Hey, everyone! I hope that you all have had a good week so far and participated in whatever way you could in A Day Without a Woman, either by striking or wearing red to show your support.
The general strike was the first time possibly in years that I've taken a full day off from doing any work, and it made me realize that there is a value to what I am doing here and that, while I appreciate every single donation I've received, I should ask for recurring support from those who are able to afford it. To that end, I've taken the advice of one of our first readers and set up a Patreon account. You can pledge to donate $1 per list update, and you can set a monthly cap on it, as well, but at most you'd be charged $31 / month if I updated every day. If you would like to be one of my patrons, please visit https://www.patreon.com/suzaneraslan and click the "Become a patron" button on the right side.
I have to admit that when I started this list I had no idea how many people would come to depend on it, and I had, rather foolishly, hoped it wouldn't need to be maintained very long and there wouldn't be so much to post about every day. Unfortunately, this administration is doing more damage than I ever thought possible, and rather than slowing down, there seems to be more to cover all the time.
Thank you for your support so far, and I hope that I can keep this up as long as it needs to be kept!
On to the list:
- Starting on March 1st, 2017, and continuing for the last week, the US has conducted an intense series of dozens air strikes in Yemen, knocking down once and for all the total strawman some supporters used to explain why they voted for DT, specifically that because they are pacifists, they had to vote for someone who wouldn't kill a bunch of people. Al Jazeera reports that civilians were wounded in the strikes.
- On March 4th, 2017, Harnish Patel was shot and killed in South Carolina while closing the minimart he owned in Lancaster. Patel is originally from India, but has lived in the US with his family for over 14 years. Patel is survived by his wife and son. Police believe the murder was racially motivated.
- On March 5th, 2017, DT once again parroted Fox and Friends on Twitter, quoting an incorrect statistic that 122 prisoners release from Guantanamo Bay had engaged in terrorism upon release. In fact, 113 of the 121 prisoners suspected of recidivism were released by George W. Bush. This is a man who has access to actual intelligence, the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, and he gets his intelligence from Fox and Friends.
- On March 5th, 2017, congressional lawmakers responded to DT's wild and unfounded allegations that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him during the campaign with either outright disdain or asking him to provide the evidence that he has. The White House has called on Congress to do the investigation and find the evidence themselves, apparently not understanding that without some kind of evidence from the White House other than a Breitbart article, Congress has nothing to go on to start an investigation.
- On March 6th, 2017, a CNN/ORC poll revealed that roughly 2/3 of Americans say that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign associates. The poll also revealed that 55% of Americans say they are somewhat concerned or very concerned about the relationship between Russian operatives and Trump's campaign.
- On March 6th, 2017 (or thereabouts) the New Yorker published a story on their website (that you can find in print in their March 13th, 2017 issue) that DT may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with a deal to build a hotel in Azerbaijan, and may have inadvertently, but still illegally, done business with a corrupt Azerbaijani member of Parliament whose family funds the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Can we please see those taxes already?
- On March 6th, 2017, CNN reported that four mosques in the Atlanta area have received death threats in recent weeks, two of which received identical emails two weeks ago. Some of the letters were signed "The Muslim Slayer," and appear to be part of a mass mailing that also went to the Islamic Community Center in Brooklyn, NY.
- On March 6th, 2017, after being confirmed as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson made a speech where he referred to Black slaves as "immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less." Slaves who were kidnapped from their homes and shipped to the Americas against their will under horrifying conditions were not immigrants or refugees.
- On March 6th, 2017, the director of an LGBT equality center in Tulsa, OK, arrived to work to find the windows and doors had been shot repeatedly with what is assumed to be a bb gun. Later that afternoon, someone apparently yelled from outside that they wished everyone inside were dead. Police are investigating.
- On March 6th, 2017, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security John Kelly told Wolf Blitzer that his department is considering separating children from their parents at the border to "deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network."
- On March 6th, 2017, the Senate voted to kill a bill that would require federal contractors found to be in violation of work place safety rules to remedy the problem immediately or be unable to vie for future contracts. The law was prompted by the horrific death of a father of two at a Tyson Foods factory after supervisors repeatedly failed to inspect a faulty chain.
- On March 6th, 2017, the House of Representatives unveiled their ACA replacement, which we will refer to as Trumpcare, since the White House specifically doesn't like that eponym. The actual name of the bill is, and I am not kidding you, "World's Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017."
- On March 7th, 2017, the Department of Justice under noted racist and Russian colluder Attorney General Jeff Sessions has lifted the ban on selling guns to people with outstanding arrest warrants as long as they have not left the state in which the warrant was issued. Yes, that means people without warrants for domestic violence, assault, attempted murder, manslaughter, etc. Just warrants. Any warrants.
- On March 7th, 2017, Think Progress published a very well researched and cited piece reporting that despite his insistence to the contrary, DT met personally with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the man no one can seem to recall meeting.
- On March 7th, 2017, Representative Jason Chaffetz said that "rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare." An iPhone 7 or 7+ costs between $649 and $849 before mobile phone provider subsidies. Kathryn Allen, an actual doctor, is running to replace Chaffetz at the midterms. You can donate to her here: https://www.crowdpac.com/campaigns/181376/the-us-congress-needs-a-caring-physician
- On March 7th, 2017, Politico went to the trouble of reading the entire bill and succinctly published how the list of winners and losers under Trumpcare is the most cruel but hilarious metaphor for our current political situation. Losers? low income families, hospitals, and Planned Parenthood. Winners? Rich people, the medical device industry, and no, I am not kidding... the tanning industry.
- On March 7th, 2017, the Independent reported that a former NSA analyst says that DT's White House is "targeting journalists with help from Russian intelligence." No further information was provided.
- On March 7th, 2017, all 100 Senators signed a letter to the DT administration asking for swift action in response to continued anti-semitic threats to Jewish schools and community centers. The wave of threats continued this week.
- On March 7th, 2017, the Washington Post reported that the National Confectioners Association has been booking events at Trump properties while lobbying the White House to roll back regulations on sugar. This is a clear conflict of interest and wildly unethical, even if not illegal.
- On March 8th, 2017, in a related story, Reuters reported that Mexico has canceled permits to export sugar to the US due to a trade dispute that has remained unsettled because DT has not put anyone in the Department of Commerce to negotiate it.
- On March 8th, 2017, the State Department, led by former Exxon executive with zero government experience Rex Tillerson, decided to resume selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in fighting Yemen. The Obama administration halted weapons sales to the Saudis after they used them to attack Yemeni civilians last year.
- On March 8th, 2017, disgraced retired General and disgraced retired National Security Advisor Mike Flynn registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent for more than half a million dollars ($530,000) worth of lobbying work before Election Day for a Turkish company run by a Ekim Alptekin, who has ties to the Turkish government. Willfully failing to register as a foreign agent is a felony. Flynn has previously parroted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ludicrous assertion that an exiled Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania is head of a "deep state" in Turkey.
- On March 8th, 2017, the Hill reported that China has given preliminary approval to DT for 38 trademarks in the country, including those for hotel chains, massage parlors, finance, real-estate, and insurance companies... oh, and escort services. The trademark approval came shortly after DT walked back his diplomatic kerfuffle where he seemed to question the One China policy prior to the inauguration. I shudder to think of the sex workers who would be exploited and probably go unpaid working for an organization that doesn't even pay its construction vendors.
- On March 8th, 2017, Sean Spicer lied, again, to the press, claiming that "James Rosen [of Fox News] had his phone, multiple phones tapped." His claim was disputed by none other than Rosen himself.
- On March 8th, 2017, Foreign Policy magazine published an excellent op-ed claiming "WikiLeaks Has Joined the Trump Administration," following the website's dump of CIA materials detailing ways to monitor civilians using, among other things, Samsung televisions just after DT claimed that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him during the campaign.
- On March 8th, 2017, Jon Huntsman accepted DT's offer to serve as Ambassador to Russia, or, "White House East."
- On March 9th, 2017, air strikes "believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militants" killed 23 civilians. The US is believed to be responsible for the death of more Middle East civilians than usual this year (which has yet to reach its first quarter), according to Slate.
- On March 9th, 2017, the New York Times reported that multiple conservative media outlets, including alt-right ones, as well as republican mega-donor organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, have roundly denounced Trumpcare. "Some of them have already taken to mocking the repeal plan with what they consider to be the most damning of pejoratives — not 'Trumpcare,' as Democrats call it, but 'Ryancare.'" While I'm always happy to hang Paul Ryan out to dry, the fact that the White House doesn't like the name Trumpcare is all I need to keep calling it exactly that.