We Resist: Day 355

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, January 09, 2018
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 (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) 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: There Is Something Wrong with the President.

[Content Note: Nativism and white supremacy. Covers entire section.]

Megan Janetsky at ThinkProgress: 'Should I Be Planning for the Worst?': Uncertainty Looms as DREAMers Fight for Justice.
After March 5, 2018, DACA permits will gradually begin to expire. Some estimate around 1,000 DACA recipients will begin losing their status per day.

...Since September, [Donald] Trump has punted the issue to Congress, calling on lawmakers to find a permanent solution on DACA by the March 5 deadline. He has used DACA to strike deals for ramping up immigration enforcement and border wall funding, as hundreds of thousands of Dreamers wait anxiously. [20-year-old Maria Socorro Leon Pena]'s once carefully laid plans of going to college to become a pediatrician has been thrust into uncertainty.

In December, it was that very uncertainty that prompted Pena to drive across the United States to D.C. with a group of DACA recipients and advocates to push for a solution.

"It just sucks to have the place where you grew up in, the place where all your dreams were born, and where you feel like you can have the opportunity to go to school, to work, to do the best that you can, but [to have] these laws and these policies are like, literally, 'No, you can't. You can't do that,'" Pena told ThinkProgress.
It's aggressively unfair. And, I know I'm the brokenest of broken records, but I just want to emphasize again that it is nigh impossible to make any kind of plan, no less contingency plans, when your immigration status is in flux. The process is costly, it's stressful, it's time-consuming, and it's without any definitive timeline. And that's the best-case scenario, when the president isn't a white supremacist, nativist, anti-immigrant bigot who is trying to make things even more difficult for you.

Seriously, just take a minute to really contemplate what it is like to have to try to plan for either going to college or moving to another country. Have funds for both, just in case. Make practical plans for both, just in case. Do all the necessary paperwork for both, just in case. Maintain relationships and plan for your future and make major life decisions not knowing which will happen.

It is an absurd and cruel position in which the Trump administration is putting immigrants. I am SO ANGRY. I hope you are angry, too.

Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Carrie Dann at NBC News: Trump and His Border Wall Remain Biggest Wild Cards in Immigration Fight. "As [Donald] Trump meets at the White House today with Democrats and Republicans to discuss immigration, it's possible to see how they could eventually reach a deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (or DACA) that the Trump administration rescinded last fall. The deal: Democrats, with leverage to use in the upcoming spending fight (because Republicans will need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate), get to permanently protect the some 700,000 DACA recipients — in exchange for increases in border security and some changes in immigration law. And that COULD include funding for Trump's border wall or something approximating it."

Democrats have to give Nightmare Tantrum Bigot President-Boy his tall, beautiful wall if they want to save DREAMers from ruin. Terrific.

Meanwhile, about that wall... Ron Nixon at the New York Times: To Pay for Wall, Trump Would Cut Proven Border Security Measures. "The Trump administration would cut or delay funding for border surveillance, radar technology, patrol boats, and customs agents in its upcoming spending plan to curb illegal immigration — all proven security measures that officials and experts have said are more effective than building a wall along the Mexican border. ...[S]ecurity experts said the president's focus on a border wall ignores the constantly evolving nature of terrorism, immigration, and drug trafficking."

Grifters gonna grift, even if it's stealing for no purpose other than funding bullshit white nationalist fantasies.

Speaking of which... Tina Vasquez at Rewire: Trump Is 'Stealing' Benefits from Elderly Immigrants He's Expelling from the United States. "'I have worked every day in this country for 18 years, paying my taxes, paying into Social Security. Trump is taking away all we have, but this is what I want to know — this is what I want you to find out: What will happen to the benefits owed to us, the benefits we have been paying for? What happens to our money?' [asked Seventy-year-old Juan Yanez, a Temporary Protected Status recipient from El Salvador]. Little is known about the specific demographic makeup of the nearly 200,000 TPS recipients from El Salvador, but Yanez said many of his friends are like him: Elderly TPS recipients who are still working and have been paying taxes in the United States for decades. As they gear up for the possibility of mass deportations of TPS recipients, Yanez said he and his friends are having lots of conversations about being forced to return to their countries of origin, and whether or not they will be able to access the benefits owed to them."

This is straight-up theft. Trump is disgusting. His party is disgusting. They are ruthless thieves.

James Hohmann at the Washington Post: Trump Systematically Alienates the Latino Diaspora — from El Salvador to Puerto Rico and Mexico. "This is part of a strategic, full-court press to make America less hospitable to immigrants, both legal and illegal."

Yep. Me, last March: "This is also a message sent to people considering immigrating to the U.S. And that message is: Don't."

It took nearly a year for that idea to make it (in such clear language) to the pages of the Washington Post.

* * *

Yesterday afternoon, I tweeted this:


And that was before the president once again demonstrated that he's got about as much patriotism as a bag of turnips:


I just really don't want to hear about conservatives being more authentically "American" than progressives ever fucking again. It was tiresome even before this human shitshow was inaugurated and it's absolutely exhausting (and even more ludicrous) now.

* * *

[CN: Voter suppression] Tierney Sneed at TPM: Judge Orders Defunct Voter Fraud Panel to Clarify Whether DHS Is Getting Voter Data.
A question lingering for months about [Donald] Trump's now-defunct voter fraud commission and its cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security may now be answered, thanks to a judge's order in a lawsuit against the commission, which was disbanded last week.

With the announcement of the commission's dissolution, Trump, its vice chair Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and the White House have suggested that the DHS would take over the commission's work, which included a controversial request for state voter roll information.

The ACLU of Florida — which was suing the commission and Florida for turning over its state voter roll data — pointed out the mixed messages it had received as to whether the DHS would have access to the data in a court filing on Friday.

The U.S. magistrate judge overseeing the case, Jonathan Goodman, demanded in a order Monday that the commission explain by Thursday where the data is being stored and whether it has been or will be transferred to the DHS.
GOOD.


In related voting law news... Kira Lerner at ThinkProgress: Supreme Court to Consider If Citizens Have the Right Not to Vote. "On Wednesday, [Ohio]'s purging policy will go before the U.S. Supreme Court when they hear arguments in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. Lawyers for Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) will argue that the policy is necessary for voting list maintenance, while advocates for voters will say it violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). States cannot deregister a voter 'by reason of the person's failure to vote,' they argue. ...Like the policy itself, the Supreme Court's decision is likely to fall along partisan lines. If the court allows the purging to continue, voting advocates say voting rights will be in serious jeopardy. 'It really seems like this is the direction that people who want to restrict voting are moving in,' Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, told TPM. 'And this case, by potentially weakening the NVRA's restrictions on purging, could help with that effort.'"

* * *

Today in Authoritarianism Watch...


"Uh oh." — The Fairness Doctrine.

Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post: Interior Puts Science Grants Through Political Review. "The Interior Department has adopted a new screening process for the discretionary grants it makes to outside groups, instructing staff to ensure those awards 'promote the priorities' of the Trump administration. The Dec. 28 directive, obtained by The Washington Post, represents the latest attempt by Trump political appointees to put their mark on government spending. Last summer, the Environmental Protection Agency instituted a system requiring that a political appointee in the public affairs office sign off on each grant before it is awarded. Scott J. Cameron, Interior's principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget, instructed other assistant secretaries and bureau and office heads to submit most grants and cooperative agreements for approval by one of his aides."


Keep your eyes on Pence. Keep your eyes on Pence. Keep your eyes on Pence...

Adi Robertson at the Verge: Twitter Would Make Trump Remove Tweets If He Posted Someone's Private Address. "Twitter says that while it's committed to keeping 'elected world leaders' like [Donald] Trump on the service, there's at least one thing that could cross the line: tweets that reveal a private address or phone number. Bruce Daisley, Twitter's VP of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, laid out the details in an interview with the BBC. 'If someone tweets private information — if someone tweets someone's private address, phone number — then there are no-go areas where we don't permit that,' he said. 'Were he to do that, just picking a hypothetical example, then those would be areas' that were grounds for discipline. But Daisley didn't say this would lead to a ban or suspension. 'We would caution him to remove that tweet for sure,' he said, when host Emma Barnett asked if that would get Trump suspended."

What an utterly ridiculous and wildly insufficient set of unique rules for perhaps the most powerful man on the planet.


FML.

* * *

[CN: Sexual harassment and assault. Covers entire section.]

Josephine Yurcaba at Rewire: For Survivors of Prison Rape, Saying 'Me Too' Isn't an Option. "The public seems to care less about the stories of incarcerated survivors than others, as Victoria Law has reported, and does not work as hard to end their abuse or the normalization of abuse in prisons. The result is a culture of sexual violence so extreme that speaking out could put prison abuse survivors in serious danger. The mainstream Me Too movement as cultural effort falls short for them. ...In order for the proper enforcement of [the Prison Rape Elimination Act] and for the condemnation of sexual abuse generally, a larger cultural shift is needed where people stop assuming that prisoners 'deserve' what they get while they're in prison."

This is a really big issue, about which I've written a number of times before: Trying to convince people, even people who are anti-rape in every other circumstance, they are wrong that rape is something incarcerated people deserve and/or that sexual violence in prisons is a useful deterrent, is incredibly difficult. I can't put my argument any plainer than this: The solution to abuse is never going to be more abuse.

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Ivanka Trump Praises Oprah's Golden Globes Speech and Times Up Movement. OMG this asshole right here.


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