Using your Presidential transition website to promote your own business properties is not normal.
Calling for millions of federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements apart from standard government forms is not normal.
Blasting journalists with product placements for the labels your child, who is on your transition team, is wearing is not normal.
Having a wide range of senior figures in your own political party distance themselves from your transition team, citing the profound irregularity of it and worrying about future ugliness, is not normal.
Placing your children in charge of your business empire, then placing them on your transition team, then seeking top secret security clearances for them, is not normal. The conflicts of interest that this represents are almost too many to count, but at a basic level: you do not give someone with a financial interest to work against U.S. policy access to sensitive information — at all, ever.
Putting one’s children into senior positions of a government is the behavior of a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy with strong institutions. This is not normal.
For a president who ran on his business acumen to refuse to disclose his taxes to the public, which in turn denies anyone the ability to see if financial conflicts of interest are driving his policy decisions, is not normal.
Asking if he can decline the President’s salary, so as to avoid paying taxes, is not normal.
Owing hundreds of millions of dollars in business debt to a foreign bank and refusing to fully divest yourself from those finances is not normal.
Ascending to the White House while your eldest son, who is also on your transition team, and for whom you also seek a top-secret clearance, seeks out seven-digit business deals in Russia, is not normal. When Russia then names the President elect an “honorary Cossack,” it is not normal.
Asking a hostile foreign intelligence agency to hack into the emails of your opponent in the campaign is not normal. Refusing to comment while they expand those hacks into other institutions is not normal. Watching that same government’s propaganda network dramatically change its tone in order to benefit the incoming president is not normal. That this foreign government is also the subject of numerous investigations into the President elect’s improper business conduct is not normal.
Threatening to cut off Europe from NATO if payment is not received, like a gangster demanding protection money, in a way that benefits said foreign government, is not normal.
Chanting for the summary imprisonment of your political opponent despite repeated conclusions that she has committed no crime is not normal. Refusing to back down from that call to summarily imprison her is not normal. Essentially suggesting a show trial before you’ve even assumed office is not normal.
Hiring an avowed white supremacist and proud antisemite to be the chief of strategy at the White House is not normal. That the new White House chief strategist has bragged, openly, of his desire to destroy the United States is not normal. That the cofounder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center raised money for this is not normal.
Staff participating in authoritarian victim-blaming and antisemitic conspiracism is not normal. Collaborating with cable news channels in that antisemitic conspiracy about protests is not normal.
When one of the new administration’s most senior proxies and spokesmen calmly discusses committing war crimes in the Middle East, it is not normal. When he is shortlisted for the Department of State — despite lobbying for terrorists who killed Americans, despotic regimes in the Middle East, and the tyrannical government of Venezuela — it is not normal.
When that proxy is simply following in the footsteps of the new President-elect, who has called for reinstating torture and summarily executing the families of alleged terrorists, it is not normal.
The leading candidate for the department of education (who himself has no background as an educator or in education policy) openly suggesting to censor speech on universities is not normal. Nominating an oil executive as the Secretary of the Interior is not normal. Nominating a climate change denialist funded by the oil industry to run the EPA is not normal. When the leading candidate for Defense Secretary having a long history of openly racist comments toward his own staff it is not normal.
The FBI intervening decisively in the last week of the election to alter its outcome for one candidate is not normal. But the FBI refusing to address the president elect’s violation of sanctions against a communist country is also not normal.
When a woman accuses a presidential candidate of having raped her as a child, but then refuses to go forward with her allegations because of a barrage of death threats yet still receives almost no media coverage, it is not normal.
It is not normal for a president-elect to have 75 pending lawsuits against him, ranging from business fraud to illegal hiring practices. It is not normal for his lawyers to demand those lawsuits be delayed until after his inauguration for not discernable reason other than to retreat behind the immunity of the office.
Relentlessly attacking the legitimacy of the media (to be distinguished from criticizing media conduct) is not normal. Threatening to sue the media because you don’t like being criticized is not normal.
Being so steeped in the language of fascism that you and and your staff mirror Hitler (“make the trains run on time“), appeasing Hitler (“America First“), or Mussolini (“drain the swamp“) is not normal.
Trying to appoint an attorney general who was once called “too racist to be a judge” is not normal
i get a lot of questions about what it’s like to live in DC! I keep meaning to make a fun post about it, and this is not that. But I do wish I could communicate to you guys what it is like to live here in the days leading to the inauguration of Donald Trump.
I have never felt this place thrumming so palpably with shared, invisible disgust and tension. Like, as a person who lived here on 9/11 and during the days of anthrax threats and fighter jets constantly flying overhead and the D.C. sniper, I am truly not exaggerating when I say that the day after election day 2016 was the grimmest I’ve ever felt or seen this place. There were people crying in the streets in 2001, but there was a kind of communion too, a sense of public mourning and catharsis. In November, people cried silently. I have never seen a city that quiet. The streets were like a weird dream. People aren’t sitting on curbs weeping anymore, but right now this city is almost vibrating.
The first GWB inauguration was fraught. (The second certainly was too, but I wasn’t here.) D.C. residents are super democratic; there were a lot of protests and a lot of anger and sorrow. But Donald Trump is on a whole other level. Not only does he stand against everything that well-meaning people here stand for – mostly the West Wing illusion of creating, from whatever ideological standpoint, A Smarter, More Decent America – but he has been using this city as a metaphorical punching bag for months. If not years.
Imagine if some dude ran for the mayor of your town by talking about how much your town fucking sucks and is ruining America (while also happily using your town to enrich himself). And then OTHER PEOPLE got to vote for your mayor. AND HE WON!!!! Whether or not you like your town, whether or not you think it’s the greatest place on earth, whether or not you believe it has flaws that should be addressed – you would still probably be like “What the fuck?” And now he is coming to your town in a week, with all the fucking people who hate or at best have no respect for you, and he and they are going to team up with your worst councilmembers (who you ALSO did not vote for) and use your town’s resources to do shitty, stupid, malicious things. You also have to imagine, in this metaphor, that your town has access to nuclear weapons.
In D.C., in my experience, the incumbent president has more influence on the culture and mood of the city than the mayor does. (We’re talking post-Marion Barry here.) For one thing, we are essentially subject to the will of the federal government; not only can we barely make our own laws, since all legislation here must be approved by Congress, but much of our civic funding comes from federal spending bills. For an example, see this article about that time the House voted to strike down a DC law banning discrimination against employees for their reproductive decisions. Would this law have affected Ted Fucking Cruz or his constituents? Of course the fuck not!!! Did he lead the movement to block it because he was so conceeeeeerned about the religious freedommmmmm of the employers of Washingtooooooooon?? Haha, take a guess! (No.) To people like Ted Cruz we are not a city full of people, 50% black, 10% immigrant, a place that needs resources and ingenuity to solve a widening income gaptied closely to race. Instead, we get to be a useful metaphor, a flag to wave at everybody else, and we don’t get a fucking vote in the Senate about it, and we are no longer going to have a President with veto power and our best interests in mind.
In fact, I feel like a huge hypocrite even using the word “we!” I pay taxes in D.C., but I still vote in Maryland, because if you can – if you want any kind of voice – you have to. As many do, I try to use that privilege to listen to and advocate for D.C. itself. But when I use the word “we,” I am speaking in that sense as an outsider.
Anyway. I am trying to talk about how it feels. Friends who have visited from New York and Los Angeles and New Haven – engaged, hooked-in, progressive activist communities – have noticed that it’s different here. On the bus the other day I made eye contact with a stranger over an overheard comment, and he said quietly “did you watch the press conference?” and I said, “yeah,” and then we just stared at each other with flaming, furious, scared eyes.
I was talking to @valencing about the way this place feels and she said “what you’re describing is the mood of a city that’s just been occupied and the enemy army is moving in.” Obviously I wouldn’t know. But it feels similarly visceral.
yeah why not suddenly remove all ambassadors appointed from the past eight years?
You know those action movies where a big disaster wipes out the executive and legislative branches of the US government and the government is nearly crippled?
Yeah, getting rid of a huge portion of your civil servants (who are required to be politically neutral by the way) is way way worse than any scenario Tom Clancy ever invented for one of his books.
This is the most dangerous thing he’s done yet. And it’s just going to get worse.
Numerous Jewish community centers on the east coast received anonymous bomb threats via phone Monday, forcing evacuations and police responses.
Some of the calls were prerecorded while others were live, and likely came from the same telephone number.
NBC reported threats were made to facilities as far apart as New Jersey, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee and South Carolina. In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League said threats were also received in Delaware.
Facilities across the county were evacuated, though authorities did not discover any explosive devices.
Jewish schools in London also received bomb threats, though it was not clear whether the incidents are connected. Read more
The police officers seemed more concerned with calling Rep. John Walker a “race baiter” for doing something completely legal than they were in upholding the law. But the kicker is that Rep. Walker had already been arrested for the same thing years ago, which is why he fought for the law (and won) in the first place.
COPS STAY ACTINNN LIKE YOU DONT HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECORD
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. They literally arrested the person who passed the fucking law to make the action that they arrested him for legal. I mean it doesn’t get any more ridiculous than that.
When you struggle with your mental health on a daily basis, it can be hard to take action on the things that matter most to you. The mental barriers anxiety creates often appear insurmountable. But sometimes, when you really need to, you can break those barriers down. This week, with encouragement from some great people on the internet, I pushed against my anxiety and made some calls to members of our government. Here’s a comic about how you can do that, too. (Resources and transcript below.)
Motivational resources: There are a lot! Here are a few I really like:
Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.
Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.
Informational resources: There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:
Among all the horrible things we already know about this guy and our upcoming administration, Bannon is involved in multiple sex discrimination lawsuits and completely fine with taking voting rights away from African Americans. The article provides more 3 more facts as well as details, sources links, etc
Steel Phoenix Studios 