Happy #NationalMuttDay from Zelda! pic.twitter.com/G1ZG8Fx3SJ
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Happy #NationalMuttDay from Zelda! pic.twitter.com/G1ZG8Fx3SJ
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party's campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.Did he really just say "we have to be a big family in order to win the House back" to justify compromising on abortion rights? Jesus fucking Jones.
Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.
"There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates," said Luján, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. "As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America."
...Luján, serving his second term as the DCCC's chairman, has cast a wide net for candidates. A map on his office wall highlights districts held by dozens of Republican that he hopes to oust in the 2018 midterm elections.
"To pick up 24 [seats] and get to 218, that is the job. We'll need a broad coalition to get that done," Luján said. "We are going to need all of that, we have to be a big family in order to win the House back."
Not sure what @TheDemocrats don't understand about the massive amounts of under- or unpaid labor women perform for the party on state level. https://t.co/IfOSEpga3G
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
Not sure why they imagine that labor will continue if women's basic autonomy is treated like so much trash.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
If you're not a party who is uncompromisingly supportive of abortion access, then you're not a party who is serious about healthcare.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
(•_•)
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 18, 2015
<) )╯ABORTION
/ \
\(•_•)
( (> IS
/ \
(•_•)
<) )> HEALTHCARE
/ \
How do the @washingtonpost editors write "The man who may disenfranchise millions" and not talk about Pence's role? https://t.co/JpyKbSTVed
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
"Mr. Kobach now leads a presidential commission on election integrity." No he doesn't. Mike Pence leads it. https://t.co/ihAezuzTMA
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
Mike Pence's history of hostility to voting rights in Indiana is crucial info. He's also next in line for the presidency, so, you know.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 31, 2017
Groups spending millions in anonymous donations are leading the outside efforts to either defend [Donald] Trump or sell his agenda with voters and Congress, despite the president's repeated calls to "drain the swamp" in Washington of special-interest money.That all seems fine.
The political empire affiliated with billionaire Charles Koch has spent $2 million to date to advance Trump's tax-cut blueprint and will hold events this week in Washington to kick off the next phase of its multimillion-dollar campaign to drive congressional support for a comprehensive tax plan to slice corporate tax rates and enact broader tax cuts.
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch network's grass-roots arm, already has 50 events scheduled in August and September to help promote the tax plan.
The pro-Trump Great America Alliance is spending $450,000 on a TV and digital ad that casts special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into possible collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign as a "rigged game."
The group already has pumped more than $3 million in advertising to advance Trump's policies and has committed to spending $5 million more, said Eric Beach, a Republican strategist who helps run the group.
The Judicial Crisis Network, which spent $7 million to push Trump's top judicial nominee, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, is "prepared to spend whatever we need to spend to help [Donald] Trump fulfill his promise of restoring balance to our federal courts," policy director Carrie Severino said in a statement.
Trump has more than 100 judicial vacancies to fill.
Another pro-Trump group, America First Policies, has spent $5 million push his agenda and to help a Trump-supported congressional candidate in Georgia.
All operate as nonprofits, can accept unlimited funds from virtually any source but are not required to disclose their donors publicly.
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
Your Fat Friend has written a terrific piece about thin people who find comments sections on fat advocacy pieces too harrowing to read: "Your Fat Friend Wants You to Read the Comments."
I shared a few comments with you in the hope of finding a witness to the cacophony in response to my handful of tweets — someone who could confirm the absurdity and harshness of strangers' responses. I should've anticipated what you would say.There is much, much more at the link, and I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.
Don't read the comments. I never do.
You, like so many other thin friends, were shaken, and found the comments too harrowing to continue reading.
I was surprised. These comments weren't anything I didn't hear regularly. These are words that strangers will readily say to me, face to face. Passersby shout epithets on the street. When turned down for a date, men snap "fat bitch" back at me with startling ease. Family members offer an unwelcome and unsolicited onslaught of diet advice and surgeon recommendations. Coworkers complain loudly about sitting next to passengers smaller than me. These comments are as ubiquitous as the air that I breathe. And like the air, they are invisible to you.
[...] I don't read the comments. I never do.
But, my darling friend, the comments are the one passage from your world to mine. The comments are what I breathe every day — the heavy smog that thickens in my lungs. The cloudy mess I exhale when I tell you what has happened. The thick skin that has brought me this far, and allowed me to take so much in stride.
I need you to peer into the world I walk through every day. I need you to read the comments.
[Content Note: White supremacy.]
At the Guardian, Jason Wilson writes about American Renaissance's annual conference in Tennessee. American Renaissance is a white supremacist outlet founded by Jared Taylor, who advocates for "an all-white 'ethnostate,' carved out of US territory."
The audience was not just crusty old dinosaurs, as the white supremacist movement is often described by people who believe no effort is required to challenge white supremacy but instead we just have to wait for its ancient adherents to die.
To the contrary, the movement — empowered by the election of Donald Trump — is full of eager, and angry, young men:
When Taylor spoke, his audience was generationally diverse. Some, well into middle age or beyond, had heard it all before. But when he asked who was attending for the first time, the great majority raised their hands.Suffice it to say, people who show up to a conference to listen to a man speak about an all-white "ethnostate" aren't just economically anxious. I don't know how many times and in how many ways that dreadful narrative needs to be debunked, but here I am, debunking it once again.
Many were millennials. Though all attendees wore conference dress code – jacket and tie – more than a few younger men sported the "fashy haircut," short back and sides with a severe parting, which has become a signature of the so-called alt-right.
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link.]
Joe Uchill at the Hill: Hackers Breach Dozens of Voting Machines Brought to Conference.
One of the nation's largest cybersecurity conferences is inviting attendees to get hands-on experience hacking a slew of voting machines, demonstrating to researchers how easy the process can be.Well, that is terrifying.
"It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it," said security consultant Thomas Richards, glancing at a Premier Election Solutions machine currently in use in Georgia.
The DEF CON cybersecurity conference is held annually in Las Vegas. This year, for the first time, the conference is hosting a "Voting Machine Village" where attendees can try to hack a number of systems and help catch vulnerabilities.
The conference acquired 30 machines for hackers to toy with. Every voting machine in the village was hacked.
Reince Priebus has been fired as White House Chief of Staff. General John Kelly, who was heading the Department of Homeland Security, will be Donald Trump's new Chief of Staff.
A general serving as White House Chief of Staff. Yikes.
Anyway. Here are some of my thoughts on this latest development.
Priebus is a party man for a truly despicable party and a colossal putz, but he was one of the last Trumpers left w/ political experience.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
We are now being governed by an executive branch that is staffed by people w/no experience, no understanding of the law & no respect for it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Plus Mike Pence. Who knows how the federal government works and will use that knowledge to destroy it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
And let me perfectly blunt: We should be very worried indeed about a WH staffed w/ virtually no one w/ government experience.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Because it's a blaring signal that the Trump WH doesn't even have the merest intention of governing effectively or decently.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
They don't NEED anyone with any competency or experience. All they need are sycophants to the authoritarian leader.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
You might think incompetence will result in failure, and it will, but only of traditional democratic governance. They'll succeed at fascism.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
They already are succeeding.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Priebus, no matter your opinion of him, represented a last line. That line has been crossed. That line has been obliterated.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Also: Priebus was, besides Pence, the last one with strong ties to the Republican Party. That could signal a significant break, too.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Another reason to keep your eyes on Pence. Is he going to keep up his role as liaison to Congressional GOP, or go all in with Trump WH?
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
The failure of the healthcare bill last night was an embarrassment for Pence. It could be that he is now willing to cut loose from caucus.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
How much we still see Pence whipping up votes on the Hill (or not) will be an indication of whether WH is going truly rogue.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
This blogaround brought to you by scarves.
Recommended Reading:
Flavia Dzodan: [Content Note: White supremacy] Sentimentality and the Building Blocks of Bigotry
Ayana Byrd: Study: There May Be Less Time to Fight Global Warming Than We Think
Brittney McNamara: Senator Mazie Hirono Celebrated for Health Care Vote While Having Stage 4 Cancer
Monica Roberts: How About Using Pics of Real Trans Service Members to Support Trans Troops?
Amy Littlefield: Thanks to Pence, Indiana Now Has One Less Abortion Clinic
Sikivu Hutchinson: The Misogynoir of Rock: Shredding While Black and Female
Rae Paoletta: These Deep-Sea Goths Live in Pure Darkness
Dan Van Winkle: IMAX Is Phasing Out 3D Movies Because People Just Don't Want Them
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
This afternoon, Donald Trump traveled to Long Island to give a speech at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, before an audience of Suffolk County police officers.
It was a belligerently white supremacist and nakedly fascist speech, during which Trump claimed "that the 'Second Amendment would be gone' if it weren't for him" and promised (or, more accurately, threatened): "We're going to secure our border against illegal entry and we will build the wall, that I can tell you."
But perhaps the most alarming part of his remarks was this:
Trump on handling suspected criminals: "Don't be too nice" to "thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon" https://t.co/rZyICcW4Yr
— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 28, 2017
[Trump stands at a podium in front of an audience of uniformed police officers] And when you see these towns, and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see 'em thrown in, rough! — I said, "Please don't be too nice." [laughter] Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and you're protecting their head, you know? The way you put the hand over... [mimics an officer putting a hand over a suspect's head as they're loaded into a police car, as the audience laughs] Like, don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody? Don't hit their head! I said, "You could take the hand away, okay?" [cheers and applause; Trump turns to face the officers and lifts his arms to bask in their approbation]Rough, he says. That is a dog whistle.
It sounds like the President of the United States just advocated the sort of "rough ride" that killed Freddie Gray. Absolutely sickening. https://t.co/S7H5EwapZ8
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Roughly 70% of the population of Brentwood, NY is Hispanic. Trump's speech was intended as a threat to non-white populace.
— eastsidekate (@eastsidekate) July 28, 2017
So, I had literally *just* posted this as part of a conversation about McCain's vote... pic.twitter.com/UZJOcCcl4R
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
If you can't see the screencap embedded in the tweet, it reads:
I'm exhausted with all the "but it was actually a genius move, because since he let it come up for a vote, now it's dead!" bullshit. Okay, players. How many times have we heard this thing is dead so far? Like the GOP is going to just give up. The fuck they are. They'll find another way to try to get it done. Or, as Trump keeps threatening, they'll just accelerate Obamacare's death by causing it to fail. So how exactly did John McCain "save" healthcare? He didn't. What he did was save the Republican caucus from getting their asses kicked out of office if we still have free and fair elections in 2018. Now they get all the credit for their relentless effort to repeal Obamacare, and none of the blame for shitty healthcare policy when Obamacare "fails" because they undermined it.
...when @eastsidekate sends me this. WELP. https://t.co/j1TKqPAAIr pic.twitter.com/QNygadAZHu
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
If you can't see the screencap embedded in the tweet, it reads:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) met with President Trump Friday at the White House about the senator's ObamaCare replacement proposal.
The meeting, confirmed by Graham's spokesman, Kevin Bishop, comes as some Republicans are pushing to keep alive their effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare despite the failed vote in the Senate early Friday morning.
Graham has pitched his bill as a better alternative to ObamaCare than GOP leaders' plans. His measure, also backed by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), would convert money currently being spent on providing ObamaCare coverage into a block grant to states. States could then choose how to spend the funds.
"We've got to regroup & continue to stay involved & find something that has 51 votes in the Senate."—House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
This is not over. The white supremacist death cult that is the GOP is very, very determined to wreak ruination on the nation's healthcare.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
The autocrat always requires enemies to protect his base from. If real enemies don’t exist, they will be created. Minorities preferred.
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) July 26, 2017
I guess the folks shocked by Trump's sinister culture warring forgot he explicitly wanted a veep to run policy and who his veep is. pic.twitter.com/wEjTKEZqy0
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 27, 2017
Donald Jr. explained that his father's vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.So here we are.
Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
"Making America great again" was the casual reply.
"As I mentioned in our conversation, I am a strong advocate for diversity, both in the Republican Party and in government," Fluharty wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO. "The President's announcement this morning — that he will ban all of those who identify as transgender from military service — runs counter to my deeply held beliefs, and it would be impossible for me to commit to serving the Administration knowing that I would be working against those values."I guess he hadn't noticed that virtually the entirety of Trump's administration is straight white cis men, but okay. The point is that this executive bigotry is yet another barrier to staffing the federal government with competent or decent people.
Fluharty, who is openly gay, said he interviewed for the job on Tuesday, one day before Trump's surprise tweet that the government "will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity" in the U.S. military.
The Trump administration's filing is unusual in part because the Justice Department isn't a party in the case, and the department doesn't typically weigh in on private employment lawsuits.The DoJ isn't even a party in the case, but filed a brief just to use its weight to argue that LGB folks aren't entitled to protections under Title VII. Fucking hell.
But in an amicus brief filed at the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, lawyers under Attorney General Jeff Sessions contend that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination, does not cover sexual orientation.
"The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination," says the Justice Department's brief. "It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts."
The Justice Department also contends that Title VII only applies if men and women are treated unequally.
"The essential element of sex discrimination under Title VII is that employees of one sex must be treated worse than similarly situated employees of the other sex, and sexual orientation discrimination simply does not have that effect," the brief says.
Hahahahahahahahaha just kidding he is the wooooooooorst.
[Content Note: Disablism] Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker: Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon. This entire thing really needs to be read in its entirety, but here's an excerpt:
On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn't happy. Earlier in the night, I'd tweeted, citing a "senior White House official," that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with [Donald] Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.Wow. Okay. So, it's obviously the Bannon quote which has gotten the most attention, because the political press is a shambolic disgrace. But there are three extremely important points here:
"Who leaked that to you?" he asked. I said I couldn't give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. "What I'm going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we'll start over," he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he's inherited in his new job. "I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can't help themselves," he said. "You're an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I'm asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it."
..."Is it an assistant to the President?" he asked. I again told him I couldn't say. "O.K., I'm going to fire every one of them, and then you haven't protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks."
I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. "I've asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period," he said. "They won't do it." He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source.
"They'll all be fired by me," he said. "I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow. I'll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he'll be asked to resign very shortly." The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn't been invited. "Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac," Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: "'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.'" (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)
Scaramucci was particularly incensed by a Politico report about his financial-disclosure form, which he viewed as an illegal act of retaliation by Priebus. The reporter said Thursday morning that the document was publicly available and she had obtained it from the Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci didn't know this at the time, and he insisted to me that Priebus had leaked the document, and that the act was "a felony."
"I've called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice," he told me.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"The swamp will not defeat him," he said, breaking into the third person. "They're trying to resist me, but it's not going to work. I've done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they're going to have to go fuck themselves."
Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock," he said, speaking of Trump's chief strategist. "I'm not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I'm here to serve the country." (Bannon declined to comment.)
It may not include dirty words, but @Scaramucci 's quote on the left is an admission that he violated the WH policy attached on the right. pic.twitter.com/Z2t68IMzPo
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) July 27, 2017
On Wednesday, I explained how a House vote on Russia sanctions, which included a provision that Donald Trump cannot rescind them without Congressional approval, was infuriating Vladimir Putin and prompting Russia to threaten retaliation.
Yesterday, the Senate also overwhelmingly passed the bill, with only two holdouts: Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders.
Now the bill goes to Trump's desk for signature — and even if he has the audacity not to sign it, it has a veto-proof majority in both houses of congress.
Putin is not happy, saying at a press conference, "It’s impossible to endlessly tolerate this kind of insolence towards our country," and openly threatening retaliation: "We are behaving in a very restrained and patient way, but at some moment we will need to respond."
That moment quickly arrived.
Neil MacFarquhar at the New York Times: Russia Seizes 2 U.S. Properties and Orders Embassy to Cut Staff.
Russia took its first steps on Friday to retaliate against proposed American sanctions for Moscow's suspected meddling in the 2016 election, seizing two American diplomatic properties and ordering the United States Embassy to reduce staff by September.To be clear, that's a message to Trump. Here's our move after the Senate passed this thing. It was escalate if you sign it.
...In its statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that the United States Congress had voted to toughen sanctions. "This yet again attests to the extreme aggressiveness of the United States when it comes to international affairs," the statement said.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said the Russian leader had signed off on the measures despite saying a day earlier that he would wait for the final version of the law before taking any such steps.
Before I get to the details of the latest Republican failure to pass a sickening "healthcare reform" that would kill people, I want to just take a moment to say: This rollercoaster is stressful as hell — and I am incandescently angry that the Republican Party is obliging us to spend our time and energy begging them not to take away our and/or others' health insurance, and that they are undermining people's health by inducing so much relentless stress, and that they are causing people to worry about whether they or their parents or their kids or their friends will have lifesaving access to healthcare, and that this entire fucking thing is a game to them while we are wrecked with anxiety.
I am angry that they are doing this to us, and I am angry that it is not over — because even if their half-assed legislation continues to fail and fail and fail, they will endeavor to ruin the Affordable Care Act to "prove" it was never any good. They will kill people for spite.
I am angry and I am sad. So profoundly grief-stricken that this is what the United States has become. It was never a perfect place, far from it, but this desperate, seething bile among the governing party to harm the nation's citizens in massive numbers, as directly as possible... It hurts. If it hurts you, too, know that you are not alone in this pain.
* * *
So, last night, at 1:30 in the morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called a vote on the latest iteration of Republican's healthcare bill, the "skinny" Obamacare repeal, and it failed.
It failed because two female senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed it, and because John McCain also opposed it — and because every single Democratic Senator and both Independents opposed it.
A couple of observations about McCain's vote:
1. Again, McCain is being hailed undeservedly as a hero. Because he chronologically cast the final of the third Republican opposition votes, his is being called the "decisive" vote, which elides his two Republican female colleagues' opposition and the opposition of the entire Democratic caucus.
The New York Times' headline is "Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No" and this is an actual paragraph from the coverage of the paper of record: "Senator John McCain of Arizona, who just this week returned to the Senate after receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, cast the decisive vote to defeat the proposal, joining two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in opposing it."
That's a bit of a simplification. But sure. Giving white men credit they don't deserve has never had any bad consequences for this country, so why not?
2. Framing McCain as the hero of the hour also elides that he didn't cast his vote because he's had a change of heart on healthcare.
Skinny repeal fell short because it fell short of our promise to repeal & replace Obamacare w/ meaningful reform https://t.co/tZISIvccOO
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) July 28, 2017
McCain on why he voted no: "From the beginning, I have believed Obamacare should be repealed and replaced." The bill wasn't awful enough.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
One thing to note about McCain's vote is that he doesn't like Mike Pence (who was whipping votes) but does love publicly fucking people over
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
Reason to note is b/c that's another indication this still isn't over. There's a bill, a terrible one, McCain would vote for at some point.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
My advice is not to feel too safe just b/c we got a glimpse of McCain's infamously vengeful temperament. It only happened to work *for* us.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
It likely won't the next time.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 28, 2017
A brink of what is not yet clear. Although I think we have a good idea about some pretty dire scenarios. Here's why...
Richard Lardner at the AP/ABC: House Punishes Russia, Blocks Trump from Waiving Penalties.
Eager to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 election, the House has overwhelmingly backed a new package of sanctions against Moscow that prohibits [Donald] Trump from waiving the penalties without first getting permission from Congress.In sum, Trump's behavior toward Russia has become so alarming that even Republicans now understand they have to do something about it — so they've enacted a safeguard to ensure he can't just unilaterally ditch the sanctions they've voted to impose on the nation who attacked our election process.
Lawmakers passed the legislation, 419-3, clearing the far-reaching measure for action by the Senate. If senators move quickly, the bill could be ready for Trump's signature before Congress exits Washington for its regular August recess. The Senate, like the House, is expected to pass the legislation by a veto-proof margin. The bill also slaps Iran and North Korea with sanctions.
The 184-page measure serves as a rebuke of the Kremlin's military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed President Bashar Assad. It aims to hit Putin and the oligarchs close to him by targeting Russian corruption, human rights abusers, and crucial sectors of the Russian economy, including weapons sales and energy exports.
"It is well past time that we forcibly respond," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Trump hasn't threatened to reject the bill even though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other senior administration officials had objected to a mandated congressional review should the president attempt to ease or lift the sanctions on Russia. They've argued it would infringe on the president's executive authority and tie his hands as he explores avenues of communication and cooperation between the two former Cold War foes.
But Trump's persistent overtures to Russia are what pushed lawmakers to include the sanctions review. Many lawmakers view Russia as the nation's top strategic adversary and believe more sanctions, not less, put the U.S. in a position of strength in any negotiations with Moscow.
Trump's "rhetoric toward the Russians has been far too accommodating and conciliatory, up to this point," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.
Russia threatened to retaliate against new sanctions passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, saying they made it all but impossible to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of improved relations.Russia is just openly, publicly threatening to attack the U.S. in a way that is "painful" for the civilian population if our president doesn't do whatever they want (which is painful for us in a different way).
The measures push U.S.-Russia ties into uncharted territory and "don't leave room for the normalization of relations" in the foreseeable future, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday, according to the Interfax news service.
Hope "is dying" for improved relations because the scale of "the anti-Russian consensus in Congress makes dialogue impossible and for a long time," Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, said on Facebook. Russia should prepare a response to the sanctions that's "painful for the Americans," he said.
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