New Council Committee Shines a Light on Bleak Impacts of Trump Funding Cuts

From immigration defense to disaster response to electric bills, federal policies will slash the local safety net and make things more expensive.

Kids In Need of Defense managing director Jessica Castellanos

By Erica C. Barnett

As Trump's funding cuts begin to hit local organizations that rely heavily on federal funds, Seattle officials have said little publicly to indicate they're prepared for, or more than generally aware of, the deep cuts that are coming for every local organization that relies on federal funding.

With a new revenue forecast showing a dramatic drop in revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax and other funding sources, the city is behaving as if the coming shortfall was the only budget problem they need to prepare to address—ignoring the other side of the ledger, where federally funded programs are at risk for closure.

The council's most recently elected member, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, said she started thinking last summer about the potential impact a new Trump administration could have locally. "It dawned on me one day that there was a [possible] reality where I won my election and Trump won the election," Rinck said. "So I spent some time reading through Project 2025 and what the prospects were like for Washington State and they were really grim."

After Rinck won in a landslide, she decided that the way to pull together all the information that was flooding council offices from organizations and people impacted by the barrage of new federal policies and funding cuts was to set up a committee where the whole council could get briefed, in public, on what was going on. "There’s efficiency, information symmetry, and transparency that I think the committee offers, and there’s so much happening in given day that I do think getting read in is an important starting place to talk about what we are going to do."

So far, her Select Committee on the Federal Administration and Policy Changes has met twice—once for an overview of Trump policies impacting LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive health care access, and immigrants, and a second time to discuss how tariffs and federal funding cuts will impact housing construction, homeless services, and legal defense for immigrants. Upcoming meetings will cover transportation, emergency management, City Light, and other areas of the budget that stand to lose funds or become far more expensive. The committee, like the council's other special committees on the comprehensive plan and the families and education levy, includes all nine council members.

During the second half of the most recent meeting, groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors talked about the elimination of all federal funding for their programs—including one, Kids In Need of Defense, that is being forced to shut down next month after 22 years.

A "welcoming city" resolution, sponsored by Rinck, would commit the council to include $300,000 in next year's budget for immigration defense—$150,000 to expand the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs' [OIRA] existing services, and $150,000 for direct legal assistance, enough to help dozens of people, including minors, avoid deportation.

If the full $300,000 went just to legal defense, KIND managing director Jessica Castellanos said, it could provide representation for 60 kids.

"We are withdrawing from almost 250 children's cases, and there's only 55 of those cases that remain that we are not withdrawing from, and that is because of OIRA's investment in the representation of unaccompanied children and immigrants in general," Castellanos said. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project also provides legal representation to immigrants and receives some of its funding from the city.

Committing in advance to even a small amount of funding could be a challenge in a year when the is facing huge, previously unanticipated budget shortfalls. Councilmember Maritza Rivera called the Trump administration's action "hateful, irresponsible, disgusting," but added that the council is going to be facing major budget challenges this year that will require balancing many different interests.

"We all know we have a budget deficit. The county has a budget deficit, the state has a budget deficit. So I think there's strength in numbers and all of us working together to see what we can do," Rivera said.

Rinck told PubliCola one of her goals with the committee is to impress on her colleagues the need for more revenue to pay for critical services that will otherwise vanish amid federal cuts.

"I only hope that my colleagues take that seriously— like, taxing the rich isn’t just a slogan, it's actually the most practical and realistic solution," Rinck said. "I'm committed to exploring every avenue to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share, and this committee is us taking steps toward us having those conversations."

So far, council members have been showing up to the committee, which requires a quorum of five members to meet. (The original quorum was three, but Council President Sara Nelson changed it to be consistent with other special committees, which have also had occasional trouble making quorum.) "I’m certainly hopeful that my colleagues see the value that this committee can provide," Rinck said. "We have a lot of leaders and experts coming it to brief us, and I would be very disappointed if we weren’t able to meet."