No Voice of America for you.

All full-time staffers at the Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected — more than 1,000 employees. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that its parent agency, called the U.S. Agency for Global Media, must eliminate all activities that are not required by law.

In addition, under the leadership of Trump appointees, the agency has severed all contracts for the privately incorporated international broadcasters it funds, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

Gosh it seems like only yesterday that Republicans were enthusiastic about broadcasting pro-US content all around the … Read the rest

I missed Kristi Noem’s stunt last week.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently toured a library that straddled the United States-Canada border, and one remark she made repeatedly is angering both Americans and Canadians.

The Boston Globe reported that Noem made the remark during an appearance at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. The library has both American and Canadian flags and a line of black electrical tape on the floor that marks the international border for visitors.

During her visit, the Globe reported that Noem stood on the American side of the library and said “USA number one,” before stepping to the Canadian side and saying: “The 51st state.” 

What … Read the rest

So so so so so so sorry.

A BBC radio presenter apologised for “misgendering” Eddie Izzard on air – despite the comedian not caring about pronouns and gender labels.

Anita Anand said she was “very very sorry” after referring to Izzard as “the man” while presenting Radio 4’s PM programme on Friday.

Yet Izzard, 63, who identifies as gender fluid and uses she/her pronouns, has previously confessed an indifference to such labels, telling The Telegraph last year: “He, she – it doesn’t matter.”

In any case it doesn’t matter what pronouns he “uses”; accuracy trumps faddish luxuries. Izzard is a man, so BBC Radio 4 shouldn’t pretend he isn’t. It’s not the BBC’s job to lie to us.

Izzard

Another consignment of ugly:

Arlington National Cemetery has scrubbed information about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War from its website, part of a broader effort across the Defense Department to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its online presence.

Well…all references that the Trump people at the Defense Department consider “references to diversity, equity and inclusion.” There are other ways of naming information about women and non-white people.

A cemetery spokesperson confirmed Friday that it removed internal links directing users to webpages listing the dozens of “Notable Graves” of Black, Hispanic and female veterans and their spouses.

On these pages, users could read short biographies about the people

It’s a great pity that the UK doesn’t have separation of church and state.

A religious school leader has been appointed as chairman of Ofsted for what is believed to be the first time.

Sir Hamid Patel will take up the interim role until a successor is found for Dame Christine Ryan at the schools regulator.

He is the chief executive of Star Academies Trust, which runs nearly 40 primaries and secondaries, including several Islamic schools.

Ah, Islamic schools. So girls have to wear hijab? So girls are called sluts if they don’t wear hijab? And the people who make these appointments are ok with that?

Sir Hamid has been on the board of Ofsted since 2019 and

Gender-critical documentary makers take UCU to tribunal

Two academic filmmakers are taking their union to an employment tribunal, arguing that it treated them unfairly because of their gender-critical beliefs.

Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne faced a backlash from campaigners amid claims that their 2022 film Adult Human Female was “transphobic”. It defines sex as being determined by biology and claims that women’s rights have been damaged by the trans movement.

Reporting on this subject is always such a mush of fact and opinion. It’s not a “belief” that sex is determined by biology, it’s just a fact. The words are human creations but the facts themselves are not.

O’Neill and Wayne, who are academics at the University of Hertfordshire and Brunel

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Nice LGBT+ training, Karl.

A Met Police training officer called anti-transgender women a “bunch of lesbians”, a tribunal has heard. Sgt Karl Eccott, an LGBT+ training officer, allegedly made the comments in a session with trainee Melanie Newman, who is now bringing harassment and direct discrimination claims against the Met.

Wait. This is, supposedly an LGT+ training officer, using “lesbian” in a way that can only be considered as pejorative? Hello, lesbians are supposed to be part of the “community” you’re allegedly doing training for and about. Remember the L? (Hint: it’s right there in front.) And what if they were all lesbians? What would be wrong with … Read the rest

Do read Mike B’s article.

In a kindergarten classroom in the mid-1960s, a kid named Mikey steered clear of the boys stacking large toy blocks on top of one another and knocking them down again–so obnoxious—and instead went and sat at the table of girls making beads out of salt dough and stringing them together on a thread. These girls were not averse to tasting the salt dough and smacking their lips in disgust. The teacher had wisely settled on salt dough because she knew it wouldn’t poison the students should they eat it. At least the girls were smart and funny and didn’t continually knock each other to the floor.

Mikey preferred these sober, artsy

Wait, how does that work?

Vatican News:

Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin celebrates Mass for members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, recalling the anniversary of Pope Francis’ pontificate and inviting everyone to continue praying for his health.

What’s the point of praying for his health? Especially for those guys to pray for his health? It’s an inside job. They’re all supposed to be on the same page. What’s the agency they’re praying to? The Big Kahuna, obviously – Mister God himself. They’re servants of Mister God. They bow to Mister God. They recognize Mister God as the big boss, and they flatter him and tell others to flatter him every chance they get. So … Read the rest

A second ruling saying “Not so fast” to Trump:

A second federal judge has ordered the mass reinstatement of fired federal workers, reversing the Trump administration’s terminations of probationary employees at 18 major agencies.

The agencies covered by U.S. District Judge James Bredar’s sweeping order, issued Thursday night, include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury, among others.

Bredar’s order sweeps even more broadly than a ruling earlier in the day from a different federal judge, who directed six Cabinet departments to immediately rehire probationary employees who were fired under President Donald Trump’s plan to cut the federal workforce.

Both judges concluded that the Trump administration used

Do people just not recognize a flat contradiction when they see one? I mean a really blatantly obvious one, like “It’s raining it’s not raining”?

Apparently.

But of course they don’t. They don’t respect the choice of their members to use the changing rooms based on the gender they identify with: they don’t respect the choice of their members to use the changing rooms for women, because there are no such changing rooms. They refuse to provide women with women-only changing rooms, and then they boast a smug boast about respecting all the choices. If men get to use the men’s changing rooms and the women’s changing rooms then women are denied the right to use the women’s changing room … Read the rest

Agh bad news.

Dammit to hell.

I regret to say that I lost my case against The BC College of Nurses and Midwives.

The fight isn't over. I will always fight for free speech and women's sex-based rights.

I'll have more to say in the near future. https://t.co/cZAM6TmH0E

— Amy Eileen Hamm (@preta_6) March 13, 2025

… Read the rest

Sex Matters has more.

An employment tribunal in South London has rejected the Metropolitan Police’s application to anonymise the identity of a witness in a gender-critical belief case.

Sex Matters intervened to object to the Met Police’s anonymity (“rule 49”) application on open-justice and public-interest grounds. We were recognised as having a legitimate interest, and Kerenza Davis made legal submissions and addressed the tribunal on our behalf.

The case of Melanie Newman v The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the third recent gender-critical employment tribunal case where an anonymity order has been refused. Similar orders were applied for by the employers and refused by the tribunal in the cases of Sandie Peggie v Fife Health

The Telegraph:

A Met Police training officer called anti-transgender women a “bunch of lesbians”, a tribunal has heard. Sgt Karl Eccott, an LGBT+ training officer, allegedly made the comments in a session with trainee Melanie Newman, who is now bringing harassment and direct discrimination claims against the Met.

Ms Newman claimed in her witness statement to the tribunal, held in Croydon, south London, that the Met Police was a “hostile environment” for anyone with gender-critical opinions.

That’s so Met Policey. Women are horrible and deserve whatever they get, while trans women are saints and deserve endless flattery and the chance to abuse women.

Ms Newman is now a detective constable with the Met, based in the child abuse investigation

What’s the thinking process here?

Greenland’s likely new prime minister on Wednesday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit, a pro-business party that favors a slow path to independence, won a surprise victory in Tuesday’s parliamentary election, outpacing the two left-leaning parties that formed the last government. With most Greenlanders opposing Trump’s overtures, the campaign focused more on issues like healthcare and education than on geopolitics.

But on Wednesday Nielsen was quick to push back against Trump, who last week told a joint session of Congress that the U.S. needed Greenland to protect its

Judge says the fired employees must be reinstated and Trump is an ignorant buffoon.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the jobs of probationary federal employees across multiple agencies, blasting the procedure behind their mass firings as a “sham.”

Ruling from the bench in a San Francisco courthouse, US District Judge William Alsup said the Office of Personnel Management — the federal government’s human resources department — had no basis for claiming the employees were fired for “performance” issues.

Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said the explanation was a “gimmick” to circumvent legal requirements for laying off federal employees.

As was always obvious.

“It is sad, a sad day when our

From The Atlantic: What ketamine does to the human brain

Last month, during Elon Musk’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, as he hoisted a chain saw in the air, stumbled over some of his words, and questioned whether there was really gold stored in Fort Knox, people on his social-media platform, X, started posting about ketamine.

Musk has said he uses ketamine regularly, so for the past couple of years, public speculation has persisted about how much he takes, whether he’s currently high, or how it might affect his behavior. Last year, Musk told CNN’s Don Lemon that he has a ketamine prescription and uses the drug roughly every other week to help with depression symptoms. When Lemon

Texas is in a race to catch up to Afghanistan.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Afghanistan have reported a surge in measles patients at three MSF-supported hospitals since January. While measles is endemic in Afghanistan, such a high number of cases so early in the year is cause for alarm.

At least one child in Afghanistan has died from measles every day so far in 2025, according to data MSF staff have collected at the Mazar-i-Sharif Regional hospital, Herat Regional hospital, and Boost Provincial hospital in Helmand. This is almost three times as many deaths as were witnessed during the same period last year.

Is junior Robert Kennedy jealous of this record?

“These are preventable deaths,” says Mickael Le Paih,

It’s odd that they can’t give up the nonsense even when all the walls are crashing down.

The buyouts are the latest efforts to scale back the workforce at HHS, a massive and highly consequential umbrella agency that employs more than 80,000 people.

Last week, eligible HHS employees were also offered early retirement buyouts under a separate program also managed by OPM, according to an email sent to staff. HHS also reportedly lost 5,200 probationary employees following the purge of those workers across the federal government. The agency has since reportedly rehired some. An unknown amount also resigned from HHS following the January “fork in the road email” that offered federal workers eight months of pay if

Mmmm not possible.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he feels “very badly” for the thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs in recent weeks but that “many of them don’t work at all.”

He means he feels very bad. “Feeling badly” is a pseudo-refinement resorted to by illiterate boobs like Trump who don’t know how adverbs work. “Feeling badly”=he does a bad job of feeling – which of course is true, but it’s not the lie he was trying to tell the press.

Asked by NBC News whether he feels responsible for so many people losing their jobs, Trump said: “Sure I do. I feel very badly … but many of them don’t work at