If only doctors could bring themselves to use the word “women”…

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance.

The guidance deals with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients facing medical emergencies. States such as Idaho and Texas have argued that the Biden administration’s guidance, which it issued in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, interpreted Emtala incorrectly.

…

“This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are not worth protecting,” Dr Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN and the president of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. “Complying with this law can mean the difference between life and death for pregnant people, forcing providers like me to choose between caring for someone in their time of need and turning my back on them to comply with cruel and dangerous laws.”

Dr Jamila Perritt means pregnant women. Generic “people” don’t get pregnant; women get pregnant. Pregnant=specific to women.

You can’t fight this fight and erase women from it at the same time. The women part is central.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Bjarte’s The hardest lesson to swallow.

I keep coming back to this idea when I try to understand why people stay loyal to groups that clearly do harm — whether it’s cults like Scientology or gender ideology or extreme political movements like MAGA or Fascism.

It’s that tribal loyalty lives in a completely different part of the brain than rational thinking. And sometimes, the tribal part takes over.

Roughly speaking, it’s the lower brain versus the higher brain. Or if you prefer Freud, the id versus the superego. Or if you’re Homer Simpson, it’s Devil-Homer versus Angel-Homer.

The “lower brain” (or limbic system) is evolutionarily older. It handles emotion, fear, reward, and motivation — all things tied to survival. The “higher brain” (the prefrontal cortex) is newer and handles planning, decision-making, and impulse control. It’s supposed to step in and override the lower brain when it’s about to make dumb, emotionally driven decisions.

But that override system doesn’t always work — especially in kids and teenagers (whose prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed) or in adults under stress or fear. In those states, control shifts back to the limbic system. Survival mode kicks in, and rational thinking takes a back seat.

Here’s where tribalism comes in. I think emotional bonding with a group is a deep, evolved instinct, rooted in survival. For most of human history, being cast out from your group could mean death. So once that bond forms, the brain treats any threat to it — like criticism of the group — as a threat to you.

And when do these bonds usually form? Often during periods of vulnerability: isolation, fear, major life changes, or identity crises. People are most susceptible when they’re seeking belonging, certainty, or meaning, and some people need those things more urgently than others. That’s why some fall harder or faster into extreme ideologies or cults. It’s not because they’re weaker or less intelligent — it’s because the group offered something they deeply needed, at the exact moment they needed it.

Once the emotional bond is locked in, rational information is treated like an attack, not a challenge to think through. The emotional brain slams the door shut. You’ll defend your group, even if it means ignoring evidence, contorting logic, or getting angry at facts. Not because you’re stupid, but because some ancient part of your brain thinks your life depends on it.

And if some part of you does recognize that something’s wrong? That’s when cognitive dissonance kicks in — that uncomfortable mental tension when your beliefs and your reality don’t match. The rational brain starts to panic, but the emotional brain is already guarding the gates. And almost always, to relive the tension, people don’t question the tribe. They double down on it.

Right now, we’re living through a period of massive technological and social upheaval. Everything everywhere is changing; the future feels uncertain; everyone’s overwhelmed. That uncertainty creates fear, and fear activates the limbic system. The result is what we’re seeing all around us: the culture war is less about ideas than about instinct — people retreating into opposing tribes, not because they’ve thought it through, but because some deep part of their brain is trying to feel safe.

And the deeper into the tribe people go, the more fear they generate in the opposing tribe — fueling a feedback loop that keeps the whole thing burning. It’s Mutual Assured Destruction.

If there’s a way out, it probably starts with recognizing the pattern and calming the fear. That means speaking not just to people’s facts and logic, but to their need for safety, respect, and belonging — the things the lower brain craves. Moments like the end of the Cold War, where dialogue and empathy defused decades of mutual fear, taught us that calm, patient communication can re-engage the higher brain. Political leaders like Nelson Mandela showed this when he chose forgiveness over revenge.

So basically, what we need right now is the exact opposite of Donald Trump. His political strategy works because it runs on activating the lower brain — fear and anger — which is where most people’s minds are at right now. Michelle Obama’s slogan, “When they go low, we go high” seemed a little trite at the time, but at the moment, it feels like a solid first step in a disarmament plan — an antidote to Trump’s apocalyptic destructivism.

The BBC tells us lie after lie in its story on a man who tried to make a gun, but so does the Telegraph. How about nobody doing that?

First the Beeb:

A former police community support officer (PCSO) with an “obsession” for weapons has been found guilty of trying to make a gun using a 3D printer.

Zoe Watts, 38, of St Helen’s Avenue, Lincoln, was found with parts for a semi automatic weapon, a machete, bladed article, crossbow and bow during a raid on her home on 11 December. During her trial at Lincoln Crown Court, Watts claimed she was making a “fidget” toy gun as a Christmas present.

She is believed to be the first person in the UK to be convicted of attempting to manufacture a prohibited gun using a printer. She will be sentence[d] on 8 August.

…

Two days before the raid on her home, Ms Watts had also searched the internet for “Has anybody been killed by a 3D printed gun?” and read about a man who had been shot dead in New York. Watts was previously jailed in 2021 after she was found with banned weapons and explosive substances and had also made an improvised explosive device.

But he’s a man.

It’s grotesque that mainstream news outlets deliberately lie to the public that women do this kind of shit.

The Telegraph is every bit as bad.

A former police community support officer with an “obsession” for weapons tried to build a gun using a 3D printer. Zoe Watts, 38, was found with an “arsenal” at her Lincoln home, with items including parts to make a semi automatic weapon, a machete and a crossbow.

Watts, who previously served as a PCSO with Lincolnshire Police, was arrested during an armed operation on Dec 11. It came less than four years after she was previously jailed for possessing illegal weapons and manufacturing explosives in 2021.

…

The 3D printer was found in a cupboard during a search of Watts’ home along with many of the parts needed to make the FGC MK II Nutty, including a “very short” steel barrel. Other items including a machete, bladed article, crossbow and bow were recovered from Watts’ home.

“The defendant had an arsenal, we say this was part of it,” Mr Dee told the jury.

But it wasn’t a woman who did all that. Everyone knows it wasn’t a woman who did all that. The news media should not be telling the public that women are every bit as violence-prone as men by calling men “she” in their reporting. The news media should stop lying about this.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on If.

…all his opponents thought that he was engaging in hyperbole for dramatic effect

There is certainly no shortage of normalization or “sanewashing” – not to mention delusional levels of wishful thinking – going on. I also suspect that the moderate, centrist tendency to “err on the side of least drama” has become such a reflex to a lot of people that any suggestion that things might actually be that bad sounds like obvious “alarmism” and “hysteria” and hence self-refuting.

Still “all his opponents” seems like an exaggeration to me. There are plenty of people out there who never had any illusions about Trump himself. What a lot more people seem to have a hard time fathoming is that a large minority of the American electorate (almost certainly the single largest identifiable “constituency” at the present) really do support Trump’s authoritarian and illiberal agenda and will not start turning against him in droves if only nice liberals and lefties can make them understand how awful he truly is. Sam Harris* once made the point (rightly in my opinion) that because most secularists or moderate believers are unable to imagine what it’s like to really believe the things that religious extremists claim to believe, many can’t bring themselves to accept that anybody else believes it either, hence the obligatory attempts to find secular motives for everything from suicide bombings to the practice of letting your own children die rather than allowing necessary blood transfusions. Apparently any correlation between theses people’s actions and their expressed beliefs was a pure coincidence.

I think the same goes for nice, moderate, centrist liberals and the MAGA crowd. In the summer of 2016 a writer in Der Spiegel argued that Trump was actually a lot closer to the White House than most liberals and leftists were prepared to admit to themselves. In part his argument was based on the observation that, according to the most recent poll results, if you took the rural bias of the electoral system into account, the outcome was basically a coin toss. But the part that really stuck with me was that because liberals and lefties found everything about Trump so repulsive, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to believe that anybody else could find anything to like about him either, hence his “apparent” popular support could only be a great big misunderstanding.

Others, like Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, may not have started out with any particular illusions about the electorate, but underestimated the degree to which the Republican Party had become radicalized. Levitzky and Ziblatt are on record as saying that when they published How Democracies Die in 2018, they saw Trump as a dangerous demagogue with strong anti-democratic tendencies, but they did not see the GOP as an anti-democratic party. They have been forced to revise their opinion on this latter point, however.

Perhaps the hardest lesson to swallow is that he really can get away with anything and that neither the constitution nor the greatly over-hyped system of “checks and balances” is going to stop him. As someone once commented I think most people used to have a vague idea that “they would never let him get away with that”. It’s time to face the fact that there are no such people as “they”, and that no one is coming to the rescue.

*Yes, I know, but as I keep saying, people are not split into those who are right about everything and those who are wrong about everything.

More Bad Kennedy news:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of a federal immunization panel has created uncertainty around how widely vaccines will be available this fall and if they’ll be free, according tosix current and former health officials.

You want vaccines to be widely available and free, so that more people get them.

After Kennedy purged the influential committee that recommends vaccines and appointed his own picks, staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who provide the panel withresearch have now been pushed aside, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. With the new advisers scheduled to meet in less than two weeks,other CDC staff are also uncertain whether they will be able to present the necessary scientific and medical data to help the committee make informed decisions, officials said.

It’s unclear what direction this new group, which includes vaccine critics, will go, and whether they’ll be able to give the stamp of approval needed for Americans to get free vaccines against coronavirus and other pathogens in time for the fall vaccine season.

“If we have a system that has been dismantled — one that allowed for open, evidence-based decision-making and that supported transparent and clear dialogue about vaccines — and then we replace it with a process that’s driven largely by one person’s beliefs, that creates a system that cannot be trusted,” Helen Chu, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who was ousted from the vaccine committee, said in a news conference Thursday.

And that’s bad, because if the system is not trusted, fewer people will get vaccinated, and that’s bad.

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the previous members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices had become a rubber stamp for any vaccine. “This group will go where the science takes them,” he said in a statement, noting half of the eightnew appointments have previously served on federal health boards. “Secretary Kennedy has replaced vaccine groupthink with a diversity of viewpoints on ACIP.”

Yeah you don’t want a “variety of viewpoints” on this subject. It’s not a movie review or a chat about personalities; it’s a technical subject, on which random people’s random opinions are not useful.

The CDC official overseeing theoperations of the paneland the staff who gather and present vaccine data was removed from her role this week, according to two current and one former federal health official. Melinda Wharton,who has nearly 20 years experience in vaccines and immunization at the agency, has been replaced by the director of scheduling and advance in the immediate office of the CDC director. The new official now reports toCDC’s chief of staff, a political appointee, the officials said.

“The biggest fear is that science and data won’t be the primary drivers of decisions,” said one federal health official. “The largest public health concern is that this move will end up broadly restricting vaccine access.”

All because of one conceited crank sitting in the boss chair.

NPR reports:

RFK Jr. sent Congress ‘medical disinformation’ to defend COVID vaccine schedule change

Interested as I am in Kennedy’s criminal meddling in public health, I’m also interested in a surprising fact about this NPR item: it uses the word “pregnant” seven times and – take a deep breath here – every single time the next word is “women”. Has something shifted?

On to Kennedy’s campaign to make Americans sicker.

A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on COVID vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others.

One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the safety of COVID vaccines for children and pregnant women.

…

“It is so far out of left field that I find it insulting to our members of Congress that they would actually give them something like this. Congress members are relying on these agencies to provide them with valid information, and it’s just not there,” said Dr. Mark Turrentine, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine.

Kennedy, who was an anti-vaccine activist before taking a role in the administration, announced May 27 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID vaccines for pregnant women or healthy children, bypassing the agency’s formal process for adjusting its vaccine schedules for adults and kids.

The announcement, made on the social media platform X, has been met with outrage by many pediatricians and scientists.

…

“This is RFK Jr.’s playbook,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Either cherry-pick from good science or take junk science to support his premise — this has been his playbook for 20 years.”

…

In two instances, the HHS memo makes claims about dangers to pregnant women that are actively refuted by the papers it cites to back them up. Both papers support the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines for pregnant women.

The HHS document says that another paper it cites found “an increase in placental blood clotting in pregnant mothers who took the vaccine.” But the paper doesn’t contain any reference to placental blood clots or to pregnant women.

“I’ve now read it three times. And I cannot find that anywhere,” said Turrentine, the OB-GYN professor. If he were grading the HHS document, “I would give this an ‘F,'” Turrentine said. “This is not supported by anything and it’s not using medical evidence.”

Kennedy is a very bad man.

They’re there to “liberate” the people from their elected representatives.

…what’s even more significant than authorities detaining a U.S. senator for asking a Cabinet secretary a question at a news conference is Noem’s ominous remark immediately prior to Padilla’s interruption.

“We are not going away,” she warned. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

They are there to liberate “the city” from its elected officials. Not the people of the city but the city. The city is a Platonic essence, a glorious concept that rises above the dross of mere human flesh, so it must be liberated from the choices its ignorant population made. Noem and her enforcers are there to liberate LA the way the Nazis entered Paris to liberate it. Noem is not the Yanks entering Paris in their tanks and jeeps, Noem is that other team four years earlier.

When she says “we” are going to “liberate” Los Angeles from the “socialists” and the “burdensome leadership” of the governor and the mayor, is she merely talking about continuing with ICE’s sadistic, haphazard raids in which undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, including women and children, and even legal immigrants and U.S. citizens have been ensnared in the name of protecting the homeland from a fictitious foreign invasion of terrorists and hardened gang members? Or is the secretary speaking more literally and indicating the Trump administration intends to remove — or otherwise render moot — democratically elected state and local officials who oppose the federal government’s brutal incursion into their jurisdictions?

The meaning of what she said is quite clear – she means the latter. Whether she means it literally or not is less clear. It is not, however, so muddy that we don’t need to be afraid.

Reichstag fire.

Today, in Los Angeles:

Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.

That is, a Democratic US Senator from California. I thought at first he was a state senator, but the Guardian clarified halfway in. (That’s my passive-aggressive way of saying the Guardian should have made it clear from the beginning.)

In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service and FBI agents.

“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past against the men pushing him back toward the exit. “Hands off!” Padilla says at least three times. Outside the room, he is pinned to the floor and placed in handcuffs.

A US Senator. Because he asked questions.

The coup is going faster and faster.

“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”

We’ll try, and then they’ll imprison or kill us.

“I am shocked by how far we have descended in the first 140 days of this administration,” Adam Schiff, the junior senator from California said in a speech from the Senate floor shortly after viewing the video of the incident. “What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do? Is there no line they will not cross?”

No. There are no limits to what this administration will do. There is no line they will not cross. We’ll be at Auschwitz within months.

H/t What a Maroon

Oh good, a new study.

Cisnormativity impacts core emotional needs of transgender and gender diverse people

Great title. “Cisnormativity” is meaningless and “impacts” is the wrong word. Also: yes, and? To put it in less pseudo-technical terms: knowing that people can’t change sex makes gender lunatics sad. No doubt it does, and hearing from gender lunatics makes the rest of us bored and impatient and irritated.

What in fact are the “core emotional needs” of gender loonies? That’s an easy one. Attention. Constant undivided lavish flattering gushing attention.

Guess what. They can’t have it. Two big reasons: one, we have other things to do with our attention, and two, our attention can’t be flattering because gender lunacy is so absurd and tedious and narcissistic and stupid.

Shall we read a little of the piece?

Despite thousands of years of diverse gender expression, many trans and non-binary people still grapple with the impact of cisnormativity: the belief that cisgender people (people whose gender matches the body they were born with) are ‘normal’ or ‘right’, while others are not. 

Sneaky move. Diverse gender expression is one thing and belief that people can change sex is very much another. Wear engineering boots or ballet slippers, whatever, but you remain the sex you are, end of story, pass the mashed potatoes.

The pressure to conform to this expectation can significantly affect mental health: societal messaging around gender being determined by biology, for example, may affect someone’s ability to feel safe and happy as themselves. 

Ohhhh no you don’t. Stop right there. Sneaky move again. Knowing that people can’t change sex is not “pressure to conform to this expectation.” Those two items are separate. It’s intellectual malpractice to pretend they’re the same. It’s pathetic how heavily the trans dogma relies on this kind of malpractice instead of coming up with a good argument.

And in conclusion:

The researchers propose several changes to better support trans people’s emotional wellbeing: promoting diverse media representation, pushing for changes in healthcare and law to support autonomy and safety, providing affirming resources to families to meet attachment needs, and supporting peer connections to enhance feelings of acceptance. These suggestions all underline the team’s main conclusion: that targeting manifestations of cisnormativity across society is essential to ensure transgender and gender diverse people have their emotional needs fully met, and allow them to thrive as their authentic selves.

And by “their authentic selves” we of course mean their pretend selves. Very scholarly; much professional.

The boots on the ground really don’t want to be there.

California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.

Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.

That seems to mean that the service members contacted the advocacy orgs as opposed to the other way around. If that’s true it’s good to know.

“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.

“Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”

Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, whose stated mission is to “mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy”, said he had heard similar things from half a dozen national guard members. “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said.

Surely there must be plenty of Trump fans in the National Guard. I wonder why they’re not calling in to say how awesome all this is.

Trump has taken the unusual step of ordering 4,000 national guard members to Los Angeles without the consent of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, saying that the city risked being “obliterated” by violent protesters without them.

The city what now? How could it risk being obliterated by protesters? Trump has been to Los Angeles, he knows it’s not a little village of mud huts. It can’t possibly be obliterated by protesters, no matter how many rocks the protesters are carrying.

Earlier this week, he also activated 700 marines from the Twentynine Palms base two hours’ drive to the east, describing Los Angeles as a “trash heap” that was in danger of burning to the ground.

He is such a compulsive liar.

The adventures of The Most Oppressed:

The equalities watchdog has told trans activists that personal attacks on her and her staff have “got to stop”.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), appeared emotional as she revealed to MPs that she had to cancel one meeting after police warned of a “serious risk” of violence.

She said that while feminist campaigners had acted in a “dignified and respectful” manner, trans rights activists had made it harder for her staff to come to work in safety.

Well yes but that’s because they are THE MOST OPPRESSED. Of course people who are the most oppressed are not going to worry about the safety of other people. It’s all very well for those privileged bitches the feminist campaigners to be all dignified and respectful and shit, but trans people are MORE OPPRESSED THAN ANYONE so they are forced to be abusive and threatening. Forced, I tell you.

Women’s rights activists who do not believe in gender ideology, the idea that sex is a spectrum and that people can change their gender identity, have had to run the gauntlet of intimidating protests from the trans rights movement for years.

After the Supreme Court ruled in April that the word “sex” in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, trans rights activists took to the streets, with one carrying a placard showing an illustration of a gallows alongside a slogan suggesting “the only good Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)” is a hanged one.

Ya that was good old “Sophie Molly”.

Lady Falkner said those on the gender-critical side of the debate, “who felt disadvantaged or felt the law was not supporting them, did so in a dignified, respectful manner, frequently using the last resort of a tribunal or a court to pursue justice for themselves or their loved ones”.

Talking about trans rights activists, she said: “Here we have a group that I appreciate is vulnerable, but I don’t think it is fair because women and girls are vulnerable as well.”

Not just as well. More. Being female is a much bigger vulnerability than being trans is. Violence against women and girls is routine, and very rarely prosecuted, let alone convicted, let even more alone punished.

“The level of agitation that they can cause in terms of personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation, where our family members are affected – our intimate family members have to think about how they’re going about to their place of work – has got to stop.”

Lady Falkner was then prevented from continuing to talk about the attacks the EHRC has faced by Sarah Owen, Labour MP and the committee chair.

Thanks, Labour. Throwing women overboard yet again.

Two women say many stupid things about JK Rowling:

J.K. Rowling is, unfortunately, on a bit of a winning streak. For years now, she has been almost solely focused on being as transphobic as possible, and in April, she celebrated a ruling from the U.K. Supreme Court stating that transgender women cannot legally be recognized as women. You might think that becoming one of the most prominent faces of anti-trans rhetoric would make Rowling someone whom public figures want to keep their distance from…

No actually what I would think is that people who insist that men are women if they say they are should stop saying that and learn the difference between fantasy and reality.

While Rowling rakes in more cash with which she can help make people’s lives demonstrably harder, HBO is standing by its decision to work with her.

The list of charities JKR has lavishly donated to is long.

 The author has time and time again declared that trans women are not women, but rather that they are men in dresses seeking to harm cis women.

That’s a lie. She doesn’t say that. I do (except for the “cis” part), but she does not.

When Rowling does opt to flag herself as an ally — when she writes that “trans people need and deserve protection” or “I want trans women to be safe” — she routinely follows up with some form of “but” that draws a thick line between trans women and all other women.

Oh yes that “thick line” between men and women. How silly to draw such a thick line, i.e. decline to agree that men are women if they say they are. What possible reason could anyone ever have for distinguishing between the two?

Some of Rowling’s former fans have branded her a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and while she dislikes the label, she shares the gender-essentialist view at its core: that womanhood is fixed, intrinsic, and anatomically determined. 

There is no such view. Gender atheists don’t even talk about “womanhood” – we just point out that men are not women, fixed or unfixed, intrinsic or extrinsic, anatomically determined or rabbit out of a hat determined. Women are different from men; men are different from women. To learn more see mares and stallions, rams and ewes, hens and roosters. Feelings can vary enormously, but the physical facts are what they are.

Rowling has stuck to this line for years, even though doctors and scientists agree that sex assignment and gender are not the same thing.

All of them? These two “writers” are idiots.

Top stories

Bad Kennedy ratchets up his campaign to stamp out lifesaving vaccinations.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new members to a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors after firing the entire group just days earlier.  His picks include some well-known vaccine critics, including Dr. Robert Malone.

…

It is unclear now how, taken together, the new advisors will affect vaccine policy and availability in the U.S. But public health experts had expected Kennedy could choose members who share his skepticism of immunization.

“We all knew this would happen and it’s a national tragedy and a major threat to children’s health and lives,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, said in a post on X.

…

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s independent panel of vaccine advisers, called some of the new members “anti-vaccine activists.”

“I think the public is not going to be getting the same quality of advice as we had before the purge,” he told CNBC. “I think the people who were on the committee that just got fired had far greater expertise in the areas that you needed expertise than this group.”

Offit said he expects recommendations from ACIP to be “less informed” with the new members.

Robert “Bad” Kennedy has no medical education or training at all.

Oh come ON.

It’s not a hoax, it’s right there on their “Pride” page.

We want all colleagues to bring their full self to work, and to support our colleagues, particularly from the non-binary or transgender community, we have pronoun badges available for all our colleagues in store, sites and head office to wear with pride.

The option to display your pronoun is open to any in the LGBT+ community, as well as allies wanting to support colleagues by creating an environment where the display and discussion of pronouns is the norm.

That is, supporting the very few colleagues who subscribe to gender ideology, while bullying the much larger number who know that men are not women. Imagine not wearing the idiot badge in that environment!

Thank goodness Elon Musk is not at all impulsive or flakey, given all the powers Trump handed him.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he regrets some of the posts he made about US President Donald Trump during their war of words on social media. “They went too far,” he wrote on his social media platform X.

How is that possible? Surely Musk, with so many serious responsibilities, would not impulsively blow up a whole row of bridges in a tantrum?

His post comes after Trump said he was open to the possibility of reconciliation in an interview with the New York Post on Wednesday. The president said he was a “little disappointed” about the fallout, but there were “no hard feelings”.

Aww sweet, do we get to watch them burst into tears and do a huge bro hug?

Hahahahaha science! Science I tell you!!!

Totalitariantrump wants to control everyone and everything.

The Smithsonian Institution has rebuffed Donald Trump’s attempt to fire the director of its National Portrait Gallery, with the museum’s governing board asserting its independence in a direct challenge to the president.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting Monday, the Smithsonian’s board of regents declared that “all personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board” – turning away Trump’s claim of authority over the institution’s staffing.

The standoff centers on Kim Sajet, whom Trump announced he had fired on 30 May, calling her “highly partisan and a strong supporter of DEI” – or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives – on social media. Sajet has continued reporting to work, creating a direct confrontation between the White House and the US’s flagship cultural institution that has a 178-year-old governance structure built against political interference.

Trump is the last person on the planet who should be meddling with any cultural institution.

This is just plain lying. The BBC telling whoppers right out in the open – whoppers that damage women and delight men who pretend to be women and take all our stuff.

Greens expel ex-spokesperson after LGBTQ+ comment row

You already know what the lie is, of course. It’s not an “LGBTQ+” comment.

The Green Party of England and Wales has expelled its former health spokesperson eight months after an investigation was launched into her comments on LGBTQ+ hate crimes.

Documents seen by the BBC show the Greens expelled Dr Pallavi Devulapalli for breaking party rules by attending a party event while under investigation for calling reports of rising LGBTQ+ hate crimes “mischievous”.

…

Green Party documents show Dr Devulapalli was originally placed on an emergency suspension pending a code of conduct investigation last September. The councillor, who sits on West Norfolk Council, was at the time one of the Green’s most high-profile figures and stood for the party at last year’s general election in South West Norfolk, against former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss.

During the election she spoke at a hustings event hosted by Friends of the Earth, where she was asked to respond to reports on rising LGBTQ+ hate crime, as well as her opinion on single-sex spaces and where the Green party stood on that issue. She told the meeting: “I’ve yet to meet anyone that actually says somebody should not have the right to be addressed as they please, and to dress as they please.

“I really think there is something mischievous in the air – to make those out to be an issue.” Following the hustings Dr Devulapalli clarified her comments, telling the BBC “there is no trans-hate in society in general”.

This one simple trick: pretend a truth claim about trans people is a truth claim about LGBTQ+ people. Boom: job done: your target stands accused of bashing lesbians and gay men and bisexuals when that is not the case.

This is his idea of heaven.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has sent thousands more troops to Los Angeles on a fourth day of chaotic protests against immigration raids, as the unrest spread to other US cities. Some 700 US Marines have been deployed to the LA area and the contingent of National Guard troops mobilised to help quell the disorder has been doubled to 4,000.

It’s his dream – he gets to play sojers with REAL SOJERS. He gets to send the tough guys in to rough up the nasty brown people Trump doesn’t like.

The state is suing the president for sending in troops without the governor’s permission. It is highly unusual for the American military to have any domestic law enforcement role.

But Trump of course thinks that’s just everybody but him being stupid and chickenshit. Of course the military should be roughing up the peasants! People who don’t have solid gold golf resorts deserve roughing up.

Trump also sent a direct warning to protesters who confronted police and federal forces. He wrote on social media: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”

He can’t wait. He wants to see them hit.

It’s funny how he didn’t talk this way about the rioters who attacked cops on January 6.