I have plenty of ideas about my own country having a stockpile of nuclear weapons. I know that many Americans would rather forcefully disagree with me, but what I see is a fascist octogenarian and an extremist cabinet of “Christian” nationalists and white supremicists running the show. Probably not a great idea, nearly $40 billion into a forever war with Iran (and that’s what the Pentagon will admit to; military experts peg the cost - what we’ve already blown through - as significantly higher than that). I’m alarmed at any religious faction that includes an apocalyptic element to its belief in our divine purpose. There are people living among us right now who genuinely believe that a nuclear war brings about Armageddon, and they’re looking forward to front row seats in heaven. I’d like to believe that none of those people are running things at the Pentagon, but am counting red flags when our Secretary (of War, his own newly established title) makes public statements such as calling for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” while declaring that Jesus is on our side. He’s an evangelical … something. Whatever that is, it’s fair to slap the label “Nationalist” in front of that word, and wouldn’t be a stretch to go ahead and add “White” as a further defining characteristic.

But I’d like us to consider the possibility that making nuclear deals with a sociopathic young Prince who ordered the death of a journalist (because he freaking did) might not be a stellar idea. It wouldn’t be the best of agreements even if MBS wasn’t objectively terrifying, not even if he embraced Western ideology and promoted democracy for the kingdom. He isn’t, and doesn’t … and he never will. His business acumen is quite a separate entity from who he is and what he believes in.

Legacy media is burying the lede. They are providing the straightforward details, but nobody is calling this out as the geopolitical firestorm that it objectively is. They expect that we will read between the lines, being committed as they are to “objective” reporting of fact. Here is a summary of the nuts and bolts, broken down in straightforward terms of what we give, what we get, and where things veer off into utter madness:

Give: U.S. commercial firms will be permitted to export nuclear reactors, components, and technical engineering blueprints to Saudi Arabia. Essentially, the United States constructs a uranium enrichment facility inside the kingdom.

Get: The terms heavily favor legacy American nuclear vendors to supply its materials. The deal dictates a strong preference for American suppliers at all phases of development, including sourcing parts and mining uranium, [presumably] to revive the domestic U.S. nuclear industry.

Crazypants: At some unspecified time, following a joint U.S.-Saudi economic study on domestic fuel production, the kingdom can legally proceed with enriching uranium or reprocessing spent plutonium on its own soil. Saudi Arabia will not be required to sign the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, effectively locking out international inspectors from conducting unannounced, snap inspections at undeclared facilities.

Clown car driving off a cliff outrageous: Secret “side letters” that are and will remain top secret classified between Trump and the Kingdom. So, terms of a deal kept completely out of public or congressional view. The “Trump”ed up rationale for these love letters is that the deal contains proprietary corporate data and highly sensitive national security details. Extended to, it bears repeating, a Kingdom where 15 of the 19 Jihadists who flew American domestic planes carrying American passengers into American buildings on 9/11 were Saudi Nationals. Minor detail.

This veers far, far to the right of the Gold Standard we’ve been adhering to ever since the United States and Russia began a race to see who could build the deadliest nuclear playthings (and dragged other countries with the means and know-how into the mix). Other administrations have given passing consideration to allowing Saudi Arabia to build nuclear energy. There are vast civilian interest reasons for why a country would want the energy component without the weapons-grade uranium enrichment side hustle. The 2009 UAE treaty requires that a nation wanting nuclear energy must voluntarily and permanently give up its right to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium domestically. Instead of producing its own atomic fuel, the host nation agrees to buy all of its nuclear reactor fuel exclusively from the international market and ship the spent radioactive waste out of the country. And there is strict oversight to ensure that these rules are adhered to. Even at that, all prior administrations that even *considered* this restrictive agreement with Saudi Arabia required that the kingdom must also formalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Because those (nuclear armed) war hawks and their own mad king Netanyahu have some legitimate existential concerns.

Trump sees $Trump$ billions in government contracts funneled to his favored campaign donors, his family, and Jared. An even split, maybe something along the lines of 70% Trump or Trump adjacent branded, 30% private contractors. Or I could be pulling those figures from a hindquarters place, but I’d bet my rather modest life savings (chump change to the Trump class) that Eric and Junior will be heavily involved on the contractor side of things. Oh, and Jared.

I fervently hope that our legislators see red flags flapping in a nuclear winter. Because this is indeed madness. I can’t pretend that I’m comforted by the notion that a man who thinks a nursing home admissions exam is an IQ test holds our nuclear football. But there are enormous differences between established governments with a clear military chain of command, and countries that operate by funding proxies. Even as I can see the hypocrisy in an eye-teeth nuclear-armed state dictating nuclear terms to other sovereign nations, we must also acknowledge the reality that Saudi Arabia has a known history of massively FUNDING geopolitical proxies. Our own intelligence reports (routinely scoffed at by Trump) have established clear, unambiguous logistical and financial ties between individual Saudi officials, state-supported charities, and the al-Qaeda hijackers of 9/11 infamy. In other words, no “official” institutional channels that funded the plot. Just rich Saudis tossing money at extremist jihadis. Nothing to see there.

It has to make us wonder, if Trump’s complicit Republicans ram this deal through: how long will it be, before Egypt and Turkey demand a slice of the nuclear pie? Before they ALL feel threatened by an emboldened Kingdom, and engage in proliferation - back channels or otherwise? Or when might a few of the more intelligent proxies realize that a coup might be in order, once MBS has his fingers on a nuclear football?

Another weekday. Another insanely dangerous Trump concession.

I know that I’ve mentioned many times that I spent decades working for county and (a brief stint at) state government. It is because I feel that I understand the inner workings of programs that most people will either need to use at some point, perhaps pray they’ll never have to, or hope they’ll have access to when they are ready to retire.

We are a strange bunch, those of us who deep dive into this service industry. Not everyone signs on for altruistic reasons, obviously. Some sign in for the paycheck, and frankly—in the final years spent managing people instead of determining eligibility—these were some of my better workers. Efficient. Objective. Less tendency to get bogged down in detail and just plow into the paperwork. We all live by what motivates us.

For me, it was in those initial dozen years or so a soothing balm to my mind, which craves structure. Details, details … so many of them. This job didn’t require a keen intellect, but it did demand adherence to a chain of command, a broad knowledge of programs and the interplay between them, and—once the basics are understood—a ritual of determining initial eligibility or processing benefit renewals.

The agency I worked for chose to differentiate between these functions, considering initial eligibility to be a more difficult task, so this was considered a promotion. I worked for many years across departments, diving into specialty areas, learning what I needed to until boredom set in, then moving on to another area. Some worked out well. Some did not.

I was a trainer for a while, but the classroom stuff was an uncomfortable stretch for me. My favorite jam, though, was those first few years I spent just processing the flow of paperwork and responding to client questions, finding ways to explain complicated and detailed stuff in ways that they would understand. Things like spend-downs for their Medicaid, the doughnut hole with Medicare, the interplay between which program covered which services, why an SSI recipient who lived with a roommate didn’t qualify for a cash supplement program.

So here’s where the “strange bunch” comment enters the discussion. We worked an eligibility system as old as Father Time. Those of us who stuck around for a while came to understand the politics thrumming beneath and throughout the workplace. Shift changes at the White House meant some bullshit was going to go down.

Things like, let’s put those SNAP recipients to work. Wait—the economy has tanked, they aren’t finding jobs? Let’s issue some waivers and make it income and asset based only. Whoa—middle class people are now losing their jobs, and we don’t really want to see them starve because they have a car and some money in the bank that will keep the lights on … let’s just change it to income based. And on, and on.

And that was just a highlight of one program across one service area. Everything changed, pretty much all the time.

I rolled my eyes at the drug testing for recipients because while this may seem like a very good idea to the general public, I knew something that the public did not (and does not, as they’re rehashing this drug testing thing again in Congress): Every action taken on a macro level has the potential to cause some serious reaction on the micro.

Who’s going to administer those tests? We gonna have to escort them to the bathrooms ourselves? What area of the budget is this added expense going to come from? How many weeks or months will this added task delay the issuance of benefits? And on, and so forth.

That idea was scrapped almost as quickly as it took hold because it demonstrated something that those of us with our loafers on the ground already knew: It cost a shit ton. It saved not a penny. Most recipients passed the drug tests, so there wasn’t a significant decline in enrollment. Those who tended not to? The absolutely most heartbreakingly vulnerable among us: mentally ill or chemically dependent houseless people living their nomadic lives. No access to 4 walls, heat, running water? Let’s kick down further and take away their food.

All of this is to say, SO MUCH SHIT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.

I’m not referring to the administration of it; once you learn the useful nuggets from the gazillionty pages of policy manuals, it wasn’t much of a flex to switch gears and close cases or issue supplements or stop asking for bank statements for certain programs. I’m talking more about the decisions themselves. How they came down, what level of restructuring or chaos they introduced, who got moved to social services and who switched back to financial depending on which department that new understanding of a program landed with.

Those of us who cared to (raises hand) began to understand the layers upon layers, starting with politicians who had no more than an introductory hello level of understanding about how decisions they made—which federally funded thing got money, which didn’t—then even block grants just shoved at states with the understanding that less money was a “good” thing because the states got to control how the money was spent.

Flush states, like my own, could choose to supplement those cuts with their own taxpayer funds. Red states just took the cuts and chopped those services out of their leaner budgets. Kinda circles back to the vulnerable analogy from earlier, in that what state you live in can determine if you get healthcare or humane services like waiver programs to pay for healthcare in the home or in assisted living with supports vs shoved into the cheapest nursing home that has a Medicaid bed opening that day.

Controlled chaos is how I would describe the function from the floor. Congress makes the budget decisions and tells us when to start drug testing again. The states make decisions about which counties get what funds and watch (oversight) how we are administering them. The commissioners and directors at the county decided which pots those funds landed in.

And at every level, every layer of bureaucracy … always, always some shit ending up not making sense. Some of it just mind-numbing in the cluelessness of it all, such as an eligibility system that couldn’t do what bureaucrats wanted, so plan scrapped and millions wasted. We could have told them.

Those of us at eye-to-eye level with the constituents these bureaucrats served: Within 5 minutes, we could have summarized: “That won’t work, and here’s why.”

The political energy thrumming along underneath it all? You start to understand that minds shifted to protecting budgets and justifying manpower. Self-preservation. Our lobby always had neat posters telling our clients that our core values were all about them, but that isn’t really true at all. We are all chess pieces being moved around. Being nudged along by well-paid and powerful men (hey, and some women) from the very top of the food chain and on to the many levels heading down to who controlled the money. And the likelihood that any of them ever received a service that we were tasked with delivering? Very close to zero.

So, while I don’t know the inner workings at my brothers and sisters over at the Fed, I do feel a sense of camaraderie with them. They also administer any number of supports and services that American people need—from managing our parks and forests to making sure that your Social Security check gets mailed on time.

How they have an expertise with whatever deliverable they are managing. How a lot of it doesn’t make sense, oh my God especially now with DOGE sweeping through with bags of hammers and chainsaws for theatrics. How unfair it must feel to be labeled incompetent, lazy, bureaucrats.

That last bit must sting all the more, because they know, as I did, that they control absolutely nothing, nor is their insight asked for—they don’t even comprehend that it could even be a thing to ask these people who have learned the nuts and bolts of their jobs and systems, “Hey, will this thing work?”

And whether they are there for the paycheck, or because helping people is their jam, or any reason in between (or beyond), they are—just like the rest of us—working a gig that keeps the lights on and food on the table.

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There was always something about him that I found off-putting, but he isn’t without a certain amount of raw charm. He’s funny, intelligent, clearly knowledgeable. Also, shrewd. Has a mean streak. I watched him verbally eviscerate inevitable trolls who’d join his lives. I wondered why he didn’t just have a moderator punt them. It’s what mature adults do. I couldn’t watch his lives for more than the amount of time he spent riffing on Trump, because I suppose I have a bit of a mean streak, too. I’m unrepentant about my loathing for the orange emperor. But he was unsettling to watch, because my instincts were screaming that he is a deeply insincere man.

He is a talented writer, and I found it much easier to read what he thinks, rather than watch him say it. I felt aligned. I bought the urgency with which he beats the drum for paid subscribers, but ponied up with clear-eyed resolve. The urgency was more about lining his pockets than creating a movement. I just believed that his content was worth paying for.

I’m aware that Lev Parnas had a feud with him, which led to Meidas Touch dropping him and an abrupt departure of thousands of his followers. I’d already departed by then, and I view Lev as a less charming version of Michael. Both of them had no moral qualms about operating outside of the law, on Trump’s behalf and in their own side endeavors. Both minimize their own felony crimes of fraud and tax evasion - their side hustles, when they weren’t committing felony crimes for “the boss”. I canceled my subscription well before their feud because I got tired of the constant sense of immediacy, positioning himself as someone who could bring Trump down, but needs our urgent help to do it. The redemption arc. The moral awakening, without downplaying his felony crimes - he simply didn’t mention them at all, ever. He spoke only of what he did for Trump, as his “fixer”.

And then, I watched his podcast with PBD and host Patrick Bet-David. After that, I circled back to Meidas Touch and read the articles being written, some of the videos. A good number of them, well before Cohen appeared in that podcast and completely demeaned himself, predicting that he would do exactly what he did. Lev Parnas knew what he was going to do as soon as he mentioned that his testimony had been coerced by the DOJ. He correctly predicted that Cohen was pardon shopping. I would not have had that much insight, but I don’t know either man. Clearly, they know each other well. I would have assumed that Cohen knows better. He is no longer useful. Trump could have possibly forgiven the disloyalty, had he not fallen with Cohen, and been forced to endure humiliating trials. JD Vance called himself a never-Trumper and likened him to a Nazi. He’s now the VP. Marco Rubio butted heads with him time and again. He is one of Trump’s most trusted cabinet members. They’re useful to him, and willing to sell their own souls in exchange for a seat at the table.

Cohen was looking at Bet-David, but he was really speaking to Trump. He used the phrase “radical left lunatics” to describe his own followers, multiple times. He spoke, with what appeared to be genuine emotion, about a friendship with Trump that felt more like family. He told cute, flattering stories about his former boss. Is he angling for a pardon? Sure, he acknowledges - he wouldn’t turn one down. But he has a higher purpose. He wants Trump to pardon all non-violent felons who have served their time, because won’t somebody think of the poor children? 🙄 He frames it as, 70 million Americans who suddenly can’t get jobs, bank accounts, housing, credit cards. He doesn’t mention that this does not apply to most non-violent felons: Only to those who have committed financial fraud to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Banks take exception to being robbed, even if the thief wears a suit and tie and isn’t holding up the teller. Who knew?!

At one absurd point, he asks Bet-Davis for advice: Should I pick up the phone and call the White House? His posture and tone screams love-sick, insecure teen asking a friend to bolster his confidence so he can find the courage to ask Mary Lou to prom. The whole display is sickening to watch.

In the last few minutes, he makes his pitch: he’s still useful. He doesn’t just tell Trump what he wants to hear. He believes that Trump is getting terrible advice from sycophantic incompetents. He carefully mentions that perhaps having “a few” bad apples in ICE free to run around and beat up women isn’t good optics. He doesn’t like that Trump is blowing up fishing boats but hey, if the goal is regime change, forget that it’s illegal - it becomes a whole other thing. That part was fun to watch because it made Bet-David visibly uncomfortable. It veered dangerously close to blasphemy.

But I’m sure that Trump, who knows that he is indeed flailing badly, got the message. I can still be useful, boss.

To that end, Cohen was truthful and sincere - to his own agenda. He’s for sale to the highest bidder. Perhaps he’s tired of peddling books and podcasts. It’s no doubt lucrative, but it’s not oligarchy. He took his shot. A calculated risk.

I hope Trump continues to ignore him. Cohen feels that he’s been cancelled by the left and the right. I see he’s gone right back to the urgent sell - only he can save us, but he needs our support. He doesn’t deserve it. He hasn’t earned it. He is not loyal or sincere - he will drift to wherever the most money and influence may be. For a while, the redemption arc seemed plausible. I don’t believe he ever wanted to leave Trumpworld, though. In fact, he said that: he didn’t want to turn on his bestie. He didn’t want to testify. He did so only when it became apparent to him that Trump had cut him loose to take a fall that his own advisors thought could be contained to just Cohen taking the hit. And as we know now, they weren’t right. They also weren’t wrong. He’s back, and meaner than ever. With twice the dementia and no restraint at all.

In the animal kingdom, few creatures respond to threats with the same raw, unapologetic intensity as the honey badger. When it senses danger - whether from a lion, hyena, leopard, cobra, or pack of larger predators - it begins with deliberate warning signals designed to intimidate and deter: loud hissing, growling, snarling, raising its fur to appear larger, baring sharp teeth, and sometimes releasing a noxious, eye-watering secretion from its anal glands that can disorient or sicken an attacker. These displays are not mere posturing; they are a clear declaration that any attempt to engage will come at a steep cost.

If the threat persists or escalates, the honey badger shifts into full, relentless aggression. It charges headfirst, even against opponents many times its size, refusing to back down or flee. Its thick, loose-fitting skin allows it to twist violently inside its own hide if grabbed, turning defense into counterattack by biting or clawing at vulnerable areas like the face, groin, or underbelly. With powerful jaws, razor-sharp teeth, and an almost superhuman pain tolerance, it can endure bee stings, porcupine quills, and even certain snake venoms. It will continue to fight ferociously even while injured. The honey badger does not retreat until the threat is neutralized or it can escape, and it often outlasts bigger, stronger animals through sheer tenacity, stubbornness, and a complete unwillingness to submit.

Pam Bondi reminds me of this ferocious creature every time she sits for congressional oversight meetings. Shrill, hackles raised, angry voice screeching juvenile insults. Today, she referred to Congressman Jamie Raskin as a “washed up loser lawyer”:

I can almost see the rancid venom oozing from her hindquarters. She cannot defend her department’s handling of the Epstein files. A calm, mature approach may have been to acknowledge that obvious errors have been made across multiple administrations, and that some regrettable mistakes have been made with releasing so many millions of files under an intense time crunch.

My personal feelings about how she has handled this entire debacle are irrelevant. I’d empty out my life savings and place Vegas odds that a fair and impartial investigation of her conduct would find criminal conspiracy elements. But until we have such investigations, this is conjecture. What is not, upon watching how she reels back, hisses, slings insults - while absorbing, to be fair, some vicious blows - speaks more to the desperate reaction of a cornered animal. This is our Attorney General. What she says and how she behaves shapes the amount of trust we place in the Department of Justice. She is befouling the institution.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal demanded Bondi turn around and apologize directly to Epstein survivors seated behind her, accusing the DOJ of prioritizing “political redactions over human decency.” Bondi refused, instead criticizing past administrations and accusing Democrats of exploiting victims for political gain, leading to a chaotic shouting exchange:

Bondi could have so easily chosen grace here. She would not have even had to admit to any wrong-doing. She could have turned to those survivors and grieving family members in the room and simply said, “I am deeply sorry for the unimaginable pain and suffering thar you have lived with. I regret that in our haste to release these files, as mandated, mistakes were made. My department is committed to rectifying this. As your Attorney General, I want to reassure you that I see you, and I am committed to seeking Justice for you.” Or, whatever. I’m not a lawyer; she is. She knows what she can say that acknowledges genuine pain and suffering while minimizing political or personal fallout. At least, she should know. Perhaps we should expect a display of compassion and empathy from a cabinet member, in such an emotionally charged reality.

Jeffrey Epstein trafficked children. He could have been tossed in federal prison for life, based only on what was known in 2006. Back when George W. Bush was President, and Alberto Reynaldo Gonzales, the Attorney General. Instead, the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, cut him the sweetheart deal of a lifetime: a sanitized plea of sex with “prostitutes” (one a 16 year old child), an 18-month state sentence of which he served - on astonishing work release - 13 months. Immunity for co-conspirators. A gaurantee of no federal charges. And when the FBI slammed the files shut, Epstein went on a worldwide hunt for children to exploit. His “business partner”, Jean-Luc Brunel, used his modeling front agency to recruit the girls. Epstein paid for their visas, and rented apartments for them to live in. They were told they would be models. Instead, he planted them in his brother Mark’s New York apartment building, invoiced them for rent (likely so that they could pay it with sexual favors and massages), and took their travel documents away from them. Very few of them ever walked a runway. This is not even factoring in that Epstein quite likely also trafficked these children to other well-connected sexual deviants, or that the scope of the operation screams Russian honeypot scheme.

The point is, the scope of this international crisis in leadership is far beyond Bondi’s doing. She is responsible for what is happening right now, and she is failing spectacularly at holding anyone accountable, at all. Because, plausibly speculative, she is shielding Donald J Trump and many other wealthy, connected predators - including prominent democrats. The billionaire class cuts across political divides. They’ll fight amongst themselves, but they protect their own. Likely because of that giant, unmistakable honeypot and dossiers that have been compiled from somewhere. I’d take the money I won from the Bondi conspiracy bet and shove all my chips at Russia.

In one of the most explosive exchanges, Bondi suggested that Rep. Becca Balint, who is Jewish, was contributing to an “anti-Semitic culture” based on her voting record on a resolution. Balint interrupted, called it “weak sauce,” and stormed out of the hearing in frustration. Her grandmother is a holocaust survivor:

What could she possibly say? The ties exist. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick is in the files. Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg is in the files. John Phalen, the sex art collector and non-military Secretary of the Navy is in the files. Bondi first asks, “what does ties mean?” Which was immediately reminiscent, for me, of Bill Clinton infamously answering a question about his affair with an intern with, “Depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Bondi asked for an opportunity to respond, when Balint’s time expired. She used it to accuse a Jewish woman of anti-semitism. Inflict maximum damage, admit to nothing.

The only real options available to Bondi are: capitulate to Donald Trump (and Stephen Miller), or assert herself as the independent Attorney General of the United States and respond to these serious allegations with appropriate concern and a commitment to investigate. If she does that, Trump will fire her, or she will be forced to resign. Trump went through 3 Attorney Generals in his first term. It is clear that Bondi has chosen her path.

Representative Jasmine Crockett simply decided she would not ask Bondi any questions. Bondi smirked knowingly. Crockett then launched into an impassioned speech about how the DOJ has weaponized itself against American Citizens. She spoke broadly about the attack on journalists, complicity in covering up the Epstein files, condemnation of Trump’s pending lawsuits against his own administration.

Bondi responded: She doesn’t ask about Hakeem Jeffries soliciting a donation from Epstein. Then, she presented a cherry-picked list of immigrants with violent criminal records who have been deported. Classic whataboutisms and deflections. She did not respond to any of Crocketts actual points. What could she say, really? The DOJ has made it clear that they are going to follow Trump’s directive: let the Epstein files go.

Yesterday, we learned that US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, sought indictments against six sitting Democratic lawmakers for making a video that reminded military personnel that they do not have to follow illegal orders. The grand jury refused to indict them. I share their concerns, and understand why they made the video. I can also understand that this enraged Donald Trump and most Republican lawmakers. An argument can be made that it was suggestive that the Trump administration would at some point give them unlawful orders. The question is, was this illegal conduct? Legal experts and most Republican members of Congress say no. Yesterday, so did a grand jury. I suspect they will try again, and ultimately fail to obtain a true bill indictment. This is what our justice system is focused on. Harassing Trump’s enemies with frivolous charges that fizzle out in courtrooms across the nation.

While across the ocean, a Prince was stripped of his title, and his brother, King Charles, was forced to acknowledge that he has “serious concerns” about the overwhelming evidence emerging from the unredacted files. Government officials in European countries are being forced to resign. UK’s Prime Minister may be forced to resign because he appointed someone who had ties to Epstein (and lied under oath about the extent of his dealings). Poland is investigstion possible Epstein ties to Russia. Democratic nations are rejecting leaders and industry titans who associated with Epstein under their “no confidence” motions that mean, they no longer support or trust the government or individuals representing their governments. The Crown Princes in the Middle East who frolicked with Epstein are probably as sheltered from political fallout as our American billionaires, politicians, and oligarchy are.

We are no longer a functional republic. The world is losing any vestiges of trust in the United States. That matters. We are all interconnected, in matters of trade, commerce, industry, finance. The US dollar dominates the world market. We are demonstrating to the world, right now, that we protect our monsters, when they are part of the ruling class. Even when they are exploiting and abusing children. Definitely when they demonstrated “lapses in judgment” and socialized and did business with Epstein after his 2008 conviction. We are telling the world that we are the monsters.

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This morning, I drove into NE Minneapolis to do more grocery deliveries. I saw WAY more people carrying bags and boxes out of the church than I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t texted or called ahead. I just assumed I’d arrive, ask reluctantly if they needed help packing or if there were any deliveries ready. There are always deliveries ready. Today, there were just two but at least several dozen people loading the bags, so I didn’t feel guilty about grabbing at the deliveries. I saw federal agents driving around. Nobody in the street at both quiet residences.

Since I finished early, I decided to drive to South Minneapolis. Lake Street. Again, if I wasn’t hyper vigilant, I could miss what is more subtle than swarming teams of armed, masked men wearing fatigues storming about. I belong to several signal chat groups, so I know what my neighbors are doing, and I saw it on the street: small clusters of residents on street corners holding phones. A few held signs - ICE OUT. They are monitoring for agents who are driving around and looking for brown and black people to pull over. When that happens - and it does - they are ready with whistles. Fingers poised to call in observers and hit “record”.

Then I drove to my old stomping grounds, St Paul. Once upon a time I worked at the giant red brick government building on the corner of Kellogg and Roberts. I turned onto Roberts. When I worked, if I’d parked my car behind the building rather than paid for the less crowded ramp across the street, I’d head out to West St Paul and buy lunch at one of the many authentic Mexican restaurants. I love street tacos. The road is always packed with traffic, all the time. District del Sol is a busy, thriving area. Today, it is hauntingly deserted. My favorite shop is closed.

As I am typing this, I’m hearing pings and seeing Signal chat messages pop up. They’re in neighborhoods now, not as much staging raids at local businesses. I am reluctant to respond. I’ve spent 20 years working in St Paul and before that, 5 in Minneapolis. I still don’t know residential areas well, which ones turn into one-way streets that I may find myself stuck in. I promised my husband, no activism. Just observing. That is not a difficult promise to keep, in theory. I have no interest in protesting, but I’ve read stories from Minnesotans who have found themselves suddenly surrounded by federal vehicles and angry residents. One woman, on the way to a medical appointment, tried to stay back. She was shouted at to move forward, but was quite understandably thinking of Renee Good, who moved forward until bullets stopped her. She was frozen with fear and indecision, until agents ended that by shattering her driver’s side glass and hauling her out of her car. She is disabled. They carried her away by her limbs and deposited her at the Whipple detention center, where she received no medical attention until she passed out.

A man returning to his home from his kid’s after-school activities also found himself at the wrong place, wrong time. He lives on the 600 block of 24th Avenue North and saw activity happening on the night that the Venezuelan man was shot. He parked off to the side, since federal vehicles were blocking his path forward. He had six children in the car with him, including a 6-month-old baby. Agents deployed flash bangs, one of which hit his car. Tear gas fumes were entering through the vents, so he rolled down his window. An agent strolled by and just casually rolled a canister of gas under his vehicle. All 6 of his children were hospitalized.

This is what DHS doesn’t talk about, ever. The casual cruelty. Agents leaving a scene, deploying gas as an afterthought. No danger, no crowd control. Just a “goodbye” present. Rolling down the street, someone shouts an obscenity so an arm reaches out of a window and deploys pepper spray. The 20-year-old Somali American man who was tackled outside a restaurant and brought to detention despite having his passport with him was pepper sprayed on the street in such a manner, after the nightmare of his detention. He says he didn’t say anything, although even if he had, there is no law against his first amendment right to express his displeasure. I believe him, though. Others who “fit the profile” have reported the same thing happening to them. Choking, burning fumes directed at them for the crime of walking on the sidewalk, too close to the street, while also brown or black.

It’s the immediate, shocking violence. It cannot be termed “escalation” because that would imply lesser force was used first. These men (and women) are running full force at people who moments ago were driving to work or pumping gas. Moments later, they’re face first on the ground in snow and dirt, or windows are broken while glass particles dig into tender flesh and scalps. One man, an American citizen, talked about finding glass pebbles in his pants pocket. Perhaps you think, I’d obey and avoid the takedown. I imagine that too, because for all my bluster, I am afraid of and trained, much like a clapping seal, to soften my voice and tone when I have been pulled over. Yes, officer - I’ve always known why that was, although I am practiced in the art of puzzled and shocked to learn that I was going 42 in a 30, or 79 in a 70. The act has never gotten me out of a ticket, but there’s always hope. And I’m white, and have been “middle aged” for closing in on 20 years, so I have that advantage. Still, even I freeze a bit, and I’ve never been swarmed. It isn’t difficult to imagine that someone who doesn’t look like me, doesn’t understand orders barked in rapid English, might feel a bit disoriented for a few seconds. That is all the time they need before they are using batons, hammers, or butt end of rifles to break glass and haul you out. Slam you to the ground.

I drove home via St Paul’s Midway (University Avenue). More businesses lining this street were open - lots of Thai restaurants, Vietnamese coffee shops and bakeries, Asian markets. I turned on Snelling, and immediately saw a heavy presence of ICE on the ground. I don’t think it was border patrol. Those fellows always seem to be dressed in fatigues with bulging utility belts clipped around their waists. ICE agents dress more in civilian clothing, khakis, cargo pants. I don’t know why I know this. Well, yes - I do. It was ICE in ERO vests, walking in clusters along the sidewalk near a liquor store. At a stoplight, I watched from my rear view mirror. I counted maybe ten of them. I did not see them enter any buildings.

I just arrived home and have finally had a chance to check all those dings and pings. A scheduled event at a community center, cancelled because of ICE presence and spooked administrators. This was for volunteers who put together “know your rights” kits and pack bags with whistles. They’ve moved to a virtual meeting. I’m not sure how they’re going to put together these kits virtually. They link to an encrypted area that I’ve never been able to figure out how to use. In another group, they list sightings but there are a lot of “all clear” messages as immediate follow up. Maybe it’s just too cold in Minnesota today for a lot of door to door effort. It’s snowing, just a light dusting. Nothing that anyone who has spent a lot of time in the Midwest would be bothered with. I saw Florida plates today. I hope they’re miserable.

This sounds bleak. Things are bleak, but between the lines, I am observing something really hopeful and important. People are turning up in much higher numbers now, post January 7. The church I deliver for was jam-packed with volunteers. It is very cold out today, and I saw citizen volunteers on nearly every corner of Lake Street. Signal chats are more active than ever. People feel compelled to do something, to protect themselves and our immigrant neighbors. I saw many people who “fit the profile” today, volunteering to deliver groceries. That’s brave. What I’m doing is very low risk, since I drive around, white and middle-aged. They don’t see me at all.

This is a riot. Shortly after this image was captured, ICE agents tossed canisters of tear gas at them, quite righteously so. They were standing at a distance, wearing objectively terrifying costumes that hid their identities, and being disrespectful to federal agents. As we all know, the constitution defines disrespect as an offense worthy of punching bullet holes into faces.

This video shows Capitol police officers inciting these peaceful protestors by walking through crowds and ignoring profane insults, placing themselves in harm’s way as they refuse to allow protestors to beat them to the ground, stomp on them, and attempt to gouge their eyes out:

And for contrast, this video shows multiple clips of domestic terrorists, obstructing federal agents by standing well clear of them and violently taunting them with signs, whistles, and angry words. Again, the constitution is very clear: the first amendment informs us that words aren’t free speech, and protests are forbidden.

This is footage of an American patriot, shot by a Capitol police officer after multiple warnings (unconstitutional!) while attempting to climb through a shattered window panel in a barricaded door leading into the Speaker’s Lobby - a hallway directly adjacent to the House Chamber - during the Capitol attack. Members of Congress and staffers were still being evacuated while she was trying to peacefully force her way inside:

And this is an America hating domestic terrorist who was shot directly in the face and head by a brave ICE agent who had no choice but to position himself in front of her car, as she was attempting to flee because another armed agent lawfully screamed at her to “get out of the fucking car” while trying to open her door, then stuck his arm through her open window. A reasonable person should conclude that this is not objectively terrifying. And we all know that law enforcement has no lawful requirement to identify themselves, explain why they are issuing an order, or attempt to de-escalate during potentially volatile situations while emotions are running high:

Renee Good’s final, provocative words were directed to the agent who heroically murdered her. They were: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you! I’m not mad.” His response, after he shot her in clear self-defense while she was deceptively steering her weaponized SUV away from him were, “Fucking bitch.”

/sarcasm

My point is that administration officials and our President have profound ability to shape narratives. Donald Trump’s administration is erasing history of January 6 - the White House official website has published a work of fiction that the violent mob of rioters were peaceful protestors who were incited and provoked by Capitol police. In their telling, democrat Nancy Pelosi admitted that she was responsible, because she didn’t call the national guard. In fact, Pelosi was filmed asking why the National Guard wasn’t already there. As Speaker, she didn’t have the authority to mobilize them. In D.C., they are commanded by the President, and can only be activated by the pentagon.

The Department of Justice issued a memo directing law enforcement to investigate and aggressively prosecute groups and individuals labeled as “domestic terrorists.” The memo was broadly sweeping, including a definition that “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment” may constitute domestic terrorism. Her description assumes that Antifa is an organized group of violent men and women who are demonstrably and criminally anti-American. Antifa does not exist. There is no headquarters, no leader, no funding streams to follow, no newsletters on agency letterhead. For the most part, there are only people, like me, who deeply believe in ANTI FASCISM and will use my constitutionally protected first amendment rights to protest a fascist movement. Which, right now, is the Trump regime.

Tears have been steadily leaking out of my face hole since 11:00 a.m. yesterday, when I first learned that Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by federal agents.

I did not know Renee, her partner, or any of her friends/family members. I am not altogether sure why I can’t stop crying, but I know that it is not about her shocking, premature death. Not entirely.

I was in NE Minneapolis, delivering groceries to migrant families, when Renee was shot and killed on Minneapolis’ south side. Just blocks away from where George Floyd had the life choked out of him by police officer Derek Chauvin, in broad daylight and in full view of shocked witnesses. It was also the first day that I noticed a heavy ICE presence in the neighborhoods I made deliveries to. At stop #3 of 4, I saw masked, fatigued agents wandering around a little less than a block away. Prior to that, I noted only that there were a lot of SUVs and cars slowly patrolling down the streets, with out-of-state and altogether absent license plates. No plates is a crime in Minnesota, but I digress. I was doing nothing wrong, I was not subject to so much as a sparing glance by any of them, and yet my body went into instant “fight or flight” mode: palpitations, flushed, nausea. I was afraid, in broad daylight, in a quiet suburban setting where no protests were happening and few pedestrians were in sight. I was afraid that somehow, they’d look my way and see a middle-aged white woman, loaded down with a grocery bag and a heavy rectangle of bottled water, and they’d guess somehow that I was bringing food to immigrants who were too afraid to shop for themselves. I knew that even if that, utterly improbably, were true - I was not breaking any laws (I checked before I signed up). But what if it makes them angry, my body whispered, and my pulse raced. I was reacting to danger that was non-existent.

And across town, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good and her partner, seated in the passenger seat of their Honda SUV, was parked on a one-way street, her vehicle blocking the right lane. Video evidence doesn’t seem to exist to explain what she was doing there. Her partner, sitting in the snow just feet away from where Nicole had been shot in the face and head, inches away from her, sobbed uncontrollably and said that they had been filming agents. She begged bystanders for help and cried, “I don’t know what to do.” She said that she had a 6-year-old child in school. Then she got up and wandered away. She left blood in the snow.

I had been receiving pings all day from a citizen watch group that I was part of, and when I pulled into my garage just before 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning, I received this text:

It was the exact location where Renee was murdered. Less than an hour later, a follow up text cleared the request: IDN has confirmed that ICE activity on 34th and Portland has ended. No Constitutional Observers are needed there. Next activity location is unknown. Trained COs please stay alert and safe.” Stay alert and safe. I wonder if Renee was enrolled in the same citizen observers group. She was not safe. She seemed very alert, as federal agents swarmed her SUV and, in a provocative show of force, an agent grabbed her door handle and then reached into her open window.

It happened so fast. I have watched the footage too many times; I am sick with it. Multiple videos, filmed from various angles. At some point, I noted when the first agent exited the pick-up truck and approached Renee’s SUV. Eight seconds later, she was dead. She was shot in the face and head. Mortal wounds; she would have been unconscious and incapacitated even if her heart continued to pump blood for moments after.

At 12:06 p.m., as I was sitting on my couch, scrolling through the first of many subsequent eyewitness videos, I got another text notification: “Community Alert: IDN has confirmed federal activity in Minneapolis by Dollar tree parking lot between 31st and Lake Street. Constitutional Observers with capacity come on the ground to support.” A woman had been murdered, hours ago, and ICE was still busy conducting raids. It was the first of several additional alerts. Roosevelt High School. On Lake Street, conducting door-to-door business sweeps. They remained busy yesterday, and clashed several times with parents, school administrators, and protesters. Mayor Jacob Frey held a press conference at 12:15 p.m. yesterday and told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Perhaps if he had asked nicely, they might have stood down for the day. Just, you know, to give us time to catch our breath. /sarcasm

Yesterday, every time I thought, I cannot cry more; there are no tears left and surely I’ll begin to dry-heave now … I would read another MAGA comment on local social media, and my face would be wet again. Real comments: ”That's what you get. Should have listened. Tired of entitled people disrespecting law enforcement.” And:

“Maybe now President Trump will declare the insurrection act and send in the marines to help ICE with these demonstrators?”

“Well, this isn't all of the video, now was it? No, obviously something has happened to get a Honda pilot perpendicular to the actual road. Saying this is the video is to come up short, and this is why the lame stream press is not trusted.”

“Stupid cunt rag,she’s in hell know”

“just because he didn’t die doesn’t mean he wasn’t hit. It doesn’t matter how much he was struck or what part of the vehicle was used, point being he was hit by her vehicle. She showed up to disrupt and display her beliefs and lost her life because of her decisions. Sad all around, but she put herself in that situation.”

Less that two hours after she died, Kristi Noem appeared on camera and besmirched the 37-year-old wife and mother as a domestic terrorist who “attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.” When she made those comments, video evidence from bystanders was not crawling all over social media yet - but she had to know that this would inevitably happen. It doesn’t seem to matter to the Trump regime, and his sycophantic cabinet. Reality is what they say it is. Believe what we tell you to believe. Vladimir Putin, who perfected the bald-faced art of explaining how so many dissidents trip and fall out of high-rise buildings, may want to take further notes. Because we have video evidence that directly, diametrically opposes what Trump and DHS boldly assert as an alternative reality.

I’m crying now, as I am writing this. I don’t know why I can’t stop. I don’t know why I feel the need to write about these tears. A young woman died yesterday. She leaves behind 3 young children. Her partner watched her die. An agent shot her in the face, and she saw this happen. She was herself inches away from the bullets, and then she was sitting in the snow, arms around a black dog that was in the seat behind them, keening mournfully and begging strangers to tell her what to do. Video footage shows a doctor asking if he can check for a pulse, and agents tell him no. “I’m a doctor!” He exclaims, incredulously. She hears this, as she is just feet away from where her loved one is slumped over the wheel, and of the few legible sentences she manages, this was one of them: “Yes! She needs a doctor!” She had to know that it was already too late. She watched it happen, the bullets pierce through a bright, lovely face and head. She was splattered with the gore. Observers know, moments after they heard the pop pop pop and witnessed the vehicle suddenly accelerate and then smash into a parked car and utility pole. The impact lifted the back end of the SUV entirely off the ground. “What did you do? Oh my God, what did you do? You murdered her!” Cries a witness, moments later. Donald Trump called this witness a “professional agitator.”

Eight seconds. Alive, as an agent approaches her vehicle. One second, he grabs the handle. Another second, he reaches through the open window, presumably to disengage the lock. While in a few more seconds, the shooter circles from the passenger side to the front of the vehicle. Renee, likely startled and fear provoked, possibly experiencing her body whispering, ”If they haul me out, they will probably hurt me” first backs up, and then at a snail’s pace, attempts to make a 3-point turn. Another beat, she sees the agent in front of her and turns the wheel away from him. Another, and he draws his gun. One second more, he is clear of the front end, but he fires anyway. One round through the far left side of the windshield. Two rounds through the open passenger window. He may have been broad-side clipped by her SUV as the muscle-memory in her body prompts her foot to step on the gas. There is no clear angle that I have seen, but what we all see (those of us who care to look) is that he remained upright the entire time, and moments after shooting her, he calmly walks to a waiting getaway vehicle. No sign of injury.

In an alternative reality, I wonder: what if he had not paused to draw that gun. He would have been fully clear. Renee would be alive. Maybe in detention, maybe picking her son up from school. If they’d felt so provoked by her blocking the left lane of traffic (and multiple vehicles passed her, with ease, on the right side of that one-way street), they could have recorded her plate number, and gone after her later. She lived less than two blocks away.

I’m crying because I do not recognize this America that we live in. Because my husband and son are brown immigrants, and I have lived in daily terror for both of them since Trump took office again in January. Because I am too old, and too afraid, to really fight. I worry that if my name appears in a database, they could go after my husband, who is “merely” a lawful permanent resident. Our son is a United States citizen, but he is also deep brown, tall and broadly built, with a full beard. He looks a decade older than his still tender age of 19. He left home for college last fall, and every day since then, I have imagined a scenario in which he “fits the profile” and a stop escalates to violence. He carries his passport in his backpack, and pocket passport in his wallet. I wonder if that is sufficient. I’ve read stories of citizens who showed their “papers please” and agents assumed they were fake.

I’m crying because objective reality exists, but too many Trump supporters buy into the official narrative, and it doesn’t seem to matter how many videos contradict them, or how many federal judges rule against them.

And I’m crying because none of this is or should be about me, and I know this. I mourn the loss of our humanity.

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a princess of Troy, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Blessed (or cursed) with the gift of prophecy by the god Apollo, she could foresee the future with perfect clarity. She predicted the fall of Troy, the deception of the Trojan Horse, and countless other disasters. However, when she rejected Apollo’s romantic advances, he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her warnings. Despite her desperate pleas and accurate foretellings, she was dismissed as mad or hysterical, forced to watch helplessly as tragedy unfolded. Her story has become a powerful archetype for those who see impending danger clearly but are ignored or silenced by others.

This morning, I read this piece published by The New Republic. It is about the “Cassandras” who saw Trump coming in 2015 and warned everyone - only to be dismissed as hysterical. It resonated to the very core of who I am. If you’re one of the people who sounded the alarm early and were called hysterical, this is for you.

I saw a fascist riding down an escalator in 2015.

My “early alert” was with Ronald Reagan and his “Moral Majority.”

I have always been civically engaged, but not particularly interested in politics. I was a young teen when Ronald Reagan was elected, and I didn’t like him. I can remember that. His administration demonized welfare recipients and those receiving early retirement, and my father was one of the millions certified disabled who had his social security terminated. It was reinstated after a very lengthy battle, and he was fortunate that a church leader was also an attorney and willing to represent him. Many people had to fight that battle alone, and often lost.

Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic as a gay plague. He didn’t publicly mention it existed until 1985. It was discovered in 1981. His messaging: “… when it comes to preventing AIDS, don’t medicine and morality teach the same lessons?” Phyllis Schlafly - a prominent conservative attorney who worked outside the home for most of her life, yet spent her later years shrieking at women to stay home and have babies - revolved in his orbit and played a key role in getting him elected. This was my first experience with a religious movement attempting to become a political force. There have been other assaults throughout history. This was just the first in my lifetime.

The Years In-between

George Bush was a blur. I loved Bill Clinton’s first term, and at the time did not see the harm his reforms were having on minorities and our nation’s poor. Clinton worked both sides of the aisle with ease; probably because he was more of a Republican than most Republicans. George Bush the Second led us into a war with Iraq. I felt within my bones another stirring of xenophobia and hostility to immigrants, but it didn’t feel orchestrated by him

Obama was elected and I sleepwalked through both of his terms. I trusted him and was fully bought into his messaging. I did not pay attention to his immigration policies, at all. They were remarkably hostile.

Point is, none of these men except for Reagan provoked a fear response in me, or a sense of loathing. Life as *I* knew it was comfortable. Politics held a place in my life, and it wasn’t a central focus.

A Turning Point

And then, a clown rode down an escalator. That is how I saw him, at first. A crude, thuggish, reality TV actor and failed businessman with profane ideas and crude speech.

I had no sense of prescience. I genuinely thought he would lose “bigly” in the primaries. I was shocked and appalled when he won. I didn’t like or trust Hillary Clinton, but assumed she would win.

He was on the campaign trail, mocking disabled reporters and blowing racist and xenophobic dog whistles.

“Show Me the Racism.”

And at the time, I remember talking about that. The response I typically got: show me, with a map and a highlighter, exactly what he said that is racist.

Ok: he said that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake and he isn’t American. He retweeted statistics from a known white supremicist account claiming outlandishly that “blacks killed by police - 1%; whites killed by blacks - 81%.” He said that Mexico and other countries are opening their prison doors and asylum gates and emptying them into America. He called for a sweeping Muslim ban.

Nope, I was rather smugly told. He didn’t use the “N” word. He isn’t burning crosses on lawns.

How to refute that, when the person standing ten toes down holds an almost cartoonish definition of racism as requiring explicit hatred or violence to count? When the word “systemic” itself is something you have to define? When you know that it operates through coded language, policy proposals, and “dog whistles” that sound reasonable to some ears but carry clear meaning to others?

I was feeling pattern recognition. Echoes of historical exclusion and scapegoating. Others around me heard, at worst, “politically incorrect” bluntness.

He doesn’t mean what you think he said. He doesn’t mean what he actually said. You’re hysterical. You’re too sensitive. You’re using your husband and son as a prop.

Four Years of Grace

I felt the stirring of real fear when he was elected the first time. It is also when I began to withdraw. I was fighting real battles with people I cared about, and I didn’t have it in me to make it bloody.

And throughout that first term, whenever I would point out that he was drawing us ever closer to the brink of fascism, I would hear: You are over-reacting. You aren’t seeing it clearly. You are becoming that very thing you claim to hate: intolerant.

And a part of me wondered, maybe they are right. Not about Donald Trump. I have always been clear-eyed and knowing about him. Moreso, is my anger turning me into something and someone that nobody wants to be around? Because as time went on, that anger indeed crystallized to rage. I knew that we were lost. I felt adrift. I saw a monster wearing human skin.

As it turns out, Trump was unsuccessful with fulfilling much of his mandate during his first term because other adults in the White House stopped him. He wanted the national guard to shoot protestors. Mark Esper, his Secretary of Defense, said absolutely not. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said he would give no such order to the military. Senior aides would remove memos and documents from his desk so that he could not sign them (including a preposterous trade agreement with South Korea). Defense Secretary Jim Mattis slow-walked or flatly refused escalated military intervention. When Trump announced that US troops were being immediately withdrawn from Syria in 2018, Mattis refused to leave vulnerable allies with no ground support. He ultimately resigned, but Trump’s “immediate withdrawal” order was never implemented. DOJ officials routinely refused to fire people that Donald Trump wanted gone, and when push came to shove, they resigned.

He was thwarted at nearly every turn. He knew that there were limits and guardrails, because he met them.

We had 4 years of grace. I will not say that Joe Biden was an effective president. He was kind, he meant well, and he isn’t a sociopath. There is that.

And now, my fear has been replaced by terror. Because Trump and his Project 2025 operatives learned a valuable lesson from his first term. He has NO cabinet officials willing to push back. All were installed because above all else, including core competency, they are loyalists. They will do as they are told.

The DOJ is Trump’s legal playground and a weapon he levels at anyone who stood in his way at any time, or might do so currently. Pam Bondi is always willing to bring charges against anyone, anytime, and for the most absurd reasons that no judge or jury will entertain. Pete Hegseth will use the Pentagon to investigate military officials. The FBI is covering for him and his sycophants.

They are breaking the law daily. There is no justice, because those halls are patrolled by Trump and orders are carried out by Bondi.

The DHS has unleashed thunder on the streets. They use the language of authoritarians in recruitment posters. They are lawless.

The Pentagon cedes command to Trump. Want to deploy the military on city streets? Hegseth has that covered. Blow boats apart on international waters? Same. Bypass congress and declare war on Iran? He’s all in. We are on standby for the inevitable land invasion in Venezuela. Another forever war, brought to you by the President of Peace.

I saw it coming. I’ve been shrieking into a void for 10 years.

I am Cassandra.

If you’ve been carrying this same rage and grief for ten years - if you, too, were dismissed, gaslit, or told you were overreacting - tell me in the comments. You’re not alone. We saw it clearly when others refused to look. Now we bear witness together, and we resist together.

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Last week, after the DOJ brought in prosecutors from Missouri in an attempt to re-indict Tish James for mortgage fraud, a grand jury heard the evidence and said, “Nope.” Today, they tried again with a 3rd grand jury. They said, “oh, HELL no.”

This whole punishment tour is an unmitigated disaster. From the very beginning - career prosecutors who refused to bring charges because they knew the evidence was flimsy, and Trump’s DOJ fired them. Then they unlawfully appointed Lindsey Halligan - knowing that she lacks experience AND is willing to stretch ethics like a warm taffy pull. A few weeks ago, a judge threw out the James Comey and Tish James indictments, after finding that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. An appeals panel upheld. Both cases were riddled with errors and irregularities, and likely would have been tossed for other reasons, had the most compelling one not been available. For James Comey, that was evidence of malicious prosecution and massive errors with the grand jury (Halligan stretched those ethics to a breaking point, and gave unlawful instructions to jurors). For Tish James, it was malicious prosecution. That judge didn’t find anything wildly unlawful in Halligan’s conduct for this case, aside from noting that Halligan did not present the evidence that Tish’s niece had previously offered sworn testimony that her aunt did not charge her rent for living in the home. That would have been exculpatory evidence that could have swayed the jury to “no true bill” (hell nope) … but it wasn’t technically illegal for Halligan to leave it out. Prosecutors can pick and choose what evidence they want a grand jury to see, which is why people say attorneys could indict a ham sandwich.

Which leads me to wonder if the prosecuting attorneys pulled in from Missouri are quietly as sick of Trump’s shit as the rest of us are. They included the niece’s testimony. And now, two juries have humiliated the DOJ and further enraged Trump. Blood pressure, old fellow. Forget to take your meds, please. It is more likely that they are just career professionals with a bad case of the ethics, but I’d like to think they were flipping the bird at the DOJ on their way out of the jury room.

Trump has, himself, listed more than one residence as primary for mortgage purposes - and even went so far as to rent some of these “primary” mortgage properties. Which is, in an absurd twist of irony, what Tish is accused of. Several Republican politicians and Trump cabinet members are doing the same thing. Cue tumbleweed, for DOJ response. The FHFA head, who unlawfully targeted them and rifled through their mortgage applications with a finely tuned comb, has a family member who did the same thing. Crickets.

It is a clowns tumbling out of sidecar spectacle extraordinaire. All of it. Bondi’s DOJ willing to pursue absolutely Trump’ed up charges at his bidding. Career prosecutors fired. The spectacle of hounding innocent people who made clerical errors. Even if they DID commit fraud, there was never going to be a world in which intent could be proven - most especially not when Tish’s paperwork shows that she did inform lenders that it was NOT going to be her primary home in a second set of documents. It is altogether possible that this inept, morally bankrupt DOJ may decide to indict Senator Adam Schiff, Rep Eric Swalwell, and Fed Governor Lisa Cook for similar “crimes” - if they can find prosecutors willing to bring the indictments. In these cases, all have refused. Since Bill Pulte is himself now under investigation for the enormously problematic referrals, they’ll likely wait until he’s cleared of any wrongdoing (because of course he will be; he was doing Trump’s bidding) before shifting focus back to these three. It doesn’t appear as if Bondi has any shame, at all. Failure to indict when prosecutors can pick and choose which evidence to highlight, which to obscure - that incredibly low bar - should have been the nail in Trump’s retribution coffin. It shouldn’t have even come to this. Career prosecutors have been warning them, and warned Halligan not to indict after Trump fired Erik Siebert for refusing with Comey and James.

Today, I’m going to bask in the warm glow of their humiliation, and hope that Trump blows a gasket. Literally. I don’t think he has many synapses to spare.

They were not smugglers.

They were not terrorists.

They were not “illegal.”

One had asylum from Egypt.

One had a green card.

One was a Canadian visitor whose work authorization was missing a single stamp. She offered to purchase a ticket and leave immediately. She was told, in effect: No. You belong to us now.

Watch their faces while they speak.

Watch the way the Egyptian man’s voice catches when he says the American detention center was worse than the torture chamber his own government threw him into.

Watch the green-card holder cry without sound, tears sliding down her cheeks for the entire twenty minutes, as if her body has decided the grief will never run out.

Watch the Canadian woman describe the day a nurse made thirty women pee in cups in front of one another, then dip a pregnancy test, and announce the results out loud like a roll call.

Then try to tell me this is about immigration enforcement.

It isn’t.

It is about what happens when a society decides that some human beings can be converted into line items on a private contractor’s spreadsheet.

The Egyptian journalist had been kidnapped in Cairo for writing articles the regime disliked. They beat him, electrocuted him, threatened his family. He fled, was granted asylum in the United States, volunteered for a respected charity. Years later ICE accused him of “material support” to a Tier III terrorist organization, the same charity. They locked him up for months. When the accusation collapsed, they released him without apology. He says the American guard’s orientation speech stays with him more than the electrodes did:

“You’re going to tell me you have kids.

You’re going to tell me you’re scared.

You’re going to tell me this is a mistake.

I don’t care.”

The green-card holder was arrested in college twenty years earlier for a joint’s worth of marijuana. The state pardoned her, expunged the record, and moved on. ICE did not. They took her from her home, flew her to three different states, kept her so long she bled through her clothes for five straight days before they allowed a shower. She still cannot say the word “detention” without crying.

The Canadian woman’s story is the one that should end every political argument about “following procedure.” She walked into a USCIS office to renew paperwork, was told one form was missing, apologized, and offered to buy a plane ticket that same day. The officer detained her instead. She spent weeks in custody, in multiple facilities. Lights on 24/7. Aluminum blankets that feel like tinfoil against frostbite. Food that made her throw up. A nurse who prayed over her in Spanish while holding her shaking hands, the only kindness she remembers in a month of deliberate cruelty.

These are not anecdotes from some failed state.

This is us.

This is 2025 America, filmed by The New York Times, paid for with your taxes, defended in press releases that accused these victims of crimes they were never charged with.

We paid the guards who said “I don’t care.”

We paid the pilots who flew them in circles so the private prison company could bill for another day.

We paid for the deportation flight after we finished breaking the Canadian, our neighbor.

And when it was over, we issued statements implying they had it coming.

There is a moment in the film when the Canadian woman starts to describe the pregnancy-test line. She stops, covers her face, and says, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” Describing this as a HIPPA violation seems a callous afterthought in proportion to what happened to them, but it is indeed a massive breach of privacy laws.

That is what moral injury looks like. Not the screaming kind. The quiet kind that happens when you realize the country you thought stood for something has decided you are not, after all, a person.

I was born in California by sheer luck. I will never know what it feels like to bleed on a concrete floor while a guard watches through a window and does nothing.

But we are not off the hook.

We are the ones who keep the lights on in those rooms.

This is not a border issue.

This is a mirror.

And until we are willing to look into it until our eyes bleed, nothing changes.

If this piece moves you, share it.

If it enrages you, good. Rage is the first step toward refusing to fund the next flight, the next cage, the next press release that calls a victim a criminal.

We paid for this.

The only question left is whether we will keep paying.

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Arendt wanted to understand how ordinary human beings could stand by and watch atrocities happening to other humans. She made it her life’s work. And decades later, several of her books were on my required reading list in college. I can’t say that I gave them the sober, intent focus that I should have. Life wasn’t hard. I lacked the imagination to believe that the horrors she described could ever happen in my country. I was fascinated by her belief that evil can be, and most often is, moral carelessness and a failure of imagination. She wrote about Adolf Eichmann, who organized the trains that moved Jews to death camps. She attended his trial in 1961 as part of a work assignment for the New Yorker. She expected to see a demonic mastermind. Instead, she found a fussy bureaucrat who maintained outrage that he was stripped of his SS title because he lost his pension rights. He was literally on trial for organizing the mass extermination of millions of people. He was more concerned with his demotion, as if he felt the court should find someone in HR he could complain to. She wrote about his obsession with train schedules, his lack of awareness that nearly every word he said was an admission of the war crimes he stood trial for. He would correct prosecutors who got small details about departure dates: “No, [it] left on the 20th, not the 19th. It had 2,800 people, not 2,500.” He seemed genuinely astonished that anyone would view him as a murderer. He reiterated many times that he never personally harmed anyone - he was merely obeying orders and carrying out his assigned duties in the most efficient manner possible. He expressed regret that the war ended before he could get the Romanian Jews out to extermination camps - they were on the schedule, he said, as she described it, almost wistfully.

She faced heavy criticism for her belief that Eichmann held no particular hatred for Jews. His task, as he viewed it, was to do his job in the most efficient manner possible. He was ambitious. He wanted promotions. He held no ideological views beyond that of a bureaucrat. To him, herding people like cattle into train cars was no different than selling vacuum cleaners door to door. He had a job to do, and he meant to do it well.

I am imagining the banality of evil now. I am seeing it all around me, every day. I am plugged into it, reading social media comments by the thousands that seek to demonize immigrants. Many of them come from the bureaucrats tasked with removing them. Expeditiously, and as efficiently as possible.

We didn’t just wake up on January 20, 2025 and decide that we have an immigration problem. A flip wasn’t just casually switched, whereby people we once viewed most skeptically as economically unviable or a drain on national resources became enemies. Donald Trump didn’t instill hatred in our hearts or provide language to describe our discomfort. He merely exploited it, and gave permission for us to express it. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats and dogs,” he ranted on the campaign trail, referring to Haitian immigrants. For ten years, he has been telling us that leaders of other countries were “sending us” their criminals, their recently freed insane, their problems. He exploited national pride by telling patriotic Americans that other countries are laughing at us, calling us fools. None of this is true, can be (and has been) objectively disproven. It doesn’t matter to his loyalists. They accept what he says as gospel truth, much as I once complacently nodded along to an Obama speech.

Arendt calls this a failure of imagination. An inability to empathize, to place ourselves in someone else’s point of view and to wonder, what might life look like from that perspective?

I’m watching the local news, and I am seeing ICE and CBP agents who are black and Hispanic. Some may even be Somali. They’re at Karmel mall in Minneapolis. I’ve visited there, several times for work and also to satisfy a craving for salty, crispy fried sambusas. It’s a lovely, hectic place to be. Brimming with bold fabrics, jewelry, fragrant spices: cinnamon, cumin, coriander. US citizens are there today, carrying passports in their handbags and wallets.

Somali kids are afraid to go to school. These are American children. Comments on social media: “If they are here legally, there is nothing to fear.” Except, the President of the United States called them “garbage”, is threatening to revoke TPS for the few who have that status, and is examining the green card and naturalization status of Somali Americans with as much fervor as the DOJ is to get Leticia James indicted, again. Comments, everywhere: their documents are forged, fraudulent. They’re marrying US citizen relatives. They’re a drain to our welfare system.

The truth is that indeed, this happens. Not wholescale, not often, but when we search for the worst things about ourselves, we can always find it: in every race, ethnicity, religious group. In ourselves, and our children. What we have forgotten - if it has ever been there at all - is that the least of us does not define the rest of us.

Our government is not exterminating immigrants. Yet. We are currently outsourcing that task by deporting them to third countries with UN recorded records of massive human rights abuses - and those countries then promptly incarcerate or deport them back to their home countries. We are removing protected status from people who came from countries our government cautions citizens to never travel to, and deporting them there. Agents are sweeping streets and grabbing anyone who looks “suspicious” and that is never going to be white people. Amnesty International published a report this month about severe human rights violations at immigration detention facilities. It’s a difficult read, but here is the link.

Protestors are being branded as antifa and domestic terrorists. Trump is doing his level best to get troops on the ground in major cities, and he’s been successful too many times already. The DOJ is actively investigating us. Overseas, allied governments are refusing to share intelligence with us. France and Germany are preparing for the possibility of war with Russia. Our allies know that things have changed. We are not to be trusted.

Warrantless arrests are not legal. Courts have ruled on this in recent months, time and again. BPD sweeps in and terrorizes immigrants and US citizens alike, and when they leave days or weeks or months later, most of those who were detained have been set free - because they are lawfully abiding asylum seekers with pending cases, and never should have been kidnapped, tackled and shackled. The DOJ always appeals these court orders, so they remain locked up until appeals courts weigh in.

Our government tells us that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. Their own statistics show that the vast majority who have been detained or deported have no criminal record at all. What they are really saying is, the civil matter of being undocumented is itself the “dangerous criminal” element.

We go about our lives as if nothing has changed. Even those of us who are deeply troubled and the few within that crowd who are speaking up, protesting, donating, calling senators and representatives. We are out shopping for holiday gifts, pumping our hard earned tax dollars into an economy that is also hard at work eliminating safety net programs and rewarding oligarchs with enormous tax breaks and incentives.

Too many of us are spreading hateful propaganda online and in our homes and broader community. We do not critically challenge the government narrative that immigrants are “trash” and criminals, we do not question the unlawfulness of warrantless arrests and mass detentions in filthy, overcrowded facilities DESIGNED to be torturous so that as many humans as possible will ask for deportation. We do not ask why people migrate to this country, particularly within the past 10 years as rhetoric and actions have aligned and we are broadly viewed as hostile and this country an inhospitable place to be. How much worse it had to have been, elsewhere, for THIS to be considered a safe haven?

We sit, idle. Draw our curtains.

My husband tells me, with sincere and loving concern, that I am withdrawing from life. He tries to encourage me to get out more, engage, maybe visit family, get a part time job. I point out that I am keeping our home clean, meals on the table, myself generally well-kempt. I don’t feel isolated. I feel raw and exposed. I don’t want to go out, smile, make eye contact. I don’t see myself as the better person. I am most decidedly not. I lack the desire and ability to view life from the MAGA perspective. I see monsters walking among us, and I want to hate that ideology. If you’re wearing it, I don’t want to be among you, sharing space. I don’t want to spend money in your stores or make casual conversation with you while waiting for seating in a local restaurant. I’m not OK - those of us who see what is happening cannot be. I’m also not a target, and my thinking is clear. I am as content as one can be during a regime change, in my comfortable home, with my books and Substack subscription and beloved pet. When I leave, it is to do “antifa” shit like hold a sign and chant slogans. Once upon a time, that was a coveted first amendment protection and broadly seen as civic engagement.

This is my personal Waterloo. I must live within this regime change. I will never live among it. I am documenting it.

Source

This was a remarkable decision yesterday. The article provides a link to the D.C. judge’s ruling. It’s a densely packed 88 pages, but it is some of the clearest legal interpretation I’ve ever seen.

The case was a lawsuit brought by CASA, Inc which listed 4 plaintiffs and 17 others who provided sworn testimony. The issue was a ruling on the legality of warrantless arrests in D.C. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, concluding that DHS, ICE, and CPB (among other collaborating agencies) acted unlawfully when not applying “probable cause” standard to arrests that resulted in detentions lasting up to 100 days. A judge in Denver, CO ruled similarly last week.

Judge Beryl Howell laid out a meticulously detailed opinion. She described testimony from people who were caught up in what were clearly profiling raids - arrests on streets, at places of business, routine traffic stops. All plaintiffs were lawfully abiding with pending asylum or in TPS status renewals. They described being pulled out of cars, approached at work or while shopping at Home Depot. All had papers with them, which they testified that agents either weren’t interested in seeing, or were told that the documentation didn’t matter. Once in detention, they described intolerable circumstances: packed into spaces so small that people had to negotiate who could lay on the floor and sleep while others stood. Sparse, small meals. Refusal to provide basic medical treatment. No access to a change of clothes or showers, for 4-5 days. Most were eventually released, as they were (as described) lawfully abiding. One man was given an ankle monitor and released - only to be detained again, with his father, in another raid weeks later. He pointed out the ankle monitor and told agents that he’d already been processed. He was told that it didn’t matter; they’d sort his status out once he was in detention. None were asked about their family/social ties when detained. This is important, as Howell describes later. All plaintiffs had local family ties, children. Some had American spouses. All were working. This information is critical in determining “flight risk”, but she eventually ruled this to be aside from the main point, which was this:

It is unlawful to use “reasonable suspicion” as a basis to detain people. Agents can use this standard for a brief interaction, but federal law is that to arrest someone without a warrant, even potentially undocumented immigrants, agents must use the “probable cause” standard. Reasonable suspicion is described as a reasonably articulable “hunch”, such as furtive movements at night during a crime scene. It does not provide a basis for full stops or warrantless arrests. Probable cause is a fair, factual probability that the person being detained has committed a crime. Even with probable cause, a warrant is usually required, except in “exigent circumstances” such as, proof that the suspect is undocumented AND cause to believe that he/she would flee if agents had to let them go while obtaining a warrant. This is why Howell focused narrowly on agents asking no questions about family and ties within the community. DHS claims that the undocumented status ALONE provides them with a basis to flee.

Yet, Howell finds that even if she were to accept that agents could use “reasonable suspicion” as a basis for detention, agents weren’t even following the bare minimum required by that standard. They weren’t asking questions, at all, to determine if the suspects had the kind of established ties that would make it unlikely that they would flee. It is important to remember that all 4 of these specified detainees (and the 17 unnamed who provided testimony) HAD community ties - jobs, families, immigration cases pending in court or in renewal.

She also pointed out that highly placed DHS officials were making public comments that they were using “reasonable suspicion” as the basis for stops and detentions, and that SCOTUS had recently “vindicated” them on this question (Noem v Perdomo). In fact, Brett Kavanaugh issued a shadow docket ruling specific to profiling as a basis for reasonable suspicion - they made no ruling on using this as a basis for detention. Federal law requires probable cause for detentions.

And DHS acknowledged that they know this to be fact. Howell pointed out that BPD commander Gregory Bovino told the press:

“We need reasonable suspicion to make an immigration arrest.... You notice I did not say probable cause, nor did I say I need a warrant. We need reasonable suspicion of illegal alienage that’s well grounded within the United States immigration law.” Also that DHS Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has made multiple public statements confirming that they use reasonable suspicion as the basis for arrests.

DHS response (which Howell called “remarkable” and clearly meant, appalling):

“Tellingly, neither defendants’ briefs nor their declarations disavowed these public statements. When questioned at the hearing, government counsel’s principal defense was that “these statements [were made] by non-attorneys” who “don’t necessarily understand” “legal terms of art” like “reasonable suspicion, [and] probable cause.” In other words, a border patrol commander engaging in making arrests has impunity to do so unlawfully because he’s not a lawyer!

Keep in mind, Spokesliars can say whatever they want to say in public. Stephen Miller’s call for 3000 arrests per day - and to just “go find them” at Home Depot is red meat thrown at the MAGA base. They aren’t expected to understand the intricacies of immigration law. Nor do I - all of my comments here are contained to analysis of Judge Howell’s ruling, which I took the time to read. Lying in court is a different matter, exposing them to real consequences.

Howell pointed out that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem routinely instruct BPD and ICE to arrest 75 immigrants daily, per agency location, or face consequences. Also, that highly placed government officials making statements that “reasonable suspicion” as lawful basis for arrests amounts to giving agents permission to break the law. DHS pushed back with, astonishingly, further admissions that they know they cannot arrest people based on reasonable suspicion alone:

“Despite the record evidence, defendants dispute the existence of such a policy, insisting that ICE’s directive issued in 2022 to its officers, plus annual trainings, require probable cause findings …. This defense puts a new twist on the old saying, “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do,” by asserting the position “don’t believe either what we say or what we do, just trust whatever we tell you now.” She highlighted yet again that Gregory Bovino used his full tiny chest (my interpretation) when he repeated the line “you notice I did not say probable cause [as basis for arrests].”

So what is really happening is, DHS is sidestepping federal law. Behaving lawlessly. Knowingly. They won’t lie to a judge about the law. They will and do lie about circumstances for arrests, which Howell also pointed out in great detail. They attempted to claim that they used probable cause for several of the plaintiffs. One, they claimed, had failed to renew his TPS status and had a 2019 criminal assault charge. Howell reviewed their findings - in fact, he had applied within established timeframe for the renewal and bureaucratic backlog was responsible for the non-renewal (which actually happened while he was in detention). The assault charges had been dropped by police in 2019.

Most of the plaintiffs testified that when they were arrested, BPD agents did not even ask for their names, far less any documentation. Some asked if they had warrants and were told to shut up. One man testified to sitting in a van, cuffed, listening to agents brag about how easy he was to arrest and that they were looking forward to spending their bonus money. I have to believe that if hell exists, there is a special inner circle reserved for men like this. The casual, forceful cruelty is breathtaking.

Howell cites the laws and statutes she draws her rulings from. The law is clear. What is also clear is that the Trump regime doesn’t care. They will continue to make warrantless arrests, continue to plead ignorance in court, continue lying to the public about what they are doing. MAGA: It might be painful to acknowledge, but at this point, it is just patently obvious that anyone supporting this just doesn’t care about our laws as they exist. What you really support is the racism and xenophobia driving these unlawful acts.

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You announced you’re done - but not before vesting in your pension - after Trump spent the last few weeks climbing into his royal steamroller and folding your narrow ass into badly built origami. The same man you defended through impeachments, indictments, and January 6 removed the pin from the grenade that you handed him, and tossed it at you. What goes around, it turns out, really does come around.

You spent years perfecting the art of the loyalty-or-else ultimatum. You called for Nancy Pelosi’s arrest, floated execution for “treason” and built a brand on the idea that anyone who stepped out of line deserved to be publicly torched. Now the torch is in different hands, and the heat feels a lot less righteous when it’s on your own skin. It’s the political version of “lie down with wolves, wake up with fleas in your messy nest of bleached blonde hair.” The playbook you wrote is being read back to you, chapter and verse.

None of this is funny, not really. Rhetoric that treats opponents as enemies of the state has a way of slipping its leash and becoming something uglier. We saw it on January 6. We’re seeing it again when sitting presidents demand that we execute or incarcerate lawmakers who annoy them, and use the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the Federal Housing Authority and the FBI to stalk, harass, and indict them. Political violence, whether it’s a mob storming the Capitol or veiled threats from the Resolute Desk, is never “just words” once somebody decides to act on them. It doesn’t get a pass because your team is holding the megaphone today and mine might tomorrow. Full stop. No exceptions. No “but they started it.”

That’s the serious part, and it matters more than any punchline.

Still, there’s a cold irony watching the same tactics you deployed without apology get thrown back in your face. You helped normalize the purge-primary, the loyalty oath, the public shaming of anyone who colored outside the lines. You are in the “finding out” stage of realizing that lines can be moved when the eraser is in someone else’s hand.

So farewell, Madge. May the next chapter be quieter. May you never run for public office again. We beg of you, please return to bland obscurity as the racist Aunt who makes everyone feel uncomfortable (and kids cry) at the holiday dinner table. And may the rest of us remember that the fire you play with doesn’t stay in the pit you built.

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Simple villians, easy answers. No nuance, no need to apply critical thinking abilities or process inconvenient facts.

Just this: We are a nation under assault by “others”. Biden allowed tens of millions to stampede across our open borders. Dictators from other countries opened the doors to their prisons and asylums and cattle-prodded insane criminals across our border. And once they arrive, they do not assimilate. They don’t learn English. They apply for welfare and crowd our schools. They take American jobs, especially the brown ones from Southeast Asia, who take those requiring special skills that Americans have in abundance. They bring their gang mentalities and their drugs with them, and commit crimes against American citizens. If unchecked, they will eventually be the racial majority, and they will determine who wins elections and what the American ideal will be. Trump and Co are only doing what is necessary, by whatever means necessary, because they won’t leave on their own accord. They aren’t citizens, they’re here illegally, so they don’t qualify for constitutional protections that are the American birthright.

I’ve heard this so many times, much of it from people I can’t help but love. We profoundly disagree, and I find myself incapable of reasoned debate anymore, so I have chosen to isolate myself.

Because this ideology is inherently false, inhumane, and a threat to the very existence of other people whom I also love.

I have shared facts before from DHS and government sources that debunk the myth that immigrants are criminals, receiving welfare, or that they leave comfortable lives because they think it’s easier to live in the United States. I still blog about this obsessively, and insert hyperlinks to back up claims. I know that I’m shouting into a chasm, unheard. It makes me feel better, and I take small comfort in knowing that sometimes - not often - I gain a new follower who doesn’t actually share my ideology. I’m not going to change minds. But that one person - he or she has followers, too. A small ripple in a massive body of water, perhaps. It’s all I have to hold on to.

I won’t cite facts.

Instead, I will ask those who support this mass deportation effort to consider the fallout. Not to the immigrants being hunted down and detained/deported. Rather, what does the United States look like, if we were to consider it from the perspective of those who are also American citizens, but are not white and/or have loved ones who are not safe.

I imagine it as the knot in your stomach when you hear the new DHS alert on your phone and you immediately text your cousin who’s on a work visa: did you renew your I-94? It is the silence that falls over the dinner table when your teenager asks if ICE can really come to her high-school parking lot. It is the way your neighbor, who has lived here legally for twenty-three years, paid taxes, sent three kids to the military - and now keeps his passport and his naturalization certificate in a plastic folder in the glove compartment “just in case.” It is the viral video of a crying child at the airport, the WhatsApp voice notes from friends in mixed-status families who have started saying “If anything happens, the kids go to my sister in Toronto.” It is the sudden, animal awareness that the rules just changed again, and this time the rule-makers are not pretending to be surgical. It’s being angrily confronted in a restaurant for not speaking English. It is the collective assumptions that if you’re brown and speak with an accent, you’re illegal and a criminal - and how that assumption is being acted on, in real time, by masked men and women patrolling streets and flooding the zones of once safe havens: courthouses, schools, grocery stores. No place is safe, even when you’re carrying those papers in your glovebox or wallet. If you’re pulled over, you try to explain to the masked man at your window wearing fatigues and carrying an assault rifle that you are an American, but he’s shattering your window and yanking you out of the car before you get the words out - and then charging you with resisting arrest when you are released from detention, hours or days later.

Now think, this is you: What feels like a lifetime ago, when your government collapsed and warlords took to the streets, you crossed the border. You barely escaped with your life, and paid smugglers to bring you past immigration checkpoints. You have a choice to make: You can present yourself to immigration officials and make your case for asylum. It’s Donald Trump’s America when you crossed in 2019, and word of mouth is that more than likely, you’ll be detained and deported. You can’t go back to Venezuala or Guatemala or Haiti or whatever war-torn country you came from. You choose to blend in, knowing that the United States is vast, immense - and you have friends who can help you find a job. You meet, fall in love with, and marry an American citizen in 2022. In 2023, you give birth to a child. This changes everything. You hire an attorney who tells you frankly, this will be an uphill battle, because you didn’t seek asylum within two years of entering the country. The new process involves a lot of paperwork, and a lengthy wait - up to a year between each step. You know the end stage, when you have to leave the country and apply for an immigrant visa at the US embassy in a 3rd country (not your own, deemed too unsafe) will be risky and painful - but it is likely what you must do, after your husband has filed the immigration petition and then together you file for a provisional waiver. Words that don’t make sense to you, but what has changed is that you are now following a legal pathway to citizenship.

Donald Trump is re-elected while you are in stage two of the process. Your attorney advises you that if you leave the country during this stage, the entire process collapses and you will not be allowed back in. Your child is now 2 years old. You aren’t working, and you are following every step of the law. The government is aware of your presence. You’ve appeared in court when called upon. A few weeks ago, you received official notice to appear for a USCIS interview. Your attorney tells you, this isn’t uncommon - they have a few more questions on the “hardship” part of your application. The less optimistic news is that ICE has been detaining people at these interviews - but if you don’t show, you lose your place in the lawful process you’ve been following thus far, and your status goes right back to undocumented without a pending case. You have to take the risk. You, your husband and child appear for the interview, along with your attorney. It is indeed a trap. You are separated from your husband and child, placed into a room alone without your attorney. Moments later, an official enters the room and tells you that you are being detained. You’re in immediate panic mode - what does this mean? Where is your husband, your toddler? You ask for your lawyer. The official says, you aren’t entitled to that right now. They are detaining you while they sort out your paperwork. You are told, there are some “irregularities” and they’ve deemed you a flight risk. You will be provided an opportunity to meet with your attorney once you are processed. You are then zip tied, led to a waiting van, and driven to a detention center. You’re brought to a large room filled with other detainees. There are no beds - just a few blankets given to you (no pillow) and the only other feature in the room is a toilet within a partial enclosure that offers no real privacy, and a sink. There is barely room for you to sleep on the floor. You can’t ask for food or water - it is brought to your group on a schedule. It is sparse and barely edible. After two days, you are allowed into a small room to take a call from your attorney. You don’t even know how to speak, what to say, where to begin. Your attorney tells you what *should* happen but cautions you, this administration has been removing normal barriers to expedited removals. What he thinks is, you will eventually be issued a summons to appear in court, because you’ve been in the country for more than 2 years and shouldn’t be “eligible” for immediate deportation. He has filed for your release, citing your ongoing case, and hopes that this may happen. Hang in there, he says. Your husband loves you, and your daughter is fine. He tells you that you’ll get through this. You want to know - what’s next? How long do I have to stay here? My baby needs me. He doesn’t want to get your hopes up, he tells you. It could be weeks, or months. He starts to explain further, but a guard enters the room and tells you that your time is up. Others need to speak to their lawyers, too. You beg for a chance to call your husband, just for a moment, just to hear your daughter’s voice. No. That’s it - you’re grabbed by the elbow and brought back to your holding cell.

Where this story has ended for thousands like her is this: if ICE can find a way around the law stating she cannot be immediately deported (because she has a pending case and has been in the country already for 6 years), she’s gone - in an average of 11 days from detention. No calls to the husband or attorney. They find out when the attorney sees she is no longer listed as detained in the facility. Otherwise, they schedule a fast track immigration court hearing - she is expedited above others because it is “family based”. This is a law meant to be humane - allowing her the chance to return to her dependent child if at all possible. Trump’s administration, however, has seized upon this as an opportunity to fast track her deportation. ICE attorneys tell the judge to dismiss her case. In late 2025, after hundreds of immigration judges have been dismissed for having stats that show they rule in the immigrant’s favor more than 35% of the time - most judges comply. She will be deported. The only question is how long she remains in detention. She has a powerful incentive to remain stoic throughout the horror of that detention - lights blazing 24/7, fed sandwiches with moldy bread, handed water bottles filled from taps, forced to relieve herself in view of others, allowed to shower in a grim room with no privacy curtains with other women once a week.

The process is the feature: it is meant to be demeaning, inhumane, brutal. It serves as a warning - get out, before we find you - and a high-pressure tactic: the only way out of this nightmare, once we find you, is to give up on your claim to a hearing and request voluntary deportation. You’ll return to an uncertain future, to the place you fled from for fear of your life - but it won’t be here, at Alligator Alcatraz or in a militarized tent camp in Texas, a former prison converted into a jam-packed detention facility. You won’t be at callous mercy of guards who routinely deny requests for medication, sanitary pads, more water, chicken that isn’t still raw in the middle. Calls or visits from family and attorneys.

Most of us want borders that aren’t porous, for criminals to be ejected, to accept asylum seekers and refugees in numbers that are manageable. We understand that compassion must be balanced with pragmatism. But if we are to remain true to our constitutional rule of law and our guiding principles of treating humans with dignity, immigration enforcement should look like a precision movement. What we have right now is scatter-shot bombs being dropped amidst us, splattering all of us. Protestors are treated with contempt, labeled “domestic terrorists”, and provoked into fits of rage. Federal Judge Sara Ellis in Chicago reviewed many hours of body camera evidence and ruled a few days ago (233 pages) that border patrol officers were routinely using tear gas and pepper spray on civilians who were not impeding them in any way. She highlighted many cases where agents arrested people, claiming that they attacked agents or threw rocks - and the video evidence shows the exact opposite. Of the hundreds of protestors arrested, most are not charged; the few who have been - most of those have been dropped before court hearings happen. Please review some of Judge Ellis’ findings:https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/49/34/daecfb4d4b86971a884bd736a564/ellisopinion.pdf

It is a lot. I cannot sift through the legalese; I don’t understand most of it. What I can grasp are the pages where she details her findings, and concludes that commander Gregory Bovino is a liar, and border patrol agents are behaving lawlessly. This isn’t just her “opinion”. She cites evidence from footage that she actually watched. The details begin on page 7.

These are not hypotheticals.

They are the woman who sat next to you at the parent-teacher conference, the man who fixed your car last month, the little boy in your daughter’s kindergarten class who still says the Pledge of Allegiance with his hand over his heart every morning.

America has always been two photographs at once: the one where we open our arms wide enough for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, and the one where we sometimes forget they have faces.

Right now the second photograph is being printed in warehouses of razor wire and tear gas. But photographs can be torn up.

Policy can be rewritten. Hearts can still choose which picture we enlarge and hang in the common room of this country.

So I am asking you, plainly, the way one neighbor asks another when something terrible is happening down the street: Look at these people. Really look. They are not an invasion. They are our coworkers, our kids’ friends, our spouses, our future.

If your humanity is still louder than your fear, then speak, vote, call, show up, donate, pray - whatever your hands find to do - until the second photograph is reduced to ashes and the first one, the one big enough to hold all of us, is the only one left.

Because a nation that loses its soul over paperwork and panic is not the nation any of us swore to build, and it is still not too late to choose again.

What I want to focus on is just one paragraph, in which he’s describing a few comments that Trump made at the US-Saudi Investment forum yesterday while hosting murderous dictator, Saudi Prince Mohammed “Bonesaw” Salman. In case you were wondering, later that evening they dined on pistachio-crusted rack of lamb, draped over velvety sweet potato purée with a bright pomegranate lemon jus. The first is a trivial bit, darkly funny, in that he invited Elon Musk just so he could bitch slap him publicly. He brought up Elon’s Teslas (in a manner meant to convey how absurd and irrelevant electric vehicles are) and then “weaved” in a rhetorical, emasculating question suggesting that Elon hadn’t thanked him enough. Maybe I’m the crazy one; I don’t think Trump should be dousing anyone with his malignant pettiness. But it’s Elon freaking Musk … and I’m not going to shed a tear.

Then he segues to remarks about deductions. The context is economic policies and tax incentives. Just casually, he says:

“You know, middle-income people don’t know what the word deduction is. They don’t know. This room, they live on deductions. Me too. How much of a deduction do I get? We all live on it.”

And this is how he sees us. All of us, except the type at that event, sipping glasses from those $3000 bottles of wine and nibbling on one bite Hors d’Oeuvres, which take a team of chefs half a day to prep and 5 minutes to assemble each one. The 1%. The rest of us? That’s my family. My husband is a systems architect, and I had the luxury of retiring at 55. We’d probably be classified as upper-middle. That’s my parents, if they were alive today, living well below the poverty line on nothing but social security. It’s the educated professionals who work for a living because they have to. It’s doctors and nurses, retail clerks and Wal-Mart store greeters. He said “middle class”, but to people like that, we all look the same. I had to look up how to spell hors d’Oeuvre, and then how to assemble them. We are nowhere close to the same. We exist in two separate realities: those exceedingly rare few who own all the shit, and those of us who produce the shit, or otherwise labor within the corporations that they own.

And we don’t know how “deductions” work, or what they even are, because we’re ignorant while we are also being poor. Trump says he LIVES on the deductions.

We can’t possibly understand each other. If Melania were plonked into *my* world (because of course Trump wouldn’t do any real labor), she’d be just as baffled about how to use the self checkout lane at a grocery store as I am with what the hell are Osetra caviar spoons and why would I ingest gold leaf shavings?

I do understand contempt, though. I’ve always understood that - because I grew up poor, and I watched how people treated my mom when she pulled the food stamps out of her purse. Because while the 1% view us at best as useful fools, we’re scuttling around like crabs in a bucket, stomping on everything below us and pulling down the ones who might otherwise reach the top. They’ve sold us a beautiful dream: If we emulate them, one day we just might *be* them. Or at the very least, know what it feels like to never again have to worry about which bill to pay, what can be delayed, and how to stretch the remaining $40 into a week of groceries.

Every time we fight each other over pronouns, borders, or which billionaire is the “good” one, they’re quietly passing another carried-interest loophole, another round of stock buybacks, another sovereign-wealth check from a prince who literally ordered a journalist dismembered.

Trump’s big ugly bill eliminates trillions of dollars from safety net programs and healthcare subsidies. Those of us who do not rely on those programs for survival may think we live a comfortable enough distance away to sneer. But he’s also capping student loan maximums and eliminating forgiveness programs for people who choose public service. Good luck with that, middle class mom and dad. He’s revoking appliance energy efficiency standards, which adds an average of $200-$500 per year to our utility bills and will add 1.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions to our environment by 2035 - adding pollutants that worsen our health and increase our medical costs. The Permanent Estate Tax Exemptions increases from $13.6 to $15 million per person, which buys a lot of golden spoons for heirs. I hope we have enough to pay our son’s college tuition, sweat at the possibility that he might want to attend grad school, and would love if we could leave him our house with a paid off mortgage. If one or both of us don’t end up in nursing homes … maybe? And I know that just this much of a possibility means we are fortunate. There are capital gains exclusions for big-time stock traders, in the tens of millions of dollars. This exclusion is written into permanent law. The “no tax on tips” exclusions is temporary. The big meat packing and chicken industries get faster running lines and fewer inspections. Gauranteed, more poop and bacteria in our food while the assembly line workers risk of serious injuries (and death) quadruples.

We are the commodity to men like Trump. Oligarchs aren’t living in the cities they pollute. They don’t worry about trifling details such as “how am I going to pay my kid’s tuition and at what point will I be dipping into my retirement savings?” Their toddlers attend “early childhood programs” that cost more than elite universities, and if Junior or Missy don’t have the grades for the Ivies, they just cut endowment checks.

Trump said the quiet part out loud last night. He’s been doing that a lot lately. I suspect he’s already realizing that no amount of money in the world can keep his brains from rotting into a muddled stew, although I’m sure he’s got cutting edge medical care to keep a few synapses firing for a longer period of time than our parents ever got, or we will get.

But the room, that room he was in last night, where deals got done and the same people who were radicalized in Saudi Arabia and flew our planes into our buildings on 9/11 … they’re getting fighter jets.

If only we would wake up and turn this anger away from each other, and on to them. There are billions MORE of us than there are of them. Blackout the System, November 25 - December 2. It’s not much, but it’s a start. It is how all revolutions begin.

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Seven weeks ago, in the dead of night on the last day of September, more than 300 federal agents descended on a rundown apartment complex at 7500 S. South Shore Drive like it was downtown Fallujah.

Black Hawk helicopter thundering overhead.

Agents rappelling onto the roof.

Flash-bang grenades.

Doors kicked in.

People - many asleep, some in nightgowns, some literally naked or in diapers - were dragged into 40-degree Chicago night air, zip-tied, forced to kneel on the freezing pavement for hours.

American citizens among them.

Little kids among them.

A U.S. military veteran among them.

And for what?

Zero criminal charges.

Not one.

Not a single person from that building has been charged with any crime stemming from the raid. The two “suspected Tren de Aragua members” the DHS bragged about: One had the accusation quietly dropped. The other never had charges filed. Of the 37 immigrants detained that night, most had no criminal records. Those who did, all were misdemeanors. No warrants were obtained. DHS headlined this event as a building swarming with “illegal gang members”. DHS statistics tell a different story, one that isn’t making front page news. Good journalists have other atrocities to investigate. Fox News and its ilk won’t do any follow-up coverage at all. MAGA won’t see the aftermath, which is what the regime is counting on. And this raid mirrors trends we now see in the greater Chicago region: 97% of the broader 614 arrested in Operation Midway Blitz had no criminal record at all.

Let that sink in.

The regime spent an obscene amount of taxpayer funded money: hundreds of agents working overtime, Black Hawk fuel and flight hours, flash-bangs, pepper balls, unmarked vans, detention costs, court time. And they did it specifically to terrorize an entire building of mostly poor Venezuelan asylum seekers and the American citizens who lived alongside them. We got exactly nothing to show for it.

Residents came home to ransacked apartments. Doors splintered and left hanging off hinges. This included U.S. citizens. Rodrick Johnson, a military veteran, told reporters that agents smashed through his door while he was in bed). Furniture overturned. Drawers dumped. Personal belongings strewn everywhere. The building was already barely habitable - mold, broken windows, no heat in some units - and federal agents turned it into a war zone for a photo-op. All of this, warrantless. No judge reviewed evidence to provide 4th amendment cover to invade private homes. Lawless.

On November 12, a federal judge ordered the release of 608 of the 614 people swept up in Operation Midway Blitz, including virtually everyone still in custody from the South Shore building who hadn’t already self-deported or been removed. The whole thing was ruled an unconstitutional fishing expedition.

Some had already asked to be deported rather than stay in detention - a choice made under duress after being treated like enemy combatants in their own homes. But the vast majority were just people trying to survive in one of the cheapest, most neglected buildings in the city.

This wasn’t law enforcement.

This was political theater paid for with your tax dollars and staged on the bodies of poor immigrants and Black American citizens who happened to live in the same crumbling complex.

And it’s going to cost us again, because the lawsuits are coming, and they are going to win.

Residents have already started filing. Civil-rights attorneys are circling. The ACLU, the MacArthur Justice Center, and private firms are documenting the broken doors, the PTSD, the lost wages, the children’s trauma, the illegal searches of U.S. citizens’ apartments. When those cases settle or go to juries, the bill will be in the millions.

We did this to ourselves for a Stephen Miller press release.

It’s time to revisit the South Shore raid because it was the purest distillation of what the new enforcement era looks like when you strip away the hashtags and the fear-mongering.

A military-style assault on a low-income apartment building.

American kids dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, and brought outside clad only in what they’d worn to bed.

Doors kicked in for zero criminal charges.

A judge forced to clean up the mess and let almost everyone go.

If this is what “making communities safer” costs, we can’t afford it.

And we never could. We will never be free of this moral injury to our national conscience.

Then, when I was 16, I got a summer job at the small county courthouse in a city nearby. It was busy work and nothing more. Once in a while, a secretary would hand me some notes to type. Mostly, they sent me upstairs to the courtroom to observe. I’d expressed interest in the law, and it was a good way to keep me out of their hair. One of the lawyers - a man in his 40s who reeked as if he bathed in cologne - took an interest in me. This was the 80s, and workplace shenanigans may as well have been in job descriptions for young women. He found every opportunity to zero in on me - the incompetent kid intern (my typed memos were covered in more white out than paper). He’d come to my desk to use the phone, while hovering over me, his suit-clad body pressed into my back. I was horrified by him and the attention. The secretaries noticed his behavior - and were horrified. At ME. Wear office attire, one scolded me. What I wore was what I had - polo shirts with popped collars and jeans. Not exactly shrieking “hussy” (although in reality, mini skirts and midriff bearing cropped tops should have also, in NO way, made him feel entitled to hover creepily and exploit me, or anyone else). I spent the summer hiding in courtrooms, out of his sight and away from the office I was employed in. I wasn’t invited back.

In college, I had a class with a chain-smoking middle-aged professor. This was before smoking was banned (also well before whitening products removed nicotine stains). I had to rush to his class from another one across campus, which usually meant I arrived just before the lecture began and had to take a front row seat. It was an easy communications class, and I did well - until I got what I thought was an unfair grade for a midterm paper that I’d worked very hard on. I approached him after class - why wasn’t my “A” effort rewarded with a corresponding grade? Aside: it probably wasn’t an unfair grade. He was focused on a technical rule that I hadn’t followed regarding its submission - but, he told me, leaning back into his desk and giving me THAT look - perhaps I’d be interested in doing some extra credit work. I pretended like I didn’t know what that meant, mumbled some excuse about being too busy with other coursework, and fled. I wondered, should I drop the course? Would he grade me fairly? He understood that *I* understood, because he didn’t say or do anything inappropriate for the rest of the term. But I still remember how flush with discomfort and embarrassment I felt, returning to his classroom. I followed his rules about standardized citation styles, and had no further issues with the grades I received. Just unease and discomfort.

In each of these instances - and there were so many more than I’ve included here (these are just the stand outs) there was one key element still lacking in how we define exploitation: I wasn’t easily exploitable. The summer jobs were for pocket change and cute clothes. The chain-smoking professor had power to assign one final grade in one class - and I was a gifted student in my major focus. He couldn’t have assigned failing grades to papers that were impeccably written - not without being subjected to impartial review. I could turn away from lustful gazes coming from men who had daughters my age (and older). Or, I could react with visible disgust and scorn - which I did, when it felt safe to do so. I wasn’t vulnerable, even when I felt that way. I never felt pressured to trade my body for, say, a pair of braces - as the 17-year-old homeless girl did, when she had sex with 41-year-old congressman Matt Gaetz. College life sheltered me: I had a tuition waiver for being on the debate team, and my financial aid covered the meal plan and housing.

I think about these differences as I read the stories of Epstein’s victims. Most came from impoverished backgrounds, and/or with careless, neglectful parents. All had likely already been conditioned to the lustful older man gaze, probably in the same manner I had been, 45 years ago when I was just 13. I probably looked “older” too, Megyn Kelly. At least 16. Thank goodness they were “only” ephebophiliacs, right?! I knew that I was smart. Not a genius, but capable of being a good student. I assumed that the degree would open doors - and in the late 1980s, it did.

It isn’t difficult for me to imagine … had my parents been overly permissive (instead of religious freaks) and if I thought the only thing good about me was my youth and curvy body … it might have felt easy, even inevitable, to trade in that for proximity to power. Reassurances that my tuition would get paid or cash to fix my crooked teeth.

And we have women like Megyn Kelly assuring the old men that it’s still consent, and it isn’t as objectively awful as all that, hysterical libs.

It isn’t consent - not when the girls are too young to lawfully provide it. Not even when we cross that barrier from “child” to “consenting adult” at the magical age of 18 - not when there is the exploitative element of a power dynamic. My professor couldn’t obtain my consent to “work out” what that extra credit may be, but his elevated position bought my silence, and my rage turned inward. I was angry that I couldn’t say what I wanted to - you’re gross, your teeth are brown and yellow, you smell like an ashtray, and your face looks like a radioactive raisin. In what world would I want anything more from you than a fair grade? I was mad that *I* felt embarrassed.

I’m 58, and I’m still mad. Also, relieved that I somehow became invisible to men, when I crossed into that certain age. Well before menopause - decades before, in fact. I gained weight and my skin sagged. I lost that youthful glow. Thank God.

We have to be better than this. I will never forget the squirmy, bug under a microscope feeling I got when old men ogled or hit on me. It felt unsafe, possibly violent, menacing, creepy. My skin crawled. That summer when I was 13? I spent the next few years binding my breasts in skin tight t-shirts and then wearing my dad’s baggy flannels and an old blue coat over that. I wanted to be a CHILD.

This is just my story, and it isn’t filled with objective “Epstein level” horror. But it isn’t normal, it isn’t right, and I suspect that it is similar to tales that most women tell. It certainly isn’t a stand out when I compare it to what I’ve heard from my female peers. Most of us also have stories we don’t tell, not with settings on “public” and definitely not in mixed company.

It’s not as if we had soulful conversations. But I did this work for a long time, and moved around from one area to another, to different jobs across social and financial services over the course of decades, and I picked up some of what exists in the margins. Not in what people say, but in the defeated slouch of shoulders. I never learned how to say “there’s nothing I can do” in a way that didn’t sound awful. Because it objectively is awful to tell a senior citizen earning a few hundred dollars over the acute poverty line that he or she didn’t qualify for a program that would pay Medicare premiums that amounted to a few weeks of groceries. To tell the young mother who was screaming at me that her kids need food now that I can’t reinstate her case until I get the necessary paperwork. She’s calling from work, she cries. She can’t just leave and make that happen, but her refrigerator is empty right now.

I learned that anger, profanity, provocative behavior might look like entitlement but most of the time it is fear and desperation and exhaustion. Some people would tell me what was happening to them - not because they needed to vent or thought I was a friendly set of ears. Mostly it was a plea to see their humanity. I heard a lot of: I lost my fast-food or retail job because my kid got sick one too many times, or my car broke down, and this one bad thing that is a minor inconvenience for those of us not living on the fringes of poverty turned into a devastating chain of events.

I don’t know life stories. I don’t know what gets a person from being OK to not being OK at all. I could delve into theories, but that is all it would be. I wasn’t the person who heard life stories. I heard circumstances. This happened last month, and then this other awful thing, and that’s why I’m here. I know that when my work day ended, I climbed into my car and drove to my comfortable home. If I wasn’t feeling up to making a meal, I could stop for takeout. My husband’s workday ended earlier than mine, so he fetched our son from school. We had many blandly nice evenings, structured around meals and homework and bath/bedtime rituals. Our lights were always on, heat or air-conditioning at comfortable levels. I had paid sick time available when I needed it, as well as FMLA to cover family emergencies. So did my husband, and if our kid got sick a week after his last bout of flu, we traded off so neither of us ran out of PTO or had to miss a career-defining deadline. This is a life that many (I hope most) of us can understand, and there is nothing so remarkable about it that should make it required reading. Except many of us do not ever need to spare a moment to think about what our lives would be like if discretionary income vanished. It is only because I spent a workday providing assistance to the people who lost that discretionary part (or no longer had it to begin with) that I ever saw it at all.

And I am so grateful to random fate, good luck, and some hard work on my part that I have this comfortable life. I worked with people who had profound disabilities that were visible. Some I saw only because of the nature of the work I did. Poverty is the destroyer of hope for a lot of people. That tall, strapping, “able-bodied adult” got a special waiver to receive benefits because he or she presented evidence of a less visible disability.

Here is what I didn’t ever see: people rolling up to the office in luxury vehicles, impeccable weaves, salon nails, designer swag. I do see a lot of memes and AI videos depicting Black people doing these things. Most of the people I served were white, because most of the residents of the county I worked in were white. But every day I saw people, young and old, from all ethnicities and backgrounds. They didn’t look stereotypically “poor” but they were not giving off vibes of well-to-do, ever. Well, scratch that. Once I had to explain to a very well-dressed white man that we could not pay his multiple-thousand-dollar house rent that month because he hadn’t demonstrated that he’d spent 50% of his income on meeting basic needs (an eligibility requirement). He tried to argue that paying his gardener should be an allowable expense, and he had the receipt. He had recently lost a good-paying job, but he was collecting unemployment compensation and he chose to pay a gardener to mow his lawn and do some landscaping. This is a true story; it happened years ago, and I still remember it because of the absurdity of needing to explain that funding the luxurious life he knew was not covered in the policy manual. That’s my “Welfare King” story, and it happened once.

What is happening right now, as this shutdown drags into month two and SNAP benefits have not been issued while two parties of politicians many levels above poverty duke it out, is already causing significant harm. People who rely on SNAP as one tool in a nearly empty box are having to dig into rent money to put food on the table. They’re begging the utility company to give them another week of grace (Cold Weather Rule is in effect in Minnesota, but electric can be cut off and heat can be put on timers that dole it out in spurts meant to feel uncomfortable). Next month, or maybe even right now, landlords are threatening evictions. Donald Trump has added another miserable barrier, another hurdle. Hopefully there are no flat tires or broken appliances or sick kids or angry managers who have heard that excuse one too many times. Even the “good” ones don’t offer paid time off if they don’t have to. A quick Google search puts the number at about 65% for entry-level jobs, 6–8 days per year.

Earlier this year the Trump administration destroyed 500 metric tons of food stored in a warehouse in Dubai (a distribution center with USAID designated for distribution in crisis zones). USAID is no more, because the era of soft diplomacy and empathy is behind us, but this was leftover supplies. Staff begged the regime to allow them to distribute the food to partners, but DOGE had laid waste to staff who made these decisions, and while they delayed and argued (from January to July) the food expired. I know these two events are not the same; it just evokes the sense of malignancy - a grotesque echo. The truth is, we exist with abundance. We the People do not get a say in how that is distributed. We elect representatives who are supposed to speak and act on our behalf - for us. Trump brags nonstop about the hundreds of billions of dollars his tariffs have brought in. This is what he said in a now-viral “hot mic” moment on April 9:

> “My staff—they’re looking at these huge chunks of money coming in, and they’re like, ‘Where’s this from? What’s going on?’ I had to explain to them: ‘It’s the tariffs, folks! It’s the tariffs!’ They were so confused, like it was some mystery cash dropping from the sky. But that’s what happens when you do deals like me—boom, unexplained riches for the good guys. It’s gonna be a record.”

The takeaway, I suppose, is that our children, our elderly, and our disabled are not “the good guys.”

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The video is 14 seconds long. A man in a navy blazer, tie loosened, face flushed with bar rage, screams “F*** you fascists!” at a line of armored CBP agents on U Street. He cocks his arm like a third-base coach and hurls a wrapped Subway footlong. It thuds against ballistic nylon and drops to the sidewalk, still sealed in its paper sleeve. The agents barely flinch. The clip ends with Dunn sprinting away, tackled seconds later by a swarm of badges.

We all agree: bad idea. Juvenile, drunk, pointless. In a sane world he gets a citation for disorderly conduct, maybe a $250 fine and a night to sleep it off. If he’s a DOJ paralegal, HR issues a notice of proposed removal, gives him seven days to respond, then fires him quietly. End of story.

That is not the world we live in.

Three days after the sandwich sailed, a federal magistrate quietly signs an arrest warrant for a man who had already been booked, printed, and released by the Metro Police Department. No new evidence. No victim statement. No flight risk. The warrant exists for one reason: to green-light the show.

At 6:12 a.m. on August 14, twenty agents - FBI, CBP, tactical vests, rifles, battering ram - breach Dunn’s apartment door. Flashbangs pop. A GoPro on the breacher’s helmet records every second. Dunn, barefoot in boxers, is zip-tied at gunpoint while his dog cowers under the bed. His attorney had called the U.S. Attorney’s Office four times the previous day offering voluntary surrender. No one picked up.

By 9:03 a.m. his security clearance is revoked. His DOJ email bounces with “no longer with the agency.” Attorney General Pam Bondi live-tweets the termination; U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro posts a smirking video: “He thought it was funny. He’s not laughing now.”

The White House drops the raid footage that afternoon - edited with slow-motion, dramatic zooms, and a pulsing soundtrack. The caption: “Zero tolerance for assaults on law enforcement.” It racks up 42 million views in 24 hours.

Prosecutors charge felony assault on a federal officer, which carries up to eight years. A grand jury, in a rarity that makes legal Twitter explode, refuses to indict. Pirro’s office shrugs, bypasses the jury entirely, and files an information for misdemeanor assault. Same statute, one year max, but the message is clear: We don’t need your permission.

Trial lasts three days. The government flies in two extra agents from Texas to testify about the “strong onion smell.” The “victim,” CBP Agent Gregory Lairmore, describes mustard stains on his vest and the “startling thud.” Defense counsel points to photos: the sandwich on the pavement, still wrapped, not a drip of condiment in sight. “If the sandwich didn’t split, you must acquit,” she deadpans. Jurors laugh, then deliberate for seven hours before returning “not guilty”.

Dunn walks out of court free, but the ledger is brutal:

• Career vaporized before sunrise.

• Savings drained on private counsel (the raid video ensured no public defender would touch it).

• Name and face plastered on an official government channel with 200 million reach.

• Apartment door replaced at his expense; neighbors still whisper “sandwich guy.”

• Precedent set: any physical contact, however absurd, can trigger the full federal circus.

The playbook, now public, reads as follows: Weaponize the trivial. Destroy the livelihood. Stage the spectacle by filming the raid and posting it to the White House Official page. Ignore the grand jury. Lose the trial, but keep the scalp: Acquittal doesn’t restore his job, his savings, or his now very public profile.

The sandwich is the joke everyone laughs at. The punch line is that the state just proved it can ruin a life over a punch line - and will do it again the moment someone hands it another excuse.

We are not safer. We are just one bad night, one viral clip, one overzealous prosecutor away from the dawn knock.

Eat your subs in silence, citizens. The feds are watching.

Our genius king - who confuses a pre-nursing-home pop quiz with an IQ test (it was very hard, he brags, then recites “person, woman, man, camera, TV” like it’s the Rosetta Stone) - just ordered the wrong agency to resume nuclear testing.

Via (un)Truth (anti)Social, he told the Pentagon to “immediately” start exploding nukes. The actual bomb-makers and bomb testers are employed at The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — a semi-autonomous arm of the Department of Energy.

The U.S. hasn’t detonated a nuke in 33 years. Trump’s excuse? “Others are testing!” Except… they aren’t. The last explosive nuclear test was 2017, North Korea. Russia’s recent moves, which is likely what confused the old fella, were flight and propulsion trials of nuclear-capable systems. No boom.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth is probably practicing his “Yes, sir” while the NNSA puzzles out how many bombs to set off inside U.S. borders to match… zero.

We know the fallout - literally. In the 1950s–60s, we detonated hundreds of nukes in Nevada. Kids in Utah and southern Nevada got 5–10× thyroid cancer risk. Leukemia rates were 2.5–3× higher in St. George. The government spun fairy tales until the NCI and CDC said: “Nope. It’s the radiation.”

That’s why RECA exists - $2.5 billion paid to 40,000+ claimants. And guess what’s on the DOJ site right now?

> “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), enacted July 4, 2025, reauthorized RECA claims until 2027.”

How prescient.

MAGA: Your “peaceful” President just green-lit radioactive cancer clusters as collateral damage.

I’m no physicist. I barely passed 8th-grade science.

But even I know: setting off nukes in our literal backyards isn’t “winning.” It is also likely to begin yet another global arms race, and other countries with nuclear capabilities will follow suit, and blast their own into all corners of the world.

Is this your line in the sand?

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