In the latest twist in Trump’s defamation case against the BBC, the president’s legal team has filed an emergency motion to block the BBC from accessing his financial records, arguing the subpoena is a “disproportionate” and a “shockingly broad” fishing expedition.

According to the filing, made in the Southern District of Florida on August 5, 2026, the BBC’s subpoena for tax returns, asset histories, and business records from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the legal entity that holds the president’s business assets across approximately 400 affiliated entities, should be quashed. Or, at minimum, impose strict limits on what the BBC can access.

According to The Hill:

If the emergency motion is not approved, the BBC would be granted insight on Trump’s crypto and stock profit, as well as business transactions from at least 400 entities and companies tied to his personal assets managed by family.

The BBC also fired back on 5 August 2026. In its own filing in the Southern District of Florida, the broadcaster accused Trump and his trust of a ‘transparent effort to evade’ the court’s order. It pointed out that Trump has produced just 735 pages of documents in response to discovery — ‘consisting mostly of publicly accessible news reports and social media’ — while the BBC has already produced 88,855 pages.

The defamation suit Trump is pursuing against the BBC alleges the BBC “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctored” a speech in a Panorama documentary to make it appear that he encouraged people to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. BBC apologised for the edit.

Irony of “shockingly broad”

The irony is hard to miss. Trump’s legal team is now calling the BBC’s subpoena a “shockingly broad” fishing expedition, complaining that the broadcaster wants to poke through his financial records across 400 entities in the very same defamation case where Trump is demanding $10 billion over a documentary edit.

Apparently, asking for $10 billion is perfectly narrow and reasonable, but asking to see the financial records that would actually prove or disprove that claim is just too much.

The emergency motion filed by Trump’s lawyers specifically calls out the BBC’s “tactic,” arguing that the timing of the subpoena, served just 25 days after similar requests were made to the president and before his responses were even due, suggests that the BBC is not genuinely seeking relevant evidence.

Instead, the filing suggests, the BBC is using the subpoena to pressure and dig through Trump’s entire financial universe for “political” reasons, rather than for legitimate discovery tied to the actual defamation claim.

By The Canary

Source link

Pro-Palestine activist Paula Akpan has been cleared of criminal damage after a two-year trial. She had been charged with criminal damage after her role in a 2024 protest outside a genocide-linked bank. The financial services company Scotiabank, was one of many which held Israeli investments.

On 6 July, the Good Law Project said the woman had:

attended a protest outside Scotiabank on 17 June 2024, along with nine others. At the time, the bank was the largest foreign shareholder in Elbit Systems – holding a massive $500m stake in Israel’s leading weapons manufacturer, whose military hardware is directly used to target Palestinian civilians.

To highlight the bank’s complicity in the ongoing genocide, some of the protesters sprayed blood-red paint across the entrances, while Paula locked on to a fellow protester outside the building.

The organisation added:

The police hit all ten protesters with a group charge for criminal damage. Now, more than two years on, Paula’s name has been cleared, and seven of her co-defendants have also been acquitted.

Paula Akpan said of her acquittal:

I feel like I can breathe again. This process is designed to make you feel like the weight of the state is against you, simply for protesting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people and highlighting the complicity of the UK state and financial institutions based right here under our noses.

She said the long wait for a trial was extremely difficult:

The last two years have been mentally gruelling for me and my loved ones

But it’s one of the honours of my life to have played a part in the international pressure on Scotiabank, leading to their full divestment in Elbit Systems last year.

Good Law Project’s lead lawyer on the case was Cat Knight. Knight said:

This is a great result for Paula, but it should never have gotten this far. The police’s response was entirely disproportionate, and it reflects a sinister crackdown on our right to protest.

As the Canadian Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners have pointed out:

This divestment does not exonerate Scotiabank, which maintains investments in arms and extractive capital. Its CEO Scott Thomson has been a loud advocate for the American “Trump doctrine” of foreign military interventions, as well as the “Global Defense Bank,” a proposed hub for military financing.

That said, activists like Paula Akpan have clearly put a big dent in the Israeli war machine, narrowing the space in which it can operate. Her acquittal is a victory for those fighting for universal human rights and justice. Those who fought for it are a credit to themselves and the broader movement.

The fight continues, not least in the UK where state repression of campaigners has escalated rapidly. But we can all take succour from Paula Akpan’s courage.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Source link

Source link

Source link

Source link

Former neo-Nazi Joshua Bonehill-Paine has withdrawn as a Tory candidate for the 2027 council elections in Somerset. Far-right candidate are hardly a rarity in UK politics these days. However, reports claim he has now been given an internal Conservative Party role educating people about extremism.

Another Tory misstep

Bonehill-Paine was convicted in 2016 for harassing former Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger.

The Guardian reported on 5 August:

Joshua Bonehill-Paine said on Wednesday that he had withdrawn from next year’s local elections, and that the Conservative leader had instead asked him to become an adviser to the party’s culture and integration commission, where he will specifically focus on how young men become radicalised.

The outlet added:

Badenoch, who has come under pressure in the last 48 hours from individuals and organisations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said she was “sad” that Bonehill-Paine felt he “won’t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community”.

Berger, who is now a baroness in the House of Lords, condemned the move on X:

The decision to welcome this individual as an adviser to the Leader of the Opposition is no better than allowing him to stand as a council candidate. It is a privileged and influential national role. As a victim of this man’s heinous crimes this appointment is an insult.

— Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) August 5, 2026

The Guardian said:

Both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) had turned down the Tory party’s offer of a meeting with the former neo-Nazi, who previously described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights” and re-emerged in recent years as the creator of the Crewkerne Gazette, a satirical online account.

A ‘formidable record’ of hate offences

The BBC reported that Bonehill-Paine’s new role:

would focus on advising on how to prevent young men from being radicalised.

According to the corporation, Bonehill-Paine spent:

three years in prison after he was jailed in 2015 for posting antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally.

The report added:

He was convicted of racially harassing then-Labour MP Berger the following year.

During sentencing in the 2016 case, Justice Spencer said Bonehill-Paine had enacted:

a cruel campaign of vile racist abuse on the Internet against a Jewish Labour Member of Parliament, Luciana Berger, simply because she is Jewish.

At the age of only 24 you have amassed a formidable record of offences of hate crime using the Internet.

Meanwhile Badenoch tried to spin the story in her favour, saying it was important to engage with reformed fascists:

If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism, we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution.

A former neo-Nazi seems like an odd choice for a candidate a political party led by a British-Nigerian woman. Or it may be that UK politics is at this stage so decayed and unhinged that we should stop being surprised by these sorts of events.

Either way, Bonehill-Paine has still ended up with an influential job in the Tory party. Just not quite the one he was after…

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Source link

Source link

The past week has been a rollercoaster for trans rights in the UK. On Friday 31 July, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to the upcoming trial of puberty-blocking medication. That same day, the court also ruled that police don’t have to perform strip searches based on ‘biological sex’.

On 5 August, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) new transphobic code of practice came into effect. It holds that a trans-inclusive women’s service is “very likely” to be discriminatory on the basis of sex. However, just one day later, the Good Law Project (GLP) has supported a legal challenge against the code.

Puberty blocker trial challenge fails

In spite of the fact that the (already ludicrously transphobic) Cass Review recommended the upcoming Pathways puberty blocker trial for trans youth medicine, transphobes have nevertheless been up in arms against it. Most recently, as GLP explained:

The controversial Bayswater Support Group have teamed up with claimants including Keira Bell, whose legal challenge to young trans healthcare in 2020 was overturned on appeal, following an intervention by Good Law Project. In a case funded by a group with links to the far right, they are asking the High Court for permission to challenge the NHS Pathways trial.

The claimants tried to argue that the medication – widely used throughout the world as part of routine trans care – posed a risk to children. As such, they held that the trial was unlawful.

Instead, Bayswater and its supporters suggested that the puberty blockers be tested on adults. This was, of course, patently ridiculous given that the adults would already have gone through puberty.

On 27 July, GLP announced that both it and trans-led charity Gendered Intelligence would oppose Bayswater’s challenge in court, if necessary. Fortunately, however, a legal battle won’t be necessary in this case. On 31 July, GLP reported:

The court held that the trial was “commissioned by NHS England with conspicuous care”, that the MHRA, the medicines regulator, undertook a “rigorous process” before approving it, and that each child involved in the trial will have been assessed for many months by specialist doctors as likely to receive direct benefit from the treatment.

The judge also noted that the court must be “very cautious” about interfering with medical regulatory decisions.

Gendered Intelligence stated that it was:

glad to hear that clinical trials of safe, effective gender care will be able to continue without interference. We should always put our young people first, and always put healthcare before politics

High Court strip-search ruling

On the same day, 31 July, the High Court also threw out a legal challenge against police strip-search guidance. The challenge, issued by anti-trans pressure group Sex Matters, argued that trans people should always be strip searched by an officer of the trans individual’s sex-assigned-at-birth.

Previous guidance held that officers matching a trans detainee’s gender should perform strip-searches, provided the detainee holds a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). However, following the 2025 Supreme Court ruling invalidating trans people’s gender under the Equality Act, the government issued new guidance.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (known as PACE) governs police powers to perform strip searches. Notably, PACE requires that an officer of the same sex as the detainee performs the search.

While the Supreme Court seemingly invalidated trans people’s right to be treated as a member of their assumed sex — i.e. the purpose of a GRC – the newest guidance argued that:

when requested, a strip search of a trans woman should be conducted by a female police officer. But there’s a significant limitation – both the trans detainee and the police officer have to consent to the search.

One might think that this is fairly straightforward. If a trans person requests an officer of their gender, and the officer is fine with it, this is a non-issue. However, Sex Matters objected, as the GLP explained:

They argued that the guidance creates a “shadow regime” attempting to “contract out” of the PACE framework, as established by the legislature.

Justice Lindon, the presiding judge, rejected the campaign group’s premise. He stated that PACE doesn’t forbid consensual searches outside of the statutory requirement, and voiced doubt that PACE was intended to protect officers rather than detainees. Moreover, he added that:

the effect of the ability to consent to a search by a person of the opposite biological sex is to mitigate the distress which the detained transgender person may feel, rather than to increase it

Anti-trans EHRC code challenged

However, the enactment of the EHRC’s new transphobic code of practice on 5 August overshadowed these two relatively-minor legal victories.

Though the code doesn’t carry legal weight in itself, instead offering an interpretation of equalities law, it encourages a nationwide bathroom ban against trans people, and their wholesale exclusion from single-sex services aligned with their lived gender.

As such, Leigh Day solicitors and GLP are supporting a legal challenge against the guidance. The claimants are currently anonymous, though GLP described them as a “trans person and a trans-inclusive organisation”.

Together, they will argue that the EHRC has fundamentally misunderstood the law, and that its code violates human rights. As an opening salvo, Leigh Day has sent a pre-action letter to both the EHRC and government setting out their argument.

GLP explained that:

Trans-inclusive women’s organisations […] are now faced with a stark choice:

1. Ban trans women entirely.
2. Stop being a women’s service, and open up to all men.

This blanket instruction puts inclusive organisations in an impossible position. […] The guidance lacks nuance, ignores context and pays no attention to the ways women want to run their own spaces and services.

Jess O’Thomson, GLP’s trans rights lead, added that:

This Labour government pushed through its transphobic guidance in the face of opposition from many MPs, including nearly a hundred of its own backbenchers. It’s not just immensely harmful. We think it’s unlawful, and completely against human rights. So this challenge is absolutely essential.

The Canary will report on the legal argument behind the challenge in more detail tomorrow. For now, however, it’s gratifying to see that neither trans people nor their allies have given up the fight just yet — no matter the forces arrayed against them.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

Source link

The former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has warned the big tech firms are winning in the battle over regulation (Alamy)

3 min read7 min

Major tech companies are “winning in a big way” against efforts to make the internet safer for women and children, according to former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips.

Advertisement

Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said that during her time in government, parts of Whitehall, including No 10, were reluctant to take action for fear of retaliation by tech giants and the Donald Trump administration.

Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, which will be published on Friday (7 August), Phillips said: “We are too beholden currently in the world to basically five unelected people.”

The Labour MP resigned as a Home Office minister in May, accusing the Keir Starmer administration of not working hard enough to protect women and girls online. Phillips said Starmer was a “decent man” but his reluctance to “have an argument” meant that steps to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) were “stalled and delayed”.

Advertisement

In her resignation letter to the then-prime minister, Phillips said that “91 per cent of online child sex abuse is self-generated by children groomed, tricked and exploited into abuse”, and that Google and Apple, the two companies that control the operating systems on almost all smartphones, could quickly and easily install software that would stop them being used by children to take and receive naked pictures.

In June, Starmer gave tech firms a September deadline to make this change, warning that the government would give itself the powers to fine or take criminal action against those that did not comply.

Phillips wants new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to hold them to this, telling the podcast that, as things stand, “tech companies are winning in a big, big way”.

Advertisement

The former minister said there was a divide within Whitehall about how to tackle online safety when she was in government. She described the Home Office as being “hawkish as hell about tech companies”, while No 10 and the now-abolished Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) were nervous about being too aggressive.

Phillips recalled “the sense that tech companies and the US would hold us to ransom on all sorts of different things”, adding: “I’ve had it directly said to my face, ‘well, look, they’ll just put trade levies on us if you try and do anything with tech companies’.”

She said Starmer “was always on my side in conversations”, but that she “just started to feel like I was going slowly mad” waiting for the machinery of government to make it happen.

“If you could hear some of the conversations I had to have with people. There are some people who genuinely just think that people taking dick pics is a human right,” Phillips said. 

Advertisement

“I had to say to somebody once: ‘You know, you won’t die. It’s not water or shelter’.”

Phillips expressed concern that the government’s Online Safety Act is “woeful for women” in its current form and “20 years behind” where it needs to be to tackle evolving online harms.

“As somebody who was seeking to put down lots of amendments to the Online Safety Act while it was passing through, I’ve never known aggressive lobbying like it,” said the Labour MP. “Every single law firm in the whole of London was basically on retainer to one of the big tech companies so that they couldn’t work for anyone else. That is just anti-democratic.”

---

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

Advertisement

• Click here to listen to the latest episode of The Rundown, or search for ‘PoliticsHome’ wherever you get your podcasts.

 

Source link

Source link