mothman is tired

Me myself and I

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"

“The White House met this week with tech companies and kids’ safety groups to try to shore up support for a package of bills that could ultimately preempt some state laws on artificial intelligence, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.”

“The effort is moving in tandem with a push by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to pass a clutch of kids’ safety and AI bills.”

The Monday meeting represents the latests action to block or replace state AI laws

“after several failed attempts by the Trump administration and congressional leadership.

And it comes less than a week after a separate, bipartisan preemption draft from Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) got a tepid reception in Washington.”

“Still unresolved is whether the White House would seek to block a wide swath of state AI rules — a goal the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have aggressively pursued since last year

or would focus on preempting state action on narrow issues such as verifying social media users’ ages.”

Jon Schweppe, a senior adviser at the conservative American Principles Project and an attendee at one of the White House meetings has said

(We also want to point out that Jon is a massive fan of age verification, even saying that if this package doesn’t go through, age verification will lose)

“The White House wants to get a deal done, and obviously preemption is an important priority for them that they’ve had since day one,”

“They understand that a robust kid safety package is how you get to preemption, so they’re just trying to piece together something that they think could actually get 60 votes,” Schweppe added.

Many kids safety groups want the guard act, a bill that would regulate AI chatbots in a bid to protect kids.

“The people said the White House gauged the advocates’ willingness to support a package that includes Blackburn’s Kids Online Safety Act and the App Store Accountability Act by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)”

“And others fear that the Trump administration plans to use the kids’ safety package as leverage to preempt a broader set of state AI rules.”

one conservative kids’ safety advocate has said

“Federal preemption is a normal part of our constitutional order, but it’s not normal to trade a kids’ safety bill — or series of kids’ safety bills — for anything broader than that, What we don’t want to do is make a trade on preemption that is going to block some future action that we need on the state level,”

According to five people who are familiar with these talks

Top White House officials meet with representatives from four kids safety groups to sell this new package

“The officials included Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Ryan Baasch, deputy director of the National Economic Council; and representatives from the offices of chief of staff Susie Wiles and first lady Melania Trump.”

“In addition to Schweppe’s American Principles Project, the people said representatives from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center were also present.”

(Also, the NCOSE has voiced their concerns over the KIDS act, which has caused Jon to talk about how it’s a tactical error, basically saying the package being their last shot for age verification. This just means some things are a bit rocky with support)

also meet with tech companies

“White House officials also met Monday with top tech companies to gauge their interest in pairing a kids’ safety package with a new preemption push, according to three people familiar with the meetings who were granted anonymity to freely discuss the talks. Representatives from Apple, Meta, Google and xAI attended the meeting, one of the people said.”

Nothing was agreed and was purely out of wanting feedback back

“Getting all the companies on the same page will be a challenge: Apple and Google have both opposed the App Store Accountability Act, while Meta has aggressively supported it at both the state and federal levels.

All the companies, however, have expressed an interest in preempting state laws around AI and other technologies, preferring a single set of federal rules over a patchwork of state laws they say slows innovation.”

https://fxtwitter.com/jonschweppe/status/2065146254456197541?s=46&t=D9wiDvG8fNalx6yOSgnTqw

call your representatives

Google is switching from manifest V2 to V3

“As early as March 2025, this rendered some extensions—including popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin—suddenly unusable, even though it was still possible to access them with a workaround.

By the end of June, however, even that will no longer work.

A future release of Chrome will block all add-ons still based on Manifest V2.”

There might be some other work arounds in the future

“Here’s what we know for sure: once the change goes live, there’s no going back.

It will be significantly more difficult to use ad blockers like uBlock Origin.

Doing so would require using developer settings and making changes that would make the browser less stable.”

The blocking of ad blockers isn’t a direct attack, but more of a side effect of switching to V3, though that’s what the company says

V3 is meant to be more safe and prevent rogue browser extensions from interfering deeply with a user’s system.

“Given that there have been repeated instances of extensions posing a serious threat, it’s understandable that Google wants to prevent that from happening.

The fact that it can also hamper ad blockers with the same move is just a bonus that Google is unlikely to be too upset about.”