As part of its efforts to completely restructure the Clinton-era volunteer organization, the Trump administration placed around 75% of full-time AmeriCorps staff on administrative leave.
Five hundred and thirty-five of AmeriCorps’ 700 full-time staff members were put on leave, an administration insider told Fox News Digital. The Trump administration said this is part of a larger plan to shrink the overall size of the federal government.
AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps volunteers, who are part of a program that focuses specifically on volunteer opportunities for youth between the ages of 18 and 26, were pulled out of the field in advance of the Trump administration’s decision to put the agency’s full-time staffers on leave on Wednesday. Additionally, contracts with AmeriCorps totaling around $250 million have been terminated.
The administrative source said that AmeriCorps is anticipated to continue, but that operations will start again.
The AmeriCorps National Service Program was established by former President Bill Clinton in 1993, his first year in office, as a federal volunteer program to support communities around the country.
As previously discovered by the House Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, the agency has collected almost $1 billion in public funding annually, but it has failed eight consecutive audits in the last ten years.
“Unfortunately, AmeriCorps has a long history of abusing taxpayer dollars,” chair of the House subcommittee, Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, said in a statement.
“AmeriCorps is entrusted with over $1 billion of taxpayer funds every year, with the result of failure of eight consecutive audits. In 2023, the AmeriCorps Inspector General issued a ‘Management Challenges’ report detailing significant challenges AmeriCorps faces. This includes being unable to detect fraud. We have no real idea when AmeriCorps will be able to have a clean audit again. In fact, this year’s audit includes 78 recommendations still open, even after AmeriCorps said it addressed 20 last year,” Owens added in his statement.
Fox News looked into AmeriCorps’ budget in previous years and discovered that it was $1,312,806 for the fiscal year 2023, which included $99,686,000 for costs and wages, and $1,262,806 for the fiscal year 2024, which contained the same amount for expenses and compensation.
For fiscal year 2025, the Biden administration suggested spending $1,342,093,000.
According to the agency’s fiscal year 2024 annual management report, its assets were $3.7 billion, which included more than $1.5 billion in investments.
The volunteer-focused organization has prioritized diversity, equality, and inclusion as well as climate change activities. According to Fox Digital’s 2024 annual management report, “advancing racial and economic equity” was listed as one of its major goals.
“AmeriCorps has a decades-long commitment to advancing racial and economic equity through national service and volunteering,” the report stated.
“These efforts are designed to expand pathways to opportunity for all Americans. Racial and economic equity will be central to AmeriCorps’ planning and implementation of all priorities, ensuring AmeriCorps members and volunteers reflect the diversity of the American people and the communities in which they serve,” the report added.
The office should be placed on the Department of Government Efficiency’s chopping block, Owens continued, adding that even if some of its projects are “well-intentioned,” taxpayers shouldn’t continue to finance it.
“It makes no sense to expand this agency or give it more money when it continuously fails to meet basic accountability standards,” Owens said.
“Every time its representatives come before this Committee, AmeriCorps assures us that they will implement reforms, and year after year nothing changes. We can tell AmeriCorps to modernize and reform until we are blue in the face, but nothing will change unless we recognize the system is built on a flawed idea. It is time to admit that this is a failed program that needs a complete overhaul or elimination. It should be on DOGE’s chopping block,” Owens added.
