Maslow's Hierarchies of Matters - June 2025

This month was pretty bland - which is always a good thing given we have the rest of our lives to live.  I also was surprised, with mixed emotion, that Trump went through Memorial Day with the gravitas we'd expect of a President.  I think traditions matter and it's good to have a President who doesn't shit on them.

So what are the MAIN things that matter going into June? What is, and isn't, worth our valuable attention?

Major: Very important, will be impactful.

The courts are ruling against Trump pretty consistently.  How will these losses be enforced?  Is there any amount of losses which motivate Republicans in Congress to start abandoning him?  If he ignores them, how can Democrats use that to motivate voters next year to support them?

"Big Beautiful Bill" is on the way to being law, and if you don't like the priorities of that bill/budget, reach out to Congress before its too late!

Appreciable: Good context to keep in mind, but don't sweat the details.
The ongoing genocide in Sudan and China.  I had removed these last month because I've been struggling whether this blog is about carefully considering what news we get or about being an informed American.  I'll be publishing those thoughts later this month but one result of thinking this over is that these DO belong because genocide is a special category of events.  That said, these events are not "impactful" on our lives, so I've moved this information to the "appreciable" category, because "don't sweat the details" is the right boundary.  Know the genocide is happening, but the where and how and why is less important to keep track of, all things considered, to live a regular life.  Yes, it does feel strange to not have genocide in the top-tier category.

Congress trying to get a bill passed to punish Russia/Putin would be an important development in our involvement in the war, or at least getting congresspeople/Trump on the record as against punishing them.  Again, reach out to Congress to let them know how they should represent you on this topic.

Incidental: Good to know, but of limited use beyond its own topic.

Musk leaving DOGE.  He's a big personality who likes to impact the news, and also recently publicly shit on the Republican budget bill.  So good to know he's now on the outside pissing in, rather than pissing from within, but ultimately he's worth a lot less of our attention than before.

The Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Hamas wars continue to burn on, and there are lots of interesting details to learn about if that's your thing.

Negligible: Ignore this as much as possible.

Continued anti-Israeli actions.  Heartbreaking stories, terrible to be personally impacted by, but low enough that it doesn't matter on a wider scale.  There's no amount of anti-Israeli terrorism that will change what's going on in Gaza for the better.  If anything it will only make things worse.  Kick this up to incidental if you go to lots of pro-Israeli events because we should always be proactively safe.  But 2 attacks at 2 events in a nation where there are probably thousands of pro-Israeli events a month make these tragedies, not statistics.

Continued anti-immigrant actions.  We're still nowhere near the level of mass deportations, and still within the realm of "individual tragedies which can be tracked," which means these are tragedies, not statistics.  It can get worse - save your outrage for if it does.  If you know or are an undocumentated immigrants obviously this becomes a major story for you which should command a lot of your attention.

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