We Resist: Day 64

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:

Natasha Geiling at ThinkProgress: Trump Administration Issues Permit for Keystone XL Pipeline. "On Friday morning, pipeline developer TransCanada announced that it had received a presidential permit to move forward with the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Obama administration spent six years considering the controversial cross-border pipeline before ultimately denying a permit for its construction in November of 2015. The Trump administration reversed that decision after a little more than 60 days in office, following an executive order issued January 24 by [Donald] Trump calling for TransCanada to resubmit its permit request to the State Department."

"It's going to be an incredible pipeline," says @POTUS. #KeystoneXL pic.twitter.com/gJxubT8ecN

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) March 24, 2017

[Image in tweet shows Trump sitting at his desk, looking pleased with himself, while surrounded, as usual, by a bunch of white men.]

[Content Note: Nativism; covers next four paragraphs] Michael D. Shear at the New York Times: Trump Administration Orders Tougher Screening of Visa Applicants. "The Trump administration is making it tougher for millions of visitors to enter the United States by demanding new security checks before giving visas to tourists, business travelers and relatives of American residents. Diplomatic cables sent last week from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to all American embassies instructed consular officials to broadly increase scrutiny. It was the first evidence of the 'extreme vetting' Mr. Trump promised during the presidential campaign."

Tina Vasquez at Rewire: ICE Report on So-Called Safety Threats 'Misleading at Best'. "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week fulfilled part of [Donald] Trump's January executive order by issuing its first report on declined detainers. The report, which advocates say is 'misleading at best,' meets the president's call for a weekly list of all the alleged crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. ...Michele Waslin, senior research and policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, told Rewire in a phone interview that there are 'glaring problems' with the report, but the fact that it exists at all is 'ludicrous.' 'The administration says it's doing this for public safety reasons, but the report undermines public safety in several ways,' Waslin said. 'It undermines the privacy of those listed and it undermines safety in the jurisdictions listed. ICE is using serious resources to create this report, rather than using those resources to, say, deal with actual threats to safety.'"

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Maria Santana at CNN: Source: ICE Is Targeting Sanctuary Cities with Raids. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been targeting so-called 'sanctuary cities' with increased enforcement operations in an effort to pressure those jurisdictions to cooperate with federal immigration agents, a senior US immigration official with direct knowledge of ongoing ICE actions told CNN. ...This week, a federal judge in Texas seems to have confirmed that tactic. US Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin revealed during an immigration hearing Monday that a mid-February raid in the Austin metro area was done in retaliation for a local sheriff's recent decision to limit her department's cooperation with ICE."

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Roque Planas at the Huffington Post: Trump Is Relocating Immigration Judges to Speed Deportations. "Donald Trump, whose administration argues that immigrants abuse the court system to delay deportation, dispatched immigration judges to the country's two largest family detention centers this week so detainees' cases can be processed more quickly. But experts―and The Huffington Post's visit to one of the centers―suggest that the president may end up disappointed if he thinks relocating judges will speed up deportations. When Judge Monica Little, who normally presides over immigration court in Los Angeles, heard the first four cases under the new system on Wednesday at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, she issued rulings that gave the detainees before her weeks to find lawyers and collect evidence."

Shannon Vavra at Axios: Mnuchin: Losing Human Jobs to AI "Not Even on Our Radar Screen". Like I keep saying: Automation is the word that Trump simply will not utter, because you can't "bring jobs back" that have been lost to automation. From the same interview: "I think we should look at putting President Trump on the thousand dollar bill." Sure. Also, on Trump's stamina: "He's got perfect genes. He has incredible energy and he's unbelievably healthy." Holy shit.

"Perfect genes." I don't even know what to tell you if that sort of language doesn't disturb the shit out of you. https://t.co/i4ozhnpw8T

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] This is probably a good time for a reminder that "Trump's father instilled in him the idea that their family's success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio. 'The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,' D'Antonio says in the documentary. 'They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.'"

[CN: Misogyny] Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn't Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State. "Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, one of the top administration officials who had been working to pass the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, on Friday morning brushed off concerns about a new provision in the bill that repeals the Essential Health Benefits requirement. That provision would repeal a requirement that insurers cover a list of 10 essential benefits, including maternity care. Asked about this on CBS' 'This Morning,' Mulvaney argued that states can still require that insurance companies cover the EHBs. ...Co-host Alex Wagner asked Mulvaney about people who do not live in a state that requires maternity coverage. 'Then you can figure out a way to change the state that you live in,' Mulvaney replied."

Matt Gertz at Media Matters: The Life Cycle of a Donald Trump Lie. "Trump and his team are doing everything they can to create an atmosphere of uncertainty in the which people will trust Trump over all other sources. ...But this only works if Trump is perceived as honest. And so Trump never admits that he was wrong, never acknowledges if his story has changed, claims that it is the people who say that he's pushing falsehoods who are the real liars, and kicks up as much dust as possible around his falsehoods. This turns every lie he tells into a polarized argument, with him and his media allies on one side and his perceived enemies on the other."

Nolan D. McCaskill at Politico: Eric Trump Will Share Business Updates with Father. "In an interview with Forbes published Friday, Eric Trump described the setup as 'kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain.' 'I am deadly serious about that exercise,' he said. 'I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That's kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it's something that we honor.' But nearly two minutes later, Trump admitted that he will keep his father up to speed on some aspects of the business."

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