Latest news with #HalRogers
E&E News
4 days ago
- Politics
- E&E News
House Republicans buck Trump on NOAA cuts
House Republican appropriators would cut NOAA by nearly $400 million for fiscal 2026, but they're rejecting deeper reductions proposed by the White House. The Commerce-Justice-Science bill — released Monday and up for subcommittee markup Tuesday — represents a blowback to the administration's efforts to dismantle the science agency, including dissolving the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. The legislation would still amount to a 6 percent cut from current levels, and Republicans focused more on its law enforcement portions than science provisions. Advertisement 'This bill importantly balances federal funding to support American values and the priorities of the Trump Administration by investing in programs that strengthen our economy and policies that protect our constitutional rights,' said Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee. 'This bill also ensures that America remains the global leader in space exploration as adversaries like China ramp up global aggression,' he said. Republicans say the bill includes 'reducing spending on reckless climate change efforts' and 'right-size the bureaucracy of the federal government by reducing salaries and expenses where appropriate.' Committee Democrats said the bill 'continues Republicans' attacks on America's scientific and economic competitiveness by cutting billions from science, technology development, STEM education, and aeronautics research of NASA and the National Science Foundation.' The legislation would slash funding for independent ocean species research, with a 78 percent cut for the Marine Mammal Commission, established in 1972 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The National Science Foundation would see a 23 percent cut of $2 billion. That's significantly less than the 57 percent proposed drop included in the Trump administration budget request. The Republican bill would hold funding levels steady for NASA, at roughly $24.8 billion, compared to a 25 percent cut under the White House budget proposal of $18.8 billion. The House bill would codify President Donald Trump's executive orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and prohibit federal funding 'for DEI efforts and critical race theory.' The Senate Appropriations Committee planned to release its own Commerce-Justice-Science bill last week but a dispute over FBI headquarters thwarted that effort. But lawmakers discussing the bill said it would include full funding for the National Weather Service. Senators are working on their spending bills on a bipartisan basis.
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Eastern Kentucky Democrat rails against Medicaid cuts in launch for Congress bid
Ned Pillersdorf thinks a 'political earthquake' just struck Eastern Kentucky. That's what the newly minted Democratic candidate for the 5th Congressional District said on the Fourth of July in Prestonsburg just one day after Congress passed a budget bill that will extend more than $4.5 trillion worth of tax cuts and is projected to result in about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid spending over the next 10 years. The 5th District is one of the poorest and most Medicaid-dependent districts in the country, and current Rep. Hal Rogers voted for the bill. But the 'earthquake' of a backlash would have to be truly devastating for Pillersdorf to get close in the 2026 election. Rogers has won almost all of his 23 general elections in landslide fashion. The last time a Democrat even got within single digits of him was 1992, when Pillersdorf himself came in second place for the Democratic nomination, and the Eastern Kentucky-centric district has grown more red since then. Pillersdorf's native Floyd County is a microcosm of the political headwinds he faces as a Democrat. Though proponents take heart in Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's 14-point win there in 2023, Republican President Donald Trump won the county by 59 points last year, and Rogers' margin was 57 points in 2022. And in most of the other counties in the district, Republicans ran up the score even more. The early gambit of the Pillersdorf campaign is that the district will revolt over the Medicaid issue and voters will appreciate his work in the legal and nonprofit spheres. Pillersdorf's stump speech largely covered those two topics, laser-focused on Medicaid when it came to policy. He told a crowd of around 100 people in Prestonsburg, across the street from his law office, Friday evening that 'they're clawing back our benefits.' 'Frankly, it is disgraceful. We are the second-poorest congressional district in the nation, and our congressman cast the deciding vote to rip away benefits from our vulnerable neighbors,' Pillersdorf said. Estimates from nonpartisan groups indicate many Americans will eventually lose Medicaid coverage, ranging from 12 million to 17 million, due to the changes in the bill which include a new work requirement, changes in how Medicaid providers are taxed and funding changes for states like Kentucky that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Dubbed by Trump the 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' the legislation is also expected to hit hospitals in lower-income areas like rural Appalachia, though some of that cost will be defrayed by a $50 billion rural health fund. The bill passed the House and the Senate each time by just one vote. In a statement, Rogers framed the cuts to Medicaid spending as 'protecting' the program for those who need it most in a press statement on his vote. 'With 4.8 million able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid, who choose not to work, the bill enforces a 20-hour weekly work requirement for those individuals who do not have small kids. Without question, we are adding integrity and strength to Medicaid and SNAP assistance for those who need it most in the years ahead.' Rogers wrote. The political calculation behind the cuts in Medicaid spending, Pillersdorf said, is that the recipients won't cause them pain at the polls. 'Why are the Republicans doing this? Here's my analysis: They know the people on Medicaid, food stamps, and they have made the political calculation that they don't vote,' Pillersdorf said. Pillersdorf, 70, is a known figure in Eastern Kentucky. Perhaps most notably, he led an effort to recruit lawyers to represent people who faced losing Social Security disability benefits as a result of the biggest disability scam in U.S. history, the long-running, massive fraud perpetrated by Eric C. Conn. He also litigated on behalf of coal miners who went on strike at the Blackjewel mine site in Harlan County; ran the political campaigns of his wife, former Kentucky Supreme Court justice Janet Stumbo; helped found an animal shelter and chairs the board of a school for disadvantaged children. Pillersdorf noted Rogers was 'incredibly helpful' during the Conn affair, but his vote on the bill gave Pillersdorf the final push to jump in the race. Rogers' age, while not a pillar of the campaign, was also mentioned. Pillersdorf questioned the 87-year-old's effectiveness in a Congress that could potentially flip to Democratic control after the 2026 midterm elections, when he'd start his term at 89. 'By all accounts, the Democrats are going to take back the (U.S.) House. Who will be representing the Fifth Congressional District? What if it's a 91-year-old man in the minority party? He won't be able to do nothing to help us,' Pillersdorf said. Pillersdorf told the Herald-Leader after the rally that he will not be content with a 'moral victory' of tightening the margin between a Democrat like himself and Rogers, despite the U.S. Dean of the House winning his last four contested general elections by an average of more than 61 percentage points. He pointed out that Beshear overperformed in the district — losing by about 16 points compared to Trump's 59-point 2020 margin — in his successful 2023 reelection. 'I know we're red, and the Democratic brand is toxic here, but I think the deck has been reshuffled in politics. I could not have won last year, but I think I can win next year because of this political earthquake, firestorm, whatever you want to call it,' Pillersdorf said. 'People in the past lost their election over the Affordable Care Act, some lost their election because of the Iraq War. I think this is 10 times bigger than both of them combined here,' he added.' He did not share how much he expected Beshear to help him in the race but said that the governor was the first person to pledge a contribution to his campaign. Mickey McCoy, a Martin County activist present for the rally, said Pillersdorf's brand will help. 'Ned is known as an honest lawyer, which is almost oxymoronic. And people know him. They call him 'Ned,' they don't call him counselor or sir,' McCoy said. McClain Dyer, a 22-year-old vice chair of the Carter County Democratic Party, argued a Pillersdorf victory is possible if the campaign can find a way to get its Medicaid message out ahead of conservative social issues like abortion or transgender women's participation in athletics. 'These big social issues that Republicans talk about, these 'woke' issues, those aren't things that are affecting everyday rural Kentuckians, but that's the only thing they hear about because Republicans are being louder than we are in this election cycle,' Dyer said. 'We have to be louder about the things that rural Kentuckians know that they need, like Medicaid.' Dyer suggested that the race could be within reach if Pillersdorf and his team find a way to flood social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Not everyone shares that assessment. Greg Stumbo a Prestonsburg native and former Democratic speaker of the house and attorney general said Pillersdorf is a legitimate candidate and deserves plaudits for his contributions to the community, agreeing also with his criticisms of the Trump-backed bill. He doesn't see much of a path to victory for him, though. 'I credit Ned for running, but I would be very surprised for the district to change. Getting the old Democrats back is a huge challenge. There's no sign to me that it will happen. They're pretty much Trump people.' Stumbo added that he didn't think concerns over Rogers' advanced age would matter much. He mentioned the advanced age of the district — at 41.6, its median age is the oldest in the state — and their familiarity with Rogers' brand. The Republican Party of Kentucky's take is more definitive. 'On behalf of the Republican Party of Kentucky, I want to congratulate Ned on his decision to join the long list of political lightweights the Kentucky Democratic Party has recruited to serve as a warm body and political martyr in the 5th District,' party spokesperson Andy Westberry said in a statement to the Herald-Leader.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Administration seeks to rescind $500 million for Eastern Kentucky prison
Federal authorities have asked Congress to cancel $500 million designated to build another large prison in Eastern Kentucky. The U.S. Department of Justice included a request to rescind the funding in its budget request for the upcoming federal fiscal year, which starts in October. The proposed Letcher County prison has been a source of controversy, lauded by supporters as an economic boon for a county hit hard by job losses in the coal industry but decried by opponents as an unnecessary boondoggle. This is not the first time officials have tried to scotch money for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) project. The administration of President Donald J. Trump tried to cancel it in his first term, and the administration of President Joe Biden did the same. Now Trump's administration is trying again. However, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican who represents Eastern and Southern Kentucky and has been a key supporter of the project, has been able to beat back several prior efforts to cancel the funding. Rogers said he's ready to defend the project again. 'The people of Letcher County have invested nearly 20 years of planning and preparation for a new federal prison to bring more than 300 much-needed jobs to our region,' Rogers said in a statement to the Herald-Leader. 'As a senior appropriator, I have helped secure more than half a billion dollars in federal funding that remain available exclusively for this facility, which will help address BOP's need for modernized facilities. 'The proposed prison has surpassed multiple environmental studies and every ounce of red tape that has been doled out. Years of investments have been made in good faith to support this project at the federal, state and local levels, and I will continue working to see it to completion.' There are four federal prisons in the eastern end of the state, in McCreary, Martin, Clay and Boyd counties. The Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department, approved building the prison last October after years of study. The agency chose a site at Roxana, about 10 miles from Whitesburg, that was surface mined decades ago, leaving a flat spot atop a steep hill. Developing the site would require extensive excavation and compacting, driving the estimated cost of the project to more than $500 million. The prison would house more than 1,100 prisoners in the main medium-security section and about 250 others in an adjacent minimum-security camp, according to an environmental assessment by the BOP. The prison is projected to employ 300 to 350 people, though in the early years many of those employees would transfer in from other facilities. Those jobs are a key reason many residents support the project. In addition to rescinding $500 million from the Letcher County project, the budget request from the Department of Justice includes rescinding $50 million from a prison project in Kansas and $60 million for a law enforcement training center. Opponents have raised a number of complaints about the proposed Letcher County prison, including that it would perpetuate high rates of incarceration; that it could hinder efforts to attract other kinds of jobs to the county; and that it would damage the environment. 'This prison would be very harmful if built. It would harm my family, our history, our use of the land and our way of life,' Wayne Whitaker, a resident of Letcher County, said Friday in a release from an organization called Building Community, Not Prisons. 'It would also harm the future of Letcher County as a tourist, educational, and recreational destination.' Opponents of the prison bought a parcel of land at the site to try to block the project.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Here's where Laurel, Pulaski County residents can get Social Security card replaced following tornadoes
KENTUCKY (FOX 56)—Tornado survivors in need of a replacement Social Security card will be able to get them on Wednesday and Thursday. Congressman Hal Rogers posted on Facebook around 2 p.m. that the multi-agency recovery centers in Laurel and Pulaski counties would be issuing replacement Social Security cards from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, June 4 and 5. Here's where Laurel, Pulaski County residents can get Social Security card replaced following tornadoes Second Publix location opens in Lexington Kentucky considers new area code as 502 nears exhaustion The Laurel County Multi-Agency Recovery Center is at the Laurel County Public Library. The Pulaski County Multi-Agency Recovery Center is at the Center for Rural Development in Somerset. Tornado survivors in need of a replacement Social Security card who are unable to get to a recovery center on Wednesday or Thursday can still request a replacement online here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Medicaid cuts will harm rural Republican communities most
Though President Trump promised a 'big beautiful' budget bill, what narrowly passed the House of Representatives in the early morning hours of May 22 will be anything but a big beautiful win for millions of marginalized Americans, and Medicaid beneficiaries won't be the only ones who feel the pinch. In fact, if passed, this legislation would destabilize the publicly insured and privately insured alike, especially in America's many rural communities. Trump's budget dramatically reduces the robustness of the federal social safety net, on which three in ten Americans (including nearly half of children) rely for critical programs ranging from health care to food security. Most drastically, the bill is set to cut Medicaid by nearly $800 billion over 10 years, add burdensome and ineffective work requirements and kick as many as 13 million people off their health insurance. These cuts will have demonstrably negative consequences for millions of Americans, including those who are not themselves enrolled in Medicaid. The irony is that despite nearly every Republican House member voting for its passage, it is rural, Republican majority communities that will face the most extreme consequences. Nineteen percent of Americans, or over 72 million, are insured by Medicaid and the share of the 66 million rural Americans on Medicaid is even higher at 23 percent. And not only do America's rural communities tend to vote more conservatively, but this is even true of Medicaid beneficiaries, the very people whose health coverage Republican legislators seek to strip away. Survey data from the Cooperative Election Study reveal that the majority of rural Medicaid beneficiaries in Republican states and districts are people who identify as Republicans. This is especially true in Republican congressional districts and states with Republican senators. For example, a majority of residents in districts held by some Republican congressmen — Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.) come to mind specifically — are enrolled in Medicaid (54 percent and 64 percent, respectively). About 40 percent of residents of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) are enrolled in Medicaid. What's more, in most of these cases, the beneficiaries are Republican voters themselves. Meanwhile, in states with two Republican senators like Arkansas and Kentucky, nearly 30 percent of residents are enrolled in Medicaid, and between 40 and 55 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries reside in Republican-leaning rural areas. In each of these instances, survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation show that the majority of even Republican beneficiaries approve of Medicaid. Not only do 61 percent of Republicans see Medicaid as important to their communities, but 67 percent of Republicans want Congress to preserve or increase Medicaid funding. Political scientist David Mayhew famously argued that members of Congress are single-minded seekers of reelection. Yet even with broad public support for Medicaid and health care's salience in the minds of voters, Republicans' efforts to cut Medicaid would remove health insurance from their own voters. Beyond the effects experienced by enrollees directly, the proposed Medicaid cuts will reverberate throughout and harm all residents of rural communities by undermining the financial security of rural hospitals. According to estimates from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, not only have nearly 200 rural hospitals already closed in the last two decades, but over 300 rural hospitals face 'immediate risk' of closure in the coming years. What's more, the vast majority of these vulnerable hospitals are in Republican majority communities in the Republican states that failed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. A key reason why these hospitals face closure is due to 'uncompensated care' costs, which accrue when uninsured or underinsured patients seek medical treatment for which they are unable to pay. Not only do rural hospitals experience higher rates of uncompensated care, but it proves more debilitating than in the case of research hospitals, which can steady themselves with higher insurance reimbursement rates and subsidies. Medicaid expansion has proven critical in strengthening these hospitals' financial security, because it drastically decreased the percentage of people showing up at hospitals without health insurance. The result has been that more rural hospitals have been able to remain open. In contrast, roughly 80 percent of rural hospitals that have closed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act have been in the Republican states that failed to expand Medicaid. The economic and health effects of rural hospital closures are catastrophic for all residents of affected communities, regardless of their insurance status. Numerous studies have shown that rural hospital closures lead to significant increases in mortality. Additionally, birthing outcomes and access to obstetric-gynecological care tend to suffer following closures. Many of these negative effects are driven by the drastically increased distances individuals must travel to receive care. When a rural hospital closes, patients are left to travel on average 20 miles farther to receive common health care services, and 40 miles farther for specialized care. That time is precious in the setting of acute health problems. Regardless of one's insurance status or provider, the farther you are from a hospital following a car crash or after a stroke, the worse the consequences. For most closures, Republican voters themselves and those with lower incomes are the people who face the longest distances to care following closures. Cutting Medicaid will only further restrict access to care and worsen health outcomes for rural people, regardless of insurance status. Outside of the immediate health effects, hospitals are typically the largest employers in congressional districts, and that is no less true in rural communities. In fact, the health care sector can supply as many as 10 percent of the jobs in a rural community. While some have argued that rural hospital closures are a symptom of communities' economic decline, their effects are also unmistakable, leading to a marked increase in unemployment and a reduction in residents' average income. In his recent New York Times op-ed, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) argued against Trump's budget. He wrote that while Trump promised to protect working-class tax cuts and social insurance programs such as Medicaid, the 'Wall Street wing' was instead seeking to slash health insurance for the working poor in a manner that he characterized as 'both morally wrong and politically suicidal.' The data are clear and Hawley is correct. Trump's budget will actively harm the health and incomes of rural communities and Republican voters, well beyond those who themselves are enrolled in Medicaid. Michael Shepherd is an assistant professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. Miranda Yaver is an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
