Alright folks, I would like to make sure I'm up to date on the last [checks notes] 9 days of US history, as I am deliberately not consuming it in a constant stream.
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This is the topic I know the most about and will have the most to add to, but I'll try to keep it short for now.
Many US states have already dabbled in criminalizing supporting trans kids and making schools, doctors, etc. mandatory reporters of gender nonconforming behavior to the state, for child protective services to follow up on and remove children from parents. It's not hypothetical. Those details haven't been mentioned explicitly in the EOs yet but we can expect a resurgence of this kind of thing.
Halting federal funding for trans care means Medicare won't cover it, and removal of LGBTQ identities from protected class status means insurers can stop covering it, which potentially leaves the vast majority of the US population unable to access any trans care legally. (Context for non-USians: we can't afford anything without insurance and even then it's a gamble, and a single hospital stay can easily push you into bankruptcy.)
It's important to note here that "trans care" doesn't just mean starting transition but continuing the hormones a person will usually take for the rest of their life. If you've had your hormone-producing organs removed (and that's a true if, because it's not a uniform thing that everyone does), that's necessary for preventing osteoperosis and various other ills. The human body isn't meant to function without any hormones -- they do a lot beyond sex stuff! If you aren't producing them and aren't getting them externally, you go through menopause. Trans care could also mean cancer screening or treatment (e.g. prostate for trans women or ovarian for trans men). Again, not hypothetical: insurers have routinely denied these things for trans people until their hands were forced by state or federal law.
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One of the EOs promises to enforce the Hyde Amendment, which was legislation passed shortly after Roe v Wade to prevent federal funding from funding abortions. This will certainly kick off another flurry of lawsuits, appeals, and so on, but the message is that we're going to try to properly ban abortion again.
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All federal employees under DEI titles have apparently been dismissed, all DEI programs disbanded, and DEI as a concept reclassified as discrimination so that any associated group, event, etc. can be purged. This again spans multiple EOs and has sweeping effects.
First and foremost, definitions have changed. DEI is not the collection of efforts to remove prejudice and systemic barriers so that individuals can be judged and treated fairly, it's the discriminatory practice of anybody else taking the place of a white man. By defining DEI as discriminatory, existing laws can be repurposed in all manner of perverse ways.
Anecdotally, we've seen gender equity resource groups, AAPI groups, etc. disbanded pretty much instantly, and DEI related messaging -- even things like wearing rainbow lanyards -- is all banned. Any federal employee whose job responsibilities were DEI related isn't going to be reassigned elsewhere either, they're just fired.
And more recently, a huge swath of federal employees were given the option to resign immediately and get paid through September. They're really cleaning house.
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Federally funded research grants have all been put on hold. Grant reviews are not happening, grant-funded purchases of routine supplies are reportedly not happening, and all NIH grant-funded researchers are barred from publishing, traveling, or external meetings of any kind until further notice (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00231-y). Unclear to me at this stage what else is NIH specific and what is more sweeping, but I think NSF has now followed suit.
It's typical for there to be a short (a day, a few days) pause on things like NIH spending while a new set of people is appointed, but the length and breadth of this freeze is radical. Much of this is percolating through unofficial channels too, so there's a lot of uncertainty as well. We don't know if grant-funded academic researchers will keep getting paid, for example.
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Jumping around a bit... we've apparently expressed interest in absorbing Greenland and possibly Canada. They have not expressed interest in joining us.
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The Gulf of Mexico is to be renamed the Gulf of America (Google is apparently going to make this change immediately, at least when accessed from the US) and it sounds like some other landmarks are being renamed or un-renamed, such as Denali to Mt. McKinley.
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There is a massive push for US dominance in AI. This involves revoking and rewriting policies to favor AI across multiple sectors.
Only days after (if I have my timeline right), a Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a model trained with vastly fewer resources than US competitors and performing as well. OpenAI feels very threatened and NVIDIA stocks lost $600 billion (although they've partly recovered).
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We've made our second attempt to withdraw from the WHO. (The first one was reversed after Biden took office.) The WHO coordinates globally in instances of pandemics but also serves the public in more routine matters like establishing best practices and guidelines. And apparently air traffic control (https://time.com/7208937/us-world-health-organization-trump-withdrawal/).
I mentioned upthread that we halted a bunch of foreign aid, and some of this is also global health related: there's an immediate freeze on the distribution of HIV antiretrovirals to countries that have been receiving that form of aid (https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/01/25/g-s1-44762/pepfar-trump-hiv-foreign-aid). There are programs for other global health issues that will be similarly affected.
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The president wants to "clear out" remaining Palestinians from Gaza and move them to Jordan or Egypt. Pretty much everyone is angry about this.
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The president fired the current heads of the coast guard and TSA and all members of an aviation security committee (while leaving the committee technically still in existence) as part of a broader purge addressing "misuse of resources." We've also sworn in a new transportation secretary who promises to reduce regulations on self-driving cars and "restore confidence" in Boeing.
About an hour ago, a passenger plane landing at Ronald Regan nat'l airport (that's near Washington DC, not Washington state, for anyone confused by the headlines) collided with a military helicopter. Details still incoming.
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The president caught his own top level staff by surprise calling for mass detainment of immigrants at Guantánamo Bay. That's a concentration camp, folks. We already have them at the southern border (have for years) and they're inhumane as fuck. Those typically hold people attempting to cross the border (including those seeking asylum). This escalation means rounding up people already living in the country and packing them in an external high security location. It can't get any plainer.
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An Anglican priest gave a Nazi salute as well (apparently this is our thing now, my god). The church revoked his license as soon as they heard about it though.
