One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
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Earlier today by me: Primarily Speaking and Republicans Protect Rapists' Parental Rights in Alabama.
Here are some more things in the news today...
[Content Note: Nativism; abuse. Covers entire section.]
Sheri Fink at the New York Times: Migrants in Custody at Hospitals Are Treated Like Felons, Doctors Say.
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.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.
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.
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.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.
...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.
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.
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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.
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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.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.
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."
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.
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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?
