I am in receipt of an email today from Devon Graham at American Atheists, about Ron DeSantis’s frenzied efforts to force Florida women to stay pregnant against their wills.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been abusing his administrative powers and spending unprecedented state resources in a religiously motivated bid to quash Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine reproductive health care access in Florida’s state constitution. 

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which DeSantis oversees, launched a website alleging the initiative “threatens women’s safety” and is paying for public service announcements urging Floridians to vote no on the measure.

(That’s … Read the rest

Trump promises to imprison everyone who resists him.

I think maybe the most notable thing about Trump's campaign this year is that he has been extremely up front and transparent about the abuses of power he intends to commit if he returns to power. https://t.co/AFdCyf6uGu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 26, 2024

Trump would disagree he’s said that the way Colonel Jessup disagreed that he ordered the Code Red on Santiago.

Bezos did it.

The Washington Post said Friday that it will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this year — or ever again — breaking decades of tradition and sparking immediate criticism of the decision.

But the newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters revealing that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.

“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” the article said, citing two sources briefed on the events.

…

The Post on Friday evening published a third article, signed by opinion columnists for the newspaper, who said, “The Washington Post’s decision

Uh oh.

Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin for two years, says report

The Wall Street Journal, citing several in-post and former US, European and Russian officials, reported that the conversations between the two men ranged from the personal to the geopolitical and included a request from the Russian leader not to activate his Starlink ​​satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favour to the Chinese leader and Putin ally, Xi Jinping.

The implications of a secret channel of communication between Musk and Putin are enormous for western security. The Tesla tycoon is a key player in the US space programme and has a high-level security clearance. His company SpaceX launches US national security satellites, his

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Taking all the medals.

My heart breaks to see the Alliance Defending Freedom in there alongside the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s horrifying that the ADF and Reem Alsalem are mentioned side-by-side so casually. And it’s sickening to see so many men and women I thought were allies participating in ADF-organized events.

The ADF are hardcore Christian nationalists who devote massive amounts of effort into recriminalizing homosexuality, and throughout the world, trying to prevent the decriminalization of homosexuality. I don’t hesitate to analogize them as an anti-gay parallel to the KKK. I think they are vile, ignorant bigots of the very worst kind.

There was a time just … Read the rest

I’m still unable to understand this, and so is everyone in Ireland.

“Barbie Kardashian” admitted making threats and was found not guilty of making threats.

How can a jury find a defendant not guilty of a crime he has said he committed? How can a judge tell a jury to find a defendant not guilty of a crime he has said he committed? How does this make any sense at all?

Most bewildering lede ever:

Barbie Kardashian, who admitted in court to issuing threats to rape and torture a female prisoner, and threats to sexually assault a female prison officer at Limerick Prison, was acquitted on Friday of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to the two women.

Oh zing.

Proud to work for the @NewYorker which unlike the @WashingtonPost knows who to endorse: Kamala Harris for President https://t.co/u2tauRkkIW

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) October 25, 2024

… Read the rest

There’s a new report from the UN.

Female athletes worldwide have lost nearly 900 medals to transgender-identifying male competitors who have intruded into women’s sports.

Titled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” the August study conducted by the United Nations found that by March 30, 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 women’s division events across 29 different sports were defeated by transgender-identifying men. Male athletes have taken over 890 medals from female athletes, the report said.

“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report said.

Created by U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence

Meanwhile across the pond –

To rape women, Barbie Khardashian told the court this morning, he “wanted to use an electric rod to do this but as it was not available to me, I could use the handle of a sweeping brush or a mop”. This afternoon he was found not guilty.

— Paddy O'Gorman (@paddyjogorman) October 25, 2024

He didn’t mean it, you see.

A 22-year-old transgender woman, accused of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to a fellow inmate and a prison officer at Limerick Prison, has been found not guilty on all charges.

Barbie Kardashian had denied three charges and told gardaí that she never intended to carry out the threats.

But he was accused … Read the rest

The former (now retired) editor of the Washington Post:

On political endorsement https://t.co/e5OTZhylIE

This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.

— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) October 25, 2024

Here's the Washington Post's front page on January 7, 2021. Four years later, the paper, famous for its tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness," doesn't want to take a stand on who is fit to be president. pic.twitter.com/WilxA8pfzG

— John Reeves (@reevesjw) October 25, 2024

The Washington Post in 2016:

Trump is unacceptable!

The Washington Post in 2020:

No second term for Trump!

The Washington Post in 2024 (after January 6th,

The fix is in.

The Washington Post said Friday that it will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this year, breaking decades of tradition, and sparking immediate criticism of the decision.

The newspaper also Friday published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the election.

“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” The Post reported, citing two sources briefed on the events.

We are owned by right-wing billionaire bros.

The announcement came days after the head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board resigned in protest after that paper’s owner Patrick Soon-Shiong

Musk learns that it’s illegal to bribe voters in the US.

After receiving a warning from the Justice Department, Elon Musk has stopped his $1 million giveaway to swing voters from his super PAC.

The tech CEO pledged Saturday to give away the hefty sum each day to one registered voter in a battleground state who signed America PAC’s pro–First and Second Amendment pledge. Every day since then, a winner has been announced: three Pennsylvania voters and one North Carolina voter.

Trouble is it’s a federal crime to pay people to register to vote.

Then the DOJ sent a warning letter to America PAC Wednesday, and there hasn’t been a giveaway since. Musk has also been uncharacteristically quiet

The way to persuade women to embrace men who say they are women is to…er…threaten them. Yeah that’s it, threaten them and grin happily while doing it. And be a state senator.

I’m her https://t.co/sRSIXFjEQi pic.twitter.com/mt9g7GMhpu

— Senator Megan Hunt (@NebraskaMegan) October 24, 2024

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Rob on Quick, hide the data.

There are days when I just wish I could tell someone to hand over their science card. There’s always been bad science (especially in medicine and social ‘sciences’ frankly), but the neoliberal trashing of universities, research institutions, and education to make nearly all science demonstrate a commercial applicability or to have regular output has been especially corrosive. Now, if you don’t publish on the regular you’re toast. If you publish negative or ambiguous results, you’re toast. If your work is interesting, but doesn’t have a commercial application, you’re toast.

It’s resulted in not just fraudulent work, but a massive rise in sloppy, poorly thought out work designed to deliver … Read the rest

Eliza Mondegreen at Unherd on the hiding of the research:

In today’s New York Times, reporter Azeen Ghorayshi investigated a leading gender clinician’s decision not to publish the results of a study into the effects of puberty suppression on the mental health of patients with gender dysphoria.

At the outset of the National Institutes of Health study, principal investigator Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the most vocal advocates of “gender-affirming care” in the United States, expected that young patients put on puberty blockers would experience “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality” and “increased body esteem and quality of life over time”. But that’s apparently not what the evidence showed. Rather than revise her hypotheses and

Much discussion today of the NYTimes article about puberty blockers and the possibility that they…er…don’t achieve the desired goal.

The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one

The Heritage people get to decide who hears what.

You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy. All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.

She’s a New York University historian with a book on what happens to the military when authoritarians take power. She shows up as a commentator on MSNBC, connecting former President Donald Trump to some of the dictators she’s studied.

The academy’s history department invited her to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture. Then she was disinvited. Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.

…

Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page

Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis ends membership of Rape Crisis Scotland

“This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We have done so to hold fast to our principles and to best serve the women and girls that need our support.

“We were created to provide support by and for women. We believe, and women have consistently told us, that single-sex services delivered by an all-female workforce are crucial to help them heal from sexual trauma. This approach remains our priority but is at odds with RCS’.”

Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland and the 5th biggest in the UK.

… Read the rest

Disgusting and creepy beyond your wildest dreams.

Tucker Carlson’s vision of a Trump presidency is that “dad comes home” and says to America,
“You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now. … It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”pic.twitter.com/fh25KmyYmG

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 24, 2024

… Read the rest

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lord Triesman, the former chairman of the Football Association, has said he is “deeply concerned” that the governing body he used to lead is “not providing women and girls with fair, safe sport” because of its policy of allowing biological males to compete in the female category.

In a sharply critical letter to Debbie Hewitt and Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chair and chief executive respectively, Lord Triesman, who served as the organisation’s first independent chairman from 2008 to 2010, argues that his successors’ approach is not only compromising the integrity of women’s football but creating an atmosphere where many people feel frightened even to speak up about their concerns.

And all for the sake … Read the rest