We Resist: Day 636

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: The Latest on Jamal Khashoggi and And Right on Cue, Another Promise That Mueller Will Deliver Soon.

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

The Associated Press did a wide-ranging interview with Donald Trump, during which, as usual, he said a bunch of alarming shit, much of which is garnering headlines, but what you may not have heard already is the exchange with which the interview opened:

Donald Trump: How is the business of the news? We're keeping you busy?

AP: Yes, sir, you are.

AP: Thank you for doing this.

Trump: What are you going to do in 6½ years with a normal boring person here?

AP: It has certainly been a busy two years.

Trump: It's going to be different, going to be different.

Trump has moved the goalposts so far so quickly that it no longer warrants comment in the political press that he's stating with absolute certainty that he will be reelected in 2020.

Lots of presidents before him have spoken with brash confidence about their reelection, but none have openly colluded with a foreign adversary to undermine our democracy in order to win the presidency in the first place.

That he said it is chilling; that he said it and it hasn't even made a blip in the news cycle is utterly horrifying.

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[Content Note: Hurricane; death; displacement] Brian Snyder at Reuters: More Than a Thousand Remain Missing a Week After Hurricane Michael. "More than a thousand people were still missing on Wednesday a week after Hurricane Michael flattened communities across the Florida Panhandle, killing at least 27. Teams made up of hundreds of volunteers with the Houston-based CrowdSource Rescue organization were searching for more than 1,135 people in Florida who lost contact with friends and family, [said] Matthew Marchetti, co-founder of Houston-based CrowdSource Rescue. Most of those missing are from Panama City and many are elderly, disabled, impoverished, or live alone, Marchetti said. ...Debris, downed trees, and power lines have hampered access to stranded people, but CrowdSource said a number of its missing person reports resulted from widespread phone and power outages."

While so many friends I grew up w/ are picking through what's left of their lives w/ shattered homes, no power & no clean water, the President of the United States is watching TV & calling a woman he slept w/ & paid off "horseface."

I'm so angry that I'm shaking.

— phillip anderson (@phillipanderson) October 16, 2018

Kate Riga at TPM: $100M from Saudis Hits U.S. Bank Accounts as Pompeo Lands for Meeting. "The Saudis promised the Trump administration $100 million to help the United States' efforts in Syria this summer — and in a suspicious turn of events, that money was suddenly deposited in U.S. bank accounts as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh for what would be a discordantly friendly meeting with Saudi officials about their alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi."

[CN: Racism; voter suppression] Mark Niesse at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Black Senior Citizens Ordered off Georgia Bus Taking Them to Vote. "Government officials in an east Georgia county told about 40 African-American senior citizens to get off a bus taking them to vote Monday, leading to complaints of voter suppression. The bus, run by the group Black Voters Matter, was preparing to depart from a senior center operated by Jefferson County when the center's director said they needed to disembark, said LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter. A county clerk had called the senior center raising concerns about allowing the bus to take residents from the senior center in the city of Louisville, south of Augusta. 'We knew it was an intimidation tactic,' Brown said Tuesday. 'It was really unnecessary. These are grown people.'"

[CN: Nativism; child abuse] Jonathan Blitzer at the New Yorker: To Free Detained Children, Immigrant Families Are Forced to Risk Everything.

Pedro is now being held in an emergency shelter in Tornillo, Texas, a tent city where the government has transferred hundreds of minors in recent weeks, often under the cover of night, in an effort to address an escalating crisis. Nationwide, there are currently 13,200 children in O.R.R. custody, more than ever before, and five times more than were being held in the spring of last year. Shelters have become overcrowded not because more children are fleeing north than in years past but mainly because the Trump Administration has made it more difficult to release them.

In April, the O.R.R. signed an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to share information about the legal status of children's sponsors. Those who come forward to claim family members can now be arrested and deported if they are here illegally. As a result, immigrant families have had to make a choice: Sponsor children and risk deportation, or keep their distance while children languish in government custody. As families weigh the stakes, children have been spending longer periods of time in detention. Officially, the H.H.S. claims that the average time is fifty-nine days, but according to one of the department's own officials, who agreed to speak with me on the condition of anonymity, detained children now spend an average of seventy-four days in federal custody, more than double what it was at the start of 2016.

...Now, according to advocates, the Trump Administration is manipulating the mission of the O.R.R. "They've flipped their mandate from the children's welfare to immigration enforcement," Jennifer Podkul, the policy director of Kids in Need of Defense, told me. "What that's done is kept kids in detention longer, and led to sponsors backing out." As the government has requested more information, including fingerprints, from any adult who may come into contact with a released child, many undocumented family members have begun moving out of households where sponsors live. Last month, Matthew Albence, a senior official at ice, told Congress that his agency had arrested forty-one sponsors between July and September, seventy percent of whom had no criminal record.

[CN: Class warfare] Ryan Koronowski at ThinkProgress: McConnell Sets His Sights on Medicare and Social Security, Saying the Debt Is 'Very Disturbing'. "The same lawmakers who exploded the federal deficit by gifting millionaires and billionaires a favorable corporate tax bill are now telling the public that the way to fix the deficit is to shred the social safety net. On Tuesday, after the Treasury Department released figures showing the federal deficit for Fiscal Year 2018 rose 17 percent to reach $779 billion, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was interviewed by Bloomberg. He was asked about the growing debt and deficit. McConnell said it was 'very disturbing,' and driven by Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid spending. The solution to cutting the deficit, he concluded, is making 'entitlement changes.'"

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