Just four months in and already they’re going for military takeover.

US national guard troops began to deploy in downtown Los Angeles after an immigration crackdown saw police use teargas on protesters in a move that has sent shockwaves though American politics.

Local television station ABC7 reported that national guard troops had started to arrive in downtown Los Angeles. It broadcast video of military trucks and troops with the helmeted soldiers wearing green camouflage uniforms, carrying assault rifles and handing out riot shields.

The troops paused at City Hall and drove through the Paramount neighborhood where protests had happened. The initial deployment represented about 300 troops at three different locations out of a total expected of 2,000. “There are approximately 300 California National Guard in Los Angeles currently,” Izzy Gardon, director of communications for California governor, Gavin Newsom, told CNN.

Protests. Not riots, not street fighting, not guerilla warfare, but protests. We are in fact allowed to protest.

The order to deploy the soldiers came from Donald Trump late on Saturday night and marks a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants in the United States following raids across the country which have triggered protests.

Trump’s federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots. At that time widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating Black motorist Rodney King.

But that was then. Now we don’t wait for widespread violence, we just send the troops in because people are talking back.

Trump’s move has been followed by the threat of even more escalation. Earlier Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial and hardline defense secretary, had raised the possibility of deploying US marines onto the streets of the Democrat-run state amid the protests that had erupted in the wake of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) authorities in the state.

“Under President Trump, violence & destruction against federal agents & federal facilities will NOT be tolerated. It’s COMMON SENSE,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

“If violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized – they are on high alert,” Hegseth said.

The Marines.

This is how military coups begin.

Musk and Trump may squabble but they’re united on the important stuff.

As it happens, Trump and Musk’s dueling criticisms are each, in their own ways, at least partially valid. The bill is an abomination, although not because it’s “pork-filled.” And much of Musk’s wealth does come from the federal government, which he has spent the past few months trying to dismantle while preserving his own subsidies. According to Axios, among other things, Musk was angry that the bill cuts the electric-vehicle tax credit, which will hurt the bottom line of his electric-car company, Tesla.

But neither billionaire—one the president of the United States and the other a major financial benefactor to the president’s party—opposes the bill for what makes it a monstrosity: that it redistributes taxpayer dollars to the richest people in the country by slashing benefits for the middle class, the poor, and everyone in between. The ability of a few wealthy people to manipulate the system to this extent—leaving two tycoons who possess the emotional register of toddlers with the power to impoverish most of the country, to their own benefit, speaks ill of the health of American democracy, regardless of the outcome.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would make the largest cuts to food assistance for the poor in history, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, eliminating $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at a time when inflation is still straining family budgets.

That’s what’s so beautiful about it.

Hostility to women continues to thrive.

Public sector workers and trade unions are widely refusing to accept the Supreme Court’s judgment on what a woman is, a think tank has warned.

A new study by Policy Exchange shows that dozens of organisations across the public, private and charitable sectors have continued to question the legal meaning of “a woman”, despite the ruling.

…

Policy Exchange’s report, the fifth edition of its “Biology Matters Compendium”, compiles examples of organisations refusing to acknowledge the legal force of the court’s judgment.

Kind of like segregationists refusing to acknowledge the legal force of Brown v Board of Education. Well no…not kind of like; exactly like. No we will not respect women’s rights and you can’t make us.

The report notes that at least seven major trade unions have appeared to question the ruling in recent months.

Unison, one of the UK’s largest unions, and the University and Colleges Union, which represents academic and support staff in further and higher education institutions, have warned of the judgment’s “harmful implications”.

The Fire Brigades’ Union has said in response to the ruling that “the law is not always on the right side of history”.

The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef) released a statement on social media saying that it “recognises the distress and uncertainty that the Supreme Court’s ruling about the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 has caused to trans and non-binary communities.”

The union declared: “We have a proud history of championing the rights of our trans and non-binary members and we continue to stand in solidarity with them.”

And as for women, fuck them. We stand in solidarity with men who nullify women’s rights, not with bitchy women who try to hang on to their rights.

A collection of unions, including Unite, the civil service union PCS, the RMT and the BFAWU, a food industry union, have staged marches against the Supreme Court’s decision, with one leading figure declaring that “the trade union movement will protect and stand with trans people, whether the law cares or not.”

Unions proudly declare their hatred of women. Solidarity forever, except solidarity with women.

The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, branded the Supreme Court’s decision “scientifically illiterate”. Meanwhile, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said it would “not rush” to change rules on strip-searching in order to fall in with the court’s decision.

We can’t just rush into this crazy new thing of admitting women have rights.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Some other workable plan.

As for transporting enough stuff – no. Doing a wetland restoration, I had to transport ‘stuff’ halfway across Oklahoma…a modern state (sort of) with the ability to stop for gas and water plants, etc etc etc. More than half the plants died. It was a five hour trip (usually three, but because of the frequent stops, it took longer).

What we were transporting would be going into a similar system, where there was adequate water, nutrients, and sunlight, and once upon a time was an established system. After the transplant, about half the remaining plants died. Our success rate was low, and we didn’t really have any truly adverse circumstances.

You can’t just ‘transport plants’ or ‘transport seeds’. They need other things…water, of course. Soil. But also, fungus. Particular fungus which associates with plant roots. But you can’t take them with the fungus, because the roots have to be sterilized so a system isn’t messed up by other things invading, so you have to inject the fungus after planting. I realize they would probably say they are taking seeds, but seeds also need the fungus, which the system provides when they get to the proper stage in their development. Mars wouldn’t have that.

You would need pollinators. Humans can fill that role, but it is slow and tedious, and slow and tedious doesn’t strike me as something Musk does.

Plants also require a particular day length before they will germinate. Mars does not have the same day lengths we do. Plants can evolve to different temperatures, different soils, different water regimes, different wave lengths, but it doesn’t happen fast enough to support a colony on Mars.

We were dealing with a small system, and only a very small part of that small system. It ran far over budget, and in the end, was only marginally successful. The cost for colonizing Mars is likely to be so high you could probably save every ecosystem on Earth for the money…and have some left over. And restoring damaged ecosystem has at least some probability of success. On Mars, it is zero.

There was an instructor in my writing program who was writing a book on the future of the moon. He was going through all this high tech stuff, etc, and how we would be colonizing the moon, mining asteroids for minerals, etc. I asked him if he had talked to any scientists. Oh yes, he says. I talked to a couple of astronauts and some psychologists who work with astronauts. Really? No biologists? No physicists? No chemists? No geologists?

People like the high tech ideas of colonizing other planets/moons. The day to day work of maintaining a livable system bores them, so they brush it away. I don’t care how many spaceships we are able to get to the moon or other planets, there is a need for a lot more thought about the science before the fools rush in (though if Musk would take Trump with him, I would gladly contribute part of my taxes for the trip).

Nancy Armour at USA Today heaps praise on Simone Biles for insisting men should too so ruin women’s sports.

[Biles] also has little use for anyone who punches down on others, which is Gaines’ specialty.

Punching down? A woman saying men shouldn’t invade women sports is punching down? Is Armour aware that men are bigger and stronger than women? Not the other way around?

Gaines has used her tie for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships to become a MAGA media darling. But her grifting has done real harm to the transgender community, which is already at an elevated risk for suicide and self-harm.

Her grifting? It’s grifting to object to men invading women’s sports? But it’s not grifting for men to invade women’s sports?

How do people get this stuff so backwards?

There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do.

Is there scientific evidence that men have a physical advantage over women? Of course there is. Transgender women are men. They have a physical advantage.

Gaines has publicly lobbied for Biles and Caitlin Clark to support her in her hate which, again, is a laughable idea to anyone who has followed Biles’ illustrious career.

It’s not “hate” to say that men shouldn’t cheat women out of their own sports.

Gaines had inserted herself into the conversation about the Class 4A softball championship in Minnesota, claiming Champlin Park had “hijacked” the title because its star pitcher is a transgender young woman.

This Nancy Armour person is a real brat. We’re allowed to say things! Gaines wasn’t “inserting herself” any more than Nancy Armour is. Less so in fact, because Gaines is an athlete and Nancy Armour is a columnist.

One step forward and 87 steps back. I get tired of it.

Why do grown-ass people keep talking about colonizing Mars?

Albert Burneko points out how absurd the whole thing is.

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let’s imagine that Mars’s lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.

Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.

Well if we pack a whole lot of suitcases full of breathable air won’t that take care of it?

Or plants? Can’t we pack a whole lot of suitcases full of plants and stick them in Mars and boom there’s our breathable air?

At this point in our discussion I must acquaint you with two dear friends of mine. Their names are The South Pole, and The Summit Of Mount Everest.

The South Pole is around 2,800 meters above sea level, and like everywhere else on Earth around 44 million miles closer to the sun than any point on Mars. It sits deep down inside the nutritious atmosphere of a planet teeming with native life. Compared to the very most hospitable place on Mars it is an unimaginably fertile Eden. Here is a list of the plant-life that grows there: Nothing. Here is a list of all the animals that reproduce there: None.

Even with all the profound advantages the South Pole enjoys compared to Mars, even on a planet where living things have spent billions and billions of years figuring out how to adapt to and thrive within an incredibly diverse array of biomes—on a planet where giant tubeworms the size of NBA basket stanchions have colonized lightless ocean depths at which a human would be crushed like a grape under a piano—the South Pole simply cannot support complex life. It is too cold, and its relationship with sunlight too erratic, for living things to sustain themselves there. On astronomical scales it is for all practical purposes in the exact same spot as some of the most life-rich and biodiverse places in the known universe, and yet no species has established a permanent self-sustaining population there. Ever.

Well…they just didn’t want it badly enough. Humans know how to want stuff.

Life on earth writ large, the grand network of life, is a greater and more dynamic terraforming engine than any person could ever conceive. It has been operating ceaselessly for several billions of years. It has not yet terraformed the South Pole or the summit of Mount Everest. On what type of timeframe were you imagining that the shoebox of lichen you send to Mars was going to transform Frozen Airless Radioactive Desert Hell into a place where people could grow wheat?

Um…ten years maybe?

Now they tell us they knew all along.

But although the break between Musk and Trump only exploded into public view on Thursday, cracks in the alliance began to appear much earlier. As Musk’s “move fast and break things” bravado complicated the White House’s ambitions to remake American society, the billionaire alienated key members of the White House staff, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and quarreled with Cabinet members, physically coming to blows with one.

…

Trump on Truth Social has called for public scrutiny of Musk’s government contracts, potentially imperiling his business empire. Republicans, meanwhile, are wary of how the world’s richest man could use his deep coffers to retaliate against them, especially as he floats the launch of a third political party.

…

The first signs of trouble emerged in February, when an email landed in inboxes throughout the government directing federal employees to describe their five accomplishments over the past week.

Cabinet officials and other agency leaders weren’t given advance notice of the memo, causing consternation at the highest levels of Trump’s administration. When officials learned the email had gone out to some federal district judges, who are not part of the executive branch, and others who handle confidential information, the feeling grew that Musk fundamentally misunderstood the federal government or did not have the dexterity to maneuver through it.

Gosh, ya think? Too bad they didn’t notice that before giving him all that power.

The threats have started.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said there would be “serious consequences” if tech mogul Elon Musk funds Democratic candidates to run against Republicans who vote in favor of the GOP’s sweeping budget bill.

“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview, but declined to share what those consequences would be.

“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” he added.

Hahahahahaha that “he added” is hilarious. What they mean is he said the same thing twice, as he so often does, because his brain can’t think different thoughts without a lot of time to make the switch. He repeats himself repeats himself because he’s not bright not bright.

Trump said he has no plans to speak with Musk anytime soon. “I’m too busy doing other things,” he said, adding, “I have no intention of speaking to him.”

There it is again: tactful veiling of the fact that he said the same thing twice. He’s not a guy who can come up with a lot of interesting varied words at a moment’s notice. His speech patterns are exceptionally impoverished.

“That’s called ‘old news,’ that’s been old news, that has been talked about for years,” Trump said on Saturday. “Even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It’s old news.”

Sir, would you say it’s old news, or no?

Trump on Thursday also responded with his own posts on Truth Social. In one post, he wrote, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,” suggesting that Musk knew what was in the bill before it was passed.

Well I can agree with that certainly. Musk should have turned against Trump months ago, well before the election. To put it clearly, he should never have turned for him.

He also wrote on Thursday, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” referring to federal contracts with SpaceX. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

So why didn’t you do it?

It turns out women should be helping men take over their sports.

Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles has called former US swimmer and activist Riley Gaines “sick” over online comments about a transgender woman softball player.

Gaines, who has regularly spoken out about transgender women athletes competing in women’s sport, mocked Minnesota State High School League for removing comments on their post about the Chaplin Park girls’ team celebrating the State Championship. Chaplin Park’s team includes a transgender woman player.

“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser,” Biles wrote on X.

Not straight up at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not straight up for male people to be allowed to compete in women’s sports, because male people possess a whole raft of physical advantages over female people.

“You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports,” continued Biles.

Why? The trans communniny does one hell of a lot of “uplifting” of itself already, so why should anyone else be helping them? Especially when what’s being “uplifted” is so counter-factual and so destructive? Why are women supposed to “uplift” the trans communniny instead of uplifting women?

They broke up over a guy.

President Trump was peeved.

Just minutes before he walked into the Oval Office for a televised send-off for Elon Musk, an aide had handed him a file.

The papers in that file showed that Mr. Trump’s nominee to run NASA — a close associate of Mr. Musk’s — had donated to prominent Democrats in recent years, including some who Mr. Trump was learning about for the first time.

That slut!!

Mr. Musk, who was sporting a black eye, which he blamed on a tussle with his young son, tried to explain. He said his friend Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who was set to become the next NASA administrator, cared about getting things done. Yes, he had donated to Democrats, but so had a lot of people. Maybe it’s a good thing, Mr. Musk told the president — it shows that you’re willing to hire people of all stripes.

But Mr. Trump was unmoved. He said that people don’t change. These are the types of people who will turn, he said, and it won’t end up being good for us.

…

Mr. Trump decided he would withdraw Mr. Isaacman from consideration to run NASA, dealing a blow to Mr. Musk, who had worked to place a top associate in charge of the agency most important to SpaceX, his rocket business. 

That is, dealing a blow to Mr. Musk who had tried hard to parlay his bizarre role in Trump’s administration into an advantage for his business. Nothing to see here folks, just people using government jobs to boost their own wealth, move along.

By Thursday evening, Mr. Musk signaled he would be open to de-escalating the fight, while the president seemed to have little interest in an immediate reconciliation. White House officials said Mr. Trump had no plans to call Mr. Musk on Friday. A spokeswoman for Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Aw that must have hurt. Is Musk finding out that he needs Trump more than Trump needs him? There must be an app for that.

By Friday morning, White House officials said Mr. Trump was planning to sell the bright red Tesla he said he had purchased in March in a show of support for Mr. Musk.

The party is over.

The rewrite team has been allowed entry at last.

NHS chiefs have been forced to rip up their pro-trans guidance after it was rendered illegal by the Supreme Court ruling.

The NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, has quietly withdrawn guidance telling hospitals that they should allow trans people to use their chosen toilets and changing rooms.

Guidance they should never have issued in the first place. I still, after all this time, cannot understand how adults managed to convince themselves to be so gullible and stupid about this issue.

The group told The Telegraph it had taken the guide down from its website because it had become “dated” since the Supreme Court judgment that the word sex in the Equality Act means biological sex.

Yeah right. What they mean is, the judgment made it untenable to keep lying about what sex people were. It should of course have been untenable all along.

On Thursday night, women’s rights charities demanded that the confederation apologise for the guidance, which they claimed may have led to unfair decisions, such as the case of Darlington nurses who were disciplined for demanding single-sex facilities.

They said that rather than deleting the guidance, the confederation should actively inform all trusts that it was now null and void.

Damn right. The guidance didn’t suddenly become ridiculous, it was ridiculous all along. An apology would be appropriate.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said: “Its guidance encouraged a hostile, humiliating and unsafe environment for NHS workers and patients. It was published with much fanfare but withdrawn by stealth.”

Nailed it.

The confederation’s now-withdrawn guidance stated: “In all types of workplaces, trans and non-binary people should be supported to use the bathrooms they feel most comfortable using. At no time is it appropriate to force staff to use the toilet associated with their assigned sex at birth against their will.”

But of course at all times it is appropriate to force those horrible people who don’t have a luxury gender to use the toilet with the other sex in it against their will. Trans people get to choose; no one else does. That’s fairness.

A spokesman for the confederation said: “We have withdrawn our guide from our website as elements of it were dated following the ruling of the Supreme Court in April and interim guidance from the EHRC.

Mmmmmmno. Not dated. Wrong. Always wrong. Wrong from the outset. Wrong then as now.

“The withdrawal of our guide does not change our explicit commitment to support our members to reduce the unacceptably high levels of bullying, abuse and discrimination at work that trans and non-binary staff and patients face.”

So the NHS continues to ignore the unacceptably high levels of bullying and abuse at work that women face.

Idols toppling in all directions.

Australia’s foremost gender-medicine expert and the lead ­author of the nation’s guidelines on gender-affirming care, Michelle Telfer, was excoriated by a Family Court judge for giving ­misleading evidence in support of a mother who wanted her child to be prescribed puberty blockers, in a judgment that has called into question the integrity of treatment of gender-dysphoric children.

So what exactly is a “gender-medicine expert”? Telfer sounds more like a shill than an expert.

Judge Andrew Strum, who stripped the mother of custody and effectively blocked the 12-year-old from accessing treatment, criticised the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne for failing to give the child a formal gender dysphoria diagnosis until the court proceedings had commenced, despite having treated the child for six years.

The hospital’s chief of medicine, Professor Telfer, he said, cheapened the suffering of victims of Nazism when she suggested a landmark review that recommended limitations on medication for gender-dysphoric ­children formed part of a wave of trans­gender oppression commencing with the Nazis.

Cheapened the suffering of victims of Nazism and expensived the mood swings of children.

Justice Strum also questioned the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines for Trans and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents, authored by Professor Telfer, for not recognising children may not be capable of making life-altering medical decisions about their gender identity.

“It is concerning that an oddly binary approach is adopted in relation to children, especially of the age of the child the subject of these proceedings; that is, to affirm unreservedly those who present with concerns regarding their gender, brooking no questioning thereof,” he wrote in the judgment.

“The case of the mother … is that because the child says so, the child is, and must unquestioningly be affirmed as being, female in gender identity. However, that overlooks the obvious, namely, that the child is still a child and not even, if it matters, a teenager.”

And what does being a child entail? Among other things, a tendency to credulity. Skepticism is a tool that develops with age; children generally believe what they’re told unless it’s very obviously a joke. If children grow up with parents who subscribe to gender ideology, that child will be a gender believer until it reaches the age when parents are wrong about everything.

The judgment, published in April, anonymised Professor Telfer as Associate Professor L and did not name the Royal Children’s Hospital due to statutory prohibitions preventing the identification of witnesses in Family Court proceedings. However, The Australian was on Thursday successful in petitioning the court to name ­Professor Telfer and her place of work, arguing it was in the public interest for the practices of an ­expert healthcare professional and a pre-eminent medical service to be transparent.

Not to be confused with trans-parent.

“Nationwide News submits, and I agree, that the interests of the public are best served by members of the public having access to the entire context of Associate Professor L’s opinion or practice, so that it can be properly assessed,” Justice Strum ruled in approving the application. “Such transparency, including as to that expert’s identity, enables individuals to evaluate critically the validity, reliability and implications of that opinion and practice.”

He said maintaining confidentiality over Professor Telfer’s identity “may well undermine public confidence in the administration of justice”.

If a doctor is out there peddling gender-woo then people need to know who that doctor is.

Oh hey gee what do you know, Khelif is “skipping” a match where he would be tested.

Olympic champion Imane Khelif is skipping the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands less than a week after World Boxing announced mandatory sex testing for all athletes.

The Algerian boxer, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, did not register in time for the event before applications closed on Thursday.

…

The 26-year-old Khelif had intended to return to international competition at the Eindhoven tournament this weekend before World Boxing announced its new sex testing policy last Friday. The governing body specifically mentioned Khelif, saying she’d have to screened to be approved to fight at any upcoming events, including the Eindhoven Box Cup.

The AP and other news organizations really should not be calling Khelif “she”. It’s a lie, and an obvious lie at that. It’s not the job of journalism to lie to us about magic gender.

Eindhoven mayor Jeroen Dijsselbloem criticized World Boxing’s decision.

“As far as we are concerned, all athletes are welcome in Eindhoven. Excluding athletes based on controversial ‘gender tests’ certainly does not fit in with that,” Dijsselbloem wrote in a letter addressed to the Dutch Boxing Federation and International Boxing Federation.

That is stupid. Excluding men from women’s competitions fits in perfectly well with welcoming all athletes. Khelif is welcome, just not in the wrong category.

I see I’m not the only one taken aback by that Guardian article – to put it mildly.

Journalism warped by a deranged ideology.

They never had those “rights” in the first place.

Transgender people must accept a perceived reduction in their rights after the supreme court decision on gender because they “have been lied to over many years” about what their rights actually were, one of the commissioners drawing up the official post-ruling guidance has said.

Speaking at a debate about the repercussions of April’s ruling that “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, Akua Reindorf said trans people had been misled about their rights and there “has to be a period of correction”.

Mind you, anyone with a brain should have been able to see that the “rights” in question were not rights.

However, the human rights campaign groups Liberty and Amnesty called on the EHRC to make sure the rights of trans people were properly considered when it draws up guidance for public bodies on how to implement the changed legal landscape.

But Liberty and Amnesty are in the made-up rights faction. There is no “right” to force everyone (or anyone) to agree that you are the sex you are not. There is no right to force people to agree that you’re a Martian or an octopus or a submarine. There is no right to force people to treat you as a Martian or octopus or submarine. Pretending there is such a right is a disaster, not least because it weakens the whole idea of human rights. If putative rights are that ridiculous then it’s a mistake to defend or protect them at all.

Asked by an audience member about worries the ruling could reduce the rights of trans people, another panellist, the barrister Naomi Cunningham, said trans people “will have to give way”, adding: “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

Reindorf, speaking next, agreed: “Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are. It’s like Naomi said – I just can’t say it in a more diplomatic way than that. They have been lied to, and there has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights.”

Genuine rights – the kind that make sense and are workable.

Chiara Capraro, head of gender justice at Amnesty International UK, said: “The EHRC has the duty to uphold the rights of everyone, including all with protected characteristics. We are concerned that it is failing to do so and is unhelpfully pitting the rights of women and trans people against each other.”

Wrong. It’s trans ideology that does that, not the EHRC. Pretending that men have a right to be in women’s spaces and take jobs reserved for women and win awards intended for women and compete as women in Olympic boxing is what pits the rights of women and the fake rights of trans people against each other.

Oops.

A gynecologist has misgivings.

I performed my first hysterectomy for gender confirmation in 2019. I was so delighted to help out my own LGBT community. I took immense pride in being my local LGBT clinic’s official gynecologist. What greater joy is there in medicine than providing great care to a vulnerable, underserved community, all with the support of your administration? It was how the world should be.

Six years later, I wonder.

The hysterectomies went well. They were uncomplicated. Even the one patient who came back to see me for well woman care after detransitioning didn’t tell me she regretted her surgery. I hope that all those patients are still happy not to have their uteri. But in terms of the clinic overall, staffed by earnest, well-meaning clinicians as it was – were we doing the right thing?

In some cases, I don’t think we were.

…

I was on board and ready to support my community. Sure, there were uncomfortable questions – hadn’t we learned in medical school that most pediatric gender dysphoria resolves by adulthood? If so, did it make sense for young adolescents to transition to the opposite sex? Was it really plausible that transgender female athletes didn’t have a biological advantage over cis girls and women? The accepted answers seemed counterintuitive – however, I assumed that the experts had carefully weighed the evidence, had done plenty of research, and had reached a scientifically-based consensus before making their recommendations regarding gender medicine.

What experts though? Trans ideology isn’t based on a whole lot of expertise. It’s mostly based on threats and abuse.

For a few years, I essentially became the go-to gynecologist in my community for gender-affirming hysterectomy referrals. I enjoyed taking care of my transmasculine patients. Some of them drove hundreds of miles from their homes in rural Iowa to receive their care in our LGBT clinic. I felt good about providing such a much-needed service. As I would joke to my assistant, a gender affirming hysterectomy referral was “my easiest consult of the day.” They came in knowing what they wanted: a hysterectomy. Unless they had a major contraindication to surgery, like uncontrolled diabetes, it was an easy decision to book it. Unlike hysterectomies for abnormal bleeding or pelvic pain, there was no need to document prior attempts at treatment, failures, and impact on the patient’s life for the insurance companies to authorize these hysterectomies. “Gender dysphoria” always got approved (with the requisite two letters, one from a mental health professional and one from a PCP).

That comes as a shock to me, I have to say. The medical kind of hysterectomy had to withstand a lot of questions, while the sad mood kind was waved right on through.

As the years went by, I couldn’t help but notice some troubling trends. The transmasculine patients who came to me had more and more poorly controlled mental health comorbidities. I also started seeing a fair percentage of them who were really quite feminine – not much different in their gender presentation than my cis patients.

I started to be a little more uneasy that hysterectomy was the right thing for this new group of transmasculine patients, but if they didn’t have any contraindications per se, I couldn’t really say no. After all, according to ACOG Committee Opinion #823, Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals, “Hysterectomy with or without bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy is medically necessary for patients with gender dysphoria who desire this procedure.”

Medically necessary, even though “gender dysphoria” is not medical. I cannot make sense of that.

As a medical system, for better or worse, we make our traditional gynecologic patients with miserable periods jump through quite a few hoops before they are approved for hysterectomy. Generally, they have to have a full workup for any reversible medical reason for their miserable periods and try some sort of medical management of their heavy periods, because it is such a grave decision to take a patient for a major surgery like hysterectomy with all the accompanying risk (death, bowel injury requiring lifelong colostomy, urologic injury requiring lifelong urostomy, chronic debilitating surgical pain, vaginal cuff dehiscence with evisceration, massive blood loss, stroke, etc.)

By contrast, according to medical guidelines currently in play, a uterus-having person need only walk into a gynecologist’s office, declare themselves to have a nonbinary or male gender identity, and endorse dysphoria from the presence of their uterus to qualify for hysterectomy.

I can make even less sense of that. It’s insane.

Still wondering how best to take care of my patients, I went to a private forum for Ob/Gyns to ask about how others addressed nonbinary individuals who requested gender affirming hysterectomy. I was told my question was “transphobic.”

What is the scientific medical term for transphobia?

To sum up: medicine is shockingly captive.

Ok this is just plain hilarious.

The alliance between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk spectacularly imploded Thursday as the world’s most prominent bromance collapsed into mutual public trolling.

…

The public unraveling began in the Oval Office, where Trump spoke to reporters at the start of a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” he said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

Oh I know. Did you hear what Sally said to Lucy about it? It’s like all over the school.

The quarrel escalated rapidly from there, with the two men blasting out angry posts on their respective social media platforms.

Which I cannot help laughing at. We knew how childish they are but still – it is hilarious that they’re that helpless at ass-covering. I think we have a good chance of seeing them pulling each other’s hair and screaming on live tv.

By late afternoon, Musk was writing on X that he agreed Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President JD Vance. 

That sentence caused me to laugh loudly enough to wake all the neighborhood dogs – genuine unforced shriek of laughter.

He further signaled his estrangement from Trump’s orbit by “unfollowing” Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top aides, whose wife has been working for Musk.

Er ner, nert ernferlering!! The ultimate tragic end of a beautiful friendship.

Musk volleyed back, declaring it was “time to drop the really big bomb” that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day DJT!”

When dickheads fall out.

The unraveling “happened faster than I thought,” said one Musk ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. “What Elon really wanted is to be president, I think.”

Hahahahahaha yes that is quite a hasty unraveling.

Was Elon thinking Trump would make him president?

Tesla investors braced themselves as they watched Musk’s relationship with the president go up in flames. “Can someone please take the phone away from him! wtf! tesla is getting destroyed,” investor Ross Gerber, a onetime Musk booster, posted on X.

Oops! Bad business move was it? How sad oh well never mind.

H/t What a Maroon

Trump is fine with women dying rather than having emergency abortions.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

Easy for him. He’s not going to die of septicemia because the hospital refuses to meddle with his pregnancy.

That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other serious complications.

Serious complications that cause death.

The move prompted concerns from some doctors and abortion rights advocates that women will not get emergency abortions in states with strict bans.

“The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance, not less, to stop them from turning away patients experiencing pregnancy crises.”

But that takes much of the fun out of it. These people want to see women die of pregnancy crises.

Aw gee, their great love lasted only three months.

President Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president’s signature domestic policy bill.

While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser.

“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote.

“Such ingratitude,” he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump’s election in a way that he never has before.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless Donald.

Mr. Musk had been careful in recent days to train his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen by the wayside.

I wonder why that is. It’s very puzzling. Let’s put our thinking caps on. Hmm…could it be…is it possibly because he is exactly what he appears to be but these fools refuse to get it until he does it to them?

What started as simply a fight over the domestic policy bill sharply escalated in just a few hours. Within minutes of one another, Mr. Trump was making fun of Mr. Musk’s unwillingness to wear makeup to cover a recent black eye, and Mr. Musk was raising questions about Mr. Trump’s competency as president.

Gee, Elon, it would have been great if you had grasped this obvious point BEFORE YOU HELPED HIM WIN THE ELECTION AND SET ABOUT DESTROYING THE WORLD.