Obama went to Harvard. Trump did not.

Game on.

Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.

Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.

Within hours of Harvard’s decision, federal officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to the university, along with a $60 million contract.

That is a fraction of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.

…

The administration’s fight with Harvard, which had an endowment of $53.2 billion in 2024, is one that President Trump and Stephen Miller, a powerful White House aide, want to have. In the administration’s effort to break what it sees as liberalism’s hold on higher education, Harvard is big game. A high-profile court battle would give the White House a platform to continue arguing that the left has become synonymous with antisemitism, elitism and suppression of free speech.

Steven Pinker, a prominent Harvard psychologist who is also a president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said on Monday that it was “truly Orwellian” and self-contradictory to have the government force viewpoint diversity on the university. He said it would also lead to absurdities.

“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.

Or the engineering school to hire magicians?

Check out the hands on “Charlotte” Clymer. It’s hilarious that he keeps waving them around when he should be hiding them.

I have seldom been so surprised in my life. How is this POSsible?

Amnesty throws women overboard again.

Amnesty says women don’t get to decide.

AMNESTY International has warned against “dangerous misinformation” ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman. 

The court is due to issue its judgement next week on how a woman should be defined in law. It is part of a court challenge brought by For Women Scotland (FWS) against the Scottish Government. 

FWS say sex-based protections should not apply to transgender people with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), while the Scottish Government argues they should be included.

What an obscure sentence. FWS says that men should not get protections intended for women, while the Scottish government says they should. Calling the protections “sex-based” instead of “intended for women” is pointedly opaque and confusing. Journalism is pathetically complicit in all this anti-woman garbage.

And now, Amnesty International has intervened ahead of the expected ruling being handed down in London on April 16. 

In a statement, Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive at Amnesty International UK, said: “Amnesty wishes to highlight the amount of dangerous misinformation that remains around this case, as an eye-watering amount of time is spent by commentators berating trans people – who make up just 1% of the population.”

Shut up. It’s not about “berating trans people.” It’s about not giving protections for women away to men in lipstick.

“Legal gender recognition, as it works now, is essential for trans people to enjoy the full spectrum of human rights each of us is entitled to, and live free from fear of discrimination.”

Bollocks. There is no “full spectrum of human rights” that depends on a right to idennify as the opposite sex and be treated accordingly.

“Amnesty has intervened in this case as it is a question of human rights, which affects us all.”

Indeed it is, and Amnesty is determined to trash women’s.

Well here’s a startling piece of information from an article by Anne Applebaum on how blatantly corrupt Trump is.

Trump’s Treasury Department announced last month that it would no longer enforce the Corporate Transparency Act, hampering recent congressional efforts to end money laundering, tax dodging, and other lawbreaking by anonymous investors. In an executive order, Trump suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American and foreign companies from paying bribes to do business.

Uh. That seems like an important piece of news.

Dang what a lot of contortions people go through to avoid telling the truth about men who pretend to be women.

FA resists calls to ban transgender players from women’s matches

First contortion right in the headline, as always. The calls are to ban male players from women’s matches. The calls really don’t give a damn how the male players idennify because the issue is that they’re male.

English football chiefs have introduced new rules on transgender players in women’s matches that stop short of a blanket ban but allow the FA to intervene if it believes there are issues around safety or fairness of competition.

If. Fuck you, dudes. Of course there are “issues”: that’s the whole point.

The updated policy came into force on April 1 and continues the practice of allowing transgender women to play in amateur women’s competitions if they have had reduced testosterone levels for at least a year.

Campaigners had wanted football to follow sports such as rugby union and hockey by restricting women’s matches to those who were born female, with an open category for all other players.

Instead, about 20 transgender women registered to play amateur football in England can continue to do so if their testosterone levels are below 5nmol per litre for at least 12 months. However, a change to the regulations means the FA can step in if it has any concerns and ask its Transgender and Non-Binary Eligibility Committee to make a decision.

Because god forbid they should just say no men in women’s sports, the end.

Still can’t get the headline right.

Trans people who self-identify as women face single-sex space ban

Men. Men who self-identify as women. Not generic “people” but men: men only. Women don’t need to “self-identify as” women because we just are women. One’s sex isn’t a matter of self-identifying any more than one’s species is.

Organisations will be told that they can no longer call a space single-sex if they admit transgender people who do not have a gender recognition certificate.

Updated guidance from the equality watchdog will say that services described as being single-sex will not be able to make the claim if they also allow transgender women to use them on the basis of self-identification.

Sigh. Why the exception? What is the point? A certificate doesn’t and can’t change what sex a person is. Gender-recognition is meaningless.

A source said of the guidelines: “The upshot [of the guidance] means it’s not lawful to have a self-ID service. The fact is that if you let a man in, it’s no longer a single-sex service, and that includes trans people without GRCs [gender recognition certificates].”

But it also includes trans people with GRCs.

The change would prevent those who rely on self-ID from being able to access women-only care homes or domestic abuse refuges without an exceptional reason. Those with a GRC may still be allowed because that is the present position in law. However, this could change in a ruling due this week after a case in the Supreme Court, in which only those born female may be afforded sex-based rights.

Well let’s fucking hope so, seeing as how a certificate does not and cannot change a person’s sex.

For Women Scotland, the campaign group backed by JK Rowling, has argued that sex-based protections should only apply to those born biologically female. However, the Scottish government countered that the definition of a woman should include those with a GRC.

Because the Scottish government is pickled in reality-denying gender ideology.

Hm. Mediaite describes the cognitive test Trump aced rather differently. What it describes is very basic indeed.

On Sunday, the White House released a report from the president’s personal physician, Capt. Sean Barbabella. Dr. Barbabella found that “President Trump remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function.”

Included in the report were the results of the cognitive exam Dr. Barbarella administered to Trump.

“Cognitive function, assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), was normal with a score of 30 out of 30,” Dr. Barbabella wrote.

Trump has frequently boasted about having aced previous cognitive tests. Speaking with reporters on Air Force One over the weekend, Trump again boasted about his performance on this most recent exam.

“I don’t know what to tell you other than I got every answer right,” Trump said. He added, “I think it’s a pretty well-known test. Whatever it is, I got every one — I got it all right.”

Yes but sir what were the questions? How easy is the test?

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment is a fairly simple exam used to detect early dementia and mild cognitive dysfunction. Respondents are typically asked to recall the date, identify pictures of animals, and count backwards by seven starting at 60.

Oh.

Oh I see.

And Trump is bragging about being able to do those very basic things.

Which kind of shows us how impaired his cognition really is.

Trump is pretty much supernaturally healthy, we’re told.

As a part of Friday’s nearly five-hour medical examination at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, Trump received several blood tests, a cardiac examination and ultrasounds, said his doctor.

“His active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being,” Dr Barbabella wrote in the memo released by the White House on Sunday.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State.”

What “active lifestyle”? He doesn’t have an “active lifestyle” – he’s not active. Golf doesn’t count. He doesn’t walk the course, he squats in a golf cart. He doesn’t walk at all apart from moving from one room to another. Remember that time in his first term when he met with colleagues in Taormina and they all went for a walk except for Trump, who rode in a youknowwhat? That is not a guy with an active lifestyle.

The president received neurological tests on his mental status, nerves, motor and sensory function and reflexes. He was also given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and scored 30 out of 30, said the memo.

The test is commonly used to detect cognitive decline and early signs of dementia and has tasks such as naming animals, drawing a clock and repeating words back five minutes later.

So it’s not decline, it’s pre-existing stupid. Noted.

Kathleen Stock does that pesky feminist thing of noticing politicians who try to draw a polite veil over religions that see women as dangerous whores.

First we were told there couldn’t be a national public inquiry into grooming gangs, because there were going to be at least five local ones. This week, considerable confusion emerged about whether there would even be any of those. Buried within a statement about tackling child sexual abuse and exploitation generally, Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, announced with smooth customer-service rhetoric that “following feedback from local authorities”, instead of local inquiries, there might be “more bespoke work”. 

I bet we can guess what that “feedback” was feeding back.

To many eyes, this was a cowardly reversal to avoid offending core Labour voters — not least, perhaps, ones in Phillips’s Birmingham Yardley constituency. Some of these tend to get defensive when attention turns to facts about the predominant ethnic heritage (Pakistani) and religion (Muslim) of the men who have been conducting the systematic rape and abuse of white working-class girls in British cities for years. Sikh girls have also been targeted by groups of Muslim men.

Religions have consequences. Religions are forms of group idennniny, and when idenniny enters the picture people get very cautious. This does not apply, of course, when the idennniny is female. Religious idenniny is massively important and valuable; female idenniny is a tragic mistake.

In the ensuing fallout, a familiar, frustratingly counterproductive approach from political leaders has been taken, which I call the “zoom-out” protocol. The unspoken rule seems to be: whenever there’s a negative social issue mainly involving members of a non-white ethnic or religious minority, zoom out as if you were operating a wide-angle lens and talk about the problem as a general one, rooted only in human nature. If, on the other hand, you are talking about a negative issue involving mostly white people, relax about any unflattering angles; feel free to zoom in with as high definition as your camera provides.

When the negative social issue is to do with male people predating on female people then even non-white female people lose out, no doubt because their male relatives don’t allow them to riot.

But not every mention of ethnic minorities involves an invidious general comparison. Sometimes we just need to better understand criminal offences in a relatively circumscribed cultural context, particularly where it is a matter of accountability and learning lessons. This should include examining any aggravating factors related to ethnicity and religion — for instance, the silencing effects of tight-knit kinship structures, or the hostile targeting of victims perceived as sinful non-believers.

Or a Holy Book that is riddled with misogynist rage.

Here’s the thing: the holy books were written by men, because men were the ones with the power to write holy books. Men left to their own devices have two burning grudges against women: they won’t spread their legs on command, and they’re whores. Naturally their god agrees with them, and so humanity ends up with sacred books that reinforce hatred of women.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Muppet applauds like a seal.

Time for a re-read of your own books.

Sure, let’s do that. One recurring theme throughout the Harry Potter series is people being falsely accused of things they haven’t done:

• The Chamber of Secrets: Hagrid accused of releasing Slytherin’s monster into Hogwarts, Harry accused of being the heir of Slytherin.

• The Prisoner of Azkaban: Sirius Black spending years in prison for Wormtail’s crimes.

• The Goblet of Fire: Harry accused of cheating his way into the Tri-Wizzard Cup.

• The Order of the Phoenix: Harry accused of lying about Voldemort’s return.

• Etc. etc.

In all these cases, the lack of conclusive evidence* is not going to stop the mob, including The Daily Prophet**, from eagerly and enthusiastically parroting back the accusations and demanding the witch be burned. Sound familiar? In the fictional universe of the books Tim Quartier would be among the people wearing the “POTTER STINKS” badges in The Goblet of Fire.

The Order of the Phoenix is basically a book about institutional capture and cancel culture. The Ministry of Magic is interfering at Hogwarts to suppress the inconvenient truth of biological sex Voldemort’s return, punishing those who speak out, and threatening to fire any teachers who fail to go along with the official dogma. Sound familiar? As I have previously written, there may not be a real-world equivalent of Voldemort (too much of a super-villain), but there sure are a lot of Draco Malfoys and Cornelius Fudges and Dolores Umbridges and Rita Skeeters out there.

* In the Hogwarts universe there is, of course, pretty much always a magical way to fake the evidence anyway.

** Obviously representing the mainstream media.

The Grand Inquisitor returns:

The Trump administration has ordered State Department employees to report on any instances of coworkers displaying “anti-Christian bias” as part of its effort to implement a sweeping new executive order on supporting employees of Christian faith working in the federal government.

I wonder how they are defining “anti-Christian” and “bias.”

The department, according to a copy of an internal cable obtained by POLITICO, will work with an administration-wide task force to collect information “involving anti-religious bias during the last presidential administration” and will collect examples of anti-Christian bias through anonymous employee report forms.

Well those are two very different things. Religious believers can be extremely hostile to rival religions, far more hostile than the relaxed kind of non-believer who just doesn’t sign up to any of it but doesn’t quarrel with any of it either.

The cable was sent out to embassies around the world under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s name. The instructions also were released in a department-wide notice.

That’s good. It’s very helpful to have a secretary of state who picks sides in religious brawls.

The cable encourages State Department employees to report on one another through a tip form that can be anonymous. “Reports should be as detailed as possible, including names, dates, locations (e.g. post or domestic office where the incident occurred,” the cable reads.

Some State Department officials reacted to the cable with shock and alarm, saying that even if well-intentioned, it is based on the flawed premise that the department harbors anti-Christian bias to begin with, and warning it could create a culture of fear as the administration pushes employees to report on one another.

Spoiler: it’s not well-intentioned.

It’s about farking time!!!

Judges have been warned against using preferred pronouns for transgender offenders who commit violent or sex crimes.

Inappropriate use of preferred pronouns in such cases raises the risk of appearing “biased” or having “predetermined” the outcome, the Judicial Office warned in an alert to all judges and magistrates.

Well yes but surely it also risks confusing the people who decide the outcome. That’s the whole point of the luxury pronouns – to condition people to think the person with the luxury pronouns really is the Other Gender.

Campaigners have expressed concern that transgender defendants who are biologically male and have committed sex attacks against women are being referred to as “she” in court.

For a slew of reasons. Top reason is because it’s misleading in a way that benefits the guy who committed the sex attack, but another reason is because it’s such a shameless sadistic insult to the victim and to women.

Last September, Lexi Secker, a trans rapist who was sentenced to

Let me stop you right there. Secker is not a “trans rapist”; you must mean he’s a man who claims to be a woman, aka a trans woman.

Last September, Lexi Secker, a trans rapist who was sentenced to more than six years in a male prison, was referred to as “she” by police, a judge and barristers throughout a trial in Swindon.

Can you imagine how torturing that must have been to the victim?

The alert to judges and magistrates said that “typically” it should be unproblematic to refer to those who appear in court however they wish. However, it pointed to updated guidance in the Equal Treatment Bench Book, an official guide to how individuals should be treated in court.

It said: “[This] makes clear that in some cases, however, it may not be appropriate, or may even be extremely inappropriate, for the judge to use a defendant’s preferred pronouns, for example, in cases of violent or sex crimes by a transgender perpetrator.

“In these exceptional, but increasingly common judgments, where one side’s case hinges on the recognition of the biological sex of the trans person as crucial, and the other side on the recognition of their chosen identification, judges need to be careful not to let the choice of gendered pronouns give an appearance of bias, or that there is predetermined conclusion.

“If possible, using the individual’s name instead of a pronoun where these pronouns are contested, or alternatively, the gender-neutral pronoun of ‘they’, may help minimise offence towards or the undermining of an individual’s personal identification, while also not giving it undue weight over the perceptions of others.”

No. To hell with that “they” crap. It’s a courtroom, not a pub. Fuzzy confusing language is not an asset in court.

The alert follows a ruling in Scotland on pronoun use in an employment tribunal in Scotland where Sandie Peggie, a nurse, was suspended after complaining about changing alongside Beth Upton, a male-born transgender doctor. Ms Peggie claimed she had been subject to harassment under the Equality Act.

Judge Sandy Kemp, overseeing the case, ruled last month that Ms Peggie was allowed to refer to Dr Upton as a man throughout the tribunal as long as it was not done “offensively” or “gratuitously”.

Still bad and stupid. Upton is a man; there shouldn’t be any “as long as it was not” about it. The trans lobby has done an amazing job of browbeating people into being terrified of saying that man there is a man.

I see. Research is bad because it tells us about climate change, so the thing to do is get rid of research. Problem solved.

The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a draft budget proposal viewed by NPR.

The agency’s budget for 2026 would be slashed by more than 25% overall from its current level of roughly $6 billion under the proposal, which would need to be approved by Congress. The draft cuts to NOAA’s research operations and fisheries services are particularly severe.

If enacted, the cuts would “take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing and the American people,” says Craig McLean, a former director of NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency’s research arm, whose career spanned multiple administrations.

Yes, hooray. People weren’t always moaning about climate change in the 1950s. Good times.

The budget aims to eliminate OAR, cutting the budget by close to 75% from previous levels and slashing all funding for research that focuses on climate and weather. A few groups from the office, like a team that works on tornado science, would be moved to other parts of the organization. The budget would also end funding for the many cooperative research centers scattered across the country that contribute to climate and weather research. The proposed budget comes as the administration has already fired hundreds of NOAA employees.

Isn’t that great? Hundreds of people who will no longer be whining at us about climate change.

Many of the proposed changes echo concepts outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint organized by the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think tank, a document the Trump administration has followed closely in recent months.

Project 2025 calls for NOAA to “be broken up and downsized,” keeping the pieces that many Americans are familiar with, like the National Weather Service, and dismantling many of NOAA’s other offices. The proposed moves follow that rubric, such as shifting the Fisheries Service to another agency.

It also called the agency part of “the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and laid out ways NOAA’s climate science research could be curtailed, some of which have been proposed in the budget document.

That’s the ticket. Don’t do anything to slow or reverse climate change, just shut up about climate change, which is both easier and cheaper.

Politico reports:

The Education Department launched the process for pulling Maine’s federal K-12 funding citing the state’s refusal to bar [male] transgender students from girls’ sports.

…

In March, the Education Department’s probe found the Maine Department of Education’s sports participation policy violated Title IX. But the proposed agreement given to the state to sign to avoid losing its funding went beyond just addressing sports.

The requirements of the agreement would have forced the state to say the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX outweighs Maine’s Human Rights Act, which provides protection for transgender people.

Wait wait wait. Explain what you mean by “protection.” Protection is not letting males play in female sports. Keeping males out of female sports does not endanger those males, and it does keep males from endangering females in female sports. Female people do matter.

The Education Department’s proposed resolution agreement would have also required the state agency to direct all schools to comply with Title IX and specify that the federal law requires schools to “forbid allowing males to participate in any athletic program, or access any locker room or bathroom, designated for females.” The directive must also tell schools there are only two sexes, “woman” and “man.”

Yes, and? There is no third sex that is neither woman nor man, or part woman and part man, or some new sex that’s so special and different we don’t even have a name for it yet. There are only two sexes, and we know their names.

The one and only thing the Trump administration is right about:

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) referred its Title IX investigation into the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for further enforcement action. Simultaneously, ED will initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding, including formula and discretionary grants.

These actions are a direct result of MDOE’s continued refusal to comply with Title IX. ED issued a noncompliance finding on March 19, and sent a final warning letter to the state on March 31. 

Title IX – the one that says don’t treat women like shit.

Following a directed investigation of MDOE, ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that MDOE has practices and policies that violate Title IX, including allowing males to compete in female sports and occupy women-only intimate spaces. MDOE refused to comply with OCR’s proposed Resolution Agreement to resolve its Title IX violations voluntarily. 

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. President Trump’s Executive Order Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports articulates United States policy, consistent with Title IX, to protect female student athletes from having “to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”   

It’s a scalding irony that it’s Trump saying this, and we know he doesn’t actually give a damn about protecting female students, but his EO is right all the same.

Trump and co are blowing off the courts.

The Trump administration on Friday defied a federal judge’s order to provide an explanation for how it intended to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month.

In an aggressive two-page filing, Justice Department lawyers told the judge, Paula Xinis, that she had not given them enough time to figure out what they planned to do about the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, after the Supreme Court ordered the administration on Thursday to “facilitate” his return to U.S. soil.

“Defendants are unable to provide the information requested by the court on the impracticable deadline set by the court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order,” the department lawyers wrote.

“In light of the insufficient amount of time afforded to review the Supreme Court order,” the lawyers went on, “defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the court. That is the reality.”

…

The dispute emerged directly from a Supreme Court ruling issued on Thursday evening in which the justices directed Trump officials to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant, from a prison in El Salvador where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.

The officials have already acknowledged that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane, despite a previous court order that had expressly prohibited sending him back to his homeland.

Ignoring a court order is not an “administrative error.”

In an order of her own, Judge Xinis gave the government until 11:30 a.m. Friday to file a written version of its plans, but refused to change the schedule for the hearing.

Clearly frustrated, she reminded the Justice Department that the administration’s “act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened.”

Moreover, she said the department’s request for additional time to study a four-page Supreme Court order “blinks at reality.”

We’re gamboling way too close to the edge of the cliff.

Sigh. We’re still doing this?

HHS will review guidance on the addition of fluoride to drinking water

The Department of Health and Human Services is directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make new recommendations on the addition of fluoride to U.S. water sources. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has blamed the fluoridation of water for a number of health problems.

The agency is directing the CDC to reconvene an independent panel of 15 health experts to examine the role fluoride plays in water sources and whether it can be detrimental to public health, Kennedy told The Associated Press earlier this week, and NPR has confirmed.

…

Kennedy has erroneously called fluoride “an industrial waste” and blamed its addition in drinking water on health issues including arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease. Health experts widely agree that fluoride — a common, naturally occurring mineral — at regulated levels is a major benefit to public health.

It’s General Jack D. Ripper all over again.

Zero gloves worn, zero fucks given.