Podcasts about veterans affairs

In this episode of Veteran on the Move, we feature Dr. John J. Kaplan, a retired Air Force Officer and the Director of the VA Technology Transfer Program (TTP). Dr. Kaplan shares his journey from a successful military career to his civilian role, discussing his dedication to continued learning and his transition into law. We explore how his desire to give back to veterans led him to the VA. Dr. Kaplan also explains the critical mission of the VA Technology Transfer Program and provides compelling examples of how it brings innovations from the VA to the private sector, benefiting the veteran community and beyond. Episode Resources: VA Technology Transfer Program     About Our Guest Dr. John J. Kaplan serves as the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Technology Transfer Program (TTP). Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico and his J.D. in Intellectual Property from the George Mason University School of Law. Further, Dr. Kaplan received his MBA from Marymount University, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology and his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Virginia Military Institute. Dr. Kaplan earned his Ph.D., J.D. and MBA as a part-time evening student while serving full-time on active duty in the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Kaplan is also a graduate of Air War College, Air Command and Staff College and Squadron Officers' School. Dr. Kaplan joined the Office of Research and Development (ORD) as the TTP Director in April 2016. He is a retired Air Force Officer with 20-years of service.     About Our Sponsors Navy Federal Credit Union   Whether you're looking to buy a new or used car or maybe you want to refinance your current car loan, Navy Federal Credit Union has great rates on auto loans and discounts for Active Duty servicemembers and Veterans. You can apply via their mobile app or online and, in most cases, get a decision in seconds. For those of you looking to refinance your current auto loan, you could get $200 cash back when you refi your loan from another lender. Find out more at navyfederal.org/auto.  At Navy Federal, our members are the mission.      Join the conversation on Facebook! Check out Veteran on the Move on Facebook to connect with our guests and other listeners. A place where you can network with other like-minded veterans who are transitioning to entrepreneurship and get updates on people, programs and resources to help you in YOUR transition to entrepreneurship.   Want to be our next guest? Send us an email at interview@veteranonthemove.com.  Did you love this episode? Leave us a 5-star rating and review!  Download Joe Crane's Top 7 Paths to Freedom or get it on your mobile device. Text VETERAN to 38470. Veteran On the Move podcast has published 500 episodes. Our listeners have the opportunity to hear in-depth interviews conducted by host Joe Crane. The podcast features people, programs, and resources to assist veterans in their transition to entrepreneurship.  As a result, Veteran On the Move has over 7,000,000 verified downloads through Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, iTunes and RSS Feed Syndication making it one of the most popular Military Entrepreneur Shows on the Internet Today.

This Day in Legal History: Nuremberg Laws EnactedOn this day in legal history, September 15, 1935, Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, codifying one of the most infamous legal frameworks of racial discrimination and hate in modern history. Announced at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, these laws included the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, the Reich Citizenship Law, and later, the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People. Together, they stripped Jews of German citizenship, prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and “Aryans,” and laid the groundwork for systematic persecution.The Reich Citizenship Law divided citizens into two classes: full citizens, who were of "German or related blood," and subjects, who were denied full political rights. Jews were relegated to the latter category. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor banned intermarriage and extramarital relations between Jews and Germans, criminalizing personal relationships based on ancestry. Violators could be imprisoned or sent to concentration camps.To enforce these laws, the Nazi regime devised elaborate charts and pseudoscientific metrics to assess Jewish ancestry, culminating in a 1936 chart issued by the Reich Health Office. This visual aid defined citizens by the number of Jewish grandparents they had, assigning labels like Mischling (mixed race) to those with partial Jewish heritage. Even one Jewish grandparent could strip a person of civil rights.The Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People added a eugenic dimension, requiring couples to undergo genetic testing before marriage and barring those deemed "genetically unfit" from reproducing. These legal measures normalized state-sponsored racism and laid a legal foundation for the Holocaust.Big Law firm Perkins Coie terminated an attorney over a social media post that appeared to criticize conservative figure Charlie Kirk following his shooting death. The firm stated the post did not align with its values and that the lawyer's conduct fell significantly below professional expectations. The firing was made effective immediately. Kirk, 31, served as executive director of Turning Point USA and was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump. He was fatally shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Perkins Coie has a history of political entanglements, notably becoming one of the first law firms to sue Trump after his executive orders targeted firms representing political adversaries. These orders reportedly restricted access to federal facilities, revoked security clearances, and jeopardized client contracts. The firm was a particular focus for Trump due to its work during Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, including hiring Fusion GPS to conduct research that led to the Steele dossier, which alleged ties between Trump's campaign and the Russian government.Perkins Coie Fires Attorney Over Social Media Post on Kirk ShootingU.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly extended a temporary block on the deportation of unaccompanied Guatemalan children with active immigration cases. The move halts a Trump-era effort that attempted to deport 76 minors without proper notice or legal process, including waking children in the early hours of August 31 to board planes. The judge's ruling followed a contentious September 10 hearing, where he criticized a Justice Department attorney for falsely claiming that all the children's parents had requested their return. A report from the Guatemalan Attorney General's Office later revealed that most parents couldn't be located, and many of those found did not want their children repatriated.The children in question mostly come from Guatemala's Indigenous, rural regions—Huehuetenango, San Marcos, Quiché, and Alta Verapaz—areas known for high poverty and malnutrition. Guatemalan officials emphasized that such a large-scale repatriation request was unprecedented. Some families reportedly mortgaged their homes to finance the children's migration, indicating the high stakes involved.US judge extends block on deportations of unaccompanied Guatemalan migrant children | ReutersU.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully directed the mass firing of around 25,000 federal probationary employees earlier this year. These workers, many of whom had served in their roles for less than a year, were dismissed under a directive from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in February. The mass terminations sparked lawsuits from unions, nonprofits, and the state of Washington, arguing the firings lacked legal justification.Judge Alsup found that the OPM's directive was unlawful and "pretextual," noting the terminations were falsely framed as performance-related. While he acknowledged that the workers had been harmed, he declined to order their reinstatement, citing recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings limiting judicial power over executive branch hiring and firing decisions. Specifically, the Supreme Court had previously paused a preliminary injunction in April that would have reinstated 17,000 employees.Despite not ordering reinstatement, Alsup mandated that 19 federal agencies, including Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Treasury, correct the employment records of affected workers by November 14. He also prohibited agencies from continuing to follow OPM's original directive. Union leaders praised the decision for confirming the firings were baseless and for requiring agencies to acknowledge the false rationale behind the terminations.Trump administration unlawfully directed mass US worker terminations, judge rules | ReutersThe University of California, Berkeley confirmed it had shared information on 160 students, faculty, and staff with the Trump administration, in response to a federal investigation into alleged antisemitism. The data was provided to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights as part of an ongoing probe linked to pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The university stated that it acted under legal obligation while striving to protect individual privacy and notified those affected.This move comes amid a broader effort by the Trump administration to penalize universities accused of allowing antisemitic behavior, particularly during recent demonstrations opposing Israel's actions in Gaza. Critics argue that the administration is conflating political protest and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, raising serious concerns about free speech, academic freedom, and due process.Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to institutions involved in such protests and attempted to deport foreign student demonstrators, though those efforts have faced legal challenges. The administration has already reached high-profile settlements with Columbia and Brown universities and is in ongoing talks with Harvard. A proposed $1 billion settlement with UCLA was publicly rejected by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who called it extortion.UC Berkeley shares information on dozens of students, staff with Trump administration | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

What if a drug could help chemotherapy patients continue treatment without painful side effects? Hoth Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HOTH) is making that possible by developing innovative treatments that address unmet medical needs and help patients maintain their therapy safely.In this interview, CEO Robb Knie discusses HT001, the company's lead drug currently in Phase 2 trials for chemotherapy-induced rash, and HTKIT, which shows promise in cancer treatment. He also shares how the company is advancing programs for Alzheimer's and obesity, including an obesity drug licensed from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.With a diversified pipeline, a patient-focused approach, and strategic use of AI to de-risk and accelerate development, Hoth Therapeutics is positioning itself as a biotech company to watch.Learn more about Hoth Therapeutics: https://hoththerapeutics.comWatch the full YouTube interview here: https://youtu.be/AYQa3g6dVLA?si=w_zDH0TaSxP3m6JiAnd follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

There is a new treatment option available now that can precisely target prostate lesions with electrical pulses, while helping preserve sexual function and urinary control. Whether you or a loved one has prostate disease, or you are a urologist considering this technology for your practice, you will not want to miss today's discussion on this innovative new option. September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, so we have a special episode today to kick it off. We are excited to welcome the distinguished urologist, Dr. Spencer Krane, to the Prostate Health Podcast. Dr. Krane is the Chief of Urology at the US Department of Veterans Affairs in New Orleans, Louisiana. He specializes in personalized medicine for patients with urologic malignancies, aiming to use new biomarkers, genomic classifications, epigenetic signatures, and advanced imaging modalities, including MRI-guided prostate biopsies, to offer his patients individualized care that improves cancer outcomes while minimizing therapy side effects. Dr. Krane has published extensively in urologic journals, and his work was selected to provide guidelines for urologic care. He has 50 peer-reviewed articles in national and international journals and has presented his work internationally, from Chile and Rome to Taiwan, as well as across the United States. We are excited to welcome him today to share his experience with the innovative new NanoKnife system as a treatment option for men with prostate tumors.  It is exciting to see ongoing innovation in the technology we have available for men with prostate tumors. For the appropriate candidates, this minimally invasive option offers precise targeting of the lesion while helping preserve both sexual function and urinary control.  Pertinent disclosure for today's episode – Dr. Krane is a paid consultant for AngioDynamics, Inc., which manufactures and sells the NanoKnife System. The views, information, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of Dr. Krane, and does not necessarily represent those of AngioDynamics, Inc., its affiliates, or subsidiaries.  Show Highlights: Dr. Krane reviews the concept of targeted focal therapy and explains what  the NanoKnife system is Who is an ideal candidate for irreversible electroporation with the NanoKnife system? The advantages and features of the NanoKnife system   Does prostate size or shape limit the candidacy for IRE with the NanoKnife system? Would prostate anatomies on the MRI or biopsy exclude a patient from NanoKnife therapy? Dr. Krane explains how long it takes to resolve the initial decrease in sexual ability after NanoKnife therapy.   Why many patients experience improved urinary function in the long term after having NanoKnife therapy Dr. Krane clarifies the time it takes to resolve the initial decrease in sexual ability after being treated with NanoKnife therapy.   Links:  Follow Dr. Pohlman on Twitter and Instagram - @gpohlmanmd.  Get your free What To Expect Guide (or find the link on our podcast website)   Join our Facebook group  Follow Dr. Pohlman on X and Instagram  Sign up for the Prostate Health Academy   You can access Dr. Pohlman's free mini-webinar, where he discusses his top three tips to promote men's prostate health, longevity, and quality of life here.  

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz said he would introduce legislation to establish AI sandboxes to allow companies “room to breathe” without running up against regulations. Cruz announced that proposal as well as a legislative framework for AI policy ahead of a Wednesday hearing before the Subcommittee on Science, Manufacturing, and Competitiveness on the administration's recent AI Action Plan. The concept of regulatory sandboxes were among the more than 90 policy recommendations outlined in that document. Cruz said during the hearing: “Under the Sandbox Act, an AI user developer can identify obstructive regulations and request a waiver or a modification, which the government may grant for two years via a written agreement that must include a participant's responsibility to mitigate health or consumer risks,” adding that “a regulatory sandbox is not a free pass. People creating or using AI still have to follow the same laws as everyone else.” Drew Myklegard is stepping down from his role as deputy federal CIO after nearly four years, FedScoop has learned. Two sources with knowledge of the matter said Myklegard told colleagues he's taking a role in the private sector and that his last day will be Sept. 22. A holdover from the Biden administration, Myklegard was appointed to the deputy federal CIO role in early 2022, after a more than eight-year stint in supporting IT operations at the Department of Veterans Affairs. During his time in the Office of the Federal CIO, he championed a number of key governmentwide technology modernization initiatives, including rolling out a new policy reforming federal cloud security authorizations under FedRAMP and guidance on how agencies acquire and inventory AI tools, among others. On Monday, Myklegard was recognized with a FedScoop 50 award in the Golden Gov: Federal Executive of the Year category. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Top headlines for Wednesday, September 10, 2025In this episode, we delve into the Israeli Air Force's recent strike in Doha, Qatar, aimed at targeting the senior leadership of a major terror organization. Next, we discuss potential changes to a Biden-era policy by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which may impact the availability of abortion services in specific cases. Lastly, we revisit President Donald Trump's reaffirmation of his administration's dedication to religious liberty and the historical significance of Christian faith in shaping the United States.00:11 Israel strikes Hamas leadership in Doha, capital of Qatar01:04 Australian lawmaker affirms New South Wales' ban on prayer01:54 VA Dept. looks to restore ‘pre-Biden bipartisan' ban on abortions02:51 The Journey Fairfield pastor facing multiple sex charges03:51 UMC controls churches in Liberia, not breakaway group: court04:40 Muslims kill Catholic man, wound another in targeted attack05:38 Trump affirms faith at Religious Liberty Commission meetingSubscribe to this PodcastApple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercastFollow Us on Social Media@ChristianPost on TwitterChristian Post on Facebook@ChristianPostIntl on InstagramSubscribe on YouTubeGet the Edifi AppDownload for iPhoneDownload for AndroidSubscribe to Our NewsletterSubscribe to the Freedom Post, delivered every Monday and ThursdayClick here to get the top headlines delivered to your inbox every morning!Links to the NewsIsrael strikes Hamas leadership in Doha, capital of Qatar | WorldAustralian lawmaker affirms New South Wales' ban on prayer | WorldVA Dept. looks to restore ‘pre-Biden bipartisan' ban on abortions | PoliticsThe Journey Fairfield pastor facing multiple sex charges | U.S.UMC controls churches in Liberia, not breakaway group: court | WorldMuslims kill Catholic man, wound another in targeted attack | WorldTrump affirms faith at Religious Liberty Commission meeting | Politics

PTSD is often called the “invisible wound” of military service. For many veterans, it shows up in nightmares, sudden triggers, or the feeling of being constantly on edge, making everyday life feel like another battlefield. But there's hope: PTSD is treatable, and recovery is possible. Since 1989, the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD has been the world's leading resource for understanding and treating this condition. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Paula Schnurr, the center's executive director, about how science becomes healing—through groundbreaking research, innovative therapies, and real stories of veterans reclaiming their lives. Dr. Paula Schnurr is the executive director of the National Center for PTSD and had previously served as deputy executive director of the center since 1989. She is also a professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the editor of the Clinician's Trauma Update-Online. More Links and Information  Check out more Fors Marsh Media Connect or partner with Fors MarshExplore the National Center for PTSD Learn more about PTSD through AboutFace  Contact the Veteran Crisis Line if you're a veteran in crisis or concerned about one 

Today, September 3, is the last day for public comment on a newly proposed rule for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The draft regulation would ban VA doctors from performing most abortions.

Today, September 3, is the last day for public comment on a newly proposed rule for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The draft regulation would ban VA doctors from performing most abortions.

A former Department of government efficiency employee who served at the Department of Veterans Affairs say Doge has fallen short on some of its goals, and government is more efficient than he expected. The VA made some changes during his tenure, but he says agencies need to hire more tech talent to make meaningful changes Federal News Network's Jory Heckman joins me with more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

VALUE FOR VALUE Thank you to the Bowl After Bowl Episode 401 Producers: dugitup, Robert Willey, Kevin S., ChadF, harvhat, Oystein Berge, Boolysteed, makeheroism, ericpp Send physical mail to: PO BOX 410154 Kansas City, MO 64141 Intro/Outro: Jaxius - Retrograde NudePodcastApps.com Check out the RSS DeMu template Listen to Homegrown Hits Episode 100 ft. ovvrdos Enjoy the sights and sounds of Truth Machine from The Great Unthinking Homegrown Hits is going live TOMORROW at 7pm Central HyperSpaceOut.com FIRST TIME I EVER... Bowlers called in to talk about the First Time THEY Ever went to a funeral. Next week, we want to hear about the First Time YOU Ever showed I.D. TOP THREE 33 NEBRASKA: August cooled down with coolest temperatures in 33 years (Central Nebraska Today) 66 civilians killed in Gaza since dawn, including 33 seeking humanitarian aid (WAFA Agency) Assam pushes back 33 Bangladeshi infiltrators as part of intensified crackdown (New Indian Express) Colombia's ombudswoman says 33 soldiers allegedly kidnapped under orders of a rebel group are freed (ABC) Landslide kills 33 as communications partially restored in Indian-administered Kashmir (AA) BEHIND THE CURTAIN The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the federal government must prove people who use pot "pose a risk of future danger" if it wants to justify applying a law banning them from owning firearms (USCourts.gov) The Department of Veterans Affairs posted tips on "how to smoke drugs safer" (VA) Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer vetoes bill overriding restrictive marijuana business zoning rules in counties (DE.gov) Green Thumb Industries confirms Robin Westman, shooter, previously worked at its Rise dispensary (The Minnesota Star Tribune) Laura Ingraham says she hopes Trump does not reschedule pot (via Alex Berenson + FOX on Twitter) New York Post op-ed suggests slowing down on rescheduling or loosing pot laws (New York Post) Missouri activists filing 2026 initiative to unify hemp, marijuana regulations (Marijuana Moment) Oregon attorney general issued certified ballot title for 2026 initiative to legalize social lounges (OR SOS) Grunt Style has a message for Texas' lieutenant governor (Twitter) Deion Sanders said he's "never been high a day in (his) life" (Twitter) METAL MOMENT Tonight, the RevCyberTrucker brings us FLOPPOTRON's cover of Master of Puppets. Follow @SirRevCyberTrucker@noauthority.social for shenanigans! ON-CHAIN, OFF CHAIN, COCAINE, SHITSTAIN Clark Moody Dashboard Strategy adds $449M in Bitcoin, raising August total to 7.7K BTC (CoinTelegraph) Bitcoin network hashrate returns to all-time highs in August (CoinTelegraph) KC Bitcoiners Coffee FRIDAY September 5, 2025 at Maps Coffee in Lenexa, KS FUCK IT, DUDE. LET'S GO BOWLING! Body cam footage released of Chuck E. Cheese arrest (FOX YouTube) Man, 33, called 'weird' by his adult sister, punches and strangles her (Cleveland Heights police blotter) China 'PhD village' celebrates after gaining another doctoral student, has 33 PhDs already (South China Morning Post) Powerball soars to sixth largest in game's 33-year history (Hays Post) Mexico's jaguar population has jumped 33% since 2010 (Mexico News Daily) 33-year-old rider rescued on trail near Aspen (Denver Gazette) Ancient head unearthed by archeology student at Scottish farm (FOX) Elderly women rescued from hot tub at remote Kentucky cabin (FOX) Umbrella mistaken for assault rifle sparks Syracuse, NY mall lockdown (WBNG) North Carolina official charged with putting drugs in grandchildren's ice cream (FOX) Dozens of piles of cremated remains discovered in desert outside Las Vegas (KLAS)  

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025Today, Donald Trump is now posting photos of himself playing golf from August 23rd and telling people without prompting that he's in excellent health; all 76 children the administration tried to kidnap and disappear to Guatemala this weekend are back at their refugee and resettlement facilities; Robert Mueller has been diagnosed with Parkinson's and will be unable to testify in the Epstein matter; Trump's commerce secretary's former investment bank is taking bets against tariffs; preliminary data shows 1.2M migrants are missing from the workforce - but those numbers may not be accurate; Russia is suspected of jamming the GPS of the EU leader's plane; Florida may lose $218M with the shutdown of the Everglades concentration camp; a judge has dismissed charges over chalk art at the Pulse nightclub crosswalk; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Thank You, FastGrowingTreesGet 15% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/dailybeansYou Can Vote For Dana !  2025 Out100: Cast your vote for Readers' Choice!StoriesRobert Mueller Has Parkinson's Disease, Family Says | The New York TimesRussia Suspected of Jamming GPS for E.U. Leader's Plane, Officials Say | The New York TimesFlorida may lose $218M on empty 'Alligator Alcatraz' as judge orders shutdown | AP NewsTrump's Commerce Secretary Loves Tariffs. His Former Investment Bank Is Taking Bets Against Them | WIRED1.2 million immigrants are gone from the US labor force under Trump, preliminary data shows | AP NewsJudge Dismisses Florida Arrest Over Rainbow Chalk Art Near Pulse Nightclub | Rolling StoneGood Trouble Tomorrow is the deadline to publicly comment on the Department of Veterans Affairs new rule banning reproductive healthcare, so please head to the link and leave a public comment asking the VA to continue providing health care to our veterans. Write a Public Comment - Reproductive Health Services - Deadline September 3**California needs your help | Proposition 50 Vote YES !!Yes On Prop 50 | Special Election Phone Banks - mobilize.us**Trump's VA Rule Would Ban Abortion Care for Veterans—Your Voice Can Stop It | On   Offense with Kris Goldsmith – Write a Public Comment - Reproductive Health Services - Deadline September 3**IRS asks for public input on free tax filing options to inform congressional report | Internal Revenue Service - Deadline September 5**Help ensure safety of public servants. Hold RFK Jr accountable by signing the letter: savehhs.org, @firedbutfighting.bsky.social on Bluesky**SIGN THE STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT for the FEMA Katrina Declaration.From The Good NewsPatrons Sponsoring Patrons - The Daily Beansdryoceansociety - instagramVolunteer Expo - Oregon - The StandardTRICARE For LifeOur Donation LinksNational Security Counselors - DonateMSW Media, Blue Wave California Victory Fund | ActBlueWhistleblowerAid.org/beansFederal workers - email AG at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. Find Upcoming Actions 50501 Movement, No Kings.org, Indivisible.orgDr. Allison Gill - Substack, BlueSky , TikTok, IG, TwitterDana Goldberg - BlueSky, Twitter, IG, facebook, danagoldberg.comMore from MSW Media - Shows - MSW Media, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | SubstackReminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Our Donation LinksNational Security Counselors - DonateMSW Media, Blue Wave California Victory Fund | ActBlueWhistleblowerAid.org/beansFederal workers - feel free to email AG at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. Find Upcoming Actions 50501 Movement, No Kings.org, Indivisible.orgDr. Allison Gill - Substack, BlueSky , TikTok, IG, TwitterDana Goldberg - BlueSky, Twitter, IG, facebook, danagoldberg.comCheck out more from MSW Media - Shows - MSW Media, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | SubstackShare your Good News or Good TroubleMSW Good News and Good TroubleHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?The Daily Beans | SupercastThe Daily Beans & Mueller, She Wrote | PatreonThe Daily Beans | Apple Podcasts

In this episode, we dive into the complex topic of Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) and its role in VA disability claims. Veterans experiencing chronic back pain or spinal issues may be struggling with DDD, a condition that can significantly impact daily life and work. Whether you're a veteran filing a claim or an advocate assisting others, this episode offers clarity on diagnosis, compensation, and common challenges in the VA claims process.

Today, Cora has her most personal conversation to date. At her home in Maine, she speaks to her childhood friend Graham Platner about his unique campaign for U.S. Senate. Running as a progressive democrat, Graham hopes to change the American system to support working class families and fight the oligarchy."My hope, at its core, is that working people in this country begin to realize that many of the divisive issues that we all find ourselves on opposite sides of are merely there to keep us all divided. And that we can build a real sense of true solidarity with each other over the fact that we all know that the system is not built for us, it is not representing us, and the more of that solidarity that we can build, the more organizing capacity that we can build on the ground amongst working people, the more power that we can take back from the political structure that have left us so unrepresented for so long." – Graham PlatnerGraham and Cora discuss everything from how his military service has influenced his thoughts on foreign policy to the importance of family farms. This is an intimate conversation had in her living room, with Graham sharing his lived experiences that have shaped him into the man who is becoming the political movement of Graham for Maine. About Graham: Graham Platner is a Marine and U.S. Army veteran, oyster farmer, and chair of the Sullivan Planning Board, and candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine, to defeat Susan Collins and win back the seat for working Mainers. Whether it was enlisting in the US Marine Corps, or coming back home to Maine to work in his community, or running for Senate, at the core of every decision Graham has made has been how he can best serve the people of Maine.After graduating high school in 2003, during the height of the Iraq War, Graham snuck his birth certificate out of his father's office to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. After completing his infantry training, Graham was assigned to Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion 8th Marines and deployed to Al-Anbar Province, Iraq in January of 2005 where the battalion served primarily in the area east of Fallujah. In 2006, he was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq and served as machinegun section leader at the Government Center. He was deployed again in 2007.After his third deployment, Graham enrolled at The George Washington University using the GI Bill. Graham quickly realized that his time serving in uniform was not over. So in 2009, he joined the Maryland Army National Guard. He was deployed to Afghanistan the following year where he served as a rifle team leader. 

He returned from Afghanistan and went back to school at The George Washington University in 2011. Like many veterans, Graham struggled with undiagnosed PTSD and physical challenges that come from heavy infantry combat. Graham eventually withdrew from George Washington University and moved back home to Maine where he used the resources from the Department of Veterans Affairs to get the help he needed.After four tours overseas, Graham was deeply disillusioned with America's failed foreign policy and endless wars and decided to focus on serving his local community in Maine.In 2018, Graham started working on his friend's small oyster farm in his hometown of Sullivan. He quickly felt deeply connected with the sea and the community. He eventually took over the oyster farm and built it into a business that produces high quality oysters. Graham also began a diving and mooring service to help out around the bay, and serves the town of Sullivan as Harbormaster and Planning Board Chair. 

He met Amy Gertner in 2023, fell in love, and got married soon after. They now reside in Sullivan—three doors down from where Graham grew up—with their two dogs Gryffin and Zevon and their cat Neptune.

This week, we're recorded live from the Minnesota State Fair with our co-host, the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. We kick off with the MDVA Chief of Staff providing an overview of the department. We'll also dive into a Veteran apprenticeship program with Building Strong Communities and meet with leaders from the […] The post Military Appreciation Day at the Minnesota State Fair 2025 appeared first on Minnesota Military Radio.

On Aug. 1, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a court injunction halting President Trump's executive order eliminating collective bargaining rights for federal unions. The decision has cleared the way for the Trump administration to execute its total assault on federal unions and workers' rights. “Union contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture have since been terminated,” The Guardian reports. “An estimated 400,000 have been affected, about 2.6% of unionized workers in the US.” After already falling to historically low levels of union density, public and private-sector unions are facing an extinction-level event under the new Trump administration. In this interview, recorded at the Netroots conference in New Orleans, LA, TRNN editor-in-chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Everett Kelley, President of the American Federation of Government Employees, about what the labor movement is doing to fight back.Guest:Everett Kelley is the national President of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is the largest union representing federal and DC government employees. He began his first term of service as national President in February 2020, was elected to another term during the 42nd National Convention in June 2022, and was reelected during the 43rd National Convention in August 2024. Kelley has been a member of AFGE since 1981. He worked at Anniston Army Depot and retired from there after 30 years of service.Additional links/info:American Federation of Government Employees website, Facebook page, and InstagramHamilton Nolan, How Things Work, “Fragile movements crumble”Michael Sainato, The Guardian, “White House cancels union contracts for hundreds of thousands of federal workers”Credits:Filming: Kayla Rivara, Rosette SewaliPost-Production: David HebdenHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

How does PTSD happen? What types of events can create Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome? What are the tools to begin to heal severe sexual, situational or deep emotional trauma? Can you heal? What type of counseling can really help you process all that has happened to you? Join Tina and Charity as they explore what can be done to help people with PTSD.

Veterans Affairs says it's now guaranteed 29 million home loans for service members and veterans. That's more than $4 trillion dollars in loans issued over the history of the program. More than four million service members and veterans have active home loans guaranteed by the VA. The department's Home Loan Guaranty Program began in 1944 as part of the G.I. Bill of RightsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The answer is no, no she hasn't.As a combat veteran who served and sacrificed along side friends who will never come home from Afghanistan, who carries the scars—both visible and invisible—of combat, I am beyond disgusted by the recent appointment of Jill McKnight as Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, to be clear I'm not the only one either. Countless veterans from across this national and outside of it have reached out to share their distain and disgusted. It's not only insulting; it shows utter contempt by Mark Carney's Liberal cabinet towards those who've actually served our nation and risked everything to uphold our freedoms. Incompetence we already knew Mark was capable of, but this is a whole new level.Substack: https://substack.com/@kelsisheren - - - - - - - - - - - -SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS - - - - - - - - - - - -Ketone IQ- 30% off with code KELSI - https://ketone.com/KELSIGood Livin- 20% off with code KELSI - https://www.itsgoodlivin.com/?ref=KELSIBrass & Unity - 20% off with code UNITY - http://brassandunity.com - - - - - - - - - - - - -SHOPB&U Jewelry & Eyewear: https://brassandunity.com - - - - - - - - - - - - -Follow #thekelsisherenperspective- - - - - - - - - - - - -CHARITYHeroic Hearts Project - https://www.heroicheartsproject.orgAll Secure Foundation - http://allsecurefoundation.orgDefenders of Freedom -https://www.defendersoffreedom.usBoot Campaign - https://bootcampaign.org

As the Department of Veterans Affairs moves to eliminate 30,000 jobs through attrition, National Nurses United is joining forces with federal unions to push back, warning that the cuts could erode frontline care and shift veterans into a fragmented community care system. That message was front and center at a recent town hall in Georgia. Here with the nurses' perspective is longtime VA nurse and chair of National Nurses United's VA division, Irma Westmoreland.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

– “Okay, Mr. Spark Plug. Out you come.”I gave it another dose of penetrating oil, waited, and pulled a little harder.Howard Pearre lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He attended UNC Charlotte and Appalachian State University and retired after a career as a counselor and manager with NC Vocational Rehabilitation and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. He served in the Army as a paratrooper and is a 5k runner. His essays and fiction have appeared in Flying South, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Proud To Be, and other publications.

Misha Tseytlin, Attorney with Troutman Pepper, joins Lisa Dent to discuss a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs to stop shorting up to 1.7 million veterans out of their GI Bill benefits.

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

The second Trump administration has spent 2025 accelerating its software modernization initiatives through the creation of agencies like the U.S. DOGE Service and other entities designed to digitize and modernize the American government. Modeling after DOD enterprise software container platforms, the Department of Veterans Affairs stood up its own Platform One application in 2021 to drive software modernization within the agency. Matthew Fuqua, technical lead at VA's Platform One, told GovCIO Media & Research Platform One is a sandbox environment where software developers can safely experiment and build applications using protected data. He said his team took inspiration from similar endeavors in federal government and built a platform where developers can focus their efforts solely on coding. Fuqua said that Platform One's ethos centered around “speed, stability, scale and security,” and each tenet drives the mission of providing services through software that can benefit veterans. Platform One supports the VA's DevSecOps strategy to streamline its operations and shift away from the traditional waterfall approach to software development that hinders innovation at speed. In a DevSecOps environment, Fuqua's team is able to monitor, update and secure troves of data rapidly, shortening processes that used to take days down to hours. Fuqua said that AI has opened the door to new potential applications but data security is paramount when considering building new software.

State police investigate a fatal shooting by a Shenandoah County sheriff's deputy… Virginia's attorney general sues Trump's Department of Veterans Affairs over failure to pay benefits... Virginia's Board of Health votes to go further in limiting transgender athletes' participation in women's sports….

Employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs are rallying across the country today in protest of the Trump administration's changes to the VA. The agency workers, who are represented by a range of federal unions, warn that staffing reductions and erosion of collective bargaining at the VA will hurt the agency's ability to support veterans. The rallies come after the VA canceled virtually all of its union contracts last week. VA union members are gathering in more than 10 cities today to sound the alarm and press the Trump administration to reverse course.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Veterans Affairs is setting a new record for the number of disability and pension claims processed in a single year. The VA has gone through more than two and a half million claims so far in fiscal 2025, surpassing last year's total. The department says it's shrunk the claims backlog by 37% since President Donald Trump took office. The backlog increased under the Biden administration when more veterans became eligible for VA benefits under the toxic-exposure PACT Act. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

8.11.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Trump Seizes D.C. Police, 800 Guard Deployed; TX Dems Block Quorum; VA Axes 400K Union Contracts Donald Trump has done something no president has ever done before.... Putting D.C.'s police force under federal control and sending in 800 National Guard troops. The mayor calls Trump's actions "unsettling and unprecedented." We'll talk with Markus Batchelor from People For the American Way about what this means for democracy and civil rights in the nation's capital. Meanwhile, for a second straight week, more than 50 Texas House Democrats remain out of state, blocking Republicans from reaching the quorum needed to push through a controversial mid-decade redistricting plan. We'll bring you the latest on this high stakes political standoff and what it means for voting rights in Texas. And in a sweeping move affecting hundreds of thousands of workers, the Department of Veterans Affairs has terminated union contracts for over 400,000 employees. We'll break down which unions are impacted and what this means for VA staff nationwide. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjs (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(The Center Square) – Right before leaving for its week-long August recess, the U.S. Senate passed a minibus Friday evening containing three out of the 12 annual government funding bills. The package allocates more than $153 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2026 alone, $27 billion for agriculture and rural development, and $2.2 billion for the Legislative branch. More than 80 senators ultimately voted for the minibus. Appropriations bills are typically passed individually. The unorthodox move is the result of Republican leaders spending days negotiating with uncooperative Democrats, who stalled on confirming the rest of President Donald Trump's civilian nominees and by doing so prevented progress on the funding appropriations process.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_e61bb11f-68a4-4705-9ee0-61665af9eea5.html

-- On the Show: -- Dan Koh, host of The People's Cabinet, fills in for David. Subscribe to Dan's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/@ThePeoplesCabinet -- Trump announced plans for a new census excluding undocumented immigrants, a move that would face major constitutional challenges and could reshape congressional representation -- House Republicans, backed by Trump, are pursuing an aggressive redistricting push in states like Florida, Texas, and Ohio to gain a dozen or more seats before 2026 -- A minor online critique of Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad was amplified by right-wing influencers, media, and politicians into a broader culture-war controversy -- Former Biden adviser Anita Dunn told House investigators that while Biden aged physically in office, he remained fully engaged and in control, rejecting claims that staff made key decisions without his consent -- Trump, joined by economist Stephen Moore, showcased charts in the Oval Office to argue the U.S. economy is strong and justify firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief -- Trump has nominated Stephen Miran, his Council of Economic Advisers chair and architect of his tariff policy, to temporarily fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board -- The Trump administration has begun ending collective bargaining agreements for federal unions, starting with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stripped labor protections from over 400,000 employees -- Top tech CEOs like Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman have courted Trump with gifts, praise, and investments -- Trump has quietly considered stepping into New York's mayoral race to oppose leftist Zohran Mamdani, consulting with Andrew Cuomo and advisers -- On the Bonus Show: Trump wastes tax dollars on White House improvements, Trump threatens to take control of Washington DC, and much more... ☕ Trade Coffee: Code PAKMAN10 saves you $10 at https://drinktrade.com/pakman

August 8, 2025- State Sen. Jake Ashby, a Capital Region Republican who did combat tours overseas with the Army Reserves, talks about increasing services for Purple Heart awardees and reflects on the Trump administration's handling of U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

This week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul stood with the Texas Democrats in their fight against corrupt Republican gerrymandering. Today, she joins Hysteria to talk about fighting fire with fire, her own redistricting plans for New York, and how her state is handling Trump 2.0. Erin and Alyssa also discuss Trump's atrocious plans to build a White House ballroom, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace's latest pick-me BS, and a roundup of new reproductive rights threats around the country. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump's White House Ballroom Renovation Plans (NY Times 8/3)Nancy Mace Announces Run for Governor of South Carolina (NY Time 8/4)Miss United States Files Restraining Order Against GOP Rep. Cory Mills (Drop Site 8/5)Marjorie Taylor Greene says Republican party has lost touch with its base (The Guardian 8/4)Arkansas AG Threatens to Sue Sites for Providing Info About Abortion Pills (Autonomy News 11/2)Idaho's OBGYNs Are Jumping Ship (Jezebel 8/1)Trump moves to bar nearly all abortions at Veterans Affairs hospitals (WaPo 8/4)OB-GYN group won't take federal funds over Trump policies (Axios 8/1)Trump's cynical bait-and-switch on IVF (CNN 8/4)

A medical sales rep blows the whistle on an alleged kickback scheme where he says a company bribed staff at a Veterans Affairs hospital to buy unnecessary medical devices at taxpayer expense, and use them in medically unnecessary procedures on veterans. The company and doctors dispute the allegations and deny any wrongdoing.Order Sharyl's new bestselling book: “Follow the $cience.” Subscribe to my two podcasts: “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast” and “Full Measure After Hours.” Leave a review, subscribe and share with your friends! Support independent journalism by visiting the new Sharyl Attkisson store.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Armand Harpin, Director of Federal Healthcare at IMEG, joins this episode to discuss the firm's extensive work with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Defense Health Agency (DHA), and Indian Health Services. Under Armand's leadership, IMEG has been ranked the top Veterans Affairs engineering firm by BD+C Magazine.   “We serve the VA across probably 75 percent of the campuses throughout the country,” Armand says. These projects span a range of services, from facility condition assessments and master planning to infrastructure upgrades like boiler and chiller plants. “We've also spent a great deal of time over the last few years and are still involved in electronic health record projects for the VA,” Armand adds.   For most of the firm's federal healthcare projects, IMEG collaborates closely with more than 20 service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses—partnerships that are extremely valued. “It's a real pleasure to support those architectural and AE firms,” says Armand. On larger projects, those $100 million and above, the firm partners with national AEC firms across the country.   Armand says the federal healthcare market is currently experiencing a transitional period, with shake-ups in leadership within the VA's Office of Construction and Facilities Management (OCFM). “They've lost their senior director, they've lost a good portion of their associate directors, and so they're in the process of rebuilding,” he says. This comes as the VA continues to face major issues with its building stock; most VA facilities are 50 to 60 years old, creating significant operational challenges. “It's becoming more and more difficult... to provide for today's healthcare needs,” Armand says. Some major campuses, he adds, are being “decanted,” with their services being moved to leased, community-based outpatient clinics in more population-dense areas. “That's called ‘commercialization,' and it's been a critical piece for bringing services and positive outcomes to veterans in underserved areas.”   Speed and efficiency in project delivery have become top priorities, with Armand citing increased use of design-build and integrated delivery approaches to accelerate project timelines. One such example is a $600 million healthcare center project in El Paso, Texas, currently being executed by IMEG in partnership with Clark Construction.   Armand has been involved in the federal healthcare market for many years and his work in the sector hits close to home. “My brother served in the Air Force. My father served as a Marine... and passed away in the VA hospital in San Diego,” he says. “This is an incredibly personal mission.”   His passion also dovetails with IMEG's stated purpose to create positive outcomes for people, communities, and the planet.   “It's a mission of stewardship, of accountability, and trying to provide the healthcare outcomes that VA and active military patients need,” he says.

It's Wednesday, August 6th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark African Muslims have killed 150,000 people in last 10 years A report from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found militant Islamic groups have killed over 150,000 people across the continent in the last decade. Such groups killed 22,307 people in just the last year, a 60% increase from the previous year. Christian Daily International noted that a majority of them were Christians in West, East, and Central Africa.  The report highlighted violence in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, and Somalia. Each country appears on the Open Doors' World Watch List of the most dangerous countries to be a Christian.  Christian-majority countries have decreased A new report from Pew Research found the number of Christian-majority countries decreased between 2010 and 2020. The study found that 120 out of 201 countries had Christian majorities in 2020. That's down four countries from 2010.  The decrease in Christian-majority countries came with the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. Christians lost their majority status in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Uruguay. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated have become the majority in Uruguay, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.  Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.” Australia upholds ban on Christian doctor over pro-life, pro-heterosexual views Speaking of Australia, officials in the country recently upheld a ban on a Christian doctor for expressing his beliefs online. Dr. Jereth Kok is a general practitioner in Melbourne. He believed it was his duty to speak out on issues like abortion and sexually perverted lifestyles. However, the Medical Board of Australia suspended his medical license in 2019 after anonymous complaints about his social media posts. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal upheld the suspension last month. The doctor, a born-again Christian, defended his stance, telling the tribunal he expressed these views on a Christian website, driven by his belief that “abortion is immoral” as a Christian and that he felt “required to speak out about the issue.”  And, on transgender surgeries, he called it  “medical butchery” and “sterilizing disfigurement to healthy young bodies.” Lyle Shelton with Australia's Family First Party commented on the case. He said, “This is about more than one man. It's about whether Australians — especially Christian and conservative professionals — are still free to express their views without losing their livelihoods.” Trump prohibits veterans' hospitals from killing babies In the United States, the Trump administration is reversing a Biden-era policy that allowed veterans' hospitals to perform abortions. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs published the proposed rule on Monday. The new rule will prohibit publicly-funded V.A. hospitals from killing unborn babies.  A statement from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said, “We thank President Trump and V.A. Secretary [Doug] Collins for restoring the rule of law and ending the Biden administration's illegal policy that forced taxpayers to fund abortions through V.A. hospitals and violated state pro-life laws.” Microsoft reached market capitalization of $4 trillion Microsoft became the second company to reach a market capitalization of $4 trillion last week. This comes shortly after Nvidia reached a $4 trillion market cap last month. Microsoft's latest growth was driven by its Azure cloud computing business. Nvidia and Microsoft have profited significantly from the rise of artificial intelligence technology. Meanwhile, Apple trails at third for most valuable company with a market cap of $3 trillion. American Bible Society: San Fran's Gen Zers more open to Christianity than elders The American Bible Society released a report on the religious views of people in the California's San Francisco Bay Area. The region skews younger, smarter, and wealthier than the rest of the United States. People are also less likely to identify as Christian and more likely to experience stress and anxiety. However, younger generations are more open to Christianity in the Bay Area compared to older generations there and even compared to their peers in the rest of America.  The study noted, “Though the Bay Area is home to fewer Christians and more atheists than the United States as a whole, the majority of people in the younger generations are curious, open, and even wish they read the Bible more.” 2 Timothy 3:15 says, “From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” NASA planning to build nuclear reactor on moon And finally, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030, reports Politico. Listen to comments from Interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy. DUFFY: “We're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon, and to have a base on the moon, we need energy. Energy is important. And if we're going to be able to sustain life on the moon to then go to Mars, this technology is critically important.” A directive from Duffy stated, “Since March 2024, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid-2030s. The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a [permanent] presence if not there first.”  Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, August 6th, in the year of our Lord 2025. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Welcome to another powerful episode of the Inclusive AF Podcast with Jackye Clayton and Katee Van Horn!

Mississippians with ties to Israel and Gaza share their thoughts on the current hunger crisis.Then, changes to federal funding isn't slowing the state's push to expand broadband access.Plus, officials at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Jackson celebrate 100 years of medical research by VAs across the nation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, discover how the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs (MDVA) supports our heroes with benefits like state veterans homes and suicide prevention programs, and explore the vital role of the Minnesota Association of County Veterans Service Officers in partnering with MDVA. Guests include: Anne Sonnee – Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs Steve McCarthy – […] The post Serving Minnesota Veterans: The Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs appeared first on Minnesota Military Radio.

As the Trump administration continues cutting tens of thousands of jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, staff and vets who rely on Atlanta's VA braces for changes. We also profile a program that helps those previously incarcerated find housing that is now struggling to stay intact after federal funds are drying up. And as a variety of industries in Georgia--from construction to tech--report they're struggling to find skilled workers, we look at a new trade school aiming to help bridge the gap between education and labor. Plus, we have a remembrance of philanthropist and developer Tom Cousins, who died this week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scott Schober, Cyber Expert, Author of "Hacked Again," and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems, sits down with host David Braue to reflect on a 2006 data breach which served as a cybersecurity wake up call for the Department of Veterans Affairs and the rest of the federal government. This episode of Data Security is sponsored by Cimcor, the developer of CimTrak, a Real-time, File Integrity Monitoring, Network Configuration, and Compliance solution. Learn more at https://cimcor.com • For more on cybersecurity, visit us at https://cybersecurityventures.com

Veterans Affairs is getting a new permanent watchdog. The Senate confirmed senior VA advisor Cheryl Mason to serve as the next VA inspector general. President Trump fired the last VA inspector general, Michael Missal, in January along with 16 other agency IGs. Mason previously served as the first woman to chair the Board of Veterans Appeals.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's a new position in the U.S. government: Federal chief artificial intelligence officer. Gregory Barbaccia has begun to refer to himself as the Federal CAIO, in addition to his current role as the federal government's chief information officer. A recent interview with CNBC referred to him this way and a federal official focused on AI confirmed to FedScoop that Barbaccia had used that title in a recent meeting. In a social media post last week, Barbaccia also used both titles. The new title comes amid the Trump administration's continued focus on federal adoption of artificial intelligence. It follows the White House AI Action Plan, which was released last week and endorsed “transformative use of AI [that] can help deliver the highly responsive government the American people expect and deserve.” Still, the AI Action Plan makes no mention of a new position of CAIO for the whole federal government. Neither does the executive order that established the council or subsequent Office of Management and Budget actions. There was no federal CAIO in the Biden administration, and it's not clear any formal action has been taken to establish the position. Federal agencies are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence to further their missions, according to a new watchdog report that found use cases of the emerging technology jumping by ninefold in a selection of nearly a dozen agencies last year. In a report published Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office said generative AI use cases across a group of 11 federal agencies increased from 32 to 282 cases from 2023 to 2024, per an analysis of those agencies' inventories. The GAO laid out several ways these agencies harnessed generative AI last year, stating the technology can “improve written communications, information access efficiency, and program status tracking.” Examples included the Department of Veterans Affairs using automation for medical imaging processing in veterans' diagnostic services, along with the Department of Health and Human Services' initiative to extract information from publications regarding the containment of the poliovirus. HHS reported the largest jump out of the 11 agencies, going from seven generative AI use cases in 2023 to 116 in 2024, according to the report. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Episode #103 Chas Sampson, a veteran who transitioned from the military to various roles, including the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs, now runs Seven Principles, a company that helps veterans with VA disability claims. Chas shared his journey from North Carolina to Virginia Beach, his military service, and his transition to civilian life. He emphasized the importance of having a plan and understanding the VA's rating system. Chas also discussed the challenges veterans face, including the need for comprehensive medical records and the impact of aging on disability ratings. Additionally, he discussed his involvement in representing NFL players for disability benefits, highlighting the similarities between the experiences of military and NFL veterans. Rob Robinson discusses the importance of planning and having assets, like the seven principles, for veterans transitioning from the military to business or other careers. He highlights the competitive nature of the NFL, noting only 350 players are drafted annually from 117,000 college football players. Emphasizing the need for good character and representation, he advises athletes to focus on their demeanor and communication skills. Robinson concludes by promoting the value of veterans' skills in entrepreneurship and encourages listeners to subscribe to his podcast for more resources and insights.As mentioned in the Podcast:  Seven Principles: https://sevenprinciples.com/ Grit: Angela Duckworth - https://a.co/d/9gop15Z Disclaimer: The content of the "Philosophy From the Front Line" podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of any affiliated organizations or sponsors. This podcast does not offer legal, financial, or professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult appropriate professionals before making decisions based on the content presented. "Philosophy From the Front Line" assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content or actions taken based on the information provided during the podcast episodes.Fair Use Statement: This podcast may contain copyrighted material not specifically authorized by the copyright owner. "Philosophy From the Front Line" is making such material available to educate, inform, and provide commentary under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. copyright law (Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act). We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material.Used for non-commercial, educational, or research purposes.Critically analyzed, reviewed, or discussed.Used in a transformative way that adds new meaning or message to the original work.If you own any content used and believe it infringes on your copyright, don't hesitate to get in touch with us directly, and we will address the matter promptly. These statements are adapted from existing disclaimers used in previous episodes of the "Philosophy From the Front Line" podcast.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/philosophy-from-the-front-line--4319845/support.

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com The current administration has a focus on reducing costs while also improving the delivery of goods and services. When it comes to handling data, innovations in code generated by artificial intelligence have enabled this remarkable goal. The challenge arises when transitioning from the data center to the hospital. " Fail early" may be a mantra for a software developer, but in a healthcare situation, it is unacceptable.   Today, we sat down with two executives from Phillips and explored the value of applying mobile technology to reduce cost and enhance patient outcomes in hospitals. Both gentlemen are military veterans, and the focus of the discussion is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which operates 170 medical centers and employs over 470,000 staff members. When examining the population of veterans, we can see that it has a wide distribution in rural areas. This can mean long trips for patients to get care. During the interview, we look at wearable devices that can provide information to physicians to help make treatment decisions. These can provide real-time health monitoring to act as an "early warning" system for patients. For example, it can detect signs of infectious diseases before symptoms appear.   Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence enable Phillips to develop a risk score calculation that reduces exposure to vulnerable populations. Explore opportunities to further deploy Philips' remote monitoring and telehealth technologies within the VA healthcare system.

Show SummaryOn today's episode, feature a conversation Maryalice Morro, a Navy Veteran, Healthcare professional, and former Hospital Administrator for both the Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Provide FeedbackAs a dedicated member of the audience, we would like to hear from you about the show. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts about the show in this short feedback survey. By doing so, you will be entered to receive a signed copy of one of our host's three books on military and veteran mental health. About Today's GuestMaryalice Morro combines her energy and relentless enthusiasm to motivate and build high-performing teams. She is a visionary leader recognized for strategic planning, innovation, financial stewardship and talent management. She delivers quality outcomes while meeting project and financial goals. She recognizes the strengths in others and inspires them to achieve and surpass their goals by mentoring, supporting and creating the vision for their success.Maryalice is currently a consultant and works with aspiring leaders through formal and informal coaching and mentoring. She is an adjunct faculty for the Citadel's undergraduate nursing program, and several of Villanova University's certificate programs. She is the Program Coordinator for the Anne W. McNulty Institute's Women's Leadership Development Certificate Program and led the multidisciplinary team in creating this program. She serves as teaching faculty for University of Pennsylvania's Doctor of Nursing Practice, Executive Leadership track.Previously, Maryalice spent 35 years in government, with 29 years on active duty in the United States Navy, serving around the world in support of peacetime, humanitarian, and wartime missions. She was the Commanding Officer (CEO) of the Pensacola Naval Hospital and Chief of Staff for Navy Medicine East, serving 15 medical commands in the United States and abroad. She was appointed to the Senior Executive Service and was selected to serve as Director (CEO) for the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin, GA, transforming an underperforming medical center into a vibrant healthcare center to meet the veterans' 21st century needs.Maryalice holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Villanova University, MSN from the Catholic University of America, MS from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and BSN from Villanova University. She is Board Certified by AACN as a Nurse Executive – Advanced.Links Mentioned During the EpisodeMaryalice Morro on LinkedInVillanova University Women's Leadership Development CertificatePsychArmor Resource of the WeekThis week's PsychArmor Resource of the Week is the PsychArmor Course Myths and Facts of Military Leaders. This course identifies four of the most popular myths about military leaders and how they don't align with the reality of working alongside Veterans and Service members. You can find the resource here:  https://learn.psycharmor.org/courses/The-Myths-and-Facts-of-Military-Leaders Episode Partner: Are you an organization that engages with or supports the military affiliated community? Would you like to partner with an engaged and dynamic audience of like-minded professionals? Reach out to Inquire about Partnership Opportunities Contact Us and Join Us on Social Media Email PsychArmorPsychArmor on TwitterPsychArmor on FacebookPsychArmor on YouTubePsychArmor on LinkedInPsychArmor on InstagramTheme MusicOur theme music Don't Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families.  You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com  

Congress is back in session this week with the House wrapping up its work before its August recess. On the agenda: legislation to increase financial oversight of the Veterans Affairs department, and votes on bills to increase penalties on people who reenter the U.S. after being deported, and to reform the Clean Water Act's permitting process. The Senate still has another work week before leaving for their annual break. On their agenda: confirmation votes for several executive nominations. Hanging over all of this--the ongoing issue of the Jeffrey Epstein files. House Speaker Mike Johnson says doesn't have any plans to put a resolution on the floor that calls for the Trump administration to release Epstein files. Instead, he wants to give administration time to put out documents on its own. And yesterday was the six-month anniversary of the second Trump administration, and polls say Americans are giving the president mixed reviews. A new Decision Desk HQ poll shows the president's disapproval rating near its highest level since January. Meanwhile, a new CBS News poll shows Americans say they want the president to focus on consumer prices instead of raising tariffs. And the Washington Post's polling average showing a clear downturn in the president's approval rating on immigration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Frm Congressman, Author of the ADAHappy ADA 35Tony Coelho has spent his entire adult life helping advance the lives of people with disabilities. He calls this his “ministry”. Congressman Steny Hoyer, former House Majority Leader, says that the disability community call him their “voice” and “champion.”Diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 22 years old, Tony's ministry is marked by significant milestones: primary author and sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — the most important piece of civil rights legislation in the last 40 years; advocating for the ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and convincing President Bill Clinton to establish the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor.  Tony continued to advocate for civil rights for individuals with disabilities by convincing President Barack Obama to issue an executive order enforcing Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to hire people with disabilities as they have been doing since 1973 for women and minorities.  He went on to work with the Biden White House to improve access to the internet for individuals who are blind, deaf, and physically impaired.Tony is a former six-term United States Congressman from California, elected in 1978 and serving until 1989. He served on the Agriculture, Interior, Veterans Affairs, and Administration Committees during his tenure, specializing in disability rights. In 1986, Tony was elected House Majority Whip, the third most powerful position in the House of Representatives.After leaving Congress, Tony joined Wertheim Schroder & Company, Inc., an investment-banking firm in New York, where he served as a Managing Director and then as President and CEO of Wertheim Schroder Investment Services, a firm that he grew from $400 million to $4 billion in managed investments. He formed ETC w/TCI, an education and training technology company in Washington, D.C., where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Currently, he serves on a number of corporate boards of directors and i  the founding partner of a national public affairs firm.© 2025 Building Abundant Success!!2025 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23bAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

What if giving birth left you with nightmares, hypervigilance, and a constant sense of dread — and no one believed you? Worse, what if you didn't think it mattered because, after all, the baby is healthy? In this eye-opening episode, host Gabe Howard talks with ADAA member expert Dr. Lauren Sippel about a condition many have never heard of: postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr. Sippel explains what postpartum PTSD really looks like, why it's often misdiagnosed, and how to tell the difference between typical new parent stress and clinical trauma. Often overshadowed by postpartum depression and dismissed by loved ones and providers, postpartum PTSD is a silent struggle affecting far more people than we realize. If you or someone you love has felt lost or dismissed after childbirth, this conversation could be life-changing. Special thanks to Evernorth Health Services for providing funding for today's episode. Additional Links: PC-PTSD-5—infographic (self-screening tool): https://adaa.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/How%20to%20Know%20If%20You%20Should%20Talk%20with%20Your%20Healthcare%20Provider%20About%20PTSD.pdf Postpartum Support International website: https://www.postpartum.net/ “There are so many things that can happen in that delivery. I've heard about the peaceful ones. I personally had two unmedicated ones that were not intentionally unmedicated. There was a lot of screaming. And my babies were healthy. And some things went as smoothly as expected and some things did not go as planned. And one of them was pretty scary. And thankfully I did not experience PTSD symptoms from that. Could I tell you why, Gabe? Absolutely not. And if I did, I probably couldn't tell you that either.” ~Lauren M. Sippel, PhD Our guest, Lauren Sippel, PhD, is the Deputy Director of the Northeast Program Evaluation Center in the Department of Veterans Affairs and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She co-leads the ADAA PTSD Special Interest Group. Her research focuses on improving the quality and effectiveness of psychotherapies, particularly those for PTSD, using strategies such as medication augmentation and family involvement. Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, "Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations," available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. Gabe is also the host of the "Inside Bipolar" podcast with Dr. Nicole Washington. Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can't imagine life without. To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We got two great guests for you this hump day. First, we talk to Brandon Roberts, an investigative journalist for ProPublica about the error prone AI program that DOGE implemented to determine Veterans Affairs cuts. We also discuss how FDA cuts have made it difficult to regulate the quality and safety of pharmaceuticals imported from other countries. Then we talk to Memo Torres an award-winning food and lifestyle Journalist and director of L.A. Taco who has been doing incredible work covering ICE's attacks on California. Check out their coverage here: L.A. TACO - Celebrating The Taco Lifestyle in Los Angeles. Also if you are in the LA area and you spot ICE agents in the wild notify L.A. Taco by emailing tips@lataco.com and they will spread the word. In the fun half we watch Hakeem Jeffries struggle to cope with the idea of getting primaried. Then we check in with Dave Rubin and his old boss, Glenn Beck. They provide some clarity on the future of the Democratic party and their plot to destroy the west. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/majority   SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/  

It's Casual Friday and Sam is still hosting solo today as Emma continues to neglect the show for her “honeymoon”. Whatever. On the program today we listen to Sen Kirsten Gilibrand (D-NY) lose her mind and spew a stream of racist sewage out of her mouth towards Zohran Mamdani. Ryan Grim joins for a wrap up of the week's news. Subscribe to Ryan's newsletter here Drop Site News Dr Adam Gaffney joins us to discuss how proposed cuts to Medicaid will ultimately kill people. In the fun half we watch Sen Jon Ossoff (D-GA) expose VA Sec Collins for having no plan to execute the proposed $17-18 billion in cuts to medical services for the Veterans Affairs. Rep Liccardo (D-CA) exposes the Trump adminstration for dropping cases against those who have contributed to his slush fund. We also visit radical Mormon fundamentalist, Glen Beck as he uses tired 9/11 era Islamophobia to attack Zohran. All that and more, folks. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 SUNSET LAKE: Use the code LEFTISBEST to save 20% at SunsetLakeCBD.com  on all their farm fresh CBD products for people and pets. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/