Stop Buying Republican Bullshit on Immigration: There Is No "Invasion"

The red lights flashing the word "pretext" were turned up to 100 in a presidential "proclamation" last week (if by "proclamation," you mean, "a steaming, stinking heap of buzzwords guaranteed to make the yahoos go dick-punching mad with rage"). "Over the last 4 years, the United States has endured a full-scale invasion of aliens entering and remaining in the country illegally, causing a relentless onslaught of crime, vagrancy, violence, and death in countless American communities," it says. This "lawless invasion" has apparently made it harder to get into a hospital or go to school. 

Now, you, being a hopefully rational human or freakishly smart animal, might think, "Umm, isn't crime at historic lows?" And you'd be right. You might then question whether there is a "relentless onslaught" of anything but hard workers who commit crimes at a lower rate than the fucked-up Americans who are accusing them of committing crimes. In fact, even as the numbers of people crossing into this country at the southern border surged to record highs in the post-Covid era in the first couple of years of Joe Biden's presidency, the crime rate dropped, which, frankly, could be used to suggest that crime goes down when more migrants come here (I know that's not the reason, but I'm saying that the bullshit inferences politicians make can go both ways). 

Meanwhile, Republicans are going completely bugfuck insane on deportations and lies about our immigration system. Today, President Trump himself shat into his Truth Toilet, "Our Country has been INVADED by 21,000,000 Illegal Aliens, many of whom are Murderers and Criminals of the Highest Order, and if we aren’t allowed to remove them because of a radicalized and incompetent Court System, the USA will quickly and violently become a CRIME RIDDEN THIRD WORLD NATION, NEVER TO SEE GREATNESS AGAIN." And then he went on to scream about winning the 2024 election and how that lets him do anything he wants, as if that's how the fucking government in this country works.

Meanwhile, the man who is no doubt the infected cockhole creating the racist deportation policy, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who looks like he brags about how he jacks off to videos of starving Palestinian children, makes Trump look like a model of rationality as he screams on various news shows about how much he loves "Americans," which means, you know, "white people." He gave away the game on the rhetoric being used by the White House and the rest of the Nazi right. "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion," Miller slurped lizardly. "So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at." And while the White House insists it's just for undocumented migrants, I'm mean, come the fuck on. Of course not. Of fucking course not.

See, that's the whole thing about the calculated use of "invasion." It's necessary to say that we are under some kind of coordinated attack in order to unleash the unchecked, unreviewable ability to simply jail, deport, kidnap, or, fuck it, murder anyone who gets in the way of the Christian nationalist takeover of the country, starting with the Alien Enemies Act and getting to martial law. And, no, I don't think I'm overstating it. I think with the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka for trying to find out what the fuck is going on at an ICE facility in his own goddamn city, with the threats to arrest Democratic members of Congress who were there with him, and so much more, including the ongoing effort to disappear non-citizens who say things like "Israel shouldn't murder every Palestinian and take Gaza" (I mean, the war's end would limit Miller's spank bank), but I think with all that, I'm probably not freaking out enough, and I am freaked the fuck out.

What is encouraging about Democrats directly confronting the increasingly lawless actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs and their increasingly brazenly thuggish behavior is that it shows they are finally giving up on trying to stupidly appease Republicans on border policy. Simply put, there is no appeasing them without mass deportations and suspension of constitutional rights. It was stupid when Democrats shifted right with the proposed border deal that Trump got shitcanned last year, and it was stupid when they didn't counter Republican hysteria over every single individual crime committed by an undocumented person. Instead, they leaned into the shift in public opinion on immigration that the fearmongering had achieved and essentially gave credence to the GOP's lies in a moment when they should have said, "No, they are fucking liars." 

Take just one thing that Trump, Miller, and the rest of the liars use: the supposed war being waged against this country by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Remember how they supposedly took over the town of Aurora, Colorado? And Fox "news" and its devolved descendant news outlets went berserker over the idea? Yeah, you know how many gang members local cops in Aurora found there? A dozen in a city of nearly 400,000 people. Either the 12 gang members had a fucking nuclear missile or everyone was lying. Oh, and Trump tried to say that the Venezuelan government was sending these highly-trained drug dealers in to overthrow the country. But a leaked intelligence memo said that was fucking bullshit, as if it ever made sense that the estimated 600 Tren de Aragua cartel members in the United States are an actual threat. Yes, I said, "600." You can arrest them, you know, and give them their habeas rights and then incarcerate them, like you would any other fucking criminals found guilty.

I will say it again: There is no invasion. And it's some punk-ass bullshit to act like there is one, like the United States can't handle a handful of criminals.

Last week, Andrea Flores of FWD.us addressed Senate Democrats and told them that it's time to stop ceding the border issue to Republican scare tactics, that being MAGA-lite lost them votes, and that they needed to come up with actual solutions, not just shit like limiting asylum. They need to come up with paths to citizenship, support for due process, and more. That also includes getting funding for immigration courts while opposing funding for the savage actions of ICE. Hopefully, it's a message Democrats take to heart because if you allow that the savages have a point, then you're pretty much a savage yourself.

Hell, I'd start hammering away on the most blatantly racist thing I've seen in a while: the quick approval of refugee status for white fucks from South Africa. That's literal white privilege. The refugee program was shut down for anyone who was a shade darker than eggshell. But, here we are, letting actual apartheid lovers jump the line. That's an easy story to make people appalled.

Donald Trump on Meet the Press: Because Fuck You, America

Today, in his "interview" (if by "interview," you mean, "a psychotic head trip into a soulless abyss") with Kristen "I'm not a reporter, but I play one on TV" Welker on Meet the Press, President Donald Trump repeatedly told the average American to kiss his gargantuan ass. Time and again, offered a chance to provide comfort, reassurance, or any measure of empathy, Trump's answer was, essentially, "Everyone can fucking kiss my gigantic ass. Just plant your lips on it. There's more than enough room for all you suckers and losers."

You might have heard about the moment that he said that children can go fuck themselves. He insisted, repeatedly, creepily, that an 11-year-old "beautiful baby girl" doesn't need to own more shit. "I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five," he said in response to questions about the effect of his tariffs. Later, pressed again on this point, he added, "We don't need to feed the beast." Now, I'm no fan of people being materialist assholes, but what the ever-loving fuck is he talking about? If a Democrat, like, say, Bernie Sanders, had ever said something as remotely anti-capitalist as this, the red feathers would have been tarred on them immediately by the GOP as they screeched about "Marxism" and "Communism" and probably Hunter Biden's laptop because, fuck it, they always do. It's the Benghazi of email servers. 

(And, by the way, 30? 250? Those are pretty precise fucking numbers. I'm betting someone's the dickhead grandpa bitching about all the things his grandkids have.)

Beyond that, look at the absolute disdain wrapped up in what he's saying. "You must do without," Trump's saying. "You must have less so that Elon Musk and I and all our billionaire friends can have more because fuck you. Fuck you for not being a billionaire. Now shut the fuck up before I limit it to two dolls and three pencils." 

That kind of abject hatred of people who have to make do with less than a gold toilet ran through the interview. When Welker brought up prices rising on basic things, like "Tires, strollers, some clothing," Trump found the idea ridiculous. "When you say strollers are going up, what kind of a thing? I'm saying that gasoline is going down. Gasoline is thousands of times more important than a stroller or some place?" Well, yes and no. A lot of people need strollers, which he'd know if he ever took care of a child. And he's lying about gasoline. 

Welker asked Trump if he would consider tariff relief for small businesses, and he scoffed. No, really, he scoffed, "Why do you always mention that. You know, you pick up a couple of little businesses. What about the car business?" Later, he said that he doesn't need to help small businesses because, through the magic of tariffs, they will make more money than they ever have. It's like he realized he said, "I don't give a shit about small business owners. How much money did they ever give me?" and had to throw them the bone of profiting in some undefined future when we have The Greatest Economy Ever.

It's not that Trump was telling Americans, "Let them eat cake." It's that he's telling us all the cake is for him and we can go fuck our selves if we don't like watching him stuff it down his gaping maw. Welker asked him about the price tag for his upcoming celebration of his tiny dick, the military parade he's forcing the armed services to do on his birthday. Like a toddler looking at dump truck toys, he responded that the cost is "Peanuts compared to the value of doing it. We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it." Yeah, to the tune of around $45 million. Trump take cake.

"Fuck you, America" was the theme of the interview, just like it's the fuel that's powering this cursed  administration. When Welker asked him, simply, straightforwardly, if he, as president, has to uphold the Constitution, Trump said, "I don't know." So Trump just said something that was so basic, so traitorous, that every American should be calling for his removal from office or the fuckin' guillotine. And he's such a little bitch about everything, constantly saying that shit is up to "the lawyers," as if he's not the goddamn president of the fucked United States. Man up and give an opinion, you dumb motherfucker.

Later in the bullshit interview, he left open whether or not he could run for a third term, which, you know, he can't unless there's an amendment to the Constitution. But he simply can't bring himself to say that he's term-limited because it would slow the fucking grift, like his "Trump 2028" hats. Trump said more legitimately anti-American shit on Meet the Press than Fidel Castro on a rum bender. Fuck, Castro's ghost was probably looking up from Hell thinking, "Oh, I wish I'd thought of that" before being sodomized with a giant lit cigar again.

This post could go on for another couple thousand words about the sheer abundance of ways that Trump demonstrated that he's an evil moron bent on the destruction of the country. But lemme finish with one more giant "Fuck you" to us all. Walking through Trump's whorehouse chic Mar-a-Lago shithole, Welker got Trump to talk about his future plans for his other residence. "We are going to make and build a ballroom, which they’ve wanted for probably a hundred years at the White House. And it’ll be a world-class, beautiful ballroom," he bragged. Now, the East Room has been used for dances and banquets and shit, but Trump wants to build a $100 million expansion to pimp out the joint like the aforementioned brothel. 

Trump says, at first, that he will pay for it. But then he adds a comment that gives the game away: "Yeah, I'm not going to ask the government for money. I'll fund it, and I'm sure we'll have some donations to it. But it's not an inexpensive thing. It'll cost a lot of money." 

He's gonna get a ton of bribe-donations to make his garish, loud, permanent impact on the seat of power. It will be corruption at levels we've never seen before, except for all the times Trump has done it. And no one will do a thing about it because fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck all of us.  

One Tale of How the Trump Administration Hates Americans

We can laugh as Donald Trump bumblefucks us all into oblivion, sleeping at Pope Francis's funeral, saying dumb shit all the time, not understanding what his own administration is doing, just looking like a shabby used car salesman at a lot near the airport in some godforsaken small Midwestern city. God, what an embarrassing buffoon. Meanwhile, Trump's savage minions, with his dullard approval, are regularly doing actual, real world harm, and not just in the huge, Constitution-breaking ways like denial of habeas rights in court or arresting judges. Sometimes, you have to dig a little deeper to see how fucking terrible life is going to be for the next few years, at least, in the devolving United States. 

For instance, in Lowndes County, Alabama, for decades, the mostly Black residents have been dealing with a wastewater issue, as in there is shit in their water and sewage that is emptied into lawns because of lack of "access to municipal sewage or a working septic tank." Yes, in the United States, we have billionaires riding giant dick rockets into the sky so they can play astronaut like deranged children, but we can't build the infrastructure needed so that thousands of people don't have puddles of human shit on their lawns. Residents in Lowndes County have tested positive for hookworm and other shit-related things. Fucking awful. As one commentator pointed out, "There is no greater concentration of hookworm-positive cases anywhere else in the developed world than Lowndes County."

Alabama wasn't doing, well, shit about the shit, so the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden investigated Alabama starting in 2021. The investigation was into whether Alabama, or the Alabama Department of Public Health, was violating the civil rights of the people of Lowndes County and forcing them to live in shit water because they're Black. And guess what they found? After 18 months, "the investigation revealed that ADPH’s enforcement of sanitation laws threatened residents of Lowndes County with criminal penalties and even potential property loss for sanitation conditions they did not have the capacity to alleviate. The investigation also revealed that ADPH engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with raw sewage. The investigation revealed that despite ADPH’s awareness of the issues and the disproportionate burden and impact placed on Black residents in Lowndes County, it failed to take meaningful actions to remedy these conditions." They found that 80% of residents lacked access to adequate sewage services. Reports in the media prior to 2021 showed children playing near pools of human shit. 

So Alabama and Lowndes County entered into an agreement with the DOJ and HHS in 2023 to finally fucking help the people there. To reiterate: The state of Alabama agreed to the terms of the agreement to take care of the shit water problem. It was an environmental justice victory.

And, of course, the whole thing was canceled by Donald Trump and his racist cockscabs. If you're wondering if they did it in the cuntiest way possible, well, you know the answer to that question. Here's what an Assistant Attorney General in the ironically named "Office of Civil Rights" at the Trump DOJ said: "The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens...President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria." 

You'd think that making it so Americans don't live in actual human shit would be a general "justice" thing. But Black people don't have that right, even if they are the ones living in the worst circumstance and most in need of immediate action.

The state health officer in Alabama said they still want to go through with all the changes to the sewage systems and new septic tanks, but the projects depend on funding from the American Rescue Plan. He doesn't know if the funding of the program will continue. Why should he? The brute awfulness of Trump's war on Americans pretty much demands that he rescind any funds previously budgeted to help people who aren't rich dickheads. 

See, this is the problem with people saying things like "Well, fuck Alabama for voting for Trump." We only do that (and, yeah, I've been guilty of it when I've felt pissy) because of the bullshit anomaly of the electoral college, which forces us to think of the national electorate by state instead of as a nation. Over 68% of the voters in Lowndes County went to Harris. They very much did not vote for this. 

The whole situation is just the violent absurdity of claiming anything that is related to non-white people is done merely because of diversity, equity, and inclusion ideas. How the fuck is making it so that Americans don't have shit in the water wrong on any level or for any reason? If you have a problem with that, then you are the problem. As Rep. Terri Sewell, the congresswoman from the district, said, "This agreement had nothing to do with DEI. It was about addressing a public health crisis that has forced generations of children and families to endure the health hazards of living in proximity to raw sewage, as the DOJ itself documented. By terminating it, the Trump Administration has put its blatant disregard for the health of my constituents on full display.”

Sure, sure, you can pull out a megaphone and scream, "DEI!" and then smile as if you've accomplished  something. But all you've done is reveal that you hate Americans, especially non-white Americans, and you don't give a fuck who knows or how it hurts them. Until this administration is gone, the shit will keep flowing through our systems.

How the Fuck Do Some Democrats Not Get That Due Process Is the Fight?

You keep hearing this shit from some Democrats, often unnamed: the denial of due process for and the United States government's kidnapping of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is some kind of crafty "distraction" that Donald Trump and Republicans have conjured up. Just this morning, on CNN's State of Dana Bash's Concerned Face, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, after stating that what happened to Abrego Garcia is fucked up, said, "They're doing it because they want to distract people from the fact that our economy is in a tailspin thanks to them, their tariffs, the fact that you have got businesses that are looking at closing down or not investing, that costs are up, chaos is up, corruption is up, and the market is down."

And she added, "So, for the most cynical reasons, this is the case they have picked to not obey the law. Maybe one -- they will. All of a sudden, they will just send him back. Or maybe they will be held in contempt. I think it's really important for people to realize they're following the law in other cases. They have just decided not to follow the law with this guy."

Except she's completely fucking wrong. They're not "following the law" in other cases, and it's very much not just "this guy." Every single man who was sent to El Salvador was denied due process for removal from the country. In fact, it was so much not only "this guy" that the Supreme Court stepped in to say, "Whoa, whoa, motherfuckers. You can't send another planeload of people to another country without giving them their day in court." So I honestly don't know what the fuck Klobuchar is talking about. 

That aside, I can't begin to comprehend where the fuck this hesitation to jump into the fight on Abrego Garcia and the rule of law is coming from. Perhaps they fear that some magical thing will show up that proves Abrego Garcia is a human-trafficking leader of a terrorist gang and not an apprentice sheet metal worker raising three American kids with his American wife. But he would still have the right to due process, so what the fuck?

There's a strain of Democrats so devoted to making the battle over tariffs the main thrust of an attack on Trump and the Republican Party that they actually seem to believe that the White House cannily created this situation with the alleged "criminals" and "terrorists" they rounded up and shipped off to a hell hole in order to intentionally distract from the tariff madness. They can't see that what really happened is that Trump bumblefucked into a situation where his deluded cabal of moronic goons and dim, drooling racists stepped on their dicks repeatedly, shit the legal bed, and now are trying to hide that they bruised their dicks themselves.

So, no, Gov. Gavin Newsom, it's not "the distraction of the day. The art of distraction," as he said. It's not "a mistake to focus Democratic opposition on border and immigration," as one of those anonymous "operatives" told NBC News. In fact, it's not even about the border and immigration, and that's why it's a winning fucking subject.

Let me make this as clear as possible: People don't fucking understand the tariff situation. They just don't. Until prices start climbing and as soon as there are shortages of shit in the stores, most people won't get it. And, frankly, it's pretty goddamn complicated to explain. Yes, polls show that voters are concerned and believe it will hurt the economy, but until it does in a more obvious way than it has so far, they won't get it. And then, absolutely, go ape shit, Democrats. 

But you know what most Americans do understand on a gut level? Denying someone their constitutionally-guaranteed due process rights. We're talking a country where half the shit that everyone watches is some variation on Law and Order or true crime, all of which are about putting someone through the criminal justice system and getting a conviction or proving their innocence. Hell, when it comes to due process for legal immigrants, including those here on visas, the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, are for them receiving a fair trial. A majority also supports due process for undocumented migrants, so, yeah, people do get this.

It's basic shit for Americans. We were all raised on pop culture of one sort or another that showed evil dictators or kings or queens condemning people without trial (Game of Thrones, anyone?). If this nation of historical idiots knows anything about this country, it's the Declaration of Independence, with its list of offenses against the people of this land committed by the British king, many of which Trump is literally committing or promising to commit again. You can see the discomfort in the face of Republican members of Congress, even some of Trump's most loyal ball-lickers, when they're asked about the disregard for due process and especially no due process followed by imprisonment in another country. Most everyone knows that's fucked up, but Trump is arguing in court and in the media that he should be allowed to disappear whoever the fuck he wants whenever the fuck he wants. 

Man, if a meatloaf like Joe Rogan understands how fucked up it is, then everyone gets it.

Trump and the ghoulish, sadistic Stephen Miller contingent want to pretend that this is about immigration and crime. But it very much isn't. It's about consolidating power in the president so that he can be a king or a tyrant or a supervillain or some such bullshit. It's about getting away with it with non-citizens so that he can unleash it on citizens, and that's so fucking easy to comprehend that it's a rhetorical gimme for Democrats.

Sure, keep up the attack on tariffs. But if Democrats take a stand on the principle that everyone, even Donald fucking Trump, even an immigrant with real (not photoshopped) MS-13 tattoos that also say, "I want to rape and murder you," even you and me, deserves due process, deserves to be able to defend themselves in court, deserves the things that have been the very foundation of not just this country, but of modern civilization, then people will get it. And, not for nothing, but they also get it if Trump defies the Supreme Court or, really, any court, and they don't fucking like it.

The party needs to unite around leaders like Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who went to El Salvador, met with Abrego Garcia, and came back to tell every fucking network today, including Fox, that we are supposed to guarantee constitutional rights, not strip them away at the whim of a mad king. And, for good measure, Van Hollen dick-punched Gavin Newsom by saying, "I think Americans are tired of elected officials or politicians who are all finger to the wind… Anybody who can’t stand up for the Constitution and the right of due process doesn’t deserve to lead." Fuck yeah. 

The Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is the Issue We All Need to Rally Behind

After he was granted permission in 2019 to stay in the United States by an immigration judge due to the fact that he faced a genuine threat of being killed in his native El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia got work as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland and joined the Local 100 of SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, a union with nearly a quarter-million members. Abrego Garcia was making a life for himself in this country, supporting his wife and three kids, including a 5 year-old with autism who is unable to speak. But on March 12, despite never having been charged with a crime, Abrego Garcia was picked up by ICE and shipped off to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the notoriously deadly prison in El Salvador, which is likely filled with members of Barrio 18, the gang that harassed and threatened him and his family. The federal government claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, although that's based on one shitty informant and no evidence, and they also admit that he shouldn't have been kidnapped off the streets of Baltimore and trafficked to CECOT. It was "an administrative error," said lawyers for our skeevy government.

You might know most of this. You might also know that the US Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, said that the Trump administration had to, at the very least, facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia  with a timeline to be decided by a district court. Judge Paula Xinis quickly demanded that the White House provide daily updates on its efforts bring back Abrego Garcia, and, in its inimitably dickish way, the State Department said, "Yeah, sorry, he's in El Salvador now. We can't do shit." Again, you might know all of this because it's frankly one of the most frightening, extreme, and enraging things ever done by any president ever. I'll get to the implications of what the Trump administration said in a sec, but, at the most basic level, this was a blatantly illegal act, denying due process, which is what would have prevented the mistake. 

But even more instructive has been the reaction from Abrego Garcia's union, SMART: they are fucking pissed off about Abrego Garcia. The union held a rally on April 4 in support of Abrego Garcia and his family. SMART General President Michael Coleman, in a statement, tied Abrego Garcia directly to the rights of workers and to what is supposed to be the promise of this country: "In his pursuit of the life promised by the American dream, Brother Kilmar was literally helping to build this great country. What did he get in return? Arrest and deportation to a nation whose prisons face outcry from human rights organizations. SMART condemns his treatment in the strongest possible terms, and we demand his rightful return." Coleman has called on government to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights, and the union has a GoFundMe for Abrego Garcia and his family. The statement on the fundraiser says, "The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."

At a gathering of the leadership and delegates of the North America Building Trades Unions, which SMART is a part of, the president of that organization of 3 million members, Sean McGarvey, loudly and angrily said that the union "means all of us. All of us. Including our brother, SMART Apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand be returned to us and his family now!" He slapped his hand on the lectern for emphasis, yelling, "Bring him home!" as the gathered audience of mostly older and middle-aged white men stood up and applauded and cheered. 

You got that? One of the biggest union groups in the country has made opposition to Abrego Garcia's kidnapping (and that's what it needs to be called because that's sure as shit what it was) a rallying point, and it's invited its millions of members to join in. Because that's what you do fucking well do: you stand up to the assholes who are abusing your fellow human beings. 

There's a lot to say about the clusterfuck of evil, incompetence, insanity, and brutality involved in the crimes the American government has committed against Abrego Garcia, up to and including the ignoring of the clear orders of the Supreme Court and the district court by the Trump administration. There's a lot to say about how grimly ludicrous it is that no one will just say, "Oh, shit. Our bad" and bring him back, which would lend some minor bit of credibility to the entire cruel exercise of totalitarian power. There's a lot to say about the entire savage exercise of essentially sentencing migrants to prison with no due process and sending them to a place where they will have no rights and then saying, "Ah, well. They now are only El Salvador's problem" (and that goes for all the ones who are allegedly Venezuelan gang members -prove it, motherfuckers). There's so much more to say in general; I'll just add that there's also one hell of a story to be written about how some of our prisons in the United States are as bad as CECOT.

But if you were in an opposition party or a group of resisters to the fascist fuckery eating this nation alive, I'd be centering Abrego Garcia's imprisonment as a single thing worth uniting to rally over. It's one of those stories that is easy to comprehend, easy to be on the right side of, and easy to come up with what you want to happen: ICE kidnapped a father of American kids and husband of an American wife who was here in the country legally, lied about who he was, and sent him to prison without charge or trial to the country where violent assholes want him dead. Then they admitted they made a mistake and refuse to correct it. And all we want is for him to come home. There. It's fucking easy. You can get a few hundred thousand union workers pissed off about it, too. To their credit, Democratic lawmakers are speaking out, but we need more, much, much more.

Every cause looks for the incident that lights the fuse on the metaphorical explosives that will make the movement erupt into an unstoppable force. This is the kind of shit that is so egregious, so blatantly awful, so clearly unlawful, and so obviously arrogant that it'll piss off people even beyond the usual cadre of marchers and clever sign creators. Again, the president of a major coalition of unions is ready to go to the wall about it. SMART keeps posting about Abrego Garcia. The fuse is there. Light that fucker.

Hell, use the refusal by Donald Trump to pick up the fucking phone and telling the government of El Salvador, who we're paying to keep our hostages, to send him home as a sign of Trump's weakness. Mr. Art of the Deal can't get a deal on this? Or is Trump just the bitch boy of dictators? Or maybe Garcia was treated so awfully not just in CECOT but while in the custody of the United States that they can't allow him to be able to tell just how much we're abusing innocent people in our fast slide into authoritarianism.

Maybe rallying for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia won't light that fuse. Maybe it won't accomplish anything beyond getting him back to this family. But, goddamn, that's a pretty big victory. And it points to how we can fight back against these vicious motherfuckers intent on ripping up everything this country ever pretended to stand for. 

Democrats Have Stories to Tell (and Cory Booker Helped to Show How To Tell Them)

Mostly, what you've heard about Cory Booker's marathon floor speech in the Senate that started Monday evening and didn't end until over 25 hours later is that it was the longest speech in the history of the chamber and that he called out President Donald Trump and Republicans for their bullshit. But one of the key things that Booker did was make a case for the necessity of Democrats and Democratic policies by telling the stories of some of the people who have written to him about what they're going through. These include people who say that Medicaid saved their lives like a veteran who needs mental health treatment or the mother of an adult son with Down syndrome who gets all kinds of help from government programs that are on the chopping block. He read a letter from the head of an association of rural hospitals about how those will be decimated and have to shut down if Medicaid cuts go through. He read a letter from a researcher about the effects of gutting the NIH. So many stories. 

Booker was saying that Democrats have stories to tell. Republicans get out there and ghoulishly parade victims of violence committed by undocumented migrants and act like that's the only thing that the government should give a damn about. The most effective Democratic ad of the 2024 election cycle involved women who were hurt by the savage abortion laws. Tell the fucking stories. 

But there are so many other stories that Democrats need to tell, big stories about who we are as a country, a good many of them political, and they shouldn't shy away from getting that narrative out there.

Take, for instance, Trump and his fucknut cabal insisting that shit is being done because of some mandate by the American people due to his election. That's only part of the story, though. They elected Trump to be in charge of one area of the government. And while, yes, the House and Senate have majorities of deranged Republicans who climb over each other to demonstrate how they can lick Trump's taint better than other Republicans, it's not just Republicans who were elected. Democrats have a story to tell about how they were elected, too, and how those Democratic representatives and senators have a mandate to defend their constituents. They have a story to tell about the role of Congress and how Republicans are abdicating that role. And this is not to mention that 23 states, which have the majority of the population, are led by Democrats. They have mandates. The point is that it's fucking absurd for Trump's lackeys to constantly say that everyone, every elected official, every member of the media, every judge, hell, every American needs to knuckle under Trump's tiny thumb because he won an election. Yeah, that gives you a third of the levers of power, bitch. 

There are so many stories that Democrats can tell. They can talk to the country about how the United States is simply not in any emergencies that would require Trump to use emergency powers. They can tell the story of how the flow of migrants into the country has never reached a crisis stage that requires deporting people on visas for protesting. They tell the story about how the economy was, in fact, doing amazingly well and that the new tariffs (or just call them "sales taxes") are not a response to any-fucking-thing at all. They can tell stories of how diversity strengthens the country and that inclusion means special needs and disabled people being treated with the respect they deserve.  Yes, the left and center need their own media ecosystem to contrast with the firehose of flaming shit from the right's media meat grinder. But stop letting Republicans be the only people whose stories matter. Don't respond to their stories. Tell your own. Give people new stories. And tell the stories of migrants, the supposed "good ones" that Trump wasn't going to go after, and of small businesses and of families who have special needs kids, all of whom are being tossed in the Trump/Musk shitpile. 

And, fucking hell, give people hope by telling them the story about how we can return to normal, how it's not supposed to be like this. The way to do that is to tell the story about how Republicans fucked this country in two short months and that every day they are left in office is going to make it take longer and longer just to get back to where we were on January 19. Jesus, that was what the protests this Saturday were about: just let us fucking live our fucking lives like we were, not in whatever fucked up, cynical, nihilistic, destructive way is being forced on us for no fucking reason. 

I'm not saying Democrats haven't done any of this kind of storytelling. Kamala Harris did a lot of this kind of thing when campaigning, especially the idea of ending chaos. That was a start. Some, like AOC, are doing it now, and we need more. I keep saying to Democrats: stop playing on the Republicans' home field. Stop being the visiting team in your own country. 

Getting back to Cory Booker, I saw him at the Hands Off protest I went to in New Jersey. Unlike his reasonable and emotional marathon speech, this was Booker fired up, raging with a growl in his voice about how fucked things are. He was bringing us into the story he was telling. He said, "When they come after immigrants, when they come after our gay kids, when they come after our healthcare for those who are struggling, we all have to stand up and say, 'They’re coming after me. They’re coming after us.'"

Tell the fucking stories. Tell the stories that inspire. Tell the stories that enrage. Tell the stories that get us into the streets more and more. We have the American story, in all its fucked up horrors and glorious triumphs. Own it all and tell it all or there's not going to be any story left but the comforting lies and sinister hatred that we are bombarded with now.

(Note: Yes, you are very smart to point out that Booker votes to fund Israel's war on Palestine. Yes, that sucks. We still need him. You still need him. Suck it up and stop fucking acting like Democrats are the same as Republicans, you dumb fucks.)

Two Months into the Enshittification of America

Listen: The United States sent people without trial or even charges to a prison in El Salvador where they will be beaten, raped, and forced into slave labor. At least one of the over 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members is not a Venezuelan gang member and was in the US legally seeking asylum, which is something you'd think that you'd at least look into if you were sending someone to a prison in another country to be beaten, raped, and forced into slave labor. Our leaders are not only ignoring that, but they are asserting that they are all criminals and openly talking about sending American citizens to be beaten, raped, and enslaved. That's our country now.

Meanwhile, the United States is imprisoning people in awful conditions in detainment centers for overstaying their visas. The country is stripping people of student visas and green cards for merely supporting a protest movement and not committing a single crime. The country is arresting visitors for no reason and keeping them in prison cells with a single foil blanket on cement floors with fluorescent lights on for 24 hours a day for days or weeks before deporting them. The country is preventing foreigners who might have criticized the president from entering. Nations that were our closest allies are warning their residents that they may be subject to brutal treatment on a whim if they visit here. That's the United States right now. 

What needs to be emphasized again and again here is the pretext for these extreme and extremist actions is the utter and complete lie that there is a crime wave of murder and rape by undocumented immigrants in gangs. It's the whole bullshit justification for the idea of an "invasion" that would trigger the Alien Enemies Act. It's the reason that's given by Republicans that the country needs to go completely bugfuck insane over immigration and, apparently, tourism. The deluge of propaganda on the right has driven half the country insane with rage that is used as a justification for racism, isolationism, and abject dickishness, and it degrades every single one of us in this tragedy of a country during the stupidest of ages we're damned to live through.

The enshittification of the United States is moving at such a rapid pace that right now that it's impossible to list all the utterly depraved fuckery that's been done in a short period of time. When I sat down to write this, I wondered if I should focus on Columbia University turning bitch when threatened by Trump or the likely closing of the Department of Education or the dragging of a federal judge through the malicious MAGA mud puddle of death threats and impeachment threats or a hundred, a thousand other things. Truly, every day in the 2025 USA is like being forced to dangle your balls over a crocodile pit. It might happen right away or it might take a while, but at some point, a hungry croc is gonna snap onto your nutsack. It's just a matter of time. (Think of this as the less poetic version of "and then they came for me.")

But I'm concentrating on the savagery being done to all kinds of immigrants and tourists from other countries because it's repellent and awful and it certainly points to what they will do to Americans soon. And I'm not just talking about sending citizens to El Salvador's torture prison, the idea of which makes both Trump and El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, so giddy and hard that you know they get on FaceTime and watch each other jack off to the sounds of the screaming prisoners being reamed out by guards. 

I'm talking about how Americans will be treated if they cross this president and how they will be able to fuck with those of us who despise him and everything he does and are incoherently angry at the fact that somehow this orange-painted lump of Adderall, Diet Coke, and Big Macs is still alive. Fuck you, medical science, for this one thing. I pretty much promise you that they will get to us soon. If they don't fuck with us through our jobs (and I know they're gonna fuck with mine soon since I'm a liberal professor) or through the loss of government programs, they'll just come up with ways to discipline and punish us for our heresy against the MAGA madness.

I believe that, at some point soon, some American returning from visiting family in, say, Canada will be asked to open up his phone at the border by CBP. He can refuse, but he'll have his phone taken and forensically searched. And they will find texts or social media posts that are critical of the Trump administration for being such a cockhead about Canada. And they will say that he is not allowed to criticize the US when he's in another country or some invented bullshit. And they will take him into custody and send him to El Salvador or a detention facility. And when they've done it once, they will have no qualms at all about doing it a million times over while courts tell them again and again that they can't because it's illegal and unconstitutional and, instead of blatantly ignoring the courts, the Justice Department comes up with another appeal angle that delays shit and allows time to round up more of us.

Some of you reading this will say that that's ridiculous, that there's this or that law that will protect citizens, that I'm being hyperbolic for the sake of being hyperbolic. To which I can only say, calmly, without malice, "Then you haven’t been paying attention, you poor, naive motherfucker. Look at how far we've fallen in just two months. Now ask yourself where we'll be in six months. Or a year."

Oh, and spare me the cries of "That's our government, not us. Don't blame us." Until we are out there shutting shit down and using our bodies to block this government from doing such fuckery, it is us. That's the burden we all need to bear. It's all being done in our name. Every act by the government is done in our name. And that's why this shit is eating away at me. 

What gets that acid churning even more intensely is that so many of us warned the leaders on our side: You have to punish motherfuckers for fucking mothers or they'll just fuck more mothers and fuck them harder. They didn't arrest the bastards who created the torture regime and the habeas-free zone at Gitmo in the Bush administration. They slow-walked the prosecution of Donald Trump because of fear of seeming vengeful. Now that the bad guys got away with so very much, fuck it, they believe they're gonna get away with it again. And it's hard to blame them.

Schumer Fucked It All Up

Here's the thing that's bugged the shit out of me about Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's betrayal of Democrats in supporting cloture on the continuing resolution (or, you know, the budget stopgap funding bill) on Friday: if, as he said, he was doing it out of some gut-level fear of what Elon Musk and his rotting meat puppet Donald Trump would do during a government shutdown, then why the fuck wasn't that the reasoning all along? 

Schumer said, "I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option" than passing the CR. The just-passed bill gives Trump and his cabal of assholes, cocks, cunts, and shit-for-brains six months to fuck things up, with total free rein from Congress. Meanwhile, we await the coming battle over whether or not court decisions and laws fucking matter to them anymore. So if Schumer has some secret fucking knowledge, some source that told him, "Oh, yeah, if you have a shutdown, Trump is gonna jack off in a corner while Musk whips his 20 year-old cryptodouches as they ass-rape every area of government. It'll be sticky and bloody and disturbing as fuck and then even stickier," then he should have told us that. Seriously, clue us in to what the fuck changed his mind between Thursday, when Schumer said they'd shitcan the CR, and Friday, when he caved, along with nine other Democrats. 

I'm not being glib or bullshitting here. After coordinating with the House on how Democrats were going to take a mighty stand against the extravagant criminality of the Trump White House, aided and abetted by Republicans who saw their jobs as giving Trump and Musk tongue baths, Schumer reverted to the same weak-kneed stance that Democrats always take in these situations. So I wanna know: What the fuck did he know? Did he have any hard evidence of some coming fuckery that he didn't happen to share with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or the rest of his caucus in the Senate or all the American people? Why wasn't that in ads or in talking points repeated endlessly in the media? Show us the reality that only you, Senator Chuck motherfuckin' Schumer, can see. 

Right now, it's a goddamn mystery. But what it looks like is that Schumer started to shit himself over taking an honest-to-fuck political risk, one that might alienate a few big donors and fuck up his book tour. It could have been the start of a political war that would have inspired the base and gotten progressives energized and unified Democrats in the House and Senate. Instead, he fucked it all up. He torched his relationship with the House and ignited a growing call for his ouster as the Democratic leader in the Senate. Yeah, instead of going to war, Schumer decided to go on vacation and make money.

In folding, Schumer tried to portray himself as the grown up (as opposed to the performative acquiescence of people like John Fetterman and Kirsten Gillibrand), that he alone understands the consequences, that he'll take the blows that come with his sudden change of heart. And it's just the goddamned rantings of someone so out of touch with the electorate, so beholden to Wall Street, so enamored of the smell of his pickle farts that he can't comprehend the actual world we live in now. He's delusional and thinks that Republicans will work with Democrats again once Trump's approval ratings tank further. No, that's 2017 thinking. That's pre-Elon thinking. Every Republican has a billion-dollar primary threat hanging over their head. They're not gonna do shit that might get that crazy asshole to turn his Twitter army of incels and inbreds on them.

Meanwhile, the bill itself actually codifies big cuts to IRS enforcement and the National Institutes of Health. Yeah, that's right. Motherfuckers slipped that in. And it'll let Musk and his DOGE shits go bonkers on the destruction of the federal government. Yeah, that's right. It gives Trump more of a free hand to jack off on the Constitution. I'd bet there's fuckery buried in there that no one even noticed until we find out that everyone has to cut off a finger and send it to Stephen Miller or some such weird, sick shit.

While there are a number of Democrats who get it, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chris Murphy and Jasmine Crockett and Tina Smith and Jamie Raskin, there's a contingent of Democrats in leadership, like Schumer and Dick Durbin and even, most of the time, Jeffries, who don't understand the rules of the game we're in now. We are hungry for the fight. We want to fight. But we need to see our elected leaders fighting, too. Fucking hell, the American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest union of government workers, said that a shutdown was better than giving Musk and Trump the budget to keep dicking over workers. That's a blaring damn siren telling Democrats what they should have done. That's actual cover for doing something semi-radical.

I will say it again: the Republican Party is evil. Trump and Musk are evil. MAGA voters are evil. Once you understand that, once you take that to heart, you have clarity in how to act and react. You don't ever do anything that makes life easier for evil motherfuckers. You do anything to stop them. And if you don't or if you can't, you get the fuck out of the way so that the people who want to stop them can lead the way. 

15 Things to Ask Republicans If They're Okay With If Democrats Are Ever Allowed to Be in Control Again

Next time someone has a Republican in the hot seat for an interview, just for shits and giggles, see what they say when you ask them if they'd be okay with a potential Democratic administration doing any of the following by executive order:

1. Threatening to withhold disaster funds from any states that don't secure abortion rights or pass gun control laws.

2. Taking away federal money from any schools that allow a Turning Point USA chapter on campus.

3. Making it policy that no religious symbols of any kind can be displayed in federal offices and firing anyone who does so. 

4. Arresting and deporting any foreign students who support Israel and its genocidal war against Palestine.

5. Allowing George Soros to decide what federal employees should be fired, including those from departments that regulate his investments, and giving him access to the personal and financial records of every person, organization, and business in the United States.

6. Appointing Rachel Maddow as Secretary of Defense, Mehdi Hasan as Secretary of State, and Joy Reid as head of the FBI. 

7. Dismantling the Department of Homeland Security. [Okay, actually, this is a good idea.]

8. Firing the leadership of the military for being white men, with Secretary Maddow stating that racism gives white men an unfair benefit. 

9. Declaring that any entity receiving government funds must immediately hire trans people, and if they don't, they will not get any government contracts.

10. Immediately cutting all government funding for the oil and gas industry. [Yeah, I wish they'd do this.]

11. Granting amnesty to every undocumented person without a felony criminal record. [Again, this ought to be done.]

12. Allowing for tens of thousands more refugees to come to the United States. [Yep, this, too.]

13. Firing any employee who isn't fully vaccinated against anything they can be vaccinated for.

14. Halting funding of any conservative policy research through grants or other programs immediately on the basis that conservative ideology is automatically racist.

15. Shooting Elon Musk into space with no way for him to come back. 

This is a worthless exercise because Democrats would never do any of this, even the good stuff. Sure, some of it is a stupid and destructive way to run a country (although I'd argue that Rachel Maddow would make a far better Defense Secretary than drunk Nazi Pete Hegseth). But it's a thought experiment (and this is the shit I came up with in about ten minutes of thinking. I'm sure I'll add to it as things pop into my head or I get suggestions on the socials, like maybe "Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Obama.")

In other words, how the hell would you like it, conservative fucknuts, if the federal government decided to fuck up your world for no reason other than the president could do it and no one would stop him?

We Are More Fucked Than We Know in the USA

If you burn down your house, you can rebuild it. It sucks and you'll have lost a bunch of meaningful things and useless shit that you'll miss, but, ultimately, you'll have a new house and that's a way to heal after the trauma of the event. But if you're living in a relatively small town, if you spend years dicking over every contractor in town, if you were a prick at city hall when you wanted a permit to put in a new porch, if you cheat at poker with house painters and plumbers, if you fuck the wife of owner of the only paving company in town and brag about it at the bar, if you just generally have created a situation where everyone thinks you're the asshole and can't muster a single dry rat turd of sympathy for you when your house burns down, well, you're fucked. Live in your ashes, motherfucker, or get the fuck out.

What we're seeing with the Trump administration is not just the dismantling of agencies and organizations that make the government function, although that's a big fucking deal. No, we're seeing nothing less than the defeat of the United States from a domestic enemy who lied his way into the presidency and is waging a bureaucratic war against the American people. Trump and Musk are tearing up the social contract that legitimizes the existence of government and turning it into an arm of an ideology that hates the masses, hates anything that hinders the authority of the executive, and hates anyone who doesn't grovel before them and their fucked up views of the world.

They're breaking shit, and we're not going to be able to put it back together because we'll have no one to help us do it.

The Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and our goddamn president and creepy vice-president before the media was a national fucking embarrassment, for sure. It was victim-blaming on a scale that would have given pause to even the most craven propagandist, with the fat, slurring, demented president of the United States, egged on by his sociopath VP, berating the genuinely heroic leader of a country that had been holding up under attack from a far larger and better-equipped military. Zelensky was patient beyond any reasonable standard as he attempted to bring some facts to pierce the thick, empty skull of a harrumphing Trump. If Zelensky had said, "Get this little bitch JD Vance out of my face," no one would have blamed him. Well, no one with a brain and a soul. 

The effect of this meeting was to take the United States out of its place as a leader in the world. We are now on our way to becoming like Russia: a nuclear-armed corrupt shithole that is despised and feared and despised even more because of the fear of our crazy motherfuckers doing crazy shit. No nation will ever trust the United States on any long-term basis because why the hell would they? If we're so pathetic that we can't put the leader of a coup behind bars and bring his entire irrational movement to heel, if our courts and our Congress are beholden to the evil dickstain in the White House, under threats from the richest supervillain in history, if we might elect another Trump-like garbage sack even after chasing him from office (if that should happen), if every deal, every treaty, every alliance, every humanitarian outreach, even, is subject to the whims of the leadership, with no permanence and ready to be tossed aside when oligarchs with totalitarian ambitions trick enough rubes to vote for them, then I'd advise every sane country to run as fucking far away from us as you can. America is a whore that sucks Vladimir Putin's dick now like a Hoover on deep pile. That is our purpose on the world stage. Get away before we drag you down into the gutter on our scabby knees with us.

Meanwhile, tweaking savage weirdo Elon Musk is gleefully tearing apart the federal workforce, a workforce, by the way, that has not kept up with the population of the country. Musk's Department of Masturbatory Cruelty is firing every federal employee on probationary status (which is up to two years for some positions) either at the start of their careers or after being promoted, firing more employees and gutting agencies, and then salting the earth so that any department or office or agency torched by DOGE can't come back. Putting aside the gutting stories of people losing jobs, losing health insurance, losing housing, and more and putting aside the sheer waste of funding that DOGE is leaving behind, with half-done projects canceled and employees trained and paid to move now fired, the government is going to be bereft of expertise in shit that matters, like at NOAA or the IRS or the NIH or, fuck, everywhere, even at the Social Security Administration.

Look at this article on some of those whose jobs in the Interior Department were murdered by Musk and his DOGE shits. They fired the guy whose job was to take care of the rescue sled dogs at Denali National Park in Alaska (they didn't change the name of the park, so suck it, MAGA freaks). They fired a soil specialist in Oregon who worked with timber companies on the best way to manage the old growth forests. They fired the people who make sure that waste and fraud don't happen in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That's one tiny fraction of the massive loss of people we really need in our government to make sure everything doesn't turn into a dystopian wasteland, although that's probably the plan.

Where the fuck is the labor movement on this? Why aren't workers all over the country shutting shit down in solidarity with federal workers? Why are we letting them get away with degrading people who did nothing wrong but work, some of them their whole lives, for the United States? We fucking owe them our rage. This is a goddamn workers' rights issue, and union leaders have issued statements and then done dick after. That's how fucking scared everyone is now. And don't get me started on the fecklessness of all but a handful of Democrats. Give me the fucking movement to follow. 

Our international standing shattered. Our government shattered. And the people we need fighting for us and leading us failing everywhere. We are fucked because we have lost shit that we will never get back. 

And it sucks. It fucking sucks. Because if we have elections again (and that's not a glib aside - it's a very real possibility that democracy is done in the United States except in a few states that have elections for old time's sake) and Democrats win back the presidency and the Congress, the clean-up is going to be nearly impossible and just getting back to zero, to where things were torn apart, is going to take a massive, time-consuming effort, just in time for Republicans to once again convince the inattentive yahoos to elect another wrecking ball and it all falls apart again. Why do I predict that? Because that's what the fuck has happened since Bill Clinton cleaned up the mess left by Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr., and then you assholes elected George W. Bush to fuck it all up again. Then Obama saves our asses. Then Trump nearly kills us. Then Biden saves our asses again. And now Trump is back to finish the job.

None of this makes sense in any kind of rational way. Not the actions by the administration and not the range of reactions from Republicans, especially. Honestly, at this point, I'll believe any reason people come up with for what Trump/Musk are doing. You tell me that it's Trump's vengeance on a nation that betrayed him by not re-electing him in 2020, and I'll say that that sucks, but it makes sense. You can tell me that Trump's softening up the country for an invasion by Russia or that Russia has threatened to kill any Republicans who get in the way of Trump destroying the U.S. or that Musk's incel brigade has hacked into everyone's wifi and knows what porn they're into and they're using that to blackmail people, I'd be convinced. Or you could say that this is all a massive robbery by Musk so that he can either go to Mars or become the eternally-alive transhuman that he and all the ultra-rich nutzoids think they need to be before the Earth devours itself (helped along by their greed), and I'll say that at least we fucking know what we're fighting. You can tell me it's all just so that Stephen Miller can masturbate to climax to the images of all the Africans who will die because USAID is gone, and I'll say that's crazy but it's something.  I've been calling all of them "evil," and I stand by that. But chaotic evil is the worst fucking kind. We're the bad guys now. 

I want to end this on an optimistic note. But words are getting more and more useless. We are seeing the beginnings of something, some embers of a potential backlash in the town halls where the constituents of Republican House members and senators are giving hell to their elected officials. Take advantage of that energy, Democrats. Get people out there. Make Republicans run the fuck out of office. Or make them change parties or go independent and join the Democrats to turn the House and maybe the Senate back to the people who might actually use the power that a co-equal branch of government is supposed to have. And, for fuck's sake, talk about all the people dying because of Republican actions. I mean, there are measles outbreaks around the country and it's killing children. Make that the beginning of the end for these vile fucks.

Christ, put AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Jamie Raskin, and a few others in charge. It's time to shoot tradition and decorum in the head to clear things out for the fight we should be deeply engaged in already. 

Judge Ana Reyes's Reaming of Trump Administration Lawyers Is About More Than Transgender Rights

In a DC courtroom this past week, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held a hearing in the case of Talbott v. Trump, where a group of transgender members of the military are challenging President Donald Trump's January 25 executive order that bans anyone who is transgender from serving in the US military. The suit is named after Nicolas Talbott, a trans man who was able to fulfill his dream of joining the Army after President Joe Biden overturned Trump's 2017 order that overturned President Barack Obama's order allowing trans people to openly serve. Yeah, that's how whiplash fast this has all moved.

Reyes took no shit from the attorneys for the Trump administration and their assertions about trans people. From wrecking the idea that that sex only exists as an "immutable biological classification as either male or female" (as stated in Trump's other odious executive order trying to erase trans people from any kind of public existence) to treating the government's legal lackeys like children who need a spanking to absolutely embarrassing them on the very issue of the effect of transgender men and women on the military, Reyes reamed them out again and again with the spiky dildo of reality.

What Reyes did was cut through the bullshit and obfuscation that is the craft and trade of any lawyers for Trump. When one tried to assert that the ban was not, in fact, a ban, she asked him, "If we had President Trump here right now, and I said to him, ‘Is this a transgender ban?’ What do you think he would say?" The Justice Department lawyer, Jason Lynch, replied, "I have no idea, your honor." And Reyes more or less scoffed, "I do. He would say, ‘Of course it is.’ Because he calls it a transgender ban, because all the language in it is indicative." 

Reyes kept throwing Trump and his cretinous administration's lies and hyperbolic statements back at them. She read off a litany of things about the military that Trump claims are affected by treatment of gender dysphoria and proper pronoun usage and she asked if Lynch really believes it would affect military readiness. Then she cut off Lynch when he tried to respond, saying, "Because it doesn’t. We all have a lot bigger problems than pronoun use. We have a military that is incompetent, if that is the case. Any common sense rational human being knows that it doesn’t." And, goddamn, it's good to hear someone state, on the record, that at some point you have to fucking deal with what's real and not what some slimy power-mad fucknut says to keep the con going with the rubes. Hell, Reyes even got Lynch to admit that if he were in a foxhole with fellow soldiers during combat, "I doubt the gender identity would be a primary concern."

Perhaps the most beautiful moment was when Reyes asked Lynch to define what Trump meant by "radical gender ideology." He replied that he was "loath to speculate what the president had in mind when he signed this executive order." Reyes impaled him with her gavel when she said, "Well, it’s not like I picked you off the street and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Lynch, hey, let me ask you some questions about what the government thinks.’ You’re the government’s legal representative." Ouch.

At one point in the hearing on Tuesday, Reyes wondered aloud if the executive order met the legal definition of "animus," which is something done for no other reason than the hatred of a group of people. She said, "[The order] calls an entire category of people dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined, immodest, who lack integrity—people who have taken an oath to defend this country, people who have been under fire, people who have received medals for taking fire for this country. I want to know from the government whether that language expresses ‘animus.’ Does that express animus?" Lynch wouldn't answer so she cut him off with "This is a policy from the President of the United States affecting thousands of people… to call an entire group of people, lying dishonest people who are undisciplined, immodest, and have no integrity. How is that anything other than showing animus?" Lynch said he didn't know, which prompted Reyes to say, "You do have an answer. You just don’t want to give it."

Of course, the Justice Department made a complaint to the chief judge of the federal court in DC, calling for Reyes to be disciplined for making complete idiots out of the idiots who had to defend an idiotic policy. Of course, the complaint has got peak hypocrisy in it by saying that judges should always appear impartial, which is something no conservative should ever be allowed to say as long as Clarence Thomas's corrupt ass is still farting up the chambers of the Supreme Court.

As a defense of the rights of transgender Americans, Reyes was an absolute pit bull getting her teeth into the supple legs of the shitty men who dared to leap the fence into her yard. But just as important was Judge Reyes refusing to buy into the cruel fantasy world that Trump and most of the right in this country demand we all live in. There are immutable facts, to use the administration's word, about what sex actually is, about what actually affects the readiness of the military, about the honorable records of the plaintiffs who served their nation more than Trump and his garbage children ever have or ever could. And the same goes for so many other issues, like immigration and crime and election integrity and abortion and race and taxation and, really, every fucking thing that is being used to justify the insanity going on at the White House that's forced on the nation. 

At some point, Reyes is saying, it matters that we agree that reality is real, whether you like it or not, and it doesn't shift with whatever a cadre of evil motherfuckers want it to be. And real people live in reality and have to deal with its real effects. This shit matters, as Reyes asserted forcefully, because you can't just hate someone and then try to create a reason to justify harming the people you hate. Which is essentially the entire ethos of the MAGA movement.

The Simplest Explanation: They Are Evil

"Evil" is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like "The cruelty is the point," but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a few Republicans who still had souls and spines. The cruelty had no real ideology behind it, just the sheer deranged pleasure of hurting people. Systematic, planned cruelty with a goal of hurting everyone who ever opposed you and your ideology? That's evil. We don't want to think that we are confronting evil now because it seems melodramatic and frankly unfathomable. If we have leaders who keep acting in ways that are evil, as in directly contrary to any concept of "good," then we need to acknowledge that we are in an evil country living through an evil age. 

I just can't think of any other clearer way to describe what the Trump/Musk administration has done in this first month of its four-year (minimum) reign of terror. We want them to be stupid, and we need to think of them as incompetent, like when Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired 300 workers from the National Nuclear Security Administration because they didn't understand that those workers are responsible for the safety of our nuclear arsenal, not a bunch of hippies inhibiting the nuclear power industry or whatever the hell they believed, and now they're scrambling to rehire them. But stupidity and incompetence lets them off the hook to an extent in a "they know not what they do" kind of way. Fuck that. 

These motherfuckers know exactly what they're doing. They are seeking to undermine the functioning of the federal government, getting rid of any checks on the power of the president and wanting to privatize much of its work, in order to make the nation a de facto autocracy that exists for the benefit of a few wealthy patrons, with the population kept in line by an enforced Christian nationalist morality. In other words, Trump and his enablers are acting like just about every fucking totalitarian regime in history. And its goal is to harm anyone or any idea that opposes their power, from entire institutions and populations and on down to the lowest-level individual bureaucrat who didn't pledge their loyalty. It is a kind of coup, a willful abandonment of the protections of the Constitution while pretending to save the country from crises that simply don't exist. 

I don't know how you describe the actions the administration has inflicted on the country in another way that makes sense. You have to remember that anything they say about why they're doing this gutting of the workforce is nonsense, not only in the amount of money DOGE and Musk claim they are saving, but also in the context of a proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut, which is something like 16 times the salaries of the entire federal workforce. If you fire a couple hundred thousand people who are doing well the jobs they were hired for, completely decimating their finances and upending they're lives and that doesn't help anyone else, that's evil shit. 

No matter where you go, evil is at play. Firing people involved in the prevention of bird flu and other viruses. Firing those trying to find a cure for cancer. Freezing and eliminating funding for USAID, which helps people in poorer countries survive diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and more. The firing of thousands of workers at the Forest Service and national parks. And so very much more. It's not just about the employees themselves, many of whom have been put through hell in the last couple of weeks, but it's about all the people who will be harmed and will die because of these cuts. 

And this isn't even getting into the disappearing of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to countries where they have no connection; or the proposed complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so the United States can build some resorts; or the Justice Department's attack on the rule of law in the Eric Adams case; or the move to erase the existence of transgender people' or the unhinged attack on anything that supports non-whites or women as "DEI," which, we should all be reminded, means "diversity, equity, and inclusion," as if those aspirational ideas are bad. Or a thousand other things that I could list and that I'm sure you thought of, all, all, all with a goal to directly harm people or force them to kowtow to Trump and Musk (or, really, Musk because Trump is just his fucking poodle now). I mean, this is some supervillain shit going on right now.

"Evil" provides us with a way of framing this in the easy, Manichean way that most people prefer to view the world. I acknowledge it's got a religious sound to it. That's okay. That helps. It's an explanation that needs no elaboration. As a term it has potency because it gives the opposition a moral dynamic: we're fighting against evil. I also think that it's a way of giving those who voted for Trump a word to articulate the way they feel like he's fucked them over (and, I know, it's a small percentage who might actually pull their heads out of his voluminous ass in order to breathe the fresh air of reality). And it gives us a way to label the people who do Trump and Musk's bidding. They're not just assholes bro-coding us to the apocalypse. They're evil assholes who want to see the rest of us hurting.

It also forces us to ask questions to anyone who supports them: What actual good has been done? Can you tell us one thing that's been accomplished that makes your life better or easier? What is being proposed that would make your life better or easier? Because the answer across the board is "Not a goddamn thing."

They are fucking up the lives of Americans. They are driving people to despair. I have said that I believe the real goal here is to provoke a violent response from a group or individuals, giving Trump the chance to declare martial law and just have his way with us as surely as if he were keeping us chained to a wall. We are in the midst of evil, awaiting to see what other evil will occur. 

And now we need to respond as if evil motherfuckers have taken over our occasionally decent nation. Call it out as evil, protest, and kick your members of Congress in the ass. The time to act is now while we're still allowed to act.

Democrats Need to Stop Being Afraid of Being Democrats

In Kamala Harris's speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Chicago in August, one key word and its variations were conspicuously absent, and it's a shame because she was speaking to a huge audience that needed to hear the words "Democrat" and "Democrats" and "Democratic Party." The only reference was a worthless nod to dead bipartisanship: "Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades." Awesome. Now how about all the shit that was done by Democrats?

In other speeches, she didn't mention the party at all, and sometimes that was just odd. At a rally in Atlanta, Harris said, "We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity to build a business, to own a home, to build intergenerational wealth; a future with affordable health care, affordable childcare, paid leave." While this was in a comparison to Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric, she never expanded "we" beyond her and her voters. That "we" should have been "Democrats."

I know that a parliamentary system requires a different kind of approach to an election, but look at UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's speech when the 2024 campaign started over there. He ties the success of the country to the success of his party: "A vote for Labour is a vote for stability – economic and political. A politics that treads more lightly on all our lives. A vote to stop the chaos." Candidates know in other countries that the only way to success is for their party to win, and they campaign on the good their party can do. Throughout its electoral history, Labour has put the party front and center in its advertising. While Starmer did have one poster that just had his image and "Change" on it (like Obama), I honestly can't remember a Harris/Walz sign that even mentioned they're Democrats. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single "Vote for Democrats" poster for anything beyond local offices. I know they exist. I've seen them online. But they weren't prominent by any stretch, and they never have. 

It's not just Harris. Even when a Democratic leader talks about Democrats, it's in the most polite and milquetoast way, like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference last week: "Democrats are always, always ready, willing and able to work with anyone to find the common ground necessary to solve problems on behalf of hardworking American taxpayers." Jeffries went on to describe Republicans as the party that wants to cut taxes on billionaires. That notion, that Democrats will "work with anyone," is, yes, the reality for a party in the minority. But it's not something anyone can rally around. No one is going to say, "Yeah, fuckin' go, Democrats. Compromise!"

After the 2024 election, when Democrats lost the presidency and the Senate and failed to retake the House, the punditocracy went into high gear about how the brand of the Democratic Party is "in the toilet" or "toxic." Actual elected Democrats joined in the beatdown, declaring, as Washington's Adam Smith saying the party is "broken." Most recently, Senator John "This Year's Sinema" Fetterman also called his party "toxic" and said that its "primary currency was shaming and scolding and talking down to people and telling them, ‘Hey, I know better than you,’ or you’re dopes, or you’re a bro, or you’re ignorant or, ‘how can you be this dumb? I can’t imagine it.’" Considering that Trump and Musk and all of those bros and dopes and ignoramuses and dummies on the right insult everyone not them, Fetterman's accusation is self-serving and wrong, and it's a shame to watch this once bad-ass warrior for the working class become a simp making nice with Republicans. 

My response to all of this is "What Democratic brand are they talking about?" Because, see, Democrats have forgotten to make their brand meaningful. Every fucking good thing in people's lives right now from the federal government came from Democrats. That what they should be selling. You like Social Security? Democrats got you that. You like Medicare and Medicaid? Democrats did that. Civil rights? You know it's Democrats who got that done. You like having access to health insurance? Motherfucker, there's one reason they call it "Obamacare," and that's because of Democrats. Don't fucking talk about shit that was done across the aisle. Don't fucking say shit like "Well, Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to undocumented migrants and raised taxes to save Social Security," like you're making some big point about how Republicans have changed. Goddamn, Republicans trot out fucking Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to say, "Look how great we are." Democrats can barely mention FDR and LBJ. 

Last week, I bitched about the lack of energy in the Democratic response to Trump's fuckery and the GOP rolling over telling him to fuck away on the ass of the Legislative branch. That energy is surging, finally. But it's got to go further, and it has to be framed that Democrats want to keep the lights on at hospitals and punish financial institutions that harm everyday people and prosecute corporate criminals and not tear down the FBI and CIA and the military and keep people from starving. It's not just that Republicans are the assholes here. It's that Democrats are the ones who can make it right. 

Stop being afraid of being part of this party. That's letting Republicans define you and accepting that it's the only way to think about the Democratic Party. Fuck that. Don't ask people to vote for you because of how well you get along with Republicans. Ask them to vote for you because you're a Democrat, and if they elect Democrats, you can get shit done for them. 

You know who knows how to talk about the party? Barack Obama. At the DNC, Obama discussed what the party and Harris and Walz believed about how to help people, saying, "That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next eleven weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision." Of course, he said the opposition was "the other side," not "those filthy fucking Republicans." But at least he embraced who he is.

Note to Democrats: We're Freaking the Fuck Out and You're Not Helping Us Enough

I know so many people who are scared to death or freaking the fuck out about all of the ways that the administration of Donald Trump (aka "Elon's Meat Puppet") is fucking with their lives like a deranged child pulling the wings off moths. In just the last week:

- A dear friend with a trans teen is making plans to leave the country for at least the next four years. Gender-affirming care saved my friend's kid's life, and the fact that hospitals are pulling back on that care since Trump issued his savage, ignorant executive order has made them decide to get the fuck out of here. They're not the only family with a trans kid I know who are leaving. Of course they're leaving. That's what you do for your child. You make sure they aren't harmed. (And, yes, I recognize that there is a great deal of privilege in having the financial ability to leave.)

- Someone close to me helps run a food bank at an area church where many of the people who get meals and groceries are undocumented. The workers there are getting training for what to do if ICE shows up. They have cards they hand out to the people who come there that give them some direction if they are confronted by the federal government. Everyone there, from the minister on down, feels it's just a matter of time before it happens, and, yeah, it's scary.

- At my university, we've been given guidance, too, on how to handle any situations like that, with our administration reminding us that the university "requires a judicial warrant for any federal or local law enforcement official who comes to a campus seeking to make an arrest" and that an administrative warrant "is not a judicial warrant." We're still freaked out and not just about that.

(If I'm being vague here in identifying people, it's intentional because I don't trust these Trumpy motherfuckers in the least.)

- We're worried about the crackdown on what we teach, from our majors to our courses to the very content in the classroom. We're worried about getting doxed for expressing our disgust with the disgusting acts of this repulsive administration. We're worried about showing up on some fucknut's Twitter feed. I've had that happen to friends of mine, and the mongrels start chomping at the door pretty goddamn quickly. (And God fucking help you if you express an opinion on Palestine that isn't kissing Bibi's corrupt ass.)

And this is just about me and others living in our blue state safe space. I have friends in the MAGA States of America who are losing their fucking minds. They've had to deal with the barrage of hate and horror from their state governments and now it's all being compounded and double affirmed by the federal government. If you're already seeing abortion rights being tossed out, book bans, attacks on LGBTQ people, forced Bible shit, enforced patriotism, and more, at least there was a hope that Washington might mitigate some of the awfulness when Biden was in office. Now, it's like being held in a pit in a basement by the killer from Silence of the Lambs and when you fall asleep, Freddie Krueger shows up and you're not fucking safe anywhere. 

So I say this with hope and with the knowledge that none of it will be easy and that Trump is completely insane and has stormtroopers ready to go apeshit on whomever he screeches about on Truth Toilet: Democrats, you need to fucking act. You need to do something that makes us see you as a genuine resistance. And by that, I don't mean just posting videos explaining tariffs. I don't mean tweeting or skeeting or threading about how the price of eggs hasn't come down or how Trump said he would solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours but hasn't done jackshit about it yet. Those are nice gestures, but that's all they are. They are icing on the resistance cake. Now bake the fucking cake.

Trump and his poisonous minions like to say that "the American people elected Donald Trump to do all the shit we're doing." Although, c'mon, not exactly this shit, like having Elon Musk take over large parts of the functioning of the government in a de facto coup. I don't remember any campaign speech with that in there. But you know what else we elected? Our fucking representatives and senators, and we expect them to follow through, too.

You have to show us action, even action that fails, so we know that you have our backs as we go through this shit. There's actually quite a bit that Democrats can do. If much of it is symbolic, well, symbolic acts inspire people. That's why they're done. 

Have constituents in Republican states and districts flood their senators and representatives with calls and get them out to the townhall meetings. Make Republicans feel the heat of an angry electorate. File more lawsuits and make a big public deal about them and their purpose, and make sure you tie them to the Democratic Party, saying that you're trying to solve the problems the GOP is creating. Demand arrests of people who violate the law, like, you know, Elon Musk. Do something like going down to the Department of the Treasury and demanding to be allowed to have access to the same records that Musk is getting. Get arrested trying to do it, if you have to. 

Most of all, stop making nice with the bastards. Sen. Amy Klobuchar recently said that Americans want Democrats and Republicans to "find common ground," which is patently absurd. Americans don't give a fuck about that or they wouldn't have voted for the candidate who explicitly said that Democrats can go fuck themselves. So fuck that. Grind the working of the government to a standstill with on unanimous consent, with bill readings, with whatever weird shit you can do in the Senate for some ancient reason. Do not support a single nominee. Make Republicans own it all. 

And use their shit against them. Tariffs making prices go up? Propose a hike in the federal minimum wage, saying that it's unfair that working people have to pay for Trump's tariffs. Make that a big focus: Republicans are forcing you to spend more. Democrats want you to have more money. If conservatives try to say it'll hurt businesses, then ask them why CEOs are making billions of dollars while their employees are on SNAP benefits. Fuck it, go all in. Say you want to raise taxes on the super-wealthy to eliminate medical debt in this country. Have the fucking class war. Why not? What the fuck do you have to lose? Your donors? Your post-Congress jobs? Then fuck off.

Finally, don't abandon the people who need you. The only reason the GOP attack on trans people got any traction is because Democrats took the fucking bait instead of saying, "What fucking business is it of yours?" and moving on. The same goes for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Defending it is ridiculously easy (and Democrats have done a bad job explaining it). Instead, we get Democrats saying shit like "Maybe we need to just concentrate on bread-and-butter issues." That's tacitly admitting Republicans are right. Don't play on their fucking field. Bring the ball to your home stadium and make them come there. Minimum wage hike - that's bread and butter. You know what else would be bread and butter? A general strike. 

It sucks. Everything suck right now. And every day is like lining up for the next forced face-fucking from these felonious freaks. It's gonna suck for a long time. So we need Democrats to get out there, in real life and not just online, and rally us. We need you to do that or a hell of a lot of us are going to be lost in our fear. Even if it all fails, at least it rallies us. Goddamn, we need it.

Oh, and, for the love the god, please stop putting Chuck Schumer out there. Just fucking stop.