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Read about hat yesterday - On my reading list …New book on Biden by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson reports a ‘cover-up’ about his decline
The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson decided to co-author a book about what had led the Democratic party to defeat, with a focus on former President Joe Biden.
The deeply sourced reporters found what they call a “cover-up” of the former president’s “serious decline.”
The resulting book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is coming out on May 20.
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The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? | George Monbiot
So much of our intelligence and military systems are shared or reliant on the US – if it becomes the enemy, it is already inside the gates, says Guardian columnist George Monbiotwww.theguardian.com
Elon Musk seemed to run a good portion of yesterday’s public cabinet meeting/press event, though he didn’t have a physical seat at the table:
I trust Tapper to be objective. Should be an interesting read.Read about hat yesterday - On my reading list …
Sorry, but just have to post this. Enjoy!I think that's a misprint. It should have been teched support.
“… And it wasn’t just PEPFAR, of course. A fact sheet sent along by groups trying to undo the cuts noted that one of the contracts terminated was for “a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that operates the only source of water for 250,000 people in camps for displaced people located in the center of current fighting.”A Midnight Global Health Massacre
Life-saving programs, including George W. Bush’s cherished global AIDS initiative, were hit in the latest, harshest round of cuts.
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A Midnight Global Health Massacre
Life-saving programs, including George W. Bush’s cherished global AIDS initiative, were hit in the latest, harshest round of cuts.www.thebulwark.com
“On Wednesday, reports began dribbling out that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had signed off oneliminating 92 percent of USAID grants, around 4,100 of them, with a savings of $60 billion. On Thursday morning, foreign aid officials woke up to see the details of those cuts. The reaction was justified shock.
Programs that the administration had suggested it believed were worth continuing were now being terminated.
That includes efforts to combat the AIDS epidemic—such as George W. Bush’s famed PEPFAR program—that have been a source of bipartisan pride for decades.
One government notice, passed along to The Bulwark, showed that USAID was terminating its contract for the joint U.N. AIDS program, which is the primary mechanism for monitoring the disease globally. An official who works on the program estimated that Rubio had eliminated half of its funding.
That was just a small portion of the carnage.
Two sources familiar with the matter say USAID support for South Africa’s PEPFAR programs were also terminated overnight. The Trump administration had already moved to cut off all aid to the country, citing disagreement with social policies there.
But this isn’t about social policies. Bhekisisa, a global health news outlet, reported that PEPFAR-funded organizations “woke up to letters that were sent overnight telling them their grants have been ended—permanently.”
… The full extent of the PEPFAR cuts is not entirely clear as of now, though one foreign official told The Bulwark that in addition to any cuts, some USAID employees who work on the program were put on administrative leave.
Even if the USAID spigot was fully cut off, there are other sources of funds into the program, including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense. …”
IMMIGRATION
I know a guy with a solution…“… And it wasn’t just PEPFAR, of course. A fact sheet sent along by groups trying to undo the cuts noted that one of the contracts terminated was for “a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that operates the only source of water for 250,000 people in camps for displaced people located in the center of current fighting.”
Adding to the shock was how the cuts transpired. USAID officials were operating under the impression that they remained in the 90-day review period, during which time all foreign aid contracts were to be scrutinized by Trump leadership. The administration is of course not 90 days old.
But Rubio and Peter Marocco, the acting deputy administrator of USAID, went ahead anyway.1 It wasn’t lost on those inside the agency that news of the terminations was leaked to the Free Beacon, the conservative outlet that has become a clearinghouse for critical reporting on USAID functions. …”