Showing posts with label IS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IS. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 718

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, January 07, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Trump Threatens National Emergency and Years-Long Shutdown over Border Wall and No, Joe.

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


It was quite reasonably assumed that Pentagon Chief of Staff Kevin Sweeney had resigned in protest, and the Pentagon released a statement from Sweeney saying he had "decided the time is right to return to the private sector," but, according to Gordon Lubold at MarketWatch, his sources tell him that Sweeney was "forced out of his post by the Defense Department's new acting head."

The acting head, following Jim Mattis' resignation, is Patrick M. Shanahan.

Relatedly: Amanda Becker at Reuters: Trump Says Acting Cabinet Members Give Him 'More Flexibility'. "Donald Trump said on Sunday he was in no hurry to find permanent replacements for one-quarter of his Cabinet currently serving in an acting capacity because it gives him 'more flexibility.' 'I am in no hurry,' Trump told reporters as he departed for Camp David... 'I like acting. It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great Cabinet,' Trump said. He did not elaborate on why they give him more flexibility." Because they are more likely to be ideological lackeys who do whatever he says and share his contempt for the rule of law, that's why.

* * *

David E. Sanger, Noah Weiland, and Eric Schmitt at the New York Times: Bolton Puts Conditions on Syria Withdrawal, Suggesting a Delay of Months or Years. "[Donald] Trump's national security adviser, John R. Bolton, rolled back on Sunday Mr. Trump's decision to rapidly withdraw from Syria, laying out conditions for a pullout that could leave American forces there for months or even years. Mr. Bolton, making a visit to Israel, told reporters that American forces would remain in Syria until the last remnants of the Islamic State were defeated and Turkey provided guarantees that it would not strike Kurdish forces allied with the United States."

When John Bolton is the voice of reason, you have totally derailed and landed in a bubbling earth-cauldron of scorching lava.

No sooner had Bolton made this "clarification" than Trump took to Twitter to undercut him. Rebecca Morin at Politico: Trump Claims Syria Withdrawal Plan Hasn't Changed. "[Donald] Trump on Monday pushed back against reports that national security adviser John Bolton had contradicted the president's initial plans to quickly withdraw troops from Syria, saying the U.S. will leave the war-torn country at 'a proper pace.' 'The Failing New York Times has knowingly written a very inaccurate story on my intentions on Syria,' the president wrote in a tweet. 'No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!.....'"

Naturally, Trump had to launch yet another attack on the media, for accurately reporting that some members of his administration are trying to stop him from handing the world's destiny over to Vladimir Putin. [Content Note: Disablist language; stochastic terrorism] John Wagner at the Washington Post: 'Crazed Lunatics': Trump Again Attacks the News Media as 'the Enemy of the People'. "[Donald] Trump launched a fresh attack Monday on the news media, writing in tweets that it consists of many 'crazed lunatics,' and he again invoked the derogatory term 'enemy of the people.' 'With all of the success that our Country is having, including the just released jobs numbers which are off the charts, the Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse,' Trump said in the first of the tweets. 'Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!'"

As long as this guy remains in office, we are so doomed.

* * *

Speaking of which...

Harmeet Kaur and Christina Kline at CNN have compiled people's stories about "How the government shutdown is affecting Americans," and the submissions are typically grim: "Cynthia Letts writes: 'I moved and began my new federal job one week before the shutdown. I spent most of my savings getting here and can't pay the rent without a job. I'm looking at homelessness.'"

I guess homelessness is just one of the "adjustments" Trump expects federal workers to make. As is hunger.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Grace Segers at CBS News: Millions Could Face Severe Cuts to Food Stamps Due to Government Shutdown. "The partial government shutdown glided into its third week Saturday with no end in sight. If the government is not reopened before February, millions of Americans who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — the nation's food stamp program — could have their assistance disrupted. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP at the federal level, is one of the agencies unfunded during the partial government shutdown. Although SNAP is automatically renewed, it has not been allocated funding from Congress beyond January. Congress has appropriated $3 billion in emergency funds for SNAP distribution, but that would not cover all of February's obligations."

Also: Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: How the Government Shutdown Is Making the U.S. Immigration System Even Worse. "While cases for immigrants in government custody are proceeding, immigration courts are not holding hearings for non-detained immigrants during the shutdown, meaning immigrants re-authorizing work visas, applying for permanent residency, or contesting government charges on deportability are in a precarious situation. Missing even a single day of hearings could add hundreds to the current backlog of 800,000 cases — over a million if you include the ones the U.S. Attorney General wants on the docket. ...'There is no benefit that is gained here,' [Ashley Trabbador, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges] said. 'The irony is not lost on us that immigration court is shut down over immigration.'"

* * *

[CN: Misogyny] Matthew Choi at Politico: Hillary Clinton: 'Likability' Discussion Around Female Candidates 'Takes Me Back'.
Talk of whether or not the U.S. is prepared to elect women leaders "takes me back," 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told an audience in New York on Monday, praising the resolve of that state's female elected officials for getting legislation passed to protect women's reproductive rights.

..."There's been a lot of talk recently about whether our country is ready for women leaders. Now that really takes me back," Clinton said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

"But today I want to thank all of you for your persistence," Clinton said of several women officials at the event. "I know many of you and can attest as to how smart, determined, effective, and, dare I say, likable you all are."
♥ ♥ ♥

This likeability horseshit — and the attendant "debates" about whether it's misogynist (it is) — are something we are going to have to continually resist throughout the 2020 campaign. And probably far beyond, sob.

* * *

Lachlan Markay at the Daily Beast: Top Trump Backer Financed Supreme Court Confirmation Fights Through Shadowy Network. "Previously unreported documents obtained by The Daily Beast provide the first glimpse into the finances of a key node in that network [of interconnected groups who funded Trump's inauguration and helped pave the way for the confirmation of his Supreme Court nominees], traced to Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, a major player in Washington's wars over the makeup of the federal judiciary. Those documents, like others revealed over the last few months, provide a deeper glimpse into the expanding role that Leo's played in advancing the Trump administration's agenda on legal matters in particular. And they underscore the degree to which anonymous, high-dollar donors have bankrolled the advocacy behind Trump's highly successful efforts to reshape the federal judiciary."

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Speaking of the Supreme Court... Eli Watkins and Ariane de Vogue at CNN: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Not on Bench for Supreme Court's First Day of Arguments in 2019, Court Says. "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be at the Supreme Court Monday morning as it meets for its first day of oral arguments in the new year. The court's public information officer said Ginsburg, who is still recovering from surgery last month to remove two cancerous nodules from her lung, would still be able to vote on the cases by reviewing the transcripts of oral arguments." I hope the Notorious RBG is feeling stronger soon, and I resist, continually, the entire premise of a profoundly ideological Supreme Court where the fate of the nation can rest on the health of a single person.


Imagine, of all the things we can be in this world, choosing to be an Assange defender. And dying on the hill of his delicate fee-fees!

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

Open Wide...
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Obama Administration Treasury Officials Emailed with Kremlin Through Back Channels During 2016 Election

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, December 20, 2018
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Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed: Russian Agents Sought Secret U.S. Treasury Records on Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign.

U.S. Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the U.S. election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.

...Russia's financial crimes agency, whose second-in-command is a former KGB officer and schoolmate of President Vladimir Putin, also asked the Americans for documents on executives from two prominent Jewish groups, the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Jewish Women, as well as Kremlin opponents living abroad in London and Kiev.

In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange information with other countries.

...[D]ocuments reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal that Russia's attempts to extract information about Western targets triggered alarms inside the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, a powerful unit of the Treasury Department with exclusive access to the most comprehensive and sophisticated financial database in the world.

Officials at FinCEN said they reported the use of the back channel to Treasury's counterterrorism unit and security office, and requested an investigation.

...The FinCEN officials reported the incidents in July and August 2016, and claim that there was no substantive investigation of the matter. These sources said that other senior officials continued to use the back channel even after they were told to stop by the Treasury's office for security.
There is much more at the link.

This report is absolutely extraordinary. Not only were employees of Obama's Treasury department aiding the Kremlin in its campaign to subvert the 2016 election, but they were sharing information on Russian dissidents with a regime whose leader is known for ordering the assassination of his critics.

And they kept doing it even after they were told to stop, which, in addition to suggesting these were people who were either profoundly compromised or eager co-conspirators, makes one wonder why they even had a second chance to keep passing information to Russia, as opposed to being immediately removed from their positions.

I have a lot of thoughts on this disturbing revelation, many of which I'm not keen to share publicly at the moment, but I'll note four things:

1. "Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents" — Yet again, "working with Russia to defeat ISIS" appears. I really do not understand why I am the only person who noticed and has been screaming about the "work with Russia to defeat ISIS" planks in every candidacy but Hillary Clinton's during the 2016 election, because that is the trail of breadcrumbs to collusion with Russia. It indicates that every campaign but Clinton's had been infiltrated by the Kremlin, and now we discover at least one cabinet in Obama's administration was, too, under the same pretenses.

2. I suspect the odds are very long indeed that Hillary Clinton didn't know, or at least suspect, any of that. The question is how long she has known or suspected. Is the fact that people around Obama and/or people in high levels of the federal government were compromised by Russia partly (or wholly) why she decided to use her own server at State? If so, this has been going on way longer than we knew. (And her decision to use that private server looks smarter by the goddamn day.)

3. Where was then-Secretary of State John Kerry while all of this was happening? If he is truly keen to mount another presidential run in 2020, he's got some pretty big questions to answer.

4. I am very concerned that this disclosure is prelude to Republicans' launching a "Democrats colluded!" offensive that will be used to try to obfuscate the ongoing collusion of the sitting president.

None of this is good. And I am very concerned.

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 700

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

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

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

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


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

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

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

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


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


In other collusion news...


Great question.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 699

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, December 19, 2018
View Comments

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: This Is Why Pelosi Has Earned Her Job and Facebook Allowed Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Sony, Spotify, Yahoo, and Others to Access Users' Data and Trump and Giuliani Are Lying Liars, as Usual.

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

Big foreign policy news today, as Donald Trump has declared: "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency."

Which was preface for the disclosure that the U.S. "is considering a total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria."

A few problems, detailed by MSNBC's Richard Engel:

This is a very significant moment. There are many allies who will see this as a great American betrayal. What is happening right now, when you look at the president's tweet, when you look at statements to NBC News by military officials, this administration — the president — is going into the holidays and taking a "mission accomplished" moment, saying the U.S. under [Donald] Trump defeated ISIS, so now it's time to withdraw a significant portion of the U.S. troops in Syria, out of the country, out of harm's way, if not all of the troops.

And, on a certain level, ISIS has been pushed back. It hasn't been entirely defeated, but it has been pushed back. U.S. military officials say that the fight against ISIS in Syria isn't over, and then there is the other problem about our allies that we've been fighting with in Syria.

We have had — the U.S. military has had a very close partner in a Kurdish-led force, the YPG, also known as the SDF. This is a Kurdish-led force that has been fighting hand in glove with U.S. troops for about four years now. They have lost thousands of men; thousands of women fighters have also been on the front lines; in the last four years, fighting alongside U.S. troops, they've been able to carve out a successful mini-state right on the Turkish border. With U.S. troops leaving, that mini-state would be at risk. Turkey already says it wants to invade it.

So, not only is the fight not quite over against ISIS, according to the U.S. special envoy who deals with ISIS, according to U.S. military commanders that I've been speaking with; it would also put this very close ally that has sacrificed so much for the United States in a position of probably unsustainable peril.

[Female anchor offscreen says: "And Richard, big picture here: This is another example of [Donald] Trump taking one view; his own military taking another; and this conflict, or clash, that we've seen before on other issues related to the military, in this administration."]

So, this almost happened about six months ago. That's when I went into this region in northern Syria. The troops on the ground, the Kurdish-led partners on the ground, were very concerned, because [Donald] Trump, six months ago, was making statements like, the war against ISIS was finished; it's time to leave the area; the U.S. no longer has any purpose in being there.

And the military pushed back. There were a lot of private conversations; there were a lot of people talking to the president and those around him, saying, hey, look, I know you're the commander in chief, sir, but you might want to consider this — we're not quite finished with the war on ISIS; our allies will be destroyed by the Turks. And the administration backed off.

This time, with that tweet, with the number of comments that we've seen coming out, right out of the gate this morning, it doesn't seem like the White House is willing to back off again.
There's a whole lot there, but I want to emphasize this: "It would also put this very close ally that has sacrificed so much for the United States in a position of probably unsustainable peril. ...Our allies will be destroyed." This, of course, would not be the first time that the U.S. has betrayed Kurdish fighters — a grim legacy left out of the recent remembrances of George H.W. Bush.

Also, once again, I will observe that "working with Russia to defeat ISIS in Syria" was a possible tell about Russian influence within campaigns in 2016. And here is the final endgame of that fuckery: The U.S. will leave Syria, declaring ISIS "defeated," abandoning Syria to chaos which Vladimir Putin will further exploit.

Meanwhile: The U.S. has reportedly approved a $3.5 billion patriot missile sale to Turkey. Holy fuck.

Also: The U.S. Treasury Department is reportedly removing Russian aluminum giant Rusal from the sanctions list. Good lord.

I am so profoundly shaken and upset by all of this. I am so sorry for the Syrian people who wanted none of this. I am so worried about where refugees will find safe harbor. I am so angry at Donald Trump, and every person who has abetted him.

* * *

Erica Werner, John Wagner, and Damian Paletta at the Washington Post: Senate to Pass Bill That Would Keep Government Open, Deny Trump Wall Funding. "The Senate prepared Wednesday to pass a short-term spending bill that would keep the government open through the New Year but deny [Donald] Trump the money he wanted for his border wall — a stark retreat for Republicans in their final days in control of Congress. ...The outcome would temporarily break an impasse that threatened to shutter large portions of the government this weekend and send hundreds of thousands of federal workers home without pay just before Christmas. Trump has signaled his support for the plan but 'can change his mind if he wants to,' said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican. A senior White House aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's position, said the plan is for Trump to sign the legislation."

Trump had better fucking sign this shit. It would be just like him to pull an unexpected reversal and refuse to sign it, throwing the entire federal government into chaos and harming federal workers right before the holidays. I hope, for once, he abandons his urge for malice and just signs the goddamn bill.

* * *

[Content Note: Nativism; abuse. Covers entire section.]

John Stanton at BuzzFeed: Another Migrant Girl Nearly Died After She Was Detained in New Mexico by the Border Patrol. "A young girl who was in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection went into cardiac arrest in November at a hospital in El Paso where she was resuscitated, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told members of Congress on Tuesday. The incident occurred in the same CBP sector where a 7-year-old Guatemalan asylum-seeker, Jakelin Caal, fell ill [and died] earlier this month."

Speaking of Jakelin Caal, I hope every person who felt compelled to sneer that her father is responsible for her death, because he took her on a journey through the desert in search of a better life, reads this. Elisabeth Malkin at the New York Times: In Home Village of Girl Who Died in U.S. Custody, Poverty Drives Migration. "Ms. Maquin has a simple explanation for why her husband joined a growing number of villagers and made the dangerous journey north: the absolute lack of alternatives in this lush but remote part of the country. Indigenous communities like theirs have endured centuries of poverty, exclusion, and repression by economic and political elites. ...Mr. Caal, like so many other migrants, may well have heard — from others who made the trip, or from the smuggler he paid to take him to the border — that he would have a better chance of remaining in the United States if he arrived with a child."

Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff at NBC News: Advocates: Trump Admin Lying When It Says It Can't Process Any More Asylum Seekers. "Immigration advocates at the southern U.S. border say the Trump administration is lying when it says it's at 'capacity' and can't process any more asylum seekers at the ports of entry where migrants can legally claim asylum. On Twitter Monday night, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said 'the processing system at CBP and our partner agencies has hit capacity.' ...But Kara Lynum, a lawyer with American Immigration Lawyers Association who was held outside the Otay Mesa border station with the 15 Honduran immigrants Monday, said the station was not full."

Tom Phillips at the Guardian: Mexico Investigates After Teens from Migrant Caravan Killed Near U.S. Border. "Two teenage members of the migrant caravan have reportedly been murdered in Tijuana, a stark reminder of the dangers facing the tens of thousands of young Central Americans who try to reach the United States each year. The Honduran victims, aged 16 and 17, reportedly hailed from the violence-stricken city of San Pedro Sula, where the caravan set out from in mid-October before cutting north-west through Mexico towards the U.S. border." That's the cost of the Trump Regime's lies about being unable to process asylum-seekers.

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Members of Congress Caged at the Border While Standing with Asylum Seekers. "Two members of Congress, along with 15 asylum seekers and leaders from immigrant activist group Families Belong Together, were caged together overnight at the Otay Mesa port of entry near San Diego. The group intended to observe how detained migrants are treated when attempting to claim asylum. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Families Belong Together said the incident amounted to the Trump administration making a 'mockery of our long-held democratic values and our legal process.' ...According to [Democratic Reps. Nanette Barragan and Jimmy Gomez, who both represent the greater Los Angeles area], CBP agents routinely gave them a hard time, making snide comments and jokes at the expense of the asylum seekers." Seethe.


I'm so, so glad that Shaima Swileh is going to get to see her son, but this is no solution — granting exceptions to people whose tragic stories go viral. The Muslim ban must be lifted.

* * *

In good resistance news... Elham Khatami at ThinkProgress: Nevada Just Became the First State with a Women-Majority Legislature. "Nevada made history on Wednesday as the country's first woman-majority state legislature, after Las Vegas county officials appointed two women to fill recently-vacated seats in the state Assembly. The appointment of the two women — Democrats Beatrice Duran and Rochelle Nguyen, who is also the first Asian American woman to serve in her district — brings the total number of female-held seats in the Assembly to 23, or 55 percent of the 42-seat chamber. Women hold nine of the 21 seats in the Nevada state Senate, meaning 34 of the 63 total seats in the legislature are women-held. According to Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), Nevada is the first state not only to have a female-majority legislature, but to even reach the 50 percent threshold of overall female representation."

And back to shitty news... [CN: Sexual harassment; racism; homophobia] Kate Riga at TPM: Ex-News Chiefs Booted for Sexual Harassment, Racism Team Up to Create New Outlet. "Ousted NPR and Fox News chiefs, booted due to sexual harassment allegations and accusations of racism and homophobia, respectively, have been recruited by former Fox News executive Ken LaCorte to head a new 'fair and balanced' digital news outlet. According to a Tuesday Politico report, Michael Oreskes formerly of NPR and John Moody formerly of Fox News will play a key role in assigning 'importance' to stories to avoid creating a partisan silo on the new site, LaCorte News. LaCorte told Politico that he is wholly unconcerned about the men's pasts, considering their ouster an overreaction."

Staff at the Feminist Newswire: Trump Administration Rescinds Anti-discriminatory School Discipline Policies. "Today the Trump Administration announced it would rescind parts of the Obama administration's 'Rethink Discipline' school policies; policies that ensured that minority students were not unfairly targeted for harsher punishments or disciplinary practices. The Trump Administration argued that the policies' efforts to reduce discriminatory punishments contributed to the increase of violence in schools. The Trump Administration created the School Safety Commission, led by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, after the Parkland shooting. Instead of focusing on gun violence and gun control, the Commission targeted Obama era school discipline policies that protect minority students from discriminatory discipline practices, even though the Parkland shooter was a white male."

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

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Everything Is Fine. (Everything Is Not Fine.)

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, August 08, 2017
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[Content Note: Terrorism; war.]

Courtney Kube at NBC News: U.S. May Begin Airstrikes Against ISIS in Philippines.

The Pentagon is considering a plan that allows the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes on ISIS in the Philippines, two defense officials told NBC News.

The authority to strike ISIS targets as part of collective self-defense could be granted as part of an official military operation that may be named as early as Tuesday, said the officials. The strikes would likely be conducted by armed drones.

If approved, the U.S. military would be able to conduct strikes against ISIS targets in the Philippines that could be a threat to allies in the region, which would include the Philippine forces battling ISIS on the ground in the country's southern islands.
This news is alarming for a number of reasons, not least of which is the concern Fannie raised in her piece this morning: "A lesson from George W. Bush's presidency, then, is that a security crisis can confer legitimacy to a President who begins his term lacking it. And, the people will hunker down and rally behind an undeserving leader during a scary time, out of a sense of fear, loyalty, and nationalism. History shows that bad leaders will squander this trust, rather than accepting it with responsibility and grace."

There's also this: How can we be sure that we're not merely participating in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's extrajudicial killings of people he doesn't like? What guarantee do we have that Trump didn't promise precisely that to Duterte, given Trump's praise of his violent campaign and Trump's eagerness to look tough on terrorism?

This is very worrying.

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Trump Hands Putin Another Gift

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, July 20, 2017
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Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous at the Washington Post: Trump Ends Covert CIA Program to Arm Anti-Assad Rebels in Syria, a Move Sought by Moscow.

[Donald] Trump has decided to end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials.

...Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump's interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests.

...After the Trump-Putin meeting, the United States and Russia announced an agreement to back a new cease-fire in southwest Syria, along the Jordanian border, where many of the CIA-backed rebels have long operated. Trump described the limited cease-fire deal as one of the benefits of a constructive working relationship with Moscow.
To describe this as "a move long sought by Moscow" is an understatement. My friend (and expert in this area) Leah McElrath explains:
By ceasing U.S. military aid to anti-Assad forces in Syria, Trump gave Russian Putin a gift Russia has sought for more than a century: Earlier this year, Putin signed a treaty with Assad to establish and expand a naval base on the coast of Syria that is allowed to house up to eleven nuclear-powered warships at a time for 49 years, with ability to extend for another 25 years.

Historically, a central geopolitical goal for Russia has been to conquer enough territory to obtain a warm-water port for itself which will enable it to reach the Mediterranean Sea and, from there, the Atlantic Ocean. The vast majority of its extensive coastline is in the north in cold-waters that tend to freeze over. The warm-water coastal areas in Russia front land-locked seas.

So, by withdrawing the relatively minimal support provided by the U.S. to the anti-Assad forces, the likelihood of Assad killing everyone who is left opposing him in Syria is much higher. And Putin gets Russia its warm-water port after more than a century of effort by the country, as it has moved through its various iterations as an empire, a socialist union, and an authoritarian federation.
This is, of course, the second long-sought gift Trump has delivered to Putin, the first being subversion the of U.S.-Germany alliance. As I noted in May: "Trump is working very hard to undermine goodwill with our NATO allies, with a special insult to Germany. Since the end of WWII, Russia has had an explicit objective of busting up the U.S.-German alliance, because the combined strength of the U.S. and Germany, in both military might and democratic cultural influence, provided a check on the empiric aspirations of the Soviet Union, now Russia. Trump's subversion of the U.S-Germany relationship is providing a dangerous opening to Putin, who has already made abundantly clear his intent to rebuild Russia's reach with his annexation of Crimea and moves in Ukraine."

Aspirations about which two female world leaders — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May — have explicitly warned Trump. (Three female world leaders, if we count Hillary Clinton. Which we should.) But one of the problems with choosing a rank misogynist to run the country is that he won't listen to women, especially when he's also a disloyal scofflaw who is intent on making Putin's wish fulfillment the centerpiece of his presidency.

So here we are.

One last item: Last month, I detailed the curious history of this "work with Russia to defeat IS in Syria" foreign policy approach — and how, before the 2016 election, joining forces with Russia to defeat ISIS was not a mainstream position, on either side of the aisle, because, as Hillary Clinton explained during the second presidential debate, Putin "isn't interested in ISIS" and Russia's assault on Aleppo was instead intended to destroy Syrian rebels opposed to Assad's regime.

Nonetheless, during the 2016 election, the one in which Russia interfered with the objective of critically weakening Clinton, every single one of her leading opponents suggested working with Russia in some manner, using the justification of joining forces to defeat ISIS.

Her Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders, and all of her general election opponents — Donald Trump, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson — all four from across the political spectrum, and all four with campaign ties to Russia, each offered a policy of aligning with Russia, with the rationale of defeating ISIS, a foreign policy position that was not being advocated by any serious politicians before the 2016 election.

And a rationale that has never made, and continues to make, no sense based on the most basic understanding of Russia's objectives and alliances in Syria.

Trump, whose campaign appears to have received the most direct help from Russia and may have colluded with Russia during the election, is now the president. And so he is the one who is now enacting this "futile and dangerous" policy.

Hillary Clinton was the only candidate who we can be certain never would have handed this gift to Putin.

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We Resist: Day 179

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, July 17, 2017
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures 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.

* * *

Here are some things in the news today:

Earlier today by me: Get Well Soon, McCain—Then Reconsider Your Politics and The Lying Liars Tell More Lies About Don Jr.'s Meeting.

REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON TRUMPCARE.

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Igor Bobic at the Huffington Post: Tom Price Says Insurers Should 'Dust Off How They Did Business Before Obamacare'.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price suggested Sunday that the nation's health insurance system ought to operate as it did before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

During an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Price was asked to respond to a blistering criticism of the Senate Republicans' health care proposal by two major groups representing the U.S. health insurance industry. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this week, the groups called the latest version of the bill "simply unworkable in any form" and warned that it would cause "widespread terminations of coverage" to people with serious medical problems.

"It's really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies, because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare," Price said...

In discussing their health care plan, Republicans do not usually speak as candidly as Price about returning the nation's health care system to its pre-Obamacare period, a period marked by egregious insurance company abuses. Protections for pre-existing conditions remain highly popular around the country, and GOP lawmakers are loath to admit their policies would weaken them.

Prior to Obamacare, 79 million — more than one in four Americans — either lacked health insurance or were underinsured. The poor, especially, lacked adequate coverage.
A perfect and terrible reminder from the Secretary of Health and Human Services that Donald Trump's cabinet appointees were chosen based on their willingness to destroy the departments they were chosen to lead. By the time Price is done with his tenure, I suspect a more accurate name will be the Department of No Health and No Human Services.

Ellee Achten at Rewire: West Virginia Families, Just Learning About Health-Care Access, Fear It Will Be Taken Away. "It is well known that Planned Parenthood offers contraception, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy services, as well as abortion services and referrals, but West Virginians also receive hormone therapy, and testing and treatment for HIV, while others take their entire families to the clinics for general health care. Planned Parenthood centers — like the one Calloway visits in Vienna — offer extensive health services to their communities, especially to those with lower incomes. And, as Calloway noted, some patients are even seeking help at Planned Parenthood in battling opioids — a long-term and yet rising concern for Central Appalachia. 'We all made the choice to go to Planned Parenthood for different reasons,' said Calloway, who wanted to give Senators more than a story, but a face. 'Putting politics aside, we rely on Planned Parenthood,' she said."

Noam N. Levey at the LA Times: Obamacare Repeal Bills Could Put Coverage out of Reach for Millions of Sick Americans. "Both the House GOP bill that passed in May and the revised Senate GOP bill unveiled last week effectively eliminate the coverage guarantee by allowing health insurers to once again sell skimpier plans and charge more to people with preexisting health conditions who need more-comprehensive coverage. At the same time, the House and Senate bills dramatically scale back financial aid to low- and moderate-income consumers, and slash funding for Medicaid, the government safety-net plan that has helped millions of sick and poor Americans gain coverage. That combination — looser insurance requirements and less financial assistance for patients — will once again put health plans out of reach for millions of sick Americans, according to numerous analyses."


Again, I will note that the Republican Party is pursuing this wildly unpopular legislation with a vigor that suggests a party who believes they will never have to be accountable to voters again. That seems worrying, no?

* * *

[CN: War; death] Samuel Oakford at the Daily Beast: Trump's Air War Has Already Killed More Than 2,000 Civilians. "Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House — roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated — upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration. ...Airwars estimates that the minimum approximate number of civilian deaths from Coalition attacks will have doubled under Trump's leadership within his first six months in office." Fucking hell.

This sounds very much like precisely what Trump threatened to do when he was a candidate, having told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in December 2015 that, unlike Obama, who he accused of waging "a very politically correct war," he "would knock the hell out of ISIS... One of the problems that we have and one of the reasons we're so ineffective, they're using [civilians] as shields. ...With the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families."

So Trump's "politically incorrect" war doesn't care about civilian casualties. And, as a result, an enormous number of civilians are being killed — which is not only breathtakingly cruel but also ineffective, as airstrikes long ago "replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants." This is not making us more safe. Even if it were, it would be hideous that our safety came at the expense of the lives of innocent people, whom the U.S. president dismisses as "shields," stripping them of all humanity to encourage our indifferent as his decision to carelessly kill them.

* * *

[CN: Nativism; exploitation] Alex Horton at the Washington Post: Foreign-Born Recruits, Promised Citizenship by the Pentagon, Flee the Country to Avoid Deportation. "About 1,000 of those recruits have waited so long that they have fallen out of legal immigration status. An internal Defense Department memo obtained by The Post acknowledges that canceling these contracts would expose the recruits to deportation. In response, lawmakers urged Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to honor the contracts of those recruits. The recruits, who have already sworn allegiance to the United States in their oaths of enlistment, could potentially face harsh interrogations or jail time if they are deported to countries such as China or Russia, said Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor in the Obama administration." Unconscionable. This is absolutely heinous treatment of people who aided the U.S.

[CN: Nativism] Tina Vasquez at Rewire: Trump's Wall Sees Windfall and Many Don't Know Why. "Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Regional Center for Border Rights for the ACLU of New Mexico, told Rewire that her real concern is that politicians continue making decisions about what is needed at the border without consulting border communities. 'At a time when migration from Mexico has been at zero, apprehensions at the border are going down, and border communities are already experiencing militarization with little accountability and oversight, the question that begs to be asked is why do we need more resources at the border?' Gaubeca said." (Maybe the wall is actually less about keeping people out than keeping people in?)

[CN: Animal harm] Natasha Geiling at ThinkProgress: A Texas Wildlife Refuge Will Be Razed to Build the First Section of Trump's Wall. "The Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge comprises 2,088-acres along the U.S.-Mexico border, and was established in 1943 for the protection of migratory birds. The refuge is home to at least 400 species of birds, 450 types of plants, and half of the butterfly species found in North America. It is also home to the highly-endangered ocelot. Federal officials told the Texas Observer that the wall would consist of an 18-foot levee wall that would stretch for three miles in the wildlife refuge. The construction plan would require building a road south of the wall, as well as clearing land on either side. Such construction would 'essentially destroy the refuge,' an official told the Texas Observer." FUCK.

[CN: Nativism; Islamophobia; misogynist violence] Michelle Chen at the Guardian: Why Trump's Travel Ban Hits Women the Hardest. "On top of alienating an entire religious community, Trump's even longer ban on future refugee admissions deepens a hidden dimension of the crisis: the endemic gender injustice of warfare. ...According to US humanitarian organization Tahirh Justice Center, which focuses on gender-based human rights abuse, women face a disproportionate share of the trauma because at every stage in the refugee journey, even outside of the direct conflict zone, they 'find themselves unable to get out of situations that might threaten their safety...' Moreover they face ancillary gender-based human rights violations that tend to explode in conflict situations, including epidemics of sexual abuse and labor and sexual trafficking." I hate Trump so much.

Not good:


Meanwhile, the one person who has done something in vaguely in accordance with the law and ethical norms in the Trump administration is considered a betrayer by the president. Jonathan Swan at Axios: Trump Hasn't Forgiven Sessions for Russia Recusal. "Trump's initial fury about Sessions' recusal from the Russia probe has turned to a simmering resentment that may have permanently poisoned their relationship, according to sources close to both of them. ...Trump's top-line association for Sessions: The guy who showed tremendous weakness and caused tremendous problems by needlessly recusing himself from the Russia investigation." Welp.

Dylan Stableford at Yahoo News: Outgoing Federal Ethics Chief: 'We Are Pretty Close to a Laughingstock at This Point'.
The federal government's top ethics chief is resigning on Wednesday. And he's torching the Trump administration on his way out.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, told the New York Times that [Donald] Trump's apparent disdain for long-established ethical norms has undermined the credibility of the United States around the world.

"It's hard for the United States to pursue international anti-corruption and ethics initiatives when we're not even keeping our own side of the street clean," Shaub told the Times in an article published Monday. "I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point."

Shaub — who has been a vocal critic of Trump's since his election — said the president's frequent trips to his family-owned golf clubs are a microcosm of just how blurry the line between the White House and Trump brand has become.

"It creates the appearance of profiting from the presidency," Shaub said. "Misuse of position is really the heart of the ethics program, and the internationally accepted definition of corruption is abuse of entrusted power. It undermines the government ethics program by casting doubt on the integrity of government decision making."

Trump spent last weekend at another one of his golf courses, and repeatedly promoted the U.S. Women's Open Championship held there.
Unreal.

I deeply appreciate the organizations, like CREW, who are trying to hold Trump accountable for this shit. CREW, in fact, had a bit of good news this morning:


The only problem is that I don't trust for a moment that the records they get will reflect reality. If they haven't been fudged all along, I fully anticipate that Mar-a-Lago will tamper with them before submission. Sigh.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Veronica Stracqualursi at ABC News: Trump Reaches a Low Even He Can't Ignore. "Few want a tweeter-in-chief: The ABC News-Washington Post poll out this morning shows that 67 percent of Americans don't like [Donald] Trump's use of Twitter and 70 percent say Trump has acted in an 'unpresidential' manner since taking office. [The poll also] shows Trump's six-month approval rating at 36 percent, the lowest of any president at this point in 70 years."

Goddddddddddd just fucking resign already! SHIT.

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

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We Resist: Day 139

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, June 07, 2017
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures 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.

* * *

Here are some things in the news today:

Earlier today by me: Trump Nominates Christopher Wray as FBI Director; Eric Trump Says Democrats Are "Not Even People"; and The Latest on Trump and the Russia Investigation.

Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast: Michael Flynn Had a Plan to Work With Russia's Military. It Wasn't Exactly Legal.
Donald Trump's first national security adviser pushed so hard for the Pentagon to cooperate with the Russian military that his initiative would likely have broken the law if it had ever been enacted.

Four current and former Pentagon officials told The Daily Beast that during Michael Flynn's brief White House tenure, the retired general advocated for the expansion of a relatively narrow military communications channel—one meant to keep U.S. and Russian pilots safe from one another—to see if the two nations could jointly fight the so-called Islamic State.

The initiative never went anywhere, in part because of opposition from the Pentagon and from U.S. Central Command; a legal prohibition set by Congress; and, ultimately, Flynn's firing.

Inside the Pentagon, "there was a lot of fear that we'd move to outright cooperation [with Russia] through this channel," according to a former senior defense official.
Emphasis mine. So, what's particularly interesting to me about this is Flynn's justification for suggesting a shared military communications channel with Russia: A joint fight against the Islamic State.

The reason that caught my attention is because, before the 2016 election, joining forces with Russia to defeat ISIS was not a mainstream position, on either side of the aisle. [Content Note: Video may autoplay at following link.] That's because, as Hillary Clinton noted during the second presidential debate, Vladimir Putin doesn't give a fuck about ISIS: "Clinton said that Russia 'isn't interested in ISIS' and its assault on Aleppo was aimed at destroying Syrian rebels opposed the regime led by Bashar al-Assad."

But during the 2016 election, the one in which Russian interfered, every single one of Hillary Clinton's leading opponents suggested working with Russia in some manner, using the justification of joining forces to defeat ISIS.

Donald Trump repeatedly insisted throughout the campaign (and still asserts) that we should work with Russia to defeat ISIS, and criticized President Obama for not having done the same, despite the fact that such a plan is "futile and dangerous."

November 2015: Sanders Calls for New NATO That Includes Russia. "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called for a new accord between America, its closest allies, and Russia as well as Arab nations as a major plank on how to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)."

September 2016: Gary Johnson: 'What Is Aleppo?' "With regard to Syria I do think it's a mess. I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end."

October 2015: Jill Stein Calls for Ceasefire in Syria, Joint Peace Agenda with Russia. "Stein People's Agenda for Global Peace and Agenda lays out a multi-prong approach to pursue peace based on focusing on promote [sic] justice and prosperity for all countries. Stein last week in NYC briefly outlined the proposal to Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who asked her to follow-up with more details."

So, no serious foreign policy suggestions to join with Russia to fight ISIS before 2016. Then, during the election in which Russia intervened with the express purpose of defeating (or critically weakening) Clinton, every one of her opponents from across the political spectrum—her Democratic primary opponent, and her general election Republican, Libertarian, and Green Party opponents—each offered a policy of aligning with Russia, with the rationale of defeating ISIS.

Clinton was also the only candidate who did not have someone with ties to Putin working on her campaign, or a previous campaign. Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Sanders' chief strategist Tad Devine had previously worked in collaboration for pro-Putin former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. Roger Stone was an advisor on Johnson's 2012 campaign, and continued to speak enthuiastically about Johnson in 2016. And Stein rather famously had dinner with Putin herself.

Also at that dinner? Michael Flynn—who then used that curiously shared rationale of defeating ISIS to argue for allying with Russia when his candidate won the White House.

A rationale that has never made, and continues to make, no sense based on the most basic understanding of Russia's objectives and alliances in Syria.


Maybe this is all just one monumental coincidence. Or maybe it's a case for a broadened investigation into Russian interference in the election.

* * *

Dan Alexander at Forbes: How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money into His Business.
Eric Trump, the president's second son and now the co-head of the Trump Organization, [has hosted the Eric Trump Foundation golf invitational] for ten years on behalf of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. He's done a ton of good: To date, he's directed more than $11 million there, the vast majority of it via this annual golf event. He has also helped raise another $5 million through events with other organizations.

The best part about all this, according to Eric Trump, is the charity's efficiency: Because he can get his family's golf course for free and have most of the other costs donated, virtually all the money contributed will go toward helping kids with cancer. "We get to use our assets 100% free of charge," Trump tells Forbes.

That's not the case. In reviewing filings from the Eric Trump Foundation and other charities, it's clear that the course wasn't free—that the Trump Organization received payments for its use, part of more than $1.2 million that has no documented recipients past the Trump Organization. Golf charity experts say the listed expenses defy any reasonable cost justification for a one-day golf tournament.

Additionally, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which has come under previous scrutiny for self-dealing and advancing the interests of its namesake rather than those of charity, apparently used the Eric Trump Foundation to funnel $100,000 in donations into revenue for the Trump Organization.

And while donors to the Eric Trump Foundation were told their money was going to help sick kids, more than $500,000 was re-donated to other charities, many of which were connected to Trump family members or interests, including at least four groups that subsequently paid to hold golf tournaments at Trump courses.
Note that this story came out yesterday, hours before Eric Trump appeared on Sean Hannity's show to angrily sputter that Trump opponents are "not even people."

Meanwhile, reporter David Fahrenthold, who has done a ton of excellent investigative work on the Trump Foundation, notes that the details revealed in the Forbes piece mean that Eric Trump "repeatedly" lied to him.

* * *

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post: 'President Pence' is Sounding Better and Better. "Many liberals correctly call Pence a doctrinaire conservative, particularly on gay rights and other social issues. ...But Pence is, at core, a small-d democrat, not a demagogue. The world would be safer with him in charge. We would still have fierce divisions about the nation's direction. But Pence, in the nearly two decades I've known him, has been an honorable man. Opponents can disagree with him yet sleep well knowing he's unlikely to be irrational." This is straight-up garbage.


Seethe.

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Karen Handel: 'I Do Not Support a Livable Wage'. "During Tuesday night's debate for an open U.S. House seat in Georgia, Republican candidate Karen Handel said that she does not support a 'livable wage.' 'This is an example of the fundamental difference between a liberal and a conservative: I do not support a livable wage,' she said on Atlanta's WSB-TV in response to a viewer question about raising the minimum wage. 'What I support is making sure that we have an economy that is robust with low taxes and less regulation.'" Let me note once again: Republicans think people aren't entitled to food.

Or anything else that is necessary to live. To wit: If you thought that Republicans had given up on destroying healthcare access, I'm sorry to inform you that they have not.


Yeah.

[CN: Racism] Breanna Edwards at the Root: In Every Service Branch, Black Troops Are More Likely to Be Punished by Commanders, Courts: Report. "Black service members are up to two times more likely to face court martial or other forms of military punishment than their white counterparts in an average year, an analysis by advocacy organization Protect Our Defenders has revealed. According to USA Today, which received an advance copy of the study, the advocacy group for victims of sexual assault in the military and military justice went through Pentagon data from 2006 to 2015 to compile its report, and came up with the perhaps not-so-surprising results. 'Over the past decade, racial disparities have persisted in the military justice system without indications of improvement,' the report states."

[CN: Racism] Kenrya Rankin at Colorlines: Study: Cops Routinely Use Disrespectful Language with Black People. "A new report from researchers at Stanford University found what many Black people already know: Police are more likely to speak disrespectfully to Black people than they are to their White counterparts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences posted 'Language From Police Body Camera Footage Shows Racial Disparities in Officer Respect' online yesterday (June 5). ...Overall, the study found that White people are shown more respect, with Whites being 57 percent more likely to be addressed with the most respectful statements, and Blacks 61 percent more likely to be disrespected."

Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire: Supreme Court Ruling Could Let Catholic Hospitals 'Pocket' Millions in Retirement Funds. "The impact of the decision [in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton] means Catholic hospitals, which employ tens of thousands of low- to middle-income workers, can now generally avoid the pension and health insurance protections required by federal law."

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

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Bombing in Manchester; IS Claims Responsibility

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, May 23, 2017
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[Content Note: Terrorism; injury; death.]

Last night, at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at an arena in Manchester, UK, an explosion was set off, killing at least 22 people and injuring 59 others, some seriously.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, though there is no evidence yet of international coordination; IS now frequently claims responsibility for terrorist acts committed by individual radicalized actors. Police are investigating whether the killer was part of a network. The explosion is also being investigated as a suicide bombing, as it is believed the bomber was carrying and detonated an improvised explosive device (IED).

Two of the victims have been identified: 18-year-old Georgina Callander, who was a health and social care student, and 8-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos, who was attending the concert with her mother and sister, both of whom are reportedly still being treated for their injuries.

Additional names of those killed will be released throughout the day as they are identified and their families notified.

The Guardian is posting live updates here.

My condolences to the families, friends, and communities of those who were killed. My sympathies to the injured, and to the survivors who were not physically injured but must process this extraordinary trauma. I am so sorry.

My heart always aches after any terrorist attack. Manchester is hitting me particularly hard. Of places on the Earth that have produced things which have made my life better, Manchester is right at the top of the fucking list.

This blog, originally named Shakespeare's Sister, is a Virginia Woolf reference coming by way of a Smiths song—a Manchester band. The last X Sentence on Page Y we did, mine was from the autobiography of a Manchester United player—a football team I love so much that an old photo from one of their matches hangs in my living room. Davy Jones was from Manchester—a member of The Monkees, the first concert I ever saw. James, a band I love so much that I own a jacket on which I painted their iconic daisy, is from Manchester. Joy Division. New Order. Oasis. The Happy Mondays. Simply Red. Swing Out Sister. Inspiral Carpets. The Ting Tings...

That this heinous act was carried out in Manchester, at a music concert, is unbearable. Not that it would have been any less so anywhere else. It's just the particular symbolism of hitting this particular town in this particular way. Fuck.

I don't know how to end this, so I'll just end it by linking to this: "Our response will be to try to contain the blast, by showing that the overwhelming majority of people remain kind, decent, and big-hearted. This is not a platitude. It is a political response."

My heart is with you, Manchester. On this day and always.

[NOTE: Please feel welcome and encouraged to share updates and additional information in comments. As always following such an event, let's keep this an image-free thread. Thanks.]

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In the News

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, September 27, 2016
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Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Bombing; terrorism; self-harm; injury and death] Fucking hell: "Three blasts killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50 in predominantly Shi'ite Muslim districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, police and medical sources said. A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in a commercial street in the eastern Baghdad al-Jadida area of the Iraqi capital, killing nine people and wounding more than 30, they said. Another suicide attack hit a commercial street of Bayaa in western Baghdad, killing six and wounding 22, the sources said. A roadside bomb exploded near a gathering of cattle herders and merchants in al-Radhwaniya, also in western Baghdad, killing two people, they said." The Islamic State has already taken credit for two of the bombings. My condolences to the people of Baghdad. I am so angry, and I take up space in solidarity with Iraqis who are just trying to live their lives in peace.

[CN: Homophobia; violence] Goddammit: "Neil Frias and Jeff White, two New Yorkers who were visiting San Francisco over the weekend for the annual Folsom Street Fair, say they were attacked with pepper spray at the intersection of Golden Gate and Fillmore Streets in the city’s Western Addition neighborhood. ...[F]ive men pulled up in a blue minivan. 'They were saying, 'You fags are destroying family values,'' Frias said. ...'The thing that was the most remarkable about the situation is how unprovoked it was,' White said, still reeling from the encounter Sunday morning. 'I was literally tying my shoe when they came at me. It's mind-boggling.'" There is no behavior that could provoke a violent, homophobic attack. None.

[CN: Class warfare] Of course: "Republican officials nationwide want to stop enforcement of new overtime rules that make millions of people who work eligible for overtime pay."

I don't know how I feel about this! "The world's first baby to be born from a new procedure that combines the DNA of three people appears to be healthy, according to doctors in the US who oversaw the treatment."

[CN: Police brutality] Will definitely watch: "Add 'interview host' to Mary J. Blige's resume. The R&B icon has a new Apple Music show, appropriately titled 'The 411,' and her first guest is none other than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton."

This forever: "Did anybody see that debate last night? [laughs heartily] Ohhhhh yes! One down; two to go!"


"Russian Photographer Captures the Cutest Squirrel Photo Session Ever." As advertised!

What have you been reading?

Open Wide...
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