We Resist: Day 63

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, March 23, 2017
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 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 in the news today:

Today is the day the GOP House Caucus wants to vote on their garbage healthcare proposal which would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. CALL YOUR REPS TODAY AND TELL THEM YOU DO NOT WANT THEM TO VOTE FOR THE GOP PLAN.


Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Freedom Caucus Chair 'Optimistic' About Deal on Obamacare Repeal Bill. "With the Thursday vote on the legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act fast approaching, members of the House Freedom Caucus said earlier on Wednesday that they still had enough votes to block the bill's passage. This prompted Republican leaders to promise conservative House members that the Senate would accommodate one of their demands: removing Obamacare's Essential Health Benefits (EHB) rule. The EHB rule requires insurers to offer plans that cover a list of basic services like emergency room care and maternity care."

#SaveTheACA. We cannot allow this travesty to pass.

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[Content Note covering the entire section below: Terrorism; Islamophobia; racism.]

In case you'd managed to forget for two seconds that Donald Trump's children are just as disgusting as he is... Sam Levin at the Guardian: Donald Trump Jr Called 'a Disgrace' for Tweet Goading London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Donald Trump Jr is facing a backlash for criticizing London mayor Sadiq Khan with a scornful tweet sent hours after an attack at the Houses of Parliament left four dead, including a police officer.

The US president's eldest son tweeted a link to a September 2016 story in the Independent, which quoted Khan saying terror attacks were "part and parcel of living in a big city," and "I want to be reassured that every single agency and individual involved in protecting our city has the resources and expertise they need to respond in the event that London is attacked."

"You have to be kidding me?!" Trump Jr tweeted, quoting the headline: "Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan."

It's unclear if the president's son read the article or understood that the quote was from six months ago and not a response to the Wednesday attack, which police are treating as a terrorist incident.

...The tweet earned strong criticisms in the US and the UK, including from Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford North and former president of the National Union of Students.

"You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London's Mayor for your own political gain. You're a disgrace," Streeting wrote.

...Others on Twitter pointed Trump Jr to Khan's actual response to the attack on Wednesday, in which he said: "Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism."

"I want to reassure all Londoners and all our visitors not to be alarmed. Our city remains one of the safest in the world. London is the greatest city in the world. And we stand together in the face of those who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life. We always have and we always will," the mayor said.
I don't suppose I need to point out that Trump Jr's target, Mayor Khan, is Muslim.

Meanwhile, his father the president tweeted his sympathies for an American killed in yesterday's attack. That was a decent thing to do. However, as Clark Gregg noted, Trump failed to acknowledge the American who was killed by a terrorist in his hometown.


Gregg is referring to Timothy Caughman, a Black man who was viciously murdered by James Harris Jackson, a white U.S. Army veteran who traveled from Baltimore to New York City "to target black men," for whom "he had harbored feelings of hatred...for at least 10 years."

He repeatedly stabbed Caughman in the chest, then turned himself into police. According to Assistant Chief William Aubry, Jackson chose NYC "because it's the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement."

Additionally: "Police said Jackson is a member of a known hate group in Maryland but did not identify the group."

White supremacy doesn't exist in a vacuum. And Trump's silence speaks volumes.

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Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz, and Jim Sciutto at CNN: U.S. officials: Info Suggests Trump Associates May Have Coordinated with Russians. "One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests 'people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready.' ...The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said."

Cameron Norsworthy at Romper: How Will the WIC Program Be Affected by Trump's Budget Proposal? Cuts Are Expected. "Cutting $200 million from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, Trump would be taking away funds from vital familial health initiatives, such as efforts 'reducing infant and maternal mortality and morbidity,' should his proposed budget be passed in its current state (that likely won't happen, but whether WIC programs will remain on the table following congressional debate is yet to be seen). It would also cut initiatives that '[provide] food vouchers for low-income pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under five years old,' as well as preexisting programs offering venues for 'breastfeeding support and nutrition education.' In other words, low-income women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or have children under 5 years old would have to go elsewhere for the support and services they've come to depend on."

[CN: Homophobia] I'm not going to link to this directly, because FUCK THAT.


[CN: Othering] Paul McLeod at BuzzFeed: A Top Trump Health Care Appointee Thinks Tattoos Are Linked to Drug Abuse. "If you've got questions about penis phobias, the link from goth culture to drug abuse, and how opioids are evidence of the existence of God, a top Trump appointee has answers. Those and other subjects were touched on in a 2006 book by John Fleming, the former congressman who was just appointed by President Trump as assistant secretary for health technology at the Department of Health and Human Services." Some of the shit he's spewing is indistinguishable from the thinking that railroaded the West Memphis Three.

Jia Tolentino at the New Yorker: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death. "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy's rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear."

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