Trump’s labor chief threatens to pull unemployment assistance from every state
www.independent.co.uk
Labor chief is ‘putting governors on notice’ with administration’s crusade against alleged fraud

Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withdraw federal funding for unemployment assistance in all 50 states as part of the president’s nationwide campaign against “fraud” in government spending.

In a letter to the governors of 53 states and territories, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling warned that the federal government would use “every available tool” to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” within state-run unemployment insurance programs, including “withholding administrative funds from states” for the first time in history.

There is no single national program for unemployment support, though the federal government partners with state agencies to support temporary financial assistance to out-of-work Americans. Nearly 2 million people are currently receiving those benefits, while roughly 229,000 people are filing initial jobless claims every week, according to the Labor Department.

  • chuckleslord
    3·
    16 hours ago

    Oh! You think they plan things. Think tanks definitely have wish lists, but the admin just does whatever, switching as fast as possible between them so that news of one rides over the news of others.

    The issue with framing it as just distraction is that that language feeds into the idea that this is a smokescreen for something else that’s actually important. They’re both important, just timed to take air from each other in the media space. It’s like a magician robbing a guy and using the illegal demolition of a building he wanted destroyed as the distraction. Both acts are things that are important to the person making the decisions, but one is definitely going to be the bigger attention grabber.