The LuLac Edition #5, 317, May 6th, 2025

 

TRUMP ON

UPHOLDING CONSTITUTION

“I dunno”

President Donald Trump argued in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that fulfilling his ambitious campaign promise to rapidly carry out mass deportations may take precedence over giving immigrants the right to due process under the Constitution, as required by courts.

 

 

 

 

PENCE GETS JFK PROFILES IN COURAGE AWARD

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday repeatedly invoked the Constitution and said it is what “binds us all together” after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Pence received the award for his refusal to go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election. The award recognizes Pence “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021,” the JFK Library Foundation said.

“To forge a future together, we have to find common ground,” Pence said. “I hope in some small way my presence here tonight is a reminder that whatever differences we may have as Americans, the Constitution is the common ground on which we stand. It’s what binds us across time and generations. .... It’s what makes us one people.”

His comments came hours after an interview with Trump aired in which he was asked whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was noncommittal.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. It was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.

Pence never mentioned Trump during his 10-minute speech but made several references to the Trump administration.

Referencing what he called “these divided times, in these anxious days,” he acknowledged that he probably had differences with the Democrats in the room but also with his own Republican Party “on spending, tariffs and my belief that America is the leader of the free world and must stand with Ukraine until the Russian invasion is repelled and a just and lasting peace is secured.”      (The Hill, AP)

 

FORMER HHS SECRETARY CALLS TRUMP/KENNEDY EFFORT A DEMOLITION

PLAN

 

Former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra decried the Trump administration’s “skinny budget” request unveiled Friday, lambasting it as not a budget proposal but a “demolition plan.”

In the proposal, President Trump called for cutting $33.3 billion or 26.2 percent of the HHS’s discretionary funding. These requested cuts included a $3.6 billion reduction in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $18 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and $674 million for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Program Management.

“This isn’t a budget proposal – it’s a demolition plan. Slashing $33 billion in NIH funding and cratering public health research is an assault on our nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to disease, medical innovation and everyday care that millions of Americans rely on,” Becerra wrote on social platform X.

Last month, he launched his campaign for California governor, citing his tenure as HHS secretary as well as his record of taking on Trump when he was California attorney general.

The Oval Office asked to cut the funding of several programs that it said promoted diversity, equity and inclusion and “radical gender ideology.”

The only health program that gains discretionary funding in the proposal is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, for which the budget provides $500 million.

In fiscal 2025, the last budget under the Biden administration, the HHS ultimately received $127 billion in discretionary funding. The Biden White House had requested s $130.7 billion in discretionary bSen. Susan Collins (Maine) was among the Republicans who pushed back on the asks in the budget, citing the proposed cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, operated under the HHS, as one of requests she took issue with along with “those that support biomedical research.udget authority.  (AP)