The latest hackings, stabbings, and loppings of the waste, fraud, and abuse that plague the sprawling federal bureaucracy.
State CDC terminates employees after losing federal funding
Via WGME (emphasis added):
Dozens of Mainers will lose their jobs Friday as the dramatic downsizing of the country's public health system continues.
Friday's target is the Maine CDC.
A spokesperson for DHHS says Monday, the federal government terminated $91 million in funding that was designated for behavioral health work in Maine.
The funding angle is an underreported factor in the deathgrip that federal bureaucracy has on health policy, even in a federalist system.
Theoretically, the federal public health agencies, rather than exercising direct control, give states ideas that then become policy. “We normally give guidance and then states take that guidance and turn it into policy,” one CDC official quipped in 2020.
The reality is that state and local governments depend heavily on federal funding, and so they understand that if they don’t toe the line, there’s always the stick.
Related: Brand-New NIH Union vs. Trump: The Funding Freeze Showdown
HHS slashes $12 billion in COVID ‘aid’ to states
The funding cuts are felt across states, with a total of $12 billion on COVID funding alone cut.
Why these states were still receiving pandemic “aid” years after the Brandon entity declared the pandemic over is a question some bureaucrats ought to be made to answer under oath in front of Congress now that Republicans control it.
Where are the subpoenas of Fauci et al.? He has no Fifth Amendment to hide behind anymore after the Biden pardon.
Related: 19 State Attorneys General Signal Intent to Prosecute Fauci
Via Reuters (emphasis added):
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services canceled around $12 billion in federal grants to states that were allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal department and state officials said on Wednesday.
The grants were being used to track, prevent and control infectious diseases, including measles and bird flu, as well as track mental health services and fund addiction treatment, said lawmakers and state governors, who sharply criticized the move…
The funds were largely used for COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and other responses to the pandemic, HHS said.
10,000 HHS pink slips in the pipeline
One recalls when Elon showed 80% of Twitter employees the door — by some estimates, 90% — after his acquisition of the company and all of the prophecies of doom that followed.
Via Forbes emphasis added):
Just six months after closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, Musk told the BBC he culled the company’s headcount to 1,500, down about 80% from 7,500 employees as of the end of 2021, as noted in the company’s last annual report as a public company.
It turns out, X is doing just fine. Why shouldn’t the same modus operandi apply to bloated federal bureaucracy?
Via NBC News (emphasis added):
The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday it plans to cut 10,000 full-time jobs across several agencies, as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to restructure many parts of the federal government.
The cuts, part of the White House’s “reduction in force” plan, were expected to effectively shutter or downsize multiple departments at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies, potentially jeopardizing public health efforts…
“We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for Healthy America or AHA,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.
