Shakesville: police brutality

Showing posts with label police brutality. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 901

a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are in so much trouble.

* * *

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

[CN: Gun violence; death]

Almost all the people who carried out mass attacks in the United States last year made threatening or concerning communications beforehand, and more than three-quarters prompted concern from others, the Secret Service said in a report Tuesday.https://t.co/9m6E4J3vsv
— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

This was the second analysis by the Secret Service of mass attacks. Its report from a year ago found that most attacks in 2017 were motivated by workplace or domestic issues, and that more than three-fourths of them had made threatening or concerning communications.
— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

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

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

[CN: Police brutality]

The family of a 17-year-old girl shot and killed by a Southern California police officer are demanding answers about the deadly Friday night shooting. https://t.co/8HxC5eO2jv
— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 9, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

Awful.

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

Open Wide...

Police Had — and Concealed — Cell Phone Video Shot by Sandra Bland

[Content Note: Police brutality; misogynoir; alleged self-harm.]

In July 2015, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman from suburban Chicago, who had just relocated to Waller County, Texas, for a job she was about to start, was pulled over by a state trooper for improperly signaling a lane change. The official story of Waller County Sheriff's Department officials has always been that Bland then became "combative" with the trooper, who restrained her, arrested her for assault on a public servant, and took her into custody, where she was later found dead in her cell of a supposed suicide.

Bland's family has always maintained that she would not have killed herself, and the details provided by the sheriff's office do make it seem extremely unlikely. Further, once the police dashcam footage of the arrest was released, it did not show Bland being physically combative, and it had also clearly been edited.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Now, nearly four years later, after WFAA and the Investigative Network worked to get access to it, Bland's own cell phone footage of her arrest has been made public.

New cellphone footage from the now infamous traffic stop of Sandra Bland shows her perspective when a Texas state trooper points a Taser and yells, "I will light you up!"

Bland, 28, was found dead three days later in her Waller County jail cell near Houston. Her death was ruled a suicide.

The new video — released as part of a WFAA exclusive in partnership with the Investigative Network — fuels the Bland family's suspicions that Texas officials withheld evidence in her controversial arrest and, later, her death.

I wouldn't say that the video "fuels" their suspicions as much as it confirms them.

Until now, the trooper's dashcam footage was believed to be the only full recording of the July 2015 traffic stop, which ended in Bland's arrest. The trooper claimed he feared for his safety during the stop.

The 39-second cellphone video shot by Bland remained in the hands of investigators until the Investigative Network obtained the video once the criminal investigation closed.

Bland's family said they never saw the video before and now call for Texas officials to re-examine the criminal case against the trooper who arrested Bland, which sparked outrage across the country.

"Open up the case, period," said Bland's sister Shante Needham said when shown the video.

Yes. The case needs to be reopened. And a new case into why the video was concealed from the family must be opened, too.

It was possibly illegal to conceal the existence of the video, and it was definitely unethical to withhold from Bland's family the last recording she ever made.

They have my condolences, once again, for the ongoing trauma caused by the police who arrested Sandra Bland, whose life ended while in their custody, and have lied about it ever since.

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 782

Eighteen years after the original Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, was introduced, House Democrats formally unveiled their new-and-improved version Tuesday.

While previous iterations of the bill focused narrowly on providing a path to citizenship only for undocumented youth brought to the United States as children, the new version does this in addition to expanding it to include immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). With the inclusion of TPS and DED recipients, the DREAM Act has rebranded to the Dream and Promise Act of 2019, to reflect the government's longtime goal to make good on its promise of providing permanent solutions to legal immigrants who have been living at the whims of the federal government for decades.

Like the DREAM Acts that came before it, the Dream and Promise Act would grant undocumented immigrant youth — known as "Dreamers" — conditional permanent resident status for 10 years and cancel any removal proceedings so long as they: have been continuously physically present in the United States for four years preceding the date of the enactment of the bill, were 17 years or younger when they first arrived in United States, pass a background check, have a clean criminal record, and graduate from high school or an academic equivalent.

...The bones of the DREAM Act have largely remained the same since 2001, when the bill was first introduced in the House by former Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) and in the Senate by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT). What makes the Dream and Promise Act different, however, is that it for the first time includes protections for TPS and DED holders.

There's an unprecedented level of urgency with this version of the DREAM Act because the Trump administration has pulled the legal rug out from under thousands of immigrant families.

I know I'm the brokenest of broken records, but I'll say once more: Regardless of the chances of this legislation becoming law during the Trump administration, this is worth doing, because it's the right and necessary thing to do.

Donald Trump may reject this legislation, because of his vile nativist agenda, but that very agenda is what obligates the attempt.

Speaking of which...

Travis Gettys at Raw Story: Trump Administration 'Very Seriously' Considering Plan to Designate Some Mexicans as Terrorists. "The president told Breitbart News that his administration was 'very seriously' considering a policy change that would label Mexican drug cartels or some of their factions as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. 'We are, we are,' Trump told the website. 'We're thinking about doing it very seriously. In fact, we've been thinking about it for a long time.' The president appeared to admit the change was intended to gin up fear of Mexican immigrants to justify his proposed border wall and other controversial anti-immigration policies. 'It's psychological, but it's also economic,' Trump said. 'As terrorists — as terrorist organizations, the answer is yes. They are.' Trump then cited an inflated statistic to justify his fear-mongering about gang violence across the border."

Absolutely chilling.

Fabiola Sanchez and Scott Smith at the AP: U.S. Pulling Last Diplomats from Venezuela Amid Power Crisis.

The U.S. said late Monday that it is pulling its last remaining diplomats from Venezuela, saying their continued presence at the country's embassy in Caracas had become a "constraint" on U.S. policy as the Trump administration aggressively looks to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

The announcement came from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a tweet shortly before midnight comes as Venezuela struggles to restore electricity following four days of blackouts around the country.

...Pompeo said the remaining diplomats would be out of Venezuela by the end of the week but gave no indication of future policy steps despite past warnings that "all options" — including the use of military force — are on the table for removing Maduro.

Fucking hell. Unless I'm somehow misreading this, it sounds like the Secretary of State is ordering the removal of diplomats because they are trying to stop the administration from taking extreme measures, including the possibility of military force, in pursuit of regime change. That blows my mind. The Trump Regime is truly out of fucking control.

To wit:

This is absolute filth. https://t.co/s47P7CDvTT
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 11, 2019

Meanwhile...

William Booth and Karla Adam at the Washington Post: Ahead of Crucial Brexit Vote, Key Lawmakers Won't Support Theresa May's Plan. "Prime Minister Theresa May presented a Brexit deal with some new add-on language to a skeptical Parliament for a landmark vote on Tuesday. But the British leader faced strong headwinds, as crucial blocs of lawmakers signaled they will not support her withdrawal agreement. Before May rose to speak, Britain's attorney general told lawmakers that May's hard-fought changes might not go far enough — an assessment that increased the odds that her Brexit deal will fail again and that the nation won't depart on schedule on March 29."

Ridiculous! Russia sends note to Ukraine of a list of violations and accuses Ukraine of targeting Russian speakers. Russia always uses the excuse of protecting Russians as means to conduct their incursions and attacks. Russia is the one in violations https://t.co/7LvprmHzmm
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) March 12, 2019

Nicholas Nehamas and Lily Dobrovolskaya at the Miami Herald: Wanted in Russia, He Partied at Mar-a-Lago — and Invested in Cheap South Florida Homes.

Last year, [Donald] Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club hosted a black-tie 'Safari Night' fundraiser for a favorite charity of one of his older sisters. The event included Chinese dancers, a silent art auction, and one unusual guest: Sergey Danilochkin, a Russian real estate investor who had settled in South Florida after authorities in his home country accused him of taking part in a massive tax fraud linked to the most contentious corruption case of the 21st century.

Party-goers had no idea they were rubbing shoulders with a wanted man. While the guests sipped cocktails and studied photos of African wildlife, Danilochkin, who is also an aspiring journalist, filmed the bustling ballroom on a smartphone and posted the footage on YouTube. Holding a flute of champagne and wearing a dark suit, the Russian émigré addressed the camera in his native tongue, alluding to the uncanny way Russians seem to turn up in the president’s orbit.

"The most interesting thing," Danilochkin said, "is that we met a lot of people here who speak Russian."

* * *

[Content Note: White supremacy] Madeline Peltz at MediaMatters: Unearthed Audio Shows Tucker Carlson Using White Nationalist Rhetoric and Making Racist Remarks. I'm sure we're all shocked that a toxic chauvinist is also a white supremacist.

[CN: Abduction; sexual assault] Melanie Eversley at the Grio: Ohio Police Officer Indicted for Sexually Assaulting Women. "Andrew Mitchell, 55, a 31-year-veteran of the police force in Ohio's state capital, is charged with holding two women against their will and demanding sexual favors in exchange for their freedom, the Columbus Dispatch reported. Mitchell is charged with three counts of deprivation of rights while using his police authority — with two of those counts involving one woman — two counts of witness tampering, and one count each of obstruction of justice, as well as making false statements, the Dispatch reports."

Ryan Mac at BuzzFeed: Facebook Removed Elizabeth Warren's Ads Calling for Its Breakup; Then It Put Them Back Up. "Facebook briefly removed and then restored four ads on Monday from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which advocated for the breaking up big technology companies, for violating its terms of service. On Monday, the social networking company confirmed that it had removed the ads, all of which featured a video with a thumbnail image incorporating Facebook's logo. 'We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo,' a Facebook spokesperson said. 'In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads.'" Shady.

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 749

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: The 2020 Election Is Going to Be So Ugly and The Trump Regime Beats the Drums on Venezuela. And ICYMI late yesterday: Virginia Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General Must All Resign.

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

Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: Paul Erickson, Russian Agent Maria Butina's Boyfriend, Indicted for Fraud. "Paul Erickson, the American political operative and boyfriend of admitted Russian agent Maria Butina, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in South Dakota on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. The U.S. attorney for the district of South Dakota is handling the prosecution, which is separate from the case that was lodged against Butina in Washington, D.C. Erickson, 56, was arrested on Tuesday and entered a plea of not guilty at an arraignment, according to the court filings." The charges stem from various schemes in which Erickson engaged to defraud elderly and disabled people.

[Content Note: Nativism; border militarization; video may autoplay at link] Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee at NBC News: Pentagon Moving 250 Active-Duty Troops to Eagle Pass, Texas, Citing Migrant Caravan. "The Pentagon is moving 250 active duty troops to the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, in advance of the arrival of a new caravan of migrants, according to a statement Wednesday by Defense Department spokesperson Capt. Bill Speaks. The move reflects [Donald] Trump's mention of a 'human wall,' but comes amid increasing frustration among Pentagon leaders with the continued border requests from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Under the new directive, the troops will be moved from Arizona to Texas and — in a sign of the Pentagon's frustrations — will not represent an increase in the overall number of U.S. troops assigned to the border mission." Yikes.

Joshua Eaton at ThinkProgress: Trump Forges Ahead with Plans for North Korea Summit, Defying His Security Advisers. "Donald Trump announced plans for a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as experts — including his own military and security advisers — warned that the upcoming meeting is likely to yield as few tangible results as the first one. ...'Kim Jong-un has to be extremely pleased that he's been able to get legitimacy on an international front, and has done virtually nothing to change his behavior within his own country,' Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN on Wednesday. 'It is baffling, again, as to what the president expects to achieve by a second summit.'" Regional destabilization and the ability to keep making absurd claims like how he averted war with North Korea, which he said in his SOTU and his dipshit cultists actually believe.

[CN: Sexual violence] Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald: Justice Department Opens Probe into Jeffrey Epstein Plea Deal. "The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta's role in negotiating a controversial plea deal with a wealthy New York investor accused of molesting more than 100 underage girls in Palm Beach. The probe is in response to a request by Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was critical of the case following a series of stories in the Miami Herald. The Herald articles detailed how Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, and other DOJ attorneys worked hand-in-hand with defense lawyers to cut a lenient plea deal with multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2008."

[CN: Guns] Josh Lederman at NBC News: New Trump Rules Make It Easier for U.S. Gun Makers to Sell Overseas. "Semi-automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and even some grenades will become easier for U.S. weapons manufacturers to export overseas under new rules being put in place by the Trump administration and obtained by NBC News. Under the new rules, set to take effect in just under a month, gun makers will no longer need licenses from the State Department to sell dozens of types of weapons to other countries, including the popular AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle that's been employed in many of America's worst mass shootings. Instead, sellers will need only a no-fee license from the Commerce Department, which has a less onerous licensing process and a smaller global footprint, making it harder to track how the weapons are ultimately used overseas."

[CN: Worker exploitation] Casey Quinlan at ThinkProgress: Trump's Administration Considers Rule That Would Make It Easier for Businesses to Exploit Workers. "Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which the Labor Department administers and enforces, there is an economic realities test that asks how dependent someone is on the employer in question. The more dependent the person is, the more likely that person is an employee and not an independent contractor. In January, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the transportation service SuperShuttle was correct to call its airport van drivers contractors instead of employees. The NLRB said it was considered entrepreneurial opportunity since workers set their own schedules and have their own work vans. [Paul Secunda, professor of law at Marquette University] said the ruling was a 'radical departure' from the common law definition of employee that has been used under the NLRA for decades."

[CN: Authoritarianism]

Wow, this bill is EVEN WORSE than I thought. "Harassment is defined as someone who files three or more public records request in a year" and deemed to be abusive by the government agency. So, like, every reporter in the state at one point or another. https://t.co/ScJpOaY4gm
— Cari Wade Gervin (@carigervin) February 7, 2019

So, presumably, they're giving this authoritarian shit a tryout in Tennessee to force a SCOTUS ruling, in the hopes of getting it through on the federal level. JFC.

[CN: Predatory lending] Ken Sweet at the AP/Star Tribune: Financial Watchdog to Gut Most of Its Payday Lending Rules. "The nation's federal financial watchdog said Wednesday that it plans to abolish most of its critical consumer protections governing payday lenders. The move is a major win for the payday lending industry, which argued the government's regulations could kill off a large chunk of its business. It's also a big loss for consumer groups, who say payday lenders exploit the poor and disadvantaged with loans that have annual interest rates as much as 400 percent."

[CN: Descriptions of self-harm at link; institutional neglect of disabled people] Emily Wax-Thibodeaux at the Washington Post: The Parking Lot Suicides.

A federal investigation into Miller's death found that the Minneapolis VA made multiple errors: Not scheduling a follow-up appointment, failing to communicate with his family about the treatment plan, and inadequately assessing his access to firearms. Several days after his death, Miller's parents received a package from the Department of Veterans Affairs — bottles of antidepressants and sleep aids prescribed to Miller.

His death is among 19 suicides that occurred on VA campuses from October 2017 to November 2018, seven of them in parking lots, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. While studies show that every suicide is highly complex — influenced by genetics, financial uncertainty, relationship loss, and other factors — mental-health experts worry that veterans taking their lives on VA property has become a desperate form of protest against a system that some veterans feel hasn't helped them.

...Sixty-two percent of veterans, or 9 million people, depend on VA's vast hospital system, but accessing it can require navigating a frustrating bureaucracy. Veterans sometimes must prove that their injuries are connected to their service, which can require a lot of paperwork and appeals.

Veterans who take their own lives on VA grounds often intend to send a message, said Eric Caine, director of the Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention at the University of Rochester.

"These suicides are sentinel events," Caine said. "It's very important for the VA to recognize that the place of a suicide can have great meaning. There is a real moral imperative and invitation here to take a close inspection of the quality of services at the facility level."

[CN: Anti-choicery; abortion stigma] T.S. Mendola at Rewire.News: When Your President Calls You a Murderer. "It's a hell of a thing to hear your president call you a murderer. That's not quite the whole picture, though, of what [Donald] Trump did to later abortion patients during the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. ...It wasn't an accident that his plea for the control — the security — of the nation's wombs got shoved up next to the legacy of the military-industrial complex. We are mere ciphers of mothers, of women, of humans to be secured in the fight for an 'America First' jingoism that has members of Congress chanting 'USA! USA! USA!' like deluded fascist schoolboys, stars in their eyes."

[CN: Police brutality; white supremacy] Shani Saxon at Colorlines: Protests Erupt After the Alabama Cop Who Fatally Shot Emantic Bradford Jr. Isn't Charged.

An unidentified police office in Hoover, Alabama, won't face charges in the shooting death of a 21-year-old Black man, according to a report released by State Attorney General Steve Marshall on Tuesday (February 5).

"The Hoover police officer who shot and killed Emantic 'E.J.' Bradford Jr. at the Riverchase Galleria mall on November 22, 2018, did not commit a crime under Alabama law and thus will not be criminally charged for his actions," the document reads.

As Colorlines previously reported, the incident started when two men began fighting inside Birmingham's Riverchase Galleria Mall last year on Thanksgiving night (November 22). One man shot the other twice, which caused chaos as shoppers ran for their lives. During the melee, an off-duty officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. According to his family, Bradford stood outside the mall and pulled out his gun in an attempt to protect frightened customers when he was killed.

The attorney general's report says the officer "identified E.J. Bradford as an immediate deadly threat to innocent civilians and thus shot Bradford to eliminate the threat." It also states the officer "reasonably exercised his official powers, duties, or functions when he shot E. J. Bradford."

That conclusion did not sit well with protestors who burned two American flags outside Hoover City Hall, NBC news reports. According to the outlet, the words "BLACK LIVES DON'T MATTER" were spray painted in the flags.

[CN: Racism; nativism]

What a cool lie to encourage people to harass interracial families. https://t.co/w5q6Sgz64A
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 7, 2019

Lena H. Sun and Maureen O'Hagan at the Washington Post: 'It Will Take Off Like a Wildfire': The Unique Dangers of the Washington State Measles Outbreak. "Almost a quarter of kids in Clark County, Wash., a suburb of Portland, Ore., go to school without measles, mumps, and rubella immunizations, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) recently declared a state of emergency amid concern that things could rapidly spin out of control. Measles outbreaks have sprung up in nine other states this winter, but officials are particularly alarmed about the one in Clark County because of its potential to go very big, very quickly. ...'You know what keeps me up at night?' said Clark County Public Health Director Alan Melnick. 'Measles is exquisitely contagious. If you have an under-vaccinated population, and you introduce a measles case into that population, it will take off like a wildfire.' To date, at least 55 people in Washington and neighboring Oregon have gotten sick with the virus, with new cases tallied almost daily. All but five are in Clark County."

Leticia Miranda and Ryan Mac at BuzzFeed: Amazon Recorded Video of a Seller's Face for Identification Purposes. "An Amazon seller based in Vietnam told BuzzFeed News that he was prompted to take a five-second video of his face using his computer's webcam in January as he signed up for a seller profile. Amazon seller consultants told BuzzFeed News they believe the company may be testing video to verify seller identities to prevent the creation of multiple seller profiles, a major issue for Amazon and its ongoing battle with fake sellers and counterfeit goods. ...Reached for comment by BuzzFeed News, Amazon disputed neither the authenticity of the facial verification process it required of the seller, nor the screenshot. The company, however, refused to explain its collection of sellers' faces. 'Amazon is always innovating to improve the seller experience,' a company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in response to a detailed list of questions."

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 734

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is exhausting.

* * *

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

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

Huh.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We Resist: Day 690

Reports that 4 Russian Air Forces Il-76MDs from Taganrog have transported Russian airborne troops from Anapa into Dzhankoi in Crimea. This combined w all the other military movements, Russian media propaganda of an imminent attack by Ukraine, and social media op is a big red flag https://t.co/yjFdazVpkV
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) December 10, 2018

Relatedly, I linked to this piece earlier, but I'll drop it here, too, with more detail. Daniel Boffey at the Guardian: Russia 'Paved Way for Ukraine Ship Seizures with Fake News Drive'.

The Kremlin launched a year-long disinformation campaign to soften up public opinion before its recent seizure of three Ukrainian ships and their crews in the Sea of Azov, the EU's security commissioner has alleged.

Julian King said Russia had paved the way for its decision to fire on and board two artillery ships and a tug boat through the dissemination of fake news.

...King said the European commission's East StratCom unit, responsible for highlighting disinformation, had discovered a complicated web of untruths emanating from Russian sources.

"If you thought that incident came out of nowhere, you would be wrong," King told an audience in Brussels. "The disinformation campaign began much earlier, more than a year ago, when Russian media started pushing claims that the authorities in Kiev were dredging the seabed in the Sea of Azov in preparation for a Nato fleet to take up residence."

"Then in the summer there were claims that Ukraine had infected the sea with cholera," King added. "This was followed up in September with dark mutterings in the Russia media forecasting 'west-inspired provocations' on the Azov Sea shore, and reporting that the U.S. has been 'planning for clashes between Ukrainian and Russian naval forces in the Black Sea since the 1990s.'"

...King said none of the claims spread ahead of the seizure were true. The allegations over the U.S. plan to spark clashes was "based on a video game a former Russian soldier claims to have seen 15 years ago," he said.

The commissioner, who was previously the British ambassador to France, went on: "But then the conspiracy theories were ratcheted up a notch — Russian media reported that British and Ukrainian secret services had been trying to transport a nuclear bomb to the newly built bridge to occupied Crimea in order to blow it up, but had been bravely prevented from doing so by special forces sent by Moscow. More bang for your fake news buck, I suppose."

Shiver. Everything is decidedly not fine.

Kevin Poulsen at the Daily Beast: Cambridge Analytica's Real Role in Trump's Dark Facebook Campaign. "Public statements and insider accounts have painted a muddled and contradictory picture on the key question of whether Trump's Facebook campaign targeted voters using Cambridge's vast store of dubiously acquired data, once described by the company as containing 4,000 data points on some 230 million Americans. Now a New York digital-marketing consultant has unearthed a trove of digital artifacts from Trump's social-media campaign that provides the first hard evidence that Team Trump made continuous use of audience lists created by Cambridge Analytica to target a portion of its 'dark ads' on Facebook."

Josh Gerstein at Politico: Manafort Gets Wednesday Court Date to Discuss Lying Allegations. "A federal judge in Washington has set a hearing for Wednesday on prosecutors' request to have former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort declared in breach of his plea agreement for repeatedly lying to special counsel Robert Mueller's office and the FBI. In an order Monday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked both sides in the case to appear before her for a scheduling conference at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Jackson also lifted a Wednesday deadline that Manafort's attorneys faced to rebut a submission from Mueller's team last week detailing a variety of incidences prosecutors contend Manafort lied in the wake of his September agreement to plead guilty to charges of unregistered foreign lobbying and money laundering."

* * *

Robert Barnes at the Washington Post: Supreme Court Declines to Review Rulings That Blocked Efforts to End Planned Parenthood Funding. "The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review lower court decisions that blocked efforts in two states to cut off public funding for Planned Parenthood, refusing for now to get involved in state battles over abortion rights. ...The issue has to do with whether individual Medicaid recipients who receive services from providers such as Planned Parenthood have a right to challenge a state's decision to cut off funding to the providers. Five regional courts of appeal have said they do, while one has said they do not. That is the kind of split that normally prompts the Supreme Court to act."

It's good news for now, but it probably doesn't signal anything about the Court's position in the long-term. In fact, I agree with Ian Millhiser's analysis at ThinkProgress: "It's common for the Court to shy away from politically fraught cases while its membership is in flux, but its membership has been settled since early October. Nevertheless, the Court, in this instance, has shied away from cases involving Planned Parenthood. It's very doubtful that this equilibrium will last — Kavanaugh's been very clear that he intends to kill Roe v. Wade. But the Court's decision to not hear Andersen and Gee gives credence to the theory that Roberts and Kavanaugh want to give the nation some time to forget about how Kavanaugh got his current job before they declare outright war on reproductive choice."

And, in the meantime, the routine battles on agency and science continue apace. Amy Goldstein and Lenny Bernstein at the Washington Post: Trump Administration Halts Study That Would Use Fetal Tissue 'to Discover a Cure for HIV'. "The Trump administration has shut down at least one government-run study that uses fetal tissue implanted into mice even before federal health officials reach a decision on whether to continue such research, which is opposed by anti-abortion groups. A senior scientist at a National Institutes of Health laboratory in Montana told colleagues that the Health and Human Services Department 'has directed me to discontinue procuring fetal tissue' from a firm that is the only available source, according to an email he sent to a collaborator in late September. 'This effectively stops all of our research to discover a cure for HIV,' the researcher wrote."

Fucking hell.

* * *

This fucking guy. https://t.co/Nl7F8Ssop4
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) December 10, 2018

Griffin Connolly at Roll Call: Rep. Mark Meadows on Trump's Short List for Chief of Staff. "Donald Trump and his top advisers are considering whether to make Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, his next chief of staff. ...White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have been rumored as candidates for the job, other news outlets have reported." Gross.

Philip Bump at the Washington Post: The Evidence Undermining Trump's Attempt to Defend the Stormy Daniels Payment. "For these payments to have violated campaign finance laws, they needed to have been related to the campaign. If they were, that they were made using non-regulated money (meaning money that wasn't donated to the campaign) and that they weren't reported by the campaign as expenditures are violations of federal law. Trump's argument, in short, is that these payments weren't related to the campaign. Instead, they were 'a simple private transaction.' When we first spoke with former FEC general counsel Lawrence Noble about the legal implications of the Daniels payment in February, he pointed out that, if Trump regularly had Cohen pay women to keep their silence, it would bolster (but not disprove) the argument that this payment wasn't related to Trump's candidacy. Since then, though, we've learned a lot of information that makes the possibility that the payments had nothing to do with the campaign seem highly unlikely."

Also we have brains and understand the basics of how politics works in the United States, so.

* * *

[Content Note: Child abuse; police brutality] Ellie Hall at BuzzFeed: NYPD Officers Are Shown Ripping a Child from His Mother's Arms at a Food Stamp Center in an "Appalling" Video. "A video posted to Facebook on Friday shows New York Police Department officers attempting to rip a child from his mother's arms at a Brooklyn social services office, prompting calls for an investigation. ...It is unclear what happened before the video starts. The woman who uploaded the footage — which has been viewed more than 200,000 times as of Monday morning — wrote that the young mother was waiting to be seen at the Fort Greene Food Stamp Center on Friday and seated herself and her child on the floor because there were no available chairs. She alleged that a security guard told the mother to move and called the police when she refused, citing the lack of chairs."

[CN: Homophobia; violence] Staff at Towleroad: Homophobic NYC Subway Attack Leaves Woman with Fractured Spine. "A homophobic attack on a Manhattan-bound E subway train has left a 20-year-old woman with a fractured spine, according to the New York Police Department. ABC7 reports: 'Police say a man got into an argument with a 20-year-old woman. During the argument, police say the man used a homophobic slur. As the woman walked away, the man approached from behind, punched her in the back of the head, and shoved her to the ground, causing her to strike her head. The attacker ran off.'" According to a report in the New York Daily News, the argument began because "the man became incensed after he saw another woman peck the victim on the cheek."

[CN: Nativism; video may autoplay at link] Cristina Lopez G. at the Huffington Post: Fox News Talked More About Migrant 'Invasion' Just Before Election Than in Past 3 Years Total. "Ahead of his party's shellacking in the 2018 midterm elections, [Donald] Trump spent weeks warning his supporters that a caravan of Central American migrants headed for the U.S border constituted an 'invasion.' Trump's favorite television channel was his most important ally in that effort. Prime-time Fox News programs used the words 'invasion' or 'invaders' to describe migrants and asylum-seekers more times in the 30 days leading up to the Nov. 6 election than they did during all of 2015, 2016, and 2017 combined."

[CN: Class warfare] Venessa Wong at BuzzFeed: People Are Living with an Incredible Amount of Debt from Student Loans and Credit Cards. "This year, as health care costs shot up, the housing affordability crisis worsened, and a million other garbage things happened, Americans' personal finances have also suffered. A new report from the personal finance website NerdWallet shows that many U.S. households have sunk deeper into debt in 2018 because rising basic costs have led them to accrue more credit card debt and to delay payments on their already massive student loans. ...The researchers estimated that among households that have any kind of debt, they on average owed $135,768. The average mortgage holder owed $184,417 for their home; households with student debt on average owed $47,671; and the average household with an auto loan owed $28,033 for their car. We owe a lot of money."

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

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We Resist: Day 676

A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked a Mississippi Republican law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks' pregnancy, declaring the measure "unequivocally" unconstitutional.

...U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves took lawmakers to task for the law in a strongly worded opinion that said the ban was obviously unconstitutional but that Mississippi lawmakers enacted it anyway.

"The Court's frustration, in part, is that other states have already unsuccessfully litigated the same sort of ban that is before this Court and the State is aware that this type of litigation costs the taxpayers a tremendous amount of money," Reeves wrote. "No, the real reason we are here is simple. The State chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade."

"This Court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature," Reeves wrote.

Reeves dismissed the GOP-held Mississippi legislature's claims that the measure was designed to protect "women's health" as "pure gaslighting."

Reeves noted that there is a "sad irony" to the fact that men, who face no risk of pregnancy, are dictating the reproductive rights of others.

"The fact that men, myself included, are determining how women may choose to manage their reproductive health is a sad irony not lost on the Court," Reeves wrote. "As Sarah Weddington argued to the nine men on the Supreme Court in 1971 when representing 'Jane Roe,' 'a pregnancy to a woman is perhaps one of the most determinative aspects of her life.' As a man, who cannot get pregnant or seek an abortion, I can only imagine the anxiety and turmoil a woman might experience when she decides whether to terminate her pregnancy through an abortion."

"Respecting her autonomy demands that this statute be enjoined," he continued.

Right on! Jessica also notes that Reeves' decision means "a nearly identical 15-week ban passed by Republican lawmakers in Louisiana will not go into effect. That law's effective date depended on the outcome of the lawsuit challenging Mississippi's 15-week ban." GOOD.

* * *

[Content Note: Climate change. Covers entire section.]

Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney at the Washington Post: Major Trump Administration Climate Report Says Damage Is 'Intensifying Across the Country'.

The federal government on Friday released a long-awaited report with an unmistakable message: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes, and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening.

The report's authors, who represent numerous federal agencies, say they are more certain than ever that climate change poses a severe threat to Americans' health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country's infrastructure and natural resources. And while it avoids policy recommendations, the report's sense of urgency and alarm stands in stark contrast to the lack of any apparent plan from [Donald] Trump to tackle the problems, which, according to the government he runs, are increasingly dire.

The congressionally mandated document — the first of its kind issued during the Trump administration — details how climate-fueled disasters and other types of worrisome changes are becoming more commonplace throughout the country and how much worse they could become in the absence of efforts to combat global warming.

...The authors argue that global warming "is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us." And they conclude that humans must act aggressively to adapt to current impacts and mitigate future catastrophes "to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades."

"The impacts we've seen the last 15 years have continued to get stronger, and that will only continue," said Gary Yohe, a professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the report. "We have wasted 15 years of response time. If we waste another five years of response time, the story gets worse."

I have observed many times before that the Bush v. Gore might have been the deadliest Supreme Court decision of all time, and this is precisely why. Of course it isn't certain that we wouldn't have wasted 15 years (and even more) of response time had the decision not halted the recount in Florida and Gore had been allowed to win the election via the completed recount. But it is far more likely, inestimably more likely, that we would be on a completely different course than we are now had our president been the man who has dedicated his life, before and since, to climate change.

Joe Romm at ThinkProgress: White House Admits Trump Climate Policies Will Cost Americans $500 Billion a Year. "The congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) by hundreds of the country's top scientists warns that a do-nothing climate policy will end up costing Americans more than a half-trillion dollars per year in increased sickness and death, coastal property damages, loss of worker productivity, and other damages. Building on a 600-page analysis of climate science from 2017, the NCA details just how dangerous Trump administration's policy of climate inaction is to Americans. ...The White House oversaw the report's review and clearance process — and tried to bury the findings by releasing it at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving."

Maddie Stone at Earther: The Trump Administration's Attempt to Bury a New Climate Report on Black Friday Totally Backfired. "No doubt, dropping the second volume of the fourth National Climate Assessment — a nearly 2,000 page report that includes contributions from 13 federal agencies — on Black Friday takes the 'Friday news dump' cliché to new heights. [But by] releasing the report on a very slow news day, the White House might have inadvertently made it easier for publications to [prominently] feature its dire conclusions. ...E&E News climate reporter Scott Waldman told Earther : 'Like any other reporter, I pay closer attention to any document the government doesn't want me to see. My colleagues and I will probably look at it more closely.'" Do that.

* * *

"But six months before people were sickened by the contaminated romaine, President Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years." https://t.co/qHsWdPTGXz
— WIRED (@WIRED) November 25, 2018

[CN: Drones] Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast: Trump Ramped Up Drone Strikes in America's Shadow Wars. "In 2009 and 2010, Obama launched 186 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia, and especially Pakistan. Donald Trump's drone strikes during his own first two years on the three pivotal undeclared battlefields, however, eclipse Obama's — but without a corresponding reputation for robot-delivered bloodshed, or even anyone taking much notice. In 2017 and 2018 to date, Trump has launched 238 drone strikes there, according to data provided to The Daily Beast by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the drone-watchers at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London."

[CN: Terrorism] Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy, and Andrew Ba Tran at the Washington Post: In the United States, Right-Wing Violence Is on the Rise. "Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism. While the data show a decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups, violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama's presidency — and has surged since [Donald] Trump took office. This year has been especially deadly." That's in no small part because the president is running an aggressive campaign of stochastic terrorism.

[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Favors Hardline Anti-Abortion Policies. "A review by the Guardian of previously unreported remarks revealed Whitaker has advocated for hardline anti-abortion policies that would drastically reshape laws affecting American women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. Whitaker, a conservative Christian, endorsed 'personhood' bills that would effectively outlaw abortion, and said as a Senate candidate that he would spend every day in Washington pushing anti-abortion policy. He also once said that as a federal prosecutor, he personally disagreed with having to use a clinic protection law against a man who crashed his car into a women's health facility and tried to set it on fire while complaining about abortion."

Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: Trump's Personal Aide Karem Is Said to Intend to Resign Post. "Donald Trump is losing his personal aide, Jordan Karem, who plans to resign after less than a year on the job, according to people familiar with the matter. Karem serves as Trump's so-called 'bodyman,' an aide who accompanies the president on travel and looks after his personal needs. He's also a Trump confidant, familiar with his moods and thinking. The president relies on him for advice and to relay messages between Trump's advisers inside and outside the White House, the people said. Karem is often the first aide Trump sees in the morning and the last to see him at night. He joined the Trump campaign in July 2015 as an advance staffer before becoming press director for then-vice presidential candidate Mike Pence. He became Trump's personal aide in March."

(That's not so much a resistance item as it is something of note. I'm not sure what it means, but I don't think it's insignificant.)

* * *

[CN: Misogyny; sexual harassment]

Gillibrand isn't my top choice for 2020, but this is a phenomenally sexist headline, blaming a woman for the fact that Franken groped eight women.

She wasn't even the only one who said he should resign, FFS. Schumer told him to resign at the same time. https://t.co/Ggaf4YEBPg
— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 26, 2018

Related Reading: Gee, This Seems Familiar. See in particular "Step Four."

* * *

[CN: Racism; death; gun violence; police brutality] Miranda Fulmore at NPR: Family Demands Video Release After Alabama Mall Shooting Death.

The family of Emantic "E.J." Bradford Jr., who died Thanksgiving night after he was shot by a police officer working security at an Alabama mall, is calling on the Hoover Police Department to release the mall video, witness videos, and body camera footage of Bradford's death.

Initially, officials said Bradford was engaged in a fight with an 18-year-old at the Riverchase Galleria Mall in Hoover, Ala. when he pulled out a gun and shot the teen. A 12-year-old bystander also was wounded that night. That night, police and city officials hailed the quick response as "heroic."

But officials later retracted the statement saying it was "highly unlikely" that Bradford fired the shots that injured two people.

In a statement early Monday, city and police officials said they can "say with certainty Mr. Bradford brandished a gun during the seconds following the gunshots, which instantly heightened the sense of threat to approaching police officers responding to the chaotic scene." Body camera and other available video was turned over to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department as part of the investigation, and the evidence is now with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

...Bradford's family spoke at a press conference Sunday, accompanied by their attorney, Ben Crump.

Crump says several witnesses have come forward since shooting to say the police officer who killed Bradford didn't give any verbal commands to Bradford before shooting him in the face.

Officials also say the shooter could still be at large. Crump says they offered Bradford no medical assistance after the shooting.

#EJBradford was everything the Right claims to valorize: a soldier, a devoted family man, a “good guy” with a legal gun, likely attempting to use it to stop a mass shooter.

Cops shot and killed him on sight.

If you guessed that he was black, you’re paying attention. https://t.co/qNo9cTdwh0
— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) November 25, 2018

If you're thinking, "Didn't this just happen to someone else?" the answer is yes, and his name was Jemel Roberson.

* * *

And finally: Bernie Sanders continues to make the case for anyone who has ever observed that he's far too brittle (among other negative characteristics) to be an effective president. Gabriel Debenedetti at NYMag: Inside Bernie Sanders's Head.

For a 77-year-old man fixated on the popularity of his ideas and his candidacy — "Harry, have you seen my crowds?" he once asked then-Senator Harry Reid by way of a greeting in the heat of the 2016 campaign — Sanders sometimes finds opportunities like these to enjoy his newfound influence in the Democratic Party. But mostly, he is ill at ease. He talks in private much as he does in front of a microphone, except with a lot more sarcasm. He continues to get angry at Establishment liberals, whose dismissals of how he sees the world he takes personally and judges personally. (He believes their positions and motivations can rarely be disentangled from their funding.) His frustration with the press has only grown. "You mean inside-the-Beltway writers may have missed the point here?" he says to me recently, eyebrows up, when we sit down to talk.

And he still thinks he should be president. He doesn't say this out loud, exactly. "I'm not one of those sons of multimillionaires whose parents told them they were going to become president of the United States," he says. "I don't wake up in the morning with any burning desire that I have to be president." Still, he's pretty certain he's already the country's second-most-important politician, and the logic for running in 2020 is obvious to him: His ideas are the best for the country, a majority of Americans will agree once they're exposed to them, no other national politician has proved to be as uncompromised or effective a messenger of his platform as he is, and no one else seems better positioned to actually win. "If there's somebody else who appears who can, for whatever reason, do a better job than me, I'll work my ass off to elect him or her," he says. But "if it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run." He's been mulling the question all year as he bounds across the country. A longtime friend of Sanders's characterizes his position as, "At this point, what does he have to lose?"

Never mind, of course, what we all might have to lose if Sanders pulls the same shit this time that he did last time around.

There is a lot at the link, but let me just address this single point, evident in the two paragraphs excerpted above: Bernie Sanders will always hate the Democrats for being a party that recognizes we don't live in a homogenous country with broad agreement on what should constitute our social contract. He insists on believing, like all the other left-wing dipshits who spout the same nonsense, that Americans are all in basic agreement on the role of the federal government; it's just that people voting for Republicans haven't encountered their great ideas.

That is simply incorrect. Wildly so.

And Sanders' refusal to get outside that bubble of intransigent belief makes him unfit to lead the nation. He doesn't understand the first goddamn thing about the nation he ostensibly wants to lead, which is that we are fundamentally not a nation of leftists and future leftists, but a nation with profound ideological differences that are further exacerbated by extreme religious differences, violent bigotries, regional idiosyncrasies, and a political system that is unjust as it is entrenched.

Sanders hasn't spent enough time outside Vermont, off of stages in front of adoring fans. He doesn't know this country. And his stubborn refusal to admit he doesn't have all the answers means he never will.

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

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We Resist: Day 663

The Camp Fire in northern California has killed 42 people, making it the deadliest in state history, authorities said.

The blaze is also the most destructive the state has ever seen, incinerating the town of Paradise and displacing more than 50,000 people as other blazes continued to rage farther south.

A total of 7,177 buildings have been destroyed, Cal Fire said. The fire grew to 183 sq miles Monday, and containment was up to 30%.

Two people have also died in the Woolsey Fire, a major blaze around Los Angeles.

On Monday officials said the Woolsey Fire had burned 91,572 acres and was 20% contained. "We are working all day and all night to increase and reinforce that containment," said the Los Angeles county fire chief, Daryl Osby. The fire had destroyed 370 structures, with 57,000 still at risk, Osby said.

My god. Some suggestions on ways to help can be found here.

Meanwhile, the president is spending his time dumping embarrassing tweetshitz, as usual. Zack Ford at ThinkProgress: Trump Mocks France for Being Invaded by the Nazis. "Trump unleashed a new round of Twitter rage Tuesday morning, this time aimed at French President Emmanuel Macron, whom he visited in Paris over Veterans' Day weekend. In one tweet, the president appears to mock France for having been invaded by Nazi Germany some 80 years ago. 'Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia,' he wrote. 'But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two — How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for NATO or not!'" JFC.

* * *

In good resistance news...

Pete Williams at NBC News: State of Maryland Asks Judge to Declare Rosenstein Acting Attorney General. "The state of Maryland plans to ask a federal judge on Tuesday for an order declaring that Rod Rosenstein is the acting attorney general — not Matt Whitaker, who was appointed to that position last week after the forced resignation of Jeff Sessions. ...Maryland's attorney general, Brian Frosh, a Democrat, argues in court documents to be filed Tuesday that if Trump had the kind of authority the White House claims, he could fire the attorney general 'then appoint a carefully selected senior employee who he was confident would terminate or otherwise severely limit the investigation.' Maryland argues that Whitaker's selection by Trump violated federal law and exceeded the appointment authority in the Constitution." Right on!

As you may recall, Jeff Sessions found himself at the blunt end of Trump's ire ever since he recused himself from the Russia investigation. So Trump is sure to be thrilled about this! Nicole Lafond at TPM: Whitaker Talking with Ethics Officials About Possible Recusal from Mueller Probe. "Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is currently in conversation with ethics officials within the Justice Department about his possible recusal from oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, DOJ officials said Monday night, according to Politico. ...Top Democrats have called on Whitaker to recuse himself from overseeing the probe, citing Whitaker's past comments disparaging Mueller and the investigation." That would be hilarious if it weren't signaling the end of the U.S. democracy.

And in other legal challenges to Trump's authoritarianism...

"CNN has filed a lawsuit against [Donald] Trump & several of his aides, seeking the immediate restoration of Jim Acosta's access to the White House. ...The suit alleges that Acosta and CNN's First and Fifth Amendment rights are being violated by the ban." https://t.co/6nS280y3NE
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 13, 2018

Good. I hope they prevail (she says, internally rage-thrashing about Trump's stacking the courts care of Mitch McConnell's unethical fuckery and grieving what a short window there is before no decent person will ever prevail in the courts against Republicans for at least a generation, if not forever).

* * *

[CN: Nativism; gun violence] Yeganeh Torbati at Reuters: Fewer Foreign Students Coming to United States for Second Year in Row. "The number of international students entering U.S. colleges and universities has fallen for the second year in a row, a nonprofit group said on Tuesday, amid efforts by the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on foreigners studying in the United States. ...Several factors are driving the decrease. Visa and immigration policy changes by the Trump administration have deterred some international students from enrolling, college administrators and immigration analysts said. ...[H]eadlines about mass shootings also may have deterred some students, said Allan Goodman, president of IIE. 'Everything matters from safety, to cost, to perhaps perceptions of visa policy,' Goodman said."

[CN: Nativism; video may autoplay at link] Elise Foley at the Huffington Post: Trump Asylum Ban Will Extend to Thousands of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors. "A controversial Trump administration policy suspending asylum for immigrants who cross the border illegally will also apply to kids and teenagers traveling to the United States without their parents, contradicting last week's comment by a high-level Trump official that it 'does not apply' to unaccompanied minors. 'This suspension does not apply to any unaccompanied alien children as defined in the [Immigration and Nationality Act],' a senior administration official told reporters Friday on a briefing call, which was jointly hosted by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. (To participate in the briefing, reporters had to agree to quote the officials without using their names.) DHS issued a press release, titled 'DHS Myth vs. Fact,' on Friday that stated the rule 'does not limit the rights of unaccompanied alien minors.' But unaccompanied minors are, in fact, affected by the policy change."

Not only are the Trump Regime a bunch of fucking liars, but they consistently try to justify their nationalist agenda by claiming to be protecting us from violent criminals and terrorists. The next time you hear that line of stinking horseshit, think of this...

[CN: Terrorism] Carol Rosenberg at McClatchy: Trump Closed an Office That Tracked Ex-Gitmo Inmates; Now We Don't Know Where Some Went. "The Trump administration closed a diplomatic office designed to keep track of released Guantánamo inmates and make sure they didn't return to their insurgencies. And now the U.S. government has lost track of several of them, including one who has returned to a terrorist-held part of Syria, a McClatchy investigation has found. ...An aide at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who was allowed to brief McClatchy on condition of anonymity, called Syria 'the worst place for an angry [former detainee] to turn up.'"

* * *

[CN: Police brutality; racism; death; gun violence] Mark Guarino, Alex Horton, and Michael Brice-Saddler at the Washington Post: 'They Basically Saw a Black Man with a Gun': Police Kill Armed Guard While Responding to Call.

It began in a way gun advocates have suggested would curtail violence. A gun comes out. Shots are fired. A "good guy with a gun" steps in to help before police can respond.

The tidy theoretical doesn't account for the chaotic unknowns when police arrive and can't tell a "good guy" with a gun from a "bad guy" with a gun.

The theory turned to grim reality at Manny's Blue Room Bar in Robbins, Ill., outside Chicago early Sunday.

Police shot and killed the good guy. Jemel Roberson, 26, was working security.

"Everybody was screaming out, 'He was a security guard,' and they basically saw a black man with a gun and killed him," witness Adam Harris told WGN.

The tidy theoretical doesn't account for the chaotic unknowns. Yeah. "Chaotic unknowns" like deadly racism.

[CN: Death] Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and David D. Kirkpatrick at the New York Times: 'Tell Your Boss': Recording Is Seen to Link Saudi Crown Prince More Strongly to Khashoggi Killing. "Shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated last month, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to 'tell your boss,' believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, that the operatives had carried out their mission... The recording, shared last month with the CIA director, Gina Haspel, is seen by intelligence officials as some of the strongest evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi... While the prince was not mentioned by name, American intelligence officials believe 'your boss' was a reference to Prince Mohammed." Goddammit.

[CN: Misogyny] Lindsay Gibbs at ThinkProgress: Their College Told Them Running in Sports Bras Was 'Distracting' — Here's How They Fought Back.

A couple of weeks ago, members of the Women's Cross Country team at Rowan University were running grueling 5:30 mile repeats on the track, when the coach of the football team approached their coach and told them that they needed to cover up.

You see, some of the women on the team were practicing in sports bras, and apparently, that was distracting to the football players.

This did not sit well with the runners at all. On the ensuing Friday, there was a closed-door meeting at the Athletics Department to discuss the matter. The cross-country runners stood silently outside, as a way to show support for their coach, speaking on their behalf.

The Athletics Department's verdict just heaped further insult on the team.

Not only would the women not be allowed to practice solely in sports bras anymore, they were going to have to move their practices to the high-school track across the street so that their presence wouldn't upset the delicate balance of football practice, which takes place on the football field inside the track.

...Gina Capone, a junior who ran on the Cross Country team in 2017 and remains close with the current crop of runners, knew she had to do something. ...So last Thursday, after securing the permission of her former teammates — including sophomore Brianna De la Cruz and senior Hannah Vendetta — Capone penned a fiery article on The Odyssey, a self-publishing platform targeted at college students.

...In just four days, Capone's article has nearly 200,000 views, and the story has been covered everywhere from the New York Times to Sports Illustrated. It has been, in one word, 'overwhelming.'

It's also been effective, at least partially.

With everything else women have to deal with at this particular moment, I can't even fucking deal with the fact that women are having to deal with this retrofuck misogyny, too! FUCKING HELL. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, MEN. JESUS JONES.

* * *

And finally, I will end by saying (not for the first time and probably not the last) that I ♥ Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Nicole Lafond at TPM: Cummings Asks Colleagues, Incoming Dems to Ignore Anti-Pelosi Factions. "Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and an influential Democrat in the House, sent a letter to colleagues and the incoming class of House Democrats on Monday, urging them to keep House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in leadership and ignore the faction of members whispering about her ouster. 'For two years, (a small group of House Democrats) asserted that with Nancy Pelosi as our leader, Democrats could never win back the House,' he wrote... 'They claimed that these relentless Republican attacks made Leader Pelosi appear too divisive and they argued that she should step aside for the good of the party. But then last Tuesday happened. And the American people obliterated the theory that Nancy Pelosi could not lead House Democrats to victory.'" YES!!!

Cummings is a man who knows how to effectively resist. Damn!

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

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