Latest news with #DepartmentofVeteranAffairs
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Benefits resource fair, claims clinic set for Ramsey County vets
Local veterans can learn more about benefits and healthcare options at a Veterans Resource Fair and Claims Clinic on Thursday. The event, held by the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Ramsey County Veterans Service Offices, will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, June 12, at the Rondo Community Library, 461 Dale St. N., St. Paul. Veterans can speak to representatives from the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, St. Paul Veterans Benefits Administration Regional Office and the Ramsey County Veterans Service. In addition, veterans can work with Veterans Affairs claim processors on disability compensation claims and benefit questions. Walk-ins are welcome but appointments can also be made online at Veterans are asked to bring a copy of their DD214 and any recent VA claim correspondence they may have. Officials say there are nearly 20,000 veterans in Ramsey County. Officials say that 11,000 of them are not using benefits or healthcare they are entitled to have. D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings The man whose weather forecast saved the world WWII vets are rock stars in France as they hand over the duty of remembering D-Day Minnesota veterans with PTSD turn to the outdoors to improve mental health Minnesota political leaders emphasize support for veterans at Fort Snelling program
Forbes
28-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
3 AI Prompts To Lighten Your Workload When You're Exhausted
Young African American woman feeling exhausted and depressed sitting in front of laptop. Work ... More burnout syndrome. Mental Health concept. Since January of this year, tens of thousands of American employees have been laid off. In 2025, major federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Veteran Affairs are undergoing sweeping layoffs, with tens of thousands of government jobs being cut to reduce workforce size and restructure operations. The tech industry has also seen over 22,000 layoffs this year, with companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Wayfair leading the downsizing. Additionally, corporations across various sectors—including Morgan Stanley, Starbucks, and Boeing—have also announced workforce reductions, reflecting widespread economic shifts. Those who still have jobs are often under pressure to do more in the same amount of time. For workers juggling the demands of work with caretaking, caregiving, health challenges or burnout, the challenge becomes finding ways to streamline tasks and conserve energy. Luckily, you can use AI to identify places to find new efficiencies so you can do your work with less energy and effort. No matter your situation, these targeted AI prompts can help you pinpoint inefficiencies, simplify your workflow, and reclaim valuable time for yourself. When you first begin to think about all the different tasks you perform in a week, it can be daunting to figure out where you can trim the fat. Luckily, you can use your favorite AI tool to get you started. Ask it to give you ideas about what you can streamline in your work based on your job title. The more specific you are about your role, the more ideas it will generate for you. Use this prompt to get started. 'What are three ways I can streamline my workflow as a [job title] Once you understand areas where you can streamline your work, take it a step further by understanding how you can begin to batch your time around the newly identified streamlined tasks. As I write in The Rest Revolution, addressing our time is one of the five critical ways we can realign our lives to exit burnout. One great way to start realigning is through time batching. Time batching refers to the act of grouping similar tasks together and dedicating blocks of time to those tasks. This helps improve your focus by reducing the context switching you'd experience when multitasking or performing different types of tasks in the same time period. For example, instead of responding to customer emails, meeting with your direct reports. and working on a business development proposal all in the same morning, you may decide to spend a focused two hours on business development tasks like writing new proposals for all new business leads. This way you can speed through the proposals before moving on to your other work. Try this prompt: 'You offered me 3 ways to streamline my workflow earlier. Which tasks should I batch together so I can be most productive?' Once you have a new set of streamlined tasks, categories for task batching to reduce context switching, let AI develop a schedule for you to put all of this into practice. Start with this prompt: 'Build me a sample weekly schedule I can use to bake in these new efficiencies.' Depending on the response you receive, you can follow up with your LLM tool to get an even more specific response based on your unique situation. If you are exhausted or have reduced performance capacity due to a health challenge, caregiving responsibility or personal experience of burnout, you can plug in the following prompt to get an even more tailored schedule. Follow-up prompt: 'You offered me a great schedule earlier. While I appreciate it, it feels ambitious as I'm on the brink of burnout. Can you build me a new schedule that accounts for my reduced energy levels?' In a time when burnout, exhaustion, and reduced capacity are all too common, working smarter—not harder—is no longer optional. We simply can't afford to waste our limited energy on tasks that technology can help us simplify or streamline. By using AI intentionally, we can offload some of the mental weight, protect our capacity, and save our energy for what truly matters—our health, our wellbeing, and the people we care about.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
You think Republicans realize they've started hurting the wrong people?
I realize that things are so upside down in American politics that it's easy to catastrophize the malfeasance that Republicans are joyously letting spread through the Trump administration. The sheer volume of the current Republican miscalculation of the American people will ultimately be a gift to Democrats and to those of us who would rather not have a government so purposefully targeting and hurting Americans without making anything better. You see, Republicans are too far down the MAGA rabbit hole to even see the mistake they've made. So I'll tell you. Trump and his GOP enablers are hurting the wrong people. His latest political mistake is an attempt to exsanguinate the U.S. Department of Education, which hurls money at Republican states. They started fine. Right out of the gate, they went after transgender people, diversity, equity and inclusion and words that were scary because of "wokeness." These are political shots that MAGA loves to shoot. These are the people and ideas that Republicans are required to weaponize as a way to scare their base. These are the exact people Trump was supposed to be hurting, and none of it helped anybody do anything anywhere. But that doesn't matter. The pain caused is joy gained. Trump had achieved the perfect mix of useless political action and apparent political achievement. So when he took office in January and immediately proceeded to dunk on all of those people and words, chances are Trump voters were living their best life. They were out here high-fiving and feeling supported as their prince of hate vanquished the unworthy. Opinion: Judge exposes small-minded idiocy of Trump's transgender military ban It was a good time for MAGA nation, right? The hate vibes were high, and everybody who was supposed to feel targeted felt targeted. It doesn't even matter that the Trump administration has lost almost 50 court rulings on the way to all that winning. Then, something changed. The hateful euphoria that came from transphobic, racist and misogynistic executive orders could only last for so long. So Trump and Elon Musk had to find something new to feed on. That something new quickly and chaotically became the rest of us. Suddenly, the people cheering MAGA's march to pointless culture war wins found themselves standing in front of the tanks that were recklessly redeployed. Opinion: Trump's speech was all about dodging responsibility for the economy he's crashing To save us some time, I'll list some of the other people Republican ineptitude is targeting by way of letting Trump and Musk run around the federal government like a child you give five minutes to pick a toy: The Department of Veteran Affairs has been gutted. Medicaid and Medicare cuts are quickly becoming a thing. The Department of Education will be a skeleton of itself. Federal workers laid off live across the country, including red states. Measles is spreading nationwide, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s response has been largely gibberish. Trump's tariff war has sent the economy reeling. The Trump administration has openly threatened judges. Honestly, I could go on for a few more minutes, but you get the idea. We've reached the point of the Republican reign where there are fewer Americans not negatively impacted by MAGA animosity. They've gone from vilifying "woke" to aggressively hurting everybody, including their own voters. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. Look at that list, which isn't even comprehensive. Republicans have targeted veterans, educators, federal workers, judges and our economy, and they seem committed to adding Medicaid recipients to their hit list. That's a wide net of political malpractice bound to catch some MAGA minnows and voters who were tricked into thinking Trump was the one to fix everything. Did you vote for Trump? Do you support his actions and policies now? Tell us. | Opinion Forum Is it any wonder that voters in congressional districts are overwhelmingly Republicans with complaints during town halls that were probably meant to be a group hug of making America hate again? These voters aren't yelling because of the Republican disdain for immigrants or people of color. They're not up in arms over transphobia that has become the GOP platform. No, they're angry because Trump and Republicans have started hurting the wrong people. Louie Villalobos is Gannett's director of opinion. You can find him with his birth certificate for when ICE agents try to deport him. Not that it will matter. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump dismantling Education Department targets red states | Opinion
The Hill
14-03-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Burn pit fund on the chopping block
The provision would cut a Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) fund meant to cover costs for illnesses linked to military burn pits and other chemical exposure. The six-month government spending package, which largely holds federal spending at fiscal year 2024 levels, would cut the Toxic Exposures Fund (TEF) for the VA next year. The controversial fund was meant to allot $22.8 billion to cover expanded benefits for former service members sickened by military toxic exposures — including burn pit smoke and Agent Orange water contamination — starting October 1, 2025. But the continuing resolution (CR) drafted and passed by House Republicans zeros out funding that would have been used for the TEF in the fall. 'It cuts more than $20 billion in funding needed to provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances next year,' Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the Senate floor Thursday. 'It cannot pass.' The Senate voted on the stopgap Friday evening. Veterans groups were also unhappy with the move, with the liberal VoteVets warning that cutting the fund 'will cost lives' in social media posts.
Fox News
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Trump's federal layoffs are a betrayal of working Americans
I know what it's like to grow up in a household where a steady paycheck means everything. My mother, a nurse in Miami, worked long shifts to keep me and my brother fed, housed and hopeful for a better future. Families like ours didn't have safety nets – we had paychecks. When money was tight, sacrifices were made. That's why it's infuriating to watch President Donald Trump threaten the livelihoods of tens of thousands of federal workers, treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet instead of real people with real families to feed. Federal employees aren't nameless bureaucrats sitting behind desks in Washington. They're the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) crisis hotline workers talking a veteran off the ledge. They're the Department of Education specialists holding school districts accountable to kids with disabilities. They're the TSA agents waking up before dawn to ensure your flight is safe. These are the people Trump wants to lay off – people who have dedicated their lives to public service only to be told they're expendable. Many live outside our nation's capital and are the neighbors, relatives, friends and associates of everyday folks making up our great country. Take Maria Alvarez, a single mother in Virginia who's worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for more than a decade. She helps low-income families navigate the federal housing system so they can access the American dream of owning a home. "I've given my life to public service," Alvarez told ABC News. "And this is how we're repaid?" She's not alone. Thousands of dedicated federal workers are now wondering how they'll pay their mortgages, afford childcare and put food on the table. And it's not just them who will suffer. Layoffs at the the VA will gut the agency's suicide prevention hotline, a lifeline for struggling veterans. If you've ever spoken to someone who has served in combat, you know these services are crucial. When our troops return home, many carry wounds that aren't visible. Thanks to Trump's cuts, some may call for help only to find no one on the other end of the line. Meanwhile, cuts to the Department of Education will leave underfunded schools with even fewer resources. America's public school classroom educators – already stretched thin – will lose critical federal support for special education, school lunch programs and low-income student assistance. Growing up, I knew plenty of kids who depended on those programs to get by. Trump's decision will hurt them the most. But this isn't just a moral failure – it's an economic disaster waiting to happen. Every first-year economics student learns that government spending is crucial to GDP. The federal government plays an outsized role in stabilizing the economy, not just through direct employment but investments in infrastructure, public services and research. Slashing that spending – especially through mass layoffs – weakens the entire economic foundation. Federal jobs inject money into local economies, fund essential programs and drive broader economic growth. Cutting them so dramatically could stall government input into GDP, leaving a hole that private industry won't quickly fill. All of this is happening while Trump's pending trade wars with Canada and Mexico are hurting businesses that rely on cross-border commerce. Agriculture, manufacturing and transportation industries are bracing for higher costs and supply chain disruptions. Add in thousands of newly unemployed government workers, and you have the perfect recipe for economic stagnation. Instead of strengthening the economy, Trump's policies actively weaken it. If cutting government spending helped the economy, we'd be seeing results by now. But we're not. Inflation is still hitting American families, wages aren't keeping up and the cost of living continues to climb. Laying off thousands of workers in the middle of this crisis isn't just cruel – it's bad economics. Growing up, my mother always said, "A budget reflects your values." If you care about something, you invest in it. If you don't, you cut it. Right now, Trump's priorities couldn't be clearer – mass layoffs for working people and more money for the wealthiest among us. That's not leadership. That's not "America First." That's a betrayal of the very people who make this country work. The federal workforce doesn't deserve to be treated like a political bargaining chip. These are real people, doing real jobs, serving real communities. If Trump truly cared about the American worker, he'd be fighting to protect their jobs, not cutting them loose. At the end of the day, a government that abandons its workers abandons its people, and we should all be outraged.
