Dissociation is so weird because half the time i’ll dissociate as a coping mechanism to deal with some kind of stressful event, and the other half of the time i’ll just be chillin eating some pancakes and my brain will be like “u aren’t real and neither are these pancakes” and I’m just like “ok”
The Reuters news agency this week recognized the challenges of
covering Donald Trump’s presidency by comparing it to authoritarian
regimes like Egypt, Yemen and China.
“It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists ‘among
the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist
dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve
Adler wrote in a message to staff
on Tuesday. “It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with
questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”
He cited the organization’s work in “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt,
Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia” as an example of how
to report on the Trump administration.
Adler said that reporters could use experience learned in “nations in
which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal
prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our
journalists.”
Among other advice, the news agency pointed out that reporters should
“[g]ive up on hand-outs and worry less about official access.”
“They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has
been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have
are sources,” the memo said. “Get out into the country and learn more
about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and
how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.”
The letter encouraged reporters to “never be intimidated” by the administration.
“Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day
frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we
can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We
need to do that in the U.S., too,” the message to reporters said. “Don’t
take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity
for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places
around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the
freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of
any news organization anywhere.”
The Romanian government just decriminalised official misconduct.
This essentially makes corruption legal.
what is life
fuckers passed the law in the middle of the night
despite protests being held against this in the last two weeks
there were more than 100k people on the streets a few days ago
i can’t even
I’m shaking with rage. A huge number of politicians will have their criminal records thrown out. People who have cause state prejudice of millions of dollars (they’re estimating a total of almost one billion). People who have tried to rig the votes in the last presidential election. The officials who had done the inspection in the Colectiv club before the fire that claimed 64 lives last year will be off their charges too.
Protests are being organized throughout the country. I’m so worried that violence may break out, despite the fact that all protests so far have been peaceful.
There are 175.000 people out in the streets in the entire country. I’m hoping this changes something.
Over 300.000 at the moment. It’s the biggest protest in Romania in the last 25 years.
Lawblr side of Tumblr, here. I don’t think anybody even understands how terrifying this is. If the Executive can ignore the Judiciary, then we have a full-on Constitutional Crisis on our hands. Our country immediately falls apart. The only options for enforcement of judicial orders are 1) U.S. Marshals (which are ordered around by the Judiciary but ultimately still a part of the Executive as part of the Department of Justice), in which case we have an ACTUAL ARMED CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT, or if the Marshals refuse to comply, 2) the Governor of the state, say Virginia, sends in the National Guard of the state, which leads to AN ARMED CONFLICT BETWEEN A STATE MILITIA AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
In case you weren’t getting the picture, let me be blunt and dramatic: this is literally Civil War-level shit right here.
And Trump has been in office a week.
This is fucking terrifying.
I spent the day at SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport). We got very little done because CBP refused to talk to us at all. When one of the attorneys with us annoyed them so much that they finally answered their office door (she literally knocked on it for 10 minutes straight), they directed her to the press release on their website (side note: I don’t know if there even is a press release on the CBP website). They told her they don’t care how many attorneys show up, they don’t take orders from attorneys or judges. Senator Patty Murray showed up just after 4:00 & CBP refused to talk to her, too. I will repeat that: Customs and Border Patrol refused to talk to a sitting United States Senator. They refused other senators at other airports, too, according to a WaPo article I read earlier.
I had to return to Portland tonight because I have work tomorrow. ACLU & International Refugee Assistance Project attorneys will be back at SeaTac tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. (including my law school bestie, I am so proud).
There were 13 people detained at SeaTac yesterday who were secretly transferred to a detention facility in Tacoma, so the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project is working with attorneys to straighten that right out.
Basically: Shit is going down, y’all. The women I went up with today? Both were Arabs. One was from Pakistan, the other was from Lebanon (a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew walk into an airport…). When I asked them if I was overreacting by feeling like this was a coup-in-progress, they said no. That’s precisely what this is.
I thought we had a coup-proof system. I was mistaken.
Keep fighting the good fight, lawyers. And if you’re in Portland, I’ll see you at Perkins-Coie tomorrow at 5:30 for the L4GG meeting.
At Dulles, CBP has been stonewalling four members of the US House of Representatives, the governer and attorney general of Virginia, and Senators Cory Booker (NJ) and Mark Warner (VA)–the latter of whom chewed out the head of CBP in person. No dice. Not even with a federal court order telling CBP at Dulles, only them, and them in particular to give detainees access to lawyers.
And they’re pulling an old trick from the national-security handbook that’s been used to evade the courts on issues like domestic surveillance: “Lawyers and advocates still didn’t know how many people were being held in the secondary inspection area at Dulles or what their immigration status was, which led to a catch-22: Attorneys couldn’t file for contempt of court without having proof that legal residents were being detained and not being given access to lawyers, but they couldn’t get proof without getting access.” (x)
At least two VA reps have found out (via friends and family) about constituents being detained at Dulles, at which point CBP released them in order to dodge the access-to-lawyers issue. The representative for my district is on the warpath–and also on the House Oversight Committee. Here’s hoping these fuckers get slapped with contempt of court so hard their ears ring, then get hauled in front of a committee hearing to see if they want to try their chances with contempt of Congress.
All of which doesn’t even get into the Monday Night Massacre clusterfuck inside the executive branch, when the acting attorney general of the United States refused to make the DoJ defend the lawfulness of the immigration order in court. And was summarily fired and replaced with someone more compliant. So here’s also hoping the Senate puts Jeff Sessions through absolute hell on his role in all this before they vote to confirm him as AG.
It’s like the civics lesson from hell.
Yeah, um… about the Marshalls.
This is what’s been worrying me most since Saturday night, when reports started coming out of Dulles that CBP was ignoring court orders.
This is awful and terrifying and I’m living in a hellscape I can’t escape from.
According to Native News Online, “Even there was strong militarized police presence on Wednesday which resulted in 76 water protectors arrested, the police did not set fire to the tepees.”
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