Oops wait a second come back

Trump’s administration is attempting to rehire officials with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) who worked on the government response to bird flu before being fired over the weekend, US media report.

The layoffs were a part of a cost-cutting mission across the US government by Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) leader Elon Musk.

The terminations came as the latest outbreak of the bird flu has wreaked havoc on poultry and cattle farms, causing egg prices to skyrocket and raising concerns among public health experts.

A USDA spokesperson told the BBC that although “several” officials working on bird flu were “notified of their terminations” over the weekend, “we are working to

The transfer to dictatorship proceeds apace.

Trump has signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution.

The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.

Everybody and everything has to get Trump’s permission to do anything, and if he doesn’t give his permission, that’s the end of it.

In a fact sheet, the White House described the move as, “ensuring that all federal agencies are

Zelensky points out that Trump tells a lot of lies.

“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv during a broader discussion about the administration, which this week opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was “living in a disinformation space” and in a “circle of disinformation.”

Which is a lightly veiled way of saying he lies non-stop.

Later Tuesday, Mr. Trump said of Ukraine’s leadership and the war, “You should have never started it”…

Note: he didn’t start it.

“Yesterday, there were signals of speaking with them as victims,” he said of the Trump officials’ tone in discussing the Russian officials,

Jo Bartosch at UnHerd:

The United Nations has been dragged into the global conflict between the defenders of biological reality and the demands of transgender activists. UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, has dared to acknowledge the existence of two sexes in her reports — at once a fact so mundane and an act so rare — that over 200 NGOs have signed a letter denouncing her.

According to this outraged coalition, co-led by Planned Parenthood International (PPI) and Women Deliver (WD), Alsalem’s “sex-based” approach is nothing less than a “Western colonial patriarchal worldview” that “undermines decades of progress.” Apparently, recognising that men commit violence against women “further marginalizes vulnerable groups, including trans and

Michael Tomasky puts it starkly:

I’d be hard-pressed to argue that JD Vance’s meeting with the leader of the German fascist party on Friday was weakly covered by the press. Yet somehow, it hasn’t registered quite the degree of shock and revulsion here in the United States that it deserves to. That visit, along with Vance’s shocking speech at the Munich Security Conference, confirms every worst suspicion about this morally rudderless mountebank. The argot of diplomats and newspaper editorials, which express “concern” or even “grave concern,” doesn’t begin to describe how we Americans should feel about what Vance did last week in our name.

The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been declared a “suspected extremist” organization by the German

Well how do you think they get there?!

It doesn’t bother me to call trans women ‘she’, but it does bother me if they deliberately destroy women’s rights to fairness & equality. https://t.co/7BHRIzxbar

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 18, 2025

It’s not about being “bothered” ffs. It’s also not personal. It’s about the whole set of demands and changes and rules and lies that impose this terrible religion on all of us. How is it not blindingly obvious that if you call a man “she” you are accepting the ideology? And when you’re Piers Morgan doing it on social media you are promoting and validating the ideology. Cut it out.… Read the rest

A Congressional press release:

House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro is warning of the fatal consequences of unelected billionaire and self-appointed president Elon Musk’s crippling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By slashing CDC’s workforce, President Trump and unchecked billionaires are leaving Americans more exposed to disease, illness, and death.

“Elon Musk – an unchecked billionaire – President Donald Trump, and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are continuing their assault on Americans’ health,” said Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro. “In the midst of a severe flu season, and as a potentially deadly avian flu outbreak threatens to raise the stakes for public health even further, firing thousands

We take for granted the various safety measures and health protections the collective intelligence of humans has come up with over the years, so we take an axe to those measures to “save money.”

At least, some of us do, and unfortunately the some of us who do are busy with those axes.

Over a thousand (1300) probationary workers at the Center for Disease Control are being let go by the Trump administration, representing about 45% of all probationary workers at the CDC.

Being fired. I dislike that “being let go” euphemism, especially in cases like this where the firings are wholly arbitrary and reckless. There’s no room for euphemisms here.

Among those laid off include all 50 first-year

Maybe the CDC isn’t the right branch of government to slash? Maybe disease control is not actually a bad thing?

The Trump administration slashed hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including dozens of workers crucial to public health safety — as the country grapples with a potential “quad-demic,” according to reports.

As part of an effort led by the Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaire Elon Musk heads, thousands of probationary workers within the Department of Health and Human Services were told they were being terminated over the weekend, including 1,300 at the CDC.

According to NBC News, those departures included around two dozen workers at the Laboratory Leadership Service

Sometimes the bafflegab is so extensive that the reader literally cannot tell what the reporter is saying.

Scots councillor claims he faces disciplinary hearing for calling non-binary child a boy

Well which kind of “non-binary child”?

Astoundingly, the Scottish Express doesn’t say. The result is a dense fog where a news item should be.

A Scots councillor claims he is facing potential disciplinary action for allegedly calling a non-binary child a “boy.” Controversial independent representative Alastair Redman will be hauled in front of Standards Commission chiefs next week to face accusations that he has breached the code of conduct.

The Argyll and Bute councillor was embroiled in a row in 2023 about parents complaining to a secondary school about a

Maybe don’t take any plane trips for the next four years or so.

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

The impacted [fired] workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told The Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Transportation Department

Man who pretends to be a woman and abuses any woman who points out he is a man tells JK Rowling to stop doing something she isn’t doing.

Please, please, please @jk_rowling – stop claiming you represent women. You absolutely do not. Most women abhor what you represent. Which is hate. Ask the 750,000 women of Unison who voted against your views last week. You represent the Gender Critical movement – very different.… https://t.co/pH6SEKdhhH

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) February 17, 2025

She doesn’t say she represents women. That would be an idiotic thing to say, and she’s not an idiot. (Jonathan on the other hand…) Saying women are organizing is not saying “I represent women.” It’s quite different, really.

The … Read the rest

Guy whines about not enough attention being paid to him our trans family especially the male part.

His name under the story is Jenny Maguire. He’s a man.

We must examine why a group that represents less than 1pc of the population now takes up such a large slice of the political and media landscape – and more importantly, what is being ignored as a result.

Well one major reason the group takes up so much space is the fact that it takes it up. It demands it, it grabs it, it camps out in it. The trans movement loves attention and can never ever get enough of it. If it had wanted to take up little space it … Read the rest

Seeking a way through:

Employers have handled disputes involving transgender issues “really badly”, the general secretary of the UK’s largest trade union has said.

Unison’s Christina McAnea said unions have a responsibility “to try and make sure that we find a way through this” and she would be happy to work with organisations on the issue. Speaking exclusively to The Scotsman, she referenced the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against while also ensuring women with concerns are “listened to and heard”.

But what does “the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against” mean? What does “discrimination against trans people” consist of?

That’s the problem. It doesn’t mean what it means in the case … Read the rest

Tom Nichols points out that we’re all the prisoners of Musk’s resentment and egomania.

One of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever pulled is to convince millions of people that DOGE, the self-styled Department of Government Efficiency, is about government efficiency.

DOGE isn’t really a department; it’s not an agency; it has no statutory authority; and it has little to do with saving money, streamlining the bureaucracy, or eliminating waste. It is a name that Trump is allowing a favored donor and ally to use in a reckless campaign against various targets in the federal government. The whole enterprise is an attack against civil servants and the very notion of apolitical expertise.

But it must be … Read the rest

One to watch:

Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.

It’s pretty tricky – aka impossible – to have a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers if the Big Boss is free to meddle with said agency. Trump wants to get rid of anyone who did or does or could blow a whistle on him, and that’s unfortunate, because he’s breaking rules and laws and constitutional norms all over the shop. Trump is the last person on the planet who should be able to … Read the rest

Wait who’s the joke?

That’s so dumb it’s hard to believe. Maya doesn’t say “he’s tall therefore not a woman.” Her point is that a lot of newspapers apparently took great care to hide the fact that Upton towers over Peggie, presumably because that fact hints at the malicious absurdity of Upton’s claim that Peggie bullied and harassed him.

Magic Gender Ideology is so stuffed with lies and manipulations like this it’s a wonder anyone takes it seriously.… Read the rest

snerk

Emergency Board Meeting at NHS Fife pic.twitter.com/HGOjsh0W7r

— Mr Malky (@MrMalky) February 16, 2025

… Read the rest

Oh wait, now the NHS is threatening Sandie Peggie with even more punishment for knowing that a man is a man. You’d think they could at least do them one at a time.

A nurse who challenged a trans doctor for using women’s changing rooms is being threatened with the sack by the NHS after “misgendering” her colleague, The Telegraph can reveal.

Sandie Peggie, who brought a landmark employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton, is understood to have been told to attend a conduct hearing on Friday which her employer has warned could lead to her dismissal.

They want to fire an experienced nurse because she knows that a man is a man. Wouldn’t you … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on As the US hurtles toward autocracy.

The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.

It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part,