This week, a group of veteran workforce leaders launched The Industry-Led Talent Initiative, the resources and background of which you can read here. As I’ve written recently, a more sector-based approach that closely involves employers is much more effective than the “everything, all the time, everywhere” approach mandated under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, America’s most consistent source of workforce funding. We need to pull in some worker perspectives to complete the drill, but the smart people behind the Initiative have put together a really great skeleton of where we need to go in terms of looping in employers and training to their needs.

The Trump Administration announced plans to shift the Transition Assistance Program, a job preparation program for servicemembers leaving the military. Something to keep an eye on. Every description I get of TAP is “brief” and “not enough.” It’s also worth wondering aloud if even a really excellent TAP can make up for issues with the private sector not understanding veterans’ experience, which can prevent veterans from getting hired into the right job or at all.

The incoming Senate Appropriations chair wants big funding calls pushed until the next Congress. Dems don‘t want to work off a GOP plan, and punting until next year could avoid one-foot-out-the-door cuts made with a cut-hungry (and generally not strategic) White House. It also could delay some funding opportunities hitting the street as agencies wait to figure out if those dollars are there.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul will lead the Republican side of the Senate HELP Committee, which oversees workforce policy. The growing expectation had been that this spot would end up with Missouri’s Josh Hawley, who is friendlier to unions and more skeptical of AI. Paul had to give up being the top Republican on the Homeland Security committee to take the HELP job. Pairing Hawley with incoming chair Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have been fun for GOP-friendly AI and anti-union interests. That said, it might have offered some variety to Hill Republicans’ take on workforce, which is pretty stagnant and seems to leave many Republicans cold. Paul hasn’t seemed particularly interested in workforce beyond not liking unions as much as humanly possible.