Now that Donald Trump has Won

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Victory for CNN. The White House caved:

"CNN dropped its lawsuit against the White House on Monday after officials told the network that they would restore reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials as long as he abides by a series of new rules at presidential news conferences, including asking just one question at a time…

“Today the White House fully restored Jim Acosta’s press pass,” CNN said in a statement. “As a result, our lawsuit is no longer necessary. We look forward to continuing to cover the White House.”

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The depths of fuckery that this Administration will sink to apparently knows no bounds…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/11/19/trump-administration-officials-suggested-sharing-census-responses-with-law-enforcement-court-documents-show/?utm_term=.61a449f3c50a

“In internal communication filed as part of discovery for a California case over the citizenship census question, Trump administration officials suggested the possibility of “renewed debate” over protections that keep census answers confidential and sharing them with law enforcement and national security agencies.”

For those of you not playing at home, this is the latest update in an ongoing legal battle over the Trump Administration trying to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. There hasn’t been a citizenship question on the official census since the 1950s. This is because asking people if they’re legal citizens depresses responses to the census, which is entirely counterproductive if you want to know how many people live in the US, and is entirely productive if you want to lessen the political power and money that large urban areas receive.

More background history:

In order to alter the census, the Department of Commerce, which runs the census, requires legal justification to add or remove anything. Secretary Wilbur Ross, the head of the Commerce Department, and generally a Grade-A Fucker, has testified on numerous occasions that the Department of Justice contacted Commerce, requesting that the citizenship question be added to the 2020 census so the Trump Administration would have better data to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Tangentially, the idea that this administration would do anything to enforce the VRA is laughable.

Well, after a bunch of states and organizations like the NAACP And the ACLU filed a lawsuit to try and prevent this question from being added, it turns out that there are documents and emails showing that Wilbur Ross months before the DOJ requested the citizenship question be added, and almost from DAY ONE, had been sending internal emails trying to get the citizenship question added. He contacted the DOJ numerous times, trying to get them to request the question, and was turned down. Eventually, he contacted the head of the DOJ, Jeff Sessions, directly, and lo-and-behold, DOJ requests the question be added to the 2020 Census.

All this information has come out in public, and the Administration’s reasoning and chain of events for the citizenship question has been shown to be a complete lie, no surprise. This latest news though shows what the Trump Administration’s true motives are: Depress the people who take the census, and for those who do, use that info to send to ICE to deport people.

To put it simply, this is just evil.

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Yeah, this isn’t shady at all. Not. One. Bit.

“In the three years after he arrived in Washington in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker received more than $1.2 million as the leader of a charity that reported having no other employees, some of the best pay of his career.”

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UPDATE: In addendum…

Read the whole thread. It’s a delightful breakdown of this nonsense letter.

Wow, it is rare that an objectively good for the universe outcome occurs with little to no negative to innocent parties (only hedging because I don’t know what his family thinks of him, will mourn him).

tl;dr: Racist dude threatens neighbors in super racist and violent fashion. Racist is charged. Racists kills self.

Bonus points for the surprise guest in the audience

Oh god. “So, it’s not a little man sitting behind a computer?”

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That’s Zoe Lofgren, the rep for my district, which includes a large chunk of silicon valley. I see her at my local coffee shop pretty frequently. As far as congresspeople go she’s not too bad.

Oh god. “So, it’s not a little man sitting behind a computer?”

I’m not quite sure what you meant here, but I think the “man behind the curtain” was an attempt at a literary reference and she was just trying to point out that search results aren’t manually ranked by a person. As ignorant as many lawmakers seem to be of technology, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t actually believe there’s a homunculus inside the computer.

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To quote Racism Watchdog, Woof WOOF woof WOOF.

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No, I perfectly understand that she knew what was going on. I was pointing out how stupid it is that she has to explain it like that and the whole reasoning for questioning is just such a waste of fucking time.

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It’s like that time Fox News said the internet was in the process of dissolving into a grey cloud of static because it was running out of IP addresses. Except now with the possibility for legally codified consequences.

It gets better:

Monopoly guy in the background, bless you.

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When the news says “Rep.” is that Republican or Representative?

I’m not from round here.

Representative. In this case though I guess it’s both.