Trump can’t claim Honest Mistake.

A onetime White House lawyer under President Donald J. Trump warned him late last year that Mr. Trump could face legal liability if he did not return government materials he had taken with him when he left office, three people familiar with the matter said.

That means Trump can’t claim “Oh I didn’t realize, sorry, my mistake.”

The lawyer, Eric Herschmann, sought to impress upon Mr. Trump the seriousness of the issue and the potential for investigations and legal exposure if he did not return the documents, particularly any classified material, the people said.

The account of the conversation is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump had been informed of the legal perils of holding onto material that is now at the heart of a Justice Department criminal investigation into his handling of the documents and the possibility that he or his aides engaged in obstruction.

I suppose Trump’s lawyers could say yes but he’s so deeply stupid and solipsistic that being informed of something doesn’t mean he pays any attention or understands or remembers or cares…but then out comes all the evidence of lying and concealment.

Trump handed over some of the boxes soon after the chat with Hershmann, but he hung on to others. He returned some more under subpoena, but hung on to others. He lost more when the FBI raided Maralago. He’s Jerry Lundegaard being dragged out of the motel room in his underwear screaming.

The meeting between Mr. Herschmann and Mr. Trump has not been previously reported, and it adds to the picture of Mr. Trump’s interactions with several people about returning the documents in the months before the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of material in January of this year. 

In other words it adds to the picture of Trump knowing perfectly well the documents were not his to keep.

Hmm. Heavily disguised Activist burns lesbian strength poster while gesturing “fuck you.” Somehow I don’t find that particularly persuasive.

Aha, a festival for International Day of the Girl.

What is Shona?

Nice, so all this is about empowering girls. Fair play to them.

So much for empowering girls and International Day of the Girl.

Updating to add: There’s another one, because of course there is.

It seems she is a woman, but considers herself too special and interesting to be called a woman.

‘I think I might be genderqueer, or non-binary,” I said to my kids. They looked nonplussed. “I might have a hard time not calling you Mum,” one replied, “But I’ll try.”

“I’ll always be Mum,” I assured her.

But I’ll be Mum who is too special to be called a woman.

Another confused group that claims to be feminist but also likes to omit and erase women.

What a pity they made the mistake of calling themselves Women’s March way back in January 2017. So typical of women not to think such things through.

Trans men are women. Intersex women are women. Women who call themselves nonbinary are women. Women are women.

Say women and girls by all means, but don’t say “people” when you mean female people.

Inclusive of what? Intersectional with what?

Right side of history?

That threat-image is disgusting. The threat to knock you down and injure or perhaps kill you. The scowling threatening yet waiflike anime figure – cute and murderous at once. It’s all grotesque and sadistic and utterly disgusting. There is nothing “progressive” about any of this.

Bullying and lying are not progressive.

While men in Brighton are busy calling feminist women fascists, Trump is doing the real thing:

Trump appeared to more fully embrace QAnon on Saturday, playing a song at a political rally in Ohio that prompted attendees to respond with a salute in reference to the cultlike conspiracy theory’s theme song.

While speaking in Youngstown in support of J.D. Vance, whom he has endorsed as Ohio’s Republican nominee for the Senate, Mr. Trump delivered a dark address about the decline of America over music that was all but identical to a song called “Wwg1wga” — an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”

As Mr. Trump spoke, scores of people in the crowd raised fingers in the air in an apparent reference to the “1” in what they thought was the song’s title. It was the first time in the memory of some Trump aides that such a display had occurred at one of his rallies.

Ah so that’s what the gesture means. I kept seeing it yesterday but without good info on what it meant – some people pointed out it’s a conservative-churchy thing.

Trump aides say no it’s this other song. Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer say it sounds a hell of a lot like the QAnon one.

But what was once a flirtation with a movement that the F.B.I. has warned could increasingly turn violent now appears to be a full embrace.

Last week, for example, Mr. Trump posted an image of himself on Truth Social, wearing a Q pin on his lapel and under a slogan reading “The Storm is Coming.” Adherents to QAnon believe that the “storm” is the moment when Mr. Trump will retake power after vanquishing his enemies, having them arrested and potentially executed on live TV.

Emphasis on the “having them” – he won’t be doing it himself. There’s a great deal of irony that it’s Trump who is the US fascist Strongman – Trump the bloated rich guy who is so weak and out of shape he can barely walk, Trump with his brassy dyed comb-over and orange makeup, Trump with his puffy face and Betty Boop lips, his golden living room and puny fist.

Doesn’t this just say it all. Stentorian male voice shouting “YOU’RE NOT FEMINISTS” over and over and over.

Shut up, dude. You’re not the boss of us.

Some people know exactly who the women are and what they’re for.

Ten former members of a Utah-based polygamist sect known as the Kingston Group are pursuing punitive damages against the organization after they say it subjected them to years of unpaid labor, sexual violence and human trafficking.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the sect’s ex-members allege: “It is largely through … illegal marriage practices that the [Kingston Group] is able to unlawfully make girls and their children religious martyrs and traffic them for sexual and labor purposes.”

The lawsuit contains explicit details of how Kingston Group leaders – who also own and operate several businesses and schools in the suburbs of Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City – allegedly arrange incestuous and sometimes underage marriages between teenage girls and adult men with exalted status to produce hundreds of children.

Women (including girls) are for breeding. That’s the purpose of them. If you don’t use them for breeding you’re just keeping them alive for nothing. Why would you do that?

The suit alleges episodes of rape aimed at forcing pregnancy, group members covering up years of sexual abuse and indoctrinating children in elementary school about plural marriage.

…

Nine of the plaintiffs claim the Kingston Group made them begin working during their elementary or preschool days through their late teenage years. None of them received a paycheck, they allege.

In her complaint, Amanda Rae Grant claims she was assigned to work in her early teens at Advance Copy, where wedding announcements and invitations were printed, because “wedding pictures of little girls marrying men in incestuous or plural marriages could not be printed at Walmart”.

Another plaintiff, Jeremy Roberts, said he started working four hours a day – year-round – at a farm run by the Order when he was seven or eight. He allegedly was told that his hourly pay was $3.23.

By the time he was 12, Roberts said, he was working 12-hour shifts at a mine the Order ran.

It’s Mormonism by another name.

Philip Pullman blames the victims.

One scrap from Brighton yesterday:

All that venom and name-calling because we decline to pretend that men are women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on No they don’t.

The National Organization for Women is defining “woman” as a “gender identity” now. How fucking feminist of them.

This is going to age really well, right? At some point, they are going to be mortified by this.

Compared to the UK, the US and Canada seem to be behind the curve. Over there, the tide appears to be turning; genderists are more on the defensive, what with the Cass report, and all of the court cases that are being decided in favour of GC belief. It’s not as if an ocean is still the same obstacle to information it once was. The legal and legislative regimes on either side of the Atlantic are different, so it might take a while for governments, courts, and organizations here to come around. Still, you’d think they’d be paying more attention to what is happening in the UK. But, they’re not.

It will start with lawsuits. Once the genderist position starts to cost somebody real money, things will shift. This fundamentally dishonest and deceptive ideology leaves broken, hurting people in its wake. They are lied to, and promised things that are impossible, things that all the force of will and rainbow flags in the world can never bring about.

Humans can’t change sex. It’s nobody’s fault; it’s not a conspiracy; that’s just how things are. The sexed body is not something that needs to be cured or corrected. To claim that it is necessary, or even possible, is a lie. That this “solution” is offered as a panacea for problems it can never address is a prescription for tragedy.

“Gender affirming care” is touted with the same enthusiastic hucksterism as the latest fad diet, though few diets have the guarantee of irreversible mutilation, sterility, and loss of sexual function listed in their Fine Print. Some of these victims will be looking for people to blame, people who should have known better. People who actually did know better. People who were responsible, but who acted irresponsibly. People who lied. There are so many it will be hard to choose. But they will be found. Precedents will be sought. The trailblazing done by UK feminists, and other adults in the room will be consulted. Someone will be made to pay. Once delusion meets Reality, things will be walked back, and tweets like this will disappear down the memory hole. Reality plays the long game, and Reality always wins. But, it can’t win soon enough.

NOW is fully captured, just like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Law Center. Nothing for women any more, always people. Women don’t matter any more; nobody campaigns or proselytizes for women any more; women are so much chaff.

They systematically avoid the word, even though it’s IN their NAME. The W in NOW stands for Women, but NOW has become ashamed to use the word.

Meanwhile – the item that prompted me to try to reply to a NOW tweet only to find I’m blocked –

That’s a moronic lie. Men don’t need access to abortion, because men can’t get pregnant. It’s only women who need abortion rights, and no longer have them.

I wasn’t aware of this, and I have to admit I’m slightly shocked.

I’m blocked by THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN????? The oldest, biggest, most mainstream feminist group in the US? That organization for women now blocks women for not agreeing that men can be women? In other words the oldest, biggest, most mainstream feminist group in the US is now shunning feminist women in favor of anti-feminist misogynist men?

How did that happen?

Mind you, I’m assuming that’s why I’m blocked, but I don’t remember anything specific.

But it’s grotesque. It’s grotesque – mainstream feminist organizations shunning feminist women for the sake of non-feminist men. How is that going to advance feminist goals? How is that going to do anything useful?

I think I’ll have to send them a little note with some questions.

Texas governor plays cruel childish games with other people’s lives:

About 50 migrants, including a one-month-old baby, have been sent in a bus from Texas to the Washington DC residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the latest move by Republican-led states to transfer migrants unannounced across the country.

The bus let off the migrants, who are believed to be mostly Venezuelan, outside the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of US vice-presidents, on Saturday morning.

They had been sent by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, while another group were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, on a flight organized by Florida governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week.

GEDDIT??? “You love migrants so much YOU take care of them nyah nyah nyah.”

Abbott also sent three buses of migrants that arrived in New York City on Saturday. Abbott had already sent two buses of migrants to Harris’s residence on Thursday, containing about 100 people from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

I remember a guy who used to send trains full of people to destinations of his choosing. He’s not generally considered much of a role model.

The latest transfers are an escalation of a series of actions by Texas and Florida, both led by Republicans, to move migrants without warning to Democratic-leaning areas. On Wednesday, DeSantis of Florida chartered two planes to take about 50 migrant adults and children to the wealthy liberal island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, forcing local residents to scramble to help provide food and shelter for the unexpected newcomers.

Several of the migrants told journalists there was nobody at the airport to greet them, and they walked almost four miles to find help in the town, where they were put up in a church overnight.

Whatever; at least they showed the libbruls who’s boss.

Some snaps from I think Brighton:

“Rapey McForehead” is trending on Twitter so I looked to find out why. The Washington Post:

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told a former White House aide that he was seeking a preemptive pardon from President Donald Trump regarding an investigation in which he is a target, according to testimony given to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Johnny McEntee, according to people familiar with his testimony, told investigators that Gaetz told him during a brief meeting “that they are launching an investigation into him or that there’s an investigation into him,” without specifying who was investigating Gaetz.

McEntee added that Gaetz told him “he did not do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great.” Gaetz told McEntee that he had asked White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for a pardon.

Didn’t do anything wrong, nope nope, obviously not.

Gaetz never did get a pardon from Trump.

Aaaand The Atlantic runs an article by freelance writer Maggie Mertens that announces Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense. It’s every bit as stupid as it sounds, and then some.

Though school sports are typically sex-segregated, a new generation of kids isn’t content to compete within traditional structures.

Ah yes, it’s just a matter of “traditional structures,” like women having to wear skirts. Thank god the new generation of kids has seen through it at last.

School sports are typically sex-segregated, and in America some of them have even come to be seen as either traditionally for boys or traditionally for girls: Think football, wrestling, field hockey, volleyball. However, it’s becoming more common for these lines to blur, especially as Gen Zers are more likely than members of previous generations to reject a strict gender binary altogether. Maintaining this binary in youth sports reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting—a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.

No it hasn’t. Sports scientists are having a good (albeit furious) laugh at that line.

Decades of research have shown that sex is far more complex than we may think. And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential.

That’s not true either. Just ask Serena Williams.

In recent years, the question of who can play on what team has developed into a full-blown front in the culture war, based in large part on the fear that transgender girls will unfairly take over girls’ sports because of sweeping generalizations about biological athletic advantages.

Welllll, sweeping generalizations plus “Veronica Ivy” and “Lia” Thomas and a boatload of other men and boys cheating women and girls out of medals and prizes.

The insistence on separating sports teams strictly by sex is backwards, argues Michela Musto, an assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the effect of the gender binary on students and young athletes. “Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around,” she told me by phone.

Cargo cult physiology! What could go wrong?!

While the need to separate athletes by sex is still held firmly by many as a way to protect girls and women from harm, many people advocate for moving to a more integrated and inclusive approach.

Yeah let’s just blow off that whole physical thing and stop protecting girls and women from being smashed up by boys and men, and instead focus on being more incloooooooooosive [of boys and men].

What a horrible man.

School prepares for backlash over high school teacher who claims to be trans. I think the teacher is just taking the mickey.

The Halton District School Board is “standing behind” an “accepted” transgender teacher who has gone viral in social media video posts.

In addition, HDSB Chair Margo Shuttleworth tells the Toronto Sun that staff are looking at “going through creating a safety plan” to ensure the Oakville Trafalgar High School teacher’s security as they prepare for potential protests when the school opens for classes Monday.

Gone viral why? Potential protests why?

Trans? Or mockery? It looks more like mockery to me. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be in a high school class taught by that teacher.

Anna Slatz at Reduxx has more:

Shocking media first began to circulate on Twitter earlier this week, with multiple accounts sharing a mobile phone video and stills of a shop teacher demonstrating how to use a circular saw.

The teacher is seen wearing an extremely prominent prosthetic bust, one which clearly outlines the nipples through his tight shirt. He is also donning a bright blonde wig and short-shorts.

Totally appropriate for high school, right?

Action shot:

Back to the Toronto Sun:

Pre-transitioning the teacher was known to students and faculty as a male and went by a man’s name. But the teacher now identifies as a woman and is referenced with a female name.

The school board says it sees her simply as a good teacher.

“This teacher (who teaches shop) is an extremely effective teacher,” said Shuttleworth. “All the kids really love being in the class.”

I don’t believe either of those claims.