Still Recovering From Hurricane Helene, Western North Carolina Braces for Federal Cuts

On March 13, residents of Western North Carolina made national news at a raucous town hall hosted by Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards in Asheville, during which one man was removed by police after shouting “I’m a veteran and you don’t give a fuck about me! . . .  Fuck you!”  

President Trump later praised Edwards on social media, and called the angry constituents  “Radical Left Lunatics” and “paid agitators with fake signs and slogans.”  

One week later, Western North Carolina residents assembled again for a town hall with a markedly different tone. There was no shouting, although there was certainly anger. The second town hall, gathered by the Buncombe County Democratic Party, elicited anger—but not shouting—as four state legislators addressed the grim impact that federal funding cuts may have in the region.  

Western North Carolina has already experienced extraordinary loss in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which killed 106 people, destroyed 4,400 homes, and damaged 170,000 others last September. Nearly six months after the storm, many child care facilities, shops, restaurants, breweries, and bars remain closed, and may never reopen, while some riverside parks and playgrounds are temporarily closed amid the debris cleanup efforts that include pulling cars out of rivers and removing shipping containers from trees. 

Now, Western North Carolina is bracing for even more financial losses under the Trump Administration, as the federal government hacks away at programs intended to support farmers, national parks, clean water, education, and health care.

At the second town hall, State Senator Julie Mayfield warned about potential cuts to Medicaid, noting that “there seems to be a difference of opinion, even between and among people in the Trump Administration, about whether these cuts are coming.” 

Cuts to Medicaid, if they do come, could affect more than a quarter of Buncombe County’s 280,000 residents. Buncombe is the most populous county in the region, and has 62,000 Medicaid enrollees. The county’s largest cohort of Medicaid enrollees are children between the ages six and eighteen. State Representative Lindsay Prather told the town hall audience that 15,000 of those enrollees only began receiving coverage after North Carolina enacted Medicaid expansion in December 2023.

“Farmers are at the front end of these cuts,” said Representative Eric Ager, whose brother and sister-in-law own Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Fairview, a small town in Buncombe County. The cuts may also impact school nutrition: The Trump Administration recently canceled $1 billion in the U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, including a $19 million program in North Carolina that purchases unprocessed or minimally processed food from small businesses and local farms for schools and child care centers. On March 17, Ager’s brother and nephew shared on Instagram that federal funding for the Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Program, in which Hickory Nut Gap Farm had participated, was pulled after three years. 

The regional Farm Service Agency is also impacted by cuts to the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month, the Trump Administration terminated the agency’s office lease in Hendersonville, where apple growers in the region’s orchard hub have been impacted by both Hurricane Helene and recent severe weather fluctuations. 

Food banks in the region are also taking a hit: The Trump Administration cut funding for the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which distributed $1.3 million to the Asheville-based MANNA Food Bank this past year. The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program purchases fresh food from local farmers and distributes it to 200 smaller food banks and social service agencies across Western North Carolina. It would have sent $11.4 million into the state this year. 

At the town hall in Asheville, state legislators noted that there are 7,600 federal workers in Western North Carolina, comprising 2.2 percent of the region’s workforce. These include employees of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration—which oversees the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, and the Asheville-headquartered National Climatic Data Center—as well as U.S. National Park Service workers. 

Cuts to the National Park Service could have a particularly strong impact on Western North Carolina, which is crisscrossed by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. The parks are among the region’s most popular tourist attractions: In 2023, the Blue Ridge Parkway brought 17 million visitors and $1.4 billion into local economies. Both are supported by the Department of the Interior, which manages national parks and monuments.

Yet in February, North Carolina Public Radio reported the Trump Administration cut seventeen U.S. Forest Service jobs in the state, including those of forest rangers, who are responsible for trail maintenance, campground cleanliness, and assisting the parks’ millions of visitors. 

While the Democrats’ town hall suggested little hope that the cuts can be stopped entirely, the assembled legislators encouraged a fighting spirit to advocate for some cuts to be reversed. They encouraged constituents to keep contacting Representative Edwards and Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd. As Representative Brian Turner told the assembled crowd, “The key to democracy really working is that voters have to hold their elected officials accountable.”