Dr. Jennifer Rubin

this is a level of complicity that had not occurred to me

Thank you @ricksteves.bsky.social ! Much love and appreciation from your neighbor in Shoreline.

raise your hand if you're not in NYC but you're following the mayoral election out of a desperate need to believe that good things are possible

Judge rules that anti-woke is just racism You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a rancid bigot.

New in PN: Judge rules that anti-woke is just racism

“'I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,' Judge Young fumed. 'I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.'

*More of this, please*"

Tennessee’s law expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status, so the Constitution and settled precedent require the Court to subject it to intermediate scrutiny. The majority contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise, inexplicably declaring it must uphold Tennessee’s categorical ban on lifesaving medical treatment so long as “‘any reasonably conceivable state of facts’” might justify it. Ante, at 21. Thus, the majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.

Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Skrmetti (which she's now reading from the bench) is deeply pained, accusing her colleagues of abandoning "transgender children and their families to political whims" and badly damaging "bedrock" principles of equal protection. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!!

PLAINTIFF'S WIN!!

Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

This is outstanding and well worth the read.

Hate to be millennial about it all but it is just mental that my whole working life has just been a series of recessions and “economic shocks”, underpinned by stagnant wages

My son was diagnosed with Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome when he was three months old. It’s been a journey. We are so proud of everything he has accomplished so far. But yes- I constantly worry about health insurance and if he will be covered in the future.

My 3-year-old son has a rare genetic condition. His medical bills have totaled over 3 million dollars. I worry everyday that that protections for pre-existing conditions will be taken away and that he won’t be able to get medical insurance.

Yes!

House Republicans just voted to gut Medicaid, which covers 1 in 5 Americans overall, including 41% of births and 63% of nursing home care.

They also just voted to gut SNAP, on which 41 million food insecure Americans rely.

This won’t just harm people. This will kill people.

They own this.

In case you missed it: “social justice” and “equity” now interpreted as illegal in education under this far-right U.S. administration. We are experiencing the rollback of civil rights protection that only lasted two generations in American history.

www.ed.gov/media/docume...

Graphic from United for Medical Research showing that NIH funding produces $2.46 in economic activity for every $1.00 awarded

Graphic from United for Research showing that NIH funding produced over $92B in economic activity in FY 2023

Graphic from United for Research showing that $914M in NIH grants to Florida institutions supported 14,688 jobs and produced $2.78B in economic activity

Cuts to the NIH are a strategy to strangle research universities not “reduce waste”

list of banned keywords

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

I won’t vote for @cantwell.senate.gov again.

➡️ January 20: FAA director fired
➡️ January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen
➡️ January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded
➡️ January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees
➡️ January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years

Making America Great Again!

These quippy one liners don’t work. Please do your job and fight back against Trump’s assault on democracy. We are tired of the Democratic Party sitting quietly.

I am begging the national media to start taking this seriously.

Stop buying the claims that the framing of "temporary" or "pause."

They are altering the review processes of federally funded scientific research from merit-based peer review processes to political screening by ideologues.

"Screenshot of an article by Erica L. Green, titled 'Federal workers were given 10 days to report on attempts to ‘disguise’ D.E.I. programs.' The article discusses the Trump administration's directive to federal employees to report colleagues who defy orders to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, with warnings of 'adverse consequences' for non-compliance. Employees were given a 10-day deadline to report violations via email without facing disciplinary action."

This is effectively a snitch on women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks policy. White men can just baselessly accuse any minority of being DEI and get them fired. They created a permission structure to bring back segregation as a matter of policy by calling it anti DEI.

If you all only knew how often* I have to prove my child is disabled** to various agencies and companies over and over again, how much time and effort it takes, how often his services get interrupted until we can prove it.
*multiple times a year
** who has multiple congenital intensive disabilities

Former Meta UX Researcher here. I used to research Facebook’s YA population. IMO Facebook and Insta are seen as outdated and stale by YA users. Their algo also can’t compete with TikTok. I don’t see a big increase in YA Insta users with the ban.

"Excerpt from an article published by The Intercept. The text discusses policies around allowing disparaging remarks about transgender individuals, including children. It mentions that the term 'tranny' is no longer considered a slur and provides examples of speech that should no longer be removed, such as statements using derogatory language against transgender individuals in various contexts."

Meta is fundamentally evil company that deserves to be wiped off the face of the planet.

But in its panicked retreat from the system it spent years building, Meta may now be putting billions of users at risk. Just because Meta deleted that line about hateful speech causing offline violence doesn't mean it isn't true. And now the company has all but declared open season on immigrants, transgender people and whatever other targets that Trump and his allies find useful in their fascist project. "I can't tell you how much harm comes from non-illegal but harmful content," a longtime former trust and safety employee at the company told me. The classifiers that the company is now switching off meaningfully reduced the spread of hate movements on Meta's platforms, they said. "This is not the climate change debate, or pro-life vs. pro-choice. This is degrading, horrible content that leads to violence and that has the intent to harm other people."

I talked to 10 current and former Meta employees about the company's surrender to the right on speech issues. All were upset. One person called the changes "a precursor to genocide" www.platformer.news/meta-fact-ch...

Meta Drops Rules Protecting LGBTQ Community as Part of Content Moderation Overhaul (Gift Article) The changes included allowing users to share “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.”

Meta ending its U.S. fact-checking and relaxing rules on sexual/gender identity is deeply concerning. As an LGBTQ+ person and researcher, I see how this fuels hate and misinformation. This isn’t about ‘free speech’; it’s about safety. Social media must protect, not amplify harm. We deserve better.

I’m so sorry that this happened to you and your family. I’m relieved that the ACA prevents insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. I’m worried that it’s going to be taken away under Trump.

Regence initially denied covering the birth of my daughter because I didn’t get prior authorization. She was born three weeks early.

As someone with a three year old who has amassed over 3 million dollars in health care costs, I have spent countless hours on the phone with insurance companies fighting over denied claims for lifesaving services. The healthcare system in the US is broken.

My 3-year-old has an extremely rare genetic condition. Our medical bills have totaled over 3 million dollars. I do not know what we are going to do if they take away pre-existing conditions.