Tag: Second presidency of Donald Trump

Trump 2.0: The further dumbing down of America officially begins

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Donald Trump School Choice Executive Order: Here’s Who’s Impacted

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to expand school choice across the country. While this policy could allow more students access to alternatives outside of public schooling, critics warn it might divert essential funding from public schools and exacerbate educational inequalities.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which provides a comprehensive measure of students’ academic achievement across the country, overall student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The percentage of eighth-graders reading below NAEP Basic is the highest in the assessment’s history, and the percentage of fourth-graders scoring below NAEP Basic is the largest in 20 years.

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Recent audits revealed that private school parents, and now voucher recipients, have used the funds for a slew of, at best, questionable expenses, including kayak lessons, horseback riding lessons, home gyms, televisions, and more. Earlier audits conducted prior to the most recent expansion revealed similarly questionable uses.”

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‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban + Trauma trigger ⚠️

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban

There are not many people who want to serve anymore. We’re in a recruiting and retention crisis across the board. It doesn’t matter what service you’re going in, they’re having a hard time getting people in and they’re having a hard time keeping people. And to want to push somebody out that has given their entire adult life to an organization, but then also to the nation, it’s just really unfortunate and sad that for everything that I’ve done, the hard work that I’ve done, the work that I’ve done, for the government to just kind of say that you are no longer able to serve. We just don’t want you because you’re trans.

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Rand [Corporation] — who had predicted that it could cost up $150,000 per service member per year to have transgender folks serve — went back after trans folks were allowed to serve openly, to see what the costs actually were. And it was less than $1,000 per transgender service member per year, which I don’t need to tell you, is like an average military service member’s prescription costs per year.

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For a lot of trans people, the military is the only option for them to to survive, to get out of the situations they’re in, and again, we’re part of that one percent of the population that has sworn to defend the country. Why would you want to not allow them to do that?

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People do tend to isolate transgender medicine as this like wildly difficult thing, but it’s actually not. It’s fairly straightforward and basic for most people. Are there folks who have complications? Sure, but we have folks who have any number of orthopedic surgeries who have complications. Or we try to manage their allergies, and the solution that we start with isn’t where we end. You can have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and maybe we put you on medications, maybe we say you need to change your diet, and we work down [to address the question of] how do we take care of you? Because we need you on the team.

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Trump antisemitism executive order invokes anti-KKK law and targets ‘leftist, anti-American’ universities

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

President Donald Trump’s executive order on antisemitism encourages the attorney general to use a federal law created to target the Klu Klux Klan, and will direct federal agencies to tell colleges and universities to “monitor” and “report activities” by foreign students, staff and faculty for activities related to terrorism, according to a draft of the order obtained by the Forward.

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In addition, it says that the attorney general is “encouraged” to use the federal “conspiracy against rights” law “to combat antisemitism.” The measure was originally passed to combat KKK violence in the aftermath of the Civil War, and has since been used to prosecute civil rights violations related to elections. Trump himself was charged with violating the law in relation to his alleged attempt to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

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The Anti-Defamation League has called for more aggressive action against students protesting Israel, including asking school presidents to investigate Students for Justice in Palestinechapters for providing material support to terrorist organizations. The Secure Community Network — the main organization providing security advice to synagogues and Jewish organizations in the United States — recently called for the country to “expel any non-citizen alien who supports terrorism,” including protesters.

Republicans have focused almost all of their attention on what they believe is antisemitism coming from left-wing activists and critics of Israel. The Heritage Foundation released a blueprint for the Trump administration to fight antisemitism called Project Esther that discussed how to dismantle a “Hamas Support Network” composed of progressive advocacy groups and foundations, while the author of that report said that he was not concerned with addressing the threat posed by white supremacists.

Trump antisemitism executive order invokes anti-KKK law and targets ‘leftist, anti-American’ universities

AI going DeepSeek

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Most readers will know the news by now. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released an AI model called R1 that is comparable in ability to the best models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, but was trained at a radically lower cost and using less than state-of-the art GPU chips. DeepSeek also made public enough of the details of the model that others can run it on their own computers without charge.

AI going DeepSeek

Previously:

Interview with Deepseek Founder: We’re Done Following. It’s Time to Lead

US moves Typhon missile launchers to new strategic site in Philippines

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Reuters

The Typhon launchers, which carry Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of reaching targets in China and Russia from the Philippines, also house SM-6 missiles, which can strike air or sea targets more than 200 km away.

The US military has relocated its Typhon missile launchers—capable of firing multipurpose missiles over thousands of kilometers—from Laoag Airfield in the Philippines to another location on Luzon island, a senior Philippine government source revealed, as reported by Reuters.

US moves Typhon missile launchers to new strategic site in Philippines

Previously:

‘It’s a win’: Philippines, China uphold South China Sea deal on resupply missions

Philippine Army acquiring US missile system

What’s Really Going On In the South China Sea Between the Philippines and China