Primarily Speaking

Welcome to another edition of Primarily Speaking, because presidential primaries now begin fully one million years before the election!

[Content Note: White supremacy] Yesterday, villainous turd Mitch McConnell actually said these actual words: "I find myself once again in the same position as President Obama. We both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slaveholders." This fucking guy and the shit that comes out of his mouth.

Last night, CNN's Don Lemon played the clip for Senator Cory Booker to get his response:

Lemon: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked today about an NBC report that said that his relatives were slaveholders and whether that would change his view against reparations. Listen to his response.

[video clip of McConnell smugly saying: "You know, I find myself once again in the same position as President Obama. We both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slaveholders."]

Lemon: How do you respond to that?

Booker: You know, I — I — I mean, Mitch McConnell doesn't seem to even in any way there express an understanding of, of these issues or, you know— The bill that I have in the Senate which would call people together to study this issue, the legacy of slavery—

Lemon: Let me just ask you there before you go, 'cause I know — and I'm going to let you talk about that — I rarely have seen you at a loss for words? Why are you at a loss for words over this, over that response?

Booker: I mean, first of all, I — I didn't hear this earlier today, so this is the first time I'm responding, and, and, dear god, there's— [stammers] This has been a couple of years of my life, for Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump where things come out of their mouth that I just sometimes have to — just sometimes have to, you know, ah, have to just take a step back for a second and gather myself.

Fucking hell. I hate Mitch McConnell so much. And I admire Cory Booker a great deal.

In other Booker news, he also denounced Trump's attempt "to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census, calling it "a 'cynical attempt' to undercount 'particular Americans' such as immigrants and minorities and an attempt to divide us against each other."

And after talking the talk, today Booker will walk the walk: "The Democratic presidential hopeful from New Jersey is introducing a Senate bill on Wednesday that would ban the U.S. Census Bureau from including citizenship information among the data the bureau is required to provide to redistricting officials after a national head count." Excellent.

Joe Biden's backers want him to get aggressive as he campaigns:

"There are people that are all over Joe to get more aggressive," according to a source who spoke with Biden in recent days. "People are very nervous."

The source added that the debate will be Biden's next big test. "If he doesn't come out strong and swinging, you're going to see a lot of people leaving him."

I have news for this source: If Biden gets more aggressive at the next debate, a lot of people will leave him for that reason, because many progressive voters — including folks who are tentatively supporting Biden as the best-known frontrunner at the moment but are using the debates to get to know the other candidates — have had enough of aggressive old white men for the rest of our damn lives.

Jill Biden, meanwhile, is still defending her husband's performance in the first debate: "Jill Biden said [Senator Kamala Harris' criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden during the debate was 'the biggest surprise' to her during the race so far but that voters 'didn't buy it.' 'I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he's a racist,' Jill Biden said. 'I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights. And then to be elected with Barack Obama, and then someone is saying, you know, you're a racist?'" Yikes.

Harris has no time for that garbage. She is too busy tweeting about the need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (which just happens to be one of Biden's signature issues): "It's July 9 and the Violence Against Women Act still has yet to be reauthorized. No more political games. Let's ensure survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence have access to the care they need."

[CN: Nativism; child abuse] She's also busy calling attention to the child abuse at the southern border:

Horrific. This is child abuse being committed by the Trump administration, full stop. https://t.co/YOxjM0lnu6

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) July 10, 2019

As is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who tweeted: "This administration's family separation policy has caused trauma that will last these families a lifetime, but it's not enough just to end that policy. We need real immigration reform with a path to citizenship and a humane asylum process." Absolutely right.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has another plan for another thing!

I've got a new plan to accelerate the transition to clean energy and combat climate change. I'm proud it has the support of former Vice President @algore, and @EdMarkey and @AOC — the original authors of the Green New Deal.

Publicly traded companies have an obligation to share important information about their business. But right now they don't share much about how climate change might affect them, their customers, and their investors.

My Climate Risk Disclosure plan requires companies to publicly disclose both environmental & financial climate-related risks to their business. Investors are already divesting from fossil fuel companies, and this will push more investors to divest and transition to clean energy.

We need to take bold action to attack climate change. I'm proud to support the #GreenNewDeal. I've also got plans to invest in clean energy tech and to stop drilling and promote renewables on public lands. This plan is another tool we can use to attack climate change.

Right on.

In good news for the Castro-heads among us, Julián Castro "has boosted his chances to take his 2020 presidential campaign to the debate stage this fall by snaring contributions from 130,000 unique donors. Castro announced Monday that he had reached the milestone putting him closer to qualifying for the September and October Democratic debates, although he still has not yet polled well enough to seal his place." Huzzah!

John Hickenlooper is still definitely running for president.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Migrant Children Allege Sexual Abuse and Retaliation

[Content Note: Sexual assault; harassment and abuse.]

Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley at NBC News report:

The poor treatment of migrant children at the hands of U.S. border agents in recent months extends beyond Texas to include allegations of sexual assault and retaliation for protests, according to dozens of accounts by children held in Arizona collected by government case managers and obtained by NBC News.

A 16-year-old Guatemalan boy held in Yuma, Arizona, said he and others in his cell complained about the taste of the water and food they were given. The Customs and Border Protection agents took the mats out of their cell in retaliation, forcing them to sleep on hard concrete.

A 15-year-old girl from Honduras described a large, bearded officer putting his hands inside her bra, pulling down her underwear, and groping her as part of what was meant to be a routine pat down in front of other immigrants and officers.

The girl said "she felt embarrassed as the officer was speaking in English to other officers and laughing" during the entire process, according to a report of her account.

A 17-year-old boy from Honduras said officers would scold detained children when they would get close to a window, and would sometimes call them "puto," an offensive term in Spanish, while they were giving orders.

...All children who gave accounts to case managers had been held at the border station longer than the 72 hours permitted by law.

There is much more at the link.

This is not the first time that we have heard reports of migrant and refugee children in detention being sexually assaulted.

In February, Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch disclosed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) documents during a House hearing on the Trump Regime's "zero tolerance" policy that revealed HHS had "received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-2018."

Last July, Rebekah Entralgo and Joshua Eaton at ThinkProgress reported that "a man with a history of serious sex crimes allegations" had been hired as the human resources manager for a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children in Topeka, Kansas.

Last June, Aura Bogado, Patrick Michels, Vanessa Swales, and Edgar Walters at Reveal News reported that unaccompanied immigrant children were being sent to shelters with known abuse histories, including staff that had sexually abused minors and allowed older children to sexually abuse younger ones.

Children are being tortured by the U.S. government, in its citizens' names, and the U.S. government is justifying that endemic abuse with the utterly fabricated pretense that it's necessary to protect us.

Even if every reprehensible lie Donald Trump tells about the sinister threat posed by undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers were true, and even if his vile nativist policies were actually effective, the cost would not be worth it to me.

I would take my chances with Trump's conjured monsters before I would support actual monsters being paid with my tax dollars sexually abusing children. The choice isn't even close.

But the fact is that the crisis at the southern border (and in detention facilities across the country) is one largely of Trump's invention. He didn't create the reasons for the mass migration toward the U.S., although he is exacerbating it by refusing to address climate change and threatening to withdraw critical support to Central America. But he did create the horrendous situation in concentration camps by fundamentally altering U.S. policy to require detentions, rather than letting people go with a court date in hand.

A change he justifies by asserting that immigrants don't show up for those court dates, which is a straight-up lie.

One of many lies he tells: There is no urgent crisis threatening the United States because of undocumented immigration — not an employment crisis, not a crime and violence crisis, not a health crisis. The opioid crisis is not attributable to migrant workers or asylum-seeking refugees. Terrorists are not entering the country over the southern border.

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

This entire crisis has been build on a foundation of lies. And children are being tortured for those lies. Which is not a bug, but a feature. Because malice is the agenda.

This is intolerable. You know what to do: MAKE SOME NOISE.

Resist.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Malice Is the Agenda — and Here's What It Looks Like

[Content Note: Nativism; concentration camps.]

U.S. Border Patrol has insisted that the appalling conditions in which migrants and refugees are detained at the southern border "are necessary to stem the flow" of people seeking refuge in the United States. The Trump Regime asserts that their nativist malice is a "deterrent," which is abject dishonesty.

Desperate people are fleeing violence, climate change, unemployment, and/or hunger. Parents bringing their children on the terrifying, perilous journey to the U.S. are trying to save their children's lives. And their own. That Trump wants them to fucking die can't be a deterrent when death lies at the other end of their journey, too. Making torture and death possible outcomes of seeking asylum won't end asylum-seeking — it will just make it less safe.

The sadistic architects of the Trump Regime's immigration policy want it both ways: They claim they are harming migrants and refugees as an allegedly effective deterrent, while simultaneously asserting that they can't help but torture people in concentration camps because their numbers are overwhelming the U.S.'s resources.

So, not an effective deterrent then. But we aren't meant to scrutinize the inherent contradiction in their bullshit justifications for their institutional abuse, nor are we meant to talk about how the detentions are unnecessary, as people could (and should be) released with a notice to return for a later court date, nor are we meant to talk about anything else that exposes the Trump Regime's deadly cruelty for the rank fascism that it is.

But let's talk about it, anyway. Let's talk about it with anyone and everyone who will listen, because our silence will be deadly for increasing numbers of people detained in these hells.

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released its final report on overcrowding at several border facilities in the Rio Grande Valley, and it included in the report photographs that reveal the extent of the horror.

This is but one of the images. There are more. Some of them show people lying in cages or rooms packed in so tightly that there is no room to walk. Others show people stuffed into tiny rooms at double the capacity, so that none of them can sit or lie down. They are all forced to stand, packed in like sardines.

At BuzzFeed, Hamed Aleaziz notes of the above photo that "inspectors indicated that 82 men were held in a cell with a maximum capacity of 41."

This is horrific.

You know what to do: MAKE NOISE. Make it any way you can. Just don't be silent. Please.

RESIST.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Resist: Day 894

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Quote of the Day and Congressional Delegation Finds Appalling Conditions at Border; Another Death After Detention by ICE and Primarily Speaking.

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

There's a breaking story that is very weird, and I'm not exactly sure what to make of it, but here's what we know as of publication time: Mike Pence was abruptly called back to the White House as he was about to depart for an event in New Hampshire, and administration officials insisted it's not because either Donald Trump or Pence is having any kind of health issue.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has reportedly canceled his plans for today to meet urgently with his defense minister. But administration officials also insist that nothing to do with why Pence was called back to the White House. Just a coincidence.

But.

This is also breaking news: "Fire erupts on one of the Russian navy's deep-sea submersibles, killing 14 sailors, Russian Defense Ministry says."

Now, when I read "fire erupts on one of the Russian navy's deep-sea submersibles," all I can think of is this piece I wrote in March: Russia Threatens to Arm Submarine with Nuclear Doomsday Devices — the second part of which was about Russian ships allegedly lurking near underwater internet cables, with the presumed intent to interfere with them in some way.

The sub in question is "a Russian AS-12, the smallest nuclear sub in the world and also one of the deepest diving." According to Russia's defense ministry, the sub was "studying the bottom of the world ocean" when the fire broke out.

If that sounds neither honest nor reassuring to you, you are certainly not alone.

Anyway. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's something. I'm just putting this here now because I have a suspicion that it will make more sense, and be a useful reference, in the future.

* * *

Andy Sullivan and Makini Brice at Reuters: Trump Plans Tanks and Flyovers at Fourth of July Celebration in Washington.

Donald Trump said on Monday that he plans to display battle tanks on Washington's National Mall as part of a pumped-up Fourth of July celebration that will also feature flyovers by fighter jets and other displays of military prowess.

The military hardware is just one new element in a U.S. Independence Day pageant that will depart significantly from the nonpartisan, broadly patriotic programs that typically draw hundreds of thousands of people to the monuments in downtown Washington.

...Also on the agenda are an extended fireworks display and flyovers by Air Force One, the custom Boeing 747 used by U.S. presidents, and the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels jet squadron.

"I'm going to say a few words, and we're going to have planes going overhead," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "And we're going to have tanks stationed outside."

And that's not all, naturally. [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Samuel Osborne at the Independent: Trump 'Demands U.S. Military Chiefs Stand Next to Him' at 4th of July Parade. "Mr. Trump has asked the chiefs for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines stand next to him as aircraft from each of their branches of the military fly overhead, the New York Times reports. The event is likely to raise concerns over Mr. Trump's desire to parade U.S. military forces through the streets of the capital in a similar manner to authoritarian regimes such as North Korea, Iran, and China."

Editors of the Washington Post: Trump's Fourth of July Plans Just Keep Getting Worse. "Equally, if not more troubling, is his insistence on a display of military might that will include a flyover of warplanes and the stationing of tanks or other armored military vehicles on the streets of the capital. What this will cost the Defense Department and the National Parks Service is anyone's guess. (Officials have refused comment.) But the question of expense pales in comparison with the message that will be sent by a gaudy display of military hardware that is more in keeping with a banana republic than the world's oldest democracy."

[CN: White supremacy; misogyny] Will Sommer at the Daily Beast: Proud Boys and Allies to Rally in D.C. to Capitalize on 'Trumpstravaganza'. "Members of the far-right Proud Boys men's group and their allies will rally in D.C. on July 6, just a week after violence at rival Portland rallies ratcheted up tensions between groups on both the right and left. ...The Proud Boys — self-described 'Western chauvinists' who adhere to a dizzying array of rules, including restrictions on how much they can masturbate — will be joined by a number of right-wing internet personalities at the 'Rally for Free Speech' at D.C.'s Freedom Plaza. The event's website lists a number of right-wing internet provocateurs, including conservative smear-pusher Jacob Wohl, anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, British far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos, and former Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec."

Fucking hell.

* * *

Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Trump Administration 'Misses Deadline' to Print Census Forms. "The Trump administration has missed its own July 1 deadline to print the paper forms needed for next year's Census, NPR reports. A website tracking the progress of 2020 Census materials shows they're yet to be officially approved by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which is headed by Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney."

They are, as Danielle McLean rightly notes at ThinkProgress, deliberately slow-walking the printing.

This, after Trump threatened last week to delay the census if he's not allowed to include his nativist citizenship question. As I noted at the time: This is almost certainly a test ahead of the 2020 election. If Trump is allowed to "delay" or suspend the census without consequence, there is nothing that will stop him from "delaying" or suspending the election, which he already constantly suggests is being "rigged."

[CN: Nativism]

"AG William Barr has moved forward with a regulation changing the way immigration courts handle appeals, expanding the ability of those courts and the attorney general himself to issue decisions that bind the way all immigration judges must decide cases." https://t.co/IBZsWllum7

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 2, 2019

So not only does Trump have nativist allies running all three arms of immigration, but he's got the entire Justice Department being run by a narivist ally, too. JFC.

[CN: Nativism; child abuse. Video may autoplay at link.] Chantal da Silva at Newsweek: Lawyers Who Visited Detained Migrant Children Say Border Officials Barred Them from Seeing the Sickest Kids, Who Were Held Separately.

In an interview with Newsweek, Human Rights Watch U.S. Program Executive Director Nicole Austin-Hillery said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency personnel refused to grant her and other lawyers visiting the Clint detention center last month access to a "sick ward" where sick children were being detained.

"We asked if we could visit with children who were sick and who had been ill for a few days because our understanding was that there was an area of the facility called the 'sick area' or the 'sick ward' and so, we said we wanted to see those children," Austin-Hillery said. "We wanted to see how those children, who are most vulnerable right now, how they are being treated and being cared for."

However, despite repeated requests, Austin-Hillery said CBP officials refused to grant lawyers access, claiming it was for their own health and safety.

"We were prohibited from seeing those children and we were told it was for our own safety," Austin-Hillery said.

"We told them, 'We don't care. We're not concerned about catching a cold,'" she said.

Ultimately, however, the lawyers were forced to leave the facility without being able to see the children who would be among the most vulnerable at the detention center.

[CN: Nativism] Staff at Reuters: Asylum Seekers Returned to Uncertainty, Danger in Mexico. "The United States government should cease returning asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during their U.S. immigration court proceedings, Human Rights Watch and the Hope Border Institute said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch's 50-page report, ''We Can't Help You Here': U.S. Returns of Asylum Seekers to Mexico,' finds that thousands of asylum seekers from Central America and elsewhere, including more than 4,780 children, are facing potentially dangerous and unlivable conditions after U.S. authorities return them to Mexico."

"Trump said Monday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to be increasing deportations of undocumented immigrants after Independence Day." https://t.co/74GYTBwkO2

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 2, 2019

[CN: Nativism; abuse] Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Homeland Security Admits It's Using Abhorrent Conditions at Detention Centers to Deter Migration. "Poor conditions including overcrowding, flu outbreaks, and a lack of clean clothes are just par for the course at an El Paso border station, according to a report released Monday by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General. In the report, border patrol argues that these conditions are necessary to stem the flow of migrants to the United States."

Malice is the agenda.

* * *

Tucker Carlson asked Trump why American cities are filthy and have people urinating on the streets. Trump said, "It's a phenomena that started two years ago." (?)

The whole answer is something. pic.twitter.com/tGgsg538A7

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 2, 2019

Philip Bump at the Washington Post: Trump Is Incapable of Accepting That Most Americans Don't Like Him. Yeah, well, I've got news for him: Most of the rest of the fucking planet doesn't like him, either.

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

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Pelosi Caves; Trump Gets $4.6B Border Package

[Content Note: Nativism; abuse.]

So, late yesterday, under pressure from moderates in her caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi caved on her demands that protections for migrant children and restrictions on the Trump Regime's use of emergency border funding and allowed the Senate border bill to come up for a vote in the House. It passed.

In other words, Donald Trump just got a $4.6 billion check to spend on his nativist malice, with zero restrictions, while he's torturing children in concentration camps.

This is a massive failure. Progressives in the Democratic caucus are deeply unhappy about it, as well they should be. Moderates in the Democratic caucus should be ashamed of themselves, but aren't — because they believe they need to look tough on border security be reelected.

Honestly, when you're voting to fund the abuse of children knowing that malice is Trump's agenda, I don't know what difference there is between you and a Republican, anyway.

I'm so filthy fucking angry.

As I noted on Twitter yesterday: Trump is now going to say, forever, that whatever he does to children at the border has bipartisan approval.

And anyone who is still saying at this point that Pelosi is a great strategist who's just giving Trump enough rope with which to hang himself has to understand that they are implicitly making an argument that children's lives are negotiable.

What is the line in the sand? What is it?

Remember when I said the other day to keep your eyes peeled for people who claim to and ostensibly oppose Trump but their actions actually work to protect and empower him? https://t.co/xxMBrT1LT5

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2019

Bloop. https://t.co/XihOHQK0kB

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2019

Pelosi should be launching impeachment hearings of Trump for his vicious nativism at the southern border. Instead, she's giving him what might as well be a blank check to escalate it.

I cannot believe I am saying this, but Pelosi must be removed and replaced immediately.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Nativist Wreck Mark Morgan Appointed Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection

[Content Note: Nativism; abuse.]

Following the announcement yesterday that at least 100 children who had been moved out of a concentration camp with "appalling" conditions were being moved back, Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection John Sanders resigned, or was forced out, and Trump has appointed Mark Morgan to be acting commissioner.

At the Washington Post, Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey report: "A week after beginning his reelection campaign with promises of mass deportations, [Donald] Trump sent the agencies responsible for immigration enforcement deeper into disarray on Tuesday, replacing his interim border chief with a figure he plucked from cable news punditry last month."

A figure he plucked from cable news punditry.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] At the Huffington Post, Roque Planas has more details on Morgan's tenure at Fox News as professional nativist wreck:

A week later, Morgan returned to the show for what was already his third appearance. This time, he took aim at child migrants ― a group generally viewed with sympathy by even the toughest voices on immigration.

"I've been to detention facilities where I've walked up to these individuals that are so-called minors, 17 or under," Morgan said. "I've looked at them and I've looked at their eyes, Tucker — and I've said that is a soon-to-be MS-13 gang member. It's unequivocal."

In the five months that followed, Morgan became Trump's most prolific media cheerleader on immigration. He racked up nearly 100 television and radio appearances following his debut on Tucker Carlson Tonight, running the gamut from CNN to conservative talk radio programs hosted by Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

No outlet embraced him more wholeheartedly than Fox News.

After saying on air that he has looked into the eyes of children and seen future gang members, Morgan, Planas notes, "will now head an agency that currently has thousands of migrant children in its care."

On Twitter, BuzzFeed's Hamed Aleaziz observes: "Per DHS official, Mark Morgan has been picked to take over CBP and Matt Albence is now back as acting director of ICE. White House allies are now in charge of the 3 immigration components: USCIS, ICE, CBP."

Donald Trump launched his political career engaging in nativism with his birther campaign against President Barack Obama. He launched his 2016 presidential campaign engaging in nativism by descending on an escalator to declare Mexican immigrants rapists. He has spent the first years of his term engaging in all manner of nativist malice against Muslim and Indian and Latinx people. He launched his reelection bid by declaring a purge of undocumented immigrant families and is consigning migrant children to concentration camps.

And now he has solidified control over every immigration arm in the federal government by appointing sycophantic minions who will execute his sadistic vision without question or compunction.

[CN: Image of death at link] People are already dying. Trump doesn't even have to establish death camps; he just has to instruct his ghouls at USCIS, ICE, and CBP to shut down access points to refugees, forcing them across deserts where they die of exposure or rivers where they drown. He just has to allow toxic conditions at "detainment facilities" to kill people by neglect or disease or just the goddamned heat.

It is urgent to impeach him. This must happen now.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Resist: Day 887

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Trump Regime to Move Migrant Children in a Bid to Avoid Accountability for Harming Them and "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free..." and Primarily Speaking.

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

Donald Trump published a series of tweets directed at Iran this morning, and they are wildly, unfathomably, aggressively inappropriate, which is still a vast understatement. The tweets read:

Iran leadership doesn't understand the words "nice" or "compassion," they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone...

...The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran's use of IED's & EFP's (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more...

...Iran's very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

No more people who aren't bellicose sadists who threaten "obliteration" of their enemies. To all decent Americans' grief and regret.

In related news... [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Saagar Enjeti and Jordan Fabian at the Hill: Trump: I Do Not Need Congressional Approval to Strike Iran. "Trump told Hill.TV in an exclusive interview Monday that he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. When asked if he believes he has the authority to initiate military action against Iran without first going to Congress, Trump said, 'I do.' ...The president disputed Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) assertion that he would need congressional approval for any 'hostilities' against Iran. 'I disagree,' he said. 'Most people seem to disagree.'" The fuck they do. I'm sure his cadre of sycophants do. Outside that thicket of reprobates, however, most people believe the president is not a fucking dictator.

Did anyone imagine that Putin would stop with just interfering in our election once he got away with that sans consequence? Oh. [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Tom Embury-Dennis at the Independent: Russia Contradicts Trump Administration by Saying Downed U.S. Drone Was in Iranian Airspace. "[Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev] spoke to reporters after a three-way meeting with his Russian and Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem. He said Iran — an ally of Russia — had not briefed Moscow about the incident, but that the Russian Defense Ministry had concluded the drone entered Iranian airspace."

Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: Trump Muses Privately About Ending Postwar Japan Defense Pact. "Donald Trump has recently mused to confidants about withdrawing from a longstanding defense treaty with Japan, according to three people familiar with the matter, in his latest complaint about what he sees as unfair U.S. security pacts. Trump regards the accord as too one-sided because it promises U.S. aid if Japan is ever attacked, but doesn't oblige Japan's military to come to America's defense, the people said. The treaty, signed more than 60 years ago, forms the foundation of the alliance between the countries that emerged from World War II."

So Trump "mused about it privately," and yet here we are reading about it! And of course we're all meant to understand it's because Trump is always pouting about unfair our treaties are, and yet, as Olga Lautman notes on Twitter: "Just what Putin wants! Trump gets all his foreign policy ideas from the Kremlin who wants weaker or no alliances." Huh.

Say, on that note... Steven Erlanger at the New York Times: Council of Europe Restores Russia's Voting Rights.

In a decision opposed by most former Soviet-bloc countries, the parliament of the Council of Europe voted on Tuesday to end Russia's suspension, which began with the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Those voting to restore Russia's full rights in the council, which is separate from the European Union, argued that if Russia left the organization — as it had threatened to do — it would deny Russian citizens the right to bring cases before the European Court of Human Rights, a part of the council.

Opponents argued that Europe was giving in to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia's support for separatist warfare in eastern Ukraine — and just as important, starting a process of normalizing relations with Moscow.

Does that strategy — holding the safety of marginalized people hostage in order to extort concessions and avoid accountability or any consequences at all for large-scale abuses — sound familiar to anyone else? Because it should.

* * *

[CN: Nativism; child abuse]

As I said yesterday, "losing" children is part of the strategy. The Trump Regime has no effective method for tracking children as it is; moving them around will make reunifications even more difficult — and will make it easier for them to conceal the deaths of children. https://t.co/eR3uyr69FZ

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 25, 2019

Nancy Cook at Politico: Trump Is Tiring of Mulvaney. "In recent weeks, Trump has been snapping at his acting chief of staff with some frequency, and expressing greater frustration with him than usual, according to four current and former senior administration officials. Trump has long said that he prefers the flexibility offered by temporary titles, but Mulvaney's ongoing 'acting' status underscores the uphill battle he faces as Trump's third chief of staff in less than two-and-a-half years. While Mulvaney is not in danger of losing his job any time soon, officials stressed, Trump's treatment of him still signals to aides the slow deterioration of their relationship has begun."

A Chilean billionaire bought a mansion in DC just before @POTUS's inauguration. While he was closing on it, Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump signed a deal to rent it. Then the billionaire got permission to plan a mine on environmentally delicate US land https://t.co/xpZCkKJTcp

— Emily Flitter (@FlitterOnFraud) June 25, 2019

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Our Next Election Is Dangerously Vulnerable, a Top Democrat Warns.

[Donald] Trump is set to meet with Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 this week, and one big question is whether Trump will warn the Russian leader against launching another attack on our political system.

We can guess the answer to that — he won't, because he stands to benefit. But that should renew attention to the steps we could be taking to fortify our elections against outside interference, but aren't, largely because Trump doesn't want us to, and because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is blocking many such efforts.

The causes for worry are mounting.

...Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, has played a lead role in studying the threat of more election interference.

...The Plum Line: What do you fear most in elections to come?

Wyden: As of today, the election interference of 2020 by hostile foreign powers — and I'm not just talking about the Russians — is going to make 2016 look like small potatoes.

Shiver.

Paul LeBlanc at CNN: Warren Introduces New Election Security Plan. "Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday released a new election security and voter fraud protection plan aimed to 'secure our elections from all threats, foreign and domestic.' 'Our elections should be as secure as Fort Knox,' the senator from Massachusetts wrote in a Medium post outlining the multi-pronged plan. 'But instead, they're less secure than your Amazon account.'"

A great and necessary idea — which chief Democracy Killer Mitch McConnell will ensure goes absolutely nowhere. Sob.

* * *

[CN: Sexual violence; rape apologia] Cristina Cabrera at TPM: Trump Denies Carroll Sexual Assault Accusation by Claiming 'She's Not My Type'. "Donald Trump denied writer E. Jean Carroll's allegation of sexual assault by stating that 'she's not my type' on Monday. 'I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened,' Trump told the Hill. 'It never happened, okay?'" JFC he is such a foul specimen. I hate him mightily.

[CN: Toxic masculinity; entitlement; gun violence; child abuse] Ben Kesslen at NBC News: California Man Shoots 10-Month-Old Girl in Head After Her Mother Rejects Him, Police Say. "A 10-month-old girl is recovering in Fresno, California, after being shot in the head by a man who made unwanted sexual advances toward her mother. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said Deziree Menagh, 18, brought her young daughter, Fayth Percy, to a social gathering Saturday night where Marcos Echartea, 23, made advances toward her. Echartea grabbed her hand, tried to pull Menagh into him, and told her to sit on his lap, police said. The two barely knew each other, having met for the first time a week earlier. Uncomfortable with Echartea's advances, Menagh left the party in a car with Fayth and a friend. ...Echartea fired three rounds into the driver's window, one hitting Fayth in the head."

[CN: War on agency] Erin Heger at Rewire.News: Texas GOP Outlaws Local Governments from Having 'Any Transaction' with Abortion Providers. "Senate Bill 22, signed into law this month by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), takes effect September 1. The legislation prohibits cities, counties, and local governments from conducting 'any transaction' with an abortion provider or its affiliates — including leases, sales, and donations of real estate, goods, and services. 'What these statewide leaders are saying is that local entities no longer have the capacity to steward their community resources in the way that they see fit,' Autumn Keiser, director of communications and marketing for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told Rewire.News."

If you don't see the through-line between all three of the above stories, I don't even know what to tell you.

* * *

[CN: Climate crisis; class warfare] Damian Carrington at the Guardian: 'Climate Apartheid': UN Expert Says Human Rights May Not Survive. "The world is increasingly at risk of 'climate apartheid,' where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law."

This speaks to my Ark Theory, in which oligarchs are using the climate crisis as their own modern-day "Noah's Ark" to escape the threat of overpopulation.

EXCLUSIVE: After Stephen Moore's failed Fed bid, he's creating a crypto central bank https://t.co/tL6AvLeMYt

"I’m really excited about doing this,” Moore said. “I hope it makes me rich.”

— Dan Primack (@danprimack) June 25, 2019

Douglas MacMillan at the Washington Post: Data Brokers Are Selling Your Secrets: How States Are Trying to Stop Them. "A state law passed last year required all businesses that trade data on Vermont's residents to register publicly and share some basic information about how they operate. ...The experiment in Vermont is being closely watched at a time when regulators across the country are trying to address growing concerns over online privacy. A California law set to take effect at the beginning of next year will allow the state's residents to opt out of having their data sold. Maine passed a law this month barring Internet service providers, including AT&T and Verizon, from selling broadband customers' information. State legislatures in New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts are all considering measures to give residents more control over data."

One wee fly in the ointment... Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Federal Agencies Left Private Data Open to Cyberattacks for a Decade, Says Senate Report. "Multiple federal agencies kept up an outdated security system over the past decade that left Americans' personal information vulnerable to theft, according to a damning new Senate report out Tuesday. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the failures came from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Education, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and the Social Security Administration." Terrific.

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

Open Wide...

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"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free..."

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

One of the (many) things that is absolutely enraging me about the public discourse around the obscene mistreatment of migrant children is that it utterly lacks this notion: We can afford to welcome every last one of those children and their families into this country.

We have the resources. We have the space. We have need for workers who are looking for stable work, if we can muster the political will for infrastructure and green jobs. The only reason to pretend we don't have these things is because it's politically expedient to exploit fear.

Please, if you talk about this subject today and I hope you will, make sure to include in that conversation the fact that the crisis is a lack of empathy and welcome. We do not lack the ability to integrate migrants and refugees. We lack the compassion.

We have to change this conversation. We cannot keep talking about it using the dishonest frames of the nativist wrecks who are driving policy. There is no need to detain children and/or their parents indefinitely. NONE. That is a fact.

* * *

In other news this morning...

A young Honduran boy was separated from his father at the border.

We represented him and he told us what it feels to be locked up in a cage.

This must stop.https://t.co/vF66DHS5HA

— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) June 25, 2019

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Graham Kates at CBS News: John Kelly Joins Board of Company Operating Largest Shelter for Unaccompanied Migrant Children. "Friday, Caliburn International confirmed to CBS News that Kelly had joined its board of directors. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates Homestead and three other shelters for unaccompanied migrant children in Texas. Prior to joining the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly had been on the board of advisors of DC Capital Partners, an investment firm that now owns Caliburn." These fucking ghouls.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Clara Long and Nicole Austin-Hillery at CNN: We Went to a Border Detention Center for Children; What We Saw Was Awful.

Based on our interviews, officials at the border seem to be making no effort to release children to caregivers — many have parents in the U.S. — rather than holding them for weeks in overcrowded cells at the border, incommunicado from their desperate loved ones. By holding and then transferring them down the line to ORR facilities, the government is turning children into pawns for immigration enforcement.

A second-grader we interviewed entered the room silently but burst into tears when we asked who she traveled with to the U.S. "My aunt," she said, with a keening cry. A bracelet on her wrist had the words "U.S. parent" and a phone number written in permanent marker. We called the number on the spot and found out that no one had informed her desperate parents where she was being held.

Alex Samuels at the Texas Tribune: People Want to Donate Diapers and Toys to Children at Border Patrol Facilities in Texas; They're Being Turned Away. "A slew of other sympathetic people, advocacy groups, and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have expressed a desire to lend a hand to the kids housed in the facilities. But after purchasing items like toys, soap, toothbrushes, diapers, and medicine — especially as news reports circulate of facilities having drinking water that tastes like bleach and sick children without enough clothing — they've been met with a common message: No donations are being accepted."

The Washington Post Editors: America Should Be Horrified by This. "Children wearing clothes filthy with snot and tears and food. Children locked in cells nearly all day long, sleeping on cold concrete floors. No windows. Always hungry. No toothbrushes, toothpaste, or soap. Children alone, even the littlest among them. These are the conditions in which hundreds of immigrant children are being held at Customs and Border Protection facilities along the U.S. border. Most pets get better treatment."

The New York Times Editors: There's No Excuse for Mistreating Children at the Border; Here's What to Do About It. "By his divisive, incoherent, and barbaric policies, Mr. Trump has only made agreeing on an approach to immigration in the United States far more difficult. He has done so by systematically creating a false narrative of immigrants as job-stealing criminals, by insisting that there is a crisis of illegal immigration where there is none, and, most maliciously, by dreaming up schemes to torment these people in the perverse notion that this would deter others from trying to reach the United States. The most appalling of these has been the separation of children from their parents and detaining them in conditions no child anywhere should suffer, and certainly not children in the care of the American government."

There are a number of action items at the link. RESIST.

Open Wide...

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Trump Regime to Move Migrant Children in a Bid to Avoid Accountability for Harming Them

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

After reports that detained migrant and refugee children are effectively being tortured in the concentration camps where they're being held, the Trump Regime has moved "more than 300 children out of Texas Border Patrol station" and relocated them "to a tent detention camp in the El Paso sector and will remain in the custody of Border Patrol."

As I noted on Twitter, "perilous conditions" exist in tent-style concentration camps, too. This is a lateral move, at best.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a piece about the tent city that the Trump Regime was building in El Paso, in which I noted:

It is appallingly indecent that the United States government would even consider housing children in "tent cities" in the heat of the El Paso summer, which averages 95 degrees in July. Children are "more susceptible to heat illness than adults for many reasons, including a greater surface area to body mass ratio, lower rate of sweating, and slower rate of acclimatization. The prevention of heat illness is based on recognizing and modifying risk factors," like, presumably, not housing children in concentration camps in the El Paso heat.

Or anywhere else.

In addition to urgent threat to detained children's wellbeing, there is this: The Trump administration has previously admitted they do not have an effective tracking system in place to facilitate reunification of detained migrant children and their families.

In May, Jacob Soboroff reported at NBC News: "'[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.' ...The shortage of data has also complicated efforts to find many other children, potentially thousands, separated prior to zero tolerance. The administration's lawyers have said in court filings that reunification could take years."

Moving kids en masse between shelters is only going to make reunifications even more difficult.

Further, I also want to note that the deaths we know about which have happened in various facilities are known mostly because the families raised hell. There will be even less accountability if families lose track of detained children and don't know whether they're even alive or dead.

One imagines that is partly the objective. Not only is the Trump Regime attempting to avoid accountability for the appalling conditions at facilities from which the children were moved, but is hoping to avoid accountability for future deaths, when families can't even locate their children.

Malice is the fucking agenda. That could not be any more clear.

Any and all legal measures must be undertaken immediately to stop Donald Trump and his sinister regime.

Open Wide...

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Trump Reverses Course on Immigrant Purge — to Blame Democrats for His Malice

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

After announcing a massive sweep of undocumented immigrants last Monday, scheduled to begin yesterday, Donald Trump reversed course at the last minute, tweeting: "At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!"

[CN: Video may autoplay] According to a CNN source, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump late Saturday asking him to call off the raids. They reportedly "spoke at 7:20 p.m. ET Friday night for about 12 minutes, according to the source." Now Trump is using Democrats' plaintive calls for decency to blame them for his malice.

The president is an extortionist and a terrorist. https://t.co/E79rUM5QWg

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 22, 2019

Trump is demanding that House Democrats put their stamp on the cruel immigration policies Trump wants, or he'll be forced to torture undocumented immigrant families. This is sick beyond measure.

Meanwhile, following Friday's report about the Trump Regime's horrific abuse of immigrant children in their concentration camps, there have been additional first-hand accounts published about the horrors taking place in these facilities:

Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker: Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children. "We drove around afterward, and we discovered that there was a giant warehouse that they had put on the site. And it appears that that one warehouse has allegedly increased their capacity by an additional five hundred kids. When we talked to Border Patrol agents later that week, they confirmed that is the alleged expansion, and when we talked to children, one of the children described as many as three hundred children being in that room, in that warehouse, basically, at one point when he first arrived. There were no windows."

William Brangham at PBS: A Firsthand Report of 'Inhumane Conditions' at a Migrant Children's Detention Facility.

Basically, what we saw are dirty children who are malnourished, who are being severely neglected. They are being kept in inhumane conditions. They are essentially being warehoused, as many as 300 children in a cell, with almost no adult supervision.

We have children caring for other young children. For example, we saw a little boy in diapers — or he had no diapers on. He should have had a diaper on. He was 2 years old. And when I was asked why he didn't have diapers on, I was told he didn't need it.

He immediately urinated. And he was in the care of another child. Children cannot take care of children, and yet that's how they are trying to run this facility. The children are hardly being fed anything nutritious, and they are being medically neglected.

We're seeing a flu outbreak, and we're also seeing a lice infestation. It is — we have children sleeping on the floor. It's the worst conditions I have ever witnessed in several years of doing these inspections.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Serena Marshall, Lana Zak, and Jennifer Metz at ABC News: Doctor Compares Conditions for Unaccompanied Children at Immigrant Holding Centers to 'Torture Facilities'. "'The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities,' the physician, Dolly Lucio Sevier, wrote in a medical declaration obtained exclusively by ABC News. ...She described conditions for [children] at the McAllen facility as including 'extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food.' All the children who were seen showed evidence of trauma, Lucio Sevier reported, and the teens spoke of having no access to hand washing during their entire time in custody. She compared it to being 'tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease.'"

Asked about these reports over the weekend, Mike Pence pretended like he cares (as if the Trump Regime doesn't have control over these conditions) and made sure to introduce the regime's new talking point blaming the Democrats: "If Democrats in Congress will simply step up...we can solve the crisis."

Reminder that when Mike Pence was governor of Indiana, he went to court in order to try to legally deny access to social services to Syrian refugees resettling in the state. Do not believe for one second that he's not fully supportive of Trump's vile nativist malice. https://t.co/biuevmi6HX

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 23, 2019

He is a despicable scoundrel. The Trump Regime could, at any time, reverse their vile nativist policy of separating and detaining families. They could certainly reverse their policies on climate change, which is driving much of the northward migration of refugees, and they could certainly reverse their decision to eliminate foreign aid for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, whence come many of the refugees fleeing violence and/or joblessness and/or hunger.

This is hardly the fault of Democrats. Mike Pence knows that. So does Donald Trump.

It wasn't the Democrats who established concentration camps in order to torture thousands of migrant and refugee children.

On that note, I will end by recommending this blunt and necessary editorial at the Salt Lake Tribune by their editorial board: Yes, We Do Have Concentration Camps.

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Resist.

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Migrant Children Being Kept in Appalling Conditions

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

The Trump Regime is abusing children. And with every new report we get about the conditions in which migrant children are being detained, it becomes more urgent that we raise relentless hell about the state-sanctioned torture of children being done under the auspices of "protecting" us.

The AP reports:

A legal team that recently interviewed over 60 children at a Border Patrol station in Texas says a traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation.

A team of attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns keeping watch over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the 2-year-old boy, he wasn't wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine. Children told lawyers that they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the facility in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

"In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity," said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. "Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change."

The Flores settlement stipulates that children can be held by Border Patrol for no more than 72 hours before being transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, but "many children interviewed by the lawyers said they were kept inside the facility near El Paso beyond 72 hours."

The Trump Regime justifies this violation of the law by saying that Border Patrol is overwhelmed, but they could simply stop separating and detaining families. Instead: "The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces withering criticism from Democrats that it's violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained."

Just yesterday, Dallas/Fort Worth reporter Jason Whitely reported: "Feds are opening a new camp in Texas for unaccompanied minors who are crossing the U.S./Mexico border. This one, just outside Carrizo Springs, Texas, will house more than 1,000 captured children."

Captured children.

The government cannot provide proper care to the children already in its custody, and they want to add 1,000 more. Because the neglect, the cruelty, the malice is the agenda. Harm is the objective.

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Resist.

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Today in Trump's Vile Nativist Agenda

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

The Trump Regime is explicitly abusing children, and justifying it by claiming it's a strategy to try to deter migrants and refugees.

A former ICE official spoke to Hamed Aleaziz at Buzzfeed about an upcoming purge, saying: "They have begun utilizing every apparatus available to them to target, separate, and terrify small children in order to claim a 'win' on immigration."

The operation will "target and remove undocumented immigrant families who have received final orders of removal in an attempt to deter future families from making the trek across the border."

Mark Morgan, who was picked to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement just weeks ago, did not reveal when an operation would occur or the scope of such an action. He maintained that the agency was still targeting its previous priorities, like removing those with criminal convictions, and that there was not a significant shift in operations.

In talking with reporters, however, Morgan focused on a group of 2,000 family units who recently arrived, were part of an expedited court process, ordered removed from the country, and given a notice earlier this year to work with ICE to leave voluntarily. Morgan said no undocumented immigrant was exempt from enforcement, including families.

"It's going to send a strong message to those individuals contemplating coming here illegally not to do so," he said. "Not only will we be enforcing the law, maintaining the integrity of the system, but we're also going to send a powerful message to individuals in the northern triangle countries: Do not come, do not risk it."

This, despite the fact that we know that people are traveling to the U.S. because they are in danger of violence and/or starvation, and at the same time that a U.N. report has found that there are currently 71 million refugees who "have been displaced worldwide by war, persecution, and other violence."

71 million.

That is "an increase of more than 2 million from a year earlier — and an overall total that would amount to the world's 20th most populous country."

It is a risk to stay. It is a risk to leave. There can be no effective "deterrence" when there are no good choices.

This is indefensible child abuse. Nothing more.

Open Wide...

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Trump Announces Massive Sweep of Undocumented Immigrants

[Content Note: Nativism; nativist language; stochastic terrorism.]

Yesterday, the State Department announced it was ending foreign aid for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador unless and until the countries take "concrete actions to reduce the number of [undocumented] migrants coming to the U.S. border."

Many of the people who arrive at the U.S. border from Guatemala, Hondorus, and El Salvador are asylum-seekers fleeing violence, starvation, and/or extreme poverty. Eliminating foreign aid will only increase the numbers of people who are obliged to leave in search of safety.

I cannot see this move as anything but an attempt by Donald Trump to worsen the refugee crisis so he can further justify his malice, as ever using migrants and refugees as the canaries in his authoritarian coalmine.

Also yesterday, Trump announced, on Twitter, a massive sweep of undocumented immigrants across the United States: "Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in. Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people......."

At the Washington Post, Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti report that the round-up is happening at the urging of Trump and his "senior immigration advisor" Stephen Miller:

Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the "rocket docket."

In April, acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted after they hesitated to go forward with the plan, expressing concerns about its preparation, effectiveness, and the risk of public outrage from images of migrant children being taken into custody or separated from their families.

Vitiello was replaced at ICE by former FBI and Border Patrol official Mark Morgan, who had impressed the president with statements on cable television in favor of harsh immigration enforcement measures.

In his first two weeks on the job at ICE, Morgan has said publicly that he plans to beef up interior enforcement and go after families with deportation orders, insisting that the rulings must be carried out to uphold the integrity of the country's legal system.

"Our next challenge is going to be interior enforcement," Morgan told reporters June 4 in Washington. "We will be going after individuals who have gone through due process and who have received final orders of deportation."

"That will include families," he said, adding that ICE agents will treat the parents and children they arrest "with compassion and humanity."

There is nothing compassionate nor humane about separating children from their parents, which causes lasting trauma to children. And there is a pervasive culture of dehumanization of immigrants among U.S. enforcers, which makes any promise of compassion or humanity a straight-up lie.

The sweep has the same inherent problem as Trump's plan to evict undocumented immigrants from public housing: There are countless families across the U.S. with mixed-immigration status. That is, the parents may be undocumented immigrants, while some or all of their children are U.S. citizens by virtue of having been born here:

The family arrest plan has been considered even more sensitive than a typical operation because children are involved, and Homeland Security officials retain significant concerns that families will be inadvertently separated by the operation, especially because parents in some households have deportation orders but their children — some of whom are U.S. citizens — might not. Should adults be arrested without their children because they are at school, day care, summer camp or a friend's house, it is possible parents could be deported while their children are left behind.

There are, of course, also no safeguards in place to ensure the rights of minor citizens are preserved.

(It's surely no coincidence that Trump announced this sickening removal plan the same week as the anniversary of DACA.)

ICE was reportedly stunned by Trump's public announcement, but they shouldn't be surprised. The announcement is firmly centered within Trump' ongoing campaign of stochastic terrorism. He was giving his rabidly nativist base a heads-up to invite their participation in the removal of people from the country.

Hate crimes against Latinx people has increased significantly since Trump was elected, with a 176% spike immediately following the election. His public announcement is a dogwhistle to his seething base that it's time to ramp up the harassment and hate crimes again, and he knows his most violent cultists don't care to make distinctions about someone's legal status before targeted them — which is why more Latinx people have reported being harassed and threatened just for speaking Spanish in public in the last several years, too.

The scope of the sweep — "millions" of people — is unfathomable. It's also impossible. ICE cannot remove "millions" of people from the population at once. But the exact number is hardly the point. Removing scores of people from their homes, all at once, all over the country, is sick. It will traumatize families, it will hurt communities, and it puts the U.S. in the company of nations whose purges of marginalized populations we once fought proudly to defeat.

Today, please share this information from RAICES, so that it is as widely available as possible:

Read more about your legal rights you have if ICE raid your work place in this helpful fact sheet @LegalAidAtWork put together: https://t.co/JZuRWsh7Oc

— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) June 18, 2019

And, if you are in the U.S., contact your representative and senators to let them know you strongly object to a nationwide purge of undocumented immigrants and urge them to support impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump immediately.

Other action items you can take:

1. Talk about this devilry to anyone who will listen. There's a lot of ignorance and indifference that those of us who care must urgently challenge.

2. Contact any local organizations who are providing social services and/or legal aid to undocumented immigrants. Ask them what they need.

3. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper and/or the closest big-city paper. A lot of folks still read those!

4. Support the work of individuals and/or advocacy organizations and/or news outlets who maintain focus on the crisis at the border in non-exploitative ways. That might mean financial support, or amplifying their work on social media, or volunteering your time (in the case of activist/legal orgs).

RESIST.

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We Resist: Day 876

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Doing? and Today in Trump's Vile Nativist Agenda and Primarily Speaking.

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

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

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 14, 2019

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

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

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

— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) June 13, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) June 13, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) June 14, 2019

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

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

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