Volleyball coach says her home was shot at after speaking out against trans athletes | Daily Mail Online

Former San Jose State volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose claims her home in California was shot at this week – three months after she was suspended in the wake of her complaint about transgender player Blaire Fleming.

Batie-Smoose, who served as an assistant for the Spartans’ women’s volleyball team before receiving her suspension, previously filed a Title IX complaint against the program over Fleming, whose inclusion on the team sparked outrage last year.

She is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against SJSU and the Mountain West Conference along with 11 players, which includes some of Fleming’s ex-teammates.

Batie-Smoose revealed that the shooting took place while she was discussing the legal battle and the NCAA’s new policy on gender eligibility in a virtual meeting with members of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports.

When asked on Fox News if she thinks the shooting was linked to her lawsuits involving SJSU and Fleming, Batie-Smoose said: ‘I do.’

She then continued: ‘It can’t be a coincidence. I have never had this happen and in our neighborhood I talked to neighbors that have lived there over 10 years and not even a robber in the area, let alone someone shooting at someone in their house.’

Source: Volleyball coach says her home was shot at after speaking out against trans athletes | Daily Mail Online

Judge blocks Trump order restricting access to gender-affirming care for now – CBS News

Washington — A federal judge in Maryland agreed Thursday to temporarily halt President Trump’s executive action that restricts access to gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19, delivering a setback to the Trump administration efforts targeting what it calls “gender ideology” while the legal proceedings move forward.

U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson issued a temporary restraining order from the bench following a hearing on their bid to temporarily block enforcement of the restrictions.

The challengers have argued that the Trump administration’s actions violate the Constitution and discriminate on the basis of sex and transgender status. Hurson’s order prevents federal agencies from conditioning or withholding funds based on the fact that a medical provider offers gender-affirming care to a young patient. It will remain in place for 14 days.

Source: Judge blocks Trump order restricting access to gender-affirming care for now – CBS News

CALL FOR A GLOBAL ACTION OF SUPPORT FOR UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Ms Reem Alsalem

CALL FOR A GLOBAL ACTION OF SUPPORT FOR UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Ms Reem Alsalem

We would like to express our deepest gratitude for the excellent and path-breaking work carried out by Ms Reem Alsalem, during her current mandate as a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls. It is utterly important that the position of the Special Rapporteur on a matter as crucial as male violence against women and girls is held by someone with both merits and bravery, and with the highest possible authority and standards of integrity.

Women’s organisations all over the world follow Ms Alsalem’s work and we are deeply concerned by the smear campaigns and unfounded attacks against her and her work that have recently escalated due to Ms Alsalem’s unwavering commitment to women’s human rights and her independent and objective presentations on all forms of violence against women and girls. These campaigns and attacks are only a proof that Ms. Alsalem has exposed the hard truth of the systems that normalise and justify violence against women.

With this letter we want to express our strong support for Reem Alsalem’s extremely important work. We call for a global support action to Ms Reem Alsalem by joining forces with her and supporting her mandate and independent work, sharing her reports and her coverage of critical issues and her recommendations for stopping the ever growing endemic of violence targeting women.

Source: CALL FOR A GLOBAL ACTION OF SUPPORT FOR UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Ms Reem Alsalem

NORWAY: Trans-Identified Male Convicted of Murdering Female Partner with Baseball Bat Receives Reduced Sentence – Reduxx

A trans-identified male in Norway recently convicted of beating his female partner to death with a baseball bat has had his sentence reduced on appeal. Despite the crime being committed by a male, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), which is subsidized by the government, has described the killer as a “woman.”

On the evening of November 27, 2023, a 22 year-old female who went by the name Oliver Ravn Rønning was beaten to death with a baseball bat at her apartment in Porsgrunn, which she had just moved into days before with her partner after having met via an LGBT dating app that summer. Rønning is a female who identifies as a man, while her partner, who Reduxx will refer to as Jonas, is a 19 year-old male who identifies as a woman.

Source: NORWAY: Trans-Identified Male Convicted of Murdering Female Partner with Baseball Bat Receives Reduced Sentence – Reduxx

Warning on blocker imports – by Bernard Lane

A prominent gender doctor, who serves on the board of gender medicine lobby the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH), has set up an online clinic where his legal advice on access to hormonal treatment for minors has been challenged as inaccurate.

Dr Darren Russell’s new Australia-wide clinic, Prism Health, also highlights savings of almost $1,000 a year if puberty blockers are imported from overseas suppliers, which his website says is legal with a doctor’s prescription.

Last month, Queensland became the first Australian state to pause new treatment of gender-distressed minors with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones in the public health sector, pending an independent review of the evidence. In the UK, routine use of blocker drugs has been restricted in both public and private health.2

The advice from Dr Russell’s Australian online clinic is that under the law, puberty blockers can go ahead in the state of Victoria with only one parent’s consent, and that cross-sex hormone treatment in Queensland does not require parental approval if the minor is mature enough.

Emeritus professor of law Patrick Parkinson said both those claims, which favour easier access to these contested treatments, are incorrect.

“In all cases, and in all states and territories, the consent of both parents must be given for any child or young person under 18, or in the alternative, the [federal Family Court] must give its approval,” Professor Parkinson told GCN.

“I am rather surprised that a doctor is purporting to give legal information on a public website.”

Dr Russell’s new website says that he was Cairns sexual health director until late 2024, when he moved to Victoria to establish the private provider Prism Health, which is promoted as an “online gender-affirming healthcare service.”3

Source: Warning on blocker imports – by Bernard Lane

GERMANY: Trans-Identified Male On Welfare Sues Over 240 Employers For “Discrimination” After Being Continuously Rejected From Jobs He Is Not Qualified For – Reduxx

A trans-identified male in Dortmund, Germany, is facing scrutiny after winning over €250,000 over the course of 240 separate discrimination lawsuits. Many have accused the man, who has been unemployed for 12 years, of using Germany’s strict protections for those who self-identify as transgender to enrich himself.

Source: GERMANY: Trans-Identified Male On Welfare Sues Over 240 Employers For “Discrimination” After Being Continuously Rejected From Jobs He Is Not Qualified For – Reduxx

Revealed: More than 1,000 patients sent for NHS trans ‘top surgery’ every year | The Telegraph

More than 1,000 patients a year are sent for transgender “top surgery” on the NHS.
Data obtained by The Telegraph show for the first time the number of referrals for taxpayer-funded “masculinising” mastectomies from specialised gender clinics.
As many as 80 per cent of people using those services are females between the ages of 17 and 25.
The 1,000-plus referrals could be the tip of the iceberg, because many people have transgender surgery privately to bypass long NHS waiting lists.
The NHS faces calls to halt the surgeries. Experts warn there is no evidence that removing healthy breasts is beneficial for those with gender dysphoria – but there is evidence of harm.
A number of detransitioners have spoken publicly about their regret at rushing to have irreversible surgery, and the pain caused.
Over three years, it also sent more than 780 women for “masculinising genital gender reassignment surgery”, also known as “bottom surgery”.

Source: Revealed: More than 1,000 patients sent for NHS trans ‘top surgery’ every year

No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague | Sonia Sodha | The Guardian

Some things are plain common sense. Female employees should not be expected to share changing rooms with male colleagues. They shouldn’t be socially shamed into undressing around them, or being in spaces where male colleagues get undressed in front of them.

There is a host of principles and evidence around women’s privacy, dignity and safety to be marshalled in support of this – the charity Sex Matters lays them out – but most people don’t need to read accounts of how uncomfortable mixed-sex changing facilities make some women feel, or statistics showing that voyeurism and exposure are two of the most common male sex crimes, to understand how wrong this would be.

But not managers at NHS Fife, it would seem. Despite the law of the land enshrining that commonsense insight – that employers are obliged to provide separate changing facilities for their male and female employees – female staff working for this Scottish health board have been expected to share changing rooms with a male doctor who identifies as female. One nurse, Sandie Peggie, has brought an employment tribunal claim for harassment, sex discrimination and victimisation against the board, following her suspension after she raised concerns.

Given the bravery required to take a legal case, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. A group of nurses in Darlington are also suing their trust as a result of having to share facilities with a male colleague. In a Sheffield hospital, female staff worried about sharing a changing room with one of their male colleagues were told, incorrectly, that the colleague in question had a right to be there. Outside the NHS, there have been many cases where employers have unlawfully elevated a male desire to be treated as female above women’s established workplace rights.

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change in the UK: take health secretary Wes Streeting’s admirably principled defence of the Darlington nurses, for example.

Not before time. There is a cautionary tale from across the Atlantic, where Democrats’ stubborn and unpopular defence of men’s rights to self-identify into women’s sport has dropped the unlikeliest of moral victories into President Donald Trump’s lap, allowing a man accused of serious sexual assault to somehow position himself as a defender of women’s rights. Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

Source: No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague | Sonia Sodha | The Guardian

Democratic states sue Trump administration over order to halt funding for gender-affirming care | NBC News

SEATTLE — Three Democratic states sued the Trump administration on Friday over its order to ban federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under 19.

Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown filed the federal lawsuit in the Western District of Washington. The attorneys general of Oregon and Minnesota, and three doctors, also joined as plaintiffs. The complaint argues that the order discriminates against transgender people.

Trump signed an executive order last month directing federally run insurance programs, including Medicaid and TRICARE for military families, to exclude coverage for such care. It also calls on the Department of Justice to pursue litigation and legislation to oppose it.

The complaint comes after families with transgender or nonbinary children filed a separate lawsuit in a Baltimore federal court earlier this week.

Trump also signed an executive order on Wednesday intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

Legal challenges have already been filed on the military order and a plan to move transgender women in federal prisons to men’s facilities. Others are likely to be filed, just as there have been challenges to a variety of Trump’s policies.

As transgender people have gained visibility and acceptance in some ways, there’s been vehement pushback. At least 26 states have passed laws to restrict or ban the care for minors. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year but has not yet ruled on whether Tennessee’s ban on the care is constitutional.

Source: Democratic states sue Trump administration over order to halt funding for gender-affirming care

The eSafety Commissioner’s Latest Fail – Quadrant

The case is Baumgarten and eSafety Commissioner (Guidance and Appeals Panel) , and as dressings down go this one’s beaut. But for some reason, despite being posted three days ago, a search of Google News turns up no recent coverage in the legacy media. This is astonishing, as not only has Ms Inman Grant had her ears pinned back yet again, the evidence quoted by Justice Emilios Kyrou AO lays bare, often in an unintentionally comic manner, what happens when arrogance and entitlement are indulged with large sums of public money and taxpayer-funded conference rooms in which to hold lots and lots of meetings.

As might be gathered from her delivery, Celine Baumgartner is a feisty sort, and she didn’t take kindly to her X post being geoblocked — hidden from Australian eyes, although not the rest of the world — at the suggestion of the eSafety Commissioner’s officious gnomes, so with the backing of Free Speech Australia she went after Ms Inman Grant’s censorship operation. And do notice, as the AAT opinion makes quite clear, that it was not a lawful order duly issued and subject to enforcement, rather a back channel communication of utter gas from deep within eSafety’s bureaucratic bowels.

Source: The eSafety Commissioner’s Latest Fail – Quadrant