The BBC reminds us that Trump is charged not just with taking all those documents he had no right to take, but also with lying and obstruction in order to hang on to them.

Mr Trump has been charged with 37 counts of unauthorised possession of classified material, obstruction of justice, concealing documents, and making false statements to law enforcement.

…

Republicans, including some of Mr Trump’s presidential rivals, rushed to his defence on Thursday as news of the indictment first broke.

While they may still take issue with what they view as a politically motivated prosecution, they may find it more difficult to explain why Mr Trump held onto such sensitive national security after leaving the White House.

Where … Read the rest

The Guardian is still resorting to the gender uncritical framing.

Oxford University’s new professor of LGBTQ+ history has accused the government of “fanning a culture war” over freedom of speech, insisting it is alive and well in higher education.

Is there such a thing as LGBTQ+ history? I suppose you can lump two or more unrelated things together and then do history of both of them, but is that a genre of history or just a random list?

Matt Cook, who was this week named as the first Jonathan Cooper chair of the history of sexualities, a newly created post at Mansfield College, was speaking only days after the appointment of the government’s first “free speech tsar” for

… Read the rest

Jolyon Maugham urging more more more puberty blockers.

https://twitter.com/stueymaco/status/1667567398432514049

Updating to add – the replies to Maugham’s tweet are almost all in dissent. That’s encouraging.… Read the rest

Trump’s incredulity:

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Mr Trump said he had been summoned to appear on Tuesday afternoon at a federal court in Miami, Florida, where the charges against him will be read.

“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former president of the United States,” Mr Trump wrote.

That’s another symptom of his profound stupidity. He thought he could get away with anything because of his sacred status. Of course, he wouldn’t have said the same thing about Obama.

Prosecutors had also presented evidence in court in Washington DC, but a decision to file the indictment in southern Florida instead may offer some consolation for the Trump team.

… Read the rest

Golly, I wasn’t expecting that while cruising for Trump news – the four children lost in the Amazon have all been found alive.

[Colombian] President Gustavo Petro said finding the group was a “magical day”, adding: “They were alone, they themselves achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history.”

The children belong to the Huitoto indigenous group. Mr Petro shared a photograph of several members of the military and Indigenous community caring for the siblings, who had been missing for 40 days. One of the rescuers held a bottle up to the mouth of the smallest child, while another fed one of the other children from a mug with a spoon.

NBC News

Updating to add:… Read the rest

This has to stop. It’s journalistic malpractice that is a massive danger to women.

https://twitter.com/wundt_vil/status/1667305603616628737

A more accurate headline and less of a threat to women. It’s not women who are running around threatening to kill people, and news media have to stop saying it is.

The man who threatened Kellie-Jay Keen:

https://twitter.com/wundt_vil/status/1667436308711497728… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1667228760603602945

Wow. Just wow. https://t.co/qrYWz9JSZn pic.twitter.com/HstQTjdOlV

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 9, 2023

UNSEALED INDICTMENT: The indictment starts with the stunning revelation Trump showed classified information to people not entitled to view it (and he was not entitled to possess it) pic.twitter.com/ySW67GdhGl

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 9, 2023

Trump's contempt for United States national security, captured in a single photograph: pic.twitter.com/j9GY2ttwFC

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 9, 2023

… Read the rest

from Norm Eisen

Paragraph 7 is the bottom of the slippery slope that he embarked upon by beginning his administration with constitutional violations of the Emoluments Clause. For six years since he’s been plummeting into worse illegality like this. (3/x) pic.twitter.com/Dp2ZysCr9d

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) June 9, 2023

OMG, paragraph 22, this is a classic speaking indictment that also makes the case for Trump’s bad intent. It enumerates his knowledge of the importance of protecting classified information! (7/x) pic.twitter.com/2VDNXoSFLP

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) June 9, 2023

The most horrifying of these is the picture on p. 14 from December 2021 in which a box fell & highly classified documents poured onto the floor of

… Read the rest

Good god. What’s coming out is…I’ve run out of words for it.

Screechy Monkey told us to see Robert Costa’s thread on the subject, so I see it, and holy shit.

(Thread) learning some new things this morning about WHY this all happened and the motivation, especially for the audio from 2021 discussing classified material. In short, it comes down to one person: *Milley.* Trump loathed his coverage in press, in books, per multiple sources…

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 9, 2023

Trump’s anger about Milley led him to be cavalier about what he said about Milley and their interactions & policy decisions, and it frustrates some aides who notices how he would veer into dicey/near classified material in convos.

… Read the rest

One interesting detail in the Trump indictment –

On two occasions in 2021, Trump showed classified documents to others, according to the indictment. One instance, which The Washington Post has previously reported on, was a July 2021 meeting at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., when Trump showed a writer, publisher and two members of his staff what he described as a “plan of attack” that Trump claimed was prepared for him by the Defense Department and a senior military official. None of the individuals present at the meeting, which was audio-recorded, had a security clearance.

Ah. He kept the stuff as souvenirs…he wanted to relive the glory days, when important people prepared plans of attack for him – … Read the rest

Trump indicted.

Former president Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that he had been indicted in federal court in Florida over the classified information found at his Mar-a-Lago home. 

…

Trump is charged under a part of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it, according to people familiar with the case. Such information is defined as “any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage

… Read the rest

First

Oxford now hosts the first fully endowed professor of LGBTQ+ history, Matt Cook.

He told #BBCWATO the treatment of trans people now is similar to the hate gay men experienced in the 1950s: pic.twitter.com/GOVIa4G4wA

— The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) June 9, 2023

A couple of points.

One, his claim is stupid and wrong. There are some surface resemblances, but the actual substance is very different.

Two, it’s quite staggering how bad he is at professional talking. That’s what professors do, it’s the “profess” in “professional” and “professor” – they talk well. This buffoon does it almost as badly as Kathleen Stock’s hilarious interlocutor at the Oxford Union. A million “kind of”s and almost as many “you know”s. … Read the rest

Baroness Nicholson sent a letter:

“The purpose of this letter is [to] request you ensure this highly political exercise in social engineering is not allowed anywhere near healthcare leaders.”

“On the basis of a misrepresentation of the Equality Act”

“The issue of rapes and serious sexual assaults in NHS hospitals is already serious enough.”

“This is a partial and prejudicial report.”… Read the rest

News on the gender incongruence services front:

Today (Friday 9 June) NHS England has published an interim service specification for specialist gender incongruence services for children and young people to support Phase 1 providers in developing their new services. The public consultation on this draft interim service specification ran on the NHS England website for 45 days from 20 October to 4 December 2022. It received 5,183 responses in total. We would like to sincerely thank all those individuals and organisations who took the time to submit responses to this consultation. Read more about the consultation feedback and NHS England’s response.

We have previously made clear, including the draft interim service specification we consulted on, the intention that the

… Read the rest

Anna Slatz at Reduxx:

A Seattle court has ruled that a female-only nude spa lacks the “constitutional right” to bar males from their facilities. The decision comes after the spa sued the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC), which had forced them to change their sex-exclusive policy due to the complaint of a transgender patron.

Human rights are for trans people, especially male trans people. They’re not for women. Obviously.

In May of 2020, a trans-identified male submitted a complaint to the WSHRC alleging discrimination on the basis of his gender identity.

Haven Wilvich had sought a membership at the Olympus Spa in January of 2020, but had been denied on the basis that he had not undergone “gender

… Read the rest

The Telegraph reports:

Patients may be found guilty of discrimination if they refuse the care of a transgender medic, according to new NHS guidance.

Health bosses have been warned that patients have no right to be told a healthcare worker’s assigned sex at birth.

No rights for patients; rights are only for transgender nurses and doctors. Patients are scum, transgender nurses and doctors are Ascended Beings.

However, transgender health workers can choose not to treat patients if they feel uncomfortable doing so, the report by NHS Confederation says.

Of course, because only transgender people have rights. Non-transgender people have only the obligation to submit.

The report, published earlier this month in partnership with the LGBT Foundation, says patients

… Read the rest

What are these privileged bitches complaining about now? Being groped on crowded public transportation? Wah wah wah, big deal.

It was the morning rush hour in Tokyo. The train was packed and rocky. Takako (not her real name) was on her way to school. The 15-year-old tried to hold on to a grab bar. Suddenly, she felt a hand pressing on her behind. She thought someone had accidentally bumped into her. But the hand started to grope her.

And it went on happening, nearly every day.

Many women like Takako are targeted in public by sexual predators. In some cases, they face another violation – the attack is filmed and the videos are sold online.

Most videos follow the same

… Read the rest

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I finally get it.

Well ok then. Stand down. It all makes sense now. Plus it’s so adorable.

she=skirt, pants=they pic.twitter.com/9pV3CXmAOp

— Héloïse (@belivetsgloves) June 7, 2023

… Read the rest

It’s the old Lone Ranger joke for the millionth time – “Who’s ‘we,’ Kemosabe?” Charles Blow at the Times says “we” a lot but there is no such “we.”

As the L.G.B.T.Q. community celebrates Pride Month, we are besieged by a malicious, coordinated legislative attack.

But there is no such community, at least not without some cautions and stipulations. It’s a very lumpy unwieldy community if it is a community. What unites lesbians and trans women exactly? Especially, what unites them in an environment where all the solidarity is for the trans women and none of it is for the lesbians unless they pretend men can be lesbians every bit as much as women can?

There’s been a notable rise

… Read the rest

Alison Phipps has a new paper [pdf] out, so I’ve read a little. It’s every bit as horrible as I expected, and more so. Page 3 –

In January 2019, at a joint panel with far-right think-tank the Heritage Foundation, Women’s Liberation Front board member Kara Dansky claimed that if the US Equality Act (designed to protect sexual orientation and gender identity) was passed, the following would happen:

Male rapists will go to women’s prisons and will likely assault female inmates as has already happened in the UK. Female survivors of rape will be unable to contest male presence in women’s shelters. Men will dominate women’s sports. Girls who would have taken first place will be denied scholastic opportunity. Women

… Read the rest