We Resist: Day 694

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 Considering Jared Kushner for Chief of Staff Because Of Course He Is and 7-Year-Old Girl Dies in Border Patrol Custody and This F#@king Guy. And ICYMI late yesterday: Pelosi Is Coming for Your Taxes, Trump.

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

Gordon Lubold and Dustin Volz at the Wall Street Journal: Chinese Hackers Breach U.S. Navy Contractors.

Chinese hackers are breaching Navy contractors to steal everything from ship-maintenance data to missile plans, officials and experts said, triggering a top-to-bottom review of cyber vulnerabilities.

A series of incidents in the past 18 months has pointed out the service's weaknesses, highlighting what some officials have described as some of the most debilitating cyber campaigns linked to Beijing.

Cyberattacks affect all branches of the armed forces but contractors for the Navy and the Air Force are viewed as choice targets for hackers seeking advanced military technology, officials said.

Navy contractors have suffered especially troubling breaches over the past year, one U.S. official said.

The data allegedly stolen from Navy contractors and subcontractors often is highly sensitive, classified information about advanced military technology, according to U.S. officials and security researchers. The victims have included large contractors as well as small ones, some of which are seen as lacking the resources to invest in securing their networks.

One major breach of a Navy contractor, reported in June, involved the theft of secret plans to build a supersonic anti-ship missile planned for use by American submarines, according to officials. The hackers targeted an unidentified company under contract with the Navy's Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I.

The hackers have also targeted universities with military research labs that develop advanced technology for use by the Navy or other service branches, according to analysis conducted by cyber firms as well as people familiar with the matter.

This should be far bigger news today than it is. Holy shit.

And what the fuck is even going on here?! "The victims have included large contractors as well as small ones, some of which are seen as lacking the resources to invest in securing their networks." If contractors lack the resources to secure their networks, then the contracts should be pulled. And if being able to provide secure networks wasn't required by the contract, that is a failure of genuinely epic proportions. Fuck.

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Sharon LaFraniere, Maggie Haberman, and Adam Goldman at the New York Times: Trump Inaugural Fund and Super PAC Said to Be Scrutinized for Illegal Foreign Donations. "Federal prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funneled donations to [Donald] Trump's inaugural committee and a pro-Trump super PAC in hopes of buying influence over American policy, according to people familiar with the inquiry. The inquiry focuses on whether people from Middle Eastern nations — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — used straw donors to disguise their donations to the two funds. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds." It's amazing to me that this is only happening now.

Asawin Suebsaeng, Maxwell Tani, and Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast: Jared Kushner Replaced Michael Cohen as Trump's National Enquirer Connection. "Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was handed a task considered critical to the president's operations. In addition to serving as a senior adviser in the White House, he would also be playing the role of the main conduit between Trump and his friend David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI, which prosecutors said on Wednesday admitted to making a $150,000 hush-money payment 'in concert with' the Trump campaign." Good lord.

Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Scientists Tell Lawmakers Fetal Tissue Research Is 'Essential' but House GOP Refuses to Listen. "During a congressional hearing on 'exploring alternatives to fetal tissue research' on Thursday, Dr. Sally Temple tried to set lawmakers straight: there are no comparable alternatives. But Republican lawmakers, who espoused 'pro-life' beliefs throughout the hearing, ignored her. 'I offer my perspective as a representative of nearly 4,000 research colleagues around the world,' said Temple, who spoke on behalf of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and, separately, has earned a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' for her research findings." Seethe.

Josh Constine at Techcrunch: Facebook Bug Exposed up to 6.8M Users' Unposted Photos to Apps. "Reset the 'days since the last Facebook privacy scandal' counter, as a Facebook has just revealed a Photo API bug gave app developers too much access to the photos of up to 5.6 million users. The bug allowed apps users had approved to pull their timeline photos to also receive their Facebook Stories, Marketplace photos, and most worryingly, photos they'd uploaded to Facebook but never shared. Facebook says the bug ran for 12 days from September 13th to September 25th. Facebook provided merely a glib 'We're sorry this happened' in terms of an apology. ...It's recommending users log into apps to check if they have wrongful photo access." JFC.

Lisa Girion at Reuters: Johnson & Johnson Knew for Decades That Asbestos Lurked in Its Baby Powder. "Facing thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc caused cancer, J&J insists on the safety and purity of its iconic product. But internal documents examined by Reuters show that the company's powder was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos and that J&J kept that information from regulators and the public. ...In 1976, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was weighing limits on asbestos in cosmetic talc products, J&J assured the regulator that no asbestos was 'detected in any sample' of talc produced between December 1972 and October 1973. It didn't tell the agency that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc — in one case at levels reported as 'rather high.'" My god.

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