At vets office with Tupac. He jumped down from my desk and hurt himself badly so he is getting X-rays. Vet says may have fractured leg / wrist bones. Hugs
If You Feel Powerless With Everything Going On With ICE, Read This
Political and immigration experts shared what exactly you can do and why it matters so much this week.
Read in HuffPost: https://apple.news/AGXVaVvzZSeW3bXUOqxfP6A
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
Erin Reed Jan 20, 2026
Early Tuesday morning, final appropriations bills for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education—and related agencies—were released, marking the last major funding measures to be negotiated in the aftermath of the record-breaking government shutdown fight in 2025. That standoff featured multiple appropriations bills loaded with anti-transgender riders and poison pills for Democrats, ultimately ending in a short-term continuing resolution that punted many of those provisions to the end of January. While other “minibus” packages funding individual agencies moved forward, the Education and HHS bills were conspicuously absent, as they contained some of the most sweeping and consequential anti-trans riders ever proposed in Congress. Now, with the final bills released, it is clear that no anti-transgender riders were included—meaning transgender people will largely be spared new congressional attacks through most of 2026 should they pass as-is.
As the government shut down on Oct. 1, the state of appropriations bills needed to reopen the federal government for any extended period was extraordinarily dire for transgender people. Dozens of anti-transgender riders were embedded across House appropriations bills, even as those provisions were largely absent from the Senate’s versions. The riders appeared throughout nearly every funding measure, from Commerce, Justice, and Science to Financial Services and General Government. The most extreme provisions, however, were concentrated in the House HHS and Education bills, including language barring “any federal funds” from supporting gender-affirming care at any age and threatening funding for schools that support transgender students. Taken together, those measures would have posed a sweeping threat to transgender people’s access to education and health care nationwide.
Those fears eased somewhat when the government reopened under a short-term continuing resolution funding operations through the end of January. In the months that followed, Democrats notched a series of incremental victories for transgender people, advancing multiple appropriations “minibus” packages that stripped out anti-trans riders as the government was funded piece by piece. As amendment after amendment fell away, those wins grew more substantial, including the removal of a proposed ban on gender-affirming medical care from the NDAA—even after it had passed both the House and Senate. Still, the most consequential question remained unresolved: what would ultimately happen to the high-impact anti-trans provisions embedded in the HHS and Education bills.
Now, the package has been released—and for the moment, transgender people can breathe again. The final HHS and Education bills contain no anti-transgender provisions: no ban on hospitals providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, no threats to strip funding from schools that support transgender students or allow them to use the bathroom, and no mandate forcing colleges to exclude transgender students from sports or activities like chess or esports. The bills are strikingly clean. As such, they avert yet another protracted shutdown fight in which transgender people are once again turned into political bargaining chips—and, at least for now, remove Congress as the immediate vehicle for new federal attacks, should they pass as-is.
When asked about the successful stripping of anti-trans provisions, a staffer for Representative Sarah McBride tells Erin In The Morning, “Rep. McBride works closely with her colleagues every day to defend the rights of all her constituents, including LGBTQ people across Delaware. In the face of efforts by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to roll back health care and civil rights, she was proud to work relentlessly with her colleagues in ensuring these funding bills did not include anti-LGBTQ provisions. It takes strong allies in leadership and on committees to rein in the worst excesses of this Republican trifecta, Rep. McBride remains grateful to Ranking Members DeLauro, Murray, and Democratic leadership for prioritizing the removal of these harmful riders.”
This does not mean that transgender people will not be targeted with policies and rules that affect them in all areas of life. The Trump administration has acted without regard to law in forcing bans on sports, pulling funding from schools and hospitals, and banning passport gender marker updates. The Supreme Court has been increasingly willing to let the office of the presidency under Trump do whatever it would like to transgender people. However, the lack of passage of bills targeting transgender people means that these attacks will only last for as long as we have Trump in the White House, and a future president should hopefully be easily able to reverse the attacks.
I have posted on this several times. Remember right now the man gets no help from the government for what an ICE thug illegally did to this young man. He won’t be able to charge the mask men who did this act against him under the tRump fanatic administration. After all ICE lied about what happened and there is video to show it. I hope he has a good lawyer who is collecting the evidence and the minute that democrats are back in power they sue. Hugs
He posted that this one is longer than usual; around an hour and ten minutes. (Listening as I set this up.) Of course a person doesn’t have to listen at one go; pause it and return. Or just keep on listening because he’s that good!
Watch the clip of pure violence against the observer who is 20 feet from the ICE thugs. The thug that assaults him has to run to get him. But the thug tactics are working, see how far the woman backs up while constantly saying she is not impeding. She is too far away to see the thugs beat the person they are detaining. ICE doesn’t want to be filmed breaking the laws. But the observer who was beaten up, he got it on his phone and may have had his phone destroyed as seems to be the new ICE tactic. In another clip a little girl was simply abandoned in the street by ICE thugs who took her parent. Hugs
Look up Scott and healthcare. He was CEO of a HMO health denying company that defrauded Medicare / Medicaid for the greatest dollar amount ever defrauded from the programs. He is a very wealthy man because while his company paid a fine he was able to retire with a huge pay out golden parachute. He has no clue what the average person lives like and hates the lower incomes. When he was governor he did everything he could to transfer state wealth to the upper incomes / his business cronies while making the lives of the working people / lower incomes harder while removing social safety nets. Hugs
Libraries, and by association librarians, do so much in our communities. Every time I help a transient person (mostly women,) they want a ride to the library. They know they’ll be free to use the restroom, freshen up, and spend some time inside safely. That’s thanks to librarians. Additionally, so many libraries offer services people wouldn’t think of; they have programs in cooking, or history, or any number of interests, free to the public. There are items available for borrowing like special cake pans, toys, movies, and more, all free with a library card. The best thing is (in my town,) the library is downtown, so people who live downtown (there are many, mostly old and less than abled,) can go there to attend a seminar, meet people with whom they have things in common, and they can get there without having to call a transit van. 💖 our librarians and our libraries! 🌞
“Pizza Parties Don’t Fix Burnout”: The State of Librarian Mental Health
Kelly Jensen Jan 20, 2026
We know that the constant demands put upon libraries and their workers take a toll. That’s why the intersection of trauma and librarianship has become a significant research and discussion topic, especially over the last six years. Look to the need for public libraries to become a place where unhoused people can spend their days; how they are expected to put their safety on the line to be warming centers during cold snaps and cooling centers during heat waves; how they continued to need to provide in-person services during the height of a deadly pandemic; and how they have begun in recent years to hire staff social workers to help with the ongoing mental health crisis faced by community members who may have no other viable access to support.
Libraries are not essential services, despite the demands made upon them to provide essential services. These are roles that library workers take on because they view their job as meeting the needs of their communities, and if they choose not to, it could mean their budgets being slashed in the next round of cuts. Both things can be true, just as it can be true that library workers enjoy the challenges present to them and are directly impacted by them on a personal level. Librarians experience compassion fatigue and significant stress throughout their days, and that is without being faced with book bans or people showing up to board meetings calling them groomers. We also know that the physical state of America’s public libraries is poor: the Government Accountability Office found that 61% of U.S. libraries have at least one building system or feature that poses a potential health or safety concern in a report put out in December 2025.
Last year saw tremendous budget slashing in all types of libraries nationwide. It wasn’t just public or school librarians who saw their jobs and resources end. Academic libraries were on the chopping block, sending yet another message about the ways that access to verifiable facts, the historical record, and resources that advance knowledge aren’t priorities. They’re instead simply “nice to have.” It’s a confounding message, especially in an era of fake news, disordered information, and the ongoing push to integrate Artificial Intelligence into every aspect of life. It’s also a confounding message, given all the ways libraries are expected to fill in the gaps left by budget cuts elsewhere, and to do so without pushing back.
All of this has a direct and material impact on the mental health of library workers.
I wanted to know how much of a toll the job takes on library workers when I sent out a lengthy survey last summer, from July to August 2025. The survey asked library workers of all backgrounds, experiences, and demographics to get honest about where and how library work intersected with their mental health. Respondents were asked to share their experiences in a free-form style, highlighting what they perceived as the most significant stressors in the field, where and how they’ve managed their mental health in relation to their job, and what kinds of solutions they think would be helpful. Those who took part were welcome to write as much or as little as they’d like.
The results were even more surprising than expected.
(snip-it’s not too long, please go there and read. Thank you!)
even though I get some good giggles from them, but so many mostly use them for opinion over fact. However I knew this one needs to be here.
(WP won’t load or paste; it’s a little blue box about the state of existence of the US Congress. It’s shorter than this sentence, and you simply must see it!)
Well, never mind; WordPress doesn’t like it, I guess. I’m reading a substack called The F—–g News, and it’s there. Here’s where to go to read today’s effing news, and see the meme that WordPress doesn’t like. There is lots of news there, as well, both regular (bad,) and good news.
Jonathan Larsen Jan 20, 2026
https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/fascism-now-more-expensive-than-eggs
Scottie's Playtime 