Author: Ophelia Benson

  • He is satisfied

    Oh well, it’s just 48 women.

    A former neurologist accused of sexually assaulting 48 of his female patients has been acquitted.

    Justice Craig Parry ruled that he is satisfied there was a valid medical reason for examinations Jeffrey Sloka performed at his Kitchener clinic. The verdict comes nine years after the first complaints were made about the doctor to Ontario’s regulatory body, and following a four-and-a-half year criminal trial.

    The complainants in the case were all female patients who were seen at Sloka’s urgent neurology clinic between 2010 and 2017. In court, they described receiving vaginal exams, breast exams or exams of other intimate areas during appointments for neurological concerns.

    Sloka’s medical license was revoked in 2019 by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) after a no contest plea to the allegations laid out in a disciplinary hearing.

    A no contest plea, but he didn’t do it. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

    Parry largely rejected the expert testimony of Dr. Vera Bril, who told court in her opinion, the exams Sloka did aren’t typically done by neurologists.

    “Having considered Dr. Bril’s evidence in the context of the totality of the evidence, I have found it incapable of establishing that Dr. Sloka operated outside the permissible scope of his neurological practice,” Parry said.

    As for the women who testified, Parry said he found their evidence unreliable.

    Do we detect a pattern here? Male judge finds women unreliable? Male judge finds male doctor reliable? Surely it can’t possibly be that simple. Can it?

  • Lovely person and brilliant educator

    Hmm.

    Here, to refresh your memory, is Matt Rattley.

    Now here is someone explaining what a fine fella Matt Rattley is and someone else saying he has the nerve to look a bit unusual. Oddly enough they’re both men.

    Can he be a lovely person while openly mocking women the way he does?

    I don’t buy it. Yet again we go back to the thought experiments about blackface and the like. Would Joe Turner say Matt Rattley is a fine person despite the fact that he teaches students while wearing blackface?

    I doubt it. I can’t know, of course, but I doubt it. One reason: we see a lot of men defending visible contempt for women and we don’t see such a lot of men defending racist mockery. I don’t think that’s just random. I think it’s a strong clue that a hell of a lot of men just do not care about visible contempt for women.

    I can’t see Rattley’s joke breasts combined with rat’s nest beard as anything but a sustained show of disdain for women.

  • Wait who has the closed mind?

    Bad news:

    The University of Sussex has overturned a £585,000 fine from England’s higher education watchdog after the high court rejected claims that the university breached free speech regulations in a case involving a former professor.

    The ruling is a damaging blow to the credibility of the Office for Students as the court rejected the regulator’s lengthy investigation involving KathleenStock’s 2021 resignation,which came after protests over her views on transgender rights and gender identity.

    Mrs Justice Lieven found that the regulator’s decision was biased towards punishing Sussex as an example to other universities.

    So…it’s ok for universities to bully and punish professors for saying that sex is real?

    Lieven wrote that the OfS’s final decision to fine the university a record £585,000 “was vitiated by bias because the OfS approached the decision with a closed mind and had therefore unlawfully predetermined the decision”.

    Everyone’s mind should be so wide open that belief in magic changeable sex has plenty of room to move in. Belief that sex is not changeable however is not quite so welcome.

    Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, greeted the outcome as vindication for her university, and said she was seeking an urgent meeting with Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, to discuss the ruling’s implications for England’s universities.

    Roseneil said: “We need a regulator that works with the sector, not against it – in the interests of the students of today and of the future. I stand ready to work with the government to find better ways to regulate and support universities in serving the public good.”

    Provided the public good embraces trans ideology, that is.

    “Meanwhile, I am delighted that Sussex’s foundational commitments to academic freedom and freedom of speech have been recognised by the high court, and that the OfS’s egregious decision against the university, and the fine it sought to impose, have been overturned.

    “The University of Sussex has a proud history of being the place where the most contentious issues of the day are aired – where independent-minded, critical thinkers develop their ideas, and where lively and engaged students work out how they understand the world.”

    Bullshit. Just ask Kathleen Stock.

    UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘This ruling is a rebuke to the politicians who have wielded the OfS as a political cudgel in campus culture wars. The regulator has lost the trust of the sector, and there now needs to be a complete rethink from government over how it will work to protect higher education.”

    As if Jo Grady hasn’t wielded any political cudgels.

    This is really crap news.

  • This decision will bleach the halls of Congress

    Worst Ruling in a Century

    Wednesday’s 6-3 party line decision in Louisiana v. Callais will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the Act.

    This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the Act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’s judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy.

    Other than that…

  • Opening the door for renewed voter suppression

    Terrible news.

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday weakened a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has increased minority representation in Congress and elsewhere, striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana and opening the door for more redistricting across the country that could aid Republican efforts to control the House.

    In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority found that Louisiana district represented by Democrat Cleo Fields relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice John Roberts had described the 6th Congressional District as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge.

    “That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the six conservatives.

    …

    It is unclear how much is left of the provision, known as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the main way to challenge racially discriminatory election practices.

    Not much, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for the three liberal justices. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote.

    In a statement, Fields said the decision’s “practical effect is to make it far harder for minority communities to challenge redistricting maps that dilute their political voice.”

    The voting rights law succeeded in opening the ballot box to Black Americans and reducing persistent discrimination in voting. Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos has estimated.

    Well we can’t have that.

    The chief justice has been at the center of the effort to limit the use of race in public life. He has had the Voting Rights Act in his sights since his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan-era Justice Department.

    “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Roberts wrote in a dissenting opinion in 2006 in his first major voting rights case as chief justice.

    Well, yes, but since the sordid business did such a good job of favoring the pallid race for so long it is the lesser of two evils to correct the favoring until there is no longer a need to do so. We’re not there yet.

    In 2013, Roberts wrote for the majority in gutting the law’s requirement that states and local governments with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, get approval before making any election-related changes.

    “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” Roberts wrote.

    Yes our country has changed but no the damage our country did before changing has not all been cleared away. Not even close.

  • Just a man who

    Jo Bartosch at Spiked:

    Oxford University biochemist Matt Rattley is the sort of man in a dress we are not supposed to snigger at. A tutor at the proudly inclusive St Hilda’s College, Oxford, he takes ‘bringing his whole self to work’ several cup sizes further, pairing a wispy beard and hulking frame with massive prosthetic plastic breasts. No one in his male-dominated department has publicly criticised his sexist sartorial choices, and he has been pictured and filmed at professional events looking as though he has wandered in from a stag do.

    Even if the blatant sexism didn’t bother them, you’d think the childishness would. No, Matt, we don’t do funny dress-up on the job, we’re supposed to be adults.

    Rattley doesn’t claim to be a woman. He is just a man who wears low-cut frocks and a huge rubber rack. The question is not about his identity, or even his motivations, but whether his choices infringe on others.

    There probably aren’t explicit rules about that kind of thing, because they are assumed, because adults are assumed to know tacit rules about how to behave around other adults. The fact that the rules are tacit doesn’t translate to it’s ok to ignore them. Tacit rules can be the worst to ignore.

    Dr Ace North is a biologist who has found himself on the wrong side of Oxford’s inclusion inquisition. Recently, he was hauled into a meeting with human resources and branded ‘hateful’ by senior staff after questioning what he saw as the department’s increasingly overt ideological signalling, from Progress Pride flag displays to a ‘gender unicorn’ poster in shared office space. Commenting on this double standard, he said of Rattley on X: ‘As an employee of the university, I feel grossly insulted that this is tolerated, even celebrated, yet even mild criticism of gender-identity ideology is shouted down. I can’t imagine how young women in his classes may feel.’

    …

    Ultimately, a university is not a stage, nor a fetish club. It is a place of learning, where young people ought to be able to study without being forced to navigate someone else’s exhibitionism. Oxford’s problem is not that it attracts weirdos. It is that it has forgotten how to say no to them. Regrettably, it seems Matt Rattley will be at liberty to display his plastic tits until university officials find their ovaries.

    Or until they get tired of all the attention? Here’s hoping.

  • Trumpy go boom

    We’re getting younger and younger every day. Not in a good way.

    has issued an astonishing new threat against Iran, posting a mocked up picture of himself brandishing an assault rifle with the strapline: “No more Mr Nice Guy!”

    “Iran can’t get their act together,” the president wrote on Truth Social early Wednesday morning. “They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!”

    The threat was accompanied by a meme of Trump, stood against a Middle Eastern backdrop of explosions devastating a hillside, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses and holding the heavy-duty firearm.

    Macho man, when in reality he can’t even stand up straight, let alone hold a massive heavy firearm.

  • “He stole my rattle!”

    Stalinism MAGA-style.

    The Justice Department has secured a new indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, over a social media post, after a past indictment effort spurred by President Trump last year ended in failure, according to people familiar with the investigation.

    The new case represents another twist in the department’s tortured efforts to satisfy the demands of Mr. Trump to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Comey, a longtime target of the president’s wrath. The first indictment against Mr. Comey was thrown out by a judge.

    The new one is about the seashells that spelled out 86 84 blah blah blah next it will be he stole Trump’s brand new red wagon.

    By the way, of these two guys, Trump is the convicted felon.

  • Teeny brother

    Ewwwww

    The US will soon begin issuing passports featuring an image of President Donald Trump inside, a State Department official said Tuesday.

    The official said that the passport “will be the default passport out of the Washington Passport Agency when available” for those who renew their passports in person at that location.

    Well that’s a relief. At least it’s not every passport agency.

    Yet.

    The presence of Trump’s likeness in the US passports is the latest – and most significant – instance of his image being used for an item said to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of US independence. Unlike a commemorative coin or national park pass, a US passport is an internationally recognized form of identification that is typically valid for 10 years.

    It’s also something you have to have for international travel.

    The blatant vanity and greed for attention, including forced attention, is grotesque.

  • Good faith debate is it?

    Yeah yeah always line up with the men.

    Blah blah open dialogue blah good faith debate blah blah building bridges blah – get men together to tell women that men can be women and women need to shut up. How to have this open dialogue good faith debate to build bridges? Via two men who pretend to be women. Sheer genius!

    Got questions? Ask two men larping as women!

  • MuhJEStick

    In which Trump demonstrates that he sounds like a kid in first grade when he tries to read aloud. That’s how bad at reading he is. No wonder he’s all television and no books.

    Too bad that kingy fella was there to listen and cringe.

  • Slash those benefits

    Now they’re going after people with disabilities. Of course they are.

    Even a glance at Shy’tyra Burton’s life reveals her need for the sort of federal government assistance that helps disabled Americans stay in their homes. Born two months prematurely into a poor family in Philadelphia, unable to breathe or swallow without tubes and largely confined to medical facilities until age 4, Burton was diagnosed with a litany of developmental and intellectual disabilities that left her with an IQ below 70.

    She persevered and graduated from a high school special education program, then attempted community college. But she struggled to grasp basic tasks and information. She couldn’t get hired, including at McDonald’s. After multiple medical and psychological evaluations and a hearing before a judge, the federal government approved her for the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides a basic income to those with severe disabilities and to indigent older people.

    For Burton, now 22, the $994 monthly benefit is lifesaving but not enough to completely support herself on her own. So, like many SSI recipients, she has continued to live with her father, who makes around $2,000 a month as a Philadelphia sanitation worker.

    Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is poised to penalize people like Burton simply for living in the same home as their families, according to four federal officials, internal emails and a federal regulatory listing. The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third — about $330 a month in Burton’s case — or ending their support altogether.

    Meanwhile garish gold-plated ballrooms for thieving cheating lying crooks spare no public expense.

    The effort to cut SSI for families who also rely on food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was initiated by top White House and Department of Government Efficiency officials last year, multiple Social Security officials said. It marks a second attempt by the Trump administration to quietly but dramatically downsize disability benefit programs overseen by the Social Security Administration, despite those programs’ strict eligibility standards and minimal instances of fraud. 

    How dare disabled people get benefits when that money could go to more tawdry luxuries for the man from Queens?

    The likely SSI cut will affect not just younger adults with disabilities such as Down syndrome and severe autism who are still living at home with their low-income parents, but also older people with health or financial problems who have had to move in with their adult children on tight budgets. All told, as many as 400,000 poor and disabled people and indigent older people across the United States could have their support cut or eliminated, according to a ProPublica analysis of actuarial figures from the Social Security Administration.

    That’s a lot of money Trump and his goons can claw back to spend on gaudy monuments to Trump.

    For his part, Bisignano, the Social Security commissioner, wants to be seen as a leader who’s making the agency more businesslike and efficient, according to interviews with agency staff and recordings of him speaking in private executive meetings. But the SSI rule change, by all accounts, will increase the administrative burden not just on families like Burton’s but also on the staff who’ll have to constantly assess the living arrangements and family incomes of her and millions of other people.

    But Social Security isn’t supposed to be “businesslike.” Not everything has to be businesslike – in fact quite a lot of things need to be anything but businesslike. Parenthood for instance; family mutual support; care for people with disabilities and other intractable obstacles to profit-making; education; the arts; science; friendship. Not everything is about money. Money is an instrument; it’s not the music.

  • The very best

    The Guardian reports:

    Guardian Sport won two top prizes at the prestigious Sports Journalists’ Association’s awards evening on Monday.

    The Guardian won sports publisher of the year at the SJA British Sports Journalism Awards night while Jonathan Liew was named columnist of the year for the fifth time in eight years, as well as winning bronze in the football journalist of the year category. Suzanne Wrack won bronze in the women’s football journalist of the year and Andy Bull won bronze in the sports feature writer of the year (long form) category.

    Erm. Excuse me. Are we to understand that there is a prize for football journalist of the year and a prize for women’s football journalist of the year? As in, a prize for normal people and a prize for those pathetic feeble nitwits who can’t possibly ever win a prize unless the prize is restricted to pathetic feeble nitwits only?

    Meanwhile, Jonathan Liew is…not a big promoter of women’s sports.

    There are a great many objections of that kind…which the Guardian will continue to ignore. Women just don’t matter.

  • The suppor’t they nee’d

    How on earth does one go about sifting through a sea of red tape?

    Beware of those intrusive apostrophes, too. There is no apostrophe in the plural phrase “my partners”. See also:

    my hats

    my books

    my intentions

    my horrified stares

    No apostrophes there. They don’t belong.

  • Your inclusion is their exclusion

    Framing.

    Hampstead Heath’s chiefs are recommending the Ladies’ and Men’s ponds remain trans-inclusive alongside a series of upgrades to the existing facilities.

    And by “trans-inclusive” they mean “women-exclusionary”.

    The City of London Corporation’s much-anticipated report into its access policy follows a consultation which received overwhelming support for the existing arrangements. The ongoing management of the ponds as trans-inclusive spaces after last year’s landmark Supreme Court judgement has however come under scrutiny with a legal challenge launched by Sex Matters ongoing.

    That’s because “trans-inclusive” in this context means the women’s pond is no longer a women’s pond. It was a women’s pond, until men started using it. There are plenty of places where swimming is not sex-specific, including at the Hampstead ponds themselves, but there are also the two sex-specific ponds. Men who pretend to be women could just leave it that way, but noooooo, they have to take the women’s pond away from the women who want it, because women must not be allowed to say no. Ever.

    Hampstead Heath has three ponds: the Kenwood Ladies’, Highgate Men’s and a mixed area. The existing arrangements for the Ladies’ pond dictate that it is available for use by biological and trans women, with the reverse true for the Men’s.

    The Corporation said this has been the case since at least 2017 and that it was consistent with the previous interpretation of the Equality Act 2010.

    Equality does not translate to pretending men are women on demand.

    Officers wrote: “In circumstances where: (a) there is overwhelming opposition to this option amongst users; (b) the current arrangements have worked well and continue to receive very strong support from users; (c) the Men’s Pond and the Ladies’ Pond have operated without any substantiated incidents since at least 2017, if not before; and (d) the privacy of changing, shower and toilet facilities is to be improved, it is difficult to see how a policy of strict segregation on the basis of biological sex could be justified.”

    Then why did it have the men’s and women’s ponds in the first place?

    Surely it’s because there are three ponds, so why not make it one for everyone, and the other two for people who prefer that? Suppose, for instance, that sometimes the mixed pond gets too crowded and/or rowdy and on those occasions some women are glad the women’s pond is an option. It’s not just about “ooh I’m squeamish”; it’s also about differences in strength, speed, noise, energy, and so on. My guess is it’s a lot more about the latter than the former. If the women’s pond becomes a second mixed pond then women won’t have that option any more.

    But heyho, what men who pretend to be women want is always more important than what women want.

  • Full of the usual

    When all else fails just stall. Drag your feet like a whining toddler. “I don’t want to, I can’t, it’s too big, I don’t want to, it hurts, I can’t, I’m tired, I want a cookie, I can’t.”

    The reply was full of the usual nonsense and obfuscation. It is “very complicated” (no it isn’t). The debate has been “very toxic.” (Whose fault is that? And what does it matter? The longer the delay, the more irritated people get). There has been no delay, the govt spokesman continues.

    (Someone points out that the Empire State Building was built in just over a year.)

    Then the hapless govt spokesman dares to suggest they need the EHRC guidance. No they don’t – it doesn’t apply to employers – such as the government.

    Finally he resorts to saying the guidance (which would help service providers and associations) can’t be laid because of the purdah rules – a transparently false excuse that Baroness Kishwer Falkner dismisses with ill-disguised contempt.

    What a shambles this government is.

    For the billionth time I wonder what it is about this particular pseudo-rights campaign that makes it so impossible to ignore.

  • Chill

    Hm. Which is more brain-tweaking, Buddhism or cannabis?

    22 Buddhist monks arrested at airport after record drug bust

    Aren’t Buddhists supposed to get their mellowness from being Buddhist as opposed to drugs? Am I wrong?

    Twenty-two Sri Lankan monks returning from Thailand were arrested on Sunday at the main international airport with a record 242 pounds of powerful cannabis, officials said.

    A Sri Lanka Customs spokesman said the group, returning home after a four-day vacation in the Thai capital, had Kush — a potent, plant-based strain of cannabis — hidden in their luggage.

    “Each carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage,” the spokesman said, adding that the monks had been handed over to police.

    Hidden. No pretending it was an innocent mistake then.

    The latest arrests aren’t the first time monks have run afoul of drug laws.

    In 2022, every single monk at a Buddhist temple in central Thailand was defrocked after they tested positive for methamphetamine. The monks were sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation.

    On the one hand cannabis, on the other hand meth. Mellow, or hopped up. What are the goals here, and where does the Buddhism come in?

    In 2017, police said a Buddhist monk was arrested in Myanmar after authorities found more than 4 million meth pills in his car and in his monastery.

    Ommmmmmmm.

  • What’s that about imposter syndrome now?

    Is it more repulsive than hilarious or more hilarious than repulsive? Hard to decide.

    It’s a nice touch that the subject is declaring yourself something, and feeling like an imposter, and how easy it is to declare yourself something. Mmmmyes, good point, it is very easy to declare yourself something. What does that remind me of?

    More seriously, it’s also repulsive, and not all that hilarious, that he drones on and on about claiming to be something and how maybe you shouldn’t claim to be something if you haven’t really earned it. Yeah, bro, you haven’t earned being a woman by putting on that ludicrous gigantic prosthetic Set Of Massive Tits. Also your beard is vomitous.

  • Safe as houses

    The Beeb also reports on the “trans murderer” we read about yesterday.

    Trans prisoner charged with sexual assault in women’s jail

    Not a trans prisoner, a real prisoner. A male real prisoner, in a women’s prison. BBC always so careful to hide the truth as long as it can. A very dishonest way to report news.

    A transgender prisoner serving a sentence for murder has been charged with the sexual assault of a fellow inmate at a women’s prison.

    Alexandra Stewart, previously known as Alan Baker, allegedly attacked the woman at HMP Greenock.

    Now why was he previously known as Alan do you suppose? Just a freak accident? Someone’s hand shook on the birth certificate?

    Stewart – a biological male who identifies as a woman – was jailed for the murder of John Weir in 2013 and has been held in a women’s unit in the prison since 2016.

    Oh there it is. Finally. In the third paragraph. Better late than never?

    Stewart – thought to be one of two trans women in the female prison estate – was jailed for life after murdering Weir, 36, by stabbing him 16 times at his home in Bonhill, West Dunbartonshire.

    But that’s no reason to refer to him as a man, now is it.

  • Down the drain

    Trump fires another batch of science people.

    Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Donald Trump.

    Members of the National Science Board, which helps govern the National Science Foundation, were dismissed in a message from the Presidential Personnel Office thanking them for their service, according to screenshots shared with The Washington Post: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.”

    The National Science Board was establishedin 1950 to guide the governance of the National Science Foundation, in an unusual structure within the federal government that echoes the setup of a company board in the private sector. It helps guide an agency that operates Antarctic research stations, telescopes, a fleet of research vessels and supports basic science research in laboratories across the United States.

    The NSF has a long history of supporting technology and research that powers many innovations the world relies on today. The agency helped language-learning app Duolingo get its start. NSF research has also helped evolve technology used in MRIs, cellphones and LASIK eye surgery.

    Blah blah blah ya fiyed. Guy from Queens knows best.

    It’s unclear how many members of the board were dismissed and whether they will be replaced. A National Science Foundation spokesman referred questions to the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries about why the members were terminated.

    It did not immediately respond because it doesn’t have a clue. Trump does whatever he wants and the flunkies who answer mail chase after him trying to sweep up the broken glass.

    Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University, who has been a board member since 2022 said he had personally received confirmation from a third of the board members that they had been terminated by the boilerplate emails, which provided no reason.

    He said the board exists to hold the agency to the highest scientific standards, “for how rigorous, intellectual, scientific decisions should be made.” It also approves large funding decisions, such as whether to build a new Antarctic research vessel.

    Well that’s no good. We can’t hold agencies to the highest standards. We have to hold them to the trumpiest standards. Getcher priorities straight.

    He noted that without a director over the last year, the board has played a major role in advising Congress of the agency’s role in the nation’s investment in science. In the president’s budget request last year, there was a proposed 55 percent cut to NSF’s budget. Congress rejected those cuts.

    What’s science ever done for us???

    The stupidity of these people is mindblowing.

    Oh look, Zoe Lofgren sees it the way I do.

    “This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (California), the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. “The NSB is apolitical. It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation.”

    Does he hate it simply because they are all vastly more intelligent than he is? Any bets?

    The shake up on the board is the latest turmoil for the agency that is supposed to help keep U.S. science at the leading edge. Last year NSF had to cancel more than 1,000 active research grants.

    …

    The shake up on the National Science Board is similar to changes seen on other science-related advisory boards in the federal government since Trump took office for his second term.

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. completely dismissed all 17 members of the federal vaccine committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He replaced them with several people who have criticized vaccines.

    R Kennedy Jr being someone with no scientific training at all.