Trump shuts down volunteer agency in latest DOGE takeover

Gregory Korte, Bloomberg News on Apr 17, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has sent home staffers at AmeriCorps, the national agency that supports public service and volunteerism, in the latest agency takeover as part of a wide-ranging effort to cut the size of government.

Interim agency head Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi sent a memo to employees Wednesday placing them on administrative leave and banning them from entering AmeriCorps facilities “until otherwise notified.”

That action came a day after hundreds of volunteers for the agency’s National Civilian Conservation Corps had their service cut short, four people familiar with the move said. The program allows 18- to 26-year-olds to earn money for college by spending a year of public service experience working on housing, disaster response and environmental projects.

The agency’s shutdown followed a playbook familiar to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Agency for Global Media and a number of other smaller, semi-independent agencies.

Representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency, the team of presidential cost-cutters run by billionaire Elon Musk, arrived at the agency last week.

The shutdown has unfolded at a slower pace than in other parts of the government because the agency had more than 700 young adult volunteers working far from home — on projects like hurricane disaster recovery — and had to be safely returned. A small number of agency officials remain on the job to wind down operations, the people said.

An administration official said Thursday that the agency had failed numerous audits and referred to an AmeriCorps management report last year that listed about $45 million in “improper payment estimates for three programs or activities.”

An AmeriCorps spokeswoman did not return a request for comment late Wednesday.

Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, wrote in an X post on Thursday that Trump’s “alarming attempted destruction of @AmeriCorps will damage communities across the nation. I am working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to press the Trump administration to reverse these unjustified cuts and restore a valued program.”

Officially known as the Corporation for National and Community Service, AmeriCorps had 770 employees as of last year, according to federal data. Its total budget was about $1.3 billion. It was founded in 1965 as the domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps.

Other AmeriCorps programs include VISTA, or Volunteers in Service to America, an anti-poverty program with 7,000 members, grant-funded state and local programs, and various volunteer programs for senior citizens.

President Donald Trump first proposed eliminating the agency in his 2017 budget, arguing that “subsidizing the operation of nonprofit organizations is outside the role of the federal government.”

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