Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, February 24, 2026, and it’s National Tortilla Chip Day. Better with guacamole than with salsa, this comestible, the backbone of nachos, was popularized, if not invented, in America:
Ignacio Anaya used triangles of fried tortilla for the nachos he created in 1943.
The triangle-shaped tortilla chip was popularized by Rebecca Webb Carranza in the 1940s as a way to make use of misshapen tortillas rejected from the automated tortilla manufacturing machine that she and her husband used at their Mexican delicatessen and tortilla factory in southwest Los Angeles. Carranza found that the discarded tortillas, cut into triangles and fried, were a popular snack, and she sold them for a dime a bag at the El Zarape Tortilla Factory. In 1994, Carranza received the Golden Tortilla award for her contribution to the Mexican food industry
It’s also World Bartender Day and World Spay Day.
Tonight Trump delivers the State of the Union address before the Congress and members of The Supreme Court. Will there be protests from Democrats? The NYT has a column (archived here) in which three op-ed writers discuss, “After a big loss, what to expect from Trump at the State of the Union.” The “loss” refers to the Supreme Court decision rejecting Trump’s tariffs, which he’s now trying to circumvent.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 24 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*NYT staff writer Jeneen Interlandi describes in a longish op-ed “The human cost of Trump’s war on science” (article archived here).
Thirteen months into the second Trump administration, science, medicine and public health have been hijacked by a cadre of grifters and ideologues and by the politicians in obvious thrall to both. Federal institutions have been all but dismantled. Researchers have been defunded en masse and the universities that support them deliberately destabilized. Discourse on crucial scientific questions and key public health challenges has been stifled. And, along the way, trust has been broken between scientists, the nation’s leaders — and the people that both are supposed to serve.
It’s tempting to view this undoing as temporary. Americans love science and revere innovation, almost as a rule, and politicians of every stripe have spent the better part of a century promoting and protecting both. However imperfect the resulting system was, hardly a modern convenience exists that can’t be traced back to it: central air conditioning, the internet and ChatGPT; polio vaccines, statins and weight loss drugs; the human genome sequence and CRISPR gene editing. The National Institutes of Health alone generates about $2.50 in economic returns for every dollar of investment. It’s also the largest government-funded biomedical research agency in the world, and until recently was the envy of scientists across the globe.
The president’s attacks on this legacy have been relentless and all-encompassing. He has turned the federal health department over to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxer. For months, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget all but froze operations at the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His newly established so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, fired thousands of civil servants from The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a process that was wildly disorganized, frequently unlawful and needlessly cruel. Global health initiatives were also eviscerated.
Stacked against these measures, the administration’s explanations — which focus on cutting waste and eliminating so-called woke politics from science — have been inadequate and disingenuous.
The bulk of the article concerns the Trump-induced tribulations of Kathryn Macapagal, identified as a “clinical psychologist and a faculty researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who lost four grants and a quarter of her salary in the first flurry of Trump cuts in NIH and NSF funding. But her grants and salary have been restored. The article also concentrates heavily on funding for LGBTQ initiatives, but the cuts affect more than that:
In the past year or so, scientists funded through the National Institutes of Health have developed potential treatments for pancreatic cancer, broke the logjam on Huntington’s disease, shepherded a male birth control pill through clinical trials and saved a baby’s life with the first personalized gene editing procedure. In a different time and place, any one of those breakthroughs would have been hailed as the triumph of an epoch, and might have lured a new generation of talent to the cause of scientific research.
Instead, six years after the pandemic began and one year into the second Trump administration, we have the opposite: seasoned scientists fleeing the profession (or the country), and younger prospects deciding not to pursue it at all. It’s impossible to say what new medicine those minds might have developed or what wicked problems their efforts might have solved.
What seems clear is that Americans have entered a grim new era, one where science itself is a political weapon, rather than a tool for the collective good. It would be simplistic to argue that the two — science and politics — should be wholly disentangled (as a human endeavor that involves trade-offs and requires public support, science is inherently political). But real data and hard, neutral facts still drive the work that most scientists do, and the best of that work should still frame public discourse and ideally, inform public policy. And right now, it does not.
The title of the article is a bit misleading about its contents, which concentrate on a single researcher and on diseases prevalent in the LGBTQ community. All I can say is that I’m glad I’m not doing research any longer.
*A new poll by ABC, the Washington Post, and IPSOS shows that Trump’s approval rating (just before the State of the Union address) has dropped, to only 39%, but the authors say that Democrats shouldn’t necessarily be ready to see their party winning a lot of elections.
As President Donald Trump prepares to address the nation Tuesday evening, Americans remain generally sour about his performance, with majorities disapproving of his handling of priority initiatives while saying he has overreached the authority of his office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The president’s approval rating stands at 39 percent positive and 60 percent negative, including 47 percent who say they strongly disapprove. The last time Trump’s disapproval touched 60 percent was shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Among registered voters, Trump’s approval is 41 percent and his disapproval is 58 percent.
Here’s a graph from the Post, though note that the Y-axis is between 40 and 60%. The upper line is the disapproval rating. which has gone up 7% in a year.
Dissatisfaction with Trump applies to specific issues, as well, with significant majorities saying they disapprove of how he is handling the economy, tariffs, inflation and relations with other countries. His worst rating is on inflation — 32 percent approve of how he has dealt with the issue. On the question of his handling of the economy overall, 41 percent approve, but while he still gets low ratings on this, the gap between negative and positive assessments has narrowed from 25 points negative in October to negative 16 this month.
For Democrats, Trump’s relatively low standing provides opportunities for the upcoming midterm elections, but the party out of power has made little headway in persuading Americans that they have better ideas or policies to offer and are seen as no more in touch with the concerns of the average person.
Asked whether they trust Trump or Democrats in Congress to handle major issues, 33 percent cite the president, 31 percent say Democrats, 4 percent say both equally and a crucial 31 percent say neither. In April, Trump led by 37 percent-30 percent on this question.
Trump will deliver the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress after a disruptive first year that has produced some successes but more controversies.
Though his approval rating has sagged from the early months of 2025, it is not statistically changed from 41 percent in October. That highlights the degree to which opinions about Trump remain firm and largely fixed among both his supporters and the far larger group of detractors. In the new poll, 85 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance while 94 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents disapprove. Those numbers are almost identical to the partisan breakdown in a Post-ABC-Ipsos poll in October.
I voted this morning (by mail) in the local and Illinois primaries, but of course this is a Democratic state and so things will remain Democratic, and that’s fine with me. We’re also replacing a Senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, and there were lots of primary candidates for his position. I chose what whom I think is the best candidate, but all are untested. Still, I try not to think too much about how the Democrats are doing, not only because the news isn’t good, but also because it’s early in the election cycle and I have a life to live; all I can do is give my opinions and vote. The midterms will be telling.
*Mexico’s most powerful drug kingpin, “El Mencho,” was killed by national security forces, something that doesn’t happen often (article archived here). In retribution, though the cartel is torching cars and businesses, as well as blocking roads in Guadalajara and other places in the state of Jalisco. The drug boss was apparently found by tracking his girlfriend, though we don’t know how that was done.
The cartel leader’s killing set off a wave of violence in areas controlled by the cartel, with reports of burning cars blocking roads. In Guadalajara, the capital city of the western state of Jalisco and one of the host cities of the upcoming World Cup, businesses were shut down, sirens and helicopters could be heard in the city center, and residents were warned to stay inside.
The U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens in Jalisco and Tamaulipas states, and parts of three other states, to shelter in place because of security operations and related road blockages and criminal activity.
Oseguera, one of the most wanted fugitives in Mexico, was a founder of the New Generation cartel, which has grown to become one of the most powerful and violent organizations in Mexico, trafficking large quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the U.S.
. . .U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, in a post on X, described Oseguera as “one of the bloodiest and most ruthless drug kingpins” and said his killing was a “great development for Mexico, the U.S., Latin America, and the world.”
In a hotel in Guadalajara, tourists on Sunday morning had no way to get to the airport, with taxis and public transit paralyzed. Hotel staff worked a double shift because employees had no way to get to work. A woman made a sign of the cross as she stepped outside the hotel.
Although Trump once floated a U.S. invasion of Mexico to stop drugs, this seems unlikely, and we’ll see how Mexico’s new President, Claudia Sheinbaum—the country’s first woman Preisdent and its first Jewish President (the U.S. hasn’t had either)—will do with her promise to clamp down on drugs. Clearly the cartels are enormously powerful in Mexico, rivaling the government. Imagine if this situation obtained in the U.S., and when a big drug-seller was taken down, huge areas of the country become nonfunctional, to the point where people must stay indoors.
*Reader Peter from Australia reports that a group of lesbians are fighting in court to keep trans-identified men out of their events.
A long-running legal battle over whether a lesbian group can exclude transgender women from its events has made its way to the Federal Court.
The Lesbian Action Group (LAG) is appealing a decision by the Human Rights Commission, which ruled it could not legally exclude transgender women.
The case, described as a “clash of rights”, will determine whether the rights of cisgender lesbians come at the expense of trans lesbians.
The Victorian-based LAG says it subscribes to the philosophy of lesbian feminism and does not believe humans can change sex.
It wishes to hold public political and social events exclusively for “lesbian-born females” that would exclude all males irrespective of whether they identify as women.
The group requires an exemption to do this in order to avoid breaching the Sex Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to exclude someone on the basis of gender identity.
The LAG was denied a five-year exemption in 2023, when it applied to the Human Rights Commission.
It then lodged an appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal, which found “overt acts of discrimination” should not be allowed and the exemption could have a detrimental impact on trans women.
The group has now appealed to the Federal Court after running a crowdfunding campaign that raised close to $40,000, with donations made by people from around the world.
Today the LAG’s lawyers told the court the group had the freedom to associate in a way that catered to their own needs.
Counsel Leigh Howard said there was “no human right to be invited to the party” and that the exemption should be granted on the same basis that female-only gyms were given exemptions.
This wouldn’t fly in the UK where they have legalized a definition of “woman” based on biology. In Australia your sex is apparently defined solely by your “gender identification”, whether or not you’ve had transitioning treatments like hormones or surgery. I can understand the anger of lesbians, who presume that a lesbian must be a woman, not a trans-identified man. This may be an additional example of a clash of rights between groups with biological women (lesbians in this case) are entitled to their own “space.”
*Mark Gustafson’s WSJ column is called “The diminishing risk of an Iran attack,” but by that he means that the risk of Iran attacking other countries is lower, not that the risk of a U.S. attack on Iran is lessening. Gustafson is identified as “White House chief of intelligence (2021-22) and head of the Situation Room (2022-25).” It’s clear he thinks that the risk of U.S. action is smaller than it was during the Biden administration, though there are palpable dangers, like creating chaos in the Middle East.
A lot has changed in two years. The risk of regional war has greatly diminished. Several factors have put the regime on its heels:
• Iran’s regional strength has weakened. Sustained Israeli and U.S. strikes have significantly degraded its proxy network of Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraqi Shiite militias, the backbone of Tehran’s deterrence strategy. Iran has struggled to resupply them, limiting its ability to mount coordinated retaliation.
• The regime faces profound domestic strain. The economy is in free fall. The rial has lost more than 90% of its value since 2018. Inflation has hovered near 50% annually. Corruption has drained the revolutionary fervor that sustained the state’s legitimacy. Last month the regime killed thousands of protesters in a few days.
• U.S. military capabilities have advanced significantly. Precision strike systems, cyber tools, missile defenses and offensive drones can impose costs without a ground invasion. In Venezuela last month, new tools to disable the electric grid, destroy missile-defense systems, and facilitate cyberattacks helped ensure a successful operation.
• Iran’s leadership is fractured. Last year, Israeli operations killed many of Ali Khamenei’s most loyal security officials, leaving behind tenuous alliances and a supreme leader who is almost 87.
• Iran’s military capabilities are hamstrung. Last year, Israel destroyed most of Iran’s long-range missile infrastructure, advanced air defenses, ammunition depots and radar sites.
• Tehran’s response to Israeli and U.S. attacks last year was tepid. It could muster only a missile barrage against a well-defended U.S. base in Qatar. This time around, the U.S. has deployed more-advanced air defenses to protect its bases and almost doubled the naval and air assets it deployed last year.
For the Trump administration, the upside of acting at a moment of Iranian vulnerability is plainly alluring. It could further erode proxy networks, blunt the nuclear threat, and help tip the global balance of power in America’s favor.
Meamwhile, the U.S. continues to amass troops and weapons around Iran, at the same time that many Iranians, according to the Washington Post’s morning report, are fearful, defiant, exasperated, and divided in their feelings about a possible U.S. attack, but “joyful” or “hopeful” are not words that were used.
Our armaments and troops around Iran:
Will the U.S. attack? I still think so, but it’s not so clear now, for if we really want regime change, I don’t think we can get this without U.S. boots on the ground. And that means a real war, and that in turn means that Congress should really declare it—though Trump’s ignored that Constitutional stipulation over and over.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s asking, “Where’s the beef?”. And her photo is especially cute today:
Hili: All is lost.
Andrzej: What happened?
Hili: Today we ate the last piece of tenderloin.
Look how sad she is!
Hili: Wszystko stracone.
Ja: Co się stało?
Hili: Zjedliśmy dziś ostatni kawałek polędwicy.
*******************
From Things with Faces, two houses conversing:
From Now That’s Wild, a new phylum:
From CinEmma:
From Masih, who in this tweet answers a challenge from an Iranian official. This is very moving:
Wow. The Foreign Minister of the Islamic regime admits to killing 3,117 Iranians.
That’s his defense on international television, then says: If you think it’s more, add one name.
We accept your challenge.We won’t bring one name.
We will bring thousands.
pic.twitter.com/hI4gUTB01U— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 23, 2026
From Luana. If this is real (what he said appears genuine), Newsom is a condescending twit. How could he say such guff? There is a community note that he wasn’t addressing blacks (the audience was mixed), and that may well be true, but it doesn’t matter: what he’s telling people is “I understand you because I’m as dumb as you are.”
Gavin Newsom is absolutely KILLING IT with the black crowd in Georgia:
“I am like you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. I can’t read. Hopefully that doesn’t offend you.”
Yikes.
pic.twitter.com/psIkJLbtrl— Jack (@jackunheard) February 23, 2026
From The Pinkah; I haven’t read the article yet, but Sally is good, and this is worth a look:
Can You Really Be ‘Addicted’ to Social Media? Addiction expert Sally Satel @slsatel examines the complexities and suggests that social media overuse is not like heroin addiction after all. https://t.co/K8hE1MMRYU
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) February 20, 2026
Titania has as a new (sarcastic) article in The Critic inspired by Mayor Mamdani. It’s about the need for communism and why Islamic countries are not homophobic (she says this: “Some bigots have argued that homosexuality is incompatible with the Islamic faith. But in fact, homophobia is extremely rare in Muslim-majority countries. This is why there isn’t a single LGBT+ community centre in the whole of Afghanistan. Everyone is so tolerant that there is simply no need for them.”
Communism is the only guarantee of human happiness.
Zohran Mamdani is our saviour.
My latest column for @TheCriticMag.https://t.co/ojp0B7Huz2
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) February 23, 2026
One from my feed, showing again how awesome corvids are:
A crow removing several metal anti-bird spikes from a building ledge. pic.twitter.com/mVZLQhM04s
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 23, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 12 years old. https://t.co/PCx1p3XaW7
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 24, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. His great niece just won a world championship in bicycling. That’s some sprint she puts on at the end!
My great niece, Erin Boothman, just became UK Women’s Champion in the Elimination track race (in Elimination 18-odd riders whizz round the track, then, every other lap, the last rider is eliminated until there are just two left.). She is only 19, beat some of the best in the world. Hooray!
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-22T17:17:43.545Z
Here are the last few minutes of the race. She’s in purple.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-22T20:29:05.453Z
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:we are here to
put a dent in the universe. -Steve Job, entreprener and inventor (24 Feb 1955-2011)
I recommend the recent (Feb 20) 45-minute Ward Carroll you tube video on the buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East with a retired naval aviator (Ward), merchant mariner (Sal Mercagliano of “Whats going on with shipping.”), and a retired air force F-16 pilot in which they give some more details regarding the forces/battle groups, the area, and what it might mean. Video should be at url
They show a bit of what it means “to deploy an aircraft carrier”. Incredible number of ships and support. Good visuals.
Thanks Jim, I’m familiar with those guys.
D.A.
NYC
Finally getting around to watching this – it’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing it!
I am rooting for President Claudia Sheinbaum to be successful in removing the cartels from power. It will be a long and difficult struggle, but just imagine a Mexico that is free of the violence and corruption that has plagued it for decades.
I don’t take any joy in the damage to NIH and NSF research progress caused by DOGE and the punitive budget cuts. But as they say it’s complicated. First, the excessive focus of research agencies on achieving political goals (antiracism, inclusion for alphabet people) painted a big political target on the backs of those agencies and the research they funded. Observers have been warning for more than 10 years that this shift from knowledge to politics would cause science to be viewed as just another political player, and it’s no wonder some politician eventually noticed and responded. Second, the agencies forced researchers to comply with those political goals and promise to pursue them in recruitment and training. Lots of researchers who wouldn’t do so lost their grants (and their incomes) in the same way Dr. Macapagal lost hers. I would have more sympathy for researchers like her if I knew that she had been publicly campaigning to stop NIH from pursuing those political goals, and had refused in her grant applications to do anything other than pursue excellence, and be fair in recruiting and training her students. A glance at her research profile suggests that’s unlikely (but I could be wrong and maybe she did so).
Honestly I fail to see how these researchers can ever actually make a difference to the field of science. Universities need to be ashamed to award any credit to these types of endeavours. The rot starts long before grants are awarded. This needs to be cleaned out before the public loses all trust with science and that loss of trust would then be a catastrophe.
An example of the nonsense :
https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/2019523201529745506?s=20
I agree that thesis is crap and the supervisor Ivy Ken should be ashamed to have supported it.
If the DOGE cuts targeted n=3 studies of intersectional genderwang on social media then that might make some progress to restoring sanity. But the cuts were indiscriminate, and targeted all kinds of DEI-based crap as well as good work. Ivy Ken had a recent NSF grant
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2401705
and it actually looks pretty interesting (at least for a sociology study). Someone much smarter (and with much less debilitating ADD) than Trump is needed to address the real problems with DEI in grants and research.
[and sorry for overcommenting – last of the day for me]
“[…] will determine whether the rights of cisgender lesbians come at the expense of trans lesbians.”
You are right to point out that language is also an issue here. They mean whether the rights of lesbian women come at the expense of heterosexual men. A man can never be a lesbian. In reality lesbians are the minority group, but so many people still insist we prioritise men above them.
Also, we can’t allow the term ‘cis’ to become normalised. Women are not a subset of women. We can’t make them so in order to allow men into the category ‘woman’.
Bio women are the norm, just like caffeinated coffee is the norm. If we want decaf we refer to it specifically because it is non standard. If we want a man who identifies as a woman, then we can call him a transwoman because he is not a standard woman, although I prefer the term trans identified man as it is more accurate.
Also, now we learn from a piece in Annals of Internal Medicine, as summarized today in Paul Offit’s Substack, Beyond the Noise, that Junior Kennedy et ux have been tamping down most of the CDC’s databases reporting cases of respiratory viruses. If the numbers aren’t reported, they’re not happening, right? Lying by omission!
Otherwise, with Iran, if we do attack, that ought to at least indirectly benefit Ukraine since Russia apparently gets a lot of its drones from Iran (Shaheds).
And with Mexico, per NPR this morning almost all of the cartel guns come from the US. Mexico has exactly one gun store, which is in central Mexico within a military compound somewhere and only sells small-bore firearms.
In regards to sharhed drones. The russians bought the rights if you will, to manufacture them in russia.
Goggles mate AI:
” Russia extensively manufactures Iranian-designed Shahed drones, specifically the Shahed-136/131 models, branded as “Geran-2” and “Geran-3″. Production is centralized at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, where, following a $1.75 billion deal, Russia has significantly scaled up production to thousands of units per year, often utilizing Chinese components.”
Yeah. I just shunt MMWR to trash each week these days. I do not unsubscribe because I am hopeful to live long enough to see a return of sanity. I think that I had read that cdc will no longer do its assessment survey of risky behavior of teens in grades 9-12….in keeping their head in the sand…or up their ass… philosophy
Sadly the ship has sailed on the shaheeds, Mr. Hempenstein. For a year (or two?) now the Russians have licensed the tech for drones from Iran and there are a few factories for them in Russia.
Many of the workers are actually Africans – prob b/c of labor shortages. They’re positively cranking those out to kill ever more Ukrainians.
D.A.
NYC
Even if the Lesbian Action Group is successful in its appeal that “transwomen” can’t be lesbians because they’re men, they’ve still shot themselves in their Birkenstocks.
First, LAG have no way to determine if a female member of the public who shows up at an open membership-drive meet-market event is “really” a lesbian. Maybe there’s a secret handshake but the group is probably trying to attract “baby dykes” who may not be au fait with all the conventions yet. (If it suffers so much membership attrition to need open-call recruitment drives the reason might be it’s a toxic organization. Female intrasex competition is vicious.)
So the events are going to have to be open to all women, that is, closed to all men. Can the gatekeeper accurately distinguish between men and women at a glance? I’m not so sure about the women photographed for the article. Only women with some sympathy to female homosexuality will show up, and they won’t all be “typical” women.
Men don’t normally object to being excluded from all-women events because they offer nothing of value to us. At most we’d resent finding a section of a public park we wanted our children to play in blocked off by blue-haired women scowling at us. Chivalry would demand we let it slide.
But enter the transwomen. Unlike us normies, the trans-identified men in Melbourne had an activist queering incentive to fuck with the lesbians and make a stink about being excluded. If LAG succeeds in its appeal that transwomen are men, not lesbians, the men will just turn about and claim that LAG was unlawfully discriminating against them…..as men! To us, that would be unmanly. But the trans-ID’d men don’t mind being unmanly: they’re women.
(Just so everyone is clear, the lesbians are perfectly free to have private, invitational lesbian-only covens in their private homes or on private land, such a farm, that the public is not normally invited into. It’s in their proselytizing in ordinary public spaces — not changing rooms, just a public venue –that they want to discriminate against men, which I don’t think they can. There is no basis I can see for lesbians, or women, or blacks, or white men, or amputees to claim an exclusive right to public spaces just for them. Then they’re not public spaces.)
“Enter the transwomen” reminds me of a rather silly movie called “Kung Pow – Enter the Fist” which you have to be stoned to fully appreciate.
Some men have lesbian fetishes, and pretending to be a woman to access lesbians might be a strategy for fulfilling such.
As for taking over public spaces being disallowed, Muslims have been getting away with this all over the Western world, such as recently in Sydney where they took over a street for a mass “prayer” in protest against Israel despite there being hundreds of mosques in that city for them to pray in – as if that’s what they really wanted to do, as opposed to making a public assertion of Islamic dominance in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.
I think (from many thousands of km away) what’s happening in Melbourne is different. LAG claims the right to hold a scheduled, permitted social event in a public venue where it would exclude men as LAG (and we) define them. With advance notice and payment of a rental fee, the city would fence off a section of the park used for group events like family reunions and allow LAG to hold their meet-and-greet, knowing that the LAG doorkeepers were going to allow only women (and ideally only lesbians but how do you tell?) in through the gate. Any men hanging around would be escorted away as trespassers by LAG volunteers or by city police or security, whoever normally looks after big gatherings in public parks.
Alternatively, LAG might hold their event in a brewery that hosted public receptions. Same deal: the venue would rent out the space understanding that LAG, as the sponsor of the
piss-upevent, would bar men. The owner of the premises would help them eject any men who tried to enter…even though the brewery normally welcomes all patrons at receptions.Victoria HRC heard a discrimination complaint from a man who claimed to be a lesbian. It agreed, said, “You can’t do that. Whether you exclude ‘her’ as a transwoman, [or, counterfactually, ‘him’ as a man], you’re still violating her/his civil rights to be free of discrimination in public service provision.” In practice it’s OK to discriminate against men because we don’t care about women’s events anyway, but not OK to discriminate against transwomen because they do.
Certainly if crowds of Muslims want to pray in the street, they need a parade permit covering a certain time. If the city approves the permit — the Muslims will have to pay for it and it won’t be cheap –, the police will close streets, divert traffic, and provide police protection for paraders. Whether they pray or chant “Death to the Jews!” is immaterial. The important thing is how long they are allowed to have the street closed for their activity.
If they don’t get a permit and just swarm into the street to do anything, the police should clear them immediately as they do any unruly crowd that blocks traffic. Appropriate charges could be mischief which can draw jail time, not just mass jaywalking. But the authorities have to want to.
The Muslims in question did not have a permit and were summarily removed by force by the police, leading to mass confected outrage from Muslim groups and leftie useful idiots screaming “Islamophobia!” Rationalizations given took the form of “they were only praying” when as I said there are literally hundreds of mosques for them to have prayed in, if that was all they wanted to do (it was not).