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This evening's music features soul singers The Chambers Brothers. Enjoy!

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

-- Assata Shakur

News and Opinion

Until Dems Can Create A Decent Alternative To Trump, This Isn’t ‘Resistance’ — It’s Just Bitching

They’re all talking about “resisting” and “opposing” the current administration and the House and Senate majority, but nobody’s talking about the infuriating fact that they have nothing to replace any of it with. Democratic leaders have stated unequivocally that they have no intention of changing anything, and not one single DNC chair candidate [at the DNC chair debate] was willing or able to say that the Democratic primaries were weighted in favor of Hillary Clinton despite overwhelming evidence that they were. If we look at the actions of the establishment propaganda machine, we can see that their entire plan is to keep Trump’s approval ratings super low by freaking out with DEFCON 1 level alarmism every single time Donald Trump says or does anything, so that they can get away with running another corporatist warmonger in 2020 who the people will support in desperation to escape from the Nazi devil man.

These people just tried to force upon us a presidential candidate who was actively pushing for a war with a nuclear superpower, who was on record praising the world-killing TPP dozens of times, who was essentially funded by legalized corporate bribery, who told a group of Goldman Sachs execs that she’d lie to the American people for their benefit, and who was installed as the nominee by a brazen assault on American democracy. They have given us exactly zero reasons not to think this will happen again, and yet here we are being told that we need to “resist” the people currently in power. If you have no intention of presenting an acceptable alternative, you are not offering a solution. If you’re not offering a solution, you’re just bitching. ...

The biggest obstacle to the progressive revolution isn’t the Republicans, it’s the establishment Democrats. These people are choking off our movement, trying to co-opt it by waving rainbow flags and promising us abortions galore while tricking us into voting for more plutocratic oppression and corporatist wars overseas. ... Nobody actually wants a corporatist warmongering Democratic party, not the progressives, not the new Dems, not the blue dogs, none of them. There are no centrist Democrats in Iowa going “Gosh I sure hope those progressives don’t try to stop us from invading disobedient OPEC nations!” They just want reasonable taxation for the middle class and maybe to keep their guns, which we can easily work with.

Without anything to support, there’s nothing to resist. So let’s fight the real enemy here and throw these manipulative bastards out.

Dawn of the Resistance

There is deep popular opposition to the legitimacy of a presidency occupied by this toxic, twittering human smokestack of polluted right-wing demagoguery. Indeed, Trump faces widespread antipathy for his racist border wall plan, proposed Muslim registry, and planned attacks on health care rights. His history of demeaning women as some sort of patriarchal birthright, coupled with an entitled silver spoon mentality that he thinks gives him free rein to insult, threaten, and bully anyone who challenges him, evoke for many only public revulsion. For many Trump is now perceived as the ultimate concierge of corrupt capitalism, a man whose economic orientation in office will translate into angling for every possible “deal” to further enrich the super-wealthy corporate class.

Unlike former president Obama or candidate Clinton, many tens of millions of ordinary Americans are not asking everyone to give Trump a chance or wishing him “success.” They’re not talking about how as Americans we’re “all on the same team.” Nor are they clamoring to assist Trump’s advisory Strategic and Policy Forum on economic issues, as many of Clinton’s most influential corporate supporters are doing.

We have to “throw sand in the gears of everything,” instead declares Frances Moore Lappe in a recent Nation essay. Good idea. That means escalating the defiance, escalating the resistance, stoking the fires of mass protest everywhere they smolder. The moment cries out for new political leadership, for grassroots working-class activism, and for a way out of the stagnant swamp of the corporate two-party system.

If there is one positive consequence of the Trump presidency, it is that it signals the birth of a new era of grassroots activism and mass social protest. Where it will go remains to be seen, but when masses of people are in motion everything is possible. But what is also possible is that the very same Democratic Party “opposition” that set the stage for Trump’s victory will limit the Anti-Trump Resistance to the goal of merely reinstalling the same-old, same-old Obama-Clinton brand of neoliberal corporate politics in the next elections. ...

The weekend protests were a profound reminder that there is one thing the world’s elites can never take away—the power of the majority to change the world. If you think this is just some Pollyannaish stab at optimism in a dark time, you are welcome to your cynicism. But history is made by those who refuse to accept social oppression and injustice, who resist adversity at all costs, and who keep fighting for justice until they’ve swept away every obstacle to the realization of the age-old dream of a world without war, economic exploitation, and social classes.

Elites Eying the Exits Signals America’s Crisis

Interviewed as part of an extraordinary New Yorker investigation into growing anxiety among America’s corporate elite over the potential for anarchic social collapse, Institute President Robert Johnson saw his peers’ talk of bolt-holes in New Zealand as reflecting a deeper crisis.

Johnson told writer Evan Osnos of the mounting anxiety he had encountered among hedge-fund managers and other wealthy Americans he knew. “More and more were saying, ‘You’ve got to have a private plane,” Johnson said. “You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ”

Osnos writes: “By January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world’s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, ‘I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.’ ” ...

“Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” Johnson said. “What does that really tell us about our system? It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”

China warns White House to “act cautiously” after new South China Sea comments

The Chinese government has given its most direct warning yet that it will not stand for any U.S. intervention in the South China Seas, after the White House said this week it would act to prevent a “takeover” in the region.

In a press conference in Beijing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made it clear that Xi Jinping’s government believes the U.S. has no say over what happens in the disputed waters.

“We urge the United States to respect the facts, speak and act cautiously to avoid harming the peace and stability of the South China Sea,” Hua said. “Our actions in the South China Sea are reasonable and fair. No matter what changes happen in other countries, what they say or what they want to do, China’s resolve to protect its sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea will not change.”

The comments came in response to remarks made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer in a media briefing Monday, when he said the Trump administration would “make sure that we protect our interests.”

Beijing warns Trump to stay out of South China sea dispute

Trump’s new defense secretary calls NATO chief on his first day

The new U.S. defense secretary, James Mattis, called NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Monday — a gesture of good will on his first day in office that will raise the spirits of officials in Brussels, who were deeply unsettled by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric describing the transatlantic alliance as “obsolete.” ...

Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general whose nickname is “Mad Dog,” had voiced a much different view during his Senate confirmation hearing, calling NATO “the most successful military alliance in modern world history.” He also said, “If we did not have NATO today, we would have to create it.”

According to a NATO read-out of Monday’s call, Stoltenberg congratulated Mattis on his appointment and the two “agreed on the fundamental and enduring value of NATO for the security of both Europe and North America.” They also discussed pushing for increased military spending by NATO allies and stepping up counter-terrorism efforts.

The Neocon Lament - Nobody wants them in Trump's Washington

There is no limit to the hubris driven hypocrisy of America’s stalwart neoconservatives. A recent Washington Post front page article entitled “‘Never Trump’ national-security Republicans fear they have been blacklisted” shares with the reader the heartbreak of those so-called GOP foreign policy experts who have apparently been ignored by the presidential transition team seeking to staff senior positions in the new administration. Author David Nakamura describes them as “some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administration who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.”

“But,” Nakamura adds, “their phones aren’t ringing.” And I wept openly as he went on to describe how they sit forlorn in a “state of indefinite limbo” in their law firms, think tanks and university faculty lounges just thinking about all the great things they can do for their country. Yes, “serve their country,” indeed. Nothing personal in it for them. Nothing personal when they denounced Trump and called him incompetent, unqualified, a threat to the nation and even joined Democrats in labeling him a racist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe and bigot. And they really got off when they explained in some detail how The Donald was a Russian agent. Nothing personal. It’s was only business. So let’s let bygones be bygones and, by the way, where are the jobs? Top level Pentagon or National Security Council only, if you please! ...

Oh yeah, some of the more introspective neocons are guessing that the new president just might be holding a grudge about those two “Never Trump” letters that more than 200 of them eventually signed. Many now believe that they are on a blacklist. How unfair! ...

And there may be yet another shocker in store for the neocons thanks to Trump. The fact that the new administration is drawing on the business world for staffing senior positions means that he has been less interested in hiring think tank and revolving door academic products to fill the government bureaucracies. This has led Josh Rogin of the Washington Post to warn that the death of think tanks as we know them could be on the horizon. ... It is a pleasure to watch the think tanks begin thinking of their own demises. It is also intriguing to speculate that Trump with his populist message might just take it all one step farther and shut the door on the K Street lobbyists and other special interests, which have symbiotic relationships with the think tanks. The think tanks sit around and come up with formulations that benefit certain groups, individuals and corporate interests and then reap the rewards when the cash is handed out at the end of the year.

Seymour Hersh Blasts Media for Uncritically Promoting Russian Hacking Story

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview that he does not believe the U.S. intelligence community proved its case that President Vladimir Putin directed a hacking campaign aimed at securing the election of Donald Trump. He blasted news organizations for lazily broadcasting the assertions of U.S. intelligence officials as established facts.

Hersh denounced news organizations as “crazy town” for their uncritical promotion of the pronouncements of the director of national intelligence and the CIA, given their track records of lying and misleading the public.

“The way they behaved on the Russia stuff was outrageous,” Hersh said when I sat down with him at his home in Washington, D.C., two days after Trump was inaugurated. “They were just so willing to believe stuff. And when the heads of intelligence give them that summary of the allegations, instead of attacking the CIA for doing that, which is what I would have done,” they reported it as fact. Hersh said most news organizations missed an important component of the story: “the extent to which the White House was going and permitting the agency to go public with the assessment.” ...

While expressing fears about Trump’s agenda, Hersh also called Trump a potential “circuit breaker” of the two-party political system in the U.S. “The idea of somebody breaking things away, and raising grave doubts about the viability of the party system, particularly the Democratic Party, is not a bad idea,” Hersh said. “That’s something we could build on in the future. But we have to figure out what to do in the next few years.” He added: “I don’t think the notion of democracy is ever going to be as tested as it’s going to be now.”

[Video of interview at link. - js]

FBI Finds Nothing Amiss in Flynn-Russia Eavesdrop: Official

The FBI eavesdropped on telephone calls between President Donald Trump's national security adviser and the Russian ambassador but found nothing improper, a U.S. intelligence official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said late Monday that there was never a formal "investigation" of the calls in December between retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, Russia's ambassador in Washington.

According to the source, who was confirming a Washington Post report earlier Monday, intelligence officials merely listened in as part of routine eavesdropping on Kislyak. ...

Flynn's call ... was not unusual for drawing the scrutiny of FBI counter-intelligence agents, one former U.S. counter intelligence official told NBC News.

The former official, who requested anonymity to speak about sensitive information, said it was not uncommon for diplomats or other U.S. officials to garner such attention if they are recorded talking to foreign counterparts. Rarely anything comes of this, however, because U.S. officials have wide latitude in how they communicate as part of their jobs.

US-Russian Businessman Said to Be Source of Key Trump Dossier Claims

The source of the most salacious allegations in the uncorroborated dossier about President Trump and the Russians is a onetime Russian government translator, according to a person familiar with the raw intelligence provided to the FBI.

Sergei Millian, a naturalized American citizen who most recently headed a group called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, said he was in Moscow at the time the dossier accuses the billionaire American businessman of being involved with Russian prostitutes. Millian claims to have helped Trump recruit Russian investors, and he posted pictures of himself attending several black tie events during last week’s inauguration. ...

The assertion that he was the source of the document’s unsubstantiated (and refuted) claims about a Russian government videotape of Trump in a compromising position was first reported online Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal quoted Millian saying in an email that the information in the dossier was “fake news (created by sick minds)” and was “an attempt to distract the future president from real work.”

Millian has said little publicly in recent weeks. But in July he told ABC News in an exclusive interview that he was well connected with both Trump and the Kremlin. ...

In recent weeks, Trump’s team has said that Millian is not who is says he is — that he never worked in any capacity with the Trump Organization and he had to be warned to stop describing himself as a Trump-approved broker. Millian for months granted interviews in Russian media making that claim. And he did so during his interview with ABC News in July 2016.

Israel just approved construction of 2,500 new settlements in the West Bank

The Israeli government on Tuesday approved the construction of 2,500 more settlement homes in the West Bank, sending a strong signal that the new Trump administration has emboldened the Jewish state to continue its controversial expansion in the contested area.

Tuesday’s announcement doubled as a sharp rebuke to world leaders who just last week gathered in Paris to call for an end to settlement-building and a return to two-state solution dialogue, and came just two days after President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had their first leader-to-leader phone call.

Settler leaders see the announcement of new Jewish settlements as a clear sign that U.S.-Israel relations have entered a new phase, one in which Trump, breaking with international consensus, will not condemn Israeli settlements that are still defined as illegal under international law.

Cold weather reignites fears for refugees poorly sheltered in Greece

A new bout of cold weather across southern Europe has reignited fears for thousands of refugees and migrants sheltered in deplorable conditions in Greece.

Forecasts of freezing temperatures have also been met with trepidation by international agencies, aid groups and local mayors on islands.

“Thousands of people are poised to suffer needlessly in conditions that are becoming increasingly desperate,” said Eva Cossé at Human Rights Watch. “Europe’s failed policies have contributed to immense suffering for people warehoused on the Greek islands.” ...

Under a controversial deal agreed by the EU and Turkey to curb an influx that surpassed a million people in 2015, Greek authorities last year accepted the introduction of a policy of containment in order to process asylum seekers at accelerated rates. By restricting refugees to islands it was hoped “secondary movement” into Europe could be reduced and those undeserving of asylum easily repatriated to Turkey.

nstead, the policy has backfired with thousands of refugees being forced to endure dire conditions in overcrowded camps while their asylum requests are processed slowly. Many have been in the facilities since March when the EU-Turkey accord was signed.

Jeremy Scahill on Trump Team: A Cabal of Religious Extremists, Privatization Advocates & Racists

Trump to order Mexico wall in national security crackdown

Donald Trump is due to sign off a volley of executive orders on national security, including measures to start the construction of a wall on the Mexican border and the imposition of a ban on refugees from the Middle East. ...

According to a report in the New York Times, Trump is also considering measures that are even more contentious, including reviewing whether to resume the once-secret “black site” detention programme, designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, and keeping open the Guantánamo Bay detention centre.

Minnesota bill would make convicted protesters liable for policing costs

Minnesota lawmakers are advancing a bill that would allow cities to sue protesters who violate the law for the cost of the police response to the demonstration. The bill is one of several being introduced across the US that seek to penalize protesters.

Both critics and supporters of the controversial bill agree on one thing: it is a response to Black Lives Matter-inspired protests in the Twin Cities area over the last two years, particularly after an officer shot and killed Philando Castile in July. The officer who shot Castile, Jeronimo Yanez, has since been charged with second degree manslaughter.

Those protests have on occasion blocked local freeways, an act of civil disobedience that the bill’s author, Representative Nick Zerwas, singled out when presenting the bill to the house civil law committee.

“I have an entire constituency that feels as though protesters believe that their rights are more important than everyone else’s,” he said in an interview. “Well, there is a cost to that. Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus. She didn’t get out and lay down in front of the bus.”

The bill, which passed a Republican-controlled committee in the Minnesota house of representatives on Tuesday, would give state agencies, cities or counties the authority to bring civil lawsuits against people convicted of unlawful assembly or public nuisance. The lawsuits could seek the full cost of responding to the “unlawful assembly”, including officer time, helicopters flying overhead and administrative expenses.

The Minneapolis NAACP president, Jason Sole, called the bill a “highly racialized” response to the local protest movement.

Trump and the Militarization of National Security

Four more journalists get felony charges after covering inauguration unrest

Four more journalists have been charged with felonies after being arrested while covering the unrest around Donald Trump’s inauguration, meaning that at least six media workers are facing up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine if convicted.

A documentary producer, a photojournalist, a live-streamer and a freelance reporter were each charged with the most serious level of offense under Washington DC’s law against rioting, after being caught up in the police action against demonstrators.

The Guardian learned of their arrests after reporting on Monday that the journalists Evan Engel of Vocativ and Alex Rubinstein of RT America had also been arrested and charged with felonies while covering the same unrest on Friday morning.

All six were arraigned in superior court on Saturday and released to await further hearings in February and March, according to court filings. ...

Jack Keller, a producer for the web documentary series Story of America, said he was charged and detained for about 36 hours after being kettled by police at 12th and L streets on Friday morning and arrested despite telling officers that he was covering the demonstrations as a journalist.

“The way we were treated was an absolute travesty,” said Keller, whose cellphone has been kept by the authorities. Keller’s editor, Annabel Park, said: “It is a maddening and frustrating situation. These are people who were there observing and documenting.”

Unplanned anthem

As millions of women turned out in cities across the world Saturday in protest of Donald Trump, and in solidarity with each other, they exceeded initial expectations of the Women’s March. Now, a Los Angeles area singer-songwriter’s unplanned video leading Washington, D.C. crowds in song has unexpectedly turned into an anthem for what many hope will become a widespread equal rights’ movement.

Connie Lim, a 30-year-old first-generation Chinese-American singer-songwriter from the South Bay area of Los Angeles, performs under the name MILCK. She initially wrote the song, “Quiet,” in response to her own history of physical and sexual abuse, alongside pressures to fulfill society’s standards of beauty. After the results of November’s election, MILCK released “Quiet” on Jan. 18 against the advice of her management company, which wanted her to wait until signing with a label.

The group, 26 women in all, performed seven times at the Women’s March on Washington D.C., breaking out in song in the middle of a crowd of 500,000 when they felt the urge. Filmmaker Alma Har’el captured one of their performances on his camera phone, despite having a low battery. It was Har’el’s video that went viral Sunday and turned the song into a relatable anthem against oppression around the world.

[Click link above for interview. - js]

Republicans push ahead with plans to hinder insurance coverage for abortions

Republicans in Congress are advancing a bill that imposes a far-reaching ban on private insurance coverage for abortion services for as long as the Affordable Care Act remains in effect and would make permanent a longtime ban on the use of Medicaid to cover abortions.

The bill, H R7, would allow Donald Trump to fulfill a promise that helped his volatile presidential campaign secure the support of major anti-abortion rights activists. In an open letter published in September, he vowed to sign the Hyde amendment, a perennial budget rider that Congress has approved every year for 40 years, into permanent law. Since 1976, the Hyde amendment has prevented millions of women who rely on Medicaid, the government-funded insurance for low-income individuals, from using it to cover their abortions.

But if the bill passes, the most immediate changes will be felt on the insurance exchanges where millions of women purchase healthcare coverage.

HR7 prohibits insurance carriers from offering policies that contain abortion coverage on the exchanges set up under Obamacare to sell insurance coverage to individuals. It prohibits low-income women who qualify for a healthcare subsidy from receiving it if they purchase a healthcare plan that covers abortion. And it would withhold the small business tax credit from employers who offer policies with abortion coverage.

Trump's supreme court shortlist: three potential nominees emerge

With Donald Trump set to announce a supreme court nomination “sometime next week”, three names have risen to the top of his list, according to multiple reports.

Trump’s reported top picks – Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman and Bill Pryor – are all federal appeals court judges appointed by George W Bush, with strong conservative credentials. Their collective views have ranged from supporting “religious liberty” exemptions for employers who object to covering contraception under healthcare plans, to support for a rollback of abortion rights.

Trump’s nominee, if confirmed, would replace Antonin Scalia, who died in February. Scalia’s enduring and strong popularity among conservatives could boost Gorsuch, who has drawn comparisons to the late justice for his ideological force and the clarity of his writing.

Trump Is Said to Keep James Comey as F.B.I. Director

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told his top agents from around the country that he had been asked by President Trump to stay on the job running the federal government’s top law enforcement agency, according to people familiar with the matter.

A decision to retain Mr. Comey would spare the president another potentially bruising confirmation battle. It would also keep Mr. Comey at the center of the F.B.I.’s investigation into several Trump associates and their potential ties with the Russian government.

Retaining Mr. Comey could also help calm the bureau’s work force, which has been rattled after a tumultuous few months in which the F.B.I. and the director himself were sharply criticized for moves that many felt influenced the outcome of the presidential election. ...

Under federal law, the F.B.I. director is appointed to a 10-year term, intended to overlap more than one administration as part of post-Watergate overhauls created to give the director independence and insulate the job from politics. The president can fire the director, though. Mr. Comey, a former senior Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, was appointed by President Obama in 2013.

Appeals court denies full hearing in data surveillance case

A federal appeals court said Tuesday it won't rehear a panel's decision letting companies like Microsoft refuse to turn over to the government customer emails stored overseas.

The judges of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals split their votes 4-4, meaning the full court will not take the rare step of rehearing a case that resulted in a victory for Microsoft and other high-tech companies in the cloud computing business. ...

Circuit Judge Susan L. Carney, who wrote the July decision, said in an opinion Tuesday that the original panel recognized the gravity of concerns that U.S. law enforcement will be less able to access electronic data when a judge decides it is probably connected to criminal activity.

She said the Stored Communications Act of 1986, which governed the case, "has been left behind by technology."

"It is overdue for a congressional revision that would continue to protect privacy but would more effectively balance concerns of international comity with law enforcement needs and service provider obligations in the global context in which this case arose," Carney said.

Supreme Court allows Alabama judges to keep sentencing people to death even if jury disagrees

Alabama is the only state in the country where jurors take a backseat role in death penalty proceedings, leaving judges with the final say on whether an inmate lives or dies. And it looks like that’s not going to change anytime soon.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the cases of three death row inmates challenging the constitutionality of Alabama’s death penalty sentencing laws. The decision is seemingly at odds with one made last January, when the high court ruled 8-1 to strike down a similar law in Florida because it violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a trial by jury.

As a result of the ruling in Hurst v. Florida, the state supreme courts in Florida, Alabama, and Delaware, which all had similarly unusual sentencing structures, were asked to re-examine the constitutionality of their death penalty laws. Justices in Florida and Delaware ruled their laws unconstitutional. Not so in Alabama. Last October, the state’s Supreme Court upheld its laws. ...

According to Equal Justice Initiative, more than one-fifth of the 199 people currently on Alabama’s death row were handed a death sentence through judicial override. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, Alabama judges have overridden jury verdicts in death penalty cases 107 times. In 92 percent of those overrides, judges overruled jury verdicts of a life sentence to impose the death penalty.

LA police officers who fatally shot Ezell Ford will not face charges

Los Angeles prosecutors have decided not to press charges against two police officers who fatally shot a 25-year-old black man in 2014, saying that the officers acted in self-defense during a struggle over an officer’s gun. In a statement, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office said that officers Sharlton Wampler and Antonio Villegas were in fear for their lives and acted lawfully when they shot Ezell Ford on 11 August 2014.

The finding comes more than a year after a police oversight board found the officers wrongfully stopped Ford, violating department policy, which led to the fatal close-range shooting.

Authorities said the officers had approached Ford after seeing him in a known gang area, telling him they wanted to speak with him. Ford, they said, began walking away, but the officers believed he was trying to discard an illegal substance. Prosecutors said Wampler placed his hands on Ford’s shoulder before Ford spun around and grabbed the officer at the waist. Both Wampler and Ford fell to the ground and started tussling as Ford tried to grab Wampler’s gun from the holster on his waist, prosecutors said. Authorities said Wampler was able to retrieve his backup weapon, reached around Ford’s body and shot him once in the back, according to the redacted district attorney’s report that was released Tuesday. Prosecutors said Villegas also fired two shots at Ford.

Lawyer Who Defended Racial Gerrymandering Picked for A Top Civil Rights Job

John Gore, an attorney who has worked to defend laws that critics say are designed to weaken the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, was selected by President Donald Trump to serve as a senior civil rights official at the Department of Justice.

Gore’s new role as Trump’s choice for deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is notable because he will lead the division that oversees civil rights laws, including voter suppression issues. Trump and his nominee to lead the Justice Department, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, are strong supporters of voting restrictions such as voter identification. ...

Gore has worked to defend Republican redistricting laws in Virginia, South Carolina, New York, and Florida — including maps that opponents say were drawn to maximize Republican seats in Congress and frequently employed a strategy of packing African-American voters into a single district to dilute their voting power in neighboring districts.

In Florida and Virginia, Gore also intervened on behalf of Republicans to defend new voter ID laws, rules civil rights group have assailed for reducing participation rates among African-Americans.

Winona LaDuke: Trump's Push to Build Dakota Access & Keystone XL Pipelines is a Declaration of War

What climate change?

The Trump administration has begun the process of removing the climate change page from the website of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Tuesday, according to two sources at the organization. This is the latest move in what is seen by some as a campaign to silence dissenting voices on the environment and climate change.

Sources at the EPA speaking to Reuters said they expect the page could be removed as early as Wednesday, and that administration officials had informed the EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page. The page, which remains online at the time of publication, contains links to scientific research on global warming, as well as detailed data on emissions.

“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” one of the EPA staffers told Reuters. Some employees of the agency are attempting to convince the administration not to press ahead with their plans, but there are contingency efforts underway to save any data being removed.

Even before Trump’s inauguration, a group of scientists were working on ways of safeguarding all the data contained on the EPA’s site, as well as on others. Dozens of hackers, scientists and librarians came together last week to try and archive as much of the data contained on a wide range of government websites as possible.

Climate facts tweeted by @BadlandsNPS have now been deleted https://t.co/pWHkIAl0Ub pic.twitter.com/xG9faYmsI8

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) January 24, 2017

Good news! The Donald is an environmentalist!?! (Whatever that means.)

Trump tells carmakers he's an environmentalist on same day he revives oil pipelines

Donald Trump offered auto executives the carrot and the stick on Tuesday, promising to reduce “out of control” environmental regulation while threatening tariffs on those who build cars abroad.

In a boardroom-style meeting with the General Motors CEO, Mary Barra; the Ford head, Mark Fields; and the Fiat Chrysler boss, Sergio Marchionne, Trump said he wanted “regulation that means something” and that companies looking to build new factories in the US would find his administration “hospitable”.

“They can’t get their environmental permit over something that nobody ever heard of before,” Trump said. “I am to a large extent an environmentalist, I believe in it, but it’s out of control.” ...

Private industry remains friendly to Trump: Barra attended his inauguration, and Fields praised the president for withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a complex multilateral trade deal between 12 countries including the US. Industry lobbying group the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers sent Trump a letter asking him to ease regulations from the National Highway Safety and Transportation Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"I'm Afraid They Are Out to Kill": Water Protectors Testify to Police Violence at Standing Rock

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism

Compromise doesn't work with our political opponents. When will we learn?

Russia’s Leery Reaction to President Trump

Obama Bequeaths a More Dangerous World

State-Sanctioned Torture in the Age of Trump

How the Media Continues To Aid Trump

National Parks Service 'goes rogue' in response to Trump Twitter ban

The Injustices of Manning’s Ordeal

Malnourished Prisoner’s Death Reveals Horrific Conditions in a Texas Prison

America’s Coming Water Affordability Crisis

Above and beyond: the world's best drone photography – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Barbara Dane & the Chambers Brothers - Freedom Is A Constant Struggle

The Chambers Brothers - People Get Ready

Chambers Brothers - Uptown

The Chambers Brothers - Call Me

The Chambers Brothers - Love, Peace and Happiness

Chambers Brothers - I Can't Turn You Loose

Chambers Bros - Let's Do It (Do It Together)

The Chambers Brothers - Smack Dab In The Middle

The Chambers Brothers - Wade In The Water

The Chambers Brothers - Traveling Shoes