A quiet Wednesday with nattering "Ned" and Dame Slap in destructo mode ...

 

Sheesh, here we go again ...

Nah, not to Little England, and sensitive cops and footy stars on the piss, nor even those teals terrifying the reptiles...

Drum roll maestro, it's the orange narcissist starring yet again over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz ...

The pond could have joined the reptiles devoted to Hamas, but decided to skip the chance to turn Gaza into the new Riviera.

Instead the pond opted for a traditional Wednesday ...

Nattering "Ned" was top of the world ma, and who is the pond to challenge that ranking? 

Better to just wake up, then go back to sleep ...

US tariff crisis: the issue here is Trump, not Albanese, Every sign is that Anthony Albanese is managing Donald Trump as a professional. Their discussion revealed an Australian government that has been diligent in preparing its case on tariffs.

It was only a five minute read, the reptiles said, a kind of mini-Everest climb, and inevitably it began with one of those dreadful collages the pond would like to be able to blame on AI ... Since Donald Trump’s election the Coalition has run a manic campaign convinced Anthony Albanese could never manage the President. Artwork: Frank Ling

Oh Frank, Frank, let's keep it small ...

"Ned" was in a surprisingly upbeat mood for someone who's made his career out of playing Chicken Little ...

Anthony Albanese has passed merely the first hurdle in his relations with Donald Trump – they spoke for nearly 40 minutes, they got on, they canvassed trade and investment ties, and they agreed that Trump would consider an exemption for Australia from his universal steel and aluminium tariffs.
This is a diplomatic win for the Prime Minister – but strictly limited and preliminary. Albanese has no guarantee of success. His real win comes only if Trump agrees to exempt Australia, and that remains an extremely steep task. The hope arose when Trump confirmed he told Albanese that he would give “great consideration” to Australia’s exemption request.
His calling Albanese a “fine man” was typical Trump gloss, not to be vested with any significance, but probably enough to send the pro-Trump, anti-Albanese legions choking on their breakfast.
The warning delivered by Malcolm Turnbull about Australia’s efforts was timely: “If Trump has decided to impose a steel tariff on everybody, full stop, no exemptions, then it may not be possible to win one, no matter how eloquent you are.”
When Trump signed the executive order he said there were “no exemptions” – maximising his negotiating stance with any country that seeks exemptions. Typical. But Labor will take heart from the emphasis he placed on Australia being one of the few nations where the US enjoys a trade surplus – always a determinant for Trump. What it won’t like is the claim in the executive order that Australia’s aluminium imports to the US have broken an earlier deal.

What "Ned" won't like is that one of the Cantaloupe Clown's criminal conspiracists decided to stick in the boot after "Ned" had scribbled his opening ... noted by the ABC ...

At this point the reptiles hastily flung in an AV distraction:

All steel and aluminium imports to the United States are set to be slapped with 25 per cent tariffs, Donald Trump has announced, marking a major escalation of his administration’s move to up-end trade policy. How will the tariffs impact Australian exports, local production, and global steel prices, as well as the diplomatic test ahead for the Albanese government.

"Ned" was steeling himself for disappointment, and never mind the way that Faux Noise has helped set the whole damn thing in motion ...

While the Trump-Albanese discussion should not be exaggerated, an unsuccessful call – where Trump rebuffed Albanese – would have been disastrous. That would have been a humiliation for Albanese and an insult to Australia. The rebuff would have translated into election politics, harming Albanese and gifting the Coalition with the line it might have expected: that Albanese couldn’t deal with the President.
The political stakes are now high. By saying he will give consideration to an Australian exemption on tariffs, Trump has inevitably raised expectations. To subsequently dash them would deliver disappointment and damage to Australia and its government.

Another quick interruption, a visual roughly equivalent to watching paint dry, Anthony Albanese on the phone with Donald Trump on Tuesday.

Oh yes, there's nothing like gazing at a phone ...

"Ned" did his best to lather himself up into Chicken Little mode ...

But Albanese doesn’t have much time. Trump’s announced 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to the US – paid by American importers, thereby lifting domestic prices – come into effect in early March. How realistic is it to think Trump will endorse an Australian exemption before then? Turnbull as prime minister won a Trump exemption on tariffs but only after a sustained campaign over a far longer period. And Trump is a far more resolute Tariff Man this term.
For Albanese, the issue is two-pronged – it is about Australia’s trade interest but also about Albanese’s authority as Prime Minister. The election inflates the stakes. For Albanese to be rejected by Trump on campaign eve would be a devastating blow and a free kick to the Coalition. Every sign is that Albanese is managing Trump as a professional. Their discussion revealed an Australian government that has been diligent in preparing its case on tariffs; witness the breadth of shared national interests the leaders canvassed.
On merit, Australia has a strong national interest case to put to Trump for exemptions, almost a unique case. No other nation has the same basket of US ties as Australia. This includes a significant two to one trade surplus on the US side; strong investment in the US economy now totalling $1.2 trillion; a longstanding security relationship now intensified by AUKUS; partnership on critical minerals; a remarkable agreement to provide $US3bn to help finance US submarine construction, a decision under AUKUS that predates Trump but fits into his mindset; and, significantly it seems, Albanese mentioning that Australia’s superannuation funds are now looking at further “significant” investments into the US. An intriguing issue is whether Labor will leverage super investments as part of a broader understanding with Trump.

Even the dog botherer was enjoined to find hope in the entrails, signs of life in the tea leaves ...

Sky News host Chris Kenny says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s call with Donald Trump might have “done the trick” to secure Australia an exemption from US steel tariffs. US President Donald Trump has confirmed an Australian exemption for steel and aluminium tariffs is being considered following his phone call with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “That's a pretty encouraging response ... although there is nothing concrete there yet,” Mr Kenny said. “It might just have got him [Albanese] a touchdown for Australia.”

For some inexplicable reason, the reptiles seemed that it was possible to extract reason and sense from King Donald I, when they might have been better off doing a John Oliver and joshing Jon Stewart about the USA turning into a monarchy - all that fuss about tea parties reversed in a trice as the country joined sundry banana monarchies ...

Unsurprisingly, Albanese pledged on Tuesday that Australia would pursue its interests using “all of the human assets at our disposal”. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has already met her counterpart, Marco Rubio; Trade Minister Don Farrell is awaiting to meet his counterpart, Howard Lutnick, when confirmed; while Richard Marles at the weekend met his defence counterpart, Pete Hegseth, and handed over an $800m first instalment of our US submarine investment.
Think of the optics: Trump rejecting Albanese after pocketing our $800m. How would that play at home? The electoral politics are diabolical – if Albanese fails to persuade Trump, he will become the target of an election-induced outcry saying he’s not up to the job.
It would be an easy accusation, but false. Let’s identify the leader who wears the obvious and heavy blame for the chaos now unfolding – that’s Trump.
Trump is not just threatening Australia. More significantly, he is threatening the world. His latest trade declaration confirms Trump’s obsession with higher tariffs. Indeed, he boasts that more is to come, from cars to pharmaceuticals.
His frenzied protectionism is irrevocably tied in his mind to the re-industrialisation of the American heartland and the refinancing of the US Treasury, but the consequence is that it will raise US domestic prices, fan inflation, undermine US competitiveness, damage global trade and growth, weaken the US alliance system and give Beijing new opportunities across the globe.
The real harm for Australia is not the direct economic consequences but the multiple economic and strategic dangers unleashed.
You don’t blame Albanese for Trump’s deluded destructiveness.

Actually if you're a reptile, or the mutton Dutton, or Dame Slap, you do, you're all in ...

You love the epic destruction, you mutter darkly about insidious forces and the need to tear it all down ... but that's for dessert, must stay the course with ponderous, pondering "Ned" ..

What is coming is a test for Australia’s political class – but not just its political class. This goes to our corporate, economic, civic and media class as well. Free trade is fundamental to our national interest and needs to be defended – but if Australia, along with other nations, is undermined by a rising protectionism then we need the honesty and intellectual clarity to see who is responsible. That’s Trump, not Albanese.
Call Albanese to account for his many blunders, but don’t blame him for failing to manage Trump’s protectionism.

Oh go tell that to Faux Noise and Sky Noise ... and show us a snap of the pated éminence grise, willing to blame anybody for anything, Peter Dutton holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

It's too late, "Ned", the cat's out of the bag, and you're not helping by normalising what's going down ...

Trump is a transforming US President. 

That's the best you can do? He's a "transforming" President, and all we're witnessing is mere transformation? 

The pond supposes that Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll were transformational characters, but it's hardly a good sign, and it might be best to leave rationality at the door ...

The required response from Australia is rationality. Trump will do many bad things and many good things. Each must be judged on merit. His tariffs are one of the very bad things.
Beware people who are totally for Trump or totally against Trump – they are no help in Australia’s current challenge.

Oh there are good things and there are bad things, and it's best to do a "Ned" and get down on knees and kiss the ring, or whatever else presents ... 

The only upside is that "Ned" apparently thinks the mutton Dutton must join in the carpet crawl ... as if a wolfhound could change its spots ...

That means it’s time for the Coalition to put the cue in the rack. Since Trump’s election it has run a manic campaign convinced Albanese could never manage Trump, demanding that Albanese initiate a meeting, or rush to get Trump on the phone, insisting that Kevin Rudd couldn’t do the job and baiting the Trump administration to cancel him. It had one purpose – to undermine Albanese, but it came to the edge of undermining Australia.
The Coalition fell for its own propaganda. Bad mistake. It told us on Monday that Albanese faced his big test. On Tuesday after Albanese passed that opening test, the Coalition risked looking exposed and unpatriotic. Peter Dutton moved fast with a decisive, corrective message – he said the nation had a “bipartisan position”, that the Coalition stood with Labor in opposing the tariff and that Trump needed to know this.
But the Opposition Leader went further. He said if Trump persisted this “will damage the relationship between Australia and the United States”. Suddenly, the Coalition started to put the responsibility where it belongs – on Trump, not Albanese. Asked directly who would be to blame, Trump or Albanese, Dutton said: “It’s a decision of the Trump administration and I don’t think it’s warranted.” That is, Trump isn’t justified doing this.
Dutton is not walking away from criticising Albanese and Rudd for their past remarks about Trump. But the caravan has moved on. The issue goes to high-level statecraft – the trade, economic and strategic partnership between the nations.
The Coalition needs to be careful – getting caught between what is Australia’s national interest and the Coalition’s electoral interest.

Too late "Ned", the game's afoot ...

Luckily - the pond uses the word in a "hair not on fire" sense - Dame Slap was on hand to correct "Ned" and explain how wanton destruction is all the go.

Others might worry about the prospect of unelected Uncle Leon slashing and burning - Business Insider had We got a DOGE staff list. From a McKinsey alum to a former Clarence Thomas clerk, here are the workers powering Elon Musk's cost-cutting squad.

The Beast had ‘Big Balls’ DOGE Guy, 19, Is Now a ‘Senior Adviser’ in State Department (archive).

How they love big balls, and so does Dame Slap, celebrating in No quarter in Trump’s war on captured institutions, Few have succeeded in stemming the left’s long march through the institutions. Now Donald Trump wants to be remembered for giving it a red-hot go.

It's obligatory as part of the worship hour to begin with a snap of the orange orangutang ... US President Donald Trump speaks to the press after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House. Picture: AFP

Then it was a full dive into Trumphalism ...

What do withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, gutting the federal Department of Education, defunding UNRWA and the UN Human Rights Council, pulling out of the World Health Organisation, killing off DEI, trussing the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau like a chicken for roasting, shutting the US Agency for International Development and sanctioning the International Criminal Court have in common?
Through the blizzard of executive orders, the outlines of a unifying theme in the Trump presidency are clear. Donald Trump wants to end institutional capture in all its forms. Though his execution, aided and abetted by Elon Musk, may well be occasionally ham-fisted and certainly deserves scrutiny, the US President’s instincts are sound.
When a political, social, cultural or legal institution is established for a public purpose, and given power and resources for that purpose, it becomes immediately, and forever, a target for a range of groups that would use its power and resources for their own ends. Whoever the hijackers are, it falls under the umbrella term: institutional capture.
There are subspecies of institutional capture. When a regulatory body succumbs to the vested interests of those it’s charged to regulate, it’s called regulatory capture. When employees commandeer an institution to suit their own ends, it’s called provider capture.
Some organisations start out captured and get only worse. Like the UN Human Rights Council with Standing Item 7 aimed at one country – Israel – despite decades’ long and wicked violations of human rights by other countries.

Cue a snap of the enemy, some bloody DEI hire ... Foreign Minister Penny Wong in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

Dame Slap then did her usual litany of hate ...

Other institutions go bad over time; for example, when provider capture sets in. In Australia, the ABC is a prime example of what happens when employees and other insiders hijack a taxpayer-funded media organisation in the service of their own pet causes, including most recently Trump hysteria, anti-Israel coverage, the voice and climate alarmism.

Why is it wrong to note ethnic cleansing, Riviera style, and genocide, and actual climate science? 

Of course the ABC doesn't help itself when it falls prostrate at the feet of the Zionist lobby in an attempt to placate them and Dame Slap ...

That sort of nonsense just sends reptiles of the Dame Slap kind into a feeding frenzy ...

The International Criminal Court is a textbook case of a legal institution captured by the politics of its employees and paymasters. The ICC has jurisdiction over its member states, meaning those countries that signed the Rome Statute that established the court. Israel didn’t sign up and Gaza is not a state. Yet ICC prosecutors issued warrants for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister and former defence minister.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded swiftly. Australia will always abide by “international law”, she said when arrest warrants were issued. But what if “law” is being commandeered for political purposes?
Unless Wong was talking out of both sides of her mouth, that means she’s committing Australia, as a signatory to the Rome Statute, to arresting democratically elected leaders of a country that is not subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction – should they set foot on Australian soil.
Well, last week the rubber hit the road. The ICC’s political exploits and presidential sanctions ordered against the court on February 6 raise serious issues for American allies – including Australia.
Trump’s sanctions – freezing all property and other interests in the US and denying entry into America – apply to “any person” determined by the US Secretary of State to have “directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute” the Israeli Prime Minister and former defence minister.
That might mean that if the Foreign Minister took any action to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, should he visit Australia, Trump’s ICC sanctions might apply to her, and to any other government or police official involved in the arrest. We’re waiting to hear the Foreign Minister’s response to that conundrum.The ICC screamed provider capture from its inception. The whimsical decision to sign the Rome Statute by then foreign minister Alexander Downer – not normally known for falling for fickle international politics – now carries potentially disastrous consequences for Downer’s successor, for the Albanese government and for our federal police, too.

Downer, who honourably now admits his blunder, says we should give notice of our intention to withdraw from the Rome Statute. There’s a 12-month notice period, kind of like a decree nisi marking a separation period in a divorce. If Wong doesn’t start the clock, then surely Peter Dutton will if he wins government.

Yes, go the full anarchist ... Elon Musk jumps on stage as he arrives to speak at a town hall event hosted by America PAC in support of Donald Trump in October. Picture: AFP

Sorry, that's the reptiles' illustration. The pond is always happy to help boost Tesla sales and the AfD ...

By now, Dame Slap was fully into wanton destruction and ethnic cleansing ...

There are other lessons from Trump’s determination to strip back the encrusted capture of public institutions by vested interests and return these institutions to what Trump sees as their proper purpose. And if they can’t be saved, then off with their heads, so to speak.
When no one is cleaning house, institutional capture enables dirty corruption and the perversion of its original objectives. Look at UNRWA, where staff members included Hamas terrorists and whose modus operandi has become the perpetuation of Palestinian victimhood.
Indeed, much of the horror and revulsion at Trump’s “Riviera” plan for Gaza is fuelled by Hamas and its allies not wanting the Palestinians to have peace or a better life. Hamas wants the Palestinians to remain a permanent refugee people controlled by them and devoted to their Islamist ideology – with any reconstruction money going to more tunnels, weapons and Qatari holiday homes for Hamas leaders. UNRWA and its supporters are Hamas’s useful idiots.
Trump’s critics may carp that he is ignorant of history, but neither is he captured by it. Why not consider whether Gaza can be transformed into a Mediterranean Dubai, or at minimum a boring backwater of peace? Any plan that strikes fear into the raison d’etre of Hamas and its ideological allies is worth consideration.

Indeed, indeed, and when Xi takes over Taiwan, and Vlad the sociopath is handed Ukraine and King Donald I takes Greenland ... why what fun there'll be ...

More litany ...

Similarly, Trump has called stumps on USAID, the 10,000-person, $US40bn ($63.75bn) foreign assistance agency that, for decades, has been accused and found guilty of fraud and meddling in the political affairs of foreign countries. As The Wall Street Journal noted last week, with $US40bn to throw about, USAID was bound to hit some good targets. But bad stuff was happening too. Republican senator Joni Hurst wrote this week about her efforts to uncover widespread fraud, USAID money being funnelled into the sex trade, into dangerous research at Wuhan.
That’s on top of millions of dollars reaching terrorist organisations. Not to mention provider capture steering USAID money into pet projects: LGBT groups in Serbia, a transgender clinic in India and electric cars in Vietnam.
Trump’s drastic action, shutting the doors on USAID and folding it into the State Department, has kicked off a battle between the executive, on the one hand, and congress and the courts on the other. That’s as it should be. Just as Trump is trying to rein in overreach at USAID, he too may be guilty of executive overreach.

As an aside, the pond would like to mention that claim that US$50 or $100 million (the numbers varied by the day) was spent on condoms for Hamas ...

This is why the New York Times and other lamestream media are singularly incapable of standing up to King Donald.

Luckily - the pond is in to free lunches - this piece could be found in the archive,  6 Inaccurate Claims Trump Has Used to Justify His Flurry of Orders, The president was wrong about birthright citizenship around the world, the Paris climate agreement and federal funding for condoms in Gaza, among other claims.

It sounded like a bold claim, but it quickly dissolved into a flurry of non-sequiturs ...

“The numbers, some of the numbers are horrible, what he’s found. 100 — think of it, $100 million on condoms to Hamas.” — in remarks on Feb. 3

This lacks evidence. 

It's literally a stupid remark, remarkably stupid ... but the Times itself is never short on stupidity, and there's plenty of evidence for that ...

This is how "this lacks evidence" wandered through saucy doubts and fears, in a way that made it seem like King Donald wasn't talking through his hat, or his arse ...

After a White House order pausing government loans and grants created widespread confusion, Mr. Trump defended the move as an attempt to identify “tremendous waste and fraud and abuse,” such as government funding for condoms for the militant group Hamas.

Even after the administration rescinded the order, Mr. Trump repeated the claim days later, doubling the amount to $100 million for good measure.

The State Department told The New York Times that the claims refer to “two buckets” of $50 million each for the International Medical Corps’ work in Gaza, and that included family planning programming such as condoms. The State Department did not respond when asked about the exact amount for condoms specifically.

But in a statement last week, the International Medical Corps wrote that it had received more than $68 million from the United States Agency for International Development since October 2023 for its work in Gaza and “no U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.” Instead, the group said, the money was used to operate two field hospitals providing medical care, treat and diagnose malnutrition, deliver more than 5,000 babies and perform 11,000 surgeries.

A public government database outlining the International Medical Corps’ contracts shows that the organization has received nearly two dozen grants that are still in progress and add up to more than $100 million. A vast majority of the awards, however, are not related to Gaza or family planning services. About $80 million worth of grants is for work in Africa to treat malnutrition, improve water sanitation, prevent infectious diseases and provide other health services. None of the remaining $20 million specifically mention Gaza, but some aimed to combat gender-based violence in Lebanon and Jordan, where many Palestinians have sought refuge.

The New York Times and other news organizations have been unable to find evidence supporting assertions of $50 million or $100 million in funding for condoms in the Gaza Strip. (There do appear to be tens of millions of dollars in federal grants awarded to other charities for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and H.I.V. in Gaza, a province of Mozambique.)

According to a report from U.S.A.I.D., the United States provided nearly $61 million in contraceptives — including condoms as well as oral contraceptives and intrauterine devices or IUDs — across the entire world in the 2023 fiscal year. Almost 90 percent of that went to Africa, and just $45,681 worth went to one country in the Middle East, Jordan.

Humanitarian and family planning organizations and researchers have specifically noted that condom access in Gaza is limited and made even more unavailable by Israel’s war.

In a 2018 report entitled “A Much Neglected Service: Assessment of Family Planning Services in Palestine,” the United Nations Population Fund found that a vast majority of the condom supply in the strip was distributed by the Gaza Ministry of Health and UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. The federal government does not fund the ministry, and the Biden administration paused funding for the U.N. agency in early 2024.

Mr. Trump is correct that there have been news reports on improvised explosives attached to bunches of balloons or condoms floating from Gaza to Israel. That appeared to have begun in 2018.

Sheesh, how remarkably, astonishingly stupid all those caveats and cautions soound ...

After that, it's easy to see how the likes of Dame Slap can drum up a conspiracy theory or three at a drop of the hat ... and there'll be nobody out there willing to say boo to her assorted cackling geese ...

Cue the reptiles celebrating the destruction of US education (throw in medical research if you like, what with it causing autism) ...

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. The Federalist Elections Correspondent Brianna Lyman has discussed this with Sky News host James Morrow. “I think people don’t understand that the Department of Education is best described as a giant welfare program. They funnel money to states and encourage them to use things like common core curriculum,” Ms Lyman said. “They use it to push left-wing agenda so if we can just diminish or dismantle the Department of Education because it is a giant welfare system, that would be great.”

What's remarkable is that this gang of criminals keeps getting caught ... and keeps getting off lightly ...

Abscond with $25 million and you get off with a slap on the wrist? Spend a cool million or so on yourself and your minions?

Why it's a better line of work than shoplifting or trying to knock off a bank for till money, a couple of thousand and the reward years in the clink ...

At the very last moment, Dame Slap does have a hesitation ...

Given the Republicans control congress, the best protection against executive overreach will likely come from the courts that Trump stacked when he was the 45th president. In 2024, the US Supreme Court threw out the so-called Chevron deference doctrine. Established by a differently constituted Supreme Court 40 years ago, the deference doctrine effectively instructed courts that government agencies, not judges, should decide how to interpret vague laws. That was a recipe for mission creep.
By overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court put the brakes on bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency overstepping their remit. It’s quite possible the Roberts Supreme Court could become the main constraint on Trump’s executive overreach. Who knows, even Democrats may grow to love a conservative Supreme Court.
Whatever the outcome, no one should be surprised that President Trump’s first instincts are overwhelmingly iconoclastic. He campaigned on draining the swamp and up-ending the deep state. Pick a phrase, and he’s on to it.
Few have succeeded in stemming the left’s long march through the institutions. Trump wants to be remembered for giving it a red-hot go.
Whether Trump’s presidency will be characterised as creative destruction or just destruction will have to await the judgment of history. In the meantime, we should all take the opportunity Trump offers us to re-examine everything we currently take for granted about institutions.

See the rat cunning in that line ...

Whether Trump’s presidency will be characterised as creative destruction or just destruction will have to await the judgment of history

It's down there with Nero fiddling while Rome burned ... though likely in Dame Slap's eyes, Nero was just practising another kind of creative destruction ...

And with the herpetology studies done for the day, the pond would like to take another shot at the Times...

One of the pond's TG friends suggested it could be run without comment, though perhaps accompanied by the sounds of gagging and nausea ...

First of all it's help to read the GLAAD story back in February 2024, a howl of pain and protest, The New York Times’ Bias Continues to Endanger Transgender People. (hot links in the original):

On the one-year anniversary of a demand for change, the New York Times has not responded, and continues to fall short in its coverage of transgender issues

One year ago a coalition of more than 100 LGBTQ organizations and notables called out the New York Times’ pattern of publishing inaccurate, biased pieces about transgender people that are regularly used by extremist lawmakers and extremist organizations in court as justification for banning trans people from accessing best practice medical care. 
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) media advocacy organization, was among those in the coalition demanding better from the Times. 
To date, the coalition has not received a response from the Times. The coalition had three asks of the newspaper, none of which appear to have been met. 
Demands from the 100-plus organizations and notables (full list below) signed onto coalition letter on February 15, 2023:

• Stop printing biased anti-trans stories, immediately.
• Listen to trans people: hold a meeting with trans community leaders within two months.
• Hire at least four full-time trans writers and editors within three months.
• On the one year anniversary of the letter’s publication GLAAD returned to the New York Times headquarters with a digital billboard. 

“The New York Times’ inaccurate, irresponsible coverage of the transgender community is regularly utilized by extremist lawmakers to justify taking away best practice health care from youth,” said GLAAD President & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “The Times has continued down its path of ignoring the trans community, their healthcare providers, and medical experts.
They have not taken our coalition up on our offer to meet with leaders from the trans community, nor have they hired any trans journalists full time, and have gone so far as to discipline their employees for bringing up valid and accurate critique of the newspaper’s trans coverage. As the Times continues down this path, they become more irrelevant every day. We remain eager to meet with the Times to help correct these coverage failures.”
Trans journalists Erin Reed and Evan Urquhart issued a comprehensive takedown of the Times’ most recent biased, inaccurate piece on trans healthcare here. Medical expert Dr. Jack Turban also weighed in to correct disinformation in that piece here.
Immediately after the last biased, inaccurate piece in the Times, it was cited in an anti-trans legal brief by the extremist Alliance Defending Freedom, a SPLC-designated hate group.
A January 2024 expose by The Flaw magazine looked at the Times’ “distinct culpability” in the paper’s ongoing trans coverage, citing journalist  Maximillian Alvarez: “the Times knows damn well that its articles are being cited in state legislatures around the country as justification for the hundreds of genocidal, anti-trans anti-queer bills that are being introduced left and right.”
Note that despite claims made by the Times in an effort to discredit their own contributors, the coalition letter was a wholly separate effort from a letter on the same topic signed by more than 1,000 Times contributors last February.

Completely clueless and deeply oblivious, the Times decided to offer this by the editorial board a few days ago, Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans (alternatively in the archive):

First the pompous preening preamble ...worthy of a "Ned" ...

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Then came this ... and the pond's gag reflex kicked in ...

Some of the most deplorable episodes in U.S. history involve the government wielding the power of the state against minority groups: Black people, Indigenous people and gay people, to name just a few. Though these campaigns might have received popular support at the time, history has consistently judged them as immoral, illegal and un-American.
Rather than understanding this history, President Trump is borrowing from the worst of it. One of the very first acts of his second term was to order the government to view gender as immutable and discriminate against transgender citizens. “As of today,” he declared in his Inaugural Address, “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”
The early days of Mr. Trump’s second term have raised any number of concerns about actions that run dangerously counter to both the laws and the best interests of the country and its people. But the chaos of these past few weeks shouldn’t mask that in this period, he has also waged as direct a campaign against a single, vulnerable minority as we’ve seen in generations.
Within hours, this language began to be codified in a series of executive orders and actions attempting to exclude transgender people from nearly every aspect of American public life: denying them accurate identification documents such as passports, imposing a nationwide restriction on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, investigating schools with gender neutral bathrooms, criminalizing teacher support for transgender students and commanding the Federal Bureau of Prisons to force the estimated 1,500 transgender women in custody to be housed with men.
The broadside against transgender people was not unexpected. Anti-transgender politicians spent at least $215 million to scapegoat transgender people for a variety of social ills. The Republican Party has increasingly viewed attacking trans rights as a political winner, much as it did attacking civil rights during Richard Nixon’s presidency and attacking gay rights in George W. Bush’s. That posture was disgracefully reflected in the speed and glee with which House Republicans barred transgender women from using women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill after the election of Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress. As for Mr. Trump, he won power by caricaturing and demonizing trans people; now he is using that power to harm trans people.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
The Trump administration’s attacks come half a decade after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch.
It should be recognized that society is still grappling with the cultural and policy implications of the rapidly shifting understanding of gender. There are some issues — such as participation in sports and appropriate medical care for minors — that remain fiercely debated, even by those who broadly support trans rights. There should be room for those conversations. But what shouldn’t be debated is whether the government should target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity to move through the world as they choose. This is a campaign in which cruelty and humiliation seem to be the fundamental point.

The fearmongering is all the more disproportionate, given how few people identify as transgender. They are a minuscule less than 1 percent of the American population. And they are 0.002 percent of college athletes — a population that’s been especially incendiary in the culture wars.
In the U.S. military, slightly more than 1 percent of troops are transgender. That makes the Pentagon the largest employer of transgender people in the country, and that has made military service a prime target for the anti-trans movement.
So it was especially dispiriting, and symbolically important, that another of the new president’s executive orders aimed to oust openly transgender soldiers from the armed services and bar others from joining. In this move Mr. Trump took aim both at people who have put their lives on the line for their nation and at an institution that has historically played a critical role in debates over the recognition and integration of minorities.
The order called for imposing federally mandated discrimination against the estimated 15,000 to 25,000 Americans who have agreed to put their lives on the line to defend the nation. He offered no evidence that this order would remove unqualified people from the armed forces or make the United States safer, because there is none. The language of the order was notable in part for its meanness.
“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order said. “Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
Not only does this order erase the honorable service (and potentially the pensions) of soldiers who led infantry patrols in Afghanistan and flew combat missions over Syria; it attempts to deny that they exist as transgender people at all. “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” declared the order.
The thousands of transgender soldiers who have served with distinction and honor for nearly a decade easily put the lie to the idea that they are unfit for service. Meanwhile, the notion that the existence of openly transgender soldiers is harmful to unit cohesion — long the go-to excuse for opponents of allowing Black people, women and gay people to serve in the armed forces — is contradicted by numerous, rigorous studies. The most comprehensive, by the RAND Corporation, examined other countries that allow transgender soldiers to serve openly and found “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.”
The first Trump administration was thwarted in 2017 by the courts in its efforts to bar transgender Americans from serving their country. The Biden administration reversed that policy before the courts could rule. Transgender troops have served openly, many on overseas deployments, without incident for the past four years, much to the ire of conservatives. “Transgender people should never be allowed to serve. It’s that simple,” Pete Hegseth, now the defense secretary, wrote in his most recent book.
Within hours of its signing, this executive order was challenged in court by six active-duty transgender service members and two seeking to re-enlist. Mr. Trump’s executive orders have often been enjoined by the lower courts, and it is important not to overstate the power that the president has to make radical change absent a sign-off from Congress — even as he appears to be trying to erode those guardrails.
Yet it is difficult to imagine another cohort of thousands of service members, kicked out of the military for reasons totally unrelated to performance or a willingness to follow orders, with barely a whimper from the country’s hundreds of pro-military and veterans’ groups, pundits and elected officials.
It’s true that Americans are divided by the new and shifting politics around gender identity. But most, regardless of party, have a shared respect for their fellow citizens who put on a uniform, pick up a rifle and travel around the world in defense of the nation.
Mr. Trump’s targeting of transgender Americans will go far beyond the military. And his instinct for demonization, his habit of dividing the public into those worthy of protection and those who should be cast aside, his habitual cruelty to those who can be pushed around without others speaking up will go far beyond a campaign against this one small, vulnerable group. As these campaigns continue, Americans would do well to remember the hard-won lessons of our history.

Not helping Jan. 

Too little, way too late. 

Part of the problem and nothing to do with a solution ... and all the pond feels in the mouth is the taste of bitter ashes, or perhaps the mendacity of a David Brooks ... and that's why legacy media in the United States and elsewhere don't have a clue how to deal with the pussy grabber-in-chief ...