The Department of Labor’s historic threat to withhold funding from states’ unemployment insurance programs didn’t quite land with the weight the government apparently intended: Several states told NOTUS they didn’t know much about the Trump administration’s new directive.
The Labor Department announced it sent out a letter Wednesday, signed by acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, telling states that “for the first time in modern history” — their emphasis — the federal government would cut states off from administrative funding if they didn’t do more to address waste, fraud and abuse in their unemployment systems.
The missive, which name-checked six states run by Democratic governors, including California, New Jersey and New York, but no red states, blamed the Biden administration for allowing “widespread fraud” in the programs.