Owlie's Domain

1) Figured this out.

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"

Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtles (Part 39)

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He who commands the dead.

They hadn't seen each other in years. Not physically, anyway. Video calls didn't really count. It wasn't that they'd broken off on bad terms, far from, it was just that their jobs took them to opposite ends of the globe. It didn't really make sense for them to continue with... whatever they had. Ending it amicably had been a good idea. Bittersweet, sure, but they had enjoyed the short time that they had had together and were able to look back at it with fondness. Stolen kisses when passing in the corridor, the occasional bouts of sleeping together when they had the chance.

They weren't boyfriends, but they were lovers for a small pocket of time. Two lonely souls taking solace in one another in a career that sometimes left them feeling isolated. Graves had fought the idea of stopping seeing each other originally, saying that he could hire a private jet for Price. Fly him out every so often, or how ever often Price would have wanted to see him. But Price had other responsibilities that went above Graves, as hard as it was to admit. It was a harder pill for Graves to swallow. Though, surprisingly, the Commander had only taken a day or so to accept it.

They'd parted a few days later, Graves pressing a kiss to each one of Price's knuckles and murmuring a promise into the skin when nobody was watching.

"We'll see each other again one day." Price just smiled sadly and nodded along. He knew they would, but the length of time was a mystery. While seeing each other again was a possibility, there was never a guarantee with jobs like theirs.

The years following hadn't changed either man all too much. Price hadn't changed a bit. Graves hadn't either apart from the new scar on his cheek that Price had to resist the urge to run his thumb over and ask if the bastard that had done it was dead.They had been lovers-- but not boyfriends. Not more. Never more. Part of John wished there had been. With jobs like theirs, you seldom ask for more. Nor was it his place to ask such a thing. In a way, it likely never had been.

The World Cup is going as expected in the States.

What a mess

“Fascist FIFA"