We Resist: Day 901

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: Barr Says Trump Can Ignore Supreme Court; Add Citizenship Question to Census and Amy McGrath to Challenge Mitch McConnell for His Senate Seat and Primarily Speaking.

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

Priscilla Alvarez and Jeremy Herb at CNN: House Democrats Plan Subpoenas for Jared Kushner, Trump Officials, and Immigration Documents.

The House Judiciary Committee moved Tuesday to authorize subpoenas for two separate issues: an array of documents and testimony related to the administration's immigration policies and to former and current Trump administration officials, including the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner, as part of its probe into potential obstruction of justice.

The committee is planning a Thursday vote to authorize the subpoenas, which would ratchet up the Democrat-led panel's investigation into possible obstruction of justice and examination of the Trump administration's immigration policies. The vote would allow Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, to issue the subpoenas at his discretion.

The committee has previously requested numerous documents related to immigration matters from the administration, but Tuesday's notice to authorize subpoenas is an escalation of those requests. It shows the committee is broadening the investigation into [Donald] Trump as Democrats weigh whether to start an impeachment inquiry and comes ahead of former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees next week.

Good. Hope this matters. Don't understand why it's taking so long to make these critical decisions.

Meanwhile... Katie Benner at the New York Times: Barr Says House Subpoenaed Mueller to Create 'Public Spectacle'. "Attorney General William P. Barr accused House Democrats on Monday of subpoenaing testimony from Robert S. Mueller III to 'create some kind of public spectacle,' rather than elicit facts, pointing to Mr. Mueller's declaration that he would discuss only the facts laid out in the Russia investigation report. ...He also called the idea that Mr. Trump worked with the Kremlin to subvert the election 'bogus' and said the early stages of his review of the Russia inquiry suggested that he needed to toughen protocol for investigating political candidates."

So, just to be clear, the Attorney General of the United States just publicly accused the Democrats of theater for expecting a Special Counsel to give testimony on his findings, and then suggested he will use the Russia inquiry as justification for investigating political candidates — which naturally means Donald Trump's Democratic opponents.

We are in so much trouble.

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[Content Note: Sexual violence] There is a lot about Jeffrey Epstein in the news today. I am frankly not inclined to cover this story ongoingly; it's easy enough to find updates if you are so inclined. If something notable happens, I will report it. Today, I will just recommend a piece at the Daily Beast by Vicky Ward, who tried to warn the world about Epstein 16 years ago and was silenced by her editor: Jeffrey Epstein's Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight.

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Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News: The True Origins of the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory: A Yahoo News Investigation.

In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside [Donald] Trump's White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.

Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony "bulletin" — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.

How/why in the hell would the Kremlin even know who he was, get news of his "random" murder which police attribute to a botched robbery, and have that narrative ready to go within 3 days?

If this report of the conspiracy theory's origins are indeed accurate, that looks to me like the Russians killed him with the intent of using his death to launch their prepared narrative — which was that Hillary Clinton had him killed.

Which only underscores the likelihood that the Kremlin had him killed: Every conspiracy theory has a grain of truth, and the grain of truth to this one is that someone had him killed. Fucking gods.

* * *

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post: Obamacare Is Going Back on Trial, with Insurance for 20 Million at Stake. "A federal appeals court is about to take up a Republican lawsuit that could wipe out the Affordable Care Act and, with it, health insurance for something like 20 million people. ...Now the case is before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of three judges will hear oral arguments on Tuesday. Two of the judges are Republican appointees and have ties to the conservative Federalist Society, just like the federal district judge who ruled in favor of the case in November." Goddammit.

D. Parvaz at ThinkProgress: Mike Pompeo Says 'We're Not Done' with Iran. "Speaking at the Christians United For Israel event in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened that the Trump administration is 'not done' with Iran. 'We've implemented the strongest pressure campaign in history against the Iranian regime and we are not done,' said Pompeo, adding that U.S. sanctions have deprived Iran of funds it would have used 'to destroy the state of Israel.' (Iran has never been at war with Israel.)" Everything about that is terrifying.

Ann E. Marimow at the Washington Post: Trump Cannot Block His Critics on Twitter, Federal Appeals Court Rules.

[Donald] Trump cannot block his critics from the Twitter feed he regularly uses to communicate with the public, a federal appeals court said Tuesday, in a case with implications for how elected officials nationwide interact with constituents on social media.

The decision from the New York-based appeals court upholds an earlier ruling that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked individual users critical of the president or his policies.

"The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees," wrote Judge Barrington D. Parker in the unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Exactly right. Trump can't simultaneously use Twitter to make official announcements and engage in foreign policy and generally do most of his daily presidenting from that platform, and also claim that he's allowed to block people. Nope. Doesn't work that way, pal.

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[CN: Gun violence; death]

Almost all the people who carried out mass attacks in the United States last year made threatening or concerning communications beforehand, and more than three-quarters prompted concern from others, the Secret Service said in a report Tuesday.https://t.co/9m6E4J3vsv

— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

This was the second analysis by the Secret Service of mass attacks. Its report from a year ago found that most attacks in 2017 were motivated by workplace or domestic issues, and that more than three-fourths of them had made threatening or concerning communications.

— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

[CN: White supremacist violence; eliminationism; death] David Williams at CNN: Police Say Man Cut Arizona Teen's Throat Because Rap Music Made Him Feel Unsafe. "Police say a man accused of fatally stabbing a 17-year-old in the throat at an Arizona convenience store told them he felt threatened because the teen had been listening to rap music. ...Witnesses told police that the man, who's been identified as Michael Paul Adams, 27, walked up behind the teen, grabbed him, and stabbed him in the neck, according to a probable cause statement obtained by CNN affiliate KPHO/KTVK. ...The witnesses told police that [the teen, Elijah Al-Amin] hadn't done or said anything to provoke the attack. One said Adams didn't say anything to the teen before stabbing him." Rage. Seethe. Boil.

I don't believe the killer was legitimately fearful (and it wouldn't justify murdering someone even if he were), but, given that's his explanation, here is some relevant reading: On Sitting with Fear.

[CN: Police brutality]

The family of a 17-year-old girl shot and killed by a Southern California police officer are demanding answers about the deadly Friday night shooting. https://t.co/8HxC5eO2jv

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 9, 2019

[CN: Ableism; suicidal ideation] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Chronic Nuisance Ordinances Are Forcing People with Disabilities out of Their Homes.

Emily Doe was nearly exiled from Maplewood, Missouri, because crisis hotline volunteers sent police to her home too many times within one year.

Emily, who's bipolar and suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, called a crisis hotline because she was suicidal. Crisis volunteers sent emergency personnel to her house on three different occasions, and in one instance, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment.

For doing what's medically recommended — that is, calling for help — Emily received a citation and summons from the City of Maplewood to attend an ordinance enforcement hearing for "generating too many calls for police services." Had the city determined her a "chronic nuisance," officials would have not only evicted Emily but revoked her occupancy permit, effectively exiling her from the community for at least six months.

"It's just so callous it's hard to believe," said Sejal Singh, co-author of a new paper titled "When Disability Is a 'Nuisance'" and published Monday in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Awful.

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

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Putin Weighs in on Iran

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a highly theatrical Q&A today, during which he said the following about the possibility of a U.S.-Iran war: "We don't want this. ...It would be a catastrophe for the region, because it would lead to a spike in violence and a number of refugees from the region."

Well. That certainly explains why Donald Trump has cooled to the idea of war with Iran, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton banging the drums.

Hours later, during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump said of Iran shooting down a U.S. drone: "I think probably Iran made a mistake. I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down. ...I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn't have been doing what they did. I think they made a mistake. ...I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth. I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it. We'll be able to report back, and you'll understand exactly what happened. But it was a very foolish move. That I can tell you."

Sure. And you know how famously forgiving Trump is of people who make mistakes.

(At the same press conference, Trudeau trolled Trump by coughing, a clear reference to Trump kicking White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney out of the Oval Office when he coughed during an interview.)

So, the collusion continues to happen right out in the open.

And, just to be clear: I don't believe that Putin is legitimately advocating against a war that would destabilize a region he has been actively trying to destabilize to create opportunities for him and his oligarch cronies to exploit.

I do believe he wants this to be his — and Trump's — public position, at least for the time being. For whatever reason.

It would be great if the media would report anything Putin says about foreign policy with the disclaimer that Putin often says one thing publicly and is orchestrating something to the absolute contrary in secret.

The public should know that they can never take what Putin says at face value.

After all, this is the same person who has repeatedly claimed that the Kremlin did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And we all know that is a goddamned lie.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Iran Shoots Down U.S. Drone

Iran shot down a U.S. drone on Thursday, with Iran saying the drone had entered Iranian airspace and the U.S. saying that the drone was shot down in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz. Both regimes have a history of lying, and both have a vested interest in their version being true, so there are no good actors in this dispute.

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link.] Luis Martinez at ABC News reports:

Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, offered a strongly worded threat to the U.S. after the drone was downed.

"Shooting down the American spy drone had a clear, decisive, firm and accurate message," he said, translated from Farsi. "The message is that the guardians of the borders of Islamic Iran will decisively respond to the violation of any stranger to this land. The only solution for the enemies is to respect the territorial integrity and national interests of Iran."

"We do not intend to engage in war with any country, but we are completely ready for the war. Today's incident is a clear sign of this accurate message," Salami added.

..."Iranian reports that the aircraft was over Iran are false," said CENTCOM spokesperson Navy Capt. Bill Urban in a statement on Thursday morning. "This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset in international airspace."

Urban said the RQ-4A Global Hawk, which "provides real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions (ISR) over vast ocean and coastal regions," was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile system while operating in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz at approximately 11:35 p.m. GMT on June 19.

The piece calls the drone downing "a major provocation," but it's only a "major provocation" if Donald Trump, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, et. al. allow themselves to be provoked. Which of course they will, because they (at least two of them) want a war.

But the downing of an unmanned drone, even in international airspace, does not need to cause an incident at all, no less a war. We must be clear on that. No matter what the Trump Regime might say otherwise, this does not require a military response.

Open Wide...

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We Resist: Day 880

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: Today in Misogyny. And Every Day. and Trump Announces Massive Sweep of Undocumented Immigrants and Primarily Speaking.

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

[Content Note: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed: USCIS Director Appears to Warn Asylum Officers in an Email to "Do Our Part". "The newly appointed leader of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, sent an email to staffers Tuesday in which he appeared to push asylum officers to stop allowing some migrants seeking refuge in the country passage at an initial screening at the border. 'Under our abused immigration system if an alien comes to the United States and claims a fear of return the alien is entitled to a credible fear screening by USCIS and a hearing by an immigration judge,' Cuccinelli wrote to USCIS staffers. ...He told staffers that USCIS needed to do 'our part to help stem the crisis and better secure the homeland.'" The homeland. JFC.

Faith Karimi at CNN: Body of a 6-Year-Old Girl from India Is Found in the Arizona Desert. "The body of a 6-year-old girl believed to be from India was found in a remote desert area in Arizona this week, officials said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the girl was trying to cross into the United States with a group of people from her country. Her body was discovered 17 miles west of Lukeville, just over the U.S.-Mexico border. The group was trying to get into the U.S. after human smugglers dropped them off near the Mexico border, the agency said in a statement Thursday. Temperatures in the rugged wilderness where agents found her remains Wednesday hovered around 108 degrees."

Deaths in the desert are going to become more commonplace as the Trump Regime escalates its violation of international law by refusing to allow refugees to seek asylum at the border. That will inevitably force more people to try to cross the border illegally in search of safety.

https://t.co/MCeLNBrf6t

— Adam Serwer🍝 (@AdamSerwer) June 18, 2019

(If you don't know why that last item was posted in this section, this is why.)

* * *

Devan Cole at CNN: Trump Downplays Tanker Attacks in Contrast to His National Security Team. "Donald Trump, in contrast to statements by his own top aides, downplayed recent attacks on two fuel tankers in the Gulf of Oman that his administration has blamed on Iran, calling them 'very minor.' The disconnect between Trump's comments in an interview with Time magazine — in which he also warned that he would 'certainly' go to war with Iran were the country to develop nuclear weapons — and recent statements by national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo come at a time of escalating military posturing between the two countries and a heightened risk of confrontation."

Eliana Johnson at Politico: Trump Prepares to Bypass Congress to Take on Iran. "The Trump administration and its domestic political allies are laying the groundwork for a possible confrontation with Iran without the explicit consent of Congress — a public relations campaign that was already well underway before top officials accused the Islamic Republic of attacking a pair of oil tankers last week in the Gulf of Oman. Over the past few months, senior Trump aides have made the case in public and private that the administration already has the legal authority to take military action against Iran, citing a law nearly two decades old that was originally intended to authorize the war in Afghanistan."

Kate Riga at TPM: Pentagon Sending 1,000 More Troops to Middle East as Iran Tensions Escalate. "Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan announced Monday that the Pentagon is dispatching 1,000 more troops to the Middle East in the wake of the blown-up oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman."

They're ramping up for war as fast as they can. Meanwhile...

Exclusive: Pompeo blocks inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a U.S. list of countries that recruit child soldiers https://t.co/VTngJlSfur pic.twitter.com/P44V7MBloY

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 18, 2019

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[CN: Gun violence; white supremacy; misogyny; death] Kelly Weill and Justin Glawe at the Daily Beast: Dallas Federal Building Shooter Posted Far-Right Memes About Nazis and Confederacy.

A Texas man accused of opening fire outside a Dallas courthouse uploaded right-wing memes to Facebook, including memes about Nazism and the Confederacy.

Authorities said Brian Clyde, 22, attacked the Earle Cabell federal courthouse Monday morning before law enforcement killed him. No one else was reported injured. A Dallas Morning News photograph of Clyde shows him holding a semi-automatic rifle and wearing a belt full of ammunition. He appears to have uploaded to his Facebook page a picture of similar magazines on Saturday. Elsewhere on the page, he shared memes, some of which suggested racist or misogynist views.

...Last week, Clyde uploaded a Facebook video suggesting plans with a gun.

"I don't know how much longer I have, but a storm is coming. However, I'm not without defense," he said in the brief video, pulling out a rifle. "I'm fuckin' ready. Let's do it."

On Saturday, he uploaded a picture of 10 gun magazines. On Sunday, he uploaded a picture of a sword with the caption "A modern gladius to defend the modern Republic."

Clyde served in the Army from 2015 to 2017, though details of his discharge were not available.

[CN: Anti-semitism; violence] Luke Barnes at ThinkProgress: California Man Arrested for Allegedly Plotting to Kill Jews Walks Free After Posting Bail. "A California man who allegedly wanted to carry out a mass shooting of Jews and police officers has been released from custody after he posted $125,000 bail over the weekend. [Redacted], 23, was taken into custody last week after a joint investigation by the FBI and police in Concord, on the outskirts of San Francisco. ...When police searched his home, they allegedly discovered a homemade AR-15 rifle, 13 magazines, a sword, a hunting knife, camouflaged clothing, books about the Hitler youth and Nazi life, as well as additional pistol ammunition. ...In a statement on Monday evening, the Concord Police did not offer any updates as to [redacted]'s bail conditions but noted that they were working to 'keep those threatened apprised of any developments' and urged the public to be vigilant." Oh.

[CN: Gun violence; domestic violence; death]

A Texas father shot his daughter six times, including twice in the head, just feet from her 13-month-old after an argument over where to place a baby gate. America is the only high-income country where guns make every day arguments deadly. #txlege

https://t.co/jBrffStXyC

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) June 18, 2019

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[CN: Sexual harassment] Olivia Messer at the Daily Beast: 'This Isn't a Game': Four Women Sue Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill for Sexual Harassment. "Indiana State Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon hasn't spoken to her state's attorney general, Curtis Hill, since the night he allegedly grabbed her ass. 'I want him to know how profoundly he's affected all of our lives,' Reardon, a Democrat, told The Daily Beast through tears on Monday. 'This isn't a game.' And so she is suing. Reardon and three other named statehouse employees filed a new federal lawsuit against Hill on Tuesday morning. The 11-count complaint against Hill and the state of Indiana alleges sexual harassment, retaliation, gender discrimination, battery, defamation, and invasion of privacy, according to a draft viewed Monday evening by The Daily Beast."

[CN: Domestic violence] Staff at USA Today: Read the Full Statement from Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan About a 2010 Domestic Case. "Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan released a written statement Monday night, addressing a violent domestic dispute from nine years ago with his then-wife. The 2010 incident is part of an FBI background investigation ahead of his possible confirmation hearing to be [Donald] Trump's permanent defense chief." Shanahan asserts: "I never laid a hand on my then-wife and cooperated fully in a thorough law enforcement investigation that resulted in her being charged with assault against me — charges which I had dropped in the interest of my family."

[CN: Domestic violence and sexual abuse] Amy Zimmerman at the Daily Beast: Eight Women Accuse Hollywood Filmmaker Max Landis of Emotional and Sexual Abuse: 'We're Not People to Him'. "As for secondhand allegations, there were too many to count. 'There's too many voices to ignore,' [actress Anna Akana] insisted. 'And I felt the need to be vocal because Max is intimidating and he's scary. And I've seen, being in that friend group, one of the most frustrating things is that he would lord his power and his money over people and intimidate them into friendship, or into forgiveness.'"

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Kari Paul at the Guardian: Libra: Facebook Launches Cryptocurrency in Bid to Shake Up Global Finance. "Facebook has announced a digital currency called Libra that will allow its billions of users to make financial transactions across the globe, in a move that could potentially shake up the world's banking system. Libra is being touted as a means to connect people who do not have access to traditional banking platforms. With close to 2.4 billion people using Facebook each month, Libra could be a financial game changer, but will face close scrutiny as Facebook continues to reel from a series of privacy scandals."

Let me offer some unsolicited advice: Don't freely offer your financial data to a company who already abuses your personal data for their own profit.

Also: Fuck Facebook. Their pretense that this will help poor people is disgusting. "Disrupting" traditional finance models with no other objective than their own profit will ultimately harm financially vulnerable people the most.

[CN: Class warfare; food insecurity] Aviva Aron-Dine, Matt Broaddus, Zoë Neuberger, and Arloc Sherman at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Administration's Poverty Line Proposal Would Cut Health, Food Assistance for Millions over Time. "The Trump Administration is considering a change to the federal poverty line that would ultimately cause millions of people to lose eligibility for, or receive less help from, health, food assistance, and other programs that help them meet basic needs. ...While [the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)'s] notice does not discuss how the proposal would affect low-income families, the Census poverty thresholds are the basis for Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines, which determine who can get help from Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), and many other federal programs. The proposed change would lower the income-eligibility cutoffs for all of these programs, cutting or eliminating assistance for some individuals and families."

[CN: Poverty] Morgan Lee and AP Staff at the Washington Post: Childhood Poverty Persists in Fast-Growing Southwest. "The number of children living in poverty has swelled over the past three decades in fast-growing, ethnically diverse states such as Texas, Arizona, and Nevada as the nation's population center shifts south and west, a report Monday on childhood well-being shows. The annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 18% of the nation's children live in poverty, down from the Great Recession. But the same advances weren't seen in the Southwest, where many children are Native Americans, Latinx, and immigrants who have long faced disadvantages. 'The nation's racial inequities remain deep, systemic, and stubbornly persistent,' said the annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation."

And finally... Reuters Staff at the Guardian: Scientists Shocked by Arctic Permafrost Thawing 70 Years Sooner Than Predicted. "Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared. A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia. 'What we saw was amazing,' Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters.

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

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We Resist: Day 876

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: Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Doing? and Today in Trump's Vile Nativist Agenda and Primarily Speaking.

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

I wish McCabe had said this *before* Trump said his successor was wrong about election interference, so there was not any possibility of the appearance that he is calling for impeachment because Trump impugned Wray rather than because the facts warrant it. Still, this is notable.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 14, 2019

CNN broke the news that former FBI Director Andrew McCabe is calling for Trump's impeachment last night, and it's already off their front page. There's barely any news coverage of it anywhere. If that doesn't convincingly illustrate the level of water-carrying the press is doing for this administration, I can't imagine what would.

Meanwhile, as pressure mounts on House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry, the Trump Regime ratchets up its manufactured case for war with Iran:

#BREAKING: #US @SecPompeo blames #Iran for 'unprovoked attacks' on vessels in #OmanGulf on Thursday ... 'a maritime emergency' that 'targeted civilians' https://t.co/WAyVM3W8fU pic.twitter.com/4wuQtgCaUQ

— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) June 13, 2019

Iran has "dismissed as 'baseless' U.S. accusations that it carried out twin attacks that left two tankers ablaze in the Gulf of Oman," and naturally they would, but Yutaka Katada, the owner of the Japanese oil tanker hit in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, also says "the U.S. is wrong about the way the attack was carried out."

Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, he contradicted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. Navy, which released a video that purports to show an Iranian patrol boat removing a limpet mine from the port side of the Kokuka Courageous.

Katada said his ship was attacked on the starboard side by a flying object, not by a mine. "It seems that something flew towards them. That created the hole, is the report I've received," Katada said, according to the Financial Times. "It seems there was a high chance they were attacked by a flying object. The impact was well above the water. I don't think it was a torpedo."

This morning, on Fox & Friends, Donald Trump referenced the video distributed by the U.S. Navy and said, "Iran did do it, and you know they did it because you saw the boat."

NPR further reports: "Calling Iran 'a nation of terror,' Trump did not discuss whether the U.S. plans to take action in response, saying only, 'We'll see what happens.'"

Sky News' Defence and Security Correspondent Alistair Bunkall why the events in the Gulf of Oman "could have massive global ramifications" (beyond the humanitarian crisis of the U.S. trying to start yet another war under false pretenses):

My explainer of why today’s events in the Gulf of Oman could have massive global ramifications: pic.twitter.com/hFjxPVGQmn

— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) June 13, 2019

The two tankers that came under attack in the Gulf of Oman were the Norwegian-owned but Marshall Island-flagged Front Altair and the Japanese-owned but Panama-flagged Kokuka Courageous.

Now, U.S. Naval forces in the region said that they received two separate distress calls: One at twelve minutes past six in the morning — that's local time — and another at seven a.m., so shortly afterwards. The U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, the U.S.S. Bainbridge, responded to those calls.

Now, the U.S. Navy presence in the region is aimed primarily at warding off any Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime choke point. The straits are one of the world's most important stretches of water, with one-fifth of the world's oil passing through that waterway, which, at its narrowest, is just 21 miles wide. And that includes crude oil and liquified natural gas from energy-rich countries in the Gulf Region, including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Conflict in the straits has the potential to create shockwaves across the world — and that could drive up the price of crude. Today's attack alone caused oil prices to surge by four percent.

During the 1980s, in the Iran-Iraq War — the so-called "Tanker War" — Kuwait's oil tankers were reflagged under a U.S. flag, so that oil could be transported safely through the straits.

And, more recently, Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, threatened to close the straits, following the Trump administration decision to leave the Iranian nuclear deal.

National Security Advisor John Bolton has wanted a war with Iran — or, at minimum, an excuse to bomb Iran — for a very long time. And Donald Trump knows, as he has said as much on many occasions, that wars tend to increase president's approval ratings. And Vladimir Putin would be thrilled to see the U.S. go to war with Iran. (Indeed, the Kremlin may be helping to orchestrate the rationale for war.) We should all be very concerned about where this is headed.

Yesterday, just as Iran starting trending on Twitter, the point at which people had noted the headlines about an Iranian bombing and just as experts were beginning to scrutinize the administration's claims, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders resigned, after having not even held a press briefing for over three months. That was not a coincidence. The manipulation is frightening.

And if drawing Iran into a war doesn't work... Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Lindsey Graham Wants to Invade Venezuela to Put 'Points on the Board. "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants the United States to use military forces to intervene in Venezuela to depose the country's contested president, Nicolás Maduro. His reason: it will scare other foreign countries like North Korea and Iran to see America put 'points on the board.' ...This is not the first time the senator has argued for invading Venezuela — or at least threatening to do so — as a strategy to stop Cuban influence there. But it is the clearest he's been that he wants to pursue a war-mongering approach for the optics it will create."

The Republican Party is truly a death cult full of sociopaths.

* * *

Susan B. Glasser at the New Yorker: Forget "No Collusion." Trump Is Now Pro-Collusion. "On Thursday, [Trump] doubled down on this position [that he would and could accept materials on political opponents from foreign actors], arguing, in effect, that accepting help from Vladimir Putin would be no different from dining with the Queen of England and the 'Prince of Whales,' as he put it in a tweet. Trump, instead of proclaiming 'no collusion,' now seemed to be announcing that he is pro-collusion. ...The President's supporters often tell those who are alarmed about his words to skip the tweets and focus on the substance of his Administration's policies. But they are wrong. Trump is telling us exactly what he is going to do — and then he is doing it."

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: The Trump Camp's Latest Lies Cannot Obscure What's Now Been Exposed. "Trump's allies are engaged in a new and frantic effort to spin away the true meaning of his comments on ABC News, in which he issued an open invitation to foreign powers to attack our political system again on his behalf and made it absolutely clear that he will not alert law enforcement if his campaign learns of such an effort. But that spin cannot obscure what is so devastating about this mess for Trump: the fact that it makes that bigger story unavoidable, and indeed throws it into new and sharper relief." Yes, but who's going to make it matter? From where will any consequences come?

Matthew Choi at Politico: McConnell Downplays Trump's Foreign Election Help Comments. "Speaking with Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Thursday night, the Senate majority leader spoke with exasperation over the backlash the president has received for saying he would hear out foreign assistance if offered in the 2020 election. McConnell portrayed the comments as a nonstory, saying Congress had legislative agendas to focus on." I hate him.

* * *

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

Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Immigration Officials Push Healthcare Providers to 'Clear' Pregnant Migrants for Detention.

Multiple times a month, U.S. Border Patrol arrives at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson with "noticeably pregnant women," according to an OB-GYN resident who works there. The hospital's obstetric triage department is essentially an emergency room for pregnant people, and officers with the federal immigration agency regularly bring in newly apprehended pregnant migrants for medical evaluations. Once the hospital visit nears its end, multiple health-care providers have said Border Patrol "pressures" them to provide a "cleared for detention letter."

"Because they are bringing these women to us almost directly from the border, inevitably we get asked for a letter because when [the pregnant migrants] leave the hospital, they are going to be detained," said Dr. Samantha Varner, the OB-GYN resident. "Basically they ask us to write these short letters that don't just say the person is 'fit for travel,' but that they are 'cleared for detention,' meaning they are 'healthy' enough to be detained."

Varner told Rewire.News in a May 20 phone interview that Border Patrol seems to be asking her to approve of a person's detention after they leave the hospital, or rather that the agency wants a health-care provider to put into writing that a migrant is "fit" for detention.

"I feel like [they are] asking us to sign off on allowing [immigration authorities] to do whatever they want with the person after they leave the hospital," Varner said.

4,000 CHILDREN.
Once again: SEEKING ASYLUM IS LEGAL AND A HUMAN RIGHT. https://t.co/gSVzBTIEYD

— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) June 14, 2019

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Caitlin Dickerson at the New York Times: The Youngest Known Child Separated from His Family by the Trump Administration. "The youngest known child taken from his parents at the U.S.-Mexico border was a 4-month-old baby named Constantin Mutu. While he was sent to Michigan to live with a foster family, his father was sent to a detention facility and ultimately deported to Romania, uncertain when he would see his son again. ...Constantin, one of thousands of children separated under the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' border policy...spent five tumultuous months away from those who loved him most."

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

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Resist: Day 841

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: We Still Don't Know Exactly What Happened to Juan de León Gutiérrez and Nativist HUD Plan Will Harm Children and Primarily Speaking.

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

“My son was totally exoernated by Robert Mueller,” President Trump says.

FACT CHECK: The Mueller Report did not mention exonerating any of the president’s children.

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 9, 2019

For fuck's sake.

Kenneth P. Vogel at the New York Times: Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, [Donald] Trump's personal lawyer, is encouraging Ukraine to wade further into sensitive political issues in the United States, seeking to push the incoming government in Kiev to press ahead with investigations that he hopes will benefit Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation's president-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.

One is the origin of the special counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

Mr. Giuliani's plans create the remarkable scene of a lawyer for the president of the United States pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump's allies hope could help him in his re-election campaign. And it comes after Mr. Trump spent more than half of his term facing questions about whether his 2016 campaign conspired with a foreign power.

This is only the latest piece of Giuliani's campaign to pressure Ukraine to move against Trump's political opponents. As I noted in March:

Ukrainian news is reporting "that the Prosecutor General of Ukraine had a meeting with Giuliani last month. After the meeting the Ukrainian opened an investigation into Clinton/DNC/Ukraine conspiracy allegations."

So, to be clear, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine is opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton — the only one of the major 2016 contenders who didn't work with someone who had worked for Viktor Yanukovych, the then-prime minister of Ukraine and Putin ally, in 2014. Clinton did, however, work with Joel Benenson, who had worked for Yanukovych's opponent, former Parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became Prime Minister of Ukraine after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014.

And the Ukrainian investigation was opened after the Prosecutor General met with Giuliani last month.

In other words: The president's personal attorney is orchestrating the domestic war on dissidents and the international war on dissidents.

We are in such serious trouble.

Thread on Giuliani and this disgusting attempt to smear Dems while protecting Russia https://t.co/j2QrjzB6Hk

— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) May 10, 2019

Pompeo will meet with Putin

Pompeo just met w Russia FM Lavrov on Monday and is going to Sochi next week to meet with Lavrov and Putin.
Too bad Pompeo canceled Merkel hours before they were supposed to meet earlier this week pic.twitter.com/VUYKlp0WyT

— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) May 10, 2019

Also this is interesting and something to keep an eye on. The Kremlin right now says there are no plans of a meet between Putin and Trump next month at G20. Let’s see how this plays out pic.twitter.com/fPyvDnxsgk

— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) May 10, 2019

Tim Mak at NPR: Documents Detail Meetings of Russians with Treasury, Federal Reserve. "Newly obtained documents describe what happened when two now-infamous Russians took their outreach campaign into the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in 2015. Alexander Torshin, then a Russian central banker, brought his protégée, Maria Butina, for meetings with senior officials and even sought another with the then-chair of the Fed, the documents confirm. ...Paul Saunders, who was then the executive director of a D.C.-based think tank called the Center for the National Interest, reached out to officials with the Treasury and the Fed to help organize meetings."

Eric Talmadge at the AP: Experts See Russia Fingerprints on North Korea's New Missile. "The three new missiles North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has tested over the past week are eerily familiar to military experts: They look just like a controversial and widely copied missile the Russian military has deployed to Syria and has been actively trying to sell abroad for years. ...The missiles bear a strong resemblance to the Russian-designed Iskander, a short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile that has been in the Russian arsenal for more than a decade. 'There are Russian technology fingerprints all over it,' said Marcus Schiller, a leading expert on North Korean missiles who is based in Germany."

As you may recall, I have suggested that the ongoing theater between Trump and Kim Jong Un serves the purposes of Vladimir Putin, and here is further evidence that this entire thing is indeed a ménage à trois.

* * *

David J. Lynch and Damian Paletta at the Washington Post: Trump Doubles Tariffs on $200 Billion of Chinese Imports, Escalating U.S.-China Trade War. "The United States and China hurtled toward a defining moment in their four-decade-old relationship, with financial markets bracing for the outcome of unusually dramatic trade talks in Washington. Negotiators met into the evening on Thursday but failed to avert an increase in U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products that took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. ...In Beijing, the Commerce Ministry said China 'deeply regrets' the decision to increase the tariffs and 'will have to take necessary countermeasures.'"

Analysis: Yes, #Trump's tariffs are costing billions. No, China isn't paying. U.S. businesses and consumers are. https://t.co/dYcoDgB78C via @bpolitics

— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) May 10, 2019

Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: Trump's Latest Round of Tariffs Will Hit U.S. Consumers Hard. "Donald Trump's latest round of tariffs went into effect Friday morning, targeting $200 billion worth of Chinese imports and raising duties from 10% to 25%. ...Experts say the hike will likely hit American consumers harder this time around than in the past. '[A 25% duty] needs to be passed on to the consumer. It is just too big to dilute with those other factors,' Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, told The Associated Press."

John Harney at Bloomberg: Trump's China Tariffs Could Cost 400,000 Manufacturing Jobs, Group Says. "Donald Trump's higher tariffs on Chinese imports will have 'dire consequences' for U.S. equipment manufacturers and worsen prospects for American farmers and others already reeling from lower commodity prices, an industry trade group warned on Friday. The tariffs will 'drive down exports and suppress job gains for the industry by as much as 400,000 over 10 years. It will also invite China to hit back at American businesses, farmers, communities, and families,' said Kip Eideberg, vice president of government affairs for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, which represents more than 1,000 U.S. makers of farm, construction and mining machinery."

* * *

[Content Note: White supremacy; racial slurs at link] Matt Shuham at TPM: TPUSA Member at UN Las Vegas 'Removed' from Organization over 'White Power' Video. "Turning Point USA, the Trump-aligned right-wing group trying to make conservatism cool on college campuses, had to deal with yet another incident of racism in its ranks Thursday: a video that showed the president of its University of Nevada, Las Vegas chapter endorsing 'white power.'"

[CN: Displacement; violence] Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Violence Forced 10 Million More People from Their Homes in 2018, Says Report. "Conflict forced more than 10 million additional people to leave their homes and live in other parts of their country in 2018—bringing the total number of so-called internally displaced people due to violence to a record high of 41 million, an all-time high. The numbers come from a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). ...If the number of people displaced from their homes by natural disasters is included, a total of 28 million people were displaced internally in 2018, according to the figures from the report."

28 million and this presidential administration wants us to build a wall and shut our doors.

[CN: War on agency] Bryn Elise Sandberg at the Hollywood Reporter: Four Production Companies Say They Won't Film in Georgia over Abortion Law. "David Simon's Blown Deadline Productions, Killer Films CEO Christine Vachon, and Mark Duplass pledged to no longer shoot in the state as long as the law exists." GOOD. Now do Alabama, because... [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Sanjana Karanth at the Huffington Post: Alabama Lt. Governor Admits State Abortion Ban Is Direct Attempt to End Roe v. Wade.

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

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Donald Trump Is Voraciously Bloodthirsty

[Content Note: Incitement; warmongering.]

We need to have a blunt conversation about this: Donald Trump wants violence — and he wants it badly.

He wants it at the southern border. He wants it all over the country, in mass shootings that he has no inclination to contain. He wants it at abortion clinics, at the houses of worship of minority religions, directed at marginalized people. He wants it in at least one war theater on which he can put his own name, because the leftover wars of George W. Bush aren't good enough.

I know it is a bold thing to assert, that the President of the United States actively wants violence. But the evidence is in, and it is compelling.

As I have been documenting since August 2016 — when Trump bellowed at a rally: "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick— [boos from audience] If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know." — Trump is waging a campaign of stochastic terrorism.

Stochastic terrorism is "the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf."

That is: Leverage visibility and influence to dehumanize your enemies and cast them as threats, then sit back and wait for your most radical and/or unstable supporters to take violent action. It helps significantly if you've also leveraged your power to give access to deadly weaponry to as many people as possible.

Last night, Trump gave a speech at a campaign rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, during which he made headlines by "joking" about shooting migrants and refugees at the border.

His "joke" took much the same tone as his "joke" about a Second Amendment solution to Hillary Clinton: "We can't let [border agents] use weapons. We can't. Other countries do; we can't. I wouldn't never do that. But how do you stop these people?" he asked his crowd, one of whom helpfully offered, "Shoot them!" in reply. Trump grins and shakes his head; the audience made excited, appreciative noises. "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement. Only in the Panhandle!"

He just never knows what the gosh darn solution is to whatever terrible, existential threat about which he's railing — whether it's the specter of Hillary Clinton judicial appointments or his invocation of hordes of criminal invaders at the border — but, gee, maybe his deplorable base has an idea. Do they? Golly, he doesn't approve of violence, nosir, not him, but maybe his crowd has some thoughts...?

It's the same construction. It's an invitation to fill in the heavily pregnant pauses he leaves dangling over his amped-up crowds with the suggestion, the idea, of violence.

That moment is being reported this morning, but, as I noted on Twitter, Aaron Rupar did a video thread of Trump's speech, and a whole bunch of it is structured as stochastic terrorism, not just that one moment.

For instance:

He talked yet again about Hillary Clinton losing the election, knowing damn well it would invite "Lock her up!" chants — which it did. And he stood and basked in the seething chants with a huge, satisfied grin on his face.

He claimed that "Nothing is more dangerous than the Democrats' crazy immigration agenda." Which naturally incited a round of "Build that wall!" chants.

He returned to his June 16, 2015 announcement speech — in which he asserted: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ...They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." — reiterating and doubling down on that idea last night: "Do you actually think that the country is giving us their finest? No! No, they're giving us some rough people. I won't say it. If you remember when I made the speech at the base of Trump Tower, I talked about what's happening. I mentioned the word 'rape.' I was absolutely — by the fake news media, they went after — Guess what? That speech was so mild compared to what's actually happening."

He again mocked asylum-seeking people as stooges and liars, and again advanced the same "invasion" conspiracy theory about refugees that motivated the Tree of Life shooter and again claimed that women are being taped up and trafficked across the border.

He again asserted that "Democrats are aggressively pushing late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mother's womb, right up until the moment of birth."

Each of these talking points are things he repeats along the campaign trail, in interviews, and on Twitter. He's hammering home the ideas that his enemies must be stopped at all costs, that migrants and refugees are dangerous, that the Democrats want open borders and are murdering children.

And then he "jokes" about how he doesn't know how all of these people, all of us, can be stopped.

Meanwhile, after his recent lengthy phone call with Vladimir Putin, Trump has suddenly changed his tune on Venezuela, reportedly justifying his about-face thus:

Trump is questioning his administration's aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.

The president's dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him "into a war" — a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said.

That might be a more convincing excuse for abruptly changing his position after speaking with Putin if Trump weren't fully onboard with Bolton war-shopping in Iran and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weren't currently in Iraq peddling some bullshit about Iran planning to use proxies to strike U.S. forces there.

This president wants bloodshed. He wants it within our borders and on foreign soil.

I desperately wish that were not the case. I desperately wish that I could fundamentally disagree with Donald Trump on everything, and still not believe him to be a sadistic wreck.

But malice is the agenda. And people are going to get hurt. People are already getting hurt. And dying. Because the president wants it just so.

If Democratic leadership cannot find any other reason to impeach this president, despite the preponderance of compelling rationales, perhaps they will consider the urgency of doing anything and everything to remove this man from office, before even more people end up dead.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Resist: Day 839

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: Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Even Doing? and Quote of the Day and Trump's Leaked Taxes and His Redefining of Poverty and Today in Our Constitutional Crisis and Primarily Speaking.

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

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee criticizes President Trump’s use of executive privilege over release of full Mueller report: “I can only conclude that the president now seeks to take a wrecking ball to the Constitution of the United States of America.” https://t.co/xL5l0YkrLv pic.twitter.com/81B8zZIqEr

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 8, 2019

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: I'm pausing for a moment because I do think this is a moment in history.

And I appreciate my good friends on the other side of the aisle, but — having received a letter both from, a copy of the letter to the President of the United States by Attorney General Barr; a letter from the Department of Justice indicating after their purposeful collapse of the negotiations, well-intentioned by the staff and House Judiciary Committee — I can only conclude that the president now seeks to take a wrecking ball to the Constitution of the United States of America.

For the first time in the history of the United States, a president is now exerting executive privilege over every aspect of life that the American people desire to have information: Whether or not their Affordable Care Act is dissolving the preexisting condition; whether or not children are being separated from their parents; whether or not the environment is being destroyed... Anything that the Congress wants to do on behalf of the American people is now being alleged to be under the jurisdiction of privilege.

Then, of course, we have to surmise that this is an absolute lawless behavior by this administration. The Attorney General's actions are contemptuous — and insulting to Congress. But we're simply the tools. It is to the American people.

YES. THIS. IMPEACH HIM NOW.

Felicia Sonmez at the Washington Post: Pelosi Says Trump Is 'Becoming Self-Impeachable'. "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that [Donald] Trump is 'becoming self-impeachable,' pointing to his efforts to fight all subpoenas from congressional investigations and prevent key aides from testifying before Congress. 'The point is that every single day, whether it's obstruction, obstruction, obstruction — obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas ... every single day, the president is making a case — he's becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things that he is doing,' Pelosi said at a Washington Post Live event."

What the everloving fuck is she even talking about? "Self-impeachable" isn't a thing. If what she means is that Donald Trump's contempt for the law is leaving Democrats no choice but to impeach him, then she should say that.

Unfortunately, I suspect what she means is that Trump is turning himself into a figure for which people won't vote and will "self-impeach" himself out of office during the next election, which is unmitigated horseshit — first of all because his base loves his authoritarian behavior for "owning the libs" and secondly because we are unlikely to have free and fair elections especially if Congress refuses to even try to hold Trump accountable.

Goddammit, this is infuriating.

* * *

After abruptly cancelling his trip to Germany. https://t.co/7pb24CESTO

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 7, 2019

So, one day after I wrote "The Trump Regime Wants a War with Iran," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancels his scheduled trip to Germany and heads to Iraq, where the administration has claimed that Iran is planning to use proxies to strike U.S. forces.

Which, of course, is garbage intel being inflated by warmongering pigshits.

Betsy Woodruff and Adam Rawnsley at the Daily Beast: Trump Admin Inflated Iran Intel, U.S. Officials Say.

On Sunday, the National Security Council announced that the U.S. was sending a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf in response to "troubling and escalatory" warnings from Iran — an eye-popping move that raised fears of a potential military confrontation with Tehran.

Justifying the move, anonymous government officials cited intelligence indicating Iran had crafted plans to use proxies to strike U.S. forces, both off the coast of Yemen and stationed in Iraq. National Security Adviser John Bolton also discussed the intelligence on the record. A consensus appeared to be emerging: that Iran was gearing up for war.

But multiple sources close to the situation told The Daily Beast that the administration blew it out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was.

It's the Iraq War all over again. And why not? John Bolton got away with it one time; he figures he might as well do it again.

* * *

Eliana Johnson at Politico: Trump Campaign Refuses to Say Whether It Has a Policy on Foreign Agents. "FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that if any 2020 presidential campaign is contacted by a foreign agent, it's 'something the FBI would want to know about.' But would [Donald] Trump's campaign alert the feds if approached by a potential election meddler? It won't say. The Trump campaign did not respond to numerous inquiries about whether it has implemented a policy about foreign interference — including the use of information stolen or hacked by a foreign power and whether aides must formally report outreach from foreigners."

Because they are planning to cheat. Are you paying attention, Speaker Pelosi? Christ.

Meanwhile... Cristina Maza at Newsweek: Russia Isn't Just Interfering in U.S. Elections; It's Abusing the American Justice System.

Before special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his 448-page report to the Department of Justice in March, the special counsel's team had argued in court against handing over sensitive evidence to Concord Management, a Russian company caught up in the sweeping investigation into Russian election interference.

The Russian firm, owned by Evgeney Prigozhin, a man close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, would use the evidence as part of a disinformation campaign against the special counsel, Mueller's team argued in an 18-page memorandum filed in January. After all, the company had been indicted for funding the St. Petersburg-based troll farm that used social media campaigns to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

According to court filings, Concord Management's lawyers had already been permitted to review documents as part of the pre-trial discovery process, and the information had been used to launch a disinformation campaign targeting the special counsel's investigation directly. Handing more documents to the lawyers would jeopardize U.S. national security, according to Mueller's team, and would allow Moscow to use the discovery process to gather intelligence on the Russia investigation.

But months later, despite the evidence that the information would be misused, the dispute was still unresolved as Concord Management's American lawyers argued in U.S. courts that they should be permitted to review millions of additional documents collected in the discovery process.

This case, which sucked up innumerable hours and energy from U.S. law firms, lawyers, and judges, is just one example of how ill-equipped the American justice system is to respond to politically motivated cases from abroad and to Russia's manipulation of the system, experts argue.

And of course Trump is busily stacking the courts with lackeys who aren't keen to prioritize America's best interests.

* * *

Staff at Protect Our Care: White House Threatens Veto of "Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act".

Late yesterday, the White House threatened to veto H.R. 986, the "Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019," ahead of its scheduled vote on the House floor tomorrow. The bill introduced by Rep. Annie Kuster (NH-02) would protect patients with pre-existing conditions from abuse by insurance companies that is enabled by new Trump administration regulations that sabotage our health care.

...In response to their shameless veto threat, Protect Our Care chair Leslie Dach released the following statement:

"Democrats are working to protect patients with pre-existing conditions like cancer, diabetes, and asthma but the Trump administration is now threatening to veto those efforts. Trump and his Republican allies have tried to repeal these protections for people with pre-existing conditions, then they went to court to strike them down and now they're threatening to veto them. No matter how many false promises they make to the American people, the record shows they'll do everything they can to let insurance companies gut coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions."

Larry Elliott at the Guardian: U.S. Prepares to Raise China Trade Tariffs. "The U.S. and China have moved to within 36 hours of a full-scale trade war after Washington published a list of imported products that will face higher tariffs from Friday. In a clear sign of Washington's hardline approach in talks with Beijing, the U.S. trade representative's office filed the formal paperwork needed to increase duties on $200bn of Chinese goods from 10% to 25% later this week. ...China has threatened to retaliate against any step up in U.S. action."

T.J. Stiles at the Washington Post: America Is Losing Its Memory. "America is losing its memory. The National Archives and Records Administration is in a budget crisis. More than a resource for historians or museum of founding documents, NARA stands at the heart of American democracy. It keeps the accounts of our struggles and triumphs, allows the people to learn what their government has done and is doing, and maintains records that fill in family histories. Genealogy researchers depend on it, as do journalists filing Freedom of Information Act requests. If Congress doesn't save it, we all will suffer."

Oliver Milman and Fiona Harvey at the Guardian: U.S. Is Hotbed of Climate Change Denial, Major Global Survey Finds. "A total of 13% of Americans polled in a 23-country survey conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project agreed with the statement that the climate is changing 'but human activity is not responsible at all.' A further 5% said the climate was not changing. Only Saudi Arabia (16%) and Indonesia (18%) had a higher proportion of people doubtful of manmade climate change."

Juliana Menasce Horowitz at the Pew Research Center: Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country's Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity. "A majority of Americans (57%) say the fact that the U.S. population is made up of people of many different races and ethnicities is a very good thing for the country, and another 20% say this is somewhat good." However, some of the other findings were far more grim, like: "Most Americans (70%) say they would not be particularly bothered if they heard people speak a language other than English in a public place, including 47% who say they would not be bothered at all. Still, a sizable share (29%) says this would bother them at least some."

A "sizable share" that is almost the exact same percentage as the hardcore conservative base. What a coinkydink.

[Content Note: Nativism; vigilantism] Matt Shuham at TPM: Stung by Leader's Arrest and Bad Press, Armed Border Militia Adopts New Name. "Stung by the arrest of their leader, an eviction from their campground on Union Pacific Railroad land, and weeks of critical press coverage, members of the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP) border militia will be reforming under a new name, said Jim Benvie, the de facto spokesperson for UCP's 'Border Ops,' on Tuesday. 'We are officially changing our name to Guardian Patriots,' Benvie said in a live video stream filmed on a patch of land near the U.S.-Mexico border. 'The reason for that is because we have had attacks on the UCP.'" Thanks for letting us know, assholes.

[CN: Anti-semitism; white supremacy] Veronica Ortega at 5 News Online: Holocaust Remembrance Day Event in Russellville Interrupted by White Supremacists Rally. "Joyce Griffis has organized the Holocaust remembrance day event in Russellville for years. This year, they were interrupted by members of a white supremacist group. 'It made me feel terrible, it made me feel terrible for my friends. They were talking to us like we were pieces of nothing,' Griffis said. Sir Beryl Wolfson, a 96-year-old World War II veteran, was invited to speak at the event. Wolfson says he saw the liberation of the concentration camps with his own eyes. He says he's traveled all over the state sharing his story for a reason. 'Never forget, because it could happen again, and I'm trying to get this out to the people so it won't happen again in any place,' Wolfson said." Sob.

[CN: Homophobia] Matt Wilstein at the Daily Beast: Meghan McCain's Husband Ben Domenech Goes on Unhinged Homophobic Rant Against 'Cuck' Seth Meyers.

The View host Meghan McCain seemed pretty uncomfortable by the end of her contentious appearance on NBC's Late Night on Tuesday night [during which Seth Meyers said her comments about Ilhan Omar's supposed anti-Semitism were dangerous]. But for the most part, she was able to keep things cordial with host Seth Meyers.

Then, a few hours later, early Wednesday morning, her husband shared his unfiltered thoughts about the interview on Twitter.

In a series of since-deleted tweets, Ben Domenech, the founder and publisher of conservative website The Federalist, went on an unhinged rant against the late-night host and former head writer for Saturday Night Live that was at times homophobic and at others suggested that he has only succeeded in comedy because he is a white man.

"I see that @sethmeyers, the untalented piece of shit who only has has job because he regularly gargled Lorne Michaels' balls, went after my wife tonight with his idiotic anti-Semitic bullshit," Domenech wrote.

..."Here is proof that white men get ahead despite their obvious lack of talent," he continued. "It's @sethmeyers, who would beg for a third of the viewers at @TheView. He's awful, untalented, and a perfect definition of a cuck," he added, referring to a popular far-right pejorative.

What a nice family.

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We Resist: Day 819

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: Barr to Release Redacted Muller Report Today and Primarily Speaking and The Mueller Report Is Out, and Trump's Brazenness Continues to Protect Him — as Does AG Barr.

Obviously, the political news is dominated by the Mueller report, but below are a few other important items of note in the news that shouldn't get lost today (but inevitably will)...

Paul Farhi at the Washington Post: Report: U.S. Declines Again in Press-Freedom Index, Falls to 'Problematic' Status.

For the third time in three years, the United States' standing in an annual index of press freedom declined, a result the report's authors attributed to [Donald] Trump's anti-press rhetoric and continuing threats to journalists.

Reporters Without Borders, the international group that compiles the World Press Freedom Index, ranked the United States 48th among 180 nations and territories it surveyed. The U.S. ranking fell three spots from 2018, continuing a downward trend that began in 2016.

The United States finished just above Senegal and just below Romania on this year's list.

It also fell into the ranks of countries whose treatment of journalists is considered "problematic," the first time the United States has been so classified since the organization began the index in 2002.

...The group cited both Trump's rhetorical hostility toward the American news media and a possibly related phenomenon — increasing threats of harm against reporters — for the nation's declining status.

Among other signs of poor press health, it cited the Trump administration's curtailment of White House briefings; the revocation of CNN reporter Jim Acosta's White House press pass; the banning of a second CNN reporter, Kaitlan Collins, from an open-media event; and the harassment of journalists at Trump's reelection rallies. Beyond this, there were bomb threats made to newsrooms; an alleged murder plot aimed at prominent media figures and Democratic politicians by a Coast Guard lieutenant; and increased security measures in newsrooms nationwide.

It noted that "hatred of the media" reached the point where a gunman killed four journalists and another employee at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis last June.

"Amid one of the American journalism community's darkest moments, [Donald] Trump continued to spout his notorious anti-press rhetoric, disparaging and attacking the media at a national level," it said. "Simultaneously, journalists across the country reported terrifying harassment and death threats, online, and in person, that were particularly abusive toward women and journalists of color."

...The greatest regional deterioration worldwide, it said, was in the Americas, led by the decline of the United States, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil.

Trump's war on the press is absolutely chilling — and he was waging it throughout the entirety of his campaign, long before he won the election and long before he was inaugurated. It was one of the key indicators of his authoritarian bent, and yet the very political press he targets chose instead to focus on how many days it had been since Hillary Clinton had held a press conference. Bad decision. Authoritarianism gets ratings, but some things, like defending our democracy against authoritarians, are more important than ratings. Or should be.

Foster Klug and Kim Tong-Hyung at the AP: North Korea Says It Tested New Weapon, Wants Pompeo out of Talks. "North Korea said Thursday that it had test-fired a new type of 'tactical guided weapon,' its first such test in nearly half a year, and demanded that Washington remove Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from nuclear negotiations." Everything is fine.

Daniel Estrin at NPR: U.S. Aid Agency Is Preparing to Lay Off Most Local Staff for Palestinian Projects. "Under orders from the Trump administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development is preparing to lay off most of its Palestinian aid workers in its West Bank and Gaza mission, according to U.S. government communications reviewed by NPR. It's the latest step toward shrinking a decades-long U.S. aid mission to build the capacity for a future Palestinian state. In response to NPR's request for comment, a USAID official emailed a statement saying that the agency has 'begun to take steps to reduce our staffing footprint.' He did not want his name used."

Mark Di Stefano at BuzzFeed: Australia Says It's "Ready to Confirm" a Key Meeting That Led to the Investigation into Trump's Russia Links. "A senior Australian diplomat has said the government is 'now ready to confirm' a series of events in 2016 between the country's high commissioner to the UK and a Trump campaign adviser, which led to U.S. authorities investigating Donald Trump's links with Russia. ...Until now, the Australian government and Downer have refused to confirm or give any details about the meeting central to the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, repeatedly citing the need to preserve national security. But in a letter sent to Australia's Information Commissioner after a 15 month-long FOI battle with BuzzFeed News, a senior foreign official said his department was ready to confirm the meeting and release redacted documents, because Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was now finished."

Jennifer Jacobs, Jennifer A Dlouhy, and Ari Natter at Bloomberg: Rick Perry Planning His Exit as Trump's Energy Secretary, Sources Say. "Energy Secretary Rick Perry is planning to leave the Trump administration and is finalizing the terms and timing of his departure, according to two people familiar with his plans. While Perry’s exit isn't imminent and one person familiar with the matter said the former Texas governor still hasn't fully made up his mind, three people said he has been seriously considering his departure for weeks. All of the people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. An Energy Department spokeswoman, Shaylyn Hynes, rejected the idea that Perry would be leaving the administration any time soon. 'He is happy where he is serving [Donald] Trump and leading the Department of Energy,' she said in a statement."

So Rick Perry may or may not be leaving the Trump administration at some point? Cool story.

[Content Note: Sexual harassment] Kyla Mandel at ThinkProgress: Senators Under Pressure to Stop NOAA Nominee After Sexual Harassment Revelations. "A government employee group is urging Senate leadership to halt the nomination of former AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee Myers to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The call was prompted by the release of a federal investigation document detailing a pervasive culture of sexual harassment at the family-run company. A letter sent Wednesday to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) by the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) states that Myers repeatedly failed to disclose the Department of Labor's investigation into claims of harassment and discrimination at AccuWeather."

Alex Hern at the Guardian: Facebook Uploaded Email Contacts of 1.5m Users without Consent. "Facebook has admitted to 'unintentionally' uploading the address books of 1.5 million users without consent, and says it will delete the collected data and notify those affected. The discovery follows criticism of Facebook by security experts for a feature that asked new users for their email password as part of the sign-up process. As well as exposing users to potential security breaches, those who provided passwords found that, immediately after their email was verified, the site began 'importing' contacts without asking for permission. Facebook has now admitted it was wrong to do so, and said the upload was inadvertent." Sure.

[CN: Nazism; anti-Semitism; nativism] Karsten Schmehl at BuzzFeed: WhatsApp Has Become a Hotbed for Spreading Nazi Propaganda in Germany. "German WhatsApp users are spreading far-right propaganda through the use of stickers and chain letters but the company is doing little to nothing to stop it, despite local laws forbidding the use of Nazi imagery. In nine WhatsApp groups that BuzzFeed News has observed since October, tens of thousands of messages have been sent among its far-right participants. Among them have been symbols glorifying the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, deeply anti-Semitic images created using WhatsApp's 'sticker' function, and messages seeking to incite violence and threats against leftists or refugees."

[CN: War on agency] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Attorneys General Pledge to Not Prosecute Abortions If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned.

Attorneys general in Michigan and New Mexico are pledging not to prosecute pregnant people or providers should Roe v. Wade be overturned. Both states would criminalize abortion in the event that the Supreme Court landmark decision is overturned — making these statements all the more powerful.

"I will never prosecute a woman, or her doctor, for making the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy," said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) at a press conference on Tuesday.

Following her announcement, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) told ThinkProgress he also would commit to not prosecuting abortion-related cases.

"Every New Mexican woman should have the ability, under the law, to seek the best medical care and family planning services for themselves," said Balderas in a statement. "I will always stand with New Mexican women, who should never be criminalized for seeking access to their own reproductive rights."

1. It makes me nauseated that we even have to start meaningfully contemplate the possibility of abortion-seeking people being prosecuted. 2. This is why the Republican Party has, for decades, been trying to gerrymander state districts and rig elections via voter suppression to take control of state governments in addition to seizing the federal government and the judiciary: The GOP doesn't want Democratic state officeholders and legislatures to be able to protect marginalized people's rights. They want us to be totally without advocates anywhere in the halls of power across the nation.

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

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Shut Up!