Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Whatever he wants

    Dashing into dictatorship:

    While Trump and his henchmen deconstruct the administrative state, his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship. The core argument emerging in their legal filings and executive orders — one without support anywhere in the Constitution or the law — is that simply by being elected, Trump has the power to do whatever he wants.

    …

    Trump’s imperial ambitions have made for some laughably thin legal theories. As Just Security noted, the government’s argument in defense of Trump’s birthright citizenship EO does not reference any citizenship statutes nor point to any authority that would give Trump the right to undo birthright citizenship via the stroke of a pen. Instead, after quoting the relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment — ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — the EO just goes on to state that it “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

    The problem for Trump is that the Fourteenth Amendment has absolutely historically been interpreted to do just that.

    But Trump doesn’t recognize it as a problem, and nobody is forcing him to do so.

    It can’t be stressed enough that there is no meaningful legal support for Trump’s actions. Yes, Republicans for a few decades now have flirted with the unitary executive theory — the idea that the president’s authority over the executive branch is absolute, particularly in national security contexts and when it comes to hiring and firing. (Well, to be perfectly correct, Republicans flirt with the unitary executive theory only when Republicans hold the presidency. When Democrats do, the constant drumbeat from the GOP is that the president should have very little authority.) But even the unitary executive theory hasn’t gone so far as to say that the president can do things like unilaterally close government agencies. Even when Project 2025 called for radical changes to USAID, for example, they didn’t argue it could just be closed.

    But it doesn’t matter because no one is stopping him. We’re on a steep downward slope, and it’s freezing over.

  • Once the structure of the Self is dismantled

    It’s useful to have philosophy people on the scene.

    The reference to the ‘how many fingers?’ torture bit towards the end of 1984 is very interesting. There’s a similar case in Severance, where Holly has to read out an apology script over and over again, ‘until she means it’. It’s a kind of set piece in epistemology texts, about ‘doxastic in/voluntarism’. Can I *will* my beliefs (doxa)? Can I believe something just because it’s in my interests to do so, and hence something I want to believe. Doxastic voluntarists think you can do this, doxastic involuntarists think you can’t. Doxastic voluntarists often point to torture cases, because they – torturers, not doxastic voluntarists – try to induce a breaking down of the structure of the will, together with the structure of the Self. Once the structure of the Self is dismantled, the victim can reconstruct their beliefs in a way that coincides with their interests, and end their pain. So the claim is that, if you can put people under enough pressure, you can make them believe that four is five, that black is white, that a man is a women. (None of this is terribly supportive of the NHS Fife position)

  • Some people have

    The Upton fella is having his turn at the tribunal.

    NC points out that he knew some women would be unhappy having him in the room where they changed their clothes. He replies that some people – not women, of course, but the evasive “people” – have BIASED, MISINFORMED, UNPLEASANT OR BIGOTED OR TRANSPHOBIC VIEWS ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE.

    The fucking nerve of this guy. No no, it’s not that women will be unhappy having this grotesquely self-absorbed callous misogynist shit staring at them when they take their clothes off, it’s that these bitches have NAUGHTY VIEWS about heroic people like him.

    Gee, I wonder why the sane among us despise this ideology. It’s such a puzzle.

  • The research cannot find the benefits

    Some fads are more destructive than others.

    More than 1,000 patients a year are sent for transgender chest surgery on the NHS. Data obtained by The Telegraph show for the first time the number of referrals for taxpayer-funded “masculinising” mastectomies from specialised gender clinics.

    As many as 80 per cent of people using those services are females between the ages of 17 and 25. The 1,000-plus referrals could be the tip of the iceberg, because many people have transgender surgery privately to bypass long NHS waiting lists.

    100 percent of people getting “masculinising mastectomies” are females, because males already have the end result of a “masculinising mastectomy.”

    Zhenya Abbruzzese, co-founder and senior adviser at the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), said: “We are concerned that young people are being told that these procedures will relieve their distress when the research cannot find the benefits, but the harms of losing a functioning body part are certain.”

    And it’s even worse than that. It’s not just that girls are being told that having their tits removed will make them happy, it’s also that they are being told, along with everyone else, that not rushing to have girls’ and women’s tits cut off on demand is peak evil transphobic wicked badness.

    An NHS spokesman said: “Masculinising chest surgery is only available to adult patients who have a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a specialist NHS clinic.

    Oh really? “Clinical” in what sense? “Specialist clinic” in what sense? What if it’s not real? What if none of it is real, and it’s just a bizarre destructive fad, and cutting one’s tits off for a fad is a seriously bad idea? What then?

  • Boss of facts

    But a fact is the very thing it isn’t. It’s the opposite of a fact. It’s a fiction, and a lie. It’s fatuous to claim that X is a fact when X is obviously not even slightly a fact. Stop doing it. Everybody stop doing it. Everybody stop pretending your increasingly absurd daydreams are “facts.” They’re not.

  • As refugees fleeing persecution

    Trump welcomes refugees. Some refugees. A particular brand of refugees.

    Trump’s offer to rehouse white South Africans as refugees fleeing persecution may not spur quite the rush he anticipates, as even right-wing white lobby groups want to “tackle the injustices” of Black majority rule on home soil.

    Trump on Friday signed an executive order to cut U.S. aid to South Africa, citing an expropriation act that President Cyril Ramaphosa signed last month aiming to redress land inequalities that stem from South Africa’s history of white supremacy. The order provided for resettlement in the U.S. of “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination” as refugees.

    Afrikaners are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers, who own most of the country’s farmland.

    …

    White people represent 7.2% of South Africa’s population of 63 million, statistics agency data shows. The data does not breakdown how many are Afrikaner.

    South Africa’s British rulers handed most farmland to whites. In 1950, the Apartheid-era National Party seized 85% of the land, forcing 3.5 million Black people from their homes.

    It’s sad for Trump that there are few if any genuine Nazis left alive. He would so love to greet them at the airport.

  • Identifying as a victim of genocide

    Uh huh.

  • The progressives blindly went along with it

    Hadley Freeman tells an important truth:

    I assume that, by now, most Sunday Times readers are au fait with gender ideology, which contends that a man magically becomes a woman simply because he claims to feel like one. Left-wing papers and politicians gasped in horror at Trump’s bill, and the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted only “bigoted” people would see males in women’s sport as a presidential priority. But President Biden opened women’s sports teams to males on his first day in office. This led to the deluge of videos of males clattering their female opponents, which ultimately curdled public opinion. You can’t argue that the question of males in women’s sports teams is the civil rights issue of our generation, and then insist only bigots focus on it just because you don’t like their answer.

    The left was the big champion of gender ideology, and the right the naysayers, but it’s so easy to imagine it the other way round. Arguing that men’s desires should take priority over women’s safety, and any woman who objects to males in their private spaces should be denounced as a prude and a bigot: that really could be a far-right argument. And yet, because rapacious activist groups realised there was money to be made in convincing progressives that trans rights were exactly the same as gay rights, the progressives blindly went along with it. And, in doing so, left the door wide open for Trump and Elon Musk, who only had to say “men are not women” to look like the sane ones in the room.

    In short, the left forgets that women matter too yet again. We thought they had learned that lesson.

  • Everyone must adopt the minority belief

    Sonia Sodha puts it very well.

    Some things are plain common sense. Female employees should not be expected to share changing rooms with male colleagues. They shouldn’t be socially shamed into undressing around them, or being in spaces where male colleagues get undressed in front of them.

    Common sense, but at the same time, transphobic and evil and yet another bad thing women do.

    …most people don’t need to read accounts of how uncomfortable mixed-sex changing facilities make some women feel, or statistics showing that voyeurism and exposure are two of the most common male sex crimes, to understand how wrong this would be.

    But not managers at NHS Fife, it would seem. Despite the law of the land enshrining that commonsense insight – that employers are obliged to provide separate changing facilities for their male and female employees – female staff working for this Scottish health board have been expected to share changing rooms with a male doctor who identifies as female.

    How is that even possible? Easy. Just insist that “trans women are women” and that it’s morally abhorrent to point out they are men. Job done! Suddenly the intruding men are the victims and the women who want to avoid them are the evil demons.

    There is no circumstance in which it could have been appropriate for NHS Fife to put Peggie in this position. The attempted justification is that everyone must adopt the minority belief system that someone’s sex is not a scientific fact but a matter of their gender identity, or some sort of gendered soul. As a personal worldview, that’s someone’s own business, but it is wrong – and, in a work context, unprofessional – to try to force it on others in relation to single-sex spaces, services and sports.

    It seems so simple and so obvious. And yet…

  • Another explosion

    Nope this is no good. Consumer financial protection is a good thing.

    CNN:


    Russell Vought took over as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday night and officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency deleted the banking watchdog’s X account, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Vought’s new role, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, came a day after he was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

    The source told CNN that DOGE officials have been granted administrative access to CFPB systems, including content management system, back-end systems for the bureau’s website and the active directory of personnel.

    Gee I wonder why guys like Trump and Musk would want to get rid of consumer financial protection.

    A letter signed by dozens of House Democrats on Saturday called on Bessent to “rescind what appears to be an illegal stop work order.”

    The letter, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said the lawmakers are “deeply alarmed and troubled” by efforts to sideline the CFPB. The lawmakers asked Bessent to respond to a series of questions about what his freeze means for consumers previously found to have been harmed by a financial institution.

    Don’t ask. Order.

  • Whose business

    Ah smug pseudo-lefties, they just can’t get enough of this kind of drivel.

    …if some father and mother have healthcare for their kid lined up who’s trans just stay the fuck out of their business.

    Burst of applause.

    Is that right? So if some father and mother keep their desperately ill kid away from healthcare because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other bullshit religion, just stay the fuck out of their business? Just let the kid die?

    In other words that’s not a generalizable policy, and in fact it’s pretty stupid on the face of it if you know anything about what “healthcare” for trans people means.

    “They should mind their own business,” Hayes goes on to say after some back and forth. Again: it depends. Some parents do seriously bad things to their children, so it’s just not an absolute rule that we should all mind our own business no matter what the specifics are. Some parents beat their children, some sexually molest them, some deprive them of food or education or medicine or all of those, some tell them they’re evil and the spawn of Satan. Sometimes it is the business of outsiders what particular parents are doing to particular children.

    I think surgeries or non-medical puberty blockers or both=one of those times.

  • Dire consequences for scientific research

    Trump in his wisdom has decreed that medical research is a useless frivolity so he’s sabotaging it.

    The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.

    The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.

    Look, if you can’t do medical research in your own kitchen using the available tools, what use are you?

    Democrats immediately castigated the Trump administration, saying NIH’s move would imperil clinical research, patient care and laboratory operations, among other health-care priorities.

    “Just because Elon Musk doesn’t understand indirect costs doesn’t mean Americans should have to pay the price with their lives,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) said in a statement.

    It does now.

  • Too much what now?

    Oh dear, too much cancellation eh wot? How did that happen?

    Such as…

    Oh well. There’s always the wonderful Greta.

  • Pick one

    Counting twice. (The link is to the Western Standard, a conservative outlet, but you know how this goes. The other team won’t go near the truth.)

    A transgendered advisor to the federal Minister of Women claims biological males have no advantage in athletics despite dominating a women’s 5 km race,

    Nathanielle Morin advises Liberal MP Marci Ien, Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth. In a Wednesday post to X, Morin objected to Trump’s executive order to ban biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

    …

    Morin was favourably profiled by Radio Canada for her diversity, during a run for MP representing the Liberals in the riding of Louis-Saint-Laurent.

    “Of the many, Liberal candidate Nathanielle Morin stands out for the uniqueness of her background. A woman and young — she is 28 — she is a rarity in the political arena. A trans woman to boot, although she does not base her campaign on this reality,” wrote Radio Canada reporter Kathleen Lavoie.

    Prolonged blast on whistle. Counting twice! Credit for trans and woman! You can’t count both! He’s a “trans woman,” therefore a man, therefore not a woman.

  • His name is Nathanielle Morin

    Reduxx has more on the powerful arguer for the absolute truth that men have no physical advantages over women.

    The advisor to the Canadian Liberal government’s Minister of Women, who claimed on X that trans-identified men do not have an advantage over women in sports, is a trans-identified male who previously dominated a women’s 5km race.

    Nathanielle Morin is currently the advisor to Member of Parliament Marci Ien in her capacity as the Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth.

    Oh is he now. Why? Why would a Member of Parliament who is Minister of Women want a man who pretends to be a woman as “the advisor”? I would really like to know.

    On February 6, Morin took to X to respond to the recent executive order from President Trump that finally banned biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

    …

    Morin shared an infographic made by Schuyler Bailar, a trans-identified male who competes in women’s sports. The infographic reads: “Trans athletes are not a threat; transphobia is.”

    The issue isn’t “trans athletes.” The issue is men invading women’s sports. It doesn’t become ok because they call themselves trans.

    In the infographic, Bailar claims there is “evidence” to support the claim that “trans women are… NOT biological men” and that sex is “bimodal,” not “binary.” Bilar goes on to state that “trans women do not have an advantage and biological diversity is everywhere.” The supposed evidence referenced by Bailar is not linked in the graphic.

    To put it mildly. There is nothing, there is only the absurd assertion.

    In response to the post, Quillette editor Jon Kay highlighted that Morin himself had once dominated a women’s race in Ottawa, Ontario.

    At the 5km event, organized by BougeBouge in February of 2024, Morin recorded a time of 25 minutes and 32 seconds in the Female 30-39 category. The fasted female in the same category came in second place with 31:16, a whole 5 minutes and 44 seconds behind Morin, followed shortly after by the woman in third place. Morin’s time placed him as the “fastest female” across all categories, nabbing the prestige from a young girl who had competed in the 10-12 age category.

    Had Morin been running with other men, he would have come in third in his age category and 10th overall.

    And he has the gall to shout that “trans women do not have an advantage.” He’s used that advantage to cheat women himself, and he dishonestly asserts that the advantage doesn’t exist. What a pig.

  • Image made by

    Oh gosh, it turns out we’ve been wrong all this time, science says trans women are NOT men. The proof is these blue box-thingies with words in them.

    That first paragraph of the first box has knocked me sideways with its epic proofyness. You can’t get much more proofy than “Research has shown that trans women are, in fact, NOT biological men.” Case closed; conflict over; surrender complete. Granted, no research is cited, but that apparent lacuna is obviated by the all-caps of NOT.

    And then of course there’s the highlighted third sentence: “Trans women are not men.” Knockout blow. There’s just no arguing with a “not” in all caps and a highlighted “are not men.” Time to pack up and go home.

    In the words of a great thinker, “facts have to be also shown.”

  • Their vision

    Of course he does.

    Trump plans to name himself chair of Kennedy Center, fire board members

    President Trump says he is taking over leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. He declared himself chairman of Washington D.C.’s long-celebrated cultural institution on Friday. In doing so, he’ll replace billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, an ally of former President Joe Biden who was set to chair until 2026.

    Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote he was immediately terminating “multiple individuals” from the center’s Board of Trustees “who do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

    Trump said he would soon announce a new board, “with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

    A new dawn for Aryan arts and culture!

  • Cheaty McCheaterson

    No advantage, no advantage; what do you mean advantage??!

    The advisor to the Canadian Liberal government’s Minister of Women, who claimed on X that trans-identified men do not have an advantage over women in sports, is a trans-identified male who previously dominated a women’s 5km race.

    That’s just great. Not only does he lie about male advantage in sports, he is also advisor to the government’s Minister of Women – he insults and steals from women in two ways instead of just one. How impressive. A woman loses top spot in a race, and women in general lose the Minister of Women.

    Nathanielle Morin is currently the advisor to Member of Parliament Marci Ien in her capacity as the Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth. On February 6, Morin took to X to respond to the recent executive order from President Trump that finally banned biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

    “Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls,” President Trump said on Wednesday. According to Morin, this was tantamount to “exclusion… discrimination… [and] promot[ing] hate.”

    Dude you’re the one doing the excluding. You’ve excluded a woman from the job of advisor to the Minster of Women. That’s you.

  • Attempting to navigate

    The ugliness on the ground.

    The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to repatriate the U.S. Agency for International Development’s overseas workforce has thrust the agency’s global staff into chaos and despair, as workers scramble to uproot their lives and brace for what they fear will be a shutdown of all American aid missions in 30 days.

    In interviews, USAID staffers said Tuesday’s recall order hassent them racing to make temporary housing arrangements back in the United States, identify new day cares or schools for their children, and plan for a future in which, as many now believe is inevitable, they are left unemployed.

    These employees, some assigned to dangerous “hardship” posts, are attempting to navigate that process with little information from the Trump administration and while many are locked out of all agency computer systems.

    And why? Because of anonymous conspiracists on TwitX and Musk’s grotesque credulity toward them.

    “We’ve seen this sort of thing happen in evacuations of war zones,” one official said. “I just can’t believe we’re doing it for the flippant kind of political pageantry that this administration seems to be doing it for.”

    And based on the beyond-flippant worthlessness of anonymous gossips on social media.

    Another official said the most concerning thing wasn’t the personal toll of navigating housing or schools.

    “The biggest thing that keeps me up at night is that I see USAID’s destruction as a test case — a practice run — in how far the administration can bend or break the law to get what they want,” the official said. “We are the canary in the coal mine.”

    Yeeah.

  • Musk is gullible

    So it turns out that Musk’s horrifyingly successful purge of USAID is based on his deep knowledge via various pseudonymous conspiracy wackos on his toy X.

    Musk’s sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID’s funding enriched an elite few who control the world. 

    But until very recently, those claims were largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington.

    That is no longer the case: President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that while he appreciated “the concept” of USAID, the people in the agency “turned out to be radical left lunatics.”

    Note that “turned out to be.” Always note that when Trump says it. It means some damn fool has been talking to him. This time it’s a damn fool who owns a big social media platform and pays attention to damn fools who use it to conspiricize.

    Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.  

    Oh that’s just great. People all over the planet suddenly cut off aid because of the gossip of Kanekoa the Great and Chief Nerd. Look behind the curtain and you find…childish idiots. If Musk is so damn smart, as everyone keeps saying he is, why is he getting his information from random anons on social media? Why is he paying any attention at all to random anons on social media?

    A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. 

    Why??? Why on earth?

    On Wednesday, Musk shared a faked video claiming USAID had sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine. Darren Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, told NBC News the video was manufactured Russian propaganda. 

    The impact of false conspiracy theories on USAID — whether they have directly shaped Musk’s actions at the agency or provided a convenient justification — is already being felt. Critical medical supplies, essential medicines and food aid are being withheld from their intended international recipients, and aid workers are scrambling to comply with the ordered shutdown of the agency on Friday. 

    Thanks to anonymous randos online.