Showing posts with label carcerality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carcerality. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 903

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, July 11, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Trump's Massive Purge of Undocumented Immigrants Is Back On and Primarily Speaking.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Staff and agencies at the Guardian: New Orleans: Evacuations Ordered as City Braces for Possible Hurricane.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered south-east of New Orleans, Louisiana, on Thursday as the city and a surrounding stretch of the Gulf coast braced for a possible hurricane over the weekend that could unload heavy rain and send water spilling over levees, in the first big test for flood defenses since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The strength and speed of the wind increased on Thursday and by mid-morning was upgraded to become tropical storm Barry.

All eyes were on a weather disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that dumped as much as 8in (20cm) in just three hours on Wednesday over parts of metro New Orleans, triggering flash flooding.

Coastal communities are braced for Barry to turn into the first hurricane of the season by Friday, coming ashore along the Louisiana-Mississippi-Texas coastline and pouring more water into the already swollen Mississippi River.

Forecasters said the biggest danger in the days to come is not destructive winds but heavy rain as the slow-moving storm makes its way up the Mississippi valley.
This is the worst fucking timeline. I am horrified that NOLA residents may have to revisit one of their city's worst nightmares. I'm thinking about you, NOLA. Stay safe.

* * *

[Content Note: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

Allan Smith and Hallie Jackson at NBC News: Trump Expected to Order Citizenship Question Added to the Census. "Donald Trump is expected to announce Thursday that he is taking executive action to add a citizenship question to the census, according to an administration official. Trump tweeted that he will hold a press conference in the afternoon to discuss his latest efforts at including the question as part of the census."

Just to be clear: The president is reportedly going to announce that he will ignore a Supreme Court ruling to take unilateral executive action. That is a grievous affront to our democracy. He is asserting his power as a dictator at that point.


Max Siegelbaum at the Guardian: Millions in U.S. Taxpayers' Money Invested in Private Prison Firms. "Millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being invested into private prison operators involved in the detention of thousands of migrants across the United States, an investigation shows. Some of the largest investments, which are by pension funds for public sector workers such as teachers and firefighters, come from states with 'sanctuary' policies, such as New York, California, and Oregon." Goddammit.

Barbie Latza Nadeau at the Daily Beast: Acting Border Boss Who Quit Says He Was 'Hit Hard' by Migrant Boy's Death. "Speaking to CNN, [John Sanders, who quit his role as acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner after just one month] did not directly criticize the Trump administration's approach to immigration, but he said that the threat of raids of sanctuary cities coupled with the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez troubled him. He said Vasquez's death pushed him towards taking further action to prevent another similar tragedy, such as bolstering medical assistance at the border. 'It hit me hard, that he was in the cell sleeping,' Sanders told CNN. 'Helping the kids. That has forever changed me. And I think a lot more needs to be done for them.'"

If more agents share his feelings, and I sure hope they do, they can: 1. Resist inhumane orders. 2. STAND DOWN. 3. Don't carry out these raids.

Yes, they may lose their jobs. But at what cost do they keep them?

* * *

[CN: Misogynoir; birtherism. Video may autoplay at link] Oliver Darcy at CNN: Trump Invites Right-Wing Extremists to White House 'Social Media Summit'. "Trump is calling it a 'social media summit,' but the White House did not extend invites to representatives from Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the White House has invited its political allies to the event. ...Among them are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who has promoted the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter; Carpe Donktum, an anonymous troll who won a contest put on by the fringe media organization InfoWars for an anti-media meme; and Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris by saying she is not an 'American black' following the first Democratic presidential debates. Other eyebrow raising attendees include James O'Keefe..." JFC.


Jordan Wilkie at the Guardian: 'A Risk to Democracy': North Carolina Law May Be Violating Secrecy of the Ballot.
North Carolina may be violating state and federal constitutional protections for the secret ballot in the US by tracing some of its citizens' votes.

The situation has arisen because North Carolina has a state law that demands absentee voting — which includes early, in-person voting as well as postal voting — is required to use ballots that can be traced back to the voter.

The laws are in place as a means of guaranteeing that if citizens cast multiple ballots during early voting or that if ineligible residents — like non-citizens or people who have not completed sentences for criminal offenses — cast ballots, those votes can be retrieved and removed.

Likewise, if a voter casts an early ballot then dies before election day, that ballot can then be discounted.

But voting rights advocates think the North Carolina law breaks one of the most sacred tenets of the democratic system: preserving the secrecy of the ballot.
If voters aren't ensured privacy, they may not vote. Which, of course, is the entire point. Because Republicans are a bunch of Democracy Killers.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Malice Is the Agenda — and Here's What It Looks Like

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, July 03, 2019
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[Content Note: Nativism; concentration camps.]

U.S. Border Patrol has insisted that the appalling conditions in which migrants and refugees are detained at the southern border "are necessary to stem the flow" of people seeking refuge in the United States. The Trump Regime asserts that their nativist malice is a "deterrent," which is abject dishonesty.

Desperate people are fleeing violence, climate change, unemployment, and/or hunger. Parents bringing their children on the terrifying, perilous journey to the U.S. are trying to save their children's lives. And their own. That Trump wants them to fucking die can't be a deterrent when death lies at the other end of their journey, too. Making torture and death possible outcomes of seeking asylum won't end asylum-seeking — it will just make it less safe.

The sadistic architects of the Trump Regime's immigration policy want it both ways: They claim they are harming migrants and refugees as an allegedly effective deterrent, while simultaneously asserting that they can't help but torture people in concentration camps because their numbers are overwhelming the U.S.'s resources.

So, not an effective deterrent then. But we aren't meant to scrutinize the inherent contradiction in their bullshit justifications for their institutional abuse, nor are we meant to talk about how the detentions are unnecessary, as people could (and should be) released with a notice to return for a later court date, nor are we meant to talk about anything else that exposes the Trump Regime's deadly cruelty for the rank fascism that it is.

But let's talk about it, anyway. Let's talk about it with anyone and everyone who will listen, because our silence will be deadly for increasing numbers of people detained in these hells.

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released its final report on overcrowding at several border facilities in the Rio Grande Valley, and it included in the report photographs that reveal the extent of the horror.

image of people crammed tightly into a large fenced cage

This is but one of the images. There are more. Some of them show people lying in cages or rooms packed in so tightly that there is no room to walk. Others show people stuffed into tiny rooms at double the capacity, so that none of them can sit or lie down. They are all forced to stand, packed in like sardines.

men packed into a tiny room so tightly that it's standing-room-only peer out of a window, their faces blurred for privacy

At BuzzFeed, Hamed Aleaziz notes of the above photo that "inspectors indicated that 82 men were held in a cell with a maximum capacity of 41."

This is horrific.

You know what to do: MAKE NOISE. Make it any way you can. Just don't be silent. Please.

RESIST.

Open Wide...
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Trump Administration to Open Mass Detention Facility for Migrant Children in Texas

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Friday, June 07, 2019
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[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse; carcerality.]

Days after the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) decided to stop funding education, recreation, and legal services for migrant children in their custody, the ORR has confirmed plans to open a new mass detention facility to hold migrant children in Texas and is "considering detaining hundreds more youths on three military bases around the country, adding up to 3,000 new beds."

Garance Burke at the AP reports:

The new emergency facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, will hold as many as 1,600 teens in a complex that once housed oil field workers on government-leased land near the border, said Mark Weber, a spokesman for Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The agency is also weighing using Army and Air Force bases in Georgia, Montana, and Oklahoma to house an additional 1,400 kids in the coming weeks, amid the influx of children traveling to the U.S. alone. Most of the children crossed the border without their parents, escaping violence and corruption in Central America, and are held in government custody while authorities determine if they can be released to relatives or family friends.

All the new facilities will be considered temporary emergency shelters, so they won't be subject to state child welfare licensing requirements, Weber said.

..."It is our legal requirement to take care of these children so that they are not in Border Patrol facilities," Weber said. "They will have the services that ORR always provides, which is food, shelter, and water."
So, to be very clear: The ORR will be detaining children on a mass scale; will not be subject to child welfare licensing guidelines; will provide the detained children with no education, recreational services, or legal aid; and will give them nothing but food, shelter, and water.

Healthcare is not even mentioned. The ORR is required by federal law to provide healthcare to people in their custody, but the Flores settlement stipulates that the government is required to provide education and recreational activities to migrant children in its custody, among other things, and release them from custody within 20 days, and the Trump administration has decided to ignore that law.

Further, there is an emergent pattern of simply releasing compromised people from custody before they die, to skirt reporting mandates.

So we cannot trust that even emergency healthcare will be provided to the children who are being kept in mass detention facilities.

Understand: The Trump administration is breaking the law by declaring these "temporary emergency shelters" and saying they are not subject to either child welfare licensing guidelines or the provisions of the Flores settlement.

They are ignoring established federal law in order to detain children in prison camps en masse.

U.S. residents: Find your representative here. Find your senators here.

MAKE YOUR CALLS.

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 852

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, May 21, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Leslie Jones Has Your Back and Trump Is Terrifying Again at Another Rally and Primarily Speaking.

Here are some more things in the news today...

In GOOD resistance news, there are hundreds of events around the country today protesting the abortion bans being passed in state legislatures.


It's enraging and scary and horrendous in every way that such protests have been necessitated by Republicans' contempt for women's et. al. autonomy, agency, and freedom, and it is infuriating that the nationwide protests will not be frontpage news in most places, but we should all feel very happy about the strength and scope of the protests. If you can't get out there and protest yourself today, you can follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #StopTheBans.

* * *


John Wagner, Mike DeBonis, and Rachael Bade at the Washington Post: McGahn Fails to Show at Judiciary Hearing, Amping Up Anger Among House Democrats.
Former White House counsel Donald McGahn was a no-show Tuesday at a House committee hearing, infuriating Democrats who are ramping up calls to start impeachment proceedings against [Donald] Trump despite continued resistance from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

During an opening statement, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) vowed that his panel would eventually hear McGahn's testimony about alleged obstruction of justice by Trump "even if we have to go to court to secure it."

"We will not allow the president to block congressional subpoenas, putting himself and his allies above the law," Nadler said. "We will not allow the president to stop this investigation, and nothing in these unjustified and unjustifiable legal attacks will stop us from pressing forward with our work on behalf of the American people. We will hold this president accountable, one way or the other."
But HOW? The courts? Because, last I checked, the courts were currently being stacked by the Republican Party as fast as Mitch McConnell can say "I'm a symphony of repugnance played by demons on broken instruments."

Don't get me wrong — I'm glad that Nadler is at least articulating how serious McGahn's failure to appear is. I just have no idea how the fuck he's going to actually deliver meaningful consequences, especially as long as Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to be an intransigent shithead about starting impeachment hearings.

And, because some Democrats are still patriots, of course it's starting to cause a rift in the caucus.

Heather Caygle, John Bresnahan, and Sarah Ferris at Politico: Pelosi Clashes with Fellow Dems in Closed-Door Debate on Impeachment. "Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Joe Neguse of Colorado — all members of Democratic leadership — pushed to begin impeachment proceedings during a leadership meeting in Pelosi's office [on Monday], said the sources. Pelosi and Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and Cheri Bustos of Illinois — some of her key allies — rejected their calls, saying Democrats' message is being drowned out by the fight over possibly impeaching Trump."

At this point, the Democrats' #1 message needs to be: WE ARE FOR OUR DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND WE ARE AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM. Impeachment hearings are right the fuck in line with that message.

On Twitter, my pal Nadine van der Velde has started a thread compiling all the Democratic lawmakers who support impeachment.

Meanwhile, this shitwheel needs to be impeached, too... Kate Riga at TPM: Barr Insists That He's Protecting the Presidency, Not Just Trump.
Attorney General William Barr is insisting that he signed on to be [Donald] Trump's attack dog to protect the institution of the presidency — not just the man currently holding the title.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Barr is resistant to criticism that he has consistently acted more like Trump's personal attorney than the attorney general.

"I felt the rules were being changed to hurt Trump, and I thought it was damaging for the presidency over the long haul," Barr said of the investigations and lawsuits Trump fielded during his first two years. "At every grave juncture the presidency has done what it is supposed to do, which is to provide leadership and direction. If you destroy the presidency and make it an errand boy for Congress, we're going to be a much weaker and more divided nation."
That's just the Attorney General of the United States publicly stating he doesn't understand, or doesn't care about, or both, the Separation of Powers.

Jack Holmes at Esquire: Trump Suggested His Pet Attorney General May Prosecute His Enemies for 'Treason'. "There is no longer any need to imagine what American Authoritarianism might look like. It is here. The president is a would-be autocrat. He will annihilate our constitutional republic via one thousand cuts if he is allowed to continue wielding the immense power we have so inexplicably given him. He has broken the law for much of his adult life and gotten away with it because nobody ever looked behind his golden curtain. Now he's broken the law while occupying the most heavily scrutinized office in the history of the world, and the only way to once again escape accountability for what he's done is to destroy any institution or mechanism of democracy that would allow the public to hold him accountable." A must-read piece.

* * *


Curious minds would certainly like to know why a sitting U.S. president would need to borrow millions of dollars. Trump can't even say it was for his business, as it's ostensibly in a trust over which he has no control. So why did he need a personal loan of that size at this time, exactly? Where is that money and what is it doing?

We're going to have a tough time, to put it mildly, finding out the answers to those questions.

Olivia Messer at the Daily Beast: Trump Appeals Decision That Gives His Personal Financial Records to Congress. "Trump on Tuesday morning filed an appeal of a federal judge's ruling a day earlier that his accounting firm must hand over his financial records to Congress. In a 41-page ruling on Monday, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the firm, Mazars USA, to comply with a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. 'It is simply not fathomable,' the judge wrote, 'that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a president for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct — past or present — even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry.' Trump lawyer William Consovoy has argued the committee has no legitimate legislative reason to ask for the records."

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: We Don't Know What Trump's Tax Returns Are Hiding, but the Hints Are Troubling. "We don't know what Trump is working so hard to hide, but we have a lot of hints. They're all troubling. Which is precisely why it's so important that Congress — as part of its constitutionally mandated oversight duties — conduct a forensic audit of Trump's worldwide financial dealings. That means learning whom he's been getting money from, whom he owes money to, and what individuals or entities could be using financial influence to exert pressure over policy."

* * *

[Content Note: Nativism. Covers whole section.]

I guess we'll be going to war with Mexico if the whole Iran boondoggle doesn't work out...


[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Kaitlan Collins at CNN: Trump Is Expected to Tap Ken Cuccinelli for Top DHS Role on Immigration. "Ken Cuccinelli is expected to take a top job at the Department of Homeland Security, but he is not likely to become the new 'immigration czar,' a senior administration official said. What exactly his role will be is still being hashed out, but officials wanted someone with the same political mindset as [Donald] Trump on immigration policy in the department."

He's more likely, in other words, to have a less official role, which means less official oversight.

And lest anyone has managed to forget what Trump's "mindset on immigration policy" is, here is a perfect and terrible reminder in the news today...

[CN: Trans hatred; disablism; self-harm] Hannah Rappleye, Andrew W. Lehren, Spencer Woodman, and Vanessa Swales at NBC News: Thousands of Immigrants Suffer in Solitary Confinement in U.S. Detention Centers.
[A trove of government documents] shed new light on the widespread use of solitary confinement for immigrant detainees in ICE custody under both the Obama and Trump administrations.

The newly obtained documents paint a disturbing portrait of a system where detainees are sometimes forced into extended periods of isolation for reasons that have nothing to do with violating any rules.

Disabled immigrants in need of a wheelchair or cane. Those who identify as gay. Those who report abuse from guards or other detainees.

Only half of the cases involved punishment for rule violations. The other half were unrelated to disciplinary concerns — they involve [people with mental illness], [disabled people], or others who were sent to solitary largely for what ICE described as safety reasons.

A Guatemalan man spent two months in solitary confinement at a county jail in Maryland. The reason: He had a prosthetic leg.

A mentally ill Ukrainian man was put in isolation for 15 days at a detention facility in Arizona. His offense: Putting half a green pepper in one of his socks.

In nearly a third of the cases, segregated detainees were determined by ICE to have a mental illness, a population especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of isolation.

"We have created and continue to support a system that involves widespread abuse of human beings," said Ellen Gallagher, a policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security.
What are we even doing. Sob.

* * *

And finally... Jerry Iannelli at the Miami New Times: Miami Candidate's Campaign Workers Might Have Tampered with Absentee Ballots. "An explosive, 150-page WhatsApp chat leaked to Miami New Times appears to show members of Miami-Dade County Commission District 5 candidate Alex Diaz de la Portilla's 2018 campaign team discussing destroying or stealing absentee ballots from voters who selected one of Diaz de la Portilla's opponents, Zoraida Barreiro. In one message, a campaign worker posted an image of a ballot and joked it had been stolen. In another text, someone took a photo of a ballot and wrote, 'Byebye.' In a third message, someone instructed a campaign worker to 'tear up the ballot good.' Diaz de la Portilla did not initially respond to messages from New Times this afternoon, including two left on his personal cell phone. He is currently running for City of Miami Commission."

I don't guess I even need to tell you, but Diaz de la Portilla is a Republican.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 796

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, March 26, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Trump Wants His Revenge and Trump Justice Department Moves to Strike Down ACA and Pentagon Informs Congress $1B Authorized to Start Building Trump's Border Wall; Democrats Object and Primarily Speaking.

Here are some more things in the news today...

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out a graphic made by the New York Post that identified members of the media who have the unmitigated temerity to believe that Donald Trump colluded with Russia and called them "angry and hysterical [Donald Trump] haters." This on the same day that she casually reminded everyone that the punishment for treason is death.


[Content Note: War on agency] Julian Borger at the Guardian: Trump Expands Global Gag Rule That Blocks U.S. Aid for Abortion Groups.
The Trump administration has expanded its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule, and has also cut funding to the Organisation of American States for that reason.

The new policy was announced on Tuesday by secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who declared: "This is decent. This is right. I am proud to serve in an administration that protects the least among us."

The Trump administration has already expanded the reach of the funding ban which dates back to the Reagan administration, to apply to all US healthcare assistance, totalling about $6bn.

The extension of the policy announced by Pompeo would not only cut funding to foreign non governmental organisations directly involved in abortions or abortion rights advocacy, but also those who fund or support other groups which provide or discuss abortion.
RAGE SEETHE BOIL. I hate this administration so fucking much.


[CN: Reproductive coercion] Katelyn Burns at Rewire.News: Trump Officials Attend Hungarian Conference to Promote Women Having More Babies. "Trump administration officials and prominent anti-choice activists appeared at a conference hosted by the Hungarian Embassy earlier this month designed to promote government policies to encourage women to have more babies. The 'Make Families Great Again' conference, which was held at the Library of Congress on March 14, promoted far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's seven-point 'Family Protection Action Plan.' The plan is 'designed to promote marriage and families and spawn a baby boom' through financial incentives... White House special assistant Katy Talento, White House Strategic Communications Director Mercedes Schlapp, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Senior Advisor Valerie Huber spoke at the event."

* * *

[CN: War; death] D. Parvaz at ThinkProgress: U.S. Airstrikes Kill 10 Children in Afghanistan as Trump Envoy Negotiates Taliban 'Peace' Deal.
As the Trump administration continues its 'peace talks' with the Taliban — with the latest round taking place earlier this month in Qatar — there's been an uptick in fighting between U.S. forces and our would-be partners, with the latest U.S. airstrikes killing ten children and three adult civilians, and wounding three other adults.

On Monday, the United Nations said that the children were all part of the same extended family, and were killed on Saturday as U.S. and Afghan forces fought Taliban fighters for nearly 30 hours in the northern province of Kunduz.

...A Taliban stronghold, U.S. airstrikes in the province have sent families fleeing the area, adding to the mass internal displacement crisis facing the country.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted that the children and their family had already been displaced from another area, fleeing fighting elsewhere in the country.
Goddammit. Sob.

[CN: Indefinite detention] Charlie Savage at the New York Times: Testing Novel Power, Trump Administration Detains Palestinian After Sentence Ends. "Swept up by authorities after the Sept. 11 attacks, Adham Hassoun, a Palestinian computer programmer who lived in Florida, served 15 years in prison for sending support to Islamist militants abroad. His sentence completed, he then waited in immigration detention more than a year and a half while the government fruitlessly hunted for a place to deport him. Finally, a judge ordered him temporarily released in the United States. But instead, the Trump administration, citing a little-used immigration regulation issued after 9/11, notified Mr. Hassoun last month that he was being declared a security risk and would be kept locked up indefinitely."

Carol E. Lee and Courtney Kube at NBC News: Mike Pence Talked Dan Coats out of Quitting the Trump Administration. "The country's intelligence chief was on the verge of resigning at the end of last year over his frustrations with [Donald] Trump but was talked out of it by his closest ally in the administration, Vice President Mike Pence, according to current and former senior administration officials. ...Similarly, whenever Trump is souring on the DNI he privately calls 'Mister Rogers' — because he won't implement a directive or has left the impression he thinks the president is irrational — Pence has encouraged Trump to stick with Coats, according to the current and former officials." What a giant collection of assholes.

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: Stephen Moore Could Inflict More Long-Term Damage Than Any of Trump's Other Nominations. "[Donald] Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump's pick to join the Federal Reserve Board. Moore's many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused. ...It's not only his forecasts for the future that have proved chronically incorrect; it's his characterizations of past and present, too." He sounds great.

Brian Kahn at Earther: The Republicans' Upcoming "Green Real Deal" Sounds Like Green Real Bullshit. "Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican whose biggest environmental claim to fame is introducing a bill to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, is reportedly planning to put forth the (I kid you not) 'Green Real Deal.' Politico scored a leaked copy of the resolution, which it says has been circulating among energy lobbyists and it could be officially introduced in the 'coming days.' I am sorry to report the Green Real Deal is not, in fact, the real deal. The five-page draft resolution — which could change when or even if it gets introduced in the House — is light on policy specifics, timelines, and goals." Huh!

[CN: Anti-Semitism] Isaac Stanley-Becker at the Washington Post: GOP Congressman Quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf to Slam Trump's Adversaries as Liars.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) took to the House floor on Monday to portray [Donald] Trump's detractors as Nazis but ended up slurring them using an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory drawn verbatim from Adolf Hitler's writings.

It's 2019, and the Führer's magnum opus, Mein Kampf, has become a playbook for political combat in Congress, at the very moment that Trump is calling the Democrats "anti-Jewish."

Brooks, a five-term Republican, accused Democrats and members of the media of propagating a "big lie" about collusion. The expression was coined by Hitler to describe how Jews used their "unqualified capacity for falsehood" to blame a top German military commander for the country's losses in World War I. A lie could be so big, Hitler claimed, that it perversely defied disbelief.

It was unclear if Brooks grasped that by leveling charges of the "big lie," he had inverted his own analogy, making Democrats the equivalent of interwar German and Austrian Jews. He set out to compare the other side to fascists, but he was the one employing a fascist smear — one that, ironically, came to define Nazi propaganda.
It was no coincidence. Trust that Mo Brooks knew exactly what the fuck he was saying.

[CN: Gun violence; abuse] Staff at the Daily Beast: NRA Instructed Far-Right Group to 'Shame' Anti-Gun Activists After Massacres. Representatives of Australia's One Nation party reportedly sought advice from the U.S. gun lobbyist on how to go about loosening their country's very strict gun laws. ...The best method to handle media inquiries in the wake of a massacre was to 'say nothing,' according to Catherine Mortensen, an NRA media liaison officer, on the video [secretly recorded by Al Jazeera]. But if the media inquiries about gun control persist, another NRA comms official, Lars Dalseide, said to 'shame them to the whole idea,' adding: 'If your policy isn't good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward? How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?'" Scum.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 781

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, March 11, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by Fannie: Stop Trying to Make "Partisan Prejudice" Happen. And by me: Primarily Speaking and Not-Breaking News: Tucker Carlson Is a Dirtbag.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Damian Paletta, Erica Werner, and Jeff Stein at the Washington Post: Trump Proposes $4.7 Trillion Budget with Domestic Cuts, $8.6 Billion in New Funding for Border Wall.
[Donald] Trump is releasing a $4.7 trillion budget plan Monday that stands as a sharp challenge to Congress and the Democrats trying to unseat him, the first act in a multi-front struggle that could consume Washington for the next 18 months.

The budget proposal dramatically raises the possibility of another government shutdown in October, and Trump used to the budget to notify Congress he is seeking an additional $8.6 billion to build sections of a wall along the U. S.-Mexico border.

...Trump's "Budget for a Better America" also includes dozens of spending cuts and policy overhauls that frame the early stages of the debate for the 2020 election. For example, Trump for the first time calls for cutting $845 billion from Medicare, the popular health care program for the elderly that in the past he had largely said he would protect.

...Other agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department, Transportation Department, and Interior Department, would see their budgets severely reduced.

...More broadly, Trump's budget would impose mandatory work-requirements for millions of people who receive welfare assistance while dramatically increasing the defense budget to $750 billion next year, a 5 percent increase from 2019.
House Budget Chair John Yarmuth said: "With severe cuts to essential programs and services that would leave our nation less safe and secure, the Trump budget is as dangerous as it is predictable. It has no chance in the House." GOOD.

Staff at American Oversight: Sessions Letter Shows Department of Justice Acted on Trump's Authoritarian Demand to Investigate Clinton.
American Oversight has uncovered the signed directive from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructing a federal prosecutor to carry out [Donald] Trump's authoritarian demand to investigate Hillary Clinton.

The document, obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by American Oversight, is a formal, November 2017 letter from Sessions to U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber and has never before been released to the public. In a sworn declaration filed in November 2018 in response to American Oversight's lawsuit, the Justice Department had insisted that no written directive existed and that all guidance to Huber had been delivered verbally.

Trump has repeatedly tweeted demands for DOJ to investigate Clinton. Throughout the 2016 presidential general election campaign and at multiple rallies after taking office, Trump and his supporters have used the rallying cry "Lock her up" to call for the prosecution of Clinton.

"'Lock her up' was wrong at campaign rallies, and it's even worse coming from the Department of Justice," said Austin Evers, American Oversight executive director. "Even after this long, it's still deeply shocking to see the black-and-white proof that Jeff Sessions caved to [Donald] Trump's worst authoritarian impulses and ordered a wide-ranging investigation of his political opponents based on demands from Congress instead of the facts and the law."
Fucking hell. There is much more at the link.


[Content Note: War; death] Eric Schmitt and Charlie Savage at the New York Times: Trump Administration Steps Up Air War in Somalia.
The American military has escalated a battle against the Shabab, an extremist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, in Somalia...

During January and February, the United States Africa Command reported killing 225 people in 24 strikes in Somalia. Double-digit death tolls are becoming routine, including a bloody five-day stretch in late February in which the military disclosed that it had killed 35, 20 and 26 people in three separate attacks.

Africa Command maintains that its death toll includes only Shabab militants, even though the extremist group claims regularly that civilians are also killed. The Times could not independently verify the number of civilians killed. The rise in airstrikes has also exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in the country, according to United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations working in the region, as civilians are displaced by conflict and extreme weather.

"People need to pay attention to the fact that there is this massive war going on," said Brittany Brown, who worked on Somalia policy at the National Security Council in the Obama and Trump administrations and is now the chief of staff of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization focused on deadly conflicts.

The war in Somalia appears to be "on autopilot," she added, and one that is drawing the United States significantly deeper into an armed conflict without much public debate.
[CN: Anti-Semitism] Zack Ford at ThinkProgress: Trump Claims Democrats Hate Jewish People and Israel Loves Him. "'The Democrats hate Jewish people,' [Donald] Trump reportedly told Republican National Committee donors on Friday night at Mar-a-Lago. ...Trump reportedly said he couldn't understand how any Jewish person could vote for a Democrat. He also bragged about his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a decision that pleased U.S. conservatives and Israel's Likud party alike, but upended decades of diplomatic policy and sparked international disapproval. If he were to run in an election for prime minister of Israel, he told the crowd, he'd be at 98 percent in the polls."

Tony Leys at the Des Moines Register: Iowa Poll: Registered Republicans Like Trump But 40 Percent Want a GOP Challenger. "Most registered Republicans think [Donald] Trump is doing a good job, but they are split over whether another GOP candidate should challenge him for their party's nomination in 2020, a new Iowa Poll shows. The Iowa Poll, sponsored by the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom, also finds 90 percent of registered Republicans want Trump to run a positive re-election campaign, focusing on the good things he's done for the country. Just 4 percent want him to focus on attacking opponents — one of the president's trademarks." LOL.

(If you're wondering whether I deliberately juxtaposed Trump bragging that he'd have a 98 percent approval rating if he ran for prime minister of Israel while 40 percent of his own base at home want him primaried, the answer is YES!)

[CN: Nativism; abuse; descriptions of sexual assault] Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: In Search of Safety: An Investigation of Abuse at an Immigration Facility. "In the United States, there are two primary apparatuses intended to protect detained immigrants from sexual abuse: the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a series of procedures and policies aimed at the elimination of sexual assault of prisoners, and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), which provides 'independent oversight' of DHS agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But immigrants in federal custody and their advocates see these processes as deeply flawed and loophole-ridden. ...What we learned through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request...only left us with more questions about the efficacy of PREA and DHS OIG and about the safety of the nearly 50,000 immigrants detained by ICE on any given day."

[CN: Violence against women; trans hatred] Jourdan Bennett-Begaye at Indian Country Today: Congress Begins Debating Violence Against Women Act — Again. "Congress held a hearing Thursday to introduce a new version of the Violence Against Women Act. Now the question is: What will it take for that measure to become law? Again. One witness said Republicans 'seemed fixated' on gender identity making it that much more difficult and 'hard to tell' if they support the new proposal. 'Today they seemed fixated on attacking trans women. That seemed to be the primary purpose today,' said hearing witness Sarah Deer, Muscogee (Creek) Nation. 'I expected to get more poignant questions today about tribal jurisdiction from the Republicans but I didn't get any. So it seems like there was some sort of distraction going on.'"

[CN: Trans hatred] Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: 2020 Democrats Slam Trump for Pressing Ahead with Transgender Military Ban.
The Trump administration appears poised to implement a ban on transgender service members in the U.S. military, following a ruling from a federal court judge giving it the green light.

...Lead attorney for the transgender service members in the Maryland case, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer Joshua Block, said the Thursday ruling does "concrete, severe harm."

"While not surprising, this decision is deeply disappointing for our clients and for transgender service members across the nation," he said.

"Each and every claim made by [Donald] Trump to justify this ban can be easily debunked by the conclusions drawn from the Department of Defense's own review process. We will continue to fight against this discriminatory policy and the Trump administration's attacks on transgender people. Our clients are brave men and women who should be able to continue serving their country ably and honorably without being discriminated against by their own commander in chief."

Meanwhile, the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders voiced their support for the nation's transgender community on Twitter throughout the weekend.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) described transgender service members "heroes" and banning them from their service amounts to a "national security threat."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who brought a transgender service member as her guest to the State of the Union this year, called the policy "wrong, hateful, unnecessary, and an insult to our troops."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called the policy unconstitutional.

And Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) meanwhile, highlighted the uncertainty that many transgender members of the military feel, with multiple ongoing lawsuits and an administration in the White House determined on undermining their rights.
Goddammit I hate this administration so fucking much.

And finally... Andy Towle at Towleroad: Trump Claims He Meant to Call Apple CEO 'Tim Apple' as 'an Easy Way to Save Time and Words'. "Apparently Trump is very embarrassed that the media called him out on his Tim Cook brain fart because he can't stop lying about it. Trump attacked the 'fake news' media on Monday for spreading another 'bad Trump story,' tweeting that he meant to say 'Tim Apple' when referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook at a meeting of tech leaders at the White House. ...Interestingly, that's not the story he told his donors on Friday night [when he claimed] 'that he actually said 'Tim Cook Apple' really fast, and the 'Cook' part of the sentence was soft. But all you heard from the 'fake news,' he said, was 'Tim Apple.''" JFC.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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We Resist: Day 768

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, February 26, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Democrats Prepare to Undo Trump's Emergency Order and Primarily Speaking and Michael Cohen Testifies to Congress This Week.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Brendan Morrow at the Week: House Committee Thinks It Has Evidence Trump Asked Whitaker to Put an Ally in Charge of Cohen Probe.
The House Judiciary Committee believes it has evidence that [Donald] Trump asked then-Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to put an ally in charge of an investigation into his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, The Wall Street Journal reports.

This follows a report from The New York Times that Trump made this request of Whitaker, asking him whether he could get attorney Geoffrey Berman to head the Southern District of New York's ongoing investigation, even though Berman is a Trump supporter who donated to his campaign and used to work with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Berman had also previously recused himself from the probe, which has looked into Trump's inaugural committee and has led to charges against Cohen, who implicated Trump in a crime.

The Judiciary Committee is also reportedly examining whether Whitaker may have committed perjury when he told Congress, "At no time has the White House asked for nor have I provided any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation." The Washington Post's Aaron Blake points out that Whitaker also said no one from the White House contacted him to express "dissatisfaction" with the SDNY probe.
Dirty rotten lying liars. Fucking hell.

Zoe Tillman at BuzzFeed: Paul Manafort's Lawyers Argue for a Lighter Sentence, Saying He's the Victim of "Public Vilification". "Paul Manafort's lawyers made the case for leniency Monday night, arguing in a new sentencing memo that Manafort had been unfairly 'vilified' by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and should get far less than the 10 years in prison he faces in one of his criminal cases. Manafort's lawyers did not advocate for a specific prison term in his DC case, asking that he receive a sentence 'substantially below' the maximum penalty. However, in highlighting the toll that pretrial incarceration had taken on Manafort's physical, emotional, and mental health, they noted that courts 'routinely' allow defendants 'who suffer from serious medical conditions' to serve no prison time at all."

What a novel argument! Manafort is hated because of his traitorous crimes and suffers ill health from having to face consequences for them, so he shouldn't have to go to prison. Okay, lol. "Your Honor, my client doesn't enjoy life as much as he did before he was caught!" Case closed.


* * *

[Content Note: Nativism; carcerality; loss of wanted pregnancy] Scott Bixby at the Daily Beast: Migrant Woman's Pregnancy Ends in Stillbirth, in ICE Detention.
A 24-year-old Honduran woman held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Texas immigrant detention facility went into premature labor on Friday, delivering a stillborn baby boy four days after she was apprehended by Border Patrol agents, the agency said on Monday.

The woman, who was not named in the press release outlining the circumstances around the stillbirth, remains in ICE custody.

In a statement, ICE explained that the incident was not revealed to the public for three days because, for investigative and reporting purposes, "a stillbirth is not considered an in-custody death."
So, a fetus is considered a person when ICE wants to deny detained pregnant migrants access to abortion, but not when a fetus is stillborn. What a very fascinating calculation that tries to have it both ways, to pregnant migrants' detriment in either case.
Under ICE policy, pregnant women in their third trimester — which begins in the 27th week of pregnancy — are not supposed to be detained, "absent extraordinary circumstances."

ICE policy also dictates that Congress, non-governmental organizations, and the media be notified of detainee deaths within two business days.
But she was detained despite policy, and the death was not reported within two days, because of the very convenient refusal to classify a stillbirth as "an in-custody death."

This is horrific. The cruelty is breathtaking. Malice is, clearly and indisputably, the agenda.

* * *

David Nakamura and John Hudson at the Washington Post: In Hanoi, Kim Jong Un and a Culture Clash with the White House Press Corps. "As Kim's motorcade was barreling into Hanoi for the final leg of his nearly 70-hour journey from Pyongyang — which included a 65-hour train ride through China — authorities were scrambling behind the scenes to avert an all-out culture clash over the boundaries of free speech for a leader accustomed to an obedient state-controlled media. Kim was staying at the Melia hotel tower in the heart of the city, but the hotel also happened to have been booked by the White House as the filing center for the traveling press corps to cover the summit. Not long before Kim arrived, a notice was distributed to the press corps that the filing center would be moved to a separate site for the international press corps at the Cultural Friendship Palace." JFC. And that's the very least of the problems with this spectacle.

Joe Parkin Daniels at the Guardian: Univision's Jorge Ramos Detained in Venezuela After Maduro Interview, Network Says. "The Mexican-born journalist was interviewing Venezuela's embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, when he and his crew were detained after asking a question the combative Maduro did not approve of, according to a tweet by the network's U.S. president, Daniel Coronell. The team's equipment had also been confiscated, Coronell said. Coronell later said Ramos and his team had been released and he had spoken to the journalist. The equipment as well as the material that upset Maduro were confiscated. Reuters reported that Venezuela was going to deport the group. Ramos told Univision that the offending line of questioning came when he showed Maduro images taken on Ramos's phone of Venezuelans eating out of the trash to prove people were living a humanitarian crisis."


Peter Walker and Heather Stewart at the Guardian: MPs Offered Vote on No-Deal Brexit and Possible Delay. "Theresa May has promised MPs the chance to reject a no-deal Brexit and possibly delay the departure date, while repeatedly declining to say whether or not she and the government would support such moves. In a significant first concession that Brexit could take place after 29 March, following months of insistence the deadline could not be shifted, May sought to appease restive Conservative backbenchers, but prompted concern from pro-Brexit MPs. In a sign of the continued uncertainty, the cross-party backers of a plan to be debated by MPs on Wednesday intended to prevent no deal said they would still table the amendment, pending further assurances from ministers." What a clusterfuck.

* * *

In good resistance news... [CN: LGBTQ hatred] Andy Towle at Towleroad: Daughter's Public Shaming Prompts Kansas GOP Lawmaker to Withdraw Support from Vile Anti-LGBTQ Bill.
Earlier this month we reported that Kansas GOP state Representatives Randy Garber, Owen Donohoe, David French, Cheryl Helmer, Ron Highland, Steve Huebert, and Bill Rhiley introduced a set of vile and hateful legislation.

The legislation seeks to ban same-sex marriage, legally deny the existence of transgender people, allow harmful and debunked gay conversion therapy, and much more. One of the bills describes sexual orientation as a "mythology," but that's just where the hate begins.

Highland this week withdrew his support from the bill after his daughter publicly shamed him in an open letter on Facebook.

Wrote Christel Highland on Facebook: "This has been a strange and difficult week indeed. My name is Christel Highland, and my Father, Representative Ron Highland of Wamego, KS was a co-sponsor of the legislation, bill HB2320, that will likely never make it to Governor Laura Kelly's desk for veto. As a proud member of Kansas City's LGBTQ+ community, a Mother, a Partner to the love of my life, an Artist active in my creative community, and a hard-working Businessperson, I am personally offended by the egregious nature of Kansas Representatives' proposed legislation, most notably, my father's."

...NBC News reported: "Following his daughter's public Facebook post about the controversial marriage bill, Ron Highland told local news outlets that he made a 'mistake.'"
Whoa. I regret that Christel Highland was obliged to write that letter, but what a remarkable act writing it was. You're damn right you made a mistake, Ron Highland. A BIG ONE.

[CN: Contagious disease] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: What the Federal Government Can Actually Do About Anti-Vaxxers. "After virtually eliminating the extremely contagious virus in the United States at the turn of the century, measles are back thanks to anti-vaccination misinformation. More than 150 people, mostly children, in 10 states, have been infected by measles so far in 2019. These outbreaks are primarily linked to travelers from other countries, like the United Kingdom, who brought the measles into communities with low vaccination rates. The public health crisis is largely seen as a policy failure: lawmakers have made it too easy for parents to opt out of getting their kids vaccinated." No shit.

And finally: At Earther, Yessenia Funes has two articles about the very different ways two nations are addressing climate change as we barrel down the road to 2050.

The Marshall Islands Plans to Raise Its Land to Survive Rising Sea Levels: "The Republic of the Marshall Islands isn't going to allow the rising seas to wipe it off the map. Instead, the islands will attempt to rise above. Literally. President Hilda Heine announced a plan to elevate the country's islands in an interview with the Marshall Islands Journal Friday, reports RNZ Pacific. Sea level rise and erosion are set to make most island atolls uninhabitable by 2050, and small island nations have become increasingly vocal about this existential threat. They're also thinking about radical ways to adapt."

Costa Rica Lays Out Plan to Zero Out Carbon Emissions by 2050: "Time to pack my bags and move to Costa Rica. The tiny Central American country is setting an example with a plan to fully decarbonize by 2050. President Carlos Alvarado officially signed the decree to decarbonize by mid-century on Sunday. On Monday, he followed it up by announcing that the country would extend its moratorium on oil exploration to 2050, too. The government has been extending this since moratorium 2002, so hopefully, it'll continue the tradition after 2050 as well. In short? Costa Rica is doing what we all need to be doing."

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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We Resist: Day 726

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, January 15, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: For the Record and Bill Barr Confirmation Hearing Today and We Are Being Gaslighted About the Gaslighter-in-Chief. And ICYMI late yesterday by Fannie: Keep Your Trickle-Down White Male Socialist Revolution.

Here are some more things in the news today...

In case you're wondering how the Bill Barr confirmation hearing is going, this about sums it up:


[Content Note: HIV/AIDS stigma] In case you haven't heard, Barr has an utterly appalling record on HIV/AIDS dating back to the Reagan administration, including, as noted by staff at Towleroad, running "HIV prison camps" at Guantanamo Bay. Sounds like he and Mike Pence are going to get on like gangbusters.

* * *

Steve Liesman at CNBC: Trump Administration Doubles Estimate of Shutdown Cost to Economy from Original Forecast, Per Source. "The Trump administration now estimates that the cost of the government shutdown will be twice as steep as originally forecast. The original estimate that the partial shutdown would subtract 0.1 percentage point from growth every two weeks has now been doubled to a 0.1 percentage point subtraction every week, according to an official who asked not to be named. The administration had initially counted just the impact from the 800,000 federal workers not receiving their paychecks. But they now believe the impact doubles, due to greater losses from private contractors also out of work and other government spending and functions that won’t occur."


Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng, Betsy Woodruff, and Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast: Mueller Probes an Event with Nunes, Flynn, and Foreign Officials at Trump's D.C. Hotel. "The Special Counsel's Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations. The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. at 8.30 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2017 — two days before [Trump's] inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources. The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent funds and if donors tried to buy influence in the White House."

Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, and Shimon Prokupecz at CNN: Trump's Legal Team Rebuffed Request for Mueller Interview in Recent Weeks.
Donald Trump's legal team rebuffed special counsel Robert Mueller's request in recent weeks for an in-person session with Trump to ask follow-up questions.

The request was made after Trump's team submitted written answers to a limited number of questions from Mueller's team focusing on before Trump was in office.

As Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russians winds down, an interview with the President remains an outstanding issue even as Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said an interview would happen "over my dead body." One source familiar with the matter summed it up by saying, "Mueller is not satisfied."

People familiar with the talks describe the two sides as at loggerheads, with no meaningful discussion about the issue in about five weeks.

And the Trump team appears to have hardened its position. It's told the Mueller team that prosecutors have no cause to seek follow-up questions in person after the President's team submitted written responses to questions before Thanksgiving.

In November, the President submitted written answers to questions submitted by Mueller's office that dealt largely with the allegations of Russian collusion and the time period before the inauguration.

The Trump team has all but closed the door to any further responses to Mueller, the sources say.
Guess it's time to send him a fucking subpoena then!

Olivia Gazis at CBS News: Adam Schiff Makes Specialty Hires for Reopened Russia Probe. "Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have wasted no time in beefing up the investigative staff dedicated to continuing the committee's work on its semi-dormant Russia probe, even as the committee's new membership is still taking shape. The new majority has made offers to half a dozen new staffers, CBS News has learned, and is still searching for six more. Among the latest hires are an expert in corruption and illicit finance and a former prosecutor. ...'There's a lot of work yet to be done on Russia,' a senior committee official told CBS News. 'What we're doing is we are creating a purpose-built team that will take the point on that.'" Get him.

* * *

[CN: Nativism] Tara Bahrampour at the Washington Post: Federal Judge Rules Against Trump Administration's Push for Citizenship Question on 2020 Census, Case Likely Headed to Supreme Court. "A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration's addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. In the first major ruling on the controversial question, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the administration to stop its plans to add the question to the survey 'without curing the legal defects' identified in his opinion. Plaintiffs hailed the decision. 'This ruling is a forceful rebuke of the Trump administration's attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities,' said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU, which was a plaintiff in the case. The Trump administration had tried several times to stop the case from going forward, including requests to the Supreme Court; the administration is likely to appeal Furman's decision in the high court."


Brian Stelter at CNN Business: John Kasich Signs with CNN as Senior Political Commentator. "John Kasich's time as Ohio governor just came to an end. And his time as a CNN commentator just began. On Tuesday morning CNN announced that Kasich is the newest addition to the network's stable of commentators. He will appear as a guest across an array of CNN programs. ...Kasich's move to CNN is notable because he is one of the most prominent critics of [Donald] Trump within the Republican Party. He has declined to rule out a 2020 primary bid against Trump." 1. He's not a prominent critic of Trump; he is a prominent critic of Trump's vulgarity. He has very few, if any, policy objections. 2. CNN is acknowledging that Kasich is essentially going to get a ton of free airtime ahead of a likely presidential run, and they're giving him the job, anyway. Disgusting.

* * *

[CN: Food insecurity; nativism] Rebecca Vallas at Rewire.News: Will Trump Starve SNAP Households to Get His Wall? "The nation's largest food assistance program, SNAP helps about 38 million people in 19 million households put food on the table each month. Nearly half are children. Facing criticism that funding for SNAP was set to run out at the end of January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it had cobbled together enough money to pay February benefits. But if the shutdown drags on past that, the Trump administration doesn't appear to have a long-term plan for keeping SNAP up and running. The agency had nothing to say about March in its announcement — and apparently SNAP benefits will end altogether if the shutdown drags on."

[CN: Carcerality; violence; sexual assault] Ella Fassler at ThinkProgress: 'This Isn't Rehabilitation': Alabama Inmates Speak Out Against State's Soaring Prison Homicide Rate. "Kennedy's case isn't unique in Alabama, where the prison homicide rate is the highest in the nation at more than 34 per 100,000 prisoners. The level of violence has skyrocketed over the past 10 years, as prisons in the state come under fire for 'horrendously inadequate' care that violate the U.S. constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. ...Derrick said he wakes up every morning fearing for his life. 'This isn't rehabilitation,' he told ThinkProgress. ...'They basically let prisoners kill each other.'"

[CN: Toxic masculinity] Kate Lyons and Matthew Weaver at the Guardian: Gillette #MeToo Ad on 'Toxic Masculinity' Cuts Deep with Men's Rights Activists. "Gillette is under fire from men's rights activists and rightwing publications for a new advertisement that engages with the #MeToo movement and plays on its 30-year tagline 'The Best a Man Can Get,' asking instead: 'Is this the best a man can get?' The advertisement features news clips of reporting on the #MeToo movement, as well as images showing sexism in films, in boardrooms, and of violence between boys, with a voiceover saying: 'Bullying, the MeToo movement against sexual harassment, toxic masculinity: Is this the best a man can get?' The film has generated heated debate." Where "heated debate" actually means "misogynist shitwheels proving the very point yet again."

screenshot of Leslie and Ben at a political rally in Parks and Recreation; closed captioning shows Leslie is saying, 'You're ridiculous and men's rights is nothing.'

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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We Resist: Day 700

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, December 20, 2018
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Putin Is Pleased with Trump's Syria Withdrawal and North Korea Has No Plans to Denuclearize (Of Course) and Trump's Acting and Nominated AG Both Criticized Mueller Probe.

Here are some more things in the news today...


Dan De Luce, Josh Lederman, and Courtney Kube at NBC News: Trump's Withdrawal from Syria Is Victory for Iran and Russia, Experts Say. "Although Russian and Iranian forces had already turned the tide of the civil war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the presence of U.S. troops has served as an obstacle to their ambitions and a source of leverage for Washington in any potential political settlement of the conflict. Just within the last week, senior U.S. officials had argued that the American military mission was needed to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS militants and to serve as a bulwark against Iran. But with Trump's move to pull out the U.S. troops, Russia and particularly Iran — which sent thousands of proxies and its own elite forces into Syria — stand to emerge as the dominant players."

Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet at the Washington Post: The Islamic State Remains a Deadly Insurgent Force, Analysts Say, Despite Trump's Claim It Has Been Defeated. "In some regions, the Islamist militants appear to be gaining ground, reconstituting themselves as a brutal insurgency bent on killing local leaders and police officers and terrorizing populations, officials and analysts say. ...For many security experts, the depiction of the Islamic State as 'defeated' — as [Donald] Trump declared in a Twitter post Wednesday — is not only inaccurate, but is also dangerously misleading. Despite its setbacks, the group maintains a formidable presence in Syria and Iraq, commanding cadres of fanatical, highly trained fighters believed to number in the thousands, including many who went into hiding after the fall of the group's self-declared caliphate."

Caitlin Oprysko at Politico: Trump Defends Surprise Syria Withdrawal Despite Withering GOP Criticism. "'Getting out of Syria was no surprise. I've been campaigning on it for years, and six months ago, when I very publicly wanted to do it, I agreed to stay longer,' Trump wrote in one tweet. 'Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there [sic] work. Time to come home & rebuild. #MAGA.' ...Although the president claimed Thursday that his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria should come as 'no surprise,' several of his administration's top national security officials appeared to be caught off-guard by the move. Congressional Republicans, including some close allies of the president, panned the notion that the Islamic State had been defeated." BUT WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT, THO? Presumably nothing. As usual.

Hopefully Senate Democrats will use whatever power they've got in their minority position to do whatever they can.


Over in the House, Nancy Pelosi is on it, and she isn't pulling any punches.


In other collusion news...


Great question.

* * *

[Content Note: Class warfare; food insecurity] Staff at the AP/Guardian: Trump Administration Puts Squeeze on Food Stamps Recipients. "The Trump administration is setting out to do what this year's farm bill did not: Tighten work requirements for millions of Americans who receive federal food assistance. The agriculture department on Thursday proposed a rule that would restrict the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps." This is classist, disablist trash that will leave millions of people hungry because they are simply unable to meet these bullshit work requirements. MALICE IS THE AGENDA. Nothing could make that more clear than this abominable cruelty.

[CN: War on agency] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: States Are Already Pre-Filing 'Fetal Heartbeat' Bans for the New Year.
Fetal heartbeat bills aim to outlaw abortion when a "heartbeat" is detected and, in recent days, it's the ban Republican state lawmakers have been coalescing around — a trend signaling the anti-abortion movement is ready for a complete ban if the Supreme Court is.

There was a rise in state legislatures considering fetal heartbeat bills in 2018, and it's certain to continue in the new year. The Ohio legislature just sent its heartbeat ban to the governor, who'll likely veto it; however, the incoming governor promised he'd sign such a ban into law when he takes office next year. Iowa was the first state in 2018 to effectively ban abortions up to six weeks, considered to be "the most restrictive" ban nationwide, and now tied up in court. State lawmakers elsewhere are already planning to introduce similar measures in 2019, with pre-files in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Lawmakers in Texas and South Dakota, meanwhile, are teeing up bills next year that try to humanize a fetus by affording it rights and requiring pregnant people to listen to the heartbeat, respectively.

The heartbeat ban, itself, is a misnomer. While a fetus' heart begins to form as early as six weeks of pregnancy, or around the time a "heartbeat" can be detected, it's still not a fully developed organ. Cardiac activity also isn't a credible measure of viability, as there's still a high chance of miscarriage and pregnancy complications. What these heartbeat bans do is outlaw abortions early during the first-trimester, before many people know they are pregnant.

It appears the objective with these measures is to make abortion more and more inaccessible.
[CN: Gun violence; death] Melissa Healy at the LA Times: More Than 15% of Childhood Deaths in America Are Due to Guns, Study Says. "More than 3,000 children and adolescents died of a gunshot wound in the United States in 2016, a new tally of childhood deaths finds. These episodes accounted for 15.4% of all Americans between the ages of 1 and 19 who died in 2016, and a quarter of those killed by injury rather than disease. ...'Children in America are dying or being killed at rates that are shameful,' [Dr. Edward W. Campion, executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine] wrote in an editorial published alongside the new report."

[CN: Nativism] Yeganeh Torbati for Reuters/USNWR: U.S. to Send Some Migrants Back to Mexico as Immigration Cases Proceed. "The United States will soon begin returning individuals who illegally cross the U.S. southern border back to Mexico to wait there while their immigration cases proceed, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Thursday. ...'Aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates,' Nielsen said in a statement. 'Instead, they will wait for an immigration court decision while they are in Mexico.'" 1. It is a straight-up lie that many undocumented immigrants skip their court dates. 2. As I noted just yesterday, asylum-seekers from the caravan have been killed in Mexico while waiting their chance to enter the U.S. Nielsen knows she will be sending some people to their deaths, and she doesn't fucking care.

[CN: HIV stigma] Savas Abadsidis at Towleroad: Trump Fires HIV-Positive Airmen Right Before Christmas. "In a bold move pernicious even for the Trump administration, two U.S. Air Force service members have been discharged for their HIV status. According to an exclusive in today's Washington Post, 'two U.S. airmen filed suit on Wednesday against Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing that the Pentagon's decision last month to discharge them from the military owing to their HIV status violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and federal law. They have asked the court to strike down the decision.' Lambda Legal quickly issued a statement in support that said, in conjunction with OutServe-SLDN and with the law firm Winston & Strawn, they filed a lawsuit on behalf of two HIV-positive members of the United States Air Force who were given discharge orders just days before the holiday season." Goddammit.

[CN: Carcerality; murder; wrongful conviction] Pamela Colloff at ProPublica: Bloodstain Analysis Convinced a Jury She Stabbed Her 10-Year-Old Son; Now, Even Freedom Can't Give Her Back Her Life. "Four years later, Julie Rea was acquitted at a retrial, after a legal team assembled by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law in Chicago mounted a vigorous defense that challenged the state's forensic testimony. They also presented new evidence that a serial killer of children — a lifelong drifter who was on Texas death row for a nearly identical crime — had confessed to killing Joel. Rea was formally exonerated in 2010. Today, she belongs to a growing community of victims: Americans who were wrongly convicted with the help of forensic disciplines allowed into courtrooms despite little to no proof of their reliability. Of the 362 people who have been exonerated based on DNA tests in the United States, faulty forensics contributed to almost half of the underlying convictions."

Luke Barnes at ThinkProgress: The Terrifying Consequences of a 'No-Deal' Brexit. "[A 'No Deal' scenario, in which the UK abruptly withdraws from the EU without any deal agreed] would mean that border checks would have to be re-imposed, the UK would lose its access to the EU single market, and EU citizens in the UK (and vice-versa) would be left in legal limbo. ...Time-sensitive supply chains, including for food and medicine, could be severely disrupted by massive backlogs in ports since goods would no longer be transferred seamlessly from the EU into the UK. The UK would also no longer be governed by EU aviation standards, which could effectively ground flights until they renegotiated. ...In the worse case scenario, the government would need to 'explore how we would deal with a rise in homelessness and other potential societal impacts like a rise in suicide rates or an increase in food banks use.'" Truly frightening.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

Open Wide...
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