11 Comments

Trump and Musk claim that they want to eliminate waste. This is pure gaslighting on their part. How many auditors have they brought in to examine budgets and spending at the agencies they're attacking? NONE! They HAVE brought in an army of diaper-dandy coders to harvest as much private information as possible on US citizens which (f)Elon Inc. can use to enrich themselves and destroy our democracy.

Expand full comment

We were warned. They are following Project 2025 to the letter. I am still angry at all the registered democrats who decided to sit the election out and NOT vote. Shame on you!

Expand full comment

My take is that MAGA lost their shit about businesses possibly having to shutdown during one if the worst pandemics in Earths history, but are perfectly fine with businesses having to shutdown because of their Orange Jesus little tantrum. Idiots!

Expand full comment

Cleveland Clinic is reportedly to be the largest employer by headcount here in our state. If you look at the Ohio Major Employers report at https://development.ohio.gov/about-us/research/major-employers you see our state's workforce being focused heavily in healthcare and education. For a laboratory of autocracy like Ohio we sure are self-destructive.

Expand full comment

I used to live in Ohio and it was a decent place. But it has turned into a "sh..t hole" state (to use Trump's words) and elects an endless stream of corrupt off-the-rails Republicans that send the state down the toilet. I hope Ohio finds its way out of the wilderness.

Expand full comment

My local member of the Ohio House is Sarah Fowler Arthur. She’s a good example of notoriously off the rails. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be another open state position for her to jump to when she term-limits at the end of this term.

Expand full comment

Welcome to 2025 Project ! "I don't know anything about it." said Trump on his campaign trail.

Expand full comment

Basically, the Trump/Musk administration and Project 2025, have declared war on the United States of America and its middle class. They are destroying pretty much everything so that all of us will become modern-day serfs.

Expand full comment

There needs to be a follow up. Yes this is all true. But get more granular as to the fungible nature of money. Flowing and how many jobs and then families will be out of funding and jobs… and then the burden on the states to raise taxes to preserve the hospital systems.. the analysis is essential and the explanation essential, but to reach working people and people on survival mode it has to be translated into real impact… which communities or towns will collapse because taken as a whole when snowballed with Medicaid funds and Medicare advantage siphoning.. ($4000 -$8000) per patient per year gone to the insurance companies and taken from the hospital systems… it is two times the states budget… there is no way the state can raise taxes enough… if you wait to calculate these things State session will be over and they cannot consider the funding that will be needed in time to save the systems. The plutocrats are counting on that blind side. Preliminary minimum asks are amendments to any cuts by delaying until a financial impact statement can be prepared on each cut. Once this is done, the news stations need the report at the same time the state reps get it… you have about a week I think before it’s too late at the fed level to delay the cuts… musk wants to tank the dollar and this is how he will do it by forcing a shutdown, but the GOP congressmen are being lied to about the actual numbers of dollar impacts and multiplier effects,,,

Expand full comment

Some people at my university workplace, which is heavily NIH funded, said: maybe if we get rid of the DEI stuff we teach, they’ll stop the NIH indirect cost funding cuts. I replied: no, they won’t. Because it’s not just the DEI stuff they want to get rid of. It’s our fundamental purpose; to teach people how to be critical thinkers. That’s what they don’t want, because then the people will question them.

Expand full comment

This was an interesting story about NIH funding. I tried using the research tracker and when I “widened the lens” further, I was surprised to see that the funding also reaches across the entire globe!

Expand full comment