Federal funding cuts and pauses under President Donald Trump’s administration have dominated recent news cycles and led to the terminations of more than four dozen state health workers, funding uncertainty for local tribes and 1.3 million pounds in canceled food bank deliveries.

But just how much does Nevada rely on dollars from Washington?

A new report released Monday by the nonpartisan Nevada research organization Guinn Center for Policy Priorities found that from 2023 to 2025, federal funding made up about 27.7 percent of the state budget — $14.8 billion out of $53.4 billion, a little lower than the average 31 percent share of states’ revenues that came from federal dollars in the two decades leading up to 2020. The finding underscores how decisions made outside of Nevada can dramatically alter the availability of services in Nevada.

That figure represents programs administered by the state and does not include services provided entirely by the federal government — such as Social Security, Medicare or the maintenance of public lands — or federal funds that go directly to counties, municipalities and other local entities.

The authors said the report aims to inform the public and lawmakers about Nevada's breakdown of funding sources, but did not weigh in on how possible cuts at the federal level could affect the state.

The report did note that federal funding cuts “present a key challenge,” though the effects of eliminating federal funds “may vary” by program.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) told The Nevada Independent that state lawmakers are worried about the effects federal cuts will have in Nevada.

“These cuts are being instituted to fund tax cuts for wealthy people,” Yeager said. “This is not a pandemic out of our control, this is not a worldwide economic event. These are intentional decisions being made at the federal level that are hurting Nevada. It’s why I’m not sleeping well at night.”

Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) said that if President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans follow through on plans to make significant cuts to Medicaid, education funding, or other programs, it’ll likely force the governor to call the Legislature into a special session later this year and present a plan to cut the state budget.

“That's the hard reality, which is why we've been so adamant that Nevada Republicans should join us in speaking out against what the administration and Congress are doing,” she said.

The health care dilemma

The biggest federally funded state expenditure by far is Medicaid, the joint federal and state health insurance program. 

In the current fiscal year, the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services received nearly $5.6 billion in federal dollars, which represents nearly 80 percent of all federal funds to the state. Of that, more than $4.7 billion went to Medicaid.

Medicaid covers more than 811,000 people in Nevada, more than a fifth of the state.

In 2014, former Gov. Brian Sandoval became the nation’s first Republican governor to opt in to the Medicaid expansion program, which expanded coverage to a broad population of low-income adults who were previously ineligible. The federal government pays for 90 percent of the cost of insuring adults covered by the expansion.

But Medicaid cuts could be on the horizon.

House Republicans’ budget calls for the congressional committee overseeing Medicaid to reduce spending by $880 billion. 

Republican leaders have maintained that they can find the level of cuts they are seeking through eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, which Democrats have said is mathematically impossible. Republicans could also aim to decrease the Medicaid price tag by imposing work requirements on recipients to shorten the rolls, or by reducing the federal match for adults covered under Medicaid expansion.

And it’s not just Medicaid. Federal funds made up about half of the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget, which includes:

• $47 million for the Special Supplemental Program for Women and Children (WIC), which provides healthy food and breastfeeding support to pregnant women, new moms and children younger than 5, and gets more than 70 percent of its budget from the federal government 
• $111 million for the widely used Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which provides direct payments to low-income Nevadans
• $90.3 million for grants for foster care
• $81 million for child care
• $25.5 million for heating and cooling assistance for low-income Nevadans
• $18.4 million for substance abuse prevention and treatment, and 
• $16.4 million for opioid response.

Some of the federal subagencies and offices that administer these grants — housed within the federal Department of Health and Human Services — have experienced mass firings as Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reorganizes and trims the department, likely imperiling delivery and assistance for these programs even before congressional cuts are made.

Other departments

Alongside health and human services, the state’s agriculture, education, employment and transportation departments heavily rely on federal dollars — about 17 percent of federal funding in Nevada’s state budget funds those departments, according to the Guinn Center report.

The Nevada Department of Agriculture — which has already felt the effects of federal cuts — received about $251 million from the federal government in the last fiscal year, good for more than 70 percent of the department’s overall budget. Most of that comes from nutrition programs, such as the National School Lunch Program ($177 million) and the School Breakfast Program ($54 million). 

Federal funding makes up a smaller portion of the Nevada Department of Education’s (NDE) budget, at about 10 percent, but it funds Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs. 

NDE received nearly $337 million in federal dollars in the last fiscal year. That includes $147.4 million from Title I, which provides funds to local education agencies to support students from low-income families, $87.2 million for special education and $15.3 million in a grant to improve teacher quality — forming nearly all of the state’s educator effectiveness program funding.

The transportation department received about $468 million for construction. There’s also money from the federal government that funds planning and research, construction and engineering, and transit systems, including rail and aviation.

The Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation received $128 million from the federal government, which supports vocational rehabilitation programs that help people with disabilities gain employment through training and job services. 

How are lawmakers thinking about the potential cuts?

While the details of federal cuts have yet to be worked out by Republicans in Congress, their target levels are staggering and sure to scramble agency budgets in Nevada. 

Senate Republicans, in a budget blueprint released Wednesday, have set a $1 trillion floor for spending cuts, while House Republicans’ budget calls for about $2 trillion in cuts. And with control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the question is over the size of the cuts rather than whether they will occur. 

Meanwhile, Trump and his Cabinet secretaries are already suspending and terminating various federal funding sources to states.

Yeager said lawmakers will close budgets with the best information that they have. But with all the cuts happening at the federal level, he said it’s “very likely” lawmakers will be back for one or more special sessions to deal with the ramifications.

“The theme of this session has been there’s not a lot of money period, so every dollar that gets cut is really going to hurt, really going to impact folks,” he said.