We Resist: Day 818

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: Trump Tells Supporters: "This Is Your Country, Not Theirs" and Barr Rules Asylum-Seekers Can Be Held Indefinitely and Primarily Speaking.

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

[Content Note: Arson; white supremacy] Last Thursday, I noted that an arrest had been made in the arson attacks on three historically Black baptist churches in one Louisiana parish. Since then: "A fundraiser started by the Seventh District Baptist Association set a target of $1.8 million to be raised and split evenly to the three churches. As of Wednesday morning, $1,030,647 had been donated by over 18,000 people." The total as of this writing is now at $1.27M, and, if you can and would like to donate, you can do so at GoFundMe.

[CN: Terrorism] In another follow-up: U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Hasson, a white nationalist with a massive stockpile of weapons and ammunition who was arrested in February after planning a large-scale terrorist attack targeting Democratic politicians and journalists, will not face terrorism charges, according to his attorney: "Hasson, 49, has remained in custody since his Feb. 15 arrest and subsequent indictment in Maryland on firearms and drug charges. Hasson's attorney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court filing Monday that prosecutors recently disclosed that they don't expect to seek any additional charges."

Essentially, she's arguing he should be released since prosecutors have supposedly told her no more charges will be filed against him, and there are no terrorism charges filed at the moment, which gives them no reason to hold him indefinitely.

Just as a reminder, at the time of his arrest, prosecutors said: "The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country."

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Felicia Sonmez, Josh Dawsey, and Karoun Demirjian at the Washington Post: Trump Vetoes Resolution to End U.S. Participation in Yemen's Civil War. "[Donald] Trump on Tuesday vetoed a resolution that would have ended U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. ...The veto means the United States will continue its involvement in Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against Yemen's Houthi rebels, waged in the name of holding back Iran's expansion in the region. But the Saudi-led effort, which has targeted civilian facilities and prevented aid shipments from getting to Yemenis, has been faulted by human rights organizations for exacerbating what the United Nations has deemed the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe."

Trump's refusal to sign the resolution is a great shame on our nation, and his veto will almost certainly not be overridden, because the Republican Party is itself a great shame on our nation.

Speaking of which...

Of course they do, because the GOP is a death cult. https://t.co/UQGAaMZ5mx

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 17, 2019

See also:

Domestic election meddling, care of the GOP. https://t.co/02jRRPw8CJ

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 17, 2019

The next time you hear someone say that there's no difference between the two parties, remember that the GOP is engaging in domestic election meddling in order to cheat their way into power, while this is what Democrats do: "Governor Laura Kelly has signed a new bill she says makes voting more convenient in Kansas. 'Over the past decade, we have seen countless efforts aimed at making voting more difficult in this state,' Governor Kelly said in a press release. 'I hope this will be the first of many laws that help ensure that every voice is heard in our democratic process and that every vote is counted.'" Right on.

Jeffrey A. Engel at the Washington Post: Impeachment Should Be a No-Brainer, No Matter What the Mueller Report Says. "The Constitution's authors wouldn't have needed any summary of the special counsel's report to know it was time to impeach the president. Neither would they have waited to see whether its full text provided evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The group that created our nation's founding document would already have judged Donald Trump unfit for office — and removed him — because he's repeatedly shown a dearth of the quality they considered paramount in a president: a willingness to put national interest above his own." Correct.

Was the entire purpose of this multi-week delay so that Rudy could prepare this report for the president?

The entire idea of preparing a counter-report to something that supposed exonerates Trump completely is ridiculous.

Barr won't say whether he's talk to the White House

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) April 16, 2019

Luke Harding at the Guardian: Deutsche Bank Faces Action over $20bn Russian Money-Laundering Scheme. "Germany's troubled Deutsche Bank faces fines, legal action and the possible prosecution of 'senior management' because of its role in a $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme, a confidential internal report seen by the Guardian says. ...Deutsche Bank was embroiled in a vast money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB, and its main successor, the FSB, used the scheme between 2010 and 2014 to move money into the western financial system. The cash involved could total $80bn, detectives believe."

Felicia Sonmez at the Washington Post: Mitch McConnell Reelection Launch Video Touts Praise from Trump, Blocking of Merrick Garland. "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday kicked off his 2020 reelection bid with a video highlighting his successful effort to block President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland — a move that helped reshape the court and over which Democrats are still fuming. The video also includes footage of [Donald] Trump hailing McConnell as a 'rock-ribbed Kentucky leader' and 'one of the most powerful men in the world.' ...McConnell, 77, is running for a seventh term." God I loathe him.

Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: Mnuchin Plans to Hire Fox's Monica Crowley as Spokeswoman, Sources Say. "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans to hire Fox News commentator Monica Crowley as his top spokeswoman, according to people familiar with the matter, as he seeks to tout the GOP's tax cuts and navigate Democrats' demands for the president's tax returns." Yeah, that sounds about right. In case you'd forgotten: "Trump planned to appoint Crowley to a position at the National Security Council in his White House, but she withdrew from consideration in January 2017 after CNN reported that she had plagiarized portions of her 2012 book and Politico reported that she had plagiarized portions of her 2000 Ph.D. thesis."

This entire fucking administration. Goddammit.

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Yessenia Funes at Earther: There's Microplastic Blowing in the Wind, Study Suggests. "Some peaks throughout the Pyrénées Mountains of France stand more than 10,000 feet tall. Across the mountains' ridges and valleys, adventurous visitors may spot a brown bear or a yellow lily, one of the wildflowers of the Pyrénées. But this mountain range is home to something else too, something not always visible to the human eye. And that's plastic. A study out Monday in Nature Geoscience found that wind can take tiny plastic particles known as microplastics for a ride, dumping them on unsuspecting mountaintops far from human settlements — like the Pyrénées. It's one of the first studies to show how these particles move long distances through the air in what is likely to be a growing area of research."

Andy Greenberg at Wired: Cyberspies Hijacked the Internet Domains of Entire Countries. "The discovery of a new, sophisticated team of hackers spying on dozens of government targets is never good news. But one team of cyberspies has pulled off that scale of espionage with a rare and troubling trick, exploiting a weak link in the internet's cybersecurity that experts have warned about for years: DNS hijacking, a technique that meddles with the fundamental address book of the internet. Researchers at Cisco's Talos security division on Wednesday revealed that a hacker group it's calling Sea Turtle carried out a broad campaign of espionage via DNS hijacking, hitting 40 different organizations. In the process, they went so far as to compromise multiple country-code top-level domains — the suffixes like .co.uk, or .ru, that end a foreign web address — putting all the traffic of every domain in multiple countries at risk."

Staff at Feminist Newswire: New Research Finds Women Make Nuclear War Less Eminent. "New research, including research by the Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy, suggests that women are a vital part of preventing nuclear conflict, as well as resolving potential nuclear weapon issues. Including women in non-proliferation talks increases the diversity of ideas as well as leads to more positive outcomes. The Royal Society found that in simulated scenarios men are more likely to display 'overconfidence' that leads to attacks. Involvement of women in these scenarios was found to result in de-escalation of the given conflicts." Yeah, I'm still not over Hillary Clinton not being president, and here's another good reason why.

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