We Resist: Day 223

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, August 30, 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:

Earlier today by me: Trump Is a Terrible Person and a Terrible President.

This afternoon, Donald Trump will give a speech in Springfield, Missouri, where he will deliver a speech introducing his tax reform before a captive audience of employees of Springfield's largest manufacturer.

The speech will reportedly be short on details about the plan, which were secretly negotiated, and instead we'll get a bunch of dishonest populist rhetoric about his wealth redistribution upwards plan will "'un-rig' the economy, resurrect 'Main Street,' and end 'the special interest loopholes that have only benefited the wealthy and powerful few.'"
The Wall Street Journal's top tax reporter Richard Rubin asked the officials on [a preview call with the White House] how they could claim their tax reform was taking things away from the well-connected few when the president's plans so far have repealed the estate tax, lowered the top rate, and lowered the corporate rate.

A White House official on the call responded to Rubin by portraying a massive corporate tax cut as a populist measure. "How I would look at this, from an American worker's perspective, it's basically a 'made in America tax.'"
Sure. Why not. *jumps into Christmas tree*


Utterly reprehensible. And totally predictable.

Patrick Kulp at Mashable: Trump's White House Nixes Obama Effort to Collect Data on Pay by Gender and Race. "The White House says it will halt a rule that would make businesses report how much they pay workers of different genders and races. The announcement takes aim at a major plank of President Barack Obama's equal pay legacy. His administration expanded the scope of the equal employment opportunity survey to include the requirements through an executive action last year. The hope was that the change would help illuminate systemic wage discrimination against women and minorities, a problem that persists in part because of limited available data. But businesses immediately complained of the administrative strain the regulation would put on their operations and questioned whether the information would be useful or securely handled. As was widely expected, Donald Trump's administration sided with them." Of course.

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: After Critical Fox Segment, Trump Claims He Purposefully Left Admin Posts Open. "After conservative commentator Laura Ingraham on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for letting key posts go unfilled, [Donald] Trump fired back on Twitter, claiming that those positions had been left vacant on purpose. '.@foxandfriends We are not looking to fill all of those positions. Don't need many of them — reduce size of government.'" Ah, the old Pee-wee Herman defense. "I meant to do that!"

Brad Lendon and Joshua Berlinger at CNN: [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Next Target Guam, North Korea Says. "North Korea's launch of a missile over Japan was a prelude to more military operations directed at the American territory of Guam, North Korean state media warned Wednesday. The country's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported leader Kim Jong Un presided over the dawn launch Tuesday of the 'ultra-modern rocket system,' the first missile ever fired from the capital Pyongyang." Everything is fine. (Everything is not fine.)


(Why is the New York Times even giving Erik Prince a platform to make this disgusting argument?! The Times is a real shitshow today. Even more than most days.)

Betsy Woodruff, Katie Zavadski, and Ben Collins at the Daily Beast: [CN: Misogynist and homophobic slurs; scatological references; harassment] Trump Pal Bought [Offensive URLs], Then the Sites Attacked Their Mutual Enemy.
Documents disclosed this week show just how far former Trump Organization adviser and convicted felon Felix Sater will go to help his one-time business associate [Donald] Trump. In emails released by The New York Times on Monday, Sater bragged to the president's lawyer in 2015 that, with Kremlin help, "our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it."

Now a dive into Sater's history on the web and in courts suggests the lengths Sater is prepared to go to damage a common enemy of himself and Trump.

Sater used his email and office address to register websites including IAmAFaggot.com, IAmADirtbag.com, several variations of FecalBoy.com and FecalMatter.info, CuntMan.net, Blackmailer.net, VaginaBoy.com, and dozens of other crudely named domains.

While registered to Sater, some of those sites attacked Jody Kriss, Sater's former business associate. The two used to work together at the Trump Tower-headquartered real-estate firm Bayrock, where Kriss served as CFO until he left the company and sued them for money laundering, according to Bloomberg. Donald Trump was initially targeted in court by Kriss, as well.

Sater's email and office address were used to register more than a dozen domain names relating to Kriss. Those sites then attacked Kriss for his lawsuit against the Trump family, among others.
What the hell did I just read?

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Andrew Kaczynski at CNN: Rep. Rohrabacher Says 'Rendezvous' Being Set up with Trump to Relay Info from WikiLeaks' Assange on DNC Hack.
Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said Monday that a "rendezvous" is being set up between him and [Donald] Trump to relay information he received from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about the hack of the Democratic National Committee last year.

Rohrabacher, who is considered to be among the most pro-Russia members in Congress, met with Assange earlier this month and claims Assange told him that Russia was not involved in the hacking. Rohrabacher said after the meeting that he wanted to brief Trump on what Assange told him. Appearing on the Sean Hannity radio show Monday afternoon, the California congressman said that meeting was in the process of being set up.

"It is my understanding from other parties who are trying to arrange a rendezvous with myself and the President, it is being arranged for me to give him the firsthand information from (Assange)," Rohrabacher said.
What in almighty fuck?! I don't even understand how any of this is legal, which is to say nothing of how aggressively unethical it is.

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Tierney Sneed at TPM: Mueller Probe Issues Subpoenas for Manafort's Spox and Former Lawyer. "Unnamed sources told CNN that Akin Gump attorney Melissa Laurenza and PR rep Jason Maloni were issued subpoenas. The subpoenas were 'seeking documents and testimony,' the CNN report said, adding that it was 'unclear what specific information the Mueller investigators believe Laurenza and Maloni may have.'" Oh.

Lindsay Gibbs at ThinkProgress: [CN: Rape culture] The Trump Administration Is Beginning to Undermine Protections for Sexual Assault Survivors. "On Tuesday night, Tyler Kingkade of BuzzFeed reported that Candice Jackson, the current head of the Office for Civil Rights, has been privately expressing her intent to begin a process that could potentially end a 2011 directive that lays out the Title IX guidelines that schools must follow when a student reports a sexual assault on campus. ...And on Wednesday morning, Alexandra Brodsky, the co-founder of Know Your IX, a project that works to empower students to end gender violence in schools, reported that the Trump administration had removed the 2014 White House 'Rape and Sexual Assault: Renewed Call to Action' report on the official White House website." Rage seethe boil.

Michael Fitzgerald at Towleroad: [CN: Homophobic and transphobic hatred; Christian supremacy] Nashville Statement: 150 Evangelical Leaders Release Disgusting Anti-LGBTQ Manifesto. "A coalition of more than 150 evangelical leaders has released a manifesto stating that 'it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.' ...The statement was issued following a meeting last Friday of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) at the Southern Baptist Convention's (SBC) Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's annual conference in Nashville. CBMW president Denny Burk said the statement aimed to mitigate Christians' 'confusion' over issues of sexuality." In other words, they were worried that some of their parishioners might have been getting a little too tolerant, so they felt obliged to put the kibosh on that nonsense! Assholes.

Kenrya Rankin at Colorlines: [CN: Racism] Predominantly White State Legislatures Are Blocking Laws That Benefit Black Workers. "On Monday (August 28), a Missouri state law went into effect that stripped more than 30,000 workers in St. Louis of a hard won local minimum wage increase, dropping their hourly pay floor from $10 an hour back to just $7.70. But St. Louis isn't the only city where state laws stand in the way of progress. A new brief from advocacy network Partnership for Working Families found that this legislation is rampant, with predominantly-White legislative bodies passing laws that circumvent legislation that would benefit communities of color." Goddammit.

Greg Bluestein at the Atlanta Journal Constitution: [CN: Misogynoir; threats of violence] Georgia Lawmaker: Talk of Ditching Confederate Statues Could Cause Democrat to 'Go Missing'. "A Georgia Republican lawmaker warned a Democratic former colleague who criticized his support for Civil War monuments on Facebook that she won't be 'met with torches but something a lot more definitive' if she continues to call for the removal of statues in south Georgia. State Rep. Jason Spencer, a Woodbine Republican, also wrote former state Rep. LaDawn Jones that 'people in South Georgia are people of action, not drama' and suggested some who don't understand that 'will go missing in the Okefenokee.'" Fucking hell. This is what Donald Trump has empowered. This is what we must resist with everything we've got.

In good news...


Between mayors of U.S. cities suing this administration on behalf of undocumented residents; governors and mayors announcing that they will still meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord irrespective of Trump's decision to pull out; people across the country resisting in persistent, resolute, and creative ways; and people doing things like getting in fucking boats to pull their neighbors out of floods, Donald Trump and his deplorable party are going to have a goddamned hard time ruining this country.

They may succeed, but we're going to give them all kinds of hell before it's over.

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