We Resist: Day 250

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: Lock Them Up, or Whatever and Trump Is a Vile Disgrace As a Humanitarian Crisis Emerges in Puerto Rico and Homeland Security Will Start Surveilling All Immigrants.

[Content Note: Nativism] Josh Gerstein, Jeremy C.F. Lin, and Lily Mihalik at Politico: These Countries Are on Trump's New Travel Ban List. "On Sunday, [Donald] Trump announced the latest revision to his administration's travel ban. The expanded plan places an indefinite ban on new visas for people from eight countries, rather than the previous 90-day restrictions. Officials say the new policy, effective Oct. 18, comes after a review of nearly 200 countries and their ability to comply with U.S. requests for data on potential travelers."

October 18 is the same day the new DHS guideline on surveilling immigrants goes into effect.

Newly added countries: North Korea, Chad, and Venezuela. Iraq and Sudan are off the list, and Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen remain.

Trump is doing the bare minimum, it appears, to undermine the courts' rationale for overruling the "travel ban," by giving his administration just enough space to argue it's not all Muslim countries anymore.

At the Guardian, Oliver Laughland has a good explainer on the newest iteration of the "travel ban."

Kevin Sieff at the Washington Post: Why Did the U.S. Travel Ban Add Counterterrorism Partner Chad? No One Seems Quite Sure.

For years, the United States and its European allies have praised the central African nation of Chad as a helpful partner in the fight against terrorism.

But on Sunday — shocking both Chadians and regional analysts — the Trump administration announced that Chad's citizens would be included in the newest American travel ban. In a statement, the U.S. government cited the presence of terrorist groups in the country and said Chad "does not adequately share public safety and terrorism related information."

Indeed, Chad does face a number of terrorist threats, most notably from Boko Haram along its western border with Nigeria. But many other countries in the region are not included in the U.S. travel restrictions, including Nigeria, Mali, and Niger are considered far more vulnerable to terrorism.

"The reaction has been astonishment and then indignation," said Nour Ibedou, director of the Chadian Human Rights Association. "We do not understand how our country achieved this lack of trust from the United States."

This administration is a fucking shitshow!

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Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: 'Reasonable' Republicans Are Betraying Us, Too.

Trump's unseriousness has become so grotesque, so all-consuming, that it has distracted us from dozens of other dilettantes and demagogues in Washington — far too many of them other members of Trump's own political party.

Trump may be a toddler, we keep telling ourselves, but at least some (comparative) grown-ups on Capitol Hill are thinking things through. Maybe we don't agree with them all the time; maybe they have a different vision for the role of government than many of us do. Still, at least a few thoughtful, moderate, principled, solutions-oriented people in the legislature are working to offset the White House's abdication of policy leadership.

The flaming turd that is Cassidy-Graham should disabuse us all of that notion.

What's been threatening the health-care coverage of tens of millions of Americans isn't Trump. It's the entire Republican Party.

Correct.

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BBC News: North Korea Accuses US of Declaring War. "North Korea's foreign minister has accused [Donald] Trump of declaring war on his country and said Pyongyang had the right to shoot down US bombers. Ri Yong-ho said this could apply even if the warplanes were not in North Korea's airspace. The White House dismissed the statement as 'absurd.' The Pentagon warned Pyongyang to stop provocations. A UN spokesman said fiery talk could lead to fatal misunderstandings."

Anna Fifield at the Washington Post: North Korea Seeks Help from Republican Analysts: 'What's up with Trump?' "North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of [Donald] Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un's regime. The outreach began before the current eruption of threats between the two leaders, but will likely become only more urgent as Trump and Kim have descended into name-calling that, many analysts worry, sharply increases the chances of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings. 'Their No. 1 concern is Trump. They can't figure him out,' said one person with direct knowledge of North Korea's approach to Asia experts with Republican connections."

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[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Pam Wright at the Weather Channel: Iceberg Four Times the Size of Manhattan Just Broke From an Antarctic Glacier, Fueling Concerns of Runaway Ice Retreat. "A massive chunk of ice has broken off from a key Antarctic glacier, creating an iceberg four and a half times the size of Manhattan. The iceberg that broke from the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica on Saturday measures some 100 square miles. It is the second time in two years the glacier has lost such a large piece and scientists are concerned that the latest break signifies a considerable change in the behavior of the glacier."

Matthew Daly at the AP: Zinke: One-Third of Interior Employees Not Loyal to Trump. "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday that nearly one-third of employees at his department are not loyal to him and [Donald] Trump, adding that he is working to change the department's regulatory culture to be more business friendly. Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, said he knew when he took over the 70,000-employee department in March that, 'I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag.' In a speech to an oil industry group, Zinke compared Interior to a pirate ship that captures 'a prized ship at sea and only the captain and the first mate row over' to finish the mission."

[CN: White supremacy; disablist language] Alex Isenstadt at Politico: Bannon to Alabama: 'They Think You're a Pack of Morons'.

Steve Bannon barreled onstage at a raucous rally inside a barn [in Fairhope, Alabama] to deliver a warning to the national Republican establishment ahead of Tuesday's special Senate election: I'm just getting started.

In a thundering 20-minute speech Monday night that was partly a rally for insurgent Senate candidate Roy Moore but equally a declaration of war on the Republican Party hierarchy, Bannon made clear that this next act of his political career could make the Republican civil war of recent years look tame.

"For Mitch McConnell and Ward Baker and Karl Rove and Steven Law — all the instruments that tried to destroy Judge Moore and his family — your day of reckoning is coming," Bannon said, referring to the Republican Senate leader and a trio of prominent GOP strategists backing incumbent Sen. Luther Strange. "But more important, for the donors who put up the [campaign] money and the corporatists that put up the money, your day of reckoning is coming, too."

The Nazis are coming for the Republican Party, too. This was how it was always going to be. The Republicans didn't care, as long as courting Nazis was getting them elected.

Adam Entous, Craig Timberg, and Elizabeth Dwoskin at the Washington Post: Russian Operatives Used Facebook Ads to Exploit America's Racial and Religious Divisions. "The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign. ...These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another." NO SHIT.

So much of the "news" about the election is not actually news at all to people who have been paying attention. https://t.co/2ccIeJNSHO

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 26, 2017

I see stories like this shared with "BOOM" and I think: "Boom? Is that the sound of a penny dropping after falling for two fucking years?" https://t.co/lXcl0XdBxn

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 26, 2017

Finally:

This is a very good piece at Sports Illustrated by Charlie Pierce: Athletes Are Not Going to 'Stick to Sports' and That's an Admirably American Thing. "In short, if you're going to perform national anthems, you're going to have politics. And if you have politics, you're going to have political statements and, this being the United States of America, those statements are not always going to make everyone comfortable."

This is a very good piece at Texas Monthly by Dan Solomon: How a Texas Green Beret Helped the NFL's National Anthem Protests Evolve. "Dropping to one knee, in most settings, is seen as a respectful gesture. In religions around the world, people kneel during prayer; it's widely considered a symbol of reverence in almost any setting — except when it has happened during the national anthem at a sporting event in the past year. When people, including the president, declare that players who take a knee during the anthem are disrespecting the troops, the flag, or the country, they're speaking out against a gesture that a Green Beret helped popularize."

And this is a very good piece at Slate by Jamelle Bouie: "Us" Versus "Them": Trump's Obsession with the NFL Protests Above All Else Shows Just Whose President He Is. "These events have at least one obvious takeaway: They underscore the vital role of racist grievance in [Donald] Trump's message and rhetoric. His attacks on black athletes are of a piece with the 'birtherism' that jump-started his political career. His belief that the protesting players are ungrateful — that they were given their success ('privilege') and have no place to complain — recalls his demand for Barack Obama's college transcripts and his view that the president was an unqualified product of affirmative action. As Jelani Cobb argued for the New Yorker, this language is euphemism for an old charge against prosperous blacks who dared speak against unfair treatment: uppity."

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