While the drug-addled world’s richest man and shadow president whines about how unfairly he’s being treated, he and his presidential puppet seem just fine with making the lives of Americans already doing the country’s most dangerous work even riskier.
Reuters has the scoop on how cuts to funding safety trainings for occupations such as fishermen, loggers and farmers, via Secretary Brain Worm’s Health and Human Services Department, are about to put American workers more at risk:
The Trump administration on April 1 terminated about 875 of the roughly 1,000 employees at [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health], including most of the staff who provide technical advice and support to a dozen Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health focused on fishing, farming and logging workers.
Although Trump this month reinstated about 300 NIOSH employees, they do not include the office overseeing the centers, according to data compiled by government worker unions seen by Reuters.
Reuters spoke to staff at seven of the centers who described preparations to close down when their current funding cycles run out in the coming months.
Not surprisingly, the clueless HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., defended the cuts with talking points that could have been written by AI (again) or a DOGE Bro. Reuters reported that in March, Kennedy claimed the cuts were needed to “improve efficiency” and that NIOSH would be combined with other departments into a new “Administration for a Healthy America.”
In reality, this is how the Musk/Trump administration will deliberately cause more deaths to Americans – while they tell us all what a great job they're doing on our behalf - when what they really want is more taxpayer money for billionaires.
Reuters explains that while fishermen, farmers and loggers make up a small percentage of our workforce, they have the highest fatal injury rate of any U.S. occupation, seven times the national average. Not only is their work dangerous, it’s done in remote, rural locations where it can take hours to reach medical care.
That fatality rate has decreased over the last 20 years, BLS data show, with advances in mechanization and tightening federal safety regulations.
Safety research and training supported by the centers have helped improve outcomes as well, said Matt Keifer, professor emeritus of occupational safety at the University of Washington, who has worked for two of the centers.
Wanna bet those injuries and deaths start going up, thanks to Musk, Trump and Kennedy?
