Some Good Law Project blither from Jolyon:

A dangerous narrative that frames trans people as a threat to women has solidified its grip on public discourse in recent months. It’s a narrative built on fear, not facts, and it’s having devastating effects on the trans community.

It’s not a “narrative.” It’s trendy to sweep all the words into the category of “narrative” (except one’s own words of course) but it’s stupid and inaccurate and manipulative. It’s also not “framing.” Calling it “framing” implies manipulation at best, lying at worst.

We’re not telling a story when we point out that trans women are men and that men are barred from some women’s spaces for reasons of safety as well as … Read the rest

The NY Times reported a couple of weeks ago that rescuers in Afghanistan don’t rescue women.

The first rescue workers reached Bibi Aysha’s village more than 36 hours after an earthquake devastated settlements across eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous areas on Sunday. But instead of bringing relief, the sight of them heightened her fears; not a single woman was among them.

Afghan cultural norms, enforced even in emergencies by the ruling Taliban, forbid physical contact between men and women who are not family members. In the village of Andarluckak, in Kunar Province, the emergency team hurriedly carried out wounded men and children, and treated their wounds, said Ms. Aysha, 19. But she and other women and adolescent girls, some of them bleeding,

Are we seeing a pattern or no?

A top House Democrat on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of “systematically dismantling” efforts to prosecute sex crimes and hunt down traffickers, as the president faces continued pressure to make public investigative files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The memo from House judiciary committee ranking member Jamie Raskin and his staff, shared exclusively with the Guardian, said that beyond refusing the demands for transparency around Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, Trump has also undercut efforts to hold people accused of similar crimes accountable by “systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes”.

Are we sure it’s systematically as … Read the rest

Look, this isn’t complicated. Either you do what Trump tells you to do, or ya fiyad. It’s that simple.

The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.

Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law

Ted Cruz dissents.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”

“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”

“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”

There are interns being thrown over the bannisters in the White House this evening. Judge tells Trump to redo his lawsuit so that it’s not so tedious and moronic.

A federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin and two Times reporters, and said the suit was filled with “vituperation and invective” and violated civil procedure in federal cases for failing to get to the point.

So one has to wonder why Trump’s lawyers didn’t tell him that instead of letting him make a fool of himself? Sabotage?

Anyway, the Guardian account is a treat.

[Judge]Merryday cited Rule 8(a) of the federal rules of civil procedure requiring a complaint include a

We won’t tell you.

A new transparency row has emerged as the fallout from the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal row continues.

The Herald can reveal that health chiefs have refused to reveal another key piece of information regarding how the legal fees are covered.

It was revealed on Wednesday that the Central Legal Office (CLO), which is part of the NHS’s National Service Scotland unit, and appoints barristers on behalf of health boards, said there was “no legitimate” case to reveal the hourly rate paid to Jane Russell KC.

No legitimate case? Really? For people to know how much of their money is being pissed away on pretending a man is a woman?

However, the CLO -which is a

Why does it surprise anyone that the Neville Chamberlain approach doesn’t work any better with Trump than it did with Hitler?

Late last year, ABC News spent $16 million to settle a defamation lawsuit with President Donald Trump. At the time, you could squint and see the business sense of it: Just pay up, say you’re sorry and this will all blow over.

Or, pay up, say you’re sorry, and next time the demand will be much higher. Which is more likely?

Across Corporate America, companies are learning the hard way that giving Trump what he wants won’t appease him — it will only stoke his appetite. (It seems some folks have forgotten the sage wisdom underpinning Laura Joffe Numeroff’s

September 10:

Texas A&M University swiftly fired a lecturer and removed two administrators after a student filmed herself arguing with the instructor that a children’s literature course broke the law because the coursework recognized more than two genders.

The student cited President Trump, who has signed an executive order saying his administration would push for the recognition of only two genders. After the video taken by the student was posted on social media, Republican politicians in the state, including the governor, demanded quick action from the public university, accusing the instructor of “blatantly indoctrinating students in gender ideology.”

The school’s moves were condemned by advocates of academic freedom, who say they reflected a state that was veering into authoritarianism

There’s murder, rape, assault…and then there is Facebook commentary.

Police have become embroiled in a free speech row after officers told a cancer patient to apologise for a social media post.

Said police went to her house to tell her to apologize for a Facebook post. Meanwhile rape goes uninvestigated.

Deborah Anderson, an American citizen living in Slough, was confronted by an officer from Thames Valley Police after someone complained about an offensive Facebook post.

Well you see it’s like this. It’s hard work tracking down a rapist. Some Yank saying something on Facebook? Like rolling off a log.

The mother of two, who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer, was told that if she did not apologise

One of these is not like the others.

When Barack Obama visited Windsor Castle in 2016, he and Michelle traveled in a plain black Range Rover, greeted by only a handful of royal guards ahead of a private lunch with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Eight years earlier, his predecessor, George W. Bush, made do with afternoon tea and a quick palace tour. But neither of them valued regalia, resplendence and royal associations quite like Donald Trump.

Because they were aware that there were more important things to focus on, and so they should focus on them. Trump is a child. He is very genuinely a child in his thinking, despite the grown-up hobbies like golf and … Read the rest

The NY Times on the state censorship:

ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.

The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure

Ash Regan nails it.

Huh. I stupidly assumed that Jimmy Kimmel had said something flippant or callous about Kirk himself, but oh gee whaddya know he didn’t do any such thing. What he said was that the trumpies are using Kirk’s murder for their own trumpy ends. Should that be protected free speech? You’re god damn right it should.

The Graun yesterday:

Politicians, media figures and free speech organisations expressed anger and alarm at the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, warning that critics of Donald Trump were being systematically silenced.

ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show.

Another giant leap down the road to dictatorship:

Weaponize the levers of government for partisan political gain. Pressure privately owned media companies to toe the party line. Punish the owners who resist and reward the ones who acquiesce.

That’s how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán consolidated control of the media in his country, according to scholars who witnessed Hungary’s democratic backsliding firsthand.

And Trump is doing the same.

Using legal maneuvers, financial incentives and public pressure campaigns, Trump is persuading companies to make changes that benefit his party and bolster his own power. Wednesday’s decision by Disney’s ABC to sideline Jimmy Kimmel is the latest example.

Not so much persuading as pushing and coercing.

Free speech groups like the

Which the activists say.

The Liberal Democrats are facing a transgender row at their conference over party rules that allow biological men to take women’s posts. Gender-critical activists have launched an attempt to force Sir Ed Davey’s party to bar trans women from taking female roles.

The group, Liberal Voice for Women, will use the party’s annual meeting in Bournemouth, set to start on Saturday, to call for a vote on changing party rules, to bring them into line with April’s Supreme Court ruling. The current rules allow those who “self-identify as women” to stand for party posts set aside for women, which the activists say dilutes the chance that biological women can reach the top of the

Ok ok but first we have to count the grains of sand in the Sahara.

The Scottish Government has been accused of repeatedly re-traumatising survivors of sexual violence by dragging its feet on implementing the Supreme Court ruling that clarified the definition of sex.

Speaking in a Holyrood debate on Wednesday, SNP MSP Michelle Thomson said the Government’s refusal to act swiftly following April’s judgment was “constantly re-triggering” for women who had experienced abuse.

Why is that? Because refusing to recognize women’s needs and concerns is abuse.

The motion before MSPs, lodged by Conservative MSP Pam Gosal, welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling that the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. It

Just because.… Read the rest

Obama suggests not inflaming more rage and violence. Trumpies call him every name in the book.

Obama said that he did not use a 2015 mass shooting by a white supremacist at a black church in South Carolina to go after his political enemies, and pointed out that after the 11 September 2001 attacks, President George W Bush “explicitly went out of his way to say, ‘We are not at war against Islam’.”

“And so when I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’, enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have

The locals are not thrilled.

Thousands have gathered in Parliament Square for a rally against US President Donald Trump’s second state visit.

Now that you mention it, why is he getting this grotesque lavish welcome? He’s been in office less than a year, and he’s horrible, so why the mad rush to throw him a very expensive party? Why the decision to give him anything at all other than a cold disdainful glare?

In the midst of the crowds – which started gathering near BBC Broadcasting House – people told the BBC why they were there, racking up a long list of grievances against the US president. They said they found him “despicable” and wanted to send a message