This evening, Rep. Al Green of Texas was forcibly removed from the joint session of Congress by the sergeant-at-arms for standing up and yelling “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid.” during the president’s address.
“He is a person who has consistently used incivility against civility,” Green said.
“I’m willing to suffer whatever punishment is available to me,” he continued. “I didn’t say to anyone, ‘Don’t punish me.’ I’ve said I’ll accept the punishment, but it’s worth it to let people know that there are some of us who are going to stand up against this president’s desire to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”
“This is about the people who are being punished by virtue of losing their health care,” he added. “This is the richest country in the world, and we have people who don’t have good health care.” (Per HuffPost)
“Many exclaimed how the agency was known for creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer dollars and time—precisely in line with DOGE’s purported mission—but it’s long been clear at this point that DOGE has little real interest in actually locating efficiencies; it’s aim is to hobble the regulatory state, pursue political objectives, and concentrate power.”
In fact, in a telling turn of events, the post in which Musk declared 18F “deleted” was a response to one of his followers crowing about (and evidently misunderstanding) 18F’s role in creating Direct File—a program that let taxpayers circumvent the onerous, for-profit TurboTax’s filing software, and instead file taxes directly to the government online. This would improve taxpayer satisfaction, reduce reliance on an outside corporation, and streamline the process of filing taxes considerably—something that, if DOGE had any real interest in efficiency, would be an obvious boon.
Instead, Musk and DOGE were evidently more interested in firing people for what they looked like, all to get a little adulation from sneering posters on X. The result is unknown and potentially incalculable harm to the nation’s digital infrastructures, and to the people who maintained and sought to improve it.
“Personally holding up okay,” one tech worker effected by the cuts told me. “Difficult to see fed friends and colleagues laid off. Really fearful for what that means for all the services, products, platforms that we spent years building and improving.”
Of course, by now, such incalculable harms are being done to crucial departments across the government—thousands of employees overseeing critical systems, data, architecture, and services, from NOAA, to USGS, to GSA, to the Treasury, to just about everywhere at this point. But it’s worth underlining the particular cruelty at work in the destruction of 18F. Clearly, there are political motives when Musk and DOGE go after USAID, stripping funding and laying off staff because conservatives thought some of its programs sounded silly or woke, and financial ones when it dismantles the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that created hassles for Musk’s billionaire buddies. But the killing of 18F is different. It’s the termination and removal of an entire office operating within the federal government on what appears to be the basis of its politics and its demography. No pretense made about performance deficiencies, or that this is about anything other than malice and punishment.
18F was openly targeted for having many nonwhite and gender-nonconforming LGBTQ+ members by DOGE. The discrimination is sickening but not unsurprising. The loss of their work will be felt by everyone even if folks don’t know where the pain is coming from.
no matter how hard i try i will always be that little girl wondering why everyone is better friends with eachother than her and begging to be loved
in another life we’re all on the playground sitting by the fence in the grass together and we all have eachother. maybe not here but somewhere it wasn’t like this.
new and magnificent beasts will arise from the muck. trust me on this one
The solar calendar marks a day (or solar term) in the spring called 啓蟄 keichitsu, literally “awakening of insects.” It’s when hibernating insects, frogs, snakes, lizards, and other creatures are supposed to wake up and come out of the ground.
In 2025, keichitsu will fall on March 5 (it’s usually sometime around March 6). I don’t want to miss it again next year, so I am reblogging this post five months in advance and then throwing it in my queue for good measure!
TLDR: Trust OP! New and magnificent beasts WILL arise from the muck! Sometime around March 6.
Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Monday evening blocked a Republican-led attempt to enshrine discrimination against transgender athletes in federal law. The lawmakers rejected the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The bill, part of a more considerable conservative effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, failed to garner enough votes needed to advance.
After senators voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon, the upper chamber considered moving forward with the anti-trans legislation. The bill was stopped by a cloture vote, which is a procedural motion that requires 60 votes to end debate and move forward. The vote was 51 to 45.
The legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives by Florida GOP Rep. Greg Steube and passed by Republicans earlier this year with the support of two Democrats, sought to rewrite Title IX protections by defining sex in athletics solely based on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” If enacted, the bill would have effectively barred transgender women and girls from participating in federally funded school and college sports.
The bill also called for federal studies on the impact of transgender inclusion in women’s sports and potential “adverse psychological and developmental effects” on cisgender athletes. There is no evidence that transgender athletes are a danger to cisgender peers. While it did not mandate physical examinations to determine an athlete’s sex, critics warned that its enforcement could lead to intrusive scrutiny of all female athletes.
The bill’s failure comes amid a broader, coordinated effort by Republicans to legislate transgender people out of public life. Just last month, Trump signed an executive order titled “No Men in Women’s Sports.“ Trump used the signing ceremony as an opportunity to spew inflammatory rhetoric, falsely claiming that men have “invaded” women’s sports and that male athletes are “beating up and injuring” women—a claim that has been debunked time and time again.
Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson applauded the Senate’s rejection of the bill, emphasizing the damaging impact of such policies. “Every child should have the opportunity to experience the simple joys of being young and making memories with their friends. But bills like these send the message that transgender kids don’t deserve the same opportunities to thrive as their peers simply because of who they are. And they are impossible to enforce without putting all kids at risk of invasive questions or physical examinations just because someone doesn’t look or dress like everyone else,” Robinson said in a statement to The Advocate.
Trump’s executive order, which threatened to strip federal funding from schools and colleges that failed to comply with his ban on transgender athletes, has already triggered legal challenges. Civil rights advocates and legal experts have pointed out that executive orders cannot override federal civil rights protections, including those under Title IX, and the order is expected to be tied up in court for months.
“We should want all of our kids to have the chance to be on a team, problem solve with others, learn valuable skills, and find places to belong,” Robinson said. “Thank you to the leaders who stood up today, pushed back against those playing politics with young people’s lives, and declared that ours should be a nation where every child feels valued.”
to be clear, 45 Democrats voted to filibuster this bill to death, no Democrats cross the line to vote to let it go forward, Democrats stand as the defenders of trans rights and anyone selling you anything else is lying to you to steal your power and make you feel hopeless.
“Honestly, these days I’m mostly an e-reader, and if I want a book I buy it. I only get nice hardcovers of books I really like. Plus, it seems like to find anything I’d have to dig and search, which I don’t care enough to do anymore. I’m mostly going to this bookstore for the vibes. My budget is safe because I doubt I’ll even buy anything.” – me, full of hubris, about to enter John King Used & Rare Books
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one of the first sections on the first floor is art and comics and i immediately realized my error
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the gasp i let out when i spotted an Out Our Way collection was audible three stacks over and truly humbling. when i saw a rufus king pulp from 1930 i was so excited i started tearing up for real.
here is a map of the store btw
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they offer it when you walk in so you can figure out where you are and one of the employees assured me that if i got lost i could just yell
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I worked on the 4th floor of John King for almost two years and except for the low pay, constant dust and lack of heating and air conditioning it was an absolute dream job. Very few people ever made it up all four flights of stairs so I was alone in a giant room full of books and no expectations. I read the entire woman’s studies section during the winter of 2004.
Also, it’s true that finding lost patrons when they yell was a significant part of the job.
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amhrancas 