We Resist: Day 175

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, July 13, 2017
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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:

Earlier today by me: Trump's Reuters Interview Is a Pile of (Telling) Lies and Trump to "Dramatically Scale Back Legal Immigration". And by Fannie: Donald Trump: Christian Culture Warrior.

REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON TRUMPCARE.

Burgess Everett, Jennifer Haberkorn, and Sarah Karlin-Smith at Politico: Senate GOP's New Health Care Bill Expected to Include Controversial Cruz Amendment. "The Senate Republicans' draft Obamacare repeal bill due to be released on Thursday will tentatively include a controversial amendment from Ted Cruz, according to sources familiar with the matter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will unveil the bill on Thursday morning at a closed-door, members-only meeting." Transparency! Seethe.

Sean Sullivan, John Wagner, and Kelsey Snell at the Washington Post: Trump: 'I Will Be Very Angry' If GOP Senators Don't Pass a Health Care Bill. "Trump put the onus squarely on Senate Republicans on Wednesday to pass a health-care bill, declaring that he will be 'very angry' if the chamber falls short on a long-standing promise of his party. ...'I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me,' Trump said. 'It has to get passed. They have to do it. They have to get together and get it done.' The president's remarks also came amid concerns from conservative lawmakers and activists that McConnell's revamped measure would not undo the Affordable Care Act aggressively enough." Horrendous.

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Wow:


This is genuinely great timing, given that conservatives are working hard to create a "both sides!" angle with their bullshit story about Hillary Clinton and Ukraine, and the press is doing their dirty work for them:


The Democrats should absolutely force the Republicans to announce what side they're fucking on. Are they on the United States' side, or not?

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Noor Al-Sibai at Raw Story: Kremlin Spokesperson Asked in 2016 About Hacked DNC Emails Deferred the Question to Trump Jr.
On Wednesday, a journalist on Twitter unearthed a year-old article about the Democratic National Committee hacks that features a Kremlin spokesperson referring questions about the hacks to Donald Trump, Jr. — a referral that, in hindsight, appears very telling.

"Fallout from the hack also reverberated at the Kremlin, where a spokesman declined to comment on the hack except to refer reporters to comments by Trump's son, Don Jr., calling the allegations part of a pattern of 'lie after lie,'" a Washington Post article from July 25, 2016 reads.

"'Mr. Trump Jr. has already strongly responded' to the Clinton campaign's claims, the Russian spokesman said, according to the news agency Tass," it continued.

"I tweeted this on July 26, 2016," journalist Sarah Kendzior wrote of the excerpt above. "Found it odd that Kremlin spokesman referred inquiries about hacks to Donald Trump Jr. Now we know why!"

Kendzior's unearthing came after a bombshell dinnertime article published in the Wall Street Journal that claims Russian officials were overheard discussing Trump's run prior to his official filing in 2015.
Don't mess with Kendzior. She's got all the receipts. All of them.


James Doubek at NPR: Justice Department Defies Court Deadline to Release Sessions' Contacts with Russians. "In defiance of a court order, the Justice Department is refusing to release part of a security form dealing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions' contacts with the Russian government. ...'Jeff Sessions is our nation's top law enforcement officer, and it is shocking one of his first acts after being named Attorney General was to mislead his own agency about a matter of national security,' [Austin Evers, the director of American Oversight, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March for sections of the Standard Form 86 relating to Sessions' contact 'with any official of the Russian government'] said in a statement. He continued: 'The court gave DOJ thirty days to produce Attorney General Sessions's security clearance form, DOJ has already confirmed its contents to the press and Sessions has testified about it to Congress, so there is no good reason to withhold this document from the public.'" Indeed.


Good question!

Josh Dawsey at Politico: Trump's Lawyers Try to Control Unruly White House. "Trump's legal team is attempting to separate the president from Donald Trump Jr. and the son's legal team on Russia matters, as well from Jared Kushner and his legal team, over concerns that the blurred lines could create unnecessary problems, according to these sources. They have tried to block Trump's warring band of aides from joining meetings with his lawyers, warning that they could become witnesses or be forced to hire lawyers if they attend." This White House's corruption has made it utterly dysfunctional. We are not being governed.


Dahlia Lithwick at Slate: Orchestrated Chaos. "How is it possible that the blue-ribbon supposedly bipartisan commission that Kobach co-chairs with Vice President Mike Pence forgot to do basic homework and paperwork—not to mention forgetting to find servers to store data—before sending out letters to state officials asking for all that private information? It looks and sounds a lot like the rollout of the first travel ban, all thunderclaps and mayhem without a shred of decent lawyering. But this wasn't a Steve Bannon special; this was supposed to be a terrifying effort at mass vote suppression done by experts in mass vote suppression. The rollout speaks to a certain ethos in Trump's Washington: He doesn't bring in experts who seek to effectuate change within legal parameters. He brings in kooks and nihilists who don't care about how things get done—or even if they get done. The end game is just to break stuff." Yup.

Speaking of election tampering, Ari Berman's Twitter thread which begins here is a must-read.

And more on Trump's nativist immigration "reform"... Maria Sacchetti at the Washington Post: DHS's Kelly: Program Shielding 800,000 [Undocumented] Immigrants May Be in Jeopardy.
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that an initiative that grants work permits to more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants may not survive a looming legal challenge.

Kelly declined to take questions after the meeting, but his spokesman said the secretary told the members that the Obama-era program, which shields immigrants brought to the United States as children, is at risk.

...Members of the Hispanic caucus said they urged Kelly to support bipartisan legislation known as the Bridge Act that would effectively preserve the DACA program. But they expressed skepticism that the Republican-controlled Congress would pass any law to spare undocumented immigrants from deportation — or that the Trump administration would defend DACA in court.

"Jeff Sessions is going to say, 'Deport them,'" a visibly shaken Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said in English and Spanish, noting that the attorney general had been a fierce opponent of illegal immigration as a senator from Alabama. "If you're going to count on Jeff Sessions to save DACA, then DACA is ended."
Fucking hell.

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