Pye Apologist

July art party stuff! really glad I could finally make it ✨

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.

I wish I knew how to start this, but I don't. So here goes nothing ^^'

After being born and raised here, and living in FL all 27 years of my life, I finally have the chance to leave. I can honestly no longer afford to live in my home state, and the culture shift that has taken place over the past five years has destroyed my love and safety for her as a visibly queer person. I am moving to Illinois with a very wonderful friend, and will officially be out of state on July 21st!

The cost to move things, however, has been astronomical. Ironically doing the pod method was cheaper than a truck, but it is still... yowza!

I feel very guilty asking for help over what is objectively a good thing for me, but with my work hours being cut, my credit card bills being very high after struggling through 6 months of unemployment, and me getting run off the road on my scooter and breaking it which I was going to try and sell for some cash... really put a dent in my ability to save up.

Any money I get from this will go straight to my uhaul payment, and any money after will go to my half of rent and the security deposit. I do have a job lined up when I get to Illinois but this bill needs to be paid before then. We will be doing a meandery road trip to get up to Illinois to buy time for my stuff to arrive, but we will be keeping it cheap as we can, and none of the money I get from this will go to that. Only essentials.

If you'd like to donate directly, you can use https://ko-fi.com/vulturereyy or my vnmo/cshpp are both Vulturereyy.

If you'd like to help and get some cute coasters, I make chickens and flowers you can buy here! https://sleepyskimmerco.bigcartel.com/

tyria pride year 10! they raised over $30,000 for rainbow railroad this year— congrats and thanks to all the wildly hard-working people who wrangle this thing every time 💖🌈💖