We Resist: Day 645

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Friday, October 26, 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: Trump Considers Executive Order to Shut Down Southern Border and The Latest on Explosive Devices Sent to Trump's "Enemies".

And from Twitter, ICYMI. [Content Note: Bigotry; misogynist slur.]


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In good news... Tierney Sneed at TPM: Black Voter Group Wins in Voter Registration Case in Memphis. "A state court judge in Tennessee ruled Thursday that Shelby County, which contains Memphis, must let voters whose registrations were stalled due to incomplete information to vote with regular ballots on Election Day, once the deficiencies are corrected. The ruling came in a case brought by the Tennessee Black Voter Project, which saw thousands of registrations forms it turned in deemed incomplete by the Shelby County Elections Commission."

In bad news, this thread by my pal Leah McElrath about how her vote was switched from Beto O'Rourke to Ted Cruz is a must-read in its entirety.


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Margarita Antidze at Reuters: White House Invites Putin to Washington. "The White House has formally invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday, returning to an idea that was put on hold in July amid anger in the U.S. over the prospect of such a summit. ...It was not immediately clear if Putin had accepted the invitation."

Mikhail Gorbachev at the New York Times: A New Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun. "Over 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I signed in Washington the United States-Soviet Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. For the first time in history, two classes of nuclear weapons were to be eliminated and destroyed. This was a first step. ...There are still too many nuclear weapons in the world, but the American and Russian arsenals are now a fraction of what they were during the Cold War. ...Today, this tremendous accomplishment, of which our two nations can be rightfully proud, is in jeopardy."

Lachlan Markay and Dean Sterling Jones at the Daily Beast: D.C.-Based Russian Media Venture Boasts That Indicted Kremlin Operative Is Its CFO.
When federal authorities allege a massive, foreign-government-backed campaign to undermine America's democratic institutions, the expected reaction from those accused of complicity is to put some distance between themselves and the culprits.

But when Elena Khusyaynova, the alleged financier of a sprawling Russian disinformation effort, was indicted last week, one Russian media outlet rushed to associate itself with the St. Petersburg accountant. USA Really, a conspiratorial website run by a Russian media executive and Kremlin policy adviser, quickly boasted on its website that Khusyaynova was the company's chief financial officer.

It's not clear what USA Really hoped to gain through the admission. The site is quick to deny that Russia had any involvement in the 2016 election. But its gleeful association with Khusyaynova suggests that USA Really is not the independent, inquisitive news organization that it claims to be, but rather an adjunct of a deep-pocketed propaganda apparatus that federal prosecutors say amounts to a criminal conspiracy against the United States.
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[CN: Nativism; violence] Brent D. Griffiths at Politico: Nielsen: U.S. Troops Have No 'Intention' of Shooting at Caravan Migrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Thursday night that the military does not intend to shoot at Central American migrants if they cross into the U.S., as reports indicate that the federal government plans to send additional troops to the southern border while a large caravan of migrants continues to makes its way through Mexico.

"We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people, but they will be apprehended, however," Nielsen told Fox News host Martha MacCallum along the border in Arizona. "But I also take my officer and agent, their own person safety, extraordinarily seriously. They do have the ability of force to defend themselves."
"Right now." Right now. Fucking hell.

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[CN: White supremacy; violence; murder]


Justin Fox at Bloomberg: Housing Is Tanking in the Northeast. Guess Why. "There was one region of the country, though, where home sales were definitely down by a lot. That would be the Northeast, where new home sales fell year over year at a rate somewhere between 31.2 percent and 71.4 percent (midpoint: 51.3 percent)... Why might this have happened? Nationwide, rising interest rates would seem to be the obvious culprit for any decline in home sales. ...But there's this other thing that's weighing on the Northeastern housing market: The provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress and signed into law by [Donald] Trump in December that restricts deductions for state and local taxes (aka SALT) to $10,000 a year. Some homeowners in states with (1) high housing prices and (2) high property tax rates will see much bigger tax bills as a result. Those homeowners happen to be concentrated in the Northeast."

[CN: Sexual harassment/assault]


And finally... Ruby Cramer at BuzzFeed: Bernie Sanders Isn't Tired. He's "Just Waking Up."
On the road, Sanders is obsessive about how many people are following his tour via Facebook and Twitter. Of the staff he's brought along with him, nearly half are dedicated to video and social media. At every stop, they chase after him with a camera. Everything is filmed and livestreamed and tweeted. As soon as Sanders gets in the van, or on the plane, the first question for his staff is always the same: "So, what are the numbers?"

He doesn't just want to know that 3,000 people attended his rally in Bloomington. He wants to see how many likes are on the Facebook post about the rally. He wants to know how many people they are reaching — by the hour. He wants to hear which videos are performing well, and about which issues. His aide will usually show him on a laptop, which Sanders reads by holding the machine in the air, screen close to his face. He is very aware that a Social Security event at a public library in Indiana may draw a crowd of 200 people in the room — but that 200,000 people are following along online.

...For the senator, those numbers are not only a measure of enthusiasm. They are "accomplishments," he says during an interview between stops in Iowa. "So if you're gonna ask me about some of my proudest accomplishments in the last two years — we have done three town meetings that I've gotten between a million and 2 million viewers. The ability to talk about our issues, directly to people, is extraordinary."
1. That's a pretty clear indicator that Sanders is not in this for the right reasons. 2. It's also exactly the sort of person that Hillary Clinton was always accused of being (but never was) that supposedly made her unfit for the presidency, according to Sanders supporters. Welp.

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