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23d ago
Yes, of course all those departments award grants that are used for DEI, encouraging immigration, or other progressive political purposes.
I'm missing something - I thought we were having a conversation based on your comment:
Here's a good theory for why this is happening. It's all about immigration.
Are they throwing out the Congressionally-appropriated babies with the DEI-HR Lady-Complex bathwater, as the memo states, or is it "all about immigration," as you say is a good theory? If the latter, why did they need to pause grants from all the departments I listed? The Trump administration's stance on immigration is far from "strategically ambiguous."
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23d ago
And they're getting grants from the USDA? And the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Transportation, and VA, plus the FCC, Library of Congress, NASA, and Social Security Administration? Some of the programs listed, I could believe, but why would it be necessary to pause all of them?
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23d ago
Can you copy and paste or screenshot the thread? Twitter is often unreadable if you don't have an account and/or use any effective browser privacy tools/settings.
I'm already satisfied by evidence of NGOs engaging in "open borders with extra steps" jiggery pokery, but pausing all federal grants because of immigration NGOs brings us back to:
This seems very... crude. The question is if it's purposefully crude, if there's some structural reason it can't be better implemented, or if the person in charge is incompetent.
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23d ago
Can you refer us to a specific part of the 922 page pdf that outlines the plan, and/or this step in the plan?
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23d ago
Even if you were right, I would take drug resistant tuberculosis if it meant funding the government with tariffs instead of income taxes. You underestimate what I am willing to accept in order to end the unacceptable.
Why do you have so great a desire for the government to be funded by tariffs, instead of income taxes?
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23d ago
"Research", and other forms of paper pushing is at the lowest risk of me caring about it getting cut, unless it gets in the way of people doing productive work (like longer waiting times for construction permits, or something? I dunno).
Here's 1,877 active and/or recruiting (hopefully...) clinical trials targeted at veterans' health problems. Do you consider this "paper pushing?" (Yes, many are the kinds of "community health" interventions that are easy to be cynical about, but there are also many potentially important RCTs and even basic science like "DNA Methylation Markers in Veterans Exposed to Open Burn Pits," just on the first page.)
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23d ago
What reason is there to believe that this is intended to be part of a plan to balance the budget? That's not the stated purpose, nor did Trump seem to care about deficits during his first term.
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24d ago
There are already strains resistant to individual antibiotics, but not lesser-used antibiotics or antibiotic cocktails (I'm unsure of the details) and not treating these infections allows the strains to spread. Also, incomplete treatment of bacterial infections (e.g., if your supply is suddenly cutoff) is one way antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria evolve.
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24d ago
Can you show me where in the Constitution it says that the President must spend the money Congress allocates? He certainly can't allocate more, but simply stopping payments until they decide if they like who gets them seems perfectly reasonable.
It's called "impoundment," others have already thought of this "one weird trick Congress hates," and there's both statutory and caselaw: https://adamunikowsky.substack.com/p/simulating-doge
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24d ago
"or" - what measurable outcomes of any kind would you accept as "negative ramifications," when the effects of the pause are analyzed?
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24d ago
Anecdotally, medical professionals at the VA are worried about their work being impacted, but I don't know what VA programs are funded by discreet grants. (Social services and research? I know a lot of neurological and psychological research is done through or in association with the VA, and I wouldn't be surprised if they provide a lot of social services that have a separate funding scheme.)
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24d ago
Phase out the supply chains in an orderly fashion. Right now, there are aid workers and paid-for drugs in foreign countries, but the aid workers are forbidden from distributing the drugs.
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24d ago
If these charities are so effective that $100 can save 1 life or whatever, than why hasn't someone like Bill Gates simply funded the entire project?
It's $3,000+ to prevent a statistical death from malaria, last I checked, and probably not as simple as $30B saving 10 million statistical lives.
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24d ago
Do you want drug resistant tuberculosis? Because that's how you get drug resistant tuberculosis.
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24d ago
Status quo bias isn't lost on me, but I think the stakes are too high for "slash everything and then closely reevaluate which good stuff we should be spending cash on." (Ideally, essential programs wouldn't be dependent on federal grants, but, well, relevant xkcd.)
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24d ago
There is no evidence for negative ramifications of the pause.
The pause has just begun. What measurable outcomes or evidence of decreased institutional efficacy would you accept as "negative ramifications," when the effects of the pause are analyzed?
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24d ago
Reuters:
Trump orders sweeping freeze for federal grants and loans
Trump order set to halt supply of HIV, malaria drugs to poor countries, sources say
Apparently based on this memo (pdf).
This seems very... crude. The question is if it's purposefully crude, if there's some structural reason it can't be better implemented, or if the person in charge is incompetent.
Also, impoundment? We'll see?
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27d ago
Nathan Lewis points out that the US has had very wide roads by international standards since before the invention of the car, and therefore deeper and narrower lots for most of the late C19/early C20.
That link goes to a page listing 120 articles, if I counted correctly, many with titles related to street width. Two which article are you referring?
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28d ago
I recently binge re-watched Mad Men. Two non-spoiler thoughts:
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For those who haven't seen it, yes, it really is as good as people say. AMC chose it as their first original series with the brand strategy of starting with a show that would be widely recognized for its quality, even if it didn't immediately have widespread appeal. I think it's telling that the tvtropes page for anachronisms has only inconsequential examples, with many of them being arcane/minute details, things that might get fudged in contemporaneously-set fiction, or both. (E.G., one of the biggest mistakes is a character giving incorrect transit instructions: "In "Love Among the Ruins", set in 1963, Don mentions taking the New York Central and Broadway Limited from Ossining to Penn Station. At the time, Broadway Limited was run by Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR did not merge with New York Central until 1968). A commuter would not make such a mistake. Additionally, the Broadway Limited was a private all-room reserved train to Chicago, and did not allow coach passengers for intermediate stops." Close enough!)
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The later seasons all start with a conspicuous change in supporting characters' personal styling and set decor, but a more jarring indication of the pace of cultural change and its resulting dissonance in the second half of the 1960s are the songs chosen to play over the each episode's end credits.
Not that this was an abnormally low quality political comment, but can you actually give examples of people who meet all criteria of:
"freaking out over this"
are in a position to reform the drug approval process
"decided [not] to so much as lift a finger against the FDA"
If so, it would be an abnormally high quality political comment.
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