It turns out that giving the green light to corporate spending on elections does have consequences. Who could have known?

Fifteen years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy made a prediction. Writing for the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, in which the court struck down key guardrails against corporate spending in American elections, Kennedy rejected the allegation that the court’s ruling would have deleterious effects on how Americans perceived their republic.

“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,” he wrote. Kennedy’s reasoning was stilted and formulaic: Because corporations were “willing to spend money to try to persuade voters,” he argued, that dynamic “presupposes that the people

When Trump says he’s considering it, BELIEVE HIM, no matter what the “it” is.

Donald Trump’s suggestion that there are “methods” by which he could run for a third term as US president has been met with scorn – but also warnings that he could seriously attempt it, despite being explicitly barred from doing so by the US constitution.

There it is right there, even in the very act of warning against it. It’s not a “suggestion”! Calling it a suggestion weakens it, which is exactly what we should not be doing, journalism very much included. He’s not fucking suggesting, he’s shouting as loudly as possible.

“The biggest mistake of the last eight years is that we somehow failed

The Let Criminals Run Everything party is fuming.

Elon Musk lambasted the French court verdict that blocked Marine Le Pen from a 2027 presidential run after she was found guilty of embezzlement.

“When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents,” Musk said on Monday afternoon. “This is their standard playbook throughout the world.”

Or to put it another way, some criminals are prosecuted. What a shock!

The White House has become increasingly critical of democracy in Europe, with Vice President JD Vance delivering a withering speech in Munich in February in which he attacked European governments for their approach to a series of hot-button cultural issues.

Le Pen and

Jaw-dropping. The Sussex University Vice Chancellor bleating about the right and indeed the need of universities to create respectful and inclusive communninies when that is exactly and precisely the very thing Sussex University entirely failed and indeed refused to do for Kathleen Stock and thus implicitly for all staff and students who are aware that humans can’t change sex.

The self-admiration of people like this is breathtaking.

Trump is breezily telling major news outlets that he plans to be dictator for life.

Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.”

“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said in a Sunday-morning phone call with NBC News, referring to his allies. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”

It’s not about “people want him to do it.” It’s about … Read the rest

Ok, classic. Absolutely classic.

2.
Public Ultimatums:
“This isn’t going to go away. It will likely just get worse. Unless she obviously changes her stance.
Then you have a choice:
You either need to live with the stigma of her choices, which will cost you gigs & friends or
Publicly distance yourself from her… pic.twitter.com/tDpK6OHZdV

— TheFamousArtistBirdyRose (@TheFamousArtBR) January 16, 2025

Do you see it? The two paragraphs after “Mate I really don’t wanna get involved or argue” –

We are all “pro-women”. Birdy, you, me, all of us. All of our little festival family are. Of course we are. Great!

But when Birdy uses the word “woman”, she only means people who were born with biologically female genitalia.

Musk expects everyone to sympathize with him because Tim Walz was not sad that Tesla’s stock fell.

Tesla’s stock price had fallen by half and “he was overjoyed.” Pause. “What an evil thing to do.”

Ah yes – evil. Evil is not Musk abruptly shutting down USAID with the result that thousands of people in poor countries were plunged into illness and misery, no no no, that’s not evil at all, what’s evil is to be pleased that the man who shut down USAID lost some of his billions.

His whine continues. “What a creep. What a jerk.”

Seriously, this shit is mind-boggling. He’s thrown thousands of civil servants out of useful jobs and here he is whining because an … Read the rest

Not a bug but a feature.

Human rights organizations on Thursday denounced the visit by the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to the notorious prison in El Salvador that is holding hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the US earlier this month without a hearing, calling her actions “political theater”.

Critics condemned Noem’s visit as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s aim to spread fear among immigrant communities, as the cabinet member stood in a baseball hat in front of a line of caged men bare from the waist up.

Noem visited the so-called Cecot, or Terrorism Confinement Center, an infamous maximum-security prison. The prison, built in 2022 during a brutal government crackdown on organized crime,

When unions lose the plot:

The academics behind a gender-critical documentary have launched a discrimination claim against their own union after officials branded the film “transphobic” and campaigned against screenings at Edinburgh University.

Deirdre O’Neill, a lecturer at Hertfordshire University, and Michael Wayne, a professor at Brunel University, directed Adult Human Female, which they described as the “first UK documentary feature to look at the clash between women’s rights and trans ideology”.

It defines sex as being determined by biology and says women’s rights have been damaged by aspects of the trans movement.

Well it’s not that the film defines sex that way, it’s that that is the definition. A person’s sex is what it is, and playing … Read the rest

Oh dear oh dear guess who is joining Bill Maher in making fun of The Leader.

John McWhorter??? But surely he’s on Team Trump with all the other best people, isn’t he?

Isn’t he?… Read the rest

Helen Webberly:

Said with extreme clarity and precision and nodding:

Ethnic cleansing, that’s what this is.

[Drama pause for everyone to gasp and flinch and send money]

Just like wartime, where you had to queue up and prove that you were pure enough to be able to live.

Except not like that at all. There are no extermination camps for trans people. There are no calls for extermination camps for trans people. There is simply the refusal to agree that people are whatever they say they are (in all circumstances no matter what) and the refusal to agree that sex is something anyone can swap out as easily as returning one library book and checking out a different one. … Read the rest

Peak stupidity. Any stupider and the universe would blink out.

Hi @soniasodha . What would your view be if Kathleen Stock was saying Asian people – particularly women – should not be legally recognised as equal? And banned from using the same facilities as White people because they’re dangerous? How would you describe such a person?… pic.twitter.com/xA3OpOEC8C

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) March 29, 2025

It’s not about “equal”; it’s about “thing you’re not.” Pretending to be the opposite sex has nothing to do with equality; it has to do with pretending to be what you are not.

It’s also not about randomly “banning” Asian people from facilities; it’s about banning men from facilities where women are vulnerable. Men can hit … Read the rest

Bad Kennedy is converting the FDA to a center for quackery.

The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator was forced out of the agency Friday and sharply criticized Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his boss at the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Dr. Peter Marks wrote in his letter of resignation, which was obtained by NPR.

Marks has long steered the FDA’s regulation of vaccines as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. He became especially well known during the first Trump administration for his work with Operation Warp Speed, which

The project to alienate allies is flourishing.

Denmark on Saturday said it did not like the “tone” of US Vice President JD Vance‘s comments that Copenhagen had not done enough for Greenland during a visit to the strategically placed, resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. 

“We are open to criticisms, but let me be completely honest, we do not appreciate the tone in which it’s being delivered,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on X.

Really? Denmark doesn’t like having some snot drop in uninvited to berate and threaten it? How eccentric and European.

“Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance

Trump stamping on unions.

Union leaders have accused Donald Trump of union-busting in a “blatant” attempt to silence them after the president stepped up his attacks on government unions on Thursday, signing an executive order that attempts to eliminate collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

…

Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, said the move was “straight out of Project 2025”, the rightwing Heritage Foundation’s manifesto to remake the federal government.

“This executive order is the very definition of union-busting. It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies,” said Shuler. “It’s clear

The Globe and Mail reports:

Yale professors who left the school and accepted positions at the University of Toronto are speaking out about the Trump administration’s attacks on post-secondary institutions, expressing their fears about authoritarianism rising south of the border.

Three Yale professors – all of them vocal critics of President Donald Trump – have recently taken up roles at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Earlier this week, philosophy professor Jason Stanley, who has written about fascism and propaganda, announced that he would leave Yale for U of T.

He joins professors Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder, who specialize in Eastern European history. The two academics are married and arrived in Canada last August, on

Micromanaging all the museums.

Trump on Thursday ordered that “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian Institution, the vast museum and research complex that is a premier exhibition space for U.S. history and culture.

That’s not his job. His power and authority are not infinite, and I really doubt they stretch to telling the Smithsonian what it can and can’t include in its museums.

According to Trump’s order, the Democratic Biden administration “pushed a divisive ideology that reconstrued America’s promotion of liberty as fundamentally flawed, inflecting revered institutions like the Smithsonian and national parks with false narratives.”

Is it divisive though? Which is more divisive: insisting that “America’s promotion of liberty” has been without flaw throughout … Read the rest

It’s so fascinating when they do this.

At the lib dem conference last weekend where they made great efforts to be inclusive.

As a woman, however, I felt like misogyny had strolled up and slapped me hard across the face.@SexMattersOrg @WomensRightsNet @DingsdaleJ95299 @GBNEWS pic.twitter.com/z6rCQYr9Pr

— Nicmar17 (@Nicmar172) March 27, 2025

MEN get men-only toilets but WOMEN do not get women-only toilets.

Why?

Women perving on men in public toilets is not a thing.

Men perving on women in public toilets is most definitely a thing.

So WHY the FUCK do these imbeciles proudly make the men’s toilets exclusive to men while making the women’s toilets open to everyone?

Other than sheer deep-dyed loathing of women?… Read the rest

Law firms fight back.

Two major law firms are taking the Trump administration to court on Friday, seeking to block executive orders that the firms say target them for zealous representation of clients and their hearty pro bono work.

The lawsuit by the Jenner & Block firm, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., alleges violations of the First Amendment guarantees to free speech and free association. It also alleges the order violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment by hurting the firm’s ability to practice law; and violates the Sixth Amendment, for undermining the relationship between attorneys and their clients, and clients’ right to lawyers of their choosing.

And Amendment forty seventy leventy … Read the rest

I love it when people I don’t like show up on my doorstep demanding dinner.

When he arrives in Greenland on Friday, Vice President JD Vance is not going to get much of a welcome from Greenlanders.

Mr. Vance will be the highest-ranking American official ever to visit the island.

But the government of Greenland never invited him and after all that President Trump has said about his desire to “get” the island, many Greenlanders don’t want Mr. Vance coming at all. Mr. Vance is scheduled to visit a remote American military base on the northern coast, far from any town.

Military base. Geddit? MILITARY BASE? They’re so subtle.

The White House’s original plan was more ambitious. Usha