We Resist: Day 649

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 Wants to End Birthright Citizenship and Pence's Offensive Tree of Life Victims' Remembrance and Climate Change Driving Mass Migration.

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

In good news for Pennsylvania, which hopefully bodes well for other states facing redistricting cases in future:

"The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a case brought by Republican officials in Pennsylvania challenging the state Supreme Court’s ability to redraw their congressional redistricting plan." Good. https://t.co/eSu0qP7uSm

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 29, 2018

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[Content Note: Tree of Life Synagogue violence. Covers whole section.]

Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post: Congressional Leaders Decline to Join Trump in Visit to Pittsburgh After Massacre. "Trump will visit Pittsburgh later Tuesday to pay tribute to the 11 victims of the mass shooting at a synagogue there — yet he is traveling with no official public itinerary, little planning, and without congressional and local leaders whom the White House invited on the trip. The White House asked the top four congressional leaders — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — to accompany Trump and first lady Melania Trump to Pittsburgh but all declined, according to three officials familiar with the invitations."

And while some of that might be because appearing with Trump is considered toxic by many voters, a bigger part is almost certainly that Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto "urged Trump not to visit Pittsburgh until after the funerals for the victims had concluded, saying, 'all attention [Tuesday] should be on the victims.' Peduto also added: 'We do not have enough public safety officials to provide enough protection at the funerals and to be able at the same time draw attention to a potential presidential visit.'" But Trump's going anyway. Because he's a piece of shit.

Frank Dale at ThinkProgress: Complainer-in-Chief Trump Whines to Fox News That Obama Wasn't Blamed for Charleston Church Massacre. "Trump complained that his predecessor Barack Obama wasn't criticized for the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during an interview with Fox News on Monday. ...Referring to media reports that connected Trump's rhetoric with the attempted bomber, whose van was covered with stickers supporting the president and taking aim at numerous Democrats and the media, Trump said, 'They didn't do that with President Obama with the church, the horrible situation with the church. They didn't do that.'" BECAUSE OBAMA WASN'T A WHITE SUPREMACIST!!!

An attorney for pop star Pharrell Williams sent a cease-and-desist letter to President Trump for playing “Happy” at a political rally on the same day as a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. https://t.co/xgg8dgzFJw

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 30, 2018

I'm so annoyed that he even had to do this. I can't imagine how distressing it was for him to hear his song used this way.

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[CN: Nativism] CNBC's John Harwood notes some troubling events from the White House briefing yesterday: "WH press sec Sanders declines to rule out suspension of habeas corpus in effort to repel 'invasion' at America's Southern border. She also refused to rule out suspension of 'posse comitatus' restrictions on deployment of US military to enfore laws within American borders." JFC.

[CN: War on agency] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Patients Are Being Incarcerated for Do-It-Yourself Abortions; These Lawyers Want to Change That.

Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for allegedly terminating her own pregnancy with medication she ordered online. By the time the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned the feticide conviction in 2016, Patel had been incarcerated for three years.

Patel is one of at least 20 people who was arrested or investigated for a self-induced abortion since 1973.

"We don't want anybody else to have to suffer that fate," said Jill Adams, chief strategist of the Self-Induced Abortion (SIA) Legal Team.

The growing hostility to abortion rights could mean an uptick in arrests, and so lawyers with the SIA Legal Team formally launched a free, confidential helpline and website on Tuesday to help anyone who's criminalized for "self-managing," or performing an abortion themselves.

"While we know of at least 20 people arrested for self-managing abortion or helping a loved one do so, we suspect the number is far greater than that and we anticipate that the helpline will bring our attention to many more of these cases," Adams told ThinkProgress.

With the advent of medication abortion and mounting research demonstrating its safety, there's a fear among reproductive rights/justice advocates that a prison cell might replace the "coat-hanger" motif as more people choose to self-manage.

Reminder that the Governor of Indiana when Patel was sentenced was Mike Pence.

[CN: Environmental toxins; child abuse] Doyle Rice at USA Today: 93 Percent of the World's Children Breathe Toxic, Polluted Air Each Day. "Nearly 2 billion children — about 93 percent of the world's children under the age of 15 — breathe toxic, putrid air that's so polluted it puts their health and well-being at serious risk, a new report said. Many of the children die: The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 600,000 children died in 2016 from lower respiratory infections caused by dirty air. 'Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,' said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. 'This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfill their full potential.'"

[CN: Death; possible violence; discussion of self-harm] Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Ashley Southall at the New York Times: Two Sisters Were Found Dead in the River, Duct-Taped Together; Police Have Few Answers. "Rotana Farea was 22; Tala Farea was 16. They had a history of going missing, and they had recently requested asylum in the United States, the police said. But beyond that, the circumstances of their deaths have remained a mystery. ...In late August, Tala Farea was again reported missing to the Fairfax County authorities, who distributed a missing-person poster online. The poster said she might be with her sister Rotana. In October, someone again reported the sisters missing in Virginia, the police in New York said. The mother also received a call from the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, informing her that her daughters had applied for asylum, the police said."

[CN: White supremacy] Will Sommer at the Daily Beast: Instagram Is the Alt-Right's New Favorite Haven. "Alt-right social network Gab shuttered itself over the weekend after one of its users allegedly killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue and announced the attack on the site. But many far-right personalities still have access to a much bigger online home: Instagram. As other social networks crack down on right-wing extremists, Instagram has become a surprising refuge for far-right figures who have somehow managed to avoid being banned from that site as well." Swell.

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