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The Hill
09-04-2025
- Business
- The Hill
‘Trump is anti-veteran' and other liberal lies
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, in conjunction with the Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration as a whole, is taking historic action to streamline the bloated department's bureaucracy that has severely harmed veterans and their families for years. In light of their efforts, certain politicians and some in the mainstream media have spread false narratives that President Trump 'is working against veterans.' One fabrication is that the VA has laid off Veterans Crisis Line responders. As Collins has made clear, however, exactly zero of those positions have been cut. This fear-mongering is meant only to manufacture outrage. It does not reflect the reality of the critical work being done to help veterans. Logistically speaking, if DOGE is cutting thousands of jobs that constitute waste, then naturally some of those jobs are held by veterans. It does not follow that the Trump administration is 'anti-veteran.' Regardless of what any employee's background is, Trump is delivering on his promise to the American people to cut government waste and end the abuse of taxpayer dollars. Many taxpayers, it turns out, are also veterans. So far, less than one half of 1 percent of the VA workforce had been cut as of Mar. 1. This is all non-essential personnel. In fact, Collins made clear that his team blocked off 300 positions labeled as 'mission critical' and did not touch a single one. The team has been using a fine-toothed-comb approach to ensure that all cuts are necessary. This is a deliberative, careful and meticulous process, with the goal of delivering transparency and benefits to veterans directly. Consistent with that mentality, so far, Collins and his team have investigated only 2 percent of VA contracts and found over $900 million dollars of waste — money that is now being put back into patient care and veterans' benefits. ' The VA was paying for PowerPoint slides and meeting notes, for the watering of plants, and consulting contracts to do the work that we should be doing ourselves,' Collins told the New York Post recently. An additional $14 million so far was saved by cutting employees and contracts infusing DEI into the VA. Additionally, Collins recently cancelled close to $180,000 in subscriptions for Politico Pro, a program that was not even being used. The impact of that cut alone is that the money can now be used to fund one homeless veteran over the next six years. This is what the purpose of the VA should be. Collins has also started to cut treatment for gender dysphoria. This includes clawing back funds for hormone therapy, surgeries, prosthetic genitals and breasts, hair removal, voice training and other types of so-called 'gender-affirming care.' The millions of dollars saved will instead now be used to treat injured and amputee veterans. Not only has Collins worked around the clock to streamline the VA bureaucracy and cut out waste, fraud and abuse, he has also already opened new healthcare clinics for veterans in Hamilton, Mont.; Spotsylvania, Va.; Aurora, Colo.; and Ridgewood, N.Y. These clinics are larger and better equipped to help veterans. This is the high-quality care that our veterans deserve. Collins made clear that veterans should not have to navigate the complex bureaucracy of the VA — they should instead have access to flexibility and choice as part of that high-quality care. This is why the secretary is instituting a more community-oriented care mentality within the VA. The positive effects of these historic accomplishments are already evident across the board, but it will take time for them to be fully felt. This notion that the Trump administration is 'anti-veteran' is not only devoid of substance and fact, but also intentionally engineered to gaslight the American people. Trump is one of the most pro-veteran presidents this country has seen. Even in his first term, Trump delivered accountability at the VA and made health care and education benefits for veterans more accessible. He signed the VA Mission ACT, making permanent Veterans CHOICE, helped veterans find employment in the civilian workforce, signed the Forever GI Bill allowing veterans to use their benefits to get an education, and placed 40,000 homeless veterans into employment, among other accomplishments. As a result, veterans' trust in the VA increased dramatically. There is not a single substantive argument to support any false narratives regarding Collins's work of so far. This is because Trump and Collins understand that our veterans, who sacrificed everything to protect this country, deserve better.
Fox News
10-03-2025
- Business
- Fox News
We're members of the House Freedom Caucus. The US must choose: either $20 trillion in debt or Medicaid reform
In 10 years, the United States is on course to add $20 trillion to the national debt, setting the total sum owed by American taxpayers at over $56 trillion. Every year we spend in the red, interest on the debt continues to accumulate, until by 2051, when interest alone will be the largest line item in the federal budget. Put simply, we are on a collision course with a total financial crisis, and Congress may only have a handful of chances left to turn back. To prevent a total collapse of the U.S. dollar and give the American people the opportunities they deserve, lawmakers must reform Medicaid. To do anything less borders on malfeasance. While the urgency of our nation's debt crisis is lost on many, cutting waste, fraud and abuse has been a priority of President Donald Trump's administration since day one. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk have already uncovered billions of dollars in waste. From excessive Politico Pro subscriptions to Democrat pet projects overseas, taxpayers have been totally robbed. But, even if DOGE meets its quota for cuts and the freezes on wasteful federal grants aren't dragged out in litigation, these savings won't scratch the surface of what's required to save America from its looming debt crisis. For lawmakers who claim to be on board with cutting the waste, fraud and abuse — and delivering on Trump's historic mandate — this is it. Nothing you do in the next two years will come close to the importance of implementing the $880 billion required in savings to programs under the House Energy and Commerce Committee's jurisdiction. We are not asking you to slash Medicaid, only turn back the clock and reverse its explosive expansion in the last few years that has put it on an unsustainable course. In the last five years, federal Medicaid spending has skyrocketed from $409 billion in 2019 to $618 billion in 2024, a 51% increase. Despite being 60 years old, a third of Medicaid's growth has occurred in those same five years. And in the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicaid will cost more than $1 trillion annually, rivaling the size of Saudi Arabia's current economy. When Obamacare introduced an entirely new class of able-bodied adults to Medicaid, the program exploded, and the federal government took on the majority of the costs. Under President Joe Biden, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) withdrew 13 waivers for Medicaid work requirements, once again dramatically expanding the program and costing taxpayers billions. Medicaid was never meant to be this expansive. Medicaid was intended to assist vulnerable populations like the disabled, pregnant women, children and people in poverty. Today, able-bodied, working-capable adults are on course to become the largest subgroup on Medicaid. Nationwide, there are an estimated 24.6 million able-bodied, working-capable adults on Medicaid, 60% of whom report no earned income. Coupled with the Biden administration's unilateral expansion of food stamps, the federal government is effectively discouraging a substantial portion of the able-bodied American population from seeking employment altogether. The "safety net" has become a full-blown poverty trap, keeping Americans in an endless cycle of dependency and diverting resources from those who truly need help. In some states, higher provider rates for expansion enrollees have created an explicit financial incentive for healthcare providers to discriminate against traditional enrollees. Single moms, infants and the disabled are being pushed aside in favor of able-bodied adults without dependents. Medicaid was meant to be a temporary bridge, not a final destination. You want to help your constituents? Give them the proper incentive structure to grow and thrive. Put them on the path to financial stability. We have a duty to safeguard taxpayers and ensure that Medicaid does not bankrupt us. Cut the waste. Cut the fraud. Cut the abuse. Reimplementing Clinton-era work requirements alone would save roughly $120 billion over 10 years and put more workers back in our economy. Site neutrality could save over $471 billion. Normalizing the federal reimbursement rate for the expansion population under Medicaid would save nearly $600 billion. You could even take Biden's advice and eliminate Medicaid provider taxes that he called a scam and save the taxpayer $612 billion over 10 years. Medicaid was intended to assist vulnerable populations like the disabled, pregnant women, children and people in poverty. Today, able-bodied, working-capable adults are on course to become the largest subgroup on Medicaid. Even if lawmakers are hesitant to make these changes, many of these measures can still be phased in — saving taxpayers hundreds of billions without cutting anyone's benefits. Not to mention the additional hundreds of billions that could be saved by cracking down on improper payments, which have reached a rate of over 25% in recent audits. We need to bring the rhetoric back into reality. Medicaid reforms are not the end of entitlement programs. They are a necessary step toward real solutions to address our nation's debt crisis and secure the financial future of generations to come. By making targeted reforms, lawmakers can execute President Trump's mandate for change. A deal to help save the country is on the table. Take it. Republican Chip Roy represents Texas' 21st Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. He is the former first assistant attorney general of Texas. Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican, represents Maryland's 1st Congressional District.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Social Security Administration bars employees from reading the news at work
The Social Security Administration wrote in a Thursday morning email that employees can no longer read news websites on work devices. 'SSA is implementing additional restrictions to the categories of websites prohibited from government-furnished equipment,' the email, obtained by NBC News, began. 'Effective today, March 6, 2025, the categories include: Online shopping, General News; and Sports.' The email added that employees can request exceptions from their supervisor. 'These additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems,' the email Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. The Washington Post first reported on the email. The email comes as Elon Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service have zeroed in on the agency. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan last week, Musk described Social Security as 'the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.' Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged not to slash benefits. The Trump administration has targeted contracts between federal agencies and news outlets, too, ordering the cancellation of subscriptions to services like Politico Pro. This article was originally published on
Vox
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Vox
4 conspiracy theories that have driven policy under Trump
President Donald Trump is no stranger to conspiracy: He rose to political prominence by touting the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. His team isn't either: Take Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s longtime baseless conviction that childhood vaccines cause autism or the billionaire Elon Musk's promotion of the 2016 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theory. The embrace of conspiracy theories isn't new, but now that Trump is back in power, there is a direct pipeline between online conspiracy theories and government policy — and in some cases, it's happening at breathtaking speed. At times, the administration takes a kernel of truth and then distorts it wildly. At others, it's entirely unclear where the theories are coming from. Here are four examples of this government by conspiracy theory: Musk has targeted both Politico and Reuters as news organizations, posting screenshots from a database of government payments and falsely claiming that their newsrooms received millions in federal grants. The Trump administration has cited those payments as examples of government waste and evidence that the federal government is supporting anti-Trump media. In actuality, the federal government as a whole paid millions for employee subscriptions to Politico Pro, which offers 'specialist reporting, data analysis, and expert briefings covering 22 policy areas' for an audience including industry stakeholders and government officials. These aren't grants, but instead are purchases of subscriptions. But baseless speculation that Politico received and depended on government grants grew online after the company missed payroll due to an unrelated technical issue. Within days, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, 'LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN [sic] AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS.' Musk has also claimed that Reuters received millions of dollars from the US government to undertake a 'large-scale social deception' campaign, calling the news organization a 'total scam.' What he failed to mention, however, was that the data analytics arm of Reuters, not its news division, received those funds starting under the first Trump administration to investigate defenses to such campaigns. Since then, the Trump administration has ordered many government agencies to cancel their subscriptions to news organizations, including The Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press, and Reuters. The State Department, for example, recently issued a memo ordering the cancellation of subscriptions to 'non-mission critical' publications that are 'not academic or professional journals.' Earlier this month, Musk posted on his social platform X that his team at DOGE had discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had 'sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.' It's not clear exactly what he was referencing, and he did not provide any evidence of such payments. He could be referring to funds paid out via the Shelter and Services Program, which is approved by Congress and administered by FEMA to support migrants released in the US after being apprehended at the southern border. The New York City mayor's office told the Associated Press that, during the time period Musk referenced, it had received $19 million in direct hotel costs as part of that program. While the city is currently sheltering 46,000 migrants, including some in hotels, it has never paid luxury rates and most were put up in hotels outside Manhattan, the Associated Press reported. On average, it has paid $152 per night, while five-star accommodations are typically more than double that price. On February 11, the administration clawed back $80 million in grants to New York City, apparently the first time that Trump has revoked congressionally approved funds from a local government. On Friday, the city filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get the money back. The Trump administration 'took these funds from the City without any advance notice that it would be doing so and without communicating any decision or rationale to the City,' according to the lawsuit. Recently confirmed as health secretary, Kennedy has been one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement. He's pushed disinformation about vaccines since 2005, when he falsely claimed that some childhood vaccines had dangerous levels of mercury that could cause autism, despite the fact scientists had already proven that mercury levels in those vaccines were not harmful and did not lead to autism. During his confirmation hearings, he reportedly privately promised Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a doctor and longtime advocate for vaccination, that he would not change existing vaccine recommendations. That helped him secure a pivotal vote from Cassidy, who said he would speak with Kennedy several times a month to collaborate on health policy. However, Kennedy is now taking steps to link vaccines to chronic diseases — a potential precursor to an anti-vaccine policy. He announced that he is using a newly created panel to investigate childhood vaccines for measles, polio, and other diseases for connections to other chronic diseases. 'Nothing is going to be off limits,' Kennedy said in his first remarks at the agency. Kennedy has also been critical of a government panel of vaccine experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The so-called Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was supposed to meet this month for the first time since Kennedy was confirmed, but the meeting has been postponed, and the committee itself is facing review under one of Trump's recent executive orders. Trump issued an executive order earlier this month cutting off US aid to South Africa and granting asylum to the country's white minority, claiming that their government is discriminating against them. The executive order cites a recently enacted land reform bill, which it claims allows the seizure of 'ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation' and is 'fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.' In actuality, the law allows the South African government to seize privately owned land in limited circumstances, such as when property is abandoned, for public use, and typically requires 'just and equitable' compensation. About 70 percent of that land is still owned by white people, who make up about 7 percent of the South African population, decades after the end of the Afrikaner-controlled government's system of apartheid. There is no evidence that white farmers have been victims of disproportionate, racially motivated violence. But Trump's rhetoric about it echoes that of the influential Afrikaner rights group AfriForum, which has been pushing such conspiracy theories for years. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, has referred to AfriForum's leaders as white supremacists. Musk, a native South African, has also decried what he describes as a 'genocide' against white farmers. Though Trump has broadly sought to block refugee resettlement and access to asylum in the US, he is making an exception for white South Africans, showing how deeply this conspiracy theory has penetrated his administration's thinking. See More: Donald Trump Policy Politics Trump Administration
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOGE Dangerously Locks Federal Workers Out of Key News Sources
The Trump administration has cut news access to some American foreign service employees, even as they clamor that the up-to-date information is essential for their work. 'It is critical to our jobs,' one employee anonymously told HuffPost's Jennifer Bendery on Friday. The employee added that the content is crucial as the news industry covers policy developments, information on meetings, and more. They added that the loss of Politico Pro was particularly damaging, as the digital publication serves as a popular channel to publish leaked documents. DOGE severed the government's subscriptions after a MAGA conspiracy emerged that revenue for Politico—which had a lapse in payroll on Tuesday—was dependent on subscriptions paid for through USAID, which was under a budget freeze at the time. In truth, USAID paid roughly $24,000 for its subscriptions to Politico Pro, while the rest of the government spent $8.4 million on the premium news subscription in 2024. But federal subscriptions to Politico Pro began under Trump's first administration, according to public data from USASpending. 'I was made aware of the funding of USAID to media outlets, including Politico.… And I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer's dime will no longer be happening,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.' Politico bosses sent a memo to staff saying they 'welcome' the conversation around the value of their products, which provide in-depth policy analysis and hard-hitting government scoops. The company had 'never been the beneficiary of government programs or subsidies,' Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and global editor in chief John Harris wrote in the memo, and the 'overwhelming majority' of subscriptions stemmed from the private sector. 'Please know that our business is strong and enduring,' they wrote. But that doesn't mean that the White House isn't still benefiting from the news wires. 'My guess,' the anonymous foreign service person told HuffPost, 'is the White House kept their access.' Musk and his team similarly attacked Reuters, misleadingly claiming that DOGE had 'uncovered' details that the news organization had been 'paid millions of dollars by the US government for 'large scale social deception.'' In actuality, the public contract to Reuters's data division was authorized by Trump during his first administration and had tasked Reuters to research potential defenses against deception.
