Community Development Financial Institutions  operating in the Chilkat Valley and throughout Southeast Alaska are considering their futures after a Trump administration executive order targeted the U.S. Treasury Department’s CDFI Fund for elimination. 

The order, signed on March 14, requires seven federal entities, including the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, to reduce services and functions to the “maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” 

“Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to get started,” said Spruce Root…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...