EDITORIAL: They want to serve. The government says go away.

It’s only because 25 states, including Wisconsin, sued the Trump administration that Ozaukee County is getting help this year from members of the national service organization AmeriCorps.

The administration tried last year to cripple, as a likely prelude to killing, the organization that was founded to give young Americans the opportunity to help communities and their residents with hands-on work projects. 

The AmeriCorps members that Ozaukee County was counting on last year to plant thousands of trees in the Clay Bluffs Cedar Gorge Nature Preserve never showed up because they were fired in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) purge of federal workers.

The administration put an end to the service of more than 32,000 AmeriCorps workers and canceled $400 million in grants for AmeriCorps projects. Every state was affected.

Days after Gov. Tony Evers was notified that  all 25 AmeriCorps programs in the state were terminated, Wisconsin joined other states in a lawsuit that has proved to be at least temporarily successful. 

Two federal judges issued injunctions ordering the administration to restore the grants and allow volunteers to return to service. Both judges used strong language in their judicial rebukes of the gutting of the program, but the injunctions are not permanent. The legal battle that will determine the survival of AmeriCorps goes on in a case that tests the boundaries of presidential power and could determine the future of community-based national service. 

At stake are not only the services provided by the corps’ organized volunteers dedicated to the mission expressed in their pledge to “get things done for America to make our people safer, smarter and healthier,” but the very ethic of service to one’s country. 

The claim to “American exceptionalism,” the frequently expressed idea that this nation is unique in world history, suggests moral superiority based on respect for the independence and well-being of its citizens and peoples of the world. Without a robust ethic of national service, it is an empty boast.

AmeriCorps was established by Congress in 1993 to provide opportunities for that service in addition to the military and the Peace Corps.

Volunteers, who join for a 10-12 month term, are not paid for their work, but receive a one-year living allowance of $12,600. Their work, in cooperation with more than 1,000 local organizations nationwide, includes disaster recovery, staffing food pantries, tutoring students and providing physical labor to improve parks and public facilities.

Some of the corps’ members most valuable contributions to the country they serve are provided through their work with community and faith-based organizations that help seniors with daily living tasks. The Trump administration’s draconian cuts deprived elderly citizens in many states of the reliable care and companionship of AmeriCorps volunteers who helped them stay active and involved in their communities.

AmeriCorps works as a partnership that matches private contributions with federal funds. States decide where to put the volunteers to work. It has been calculated that every federal dollar invested in the corps’ work generates a $17 return to society.

The attempt to starve the country’s domestic service organization, like other arbitrary DOGE cuts, was defended as necessary to reduce the national budget deficit and spiraling debt.

Rather than a justification, the rationale is a joke. The AmeriCorps budget that was slashed in 2025 totaled $1.3 billion—equal to a rounding error in the cost of the Iran war (now at $44 billion and climbing) and less than the $1.5 billion in taxpayer money paid at the order of President Trump to keep ancient coal-fired power plants operating and shut down wind power projects.

With the AmeriCorps cuts temporarily at bay by court order, an Ozaukee County nature preserve will be graced with trees that will thrive for years amid the surrounding flora and fauna. It is a national disgrace that the survival of the organization whose volunteers are planting those trees is less certain.