RFK Jr. illegally rescinded $11B in public health grants, states’ lawsuit says

RFK Jr. killed grants "with no warning or legally valid explanation," states say.

See full article...

 

[jbjhillbilly]

Is the picture in this article of a troll or gremlin in a suit?

Yes

 

[mpfaff]

Is the picture in this article of a troll or gremlin in a suit?

That’s this old druggie who collects animal skulls, thinks vitamins replace vaccines, and has a voice that sounds like a set of keys in a tumble dryer.

 

[johnsonwax]

Dr. Richard Youle was fired today from NIH. He won the Breakthrough Prize 4 years ago for his gains battling Parkinson's Disease.

Don't lose sight of what's happening here. He wasn't laid off. His unit wasn't discontinued because Congress cut funding (Congress hasn't done that). He was fired for cause, which is the only tool the administration has with all of these firings. Weirdly, everyone in his unit was incompetent, as was everyone who was working on infant mortality who were fired today as well. Every single one of them.

If the federal government can summarily fire any worker regardless of whether Congress wants that agency to exist or not, then you in the private sector have zero job security. If women can be fired just because they're women or people of color can be fired just because they're people of color, you can be fired for who you are married to, whether you have a gay kid, who you vote for, etc. That's the stated goal here.

 

[robrob]

Totally fair point. I'm neither in healthcare nor government and didn't know what an ELC grant was until looking it up a few minutes ago.

Again, to be clear - my original comment had nothing to do with the lawsuit or its merits.

My point was that the headline starts "“Chaos” at state health agencies after US illegally axed grants," - yet Ars quoted no specifics on what the cuts were or what each side was saying about them. Everything was about unspecified "programs" and just quoted the impacted offical's statements that it's "Chaos" at face value.

Why do the specifics of the funding matter though when causing chaos? If there are employees to be paid, equipment that already exists, bookings for vaccines or research or whatever already done, wouldn't it cause chaos regardless? If I'd hired 19 clowns, 400 guinea pigs and bought 300 hamberders for a party then suddenly funding was cut, it'd still be chaos trying to undo what I'd booked.

The "chaos" is part of a quote from a press release which is linked and states "including immunization distribution, training for local public health agencies focused on infectious disease surveillance and investigation, lab services, and replacing worn out lab equipment".

It's really confusing what you're asking for, the information is right there, and chaos comes from the suddenness of the change.

 

[Steve austin]

That part I don't mind.

It's the techbro "and breaking things" part that pisses me the fuck off.

But the moving fast is part of the process, because it means things have already happened before anyone (including the courts and congress, let alone the people) can react and push back. It’s a fait accompli, and (they are hoping) not undoable. And from their point of view, most if not all of the breaking thing is intentional, because they don’t like the things they are breaking.

 

[Steve austin]

I might be able to get on board with some of these cuts if the goal was to balance the budget rather than to give it all to billionaires in the form of tax cuts. We're going to end up with fewer services and still have higher deficits.

If you really wanted to balance the budget, the first thing you’d cut is the defense budget, and you would raise, not cut, taxes on the rich and corporations.

 

[Hypatia]

There’s a line of argument in the federalist papers that basically is as follows:
“we are going to assume that officers will follow the laws. Considering scenarios where the law is ignored is besides the point when discussing a constitution, because there is literally no law you can write that would protect against that scenario.”

The point is that, yes, democratic governments are run on an honor system. If you violate that honor system, then you violate the notion of a rule of law. And without a rule of law…

I’ll add one of my favorites (by Learned Hand; 1872-1961):
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it[…]”

 

[kirkaiya]

I'm at loss understanding how people support or al least accept the dismantling of their own social security net.

Because they fear brown people and trans people more than they fear not having a social safety net.

 

[C.M. Allen]

“Chaos” at state health agencies...​

Trump and company -- "SUCCESS! What do we want to destroy today?"

 

[gerbal]

This is happening across the entire government, everywhere you look, and many more places you don't even know to look. Experts are being fired and state capacity gutted.

The endgame to this wonton destruction is the death of the current State and it's replacement with something new. That something new looks an awful lot like techno-feudalism. They discuss this publicly. Their stated goals include the end of democracy and total unification of corporate and state power. They love to talk about their goal to end the era of liberalism that began with the enlightenment and the industrial revolution. They fucking describe themselves as "the dark enlightenment".

 

[sixstringedthing]

"your desire to harm others outweighs your desire to help yourself."

"Despite clear signs to the contrary, supporters of the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party remain fully confident that the freely roaming Leopards pose no threat to them or their families. One Florida Man interviewed by this outlet provided the following statement: 'nah bro I aks grok and it sed lepods only eat WOKE face lol they just here owning da libs lol'".

 

[Marlor_AU]

The chaos is spreading internationally. The current administration's funding cuts have hit long-running international collaborations in health, the environment and social sciences. In particular, Australian universities work closely with the US on cancer research, with hundreds of jointly-funded projects being established over the past decade. This is part of the almost a thousand joint research projects overall.

This has generally been a win/win for all involved, with the US gaining access to leading researchers and top-quality labs, all subsidized by the Australian government and for a fraction of the normal cost, and Australian researchers gaining access to a research pool that is larger than exists locally.

However many of these projects have received demands to fill in questionnaires to ensure they contain no "DEI, climate or environmental justice" content, and many have had funding suddenly suspended while they are assessed for content that may promote "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies". The funding cuts may be due to something as simple as having a verboten word such as "women", "climate", "equality" or "environment" in their project descriptions.

This is obviously causing chaos, and universities are racing to switch to working with European partners instead, with a big push under-way for Australia to join Horizon Europe and quickly establish joint-projects there, rather than relying on an unstable research partner.

 

[johnsonwax]

If you really wanted to balance the budget, the first thing you’d cut is the defense budget, and you would raise, not cut, taxes on the rich and corporations.

Raising taxes on the rich has benefits beyond that, and I say that as someone who is in the top 3% or so.

When rich people are able to accumulate wealth faster than working people, they are able to outcompete everyone else in the asset markets. 97% of the homes in this country are affordable to me and if I want the home you are looking at, I can outbid you for it. I can outbid you for it, even if I already own a home.

The point the exercise is supposed to be able to expand the size of the economy, to make the pie bigger. But that's not how rich people work. Rich people are competing for larger slices of the pie, to the exclusion of everyone else. Workers make the pie bigger, not billionaires. Sure Apple innovated and grew, but they also destroyed - they took the slice that Nokia had been holding, and Motorola, and Blackberry, and so on. They did expand the pie with new products and markets, but most of their success came by displacing others. That's also true with individuals, but look at how they are approaching their 'run government like a business' - by cutting jobs, and awarding contracts to themselves.

It's a lesson you learn when you cross over that line from poor to rich. I used to work hard to avoid annual fees for a credit card, and banking fees. Banks will offer me $1000 to put my money there. Whose savings deposit rate got lowered to come up with that cash? Brokerages will offer me $5K to do business with them. When we last moved brokerages our new account manager asked at the end of the call if there was anything else we needed and my wife blurted out 'a new iPad' as a joke. A few days later one arrived in the mail. It wasn't even a serious ask, it was a joke. We didn't earn any of that shit. And the working class can't keep up with that even when they're getting pay raises proportionate with inflation when investors like me are growing wealth at 4x that rate.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I'm at loss understanding how people support or al least accept the dismantling of their own social security net.

Because the US as a whole was deeply gaslit by Reagan. It's almost religion that taxes are evil, government is bad, and the average american is a rugged individualist who doesn't need a community to thrive.

The rest of the world understands that they live in a society.

Worse, still, the average american does not grok to which extent every last one of those who do not live in a prepper cabin in the Ozarks is utterly reliant in government subsidies, aid and regulations.

They're about to find out.

It all gets worse by the fact that it's deeply rooted in american culture that topic expertise and education is worthless. Isaac Asimov's 'Cult of Ignorance' makes for a population where only a minority realizes that you can't replace an expert with a plucky kid who just works a bit harder.

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

I feel like we’re living in Jonestown. And they’re handing out the Kool-aid.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

The sad irony here is that this is good for republicans. Because when times are tough and changing too fast and people feel in danger, they vote conservative. It's the common sense narrative that conservatives are the party of law and order and good financial times and general stability. Every part of that narrative is wrong, but it's still what the least politically aware think, so they'll vote conservative even harder as a result of the chaos and despair conservatives are sewing.

Look to the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice election today to see if I'm right. Despite being a purple state and one option being terrible and the current political climate, I still expect a landslide victory for conservatives.

That's not ironic at all. Conservatism has always been about using fear and uncertainty as a vote winner.

Keep the sheep ignorant and scared of their own shadows and they won't bleat too much about being fleeced and controlled.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Totally fair point. I'm neither in healthcare nor government and didn't know what an ELC grant was until looking it up a few minutes ago.

And yet a casual check would have informed you your entire line of questioning was irrelevant.

What is known is that this is funding which had been approved by congress, signed, sealed and ratified. People had been hired by those funds and services commissioned.

Imagine the following analogy. You've signed a three year contract with a construction agency. You've set aside money and the agency has put its people to work.
Then you decide, right out of the blue that you aren't goung to pay what you owe or the services you've already ordered.

THAT is what is happening here. The US government is now Trump in the 90's, telling the people building his casinos that he isn't going to pay them.
It's rare for a nation-state to sink its credit rating, but making it a practice to welsh on its debts will do it.

After this is realized the exact specifics of who is getting shafted by how much out of the total sum of executively defaulted contracts becomes very academic.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

The chaos is spreading internationally. The current administration's funding cuts have hit long-running international collaborations in health, the environment and social sciences. In particular, Australian universities work closely with the US on cancer research, with hundreds of jointly-funded projects being established over the past decade. This is part of the almost a thousand joint research projects overall.

This has generally been a win/win for all involved, with the US gaining access to leading researchers and top-quality labs, all subsidized by the Australian government and for a fraction of the normal cost, and Australian researchers gaining access to a research pool that is larger than exists locally.

However many of these projects have received demands to fill in questionnaires to ensure they contain no "DEI, climate or environmental justice" content, and many have had funding suddenly suspended while they are assessed for content that may promote "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies". The funding cuts may be due to something as simple as having a verboten word such as "women", "climate", "equality" or "environment" in their project descriptions.

This is obviously causing chaos, and universities are racing to switch to working with European partners instead, with a big push under-way for Australia to join Horizon Europe and quickly establish joint-projects there, rather than relying on an unstable research partner.

Myeah, even if Trump keels over from one burger too many tomorrow and the US citizenry mans up and exiles every conservative into the Ozark foothills the week after, the damage has been done. The landslide is in motion and will hit rock bottom before cleanup can begin.

US research capacity will nosedive and crater. Once the big names in science have fled the country, no one with promise will choose the US as their place of study.

In the long run this massively benefits the EU which will become the new meccah of research.

 

[JoHBE]

"We contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services about the lawsuit and will update this article if it provides a response."

Did the poop emoji already arrive?

 

[ngoncalves]

There’s a line of argument in the federalist papers that basically is as follows:
“we are going to assume that officers will follow the laws. Considering scenarios where the law is ignored is besides the point when discussing a constitution, because there is literally no law you can write that would protect against that scenario.”

The point is that, yes, democratic governments are run on an honor system. If you violate that honor system, then you violate the notion of a rule of law. And without a rule of law…

I was always kind of envy of the USA because they had a constitution that stood the test of time, while here in Europe these things seem to change every few decades.

Now I see the reverse of the medal, the US constitution has prevailed for so long because all the gritty, nitty details of government were delegated to institutions (Congress, Senate, POTUS, the states, etc..). And when those don't work towards the common good, we get today's state of afairs.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Myeah, even if Trump keels over from one burger too many tomorrow and the US citizenry mans up and exiles every conservative into the Ozark foothills the week after, the damage has been done. The landslide is in motion and will hit rock bottom before cleanup can begin.

Also...is it just me, or is that show starting to be eerily prescient ?

 

[C.M. Allen]

View attachment 106547


Also...is it just me, or is that show starting to be eerily prescient ?

Only in the sense that predicting rain in the future is prescient. This is a pattern societies have repeated over and over, for thousands of years. The stupid, incompetent, greedy, and corrupt naturally rise to the top. And once they get there, their destructive nature runs its course. That it's happening to the US was never a question of 'if' but a question of 'when.' And the moment the US elected Trump the first time, the 'when' became "Very soon."

 

[migrena]

Illegal only matters if the justice system can compel obedience to the law.

At this point, that is in doubt here in the US.

even if justice system does what it should what stops orange muppet to just issue pardons like for milton?

 

[NeutrinoSunset]

What's going on in the 23 states that did not join the lawsuit?

I assume these are mostly red states whose leadership know that they are not allowed to say or do anything that contravenes the will of the Great Orange Clown. If they do they will be made to suffer, (probably financially which is what's most important to them).

 

[sixstringedthing]

Did the poop emoji already arrive?

I think it's pretty safe at this point to assume that any response from any office or department infiltrated by DOGE will just be a long string of them. Possibly followed up with [$][$][eggplant][US flag][explosion][fistbump][cry-laugh][$][$] , depending on which insufferable child got Social Media duty.

 

[RZetopan]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be in jail. Everything he does is illegal and dangerous. It is going to kill a lot of people.

He has already killed a lot of people. He is now moving into the big leagues and trying to outdo Felon45's COVID response disaster. The dead brain worm has been doing his driving, even before getting into that rotting roadkill he ate.

 

[T_Bartholomew]

I'm at loss understanding how people support or al least accept the dismantling of their own social security net.

Same reason that tariffs aren’t a tax. Dear leader said so.

 

[gnasher729]

Here's at least one specific for you: TX just shut down about about 50 measles clinics and laid off 21 front-line health care workers.

Wait for it .. there's going to be A LOT more of this.

That's 50 measles clinics and 21 health care workers who won't report any measles cases, or complications from measles, or deaths from measles.

 

[AdrianS]

I'd argue it should be the other way around. If someone is asking for a check, they should be able to make the case for why the expense is justified.

You keep ignoring an important fact: the money was already allocated by Congress.

Which makes your argument patantly nonsense.

 

[Properjob70]

It would not be any weirder if he ran around with a literal ax, murdering people; I guess I don't know that he didn't, it's 2025 so fuck it I guess, all bets are off. Musk was waving an actual chainsaw in his little bit the other day. It's plausible he went straight backstage and cut an orphan in half for fun.

Possibly one of his own kids that fell out of line?

 

[GCamomescro]

I'm at loss understanding how people support or al least accept the dismantling of their own social security net.

Lack of critical thinking ability. It's that simple.

 

[numerobis]

Possibly one of his own kids that fell out of line?

There must be a reason he keeps arguing that breeders need to breed more.

 

[StuiWooi]

Meanwhile, Secretary Brainworm is busy firing 10,000 HHS staffers, including a bunch of very very qualified and able senior personnel at the CDC. And, just in case those fired workers have any questions, they can contact a particular person in the department.

Via seance. Because she's dead.

Got a non-paywalled link for us there fella?

 

[lcooksey]

Don't let any Trump voter tell you they didn't vote for this. From Trump's Madison Square Garden rally:
"Donald Trump Vows to Let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘Go Wild on Health’ If Elected"
https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-robert-f-kennedy-jr-rfk-rally-go-wild-on-health-antivax/

 

[entropy_wins]

Dr. Richard Youle was fired today from NIH. He won the Breakthrough Prize 4 years ago for his gains battling Parkinson's Disease.

Don't lose sight of what's happening here. He wasn't laid off. His unit wasn't discontinued because Congress cut funding (Congress hasn't done that). He was fired for cause, which is the only tool the administration has with all of these firings. Weirdly, everyone in his unit was incompetent, as was everyone who was working on infant mortality who were fired today as well. Every single one of them.

If the federal government can summarily fire any worker regardless of whether Congress wants that agency to exist or not, then you in the private sector have zero job security. If women can be fired just because they're women or people of color can be fired just because they're people of color, you can be fired for who you are married to, whether you have a gay kid, who you vote for, etc. That's the stated goal here.

I vaguely remember from one of my appointments, that yearly reviews were supposed to protect you against such sudden shifts in management - i.e. If I have 5 years of "meets or exceeds" , wheres the cause?

Is this sort of thing and issue in these positions?

 

[kvndoom]

I vaguely remember from one of my appointments, that yearly reviews were supposed to protect you against such sudden shifts in management - i.e. If I have 5 years of "meets or exceeds" , wheres the cause?

Is this sort of thing and issue in these positions?

They're being fired for "poor performance" which makes it more difficult to get unemployment benefits. Basically a stacked "fuck you."

Most people don't realize just how insidious it all is. Horrible on the surface, even worse as you dig deeper.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

View attachment 106547


Also...is it just me, or is that show starting to be eerily prescient ?

<checks notes on ancient Rome>

No, I think 'prescient' isn't the word we're looking for.

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha]

This is not move fast and break things. This is billionaires stealing from you - the services you've paid for, and if you don't want to die you're going to have to pay them because they are going to privatize everything.

This is EXACTLY what I am wasting my time telling fools that think Trump is better than Brandon mentality. I get not agreeing with some Dem policies as that is what voting was for. But I also don't get the morons that just believe news sources that are on social media that never existed before! Take that Joe Rogan idiot..he was some actor turned marketing-podcast-vj pusher. He's just a more pleasant Alex Jones. And fool Bros follow like hooker with fishnets.

The current FarceAdministration w/kangaroo court backing, will break every federal taxpayer system to privatize. First to jump for new slot is DeJoy...he didn't resign for good reason: he left so he can CEO the Private postal delivery company... so I guess we can steal mail now because...no one to enforce that! Thanks Don the Mobster!

 

[pnellesen]

Don't let any Trump voter tell you they didn't vote for this. From Trump's Madison Square Garden rally:
"Donald Trump Vows to Let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘Go Wild on Health’ If Elected"
https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-robert-f-kennedy-jr-rfk-rally-go-wild-on-health-antivax/

Yes, but did they see that on Faux News, and if they did was it broadcast unedited?

The majority of MAGA has no clue he said 90% of the shit he did, and if they ARE somehow aware, they think he just said it to pwn the libs and didn't really mean it. And besides, he's deporting brown people, so it's all good.

 

[sword_9mm]

I'm at loss understanding how people support or al least accept the dismantling of their own social security net.

There's a lot of built-in hate in this country with a dollop of prosperity gospel mixed in.

It's a really really toxic stew.