How will Indiana be affected by the federal shutdown?

Are Hoosiers, who use the health insurance marketplace about to see a big spike in their premiums?

And why is Purdue ending a popular grant program for low income students?

From the studios of WFYI, it's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending October 3rd, 2025.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.

This week, federal employees across Indiana have been furloughed or forced to work without pay because of the federal government shutdown.

Indiana has about 24,000 civilian federal employees, most working in areas such as law enforcement, transportation, security, and veterans affairs.

The Minton-Capehart Federal building in downtown Indianapolis houses regional offices for agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the IRS, as well as an immigration court.

The city is also home to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

During a government shutdown, many federal employees are told not to work, but people in jobs that are deemed essential are required to work without pay.

Law enforcement and air traffic control fall into that category.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun commented on the situation Wednesday.

He was in Congress in 2019 during the longest shutdown of the first Trump administration.

It's worse now than it was when I was there six years ago.

And sadly, they need to get their act together and do budgets.

Do the simple thing we all do is households, businesses, municipalities and states don't spend more than you take in.

Furloughs during government shutdowns are usually temporary, but this time could be different.

As the white House has told federal agencies to prepare for permanent layoffs.

Should Hoosiers working for the federal government be worried about not having a job when the shutdown ends?

It's the first question for our Indiana Week review panel.

Political strategist Elise Schrock.

Republican Mike O'Brien.

Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief of the Indiana Capitol Chronicle.

I'm Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers and the interim host of Indiana Week in Review.

Elise, we're only a day or two into this, and my brain has already shut down trying to make sense of it.

Let's let you take a crack at it.

What's going on here?

Sure.

Well, you know, at the top of the show, you said, should Hoosiers be worried if they have a job at the end of the shutdown, which we don't know when that's going to come?

And I think everything just feels more tenuous than any one of these has ever been.

And we just have to look at what the administration has been saying from the top down.

since January, we have seen the administration, the Trump administration, kind of vilify these bureaucratic jobs, always trying to cut these jobs, looking for any opportunity to kind of, lay off folks, lay them off and realize, wait, we actually need government to run.

Recall some of them back.

So, and then we heard him say after his, you know, 70 minute authoritarian tirade to our top generals that this is intentional.

This is intentional to make things harder, to take away programs that would, quote, help Democrats because they like these programs.

It's political.

this is a, scary time to be a federal worker.

And it's a scary time for our Hoosier federal workers.

And it's never good when we have people out of work.

Well, as you point out, shutdowns are not uncommon.

But this is different in many ways.

we have a president who seems willing to dispense with the norms of the office, or perhaps even federal law regarding some of these issues, or at least test federal on some of these issues.

Also, the last time this came around, we didn't have AI generating ads sort of lampooning the other side with some would say, well, nontraditional.

is this different fundamentally?

It all feels different.

I mean, none of it feels like it's working.

you know, it's Congress's failure to, you know, come up with a budget.

It's really what this exercise, I guess it's to to two reactions, right?

If you're a federal employee, yes.

You are concerned, of course, like anybody would be, you know, if you're if you believe you're at risk that, being laid off.

So that's one thing.

The other thing is no one really notices when the government shuts down, at least for a minute.

Right?

because the or the essential things keep going.

The non-essential things you don't even really see permitting.

And, you know, maybe your passport slows down or, you know, things, things that are not critical, things that are critical to you and things that aren't, you know, you don't pay attention to and you don't notice.

And the problem with that, or what both parties are doing right now, and, you know, Democrats are failing as well as the Republicans.

It, is finding any leverage.

So where do you find leverage in that?

If the public is not paying attention because they didn't really notice and not being affected by it?

the universe of federal employees relative to everyone else is small.

how do you create full political leverage to get to get to a deal?

And that is what is different, because there doesn't seem to be any leverage other than the white Democrats are harping on Medicaid expansion and, you know, health care subsidies.

and the White House's lever seems to be we're going to fire 100 hundreds of thousands of people, and eliminate all Democratic agents.

And who's going to and who's going to be put in.

Yeah, who's going to blink first?

And we don't know, because there doesn't seem to be a willingness on either side to come to a come to an agreement.

Well, when does when do we get that sort of, incentive to, to resolve this?

It seems to me that there are three ways to look at who's affected here.

And we've already touched on this.

You have the average Hoosier.

You have federal employees who live in Indiana and may or may not have a job when this is done.

And then politicians how their stock either rises or falls.

Let's take them in that order.

If in fact people have to hurt and start calling their representation in Washington before this is resolved.

When do we start seeing that, in not in the short term, but we've also heard if Wick benefits, Snap benefits, some of these things, if there isn't a resolution in October, maybe we do start seeing an interruption in benefits.

Well, I think when people start like having their lives being impacted, you know, and and it ultimately will impact, you know, all Hoosiers, whether they're federal government employees, whether, you know, there's somebody that's looking to get Social Security benefits.

when those people really start feeling, I'm going on a flight, you know, next week.

And I'm really hoping because I remember last time during the shutdown, a lot of federal employees were calling in because they weren't, you know, getting paychecks and and just calling in sick.

So I got my fingers crossed.

But, you know, when people start getting impacted and that's of course, who is going to be impacted.

Everybody in there and their everyday lives.

That's when people maybe are, you know, paying more attention and really being like, let's, let's try to come to a compromise.

But again, you know, seeing how long the last federal government shutdown happen for 35 days.

And, the last significant one, anyway, in 2018, 2019.

And where we were, you know, in those years pre-pandemic and where we are now, as far as, being able to come to a compromise.

I was.

Right there.

We're also much deeper in debt that we were in an accelerated way.

I mean, it's $1 trillion every six months.

I mean, what are we what are we going to what are we what are we.

Going to do?

Right?

How are we going to balance that?

That raises an issue that when the governor met with reporters this week, he talked about this being a lesson of sorts.

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but for the state to learn to live within its means, the same way that we would as a family sitting around the kitchen table or the state.

And yet we're reminded that the state is number three on the list.

A ranking of states that are most reliant on federal money.

And I guess if you use the family around the the the dinner table analogy, if you have the rich uncle or grandfather pumping lots of money into your bank accounts, you can oftentimes balance that budget more easily.

Is there some disconnect here?

Well, I mean, when you say most reliant, we don't necessarily mean the state government getting the money.

We mean people in Indiana getting money, whether it be Social Security or whether it be transportation dollars, building roads or, you know, things like that, Medicaid is a huge one that a lot of that federal money is just a pass through the state isn't, you know, getting the enjoyment of that money.

It's just passing.

But if the feds on the Medicaid front contract, who's left to pick up the pieces?

Yeah.

But I mean, that's protected mandatory spinning.

So we're really only talking about the discretionary side.

You know, we're going to see state federal Park shut down.

You know, no one can go to Yellowstone or you know, any of those.

So that that's an example of something they'll see.

But, yeah, I don't know what brings them to the table.

On one hand, you know, the Democrats are wanting to continue these ACA, health subsidies.

But, you know, that's again, a cost of money.

And so then we get back to Governor Brown's point, which is, you know, the federal government has spent more than it takes in four decades.

And I don't know, how do you break out of that?

Well, and we will get to that momentarily, because that is sort of, I think, ground zero in this, this whole debate.

But in the meantime, it seems the messaging is, is is what's up front here.

I mean, we're going to be bombarded with various messages online.

I mean, you got.

Any, federal agency right now and they are likely violating the Hatch Act and using.

Blackouts because the political.

Rhetoric here, the Democrats are doing this, you know, so you've got that which, again, a violation of the Hatch Act.

And then you need Democrats to be saying, listen, open enrollment is happening.

pricing will go up if we don't if we don't fight for these subsidies.

And it's not just, you know, to protect Obamacare, it is, you know, the people who are getting these subsidies through Obamacare, if they take that away, prices go up for everybody.

and it is a messaging issue.

And if either side is just saying it's that guy, it's that guy.

And not giving Americans a vision for what they're fighting for.

then we're going to have a problem, on both sides.

and I will say, I do have a little bit of an issue with Governor Bronze.

It's just simple.

Don't spend more than you're taking in and acting like families who are sitting around their dinner table.

That that's simple for them because it's not right now.

And that's what Democrats are fighting for.

They're fighting to make sure that when they are doing that math around their table, their subsidies, their health care, those prices, among other things, aren't going up.

I don't know if you can't see us from his helicopter, but that is actually a very hard thing for families to be doing right now.

We give you equal time, but we only have 30 minutes.

So if any any response quick to some.

Well let me ask you about that.

The I that is what is new.

We have the president.

There's one that with the grim reaper is going through Washington and he's hitting on a cowbell like Will Ferrell.

And then you see it's the OMB director at the end when they pull back the cloak.

The other one was, you already talked about the sombrero and mustache on Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.

Is that helping or hurting?

It's not helping.

I mean, it's it's, you know, amusing to some people, but it's also like to, you know, the I'm not for you.

I'm not for any of that.

I might be for the other alien policy, but I'm never for I'm for our house as a party talking about it.

So the cowbell that you have under your here is not.

That's always there.

That's always there.

All right.

Well, I promised we'd be talking more about health insurance.

Here we go.

Health insurance costs for Hoosiers on the federal health care marketplace.

Well, we'll be seeing nearly a double doubling in the cost of premiums next year if Congress doesn't extend enhanced premium tax credits created during the Biden administration, the issue has become something of ground zero in the debate surrounding the government shutdown.

The enhanced tax credits were introduced in 2021 to help lower the cost of coverage secured through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

They're set to expire this year.

Kathy Hempstead, a senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says a jump in premiums will have a huge impact nationwide.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 4.2 or so million people who are currently on the marketplace will become uninsured.

Hempstead did an analysis for Indiana's costs.

She used the example of a 50 year old making about $47,000 a year on those lowest level plans on the ACA marketplace.

That person's premiums are poised to go up anywhere from 83 to 102% next year.

That's about $155 a month.

Hempstead says.

The cost increase, coupled with a likely jump in the number of people uninsured, will have an impact on the health care system as a whole.

Because we don't have as many people to pay them as we used to.

So we're going to eliminate some services or we're going to shut down this, you know, satellite emergency room or whatever.

Hempstead says rural areas will be hit the hardest.

Mike, sombreros and cowbells notwithstanding.

Is this the kind of issue that can bring people to the table, bring some sort of agreement?

I don't know how you fix it because it's good.

What's happened is what we always thought would happen at the beginning, which is if you don't, if you don't, you know, aggressive way require people to participate that the adverse selection issue where, you know, the 48 year old is going to see it go up 100, 100%, 102%.

and the 27 year old who's like, I'm out of here.

Like, and so now it just it creates this spiraling of high cost, smaller group or small, you know, there's fewer people in the pool and they cost a lot more money.

and so, you know, the mandates are gone unless you live in Vermont or California.

and so it was only it was only going to work if we compelled everybody to be in, and we've never had the political willingness to do that, really.

And the Republicans didn't have the willingness to make the individual mandate aggressive, and the Democrats never had the willingness to put heavy penalties on it.

If you didn't.

At least early on, the ACA caused a lot of Democrats to lose office.

Is it time for the final word on that and say, ha ha, we stuck with it and now it's popular.

It is popular.

I don't see it going away.

I think there are many provisions that that keep it popular that you just can't take away.

You know, it's the reason that a lot of young people can stay on their parents insurance, and have insurance when they're entering the work field.

It is the reason why many women who, women who get pregnant and, give birth aren't bankrupt by, having children.

It's the reason why someone like me with, you know, asthma can get some type of enforceable, affordable insurance because of a preexisting condition.

That doesn't bother me all the time, but could knock me off of insurance.

There are just many, many reasons that, the passage of Obamacare had to exist, why it is popular, and why, many people are healthier because of it.

You just can't take that away.

Niki, is there any answer out there?

I mean, you go back to the bucolic days when everybody talked and had respect for each other.

This issue would be tough, even in that.

Well, I mean, if I'm I'm going to focus a little more granularly, which is the discussion now, is these additional, benefits that would take your costs down.

Those, to be fair, were put in after Covid to help into in the middle of Covid, to help people who were struggling and who had lost their jobs and things like that.

So I'm one.

And yeah, we put them in in a temporary basis to help people and now they're coming off.

So part of me feels like that.

That's okay.

But then again, two months ago, we also had temporary tax credits for Rich people that we just had to make permanent because otherwise it would be a tax increase.

And that's what Republicans wanted.

So I kind of feel they're kind of similar.

And we've often talked in recent weeks about the difficulty of taking away benefits that exist.

Yeah.

And I mean, the subsidies did exist from the beginning of the program, and it has grown like you said, in popularity in Indiana over the last, you know, 3 or 4 years, I think more than 325,000 people on the ACA marketplace right now.

Those subsidies are really crucial for people that are trying to, you know, make that budget work.

and, you know, when health care costs in Indiana continue to increase and we really don't have a lot of answers, presented to us, it seems like common sense that we would want to extend some of those benefits to people that are really struggling with health care.

Well, time now for viewer feedback.

Each week we pose an unscientific online poll question.

This week's question should lawmakers prioritize extending subsidies for those getting health insurance on the federal marketplace?

Yes or no?

Last week's question should school employees be fired for social media posts about the death of Charlie Kirk that are deemed controversial?

18% of you said yes.

82% of you said no.

You would like to take part in the poll, go to wfyi.org/iwir and look for the poll.

Well, Purdue University this week abruptly ended a statewide program that helped low income Indiana students go to college.

Eric Weddle reports that the move came after the Trump administration canceled the initiative's federal funding as part of the elimination of its D-I programs.

Gear up is a federal initiative that awards grants to states and universities to prepare low income students for college.

Purdue began its program nearly a decade ago.

The university won a $35 million grant last year to continue to gear up for seven years, but the U.S.

education Department canceled the grant in early September, federal officials said.

Elements like diversity, equity and inclusion training conflict with federal policy.

The Indiana program served more than 13,000 students in ten school districts across the state.

It included afterschool help, mentoring, and college campus visits.

Purdue did not appeal the federal decision.

Jill, what's at risk here for the many students who benefited from this program?

Well, I think yeah, at risk for more than 13,000 students, all around the state that were benefiting from this program, getting help, from middle school until they were going to college.

The students, you know, often low income, often involved in the 21st Century Scholars Program.

I mean, the risk is, that those that that help that that assistance, is gone for for those students.

and so again, you know, it's, it's, it's an education issue for the state and for Purdue, to not appeal the decision.

And also to not comment on it, and what's facing, you know, a lot of universities in the state right now with, questions about the Dei work and, of course, you know, the for the last couple of years, more of that language, I think, has been inserted into this gear up program.

but that being a reason to to take away this program from the students.

what do you make of the fact that Purdue sort of said, oh, the answer is no.

Okay.

We'll take our.

I think we'll move on an example of how we're swinging too far on the day.

I think there were only a couple times where the DEA stuff came up, like D-I training for some of the teachers.

Okay, we'll just take that out or eliminate the cultural sensitivity training part.

But the fact is why we're taking away help for low income students of all races, including white people, because of, you know, some training that doesn't necessarily have to be part of the program.

I feel like Purdue could have at least maybe said, hey, could we modify it first and maybe you guys could get on board with it, as my mom would say.

Instead, they just threw the baby out with the bathwater.

And the reason, I mean, you can infer that they well know why not?

I mean, oh, no.

One wants to be on the bad side of the Trump administration now.

Fear of repercussions, you know, produce it seems to be in a tough spot.

They've had, in-state tuition freeze for, what, 13, 14 years are very proud of that.

Justifiably so.

And they've been partly doing that by getting students who pay more from out of state and even from beyond our borders, national borders, where there's a surcharge.

and now the General Assembly last session was saying, hey, we're going to focus more on Hoosiers, which means that revenue stream goes the talk about a rock and a hard place for Purdue and other institutions in it.

Yeah, I mean, this is a signal, right?

And this is a very focused example of what happens when all of us, from any background and any demographic, think that just because, IRE is focused at black and brown people, it can't happen to anyone else.

And that is a message that has been that is a fear that has been stoked in several different policies, many different policies.

That is an umbrella message coming from the Trump administration on anything from immigration to education, and especially when it comes to low income working people, working Hoosiers, our fates are tied together.

So when you take away opportunities for people, when you offer opportunity to black and brown people, it benefits our communities as a whole.

So, you know, this this is a signal.

and Purdue has, you know, made the decision to capitulate to it.

But they are they're put in a rock and a hard space and many of our institutions are.

Just an aberration or the new normal for our institutions of higher learning in this state.

I'm I'm with Niki.

It's that you could have modified the program because, you know, if you're a conservative, let's figure out a way to get kids.

I promise you, those ten school districts in Hamilton County or Hendricks County, my guess is they were in Center Township and Marion County and Lake County and places that, yes, disproportionately probably help minorities because minorities are disproportionately poor.

So let's send them to college or we can not help them at all.

Get into school.

And now we're back dealing with insurance subsidies and Medicaid growth, enrollment and dock issues.

And like all the all the other things that being poor exacerbate and being uneducated exacerbate.

next week we'll go back to talking about how you football and.

Well, so just to have a week off at the bye week, a number of clean energy jobs or the number of clean energy jobs in Indiana, that is, those that are the sectors such as energy efficiency, wind, solar, electric vehicles and biofuels hardly grew last year, analysts with the nonprofit Environmental Entrepreneurs say the employment figures are likely to fall as the Trump administration revokes clean energy incentives.

Indiana Public Broadcasting's Rebecca Thiele reports.

Indiana ranks 12th among states for clean energy jobs overall, but those jobs grew by less than 1% last year.

And though the state is known for car manufacturing, jobs in electric and hybrid vehicles went down 6%.

E2 state advocacy director Mikayla Preskill says those numbers may bounce back as EV manufacture RNG plants planned for Indiana.

Get up and running.

I think we're just at the beginning of this transition in Indiana, and we'll continue to see the clean vehicles industry grow.

But Preskill says clean energy jobs are at risk as President Donald Trump works to pull clean energy funding and tax incentives set by the Biden administration.

She says since the 2020 slump, clean energy jobs in the U.S.

have grown faster than the rest of the economy.

Niki, a year or two ago, clean energy jobs.

That was what everybody was buzzing about.

Have we seen the high water mark and now receding?

They are still growing a little.

And I do think the vehicle part will continue to move forward.

But obviously wind, solar, those kind of things, those are on all on the outs with the current administration.

And also frankly, you know, we've seen example after example of Indiana communities.

They don't want those, you know, entities or efforts in their area.

So we're seeing that.

So we're seeing that in these numbers as well.

Jill, is this a branding problem?

I bet if you just call it manufacturing instead of green jobs, maybe it'd be a different outcome.

It could be a branding problem.

But also, I think it's true that there are a finite amount of resources and clean energy.

You know, whether you want to call it clean energy or something else is still something that we're going to have to look to in the future, you know, whether it be vehicles or electrical grid.

I mean, we have to do that.

So why not do that in Indiana?

And I know a lot of communities here locally that are excited about these jobs, and there's programs that help support them.

So all right, we'll leave it there.

That's Indiana Week and review for this week.

Our panel has been political strategist Elise Schrock.

Republican Mike O'Brien.

Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief of the Indiana Capitol Chronicle.

I'm Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And join us next time, because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber.