The lasting human impact of Trump funding freeze: An 86-year-old's ride to dialysis now feels tenuous

For Nancy Hastings, the face of the federal government is the young man who picks her up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5:45 a.m. to drive her to dialysis. She’s 86, and frail, and he stands behind her in the smoky half-light as she maneuvers down her front stairs. “If you happen to fall, don’t get scared,” he tells her. “Just fall on me, and I’ll shield you.”

Then suddenly, in late January, word came that he was gone. With the Trump administration’s spending freeze, the five-person nonprofit where he’d worked didn’t have money to keep paying everyone, and he was among the three workers laid off. One of the two remaining employees called Hastings to let her know. “She said, ‘We’ll come and get you one way or the other,’” Hastings recalled — both a reassurance and a reminder of her own fragility. The staff calls her dialysis “life-sustaining,” which is a nice way of saying that if she doesn’t receive it, she’ll die.

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