What Caught My Eye forJuly 9 - 15 (#22)

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Tuesday that his department would redirect $1.73 billion in Biden-era grants away from establishing “DEI bike lanes” to build roads and bridges instead.

We live in the stupidest of times. As the article points out, bicycle lanes make roads safer for both cyclists and drivers alike.

Science should generally be a bipartisan issue, but even if it wasn’t, the effects of the rule change would be sweeping. “What I think most Americans don’t really think [of] on a day-to-day basis is how many of the services that arrive in their communities happen, right?” Ginexi says. “Some of it gets paid by your local taxes, or your county, or your state, but a very significant number of programs and offerings that we have available to us come from the federal government.” If those programs are subject to political review, and can be pulled at any time? “Everyone will be affected, not just scientists, every community in the country,” she says. “We are going to see devastation to our federal grant programs like we’ve never seen before in this country if this is allowed to go forward.”

Science should be a non-partisan issue. I don’t want to see either political party interfere with what gets funded and doesn’t.

In Texas just this Tuesday, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three who lived in the US for 35 years building houses and caring for his family. The agency immediately released a statement justifying lethal force on someone it alleges tried to “weaponize his vehicle.” Videos showing parts of the confrontation already suggest it’s probably another bullshit story like the ones we’ve seen from Minnesota. The feds later admitted they were looking for an entirely different person. Salgado Araujo nonetheless ended up dead.

Again, ICE lies and spreads bullshit, the media report it, and the truth in what actually happened is buried in footnotes later, never seen by but a few.

The government is very upset that people are criticizing it for shooting innocent mothers to death in the street. DHS stalked and intimidated a man who protested against state-sponsored killing, issuing him a “WARNING NOTICE” as flimsy as the nonjudicial “warrants” it uses now to bust into people’s homes. It’s like if Jay and Silent Bob showed up at your house because of an online comment you wrote, except with guns and the force of the federal government. It’s both deadly serious and deeply unserious. What are they afraid of? Well, we already know. Accountability in any form.

Freedom of speech and the First Amendment be damned.

Policing in America has always been complicated, but the Trump administration has made it a runaway train of abuse fueled by billions of dollars and unapologetic racial animus. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gotten so much money and permission from Trump that it operates its dear leader’s fundamentally racist mission of mass deportation with impunity. ICE agents have kidnapped people, knocked down doors without warrants, assaulted reporters, terrorized the general public (including children and infants), and even shot dead innocent people in broad daylight. And that’s just the brief summary of events.

ICE is a menace to democracy and its murderous conduct should be soberly considered. But we should also recognize that these people are weak and sad and ought to be made fun of. Even for their stupid outfits, which look ripped from a “how to be tacticool” buying guide. And Americans are ridiculing these people. What better way to protest an army of clowns than by showing up as Portland did with a human frog at the front? Cops arrested that frog. Trillions of dollars later, we’ve learned nothing about counter-insurgency, because now there’s a frog legion.

These ICE agents are so small that they wear masks in public like a bunch of cowardly Patriot Front wannabes, who probably got a similar amount of training. You’d think the average DMV worker would have been masked up for years based on the abuse they get, but then again, the average government employee is far braver than these fools.

As America pursues what Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, recently described as “economic statecraft in the 21st century”, in which global access to the dollar and the American economy is “no longer unconditional”, and other countries try to respond in kind, the global financial system is splintering into regional and national systems. This is happening first in payments—and presents a headache for Visa and Mastercard, the industry’s American duopoly.

America enjoys many benefits from controlling the world’s global reserve currency. Trump’s policies are already pushing other countries away.

A small victory. A reminder for everyone to keep pushing for equal rights for all and to support the trans community. We all know the Trump administration isn’t done trying.

I hate the name, but if they can help the next generation, I’m not necessarily going to poo-poo them because of the name.