How lucky for Musk that he just happens to be in a position to fire federal employees at will.

Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is eliminating jobs at the vehicle safety agency that oversees his Tesla Inc., regulates the autonomous vehicles he says represents its future and has launched investigations into deadly crashes involving the Texas-based company’s cars.

Deadly crashes are the price we pay for other people having dangerous cars. Aren’t we lucky?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has cut a “modest” amount of positions at the agency, which is tasked with ensuring safety on U.S. roads, it said in a statement Saturday.

The loss of three of the seven members of the specialized unit overseeing autonomous vehicles

It turns out Trump doesn’t actually have the power to do what he’s doing. It looks as if nobody’s going to stop him all the same. I have to wonder why there are no enforcement mechanisms built in to all these rules and limits.

President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that seeks greater authority over regulatory agencies that Congress established as independent from direct White House control, part of a broader bid to centralize a president’s power over the government.

If Congress established the regulatory agencies as independent from direct White House control then Trump should be unable to get greater authority over them. Why are there no guardrails?

The order requires independent agencies to submit their proposed

Oh come ON.

How trans rights took over Scottish politics — and aren’t going away

Henceforth, no medical diagnosis would be needed and a person would be required to “live in” their acquired identity for only three months before becoming eligible for a GRC. The age at which such certificates could be gained would also be lowered to 16. In effect, a person could “self-identify” as a man or a woman as they saw fit and the system, the nuts and bolts of officialdom, would accept this as a manifestation of their true selves. The proposals would “make the lives of trans people in this country that little bit better and easier”, Sturgeon said, “and I think that is something

Crude boy asks crude question, makes crude threat.

Elon Musk said Saturday that federal employees must detail their accomplishments at work or risk losing their jobs, the latest move by the Trump administration to overhaul the government that prompted confusion among the workforce.

“Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted on X.

The email created confusion across the federal government. One senior government official said some federal employees started checking with their own legal advisers about how best to respond. One Justice Department official sent out an email asking their staff members to

Twitter summary:

Maine Governor Defies Trump on Transgender Sports Ban

Last updated 21 minutes ago

Maine Governor Janet Mills has publicly opposed an executive order by President Donald Trump that aims to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports. The dispute escalated after Governor Mills challenged Trump’s threat to cut federal funding to Maine, leading to a commitment to legal action. This confrontation has sparked a broader conversation on transgender rights in sports, highlighted by social media reactions from various figures, including a notable appearance of Mills at a drag show in Portland, which has stirred both support and criticism.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its

Adam Serwer in the Atlantic:

Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration’s central ideological project: restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Call it the “Great Resegregation.”

Since taking office, Trump has rescinded decades-old orders ensuring equal opportunity in government contracts and vowed to purge DEI from the federal government, intending to lay off any federal worker whose job they associate with DEI. Yesterday evening, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown, and replaced him with a lower ranking white official, a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously

The wording is interesting.

Schools following Scottish Government gender guidance could be next in line for a Sandie Peggie-style legal case, John Swinney has been warned. For Women Scotland described First Minister John Swinney’s stance on single-sex spaces as “very cowardly” as the group used a Scottish Labour fringe event to call on councillors to reject national guidance.

The Scottish Labour conference rejected a motion calling for the Scottish Government to have single-sex spaces for boys and girls based on biology. It said current Scottish Government guidance “relies on the necessity of unquestioning affirmation” of transgender identity from a school pupil.

The wording is interesting because it’s so obviously nuts. How can unquestioning affirmation of anything a school pupil says … Read the rest

O what a noble university is here o’erthrown.

This is the start of a lecture at Oxford University this week on 'Queerness and monsters from antiquity to today:  The monsters of ancient Greek myth and literature and, through this [learning], we can explore what it means to create, to possess and to celebrate a trans body' pic.twitter.com/NaMMorusiG

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) February 22, 2025

That’s DOCTOR Alexandra Hardwick to you. Yes he’s a guy.

(Also why do they put a glass of water right next to the laptop? I’d bump into it 4 seconds in.)… Read the rest

Part two of The Open University’s censorship and punishment of Dr Almut Gadow:

Dr Gadow had alleged that the university’s equality, diversion and inclusion (EDI) department announced plans to “incorporate its political ideologies” across the curriculum in the 2021-22 academic year. She claimed she voiced concerns that a criminal lawyer’s role “is to present facts” and that “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”.

The academic also argued that “no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts”. Dr Gadow said she was told that her posts on the online staff forum amounted to “serious insubordination” because she had been told it was not the

It can be expensive to fire academics for knowing and saying that people can’t change sex.

A law lecturer who was sacked by the Open University after expressing gender-critical beliefs has been handed a payout from the institution. Dr Almut Gadow was dismissed for gross misconduct in November 2022 after she criticised changes to the curriculum based on gender identity in an online forum. She claimed the university was introducing requirements to “indoctrinate students in gender identity theory”.

The lecturer, who taught law at the university for almost a decade, claimed she had raised concerns about new teaching requirements, including making students use offenders’ preferred pronouns.

Brilliant. Requiring teachers to require students to lie about the sex of offenders … Read the rest

Shouldn’t that be “inseminated thing”?

EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has introduced a bill that will change state law to replace the word "mother" with "inseminated person." pic.twitter.com/uJ8mPypFC4

— Dan O'Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) February 21, 2025

DemocratIC Governor. “Democrat” is a noun, not an adjective. The adjective is “democratic.”

But anyway – the determination to erase women continues. Men can’t be inseminated, so there’s no point in changing “pregnant woman” to “inseminated person.” If women who claim to be men are offended by “pregnant woman” that’s just too bad.… Read the rest

Tom Nichols at the Atlantic:

President Trump tonight began a purge of the senior ranks of the United States armed forces in an apparent effort to intimidate the military and create an officer corps personally loyal to him. The president fired General C.Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a remarkable move but also one that Trump and his MAGA allies signaled was coming.

…

The chairman is the most senior officer in the United States and by law the principal military adviser to the president. He does not direct military forces and is not in the chain of command. Normally, the chairman serves a four-year term; the position, like that of FBI director, is meant

CNN reports the latest insanity:

In an unprecedented purge of the military’s senior leadership Friday night, President Donald Trump fired the top US general just moments before his defense secretary fired the chief of the US Navy and the vice chief of the Air Force.

Trump announced he was dismissing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown and replacing him with Air Force Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine – an extraordinary move since Caine is retired, according to an Air Force official, and is not a four-star general.

Trump called Brown a “fine gentleman” and an “outstanding leader,” while hinting at the firings to come. “Finally, I have also directed Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth

John Cleese in 2018:

My American friends are asking me about President Trumps’s observation that the British ‘like him’.

I regret this is quite unfounded.

The explanation for this canard is that Trump is pronoid.

Pronoid is the opposite of paranoid. A paranoid person thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody is out to get them. A pronoid person is someone who thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody likes them.

The fact is that the British loathe Donald Trump

This is because he is the polar opposite of a ‘ Gentleman ‘, who has qualities the British admire. A fine example is Gareth Southgate.

To the British, a ‘ Gentleman ‘ is a man who is … Read the rest

Unite Scotland turns out to be not all that unitey.

A statement from Unite Scotland's LGBT+ Committee on the comments made by Anas Sarwar on the GRA bill pic.twitter.com/eAVTgJBkyB

— Unite Scotland (@UniteScotland) February 21, 2025

I’m especially impressed by that breezy “Unite believes that the strengthening and protection of the rights of trans people does not mean the rights of others will be diminished or affected.” Well that’s nice, but they offer no explanation of how that claim can possibly be true. How can it be true that “rights” such as the “right” for men who say they are trans to have everything that belongs to women and go everywhere that women go will not diminish or affect the … Read the rest

Julia Carrie Wong chats with “scholar” Sophie Lewis about those evil women who dare to call themselves feminists even though they don’t think men are women.

…just three weeks into Trump’s second term, the man responsible for stripping women in the US of the right to an abortion was declared a “feminist kween”, “feminist hero” and “feminist icon” by several prominent feminist writers in the UK.

The occasion for these declarations was Trump’s all-out assault on trans rights. Since taking office, the president has used executive orders to attempt to restrict the ability of trans Americans to travel, work, receive medical care, serve in the military, attend school and participate

Meanwhile, Bannon…

Steve Bannon has been accused of making a “Nazi” salute while giving a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday.

The incident occurred soon after Elon Musk, another top ally of Donald Trump, was accused of giving a Nazi salute on stage during an event celebrating the president’s January inauguration.

There’s a clip, and I gotta say, it’s a pretty feeble “Nazi salute” if it is one at all. It’s not as energized as Musk’s was – it’s more like a wave than a Nazi salute. But I’m not going to quibble. It’s not as if either of these guys is a staunch opponent of Nazi-style messages.

H/t NightCrow

… Read the rest

Time for some Steve Bannon news.

He’s not a fan of the unelected overlord from South Africa.

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former White House chief strategist, has renewed his feud with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a top Trump adviser, calling him a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in an interview published online on Tuesday.

Mr. Bannon made the comments in an interview with UnHerd, a British news site, that took place last week.

“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Mr. Bannon told the interviewer.

Of course Trump too wants to play-act as god etc … Read the rest

This is an angle that doesn’t get enough attention.

Anyone who believes they can magically transition into the opposite sex, is mentally unwell and they should not be employed as doctors…
"Beth" Upton is proof of that… pic.twitter.com/yAQUysxFbh

— Jonny Bell (@Jonnywsbell) February 21, 2025

Do I want a doctor who is busy pretending to be the opposite sex alongside being a doctor? Like hell I do.

To spell out the obvious, that’s a doctor who misunderstands some very basic things about the human body. It’s also a doctor who is self-obsessed enough to pretend to be the other sex and to impose that fantasy game on patients. Why would anyone want that from a doctor?… Read the rest

Wes Streeting objects.

Wes Streeting has raised concerns after a Telegraph investigation found that doctors who change gender are able to have past wrongdoings scrubbed from the public record.

The Health Secretary said the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors, should urgently overhaul its practices, adding the situation should “not have been allowed”.

The GMC holds a public register of all doctors, allowing the public to check whether a medic has been subject to restrictions or suspensions, or has been struck off.

However, on Thursday the watchdog admitted that it erases the public disciplinary history of doctors who change their gender identities.

It raises the prospect that medics seeking to hide a chequered disciplinary history could