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- The Gov Hub Newsletter: April 21, 2025
The Gov Hub Newsletter: April 21, 2025
Nancy Mace has a meltdown and so does MAGA over a SCOTUS ruling they don't like
Gov Hub
April 21, 2025
Welcome to The Gov Hub Newsletter by Girl and the Gov® – a Dem tent weekly that shares action items you can do from your phone, good political news, civic engagement tools and topics, and a little dose of political goss too, right to your inbox.
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GOOD NEWS BEARS
Positive political wins [yes, those do exist]
DE GOV. MATT MEYER SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER TO CREATE COLLABORATIVE TO END HOMELESSNESS: Signing Executive Order #8 of his term thus far, Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer has established the Delaware Interagency Collaborative to End Homelessness. The Collaborative is intended to take a multi-pronged approach to combatting a rise in homelessness, with the specific goal of cutting adult homelessness in half and ending youth homelessness within the next five years. The Collaborative will include 15 members that will advise the Governor on how to address homelessness, review existing programs for improvement, recommend ways to streamline efforts across agencies, and be in charge of implementing a statewide strategy. All meetings of the Collaborative will be open to the public.
WISCONSIN GOV. EVERS ANNOUNCES $3.2M IN GRANTS FOR SMALL BIZ: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers in partnership with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has announced that 19 organizations across the state will be the recipients of $3.2 million in Small Business Development Grants [SBDG]. Per the Governor’s office, the SBDG program distributes grants to communities and the organizations within them that are tasked with supporting small business development. 100% of the grant funds will be passed onto its 19 recipients that will cover initiatives that range from a business training program to enhancing infrastructure that will mitigate blight to business renovation programs.
MA GOV. HEALEY GREEN LIGHTS $9.7M TO THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE NURSING GRANT: Centered around workforce training in an industry that’s continuing to grow and be highly in demand in Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey has awarded $9.7 million to support healthcare training programs via the Community College Nursing Grant. Specifically, the funding will go to bolster the noncredit Certified Nursing Assistant and Medical Assistant training programs that are available at each of the state’s 15 community colleges. The program investment aims to further enhance the state’s healthcare industry, generate a highly skilled workforce, and create good-paying careers.
CHRONICALLY ONLINE
Politics meets social media
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear did this for the plot – asked his daughter what Gen-Z lingo means on his pod. Importantly, he asked the questions all other generations have been dying to know the answer to – if you’re doing it for the plot, do you have rizz?
Congresswoman Sarah McBride shared with the Pod Save America Bros a saying that her dad always says in relation to scariness of this current timeline – “if everyone has just a little bit of courage then no one has to be a hero.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey popped on a horse in Boston to celebrate America’s 250th and to point to the state’s big list of celebrations that you can attend.
Dylan Wells, who covers campaigns at the WashPo, gave a BTS look at her day out on the road to go interview Gov. Tim Walz with this DIML TikTok.
What do Senators and members of Congress make? These Dem Senators drop the line item, who should be paid more, and deats on why giving tax breaks to billionaires is bad [and something you should be calling your senators about daily, regardless of party]. The tea: according to Senator Slotkin, Senators low key do scroll their phones and pay attention to ratio-ing…
GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski admitted at a town hall that she is often anxious about speaking up and out because the “retaliation is real” which she shared is “not right.”
DNC Vice Chair David Hogg shared the “why” behind a new strategy he’s spearheading at the DNC to fund primaries against Dems in safe blue districts that aren’t standing up to Trump or the GOP.
Chuck Grassley tweeted…what? The 91-year old Senator who was recently grilled, roasted, and skewered verbally by constituents, was the center of convo on this eppy of Have I Got News For You for his Twitter fingers – an affliction that impacts both him and the Real Housewives.
What has gov-funded scientific research ever done for you? To start, it gave you the internet aka the thing that enables you to read this newsletter rn, and it’s given Americans all of these big time, life-improving advances.
Congresswoman Nancy Mace predictably lost her shit on a constituent in Ulta when he asked her if she would be hosting any 2025 town halls. Per this vid, which she thought was such a good look for her that she then posted it herself, she also rambled about how she voted for gay marriage…the constituent never said anything about his sexuality, and she’s been on a tirade against trans people, so girly what??
EXTREMISM
…that’s the tweet [or the x]
“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten constitutional rights for everyone” is what Senator Van Hollen said about the Trump Admin violating the Constitution in its wrongful deportation of Maryland father of three, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He also shared that he is “defending the rights of this man to due process” and described both the fight at-large to bring Garcia home and his trip to El Salvador to NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe, a trip in which the gov of El Salvador tried to block him from meeting with his constituent.
Over the wknd, SCOTUS ordered the Trump Admin not to deport Venezuelans being held in North Texas under the Alien Enemies Act, putting a pause on the case. The decision was 7-2. In response, MAGA has called for SCOTUS to be dissolved and ignored.
Two people were killed, multiple injured, and a community traumatized, after a man who holds white supremacist views and has demonstrated a robust fascination with hate groups, opened fire on Florida State’s campus last week. The deadly shooting comes after Republicans in the state have made rolling back a Red Flag law and common sense gun safety reforms the centerpiece of their 2025 agenda. For backstory: The Red Flag law was passed following the Parkland mass shooting. Students who survived that shooting [Parkland] also ran for their lives during this FSU shooting.
Per AP, a new U.S. intelligence assessment found that there has been zero coordination between the Tren de Aragua gang and the Venezuelan gov, an assessment that directly contradicts statements that have been made by the Trump Admin – statements that have been used to justify the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. 17 out of the 18 different intelligence agencies agreed with the assessment.
American citizens have been receiving notices from Homeland Security telling them to leave the country, including this Connecticut-based doctor. DHS claims they were sent “by accident.” Per NBC, this is what the experts are saying to do if this happens to you.
In two different instances, American citizens were unlawfully detained last week. One of the two parties is now pursuing legal action against the Trump Administration.
Following a horrifying arson attack during Passover, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro was asked about revising security protocols and whether he’d heard from President Trump. The answer? Not a peep.
There has been a significant uptick in threats made against federal judges and their children. The threats have been coming in a particularly unique manner, with pizzas being delivered to homes of judges and/or their children in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas deceased son, who was murdered by an aggrieved lawyer.
FULL SEND…TO A FRIEND
Stories that are guaranteed to make it to the group chat
A new portrait collection has brought together Holocaust survivors and pop culture icons like Cindy Crawford and Jennifer Garner, to tell the stories and testimonies of those survivors in the face of rising antisemitism and Holocaust denialism. The portraits will be on display this week in NY, and captured in a book dubbed Borrowed Spotlight.
The Trump Admin has asked Congress to nix funding for Head Start, a federally-funded program that provides child care and education to some of the country’s neediest children, including those in foster care. The proposed cut to a service designed to lift children out of poverty originates in Project 2025.
The Pope sent his number two to meet with JD Vance to read him the riot act over the Trump Admin’s inhumane deportation and anti-immigration policies. The following day on Easter Sunday, the Pope granted recent Catholic convert-Vance a meeting to exchange Easter greetings - a meeting which lasted less than 20 minutes and looked painfully awkward AF. Unexpected Update: The Pope has died at the age of 88.
In possibly the weirdest way to find out what the Virginia state flag looks like, it’s this – via a story out of Texas where a school district has banned the flag…because one of the Roman-looking characters on the flag is flashing a nipple. Like for real, this is what's keeping them up at night, despite being ranked at the 6th highest in the country for high school bullying and having the 8th highest dropout rate in the country.
On May 15th, SCOTUS will hear oral arguments on whether the Trump Admin can go ahead with a plan banning birthright citizenship, something that is literally a constitutional amendment, like the 14th one to be exact…
HEALTH & WELLNESS
In the club, we’re all sick
The FDA has suspended food safety quality checks after cutting the staff members that ensure that you don’t eat food that could kill you. Per Reuters, one of the things now on hold is testing for the parasite Cyclospora in spinach (causes intestinal illness) and testing for the pesticide glyphosate in barley (can have a neurotoxic impact). This follows a suspension in efforts to improve testing for bird flu, milk, cheese, and pet food at the start of the month.
RFK Jr’s suggestion that those with depression or ADHD should be sent to wellness farms, which has many ringing the eugenics alarm, is a strategy that has proven itself to be a losing one across America’s history. Teen Vogue took a magnifying glass to the wonky wellness and connected it to the failures of colonies created for the disabled that were set up in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the horrifying conditions, the control, the connected “ugly laws,” and the forced sterilizations.
RFK Jr. also took to the mic to say that "Autism destroys families,” amongst numerous other offensive, untrue, and wild claims that have not just received backlash from those on the spectrum and their families, but has brought into question whether RFK Jr even knows what Autism is. Amongst those calling him out is Brittany Cartwright of Vanderpump Rules/The Valley, whose son was recently diagnosed with Autism.
The CDC lab scientists that were working on finding out how people across six dates had become infected with viral hepatitis had to stop their work because they were fired via RFK Jr.’s cuts, according to the WashPo. The 2,400 people fired from the CDC also include those that worked at the only U.S. facility capable of tracking antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
CATACLYSMIC CORRUPTION
Mostly stories that involve Elon and his besties
The group chat saga is now its 2nd chapter, with it being revealed that main characters, SecDef Hegseth shared military plans in another Signal chat that included side characters like his wife, his brother, his personal lawyer, and two of his senior advisors that were fired last week for allegedly leaking info [something that they deny per this public statement]. According to CNN, the GC was originally used as HQ for strategy on his confirmation campaign, but he never stopped using it, which btw was on his personal phone.
Intuit, the company that counts TurboTax as part of its corporate famjam, donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration committee. Fast forward to now, and the Trump Admin is reportedly drafting plans to nix the IRS Direct File Program. ICYMI, the program was created under the Biden Admin and allowed taxpayers to file their taxes for free, directly.
In a story that will likely continue to evolve, a federal judge has blocked the Trump Admin’s firing of 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Bureau [the majority of its staff that work to protect consumers against fraud and deceptive practices].
CRASHING OUT 101…
Like the economy…
Tariffs are impacting Americans coast to coast, including in Kentucky where the bourbon industry is taking a hit for the second time. Congressman McGarvey shares how the impact is worse than Trump’s term 1 tariffs.
The talking heads at CNBC literally don’t know how the Constitution works – like Senator Warren had to run them through it on live TV, which she did here.
JD Vance, a man who has the internet debating what type of eyeliner he wears, has told the UK that they need to repeal their hate speech protections for LGBTQ+ people and minorities to be able to secure a trade deal with the US.
Price Check: Eggs were on average $2.99/dozen in 2024. In 2025, eggs average $6.23/dozen. And amongst high prices and shortages, the White House hosted the annual Easter Egg Roll, using real eggs – 30,000 to be exact. The event also included a weird kiss the ring corporate sponsorship situation, that had the likes of Meta, Amazon, and YouTube participating – a little bit dif than its prior glory when it hosted Hope Walz and the Jonas Brothers.
More layoffs are happening due to tariffs and market uncertainty, including at Mack Trucks in the Lehigh Valley [PA]. The company is laying off about 10% of its workforce there, or somewhere between 250-250 workers.
BACK ON OUR BILLSH*T
Bills, bills, bills
FEDERAL, GUN SAFETY: Three Congressional Dems have partnered to intro The Safer Neighborhoods Gun Buyback Act of 2025. The bill would utilize $360M in funding over three years to create state and local gun buyback programs, getting guns off the streets.
MICHIGAN, MEDICAL DEBT: State Rep. Denise Mentzer has intro’d a new bill that would put the kabosh on credit reporting agencies from reporting medical debt on Michigander’s credit report. The legislation is similar to that which has been passed in other states, like Colorado.
THE ACTION ITEMS
Get ‘em done from your phone
ACTION 1- DOGE
The Ask: Tell Congress to get DOGE’s dirty paws off our data.
The Background: What’s DOGE doing with our personal data? Questions remain, whistleblowers be chattin’, and generally speaking our data is in doge. Tell Congress to do their jobs and step in.
ACTION 2- HEAD START
The Ask: Tell Congress to fund and protect Head Start.
The Background: Per deats above, Head Start provides critical services to low-income children and their families, lifting people out of generational poverty. Cutting the program would devastate close to a million people who depend on the program, particularly in rural areas.
KEY READS
Important stories from around the USA
BEFORE YOU GO…
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