Regime Movie Night.

On Thursday afternoon, in the lobby of the Trump Kennedy Center, reporters whispered in hushed voices to each other to see which journalists, if any, would be allowed entry to a screening of Melania Trump’s documentary “Melania.”

In the hours before the film screened (press check-in began at 2 p.m. for the 6 p.m. carpet), there was slight optimism from veteran reporters, accustomed to slipping their way into Trump World, that they’d be able to network their way into a seat. But by 6:30 p.m., when members of the administration began walking the carpet, it became clear that most of the mainstream press would be blocked from attending the Amazon MGM Studios film.

Well duh. If you’re mainstream press you’re probably not going to heap flattery on a movie about a woman sleazy enough to marry Donald Trump.

Reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, AP and Vanity Fair, among dozens of other outlets on the carpet, were not granted tickets to the invit[ation]-only screening in the Opera House, located one floor above the carpet. The only press from the carpet allowed into the screening (not counting those separately invited) were One America News anchor Dan Ball and his wife Peyton Drew, a producer for the far-right news channel.

Regime media only. Bow to the pretty lady.

The film opens on Friday, Jan. 30 against a backdrop of political unrest, with ICE raids in Minneapolis and other parts of the country causing increased backlash against the administration’s glitzy White House screening earlier this week (with Apple CEO Tim Cook in attendance) and tonight’s premiere.

When asked about the exorbitant amount of money Amazon spent on the film — Amazon MGM paid $40 million for rights to the doc, and reportedly another $35 million on marketing — Trump said he “wasn’t involved with that.”

And it was in no way a barely disguised bribe. Good heavens no.

The flames are getting higher.

The former CNN anchor Don Lemon and three other people have been arrested on charges that they violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., this month, lawyers and Justice Department officials said on Friday, reviving a case that was rejected last week by a magistrate judge.

The arrests of Mr. Lemon, a second journalist and two protesters came a little more than a week after three other demonstrators who took part in the action at the Cities Church on Jan. 18 were taken into custody. The prosecution is likely to face pushback from defense lawyers on First Amendment grounds, given that political protest sits at the center of the charges and that Mr. Lemon and the other journalist, Georgia Fort, have said they entered the church to cover a demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the area.

In other words Trump is actively tearing up the Bill of Rights.

The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Justice Department drafted a criminal complaint to charge a total of eight people, including Mr. Lemon, over of the episode, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.

But the federal magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people — Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Allen and William Kelly. He refused to sign arrest warrants for Mr. Lemon and the others, citing insufficient evidence. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the chief judge in Federal District Court in Minneapolis to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied.

Because reporting on a protest is not the same thing as being part of the protest. It’s not a massively subtle distinction. It remains a distinction even if the reporters are in sympathy with the protesters. It is in fact very often the case that reporters are in sympathy with the people or cause they are reporting on. Labor reporters report on strikes, and they may be in sympathy with the strikes they report on; they are still reporters and protected by the First Amendment.

The arrests come as the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis is in deep turmoil. At a tense meeting earlier this week, a number of prosecutors challenged the head of the office about the administration’s decision not to pursue investigations of the shootings by federal agents, according to people familiar with the internal discussions. At least a half dozen prosecutors have resigned, and more departures are expected.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has called on other federal prosecutors’ offices in the Midwest to send temporary reinforcements to help investigate and prosecute cases.

It’s all getting much too Weimar.

Now Trump is hooking up with separatists in Alberta.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta’s premier say the US should respect Canadian sovereignty after reports emerged that Alberta separatists had talked to the Trump administration about the province possibly leaving Canada. Carney said they “expect the US administration to respect Canadian sovereignty – I’m always clear with President Trump to that effect”.

Similarly, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she expected US officials to leave discussions about the province’s “democratic process” to Albertans and Canadians.

No, see, other people have to stay out of US affairs but Trump gets to do whatever he wants. That’s the rule.

Currently, Alberta separatists are collecting signatures for a petition process that could lead to a referendum on leaving Canada. The Financial Times has reported they had meetings with US officials, which drew criticism from some Canadians premiers.

British Columbia Premier David Eby said that “to go to a country and ask for assistance in breaking up Canada – there’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is ‘treason'”.

Unless Trump, in which case all the rules are different.

Good good good. All as it should be. Move along.

Trump hangs picture of himself with Putin in White House

As one does.

Elizabeth Landers, the White House correspondent for PBS News Hour, who shared an image of the photograph on X, said it was hung in a vestibule area connecting the West Wing to the residence.

Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s key negotiator, welcomed the news, saying: “Good. A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Russia views the meeting between Putin and Trump in Anchorage, the first time the Russian leader had visited a western nation since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as an important moment in their modern history.

The Kremlin announced this week that the summit would appear in an updated version of school history textbooks from the beginning of the next academic year.

Great. Fabulous. Is there a photo of Hitler on his bedside table?

Editing to add: I missed the fact that this tantrum is from May 16 last year.

Making sure we all know just how stupid he is, again.

“to speak badly about” – he means slam or attack or bash or go after or even criticize. “Speak badly” means stutter or mumble or squeak or any other version of unskilled talking. It means doing the act of speaking in a bad, talentless way. It does not mean speaking of one too-powerful man in a way said man doesn’t like. This is in fact, tidily, an example of Trump…wait for it…speaking badly. He always speaks badly because he has a tiny vocabulary and he’s dumb as a stump. Springsteen, not so much.

Also, “importantly” is not a synonym for “what’s important is that”. I will use it correctly so that you can see what I mean: Trump tries hard to say things importantly but he always fails.

It’s hilarious to see Trump call anyone else on the planet “pushy”.

He said “If I wasn’t elected” when he meant “If I hadn’t been elected”. He can’t follow the most basic humdrum rules of grammar. He understands neither the subjunctive nor the past conditional. He is dumb as a stump.

He thinks it’s necessary or perhaps stylish to put quotation marks on the most banal of phrases, like “dumb as a rock”. Who ya quotin’ there Donny? Was it Henry James? Proust?

Springsteen’s skin is “all atrophied”??

No but Trump’s brain is.

Aha. So that’s what Trump wants, is it. Well he’s not getting it.

“Hey! He’s theee HeadofaCountry, and I mean he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different, he speaks and his people sit up at attention, I want my people to do the same.”

We’re not your people, you worm, we’re our own people, and your longing to make us sit up at attention instead of explaining in detail what a sick fuck you are is exactly why you should have a job emptying the bins in Central Park.

The “erring on the side of” bit seems all wrong in this Atlantic piece on “trans athletes” by sports columnist Sally Jenkins.

Transgender participation in women’s athletics is the single most difficult issue I’ve seen in 40 years of covering sports. It makes gambling, performance-enhancing drugs, and regulation of collegiate athletics look like tidy challenges.

What’s difficult about it? Just say no. No, men can’t play in women’s sports.

Two groups—trans women and cisgender women—both argue that they need equal protection from discrimination. But if they can’t have it at the same time in the often zero-sum realm of sports, who wins?

Oh please. It’s often the case that two groups argue that X. Deal with it.

At the core of the matter is whether trans-women athletes have a lingering testosterone advantage…

Is it? I think the core is that males have a whole array of physical advantages and that’s why women’s sports exist.

It’s unclear how many people are directly affected by the issue of trans competitors in women’s sports—according to the NCAA, fewer than 10 trans students competed among 500,000 collegiate athletes in 2024. But to high-school and collegiate girls and women who fight tooth and nail for every scholarship, decent athletic facility, and ounce of confidence in what remains a man’s world, no number seems small. At the same time, few groups must fight harder for acceptance in a hostile world than trans women.

Well, you could say the same about serial killers, or arsonists, or men who rape babies. “Acceptance” is not something that’s automatically owed to everyone in all circumstances no matter what. Women are not under any obligation to “accept” men who call themselves trans in all places and circumstances without exception.

It’s just not that difficult.

Jolyon Maugham gloating that for now men can continue to force themselves on women at the women’s pond on Hampstead Heath.

The High Court just refused Sex Matters’ permission to ban trans women from the Hampstead ponds. We’re relieved that the ponds can remain a place where trans people have always belonged.

Notice that he resorts to the usual lie. Sex Matters is not seeking to “ban trans women from the Hampstead ponds”. Sex Matters is seeking to ban men from the women’s pond. Note that if they succeed the men’s pond will still be there and trans women aka men will still be able to splash about in it.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Choose one.

Norfolk Constabulary confirmed that “in most cases” the force recorded the self-identified gender of suspects.

Do they also note their astrological sign and favourite flavour of ice cream? They’re just as useful and relevent as “gender identity.”

If that’s far as it went, there’d be little problem, but what the police are doing is letting these suspects lie about their sex.. Once they’re in the system, this putative “gender” is used in place of sex because the system is built around seeing a suspect or prisoner’s sex.

“Gender identity” wasn’t a thing when women’s prisons (or women’s anything for that matter) were established. They were intended to account for the physiological differences between men and women. To put it bluntly, women need protection from men. Female vulnerability to rape and pregnancy requires protection from men’s greater physical strength. Letting men circumvent this basic, humane, sensible safety requirement by means of some conveniently self-proclaimed, imagined, invisible, untestable, unquestioned, “identity” is brutally sadistic.

The police and courts cannot not know this. Do they place a suspect in the police stables if he dresses as a pantomime horse? Do they set him free if he “identifies” as innocent?

“Identifying as a woman” does not change the material body of the males being arrested and imprisoned. It does not change their guilt or innocence. His “identity” does not make him a victim, and treating him as the male he is and always will be is not in any way victimization. It should not let them be imprisoned with unwilling female inmates who are forced to accept his presence. Even if they’re receiving “gender affirming treatment”, they remain male. And even psychologically, such identification will not change male-pattern offending.

This dishonest bait and switch is exactly what genderists chide critics for, but precisely what these opportunistic, predatory men are counting on to escape the male estate and gain access to a target-rich environment.

Oh gee, what a good idea.

Police force lets suspects choose their gender

So rape suspects get to choose to “be” women? Men who assault women get to choose the women label? Domestic violence perps get to say they are women? All men who commit crimes against women are allowed to tell the police they are women?

Why would the police do that?

Norfolk Constabulary confirmed that “in most cases” the force recorded the self-identified gender of suspects. The policy has been criticised by women’s rights groups, who fear that it skews crime statistics and obscures focus on the safety of women and girls.

They don’t just fear that it does, they know it does. How could it not? If you let men lie about their sex then of course you’re skewing the statistics.

When even the police can’t see it…

The guy with the syringe is what you’d expect: a fan of the ratbag.

The man who sprayed an unknown substance on Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at a town hall in Minneapolis has a criminal history and has made online posts supportive of President Donald Trump.

Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence, and has had numerous traffic citations, Minnesota court records show.

The kind of person who doesn’t give a shit about other people. Naturally.

In social media posts, Kazmierczak described himself as a former network engineer who lives in Minneapolis. Among other things, he made comments critical of former President Joe Biden and referred to Democrats as “angry and liars.”

Hmmmmm. Are Democrats more angry than Republicans? Are they more angry than the current president? Trump spends a lot of time fuming and raging and spewing insults. He’s a bigger liar and angrier than any Democrats I know anything about.

“Trump wants the US is stronger and more prosperous,” Kazmierczak wrote. “Stop other countries from stealing from us. Bring back the fear that enemies back away from and gain respect that If anyone threatens ourselves or friends we will (expletive) them up.”

In another post, Kazmierczak asked, “When will descendants of slaves pay restitution to Union soldiers families for freeing them/dying for them, and not sending them back to Africa?”

Oh yeah, gee, why aren’t people whose great-grandparents were enslaved more grateful to the country that enslaved them? Why don’t they give us all money?

The attack came days after a man was arrested in Utah for allegedly punching U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida, in the face during the Sundance Film Festival and saying Trump was going to deport him.

All part of our proud history.

H/t Mostly Cloudy

The Bulwark:

This White House has a playbook for scandal: Always double down, never apologize, and above all attack, attack, attack. So it was nothing less than shocking yesterday when the administration—after two days of utterly shameless lies about the killing of Alex Pretti—slammed on the brakes in an attempt to pivot to a more normie-palatable [acceptable] narrative.

Out, suddenly, were statements like Stephen Miller’s, who called Pretti “a domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” or Kristi Noem’s, who called it a “fact” that Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” No longer, apparently, was it the Department of Homeland Security’s position, as the official DHS account tweeted Saturday and Border Patrol mook Greg Bovino later repeated, that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt conspicuously declined yesterday to defend any of these obscene statements. Instead, she reached for a pair of new, less noxious lies: that President Trump was mourning Pretti’s death as a tragedy, and that DHS would conduct a full and fair investigation.

Hmm. Is it really less noxious to claim that Trump is mourning Pretti’s murder? I for one think it’s highly noxious to pretend that Trump would ever mourn anyone’s murder, let alone that of a guy like Pretti. Here’s why: Trump does not care about other people.

“Nobody here at the White House, including the president of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed,” Leavitt said, adding that “we mourn for the parents—as a mother myself, of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life, especially losing one’s child.”

Trump has said nothing that could be construed as “mourning.” His sole commentary on the shooting was to tweet out a picture of Pretti’s pistol, which he described as “loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go,” before pivoting back to his usual pack of grievances against Minnesota.

Trump might mourn for a BigMac that fell into a mud puddle, but for a person, no.

Let’s pick a fight with Denmark.

Staff at the US embassy in Copenhagen have removed 44 flags decorated with the names of Danish soldiers that were killed in Afghanistan, put up after US President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of allied countries’ military contributions.

As yet unidentified activists put up the flags on Tuesday but they were removed later the same day by an embassy security guard, according to Danish media TV2,

In an interview with Fox News last week, Trump said that allied soldiers in Afghanistan, “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” – causing pushback from European capitals.

Trump himself, by the way, stayed more than a little back. Trump stayed all the way back. Way way way back.

Copenhagen’s mayor for environmental affairs, Line Barfoed called the removal “disrespectful.” “The flags marked in a very nice and quiet manner the tremendous effort that the Danish soldiers deployed there made over several years,” she said in a statement to Euractiv.

“There was no malicious intent behind removing the flags” an embassy spokesperson told TV2, adding that if the embassy management had been aware of the purpose, the flags would have remained in place. Yet according to the outlet, embassy security staff was briefed on the action before they the flags were removed.

Leave no ally uninsulted.

One of those times when you compose the next sentence before reading it.

The sentence before the next sentence:

Holed up in the White House over the weekend, with temperatures dropping and a major snowstorm on its way, Mr. Trump expressed concern about the killing to aides and allies.

The next sentence you compose in your head:

You mean Trump pitched a fit about the public reaction to the killing and how everybody else had to fix it because the reaction was bad for him.

The next sentence the NY Times wrote:

But his frustrations were more about the coverage of the events rather than the incident itself, according to people familiar with the dynamic.

Yeah no shit. Of course they were. They always are. Always. There is nothing in this world or any other that matters to Trump except how whatever it is affects him. Not one single thing.

Trump and consequences:

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unidentified substance by a man with a syringe on Tuesday as she gave her first in-person town hall of the year in Minneapolis, during which she called for ICE to be abolished “for good” and DHS secretary Kristi Noem to resign.

Omar had only been speaking for a few minutes when a man in the audience got up and began to shout, while spraying her with the liquid. People at the meeting said the liquid had an acidic smell.

The good news is that it was a small amount.

Some, such as Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw, pleaded with Omar to end the town hall early to get checked, due to concerns for her safety because of the unidentified liquid . Omar refused to stop. “Ten minutes, I beg you … please don’t let them have the show,” she told the security team.

After the alleged attacker was subdued, there was applause from the room as he was escorted out. “Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand, is that we are Minnesota strong,” the congresswoman said.

…

Omar is among a wave of Democratic politicians to react with outrage and horror to the Saturday shooting of 37-year-old VA nurse Alex Pretti, the second fatal shooting of a US civilian by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis.

You know…it’s hard to figure out how else anyone should react to the slaughter of Alex Pretti, especially given the reality of who and what he was. A cancer ward nurse in a veterans’ hospital? Come on.

Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic representative from Texas, said in a social media post that she was “disgusted” and “outraged”, writing: “Let’s be clear: nonstop hate and dangerous rhetoric from Trump and his allies has fueled this type of violence.”

…

Omar has long been a political target of the US president, who in recent months has renewed his xenophobic attacks, calling in a post on his Truth Social network for her to be “sent back to Somalia”. She arrived in the US as a refugee aged 12 and became a citizen more than 25 years ago.

Can we send Trump back to Germany? Now?

H/t Mostly Cloudy

Nah.

This this this! If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a billion times.

“Booker was not disqualified for being transgender. This is inaccurate. Disqualification for this reason would be illegal. Booker was disqualified for being male.”

THAT. They do it every damn time, and it’s sneaky, and it’s a lie.

Back you go indeed.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeee another new way to insult women, how exciting!!

Just imagine a tweet shouting about a white person who “channels” some of the most iconic poses of Black people throughout history. Imagine a tweet shouting about Sean Hannity as he channels Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robson, Fanny Lou Hamer, Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks.

Go choke on your own toffees, Rainbow.

Shut her up.

SNP ministers tried to “silence and intimidate” a female prisoner who had been traumatised by sharing a jail with biological men by sending her testimony to police, a court has been told.

Aidan O’Neill KC, who is representing For Women Scotland (FWS) in its latest legal battle with the Scottish government, argued that ministers were in contempt of court by sending a draft of the woman’s written evidence to Police Scotland without her or the court’s permission.

The devolved government, which is fighting in court to continue to allow biological men who identify as women to remain in women’s prisons, also urged Lady Ross KC on Tuesday not to accept the sworn affidavit, calling it “irrelevant” to the case.

Well let’s face it, women themselves are irrelevant. Let’s all just pack up and go home.

O’Neill claimed that the government’s actions amounted to an attempt to “discipline and punish a woman for speaking out” on gender issues, arguing that sending her allegations to detectives, as well as her name, was a “startling” abuse of court process.

The affidavit provided to the court was from a former prisoner who spoke of the “humiliation, fear and intimidation” she had experienced at having to serve her sentence with transgender women.

Who are men, and not just any men, but deceptive manipulative lying abusive men.

The SNP government, in its legal response to the FWS’s campaign to have prison policy ruled unlawful, has denied that female inmates are disadvantaged by having to share supposedly single-sex jails with men.

In one submission, ministers likened housing potentially violent trans women in female jails to a mother taking her young son into a single-sex changing room, saying that neither would “challenge the dignity” of females.

Who are these people? How can they possibly say that?

FWS has claimed that, after last year’s Supreme Court ruling, in which they defeated the SNP ministers for a second time, housing biological men in female jails is unlawful. The Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equalities Act should mean biological sex.

The Scottish government has rejected this, despite publicly accepting the ruling and rewriting gender policies in schools, claiming that a “blanket” policy in which no men could serve sentences in female jails would breach the human rights of transgender inmates.

And we can’t have that. But, oddly enough, we can have breaching the human rights of female inmates. Male “transgender” inmates can have whatever they want; female inmates must shut up and take it.

Expert in what?

Expert says trans children’s rights are not being respected

Expert in what field exactly?

The reporter, one James MacEnany, Education Specialist, fails to say.

Next we get photo caption:

Expert academic says the rights of trans children in Scotland are not being respected 

Then we get the first two paragraphs:

“It is a difficult time to be doing any kind of research on trans or queer or even feminist topics, so I’m finding that I need to be quite cautious about media coverage.”

This is the view of Dr Ruth Pearce, an expert and researcher at the University of Glasgow.

Expert expert expert, we get it, but expert in what field?

We are not told. We do get another expert though.

Dr Pearce has recently collaborated with an expert from south of the border to examine whether or not the rights of trans children are being respected in Scotland, with a particular focus on the way in which the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) – which was supposed to protect and enhance the rights of all children – is operating in practice after its incorporation into Scots law.

Finally we get the answer.

“I was working with Dr. Cal Horton. They’re at Oxford Brookes University and an expert on trans childhood in the UK, looking at areas like education and healthcare as their main focus. We were looking specifically at Scotland because it is the only part of the UK that’s has integrated UNCRC into domestic law.

“I’m a sociologist rather than a legal scholar, as is Cal, so in a sense we’re kind of looking at how the law in terms of the experiential impact of it.”

That should have been at the top. “Expert” means nothing. People can idennify as experts, and they do.