We Resist: Day 859

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, May 28, 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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Earlier today by me: Trump Is a Vulgar National Disgrace on a State Trip and Primarily Speaking.

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

[Content Note: Anti-choicery; war on agency. Covers entire section. Video may autoplay at first link.]

Kate Smith at CBS News: Missouri's Last Abortion Clinic Says It May Lose Its License This Week.
The last remaining abortion clinic in Missouri says it expects to be shut down this week, effectively ending legal abortion in the state.

In a statement to be released later Tuesday, Planned Parenthood said Missouri's health department is "refusing to renew" its annual license to provide abortion in the state. If the license is not renewed by May 31, Missouri would become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided.

...Planned Parenthood said it plans to sue the state "in order to try to keep serving Missouri women."

"This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis," said Dr. Leana Wen, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
And, let us be very clear on this point, it's a public health crisis being caused by misogynist, consent-hostile, agency-thieving pigshits who invent reasons to try to put abortion providers out of business:
On May 20, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services notified Planned Parenthood of three issues that could impact license renewal, according to documents reviewed by CBS News and provided by Planned Parenthood.

On May 22, Planned Parenthood said it would address two of them: adjusting who at the clinic provided the state-mandated counseling and adding an additional pelvic exam for abortion patients.

But it said a third request was out of its control. According to Planned Parenthood, the health department said it was investigating "deficient practices," and needed to interview seven physicians who provide care at the clinic. Planned Parenthood said it could offer interviews only with two who are its employees. The remaining physicians provide services at the facility but aren't employed by Planned Parenthood and have not agreed to be interviewed.
Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court:


Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: We Just Got the First Supreme Court Abortion Opinion of the Kavanaugh Era. "In 2016, while serving as the governor of Indiana, Vice President Mike Pence signed an anti-abortion law that appears designed to troll liberals and give late night fodder to Fox News. ...On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down a brief, unsigned opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood, which announced that the court will not hear the challenge to Indiana's ban on selective abortions. The practical effect of this decision is that the lower court's decision striking down that ban will remain untouched. The Supreme Court upheld a minor provision of Pence's trolly law, but it did so on exceedingly narrow grounds. That provision 'altered the manner in which abortion providers may dispose of fetal remains' to prevent 'incineration of fetal remains along with surgical byproducts.'"

Despite this legislative and judicial onslaught against women's et. al.'s agency, autonomy, right of consent, and very freedom, we're getting absolute bullshit articles in the press about how it's not that bad. To wit:


And as a very pointed reminder — and admonishment to anyone who dares utter any despicable variation on "people who live in red states deserve what they get" — Republicans and conservative judges are passing and upholding these laws in direct contravention of the will of a majority of voters. Leah C. Stokes at the New York Times: "Alabama State Legislators Are Wrong About Their Voters' Opinions on Abortion."
Alabama's law banning abortions even in the case of rape and incest has attracted big headlines. But the state is not alone in trying to all but eliminate abortion rights. Since the beginning of the year, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah have passed similar laws.

But most Americans — including four out of five people in Alabama — oppose these laws. Why would politicians pass abortion bans opposed by their voters?

One explanation is that politicians don't know what the public wants, or so my research suggests.
That's one explanation, sure. But the only explanation that matters is that Republican politicians don't fucking care what their voters want.

And all of us should be very concerned indeed that the GOP continues to behave like a party that isn't and will never be again beholden to voters to retain their power.

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[CN: Nativism; child abuse. Covers entire section.]

Catherine E. Shoichet and Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez at CNN: These Doctors Risked Their Careers to Expose the Dangers Children Face in Immigrant Family Detention.
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pamela McPherson were used to working behind the scenes, quietly documenting the devastating things they'd seen.

Children's fingers crushed by cell doors. A boy who'd lost nearly a third of his body weight in a matter of days. Incorrect vaccine doses and missed diagnoses.

Each incident, the doctors say, was meticulously noted in reports they filed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Allen and McPherson — an internist and a psychiatrist — are expert consultants contracted by the department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Their mission: inspecting the facilities where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrant families.

For years, the doctors' expert opinions, like the facilities they inspected, remained out of the spotlight — unseen by most lawmakers and unheard by members of the public.

That changed, they say, when the Trump administration's policies left them no choice. The doctors became whistleblowers, speaking out with a dire warning. Family detention isn't safe, they said, and children's lives are at stake.

"We are writing to you, members of Congress with oversight responsibility, because we have a duty to raise our concerns about the ongoing and future threat of harm to children posed by the current and proposed expansion of the family detention program," the doctors said in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

Their new mission: Showing the world why immigrant family detention should be stopped.

"Detention of innocent children should never occur in a civilized society, especially if there are less restrictive options, because the risk of harm to children simply cannot be justified," they wrote.

That letter was sent nearly a year ago. And writing it changed their lives.

...[F]or Allen and McPherson, what started with one letter to Congress has become a quest with no end in sight.

"Each passing day of continued detention of children — and no acknowledgment of the risk that we have reported — alarms me even more," Allen told CNN in a recent interview.
Everyone in the U.S. should take a moment today to write their Senators and Congressional Representative and ask them to please heed the warnings and advice of Drs. Allen and McPherson, so that no more children may be harmed or die in U.S. custody while held in family detention.

If the CNN article isn't enough to convince you it's worth two minutes of your time, maybe this will... Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Trump Administration Separates Some Pregnant Migrants from Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention.
As Rewire.News reported in part one of this series, migrants prosecuted under the "zero-tolerance" policy are remanded to U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) custody, and this is when lapses in medical care happen. Advocates told Rewire.News pregnant migrants detained in USMS custody are not receiving adequate services, and they are shackled when accessing prenatal and postpartum care. Some women are even shackled during birth, as Rewire.News reported in part two of this series.

Advocates also report that some asylum seekers in the Western District of Texas who have given birth in USMS custody were forced to hand over their newborns to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). Reuniting with their newborn hinges on their release from federal custody, and whether they can access legal help to navigate the child welfare system. We learned that women who find their way to advocacy organizations appear to be reuniting with their newborns, but Rewire.News was unable to verify what happens to the children of women who do not have access to legal help.
Sob.

MAKE NOISE. MAKE YOUR CALLS. SEND YOUR TWEETS AND EMAILS. RESIST.

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Today in rampaging authoritarianism...


Ben Penn at Bloomberg Law: Mulvaney Tightens Grip on Labor Chief After Trump Allies Grumble. "Donald Trump‘s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, has seized power over the Labor Department's rulemaking process out of frustration with the pace of deregulation under Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, according to current and former department officials and other people who communicate with the administration."

Kevin Breuninger at CNBC: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Reportedly Still Holds Construction Co. Stake She Pledged to Divest. "Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has held onto her shares of Vulcan Materials, a construction company she promised to divest from more than a year earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Vulcan, the U.S.' largest supplier of sand and gravel used in paving and building, has seen its stock price rise more than 12% since April 2018, when Chao said she would cash out her shares, according to a 2017 government ethics agreement. Chao's shares have risen in value by more than $40,000 since the month she said she would divest them, the Journal reported, citing corporate and government filings." Reminder that Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Which the linked article does not even mention.


Coral Davenport and Mark Landler at the New York Times: Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science. "Now, after two years spent unraveling the [climate change] policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault. In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump's hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change. And, in what could be Mr. Trump's most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests."

This, at the same time that, as Erin Durkin reports at the Guardian: "Tornadoes Rip Through Indiana and Ohio Leaving One Dead and Many Injured."

And Speaker Nancy Pelosi still refuses to launch impeachment hearings, and Congressional Republicans remain intransigently fixed in their position of defending and abetting Trump. Alexander Bolton reports at the Hill: "Senate GOP Vows to Quickly Quash Any Impeachment Charges." Of course they do.

We are in so much trouble.

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