Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.

JUNE 30, 2018
Week 85

This was a devastating week for our country. People - especially women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people - are legitimately scared. Much is at stake as our country shows increasing signs of sliding towards authoritarianism.

While some voices on the left called for civility, Trump ramped up threats and attacks on members of Congress, a restaurant owner, a publicly-traded US corporation, and our media on his Twitter account and at campaign rallies. The week of stoked up rhetoric and hatred flamed culminated with a mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, where five employees were killed.

Early in the week, Trump celebrated a Supreme Court victory for his Muslim Ban, and the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Kennedy?—?giving Trump the power to potentially reshape our highest court and place issues like abortion and civil rights, gay marriage, and healthcare in jeopardy.

Americans took to the streets again this week to protest Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy and to call for the abolishment of ICE?—?a rallying cry that is picking up support. Migrant families remained separated as the rest of the world looks on in horror.

In all this chaos, progress of the Mueller probe into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia was overshadowed, but there were many developments this week, as Trump prepares for a summit with Putin, continues to deny Russian interference in the 2016 election, and continues to work to undermine the investigation.

1. A bipartisan poll commissioned by George W. Bush and Joe Biden revealed half of Americans think the United States is in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country.”
2. The polls also found 55% see democracy as “weak,” and 68% believe it is “getting weaker.” Eight in 10 Americans say they are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the condition of democracy here.
3. For the first time, the U.S. was listed among Thomson Reuters’ list of the world’s most dangerous countries for women, the only Western nation to appear in the top 10.
4. The U.S. ranked 3rd for “sexual violence,” which includes domestic rape, rape by a stranger, and lack of access to justice in rape cases, and 6th in “non-sexual violence,” including domestic, physical, and mental abuse.
5. On June 23, the Department of Homeland Security issued a fact sheet saying 522 children who were in custody of Border Patrol have been reunited with their families?. ?2,053 migrant children remain separated.
6. As the week closed out, only 6 of the 2,053 migrant children in custody of the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had been reunited with their parents: 2,047 remained separated.
7. NBC News reported the Obama-era Family Case Management Program, launched in early 2016 with the aim of keeping asylum-seeking families together and out of detention, was canceled by Trump one year ago.
8. Miami Herald reported according to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at least 10 migrant babies and toddlers, ranging in age from newborns to 5 year-olds, are being housed in “tender-age shelters” in Miami-Dade County.
9. On Saturday, NYT reported Border Patrol agents shut down stretches of highway along Interstate 95 in New Hampshire and Maine last week, and asked people traveling in cars, “What country are you a citizen of?”
10. On Sunday, WAPO reported migrant children are held all over the US, far away from parents who do not know the location of the their children. The children, before arriving, had already gone through hellish journeys.

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https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-85/