Just try harder grrrlzzzz

No no no no no you stupid goons, you still don’t get it – we’re happy for you to play all-trans sports. Delighted. Go for it! It’s the playing “one man in the women’s sport” that we object to.

Pink News headline:

Historic all-trans rugby match sends a ‘big f*** you’ to transphobes

No, Pinky, it really doesn’t. Quite the opposite. All-trans sport is perfectly fine and doesn’t trouble us in the least. It’s the stealing women’s sports we object to. I think we’ve been very clear on this point.… Read the rest

Ken White on the unwinnable case scenario:

Yesterday, on our Emergent Situation Episode of Serious Trouble, Josh and I sparred a bit over the moral and political philosophy of Jack Smith’s decision to prosecute. I pointed out that the somewhat predictable assignment of the case to Judge Aileen Cannon — who proved herself to be an arguably lawless Trump partisan when she entertained his attempts to derail his own investigation — will make it extraordinarily difficult to convict him. If Judge Cannon presides over the case she can derail the prosecution in myriad ways, some of them unreviewable, if she wants to. Moreover, there’s reason to doubt that a Florida jury will convict Trump. Finally, and perhaps

Hmmm.

A lawyer speaks:

You know what I don’t have? Female clients assaulted in women’s institutions by women with penises. Nada. Not a single one. What I do have are trans women who can’t get women’s clothing, trans women who are told that wigs and makeup present a security risk, (4/x)

— Amy Matychuk (@amymatychuk) June 10, 2023

You know who the vulnerable parties are? Trans women living their gender in male institutions, which means being assaulted, being jeered at and asked to show their tits by staff and inmates alike. Trans women who are too afraid to be out while in custody. (6/x)

— Amy Matychuk (@amymatychuk) June 10, 2023

“And when they finally have the genitalia they want?” … Read the rest

Trump isn’t the only one.

Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the SNP. Police confirmed a 52-year-old woman was taken into custody as a suspect and is being questioned by detectives.

It follows the arrest and release of her husband, ex-SNP chief executive Peter Murrell in April. A spokesman for Ms Sturgeon confirmed she was cooperating with the investigation.

She probably won’t have to spend time in a cell, but if she does, I wonder if she’ll urge the screws to put her in with a trans laydee.… Read the rest

Sonia Sodha writes:

Patients are supposed to be at the heart of everything the NHS does. This is considered such an important principle that, a decade ago, the fledgling NHS constitution was rewritten after the mid-Staffs scandal, in which so many patients died, to make clear it should frame every aspect of NHS work.

You’d think that would be self-evident. What else would be at the heart of health care?

Yet, last week, the NHS Confederation, the membership body for NHS providers, published guidance that appears to cut this ethos adrift. [Its stated objectives are incredibly important: supporting trans staff by helping healthcare leaders to understand their needs and address any workplace discrimination they may face.] But it also

Grey Slavery is back in the news gossip.

I’m ready to disclose the details of the prior restraint of my research. The culprit is University College London, whose lawyers instructed the executive editor of their online journal THINK PIECES to pull my essay. The essay is linked here.https://t.co/H0BYUfY3kj

— Prof. Grace Lavery (@graceelavery) June 9, 2023

He adds several hundred tweets, which are too boring to read, let alone share. He’s enjoying the attention a lot.

H/t Mostly Cloudy… Read the rest

The Times says Aileen Cannon won’t be recused.

The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.

In other words she’s the last person who should be filling this slot.

There are all kinds of reasons other judges couldn’t be assigned to the case. It’s almost as if there are too many reasons. Assigning a judge who has already tried to protect Trump from the … Read the rest

Trump is displaying his usual taste and wit.

Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.

“I’ll never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. “Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable.”

Translation: He’ll continue to barge ahead because he’s a deranged narcissist.

While Trump said campaign fundraising had skyrocketed since the indictment was issued, he conceded it was an unwelcome development.

“Nobody wants to be indicted,” said Trump. “I don’t care that

The BBC reminds us that Trump is charged not just with taking all those documents he had no right to take, but also with lying and obstruction in order to hang on to them.

Mr Trump has been charged with 37 counts of unauthorised possession of classified material, obstruction of justice, concealing documents, and making false statements to law enforcement.

…

Republicans, including some of Mr Trump’s presidential rivals, rushed to his defence on Thursday as news of the indictment first broke.

While they may still take issue with what they view as a politically motivated prosecution, they may find it more difficult to explain why Mr Trump held onto such sensitive national security after leaving the White House.

Where … Read the rest

The Guardian is still resorting to the gender uncritical framing.

Oxford University’s new professor of LGBTQ+ history has accused the government of “fanning a culture war” over freedom of speech, insisting it is alive and well in higher education.

Is there such a thing as LGBTQ+ history? I suppose you can lump two or more unrelated things together and then do history of both of them, but is that a genre of history or just a random list?

Matt Cook, who was this week named as the first Jonathan Cooper chair of the history of sexualities, a newly created post at Mansfield College, was speaking only days after the appointment of the government’s first “free speech tsar” for

Jolyon Maugham urging more more more puberty blockers.

What kind of health service doesn't give out untested drugs to kids like smarties, inevitably leading to a lifetime of complications, unnecessary surgeries, unrecorded regret, and potential costly litigation?

(A sensible one.) pic.twitter.com/YSyy2cagBD

— Stuart Macintosh (@stueymaco) June 10, 2023

Updating to add – the replies to Maugham’s tweet are almost all in dissent. That’s encouraging.… Read the rest

Trump’s incredulity:

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Mr Trump said he had been summoned to appear on Tuesday afternoon at a federal court in Miami, Florida, where the charges against him will be read.

“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former president of the United States,” Mr Trump wrote.

That’s another symptom of his profound stupidity. He thought he could get away with anything because of his sacred status. Of course, he wouldn’t have said the same thing about Obama.

Prosecutors had also presented evidence in court in Washington DC, but a decision to file the indictment in southern Florida instead may offer some consolation for the Trump team.

Golly, I wasn’t expecting that while cruising for Trump news – the four children lost in the Amazon have all been found alive.

[Colombian] President Gustavo Petro said finding the group was a “magical day”, adding: “They were alone, they themselves achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history.”

The children belong to the Huitoto indigenous group. Mr Petro shared a photograph of several members of the military and Indigenous community caring for the siblings, who had been missing for 40 days. One of the rescuers held a bottle up to the mouth of the smallest child, while another fed one of the other children from a mug with a spoon.

Updating to add:… Read the rest

This has to stop. It’s journalistic malpractice that is a massive danger to women.

Man arrested after online threats to kill women’s rights campaigner would’ve been a more accurate headline ladshttps://t.co/cZhVgfE0TQ

— Sam Cowie (@wundt_vil) June 9, 2023

A more accurate headline and less of a threat to women. It’s not women who are running around threatening to kill people, and news media have to stop saying it is.

The man who threatened Kellie-Jay Keen:

https://t.co/l5vXM7f0je

— Sam Cowie (@wundt_vil) June 10, 2023

… Read the rest

38 Counts

1-31: 18 USC 793(e)
32: 18 USC 1512(k)
33: 18 USC 1512(b)(2)(A), 2
34: 18 USC 1512(c)(1), 2
35: 18 USC 1519, 2
36: 18 USC 1001(a)(1), 2
37: 18 USC 1001(a)(2), 2
38: 18 USC 1001(a)(2)https://t.co/HctsEsq0ia

— Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) June 9, 2023

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1667154114399150080

UNSEALED INDICTMENT: The indictment starts with the stunning revelation Trump showed classified information to people not entitled to view it (and he was not entitled to possess it) pic.twitter.com/ySW67GdhGl

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 9, 2023

Trump's contempt for United States national security, captured in a single photograph: pic.twitter.com/j9GY2ttwFC

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 9, 2023

… Read the rest

from Norm Eisen

Paragraph 7 is the bottom of the slippery slope that he embarked upon by beginning his administration with constitutional violations of the Emoluments Clause. For six years since he’s been plummeting into worse illegality like this. (3/x) pic.twitter.com/Dp2ZysCr9d

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) June 9, 2023

OMG, paragraph 22, this is a classic speaking indictment that also makes the case for Trump’s bad intent. It enumerates his knowledge of the importance of protecting classified information! (7/x) pic.twitter.com/2VDNXoSFLP

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) June 9, 2023

The most horrifying of these is the picture on p. 14 from December 2021 in which a box fell & highly classified documents poured onto the floor of an insecure room. This is insane.

Good god. What’s coming out is…I’ve run out of words for it.

Screechy Monkey told us to see Robert Costa’s thread on the subject, so I see it, and holy shit.

(Thread) learning some new things this morning about WHY this all happened and the motivation, especially for the audio from 2021 discussing classified material. In short, it comes down to one person: *Milley.* Trump loathed his coverage in press, in books, per multiple sources…

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 9, 2023

Trump’s anger about Milley led him to be cavalier about what he said about Milley and their interactions & policy decisions, and it frustrates some aides who notices how he would veer into dicey/near classified material in convos.

One interesting detail in the Trump indictment –

On two occasions in 2021, Trump showed classified documents to others, according to the indictment. One instance, which The Washington Post has previously reported on, was a July 2021 meeting at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., when Trump showed a writer, publisher and two members of his staff what he described as a “plan of attack” that Trump claimed was prepared for him by the Defense Department and a senior military official. None of the individuals present at the meeting, which was audio-recorded, had a security clearance.

Ah. He kept the stuff as souvenirs…he wanted to relive the glory days, when important people prepared plans of attack for him – … Read the rest

Trump indicted.

Former president Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that he had been indicted in federal court in Florida over the classified information found at his Mar-a-Lago home. 

…

Trump is charged under a part of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it, according to people familiar with the case. Such information is defined as “any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage