August 20, 2026

MATT CALKINS: I was a sports columnist at the Seattle Times for 11 years. This is why I resigned.

16-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson, who’d lost to a biological male in a track and field race in eighth grade and was holding a sign reading “Thank You Sophie for Speaking up for Girls!”

* * * * * * * *

One thing Wilson emphasized to me at the rally was that she wasn’t anti-trans. Another student-athlete named Frances Staudt — who said she’s endured daily verbal abuse after refusing to play against a biological boy in a basketball game — echoed Wilson’s sentiment.

So that was the thesis of my column (which you can read here) — that supporting the separation of biological females and males doesn’t automatically make you transphobic, so let’s stop throwing those labels around.

I sent a draft after talking to my editor the morning of Friday, July 31, telling him there was no rush to run it. He told me later that day that he and others were looking at it, but that it wouldn’t be ready for Sunday’s paper. Monday night, I got an email saying that his boss was hoping to talk to the top two newsroom editors about it on Wednesday. No feedback had been given to me. Thursday afternoon, my editor informed me that it wasn’t going to run because I didn’t tell him I was doing this in advance. I didn’t buy this reasoning. If that were the case, the piece would have been killed on the spot, not passed through the hands of multiple editors over several days.

My response? To resign on the spot.

In 2023, Jeremy Clarkson wrote thusly about his longtime former employer:

Remember, what everyone on every BBC platform fears more than anything is a Twitter backlash, so to try to keep that festival of left-wing madness happy, they have to be even more left wing and even more right-on. And they have to make sure that every show is pitch-perfect to the BLT+ community and the ethnic minority communities and the community communities, and when you’re thinking defensively like that, the concept of informing and educating and entertaining pretty much goes out of the window.

Considering Seattle was held hostage by an inflamed leftist Twitter mob during 2020’s infamous “Summer of Love,” the editors of the Seattle Times are likely even more afraid of being devoured by their core subscribers than the BBC.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

“WHO SAYS SELF-DEPORTATION WON’T WORK?” Are You Ready for … Megxit 2: Back to Britain Boogaloo?

The Sussexes came to the US seeking fame, fortune, and validation as poor victims of the Establishment, complete with complaints about racism and classism. The American media and celebrity clique ate it up – for a couple of years. Harry and Megan got a development deal with Netflix that went nowhere, and the two of them palled around with Oprah and the A-list for a while.

And then … nothing happened, in the most brutal way possible. Their narcissistic and commercial antics wore thin among the celebrity set. The $100 million Netflix deal produced nothing except Markle’s embarrassing “lifestyle” show that drew derisive hoots from most observers. Netflix cut ties in March of this year, and no one stepped up to fill the supposed demand of Harry-Meghan drama. Other business ventures flopped as well, and the constant whining about media from a couple desperate for attention likely killed off any charm left.

It took a while for reality to set in: the only value these two had was as royals. When they renounced that status, their main value was novelty. Had they approached that status with some groundedness and fewer mercantile machinations, they could have succeeded in building a lasting brand. Instead, the two of them put on a performance-art tour of entitlement and arrogance that quickly sapped the commercial value and appeal of the Sussex “brand,” which was never authentically theirs in the first place. It belonged to the family that Harry and Megan snubbed as racists and classists.

Having discovered that they’re nothing special without the royalty, Harry and Megan now apparently want back in.

Ed Morrissey adds, “The Twitter analyst of all things British, VBSpurs, posted a good explainer for the sudden retreat to the British Isles based on her expert observations over the past few years. Harry’s visa status has nothing to do with it, but his status as a king’s son does. Read it all and track the conversations that are still ongoing for more insight:”

Related: True scale of Meghan and Harry’s US political plans revealed — from request for Biden Oval Office meeting to eyeing Senate seat.

Delusional Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sought US political clout far beyond the dreams of any British royal since King George III, The Post has learned, with the Duchess of Sussex angling to take over the Senate seat held by Kamala Harris ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Weeks before Democrat Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, a source says, Markle requested a sitdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom because she “wanted to be considered to be appointed” to the seat held by Harris, which she vacated just before becoming vice president on Jan. 20, 2021. The source added that the discussion was publicly described as a welcome-to-California chat to head off potential inquiries.

It is unclear just how far Markle’s appeal got with Newsom, who appointed California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to replace Harris two days before her swearing-in as Biden’s second-in-command. Padilla subsequently won election to a full six-year term in 2022.

A Sussex source firmly denied that Markle wanted to take over the Harris seat, while a rep for Newsom did not respond to a request for comment.

To be fair, isn’t going from 90210 to the US Senate something of a lateral move?

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

“WOKE ONE WAS CRAZY!” Wokesters Without Borders.

Woke 1, for all its horrors, expressed maximalist and deformed versions of very American sentiments. Its obsession with “black lives” and “white privilege” was tied to America’s undying remorse over the country’s original sin of slavery. The call to defund the police can be seen as a twisted strain of our exceptional anti-authoritarianism. And the unbridled gender madness was a debauched declaration of individual liberty.

Woke 2 is foreign in every respect. The Democratic Socialists of America aren’t talking about tearing down statues. They have plans to raze or replace the basic architecture of American governance, including the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the presidency. They want to abolish capitalism and private property. They eschew individual liberty for class consciousness. There is no meaningful or legitimate precedent in American history for this kind of movement. It is overtly Soviet and Maoist (note Hasan Piker’s Zhongshan suit).

The Islamists changed the focus of left identity politics and centered it on the longstanding grievance of the Middle East’s Muslims: from black Americans to Palestinians in Gaza, and from white Americans to Jews worldwide. Instead of America’s original sin of slavery, Woke 2 is obsessed with what it casts as Israel’s original sin of existing. As a result, it’s given rise to a surge of primitive and violent anti-Semitism that has no antecedent in American history. The model—the stated aspiration—is Palestinian intifada.

So it’s not just that Woke 2 is wholly foreign in its motivations and aims. It’s that Woke 2 is establishing an American beachhead for this country’s historical and ideological foreign enemies. And its endgame is a science-fictional America that’s been conquered by the millenarian forces of Communism and Jihad.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 5:40 pm by Ed Driscoll

STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM:

This system, too:

Posted at 4:37 pm by Stephen Green

THAT SUCKS: NASA calls off mission to save Swift Observatory telescope in space.

The announcement came down on Wednesday after an attempt to use the LINK spacecraft ran into altitude control issues, NASA and Katalyst Space said in a press release. The spacecraft was meant to raise NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher altitude.

LINK is still set to attempt rendezvous and proximity operations with the Swift Observatory.

“NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission,” Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, said in a statement. “This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting.”

It was a bit of a longshot, but Isaacman was right to light a fire under NASA.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

TENTATIVELY SET FOR AUGUST 28…:

This should include the Ship’s first orbital flight, and first operational deployment of V3 Starlink satellites.

Posted at 3:35 pm by Stephen Green

HAMAS USES THE WEST’S HUMANITY AS A SHIELD, AND ITS OWN CHILDREN AS HUMAN SHIELDS:

Posted at 3:04 pm by Stephen Green

I WISH I COULD SAY THAT I WAS EVEN TRYING…:

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

EXAGGERATED? I’M LESS CERTAIN:

UPDATE (From Ed): If Nathan Cofnas is being fired for exposing Arday as a fabulist, he’s going out guns a-blazing:

Here’s the link to the Brussels Times that’s embedded in the above tweet, from the beginning of the year: UGent chancellor Petra De Sutter caught using AI in opening speech.

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green