We Resist: Day 853

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: #StopTheBans and Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Even Doing? and Primarily Speaking.

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

Welp, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's decision to go to the White House to meet with Donald Trump on infrastructure turned out to be a bad idea! WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED.

Trump instead declared that he wouldn't work with them, because of the Democrats' investigations and talk of impeachment.

Josh Dawsey: "Trump says he walked into room with Pelosi and Schumer and told them he wanted to do infrastructure but that he won't work with them unless they 'get these phony investigations over with.' And now he's in the Rose Garden for a presser."

Judy Woodruff: "Standing in Rose Garden, [Donald] Trump adds 'these are the people that after 2 years and 45 million dollars...500 witnesses..and Nancy Pelosi says I engaged in a coverup. We have a House investigation, Senate investigation, & we did nothing wrong. These people were out to get us.'"

Chris Megerian: "'We will go down one track at a time,' Trump says. He'll fight Democrats first, work on policies later. That's a wrap from the Rose Garden."

As always, Aaron Rupar has video.

That Trump just came out and said HE won't work with Dems on infrastructure because of the threat of impeachment, which Pelosi still hasn't agreed to pursue, is exactly why: 1. Pelosi and Schumer shouldn't even have gone to WH; 2. Pelosi should be launching impeachment hearings.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 22, 2019

Honestly, I do not understand the argument it's a "win" if Pelosi, Schumer, or anyone else can successfully bait Trump into behaving like a villainous wreck.

WE ALREADY KNOW HE IS A VILLAINOUS WRECK. No more evidence is required.

Now it's (beyond) time to do something about it.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 22, 2019

See, the problem with the whole "let Trump hoist himself with his own petard" concept is that, for it to work, there has to be someone positioned and willing to hold him accountable.

And, while we wait, Mitch McConnell is busily stacking the courts.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 22, 2019

The pushback I'm getting on those tweets is incredible. Over and over, I am being accused (of course) of not understanding politics. The thing is, I am urgently in favor of launching impeachment hearings not because I don't understand U.S. politics, but because I do.

I have been writing about U.S. politics in this space for 15 years, and I have routinely been both entirely right about what's happening in this country and well ahead of the curve. My track record speaks for itself.

Impeach him now.

* * *

Karoun Demirjian at the Washington Post: Justice Department and House Intelligence Panel Strike Deal for Mueller Materials.

The House Intelligence Committee will not enforce a subpoena against Attorney General William P. Barr as planned Wednesday, after the Justice Department agreed at the 11th hour to produce the redacted material and underlying information from the special counsel's report that the panel sought, albeit more slowly than it wanted.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, announced the deal in a statement Wednesday morning. He warned that the subpoena "will remain in effect and will be enforced should the Department fail to comply with the full document request."

This is ridiculous. The constant goalpost-moving benefits Trump. It's just that simple.

Kate Riga at TPM: Tillerson Slipped into the Capitol to Tell House Committee About Trump and Russia. "Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quietly slipped into the Capitol Tuesday to talk to the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Trump administration’s interactions with Russia. According to the Daily Beast, Tillerson arrived under a shroud of secrecy, with almost no media warning and a back entrance to the building. During a six-hour hearing, Tillerson told the committee about how the administration actively avoided confronting Russia on their election interference in the name of establishing a rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin." Also ridiculous. Open hearings are necessary. Secrecy also benefits Trump.

Jeff Stein and Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post: Confidential Draft IRS Memo Says Tax Returns Must Be Given to Congress Unless President Invokes Executive Privilege. "A confidential Internal Revenue Service legal memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless the president takes the rare step of asserting executive privilege, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post. ...Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instead denied the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them. But according to the IRS memo, which has not been previously reported, the disclosure of tax returns to the committee 'is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.'" Cool outline to Trump on how he can keep his taxes concealed.

* * *

[Content Note: Transphobia] Zack Ford at ThinkProgress: Virginia Confirms It Will Discriminate Against Transgender National Guard Personnel. "Responding to an inquiry from ThinkProgress, Adjutant General Timothy Williams...proceeded to repeat the Trump administration's description of the ban. 'The new DOD policy doesn't ban transgender individuals from service, and transgender service members may continue to serve,' he wrote. 'The DOD policy states that anyone who meets military standards without special accommodations can and should be able to serve, and this includes transgender persons.' This is incorrect. The administration's policy explicitly requires that service members can only serve in their 'biological sex.' This automatically precludes any transgender person from serving, including those who are already living in accordance with their gender identity."

[CN: Nativism] Chelsia Rose Marcius at the Daily Beast: Texas Migrant Detention Center Shuts Down over Flu Outbreak Following Teenager's Death. "U.S. Customs and Border Protection's main migrant intake center in Texas has halted work after a 'large number' of migrants fell ill, the agency announced late Tuesday. An unspecified number of migrants at the Central Processing Center in McAllen began showing 'signs of a flu-related illness,' CBP said. No further details were immediately available on the number of those affected or their ages. The outbreak comes just one day after [16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Vasquez] who had been held at the same facility died after being diagnosed with the flu."

7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin. 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez. 16-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez. A still-unidentified 2-year-old boy. And 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Vasquez. Sob.

[CN: Misogynoir] Tucker Higgins at CNBC: Harriet Tubman $20 Bill No Longer Coming in 2020: Mnuchin Says Redesign Postponed. "The redesign of the $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman will no longer be unveiled in 2020, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday. The unveiling had been timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Mnuchin said the design process has been delayed and no new imagery will be unveiled until 2028." Of course.

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

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We Resist: Day 797

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: Justice Dept. Defends Trump's Twitter Blocking in Court and Primarily Speaking.

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

Chris Kahn at Reuters: Despite Report Findings, Almost Half of Americans Think Trump Colluded with Russia. "Nearly half of all Americans still believe [Donald] Trump worked with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after [Attorney General Bill Barr claimed that] Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared Trump of that allegation. ...Among those familiar with Barr's summary, only 9 percent said it had changed their thinking about Trump's ties to Russia and 57 percent said they want to see the entire report." MAKE THE REPORT PUBLIC.

Karoun Demirjian at the Washington Post: 'Undoubtedly There Is Collusion': Trump Antagonist Adam Schiff Doubles Down After Mueller Finds No Conspiracy. Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff "refuses to let the matter go until lawmakers can assess the investigative materials that informed Mueller's findings. 'Undoubtedly there is collusion,' Schiff said in an interview this week, after Attorney General William P. Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress summarizing key aspects of Mueller's report. 'We will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power? ...It doesn't appear that was any part of Mueller's report.'"

Thank Maude for Adam Schiff. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has no intention of letting this shit go, either — and neither do I. I categorically refuse to gaslight myself and pretend I haven't seen what I have indeed seen with my own goddamned eyes.

And once again, I just want to make the point that there is a very important bit of fuckery going on re: the definition of collusion. Special Counsel Bob Mueller limited his investigation of "collusion" to Russian government officials, ignoring that figures like Maria Butina and Oleg Deripaska, though not members of the Russian government, are agents of Vladimir Putin. That's a big fucking loophole. There was also no investigation of whether the sitting president is currently compromised, so if anyone thinks that I'm about to "move on" from this subject with those galactic caverns unexplored, they don't know my tenacious ass very well.

Casey Michel at ThinkProgress: Russia's Influence Efforts Had Plenty of American Help Outside of the Trump Campaign.

Special counsel Robert Mueller may not have found the Trump campaign colluding with Russia, but plenty of Americans — wittingly or otherwise — have helped Moscow's election meddling efforts in recent years...

According to Barr, Mueller's report found that Russian operatives reached out to Trump's campaign, but that no member of the campaign actively colluded with the Russian government. However, Barr wrote that Mueller also "determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election." Both of these efforts — social media interference, and stealing and disseminating internal Democratic documents and emails — were widely known before the report's conclusion.

From fake Facebook pages to networks of Twitter bots, from posing as Romanian hackers to transferring stolen emails to Wikileaks, the details of these operations have been previously reported or described by intelligence analysts. And they've already resulted in numerous criminal indictments, for everything from illegally accessing emails to stealing Americans' identities.

But those weren't the only ways the Kremlin tried to put its fingers on American scales in 2016.

Michel goes on to discuss Russian cultivation of American secessionists, the cozy relationship between Russia and the NRA, Christian fundamentalists' bridge-building to Russia, and the far-left and third-party candidates with ties to Russia. Read and bookmark this one.

Julia Ainsley at NBC News: James Comey Says He Is Confused by Mueller's Decision on Obstruction. "Former FBI Director James Comey told an audience in Charlotte on Tuesday that he is confused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's decision to neither charge nor exonerate [Donald] Trump on obstruction of justice. 'The part that's confusing is, I can't quite understand what's going on with the obstruction stuff,' Comey told an audience of roughly 2,000 people gathered at the Belk Theatre for an event sponsored by Queens University. 'And I have great faith in Bob Mueller, but I just can't tell from the letter why didn't he decide these questions when the entire rationale for a special counsel is to make sure the politicals aren't making the key charging decisions,' the former FBI chief said."

Well, I don't understand your flaming trash decision to throw the election to Trump, James Comey, so welcome to the Confused Club!

* * *

In good news... Matthew S. Schwartz at NPR: Federal Judge Blocks North Carolina Ban on Abortions Later Than 20 Weeks. "A law making it harder for women in North Carolina to get an abortion after 20 weeks is unconstitutional, a federal judge has declared. The law, which had been on the books since 1973, banned abortion after 20 weeks with only certain exceptions to protect the life of the mother. A 2015 amendment tightened those exceptions, criminalizing abortion unless the woman's life or a 'major bodily function' were at immediate risk. Pro-abortion rights groups challenged the law, and on Monday U.S. District Judge William Osteen sided with them. ...'The Supreme Court has clearly advised that a state legislature may never fix viability at a specific week but must instead leave this determination to doctors,' Osteen wrote." RIGHT ON.

[Content Note: Guns; domestic violence]

NRA opposes because the bill would prevent people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or stalking from access to firearms. They think that is too low of a bar.

— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) March 26, 2019

Despite the fact that domestic violence is a precursor to virtually every act of mass gun violence, the NRA thinks that it's "too low a bar" to take away someone's access to firearms. Fucking assholes.

Doha Madani at NBC News: Betsy DeVos Grilled in Congress over Proposed Elimination of Special Olympics Funding.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos struggled before a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday to defend at least $7 billion in proposed cuts to education programs, including eliminating all $18 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics.

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan pushed DeVos on her proposed cuts to the Special Olympics and other special education programs during her testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee.

When Pocan asked whether she knew how many children would be affected by the elimination of federal funding to the Special Olympics, DeVos said she did not know.

"I'll answer it for you, that's okay, no problem," Pocan said. "It's 272,000 kids that are affected."

...Pocan wasn't the only House member to criticize DeVos over the proposed cuts to special education.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., noted that past proposed budgets also attempted to eliminate federal funding for the Special Olympics.

"I still can't understand why you would go after disabled children in your budget," Lee said Tuesday. "You zero that out. It's appalling."

It certainly is.

McDonald’s is paying $300 million to eliminate its workers. https://t.co/pRzQchy1xk

— April Wolfe (@AWolfeful) March 27, 2019

[CN: Islamophobia] Stephen Caruso and Elizabeth Hardison at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Pennsylvania Legislature's First Muslim Woman Calls Prayer Delivered by Fellow House Member Blatant Islamophobia. "A first-year member of the Pennsylvania House on Monday offered a prayer laden with political and Christian imagery shortly before the swearing in of the chamber's first Muslim woman. ...[Movita Johnson-Harrell, the first Muslim woman elected to the General Assembly] said the prayer was 'highly offensive to me, my guests, and other members of the House.'" It is also highly offensive to me as a Pennsylvania resident.

* * *

[CN: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

Christina Goldbaum at the New York Times: Trump Crackdown Unnerves Immigrants, and the Farmers Who Rely on Them. "It has long been an open secret in upstate New York that the dairy industry has been able to survive only by relying on undocumented immigrants for its work force. Now, this region has become a national focal point in the debate over [Donald] Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their role in agriculture. ...The pressures here reflect broader challenges facing farmers across the country who rely on undocumented workers. The farmers are struggling with a shrinking labor pool as fewer migrants cross illegally into the country and migrants who are long-term residents become too old for field work. This year the labor shortage has been compounded by Mr. Trump's trade war and extreme weather, forcing some small farmers to switch to higher-value crops, to reduce their acreage and to consider selling their farms." Is it enough that farmers who supported Trump won't support him again, though?!

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Hundreds of Activists Protest Florida Lawmakers' Secret Immigration Deal. "Senate Bill 168, and its sister legislation HB 527 in the House, would prevent municipalities from designating themselves as sanctuary cities — despite the fact that no sanctuary cities currently exist in the state of Florida. Nearly every municipality already shares information with federal immigration authorities, but the new bill would require local law enforcement to comply with federal requests to detain undocumented immigrants for potential deportation proceedings. Immigration activists worry that the bill will incentivize racial profiling and fracture the fragile trust between immigrant communities and local police."

Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Exclusive: Immigration Agencies Communicated Prior to Arrest of Sanctuary Leader.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), once considered the services arm of federal immigration agencies, is engaging in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration to what advocates fear is an unprecedented level.

Confirming what advocates had suspected, the agency communicated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about an upcoming appointment for Samuel Oliver-Bruno, a former member of North Carolina's immigrant community, in early November, according to documents obtained by Rewire.News through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

At that appointment three weeks later — the existence of which ICE officials sought to verify with USCIS after seeing a social media post, as the FOIA documents show — plain-clothed immigration officials ultimately took the husband and father into custody. Soon after he was deported to Mexico.

Oliver-Bruno was a member of Colectivo Santuario, comprised of people in sanctuary nationwide who were organizing together to one day move out of their churches without fear of deportation.

This is a very big deal. It's a big deal for the immigrant community, and it's a big deal for the rest of us, because, as I warn continuously, the Trump Regime is using undocumented immigrants as their canary in the coalmine. If they get away with this, you can bet that the government will start coordinating to target dissidents of all types.

Resist mightily everything you see happening at the intersection of the Trump Regime's war on immigrants and its war on dissidents.

* * *

Tom Phillips at the Guardian: Venezuela Hit by Fourth Massive Blackout in Less Than Three Weeks. "Venezuela has suffered its fourth massive blackout in less than three weeks, leaving at least of 12 of its 23 states without electricity and reinforcing the sense of crisis in the country. Many of the cities and regions affected by Wednesday's outage had yet to recover from two other crippling blackouts on Monday that forced the government to close schools and businesses and left the country's biggest airport in the dark. ...[T]here was anger and on the streets of Venezuela's capital — where many citizens are now living without water as well as light — as citizens faced up to another period of profound uncertainty and deprivation. Despite government claims, many people suspect the blackouts are the result of crumbling infrastructure caused by years of corruption, incompetence, and under-investment. 'I feel hopelessness and despair,' said Nohelia van Praag, a 43-year-old preschool teacher from Caracas."

Staff at the Daily Beast: Cholera Confirmed in Mozambique After Cyclone Idai. "Five people in Mozambique have tested positive for cholera, just two weeks after a brutal cyclone left tens of thousands of people without consistent clean water and sanitation, The Guardian reports Wednesday. The cases of the deadly waterborne disease all came from Munhava, an impoverished enclave of Beira. Many of Beira's nearly 500,000 residents still lack access to clean water in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai, stoking authorities' fears that it will spread. The cyclone killed approximately 700 people when it struck on March 14. ...The World Health organization is planning to send 900,000 doses of the vaccine later this week to help stop the outbreak."

[CN: Genocide] Tiemoko Diallo at Reuters: U.N. to Investigate Massacre of 157 Malian Villagers. "The United Nations has dispatched human rights experts to central Mali to investigate a weekend massacre of at least 157 villagers seen as one of the worst acts of bloodshed in a country beset by ethnic violence. The attack, in which women and children were burned in their homes by gunmen, escalated a conflict between Dogon hunters and Fulani herders that killed hundreds of civilians in 2018 and is spreading across the Sahel, the arid region between the Sahara desert to the north and Africa's savannas to the south."

[CN: Islamophobia; human rights abuse] Reuters Staff at the Guardian: Xinjiang Crackdown Must Continue, Top China Leader Says. "Xinjiang needs to 'perfect' stability maintenance measures and crack down on religious extremism, the ruling Communist party's fourth-ranked leader has said on a tour of the region where China is running a controversial deradicalisation programme. Critics say China is operating internment camps for Uighurs and other Muslim peoples who live in Xinjiang, though the government calls them vocational training centres and says it has a genuine need to prevent extremist thinking and violence. The government has not said how many people are in these centres. Adrian Zenz, a leading independent researcher on China's ethnic policies, said this month an estimated 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims could be held in the centres in Xinjiang, up from his earlier figure of 1 million."

I remember when the United States had a president who might have said something about these things. Smart and decent things. That time has passed. I hope not permanently.

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

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House Dems Are Coming for Trump

Since Donald Trump was installed as president, House Democrats including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Elijah Cummings, Eric Swalwell, and others have promised to investigate Trump's finances for evidence of Russian collusion and other corruption.

Now that the Democrats have the House majority, and subpoena power as a result, they're plowing full steam ahead.

Yesterday on Face the Nation, Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said: "We are certainly looking deep into the set of issues around Moscow Trump Tower. We're also looking at persistent allegations that the Russians have been laundering money through the Trump Organization. I don't know that that's true. But if it is, again, it's a profound compromise of this president. ...There are any number of witnesses that can shed light on whether America's national security is compromised because the president has been pursuing financial interests with the Russians."

Today, Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said his committee is "requesting documents Monday from more than 60 people from Trump's administration, family, and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation."

"We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power, into corruption, and into obstruction of justice," Nadler said. "We will do everything we can to get that evidence."

Asked if he believed Trump obstructed justice, Nadler said, "Yes, I do."

..."It's very clear that the president obstructed justice," Nadler said.

Get him.

And save some of that scrutinizing energy for the reprobate occupying the vice president's office, too.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Get Your $h!t Together, Republicans

Rep. Adam Schiff has written an open letter in the Washington Post to his Republican colleagues, asking them to start acting with bravery and integrity.

They will never do it. As I've previously observed, if Congressional Republicans ever turn on Donald Trump, it will only be because they're ready to usher in Mike Pence, who will continue to deliver all the malice they love without the vulgarity they pretend to abhor.

But it was worth the effort all the same, because we must expect more, even and especially of people from whom we are certain we won't get it.

If for no other reason, give it a read to feel good about the decency of elected officials we've got fighting our side, who aren't giving up or giving in.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

So, This Mueller Investigation...

Have I mentioned once or twice or three dozen times that I am very dubious about Special Counsel Bob Mueller's investigation? That I am concerned it lacks urgency? That I fear it will effectively, if not intentionally, create all the space Republicans need to consolidate power while keeping the public complacent and patiently waiting for accountability that will never actually come? That maybe lifetime Republican Mueller isn't actually as interested as we are in seeing an entire Republican administration brought to its knees and then frog-marched out of the White House?

Anyway. Here are two things that I find concerning!

1. Zachary Warmbrodt at Politico: Schiff Questions Mueller's Approach on Deutsche Bank.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff on Sunday raised doubts about the extent to which special counsel Robert Mueller has probed [Donald] Trump's dealings with Deutsche Bank, bolstering Democrats' case for moving ahead with an investigation into the German lender.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," the California Democrat cited reporting that Trump had once sought to fire Mueller over reports that investigators had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank — crossing a "red line" into his family's finances — but that the president backed down after being told the claims were inaccurate.

"If the special counsel hasn't subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, he can't be doing much of a money laundering investigation," Schiff said.

Schiff has previously been very careful to say that House investigations would not step on Mueller's toes, so the fact that he and his colleague Rep. Maxine Waters are launching an investigation into Deutsche Bank suggests that Mueller has indeed not been doing that investigation himself. Yikes.

2. Sharon LaFraniere, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Scott Shane at the New York Times: In Closed Hearing, a Clue About 'the Heart' of Mueller's Russia Inquiry.

Of the few hints to emerge from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about evidence of possible collusion between [Donald] Trump's campaign and Russia, one of the most tantalizing surfaced almost in passing in a Washington courtroom last week.

Comments by one of Mr. Mueller's lead prosecutors, disclosed in a transcript of a closed-door hearing, suggest that the special counsel continues to pursue at least one theory: that starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump's candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia's incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

WTF. This is not a theory. We have known that the Trump campaign pressed for a change to the Republican platform's plank on Ukraine since before the 2016 election. The lead story in my We Resist thread from March 3, 2017 — nearly two years ago — was about J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign's national security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, openly admitting "that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with [Trump's] views," which just happen to align with Vladimir Putin's.

Either the Times is gaslighting the fuck out of us, or the Mueller investigation is even hotter garbage than I imagined. (And I'm not ruling out "both" as an option.) This is infuriating. Fuck.

Open Wide...

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Reps. Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff to Investigate Deutsche Bank and I Am Here for It!

When the Democrats won back the House majority in the midterms, Rep. Maxine Waters became the chair of the Financial Services Committee and Rep. Adam Schiff became the chair of the Intelligence Committee. They have been two of the most dogged critics of Donald Trump since he darkened the White House's doorstep, and they're coming for him — and everyone who may have abetted him, starting with Deutsche Bank.

The investigation into Deutsche Bank will be one of the most closely watched probes launched by the new Democratic-controlled House because it could provide a glimpse into Trump's finances and ties abroad.

Waters, who has called for the president's impeachment, has vowed to follow the "Trump money trail" starting with Deutsche Bank. Before she became chairwoman, she asked the bank for details on its handling of Trump's accounts and involvement in Russian money laundering schemes.

The bank declined her request, citing concerns for customers' privacy. She now has subpoena power to get some answers.

Schiff, whose committee has been investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, has said Deutsche Bank is "one obvious place to start" as he looks into possible money laundering by The Trump Organization. He has said he plans to probe Trump's connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, and countries.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of both committees, said Financial Services will be interested in "domestic questions" such as whether Deutsche Bank extended loans at favorable rates.

"The interesting thing about Deutsche Bank is they seem to be pretty much the only entity out there willing to lend to The Trump Organization," Himes said.

That is interesting. Also interesting is that the global head of real estate markets for Deutsche Bank, who loaned Donald Trump, then just a corrupt real estate developer, over $1 billion when no other lending agencies would give him the time of day, was none other than Justin Kennedy, son of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who made way for Brett Kavanaugh.

Yet another interesting item is how Deutsche Bank was apparently helping Trump play a shell game with his real estate properties for years.

And one more interesting piece of info is that Trump isn't the only member of his administration with deep ties to Deutsche Bank. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also has a complex and troubling relationship to the bank. And Jared Kushner's real estate company had finalized a $285 million loan with Deutsche Bank right before the election, which he subsequently failed to disclose.

So many interesting things for Reps. Waters and Schiff to scrutinize! I can't wait to find out what interesting things they discover about our very interesting president.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Resist: Day 726

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:

Leahy asks if William Barr will seek and follow the advice of DOJ ethics officials on whether he must recuse himself from the Mueller investigation.

Barr says that he will seek out their advice "but under the regulations, I make the decision."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 15, 2019

[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."

"The boost from Trump's tax cut isn’t materializing for taxpayers." No shit. https://t.co/1vasFdfCq1

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 14, 2019

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."

"Contrary to recent rumors, Ivanka Trump will not be the new leader of the World Bank, according to the White House. But she will play a large role in selecting its new president." Oh. https://t.co/O6lULTXqoy

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 15, 2019

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."

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

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Trump Threatens National Emergency and Years-Long Shutdown over Border Wall

[Content Note: Nativism; authoritarianism.]

Once again, I want to remind everyone reading this piece that Donald Trump's vile nativist agenda is based on outright lies. There is no urgent crisis threatening the United States because of undocumented immigration — not an employment crisis, not a crime and violence crisis, not a health crisis. The opioid crisis is not attributable to migrant workers or asylum-seeking refugees. Terrorists are not entering the country over the southern border.

The administration's rationale for their obscene immigration policy continually shifts, but every new explanation is just as dishonest as the one before it.

It has always been important to understand that Trump's war on immigrants has no justification beside profit and malice, because it has resulted in sustained abuse of entire families and the deaths of at least one adult and two children.

And it continues to be important to center the pointlessness of this relentless cruelty except for cruelty's sake as Trump inflicts pain on nearly a million federal workers during the government shutdown and further threatens to declare a national emergency if he's not given what he demands, thus plunging our democracy even further into the fetid swamp of authoritarianism his presidency was always going to be.

David Taylor and Martin Pengelly at the Guardian report on his latest grotesquery:

Donald Trump said on Sunday he may declare a national emergency over immigration, to allow him to build a wall on America's southern border.

As the government shutdown triggered by the president entered its 16th day, Trump threatened to take extraordinary action to bypass Congress, where Democrats refuse to pass a spending bill that would give him $5.6bn to build his wall. New House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the wall "an immorality" and refused to fund Trump's signature campaign pledge.

By declaring a state of national emergency, the White House thinks it will be able to unlock money without congressional approval, although it has given no specific details of the move.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic leader on Capitol Hill, declared the idea "a non-starter."

Speaking on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, the California representative said: "If Harry Truman couldn't nationalise the steel industry during wartime, this president doesn't have the power to declare an emergency and build a multi-billion dollar wall on the border. So that's a non-starter."

...Leaving the White House for Camp David on Sunday, Trump claimed that many of the 800,000 federal staff either working without pay or told to stay at home "agree 100% with what I'm doing."

"I may decide a national emergency depending on what happens over the next few days," he said, insisting: "I have tremendous support within the Republican party."

...Trump said on Friday the shutdown could go on for years. ...His disregard for the hardship of unpaid workers was brushed aside on his return to the White House, as he said: "They will make an adjustment because they want to see the border taken care of."

Pretending as though federal workers speak with one voice is as mendacious and foolish as pretending to speak for the entirety of "the American people," as politicians often do. There is vast ideological diversity among federal workers, and many of them staunchly reject Trump's policies and are disinclined to "make an adjustment" in order to support this monstrous pursuit of a monument to his nativist white supremacy.

And, irrespective of any federal worker's individual ideology, there aren't a whole lot of people who can "make an adjustment" on principle to the tune of no income for the indefinite future.

It's an absolutely absurd ask and a wildly unreasonable expectation. But Trump simply doesn't care. Nor do his allies in Republican leadership, including his #2, Mike Pence. All of this is based on demonstrable lies, and they are willing to sacrifice other people's lives and safety to win a political battle based on those lies. This isn't even a battle based in reality. It's a battle of wills, which isn't about a wall at all but about the integrity of our democracy.

And the people seeking to undermine our democracy don't care how many people get hurt, and they never will, because malice is the agenda.

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Trump Wanted to Give Putin $50M Trump Tower Penthouse During the 2016 Campaign

As I have said many, many times: The collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians has always been right out in the open.

That doesn't mean, of course, that there wasn't also collusion going on that none of us could see.

Like, for example, as we've now learned in the wake of Michael Cohen's guilty plea, that Trump intended to give Vladimir Putin the $50 million penthouse in Trump Tower, for reasons that included trying to entice other Russian oligarchs to spend their money with Trump — because, according to Felix Sater, "In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin. My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin."

Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed report:

Donald Trump's company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan.

Two U.S. law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary.

The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Cohen acknowledged in court that he had lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign.

The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about [Donald] Trump's relationship with the Kremlin. The plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled, and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse. But Cohen said in court documents that he regularly briefed Trump and his family on the Moscow negotiations.

To that end, Hunter Walker reports at Yahoo News that Mueller is also investigating reports "that the president's elder daughter, Ivanka, who is now a top White House adviser, and his eldest son, Don Jr., were also working to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality. The sources said those efforts were independent of Cohen's work on the project. One of the sources said Ivanka was also involved in Cohen's efforts."

Donald Trump may try to argue, incredibly, that Cohen and Sater were trying to give away the penthouse in Trump Tower without his knowledge, but he's going to have a hard time convincing anyone with a shred of sense and decency that he was clueless about his personal lawyer, his longtime real estate business associate, his daughter, and his son trying to make a deal to get a Trump property into the hands of Vladimir Putin.

That argument becomes an even harder sell given, as Greg Sargent at the Washington Post notes, that Trump was a presidential candidate at the time who "repeatedly talked up Putin and stated in many different ways that as president, he'd pursue good relations with him and Russia."

Trump's collusion with Russia has been evident for years. In July of 2016, months before the presidential election, I wrote "The Real Story of the DNC Email Leak is Trump's Terrifying Ties to Russia," in which I detailed the possibility that Trump was compromised by Russia, Paul Manafort's sinister history, and the Trump campaign having changed the Republican platform's Ukraine plank to be more favorable to Russia. The dots were there to be connected, long before Election Day. But far too many people were spending their time instead scolding the people connecting them for being conspiracy theorists, hysterics, and alarmists.

And now here we are.

Fortunately, Congressional Cassandra Rep. Adam Schiff has been on this from go, and the Democrats' new majority has positioned him to finally make some shit happen — which the Republicans can no longer stymie. Emma Loop at BuzzFeed reports:

A plan by Donald Trump's company to give Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse will be in the crosshairs of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats take control of it in the new year, several members said. The plan, hatched during the 2016 election and involving the proposed but never realized Trump Tower Moscow, was reported Thursday by BuzzFeed News.

"If true, this story further underscores the need to finish the Committee's counterintelligence investigation to determine what, if any, financial leverage the Russians may hold over [Donald] Trump and the Trump Organization, and what Trump may have hoped to gain by any financial offer to Putin," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News Thursday evening.

The committee, which spent more than a year on an investigation into Russian election interference, already questioned Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, about the real estate development project. On Thursday Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project in order to protect Trump and his campaign.

"The Committee looks forward to inviting Mr. Cohen back to help answer these and many other outstanding questions," Schiff said.

I'll bet.

I'm looking forward to it, too.

I am not, however, giddy with anticipation about what will come next. Partly, that's because it's still a long shot that Donald Trump will face consequences and be neutered of the power he routinely abuses — and I remain well aware that Trump pushed into a corner while he retains the colossal power the office of the presidency confers is a perilous thing for the rest of us. I'm too busy fervently hoping we get through this safely to be giddy about any of it.

And partly it's because I will never stop grieving all the damage that Trump has done in the time he was allowed to be the Republican nominee and then the president, despite the fact that his collusion with Russia was apparent given some basic scrutiny. I desperately hope that we get rid of Trump and get rid of Mike Pence and get rid of all their dirtbag lackeys and find some way to rid ourselves of the stain of their leadership and restore some of what we've lost. If that can even happen, it's going to take so much work. Just contemplating it leaves me bereft of the energy required for giddiness.

I want him gone with every cell of my being, though. And I'm going to keep doing my tiny piece to make that happen every goddamn day until he's nothing but a red-behatted smear in a history book.

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The Democrats Take Note (Cough) of Cohen's Plea

In case you're wondering if House and Senate Democrats have taken notice of Michael Cohen's guilty plea and its details and what those details actually reveal about Donald Trump, the answer is FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Garrett Haake, Frank Thorp V, Alex Moe, and Dartunorro Clark at NBC News: Democrats Pounce After Cohen Admits He Lied to Congress About Trump Tower Project in Russia. (Emphases mine.)

Top Democrats on Thursday excoriated [Donald] Trump after his former longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said there is a "culture of corruption" surrounding Trump and renewed calls to protect special counsel Robert Mueller, who brought the bombshell charges against Cohen on Thursday morning in Manhattan federal court as part of his investigation into Russian election meddling.

...Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of [the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence], said Cohen's admission is just another example of one of Trump's "closest allies lying about their ties to Russia and Russians."

"You've got all these close associates of the president, one after another, pleading guilty, often pleading guilty about their ties to Russia and Russians, and what are they covering up for?" Warner added.

He said Cohen was "obviously" one of the witnesses "we've always wanted to have come back" before the committee.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called Cohen's deal a "very significant plea and statement" and suggested that there were others who possibly lied to congressional investigators.

"It means that when the president was representing on the campaign that he has no business interests in Russia, that that wasn't true," Schiff said. "This, I think, only underscores I think the importance of not only bringing Mr. Cohen back before our committee but also looking into this issue of whether the Russians possess financial leverage over the president of the United States."

...Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Thursday that Cohen's admission "raises serious questions about the president’s relationship with Russia and whether he and his family have been honest with the American people."

"Today's guilty plea clearly shows that we still don't know the full story and that Special Counsel Mueller must be allowed to complete his investigation without interference or delay," Feinstein said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Cohen's guilty plea is a serious offense and that he wants to know why he lied to Congress originally.

"He lied to Congress apparently about dealings between Trump and Russia. And that leads me to suspect that there are more dealings that the president wanted hidden," Nadler said. "And this raises all kinds of questions with respect to the question of how much — whether the Russian government has any kind of hold on the president because of his financial dealings and whether the president knew about the obvious collusion between his campaign and the Russians."

He said that he thinks it is a sign that Congress needs to step up and have "an honest investigation."

I hope you're all resting comfortably on your fainting couches before you read this next bit, but it turns out that Republicans DON'T AGREE with Rep. Nadler that it's time for "an honest investigation" into Donald Trump's collusion with and possible (ahem) personal compromisation by the Russians.

My favorite is the loathsome Sen. John Thune, who ran to Fox News to disgorge his execrable talking points:

"I don't think at this point that there has been anything that, in any way, changes the landscape, so to speak, where the president is concerned," Thune said in an interview with Fox News Thursday. "He has argued all along there wasn't any collusion on the part of his campaign team or his administration with Russia. And I haven't seen anything that disproves that."

Thune added that the Mueller probe should be thorough and complete, but can't go on forever. He said Trump has important work to do for the American people and it is time to "move on."

"And the longer these things drag on, it just, it gets, I think, very wearing on the American people," he said. "The report needs to come out. We need to know what happened, but I agree with my colleagues that the time I think has come to start drawing this to a conclusion."

The unmitigated temerity of this fucking guy! As if the Republican Party really gives two fucks about what wears on the American people. (If they did, they wouldn't spend their time passing massive tax cuts for the wealthy and destroying the social safety net.) The reason Thune wants the probe to end now is because it hasn't directly implicated anyone in the White House which would oblige the Republican Party to take down their own president or permanently implode their party in a refusal to hold accountable an Oval Office traitor from their ranks.

That the probe has lasted as long as it has, has only served Republicans, giving them egregious amounts of time to consolidate their power behind Donald Trump. They lost the House in the midterms, which was a big blow for them and a big success for us, but they continue to orchestrate their takeover via the federal courts every day.

They've wasted no time, despite their transparent complaints about the duration of Mueller's probe, and I sure hope to fuck that Mueller hasn't been wasting any time, either.

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Trump Is a Cruel, Traitorous Disgrace

Donald Trump was in Europe the past couple of days, behaving like an absolute nightmare, the puppet of Vladimir Putin that he has always claimed not to be.

Observe their expressions as Putin approaches pic.twitter.com/okDnM2T4qt

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) November 11, 2018

Anyone else notice the extra love tap that Putin gave his boy, @realDonaldTrump?🙄#PutinsPuppet#TrumpRussiapic.twitter.com/sVDk13wUUL

— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) November 11, 2018

With Trump standing nearby, French President Emmanuel Macron gave an Armistice Day speech about the threat of rising nationalism that would have shamed Trump, if he had any shame. Back home, Democrats who are now empowered to investigate Trump took notice, e.g. Rep. Adam Schiff.

It’s not only that nationalism is on the rise around the globe, but also its pernicious twin, authoritarianism. From Poland to Hungary, Brazil to the Philippines, liberal democracy is being challenged everywhere and America must rise to its defense. We must be freedom’s champion. https://t.co/tGrftK7OaZ

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 12, 2018

Meanwhile, Trump was multitasking as a despicable shit to his people back home, tweeting out blame at forest management for the devastating forest fires, which have claimed dozens of lives.

Malice is the agenda. https://t.co/XL54XvNI1S

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 10, 2018

And now that he's home, he's back on Twitter, ranting about how our European allies are unfair to the United States.

I don't know what there is to be said that hasn't already been said a thousand times before. Donald Trump is a cruel, traitorous disgrace.

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Roger Stone Sought Stolen Clinton and State Department Emails During Campaign

Shelby Holliday and Rob Barry at the Wall Street Journal: Roger Stone Sought Information on Clinton from Assange, Emails Show.

Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone privately sought information he considered damaging to Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The emails could raise new questions about Mr. Stone's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in September, in which he said he "merely wanted confirmation" from an acquaintance that Mr. Assange had information about Mrs. Clinton, according to a portion of the transcript that was made public.

In a Sept. 18, 2016, message, Mr. Stone urged an acquaintance who knew Mr. Assange to ask the WikiLeaks founder for emails related to Mrs. Clinton's alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011 when she was secretary of state, referring to her by her initials.

"Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30--particularly on August 20, 2011," Mr. Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had interviewed Mr. Assange several weeks earlier. Mr. Stone, a longtime confidant of Mr. Trump, had no formal role in his campaign at the time.

So, we'll pause here briefly to note a couple of things:

One, that per Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the email exchange between Stone and Credico was not provided to congressional investigators.

[Schiff] said the emails hadn't been provided to congressional investigators.

"If there is such a document, then it would mean that his testimony was either deliberately incomplete or deliberately false," said Mr. Schiff, who has continued to request documents and conduct interviews with witnesses despite the committee's probe concluding earlier this year.

Two, that as noted by former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, "It is a federal crime to knowingly receive stolen material that has crossed a national or international boundary."

And three, that Stone "had no formal role" in Trump's campaign at the time is totally irrelevant to everyone aside from treason apologists.

Which Stone knows as well as anyone and better than most. Hence this:

Mr. Stone, in a text message to the Journal, said that Mr. Credico had "provided nothing" to him and that WikiLeaks never handed anything over.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Roger Stone isn't known for his rigorous honesty. Either way, the very fact that he was soliciting State Department emails, which would have had to be stolen for him to access them, is a problem. And the likelihood that he omitted information during his congressional testimony could be a crime.

Unfortunately, the usual issue is that there still doesn't appear to be anyone in the Republican majority who has even the slightest inclination to hold anyone accountable for any of this.

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Inspector General Initiates FISC Review

This is absolutely incredible: The Inspector General's office has announced that it will, at the request of Jeff Sessions and a bunch of Republican creeps in Congress, initiate a review "that will examine the Justice Department's and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person," i.e. Carter Page.

BREAKING: DOJ Inspector General "will initiate a review" to examine "DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person." pic.twitter.com/QrQ0deIYEn

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) March 28, 2018

This, of course, is related to a centerpiece of the Republican strategy to discredit Special Counsel Bob Mueller's entire investigation: They argue that Page was illegally surveilled, despite the fact that Page has practically bragged about being an Russian agent.

Rep. Devin Nunes' infamous memo contended that Hillary Clinton and/or Democrats paid for the Steele dossier, and the FBI subsequently used it exclusively as justification to spy on Page, making the application unethically ideological in nature.

But of course Nunes' memo was trash: Rep. Adam Schiff's subsequent memo made clear, even with redactions, what manifest bullshit it was. Crucially, Schiff's memo recounted that the FBI had reasons independent of the Steele dossier to suspect Carter Page of "knowingly" assisting Russian intelligence officials, and further that the FBI provided the FISA court with information that corroborated the dossier's assertions.

So all of this is a fucking sideshow, with no purpose except to try to discredit Mueller — by defending a likely traitor.

The Trump administration is expending an awful lot of capital on Carter Page. So much so that it almost seems as though they feel confident they have unlimited capital to spend. Like people who know the party will never end.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 28, 2018

Meanwhile, no word on whether the IG is inclined to initiate a review of how the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, and public disclosures thereof. Cough.

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We Resist: Day 418

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: This Is What It Looks Like When Your President Is Owned by Russia and Trump's Personal Assistant Fired and Removed from White House and Women Bring Class Action Lawsuit Against Microsoft.

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

Luke Harding at the Guardian: Russian Exile Nikolai Glushkov Found Dead at His London Home. "A Russian exile who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead in his London home, according to friends. Nikolai Glushkov was discovered by his family and friends late on Monday night, aged 68. The cause of death is not yet clear." Russia is doing the most to break apart the US-UK alliance and start a world war. We must be clear on this point, no matter how terrifying it is to process.

And, because I am clear on that point, I ask: Chuck Schumer, what are you even doing?

The instability of this administration in just about every area weakens America.

If he’s confirmed, we hope that Mr. Pompeo will turn over a new leaf and will start toughening up our policies towards Russia and Putin.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 13, 2018

This isn't helpful. Trump just said in a presser the reason he chose Pompeo is specifically *because* he won't challenge Trump on Russia or anything else: "We’re always on the same wavelength. The relationship has been very good. That’s what I need as secretary of state." https://t.co/7tpQZnTbye

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2018

Trump said in full (according to the New York Times' transcript of the brief press avail):

I've worked with Mike Pompeo now for quite some time. Tremendous energy, tremendous intellect. We're always on the same wavelength. The relationship has been very good. That's what I need as secretary of state.

I wish Rex Tillerson well. Gina, by the way, who I know very well who I worked very closely, will be the first woman director of the C.I.A. She is an outstanding person who also I have gotten to know very well. So I've gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year and I'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the cabinet and other things that I want.

But I think Mike Pompeo will be a truly great secretary of state. I have total confidence in him. And as far as Rex Tillerson is concerned, I very much appreciate his commitment and his service and I wish him well. He's a good man.

...Rex and I have been talking about this for a long time. We got along actually quite well. But we disagreed on things. When you look at the Iran deal. I think it's terrible. I guess he — it was O.K. I wanted to either break it or do something. And he felt a little bit differently.

So we were not really thinking the same. With Mike, Mike Pompeo, we have a very similar thought process. I think it's going to go very well.

The important takeaways: 1. Trump wants a yes-man as Secretary of State. 2. Trump doesn't want anyone at State challenging him, especially on Russia. Also note Pompeo's agreement with Trump that "the Iran deal [is] terrible." 3. Trump says he's "getting very close to having the cabinet and other things" he wants. It's unclear what those "other things" are, but it's clear that the cabinet he wants is one full of deferential sycophants who will aid and abet his authoritarianism.

So there is literally no reason for Schumer to be pretending at this point — and every reason to stop pretending — that there is any good faith to be found among Trump's cabinet. They are not going to do the right thing. There will be no "new leaf" for Mike Pompeo, no more than there has ever been a "pivot" for Trump.

To insist otherwise is to indulge the utterly false narrative that this administration is something other than profoundly abnormal, subversive, disloyal, and intent on undermining our democratic institutions, norms, and laws.

It is to further pretend that the rest of the Republican Party hasn't colluded with this coup every step of the way, despite the fact that they have, openly and shamelessly. Here is another piece from Trump's presser:

We're very happy with the decision by the House Intelligence Committee saying there was absolutely no collusion with respect to Russia. And it was a very powerful decision, a very strong decision.

Backed up — I understand they're going to be releasing hundreds of pages of proof and evidence. But we are very, very happy with that decision. It was a powerful decision that left no doubt. So I want to thank the House Intelligence Committee and all of the people that voted so strongly.

I'll bet. I'm sure Donald Trump is incredibly grateful to his helpers in Congress, who refuse to acknowledge his collusion, because that might shine a spotlight on theirs.

I understand the Democrats are in the minority and there is not a whole lot they can do to stop Trump as long as Republicans are in charge, having abandoned their patriotism and duty to provide checks and balances on the executive branch. But the one thing Democrats can do is stop talking about this in a way that ignores or soft-pedals reality. That only helps Trump.

Be honest. Even if the honesty is difficult for people to hear and accept. Especially when it is.

Here is the since-deleted tweet from Mike Pompeo on July 24, 2016 pushing stolen Democratic emails and Wikileaks. Pompeo was head of House Intelligence Commitee at the time. 3 days later, Trump called on Russia “if you’re listening” to get Clinton’s email. pic.twitter.com/ZE5dLqrtI9

— Dafna Linzer (@DafnaLinzer) March 13, 2018

That's the reality about Mike Pompeo. New leaf, my fat fucking ass.

* * *

Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress: Nunes Justifies Ending Russia Probe with Talking Point That Was Debunked 8 Months Ago. "'If you look at the one example of which was I think bad judgement which is where they met with a Russian lawyer, but it had to do with Russian adoptions,' Nunes said, after he was asked to explain how the House Intelligence Committee arrived at its conclusion that there was no collusion." As has been well documented, "adoptions" is code for "sanctions."

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: The Republican Coverup for Trump Just Got Much Worse.

House Republicans may have the power to prevent important facts about [Donald] Trump and Russia from coming to public light. But here's what they don't have the power to do: prevent important facts about their own conduct on Trump's behalf from coming to public light.

...In an interview with me this morning, Rep. Adam B. Schiff — the ranking Democrat on the Intel Committee — confirmed that Democrats will issue a minority report that will seek to rebut the GOP conclusions.

But here's the real point to understand about this minority report: It will detail all the investigative avenues that House Republicans declined to take — the interviews that they didn't conduct, and the leads that they didn't try to chase down and verify. And Schiff confirmed that the report will include new facts — ones that have not been made public yet — that Republicans didn't permit to influence their conclusions.

Sargent is right, and I'm hugely appreciative that Schiff continues to say and do the right thing, but what will any of this matter as long as the Republicans remain in charge? Who is going to make it matter?

An associate of Roger Stone told the WaPo that Stone had learned WikiLeaks had hacked DNC emails months before the hacking was public knowledge. https://t.co/30FSbcoReH

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2018

I wish I thought that any of this was going to matter, to the people empowered to hold these traitors accountable.

* * *

The vile words of a shitty candidate who knows he can't win on the merits. If he wins, it will be because of garbage like this, not because of policy. https://t.co/FnE0f2ZMhO

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2018

Get this dude outta there, Pennsylvania 18! Good luck, Democrats. I'm rooting for ya from the other side of the state.

* * *

[Content Note: Chipping away at abortion rights. Covers entire section.]

Rolling back abortion access, and the very right to access abortion at all, continues apace across the country, as Republican legislatures pass anti-choice laws in a vacuum of inattention and with a newly-sympathetic Supreme Court majority:

1. Mississippi passed a "blanket ban on abortion after 15 weeks gestation."

2. Kentucky's House passed a ban on the 'dilation and evacuation' procedure, "the most commonly-used method for second trimester abortions."

3. Tennessee's House passed legislation "seeking federal approval to ban TennCare payments to abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, for non-abortion services."

4. Idaho's House passed legislation that "would require the state Department of Health and Welfare to provide individuals seeking abortions with information about reversing a medication-induced abortion. It would also require the agency to publish information on its website about the reversal procedure, which according to Planned Parenthood, has 'no basis in science.'"

So, everything is going great for women and others who can get pregnant and thus need access to a full state of reproductive healthcare options.

* * *

"The San Francisco spokesman for ICE resigned after the agency’s recent Northern California sweep, saying he couldn’t continue to do his job after Trump administration officials made false public statements about a key aspect of the operation." https://t.co/9xApIPqKsS

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2018

[CN: Nativism; reproductive coercion] Layidua Salazar at Rewire: Activist's Detainment Reminds Us Immigration Is a Reproductive Justice Issue.

Ale has talked about her decision to have an abortion and why she feels having a family under this administration would be unsafe. "When I first found out I was pregnant, I was conflicted," she said earlier this year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. "For a minute or two I smiled at the idea of being a mother. I quickly had a reality check and knew I couldn't start a family here, right now. I do not want to be a mother because families are under attack."

She added that, "The same people who would force me to continue my pregnancy are the same people who would rip my baby from my arms and deport me because of my immigration status. I can't ignore the irony of lawmakers whose only mission is to control a woman's body, and refuse to support us in accessing childcare and livable wages for our families. The president is a known racist and encourages police to keep killing us instead of working towards a country that can begin transforming itself to be a place that truly is the best country in the world."

[CN: Death penalty] Alfonso Serrano at Colorlines: Death Sentence: Trump Considers Capital Punishment for Drug Dealers. "An opioid overdose crisis that killed nearly 64,000 people in 2016 has proved more deadly than the AIDS epidemic at its peak and has played a significant role in reducing life expectancy in the United States for the second straight year. As morgues overflow with bodies and children pour into the foster care system, states are scrambling to stop the hemorrhaging via high tech solutions, ramped up addiction services, and lawsuits targeting drug makers. But [Donald] Trump has recently floated a different approach, inspired by some Asian countries: death sentences for drug dealers. During a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday (March 10), Trump said that drug dealers might deserve the death penalty. It's the second time he has voiced the idea in two weeks."

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

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Shut Up!