Another bad road we’re going down – the old False Accusation to Justify Authoritarian Moves ploy.

After New York City comptroller Brad Lander this week became the latest prominent Democrat to be arrested while monitoring and protesting US immigration authorities, the Trump administration trotted out a familiar refrain to justify his detention.

The mayoral candidate had “assaulted” law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted, warning “if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences”.

The accusation, which DHS has also recently leveled against a member of Congress and a high-profile union leader, have sparked consternation, particularly as videos of the incidents did not show the officials attacking officers and instead captured officers’ aggressive behavior and manhandling of the officials.

It’s what they do, because of course it is. Just make shit up to justify the arrests, the beatings, the totalitarian rule.

In several cases, DHS’s public accusations of assault were not followed by criminal charges. Civil rights advocates and scholars on policing say the government’s assault claims against well-known members of the opposing party, and the repetition of those accusations, nonetheless are troubling indicators of rising authoritarianism.

Well of course they are! It’s what authoritarians do.

Lander was arrested by federal agents inside an immigration court building on Tuesday, as he asked officers whether they had a judicial warrant to detain an immigrant he was accompanying. He was released after four hours, and so far, no charges have been filed against him.

Video of the encounter shows plainclothes officers, some in masks, pinning Lander to a wall, handcuffing him and escorting him away. Lander had held on to the arm of the immigrant who was being targeted.

Still, DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to the press and on social media soon after the incident that it was Lander who had assaulted officers.

Despite the existence of video that shows him not assaulting officers. It’s one of those rare occasions when one can demonstrate a negative: “Look, here’s the footage, of Lander not assaulting officers.”

In a statement to the Guardian on Thursday, McLaughlin said Democratic politicians were “contributing to the surge in assaults of our Ice officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of Ice”, adding: “This violence against ICE must end.”

Ah that’s the ploy is it? Pretending dissent is violence? If that’s how that works then Trump is a mass murderer. Trump dissents from every norm we have.

Lauren Regan, an Oregon-based civil rights lawyer who has represented activists facing prosecution, said she saw arresting elected officials as part of an “authoritarian playbook” designed to make people widely afraid that they, too, could be targeted, regardless of their backgrounds.

“You keep it chaotic and random so no one thinks they’re safe,” said Regan. “When elected officials with privilege, power, education and training get thrown to the ground and cuffed or jailed, then what is going to happen to us? Everyone is at risk.”

…

Indeed, since the recent protests against immigration raids began in LA, hundreds of demonstrators in southern California have been arrested by local police. Federal prosecutors have formally charged a handful of them assaulting officers – though soon after moved to dismiss two of the first cases they filed.

In an incident of two protesters arrested at a 7 June demonstration, a video of the chaotic scuffle showed one of the protesters being shoved by an agent just before the arrests, and officers taking both protesters to the ground. US prosecutors charged both men with assaulting officers, but filed a motion to dismiss the charges a week later after one of them told the Guardian he had not attacked the agents, and was himself severely injured in the confrontation.

…

Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit, said that the government’s repeated misinformation about violence against officers risks backfiring: “Officers do at times get assaulted, but if agencies continue to make patently false claims and suggest that any physical contact is an assault, you’re going to undermine legitimate cases.”

He said he was also concerned about the impacts of officers using heavy force in arrests that don’t require it: “Three or four agents tackling a US senator clearly isn’t necessary. That kind of force compels resistance. It’s hard to let yourself be violently attacked without your natural reaction of trying to defend yourself, and then if officers say that’s assault, that undermines public trust.”

I think they want to undermine public trust. They want to amp up the us v them atmosphere as much as they can. It’s one of the steps.

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Fans on a walk.

As Richard Dawkins said about religion “You’re only a Christian because you were born in America. Had you been born in Israel you’d be a Jew, in India a Hindu or in Iran, a Muslim”

When you only know your country as a theocracy, you grow to think theocracy is normal, just as Brits accept an expensive monarchy and Americans a dysfunctional electoral system.

Iran is only a theocracy because the British feared losing their oil fields when Iran’s nascent democracy proposed nationalisation of its resources. Britain, aided by the USA, overthrew the Iranian attempt at democracy and reimposed the brutal Palavi family. That the only way Iranians could rid themselves of the brutal police state Iran had become was to support an Islamic revolution is totally the fault of the UK and USA. I doubt the Iranians who supported the revolution realised that they would replace one form of repression with another.

Since the war with Iraq, Iran has kept within its borders, has not attacked its neighbours. Israel alone is responsible for the current situation, aided and abetted, as usual, by the USA. Iraq didn’t attack Israel, but is now forced to defend itself, just like Ukraine, but with less help from the rest of the world.

Netanyahu is a war criminal who is doing anything he can to cling to power, because just like Trump, as long as he is in government he is immune from prosecution.

As for “The far right side of history”, that again is Israel and USA.

I hold no brief for Iran or Islam, but I can understand how the one is the unifying force for the other when it seems the whole world is against you.

The only light that may come from the death and destruction in Iran could be the self destruction of MAGA and the GOP returning to actual policy. So, just as Palestinians were robbed of land, homes, and businesses to assuage European guilt, so must Iranians pay for America’s failings.

“Oh but you mustn’t talk about that” – they say, about the very things we have to talk about.

Horrible women-hating coercive demanding religions for instance. Which religion does that conjure up? Shhhhhhhhhh – it doesn’t do to say so.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has been accused of conducting secretive talks to establish a government-wide definition of Islamophobia that critics say could hamper discussions about grooming gangs.

Don’t. We’re allowed to hate religions. Islam is a harsh system of control of humans, triply harsh toward women and not too fond of atheists or Jews. We’re allowed to criticize it and we’re allowed to resist it.

The MP has established a working group to develop the definition, but Conservative frontbencher Claire Coutinho has raised concerns about the lack of transparency in the process.

Coutinho has written to Rayner accusing her of conducting the work in secret, without allowing the public to contribute their views through a consultation period.

The shadow equalities minister warned that a “culture of secrecy around matters relating to race and religion” was a key factor that had previously enabled “gangs of men to groom, rape, and torture young girls with impunity”.

It’s probably not a coincidence that those men were of a religion that despises female people, calling them whores and sluts if they let a bit of hair show. If you teach men to hate women you’re going to end up with men who hate women.

She told The Telegraph: “The Casey report was crystal clear. For years, people were too scared to tell the truth about the rape and torture of children because they were scared of being called racist. Yet Labour is doubling down – pushing a secretive process including the voices of activists who have promoted extreme definitions of Islamophobia that would prevent people discussing genuine concerns around extremism and integration.”

Islam hates us; we get to hate Islam.

Theocracy: right side of history or no?

Victoria Smith starts with a wry joke.

My youngest son has audio versions of all of the Harry Potter books. Given the public pronouncements of a certain artist, I’ve started to find this problematic. True, one can separate the art from the creator, but sometimes the latter’s hateful beliefs infect the former. This is the case when actor Stephen Fry reads the works of brilliant, principled writer J.K. Rowling.

Gotcha! It’s not JKR who is “problematic”; it’s the Problematic-sniffing Policers of Discourse who are problemyish.

There’s something in the way he voices each female character, from Hermoine Grainger to Dolores Umbridge, which reeks of misogyny. The way to sound like a woman, in Fry’s view, is to make yourself high-pitched, whiny and annoying, no matter what you have to say. I haven’t banned my son from listening because the books are still wonderful. Nonetheless, every time I hear Fry holding forth, I’m reminded of Liz Lochhead’s poem “Men Talk”: “Women prattle / Women waffle and wiffle / Men talk.”

And that goes double triple a millionle for Stephen Fry – he’s got that lofty Oxbridge, from a great height accent and tone down cold. To put it more crisply, he talks posh. It’s a weapon, and he’s not ashamed to use it.

And if women are going to keep talking, it seems that the least they can do is shut up about serious issues such as their own existence in law. Fry has become the latest self-appointed man of reason to express dismay at Rowling’s involvement in current debates around sex and gender. Speaking to The Show People podcast, Fry, a man who once told sexual abuse victims to “grow up” and stop being so “self-pitying”, believes that Rowling, a woman who uses her own money to help such victims, has become “cruel” and “mocking”. Then again, he suggests, perhaps she can’t help it.

Where’s his equivalent of Beira’s Place?

The New Republic underlines the obvious, which is that Trump will say anything and do anything to get his way and we can’t stop him unless we stop him, which we’re obviously not doing.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump scored a temporary victory after an appeals court ruled that he can continue deploying the National Guard as part of his watch-me-play-fascist-on-TV response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. The decision accepted Trump’s premise that conditions in L.A. permit him to take control of the guard—but it rejected his claim that such decisions should be entirely unreviewable by courts.

That latter part of the ruling is important. It’s potentially something of an obstacle to his ongoing effort to assume quasi-dictatorial powers for himself—for now, anyway.

Golly, what a robust firewall against dictatorship, right? It’s maybe possibly a sort of kind of little bit of an obstacle to full-on wearefucked.

Trump seized on this mixed ruling to threaten to send in the National Guard anywhere in the United States if and when he decrees it “necessary.” The scare quotes are mine, because on many fronts, Trump is testing how far he can get by inventing ways to claim such actions are “necessary,” a power he and his advisers see as boundless.

Ya think???

Of course he fucking is. He said he would, he is, we can all see he is. None of this is what you’d call subtle or ambiguous.

All of which highlights a deeper conundrum here: What can the courts—and the rest of us—do in the face of a president whose bad faith and willingness to concoct pretexts for abusing his powers basically have no bottom?

NOTHING. WE ARE SCREWED. What we’re seeing is exactly what it looks like and not some other surprising escape hatch.

Oliver Brown on Simone Biles and her show of contempt for women:

For Biles, the provocation, if you could call it that, was Gaines’ highlighting of the fact that a Minnesota girls’ softball team won a state title this month despite their dominant pitcher being male. “Your star player is a boy,” she said, prompting Biles, until that point a mute figure in the ferocious battle to compel sports to respect the reality of sex, to go off the deep end.

“You’re truly sick,” she raged at Gaines, who was infamously denied a United States collegiate trophy in 2022 by transgender opponent Lia Thomas. “Straight-up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive, or creating a new avenue where trans [people] feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category in all sports. But instead, you bully them. One thing is for sure: no one in sports is safe with you around.”

…

It is a parable for our times, in many ways, where those preaching about kindness often reveal themselves as the least kind of all. For Biles, desperate to be seen as an ally of the trans community, going after Gaines was the logical extension of her activism, which has involved frequent promotions of LGBT Pride Month. Except the move has backfired horribly, with Biles’ stock falling faster than that of Bud Light, which lost its place in 2023 as America’s best-selling beer after a tone-deaf partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

I have to wonder why Biles is desperate to be seen as an ally of the trans communniny. I have to wonder why anyone is, but especially people who are already seen as, shall we say, good at their jobs.

Biles has not responded to the comments [of critics of her outburst], although she has offered a carefully-scripted apology to Gaines, acknowledging: “It didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley.” She explained: “These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers to or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect.”

Empathy and respect for whom?

What about empathy and respect for the girls and women cheated out of opportunities and wins by boys and men who pretend to be girls and women? What about them?

Biles’ mistake was to put the projection of virtue before even a fleeting consideration of fairness. 

It’s pretty much everyone’s mistake, among the trans-huggers. They all put the projection of [a grotesque parody of] virtue before fairness. They can’t do otherwise, because you can’t defend men invading and ruining women’s sports without putting fake virtue ahead of fairness.

None of her astounding distinctions – the 11 Olympic medals, the 30 world championship medals, 23 of them gold – would have been possible without the existence of the female category. 

But she’s got them now, so she can safely lean on other female gymnasts to “be kind.”

Originally a comment by Arcadia on Stephen Fry is a rat.

This bit is the bit that genuinely infuriates me:

‘Sir Stephen said: “She has been radicalised, I fear, and it may be she has been radicalised by terfs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her. It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her, I am afraid. I am not saying that she [should] not be called out when she says things that are really cruel, wrong and mocking. She seems to be a lost cause for us.”’

This double standard. This quote makes clear he knows full well what Rowling has been subjected to, and he knows it constitutes harassment. The only concession he makes to deeming this bad behaviour is that he calls it “unhelpful”, but otherwise, he is blaming Rowling for failing to take this harassment and abuse well. He is expecting that, if she were nice, she would have overlooked it all, and backed down. He requires that of her to count as kind, in his estimation, while requiring no such thing of the vitriol flingers and public pissers. In fact, he excuses them so much, he still says Rowling should be “called out when she says things that are really cruel, wrong and mocking”.

There is apparently no limit to the amount of abuse he requires her to take in good humour, and she absolutely must not learn any lessons like “these are abusive men, subjecting me to abuse, and that justifies my position rather than undermining it”. Likewise, there is apparently nothing Fry won’t excuse from the trans activists, given the worst he’ll describe their behaviour as is “unhelpful”. A ten year old who won’t put their plate in the sink is unhelpful. A man threatening the beheading of women’s rights campaigners is hardly in the same league.

His behaviour and reasoning is frankly outrageous.

Laura Webster, the editor of a newspaper called The National is annoyed that JK Rowling called the paper “anti-woman.”

She made this claim because we ran an article, and have run many articles previously, describing groups like Sex Matters as “anti-trans”.

I would like to take the opportunity to defend this newspaper against Rowling’s frankly ridiculous description, and explain why “anti-trans” is indeed suitable language for these activists. 

In the social copy for the article, we stated: “An anti-trans campaign group is threatening further legal action against the Scottish Government, saying ministers are failing to implement the recent Supreme Court judgment on biological sex in equalities law.”

On Wednesday night, Rowling tweeted: “For Women Scotland is a feminist campaigning group. You appear to be an anti-woman newspaper.”

Rowling was right. It’s not “anti-trans” to resist the wholesale attack on women’s rights that’s going on under the banner of tranzzz inclooosion. We despise the ideology and the rhetoric and the endless relentless remorseless bullying of women.

First of all, let’s take on the argument that describing Sex Matters as “anti-trans” is unfair, pejorative language. Rowling says it is simply a “feminist campaigning group”. Is that the case? 

Sex Matters is an organisation which spends most of its time trying to keep trans women out of all women’s spaces.

Yes, because they are men. You are a person who thinks men get to invade women’s spaces as long as they call themselves “trans women.” We disagree.

Vance is going to Los Angeles to rub their noses in it.

The vice-president will meet with law enforcement and military leadership deployed by Donald Trump in the city to help control violent protests.

“Vice-president JD Vance will travel to Los Angeles, California, where he will tour a multi-agency federal joint operations centre, a federal mobile command centre, meet with leadership and Marines, and deliver brief remarks,” according to a readout.

The visit risks inflaming the already tense relationship between Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor, and the White House.

It doesn’t so much risk inflaming it as make a point of inflaming it.

An appeals court on Thursday allowed Mr Trump to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed to Los Angeles.

The decision halts a ruling from a lower court judge who found Mr Trump acted illegally when he mobilised the soldiers despite opposition from Mr Newsom.

The court said that while presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for doing so and that Mr Newsom had no power to veto the president’s order.

That’s not good news. He’ll be doing it at every opportunity now.

This is such a key point for the resistance to trans ideology and blurghy thinking generally.

“Hallmark soundtrack” is an excellent label for it.

I hate it, not in a calm all in the head way but viscerally – I hate slushy elevated pompous look at me wording the way I hate fat buzzing flies anywhere near me, or noisy crowded shouty spaces, or cigarette smoke. I hate self-conscious posturing look at me writing. I hate the substitution of manipulative drool for actual arguments and reasons. And of course trans ideology is riddled with it, for the obvious reason that it has nothing else.

Beware the Hallmark Effect.

Extras for everyone except women. Women are the privileged class you know. Bitches and Karens all of them.

An amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would introduce tougher sentences for hate crimes committed against LGBT people and people with disabilities is being backed by East Thanet MP Polly Billington.

The new law, if passed by MPs, would make serious crimes motivated by prejudice against anyone because of their disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity “aggravated” offenses – as is currently the case for hate crimes motivated by race or religion. Aggravated offenses carry tougher sentences for perpetrators.

Got that?

Disability, sexual orientation, genner idenniny, race, religion.

But not sex. No extras for women: women don’t need extras and women don’t deserve extras. Women are privileged and women are bad.

Is that clear?

Originally a comment by iknklast on Break everything.

As for how [anti-vaxxers] can live with themselves, they are sure they are doing the opposite of killing people. They believe they are saving people. (I don’t think that’s the case with Trump; I think he doesn’t think at all, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.)

I met a lot of anti-vaxxers in the years I was part of the environmental science program in my doctoral program. For the most part, they were the youngsters, those born after we managed to solve so many problems of diseases. They had been raised on a media drumbeat of the evils of big Pharma, big Medicine, and science denialism, but they didn’t believe it was science denialism. They don’t remember what it was like to have half the class out with the measles, mumps, or other diseases, and the risk that came from these diseases. They grew up in a world where the diseases were not manifest in large numbers. If people are so healthy, why do we need vaccines?

A frightening number of students in the science program were anti-science based policies. It was even worse in the environmental philosophy program, with which I was required to engage for two graduate level classes. They outright believed all science was evil. They believed science was in the clutches of ‘big’ everything. They were woke before there was ‘woke’. They had avoided all science classes, and gave us (the scientists required to engage with philosophy) regular renditions of what exactly science said and did – and they were never right. They stuck by their beliefs even in the face of half the class being scientists who were capable of correcting their mistaken beliefs.

I think at the time I underestimated the numbers of science deniers in the program, because our program tended toward older. Most of the students were Baby Boomers who grew up with diseases and new the benefits of vaccines and other scientific advances. The only one of the older students who had any anti-science beliefs was actually a devout Catholic who believed that abortion was bad for women and society. He wasn’t anti-vax, though.

Kennedy has been awash in the environmental movement for some time. To most people, environmental movement and environmental science are synonymous, so they don’t realize that people like Kennedy have been associated with anti-scientific people who don’t know what the science says, don’t like it anyway, and are determined to bring ‘purity’ back to the Earth.

I don’t know if these groups and individuals shaped his beliefs, or if he helped shape theirs. I suspect more than anything they were all the result of multiple anti-science sources that sound more appealing to them than the rigorous science practiced by the environmental scientists.

Science is hard work. I suspect Kennedy is lazy, at least intellectually. A lot of the students who passed through my classes were intellectually lazy, and felt the science was too hard to understand. It was common practice for them to dismiss the actual science because the articles were filled with graphs and charts and large, unfamiliar words.

There is also the ubiquitous and ill-informed worship of the ‘natural’. Yes, natural can be good. It can be very good. But arsenic is natural. Rattlesnakes are natural. Earthquakes are natural. All of them can kill you. Meanwhile, Pepsi isn’t natural, and while it might kill you if you drank too much of it, a glass of Pepsi is not going to affect you in the same way that a glass of arsenic would.

Vaccines don’t seem ‘natural’. They seem to a lot of people like ‘playing God’. They are ‘chemicals’. (One of the first things I told my students, often the first day of class, is that everything is chemicals. Water is chemicals. Food is chemicals, no matter how ‘natural’. We are chemicals.) Hatred of ‘chemicals’ is also intellectually lazy thinking. There are chemicals that harm us, and chemicals that are essential to maintain our health. Some fall in both categories, depending on dosage or interactions. It can be hard work to sort that out.

The BBC does a surprisingly good job of letting Martina Navratilova state her views on trans ideology without interrupting to throw rocks at her. The article is about her views on Trump (briefly: not what she emigrated to the US for).

There is, however, one extremely divisive subject on which she has previously said she agrees with President Trump – transgender women’s participation in sport. Navratilova is firm in her belief that the inclusion of trans women in women’s tennis is “wrong”.

She says she doesn’t agree with current World Tennis Association (WTA) rules, which state transgender women can participate in women’s games if they provide a written and signed declaration that they are female or non-binary, that their testosterone levels have been below a certain limit for two years, and that they sustain those levels of testosterone.

She says she feels trans women have biological advantages in women’s sports – a belief that is hotly debated.

“There should be no ostracism, there should be no bullying,” she says, “but male bodies need to play in male sports. They can still compete. There is no ban on transwomen in sports. They just need to compete in the proper category which is the male category. It’s that simple.” She adds: “By including male bodies in the women’s tournament, now somebody is not getting into the tournament – a woman is not getting into the tournament because now a male has taken her place.”

In December last year, Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association changed its rules, meaning transgender women can no longer play in some female domestic tennis tournaments. And in April, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Asked if she felt tennis should follow the lead of the UK court, she says: “100%”

Pushed on whether we should “spend a bit more time being sympathetic to” trans people, Navratilova replies: “Very sympathetic – but that still doesn’t give them a right to women’s sex-based spaces.”

It’s not perfect, certainly. It’s absurd to say she “feels” that men (what the Beeb calls “trans women”) have biological advantages in women’s sports, and that that’s “a belief that is hotly debated.” It’s hotly debated by fools; it’s something that everyone knows. Human sexual dimorphism is a fact; the belief is that it’s not. So, not perfect, but perhaps a step on the road to honest reporting.

It’s so very blatant. Instead of saying the true thing, say this manipulative lie.

I especially like the ones where they just delete “women” and substitute something completely different. Yes we know, thanks for documenting.

If you’re a sleb you have to stand up in public and tell abusive lies about JK Rowling or you won’t be a luvvie any more. Stephen Fry energetically complies.

Speaking on the Show People podcast, Sir Stephen said: “She has been radicalised, I fear, and it may be she has been radicalised by terfs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her. It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her, I am afraid. I am not saying that she [should] not be called out when she says things that are really cruel, wrong and mocking. She seems to be a lost cause for us.”

Yo, Sir Stephen, take a look at the things trans “activists” say about women, then get back to us about anything JKR has ever said that comes within shouting distance. Take all the time you need provided you shut up while you search.

Sir Stephen is the latest high-profile figure to criticise the author, following well-documented fall-outs with original cast members Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

No, not fall-outs, you lying weasels. Backstabs by Radcliffe Watson and Grint.

“She started to make these peculiar statements and had very strong, difficult views,” he continued. “She seemed to wake up or kick a hornet’s nest of transphobia, which has been entirely destructive. I disagree profoundly with her on this subject. I am angry she does not disavow some of the more revolting and truly horrible, destructive, violently destructive things that people say. She does not attack those at all.”

Yo, Mister Sir, are you at all angry about the revolting truly horrible, destructive, violently destructive things that the pro-trans ideology faction says about and to her?

He said he was “very happy” to go on the record and say he was “really angry” about Rowling’s “crowing” of the gender ruling in court.

Happy to go on the record being really angry that women have rights?

Horrible man.

Cool cool. Something for women for a change.

We are delighted to launch the first West Cheshire Women in Leadership programme, in partnership with women leaders at Chester Racecourse, Cheshire West and Chester Council, the Countess of Chester Hospital, Lloyds Banking Group and the University of Chester.

The programme grew out of a panel discussion at the 2024 Storyhouse Women festival, entitled The Future of Chester is Female. With so many of Chester’s key organisations now run by women, we asked ourselves ‘how can we use this to benefit other women?’

That question led to the development of this programme. We are not representative of all women, but we have come together to share our lived experience with others, to support and inspire more women to gain confidence around leadership.

We hope you decide to join us.

Sounds good.

Vision:

To make West Cheshire a place where women leadership can thrive.

Aims:

• To provide support to women to increase the number in leadership positions
• To recognise and share the characteristics and principles of leadership demonstrated by women
• To strengthen the quality and diversity of leadership in the public, private and voluntary sectors across West Cheshire

Good, good.

Who is it for?

Women (including trans women or anyone identifying as non-binary) working in the public, private or voluntary sector…

Oh.

Not for women after all.

Don’t call it “for women” when it’s not.

Source: Jonny Best

Rolling Stone on The Ugly:

Among the weighty roles and responsibilities placed on the American president’s shoulders, the least controversial is the practice of calling other politicians, in the face of personal or public tragedy, to make sure that they have everything they need. If a president wants to go above and beyond that lowest of bars, they offer condolences, and act like a human instead of a partisan hack. 

This week, after a spree shooter killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman [and] her husband, and severely injured state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, President Donald Trump hasn’t bothered to pick up the phone to speak with Minnesota’s head of state. 

…

By Tuesday morning, it appeared the president was not just committed to giving Walz the silent treatment, but to openly spurning the governor, who ran against him and J.D. Vance as the vice presidential candidate on the 2024 Democratic ticket

Speaking to reporters Tuesday on Air Force One, Trump stated that he had no interest in calling the former vice presidential candidate. “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling,” Trump said. “The guy doesn’t have a clue, he’s a mess… so, you know, I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?”

This wasn’t a one-off moment of being loose-lipped with reporters. A source with direct knowledge of the matter says that Trump has been relentlessly trash-talking the Minnesota governor behind the scenes since the horrific news broke. “He’s not letting up,” the source said.

The guy is wired wrong. Very very very wrong.

This is disgusting. You have to lean in to hear what he says – and what he says is nausea-inducing.

Days after a Minnesota state lawmaker was killed and another was injured in a “politically motivated assassination,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would not call the state’s governor, eschewing a traditional presidential response to tragedies.

“Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue,” Trump said, referring to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who was the vice presidential contender facing off against Trump’s ticket last year. “He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”

He does actually say that.

The Associated Press is staffed by teenagers.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a stunning setback to transgender rights.

Stunning shmunning. There is no “right” to be mutilated or prescribed harmful drugs or both. The whole idea of “gender-affirming care” is both absurd and malign.

Imagine if people started claiming to idennify as trees, and doctors rushed to provide transarborial rights. Yes, certainly, we will encase you in bark and replace your head with foliage, and behold, you are affirmed as a tree.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the law does not violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

“This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,” Roberts wrote. “The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.”

I wish the goddam liberal majority agreed.

In a dissent for the court’s three liberal justices that she summarized aloud in the courtroom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.”

Newsflash: the ludicrous notion that people’s sex is all in their heads and can contradict their bodies is a political whim. It’s the whimmiest whim that ever whimmed.

The decision comes amid other federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. 

Snide misogynist bullshit. It’s not a matter of “regulating the lives” of trans people, it’s a matter of preventing male people from grabbing everything that belongs to women and girls.

In April, Trump’s administration sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls sports.

Male athletes you craven callous shitheads.