This article is a part of 12-piece series for The Times’ 2025 “Year in Review.” Click here for the print version.
The United States saw a new administration at her helm this year. The rudder has turned in new directions, and at times, into uncharted waters. President Donald Trump introduced more executive orders during his first year in office than any other sitting president in U.S. history. And some of those orders, bills, and federal policies have affected Island residents directly.
Town library administrators were left reeling from funding cuts in the early summer, when an executive order reduced federal funding to libraries across the country. Nonprofits worried if they’d need to rethink their business models in the face of the executive acts, and some, like the Yard, even shut down temporarily.
Local veterans were affected after federal funding to PTSD treatment services was slashed. Tick research and illness prevention was under threat after health professionals salary funding was cut. And scientists in Woods Hole were left to pick up the pieces after a quarter of the Oceanographic Institute employees lost their jobs in the spring.
Then, substantial federal cuts came in the form of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” a comprehensive spending initiative that hit local nonprofits and targeted social services. It also terminated tax credits for wind and solar projects years earlier than planned, possibly slowing the development of offshore wind and shrinking the number of solar energy installations. Executives from the food pantry, the only winter shelter for unhoused people on the Island, and health services raised concerns about the bill this summer and the impacts federal cuts could have on Islanders.
“This is a time that’s going to require a lot of creativity. We’re going to need community solutions, and we’re going to need neighbors helping neighbors. We live in such a caring community — [but this is] going to ask a lot of us,” Noli Taylor, co-executive director of Island Grown Initiative, which runs the food pantry, said.
Just a few months later, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts hit local residents, and Taylor’s prediction stood the test of time. Farmers and business owners across the Island stepped up to provide free food services when over a thousand locals lost their food stamps for the month of November.
Around the same time, this fall, changes to the health insurance market began because of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and a partisan divide in Capitol Hill over Obama-era insurance subsidies caused the longest government shutdown in history. Local residents were affected in a few ways: Lawful immigrants lost state coverage completely, small business owners were disproportionately impacted by subsidy cuts, and many of the changes have remained largely unresolved, even after the government reopened.
Still, Islanders prevailed. Nonprofit organizations stepped up with free food initiatives, scientists rallied to keep research funded, community events sparked joy, and neighbors sat down at the same table, passing warm homemade food to the person next to them.
Other headlines:
Woods Hole institutions rally to protect sciences
Top elected officials fire back over VA funding cuts
Federal cuts jeopardize Island disease research
Hit by funding cuts, concert raises funding for Island vets
Sources say quarter of NOAA Northeast fisheries staff gone
Federal funding cuts reach Vineyard libraries
Trump bill could increase energy costs, stymies renewables
Homelessness, food insecurity could rise with federal cuts
Health Imperatives face increased federal cuts
A shifting landscape for Island nonprofits
Hundreds of Islanders facing insurance cuts
Imminent SNAP cuts could hit more than 1,000 Islanders
With food-assistance cuts, businesses and farms go to work