Lujan: On Impoundment, Trump And Musk Are Already Doing This'

Fox News reporting indicates that the White House plans to impound the funds from the Republican continuing resolution, if it passes. When I asked Sen. Lujan (D-NM) about it, he pointed out that Musk, Vought et al. are already doing it.

"Republicans in the House of Representatives and Republicans in the Senate are complicit in allowing President Trump to violate the law," he told me. "They're letting it happen and it's already happening today."

It's a Biden spending bill.
#9 | Posted by lee_the_agent

Defintely not a Biden spending bill:

Gallego Explains Why The GOP CR Was Untenable

"What I see there is massive cuts to the VA, massive cuts to FEMA--Arizona is about to go into a harsh fire season--and wildland firefighters' pay being cut and/or just fired," he told us of the GOP CR. "I know what I get from it, and so I know that that is something I cannot support, and I'd rather take my chances in trying to see if I could have a better negotiating position to save Arizona from a lot of these impacts that are about to come."

"He sees the difference."

Or he doesn't and also doesn't realize other people aren't as naive and gullible as he is.

According to testimony from Elaine Karmarck, the director of Clinton's initiative, it eliminated 426,200 federal roles between January 1993 and September 2000.
Seemed it was okay back then, so why no now...

You honestly don't see the difference between cutting the federal work force over a 7 year period after a review board was impaneled that gave their recommendations after a 6 months review, and Musk and his DOGE bros haphazardly cutting them in less than 60 days with no transparency and accountabliity? From the link you posted:

It's true that during his presidency, Clinton reduced the federal government's workforce by more than 377,000 employees as part of an initiative called the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (initially called the National Performance Review, or NPR). However, there's a key difference between how Clinton's NPR cut jobs and what Trump and Musk are trying.

In March 1993, just two months into his presidency, Clinton announced the creation of the National Performance Review, led by his Vice President, Al Gore. Its goal, according to Clinton's announcement, was "to make the entire Federal Government both less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment."

The review lasted six months, and made 384 recommendations to improve the federal bureaucracy. The implementation of those policies took a lot longer, and some required legislation to be passed through Congress. For instance, in 1994, Clinton signed a bill that offered federal workers buyouts of up to $25,000 in an effort to reduce the workforce by 272,000 employees. According to an April 1995 statement from Clinton, the buyouts were largely offered to management positions in an effort to "reduce the layers of bureaucracy and micromanagement that were tying Government in knots." That statement said that about 70 of the buyouts in non-Department of Defense agencies went to managers and other individuals "at higher grade levels."

The initiative continued to make recommendations for government reform. According to a 1999 article on an archived version of NPR's website, it reduced the federal workforce by 351,000 between 1993 and 1998. An archived FAQ page from 2000 said 377,000 jobs were cut between 1993 and 1999. In a 2013 appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former National Performance Review leader Elaine Karmarck said the agency cut 426,200 jobs by September 2000.

I wish this guy was a senator.
#2 | Posted by grumpy_too

I wish he was a senator and that there were 10 more of him in both the House and the Senate.

"Canadians are already opting to vacation elsewhere. Dementia Donnie is making all the right moves during Spring Break, LOL"

LynnZ
@zizij.bsky.social

In Canada, if you are flying to the US, you go through customs at the airport.

Usually in mid March, many college students in Canada fly to AZ or Florida for Spring Break

This is the US customs hall at Pearson airport in Toronto on Saturday.

Here are the 3 things being suggested:

Opposition town halls

In recent weeks, Republicans have encountered anger and hostility from their constituents during town hall events, including in pretty solidly red states and congressional districts. Much of the hostility has been directed at Elon Musk. Internally, the party leadership has responded by instructing members of Congress to stop holding town halls. Externally, they've preposterously claimed that these events have been infiltrated by paid protesters.

As a born-and-bred Midwesterner, I'd say that the folks in this video look pretty Kansan to me.

In the wake of Republicans canceling these events, a few Democrats " including Bernie Sanders, Tim Walz, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez--have offered to host town halls in districts and states where Republicans are no longer holding them.

This is a terrific idea. I'd imagine the first several would be newsworthy enough to generate earned media, but they should also stream and promote them anyway. The party should send its best communicators to hold these events in red districts and states--in addition to the three above, I'd suggest Pete Buttigieg, Jay Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, and Julian Castro.

Daily briefings

The public craves information in times of crisis confusion, and we tend to gravitate toward the politicians and public officials who provide it. Rudy Giuliani's popularity soared after September 11 because of his empathetic, straight-talk press conferences. Ditto for Andrew Cuomo during the earliest days of Covid. That both proved to be terrible public servants--and worse human beings--only underscores the point. If even the most unlikeable politicians can earn public trust by simply providing information and making themselves available, imagine what a likable politician can do.

The Democrats should assemble a rotating mix of trusted, high-ranking politicians--in addition to the people already named, I'd suggest popular governors like Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer--to hold regular briefings to inform the public about what Trump and Musk are doing. Stream these briefings on every social media platform. They could be as frequent as daily at first, then adjusted accordingly.

As I think I showed in my previous post summarizing just five days of Trump's madness, this administration is jamming our capacity to process information with a relentless barrage of destructive policies. They've made it impossible for normal people with normal lives, jobs, and families to keep up. It's all by design.

The shadow cabinet
In other Western democracies, the opposition party typically assembles a shadow cabinet to track and monitor what the party in power is doing. The Democrats should adopt this tradition.

Trump's cabinet isn't just the least qualified in U.S. history, it is aggressively unqualified. Unfortunately, holding office also lends built-in credibility, whether it's deserved or not. Designating someone as a vetted expert who speaks for the minority party for a given policy area can help overcome that built-in credibility. In our current hellscape, picking competent, experienced people to talk about these issues would also remind the public of what a credible government--or at least something better than an assertively incompetent one--looks like.

25% of jobs added in the US economy over the past two years were government jobs, up from 5% in 2021 and 7% in 2022.
#26 | Posted by visitor

Trump repeats misleading claim that one in four jobs added under Biden was a government job

President Donald Trump on Friday touted the February jobs report, highlighting the estimated 10,000 manufacturing jobs added versus 10,000 federal government jobs lost.

In doing so, he lobbed a familiar--but highly misleading--claim about one of the biggest job generators in recent years.

"Under the final two years of Biden, one in every four jobs created in America was a government job," Trump said from the Oval Office Friday morning.

While 26% of the past two years' job gains were in the government sector, the lion's share of those public sector gains took place in state and local government employment (including schools and hospitals)--not the federal workforce.

In 2023 and 2024, state-level government employment (which has a workforce of 2.6 million) increased by 376,000 jobs, accounting for 8% of the overall job gains, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

Local governments (where 15.1 million people work) saw net growth of 672,000 jobs in that period, accounting for 15% of the nationwide gains.

The federal government (3 million workers) added 139,000 jobs, representing a 3% share of the national gains.

Infrastructure spending would involve govt contracts with private companies, not govt jobs per se.

"It's a Biden spending bill."

It's not now if it ever was:

Bobby Kogan
@bbkogan.bsky.social

In exchange for keeping the government open, Republicans are demanding:
-cuts to the programs that run Head Start and Community Health Centers
-$12 billion increase to defense
-$3.5 billion increase to DHS
-Congress relinquish some of its tariff oversight to Trump
-DC enact immediate budget cuts

Here's the video. I hope more Democrats will follow his example:

"the clinical research coordinator" #9 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2025-03-12 02:37 PM | Reply | Flag:
You know what the clinical research coordinator does? It acts like it needs to coordinate the people that actually do the research. So why not keep the researchers who actually do the work and get rid of the waste that gets in the way of them doing it.
#13 | Posted by fishpaw

Yes, I imagine the clinical research coordinator does what the job title suggests: coordinates the research that is being done, sometimes across multiple research sites, in which case the clinical research coordinator would play an important, necessary role. Somebody has to look at the research, put it all together, analyze it, address questions and problems that occur. Individual researchers are essential, but so is the person who oversees them, makes sure protocols are being followed, collects all the data and comes to conclusions about it. That is work too.

The real crime here is these people politicizing the study to own leon.
#8 | Posted by itchypossum

Musk is doing real damage, not just to individual research projects and the people who were counting on them, but to whole communities which are built around "Eds and Meds" jobs. Pittsburgh is one such community, which was devastated years ago by the steel mills closing down and which rebuilt its economy around the very jobs which Musk, Trump and the GOP are cutting and/or threatening to cut:

How NIH cuts could stall Pittsburgh's economy

The Pittsburgh area's economy could lose out on billions of dollars if federal health research cuts proposed by the Trump administration go through, officials say.

Why it matters: Pittsburgh's economy is largely driven by health care, universities and tech--the so-called "Eds and Meds"--and medical research is a huge part of that equation, according to Stefani Pashman, CEO of pro-business coalition Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

What they're saying: "This is an industry that is the backbone of this region," said Lee. "It would be as big as making cuts to U.S. Steel in its heyday."

Zoom out: Pashman said medical research is a cornerstone of Pittsburgh's "Eds and Meds" economy.

"It is our brand now," she said. "It really would stall our economy if it came through. It would take some significant wind out of the sails of the region."

So for want of ONE administrative position, the entire program is not??
I call BS.
#7 | Posted by itchypossum

It wasn't just one administrative position. It was the key administrative position, i.e. "the clinical research coordinator" which wasn't "renewed". Could they have promoted someone else into the position? Probably not. There was no funding for the position, which was eliminated.

Not renewing funding for medical research trialsis one thing, especially if you give people a heads up so that they can plan and prepare for those cuts. Cutting off funding for trials already underway is another thing entirely. This is true for any of the cuts Musk/Trump are making. People should be given time to plan, prepare, look for other funding sources or wind down programs that can't be sustained. The cruelty is the point though. But they want to traumatize people as Russ Voight said, and in that they are succeeding. And in the process they are also wasting all the time and money that went into the trials/programs that were underway and are suddenly cut off. It didn't have to be this way.

FTA:

At the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh, researchers spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box.

They were ready last month to start enrolling patients " veterans whose cancer had spread to other tissue and who had run out of treatment options.

Then a problem arose.

The hospital was unable to renew the job of a key staff member involved in running the study, a typically routine process thwarted by a hiring freeze imposed under the government-cutting project led by President Trump and Elon Musk. Suddenly, the clinical trial was on hold.

"They were ready to enroll," said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. "They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn't get the clinical research coordinator renewed."

This FUBAR cutting of medical research is unfortunately not limited to Columbia University but is an essential feature of Musk and his DOGE bros assault on the federal government:

Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency

Clinical trials have been delayed, contracts canceled and support staff fired. With deeper cuts coming, some are warning of potential harms to veterans.

At the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh, researchers spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box.

They were ready last month to start enrolling patients--veterans whose cancer had spread to other tissue and who had run out of treatment options.

Then a problem arose.

The hospital was unable to renew the job of a key staff member involved in running the study, a typically routine process thwarted by a hiring freeze imposed under the government-cutting project led by President Trump and Elon Musk. Suddenly, the clinical trial was on hold.

"They were ready to enroll," said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. "They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn't get the clinical research coordinator renewed."

Ending funding for medical research trials that are already underway is a waste of taxpayer money as well as being cruel and unusual treatment for the participants in those trials and the people who are anxiously and hopefully awaiting their results. Better hope you and your neighbor never find yourselves in the position of needing the results of those trials yourselves.

Jamie Daw
@jamiedaw.bsky.social

I received one of the 232 NIH grant "terminations" sent to scientists at Columbia last night. My research focuses on improving maternal and child health in the US. Also affected: ongoing clinical trials, research training programs, and research centers that aim to improve the health of Americans.

This is where we are folks:

News Eye
@newseye.bsky.social
A President reduced to car salesman is historically degrading.

But there's something else very revealing in all this: amidst growing protests & collapsing sales, Musk is panicked.

LOL Close up of paper Trump referred to while saying he's going to write a check for a Tesla tommorow morning:

Eliot Higgins
@eliothiggins.bsky.social

HE'S LITERALLY READING A SALES PITCH

Video at link:

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar.com

Trump says he's going to write a check for his new Tesla: "I do it the old-fashioned -- I give checks. I like checks. I like a check better than this better system of, all of the sudden there's money in your account. Nobody knows.

"I think his credit is good," Elon Musk adds.

FYI: Before some low information voter wanders into this thread quoting the latest Musk lie regarding social security:

Peter Baker
@peterbakernyt.bsky.social

Musk claims Social Security is a "gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants."

In fact, immigrants here illegally do not collect Social Security. But they pay $25.7 billion a year into it, a recent study found, so these undocumented workers are actually subsidizing Americans.

..according to four sources familiar with..
it writes itself
#10 | Posted by itchypossum

Anticipating such a response is why I posted this upfront:

FTA:

The department's plans to perform these tests was first reported by Bloomberg Government.

After the publication of this article, DHS said in a statement: "The Department of Homeland Security is a national security agency. We can, should, and will polygraph personnel."

Border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have blamed lower-than-expected ICE arrest numbers on recent leaks revealing the cities where it planned to conduct operations.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday

"Ultimately, when we have fair and balanced trade which the American people have not seen in decades ... "

Have not seen in decades? Hmm, someone needs to ask Leavitt, Trump and Republicans in general if this includes "the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history" which Trump himself negotiated and bragged about just 5 years ago:

President Donald J. Trump's United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Delivers a Historic Win for American Workers
January 29, 2020

"The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly."
President Donald J. Trump

DELIVERING ON HIS PROMISE: President Donald J. Trump is replacing the outdated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).