CURRENT EVENTS APRIL 3 - 8
- Thread starter nycfan
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No, it’s a classLESS signifierNo it’s a trend among women of that class and political affiliation. I read somewhere that facial plastic surgery is no longer about looking more symmetrical or youthful, it’s about looking different from regular people to prove that you have the ability to do so. It’s a class signifier.
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What the fuck?!?No it’s a trend among women of that class and political affiliation. I read somewhere that facial plastic surgery is no longer about looking more symmetrical or youthful, it’s about looking different from regular people to prove that you have the ability to do so. It’s a class signifier.
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CDC lays off entire FOIA staff
www.citizensforethics.org
“… This week, as part of DOGE’s efforts to reshape the government, the Department of Health and Human Services began laying off 10,000 employees, which included the entire CDC FOIA office.
CREW requested records through FOIA on an expedited basis and received an automatic response stating that the “FOIA office had been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.” CREW’s requests seek information related to the shuttering of the office and DOGE’s involvement, as well as records regarding a recent report that the CDC allegedly suppressed an expert assessment about measles vaccination.
Given ongoing outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases, it is crucial that Americans have transparency into the CDC’s operations and DOGE’s apparent interference in public health agencies. Like every government agency, under FOIA the CDC is required to keep records and turn them over to the public when requested. The CDC has no apparent plans to handle the thousands of FOIA requests it has and will receive, which is a violation of the law. …”
CREW sues to challenge destruction of CDC FOIA office - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
The closure of the CDC's entire FOIA office violates both FOIA and the Administrative Procedures Act and the CDC must be compelled to follow the law.
www.citizensforethics.org
“… This week, as part of DOGE’s efforts to reshape the government, the Department of Health and Human Services began laying off 10,000 employees, which included the entire CDC FOIA office.
CREW requested records through FOIA on an expedited basis and received an automatic response stating that the “FOIA office had been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.” CREW’s requests seek information related to the shuttering of the office and DOGE’s involvement, as well as records regarding a recent report that the CDC allegedly suppressed an expert assessment about measles vaccination.
Given ongoing outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases, it is crucial that Americans have transparency into the CDC’s operations and DOGE’s apparent interference in public health agencies. Like every government agency, under FOIA the CDC is required to keep records and turn them over to the public when requested. The CDC has no apparent plans to handle the thousands of FOIA requests it has and will receive, which is a violation of the law. …”
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No it’s a trend among women of that class and political affiliation. I read somewhere that facial plastic surgery is no longer about looking more symmetrical or youthful, it’s about looking different from regular people to prove that you have the ability to do so. It’s a class signifier.
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“… Some people who were fired are being unfired, at least temporarily. Some managers don't even know who still works for them. With human resources teams gutted, answers are extremely hard to come by. This is according to interviews with more than a dozen staff, many of whom did not share their names for fear of retaliation.
Firings began early this week. Many workers only found out they had been fired when they tried to enter the building and their security badges didn't work.
… Among those "mistakes," Kennedy said, was the elimination of a division of CDC that, among other things, helps public health departments around the country address lead contamination in water. A massive testing effort was about to begin in Milwaukee's school system when CDC sent its notices.
By Friday afternoon, a day after Kennedy said the lead surveillance program was reinstated, officials in that division said they had heard nothing about resumption of the work, or plans to reinstate their jobs.
… At the National Institutes of Health, six workers in the public records office who had been terminated with their jobs set to end in 60 days, were then ordered to return to work. NPR obtained the email they received, calling them back to work — though not restoring their jobs. It reads in part:
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“…
The government is not providing precise details about the positions and functions that have been cut.
Instead, some workers have worked on crowdsourcing lists of those cut.
The picture they paint is stark.
For instance, at the CDC, entire divisions were hit hard. Outside of the human resources and IT functions, some of the hardest hit appear to include the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and divisions that monitor birth defects, zoologic and infectious disease, and chronic disease — one of the areas Kennedy said is a priority for the country.
… On Thursday, HHS announced all contract spending must be cut by 35%. This move adds to the confusion and difficulty of those staff who remain in place to do their jobs, one CDC staffer told NPR.
"Folks at CDC who are our contracting officers have been destroyed," which means even trying to cancel contracts will be "a tall order" for the remaining staff.
…
At NIH where about 1,300 employees were laid off, there's widespread anger and despair. Most of those cut appear to have been involved in support jobs, communications, IT, human resources, those who order supplies and specialists who handle contracts and grants. These jobs are crucial for enabling scientists to search for new cures for everything from asthma, allergies and Alzheimer's to AIDS, cancer and heart disease.
"I don't even know where to start with the devastation that is being wrought in infectious disease in particular," said an NIH official who did not want to be identified because of fears of retribution.
"It is going to take us more than a generation to recover, not just with the science but with the cuts to training grants and supporting mentees. And all the while, China is continuing to pour investments into these very areas … and we will quickly be eclipsed," the official said via email.“
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Trump Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses at a Moment of Rising Danger
The firing of the head of the National Security Agency was only the latest move that has eroded the country’s fortifications against cyberattacks, especially those targeting elections.GIFT LINK
—> Trump’s National Security Firings Come as He Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses——
I sincerely can’t even imagine the media and GOP outrage if a Democratic Administration tried a fraction of these things, much less in concert with the other military cuts I’ve posted about just today.
It's like The Picture of Dorian Gray. Let's give everyone an outer view of the inner soul.No it’s a trend among women of that class and political affiliation. I read somewhere that facial plastic surgery is no longer about looking more symmetrical or youthful, it’s about looking different from regular people to prove that you have the ability to do so. It’s a class signifier.
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“… General Timothy D. Haugh, had sat atop the enormous infrastructure of American cyberdefenses until his removal, apparently under pressure from the far-right Trump loyalist Laura Loomer.Trump Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses at a Moment of Rising Danger
The firing of the head of the National Security Agency was only the latest move that has eroded the country’s fortifications against cyberattacks, especially those targeting elections.
GIFT LINK
——
I sincerely can’t even imagine the media and GOP outrage if a Democratic Administration tried a fraction of these things, much less in concert with the other military cuts I’ve posted about just today.
He had been among the American officials most deeply involved in pushing back on Russia, dating to his work countering Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election.
His dismissal came after weeks in which the Trump administration swept away nearly all of the government’s election-related cyberdefenses beyond the secure N.S.A. command centers at Fort Meade, Md.
At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks.
Cybersecurity experts, election officials and lawmakers — mostly Democrats but a few Republicans — have begun to raise alarms that the United States is knocking down a system that, while still full of holes, has taken a decade to build. It has pushed out some of its most experienced cyberdefenders and fired younger talent brought in to design defenses against a wave of ransomware, Chinese intrusions and vulnerabilities created by artificial intelligence. …
… Mr. Trump’s embattled national security adviser, Michael Waltz, has not yet announced a new cyberstrategy, but he has argued that the country needs to go on offense more.
“We’ve been playing a lot of defense, and we keep trying to play better and better defense,” Mr. Waltz told Breitbart before the inauguration.
“If you’re putting cyber time bombs in our ports and grid,” he added, the United States must show that “we can do it to you, too.”
… In his first term, Mr. Trump and his top aides fortified cyberdefenses: He signed legislation creating the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the White House started publicly naming countries that were attacking the United States. …”
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BUT
“… Mr. Trump has moved in the opposite direction in his second term. For four years, he nurtured deep resentments about CISA, which had declared that the 2020 election was one of the best run in history, undercutting his false claims that he had been cheated of victory. Weeks after taking office this year, he began a campaign of dismantlement.
Federal programs that monitored foreign influence and disinformation have been eliminated.
Key elements of the warning systems intended to flag possible intrusions into voting software have also been degraded; the effects may not be known until the next major election.
And contractors who worked with local election officials to perform cybersecurity testing, usually with federal funding, have found the deals canceled.
In early March, CISA — which is nested inside the Department of Homeland Security — cut more than $10 million in funding to two critical cybersecurity intelligence-sharing programs that helped detect and deter cyberattacks and that alerted state and local governments about them.
One program was dedicated to election security, and the other to broader government assets, including electrical grids.
In some counties around the nation, these two programs were the only ways that local governments stayed on top of mounting attacks.
“It’s like somebody lowered the drawbridge, and there’s no guards,” said Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, who has written letters of protest to the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and his congressional delegation. “This is incredibly bad.”
CISA’s election-security program had helped identify not only cyberattacks but also risks to key infrastructure like voter databases. The program shared information between election officials and federal agencies to prevent attacks.
In Arizona, the program helped Mr. Fontes and other officials learn on election night in November that 15 bomb threats they had received were a hoax originating in Russia, a realization that allowed voting to go largely uninterrupted in the battleground state. …”
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“… In a reflection of the administration’s effort to bring cybersecurity more within the government, CISA canceled contracts in March that affected more than a hundred cybersecurity experts with a range of specialties. Some, for example, led “Red Teams”that hunted for vulnerabilities that needed to be sealed off to intruders, a practice known as penetration testing. And there are reports of more looming cuts at the agency, though the timing remains unclear, and the agency declined to comment.
… Mr. Waltz is betting that by going on offense, he can deter attacks on the United States. Yet history suggests that the strategies that worked in the nuclear arena often do not translate smoothly to cyber operations. Over the past 15 years American cyberwarriors have not only crippled Iran’s nuclear program but also gotten inside Russian power plants and North Korea’s missile program. But the effects have proved fleeting. Russian, Iranian and North Korean cyberattacks on the United States have grown more sophisticated, and so has North Korea’s missile arsenal. …”
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States scramble after Trump's 'devastating' cuts to humanities grants
As part of his effort to shrink government, Trump cut humanities grants that have been used to record and share history for a half century
States scramble after Trump's 'devastating' cuts to humanities grants
As part of his effort to shrink government, Trump cut humanities grants that have been used to record and share history for a half century
www.usatoday.com
“… After the federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City in 1995, a grant helped preserve stories of survivors. A similar grant supported the recording of oral histories from survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Veterans centers, public schools and rural communities have also received some of the $42 million handed out by the state-run Oklahoma Humanities over the last 50 years.
That ended this week with a grant termination letter from the Trump administration.
"Our funding is quietly sustaining the cultural infrastructure and educational infrastructure of our state," executive director Caroline Lowery told USA TODAY. "I think our absence will be felt once it's too late."
More than a thousand National Endowment for the Humanities grants were terminated this week by the administration, including grants provided to every state humanities council for decades. …”
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“… Among the terminated grants was the National History Day history competition that serves more than 500,000 students a year and is just weeks away from holding its national competition.States scramble after Trump's 'devastating' cuts to humanities grants
As part of his effort to shrink government, Trump cut humanities grants that have been used to record and share history for a half century
States scramble after Trump's 'devastating' cuts to humanities grants
As part of his effort to shrink government, Trump cut humanities grants that have been used to record and share history for a half century
“… After the federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City in 1995, a grant helped preserve stories of survivors. A similar grant supported the recording of oral histories from survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Veterans centers, public schools and rural communities have also received some of the $42 million handed out by the state-run Oklahoma Humanities over the last 50 years.
That ended this week with a grant termination letter from the Trump administration.
"Our funding is quietly sustaining the cultural infrastructure and educational infrastructure of our state," executive director Caroline Lowery told USA TODAY. "I think our absence will be felt once it's too late."
More than a thousand National Endowment for the Humanities grants were terminated this week by the administration, including grants provided to every state humanities council for decades. …”
… Earlier this week 56 state and jurisdiction humanities councils across the country received a letter that their NEH grants were being terminated because the NEH is "repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of President Trump's agenda." Nearly half of the NEH's budget goes directly to humanities councils in every U.S. state and jurisdiction.
Lowery said she's struggling with how abruptly the grant was terminated. Without the money, she and many others will be out of a job, and the work they've done to preserve the state's history and culture for future generations will end.
"We are not a big, flashy, abstract D.C. agency. We are in Oklahoma. I'm from Oklahoma. I've lived here my whole life. This is my life's work. We're just a quiet agency working hard to make Oklahoma a better place, and have devoted our lives to this," she said. "Our small office serves hundreds of thousands of people, in all 77 counties, in all five congressional districts."
Oklahoma Humanities had to match the federal money with private investment before it could be spent. This year they received just under $1 million from the federal government.
"I don't just get a blank check from the federal government. I am from an incredibly red, incredibly fiscally conservative state, and these are my taxpayer dollars too. This investment has been broadly supported by Oklahoma lawmakers and Oklahoma citizens for over 50 years, we turn a not even a rounding error in the federal budget into millions of dollars for the state," Lowery said. …”
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“… The agency is mandated by Congress to operate across the country to make sure that every community has access to the humanities, the study of human experiences over time, and "ensure that community treasures of all kinds are preserved and help these communities preserve their heritage."
… Kidd said the Alliance is still trying to get a scope of the terminations.
"Our understanding is that it is well over 1,000 grants. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to which ones were cut. It is just a broad swath of everything, including a number of grants for projects that have been incredibly impactful for veterans," he said.
… "Humanities funding tends to be under the radar a lot because these are relatively tiny amounts of funding, but they go such a long way. They fund a computer, they fund an airplane ticket, they fund interviews with people," she said.
"It's a lot of elbow grease, and it goes such a long way. It's community projects. It's your local library. It's the exhibits that your local museum prepares for your kids. It's library archives so that all Americans have access to digital resources and historical information."
… The endowment also supports museums, libraries, preservation, history and media projects through a competitive application process. …”
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‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians
Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings scheme
‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians
Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings scheme
After taking office, Trump created “… a “White House faith office”, which will be led by Paula White, a millionaire televangelist known to speak in tongues who called the Black Lives Matter movement the “Antichrist” and once encouraged people to buy “resurrection seeds” for $1,114.
… In March, she was criticized over an alleged cash-for-blessings scandal, while other rightwing Christians are unhappy with her new government role, with one describing White as “100% a false teacher”.
White will be “senior adviser” of Trump’s faith office, which Trump announced along with an executive order which created a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias”.
…Trump, whose commitment to true freedom of religion has repeatedly been questioned, in January rescinded guidance that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection from carrying out immigration enforcement in churches – more than two dozen Christian groups are suing the government over the policy – but that apparent lack of sympathy appears to match White’s views. During Trump’s first term, White, then the president’s spiritual adviser, raised eyebrows when she said Jesus would have been “sinful” and not “our Messiah” if he had broken immigration law.
“I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like: ‘Well, Jesus was a refugee,’” White told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“And yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years. But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.” …”
superrific
Legend of ZZL
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Both can be true. It could be considered classy among classless people.
Personally it sounds to me like someone buying their cut-rate cosmetic surgeons' excuses.
Mulberry Heel
Iconic Member
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Even the "religious" people Trump appoints are nothing but grifters and charlatans. This woman has a long history of being nothing more than a con artist for gullible religious right rubes. I'm sure she will fit right in with the rest of this administration.‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians
Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings scheme
‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians
Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings schemewww.theguardian.com
After taking office, Trump created “… a “White House faith office”, which will be led by Paula White, a millionaire televangelist known to speak in tongues who called the Black Lives Matter movement the “Antichrist” and once encouraged people to buy “resurrection seeds” for $1,114.
… In March, she was criticized over an alleged cash-for-blessings scandal, while other rightwing Christians are unhappy with her new government role, with one describing White as “100% a false teacher”.
White will be “senior adviser” of Trump’s faith office, which Trump announced along with an executive order which created a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias”.
…Trump, whose commitment to true freedom of religion has repeatedly been questioned, in January rescinded guidance that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection from carrying out immigration enforcement in churches – more than two dozen Christian groups are suing the government over the policy – but that apparent lack of sympathy appears to match White’s views. During Trump’s first term, White, then the president’s spiritual adviser, raised eyebrows when she said Jesus would have been “sinful” and not “our Messiah” if he had broken immigration law.
“I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like: ‘Well, Jesus was a refugee,’” White told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“And yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years. But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.” …”