Wait a second I forgot my shoes. Hang on, I have to eat lunch first. Sorry, I’ll be right with you, as soon as I find my wallet. Sit down for a minute, enjoy yourself, I have to do my taxes before we go.

US President Donald Trump has said Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on goods that come under the trade pact between the two countries and Canada until 2 April.

Trump has not confirmed if the suspension also applies to Canada, but its northern neighbour is expecting an exemption of the “same nature”, a Canadian government source told the BBC.

The latest move is the second climbdown in two days from Trump on his tariffs.

Hey hey hey it’s not a climbdown, it’s just a slight delay while he figures out which is his right hand.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told CNN that the province would go ahead with a 25% tariff on the electricity it provides to 1.5 million homes and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota from Monday.

What??? No fair! Trump paused so you have to pause! That’s the rule!

Or to put it another way…oops.

A bit of good news for a change.

I’d like to read/quote the ruling but it won’t open; maybe later. Meanwhile Jon Pike enlightens:

There’s a particular feature of this that I want to bring out. Blair Hamilton is an academic sports scientist who publishers in this area: Hamilton researches, in particular, the effects of T-reduction and cross sex hormones on performance. This research project has an enormous blind spot, because it focuses on performance metrics and not body metrics. Body metrics – like height – are set by sex, and are not affected by T-reduction. Because BH is biologically male, BH has a huge, male-generated height advantage. And BH plays in goal, where body metrics like height and reach play a very big part. It serves the political interests of Hamilton’s research to switch the emphasis from (eg) muscle strength, where there is a small reduction, and away from height where there is no change, and no diminution of male advantage.

We can see, from the submission to IPSO how Hamilton thinks about this. I am struck by the term ‘mere anatomy’. YES. It is ‘mere anatomy’ that means that Hamilton is much taller than almost all women goal keepers. It is ‘mere anatomy’ that will drive some women goalkeepers out of the game. Because it is ‘mere anatomy’ – the fact that there are two types of human body – that justifies female sport.

‘Mere anatomy’ is absolutely fundamental to this argument.

And Hamilton’s “personal journey as a transgender woman” is – how to put it? – neither here nor there.

Indeed. It’s also grotesquely self-involved to think it is either here or there. All this “mai journey” shit canceling women’s rights and interests and needs is so childish as well as outrageous. It needs to go away!

The NY Times muddies the waters in the approved fashion.

The headline is muddy:

Democrats Block Bill to Bar Transgender Girls From Female Sports Teams

“Transgender girls” are not girls. No doubt most NYT readers know that, but all the same, the word “girls” does its work. When we see the word “girls” we don’t correct it to “boys” automatically; it takes extra time and attention to remember that the subject here is boys in girls’ sports. Mostly we don’t read that slowly. Referring to boys as transgender girls is conditioning, and journalism really ought to stop doing it.

Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican-written bill aimed at barring transgender women and girls from school sports teams designated for female students, thwarting consideration in the Senate of the G.O.P.’s latest move to use transgender people as leverage at the dawn of President Trump’s second term.

So the reporter, Annie Karni, makes the story a matter of Republicans “using” trans people as opposed to a matter of not grotesquely cheating women in their own sports. Never mind about move and use and leverage and dawn and even Trump – focus on the unfairness to women, god damn it. But of course she doesn’t.

With Democrats opposed, the measure stalled on a vote of 51 to 45, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and be brought up for consideration. The bill, which passed the House in January on a largely party-line vote, would prohibit federal funding from going to K-12 schools that include transgender students in women’s and girls’ athletic programs.

Male students, you quisling. The issue is not that they’re trans, it’s that they’re male.

Senate Republicans argued it was essential to protecting girls from predatory men encroaching on their private spaces and seeking to gain an unfair athletic advantage on the basis of sex, even as they hinted that the measure was intended to lay a political trap for Democrats.

But what about the unfair advantage? Don’t just hop over it as if it were a fake issue; it’s a very real issue.

But hopping over it is the done thing.

Anne Applebaum on The Rise of the Brutal American:

Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.”

That’s putting it mildly. Even “rude” and “cruel” and “ugly” fall short of describing the grotesque nightmare of that performance.

Europeans can also see that this alternative reality is directly and profoundly shaped by Russian propaganda. I don’t know whether the American president absorbs Russian narratives online, from proxies, or from Putin himself. Either way, he has thoroughly adopted the Russian view of the world, as has Vance. This is not new. Back in 2016, at the height of the election campaign, Trump frequently repeated false stories launched by Russia’s Sputnik news agency, declaring that Hillary Clinton and Obama had “founded ISIS,” or that “the Google search engine is suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton.” At the time, Trump also imitated Russian talk about Clinton starting World War III, another Russian meme. He produced a new version of that in the Oval Office on Friday. “You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III,” he shouted at Zelensky.

And Putin is…?

In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see.

But seeing it is all we can do. Stopping it is way out of reach.

H/t Tim Harris

Still melting.

Global sea ice fell to a record low in February, scientists have said, a symptom of an atmosphere fouled by planet-heating pollutants.

The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

The fun thing about this is that it’s both a symptom and the thing itself. It’s a sign of warming and it is warming. A twofer.

Scientists had already observed an extreme heat anomaly in the north pole at the start of February, which caused temperatures to soar more than 20C above average and cross the threshold for ice to melt. They described the latest broken record as “particularly worrying” because ice reflects sunlight and cools the planet.

“The lack of sea ice means darker ocean surfaces and the ability of the Earth to absorb more sunlight, which accelerates the warming,” said Mika Rantanen, a climate scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Quick tip: accelerating the warming is not helpful.

Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, said the long-term prognosis for Arctic sea ice was grim.

“The region continues to rapidly heat up, and can only be saved with rapid and massive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “That will also limit the growing severity of weather extremes and long-term sea level rise across the world.”

Would. Not will, but would. That’s the problem. It’s never will, it’s always would. We can’t do the will part.

A guy called Pips is “honored and excited” to have been given a role that should have gone to a woman, because of course he is.

Pip Bunce to be exact. We’ve heard of him before.

Honoured and excited to have been chosen as a delegate for this years United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) Previous years events attended have been incredible and I know that this years will be as good, if not even better!! Spending time with all the amazing delegates is always a pleasure, as too is working with like-minded individuals working to progress inclusion, equality and equity. Our shared ethos being that together we can make a change and equality and equity for ALL women and girls is long overdue.

And of course by “ALL women” he means including men like him.

The fact that he’s invited means there’s a woman who would have been but isn’t. He’s good with that. He loves being in a position to lecture us about ALL women and girls as if he knew more about female people than we do.

What an asshole.

Trump has halted intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The Trump administration has paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine alongside a military aid freeze, officials said on Wednesday, part of a pressure campaign to force its government to cooperate with the White House’s plans to end the country’s war with Russia.

A U.S. official said that military targeting information was no longer being shared with Ukraine.

…

Some U.S. officials said the hope was that any pause in intelligence sharing would be very short, with little practical impact. A senior Trump administration official said the initial plan was to pause military and intelligence sharing for a week or two as part of the campaign to pressure Mr. Zelensky.

Oh that’s fine. Just pressure Zelensky and cause more people to be killed so that Trump can show everyone what a boss he is.

While the Trump administration has steadily increased pressure on Ukraine, it has not done so to Russia to halt its attacks. The Russian military has continued to bombard Ukrainian cities daily.

Of course not. Trump has a toad-crush on Putin and he hates Zelensky for being so mean to his toad.

What this ideology does to wannabe progressives. Noisily laughing at a high school girl receiving a brain injury.

Ah yes, that infuriating tic.

It’s safe to say U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t exactly endearing himself to many foreign leaders these days.

In the last few days alone, he’s clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and paused its U.S. military aid, launched a trade war with Canada, Mexico and China, and mocked Lesotho in his first speech to Congress, claiming “nobody has ever heard of” the country.

That last one – that toddler cognition that tells him what he is unaware of, everyone is unaware of. He lacks that mechanism that adults have, that reminds them of the variety of what different people know. Trump is pig-ignorant therefore everyone is exactly as pig-ignorant as he is. He’s ignorant in himself and ignorant of his own ignorance.

Now Trump is playing “Let’s negotiate.” Howzabout I skip the tariff on cars, ok? Yeah sure bro, howzabout I torch 90% of your house instead of all of it?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to speak to his U.S. counterpart Wednesday after the Americans launched a trade war yesterday with devastating tariffs on all Canadian goods.

A senior government official told CBC News that the call is expected sometime around midday. It’s the first time Trudeau has spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump since his administration torpedoed free trade between the two countries by imposing steep levies on imports.

The call comes as the federal government grapples with the usual chaotic situation out of Trump’s Washington with the president’s advisers suggesting at different points over the last 12 hours that there could be a compromise on tariffs only to say later that tariffs will still apply but maybe at a lower rate.

Or with a box of chocolates, or only every other month, or upside down, or in suspendies and a bra.

After U.S. stock markets plummeted once Trump slapped tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on Fox News Business Tuesday saying he’s working on a plan to “meet in the middle” on tariffs, without offering any clarity on what exactly that means.

Genius, sheer genius. “After the house burst into flames, the arsonist said he’s working on plans to put half the fire out.”

In an interview with CBC’s The National late Tuesday night, LeBlanc said Canada is “not interested in some sort of reduction of the tariffs. We want the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico respected.”

Oh that. Well…the agreement was not our idea so we don’t have to respect it. That’s how this works, right? If you didn’t make the law or treaty or agreement, you don’t have to obey it?

In his address to Congress last night, Trump doubled down on the value of tariffs, including on allies like Canada.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it is happening and it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that,” he said.

That’s so elegant, that “rather quickly.” I just marvel at his brilliance.

David Frum in the Atlantic:

The Trump administration’s elimination of PEPFAR, the American program to combat HIV infection in Africa, symbolizes the path ahead. President George W. Bush created the program because it would do immense good at low cost, and thereby demonstrate to the world the moral basis of American power. His successors continued it, and Congresses of both parties funded it, because they saw that the program advanced both U.S. values and U.S. interests. Trump and Vance don’t want the United States to be that kind of country anymore.

The thing about this demonstrating the moral basis of one’s power is that you can’t do it without actually having the moral basis. The ulterior motive is there, but so is the immense good being done. Immense good is good.

The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name—and the services they are performing for dictators and aggressors. There may not be a deep cause here. Trump likes and admires bad people because he is himself a bad person.

And not just a bad person but a kind of paradigm of a bad person – a bad man, specifically. Bad so thoroughly; bad in so many ways; bad to the total exclusion of any good. There are no stories of Trump doing something benevolent. None. Everything he does is about enriching and empowering and flattering himself; there is nothing left over for people who are not trump.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Prank.

Will nobody tell Trump how tariffs work? He’s under the impression (or giving the impression) that the countries he’s targeting with these tariffs are going to pay him for the privilege of selling in the US. Canada isn’t going to pay a dime; it’s US customers of Canadian goods who are going to be stuck with the bill, or needing to scramble to find alternate sources for the products we can sell more profitably elsewhere. Trump seems to think that, like some hoity- toity credit card with exorbitant annual fees, we’ll pay through the nose in order to be permitted to bow and scrape our way back into his good graces.

“It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,”….

Wait. We’re talking about trade, right? Where does the “steal our money” happen? Are these countries shoplifting on a massive scale, stuffing their diplomatic bags with items they’ve pinched from Walmart? Traditionally, tariffs were used to protect domestic production from foreign competition. But what if there are few (or no) domestic producers left to protect? What’s the point? As for “stealing our jobs” and “taking” factories and businesses, wasn’t it American companies moving to those countries? Are they not permitted to do that? Isn’t it the goal of corporations to seek out the cheapest source of labour, the least regulated and profitable locations for their facilities? This corporate strategy has been used to roll back wages and working conditions in a race to the bottom. This is how the game is played, and if it were going in Trump’s favour, he would have no problem at all with it; he’d say he was “winning.”

Corporations have no loyalty to anything but profit; this is a stance which Trump should appreciate, as he follows it himself (albeit, given his record, with limited success). Taxing the corporations that claim to be “American” while doing all of their manufacturing overseas would make more sense. Fighting for a level playing field internationally in terms of worker pay, environmental protection, and carbon pricing for shipping would, in the long run, make a lot more sense and make the world a better place for everyone. But that’s not what Trump wants. He wants obedience and gratitude, and he doesn’t care how many Americans have to suffer until he gets it. Good luck with that. The US isn’t in a position to dictate in this way any more. Trump can’t make anyone trade with him if they don’t want to. Beating with the tariff stick won’t really help. It might be awkward or difficult, but the world can bypass or ignore the US much more easily than in the past. There are other markets, and other customers.

It’s the science, stupid.

Fellows of the Royal Society met yesterday to discuss, as they put it, “Fellows’ behaviour”. In light of the resignation of two fellows and an open letter signed by nearly 3,500 scientists, many, including me, expected the discussion to be focused on the behaviour of one particular fellow: Elon Musk.

The Royal Society, as one of the world’s most esteemed scientific institutions, bears the responsibility of maintaining standards among its fellows. Musk, admitted as a fellow in 2018 for his technological innovations, has recently engaged in behaviour that contravenes the society’s code of conduct.

I did not know Musk is an FRS.

In particular, many scientists have taken issue with his assault on the conduct of science in the US and beyond as head of the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) as well as his malicious accusations against public scientists (such as Anthony Fauci) and other public figures.

Musk is an important figure (some would argue the most important) in a US administration that is laying siege to science and to scientific inquiry itself. The new administration’s executive orders have restricted research, silenced climate scientists and cut funding as part of a systematic targeting of the scientific community.

…

The Royal Society’s code of conduct for fellows states that “Fellows and Foreign Members shall not act or fail to act in any way which would undermine the Society’s mission or bring the Society into disrepute”. It is clear that Musk’s behaviour has contravened this rule. So why, even now, has the Royal Society not spoken out specifically against his actions?

…

So for me it’s time to take a stand, small as it may be, and to distance myself from the Royal Society until such a time as it has the moral courage to specifically denounce the actions that Musk is taking to undermine science in the US and elsewhere. 

Like firing a big chunk of NOAA to name just one item.

Trump being activisty again.

Wheels falling off already.

A leading spokesperson in the Department of Health and Human Services announced his resignation Monday after stark disagreements with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over how to manage the growing measles outbreak.

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Thomas Corry resigned effective immediately on Friday only two weeks after starting the job, he posted on LinkedIn, wishing his colleagues in the department “the best and great success.” Corry reportedly butted heads with Kennedy and Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over how to manage the department, according to Politico.

Let me guess – he thought it should be managed in the direction of shutting down outbreaks of dangerous disease?

Specifically, Corry was not happy with Kennedy’s initial response to Texas’s growing measles outbreak, which has infected at least 146 people and caused the first measles death in the United States in 10 years. Last week, Kennedy said during a Cabinet meeting that measles outbreaks were not unusual, despite the fact that measles had been declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Well, eliminated, not unusual – they’re pretty much the same thing, right?

Since then, Kennedy said that HHS was helping health officials in Texas respond to the outbreak and spoke approvingly of the measles vaccine, but has still stopped short of calling for everyone to get vaccinated, writing Sunday in a Fox News op-ed that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”

Nope. Just as the decision to burn down a neighbor’s house is not a personal one, the decision to be a risk to the health of other people is not a personal one. Decisions that affect other people cannot be purely personal.

Kennedy has long had a reputation for being anti-vaccine, although he tried to deny his previous comments during his confirmation hearings.

Since his confirmation to lead HHS, Kennedy’s actions have not been reassuring. He has paused multiple vaccine developments in the department and on his first day fired critical employees, including members of the CDC who respond to outbreaks. 

That’s a guy who wants more people to catch dangerous diseases.

Goddam Democrats voted unanimously to let men invade women’s sports.

Help is on the way.

No, it’s really not.

Women’s history is women’s history. That’s all. We have zero obligation to share it with other categories of people, because it’s women’s. Words have meaning.

Trump is doing his tariff thing.

Donald Trump just took the biggest gamble of his young second presidency.

His hammer-blow 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico that hit at midnight dealt a fresh shock to an economy showing alarming signs of slowing growth and rising inflation – a perilous mix for any president.

Trump also doubled an additional tariff on all Chinese imports to 20%, in a trio of decisions that sent stocks – a cherished metric of his own performance – tumbling. 

Not to worry. All part of the plan. These guys know what they’re doing. This is three dimensional chess.

“It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,” Trump said Monday. “And they’re being punished by tariffs. It’s a very powerful weapon that politicians haven’t used because they were either dishonest, stupid, or paid off in some other form.”

Hmm. The economics of punishment. That works, does it?

Trump’s decision to launch full scale trade wars with America’s neighbors is a landmark moment in his second term and is just the latest occasion when he’s stuck to his sweeping campaign trail promises despite the enormous disruption that honoring his word entails.

Maybe because enormous disruption is what he wants? Because it’s fun? Like pulling the wings off insects?

Tariffs – a device used for generations earlier in America’s history but that was largely phased out in the 20th century – are stamped in the DNA of Trump’s “America First” movement. Their implementation against Canada mirrors the worldview behind his eruption at Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week. For Trump, all foreign policy is a monetary transaction in which the United States is either winning or being taken advantage of. This mindset precludes the idea that America has friends or allies with common interests. Instead, his use of tariffs to try to wring concessions from Mexico and Canada on immigration shows that his White House views them not as an exclusively economic tool but as part of a deeper national security arsenal.

Or to put it more simply, another way to bully everyone.

Trump has stopped military aid to Ukraine.

We’re restarting our live coverage as the White House announces that the US will pause military aid for Ukraine.

“The President has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” a White House official has told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

…

According to officials this pause is said to be temporary until President Trump determines that Ukraine can demonstrate a “commitment to peace negotiations” with Russia.

The Trump administration basically wants President Zelensky to sign the minerals deal and “make peace” with Russia, without giving him the security assurances he wants.

Which is not “peace” but surrender. Trump is trying to force Zelenskyy to surrender. To his homey Volodya.

In the early afternoon, US President Donald Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social and warned Zelensky that “America will not put up with it for much longer”.

His message was in response to a comment made by Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, when the Ukrainian President said during a press briefing that a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war “is still very, very far away”.

Trump is saying he won’t “put up with” Zelenskyy’s refusal to surrender.

We’re all trapped in the cesspool with Trump.