ya boi

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

Also a reminder that they were better at tumblr than most of us, comrade interloper was great at memeing. Like, the talent!

they will do a lot of that, actually; most of their posts are usually a mix of popular memes (since that's what gains followers) and reasonable-sounding posts about social and political issues (since that's what "proves" their legitimacy and establishes their cover), and in between all of that is the occasional post about how voting is useless and the progressive candidate is Just As Bad, Actually

these blogs are meant to be indistinguishable from real people in left-leaning communities because that's the entire point

Silverman, C. (2018, February 6). Russian Trolls Ran Wild On Tumblr And The Company Refuses To Say Anything About It. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/russian-trolls-ran-wild-on-tumblr-and-the-company-refuses#.kq6pLQ5q6

Collins, B., Russell, J. (2018, March 1). Russians Used Reddit and Tumblr to Troll the 2016 Election. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-used-reddit-and-tumblr-to-troll-the-2016-election

Ewing, P. (2018, March 27). Tumblr's Ban Of Russian Accounts Adds Detail To Targeting Of Black Americans. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597021235/tumblrs-ban-of-russian-accounts-adds-detail-to-targeting-of-black-americans

Feldman, B. (2018, March 26). Tumblr Is, Almost by Accident, Our Best Glimpse of How Russian Trolls Work. New York. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/tumblr-is-our-best-glimpse-of-how-russian-trolls-work.html

Jones, R. (2018, December 18). Here's How Russian Trolls Turned Social Media Into a Weapon While Tech Giants Played Dumb. Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/heres-how-russian-trolls-turned-social-media-into-a-wea-1831144317

Neill Hoch, I. (2020). Russian Internet Research Agency Disinformation Activities on Tumblr: Identity, Privacy, and Ambivalence. Social Media + Society, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120961783

Summer Chiaki she’s so cute I want this bathing suit so bad lol 💕💕

Still working on my style, I think I’ve mixed them in a way I really like. Maybe I’m finally getting somewhere lol 🥰 art is such a process and it can be so discouraging but I’m so happy with this piece and that’s what matters

More info from GLAAD:

https://glaad.org/fcc/

They have some good tips about writing a comment and protecting your privacy which, fuck it, I'll just paste here:

Providing an email address is optional. If you have concerns about privacy, you may use your initials or public address in your local area, such as City Hall. Do not use a joke name. It diminishes the comment’s credibility.

Your submission does not need to be long. A single, well-reasoned paragraph is sufficient.

Do not copy/paste a template comment. The FCC values unique perspectives, and an original comment carries significantly more weight in the public record. You can explain why this matters to you without revealing private or sensitive personal information.

Here's what I said:

“Free speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.”

Here's the link to submit your comment by May 22:

modern day cupids 💘

I’m known for these two at this point