We Resist: Day 841

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Friday, May 10, 2019
a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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: We Still Don't Know Exactly What Happened to Juan de León Gutiérrez and Nativist HUD Plan Will Harm Children and Primarily Speaking.

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


For fuck's sake.

Kenneth P. Vogel at the New York Times: Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, [Donald] Trump's personal lawyer, is encouraging Ukraine to wade further into sensitive political issues in the United States, seeking to push the incoming government in Kiev to press ahead with investigations that he hopes will benefit Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation's president-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.

One is the origin of the special counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

Mr. Giuliani's plans create the remarkable scene of a lawyer for the president of the United States pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump's allies hope could help him in his re-election campaign. And it comes after Mr. Trump spent more than half of his term facing questions about whether his 2016 campaign conspired with a foreign power.
This is only the latest piece of Giuliani's campaign to pressure Ukraine to move against Trump's political opponents. As I noted in March:
Ukrainian news is reporting "that the Prosecutor General of Ukraine had a meeting with Giuliani last month. After the meeting the Ukrainian opened an investigation into Clinton/DNC/Ukraine conspiracy allegations."

So, to be clear, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine is opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton — the only one of the major 2016 contenders who didn't work with someone who had worked for Viktor Yanukovych, the then-prime minister of Ukraine and Putin ally, in 2014. Clinton did, however, work with Joel Benenson, who had worked for Yanukovych's opponent, former Parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became Prime Minister of Ukraine after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014.

And the Ukrainian investigation was opened after the Prosecutor General met with Giuliani last month.

In other words: The president's personal attorney is orchestrating the domestic war on dissidents and the international war on dissidents.
We are in such serious trouble.


Tim Mak at NPR: Documents Detail Meetings of Russians with Treasury, Federal Reserve. "Newly obtained documents describe what happened when two now-infamous Russians took their outreach campaign into the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in 2015. Alexander Torshin, then a Russian central banker, brought his protégée, Maria Butina, for meetings with senior officials and even sought another with the then-chair of the Fed, the documents confirm. ...Paul Saunders, who was then the executive director of a D.C.-based think tank called the Center for the National Interest, reached out to officials with the Treasury and the Fed to help organize meetings."

Eric Talmadge at the AP: Experts See Russia Fingerprints on North Korea's New Missile. "The three new missiles North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has tested over the past week are eerily familiar to military experts: They look just like a controversial and widely copied missile the Russian military has deployed to Syria and has been actively trying to sell abroad for years. ...The missiles bear a strong resemblance to the Russian-designed Iskander, a short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile that has been in the Russian arsenal for more than a decade. 'There are Russian technology fingerprints all over it,' said Marcus Schiller, a leading expert on North Korean missiles who is based in Germany."

As you may recall, I have suggested that the ongoing theater between Trump and Kim Jong Un serves the purposes of Vladimir Putin, and here is further evidence that this entire thing is indeed a ménage à trois.

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David J. Lynch and Damian Paletta at the Washington Post: Trump Doubles Tariffs on $200 Billion of Chinese Imports, Escalating U.S.-China Trade War. "The United States and China hurtled toward a defining moment in their four-decade-old relationship, with financial markets bracing for the outcome of unusually dramatic trade talks in Washington. Negotiators met into the evening on Thursday but failed to avert an increase in U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products that took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. ...In Beijing, the Commerce Ministry said China 'deeply regrets' the decision to increase the tariffs and 'will have to take necessary countermeasures.'"


Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: Trump's Latest Round of Tariffs Will Hit U.S. Consumers Hard. "Donald Trump's latest round of tariffs went into effect Friday morning, targeting $200 billion worth of Chinese imports and raising duties from 10% to 25%. ...Experts say the hike will likely hit American consumers harder this time around than in the past. '[A 25% duty] needs to be passed on to the consumer. It is just too big to dilute with those other factors,' Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, told The Associated Press."

John Harney at Bloomberg: Trump's China Tariffs Could Cost 400,000 Manufacturing Jobs, Group Says. "Donald Trump's higher tariffs on Chinese imports will have 'dire consequences' for U.S. equipment manufacturers and worsen prospects for American farmers and others already reeling from lower commodity prices, an industry trade group warned on Friday. The tariffs will 'drive down exports and suppress job gains for the industry by as much as 400,000 over 10 years. It will also invite China to hit back at American businesses, farmers, communities, and families,' said Kip Eideberg, vice president of government affairs for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, which represents more than 1,000 U.S. makers of farm, construction and mining machinery."

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[Content Note: White supremacy; racial slurs at link] Matt Shuham at TPM: TPUSA Member at UN Las Vegas 'Removed' from Organization over 'White Power' Video. "Turning Point USA, the Trump-aligned right-wing group trying to make conservatism cool on college campuses, had to deal with yet another incident of racism in its ranks Thursday: a video that showed the president of its University of Nevada, Las Vegas chapter endorsing 'white power.'"

[CN: Displacement; violence] Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Violence Forced 10 Million More People from Their Homes in 2018, Says Report. "Conflict forced more than 10 million additional people to leave their homes and live in other parts of their country in 2018—bringing the total number of so-called internally displaced people due to violence to a record high of 41 million, an all-time high. The numbers come from a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). ...If the number of people displaced from their homes by natural disasters is included, a total of 28 million people were displaced internally in 2018, according to the figures from the report."

28 million and this presidential administration wants us to build a wall and shut our doors.

[CN: War on agency] Bryn Elise Sandberg at the Hollywood Reporter: Four Production Companies Say They Won't Film in Georgia over Abortion Law. "David Simon's Blown Deadline Productions, Killer Films CEO Christine Vachon, and Mark Duplass pledged to no longer shoot in the state as long as the law exists." GOOD. Now do Alabama, because... [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Sanjana Karanth at the Huffington Post: Alabama Lt. Governor Admits State Abortion Ban Is Direct Attempt to End Roe v. Wade.

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