We Resist: Day 508

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, June 11, 2018
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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: Trump's Border Patrol Replicates Actual Nazi Tactic and Trump Is — Still and Increasingly — Out of Control and How Much of the NRA's Money Funding Republicans Came from Russia?

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


April Glaser at Slate: Day 1 of a Worse Internet.
Monday, June 11, is the first day of the post-net neutrality internet. In December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the Obama-era rules that prohibit internet companies from slowing down or speeding up access to certain websites, but it took about six months for the repeal to get a sign-off from the Office of Management and Budget and for the new rules to be published in the federal register. Beginning, well, now, your internet access could — emphasis on could — feel dramatically different than it did yesterday.

Under the new network neutrality rules, internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are allowed to throttle traffic that travels over their network or even block access to entire websites as long as the companies alert their subscribers in their terms of service that they reserve the right to do so. But since most people in the United States don't have more than one or two internet providers to choose from for broadband service, that means if users don't wish to accept those terms, many won't have anywhere else to go for their internet. Without net neutrality rules stopping them, internet providers will also be able to charge websites a fee to reach users faster.

Those internet providers stand to win the most from the net neutrality repeal, since they'll be able to operate what is essentially a two-way toll, collecting money from both subscribers and websites that want priority access to users.
At the New York Times, Keith Collins notes: "As of late May, 29 state legislatures had introduced bills meant to ensure net neutrality, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Still, several of these measures have failed, some are still pending, and not every state has taken such actions." So be sure to contact your local and state legislators in addition to your federal Senators and representative. Bother everyone you can. It's only too late if we give up.

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[Content Note: Misogynist slur] Kate Riga at TPM: Trump's Foreign Policy Doctrine: 'We're America, Bitch'. "Amid the international upheaval after the G-7 summit, an unnamed senior White House official summed up the Trumpian foreign policy doctrine: 'We're America, bitch.' According to a Monday Atlantic report, a 'senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking' explained: 'Obama apologized to everyone for everything. He felt bad about everything.' The official said that Trump 'doesn't feel like he has to apologize for anything America does.' Another distillation of Trump's doctrine came from a senior national security official: 'Permanent destabilization creates American advantage,' the official said, arguing that leaving everyone else on shaky ground makes America the sole strong power."

That is essentially Putin's view. His objective has been to seize and consolidate power from vacuums created by destabilization and chaos.

Trump has spoken about his admiration for Putin — and how smart he is, especially compared to the likes of Obama and Clinton — openly and repeatedly, right from the launch of his campaign, and even before. That he would adopt Putin's exact strategy, which he's been enthusiastically praising for years, shouldn't come as any surprise.

Nor should the fact that he is constitutionally incapable of executing it with a smidgen of Putin's patience, concealment, or efficacy.

Trump is not stupid, but he isn't sophisticated, either. He has all the precision of a wrecking ball, and lacks utterly the competence to exploit the chaos he creates.

Which is why, whether or not he realizes it, Trump is ultimately just doing the dirty work for Putin, who knows what to do with his own power. And any that anyone else gives him, intentionally or otherwise.

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The Democracy Killers are at it again, with the help of the Supreme Court majority:


Kira Lerner at ThinkProgress: The Supreme Court Just Cleared the Way for the Mass Disenfranchisement of Voters. "With its ruling Monday upholding Ohio's practice of removing infrequent voters from its rolls, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the mass disenfranchisement of low-income, minority voters across the country. In a 5-4 ruling, Justice Samuel Alito found that the National Voter Registration Act does not prevent Ohio from purging from the rolls voters who do not participate in federal elections for two years. If inactive voters do not respond to a mailer asking them to verify their address and do not vote for two more years, they are purged from the rolls. The ruling will have implications beyond Ohio. 'Today's decision threatens the ability of voters to have their voices heard in our elections,' said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, which challenged the state's practices." Seethe.

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[CN: Nativism; child abuse]


This is a policy explicitly designed to discourage parents from claiming their own children, after they have been forcibly separated at the border.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says that asylum-seeking people are "abusing the system."


I hate this administration so fucking much.

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[CN: Human rights abuses] Ken Dilanian at NBC News: U.S. Won't Bring Up North Korea's Human Rights Issues at Singapore Summit. "When Trump meets Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday, he will be sitting down with the leader of one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in modern history — a country that has committed 'unspeakable atrocities' on a vast scale in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Germany, according to a 2014 United Nations investigation. But two administration officials tell NBC News the U.S. has decided not to bring up human rights at the summit." Of course not. Because Trump doesn't GAF about human rights abuses, and further has no leg to stand on, given what's happening along the United States' southern border at his command.

In other Trump news...

Annie Karni at Politico: Meet the Guys Who Tape Trump's Papers Back Together. "Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails, and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records. But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn't violating the law." JFC. He's so resistant to even the most minor suggestion or correction or advice, and so hostile to the rule of law, that this is what it's come to. And he's so proud of being such a petty tyrant that he's probably the one who leaked it.


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[CN: White supremacy; eliminationism] James LaPorta at the Daily Beast: Marine Veteran Trains White Supremacists in Military Tactics. "A leader of an emerging white-supremacist group is a Marine veteran who uses his military experience to train other extremist recruits in military tactics, leaked messages show. Erik Sailors is the head of a Texas chapter of Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group that splintered from one of the main groups at the deadly white-power rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. Sailors gives 'hip-pocket classes' (short, informal military class) to white nationalists, from the 'gear list' of what members should bring to protests (Marine Corps-issued combat boots and decontaminate wipes) to lessons in mixed martial arts and hand-to-hand combat techniques, the leaked messages reveal."

[CN: Racism] Meanwhile: Jay Scott Smith at the Grio: Charlottesville Flamethrower Who Held Off White Supremacists Sentenced to Jail. "One of the most memorable photos of last year's Charlottesville protest was that of a young man lighting an aerosol can on fire to keep armed white supremacists at bay. That community activist's name is Corey Long and he was among those arrested in the aftermath of the violent protests last August. Long, 24, was convicted of disorderly conduct for using the improvised flamethrower on the raging racists on Friday. Long was sentenced to 360 days, with all but 20 suspended." Rage.

[CN: Environmental racism] Ayana Byrd at Colorlines: Activists, Attorneys Say Government Ignored Data on Negative Impact of Pipeline on Natives, Blacks. "Nearly one year ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), stating that it posed no environmental justice concerns. Now, a group of academics and attorneys say that FERC used data from unreliable statistical methods in an effort to disregard the impact that the pipeline will have on Black and Indigenous communities. ...'It's going to be a lot of pollution in our community,' says Robie Goins, a Lumbee Native American who lives in the evacuation zone of the pipeline's proposed route. 'The people who are in low-income, poverty-stricken areas are targets for these types of projects. It's like we're being targeted by the big corporations. It's like they want to kill us all.'" Sob.

And finally... [CN: Misogyny; rape culture]


Unremarkable indeed. Totally fucking typical, more like.

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