We Resist: Day 778

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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Late yesterday and earlier today by me: An Observation and Manafort Sentenced and Happy International Women's Day and Trump Inauguration Took Foreign Donations.

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

Let's start out with some good news!

Addy Baird at ThinkProgress: House Passes Sweeping Voting Rights, Electoral Reform Bill.

House Democrats passed expansive legislation Friday aimed at increasing ballot access, including making Election Day a federal holiday, as well provisions for publicly financing elections and requiring presidents to release their tax returns.

The bill, known as HR 1, passed by a vote of 234-193 Friday. It has been a top priority for Democrats since the party took back the House in November, following an election marked in large part by voting rights issues, including Stacey Abrams' refusal to concede in the Georgia gubernatorial election and the passage of Amendment 4 in Florida, which re-enfranchised 1.4 million formerly incarcerated people.

While many of the individual provisions have been considered in previous bills, progressive voting rights and electoral reform legislation has been essentially nonexistent since Democrats lost the House eight years ago, and the party has made HR 1 their top priority since taking back the chamber.

Though the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate — and even less likely to be signed into law by [Donald] Trump — legislators and activists have cheered the bill's passage as step one and hope it will become law should a Democrat win in 2020.

WORTH DOING. We cannot let Republicans' indecency stop us from even trying to do what's right.

On that note, Senator Elizabeth Warren has a proposal for breaking up big tech companies, if she is elected.

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BREAKING: Pentagon 'Thinks' the Air Force Secretary Has Resigned https://t.co/4v70060eAt

— Katie Bo Williams (@KatieBoWill) March 8, 2019

Thinks?! JFC.

Later came some clarity. Dan Lamothe and Paul Sonne at the Washington Post: Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson Says She Will Resign. "Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, one of the first officials to join the Trump administration in the Pentagon, said Friday that she has informed [Donald] Trump that she will resign, as the University of Texas System announced that she has been named the sole finalist to become president of its campus in El Paso. Wilson said in a tweet that she submitted a resignation letter, and released a statement Friday morning in which she said it was a privilege to serve alongside U.S. airmen over the two previous years and that she is 'proud of the progress that we have made restoring our nation's defense.'" Ugh.

In other resignation news... Jacob Pramuk at CNBC: Bill Shine Resigns from the White House to Advise Trump's 2020 Campaign. "White House communications director Bill Shine resigned from his administration post and will advise [Donald] Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, the White House announced Friday. The former Fox News executive joined Trump's communications staff last year. He left the network in 2017 amid criticism of how he handled sexual harassment scandals. ...Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign manager, said Shine will 'bring insight and talent as we build a world-class campaign.' He did not say exactly what role Shine will have during the election." Double ugh.

Lucy Bayly at NBC News: Economy Gained Just 20,000 Jobs in February, But Wages Are Rising. "The economy gained a meager 20,000 jobs in February, falling far short of analyst expectations of 185,000 and indicating that the nation's 10-year economic expansion has potentially hit a speed bump. ...White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow dismissed the low job growth number as a statistical quirk, blaming the timing of the government shutdown and 'winter, seasonal issues.'" OH OKAY.

Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas, and Caitlin Ostroff at the Miami Herald: Trump Cheered Patriots to Super Bowl Victory with Founder of Spa Where Kraft Was Busted. "Sometime during the party at Trump's West Palm Beach country club, the president turned in his chair to look over his right shoulder, smiling for a photo with two women at a table behind him. ...Nineteen days after Trump and Yang posed together while rooting for the Patriots, authorities would charge Kraft with soliciting prostitution at a spa in Jupiter that Yang had founded more than a decade earlier." That sounds about right.

[Content Note: Misogyny] Andrew Das at the New York Times: U.S. Women's Soccer Team Sues U.S. Soccer for Gender Discrimination.

All 28 members of the world champion United States women's national team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation on Friday, a sudden and significant escalation of a long-running fight over pay equity and working conditions that comes only months before the team will begin defense of its Women's World Cup title.

In the lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, the 28 players accused the federation — their employer and the governing body for soccer in the United States — of years of what they labeled "institutionalized gender discrimination." The issues, the athletes said, affected not only their paychecks but also where they played and how often, how they trained, the medical treatment and coaching they received, and even how they traveled to matches.

Happy International Women's Day!

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