ICYMI, yesterday’s fascism watch post included a list of things you can do.
On to Wednesday’s fascist shenanigans!
Trump
Carrier kept a few thousand jobs in the US, yes. But Trump may have promised the company it wouldn’t lose its $6 billion in federal contracts as part of the deal. (Twitter thread from a Washington Post journalist.)
Trump is again speaking to foreign leaders without consulting the State Department, and this leads to embarrassing nonsense and promises he should not be making.
Trump’s DC hotel got a big new tax subsidy after he won the election.
Transition Team & Cabinet Appointees
“If Goldman Sachs is the Swamp, Trump is putting on waders.”
If Petraeus is named Secretary of State, he’ll have to inform his probation officer and get permission to leave North Carolina, at least until Trump pardons him or commutes his sentence.
So why did Tom Price catch my attention more than other Trump cabinet picks? Yes, he detests Obamacare and is likely to be fully enthusiastic about gutting it, but pretty much anyone Trump picked would have been expected to hold that view. It’s pretty much par for the course for the Republican Party these days. I would have been more surprised if Trump had picked someone who was was relatively neutral on the Affordable Care Act. No, what caught my eye was that I learned that Tom Price is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and that told me a lot about him, none of it good.
Voting
Michigan is trying to rush a new voter suppression law through its lame duck legislature.
Protests
The FAA has declared a no-fly zone over the Standing Rock protests, barring journalists from capturing the sort of drone footage that revealed the highly militarized response to unarmed protesters earlier in the month. Law enforcement aircraft are exempt, of course.
Other Fascist Nonsense
While the Michigan government argues that it’s too expensive to keep providing bottled water to Flint , a town 120 miles away has signed a deal to sell 100 million gallons to Nestle for $200.
I’m not even going to attempt to keep up with the conservative war on women’s health, as it’s only tangentially related to Trump’s efforts to set himself up as an autocrat. However, I feel I should mention that later this month Texas will begin requiring cremation or burial for aborted or miscarried fetuses in a law very similar to one Mike Pence signed in Indiana earlier this year. A judge suspended the Indiana provision the day before it was to take effect.
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