May 18, 2025 By Garrett Neese 5 min read

Joe Angelelli takes heart in a finding from a study on nonviolent protests: Once 3.5% of the population shows up consistently in protest of an issue, it flips.

A Thursday forum in Carmichaels, which drew about 35 people to hear about the potential impacts of the Trump administration’s proposed or recently announced cuts to areas from Medicaid to the Veterans Administration, was a step toward that goal, he said.

“We’ve all got to do it in our own community — have things like this, keep talking, keep showing up,” said Angelelli, chairman of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Partnership for Aging. “I think that’s what we can do, and it’s where we’ll build the relationships for what comes next.”

SWPAA co-hosted a panel discussion with the United Mine Workers of America and the American Federation of Government Employees.

Angelelli was joined on the panel by Chuck Knisell, UMWA’s District 2 international vice president, and Phil Glover, AFGE’s District 3 national vice president.

Nearly 10,000 Greene County residents are using some form of Medicaid coverage, Angelelli said, including behavioral health care, in-home care, or community health centers.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget would cut nearly $800 million from Medicaid and also impose new requirements where able-bodied people without dependents would be required to put in 80 hours a month of work, education or service.

The extra complications would deter people from seeking care they need, Angelelli said. And cuts could also jeopardize the jobs and services tied to that funding.

A combined $14.6 million in Medicaid funding went to home and community-based services and nursing homes in Greene County in 2022.

Almost 250 residents receive those home- and community-based services, and almost 150 rely on Medicare payments for their nursing home care.

“We know that taking Medicaid coverage away from people hurts their health for all the obvious reasons,” Angelelli said. “It hurts the whole community’s health, because when people lose Medicaid coverage, they’re still going to end up in the emergency room, receive care, delay care.”

When Knisell looks at the cuts to mine safety programs and research, he sees almost 60 years of progress coming undone.

A 1968 explosion at the Farmington Mine in West Virginia that killed 68 people led to more protections for mining safety, inspections and worker health.

Knisell credits regular mine inspections by the Mine Health Safety Organization — backed up with the ability to cite mines for violations – with saving thousands of lives. The Department of Government Efficiency has slated dozens of MSHA offices for closure, including the one in Waynesburg, potentially making those inspections harder to come by.

Cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health laid off the employees at the Morgantown, W.Va., office responsible for research into black lung and the screenings affected miners needed to obtain health benefits. Those jobs were reinstated Tuesday after a federal judge ruled in favor of a West Virginia miner who’d filed a suit against the moves.

Layoffs at a NIOSH facility near Pittsburgh, responsible for certifying respirators nationally, are still on target.

“A hundred thousand coal miners have died (of black lung),” Knisell said. “There’s been acts put in place to slow that way down. Our rates of death have went way down. If we continue on this path of destruction, we will go right back to where we were.”

The speed and arbitrary nature of some of the cuts were down to the “20-year-old coders” employed by DOGE, Glover said. He highlighted cases such as cutting chemotherapy for veterans getting cut after DOGE members flagged cleaning expenses that were necessary

Cuts such as the 83,000 employees planned in Veterans Affairs risk backtracking on recent agreements that had been broadly bipartisan, Glover said. The PACT Act in 2022 opened up VA benefits up to those who had been exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances.

“From 2022, we gained somewhere around 61,000 employees,” he said. “A million veterans signed up under PACT. I don’t think 60,000 people helping those million is too much to ask.”

Angelelli called on the people in the crowd Thursday to contact their officials in Pennsylvania to either vote against the cuts at the federal level or be prepared to backstop those cuts locally.

Glover urged residents to contact U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, the area’s representative in Congress. His district administrator had told him that could change in a hurry.

“It’s working,” he said. “The pressure is building in the Senate. They’re not sure they can get the cuts that they are trying to get through the House. So it’s always about activity.”

Marianne Gideon, a former 46-year employee of the Centerville Clinics in Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, now sits on its board. She came to Thursday’s forum to learn more about the cuts. While they haven’t affected the clinic’s services yet, she said, the uncertainty is trying enough.

“All the things that we’re talking about here affects Centerville Clinics and all the community health clinics in the United States,” she said. “Medicare is like a lifeblood.”