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 A Fourth Migrant Child Dies in U.S. Custody — and a Fifth.
Here are some more things in the news today...
Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: Iran Hits Back at Trump for Tweeting 'Genocidal Taunts'.
The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has hit back at Donald Trump's "genocidal taunts" after a strongly worded warning from Trump that Tehran should not think of attacking the U.S.I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm feeling incredibly angry, and I'm feeling scared, and I'm feeling bitter about the fact that I warned over and over during the 2016 campaign that Donald Trump would be a dangerous, warmongering president, and I, along with everyone else who gravely made those warnings, was sneered at as a hyperbolic hysteric, but here we are, and now everyone behaves as though we were somehow all in agreement that Trump would do this if he were elected. But we weren't. And there were lots of leftists and members of the media who, along with Republicans, ridiculed and silenced and harassed the people who were sending up the red flags and downplayed Trump's authoritarian malice, which helped him get elected.
"Goaded by #B_Team," Zarif wrote on Twitter, in an apparent reference to Trump advisers such as John Bolton, "@realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis, & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone. #EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won't 'end Iran.'"
He added: "#NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect — it works!"
On Sunday Trump warned Iran not to threaten the U.S. or else it would face its "official end," shortly after a rocket landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad overnight.
David Enrich at the New York Times: Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts.
Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.Oh.
The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump's now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.
But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees' advice. The reports were never filed with the government.
I mean, the Treasury Department has been compromised all the way back to 2016, so there's no guarantee that anything would have happened even if the suspicious activity had been reported, as it should have been, but now we'll never know.
Jasper Jolly at the Guardian: Trump Reacts Angrily to New York Times Report on Deutsche Bank Transaction. "On Monday, Trump tweeted: 'The new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn't need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don't need banks, but if I did they would be there.' Trump also called the Times reporting 'phony' and called Deutsche Bank 'very good and highly professional.'" OMG. This would be hilarious if it weren't so goddamned tragic.
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[Content Note: War on agency] Brie Shea and Imani Gandy at Rewire.News: Everything You Need to Know About the Extreme Abortion Bans Sweeping the Country. "Conservatives have had their sights set on undermining — if not outright overturning — Roe v. Wade from the moment the U.S. Supreme Court issued the decision 46 years ago. And now, states are clamoring to pass unconstitutional pre-viability abortion bans in the hopes that the Court's conservative majority will revisit Roe and kill it. Here at Team Legal, we wanted to provide an overview of where these unconstitutional bans are being enacted, what penalties they carry, and anything else you might need to know about them."
[CN: War on agency] Rachana Pradhan and Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico: How Mike Pence's 'Indiana Mafia' Took Over Health Care Policy. "Pence has developed his own sphere of influence in an agency lower on Trump's radar: Health and Human Services. It's also the agency with the ability to fulfill the policy goal most closely associated with Pence over his nearly 20 year career in electoral politics: de-funding Planned Parenthood. Numerous top leaders of the department — including Secretary Alex Azar, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and Medicaid/Medicare chief Seema Verma — have ties to Pence and Indiana. Other senior officials include Pence's former legislative director from his days as governor and former domestic policy adviser at the White House. 'He has clearly recruited people connected to him who share his very extreme views on sexual and reproductive health care,' said Emily Stewart, the vice president of public policy at Planned Parenthood."
The fact that a Pence vice-presidency under a president who wanted his veep to focus on policy would have horrific consequences for marginalized people was something about which I and many others warned, too.
[CN: Sexual violence; misogyny] Deanna Paul at the Washington Post: Sailors Ranked Female Crew and the Sex Acts They Wanted to Perform with Them, Navy Report Says. "Sailors aboard a U.S. Navy submarine circulated sexually explicit lists that ranked female crew members, an investigation found. The lists, first reported Friday by Military.com, were uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request. The 74-page investigative report reveals two lists — one with Yelplike star ratings on the women and another containing 'lewd and sexist comments' beside each woman's name."
Among other urgent warnings during the last presidential election, see also: Electing a confessed serial sex abuser as president and commander-in-chief will normalize sexual violence across the country, including in the military.
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[CN: Nativism; violence] Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Border Patrol Agent Reportedly Called Migrants 'Subhuman' Before Hitting a Migrant Man with His Truck. "A Border Patrol agent accused of hitting a migrant with his truck called migrants 'subhuman' and 'mindless murdering savages,' federal prosecutors said. ...According to court documents, [in December 2017, Border Patrol Agent Matthew Bowen, 39] spotted a man, later identified as 23-year-old Antolin Lopez Aguilar, who appeared to have jumped a border fence near the Mariposa Port of Entry. As Lopez Aguilar ran away, Bowen 'accelerated aggressively' and struck him twice in the back with the front grille of his truck, said another Border Patrol agent on the scene. Lopez Aguilar fell to the ground, the truck tires landing mere inches from his face."
Lisa Friedman at the New York Times: EPA Plans to Get Thousands of Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math. "The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the future health risks of air pollution, a shift that would predict thousands of fewer deaths and would help justify the planned rollback of a key climate change measure, according to five people with knowledge of the agency's plans. ...The new modeling method, which experts said has never been peer-reviewed and is not scientifically sound, would most likely be used by the Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules."
Angelica LaVito at CNBC: Measles Cases Climb to 880 in U.S., with Most New Cases in New York. "Health officials confirmed another 41 measles cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, bringing the total to 880 for 2019, already the worst year for the disease since 1994. ...Thirty of the 41 new cases were reported in New York, where health officials have battled two large outbreaks since the fall. ...Health officials blame the recent surge of cases — after saying in 2000 that the disease had been eliminated from the U.S. — on an increasing number of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children."
And finally, about that Trump tax cut... Camila Flamiano Domonoske at NPR: Ford Slashes 10% of Its Global Salaried Workforce. "Ford is eliminating about 7,000 white-collar jobs — or about 10% of its salaried workforce — as part of a previously announced company-wide global restructuring. About 800 U.S. workers will lose their jobs between now and August. Some workers are being laid off, while others are being reassigned, Ford says. It says the company's management team is shrinking by close to 20% as part of the restructuring, which will save Ford about $600 million a year."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
