Notices by Tony Stark (tonystark@progressivecafe.social)

It’s a lie that the jobs are wasteful or unnecessary. And national parks are something everyone uses.

Just wait until everyone has to wait in giant long lines to get in or someone needs rescuing from a fall off a trail.

Eventually, the Trump government will declare them unsafe and open them up for industry to drill and destroy.

Once they’re gone, they’re gone. You can’t rebuild them.

A fired national park ranger lost his dream job. He says the public is losing more:
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/17/nx-s1-5298684/national-park-ranger-trump-job-cuts-nps

If you are trying to use https://www.noaa.gov to access reliable weather information, https://forecast.weather.gov is still an operational part of their website.

Those who stand in the way of ethical science and care for the vulnerable are destroying years of progress. The destruction of these resources harms everyone.

And remember that Trump's first Secretary of Commerce wanted to privatize NOAA's weather services so we’d have to pay for it.

Make sure people you know understand this. #NOAA

I have no idea why Kansas farmers continue to trust Republicans after all the Kochs’ meddling in local politics and the hardship that’s caused Kansans.

Were they played for suckers? I don’t know. They and others voted for him, believing none of his terrible policies would touch them personally.

If you know any Trump-voting farmers, let them know they can vote for something else.

With Trump and Musk driving U.S. policy, Kansas farmers have been played for suckers-
https://kansasreflector.com/2025/02/12/with-trump-and-musk-driving-u-s-policy-kansas-farmers-have-been-played-for-suckers/

@Tengrain We have this on one end and I got yet again today a flurry of responses, some of them very abusive, from alleged left people, saying that being involved in politics is a waste of time, that they’ll never vote for a Democrat, and encouraging people to take up guns against Trump.

Something’s got to give here.

@arbres @Tengrain I have a friend there with a nice wife and 2 kids so I’m going to stop short of saying they’re all horrible. I don’t like demonizing whole states and there’s an active grassroots Dem organization there.

And Laura Kelly is in her 2nd term so I hold out hope.

Norman, OK mayor is a nonpartisan office (officially) but Larry Heikkila was backed by conservative groups who didn’t have local interests in mind.

Stephen Tyler Holman beat him by 26 points by going out and being involved in his community and by running on listening to people and working together and not dividing people, even if you don’t agree 100 percent.

Something to think about.

Stephen Tyler Holman, Larry Heikkila react to election | News | oudaily.com:
https://www.oudaily.com/news/norman-mayor-election-results-stephen-tyler-holman-larry-heikkila-reacts/article_983fceda-e8fe-11ef-8500-0f5b6a1ccee7.html

Once again, everyone should’ve opposed fascism on November 5th. Yet, a majority of people refused to.

Left columnists and TV personalities and people like James Carville with absolutely no skin in the game and the people listening to them need to stop blaming Democratic leaders for why Republicans and their propaganda continue to fleece the country. This goes back decades. It’s not new.

Until this attitude changes, nothing else will.

They literally told everyone what they were going to do.

When people die because their food, medication, water, and air is not safe, all the “both parties are the same people” will be sorry. I will also be sorry because I have people in my life I care about.

But I’ll tell you, you’re going to have a very hard time convincing people to trust you when they find out you helped this along.

Republicans want to prevent USDA from implementing rule to control Salmonella | Food Safety News
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2025/02/republicans-want-to-prevent-usda-from-implementing-rule-to-control-salmonella/

@samiamsam @adammoe2022 I said that day 1 and eventually had to block an entire instance over it.

He got this far after being impeached twice, 34 felony convictions, multiple sexual abuse allegations and judgements against him, and since the beginning, making fun of a reporter with a disability.

Our country is in the gutter and a lot of people told folks not to turn every single part of the federal government over to Republicans.

Those people at least ought to own this.

Nancy Gertner reacts to a recent court order against the Trump administration : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/nx-s1-5292199/retired-federal-judge-nancy-gertner-trump-federal-funding-freeze-restraining-order

1938 all over again. A weakling functionary says that in order to avoid war, democracies must give in to the demands of a dictator to the delight of that dictator and other dictators in the world. They see now that they just need to invade their neighbors and that’s it.

This is what Trump and the far right have been saying all this time and they are ready to roll over and give Putin everything.

Full Ukrainian liberation from Russia 'unrealistic,' Hegseth tells allies -
https://abcnews.go.com/International/full-ukrainian-liberation-russia-unrealistic-hegseth-tells-allies/story?id=118727933

Allies sharing intel with the U.S. just came to a screeching halt. If you don't know what that means, that means national security is massively at risk. That means your family. That means your community. That means you.

I voted for Kamala Harris who wanted to pick qualified people for important jobs.

Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence | CNN Politics
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/12/politics/tulsi-gabbard-confirmation-vote-senate/index.html

@arbres @NoRomBasic Where’s Jill Stein? Hiding under a rock until she can crawl out in 4 years and be “the disrupter?”

Sorry, starving children! Stein and her voters thought their message sending while they sit around Ivy campuses was more important.

Here’s Jill Stein’s campaign manager on Twitter asking “where’s ’ Kamala” like they didn’t do everything possible to keep her from having power to do it. But they’re all about the “dO sOmEtHiNg!!!!”

These people are not our allies. Fuck ‘em.

@FallsMom I talked to someone yesterday who I didn’t really fully understand the political views of until yesterday who told me racism doesn’t exist (while going on a racist rant about the Superbowl Halftime Show) and told me that cancer had been secretly cured so we no longer need medical research. Does Fox tell them this? Facebook groups?

I feel sick most of the day now thinking how many people are being hurt. Eventually killed.

As a scientist, this is infuriating. Cutting “indirect costs” guts the infrastructure that makes research possible. Labs don’t run on goodwill alone—this will shut down projects, derail discoveries, and drive talent away. But sure, let’s call it “sanity” while billions are wasted elsewhere.

Pittsburgh universities join legal challenge against NIH funding cuts | 90.5 WESA
https://www.wesa.fm/health-science-tech/2025-02-11/pittsburgh-nih-funding-cuts-lawsuit

I really encourage people to organize hyper-locally. It's hard to change the world if you don't know the names of the people on your street or in your neighborhood or who your local elected officials are.

We are unfortunately limited on what federally-elected Democrats can do until midterms. That’s math.

But get involved in your school boards, township councils, and municipal elections. When they turn blue or solidly blue, we move up.

Local elections calendar:
https://ballotpedia.org/Local_elections_calendar

People should be leaning on to their state attorney general to join this suit if they’re not already on it.

State attorneys general | USAGov:
https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general

A lot of Trump’s weird antics like his Kennedy Center crap are a distraction so he can pull off things like this.

Attorney General Bonta Sues Trump Administration Over DOGE’s Unlawful Access to Americans’ Personal Information | State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-sues-trump-administration-over-doge%E2%80%99s-unlawful-access

What he’s doing vs. what he thinks he’s doing.

Judge Deborah Boardman is a Biden appointee.

But people and apparently a whole lot of organizations spending their time protesting Democrats don’t like to pay real attention to how the government works, I guess. Otherwise, they’d talk about things like that.

Judge blocks Trump's bid to restrict birthright citizenship -
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8kk9j3j0o