Oh, gee, thanks; good to know.

Stickers saying “I Love JK Rowling” are not a “dog whistle” for transphobia, a university professor has told an employment tribunal.

Academics Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne are suing the University and College Union (UCU) after its Edinburgh branch said their film Adult Human Female was an attack on transgender identity.

How are we defining “attack”? “Identity”? “Transgender”?

People who talk about and believe in and aggressively defend “transgender identity” believe that sex is swappable and that “transgender identity” is vastly more important than mere bodies. It’s all a bit church-like, really – never mind the vile body, it’s the soul that matters.

The film challenged trans rights claims and provoked protests when they tried to show it at the University of Edinburgh, the tribunal heard. The academics say this was unlawful discrimination by the UCU against their belief that there are only two sexes.

It’s not a belief. Everyone knows there are “only” two sexes (how many do you want ffs?) so the act of believing it is superfluous.

From the Telegraph’s coverage of the tribunal:

Naomi Cunningham, for the academics, said: “The conduct of the union in encouraging protest against these screenings and calling for [the] venue to be withdrawn was a completely consistent part of a wider course of conduct.” She said that Dr Wanggren, Grant Buttars, UCU Edinburgh branch president, and the union had sought to create “a hostile environment for anyone who held a gender critical view”.

Ms Cunningham added: “You were trying to create an environment, both at Edinburgh University and in the union as a whole, in which it was simply impossible to discuss gender critical ideas or arguments at all because you regarded those ideas as inherently transphobic.” She went on to say: “The branches conduct in response to the two proposed screenings was for the specific purpose of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for any member of the union with gender critical views, whether at Edinburgh or elsewhere, wasn’t it?”

Dr Wanggren replied: “Absolutely not.”

Ms Cunningham suggested that large numbers of gender-critical members of the union have now left.

Dr Wanggren said that was “not to my knowledge” but that she is aware that some people had left, and said a comparable film with different or opposing views would likely have been treated the same way. She said: “I am telling the tribunal that if a comparable film against any other minority group that used the kind of language, the broad brush strokes that harm that minoritised community, UCU would in line with our policies [have] acted in a similar way.”

She said the union has a policy on a range of equality issues including those affecting trans, race and LGBTQ communities.

But not, of course, women. Never women. Never ever women.

Why is that, exactly?

Is it because women are not strictly speaking a “minority”?

And yet women are treated like a minority, and arguably viewed as a minority. Women are the Other. Women are the mistake, the exception, the where things went wrong, the defective. Proper people are male, with the big muscles and the beards and above all no nasty stinky hole Down There. Men are the real people and women are the sly plotting treacherous feeble mistakes.

That’s why UCU and Dr Wanggren wouldn’t dream of protecting women’s right to speak and protest. Women don’t deserve it. The only good woman is a male woman.

Another front in the Shut Up About Women wars.

Two academics behind a gender-critical film have taken legal action against their union, accusing it of discrimination and harassment after it campaigned on social media to stop the documentary being screened.

Deirdre O’Neill, a senior lecturer in film studies at the University of Hertfordshire, and Michael Wayne, a professor of media and film studies at Brunel University, describe Adult Human Female as the first UK documentary to look at the “clash between women’s rights and gender ideology/trans rights”.

When a screening was arranged at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, documents before the tribunal said the local branch of the University and College Union (UCU) wrote to the university calling on it to cancel the event, describing it as a “clear attack on trans people’s identities” and denouncing it as “transphobic” on Twitter.

But what about the women’s rights part? Does that not matter at all?

Don’t be silly; of course it doesn’t. Fans of trans ideology succeeded in preventing the film from being shown on two occasions.

Adult Human Female is regarded by trans rights groups as inflammatory, transphobic and inaccurate. Documents before the Watford tribunal said the film examined claims made by trans rights activists that “trans women are women” and should be treated as women in all legal and social contexts.

Can you imagine? Actually examining claims that men are women and should be treated as women in all legal and social contexts? Whatever next? Examining claims that dogs are trees?

O’Neill and Wayne, who describe themselves as gender critical, believe sex is a matter of biology, that it is impossible for a human to change sex, and that sex is important in a range of different political and social contexts.

Or rather they are aware that sex is a matter of biology and that it is impossible for a human to change sex. It’s a reality more than a belief. It is a belief in a sense but it muddies the water to call it that. We don’t burble about “belief” when it’s a matter of speeding cars crashing into objects or bodies jumping off tall buildings. We’re aware of certain realities and we act accordingly.

The union – or respondent – denies it has discriminated against O’Neill and Wayne. Documents before the tribunal said: “The respondent’s conduct was proportionate and necessary in the interests of advocating the rights of others. Accordingly, the reason for any less favourable treatment was not the claimants’ gender-critical belief or lack of a belief in gender identity theory.”

Is that right? What if the film had been about racism? What if the protesters had been brandishing placards raging at immigration and Pakis and replacement?

Denying harassment, the union’s defence stated: “The conduct of the respondent was to highlight its commitment to supporting its members that identify as trans or non-binary. The respondent’s conduct was proportionate and in line with its current support for its trans, non-binary and LGBT+ members.”

But what about women?

We know the answer to that. The answer is nothing. Nothing about women.

Round up the usual manipulations.

Fencer disqualified for refusing to compete against transgender opponent

No. Female fencer disqualified for refusing to compete against male opponent. The problem is not that he’s transgender, the problem is that he’s male.

USA Fencing has backed a transgender athlete after a female opponent refused to compete in their match and instead took a knee in protest.

No. Again. USA Fencing has backed a male athlete after a female opponent refused to compete in their match. Issue not transgender; issue male.

Sullivan transferred to Wagner College’s women’s team, having previously competed in the men’s division. On Wednesday, USA Fencing came out in support of Sullivan after footage of the protest went viral.

The statement read: “USA Fencing enacted our current transgender and non-binary athlete policy in 2023. The policy was designed to expand access to the sport of fencing and create inclusive, safe spaces. The policy is based on the principle that everyone should have the ability to participate in sports and was based upon the research available of the day.”

But of course a policy of allowing men to compete against women does not create inclusive, safe spaces. It does the exact opposite of that. It forces women to compete against men. That’s not safe for women and it’s not inclusive of women.

“We understand that the conversation on equity and inclusion pertaining to transgender participation in sport is evolving. USA Fencing will always err on the side of inclusion…”

No no no no. No pats on your own back. You are not erring on the side of inclusion. You are erring on the side of excluding women. You might as well call it “inclusive” to let adult male gorillas compete in wrestling matches.

Musk’s hobby:

Ashley St. Clair, who says she is the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has accused the billionaire of withdrawing child support payments to punish her for “disobedience.” It comes after St. Clair said she sold her Tesla car on Saturday to make up for Musk’s alleged 60 percent cut to payments, according to the The Daily Mail.

…

Responding to St. Clair’s claims on Monday, Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out. No court order is needed.

“Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”

Not a huge amount of child support for such a rich gangster.

Ashley St. Clair wrote on X on Monday: “It’s ironic that your last effort in court was to try to gag me while you use a social media channel you literally own to distribute derogatory messages about me and our child to the entire world. It’s all about control with you, and everyone can see it.

“America needs you to grow up, you petulant man-child.”

Yeah well that’s not happening.

The Dems are suing.

The Democratic Party on Monday asked a U.S. court to block Republican President Donald Trump‘s executive order overhauling the election system, arguing the changes risked denying eligible U.S. citizens the right to vote.

In a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the Democratic National Committee said Trump exceeded his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do not comply.

“The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy—all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed by longtime Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm.

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in the case.

…

Trump has long questioned the U.S. electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. The president and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs.

In their lawsuit, the Democrats said the U.S. Constitution empowers individual states and Congress – not the president – to control how federal elections are conducted. They said this was critical to making sure presidents do not seek to change election rules to favor themselves.

“The Framers of our federal Constitution foresaw that self-interested and self- aggrandizing leaders might seek to corrupt our democratic system of government to expand and preserve their own power,” the lawsuit read.

What kind of leaders? Can we see that again?

…self-interested and self- aggrandizing leaders might seek to corrupt our democratic system of government…

Why, that describes Trump himself. What a coincidence.

It seems that a Netflix drama about male violence against girls and women can get attention but actual real world male violence against girls and women not so much.

When real women talk about it it’s just boring and shrill. When Netflix does a male-focused drama about it Keir Starmer sits up and takes notice.

Wisconsin steps up.

Democrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.

Musk endured a wave of gloating on Twitter/X, his own social media platform, after Brad Schimel, a Trump-endorsed judge that he spent $25m supporting, lost by 10 percentage points to Susan Crawford, whose victory sustained a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

On a day that Trump has earmarked as “liberation day” to mark his long-awaited roll out of trade tariffs, Democrats seized on the result as a referendum on Musk – who has spearheaded the president’s slashing of federal government workers and spending programmes – while casting it as a platform for a recovery in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

…

The result is politically significant because the court is due to issue abortion rulings while also deciding on electoral redistricting questions which now have the potential to help Democrats in future elections in a state where contests are traditionally close.

Let’s not get carried away here. Expect nothing, avoid disappointment.

Lots of hedging here so don’t get too hopeful yet…

Trump has indicated to top advisers that Elon Musk could be taking a step back from his current role in the administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Musk is employed by the government as a “special government employee” — meaning his appointment is not to exceed 130 days. His term would be up around the end of May, but it was widely rumored that the White House could take steps to keep him on or extend his employment status in some way.

As ABC News has previously reported, Musk’s decision-making has divided Trump’s top aides and at times has sparked rifts among those closest to the president. Some of Musk’s defenders in the White House caution reporting that Musk is being pushed out is overblown, sources said.

So, who knows.

ABC News previously reported that some White House officials who had grown frustrated with Musk had resigned themselves that the billionaire is unlikely to be reined in anytime soon and had instead focused on managing the situation as best they can until his special government contract comes to an end in May.

Oh, how funny, because that’s what the rest of us have to do too.

Headline:

Sandy Stone is the first transgender woman inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame

Should of course be “Sandy Stone is the first man inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.”

They just can’t get enough of insulting us, can they. Without rubbing women’s noses in male contempt what would “trans women” even mean?

Bupkis. Insulting women is the entire point; there’s nothing left over.

The Advocate really relishes the work.

Stone, credited with starting the academic field of transgender studies, is also a recording engineer, an artist, and the first known trans woman in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Around the end of this year, her story will be told in a documentary film.

The first known trans woman – geddit? There are lots of secret men in the women’s hall of fame already, teehee.

Stone was inducted into the hall last year along with several other prominent women, such as civil rights icon Ruby Bridges, tennis champion Serena Williams, and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Notice the care taken to name only Black women, nudging us to accept the trans ideology truism that “transphobia” is racism by another name.

“It’s a great honor and a great responsibility,” Stone says of her induction. “Somebody has to go first.”

Go first? Go where first? What somebody? Has to why? Does the first white person have to be inducted into the African-American Hall of Fame? Why does somebody have to be the first man inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame? Please explain – really explain, not just assert.

“Obviously this was an incredibly historic induction,” says Jennifer Gabriel, CEO of the hall. 

Yeah obviously it’s massively historic when men are invited to take women’s awards.

Of inducting a trans woman, Gabriel says, “Of course there’s going to be backlash and pushback — but it’s really beautiful that we didn’t experience a lot of that.”

Why? Why is it of course? Could it be because it’s so insulting to give a man an award that’s specifically for women? If so why do you think it’s rilly byootiful that you got away with it easily?

On the transphobia coming out of the White House and elsewhere, Stone says, “Our side has been preparing for this for years, but our response will necessarily be tactical and slow, which gets no click-throughs at all. But still it will happen, and it’s just as real as what the transphobes are doing. My game, going forward, is to help people learn to turn fear into rage and defense into attack.”

Transphobes have an “unwholesome focus on other people’s genitalia,” she adds, and there’s no point in talking to them.

“There is nothing you can say to them,” she says. “Living your life is the best revenge. The best way to fight is to just be your authentic self.”

Yes, the best way to fight is to be your authentic fake self.

Originally a comment by Mosnae on No no not the chair, the person.

Gender is a [social] construct. But so is sex. So is money. We work with [social] constructs all of the time.

The point appears to be that it’s not bad for gender identity to be a social construct because the authors can come up with examples of social constructs that aren’t bad. Leaving aside the highly dubious claim about sex, there are a few issues with this. For starters, why not throw in some undesirable social constructs, too? Why not point out that God is a social construct, as well as racism and homophobia and honor killings and forced marriages and slurs?

Then there’s also the matter that money is very different from gender. Consider the following attributes:

Concreteness

Sure, money is a social construct. But it also has a very clear physical manifestation. I can point to a twenty-dollar bill and tell you: “There, that’s money.” Maybe you don’t attach value to it like I do. But you know there’s a specific thing in the real world that stands for my concept, and you can observe it and examine it and tell it apart from other things (the one exception being well-made counterfeit $20 bills). And although the broader concept of money might only exist in the mind, this particular money isn’t just in my mind; if you take the bill away from me, I don’t have those twenty bucks anymore. You can’t really do any of that with gender identity. (Of course, you can do it with gender to some extent, but it’s a limited extent, and anyway I don’t think that’s what the article wants to get at.)

In addition, though this is not a necessary feature of money, it is quite often defined, created and regulated by governments with great precision. I don’t think I need to explain how this clashes with gender and gender identity; the latter pretty much just consists of random people going around saying they have gender identities, with no particular coordination.

Mutuality

Money as a social construct only works because its users agree on it. I’m not going to convince you to trade twenty dollars’ worth of food for a worthless piece of paper. You need to regard that piece of paper as money, or no transaction will take place.

This is exactly why money has a physical instantiation. It’s not feasible to have a monetary system without any concrete token to stand for it. Alice can’t just go up to Bea and tell her that she has $20 in her mind and that she’ll transfer them over to Bea in exchange for food. How would Bea know that Alic is saying the truth? Even if she did agree to go through with the transaction, how would she use those $20? If Bea wants to buy something from Clara with the money Alice gave her, then Clara finds herself in a situation in which both Alice or Bea could be making stuff up. It just doesn’t work. Even without accusing Bea of being a liar, Clara should be able to say, “Listen, I have no way to know whether you’re saying the truth or not. No offense, but I can’t acknowledge your money nor go through with this transaction.”

With gender identity, however, people are the “experts of themselves” and if they say they have a gender identity then they do and that’s that and everyone should just take their word for it.

Utility

As far as I’m concerned, this is the big issue. Money has a clear function and purpose. We don’t just run around believing in it and telling each other about it without having any reason for doing so.

On the other hand, there isn’t an evident reason for which it would be useful to tell others about your gender identity and have them believe you. I don’t see what purpose there is in getting your gender identity acknowledged through proper pronominalization. Gender identity doesn’t impact interactions between humans in any obvious way. Or at least, there isn’t anything that’s obvious to me.

Maybe it would be fairer to put it this way: I can easily make up many scenarios in which Alice, Bea and Clara are communicating and need to have information about money. But when it comes to gender identity, I’m drawing a blank.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can reject social constructs. Granted, doing so might put you at odds with society, or prevent you from living within it. But you don’t have to use money or to adhere to a monetary system; not everyone does. And a given society can change; it’s possible for entire social constructs to disappear. Yet, despite claiming that “gender is a [presumably social] construct,” the authors appear to treat it like it’s some kind of weird absolute that is intrinsic to human beings.

Oh look, it’s Alok Vaid-Menon again. It’s been a long time.

To paraphrase somewhat liberally, he says the reason people think trans ideology is bullshit is because we’re so miserable and unfree. “It’s easier to romanticize the unfreedom,” he says emphatically, “decorate and accessorize it” –

Wait wait wait. He’s the guy recording himself in a colorful abstract-patterned shirt and dangly earrings and bright pink hair and heavy eye makeup and lipstick. Who is decorating and accessorizing here?

Another deepity: “People are made to destroy their own creativity, their own simultaneity – “

Our what now? Simultaneity? No we’re not. Look at me: typing and breathing with all the simultaneity in the world.

Aw, sad. Trump thought he could lead Putin around like a little toy donkey on wheels, and it turns out to be not that easy. Who could have known?

Russia cannot accept U.S. proposals to end the war in Ukraine in their current form because they do not address problems Moscow regards as having caused the conflict, a senior Russian diplomat said, suggesting U.S.-Russia talks on the subject had stalled.

The comments by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov suggest Moscow and Washington have so far been unable to bridge differences which President Vladimir Putin raised more than two weeks ago when he said U.S. proposals needed reworking.

They come as U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be growing increasingly impatient with what he has suggested might be foot-dragging over a wider deal by Moscow.

Trump in recent days has said he is “pissed off” with Putin and has spoken of imposing sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is blocking a deal.

I guess Trump is the kind of guy who has to drive his car at 90 miles an hour into a brick wall before he’ll believe that’s risky behavior.

Before the weekend, Trump had taken a more conciliatory stance towards Russia that has unnerved the United States’ European allies as he tries to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

But in recent days, and amid lobbying by Europeans such as Finland’s president urging him to hold Russia to account, he has adopted a tougher tone.

“Ohhhhhhh, now I get it,” said the large noisy fool. “You mean Russia has been the aggressor this whole time. Who knew?”

(Just kidding about the “aggressor” part. His vocabulary doesn’t stretch that far.)

Who knew people are required to endorse trans ideology when they don’t even know how to tie their shoelaces yet?

A toddler was suspended from nursery after being accused of being transphobic or homophobic, The Telegraph can reveal.

Department for Education (DfE) data show the child, aged either three or four, was suspended from a state school in the 2022-23 academic year for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity”.

Age three or four. Children that age don’t know what “sexual orientation” even is – they don’t know what “sexual” means. Nobody knows what “gender identity” is. And anyway since when are children, let alone very young children, being kicked out of school for ideological reasons?

I could see it in the case of intractable bullying of other children – boys bullying girls, white toddlers bullying brown toddlers, that kind of thing. But how could gender identity even come up? How would any toddler be motivated to bully another toddler because of “sexual orientation and gender identity”? How would any toddler know what either of those labels meant?

Maybe because they’ve watched too much BBC programming?

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said: “Every once in a while, the extremes of gender ideology throw up a story that seems too crazy to believe, and a toddler being suspended from nursery for so-called ‘transphobia’ or homophobia is one such example.

“Worse still, this is not an isolated case. Apparently 13 four and five-year-olds were suspended or permanently excluded from school for the same reason. Teachers and school leaders involved in this insanity should be ashamed of themselves for projecting adult concepts and beliefs onto such young children.”

The teachers must be entrapping the toddlers. They must be teaching them the silly ideological vocabulary and then punishing them for using words the way toddlers do use words. “Poopyhead” becomes “tranny” or similar.

Welp, get them young. Maybe in a generation or two trans ideology will have replaced reality.

Large strides into the new hellscape.

Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.

A twofer – union busting and making people sick.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half of the country.

Well who needs any of that, right? Who needs disease outbreaks tracked? Who needs medical research? Who needs safe food and medicine? Who needs health insurance in a privatized health system?

At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDA’s tobacco chief was removed from his position.

Regulation is bad. The market should be free to add nicotine to cookies and candy. Get the people hooked early: $$$.

At the CDC, most employees have not been unionized, but interest rose sharply this year as the Trump administration took steps to reduce the federal workforce. Roughly 2,000 CDC employees in Atlanta belonged to the American Federation of Government Employees local bargaining unit, with hundreds more who had petitioned to join in recent days being added.

But on Thursday night, Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order that would end collective bargaining for a large number of federal agencies, including the CDC and other health agencies.

Haha! Fuck you, federal workers: the big boss says you can’t have unions at all!

Via James Esses – A person-centred approach is antithetical to gender critical beliefs.

Approach to what? That’s just the title, and already we’re in the presence of mushy thinking. Also they mean the other way around – gender-critical beliefs are antithetical to their “person-centred” approach. Approach to what? Therapy. So naturally you have to wonder what other kind of therapy there is – therapy centered on chairs and buttons and spoons?

But, believe it or not, it gets steadily worse.

Recently, we were struck, on finding a register of ‘gender critical’ therapists, by the fact that some of those therapists list themselves as person-centred, and so we start this piece with this statement.

One cannot both be ‘gender critical’ and ‘person-centred’.

Like hell one cannot.

Unless of course by “person-centred” they mean something so twisted and arcane that it actually has nothing to do with therapy that focuses on the person getting the therapy, which the naive outsider might think means all therapy.

Person-centred: a non-directive approach that believes that fundamentally the client is the expert of themself.

Ah. But what if the client is too profoundly mentally ill to have a clear view of her/his self? What if the whole point of therapy is to get help from someone outside one’s self? In other words it sounds way too touchy-feely and pro-narcissism to be useful therapy. But I know nothing about it so I could be completely wrong about the type of therapy. These particular writers though – their intellectual shortcomings are hard to miss.

Gender is a construct. But so is sex. So is money. We work with constructs all of the time.

Oops! Sex is real! If it weren’t you wouldn’t be here!

I don’t think I would recommend these particular therapists.

Civil liberties.

Always with the framing. So. much. framing.

Top Republicans on Capitol Hill poured cold water on President Donald Trump‘s talk of a potential third term, downplaying the prospect that he would pursue it.

Several lawmakers insisted that Trump wasn’t serious about it, even though he told NBC News on Sunday that he’s “not joking” about wanting another term, which is barred under the 22nd Amendment, and that “there are methods” to being able to run again.

What makes them so confident that he doesn’t mean it? It’s not as if he doesn’t say shocking horrifying appalling things all the fucking time. Why should anyone assume he’s not serious about this one?

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday when asked if he believes Trump, 78, can serve a third term: “Not without a change in the Constitution.” He added that Trump doesn’t appear serious about that.

“I think that you guys keep asking the question and I think he’s probably having some fun with it, probably messing with you,” Thune told reporters.

Oh hahahaheeheehee he’s so hilarious. It’s always a riot when a demonstrably lawless evil greedy monster makes yet another grotesque threat. I mean it’s not as if Trump tried to steal the last election by means of a violent insurrection. No no, he’s just a funny guy, that’s all; everybody kick back and enjoy the hilarity.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a close Trump ally, said that the president is being “tongue in cheek” about a third term.

“He can say he’s not joking, but it’s tongue in cheek of the president,” Mullin told NBC News. “I’ve known him for a long time, and I consider him a friend.”

So you’re a moral monster, so we know to ignore anything you say.

Across the Capitol in the House, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., dismissed the idea of Trump actively pursuing a third term, suggesting that Trump floats ideas and concepts not necessarily with the hope of achieving those goals but in an effort to get a discussion going on the topic.

“I don’t know what he was referring to. I never saw it,” Scalise said when asked about Trump’s comments. “But, you know, you see it like with Greenland, like with Panama Canal.”

Why yes, he’s made other grotesque lawless threats which he is currently working to bring to fruition, so that doesn’t tell us he’s “joking” about the third term (at which time he will be 82).

It turns out that giving the green light to corporate spending on elections does have consequences. Who could have known?

Fifteen years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy made a prediction. Writing for the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, in which the court struck down key guardrails against corporate spending in American elections, Kennedy rejected the allegation that the court’s ruling would have deleterious effects on how Americans perceived their republic.

“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,” he wrote. Kennedy’s reasoning was stilted and formulaic: Because corporations were “willing to spend money to try to persuade voters,” he argued, that dynamic “presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials.”

Hmm. Because the money bags pay for our vote, we are flattered by their deference to our “ultimate” influence. That is some twisted reasoning right there.

The last two months have proven him disastrously incorrect. Elon Musk, a South African billionaire who is considered to be the world’s wealthiest man, spent $288 million to reelect President Donald Trump last year. In return for his contributions, he has been given more power over the federal government than any other private individual since the founding.

With that power, Musk and his henchmen have dismantled entire federal agencies and directed the dismissals of thousands of civil servants. He has gained access to private data on millions of Americans from the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and other bedrock components of the federal government. He has used the Treasury’s payment system to cut off funds to congressionally authorized programs and disfavored recipients of federal funds.

The entire federal government now seems to bend to one man’s personal interests. Trump personally took part in a private car show for Tesla, Musk’s ailing electric car company, on the White House lawn. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced that the Justice Department would treat vandalism of Tesla cars and dealerships as “domestic terrorism.” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told Fox News viewers this month that Tesla’s stock price slide was a historic buying opportunity and urged them to take part in it.

Corrupt enough yet? No? Seriously, you’re going with no?

The court’s liberal members, for their part, were unpersuaded by Kennedy’s reasoning. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissenters, criticized the conservative majority for its dangerous nonchalance toward the corrosive effects of corruption. “The majority declares by fiat that the appearance of undue influence by high-spending corporations ‘will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,’” he noted. “The electorate itself has consistently indicated otherwise, both in opinion polls and in the laws its representatives have passed, and our colleagues have no basis for elevating their own optimism into a tenet of constitutional law.”

It’s almost as if bribery works, you know?

When Trump says he’s considering it, BELIEVE HIM, no matter what the “it” is.

Donald Trump’s suggestion that there are “methods” by which he could run for a third term as US president has been met with scorn – but also warnings that he could seriously attempt it, despite being explicitly barred from doing so by the US constitution.

There it is right there, even in the very act of warning against it. It’s not a “suggestion”! Calling it a suggestion weakens it, which is exactly what we should not be doing, journalism very much included. He’s not fucking suggesting, he’s shouting as loudly as possible.

“The biggest mistake of the last eight years is that we somehow failed to give credibility to Donald Trump’s whims and impulses, but we know it’s true,” David Jolly, a former Republican member of Congress, told MSNBC.

“January 6 was a perfect example. If he says he’s not ruling it out, then he’s not ruling it out, and we should consider it a constitutional threat.”

The second-biggest mistake is that journalists and pundits and talking heads kept translating Trump’s shouting into “suggestions.”

On Sunday Trump was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press about if there were plans for him to stay on in a third term as president. “Well, there are plans,” Trump said. “There are – not plans. There are methods – there are methods which you could do it, as you know.”

No they don’t know, and neither does anyone else, because it’s not true. It’s a flagrant lie.

Democrats have attacked Trump for his rhetoric, claiming it follows a pattern of authoritarian posturing by the president.

Another tricksy word. His authoritarianism isn’t posturing, it’s much much much too real. And yet a third: “rhetoric” – it’s not just rhetoric: he means it.