We Resist: Day 536

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, July 09, 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: Good Morning! Trump Is the Worst! and Trump's War on Immigrants: The Latest and Briefly, on Trump's SCOTUS Pick.

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

Stephen Miller and Kellyanne Conway are the latest members of the Trump Regime to get harassed in public. Good.


Andrew Jacobs at the New York Times: U.S. Opposition to Breastfeeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials. "A resolution to encourage breastfeeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. ...American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to 'protect, promote, and support breastfeeding' and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children. When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs. The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced." Bullying over breastfeeding. For crying out loud.


Katelyn Burns at Rewire.News: Scott Pruitt Is out as EPA Head; a Coal Lobbyist Takes His Place. "Deputy EPA Director Andrew Wheeler will step in to run the agency. Wheeler has a long history of lobbying for looser regulations on the coal industry. Wheeler, former chief of staff to climate-change denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), has lobbied for the largest coal mining company in the United States... 'Andrew Wheeler is equally unqualified to serve as the nation's chief environmental steward,' Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director for government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. 'Like Pruitt, this veteran coal lobbyist has shown only disdain for the EPA's vital mission to protect Americans' health and our environment.'"


Andy Towle at Towleroad: Trump's Personal Driver Sues Him for 3,300 Hours of Unpaid Overtime. "Donald Trump's personal driver of 25 years sued him on Monday for 3,300 hours of unpaid overtime in a complaint that said he was exploited 'in an utterly callous display of unwarranted privilege and entitlement and without even a minimal sense of noblesse oblige.' Bloomberg reports: 'Trump's personal driver for more than 25 years says the billionaire real estate developer didn't pay him overtime and raised his salary only twice in 15 years, clawing back the second raise by cutting off his health benefits. Noel Cintron, who is listed in public records as a registered Republican, sued the Trump Organization for about 3,300 hours of overtime that he says he worked in the past six years. He's not allowed to sue for overtime prior to that due to the statute of limitations.'"

Tarini Parti and Jeremy Singer-Vine at BuzzFeed: Some Members of Trump's Exclusive Clubs Appear to Have Been Invited to An Air Force One Tour. "Although the names of the individuals are redacted, partially unredacted email addresses show eight of those people were affiliated with Arrigo Automotive Group, a family-owned car dealership in the West Palm Beach area. The leadership of the company — Joe Arrigo and his sons, Jim and John Arrigo, and their wives — have been members of both Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Membership records from 2007 obtained by BuzzFeed News list the family as members of both the clubs and specify that Jim Arrigo had been a member of the Trump International Golf Club since 1999, the year it opened."

Luis Martinez at ABC News: Two U.S. Navy Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait. "Two U.S. Navy ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait this weekend, the body of water separating China and Taiwan. The transit of American warships through the Strait are always sensitive because of China's claims over Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway province. ...While the U.S. and China cooperate in denculearizing North Korea, there are tensions between the two countries over China's growing military presence on [human]-made islands in the South China Sea. The U.S. Navy has continued to carry out freedom of navigation passages in international waters close to those islands that have the effect of countering China's territorial claims." Everything is fine. (Everything is not fine.)

Jackson Diehl at the Washington Post: Annexing Crimea Was Egregious; Why Does Trump Disagree? (Because he's Putin's puppet, obvs.)
Inside the U.S. government there is virtual unanimity on the question of Crimea, the Ukrainian region invaded and abruptly annexed by Russia in 2014: It was an egregious act of aggression and, as the first forcible transnational seizure of territory in Europe since World War II, should never be accepted by the United States.

There's just one exception to this consensus: [Donald] Trump.

Since his presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly said — most recently, to the other leaders of the Group of Seven democracies — that Crimea ought to be part of Russia because a majority of its people are Russian-speaking and, as he put it in 2016, "would rather be with Russia." When Trump was asked about reports he might acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Crimea in his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, the president teasingly told reporters, "We're going to have to see."
Everything is super fucked. Meanwhile, in Britain...


And in other news... [Content Note: Class warfare; nativism; police brutality; sexual harassment]


Danielle Corcione at Rewire.News: Demonstrators Occupy ICE Building in Philadelphia Amid Police Brutality. "Due to sweeping immigration arrests, the Philadelphia ICE office made more 'at-large' arrests of undocumented people without criminal convictions in 2017 than any other ICE office in the United States, according to ProPublica. Philadelphia is a so-called sanctuary city, meaning it doesn't honor ICE requests to hold an immigrant so the agency might take her into custody. Even so, ICE officers from the Philadelphia regional office have conducted warrantless searches, trespassed, and racially profiled in their pursuit of immigrants, ProPublica reported."


Goddammit.

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