We Resist: Day 15

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

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

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

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Here are some things I've read today:

Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that would roll back key financial protections of Dodd-Frank enacted after the 2008-09 financial crisis:

Trump pledged during the campaign to repeal and replace the law, which also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"Dodd-Frank is a disaster," Trump said earlier this week during a meeting with small business owners. "We're going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank."

Trump will also sign a presidential memorandum Friday that instructs the Labor Department to delay implementing an Obama-era rule that requires financial professionals who charge commissions to put their clients' best interests first when giving advice on retirement investments.

...The so-called "fiduciary rule" was aimed at blocking financial advisers from steering clients toward investments with higher commissions and fees that can eat away at retirement savings.

It's hard to overstate how dreadful these orders are. And it's important to note that good faith financial representatives did not hate the latter rule. They thought it was a good and necessary protection, and, in fact, the financial industry has invested enormous time and treasure preparing for it. The only people who hate it are exploitative vultures like Treasury nominee Steve Mnuchin. Trump is literally rolling back consumer protections explicitly on behalf of bad actors who want to exploit people.

[Content Note: Islamophobia; violence] This morning, Donald Trump tweeted: "A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S." No one was harmed, except the attacker, not that you'd know it from Trump's tweet. Trump has still not tweeted or said anything about the attack in Québec, during which six Muslims were killed at their mosque. Perhaps that's because the man who killed them, Alexandre Bissonnette, was a white supremacist and a fan of Trump.

[CN: White supremacy; anti-Semitism] Eric Boehlert at Media Matters: Exciting the Right Wing, Trump Downplays Threat of Right-Wing Terror. "At neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, editor Andrew Anglin announced to readers, 'Donald Trump is setting us free.' He continued, 'This is absolutely a signal of favor to us.'"

[CN: War; death] William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Robert Windrem at NBC News: Inside the Navy SEAL Raid in Yemen Targeting al Qaeda. "Trump declared Sunday's mission a success, and the Pentagon released a statement Wednesday that said U.S. forces had captured 'materials and information that is yielding valuable intelligence.' But a senior military official told NBC News 'almost everything went wrong.'"

Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast: Steve Bannon's Long Love Affair With War. "Those who have known Bannon for years, and before he ascended to executive power, describe a man almost obsessed with military history, guerilla warfare, and the general art of war and nationalist foreign policy." And he's (completely inappropriately) been given a seat on the National Security Council, and, as I mentioned yesterday, was part of the planning for the abovementioned bungled raid, so we can expect more of that aggressive, incompetent fuckery in the future.

Nikita Vladimirov at The Hill: U.S. Threatens North Korea with 'Overwhelming' Retaliation if It Uses Nuclear Arms. "U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis on Thursday threatened North Korea with an 'effective and overwhelming' retaliation if the country decided to utilize its nuclear arsenal. ...'Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming,' the Defense secretary said."

Timothy Ahmann at Reuters: U.S. Announces New Iran-Related Sanctions. "The United States on Friday sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities under U.S. Iran sanctions authority, days after the White House had put Iran 'on notice' over a ballistic missile test and other activities. In a statement on its website, the U.S. Treasury listed the sanctioned individuals and entities, some of which are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and China."

[CN: Torture] Matthew Rosenberg at the New York Times: New CIA Deputy Director, Gina Haspel, Had Leading Role in Torture. "As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting their brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand. On Thursday, Ms. Haspel was named the deputy director of the CIA."

Gabriella Paiella at New York Magazine: Trump Is Reportedly Obsessed with How the People Who Work for Him Dress. And, I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, there's a misogynist angle: "Via a source who worked on the campaign, Trump wants his female employees 'to dress like women,' adding, 'even if you're in jeans, you need to look neat and orderly.' Though, per Axios, women who worked in campaign offices 'felt pressure to wear dresses to impress Trump.'" Gross.

PPP finds: "Less than 2 weeks into Donald Trump's tenure as President, 40% of voters already want to impeach him." For things that were evident from Day One.

Next week's cover of The New Yorker is breathtakingly sad:

next week's cover by John W. Tomac pic.twitter.com/dkn49wBLKR

— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) February 3, 2017

[Image in tweet shows the cover, which features the hand of the Statue of Liberty holding up her torch, which has been extinguished, and in place of the flame is just a slow drift of smoke.]

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