The High Court has dismissed a legal challenge from the Good Law Project (GLP) and three anonymous claimants against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s interim guidance on single-sex services published last year.
Sex Matters intervened in support of the EHRC.
Mr Justice Swift endorsed the interim update that the EHRC published in April last year as an accurate statement of the law for employers and service providers and ruled that “transsexual persons” under the Equality Act have no right to use opposite-sex toilets or changing rooms.
Women win, Jolyon loses.
GLP was judged not to have standing as it lacked “sufficient interest” in the legal questions. The three anonymous claimants did have standing, and so their substantive arguments were considered. The court dismissed their claims in their entirety. It found nothing that was wrong in law about either version of the EHRC’s statement, and found that the claimants’ human rights had not been breached by being told not to use facilities provided for the opposite sex.
Jolyon lacks standing. In more ways than one. Sux to be you, Joly.
NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from January 6 allegedly yelling 'kill them!' at police officers. His name is Jared Wise.
BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned by President Trump
Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories.
Oh. Great. We’re just going to pretend it’s not happening and do nothing to slow it and let the current generation of children fix it way down the road when it’s not our problem any more.
The finding — which the EPA issued in 2009 — said the global warming caused by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endangers the health and welfare of current and future generations.
“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy,” Trump said at a news conference. “This determination had no basis in fact — none whatsoever. And it had no basis in law. On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world.”
I wonder where he got the evidence for “no basis in fact — none whatsoever.” Pam Bondi maybe?
It’s true about technology lifting people out of poverty, but that doesn’t mean global warming is not a problem. It doesn’t even mean global warming is not a bigger problem.
The endangerment finding underpinned the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles and power plants and to mandate that companies report their emissions. It required the federal government to take action on climate under the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA had the authority to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases and acknowledged that harms associated with climate change are “serious and well recognized,” which led to the creation of the endangerment finding two years later.
Ah. So the thing is to elect people who won’t nominate Supreme Court justices who will rule that way. Elect justices who are perfectly happy to continue cooking the planet because it will be the children and grandchildren of those justices who will have to deal with the cooked planet. Isn’t time a wonderful thing?
In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site. Although Trump had promised over the summer that the project wouldn’t “interfere with the current building,” workers razed the entire structure, which was constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1942.
Well that’s what he meant. It won’t interfere with it, it will obliterate it altogether. Totally not deceptive at all.
Trump managed this the same way he has so much in his second term: He simply didn’t ask permission from any of the possible relevant authorities, including Congress, and acted so fast that no court could restrain him.
Just imagine all the exciting actions he could apply that pattern to.
In a court hearing last week, Richard Leon, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush, skewered the government lawyers representing the administration against a challenge to the ballroom, which would be as tall as the original executive mansion and have nearly double its footprint. Although a law enables the executive branch to conduct maintenance on the building without congressional authorization, Leon said it was not intended to cover $400 million projects. A Justice Department attorney suggested that Trump’s ballroom was similar to previous renovations, including a pool added decades ago, but Leon was not having it.
“The Gerald Ford swimming pool? You compare that to ripping down the East Wing and building a new East Wing? Come on,” he said.
Such reactions from a judge are not generally considered a favorable omen for a litigant. Leon has not issued a ruling yet, and whatever he concludes is likely to be appealed. But the hearing suggests the real possibility that Trump will be unable to construct anything in the East Wing’s place, leaving just an empty site and idled construction equipment.
Half the prize is better than no prize at all, right?
Destruction followed by stagnation seems to be something of an MO, the likely outcome for some of Trump’s less tangible and visible changes to the federal government. Consider last week’s clash over Greenland. Trump threatened European and Canadian leaders with tariffs and unspecified future consequences, culminating in Trump settling for a tentative deal that appears to closely resemble the existing arrangement, but not before creating bad blood and encouraging Europe to think of the U.S. as not much of a friend. Trump has the capacity to tear down the global international order, but he has neither the plans nor the wherewithal to rebuild anything in its place.
Look, he made a difference, ok? That’s what matters. Enough of this kvetching and criticizing about the lack of concrete results.
The EU Parliament has voted to recognise “trans women” as women for all purposes, explicitly calling for them to be granted access to women-only domestic violence shelters and refugees.
An EU delegation will present this radical recommendation at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York next month. It is not binding, but intended to be adopted/followed as an “international standard”. It also demonstrates the ideological makeup of the European Parliament.
Few speakers mentioned the “trans women” part of the recommendation during the debate leading up to the vote. Parties could have asked for a vote on the individual paragraph, but having failed to do so, MEPs were left with a choice between rejecting the entire resolution, or adopting it with no possibility of removing the trans paragraph.
The chamber was almost empty for the debate. Left-wing parties and centre-right parties concentrated on the Epstein files, “gender” stereotypes, the “gender pay gap”, and the “anti-gender movement” as well as ICE operations in the US. MEPs from both the Patriots party and the European Conservatives and Reformists, spoke up in favour of protecting the category of woman in international fora. They were defeated.
Not calling him a man either, you’ll notice. They don’t want to get all extreme about this.
“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female,” Dwayne McDonald, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner, said.
The shooting at the nearby home occurred first, then the suspect went to the school, McDonald said. The victims at the school were a 39-year-old female educator, three female students, all aged 12, and two male students, one aged 12 and the other 13.
Huh. Will you look at that. The BBC just straight-up calls the victims female and male. I wonder why they still can’t call the perp male.
There are unethical people in every profession. Journalism is no exception.
But unethical journalism isn’t only about phone hacking, going through bins or taking bribes.
At its core, it’s about knowingly misrepresenting reality.
Yesterday’s case involved one of the worst mass shootings in Canada’s history – the kind of event where the stakes for getting the facts right could not be higher.
You cannot claim to uphold journalistic standards while describing a crime committed by a man as having been committed by a woman.
Nor can you sidestep it by using the word “person” when sex is materially relevant.
Yet several major outlets did exactly that yesterday – including Sky and the BBC.
This isn’t about politics.
It’s about truth.
Because if we cannot rely on the media to report observable facts clearly and honestly, then what exactly can we rely on them for?
SEEN in Journalism makes the point I just made in a comment: that calling the perp a woman in the lede and not telling the truth until many paragraphs down is a grossly obvious violation of journalistic standards.
‘Canadian police have identified the suspect as an 18-year old woman with a history of mental health problems’
This is a very serious lie about a shattering event. It’s not a point-scoring exercise to say so: it’s not stigmatising to notice and explain the lie.
‘Canadian police have identified the suspect as an 18-year old woman with a history of mental health problems’ This is a very serious lie about a shattering event. It’s not a point-scoring exercise to say so: it’s not stigmatising to notice and explain the lie. Journalist convention is to explain the bones of the story in the first four paragraphs. This developed from the understanding that people don’t always read down: they may click, but they don’t scroll. Engagement tapers.
In short: DON’T BURY THE LEDE.
The Guardian did it on purpose, knowing perfectly well it’s a violation of that journalistic convention. That’s why they did it: because they know most people won’t read that far. It’s a conscious, deliberate cheat, in aid of manipulating people into believing women are every bit as violence-prone as men.
Not only that, at this point, the facts that the killer was a man (contra earlier reports) who ‘identified’ as trans (previously dismissed as speculation) are the newest lines, a fresh top.
The @guardian defies all natural editorial instincts to bury in the tenth paragraph the newest line and the explanation that its first sentence is untrue. It will know by its own data that a percentage of readers will just bounce off after reading the lie, and increasing numbers drop off by a third or half of the way down. Certainly before reaching the truth. Which turns out to be not so sacred after all.
The madness of this slavish, unquestioning devotion to the lie is puzzling and very worrying. There’s a defiance with which the paper sacrifices itself to the service of identity affirmation.
Which is also, unavoidably, the service of harming women.
Attorney General Pam Bondi at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday seemed to have a printout of Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s history of searches of the Department of Justice’s database of documents related to the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Photos of a black binder that Bondi had at the hearing showed the words “Jayapal Pramila Search History” and a list of documents whose numbers coincide with the number of Epstein files.
That’s my Rep – not mine personally, but ours in Seattle. Seattle, of course, is not Trump Territory.
Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee, and other members of Congress have visited the DOJ in recent days to view documents related to Epstein that are not available to the public.
Jayapal blasted Bondi in a post on X on Wednesday evening.
“It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files,” Jayapal wrote. “Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched,” the congresswoman said. “That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”
Six people were found dead at a high school in the town of Tumbler Ridge
The suspected shooter, a woman, was among the dead at the school
Two more were found dead elsewhere and another died en route to hospital
Item 4 in that list is a lie. The shooter was not a woman.
It’s nearing midnight in Tumbler Ridge, the town in British Columbia where six people were found dead – including the suspected female shooter – at a high school.
We’re winding down our live coverage for now, but here’s what we know and don’t know so far about one of Canada’s worst mass shootings in decades:
Overall, 10 people died in the small town of Tumbler Ridge, a remote municipality with a population of around 2,400 people.
Six bodies were found at the local high school, which has a student population of 160 students.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled a trip abroad in response to the deaths.
Authorities haven’t identified the woman who was the suspected shooter, nor any motive.
There was no woman who was the suspected shooter. There was only a man.
Are all these reporters and their editors just hugging themselves with glee at being able to pretend that women are the perpetrators of mass shootings by men? Is it totally the best fun they’ve ever had?
• Key hearing: Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying at a heated House Judiciary Committee amid ongoing controversies related to the Jeffrey Epstein files release, investigation into President Donald Trump’s political foes and the handling of the fatal shootings of two US citizens in Minnesota by immigration enforcement officers.
• Clashes with lawmakers: Bondi called Rep. Jamie Raskin – a former constitutional law professor and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee – a “washed up loser lawyer,” as the clash between her and committee Democrats escalated over her approach to their questions.
Huh. Pam Bondi is going to stop people telling the truth about Trump. That seems a tad authoritarian.
Bondi: "You all should be apologizing. You sit here, and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it." pic.twitter.com/ucmrjhhFuq
Trump: "So I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low. I got an emergency call from I believe the prime minister of Switzerland. She was very aggressive … I didn't really like the way she talked to us, so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39%." pic.twitter.com/covIESz4u2
The National Prayer Breakfast was founded in 1953, when President Dwight Eisenhower accepted an invitation to join members of Congress to break bread together. Every president since has participated, regardless of party or religious persuasion. It offers an opportunity, according to its organizers, for political leaders to gather and pray collectively for our nation “in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago.”
And that’s a bad thing, because it’s a gross violation of religious freedom, aka the separation of church and state. It’s not really an “opportunity” for “political leaders” aka the government to gather and pray collectively, is it, it’s a conspicuous push to do so. Government needs to be secular. The “National Prayer Breakfast” is wildly anti-secular, aka theocratic. Theocracy=there’s no way to vote the god in question out.
It is testimony to the marketing genius of Donald Trump that he never sold himself to Christians as one of them—pious, devoted, merciful, forgiving, irenic, biblically literate, a faithful husband and father, a man of high moral standards.
Is that marketing genius? Or is it just the familiar fact that Trump is a foul human being who loves to shove his foulness in our faces all day every day?
The National Governors Association (NGA) has canceled its annual White House meeting after President Trump only invited Republican governors to the gathering.
The yearly meeting is traditionally bipartisan and offers a chance for state leaders to convene with one another and the president.
Sigh. It’s a meeting of governors, not a meeting of Republican governors. It’s not for him to change that.
“Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) wrote in a Monday letter announcing plans to forgo the meeting, according to The Associated Press.
Stitt said the Trump administration’s decision to exclude Democratic governors would not divide the association.
Political affiliation is not all there is to people. It’s not that simple. Nothing is that simple. There’s a lot of life that has nothing to do with political affiliation, so it’s not always necessary to sort people into BigEnders at this end and LittleEnders at the other end. Furthermore, it’s healthy for people with different political views to talk, because they can learn from each other.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s move to not invite Democratic governors to the meeting during Tuesday’s briefing.
“I just spoke with the president about this,” Leavitt told reporters. “It is a dinner at the White House. It’s the ‘People’s House.’ It’s also the president’s home, and he can invite whomever he wants to dinners and events here at the White House.”
No it isn’t. When he’s playing host at official events he’s not in his “home”; he’s at work, in a house that belongs to the government, or the country as a whole if you prefer. Part of the White House is his temporary “home” but the rest of it is his and other people’s workplace, and a government building that belongs to all of us. No he cannot invite whomever he wants, not morally or legally.
A freedom of information request by Good Law Project has found that deaths by suicide of trans young people under 18 surged following the withdrawal of gender-affirming healthcare
For years, successive governments have denied an increase in suicides among trans youth following the withdrawal, and criminalisation, of gender affirming healthcare. And, when Good Law Project raised the alarm about rising deaths, health secretary Wes Streeting responded with a review that criticised our figures and attacked our reporting as “dangerous”.
Those of us in or close to the trans community have been to the funerals of those we love. And we have wept together for those we have been unable to save on Trans Day of Remembrance. We know the truth – we see it with our own eyes. And, to us, the decision by Wes Streeting to commission a review into suicides which downplayed the scale of these tragedies was unforgivable. His report denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.
He doesn’t actually say the ban on puberty blockers caused the purported rise in suicides, but he implies it as heavily as he possibly can. Very lawyerly of him, I suppose.
To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as “dangerous” while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness.
And it’s not an act of grave moral wickedness to act on a new and peculiar idea of what human sexes are by helping teenagers harm their own bodies?
We are all aware of the special alignments of particular academic disciplines. In “Gender Studies” departments, for example, the listed requirements for majoring in the subject never include any Biology coursework; this is because scholars in this subject do not believe that “gender” has anything to do with Biology. Similarly, none of the various “This or That Studies” departments require any education in Statistics, because scholars of these disciplines typically define “knowledges” (plural, and including indigenous folk-traditions) in a sense that is independent of what elsewhere is called “data”.
Departments are free to define their own subject matter, but I submit that US universities committed a category error when they assigned these departments to the Faculties (or Schools) of Arts and Sciences. The Sciences, of course, all concentrate on knowledge of the physical world. And the Arts are no less deeply connected with the physical world: visual Art through the physical materials it uses in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and so on; musical Art through the instruments it uses, and in the physics of sound. But how, then, can disciplines which assert their complete separation from analysis of the physical world be part of an A & S Faculty?
The solution is obvious. Academies should define a separate School or Faculty of Rhetoric, to include the department of Communications, all the “Studies” departments, and some other units. Rhetoric has a venerable academic history, going back to ancient Athens at its height, and much later becoming part of the classic medieval Trivium of university studies.
Once “Studies” departments are placed in the Faculty of Rhetoric, their majors will of course receive undergrad degrees of BR rather than BS or BA, better informing putative employers about the nature of their training. The names of advanced degrees in these disciplines will also be modified to provide such improved information. Finally, inclusion of these departments in the Faculty of Rhetoric will provide the departments with an intellectual environment appropriate for them.
In short, this simple reform of the Faculty assignment of departments will cure 40 years of of ambiguity and confusion in and downstream of the groves of academe.
The author was formerly a professor at the University of Washington, first in the A & S Faculty, then in the School of Medicine. He is currently experiencing an advanced case of emeritis.
An explanatory photo of the male Scottish Green candidate would have helped too. I mean, this is how all professional women dress for work. pic.twitter.com/1mK50mAIki
