We Resist: Day 599

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, September 10, 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: Mike Pence Makes His Move and Bolton to Deliver Provocative Speech Challenging Legitimacy of the International Criminal Court and I Have a Question.

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


Renee Duff at AccuWeather: Strengthening Florence to Pose Serious Threat to U.S. East Coast Later This Week. "All interests along the coasts of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic are being put on alert for a potential strike from Hurricane Florence during the second half of the week. ...States of emergency have been declared in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia due to possible impacts from the storm. ...'Residents and interests living along and near the Carolina coast and even up toward the Virginia Capes should closely monitor Florence and be ready to put their hurricane plan in place,' [AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski] said. 'If you do not have a hurricane plan in place, do so immediately.' People should also pay close attention to and take the advice of local officials for their given area."

In other words, Hurricane Florence is going to be a doozy. Not that the president gives a single fuck, apparently.


We are not being governed. Look out for each other. ♥

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[Content Note: Nativism; trauma] Stephanie Griffith at ThinkProgress: Migrant Families File Lawsuit over Emotional Trauma from Trump's 'Zero Tolerance' Policy. "Migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under [Donald] Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy have suffered 'life-altering' emotional trauma, according to a lawsuit demanding that the government provide counseling for those affected. The federal class action lawsuit...seeks to create a fund that will pay for therapy for some 2,000 traumatized children who were ripped away from their parents. ...The head of the American Academy of Pediatrics told CNN in June that the family separation policy, which the Trump administration has since abandoned, amounts to 'nothing less than government-sanctioned child abuse.'"

Allegra Kirkland at TPM: Feds Investigating Trump Org Execs for Possible Campaign Finance Crimes. "Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating whether senior executives at the Trump Organization violated campaign finance laws to silence women who claimed to have carried out extramarital affairs with [Donald] Trump. Bloomberg confirmed for the first time Friday that the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office probe extends beyond Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other financial crimes in late August. A source told Bloomberg that prosecutors are looking into two senior Trump Organization officials mentioned in Cohen's indictment as approving the hush money transactions, as well as anyone else at the company who may have been aware of these activities."

Emily Goldberg at Politico: Trump Says He'll 'Write the Real Book' to Counter Woodward's. "[Donald] Trump promised Monday that he would 'write the real book' to set the record straight on his administration, once again lashing out against veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward, whose incendiary book about the Trump White House will be released this week. 'The Woodward book is a Joke — just another assault against me, in a barrage of assaults, using now disproven unnamed and anonymous sources. Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction,' Trump tweeted on Monday morning. 'Dems can't stand losing. I'll write the real book!'" By which he presumably means he'd pay someone else to write the book so he doesn't have to actually do any work or risk his golfing or tweeting time. And then he'll just slap his name on it.

David Leonhardt at the New York Times: The Urgent Question of Trump and Money Laundering. "He could make his life easier if only he treated Vladimir Putin the way he treats most people who cause problems — and cast Putin aside. Yet Trump can't bring himself to do so. This odd refusal is arguably the biggest reason to believe that Putin really does have leverage over Trump. Maybe it's something shocking, like a sex tape or evidence of campaign collusion by Trump himself. Or maybe it's the scandal that's been staring us in the face all along: Illicit financial dealings — money laundering — between Trump's business and Russia." GEE MAYBE! Just to be clear, this item is dated September 9, 2018 — not, say, three years ago — and it really does have "urgent" in its title. For real.

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[CN: Racism] Jamilah King at Mother Jones: Trump Renews Attacks on Kneeling Players as NFL Opts Not to Punish Them. "As the 2018 football season kicks off, the NFL has opted not to punish players who kneel during the national anthem. But that's not stopping [Donald] Trump from attacking players who don't stand during the anthem. On Sunday, Trump lobbed his latest Twitter tirade, writing, 'If the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings would come back?' ...Just before this season kicked off, Nike, the NFL's official sponsor and a longtime marketer of rebellion against authority, announced that Kaepernick is the new face of its 30th-anniversary Just Do It ad campaign with the tag line 'Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.' Sales jumped 31 percent."

[CN: Class warfare] Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: After Blowing Up the Deficit with Tax Cuts, These Republicans Want Credit for Fiscal Responsibility. "A ThinkProgress review of House Republicans running for re-election in districts deemed competitive by the Cook Political Report found 18 of them explicitly call for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget on their current campaign re-election websites, yet also voted for massive Trump tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. The plan is predicted cost the government more than $1 trillion in revenue, massively increasing the current budget deficit. Thirteen of those lawmakers also voted for the 2018 omnibus spending bill, which cost another $1.3 trillion. Combined, these helped swell the annual federal budget deficit (which was $584 billion in Fiscal Year 2016) to an estimated $1 trillion starting next year."

[CN: Class warfare] Kelly Weill at the Daily Beast: Amazon Is Worth $1 Trillion; Its Workers Are on Food Stamps. "Jeff Bezos's tech giant is the second U.S. company to be worth thirteen-digits on the stock market, following Apple, which hit $1 trillion in August. That's all well and good for Bezos, whose net worth exceeds $150 billion. But workers at the growing network of Amazon-owned companies say they aren't seeing the money... Two years after Amazon opened fulfilment centers in Ohio in 2015, approximately one in ten of its Ohio employees appeared to be receiving public assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits program, The Daily Beast previously reported. SNAP benefits are available to individuals and families living below the poverty line."

[CN: Environmental harm] Rosa Furneaux with photography by Steven Rubin at Mother Jones: Haunting Poems and Photos from a State Torn by Fracking. "[Julia Spicher Kasdorf] grew up in central Pennsylvania surrounded by dairy farms. She'd seen the way coal mining had ravaged the state's southwest, but this destruction was new. Determined to keep an open mind, she began seeking out stories from people affected by fracking. Her curiosity turned into a six-year project and a collaboration with documentary photographer Steven Rubin that culminated in their recent book, Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields. ...Roughly 50 new wells were drilled in Pennsylvania every month last year, according to industry analyst Imre Kugler. ...Despite the power of the fracking industry and the damage already done to Pennsylvania's rural landscape and communities, Kasdorf remains optimistic. 'I don't want people to feel defeated,' she says. 'There was a kind of ferocity and resilience in the people I met, who were fighting with whatever tools they had to try and get to the bottom of things, often against great odds.'"

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[CN: Sexual assault] Aparna Nancherla at the New York Times: Who Gets a Second Chance? "What about the victims' second chances? To argue that their talent must not match that of Louis C.K. or they would have gotten farther at this point in their careers, is missing the point. His actions affected their careers. To think the entertainment industry is fair or just or chiefly merit-based is assuming it operates by different rules from the rest of world. The burden placed on victims will always far outweigh those placed on predators. ...Imagine trying to voice your dissent when it's your entire career on the line. The women who came forward as victims of Louis C.K. had nothing to gain except to be bullied, ridiculed, and insulted. Do they get a second chance?"

[CN: Sexual assault] Matthew Dessem at Slate: Olivia Munn Spoke Out About a Registered Sex Offender Being Cast in The Predator, So Her Co-Stars Let Her Handle the Press All by Herself.
On Thursday, news broke that Twentieth Century Fox had cut a scene from Shane Black's upcoming film The Predator after being informed that one of the actors it featured, Steven Wilder Striegel, was a registered sex offender who'd served six months in prison after pleading guilty to sending sexually charged emails to a 14-year-old girl. Striegel's past was brought to the studio's attention by actress Olivia Munn, who appeared with him in the scene and objected to not being told about his past before working with him. In a statement, Fox said it was unaware of his record until Munn brought it to their attention. But director and screenwriter Shane Black, a longtime friend of Striegel who also cast him in Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys, knew about Striegel's legal problems and said nothing to the cast, which Munn said she found "surprising and unsettling." The scene was cut within 24 hours of Munn speaking to Fox...

...Then Munn's co-stars bailed on scheduled interviews with the Hollywood Reporter Saturday (except Jacob Tremblay, who is 11 years old), leaving her to talk about the situation all by herself. "It's a very lonely feeling to be sitting here by myself when I should be here with the rest of the cast," Munn said, in response to a question premised on the idea that her co-workers were being supportive. In fact, as she made clear, director Shane Black hadn't spoken to her personally about the situation, and other people have been snubbing her.
Fuck that.

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