January 28, 2025

Trump shuts down federal grants, corruption cops fired, disrupting the civil service purge, and more!

Jan 28, 2025

Contact all members of Congress:
By phone: (202) 224-3121
By email: Congress.gov
By US mail: Representatives / Senators
By fax: Representatives / Senators
By Resistbot: Resist.bot
Contact White House or other federal agencies:
usa.gov/federal-agencies

If you have questions, comments, and especially submissions for actions, please email us at roganslisttips@gmail.com!

SIREN: TRUMP HALTS TRILLIONS IN FEDERAL GRANTS
Last night independent journalist Marisa Kabas and the Washington Post confirmed that Trump’s Office of Management and Budget has halted *all federal grants* and will require them to make it through a political screening before they move forward. That’s potentially trillions of dollars of funds that countless people, communities, non-profits, non-governmental organizations, universities, and businesses were counting on that are off limits until further notice, and will now be subject to a test to ensure they are consistent with Trump’s views and personal agenda. The potential harms here are enormous and everyone in the country is at risk. This is still developing and we will have more on this in the days ahead, but this cannot be allowed to quietly stand.
- Let’s reach out to our members of Congress and demand answers as to what they’re doing to get these funds turned back on immediately - and they need to have some.
- With our senators especially, let’s remind them this is exactly what Office of Management and Budget director nominee Russ Vought promised the federal government would do, and it is more important than ever that they vote against him.
- As the denial of grants hits projects, institutions and workplace we or those around us are involved in, let’s make sure we’re telling our stories. We should contact our own members of Congress; House Appropriations ranking Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro; any relevant advocacy group; and local and regional media. Trump’s bullying is going to cause real pain for real people, and we need to make sure everyone knows this is hurting their neighbors and stopping progress they support.

FRIDAY NIGHT MASSACRE OF INSPECTORS GENERAL
The job of inspectors general in our government agencies is to serve as an independent voice rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. These are some of the folks we look to keep politicians like Trump and their donors like Musk from robbing us blind. On Friday night, Donald Trump fired 18 of them – including those who monitor the Departments of Defense, State, Health and Human Services and Labor. (This exact move was recommended in Project 2025.) These firings needs to be understood as him enabling theft by him and his cronies. They’re also illegal – as the inspectors general pointed out, the President is required to provide a substantive reason for the firing of an inspector general to Congress along with 30 days’ notice. We are almost certainly going to see litigation, but the court case is not enough – we need to ensure the public knows Trump is giving his appointees permission to steal. Let’s reach out to our members of Congress and tell them they need to take some sort of action in response to this Friday Night Massacre or admit complicity in the corruption that will result, and they need to be loudly and aggressively ensuring the American people hear from them that Trump is firing the anti-corruption watchdogs. We can start with this language from Public Citizen.

THEY’RE PURGING DIVERSITY FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
The anti-corruption cops aren’t the only ones getting purged by the Trump Administration. They have made a priority in week one of targeting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility – shutting down programs, closing offices and firing staffers they deem “DEIA.” This apparently includes anything they feel is too focused on “DEIA” or promoted by “DEIA,” including those “disguised” with “coded or imprecise language,” and federal employees are being ordered to inform on their co-workers for having done “DEIA work.” This has led commentators like Elie Mystal to raise concerns offices or staff will be purged based mostly on “looking like they might be” DEIA, that this will be a smokescreen for threatening the jobs and future hiring of women, people of color and other marginalized folks. The commandant of the Coast Guard, the first woman ever to lead a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, has been removed for being “too focused on DEI.” We must do whatever we can to throw a wrench in their plans. Folks have started with some simple actions, such as flooding the DEIA snitch line with spam. Let’s do our part by creating burner email accounts using Proton and joining in sending deiatruth@opm.gov fake reports and copypastas, signing them up for advertising emails and newsletters, or whatever we can think of. We can also do the same for their addresses to report our undocumented neighbors at ICEOPRIntake@ice.dhs.gov. (h/t
Jessica Craven
)

A RUSSIAN ASSET RUNNING AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE?
Along with endangered and dangerous nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard will also get her Senate hearing this week, appearing before the Intelligence Committee on Thursday. There has been genuine and at times open debate as to whether Gabbard is compromised by Russia. She is a longtime and frequent defender of the Putin regime and parrot for their propaganda, advocating for U.S. foreign policy towards Syria and Ukraine to take the positions Moscow would prefer. (In 2018, a Syrian dissident was wary of testifying in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee out of concern Gabbard would share his identity with the Assad dictatorship.) She has long been considered the likeliest of Trump’s picks to fail to pass muster, with senators including Mitch McConnell and Intelligence Committee Republicans Susan Collins (R-ME) and Todd Young (R-IN) still not on board. Let’s use this script from Indivisible and let our senators know America cannot afford a DNI we cannot trust. (We can also take a moment to urge them to oppose Kennedy and Patel, and either thank or criticize them for their votes on Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem’s confirmations.)

HELP STOP DEPORTATIONS BY CURBING THE ROLE OF SHERIFFS
Despite Trump’s abhorrent executive orders, one of the ways we can still work to stop deportation is to quietly curb the role of sheriffs, who still have a choice on whether or not to respond to requests from ICE on inmate immigration status, act as deputized immigration agents and allow ICE to rent space in local jails to detain immigrants. Safety Bound has put together a toolkit on how we can protect our own communities by demanding that sheriffs refuse to cooperate with ICE. This is crucial, since in the last Trump term, 47% of those came through the jails. Let’s download the toolkit, get together with our neighbors, and strategize on which of the many tactics mentioned would work best for approaching the sheriff in our region. Then, let’s start organizing!

STATE-SPECIFIC ACTIONS

RI – TELL SENATOR WHITEHOUSE IT’S US OR HIM
We have a real shot at keeping Robert F. Kennedy Jr away from the Department of Health and Human Services – but any one Democratic defection could kill our chances, and DC commentators have reported concerns within the Senate Democratic caucus that our senator Sheldon Whitehouse might do just that. Whitehouse and Kennedy have been friends since they were law students at the University of Virginia, and Kennedy has supported Whitehouse’s campaigns. However, he has also been clear that Kennedy’s antivaccine views are extremely dangerous. Let’s do our due diligence and reach out to Senator Whitehouse to insist he put the safety of the people of Rhode Island first and vote no on Robert F. Kennedy Jr, both in committee and if he reaches the Senate floor. We can find talking points from
Neighborly Actions
here.