Shakesville: Jared Kushner

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We Resist: Day 900

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This is a reminder that Mike Pence is: 1. As profligate a liar as Donald Trump; 2. As heinous a nativist wreck as Donald Trump, who, while governor of Indiana, went to court in order to try to legally deny access to social services to Syrian refugees resettling in the state. https://t.co/nLsQdmEVIW
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 8, 2019

Mike Pence is going to go to the southern border and tell rank lies about what he sees there. Let us all endeavor to counterbalance his propaganda with the truth, wherever we can.

Elham Khatami at ThinkProgress: United Nations Human Rights Commissioner 'Appalled' by Conditions in U.S. Detention Centers. "Conditions in U.S. detention centers where migrants and refugees are being held are 'undignified' and 'alarming,' said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday. ...Bachelet said she was appalled by the detrimental effects of such conditions, especially for children, adding that 'Detaining a child even for short periods under good conditions can have a serious impact on their health and development — consider the damage being done every day by allowing this alarming situation to continue.'"

Amanda Holpuch at the Guardian: Migrant Children Held in Texas Facility Need Access to Doctors, Says Attorney.

Hundreds of children at a migrant detention center in Texas are being held in "inhumane" conditions that amount to an "emergency public health crisis" and should be allowed immediate access to doctors, according to an attorney who gained rare access to the facility.

Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School's immigrant rights clinic, was one of six attorneys to visit the detention center in Clint as part of ongoing litigation about an agreement that states unaccompanied children can't be held in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities for more than 72 hours.

The team found that children had no adequate access to medical care, had no basic sanitation, were exposed to extreme cold, and did not have adequate access to drinking water or food.

"I've been visiting children detained in federal immigration custody for 12 years," Mukherjee told the Guardian. "I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen, smelled, had to bear witness to such degrading and inhumane conditions."

Sob.

[CN: Homophobia] And of course it isn't just the children who are being subjected to degrading and inhumane conditions.

Customs and Border Patrol agents at a migrant processing center in Texas allegedly attempted to humiliate a Honduran migrant by making him hold a sign that read, "I like men," according to emails written by an agent who witnessed the incident. https://t.co/NSgsInu7pz
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 5, 2019

Molly O'Toole and Carolyn Cole at the LA Times: Facing Trump's Asylum Limits, Refugees from as Far as Africa Languish in a Mexican Camp.

A group of roughly 100 Haitians, Africans, and South Americans cross the Rio Grande, just shallow enough for adults to wade despite an overnight storm.

As they wait on the muddy bank near Del Rio, Texas, to surrender themselves to the Border Patrol, the voices of children in the group carry across the river to the Mexican side.

There, in the city of Ciudad Acuña, hundreds of migrants have formed an impromptu refugee camp in an ecological park bound on one side by the river. Just outside the park, the official port of entry to the United States sits at the end of a short bridge.

They've crossed thousands of miles by foot, boat, and bus to seek asylum in the U.S., only to find themselves stalled in a purgatory of soggy tents and overflowing bathrooms. Now, they face an uncertain wait prolonged by Trump administration policy.

The temptation to make the risky and illegal river crossing mounts daily.

"If you see people jumping over the river, it is because they are tired of staying here," said one resident of the camp, Luis, who declined to give his last name out of fear for the safety of his family back home.

Home for him would be the West African nation of Cameroon, where Luis was vice principal of a school until he fled last fall. He escaped a widening conflict between the country's English-speaking minority and its Francophone-majority government, which receives security assistance from the U.S.

He was jailed and tortured before escaping to neighboring Nigeria, Luis said. After a trek across three continents, he landed here, where he has waited for six weeks to present himself to U.S. officials at the Del Rio port of entry.

He hopes to join a sister in Ohio.

"At times, it is really disheartening," he said, "so it is difficult to wait."

Patrick Timmons at the Guardian: 'People with No Names': The Drowned Migrants Buried in Pauper's Graves. "Dotted amid the decorated graves there is the sudden, jarring sight of plain, wooden crosses. One has scrawled on it in Spanish: '24 April 2019. Unidentified male recovered from the Rio Bravo approximately 300 meters from the black bridge in the Morelos neighborhood.' ...As drownings have increased in the treacherous river amid the Trump administration trying to block all undocumented people from crossing into the U.S., even to seek asylum, Piedras Negras has had to bury unidentifiable bodies after they were hauled out of the water by first responders."

Family members of a 47-year-old man who died after falling from the border fence said he was trying to return to his family in the United States after being deported and "had lived in Arizona and California since he was 2." https://t.co/G7LcjeRnQe
— Nick Miroff (@NickMiroff) July 5, 2019

Malice is the motherfucking agenda.

As I have noted many times previously: This administration (mis)treats migrants and refugees as the canary in the coalmine of their official cruelty. The Trump Regime's war on immigrants is intolerable on its face, but understand that, whatever they are doing to undocumented immigrants, they will do to other marginalized people and dissidents in the same way eventually.

With that as preface, Drew Harwell at the Washington Post: FBI, ICE Find State Driver's License Photos Are a Gold Mine for Facial-Recognition Searches. "Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have turned state driver's license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through millions of Americans' photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show. Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and emails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by researchers with Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state departments of motor vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure."

A lot of folks will read headlines about this item, see "ICE," and assume the technology is only being used to "nab illegals." It isn't. It's already being used against citizens. And, even if it were only being used against undocumented immigrants, that's bad enough. But the population's indifference to abuses against undocumented immigrants will mean this surveillance programs expands without much pushback. So, let's make some noise.

Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Sanctuary Leaders Fight Back Against ICE's 'Psychological Violence' and Steep Fines. "Ivan and his mother Hilda Ramirez came to the United States fleeing familial violence in 2014. Since then, they have been 'under attack' by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the elder Ramirez said. They were detained together for almost a year after first arriving in the United States. Since their release from detention, they have been targeted for deportation. Because of ups and downs in their immigration cases, they have been forced to take sanctuary twice in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. On July 4, soon after receiving a letter from ICE informing her of a $303,620 fine, Ramirez told Rewire.News she sees these financial penalties as part of a larger pattern of attacks against immigrants in sanctuary."

Matt Zapotosky at the Washington Post: Justice Department Changing Lawyers on Census Case. "The Justice Department is swapping out the lawyers who had been representing the administration in its legal battle to put a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census, possibly signaling career attorneys' legal or ethical concerns over the maneuvering ordered by [Donald] Trump." We knew this wasn't over yet. Goddammit.

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Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Federal Grand Jury Probing Top GOP Donor Elliott Broidy over Trump Inauguration. "Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally Elliott Broidy is under investigation by a federal grand jury over suspicions that he used his position as vice chairman of Trump's inaugural committee to help him strike business deals with foreign leaders." Yeah, that Elliott Broidy.

Mohamad Bazzi at the Guardian: The Troubling Overlap Between Jared Kushner's Business Interests and U.S. Foreign Policy. "The meeting in May 2017 was crucial because it helped solidify a Trump foreign policy favoring Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their conflict with Qatar, a tiny emirate in the Gulf that is rich in natural gas and home to a major U.S. military base. It also raises questions about a problem that has dogged Kushner since the earliest days of the Trump administration: whether his family's business interests are driving his political decisions." Yes, they are.

Spencer Kimball at CNBC: Deutsche Bank Will Exit Global Equities Business and Slash 18,000 Jobs in Sweeping Overhaul. "Deutsche Bank announced Sunday that it will pull out of global equities sales and trading, scale back investment banking and slash thousands of jobs as part of a sweeping restructuring plan to improve profitability. ...Deutsche has come under renewed scrutiny in the U.S. over its business relationship with [Donald] Trump. The House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees subpoenaed Deutsche in April for records on Trump's finances. Trump and his family sought to have that subpoena squashed in court, but a federal judge ruled the bank can turn over financial documents to House Democrats."

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

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We Resist: Day 879

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: Today in Rampaging Authoritarianism and Primarily Speaking and Some Good News from SCOTUS.

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

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin at Reuters: Iran Says It Dismantled a U.S. Cyber Espionage Network. (Emphasis on "says.") "Iran said on Monday it had exposed a large cyber espionage network it alleged was run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and that several U.S. spies had been arrested in different countries as the result of this action. ...The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said on Monday: 'One of the most complicated CIA cyber espionage networks that had an important role in the CIA's operations in different countries was exposed by the Iranian intelligence agencies a while ago and was dismantled.' ...He did not specify how many CIA agents were arrested and in what countries."

Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell at the AP: Iran Says It Will Break Uranium Stockpile Limit in 10 Days. "Iran will break the uranium stockpile limit set by Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in the next 10 days, the spokesman for the country's atomic agency said Monday while also warning that Iran could enrich uranium up to 20% — just a step away from weapons-grade levels. The announcement by Behrouz Kamalvandi, timed for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, puts more pressure on Europe to come up with new terms for Iran's 2015 nuclear deal. The deal has steadily unraveled since the Trump administration pulled America out of the accord last year."

Aaron David Miller at USA Today: Why Are We Headed for a Blowup with Iran? It Began When Trump Scrapped the Nuclear Deal.

The Iranian regime is authoritarian, ideological, and repressive, a serial human rights abuser and regional troublemaker. But we now find ourselves in a dangerous situation largely as a result of a great unraveling begun by the Trump administration's unilateral decision last year to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

The accord — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was flawed, to be sure, and didn't address Iran's aggressive regional behavior or its ballistic missile programs. Even so, it was still a highly functional arms control agreement that imposed significant constraints on Iran's nuclear program for at least for a decade or more.

Campaigning hard against the agreement, candidate Trump vowed to renegotiate or leave what he deemed the worst agreement ever negotiated. Then as president, he pulled out of the agreement and launched his "maximum pressure" campaign. The administration reimposed sanctions on banking and petrochemicals and, in the past several months, has made a major effort to reduce Iran's lifeblood — its oil exports — to zero. As intended, all of this has wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy.

Not surprisingly, the regime, which the Iranian foreign minister quipped had a Ph.D. in sanctions busting, signaled through mine attacks on six oil tankers in the past month that it had options, too. Within hours of Thursday's attacks, oil prices spiked.

No matter how egregious the regime's behavior in other areas, pulling out of the JCPOA without a Plan B other than "maximum pressure" has more than any other factor brought us where we are today.

Well, that and the fact that Donald Trump and his advisors actively want a war with Iran.

As, it appears, does Vladimir Putin. Olga Lautman notes on Twitter: "While tensions are heating up with Iran Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak is in Iran holding talks with Iran's oil minister."

I strongly suspect the Kremlin is trying to orchestrate a U.S.-Iran war. A war that it won't even have to fight:

The tanker war in 1980s bears little resemblance to what this one might look like. Then the tanker war was derivative of Iran-Iraq war with US on sidelines. Now this brouhaha with Iran in Gulf could start a brand new war with the US smack in the middle. https://t.co/IMiPRPNBXw
— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) June 14, 2019

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[Content Note: Racism; nativism. Covers entire section.]

Oliver Laughland at the Guardian: How Trump's Census Question Could Transform America's Electoral Map. "For the first time, the census could include a question on respondents' citizenship that, according to the bureau's own research, will substantially reduce the number of people willing to participate. A study published last week estimated that the addition of the question could mean up to 4 million people — mostly people of color from immigrant minority communities — could go uncounted. If such an undercount occurs the effects will be profound. It could allow for electorate boundaries throughout America to be redrawn, almost certainly favouring the Republican party. It could result in billions of dollars in federal funds being withheld from some of the most vulnerable communities in America."

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Census Battle over Citizenship Question Leaves Immigration Activists with Their Hands Tied.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the the citizenship question by the end of the month, but not before the Census Bureau launched a test last Thursday to examine how its inclusion will impact responses. Approximately 480,000 housing units around the country will receive a questionnaire with households randomly assigned to one of two versions of the questionnaire: one with the citizenship question included, the other without. These results are expected to be completed by October.

So where does that leave the groups that advocate on behalf of immigrants and want to ensure their community members are counted? For now at least, their hands are tied.

Many people are not aware of the census in the first place, and a tremendous amount of resources is spent on outreach and keeping communities informed. With the citizenship question in limbo until at least the end of June, that reduces the amount of time groups can provide outreach.

"We are waiting to see what happens and then we'll decide accordingly," Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) San Francisco Bay office told ThinkProgress. "I tell my staff we are planning to encourage participation in the census the same way we did in 2010. Because it's really important that all of these communities be counted. This matters now and well beyond this president's time in office."

But, Billoo emphasizes, that's not to say she isn't extremely hesitant.

"We recognize, of course, that we could not discourage participation in the census," she added. "The option isn't discourage versus encourage. It is neutral or silent versus encourage. Because even though I do want my community to be counted, it would also weigh heavily on me if I weren't confident in the safety, security, and secrecy of the census data."

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux at FiveThirtyEight: The Citizenship Question Could Cost California and Texas a Seat in Congress. "The results of the count determine everything from where grocery stores are placed to how congressional representatives are distributed. There are few things we care more about around here than political apportionment (although, if we're being honest, we care an awful lot about groceries, too). So we went in search of researchers who had estimated the potential effect of the citizenship question. We found several, none of whom agreed on just how big an impact this would have. But they were all on the same page about one thing — if the Supreme Court rules that the new question can be included, it could alter our political future."

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Kate Riga at TPM: On Heels of Conway Rec, Dems Call for Probe into Kushner for Hatch Violations. Just days after the Office of Special Counsel recommended that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway be fired for violating the Hatch Act, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Don Breyer (D-VA) are calling for Jared Kushner to be investigated as well. 'As you know, under the Hatch Act, federal employees are prohibited from fundraising for political candidates,' they wrote to the Office of Special Counsel. 'Alarmingly, recent media reports indicate that Mr. Kushner is nonetheless taking a direct role in raising funds for the re-election campaign of [Donald] Trump.'"

This is the right thing to do, because ethics and rules still matter. But nothing will come of it. Kellyanne Conway and Jared Kushner will not be fired. Members of the Trump administration won't stop violating the Hatch Act. The only result will be that that the Trump administration is further empowered by having visibly broken the law and gotten away with it (again). Which underlines the urgency of impeaching him now.

Rachael Bade at the Washington Post: Push to Impeach Trump Stalls Amid Democrats' Deference to — and Fear of — Pelosi. "As pressure has mounted in recent weeks on House Democrats to move more aggressively against Trump, Pelosi has demonstrated the firm grip she wields over her caucus — quashing, at least for now, the push for impeachment. It is a command that colleagues say is drawn from a deep well of respect for the political wisdom of the most powerful woman in American politics — and fear that challenging her comes with the risk of grave cost to one's career."

Care more about the entire country than your careers, Democrats. For fuck's sake.

If we wanted opportunistic careerists who didn't give a flying fuck about the nation's future, we could just vote for Republicans. Get a goddamned grip.

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[CN: Misogyny; racism] Isabella Dally-Steele at Ms.: This Week in Trump's War on Women. "On Tuesday, Politico revealed that claims of racism and sexism in the Treasury Department, which came to a head after Secretary Steve Mnuchin's decision to delay the historic rebranding of the $20 bill by changing out Andrew Jackson's image for Harriet Tubman's until at least 2026, were spot on. Nancy Cook revealed that the department's lack of diversity is much more than skin deep — with only three women and one person of color in Department's 20-person senior staff and an overwhelmingly white, male boys club culture permeating the workplace. 'For women and people of color,' said one of Cook's sources, a former Treasury official, 'there is just a general feeling when you walk in and there are all white men that it is not a comfortable environment.'"

[CN: Sexual assault; war on agency] Staff at AP: Ex-Pastor in Texas Accused of Sexually Abusing Teen Relative. "A former Southern Baptist pastor who supported legislation in Texas that would have criminalized abortions has been arrested on charges of child sex abuse, accused of repeatedly molesting a teenage relative over the course of two years." Men who object to women's right of consent over our own bodies when it comes to healthcare frequently don't care about our right of consent in any circumstance.

[CN: Misogyny] Sam Stein at the Daily Beast: Exclusive Poll Reveals Dems' Sexism Problem in 2020.

Sexism is weighing down the women running for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos for The Daily Beast reveals.

A full 20 percent of Democratic and independent men who responded to the survey said they agreed with the sentiment that women are "less effective in politics than men." And while 74 percent of respondents claimed they were personally comfortable with a female president, only 33 percent believed their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman in the Oval Office.

That latter number, explained Mallory Newall, research director at Ipsos, was a strong tell about how gender dynamics were souring voters on certain candidates. Asking respondents how they believe their neighbors feel about an issue is "a classic method to get around people being reluctant to admit to less popular views."

Jesus fucking Jones, dudes. Get your shit together.

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Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky at NBC News: Without Swift Action on Climate Change, Heat Waves Could Kill Thousands in U.S. Cities. "If global warming sometimes seems like a distant or abstract threat, new research casts the phenomenon in stark, life-or-death terms. It predicts that in the absence of significant progress in efforts to curb emissions of temperature-raising greenhouse gases, extreme heat waves could claim thousands of lives in major U.S. cities. If the global average temperature rises 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels — which some scientists say is likely if nations honor only their current commitments for curbing emissions — a major heat wave could kill almost 6,000 people in New York City. Similar events could kill more than 2,500 in Los Angeles and more than 2,300 in Miami."

Brian Kahn at Earther: Half of Greenland's Surface Started Melting This Week, Which Is Not Normal. "Greenland has been scorching (by Greenland standards) for the past few days, with temperatures rising 10-20 degrees Celsius (18-36 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal across the island. Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told Earther that the weather station at the top of the ice sheet saw temperatures reach above freezing on Wednesday and they were headed that way again on Thursday. That puts them just a degree or so away from setting the all-time heat record for June, which is currently held by June 2012."

Erin McCormick, Bennett Murray, Carmela Fonbuena, Leonie Kijewski, Gökçe Saraçoğlu, Jamie Fullerton, Alastair Gee, and Charlotte Simmonds at the Guardian: Where Does Your Plastic Go? Global Investigation Reveals America's Dirty Secret.

What happens to your plastic after you drop it in a recycling bin?

According to promotional materials from America's plastics industry, it is whisked off to a factory where it is seamlessly transformed into something new.

This is not the experience of Nguyễn Thị Hồng Thắm, a 60-year-old Vietnamese mother of seven, living amid piles of grimy American plastic on the outskirts of Hanoi. Outside her home, the sun beats down on a Cheetos bag; aisle markers from a Walmart store; and a plastic bag from ShopRite, a chain of supermarkets in New Jersey, bearing a message urging people to recycle it.

Tham is paid the equivalent of $6.50 a day to strip off the non-recyclable elements and sort what remains: translucent plastic in one pile, opaque in another.

A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of thousands of tons of U.S. plastic are being shipped every year to poorly regulated developing countries around the globe for the dirty, labor-intensive process of recycling. The consequences for public health and the environment are grim.

This is a must-read report.

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

Open Wide...

We Resist: Day 872

As apprehensions of migrants climb at the southwest border, and dozens a day are taken to community hospitals, medical providers are challenging practices — by both government agencies and their own hospitals — that they say are endangering patients and undermining recent pledges to improve health care for migrants.

The problems range from shackling patients to beds and not permitting them to use restrooms to pressuring doctors to discharge patients quickly and certify that they can be held in crowded detention facilities that immigration officials themselves say are unsafe. Physicians say that needed follow-up care for long-term detainees is often neglected, and that they have been prevented from informing family members about the status of critically ill patients. Agency vehicles parked conspicuously near hospital entrances, health providers say, are also stoking fear and interfering with broader immigrant care.

Doctors typically do not know what rights they might have to challenge these practices. At Banner and several other hospital systems across the country, they have called on administrators to oppose and change security measures that they view as endangering health.

This is devastating. Patients "are often subjected to security measures meant for prisoners charged with serious crimes," and crossing the border illegally is not, despite what the president and his favorite TV channel would have people believe, a serious crime. Approaching the border is search of asylum is not a crime at all. It's heinous and wrong that migrant people are being treated this way in any circumstances, no less when they are in need of medical care. Goddammit.

And it's only going to get worse.

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Trump Picks Immigration Hardliner to Lead USCIS. "Former Virginia Attorney General and immigration hardliner Ken Cuccinelli will be the new head of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency confirmed on Monday. ...[Immigration advocates] are concerned that Cuccinelli's appointment signals an official shift to the Stephen Miller-fication of DHS. ...In 2012, Cuccinelli compared immigrants to rats in a conversation on a conservative radio talk show. ...Cuccinelli also has a history of invoking the same heavily-coded language against immigrants as Trump. He appeared on another conservative radio show in 2015 and claimed President Barack Obama's immigration policy was encouraging an 'invasion.'" FUCK.

Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: What Is 'Sanctuary' for a Black Immigrant Family in the U.S.?

[The Thompsons] are the only Black family currently taking sanctuary at a church in the United States. To be precise, the Thompsons are the only Black family with a public sanctuary case in the United States. There are people in sanctuary who decide not to make their cases known for safety reasons.

...Clive and Oneita have lived at First United Methodist Church of Germantown for nine months. When I sat down with them in March, I was clear about the focus of the interview: What is it like for the only Black family in sanctuary? Clive excitedly stood up and clapped his hands. Oneita laughed, and said they'd been waiting for that question. Her assumption, she said, is that people are "scared" to talk about race.

"So let's talk about it,” Oneita said. "My husband looks into this all the time. I looked into it. From what we've seen, we're the only family like us. When reporters come to us, saying they want to do big stories on us, we think it's because we are the only Black family [in sanctuary]. But they never mention it."

Clive and Oneita said they want to be clear: While they may be the only Black family in sanctuary, they are more than that. They are more than the story of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting them for deportation, and they are more than the trauma that forced them to flee Jamaica. Yes, they want their blackness to be acknowledged in the context of sanctuary and immigrants' rights. But they also want their family to be fully seen, away from the prying eyes of the U.S. immigration system. They are a family first and asylum seekers second, Oneita said.

This, like everything Tina Vasquez writes, is essential reading. And yet I grieve that it had to be written at all. We should not be forcing people to make a choice like moving their family into a church for nearly a year to avoid being, for example, their family been torn apart and remanded to separate detention centers, or treated like hardened criminals while seeking medical care.

The way we are treating migrant people and refugees is fucking appalling. And I'm tired to my very bones of mendacious discussions in which people wonder whatever are we to do and wring their hands about what a difficult problem it is.

The fuck it is. Treat migrant people and refugees the same way as everyone else. Let them live a life here. Stop pretending that their humanity is somehow fundamentally different than anyone else who has the good luck to have been born here or able to immigrate legally. They overwhelmingly just want to make a living and put a roof over their heads and get enough to eat and maybe have a little left over to do something fun once in awhile, just like the rest of us.

And also just like the rest of us, some of them won't be kind or decent people, and that's to be expected, because HUMAN BEINGS. So we deal with individual people who prove themselves to be unkind or indecent, and that's that.

This isn't complicated. What complicates it is bigotry, not inherent complexity.

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Heidi Przybyla, Alex Moe, and Mike Memoli at NBC News: House Democrats Consider Bills to 'Safeguard Democracy' in Response to Mueller Report. "As Democrats prepare to launch a more 'robust hearing and legislative strategy' across at least six committees to highlight the special counsel's investigation, they are discussing bills to magnify wrongdoing uncovered in Mueller's report, including contacts with Russian entities. The focus on legislation in upcoming hearings would be designed 'to rein in [Donald] Trump's abuses and safeguard our democracy from future attacks,' said a leadership aide involved in the process." Sure. But also impeach him. Get those additional investigative powers and use them.

Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Company Part-Owned by Jared Kushner Got $90m from Unknown Offshore Investors Since 2017. "A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump. Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the U.S., according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy." Fucking hell.

Catherine Belton at Reuters: American Banker and Putin Ally Dealt in Access and Assets, Emails Reveal. "A senior American banker once secretly awarded a shareholding in powerful Moscow investment bank Renaissance Capital to one of Vladimir Putin's closest friends and brokered meetings for the friend with top U.S. foreign policy officials a decade ago, emails show. The American banker, Robert Foresman, currently vice chairman at UBS investment bank in New York, held a series of prominent roles in Moscow's financial world. ...A deeply religious conservative, the blue-eyed, curly-haired U.S. banker, has said it has always been his calling to be a peacemaker between the two nuclear superpowers." For fuck's sake.

Staff at Just Security: Norms Watch: Damage to Democracy and Rule of Law in May 2019. "Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of those norms in reactions and responses by others. This is our collection of the most significant breaks with democratic traditions that occurred in May 2019." An excellent companion to this daily thread.

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Sharon LaFraniere, Charlie Savage, and Katie Benner at the New York Times: People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He's Busy Stockpiling Power. No shit!

[H]is rising power over the intelligence community has been accompanied by swelling disillusionment with Mr. Barr among former national security officials and ideological moderates. When he agreed late last year to take the job, many of them had cast him as a Republican straight shooter, steeped in pre-Trump mores, who would restrain an impetuous president.

Now they see in him someone who has glossed over Mr. Trump's misdeeds, smeared his investigators, and positioned himself to possibly declassify information for political gain — not the Bill Barr they thought they knew.

"It is shocking how much he has echoed the president's own statements," said Mary McCord, who led the Justice Department's national security division at the end of the Obama administration and the start of the Trump era. "I thought he was an institutionalist who would protect the department from political influence. But it seems like everything he has done so far has counseled in the opposite direction."

I mean, it was pretty obvious from where I'm sitting that that's exactly how Barr was going to behave, so I honestly have no fucking idea why members of the intelligence community are surprised. But the fact that they are is probably something to note for the next time someone wonders aloud how Russia could have succeeded in electing their puppet as our president.

Nicole Lafond at TPM: Rosenstein Defends Barr's 'Reasonable' Handling of Mueller Report. "Rosenstein suggested criticism of the way Barr rolled out the report — writing his own summary of the document, concluding that [Donald] Trump didn't obstruct justice after Mueller wouldn't make a determination, holding a bizarre pro-Trump press conference — was unfair. 'A few years from now, after all of this is resolved, some of Barr's critics might conclude that his approach was a reasonable way to navigate through a difficult situation,' he told the Times." STFU, Rosenstein.

Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: GOP Congressman Admits He Hasn't Read the Mueller Report. "Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) said Sunday that he has not read former special counsel Robert Mueller's report because large investigations can find bad things and members of Congress should instead focus on legislation." I don't even have words.

* * *

Beth Reinhard, Katie Zezima, Tom Hamburger, and Carol D. Leonnig at the Washington Post: NRA Money Flowed to Board Members Amid Allegedly Lavish Spending by Top Officials and Vendors. "A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum. The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years that went to board members — the very people tasked with overseeing the organization's finances." All people probably bought by the Kremlin, even if they don't know it. They'll find out, though.

[CN: Trans hatred] That's your progressive pope for ya!

Breaking: Vatican office questions intentions of transgender people, saying they wish to make "only a 'provocative' display against so-called 'traditional frameworks.'" https://t.co/HwULG28v6B
— Joshua McElwee (@joshjmac) June 10, 2019

Also: What's wrong with making a provocative display against traditional frameworks, anyway? Traditional frameworks around gender are hot garbage, Frank.

[CN: Animal harm; image of bee at link] And finally... This isn't really a resistance item, but more of a heads-up with some suggestions on what you can do to help. Erin Biba at Earther: Your Cheap-Ass Bee House Is Probably Killing the Bees. We leave "overgrown" parts of our garden for precisely the reasons detailed here. Bees forever!

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We Resist: Day 865

Unless a politician's thought is "I need to draft legislation that prevents access to these killing machines" and their prayer is "please, god, let it pass," I don't want to hear about any thoughts and prayers anymore.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 18, 2018

Andrew Kirell at the Daily Beast: Trump on Gun 'Silencers' Like One Used in Virginia Beach Shooting: 'I Don't Like Them at All'. "[Donald] Trump on Monday morning condemned gun 'silencers' like the one police say the Virginia Beach shooter attached to his handgun while killing 12 people last Friday evening. 'The suspect in the Virginia Beach shooting used a silencer on his weapon. Do you believe that silencers should be restricted?' a reporter asked Trump outside the White House, as the president departed for a U.K. visit. 'I don't like them at all,' Trump replied, according to a pool report." But is he going to do anything about them?! Of course not.

[CN: Flooding; death; displacement] Chris McGreal at the Guardian: 'So Much Land Under So Much Water': Extreme Flooding Is Drowning Parts of the Midwest.

Weeks of flooding is drowning large parts of the midwest, wrecking communities and turning farms into inland seas. On top of that, a near record number of tornadoes has whipped through the region, smashing homes and claiming nearly 40 lives so far. All of this comes after the wettest 12 months in the US since records began.

Storms and near record rainfall have caused the region's three major rivers to flood, inundating communities from Nebraska to Michigan and Illinois to Oklahoma, driving tens of thousands in to shelters, shutting businesses, and closing interstate highways.

Waters that used to surge and recede have stayed around, swamping millions of acres of farmland and devastating the planting season. The amount of land farmers are being prevented from sowing by the water is estimated to be as much as double the previous record of 3m acres of corn, set in 2013. The worst-hit states include Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana.

In Nebraska, where farmers are already grappling with the effects of Donald Trump's trade war with China, which has killed off a good part of the soybean trade, flooding is estimated to have destroyed $1bn-worth of crops and livestock.

In Iowa, bordered on either side by America's two greatest rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri, entire towns have been engulfed and some may never revive. At the weekend, levees failed on three rivers, flooding homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands in Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas.

This should be dominating the news, given its unfathomable scope, but it isn't. And I believe a significant part of the reason why it's not getting more coverage is that the president isn't relentlessly tweeting about it. He's barely said a word about it.

It's meant to be the job of the president to care about and call the nation's attention to stuff like this. The for-profit coastal media can't profit handsomely from a story like this, so they mostly ignore it, unless and until the president's attention demands reporting.

It's absolutely chilling how quickly we've become a nation in which the press only cares about what this president does. That's a red flag about how deeply authoritarian a state we already are.

[CN: Nativism; child abuse; self-harm] Monique Q. Madan at the Miami Herald: No Hugs, Kids Cutting Themselves: Court Gets Unprecedented Peek Inside Homestead Shelter. "A 705-page court document filed by lawyers who spent substantial time inside Homestead's detention center for unaccompanied minors says the migrant children held there [2,350 and counting] are subjected to 'prison-like' regimens, potentially sustaining permanent psychological damage due to isolation from loved ones. Based on interviews with detainees, the filing describes dumbfounded and despairing children, cut off from their relatives except for phone calls, enduring 'military-camp' style conditions and stays that often stretch into months." Rage. Seethe. Boil. What the fuck are we doing. Goddammit.

[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] Jill Heaviside and Rosann Mariappuram at Rewire.News: The Escalation of Anti-Abortion Violence Ten Years After Dr. George Tiller's Murder. "As we mark the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, it is incredible to think that, just over a month ago, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse was really asking how 'the pro-life position is in any way violent.' Violence has been a central tenet of the anti-abortion movement since before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. As activists have sought control over the reproductive freedom of millions of people — particularly women of color, low-income women and families, and queer, gender-nonconforming, and transgender communities — they have used violence as a tactic of control, abuse, and fear across the United States."

Read this thread.

Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell’s wife and Trump’s Secretary of Transportation.

The corruption is immense. https://t.co/hEKQV2LO9a
— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) June 3, 2019

[CN: Privacy violations] Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Quest Diagnostics Admits 12 Million Patients May Have Had Medical Data Breached. "Nearly 12 million people may have had their personal, financial, and medical information breached, Quest Diagnostics has admitted. Quest, one of the biggest blood testing providers in the country, said it believes someone had gained unauthorized access to the systems of AMCA, which is a billing collections vendor. 'Information on AMCA's affected system included financial information (e.g., credit card numbers and bank account information), medical information, and other personal information (e.g., Social Security Numbers),' Quest said in a filing, according to NBC News." Fucking hell.

* * *

Donald Trump is on a state trip to the UK, and he is, as always, an international embarrassment.

Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Trump's Insult of Meghan Markle Is Right out of His Tired Playbook.

Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair: Trump Launches UK Trip by Calling London Mayor a "Stone Cold Loser".

Obviously, Brits are taking kindly to his shit, so the Trump Baby Blimp is back and a giant penis was mown into a field along Trump's flight path.

* * *

Jared Kushner is on quite a roll.

Josh Wingrove and Kim Chipman at Bloomberg: Kushner Questions Whether Palestinians Can Govern Themselves.

Jonathan Swan at Axios: Kushner Unsure Whether He'd Alert FBI If Russians Request Another Meeting.

Jamiles Lartey at the Guardian: Trump 'Absolutely Not' a Racist, Insists Kushner.

This fucking guy.

* * *

[CN: Sexual abuse] Julia Alexander at the Verge: YouTube Won't Stop Recommending Videos with Children, Despite Ped0philia Problem. "A new report from the New York Times found that, despite evidence from independent researchers that YouTube's algorithm helps videos of children spread among predatory circles, YouTube's teams don't want to turn off recommendations because it would hurt creators by reducing traffic driven to their videos." In other words, it would hurt YouTube's profits, so OH WELL.

[CN: Sexual abuse] Kate Briquelet at the Daily Beast: Feds Are Asking Jeffrey Epstein's Victims About Sex-Trafficking Crimes. "Eleven years after billionaire Jeffrey Epstein received what amounted to a country-club jail sentence for allegedly molesting dozens of girls in Florida, his victims could be closer to justice — with a possible future federal prosecution beyond Palm Beach. ...[I]n February of this year, a federal judge ruled the non-prosecution agreement (NPA), which was concealed from the victims and their counsel, violated the law, specifically the Crime Victims' Rights Act. Now the feds are contacting victims to discuss possible remedies. During these meetings, the government is reportedly asking one question in particular: Did Epstein’s abuse ever cross state lines?"

[CN: Homophobia] Quimby at Celebitchy: Rocketman Edited in Russia to Cut All Gay Scenes Due to 'Homosexual Propaganda' Law. "Russian film critic Anton Dolin reported that 'all scenes with kissing, sex, and oral sex between men have been cut out' and that the movie's 'final caption' explained that Elton 'established an [AIDS] foundation and continues to work with his musical partner.' Both notable accomplishments, to be sure, but the original caption mentions Elton's marriage to David Furnish and their children. On Friday, Elton and the other filmmakers released a statement condemning the decision. Russia's 'homosexual propaganda' law was signed by Putin in 2013 under the auspices of protecting children. However it has the opposite effect, particularly on LGBT youth, who are denied access to support services and to representation of gay people in media under this law. The law also contributes to a rampant anti-gay culture and to violence and discrimination."

And speaking of violent, homophobic dictators whom Donald Trump adores... [CN: Homophobia] Julia Hollingsworth at CNN: Philippine President Duterte Says He 'Used to Be Gay' Before He 'Cured' Himself. "After accusing his political opponent and vocal critic Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV of being gay, Duterte said he could sense he himself was also 'a bit gay' while married to his ex-wife, Elizabeth Zimmerman. Their marriage was annulled in 2000. Duterte went on to say that he was 'cured' after meeting current partner Honeylet Avanceña. 'I became a man again! So beautiful women cured me,' Duterte said. 'I hated handsome men afterwards. I now prefer beautiful women.' Duterte has a history of making controversial and contradictory remarks about the LGBT community." JFC.

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

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We Resist: Day 851

The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has hit back at Donald Trump's "genocidal taunts" after a strongly worded warning from Trump that Tehran should not think of attacking the U.S.

"Goaded by #B_Team," Zarif wrote on Twitter, in an apparent reference to Trump advisers such as John Bolton, "@realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis, & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone. #EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won't 'end Iran.'"

He added: "#NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect — it works!"

On Sunday Trump warned Iran not to threaten the U.S. or else it would face its "official end," shortly after a rocket landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad overnight.

I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm feeling incredibly angry, and I'm feeling scared, and I'm feeling bitter about the fact that I warned over and over during the 2016 campaign that Donald Trump would be a dangerous, warmongering president, and I, along with everyone else who gravely made those warnings, was sneered at as a hyperbolic hysteric, but here we are, and now everyone behaves as though we were somehow all in agreement that Trump would do this if he were elected. But we weren't. And there were lots of leftists and members of the media who, along with Republicans, ridiculed and silenced and harassed the people who were sending up the red flags and downplayed Trump's authoritarian malice, which helped him get elected.

David Enrich at the New York Times: Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts.

Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump's now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees' advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

Oh.

I mean, the Treasury Department has been compromised all the way back to 2016, so there's no guarantee that anything would have happened even if the suspicious activity had been reported, as it should have been, but now we'll never know.

Jasper Jolly at the Guardian: Trump Reacts Angrily to New York Times Report on Deutsche Bank Transaction. "On Monday, Trump tweeted: 'The new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn't need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don't need banks, but if I did they would be there.' Trump also called the Times reporting 'phony' and called Deutsche Bank 'very good and highly professional.'" OMG. This would be hilarious if it weren't so goddamned tragic.

* * *

[Content Note: War on agency] Brie Shea and Imani Gandy at Rewire.News: Everything You Need to Know About the Extreme Abortion Bans Sweeping the Country. "Conservatives have had their sights set on undermining — if not outright overturning — Roe v. Wade from the moment the U.S. Supreme Court issued the decision 46 years ago. And now, states are clamoring to pass unconstitutional pre-viability abortion bans in the hopes that the Court's conservative majority will revisit Roe and kill it. Here at Team Legal, we wanted to provide an overview of where these unconstitutional bans are being enacted, what penalties they carry, and anything else you might need to know about them."

[CN: War on agency] Rachana Pradhan and Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico: How Mike Pence's 'Indiana Mafia' Took Over Health Care Policy. "Pence has developed his own sphere of influence in an agency lower on Trump's radar: Health and Human Services. It's also the agency with the ability to fulfill the policy goal most closely associated with Pence over his nearly 20 year career in electoral politics: de-funding Planned Parenthood. Numerous top leaders of the department — including Secretary Alex Azar, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and Medicaid/Medicare chief Seema Verma — have ties to Pence and Indiana. Other senior officials include Pence's former legislative director from his days as governor and former domestic policy adviser at the White House. 'He has clearly recruited people connected to him who share his very extreme views on sexual and reproductive health care,' said Emily Stewart, the vice president of public policy at Planned Parenthood."

The fact that a Pence vice-presidency under a president who wanted his veep to focus on policy would have horrific consequences for marginalized people was something about which I and many others warned, too.

[CN: Sexual violence; misogyny] Deanna Paul at the Washington Post: Sailors Ranked Female Crew and the Sex Acts They Wanted to Perform with Them, Navy Report Says. "Sailors aboard a U.S. Navy submarine circulated sexually explicit lists that ranked female crew members, an investigation found. The lists, first reported Friday by Military.com, were uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request. The 74-page investigative report reveals two lists — one with Yelplike star ratings on the women and another containing 'lewd and sexist comments' beside each woman's name."

Among other urgent warnings during the last presidential election, see also: Electing a confessed serial sex abuser as president and commander-in-chief will normalize sexual violence across the country, including in the military.

* * *

[CN: Nativism; violence] Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: Border Patrol Agent Reportedly Called Migrants 'Subhuman' Before Hitting a Migrant Man with His Truck. "A Border Patrol agent accused of hitting a migrant with his truck called migrants 'subhuman' and 'mindless murdering savages,' federal prosecutors said. ...According to court documents, [in December 2017, Border Patrol Agent Matthew Bowen, 39] spotted a man, later identified as 23-year-old Antolin Lopez Aguilar, who appeared to have jumped a border fence near the Mariposa Port of Entry. As Lopez Aguilar ran away, Bowen 'accelerated aggressively' and struck him twice in the back with the front grille of his truck, said another Border Patrol agent on the scene. Lopez Aguilar fell to the ground, the truck tires landing mere inches from his face."

Lisa Friedman at the New York Times: EPA Plans to Get Thousands of Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math. "The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the future health risks of air pollution, a shift that would predict thousands of fewer deaths and would help justify the planned rollback of a key climate change measure, according to five people with knowledge of the agency's plans. ...The new modeling method, which experts said has never been peer-reviewed and is not scientifically sound, would most likely be used by the Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules."

Angelica LaVito at CNBC: Measles Cases Climb to 880 in U.S., with Most New Cases in New York. "Health officials confirmed another 41 measles cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, bringing the total to 880 for 2019, already the worst year for the disease since 1994. ...Thirty of the 41 new cases were reported in New York, where health officials have battled two large outbreaks since the fall. ...Health officials blame the recent surge of cases — after saying in 2000 that the disease had been eliminated from the U.S. — on an increasing number of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children."

And finally, about that Trump tax cut... Camila Flamiano Domonoske at NPR: Ford Slashes 10% of Its Global Salaried Workforce. "Ford is eliminating about 7,000 white-collar jobs — or about 10% of its salaried workforce — as part of a previously announced company-wide global restructuring. About 800 U.S. workers will lose their jobs between now and August. Some workers are being laid off, while others are being reassigned, Ford says. It says the company's management team is shrinking by close to 20% as part of the restructuring, which will save Ford about $600 million a year."

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We Resist: Day 792

Unfortunately, many Members of Congress whisper the President should be impeached but have not supported my call for impeachment. Only a few of us dare to continue to urge both Dems and Repubs to impeach this dangerous president. I will keep trying. The public needs to demand!
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) March 21, 2019

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Let your reps know that you support the Democrats in pursuing impeachment of Donald Trump. They need to hear that we want them to do whatever it takes to disempower Trump.

* * *

I linked this in comments of yesterday's thread, but just in case anyone missed it, especially given its importance...

Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney at Politico: Cummings Demands Docs on Kushner's Alleged Use of Encrypted App for Official Business.

House Democrats are raising new concerns about what they say is recently revealed information from Jared Kushner's attorney indicating that the senior White House aide has been relying on encrypted messaging service WhatsApp and his personal email account to conduct official business.

The revelation came in a Dec. 19 meeting — made public by the House Oversight and Reform Committee for the first time on Thursday — between Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the former chairman of the Oversight panel, and Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell.

Cummings, who now leads the Oversight Committee, says in a new letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone that Lowell confirmed to the two lawmakers that Kushner "continues to use" WhatsApp to conduct White House business.

...Kushner, whom the president charged with overseeing the administration's Middle East policies, reportedly has communicated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman via WhatsApp.

The details of the discussion about Kushner's email and messaging practices came as part of a new Oversight Committee demand for a slew of new documents from Kushner and other current and former White House officials, including his wife Ivanka Trump, former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, and former top strategist Steve Bannon.

...According to Cummings, Lowell also told him and Gowdy that Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter who also serves as a top adviser, conducts official White House business through her personal email account. Cummings suggested that Ivanka Trump was in violation of the Presidential Records Act because she was not forwarding emails to her official White House account that deal with government-related business.

...Cummings also told Cipollone that the committee obtained a document showing that McFarland was using an AOL.com account to conduct official White House business. Cummings said the document shows that McFarland was in communication with Tom Barrack, a longtime Trump confidant and the chairman of the president's Inaugural Committee, about transferring "sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia."

Barrack pitched the plan to Bannon through Bannon's personal email account, according to Cummings.

Fucking hell!

As if the fact that Kushner repeatedly lied on his federal disclosure docs wasn't enough to revoke his security clearance (which he never should have gotten in the first damn place). https://t.co/qztS0SlJfF
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 22, 2019

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Shane Croucher at Newsweek: Jared Kushner's Using WhatsApp for White House Business Is 'Far More Egregious' Than Hillary Clinton's Emails, Cybersecurity Expert Says. No shit! "During a discussion about the Kushner WhatsApp news on MSNBC's The 11th Hour, Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and a cybersecurity expert, noted a story in The New York Times about 'internet mercenaries' selling their hacking skills to foreign governments. Watts told The 11th Hour that these private security companies were now targeting people 'in their communications at the point of origin — at the phone.' He continued: 'This is what it's about now. It's not about this intercepting en route. It's about companies now that have the ability — and this is well-known in cybersecurity circles, I hear about it all the time — going in and targeting anyone's phone and being able to tap into those communications. We cannot have this.'"

I mean, yes, of course that's correct. But when Jared Kushner is using WhatsApp to communicate directly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and K.T. McFarland is using an AOL account to discuss transferring U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, the concern about hacking is rather less serious than the concern that we have traitors running the government who are using these technologies to operate in secrecy.

It would be bad if they were just being foolish in their top secret communications and risked getting hacked, but it's even worse that they are strategically avoiding transparency because they are apparently committing treason.

* * *

Staff at the Daily Beast: Trump: 'People Will Not Stand for It' If Mueller Report Makes Me Look Bad. "In a new interview with his favorite cable TV network, [Donald] Trump was adamant that 'the people won't stand for it' if a report delivered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller makes him look bad." This, too, must be understood as part of Trump's campaign of stochastic terrorism. He is tacitly urging his supporters to not "stand for it" and to take action if Mueller's report is even critical of their dear leader.

The Christian Broadcasting Network asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if he thinks Donald Trump might have been sent by God to save Jews from Iran, and he responded, "As a Christian, I certainly believe that's possible." OMG.

In which the Christian Broadcasting Network asks @SecPompeo if @realDonaldTrump has been “raised” up by God to save the Jewish people from Iran: pic.twitter.com/nvLvSk53KC
— Christina Ruffini (@EenaRuffini) March 21, 2019

Matt Apuzzo at the New York Times: How Strongmen Turned Interpol into Their Personal Weapon. "Unwaveringly confident in its fellowship of nations, Interpol was slow to recognize an era in which autocrats and strongmen wield increasing power over international institutions. Today, Interpol is scrambling to bolster oversight across 194 countries and review tens of thousands of red notices that have accumulated over the years. Nobody knows how many are tainted by political influence. That leaves governments around the world, including the United States', trying to figure out whether they are arresting a fugitive or employing their police for the whims of a despot."

* * *

[CN: Nativism. Covers entire section. Video may autoplay at first link.]

Danica McAdam and Artie Ojeda at NBC San Diego: Young U.S. Citizen Detained at Border Gave 'Inconsistent Info,' CBP Says. "U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are defending the decision to detain a 9-year-old girl for more than 30 hours as they worked to verify her identification. Thelma Galaxia said her friend, Michelle Cardenas, was driving each of their two children from Tijuana, where they live, to their schools in San Ysidro Monday morning, as they do nearly every day. ...Galaxia says CBP officers accused her daughter of lying about her identity [because she is younger in her passport photo]. ...CBP said the girl 'provided inconsistent information during her inspection,' and officers took her into custody 'to perform due diligence in confirming her identity and citizenship.'" Goddammit.

Michael Y. Park at the Points Guy: Airline Assured Flight Attendant She'd Be Safe to Fly to Mexico; When She Returned, ICE Detained Her. "Selene Saavedra Roman, 28, a resident of College Station, Texas, had been a crew member for Phoenix-based Mesa Airlines for less than a month in February when she was scheduled for a flight to Mexico out of Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), even though she'd already made it clear that she didn't want to work any flights outside the U.S. ...Saavedra immediately told her supervisors she was worried — she was, after all, a so-called Dreamer, one of an estimated 700,000 immigrants to the US who fall under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. ...But Mesa Airlines insisted she was legally all right to fly to Mexico and back. ...She ended up being held at the Houston airport for 24 hours, then Immigrations and Customs Enforcement transferred her to a privately run immigration detention facility in Conroe, Texas."

This is a situation where Trump's vile nativist agenda has fundamentally changed things for undocumented immigrants living in the United States: "According to [her attorney, Belinda Arroyo], immigration officials at Houston airport previously would have granted Saavedra a parole — a legal exception that would have allowed her, as a DACA recipient, to leave and reenter the country without hassle. But because of DACA's legal limbo, it's not clear whether paroles still apply." Rage seethe boil.

Molly O'Toole at the LA Times: Marine Corps Commandant Says Deploying Troops to the Border Poses 'Unacceptable Risk'. "The commandant of the Marines has warned the Pentagon that deployments to the southwest border and funding transfers under the president's emergency declaration, among other unexpected demands, have posed 'unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.' In two internal memos, Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller said the 'unplanned/unbudgeted' deployment along the border that [Donald] Trump ordered last fall, and shifts of other funds to support border security, had forced him to cancel or reduce planned military training in at least five countries, and delay urgent repairs at bases." Welp.

* * *

[CN: Anti-choicery; dehumanization of people who can get pregnant] Ari Bee at Rewire.News: Georgia's Total Abortion Ban Would Give Rights to a Fertilized Egg.

Most of Georgia's House Bill 481 focuses on redefining medical and legal viability as beginning when a fetus has "a detectable heartbeat," usually around six weeks' gestational age. This effectively outlaws all abortion, as many people don't know they're pregnant at six weeks. However, the bill slips in language that fundamentally redefines a "natural person," to include "a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb."

...Jalessah Jackson, the Georgia coordinator for SisterSong, a women of color reproductive justice collective based in Atlanta, told Rewire.News by email that the so-called fetal personhood language in anti-choice bills like HB 481 is a direct attack on the autonomy and rights of anyone who can become pregnant.

"To be clear, the desired outcome of fetal personhood framing is to remove the pregnant person's human and reproductive rights altogether," Jackson said.

As I have been noting for at least six years, these laws value fetuses more highly than the people who carry them. That's not a bug of anti-choice legislation; that's a feature.

[CN: Gun violence; abuse] Arika Herron at the Indianapolis Star: 'It Hurt So Bad': Indiana Teachers Shot with Plastic Pellets During Active Shooter Training. "An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises, and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff's office conducting the session. The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning. 'They told us, 'This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing,'' said one of the two teachers, both of whom asked IndyStar not to be identified out of concern for their jobs." JFC.

[CN: Trans hatred] Also in Indiana... Casey Quinlan at ThinkProgress: Indiana Republicans Push Anti-Trans Legislation Days After Gender-Neutral License Victory. "Indiana lawmakers are trying to make it harder for transgender and non-binary people to correct the gender on their ID cards and driver's licenses only a few days after Indiana became the sixth state in the nation to provide non-binary people with a gender marker option. A new amendment, introduced by a Republican state representative, would require people who want their correct gender marker on their ID card to first change their birth certificate — something that is often impossible for people born in a different state." Such assholes.

Emily Barrett and Katherine Greifeld at Bloomberg News: U.S. Treasury Yield Curve Inverts for First Time Since 2007. "A closely watched section of the Treasury yield curve on Friday turned negative for the first time since the crisis more than a decade ago, underscoring concern about a possible economic slump and the prospect that the Federal Reserve will have to cut interest rates. The gap between the 3-month and 10-year yields vanished on Friday as a surge of buying pushed long-end rates sharply lower. Inversion is widely considered a reliable harbinger of recession in the U.S. The 10-year slipped to as low as 2.439 percent." Swell.

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

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We Resist: Day 777

Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia's propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a "regrettable error," but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro's social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.

As I noted on Twitter: Given that Aro is a well-known Putin critic, citing Trump criticism as the reason for rescinding the award may have been subterfuge to mask the Kremlin's interference. Or, of course, it was a little of both, with the Trump criticism used as the public veneer. Truly chilling.

[Content Note: Nativism] Elliot Spagat at the AP: Guidelines Ask Agents to Target Spanish Speakers at Border. "Border agents have been told to explicitly target Spanish speakers and migrants from Latin America in carrying out a Trump administration program requiring asylum seekers wait in Mexico... The Trump administration launched the program in late January in what marks a potentially seismic shift on how the U.S. handles the cases of immigrants seeking asylum and fleeing persecution in their homeland. The program initially applied only to those who turned themselves in at official border crossings. But a memo from a division chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector says it expanded Friday to include people who cross the border illegally."

[CN: Nativism; child abuse; video may autoplay at link] Priscilla Alvarez at CNN: 471 Parents Were Deported from U.S. without Their Children During Family Separations. "The Trump administration identified 471 parents who were removed from the United States without their children, according to the latest court filing in an ongoing lawsuit. At least some of those parents were deported 'without being given the opportunity to elect or waive reunification' in accordance with a court order in June 2018 that required the government to better document waivers."

[CN: Nativism; child abuse] Richard Luscombe at the Guardian: Inside America's Biggest Facility for Migrant Teens. "The migrants were ages 13 to 17, from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and had made dangerous journeys from their homelands, in many cases alone, across hostile territory to reach the southern U.S. border. On arrival in the U.S., they are arrested by border protection agents and transferred to what is described as a temporary shelter on 50 acres of remote federal land in Homestead, 30 miles south-west of downtown Miami, to await reunification with relatives or sponsors already in the United States. Or, more rarely, to be sent home again if none can be found. The presence of the camp, the largest of its kind in the U.S., is controversial, with activists and some politicians denouncing the 1,700-bed facility and its military-style regime for a 'prison-like feel' that epitomises Donald Trump's hardline approach to immigration policy for minors."

This is scandalously absurd. "Dear King." OMG. [H/T to @eastsidekate] https://t.co/bB0UhR2qXu
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 6, 2019

Caleb Melby at Bloomberg: Trump Fussed over Tablecloths and Rockettes for the Inauguration. That is a deceivingly benign headline for what's actually contained in this article: "It was Christmas Day 2016, and President-elect Donald Trump had the Rockettes on his mind." Gross. "[S]ome of the dancers were balking over Trump and his politics, a recurrent problem for those trying to lure top talent to play the inaugural. In a phone call with Tom Barrack, his longtime friend and chairman of his inaugural committee, Trump asked if the dance troupe was still locked down." Here is proof that, despite Sarah Huckabee Sanders' claims to the contrary, Trump was involved with his inaugural committee, currently under investigation for corruption.

Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: Embassy Staffers Say Jared Kushner Shut Them out of Saudi Meetings.

Officials and staffers in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said they were not read in on the details of Jared Kushner's trip to Saudi Arabia or the meetings he held with members of the country's royal court last week, according to three sources with knowledge of the trip. And that's causing concern not only in the embassy but also among members of Congress.

On his trip to the Middle East, Kushner stopped in Riyadh. While there, he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman to discuss U.S.-Saudi cooperation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and economic investment in the region, according to the White House.

But no one from the embassy in Riyadh was in the meetings, according to those same sources. The State Department did have a senior official in attendance, but he was not part of the State Department team in Saudi. He is a senior member of the department focused on Iran, according to a source with direct knowledge of the official's presence in Riyadh.

"The Royal Court was handling the entire schedule," one congressional source told The Daily Beast, adding that officials in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh had insight into where Kushner was when in Saudi Arabia.

JFC. Meanwhile, the Washington Post editorial board has published a piece bluntly headlined: "Trump Is Covering up for MBS. The Senate Must Push for Accountability."

* * *

[CN: War on agency] Amy Littlefield at Rewire.News: 'Not Dead Enough': Public Hospitals Deny Life-Saving Abortion Care to People in Need. "Many of the poorest and sickest patients end up at public hospitals when their pregnancies go wrong. But little-known laws in 11 states — Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas — prohibit abortion care in various kinds of public facilities, according to an analysis conducted by the Guttmacher Institute for Rewire.News. ...Although exceptions exist in all 11 states if a patient's life is in danger, hospital officials are free to interpret what that means and thereby deny abortion care to the sick and dying. ...Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, who cared for [a patient who needed a life-saving abortion], told Rewire.News: 'It really was almost a cruel joke: that she wasn't really dead enough to warrant intervention.'"

[CN: Trans hatred] Nico Lang at Logo: Why Tennessee's New Anti-Trans Bill Could Be the Worst One Yet. "An 'indecent exposure' bill in Tennessee is making headlines over concerns it could represent a new wave of legislation targeting transgender restroom use. ...LGBTQ advocacy groups take issue with language in HB 1151 that appears to be crafted to discriminate against trans people. 'A medical, psychiatric, or psychological diagnosis of gender dysphoria, gender confusion, or similar conditions, in the absence of untreated mental conditions, such as schizophrenia, does not serve as a defense to the offense of indecent exposure,' claims Section 2(e) of the bill. Chris Sanders, executive director for the Tennessee Equality Network, claims these policies set transgender people up to be 'arrested and prosecuted.'"

Damian Carrington at the Guardian: Microplastic Pollution Revealed to Be 'Absolutely Everywhere' by New Research. "Microplastic pollution spans the world, according to new studies showing contamination in the UK's lake and rivers, in groundwater in the U.S., and along the Yangtze River in China and the coast of Spain. The new analysis in the UK found microplastic pollution in all 10 lakes, rivers, and reservoirs sampled. More than 1,000 small pieces of plastic per litre were found in the River Tame, near Manchester, which was revealed last year as the most contaminated place yet tested worldwide. Even in relatively remote places such as the Falls of Dochart and Loch Lomond in Scotland, two or three pieces per litre were found. 'It was startling. I wasn't expecting to find as much as we did,' said Christian Dunn at Bangor University, Wales, who led the work."

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

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