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Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Idiots Chump, Musk and Jim Banks

Hot off the presses tonight, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Make America A Pigsty Again"

That fat sow. I've seen some dumb White House spokespeople in my life but she really is dumb, dumber than anyone before.

Wisconsin did not go well for Musk and Chump and even the two Florida House wins weren't really good news. Ha ha ha. Erik De La Garza (RAW STORY) notes:

Two prominent GOP campaign veterans weren’t ready to take a victory lap after Republican state Sen. Randy Fine was projected as the winner of the special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

“Republicans should be scared,” Trump 2020 campaign communications official Erin Perrine declared Tuesday. “And you want to know why? Because this is a safe district.”

She added a message for her party: “So Republicans now for the midterms, start fundraising, get moving! Because it’s going to cost a lot.”

The stark assessment for Republicans came as Tuesday’s Florida special election results have so far shown a massive shift from the 30-point lead Waltz maintained in the November general election – to the now 10-point advantage the Republican has over Democrat Josh Weil.

While CNN conservative commentator Shermichael Singleton told a CNN panel on Tuesday that “a win is a win,” he added: “I'm personally not happy with just winning by 8 or 9 points.”

The country is turning against Donald Chump. Jill Covin (AP) reports:

A trio of elections on Tuesday provided early warning signs to Republicans and President Donald Trump at the beginning of an ambitious term, as Democrats rallied against his efforts to slash the federal government and the outsize role being played by billionaire Elon Musk.

In the marquee race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, the conservative judge endorsed by Trump and backed by Musk and his groups to the tune of $21 million lost by a significant margin in a state Trump won in November. And while Florida Republicans held two of the most pro-Trump House districts in the country, both candidates also underperformed Trump's November margins.

The elections — the first major contests since Trump's return to power — were seen as an early measure of voter sentiment as Trump works with unprecedented speed to dramatically upend the federal government, clashing with the courts and seeking revenge as he tests the bounds of presidential power.

We want to move forward and learn and have a better world for our children but Chump just wants to destroy us and force us into a past. Matt Dixon (NBC NEWS) notes:

Republicans are assessing how Musk’s spotlight-stealing influence will shape key political races headed into the 2026 midterms, when Republicans will defend a narrow House majority. While turnout in Wisconsin didn’t hit presidential levels, it did come close to the number of people who voted in the 2022 midterms in the state — closer to a regular election than a low-turnout blip.

“Elon is great for Trump because he’s a shield,” said a Republican operative who advised Musk on the Wisconsin race. But, the person added, that same ability to attract so much heat is “bad for elections because he energizes the Democrats.”

The recent NBC News poll showed a majority of voters nationwide (51%) holding negative views of Musk, while 39% viewed him positively.

Let's talk about THIRD. We had ideas for stories, we didn't get them done. Ava and C.I. wrote a long piece that they are farming out to the gina & krista round-robin for Friday's edition. Instead, because we couldn't pull together the other pieces, they started over last night and wrote "Media: The intended and the unintended jokes." We were going to make a lot of points in our other stories. Ava and C.I. had to figure what the main points were after nothing else got completed. They then did a quick write -- that they hate. But they thought it would work in terms of reaching people. And it did with Beau and my brother who both thought the points were solid and were also glad for more of an entertainment emphasis -- they cover a new sitcom on HULU and they worked that in for the candy while making the meat and bones the threats to us and the threats to those serving in the US military. They tried to make it PEOPLE magazine ready.

That's not an insult. But they do big pieces and sometimes they do PEOPLE magazine pieces -- a piece that they plan to reach out to more than the usual readers that they have. They did that a lot with Winter Soldier -- in the lead up to that, they'd put a notice in the middle of their media piece about the Winter Soldier hearings and they'd write something -- some topic -- that they thought would attract the most eye balls to get the word out on Winter Soldier.

Which is why I'm grabbing PEOPLE right now, Angel Saunders reports:

Republican Sen. Jim Banks told a former Health and Human Services employee that he “probably deserved” to lose his job in a viral video on Tuesday, April 1.

The brief interaction between the U.S. senator from Indiana and Mack Schroeder was caught on video and shared by multiple outlets, including NBC News’ TikTok account.

In the video, Schroeder, who does not appear on camera, follows and questions Banks as he is escorted to an elevator.

“Hi, I was a worker at HHS. I was fired illegally on Feb. 14,” he said, referring to recent, mass layoffs and firings under the Trump administration. “There are many people who are not getting social service programs, especially people with disabilities. Are you gonna do anything to stop what’s happening?”

“You probably deserved it," Banks said once inside the elevator.

The former HHS employee and a woman standing near him seem taken aback by Banks' response, both audibly exhibiting surprise.

What an ass. And since PEOPLE's covering it, a lot of people will see it. C.I. got two Iraq War veterans coverage in PEOPLE and, of course, called in a favor at ROLLING STONE to get Lt Ehren Watada covered.

I remember one ass that she tried to help and he went off on her after she called in a favor with a friend at ABC NEWS. He got real and serious coverage and he was a titty baby about it. She prepped her friend on what to say and ask of US officials so that the guy could come back and face as little consequences as possible -- he'd self-checked out of the military. But even with it on the record of what would happen to him -- much less than they did to others before him, he had a hissy fit and he started attacking her in e-mails. She was like, "Okay, we're done. I can't work with crazy so I can't help you." But he just knew someone could. No one did. Now he goes around the world forever moving spot to spot to try to avoid being deported back to the US. I can't remember what he would have gotten. I want to say that the reporter got the US official on record for six weeks in a military facility and then the guy would be free. But six weeks was too much for him. So, to this day, he hops around the world thinking some day, something is going to change and they'll say, "Sure you went AWOL but that was long ago so let's forgive and forget." That's never happening. And the only reason they could paint the US official into a corner on the vet was because the US government was seriously concerned about the global attention the war resisters were receiving and wanted as many back in the US to kill coverage. So they were drastically lowering the sentencing to try to get the vets to come back.

I'm pretty sure Canadian input helped him make the bad decision. The Canadian War Resisters Support Group just used the vets to try to score political points. The ones C.I. helped are still in Canada. The ones that went through that group are all deported now, I believe. C.I. got the group she worked with citizenship. The ass I'm talking about went to Canada on his own and then got 'help' from the War Resisters Support Group. His attorney contacted C.I. for help and C.I. was clear that she couldn't help ass the way she did the ones that had come to her.

Ass was already a public figure and couldn't fly under the radar.

The best she could do for ass was to get a promise on the record that he wouldn't have a long sentence if he came back. And she got that and it wasn't good enough for him so he's screaming and yelling and harassing her and it's all her fault and blah blah blah. And C.I.'s like, "Look, I didn't talk to you before you went to Canada. If I had, I would've told you that if it works out, that means you're never coming back to the US. I would've explained to you how I would get you citizenship and I would've told you to sit your ass down and blend in so that the US military doesn't feel they have something to prove with you. You did everything wrong for someone who wanted to become a Canadian citizen and you show up after Canada announces you're being deported and you expect me to pull a miracle out of my ass. I got a public concession that you would face only six weeks imprisonment. Nobody else got you s**t. I can't work with crazy, you're on your own."

Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"

Wednesday, April 1, 2025. Another security breach, calls for an independent investigation, administration caught lying about a deportation, and much more.

Filip Timotija (THE HILL) reports:

More than 30 Senate Democrats have called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Houthi Signal chat scandal, as the White House insists the case is closed on how a journalist was looped into high-level military discussions.

“In addition to the reckless inclusion of a journalist in the chat, we are deeply concerned about this serious breach in the proper handling of such information and deliberations,” 31 Senate Democrats wrote in a 6-page Monday letter to Bondi.

“Given the extraordinary circumstances of this shocking incident and the significant public interests at stake, it is imperative that you immediately appoint a Special Counsel to thoroughly and impartially investigate whether any of the government officials involved violated federal criminal law,”

The lawmakers said appointing a special counsel is “appropriate” in cases where the Department of Justice (DOJ) “may have a conflict of interest or extraordinary circumstances are present, a criminal investigation is warranted, and it is in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to investigate the matter.”

As we noted in yesterday's snapshot, that is only one security breach. Since yesterday's snapshot, yet another has emerged. Adam Lynch explains:

The Washington Post broke the story on Tuesday that aides of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz have been using commercial email to share information that could pose a risk to the U.S. if revealed to adversaries.

The Post revealed members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council — particularly White House national security adviser Michael Waltz — conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents and interviews with three U.S. officials. National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told the paperhe hadn't personally seen evidence of the national security adviser using the Gmail account as described, but he said Waltz's "legacy contacts" have occasionally emailed work-related information to accounts.

“They are so g----n stupid, dangerous and hypocritical,”wrote Democratic National Committee Chief Marketing Officer Shelby Cole on X. Cole referenced the drumbeat of GOP voices calling for the head of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during Trump’s first campaign roughly eight years ago.

They are that stupid. And the security breaches also include access to personal data of private citizens. They don't know what they're doing and they protect no one. The White House is exercising a combination of gross negligence and incompetence.

The latest security breach was discussed on MSNBC yesterday.

At THE HILL this morning, Brett Samuels notes:

The White House has declared the controversy around a Signal chat for a military strike that inadvertently included a journalist to be “closed,” but the episode has left some in President Trump’s orbit distrustful of national security adviser Mike Waltz.

White House officials are eager to move past the controversy, in which Waltz mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, to a group of administration officials discussing planned strikes against the Houthis. The White House has offered no specifics on any discipline handed down or protocol changes to avoid future mishaps.

Senator Tammy Duckworth's office issued the following yesterday:

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Today, combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)—a member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), U.S. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC) and U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC)—along with SVAC Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) called out the White House for declaring SignalGate—the most devastating and significant national security breach in years—“case-closed” without holding any senior Administration officials responsible for leaking classified information through an unclassified communications channel, putting the lives of our servicemembers at greater risk. In her remarks, Duckworth called on Republicans to join her in demanding congressional hearings and an independent investigation to look into the Trump officials on the Signal chat—urging her colleagues on the other side of the aisle to remember that they serve the people of this country, not Donald Trump’s ego. Full video of the presser is available on Twitter/X, Facebook and Senator Duckworth’s YouTube.

“It is outrageous that Donald Trump is trying to sweep SignalGate under the rug—declaring this egregious national security breach ‘case closed’ with absolutely no repercussions for anyone involved—after Pete Hegseth and others in the Administration put our troops—and our national security—at even greater risk,” said Senator Duckworth. “If Republicans actually care about our troops like they proclaim, they must do the bare minimum and join me in demanding an independent investigation as well as hearings looking into every official who was on that Signal chat—and Trump must fire Hegseth immediately for leaking classified information. With each second Hegseth remains Secretary of Defense, his incompetence emboldens our adversaries, weakens our national security and makes Americans less safe.”

“The Trump Administration’s reckless Signal chat security breach is appalling and chillingly dangerous to our military men and women,” said Senator Blumenthal. “This shocking and dangerous failure to maintain operational security at the highest levels of leadership demands accountability. While the White House is turning a blind eye to the Trump Cabinet’s carelessness with classified information—claiming it’s “case closed”—many questions remain and the American people deserve answers. Our Republican colleagues need to step up and face up to this breakdown in security that put our pilots at unacceptable higher risk. Until then, I will continue to call for a comprehensive criminal investigation into how this security breach occurred and demand that Secretary Hegseth and Waltz resign.”

“As someone who has planned and executed strikes off an aircraft carrier, I know there is no more sensitive information than the time on target for aircraft conducting a military strike over hostile territory,” said Senator Kelly. “The lack of accountability from those in this chat—and from the White House—isn’t just reprehensible, it’s dangerous. The American people deserve answers, and our servicemembers deserve leadership that protects them, not politics that puts them in harm’s way.”

“The Signal chat security breach reaffirms what we have known all along—that Trump’s national security officials are fundamentally unfit to serve,” said Senator Hirono. “Sharing attack plans, timing, and targets on devices that may well be compromised by adversaries endangered the lives of our servicemembers. Despite jeopardizing our national security, no one involved in this debacle has offered any assurance that this will not happen again or taken accountability for their actions. That is unacceptable. Democrats will continue working to understand exactly how this grave security breach happened and hold those responsible for this fiasco accountable.”

Since he was first nominated, Duckworth has made it clear that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is unqualified to lead our men and women in uniform. During Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, Duckworth demonstrated some of the areas where he lacks the experience or knowledge that any serious Defense Secretary nominee should have, grilling him on basic questions that he failed to answer. She asked him if he ever led an audit, and he would not confirm. She asked him to describe at least one of the main international security agreements a Secretary of Defense is responsible for leading, and he could not name any. She asked him to name at least one nation that is a part of ASEAN, an organization with several member states that have mutual defense treaties, alliances or enhanced defense cooperation agreements with the US, but none of the three countries he named are part of the organization.

After The Atlantic reported that Hegseth sent classified war plans in a Signal group chat with other Trump Administration officials, putting the lives of our men and women in uniform at greater risk and undermining the effectiveness of the mission, Duckworth released a statement demanding his resignation and calling him a “f*cking liar.”

Last week, Duckworth joined fellow SASC member Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and 14 other Senate colleagues in calling on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), SASC and SFRC to hold hearings to investigate why members of President Trump’s national security team were recklessly discussing classified military operations on unsecured devices. In the letter, the Senators also criticized the incompetence and carelessness of how these Trump officials mishandled the situation and inadvertently added a journalist to the group chat. Additionally, Duckworth joined Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and 12 of her colleagues in demanding answers from President Trump about what disciplinary action will be taken in response to SignalGate and emphasized that the Administration is in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act.

-30-

There needs to be a full investigation and there needs to be accountability.

Turning to the topic of immigration, Kilmar Armado Abrego-Garcia. Remember the name. He is one of many targeted by Donald Chump. He is one of many who was deported for no real reason. He was part of the 300 Venezuelans. Chump lied but he always lies. He used an 18th century wartime law to justify the deportations and he did so despite an order from US District Judge James E. Boasberg blocking the deportation. Propaganda Pig Karoline Leavitt insisted the court order had "no lawful basis." Kilmar had a lawful basis to have his deportation considered by a judge before he was thrown out of this country.

Aaron Blake (WASHINGTON POST) reports :

After JD Vance last year played perhaps the most prominent role of anyone in spreading a baseless claim about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating people’s pets — a claim that drew strong rebukes even from some fellow Republicans — he explained himself thusly.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said.

[. . .]

Monday brought some long-anticipated news about the evidence against recently deported migrants. The administration two weeks ago rapidly deported hundreds of them to a prison in El Salvador, many without due process because they were allegedly gang members. It relied on a rarely invoked power that had only been used in wartime. But lawyers and family members for several of the migrants have claimed that their tattoos and other evidence were misconstrued and that they didn’t belong to gangs. That raised the possibility that this lack of due process had landed the wrong people in a notorious foreign prison.

Well, we’ve now quickly learned that at least one person was indeed sent there in error. The Trump Justice Department on Monday cited an “administrative error” for including on the deportation flights a man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who legally couldn’t be deported to El Salvador.

This proves the administration’s hasty deportation process was indeed prone to the types of errors avoidable through the due process the administration cast aside. It has been just two weeks, and the government has already been forced to admit that a person was wrongfully deported to a foreign prison, while saying he can’t be returned. What are the odds he’s the only one?

Kate Plummer (NEWSWEEK) adds:

Vice President JD Vance has reacted defiantly to news that a government department deported a man in "error," commenting that it was "gross to get fired up" about the case.

[. . .]

Kilmer Armado Abrego-Garcia, who has a United States citizen wife and a 5-year-old child, was stopped by ICE officers and sent to the prison CECOT in El Salvador, according to legal filings.

Abrego-Garcia, who came to the U.S. at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in El Salvador, according to filings, had been detained by ICE in March over his alleged affiliation with the gang MS-13.

This suspected affiliation came from a 2019 incident, according to his attorneys, when an informant made the claim he was linked to gangs. Abrego-Garcia had already filed for asylum, and a judge had withheld his removal to the country, which was a protected status. The judge ruled he could be targeted by gangs if deported.

His lawyers said Abrego-Garcia was not affiliated with gangs and that the government had not produced evidence to prove otherwise.

After Jon Favreau, Barack Obama's former director of speechwriting turned podcast host, called on Vance and other Trump administration figures to comment on X, formerly Twitter, the vice president said that it was "gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported."

The soul-less Miss Sassy fails to grasp that first-in-line on being fired up over Kilmer's deportation is Miss Sassy himself. As Vice President, he should be outraged by what happened. Instead, he takes no ownership and he offers no apology. It goes to the fact that he has no soul. He has no integrity and he is not fit for public office. After acknowledging this grave error (which he has still not done), Miss Sassy should have immediately informed the country that the administration was working on securing Kilmer's release from the prison in El Salvador this country put him in and returning him to the United States.

Again, Miss Sassy is not suited to be Vice President. His refusal to do what now needs to be done goes to his immaturity and his hatred of others. Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) observes of Miss Sassy's refusal to take accountability:

Vance also attacked Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney, who was covering the story, as "unable or unwilling to look at the facts," adding that "in 2019, an Immigration Judge (under the Biden administration) determined that the deported man was, in fact, a member of the MS-13 gang."

Trump, not Biden, was president in 2019.

"Vance is badly wrong here," wrote attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. "In 2019, a police informant alleged the guy was in MS-13. He spent a year in ICE detention as a result, then won his case. He’s been out for the last five years, married to a U.S. citizen, has two kids, and STILL has no criminal record at all."

"JD Vance needs to work on his reading comprehension because the court document says HE WAS NEVER CONVICTED OF BEING A GANG MEMBER and the Trump administration itself admits he was only deported due to an ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR," wrote political analyst Judd Legum. "This is cruelty and incompetence resulting in moral catastrophe."

"Vance is such a strange breed of liar because it's precisely his appeal to facts and his desire to appear in command of them that trips him up and allows him to be caught," wrote former New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff.

Propaganda Pig Karoline, faced with reality, just continued to lie and squeal as she wallowed in her own slop:

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the deportation by claiming Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a leader of the notorious MS-13 gang who had engaged in human trafficking.

“Foreign terrorists do not have legal protections in the United States of America anymore, and it is within the President's executive authority and power to deport these heinous individuals from American communities,” she said.

Just a day earlier, Justice Department lawyers admitted in a court filing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had mistakenly arrested and deported Abrego Garcia, despite being aware that he had been granted a form of protected legal status called “withholding of removal” in 2019 after an immigration judge found he would likely be targeted by gangs for persecution and torture if sent back to El Salvador, the place he’d fled when he came to the U.S. in 2011.

We'll wind down with this press release from Senator Patty Murray's office:

ICYMI: Senator Murray, VA Researchers, Employees, Contractors in WA State Slam Trump & Elon’s Plans to Decimate VA With Further Mass Layoffs, Harm Services Veterans Rely On

ICYMI: Murray Statement on Trump & Elon Plans to Decimate the VA, Firing 80,000 Employees and Putting Veterans’ Care in Grave Danger

*** VIDEO of Senator Murray’s Remarks and Questioning HERE***

Washington, D.C. — Today, at a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing to consider pending nominations, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, questioned Lieutenant Colonel James Baehr, nominee to be the General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Captain Richard Topping, nominee to be Chief Financial Officer at VA. Senator Murray pressed the nominees on the Trump administration’s plans to fire over 80,000 VA employees, and how those cuts will harm veterans’ earned benefits and services. Senator Murray also underscored her concern with how this administration is picking and choosing which laws to follow instead of reviewing compliance with every law Congress passed to ensure care for veterans.

Senator Murray began by emphasizing the sacred oath we make to our veterans, that we will take care of them when they return home, and questioning Mr. Baehr on the impact of mass firing tens of thousands of employees at VA. “I, and many of us, are very concerned about Trump’s plan now to fire over 80,000 VA employees and how that would seriously disrupt veterans being able to access not just their obviously, education benefits, but their disability benefits, their home loan benefits, all that they’ve earned.”

“Do you support those widespread cuts to VA’s workforce?,” Murray asked Mr. Baehr.

Mr. Baehr dodged the question, saying: “I’m not at the VA and have no role in any of those choices or decisions. As an individual who uses VA myself, of course I want to ensure we have the best services and benefits—I also as a veteran want to see the VA improve and I think this entire committee does as well. So, I would review the law, and I would advise the Secretary on following a legal path and pursuing his vision for putting the veteran at the center of all that we do, if confirmed.”

Senator Murray followed up, “Do you think that firing 80,000 people will make it more or less difficult for veterans to get access?”

“I have not looked at the situation myself,” Mr. Baher replied, dodging again. “And I don’t know—I have just read the public reporting on it. I understand there is some exempt positions. The Secretary said that he is focused on care for veterans and making sure veterans don’t lose care or benefits. So, I don’t know where those opportunities for efficiency, or not, exist in this system. My role, if confirmed, would be to ensure that everything we do is lawful and compliant with Title V, Title 38, and other rules and regulations.”

Senator Murray continued, asking Mr. Topping and Mr. Baehr on the ability of DOGE and the Trump administration to pick and choose which laws to follow: “I would just remind all of us that this is a people organization and if we fire 80,000 people, it’s going to be really challenging and difficult—if not impossible—for our veterans to get the care and benefits that they’ve earned… This Committee has worked to pass a lot of really important pieces of legislation that require vital changes at the VA. That includes the Caregivers Program that passed when I was chair of the Committee, as well as the Deborah Sampson Act and of course the PACT Act, which just passed recently. During Secretary Collins’ nomination hearing, he testified that he agreed with providing vital health care and benefits to veterans, and that we have to get it right.”

“However, I just have to say—I have really serious concerns that this administration now is picking and choosing which laws to follow, which means not living up to the promises we have made our veterans and really ignoring the intent of Congress. For example, we know that VA is doing a review to determine whether it is fully compliant with the MISSION Act, but not reviewing compliance with any other piece of legislation. Mr. Topping let me just start with you, is the PACT Act less important that the MISSION Act?”

Mr. Topping responded, “Senator, I think all the legislation passed by this Congress is important.”

“Should VA pick and choose which laws to follow?” Senator Murray pressed.

Mr. Topping replied, “Senator, I think like any organization with limited resources, time, and capabilities, there is always a prioritization, none is more or less important. But I think what the Secretary said he’s doing is—he’s focused on maximizing efficiency, redeploying those resources so they’re front-facing and essential of veterans, and ensuring that the veteran remains at the center of everything that we do. I am not there, I am not exactly sure how the prioritization works, but I understand what the Secretary has articulated his goals to be.”

Senator Murray turned the same question to Mr. Baehr, to which he replied: “I believe that the VA should follow all the laws, and if confirmed I would advise the Secretary on how he can fulfill his role in the best course of action with all the laws and regulations that are passed by Congress.”

“I just have a few seconds left and I just want to ask you, Mr. Baehr, do you think it’s legal for DOGE to have access to veterans’ personal information?” Senator Murray followed up.

Mr. Baehr responded, “Senator, again, I am not at VA, and I am not familiar with what is going on. I’m just operating with what I have read in the public news. And there are… significant protections for veterans’ information. All three veterans before you, our information is in VA, so we are certainly sympathetic. I don’t want anyone looking at my podiatry records or other…”

“Personal, financial, health, all of that,” Senator Murray interjected. “So, if the Department is given directives by DOGE, or by the White House, that you believe are illegal, will you follow those directives?”

“I will always pursue the Constitution and follow the laws. I don’t believe I will be given illegal directives, but I will always follow the law,” Mr. Baehr replied.

Senator Murray was the first woman to join the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the first woman to chair the Committee—as the daughter of a World War II veteran, supporting veterans and their families has always been an important priority for her. Senator Murray has been a leading voice in the Seante speaking out forcefully against President Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firing of VA employees and VA researchers across the country and Elon Musk and DOGE’s infiltration of the VA, including accessing veterans’ sensitive personal information. In recent weeks, Senator Murray and her colleagues sent letters to VA Secretary Doug Collins demanding that the VA swiftly reverse moves to cut VA researchers, as well as multiple letters pressing Secretary Collins to sever Elon Musk and DOGE’s access to any VA or other government system with information about veterans, and protect veterans, their families, and VA staff from unprecedented access to sensitive information. Senator Murray grilled Trump’s nominee for VA Deputy Secretary, Dr. Paul Lawrence, on the mass firings of VA employees and VA researchers, and voted against Doug Collins’s nomination to be VA Secretary in early February, sounding the alarm over reports of DOGE at the VA and making clear that the Trump administration’s lawlessness was putting our national security and our veterans at risk.

A fact sheet outlining how Trump and Musk are endangering Veterans’ care is HERE.

###

The following sites updated:

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Another idiot and picturing Junior and Cheryl in hell

So many idiots, so little time. MegHAM McCain won't win it this week but she did make a worthy contribution.

Fatty is upset now. After the country is falling apart. Princess MegHAM is upset now. She got what she wanted and now she doesn't want it.

Idiot.

In hell, do you think crows will peck and pick at Cheryl Hines' organs for all eternity. As she screams and cries, do you think she'll find any pity? Or do you think she'll just look over and see the faces on Satan and her husband Junior laughing at here. This time last year, she was still insisting her husband wouldn't work with Chump and that she's leave him if he did.

Today the cheap whore is right at his side as he destroys the lives of so many children. Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already ignited a firestorm of controversy by pushing his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories into public policy, including his alleged mismanagement of a measles outbreak. But another fast-growing controversy concerns his influence over how neurodivergent kids are treated in special education, Slate reported.

President Donald Trump is mounting a likely-illegal move to dismantle the Department of Education, a long-running dream of far right activists who oppose its role in enforcing civil rights in schools at the state level. This move would put Kennedy in charge of special education oversight — and for many parents, that's a huge problem.

"Underlying the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again campaign, and most particularly a February executive order calling out ADHD medications and other commonly prescribed drugs for children as potential 'threats,' is the anti-science implication that neurodivergence is a fiction, curable, as suggested in the executive order, with a well-balanced diet and regular exercise," wrote Sarah Carr. The order, she continued, echoes "recent declarations from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., offering another piece of evidence — as if his persistent illusions of a link between vaccines and autism weren’t enough — that the secretary of health and human services believes that scientists and doctors are hurting rather than helping neurodivergent children."

"It’s only in recent decades that it’s been widely understood how rooted the most common neurodivergent conditions like ADHD, autism, and dyslexia are in differences in brain structure or function, or both — and how treatable ADHD, in particular, can be with medications that alter that functioning," Carr continued — and Trump and Kennedy's attack on this medication could set special education back years.

One parent in Oklahoma, identified as "Grace," told the story of how her daughter had impulsive behaviors in the classroom, getting in trouble for walking around and touching students, embarrassed at her behavior but struggling to control it, until her diagnosis and medication allowed her to thrive. Trump's executive order is a huge problem for her family.

“It makes me kind of rage honestly,” Grace told Slate. “If it was that simple to fix without meds, we would have done it. Suggesting that ADHD is a parenting failure rather than a neurological difference is all kinds of messed up.”

He's destroying the lives of our children. And yet Cheryl Hines stays by his side like the sick f**k that she is. She dishonors everything she once claimed to believe him for his promise not to cheat on her again. She's a bug-eyed bimbo with a misshapen body. And she'll do anything for Junior while she betrays her country and her core beliefs.

Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot"

Tuesday, April 1, 2025. The security breach becomes a plural and much bigger than most are realizing and no one seems to be noticing the people working for Donald Chump who are trying to minimize the breach -- guess what, I'm not talking about MAGA, I'm talking about freaks on the left.

Let's start with the security breach. Alison Durkee (FORTUNE) reports on a new poll:

The CBS News poll asked Republicans about how they feel about Trump’s top officials using Signal to discuss military plans. Jeffrey Goldberg, CEO of The Atlantic, reported this week on a group chat he was mistakenly added to, in which Trump’s Cabinet members were discussing detailed military operations over the encrypted messaging app. A 60% majority of Republicans said the Trump administration discussing operations on Signal with a journalist present is a “serious” matter, and a 56% majority think it’s not appropriate to use Signal to discuss military plans. That’s lower than the 76% of respondents overall who believe the use of Signal is inappropriate, and is in line with a YouGov poll earlier this week that found a 56% majority believe the Signal chat episode is a “very serious” problem.

76% of all respondents oppose the usage of Signal to discuss military planning. This is a major issue.

Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reckless treatment of classified information has left the majority of voters thinking that he should resign, according to a poll published Monday.

A poll by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that 54 percent of voters believed that Hegseth should resign over his involvement in the recent Signalgate scandal.

While all of the senior Trump officials who were members in the nonsecure group chat failed to notice the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, as they discussed a strike against the Houthis, it was Hegseth alone who sent details about the timing of the attacks—definitionally classified information.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said they weren’t sure what he should do, while only 22 percent said he should remain in his post.

Again, this is a major issue.

For most Americans.

For most.

We'll get to the freaks in a moment. But for the average Americans, it's an issue. The security breach has already resulted in questioning during two Congressional hearings -- the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

When we say "the security breach," we refer to the Chump administration inviting journalist Jeffrey Goldberg into what should have been a private and secure communication about the US being on the verge of dropping bombs on Yemen.

But that's stilly. That pretends that's the only security breach. The Chump administration has had one security breach after another.

February 25th, for example, THE JERUSALEM POST reported:

The CIA is conducting an internal formal review to assess any potential damage caused by an unclassified email sent to the White House that discussed possible layoffs, using names and initials that had the potential to expose undercover officers, a source familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.

The email, sent in early February, was part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plan to cut the workforce and spending of the federal government.

The Trump administration’s continuous efforts to audit federal organizations threaten to jeopardize the government’s most sensitive work, CNN reported, citing current and former US officials familiar with internal deliberations.

Earlier this month, in an effort to comply with Trump’s executive order aiming to reduce the federal workforce, the CIA sent an email listing all employees who had been with the agency for two years or less – including officers preparing for undercover operations – over an unclassified email server.

Now, the agency is unsure if several employees listed in the email should be reassigned, sources said to CNN, as the risk that their identity has been compromised and exposed to foreign government hackers may be too high.

“Your predecessor was in that position, as were the five officers before them. Now the host country and adversaries know this person going to this position in the embassy is agency,” said one former CIA officer to CNN, speaking hypothetically.

“They now assume the predecessors were the same [and] work backward and find out their collective footprint. The position is now burned," the former CIA officer added in the report.

Do we get it? Do we get how serious that was?

Maybe not. David Corn ignored this story. This is the man who was all over the story of the Bully Boy Bush administration outing undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. But several undercover agents being outed by Alien Musk was apparently not interesting enough to David or anyone else. Even now, David doesn't seem interested in it although he is covering the Signal story.

That's too bad because, again, this goes to pattern. And in less than three months, the Chump administration has a repeated pattern of not grasping what security means.

Last night, Jen Psaki discussed the emerging news that Michael Waltz had done "multiple other" threads have taken place on Signal.

There are so many issues here including legal ones and competence ones but, as US House Rep Jason Crow noted with Jen, there's also "the risk, the ongoing risk that's posed to our service men and women."

Remember for when we get to the freaks. We're working our way towards those losers.

Sunday, David McAfee (RAW STORY) reported:

While all eyes are on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attack plans posted on Signal, there was another dangerous leak from the Trump administration, according to a new report.

The media is largely focused on the Signal chat scandal, but according to Rolling Stone, there is another leak that should be spoken about.

"Reports that Donald Trump’s top national security officials accidentally shared their Yemen attack plans with The Atlantic in real-time drove the news in official Washington in recent days," the report states. "But it wasn’t the only damaging leak of information held by the administration this week."

The report continues, "Two Trump administration spreadsheets — which each include what numerous advocates and government officials say is highly sensitive information on programs funded by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — were sent to Congress and also leaked online."

The outlet further reports that, "The leak, which sent a variety of international groups and nonprofits scrambling to assess the damage and protect workers operating under repressive regimes, came after the organizations had pressed the Trump administration to keep the sensitive information private and received some assurances it would remain secret."

There are so many issues to this story. Issues like qualifications, accountability, and honesty. As former US Senator Clair McCaskill points out, Pete Hegseth's ability and desire to lie is something to behold.

On the issue of lying to the American people, Tara Suter (THE HILL) reports:

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said on Sunday that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe “lied repeatedly” about messages in a Signal group chat in which top members of the Trump administration discussed an attack on Yemen.

“Intelligence officials told your committee this week that no classified information was shared. Do you believe that directors Ratcliffe and Gabbard were truthful when they testified before your committee?” NBC News’s Kristen Welker asked Bennet on “Meet the Press.”

“No, I think they lied repeatedly to our committee and to the House committee. Kristen, let me try to make this as simple as I can,” Bennet replied. “I think the American people know this. If this material was not classified, literally nothing that I’ve ever heard as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee over all these years is classified.”

Earlier this week, Bennet labeled the Signal incident disrespectful to rank-and-file intelligence officers during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

“This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment. Do better. You need to do better,” he said Tuesday.

Outing agents, Intel conversations not being secure, on and on and on. It is a pattern not a "glitch." And it's a pattern because this is what happens when people with little to no Intel experience are put in positions that they are not qualified for.

The way the government is supposed to work is this -- a president nominates someone to a post. The Senate vets the nominee. If the nominee is not qualified, the Senate doesn't confirm them.

But that's not how it worked in January, February, March or possibly even now in April.

Instead of doing their jobs, many Republicans were just rubber stamps and they were rubber stamps for people so woefully unqualified that Chump's administration will probably go down as both the biggest joke in US history and as the saddest reflection on the US Senate. Some will argue 'I was threatened! I was threatened!'

Oh. Then you: Call the authorities, call the authorities.

You certainly don't vote to confirm the nominee.

In fact, being threatened means you vote NO on that nominee.

"We don't negotiate with terrorists." Various administrations have declared that throughout the last 100 years.

But apparently if you're online MAGA (a group that astroturfs and doesn't not have the membership it would hope) and threaten a sitting US senator, the Republican response is to piss your panties and vote for whatever way they tell you to. These were not voters objecting to a nominee and telling the senator that if they confirmed the nominee then they would vote for the senator again. Telling your elected official that they will lose your vote if the do A or B is not a threat. It's part of the negotiation process in our democracy. Remarks to the senator and/or their family of physical harm qualifies as a threat. And the way you respond to threats is to stand up to them, not to cave. It's amazing to grasp how scared and frightened Republicans in the Senate were. This is the same crowd that insists they raise their children strictly and they lay down the law and blah blah blah. No, they really don't. Faced with a threat, they chose to cave.

They didn't help the country.

And the media isn't helping the country by not addressing this two month pattern of the country's national security being compromised under Donald Chump and his appointees.

As noted above, Waltz has done other Signal chats. Here's Shane Croucher (NEWSWEEK) reporting on it:

U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz used the Signal messaging app to host other sensitive discussions with Cabinet members, The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing two unnamed officials.

Among those discussions were threads on brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, and military operations, according to the Journal.

[. . .]

The use of apps such as Signal to discuss sensitive information raises serious questions about the security of communications at the highest levels of government, with potential implications for intelligence sharing by America's allies.

There is also the issue of government records preservation—a requirement of federal law—with the use of apps like Signal, where messages can be automatically deleted over time.

Lat's note this from Senator Chris Coons' office (issued Friday):

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, led a letter to the Acting Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Department of State calling for an investigation into senior Trump administration officials for mishandling attack plans and other sensitive information through an unsecure messaging group chat, thereby putting U.S. servicemembers and intelligence officers at risk. The letter comes in response to a series of articles in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg detailing conversations by high-ranking Trump administration officials about military strikes conducted in Yemen in a Signal group chat in which Goldberg was included.

The letter details concerns that multiple cabinet officials potentially violated laws and regulations related to the handling of national security information and the retention of federal records, including the precise timing of missile strikes and information about intelligence gathering.

In the letter to the inspectors general, the senators expressed grave concern “over potential violations of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act, as the article outlines policy debates between the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and senior White House officials—discussions that should be preserved as official government records… the use of a messaging application with auto-delete functions raises further questions about whether these records were improperly destroyed.”

The senators also highlighted how a report to the Department of Justice has been yet to be filed regarding this breach, despite the legal requirement to address leaks of classified material.

“We note that classified information is designated as such because its release would significantly damage U.S. national security and put at risk our national security personnel,” the senators wrote. “As such, this information can only be shared in a sensitive compartmented facility and such operational information is classified at least the SECRET level or higher based on the Department of Defense’s own guidance. Disclosing classified information on an unsecured messaging group chat, which contained an uncleared individual, could be a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 798. We are unaware of any report to the Department of Justice associated with this event, which is a standard practice when classified information is leaked to the media.”

“This report, if accurate, indicates multiple violations of law and policy by a host of elected and confirmed officials responsible for national security issues,” the senators added. “Given that this was an accidental disclosure, it also raises the potential that the officials involved in this chat may be conducting other potentially classified and unlawful conversations on this messaging application.”

In addition to Senator Coons, the letter is signed by U.S. Senators Gary Peters, Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee; Jeanne Shaheen, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Brian Schatz, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS); and Patty Murray, Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair.

You can read the full text of the letter here.

From last night's THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW on MSNBC, here's Rachel addressing those developments and others.

It is unending. No one is in charge. No one is responsible. No one seems to know what secure means. Emil Guillermo (INQUIRER) observes:

Someone should be fired for SignalGate, and if it were up to me I’d say the sights are on at least three, maybe even four people.

And Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) agrees with me. She thinks everyone on that chat, in terms of our national security, was in dereliction of duty. Except for the inadvertently included reporter, of course.

If you think that’s harsh, consider how the Trump administration uses national security as a pretext to bolster its policy of harassing, rounding up and deporting even legal immigrants with green cards or student visas.

The recent cases of student protesters at Columbia University, a graduate student at Tufts and the cases involving legal green card holders from the Philippines and Colombia, all show an alarming hardline.

With that attitude toward immigrants, how can the Trump administration be lax on national security when its top officials are caught talking about secret war information on Signal, an encrypted but hackable public app.

And yes, we should call it Signalgate.

The neologism is appropriate. Every scandal needs to compare with Watergate. When top-level advisors – primarily Pete Hegseth, the Fox weekend anchor-turned-defense secretary; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; and Michael Waltz, national security advisor – show their inexperience and discuss on a non-secure platform the specifics of an attack on Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, there’s got to be accountability.

Indeed there does. And the American people -- regardless of whether they identify as Democrats or Republicans or independents or Libertarians, are outraged by this scandal -- even if they only grasp the above aspect of it.

Those troubled by the way I worded that should grasp that the national Green Party or its ridiculous Jill Stein have not uttered a single word while Socialists of the DSA and PA ilk are apparently represented by Rashida Tlaib who has refused to call out the leak.

Refused?

That's not fair, she's attacked those calling out the leak and insisting that the issue is the people targeted in Yemen. And COMMON DREAMS and other craplets have picked upon that. It's no longer about putting troops at risk or failure to observe proper regulations for handling secure information, it's ow just about anything else but that. And for COMMON DREAMS, it's been that way since March 25th. Craplets. Not news outlets. Not news sources. CRAPLETS.

As per usual, Rashida is not concerned with Americans or with America but she is concerned about people overseas. Maybe it's time for a Go-Fund-Me to help her go work in the part of the world that she actually gives a damn about?

Similarly, in the last 8 days, despite a ton of Tweets every day, WSWS (the SEP outlet) has refused to Tweet about this security breach in the last eight days and that's also true of PFSL. So apparently Socialists don't care about nationals security. Remember that when they ask for your votes. Apparently they're all happy -- the Socialists and the Greens -- with Chump and his idiots mishandling secure information.

JACOBIN published no article (DSA bible), PSFL took a pass as well. WSWS wanted to tell Americans -- in their only article -- that the point was being missed, this was about Yemen.

That's right, according to the freaks, it's the 78% of Americans that have it all wrong.

I'm really concerned about Justice "Democrats" more than ever. The Socialists -- that's what they are -- don't deserve to be in Congress if they're not going to protect this country. That does mean protecting the military. Whether Rashida thinks Yemen should have been hit or not, she should damn well know that the US military follows orders.

I'm sick of these people who want to look at crimes in the US -- and the security breach was a crime -- and ignore it to on and on about something outside of the US. You can focus on both, you actually can. The refusal of Justice 'Democrats' to do so goes to the fact that they don't belong in the US Congress.

The mishandling of information also involves Hegseth and the tramp he rode in on.

Tramp he rode in on?

I saw that photo Friday.

That's how she goes overseas? A forty-year-old woman who is not named Madonna thinks it's appropriate to travel overseas representing the US government in a shirt so tight that it gaps open and shows her black bra at various spots. That blouse is inappropriate. At forty her boobs were not growing. She should have known how to purchase a blouse with the same boobs she'd had for probably 24 years at least. Her failure to do so made her a joke.

She needs to learn to dress appropriately when she's representing our country. She and her husband also need to learn that she doesn't have a security clearance and no one has confirmed her for a Cabinet level position. Evan Williams (TAG 24 NEWS) notes:

A report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) alleged that Hegseth's wife attended two meetings with foreign military counterparts, despite lacking expected security clearances for access to classified national security information.

While there are no hard and fast rules about such meetings, they are high-security events, and it is generally expected that all attendees have necessary security clearances.

Rauchet, a former Fox News producer, attended a meeting between Hegseth and his British counterpart, John Healey, shortly after the US cut off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

She also attended a February NATO meeting in Brussels, in which discussions were also held over support for Ukraine and ongoing negotiations.

The WSJ report came less than a week after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been included in a top-secret Signal group chat in which classified information was shared about then-impending strikes in Yemen.

"That’s not normal at all," Delaware Senator Chris Coons told MSNBC's The Weekend when asked about Rauchet's presence. "On some of those trips, our spouses come along with us, but they are not allowed in any secret, sensitive, classified meeting with foreign heads of state, with foreign officials."

Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:

Washington, D.C. — Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-02), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, sent a letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding answers about the plans he announced last week to gut staffing levels and reorganize the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In their letter, Murray, DeLauro, and Baldwin press Kennedy for more information about his plans to gut the Department—warning of how it will jeopardize Americans’ health and well-being and urging him to fulfill the administration’s promise of transparency and detail the Department’s plans. Thus far, the Trump administration has shared only the most high-level details about its massive reorganization plans and significant staffing reductions across HHS—all without so much as consulting Congress.

“Authoritatively stating that these drastic changes will improve the health of Americans without any explanation insults the American public and defies logic,” write the lawmakers. “If these actions were actually intended to improve the Department’s ability to carry out its mission to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, you and the Department should be eager to provide additional detail and justification for them. Instead, the Department has operated with a complete lack of transparency—far less than previous administrations of both parties—and is withholding information from Congress and the American public. The obvious conclusion is the Department is intentionally hiding information because its actions will worsen the health and well-being of Americans. We insist that you begin operating the Department under the ‘radical transparency’ you pledged you would in your sworn testimony before the Senate.”

The top Democratic health appropriators in each chamber note that the Department’s plans fly in the face of the funding bill Congress passed and the President signed just weeks ago, writing: “Just two weeks ago, Congress passed and the President signed a full-year fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill that provided funding to specific agencies and operating divisions within the Department to carry out specific authorized activities, programs, and functions. The Department’s announced reorganization completely disregards how Congress appropriated funding. The reorganization seeks to illegally eliminate agencies Congress explicitly appropriated funding for and illegally move functions and programs for which Congress explicitly appropriated funding for one agency to carry out to other agencies it did not. The magnitude of staff reductions and reorganizations will also very likely prevent the Department from executing its responsibilities under the law.”

They detail other sweeping actions the Department has taken that weaken HHS’ ability to protect Americans health and set back ongoing lifesaving work—and note that if the steps are truly in the American public’s interest, the administration should be eager to share more details: “The Department has taken the unprecedented step of terminating thousands of grants, including for communities to combat infectious diseases like measles and bird flu, and to discover treatments and cures for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and other devastating diseases. The Department has paused funding for grants and prevented organizations from legally drawing down already awarded funds. The Department has imposed gag orders and already delayed billions in funding for lifesaving research at NIH. The Department has attempted to illegally cap and cut funding for research institutions in obvious contravention of annual appropriations law. The Department has been unwilling to provide even basic information about these actions to Congress.”

“The American people deserve to know what is happening to the federal workforce and agencies tasked with carrying out the Department’s tremendous responsibilities and the taxpayer dollars appropriated to carry those responsibilities out,” the lawmakers conclude, before demanding answers to a series of straightforward questions about the Department’s reorganization and staffing plans—with answers requested by April 4.

Full text of the letter is available HERE and below:

Secretary Kennedy,

We write with extreme concerns about significant staffing reductions and reorganizations at the Department of Health and Human Services (the “Department”), amidst other unprecedented actions taken by the Department over the last several weeks, which put American’s health and well-being at risk. The stunning lack of transparency surrounding these changes leaves us deeply concerned about what the administration is hiding. Moreover, several actions taken or proposed by the Administration appear to violate federal law.

Last week the Department announced it was implementing an unprecedented and disruptive reorganization that includes significant staffing reductions and office closures. This will degrade the Department’s capacity and expertise across a wide range of issues that will impact communities and individuals across the country. In the past, the Department has always worked closely with Congress on reorganizations, including those that were orders of magnitude smaller than what it is now being proposed. The Department has demonstrated a complete unwillingness to share even basic information with Congress (including the Committees on Appropriations) and the public about its actions or to provide any justification for them. Authoritatively stating that these drastic changes will improve the health of Americans without any explanation insults the American public and defies logic. If these actions were actually intended to improve the Department’s ability to carry out its mission to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, you and the Department should be eager to provide additional detail and justification for them. Instead, the Department has operated with a complete lack of transparency—far less than previous administrations of both parties—and is withholding information from Congress and the American public. The obvious conclusion is the Department is intentionally hiding information because its actions will worsen the health and well-being of Americans. We insist that you begin operating the Department under the “radical transparency” you pledged you would in your sworn testimony before the Senate.

Congress has an obligation to assess how changes the Department is haphazardly implementing will impact our constituents and the American public. It is our duty to ensure the Department is carrying out its tremendous responsibilities under the law that touch the lives of nearly every American, and this reorganization clearly violates the law. Just two weeks ago, Congress passed and the President signed a full-year fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill that provided funding to specific agencies and operating divisions within the Department to carry out specific authorized activities, programs, and functions. The Department’s announced reorganization completely disregards how Congress appropriated funding. The reorganization seeks to illegally eliminate agencies Congress explicitly appropriated funding for and illegally move functions and programs for which Congress explicitly appropriated funding for one agency to carry out to other agencies it did not. The magnitude of staff reductions and reorganizations will also very likely prevent the Department from executing its responsibilities under the law.

In addition to the announced reorganization and staffing reductions, the Department has taken a series of other unprecedented and harmful actions over the last several weeks that raise similarly grave concerns. Last month, the administration fired thousands of employees serving in their probationary period across the Department. The Department has offered deferred resignation benefits and voluntary retirement to virtually all of its employees. The Department has taken the unprecedented step of terminating thousands of grants, including for communities to combat infectious diseases like measles and bird flu, and to discover treatments and cures for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and other devastating diseases. The Department has paused funding for grants and prevented organizations from legally drawing down already awarded funds. The Department has imposed gag orders and already delayed billions in funding for lifesaving research at NIH. The Department has attempted to illegally cap and cut funding for research institutions in obvious contravention of annual appropriations law. The Department has been unwilling to provide even basic information about these actions to Congress.

Earlier this month, reports emerged of significant planned reductions at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The Department has now announced it plans to reorganize SAMHSA. We are deeply concerned about the impacts this will have on communities across the country trying to address substance use and mental health crises facing millions of families. After opioid overdose deaths reached a record high of nearly 112,000 from August 2022 to August 2023, we are finally making progress, and the trend of overdose deaths is shifting downward. Significant staff reductions and reorganizations will undermine SAMHSA’s ability to work with communities and make life-saving opioid-reversal drugs available. Communities across the country are also grappling with a mental health crisis, particularly among youth. Undercutting SAMHSA’s ability to work with states and communities to address this issue will only set us backward—putting mental health care further out of reach for those who need it. Additionally, we are concerned that staff firings will impact the work of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which has seen a steady increase in contact volume since it launched in 2022. If laying off staff or restructuring SAMHSA will have a positive effect on addressing the substance use and mental health crises affecting communities and families across the country, we think you would be eager to explain the steps you are taking. Despite requests by staff, we have not received any information about these planned staffing reductions and its effects on SAMHSA programs, and the Department has provided no information about planned reorganizations and how they will affect the administration of critical substance use prevention and treatment and mental health programs.

Earlier this month, there were also reports of planned layoffs at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). We are concerned about the impact these reductions will have on addressing healthcare workforce shortages, preventing and treating HIV/AIDS, supporting community health centers, and modernizing our organ donation and transplantation system. The Department has not provided the number of probationary employees that were fired who were working on these efforts or justification as to how these layoffs will best make use of the discretionary funding increases that Congress provided to HRSA in recent years. As the Department plans further staffing reductions at HRSA, we expect you would relish the opportunity to describe how staff layoffs will advance our shared goal of training more nurses and connecting the more than 100,000 Americans on organ donation waiting lists to lifesaving organ donations. Instead, questions have been met with silence, despite multiple requests for additional information. The Department is now planning to implement a reorganization of HRSA and again, has provided no information about how that will be implemented to improve the health and well-being of Americans.

There have also been significant changes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To date, the Department has not provided any information on staffing reductions at those agencies, other than strictly the number of probationary employees who were fired. Those agencies are tasked with detecting and responding to dangerous diseases to keep Americans safe and supporting biomedical research into lifesaving treatments and cures for diseases. The Department owes it to the American public to describe how laying off scientists, researchers, fellows, and staff at CDC will keep Americans safe from infectious diseases such as measles, avian flu, and tuberculosis. The Department owes it to the American public to justify how laying off scientists, grant administrators, and other staff at NIH will provide hope to patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and other devastating diseases, including rare diseases for which NIH clinical trials offer their only hope. The Department owes it to the American public to justify how firing scientists and career staff across the Department to make room for political appointees and fringe conspiracy theorists with no scientific background is an acceptable and appropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

We are also very concerned that the Department’s plan to dissolve the Administration for Community Living (ACL) will have a detrimental impact on the needs of some the country’s most vulnerable populations. ACL helps to ensure seniors and people with disabilities maintain their independence and participate fully in their communities. Carelessly shoving the administration of these activities into other operating divisions, already overwhelmed due to mass firings, will not help make Americans healthier; in fact, preventative programs administered by the thousands of community-based organizations that partner with ACL have significantly reduced health care costs for individuals at higher risk. These critical programs include nutrition services for older adults, which reduce hunger and encourage socialization; research and resource centers for people with disabilities and their caretakers; family caregiver support and respite care; and prevention of elder abuse and neglect. Dismantling ACL without any thought for the critical work it does shows a disregard for the needs of seniors and people with disabilities.

The American people deserve to know what is happening to the federal workforce and agencies tasked with carrying out the Department’s tremendous responsibilities and the taxpayer dollars appropriated to carry those responsibilities out. Congress is owed the same. Finally, we remind you of your legal obligation (per section. 713 of P.L. 118-47) to ensure that no federal funds are used to prevent federal employees from communicating with members of Congress.

To that end, we encourage you to begin operating the Department with the transparency you claim to. At the very least, that means directing your staff to provide the same level of information to Congress as previous administrations of both parties have provided – and to respond to basic inquires and requests for information and to maintain periodic briefings which you have cancelled. In addition, below we have included several questions, many of which have been submitted multiple times to the Department. This is information that should be readily available because it is surely information that was considered prior to making such significant changes at the Department.

We request responses to the following questions by April 4, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.

Provide the following:
1. The organizational structure of the Department on 1/20/25.
2. The planned organizational structure of the Department after the proposed reorganization that reflects any offices eliminated or moved relative to the structure as of 1/20/25.
3. A table displaying all programs funded in fiscal year 2024 by Operational Division (as is routinely provided in annual Congressional Justifications) with a crosswalk of where they were funded in fiscal year 2024 to where they will be funded after the proposed reorganization.
4. The total expected reduction in staffing at the Department relative to 1/20/25 by operational division and subcomponent (e.g. NIH institute, CDC center, HRSA bureau, etc.) including separately the number of probationary employees terminated, the number of employees who took deferred resignation or other voluntary separation, and those subject to Reductions in Force (RIF). Please also include a list of probationary employees that were fired and then rehired.

For each impacted agency, operational division, or office in place as of 1/20/25, describe in detail how proposed reorganizations and staffing reductions will improve the ability of the Department to carry out its authorized and funded activities, and how it will enhance the health and well-being of Americans.

For each impacted agency, operational division, or office in place as of 1/20/25, provide a justification for whether or not the proposed reorganization includes any reprogramming or transfer of funds.

How will the Department execute fiscal year 2025 appropriations given the recently passed fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill provided funding under a different organizational structure? Specifically, for each program, activity, or function that the Department plans to administer under a different operational division than where it was funded by Congress in fiscal year 2025, describe how the Department would execute those appropriations. For new offices the Department plans to create, including a new “Administration for Healthy America,” describe which appropriations from which Department or agency plans to fund those new activities.

Regarding probationary employees who were terminated:
1. How many had a veteran’s preference?
2. How many received an “Achieved Outstanding Results” performance review in their last 12 months?

Provide a list of new political appointee positions created, or planned to be created under this reorganization, since 1/20/25.

How many employees who were terminated, subject to RIFs, or who otherwise separated from the Department, worked on the Organ Procurement Transplantation Network modernization effort? How many worked on the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline?

For the National Institutes of Health, provide the number of probationary employees who were terminated, the number of employees who took deferred resignation or other voluntary separation, and the number expected to be subject to RIFs, by Institute, Center and Office (ICO) and job series, including:
1. The number of scientists working in the Intramural Research Program, including a breakdown by ICO.
2. For terminated employees, the number the Acting NIH Director requested to have reinstated.
3. The number of employees who were reinstated by ICO.

Provide a list of all grants and contracts that have been terminated since 1/20/25 by agency, Operational Division, and Office, including a justification, and any office involved in identifying it for termination.

Provide a list of all grants and contracts that have any kind of stop payment indicator associated with them, including grantees who are unable to draw down funds.

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