Notices by Tony Stark (tonystark@progressivecafe.social)

One of the most sinister thing the Trump administration and DOGE are doing is defacto trying to create a national registry in the U.S. without really making it a political question of whether or not the government should know everything about the population.

Food assistance was the initial scope of the Aadhaar biometric system in India which ended up being mandated for everything from vaccine records to banking.

USDA wants states to share sensitive food stamp data:
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5389952/usda-snap-doge-data-immigration

Something to think about: government isn’t always the best tool to solve every cultural ill in society — so anyone setting that up as an expectation is setting up a no-win contest. It’s not going to solve white men’s masculinity issues, for example.

John Kasich recently criticized Biden for not "uniting the country.”

Biden never promised that magic wand outcome.

He did get significant bipartisan legislation passed, but the press one-and-done covered it if at all. But that was his actual job.

Why is the media giving Trump credit for walking back a mess of his own creation with China, which probably still won’t work, while ignoring the near half-a-billion dollar bribe ... sorry, "gift" of a decked out 747 a foreign country is giving him?

Just another day.

It's insane to me that book banning is not being treated like the scandal of say, Joe Biden's dog biting a USSS agent. It’s hardly getting any notice at all. “Banning books to appease Trump” isn’t setting off alarms?

Not Jennifer Bendery here because she’s obviously doing the work, but her colleagues in the media are failing us as a country every day.

The Military's K-12 Schools Are Banning Award-Winning Kids’ Books To Appease Trump |
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/defense-department-schools-book-bans-transgender-black-history_n_681b955be4b0a7eb6001ebf0

Well, at least we don't have those nerds from the last administration. All they did was study and was honestly were a little *too* prepared.

Trump says 80% tariff on China "seems right" ahead of trade talks -
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-china-trade-negotiations/

Some of us have spent 10 years being shut down when we said his entire movement is based on white racial grievances and not economic anxiety.

Trump knocks down a controversial pillar of civil-rights law:
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/08/trump-knocks-down-a-controversial-pillar-of-civil-rights-law

A story about how a male Democratic president was doing "First Lady duties" would never, ever, *ever* be forgotten. Decades from now the ghost of Maureen Dowd would still be appearing every Election Eve to recount it.

A Most Sensitive Subject in the White House: Where Is Melania? -
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/us/politics/white-house-melania-absence.html

From 2013 to 2024, the number of unique visits to the 63 National Parks of the U.S. (out of 433 managed sites) climbed 36.4% to over 94,000,000. (Source: nps.gov)

The proposed 2026 budget suggests cutting between $900 million and $1.2 billion out of the current budget and will cause large layoffs, depleting services.

What kind of shithole country can’t even keep its parks open?

National Park Service Targeted for 1,500 Layoffs And Budget Cuts From Trump Administration:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/05/08/national-park-service-layoffs-budget-cuts/

In case you missed it, which you probably did because the larger news outlets we’re all used to looking at don’t give this type of thing coverage.

The SAVE Act, Which Could Stop Millions of Women From Voting, Is ‘Dead on Arrival’ in the Senate |
https://www.glamour.com/story/the-save-act-which-could-stop-millions-of-women-from-voting-is-dead-on-arrival-in-the-senate

I highly encourage Republicans to double down on Trump’s “you and your kids will have fewer things and they’ll be really expensive.”

Seriously, run on that as aggressively as you can.

Trump rejects concerns about prices and economic uncertainty as he defends his agenda:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-rejects-concerns-prices-economic-uncertainty-defends-agenda-rcna203512

This is what happens when you vote for a union buster.

Good luck getting your mail, packages, and also ballots.

UPS and U.S. Postal Service announce significant job cuts. What you need to know:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ups-u-postal-announce-significant-220000962.html

The gutting of American science funding isn’t a big enough story in our news and it should be.

It significantly reduces American innovation and economic competitiveness in the near-term and long-term and it isn’t even being done efficiently, if that were in fact the goal.

I mean I’m sure it’s a victim of the “flood the zone” strategy, but this is going to hurt people in big ways.

This is bad.

Trump cuts roil National Science Foundation, alarming researchers:
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5371720/national-science-foundation-budget-grant-cuts-turmoil

I’d guess too many Americans have no clue about scientific research, how it’s done, who does it, who funds it, and why it’s critical to your actual life. This is especially true of academic research.

They have no idea what STEM professors at Research-1 universities do, for example. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to know that exactly but giving people a vague idea would be great.

Couldn’t anyone in cable news care about this instead of “Biden’s old?”

Everyone is going to find out the hard way.

@mischievoustomato My dude, none of that is a sentence.

@mischievoustomato Why does it bother you so much that someone likes something?

It’s weird to demand societal hegemony. Not everyone wants to be a soy tomato.

Guys, boring and competent are perfect qualities in a public servant.

If you want to have a beer with a public servant, I feel like you need to get some friends.

I don't want to have a beer with my podiatrist.

I don't want to have a beer with the principal of my kid's school.

Normal and competent can be a qualifier.

“I want to live but some Fox News guy and Joe Rogan convinced me that Kamala Harris was a communist so I voted to die.”

‘I want to live': Coal miners speak out as Trump strips away health protections - ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-coal-miners-speak-trump-strips-health-protections/story?id=121257399

@Puck Honestly on a lot of social media, nobody uses a name. Spend 10 seconds on Reddit.

No idea why anyone thinks that sort of strawman attack carries any legitimacy.

@Puck Sensible. I had a different one back in the BBS days but I dumped it for a sort of regretful reason now. But anyway, it’s very normal behavior.

If Democrats do get back into federal office, give them time and space to fix what’s been broken. Stop the cycle of destructive impatience.

It’s going to take more than 4 years to rebuild and repair damage from these last 100 days alone.

Tune out the media and their distractions and the extremists and their promises of revolution and quick fixes.

Nothing will be getting fixed quickly. Rebuilding foreign alliances and destroyed agencies like The Forest Service alone will take generations.