Showing posts with label scotus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scotus. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 903

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, July 11, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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: Trump's Massive Purge of Undocumented Immigrants Is Back On and Primarily Speaking.

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

Staff and agencies at the Guardian: New Orleans: Evacuations Ordered as City Braces for Possible Hurricane.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered south-east of New Orleans, Louisiana, on Thursday as the city and a surrounding stretch of the Gulf coast braced for a possible hurricane over the weekend that could unload heavy rain and send water spilling over levees, in the first big test for flood defenses since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The strength and speed of the wind increased on Thursday and by mid-morning was upgraded to become tropical storm Barry.

All eyes were on a weather disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that dumped as much as 8in (20cm) in just three hours on Wednesday over parts of metro New Orleans, triggering flash flooding.

Coastal communities are braced for Barry to turn into the first hurricane of the season by Friday, coming ashore along the Louisiana-Mississippi-Texas coastline and pouring more water into the already swollen Mississippi River.

Forecasters said the biggest danger in the days to come is not destructive winds but heavy rain as the slow-moving storm makes its way up the Mississippi valley.
This is the worst fucking timeline. I am horrified that NOLA residents may have to revisit one of their city's worst nightmares. I'm thinking about you, NOLA. Stay safe.

* * *

[Content Note: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

Allan Smith and Hallie Jackson at NBC News: Trump Expected to Order Citizenship Question Added to the Census. "Donald Trump is expected to announce Thursday that he is taking executive action to add a citizenship question to the census, according to an administration official. Trump tweeted that he will hold a press conference in the afternoon to discuss his latest efforts at including the question as part of the census."

Just to be clear: The president is reportedly going to announce that he will ignore a Supreme Court ruling to take unilateral executive action. That is a grievous affront to our democracy. He is asserting his power as a dictator at that point.


Max Siegelbaum at the Guardian: Millions in U.S. Taxpayers' Money Invested in Private Prison Firms. "Millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being invested into private prison operators involved in the detention of thousands of migrants across the United States, an investigation shows. Some of the largest investments, which are by pension funds for public sector workers such as teachers and firefighters, come from states with 'sanctuary' policies, such as New York, California, and Oregon." Goddammit.

Barbie Latza Nadeau at the Daily Beast: Acting Border Boss Who Quit Says He Was 'Hit Hard' by Migrant Boy's Death. "Speaking to CNN, [John Sanders, who quit his role as acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner after just one month] did not directly criticize the Trump administration's approach to immigration, but he said that the threat of raids of sanctuary cities coupled with the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez troubled him. He said Vasquez's death pushed him towards taking further action to prevent another similar tragedy, such as bolstering medical assistance at the border. 'It hit me hard, that he was in the cell sleeping,' Sanders told CNN. 'Helping the kids. That has forever changed me. And I think a lot more needs to be done for them.'"

If more agents share his feelings, and I sure hope they do, they can: 1. Resist inhumane orders. 2. STAND DOWN. 3. Don't carry out these raids.

Yes, they may lose their jobs. But at what cost do they keep them?

* * *

[CN: Misogynoir; birtherism. Video may autoplay at link] Oliver Darcy at CNN: Trump Invites Right-Wing Extremists to White House 'Social Media Summit'. "Trump is calling it a 'social media summit,' but the White House did not extend invites to representatives from Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the White House has invited its political allies to the event. ...Among them are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who has promoted the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter; Carpe Donktum, an anonymous troll who won a contest put on by the fringe media organization InfoWars for an anti-media meme; and Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris by saying she is not an 'American black' following the first Democratic presidential debates. Other eyebrow raising attendees include James O'Keefe..." JFC.


Jordan Wilkie at the Guardian: 'A Risk to Democracy': North Carolina Law May Be Violating Secrecy of the Ballot.
North Carolina may be violating state and federal constitutional protections for the secret ballot in the US by tracing some of its citizens' votes.

The situation has arisen because North Carolina has a state law that demands absentee voting — which includes early, in-person voting as well as postal voting — is required to use ballots that can be traced back to the voter.

The laws are in place as a means of guaranteeing that if citizens cast multiple ballots during early voting or that if ineligible residents — like non-citizens or people who have not completed sentences for criminal offenses — cast ballots, those votes can be retrieved and removed.

Likewise, if a voter casts an early ballot then dies before election day, that ballot can then be discounted.

But voting rights advocates think the North Carolina law breaks one of the most sacred tenets of the democratic system: preserving the secrecy of the ballot.
If voters aren't ensured privacy, they may not vote. Which, of course, is the entire point. Because Republicans are a bunch of Democracy Killers.

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

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Barr Says Trump Can Ignore Supreme Court; Add Citizenship Question to Census

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, July 08, 2019
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Of course.

See, when there's no one empowered to hold the president accountable who is willing to do it, what happens is that the president turns the Justice Department into a rubber stamp for his authoritarianism.

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Trump Will Suspend the Election If He's Allowed to Get Away with This

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, June 27, 2019
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Earlier this afternoon, in response to the Supreme Court's ruling that the Trump Regime was not allowed to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, Donald Trump tweeted:

Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020. I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the.....

.....United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!
As I noted on Twitter: This is almost certainly a test ahead of the 2020 election. If Trump is allowed to "delay" or suspend the census without consequence, there is nothing that will stop him from "delaying" or suspending the election, which he already constantly suggests is being "rigged."

Also note the through-line: Trump has repeatedly rooted his claims of "election rigging" in false assertions of widespread voter fraud committed by undocumented immigrants; he threatens to delay the census because he can't determine if undocumented immigrants are participating.

He launched his political career with a nativist birther campaign against President Obama; he announced his first candidacy by descending on an escalator and disgorging nativist rhetoric; and he continues to consolidate power and subvert democracy via vile nativist malice.

Trump is a big eugenics aficionado; an avowed white supremacist; and a nativist fascist.

He is angling, demonstrably, to be a dictator, and he is exploiting racist hatred to achieve that objective.

He cannot be allowed to delay the census.

Impeach him now.

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Supreme Court Rules on Census, Gerrymandering, and Consent Cases

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, June 27, 2019
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First, the big one for which we were all waiting with baited breath: Whether the Trump Regime would be allowed to add a nativist question to the 2020 census, which could "allow for electorate boundaries throughout America to be redrawn, almost certainly favouring the Republican party" and "result in billions of dollars in federal funds being withheld from some of the most vulnerable communities in America."

The court ruled that they cannot add the citizenship question — but only because their reason for doing it was garbage.


Problem is, I'm not certain at all that wasn't just direction on how to come back with an argument that the Supreme Court would find acceptable.

As SCOTUSblog notes: "For now, the question is out. It is unclear if there is enough time left to add it back in."

So, unfortunately, we may not have seen the end of this fuckery yet.

* * *

Next up: The gerrymandered maps case.

The court ruled that "partisan-gerrymandering challenges to electoral maps are political questions that are not reviewable in federal court, dismissing challenges by Democratic voters to North Carolina congressional map drawn by Republican officials and by Republican voters to 1 district drawn by Democrats in Maryland."

Since when are "political questions" not reviewable in federal court?

Their definition of "politics" is certainly interesting if it doesn't include electoral maps but does include healthcare access, reproductive rights, and same-sex marriage. Cough.

Also, I'm old enough to remember when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act six years ago, so.

Cripes.

* * *

And finally: The "assumed consent" case.

The court ruled that "state law assuming driver's consent to blood test for drugs/alcohol, even when driver is unconscious, provides exception to 4th Amendment's warrant requirement, allowing law enforcement to draw blood from unconscious drivers without warrant."

YIKES.

I understand that it's a real fucker to not be able to prove inebriation in the case of driving under the influence when the driver is out for the count, but "the requirement to get consent is inconvenient" isn't a good precedent for ruling that consent is therefore unnecessary.

That is, quite obviously, a gateway to eroding legal protections of consent in many other areas.

Fuck.

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We Resist: Day 882

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, June 20, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Today in Trump's Vile Nativist Agenda and Iran Shoots Down U.S. Drone and Primarily Speaking and Good News (Hopefully) for Impeachment Supporters.

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

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.] Helen Christophi at Courthouse News Service: Feds Tell 9th Circuit: Detained Kids 'Safe and Sanitary' without Soap.
The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in "safe and sanitary" facilities.

All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.

"You're really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn't a question of 'safe and sanitary conditions?'" U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department's Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government's interpretation of the settlement agreement.

"Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you've got an aluminum foil blanket?" Fletcher asked Fabian. "I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary."
The panel has yet to issue its ruling, but it doesn't look good for the Trump Regime. (Thankfully.) Which, of course, is why Mitch McConnell is stacking the courts with unqualified hacks that will affirm their malice as quickly as he can.

On Twitter, former director of the Office of Government Ethics Walt Schaub notes: "The government attorney, Sarah Fabian, who doesn't think [that] children need soap or toothbrushes, is the same attorney who refused to work over a weekend to address the crisis: 'I have dog-sitting responsibilities that require me to go back to Colorado but I will be back Monday.'"

This is an entire administration of sociopathic wrecks.

[CN: Nativism] At the intersection of the Trump Regime's nativism and trade warring... Neha Dasgupta and Aditya Kalra at Reuters: U.S. Tells India It Is Mulling Caps on H-1B Visas to Deter Data Rules. "The United States has told India it is considering caps on H-1B work visas for nations that force foreign companies to store data locally, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, widening the two countries' row over tariffs and trade. The plan to restrict the popular H-1B visa program, under which skilled foreign workers are brought to the United States each year, comes days ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to New Delhi. India, which has upset companies such as Mastercard and irked the U.S. government with stringent new rules on data storage, is the largest recipient of these temporary visas, most of them to workers at big Indian technology firms."

[CN: Nativism; child abuse; homophobia; Christian Supremacy] Scott Bixby at the Daily Beast: Lesbian Couple Barred from Fostering Migrant Kids. "Bryn Esplin and Fatma Marouf knew early into their marriage that they wanted a family. But when early attempts with in vitro fertilization were unsuccessful, the couple started exploring serving as foster parents, opening their home to child refugees held in increasingly draconian conditions by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ...When they approached a local child-welfare organization contracted by the federal government to help find homes for some of the thousands of migrant and refugee children in the department's care, however, Esplin and Marouf were told that they didn't qualify — not because they couldn't provide a loving home for a child fleeing oppression abroad, but because, as a same-sex couple, their lifestyle doesn't 'mirror the Holy Family.'" (In good news, they sued and won.)

[CN: War on agency] Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico: Appeals Court Says Trump Family Planning Restrictions Can Take Effect. "A federal appeals court this morning said the Trump administration's family planning rules can take effect nationwide while several lawsuits play out, delivering a major blow to Planned Parenthood and states challenging the overhaul. ...A panel of three judges, all appointed by previous Republican presidents, said the administration will likely prevail in the legal battle over the Title X family planning program since the Supreme Court held up similar Reagan-era rules almost 30 years ago, though they were reversed by the Clinton administration."

Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: Justice Alito Just Wrote the Most Terrifying Sentence to Appear in a Supreme Court Opinion in Years. "[T]he fifth vote to maintain SORNA's basic structure came from Justice Samuel Alito. His opinion concurring in the result is just three paragraphs long, and it contains this portentous sentence: 'If a majority of this Court were willing to reconsider the approach we have taken for the past 84 years, I would support that effort.' ...Congress' power to delegate regulatory authority to agencies is a backbone of American law. ...Had Congress known that the Supreme Court would pull this rug out from under it, it may have written some of these laws differently. ...But Congress acted on the assumption that the Supreme Court would not someday be held by nihilist revolutionaries."

[CN: Christian Supremacy] Robert Barnes at the Washington Post: Supreme Court Rules That Maryland 'Peace Cross' Honoring Military Dead May Remain on Public Land. "The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a 40-foot cross erected as a tribute to war dead may continue to stand on public land in Maryland, rejecting arguments that it was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. ...Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the main opinion and said history and tradition must be taken into account when judging modern objections to monuments on public land. 'The cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent,' Alito wrote." WHUT.

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer: Did Russian Hackers Make 2016 NC Voters Disappear? Why Won't We Stop This for 2020?
In the end, we'll never know how folks went home and didn't vote in North Carolina, a key swing state that Trump won by 173,000 votes — and that's neither the only mystery about what happened in Durham, nor the biggest. Just days before the 2016 voting, Greenhalgh and other activists had heard the first reports that Russian operatives had tried to hack into an election technology company called VR Systems. She wondered that day if VR Systems was Durham's vendor.

It was.

Incredibly, it is just now — 32 long months after North Carolina's Election Day snafus — that officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have finally launched a serious probe into the possibility that Russian hackers crashed the computers or altered data that caused those crushing lines. DHS investigators are launching a forensic analysis of those laptops that crashed in Durham County — an effort that North Carolina officials had requested a year and a half ago.

Even more incredible: We might never have gotten here were it not for the actions of a heroic whistleblower — Reality Winner, who leaked federal intelligence about the VR Systems hack when most key state officials knew nothing about it, and who has been prosecuted, imprisoned, and held incommunicado by the Justice Department for her efforts — and the diligence of special counsel Robert Mueller, who confirmed a successful malware plant by Russian agents.

Now here's the most incredible part: U.S. election systems could be every bit as vulnerable to outside monkey business in the 2020 presidential election, because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP lawmakers are refusing to vote on critical election security bills that would provide federal dollars and support to local election systems to upgrade cybersecurity, as well as requiring paper ballots and audits that would ensure the integrity of the vote.
Republicans are democracy killers. And the entire party, in failing to prevent foreign interference in future elections, is colluding with any foreign interlopers who decide to interfere.


Josh Kovensky at TPM: FBI Conducting Criminal Probe of Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Lapses. "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an active criminal probe into whether Deutsche Bank broke anti-money laundering laws, the New York Times reports. Agents have reportedly tried to establish contact with a former Deutsche Bank compliance employee who sounded the alarm about transactions made by Kushner Companies, the family business of [Donald] Trump's son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Those transactions purportedly involved money that was sent to Russian entities. The bank reportedly did not file suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department, as would have been required by law."

Miranda Bryant at the Guardian: Ivanka Trump's 2020 Tweet Violated Hatch Act, Watchdog Says. "Ivanka Trump has been accused of violating the Hatch Act, which bans government workers from speaking out on political campaign issues, over a tweet she wrote before her father's 2020 presidential campaign launch. The influential Washington-based watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint against Donald Trump's daughter, a senior presidential aide who works in the White House as an adviser, albeit unsalaried." It would be great if this mattered. It won't.

* * *

Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: U.S May Have to Spend over $400 Billion on Seawalls by 2040 to Protect Itself from Rising Seas. "A new report has predicted that the U.S. will have to spend $416bn on seawalls in the next 20 years in order to protect itself from rising seas. The report comes from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI.) Florida is likely to face the highest bill of $76bn by 2040, according to the research, followed by Louisiana which has a projected bill of $38bn, then North Carolina which stands to pay $35bn. 'I don't think anybody's thought about the magnitude of this one small portion of overall adaptation costs and it's a huge number,' said Richard Wiles, executive director of the CCI. 'So the question is: Who's going to pay for that? Is it really going to be taxpayers? The current position of climate polluters is that they should pay nothing, and that's just not tenable.'" Build those walls.

[CN: Water insecurity; video may autoplay at link] Jessie Yeung and Swati Gupta at CNN: India Is Running Out of Water. "Millions of people are running out of usable water in the southern Indian city of Chennai, which is currently experiencing major droughts and a rapidly worsening water crisis. At least 550 people were arrested Wednesday in the city of Coimbatore for protesting with empty water containers in front of the municipal government's headquarters, accusing officials of negligence and mismanagement. Meanwhile, four reservoirs that supply Chennai, the state capital and India's sixth largest city, have run nearly dry."

Maram Ahmed at the World Economic Forum: How Climate Change Exacerbates the Refugee Crisis — and What Can Be Done About It. "Climate-induced displacement is on the rise. Last year, climate-related factors resulted in the displacement of around 16.1 million people. It is estimated that, by 2050, between 150 to 200 million people are at risk of being forced to leave their homes as a result of desertification, rising sea levels, and extreme weather conditions. ...It is the world's most vulnerable people who are made to bear the brunt of climate change, though they are the least responsible for causing it, and are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences. ...Climate change induced migration is adding a new layer of complexity to the area of gender, as women and girls are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change impacting education, maternal health, and gender-based violence."

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

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Some Good News from SCOTUS

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, June 17, 2019
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The Supreme Court has issued two rulings that are good news for opponents of the GOP consolidation of power and Donald Trump's criminal enterprise.

1. Marianne Dodson at the Daily Beast: Supreme Court Reaffirms 'Double Jeopardy' Exception with Mueller Probe Implications.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed a 170-year-old exception to the Constitution's double-jeopardy clause, and left the door open for state prosecutors to prosecute Trump campaign officials regardless of whether federal officials have already done so.

The case, Gamble v. United States, has drawn attention for its potential effect on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's federal prosecutions on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Had the 'dual sovereignty doctrine' been repealed, states would not be able to pursue investigations parallel to the federal government, the National Law Journal reports.

State prosecutors in New York have brought charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort Jr., who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, in the event that [Donald] Trump pardons him.
2. Taegan Goddard at Political Wire: Virginia Democrats Win In Gerrymandering Case.
"The Supreme Court has ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a racial gerrymandering case that represents a victory for Democrats in the state," The Hill reports.

"In the 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the House didn't have the standing to appeal a lower court ruling that found that the new district maps must be used ahead of the 2020 election. Those new maps are already in use."
It represents a victory for Virginia Democrats and also for Black voters of Virginia, who will have fair(er) representation care of more fairly drawn districts.

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We Resist: Day 861

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, May 30, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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: Trump Admits Russia Helped Him Get Elected and Primarily Speaking and Mike Pence Is a Terrifying Menace.

Here are some more things in the news today, and I'm going to start with some GOOD resistance news!

Lydia Smith at Pink News: Trans Activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera to Get New York Monument. "Transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera will be commemorated with a monument in the city of New York. ...The two transgender women of colour led the uprising against homophobic police raids, an era-defining moment in the struggle for LGBT equality. Rivera and Johnson also later co-founded the organisation STAR, or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens and trans women of colour. The monument will mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and it is proposed for the Ruth Wittenberg Triangle in Greenwich Village, the New York Times reported. It will also be one of the world's first monuments dedicated to transgender people." Woot!

Audrey McNamara at the Daily Beast: New Hampshire Abolishes Death Penalty. "New Hampshire lawmakers voted Thursday to abolish the death penalty, making it the last state in New England to end capital punishment. The vote overrides a veto from the state's Republican governor, Chris Sununu, and makes it the 21st state nationwide to abandon the practice." Yay!

[Content Note: Gun violence] Kay Wicker at ThinkProgress: Shannon Watts Says the Gun Control Movement Is Finally Outmaneuvering the NRA. "What I've learned over the last six years is that Congress is not where this work begins; it's where it ends, like most social issues in this country. When Sandy Hook happened, we didn't have a political movement with any power. We do now. In just six years. Those wins on the ground will eventually point Congress and the president, whoever that [ends up being], in the right direction. ...We out-maneuvered the NRA at the midterm elections, for the first time ever. And that sends a strong a cultural signal." Hell yeah.

* * *

Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Trump Admits Russia Helped Elect Him — Then Does a U-Turn. "Donald Trump finally admitted that Russia helped elected him president—before immediately retracting it. In an ill-tempered series of tweets sent Thursday morning, he said he 'had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.' With reporters jumping on the fresh admission as Trump appeared on the White House lawn almost immediately afterward, the president contradicted himself, saying: 'Russia did not help me get elected... Russia didn't help me at all.'" Okay, player.

Impeach. Him. Now.

One of the arguments I have made for impeachment is that it would be a much more significant a political story than a standard Congressional investigation — which might begin to penetrate the bubble in which Trump's base resides. And that bubble is thick:


Impeach. Him. Now.

Joyce White Vance at USA Today: If Only We Had Heard from Robert Mueller Before William Barr's Spin. "If Mueller's statement Wednesday had been the public's introduction to his report, the conversation about it would have been framed in a very different light, far more damaging to Trump than Barr's were. ...Mueller's comments Wednesday should have been the first public characterization of his findings on obstruction of justice. ...The public's understanding of the report is tainted by Barr's initial comments. It is difficult to change first impressions." Yup.

And it's almost like that is the objective, especially given what vague weaksauce Mueller's comments were, anyhow.


Charles M. Blow at the New York Times: Democrats, Do Your Damned Duty! "What the hell is it going to take, Democrats?! What evidence and impetus would compel you to do the job the Constitution, patriotism, and morality dictate? What is it going to take to make you initiate an impeachment inquiry? Your slow walking of this issue and your specious arguments about political calculations are pushing you dangerously close to a tragic, historic dereliction of duty, one that could do irreparable damage to the country and the Congress."

Absolutely. And one other point I will make about the need to launch impeachment hearings: If the Democrats fail to do so, it won't be Donald Trump and the Republican Party who exclusively bear the blame for this execrable mess. Unless Congressional Democrats want to share that mantle of shame, they'd better get to getting. Now.

* * *

Alex Marquardt and Zachary Cohen at CNN: U.S. Intelligence Partners Wary of Barr's Russia Review.
Key allies who share intelligence with the United States could soon be dragged into the middle of Attorney General Bill Barr's politically-charged Justice Department review of how the Russia investigation began.

[Donald] Trump has said he wants Barr to look into the role key intelligence partners, including the United Kingdom and Australia, played in the origins of Russia probe. He has said he could raise the issue with the British Prime Minister Theresa May during his state visit next week and suggested he may ask her about his accusation that Britain spied on his 2016 presidential campaign.

In describing the scope of Barr's mission to declassify and study the pre-election Obama-era intelligence, among several other topics, Trump told reporters, "I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine."
Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Meanwhile, the collusion continues to happen right out in the open:


Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: A Dead Man Just Revealed the Trump Administration's Plans to Rig Elections for White Republicans. "[Dr. Thomas Hofeller, a Republican master in the dark arts of political mapmaking who passed away last summer] was previously believed to be a minor figure in the Trump administration's efforts to rig the census, until his estranged daughter turned over the contents of Hofeller's hard drives to the voting rights group Common Cause. Hofeller died last summer. Among other things, the documents on Hofeller's hard drive revealed that he 'played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, 'Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.''"

Luke O'Neil at the Guardian: U.S. Energy Department Rebrands Fossil Fuels as 'Molecules of Freedom'. "Mark W Menezes, the U.S. Undersecretary of Energy, bestowed a peculiar honorific on our continent's natural resources, dubbing it 'freedom gas' in a release touting the DoE's approval of increased exports of natural gas produced by a Freeport LNG terminal off the coast of Texas. 'Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America's allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,' he said. The concept of 'freedom gas' may seem amorphous, but it's actually being measured down to the smallest unit. 'With the U.S. in another year of record-setting natural gas production, I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world,' said Steven Winberg."

I don't even know.

* * *

Eve Johnson at Reuters: White House Wanted USS John McCain 'out of sight' During Trump Visit. "Donald Trump said on Wednesday he was unaware of any effort to move the USS John S. McCain that was stationed near the site of his recent speech in Japan. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Reuters that an initial request had been made to keep the John McCain out of sight during Trump's speech but was scrapped by senior Navy officials."

Carla Babb at Voice of America: Shanahan Says He Did Not Okay Efforts to Keep USS John McCain 'out of Sight'. "Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said Thursday he did not authorize and was not even aware of a White House directive to have the U.S. Navy warship USS John S. McCain 'out of sight' when [Donald] Trump visited Japan. 'I would never dishonor the memory of a great American patriot like Senator [John] McCain,' Shanahan told reporters traveling with him aboard a U.S. military aircraft en route to Singapore. 'I'd never disrespect the young men and women who crew that ship.' During a visit to Indonesia earlier, Shanahan told reporters: 'What I read this morning was the first I heard about it.' He said he is asking his chief of staff to look into the matter."

Olivia Messer at the Daily Beast: Trump: Whoever Ordered USS John S. McCain Hidden Was 'Well-Meaning'. "During a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn, Trump said, 'I wasn't a fan, but I would never do a thing like that. Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn't like him. They were well-meaning, I will say.' Minutes later, Trump picked the topic back up again, noting that whoever made the request 'thought they were doing me a favor because they know I am not a fan of John McCain.' He added, 'John McCain killed health care for the Republican Party, and he killed health care for the nation... I disagreed with John McCain on the Middle East. He helped George Bush to make a very bad decision of going to the Middle East. So I wasn't a fan of John McCain and I never will be. But certainly I couldn't care less whether there's a boat named after his father.'"

This is at once an incredibly stupid story and an incredibly important one, because it lies at the heart of Trump's brittle authoritarianism, and the lengths to which people who fear his power will go in order to accommodate it. When that includes the military, it's particularly frightening.

* * *

[CN: Anti-choicery; war on agency. Covers whole section.]


Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Why States Are Always Dangerously Close to Losing Their Last Abortion Clinics. "It's challenging for clinics to stay open. The red tape makes it hard, with clinics — depending on the state — having to meet standards comparable to surgical centers and ensure the room where the abortion takes place is a specific width. There are also financial obstacles, with insurance not always covering abortion services, so clinics aren't reimbursed. The number of abortion providers fell from 780 in 2017 to 755 in 2018 nationwide, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley."

Jessica Glenza at the Guardian: Revealed: Women's Fertility App Is Funded by Anti-Abortion Campaigners. "A popular women's health and fertility app sows doubt about birth control, features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the U.S., and is funded and led by anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners, a Guardian investigation has found. The Femm app, which collects personal information about sex and menstruation from users, has been downloaded more than 400,000 times since its launch in 2015, according to developers. It has users in the U.S., the EU, Africa, and Latin America, its operating company claims."

Imani Gandy at Rewire.News: When It Comes to Birth Control and Eugenics, Clarence Thomas Gets It All Wrong.
In Thomas' esteemed opinion, bans like the one at issue in Box "promote a State's compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics." To make his claim, Thomas conflates eugenics, which is an effort to "improve" the population by controlling who has kids and who doesn't, with a choice that an individual pregnant person makes to terminate a pregnancy. They are not equivalent.

Eugenics is about restricting someone's reproduction. As Amanda Stevenson — who is a professor of sociology at University of Colorado Boulder and a family planning enthusiast — explained to me in an email, "eugenics is an ideology advocating for population-wide policies aimed at changing who has kids in order to 'improve' the population. It's about removing or constraining individual reproductive choices." It's not about the choices individuals make about their own reproductive autonomy.

But that doesn't seem to matter to Thomas; he goes all in.
Loathsome.

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

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McConnell Says He'd Fill a SCOTUS Vacancy Next Year

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, May 29, 2019
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Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell led the obstructionism blocking the judicial appointments, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, in the last year of President Barack Obama's second term.

He justified the move with a transparently mendacious argument about how it wasn't respectful of voters to allow an outgoing president to make lifetime appointments, but the truth was that McConnell just wanted to hold open as many federal judgeships as possible in the hopes that an incoming Republican president and a retained Republican Senate majority would allow him to stack the judiciary with conservative jurists.

And that is precisely what has happened. Obama left office with over 100 federal judicial vacancies and an empty Supreme Court seat, every one of which carries with it a lifetime appointment. Which McConnell, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and the Republican Senate majority are now filling as quickly as possible with young conservative judges who will spend their entire careers enabling and abetting Republican rule.

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Naturally, when McConnell was asked yesterday what he would do if there were a Supreme Court vacancy next year, in the final year of Trump's term, he readily conceded he would not play by the same rules.

Speaking at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, McConnell was asked by an attendee, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?"

The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, "Oh, we'd fill it," triggering loud laughter from the audience.
McConnell went on to brag about how stacking the judiciary is the best and most important thing he's done: "What can't be undone is a lifetime appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of the judge is to follow the law. That's the most important thing we've done in the country, which cannot be undone."

McConnell is one of the most despicable people ever to hold office in this nation's history. He boasts about rigging the game to consolidate and retain power, and then pretends he's doing it out of respect for the democratic process. Utterly reprehensible.

And what's important to understand is that McConnell is not merely a "hypocrite," as you will undoubtedly see him called a million times today. He is a strategic, conniving, shameless authoritarian for whom the asymmetry of the rules is the point.

That's why he's announcing it (with zero fear of consequence, I might add). He wants us to know about the double-standard. He wants to appall us with it.

It's a brazen flex.

McConnell just doesn't want to win. He wants to rub our noses in it. He wants us to know he cheated his way to victory. He wants to gloat about his domination.

He isn't confessing hypocrisy. He's doing a touchdown dance.

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We Resist: Day 859

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, May 28, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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: Trump Is a Vulgar National Disgrace on a State Trip and Primarily Speaking.

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

[Content Note: Anti-choicery; war on agency. Covers entire section. Video may autoplay at first link.]

Kate Smith at CBS News: Missouri's Last Abortion Clinic Says It May Lose Its License This Week.
The last remaining abortion clinic in Missouri says it expects to be shut down this week, effectively ending legal abortion in the state.

In a statement to be released later Tuesday, Planned Parenthood said Missouri's health department is "refusing to renew" its annual license to provide abortion in the state. If the license is not renewed by May 31, Missouri would become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided.

...Planned Parenthood said it plans to sue the state "in order to try to keep serving Missouri women."

"This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis," said Dr. Leana Wen, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
And, let us be very clear on this point, it's a public health crisis being caused by misogynist, consent-hostile, agency-thieving pigshits who invent reasons to try to put abortion providers out of business:
On May 20, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services notified Planned Parenthood of three issues that could impact license renewal, according to documents reviewed by CBS News and provided by Planned Parenthood.

On May 22, Planned Parenthood said it would address two of them: adjusting who at the clinic provided the state-mandated counseling and adding an additional pelvic exam for abortion patients.

But it said a third request was out of its control. According to Planned Parenthood, the health department said it was investigating "deficient practices," and needed to interview seven physicians who provide care at the clinic. Planned Parenthood said it could offer interviews only with two who are its employees. The remaining physicians provide services at the facility but aren't employed by Planned Parenthood and have not agreed to be interviewed.
Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court:


Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: We Just Got the First Supreme Court Abortion Opinion of the Kavanaugh Era. "In 2016, while serving as the governor of Indiana, Vice President Mike Pence signed an anti-abortion law that appears designed to troll liberals and give late night fodder to Fox News. ...On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down a brief, unsigned opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood, which announced that the court will not hear the challenge to Indiana's ban on selective abortions. The practical effect of this decision is that the lower court's decision striking down that ban will remain untouched. The Supreme Court upheld a minor provision of Pence's trolly law, but it did so on exceedingly narrow grounds. That provision 'altered the manner in which abortion providers may dispose of fetal remains' to prevent 'incineration of fetal remains along with surgical byproducts.'"

Despite this legislative and judicial onslaught against women's et. al.'s agency, autonomy, right of consent, and very freedom, we're getting absolute bullshit articles in the press about how it's not that bad. To wit:


And as a very pointed reminder — and admonishment to anyone who dares utter any despicable variation on "people who live in red states deserve what they get" — Republicans and conservative judges are passing and upholding these laws in direct contravention of the will of a majority of voters. Leah C. Stokes at the New York Times: "Alabama State Legislators Are Wrong About Their Voters' Opinions on Abortion."
Alabama's law banning abortions even in the case of rape and incest has attracted big headlines. But the state is not alone in trying to all but eliminate abortion rights. Since the beginning of the year, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah have passed similar laws.

But most Americans — including four out of five people in Alabama — oppose these laws. Why would politicians pass abortion bans opposed by their voters?

One explanation is that politicians don't know what the public wants, or so my research suggests.
That's one explanation, sure. But the only explanation that matters is that Republican politicians don't fucking care what their voters want.

And all of us should be very concerned indeed that the GOP continues to behave like a party that isn't and will never be again beholden to voters to retain their power.

* * *

[CN: Nativism; child abuse. Covers entire section.]

Catherine E. Shoichet and Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez at CNN: These Doctors Risked Their Careers to Expose the Dangers Children Face in Immigrant Family Detention.
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pamela McPherson were used to working behind the scenes, quietly documenting the devastating things they'd seen.

Children's fingers crushed by cell doors. A boy who'd lost nearly a third of his body weight in a matter of days. Incorrect vaccine doses and missed diagnoses.

Each incident, the doctors say, was meticulously noted in reports they filed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Allen and McPherson — an internist and a psychiatrist — are expert consultants contracted by the department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Their mission: inspecting the facilities where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrant families.

For years, the doctors' expert opinions, like the facilities they inspected, remained out of the spotlight — unseen by most lawmakers and unheard by members of the public.

That changed, they say, when the Trump administration's policies left them no choice. The doctors became whistleblowers, speaking out with a dire warning. Family detention isn't safe, they said, and children's lives are at stake.

"We are writing to you, members of Congress with oversight responsibility, because we have a duty to raise our concerns about the ongoing and future threat of harm to children posed by the current and proposed expansion of the family detention program," the doctors said in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

Their new mission: Showing the world why immigrant family detention should be stopped.

"Detention of innocent children should never occur in a civilized society, especially if there are less restrictive options, because the risk of harm to children simply cannot be justified," they wrote.

That letter was sent nearly a year ago. And writing it changed their lives.

...[F]or Allen and McPherson, what started with one letter to Congress has become a quest with no end in sight.

"Each passing day of continued detention of children — and no acknowledgment of the risk that we have reported — alarms me even more," Allen told CNN in a recent interview.
Everyone in the U.S. should take a moment today to write their Senators and Congressional Representative and ask them to please heed the warnings and advice of Drs. Allen and McPherson, so that no more children may be harmed or die in U.S. custody while held in family detention.

If the CNN article isn't enough to convince you it's worth two minutes of your time, maybe this will... Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Trump Administration Separates Some Pregnant Migrants from Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention.
As Rewire.News reported in part one of this series, migrants prosecuted under the "zero-tolerance" policy are remanded to U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) custody, and this is when lapses in medical care happen. Advocates told Rewire.News pregnant migrants detained in USMS custody are not receiving adequate services, and they are shackled when accessing prenatal and postpartum care. Some women are even shackled during birth, as Rewire.News reported in part two of this series.

Advocates also report that some asylum seekers in the Western District of Texas who have given birth in USMS custody were forced to hand over their newborns to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). Reuniting with their newborn hinges on their release from federal custody, and whether they can access legal help to navigate the child welfare system. We learned that women who find their way to advocacy organizations appear to be reuniting with their newborns, but Rewire.News was unable to verify what happens to the children of women who do not have access to legal help.
Sob.

MAKE NOISE. MAKE YOUR CALLS. SEND YOUR TWEETS AND EMAILS. RESIST.

* * *

Today in rampaging authoritarianism...


Ben Penn at Bloomberg Law: Mulvaney Tightens Grip on Labor Chief After Trump Allies Grumble. "Donald Trump‘s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, has seized power over the Labor Department's rulemaking process out of frustration with the pace of deregulation under Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, according to current and former department officials and other people who communicate with the administration."

Kevin Breuninger at CNBC: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Reportedly Still Holds Construction Co. Stake She Pledged to Divest. "Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has held onto her shares of Vulcan Materials, a construction company she promised to divest from more than a year earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Vulcan, the U.S.' largest supplier of sand and gravel used in paving and building, has seen its stock price rise more than 12% since April 2018, when Chao said she would cash out her shares, according to a 2017 government ethics agreement. Chao's shares have risen in value by more than $40,000 since the month she said she would divest them, the Journal reported, citing corporate and government filings." Reminder that Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Which the linked article does not even mention.


Coral Davenport and Mark Landler at the New York Times: Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science. "Now, after two years spent unraveling the [climate change] policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault. In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump's hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change. And, in what could be Mr. Trump's most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests."

This, at the same time that, as Erin Durkin reports at the Guardian: "Tornadoes Rip Through Indiana and Ohio Leaving One Dead and Many Injured."

And Speaker Nancy Pelosi still refuses to launch impeachment hearings, and Congressional Republicans remain intransigently fixed in their position of defending and abetting Trump. Alexander Bolton reports at the Hill: "Senate GOP Vows to Quickly Quash Any Impeachment Charges." Of course they do.

We are in so much trouble.

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

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 825

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, April 24, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late yesterday and earlier today by me: An Observation and Financial Freedom for Everyone and Primarily Speaking.

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

Robert Costa, Tom Hamburger, Josh Dawsey, and Rosalind S. Helderman at the Washington Post: Trump Says He Is Opposed to White House Aides Testifying to Congress, Deepening Power Struggle with Hill. "[Donald] Trump on Tuesday said he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels in the wake of the special counsel report, intensifying a power struggle between his administration and House Democrats. In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said that complying with congressional requests was unnecessary after the White House cooperated with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of Russian interference and the president's own conduct in office. 'There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it's very partisan — obviously very partisan,' Trump said."

That is absolutely incorrect. And it is infuriating that the Washington Post is framing this as a "power struggle" between Trump and Congressional Democrats, which is the absolute nadir of bothsideserism bullshit.

This isn't a "power struggle." The Democrats aren't trying to seize power; they are trying to protect our democracy, which is their job. They are tasked with holding the president accountable. Trump, on the other hand, is orchestrating a subversion of our democracy and a consolidation of power in the executive branch, with the assistance of Congressional Republicans.

Goddammit.

Alison Durkee at Vanity Fair: The White House Escalates Its Battle to Keep Don McGahn Silent. "[T]he White House is reportedly planning to use executive privilege to block [former White House counsel Don McGahn] from complying with a congressional subpoena, after McGahn's comments to special counsel Robert Mueller pointed toward potential instances of the president obstructing justice. ...[T]he move to block McGahn's testimony is part of a broader effort to thwart House Democrats from securing testimony from current and former White House aides, and comes after White House deputy counsel Michael M. Purpura instructed former personnel security director Carl Kline not to appear before Congress."


Staff at the Daily Beast: Trump: If Democrats Try to Impeach Me, I'll Take It to the Supreme Court. "In his latest tweet, strewn with misplaced capital letters, the president made clear he wouldn't go quietly. 'The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn't lay a glove on me,' he wrote. 'I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only ... are there no 'High Crimes and Misdemeanors,' there are no Crimes by me at all. All of the Crimes were committed by Crooked Hillary, the Dems, the DNC and Dirty Cops — and we caught them in the act! We waited for Mueller and WON, so now the Dems look to Congress as last hope!'" YIKES.

Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: Trump Thinks the Supreme Court Is His Personal Goon Squad (and He May Be Right). "Trump is wrong that the Supreme Court may lawfully intervene if the House of Representatives chooses to impeach him. ...So a Supreme Court decision weighing in on whether the House properly impeached Mr. Trump would be utterly lawless. The House has the 'sole' power to decide which officials should be impeached, and the Senate has the 'sole' power to determine whether the charges brought by the House warrant removal from office. As the court held in Nixon, 'the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments.' The problem, however, is that this Supreme Court seems to think that that the law is optional when the Trump administration is involved."

Steve Vladeck at NBC News: Trump Tweet About Impeachment Confuses Political Conclusions with Legal Ones. "Whether Trump broke any criminal laws is therefore formally irrelevant to whether the House of Representatives has the constitutional authority to impeach him. The House certainly can impeach the president — or any other government officer — for non-criminal misconduct. The harder question is whether the House should do so. But the one point on which we all should be able to agree is that the Constitution commits resolution of that question entirely to our elected representatives in Congress — and not to the president's Twitter feed or the absence of criminal charges against him."

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Trump Plausibly Committed Impeachable Offenses. A Leading Expert Explains How.
I spoke to [Philip Bobbitt, constitutional scholar at Columbia University and co-author of Impeachment: A Handbook] at length about the latest revelations. The upshot: Bobbitt now believes it's "plausible" that Trump committed impeachable offenses and that the House of Representatives is obligated to proceed from this premise.

...Coming from Bobbitt, this is notable, because he has long maintained that impeachment must be reserved only for the most extraordinary cases and (as his book argues) that we must approach the question of whether conduct is impeachable with extreme caution.

...In our interview, Bobbitt described the implications of all this for impeachment this way:
Mueller depicts an executive branch that is using the levers of his constitutional power in a corrupt way. It's not that a president can't determine whom to prosecute or investigate, or give advice to members of the executive to shape their testimony at legislative hearings. It's that he can't do so with the intent to frustrate the investigation of his own culpability. We certainly have ample evidence that suggests this what he was trying to do.
What's more, this obstructive conduct can be directly tied to the other element of the case against Trump: his response to Russian electoral sabotage. Importantly, Trump did not merely seek to derail an investigation into his campaign's conspiracy with that Russian sabotage — that is, into his own conduct.

Rather, Trump also sought to derail a full accounting of the Russian attack on our political system, separate and apart from whether his own campaign conspired with it. He did this because acknowledging the sabotage would detract from the greatness of his victory, which also led him to fail to marshal a serious response to the next round of interference.

Bobbitt explained the relevance of those facts to the impeachment question this way:
The real problem isn't just cooperating with the Russians, or just impeding an investigation into that cooperation. It's impeding an investigation to stop a determination of what Russia did, why, and how they did it. Because this is not over. It's going to happen again, not just in our country. In many countries.

The exposure of the country to very damaging political intelligence techniques, for the venal reason of not diminishing the status of your victory — would that be a high crime and misdemeanor? It certainly would.
In sum: Trump's obstruction to protect his own hide has also impeded investigation into Russia's subversion of the integrity of our elections — and that is an impeachable offense.

Cough:


* * *

Maria Vasilyeva at Reuters: North Korea's Kim Arrives for Summit with Russia's Putin. "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in the Russian city of Vladivostok on Wednesday for a summit he is likely to use to seek support from President Vladimir Putin while Pyongyang’s nuclear talks with Washington are in limbo. ...Kim will sit down for talks with Putin on Thursday at a university campus on an island just off Vladivostok. It will be the first summit between the two leaders, and the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program will top the agenda, according to a Kremlin foreign policy aide."

Julia Hollingsworth at CNN: Duterte Threatens 'War' Against Canada over Trash Shipped to Philippines. "Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to 'go to war' with Canada if the country doesn't take back tons of trash a Canada-based company had shipped to Manila several years ago. 'I'll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that (trash) out,' he said Tuesday, according to CNN Philippines. 'We'll declare war against them, we can handle them anyway.'" Just as a reminder, Trump thinks Duterte is tops.

Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: Iran Will Continue to Defy U.S. Oil Sanctions, Says Tehran. "The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has said Tehran will continue to defy U.S. sanctions by finding buyers for its oil and warned that Washington should 'be prepared for the consequences' if it tries to stop it. ...Zarif, seen as the moderate face of Iran and speaking in New York, said Tehran would also keep the Strait of Hormuz open for oil exports. ...'It is in our interest, our vital national security interest, to keep the Persian Gulf open, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.' He added that if the U.S. entered the Strait, they had to 'talk to those who are protecting the Strait of Hormuz, and that is (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).' The IRGC has been designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the Trump administration."

* * *

Staff at BBC News: Europe Wildfires: Norway Police Evacuate Hundreds in Sokndal. "Hundreds of people have had to leave their homes in Norway as emergency services try to extinguish forest fires raging in the south of the country. Some 148 homes were evacuated around the town of Sokndal, where fires have been burning since Tuesday. Police say the fires are still out of control and warn that heavy winds could help them to spread. April is very early for forest fires in Norway, and experts have warned of a dramatic increase across the continent."

Emily Holden at the Guardian: Millions More Americans Breathing Dirty Air as Planet Warms, Study Finds. "Air quality in the U.S. has been improving since the 1970s, but that progress may be backsliding and 43% of Americans are now living in places where they are breathing unsafe air, according to the American Lung Association report. As temperatures rise, wildfires are getting worse and spewing smoke across the west. And more smog, or ozone, is forming on warmer days. For the three hottest years on record, 2015 through 2017, about 141 million people lived in U.S. counties that saw unhealthy levels of particle pollution, either in a single 24-hour period or over a year, or unhealthy levels of smog."


[CN: Environmental racism; classism; food insecurity] Marlene Cimons for Nexus Media at ThinkProgress: Flint's 'Food Apartheid' Is Impeding Recovery from Water Crisis. "Community activists like Bob Brown are trying to create new hope for residents. He is among those in the Flint community working with Laura Schmit Olabisi, an associate professor of community sustainability and environmental science and policy at Michigan State University, to help residents cope with the ongoing health effects of lead poisoning. Her focus is on nutrition, trying to find ways to improve their access to healthy food. When people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables — and fail to consume nutrients like calcium and iron — the impact of heavy metals like lead in the body is exacerbated."

[CN: Rape culture] Edward McKinley at the Kansas City Star: Lobbyist's Crusade to Change Title IX in Missouri Stems from His Son's Expulsion. "After his son was accused and subsequently expelled from Washington University in St. Louis last year through the school's Title IX process, a leading Jefferson City lobbyist launched a campaign to change the law for every campus in the state. Richard McIntosh has argued to legislators that Title IX, the federal law barring sexual discrimination in education and mandating that schools set up internal systems to police sexual violence, is tilted unfairly against the accused." Fucking of course.

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

Open Wide...
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We Resist: Day 823

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, April 22, 2019
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Late Thursday and earlier today by me: A Divided Nation and World News: Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Burkina Faso, and a Russia-North Korea Summit and Primarily Speaking.

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

When CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Donald Trump about "the portrayal in the Mueller report that his staff often ignored his directives," Trump replied: "Nobody disobeys my orders." Another reporter then asks him, as he is walking away, if he's worried about impeachment. He stops, turns, and says stridently, "Not even a little bit." Then he continues walking away.


He sounds more and more like an authoritarian dictator every goddamn day.

And acts like one, too. John Wagner and Rachael Bade at the Washington Post: Trump Sues in Bid to Block Congressional Subpoena of Financial Records.
[Donald] Trump and his business sued House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) in a bid to block a congressional subpoena of his financial records on Monday.

The lawsuit seeks a court order to prevent Trump's accounting firm from complying with what his lawyers say is an improper use of subpoena power by congressional Democrats.

"Democrats are using their new control of congressional committees to investigate every aspect of [Donald] Trump's personal finances, businesses, and even his family," the filing by Trump claims. "Instead of working with the President to pass bipartisan legislation that would actually benefit Americans, House Democrats are singularly obsessed with finding something they can use to damage the President politically."

The filing, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, further escalates a clash between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House over congressional oversight.
That's a very euphemistic way of saying that the sitting president doesn't believe that Congress has the right to do their Constitutional duty of holding him accountable.

Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Carrie Dann at NBC News: The Mueller Report Makes a Damning Case About Trump's Dishonesty. "One of the unmistakable takeaways after reading the Mueller report is how the president of the United States wasn't honest with the American public when it came to Russia and the entire Russia probe." Correct. Also: The president of the United States isn't honest with the American public about literally anything.

Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: Giuliani Defends Trump Campaign's Use of Stolen Russian Information. "Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani defended Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election on Sunday, claiming that 'people had a right to know' what was in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails and those stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee. ...'I wonder if there isn't an argument that the people had a right to know that information about Hillary Clinton,' Giuliani said. 'People had a right to know that Hillary Clinton and the people around her were as dishonest, as deceptive, as duplicitous as they actually are.'" The fucking nerve.

Editorial Board at the Washington Post: Trump Is Accused of Gross Abuse of His Office. We're Not Talking About the Mueller Report. "Instead, it concerns the $85.4 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger that the president reportedly sought to pressure the Justice Department to block. ...Even the appearance of impropriety in antitrust enforcement is damaging to public trust. T-Mobile executives spent $195,000 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington after the carrier announced its plan to purchase competitor Sprint. Any decision the Justice Department makes on the merger will now be viewed through that lens: The company has at least given the appearance of believing it could exert influence over enforcers through the chief executive."

Ben Schreckinger at Politico: Reagan's Supply-Side Warriors Blaze a Comeback Under Trump. "Those decades of free-market machinations are now paying off, as a quintet of Ronald Reagan administration alumni — Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, Steve Forbes, Stephen Moore, and David Malpass — united by undying affection for each other and for laissez-faire economics, have the run of Washington once more. Members of the tight-knit group have shaped Trump's signature tax cut, helped install each other in posts with vast influence over the global economy, and are working to channel Trump's mercantilist instincts into pro-trade policies." Reaganomics destroyed the working class in the '80s, and now its architects want to deliver the death blow.

Staff at the Daily Beast: Trump Admin Cuts Off Waivers for Iran's Oil Sanctions. "The Trump administration said it is ending its 180-day oil waivers against U.S. sanctions that were granted to eight countries that rely on Iranian oil exports, The Wall Street Journal reports. China, India, and Turkey are among those had hoped for an extension of the waivers when they expire May 2. Instead, the White House signaled it will end the dispensation in an attempt to drive Iran's oil exports down to zero."

And despite, or because of, all of the above — authoritarianism, dishonesty, collusion, corruption, harmful policy — Alex Isenstadt reports at Politico: Trump Wins Over Big Donors Who Snubbed Him in 2016. "Deep-pocketed Republicans who snubbed Donald Trump in 2016 are going all in for him in 2020, throwing their weight behind a newly created fundraising drive that's expected to dump tens of millions into his reelection coffers. The effort involves scores of high-powered businessmen, lobbyists, and former ambassadors who raised big money for George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney — and who are now preparing to tap their expansive networks for Trump after rebuffing his first presidential bid."

* * *

[Content Note: LGBTQ discrimination] Robert Barnes at the Washington Post: Supreme Court to Decide If Anti-Discrimination Employment Laws Protect on Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
The Supreme Court on Monday added what could be landmark issues to its docket for the next term: whether federal anti-discrimination laws protect on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The court accepted three cases for the term that begins in October. They include a transgender funeral home director who won her case after being fired; a gay skydiving instructor who successfully challenged his dismissal; and a social worker who was unable to convince a court that he was unlawfully terminated because of his sexual orientation.

The cases shared a common theme: whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, is broad enough to encompass discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Some states protect gay and transgender workers, but federal courts have split on whether federal law provides protection.
These are going to be massive cases, and I am desperately hoping for the best while fearing the worst.

[CN: Nativism] Dakin Andone and Artemis Moshtaghian at CNN: A Member of an Armed Group Detaining Migrants at the Border Has Been Arrested by the FBI. (GOOD.) "Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, is a member of an armed group that had reportedly detained hundreds of migrants near Sunland Park, New Mexico, state Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement. Hopkins — also known as Johnny Horton Jr. — was arrested on felony charges of being in possession of firearms and ammunition, according to a statement from the FBI's Albuquerque field office. Earlier this week, videos posted online purported to show migrants being held by a militia known as the United Constitutional Patriots before being turned over to U.S. Border Patrol." This sort of vigilantism must be nipped in the bud swiftly and decisively.

[CN: Environmental misogyny and racism] Osub Ahmed at Rewire.News: The Threat That Climate Change Poses to Women's Health Is Real. "As we celebrate Earth Day, we should take a moment and consider what our planet is trying to tell us: Extreme weather events and natural disasters are becoming the norm. But less discussed is the impact of climate change on certain communities, particularly women and people of color. The intersection of climate change, women's health and safety, and current federal and state restrictions on reproductive rights is a perfect storm that will put the lives and well-being of women, disproportionately women of color, at risk." A must-read.

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

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