Cutting Off The Helping Hand
Cascade Failure is Coming
I hate being right. Four days into this presidency, I said a whole bunch of things, and already more than one of them appears to be happening. Admittedly it was not the changes I expected right away, but the ramifications are beyond what I would consider to be recoverable. In short, what is about to happen is going to be irrevocable damage, and will result in widespread global destabilization, in addition to internal destabilization.
This cannot be understated enough. This is the beginning of the cascade.
If you don’t know what that means, this page is useful to explain in engineering terms.
For the layman, in essence, it means that a failure so catastrophic occurs to one or more interconnected parts of a system that it collapses the rest. Once the cascade has started, there is no way to pull it back. No way to recover.
So let’s talk about what this latest Executive Order did, what this means for you as an individual, and what it means for our country as well as globally.
Here is the Executive Order in its entirety.
Now here it is important to recognize that the president does not at this time have the power to cancel funds allocated by Congress, but he can, however, pause it. This Executive Order is attempting to pause it indefinitely. There are already lawsuits filed to try to get this revoked, but our legal process takes time, and in the interim, there will be suffering. In addition, all of the wording in this Executive Order is incredibly vague. It does not name any specific programs, but that is a bane, not a boon. This means that they can use extreme discrimination in what they are targeting.
Here is a list of programs that have had all funding halted as of now domestically:
Head Start
Free school meals
SNAP
EBT
Section 8 Housing
Welfare
Medicaid
501(c)3 federal grants and funding.
What that means is that children who are food insecure will get hungrier, and their Medicaid will not cover treatment for that malnutrition. Pregnant women in poverty will lose their insurance, and we will see a spike in infant and maternal mortality, as women in desperation to not go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, attempt high-risk free births, and skip Obstetrics appointments. This means that food-insecure households will become hungrier. It means that rent will not be paid, and millions of people who cannot afford their rent will be evicted. It means that chronically ill people who depend on Medicaid for their care will suddenly be without insurance, to cover their meds and care. Families with disabled children, and disabled adults will similarly be without care. Families without income, or with severely low income will lose their assistance. All the organizations that are dedicated to helping people in these situations will be in a chokehold for funds and will not be able to help. The people who work for those organizations will miss paychecks.
I will also point out that Federal Student Loans are not affected. So, if you need help to live, you’re fucked. If you need help going into perpetual debt, the government still has your back.
In terms of foreign aid, all of it is canceled at this moment. All the pies that we forced our grubby little fingers into are now halted. That means no more humanitarian aid, no more vaccines, no more infrastructure, no more food. We will still fund war efforts, of course, but everything else is gone. Starving people left at suddenly shuttered outposts of help. Families left in the dark as US-funded powerplants go offline. We have created this need for our aid, and to suddenly withdraw it is unconscionable. You cannot force a person to drink from your well, and then close the well and tell them they need to get more independent, especially when you have poisoned every other available water source.
The callous nature of this Executive Order cannot be understated. The impact cannot be exaggerated. If this is allowed to continue for more than it has already, there will be death. Massive death, eviction, starvation, and the most vulnerable among us will suffer the most. The disabled, the poor, and communities of color. You can’t create a system that disenfranchises and oppresses the people until they absolutely need you then tell them that the help you forced them to need is an entitlement.
The language in the Executive order is so vague that it could apply to anything, but this is 100% to target anyone who isn’t wealthy, white, male, cisgender, and heterosexual. This is a move by bigots to forward their bigotry, and in the order it all but says the quiet part loud. Stating that they are targeting “wokeness.”
You cannot separate “woke” from black and queer communities. “Woke” is the word the right uses when they mean Black, when they mean queer, when they mean Indigenous.
Welcome to the Cascade folks. If you thought this term was going to be a repeat of the last, you were sorely mistaken, and all I can do is tell you that you must take action now. You must do everything in your power to protect your communities. Especially when instead of feeding a starving population, the federal government has put a price on the heads of migrants, and is hiring bounty hunters to collect. Bounty hunters who need no warrants, and have no obligation to due process.
About the Creator
Paige Graffunder
Paige is a published author and a project professional in the Seattle area. They are focused on interpersonal interactions, poetry, and social commentary.
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With a Whimper
Author's Note: I am not a political scientist, the below statements are my opinion only. I have been relatively quiet for the last few years. Things in my personal life have been turbulent, but I am now at a place where silence is no longer an option. Before the election, I knew it was a lost cause. With the systemic defunding of education, the American public lacks the critical thinking skills to act in their best interest. If misogyny lost the first election for Clinton, then racism and misogyny lost this one for Harris. When this same thing happened in 2016, I wrote a lot. I wrote about what this meant for the country, and what kind of portent this painted for our future. I got called a lot of things, but most prominently I was called a fear-monger, an extremist, and a feminist killjoy. Looking back at those articles, I was correct about nearly everything I said. I said, that with his winning, we would see the decline of respected science, leading to a largely preventable epidemic. I said that we would see non-white children in cages, separated from their families. I said that we would see a rise in gun violence in public places. I said we would see an attempted coup to retain power. I said a lot of other things, but I think those are the big points. In 2016, at the start of it all, no one ever thought any of those things would happen. And yet here we are.
By Paige Graffunder12 months ago in The Swamp
Doug LaMalfa and the Quiet Power of Rural California Politics
Politics often feels loud, crowded, and distant from everyday life. Yet far from major cities and cable news studios, a different kind of political story unfolds. It happens in farming towns, water districts, and county meetings where decisions shape daily survival. Doug LaMalfa has spent years operating in that quieter space. His name rarely trends, but his influence reaches deep into rural California. To understand his role is to understand a part of America that often feels unseen. This article looks beyond headlines to explore how Doug LaMalfa built his political identity, what he represents to his supporters, and why his work continues to stir strong feelings across California’s agricultural heartland.
By Muqadas khan5 days ago in The Swamp
Comments (1)
I hate the current president so much. I’d say his name but I feel like if I say it three times he’s going to show up at my door with an executive order to arrest me, because he believes in freedom of speech unless it’s the truth. I hope he burns in a tire fire! Anyway, great work! Hope our country has a happy ending!