Politics Random, Random

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Trump’s cuts hit red states, triggering GOP pushback
GOP lawmakers try to intervene with the Trump administration as local fallout grows.

By Ben Leonard and Hailey Fuchs

02/14/2025 05:00 PM EST

Republican lawmakers are pushing back against sweeping cuts to the federal government launched by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as their downsizing crusade begins to hit GOP constituents.

A growing number of GOP lawmakers are trying to intervene with the Trump administration and are weighing legislation to circumvent the changes. But with the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Management and Budget moving at a rapid clip and flouting federal law to carve up the government, the lawmakers face monumental challenges in getting the White House to spare their constituents from the ax.

Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior appropriator whose district is home to a number of National Park Service sites, said in an interview his staff is talking to the administration about how an OMB-directed, government-wide hiring freeze will affect the National Park Service. The park service fired 1,000 full-time staff Friday but said seasonal hiring is resuming, exempting 5,000 seasonal jobs from the hiring freeze.

Sen. Jerry Moran, another GOP appropriator who represents the agriculture-heavy state of Kansas, has told the White House that DOGE’s dismantling of USAID will impact constituents who have long relied on selling their crops to a government program that fights hunger abroad.

And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who chairs an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the National Institutes of Health, said her panel’s funding bill includes language to prevent the White House budget office from slashing billions of dollars in health research grant money. Capito has long been a champion of the NIH, linking the biomedical research agency’s funding to grant opportunities in her small state.

“I’m hearing from my institutions concerned about it,” Capito said in an interview. “It’s pretty drastic.”

The fight illustrates how efforts by DOGE and OMB to slash the federal bureaucracy are poised to create conflicts with industries and interests that Republican lawmakers hold dear. The confrontation is also the latest test of Capitol Hill’s power in the second Trump era, and a new front for lawmakers who have a direct say over federal spending.

The White House is standing behind the cuts and urging Congress to codify them, raising doubts about the extent to which Republicans on the Hill can soften the blow.

“President Trump has enjoyed broad support on his plan to ensure that taxpayer-funded programs align with the mandate the American people gave him in November,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “The spending freeze is already uncovering waste, fraud and abuse across federal agencies and ensuring better stewardship of taxpayer dollars, including for American farmers and families.”

It’s an awkward position for GOP lawmakers who have otherwise voiced support for DOGE.

Capito took to the Senate floor in the weeks before Trump took office to laud Musk’s initiative.

“Republicans are proud to have the Department of Government Efficiency … on our side,” she said. “Under President Biden, wasteful government spending spiraled out of control, harming hardworking Americans and their livelihoods.”

But when it comes to government waste, Republican lawmakers are beginning to see things differently as constituents in red states speak out. Many are waiting to see if the courts strike down some of DOGE and OMB’s actions, according to a senior Republican Hill aide granted anonymity to discuss party dynamics.

Some Republicans are “chafing about the basis of [the] executive doing it rather than it being done by Congress,” said the aide.

Capito didn’t say she wanted the courts to settle the matter for lawmakers, but made clear she believes lawsuits will determine whether various funding freezes and recissions are allowed to go through.

“They have given us the backup legal argument as to whether they can do it,” she said of the Trump administration. “I’m sure it will be determined in the court.”

Simpson, whose appropriations subcommittee oversees the Interior Department and National Park Service, has made federal support for national parks a centerpiece of his legislative portfolio over more than two decades in Congress.

“The hiring freeze has been a problem because now’s when we’re hiring seasonal employees for the parks — that’s a challenge,” he said in an interview.

Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association, which has pushed back against the changes, said “when national parks struggle, gateway communities and economies feel the effects too.”

“The hiring freeze means our national parks will struggle with insufficient staffing as parks across the country need to begin hiring critical seasonal staff for spring break and summer,” Pierno said.

In the agriculture industry, an array of trade associations representing Kansas staples like sorghum and wheat are backing legislation from Moran and other Republicans from farm-dense states that would take the Food for Peace program out of the now-gutted USAID and fold it into USDA.

“By placing Food for Peace under USDA’s authority, we make certain that the program is in good hands and can continue to bring revenue to American agriculture,” Moran said on the Senate floor Thursday, also citing “growing concern” with “inefficiency” at USAID.

Republicans are increasingly speaking up against NIH cuts that are hitting universities in their states. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine, who has said she’s heard from universities and labs in her state that the cuts would be “devastating,” pressed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on her concerns. She said in a statement Monday that he has promised to “reexamine” the decision.

Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who serves on the Appropriations Committee, was among the first to speak out in favor of a “targeted approach” to reducing government waste. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has said the cuts to NIH would slow research and hurt the state’s economy.

Britt’s fellow Alabama senator, Tommy Tuberville, acknowledged the impact in an interview, but suggested he’s not changing course. “I’m all on DOGE’s side.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/1 ... p-00204435

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[ponchi101]

Thanks for that. I thought Kamala had gotten way less than 75 MM.

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Brokenbones?Illfixit.bsky.social
‪@drbrownreal.bsky.social‬

Wow, this is outrageous! DOGE claims they found fraud where 150 year olds were receiving Social Security! What a joke these incompetent, inexperienced folks running this department are!

[Owendonovan]

4 Top Officials to Resign Over Adams’s Cooperation With Trump
Four deputy mayors to Eric Adams are leaving “to stay faithful to the oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families,” they said in a statement.

By William K. RashbaumDana Rubinstein and Emma G. Fitzsimmons
Feb. 17, 2025
Four top New York City officials said they would resign after the Justice Department moved to dismiss Mayor Eric Adams’s corruption case in apparent exchange for his help with President Trump’s deportation agenda.

The four officials — Maria Torres-Springer, the first deputy mayor, and Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom and Chauncey Parker, all also deputy mayors — oversee much of New York City government, and their departure is poised to blow a devastating hole in the already wounded administration of Mayor Eric Adams.
Increasingly, the deputy mayors felt that they were not merely working for an indicted mayor, but for someone whose personal interests risked outweighing the interests of New Yorkers, according to a person briefed on the matter. They found this untenable, the person said.

Three of the deputies told their staff members of their decisions in emails on Monday. They are expected to leave in coming weeks.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, is forcefully resisting growing calls to resign. Gov. Kathy Hochul is also under increasing pressure to remove him from office.

The four officials who are leaving office are all respected government veterans. Ms. Torres-Springer was elevated to the second most powerful job at City Hall in October in an effort to stabilize city government and restore confidence in the Adams administration following the mayor’s federal indictment in September on five counts, including bribery and fraud.

The departing deputy mayors met with Mr. Adams on Friday and told him that they had grave concerns about his predicament as a leader, according to two city officials. At that meeting, they told him they were planning to resign, one of the officials said. The meeting was first reported by Politico.

On Sunday evening, the four deputy mayors met with Mr. Adams on Zoom, and he tried to persuade them to postpone the announcement of the resignations, one of the city officials said. The exact timing of the their departures has yet to be determined. The Sunday Zoom was first reported by WNBC.

“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” said Mr. Adams, in a statement issued after news of the resignations emerged. “But let me be crystal clear: New York City will keep moving forward, just as it does every day. All deputy mayors will remain in their roles for the time being to ensure a seamless transition. The people of New York City remain, without question, our top priority.”

On Monday, Ms. Joshi and Ms. Torres-Springer sent emails to their staff in which they announced that they and Ms. Williams-Isom were departing and shared a joint statement from all three.

“Due to the extraordinary events of the last few weeks and to stay faithful to the oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families, we have come to the difficult decision to step down from our roles,” they said in the statement, which was obtained by The New York Times.

“While our time in this administration will come to a close, our support for the incredible public servants across the administration with whom we have stood shoulder to shoulder and our championing of this great city and all it stands for will never cease,” the email said.

The departure of the fourth official, Mr. Parker, is particularly notable because as the deputy mayor for public safety, he has been deeply involved in issues around the city’s role in the president’s deportation plans.

The planned exit of the four key officials means that half of New York City’s eight deputy mayors are leaving City Hall. It remains unclear who will replace them and if this will precipitate further departures from the commissioners who report to them.

“As we always say, if and when we have personnel announcements to make, we will make them,” said Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

The officials’ expected departure would cap five months of instability in an administration that at times has veered toward chaos. First the mayor was indicted on federal bribery and fraud charges, and then a deluge of other unrelated federal corruption investigations swept through City Hall.

Those inquiries led to the resignations of half a dozen of his most senior aides who had their phones seized by federal authorities: two successive police commissioners within three months of one another; his prior first deputy mayor and deputy mayor for public safety; his schools chancellor and a senior adviser who was one of his closest confidants.

Then, in December, the mayor’s top adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, resigned shortly before the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, obtained an indictment charging her and her son with bribery and other crimes.

Ms. Torres-Springer, Ms. Joshi, Ms. Williams-Isom and Mr. Parker were understood to act as a counterweight to the perception that the mayor’s loyalists were running amok at City Hall.

Once Mr. Trump’s administration moved to dismiss the charges against the mayor, the presence of the four deputy mayors was viewed by people in and around city government as a bulwark against the president's influence at City Hall. Now it remains unclear who is left to serve in that role.

The president first entered the picture in the fall, when Mr. Adams publicly sidled up to him — both rhetorically and actually. The mayor met the president at a political gala in Manhattan and at a prize fight at Madison Square Garden. In the weeks preceding the November election, the mayor declined to name Kamala Harris as his choice for president, despite having endorsed her. He also chided his party colleagues for describing Mr. Trump as a fascist.

After the election, Mr. Adams traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., in January to lunch with Mr. Trump, and then traveled to Washington, D.C., to sit in the overflow room at Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Mr. Adams’s lawyers promptly sought a pardon from Mr. Trump once he took office. The pardon was not forthcoming.

But in February, just weeks after federal prosecutors in Manhattan said they had uncovered “additional criminal conduct” by the mayor, one of Mr. Trump’s top deputies at the Justice Department directed them to ask the judge presiding over the mayor’s case to dismiss his indictment.

The respected prosecutor whom Mr. Trump had appointed as U.S. attorney to oversee the office on an interim basis, Danielle R. Sassoon, chose to resign instead, after writing an explosive letter detailing what she characterized as an inappropriate backroom deal that prioritized politics over the interests of justice. She also wrote that the office had been planning to charge the mayor with obstruction of justice in a new indictment.

The mayor’s “advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” Ms. Sassoon said.

The lead prosecutor in the case against Mr. Adams, Hagan Scotten, also resigned, issuing a blistering resignation letter suggesting only a “fool” or a “coward” would obey the Trump administration’s edict to seek the dismissal of the case.

Then, five other Justice Department lawyers in Washington who either oversaw or prosecuted public corruption cases also stepped down rather than sign the court papers at the direction of the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III.

The episode “raises serious questions involving both the potential quid pro quo and prosecutorial weaponization of our justice system,” said the New York City Bar Association, in a statement issued Monday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/nyre ... ation.html

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Aaron Rupar
‪@atrupar.com‬



SWAN: DOGE and SpaceX employees are now working directly at the FAA and DoD, agencies that have billions of dollars of contracts with Musk's companies or regulate them. How is that not a conflict of interest?

TRUMP: Well I mean, I'm just hearing about it

The complete word salad at the link. The above is only part of what he said.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3liiafvvd2l2v

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[Owendonovan]

So.............free Luigi?

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