Trump to Iran: Ok we fixed that for you, now get on with it, kthxbye.

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked the latest decapitation or defeat of a bitter U.S. adversary overseas, following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq two years later, the breaking of Moammar Gaddafi’s grip on power in Libya in 2011 and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro just two months ago.

The United States has often followed such triumphant moments with attempts to fill the void — deploying thousands of troops, spending billions of dollars, seeking to nurture fledging democracies or, in the case of Venezuela, leaving the decapitated government in power. But those efforts have largely brought disappointment, yielding states that remain riven by conflict, have revolted against the U.S. role or hardly rank as robust U.S. allies.

Trump appears to be pursuing a starkly different approach with Iran, signaling that he has no intention to use Americantroops to steer the path of a country whose fate has been buffeted by U.S. power since Iran’s last democratically elected government was ousted in 1953 in a CIA-backed coup.

We broke it but we’ll be god damned if we’re going to fix it.

On Sunday, in phone calls with multiple journalists at several news outlets, Trump seemed to revel in the incapacitation of the Iranian regime, saying that the strikes had wiped out potential successors to the supreme leader.

After assessing Trump’s comments and the impact of U.S.-Israeli attacks, a German security official said the worry in Berlin and other European capitals is that “the plan is to have no plan.”

Well, you see, having a plan would require some actual brain power, and Trump doesn’t have that, so…

That’s another thing. Even if you do think it’s worth burbling about idennniny all the time, it doesn’t follow that idennniny=ONE thing about you. The odds are good that there’s more than one thing about you.

Cheer up peeps! There’s more than one thing about you! Life is rich; people are complex; the road stretches ahead of you; seize the day!

Helen Webberley is economical with her words. She omits a lot of words that would make her meaning clearer.

A mother wrote to me recently, heartbroken. Her ten-year-old transgender daughter had been told, just two weeks before departure, that she could not go on her school trip. The reason given was that she could not share a room with her friends because of new legislation. Her daughter was inconsolable. And her mother wanted to know: how can this happen? What can I do?

We can guess at her meaning because we know something about her, not because she makes it clear. She makes it the opposite of clear. That’s not random. What does she mean “she could not share a room with her friends because of new legislation”? Who are these friends? What is the new legislation that says this boy can’t share a room with his friends?

Because we know something about her we can guess that she means the “daughter” in question is a son and the “friends” in question are girls. The fact that Webberley takes care not to spell that out is telling. What does it tell? That she is a manipulative liar with zero concern for the rights and/or safety of young girls.

Schools across the country are making decisions like this one right now, often in good faith but on the basis of a misunderstanding of what the law actually requires. So let me set out what the law says, what the current guidance actually is, and what any parent in this situation can do.

The Equality Act 2010 is the piece of legislation that governs this. Under Section 7 of that Act, gender reassignment is a protected characteristic. That means a child who is transgender, or who is in the process of transitioning, is protected by law from discrimination at school.

Section 85 of the same Act makes it explicitly unlawful for schools to discriminate against a pupil on the basis of a protected characteristic in the way they provide education and related activities. School trips are school activities. Excluding a child from a trip, or placing conditions on their participation that prevent them from going, on the basis of their transgender identity, is direct discrimination. It is unlawful. That has not changed.

But excluding a boy from the girls’ sleeping room is not “on the basis of their transgender identity” – it’s on the basis of their being a boy. The rule is not “transgender children cannot sleep in the girls’ sleeping room” – the rule is “boys cannot sleep in the girls’ sleeping room.” Claiming a transgender idennniny is not an all-day pass to intrude on female people.

Hayley Dixon in the Telegraph on the throttling of an academic who doesn’t subscribe to magic gender beliefs:

The health official behind the pause of the NHS’s puberty blocker trial is blocked from any further involvement amid accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George is said to have raised concerns over the trial after taking up his role as the chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) earlier this year. The regulator’s subsequent intervention in the debate led to the Department of Health announcing that the experiment would be paused.

But Prof George is now removed from any further involvement after social media posts emerged of him praising JK Rowling and criticising people for the denial of “basic biological fact”.

How can it be bias to know that people can’t change sex? It’s just a fact that people can’t change sex. A dull obvious everyday fact that doesn’t become a fiction no matter how many interesting people wear interesting clothes while telling us all about themselves.

Again. Same problem. How is awareness of very basic facts “bias”? Surely the denial of very basic facts is a better candidate for accusations of bias.

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

But the regulator announced on Saturday that George would recuse himself from involvement in the trial after gender-critical social media posts made last year emerged.

But what is meant by “gender-critical” here is knowing that men are not women and vice versa. You might as well call it bias to know that humans have hands and feet.

The MHRA said that although George’s posts were made before his appointment, he had been removed from involvement in the trial as a precaution.

Yes, it’s very precaution to remove the guy who doesn’t claim that men are women if they say they are.

Sonia Sodha writes

This row has emerged from one of the most contested issues in medical science today: whether gender-questioning children should be put on an irreversible medical pathway, taking drugs to block puberty and ultimately progressing onto cross-sex hormones. I’ve written about the background to this here: an independent review undertaken by the paediatrician Hilary Cass called an overdue halt to this practice in the NHS. But her review controversially left the door open for a clinical trial of puberty-blocking drugs.

That trial is controversial because many experts (in my view, rightly) think it is impossible to to run an ethical trial of puberty blockers on gender-questioning children. I highly recommend this post from Genspect, and this open letter to health secretary Wes Streeting signed by hundreds of clinicians that explain why. It’s not possible to do them justice in a short summary. But for me the fundamental ethical problem at the heart of a puberty blocker trial is as follows.

The evidence we have is that for most children, gender dysphoria resolves naturally through puberty. Cass in her review is rightly concerned that subjecting these children to medical intervention that blocks their natural development will bake in mental distress that would otherwise be temporary.

That’s two radically opposed viewpoints there. One is that gender dysphoria is permanent and agonizing, and the other is that it’s a childhood blip that fades out as childhood recedes into the distance.

What trans ideology has done here is make the childhood blip [assuming it is a blip] into a tragic yet deeply meaningful permanent condition that can be made joyous via radical permanent changes to the body.

That’s quite the gamble right there.

It’s sort of as if there were a passionate dedicated vituperative movement to perform all sorts of surgeries and medical interventions on children to “affirm” them in whatever fantasy has most besotted them. Transform them into Spock or Elsa or Woody when they’re 10, what could possibly go wrong?

So much. So much could go wrong.

SEEN in journalism points out, and underlines, that what sex people are is not a belief or opinion.

For those catching up on the drama, here’s an overview of what happened last night and this morning (February 27 – 28) with Cathy Newman, Economist Health Editor Natasha Loder, and Professor Jacob George.

At tea-time yesterday Cathy Newman announced on X that she’d seen social media posts from Professor Jacob George, the recently appointed Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the medical regulator the MHRA, and that after they were brought to the attention of the MHRA he was recused (according to Loder, by the MHRA, indicating it wasn’t voluntary) of oversight of the Pathways puberty blocker research.

…

Last night campaigners and journalists, plus anyone with the use of the search function on social media, immediately began to investigate, or ‘unearth’ the social media history and public declarations of other senior officials involved in specialist health oversight including ‘gender’ protocols.

There’s Jonathan Fennelly-Barnwell, James Palmer, Matt Westmore, and the entire Health Research Authority, for example. The story won’t end here, more able reporters are pursuing it, and as soon as any new Pathways protocol is released, the controversy will flare again. Is it really a disqualifier to public health office to understand that sex is real, it’s not mutable, that men and women are different, and that the difference matters? Over at Civil Service SEEN they’ve established that it isn’t. These are not only facts, they are lawfully held beliefs. If it is a disqualifier, why aren’t equally strong affirmative beliefs also a problem? The MHRA will regret its decision and probably already is.

…

The two correspondents concerned elevated this expose above the many questions, uncertainties and safeguarding fears around the Pathways puberty blocker experiment on children, who were originally to be recruited as young as eight. For Natasha Loder to describe these concerns as a ‘Pathways Pile-on’ (in an aside, no less) is a serious abrogation of her responsibility as an health editor. As well as minimising the multiple strands of that story, both missed the real top line last night, which was how on earth could such a serious, senior and respected figure as Professor George be removed so summarily over such loose ‘offences’ when nothing he posted (well before his appointment, remember) was untrue. The possibility that a chief medical officer was recused because he understands sex is real and isn’t afraid to say so is a scandal all of its own.

In the Times Radio interview, Cathy Newman complained about a ‘glaring failure of vetting by the MHRA’ and suggested that Christine Jardine raise the issue with MPs on the Women and Equalities Select Committee, of which she is a member. At one point she even suggests Professor George should be chucked off the MHRA completely, so sure is she that ‘biological sex’ is only a controversial opinion.

Sums it up. What sex people are is “a controversial opinion” as opposed to a fact.

Imagine if we did that about everything we know. Driving a car into a brick wall at high speed might or might not cause injury. Placing your hand firmly on a red-hot stove burner might or might not cause pain. Jumping off the roof deck of a 50-story building might or might not be fatal. It’s all controversial.

It was based, as was Loder’s position, as was the MHRA statement, on the belief that the correct and neutral position on sex and gender is to sit on the fence. (Loder at one point describes the Professor’s posts as expressing an ‘ideology’.) That is: it is not neutral to say sex is real, there are two, it matters socially and you can’t swap.

It’s a flaw that besets almost every broadcast news outlet and many press outlets. They build their journalism on the premise of neutrality over whether being male or female is determined by the brain. Most build their editorial policies on exactly the same position as Newman and Loder – that biological sex and gender identity are two opinions of equal value. The broadcasters think therefore that by doing so they are impartial.

However it really means they’re building every single piece they write or broadcast on inaccuracy. The belief that you might be able to change sex is as loaded as the belief that you can. Neither is true and neither should be brought to the desk as a fact.

That’s because we know neither is true, and we have always known that neither is true. Yet here we are, watching thousands of people we used to consider sensible pretending otherwise. It’s disconcerting.

H/t Arcadia

Originally a comment by Steven on A war of choice.

Iran responds by…attacking Saudi Arabia. Makes sense.

It does make sense.

Trump acts like a Mafia boss. He’s boss of the U.S.; now he wants to be capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses). He is demonstrating his ability to remove other capos. He removed Maduro; now he is going after the Iranian leadership. Pick off the ones who defy you and the rest will fall in line. It is the same tactic that he uses to keep Republican legislators obedient to him: he primaries any who aren’t.

But Saudi Arabia is already obedient to Trump. They do him obeisance; they paid the $1B bribe to be on his Board of Peace. As with any extortion racket, what protection money paid to Trump mostly gets you is protection from Trump. But at some point, Trump does have to be able to protect the people who pay him. If he can’t, then their calculus changes. Maybe they start doing deals with each other (cf. the E.U.) Maybe they decide to take their chances with a U.S. air strike.

So it does make sense for Iran to attack Saudi Arabia. It is one of the few things they can do that will matter to Trump.

The pushback at last.

Yesterday this:

I made a complaint to the @metpoliceuk and today I was called back by one of their officers. Name: Pc/Officer Humphreys.Badge No. 2417.Based at Lewisham Police Station.

@MPSLewisham Officer Humphreys asked what had given rise to the doxing and I told him that I hold the position that men cannot become women.

He immediately, without taking a breath said “well, that’s transphobic“.

Officer Humphries then proceeded to harangue me about my ‘transphobia’ and ‘homophobia’.

I told him that I was not confident in the way he responded and that I would be reporting him to his superiors.

He said “well you won’t get anywhere“.

I then tried to explain to him that being ‘transphobic’ is not a crime and that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Forstater Ruling.

I also told him about the Supreme Court ruling that sex, in law, means biology and not identity.

At this point in the conversation, PC Humphreys put the phone down on me.

PC Humphreys seemed to have no understanding of his responsibility to act as an impartial public servant.

He also seemed unconcerned that I felt threatened and that I and my family could be put at risk by the doxing.

His only interest was in berating me for my beliefs.

I have made an in-person complaint at Lewisham Police Station and I will be making an appointment to discuss this incident with my MP @JanetDaby

We are being failed by a captured police force.

@SexMattersOrg @SpeechUnion Please can you Rx this.

Thank you.

Dr P.

Today:

Update:

I have just had a call from a DS Tokar at @MPSLewisham I think largely in response to my story here on X, which has been seen and noted.

DS Tokar is the line manager of PC Humphreys.

She apologised on behalf of the @metpoliceuk and will pursue the matter further with PC Humphreys.

DS Tokar said also they will take various methods to ensure my safety and that of my family, but she asked me not to divulge the specific details.

Either the Met, or Fred Wallace’s local police force will also be investigating him (they are it seems, very aware of his past activities).

I have already made a formal complaint against PC Humphreys, but I plan to pursue this matter as far as necessary.

A new OIC has been assigned to me and I will be hearing from him/her later today.

I shall keep you updated.

Thank you everyone for your support.

I am deeply appreciative and I am heartened by it.

Dr P.

(I also told DS Tokar that I think my story has gained so much traction because it has touched a nerve with people, especially women.

We women are tired of being denigrated and ignored. We are tired of being bullied by men who think they are women and we are tired of the police defending these men!)

The AP’s live coverage of Trump’s attack on Iran is interesting.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its government from further threatening international peace and security.

He says Canada is clear in its position that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East.”

Trump is kind of the Iran of this part of the globe.

Britain, France and Germany are calling for a resumption of U.S.-Iran negotiations and condemned Iranian attacks on countries in the region. They did not comment on the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.

U.K. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issued a statement saying their countries didn’t take part in the strikes on Iran, but are in close contact with the U.S., Israel and partners in the region. The three countries have led efforts to reach a negotiated solution over Iran’s nuclear program.

Cautious. Very cautious.

One of the senior U.S. lawmakers recently briefed by Trump administration officials on Iran says that the United States is entering a “war of choice.”

“Everything I have heard from the administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” said Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He also expressed his concerns to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio directly that military action in the region “almost never ends well for the United States.”

“It does not appear that Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history,” Himes said.

Now there’s a surprise.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced support for the military strikes on Iran, calling the country “an accomplice of Putin” for supplying Shahed drones and the technology for Moscow to produce them and other weapons to Russia during its four-year war against Ukraine.

Zelenskyy posted on X that the emphasis now should be to save as many lives as possible and prevent any expansion of the war. “It is important that the United States is acting decisively. Whenever there is American resolve, global criminals weaken. This understanding must also come to the Russians,” he said.

But unfortunately Trump is a global criminal himself.

Iran responds by…attacking Saudi Arabia. Makes sense.

Saudi Arabia says Iran targeted its capital, Riyadh, and its eastern region in an attack.

Saudi Arabia made the announcement on its state-run Saudi Press Agency. It called the attack “blatant and cowardly” and said it was repelled. Saudi Arabia had reached a Chinese-mediated detente with Iran in 2023.

“That bastard Trump has attacked us – we must attack Saudi Arabia! That’ll teach him!”

Right target, but you’re supposed to get permission first.

Hakeem Jeffries objects to the manner.

The U.S. House Democratic leader says that “Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region.”

But Jeffries has said in a statement that outside “exigent circumstances,” the president “must seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war.”

U.S. President Donald Trump “failed to seek Congressional authorization prior to striking Iran,” Jeffries said. He also said that the latest round of strikes “has left American troops vulnerable to Iran’s retaliatory actions.”

We all await developments.

What’s the issue? The issue, or question, is whether or not there is a moral obligation to affirm, or at least not deny, people’s claims about themselves.

Put like that, it seems obvious that there can’t be such an obligation without a lot of stipulations and exceptions and so on. People can lie, people can cheat, people can forge – the list is long.

Ok but maybe trans people are exceptions. They’re not trying to empty your bank account or move into your house or turn your brother into a ballerina. At least, not all of them are. Probably not a large number of them are. Why not just give them what they want? Why not just go ahead and validate them?

The thing is, they really really want you to. They want it a lot. It’s important to them. How can you be so callous and brutal as to say no?

But the problem with that is, they’re not the only people who have wants. They want us to lie for them, but we want to be not bullied into lying for them.

The assumption is widespread that they want what they want with far more desperation than we want what we want. I think that assumption is false, and I also think they have no right to think it’s true. Why should we dedicate ourselves to lying for them because of their depth of feeling while they treat our feelings as so much dross?

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The belief is mandatory.

Fred Wallace is of course the man who sends unsolicited dick picks to women. He also sends unsolicited pics of himself in flagrante at men’s fetish dens. I still can’t wrap my head around people who insist this man is a woman even when they know that he knows he’s a fetishistic man, and that they know that he knows that they know he’s a fetishistic man — so much so that he blatantly publishes pornographic pictures of himself engaging in his fetish.

Everybody knows he’s a man, and everybody knows that everybody else knows he’s a man. And yet.

It’s that two-regions-of-the-brain thing: first-order belief (“I believe x is true/false”) lives in the frontal cortex. But the limbic system overrides it, because it prioritizes tribal attachment, which involves second- and third-order beliefs (“Other people in my tribe believe x is true/false”, or “Other people in my tribe believe that other people in my tribe believe x is true/false”). They’re not stating their personal beliefs, because they can’t even access that part of the brain. They’re stating the prevailing dogma of their tribe, as required to maintain their social standing within it.

And they’re not even conscious of the fact that they’re doing it. The switchover in their brain from rational driver to irrational driver is imperceptible to them.

But it’s not imperceptible to us, to the people around them. If you pay attention, you can actually tell that they’re doing it. You can tell that their safety mechanism has been activated if they’re confronted with anything that involves questioning beliefs about trans. You can tell that they’ve switched over to a heightened emotional state. You can tell that they’re subconsciously panicking, that their threat level has spiked, that they’re no longer calm and collected, when the word “trans” comes up. Sentences become fragmented and clipped. The voice raises. The body tenses up. It’s as if they’re in the jungle and they’ve just detected a lion. They flee as soon as they can. Or they do the modern equivalent: they abruptly hang up the phone on you.

That’s not first-order logic processing; that’s the emergency backup system taking over. It’s the limbic system hijacking the brain and cutting off the capacity for individual belief because it could endanger the person’s tribal standing. That there is the magic behind the curtain that keeps religions and cults going for millenia. It’s probably the single most perplexing feature of the human mind.

And the fact that that mechanism is activated by the word “trans” is proof positive that trans is a cult. It literally operates on the same brain mechanism as cults do.

The police are telling us we are not allowed to say that men are not women.

Based at Lewisham Police Station.

@MPSLewisham Officer Humphreys asked what had given rise to the doxing and I told him that I hold the position that men cannot become women.

He immediately, without taking a breath said “well, that’s transphobic“.

Officer Humphries then proceeded to harangue me about my ‘transphobia’ and ‘homophobia’.

I told him that I was not confident in the way he responded and that I would be reporting him to his superiors.

He said “well you won’t get anywhere“.

I then tried to explain to him that being ‘transphobic’ is not a crime and that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Forstater Ruling.

I also told him about the Supreme Court ruling that sex, in law, means biology and not identity.

At this point in the conversation, PC Humphreys put the phone down on me.

PC Humphreys seemed to have no understanding of his responsibility to act as an impartial public servant.

He also seemed unconcerned that I felt threatened and that I and my family could be put at risk by the doxing.

His only interest was in berating me for my beliefs.

I have made an in-person complaint at Lewisham Police Station and I will be making an appointment to discuss this incident with my MP @JanetDaby

The police are enforcing trans ideology and bullying women who are bullied by trans ideologues. How is that their job? How is that any part of their job?

Well here’s a malevolent bit of “journalism” to put in the record books.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Pitch a fit about a chief medical officer and get him recused from the nightmare superfluous “puberty blockers trial” so that more kids can have their lives blighted by the fad for magic gender. Pat yourself on the back Cathy Newman.

Yikes. The Lancet on Bad Kennedy’s war on HHS:

10 days after his speech about trust and openness, HHS rescinded a 54-year-old policy of soliciting public comments for new rules and regulations, silencing the voices of many of the stakeholders he pledged to serve. Kennedy has summarily dismissed advisers and experts, communicated policy changes on pay-walled media, fired a whistleblower, and overseen the revisions of guidelines and recommendations, contradicting decades of established science, often to the benefit of industries he formerly condemned. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shuttered programmes studying the health effects of air pollution, HHS withheld a report linking alcohol consumption to cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew warnings of potential harm from consuming products (such as raw milk and chlorine dioxide) falsely marketed as treatments for autism. His changes at CDC have driven 26 states to reject official guidance on vaccine policy, and in December the CDC awarded an unsolicited $1·6 million grant to conduct a vaccine study in Guinea-Bissau that raised so many ethical concerns—the design would have risked exposing thousands of unvaccinated children to hepatitis B—that it has been compared to the infamous Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.

Holy shit. I did not know that. How fascinating that the study is (was) in Guinea-Bissau and not, say, Massachusetts.

HHS under Kennedy has made a habit of throwing good money after bad science. Amid the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and personnel there has been a harmful shift in priorities. Cutting-edge discoveries and clinical investigations—on subjects ranging from mRNA vaccines to diabetes and dementia—are denied crucial resources while junk science and fringe beliefs are elevated without justifiable explanation.

I wonder how much of that stems from the fact that Kennedy is in no way a medical or scientific professional. As far as the science of medicine goes he’s just some shlub off the street. We shlubs are not equipped to lay down the law on medical matters, because it’s not a subject for amateurs. I wonder if Kennedy is kicking out the knowledge-based stuff in favor of amateur hour because he is himself an amateur. If the sheep hides among all the other sheep the wolf will likely never find that one sheep.

But…

But what he means is IDs that don’t reflect who they are – or at least that don’t declare who they are. The whole point of IDs is to verify that the ID-haver is who she/he says she/he is. Because that’s the whole point, the information has to be accurate. The ID has to have the right date of birth, the right height and weight, the right citizenship – and the right sex. A driver’s license or passport is not an occasion for a theatrical performance of magic gender; it’s an occasion for verifying a few blunt facts and then moving on. The idea that one tiny Special set of people get to present fake id because it “reflects who they are” is mawkish and ridiculous. Funny, that, because trans ideology itself seems to make people mawkish and ridiculous. Droning about the glory of fake ID that reflects the owner’s version of Whooo Theyyyy Arrrrre is childish and embarrassing.

Meidas Touch:

BREAKING: As Hillary Clinton heads into a closed-door deposition related to the Epstein investigation, she released a pointed opening statement, making clear she knew nothing about Epstein and slamming the Republicans for not allowing her to testify in public.

Below is her full, unedited statement:

I’ll excerpt.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee… as a former Senator, I have respect for legislative oversight and I expect its exercise, as do the American people, to be principled and fearless in pursuit of truth and accountability.

As we all know, however, too often Congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people.

The Committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee… as a former Senator, I have respect for legislative oversight and I expect its exercise, as do the American people, to be principled and fearless in pursuit of truth and accountability.

As we all know, however, too often Congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people.

The Committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not.

It’s a guy thing. If anything has ever been a guy thing, this is that thing. It’s ridiculous to drag a wife of one of those guys in to be bullied by…what else, a bunch of guys.

ou have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today, despite espousing the need for transparency on dozens of occasions.

You have made little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files. And when you did, not a single Republican Member showed up for Les Wexner’s deposition.

This institutional failure is designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors, as well as the public who also want to get to the bottom of this matter. My heart breaks for the survivors. And I am furious on their behalf.

I have spent my life advocating for women and girls. I have worked hard to stop the terrible abuses so many women and girls face here and around the world, including human trafficking, forced labor, and sexual slavery. For too long, these have been largely invisible crimes or not treated as crimes at all. But the survivors are real and they are entitled to better.

In Southeast Asia, I met girls as young as twelve years old who were forced into prostitution and raped repeatedly. Some were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe, I met mothers who told me how they lost daughters to trafficking and did not know where to turn. In settings around the world, I met survivors trying to rebuild their lives and help rescue others — with little support from people in power, who too often turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder.

If you are new to this issue, let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein was a heinous individual, but he’s far from alone. This is not a one-off tabloid sensation or a political scandal.

It’s a global scourge with an unimaginable human toll.

…

As Secretary of State, I appointed a former federal prosecutor, Lou deBaca, to ramp up our global antitrafficking efforts. I oversaw nearly 170 anti-trafficking programs in 70 nations and directly pressed foreign leaders to crack down on trafficking networks in their countries. Every year we published a global report to shine a light on abuses.

The findings of those reports triggered sanctions on countries failing to make progress, so they became a powerful diplomatic tool to drive concrete action.

I insisted that the United States be included in the report for the first time ever in 2011. Because we must hold ourselves not just to the same standard as the rest of the world but to an even higher one. Sex trafficking and modern slavery should have no place in America. None.

Infuriatingly, the Trump Administration gutted the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department, cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked so hard to prevent trafficking crimes. The annual trafficking report, required by law, was delayed for months. The message from the Trump Administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: combatting human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House.

Unless there is some political revenge involved, like…this hearing right here.

How indeed?

Manchester Green Party:

In other words, we of Manchester Green Party require that all members affirm a conspicuous and absurd lie. We regard refusal to do so as irrational hatred. We affirm that such refuseniks are not welcome as members of Manchester Green Party.

It’s Trumpian. Why does Manchester Green Party want to be Trumpian?

When the crook is empowered to fire the cops.

At least 10 FBI employees who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s retention of classified records after he left the White House in 2021 were fired on Wednesday, multiple sources told CBS News.

The firings came after Reuters reported that the FBI had subpoenaed records of phone calls made by FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles when they were still both private citizens as part of Smith’s probe into Trump.

The Reuters article quoted Patel, who alleged that the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his phone records “using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.” The Reuters article added that it had not independently verified any of Patel’s claims.

Patel did not provide any evidence of wrongdoing by the staff who were terminated.

So? He can do whatever he wants. Shut up.

Special Counsel Jack Smith oversaw two federal probes into now-President Trump. One case alleged he unlawfully tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, while the other focused on his retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct the Justice Department when it asked him to return the files.

The “One case alleged” is funny since we watched him do it. It wasn’t a behind closed doors type thing, it was Trump shouting on nationally broadcast tv.

The FBI Agents Association, which represents current and former agents, condemned the firings in a statement, saying they violate FBI employees’ due process rights.

“These actions weaken the Bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership and jeopardizing the Bureau’s ability to meet its recruitment goals—ultimately putting the nation at greater risk,” the group said.

Blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. They said bad about Trump so they are toast.

Smith’s dual investigations into Mr. Trump led to the first federal criminal indictments against a former president in U.S. history. The classified document charges were dismissed by a federal judge in Florida in mid-2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed, and Smith dropped the 2020 election charges after Mr. Trump won the 2024 race.

And that judge was………………………Aileen Cannon, the wildly underqualified hack appointed by…………………..Trump. What a surprise.

Since then, the Trump administration has taken aim at federal employees who worked on the two cases. The Justice Department fired a group of prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team, and the FBI has fired agents involved in the Arctic Frost election investigation.

Nothing corrupt here, no sirree.

Sigh.

A “distasteful joke” by US President Donald Trump has overshadowed the achievement of female athletes at the Winter Olympics, says USA women’s ice hockey captain Hilary Knight.

USA won both men’s and women’s ice hockey gold for the first time at the Milan-Cortina Games this month.

The men’s team received a congratulatory call from Trump, who invited them to his State of the Union address and said he would have to ask their female counterparts as well or he “probably would be impeached”.

Sigh.

That’s not really a “joke” – not as normal people normally understand a joke. It might pass as a “quip” for people who like that sort of thing. A stupid gratuitous insulting “quip”.

It’s so Trump that he simply assumes inviting the women would be a drag, and that he says so out loud. Women are things for sticking your penis into, and other than that they should just let the real people, men, have fun together.

He didn’t have to say that. He didn’t have to let the men know, wink wink nudge nudge, that he too hates women and doesn’t want them around except at fucking-time. We all know that already.