Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Five plus years ago…

A Boise State professor’s comments calling independent women “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” have spurred backlash in the Treasure Valley.

Scott Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University, made the comments on Oct. 31 during the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. But the comments went viral when a Boise nurse posted a Nov. 25 video with excerpts of his speech on TikTok.

“Our culture is steeped with feminism,” Yenor said during the conference. “It teaches young boys and girls that they are motivated by much the same things and want much the same things.”

“Thus girls are told to become as independent as boys are said to be. … They are more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.”

He went on to condemn feminism and said its teaching of individualism is a fundamental threat to strong families.

Because what “strong families” mean = men in charge and women obeying.

So why doesn’t Scott Yenor just move to Afghanistan? He’d love it there.

One:

Rubio: “Imagine if instead of spending billions on weapons, Iran spent that money on its people. They’d have a much different country.” Fascinating pic.twitter.com/rx0UQkBSGi

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) March 31, 2026

Two:

Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things. pic.twitter.com/vLGpp7KJnm

— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 1, 2026

Originally a comment by Papito on Another first.

Trump can glower all he wants to, it’s not going to work. His argument is too wacky and ahistorical to win. All the same issues and questions have been hashed out extensively, on the record, in the past. You’d have to go all the way back to Wong Kim Ark, and say the Court decided that case wrongly, or even before, to to Lynch v Clarke, before the 14th Amendment was even passed. It’s a position that is so far outside American legal tradition that I expect a 9-0 ruling.

For lagniappe, the lawyer arguing the case on behalf of the ACLU is a citizen thanks to birthright citizenship – her Taiwanese parents were on student visas when she was born.

And because Trump is dumb and wrong about just about everything, no the US is not the only country with a tradition of jus soli. Almost every other country in the Americas does, for starters.

Worse and worse.

Ten minutes before oral arguments for the birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court began on Wednesday, a hush came over the courtroom. President Trump walked in and came face to face with justices whom he has tried to bully and intimidate.

Mr. Trump became the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the court, watching from the courtroom’s public gallery as the justices across the ideological spectrum questioned his efforts to strictly limit birthright citizenship.

The first. Not the good kind of first; the other kind. Blatant intimidation move. Nice little court ya got here.

He watched as the arguments began and delved quickly into a history lesson about the 19th century debate surrounding the 14th Amendment.

That will have been gibberish to him. The what now? What century? What debate? What amendment? What mean? Is there a comic book version?

Trump, who has appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, has often talked about the justices not as independent checks on his power appointed for their expertise but as loyalists who should support his agenda. Last month, he suggested that Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he nominated during his first term, were “an embarrassment to their families” because they sided with the majority against him.

That’s what he knows. Mobster loyalty. The history of enslavement and the 14th Amendment, not so much.

Many people outside the court expressed strong opposition to the president’s presence.

“I think it’s basically kind of a strong-arming tactic, wanting to be there, intimidate them with his presence,” said Michelle McKeithen. “And, kind of a statement of: ‘Make a decision while I’m here, looking you dead in your eye — and don’t make the wrong decision.’”

Damn right that’s what it is.

They don’t see how insulting it is? Really?

Elizabeth I will be transgender in ITV drama

She will? Why? Because women are too weak and inferior to have the top job?

Elizabeth I will be portrayed as transgender in a forthcoming ITV drama.

The Tudor queen, who never married and established England as a rising imperial power, will be shown as a biological man in the six-part series next year.

The independence of the “Virgin Queen”, who ruled from 1558 to 1603 and defeated the Spanish Armada, has given rise to improbable conspiracies that she was a man masquerading as a woman.

Claims of her being a trans woman will be a central focus of the new series, titled Majesty, in which the monarch will be played by a transgender woman, according to reports.

So, insult piled on injury. Hey don’t stop there. Do a series on Jane Austen, because obviously no woman is intelligent enough to write Emma.

In 2022, academics working for Shakespeare’s Globe in central London said she could have been non-binary, when people believe they are neither male nor female.

Elizabeth I was presented as such in an essay published by the theatre which referred to the female monarch with the gender-neutral they/them pronouns.

Feminist thinkers have raised concerns that casting doubts on the womanhood of prominent women because they defied gender norms and did supposedly “manly” things will effectively write them out of history.

That plus the fact that it amounts to shouting that women are too weak and brainless to accomplish anything.

James Strong, the director behind the production company, previously said the series would “re-imagine” history to make it “modern and relevant to today’s viewer”.

“The brilliant scripts are a director’s dream as we get to re-imagine and recreate an iconic piece of English history and tell a period story that looks stunning but also feels modern and relevant to today’s viewer,” he said.

Yeah bro, claiming women didn’t do those important difficult things because they’re too stupid is the best way to feel modern and relevant to today’s viewer.

Well there’s a headline.

National Education Union conference to debate if Supreme Court trans ruling is ‘attempted genocide’

Of course it’s not. What a ludicrous and downright abusive question. No, kiddies, saying that men are not women is not attempted genocide. The question is insanely insulting and misogynistic.

The National Education Union (NEU) is set to discuss whether the 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman constitutes “attempted genocide” against transgender people.

Delegates are expected to debate the issue today (31 March) at the union’s annual conference in Brighton.

According to the Daily Mail, Britain’s largest teaching union may hear arguments that the judgment amounts to an “attempted erasure of a group from public life”, with criticism potentially directed at both the judiciary and the government.

Fancy footwork. “Erasure of a group from public life” is not genocide. It’s a sneaky rhetorical move to pretend that it does. “Erasure” can mean elimination but it can also mean simply ignoring, withdrawing attention from, indifference, disbelief, refusal to promote and amplify. It can include pointing out that a putative “group” is not necessarily or automatically entitled to public attention. You can call three people at a bus stop a group, but that doesn’t mean those three people are owed public attention. It’s not written on a Sacred Tablet somewhere that people who claim to be the sex they are not are owed fervent intense admiring public attention.

The word “group” is not sacred. The existence of a group does not automatically entail public enthusiasm and endorsement.

The Supreme Court previously ruled that, under the Equality Act, the definition of a woman is based on biological sex, a decision that has prompted ongoing debate about the operation of single-sex spaces and the inclusion of trans people.

How do you prompt ongoing debate? If it’s ongoing it doesn’t need prompting, does it.

Anyway…you’ll never guess what’s coming next. Or perhaps you will.

Today’s debate follows a motion submitted to conference which describes the ruling as a “step towards an attempt to erase that group’s existence”.

“The goal of which is to completely erase transgender people” – Lemkin Institute on trans rights in the US

The discussion comes amid similar warnings internationally. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has issued multiple Red Flag Alerts in response to anti-trans policies in the United States.

Oh good god. How many times do we have to point out that the “Lemkin Institute” is just one or two people and a label? They’re not Hannah Arendt, they’re not Philip Gourevitch, they’re not authorities.

I repeat. Saying men are not women is not genocidal.

Unconstitutional.

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Trump’s executive order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment.

Randolph Moss, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in his ruling that Mr. Trump’s order, signed last May, was unlawful because it instructed federal agencies to refrain from funding NPR and PBS because the president believed their news coverage had a liberal viewpoint.

“The message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the president disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” Judge Moss wrote. But the First Amendment, he said, “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”

Sadly, the ruling doesn’t mean funding will be restored.

Two months after the executive order, Congress voted to claw back roughly $500 million in annual funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that distributes federal money to NPR and PBS. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has since shut down, and public radio and TV stations across the country have sought alternate forms of revenue.

But the ruling could have implications for any future money Congress decides to allocate to public media, removing a hurdle that could have prevented lawmakers from restoring funding for NPR and PBS.

Assuming there still is a Congress in that hazy future. Trump is still hell-bent on destroying everything before his time is up.

There are lots of things that children age 10 can’t understand. That’s why they can’t legally vote or drive or join the military or practice medicine.

Trans girl guide, 10, ‘can’t understand why she is being kicked out of beloved group’

That one seems pretty easy to explain, even to a child age 10. Girl guides are girl guides; trans girls are boys.

A trans girl guide, 10, has told her mum she cannot understand why she is being excluded from the group that made her feel accepted.

Sophie’s* mother Angela told Metro that Girlguiding’s decision that trans members must leave the charity by September feels like a ‘betrayal’.

The group said they were taking action following a Supreme Court ruling that women are defined by biological sex.

What else should women be defined by? Their souls? Whether or not they wear lipstick?

Sophie was just six when she began living life as a girl.

In other words Sophie was just six when adults told him he could “live life as a girl.” Six is hella young to tell a little boy he can change sex with the power of thought.

She joined Girlguiding two years ago and two years after her cis-gendered sister became a member.

Are journalists ever going to stop using this ridiculous reality-denying jargon? There is only one kind of girl: the kind that is actually a girl.

Hopeful but vague. Really really vague.

The UK government is to change when police forces in England and Wales record non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), in a bid to end the policing of “everyday arguments”.

New Home Office guidance will say that forces should only log incidents that are potentially “relevant to policing”.

A tad circular, don’t you think? Once the police take a look at it it becomes relevant to policing, right?

It comes after a review by police chiefs found the system, developed in the mid-2000s, had increasingly seen officers drawn into policing debates on social media.

However the Conservatives say the move from Labour ministers does not go far enough, calling it “simply a rebrand”.

Well, I’m not a Conservative (or a conservative) but that’s what it looks like to me. Plod can just say “This is relevant to policing” and we’re back at square one.

NCHIs are recorded when police receive a report perceived by the caller to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards people with certain characteristics, such as race or gender, but which does not meet the bar for prosecution under hate crime laws.

Erm…”gender” meaning what? Sex? Or magic sacred fungible soul? It’s still ok to bully women while still not ok to say men can’t be women?

I’m not placing any bets.

Well whaddya know. Judge tells Trump he can’t do that.

A federal judge has knocked down the core of President Trump’s executive order barring federal funding for NPR and PBS, saying it violated the broadcasters’ First Amendment rights on its face.

A District Court judge has found that a Trump White House executive order to defund NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment and is therefore “unlawful and unenforceable.” It wasn’t immediately clear what the decision, which could be appealed by the administration, would mean for the future of federal funding of public broadcasting.

In his ruling, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said “the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power – including the power of the purse – ‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’ by others.”

Which a US president of course ought to know before he even thinks of running for public office.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement: “This is a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge attempting to undermine the law. NPR and PBS have no right to receive taxpayer funds, and Congress already voted to defund them. The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

Of course she did.

Not so fast, Mango Mussolini. Put the crayons down.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled Tuesday that construction on President Trump’s White House ballroom “must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”

Using a notable number of exclamation points, Leon said the plaintiff, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, is likely to succeed in their lawsuit and therefore he is granting a preliminary injunction to halt construction.

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote.

He’s delaying enforcement for two weeks though. Sigh.

A long-time dream project for President Trump, the ballroom is designed to seat 1,000 guests and will cost at least $300 million, according to estimates by the president. It has generated massive controversy and public pushback, but recently got approval from the Commission of Fine Arts, an architectural review panel now packed with Trump allies. 

If only he could pack the whole country with Trump allies. He’s working on it, but it’s going way too slowly.

Trump responded to the ruling in a social media post complaining that the National Trust for Historic Preservation doesn’t appreciate his efforts at “sprucing up” Washington’s buildings from the White House to the Kennedy Center.

Historic preservation isn’t about “sprucing up”. Trump would “spruce up” Stonehenge and the Colosseum and the Parthenon if he could, but that wouldn’t be historic prez. Rather the opposite.

Hmm.

I disputed something trans activist mushy crouton said the other day.

I didn’t bother to say we don’t “celebrate” the kid’s unhappiness, because of course we don’t; that’s just typical hyperbole plus assumption. I simply underlined for the billionth time that things for girls are for girls. A 10-year-old who identifies as a transgender girl is a boy. (I wonder if that subhead is even accurate. Does the boy really idennify as a transgender girl as opposed to as a girl? Or did the Mirror just put it that way in an attempt to clarify the usual murk?)

Mushy responded with the usual fairness and restraint.

Oh no!!! What have I done?!?

Pause for laughter.

Is the child going to know about it? No. If the child did know about it, would the child react to it the way mushy did? No. Does the child understand this whole thing the way mushy does? No. Do children understand any of this the way adults do? No. Is mushy on the side of the angels in flattering and encouraging the transing of children? No times a million.

Hmm. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wonders why they don’t what now?

And I would just say this – and I said this yesterday; I’ll say it again now. Iran is – not the Iranian people. The Iranian people are phenomenal people. They deserve way better than what they have, which is a radical, Shia clerical regime that has basically taken that country’s wealth and used it not to build roads and bridges, not to build health care systems or universities, not to build a better, more prosperous country. They’ve used the wealth of that country to sponsor terrorism, build rockets, build drones, build missiles, build sea mines.

Interesting. I wonder if we can think of any other countries that spend a whole lot of money on weapons (and vanity projects the boss wants) rather than health care systems or universities.

It’s a real puzzler.

Dan Roan, a BBC Sports editor, pretends not to know that men have physical advantages over women.

“This is a question where there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It differs from sport to sport.”

The words of former International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach in July 2021, when claiming that sex eligibility criteria should be left to each individual sport to determine.

…

Yet just five years on, Bach’s successor Kirsty Coventry has announced a blanket ban on transgender women, as well as athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) who have gone through male puberty from female events, “to protect fairness, safety and integrity”.

Oh dear, a blanket ban, how very crude and sweeping and not what the cool kids do.

From the 2028 LA Games, eligibility for women’s competition at all IOC events will be limited to biological females, and determined on the basis of a one time SRY gene screening, which detects the presence of a Y chromosome and male sex development.

Can you believe it? From 2028 men won’t be allowed to insert themselves into women’s competition – it’s outrageous!

Ofcom investigates!

OFCOM has launched an investigation into a Talk TV programme for “broadcasting anti-trans hate”.

The regulator confirmed that the right-wing channel is facing a probe after the Good Law Project (GLP) lodged several complaints over its output in recent months.

Oh well then. If it’s the Pretentious Maugham Project then it must be right.

More than 21,000 people complained to Ofcom to take action over Talk TV’s repeated “attacks on trans people”, GLP said.

Because Maugham urged them to, yeah?

Ofcom confirmed that one programme presented by host Ian Collins will be investigated over its anti-trans content, while episodes hosted by Collins, Alex Phillips and Jeremy Kyle will face a probe over how they covered climate change and net zero.

But what counts as “anti-trans”?

I ask because so often it’s not saying mean things to trans people but simply stating obvious truths like “men are not women”. We have the right to say there is no God and we have the right to say men are not women.

The first Collins programme, on June 23, 2025, featured a discussion on gender-neutral language in the court system. Collins suggested during the programme that “non-binary is just an invented thing”, while guest Helen Joyce, of Sex Matters, said that it is an “actual fact” that “one hundred per cent of everyone who’s ever been pregnant is a woman, whether they like it or not”

Yes, and?

GLP said that in one of those programmes, broadcast on June 21, 2025, host Phillips suggested that trans rights groups know “giving children puberty blockers was evil”.

In another segment that was complained about to Ofcom, presenter Kevin O’Sullivan accused a trans woman of wanting to “pretend that he’s female”.

The first one is similar to the issue with saying people are lying (which can risk a libel suit in the UK), because we can’t know for sure what other people are thinking…or we can most of the time but we can’t prove that we can so best not risk it.

I suppose the second one has the same issue, because we can’t know what people want…or we can but etc see above.

Matthew Gill, a lawyer at GLP, said Ofcom are “basically giving right-wing channels a free pass”.

“The far right can only spread their toxic lies because of platforms backed by billionaires,” he said. “So we need a regulator that takes it seriously when channels break their duty to provide balance. It’s time for Ofcom to stop right-wing media barons broadcasting hate.”

Hmm. Broadcasting hate is it. Has he seen the way people like “India” Willoughby talk about radical feminists who know a man when we see one?

Peter Tatchell in the Women Don’t Matter pulpit yet again.

Olympic ban on all trans women competing in women’s events is unjustified

They’ve no unfair advantage if they’ve had hormone treatment

It reduces muscle mass, bone density & physical strength & endurance. Their performance declines to that of ‘biological’ women

Individual… https://t.co/euBoXRrWbk

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) March 28, 2026

“Individual assessment. No blanket ban” is the full last line.

He’s so full of shit. Of course “hormone treatment” doesn’t wipe out 100% of male advantage. It doesn’t shrink the skeleton.

I’m so tired of these men blithely giving away women’s rights while pretending to be on Team Righteous.

Trump takes time out of his frantically busy schedule to show reporters pretty pictures of his future BallRooM.

Trump: This is a view of the columns as they are going to be made. They're going to be hand-carved and they're beautiful. Top of the line. They'll be corinthian, which is considered the best, most beautiful by far. pic.twitter.com/VGEdSlSYqr

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 30, 2026

Jaw-dropping.

Cross-party councillors rejected a plea for single-sex spaces across council buildings and services.

The motion, tabled by Conservative and Reform councillors, called on Darlington Borough Council to protect women’s “privacy, dignity and safety”, but was slammed by campaigners for being “anti-trans and discriminatory”.

They’re going with that? Protecting women’s privacy dignity and safety is anti-trans? They don’t realize that the implication is pro-trans [ideology]=attacking women’s privacy dignity and safety? They want to be seen and understood as against women’s privacy dignity and safety?

Councillors were told [that], if approved, the opposition plea would place members of the transgender community at “increased risk of harm”.

So they put women at increased risk of harm.

Why is that the obvious choice? Why is that the default?

Labour and Green Party members vowed to protect the area’s LGBTQ+ community by refusing the motion on Thursday.

Labour and Green Party members vowed to do away with safety and privacy for women.

Labour councillor Libby McCollom, cabinet member for stronger communities, said: “The cruel and harmful narrative pedalled by councillors Dulston and Walker in this motion frames transgender and non-binary people as a danger to women.

Liar. The issue is that making toilets and changing rooms single-sex is a danger to women. The issue is that some males are a danger to women. Whether they are trans or not is not the issue.

Aw. Ewan Weddell lost another one.

But on the bright side, a barrister no longer has to worry about her career being destroyed by a benefit scrounging loser, and a trans activist fox slayer. pic.twitter.com/LH3LxEN5Co

— Stuart Macintosh (@stueymaco) March 29, 2026

A guy who has experience of trying to deal with Trump tells us what that’s like.

When [I was] meeting with Donald Trump in 2018 about a life-or-death homeland security issue in the Oval Office – an impending Category 5 hurricane, the strongest there is – he did something jarring. He started talking about helicopters. Specifically, he wanted to share with us his frustration that helicopters are always breaking down because, in his words, “there are too many parts!” Mid-briefing. We were asking him to issue an urgent warning to Americans to evacuate the affected area, and he went off on a tangent about helicopters. And then another about the election. We finally got him back on track, but the clock was ticking.

I filed it away as a data point. But I now think it was an eye-opening preview.

Of someone who can’t even find the track in broad daylight.

I watched Trump operate at close range from a perch inside the Department of Homeland Security. He spent more time with our department than any other. What I observed was a man of genuinely unusual cognitive disarray. He was disorganised in ways that were structurally alarming for a commander-in-chief. For instance, he appeared to think in sudden associations, not sequences, and he absorbed information through flattery and visual repetition rather than briefings. We were literally told to stop sending him documents to read that were longer than a page in length, and, where possible, to provide information in pictures instead of words.

Yeah. That’s an extremely startling and alarming thing to be told about a person in that particular job. That’s being told he’s mentally about 6 years old.

The machinery of government was largely adapted to these peculiarities. Fifty-page background papers were reduced to one-pager descriptions using Trump’s “winners-and-losers” lexicon to try to help him understand complex topics and to coach him through difficult decisions.

And that was then. It’s much worse now, and will continue to get worse until 1. he blows up the whole planet or 2. he is removed.

I believe Trump’s cognitive decline is self-evident. He rambles more. The tangents have grown longer and stranger: see recent riffs about Hannibal Lecter, the inexplicable detours into shark-related hypotheticals, or the moments where sentences simply stop. Speech pathologists and neurologists have noted the deterioration publicly and while I’m not qualified to diagnose it, what I can tell you is that the contrast with even five years ago is striking. The man I observed in the first term was erratic but the man I observe now is erratic without a safety net.

It’s going to be 1. isn’t it.