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Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Saturday, May 31, 2025

Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy. Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee.

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... State and local health departments responsible for invisible but critical work such as inspecting restaurants, monitoring wastewater for new and harmful germs, responding to outbreaks before they get too big -- and a host of other tasks to protect both individuals and communities -- are being hollowed out.

"Nobody wants to go swim in a community pool and come out of it with a rash or a disease from it. Nobody wants to walk out their door and take a fresh breath of air and start wheezing," said Lori Tremmel Freeman, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

But local health officials say they now have no choice but to do a lot less of it. The Trump administration is cutting health spending on an unprecedented scale, experts say, including pulling $11 billion of direct federal support because the pandemic is over and eliminating 20,000 jobs at national health agencies that in part assist and support local public health work. It's proposing billions more be slashed. ...



#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-31 06:50 PM | Reply

Related ...

Trump cuts threaten safety training for America's most dangerous jobs

... By the time Robbie Roberge spotted the fire consuming his boat's galley last August, he knew he had just minutes to evacuate his beloved Three Girls fishing vessel, named for his daughters.

As the flames spread up the boat's walls, he helped his crew into safety suits, deployed a life raft and made a mayday call to alert nearby mariners and the U.S. Coast Guard that he was abandoning ship more than 100 miles offshore.

Roberge, a commercial fisherman from South Portland, Maine, learned how to handle such an emergency just three months earlier at a workshop held by Fishing Partnership Support Services, a nonprofit that has trained thousands of East Coast fishermen in safety practices.

On May 20, Roberge cut a fishing trip short to bring the six-man crew from his remaining boat, the Maria JoAnn, to another FPSS training in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

"I have years of experience, but not dealing with emergencies," said Roberge, whose handling of the fire led to a successful rescue with no injuries. "I make it a point to be here."

Such safety trainings -- aimed at fishermen, loggers, farmers and other workers in America's most dangerous jobs - could be scaled back or wound down entirely as soon as July, according to Reuters interviews with a dozen health and safety experts and organizations, as a result of President Donald Trump's drive to slash the size and cost of the federal government.

Those cuts have fallen heavily on the federal government's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is a key funder of workplace safety training and research.

WINDING DOWN

The Trump administration on April 1 terminated about 875 of the roughly 1,000 employees at NIOSH, including most of the staff who provide technical advice and support to a dozen Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health focused on fishing, farming and logging workers. ...

[emphasis mine]


#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-31 06:55 PM | Reply

@#2

Oops, forgot to include the URL for the article ...

www.reuters.com


#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-31 06:56 PM | Reply

And when people start to notice the effects, the blame will fall on the remaining folks at the gutted agencies.

The building of mistrust is a feature, not a bug.

#4 | Posted by jpw at 2025-05-31 07:54 PM | Reply

@#4 ... The building of mistrust is a feature, not a bug. ...

Yup.

That's what the GOP seems to have been doing for years ...

Cutting the budgets of Federal agencies, then complaining that those Federal agencies do not look to be able to do their job.


It's an old, tried and true for a couple decades at least, tactic of the GOP, that the Trump admin seems to be exploiting to the Nth degree.

#5 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-31 08:17 PM | Reply

The "U.S. health system" has been shite for everyone but billionaires. Who by the way have no right to exist.

#6 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-06-01 01:41 PM | Reply

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