We Resist: Day 866

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, June 04, 2019
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.

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Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Happy Pride Month! and Migrant Children in U.S. Custody Left in Vans for Days and Primarily Speaking.

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

Donald Trump is in the UK, making an arse out of himself and embarrassing the United States on the global stage once again, and I really don't have any fucking thing to say about anything he's doing or saying there, or who is meeting with him and who is refusing to meet with him and with whom he's supposedly refusing to meet. The only thing I have to say about it is this:


In other news...

Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris at Politico: Clyburn Walks Back Impeachment Comments.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn on Monday walked back remarks suggesting that Democrats will impeach [Donald] Trump, reversing course to say he's "farther" from backing impeachment than most of his caucus.

Clyburn's comments came after a private leadership meeting Monday evening in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated that she didn't support launching impeachment proceedings right now despite a growing push within the caucus.

"I'm probably farther away from impeachment than anybody in our caucus," Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters Monday night. "We will not get out in front of our committees. We'll see what the committees come up with. I've said that forever."

Asked by Politico whether he thought impeachment proceedings were inevitable, Clyburn simply said no.

The No. 3 Democrat's comments stand in contrast to what he said Sunday, suggesting it was only a matter of time before House Democrats began impeachment proceedings against Trump.
What the everloving fuck. Pelosi can twist arms all day long, but she's not the only one who knows how to apply pressure.

To wit: Sam Brodey, Erin Banco, and Sam Stein at the Daily Beast: Pro-Impeachment Dems Are Privately Recruiting Other Members Despite Pelosi's Warnings. "Unwilling to wait for Nancy Pelosi to embrace their cause, pro-impeachment House Democrats have begun recruiting fellow lawmakers to their camp in a bid to put more pressure on the House Speaker. The effort has been described by one lawmaker as 'organic.' But the goal is clear: The lawmakers are hoping to build a critical mass of members that will force Pelosi to choose between defying the majority of her own caucus or moving forward with [an impeachment process]."

And here's a big subtweet for Pelosi, in case she still ain't getting the message:


Meanwhile, Trump continues to behave in a way that demands impeachment. Kate Riga at TPM: Trump Shows No Sign of Cowing to GOP Tariff Vote Threat: 'That Would Be Foolish'. "Tensions between congressional Republicans and [Donald] Trump have been heightened in the past few days over Trump's threat to levy tariffs on Mexico. Now, congressional Republicans are mulling holding a vote to block the tariffs, which could also prevent funds from going to Trump's border wall. At a press conference Tuesday in the UK, Trump showed no signs of backing off his tariff strong-arming. 'I don't think they will do that; if they do it's foolish,' he said of the threatened Republican vote. 'There's nothing more important than borders. I've had tremendous Republican support.' The vast majority of Republicans don't often break with this president, but many of his usual allies have voiced displeasure at his tariff threat."

Here's the thing: The GOP is vanishingly unlikely to stand up to Trump, but the fact that they're even publicly pretending that they might creates a very good opening for Pelosi to announce impeachment proceedings, saying, "Even his own party now sees that this president goes too far." Let's get to getting, Nancy!


Jason Rezaian at the Washington Post: The State Department Has Been Funding Trolls and I'm One of Their Targets. "Even after spending a year and a half in prison in Tehran, I knew that if I wanted to go on writing about Iran, I would be a target for plenty of public attacks despite the abuse I had suffered at the hands of the Islamic Republic. And so it has been. But I never imagined the U.S. State Department would be funding my attackers. ...Ironically, the Iran Disinformation Project was funded by the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which was begun to combat online extremism and propaganda. The targets of the tweets included think-tank analysts, human rights activists, and journalists (including me)."

[Content Note: White supremacy] Adam Serwer at the Atlantic: A White Man's Republic, If They Can Keep It. "Long before Trump was even elected, Republican Party insiders were plotting to increase white political power at the expense of people of color. After Trump was elected, they implemented this plan by insisting that their actual goal was the protection of minority voting rights. As with the Voting Rights Act, there was the real reason and the stated reason, the truth and the pretext. The nationalism, and the delusion."

Like clockwork: Khushbu Shah at the Guardian: Activists Say New Tennessee Law Aims to Suppress African American Votes. "Last month, Tennessee's governor, Bill Lee, signed a law imposing restrictions on those groups holding voter registration drives, citing the high number of registrations collected by voting rights groups which are incorrect and become ineligible once filed to the state. The law, once enforced, would fine those turning in incomplete or incorrect registration forms. In some cases, it could mean criminal charges." For fuck's sake.

[CN: Nativism; child abuse]


[CN: Anti-choicery; loss of wanted pregnancy] Jeni Putalavage-Ross at Rewire.News: I Needed a Second-Trimester Abortion; a Proposed Texas Bill Would Have Put Me in Greater Danger. "I found out I was pregnant soon after getting married. My husband and I were ecstatic because we were in our mid-30s, and we wanted to start a family right away. We didn't expect to be told that our fetus had issues 'incompatible with life' at our second anatomy scan at nearly 22 weeks of pregnancy. ...I don't second-guess the decision to have an abortion, but I do wonder what my life would have been like nine years ago if I had been treated by doctors forced to comply with a dangerous bill like SB 1033 by denying me the abortion I needed."

[CN: Anti-choicery] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: UN Commissioner Had Some Tough Words About U.S. Abortion Bans. "Recent state-level anti-abortion policies, including Alabama's and Georgia's near-total bans, amount to torture, according to a top official at the United Nations. 'We have not called it out in the same way we have other forms of extremist hate, but this is gender-based violence against women, no question,' UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore told the Guardian. 'It's clear it's torture — it's a deprivation of a right to health.'"

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