Opinion by Friendo Media Editorial Staff

There is a phrase that should haunt this country for the rest of its natural life.

When asked what the United States needs to do to end the war with Iran, a war now in its second week, a war that has already killed American service members, a war costing taxpayers what some estimates put at nearly $2 billion per day — the President of the United States answered with three words:

“More of the same.”

No timeline. No endgame. No defined objective. No metric for success. No exit. Just more. More bombs. More money. More caskets draped in flags. More gold star families learning their loved ones died for a policy that nobody in power can articulate.

That is the state of the union on Friday, March 13th, 2026. And it only gets worse from there.

Six Americans Came Home in Caskets This Week. The News Barely Flinched.

On Thursday, a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker, an aerial refueling aircraft supporting operations over Iraq as part of Operation Epic Fury, went down in western Iraq. All six crew members aboard were confirmed dead.

Six Americans. Not politicians. Not generals. Not the architects of this war. Crew members. The people who fly the planes, who refuel the jets, who follow the orders issued by men who will never sit in a cockpit or feel the turbulence of a warzone.

The Pentagon confirmed the loss. The news cycle absorbed it like a pebble dropped in the ocean. By evening, cable news had moved on.

That is what “more of the same” looks like in practice. It looks like six families destroyed and a country too numb to notice.

We covered this story the moment it broke. Watch on TikTok.

The FBI Warned California That Iran Might Strike U.S. Soil. Read That Again.

While the war machine grinds forward overseas, the FBI quietly sent an intelligence bulletin to every law enforcement agency in California warning that Iran "allegedly aspired" to conduct a drone attack on the West Coast, launched from an unidentified vessel off the coast. The timing, method, and target were all unclear. But the warning was real, and it went to every police department in the state.

The White House responded not by addressing the threat, but by attacking the press. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded ABC News retract the story, calling it "based on one email" from "a single, unverified tip" and insisting that "no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did." She did not deny the bulletin was sent.

Meanwhile, the President himself told reporters the threat was "being investigated." Governor Newsom said there is no imminent threat but confirmed he is "in constant coordination with security and intelligence officials" over threats tied to the conflict.

So which is it? Is it being investigated, or does it not exist? The administration can't even get its story straight on whether Americans are in danger, and its instinct when confronted with that contradiction is to go after the journalists who reported it. Independent creators were the first to question the story's implications, asking how a nation with limited long-range drone capability would pull off a transoceanic strike. The mainstream press, as usual, ran with the official line first and asked questions later.

We broke this down on TikTok. Watch the full video.

$11.3 Billion in Six Days. And Congress Can’t Agree on How to Pay for It.

The Pentagon shared preliminary cost estimates with Congress this week. In the first six days of the Iran war, the United States spent $11.3 billion in munitions alone. That is roughly $1.9 billion per day. In bombs. Not in bridges, not in hospitals, not in schools, not in the crumbling infrastructure that kills Americans every year through neglect.

Bombs.

Congress is now scrambling to figure out how to fund a war that nobody voted for and nobody can define. There is no authorization for use of military force. There is no congressional debate. There is a president who said “more of the same” and a legislature too fractured and too cowardly to challenge him.

Every missile that hits a target in Iran is a meal that doesn’t reach a family in Ohio. Every sortie is a school that doesn’t get built. Every billion is a choice, and the choice, as always, is violence over survival.

A Synagogue and a University. Two Safe Spaces Shattered in One Day.

Thursday was also the day that reminded us the violence is not only overseas.

In the Detroit area, a suspect carried out a shooting and vehicle-ramming attack at Temple Israel synagogue. The suspect is dead. The FBI is investigating. A rabbi told reporters the congregation had completed security training just last month. They had prepared for this. They had drilled for this. And it still happened.

Seven hundred miles south, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, an active shooter sent students fleeing from campus. Details are still developing.

A house of worship. A university. Two of the spaces where Americans are supposed to feel safe: where we pray, where we learn, where we gather to become better versions of ourselves. Both violated on the same Thursday afternoon.

And the country barely had the bandwidth to grieve, because the war consumed the oxygen and the government shutdown consumed the rest.

DHS Is Still Shut Down. The Senate Just Failed Again. The Reason Is Voter Suppression.

The Department of Homeland Security has now been operating under a partial shutdown for nearly one month.

This week, the Senate voted 51-46 to advance a funding bill. That sounds like a majority. It is. But under Senate rules, you need 60 votes. And the bill failed because it was tied to the SAVE America Act, Trump’s voter ID legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Follow the logic: the department responsible for domestic security is running on fumes during an active war with a country that the FBI says might attack U.S. soil, and the reason it cannot be funded is because one party is holding it hostage over a voter suppression bill.

That is not dysfunction. That is design. The shutdown is not a crisis for the people who engineered it. It is leverage. It is a bargaining chip made of human suffering, played by people who will never miss a paycheck.

While Nobody Was Watching, They Gutted Climate Protections

There is a pattern to this administration that is as predictable as it is effective: start a war, dominate the news cycle, and quietly dismantle the regulatory state while the cameras point elsewhere.

This week, the Trump administration rescinded a 2009 policy aimed at regulating greenhouse gas emissions. It happened without fanfare. It happened without protest. It happened because every major newsroom was covering Iran and the shutdown and the shootings, and nobody had the column inches left for the environment.

That is the playbook. It has always been the playbook. And every time we fall for it, another protection disappears, another regulation dies, and the people who will suffer the consequences. The same communities already squeezed by everything else, lose another inch of ground.

The Week in Summary

Six service members dead in Iraq. Drone threats on the California coast. Eleven billion dollars in bombs in less than a week. A synagogue attacked. A university under fire. The government partially shut down over voter suppression. Climate protections gutted in the dark.

And the president’s plan: more of the same.

This is why independent journalism exists. Not to tell you what to think. Not to perform outrage for clicks. But to make sure you actually see what is happening, all of it, at once, without the filter of a corporate newsroom deciding which stories deserve your attention and which ones get buried.

The news does not stop. Neither do we.

This is the first edition of the Friendo Friday News Roundup, a weekly dispatch every Friday, running the week’s most critical stories through the lens of independent, community-powered journalism rightr to

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A New Radical Reconstruction

The common story of this country’s origin is one of shared ideals that, when first publicly declared, sent shockwaves throughout the world. Those ‘inalienable’ rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, as the story goes, were revolutionary. Then four score and seven years after those ideals sent shockwaves across the world, our nation was experiencing a new birth of freedom. For the people. By the people. Behind lead ball, bayonet, cannon fire, and new constitutional amendments, the Founder’s constitution was changed to one that shined a light toward justice and equality.

The common story of our country tells us of a steady march towards progress. It ignores historic moments of failure: the Articles of Confederation; the Founders’ Constitution breaking, which lead to the Civil War; and the continued reverberating failures of white apathy during the Reconstruction era and the constitution born from it.

As they say, the past doesn’t repeat, but it echoes. In our modern era, we have a congress that refuses to pass legislation that would help its constituents or even do the bare minimum of funding the government itself. A legislature unable to meet the needs of its people which then pushes these disputes to the courts. In the courts, we have seen the roll back of voting protections, reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, allowing unlimited amounts of cash to flow into our elections, and new anti-democratic presidential immunities. These have allowed an authoritarian executive to take hold. Now, we watch as masked men abduct people off the streets in front of their children or use drones to bomb boats in international waters, both without the due process guaranteed by the Reconstruction amendments. We watch as our government slashes programs that serve our most vulnerable while passing large tax cuts to the wealthy. We watch as the President, Congress, and the Courts take authoritarian sledgehammers to the pillars of our democracy with impunity. We see an oligarchy in full bloom.

Now, in this political moment, the fabric of our country has again began to fray. Democrat-run states are organizing their own version of the CDC to give guidelines to their populations to counter the destruction of health and safety by the Federal Secretary of Health. These same states have threatened to withhold federal tax dollars in protest of the federal government’s illegal practices and to continue the services the Federal Government want to cut. These actions have been referred to as a “soft secession,” and we’re likely to see more of these actions as the sledgehammer continues to strike.

The United States can and will continue beyond this moment. We the People endure. We do not and will not consent to the government this current Administration envisions. We still believe in our constitution, but because of the damage being done, we need to start pushing the next Reconstruction for the Post-Trump world. Part of that, just like the first Reconstruction, is needing new constitutional amendments. The process to amend the Constitution is an onerous one, needing super majorities of federal legislators and states to ratify it. This is why we need to build a mass movement to start demanding now, as the 2026 midterms start to take shape, that our candidates support these changes. It is not just our senators or federal congressional candidates that we need on board. We need to petition and lobby our state legislators if we are to ratify even one amendment.

To achieve our main objective to create a new Reconstruction we need to return amending the Constitution to a mainstream position. We must re-embrace and preach living constitutionalism. Living constitutionalism is the belief that the words and clauses of the Constitution are like an organism, adapting to the times of the current society. For most of our history, constitutional scholars, politicians, and judges had held this belief. Then, about forty years ago, led by the Federalist Society and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, originalism became the more dominant brand of constitutional interpretation. Originalism believes that we should be guided only by the words of the Constitution and context in which the framers wrote them. Not only is it absurd that only originalist judges are uniquely able to divine the true meaning of men who have been dead for centuries, but it is incredibly harmful to the progress of our country. It binds us to a document cobbled together in the 1787, by endless compromises with men who held humans in bondage. It also ignores the revolution Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglass, Charles Sumner, Harriet Tubman, Thaddeus Stevens, and thousands of Americans, Black and white, achieved in the 1863. It cannot continue to be the dominant form of constitutional interpretation if we are to move forward.

In the six years between the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of our current Constitution, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other leaders of the time became acutely aware of the weaknesses within the Articles. Raising a national army, interstate commerce, and collecting taxes were near impossible with each state acting as independent nations and in competition with each other. Additionally, the amendment process required unanimous approval. Despite the daunting task in front of them, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states (Rhode Island didn’t send anyone) met in Philadelphia in the heat of the 1787 Summer with the purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation to address these issues. Instead, they exited the convention hall with an entirely new constitution to be ratified. To this day, it remains the first and only time a constitutional convention was called by the states.

In Article V, of this new constitution, the framers provide us with two new ways in which this Constitution can be amended. It states:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”

This is an incredibly difficult task. Option one requires that two thirds of Congress propose an Amendment. Option two requires that two thirds of the states call a convention to propose amendments. Either way, after the amendment has been successfully proposed, 75% of the States have to approve the amendment by a vote of their State Legislature or at the convention they called. In the nearly two hundred and fifty year history of our Constitution,11,985 amendments have been proposed. Only 27 have been ever been ratified.

Given this incredibly difficult task of passing and ratifying amendments it is fair to ask, “why not just pass legislation to meet these needs?” The simple answer is that legislation can be overturned by a future congress, a new President can choose not to enforce it via executive order, or it can be ruled unconstitutional by the courts. We’ve seen it countless times. We’re currently witnessing the Roberts Court unraveling the remaining pieces of the Voting Rights Act. If we are going to create lasting reforms, they must be codified into the Constitution. For example, lasting reforms could include abolishing the Electoral College or creating term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Both of these systems are explicitly outlined in the Constitution. Passing legislation that executed either of these actions would be contradictory to the language of the Constitution. Thus, passing legislation would not be possible, nor would it meaningfully fix the practical issues these reforms aim to cure. If we want to implement these reforms, we would need to change the structures as outlined in the Constitution. In short: there is no way to implement these changes legislatively; a constitutional amendment is required.

Article II Section 1 of the Constitution plainly lays out the process for electing the President, implementing the Electoral College: states appoint electors equal to the value of representatives and senators combined, and those electors then cast ballots for the President and Vice President. While eliminating the Electoral College goes against the text of the Constitution, it is important to remember that the electoral process outlined here has been amended before. In the early days of our Republic, the Vice President was the candidate who received the second most votes for President. The election of 1800 resulted in an electoral vote tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr because electors did not specifying which candidate they were voting for which office. As a result, Congress and the states ratified the 12th Amendment which required electors to cast a vote for each the President and the Vice President. This also had the less explicit intention of helping the nascent political parties at the time elect their candidates into these offices. It would not be a novel interest to amend Article II again as the Country has grown over time.

Term limits for Supreme Court Justices also goes against the specific language in our Constitution. Article III, which establishes the court systems, states that ‘Judges shall hold the offices during good behavior.’ These terms, limited only on good behavior, are for life, unless impeached. There is precedent for judicial impeachment in our nation’s history, but the standard requires misconduct and/or crimes. Misconduct is a very vague standard as Supreme Court Justices are not held to any standards of professional ethics. Once confirmed as a Justice, these individuals are able to weave their way through cases, virtually without consequence for any actions while also deciding the fate of the nation. Term limits would ensure that the Judicial Branch is effective, loyal to the country, and not above the law themselves. Amending Article III is possible and popular.

July 4th, 2026, will be the 250th anniversary of our founders declaring their independence from a despotic king an ocean away. I can think of no better way to honor our revolutionary leaders than by continuing to push this country towards a more perfect union. One that once again is striving for Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Justice for all. We cannot continue to put bandaids on problems hoping tomorrow brings a better solution. We have the tools today that can rebuild the United States, not just for us now, but for future generations.

Which brings us to our main goal: amending the framework of our Constitution for all people to enjoy their unalienable rights. And when the next crisis comes to our nation, we have provided firm ground on which the leaders of tomorrow can stand and push forward.

We need a voting rights amendment. It must be one that eliminates the endless flow of money into our elections, eliminates partisan gerrymandering by implementing a proportional representation system for seats in the House of Representatives, enshrines provisions of the voting rights act of 1965 and its enforcement mechanisms into the Constitution, and eliminates the electoral college for presidential elections by making the President and Vice President elected by popular vote.

The next amendment will establish a twenty year term limit on Supreme Court justices. This would ensure proper turnover. The values of the current generation must be reflected in the composition of the Justices.

Our third proposed amendment is one for equal rights. No longer should any person rely on legislation or court rulings for rights. These mustn’t be a zero-sum game. We will push for an amendment that enshrines a person’s bodily autonomy, right to marriage, and reproductive rights into our constitution.

These aren’t being offered as the only solutions. Society and our government are complex and always in motion. We are offering long term, structural improvements as many other experts and organizers push for current fixes to stop the authoritarian creep of our national government. All of these should be taken in tandem and in light of each other. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that once the current occupant of the White House leaves, our problems will be solved. That is a fallacy. He is just a symptom of greater institutional brokenness that these solutions will help repair.

This work, just like any movement building, is going to be difficult and is going to take time. If we want to repair the institutional damage caused by this administration, if we want to build safeguards against this happening again to our nation, if we want to move our republic closer to the multiracial democracy the first Reconstruction aimed us towards, we must come together to do difficult things. This country is worth it, because we are worth it.

Last Tuesday was supposed to be Democratic Party’s biggest highlight of the month. And for a moment, a brilliant, shining moment, it was. Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist from Queens, didn’t just win. He demolished the machine, crushing both Andrew Cuomo’s grotesque comeback attempt and the entire corporate establishment in a landslide that would have made FDR proud. The 34-year-old democratic socialist became NYC’s first Muslim mayor with over one million votes in near-record turnout.

Across the country, working Americans stood up. Spanberger crushed Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia by the widest Democratic margin since 1961. Mikie Sherrill broke a 60-year pattern in New Jersey, marking the first time the same party won the governorship three terms in a row. In Georgia, Democrats shattered decades of Republican dominance. In Pennsylvania, they beat back the billionaire class’s judicial takeover.

This wasn’t just winning. This was the Democratic base demanding. A party that puts workers first, that puts Wall Street in their place, that fights for the forgotten. The people spoke with clarity: We want real Democrats. Fighting Democrats. Democrats who don’t take orders from elite donors.

And what did the establishment do with this mandate? They sold it to the highest bidder.

The Great Betrayal: How Eight Corporate Democrats Abandoned the New Deal

Just days after this electoral earthquake, eight Democratic senators - who we like to call “The Surrender Caucus” (Tim Kaine, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, John Hickenlooper, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, and Dick Durbin) voted with Republicans to advance a government funding bill without securing ACA subsidy extensions.

Let’s be absolutely clear: Those enhanced subsidies, used by millions of Americans, expire at the end of December if Congress doesn’t extend them. Premiums will double. Families will choose between medicine and meals. Americans will die because they can’t afford to live.

And these eight senators, these corporate puppets wearing Democratic masks, decided that was acceptable. They traded 22 million people’s healthcare for a promise of a future vote. Not iron-clad legislation. Not a binding agreement. A pinky promise. From Republicans who’ve spent 40 days holding America hostage.

Senator Tim Kaine claimed this was about “protecting federal workers”, as if you protect workers by letting their healthcare costs explode in just a few weeks. This is what happens when Democrats take corporate money: they learn to speak in focus-grouped lies.

Schumer must go. Every corporate Democrat who chose donors over voters needs to face a primary from a real Democrat: a democratic socialist who won’t back down, who won’t take their money, who remembers what this party is supposed to fight for.

The FDR Democrats Are Taking Over

Trump’s response to Mamdani’s victory was revealing: he called him a “communist” and threatened to withhold federal funds from NYC. Perfect. Let him show America what we’re up against. Let him prove that the choice is between FDR Democrats who fight for working people and fascists (and their apologists) who serve billionaires.

Because here’s what terrifies them: Mamdani didn’t win by moving to the center. He mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers, won endorsements from Bernie Sanders and AOC, and built the largest NYC mayoral coalition since 1969. His platform was pure economic populism: freeze rents, free public transit, and public grocery stores to break corporate monopolies. This is the blueprint. Not begging corporate Democrats for scraps, but building a movement of working people. Not negotiating with extremists, but defeating them with bold, popular programs that transform lives.

The establishment thinks we’ll give up. They think we’ll get tired, get comfortable, accept their corporate-approved incrementalism. They couldn’t be more wrong. The base is fired up. The coalition is growing. And we’re coming for every seat held by Democrats who forgot they work for the people.

The shutdown dragged on for 40+ days. Republicans manufactured this crisis to hurt working Americans. And instead of using our fresh electoral mandate to fight back, to be the party of Roosevelt, of Johnson, of fighters, eight Democrats handed the extremists everything they wanted.

This betrayal will not stand. Every Democrat who voted to abandon the healthcare fight now has revealed themselves. And lets be honest here - are we suddenly going to expect Republicans to “do the right thing?” after the maximum position of leverage we had has now gone away? When have they EVER done the right thing?

Centrists have chosen surrender today over some perceived chance to fight, tomorrow. But here’s what they don’t understand: The blue wave that crested on beaches from New York to Virginia last week? That was just the first surge. And the democratic socialism in that water is warm.

Out there, beyond the breakers, a tsunami of Mamdani’s, Crocketts, and AOC’s is building. Every centrist betrayal adds to its power. Every corporate capitulation feeds its strength. Every American denied healthcare, denied dignity, denied the democracy they voted for: they’re all joining the wave.

And when it crashes onshore in 2026, it won’t just sweep away Republicans. It will wash out every corporate Democrat who forgot what this party stands for. It will carry in a new generation of FDR Democrats: fighters who don’t back down, who don’t take corporate money, who remember that we’re supposed to be the party that welcomes hatred from the powerful because we fight for the powerless.

The tsunami is coming. A new Democratic Party is being born. And this time, we’re not asking permission.

The State of our Union is rough. This week alone, Amazon and UPS eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. The federal government entered its second-longest shutdown in history. Millions are on the verge of losing SNAP benefits that keep their families fed. And in Washington, construction continues on a $200 $250 $300 million ballroom renovation inside the White House. Wild times, folks.

Breadlines for the public. Champagne for the powerful. That is the real headline.

The System Is Functioning Exactly as Designed

For years, pundits have said the system is broken. That is the wrong diagnosis. The system is functioning perfectly, just not for the majority of people living inside it.

The economy runs on obedience, not innovation. The working class must show up, follow the rules, and perform. The ruling class simply ensures that rules never touch them.

That is the quiet contract of American capitalism: you act ethically so they can act freely.

Amazon cut roughly 14,000 corporate jobs this month as part of its “AI transition.” UPS has shed nearly 48,000 positions in nine months while its executives collect bonuses tied to “efficiency.” Wall Street cheers. Share prices rise. The people who built the wealth are dismissed, then told to be grateful for the “opportunity to re-skill.”

The layoffs are not an accident. They are a strategy.

The Shutdown Is Not a Crisis, It Is a Policy

The U.S. government has now been partially shut down for four weeks, making it the second-longest closure in modern history. SNAP benefits are days from vanishing. Democratic states are suing simply to keep feeding their residents.

Defense spending continues without interruption. Contractors keep getting paid. ICE raids continue unabated. The machine pauses only where human need begins. Funny how that works.

That is the hidden logic of American austerity. It starves the poor, rewards the rich, and convinces the middle that all this suffering is “fiscal discipline.” The cruelty is the plan, not the side effect.

Conservative America Broke the Deal and Got Nothing

Conservative America (this is now a misnomer, as there is nothing conservative about these fascist fucks in 2025) once had a deal with the system: play by the rules, remain respectable, and distance yourself from “those people.” In return, you would receive stability and social status.

That bargain is gone. The country you thought you owned now belongs to billionaires who do not know your name. And worse, you think they do.

You voted to “drain the swamp,” and after year 10 of the biggest grift in American history, they demolished the east wing of the white house and built plans for a gilded marble ballroom instead. You voted for “the forgotten man,” and they forgot you first, and pretty quickly. You traded solidarity for white supremacy and lost both. You’ve got nothing to swim in, except your propaganda..

Now the social contract is ash. You held the torch, while the madman destroyed compassion and kindness as American values. You were told your sacrifice was noble, that your loyalty would be rewarded. Instead, you are watching your jobs disappear, your farms go into foreclosure, your benefits dry up, your children’s futures dissolve, while the people you empowered toast themselves in your honor, and on your dime.

You broke the social contract for nothing.

The Hunger Behind the War Drums

As domestic collapse deepens, the talk of foreign conflict grows louder. The United States is posturing for confrontation in Latin America, bombing boats out of the ocean, and expanding military budgets and surveillance for potential “threats”.

Declining empires always try to export their despair. Every dollar spent on destruction abroad is a dollar withheld from survival at home. Every missile strike means a SNAP meal denied. Every Pentagon contract means another family without food.

This whole bloody thing is profiteering, dressed as masculine strength.

The shutdown drains around fifteen billion dollars each week, yet the same leaders claim there is “no money” for food assistance. There is always money for war, luxury, and spectacle, never for the people who make the country run.

The Moral Order Has Been Reversed

The genius of this system is how it demands decency from everyone except those in charge.

Workers must show discipline, honesty, and good conduct. Executives must only ensure profit.

If you steal food, you are a criminal.
If you steal wages, you are a CEO.
If you lie on welfare forms, you are a parasite.
If you lie on SEC filings, you are a Forbes 30 Under 30 visionary.

Every moral code has been rewritten to glorify greed and condemn solidarity. Exploitation is now called innovation. Ruthlessness is marketed as leadership. The people who play fair lose, and the people who cheat are invited to destroy the world over their own petty and paranoid supremacist convictions.

This is a system revealing its true face. Once and for all. Clear as sky.

Shame Is Appropriate Here

Let us stop pretending this is respectable politics. If you voted for this chaos, this cruelty, this false populism that only serves oligarchs, you should feel deeply ashamed.

Not because you were fooled once, or twice, but because you keep defending the lie.
You are watching your neighbors starve and your wages vanish, yet you console yourself that at least “the liberals are angry.”

This is wholesale surrender. You are not fighting the elites. You are protecting them.

And when your benefits end and your savings disappear, they will not visit your GoFundMe page. They will be on their yachts, laughing about your loyalty.

The Reckoning

Beneath all the wreckage, something new is being born. Cooperatives. Mutual aid networks. Worker-owned newsrooms. Unions learning a new language of old struggles. Communities rediscovering what “solidarity” actually means.

The next America will not be saved by billionaires or campaign slogans. It will be rebuilt by people who understand that survival is collective, not individual. The system continues to work only because ordinary people still hold it up.

That is the secret the ruling class fears most. If we ever stop serving their game and start building our own, the entire old order collapses overnight.

The System Works — Just Not for You

The great American myth says everything is broken and someone out there will fix it. The truth is simpler and harder to face. The system is functioning exactly as intended. The layoffs, the shutdown, the hunger, the endless wars—all of it continues because it was designed to.

It will last until we decide otherwise.

The people built it, the people can dismantle it, and the people can create something better.

The class war has already started. The awakening has too.

They came in the night. U-Hauls lined up like armored carriers. Helicopters over the roof. Doors kicked in at 2 a.m. Children yanked from sleep. Neighbors zip-tied in vans with no explanation.

The government called it a “targeted operation.” The residents called it what it was: a gang raid.

When the agents left, they left behind blood, broken doors, and baby shoes. They left stolen belongings, trashed apartments, unsecured hallways. They left hell in their wake.

And they called it law.

This is not law. This is rabid. It is the Miller doctrine in action: shock, fear, and spectacle.

These agents behaved like the very animals they accuse immigrants of being. Foaming at the mouth. Tearing through homes. Leaving decay behind.

The cruelty is the point. The theater is the point.

Stephen Miller has been telling us who he is for years. This week in Memphis he bellowed like a warlord, promising “real cops with guns” and pledging that the U.S. government would show “how ruthless we are.” He was not outlining a plan for safety. He was declaring a siege.

And South Shore got a preview.

The 2 a.m. raid was not policy. It was seemingly Miller’s dream come to life. Helicopters dropping agents. U-Hauls rolling in. Doors smashed. Citizens dragged limbless in the dark. Blood, baby shoes, and broken homes left behind.

When Miller roared that “they have no idea how hardcore we are,” he was not magnifying. He was manifesting.

This is the doctrine Trump’s DHS under Kristi Noem is now putting into practice. Miller may not hold the title. But his blueprint is alive in every broken door, every zip tie, every family shoved from their doorway.

Chicago has seen this before. In the 1960s it was COINTELPRO agents smashing into homes of Black Panthers, murdering Fred Hampton in his sleep, calling it a police action. Before that it was the Red Scare raids that broke into immigrant apartments with the same justification of “safety.” Long before that it was slave patrols, dragging people out of their beds in the name of “law.”

This is not new. It is muscle memory.

And it is not just American muscle. Listen closely to Stephen Miller’s sermon of ruthlessness, his promises of shock and awe, his obsession with making fear into public ritual. It is not strategy. It is theater.

Goebbels understood this well, during the Nazi Germany occupation of Europe. Fascism requires spectacle. It requires the population to see the broken doors, to watch neighbors dragged into vans, to breathe in the smoke and rubble and call it order. It is terror disguised as protection. It is persecution marketed as safety.

That is why NewsNation was invited along for the raid. That is why Miller’s voice rises to a scream. The cruelty is not a hidden byproduct. It is a performance.

Goebbels, too, knew that violence without a spotlight is wasted. The spectacle must be seen. The blood must be narrated. The fear must be broadcast.

That is why NewsNation was not a bystander in South Shore. They were a guest. They were embedded, given front-row seats to a midnight assault on families, so they could package it as a triumph of order. The same tactic plays out on Fox, on talk radio, in endless clips online. Each raid becomes a highlight reel for authoritarianism. Each broken door is turned into a commercial for cruelty.

This is not journalism. It is propaganda. It is the fascist playbook, dressed in the language of “law enforcement.” Goebbels called it “total war.” Miller calls it “ruthlessness.” Noem calls it “security.” The script is the same.

The point is not truth. The point is terror.

The story in South Shore is not just about migrants. It is about citizens.

Citizens held without charges. Families ripped from sleep without warrants. Property destroyed without remedy. The very Constitution the agents claimed to defend was trampled under their boots.

Stephen Miller calls this “ruthlessness.” Kristi Noem calls it “security.” But the Constitution calls it unlawful. And Americans call it what it is: a raid by rabid animals.

When Dan Jones came back to his apartment, he found his mattress gone, his iPad gone, even his air fryer gone. In its place were garbage, strange clothes, the smell of mold. A man who had lived quietly, worked hard, paid rent, came home to find his life scattered like trash. He stood in the ruins with tears in his eyes and still tried to close the door behind him.

Down the hall, an Army veteran — blind now after decades of service — was left to feel his way through broken glass and busted walls, still telling himself this was once a good place to live.

These are not the faces of fugitives. They are neighbors. They are citizens. They are the people the Constitution was supposed to protect.

This is not the enforcement of law. It is the suspension of it. The Fourth Amendment promises the right to be secure in one’s home against unreasonable searches and seizures. That promise was broken. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments promise due process. That promise was mocked.

The agents who came in the night called it a mission. The right wing media networks called it a victory. But the residents who lived through it called it what it was: hell.

And that is the truth. Not the propaganda, not the press release, not Miller’s shouting. The truth is written in the baby shoes left in the rubble, the blood stains on the floor, the zip ties abandoned beside strollers.

Chicago has been here before. It has seen police murder freedom fighters in their sleep. It has seen raids on immigrants and labor organizers. And every time, the city’s people learned the same lesson: solidarity is survival.

So yes, this was a raid. Yes, it was an act of conquest. But it was also a reminder. That we only make it out of this if we stand together — the veteran and the migrant, the longtime tenant and the new arrival, the neighbor who still has a door and the neighbor who doesn’t anymore.

Because the truth is simple. We belong to each other. And no raid, no propaganda, no rabid animal in uniform can change that.

Opinion by: Aisha K. Staggers, Editor-At-Large

In 2028, a new, highly gerrymandered America will wake up to the realization that re-electing Donald Trump for a second term was the biggest mistake since the Dred Scott decision.

Like the Dred Scott decision, Trump’s second term won’t just be a policy disaster — it will be a moral disgrace, the kind history teachers can’t describe without warning their students first. And like the Dred Scott decision, it will be born out of desperation: a last-ditch attempt to lock the country into a version of itself that is already dying.

Trump is the perfect casting choice for the role they’re trying to keep alive — the Pleasantville patriarch, selling a fantasy of America where white men set the rules, white women stay in their place, and everyone else is an outsider. That fantasy never existed outside the screen and the segregated suburb, but for his followers, he’s the last leading man of a story they refuse to admit was fiction all along.

Here’s the part his voters will never say out loud but everyone else can see: Trump’s base is built on white grievance. The GOP’s power depends on the illusion that America is, and must remain, a white nation. But the math is already against them — every year, the percentage of white conservatives in the electorate shrinks. By the time Gen Alpha is voting, people of color — including multiracial Americans — will outnumber white people for the first time in U.S. history.

And here’s what they refuse to face: the world has never been majority white. Globally, most people are Black, brown, Asian, Indigenous, or mixed-race. The idea of a “white world” exists only in the American imagination — a fantasy propped up by movies, media, redlining, and selective history books. The Pleasantville 1950s they idolize wasn’t real even in the 1950s. It was a curated lie built on segregation, exclusion, and violence against anyone who didn’t fit the picture.

The Republican Party is desperately trying to preserve that lie. They’re purging voter rolls, banning books, criminalizing abortion, demonizing immigrants, stripping affirmative action, erasing Black history from classrooms, and inventing moral panics about “critical race theory” and “wokeness.” They think if they can control the rules, they can freeze America in their preferred frame. But every one of these so-called “victories” is proof they’re losing.

Suppress the youth vote? You radicalize the most diverse, politically aware generation in history. Ban history? Kids find the truth online, without your filter. Strip reproductive rights? You guarantee that women and allies will never forgive or forget. Deport immigrants? Their families and communities show up at the polls in bigger numbers than ever.

It’s the same miscalculation the Dred Scott decision represented in 1857. The Supreme Court thought it could cement white dominance forever by declaring Black people could never be citizens. Instead, it poured gasoline on the abolitionist movement and pushed the nation toward a civil war that destroyed the very system the ruling was meant to protect.

History doesn’t whisper — it yells. And right now, it’s yelling that the America Trump and his followers are clinging to no longer exists, and never really did. Gen Alpha will be the first majority-minority generation in U.S. history. They won’t need permission to define America. They will be America. And they’ll do it in a world where whiteness is not the measure of humanity — because it never was.

By the time the post-2028 regret sets in, it won’t just be political. It’ll be economic, as the country finds itself globally isolated and hemorrhaging talent because young innovators and workers want no part of a reactionary regime. It’ll be cultural, as the U.S. clings to outdated values rooted in white supremacy while the rest of the world moves forward. And it’ll be moral, as the Trump generation of voters faces the reality that they gave the wheel to a man who drove the country into a wall to protect a fantasy that was never true.

And here’s the part they can’t stomach: when the shift is complete, they’ll be the minority. The rest of the country will remember them not as patriots, but as the last defenders of a delusion — a myth they mistook for reality. They’ll see that the “real America” they fought for was never America at all.

The GOP thinks it’s outrunning the future. In reality, they’re sprinting toward their own extinction.

The rest of us? We’re already building what comes next. And there’s no executive order in the world that can stop it.

The world doesn’t wait for cowards clinging to lies — it leaves them behind, remembered only for the fantasy they failed to save and the future they refused to survive.

10 years ago, my husband (then fiancé) and I stood inside the great city clerk’s office in New York City and said our vows. We left that moment believing we could build a future in a country that finally recognized our love. We continued on over the years and built our lives on that promise. We imagined a time soon enough when children would grow up never knowing a time when their parents’ marriage was questioned by the law. Fast forward a decade, under the second Trump administration, we are now forced to consider every legal document, every state line, every step we might need to take in order to protect ourselves if that promise is broken. That is not the life we were told we could have. That is not the America we were told we belonged to.

This week, anti-LGBTQ groups formally asked the Supreme Court to overturn the marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges. The Court has not yet agreed to hear the case. That is exactly why the danger is greatest now. When those who want to strip away your rights are knocking on the Court’s door, the most dangerous mistake is to assume the Justices will not open it.

On the other side of the country, another fight is building. CA Governor Gavin Newsom has announced a November ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts in a way that protects representation for millions of voters. It is a direct counterattack against the Republican gerrymandering machine that has been carving up maps in Texas (and other states) to lock in power for a shrinking minority that is hemorrhaging support in poll after poll.

At first, these two battles may seem separate. They are not. They are different fronts in the same war.

The authoritarian right has a single strategy. Change the rules until they cannot lose. In the states they control, they twist voting maps until your vote counts for less than theirs. In the courts they influence, they target rights that the public has already won and still supports. If they succeed, they will control who represents you and decide which freedoms you get to keep; like who you get to love.

We have seen this before. After the Civil War, newly freed Black Americans voted, held office, and began dismantling white supremacy through the law. The backlash came quickly. Rights were stripped. Districts were rewritten. Jim Crow was born. Democracy shrank until only a favored few were allowed inside. The blueprint is running again today, with different targets but the same outcome in mind.

Do not be fooled by their language. Gerrymandering is never about fairness. It is about locking in minority rule. Attacks on marriage equality are never about states’ rights or religious freedom. They are about giving hostile governments the power to erase the humanity of their neighbors, simply because of who they happen to love. The radicalized right wing Republican Party wraps cruelty in legal arguments because the naked truth would never win them a majority.

My marriage should not depend on which state I live in or which political party holds the Court. Your voice in Congress should not depend on how cleverly someone can draw a line on a map. These are not niche fights. They decide whether all of us count and all of us belong.

California’s ballot measure is a chance to show the country what happens when a state refuses to surrender to map-riggers. The marriage equality petition is a warning flare that rights are only safe when we defend them every time they are threatened, not just after they are lost.

The time to fight is before the ink dries, before the maps are final, before the gavel falls. We cannot choose only the battles that feel most urgent in the moment. We must defend the whole field or watch it disappear piece by piece.

In November, Californians must flood the polls to defend fair representation. Starting now, every American must demand that Congress enshrine marriage equality in law before the Court has the chance to erase it. The stakes are not abstract. They are measured in who sits in office and who gets to love openly without fear.

They are changing the rules to erase us. We still have the power to stop them. But only if we act before the door slams shut.

America’s longest‑running animated insurgency, South Park, just dragged the “strong‑woman” of the Trump era, Kristi Noem, and the nation cheered. In the scorching episode “Got A Nut,” the writers sliced Noem’s real‑world transgressions into razor‑sharp political shrapnel—no need for a diplomatic retreat or a veneer of nuance; the cartoon simply plunged a blade into her most brutal flaws and kept striking.

The show didn’t just mock her; it made her the poster child for everything grotesque about the Trump‑era strongwoman; an amalgam of corporate arrogance, authoritarian hunger, and shameless, unrelenting, vanity. The White House’s defensive panic (about its own hilarious portrayal) and Noem’s own petty indignation about Thursday’s episode proved the satire’s razor‑sharp bite.

With 5.3 million viewers last week, the show’s largest audience in almost two decades, this season of South Park hasn’t let their foot off the gas. This Thursday they painted Noem as “ICE Barbie”: a Botox‑slick, dog‑shooting enforcer obsessed with arrest quotas against brown people and photo‑ops. The dog gag? Straight from her own memoir, where she bragged about shooting her 14‑month‑old puppy to prove she could make “tough decisions.” South Park didn’t soften the blow; it magnified it 80 fold. Even Superman’s dog was no‑escape.

Why did this hit so hard? Because Noem’s record of political and personal corruption is staggering. She is the perfect satire target: vain, authoritarian, and delightfully sloppy with the truth; an enemy who doesn’t even need exaggeration to be absurd.

When the White House tried to brush South Park off as “irrelevant for 20 years,” and when Noem called the episode “lazy” and “petty,” it only further cemented the joke, (and the Streisand effect). The moment the target can’t laugh, the satire works. The mirror is too clear, and the cultural narrative has been forced to confront the ugliness it has been masquerading as strength.

For years, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone avoided naming names, citing “Trump fatigue.” This is their return to naming the names; no more mask‑wearing, no more “in the spirit of” euphemisms. The result? A media landscape that’s hungry for sharper commentary than the rinse‑and‑repeat of late‑night pundits.

The numbers speak for themselves: South Park’s political comeback pulls in more than double Stephen Colbert’s audience and five times The Daily Show’s. Sounds like there is a hunger for fearless satire that cuts through the noise and lays the truth on the floor.

Why This Is a Threat to Noem… and to Trump’s Culture War

Political damage isn’t just about polls or scandals, it’s also about the culture that surrounds you. When late‑night monologues, memes, and sitcoms start using a figure as shorthand for cruelty or incompetence, the figure can no longer shape the narrative—they’re the punchline.

Kristi Noem is now the punchline. The “ICE Barbie” caricature will haunt every headline, the dog gag will echo a million times in clips cut up a hundred different ways. Whenever she tries to rebrand, she will never be able to run from this. You also can’t campaign on toughness when the culture sees you as a self‑parody of authoritarian vanity.

And this matters for Trump’s world. South Park didn’t just skewer Noem; it signaled that comedic gatekeepers have stopped tiptoeing around MAGA figures. The same shift we saw in Nixon’s and Bush’s final years—when pop culture stopped fearing backlash and started aiming to finish them off in the cultural zeitgeist. We’re witnessing the final crescendo of that cultural assault.

Satire works only when it’s fast, fearless, and rooted in truth. And when a show with a six‑day production cycle and a cultural memory muscle like South Park decides to unload on a right‑wing puppet, you don’t just lose the week’s news cycle—you lose the cultural narrative.

Kristi Noem’s political obituary may not yet be written, but if history’s any guide, once the jokes stick, they never come off.

We are only seven months into Donald Trump's return to power, and already it feels like we've been living under siege for years.

The fear is back—but it's heavier now. More targeted. More efficient. The legal system isn't failing us; it's actively being used against us. The media isn't informing the public; it's normalizing the collapse. And the White House isn't governing the people; it's ruling over them.

This doesn't feel like democracy. It doesn't feel like liberty.

This feels like serfdom.

And if you're part of any marginalized group—Black, queer, trans, immigrant, disabled, poor—you're not just feeling it. You're suffocating under it.

Because the weight of authoritarianism doesn't fall equally. It crushes those already living at the margins, those who were barely holding on during the softer version of Trumpism we endured the first time around. Back then, we were gaslit into thinking it was an aberration. A four-year fever dream. Now, we know better: it was a test run.

And now we are in the real thing.

This moment we're living in is not just post-freedom—it is anti-freedom. It is the institutionalization of vengeance, the weaponization of the state, and the erasure of rights wrapped in a flag and sold as patriotism. It is what happens when fascism stops flirting and demands a ring.

For those of us on the frontlines—for those of us forced onto the frontlines just by existing—this is more than political exhaustion. This is soul-deep depletion. It is being told every day, in ways both loud and quiet, that our lives are expendable. That our rights are negotiable. That our personhood is conditional.

And we still have three and a half more years of this.

Do you know what it means to look down the barrel of that reality? To know that no matter how exhausted you are, no matter how much you've already lost, you are expected to just keep pushing? Keep resisting? Keep smiling like hope is still sustainable?

Because if we're being honest, hope is starting to feel like a luxury product—marketed for mass consumption but priced out of reach for those who need it most.

It's not just the policies. It's the posture. The cruelty isn't just the point—it's the performance. From the demonization of immigrants and trans people, to journalists being surveilled and activists being harassed, we are being conditioned to believe this is normal. That this is legal. That this is deserved.

And for the most vulnerable among us, there is no off-ramp. There is no "safe state," no sanctuary. Because when fascism is federalized, safety becomes a myth. Resistance becomes a risk. And rest becomes a casualty.

We are not burned out because we are weak. We are burned out because we are awake. And we see what's coming. This is the definition of "woke" that the right misunderstands. The people who call liberals "sheep" don't seem to realize that we are fully awake, seeing right through their sanctimonious bullshit.

And we are tired of it.

We know this is not just about Trump. It's about the machine behind him—the billionaires, the judges, the media executives, the evangelical extremists, the corporate cowards, and the everyday Americans willing to trade away other people's freedoms for their own comfort. That machine is humming along just fine. And unless we dismantle it, ballot by ballot, policy by policy, callout by callout, it will keep running even after Trump is gone.

But right now? In this moment? We are tired. Not defeated, but raw. Grieving. Raging. Holding each other up because the state won't.

Refusing to call this freedom when we know what freedom is supposed to feel like, even if we've never fully been free.

And this ain't it!

Sources:

On DOJ Weaponization:

• Timeline: Politicization and Weaponization of Justice Department in Second Trump Administration

• Trump is weaponizing the DOJ just like he accused Democrats of doing

• White House Executive Order: Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government

On Press Freedom Under Attack:

• Trump's first 100 days: How he's gone after the news media

• Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves

• Under Project 2025, Journalists and Sources Would Face Spying and Prosecution

On Targeting Marginalized Groups:

• Trump's anti-trans effort is an agenda cornerstone with echoes in history

• One month of fear for groups targeted by Trump's executive orders

• ACLU: Trump's Executive Orders Promoting Sex Discrimination, Explained

• Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights Rollbacks

On Surveillance and Civil Liberties:

• ACLU: Trump on Surveillance, Protest, and Free Speech

• Activists, journalists and civil rights organizations prepare for increased surveillance

In Trump's America—again—we're watching something insidious unfold in real time. It's not just that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives are being publicly dragged, defunded, and demonized. It's that people who dedicated their careers to this work—who led initiatives, taught the courses, shaped policy, mentored students, and expanded access—are now being shut out of the job market.

People like me.

I've spent 25 years in communications and journalism. I've taught college-level statistics and research methods. I served as Assistant Director of a public policy and social research center in higher education. And yet, I was told—straight-faced—that I wasn't qualified for an Assistant Director of Public Policy and Social Research role.

Let that sink in.

I tested it. I tailored my résumé to match every single line of the job description. I didn't just meet the qualifications. I exceeded them. Still, I was told no. And I know why.

Because buried in my résumé—unapologetically—are words like "equity," "diversity," "African American," "civil rights," "minority health," and "DEI." Not just in the job titles. In the names of the institutions themselves. The algorithm caught it, flagged it, dumped it. That's not speculation. That's a pattern.

STORY RESOURCE: NPR Report on AI Hiring Discrimination

We've entered a digital era where the algorithm isn't neutral. It's weaponized. Recent research from the University of Washington found that AI hiring tools show significant racial and gender bias, favoring white-associated names 85% of the time and never favoring Black male-associated names over white male-associated names. Legal experts warn that algorithmic bias in hiring can perpetuate systemic discrimination while hiding behind the veneer of technological objectivity.

But this didn't start with the algorithm. It's just the new face of an old tradition: denying highly qualified Black and brown candidates access to leadership roles and reserving those titles for white men—often with less experience, fewer credentials, but plenty of confidence and an assumption that they'll "grow into the role."

How many times have we heard: "We went with someone whose skills more closely align with the culture of the organization." Translation: We hired the white guy who reminds us of ourselves.

How many times have Black women been told they were overqualified, too direct, too passionate, too "different"? Or that they needed more "executive polish," more "cultural fit," more whatever—while simultaneously watching the white guy who used their decks, borrowed their ideas, or leaned on them as a "thought partner" be handed the job they've been doing for months while waiting for the company to "hire permanently."

Companies love to talk about mentorship. Until they realize the person doing the mentoring is also the most qualified person in the room. Then suddenly, the conversation shifts. Suddenly, it's not about qualifications. It's about "tone." About "culture." About not upsetting the status quo. And that status quo, historically, has been white, male, straight, and often underwhelming.

We've seen this pattern for decades. Talented, experienced, credentialed women and people of color being told to wait their turn—or worse, to train their replacements. The DEI backlash just put that discrimination on blast. Now it's public. Now it's policy.

STORY RESOURCE: Corporate DEI Rollbacks - Robby Starbuck's Campaign

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck has successfully pressured over a dozen major corporations—including Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and Toyota—to roll back their DEI initiatives. Companies worth over $2 trillion have now altered their diversity policies following social media pressure campaigns that threaten boycotts and frame equity efforts as "woke" ideology.

Even elite institutions like NYU—whose campuses are filled with students of color, queer students, first-gen students, and international students—are playing scared. After all, they bent over backwards to appease one student. One student whose father is a racist and happens to be the President of the United States.

STORY RESOURCE: Universities Dismantling DEI Programs

In changing campus policy to protect the comfort of that student, they made the rest of the campus demonstrably unsafe for everyone else. Their message is clear: they don't care about all their students, just the one whose father can threaten their funding. Students are basically being told to just sit and be uncomfortable until Trump leaves office. But what if they graduate before then? What about their safety, their mental health, their education?

Universities across the country are proactively dismantling DEI offices before legislation forces them to. Over 50 universities are now under federal investigation as part of Trump's anti-DEI crackdown. What happens to institutions that protect power over people? They lose enrollment. They lose talent. And soon, they won't be able to attract the kind of faculty they claim to want either—because no one with integrity wants to work for a university that surrenders to white supremacy in a tailored suit that holds the Seal of the President of the United States.

This isn't "Making America Great Again." This is Stephen Miller's Pavlovian wet dream: Make America white again. Purge the diversity. Erase the equity. Burn down the inclusion.

[CONTEXTUAL IMAGE: Government Brain Drain - Empty offices with ringing phones and Help Wanted signs]

STORY RESOURCE: Federal Government DEI Elimination

The Trump administration has issued executive orders to eliminate DEI programs across federal agencies, leading to widespread layoffs of qualified professionals and their replacement with political loyalists.

Here's the problem: Gen Z isn't buying it. They were raised in this so-called "diverse" world. They've lived it longer than the folks now racing to dismantle it. They aren't going to work for you if you strip away every sign of humanity in the workplace. If you're hiring only sanitized, algorithm-approved versions of your ideal candidate, you're going to find that your pipeline is dry.

And guess what? These young people have options. They'll freelance. They'll launch their own projects. They'll become influencers, content creators, or start their own companies before they agree to shrink themselves into some 1950s mold you cooked up to avoid upsetting Trump's re-election team.

Meanwhile, people like me—people with experience, dedication, innovation, and a résumé that reflects the actual America—are being sidelined. Not because we're unqualified. But because we had the audacity to do the work before it was a trend and before it became a liability. Because we dared to believe that justice, policy, and community engagement were not only valuable—they were essential.

I'm proud of the work I did. I won't scrub it from my résumé just to get through the filters. That work is where I gained the very skills that make me overqualified for many of the jobs I'm now being told I'm not eligible for.

And the truth is, I don't think it's going to get better anytime soon. But that doesn't mean I'm going to lie about who I am, what I've done, or who I've done it for. If the cost of telling the truth is exclusion, so be it. My skills and talents are in communications, marketing, and public relations. My experiences are an asset, not dead weight I should shed in order to fall in line with the yearnings of a dictator. I am determined, experienced, and innovative (DEI), I will find a way, but what about those who cannot?

Much like the election where nearly nine million people stayed home, the bigger cost was silence. We already know what that is costing us now as qualified people are being fired from government jobs and replaced with unqualified loyalists. Phones at DOE, IRS, and Social Security aren't being answered. People aren't getting the help they need because the workforce that knew what needed to be done is gone. The chaos is what we're paying for now. And it is expensive. But what will it cost us in the future, if this road of destruction isn't veered off course? We should all be too afraid to even find out.

Additional Resources:

• Harvard Business Review: "All the Ways Hiring Algorithms Can Introduce Bias"

• Nature Journal: "Ethics and discrimination in AI-enabled recruitment practices"

• Inside Higher Ed: "How the battle over DEI shook out in 2024"

• Walmart rolls back DEI commitments amid conservative backlash

• IBM: "What Is Algorithmic Bias?"

In 2003, I was teaching fifth grade in South Carolina when one of my students raised her hand during a lesson on slavery and said, “My mama had slaves growing up.” Again, it was 2003; her mother was 39. It never happened, but that’s not the point. That 10-year-old had already internalized the message of white supremacy: while the people who worked for their family weren’t enslaved, they weren’t entirely free either. The people they worked for still viewed them as property, and let their children, friends, and neighbors believe that even if you pay for someone’s labor, you still own them.

That time of a pre–Civil War, pre–Emancipation Proclamation America has been so romanticized by white people, they’re desperate to return to it. And this big bill of bullshit is their vehicle. They feel no guilt about it, because the truth is—they’re tired. Tired of having to behave with the humanity they’ve spent centuries robbing from everyone else. Tired of sharing anything. Tired of pretending the rest of us are fully human.

From the moment their battered old boats landed, carrying hungry, diseased ancestors begging for help and a hot meal from the very Indigenous people they later slaughtered, white people in this country have taken everything. They claimed they didn’t want a king, said they were fleeing persecution—only to build a system of government designed to persecute everyone but themselves. They kidnapped an entire race of people from a continent, then called it liberty. And now, that government wants to go even further—with this big bill of bullshit.

These men (and women) whose nostalgic longing to be gentlemen sipping bourbon on porches or ladies drinking mint juleps overwhelmed by “the vapors” are, in fact, descendants of violent slave-owning rapists who built their power on white supremacy. And this band of antebellum idiots intends to carry forth that horrific legacy by any means necessary and with precision. They don’t miss the past—they want to remake the present in its image.

And now, with the Big Bullshitter back in the White House, these obedient little foot soldiers are lining up to prove their devotion.

This bill isn’t about budgets or border policy or defending “American values.” It’s about codifying cruelty. It is a declaration of war on women, on immigrants, on the poor, on anyone who refuses to kneel before Trumpism’s golden idol of white grievance and patriarchal power.

In Florida, that cruelty has a name: “Alligator Alcatraz.” That’s what they’re calling the new ICE detainment compound, built deep in the Everglades on land soaked in blood and Black history. But don’t let the branding fool you—this isn’t just a prison. It’s a provocation.

“Alligator bait” isn’t folklore—it’s fact. In the Jim Crow South, especially Florida, enslaved Black babies and toddlers were used as bait to lure alligators. That horror was real, documented, and even marketed in newspapers and postcards. Today, that legacy is being revived under the guise of immigration enforcement, caging brown and Black people in the same swamps where their ancestors were fed to beasts.

And while they’re feeding ICE, they’re starving healthcare. This bill guts funding for any hospital that provides abortion care, gender-affirming treatment, or even basic reproductive services. The result? Entire regions—especially in the South and Midwest—will lose access to OB-GYNs, prenatal care, and safe childbirth support in a country where forced birth is law in some states.

When hospitals close, women die. And the GOP knows it. The incels running the party just don't care.

They’re slashing food assistance, cutting housing support, and supercharging police departments under the lie of “community safety.” This is plantation logic in a modern wrapper—starve the poor, over-police the Black, and punish the defiant.

Donald Trump doesn’t need to write the bill. He doesn’t even need to read it. He just needs to grunt, and they snap to attention. Every act of cruelty, every lie, every death that results from this legislation is part of their collective sacrifice at the altar of his ego. They aren’t lawmakers. They’re enforcers.

This is what the Republican Party is now. Not conservative. Not constitutional. Just committed to the politics of domination—by any means necessary.

So no, there’s nothing good about the good ol’ boys. And nothing noble about the women who ride shotgun with them. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s terrorism. This isn’t just cruelty—it’s population control. And if we don’t call it what it is, we’re part of it. Stephen Miller said he wants America to be a country of 100 million. You don’t get there without camps, bans, forced births, and mass death. And the only people he wants here are white.

That’s the plan. And by voting for this big bill of bullshit, it seems Congress supports that plan.

They used to need us—for labor, for the illusion of democracy. So they made us 3/5ths human to feel better about getting rich off our backs. It took a constitutional amendment to admit we were people. That’s how disgusting the foundation of this country is. The only thing more disgusting is how many people still think like the men who wrote it.

We let them control the narrative, the policy, the courts, the maps, the money. And then we pretend to be shocked when they control the future. This country is not run by good people. It is run by the descendants of those who made profit off stolen bodies and broken families. They still don’t see us as fully human. And they write laws to make sure they don’t have to.

That’s what this bill, soon to be law, is.

A country with no shame cannot be saved. And a country this proud of having none doesn’t deserve to be.

Donald Trump’s list of presidential enemies is long. But his hatred is sharpest for two men: Barack Obama and Lyndon B. Johnson.

With Obama, the racism is obvious—Trump launched his political career by trying to delegitimize the nation’s first Black president. But it goes beyond race. Trump loathes that rather than fall on his face, as many expected the first Black president to do, Barack Obama rose to the moment and passed the most significant piece of healthcare legislation in a generation. 

The Affordable Care Act wasn’t just a policy win—it was a seismic political achievement that Democrats had spent more than 30 years chasing. Obama succeeded where Bill Clinton failed. Where Ted Kennedy ran out of time. That victory sealed his legacy in permanent ink. And Trump has been obsessed with erasing it ever since—not because it didn’t work, but because it did. Because it proved that a Black man could outmaneuver Congress, outlast the pundits, and outshine his enemies by doing what Trump never could: govern with skill, empathy, and impact.

Trump wants to be remembered as the most transformative president of the modern era. He wants monuments, not indictments. He wants legislation that reshapes American life, not rollbacks stamped with cruelty. He wants to be the kind of president whose impact echoes across generations. And he knows he’s not. So instead of building, he destroys.

And LBJ? LBJ built.

Say what you will about Lyndon Baines Johnson—and there's plenty to say. He was a Southern power broker who used the n-word in the Oval Office, belittled staffers, escalated the Vietnam War, and bulldozed political opposition like it was a personal sport. But when the moment demanded moral courage, Johnson grabbed the full machinery of government and used it to advance civil rights, voting rights, fair housing, education, and health care. The Great Society wasn’t perfect, but it fundamentally altered who had access to power and possibility in America.

Trump can’t compete with that. So he’s dismantling it instead.

Every signature program Johnson championed, Trump has targeted: Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, public broadcasting, the Higher Education Act, immigration reform, and federal funding for marginalized communities. Trump isn’t just undoing policies—he’s trying to erase Johnson’s name from history by tearing down every beam of the house LBJ helped build.

And yet the irony is this: Trump doesn’t just hate Johnson. He wants to be Johnson—just with fascism instead of fairness.

He wants the scale of Johnson’s legacy, the gravity of his decisions, the “I changed America” headline burned into textbooks. But Trump’s only roadmap to history is spite. He has no grand vision—only vendettas. Where Johnson signed laws to expand democracy, Trump weaponizes power to punish his enemies. Where Johnson confronted the moral failure of racism—even if begrudgingly—Trump stokes it as a political strategy. And where Johnson sought to unite poor Americans across racial lines, Trump divides them for sport.

It’s no accident that Trump’s favorite presidents are those who reinforced white power—Andrew Jackson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Johnson, for all his flaws, ruptured that tradition. He knew signing the Civil Rights Act would “lose the South for a generation”—and he did it anyway. Trump, on the other hand, courts that South like it’s the Confederacy reincarnated.

So yes, Trump hates LBJ. But it’s deeper than ideology.

He hates that LBJ did the one thing Trump never could: sacrifice popularity for progress. He hates that Johnson’s name is etched into some of the most transformative legislation of the 20th century—while Trump’s most memorable act may be inciting a deadly insurrection because he lost.

Most of all, he hates that when historians write about who truly changed the course of America, Johnson and Obama will get chapters—and Trump will get footnotes.

Or maybe one of those advisory stickers, “LEARN WITH EXTREME CAUTION.”

Either way, it won’t be the legacy he craved. So he lashes out at the men who earned theirs the hard way: with vision, with courage, and with consequences.

That’s something Trump will never understand—because hate builds nothing. And history remembers that.

What is happening in Florida is not a “crisis.” It is not “border security.” It is not “a controversial new policy.” It is a concentration camp, constructed on American soil with full intent and no shame. A facility surrounded by alligators, drenched in Everglades heat, built in just eight days, capable of holding thousands—caged, surveilled, and forgotten.

This is not rhetoric. It is the infrastructure of erasure.

And it is not an aberration. It is the natural conclusion of a project that began the moment Donald Trump branded Mexicans as rapists on national television in 2015. From the start, the logic has been elimination. Not reform, not border control, not security—removal. The enemy is not crime. It is not drugs. It is identity itself: brownness, blackness, foreignness, otherness. This administration no longer cares to distinguish between immigrant and citizen, between asylum seeker and journalist, between due process and brute force. It doesn’t have to.

Because the point is not enforcement. The point is fear.

Alligator Alcatraz, as it’s been called, is not merely a grotesque outgrowth of Trumpist cruelty—it is a deliberate experiment in dehumanization. A prototype. A performance. Officials have described the surrounding wildlife as “natural deterrents.” The facility has no real plumbing. No shade. No medical infrastructure. It is designed not just to imprison—but to humiliate, to degrade, to broadcast suffering to those still watching.

And people are watching.

On social media, far-right figures like Laura Loomer have cheered the spectacle, tweeting this horrifying post on X.

A genocidal fantasy, posted casually, publicly, without consequence. Her comment wasn’t met with outrage by her peers. It was a nod in the direction of what has always lurked beneath America’s mask: the idea that some lives, by virtue of race or origin, are disposable.

This is not about one woman. It’s about what she reveals.

The machinery of state violence is accelerating. With the near passage of the new immigration bill—a bill we should call what it is, a Big Piece of Shit Bill—ICE will receive twenty times its current funding. Twenty times the power to detain. Twenty times the freedom to ignore due process. Twenty times the ability to target Black, brown, and poor communities with impunity. The language of the bill is administrative. Its intent is unmistakably fascist.

This moment mirrors the legislative inflection point that historians warn about—the moment when cruelty ceases to be exception and becomes the law. The Enablement Act in Germany did not declare extermination. It simply gave a single man unilateral authority. It suspended rules. It authorized fear. And the killing followed.

In America, we are now there.

Trump v. CASA has rendered the Fourteenth Amendment a geographic suggestion. Birthright citizenship is no longer uniform. Depending on where you are, who’s in office, and how quickly you can sue, your Americanness may or may not be recognized. The Constitution is now regionally optional. That’s not interpretation. That’s authoritarian drift.

And while the courts equivocate, the cages multiply.

The people inside them are not theoretical. They are not anecdotes. They are names.

Kilmar Abrego García—a legal Maryland resident, wrongfully deported, forced to kneel for hours in a Salvadoran prison, beaten when he collapsed from exhaustion. Tortured. This story just broke tonight, and I’ve already cried reading it twice. No wonder this administration wanted him disappeared forever. These are crimes against humanity.

Andry Hernández Romero—a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker, detained without trial, his tattoos cited as reason for exile, languishes in the same prison that Garcia was freed from. Don’t forget his name.

Isidro Perez, a 75-year-old Cuban American, arrested in Florida, dead before release.

These are not mistakes.

They are messages.

The cruelty is not collateral. It is the point.

And the response from the architects of this system is not horror. It is celebration. Trump smirks in photo ops. DeSantis sells merch. The cruelty isn’t hidden—it’s monetized.

This is not America failing to live up to its ideals. This is America living up to its origins. The architecture of the swamp camp is new. The instinct is not. Slavery. Internment. Sterilization. Deportation. These are not deviations from the American story. They are the spine of it. What we are witnessing is not collapse. It is a shedding of pretense.

And the ideology beneath it is not conservatism. It is white supremacist fascism.

It does not walk. It swarms. It coordinates. It reacts. It bites.

It does not care about borders. It cares about blood.

If this moment feels historic, it’s because it is.

We have built the cage.

We have filled it.

We have televised it.

We are laughing as it closes.

This is not a time for moderation. It is not a time for euphemism. If we cannot name a concentration camp on our own soil, we have lost the moral vocabulary necessary for democracy.

So name it.

Alligator Auschwitz.

Call it what it is.

Because history will not care how polite we were while fascism grew fangs.

It will only ask why we let it.

America is not collapsing. It is shedding its skin—again.

The latest mask of pluralistic democracy is peeling. What we called law is unraveling—revealing who it was always meant to serve. And beneath it all, the foundation is exposed: genocide, slavery, exclusion—still operative, still sacred to power.

This is not dysfunction. It is design.

What we are witnessing is not the chaos of decline, but the choreography of preservation: a dominant caste, cornered by justice, reverting to instinct.

White supremacy isn’t fading. It’s foaming at the mouth. It’s thrashing. It’s biting. It’s devouring.

The Swarm Has Been Awakened

White supremacy no longer walks on two legs. It moves as a colony—frantic, synchronized, operating without thought. Like disturbed ants boiling from the ground, it reacts to the faintest tremor of change. A Black child learning their rich history. A migrant child crossing a border for a better life. A trans child existing.

That’s all it takes for the swarm to move.

Not to debate. To attack.

This is not ideological. It is biological. A reflexive mass panic from a caste that senses its control evaporating. It snarls in legislation, bites in executive orders, and spreads like pheromones through media, school boards, and sheriffs’ offices.

It doesn’t need coordination. It is coordination.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA did not erase the 14th Amendment—it did something more terrifying. It turned it into territorial fiction. The president can now void birthright citizenship protections in parts of the country where no lawsuit is filed. A baby born in New York may be American. In Texas, maybe not.

This is not governance. This is hunting ground logic—marking which territories are safe for prey, and which are open season.

The court did not interpret the Constitution. It fed it to the swarm.

Look closely. It is not Trump alone. It is not the far-right fringe.

It is your neighbor with the “Back the Blue” sticker who cheers when ICE drags out a citizen. It is the white woman on the school board banning books.

It is the judge who claims “originalism” while cutting the 14th Amendment into ribbons.

They do not act alone. They act as a species defending its nest. Territorial. Unthinking. Violent.

They do not speak in policy. They hiss in fear. They do not want justice. They want dominance disguised as law.

Ask José Hermosillo—a cognitively disabled U.S. citizen detained for ten days, despite his papers, despite his birth certificate, despite his tears.

Ask Mario Guevara—a Salvadoran-born journalist, legal resident, father—arrested while filming an ICE raid.

Or there is Johnny Noviello - A 49-year-old Canadian, lawful permanent resident in Miami— who died in ICE custody. He had lived in the U.S. since the 1980s. Detained for a decades-old conviction.

And Isidro Perez - A Cuban man, 75 years old, in the U.S. nearly 60 years. Arrested in Key Largo, sent to Krome Detention Center, hospitalized, and died while still in custody.

These are not the “exceptions.”

They are the ritual offerings that keep the swarm fed.

They scream “illegal” at the brown and disabled.

They arrest reporters like prey flushed from the brush.

They strip humanity from the people they fear—so they can justify the hunt.

This Is the Death Instinct of Empire

The swarm does not evolve.

It remembers—the slave patrols, the lynching trees, the Japanese internment camps, the sterilizations, the Red Scare raids, the border wall, the cop’s boot. The list goes on, and on, and on.

This is not America gone wrong. This is America remembering itself.

And now, the white supremacist hive senses extinction—and chooses extermination instead.

What remains of democracy lies scattered—shredded by MAGA judge rulings, drowned by Republican gerrymanders, silenced by wallets of billionaires. The Constitution means nothing to the swarm except as a flag to wear while it feeds.

They want the appearance of law, not its substance.

They want elections they cannot lose.

They want laws they do not follow.

They want rights they can revoke—at will, by region, by race.

They do not want coexistence.

They want supremacy without negotiation.

This Is Not Politics. This Is Predation.

You do not reason with a beast that bites you while tearing up the constitution.

You expose it.

You disarm it.

You outlast it.

That means abolition. Not reform.

Sanctuary. Not silence.

Solidarity—not as sentiment, but as survival.

If you are white and afraid to speak: your silence feeds the swarm.

If you are brown and hunted: you are not alone.

If you are human: this is your fight now.

Bottom Line: White Supremacy Is Not Dying Quietly

It is howling, clawing at the future, shrieking “illegal” at the mirror while it convulses, and eating the Constitution one clause at a time.

It behaves like the animal it always accused others of being: irrational, foaming, incapable of coexisting. Utterly rabid.

It sees democracy as a threat, and multiracial future as extinction.

And it would rather burn the world than share it.

White supremacy is not the exception. It is the organism of rot and destruction.

And it will not stop until we cut out its teeth—every last one.

Opinion by: Aisha K. Staggers, Editor-At-Large

Donald Trump let over a million Americans die from COVID-19. That’s not hyperbole—it’s historical fact. He downplayed the virus, ignored science, undermined health officials, mocked mask-wearing, and pushed snake oil instead of solutions. But what if I told you the reason he didn’t act wasn’t just incompetence or arrogance—but intent? What if his inaction was deliberate?

In the early days of the pandemic, reports began circulating that more Black and Latino Americans were contracting and dying from COVID-19 compared to other Americans. Instead of treating that as a national emergency, Trump and his inner circle saw an opportunity of political convenience. A data point to justify letting the virus run its course. This reporting was the feature—not a flaw—of the chaos that ensued.

It wasn’t a failure of leadership. It was a practice born of convenience: the perfect circumstance to launch a trial run of Stephen Miller’s eugenics revival. Let the virus burn through vulnerable communities—especially those they’ve always considered expendable. Then, when the bodies started piling up, Trump turned the country’s rage toward China and stoked a wave of anti-Asian hate that still hasn’t fully subsided. We're just not talking about it anymore.

Trump didn’t botch the response. He weaponized it. The cruelty wasn’t accidental—it was a choice rooted in his hatred for anyone non-white.

While everyone was watching that distraction, here’s what went unreported in plain English: of the 1,147,000 Americans who died from COVID, 759,258 were white. That’s the majority. No, it wasn’t Black and brown people driving that death toll. It was white people—specifically white antivaxxers, white antimaskers, and white conspiracy theorists who turned science into politics and personal responsibility into a culture war. They refused masks, vaccines, and common sense—and then turned around and blamed everyone else as they died.

Read more

There’s a malignant tumor in the body politic, and America keeps pretending it’s benign.

The “manosphere”—that toxic stew of grievance-fueled masculinity that festers across podcasts, YouTube channels, forums, and increasingly, the halls of government—is not fringe anymore. It’s not harmless. And it’s not just “young men trying to find themselves” or “men expressing frustrations in a changing world.” It is organized, ideological, and deadly serious in its mission: to reassert patriarchal dominance at the expense of everyone who isn’t straight, white, cisgender, male, and Christian.

Read more

Tonight, you’re not just hearing a shift. You’re hearing the torch being torn from trembling hands. On Tuesday night, something tectonic shifted in the crust of American politics. Something the pundit class will try to minimize, the billionaires will try to bury, and the centrists will try to spin. But the numbers out of NYC tonight, don’t lie.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist and state assemblyman from Queens, surged to a shocking first-round lead in New York City’s 2025 Democratic mayoral primary. Beating Andrew Cuomo…yes, that Andrew Cuomo… in early returns wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in this economy. Not in this media landscape. And definitely not in a party still dominated by donors with Silicon Valley handshakes and Wall Street wallets.

But here we are. And Mamdani’s rise isn’t a fluke. It’s the loudest fucking flare in the sky tonight. For the Democratic Party, this is a warning. The base is no longer asking. It’s demanding.

A Party Bursting at the Seams

Millennials and Gen Z voters have waited their turn long enough. They’ve voted, organized, marched, gotten crushed by debt, lived through recessions, watched the planet catch fire, and been told, repeatedly, to “be patient” while their futures were auctioned off to the highest bidder. The neoliberal technocrats in charge promised steady hands, but instead delivered band-aids on bullet wounds.

Mamdani’s candidacy channels a generational fury long dismissed by the political class. That it erupted in one of the country’s most famously liberal cities makes it all the more potent. Tonight, that fury didn’t just simmer, it took on a new fresh new life.

The left wants rent control, public housing, free transit, police accountability, and a climate plan that doesn’t begin with “We’re working with Exxon.” It wants leaders who understand the now. That means AI. That means cryptocurrency. That means tech policy shaped by people who know the difference between an algorithm and a PDF editor. That means being able to name, not just fundraise from, the community you claim to serve.

The Boomer Stronghold Is Cracking

Let’s say the quiet part out loud: the Democratic Party is still being run by people who need staffers to open a Google Doc. Mamdani’s lead proves that young voters are tired of pretending this out of touch representation is okay.

They don’t want “AI task forces” led by people who think ChatGPT is a new streaming service. They want bold, competent, morally clear leadership from people who didn’t come of age in a Cold War hangover.

It’s not ageist to say it’s time to pass the baton, it’s survivalist. If you’re running a city, a state, or a national party and you don’t understand how the tools of today shape the crises of tomorrow, then step aside.

And let’s be clear: the so-called “kids”? They’re millennials—many of whom now are middle managers with mortgages and teenagers. The joke’s on the establishment. They’re not just alright. They’re ready to govern. And they will do it soon.

The Mamdani Effect

Mamdani’s insurgent campaign has been powered not by big checks, but by community energy, grassroots dollars, and a progressive vision built on economic justice, not corporate appeasement. His lead in one of the most expensive, high-profile primaries in America is proof: the base is hungry for something different, and finally, it’s willing to fight for it.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a protest vote, it’s the first clean rupture in the Democratic Party’s aging armor. The first unmistakable crack in a dam that’s been under pressure for decades. And now, that dam is starting to break, loudly, publicly, and all at once.

It’s not just Mamdani. It’s school board takeovers in red states. It’s the explosion of labor union activism at Starbucks, Amazon, and across the gig economy. It’s climate activists running for office instead of waiting for permission.

It’s a generation that watched both parties fumble the future, and is now grabbing the wheel firmly with both hands.

The Reckoning Is Here

The GOP establishment already had its implosion. MAGA swallowed the so-called Grand Old Party and spit out a machine of resentment, extremism, and culture war chaos. Democrats watched—smug, calm, confident their house was in order. They leaned into centrist appeasement. Talked about “unity,” tried to “work together.” Drifted farther from their core base of big tent, working-people, values.

But we told you: You don’t work with fascists. You have to beat them. Everywhere.

You don’t check the polls to find your voice. You listen to your communities and lead with purpose. People aren’t whispering, they’re screaming: do something.

And now? The reckoning has come for the establishment Democratic Party. Mamdani’s win is just the prelude.

This isn’t about “moving the party left.” It’s about exposing what’s already true:

The left is here. The left is leading. The left is winning the message. And today? The votes. The only question now is whether the establishment is wise enough to get out of the way, or whether it’s also going to get eaten alive, MAGA-style.

Because here’s the truth: the people who actually want to fix communities are ready.

They’re labeled “extremists” and “idealists” by donor-class operatives, while the right is actively ripping people off the streets, banning books, criminalizing protest, and consolidating power in broad daylight.

And what are progressives doing? Fighting for health care, housing, climate justice, trans rights, abortion access, union protections, and an actual future.

Meanwhile, half the Democratic establishment just voted against impeachment—today. Our democracy is dangling by a thread. And if you’re not getting the fuck out of the way? You’re not neutral. You’re helping the fascists win.

Mamdani is progressive. Mamdani is idealistic. And NYC will be better off for it should he win—unless the establishment prefers a corrupt status quo that protects donors, not actual people.

I think it’s due-fucking-time to stop pretending. The left isn’t the problem. The progressive ideas that lift people up—health care, housing, climate action, real safety—aren’t the problem.

The problem is a Democratic donor class and political elite more terrified of grassroots organizers than of the fascists clawing at the foundations of democracy.

They fear disruption of their power and position, more than our collective imminent destruction. They’d rather cling to power than share it. And they’d rather lose to the right than win with the left.

Who benefits from that betrayal? Because it sure as hell isn’t the people they claim to represent. And the ones who just want to fundraise off our pain? They won’t be pushed. They won’t be reasoned with. They’re going to be replaced—by people who actually give a damn.

History has already begun rewriting its roster.

Since then, the crackdown has only deepened. And the resistance? It’s only grown louder.

Now, armed troops occupy our streets. Roughly 4,000 National Guard soldiers have been deployed, with 2,100 stationed right here in the heart of Los Angeles. Another 700 active-duty Marines joined them, locked and loaded. Not for war overseas, but for political suppression at home.

All told, this militarization against American citizens is costing us $134 million. Not to protect us, but to remind us who they think holds the power.

But here’s the thing: they wouldn’t spend that kind of money if they weren’t afraid. Afraid of our solidarity. Afraid of our organizing. Afraid of the community we’ve built and the power we’re reclaiming.

ICE raids continue in neighborhoods like Bell and Maywood, where families live with one eye on the street and the other on their children’s futures. Koreatown has gone quiet. Not for lack of life, but from fear. Vendors are vanishing. Citizens are being detained. Undocumented people are being dehumanized on a daily basis. Economies once rooted in resilience are being strangled. But don’t mistake silence for surrender.

Just beneath the surface, this city is vibrating. With love. With resistance. With a defiant refusal to disappear.

Senator Alex Padilla was tackled for demanding answers. He rose up and took that fight to the Senate floor. Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Newsom sued the federal government. Legal challenges are mounting. Courtrooms are heating up. And the people? We’ve already drawn the line.

They came at us with smoke bombs and armored trucks. We answered with rallies, prayer circles, livestreams, and mariachis on the sidewalk. Folklórico dancers stomped defiance into the pavement. Families passed around maps to sanctuary homes. Mutual aid flowed like lifeblood. Activists trained residents and businesses in their rights. TikTok told the truth. This isn’t just a protest. It’s a movement reborn.

And it’s led by us. By the 47 percent of this city who are Latino. By the immigrants and children of immigrants who built this place, teach its kids, drive its buses, grow its trees, and cook its meals. We’re not fringe. We are the foundation.

They thought they’d make an example out of Los Angeles. Thought we’d look away and abandon our neighbors. But we stood up. We stood together. We became the example. And when the history books ask what Los Angeles did in the face of fascism, they’ll tell stories of civil disobedience, community power, joyful defiance, and righteous trouble.

Because this fight is no longer about policy. It’s about survival. Dignity. Humanity. And anyone still pretending otherwise has chosen blindness.

Those who say “they should’ve done it the right way” while folks are ripped from court houses, mere steps from a judge, are two steps from justifying Anne Frank’s arrest. Some people have abandoned their humanity. But we haven’t. We won’t. We will not cede the moral ground to sadists. We lead with love. And we lead with clarity.

Here’s the truth: Los Angeles is under military occupation by our own President. Not because we’re violent, but because we’re powerful. Not because we’re criminals, but because we’re organized, multiracial, multilingual, and unyielding in our diversity.

They came with armored cars and flash bangs. We came with tambourines and joy. They came with Marines. We came with microphones and livestreams. They came to shut us down. We came to rise.

This isn’t just Los Angeles’ fight. This is America’s test.

So join the neighborhood ICE-watching patrols. Support the bond funds. Donate to the many go-fund-me’s for legal support. Keep your cameras ready. Keep your neighbors close (and actually check on them). And above all, do not look away.

Because history is watching. And we are writing the next chapter.

Los Angeles stands. Fierce. United. And beautifully, irreversibly unafraid.

It’s been ten years since Donald Trump descended that gilded escalator and declared that Mexicans were rapists, kickstarting a campaign fueled by white grievance, racial scapegoating, and lies. The next day, a young white supremacist walked into Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat through Bible study, and then executed nine Black parishioners. Among them was State Senator Clementa Pinckney—a rising star in South Carolina politics whose life was cut short in a massacre that was both a hate crime and a political assassination.

It’s tempting to treat these events as separate: one a launch of a political campaign, the other an act of racial terrorism. But they were linked by something much deeper: a shared belief in white dominance and a violent reaction to the changing face of American power. What we have witnessed in the ten years since is not just a rise in extremism, but a mainstreaming of political violence—and we are now living with its consequences.

The details of past weekend’s violence—still unfolding, still too raw—tell us this tragedy didn’t come from nowhere. It is the inevitable outcome of a decade of permission, provocation, and political protection for those who believe violence is a legitimate means of reclaiming the country they believe is being “stolen” from them. The signs have always been there. They were in the tiki torches of Charlottesville, in the zip ties of January 6, in the countless bomb threats to libraries and synagogues and Planned Parenthood clinics. They’re in the governors and members of Congress who openly carry weapons in campaign ads, who talk about “real Americans” and “traitors,” and who have stopped condemning violence because their base no longer sees it as wrong.

Let’s be clear: the Republican Party (and its MAGA base) has become a breeding ground for stochastic terrorism. The kind of rhetoric Trump unleashed in 2015 wasn’t new, but it had never before been delivered with such impunity from a presidential frontrunner—then a nominee, then a president, and now a twice-impeached felon back in office. The results are not theoretical. They are measurable. Hate crimes surged under his presidency. Mass shootings targeting Black, Jewish, Asian, LGBTQ+, and immigrant communities have followed his speeches like clockwork. People are dying because the temperature has been raised so high that political disagreement now feels like a warzone.

And that’s because, in many ways, it is.

Political violence doesn’t always look like civil war—but the ingredients are the same: a breakdown of shared truth, dehumanization of the opposition, the arming of civilians, and the erosion of democratic norms. We’ve now had sitting members of Congress caught aiding insurrectionists, governors threatening to defy federal courts, and elected officials openly mocking the victims of political violence on social media. The GOP has gone from dog whistles to bullhorns to outright threats—and the bodies continue to pile up.

This didn’t start with Trump. But he made it profitable. He made it popular. He made it patriotic. And, let's be honest, he just makes it worse!

The most devastating part is that so many Americans still don’t see this for what it is. They’re still looking for lone wolves instead of systems. They’re still talking about "mental health" instead of white supremacy. They are still saying, “it doesn't happen here,” while it happens everywhere. They’re still hoping we can vote our way out of fascism, while refusing to acknowledge that it's already inside the house.

When Clementa Pinckney was murdered, President Obama gave a eulogy that reminded the country what grace looked like in the face of horror. He sang “Amazing Grace” and called for gun reform and racial reckoning. It was a moment of national mourning, yes—but also a warning. That warning was ignored and the violence continued.

Today, the flag like that which covered Pinckney’s coffin has been replaced with the banners of hate and treason. Prayer circles have turned into protest barricades. And once again, the violence is political—because the political moment we are in is violent. Trump isn’t just stoking the flames from the sidelines; he is the president again—this time without guardrails, without shame, and without the pretense of democratic restraint. The violence isn’t incidental. It’s embedded. And if we don’t confront it now, we may not get the chance to do so again.

Look at Minnesota this past weekend: on June 14, a gunman impersonating a police officer broke into the homes of Minnesota Democrats. He fatally shot House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in Brooklyn Park, then severely wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in Champlin—wounding Hoffman nine times and his wife eight times. Authorities later discovered a homemade "hit list" in the shooter’s vehicle, targeting nearly 70 abortion providers, Democratic officials, and community leaders. A massive manhunt ensued across rural Minnesota and the Twin Cities, the largest in state history. That same day, millions attended "No Kings" protests across the country defying warnings to stay home. While overwhelmingly peaceful, the rallies underscored the gravity of the threat in broader American politics. Instead of honoring the lives lost that day, Donald Trump held a military birthday parade for himself (the 250th anniversary of the army was a red herring).

Minnesota isn’t just a tragic outlier—it is a sixth-grade exam in the violent civics Trump has authored. Extremism disguised in uniforms; manifestos hidden in trunks; elected officials hunted because of their beliefs. And a president who categorizes the act as horrific—but refuses to contact grieving state leaders, instead calling the governor "whacked out."

This is the new normal: political violence exported from fringe conspiracy groups into homes, into votes, into Washington, and into your neighborhood. And the engine behind it is no longer a distant echo—you can hear it rumbling down Pennsylvania Avenue.

We are not on the brink of authoritarian violence—we are in it. We have been in it. The question now is not whether political violence will escalate. It is whether Americans still believe enough in democracy to resist it, to name it, and to fight like hell against it. Because if we treat these assassinations, insurrections, and hate-fueled rampages as isolated incidents, we will continue to lose elected leaders, vulnerable communities, and our moral compass one funeral at a time. The alarm has been ringing for ten years. If we keep hitting snooze, we will wake up to find that we slept right through the coup. 

Every June I celebrate things things: Black Music Month, Prince’s birthday, and the right and the courage of my daughter and others to love.

In a country that wraps itself in slogans about freedom, the most defiant thing some of us have ever done is choose love. To love freely, love truthfully, love without apology. That’s what Pride Month is really about—not just parades or hashtags, but honoring the unshakable courage of people who dared to love in a world built to shame and punish them for it.

I’m a mother of a child who identifies as queer, and I’m writing this as both testimony and protest. Because it’s not enough to put up rainbow flags while lawmakers are tearing down human rights. It’s not enough to quote Marsha P. Johnson if we won’t protect the Black and brown trans kids still fighting to exist. And it’s not enough to say “love is love” unless we also say: love is resistance.

Because make no mistake, we are at war. Not of our choosing, but of our necessity. Across the country, politicians have declared open season on LGBTQ+ lives—especially trans youth. They ban books. They criminalize gender-affirming care. They strip away dignity with every speech, every bill, every bathroom ban. And they do it all while preaching “family values” and “parental rights”—as if those rights belong only to the parents who hate, not to the ones who love.

Let me be clear: my love is a parental right. My support is a form of defense. And my child’s existence is not up for debate.

So yes, love is radical. Because it breaks cycles. It builds what hate tries to destroy. And it refuses to flinch in the face of cruelty. I think often about the people in our history who loved despite the risk—interracial couples who faced prison for marrying, queer people who built community during the AIDS crisis, trans women of color who threw bricks at Stonewall not for spectacle but survival. So many of us are here because someone, somewhere, had the audacity to love.

That’s the legacy my child inherits. Not shame. Not fear. But power. Every time I look at her, I see someone walking in their truth—fully themselves, fully divine. And I am reminded that the future belongs to the lovers, not the lawmakers.

To the other parents out there: if your love for your child is conditional, transactional, or performative, this is your wake-up call. Don’t be the reason they shrink. Be the reason they shine.

And to every queer kid reading this: you are not a problem to be fixed. You are a miracle that keeps unfolding. Your joy is rebellion. Your existence is testimony. And your love? Your love is how we win.

This Pride Month, let’s get honest. Rainbow capitalism won’t save us. Allyship without action won’t protect us. And silence sure as hell won’t shield us from the storm. What will? Radical, public, unapologetic love.

The kind that tells the truth.

The kind that fights back.

The kind that makes freedom possible.

Because love—real love—is resistance. And we should never stop wielding it like the power it is.