Michelle Cohen, executive director of the Lake Monroe Water Fund, was beaming with joy when she received an award notice from the U.S. Forest Service in May 2024. After over a year of hard work — several hundred hours of research, outreach, writing, and refining its application — and six months of waiting, her organization won $426,690 in federal and matching grants to take out invasive species in Yellowwood State Forest and downtown Nashville, Indiana. The project’s targets for removal were tree of heaven, autumn olive, Norway maple, the infamous Bradford and other invasive pears, Asian bush honeysuckle, and Japanese stiltgrass. Taking out these invasives would allow the native species to grow back and repopulate the forest.
Michelle Cohen leads the nonprofit Lake Monroe Water Fund, which is in limbo as it waits to hear if the federal funds it had already been awarded will materialize. | Photo by Trung Le
Although the water fund spearheaded the project, it was not alone. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the town of Nashville, the Nature Conservancy of Indiana, and the Brown County Soil & Water Conservation District had all committed either matching grants, labor hours, or office space to carry out the project.
From May 2024 till now, however, Cohen’s project has been in limbo under the Trump administration’s efforts to cut federal spending. Without the $213,336 in federal grant money, the matching funds from the other project partners can’t be made available, and Cohen’s project is unable to move forward. The U.S. Forest Service has provided no clear direction, which leaves Cohen with only one recourse: Wait and see.
Uncertainties have enveloped not only the people at Lake Monroe Water Fund but also people across other organizations that rely in whole or in part on federal funding. Funding cuts or freezes are affecting numerous entities in south-central Indiana, including food banks, libraries, arts organizations, research institutions, and more. Pantry 279 in Ellettsville and the Monroe County Public Library are among those having to adjust to funding losses.
Watershed protection efforts help residents
Cohen joined the water fund in 2022 after a twenty-year career in waste management and recycling. The water fund’s mission of protecting Monroe Lake, as it’s officially known, as a water source felt like a good match with her experience, she said. Her organization is lean — Cohen at the helm, one part-timer, and an Indiana University intern — but it serves a vital role as the bridge between the people getting their household water from Lake Monroe and those living upstream.
Volunteers with the Lake Monroe Water Fund plant willow stakes along Clay Lick Creek in Brown County in 2023. | Photo by Michelle Cohen
The largest inland lake in Indiana, Lake Monroe draws its water from a 276,000-acre watershed — the area of land that drains water into it — and is the sole water source for 128,000 customers in Monroe County and a supplemental source for Brown County, according to the water fund’s website. Its significance cannot be overstated.
Lake Monroe’s watershed extends into six counties, with Monroe, Brown, and Jackson counties taking up 98 percent of its area. Any septic runoff, debris from erosion, or fertilizer/pesticide contamination within the watershed could theoretically affect Lake Monroe’s water quality. Thus, one of the water fund’s goals is to encourage good practices in watershed management.
Given the size of Lake Monroe’s watershed, protecting it could seem like an impossible task, but Cohen’s team has been nibbling at the edges in incremental bites. In October 2022, the Lake Monroe Water Fund partnered with the Brown County Soil & Water Conservation District to give fifty households a $200 rebate each to have their septic systems inspected and pumped. In spring 2023, the water fund and its volunteers planted 900 native trees and shrubs — pecans, dogwoods, American hornbeams, and buttonbush — and 600 willow stakes along Clay Lick Creek at the CYO Camp Rancho Framasa. For another annual project that currently runs through June 30, the water fund is providing a total of 500 free soil tests to residents of Brown, Jackson, and Monroe counties.
Now, with the promised federal grant failing to materialize, the water fund’s most ambitious project yet might never happen. The absence of the grant will not threaten the water fund’s existence, Cohen said. Its main sources of funding have come from the city of Bloomington, Duke Energy, Smithville Communication, the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, South Central Indiana REMC, and corporate and individual sponsors. But the grant could have created three more positions within the water fund to carry out important work — two people for the invasive species project and one person to advise people on water conservation practices. Instead of jobs to fill, Cohen now faces a heap of disappointment and the prospect of several years of waiting and efforts down the drain.
Volunteers with the Lake Monroe Water Fund plant native trees and shrubs along Clay Lick Creek in Brown County in 2023. Lake Monroe’s watershed extends into six counties, and one of the water fund’s goals is to encourage good practices in watershed management. | Photo by Michelle Cohen
Feeding fewer hungry people
The situation at Pantry 279 could be more dire than what the water fund is facing, because federal funding cuts will reduce its capacity to feed hungry people.
Pantry 279 receives 20 to 25 percent of its food from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and distributed via Hoosier Hills Food Bank. In the last week of March, the pantry was shocked when Hoosier Hills Food Bank announced that 62,000 pounds of eggs, meat, and produce that it was expecting from TEFAP had been sent back. “Where did the food go? We don’t know,” said Cindy Chavez, Pantry 279’s executive director.
Chavez opened Pantry 279 in 2015 at the urging of her Girl Scout troop — ten 6th- through 8th-graders, including Chavez’s daughter. During a school lunch in 2013, Chavez said, her daughter and the other Girl Scouts were approached by some friends who asked for their leftovers. “Why do you want our food? It’s gross,” her daughter asked. “We don’t have any food at home,” the others answered. “Mom and dad are without jobs right now, so we have to store [the leftovers] in our lockers to eat on the weekends.”
The exchange prompted Chavez’s Girl Scouts to ask her at their next meeting to build a food pantry. Chavez balked at the idea at first but later relented. She had told the girls to “go big or go home, and if they put in the work, they can accomplish anything.” It was time to put her words into action.
And, so, her “pantry lifestyle” began. For the first seven years, Chavez would work at the pantry all day then “go home, change shirts, and drive Uber until 4 a.m., because you still got to pay the bills.” In October 2021, thanks to a COVID grant from United Way, Chavez quit Uber and finally got paid for her work at the pantry. Though Uber paid better, she said the pantry work was safer and more rewarding.
In 2024 alone, Pantry 279 served 117,433 people, according to data from Hoosier Hills Food Bank, one of its biggest food donors.
In 2024, Pantry 279 served 117,433 people. It receives 20 to 25 percent of its food from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and distributed via Hoosier Hills Food Bank, one of the pantry’s biggest donors. | Photo by Olivia Bianco
On April 6, one full-time employee and eleven volunteers helped Chavez unpack food items — tangerines, poblano peppers, pork, chicken, bread, Ka’Chava protein powder, salt, and canned food — and stack them on the shelves; some were putting corn flour into smaller ziplock bags. At the same time, four part-time drivers were on the road delivering food to homebound clients.
In early 2025, Pantry 279 expanded its delivery service to Monroe, Owen, Greene, and Lawrence counties to people who are elderly, ill, disabled, or without transportation. The pantry started delivering to Bloomington in 2016 and averaged six to ten deliveries a week. When COVID hit, the number went up significantly. By 2023, the pantry made an average of 150 deliveries a week. Now, Chavez said, that number is between 300 to 400 per week.
At 1 p.m. on April 6, clients, in a single line, filed into the pantry. They provided their names, cities, states, counties, and zip codes at the check-in counter, picked up a basket and began shopping for their favorites. There was a diverse mix of ethnicities among the clients: white, Black, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic.
Cynthia Murphy was there with her three grandchildren. She was a nurse in Chicago, but in 2015, after hearing that the Indiana Department of Child Services had taken over custody of her four grandchildren, Murphy relocated to Indiana and adopted the three grandchildren with disabilities while her daughter adopted the fourth. That year, Murphy had lost a daughter and grandson in Texas to a car accident, as well as her mother. She couldn’t let another four family members get snatched from her, she said.
At the pantry, they got catfish and chicken, among other items. Murphy said she uses the pantry to supplement the disability checks her grandchildren receive each month. She takes care of her grandchildren full time. Two of the grandchildren, ages 19 and 11, have cognitive delays, while another, age 10, has ADHD. They receive a total of $2,302 in disability checks and $325 in food stamps each month in addition to medical benefits. The Murphys also receive a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher from Indiana each month to help pay for their apartment’s rent. With help from the federal and local governments and nonprofits like Pantry 279, “we’re comfortable,” Murphy said.
Cases of grandparents having to take care of their grandchildren on Social Security have been on the rise, according to Chavez. There are “parents dying, parents overdosing, parents in jail,” she said. Chavez attributed the drug abuse and overdose epidemic to depression and the widespread availability of meth and fentanyl. Some people were struggling, she said, and they didn’t go to the doctor because it’s expensive. Meth and fentanyl are cheap, so people take them to feel better, but they need to take the drug only once or twice before they are hooked.
Traci Ayala, who joined the pantry in July 2023 as a part-time delivery coordinator and now is working there full-time, added this:
[Drugs] hit lower income communities the hardest.… If you can’t afford to live, let alone have some enjoyment out of life … like hanging out with friends or going bowling or going to the movies … buying a new purse, whatever it might be; if you are just sitting around wondering how you’re going to pay your rent or where you’re going to find your next meal, that really does negatively affect your mental health.… A lot of those people do drugs just to not have to feel like that anymore.
“We don’t judge,” Chavez said. “Almost all of us are lacking one paycheck away from right here,” she added. She would rather have people feel welcomed at the pantry than starve to death because of shame or stigma.
In 2020, during COVID lockdowns, people were coming to the pantry from wealthy neighborhoods. “These are people that had good jobs, but they were on lockdown,” Chavez said. “Their savings were depleted.… They did not want their neighbors to know.… They would have been ostracized. But, what they didn’t know was three cars behind them was another one of their neighbors.”
Pantry 279 serves people from 36 counties in Indiana. It served 16,886 clients in February and March of 2025, a 9 percent uptick compared to the same period last year. With talks of federal funding cuts, Chavez’s clients are afraid that their Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid could be affected. That fear is driving them to the pantry to stock up, Chavez said.
Their fear is not unfounded. According to Chavez, in February, some clients came to the pantry with letters from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often known as food stamps. Another grandmother with four grandchildren, Chavez said, was depending on Social Security and food stamps to get by. In the SNAP letter that she showed Chavez, her food stamps were cut by 75 percent.
Back to the missing 62,000 pounds of food and TEFAP: The USDA uses TEFAP money to buy produce from American farmers, then allocates the produce to all 50 U.S. states to feed low-income people. For fiscal year 2024, which began on October 1, TEFAP received $541.5 million from Congress and $943 million from the USDA’s own Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) for a total of $1.5 billion in federal funding to buy food and run its program. For the fiscal year 2025, it has received $500 million to date from the CCC, a 66 percent reduction compared to last year.
With efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (commonly known as DOGE) to cut federal funding, it’s uncertain whether TEFAP will receive more money this year from the CCC.
The Farm Bill governs TEFAP and is renewed by Congress about every five years. Congress, however, did not renew but instead extended the 2018 Farm Bill in 2023 for fiscal year 2024, and again in 2024 for fiscal year 2025. The Farm Bill’s latest extension, part of the American Relief Act, 2025, was passed on December 21, 2024, under the Biden administration. Besides the $25 million appropriated for TEFAP to be used for infrastructure needs related to major disasters, Congress has set aside no other money to the program.
“It will be a painful hit,” Chavez said. But “pantry is hope.” In June 2024, a big storm came through and knocked out power in the area. “We all came in and we all worked with candles in here, flashlights, coolers, and a few generators that people let us borrow to keep our refrigerators going.… It was crazy, and it was chaos. We had no internet or computer, so we had to do everything by paper and put it in later. But the community really rallied together, and a lot of people came to us because there were a lot of people without power.” In the end, Chavez said, “we figured it out.”
Library of Things and more
For Grier Carson, director of Monroe County Public Library (MCPL), Trump’s Executive Order to disband the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was unprecedented.
Grier Carson, director of the Monroe County Public Library | Photo by Aubrey Dunnuck, Monroe County Public Library
Created in 1996 by Congress, the IMLS helped libraries across the country develop policies and best practices; provided libraries with money and opportunities for professional development; and helped fund the popular Libby ebook app, interlibrary loan, and many other services. The IMLS’s budget was $295 million in 2024. Now, with one signature, the esteemed organization is no more.
Alarmed by the move, Carson wrote an open letter to the Monroe County community alerting it to the IMLS’s destruction. Such a statement is not something that the library does often, Carson said.
The library’s services have always been impartial and apolitical. A library is “a common space,” Carson said. It goes back to the Roman and Greek periods, where a notion was born that “everyone had the right to participate in their society.” The MCPL’s mission has been to “be as many different things for as many different people as possible,” regardless of their political stripes.
With 174 employees and over 200 volunteers across three branches, MCPL runs more than 2,000 programs a year that benefit all age groups, including STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) club, book clubs, music programs, and craft programs. Tori Lawhorn, MCPL communications and marketing director, rattled off a laundry list of MCPL programs, which seem to offer something for everyone. Adding to the list, Carson lauded the MCPL “Library of Things” collection that includes nontraditional items like iPads, tabletop RPG games, video production kits, and baking kits. With the latter, Carson said, “people could … dip their toe in the water of baking, rather than going out buying a bunch of tools, only to discover you don’t have an affinity for it.”
Carson was also proud of his organization’s teenage programs. Carson explained via email:
MCPL opened a new dedicated teen space at the Downtown Library in 2014. At the time, the library offered approximately 200 teen programs a year and saw around 1,500 attendees at those programs. We have since opened two additional teen spaces (one at our Ellettsville Branch Library and one at our new Southwest Branch Library). Teen programs have increased to 420 per year with over 2,500 teen patrons attending. As of today, we see around 25,000 teens visit one of our three teen spaces.
With teenagers being a particularly difficult group to engage, it’s even more remarkable that library connections with teenagers have grown exponentially across the country, Carson said.
Despite the library’s success with teenage programs, Carson lamented what he described as a growing attack on intellectual freedom — the freedom of all patrons to find and pursue contents that interest them. That freedom also means one patron should not attempt to restrict what’s available to other patrons based on what he or she deems to be appropriate.
Since 2021, libraries nationwide have noticed an explosion of book challenges — attempts to ban books in school and public libraries — according to the American Library Association (ALA), a 149-year-old nonpartisan nonprofit organization that supports library missions to “enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” Before 2021, there were between 200 to 300 book challenges a year, according to the ALA data. In 2021, that number exploded by more than fourteenfold to 3,916 book challenges. The number peaked in 2023 at 9,021 but has far from returned to pre-2021 numbers.
The ALA noted that most attempts to ban books have focused on teenagers and topics related to gender and race. It also mentioned a trend that 72 percent of attempts to ban books now come from organized groups instead of individual users. Below is the list of top ten most challenged books of 2024:
1. All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson
3. (Tie) The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
3. (Tie) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
5. Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins
6. (Tie) Looking for Alaska, by John Green
6. (Tie) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews
8. (Tie) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
8. (Tie) Sold, by Patricia McCormick
10. Flamer, by Mike Curato
Describing book bans as the “slipperiest of slopes when it comes to intellectual freedom,” Carson defended the need to keep books on library shelves, even if certain groups find those books objectionable, “because at the end of the day, it’s an opt-in collection. You choose to check something out, read it, watch it, whatever, or you choose to ignore something you don’t like or you think is harmful … but you don’t presume to tell other patrons what they should or should not be watching.”
Southwest Branch of the Monroe County Public Library on West Gordon Pike. | Limestone Post
The MCPL ran through a six-week book review process, Carson said, every time it received a book challenge. The first step is for the library to talk to the patron who submits the request. The library then creates a committee of library staff and sometimes members of the public to read the book and see why it was added to a particular collection. That committee then submits a recommendation to Carson to either keep it as is, move to another collection, or discard. Carson then communicates the decision to the patron and the library board of trustees. The patron has the right to appeal the decision, which would then be reviewed by the board of trustees at a public meeting for a final verdict.
Expanding on the political neutrality of the MCPL, Carson sees the dissolution of the IMLS and the rise in book bans as a worrying cultural trend that interferes with libraries’ mission to protect intellectual freedom.
Don’t take libraries for granted, Carson urged. “Libraries are incredibly popular in the United States … but they’re also fragile. Like any public institution, they are built as much on a shared set of values and assumptions as they are on law and statute and funding models.” He went on, “Libraries are really one of the few, if not the only, places where you can walk in the door without a red cent and have access to everything there and be anonymous and do it on your own terms.”
The IMLS’s dissolution, Carson said, would most likely affect small-town libraries that serve populations of under 30,000. These libraries have ten to twenty people on staff, working from a single location, and rely heavily on federal funding for their programs and services. Without that funding, “they’re going to start shutting their doors and laying staff off.”
Intended and unintended consequences
The swift and systematic dismantling of federal programs and institutions under President Trump will have profound impacts on America. Some of its unintended consequences may take years to be fully understood. To borrow the words of Grier Carson, MCPL director, “If we agree as a country that things like libraries are just superfluous privileges that we could do without, let’s just get down to real business and focus on the things that matter. There may be some justification in that mentality, but we may lose out on some real treasures, sort of the jewels of society, as they say, that you kind of take for granted when you grow up with [them].”
Organizations like Lake Monroe Water Fund, Pantry 279, and Monroe County Public Library are grappling with the uncertainties of funding cuts and the eliminations of federal institutions like the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
If the ramifications for organizations like the MCPL and Pantry 279 are any example, these cuts will have the worst impacts on the most vulnerable Americans: grandparents who have taken custody of their grandchildren, low-income families, rural communities, and members of the public “without a red cent” who relish the services of a public library. The cuts might also hamper previous efforts to protect and preserve the environment, like the story of the water fund has shown.
Despite the storm, people like Michelle Cohen, Cindy Chavez, and Grier Carson continue to push forward in leading their respective organizations. “We take the long arc of history approach to all of these things,” Carson said.
For questions or concerns about the federal funding cuts, you may contact your U.S. senators and representatives.
