Latest news with #Swenson
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Memorial Day celebration reflects on remembrance amid shared loss
May 26—ROCHESTER — Kay Swenson has told her family's story countless times since her son, Cpl. Curtis Swenson, was killed in Afghanistan , but each telling for the Gold Star mother remains fresh. "I've worn that badge for 15 years," she said of the Gold Star family status to families of U.S. military members who've died while serving. "At times, it feels like 15 seconds." On Monday, she shared her family's story again as part of Rochester's Memorial Day observance at the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial. It was Swenson's third time giving the main address at the annual event, but friends and strangers who paused briefly after the ceremony to reach out to her made it evident the emotions shared among them are fresh. "She always gets me," program master of ceremonies Darlene Krebs said. Curtis Swenson was killed in Afghanistan on April 2, 2010, having joined the military shortly after his 2007 graduation from Mayo High School. Enlisting was a family tradition shared by his mother and father, as well as cousins and others. "Because of my family's history of service, I thought that was the thing you do," Kay Swenson said of her own Army service. When the son she described as a "smart, quick-witted, strong-heated, yet soft-hearted, little boy" served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009 and later left for Afghanistan in 2009, she said she better understood that individual service is not truly service of one person. "When a soldier serves their country, a family serves their country," she said. "We go through much of the same mental strain as our loved one." As someone born into a Gold Star family due to the death of her mother's first husband, Sgt Francis Berger on Nov. 14, 1952, Swenson said she knew of sacrifice but didn't understand the full impact on the family until her mother opened up following Curtis' death. "It was something she never talked about," she said of Berger's death in a non-combat plane crash in Korea. Even after Kay Swenson's sister died from cancer while serving, giving the family another Gold Star, she said the full impact didn't strike her. But Curtis Swenson death as the result of an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan during a combat support operation as part of Operation Enduring Freedom changed everything. She said her family opted to publicly mourn, searching for meaning in Curtis' death and letting others in to share their loss and personal stories. The search led to a memorial fund and educational scholarships , but Swenson said it's also helped others share and consider the enduring lessons of pain and sacrifice. "That's why we strive to turn our pain into purpose," she said. Swenson said sharing the experiences helps deal with the pain, even as the sadness remains indefinitely "It makes me incredibly sad, not knowing what might have been," she said, reflecting on her son's goals and plans for the future. "Letting go of our future is almost as difficult as letting go of him." With that, she urged the crowd that filled the seats and poured out of the memorial during Monday's program to remember those honored on Memorial Day, as well as those left behind as battle survivors and loved ones. Amid the variety of traditions carried out Monday, she said the key is remembering the sacrifices of those lost. "We owe a lifetime of gratitude," she said. "We speak their names so their sacrifice is not forgotten."
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Weatherford ISD superintendent gets 'positive' evaluation, Swanson named Curtis Elem chief
Weatherford school trustees on Monday named a new principal for Curtis Elementary and hired a communications director. Both officers succeed retiring Weatherford ISD leaders. Trustees also emerged from closed session to give Superintendent Beau Rees a positive annual performance evaluation. Rees said Tuesday any changes to his contract will be considered when the board writes next year's budget this coming summer. Trustees also named Brandi Swenson to succeed Lorie Bratcher at the elementary school Monday. Swenson arrives from Iowa Park Consolidated ISD northwest of Wichita Falls, where she has served the past decade as principal of Bradford Elementary. A news release Tuesday morning said Swenson served in assistant principal roles there since 2011, after starting out as a third grade teacher in Iowa Park in 1999, according to WISD. Swenson was named Assistant Principal of the Year in 2012 for the Region 9 Education Service Center region. She holds a master's degree in education from Wayland Baptist University. Weatherford trustees also named Reid Blackwell to succeed retiring Charlotte LaGrone as director of communications. Blackwell comes from the Mesquite ISD communications department where the Baylor alum has served since 2019. There, he developed a districtwide messaging system and led multi-media projects. LaGrone is set to retire at the end of June.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump HHS eliminates office that sets poverty levels tied to benefits for at least 80 million people
President Donald Trump's firings at the Department of Health and Human Services included the entire office that sets federal poverty guidelines, which determine whether tens of millions of Americans are eligible for health programs such as Medicaid, food assistance, child care, and other services, former staff said. The small team, with technical data expertise, worked out of HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, or ASPE. Their dismissal mirrored others across HHS, which came without warning and left officials puzzled as to why they were 'RIF'ed' — as in 'reduction in force,' the bureaucratic language used to describe the firings. 'I suspect they RIF'ed offices that had the word 'data' or 'statistics' in them,' said one of the laid-off employees, a social scientist whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because the person feared further recrimination. 'It was random, as far as we can tell.' Among those fired was Kendall Swenson, who had led development of the poverty guidelines for many years and was considered the repository of knowledge on the issue, according to the social scientist and two academics who have worked with the HHS team. The sacking of the office could lead to cuts in assistance to low-income families next year unless the Trump administration restores the positions or moves its duties elsewhere, said Robin Ghertner, the fired director of the Division of Data and Technical Analysis, which had overseen the guidelines. The poverty guidelines are 'needed by many people and programs,' said Timothy Smeeding, a professor emeritus of economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. 'If you're thinking of someone you fired who should be rehired, Swenson would be a no-brainer,' he added. Under a 1981 appropriations bill, HHS is required annually to take Census Bureau poverty-line figures, adjust them for inflation, and create guidelines that agencies and states use to determine who is eligible for various types of help. There's a special sauce for creating the guidelines that includes adjustments and calculations, Ghertner said. Swenson and three other staff members would independently prepare the numbers and quality-check them together before they were issued each January. Everyone in Ghertner's office was told, without warning, that they were being put on administrative leave until June 1, when their employment would officially end, he said. 'There's literally no one in the government who knows how to calculate the guidelines,' he said. 'And because we're all locked out of our computers, we can't teach anyone how to calculate them.' ASPE had about 140 staff members and now has about 40, according to a former staffer. The HHS shake-up merged the office with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, whose staff has shrunk from 275 to about 80, according to a former AHRQ official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. HHS has said it laid off about 10,000 employees and that, combined with other moves, including a program to encourage early retirements, its workforce has been reduced by about 20,000. But the agency has not detailed where it made the cuts or identified specific employees it fired. 'These workers were told they couldn't come into their offices so there's no transfer of knowledge,' said Wendell Primus, who worked at ASPE during the Bill Clinton administration. 'They had no time to train anyone, transfer data, etc.' HHS defended the firings. The department merged AHRQ and ASPE 'as part of Secretary Kennedy's vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans,' spokesperson Emily Hilliard said. 'Critical programs within ASPE will continue in this new office' and 'HHS will continue to comply with statutory requirements,' she said in a written response to KFF Health News. After this article published, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon called KFF Health News to say others at HHS could do the work of the RIF'ed data analysis team, which had nine members. 'The idea that this will come to a halt is totally incorrect,' he said. 'Eighty million people will not be affected.' Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has so far declined to testify about the staff reductions before congressional committees that oversee much of his agency. On April 9, a delegation of 10 Democratic members of Congress waited fruitlessly for a meeting in the agency's lobby. The group was led by House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who told reporters afterward that Kennedy must appear before the committee 'and tell us what his plan is for keeping America healthy and for stopping these devastating cuts.' Matt VanHyfte, a spokesperson for the Republican committee leadership, said HHS officials would meet with bipartisan committee staff on April 11 to discuss the firings and other policy issues. ASPE serves as a think tank for the HHS secretary, said Primus, who later was Rep. Nancy Pelosi's senior health policy adviser for 18 years. In addition to the poverty guidelines, the office maps out how much Medicaid money goes to each state and reviews all regulations developed by HHS agencies. 'These HHS staffing cuts — 20,000 — obviously they are completely nuts,' Primus said. 'These were not decisions made by Kennedy or staff at HHS. They are being made at the White House. There's no rhyme or reasons to what they're doing.' HHS leaders may be unaware of their legal duty to issue the poverty guidelines, Ghertner said. If each state and federal government agency instead sets guidelines on its own, it could create inequities and lead to lawsuits, he said. And sticking with the 2025 standard next year could put benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk, Ghertner said. The current poverty level is $15,650 for a single person and $32,150 for a family of four. 'If you make $30,000 and have three kids, say, and next year you make $31,000 but prices have gone up 7%, suddenly your $31,000 doesn't buy you the same,' he said, 'but if the guidelines haven't increased, you might be no longer eligible for Medicaid.' The 2025 poverty level for a family of five is $37,650. As of October, about 79 million people were enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children's Health Insurance Program, both of which are means-tested and thus depend on the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility. Eligibility for premium subsidies for insurance plans sold in Affordable Care Act marketplaces is also tied to the official poverty level. One in eight Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and 40% of newborns and their mothers receive food through the Women, Infants, and Children program, both of which also use the federal poverty level to determine eligibility. Former employees in the office said they were not disloyal to the president. They knew their jobs required them to follow the administration's objectives. 'We were trying to support the MAHA agenda,' the social scientist said, referring to Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' rubric. 'Even if it didn't align with our personal worldviews, we wanted to be useful.' KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
CNN
17-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
Trump HHS eliminates office that sets poverty levels tied to benefits for at least 80 million people
President Donald Trump's firings at the Department of Health and Human Services included the entire office that sets federal poverty guidelines, which determine whether tens of millions of Americans are eligible for health programs such as Medicaid, food assistance, child care, and other services, former staff said. The small team, with technical data expertise, worked out of HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, or ASPE. Their dismissal mirrored others across HHS, which came without warning and left officials puzzled as to why they were 'RIF'ed' — as in 'reduction in force,' the bureaucratic language used to describe the firings. 'I suspect they RIF'ed offices that had the word 'data' or 'statistics' in them,' said one of the laid-off employees, a social scientist whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because the person feared further recrimination. 'It was random, as far as we can tell.' Among those fired was Kendall Swenson, who had led development of the poverty guidelines for many years and was considered the repository of knowledge on the issue, according to the social scientist and two academics who have worked with the HHS team. The sacking of the office could lead to cuts in assistance to low-income families next year unless the Trump administration restores the positions or moves its duties elsewhere, said Robin Ghertner, the fired director of the Division of Data and Technical Analysis, which had overseen the guidelines. The poverty guidelines are 'needed by many people and programs,' said Timothy Smeeding, a professor emeritus of economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. 'If you're thinking of someone you fired who should be rehired, Swenson would be a no-brainer,' he added. Under a 1981 appropriations bill, HHS is required annually to take Census Bureau poverty-line figures, adjust them for inflation, and create guidelines that agencies and states use to determine who is eligible for various types of help. There's a special sauce for creating the guidelines that includes adjustments and calculations, Ghertner said. Swenson and three other staff members would independently prepare the numbers and quality-check them together before they were issued each January. Everyone in Ghertner's office was told, without warning, that they were being put on administrative leave until June 1, when their employment would officially end, he said. 'There's literally no one in the government who knows how to calculate the guidelines,' he said. 'And because we're all locked out of our computers, we can't teach anyone how to calculate them.' ASPE had about 140 staff members and now has about 40, according to a former staffer. The HHS shake-up merged the office with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, whose staff has shrunk from 275 to about 80, according to a former AHRQ official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. HHS has said it laid off about 10,000 employees and that, combined with other moves, including a program to encourage early retirements, its workforce has been reduced by about 20,000. But the agency has not detailed where it made the cuts or identified specific employees it fired. 'These workers were told they couldn't come into their offices so there's no transfer of knowledge,' said Wendell Primus, who worked at ASPE during the Bill Clinton administration. 'They had no time to train anyone, transfer data, etc.' HHS defended the firings. The department merged AHRQ and ASPE 'as part of Secretary Kennedy's vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans,' spokesperson Emily Hilliard said. 'Critical programs within ASPE will continue in this new office' and 'HHS will continue to comply with statutory requirements,' she said in a written response to KFF Health News. After this article published, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon called KFF Health News to say others at HHS could do the work of the RIF'ed data analysis team, which had nine members. 'The idea that this will come to a halt is totally incorrect,' he said. 'Eighty million people will not be affected.' Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has so far declined to testify about the staff reductions before congressional committees that oversee much of his agency. On April 9, a delegation of 10 Democratic members of Congress waited fruitlessly for a meeting in the agency's lobby. The group was led by House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who told reporters afterward that Kennedy must appear before the committee 'and tell us what his plan is for keeping America healthy and for stopping these devastating cuts.' Matt VanHyfte, a spokesperson for the Republican committee leadership, said HHS officials would meet with bipartisan committee staff on April 11 to discuss the firings and other policy issues. ASPE serves as a think tank for the HHS secretary, said Primus, who later was Rep. Nancy Pelosi's senior health policy adviser for 18 years. In addition to the poverty guidelines, the office maps out how much Medicaid money goes to each state and reviews all regulations developed by HHS agencies. 'These HHS staffing cuts — 20,000 — obviously they are completely nuts,' Primus said. 'These were not decisions made by Kennedy or staff at HHS. They are being made at the White House. There's no rhyme or reasons to what they're doing.' HHS leaders may be unaware of their legal duty to issue the poverty guidelines, Ghertner said. If each state and federal government agency instead sets guidelines on its own, it could create inequities and lead to lawsuits, he said. And sticking with the 2025 standard next year could put benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk, Ghertner said. The current poverty level is $15,650 for a single person and $32,150 for a family of four. 'If you make $30,000 and have three kids, say, and next year you make $31,000 but prices have gone up 7%, suddenly your $31,000 doesn't buy you the same,' he said, 'but if the guidelines haven't increased, you might be no longer eligible for Medicaid.' The 2025 poverty level for a family of five is $37,650. Dr. Richard Besser joins The Lead As of October, about 79 million people were enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children's Health Insurance Program, both of which are means-tested and thus depend on the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility. Eligibility for premium subsidies for insurance plans sold in Affordable Care Act marketplaces is also tied to the official poverty level. One in eight Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and 40% of newborns and their mothers receive food through the Women, Infants, and Children program, both of which also use the federal poverty level to determine eligibility. Former employees in the office said they were not disloyal to the president. They knew their jobs required them to follow the administration's objectives. 'We were trying to support the MAHA agenda,' the social scientist said, referring to Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' rubric. 'Even if it didn't align with our personal worldviews, we wanted to be useful.' KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
CNN
17-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
Trump HHS eliminates office that sets poverty levels tied to benefits for at least 80 million people
President Donald Trump's firings at the Department of Health and Human Services included the entire office that sets federal poverty guidelines, which determine whether tens of millions of Americans are eligible for health programs such as Medicaid, food assistance, child care, and other services, former staff said. The small team, with technical data expertise, worked out of HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, or ASPE. Their dismissal mirrored others across HHS, which came without warning and left officials puzzled as to why they were 'RIF'ed' — as in 'reduction in force,' the bureaucratic language used to describe the firings. 'I suspect they RIF'ed offices that had the word 'data' or 'statistics' in them,' said one of the laid-off employees, a social scientist whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because the person feared further recrimination. 'It was random, as far as we can tell.' Among those fired was Kendall Swenson, who had led development of the poverty guidelines for many years and was considered the repository of knowledge on the issue, according to the social scientist and two academics who have worked with the HHS team. The sacking of the office could lead to cuts in assistance to low-income families next year unless the Trump administration restores the positions or moves its duties elsewhere, said Robin Ghertner, the fired director of the Division of Data and Technical Analysis, which had overseen the guidelines. The poverty guidelines are 'needed by many people and programs,' said Timothy Smeeding, a professor emeritus of economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. 'If you're thinking of someone you fired who should be rehired, Swenson would be a no-brainer,' he added. Under a 1981 appropriations bill, HHS is required annually to take Census Bureau poverty-line figures, adjust them for inflation, and create guidelines that agencies and states use to determine who is eligible for various types of help. There's a special sauce for creating the guidelines that includes adjustments and calculations, Ghertner said. Swenson and three other staff members would independently prepare the numbers and quality-check them together before they were issued each January. Everyone in Ghertner's office was told, without warning, that they were being put on administrative leave until June 1, when their employment would officially end, he said. 'There's literally no one in the government who knows how to calculate the guidelines,' he said. 'And because we're all locked out of our computers, we can't teach anyone how to calculate them.' ASPE had about 140 staff members and now has about 40, according to a former staffer. The HHS shake-up merged the office with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, whose staff has shrunk from 275 to about 80, according to a former AHRQ official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. HHS has said it laid off about 10,000 employees and that, combined with other moves, including a program to encourage early retirements, its workforce has been reduced by about 20,000. But the agency has not detailed where it made the cuts or identified specific employees it fired. 'These workers were told they couldn't come into their offices so there's no transfer of knowledge,' said Wendell Primus, who worked at ASPE during the Bill Clinton administration. 'They had no time to train anyone, transfer data, etc.' HHS defended the firings. The department merged AHRQ and ASPE 'as part of Secretary Kennedy's vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans,' spokesperson Emily Hilliard said. 'Critical programs within ASPE will continue in this new office' and 'HHS will continue to comply with statutory requirements,' she said in a written response to KFF Health News. After this article published, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon called KFF Health News to say others at HHS could do the work of the RIF'ed data analysis team, which had nine members. 'The idea that this will come to a halt is totally incorrect,' he said. 'Eighty million people will not be affected.' Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has so far declined to testify about the staff reductions before congressional committees that oversee much of his agency. On April 9, a delegation of 10 Democratic members of Congress waited fruitlessly for a meeting in the agency's lobby. The group was led by House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who told reporters afterward that Kennedy must appear before the committee 'and tell us what his plan is for keeping America healthy and for stopping these devastating cuts.' Matt VanHyfte, a spokesperson for the Republican committee leadership, said HHS officials would meet with bipartisan committee staff on April 11 to discuss the firings and other policy issues. ASPE serves as a think tank for the HHS secretary, said Primus, who later was Rep. Nancy Pelosi's senior health policy adviser for 18 years. In addition to the poverty guidelines, the office maps out how much Medicaid money goes to each state and reviews all regulations developed by HHS agencies. 'These HHS staffing cuts — 20,000 — obviously they are completely nuts,' Primus said. 'These were not decisions made by Kennedy or staff at HHS. They are being made at the White House. There's no rhyme or reasons to what they're doing.' HHS leaders may be unaware of their legal duty to issue the poverty guidelines, Ghertner said. If each state and federal government agency instead sets guidelines on its own, it could create inequities and lead to lawsuits, he said. And sticking with the 2025 standard next year could put benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk, Ghertner said. The current poverty level is $15,650 for a single person and $32,150 for a family of four. 'If you make $30,000 and have three kids, say, and next year you make $31,000 but prices have gone up 7%, suddenly your $31,000 doesn't buy you the same,' he said, 'but if the guidelines haven't increased, you might be no longer eligible for Medicaid.' The 2025 poverty level for a family of five is $37,650. Dr. Richard Besser joins The Lead As of October, about 79 million people were enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children's Health Insurance Program, both of which are means-tested and thus depend on the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility. Eligibility for premium subsidies for insurance plans sold in Affordable Care Act marketplaces is also tied to the official poverty level. One in eight Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and 40% of newborns and their mothers receive food through the Women, Infants, and Children program, both of which also use the federal poverty level to determine eligibility. Former employees in the office said they were not disloyal to the president. They knew their jobs required them to follow the administration's objectives. 'We were trying to support the MAHA agenda,' the social scientist said, referring to Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' rubric. 'Even if it didn't align with our personal worldviews, we wanted to be useful.' KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
