We Resist: Day 362

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, January 16, 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 Fannie: The Hell That Misogyny Has Wrought. And by me: Steve Bannon to Testify Today and The Good Guys Who Have Betrayed My Trust and Broken My Heart.

After Hawaiians were wrongly sent a warning that an attack was imminent, today a very similar thing happened in Japan:


Maybe that's just a startling coincidence. Or maybe it isn't. And, if it isn't, then we need to know who the fuck is messing with warning systems in a way that could end up starting a goddamned nuclear war. I think we all know who the likely culprit would be, in that scenario. Which the U.S. government definitely wants us to think is nothing but the conjecture of tinfoil-hatted conspirists.

[Content Note: White supremacy] In other news, we're still talking about how the President of the United States called Haiti, El Salvador, and unspecified African countries "shitholes," and those conversations are definitely terrific and on-point, as usual.


Thank Maude at least Jonathan M. Katz at the Washington Post wrote something sensitive and smart on this subject: This Is How Ignorant You Have to Be to Call Haiti a 'Shithole'. "To rail against poverty in countries such as Haiti and argue that it's some naturally occurring, objective reality ignores why that poverty exists and what the United States's role has been in creating it." YES.

Meanwhile... Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo: Senate Dems Grill DHS Chief on 'Shithole' Meeting with Trump.
The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday faced intense questioning from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding whether [Donald] Trump disparaged certain countries during a meeting on immigration last week.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did not deny, however, that Trump used vulgar language while referring to certain countries, as has been reported.

...During an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-NH) asked Nielsen, who was at the meeting in question, about the reports.

"You were in the room," he told Nielsen. "You're under oath."

"Did [Donald] Trump use this word or a substantially similar word to describe certain countries?" Leahy asked.

"I did not hear that word used, no sir," Nielsen said.

"That is not the question. Did he use anything similar to that describing certain countries?" Leahy asked. Various reports days after the fact cited unnamed White House officials who claimed Trump may have been using the word "shithouse."

Nielsen responded: "The conversation was very impassioned. I don't dispute that the President was using tough language. Others in the room were also using tough language. The concept, and the context, I believe, in which this came up was the concept that the President would like to move to a merit-based system. He would like to not — no longer look at quotas—"

Leahy interrupted her: "Did he use what would be considered vulgar language referring to certain countries?"

"The President used tough language in general, as did congressmen in the room, yes sir," she said.

..."What did the president say about immigrants from Norway?" Durbin pressed. He told CNN's Jake Tapper, in an interview clip aired Tuesday, that Trump had said "We need more people from Norway. Norway, they don't even take refugees in Norway. And I just met with the Norwegian Prime Minister. We need more Europeans!"

"I heard him repeating what he learned in a meeting before, that they are industrious, that they are a hard-working country," Nielsen replied. "They don't have much crime there, they don't have much debt. I think in general, I heard him giving compliments to Norway."

Leahy had asked about Norway, as well. "Being from Norway is not a skill," he noted, referring to the White House's professed preference for high-skilled immigrants. "What does he mean when he says he wants more immigrants from Norway?"

Nielsen said she did not believe Trump used that exact phrase "specifically," but that "he was using Norway as an example of a country that is — what he was specifically referring to was the prime minister telling him that the people of Norway work very hard. And so what he was referencing is, from a merit-based perspective, we would like to have those with skills who can assimilate and contribute to the United States, moving away from country quotas and to an individual merit-based system."
Sounds legit. (It does not sound legit.)

But the president can't be a racist, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, because he had a TV show! [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Toluse Olorunnipa at Bloomberg: Sanders Says Trump Isn't Racist, Citing The Apprentice. "White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said claims that [Donald] Trump is racist are 'outrageous,' citing his success as a public figure and his star turn on television as a host on NBC's reality show The Apprentice. 'Frankly, if the critics of the president were who he said he was, why did NBC give him a show for a decade on TV?' Sanders said Tuesday."

LOLOLOLOLOL these fucking people. They've been calling "Hollywood" a bastion of liberal elitism for so long that they've started to believe it. The only problem is that the film and television industry is rank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, disablism, fat hatred, ageism, and every other bigotry. It looks less like conservatives' conjured fantasy of a progressive hellscape and more like the Republican platform.

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Brian Fung at the Washington Post: The Senate's Push to Overrule the FCC on Net Neutrality Now Has 50 Votes, Democrats Say. "Fifty senators have endorsed a legislative measure to override the Federal Communications Commission's recent decision to deregulate the broadband industry, top Democrats said Monday. The tally leaves supporters just one Republican vote shy of the 51 required to pass a Senate resolution of disapproval, in a legislative gambit aimed at restoring the agency's net neutrality rules. ...The resolution aims to overturn the FCC's decision and prohibit the agency from passing similar measures in the future. It has the support of all 49 Democratic senators as well as one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine."

Surely there is one more Republican who will support this measure! COME ON.


If you've got a Republican Senator, MAKE YOUR CALLS. Let's get this number to 50, dammit. It still won't make for a veto-proof majority, but if we're gonna lose Net Neutrality, let's make Donald Trump sign his fucking name to it.

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[CN: Nativism] Esther Yu Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress: Justice Department Report Blames Immigrants for Terrorism, But Doesn't Have the Data to Back It Up. (Spoiler Alert: That's because such data doesn't exist.) "On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security released a scary report claiming that three out of four individuals convicted of international terrorism or terrorism-related offenses were 'immigrants.' 'This report reveals an indisputable sobering reality — our immigration system has undermined our national security and public safety,' U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a press statement. ...As other journalists and national security analysts skeptically pointed out, the DOJ broadly defines 'immigrants' as both the people extradited to the United States for trial and immigrants arrested in the country."


[CN: Nativism] Niraj Warikoo at the Detroit Free Press: Too Old for DACA, Man Who Spent 30 Years of His Life in U.S. Is Deported. "His arms wrapped around his wife and two teenage children, Jorge Garcia's eyes welled up Monday as he looked into their eyes one last time near the entrance to the airport security gate. His wife, Cindy Garcia, cried out while his daughter, Soleil, 15, sobbed into Garcia's shoulder as they hugged, with two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents keeping a close eye on them. After 30 years of living in the United States, Jorge Garcia, a 39-year-old landscaper from Lincoln Park, Mich., was deported on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to Mexico, a move his supporters say is another example of immigrants being unfairly targeted under the Trump administration. An undocumented family member brought Jorge Garcia to the U.S. when he was 10 years old. Today he has a wife and two children, all of whom are U.S. citizens." Rage seethe boil sob.

[CN: War on agency] Amy Littlefield at Rewire: Indiana Denies Abortion Clinic License for 'Incredibly Offensive' Reason. "Amy Hagstrom Miller knew it wouldn't be easy to run an abortion clinic in Indiana. But she didn't expect to get a letter from the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) denying her application to open a clinic in South Bend on the grounds that her organization is not 'of reputable and responsible character.' 'That sentence is incredibly offensive,' Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman's Health Alliance, said in an interview with Rewire. 'Every single thing they have asked of us we have complied with and responded to promptly and accurately.' ...Hagstrom Miller said the organization would file an appeal, which the letter said they must do by January 23." Goddammit.

[CN: Trans hatred] Rebecca Klein at the Huffington Post: Trump Admin to Transgender Kids: We Won't Deal with Your Civil Rights Complaints. "In Texas, a transgender teenager said his high school discriminated against him for almost two years. He was not allowed to use the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity. When he traveled overnight with one of the school's teams, he wasn't allowed to room with his male peers, he alleged. But Donald Trump's Department of Education did not think it could help this student. The teenager's case is one of at least three involving transgender students' experiences navigating school bathrooms or gender-specific sports teams that the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has dismissed in the past several months, with the explanation that these issues do not fall under its jurisdiction, according to documents obtained by HuffPost and a source familiar with the matter." Fucking hell.

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

Aditi Juneja at Medium: Allegations Against Aziz Ansari Are Forcing a Reckoning Around Intersectionality in the South Asian Community. "The defenses of Ansari that I have seen from within the South Asian community, in more casual settings, similarly fail to consider the experiences of South Asian women, and focus on the way these accusations stain the reputation of our culture as a whole. ...We cannot have conversations about how Ansari's behavior was problematic when we don't discuss healthy sexuality in our communities. I am not blaming South Asians, or the broader Asian American community, for Ansari's behavior. Rather, I am suggesting that it is an opportunity for us to actively participate in the broader American conversation happening about sexual assault, sexual harassment, and healthy sexuality through an intersectional lens that considers the experiences of South Asians who are not heterosexual cisgender men."

Eliza Dushku on Facebook: When I Was 12 Years Old, While Filming True Lies, I Was Sexually Molested by Joel Kramer, One of Hollywood's Leading Stunt Coordinators. "I remember, so clearly 25 years later, how Joel Kramer made me feel special, how he methodically built my and my parents' trust, for months grooming me; exactly how he lured me to his Miami hotel room with a promise to my parent that he would take me for a swim at the stunt crew's hotel pool and for my first sushi meal thereafter. ...And I remember how soon-after, when my tough adult female friend (in whom I had confided my terrible secret on the condition of a trade that she let me drive her car around the Hollywood Hills) came out to the set to visit and face him, later that very same day, by no small coincidence, I was injured from a stunt-gone-wrong on the Harrier jet. With broken ribs, I spent the evening in the hospital."

Erin Nyren at Variety: Eliza Dushku's Alleged Assailant Subject of Two More Allegations of Sexual Misconduct. "Joel Kramer, the stunt coordinator accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Dushku when she was 12 years old, is the subject of two further allegations of misconduct. According to Deadline, stuntwoman Laura Albert said in a statement that Kramer coerced a 16-year-old girl, the friend of Albert's younger sister and who wanted to remain unnamed, into having sex [sic] while Albert was working on 1997's Virus in North Carolina. ...Another stunt woman also came forward with a new allegation against Kramer, telling Deadline that while getting a ride with Kramer from one location where the stunt crew had met for drinks to another in the late 1970s or early '80s, he drove her into a quiet residential area. She says he then forced her to perform oral sex on him, grabbing the back of her head."

Amanda Arnold at the Cut: Condoleezza Rice Is Wary of the #MeToo Movement. "While former U.S. secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she's supportive of the #MeToo movement and believes it to be 'a good thing,' she's worried that it could lead to the infantilization and exclusion of women, CNN reports. Therefore, she warns advocates to be 'a little bit careful' about sexual-harassment allegations. 'Let's not turn women into snowflakes,' she told CNN's David Axelrod on The Axe Files. 'Let's not infantilize women.'" That's pretty rich coming from someone who served in the administration of a Republican president, given that a central plank of the GOP platform is treating women like we are children who can't be trusted to make decisions for ourselves.

Benjamin Lee at the Guardian: Alec Baldwin Criticizes Stars Renouncing Woody Allen: 'Unfair and Sad'. "'Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (NY and CT) and no charges were filed,' Baldwin tweeted. 'The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it's unfair and sad to me. I worked w WA 3 times and it was one of the privileges of my career.' He then proceeded to retweet a number of people sharing the story of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen's adopted son Moses Farrow, who claims he was 'brainwashed' by his adoptive mother." Shut the fuck up, Alec Baldwin. Some of us still remember that you treat your own daughter like garbage. Asshole.

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