the literal worst

For public libraries, one of the ways we secure funding year to year is lending. Governments don’t want to fund more books if they’re not being used and the way we measure use is by issues. Regardless of whether you read it or not, whether you have it for a day or a month, if you issue it to your library card, we get the stats! It makes the library look good!

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"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

a) young children tend to do a lot of copying the behaviors around them, and

b) most of the people hanging around them are taking care of kids (them)

a lot of little kids REALLY want to take care of slightly littler kids. Today a toddler barely over a year old kissed a baby a couple months younger than him, tried to wipe his nose, and tried to feed him a toy apple. A couple kids older than Him then started trying to put him in a toy shopping cart to take him shopping. There's a 3yo who always tries to steal the babies' milk bottles to feed them. A 4yo tried to give a baby his own bottle once. A toddler too young to know any words yet will shush me if any of the little babies are laying down to sleep.

The toddler who really wants to kiss babies continues to really really really want to kiss babies. However this toddler is also often very upset that Mama Left Him, as it goes for some. His desire to love on a babier baby doesn't break through that for too long.

But! There are two older boys (8 & 5) that, when they're also there, he never cries. He likes to chase them around and play with them and try to touch their faces.

Now, these two older boys have had some behavioral issues in the past, particularly that they get rough with each other. But with this toddler? They're sweet as fuck. They play around with him and are extremely gentle and help him out. And at one point today the older kid sat next to the toddler and just said. That's a Handsome Boy.

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

1) OP made a post that seemed interactive but then

2) Did NOT want anyone to actually engage

I remember tumblr at the time. It wouldn’t have changed OP’s post so lmao big L for OP making it weird

But best of all:

Most people didn’t realize there WAS a response until this fuckin UFO went by.