Suzan eraslan has been a podcaster, dj, theater maker,and freelance beverage writer, currently working full time in non-alcoholic wine and spirits

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1ST, 2017 (Who is Frederick Douglass? day)

Suzan Eraslan
“Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!”
— - Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"

I am trying to make the format of these more readable, and am now embedding tweets rather than doing screenshots, unless I feel there is a genuine concern that the initial tweet will be deleted, or it is part of a long thread. Thanks for bearing with me as I find the best way to present this massive amount of information to you each day.

Also, I realize that there is information in here that is not a direct action of the US federal government, whether it has to do with different branches, foreign governments, or actions taken or reports made by individuals. I feel that this information is necessary to get a complete worldview as to how the influence of DT's election has extended beyond merely who sits in the White House. 

As always, stay strong and stay sane! - Suzan

  • On February 1st, 2017, in his daily press briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked to clarify DT's earlier statements about Frederick Douglass. In the video of the briefing, it is still unclear if DT is aware of who Douglass was and that he has been dead for over a century, and now it is unclear if Spicer does, either, or if anyone in the White House, for that matter, is aware of who the famous abolitionist and former slave was.

Uploaded by tpmtv on 2017-02-01.

  • On February 1st, 2017, Twitter user and lawyer, @nycsouthpaw pointed out that Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump, DT's children who are meant to be running DT's companies in a blind trust and who, by law, are not meant to be participating in government, were photographed last night in the Capitol with Senator Orin Hatch.
  • On February 1st, 2017, Twitter user @east_londonista posted a picture of an anonymous, threatening letter sent to her brother-in-law's cousin, a Texas resident, through the mail. The letter encouraged the recipient not to rent or sell their home to to Muslims, Indians, Blacks, or Jews, or if they were one of the listed minorities, to "LEAVE TEXAS OR BETTER YET GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM." It went on to say that the writer, and presumably those like him, would not be "RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TORTURE STARTING NOW." No other details were provided.
  • On February 1st, 2017, Politico reported that Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock no-showed two scheduled town halls, infuriating constituents who had shown up with questions about, among other thing, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and DT's executive order barring entry to the U.S. for visa holders from 7 majority Muslim nations. Comstock's staff said that invitations suggesting she would appear were "in error." This is just one of several reports that elected officials in Congress, both the House and the Senate, have become increasingly inaccessible to their constituents, and is in keeping with my personal experiences attempting to reach Senator Charles Schumer either by phone or at his office last Friday, January 27th.
  • On February 1st, 2017, House Democrats including Rep. Barbara Lee and the chairs of 4 Democratic caucuses, demanded that noted white supremacist and neo-Nazi Steve Bannon, chief strategist to the White House, be removed from the National Security Council, calling his appointment to the council, "dangerous."
  • On February 1st, 2017, National Security Advisor retired General Michael Flynn, continued to pave the way for a war with Iran. In a statement to the press, he told Iran that they are "on notice" after a "provocative" ballistic missile test launch. Flynn was pressed into early retirement because, as Colin Powell wrote in an email that was hacked during the election, Flynn was, "Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since.” DT has been signaling aggression toward Iran since the election, when he slammed the Iran nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions on the country in exchange for their not developing weapons grade plutonium, and lying that he had seen video in which millions of dollars in cash were unloaded from a plane, delivered to the Iranian government on behalf of President Barack Obama. No such video exists. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, police officers resumed attacks on the Standing Rock camp where the Sioux, other Native Americans, and ally Water Protects have been protesting the construction of the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
  • On February 1st, 2017, hours after former Exxon-Mobil executive Rex Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State, Reuters announced that the House passed a resolution that would no longer require oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose foreign payments. More concrete source for the resolution forthcoming. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, Business Insider reported that during a telephone conversation on Friday, DT told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto that the U.S. would, indeed, build a wall along the southern border of the United States and that Mexico would pay for it, "like it or not." DT threatened a 10% tax on Mexican imports and a 35% tax on those imports that "hurt Mexico the most." After criticizing President Peña Nieto's handling of the narcos, DT further threatened to send troops into Mexico to combat drug trafficking for him. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, DT took Marine One to Dover, Delaware to receive the body of the Navy SEAL killed in the first military action of DT's administration that also left an 8-year-old American girl dead. In his press briefing this afternoon, Sean Spicer named the Navy SEAL, mentioned his wife and children, and named the city where they live, an extraordinary breach of security that puts them in danger. As such, I will not source any news story that mentions any of them by name. Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron), journalist and national security and military analyst, criticized Spicer on Twitter and called for the Department of Defense to offer them protection. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, inmates at James T. Vaughn Correctional Facility in Smyrna, Delaware, are holding 4 correctional officers hostage. An inmate called the Delaware Online newspaper to state that the hostage situation was a rebellion and that they demanded reform and rehabilitation of the prison, and that the rebellion was in response to: "Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse. ... Education, we want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget."
  • On February 1st, 2017, Reuters reported that the White House intends to change the name and the mission of the counter-extremism program that counters all violent ideologies around the world, from Countering Violent Extremism to Countering Islamic Extremism or even Countering Radical Islamic Extremism. There are a host of problems with this move, aside from the obvious ethnic and religious prejudice, so I suggest reading the article in its entirety. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, Russia again began bombing Ukraine. During the election, when criticized for saying that Putin would not move into the Crimea well after he had already done so, DT "clarified" that he meant Putin would not move into the Ukraine if DT were elected. Your move, Dorito Musssolini. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, the Washington Post revealed that DT's telephone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was the PM's "worst call by far," of 4 other phone calls with world leaders that day, including Vladimir Putin. On the call, DT spent a great deal of time bragging about his non-existent electoral college sweep (DT has one of the lowest electoral college victories in US history, among the bottom 1/3) and railed against an agreement signed between the U.S. and Australia for the former to accept refugees from the latter's camps. The White House framed the call as congenial. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, over one thousand Yemini bodega owners in New York City announced that they would go on strike tomorrow from 12:00 PM - 8:00 PM to protest DT's executive order banning entry to the US for visa holders from 7 majority Muslim nations, including Yemen. 
    • Source: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/news/new-york-yemeni-bodega-shutdown/index.html?sr=twCNN020217new-york-yemeni-bodega-shutdown1256AMVODtopPhoto&linkId=34031155
  • On February 1st, 2017, 76 protesters were arrested at Standing Rock for protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Linda Black Elk, a member of the Catawba Nation and a medic at Standing Rock who was not arrested said,“We have completely lost faith in local law enforcement and their ability to control themselves.” The arrested protesters were taken to 5 different jails across North Dakota. 
    • Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/01/standing-rock-arrests-dakota-access-pipeline-construction
  • On February 1st, 2017, to mark the beginning of Black History Month, Mike Pence tweeted his thanks to Abraham Lincoln, a white man, for submitting the 13th Amendment to the states, ending slavery. Lincoln did not submit the Amendment to the states. It was proposed by Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio. 
    • Source: https://twitter.com/VP/status/826973464078716935
  • On February 1st, 2017, the New York Times and other outlets reported that the raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL and an 8-year-old American girl had been previously discussed by President Barack Obama and his military advisors, but abandoned due to the impossibility of gaining intel necessary to conduct the raid without excessive loss of civilian life. The White House acknowledged on Wednesday night the possibility of more civilian casualties than the young girl, but did not give numbers. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, a draft of a potential executive order that would severely limit freedoms of LGBT people, women, single and unwed parents, and reproductive rights, among countless others began circulating. Framed as granting "religious freedom" the language of the draft is so broad that it would allow anyone, in any position, including at closely held companies and government agencies, to discriminate against anyone "when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments." The draft specifically protects the tax-exempt status an organization practicing discrimination on the basis that the org "believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.” It is important to keep in mind that this is a draft, not a signed document, but to be alert for an official order in the coming days.
  • On February 1st, 2017, the Seattle City Council Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods, and Finance Committee voted unanimously to advance a bill to divest $3,000,000,000 (three billion dollars) of city money from Wells Fargo over their investment in the Dakota Access Pipeline. The bill will be voted on by the full City Council on Monday. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, in advance of a scheduled appearance by Breitbart editor and white nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos, the University of Berkeley warned students that the event could be used to out undocumented immigrants and "to target individuals, either in the audience or by using their personal information in a way that causes them to become human targets to serve a political agenda.” At a previous college appearance by the flamboyant hate monger at the University of Wisconsin, Yiannopoulus harassed and incited violence against a transgender student. 
  • On February 1st, 2017, after failing to block an appearance by Breitbart editor and white nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos through petitions, protesters, including the antifa black bloc, shut down the event. Three Yiannopoulos supporters claimed to have been maced by black bloc members, some small fires were set, and a Bank of America window was apparently broken before the black bloc dispersed. Yiannopoulos was unharmed, and later appeared on Fox News bemoaning that he had been silenced, apparently unaware that he was at that moment speaking on national television. 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2ND, 2017

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31ST, 2017 (1st SCOTUS nomination)