Three grants funding university researchers across North Carolina were marked for termination in a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services email mistakenly sent to grant recipients April 29.
It follows a wave of federal funding cuts that have affected workers across North Carolina.
A department spokesperson told the Associated Press that the email, which included a spreadsheet labeling 150 Administration for Children and Families grants for termination, contained "outdated and predecisional information."
"It's alarming that grantees and contractors had to find out this way, through an accidental email, rather than a transparent process." Katie Hamm, a former ACF deputy, told the Associated Press. "Ending these projects without explanation not only wastes taxpayer dollars, it also threatens the evidence base behind key safety net programs.”
Two of the listed grants funded analyses of Head Start, an early childhood education program launched in the 1960s that primarily serves impoverished youth. The organization has recently undergone budget cuts, layoffs and a plan to reduce its funding.
One of those Head Start grants funded researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, while the other was awarded to UNC-Charlotte.
"I didn't even know it was on a list," said Dr. Stephanie Potochnick, associate professor of sociology at UNC-Charlotte and principal investigator for their grant.
She clarified that while she'd gotten further information from HHS complicating the money-spending process, she "just ignored it because we've already spent all our funds."
Cutting funding to projects that had already concluded, she stressed, reflects the administration's "haphazard" approach to budget-tightening.
Naomi Goldstein, former director of the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, which funds these grants, said it illustrates the "haste and chaos" at HHS.
Both UNC grants were set to end in March. Per a UNC spokesperson, the Chapel Hill researchers still had money to spend by their deadline. When they reached out to HHS to extend the timeline to spend the funds, they never heard back.
Potochnick posited that they might have been selected for cuts due to the specific communities their research studied.
"Head Start tends to service vulnerable populations," she said. Both UNC grants went to research studying Head Start programs in impoverished Latino communities.
The third NC grant on the list, awarded to Duke University researchers, also potentially covered impoverished populations. It evaluated the efficacy of a program in Durham that waived fees accrued by those whose drivers' licenses were suspended after they failed to pay for a citation.
The principal investigator on that project did not respond to requests for comment.
Potochnick added that the UNC-Charlotte grant might also have been targeted for its analysis of immigration enforcement. They found that higher apprehension rates during the first Trump administration correlated to reduced Latino enrollment in Head Start.
If the cuts were determined by finding and attacking studies with certain keywords, she reasons, their research would be a prime target for an administration that's been hostile to immigrants.
National and Statewide Impact
The sweeping national budget cuts have created a culture hostile to research, Potochnick says, and researchers are taking note.
"I mean, most of us are just not even thinking about applying for grants anymore," she said.
Trump administration officials claim the cuts serve to save government money. But Potochnick emphasized that the central purpose of this research is to evaluate if government money is being well-spent.
"Cutting this research … hurts our ability to know how to improve programs and services so that they actually are meeting their goals," she said. The Chapel Hill study's express primary purpose, for instance, was to find best practices that improve child learning.
Potochnick added that the programs can also turn out to be money-makers for local economies. "If you invest in young children, that's going to have economic benefits, not only for those children (and) their families, but for the community broadly," she said.
The cuts harm not just the individual studies slashed, but the future of research in North Carolina and the country as a whole.
