We Resist: Day 272

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 President Because He's a Terrible Human Being. And from late yesterday: Trump Muslim Ban Thwarted a Third Time.

Matt Zapotosky at the Washington Post: Second Judge Rules Against Latest Travel Ban, Saying Trump's Own Words Show It Was Aimed at Muslims.

A federal judge in Maryland early Wednesday issued a second halt on the latest version of [Donald] Trump's travel ban, asserting that the president's own comments on the campaign trail and on Twitter convinced him that the directive was akin to an unconstitutional Muslim ban.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang issued a somewhat less complete halt on the ban than his counterpart in Hawaii did a day earlier, blocking the administration from enforcing the directive only on those who lacked a "bona fide" relationship with a person or entity in the United States, such as family members or some type of professional or other engagement in the United States.

But in some ways, Chuang's ruling was more personally cutting to Trump, as he said the president's own words cast his latest attempt to impose a travel blockade as the "inextricable re-animation of the twice-enjoined Muslim ban."

Omar Jadwat, who directs of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project and represented those suing in Maryland over the ban, said: "Like the two versions before it, [Donald] Trump's latest travel ban is still a Muslim ban at its core. And like the two before it, this one is going down to defeat in the courts."

In other immigration news...

As @Shakestweetz has been saying, this admin was never going to stop with undocumented immigrants. https://t.co/Todey9o8qS

— Chloé Pascual (@chloepascual) October 18, 2017

From the linked article at Mic by Emily Singer and Ashley Edwards: "Army recruiters have been told to stop enlisting green card holders into the Army effective immediately, according to an email sent to military recruiters and obtained by Mic, a move that experts say breaks federal law."

And in other military news... Susan McCord at the Augusta Chronicle: Religious Freedom Group Reports Christian Proselytizing Forced on Some Soldiers at Fort Gordon Barbecue. "A religious freedom organization is calling on post leadership at Fort Gordon to take action after some soldiers reported they were forced to undergo fundamentalist Christian proselytizing by an Army chaplain during a Saturday 'spiritual' barbecue. A post official said attendance was voluntary. [Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation] said the soldiers were marched to a Fort Gordon chapel Saturday under belief the event was mandatory. At the chapel, loud Christian rock music played and an Army chaplain tried 'his level best to get them to accept and surrender to his version of the gospel of Jesus Christ,' Weinstein said."

Christian Supremacy has long been an issue in the U.S. military. But previous presidents, unlike Donald Trump, weren't keen to be commander-in-chief of a white nationalist Christian crusade. George W. Bush was bad, and he doesn't hold a tiki torch to Trump. This is very concerning.

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Shannon Vavra at Axios: Poll: 46% Think Media Invent Stories About Trump. "That 46% is largely divided on partisan lines — 76% of Republican voters think media make up stories about Trump while only one in five Democrat voters think that, a Politico and Morning Consult poll shows. Those who strongly approve of Trump's job performance are very likely (85%) to think the media makes up stories."

Because they refuse to listen to the "fake news" media and thus only listen to Trump, who continually tells them that the media is feeding them "fake news," creating a self-reinforcing loop of fuckery.

I mean: Esme Cribb at TPM: Trump Vents on Twitter About 'Fiction Writers,' Democrats, Obamacare. "Donald Trump took to Twitter late Tuesday afternoon to complain about 'fiction writers' at cable networks and 'dying magazines and newspapers.' ...'So much Fake News being put in dying magazines and newspapers,' Trump tweeted. 'Only place worse may be @NBCNews, @CBSNews, @ABC and @CNN. Fiction writers!' It was unclear whether Trump was referring to any particular report of a number published recently that seemed likely to draw his ire."

It doesn't even matter. A specific report, or reporting generally. Either way. Neither. Who cares. The whole objective is to convince his base that the media is lying to them about Trump. And he's been wildly successful in achieving that goal, just by reiterating "fake news" relentlessly.

The target doesn't matter. What matters is making sure that people hear it over and over.

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[Content Note: Disablism] Senator Tammy Duckworth at the Washington Post: Congress Wants to Make Americans with Disabilities Second-Class Citizens Again.

At the signing ceremony [for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990], President George H.W. Bush noted that before the ADA, "tragically, for too many Americans, the blessings of liberty have been limited or even denied. The Civil Rights Act of '64 took a bold step towards righting that wrong. But the stark fact remained that people with disabilities were still victims of segregation and discrimination, and this was intolerable." Bush declared, "Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down."

Decades later, the forces of discrimination are working hard to rebuild that wall. Led by the hospitality and retail industries, special interests want to shift the burden of ADA compliance away from business owners and onto individuals with disabilities. They're backing a bill that has already passed the House Judiciary Committee, the so-called ADA Education and Reform Act, which would reward businesses that fail to comply with the law. The bill would allow businesses to wait until they are notified of their failure to meet legal obligations before they even have to start removing barriers that prevent Americans with disabilities from leading independent lives.

This offensive legislation would segregate the disability community, making it the only protected class under civil rights law that must rely on "education" — rather than strong enforcement — to guarantee access to public spaces.

...For decades, from enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through passage of the ADA, Congress has worked to enshrine the principle in law that no American should be denied access to a public space because of who they are, be it their race, nationality, religion, gender, or disability. The ADA Education and Reform Act betrays this bipartisan legacy.

The Republicans don't care about their legacy. All they care about is destruction and winning. At any cost.

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Annie Karni and Josh Dawsey at Politico: Spicer Interviewed by Mueller's Team. "Donald Trump's former press secretary Sean Spicer met with special counsel Robert Mueller's team on Monday for an interview that lasted much of the day, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting. During his sitdown, Spicer was grilled about the firing of former FBI director James Comey and his statements regarding the firing, as well as about Trump's meetings with Russians officials including one with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office, one person familiar with the meeting said." I'm sure Mueller got tons of great info, since Spicer definitely isn't known to be a world-class fucking liar.

Ari Melber, Meredith Mandell, and Mirjam Lablans at NBC News: Putin Rival Ties Kushner Meeting to Kremlin Bankers. "A prominent exiled Russian oligarch said in an exclusive interview with NBC News that he is nearly certain Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to collaborate with the Trump campaign, and that he believes a top Russian banker was not 'acting on his own behalf' when he held a controversial meeting with Jared Kushner last December. The pointed remarks come from a longtime Putin rival, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil executive who was Russia's richest man before he was imprisoned and exiled by the Kremlin. 'I am almost convinced that Putin's people have tried to influence the U.S. election in some way,' Khodorkovsky told MSNBC's Ari Melber in his first U.S. television interview since Trump took office."

Khodorkovsky estimates the likelihood that Putin tried personally to collude with Donald Trump's campaign to affect the election as a "9 out of 10." I don't guess it needs to be said that he has made these statements at great personal risk. I hope he remains safe.

[CN: White supremacy; nativism; Islamophobia] Benjamin Elgin and Vernon Silver at Bloomberg: Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States. "Unlike Russian efforts to secretly influence the 2016 election via social media, this American-led campaign was aided by direct collaboration with employees of Facebook and Google. They helped target the ads to more efficiently reach the intended audiences, according to internal reports from the ad agency that ran the campaign, as well as five people involved with the efforts. Facebook advertising salespeople, creative advisers, and technical experts competed with sales staff from Alphabet Inc.'s Google for millions in ad dollars from Secure America Now, the conservative, nonprofit advocacy group whose campaign included a mix of anti-Hillary Clinton and anti-Islam messages, the people said."

[CN: Bigotry] Kevin Collier at BuzzFeed: Twitter Was Warned Repeatedly About This Fake Account Run by a Russian Troll Farm and Refused to Take It Down. "Twitter took 11 months to close a Russian troll account that claimed to speak for the Tennessee Republican Party even after that state's real GOP notified the social media company that the account was a fake. The account, @TEN_GOP, was enormously popular, amassing at least 136,000 followers between its creation in November 2015 and when Twitter shut it down in August, according to a snapshot of the account captured by the Internet Archive just before the account was 'permanently suspended.' ...Twitter, already under fire, along with Facebook, for being slow to recognize its role in Russian election meddling, declined to comment. A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company does not comment on individual accounts."

Five years ago, if you'd told me that Donald Trump would be president and BuzzFeed would be doing some of the most trenchant reporting on technological espionage, I probably would have just gone ahead and fired myself directly into the sun then.

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Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: White House Doc Links Manufacturing Decline to Uptick in Abortions Sans Data. "A document circulated within the White House in September claimed that the demise of the American manufacturing industry has led to an uptick in abortions, divorce, infertility and opioid abuse without offering any evidence, according to a Tuesday report in the Washington Post. ...One unnamed administration official told the Post that the document was distributed to White House staff, while a different administration official said that Cabinet leaders saw the document." Cool.

[CN: Reproductive coercion] Tina Vasquez at Rewire: 'Anti-Choice Fanaticism' in the U.S. Immigration System: The Real Reason Jane Doe's Abortion Request Is Being Denied. "On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a second emergency action on behalf of Jane Doe, an unaccompanied immigrant minor being 'held hostage' by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), after a district court on Wednesday denied a request for a temporary restraining order that would have allowed the teen to access an abortion. ...'The Trump administration's action is shocking — a young woman is essentially being held hostage and forced by federal officials to continue a pregnancy against her will,' said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. 'And this case isn't the only one — nationally, the federal government is obstructing young immigrant women's access to abortion. It's blatantly unconstitutional, not to mention unconscionable.'" Goddammit.

[CN: Homophobia; self-harm; eliminationism] Michael Fitzgerald at Towleroad: Flyers Encouraging LGBT Kids to Commit Suicide Posted at Cleveland State University on Day It Opens LGBT Center. "Fliers were distributed around the Cleveland State University (CSU) on Monday urging LGBT students to commit suicide. Reading 'Follow you fellow f----ts,' the fliers appeared on the same day the school's LGBT center opened. It included statistics of suicide rates in the LGBT community and an illustration of a man with a noose tied around his neck." This, within the context of Donald Trump having "joked" that Mike Pence wants to hang all gays.

The ugliness that this administration has unleashed and empowered. I will never, ever, stop being filthy angry.

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