We Resist: Day 537

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, July 10, 2018
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: So Trump Picked Brett Kavanaugh and Trump Leaves for Europe, with Harsh Words for NATO and Kind Words for Putin and Trump's War on Immigrants: The Latest.

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

[Content Note: Nativism] Alice Ollstein at TPM: DOJ Threatens More Migrant Family Separations After Judge's Scathing Ruling.
In the wake of a federal judge slapping down the Trump administration's attempt to roll back decades-old protections for children in immigration detention, the Trump administration is threatening to present migrant parents with a choice between indefinite detention with their children or continued separation — leaving out the third option used by previous administrations of supervised release.

..."The court does appear to acknowledge that parents who cross the border will not be released and must choose between remaining in family custody with their children pending immigration proceedings or requesting separation from their children so the child may be placed with a sponsor," Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement Monday night.

...Without revealing whether or not the administration plans to appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, O'Malley said: "We disagree with the court's ruling declining to amend the Flores Agreement to recognize the current crisis of families making the dangerous and unlawful journey across our southern border."

But the fiery Monday night ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee did not give the administration the green light for indefinite detention and separations the DOJ is claiming.
What a surprise. Exactly as I predicted.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is busily turning the Department of Justice into a fully-controlled arm of the White House:


Benczkowski is the guy about whom Senator Dick Durbin was urgently warning last week, but his confirmation has flown almost entirely under the radar because of everything else.

In other "Trump is reshaping the country faster than we can even comprehend it" news...


Yikes. That is very bad.

* * *

Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly at the Washington Post: Anatomy of a Trump Rally: 76 Percent of Claims Are False, Misleading, or Lacking Evidence. "We're doing something new: Analyzing every factual claim from [Donald] Trump's campaign rally in Montana on Thursday. According to The Fact Checker's database, the president had made 3,251 false or misleading claims at the end of May, and his average daily rate was climbing. This side of Trump really comes alive during campaign rallies, so we wanted to do the math and find out whether the president speaks more fictions or facts in front of his crowds."

Coooooool. Who is this waste of time and energy for, though? Anyone with sense already knows he's a compulsive liar, and the members of his MAGA cult will never believe you and/or don't even care and/or consider his dishonesty a positive. What a pointless piece of performative circle-jerkery for their Beltway colleague and literally no one else.

* * *

Niels Lesniewski at RollCall: After Moscow Trip, Senator Ron Johnson Says Election Meddling Overblown. "One of the Republican senators back from a trip to Moscow is suggesting that Congress went too far in punishing Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 'I've been pretty upfront that the election interference — as serious as that was, and unacceptable — is not the greatest threat to our democracy,' Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview with the Washington Examiner published over the weekend. 'We've blown it way out of proportion.'" Oh.

Luke Harding at the Guardian: Former Putin Adviser Has Secret Investment in U.S. Energy Firm Praised by Trump. "Vladimir Putin's former chief of staff has a secret investment in an American energy company hailed by Donald Trump as creating jobs for American workers. Alexander Voloshin — who served as Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff before working for Putin between 2000 and 2003 — has an undisclosed stake in American Ethane, a Houston-based firm that recently signed a multibillion dollar export deal with China." Sounds about right.

Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, and Ashley Parker at the Washington Post: Giuliani Works for Foreign Clients While Serving as Trump's Attorney. "Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to work on behalf of foreign clients both personally and through his namesake security firm while serving as [Donald] Trump's personal attorney — an arrangement experts say raises conflict of interest concerns and could run afoul of federal ethics laws. Giuliani said in recent interviews with The Washington Post that he is working with clients in Brazil and Colombia, among other countries, as well as delivering paid speeches for a controversial Iranian dissident group. He has never registered with the Justice Department on behalf of his overseas clients, asserting it is not necessary because he does not directly lobby the U.S. government and is not charging Trump for his services." Sure.


Hahahahahahaha nothing matters! *jumps into Christmas tree*

* * *

[CN: Racism; death] Ayana Byrd at Colorlines: Racism Linked to High Maternal and Infant Mortality for Native Women. "The Center for American Progress released a report [July 9] that finds that institutional racism, which has been proven to negatively impact the health of Black women, is also a factor behind high maternal and infant mortality rates for Native Americans. In 'American Indian and Alaska Native Maternal and Infant Mortality: Challenges and Opportunities,' authors Lucy Truschel and Cristina Novoa also found that in the face of disproportionately high death rates for mothers and babies, traditional Indigenous community practices are instrumental in getting women better access to health care."

[CN: Harassment; war on agency] Teddy Wilson at Rewire.News: Anti-Choice Intimidation, Harassment Close Indiana Planned Parenthood Clinic. "Planned Parenthood is closing its clinic in Fort Wayne, Indiana, because of a coordinated intimidation and harassment campaign by anti-choice activists. The closure of the reproductive health-care clinic comes amid a massive surge in violent actions against abortion providers. ...Christie Gillespie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK), said in a statement Monday that Fort Wayne patients and providers have been subjected to harassment and attacks from those who oppose abortion rights. 'I am putting Allen County Right to Life, and all anti-women's groups, on notice: You have intimidated and harassed us for the last time in this community,' Gillespie said. 'We will be back, stronger than ever before. Because our supporters know that we provide lifesaving, high quality health care to the thousands of Hoosiers in the Fort Wayne community. No matter what.'"

[CN: Death penalty] And in other news, a number of state governments are still really determined to execute people, despite the fact that murder drug availability has made that extremely difficult. So they're getting "inventive."


If Republican state legislatures spent half as much time on figuring out how to support people's lives as they did trying to figure out how to kill people, we'd live in a goddamn utopia.

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

Shakesville is run as a safe space. First-time commenters: Please read Shakesville's Commenting Policy and Feminism 101 Section before commenting. We also do lots of in-thread moderation, so we ask that everyone read the entirety of any thread before commenting, to ensure compliance with any in-thread moderation. Thank you.

blog comments powered by Disqus