The correct answer is no one outside US Government IT knows for sure what is or isn't approved per their own rules. Every article (and comments therein) are just speculation and people trying to confirm their own biases, desperately looking for something to blame someone for, to produce more rage-bait and thus feed more ad clicks.
Every single article is written with the presumption that there are no actual IT people in the White House, that someone wheeled in a Starlink dish on a dessert cart in the yard which is somehow running the entire government. It's silly and ridiculous.
> The correct answer is no one outside US Government IT knows for sure what is or isn't approved per their own rules
Veterans Affairs actually publishes a list of approved software as part of their Technical Reference Model: https://www.oit.va.gov/services/trm/ (don’t know how complete it is)
But I’m not aware of other agencies doing this. I suppose that VA, given the nature of what they do, likely feels that there is less risk in publicising this information
There’s also the FedRAMP program for centralized review of cloud services - fedramp.gov - I haven’t looked to see if Telemessage is listed as approved but I see some references to FedRAMP and Telemessage online suggesting that it may be
Another source of info is SAM.gov - https://sam.gov/opp/ab5e8a486e074d73bfe09b383ba819ab/view (that’s for NIH) - if there is an agency paying for it, you can assume they’ve approved it for use (or are in the process of doing so) even if they haven’t otherwise publicly said they are. But, not all contracts are public, so just because you can’t find it on SAM.gov doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
>that someone wheeled in a Starlink dish on a dessert cart in the yard
That situation was ridiculous, in that to score the marketing points, but fighting with the whitehouse IT the starlink is installed at a remote location with much the same point of failure as their fibre services.
A few decades ago, the Republican party had one foot in the anti-intellectual camp, but only one.
They were the party of young-earth creationists, religious pro-lifers, climate-deniers and gun-lovers - but also of educated fiscally conservative folks. The party would welcome economics professors and leaders of medium-sized businesses, promising no radical changes, no big increases in spending or regulation, and a generally pro-market/pro-business stance.
The genius of Trump was in realising the educated fiscally conservative folk were driving 95% of the republican policy agenda but only delivering 10% of the votes. The average Republican voter loves the idea of disbanding the IRS and replacing all taxes with tariffs on imports. Sure, you lose the educated 10% who think that policy is economic suicide - but you can more than make up for it with increased turn-out from the other 90% who are really fired up by the prospect of eliminating all taxes.
And it works - jumping into the anti-intellectual camp with both feet has delivered the house, the senate, the presidency (electoral college and popular vote), and the supreme court.
The conservative movement has a brain-drain because they've realised they don't want the votes of smart, educated people.
Their take on scripture is deliberately anachronistic. We didn’t have the medicine or sanitation 2000 years ago to place their kind of value on a fetus.
The medicine in question comes from the very scientific establishment that grew out of scholasticism, which is why I find the accusation of anti-intellectualism rather strange.
My point is that you have to distinguish between arguing against the output of the intellectual activity and arguing against the intellectual activity taking place.
It’s possible that I misread it, since I don’t understand the accusation of anti-intellectualism.
Isn’t it rather pro-intellectual to found universities like that of Bologna in 1088 and pour massive amounts of resources into research to ensure we eventually get to the level of obstetric medicine that we have?
And isn’t it on the contrary intellectually lazy to throw your hands up and declare life to be disposable simply because you don’t know how to treat and prevent diseases and can’t be bothered to figure out how?
If I'm following you, I should state that I don't see anything anti-intellectual in Christianity as a concept or in practice. The anti-intellectualism I was referring to is specifically regarding the idea that the bible proscribes abortion, solely because the train of thought is anachronistic.
Every single article is written with the presumption that there are no actual IT people in the White House, that someone wheeled in a Starlink dish on a dessert cart in the yard which is somehow running the entire government. It's silly and ridiculous.