Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
People are dying because they are not getting medicines that U.S. Aid used to bring them. Many of these medicines were already donated, but they go expired because U.S. Aid, who would be delivering them, was gutted by Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaQ7PquxTg
“The administration is using a process known as “rescission” to pursue the cuts, which allows the White House to ask Congress to claw back money it has already approved. The process has not been successfully used in over two decades, and the Senate rejected a rescission request in 2018, during Trump’s first term.
Lawmakers must approve the cuts within 45 days of the request — July 18 — or Trump is required by law to spend the money. The administration has said that this could be the first of several rescission requests.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/clocks-ticking-codifying-doge-cuts-174930140.html
Joe Rogan Slowly Realizes Elon Musk SCREWED US ALL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC3UVy9RdsM
“DOGE’s aggressive cost-cutting efforts, led by a staff Musk brought in, are expected to continue even after he formally leaves his role as a special government employee. Both Republicans and Democrats also widely expect the tech billionaire, who poured $290 million of his own money into the 2024 elections, to continue to be a major political player.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/19/elon-musk-disappears-trump-world-00355313
“Staff reductions and reassignments led by DOGE are slowing the pace of claims processing as field offices lose longtime staff and gain a smaller number of inexperienced replacements. DOGE-driven changes to the agency’s website are causing crashes almost every day, and phone customers complain about dropped calls and long wait times. A DOGE-imposed spending freeze is leading to shortages of basic office supplies, from printer cartridges to the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs.
And on Friday, Social Security leaders told employees that the agency was ending a security check, developed at DOGE’s request, that was meant to root out allegedly fraudulent claims filed over the phone, according to three employees familiar with the situation and an email obtained by The Washington Post. But the measure – which involved placing a three-day hold on all phone claims as other staffers checked into the caller’s background – had only identified a couple of potential fraud cases while causing significant delays in claims processing, two employees said.
Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security official who is now at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there were already safeguards in place to detect fraud through the agency’s phone service. DOGE’s efforts have only delayed claims processing and, like most of the team’s attempts to reshape Social Security, placed serious stress on the agency, she said.
“So much of this is self-inflicted wounds,” Romig said.
This account of turmoil within the Social Security Administration is based on interviews with eight current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private deliberations. The Post also reviewed more than a dozen pages of internal agency records and communications.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-grand-plan-remake-social-002714407.html
“President Donald Trump’s administration has thrown the NNSA into chaos, threatening hard-won staffing progress amid a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade. Desperately needed nuclear experts are wary of joining thanks to chaotic job cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, experts say.
The disruption of NNSA’s chronically understaffed safety workforce is “a recipe for disaster,” said Joyce Connery, former head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.”
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“Nuclear weapons workers don’t grow on trees, nor do the federal experts who oversee them. Many of the jobs require advanced degrees, and new hires often need years of on-the-job training. Security clearance requirements limit the most sensitive jobs to U.S. citizens.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-weapons-woes-understaffed-nuke-172019595.html
“A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs at several agencies, including HHS, saying that cooperation of the legislative branch is required for large-scale reorganizations.
Kennedy eliminated thousands of jobs in early April, paralyzing programs across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and particularly in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, that monitored health threats, researched cures and investigated everything from toxic fumes in fire stations to outbreaks of gonorrhea.
The layoffs at NIOSH have halted the National Firefighter Cancer Registry, Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, Health Hazard Evaluation Program, Respirator Approval Program and Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program. All are required by law, but their government websites explain they are no longer operating because of the layoffs.
“If the law requires you, the executive, to do this work, you have, in a back door way, thumbed your nose at Congress by firing the people who are actually necessary to get that work done,” said Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, whose mission is supporting the federal workforce. “The executive branch is supposed to execute — the name says it all. It doesn’t have the right to determine where money is spent and how much money is spent. ”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told POLITICO that “critical initiatives under NIOSH will remain intact.””
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“while the administration has pledged that “essential services…will remain fully intact and uninterrupted,” and have repeatedly claimed that core programs will transfer to the yet-to-be-created Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, interviews with staff and public notices on the CDC’s website show that the programs are no longer operational.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/11/trump-transforms-congressionally-mandated-health-offices-into-ghost-towns-00340176
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: Politics, Trump, AOC, Elon & DOGE | Lex Fridman Podcast #462
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTPSeeKokdo
Trump 2.0, DOGE, and America’s Global Decline with Sam Harris and Jonah Goldberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfrZTJ4vek
“The Food and Drug Administration earlier this month fired dozens of staffers responsible for going after retailers who illegally sell tobacco to minors.
Now it’s begging them to come back.
Senior FDA officials asked laid-off employees in recent days to temporarily return after mass cuts decimated the agency’s ability to penalize retailers that sell cigarettes and vapes to minors, four federal health officials familiar with the matter said.”
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“Without aggressive federal oversight, stores would face far less incentive to turn away underage buyers. That could open the door to a reversal in youth tobacco use rates, experts said, undercutting the fight against chronic disease that Kennedy has vowed to make the centerpiece of his agenda. The civil penalties office also served as a key tool in combating growing sales of illicit vapes.
People who smoke cigarettes, use e-cigarettes or other tobacco products primarily begin before they turn 18, research shows, elevating their risk for a range of chronic diseases like lung cancer and heart disease.”
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“It remains unclear why HHS gutted the office focused on civil penalties, which is known within FDA’s tobacco enforcement apparatus as the Division of Business Operations. The Center for Tobacco Products is funded entirely by user fees paid by industry, meaning the terminations won’t create any taxpayer savings. Instead, officials said, it may end up costing money; the fines that the FDA collects from retailers are funneled directly to the federal treasury.
Kennedy, who has singled out smoking as particularly detrimental to Americans’ health, argued in a recent CBS News interview that all the jobs eliminated across HHS were either administrative or deemed redundant.
“In some cases, we cut programs, but we only did that when we consolidated them into another program,” he said. “So the task will continue, their mission will continue. The people are still there for the most part.”
Yet within the FDA, the officials said the cuts effectively collapsed its tobacco enforcement operation.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/14/fda-fired-tobacco-enforcers-asked-return-00289985