We Resist: Day 530

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, July 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.

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Earlier today by me: Photo of the Day and Surviving the Trump Regime Is Warping My Sense of Time and Devastating: Merkel Backs Down and Agrees to Refugee Camps at Border.

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

Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Trump Shrugs off News of Secret Nuclear Facility; Pretends He Prevented War with North Korea. "Despite Donald Trump's claims that Kim Jong Un would denuclearize, his own Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly believes that North Korea has no intention of ending its nuclear program. Still, days after U.S. intelligence officials said North Korea has actually increased its production at secret nuclear facilities, Trump tried to take credit on Tuesday for single-handedly preventing war with the country. 'If not for me,' he tweeted, 'we would now be at War [sic] with North Korea!'"

Donald Kirk at the Daily Beast: Pompeo Heads Back to North Korea; What More Will Trump Give Away? "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Pyongyang on Thursday pretty sure the North Koreans will have some American soldiers' remains to offer, if nothing else, at a time when the administration needs something, anything, to show Kim Jong Un would keep at least one of the commitments from his schmoozefest with [Donald] Trump in Singapore on June 12. But nukes? Complete, verifiable, irreversible 'denuclearization' — CVID, as the Americans say? We are a long, long way from that. And reports by NBC News and The Washington Post over the last few days suggest we are getting farther away all the time."

Lee Jeong-ho at the South China Morning Post: North Korea Is Looking to China to Boost Its Economy, But What About Denuclearisation? "'Beijing has promised solid economic support to Pyongyang throughout a series of bilateral summits held in China,' a senior South Korean diplomatic source said, adding that it was an attempt by the North to bring about economic change before it had fully denuclearised. Washington has long demanded a 'complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement' of Pyongyang's nuclear programme, in return for economic compensation. 'North Korea can now start developing its economy without giving up its nuclear weapons [by strengthening economic ties with China],' the source said."

Awesome. (Not awesome.)

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[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse. Covers entire section.]

Kate Irby at McClatchy: Congressman Denied Entry to California Detention Facility for Children Under Age 14.
The cry of a child could be heard just inside the nondescript, brown detention facility in Pleasant Hill, California, a San Francisco suburb, and Rep. Jeff Denham wanted to see for himself what was inside.

He knocked on the door and waited about five minutes, alternatively silent, knocking some more and asking the security guard if employees inside were aware he was out there. The guard eventually told him the employees inside had been instructed to not answer the door, not to even speak to him.

He'd been trying for more than a week to tour the facility.

...The facility, Denham said, was detaining immigrant children ages 13 and younger. He said he was told that there were 25 children inside, and two girls had been separated from their parents. He had been told as recently as Friday that he was cleared to go in, he said, but the facility changed their tune over the weekend.

...He said he worked with multiple parts of [Donald] Trump's administration, including the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, to gain access to the facility.

...Denham said Southwest Key requested two weeks notice before Denham was allowed to tour the building, but would not explain why it needed that kind of time to prepare. Denham didn't want to wait because Congress would be back in session and trying to legislate on the issue by the time two weeks passed.

"They knew that we were coming," Denham said. "We knew cameras most likely wouldn't be allowed in, but if they wanted to show the conditions, and what a lovely facility they run, then why wouldn't they want people to come in and report on it?"
Note that Denham is a Republican. He was, presumably, hoping to show up to prove that critics of the administration are exaggerating. Instead, what he found was precisely what critics have been detailing.

And surely he knows the answer to his own question. The reason they don't "want people to come in and report on" the facility is because there is heinous abuse going on behind the tightly guarded doors.

Meanwhile, as you may recall, a number of refugees stopped at the border have been transferred en masse to prisons overwhelmed by the sudden influx. As a result, one of the prisons to which 1,000 refugees were sent is now contending with rapidly spreading infectious disease, and the detainees are suffering mightily:


And of course, as I've been urgently warning, all of this is preface to the Trump Regime's ultimate goal of a full-scale attack on documented immigrants, too. Especially Muslims and/or people of color.

Abigail Hauslohner and Andrew Ba Tran at the Washington Post: How Trump Is Changing the Face of Legal Immigration.
As the national immigration debate swirls around the effort to discourage illegal immigration by separating families at the border, the Trump administration is making inroads into another longtime priority: Reducing legal immigration.

The number of people receiving visas to move permanently to the United States is on pace to drop 12 percent in [Donald] Trump's first two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of State Department data.

Among the most affected are the Muslim-majority countries on the president's travel ban list — Yemen, Syria, Iran, Libya, and Somalia — where the number of new arrivals to the United States is heading toward an 81 percent drop by Sept. 30, the end of the second fiscal year under Trump.

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld that ban, paving the way for an even more dramatic decline in arrivals from those countries.

Legal immigration from all Muslim-majority countries is on track to fall by nearly a third.

...Some public officials and immigration experts have raised concerns that the administration's approach targets certain nationalities, discriminating against those from poorer and nonwhite countries.

The Post's analysis also found immigration declines among nationalities not targeted by Trump's travel ban, including nearly all of the countries that typically receive the largest number of immigrant visas from the United States. The number of immigrant visas granted to people from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, Haiti, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Pakistan, and Afghanistan has also declined. Among the 10 countries that send the highest number of immigrants to the United States annually, only El Salvador is projected to receive more visas under Trump: An increase of 17 percent in his first two fiscal years.

The number of immigrant visas approved for Africans is on pace to fall 15 percent.

Meanwhile, the flow of legal immigrants from Europe has increased slightly, though the total number of visas is still much smaller than that from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
All of this in service to Trump's desire to turn the United States into a white ethnostate.

Which is right in alignment with what's happening across Europe, even as more refugees risk (and lose) their lives trying to find safety.

Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: Mediterranean: More Than 200 Migrants Drown in Three Days. "More than 200 migrants have drowned at sea in the Mediterranean in the past three days, taking the death toll for the year to more than 1,000 and prompting fears that human traffickers are taking greater risks because of a crackdown imposed by the Italian government and the Libyan coastguard. ...The 1,000 deaths landmark was reached on 1 July. It is the fourth year in succession that more than 1,000 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea."

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[CN: Sexual assault; rape culture; toxic masculinity; gun violence; death. Covers entire section.]

Corky Siemaszko at NBC News: Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan Accused of Turning Blind Eye to Sexual Abuse as Ohio State Wrestling Coach.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, is being accused by former wrestlers he coached more than two decades ago at Ohio State University of failing to stop the team doctor from molesting them and other students.

The university announced in April that it was investigating accusations that Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, abused team members when he was the team doctor from the mid-1970s to late 1990s.

Jordan, who was assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994, has repeatedly said he knew nothing of the abuse until former students began speaking out this spring. His denials, however, have been met with skepticism and anger from some former members of the wrestling team.

Three former wrestlers told NBC News that it was common knowledge that Strauss showered regularly with the students and inappropriately touched them during appointments, and said it would have been impossible for Jordan to be unaware; one wrestler said he told Jordan directly about the abuse.
Emphasis mine.

So, from one horrible aspect of rape culture — people who are supposed to protect you instead protecting abusers — to another: People who are supposed to protect you instead abusing you:


And in another corner of toxic masculinity: Domestic violence as a precursor to acts of mass public violence:


And at the horrendous intersection of not supporting victims and domestic violence as a precursor to mass violence... Eric Fleischauer and Mary Sell at the Decatur Daily: Triple Homicide Leaves Ex-Wife Dead After Protection Request Denied. "Before she and two others were shot dead near Ardmore on Sunday, Debra Ann Rivera twice had asked a judge to order her ex-husband to surrender his guns because of alleged abuse. The request was denied both times. According to the Limestone County Sheriff's Office, Darwin Brazier, 43, used a semi-automatic SKS rifle with a high-capacity magazine to shoot his ex-wife and two other victims multiple times and then shot himself to death near his home in Madison County." Goddammit.

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In other Trump administration fuckery, there's a lot of news, again, about what a giant corrupt asshole Scott Pruitt is, and I just don't even have the energy to parse through it all to cover it. The truth is, I just don't want to hear a single thing about Pruitt unless and until he's handing in his resignation or being marched out the door by security. But please feel welcome to discuss what a colossal shitbird he is!

[CN: White supremacy]


Between this and yesterday's item about the federal judge ruling that students have no right to literacy, this is a full-scale assault on education accessibility, except for the very privileged.

And finally, Paul Campos at NYMag: Broidy Ending Playmate's Hush Payments Doesn't Add Up — Unless He's Covering for Trump. "Now, after making two of the eight payments — the third was due yesterday — Broidy is backing out of the deal. His reasons for doing so make very little legal or practical sense, at least if you assume Broidy actually did have an affair with Bechard. ...By claiming that their agreement is void, Broidy is putting Bechard in a position to tell her story — whatever it may actually be — in whatever forum she likes. I suspect this last point contains a key to understanding why Broidy is trying to back out of the agreement now. Perhaps like so many other people, Broidy has concluded that Donald Trump is a bad business partner." Just as I suggested.

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