Notices by Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD) (iris@neuromatch.social), page 2

People involved in the Jan 6th riots, and a few others, have been pardoned, effectively laying down a welcome mat for repeat performances. Conversely, people the current administration considers enemies have had security protections revoked (incl. Fauci, who has since hired his own security detail out of pocket).

We're withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and refocusing in favor of oil, natural gas, and mining. Regulations will be revoked or rewritten as necessary to extract everything possible from US soil and waters, especially in Alaska. Transportation subsidies will support gas-powered vehicles, not hybrids or EVs. We once again have a national emergency declared for the purpose of consolidating power, and a timeline of 30 days until the first set of reports from other gov't entities on how they've responded to the "energy emergency."

New gov't officials have been appointed or nominated. Notably, a new dept of gov't efficiency was created and newly appointed head Elon Musk gave some Nazi salutes on inauguration day. We now have a literal official DOGE Service Temporary Organization and a US gov't page showing the DOGE logo.

We also have RFK, of brain-worm fame, nominated for secretary of health and human services; he's anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridated water, and a bunch of other things incompatible with health. His cousin released a bunch of personal email correspondence between them to support her painting of him as depraved and sadistic as well.

We've confirmed Pete Hegseth (formerly at Fox News) as secretary of defense. He has an extreme lack of relevant experience, has been credibly accused of sexual assault, and is known for getting black-out drunk at work events.

Undoubtedly more to come in this category.

We're withdrawing from the WHO (more on this later), we're supposedly putting pressure on Putin to end the war, there are new designations of terrorist organizations, foreign aid is being reevaluated and redistributed, and there's a bunch of America First language across multiple EOs. We can expect to burn bridges.

This is the topic I know the most about and will have the most to add to, but I'll try to keep it short for now.

Many US states have already dabbled in criminalizing supporting trans kids and making schools, doctors, etc. mandatory reporters of gender nonconforming behavior to the state, for child protective services to follow up on and remove children from parents. It's not hypothetical. Those details haven't been mentioned explicitly in the EOs yet but we can expect a resurgence of this kind of thing.

Halting federal funding for trans care means Medicare won't cover it, and removal of LGBTQ identities from protected class status means insurers can stop covering it, which potentially leaves the vast majority of the US population unable to access any trans care legally. (Context for non-USians: we can't afford anything without insurance and even then it's a gamble, and a single hospital stay can easily push you into bankruptcy.)

It's important to note here that "trans care" doesn't just mean starting transition but continuing the hormones a person will usually take for the rest of their life. If you've had your hormone-producing organs removed (and that's a true if, because it's not a uniform thing that everyone does), that's necessary for preventing osteoperosis and various other ills. The human body isn't meant to function without any hormones -- they do a lot beyond sex stuff! If you aren't producing them and aren't getting them externally, you go through menopause. Trans care could also mean cancer screening or treatment (e.g. prostate for trans women or ovarian for trans men). Again, not hypothetical: insurers have routinely denied these things for trans people until their hands were forced by state or federal law.

We've crossed a few bright lines on trans rights. In addition to the "harmful gender ideology" framing, we're explicitly describing trans people as dishonest and trans healthcare as mutilation and abuse. This spans a few different EOs with slightly different contexts and they're pretty dense, so this'll be a long one.

Military: current and future active service members who are trans will be discharged as they are mentally and physically unfit for service. This is the section where language of dishonesty and immoral behavior is introduced.

Prison: there will be no trans care provided (allowed) in prison, and trans inmates will be housed by sex at birth. This also includes how they're allowed to dress, keep their hair, etc.

Healthcare generally: federal funding will not cover any form of trans care, and federal funding will not support any organization that provides services to trans kids. This latter one has been tried before and successfully pressured hospitals to shutter their programs for trans pediatric care, which, for the record, does not and has never meant surgeries on kids. It's puberty blockers, which delay wrong puberty until kids are older and choose to proceed with transition in other forms. I'll leave further explanation to this comprehensive thread by @chandlerc with receipts: https://hachyderm.io/@chandlerc/113909097204877205

Parenting: doubling down on the framing of supporting trans kids as abuse, a new EO classifies (nonexistent) procedures as female genital mutilation (an actual and unrelated act of violence) and invokes laws relating to kidnapping to be used on parents of trans kids who flee from less safe to more safe states within the US.

One of the EOs promises to enforce the Hyde Amendment, which was legislation passed shortly after Roe v Wade to prevent federal funding from funding abortions. This will certainly kick off another flurry of lawsuits, appeals, and so on, but the message is that we're going to try to properly ban abortion again.

Federally funded research grants have all been put on hold. Grant reviews are not happening, grant-funded purchases of routine supplies are reportedly not happening, and all NIH grant-funded researchers are barred from publishing, traveling, or external meetings of any kind until further notice (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00231-y). Unclear to me at this stage what else is NIH specific and what is more sweeping, but I think NSF has now followed suit.

It's typical for there to be a short (a day, a few days) pause on things like NIH spending while a new set of people is appointed, but the length and breadth of this freeze is radical. Much of this is percolating through unofficial channels too, so there's a lot of uncertainty as well. We don't know if grant-funded academic researchers will keep getting paid, for example.

All federal employees under DEI titles have apparently been dismissed, all DEI programs disbanded, and DEI as a concept reclassified as discrimination so that any associated group, event, etc. can be purged. This again spans multiple EOs and has sweeping effects.

First and foremost, definitions have changed. DEI is not the collection of efforts to remove prejudice and systemic barriers so that individuals can be judged and treated fairly, it's the discriminatory practice of anybody else taking the place of a white man. By defining DEI as discriminatory, existing laws can be repurposed in all manner of perverse ways.

Anecdotally, we've seen gender equity resource groups, AAPI groups, etc. disbanded pretty much instantly, and DEI related messaging -- even things like wearing rainbow lanyards -- is all banned. Any federal employee whose job responsibilities were DEI related isn't going to be reassigned elsewhere either, they're just fired.

And more recently, a huge swath of federal employees were given the option to [begin edit] submit their resignation and work from home for whatever part of the next 8 months the government chooses to keep them. The other "option" is to just acknowledge they could be fired at any moment. [end edit] They're really cleaning house.

Jumping around a bit... we've apparently expressed interest in absorbing Greenland and possibly Canada. They have not expressed interest in joining us.

The Gulf of Mexico is to be renamed the Gulf of America (Google is apparently going to make this change immediately, at least when accessed from the US) and it sounds like some other landmarks are being renamed or un-renamed, such as Denali to Mt. McKinley.

We've made our second attempt to withdraw from the WHO. (The first one was reversed after Biden took office.) The WHO coordinates globally in instances of pandemics but also serves the public in more routine matters like establishing best practices and guidelines. And apparently air traffic control (https://time.com/7208937/us-world-health-organization-trump-withdrawal/).

I mentioned upthread that we halted a bunch of foreign aid, and some of this is also global health related: there's an immediate freeze on the distribution of HIV antiretrovirals to countries that have been receiving that form of aid (https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/01/25/g-s1-44762/pepfar-trump-hiv-foreign-aid). There are programs for other global health issues that will be similarly affected.

Nice sum-up in the language the US media usually reserves for countries it feels vastly superior to: https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-junta-establishes-him-as-head-of-government

update on the CDC database is they've issued orders to purge all mentions of a bunch of gender terms from all manuscripts submitted or accepted for publication. This is wild. I can't help but laugh while I wait for it to sink in. Details: https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction

@inthehands fwiw I appreciate reminders that small daily kindnesses are part of the foundation of community and more valuable than we tend to give them credit for. I thought you were quite clear that this was introspection, not niceness police propaganda, and that's why I thought it was worth sharing.

the US is experiencing rapid unscheduled disassembly.

@mcnado wait they halted supply purchases??

In case anybody needs a beautifully illustrated, exquisitely scored rhythm game for some decompression time, I can highly recommend Melatonin. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1585220/Melatonin/)

I'm about 85% sure it is also playable for #blind users, as everything is unambiguously cued with audio, to the point that I find I have better results when I ignore the visuals as much as possible -- I've played levels entirely with my eyes closed. My only reason to hesitate is that I haven't tested learning the cue the first time without visuals. If that's a problem I can record a guide for each level myself -- let me know if you want this.

And if games are not your thing... they have the soundtrack up on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_EMwMRFtlcdUdZLR79eMTfURgtJ-G0Pj). No voices, so nice for studying.

@AdamBishop and for simple individuals like myself, you can remove links to your X profile from your professional profiles if you had previously put it on e.g. a university or company site, a personal webpage, linkedin, orcid, github, other socials, or on your résumé.

@IanDSmith Achillean task: you're really good at this. Just don't fuck up one specific thing.

Thesean task: no part of your original plan or instructions will remain by the time it's done.

Hermetian task: your entire job is to courier messages back and forth between other people.

Odyssean task: the vast majority of your time will be spent on sidetracks.

Pandorean task: you're going to regret doing this, but you just can't let it go.