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Senate Finance Committee Should Not Have Advanced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Nomination
Following the vote by the Senate Finance Committee supporting the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman issued the following statement:
“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a conspiracist and anti-science crusader, who is manifestly unqualified to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and never should have been nominated for the post. Every Senator knows this and the Senate Finance Committee should have voted unanimously against confirmation.
Kennedy’s core commitments are not to ensure access to quality health care for all, and, in fact, his and Trump’s plans – to slash Medicaid, increase privatized Medicare and roll back Affordable Care Act consumer protections and subsidies — will manifestly reduce access to care, especially for the poor and vulnerable.
Instead, Kennedy made clear at his confirmation hearings last week that he is profoundly committed to spreading deadly vaccine disinformation, as he has long done.
At the hearings, Kennedy showed nothing but disdain for the intelligence of the American people. He misrepresented his previous positions on numerous issues while continuing to endorse anti-science conspiracies, showed profound ignorance on basic facts and functions of HHS, and repeatedly said he would carry out President Trump’s chaotic and dysfunctional orders.
This is a man who, if confirmed, will do devastating damage to public health institutions and the health of the American people. The members of the Senate Finance Committee know this, as does the full Senate. It’s time for senators to stand up to billionaire threats and exercise their constitutional duties responsibly.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Progressives Demand Senate Dems Halt All Trump Confirmations to Combat 'Corporate Coup'
"Trump's blatant collaboration with Musk is an attempt to consolidate billionaire power and dismantle democracy as we know it," said Our Revolution.
Feb 04, 2025
With U.S. President Donald Trump having little to say since he took office about reducing the high cost of living—an issue he has said won him the election—and his billionaire backer Elon Musk making his way through a takeover of numerous federal agencies, progressive organizers on Tuesday demanded that Senate Democrats treat Trump's second term like the "corporate coup" that it is and end all cooperation with the Republican Party.
"Let's be clear: Musk is not a federal employee," said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution. "He was not appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, or authorized to have any leadership role in government. Yet, under Trump's orders, Musk is calling the shots—deciding who gets federal funds, raiding classified data, and shuttering agencies established by law. This isn't governance."
As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), an advisory body Trump established by executive order, Musk has seized control of payment systems that send Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as other payments to millions of Americans; placed officials at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave and attempted to shutter the agency; allegedly operated an illegal server at the Office of Personnel Management; and begun considering staff and spending cuts at the Department of Education as Trump prepares an order to close the agency.
Our Revolution called the effort "a Trojan horse for dismantling public institutions and replacing them with private, profit-driven control."
"Trump's blatant collaboration with Musk is an attempt to consolidate billionaire power and dismantle democracy as we know it," said the group. "This is not efficiency—it's a coup."
Echoing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) demand that Democrats in the Senate stop cooperating with the president's right-wing agenda, Our Revolution called out the seven Democratic lawmakers and one Independent—Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)—who voted to confirm Trump's nominee for energy secretary on Monday.
The lawmakers "effectively [enabled] Trump's billionaire-backed dismantling of public institutions," said the group.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also joined the call in the U.S. House for senators to do "everything in their power to block Trump's Cabinet nominees."
"The Democratic Party must act as a real opposition party," said Our Revolution, calling on senators to:
- Place a blanket hold on all Trump nominees as Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said he plans to on Monday;
- Use every procedural tool available, from quorum calls to blocking unanimous consent, bringing Senate business to a grinding halt until this coup is reversed; and
- Hold Republicans accountable by exposing Trump and Musk's "assault on democracy" to the public and demanding answers.
The group spoke out as New York residents assembled outside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) office in Peekskill, New York, holding signs that read, "Block the coup," and "Musk hijacked America."
Progressive lawmakers and organizers also made their way to the Treasury Department on Tuesday afternoon, attempting to enter the agency and demanding answers about Musk's takeover.
"We need to understand why it is that our Department of Treasury has been broken into, and we need to go ahead and handle the person that decided they were going to have the audacity to go after our information," said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).
Our Revolution called for Democrats to take "bold, decisive action to protect democracy and halt this authoritarian takeover."
"This is not the time for silence or half-measures," said the group.
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Trump Has Begun Deportation Flights to Feared 'American Gulag' at Gitmo
"The administration's claim that there is a migrant 'invasion' is unfounded, and its mislabeling immigrants as 'terrorists' is diversionary—and neither makes offshore detention lawful," said one rights advocate.
Feb 04, 2025
"America can and must be better than this," said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal Tuesday as the Trump administration announced it had begun operating deportation flights bound for Cuba, where President Donald Trump has said he wants to detain undocumented immigrants at the notorious Guantánamo Bay naval base and prison.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the first flights authorized last week by Trump were underway, with the Department of Defense having deployed Marines to the U.S. base in Cuba on Sunday to begin expanding detention facilities.
Trump has called for the prison to be expanded to hold 30,000 people.
The flights announced Tuesday are the latest step in Trump's militarized anti-immigration operations, with 1,500 soldiers and Marines deployed to the southern U.S. border and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducting major immigration raids across the country.
According to reports, roughly half of the people arrested in cities such as New York and Chicago have had no criminal records and were guilty only of overstaying a visa or crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without going through a port of entry—civil violations of U.S. immigration laws rather than criminal offenses.
Last week, Leavitt said all undocumented immigrants, not just those who have committed violent crimes—whose arrests Trump had previously said would be prioritized—were criminals who had "invaded our nation's borders."
At Slate on Sunday, Pedro Gerson noted that Trump's "entire political rise is tethered to the idea that immigrants are invading the country and that only he can fix it."
"Trump intends to build in Guantánamo purposely to reify the same message that propelled him to power: Immigrants are criminals and they are here to hurt you," wrote Gerson. "But now Trump is going further: Some of these immigrants are not only criminals, they are equivalent to terrorists. Frighteningly, this move may also be Trump signaling an intent to strip undocumented immigrants of even more rights and treat them under similarly abusive conditions as recent Guantánamo Bay detainees have experienced."
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was vague in an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday about who exactly would be sent to Guantánamo Bay, commonly known as Gitmo, via military planes.
When host Kristen Welker asked whether "women, children, and families" would be imprisoned there, Noem reverted back to the administration's previous claim that it is "targeting the worst of the worst" and detaining people who "are making our streets more dangerous."
"After that, we have final removal orders on many individuals in this country. They are the next priority," said Noem. "We're going to use the facilities that we have."
"Setting up an American gulag in the Caribbean in response to forced displacement in the Americas is a shameful low in U.S. history."
The mass detention facility was built by the Clinton administration to hold 12,500 inmates, and became infamous during President George W. Bush's administration for its detention of suspects in the so-called "War on Terror." Detainees have been held without charges in violation of the U.S. Constitution and have been subjected to torture. Fifteen detainees remain at the prison following the Biden administration's transfer of 11 people to Oman last month.
Trump's planned expansion of Gitmo's prison would result in "a detention facility of unprecedented size in the American context," wrote Gerson at Slate. "The Tule Lake Japanese internment camp, for example, had a capacity of around 18,000. If the Trump administration actually builds the detention camp in Guantanamo, it'll double in size Auschwitz-Birkenau's original design and be bigger than Dachau and Treblinka combined."
As Yael Schacher, director for the Americans and Europe at Refugees International, said in a statement, the U.S. prison was also used to "inhumanely [detain] Cuban and Haitian asylum-seekers in the 1990s."
"The Trump administration's use of military planes to send immigrants to detention at Guantánamo Bay epitomizes the administration's gratuitously cruel, illegal, expensive, and burdensome approach to immigration policy," said Schacher. "Guantánamo's Migrant Operations Center, which the Trump administration is sending Marines to expand, is truly a black box that no nongovernmental organization has been allowed to visit."
"The administration's claim that there is a migrant 'invasion' is unfounded, and its mislabeling immigrants as 'terrorists' is diversionary—and neither makes offshore detention lawful," Schacher added. "Members of Congress should investigate the move as a misuse of military assets. Setting up an American gulag in the Caribbean in response to forced displacement in the Americas is a shameful low in U.S. history."
Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA, warned that mass deportation to Gitmo will "cut people off from lawyers, family, and support systems, throwing them into a black hole so the U.S. government can continue to violate their human rights out of sight."
"Sending immigrants to Guantánamo is a profoundly cruel, costly move," she said. "Shut Gitmo down now and forever!"
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DOGE's Tentacles Aim to Squeeze Department of Education
Feb 04, 2025
The U.S. Department of Education is reportedly the next agency in the crosshairs of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an Elon Musk-led White House team tasked with slashing government regulation and spending.
Roughly 20 people with DOGE are working inside the Department of Education with the aim of cutting spending and staff, The Washington Postreported Monday, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the situation and records the outlet obtained. The Wall Street Journal also reported that representatives from DOGE are working out of the Department of Education building, and sources told the outlet that DOGE is eyeing the agency as a target for its efforts to slash bureaucracy.
But in the long term, the Trump administration has even more drastic plans for the department that was established by Congress back in 1979. Both papers report that the administration is prepping an executive order aimed at dismantling the agency entirely.
According to the Journal, officials are discussing the an executive order that "would shut down all functions of the agency that aren't written explicitly into statute or move certain functions to other departments" and would also "call for developing a legislative proposal to abolish the department," according to people familiar with the matter. Timing and specifics are still being hammered out.
Because the agency was created by Congress, it therefore can only be fully eliminated by Congress, according to the Post.
Musk on Monday night wrote on his platform X that U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to fully dismantle the Department of Education "will succeed." Trump pledged to get rid of the Department of Education on the campaign trail and the priority was also listed among the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" policy proposals.
"They want to destroy public education," wrote Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, in response to the Post's reporting.
Since Trump's inauguration, Musk and his lieutenants at DOGE have moved swiftly to gain influence over multiple government agencies. Last week, DOGE fired officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development and earlier this week Musk said he intended to shut it down completely. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that he's now in control of the agency.
DOGE representatives were also given access to a Treasury Department payment system that processes trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions and holds personal financial data on millions of Americans. Two unions and an advocacy group sued Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department in federal court Monday for giving DOGE access to the system, citing privacy concerns.
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