Of course he does.

Trump plans to name himself chair of Kennedy Center, fire board members

President Trump says he is taking over leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. He declared himself chairman of Washington D.C.’s long-celebrated cultural institution on Friday. In doing so, he’ll replace billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, an ally of former President Joe Biden who was set to chair until 2026.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote he was immediately terminating “multiple individuals” from the center’s Board of Trustees “who do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

Trump said he would soon announce a new board, “with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

A new dawn … Read the rest

No advantage, no advantage; what do you mean advantage??!

The advisor to the Canadian Liberal government’s Minister of Women, who claimed on X that trans-identified men do not have an advantage over women in sports, is a trans-identified male who previously dominated a women’s 5km race.

That’s just great. Not only does he lie about male advantage in sports, he is also advisor to the government’s Minister of Women – he insults and steals from women in two ways instead of just one. How impressive. A woman loses top spot in a race, and women in general lose the Minister of Women.

Nathanielle Morin is currently the advisor to Member of Parliament Marci Ien in her capacity as the

The ugliness on the ground.

The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to repatriate the U.S. Agency for International Development’s overseas workforce has thrust the agency’s global staff into chaos and despair, as workers scramble to uproot their lives and brace for what they fear will be a shutdown of all American aid missions in 30 days.

In interviews, USAID staffers said Tuesday’s recall order hassent them racing to make temporary housing arrangements back in the United States, identify new day cares or schools for their children, and plan for a future in which, as many now believe is inevitable, they are left unemployed.

These employees, some assigned to dangerous “hardship” posts, are attempting to navigate that process with little information

So it turns out that Musk’s horrifyingly successful purge of USAID is based on his deep knowledge via various pseudonymous conspiracy wackos on his toy X.

Musk’s sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID’s funding enriched an elite few who control the world. 

But until very recently, those claims were largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed

He doesn’t actually have the authority to do this.

Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to keep just more than [over] 600 essential workers at USAid, according to a notice sent to employees of the US foreign aid agency on Thursday night.

…

The USAid staff reductions are set to take effect at midnight on Friday, as indicated on the agency’s website. But a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) seeks to prevent the administration from dismantling USAid, which was established as an independent agency by a law passed by Congress in 1998.

And he can’t just crumple up and throw away … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

…the day is fast approaching when you’ll want to pretend you always saw through the craziness and never believed it for a second.

For years lots of people have been predicting “Peak Tr… (1)”, and lots of people have been predicting “Peak Tr… (2)”.

The former kept expecting Tr… (1)’s outrageous behavior, his lifetime of crime and corruption, his pathological lying, his pussygrabbing, his obvious authoritarianism and illiberalism, his nepotism, his use of the office to funnel money to his private businesses, his theft of classified documents, his attempted coup d’état (!), his endless legal trouble etc. to finally catch up with him.

The latter kept expecting the invasion of … Read the rest

Health is non-essential.

The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

White House on Thursday denied it is drafting an executive order to cut workers across federal health agencies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, under the order, which could come as soon as next week, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies would have to cut a certain percentage of employees.

How do Musk and his troops know that there is a “certain percentage of employees” who are useless to public health?

Or is … Read the rest

Confusion.

I currently have MAGA people coming after me, thinking that I support men in women’s spaces.

Um *ahem* I do not support men in women’s spaces. pic.twitter.com/WxBebJXPWc

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) February 6, 2025

Tickle v Giggle; remember that?

I went looking for some reporting to refresh my memory, and up popped the ever-diligent BBC.

A transgender woman from Australia has won a discrimination case against a women-only social media app, after she was denied access on the basis of being male.

The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination – which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute –

Lego has bumps and slots. That’s heteronormative AND transphobic.

Lego can be anti-LGBT, the Science Museum has said.

A self-guided museum tour on “stories of queer communities, experiences and identities” includes a display of Lego bricks alongside a guide stating the plastic blocks may reinforce the idea that heterosexuality “is the norm”.

The tour, devised by a Gender and Sexuality Network at the museum, also claims in the “Seeing Things Queerly” guide that Lego adds credence to the view that there are only two genders.

This is because people supposedly describe Lego bricks as having male or female parts that are made to “mate” with each other.

This is “heteronormative”, the guide states…

Ok so how do… Read the rest

The war on truthful reporting is on.

The television news magazine 60 Minutes — the most storied and profitable show in the history of CBS News — currently finds itself as the avatar of President Trump’s onslaught against the media in the courts and the court of public opinion.

Despite brave talk from the news division, CBS’s parent company appears to be inching toward capitulation, as its controlling owner wants to drag CBS out of the headlines and wrap up a corporate sale.

Naturally. News people care about truthful reporting; owners care about profit. Owners, being owners, win conflicts between the two.

Before becoming president, Trump sued CBS over 60 Minutes‘ interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris shortly

So many outright lies in this CNN piece on getting men out of women’s sports:

President Donald Trump is ready to take his fight against transgender athletes to the International Olympic Committee.

Trump said Wednesday during a signing ceremony for an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports that his administration wants the IOC to “change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject” ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

Liar liar liar. It’s not a “fight against transgender athletes” and it’s not “an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.” It’s an executive order banning male athletes from women’s sports.

The

Musk continues to bully federal workers.

Elon Musk has declared war on the bureaucracy. And as a Thursday deadline nears for federal employees to take a “buyout,” he is looking to demoralize and wear down his enemy.

Across the government, officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have fired off message after message pushing staff to accept the deferred resignation program, coaxing them with promises of paid vacations and threatening that there will be layoffs if they don’t leave. At the same time, Musk has bullied them with online taunts.

…

According to Trump allies, the intimidation campaign is deliberate as the president pursues an unprecedented purge of the federal workforce.

“They realized that you can kind of turn up

But…

Female barrister says it is @MForstater 'belief' that TW are male to which Forstater replies 'it is a fact' to which the barrister for Fife Health board reiterates that Forstater is not a biological expert…

— mandy rhodes (@holyroodmandy) February 5, 2025

But that’s just nonsensical. People don’t have to be “biological experts” to know which people are female and which are male. If we did, we wouldn’t be here, because mating would never happen so there would be no people.

More simply, it’s not a matter of biological expertise, it’s just a matter of knowing the names for things. We learn the names for things so early in childhood that we don’t remember doing it. Trans ideology wants … Read the rest

Oh, you have to be an expert to know whether people are women or men.

Huh. So how have so many people managed to reproduce over the past thousands of years? Just wild guesses, roughly half of which were wrong?

Also there’s that whole definition thing – male adults are men by definition: that’s what the word means.

You really don’t need to be a “biological expert” or even an expert biologist to know that male adults are men, unless you’ve been raised by computers while living in a self-contained box.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Signing a truce with starvation and disease.

I’d like to try highlighting one small reason our political discourse so often feels frustratingly fruitless.

Our dominant political factions represent opposed paradigms of government, and the arguments one side finds compelling simply cannot and will not move the other. In order to make an argument that is compelling to the other side of a conversation, one must understand what matters to them. Unfortunately, we tend to simply repeat ad nauseam arguments that address questions that matter to us, rather than consider the questions motivating our interlocutors. This is a kind of fallacy of irrelevance—one that’s often hard to see, because the premises are … Read the rest

It’s odd how oblivious journalists (and no doubt the people who read them) can be about misogynist insults. CNN for instance:

Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department, multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN.

…

Beattie also has made a series of racially charged comments, writing in one tweet last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

Yes, that’s “racially charged,” aka

Balancers v slashers.

The battle is between legacy government and the legal checks and balances that have held it together for generations, a system Democrats are vociferously trying to defend — including in court — and Trump’s new order, aimed at tearing down the status quo with the fast-paced, slash-and-burn tactics of venture capital and big tech, where breaking things in the name of innovation is celebrated.

Yeah clearly breaking things is always good, no matter what the things are or why they exist or how anyone will replace them. When you come to a fork in the road, break everything. It never goes wrong!

In addition to being the primary owner of X, Musk is the chief executive

This is all great.

When Elon Musk set about “feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper,” as he put it, it wasn’t only supporters of President Trump’s “America First” agenda who were cheering the dismantlement of the foreign aid agency.

The Kremlin was, too.

“Smart move,” Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former Russian president who is currently the deputy chairman of the country’s security council, chimed in from Moscow, which for years had chafed at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s actions before forcing it out of the country in 2012.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is closely aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, celebrated what he called an end to the funding of “globalist” organizations in

Another massive lurch down:

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it is pulling almost all U.S. Agency for International Development workers off the job and out of the field worldwide, moving to all but end a six-decade mission to shore up American security by fighting starvation, funding education and working to end epidemics.

The administration notified USAID workers in emails and a notice posted online, the latest in a steady dismantling of the aid agency by returning political appointees from President Donald Trump’s first term and billionaire Elon Musk’s government-efficiency teams who call much of the spending on programs overseas wasteful.

Well, I consider much of what Elon Musk does evil, so we have to shut him … Read the rest

Might as well just pour it down the drain.

The US Army Corps of Engineers opened two dams on Friday in Central California and let roughly 2.2 billion gallons of water flow out of reservoirs, after President Donald Trump ordered the release with the misguided intent to send water to fire-ravaged Southern California.

Trump celebrated the move in posts to Truth Social post on Friday and Sunday, declaring, “the water is flowing in California,” and adding the water was “heading to farmers throughout the State, and to Los Angeles.”

There are two major problems, water experts said: The newly released water will not flow to Los Angeles, and it is being wasted by being released during the wet