Some News From Bilderberg

Last year I posted about this, because of the consensus of attendees that they should prepare for war. Gee whiz they called that! A lot of people ignore this, because it’s all a buncha rich people who think they run the world. Well, it is a buncha rich people, and no doubt they do run some parts of the world, but all the wee little people all have free will, and they use it. Bilderberg prepares those with all the money for what appears will happen due to free will’s this, that, and the other thing. I don’t care who wore what, or even who was there, but the tiny things within the name-dropping matter; that tells us what they come away with as info for keeping their interests safe. So, in case I’m not the only one, here is this.

Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said?

Charlie Skelton

This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, but it’s a mystery why the press fails to talk about it

The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.

Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.

The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.

Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism.

Trump’s trusted secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, was attending, alongside his favourite trade guru, Robert Lighthizer. They were joined by Trump’s economic ally Jason Smith, the chair of the influential House ways and means committee, and his secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, known as Trump’s “drone guy”.

It was no surprise with the conflict in Iran dominating the global news cycle that this year’s conference had a wartime flavour: with the “Future of Warfare” on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers, led by the Bilderberg insider Eric Schmidt, who’s the former head of Google and a keen evangelist for drone warfare.

Earlier this year, Schmidt told the FT that “future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons”, with “swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting”. Thriving in this rich overlap between drones and AI are companies like Anduril Industries, whose co-founder and CEO, Brian Schimpf, is attending the Washington conference, alongside his collaborator in Trump’s “Golden Dome” project, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp.

Karp is close to fellow billionaire tech-bro Peter Thiel, whose name, remarkably, is absent from this year’s participant list. Thiel has been a member of the group’s steering committee since 2008, and it was unheard of for him to miss a Bilderberg. Thiel’s reach runs deep into the Trump administration, and his influence within Bilderberg has also been growing through the years. Through the American Friends of Bilderberg Inc, he largely funds the lavish Washington-based meetings, alongside fellow steering committee member and billionaire Schmidt.

Thiel operates in the powerful liminal area between big finance and big intelligence – most notably, he set up Palantir with the help of funding from the CIA. This shady intersection was the birthplace of Bilderberg, and is baked into its history: the group was set up by British and American intelligence, and there’s always a handful of spy chiefs at the conference. This year, three intelligence directors were present, including the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. It is a fascinating backstage world which Thiel will now miss along with the strategising, the talent spotting and the big ideological discussions on “China” and “the west”.

It was no small thing for the arch-networker Thiel to skip Bilderberg. After all, Bilderberg is all about the chance to stay three steps ahead with all that lovely, off-the-books access to policymakers such as breakfast with the president of Finland, tea with the head of the IMF, and cocktails with the King of Holland.

Quite why the press fails so spectacularly to talk about Bilderberg, such a major annual summit with so many senior politicians present, is an enduring mystery. This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, not least the presence of Vivian Motzfeldt, the former Greenlandic foreign minister and ex-speaker of the Inatsisartut (Greenland’s parliament).

Motzfeldt was the first Greenlander to appear at Bilderberg, and her presence was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Greenland has powerful allies within the Trans-Atlantic partnership. Motzfeldt no doubt contributed to the session on “Arctic Security”, and might even have been moved to quote the final sentence of Trump’s recent anti-NATO vent: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

But as there was no press oversight for this conference, it is something that we will probably never know.

Some News From The Poor People’s Campaign:

Randy/blundersonword is correct about moral turpitude in the US’s government, though of course many believe that moral is as moral does for each person. What I consider moral can be immoral to others (though I never get why… Anyway.) This came in my email today, and maybe others wish to participate with this absolutely moral activism. Thanks for checking in!

Please join us on Tuesday, April 14 at 8:30AM ET for an emergency press conference convened by Bishop William J. Barber, II, DMin, President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy, and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.

Bishop Barber will respond to President Trump’s widely circulated AI‑generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, recent statements from Franklin Graham, and the Pope’s global call for renewed moral commitment to the poor and to pluralist democracy.

Bishop Barber will address the theological and democratic dangers of these developments and call faith leaders nationwide to resist the misuse of religion to sanctify policy violence and division.

You can watch the press conference on the Repairers of the Breach website here: https://breachrepairers.org/get-involved/live/

Maybe If I Change The Title?

Because this is important history that we really ought to review, because the leopards who were “only” going for certain parts of the population are going for all the population, these days.

“Not all Republicans are racist, but racists vote Republican, and they do it for racist reasons.”

Why the Deeply Racist Nixon-Reagan Tapes Are Only a Surprise to Those Not Paying Attention

While the explicit nature of the “monkey” and “cannibal” slurs is jarring, it sits within a long, documented tradition of presidential prejudice that has shaped the nation’s policies.

By Asheea Smith

History always has a funny way of spinning the block, and every once in a while, we run into something that refuses to stay buried no matter how much time has passed. Recordings reported by CBS revealed a deeply disturbing discussion between former Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan—and you guessed it, it’s super racist.

Per the news outlet, former President Richard Nixon was speaking with then-California Governor Ronald Reagan following a United Nations meeting to recognize the People’s Republic of China. While global attention should’ve been centered on the diplomatic shift, Reagan reportedly phoned Nixon’s White House to voice his frustration over African delegates who celebrated the decision. At one point, Reagan flat out called them “monkeys”—and it only went downhill from there.

Before we get to that, here’s the real question: Why is anyone shocked? To treat these recordings as a singular, shocking “glitch” in the American presidency is to ignore the very fabric of the office. Yes, the explicit nature of the “monkey” and “cannibal” slurs is jarring, but it sits within a long, documented tradition of presidential prejudice against Black folks that has shaped the nation’s policies for decades.

Long before Reagan and Nixon shared a laugh at the expense of African diplomats, Woodrow Wilson was busy re-segregating the federal workforce and praising the post-Civil war Ku Klux Klan as an “Invisible Empire of the South,” per History. Andrew Jackson publicly framed Native Americans as an “inferior race” to justify the brutal displacement of the Trail of Tears. Even Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act, was notoriously recorded using the N-word in private to describe the very people he was legislating for—often viewing civil rights through the lens of political leverage rather than inherent humanity.

When we look at the timeline, Nixon’s own history of referring to Black people as “genetically inferior” or Reagan’s later “welfare queen” trope aren’t outliers; they are the quiet parts being said out loud. So, as these clips circulate on social media, the most revealing part of the story isn’t the racism itself—it’s our collective lack of surprise that it happened at all.

Let’s get back to the audio. Reagan told Nixon “Last night, I tell ya, to watch that thing on television as I did. To see those monkeys from those African countries, damn them. They’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”

Laughter is heard on the other end of the call after the disgusting statement. But that’s not all.

After Reagan’s reckless and racist phone call, Nixon later spoke with William Rogers—then Secretary of State—and doubled down on Reagan’s racist remarks. And if you thought the last phone recording was bad… just wait, it gets worse.

(snip-embedded TikTok; click the story title above to go to the page, if you wish)

“He saw these cannibals on television last night, and he says ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the U.S. is going to submit its fate to that…” Nixon said.

Later that month Nixon had a laugh with his long time best friend, former Florida banker and businessman Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. And as you may have expected, the racist banter continued to roll.

“That reaction on television was that it proves how they ought to be still hanging from the trees by their tails,” Rebozo said with a laugh during his call with Nixon.

Tiktok’s comments section was riddled with folks asking, “Where’s the surprise?” and “The way my jaw did not drop,” alongside emojis. And let’s be real, we get it.

While there’s certainly shock value in hearing these recordings, none of this is entirely surprising. This is a country built on Black labor and Black suffering—one where federal power has long been used to contain Black political movements, including COINTELPRO, which targeted organizations like the Black Panther Party and other Black-led groups working toward progress and self-determination.

That said, these tapes don’t feel like an isolated incident, but rather a reminder of how deeply racism has been woven into political life at even the highest levels. And while the exposure of this kind of rhetoric may be unsettling, it ultimately tells a familiar reality of Black folks’ lived experience in America.

Will They Do It?

Something to keep track of.

Trump administration agrees to return rainbow Pride flag to New York’s Stonewall monument

By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday it will resume flying a rainbow Pride flag on a federal flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, reversing course two months after removing the banner from the first national monument commemorating LGBTQ+ history.

The government revealed the decision in court papers as it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by advocacy and historic preservation groups who had sought to block the Feb. 9 removal. A judge approved the deal.

The Interior Department and National Park Service “have confirmed their intention to maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall,” lawyers for the government and the groups wrote in a joint court filing.

The flag — one of several Pride banners at the 7.7-acre (3.1-hectare) park — won’t be removed, except for “maintenance or other practical purposes,” the filing said. (snip-details of position and measurements of the Pride flag)

https://apnews.com/article/stonewall-rainbow-flag-trump-lgbtq-historic-preservation-ac4ab59d3251476139700db6687828ca

Hrmphh. Nobody Ever Listens To Us.

Feminists began raising the alarm about the manosphere decades ago – and we were ignored

Laurie Penny

We were told we couldn’t take a joke, and that social media isn’t real life. Now the misogyny of early chatrooms and Gamergate has reached the White House

Harrison Sullivan, known as HSTikkyTokky, in Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. Photograph: Netflix/PA

Why has it taken so long for us to treat misogyny as a political problem? The modern manosphere has been metastasising for many years – and for years, mainstream culture has responded with a helpless shrug. There was nothing unusual about men hurting women, even if the technology was new.

In the early aughts, angry and alienated men began indulging in recreational misogyny online, bombarding women and girls in the public eye with threats, insults, harassment, hacking, and hideous “revenge porn”. Strange as it may now sound, though, “the internet” was still seen as separate from “real life”.

That, at least, was what I was told the first time I went to the police about the death threats I was receiving as a young columnist. Nothing could be done, because what happened on social media wasn’t real and didn’t count. If I didn’t like it I should get offline, and presumably continue my work via rotary phone and fax. Those of us who were early targets of what would become the manosphere did not have the luxury of ignoring the issue. For us, it was easy to see that this was something new and serious, easy to understand how the tactics used against us might be deployed elsewhere – and how quickly matters could escalate.

Which is what happened in 2014. In May of that year, the terrorist Elliot Rodger killed six people and brought global attention to “incels” – young men radicalised by sexual resentment.

Three months later came Gamergate, a global orgy of online harassment targeting women in the video game industry. It all started when up-and-coming game creator Zoe Quinn was attacked by a bitter ex-boyfriend in a book-length tirade of sexual and professional jealousy. The non-scandal became a lightning rod for tens of thousands of gamers furious that women were intruding on a medium that was meant to be their personal power fantasy.

On anonymous forums like 4chan, men coordinated an extraordinary campaign of abuse dressed up as concern for “journalistic ethics”. Quinn and other creators were driven from their homes, but the firestorm was already out of control. Over the next few years, as “incels” continued to carry out acts of mass murder, every entertainment industry, from comics and publishing to film and TV, was besieged by obsessive trolls casting themselves as brave rebels against illiberal “social justice warriors”. The more they got away with it, the more they treated it like a game.

Gamergate brought together the disparate strands of what we now call the manosphere: the grifting pickup-artists, the Christian nationalists, the bitter “incels” and the furious fans triggered into mass social vandalism whenever they heard a story they weren’t the hero of. This slurry of half-formed fixations congealed into a coherent ideology of aggrieved entitlement, with its own language – “escaping the matrix”, “taking the red pill” – and their own logic of heroic victimhood in the face of women’s sexual power. The rage and alienation of men abandoned by post-crash capitalism was channelled towards a common cause – one ripe for co-option by the worst possible actors.

Throughout the mid-aughts, mainstream media continued to underestimate the manosphere. The fringes of the right did not make the same mistake. Gamergate was the proving ground for some of the central propagandists of the new “alt-right”. Steve Bannon, the political svengali and co-founder of Breitbart News, saw the potential in this cohort of cranks. He went on to run Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, helping to deliver that key demographic to a president who personified everything the new cult of male supremacy most admired, as he crowed about sexual violence and held the notionally free world hostage to his every emotional spasm.

In hindsight, it is startling that all of this was normalised for so long. It was apparently inconceivable that violence against women could constitute a crisis – unless, of course, the violence was blamed on immigrants or on transgender people, at which point women’s safety suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda. When feminists and others in the infected eye of the storm tried to raise the alarm, we were told we were exaggerating for attention, or that we couldn’t take a joke. Under the posturing, cartoon frogs and memespeak, these were lost young men who deserved patience and understanding, and if we didn’t offer it we were heartless, humourless killjoys.

Identical arguments were used to dismiss the rise of Maga until it was far too late. The playbook tested out on feminists and on Black, queer and female creators in the mid-aughts was replicated in far-right movements across the global north – as was the response of muted both-sidesism. Then as now, politicians, pundits and industry leaders officially disapproved of the worst excesses of the manosphere, but declined to take an explicit stand, terrified that any display of moral integrity would alienate their base.

As the 2010s turned into the 2020s and the manosphere continued to expand, funnelling its recruits towards ever more extreme, explicitly racist ideas, it became fashionable to cast “social justice warriors” as the pressing danger to human freedom. Politicians and public figures seemed far more concerned about the #MeToo movement, which seemed proof positive that feminists had gone too far – and deserved, perhaps, to be punished for it. After the third or fourth time a documentary crew came to interview me about all the death threats, I realised that they didn’t want to help – they wanted to watch.

Lots of people did. After Gamergate, bigotry became a growth industry for enterprising young lads unburdened by conscience. As a journalist, I interviewed many young far-right men who admitted that what they really wanted was to be influencers and film-makers. For clicks and views they courted controversy and flirted with the far right – but it didn’t take long for the relationship to get serious. As Kurt Vonnegut writes in his anti-fascist masterpiece Mother Night, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be”.

Today, nobody is pretending that this is a joke any more. Trump, in his deranged dotage, is openly courting the manosphere, and the young men of gen Z are veering towards the far right en masse. There’s a clear line from the social vandalism of Gamergate to the mega-grifting male supremacists, scamming their followers with the promise of a reality where women and girls are non-player characters, to be defeated, exploited or traded for tokens in a brutal marketplace of human value. Many young men have lived their entire lives in the shadow of this weaponised misogyny – and so have young women. And that sinister ideology is still gnawing at the heart of power.

A few weeks ago, in a break from encouraging his deranged president to take over Greenland, White House adviser Stephen Miller found time to post a tweet on X that appears to be mocking the new Star Trek series for being too diverse. Elon Musk emerged from his fug of racial conspiracy theories and transphobia to agree. This is embarrassing, and not just because any half-literate nerd knows that Star Trek has been woke since 1966. Because even after turning the world into their personal thunder dome, the representatives of aggrieved white male power are still unsatisfied, still demanding we cater to their every petty whim. They will continue to do so until the rest of us, at last, refuse to tolerate their nonsense.

Laurie Penny is a journalist, author and screenwriter. They write the substack Force of Culture

What leading Planned Parenthood is like now

Apr 08, 2026 Errin Haines

This story was originally reported by Errin Haines of The 19th. Meet Errin and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

This column first appeared in The Amendment, a newsletter by Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor-at-large. Subscribe today to get early access to her analysis.

When Alexis McGill Johnson took the helm as leader of Planned Parenthood in 2020, the nation’s largest provider of reproductive care and a major force in American politics was already at a critical juncture.

The organization’s last president had lasted just eight months; she followed Cecile Richards, the charismatic and connected leader who was in the role for a dozen years. The future of abortion rights looked potentially shaky, and Donald Trump was in his first term.

In the six years since, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal protections for abortion, a major challenge both for providing care and for the organization’s political arm — then Trump won a second term and moved to take away federal funding, slashing a third of Planned Parenthood’s budget. Under the first Trump administration, Planned Parenthood had more than 600 health centers. Since the start of 2025, 53 have closed. More are threatened since Trump on July 4 signed into law a measure to block them from accepting Medicaid.

The end of federal abortion protections led to a surge in energy around the issue from Democrats and the left. It has faded since then as the president’s military actions and mass deportation strategy dominate attention — but McGill Johnson still has to figure out how to galvanize supporters; keep Planned Parenthood clinics serving patients; and elect Democrats in key races in states including Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio.

As one of the abortion rights movement’s key standard bearers, McGill Johnson is navigating expectations from activists, donors and voters who want a fighter and expect her to deliver. Their sense of urgency can obscure what it means to both lead the fight and provide essential care to millions of Americans in an intentionally overwhelming and chaotic news cycle.

Johnson stands in front of a group of women speaking while those behind her hold signs. — Alexis McGill Johnson’s presence at the top of Planned Parenthood reflects a broader pattern in American institutions, in which Black women are often called on to lead in moments of crisis while having limited room for error and a lack of support. (Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images)

“When I look at where Planned Parenthood is in this moment, we are navigating all of the chaos, but also looking for where the opportunities are inside that chaos,” McGill Johnson said. “Chaos is a strategy: throw everything at people so they don’t know where to look or how to fight.”

McGill Johnson describes her style as collaborative; those who know her best say she’s a master strategist, confronting a challenging political climate with courage, clarity and creativity.

The political climate in which McGill Johnson has led can really not be compared to any other past leader, said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center.

“This isn’t something that’s happened over three decades; this has been the last six years,” said Goss Graves, who first met McGill Johnson in 2017 after Goss Graves became the first Black woman to head her organization. “Alexis was the right person at the right time. It is a big deal that surviving the level of attacks they have faced, that they are still here, they are serving patients, they are still committed, and they have had to make adjustments. The work is what she’s doing.”

Planned Parenthood is shorthand for dual entities: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nonprofit supporting affiliate clinics across two dozen states; and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s political arm, focused on organizing, advocacy and voter education.

McGill Johnson’s path to leading both came after a career working on voting rights and civil rights, and she approaches the work through a racial and gender lens. She is only the second Black woman leader in the organization’s existence of more than a century.

Her presence at the top of Planned Parenthood reflects a broader pattern in American institutions, in which Black women are often called on to lead in moments of crisis, with limited room for error and a lack of support.

McGill Johnson talked about the added weight of doing this work as a Black woman in a movement that has been largely White at the national level. She said that having lived and worked at the intersection of race and gender has been an asset in her current role.

McGill Johnson is familiar with leading in moments like the one Planned Parenthood is facing, “moments where our leadership is judged more harshly, where we may be granted more scrutiny, less grace.”

“Those are the places where I’ve had to find my center, to remind myself that I’m in this role to be unapologetic about fighting for the liberation of women of color, Black women, at the center of that liberation, because I think that actually transforms the liberation of everyone else,” she said.

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler, the first Black woman to head EMILY’s List, the political action committee focused on electing Democratic women, put it this way when asked about the challenges of leadership for Black women: “It is an expectation whose bumper sticker reads: ‘Fix it for us, please.’ When you look across the movement spaces where both crisis and care are on a collision course, it is Black women like Alexis who are stepping up.”

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the nearly 50-year precedent of legal abortion access nationwide, angered many Democratic women and motivated them in record numbers in the 2022 midterm elections.

Then-Vice President Kamala Harris championed reproductive rights as a pillar of her 2024 presidential campaign — but her loss was criticized by some, in part, as prioritizing abortion access over the economy. Now, the Democratic Party’s uncertainty around whether and how to talk about abortion to voters adds to McGill Johnson’s challenges in this moment.

The stakes on the ground are still life and death for many Americans, but political strategists say the issue of abortion has proved less politically potent as the national spotlight has moved on.

“For someone fighting on this issue, the progressive movement that was so galvanized is less so because they’re focused on many of the other things that Trump is doing that are dangerous to the country,” said Democratic strategist Karen Finney.

Abortion can still be a motivating issue for Democrats — especially as it’s related to the two biggest issues at the moment, health care and affordability, said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

“It’s still motivating to voters for turnout,” Lake said. “Right now, everything is being pushed out by the war and the economy. I think it will reemerge as a much more powerful issue in 2028. Health is the number one issue, the number one pocketbook issue. When you talk about abortion and broaden it, it’s very powerful there.”

McGill Johnson worked to do just that, emphasizing Planned Parenthood’s presence particularly in communities with a lack of options for reproductive care. Politically, she has framed the issue as one of affordability and of democracy, and is focused on a message to voters about how the administration’s actions in recent years are impacting them.

“It may not feel as though abortion is as front and center as it was in the year or two after the Dobbs decision … but when you bring it to people and remind them that these things are happening, it taps directly into that rage,” McGill Johnson said.

She added that part of the job now also looks like acknowledging the concerns of those in the movement as a leader of a complex organization with little room for error. Supporters of abortion rights — and even supporters of McGill Johnson herself — have criticized her for not responding strongly enough to attacks on access, saying they don’t see her fighting in the way they want.

What does it mean when some on the left are more in the mood for a wartime general than a collaborator?

“In the day-to-day, it is a lot of navigating people’s frustrations, anxieties and hopes, and how to keep people focused on that hope and a strategy for how to get there,” McGill Johnson said. “We’re living in moments where philanthropy has pulled back from a number of institutions where there is a federal defund, which has impacted a lot of my colleagues. One day, you’re navigating ICE and the next day, the country’s at war, right? All within the same time period. I think my kind of special superpower is the ability to kind of keep myself at the 30,000-foot view to understand how all of these things are interacting with each other.”

McGill Johnson said the urgent question for her is: Who are we going to be now that we’re no longer defending Roe? It’s one that no other president of Planned Parenthood had to grapple with after the landmark 1973 case that made abortion the law of the land.

Since 2019 when she became interim leader, Planned Parenthood’s supporter base — which includes volunteers, donors, activists and email subscribers — has grown from 13 million to 20 million.

In addition to her focus on the campaign trail, McGill Johnson will also have to continue the work of reimagining Planned Parenthood’s network of clinics as part of the national health care infrastructure. According to the organization, 1 in 3 women in the United States has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic.

“I believe that Planned Parenthood could become the Cleveland Clinic of sexual and reproductive health care, because we have such great clinical excellence,” McGill Johnson said. “We are already a leader in standardizing best-in-class care, on sexual, reproductive health care, including abortion, so I think a lot about what it would mean for us to to focus on seeing as many patients as Planned Parenthood can, but to also export that influence into ensuring everybody else’s is standard of care is raised.”

To get there, McGill Johnson will have to endure and survive the current climate and the demands of the post-Roe era. Reproductive Freedom for All President Mini Timmaraju said meeting the multiple challenges at the local, state and federal level with diminished resources and competing areas of attention is daunting.

“We have to do more than we’ve ever done before, and the funding is not what it should be,” said Timmaraju, the first woman of color to lead her organization. “We are all scrambling to make sure that in the moment where abortion funds need funding, clinics need funding, we also have enough resources for advocacy at every single level, and that’s really challenging in an environment where donors are understandably a little frustrated with progressive entities right after 2024 so we’re having to prove ourselves again, and continually having to prove and reprove, over and over again, the salience of abortion electorally.”

Some Peace & Justice History For 4/12:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april12

T.V. Alert, for 4/15/26

http://youtube.com/post/UgkxFtqwnJ7oybBIcESWSnDJj-7BhaQo3MPQ?si=ogfVDizNfVFaryPQ

Josh Johnson 2 days agoHi Friends, I wanted to share this with you a little early. I’ll be a guest on ‪@ColbertLateShow‬ this Wednesday. First time being interviewed on the show. To be a guest weeks before the show comes to an end feels really special. Thank you for being part of the reason this is happening.

http://youtube.com/post/UgkxQW77z7C7wCtDT1GutIPfuwBwrUw2Gfmk?si=GbbO_83Dlkwx_wBg

Josh Johnson 19 hours ago (edited) See you Wednesday the 15th Friends

Randy Rainbow To The Rescue!

(It’s not long, but it’s not a short. However, the figurative ripping of Sec. Hegseth is fine!)

It’s Sunday. Have Some Clay Jones Work!

Ketchup Tacos

I love tacos, but I HATE ketchup

Clay Jones

I had a few other ideas I could have gone with today, but I decided to put them aside and have a little fun with something I wrote a few days ago. I honestly didn’t expect to draw this cartoon the day that I wrote it, along with three other ideas, but as I showed each of those ideas to a couple of friends, it was the one that made them both laugh.

So I decided to take it easy today by drawing this, and I still ended up working until 6 PM on a Saturday. Basically, I feel like this is a cartoon I did not have to draw, but I just wanted to. If nothing else, I should get some satisfaction out of it because I always end up pissing off a MAGAt or two anytime I bring up the word taco.

Fine. I’ll come clean. The biggest reason I wanted to draw this cartoon was for the twist on the Jack in the Box car antenna.

I never thought anyone would put ketchup on a taco, but one of my friends told me some people do. And I thought putting ketchup on eggs was gross. Taco Bell doesn’t stock ketchup, do they? (snip-a bit MORE; click the title. Also I know a couple of people who put ketchup on their Mexican entrees, and yeesh.)

Barron’s Daddy

Melania’s surprise statement that came out of nowhere raises new questions

Clay Jones

Melania Trump came out of nowhere yesterday to deliver a 6-minute address to let us know that she never had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. OK, did somebody ask?

Delivering scripted remarks at a podium in the same room Donald Trump used to address the nation on the war in Iran last week, Melania declared that she “never had a relationship” with, or was ever one of the victims of the late pedophile Epstein she also claimed she never had a relationship with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, despite there being an email between the two where Melania signed it with “love.”

“I have never been friends with Epstein,” she said in her statement. “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”

She went on to say that she and Donald were invited to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time” as “overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach”. But she specifically denied that her emails to Maxwell were anything more than “casual correspondence.”

Melania claimed that she met Epstein for the first time in 2000, at a party she attended with Donald. “I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings,” she said. “Numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been calculating (sic) on social media for years now. Be cautious about what you believe.”

The Epstein files released by the Department of Justice earlier this year did contain one brief exchange that appeared to be between Melania and Maxwell. It was signed: “Love, Melania.”

The first email, sent by Melania in October, 2002, with the subject line “HI!” begins “Dear G!” Melania writes that there is a “nice story about JE in NY mag” before asking Maxwell about their travels and to call them when they are back in New York.

In her reply, “G. Max” wrote that while they are already on their way back to the city, they would not have time to see Melania, but they would “try and call.”

Melania and Ghislaine were photographed together a little over two weeks later. Two months later, Epstein was presented with the infamous birthday card containing a drawing of a naked woman and a weird note by Donald Trump. But remember, they’re all just casual acquaintances.

Then, Melania called on Congress to take sworn testimony in a public hearing from Epstein victims…probably just so long that they don’t compel her to testify. They forced Hillary Clinton to testify, who never met Jeffrey Epstein or Maxwell, and congressional Republicans are not going to force former Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify, but sure, let’s hear from all the victims whose names Bondi left unredacted, while leaving Melania alone.

So what spurred Melania to make this public announcement from the White House when Donald Trump is trying to distract all of us from the Epstein files? What was the point of starting a war with Iran to distract us from the Epstein files if Melania was just going to turn our attention right back to them a month later?

Trump even said that he didn’t know this announcement was going to happen, and it took him by surprise, like Kristi Noem’s husband with helium-filled balloon titties.

What happened? Did Barron ask, “Who’s my daddy?” Did Barron ask why there were so many photos of his mother and father with a pedophile? Did Barron eventually come around to asking why there are so many nude photos of his mommy on the internet? Did Barron ask about his father’s claim that you are allowed to grab women by the pussy as long as you are famous? Maybe Barron’s follow-up question was, “Mom, am I famous?” (snip-MORE-it’s great! Click the title to go see.)