1. Starting tonight, the National Guard in DC will be armed, as Trump plans a deployment in 19 more states. As other states’ National Guard and federal DHS agents stage a hostile takeover of Washington DC, it’s common to see five or more soldiers taking down just one person–now they will have guns.
Nearly 1000 people have been arrested in the district in the last week, many of whom were unhoused, disabled, immigrants, or at the intersection thereof–ICE is also present.
The administration announced additional deployments to at least 19 more states, often at the protest of local officials in targeted areas, who say there are no emergencies warranting the takeovers. Deploying the National Guard as a precursor to a declaration of martial law was a key desire expressed in Project 2025.
2. Supreme Court votes to OK Trump’s NIH funding cuts. In a 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS ruled that Trump and RFK Jr. can remove $800 billion in funding from the NIH, a move that had previously been blocked by a lower court injunction. The NIH funding in question was labeled “woke” or “DEI” by the administration, but was actually for work in Alzheimer’s, cancer, HIV, youth suicide, climate-driven health crises, and other lifesaving biomedical research.
3. Trump’s Department of Justice subpoenas children’s hospitals in an attempt to get privileged medical information about children receiving gender-affirming care. Multiple hospitals including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have reported the request and are pushing back. Gender-affirming care is a safe and evidence-based way to support children and teens experiencing gender dysphoria, and hormone therapy is also often used for children experiencing various other medical conditions unrelated to gender expression.
About 30-40% of trans people are also disabled; however, this invasion of medical privacy should be of concern to all people, especially in the hands of an administration that has been vocal about its eugenic policy.
4. Local: Texas HB2, 6 a mixed bag for state education. A series of education-based law changes are going into effect this back-to-school, with some high and lowlights on the scene. Pay raises for teachers, more teacher input into state testing, and raising the baseline funding available for special education students are some positives.
The forcible inclusion of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms (currently blocked by a judge), increased book banning, and broader use of suspensions and out placements to deal with behavior issues are some concerns.
5. Local: Florida HB1105 removes high school certificates of completion for disabled students. Previously, if a student with significant disabilities could not meet the requirements for a standard high school diploma (ex: students in lifeskills-based programs not eligible for taking high-school level content exams) they were issued an alternative diploma or Certificate of Completion marking their attendance of four years of high school and the completion of their special education programming.
Florida will now no longer issue the certificates, meaning disabled students will leave high school with nothing, making it difficult for them to find employment, take vocational or college courses, and more. Advocates say this is a backdoor way to avoid funding for special education, forcing disabled students to leave school entirely.
What to Do:
Please find a way to share this information in addition to social media. As you may have seen, we have been shadowbanned and have taken several weeks off of posting in hopes of resetting the cache and developing new workarounds to combat the algorithm. But this is only the beginning–the more robust our information networks the easier it will be to communicate as censorship ramps up.
