The rapid, deep, and sweeping cuts to the federal workforce being carried out by the Trump Administration are hard to keep up with, and it’s even harder to understand their impacts on all of our lives and our environment.
Word of funding and job cuts are slow to be made public.
Here are two things I’ve heard in the past 12 hours.
1) A longstanding program in the State Judiciary to educate middle-and-high school students about the history, meaning, and importance of the U.S. Constitution and their constitutional rights has been unfunded. The curriculum used dates back to the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and thousands of Hawaii students have benefited over the years. Although Donald Trump took an oath to uphold the constitution, his administration is pulling the plug on this and other programs that educate students and the general public about that same constitution.
2) At least a dozen biologists working to protect Hawaii’s endangered species and habitats were fired this week from their jobs with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The number is likely higher, as the Fish and Wildlife Service works to protect endangered species throughout the Pacific area. So although Hawaii is considered the endangered species capitol of the world due to its high number of endangered and threatened species relative to the small land area, the Trump Administration and Elon Musk have now eliminated the programs and staff working in related programs. These aren’t federal bureaucrats sitting behind desks somewhere. These are biologists working in the field.
These programs were cut and jobs eliminated without prior review, opportunity for comment, or consideration of the impacts they will have.
These are just two out of what must be hundreds of programs being unfunded in Hawaii and people losing their jobs across the state.
We need to be telling their stories.
Please, when you hear of other cuts, please leave a comment here.
You can also contact me via encrypted Proton mail, ilind600@proton.me.
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Creating chaos is the Trump/ Musk intention. Neither care about America or its people! Unconscionable!
We have spent beyond our means in the United States for so long it seems the “norm”. It’s not. We now have $36 trillion in debt – the interest cost on our National Debt has been larger than our expenditure for Medicare – think about that.
Presidents in the past have done glancing blows at best to reduce spending. President Trump has finally taken the bull by the horns. The cost of our federal workforces is out of control and must be reeled back in. It’s going to be painful, but the alternative is catastrophic.
And stopping to chat about the action is akin to watching cancer grow as you talk about what to do. It’s time for surgery immediately and it’s obviou. Jack James
The problem is that a the debt grew extraordinarily during Trump’s first term.
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
And these current cuts are being made without any semblance of thought or basic cost/benefit analysis.
To use your cancer analogy, this is being worried about a growing cancer, and responding by firing the surgeon because he was costing too much, then amputating random limbs in order to be doing “something.”
The same can be said of our exorbitant federal and state taxes that are taken out of our paychecks each pay period. We have gotten so used to paying so much in taxes and in Hawaii, so MANY types of taxes, that we see it as normal.
People also may forget that this guy at the helm was once a developer. He does not look at a piece of land and see it in the present, he sees what it could be in the future.
He looks at the U.S.A. in the same way. He sees how much better things could be for us all in the future.
Your “surgeon” is indescriminately cutting away healthy tissue along with the cancer. There is no intelligence in the cutting, it is capricious and seemingly driven by ideology more than any fiscal consideration. Where is a measured and evaluated process?
I have been there as a corporation went though serious cost cutting, doing so in a careful process and actually coming out better in the end. This is just stupid, and will utimately result in great damage, making America far worse in the process.
The problem is it’s not the cancer that is being cut, it’s the immune system. The people and programs that I see being cut are some of the hardest workers, brightest minds, and impactful experiences that help to make our country better. I have yet to see a person who slacks off in their government position be cut. I have yet to see a program that does not improve community quality of life get cut. Those things exist, and yet they seem more stable – like the excess amount of tax money the government will be losing by the proposed billion-dollar business tax cuts. They are offsetting wealth savings by business owners by sacrificing important jobs and programs that serve the everyday citizen.
These cuts are only for the purpose of making up the $4 trillion needed to renew the billionaires tax cut. Nothing else.
Our nation has gone so far down the wrong path, it’s time for a disruptor to right the ship. Usually, the disruptor is hated in the present, but in the future, is lauded for having foresight, guts and the ability to succeed.
I’ll bet there’s a federal government program in Florida to protect the endangered whatsitsname in the hoosawhatsee river. And another federal program in Massachusetts to re-pave the roads and improve the signage along the path of Paul Revere’s midnight ride. AND WE THE PEOPLE OF HAWAII ARE PAYING FOR THOSE PROGRAMS THROUGH OUR FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. Likewise, the people of Florida and Massachusetts are paying for us in Hawaii to do similar things. And a portion of everyone’s taxes are going into the paychecks of the bureaucrats in Washington who figure out who gets how much money to do those things, and to write the regulations governing how they must be done. That’s crazy! Let’s reduce the size and cost of the federal government, allow the people of Hawaii, Florida, and Massachusetts keep our money in our own places and make us decide for ourselves what projects are important, how much we’re willing to pay for them, decide what regulations we want to protect how we do them, and which projects to abandon because they are not sufficiently important to us. “Free money” from Washington is very expensive.
Dang, Brilliant Ken!!!
The cutting is not being done with any semblance of intelligence, it is capricious and detructive. Well there is some logic at play here… Note that federal agencies that have offended Musk or Trump in the past have suffered the most.
I would also point out that budget considerations in deciding where to cut seems to be second to MAGA hate… The IRS had thousands of employees terminated despite the well known fact that a properly funded and staffed IRS brings in more tax revenue through better compliance with tax law.
These cuts seem to have little to do with the budget and more to do with ideology. And if we do see extended tax cuts for corporations and the weathy (as has been promised) we know with utter certainty that the budget and deficit have very little to do with the cuts.
A nice picture but just propaganda ans lies. Congress, you know representatives of the American people do this down to even the smallest line in the budget that includes these biologists. And how that money is spent is also under review of Congress. Then you have what’s a state problem. Take weather if you follow local news you might notice our weather comes from out of state. Hurricanes as we have seen come from someplace else and impact several states. That weather in turn uses satelites to make forecasts. So every state should have a space program, every local news channel its own weather service. Hen as we have seen, epidemics cross state linesLikewise the environment. Have you noticed it covers more than one state or even country. There are 2.3 million federal employees with a payroll of $248 billion they administer 7 trillion dollars. Call that adminifstrative costs. So the administrative costs are 3.5 percent. Compare that with say private insurance where admistrative costs typically are 12-15 percent.
Some states have chosen not to use “We the People” program as part of their official civic education curriculum due to concerns about ideological bias or preference for alternative civic education programs.
The other argument is that these programs should be State funded.
“Trump took an oath to uphold the constitution…” He lied. No surprise there!
I am devasted hearing that even the programs at UH are impacted. How can we expect people to work without pay?
Will share if I hear more. Angry!
Aloha Ken, Should we be 50 individual Countries versus 50 States?
The local HUD office was cut by 50%; from 30 staff down to 15.