Women may not meet together. It is not allowed.

So all women are terrorists, is that where we are now?

Extraordinary.

Swansea [University] Union issues a statement:

The University recently informed the Union that an external community group, Swansea Bay ReSisters, is hiring Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre for an event on 31^st August 2023 focussing on legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales.

This event has not been promoted, encouraged, or planned by the University, the Taliesin or the Students’ Union.

Wait, what? Why the need to frantically distance the university and the union from a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales? Is that a taboo subject in Wales?

The Union acknowledges the impact this event could have on students, staff and the wider community, but also understands that the Taliesin is bound by the same legislation and statutory duties as the wider University.

Impact? Impact? What impact? What’s so horrifying about a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales? To be clear: I haven’t skipped anything from this statement, so there is no missing explanation in these first three paragraphs. That’s all there is: women are meeting to discuss issues; we apologize for the horror.

The University has previously engaged with and explained to the Students’ Union that in the UK, Universities have a statutory duty to ensure freedom of expression and freedom of speech the way in which the law defines it. This legislation binds the University to protecting the rights of any individual to express their opinions on topics, regardless of the University community or Union’s stance on the issue. The University informed us that in order to discharge its statutory duty, it took the decision to accept the booking.

The booking of a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales. We still haven’t been told what the problem is.

As a Students’ Union, we have always firmly stood with our Trans and Non-Binary students and wish again to echo our support for the community at this time.

What’s that got to do with anything?

We understand that for many of our students, your officers included, this event taking place on our campus is upsetting and uncomfortable.

They understand that? How? Why is this event upsetting and uncomfortable? They’re upset and uncomfortable because women are meeting to discuss issues that affect women and girls? Why????

Please be assured that your Union will continue to work closely with the University on the impact this event may have on the student community.

There is support available for anyone affected by this issue, through our Advice & Support Centre or through the Welfare Team in Campus Life, their contact details are below.

Still not a word of explanation of how and why this event may have some mysterious kind of “impact on the student community.”

If you have any further questions, you can contact our team on fto@swansea-union.co.uk.

Trans rights are human rights.

–  Your Full-time Officers

The end. Not one word to explain the connection between women talking about women’s issues and all this upset and discomfort and impact. There are just the totemistic mentions of trans people and trans rights, but no link to the upset n discomfort n impact. Are trans people allergic to women, so allergic that they can’t be on the same campus with them even for an hour or two? Is that it?

Back in May, staff at the Edinburgh comedy club The Stand tried to shut down a planned Fringe event with Joanna Cherry, but were foiled by public outrage. Now there are new threats.

Joanna Cherry has claimed that the need for unprecedented security measures such as metal detectors at her Fringe show are “a disgrace in modern Scotland”.

The MP, who is well known for her gender critical views, is the headline act at a show at The Stand comedy club on Thursday, an event it is feared trans activists will attempt to prevent going ahead.

Her appearance had initially been cancelled after staff refused to work at it due to Ms Cherry’s views, but the venue backed down and reinstated it after she threatened legal action.

The Stand said that after taking police advice, it had been forced to take “extra measures to ensure the safety of everyone involved with staging the show and members of the audience”.

All because we know that men are not women.

She’s the perfect judge for Trump – from our point of view, not from his.

LAWYERS WHO’VE DEFENDED clients before Tanya S. Chutkan, the judge assigned to Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case, have some advice for the former president and his attorneys: buckle up.

Far from the more indulgent* Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, attorneys tell Rolling Stone that Chutkan is perhaps the toughest judge he could have gotten in the Washington, D.C. district court.

*the more hand-picked and underqualified Aileen Cannon.

“It’s probably the worst draw for Trump. She’s the worst judge he could’ve gotten handed,” one attorney with experience representing a January 6 defendant tells Rolling Stone. “She’s pleasant, she’s nice, and she’s fair, but she’s a tough judge with these January 6 cases.”

Good.

Let’s try the whole case in public shall we? In fact let’s do it on social media.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE “ASSIGNED” TO THE RIDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE! WE WILL BE IMMEDIATELY ASKING FOR RECUSAL OF THIS JUDGE ON VERY POWERFUL GROUNDS, AND LIKEWISE FOR VENUE CHANGE, OUT IF D.C.

All he has to do is keep shouting in all-caps on his twoof soshal and the whole thing will fade out.

Other lawyers are surprised to learn this:

If former President Donald Trump committed a “technical violation of the Constitution,” it doesn’t mean he necessarily broke any criminal laws, John Lauro, Trump’s criminal defense attorney, argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

…

“A technical violation of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law,” Lauro contended, calling it “just plain wrong” to suggest that Trump had pressed Pence to break the law.

Other lawyers beg to differ.

Here is the Museum of Pop Culture blog post by Chris Moore explaining why the museum is displaying JKR’s work but not her name, aka stealing her intellectual property without acknowledgement. Apart from the sheer spiteful nastiness it seems to me to be remarkably childish and silly for a museum administrator, but maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just pop culturey.

Remember, this blog post is on the museum’s website, so it’s speaking for the museum, not just Chris Moore the (proudly gender-special) person.

Title: She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

Subhead: There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor.

Body of text:

We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored. Yes, we’re talking about J.K. Rowling, and no, we don’t like that we’re giving her more publicity, so that’s the last you’ll see of her name in this post. We’ll just stick with You-Know-Who because they’re close enough in character.

Her transphobic viewpoints are front and center these days, but we can’t forget all the other ways that she’s problematic: the support of antisemitic creators, the racial stereotypes that she used while creating characters, the incredibly white wizarding world, the fat shaming, the lack of LGBTQIA+ representation, the super-chill outlook on the bigotry and othering of those that don’t fit into the standard wizarding world, and so much more. We’re going to be focusing on You-Know-Who’s transphobic views in this blog post because she’s really doubled down on them lately.

So, hi! An introduction is important for this post because, while I’m writing for MoPOP, I’m also an individual who has been affected by her viewpoints. My name is Chris Moore (he/they) and I am the Exhibitions Project Manager at MoPOP. I’m also a board member for the Seattle Trans and Nonbinary Choral Ensemble and a transgender Harry Potter ex-fanatic. 

He/they used to love HP, from 1998 on.

A bit of history is important here, too. You-Know-Who started dancing around transphobic statements in 2018 and became more vocal in 2019 by supporting a person who was fired for being transphobic. In June of 2020, she fully committed to these viewpoints and went on long, hateful Twitter tirades (we recommend not reading them, but here’s Daniel Radcliffe being an awesome ally on Rolling Stone). This caused many cast members of Harry Potter to distance themselves from her… unfortunately, it also caused many cast members to support her and out themselves as being transphobic. In the same year, she released a new book under her pen name about a serial killer who dresses in women’s clothing to seduce his victims. It ends up being an entire novel of thinly veiled transphobic scare tactics.

I haven’t read it but I’ve gathered that that’s not true…unless of course “thinly veiled” means “barely at all.”

(I have to admit I’ve tried a couple of the Cormoran Strike novels and gave up both times. I have to admit I don’t like them and don’t think they’re very good. I admire JKR as an activist but not as a novelist.)

And what is MoPOP doing? If you’ve visited the museum recently, you will have seen artifacts from the Harry Potter films in Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic gallery and her likeness in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. They’re there and trying to dance around it would make me look like a bigger hypocrite. But here’s the deal… it’s complicated. Long conversations are being had and a lot of considerations around what to do with problematic people and content because instances like this are going to keep happening. I’m privileged to get to work with our Curatorial team and see the decision-making processes there, so let me give you a little bit of insight into what these are like after someone outs themself as holding terrible ideologies.

Nah, I’ll stop there, thanks, and let Pecksniff do his thing by himself.

The place should rename itself the Museum of Popular Inquisition.

Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, formerly the Experience Music Project, displays Harry Potter stuff but pretends Harry Potter was invented by no one. I call that highly unethical, bordering on plagiarism.

A Seattle Museum has airbrushed JK Rowling from its hall of fame and Harry Potter exhibition over her gender-critical views. The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Washington hit out at the famous author and accused her of holding ‘super hateful and divisive’ opinions.

It defended its decision to remove all references to Rowling in a lengthy blog post on Saturday. The museum still has Harry Potter memorabilia on display but any mention of the author of the franchise has been airbrushed.

In other words it profits from her work but erases her as its creator. How is that not plagiarism and theft? Tickets to the museum cost 30 bucks.

Its exhibitions project manager Chris Moore, who is transgender and uses the pronouns ‘he/they’, confirmed the museum would no longer contain any references to Rowling.

‘There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor,’ he wrote in a 1,400-word blog post on Saturday. 

‘We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored.’ 

She’s too hateful to be ignored and that’s why we’re removing her name from our display of her work.

How adult, how thoughtful, how reasonable, how wise, how proportionate, how free of spite and venom and loathing and contempt.

Trump typed:

I purposely didn’t comment on Nancy Pelosi’s very weird story concerning her husband, but now I can because she said something about me, with glee, that was really quite vicious. “I saw a scared puppy,” she said, as she watched me on television, like millions of others, that didn’t see that. I wasn’t “scared.” Nevertheless, how mean a thing to say! She is a Wicked Witch whose husbands journey from hell starts and finishes with her. She is a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!

Imagine saying a mean thing about someone!! Donald Trump has never said a mean thing about anyone in his entire life!

No but seriously – imagine being a donald trump with a 70+ year history of saying very mean things about a vast array of people and then bursting into flames because a woman says he looked like a scared puppy. He says meaner things than that in his sleep.

Women may not have anything for women. Women may not defend the rights of women. Women may not tell the truth about who is a woman. Women must sit down and shut up. The Great Western Railway says so.

The website of a gender-critical group was blocked on a train’s Wi-Fi network for being linked to “terrorism and hate”, it has emerged.

Sex Matters, which campaigns against the adoption of gender ideology and argues that biological sex is a reality, had its web page blocked by Great Western Railway.

Those attempting to access the site, which raises concerns about gender reassignment surgery as well as about men in women’s prisons, hospital wards and sporting events, received a message that stated: “The domain is blocked by GWR because it’s associated with the terrorism and hate category.”

Is it now. What a very strategic use of the passive voice. Associated with the terrorism and hate category by whom? One green-haired activist in Stoke Newington? And associated with in what sense? Just in the sense that the green-haired activist says so?

Ah well, you can’t be too careful, can you.

Trump the anarchist:

American democracy is only as strong as its legal system. The founders of the country created the judiciary as the third branch of the federal government to keep executive power in check and prevent corruption. So it was a cause for deep concern last week when Donald Trump unleashed a verbal tantrum on his Truth Social platform, accusing special counsel Jack Smith of “prosecutorial misconduct” even before he filed four federal criminal counts against the former president over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a bid to remain in office.

An identical barrage came last April when a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony charges for falsifying business records. That time, he also called for defunding the justice department and the FBI, even though the charges did not come from either federal agency. Both reactions were part of a long-running campaign by Trump to undermine the rule of law in the US and dismiss the multiple charges he faces, and has denied, as politically motivated.

It’s as if he had bitten into a mushy brown spot on an apple and declared war on agriculture. It’s as if he caught a cold and tried to get rid of all doctors. It’s as if he got bored with one of the rooms in one of his houses and decided to shut down architecture. It’s narcissism plus overkill, which could be Trump’s sweatshirt motto.

He’s a repeat criminal and the law is finally getting closer to dropping a hand on his shoulder, and his solution is to nuke the Justice Department and the FBI and every other arm of the law he can think of. Egomania doesn’t get much more egomaniacal than that.

On one level, it is shocking to hear the worries that US lawyers are expressing about the impact of Trump’s outbursts. On another, what we’re witnessing in Washington is part of a trend happening around the world. From Hungary to Pakistan, the power of judges is being reduced and legal systems are being upended.

That may sound like fun – freedomfreedomfreedom! – but only until you pause to think about it.

This is why we can’t turn it around.

More reactions to Stephen Whittle’s disgusting tweet.

There are many many more.

James Fallows makes a very good point here.

Reporters generally (or always?) don’t write the headlines and subheads; that’s the editor’s job. The first para of the story certainly pulls no punches, ending with “He is an inveterate and knowing liar.”

Another thing: there’s an ambiguity in quotation marks. It’s not always clear whether they’re straightforward (someone said this) or scare quotes. But Fallows is still right: even if ‘Lies’ is quoting the indictment, it can still look like scare quotes.

Yep, he certainly has a point there too. Habit? What a benign word for a pattern of criminal behavior.

He sums up:

To underscore a point well known in journalism but not so much in civilian world: 99% of the time, the issue w NYT framing is headlines, subheds, “social sells”—presentation on Xitter et al. Rather than stories themselves. Alas, 99x more people just see the headlines.

Framing is important.

It’s complicated.

If convicted in any of the three criminal cases he is now facing, Donald Trump may be able to influence whether he goes to prison and what his stay there looks like under a law that allows former U.S. presidents to keep Secret Service protection for life, some current and former U.S. officials said.

…

Trump could force politically and logistically complex questions over whether officials should detail agents to protect a former American president behind bars, leave it to prison authorities to keep him safe, or secure him under some type of home confinement, former U.S. officials said.

…

The charges Trump faces technically come with the possibility of decades in prison — though pleas, verdicts and possible punishments are very far off.

Of course, he doesn’t have decades, plural.

Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during President Barack Obama’s administration and led the department for the first several months under Trump, said Trump presents unique challenges to the Justice Department. Ensuring some penalty for a former president under Secret Service detail would require extensive discussions and potential accommodations, “because it really would be a pretty enormous burden on our prison system to have to incarcerate Donald Trump.”

Ok then how about this: convert a small garage or similar at one of his resorts to a little one-guy prison with room for the Secret Service detail.

The Secret Service can direct and oversee protection by others, assigning a special detail to work inside the Bureau of Prisons, or potentially helping prison officials enforce a custodial sentence at home — potentially such as at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., or Mar-a-Lago residences or elsewhere.

If Trump is locked up at Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago it had better not be in full luxury conditions. This is why I suggest a converted garage. Am I vindictive about this? Damn right I am.

H/t What a Maroon

Oh really. How interesting.

The cops visited trans man Stephen Whittle after she [gloated about the assault on KJK?] but actually they approved of the gloating and one said he would have said far worse? That is very very interesting, and not in a good way.

Joyce Vance expands on her point:

Today, Donald Trump issued what can only be construed as a shot across the bow, after the Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya admonished him during arraignment yesterday that he must not commit any new crimes while on a pre-trial bond—the thing that’s keeping him out of jail before trial—and that efforts to influence or intimidate witnesses, jurors or others involved in the case were illegal.

So, naturally, he posted a threat on his social media toy.

It couldn’t be more clear that this is a threat to Jack Smith and the prosecutors and investigators involved in the case against him. It’s readily construed as a threat against state court prosecutors like Alvin Bragg in New York and Fani Willis in Georgia and could even be seen as a threat to people like E. Jean Carroll who have the temerity to hold him accountable for civil misconduct.

That’s a threat, made by a defendant in a criminal case, after being warned by a judge that there were consequences for violating conditions of release. Trump may think he can be cute and deny it if confronted. 

He’ll throw every monkey wrench he can find into the works.

Prosecutors haven’t asked the court, at least not yet, to revoke Trump’s bond. That, of course, would be a step that would trigger prolonged litigation and possibly delay the trial. That seems to be the one thing Jack Smith is trying to avoid at all costs. He has made strategic decisions, for instance, only indicting Trump and leaving the co-conspirators unindicted, that streamline the process. He clearly wants his trial before the election.

So I’ll have to stop wishing they would lock him up. Or at least pretend to.

Joyce Vance thinks he should be locked up.

Former President Donald Trump has gone “over the line” and should be taken into custody for his latest apparent threat, according to former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.

During an arraignment hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Trump pleaded not guilty to four felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result and over his actions surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Approximately 24 hours later, the ex-president posted the following to his Truth Social account: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Vance, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said that the post went beyond “free speech” and Trump should be forced to “explain it to the judge” a short time later [in a tweet].

He should be locked up and made to eat dog food.

Reuters tells us:

 U.S. prosecutors flagged a threatening social media post from Donald Trump in a late-night court filing on Friday, arguing that it suggests he might intimidate witnesses by improperly disclosing confidential evidence received from the government.

On his Truth Social site, the former president wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Friday afternoon, a day after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he orchestrated a criminal conspiracy to try to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In the filing in Washington federal court, the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith said Trump’s post raised concerns that he might publicly reveal secret material, such as grand jury transcripts, obtained from prosecutors.

Under the process known as discovery, prosecutors are required to provide defendants with the evidence against them so they can prepare their defense.

“It could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case,” prosecutors wrote, noting that Trump has a history of attacking judges, attorneys and witnesses in other cases against him.

At his arraignment on Thursday, Trump swore not to intimidate witnesses or communicate with them without legal counsel present.

And then promptly issued a threat. On social media.

Trump might find himself in prison to await trial.

It’s a threat, you see. It’s not clever to threaten when you’re out on bail.