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Does razing count as interfering with?

Last month a judge told Trump to cool his jets on the Ballroom plans.

In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site. Although Trump had promised over the summer that the project wouldn’t “interfere with the current building,” workers razed the entire structure, which was constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1942. 

Well that’s what he meant. It won’t interfere with it, it will obliterate it altogether. Totally not deceptive at all.

Trump managed this the same way he has so much in his second term: He simply didn’t ask permission from any of the possible relevant authorities, including Congress, and acted so

… Read the rest

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Does razing count as interfering with?
By Ophelia Benson, February 12, 2026

Last month a judge told Trump to cool his jets on the Ballroom plans.

In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site. Although Trump had promised over the summer that the project wouldn’t “interfere with the current building,” workers razed the entire structure, which was constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1942. 

Well that’s what he meant. It won’t interfere with it, it will obliterate it altogether. Totally not deceptive at all.

Trump managed this the same way he has so much in his second term: He simply didn’t ask permission from any of the possible relevant authorities, including Congress, and acted so

… Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Does razing count as interfering with? 

Last month a judge told Trump to cool his jets on the Ballroom plans.

In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site. Although Trump had promised over the summer that the project wouldn’t “interfere with the current building,” workers razed the entire structure, which was constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1942. 

Well that’s what he meant. It won’t interfere with it, it will obliterate it altogether. Totally not deceptive at all.

Trump managed this the same way he has so much in his second term: He simply didn’t ask permission from any of the possible relevant authorities, including Congress, and acted so

… Read the rest
Some international standard 

Róisín Michaux writes on TwitX:

The EU Parliament has voted to recognise “trans women” as women for all purposes, explicitly calling for them to be granted access to women-only domestic violence shelters and refugees.

An EU delegation will present this radical recommendation at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York next month. It is not binding, but intended to be adopted/followed as an “international standard”. It also demonstrates the ideological makeup of the European Parliament.

Few speakers mentioned the “trans women” part of the recommendation during the debate leading up to the vote. Parties could have asked for a vote on the individual paragraph, but having failed to do so, MEPs were left with a

… Read the rest
The 18-year-old what? 

Oh look – today the BBC is not calling the shooter a woman.

Police identify 18-year-old as suspect in Tumbler Ridge shooting

Not calling him a man either, you’ll notice. They don’t want to get all extreme about this.

“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female,” Dwayne McDonald, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner, said.

The shooting at the nearby home occurred first, then the suspect went to the school, McDonald said. The victims at the school were a 39-year-old female educator, three female students, all aged 12, and two male students, one aged 12 and the other 13.

Huh. Will you look at … Read the rest

Ethical and unethical journalism 

Journalist Janet Murray writes

There are unethical people in every profession. Journalism is no exception.

But unethical journalism isn’t only about phone hacking, going through bins or taking bribes.

At its core, it’s about knowingly misrepresenting reality.

Yesterday’s case involved one of the worst mass shootings in Canada’s history – the kind of event where the stakes for getting the facts right could not be higher.

You cannot claim to uphold journalistic standards while describing a crime committed by a man as having been committed by a woman.

Nor can you sidestep it by using the word “person” when sex is materially relevant.

Yet several major outlets did exactly that yesterday – including Sky and the BBC.

This isn’t about

… Read the rest
A very serious lie 

SEEN in Journalism makes the point I just made in a comment: that calling the perp a woman in the lede and not telling the truth until many paragraphs down is a grossly obvious violation of journalistic standards.

‘Canadian police have identified the suspect as an 18-year old woman with a history of mental health problems’ This is a very serious lie about a shattering event.

… Read the rest

A right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress A right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress 

Dude.

Like this?

… Read the rest
How dare she consult the database 

Watching.

Attorney General Pam Bondi at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday seemed to have a printout of Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s history of searches of the Department of Justice’s database of documents related to the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Photos of a black binder that Bondi had at the hearing showed the words “Jayapal Pramila Search History” and a list of documents whose numbers coincide with the number of Epstein files.

That’s my Rep – not mine personally, but ours in Seattle. Seattle, of course, is not Trump Territory.

Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee, and other members of Congress have visited the DOJ in recent days to view documents

… Read the rest
The w word 

More on the news media blatantly lying in the headline:

Ten dead, including female suspect, after Canada school shooting – as it happened

Yo. Suspect not female. Suspect male. Repeat, suspect male.

Summary

  • Ten people died in a mass shooting in British Columbia
  • It’s one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent Canadian history
  • Six people were found dead at a high school in the town of Tumbler Ridge
  • The suspected shooter, a woman, was among the dead at the school
  • Two more were found dead elsewhere and another died en route to hospital

Item 4 in that list is a lie. The shooter was not a woman.

It’s nearing midnight in Tumbler Ridge, the town in British Columbia

… Read the rest
Rich vocabulary 

It’s all so dignified.

• Key hearing: Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying at a heated House Judiciary Committee amid ongoing controversies related to the Jeffrey Epstein files release, investigation into President Donald Trump’s political foes and the handling of the fatal shootings of two US citizens in Minnesota by immigration enforcement officers.

• Clashes with lawmakers: Bondi called Rep. Jamie Raskin – a former constitutional law professor and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee – a “washed up loser lawyer,” as the clash between her and committee Democrats escalated over her approach to their questions.

Yep. Peak dignity right there.… Read the rest

Not going to put up with it 

Huh. Pam Bondi is going to stop people telling the truth about Trump. That seems a tad authoritarian.

… Read the rest

wearing a brown dress 

Not Our Crimes yet again. Not Our Mass Murders.

… Read the rest

He dinnit really like 

Switzerland doesn’t have a prime minister.

Who knew that tariffs are for punishing people who aren’t deferential enough to Trump?… Read the rest

One way of looking at it 

Slow down. Take a step back.

The National Prayer Breakfast was founded in 1953, when President Dwight Eisenhower accepted an invitation to join members of Congress to break bread together. Every president since has participated, regardless of party or religious persuasion. It offers an opportunity, according to its organizers, for political leaders to gather and pray collectively for our nation “in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago.”

And that’s a bad thing, because it’s a gross violation of religious freedom, aka the separation of church and state. It’s not really an “opportunity” for “political leaders” aka the government to gather and pray collectively, is it, it’s a conspicuous push to do … Read the rest

You can’t come to my party 

More news from nursery school:

The National Governors Association (NGA) has canceled its annual White House meeting after President Trump only invited Republican governors to the gathering. 

The yearly meeting is traditionally bipartisan and offers a chance for state leaders to convene with one another and the president. 

Sigh. It’s a meeting of governors, not a meeting of Republican governors. It’s not for him to change that.

“Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) wrote in a Monday letter announcing plans to forgo the meeting, according to The Associated

… Read the rest
Dangerous waters 

Jolyon Maugham pretends not to know the difference between post hoc and propter hoc. (Maugham or someone else at “Good Law” Project, but I doubt the someone elses are allowed to deviate from the party Jolyon line.)

A freedom of information request by Good Law Project has found that deaths by suicide of trans young people under 18 surged following the withdrawal of gender-affirming healthcare

For years, successive governments have denied an increase in suicides among trans youth following the withdrawal, and criminalisation, of gender affirming healthcare. And, when Good Law Project raised the alarm about rising deaths, health secretary Wes Streeting responded with a review that criticised our figures and attacked our reporting as “dangerous”.

Those of us

… Read the rest
Guest post: A Modest Proposal for Departmental Reorganization at Universities Guest post: A Modest Proposal for Departmental Reorganization at Universities 

Guest post by Dr. Phage.

We  are all aware of the special alignments of particular academic disciplines.  In “Gender Studies” departments, for example, the listed requirements for majoring in the subject never include any Biology coursework; this is because scholars in this subject do not believe that “gender” has anything to do with Biology.  Similarly, none of the various “This or That Studies” departments require any education in Statistics, because scholars of these disciplines typically define “knowledges” (plural, and including indigenous folk-traditions) in a sense that is independent of what elsewhere is called “data”.  

   Departments are free to define their own subject matter, but I submit that US universities committed a category error when they assigned these … Read the rest

Fashion forward 

Fascinating. The man who calls himself a woman who is the Greens candidate who wants to use the women’s toilets is this very reasonable and non-threatening fella here:

… Read the rest

in their lived gender 

Always push the lie.

Greens candidate in bid to lift Holyrood’s trans toilet ban

Wait, what? Trans toilet ban? You mean Holyrood has banned trans people from all the toilets?

I bet that’s not what they mean.

A Scottish Greens for the Holyrood election has pledged to work to persuade the Scottish Parliament to lift its ban on trans people using toilets in their lived gender in the building if she is elected in May.

Ah, there it is. After the obfuscatory bilge has misled the reader. Nobody is banning trans people from toilets; the ban is on using toilets for the other sex. No men in women’s toilets, capeesh?

Iris Duane, who is the party’s candidate for the

… Read the rest
Writing difficultly 

Trump throwing his toys out of the crib again.

President Donald Trump says he will not allow the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor to open unless Canada makes significant concessions to the U.S.

Trump said in a Feb. 9 post on Truth Social that the U.S. will open negotiations with Canada, which has footed the entire bill for the $5.7-billion bridge construction project, but believes the U.S. should probably take ownership of at least half of it.

In fact, the bridge is jointly owned by Canada and the U.S., with Canada intending to recoup its upfront construction costs over time, through bridge tolls.

While the US enjoys a free ride, but Trump is pissed off anyway.… Read the rest

Guest post: Social engineering when they do it 

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Reassigned and replaced by a man.

“While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.”

And replacing women from these positions is not social engineering? All and only men is a neutral, apolitical, unprejudiced position? And each of these women has more experience, talent, and skill than a hundred thousand Hegseths and Trumps.

As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women “is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform….”

I wonder how … Read the rest