Aw how sad. It turns out that gender dogma that fails to attract paying customers will be shown the door.

An honours course covering “queer and trans geographies” has been dropped by Edinburgh University one week into the semester as the institution seeks cuts of £140 million…Edinburgh University said it had paused the unit due to the small number of students who had signed up.

It’s not a good combination, is it – small number of gullible customers plus utter nonsense.

Part of an undergraduate geography degree programme, the “Queer Geographies: Spatialising Sexuality and Gender” class was described as an opportunity for students to “critically, and self-reflexively, consider how sexuality and gender inform and unfold in the everyday spaces we inhabit”.

What the hell is “self-reflexively” supposed to mean? The fool who wrote that probably meant “reflectively” but wanted to make it more pretentious, so stumbled into incoherence.

Assessment was in the form of a 4,000-word journal.

Oh yay! Your homework is to talk about yourself!

Self-reflexively of course.

Martin Zebracki, chair of the Space, Sexualities and Queer Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society, said: “This type of course would help students understand the processes of social marginalisation, including in relation to legislation, and encourage students to consider how social norms could be challenged — not only in theory but also in everyday life. Courses like this really seek to develop critical thinkers of the future.”

Chair of the what???

And how would this type of course do any of that? And what does obsessing over one’s very own personal “gender” aka idenniny aka soul have to do with developing critical thinkers? If you want critical thinkers you want them to look outward, not inward.  The world is there, other people are there, and they’re not about Me and My Ego.

He warned that losing the unit risked further marginalising minority topics and groups… 

When your minority topic is so minority that it’s just about the self-involvement of the students signing up to your minority topic, you’re just engaged in flattering the students and encouraging them to be even more self-obsessed than teenagers usually are.

A university spokesman stressed that the course had not been permanently closed. He said: “The university regularly reviews and refreshes its degree programmes and courses to ensure that they meet the needs of our community. We have made the decision to pause Queer Geographies: Spatialising Sexuality and Gender for the 2025–26 academic year due to the level of demand not being sufficient to enable us to deliver the course and ensure an excellent student experience. Students who had enrolled on the course will be reallocated to another within their programme.”

The university did not disclose how many students had registered for the unit this academic year.

Five? Two? One?

The dignity of the man.

It’s strange when for-profit commercial entertainment becomes an arm of the resistance, but then it’s strange when corrupt violent law-breaking real estate tycoons are voted into the boss job, too.

Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late-night stage Tuesday night and urged viewers to stand up to President Trump’s threats. Shortly before Kimmel’s show aired, the president sent out a new missive against Kimmel’s network, ABC.

Of course he did. He’s a corrupt violent law-breaking real estate tycoon with zero education or experience relevant to being a head of state, so of course he tries to destroy anyone who doesn’t kiss his festering ass.

In an eloquent and emotional monologue, Kimmel assailed “anti-American” efforts to curtail free speech in the United States and signaled that he won’t temper his criticism of the president after a nearly week-long suspension of his show amid pressure from the Trump administration.

“This show is not important,” Kimmel told viewers. “What’s important is that we live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

Again – we don’t generally look to entertainers for the job of talking back to power, but then Trump wouldn’t be where he is if it weren’t for The Apprentice.

Kimmel predicted that ABC and its parent company Disney would come under further scrutiny from the Trump administration for reinstating his show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” days after Trump wrongly said Kimmel had been “fired.”

Noting that Trump has openly rooted for Kimmel’s cancellation — and thereby the loss of work for his staffers — the comedian said, “Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

Then Kimmel noted that Trump has also called for NBC to fire “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon.

Anything else, Mister Sir? A few burnings at the stake? Exiles? Torture sessions?

About an hour before the broadcast, Trump weighed in on ABC’s restoration of the show for the first time, commenting on Truth Social that “the White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!”

Oh poor Donny! That’s so unfair! They promised!

Trump once again used his political platform to threaten ABC, saying of Kimmel, “He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this.”

“Let’s see how we do,” Trump continued. “Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Disney agreed to pay Trump about $16 million last December to settle a defamation lawsuit that he had lodged against ABC.

Money money money, it’s a rich man’s world.

Trump got some things wrong.

Trump’s poll numbers: The president claimed, “I was very proud to see this morning I have the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had. Part of it is because of what we’ve done on the border. I guess the other part is what we’ve done on the economy.” It’s theoretically possible Trump saw some private polling that gave him dramatically better numbers than public polling has produced, but his standing in public polling is nowhere near his highest ever — in fact, it’s down substantially from the beginning of this year.

Hmm, what happened at the beginning of this year? Oh yes, Trump started presidenting! Remember when he released all that water that California farmers needed for irrigation and just pissed it away in the Central Valley? Great start.

A New York Times polling average put Trump’s approval rating at about 43% as of Tuesday (with 54% disapproval), down from 52% approval in the first week of his second term in January (with 43% disapproval).

Yes but that’s the New York Times. Ask the Trump Bullshit Gazette and you’ll get a totally different polling average.

Trump also claimed that under his leadership, “grocery prices are down.” False. Average grocery prices have increased during Trump’s presidency, though the prices of some individual items have fallen; Consumer Price Index figures show that average grocery prices were about 1% higher in August than they were in January, when Trump returned to the White House.

That’s what he said! He just used different words, that’s all.

Trump said electricity in Europe is much more expensive than in China or the US, which is generally correct. But then he added, “And our bills are coming way down.” In fact, US electricity prices are spiking, rising more than twice as fast as overall prices; Consumer Price Index figures show they were about 6.2% higher in August than they were a year prior and about 4.9% higher in August than they were in January.

That’s what he meant by “coming down.” Sheesh, reporters just can’t give Trump a break, can they.

Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and he also referred to “the global warming hoax.” He didn’t precisely explain what he was calling the con job or hoax, but global warming is a demonstrated fact. Trump also baselessly suggested that scientists now use the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming” so that they can’t be accused of getting things wrong if the world ends up cooling; in reality, climate scientists use both phrases, often saying “global warming” when referring to the long-term trend of increasing global temperature and “climate change” when referring to the numerous effects the world is experiencing because of that trend.

Whatever. It was cold somewhere today. Did they check Alaska? Greenland? The top of Chomolungma?

NASA says on its website: “‘Climate change’ encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet. These include rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.”

For example, a 2023 report from the UN’s climate change panel, titled “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report,” said this: “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.” In a section titled “Future Climate Change,” the report also said this: “Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).”

These are all just trivial details that don’t matter. Bigger picture: Trump is a brilliant genius who should have multiple Nobel Prizes and his very own fire engine.

Erm…getting to know? Now? Having not known before?? What were you doing all this time????

After meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the president of the European Union, President Trump appears to have shifted his view on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No longer is he claiming that Ukrainian lands have been lost for good to Russia.

“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Just like that, he comes out and admits that he hasn’t bothered to “get to know” the Ukraine/Russia military and economic situation until today. What a genius. Nobel Peace Prize, coming right up.

Instead of seeking to broker a peace, President Trump appears now to be washing his hands of the conflict in Ukraine. He expressed confidence that Ukraine could win back its land, even though it was unable to do so even when the United States was providing tens of billions of dollars in support. Trump offered to keep selling weapons to Europe, which they can then give to Ukraine, but he said nothing about providing new support from the United States. He ended with the words, “I wish both countries well.”

He finally “got to know” it but don’t go thinking that means he’s going to do anything about it. He has his own agenda. Getting the Nobel Peace Prize, appearing on late night talk shows, getting more money, firing people, yelling at us, supervising the building of the White House ballroom, reminding everyone how important he is, getting the Nobel Peace Prize while doing nothing to earn it, whining about Obama, getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Pliny calls it.

Trump is pestering the UN.

He says “Now after ending all of these wars and also earlier negotiating the Abraham accords which is a very [long pause] big thing for which our country received no credit, never receives credit, everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize”

Well which is it? The US never receives credit, or everyone says Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize?

It can’t be both.

Especially not in the same sentence.

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

In retrospect, it is lamentable that the US labored under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1940s.  Think of how glorious things might have been if, instead, the US of 1941 had had a president with all the qualities of its present chief executive, Donald H.Trump.  Let us imagine such a scenario.

  In 1940, our ideal President would have campaigned for America First, against entanglement with European affairs, and against Lend-Lease and all the various rip-offs that Winston Churchill had been able to extract from the US under FDR’s presidency.  Our candidate explained that there would have been no war at all if he had been President in 1939; and he insisted that he would end the war (which Poland had started) in 24 hours once he was elected.

  After assuming office in January of 1941, our ideal President invited both leaders of the Axis powers to a summit meeting with him to discuss Peace, and to restore friendly relations with the US.  The summit meeting was held at a US installation in formally neutral Iceland.  After US soldiers laid out a long red carpet for Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, our President in person cordially welcomed them both, and led them past posters that proclaimed “the Pursuit of Peace”.   After a brief meeting with no tangible outcome, the three leaders held a short joint press conference to praise each other.

  Later, an advisor to the US President announced that a Peace deal based on “land swaps” was imminent.  The German Foreign Office then issued a summary of the “land swap” deal.  It called for the US and Great Britain to officially recognize German annexation of Czechoslovakia and the western half of Poland; and to recognize German occupation and administration of Yugoslavia, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, not to mention northern France.  In return, the Third Reich would issue a paper affirming that the German Reich would not, in future, lay claim to the North Pole, the South Pole, or the Himalaya mountain range—unless it was forced to do so by urgent, legitimate security concerns.

   Next, our US President thanked the Third Reich for its pursuit of Peace, and hinted that a ceasefire with Britain might expedite further negotiations.  He added that it would take a lot of time to consider the details of this complex suggestion, so he wouldn’t mention it again for a year or two, or maybe five.  The German dictator thanked our President for his proposal, and confided that it would be examined at length by himself together with his colleagues Herr Himmler, Herr Goering, Herr Goebbels, and Herr Ribbentrop.  And then, the Reich Führer added that he, speaking personally as Adolf Hitler, would now nominate the US President for a Nobel Peace Prize.     

They cannot be serious.

Bristol city council has been accused of offending women with “virtue-signalling madness” after claiming that legally defining sex as biological “misgenders trans people” and could lead to discrimination.

…

The comments were made in a 39-page response to a consultation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on updates to its guidance, following the Supreme Court ruling in April this year that sex in equality laws refers to biological sex.

The guidance, which is waiting final approval by ministers, is understood to state that trans women cannot be admitted to women’s single sex spaces.

…

Bristol city council, whose Green Party leader Tony Dyer has criticised the Supreme Court ruling, raised a number of objections, including urging the EHRC to drop gendered language when referring to pregnancy, maternity and breastfeeding.

They wrote that “not all pregnant individuals would use the pronouns ‘she/her’” and so it could add “emotional and psychological distress” for “trans men, non-binary, gender diverse or intersex individuals”.

Maybe, but then it could add emotional and psychological distress for women to pretend that women don’t exist. There are far more women than there are trans men, non-binary, gender diverse or intersex individuals. Arguably there are zero trans men, non-binary, gender diverse or intersex individuals, since none of those labels name anything but invented labels for eccentric opinions about sex and idenniny. Either way women are in the majority by a huge margin, so why is this Green Tony Dyer fella so concerned about the feelings of a handful at the expense of the feelings of billions?

“We strongly advise the use of more inclusive language such as using ‘they/them’ to refer to all individuals, or include other identities to reflect the diversity of individuals who access maternity or paternity services,” officials argued.

“This could include ‘people with ovaries’ or the term ‘people who use paternity services’. We also recognise that individuals may not identify with the word maternity and prefer paternity as it is gender neutral.

WHAT?????

Like fucking hell it is. Mater: Latin for mother. Pater: Latin for father. The word father is not one atom more “gender neutral” than the word mother is.

“Additionally, it is unclear what support will be available to trans people who chestfeed to ensure they are protected from discrimination.”

The word is “breastfeed” and what does it have to do with trans people and discrimination? Women can breastfeed, men cannot; end of discussion.

Protections based on biological sex are “too vague”, the response added, as: “It is unclear whether it refers to anyone capable of pregnancy, or only those who were assigned female at birth.”

If you look closely you will find that those are the same thing. Male people are not capable of pregnancy; end of discussion.

Council officials complain that the new guidance implies that “trans women are not ‘really’ women” and risks “creating a hostile environment in public services”.

Oh blah blah blah. Go do something useful.

Derrick Jensen on making excuses for murder:

Peter Boghossian is right. This is much of what is wrong with postmodernism, academia, and the postmodern left.

Edit:

I know this is facebook, so my expectations are low already, but Jesus, the responses disappoint me. I’ll make this clear: The point is that NOBODY DESERVES TO BE MURDERED FOR THEIR IDEAS. And more than half the fucking people responding to this post seem pretty clearly to be more appalled by his words than by the fact that he was MURDERED FOR SPEAKING. As a writer of controversial materials who has received boatloads of death-threats by the postmodern left, a postmodern left who calls ME a nazi and a fascist for not believing that men can become women, I have a strong objection to people in any way rationalizing or seeming to rationalize the murder of people for expressing opinions that some people consider fascist. In fact, even if I weren’t the recipient of death threats, I would still object to someone being murdered because people don’t like what he says. I grew up believing, “I may not agree with you (and I may have no interest in listening to you), but I will defend to the death your right to express your opinion (to others).” Now, Jesus, I just read that something like half of all college students feel it’s okay to stop those you disagree with from expressing their opinions. I’m absolutely horrified by the response to the murder of a speaker. And I’m especially horrified by the response to the murder of a speaker by some radical feminists: if you (or JK Rowling) were murdered, do you really think they wouldn’t be calling you a fascist? And in any case, what the hell is wrong with us that for so many of us, our primary public response to the murder of a speaker is to be more appalled by his words than his murder for those words.

I can’t stand Judith Butler, but if she were murdered by people who also can’t stand her words, I would IMMEDIATELY disavow the murder of a writer. If you can’t see the horror of the murder of writers, and if the left can’t see the horror of the murder of writers, then you yourself are authoritarian, and the left is authoritarian. If you don’t like some writer, write a better goddamn fucking book. Do a better job. That’s a writer’s JOB.

I think that is relevant to the dispute we had here last week. I think I agree with it, and I also think I think that we can still talk about the writer’s work without endorsing the writer’s murder. Maybe I’m wrong? Maybe that’s hypocritical? Maybe I’m kidding myself?

Doctor Genius Trump explained about Tylenol and gestation today.

President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US Food and Drug Administration will be notifying physicians that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” despite decades of evidence that it’s safe.

“They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary,” such as to treat fever, “if you can’t tough it out,” Trump said.

Yeah you whiny weakling cowardly bitches, and by the way never mind that maternal fever isn’t all that good for the future baby either.

Experts say autism is caused by multiple factors, and the science concerning the connection between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism is not settled.

Well it is now! Because Trump said so!

Acetaminophen has been considered the only safe over-the-counter option for pain or fever for pregnant people. Other common pain relief options like ibuprofen or regular-dose aspirin can increase the risk of serious complications during pregnancy. Not treating a fever can also be dangerous for both the fetus and the pregnant person.

Oh go to hell CNN – “women” is not a dirty word.

Speaking from the Oval Office alongside US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, US National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump did not keep his remarks to Tylenol during pregnancy. He advocated for breaking up childhood vaccinations and even pushing back the hepatitis B shot for newborns — a public health strategy that brought the infection in children to the brink of elimination — to age 12.

It’s “too much liquid, too many different things are going into that baby,” Trump said, without providing further evidence.

Ah yes that’s it, too much liquid. Make it into a tiny brick, that will be much better for that baby.

Trump thanked Kennedy for bringing autism to the “forefront of American politics, along with me.” Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has promoted discredited theories that vaccines cause autism. “We understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it,” Trump said.

No. No you didn’t. That’s where you go so very wrong. You’re not a genius who understands things without studying them or even finding out what they are. Nope nope nope. You’re a stupid and ignorant blowhard with a conceit the size of Jupiter.

The descent is going faster and faster by the day.

Trump has spent months chipping away at the barriers that have longprotected the Justice Department from political interference. But now federal prosecutors and legal observers are bracing for what comes next as he escalates that effort rapidly.

Veteran lawyers in a Virginia U.S. attorney’s office fear that the ouster of their bosslast week — after a White House push to prosecute two of the president’s political foes — could portend even more overt efforts by Trump to dictate the outcome of investigations.

…

“I just want people to act. They have to act,” Trump told reporters outside the White House Saturday evening, adding, “We have to act fast.”

Did he say they have to act? Did he mention anything about acting?

Former Justice Department officials said they are stunned by what they see as the acceleration and increasing audacity of Trump’s demands.

Or in other words the acceleration of Trump’s dictatorship.

Just in the past week,the president and members of his administration threatened to prosecute critics for what they described as “hate speech,” which is itself not illegal under federal law. They floated the notion of charging Democratic donors and organizers under federal racketeering statutes. And on Friday, they forced out Erik S. Siebert, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, after he opted not to pursue indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and former FBI director James B. Comey, citing alack of evidence that they had committed crimes.

Dictator behavior. Not a dress rehearsal but the thing itself.

On Saturday, Trump capped off those rapid-fire developments with an extraordinary directive, delivered publicly over social media, instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to swiftly prosecute Comey, James and other political rivals and back U.S. attorneys willing to get that job done.

…

“This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Schiff told MSNBC on Sunday. “Nixon had his enemies list, but it wasn’t so exhaustive and blatant as this, where he was ordering in front of the whole country, the Justice Department to go after his enemies.”

Those were innocent times.

Pretending men are women isn’t feminist.

I’m curious about why “Sophie Molly” does this.

People mostly don’t bare their teeth like that when smiling, and they even more mostly don’t grit them like that. In other primates a gritted teeth grin like that is a threat response.

Maybe he thinks it makes him look more womany.

The metamorphosis of the Washington Post:

Longtime Washington Post writer Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the publication’s Opinions department for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”

The Post, which has been overhauling the entire department, declined to comment on personnel matters. But Attiah’s Post biography has been revised to say she “was” a columnist, indicating she is no longer employed.

…

Attiah posted a string of messages about political violence in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week. She criticized what she called “empty rhetoric” denouncing violence that hasn’t been matched by actions.

One of her posts asserted that “part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”

Attiah didn’t reference Kirk by name, but she also said to a commenter that “refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is… not the same as violence.”

Did he in fact espouse violence though? I haven’t researched the subject but the impression I have via the reporting is that he didn’t. He espoused hierarchies, but that’s not the same thing. I know one can go all rhetorical and point out how (silently, passively) hierarchies are in fact violent, but it does matter what people actually say and what they don’t say.

Attiah wrote in a Monday blog post that “my commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.”

But her assertion that Kirk “espoused violence” may have been flagged by Post management.

Two Post staffers told CNN that management also took issue with Attiah misquoting a Kirk remark on affirmative action from 2023.

…

The Opinion department has been in turmoil for months, driven by Post owner Jeff Bezos and his desire to change the direction of the editorial board.

Bezos said in February that “we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Over the summer the Post hired a new Opinion editor, Adam O’Neal, who said he would reorient the department accordingly.

I notice some missing pillars. Equality, justice, compassion – the stuff that can sometimes get in the way of absolute “personal liberties.”

Trump speaks up for hatred.

Trump told a crowd of tens of thousands at a memorial for Charlie Kirk that he “hates” his opponents, despite Kirk’s widow saying she forgives the man charged with fatally shooting her husband.

The president gave the last of more than two dozen speeches at a public event that reflected on Kirk’s impact within the Make America Great Again movement. He said Kirk told a staff member he was not afraid of students who disagreed with him in the crowd at Utah Valley University. “I’m not here to fight them – I want them to know them and love them,” Trump quoted Kirk as saying.

But Trump said he felt differently to the rightwing activist, adding: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

And by “I’m sorry” of course he means sorry not sorry.

You gotta hand it to him, he is good at saying things in public that most adults with functioning brains know better than to say in public.

It sounds familiar…

Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh said she was injured Friday as a result of getting knocked to the ground by a U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement agent.

The incident took place during a demonstration outside of the Broadview ICE detention facility near Chicago. Abughazaleh, a Democrat seeking to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, posted a video on X, writing: “This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights.”

“This escalation isn’t surprising,” she said. “We shouldn’t be shocked that ICE agents that are allowed to operate outside the law operate outside the law. This should be a processing facility, meaning people should not be held there for more than 12 hours at a time, but they are being held there for days, even weeks.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to MSNBC, “These fame hungry, sanctuary politicians are so desperate for their 15-minutes of fame that they will go so far as to put our law enforcement at risk and obstruct justice.”

Except they’re not putting “our law enforcement” at risk, and they’re not obstructing justice. You on the other hand…

H/t Mostly Cloudy

The road to dictatorship:

Democrats on Sunday framed President Trump’s public demand that Attorney General Pam Bondi not “delay” in prosecutions of political enemies as a threat to American democracy.

I don’t think “framed” is the right word there. “Described” or “characterized” would be better. It’s not really all that controversial or debatable that a president leaning on an AG to prosecute people the president doesn’t like is not kosher. Is “not kosher” equivalent to “threat to democracy”? Good enough for government work, I’d say.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that Trump is turning the DOJ “into an instrument that goes after his enemies, whether they’re guilty or not” and “that helps his friends.”

Schumer warned, “This is the path to a dictatorship.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) framed the current moment “one of the most dangerous” the country has faced, saying on ABC’s “This Week,” “We are quickly turning into a banana republic.”

He’s not wrong. I wish we could say he’s wrong, but he’s not. Trump publicly telling the AG to go after his enemies is very banana. It wouldn’t be any better if he’d done it privately, but the fact that he did it publicly is a sign that norms and public opinion are not a deterrent. That’s scary. It’s all scary, and that’s scary too.

So is Pam Bondi willing to be another John Mitchell?

Trump is worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is moving too slowly to prosecute his political adversaries on fake charges. Trump has good reason to be concerned. He is carrying out his project to consolidate authoritarian power against the trend of declining public support for his administration and himself…

Autocracies are headed by one man but require the cooperation of many others. Some collaborators may sincerely share the autocrat’s goals, but opportunists provide a crucial margin of support. In the United States, such people now have to make a difficult calculation: Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?

As Bondi makes her daily decisions about whether to abuse her powers to please Trump, she has to begin with one big political assessment: Will Trump ultimately retain the power to reward and punish her? It’s not just about keeping her present job. On the one hand, people in Trump’s favor can make a lot of money from their proximity to power. On the other, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate.

Fingers crossed!

Shortly after MSNBC reported that Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, had accepted $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as businessmen last year, allegedly in exchange for a promise to help secure government contracts, the pro-Trump podcaster Megyn Kelly posted “We DO NOT CARE.” This kind of acquiescence to corruption has been one of Trump’s most important resources. But the American people become a lot less tolerant of corruption in their leaders when they feel themselves under economic pressure.

Well, that’s all very nice. The “border czar” takes bribes. Prominent journalists tells us we do not care. This “go right ahead, we don’t mind” approach is why we’re stuck with Trump. It starts to wobble only when it hits our own wallets. What lovely people we must be.

Trump has a shrewd instinct for survival. He must sense that if he does not act now to prevent free-and-fair elections in 2026, he will lose much of his power—and all of his impunity. That’s why he is squeezing Bondi. But for her, the thought process must be very different. Trump is hoping to offload culpability for his misconduct onto her. She’s the one most directly at risk if she gives orders later shown to be unethical or illegal.

The survival of American rights and liberties may now turn less on the question of whether Pam Bondi is a person of integrity—which we already know the dismal answer to—than whether she is willing to risk her career and maybe even her personal freedom for a president on his way to repudiation unless he can fully pervert the U.S. legal system and the 2026 elections.

It’s gonna be a bumpy 14 months.

Trump wants his Attorney General to do something, so he yells at her in public on his personal social media toy.

He’s stupid but he can’t be so extremely stupid that he thinks this is normal and president-like and not at all cringe-worthy. So why does he do it? I suppose it’s because he doesn’t care about being cringe-worthy because we can’t get rid of him so why should he? So the libs think he’s childish and embarrassing and idiotic, so what?

CNN:

President Donald Trump increased pressure on Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring criminal charges against several political foes, calling her out by name Saturday as he noted he had reviewed statements critical over what he says is a lack of action in the investigations. Just over an hour later, however, he expressed support for the nation’s top law enforcement official.

In his remarkable first post to social media Saturday, Trump essentially called on Bondi to use the power of the Justice Department more aggressively.

Remarkably flagrant and remarkably mindless. The combination of brutality and cluelessness is a weird thing to watch.

Trump went on to rail against former US Attorney Erik Siebert, who announced Friday he would step down after facing intense pressure from the president to charge James with mortgage fraud. CNN has previously reported that Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia believed they have not gathered enough evidence to indict James.

This is what you get when you have a shameless crook in the top job. He wants to harm Letitia James because she prosecuted him, and he demonstrates this desire in public, by browbeating his own Attorney General and his own former US Attorney. It’s all so dignified and not corrupt.