Trump Administration Health Funding Cuts: 23 states sue Trump administration over $11 billion health funding cut– timesofindia.indiatimes.com Source Link Excerpt:
A coalition of attorneys general from 23 states has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke $11 billion in federal health funding, arguing that the move is illegal and endangers public health across the country.
The lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in Rhode Island.
According to the news agency AP, the move aims to block the administration from pulling back funds that were originally allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic for testing, vaccination, mental health services and addiction treatment.
The states involved in the lawsuit include New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia.
“Slashing this funding now will reverse our progress on the opioid crisis, throw our mental health systems into chaos, and leave hospitals struggling to care for patients,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Tuesday.
As per the news agency Reuters, the US department of health and human services (HHS) defended the cuts, stating that “the Covid-19 pandemic is over” and that taxpayer dollars should no longer be spent on what the agency described as a “non-existent pandemic”.
The funding in question was being used by states not only for pandemic-related efforts but also for tracking other infectious diseases such as measles and bird flu, as well as supporting mental health services and addiction treatment programs, reported Reuters.
Local and state health departments have warned that the sudden withdrawal of funds will lead to massive job losses, with some infectious disease teams expected to lose up to 90% of their staff.
Democrats Sue Trump for Mandating Proof of Citizenship to Vote in Federal Elections– slaynews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Top Democrats have filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating that voters must provide proof of citizenship to cast ballots in federal elections.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order will “impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote.”
Trump signed the executive order last week seeking to overhaul the nation’s elections.
However, the order now faces two legal challenges, one of them by top Democrats.
The first lawsuit was filed on Monday afternoon by two leftist groups – the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
Shortly after, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders filed a complaint of their own.
Both lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ask the court to block Trump’s order and declare it illegal.
ICE admits ‘administrative error’ in deporting Maryland man– www.bostonherald.com Source Link Excerpt:
President Donald Trump ‘s administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison but is arguing against returning him to federal custody in the United States because of alleged gang ties.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials admitted in a court filing on Monday night to an “administrative error” in deporting the 29-year-old man, generating immediate uproar from immigration advocates.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was arrested on March 12 after completing a shift as a sheet metal worker apprentice at a construction site in Baltimore, according to a complaint filed in federal court by his lawyers.
Abrego Garcia was then sent to a notorious prison in his home country, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside.
He was placed at CECOT despite an immigration judge’s ruling in 2019 that he not be deported to El Salvador because he had established it was “more likely than not that he would be persecuted by gangs,” according to his lawyer’s complaint.
Abrego Garcia “left El Salvador when he was around sixteen years old, fleeing gang violence,” according to the complaint. “Beginning around 2006, gang members had stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents to succumb to their increasing demands for extortion.”
DOGE Moves to Gut CDC Work on Gun Injuries, Sexual Assault, Opioid Overdose Data, and More – Mother Jones– www.motherjones.com Source Link Excerpt:
On Tuesday, thousands of staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta received early morning emails asking them to resign. The centers affected included those working on reproductive health, chronic disease, occupational safety, birth defects, smoking, tuberculosis, asthma and air quality, accidental and intentional injury, and prevention of violence and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
“It’s a blood bath this morning,” one CDC employee messaged me. Several others told me that their entire departments had received the letters. It wasn’t immediately clear whether everyone who had received the notices would ultimately be laid off.
“I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,” the letters stated. “After you receive this notice, you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access beginning Tuesday, April 1, unless directed otherwise by your leadership.” This action follows the announcement last week, by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to cut 10,000 employees from the agency. “This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves,” Kennedy said in a statement. “That’s the entire American public because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.”
Yet the staffers I talked to weren’t convinced that the cuts would improve public health or efficiency—on the contrary, they said they worried that government efforts to improve the lives of Americans would be undermined.
Federal Judge Issues TRO Pausing CDPAP Transition – Holland & Knight Source Link Excerpt:
Judge Frederic Block of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on March 31, 2025, stalling the consolidation of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), which was intended to be completed by April 1, 2025. Oral arguments will be heard on April 4, 2025.
The TRO was issued in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of six individuals and two independent living centers claiming, among other things, that the New York State Department of Health’s (DOH) mandated transition to a single fiscal intermediary (FI), Public Partnerships LLC (PPL), has been plagued with technical challenges that have jeopardized their access to home health services and that DOH’s failure to ensure their continued access to CDPAP services without notice and opportunity for a fair hearing to challenge the proposed termination or suspension was a violation of their due process rights under the Medicaid law.
The TRO is clear that there is to be no impact on the transitions that have been completed to date, meaning customers and caregivers who have already registered with PPL will be serviced by PPL. However, the TRO prohibits DOH from disallowing the nearly 600 FIs from providing services to those who have yet to register with PPL until a hearing is held to determine whether DOH should be permanently enjoined from enforcing the overhaul.
Arkansas Senate Committee Passes Bill to Teach Kids About Fetal Development– www.lifenews.com Source Link Excerpt:
On Monday the Senate Education Committee passed a good bill to help educate public school students about unborn children.
S.B. 450 by Sen. Breanne Davis (R — Russellville) and Rep. Kendra Moore (R — Lincoln) makes it possible for public school students to see a recording of a high-definition ultrasound video as part of human fetal growth and development education courses.
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The bill also contains provisions letting students learn important facts about how unborn children develop in the womb.
Ultrasound images and similar educational resources can help show students that unborn children are human beings.
Very few medical advancements have done more to change hearts and minds on abortion than ultrasound technology. In fact, research has shown that some women are less likely to have an abortion if they see an ultrasound image of their unborn child.
S.B. 450 is a good bill, and it now goes to the entire Arkansas Senate for consideration.
Detroit-Area Clerk Blows Whistle On ‘Years’ Of Ballot Trafficking– thefederalist.com Source Link Excerpt:
Voter fraud has been taking place in the Detroit-area suburb of Hamtramck “for years,” potentially affecting “hundreds of ballots,” the city clerk told The Federalist. She wrote Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel weeks ago imploring action, but heard “nothing” in response.
“That’s the only thing I can do, since there’s nobody else that helps me put a stop to them breaking the law,” Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj told The Federalist. “It’s been ongoing for years, and nobody does anything about it.”
Meanwhile, Nessel was pictured meeting with Hamtramck Councilman Mohammed Hassan — who is accused of election fraud — at an event in Detroit on March 29, according to Facebook. The two discussed “local security issues,” according to an account of the event posted online.
The Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, once a Polish enclave, is now the only Muslim-majority city in America. The area elected an “all-Muslim government” in 2021. The city’s population is just more than 27,000, so Faraj said only a few thousand voters turn out for city elections. The clerk said she is “aware” of her surroundings, so she knows “exactly what’s going on in the community.”
Trump’s Approval Rating Holds Steady After Democrats’ ‘Signal-Gate’ Campaign– slaynews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Despite the best efforts of the Democrats and their corporate media allies to land a glove on President Donald Trump, their “Signal-gate” campaign has failed to put a dent in his popularity.
A new poll from CBS News found Trump’s approval rating holding strong at 50%.
The poll was taken after the anti-Trump “news” outlet The Atlantic published its story about the administration’s leaked Signal chats.
Notably, most Americans told CBS that they do believe the Signal breach is “serious.”
However, it hasn’t impacted Trump’s popularity.
His overall job rating is split down the middle at 50-50.
Military Analysis: Europe’s Firepower is Far Behind U.S., Russia, and China | The Gateway Pundit– www.thegatewaypundit.com Source Link Excerpt:
After eighty years of relying on the U.S. for defense, the EU’s combined military power remains dwarfed by the U.S., Russia, and China.
Recent media reports have claimed that Europe is bolstering its defenses to counter Russia, increasingly independent of U.S. assistance.
These headlines, while attention-grabbing, often gloss over a critical clarification: Europe is not a unified political entity. It is a continent—a geographic space—lacking its own institutions or a standing army.
When such claims surface, they could plausibly refer to three distinct entities: NATO, the US-led transatlantic alliance with its collective defense framework; the European Union (EU), a political and economic union with limited military integration; or a broader notion of “greater Europe,” encompassing all nations on the continent, including non-EU and non-NATO countries like Russia itself.
For this article, I assume these claims point to the EU’s militarization efforts. And for the analysis, I am employing this PMEI framework—Political, Military, Economic, and Infrastructure—widely used in strategic and national security contexts, to provide a comprehensive lens to assess the EU’s complex systems, identifying strengths, vulnerabilities, and interdependencies across these critical domains.
Elon Musk and DOGE Discover Biden Gave 2.1 Million Social Security Numbers to Foreigners– lidblog.com Source Link Excerpt:
Elon Musk and DOGE have revealed that Joe Biden gave Social Security numbers to 2.1 million illegals in 2024 alone.
This essentially made these illegal aliens quasi legal because they were able to use those official numbers to get jobs, loans, and any other manner of legal services to which they were not eligible.
Speaking at a conference alongside his longtime friend Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners, Musk said DOGE uncovered some eye-opening numbers regarding social security in 2024.
“We started at the top of the system. Mapping the whole system of social security to understand where all the fraud was. There’s a lot of great people there that showed us a lot of waste, so that came with a big list of stuff. But this is what jumped out at us,” Gracias said as he pointed to the chart. “In 2021, you see 270,000 people; goes all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are non-citizens that are getting social security numbers.”
Gracias clarified that he had no political motivations for revealing those numbers, noting that his parents and siblings were born in Spain while touting himself a supporter of legal immigration. He also praised the employees of the social security administration who “took risks” to show them what has been allegedly happening.
France Cracked Down on Far-Right Corruption—And Team Trump Is Triggered – Mother Jones– www.motherjones.com Source Link Excerpt:
Far-right French politician Marine Le Pen has not proven to be as lucky as Donald Trump was in skirting consequences of breaking the law.Alexis Sciard/IP3/ZUMA
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After a French court found far-right leader and former presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement on Monday—a conviction that will bar her from holding political office for five years—some of President Donald Trump’s closest allies are boosting baseless conspiracy theories alleging that Le Pen’s conviction is part of a global scheme to keep right-wing populists from holding office.
Le Pen is reportedly accused of wrongfully diverting $5 million in funds earmarked for the European Parliament to staffers of her nationalist, xenophobic party, the National Rally, over a 12-year period. The verdict makes her ineligible to run in the country’s next presidential election in 2027—and comes after she was polling at 37 percent, more than 10 points ahead of her closest challenger. Le Pen has run for that office three times before, and became more popular as right-wing political parties across Europe rose in prominence in recent years; in the 2022 presidential runoff, Le Pen earned 41.5 percent of votes to President Emmanuel Macron’s 58.6 percent. (Macron is term-limited.)
Chinese firms accused of poaching Taiwan’s chip engineers using bogus front companies – Computerworld– www.computerworld.com Source Link Excerpt:
The statement provided three examples, the most prominent of which was Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest chip maker, which is partially owned by the Chinese state. The company had started recruiting staff via a front company set up in Taiwan as a subsidiary of a separate entity apparently based in the island of Samoa, the MJIB claimed.
Meanwhile, Chinese networking chip company Cloudnix, had “aggressively recruited talent from major global firms such as Intel and Microsoft since its establishment in 2020,” the MJIB said. The company had set out to hide its Chinese control by registering itself in Taiwan, and later, to avoid deeper scrutiny, as being owned by an entity based in Singapore.
A third, Shenzhen Torey Microelectronics Technology, had tried to hire Taiwanese from inside the country while keeping its presence on the island a secret.
Iran, Facing Trump Threats, Says It Positioned ‘Launch-Ready Missiles’ To Strike ‘US-Related Positions’– freebeacon.com Source Link Excerpt:
Iran says it has readied “a significant number” of advanced missiles capable of striking American bases and military outposts in the Middle East, drawing a sharp warning from the Trump administration.
Iran’s “armed forces have readied missiles with the capability to strike U.S.-related positions,” the Tehran Times, a state-controlled newspaper, reported on Monday. “A significant number of these launch-ready missiles are located in underground facilities scattered across the country, designed to withstand airstrikes.”
The announcement came in response to President Donald Trump’s threat over the weekend to bomb the country if it does not enter into negotiations over its contested nuclear weapons program. But Trump is not backing down—the White House, in response to Tehran’s war preparations, told the Washington Free Beacon it does “not take kindly to military threats.”
“President Trump and his administration do not take kindly to military threats,” said White House National Security Council communications director James Hewitt. “The President has made clear he prefers direct diplomatic channels with Tehran, or they will face serious consequences if they do not end their work to obtain nuclear weapons.”
Fresh US strikes extend air campaign targeting Yemen’s Houthis | News– www.aljazeera.com Source Link Excerpt:
Houthis claim to down US drone. President Donald Trump declares Yemeni rebel group ‘decimated’ by air strike campaign.
The United States military launched a series of air attacks on Yemen overnight, targeting Houthi rebels.
Strikes hit an area near the capital, Sanaa, as well as the northern province of Saada early on Tuesday as the US extended a bombing campaign against targets in Yemen that began in mid-March and has killed dozens of people.
The Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported that US forces launched 15 raids on the northern province of Saada, including the city of Saada and the districts of Majz and Sahar. Mount Nabi Shuaib, in the Bani Matar district of Sanaa province, was also reported to have been targeted.
According to POLITICO, nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates that receive federal money from the 55-year-old Title X family planning program received a letter on Monday announcing that their funding is being “temporarily withheld” for “possible violations” of federal civil rights law and President Donald Trump’s executive orders — including prohibitions on the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Funding is also being withheld, according to the article, because the organization “overtly encourages illegal aliens to receive care.”
The Bud Light boycott worked: Major corporations are walking away from LGBT pride– www.lifesitenews.com Source Link Excerpt:
(LifeSiteNews) — Pride comes before a fall – and as some major companies rethink previous “woke” policies, the corporate gravy train LGBT activists have relied on to fund their activism has finally begun to slow.
According to NPR, both Anheuser-Busch – famous for beer brands like Beck’s and Budweiser – and the telecoms giant Comcast have both pulled funding from San Francisco Pride. Anheuser-Busch has also ended their sponsorship with St. Louis Pride.
They aren’t the only ones. Diageo, the beverage company responsible for Johnny Walker, Smirnoff, and Guinness has pulled support from San Francisco Pride, as has Jackson Family Wines (which includes La Crema Wines). Meta, the tech giant that includes both Facebook and Instagram, has also reportedly pulled funding from San Francisco Pride.
Significantly, a number of those companies have been attempting to distance themselves from wokeness after spending years wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta announced earlier this year that he was reintroducing free speech to Meta’s social media platforms and began by removing many of the restrictions around LGBT debates (and had the tampon dispensers removed from the male washrooms at Facebook’s headquarters).
Federal judge orders Colorado school to restore controversial books to school library – Standing for Freedom Center– www.standingforfreedom.com Source Link Excerpt:
The school board must now make books with themes and images of violence, graphic sex, and suicidal ideation widely available to young teens against the wishes of many parents, but an appeal is already being planned.
A U.S. District Court judge has mandated that Colorado’s Elizabeth School District reinstate 19 previously removed books to its library shelves.
This decision follows a lawsuit initiated by the NAACP alongside students, asserting that the school board aimed to “limit students’ access to any books that contravene the Board members’ partisan, political values.”
The controversy began in August 2024 when the Elizabeth School Board voted to remove certain books from school libraries. Board officials cited concerns over the content they deemed inappropriate, including graphic violence, racism, and discrimination, ideations of self-harm or mental illness, and sexual content.
DEI Hangs on At NASA. Plus, Harvard in Trump Admin’s Crosshairs.– freebeacon.com Source Link Excerpt:
Equity in space: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory let go nearly 900 workers last year due to budget cuts. The layoffs impacted both technical and support staff at the lab, which creates land rovers that have reached Mars. They did not impact the lab’s chief inclusion officer, Neela Rajendra.
She is best known for arguing that “extreme deadline[s]” are an “obstacle to inclusion.” While NASA closed its central diversity office earlier this year in response to a Trump executive order, Rajendra survived because “the lab created a new role for her—one with many of the same duties as the old one,” our Aaron Sibarium reports.
“Instead of chief inclusion officer, the lab explained in a March 10 email, Rajendra would henceforth serve as the ‘Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success,'” writes Sibarium. “The title change provides one of the most clear cut examples yet of how institutions are seeking to circumvent Trump’s ban on DEI by renaming diversity offices and shuffling staff.”
German foreign minister says Ukraine peace talks at ‘deadlock’, but China disagrees– www.euronews.com Source Link Excerpt:
The German foreign minister says that US President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a truce in Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine are at a deadlock, but her Chinese counterpart claims that it is encouraging that peace talks between Washington and Moscow continue.
Arriving in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that “due to the deadlock” between the US and Russia on a ceasefire deal, European allies’ continued support for Ukraine in the war is “absolutely crucial”.
Yet at the same time, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on a visit to Moscow, was quoted as saying Tuesday that “certain results have been achieved” in Washington’s attempt to stop the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion, now in its fourth year.
In an interview with Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he said that Beijing supports the goal of “a fair, long-term, binding peace agreement acceptable to all parties involved”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Wang is scheduled to meet with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday, but no further details were given.
Zelensky Urges Europe to Unite Behind Ukraine, 3 Years After Bucha Massacre– www.themoscowtimes.com Source Link Excerpt:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday visited Bucha, where Russia’s army is accused of murdering hundreds of civilians three years ago, urging European allies to unite to prevent fresh massacres.
Following Russia’s retreat from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after a month-long occupation ending March 31, 2022, AFP journalists saw the bodies of at least 20 civilians lying on a street after being shot dead, some with hands tied behind their backs.
It was the first in a string of macabre discoveries in towns abandoned by Russian forces, which sparked an international outcry and war crimes investigations. Moscow has denied responsibility, accusing Ukraine of staging incidents.
“Please remember that Bucha is not ‘somewhere in Ukraine’; it is something that can happen in any European country if our unity does not work now to genuinely hold Russia accountable for this war,” Zelensky said at a ceremony.
ICE admits ‘administrative error’ in sending protected Maryland resident to Salvadoran prison– www.washingtonexaminer.com Source Link Excerpt:
In a new court filing, the Trump administration said it made a mistake in deporting a Maryland father with protected legal status to a prison in El Salvador.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Kilmer Armado Abrego-Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old child, was mistakenly a part of three planes with Venezuelan deportees to the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center last month. The filing appears to be the first time the administration has admitted a mistake during the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportation of over 100 Venezuelan nationals.
“Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego-Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” an ICE official said in a court filing.
While the government acknowledged the error, it said that because Abrego-Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the U.S., nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
In 2019, Abrego-Garcia was deemed by an immigration judge to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang based in Los Angeles, which Abrego-Garcia has repeatedly contested. In the same decision, the court agreed at the time that he should not be deported to El Salvador, determining that his fear of being persecuted or tortured at the grim prison was credible.