What Happened to Lowering Costs?
Rather than lowering costs, House Republicans are instead choosing to passively stand by while President Trump Musk takes a hatchet to critical programs that everyday Americans rely on – everything from providing mental health care for veterans to protecting Americans from toxic chemicals and helping to prevent natural disasters like the recent California wildfires.
DCCC Communications Director Courtney Rice:
“We’re not sure how cutting services to veterans or gutting agencies that protect Americans from toxic chemicals is putting America first, but we can count on House Republicans to once again lie to their constituents to try to cover up the real impacts of their agenda.”
Washington Post: Trump’s federal firings imperil government services from cities to farm towns
By Hannah Natanson, Emily Davies, Lisa Rein and Rachel Siegel
- The Trump administration’s move to fire thousands of federal employees could have a swift and severe impact on public services, staffers warned Friday, making it harder for veterans to get mental health care and hampering electric service to some rural residents as a beleaguered workforce struggles to cover for lost colleagues.
- In an Energy Department subagency that helps provide power, staff who handled homeowners’ electricity bills were fired, employees said, potentially leaving no one to take the money that keeps their lights on. In one state, all but two of the employees who helmed an Agriculture Department program assisting poor rural communities were fired. And in a tiny Wyoming town, a Forest Service office that has spent decades providing support to hikers, Christmas tree permits to residents and firewood for the elderly has been forced to shutter, a staffer said.
- At the National Institutes of Health, another HHS agency, an unknown number of key staff are being let go, posing a potential threat to patient safety, said a person familiar with the matter.
- At the Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, leaders of the agency’s largest union said 388 members were terminated Friday afternoon. The firings could undermine efforts to protect Americans from toxic chemicals and natural disasters such as the recent wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area[.]
- And some cuts targeted the administration’s avowed priorities. More than five immigration judges were fired Friday, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. Immigration judges on average handle 500 to 700 cases per year, most of them to do with deportation, IFPTE President Matt Biggs said. “How does that square with the campaign promises and campaign rhetoric? It doesn’t, at all,” Biggs said of the firings.
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