We Resist: Day 503

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.

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Earlier today by me: Election Thread and Just a Reminder That He Is Not Actually a Clown.

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

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: Trump Wants Kim to Commit to Disarmament Timetable in Singapore.

The White House wants North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to commit to a timetable to surrender his country's nuclear arsenal when he meets [Donald] Trump next week in Singapore, a high-stakes summit that could last as long as two days — or just minutes.

Trump has been advised not to offer Kim any concessions, as the White House seeks to put the onus on the North Koreans to make the summit a success, one U.S. official said. The president is determined to walk out of the meeting if it doesn't go well, two officials said. Alternatively, Trump is toying with the idea of offering Kim a follow-up summit at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida — perhaps in the fall — if the two men hit it off.

And they will either "hit it off" or hate each other on sight, as two people who are very much alike tend to do.

And lest you imagine I'm being snarky or presumptuous by saying they're very much alike, take it from Dennis Rodman, who knows both of them: "Having been a contestant twice on Trump's reality-TV show, Celebrity Apprentice, and having been to North Korea five times since 2013, he's one of the few people on the planet to have met both leaders, let alone be on friendly terms with them. In April, Rodman claimed to have helped Kim have a 'change of heart' about the president by giving him a copy of Trump's book, The Art of the Deal."

And said at the time: "Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are pretty much the same." Cool.

In other summit news... [CN: Nazism]

Administration official says Gorka is not going to Asia in an official capacity.

— Julian Borger (@julianborger) June 6, 2018

You know how during every celebration of a Nazi leaving the White House, I'm a big old buzzkill who warns that they'll just be moving into an unofficial role with no oversight? That.

But also: In a private conversation, which I'm sharing with permission, Shaker SKM noted: "Hannity is going to Singapore as well. Looking more and more like a far-right out-of-country meeting for some purpose other than North Korea."

Absolutely. (Or in addition to.) I wonder which Russian diplomat(s) and/or oligarch(s) is going to show up to meet them outside the purview of U.S. feds.

This is shaping up to be Seychelles 2.0.

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What the fuck?!

Uh. "It’s not yet clear what Edwards’ job was at the White House, but, unless Tuesday was his first day on the job, an attempted murder suspect has been coming and going from the White House grounds." https://t.co/SWdGzRyBtI

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 6, 2018

"A federal law enforcement official says Edwards did work for the National Security Council in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House and did not have access to the West Wing." I MEAN. https://t.co/s8vfOcogvt

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 6, 2018

Aron Heller at the AP: Giuliani Says Mueller's Team Is Trying to Frame Trump. "Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller's team is trying to frame [Donald] Trump. ...'There are a group of 13 highly partisan Democrats who make up the Mueller team, excluding him, and are trying very, very hard to frame him to get him in trouble when he hasn't done anything wrong,' said Giuliani, who has been serving as Trump's lawyer amid the Russia scandal. 'They can't emotionally come to grips with the fact that this whole thing with Russian collusion didn't happen. They are trying to invent theories of obstruction of justice,' Giuliani told a business conference in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv." This is breathtakingly inappropriate. Seethe.

Judd Legum at ThinkProgress: Latest Trump Attack on Russian Investigation Comes Directly from Conspiracy Websites. "Trump's tweet refers to an article about Strzok and Page's texts that appeared on Gateway Pundit, a notorious right-wing conspiracy website, claiming that the texts prove the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign. The Gateway Pundit article, in turn, is based on an unsourced tweet from a pseudonymous twitter account. (It's notable that even this random Twitter user is more suspicious of his own analysis than Trump.) It was also a popular post on the forum for conspiracy theories on Reddit, called r/conspiracy. As you might imagine, the analysis is totally wrong." From rando Redditors to the Twitter account of the United States president. Highly disturbing.

Carole Cadwalladr and Stephanie Kirchgaessner at the Guardian: Cambridge Analytica Director 'Met Assange to Discuss U.S. Election'. "A Cambridge Analytica director apparently visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during the U.S. election, the Guardian has learned. Brittany Kaiser, a director at the firm until earlier this year, also claimed to have channelled cryptocurrency payments and donations to WikiLeaks. This information has been passed to congressional and parliamentary inquiries in the U.K. and U.S. Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks are already subjects of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, but the revelations open up fresh questions about the precise nature of the organisations' relationship."

"Trump is preparing to sign a sweeping new law Wednesday aimed at expanding veterans’ access to private-sector health care. But behind the scenes his administration is fighting a bipartisan Senate effort to fund the legislation." https://t.co/UNVCsCiPTv

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 6, 2018

Kate Riga at TPM: Andrew McCabe Is Asking for Immunity to Testify on Clinton Email Probe. "Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is requesting immunity in exchange for his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, according to a Tuesday CNN report. In a letter obtained by CNN, McCabe's lawyer, Michael Bromwich, set out the terms to Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), wanting to establish that no information McCabe provided would be used against him in a criminal prosecution. Per CNN, Grassley has called McCabe to testify next week, though the inspector general's report has not yet been released." That IG report is gonna be something, sounds like.

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[CN: Police brutality; racism.]

"I don't feel that our officers were at their best" says a police chief whose officers were caught on video "brutally beating a man who appeared to be minding his own business while on his cellphone." https://t.co/bXAchY2wGs

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 6, 2018

Richard Lawler at Engadget: Facebook's On-Device Data Sharing Program Included Huawei, Lenovo. "After a New York Times report highlighted how Facebook provided 60 or so device manufacturers access to user data, today the NYT and Washington Post report that four Chinese manufacturers are on the list. Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo, and TCL all had integrations that Facebook exec Francisco Varela told the NYT 'were controlled from the get-go — and Facebook approved everything that was built.' Huawei, in particular, has been raised for scrutiny by several lawmakers, who worry that the Chinese government could demand access to data on its servers. Earlier this year, the FBI, CIA, and NSA warned against use of the company's products or services, citing a potential capacity for 'undetected espionage.'"

[CN: War on agency] Teddy Wilson at Rewire.News: Report: Trump's Global Gag Rule 'Downright Catastrophic for Global Health'. "The Trump administration's reinstatement and expansion of the 'global gag rule' (GGR) has been the most 'extreme and sweeping' iteration of the policy yet and 'threatens to derail decades of progress' in improving health care, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). 'When the GGR is in effect, it creates and exploits inefficiencies in health care delivery and causes harm to beneficiaries, who may not be aware that their fate is being determined by what is essentially a political football in Washington, D.C.,' the report's authors concluded."

[CN: Class warfare] Hari Kishan and Rahul Karunakar at Reuters: U.S. House Prices to Rise at Twice the Speed of Inflation and Pay. "The latest poll of nearly 45 analysts taken May 16-June 5 showed the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 cities is expected to gain a further 5.7 percent this year. That compared to predictions for average earnings growth of 2.8 percent and inflation of 2.5 percent 2018, according to a separate Reuters poll of economists." Those numbers may sound innocuous, but that's not good. At best, many people will have to keep renting and not building any equity. And, at worst, we're diving headfirst into another housing bubble and subsequent collapse.

[CN: Misogyny; racism; harassment; threats; bullying] Amy Zimmerman at the Daily Beast: The Persecution of Kelly Marie Tran: How Star Wars Fandom Became Overrun by Alt-Right Trolls. "On Monday night, the Twitter account Star Wars Facts tweeted out that Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Kelly Marie Tran, the first woman of color to land a leading role in the mega-popular franchise, had 'deleted all the posts off her Instagram due to months of harassment she has received for her character Rose in ‪#TheLastJedi‪.' ...Tran's Instagram does appear to be scrubbed, robbing online trolls of a forum they once used to personally attack the actress. Now, the only evidence of life on her social media account is her bio: 'Afraid, but doing it anyway.'" Blub.

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