What Trump/Pence Regime Has Already Done…

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Air date: 
Fri, 11/03/2017 - 8:00am to 9:00am
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A running list compiled by Refusefascism.org detailing the tangible damage that the Trump/Pence regime has inflicted.

 

What they have done to Women & LGBTQ:

  • Promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion; appointed Neil Gorsuch.
  • Signed a law giving states the option to deny funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide legal abortions.
  • Slashed funding to combat HIV/AIDS in the world’s poorest countries by 17 percent.
  • Drastically reduced funding to women’s health care globally that provided access to birth control.
  • Revoked Executive Order 13673 that required that companies receiving large federal contracts demonstrate that they have complied with laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender stereotyping, or gender identity.
  • Took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website the day Trump took office, and there has been no replacement.
  • Revoked federal guidelines that mandated transgender students have the right to use public restrooms that match their gender identity.
  • In a lawsuit involving employment discrimination against LGBTQ people, the Justice Department filed legal papers arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act banning sex discrimination does not protect workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation.
  • Tweeted that transgender people will be banned from the U.S. military because they are a “burden.”

What they have done to Civil Liberties:

  • Over 230 protesters arrested at Trump’s inauguration were charged with multiple felonies, including federal riot charges, and 230 defendants face up to 70 or more years in prison. The government is now demanding massive and detailed information on visitors to a website used to organize those protests. The site’s web hosting provider says complying would amount to handing over roughly 1.3 million visitor IP addresses.
  • U.S. agents now search cell phones and other electronic devices of people traveling internationally at a rate four times higher than in 2015. The head of Department of Homeland Security said visitors to the U.S. should be required to give up their online passwords and submit to social media searches.
  • Trump has systematically accused the press of “fake news” and being an “enemy of the people”; refuses to hold regular press briefings; threatens individual reporters and news outlets; and has tweeted a video of himself beating up a CNN reporter.
  • Trump and his spokespeople have attacked artistic expression ranging from comedians to a staging of Julius Caesar by NYC’s Shakespeare in the Park featuring a Trump-like title character.
  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions has launched an aggressive campaign to identify and prosecute people who leak information to the press and opposes a federal “shield” law to protect journalists who refuse to disclose their sources.

What they have done Internationally:

  • The U.S. is waging war, in one form or another, in six countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. It’s escalating and intensifying U.S. attacks at a rapid pace.
  • Yemen has been hit by more U.S. air strikes than in all of 2015-2016 combined.
  • In March, the U.S. resumed drone attacks in Pakistan.
  • In Afghanistan in April, the U.S. carried out 296 bombing strikes—its highest monthly total in 5 years.
  • The war against ISIS has escalated as U.S.-led forces fight to take Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.
  • The U.S. has also stepped up threats against Iran and its allies, and directly attacked Syrian government forces for the first time.
  • There’s been a staggering increase in the number of civilians killed by the U.S. and its allies in Syria and Iraq—anywhere from 2,300 to more than 3,000 civilians, figures including over 1,000 in March alone.
  • U.S.-supplied white phosphorous munitions have reportedly been used in the heavily populated cities of Mosul and Raqqa. White phosphorous munitions are savage weapons: they’re toxic, stick to the skin, and burn so hot they can create deep second- and third-degree burns. Under international law, they’re banned from use in populated areas.
  • Civilian casualties have soared.  Defense Secretary Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis dismisses them as “a fact of life.”
  • Finalized the largest arms sale in U.S. history with Saudi Arabia—$110 billion in tanks, bombs, helicopters, and other equipment immediately, with tens of billions more likely to come.
  • Explicitly supported the Saudis’ war in Yemen, which has led to 10,000 civilian deaths, massive famine, and a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic.  On average, one child under the age of five dies of preventable causes every 10 minutes.
  • Dropped the world’s largest-ever non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan in April weighing 11 tons and nicknamed MOAB—the “mother of all bombs.” Trump called MOAB “another very, very successful mission.”
  • Has repeatedly threatened North Korea with war while deploying attack aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to its coast and carrying out provocative military maneuvers along its borders.
  • Twice provocatively deployed warships within 12 miles of islands in the South China Sea claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam to challenge their claims and assert U.S. supremacy and “freedom of navigation.”
  • U.S. Special Forces are now deployed in 70 percent of all the countries on Earth.
  • Slammed U.S. borders shut and demonized Muslims and refugees during the greatest global displacement crisis in history.  Over 65 million people (half are children) are fleeing wars, violence, and persecution.

What they have done to Muslims:

  • Imposed significant parts of a Muslim ban that bars people from 6 Muslim-majority countries and all refugees from entering the U.S.
  • To get around the obstacles put up by some courts to the Muslim ban, instituted “extreme vetting” that especially targets people entering the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries.
  • After the initial Muslim ban, Trump fired the acting attorney general for refusing to defend the ban.
  • Trump said nothing when a 17-year-old abaya-wearing Muslim girl, Nabra Hassanen, was kidnapped after leaving a Virginia mosque and battered to death with a metal bat.
  • Trump appointed as his chief of strategy Steve Bannon, who sees America and the “Christian West” as being locked in an existential struggle with the Muslim world and non-European/dark-skinned people generally.
  • Wisconsin sheriff, David Clarke, a fascist who spoke at the Republican Convention, called for intensified surveillance of Muslim communities.

What they have done to Immigrants:

  • One of Trump’s first acts in office was an executive order targeting all 11 million undocumented immigrants for deportation, regardless of any supposed criminal record.
  • Arrests of immigrants are up almost 40 percent from the record highs under Obama.
  • Every day since Trump/Pence came into office, over 400 people have been ripped away from their lives, families, and jobs by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
  • Trump officials claim the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gave temporary deportation relief to 750,000 mostly young immigrants (“DREAMers”) brought to the U.S. without documents when they were children is “under review”—but ICE agents have already arrested some DREAMers, like 22-year-old Daniela Vargas in Jackson, Mississippi.
  • In prepared remarks for an appearance at the U.S.-Mexico border, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote: “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth…. This is a new era. This is the Trump era.”
  • Over the June 10 weekend, at least 114 Iraqi immigrants—nearly all Christians who face extreme persecution and threat of death if deported—were rounded up in SWAT-team type raids by ICE agents in Detroit.
  • Trump’s Department of Homeland Security appointed the former director of the virulently xenophobic group FAIR as an “ombudsman” whose role is supposedly to advocate for immigrants whose citizenship or visa applications have run into problems.

What they have done with White Supremacists and the Police State

  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for maximum charges and penalties for non-violent drug offenders, reversing policies reducing them, at a time when 2.3 million people, disproportionately Black and Latino, are already incarcerated.
  • Sessions has put a halt on consent decrees with cities that aim to address some of the most egregious police abuses, such as in Baltimore.
  • Police across the U.S. have already shot and killed over 508 people in the first 6 months of 2017, over 200 of them Black or Latino, with many unarmed.
  • In the name of stopping the “carnage,” the Department of Justice is working with local police in 12 cities, and Trump has sent feds into Chicago. These forces are an advance guard for a stepped-up reign of terror on Black and Latino people.
  • Under Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education is rolling back investigations of civil rights abuses against people of color, women, and LGBTQ people in public schools.

What they have done to the Environment:

  • Withdrew the U.S. from the Paris international climate agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The regime released a list of 860 environmental rules it’s reviewing or withdrawing—including drinking water standards for radon and lead levels, water quality standards on Indian reservations, ozone and methane emission limits, and air-quality standards for hazardous chemicals. Just ten of those standards save more than 10,000 lives and prevent 300,000 cases of illness and injury each year.
  • Contrary to scientific consensus, EPA head Scott Pruitt denied on national TV that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the main cause of global warming.
  • Approved and expedited construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines, which will increase fossil fuel use and emissions and accelerate global warming.
  • Attempted to block rules restricting leaks of methane, an even more harmful greenhouse gas than CO2, from landfills and from oil and gas wells.
  • Approved the use of chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide shown to be harmful to children’s brains and nervous systems.
  • Rescinded Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which put restrictions on carbon emissions from new and existing power plants.
  • In a move lauded by the NRA, Trump’s interior secretary approved the use of lead ammunition on federal lands and waters.
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