Pro Publica tells us Trump has been bribing witnesses dealing out some conveniently timed rewards.

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where

The Guardian has a long piece on Mhairi Black, who is retiring from her job as as MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.

Swinney took up his position as first minister with a pledge to “govern from the mainstream” and many of Black’s colleagues have expressed concern at a growing perception among voters that the SNP is distracted and divided over gender issues at the expense of their doorstep concerns.

With a general election looming, Black is a pragmatist. “I think that progressing trans rights is absolutely the right thing to do, but during a cost of living crisis I can understand why people get frustrated with it,” she says. While she provoked anger when she dismissed gender-critical feminists

Oh ffs. Is it still 2015? Did I just imagine the last 9 years? Or does CNN need to read the room?

Maryhope Howland gave birth to a baby she thought was a boy. But at 6 years old, the child asked her questions such as “Mom, am I a boy? How do you know I’m a boy?”  

“Once I clued in, I said, ‘The doctors make a best guess based on your body … but only you can know, and we love you no matter what,’” said Howland, now co-lead for the Families United for Trans Rights, an organization of transgender kids and their loved ones.

No the doctors didn’t make a “best guess.” Children ask a lot … Read the rest

Shock-horror in Beeston.

The aim is to bring communities together and not to divide. Hm.

Which communities?

You’re not bringing all communities together with this endless bullying of women, now are you. You’re driving a fuck of a lot of women away, very far away, so far they’ll probably never come back.

It’s very creepy, this blather about “communities” to shore up the silencing and punishment and exile of women. New boss exactly like the old boss.… Read the rest

Extend them where exactly? How? Into what? What rights are missing?

Happy Pride Month and solidarity always.

Defend the progress we’ve made, extend trans rights.

Equality now 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

— Richard Leonard (@LabourRichard) June 1, 2024

As for “equality now” – what does that even mean? In what sense are trans people not “equal”? In what sense are they treated as not equal? In no sense that I know of. Idenniny isn’t about equality, it’s about pampering the self at the expense of everyone else.… Read the rest

Man sues politician for calling man a man:

The first transgender woman [aka man] to be awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival filed a legal complaint on Wednesday over a “sexist insult” from a far-right politician after her win.

It’s not a sexist insult to call a man a man.

Karla Sofía Gascón and co-stars jointly received the accolade on Saturday for their performances in French auteur Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set narco musical Emilia Perez.

In the film, the 52-year-old Spanish actor – who lived as a man until she was 46 – plays a Mexican drug trafficker both before and after gender reassignment surgery.

After her win, French far-right politician Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of National

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on However, these constructs exist along a spectrum.

Probably unlikely, but I wonder if this is another instance of activist interns taking over an organization’s coms? It’s quite a coup for gender ideology to capture a prestigious, authoritative journal such as The Lancet, despite the fact that its surrender to them diminishes and devalues the very prestige and authority they coveted it for in the first place.

And what have they won? what do these guidelines do? From the excerpt here in the original post, The Lancet is now endorsing several key goals and concepts of gender ideology, but in a very slippery way. It doesn’t come straight out and say … Read the rest

Oh no – women have become too mouthy. They’re supposed to be silent and fun to look at, or else absent. We’re not here to listen to women talk ffs. By “we” I mean real people; women are just toys.

“Look, let’s just be frank. Women have become too mouthy. As the Black man in the room, I’ll say that.”

That’s a quote from Minnesota Senate candidate Royce White, the man recently endorsed by the state Republican Party in its primary contest to face off against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the fall.

See? See what I mean? What the hell is Senator Amy Klobuchar doing being a senator? It’s so mouthy!

White made the comments in July on

From way back in the obscure past and an excellent listen: John McWhorter on the ways Trump has no clue how to talk like a grownup.… Read the rest

The Center for Reproductive Rights still uses That word.

Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications

The Texas legislature and its Supreme Court want women to die rather than get an abortion.

Today the Texas Supreme Court denied claims brought by 20 women denied abortion care despite facing dangerous pregnancy complications and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion bans. The ruling in the high-profile case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, left physicians without clarity about the circumstances under which they can use their own medical judgement to provide abortion care without fear of prosecution.

And without that clarity they have abundant reason to fear the consequences of using their own medical … Read the rest

More on the inspiring theme of Republicans declaring war on the criminal justice system:

Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party’s presidential candidate for the November election — in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case against the former president or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.

In fact, any Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan of Maryland, were instantly bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to “leave the

So the plan now is to attack judges and prosecutors.

Throughout Washington, Trump’s allies – some of them jockeying to be his running mate – responded Friday with a series of escalating calls for retribution on his behalf.

As one does. Republicans have always been staunch enemies of…the judicial system.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, an attorney in the prosecutor’s office, testify next week “about the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.” Several Republican senators – including vice presidential contenders Marco Rubio of Florida and JD Vance of Ohio – signed a letter signifying they would not work with the Biden administration to

It was that courthouse.

As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial this week, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that.

It’s the same courthouse where five Black and Latino youths were wrongly convicted 34 years ago in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. The former president famously took out a newspaper ad in New York City in the aftermath of the 1989 attack calling for the execution of the accused in a case that roiled racial tensions locally and that many point to as evidence of a

The Lancet.

The Lancet!!!

From The Lancet's new guidelines for authors https://t.co/C5cV611Jkv pic.twitter.com/mmMxTaCe61

— Ian Leslie (@mrianleslie) May 31, 2024

The Lancet. … Read the rest

This is healthy and reasonable:

Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution.

After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.

Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.

“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win.

Originally a comment by KBPlayer on Shortcut.

The activists have succeeded in forcing the Edinburgh Book Festival to drop sponsorship from Baillie Gifford because of their threatened disruption. The activists are such little shits – book festivals are about the safest place around to let off smoke bombs or whatever crap they do. This will damage the book festival, and of course the writers involved. According to Jenny Lindsay, the poet who was hounded out of Edinburgh by transactivists, one of her worst tormentors is part of this anti-book crusade.

There is an open letter from about every well-known Scottish writer, excluding Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and J K Rowling (who is English rather than Scottish but has lived … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Putting ideology before science.

I think when it comes to medical or other technical subjects, we’re all forced to take shortcuts and rely on some heuristics. It’s just not possible to become an expert in gender medicine, climate science, evolutionary biology, and virology and infectious disease, to name just a handful of science-related controversies. So we look at things like what side do most of the credentialed experts take, how good are the best arguments made by their critics, what are the economic incentives and biases of the disputants, who seems to be arguing in good faith, etc.

And a lot of the time, this works quite well. You don’t have to … Read the rest

Texas wants women to die of pregnancy complications.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to the state’s strict abortion ban — a response to a lawsuit filed last year by a group of women who had serious pregnancy complications.

The ruling was unanimous. All of the nine justices are Republicans.

Five women brought the lawsuit in March 2023, saying they were denied abortions even when issues arose during pregnancy that endangered their lives. The case grew to include 20 women and two doctors.

That’s what happened to Savita Halappanavar, and what happens to women in Catholic-run hospitals in the US. Texas wants all pregnant women in Texas to run that risk. Texas wants all pregnant women … Read the rest

Convicted felon Trump gave a news conference packed with the usual lies.

Mr. Trump, in a rambling and misleading 33-minute speech, derided the trial as “rigged” and attacked the judge in his first public comments since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. He also made numerous misleading statements about the case and what took place at the trial.

“Misleading statements”=lies.

Mr. Trump said he would appeal. Long before that appeal is heard, he will be enmeshed in the gears of the criminal justice system. A pre-sentence report, made by probation officers, will make recommendations based on the defendant’s

Darren Johnson on the Green party’s refusal to heed the Cass Report:

Labour’s Wes Streeting admitted that he had got things wrong in the past and called the review a “watershed moment” for the NHS. Even in Scotland, the previously gung-ho SNP belatedly welcomed the findings and it is hoped that changes will be made to provision there. 

But sadly, that wake-up call does not appear to have been heard by the Greens. In the Scottish Parliament Green MSPs now stand completely isolated on the Cass findings. Their co-leader, Patrick Harvie, was reluctant to even accept the report as a valid scientific document. 

In London, Zoë Garbett, the Green mayoral candidate last month (who now sits as a London