We Resist: Day 889

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, June 27, 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: Primarily Speaking + Debate Recap and Today in Rampaging Authoritarianism and Supreme Court Rules on Census, Gerrymandering, and Consent Cases.

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

[Content Note: Misogynoir; gun violence; war on agency] Carol Robinson at AL.com: Alabama Woman Loses Pregnancy After Being Shot, Gets Arrested; Shooter Goes Free.
A woman whose unborn baby was killed in a 2018 Pleasant Grove shooting has now been indicted in the death.

Marshae Jones, a 27-year-old Birmingham woman, was indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury on a manslaughter charge. She was taken into custody on Wednesday.

Though Jones didn't fire the shots that killed her unborn baby girl, authorities say she initiated the dispute that led to the gunfire. Police initially charged 23-year-old Ebony Jemison with manslaughter, but the charge against Jemison was dismissed after the grand jury failed to indict her.

...[Jones] was five months pregnant and was shot in the stomach. The unborn baby did not survive the shooting.

"The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby," Pleasant Grove police Lt. Danny Reid said at the time of the shooting.

...The 5-month fetus was "dependent on its mother to try to keep it from harm, and she shouldn't seek out unnecessary physical altercations," Reid added.
I don't even know where to begin. If we're criminalizing women's emotional behavior while they're pregnant, we are in deep shit.

Amanda Reyes, Executive Director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a member of the National Network of Abortion Funds which helps women access abortion services, said in the statement: "The state of Alabama has proven yet again that the moment a person becomes pregnant their sole responsibility is to produce a live, healthy baby and that it considers any action a pregnant person takes that might impede in that live birth to be a criminal act."

She further notes that this opens the door to women being charged for not getting adequate prenatal care — and, of course, many women don't because of our garbage policy of treating healthcare as a privilege rather than a right.

Women are more than incubators. Goddammit.

[CN: War on agency; class warfare] Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire.News: What's Next in the Continuing Mess of the Domestic 'Gag Rule' Fight.
Reproductive rights and health advocates on Monday filed an emergency petition to the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to reverse a ruling last week setting aside preliminary injunctions blocking the Trump administration's domestic "gag rule" from taking effect.

The request is advocates' latest attempt to prevent the administration from enforcing the rule, which bans federal family planning dollars from going to healthcare providers who perform abortions or refer patients for abortion services and was originally set to take effect on May 3. Last week, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Trump administration could begin enforcing the policy while the case makes its way through the courts.

On Friday, attorneys from the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a separate emergency request with a federal court in Maine to block the gag rule as well. The court has not yet ruled on that request. A separate injunction remains in place for Title X grantees in Maryland.
[CN: Sexual assault] Daniel Victor at the New York Times: Two Women Who Heard E. Jean Carroll's Account of Being Attacked by Trump Go Public. "Two women in whom E. Jean Carroll confided about having allegedly been sexually attacked by Donald Trump in the 1990s spoke publicly about it for the first time in an interview excerpted on the New York Times podcast 'The Daily,' describing the conflicting advice they gave their friend at the time. On Wednesday, Megan Twohey, a Times reporter, interviewed Ms. Carroll and the two women, Carol Martin and Lisa Birnbach, who had not been publicly identified until now. It was the first time since the alleged assault that the women had discussed it together."

So, not only has Carroll gone on the record with her rape allegation against a sitting president, but the two friends in whom she confided at the time are now going on the record. And still, it's barely getting any attention.

[CN: Rape culture] Alex Kaplan at MediaMatters: Here's How a Fringe Smear Targeting E. Jean Carroll Reached Donald Trump Jr. "After author and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll reported that [Donald] Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., pushed a conspiracy theory that the claim was 'ripped-off a plot' from a 2012 episode of NBC procedural Law & Order. Before being amplified by Trump Jr., the conspiracy theory was spread by a Twitter account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory and another account whose content has regularly been shared by 'seemingly-automated accounts.' It has also been pushed by the Daily Mail's political editor."

[CN: Nativism; abuse] Maria Sacchetti at the Washington Post: U.S. Asylum Officers Say Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' Policy Is Threatening Migrants' Lives, Ask Federal Court to End It. "U.S. asylum officers slammed [Donald] Trump's policy of forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while they await immigration hearings in the United States, urging a federal appeals court Wednesday to block the administration from continuing the program. The officers, who are directed to implement the policy, said it is threatening migrants' lives and is 'fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation.' ...The union said in court papers that the policy is compelling sworn officers to participate in the 'widespread violation' of international and federal law — 'something that they did not sign up to do when they decided to become asylum and refugee officers for the United States government.'"

[CN: Nativism] Franco Ordoñez at NPR: Trump Wants to Withdraw Deportation Protections for Families of Active Troops.
The Trump administration wants to scale back a program that protects undocumented family members of active-duty troops from being deported, according to attorneys familiar with those plans.

The attorneys are racing to submit applications for what is known as parole in place after hearing from the wives and loved ones of deployed soldiers who have been told that option is "being terminated."

The protections will only be available under rare circumstances, the lawyers said they've been told.

"It's going to create chaos in the military," said Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney who represents recruits and veterans in deportation proceedings. "The troops can't concentrate on their military jobs when they're worried about their family members being deported."
I can't imagine anything that makes more abundantly clear that Trump's immigration policy isn't about "protecting citizens" but is just straight-up white supremacist, nativist malice.


As Kyle Griffin notes on Twitter, this is "a move with potentially stark implications for Trump's account." LOL indeed.

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Peter Baker at the New York Times: Heading to G-20, Trump Once Again Assails America's Friends. "In the hours before and after leaving for an international summit meeting, Mr. Trump assailed Japan, Germany, and India. He complained that under existing treaty provisions, if the United States were attacked, Japan would only 'watch it on a Sony television.' He called Germany a security freeloader and chastised India for raising tariffs on American goods."

Seung Min Kim, Damian Paletta, and Simon Denyer at the Washington Post: Trump Arrives at Global Economic Summit with Full Agenda and List of Grievances. "'Well, I think I can say very easily that we've been very good to our allies, we work with our allies, we take care of our allies,' Trump, flanked by senior aides and Cabinet officials, said at the beginning of his dinner with [Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison]. 'We even help our allies militarily. So we do look at ourselves and we look at ourselves, I think, more positively than ever before, but we also look at our allies and I think Australia is a good example.'"


Eliana Johnson Burgess Everett at Politico: Trump's Hawks Ramp Up Campaign to Shred Last Part of Iran Nuclear Deal. "Iran's expected breach on Thursday of the uranium stockpile limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal is reviving a fierce debate within the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill about just how hard Trump should go to undermine the agreement. Even though Trump pulled out from the deal struck by President Barack Obama, an important portion of the agreement was left intact that allows work on Iran's civil nuclear program and facilitates international projects to encourage its advancement. The State Department has issued waivers to allow those projects to continue and doing away with them would almost certainly blow up the deal entirely. That's precisely the goal that Trump administration hawks, led by national security adviser John Bolton, have been pursuing."

Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Trump's DC Hotel Charged Secret Service $200,000 in First Year of Presidency. "The Trump International Hotel in Washington, just five blocks from the White House, charged the Secret Service more than $200,000 in taxpayer money during the first year of Trump's presidency. Expense documents obtained by NBC News show that a total of $215,254 was spent by the agency at the property from September 2016 to February 2018. One bill came in at $33,638 for just two days of use. "

[CN: Climate change]


Jon Henley and Sam Jones at the Guardian: Spain Fights Huge Forest Fire as European Heatwave Intensifies. "More than 500 firefighters and soldiers are working to bring a huge forest fire under control in north-eastern Spain as the early summer heatwave intensifies across Europe. The fire, in the Catalan province of Tarragona, has been fanned by strong winds and high temperatures and has so far burned across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land. ...'We're facing a serious fire on a scale not seen for 20 years,' the region's interior minister, Miquel Buch, said in a tweet."

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