Trump thinks “executive privilege” is something like a guarantee of absolute monarchy – a magic holy term that empowers him to have take keep do say deny lie about whatever he wants. He thinks all he has to do is say the documents are covered by “executive privilege” and that’s the last word on the subject. In short he has a child’s idea of what being president means and what having been president means.

That’s why his exchanges with the National Archives were at cross-purposes.

The National Archives and Records Administration recovered more than 100 documents bearing classified markings, totaling more than 700 pages, from an initial batch of 15 boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, according to newly public government correspondence with the Trump legal team.

The numbers make clear the large volume of secret government documents recovered months ago from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, well before FBI officials returned there with a search warrant on Aug. 8 and removed an additional 11 sets of classified records. The warrant reveals an FBI investigation into the potential unlawful possession of the records as well as obstruction of justice.

In Trump’s tiny mind there can’t be such a thing as “unlawful possession” of documents from his Absolute Monarchy.

The figures on documents were included in a May 10 letter in which acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall told a lawyer for Trump, Evan Corcoran, that the Biden administration would not be honoring the former president’s protective claims of executive privilege over the documents.

Does not compute. They’re not “claims,” they’re Absolute Reality just as he was Absolute Ruler. He was the god-king so the papers from his god-kingship are protected by his godly kingyness. Executive privilege. Woman man person camera tv.

The archivist’s letter says the Justice Department had found “no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter” from obtaining from the National Archives presidential records that belong to the federal government and that are needed for current government business.

“Precedent”? What is this “precedent” of which you speak?

Once again the question arises: what about copies? Why isn’t the reporting explaining to us why there is so much agitation over The Documents with no mention of copies?

Anyway. Rolling Stone reports:

IN THE WEEKS after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement.

Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover “all” of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as “mine” — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.   

Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best.  “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,” says one Trump adviser. “That ship has probably sailed.”

But why is it implied that the documents are unique? Why wouldn’t Trump have multiple copies in multiple places? What are we missing? Is it that the originals have copy-proof Somethings that mean copies are essentially worthless? Or what?

Oh dear. That sounds way too much like “What is this drivel, throw it away and hand in the actual assignment by tomorrow or you get an F for the course.”

All the narcissism.

“Buckle up everybody it’s time to talk about my”

Stop right there.

Updating to add: It’s a parody.

“You can’t criticize or dispute ____, ____ is a mother’s child!”

The Daily Record rants:

The mum of a Scots transwoman who is competing in a women’s professional golf tournament has hit out at Judy Murray after she criticised her daughter’s place in the competition.

Why “the mum”? Why baby talk? Other people’s mothers aren’t “the mums,” they’re the mothers. We’re not all 6. Also why bother with a link for “mum”? Also stop saying “hit out at” when you mean “disagreed with” or “criticized.”

But the real point is, that’s not “her daughter,” it’s her son, which is why it’s not fair for him to be competing in a women’s tournament.

Hailey Davidson, from Stair in Ayrshire, became the first transgender woman to earn a Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour card and is currently taking part in the LPGA and Epson Tour Qualifying School in Palm Springs, America.

That is, Hailey Davidson is cheating a woman out of a place in the LPGA and Epson Tour Qualifying School in Palm Springs, America. It’s not cute.

Tennis coach Judy Murray branded the decision to allow the trans athlete to compete as ‘wrong’ and unfair on the other competitors.

Sharing a tweet about the golfer, the tennis coach wrote: “No. Not fair at all. Protect women’s sport. Listen to the facts, the scientists and the medics. This is wrong.”

As, of course, it is.

Sandra, who spoke to the Record from her home in Florida, where she lives with Hailey said: “Shame on Judy Murray for attacking another mother’s child.”

That’s idiotic. Every single human being is “another mother’s child.” Trump is a mother’s child. Putin is a mother’s child. Mass shooters are all mothers’ children. Torturers are mothers’ children. Even men who claim to be women are mothers’ children; that doesn’t mean we can’t say they’re wrong.

“You do not know my daughter Hailey and most importantly you know absolutely nothing about transgender men or women and therefore have no rights whatsoever to give your opinion on something you know nothing about.”

How does “Sandra” know what Judy Murray knows about trans people? Even if she does know, what right does she have to tell Murray not to talk about men in women’s sports?

None.

This is an interesting point – by claiming executive privilege he’s confessed.

Lawyers are laughing at Trump’s filing.

It might be tempting to scrutinize the filing as if it were a serious legal document, submitted in a credible way. That would be a mistake. Orin Kerr, a conservative law professor at UC Berkeley, noted overnight that many actual lawyers “are giggling at Trump’s motion, and how poorly it was done.”

Go on, just say it. Badly. The word is “badly.” There’s no need to soften it with “poorly.” Trump isn’t poor, he’s bad.

Among the many problems is the fact that it’s oddly late. The FBI executed its search warrant on Monday, Aug. 8. At that point, federal law enforcement officials reclaimed classified materials the former president brought to his glorified country club, taking stock of what he improperly took. Two weeks later, Trump’s lawyers went to court, apparently in the hopes that the FBI would stop reviewing the documents.

The FBI, with once voice: “Oops! Sorry! Our bad!”

The idea that the FBI’s search was “shockingly aggressive” is even more difficult to take seriously. The Justice Department tried a series of lesser means, including subpoenas and in-person meetings in the hope of avoiding this step. When Team Trump refused to cooperate, the FBI went to court, obtained a search warrant, and executed it in the least aggressive way possible: The bureau sent plain-clothed agents who coordinated in advance with the Secret Service.

I’m guessing that “shockingly aggressive” is trumpese for lèse-majesté. One doesn’t rifle the cupboards of the god-emperor.

The former president keeps calling it an illegal “break-in” and “raid,” hoping that the public will imagine swarms of agents in tactical gear, pointing assault weapons at scared Mar-a-Lago customers. That’s plainly absurd.

To adults it is. Trump aims everything toward people as childish in their thinking as he is. It turns out there are a hell of a lot of them.

Perhaps most entertaining was an accompanying written statement from Trump, which read in part, “This Mar-a-Lago Break-In, Search, and Seizure was illegal and unconstitutional, and we are taking all actions necessary to get the documents back, which we would have given to them without the necessity of the despicable raid of my home, so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the future Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.”

Would have given to them when? He’s only had a year and a half already. Also they’re not his to “give” to the National Archives, much less to grab back for his “library.”

That said, misguided court filings sometimes work, and in this instance, the case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump-appointed Federalist Society member, who was confirmed after Trump’s 2020 defeat, and who has a reputation as a far-right jurist.

Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum.

It never ceases to amaze me the way “inclusive” is for trans people but never ever for women. I still say I was never given the option to agree or disagree with the proposition “women are no longer an oppressed group in any way.”

See by giving customers a choice of male or female changing rooms they’re not being “an inclusive retailer,” because they’re excluding female people who don’t want to risk being spied on or assaulted while they try on a bra. It’s stupid and mindless to call it “inclusive” to give men carte blanche to do that.

What an interesting claim:

Regarding Julia Mason and Leor Sapir’s op-ed “The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Dubious Transgender Science” (Aug. 18): In its recommendations for caring for transgender and gender-diverse young people, the AAP advises pediatricians to offer developmentally appropriate care that is oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience. This care is nonjudgmental, includes families and allows questions and concerns to be raised in a supportive environment. This is what it means to “affirm” a child or teen; it means destigmatizing gender variance and promoting a child’s self-worth. Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.

That’s what “gender-affirming care” means? It doesn’t mean cutting off breasts or penises, or constructing new “front holes” or penises from bits of colon or chunks of arm?

Huh. That’s not how Boston Children’s Hospital uses it. Someone should let them know.

Law-mavens are following the Maralago adventures with keen interest. [Updating to add: the bit about not having a lawyer turns out to be a mistake. H/t Screechy]

Typical Trump, too – always with the overkill. It’s like that hideous gilded apartment in Trump Tower.

The NY Times on Trump’s lavish archive of classified documents:

The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald J. Trump in January included more than 150 marked as classified, a number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led F.B.I. agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month seeking to recover more, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

There are levels here. He wasn’t supposed to have any documents: they were never his to keep. Multiply that by a very big number for classified documents. Multiply again for the huge number of them.

In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, the people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump’s aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.

More than 300 separate crimes.

The previously unreported volume of the sensitive material found in the former president’s possession in January helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently to hunt down any further classified materials he might have.

And all this is happening, let’s not forget, at a hotel. A place with hundreds of people wandering around at all times. Trump stole hundreds of classified documents and kept them at his hotel.

Mr. Trump’s allies insist that the president had a “standing order” to declassify material that left the Oval Office for the White House residence, and have claimed that the General Services Administration, not Mr. Trump’s staff, packed the boxes with the documents.

Why would that make it ok? Trump’s saying “declassify all this stuff, I’m taking it home” doesn’t change the nature of the stuff.

The Society of Authors has advice for us.

A lot of authors I follow are annoyed by the condescension of “play nicely.” I read some of the thing we were told to have a peep at, and was struck by a certain omission.

The Society of Authors is committed to promoting professional behaviour throughout all its activities, and to tackling and preventing bullying, harassment and racism in all their forms.

Why racism only? Why not sexism? (There are others, too – classism, xenophobia, etc – but women are half of everyone, so we’re a particularly big item to ignore.)

Bullying, harassment and racism have no place on our premises, in our communications, or in any other environment in which we operate.

But sexism does have a place there?

Our approach

We condemn any kind of racist, hate or unprofessional speech.

Again – why specify racism and leave all the other kinds of hate speech unspecified? In particular why leave the one that targets half the population unspecified?

I asked them but I don’t suppose they’ll answer.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Steve’s nails.

Does Steve think that the only way to rebel against gender stereotypes is to pretend that sex isn’t binary? Does Steve not understand that gender stereotypes aren’t the same as biological sexes? Does Steve think it’s impossible for him to wear nail polish if males and females are in any way different sexes? Does Steve think that by declaring himself neither male nor female he’s on the path to convincing us all that male and female literally don’t exist? Or is it not a matter of whether sex differences do or don’t exist, but whether they should or shoudn’t exist?

None of this makes any sense for more than a second or two. One goes from “ok, nonbinary is like gender bending” — fine so far I guess — but then one sees “oh, wait, they’re saying they’re neither male nor female because they’re gender bending” and after about two seconds of thought, the whole thing just turns into a self-contradictory jumble that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

That this Travis person can write an entire book without putting so much as two seconds of thought into what he’s talking about is such an incredible level of narcissism, in the words of Ron Burgundy, I’m not even mad; that’s amazing.

Brendan on the narcissism of I don’t even have to say whose narcissism it is.

In his new book None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary, nonbinary writer Travis Alabanza cites this dilemma [to paint the nails or not to paint the nails] as proof of the ‘oppression [of] the gender binary’. He introduces us to Steve, a man who had ‘wanted to paint his nails for years’. But he didn’t because, like the rest of us cis squares, he’d been conditioned into ‘upholding the gender binary’ which says men don’t do that.

But then he saw Alabanza on stage and was EmPowered to paint those mofos.

Alabanza is moved by this brave strike against the forces of oppression. ‘My urge was to hug him’, he writes. Free at last! Thank God Almighty, free at last!

It’s almost too ridiculous for words. There’s page after page in this memoir-cum-nonbinary-treatise about Steve and his nails. Alabanza refers to the ‘trials’ of Steve, to Steve’s ‘oppression from the gender binary’. Turning the histrionics up to 11, he says he found himself ‘mourning Steve’s lost time’. Just to remind you: Steve wasn’t dead or in jail or under house arrest; he just didn’t paint his nails.

It is of course the case that we’re all limited in what we can do by a billion conventions, and that can be more or less sad, limiting, frustrating, and so on. But, as Brendan hints so subtly, there is a limit. It’s not all that sad, for the most part. The Steves of the world could surely wear nail polish for the weekend, for instance, and then remove it if they didn’t want to be giggled at on the job.

The story of Steve’s oppressed unpainted fingernails is only one mad example of gender-binary ‘oppression’ in Alabanza’s book. There’s also the tragic tale of Alabanza feeling he cannot go out in public dressed as a witch.

He can though, but people might laugh at him. Now if he did it in for instance Nigeria he could get himself killed, but Alabanza isn’t talking about Nigeria. He’s talking about getting laughed at.

Alabanza says in his book that the reason he couldn’t go into the ‘male changing rooms’ is because it would be an ‘unsafe place to change’. The men in there would pose a threat to him; he would be ‘at risk from harassment’. So the solution is to make all spaces ‘gender-neutral’ and allow those same men you fear to go anywhere they like, including into the girls’ changing room? The arrogance of this position, the narcissism of it, is astonishing.

But all too typical.

Idiots.

Notice anything missing? Of course: what’s always missing.

It’s not our bodily autonomy, i.e. everyone’s. It’s specifically women’s bodily autonomy. Women are not allowed to be entirely free because women have the responsibility of making the new humans. It is women who are dominated and pushed around by laws against abortion, and it’s yet another insult to women when political campaigns pretend it’s all of us.

The whole post by MoveOn which doesn’t mention women once:

The GOP thought they could strip away our bodily autonomy without facing any consequences. But the recent election in Kansas, one of the country’s most conservative states, proved them WRONG.

The anti-abortion measure on the ballot was defeated in every congressional district in the state. Even in the most conservative districts, people of all political stripes turned out to support abortion. And, crucially, the election’s turnout—which was expected to be relatively low—went through the roof.

Do you know what that means? We can turn the midterm elections this November into a referendum on abortion rights, and we can WIN.

MoveOn wants to get the message out for this fall that we’re going to Roe the Vote and make sure there’s a public, visible movement nationwide to ensure the fight over abortion access is front-and-center for voters.

We’ve just printed a big batch of these stickers and are giving them away for free, while supplies last. Click and order your sticker now while supplies last to proudly display your support for abortion rights and remind those in power that we, the people, hold the real power in this country—and we demand reproductive freedom.

We, the women, demand that you say “women” when you talk about abortion rights.

Let’s insult women some more.

“Hannah” Mouncey is an enormous man. The one woman on this panel is a friend of Mouncey’s.

Putin is aggrieved.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has sent his condolences to the family of Darya Dugina, describing the daughter of the ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin as a “patriot of Russia”.

In a statement published on the Kremlin website, the Russian leader described Dugina’s killing as a “despicable, cruel crime”.

No doubt it was, but what does Putin suppose it was when he launched a war? Was it not a despicable, cruel crime to kill all these Ukrainians?

Trump is insulting his own creatures again.

Donald Trump launched a new line of attack against Mitch McConnell over the weekend, calling the Republican Senate minority leader a “broken down hack politician” for what he believes is a lack of support for the GOP’s 2022 midterm candidates.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump also insulted McConnell’s wife, former Trump administration official Elaine Chao, calling her “crazy.”

So why did he lean so heavily on both of them for such a long time?

“Why do Republican Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates for the United States Senate?” Trump wrote on his social media platform Saturday. “This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”

An affront to honor – where’d he get that? And if Chao is crazy and corrupt why did Trump make her Secretary of Transportation?

I guess UNICEF is a terf.

Ensuring no child is excluded on the basis of gender is a priority identified in UNICEF’s new Education Strategy. To reach this goal, a commitment to strong intersectoral work is paramount. To understand what this means in practice, this blog outlines how Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) plays a significant role in girls’ access to education and could help unlock the future for millions of girls around the world.

WASH is fundamental for girls’ education

Every child – including every girl – has the right to a quality education, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child 30 years ago…

For girls, appropriate WASH facilities are a particularly important part of ensuring their safe and healthy participation in school. WASH facilities have both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors for girls’ education. Girls can struggle to attend and stay in school if they do not have safe, single-sex and hygienic facilities, which are essential for menstrual hygiene management (MHM). Although there is still little evidence, reports have recognised that ‘the introduction of appropriate water and sanitation facilities has been associated with improved girls’ attendance.’ In addition, WaterAid notes that ‘girls are particularly at risk of sexual violence when using unsafe facilities at school.’ Indeed, girls in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp in Bangladesh have reported feeling fearful in accessing latrines, and UNHCR notes that ‘young girls/children and women who walk long distances to water points are at risk of sexual violence.’

…

In 2015, the world committed to achieving gender parity in education and to build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all with Sustainable Development Goal 4. Approaching this via WASH might seem like a circuitous route. But, in fact, supporting access to safe, hygienic WASH facilities in fragile states is an important step in the road to achieving education for all girls.

Huh. Girls. Who knew?

One of these again.

It really doesn’t take that much thought to see the problem. The authors of this harangue can’t have made any effort at all.

What about the privacy of the person – let’s say, just to pick one at random, the woman – who “feels like” the man she sees in the women’s toilet is in the wrong toilet? Why doesn’t her privacy matter at least as much as his? Why is he in the women’s toilet? Why can’t he use the men’s? Why is it her job to respect his privacy but not his job to respect hers? Why is it her job to protect him from harm when he could be there to do harm to her? Why does anyone have to respect anyone’s “identity” when that’s a matter of respecting a fantasy “identity” that differs from the obvious physical real-world one? And above all, she is using the facilities she feels safe in, and the man is taking that away from her by using them himself – so why is she the one admonished that the man is using the facilities he feels safe in?

I can’t believe this stupid poster hasn’t been laughed out of existence yet.