Everything is on fire again, and $1.5 billion in grant listings.
Plus, a potential strategy for the Trump Administration to kill workforce programs and how the Administration's grants process creates risks... for the Trump Administration.
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Hello, and some news
Greetings from D.C. where you’re getting this a little late today because Lord help me it’s been a week. If at 3 p.m. today I get a call about an executive order saying the Frances Perkins Building’s second-floor candy machine is a Deep State plot… well, it’d match the tenor and tone of the past five days.
In the meantime, I have gotten great feedback on the formatting tweaks to THE MONEY. I expect to roll out some additional changes to all sides of the newsletter in the next few weeks. You’ll still get what drew you here, but I want to improve the overall reading (and watching?) experience and give paid subscribers a little bit more for their lovely investment.
What will that look like?
Snappier Tuesday pieces that offer a little more news and notes about the great work happening elsewhere in workforce development.
Deeper-dive pieces on jobs policy exclusive for paid subscribers, in the vein of the cannabis piece and my March breakdowns of Trump funding shifts.
Sponsored posts where you can promote your work and/or point a Nick Beadle at a topic of your choosing and share it with an audience teeming with corporate, political, and nonprofit leaders and influencers. Email me at nick@jobsthat.work for more info.
In less newsletter-y news, yesterday I heard some amazing stories from people hired through skills-first hiring at Opportunity@Work’s State of the Paper Ceiling event here in Washington. Skills-first hiring remains a necessity, and it’s amazing to hear about the successes—and the thinking of employers who saw talent and caught it without waiting for old hiring systems to let them do it.
Toplines
News you should know affecting money that gets people to work.
Trump workforce personnel changes to be concerned about.
Bloomberg reported the Labor Department parted ways this week with my former colleague Amy Simon, the Trump appointee who was acting head of America’s chief workforce development agency, the Employment and Training Administration.
The Administration pointed to a memo threatening people not to leak when asked about the change. Amy and I haven’t talked in years—feels like a thing that needs to be said here—but I can tell you there are very few people in government as universally liked and respected in this work (and who you would want around in the large-scale workforce reorganization announced by the President this week). On both sides of the aisle, I know Amy’s appointment was a relief for stakeholders who felt attacked by the funding freeze.
Separately, POLITICO reported earlier this week about the suspension of Steve Rietzke, another former colleague, and a couple others in connection to DOGE efforts to access data from the National Farmworkers Jobs Program.
It’s utterly bizarre to read about Steve in this context. Steve is one of the most practical and professional people I worked with at DOL. Another person you’d want around if you were seriously aiming to reinvent workforce for the better.
Probably not great I wrote that twice within a few paragraphs. But with 20 percent of DOL gone, there are many more I could say that about too.
This week’s grants listing number: $1.5 billion.
Speaking of which: new DOL money this week, and some flags about that process behind the paywall. There also is new NSF money I’m evaluating but don’t feel comfortable rating yet because of the fires behind their side of the fence.
Behind the paywall
Something to watch in the consolidation of workforce programs under the new Trump executive order.
How the Trump Administration can create risks to the Trump Administration in grants decisions.
Anxiety Watch for missing workforce money.