We Resist: Day 103

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:

I covered several stories earlier today already: Wilbur Ross being glib about bombing Syria; Ivanka Trump's enabling of her father; and the latest on healthcare.

[Content Note: Racism; class warfare] Dawn Godbolt at Rewire: The Life-or-Death Factor We Must Keep in Mind About Medicaid.

With all the talk about appeals, repeals, expansion, dismantling, restructuring, per-capita caps, and block grants when it comes to health insurance, it is increasingly important to keep one life-or-death factor in mind: Medicaid provides coverage for the country's most financially vulnerable individuals. And these people disproportionately happen to be people of color.

Put simply, in 2017, there are racial differences in access to health insurance and, consequently, vast differences in morbidity and mortality. Black and brown people in the United States fare far worse than white people across health measures when it comes to diabetes, hypertension, and cancer mortality, just to name a few examples. Many of these conditions are due to lack of access to preventive care.

...Medicaid is a public service that has proven results, and dismantling or restructuring it ineffectively would harm a large portion of Americans.

...[I]t's important to note that while people of color are disproportionately more likely to use Medicaid, they also remain less likely to have access to care. Latino people and Native Americans are at greatest risk of being uninsured; Black people are also disproportionately at risk of not being covered, in part due to being concentrated in Southern states that chose not to expand Medicaid.

...The future of our country depends on the next generation. There will be no "making America great again" without healthy people able to reach their full potential.

Very important stuff here.

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[CN: White supremacy; harassment] Donald Trump did not invent white supremacy, but he sure as fuck is doing everything he can to empower it. And that has consequences.

[video may autoplay at link] Bob Nightengale at USA Today: Orioles' Adam Jones Berated by Racist Taunts at Fenway Park. "Baltimore Orioles All-Star center fielder Adam Jones was berated by racist taunts at Fenway Park while a bag of peanuts was thrown at him Monday night, calling it one of the worst cases of fan abuse he has heard in his career. 'A disrespectful fan threw a bag of peanuts at me,' Jones said, 'I was called the N-word a handful of times tonight. Thanks. Pretty awesome.' Jones, one of just 62 African-Americans on opening-day rosters this year, said he has been subjected to racist hecklings in the past at Fenway Park, but said this was one of the worst experiences of his 12-year career. 'It's different,' he said. 'Very unfortunate. I heard there was 59 or 60 ejections tonight in the ballpark. It is what it is, right. I just go out and play baseball. It's unfortunate that people need to resort to those type of epithets to degrade another human being. I'm trying to make a living for myself and for my family.'"

CBS/AP: Bananas Found Hanging from Noose-Shaped Strings on D.C. Campus. "Officials at American University in the nation's capital are investigating what they say are racist incidents in which bananas were found hanging from string in the shape of nooses on campus. University officials said in an email on Monday to students, faculty and staff that the bananas were marked with the letters AKA. The letters are those of the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. ...American University President Neil Kerwin said in a memorandum on Monday that 'the crude and racially insensitive act of bigotry reported' that morning was being investigated by the university's Campus Police with help from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and other university offices and senior officials."

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[CN: Bigotry; fascism] David Remnick at the New Yorker: A Hundred Days of Trump. This is just a really terrific piece summarizing the opening chapter of Donald Trump's presidency. Head on over and read the whole thing.

Margaret Talev and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: Trump Says He'd Meet with Kim Jong Un Under Right Circumstances. Actually what he said was that he'd "be honored" to meet with Kim Jong Un: "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it. If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that." And then he went on to tacitly acknowledge he says this outrageous and dangerous shit for ratings: "Most political people would never say that, but I'm telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news." We have breaking news. JFC.

Meanwhile, during his morning tweetshitz, Trump suggested that we need a government shutdown:

The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017

either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good "shutdown" in September to fix mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017

There has never been a United States president who cared so little about this country, its people, or the consequences to the aforementioned of anything he says or does.

Travis Gettys at Raw Story: Jared Kushner Failed to Reveal Business Ties to Goldman Sachs, George Soros, and Peter Thiel on Government Forms. "The president's son-in-law and senior adviser didn't identify his partial ownership stake in Cadre, a tech startup pairing investors with real estate developers, and other ties to large financial institutions on his disclosure forms, reported the Wall Street Journal. The 36-year-old Kushner's stake in Cadre makes him business partners with other part owners such as the Goldman Sachs Group Inc., conservative bête noire George Soros and tech investor Peter Thiel—a prominent backer of [Donald] Trump. The newspaper reported that Kushner failed to divulge those ties, as well as loans worth at least $1 billion, from more than 20 lenders, and personal guarantees on more than $300 million of that debt."

Lachlan Markay and Kimberly Dozier at the Daily Beast: Trump Campaign Pulls Legally Suspect Ad with McMaster in Uniform. "Donald Trump's reelection campaign quietly took down an ad on Monday that may have skirted federal laws that govern politicking by active-duty U.S. servicemembers. The 30-second video...featured b-roll of the president shaking hands with his National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, just after he accepted the job at Mar-a-Lago. McMaster was wearing his Army uniform in the clip... Senior administration officials were not aware of the ad when contacted Monday morning, and asked for time to view it and check with their legal advisors. They declined to comment after the ad was taken down."

Meredith Newman at the Capital Gazette: Pence to Speak at Naval Academy Graduation. "Mike Pence will address the Naval Academy Class of 2017 at its graduation ceremony on May 26, breaking the recent trend of the commander-in-chief addressing the midshipmen in his first year as president. [Donald] Trump instead will deliver his first commencement address as president to graduates of Liberty University, a Christian university in Virginia, May 13, followed by an address at U.S. Coast Guard Academy ceremonies May 17 in New London, Connecticut." Pence goes to Naval Academy; Trump to Liberty University. Wow. WOW.

Mallory Shelbourne at the Hill: DeVos to Give Commencement Speech at Historically Black University. "Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will give the commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University, the historically black establishment said. DeVos will speak at the school's commencement ceremony on May 10 on its campus in Daytona Beach, Fla." This, after DeVos appropriated and rewrote HBCUs' purpose and mission, to suit her own personal bailiwick of privatizing education. Gross.

[CN: Homophobia] Lambda Legal: We're Suing a Mississippi Funeral Home for Refusing to Transport and Cremate the Body of Gay Man. "Lambda Legal today announced it has joined a lawsuit against a Picayune, MS, funeral home for refusing to provide any service for Robert Huskey after his death, leaving his 82-year-old husband, Jack Zawadski, desperate to make other arrangements in the hours after his beloved spouse's passing. The suit seeks damages for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, and the intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress."

[CN: Homophobia; violence] Luis Damian Veron at Towleroad: Russian Police Arrest LGBT Activists Demonstrating Against Torture of Gay Men in Chechnya. "A demonstration by LGBT activists against anti-gay abuses in Chechnya held in the midst of a St. Petersburg May Day march was broken up by Russian police today as around ten to twenty protesters were arrested. The protesters were detained near the Anichkov Bridge by officers in riot gear, who led them into police vans. The activists had wrapped themselves in rainbow and Chechen flags and had lain down in the street, smeared with fake blood, to symbolize the ongoing detentions, torture and deaths of gay men in the Russian republic in the Caucasus." And as German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks out, the U.S. president remains silent.

[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] Yesterday I shared a piece about the police killing of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, a Black boy fatally shot by police, who justified the shooting by saying the boy and his friends were "backing down the street toward officers in an aggressive manner." As I have observed many times before, the immediate official account by police following the fatal shootings of Black people almost inevitably changes as witnesses or video undercut their version, and this time is no different. E.A. Crunden at ThinkProgress: Police Story About Why They Gunned Down an Unarmed Black Ninth Grader Falls Apart. Camera footage has revealed the car was not driving in "an aggressive manner." It was also driving forward, not in reverse.

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