Kipnuk, Alaska, received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity early this year: a $20 million federal grant to stop the erosion that threatens its future.
Leaders of the isolated village got to work, purchasing a bulldozer and making plans to build a rock wall that would prevent its homes from falling into a river.
But in May, the Trump administration terminated Kipnuk’s grant, along with hundreds of others that President Joe Biden’s agencies had issued under the Inflation Reduction Act. Now the village leaders are scrambling for ways to replace the cash — while other recipients of the rescinded grants question whether they can ever trust the federal government’s promises again.
“My mind was like, how could they terminate the grant, even when we did not do anything wrong?” Rayna Paul, the village’s environmental director, said in a recent interview as a storm that garnered a flood warning from the National Weather Service bore down.
