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John Thompson: Oklahoma Has Its Own DOGE, Just as Destructive as Elon’s

After Trump introduced Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” several Republican-controlled states created their own DOGE operations. Like the one Musk launched, these were non-governmental, unelected, unaccountable cost-cutters, set loose to apply a chainsaw to state government.

John Thompson reports on what happened in Oklahoma.

CBS’s Sixty Minutes recently reported on the danger of H5N1 bird flu spinning out of control. It cited Dr. Kamran Khan who explained why “We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential.” Another expert agreed that “this flu could make Covid look like a walk in the park.”

This frightening reporting comes as the DOGE–OK seeks to cut nearly $150 million for programs that provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, and provide Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention of Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

And this is only one reason for looking into the DOGE–OK process.

Anyone paying attention to Elon Musk’s leadership of the Trump administration’s DOGE campaign to cut federal programs has reason the fear the DOGE campaigns launched in 26 states. After all, as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains, when Governor Kevin Stitt opened Oklahoma’s DOGE-OK, he called for a reduction in our personal income and corporate tax rates, thus making the state’s tax code even more regressive.

The EPI further explained that Stitt selected Marc Nuttle, “who was the ‘chief strategist’ behind Oklahoma’s 2001 so-called right-to-work referendum—a policy designed to disempower workers and lower wages (and contrary to proponents’ claims, it did not bolster job growth in the state).” The executive order empowered Nuttle to lead efforts of a newly formed agency to study the state budget.

Moreover, the EPI explains:

DOGE-OK is itself duplicative since the Office of the State Auditor and Inspector is constitutionally mandated to “examine the state and all county treasurers’ books, accounts, and cash on hand, stipulating that [the office] shall perform other duties as may be prescribed by law.” Similar to DOGE-OK, the auditor reviews staffing levels, assesses state spending, and issues public reports to promote transparency.

The DOGE-OK report now explains:

Once DOGE-OK ideas are received, they are analyzed and vetted with the appropriate group. If validated, ideas are added to the DOGE-OK website.

But, when I studied the report, I found no sign of hard evidence to back its claims. For instance, they didn’t explain their methodology, and offered no cost/benefit analyses. DOGE didn’t explain what “groups” it considered to be “appropriate,” and what data was used to analyze and vet, and validate their ideas.

Since the first DOGE headlines focused on $157 million in supposedly “wasteful health grants” by the federal government, I focused on Medicaid and Department of Health cuts.

These proposed cuts are especially disturbing because, as Shiloh Kantz, the executive director of the nonpartisan Oklahoma Policy Institute, explained, “Oklahoma already ranks among the worst in health outcomes.”

First, DOGE-OK claimed that $60 million per year would be saved if the state, not the federal government, performed eligibility checks on children. And, they cited two drugs that received accelerated approval without working, costing $42 million. But, they did not mention the number and the benefits of the other drugs, like the Covid vaccine, that received accelerated approval.

Also, DOGE-OK inexplicably said that easing the prescription drug cost cap would improve prices. And they recommended repeal of staffing requirements for Long-Term Care facilities in order to save $76 million annually, without mentioning harm to elderly patients due to under-staffing.

DOGE-OK also said that three Oklahoma State Department of Health programs should be cut by almost $150 million because their funding exceeded the amount necessary. As already mentioned, in the wake of Covid pandemic, and as measles and bird flu spread, these programs provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, etc. So, how did DOGE reach the conclusion that the full funding of those programs is no longer necessary?

Then, DOGE-OK said that 7 programs should have cuts because of “duplication,” with partners doing the same or similar work. They said $2.2 million would be saved by getting rid of the team efforts necessary to improve health.

And Sex Education should be cut by $236,000 because of its low Return on Investment.

Again, I saw no evidence behind their recommendations for $157,606,300 in overall health care reductions. Neither did they address financial costs of implementing their ideas. And, there is no evidence that DOGE seriously considered the costs in terms of the lives that would be damaged or lost.

Given the history of the Trump/Musk DOGE, none of the DOGE–OK should be a surprise. When Gov. Stitt selected Nuttle, a true-believer in Milton Friedman, to run the project, Stitt said, “With his help, we’ll leave state government leaner than we found it.”

Is that the proper way to launch a supposedly balanced and evidence-driven investigation of such complex and crucial policy approaches?

Stitt’s news release previewed Nuttle’s methodology: “use his knowledge of the inner workings of government to comb through agency budgets, legislative appropriations, and contracts.”

So, to paraphrase the DOGE-OK report’s description of its methodology, its proposals would be “analyzed and vetted” by what they see as the “appropriate group.”

In other words, Oklahomans were never promised an open, balanced, evidence-based DOGE process for making our state better. But the same is also true for Musk’s federal DOGE chainsaw.

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03/05/2025
Staying connected with music has enriched my college life

Two years ago, I was ready to give up everything from my old life and move 3,000 miles away to pursue journalism at San Diego State University. This meant leaving behind my friends, family and my passion for singing and performance. I was sure I would have to leave behind my musical side to focus on my academics, take on a campus job and join the student newspaper.

Or did I?

I have been singing almost my entire life, and did so anywhere I could. The first evidence comes from a 2007 video, where 3-year-old me danced around my living room singing “I’m Wishing” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” A few years later, I took the hobby from my living room to the stage. I joined the school choir and began performing in local productions.

From then until my high school graduation in 2022, there was not a month that went by where I wasn’t in a show, choir or dance class.

Music and theater were always my favorite hobbies, but not something I saw myself pursuing as a career. I decided to study journalism in college after discovering my passion for it during my senior year of high school.

But after dedicating countless hours of my life to performance, how could I leave all that behind in pursuit of my degree?

Luckily, I didn’t have to.

Performing served me so well during my time in high school, allowing me to form lifelong friendships and escape from my other endeavors, so I decided to take the risk and blend my old life into my new college one. I soon found the a cappella group I wanted to join: SoundWave.

I had never done a cappella before, but I wanted to give it a shot. Once I had settled into my first week of freshman year, I signed up to audition and was welcomed into a wonderful community.

Unfortunately, the rest of my first semester at university did not go so smoothly. I was in a rough living situation at my dorm and had trouble making friends. Every day, I wanted nothing more than to transfer home.

But when I went to rehearsal, I left those troubles at the door and found solace in a community that valued every single one of its members. At the time, I had wished that we had rehearsal every day.

Now in my third year of college, and feeling more settled, I am grateful that my SoundWave commitment is flexible, allowing time for my academics and outside endeavors, such as work and an internship.

I believe in the importance of career-focused pursuits. As a journalism major, I report and write for my college newspaper, The Daily Aztec, and am part of the leadership for our Society of Professional Journalists chapter.

However, I also believe in the importance of joining clubs that exist outside your academic realm. Not only do such activities make you stand out to potential employers, but they are also a great way to meet people with similar interests.

Jacob Opatz, a fourth-year computer science major who currently serves as the president of SoundWave, agrees.

“People always cite the studies that say ‘music is good for your brain,’ but on a deeper level, having a community on campus and working towards a creative goal is so important for my mental health,” he said. “Also, since my major is computer science, I’m desperate to find something creative and fun to break up my otherwise boring schedule.”

Extracurricular activities in grade schools have been proven to improve optimism and lower depression and screen time, according to a 2020 study by Preventative Medicine.

As a college student, I am on my laptop for at least eight hours a day. When I’m not on my laptop, I’m usually on my phone scrolling social media.

Rehearsal gets me to put the screen down and create something with the people around me.

We rehearse two days a week. Members are also expected to practice on their own each day. However, the competition season is more hectic. In the months leading up to the quarterfinals for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, our two-hour rehearsals turn into three.

New member and third-year psychology major Lexy Sakrekoff has had to make some sacrifices to be in the group.

“I used to go home more on the weekends to visit my mom in Oceanside, but now I avoid that because of our Sunday rehearsals,” she said.

However, Sakrekoff says the sacrifice is worth it.

“It helps that [my friends and family] are also super supportive and excited that I’m in SoundWave. I even rehearse my songs in front of them, and that’s always fun for them to listen to,” she said. There have definitely been times when I was up late doing homework after rehearsal or had to cut down my work hours due to performances. But despite my junior year being the busiest so far, SoundWave has always felt like a vital outlet rather than an obligation.

•••

Calista Stocker is in her third year at San Diego State University, pursuing a journalism major and sociology minor, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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29/04/2025
Author of federal mental health law has advice for California

Seventh-graders work together on homework in their school library.

Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

Mental health has been at the center of former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy’s personal journey to recovery from addiction as well as his public career as a policymaker, author and advocate.

In 2008, while representing Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kennedy was the lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, a federal law that requires health insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health and addiction care and general physical health care, such as diabetes or cancer treatment.

Forner U.S. Rep, Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I.

Kennedy, who has long been vocal about pursuing treatment for his substance use and bipolar disorder, remains an advocate for greater access to mental health care. Earlier this year, he published his book “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” — a reference to his late uncle and former President John F. Kennedy’s classic “Profiles in Courage” — detailing how people from diverse backgrounds across the country have taken on mental illness and addiction. In October, he was a keynote speaker at the annual student wellness conference Wellness Together in Anaheim, where he spoke about his advocacy as founder of the mental health policy nonprofit The Kennedy Forum.

“As we turn the corner on stigma related to suicide and overdose, we need to finally focus a lot more on solutions early on in a person’s life,” Kennedy said in an interview with EdSource. Not only are young people less likely to seek help due to stigma, but are also less likely to be properly insured, incurring high out-of-pocket costs for treatment when they need it.

For Kennedy, the key to addressing the youth mental health and addiction crisis is increasing and sustaining funding for care on the local, state and federal levels. He emphasized that schools desperately need the bulk of that funding, given that early intervention significantly reduces a child’s chance of developing a serious mental illness in adulthood.

California has, in recent years, invested heavily in expanding mental health support for children and adolescents. The state’s next challenge, Kennedy said, is sustaining these crucial services.

In 2019, the state embarked on a $4.7 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, focused mainly on recruiting and training new mental health providers across the state’s school system. To help sustain these programs, the state Department of Health Care Services plans to make new public school-based mental health services billable to both Medi-Cal and commercial health insurance, making California’s multi-payer fee schedule one of the largest school reimbursement programs in the country.

EdSource interviewed Kennedy about expanding mental health care for students and families. His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

How do we address the enduring impact of stigma on our health and education systems?

We need greater literacy (regarding mental health) across the board. Many don’t know these mental illnesses as brain illnesses, and they don’t understand that they’re treatable. If we knew we could treat them successfully, which we can, especially if we go in early, how can we think about them differently? We don’t let cancer get to stage four to treat it. We screen it, screen it, screen it. It’s embedded in my medical chart. My doctor asks me 15 ways about my risk for stroke and cancer. We need to do that with mental health.

We could address so much of this if we just incorporated better mental health services within our community. So many families have their mental health symptoms exacerbated by lack of stable housing, no supportive employment and a lack of community to help. They become isolated, which is the worst thing for those struggling with their mental health.

Why does the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act matter for young people today?

It used to be the case where, if you had a mental illness, you had to pay higher co-pays, premiums and deductibles to get mental health treatment than you would to get diabetes treatment or asthma treatment. Unlike for physical illnesses, insurance companies would cap the total of dollars you could spend as a patient on mental health. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act established that insurance companies could not discriminate and treat the brain any differently than any other organ of the body.

Ultimately, we can’t treat everyone based upon bake sales. We have to change the metrics of what constitutes value in our mental health system. We have to get this embedded in regular insurance.

How can California ensure that new school-based coverage for mental health care is effective in the long term?

We have to figure out how to reorient the insurance process so that there’s a way of capturing the return on investment from an earlier investment. The state is the one that has the most to say about overall state coverage for mental health early on, in order to reduce future obligations on the state’s part, which means picking up the pieces of a broken population that hasn’t properly been supported by coverage through early intervention services.

We need to get organized as voters. There’s not a family out there that doesn’t have these issues affecting a member of their family, who hasn’t lost a loved one to suicide or overdose. There’s a huge need for mental health treatment because we keep waiting till people are in a crisis. Why not make this a public health issue and really embed resources in elementary and secondary schools so students can take care of themselves?

What role should the federal government play in addressing youth mental health?

We need to have Federally Qualified Health Centers in every public school in America. They could open satellites in each of the schools that can help treat kids where they are. A lot of kids, particularly from minority communities, are not going to get mental health care after school. You could bring tele-mental health into a school nurse’s office, so it’s not just where you get an aspirin, but a real clinic in the school where you could be meeting kids’ health needs writ large. You’d also need ongoing intensive care to connect them to the community health center outside.

We already fund Federally Qualified Health Centers. It’s supported on a bipartisan basis. It covers the uninsured as well as the insured. These centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers cover a lot of rural areas and health deserts, and they can provide general counseling and support services. They have a board of directors, who are all people in the community who know the resources in the community and can pull together a more wraparound, holistic approach.

So many kids come to school from homes where there’s violence, addiction or mental illness. We need to reach the whole family. In many states where Republicans don’t have good benefits for their people, the centers provide a valuable safety valve for their constituents to get health care. We just need to take that model to scale in schools. The easiest thing is to run all of these through existing bureaucracies, so you’re not trying to create a new system from whole cloth.

How can students help address mental health?

I would say to young people that there are two major ways they can really help the system. One, they can learn about how to prevent mental health challenges themselves through learning about their own brain and learning coping skills and problem-solving skills. We can focus on a lot more upstream, or proactive, mechanisms early in a student’s life, when they can start to build different coping skills and learn how to manage their emotions.

And second, if they’re interested in going into the mental health space, they can create a much better track to get into the mental health field. We just don’t have enough hands on deck to really meet the enormity of the need for those who desperately need treatment. Not only do we need to build that infrastructure and access, but also build a workforce pipeline for those trying to go into the field in greater numbers.

It’s got everything to do with young people. These are illnesses where 50% of them occur before the age of 14, and 75% occur before the age of 25. They’re illnesses of the young; they can take you hostage and take out whole parts of your life, when, ordinarily, you’d be in the most productive period in your life as a young person.

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28/04/2025
Jamelle Bouie: Trump Has No Interest in Governing

Jamelle Bouie, one of the most insightful columnists for The New York Times, observes that Trump has no interest in governing. He is interested in ruling. He thinks he has a mandate, even though he did not win 50% of the popular vote. He thinks his will is as powerful as law. He does not share power with Congress, and he’s testing how far he can go to diminish the courts.

Bouie reflects on Trump’s indifference to the other branches of Govenment in this newsletter:

I think it’s obvious that neither President Trump nor his coterie of agents and apparatchiks has any practical interest in governing the nation. It’s one reason (among many) they are so eager to destroy the federal bureaucracy; in their minds, you don’t have to worry about something, like monitoring the nation’s dairy supply for disease and infection, if the capacity for doing so no longer exists.

But there is another, less obvious way in which this observation is true. American governance is a collaborative venture. At minimum, to successfully govern the United States, a president must work with Congress, heed the courts and respect the authority of the states, whose Constitutions are also imbued with the sovereignty of the people. And in this arrangement, the president can’t claim rank. He’s not the boss of Congress or the courts or the states; he’s an equal.

The president is also not the boss of the American people. He cannot order them to embrace his priorities, nor is he supposed to punish them for disagreement with him. His powers are largely rhetorical, and even the most skilled presidents cannot shape an unwilling public.

Trump rejects all of this. He rejects the equal status of Congress and the courts. He rejects the authority of the states. He does not see himself as a representative working with others to lead the nation; he sees himself as a boss, whose will ought to be law. And in turn, he sees the American people as employees, each of us obligated to obey his commands.

Trump is not interested in governing a republic of equal citizens. To the extent that he’s even dimly aware of the traditions of American democracy, he holds them in contempt. What Trump wants is to lord over a country whose people have no choice but to show fealty and pledge allegiance not to the nation but to him.

What was it Trump said about Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, during his first term in office? “Hey, he’s the head of a country. And I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different,” Trump said in 2018. “He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

He wants his people to do the same.

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27/04/2025
Michael Tomasky: Trump Just Did the Most Corrupt Thing Any President Has Ever Done

Michael Tomasky is a veteran journalist who is the editor of The New Republic and editor in chief of Democracy. He has written for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The American Prospect, and The New York Review of Books.

When reading the article, it’s important to remember that the President is not supposed to enrich himself while in office. It’s illlegal.

Tomasky writes:

He’s using the White House to get rich from anonymous investors—and it’s hardly even a news story.

Imagine that Joe Biden, just as he was assuming office, had started a new company with Hunter Biden and used his main social media account to recruit financial backers, then promised that the most generous among them would earn an invitation to a private dinner with him. Oh, and imagine that these investors were all kept secret from the public, so that we had no idea what kinds of possible conflicts of interest might arise.

Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Take a minute, close your eyes. Let yourself see Jim Jordan’s face go purple in apoplexy, hear the moral thunder spewing out of Jesse Watters’s mouth, feel the shock (which would be wholly justified) of the New York Times editorial board as it expressed disbelief that the man representing the purported values and standards of the United States of America before the world would begin to think it was remotely OK to do such a thing. The media would be able to speak of nothing else for days. Maybe weeks.

Yet this and more is what Donald Trump just did, and unless you follow the news quite closely, it’s possible you’ve not even heard about it. Or if you have, it was probably in passing, one of those second-tier, “this is kind of interesting” headlines. But it’s a lot more than that. As Democratic Senator Chris Murphy noted Wednesday: “This isn’t Trump just being Trump. The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”

Trump announced this week that the top 220 buyers of his $Trump (strump, as in strumpet) meme coin between now and mid-May will be invited to an exclusive dinner on May 22 (“a night to remember”) at his golf club outside Washington, D.C. The Washington Post and other outlets have reported that in the days since the announcement, “buyers have poured tens of millions of dollars” into the coin; further, that the holders of 27 crypto wallets have acquired at least 100,000 coins apiece, “stakes worth about a million dollars each.” Holders of crypto wallets are anonymous, if they want to be, so the identities of these people (or businesses or countries or sovereign wealth funds or whatever they might be) are unknown and will presumably remain so until the big dinner or, who knows, maybe for all time.

It’s also worth noting that Trump launched this meme coin just a few days before inauguration. Its value quickly shot up to around $75. It steadily declined through the first month of his presidency, and by early April, as Americans grew weary of a president who was tanking the economy, it had fallen to $7.14.

Mind you, a meme coin is a thing with no intrinsic value. It’s just some … thing that somebody decides to launch based on hype because they can get a bunch of suckers to invest in it. As Investopedia gingerly puts it: “Most meme coins are usually created without a use case other than being tradable and convertible.” It should come as no surprise that some meme coins are tied to right-wing politics. Elon Musk named his Department of Government Efficiency after his favorite meme coin, dogecoin (which, in turn, was indeed named after an actual internet memein which doge is slang for a Shiba Inu dog).

So, to go back to my opening analogy—this isn’t even like Joe and Hunter Biden starting a company from the White House. A company is a real thing. It makes a product or provides a service. It files papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It pays taxes. It employs people. Assuming that it’s a good corporate citizen and that it exists at least in part to solve some problem or offer the public some innovation, it contributes to the general welfare.

Not so a meme coin. It’s just a hustle. It may make certain investors rich, but it does the world no good whatsoever.

So stop and think about this. First, Trump, preparing for the presidency, purportedly busy thinking about how many millions of people he’s going to deport and how he’s going to bring “Jina” to its knees and how he’s going to hand eastern Ukraine to Putin and how he’s going to cut Meals on Wheels, for Chrissakes, takes time out from all that to stop and think: Now, how can I profit from returning to the White House? So he launches, naturally, the griftiest Christmas present ever.

It starts out great. Then its value drops by 90 percent. So in April, while he’s illegally deporting legal U.S. residents to El Salvador and roiling the world’s financial markets, he stops and takes the time to think: Hey, what happened with my meme coin? I had better figure out a way to goose this grift. So he comes up with this dinner. As well as showing just how tawdry his mind is, how he just automatically and intrinsically thinks it’s his right to make a buck from the presidency, it’s unspeakably corrupt. (One small silver lining here is that after peaking Wednesday at almost $15, it’s now under $12.)

Who knows who these “investors” are? Will we ever know? Inevitably, on May 22, people will be invited to that dinner. Will we know the guest list? Will the list be sanitized? Will a few Russian oligarchs be among the top 220 but send surrogates to keep their identity hidden?

This doesn’t create the “appearance” of corruption or set up the “potential” for conflict of interest. It is corruption, and it’s a standing conflict of interest. Patently, and historically. Chris Murphy is right: This is the most corrupt thing any president has ever done, by a mile.

What are the others? Watergate? It was awful in different ways, but of course Trump is worse than Richard Nixon in all those ways too. Teapot Dome? Please—a tiny little rigged contract, and it didn’t even involve Warren Harding directly, just his interior secretary. Credit Mobilier? Run-of-the-mill bribes by a railroad company, again not involving President Grant directly, just his vice president.

And yes, I’ve been thinking this week of the Lincoln Bedroom scandal. In 1995–96, the Clintons invited a lot of people to spend a night in the famous chamber. Many of them made large donations to the Democratic Party. It was unseemly. But it wasn’t illegal. And it certainly didn’t line the Clintons’ personal pockets. But if you were around at the time, you remember as I do the swollen outrage of Republicans about how relentlessly corrupt the Clintons were.

Today? Crickets.

Finally: Before we leave this topic, I want you to go to GetTrumpMemes.com and just look at those illustrations of Trump. There’s a big one in the middle of him with his fist raised, echoing the image from his attempted assassination. Then off to the right, there’s Trump seated at the head of a dining table.

In both, he looks about 50. The artist has airbrushed a good quarter-century off his face, in terms of jowl fat and wrinkles and accumulated orange pancake. And in the dominant, middle image … what do we think Trump’s waist size is, about 46, 48? This Trump is about a 34. Maybe even a svelte 32. It’s hysterically funny. These are probably the most creepily totalitarian images of Trump I’ve ever seen, and yes, I understand, that’s a big statement. But even Stalin’s visual hagiographers didn’t try to make him look skinny.

I digress. Let’s keep our eyes on the real prize here. This May 22 dinner is a high crime and misdemeanor. A president of the United States can’t use the office to enrich himself in this way, from potentially anonymous donors for whom he might do favors. This is as textbook as corruption gets.

New York Times and Washington Post, put your best investigative reporters on this and place their stories on your front pages. MSNBC, hammer on this—you haven’t been. Democrats, talk about this every day, several times a day. Do not let Trump’s sewer standards jade us. Make sure the people know.

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27/04/2025