U.S. judges feel threatened

Recently:

Amid rising tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary, some federal judges are beginning to discuss the idea of managing their own armed security force.

The notion came up in a series of closed-door meetings in early March, when a group of roughly 50 judges met in Washington for a semiannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, a policymaking body for the federal judiciary. There, members of a security committee spoke about threats emerging as President Trump stepped up criticism of those who rule against his policies.

Dozens of judges and their relatives have received anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes—which they perceived as a “we know where you live” message. In March, five days after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the administration must pay USAID contractors, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister was targeted with a bomb threat, according to police records. Another judge had a SWAT team called on him after he overturned an executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

Judges Weigh Taking Control of Their Own Security Amid Threats U.S. marshals, sworn to protect federal judges, ultimately answer to President Trump, who has ramped up criticism of the judiciary. By Katherine Long, James Fanelli, C. Ryan Barber. Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2025

Now:

The White House deepened its attacks on the judiciary on Wednesday [May 28] as it hit back at a federal court decision striking down President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

“[Trade] deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told HuffPost in a statement. “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

And White House senior adviser Stephen Miller went even further, claiming in a post on X that “the judicial coup is out of control.”

White House Lashes Out At Judges After Court Blocks Trump's Tariffs A senior adviser alleged a "judicial coup" in renewed broadsides against the courts. By Li Zhou, HuffPost, May 28, 2025

Relatedly: Trump's circle, says Maggie Haberman, saw Elon Musk as "a source of tension, and he commanded this social media presence where he could intimidate any of them as well. And so I think, you know, they are happy to see this chapter end." (HuffPost, June 2, 2025)

Also:

"President Donald Trump has privately complained that the Supreme Court justices he appointed have not sufficiently stood behind his agenda, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations. But he has directed particular ire at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, his most recent appointee, one of the sources said.

The behind-closed-doors grievances have been wide-ranging, and while many have been about Barrett, Trump has also expressed frustration about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the sources familiar with the matter said. The complaints have gone on for at least a year, the sources said.

The president’s anger, sources said, has been fueled by allies on the right, who have told Trump privately that Barrett is “weak” and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before Trump nominated her to the bench in 2020.

* * *

Last week, as Trump raged over a three-judge panel’s decision against his tariff plan, he took aim at Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, who played a major role in helping Trump identify judges to put on the federal bench.

In a Truth Social post, Trump called Leo a “real ‘sleazebag’ … a bad person, who in his own way, probably hates America.”"

— Trump privately complains about Amy Coney Barrett and other Supreme Court justices he nominated, Kristen Holmes and John Fritze, CNN, June 3, 2025

Trump fears Musk:

"On Tuesday [June 3], MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested why the typically “explosively rageful” president has not yet said a thing.

It boils down to Trump actually being afraid of Musk and the way he could weaponize his vast wealth against him, said “The Last Word” anchor.

“That is how you know who Donald Trump fears in this world,” he said. “If you attack Donald Trump and Donald Trump says nothing, Donald Trump’s silence is the biggest expression of fear that he has.”

— Lee Moran, Lawrence O’Donnell Reveals Why Donald Trump Hasn’t Dared To Clap Back At Elon Musk Yet: The “explosively rageful” president hasn’t said a thing, and the MSNBC anchor suggested why. HuffPost, June 4, 2025

Judges are politicized:

Trump's appellate judges have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. How often they ruled for him in 2025: Trump appointees: 92% Other Republican appointees: 68% Democratic appointees: 27% @schwartzesque.bsky.social Emma Schartz www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...

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— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt.bsky.social) January 11, 2026 at 9:43 AM

Stephen Miller understands that the criminal system is the most powerful on the state level, so he is going after local and state sovereignty.

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— Jessica Pishko (@jesspish.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 3:14 PM

Relatedly, on an August 2026 episode of NBC’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) about the prosecution of David Hearn for touching the Reflecting Pool and allegedly damaging it. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro had just asked to dismiss charges. Kennedy said, essentially, that the president can lie all he likes and prosecute someone for a personal or political vendetta, but a U.S. attorney can't:

"The president says it was caused by vandals. I don’t know whether he really believes that, or it’s part of his political messaging, or he’s just thinking out loud. You and I both know the president well. He exists loudly, and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought. I’m not saying he doesn’t really believe it, I just don’t know. Now, the stakes are a lot higher for U.S. Attorney Pirro. You can’t lie to a federal judge. If she can’t prove her case, she was right to pull back. Because if you fool around with a federal judge, you will find out." (See Parker Molloy's post about this: plainly, Trump is "trying to throw this random guy behind bars for a decade for absolutely no reason," so is he doing it ignorantly or knowingly? Both options ought to be "gigantic scandals.")

Race and gender are different constructs

Tyra is on Instagram too

The Gender/Sexuality Journal by Tyra Blizzard

I wrote: "Why Did Richard Dawkins Tweet About Rachel Dolezal? (April 27, 2021)

ChatGPT as a search engine

"I have not used ChatGPT, because as of yet, no one has held a shotgun to my head and made me do it." — Vince Gilligan (WATCH: Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan really hates AI, Simone De Rochefort, Polygon, Nov 7, 2025)

Kids are taught to look things up, right? That basic recommendation assumed that available sources would contain facts. But now, there are LLMs, which are "nonsense machines." So looking things up is bad advice, or at least incomplete advice, given the widespread availability of a tool that lies to you. Otherwise kids are going to use the nonsense lying tool and believe they've learned something from it.

"They 'looked it up'! they got it from somewhere! ... it's something they think they LEARNED"

Well this is grim

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— Pavel (@spavel.bsky.social) July 6, 2024 at 5:15 PM

Schools were unprepared for this:

"at least in the early days, a total crapshoot: Some states claimed that they had not thought about ChatGPT at all, while other state departments of education brought in consulting firms to give trainings to teachers and principals about how to use ChatGPT in the classroom. Some of the trainings were given by explicitly pro-AI organizations and authors, and organizations backed by tech companies. The documents, taken in their totality, show that American public schools were wildly unprepared for students’ widespread adoption of ChatGPT, which has since become one of the biggest struggles in American education."
— American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show, Jason Koebler, 404 Media, May 15, 2025

"Everyone participating in generative AI is polluting the data supply for everyone." AI is already eating itself: www.theregister.com/2025/06/15/a...

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— Doc Sarah Lonsdale (@sarahjlonsdale.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 2:23 AM

By the way, the president uses "AI" as a deflection to indicate something is false.

"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."

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— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 6:05 AM

Look what a massive amount of the U.S. stock market is invested in "AI" companies.

Generative AI is a societal disaster: Governments are deluding themselves into believing investment justifies allowing AI to upend society. Don't buy the AI hype. by Paris Marx, Disconnect, October 24, 2025

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

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— Matthew Noe (@noethematt.bsky.social) October 28, 2025 at 5:46 AM

In 2022

The UK made it illegal to hire someone to write an essay for you. Yet there's nothing that can be done about machines writing the essay for you?

In 2025

Sam Altman of course says you need ChatGPT to know how to raise a baby.

Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?" Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."

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— More Perfect Union (@moreperfectunion.bsky.social) December 9, 2025 at 10:01 AM

Guillermo del Toro gets it. variety.com/2026/film/ne...

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— Trey Lawson (@tlawson.bsky.social) January 4, 2026 at 10:55 PM

Happy to be included in this article with MIT Technology Review about the QuitGPT campaign. www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/10/1...

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— Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) (@fisherdanar.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 6:58 AM

Today's technology is designed to divorce us from ourselves.

"...the rapid promotion and acceptance of AI into our daily lives helps to ease us into this weird dysmorphic fascism we have moved into." Their goals are to "get rid of the pesky people who question things, keep tabs on all of us to keep us 'safe,' help distort reality so we are too tired to question everything, keep us disconnected from other humans, keep us 'efficient' (because white supremacy likes efficiency more than quality), get you to question everything and be too scared to trust your instincts—oh, and help destroy the planet because that takes away more of us, too." So, "don’t outsource your thinking to a data packet that serves a master who doesn’t care about you and who just wants to strip your essence and use it to fuel their quest for unlimited riches." (Black Girl in Maine)

Erin Maglaque [interviewed by Chandler Fritz]: It is true that the textureless authority of AI-generated writing makes us feel as if we are in the presence of an omniscient being. But we lose something important about being human if AI becomes our primary contact with the unknown, our primary experience of the inexplicable.

And what does that misplaced reverence say about us, about our capacity to contend with real mystery? AI is predictable by its design; that is how large language models work, through probability. Premodern mysticism was not concerned with the predictable or the probable, but with the opposite: with moments of irruption, of disabling wonder. Why do we want our gods to be so bland, our oracles so anemic? Do we get the gods we deserve?

— Interview in the New York Review of Books, emailed to subscribers, March 21, 2026

"And they just…took it. They took the best work of my mind and used it to build the very thing that is actively ruining just about everything all the time. They took the books I wrote for children and used them to make it possible for children to not bother with reading ever again. They took the books I wrote about love to create chatbots that isolate people and prevent them from finding human love in the real world, that make it difficult for them to even stand real love, which is not always agreeable, not always positive, not always focused on end-user engagement. They took the books I wrote about hope and glitter in the face of despair and oppression and used it to make a Despair-and-Oppression generator.

They took my heart and used it to replace me and everyone else."

— Catherynne M. Valente, Blood Money: The Anthropic Settlement: The actual audacity of it all, Welcome to Garbagetown, Mar 30, 2026

Don't use AI summaries for journalism either

Even after getting caught, he still basically just shrugs it off as user error, rather than the extremely obvious outcome of using a piece of software that has zero designed tendency towards accuracy beyond the human-created (stolen) inputs it relies upon archive.ph/wip/qMFtz

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— Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) March 21, 2026 at 2:40 PM

Polling is broken?

"In my Facebook dahlia growers group, there are endless queries from new growers asking if the planting plan built for them by some A.I. chatbot would work (almost always: no). I want to reply in all caps: COMPARE THE TIME IT TOOK YOU TO ASK CLAUDE THIS QUESTION, POSE IT TO THIS GROUP, THEN FIGHT WITH EVERYONE IN THE GROUP ABOUT A.I......TO LOOKING IN ONE (1) DAHLIA-GROWING BOOK, OR PERUSING ONE (1) DAHLIA GROWER'S FAQ."
Anne Helen Petersen, "A.I. Keeps Wasting My Time," Culture Study, May 24, 2026

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No, Trump hasn't banned abortion yet. But he's ended health research for trans people

There was widespread concern in 2024 — based on the positions of many people in Trump’s orbit — that his administration might start enforcing the centuries-old Comstock Act or have the Food and Drug Administration pull approval for abortion drugs.

Didn't happen, but, as Alanna Vagianos tells us:

"In his first week as president, Trump reinstated the 'global gag rule'...[and] signed an executive order to enforce the Hyde Amendment...

And those were just the policy decisions generally expected of a Republican administration. Others have been more extraordinary — undermining decades of political precedent and quietly targeting abortion as well as basic reproductive health care like birth control and sexually transmitted infection prevention and testing."

Vagianos has put together this incredible list for HuffPost today: "Trump Still Has An Anti-Abortion Agenda, It’s Just Sneakier Than Before."

These policy decisions of Trump's first 100 days include (the numbering is mine):

1. "...entertaining pro-natalist policy ideas...[like] awarding the 'National Medal of Motherhood' to any woman who has six or more children. In Nazi Germany, women were awarded a bronze medal for having four children, silver for six and gold for eight children."
2. "he limited enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — a federal law created to safeguard abortion clinics, patients and providers. He dismissed a handful of current ongoing investigations and pardoned 23 people for FACE convictions, effectively declaring open season on already vulnerable abortion clinics, patients and workers."
3. "He also rejoined the Geneva Consensus, an extreme global anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQIA pact created during the first Trump administration that aligns the U.S. with socially conservative countries, some of which have been accused of rampant human rights violations."
4. DOGE "dismantled the Department of Health and Human Services," disrupting or ending work by those who "monitored in vitro fertilization, tracked national maternal and infant health outcomes, as well as published key contraceptive guidelines for physicians," or "tracked maternal complications like gestational diabetes and preeclampsia," thus "losing the only source of data about the health and behavior of women before, during and shortly after pregnancy." Funding was pulled from "gender-based research, including one study grant meant to protect pregnant women from domestic violence."
5. He "cut $65.8 million in family planning grants under Title X," which had "helped fund around 4,000 health clinics, supplying nearly 3 million low-income Americans in 2023 with reproductive health care including birth control, STI testing and cancer screenings" — never abortions (by law). Some Planned Parenthood clinics closed due to the loss of funding.
6. The government "joined a Supreme Court case alongside South Carolina, arguing that states should be allowed to exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, even for health care services outside of abortion care." This would "effectively defund Planned Parenthood."
7. "...attacks on the trans community and attacks on reproductive justice are inherently linked. Trump’s [first] anti-trans executive order ["Defending Women"] contained 'personhood' language, used often by extremist anti-abortion groups that believe life begins at conception and fetuses should have the same legal rights as born children..."
8. "Trump has also lined his cabinet with abortion opponents, creating one of the most extreme anti-choice administrations in history."
9. "Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to dismiss a high-profile federal lawsuit over the right to emergency abortion care in Idaho — sending a clear message that the administration would rather pregnant women continue dying than offer safe abortion and miscarriage care...The person in Trump’s administration in charge of enforcing that law is Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former TV personality who is openly anti-abortion...Now that the lawsuit is dismissed, the Trump administration has the ability to rewrite federal EMTALA guidance, which would follow the far-right Project 2025 playbook perfectly."
10. "Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is responsible for gutting several HHS agencies as well as cutting Title X funding. Trump tasked him with studying the safety of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion...Many of the HHS agencies Kennedy decimated were also the ones that would have studied mifepristone. Kennedy himself could pull FDA approval of mifepristone, or FDA Commissioner Martin Makary could. The former Fox News contributor routinely spread anti-abortion misinformation before Trump made him head of the FDA. During Makary’s confirmation hearing, he refused to answer questions about his plans for mifepristone."
11. "John Sauer, well-known for his dogged opposition to abortion and birth control access, was recently confirmed as solicitor general, a position sometimes referred to as the 'tenth justice' [i.e., in addition to the nine on the Supreme Court]."

How Trump's HHS Cuts Are Another Attack On Trans People: Research on HIV prevention among trans people was already scarce, but Trump's restructuring of the health agency decimates future studies. Lil Kalish, HuffPost, Apr 29, 2025

Update: Republicans Move A Step Closer To Repealing Protections For Abortion Clinics: A bill to repeal a 30-year-old federal law that safeguards reproductive health clinics passed out of committee on Tuesday and now heads to the full House for consideration. Alanna Vagianos, HuffPost, June 11, 2025

Regarding FACE: Publishing Doctors’ Names is a Threat The Nuremberg Files was 1990s anti-abortion doxxing. Tucker Lieberman, Medium, Dec 2, 2021

HIV funding

Also today in the HuffPost, Lil Kalish writes:

"The Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services make the dream of ending the HIV epidemic more unattainable than it has been in years, and public health experts warn it also marks an escalation of the president’s attacks on trans people."

"Medicaid is the largest insurer of people living with HIV, and roughly 276,000 trans people access health care through that system.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed a rule last month that would make it more difficult for low-income people to get insurance from plans covered by the Affordable Care Act — and proposed that gender-affirming care would no longer be covered as an essential health benefit, a move that could drive up medical costs for hundreds of thousands of trans Americans."

* * *

Some of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS programs, which provide direct support for people living with HIV, are completely eliminated in the draft HHS budget for next year.

* * *

'It means that free testing events, or opportunities to get PrEP ... all those different tools that we have are going to be minimized and eliminated depending on where you are in the country and what levels of access and transportation needs you have,' said Tori Cooper, director of strategic outreach and training at Human Rights Campaign."

And:

"Research on the specific challenges to HIV prevention among trans women, trans men and gender nonconforming people has only started in the last five years...and his administration has wiped dozens of web pages, studies and data sets that make any mention of gender.

... Nearly 29% of terminated grants involved research into HIV and AIDS, according to an unofficial database kept by academics tracking the cuts.

A new study from the University of Michigan shed light on the effectiveness of trans-inclusive HIV research. It found that when trans people had access to gender-affirming hormone therapy in the form of primary care, they had a 37% lower chance of getting HIV and a 44% lower chance of having the virus detectable in blood samples."

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October 4, 2025 screenshot of CNN:

GOP Accused of Trying to Slip Backdoor Abortion Ban Into Government Funding Bill: “Trump said he’d leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Nov 9, 2025

Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world. A year-long investigation reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors. Investigation by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne; illustration by Laurie Avon. The Guardian. Nov 22, 2025.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has suggested that updated COVID booster shots (2025–2026 formula) may not be approved and that the boosters are unnecessary for most people.

Robert F Kennedy Jr is currently receiving gender-affirming care. Yes, really www.thepinknews.com/... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

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— Transgender World (@transgenderreport.com) November 28, 2025 at 6:59 AM

The United States was the gold standard for science and technology for decades, and there was never any reason that had to end.

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— Tom Marcinko (@tommarcinko.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 12:05 AM

I again wish to point out that it is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. has unilaterally ended CDC recommendations for many childhood vaccines. It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States. And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).

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— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD (@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 2:40 PM

Lurie Children’s Rolls Back Trans Youth Care Lurie was one of six hospitals targeted by the HHS last week over the provision of legal and medically necessary care for trans patients. s. baum, Erin in the Morning, Jan 21, 2026

California AG Bonta Files Groundbreaking Lawsuit Against Rady Children’s Hospital for Dropping Trans Youth GAC “If my child had a different diagnosis, they would likely have a surgery date tomorrow. But because of who my child is, the door was closed.” s. baum, Erin in the Morning, Feb 04, 2026

Children’s hospital will continue gender-affirming care after “thorny” court ruling The court said the hospital must keep providing the care until March 10, but the care could continue well past then. Daniel Villarreal (he/him), LGBTQ Nation, February 12, 2026

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Read: The Trump Administration Is Overhauling Birth Control Access for the Pronatalist Movement: Under RFK Jr., HHS is revamping a program that’s supposed to fund contraceptives and sexual healthcare to please a far-right movement with roots in eugenics. Jessica Washington, The Intercept, July 10 2026

"The Trump administration is planning to cut a subsidy program that has been helping lower the cost of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, potentially raising prices for millions of seniors in 2027, according to The Wall Street Journal." (HuffPost, July 28, 2026)

Harvard University sues the White House

Politico explains:

"In a 51-page filing, Harvard’s lawyers argue that the funding freeze violates the First Amendment by amounting to government interference “with private actors’ speech” in order “to advance its own vision of ideological balance.” The suit further claims the Trump administration “has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen.” The judge assigned the case is an appointee of Barack Obama, per POLITICO’s legal ace Josh Gerstein. More from The Harvard Crimson’s Dhruv Patel and Grace Yoon."

Harvard President Says University Had No 'Choice' But To Sue The Trump Administration: Donald Trump on Thursday called the elite school a "threat to Democracy." Marita Vlachou, HuffPost, Apr 24, 2025

"Websites for Harvard College centers serving minority and LGBTQ students and women vanished Wednesday, The Harvard Crimson reported, marking the continued unraveling of diversity initiatives at the nation’s most prestigious university as it faces fresh pressure from the Trump administration.

Websites for the Harvard College Women’s Center, the Office for BGLTQ Student Life and the Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations now redirect to a page for an Office of Culture and Community, the student newspaper reported."

— Dakin Andone, "Websites serving Harvard undergrad women, minority and LGBTQ students taken down, Crimson reports," CNN, July 10, 2025

Trump administration still in active talks with Harvard on $500 million deal, McMahon says, From CNN's Betsy Klein, Nov 19, 2025

Trump administration sues Harvard, alleging school didn’t protect Jewish students as settlement talks go nowhere, CNN, March 19, 2026

The UK Supreme court April 16, 2025 ruling will make everything worse for trans people

Trans people in the UK are in real trouble.

“I think this will be the kicking-off point for a very enhanced push for overt restrictions on the rights of trans people,” said Victoria McCloud, who changed her legal sex more than two decades ago.

The UK’s first trans judge, she applied to intervene in the supreme court appeal but was refused. Last year she quit her job as a judge, saying her position had become “untenable” because her trans identity was viewed as a “lifestyle choice or an ideology”. She now lives in the Republic of Ireland.

McCloud said the supreme court ruling came in the midst of “a scary time” for trans people in the UK and would mark the start of a more intense fight for rights. “The rest has been phoney war. The real issues now start,” she said.

“If I was a trans person in the UK today, I would steer clear of using any loo in a public space unless it was a combined-sex loo, because I personally cannot, as of this moment, judge whether I should use the male loo or the female loo,” she said.

“I haven’t got my head around the complexities of the judgment and its repercussions will be ongoing for some time. But I’m happy I live in the Republic of Ireland, where this problem is not an issue. They know where I’m allowed to pee here.”

— Jessica Murray, ‘A huge reset’: gender-critical activists and trans rights campaigners react to supreme court ruling, The Guardian, April 16, 2025

See also:

"...they assert that no trans people will be disadvantaged by this ruling. Funny that. For, the torrent of tears in my online feed yesterday, and the long line of trans folk turning up to declare themselves in despair, in pieces, and otherwise broken by this, suggests an entire community would beg to differ."
— 'Trans People Woke Up To A Bleak New World Today. How Did We Get Here?': Campaigner jane fae examines the Supreme Court's landmark decision on how to define a woman for HuffPost UK. By TransActual director and chair of Trans Media Watch, jane fae. April 17, 2025.

Where will organized anti-trans go next?

"Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman, a prominent supporter of trans rights ... said: "The response by For Women Scotland and other associated groups was very, very clear - they are taking this as a victory and that is potentially dangerous about where they go next."
— "We've already heard people say they want to repeal the gender recognition act 2004, and trans people are worried that people are coming after their right to exist.": Supreme Court ruling has dire consequences for trans people, campaigners warn. Paul O'Hare and Jonathan Geddes, BBC Scotland News, April 17, 2025

For more on the ruling, see: So Sorry About Our Coach and Horses: The UK Observer says “neigh” to trans rights, as we came too close to driving and smashing right through equalities law (9-min read), on Medium

"What Groups Were Behind The 16th April Gender Identity/Sexual Orientation Court Hearing?" Alice Snow, Medium, April 22

Shevchenko: 'Oh bury me, then rise ye up'

"A St Petersburg court has sentenced a 19-year-old woman to nearly three years in a penal colony after she was accused of repeatedly 'discrediting' the Russian army, including by gluing a quotation on a statue of a Ukrainian poet. ... Kozyreva was arrested on February 24, 2024, after she glued a verse by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko onto his monument in St Petersburg... The verse from Shevchenko’s My Testament read, 'Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained'..."

— Russia sentences 19-year-old woman to nearly three years in a penal colony after poetic anti-war protest, Mariya Knight and Caitlin Danaher, CNN, April 18, 2025