Trump says anything short of grabbing Greenland by force is unacceptable.

The Trump administration is poised for crunch talks with Greenlandic and Danish officials on Wednesday, amid the U.S. president’s ongoing push to take control of Greenland.

Greenland Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt and her Danish counterpart, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, are expected to convene at the White House for talks with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump doubled down on his aggressive rhetoric shortly before the high-stakes meeting. In a social media post on Wednesday, the U.S. president said anything less than Greenland becoming a part of the United States would be “unacceptable.”

So this is the new rule now, yes? We say it’s unacceptable for X to hang onto X’s Whatever because we want it so X has to give it to us?

Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, said he does not expect the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark to be able to find a diplomatic solution on Wednesday, describing the situation as “a profound crisis.”

“I think there was a significant change, I think it was yesterday, when it was announced in Washington that JD Vance, the vice president, was going to take over the meeting,” Bildt told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Wednesday. “It was scheduled to be with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has indicated a slightly milder approach, but JD Vance has, of course, been directly insulting towards Denmark and demanding very strange things,” Bildt said.

It’s all very Sudetenland.

NPR does the same thing.

SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from two separate cases weighing the rights of transgender athletes. Little v. Hecox challenges Idaho’s ban on trans athletes playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. West Virginia v. B.P.J. challenges a similar ban in West Virginia. 

Male athletes you fool. The issue is that they’re male so they don’t belong on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

MCCAMMON: So, in essence, what are these two cases about?

SOSIN: So conservatives have increasingly argued that transgender women and girls have an unfair advantage in sports, that their hormone levels make them stronger and faster, and for that reason, they say, trans women should be banned from competition. 

Not just conservatives, and not just “hormone levels”. Males are stronger and faster, in multiple ways. Humans are dimorphic, and male humans get the bigger and stronger morph.

You know, the rest of the country will remain as it is, but I think the bigger implication that we would see is that having your Supreme Court come back and tell you again and again and again that your rights matter less than everybody else’s is a really damaging thing for a lot of transgender individuals. We’re seeing a slow chipping away of transgender dignity, equality and also the law, very, very slowly.

What a lie. Nobody is telling trans people their rights matter less than other people’s. Courts and feminists are telling them there is no such thing as a right to pretend to be a woman in order to take jobs and prizes and services and sports trophies intended for women.

I’m not the only one who is annoyed by this dreck.

The rest of Jon’s rebuke:

Sosin simply *lies* about the research, notably the paper by @FondOfBeetles in SM (2021). But the whole framing is wrong, and the spin that you put on this – on words like ‘ban’ and ‘advantage’ – is deeply dishonest. On this evidence, you simply have no regard for the truth at all. It’s *astonishingly* poor journalism. Your reputation should be in the ditch for this, including among liberals.

Among many of us it is.

The ludicrous things Trump says. His total lack of awareness of other minds. Normal people know it’s not clever to say idiotic things out loud in public, let alone to the New York Times.

Whether he’s trying to make the country Whiter

TRUMP: No, I just want people that love our country. It’s very simple. I want people that love our country. I want people that respect our country, respect the laws of our country, and I want people that can embrace our country.

(The reporters pointed out that the only refugees currently allowed to enter the country are White South Africans.)

TRUMP: Well, I haven’t seen that. I mean, I certainly haven’t seen that. But over the years, it’s been very much the opposite of that. Very, very much the opposite of that. People are coming into our country. Nobody’s doing it based on race.

He hasn’t seen that – it’s his doing. He did that.

(The reporters said the pollsters warn Trump isn’t doing enough to convince the young voters he is addressing the economy.)

TRUMP: I don’t know. I think, I think I can tell you I’m very popular. This just came out, from TikTok. It came out just recently that Donald Trump was No. 1 on TikTok and the most popular person. You can have these. I don’t think you’ll use it.

Reader: they used it.

Whether he is interested in retribution on his political foes

TRUMP: No, well, it’s not retribution. But it should be retribution.

Sharp as a tack.

On $2,000 tariff rebate checks he promised to most Americans

TRUMP: I did do that? When did I do that?

Oops.

Prosecutors say no.

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Right. When a cop kills a random bystander the thing to do is investigate the bystander’s spouse rather than the cop.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.

Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

It’s so trumpy, pressing for a criminal investigation of the victim.

The fraud cases, which involve schemes to defraud safety net programs managed by state agencies, were the chief reason the Trump administration launched an immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are of Somali origin.

…

After Ms. Good was shot, the Justice Department decided to forgo a civil rights investigation that would establish whether the ICE officer’s use of deadly force was justified. That decision led several career prosecutors at the department’s civil rights division in Washington to resign in protest, MS Now reported on Monday.

…

Mr. Thompson strenuously objected to the decision not to investigate the shooting as a civil rights matter, and was outraged by the demand to launch a criminal investigation into Becca Good, according to the people familiar with the developments, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Mr. Thompson had originally set out to investigate the shooting in partnership with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that reviews police shootings. Senior Justice Department officials overruled the decision to cooperate with the state agency.

A filthy business.

The thumb always on the scale.

Right before Becky Pepper-Jackson sets up to shot put, she always taps her left foot on a board at the edge of the throwing circle.

The ritual helps her focus on her form amid the pressure of the track and field competition — not to mention the additional pressure of spectators wearing T-shirts that say things like “Protect Women’s Sports,” which Pepper-Jackson says are worn specifically for her.

The 15-year-old is the sole transgender student-athlete in West Virginia, according to her attorneys, and her bid to continue playing competitive sports is in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Three words in, there’s the thumb – Becky. Followed by she, her, her, her, her, transgender, her, her.

It’s the Washington Post and it picks a side in the first clause of the first sentence. It’s the Washington Post and it picks the side that tells blatant lies. It’s the Washington Post and it reports this story as if women and girls have no rights at all and simply don’t matter.

The justices are scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday about whether Pepper-Jackson should continue competing, considering that a state law bans transgender women and girls from playing on women’s sports teams.

In other words he’s a boy and he shouldn’t be playing on a girls’ sports team. It doesn’t matter that he’s a “transgender girl” any more than it would matter if he were a pretend girl or a masquerade girl. He’s a boy.

Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers argue that the ban discriminates against her for being transgender and violates her constitutional equal-protection rights.

The state counters that the ban is necessary to preserve fairness in women’s sports and that Pepper-Jackson should receive no exceptions. Trans women have an unfair physical advantage, no matter their age, because the athletes were designated male at birth, the state argues, adding in its brief that “biological males are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than biological females.”

Oh come on. They can’t expect us to believe that men have an unfair physical advantage because they were designated male at birth. They can’t even expect us to believe they believe that. Men have that unfair physical advantage because they are male. They would be male even if nobody had ever “designated” them anything. The reality precedes the label, and is independent of it, and is emphatically not created by it.

Although the Supreme Court in 2020 found that trans workers were covered by federal antidiscrimination laws, it has recently handed defeats to advocates for transgender rights.

But the purported rights in question are not rights. There are no special transgender rights just as there are no special forgers’ rights or imposters’ rights. Trans people have human rights; human rights don’t include rights to force others to join our personal fantasies.

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans agree with bans on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. The science concerning the biological advantages of trans female athletes remains hotly debated.

The debate is political, not scientific or in any other way factual. Everybody knows males have physical advantages.

Pepper-Jackson was designated male at birth. Heather Jackson, Pepper-Jackson’s mother, has testified that she noticed early that there was a difference between her youngest child and two older sons.

Pepper-Jackson had typically feminine preferences, gravitating toward dresses and asking her mother why their bodies were not alike.

Oh well then. Gravitating toward dresses trumps the physical body every time, yeah?

It’s sometimes hard to believe, the way respected news outlets make fools of themselves over this subject.

The DoJ is not investigating.

Trump’s Department of Justice is seeing its latest mass resignation over its handling of the case of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week in Minneapolis.

Days after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced that the agency’s Civil Rights Division would not be investigating the shooting—despite the fact that the office’s criminal unit would ordinarily probe any abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement—four top officials in the section have resigned.

As MS NOW reported Monday night, the chief of the criminal unit—listed on the DOJ website as Jim Felte—has resigned, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief. The outlet reported that other decisions by administration officials also contributed to their decision to leave.

The FBI announced late last week that it would be probing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’ shooting of Good, who was killed while sitting in her car on a street in Minneapolis where ICE was operating—part of a surge of federal immigration agents who have been sent to the area in recent weeks, with the Trump administration largely targeting Somali people.

Despite video evidence showing that Good’s wheels were turned away from Ross, who was one of a number of officers who had approached her car and reportedly given her conflicting orders, the Trump administration is continuing to claim that she purposely tried to drive into the ICE agent and that Ross fired “defensive shots”—something law enforcement agents including ICE officers are trained not to do in situations involving a moving vehicle.

And they weren’t defensive anyway. Even if you think she intentionally bumped him with her car, it still seems clear that she was turning away from him, because that’s the direction her car went after he shot her in the face three times. Her car didn’t roll across the street, much less into Ross or in the direction of Ross, it rolled down the street, away from Ross. The word is not “defensive” but “rage-fueled”.

As administration officials have aggressively pushed a narrative painting Good as a “domestic terrorist”—a designation that ordinarily would never be used by the government until a full investigation had been carried out—the FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from conducting a probe, leading the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to file a lawsuit Monday.

As the Washington Post reported Monday, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division would typically work alongside the FBI “to guide investigatory strategy” on a case like Good’s. Prosecutors with the division were involved in trying the officers who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration, told the Post. “I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved—its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases.”

Well Trump and his slaves don’t want expertise, especially not long-standing expertise. They want pliability, and automatic loyalty to Trump, and obedience.

Hundreds of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have resigned since President Donald Trump began his second term a year ago. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who left the DOJ soon after Trump was inaugurated, told NPR that the division is “not an arm of the White House.”

“The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans,” Young said. “It doesn’t exist to enact the president’s own agenda. That’s a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department.”

Yes but Trump is the big boss and that’s all that counts.

Sigh. An act of resistance ffs.

The trans youth athletes in the US fighting for their rights: ‘Playing is an act of resistance’

Yeah right. Boys invading girls’ sports is the maquis itself. Women and girls, obviously, are the Nazis.

As the US supreme court weighs bans on trans athletes, five students speak about the joy of sports and toll of exclusion

Ah yes, the joy for boys of destroying girls’ sports, and the dreadful toll of not being allowed to destroy girls’ sports. Girls, naturally, were not asked for their opinions on this matter.

The US supreme court on Tuesday is considering state laws banning transgender athletes from school sports.

The cases were brought by trans students who challenged bans in West Virginia and Idaho barring trans girls from girls teams. The outcome could have wide-ranging implications for LGBTQ+ rights. A total of 27 states have passed sports bans targeting trans youth while more than 20 states have maintained pro-LGBTQ+ policies.

What “implications for LGBTQ+ rights”? There is no LGBTQ+ right for boys to invade girls’ sports. That’s not a right at all. Even if it were a right, it still wouldn’t have implications for lesbian and gay rights, because being trans is different from being lesbian and gay. Can you say “different”? It’s an important word.

As the highest court in the US debates their rights to participate in school sports

Liars liars liars. The court is not debating their rights to participate in sports.

How does the Guardian get away with this blatant lying? What happened to the integrity of journalism?

Heather Cox Richardson tells us some things about the timing. She starts with the Epstein files, then

the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, a decision that seemed to limit Trump’s power to use military forces within the United States.

Oh so that’s why he stepped up the non-military bullying to such dramatic effect.

Yet another part of the backstory is that on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. In that testimony—under oath—Smith said that his office had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

With pressure building over the Epstein files and Jack Smith’s testimony, and with the Supreme Court having taken away Trump’s ability to use troops within the United States, the administration went on the offensive.

Trump wanted to do as much harm as he could before someone stopped him.

Then, on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters determined to keep Trump in office despite Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s majority of 7 million votes, Trump’s White House rewrote the history of January 6, 2021, claiming that the rioters were “peaceful patriotic protesters” and blaming the Democrats for the insurrection.

That same day, after the Supreme Court had cut off the administration’s ability to federalize National Guard soldiers and send them to Democratic-led cities, the administration surged 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis in the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever launched.

The next morning, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, and the administration responded by calling Good a domestic terrorist.

Well, anything to make Trump feel happier, right? No price is too high? Price for other people, of course.

The Senate advanced a bill to stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. And, just two days after Trump had reversed the victims and offenders in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that Capitol Police officers had been among the offenders, the Senate unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating that the plaque be hung, but Republicans until now had prevented its installation.

Who will get custody of the red neckties?

Bash Free Speech

Trans activists have hacked into the website of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and published a list of its donors online.

A direct action group calling itself Bash Back said it had breached the FSU’s online security and was revealing the names of all those who had donated more than £50 over the past two years. Hours after the list of names appeared online, the FSU obtained an emergency injunction from the High Court, forcing the group to remove the donor details.

What was the point? Just random intimidation, I suppose, because what else could it be?

Bash Back, which describes itself as a direct action group “focused on total transgender liberation”, recently made headlines after allegedly attacking the constituency offices of Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary. Paint was sprayed across the building in Ilford, east London, and the words “child killer” were daubed on the windows.

Masked activists also disrupted a women’s rights conference in Brighton in the autumn, smashing windows and spraying paint on the building.

Calling it “direct action” is a tidy bit of self-flattery. It’s direct bullying is what it is.

At 4.30pm on Monday, Bash Back posted a link to a list of names of FSU’s financial supporters.

The FSU’s website was disabled for 72 hours after the attack, but the group later set up a temporary page allowing supporters to continue donating via a secure portal.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the FSU went to the High Court and was granted an emergency injunction. The order banned Bash Back from publishing the list of donor details, and warned any breach could lead to imprisonment for contempt of court.

It also named Autumn Redpath, a 22-year-old postgraduate student at Warwick University, as someone allegedly associated with the group.

Biter bit, eh wot? I don’t suppose Autumn wanted to be named as one of these criminal bullies.

Lord Young of Acton, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “Bash Back is a dangerous anti-democratic organisation that boasts about breaking the law and encourages its supporters to steal hammers to carry out ‘direct action’, including against Members of Parliament. The Health Secretary has already been targeted in a very unpleasant attack. Hacking and then publishing digital material is a serious criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.”

Lord Young said he was disappointed that none of the police forces contacted appeared to have yet taken any action against those responsible, adding: “The members of this group need to be prosecuted. Neither we nor our members will be cowed by these tactics.”

No action, eh? Jeez. When it’s a woman saying men are not women the action is taken before she has time to say anything else.

The coup continues.

Five years ago, President Donald Trump pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.

Trump, openly fearful that a Congress controlled by Democrats could investigate him, impeach him and stymie his agenda, is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity. Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion, challenging long-established democratic norms.

Of course they do. Everything he does goes far beyond typical anything.

They include unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts beforethe constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughenvoter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.

The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottomwith officials who have denied the legitimacyof the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

We’re gonna need a bigger supply of suicide pills.

Trump cast this year’s elections in existential terms in a speech to House Republicans this month, telling them that Democrats would impeach him if they win a majority. He teased the notion of canceling the elections but said he wouldn’t because he’d be accused of being a dictator if he did.

Trump can’t cancel elections and he lacks the authority to carry out some of his most far-reaching plans because local and state officials oversee elections, rather than the federal government. Trump has already ignored those constraints and signaled he will continue to do so, which means courts will probably have to determine what rules are in place for the midterm elections.

But will he pay any attention to what courts determine?

Ofcom v Musk

Ofcom has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over concerns its AI tool Grok is being used to create sexualised images.

In a statement, the UK watchdog said there had been “deeply concerning reports” of the chatbot being used to create and share undressed images of people, as well as “sexualised images of children”.

Note the careful avoidance of the word “women”. Note how unlikely it is that all this “undressing” is equally distributed between women and men. Note the BBC’s staunch determination to erase women even from stories that affect them far more than they affect men.

The BBC has seen several examples of digitally altered images on X, in which women were undressed and put in sexual positions without their consent. One woman said more than 100 sexualised images have been created of her.

Finally – but that’s the 6th paragraph. The word “women” should have appeared at the top.

An Ofcom spokesperson did not give an indication on how long the investigation would take but said it would be a “matter of the highest priority”.

“Platforms must protect people in the UK from content that’s illegal in the UK,” they said. “We won’t hesitate to investigate where we suspect companies are failing in their duties, especially where there’s a risk of harm to children.”

But not women. Never ever ever women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

Today I wrote to Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, and Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Poilievre;

I’m writing you today to express my anger and dismay at your congratulating Donald Trump on his kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. In your misplaced and hasty enthusiasm at the misfortune of a bad guy you don’t like, you have forgotten or ignored Trump’s trampling of much more important principals, those of national sovereignty, and the standards and norms of international law. If you were reading the room, you would see that that is the case, and would not have pressed “enter” on this poorly thought-through message. But no. You have given him a pass on his violation of Venezuelan sovereignty because of your shared dislike of the people he conspired to abduct. You sign off your your post on X with “Down with socialism. Long live freedom.” This is a non sequitur. Donald Trump is not an agent of freedom. He is an agent of corruption, greed, and unbridled power. He is plunging the United States into tyranny and dictatorship. But, apparently, because he dislikes socialism, that’s okay. You have abandoned the very foundations of international law to become a cheerleader for a dangerously unhinged, aspiring dictator who believes in “Might makes right.” But don’t take my word for it, here is Trump advisor Stephen Miller:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

And here’s Trump himself:

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

Of course he’s looking to hurt people. He’s fine with killing people. He authorized and orchestrated the murder of scores of people in international waters, claiming they were “narcoterrorists” bent on attacking the United States (while piloting small powerboats that, from Venezuela, could never reach American waters.) We were supposed to take his word for it. Any proof or evidence of his claims was destroyed, and went to the bottom of the sea, along with those people who were killed without arrest, killed without trial. These acts, and Trump’s declaration of Venezuelan airspace as a “no fly zone” constituted acts of war. But Maduro was a bad guy, so you’re willing to brush that off, so long as Trump is supposedly fighting “socialism”.

Venezuela was apparently a test case. The day after his Venezuelan kidnapping outrage, Trump resumed his verbal campaign against Greenland. In Trump’s mind, because he wants it, he gets to have it. These are not the actions of a serious, responsible head of state. They are the musings of a mob boss armed with nuclear weapons. Is Greenland run by “narcoterrorists”? No. Is it a threat to the United States? No. Do the people of Greenland get a say in this? No. But because Trump claims he “needs it” for “national security”, he’s going to take it:

At a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump had said Greenland was crucial for US national security. “We’re not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland. That’s what they’re going to do if we don’t. So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way,” he told reporters

His words, not mine. This is not a joke. This is a threat. To an ally.

How do you respond to that Mr. Poilievre? You’ve already abandoned the high ground of international law. How do you dissuade or prevent Trump from invading Greenland, an act of war which will destroy NATO and embolden America’s enemies? If you give in to him on Venezuela, on what grounds do you refuse him Greenland? Because after Greenland comes Canada. Trump will see this big space on the map north of the lower 48 States, east of Alaska, and west of Greenland. For the sake of “national security”, and to complete his continental empire, Trump logic will demand that gets to “have” Canada too. Your craven, servile congratulatory message to Donald Trump doesn’t sound like something that’s written by man who wants to be the Prime Minister of Canada, but someone angling to become governor of the 51st State.

Trump says he doesn’t know what Norway has to do with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Does he know what Sweden has to do with it?

Does he know what Nobel had to do with it?

Does he know anything?

Editing to add: Not to mention the complete absurdity of thinking that possession of the physical object=winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Of thinking it means anything.

So this is what technology is for.

Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year’s Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini.

The “put her in a bikini” trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake, sexualised images were posted publicly on X, freely available for millions of people to inspect.

Relatively tame requests by X users to alter photographs to show women in bikinis, rapidly evolved during the first week of the year, hour by hour, into increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible. By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian.

Because shaming women never goes out of style.

As people slowly started to understand the full potential of the tool, the increasingly degrading images of the early days were quickly superseded. Since the end of last week, users have asked for the bikinis to be decorated with swastikas – or asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies. Pictures of teenage girls and children were stripped down to revealing swimwear; some of this content could clearly be categorised as child sexual abuse material, but remained visible on the platform.

The requests became ever more extreme. Some users, mostly men, began to demand to see bruising on the bodies of the women, and for blood to be added to the images. Requests to show women tied up and gagged were instantly granted. By Thursday, the chatbot was being asked to add bullet holes to the face of Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in the US on Wednesday. Grok readily obliged, posting graphic, bloodied altered images of the victim on X within seconds.

Of course Grok did.

The LA Times way back in 2014:

Border Patrol agents have deliberately stepped in the path of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers and have fired in frustration at people throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border, according to an independent review of 67 cases that resulted in 19 deaths.

Oh really. Stepped in front of cars have they. To justify shooting the drivers. How very interesting.

The report by law enforcement experts criticized the Border Patrol for “lack of diligence” in investigating U.S. agents who had fired their weapons. It also said it was unclear whether the agency “consistently and thoroughly reviews” use-of-deadly-force incidents.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which had commissioned the review, has tried to prevent the scathing 21-page report from coming to light.

House and Senate oversight committees requested copies last fall but received only a summary that omitted the most controversial findings — that some border agents stood in front of moving vehicles as a pretext to open fire and that agents could have moved away from rock throwers instead of shooting at them.

This was during Obama’s presidency, you’ll notice.

The Times obtained the full report and the agency’s internal response, which runs 23 pages. The response rejects the two major recommendations: barring border agents from shooting at vehicles unless its occupants are trying to kill them, and barring agents from shooting people who throw things that can’t cause serious physical injury.

The response, marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” states that a ban on shooting at rock throwers “could create a more dangerous environment” because many agents operate “in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover and egress is not an option.”

If drug smugglers knew border agents were not allowed to shoot at their vehicles, it argues, more drivers would try to run over agents.

Mexican authorities have complained for years that U.S. border agents who kill Mexicans are rarely disciplined and that the results of investigations are not made public for years. Critics warn that more deaths or abuses are inevitable unless stricter rules are imposed to limit use of lethal force.

I’m guessing those stricter rules have not so far been imposed.

“It is suspected that in many vehicle shooting cases, the subject driver was attempting to flee from the agents who intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force,” the report reads. In some cases, “passengers were struck by agents’ gunfire.”

“It should be recognized that a half-ounce (200-grain) bullet is unlikely to stop a 4,000-pound moving vehicle, and if the driver … is disabled by a bullet, the vehicle will become a totally unguided threat,” it says. “Obviously, shooting at a moving vehicle can pose a risk to bystanders including other agents.”

Yes, we just saw that. It’s just luck that there was no one between the SUV and the smaller white car that got smacked.

The authors recommended training agents “to get out of the way… as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in the path of such vehicles.”

They also recommended that the Border Patrol adopt police policies used in most U.S. jurisdictions, which bar officers from firing at a moving vehicle unless deadly force is being used “by means other than a moving vehicle.”

Border Patrol doesn’t seem to have adopted much of anything.

Al Jazeera on the “domestic terrorism” label:

Kristi Noem has described the actions of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on Wednesday, as “domestic terrorism”.

Noem said Good refused to obey orders to get out of her car, “weaponise[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” over an officer. Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to drive away.

There were no “orders to get out of her car” – there was one guy who shouted at her to get out of her car but there was a whole lot of shouting going on, and it must have been very difficult to know which shouts were official and which were just dudes shouting in testosteroney rage.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said on Thursday on the CNN news channel that Noem’s statement is “an abuse of the term” “domestic terrorism”.

Just a tad.

Trump’s administration has turned to the phrase in recent months, including in an October immigration enforcement-related shooting. In September, the administration issued a memo calling on law enforcement to prioritise threats including “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement”, saying “domestic terrorists” were using violence to advance “extreme views in favour of mass migration and open borders”. Experts said it violates free speech laws.

Also what about Trump’s endless violent threats?

Federal agencies have their own definitions of “domestic terrorism”.

According to a 2020 memo, the FBI, citing a specific section of the US Code, defines “domestic terrorism” as acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state criminal laws and appear intended to intimidate or coerce civilians; influence government policy by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

Does not describe a couple of women talking to/taunting a man in police/military gear. Not even close.

After conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump issued a September 25 memo ordering the attorney general to expand “domestic terrorism” priorities to include “politically motivated terrorist acts such as organised doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder”.

Trump signed an executive order a few days before designating antifa, a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists, as a “domestic terrorist” organisation.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi told federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to compile a list of groups “engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism”.

Legal experts have raised alarms about the memo’s potential infringements on the First Amendment.

“Both the order and the memo are ungrounded in fact and law,” Faiza Patel, the director of liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote. “Acting on them would violate free speech rights, potentially threatening any person or group holding any one of a broad array of disfavored views with investigation and prosecution.”

It’s almost as if Trump and his enablers are the ones terrorizing us.

Experts have also pointed to the memo’s focus on left-wing violence. It does not mention the politically motivated assassination of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, months before.

“When a policy directive targets one ideological family and leaves others to the footnotes, it sheds any pretense of neutrality,” Thomas E Brzozowski, former Department of Justice counsel for domestic terrorism, wrote on December 12.

It’s another one of those pronoun things – no not that kind, the other kind, the one from Yes Minister. I’m an impassioned activist, she is a domestic terrorist.

Trump informs us that he doesn’t have to pay any attention to laws or treaties or precedent or anything else that might prevent him from doing whatever he wants all the time.

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

That’s not true, of course, but even if it were, it wouldn’t be a reason for throwing out laws or treaties.

Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.

Also known as Might Makes Right. That is of course the negation of any form of moral constraint.

He made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations. During his interview with The Times, he took a lengthy call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who was clearly concerned after repeated threats that Mr. Trump was thinking of an attack on the country similar to the one on Venezuela.

How about Brazil next? Argentina? Chile? Peru?

The call between the two leaders, the contents of which were off the record, was an example of coercive diplomacy in action. And it came just hours after Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had extracted the United States from dozens of international organizations intended to foster multinational cooperation.

Because international war and international colonialism is so much better than international organizations fostering multinational cooperation.

Yet more news on Scotland’s war on women:

First Minister John Swinney has been asked for clarification amid reports his government is attempting to challenge the Supreme Court ruling on sex and gender. 

At First Minister’s Questions, SNP MSP Michelle Thomson asked about a report in The Times that in November the Scottish Government wrote to the Advocate General for Scotland, Baroness Smith of Cluny KC, who advises the UK Government. 

[For more see Unlawfully trample]

The government informed her that it would seek a legal ruling declaring that implementing the Supreme Court’s judgment would unlawfully infringe on the human rights of transgender criminals, if its other legal arguments against the Supreme Court‘s ruling fail.  

This is despite Scottish ministers consistently affirming in public that they accept the ruling.  

They are seeking a ruling that would demolish women’s rights, still, in the teeth of the existing ruling telling them to stop demolishing women’s rights.

This is despite Scottish ministers consistently affirming in public that they accept the ruling.  

They accept it, it’s just that they want to overturn it or, failing that, ignore it. Seems fair.

If Scotland’s highest civil court were to grant the declaration, it would state that to remove a biological male prisoner who identifies as female would be an unlawful breach of their human rights.  

While it would not be an unlawful breach of the human rights of female prisoners to force a man on them.

Why is that exactly? Why are the purported rights of one man who wants to intrude on and ogle and intimidate and assault women all-important while the rights of a whole lot of women? Why? Why is the male desire to intrude important while the female desire to be safe from intrusion is unimportant? How, exactly, do men like Swinney arrive at this conclusion? The insult and injustice seems so extremely blatant…

It’s a very rapey thing to say.

Greenlanders “don’t want to be Americans” and must decide the future of the Arctic island themselves, politicians in the self-governing Danish territory have said, after Donald Trump warned the US would “do something whether they like it or not”.

All it needs is replacing “they” with “the bitches”.

Trump of course actively loves doing things to people that they don’t “like”. It’s his happy place, his meaning of life, his Valhalla.

At a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump had said Greenland was crucial for US national security. “We’re not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland. That’s what they’re going to do if we don’t. So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way,” he told reporters.

That’s the slightly euphemized version of doing something whether they like it or not.

The US has operated a military base on the northwestern tip of Greenland since the second world war, where more than 100 military personnel are permanently stationed. Existing agreements with Denmark would allow Trump to bring as many troops as he wanted to the island.

But Trump told reporters on Friday that a lease agreement was not enough. “Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don’t defend leases,” he said. “And we’ll have to defend Greenland,.”

But the ownership that countries have to have is ownership of themselves, not of other countries. Trump is not the owner of Greenland, and the US is not the owner of Greenland either. Some Greenlanders murmur that Denmark is also not the owner of Greenland, but at this point Denmark is not the one throwing its flabby weight around.

The BBC reports:

A video filmed by the US immigration agent who fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday has emerged, showing the moments before gunfire rang out.

The gunfire didn’t “ring out”. Quite the contrary. There’s nothing bell-like about gunshots. End all stupid journalistic clichés.

The 47-second footage, obtained by Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News, shows Renee Nicole Good sitting behind the wheel of her car and speaking to the officer.

US Vice-President JD Vance shared the clip on social media, commenting that the agent had acted in self-defence. 

US VP lied, not for the first time.

The Trump administration says Good was blocking the road and impeding the work of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

That may be true. It is not a reason to shoot her in the head. Not even slightly.

Another agent approaches Good on the driver’s side and uses an expletive as he says: “Get out of the car.”

The agent filming the clip moves in front of Good’s car as she reverses.

In a chaotic couple of seconds, she turns the wheel to the right and pulls forwards.

The camera jerks up to the sky. “Woah, woah!” a voice says, as bangs are heard.

In the final part of the video the car is seen veering down the road. The ICE agent swears.

No the ICE agent doesn’t swear, the ICE agent calls the woman he’s just killed “fucking bitch”.