This federal program helps families pay utility bills—but Trump just fired the entire staff

As a particularly cold winter sputters to an end, Pennsylvania’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps residents pay their heating bills, closed on Friday—several weeks earlier than expected. 

Funding for LIHEAP has dried up because federal workers who administer the program were recently laid off by the Trump administration, said Elizabeth Marx, the executive director at the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, a legal advocacy group that assists people struggling to pay their utility costs.