We Resist: Day 469

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, May 03, 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 Giuliani: Hold the Popcorn and Nevertheless, She Resisted and Charlie Rose: 27 More Women Report Harassment.

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

[Content Note: Nativism] Tina Vasquez at Rewire: The New ICE Age: An Agency Unleashed.
As the American Immigration Council explains, "the enforcement of US immigration laws has historically been guided by policies that emphasize prioritization": An undocumented immigrant who committed a violent crime or an immigrant believed to be a threat to national security was prioritized for enforcement and, eventually, deportation. Trump's executive orders — starting on the fifth day of his presidency with 13767, which called for the construction of a wall on the Mexican border and the swift repatriation of those living in the United States without authorization — have done away with this system, making enforcement priorities a thing of the past. Now every undocumented immigrant is deportable.

...Newly empowered, ICE is newly emboldened. Despite the many failings of Trump's White House, the administration has delivered on one of the president's primary goals: Mass deportations. Trump is giving ICE the tools, financial resources, and presidential backing to go after immigrant communities as never before.

The agency still claims to focus primarily on those with criminal records, which, often, can mean nothing more than an old DUI conviction — and raids have been based on that. Yet the fastest-growing category of arrests under Trump are of people with no criminal charges. Last year, the agency arrested more than 28,000 "non-criminal immigration violators."
There is much, much more at the link.

[CN: Nativism] Kira Brekke at ThinkProgress: Since Trump, Immigrants Are Living with a 'Monster Under the Bed'. "While there has always been an ebb and flow in how presidential administrations handle immigration, the Trump administration has waged an all out war on immigrant communities since January 2017. 'There is a viciousness in which this administration relishes targeting people and feels just shameless in the embracing of that,' Avideh Moussavian, senior policy attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, told ThinkProgress."

Meanwhile...


And, as yet another reminder that Trump is not an anomaly of Republican politics...

[CN: Nativism] Alfonso Serrano at Colorlines: Seven-State Coalition Sues to End DACA. "A seven-member coalition of Republican states filed a lawsuit on Tuesday (May 1) against the Trump administration in an effort to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era initiative that protects hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. ...Last week's federal ruling ordering the Trump administration to continue DACA also called on the government to reopen the program to new applicants, a decision that could benefit hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The judge, however, stayed the decision, giving the Department of Homeland Security 90 days to produce a strong argument for ending DACA. On Tuesday, six other states — Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia — joined Texas as plaintiffs in the case."

To be clear: These Republican states are suing the Trump administration to help the Trump administration end DACA.

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Dominic Rushe at the Guardian: Over 1,000 Economists Warn Trump His Trade Views Echo Mistakes of 1930s. "Over a thousand economists have written to Donald Trump warning his 'economic protectionism' and tough rhetoric on trade threatens to repeat the mistakes the US made in the 1930s, mistakes that plunged the world into the Great Depression. ...'Congress did not take economists' advice in 1930, and Americans across the country paid the price. The undersigned economists and teachers of economics strongly urge you not to repeat that mistake. Much has changed since 1930 — for example, trade is now significantly more important to our economy — but the fundamental economic principles as explained at the time have not.'" All of that is right — except for the part where it presumes that economic collapse is not the objective.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey at the Washington Post: Amid Stormy Daniels News, Trump Expected to Announce Faith-Based Office on National Day of Prayer. "Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday to create his version of a faith-based office during a Rose Garden ceremony in front of 200 religious leaders — a move that has caused concerns about church and state under previous administrations. ...The White House announcement, which was first reported by Religion News Service, is expected to introduce the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative, intended to signal to religious groups that they have a voice in the government." Not to "religious groups." To white conservative Christians.

[CN: War on agency]


Echoes of the Iowa legislator I quoted just yesterday: "He acknowledged this bill is an attempt to 'take another run at Roe v. Wade,' he said about the 1973 Supreme Court decision to allow abortion, and predicted the bill will be the vehicle for overturning that decision. 'We're not hiding that.'"

Elham Khatami at ThinkProgress: Oklahoma Bill Aimed at Dismantling Unions Takes 'Revenge' on Teachers for Striking. "Weeks after tens of thousands of Oklahoma teachers ended their nine-day strike after securing major wins, including teacher raises and additional education funding, legislators introduced a bill that aims to hamper membership in the teachers unions that helped organized the walkouts. The measure, Senate Bill 1150, began as a bill tackling child abuse, but was completely rewritten this week thanks to an amendment by state Rep. Todd Russ (R). ...Ed Allen, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Oklahoman that the legislation 'seems like a revenge bill to come back after teachers, after the walkout.'"

[CN: Misogynoir; harassment] Perry Stein at the Washington Post: Three Black Teens Are Finalists in a NASA Competition; Hackers Spewing Racism Tried to Ruin Their Odds.
The three D.C. students couldn't believe the news. They'd developed a method to purify lead-contaminated water in school drinking fountains, and NASA announced last month that they were finalists in the agency's prestigious high school competition — the only all-black, female team to make it that far.

"Hidden figures in the making," one of the teens wrote in a celebratory text message to her teammates and coaches, a reference to the 2016 movie about the true story of three African American women who worked for NASA in the 1960s.

The next stage of the science competition included public voting, and the Banneker High School students — Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner, and Bria Snell, all 17-year-old high school juniors — turned to social media to promote their project.

But while the teens were gaining traction on social media and racking up votes, users on 4chan — an anonymous Internet forum where users are known to push hoaxes and spew racist and homophobic comments — were trying to ensure the students wouldn't win.

The anonymous posters used racial epithets, argued that the students' project did not deserve to be a finalist, and said that the black community was voting for the teens only because of their race. They urged people to vote against the Banneker trio, and one user offered to put the topic on an Internet thread about [Donald] Trump to garner more attention. They recommended computer programs that would hack the voting system to give a team of teenage boys a boost.

NASA said in a statement that voting was compromised, prompting it to shut down public voting earlier than expected. The federal space agency said it encourages the use of social media to build support for projects but wrote in a statement Tuesday that public voting was ended because people "attempted to change the vote totals."
Rage seethe boil. There is a whole additional level of fuckery in trying to shut down three Black girls whose project is about purifying drinking water, while Flint still doesn't have clean water.

[CN: Class warfare]


This is legislation of the profoundly racist narrative that is extremely prevalent among poor whites, which essentially argues: White people just use welfare as a bridge. Black people use it as an apartment.

It's an attempt to entrench into law the notion that Good White Folks use welfare the way it's supposed to be used, to help someone who works hard but is just down on their luck get back on their feet blah blah bootstraps, while Black people cynically and selfishly abuse the system.

Takers and makers. The Republican Party isn't even trying to hide the white supremacy central to their policymaking anymore. Thanks to Donald Trump for showing they needn't even bother.

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Adam Peck at ThinkProgress: The Media's 2016 Freakout over Clinton's Pneumonia Looks Really Suspect Today.
The entire media world breathlessly covered her every movement that September day, when Clinton had to be helped into a van after baking in the summer sun at a 9/11 memorial ceremony.

...Fast forward 20 months. On Tuesday afternoon, CNN reported that longtime Trump physician Harold Bornstein admitted that the doctor's note he signed and publicly released during the campaign — you know, the one where he said Trump's "physical strength and stamina are extraordinary," that he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," and whose blood work was, in professional medical parlance, "astonishingly excellent" — was a complete fabrication, and was in fact dictated by Trump himself.

As of midday Wednesday, Fox News has yet to address the subject on its website. NPR and the Washington Post ran short stories based on CNN's reporting. The New York Times ran a short wire piece from Reuters on its website. The discrepancy between the coverage of Clinton's health and Donald Trump's by the country's newspaper of record wasn't lost on people.


And so it goes. After 16 months of the Trump presidency, we are completely deadened to monumental scandal.
This whole piece is great.

[CN: Terroristic threats; homophobia]


[CN: Homophobia] Andy Towle at Towleroad: Mat Staver on Trump's Judicial Appointments: 'Literally, We Are a Few Months away from Ending Gay Marriage'. "'The nice thing about what [Donald]Trump has done, different from other Republican presidents, is that he is appointing, he's nominating, so far, judges who are what I would call constitutionalists, originalists, dedicated to the original understanding and interpretation of the Constitution and the statutes. On the other hand, Republican presidents in the past, they've been hit or miss. [Donald] Trump so far has been hitting this on the nail.' Staver could hardly contain himself while talking to VCY America's Jim Schneider about the possibility of 'one, maybe two more' SCOTUS Justices retiring and being replaced 'with someone like Gorsuch.' Said Staver: 'That means the abortion decision, the same-sex marriage decision, all of those things that went the wrong way will ultimately be in the balance to be reversed. So literally we are a few months away.'"


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