We Resist: Day 467

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, May 01, 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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Earlier today by me: Mueller Has Questions for Trump, as Republicans Prepare Impeachment Papers for Rosenstein and People Are Lonely. You Can Be Visible Here. and Remember Puerto Rico.

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

[Content Note: Misogyny.]


Meanwhile, at the New York Times...


So the political press is doing great, as ever. Seethe.

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Ben Brimelow at Business Insider: Benjamin Netanyahu Gives Bizarre Presentation Saying Iran Is Cheating on Nuclear Deal. "Standing in front of a massive screen, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday gave a PowerPoint presentation on Iran's nuclear program. He reached one conclusion: Iran had lied about its nuclear ambitions. 'Iran is brazenly lying,' Netanyahu said. 'The nuclear deal is based on lies.'"

And then, hours after that... Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: White House Quietly Corrects Statement on Iran's Nuclear Capabilities, Hopes Nobody Will Notice.
On Monday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference during which he laid out a trove of documents he claimed proved Iran was running a secret nuclear weapons program, in violation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. "Iran lied, big time," he said.

In response to that presentation, the White House issued its own statement to reporters at around 7:30 p.m., according to CNN, condemning the "new" findings.

"The United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in an official statement. "These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people."

As the day wore on, however, it became obvious that the information Netanyahu had presented to the public was actually outdated — most of it from the period between 1993 and 2003, The Atlantic notes — and likely part of a broader scheme to convince Trump to withdraw the United States from the Iran agreement. An assessment by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday, as well as one he gave in October, also contradicted Netanyahu's claim that the nuclear deal was ineffective.

The White House, perhaps hoping to avoid an incident, subsequently took stock of its situation and quietly issued a minor, but drastic correction to its initial statement at around 9:30 p.m. Monday night, posting the amended version to the WhiteHouse.gov website.

"These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known," the new statement read. "Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people."

The subtle swap from "has" to "had" shifted the tone of the statement substantially, pushing the administration's accusation from the present to the past tense.

The White House, unsurprisingly, did not issue a formal correction or publicize the change.
If anything mattered anymore, this would be a major scandal.

[CN: Video autoplays at link] By the way, if you haven't seen John Oliver's segment on Trump blowing up the Iran deal, I highly recommend watching it, if you are able.

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Not just vulnerable. The Republicans are essentially publicly advertising that they will use stolen materials if any malicious actors offer them up. The collusion is right out in the open.

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[CN: Misogyny; disablist language] John Kelly is a real turd, and I'm really exhausted with the expectation that we pretend otherwise. Moderating influence, my fat ass.


Traitors, for a start.

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[CN: Misuse of "rape"] Anna R. Schecter at NBC News: Trump Doc Says Trump Bodyguard, Lawyer 'Raided' His Office, Took Medical Files.
In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.

The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a "raid," took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.

In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened, and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House.

"They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos," Bornstein said, who described the incident as frightening.

A framed 8x10 photo of Bornstein and Trump that had been hanging on the wall in the waiting room now lies flat under a stack of papers on the top shelf of Bornstein's bookshelf. Bornstein said the men asked him to take it off the wall.

Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president — known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law. A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter to Bornstein from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, but didn't know if there was a release form attached.

Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump's charts, including lab reports under Trump's name as well as under the pseudonyms his office used for Trump, were taken.

Another man, Trump Organization Chief Legal Officer Alan Garten, joined Schiller's team at Bornstein's office, and Bornstein's wife Melissa photocopied his business card. Garten declined to comment on this story.

Schiller, who left the White House in September 2017, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bornstein said that Trump cut ties with him after he told the New York Times that Trump takes Propecia, a drug for enlarged prostates that is often prescribed to stimulate hair growth in men.
What a truly weird fucking story. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this, since it's pretty obvious this entire operation was to cover up something.

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[CN: Nativism; abuse]


[CN: White supremacy; video may autoplay at link] Kia Morgan-Smith at the Grio: #MovingWhileBlack: How Ex-Obama Staffer Got Fingered as a Burglary Suspect by Six Cops. "Darren Martin, fresh off of working on Capitol Hill and in the White House under Obama's administration, had a jarring experience when the Bronx native made a move back to NYC. A neighbor called the cops on Martin who was unloading his belongings into his Upper West Side apartment when the police responded to a burglary call, reports New York's WPIX. Unfortunately it was Martin who was cited as the burglary suspect."

[CN: White supremacy] Leyland Cecco at the Guardian: #DiningWhileBlack: Toronto Restaurant Fined After Charging Customers Up Front. "When Emile Wickham and three friends arrived at a popular Chinese restaurant in Toronto, they were eager to unwind from a busy day at the university and celebrate Wickham's birthday. But after ordering their meal, the group was informed by staff at Hong Shing that they would be required to pay before they ate — a policy they were told applied to all patrons. Wickham and his friends soon discovered they were the only ones that had been asked to provide money up front. They were also the only black diners at the restaurant. 'I don't think I could adequately describe leaving that restaurant …We were so dejected,' Wickham told the Guardian."

[CN: Misogyny; stalking] Staff at the Daily Beast: Facebook Investigating Claim Employee Used Access to Stalk Women. "Facebook has confirmed it's investigating a claim that one of its employees used access to company data to stalk women online. 'Although we can't comment on any individual personnel matters, we are aware of the situation and investigating,' a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Motherboard. A spokesman told CBS News that it maintains 'strict technical controls' and 'policies to restrict employee access to user data.'" Sure. I trust that. (I don't trust that. At all.)

[CN: Misogyny; violence] Ashifa Kassam at the Guardian: Violence Against Women in Canada Is 'Pervasive and Systemic'. "Dubravka Šimonović, the UN's special rapporteur on violence against women, applauded the Canadian government, led by Justin Trudeau, for its commitment to championing the rights of women and girls — but she urged officials in the country to do more. 'Violence against women in Canada is still a serious, pervasive, and systemic problem: an unfinished business that requires urgent actions,' said Šimonović recently after 13 days spent travelling the country last month." Canada and literally everywhere else. Sob.

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