During a time when news feels like a constant deluge, there is one story – one tweet, really – that I can’t get out of my mind. PBS reported that after being separated from his parents, a 14-month-old boy was returned covered in lice and without having been bathed in 85 days. That’s nearly three months.
Three months without giving a baby a bath. If a parent didn’t bathe a child for that long, they’d be arrested for child abuse – and this is what our government is doing to children who aren’t even old enough to talk.
I’m terrified that because of Trump’s fake executive order, the media will lose sight of the torture these children and families are being put through – that we’ll think the worst is over. Because the truth is that nothing has really changed – we are still in the midst of a humanitarian crisis perpetrated by the Trump administration. These are people who didn’t even bother to keep records or make a plan for how they were going to reunite these children with their parents – now we’re told they’re going to rely on DNA.
A baby wasn’t bathed for three months. In our country, thanks to our government. We cannot stop being urgently ashamed – maybe not ever.
Glass half-full
My new hero Therese Patricia Okoumou – who scaled the Statue of Liberty in protest of the Trump administration’s internment of immigrant children – said something that had me in tears: “Michelle Obama, our beloved First Lady that I care about so much, said when they go low, we go high. And I went as high as I could.”
That there are people like this in our country give me much-needed hope.
What I’m RTing
Abby D. Phillip
(@abbydphillip)Trump on media: “they are so damn dishonest.”
“They’re fake.”
“These are really bad people.
And he’s still going. So there’s your answer to the question of whether Trump’s rhetoric would change after 5 journalists were gunned down in Annapolis.
July 5, 2018
Judy Woodruff
(@JudyWoodruff)14 month old boy separated from immigrant parents at the border, was returned after 85 days, covered with lice, had apparently not been bathed – part of lawsuits filed by states against Trump administration @LisaDNews reports @NewsHour tonight
July 5, 2018
Natasha Bertrand
(@NatashaBertrand)Trump wants to meet with Putin alone, with no other aides present on either side, in Helsinki this month. That means no note-takers, witnesses, or official record.
July 3, 2018
Shannon Watts
(@shannonrwatts)Before she and two others were shot dead in Alabama on Sunday, Debra Ann Rivera twice had asked a judge to order her ex-husband to surrender his guns because of alleged abuse.
The request was denied both times by the same judge.
July 3, 2018
Who I’m reading
Jamelle Bouie on Trump’s move to denaturalize citizens and to “preserve a shrinking white majority”; Michelle Garcia on how the end of Roe is already here for some states; and Michelle Goldberg on how women might save America.
What I’m listening to
This brutally important episode of The Daily following one family’s reunification process.
How outraged I am
At a Montana rally, Trump made a #MeToo joke, mocking rape and harassment victims. That’s outrageous enough on its own, but what really has me at a 10 out of 10 is just how damn used to it we all are.
Axios
(@axios)Trump suggests he would like to test Elizabeth Warren for Native American heritage, “but we have to do it gently because we’re in the MeToo generation.”
July 6, 2018
How I’m making it through this week
I don’t know why, but this had me in tears.
elv
(@_ElvishPresley_)the world: at the edge of apocalypse
me: oblivious, headphones on
June 29, 2018
