Progressive Breakfast: The State of OUR Union Is Ready To Lift Up Truth
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31
MORNING MESSAGE
The State of OUR Union Is Ready To Lift Up Truth
My name is Chelsea White and I am a proud Appalachian woman. I live in the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina. There’s a new wave of defiance growing, and that defiance is female, is young and old, and is every color of the rainbow. The state of OUR union is ready to lift up truth, to raise our voices collectively and move mountains. We are ready.
State of Our Union Calls For Women To Unite
State of Our Union event calls for women to unite against Trump agenda. Detroit Free Press:“The resistance to President Donald Trump made its objections loud and clear on the night of his first State of the Union address… Their counter event, called the State of Our Union, drew leaders of such organizations as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the MeToo movement, Girls for Gender Equity, Planned Parenthood, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, MomsRising and Color of Change. ‘We have continued to be defiant and proud, persisting and resisting — even though there were many attempts to divide us, we have come together in unity,’ said Catalina Velasquez, a transgender immigrant from Colombia who works for End Rape on Campus. ‘We are all one movement.’ The event was livestreamed online at www.thestateofourunion.org, and Tarana Burke, founder of the MeToo movement, estimated 900 people filled the room at the National Press Club for the event.”
SOTU Offers No Salve To Divided Nation
Trump’s plans for immigration, infrastructure meet swift resistance in Congress. WaPo:“President Trump’s pledge in his State of the Union address to ‘extend an open hand’ to both parties in pursuit of an ambitious policy agenda rammed quickly Wednesday into the reality of a largely gridlocked Congress — and a deeply polarized Washington. Trump’s call for a massive infrastructure bill to fund new bridges, roads and other projects across the country was shelved, at least for now, as lawmakers prepared to return to their disputes over spending that have gripped the Capitol for weeks… Party leaders remain preoccupied by the approaching Feb. 8 deadline on government funding. Most Democrats, other than those running for reelection in conservative states, are wary of Trump’s outreach and distrustful of a president many have said is morally unfit for the office.”
Trump’s Address Full Of False Figures
Trump’s address rife with disproved, deceptive figures. SF Mercury News:“President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech had soaring rhetoric – and many dubious facts and figures. Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them. Trump often inflates the number of jobs created under his presidency by counting from Election Day rather than from when he took the oath of office. There have been about 1.8 million jobs created since January 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the slowest gain in jobs since 2010, which indicates how well job growth was going before Trump took office. Trump repeatedly claims he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history, but it’s just not true. He’s earned Four Pinocchios for this claim before – but repeated it 57 times in his first year as president.”
Infrastructure Bid Plans Sweeping Privatizations
Trump’s infrastructure plan could destroy our nation’s water systems. The Nation:“Remember the Trump administration’s infrastructure plan? The one that promised America job-boosting projects for gleaming highways and bridges? Well, so far the Trump-branded New Deal has fallen by the wayside; the job-creation program of year one involved boasting about employment rates that have little to do with his policies, deregulating federal agencies, and saber rattling about trade wars with China. But now he’s poised to follow his monstrous tax cuts with a stimulus plan that will actually fork over more public assets to corporate executives. The draft outline of the zombie infrastructure program… confirms what many feared: The White House hopes to privatize areas of government at a discount, opening up more public services to abuse at the hands of corporations. Trump plans to expand private-activity bonds for infrastructure construction, ‘to benefit the public,’ with a definition of ‘public benefit’ that’s more solid-gold toilet than Hoover Dam.”
Trump Signs Order To Keep Gitmo Open
Trump Signs Order To Keep Prison At Guantanamo Bay Open. NPR:“President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to keep open the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, after pledging during the campaign to “load it up with some bad dudes.” No new prisoners have come to Guantanamo in more than a decade. When Obama left office, eight years after signing the closing order, there were still 41 inmates. They remain, including five who had been cleared for release by federal agencies when Trump took office. NPR’s David Welna, speaking with Morning Edition, says ‘It looks like many of the remaining prisoners – many of whom have been stuck there for more than a dozen years and have never been charged with any crime, much less tried, are likely stuck there for more years to come.'”
DHS Drafts Plan To Arrest Sanctuary City Mayors
Trump officials are exploring mass arrests of US mayors. Truthout:“It’s 4 am in New York. Federal agents in tactical gear confront the police department’s mayoral security detail outside Manhattan’s Gracie Mansion. After a tense standoff, the NYPD stands down and steps aside as the bedraggled mayor is removed in handcuffs. Across the nation, carefully coordinated pre-dawn raids sweep up the mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, and the governor of California. Two hours later, President Trump tweets victory. Paranoid conspiracy thriller? Feverish dystopian fantasy? Hardly. This is a plan that the Trump administration is actively considering. On January 16, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee that, at her department’s request, federal prosecutors are ‘reviewing what avenues might be available’ to arrest and prosecute mayors of sanctuary cities for harboring unauthorized immigrants. Nielsen’s testimony wasn’t even the first time in January that the administration floated the idea of arresting mayors and governors. Two weeks earlier, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan told a Fox News host, “We gotta start charging some of these politicians with crimes.’ This is dangerous, dangerous talk.”
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