We Resist: Day 729

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 Committed Obstruction Another Time and Must Be Removed Immediately and Trump Regime Contemplated Denying Refugee Children Their Right to Asylum Hearings and Get. Him. Out. Of. Office. And ICYMI late yesterday: An Observation About Toxic Masculinity.

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

I don't know what it's going to take to wake people up to the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves, but maybe this will do it.

Let's be very blunt about this: Trump is willing to starve his own people, which is something that only the most brutal dictators in history have done. https://t.co/qaGtFU8Gm4

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 18, 2019

Indeed he doesn't. But that doesn't make them *not* his own people. Other dictators also othered their own people before and as a rationale for starving (and/or in other ways harming) them. That this is his view also puts him right in line with other vicious authoritarians.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 18, 2019

American Exceptionalism is making far too many people complacent about what is already happening here. Don't believe it couldn't happen here. It's happening.

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After Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not allowed to go on her diplomatic mission to see NATO leaders and visit the troops, Donald Trump has now decided that no one in Congress will be allowed to go anywhere without his approval:

JUST IN: White House issues a directive to executive branch agencies that bars congressional delegation travel on any government aircraft, as well as use of travel expenses, during the shutdown without White House approval. pic.twitter.com/LmtMoWDIVX

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 18, 2019

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is meeting with North Korea and Senator Lindsey Graham is in Turkey meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

And the United States is doing nothing as Russia deploys nuclear-capable ballistic missile launchers near Ukraine's border.

So, Lindsey Graham is with Erdogan, Mike Pompeo's with North Korea, John Bolton is asking the Pentagon for plans to go to war with Iran, Russia is moving nukes to Ukraine's border, and Trump stopped Pelosi from meeting with NATO.

How much more urgent does it have to get, folks?

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 18, 2019

Everything is fine. (Everything is not fine.)

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[Content Note: Nativism; Islamophobia] Caitlin Oprysko at Politico: Trump Touts Story About Finding 'Prayer Rugs' Along Border. "Donald Trump on Friday sought to prop up his administration's claims that migrants who enter the U.S. illegally at the southern border don't come from only Mexico and Central America, in an attempt to justify his demands for a border wall. Trump cited a story from conservative news outlet the Washington Examiner in which an unnamed rancher living in New Mexico claimed to have found 'prayer rugs,' or pieces of carpet used by Muslims for prayer, near her property. The story does not include any first-person accounts of seeing such migrants, however. U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Arizona said recently that it had arrested migrants from seven countries trying to enter the U.S. illegally there, but none of the countries it named were majority Muslim."

In other words, that rancher is lying, and Trump is repeating the lie.

[CN: LGBTQ hatred] Carla Herreria at the Huffington Post: Vice President Says Outrage over Wife Karen Pence's Discriminatory School Is 'Offensive'. "Vice President Mike Pence defended second lady Karen Pence's decision to take a teaching job at a school that discriminates against LGBTQ individuals and families, suggesting that the uproar over it is an attack on Christianity. During an interview with the Catholicism-focused Eternal World Television Network on Thursday, Pence said that the attacks on the Immanuel Christian School, which bans LGBTQ employees, students, and families, were offensive to his family. 'To see major news organizations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us,' Pence said. 'We'll let the critics roll off our backs,' the vice president continued. 'But this criticism of Christian education should stop.'"

1. Fuck you. 2. It's not an attack on Christianity; it's a condemnation of bigotry. 3. Not all Christian denominations are homophobic and transphobic, so it can't possibly be an attack on Christianity. 4. Running to the media and demanding that criticism stop is the polar opposite of letting the criticism roll off your backs. 5. Fuck you.

[CN: Anti-choicery] Ally Boguhn at Rewire.News: Senate GOP Prioritizes Abortion Funding Restrictions over Ending Shutdown. "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) advanced legislation that would codify a ban on federal abortion funding in a nod to anti-choice activists rallying this week in Washington, D.C. But the bill's progress was halted Thursday afternoon when it failed to pass the 60-vote threshold needed to proceed. Meanwhile, McConnell continues to block legislation to end the partial government shutdown." PRIORITIES.

[CN: Anti-choicery; class warfare] Emma Platoff at the Texas Tribune: Federal Appeals Court Lifts Order Blocking Texas from Kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid. "A federal appeals court has lifted a lower court order that blocked Texas from booting Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, potentially imperiling the health care provider's participation in the federal-state health insurance program. A three-judge panel on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Sam Sparks, the federal district judge who preserved Planned Parenthood's status in the program in February 2017, had used the wrong standard in his ruling. The appeals court sent the case back to him for further consideration." JFC.

[CN: Homophobia] Tim Fitzsimons at NBC News: Judge Rules Against Elderly Lesbians Rejected from Retirement Home.

A federal court on Wednesday ruled against a lesbian couple who brought a lawsuit against a Missouri retirement home that rejected the women's apartment application because their marriage is not "understood in the Bible.”

Bev Nance, 68, and Mary Walsh, 72, married a decade ago in Massachusetts and have been in a committed relationship for roughly 40 years.

When they applied to move into the Friendship Village senior living facility, they did so "because it is in their community, they have friends there, and it offers services that would allow them to stay together there for the rest of their lives," said Julie Wilensky, an attorney representing the couple.

But once Friendship Village staff found that Nance and Walsh are married, they told the couple that they were not allowed to move in, because the home did not condone homosexuality. The letter they received said that the only married couples they accepted were those in unions between "one man and one woman."

The couple sued, alleging "discrimination on the basis of sex," and their case was finally decided this week by a federal court in Missouri, which found "sexual orientation rather than sex lies at the heart of Plaintiffs' claims."

LGBTQ groups decried the outcome, and the couple's lawyers said "we disagree with the court's decision, and our clients are considering next steps."

Goddammit. Rage seethe boil.

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Staff at the Daily Beast: DNC Says It Was Hit by a Russian Cyberattack Days After the Midterms. "The Democratic National Committee claims it was hit by a Russian cyberattack in the days after the 2018 midterm elections. According to court documents filed late Thursday, the DNC says 'dozens of DNC email addresses were targeted in a spear-phishing campaign' on Nov. 14, but that the attack appears to have failed to gain access to any information. The committee believes the attack was part of a phishing campaign that cybersecurity firms previously linked to a Russian hacking group known as Cozy Bear. Cozy Bear is linked to Russian intelligence and is said to have broken into the DNC's systems ahead of the 2016 presidential election." Fucking hell.

Erin McCormick at the Guardian: Recalls of 'Potentially Lethal' U.S. Meat and Poultry Nearly Double Since 2013.

The number of meat and poultry products recalled in the US for potentially life-threatening health hazards has nearly doubled since 2013, according to a report by a consumer watchdog group.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture logged 97 meat recalls for serious health hazards in 2018, ranging from 12 million pounds of raw beef that made close to 250 people ill with salmonella to the withdrawal of 174,000 pounds of chicken wraps for possible contamination with listeria.

These "Class 1" recalls — for conditions the USDA deems "a health hazard situation in which there is a reasonable probability that eating the food will cause health problems or death" — are up from 53 in 2013, the report by the US PIRG Education Fund said.

"The most dangerous types of meat and poultry recalls are on the rise," said Adam Garber, who co-authored the report. "Whether you like hamburger or chicken, more and more dangerous meat is reaching your house."

Some people argue that this proves inspections are working; i.e. more cases are being caught. Either way, the numbers are going to go up the longer the shutdown lasts. Food safety is one of the many things that will compromised by a shuttered government.

Joel Shannon at USA Today: Measles Outbreak Grows in Area with Low Vaccination Rate, Most Patients Unimmunized. "A measles outbreak in southwestern Washington state has grown to 16 confirmed cases, and most of the children affected are unimmunized against the disease, officials said Thursday. ...Only two of the children have an unverified immunization status; the other 14 are unimmunized, officials say. Clark County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state, with more than 22 percent of public school students having not completed their vaccinations, The Oregonian reports, citing state records."

Outbreaks of disease, whether due to a subversion of herd immunity or other causes, will also be even worse than otherwise if the shutdown continues. We are just fucked on so many levels.

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