01/29/25

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, January 29th.

Chinese New Year!

Today, you can eat a few different things to bring good luck your way in the new year. Eating dumplings can lead to more money, noodles are meant to represent a long life, seafood is believed to symbolize a bountiful new year, and citrus is believed to bring good luck.

And when taken together – you get noodles, dumplings, seafood, and citrus. Which is also just a delicious sounding meal.

And now, the news.

Federal Funding Pause

-via AP News

The biggest story of the day was certainly the news that the Trump administration hit pause on federal funds.

If you were trying to follow this story on Tuesday and couldn’t… I don’t blame you. It was fast moving, illegal, and… confusing.

So let’s break it down.

A vague memo from the Office of Management and Budget was sent out in the early morning that said: “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.” And it directed all federal loans and grants to freeze.

What does this mean?

Unknowable!

Apparently not even the White House or OMB truly knew, or maybe they did but they also knew how bad it was because they wouldn’t answer some basic questions. Like – will this effect Medicaid? Food stamps (also known as SNAP)? Disaster assistance? Meals on Wheels? The Kansas state Transportation Secretary wondered if it would mean freezing money otherwise meant for highway and bridge projects.  

The director of Federal Funds Information for States said this was unprecedented.

Independent Senator Angus King said: “This is a profound constitutional issue. What happened last night is he most direct assault on the authority of Congress. I believe, in the history of the United States.”

Democrats were so worried, they said they’d have a meeting… on Wednesday.

Let’s not rush it, babes!

Going back to Medicaid – the website that states use to get federal payments was down while the White House refused to comment.

So it was… not great online! Not great in the government! Not great in the country!

Then, moments before the pause was about to start (yeah, all that chaos and the paused hadn’t started yet), a federal judge blocked it until Monday.

So… I don’t know. The White House says that things like Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps won’t be affected with the pause starts but Tuesday was chaos. People were genuinely scared. Do we really think that waiting a few more days will keep people safe?

It used to be that the President could stop Congress from spending federal money, but that all stopped after another President canceled billions in debt. Afterwards, Congress passed a law saying that Congress needed to give the thumbs up emoji before this could happen again.

Now which president was that? Which president was that?

Oh yeah! NIXON!

So yeah, you’ll be surprised to hear that this move was probably illegal.

So in summary – probably illegal, definitely damaging, and very confusing.

And that’s what you missed on Glee!

Trump’s Military Executive Order

-via NBC News, NIH, and Washington Post

Here’s the story I actually planned to start the show with: On Monday night, the President signed an executive order that would bar transgender people from serving, or even enlisting, in the military.

GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a suit against Trump and others because, as the suit says, "President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military discriminates against Plaintiffs based on their sex and based on their transgender status, without lawful justification, in violation of the Equal Protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Rather than being based on any legitimate governmental purpose, the ban reflects animosity toward transgender people because of their transgender status."

Because there is no thing that happened that made him decide this. The whole 8000 known transgender people in the military didn’t ban together and form a rebellion. By the way, that number makes up .62% of all active-duty service members. There may be more trans servicemembers, but you can’t really blame for someone wanting to hide their identity out of fear of retribution.

Now, Trump did this last time he was in office as well and back then, in 2017, he said it was because of medical costs.

Back then it was estimated that the military spends between $2.4 and $8.4 million a year on transition related treatment. Compare that to the $84 million spent annually on erectile dysfunction medicines.

Both are gender-affirming care.

I guess it’s just about what kind of care this administration approves.

This time, he didn’t even say it was about the budget. He said it’s intended to protect the American people and our homeland as the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force." Which is so demonic that I feel gross repeating it.

Someone willing to risk their life, to spend a life in service of this country, should not be kicked out just because their commander-in-chief, who paid to get out of having to serve, is bigoted and hateful.

Our nation is weaker because of Donald Trump.

Oklahoma

-via CNN

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to ignore the Constitution.

In 1982, the Supreme Court issued their decision in Plyler v Doe, which held that states cannot Constitutionally deny a student free public education on account of their immigration status.

But on Tuesday, Oklahoma approved a proposal that requires parents to report their immigration or citizenship status before their kids can be enrolled in class.

The purpose of this is to gather data on its student body. It is to account for how many students of illegal immigrants are in our schools.”

Expect some court cases here, and also remember – it would still need to be passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor before it takes place. It’s possible that will happened, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The Superintendent of Public Instruction is Ryan Walters. If his name sounds familiar, you’re as obsessed with the news as I am. Congrats! Also, oh no! Walters is the same guy who required all schools to teach the Bible and display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

He also, back in November, sent a letter to leaders in the school district telling them that they had to play a video for students, and parents, where he blamed the “radical left” and “woke teachers unions” for “attacking” religious liberty before he went on to pray for Trump and inviting people to join in.

Which is… bleak and also… what a loser! What an absolute nerd!

Trump… Turned on Water?

-via The Hill

And we started with chaos, so let’s end with stupidity….

On Monday evening, Trump took to his ironically-named Truth Social to lie and say this: “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!”

And you really gotta go check out how he wrote it. Taking some big swings with deciding where to toss those capital letters.

Anyway, if you’re normal, you may have forgotten, or not even known, that during his campaign he also talked about this giant valve that he appears to really believe in, that just needs to be turned and then the water would be turned back on.

Well promises made, promises kept. He definitely turned the water back on.

No no… that’s inane. That’s a lie.

That would be insane if it were true and I’m really curious to know what kind of big brain actually believes this.

Per the California Department of Water Resources, “The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days.”

And most importantly, as they say, “The military did not enter California.”

This is an absurd and silly story but I do believe that lie right in the middle is also dangerous. He literally said the military entered the state to do this.

That did not happen.

We are on the dumbest, and most dangerous, timeline.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of food that promises good luck if I eat it.

But more than that, because you’re good luck no matter what… I’m proud of you.