Erin Brooks

Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services US president reverses threat to suspend security clearances and cancel federal contracts after meeting with chair of Paul, Weiss

This is freakishly wrong. Extortion, corruption, submission. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Donald Trump’s order dismantling the Dept. of Education is yet another attack on our children’s future. This isn’t about empowering states—it’s about gutting protections for students, slashing resources for public schools, + abandoning families who rely on federal support as a pathway to prosperity.

"forced discrimination programs" = EPA programs that made it slightly more difficult for industry to turn Black neighborhoods like Pleasantville in Houston or Africatown in Mississippi into cancer havens polluted with unregulated toxic waste

Can’t stop thinking about all the people who’ve lost their jobs. Losing your job in this country, it’s like annihilation—not least because it usually means losing health care, too. And for so many people, their entire sector has been eviscerated. I wouldn’t be able to feed my kids. It’s terrifying.

I have decided to cancel my show at The Kennedy Center on May 11, 2025 and move it to The Anthem.

We know who the villains are in this coup. But so many heroes are showing up to oppose them, and many of them are federal employees, including judges. I give you supreme boss-hero champion Judge Ana Reyes, telling Team Trump they don't know shit and schooling them in the facts about gender and sex.

So sick of the people who are stifling speech and censoring content and deleting websites and firing folks for working on diversity in America turning around and lecturing others around the world about “free speech” (ie hate speech)—disgusting doublespeak

To Use Their Language Is to Endorse Their Lies Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis, and the current one here in the US is also a language crisis. How we use the language and how we listen for lies that are in single words and phrases as ...

A single word can be a lie. For example, journalists are still calling what Musk and his child army have been doing an operation in pursuit of government efficiency.... www.meditationsinanemergency.com/to-use-their...

TOTE ASTRICT COLOR DOCTORS FOR AMERICA, Plaintiff, Civil Action No. 25-322 (JDB) OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT et al., Defendants. ORDER Upon consideration of [6] Plaintiff's motion for a temporary restraining order, [8] Plaintiff's supplemental declarations, [9] Defendants' opposition, [10] Plaintiff's reply, the hearing on February 10, 2025, and the entire record herein, and for the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion, it is hereby ORDERED that 1. Defendants Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control, and Food and Drug Administration (hereinafter "defendants") shall, by not later than 11:59 pm on February 11, 2025, restore to their versions as of January 30, 2025, each webpage and dataset identified by Plaintiff on pages 6-12 of its Memorandum of Law in Support of the Motion for a Restraining Order [ECF No. 6-1]; 2. Defendants shall, in consultation with Plaintiff, identify any other resources that DF A members rely on to provide medical care and that defendants removed or substantially modified on or after January 29, 2025, without adequate notice or reasoned explanation; and defendants shall, by February 14, 2025, restore those resources to their versions as of January 30, 2025;

BREAKING: In response to doctors' lawsuit, Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, orders CDC, NIH, and FDA to put back up websites and datasets cited by the doctors in their lawsuit as having been relied upon and pulled down without notice. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I have a confession
.
.
.
I was an “overhead cost”.

I was a beaker washer, agar plate pourer, research secretary. I was paid by “overhead cost” fees. Loved it.

Those “overhead cost” jobs allowed this rural kid to become a physician.

Please tag how #OverheadCostJob impact u.

Seriously, we are losing so much specialized knowledge, and for what?! so that Trump can plunge the economy into a recession in addition to all the trauma of this? Seriously, NO ONE should support this stuff.

Trump’s Attacks on DEI Get Approval From Some in the Left Wing Many Democrats and activists are rallying to defend diversity programs, but others say they distract from deeper efforts to address inequality.

i'll be blunt, if you are someone who is vocal about the ways that diversity efforts "divide the working class" but silent about the ways that *actual racism and discrimination* divide the working class, then i think you're just an opportunist

DOGE is reportedly threatening NOAA with massive staff and budget cuts.

NOAA houses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, which produce forecasts and warn people about storms.

This attack on public safety is ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025.

To America’s 2.3 million federal employees:

Don’t accept a buyout.

Neither Musk nor even Trump has the legal authority to make such an offer.

And even if they did, would you trust them to follow through on it?

Sincerely,

Robert Reich
Former U.S.Secretary of Labor

It was totally predictable that the "cancel culture" and "free speech" charade from right-wing grifters ended up supporting a regime that has done more to censor speech in a week than the Oberlin students they relentlessly lied about did ever.

Elon Musk’s Blitz Shakes U.S. Government as He Sweeps Through Agencies The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.

The federal work force is NOT our enemy.

From NY Times: Musk “boasted on Saturday that his willingness to work weekends was a “superpower” that gave him an advantage over his adversary. The adversary he was referring to was the federal work force.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/u...

Trump moves to wrest control of USAID as Musk says ‘we’re shutting it down’ Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk said early Monday that his DOGE team is in the process of closing USAID, the world’s largest provider of food assistance.

A deadly serious bureaucratic-legal question. What formal position does Musk currently hold & what authority does he have (“the president told me” doesn’t count) to shut down federal agencies & raid their secure material? www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

In my years of reporting on LGBTQ news this was by far the hardest.

But we are still here. You made it to Friday. You lived. Good job. That wasn’t easy.

Through a diversity of tactics, we will continue to live.

Rest up, drink water, find community, so that we can all be here tomorrow too.

The ordinary questions you might ask: Is Elon Musk a government employee? Are his lieutenants? Does he personally hold a security clearance and do his “lieutenants”? Have they all undergone a background check? Are they subject to foreign influence? Have they ever done a sieg heil on stage?

From NYTimes: Senator Patty Murray commending those who spoke out against the original order for putting pressure on the White House. She accused the Trump administration of sowing chaos through “a combination of sheer incompetence, cruel intentions and a willful disregard of the law.”

Hey friends! We're seeing a lot of terrible things. We're not able to cover all of them, but we felt this latest one is a really big deal and needs much more awareness. Our summary is this: It's an administrative coup. Trump has ordered tens of billions (maybe up to $3 trillion) of budget halted indefinitely in a blatantly illegal move. He's claiming power to halt and potentially redirect funding that's already been authorized by Congress — a classic authoritarian move. Here's what we know. And we're doing our best to catch up with this story, because it's moving fast. There's a memo from Matthew Vaeth, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget. (That's the same government entity who set-up the DEI "snitch" line, that's now been spammed by tens of thousands of our fellow residents.) In typical Trump-style, the memo gets its facts wrong. It claims in FY2024 the US government spent $10 trillion (actually it was $6.8 trillion). It says money should be used for the administration's priorities — "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve." (Again, it's very fact deficient.) The memo says a pause will begin at 5pm on January 28th where, "Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal." Anyone promised federal grants might have their money at risk, even states. This is Congressional directed spending and Trump is ordering people to not do it. This funding includes universities for education and research programs, nonprofits, local and tribal governments, disaster relief aid, e…

So what can we do? It's been a lot. And the shock approach of this administration is to overwhelm us with nonsense and a state of paralysis. We continue to believe the best thing is to stay grounded and keep yourself sane amidst insanity. At this juncture, three actions we suggest that make sense to us: 1) Urge media to cover this story properly This is not "possibly illegal" — it's "patently illegal." You can read notes on that here. It's not "temporary" — it's "indefinite." There's no timetable for ending it. It's not just a memo — it's an administrative coup. 2) Urge your Representatives to act like this is a big deal If you know us, this isn't a knee-jerk action we suggest. We think this is a strategic because it's Congress that's being violated — their power is being directly undermined. 3) Continue to support ACLU and Democracy Forward These groups have been preparing litigation for some time. Unless Trump revokes this, this will certainly make its way through the courts. Our read is even the biased courts will have trouble swallowing this — so it may end up being shut down. Keep breathing. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again," Nelson Mandela. Warmly, - Choose Democracy

Hi that was a coup last night in case no one mentioned that to you. The executive branch seized the power of the purse the Constitution gave to Congress, which is a pretty authoritarian / illegal consolidation of powers move. Time to go yell at your reps, the media, etc.

Friends in music studies, sound studies, disability studies, and trauma studies: Please spread the word about this CFP for the AMS Music, Sound, and Trauma Study Group's dedicated session at the 2025 AMS meeting in Minneapolis! Feel free to email us at amsmusicsoundtraumasg@gmail.com with questions!

Trump Administration Escalates D.E.I. Crackdown in Latest Threat to Federal Workers The warning came one day after the administration ordered that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the government be shut down by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Every autocracy needs informers! Breaking horizontal bonds of trust by denouncing co-workers is key to making institutions political tools. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/u...

If you like food you like immigrants.

[Or should.]