February 15, 2025

How Love Wins This Week (Feb 15, 2025)

Soft Wins:

• Alaska's Republican senators introduce legislation to keep Denali's name in place: Alaska US senators introduce bill that would again designate North America’s tallest peak as Denali [AP]
• 14 state Attorneys General filed suit to challenge the authority of Elon Musk and the new "Department of Government Efficiency", seeking a declaration that Must can't issue orders to anyone outside DOGE, and barring Musk/DOGE from meddling with public funds, government contracts, or otherwise interfering in the running of agencies: More than a dozen state attorneys general challenge Musk and DOGE’s authority [AP]

Hard Wins:

• A Maryland federal judge blocked enforcement of the attempted ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth: Federal judge pauses President Trump’s order restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth [AP]
• Another federal judge has halted the freeze on funding for overseas aid, finding the administration has "not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid ... was a rational precursor to reviewing programs": Judge orders Trump administration to temporarily allow funds for foreign aid to flow again [AP]

Fighting the Good Fight:

• Protesters turned out at Stonewall to decry erasure of trans identity from the National Park Service website: Outside Stonewall, Trans People Won’t Be Erased [Huff Post]; see also Protests Erupt At Stonewall After Trump Removes Trans People From Monument Website [Erin in the Morning]

• "If there’s a silver lining, it’s that by all counts, the assault on federal workers has inspired a surge of interest in organizing... There are Signal chats lighting up, a spoon revolt—where federal workers used spoon emojis to mock the fork in the road emails—and harried efforts to formally unionize among those who have not yet done so, and to find the right union reps through which to push back. ... Elsewhere, federal workers are engaging in lower key acts of refusal and resistance; declining to let DOGE officials access systems, and throwing up whatever roadblocks are possible to stop them from ingesting private information." The federal tech workers facing down DOGE [Blood in the Machine]

• Wikipedia flashback: Olive Swezy was an American zoologist who lived 1878–1963. She studied topics relating to applied zoology, including research on amoebas as a cause of disease. During the 1940s, Swezy wrote papers against Nazism and protested the confinement of Japanese Americans in internment camps. Olive Swezy - Wikipedia

• This week's newsletter is dedicated to the spirit of Oscar Wilde. I'm so glad to hear he has been getting out and about. [I'm Fine I'm Fine Just Understand] (Seriously, I cried. So, so good.)

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Photo by Raoul Droog on Unsplash