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

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

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

  • minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    Good do it. Let the states that still have a sense of sanity group up and implement a multistate unemployment assistance strategy. Seriously, perhaps its time blue states encourage the disempowerment of the federal government and transfer those programs to mutually aligned state initiatives. Leave out all the welfare red states and redirect that transfer of wealth from blue states to red states, back to their own ppl. Americas system of statehood and states rights is something dems should probably start proposing making more use of. If feds under Trump don’t want social programs then build multistate programs that serve that function, leaving out the Maga central states altogether.