Shakesville: NRA

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We Resist: Day 872

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As apprehensions of migrants climb at the southwest border, and dozens a day are taken to community hospitals, medical providers are challenging practices — by both government agencies and their own hospitals — that they say are endangering patients and undermining recent pledges to improve health care for migrants.

The problems range from shackling patients to beds and not permitting them to use restrooms to pressuring doctors to discharge patients quickly and certify that they can be held in crowded detention facilities that immigration officials themselves say are unsafe. Physicians say that needed follow-up care for long-term detainees is often neglected, and that they have been prevented from informing family members about the status of critically ill patients. Agency vehicles parked conspicuously near hospital entrances, health providers say, are also stoking fear and interfering with broader immigrant care.

Doctors typically do not know what rights they might have to challenge these practices. At Banner and several other hospital systems across the country, they have called on administrators to oppose and change security measures that they view as endangering health.

This is devastating. Patients "are often subjected to security measures meant for prisoners charged with serious crimes," and crossing the border illegally is not, despite what the president and his favorite TV channel would have people believe, a serious crime. Approaching the border is search of asylum is not a crime at all. It's heinous and wrong that migrant people are being treated this way in any circumstances, no less when they are in need of medical care. Goddammit.

And it's only going to get worse.

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Trump Picks Immigration Hardliner to Lead USCIS. "Former Virginia Attorney General and immigration hardliner Ken Cuccinelli will be the new head of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency confirmed on Monday. ...[Immigration advocates] are concerned that Cuccinelli's appointment signals an official shift to the Stephen Miller-fication of DHS. ...In 2012, Cuccinelli compared immigrants to rats in a conversation on a conservative radio talk show. ...Cuccinelli also has a history of invoking the same heavily-coded language against immigrants as Trump. He appeared on another conservative radio show in 2015 and claimed President Barack Obama's immigration policy was encouraging an 'invasion.'" FUCK.

Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: What Is 'Sanctuary' for a Black Immigrant Family in the U.S.?

[The Thompsons] are the only Black family currently taking sanctuary at a church in the United States. To be precise, the Thompsons are the only Black family with a public sanctuary case in the United States. There are people in sanctuary who decide not to make their cases known for safety reasons.

...Clive and Oneita have lived at First United Methodist Church of Germantown for nine months. When I sat down with them in March, I was clear about the focus of the interview: What is it like for the only Black family in sanctuary? Clive excitedly stood up and clapped his hands. Oneita laughed, and said they'd been waiting for that question. Her assumption, she said, is that people are "scared" to talk about race.

"So let's talk about it,” Oneita said. "My husband looks into this all the time. I looked into it. From what we've seen, we're the only family like us. When reporters come to us, saying they want to do big stories on us, we think it's because we are the only Black family [in sanctuary]. But they never mention it."

Clive and Oneita said they want to be clear: While they may be the only Black family in sanctuary, they are more than that. They are more than the story of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting them for deportation, and they are more than the trauma that forced them to flee Jamaica. Yes, they want their blackness to be acknowledged in the context of sanctuary and immigrants' rights. But they also want their family to be fully seen, away from the prying eyes of the U.S. immigration system. They are a family first and asylum seekers second, Oneita said.

This, like everything Tina Vasquez writes, is essential reading. And yet I grieve that it had to be written at all. We should not be forcing people to make a choice like moving their family into a church for nearly a year to avoid being, for example, their family been torn apart and remanded to separate detention centers, or treated like hardened criminals while seeking medical care.

The way we are treating migrant people and refugees is fucking appalling. And I'm tired to my very bones of mendacious discussions in which people wonder whatever are we to do and wring their hands about what a difficult problem it is.

The fuck it is. Treat migrant people and refugees the same way as everyone else. Let them live a life here. Stop pretending that their humanity is somehow fundamentally different than anyone else who has the good luck to have been born here or able to immigrate legally. They overwhelmingly just want to make a living and put a roof over their heads and get enough to eat and maybe have a little left over to do something fun once in awhile, just like the rest of us.

And also just like the rest of us, some of them won't be kind or decent people, and that's to be expected, because HUMAN BEINGS. So we deal with individual people who prove themselves to be unkind or indecent, and that's that.

This isn't complicated. What complicates it is bigotry, not inherent complexity.

* * *

Heidi Przybyla, Alex Moe, and Mike Memoli at NBC News: House Democrats Consider Bills to 'Safeguard Democracy' in Response to Mueller Report. "As Democrats prepare to launch a more 'robust hearing and legislative strategy' across at least six committees to highlight the special counsel's investigation, they are discussing bills to magnify wrongdoing uncovered in Mueller's report, including contacts with Russian entities. The focus on legislation in upcoming hearings would be designed 'to rein in [Donald] Trump's abuses and safeguard our democracy from future attacks,' said a leadership aide involved in the process." Sure. But also impeach him. Get those additional investigative powers and use them.

Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Company Part-Owned by Jared Kushner Got $90m from Unknown Offshore Investors Since 2017. "A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump. Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the U.S., according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy." Fucking hell.

Catherine Belton at Reuters: American Banker and Putin Ally Dealt in Access and Assets, Emails Reveal. "A senior American banker once secretly awarded a shareholding in powerful Moscow investment bank Renaissance Capital to one of Vladimir Putin's closest friends and brokered meetings for the friend with top U.S. foreign policy officials a decade ago, emails show. The American banker, Robert Foresman, currently vice chairman at UBS investment bank in New York, held a series of prominent roles in Moscow's financial world. ...A deeply religious conservative, the blue-eyed, curly-haired U.S. banker, has said it has always been his calling to be a peacemaker between the two nuclear superpowers." For fuck's sake.

Staff at Just Security: Norms Watch: Damage to Democracy and Rule of Law in May 2019. "Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of those norms in reactions and responses by others. This is our collection of the most significant breaks with democratic traditions that occurred in May 2019." An excellent companion to this daily thread.

* * *

Sharon LaFraniere, Charlie Savage, and Katie Benner at the New York Times: People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He's Busy Stockpiling Power. No shit!

[H]is rising power over the intelligence community has been accompanied by swelling disillusionment with Mr. Barr among former national security officials and ideological moderates. When he agreed late last year to take the job, many of them had cast him as a Republican straight shooter, steeped in pre-Trump mores, who would restrain an impetuous president.

Now they see in him someone who has glossed over Mr. Trump's misdeeds, smeared his investigators, and positioned himself to possibly declassify information for political gain — not the Bill Barr they thought they knew.

"It is shocking how much he has echoed the president's own statements," said Mary McCord, who led the Justice Department's national security division at the end of the Obama administration and the start of the Trump era. "I thought he was an institutionalist who would protect the department from political influence. But it seems like everything he has done so far has counseled in the opposite direction."

I mean, it was pretty obvious from where I'm sitting that that's exactly how Barr was going to behave, so I honestly have no fucking idea why members of the intelligence community are surprised. But the fact that they are is probably something to note for the next time someone wonders aloud how Russia could have succeeded in electing their puppet as our president.

Nicole Lafond at TPM: Rosenstein Defends Barr's 'Reasonable' Handling of Mueller Report. "Rosenstein suggested criticism of the way Barr rolled out the report — writing his own summary of the document, concluding that [Donald] Trump didn't obstruct justice after Mueller wouldn't make a determination, holding a bizarre pro-Trump press conference — was unfair. 'A few years from now, after all of this is resolved, some of Barr's critics might conclude that his approach was a reasonable way to navigate through a difficult situation,' he told the Times." STFU, Rosenstein.

Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: GOP Congressman Admits He Hasn't Read the Mueller Report. "Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) said Sunday that he has not read former special counsel Robert Mueller's report because large investigations can find bad things and members of Congress should instead focus on legislation." I don't even have words.

* * *

Beth Reinhard, Katie Zezima, Tom Hamburger, and Carol D. Leonnig at the Washington Post: NRA Money Flowed to Board Members Amid Allegedly Lavish Spending by Top Officials and Vendors. "A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum. The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years that went to board members — the very people tasked with overseeing the organization's finances." All people probably bought by the Kremlin, even if they don't know it. They'll find out, though.

[CN: Trans hatred] That's your progressive pope for ya!

Breaking: Vatican office questions intentions of transgender people, saying they wish to make "only a 'provocative' display against so-called 'traditional frameworks.'" https://t.co/HwULG28v6B
— Joshua McElwee (@joshjmac) June 10, 2019

Also: What's wrong with making a provocative display against traditional frameworks, anyway? Traditional frameworks around gender are hot garbage, Frank.

[CN: Animal harm; image of bee at link] And finally... This isn't really a resistance item, but more of a heads-up with some suggestions on what you can do to help. Erin Biba at Earther: Your Cheap-Ass Bee House Is Probably Killing the Bees. We leave "overgrown" parts of our garden for precisely the reasons detailed here. Bees forever!

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

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We Resist: Day 797

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

[Content Note: Guns; domestic violence]

NRA opposes because the bill would prevent people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or stalking from access to firearms. They think that is too low of a bar.
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) March 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It certainly is.

McDonald’s is paying $300 million to eliminate its workers. https://t.co/pRzQchy1xk
— April Wolfe (@AWolfeful) March 27, 2019

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

* * *

[CN: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We Resist: Day 796

Mueller Madness! Which of the angry and hysterical @realDonaldTrump haters got it most embarrassingly wrong? #YouDecide pic.twitter.com/IkzUesDdub
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) March 26, 2019

Just the White House putting out a hit list of dissenters. Everything is fine. 🌋
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 26, 2019

[Content Note: War on agency] Julian Borger at the Guardian: Trump Expands Global Gag Rule That Blocks U.S. Aid for Abortion Groups.

The Trump administration has expanded its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule, and has also cut funding to the Organisation of American States for that reason.

The new policy was announced on Tuesday by secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who declared: "This is decent. This is right. I am proud to serve in an administration that protects the least among us."

The Trump administration has already expanded the reach of the funding ban which dates back to the Reagan administration, to apply to all US healthcare assistance, totalling about $6bn.

The extension of the policy announced by Pompeo would not only cut funding to foreign non governmental organisations directly involved in abortions or abortion rights advocacy, but also those who fund or support other groups which provide or discuss abortion.

RAGE SEETHE BOIL. I hate this administration so fucking much.

Did you know that states have introduced 297 anti-abortion bills since 2019 began? And it's only March.

The coordinated attack on abortion is very real.
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) March 25, 2019

[CN: Reproductive coercion] Katelyn Burns at Rewire.News: Trump Officials Attend Hungarian Conference to Promote Women Having More Babies. "Trump administration officials and prominent anti-choice activists appeared at a conference hosted by the Hungarian Embassy earlier this month designed to promote government policies to encourage women to have more babies. The 'Make Families Great Again' conference, which was held at the Library of Congress on March 14, promoted far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's seven-point 'Family Protection Action Plan.' The plan is 'designed to promote marriage and families and spawn a baby boom' through financial incentives... White House special assistant Katy Talento, White House Strategic Communications Director Mercedes Schlapp, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Senior Advisor Valerie Huber spoke at the event."

* * *

[CN: War; death] D. Parvaz at ThinkProgress: U.S. Airstrikes Kill 10 Children in Afghanistan as Trump Envoy Negotiates Taliban 'Peace' Deal.

As the Trump administration continues its 'peace talks' with the Taliban — with the latest round taking place earlier this month in Qatar — there's been an uptick in fighting between U.S. forces and our would-be partners, with the latest U.S. airstrikes killing ten children and three adult civilians, and wounding three other adults.

On Monday, the United Nations said that the children were all part of the same extended family, and were killed on Saturday as U.S. and Afghan forces fought Taliban fighters for nearly 30 hours in the northern province of Kunduz.

...A Taliban stronghold, U.S. airstrikes in the province have sent families fleeing the area, adding to the mass internal displacement crisis facing the country.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted that the children and their family had already been displaced from another area, fleeing fighting elsewhere in the country.

Goddammit. Sob.

[CN: Indefinite detention] Charlie Savage at the New York Times: Testing Novel Power, Trump Administration Detains Palestinian After Sentence Ends. "Swept up by authorities after the Sept. 11 attacks, Adham Hassoun, a Palestinian computer programmer who lived in Florida, served 15 years in prison for sending support to Islamist militants abroad. His sentence completed, he then waited in immigration detention more than a year and a half while the government fruitlessly hunted for a place to deport him. Finally, a judge ordered him temporarily released in the United States. But instead, the Trump administration, citing a little-used immigration regulation issued after 9/11, notified Mr. Hassoun last month that he was being declared a security risk and would be kept locked up indefinitely."

Carol E. Lee and Courtney Kube at NBC News: Mike Pence Talked Dan Coats out of Quitting the Trump Administration. "The country's intelligence chief was on the verge of resigning at the end of last year over his frustrations with [Donald] Trump but was talked out of it by his closest ally in the administration, Vice President Mike Pence, according to current and former senior administration officials. ...Similarly, whenever Trump is souring on the DNI he privately calls 'Mister Rogers' — because he won't implement a directive or has left the impression he thinks the president is irrational — Pence has encouraged Trump to stick with Coats, according to the current and former officials." What a giant collection of assholes.

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: Stephen Moore Could Inflict More Long-Term Damage Than Any of Trump's Other Nominations. "[Donald] Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump's pick to join the Federal Reserve Board. Moore's many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused. ...It's not only his forecasts for the future that have proved chronically incorrect; it's his characterizations of past and present, too." He sounds great.

Brian Kahn at Earther: The Republicans' Upcoming "Green Real Deal" Sounds Like Green Real Bullshit. "Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican whose biggest environmental claim to fame is introducing a bill to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, is reportedly planning to put forth the (I kid you not) 'Green Real Deal.' Politico scored a leaked copy of the resolution, which it says has been circulating among energy lobbyists and it could be officially introduced in the 'coming days.' I am sorry to report the Green Real Deal is not, in fact, the real deal. The five-page draft resolution — which could change when or even if it gets introduced in the House — is light on policy specifics, timelines, and goals." Huh!

[CN: Anti-Semitism] Isaac Stanley-Becker at the Washington Post: GOP Congressman Quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf to Slam Trump's Adversaries as Liars.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) took to the House floor on Monday to portray [Donald] Trump's detractors as Nazis but ended up slurring them using an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory drawn verbatim from Adolf Hitler's writings.

It's 2019, and the Führer's magnum opus, Mein Kampf, has become a playbook for political combat in Congress, at the very moment that Trump is calling the Democrats "anti-Jewish."

Brooks, a five-term Republican, accused Democrats and members of the media of propagating a "big lie" about collusion. The expression was coined by Hitler to describe how Jews used their "unqualified capacity for falsehood" to blame a top German military commander for the country's losses in World War I. A lie could be so big, Hitler claimed, that it perversely defied disbelief.

It was unclear if Brooks grasped that by leveling charges of the "big lie," he had inverted his own analogy, making Democrats the equivalent of interwar German and Austrian Jews. He set out to compare the other side to fascists, but he was the one employing a fascist smear — one that, ironically, came to define Nazi propaganda.

It was no coincidence. Trust that Mo Brooks knew exactly what the fuck he was saying.

[CN: Gun violence; abuse] Staff at the Daily Beast: NRA Instructed Far-Right Group to 'Shame' Anti-Gun Activists After Massacres. Representatives of Australia's One Nation party reportedly sought advice from the U.S. gun lobbyist on how to go about loosening their country's very strict gun laws. ...The best method to handle media inquiries in the wake of a massacre was to 'say nothing,' according to Catherine Mortensen, an NRA media liaison officer, on the video [secretly recorded by Al Jazeera]. But if the media inquiries about gun control persist, another NRA comms official, Lars Dalseide, said to 'shame them to the whole idea,' adding: 'If your policy isn't good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward? How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?'" Scum.

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

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We Resist: Day 741

"Billionaire" isn't a qualification. It's the description of a person who is hoarding more resources than they could use in 100 lifetimes while other people are starving. It's the name for a human dragon sleeping on its pile of rubies and gold.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 29, 2019

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

John Wagner and Shane Harris at the Washington Post: Trump Blasts U.S. Intelligence Officials, Disputes Assessments on Iran and Other Global Threats. "[Donald] Trump lashed out at U.S. intelligence officials Wednesday, calling them 'extremely passive and naive' about the 'dangers of Iran' and pushing back on their assessments of the Islamic State and North Korea during a congressional hearing. ...Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also weighed in. 'The President has a dangerous habit of undermining the intelligence community to fit his alternate reality,' Warner said in a tweet. 'People risk their lives for the intelligence he just tosses aside on Twitter.'"

When Russia is involved it’s always shady!
Venezuelan lawmaker says that the empty Russian plane (500 person capacity) that arrived yesterday was there to pick up 20 tons of gold from the central bank
Destination unknown https://t.co/eHYPGX53S9
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) January 30, 2019

I still don't understand what Trump (and Pence) are doing in Venezuela, although I am damn certain that their interest does not end at regime change. I do think they are interested in further destabilizing the region, to what ends I'm not sure, and I suspect there's a possibility of waging a false war with Russia in Venezuela, with the purpose of pillaging oil and other regional resources (including state treasure; see above) and the tangential benefit of creating the illusion that Russia and the U.S. are still adversaries and that the U.S. president isn't a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin. In any case, I'm very freaked out and worried for the people of Venezuela.

Emma Loop at BuzzFeed: A House Democrat Is Targeting Steven Mnuchin's Business Dealings in the Russian Sanctions Fight. "A House Democrat is demanding answers about an alleged business deal that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had with an associate of a Russian oligarch whose companies recently received US sanctions relief. California Rep. Jackie Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Mnuchin last week seeking answers about a deal he reportedly made in 2017 with an associate of Oleg Deripaska's, the billionaire aluminum magnate whose companies Treasury surprisingly announced it would be taking off the formal sanctions list in December."

Igor Derysh at Salon: With Sanctions Lifted, Trump Transition Member Gets Board Position on Russian Oligarch's Company. "On Sunday, the Treasury Department lifted the sanctions on three companies owned by Deripaska 10 months after it imposed them, citing Russia’s 'malign activity around the globe.' Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also personally sanctioned because the government accused him of threats to rivals, bribing government officials and links to organized crime. As part of the deal to have the sanctions lifted, Deripaska agreed to dilute his control of EN+, the parent company of the Russian aluminum giant Rusal. ...On Monday, EN+ announced seven new board directors, including Christopher Burnham, who served on Trump's State Department transition team and previously worked as an executive at Deutsche Bank." Deutsche Bank. Of course.

As an Intelligence warrior my mission was to identify imminent threats to our great nation. A megalomaniacal, delusional #RussianAsset who thinks he knows better than all of us is the greatest threat this nation has ever faced. Our Constitution gives us tools to #DisArmTheThreat https://t.co/iKWwB0dspZ
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) January 30, 2019

Danny Hakim at the New York Times: N.R.A. Seeks Distance From Russia as Investigations Heat Up. "When a delegation of high-profile donors, boosters, and board members from the National Rifle Association traveled to Russia in 2015, they visited a gun factory in Moscow, took in a ballet, and met with members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. But now the N.R.A. is seeking to distance itself from the trip, after revelations that a Russian woman who helped arrange it, Maria Butina, was conspiring to infiltrate the organization. The trip has been a subject of scrutiny in at least four inquiries into the N.R.A.'s ties to Russia; questions about the N.R.A. have also surfaced in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Newly empowered congressional Democrats are now stepping up efforts to uncover how much money the N.R.A. received from Russia, and whether the group served as a conduit for Russian funds into the 2016 Trump campaign."

Casey Michel at ThinkProgress: Hacked Emails List Right-Wing Fundraiser Partying with Russian Fascists and Oligarchs. "Last month, a new leak site called Distributed Denial of Secrets went live, compiling a cache of hacked emails and documents of Russian officials, confidants of sanctioned Russian oligarchs, and those steering Russian interference efforts. Among the revelations: A higher-up at the Bradley Foundation, one of the main financiers of right-wing groups in the U.S. — including the Daily Caller News Foundation and anti-immigrant organizations — apparently attended a notorious 'pro-family' conference in Russia in 2014, held shortly after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine."

Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: Mueller Witness' Team Gamed Out Russian Meddling...in 2015. "Days after Donald Trump rode down an escalator at Trump Tower and announced he'd run for president, a little-known consulting firm with links to Israeli intelligence started gaming out how a foreign government could meddle in the U.S. political process. Internal communications, which The Daily Beast reviewed, show that the firm conducted an analysis of how illicit efforts might shape American politics. Months later, the Trump campaign reviewed a pitch from a company owned by that firm's founder — a pitch to carry out similar efforts."

Christopher Bing and Joel Schectman at Reuters: Special Report: Inside the UAE's Secret Hacking Team of U.S. Mercenaries.

Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cyber security contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cyber security firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.

"I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons," she told Reuters. "I am officially the bad kind of spy."

The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists, and political rivals.

Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE's efforts to monitor opponents.

There is much more at the link.

* * *

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Howard Schultz Is Anything But a Realist. "The idea that a billionaire with no political experience is just what we need is particularly galling amid our current disastrous experiment. And Schultz would run as a 'centrist independent,' which appears to mean 'economically conservative and socially liberal,' but there's not a great constituency for that. ...At the core of this sort of centrism is the idea that there's a hallowed middle ground that — simply by virtue of being equidistant between arbitrarily designated and presumptively equivalent 'extremes' — is inherently sensible, virtuous, and above all, non-ideological. This idea is certainly seductive to far too many people. But it doesn't give rise to anything resembling realism. In a way, it's a rigid ideology all its own."

Pilar Melendez at the Daily Beast: Howard Schultz Shocked a Box of Cheerios Costs Four Dollars. "Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, amid a media tour rife with awkward moments, got stumped by Morning Joe on Wednesday when asked: 'How much does an 18-ounce box of Cheerios cost?' 'An 18 ounce box of Cheerios? I don't eat Cheerios,' the billionaire responded to host Mika Brzezinski. When she revealed the price was four dollars, Schultz was shocked. 'That's a lot,' he said."

There are a whole lot of reasons that the cultural enamourment with billionaires and the attendant belief that they are inherently qualified to be political leaders are garbage. Among them is this: Anyone who is a billionaire is de facto completely out of touch with the lives of the majority of the population. They have no comprehension about what life is really like. One cannot effectively and decently lead people whose lives they fundamentally don't understand.

And, truly, no president of a wildly and wonderfully diverse nation can know and understand the lives, needs, interests, struggles, and successes of everyone in the country. But living in a separate, elite economic stratosphere is insulating, even for the empathic and curious.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 30, 2019

[Content Note: Class warfare] Ally Boguhn at Rewire.News: Diapers, Tampons, Nursing Bras: The Trump Shutdown's Unseen Costs for Working Families. "Corinne Cannon, founder and executive director of the Greater D.C. Diaper Bank, told Rewire.News Friday that the organization saw 'a pretty drastic increase in requests for help for individuals' during the government shutdown. The diaper bank, operating in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia for more than eight years, normally provides 'diapers, period products, formula, breastfeeding supplies, adult incontinence supplies, and other hygiene products' to social service organizations that then distribute them to those in need. But during the government shutdown, there was 'a massive increase in need,' Cannon said. 'We had an increase in requests for individuals, an increase in requests from organizations — we saw a lot of folks who we've never talked to about diaper needs before coming [to us].'"

[CN: Nativism] John Wagner and Erica Werner at the Washington Post: Trump Digs In on Border Wall Funds as Congressional Negotiators Prepare to Convene. "Trump warned Wednesday that congressional negotiators would be 'wasting their time' if they do not discuss his demand for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, which led to a 35-day partial government shutdown that ended last week with a temporary truce. The president's message, delivered in a morning tweet, came hours before a bipartisan, bicameral committee was set to meet for the first time to broker a compromise over border security funding and avert another shutdown, with Democrats continuing to resist Trump's demand. 'If the committee of Republicans and Democrats now meeting on Border Security is not discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time!' Trump wrote on Twitter."

Fucking hell.

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 734

Can U.S. democracy survive when between 35 and 45 percent of the population cheers a president who behaves like an autocrat?

When Donald Trump took office two years ago, I and many others began sounding the alarm — not out of partisan worry but out of concern for democracy. Trump, we argued, was an existential threat to the republic. For the first time in American history, the president of the United States was an authoritarian-minded demagogue who viewed checks and balances as outdated nuisances rather than sacred principles.

I even wrote a book explaining how Trump was behaving like a "lite" version of the thin-skinned authoritarian leaders I have interviewed and studied in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. I called Trump a wannabe despot. In return, some Trump fans called me an alarmist — a person suffering, perhaps, from "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Others acknowledged that Trump had autocratic tendencies but argued that he had become such a weak and unpopular president that those impulses were meaningless.

Now, two years later, should we still be alarmed? Or was I an alarmist?

The United States is still a democracy. The Constitution and its checks and balances still exist. And even though Trump swoons at even the mention of a foreign dictator or despot, he is not one himself. Yet Trump has done immeasurable damage to U.S. democracy. That damage can be broken down into three categories: damage to institutions; damage to norms; and normalization of authoritarian tactics within the Republican Party.

The whole thing is worth your time to read. Long story short: Maybe once upon a time, the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, but now we've got a sitting president who, along with the elected members of his party and his base, is a true threat to the survival of our democracy.

Azeen Ghorayshi at BuzzFeed: Trump's Lawyer Said There Were "No Plans" for Trump Tower Moscow: Here They Are.

The plan was dazzling: A glass skyscraper that would stretch higher than any other building in Europe, offering ultra-luxury residences and hotel rooms and bearing a famous name. Trump Tower Moscow, conceived as a partnership between Donald Trump's company and a Russian real estate developer, looked likely to yield profits in excess of $300 million.

The tower was never built, but it has become a focal point of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump's relationship with Russia in the lead-up to his presidency.

The president and his representatives have dismissed the project as little more than a notion — a rough plan led by Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his associate Felix Sater, of which Trump and his family said they were only loosely aware as the election campaign gathered pace.

On Monday, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said "the proposal was in the earliest stage," and he went on to tell the New Yorker that "no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file."

However, hundreds of pages of business documents, emails, text messages, and architectural plans, obtained by BuzzFeed News over a year of reporting, tell a very different story. Trump Tower Moscow was a richly imagined vision of upscale splendor on the banks of the Moscow River.

What a shocker that Donald Trump, his son, his attorney, and literally everyone else around him are all filthy fucking liars!

Sara Murray at CNN: Mueller Wants to Know About 2016 Trump Campaign's Ties to NRA. "Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has expressed interest in the Trump campaign's relationship with the National Rifle Association during the 2016 campaign. 'When I was interviewed by the special counsel's office, I was asked about the Trump campaign and our dealings with the NRA,' Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, told CNN. The special counsel's team was curious to learn more about how Donald Trump and his operatives first formed a relationship with the NRA and how Trump wound up speaking at the group's annual meeting in 2015, just months before announcing his presidential bid, Nunberg said."

Here again is another "breaking news!" story that we've actually already known for quite some time. It was in June of 2018 that I wrote: "For some time now, we've known about the NRA's documented ties to the Kremlin and the distinct possibility that the NRA illegally filtered dark money from Russia to the Trump campaign. Today at McClatchy, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon have an important report on...the Justice Department investigation into whether the NRA filtered Russian money to Trump's 2016 campaign."

This is exhausting.

* * *

If you, like me, have been feeling as though the entire MAGA Teen Harasser Force incident increasingly seems like a set-up from go, a perfect storm to re-energize the jackboots heading into the next presidential campaign season, then this will probably add grist to your mill, too:

Gee what a coinkydink. https://t.co/CDzCrwJaQ5
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 23, 2019

Huh.

* * *

Dan Witters at Gallup: U.S. Uninsured Rate Rises to Four-Year High. "The U.S. adult uninsured rate stood at 13.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to Americans' reports of their own health insurance coverage, its highest level since the first quarter of 2014. While still below the 18% high point recorded before implementation of the Affordable Care Act's individual health insurance mandate in 2014, today's level is the highest in more than four years, and well above the low point of 10.9% reached in 2016. The 2.8-percentage-point increase since that low represents a net increase of about seven million adults without health insurance."

Rebecca Grant at Rewire.News: Opening a Reproductive Health Clinic Is Hard; Trump's Steel Tariffs Make It Even Harder. "Rebecca Terrell, executive director of CHOICES, founded in 1974 as a nonprofit abortion clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, anticipated obstacles when she set out to build a 16,000-square-foot facility that would include both abortion care and a birth center. What she didn't anticipate was that CHOICES would feel the impact of a Trump trade policy, announced last March, that seemed completely unrelated to her work. 'When the news broke about the tariffs, I just didn't know what the impact would be,' Terrell told Rewire.News. 'I had no idea that just about all of our building materials would be affected: Masonry, steel, plumbing. Everything. The tariff may seem like it is targeting one thing, but it has such ripple effects.'"

[Content Note: Domestic violence] Natalie Nanasi at Slate: The Trump Administration Quietly Changed the Definition of Domestic Violence. "Without fanfare or even notice, the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women made significant changes to its definition of domestic violence in April. ...The previous definition included critical components of the phenomenon that experts recognize as domestic abuse — a pattern of deliberate behavior, the dynamics of power and control, and behaviors that encompass physical or sexual violence as well as forms of emotional, economic, or psychological abuse. But in the Trump Justice Department, only harms that constitute a felony or misdemeanor crime may be called domestic violence. So, for example, a woman whose partner isolates her from her family and friends, monitors her every move, belittles and berates her, or denies her access to money to support herself and her children is not a victim of domestic violence in the eyes of Trump's Department of Justice."

[CN: Sexual violence; descriptions of assault at link]

The “Bohemian Rhapsody” director Bryan Singer has been trailed by accusations of sexual misconduct for 20 years. Here, his alleged victims tell their stories. @MisterAlexFren1 and @maxapotter report: https://t.co/PeKrnUEqRu
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 23, 2019

[CN: Sexual violence; police brutality] Staff at the Daily Beast: Pennsylvania Police Officer Charged with Raping Four Women While on Duty. "Officer Robert Collins, 53, of the Wilkes-Barre Police Department was charged with rape, witness intimidation, and official oppression, among other charges, which stemmed from the alleged assaults of four women between August 2013 and December 2014, and was arrested as his shift ended Tuesday afternoon. Bail was set at $125,000. Prosecutors allege that after finding evidence of criminal activity, Collins would demand sexual favors in exchange for avoiding arrest. ...Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro condemned Collins' alleged actions in a statement. 'This case is reprehensible — the perpetrator is a public official, someone who the community entrusted to protect them,' he said."

[CN: Christian supremacy] Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: Justice Alito Pens a Bizarre Love Letter to the Christian Right. "One of the Christian right's top policy priorities is to effectively create two different codes of law in the United States. The first code, which applies to people who do not hold conservative religious views, is rigid and unmoving. The second code, which would apply primarily to Christian-identified conservatives, contains broad exceptions for people who hold the right religious beliefs. ...Justice Samuel Alito's opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District suggests that the Court's right flank would give conservative Christians such broad immunity from the rules that govern all other Americans that it is unclear the government would be allowed to manage its own workforce — at least when some members of that workforce identify with the Christian right."

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 725

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: Quite a Weekend for Russian Puppet Donald Trump and Julián Castro Announces Candidacy for President. And ICYMI late Friday: An Observation About the Shutdown.

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

Paul McLeod and Tarini Parti at BuzzFeed: This Is Now the Longest Government Shutdown in U.S. History and There's No End in Sight. "The ongoing government shutdown became the longest in United States history Saturday, and there is no end to the standoff in sight. [Today] marks the [24th] day of the partial shutdown, breaking the previous record of 21 days set during Bill Clinton's presidency between December 1995 and January 1996. That shutdown affected only a third as many workers. ...Friday was supposed to be payday for government workers. Around 800,000 people — roughly half of whom are furloughed, half of whom are deemed essential and must work without pay — missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began. Cracks are already starting to show. TSA workers are calling in sick in droves. Low-wage subcontractors are losing wages they'll likely never get back. Even the organization tasked with stabilizing the spike in asylum claims at the southern border has been largely shut down."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. People who rely on food stamps are going to have to try to find other sources of food if the shutdown doesn't end soon. Federal prisoners are soon going to start feeling the effects of a major barrier to their accessing resources, including food. People who live in federally subsidized housing may start having trouble making rent. The shutdown is already grim for millions of people, and it's going to escalate fast.

Meagan Flynn at the Washington Post: Compelled to Work without Pay, Federal Employees Sue Trump, Accusing Him of Violating 13th Amendment. "A group of federal employees working without pay during the partial government shutdown are likening the predicament to involuntary servitude in a lawsuit filed last week, accusing [Donald] Trump and their bosses of violating the 13th Amendment. ...Employees at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Prisons, and Federal Aviation Administration have already filed lawsuits against the administration through their respective unions, among others. But this case, filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, diverges from the others by invoking the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the aftermath of the Civil War. The four plaintiffs, who are from Texas and West Virginia, work for the departments of Justice, Agriculture, and Transportation; one is an air traffic controller. The lawsuit also claims violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, among other statutes."

Martin Pengelly and Oliver Laughland at the Guardian: Trump Rejects Lindsey Graham's Proposal to Reopen Government. "On day 24 of the partial government shutdown, the longest in history, Senate Republicans seemed best placed to negotiate a reopening of shuttered federal departments and threatened services and the restoration of pay to 800,000 workers. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has worked assiduously to get close to Donald Trump, said he told the president he should reopen the government temporarily, to pursue a deal. Some Democrats voiced support. But on Monday morning, en route to New Orleans where he is due to address a farming convention, Trump told reporters he had rejected Graham's suggestion. 'I'm not interested,' he said of the senator's proposal. 'I want to get it solved. I don't want to just delay it. I want to get it solved.'"

Ariel Edwards-Levy at the Huffington Post: Most Americans Hold Trump Responsible for Government Shutdown, New Polls Show. (As well they should!) "Most Americans hold [Donald] Trump responsible for the partial government shutdown, according to a slate of just-released surveys, including the fourth wave of HuffPost/YouGov's shutdown tracking poll. The share of Americans who regard the shutdown as “very serious” now stands at a new high of 50 percent... 57 percent of Americans say they hold Trump at least partially responsible for the shutdown, an uptick from the 49 to 51 percent who have said the same in previous weeks."

My profound sympathies to everyone who is already being affected by the shutdown. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave suggestions in comments for how others can best support those who rely on federal paychecks and/or services.

* * *

John Wagner at the Washington Post: Trump Denies Working for Russia, Calls Past FBI Leaders 'Known Scoundrels'. "Trump on Monday flatly denied that he worked for Russia, and he called FBI officials who launched a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether he did 'known scoundrels' and 'dirty cops.' ...'I never worked for Russia,' Trump said as he prepared to leave for an event in New Orleans, adding: 'Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big fat hoax. It's just a hoax.'" ...'He was a bad cop and he was a dirty cop,' Trump said of Comey. The president also attacked former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe as 'a proven liar and was fired from the FBI.' ...Speaking more broadly of FBI leadership at the time, Trump said 'the people doing that investigation were people that have been caught that are known scoundrels. They're ... I guess you could say they're dirty cops.'"

It's interesting (cough) that Trump's entire defense against charges he is a Russian asset is to talk shit about the U.S. intelligence community, i.e. calling them scoundrels, but never to talk shit about Putin, as in "I'd never work for such a scoundrel." https://t.co/DxtE28YDO9
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 14, 2019

Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani at ThinkProgress: Senate Democrats to Push Vote Blocking Sanctions Relief for Russian Oligarch's Companies. "Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Saturday that sanctions on Oleg Deripaska's businesses should remain in place. He announced that he will force a vote disapproving the Trump administration's decision through a 2017 sanctions law, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which requires a simple majority vote. Senate Democrats would need the support of a few Republicans to pass the bill and send it on to the House." This is something Schumer would not have to do if Trump and the Republican leadership weren't beholden to the Kremlin.

Further reminders that it's not just Trump who's compromised and/or voluntarily traitorous...

“Vekselberg is connected to a few people in Trump’s inner circle. In 2014, on a trip to Moscow, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner met with Emin Agalarov and attended a private fundraising dinner with Vekselberg," @olgaNYC1211 explains in my latest: https://t.co/P5jkMWobv2
— Cristina Maza (@CrisLeeMaza) January 14, 2019

Betsy Woodruff at the Daily Beast: Kremlin Blessed Russia's NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says. "The Kremlin has long denied that it had anything to do with the infiltration of the National Rifle Association and the broader American conservative movement. A U.S. intelligence report reviewed by The Daily Beast tells a different story. Alexander Torshin, the Russian central bank official who spent years aggressively courting NRA leaders, briefed the Kremlin on his efforts and recommended they participate, according to the report [which also] notes that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was fine with Torshin's courtship of the NRA because the relationships would be valuable if a Republican won the White House in 2016."

In related news... Jessica Schneider and Eli Watkins at CNN: Attorney General Nominee Says Mueller Should Be Allowed to Finish Report. "Attorney General nominee William Barr said that, if confirmed, he would let special counsel Robert Mueller finish his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and believes the results should be made public. 'On my watch, Bob will be allowed to complete his work,' Barr intends to say to Congress at the start of his Senate hearing Tuesday, according to prepared testimony released on Monday. 'I believe it is in the best interest of everyone — the President, Congress, and, most importantly, the American people — that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work,' he will say."

On its face, that certainly sounds like good news. Problem is, as I have been saying for more than a year now, Mueller's investigation has effectively, even if not intentionally, created loads of time and space for Republicans to so thoroughly consolidate power that they won't have to care about or even let the public see his conclusions, even if those conclusions recommend serious consequences for Trump and/or anyone else in his administration. The more time Mueller gives them, the more time they'll have to keep consolidating power and, not incidentally, stacking the judiciary. Barr, who by the way is old friends with Mueller, knows this. Of course he's happy to give Mueller all the time in the world.

The question for Senate Democrats during Barr's hearing is not whether he'll allow Mueller to finish, but whether he will support public disclosure of his findings, whenever they are delivered.

* * *

[Content Note: Anti-choicery]

Says the guy who's overseen a hideous rollback of reproductive rights in his state. Kasich is (literally) the reason why I coined the phrase "the perfidy of civility." https://t.co/kuBiNnXuUi
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 14, 2019

Lindsay King-Miller at Rewire.News: The Real Question Now May Not Be How to Save Abortion Rights, but How to Prepare for Their Absence.

Having written about abortion rights and their opponents since the mid-2000s, including for Rewire.News, journalist Robin Marty was quick to dispense with hand-wringing over the future of Roe; as she sees it, an overturn is now inevitable.

Kennedy's retirement "was essentially a signal saying Roe v. Wade was up for grabs," she told me over the phone.

Marty's thread [on the subject] quickly garnered enough attention that she turned it into a HuffPost article, and then a book proposal, and then a book. After a breakneck round of drafting and editing, Handbook for a Post-Roe America will be available January 15.

...Much of what Marty discusses will not be new to those already involved in pro-choice organizing, but for people who have never considered the possibility of a world without Roe, her analysis is accessible without oversimplifying. She separates the feasible from the counterproductive: "Yes, buying a bunch of [emergency contraception] feels like a really proactive way to stick it to Trump and the rest of the anti-abortion politicians. But remember, most EC has a shelf life of three to four years, and in some cases the clock may already be ticking."

Throughout the book, Marty also points out the ways in which racism, poverty, and other oppressions restrict access to abortion beyond what is specified in the law. She highlights the importance of a reproductive justice framework that "goes far beyond just reproductive health and rights to highlight the intersections of race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, religion, and the other intersections of women and people's lives."

...As reproductive rights organizers have insisted for generations, Handbook points out that making abortion illegal "does not stop people from seeking it, it only divides them into those who have the resources to find a safe abortion where it is legal, and those who attempt illegal abortions with a variety of success." And despite the specter of wire coat-hangers and "back-alley" abortions hanging over any debate about reproductive rights, Marty acknowledges that self-managed abortions, particularly medication abortions, are a safer and more viable option today than in decades past.

Handbook is cautious about emphasizing that it does not offer medical advice, but merely reproduces information that is available elsewhere. "I definitely talked to some lawyers," Marty told me with a laugh. Nonetheless, Marty does offer detailed explanations of various approaches to self-managed abortion, including reprinting a diagram explaining how to make a vacuum aspirator to perform the early abortion procedure called menstrual extraction.

The overall focus of the book, however, is less about preventing or ending unwanted pregnancies than it is about maintaining abortion access wherever possible.

And finally, in partial good news... AP at the Guardian: Judge Blocks Trump Administration Contraception Rule. "A judge in California on Sunday blocked from taking effect in 13 states and Washington D.C. Trump administration rules which would allow more employers to opt out of providing women with no-cost contraception. Judge Haywood Gilliam granted a request for a preliminary injunction by California, 12 other states, and Washington D.C. The plaintiffs sought to prevent the rules from taking effect as scheduled on Monday while a lawsuit against them moved forward. But Gilliam limited the scope of the ruling to the plaintiffs, rejecting their request that he block the rules nationwide."

At least it's something.

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 722

Serhiy Kivalov, a Ukrainian lawmaker known for pro-Russian initiatives, took photos of [the Trumps' first dance at the inauguration party], as well as of his coveted tickets and passes to the soiree where it took place, the Liberty Ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, posting them on Facebook and declaring that "it was an honor" to attend.

He was one of at least a dozen Ukrainian political and business figures who made their way to Washington for the inauguration, several of whom attended the Liberty Ball. Most had more on their dance cards than just parties.

They attended meetings and orchestrated encounters at Trump International Hotel with influential Republican members of Congress and close allies of [Donald] Trump. Representing a range of views, including a contingent seen as sympathetic to Moscow, they positioned themselves as brokers who could help solve one of the thorniest foreign policy problems facing the new administration — the ugly military stalemate between Russia and Ukraine and the tough sanctions imposed on Moscow following its seizure of Crimea.

...Federal prosecutors have asked witnesses about how some of the Ukrainians gained access to inauguration events, whom they met with while they were in the United States, and what they discussed — including questions about various peace plan proposals — according to people with direct knowledge of the questions and others who were briefed on the interviews.

It's truly infuriating to be reading about this now, when some of us were raising red flags about Trump's aides changing the Republican platform's Ukraine policy in a way that benefitted Russia back in July of 2016. Because the collusion has always been happening right out in the open.

It's excruciating to contemplate the vast amount of harm Donald Trump has already done in the time since those of us paying attention, and lacking the urge to extend to him and his party a benefit of the doubt that they never deserved, sounded the alarm that Trump was compromised. He should have — and could have — been stopped then.

In related news... Christopher Hooks and Mike Spies at the Trace: Documents Show NRA and GOP Candidates Coordinated Ads in Key Senate Races. "The National Rifle Association appears to have illegally coordinated its political advertising with Republican candidates in at least three recent high-profile Senate races, according to Federal Communications Commission records. In Senate races in Missouri and Montana in 2018, and North Carolina in 2016, the gun group's advertising blitzes on behalf of GOP candidates Josh Hawley, Matt Rosendale, and Richard Burr were authorized by the very same media consultancy that the candidates themselves used — an apparent violation of laws designed to prevent independent groups from synchronizing their efforts with political campaigns."

Given what we know about the NRA's documented ties to the Kremlin and the possibility that the NRA illegally filtered dark money from Russia to the Trump campaign, it's necessary to explore whether this coordination was directed and/or funded by Russia.

The entire Republican Party is compromised. Whether by active collusion or their refusal to investigate and hold accountable colluders in their ranks.

Speaking of which... Nicole Lafond at TPM: Giuliani: Trump Team Should Be Allowed to Review and 'Correct' Mueller Report. "Before Congress or the public is allowed to dig into special counsel Robert Mueller's impending report on Russian interference and the Trump campaign, the President's legal team thinks it should be allowed to review and 'correct' it. During an interview with The Hill, Rudy Giuliani suggested it was only fair that that be the case. 'As a matter of fairness, they should show it to you — so we can correct it if they're wrong,' he told The Hill. 'They're not God, after all. They could be wrong.'"

Evan Perez, Pamela Brown, and Laura Jarrett at CNN: As Robert Mueller Writes His Report, a Potential Battle Brews over Obstruction of Justice. "As special counsel Robert Mueller wraps up his Russia probe, investigators have focused on conflicting public statements by [Donald] Trump and his team that could be seen as an effort to influence witnesses and obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the investigation. The line of questioning adds to indications that Mueller views false or misleading statements to the press or to the public as obstruction of justice. That could set up a potential flashpoint with the White House and the Trump legal team should that become part of any final report from the Mueller investigation."

Cool. That all sounds great. Now how about some urgency, since people are soon going to start going hungry and becoming homeless as a result of this fucking shutdown, because Trump has remained unaccountable for two years and counting.

Erica Newland at the Washington Post: I Worked in the Justice Department; I Hope Its Lawyers Won't Give Trump an Alibi. "[W]hen it comes to the president's findings about the state of the world, [the Office of Legal Counsel] generally defers to the president. This deference, which is baked into OLC's culture, proceeds from the assumption that the president is acting consistent with Article II of the Constitution and with his oath of office, both of which require that he 'faithfully' execute the laws. That means he has a constitutional duty to act honestly and in the public interest. OLC's deference is also born of a recognition that its lawyers are not equipped to be sophisticated fact-finders. But when I was at OLC, I saw again and again how the decision to trust the president failed the office's attorneys, the Justice Department, and the American people."

Pelosi blasted a classified briefing from Steve Mnuchin on Treasury lifting Russia sanctions as a "waste of time" and "one of the worst classified briefings" she has received

She said Mnuchin mostly read from an unclassified document and “barely testified at all.” @jeremyherb
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 10, 2019

Laura Rozen at Al-Monitor: Pompeo's Cairo Speech Panned as 'Tone-Deaf,' 'Hyper-Partisan,' 'Offensive'. "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's stridently partisan speech in Cairo [on January 10] chiding the former Barack Obama administration for its Iran nuclear diplomacy and attempts to engage the people of the Middle East received a withering response from former U.S. diplomats and regional experts, who called it unstatesmanlike and tone-deaf. ...Pompeo's speech 'was a regurgitation of what they have been saying for two years. There was nothing new, and it was offensive,' former career U.S. diplomat and ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein told Al-Monitor. 'That they think that anyone still wants to hear about Barack Obama's 2009 Cairo speech — get over it. You own the issue now, you own the policy,' Feierstein continued."

[Content Note: Nazism.]

This is fine. (This is not fucking fine.) https://t.co/HPeZKI1QfA
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 11, 2019

This is the sort of thing happening all over the world, as rightwing fascist movements gain traction once again, and our Secretary of State is rambling reprehensible nonsense indicating (again) that this administration is part of that movement, rather than a reliable bulwark against its frightening global momentum.

Susan B. Glasser at the New Yorker: The International Crisis of Donald Trump. "After the 9/11 attacks, [Eliot Engel, the Democratic congressman from New York who has just taken over the chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee]'s predecessors on Foreign Affairs set up a new terrorism subcommittee, which underscored America's sudden, obsessive focus on countering such threats. That is the subcommittee that Engel will now eliminate in favor of his new investigative panel. There 'wasn't a great clamor' to keep the terrorism panel anymore, Engel told me, whereas there is no end to the Trump foreign-policy scandals that his members are pushing to investigate. 'We just thought, if we're going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to reassert itself, where there are so many questionable activities of this Administration vis-à-vis foreign policy, that it made sense to have this.' Trump, in other words, is a bigger threat than terrorism. At least for now."

* * *

guys it’s over shut it all down pic.twitter.com/1WMUT1Ng1r
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 10, 2019

[If you can't view the image embedded in the tweet, it's a screenshot of a Fox Business article headline, which reads: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't the future of the Democratic Party: Joe Lieberman."]

Joe Lieberman isn't even a Democrat anymore, so why doesn't he join in a shuttered diner for a cup of steaming hot STFU all the other non-Democrats who have Big Thoughts about the future of a party to which they don't belong.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 11, 2019

In (cough) related news [CN: Sexual harassment and assault]:

"Clearly we need a cultural revolution in this country to change workplace attitudes and behavior. I intend in every way to be actively involved in that process." The thing is, we can't *have* that cultural revolution as long as cishet white men insist that they have to lead it. https://t.co/d5hq0j9i5d
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 10, 2019

And finally... Elena Schneider at Politico: Gillibrand Hires Three Senior Staffers Ahead of Iowa Visit. "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's political operation has hired three senior staffers ahead of an expected presidential campaign launch. It's the latest sign of movement toward a 2020 campaign from the New York Democrat, who is also planning a trip to Iowa next weekend. The new hires are veteran Democratic operatives Dan McNally, Meredith Kelly, and Emmy Bengtson, according to a person familiar with their hiring. McNally will be Gillibrand's campaign director, while Kelly will serve as Gillibrand's communications director. Bengtson will be the deputy communications director, leading the digital operation."

If three female Senators (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand) run, or even more (e.g. Amy Klobuchar), I am going to be delighted (if also somewhat worried about what will happen to the gender makeup of the senate, but that's not their responsibility to prevent in detriment to their ambitions).

I hope they strike a pact to appear unified in all debates until they get any Bernies Sanders or Joes Biden out of the contest, lol.

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

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