We Resist: Day 453

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, April 17, 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.

* * *

Earlier today by me: On the "Trump Pulitzers" and The Collusion Continues to Be Right Out in the Open.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Just a perfectly normal tweet from Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik:


Everything is fine. (Everything is not fine.)

[Content Note: Domestic violence; gang violence; nativism] Julia Preston at Politico: Trump Administration Wants to Shut Door on Abused Women.
Women in an exodus from Central America since 2014 have succeeded in winning asylum or other protections in the United States as victims of a pandemic of domestic abuse in that region. Because of recent cases that established fear of domestic violence as a legitimate basis for asylum, those claims often found more solid legal grounding in U.S. immigration court than claims of people who said they were escaping from killer gangs.

Now the Trump administration, determined to stop the stream of people to the border from Central America, is moving to curtail or close the legal avenues to protection for abused women like L.C. ...Attorney General Jeff Sessions, from his position as the top official in charge of the immigration courts, is leading a broad review to question whether domestic or sexual violence should ever be recognized as persecution that would justify protection in the United States.

...Sessions has expressed his suspicion of asylum claims based on domestic abuse or gang predation. In a speech in October to immigration judges, Sessions said asylum was meant to protect people who fled their home countries "because of persecution based on fundamental things like their religion or nationality." He said the immigration courts were "overloaded with fake claims."
Rage. Seethe. Boil. Sending women back to countries where husbands and/or gangs who want to kill them await is one of the lowest policies in an administration defined by low policies. And I never, ever, want to get pushback again from trifling men who accuse me of "hysteria" when I say that the Trump administration is killing women. The Trump administration is killing women.

[CN: Threats of violence] Staff at the Daily Beast: Stormy Daniels' Lawyer Reveals Sketch of Man Who Allegedly Threatened Her. "Stormy Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, on Tuesday unveiled a sketch of the man who allegedly threatened the adult-film star in a parking lot in 2011. The man is purported to have warned Daniels to not speak out about her alleged affair with [Donald] Trump, she said during a recent 60 Minutes interview. 'And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.' And then he was gone,' she said."


Nick Statt at the Verge: Broadband Adviser Picked by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Arrested on Fraud Charges. "A broadband adviser selected by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to run a federal advisory committee was arrested last week on claims she tricked investors into pouring money into a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme, according to the Wall Street Journal. The adviser, Elizabeth Pierce, is the former chief executive of Quintillion, an Alaska-based fiber optic cable provider operating out of Anchorage. In her capacity as CEO, Pierce allegedly raised more than $250 million from two New York-based investment companies using forged contracts with other companies guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue. Pierce resigned from Quintillion in August of last year, and she stepped down from her role in Pai's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee the following month." They're all corrupt.

Sara Ganim at CNN: Ryan Zinke Refers to Himself as a Geologist; That's a Job He's Never Held. "Since becoming leader of the 70,000-employee agency, Zinke has suggested that he was a geologist or former geologist at least 40 times in public settings, including many under oath before Congress. ...Zinke, however, has never held a job as a geologist. ...Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift provided this statement to CNN: 'Ryan Zinke graduated with honors with a B.S. in Geology.' ...Several geologists who CNN has spoken with have flagged his comments as disingenuous, saying that someone with a 34-year-old degree who never worked in the field is not considered a geologist." They're all liars.

Addy Baird at ThinkProgress: GOP Congressman Charlie Dent Announces His Resignation. "Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) announced this week that he would be resigning from the House of Representatives in May, according to a statement his office released Tuesday morning. ...Dent previously served as the chairman of the House Ethics Committee. Last September, he announced his retirement, but his announcement Tuesday means he will not even serve out his term." They're all cowards.

Apart from the fact that the new districts in Pennsylvania mean Dent (and Ryan Costello) will have an uphill reelection battle, all the Republicans who have decided not to seek reelection are clearly worried that Trump is going to do something they can't ignore, and instead of doing the right thing before they abandon ship, they're jumping ship even earlier so they don't even have to face the expectation. Weasels.

I mean, what's going to happen when Trump fires Rosenstein after all these dudes have called that the line in the sand, or the red line, or whatever? They're definitely not going to do anything about it! I guess they're hoping that the media won't remember their earlier statements, and the media will probably oblige.


Staff at CBS News: Cambridge Analytica Boss Pulls out of Parliamentary Grilling. It's definitely newsworthy that Alexander Nix continues to try to evade accountability, but this may be the even bigger news item, buried deep in the piece: "But on Tuesday, former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser told British lawmakers in written testimony that it wasn't just one app that harvested the data eventually handed over to her former company, but in fact 'a wide range of surveys which were done by CA or its partners.' Until Tuesday, all of the misused data was believed to have come from Facebook users who filled out the questionnaire on the 'This Is Your Digital Life' app. ...But Kaiser said Tuesday that, given Cambridge Analytica's use of at least two other separate personality quiz apps, 'it can be inferred or implied that there were many additional individuals as opposed to just the ones through Aleksandr Kogan's test (This Is Your Digital Life) whose (data) may have been compromised.'"

[CN: Nativism; exploitation] Esther Yu Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress: Immigrants Allegedly Forced to Work in Detention Centers for $1 a Day.
Detainees held at a privately-operated immigration detention center in Georgia are forced to work at the facility for pitiful pay and are threatened with serious harm if they refuse to "volunteer" to work, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday against the private prison operator CoreCivic.

According to the lawsuit filed on behalf of current and formerly detained immigrants, the CoreCivic-operated Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin solicits "volunteers," or immigrants detainees, to "mop, sweep, and wax floors; scrub toilets and showers; wash dishes; do laundry, clean medical facilities; and cook and prepare food and beverages" for the nearly 2,000-detainee population.

Detainees are then paid between $1 and $4 per day and occasionally slightly more for double shifts. The lawsuit states that immigrant detainees reportedly do not have a choice to refuse because the facility has a "policy of threatening detained immigrants until they comply."
[CN: Nativism] Sheila Burke at the AP: Lawyers: Journalist Was Detained by ICE Because of Reporting. "Lawyers for a journalist who was arrested in Tennessee and then placed in an immigration detention facility said Monday that the government was trying to suppress his reporting and violated his rights of freedom of speech and the press. Attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center have asked a federal court to release Manuel Duran Ortega, a reporter who was arrested earlier this month in Memphis... Duran, 42, was working for Spanish-language media outlet Memphis Noticias and has written stories raising questions about local police and their cooperation with federal immigration officials, one of his attorneys at the SPLC said."

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

Shakesville is run as a safe space. First-time commenters: Please read Shakesville's Commenting Policy and Feminism 101 Section before commenting. We also do lots of in-thread moderation, so we ask that everyone read the entirety of any thread before commenting, to ensure compliance with any in-thread moderation. Thank you.

blog comments powered by Disqus