I just had to read every inch of this, and the part that stayed in my throat was the contrast: billions “illegally confiscated,” tariffs and market losses, medical debt erased on the one hand then masked, unaccountable federal agents and kids getting tear-gassed on the other. That’s the whole fight in one frame: does government protect people, or does it punish them.
And then Pritzker’s turn to love…a love that doesn’t wave flags, love that shows up as parishioners forming a human chain, moms in the pickup line with cameras, bicyclists shielding vendors, people outside on the coldest day and that that hit me hard. Because that’s what survives every regime: ordinary courage, practiced in public. Thank you for putting that kind of hope on the record. Www.xplisset.com
Pritzker is my governor and I applaud every word that he said. Illinois is the state I vote in, and I hope my ballot reaches there from Germany in time. I got my ballot via email on the 31 of January, and printed and filled it out the next day. Then I took it to the post office on the next Monday and paid extra to have it fly registered to Chicago. I also guided my daughter in her voting and mailing it via registered mail in her German city as well. We have not yet been notified that it has arrived, but our mail ballots arrived last week, probably too late to get back in time via mail. People in France have been telling me their mail is taking 4-5 weeks to reach their US destinations. Some states allow one to fax or email ones ballot in, Illinois does not. So, we use the increasingly antiquated system of postal mail to participate in our right and duty as citizens to vote.
However that is not all. We are both members of Democrats Abroad in Germany which has a lot of branches. I am also a member of Indivisible Abroad, apparently a terrorist organization according to Trump, as in the Doublethink that is described in 1984. I also started a local group of Indivisible in my German city. We are already planning the next No Kings rally here. All of the Americans I know who are involved in Democratic politics abroad in both groups have a strong love of country and justice and we are working from afar to stand up for our country. Currently a group of us from several countries in Europe in Indivisible Abroad, is working on a plan to boycott Big US Tech such as Scott Galloway has started, and the Chaos Computer Clubs of Germany are doing the same. I know that members of both IA and DA will be joining us in getting citizens of our European countries to join in.
Financially, I too will suffer. My husband and I earned all our income in the US, and have to transfer money to Europe where we have retired and where our daughter is attending University (we are the old parents of a young adult), and we must pay for everything by turning our dollars into Euros, so as the dollar has weakened it costs us more to live. We also are willing to lose money in our pension funds in order to stand up to the beast. Recently the US stock market, which is propped up by overvaluation of big tech according to Paul Krugman, is not doing so well compared to other countries. According to Jeff Tiedrich, and others the US stockmarket, as measured by market cap is number 8. Canada's being number 1 and Germany's number 2.
I also stated a political book club which has been going since 2 summers ago, started to read Project 2025 collectively, and now we read books that help us better understand democracy and how we can support it. To that end we just finished reading Orwell's "1984" and since we meet weekly we went through it slowly. Our final meeting was about the appendix which explains the use of language in the fictional land of the story Oceania, but also a way that fascists in general use language. This is what Trump and his followers do, and it would help to recognize it. I wrote a piece about the words that I think best describe what Trump does, because it is important to understand.
I have to say I wish that Friedrich Merz understood this and perhaps he does, but still, he is sending someone to observe in the Trump Board of Peace meeting. Staying as far away as possible is important.
If you read my piece on the language of fascists you will understand what I think this board is really about. You can say that if he understands, then he is sending someone to keep an eye on the fascists under the guise of supporting Gaza's rebuilding. Germany will offer money for this, but I do not think it should give money to Trump to run it.
As Pritzker noted Illinois has given more than its share of money and it is not getting it back. Too bad Pritzker was not at the Munich Security Conference this past weekend. There California Governor Gavin Newsom invited leaders in other countries to make deals directly with him and his state with its huge economy as measured by GDP, thus circumventing Trump and his tariffs. I don't know how he can do it, but Newsom should be teaching this to Governor's like Pritzker as well. All Blue State Governors should be running their economies in ways that circumvent Trump. And yes, they should be suing Trump for withholding funds, as they are doing with great state AGs like Illinois' Kwame Raoul who went to the same school that I did only after me.
Thank you. You've given me some points to make in my next letter to Governor Healey. Like you, my savings are largely invested, so the stock market's craziness is a worry. And I, too, am in a state that sends more to Washington than it receives. Being a blue state makes us a target. I'll have to check with our AG - she is one who would sue T**** any time it's necessary.
James, In Solidarity!✌🏽 Let us know what you are saying to your governor. I have written Pritzker about Blue State collectively suing the Trump administration for these antics and the need for democratic politicians to go out and make connections beyond he US with other democratic politicians in other countries, the way the far-right has done. They are all buddies with Viktor Orban for example. Can we say that about any democratic politicians outside the US that all of the democrats are going to see and align with. The members of the AfD in Germany are constantly coming to the US and seems they are regularly getting together with the very stupid, but also evil, Anna Luna of Florida. I am reading about this regularly in the German publication Politico Berlin.
I call Luna “Lunatic” but I feel she is an agent for Russia, like Tulsi Gabbard. Plays dumb but is dangerous.
Still working on our German citizenship papers but I think my daughters, my sister, and I are getting close now. Have to work on my husband next. He has an Irish ancestry somewhere.
We are invested also but do have some foreign stock. I do know if you look at when we had the Great Depression years, those who stayed in the stock market, even with a few dollars, survived. They suffered but purchased stocks that were pennies on the dollar. When things improved (and we will get there!), those people made out like bandits! I am hoping we never reach those abysmal years but look, I never thought we’d be here in this state of craziness.
As Paul Krugman and Catherine Rampell have pointed out, the international stock markets have outperformed the US markets by over 10% since the inauguration.
Any broker worth their weight will have their clients invested in international markets as well as domestic. Diversity is the key to long term investing.
I have suggested to Mr Klugman in his Substack to think on doing ore than just talking and writing. It sees the Nobel prize winners have mainly siloed themselves. He could go out of the box and think on how economics affect chikdren as Jane Addams saw in her work at Hull House or how economics affects public and occupational health as Dr Alice Hamilton did as well as Hazel Johnson. It was not only Rachel Carson who had the mind and vision.
Then these folks coukd create whistle stop train tours and talk to people at the station or public areas and buildings. Or go to peoples homes . Whatever and connect in a visceral level. They could highlight an area to visit with a path. Similar but different from the monk peace journey. Back away from the elite circuit and do what Mother Joones did for a couple of weeks.
I agree. She is super super dangerous to German democracy, so I assume she is meeting with others. See the article I posted in response to James Vander Poel.
I've been hearing bits and pieces about Anna Luna. Having once lived in Florida, I've never been impressed with that state's congressional delegation - two loathsome Republican senators and 20 of 28 Republican representatives. Thanks for the warning.
AfD top candidate travels to US shortly before election...
Baden-Württemberg state parliament
Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD's leading candidate for the state elections in Baden-Württemberg, wants to fly to the US a few days before the state elections. He will travel to Washington from March 3 to 5 to attend an event entitled “The Alliance of Sovereign Nations,” the member of the Bundestag announced. The podcast “Inside AfD” was the first to report on the trip. The state election in Baden-Württemberg will take place on March 8.
AfD member of the Bundestag Anna Rathert announced the flight of a delegation to an international congress of right-wing parliamentarians on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. She said she had initiated the meeting on March 4 and 5 together with US Representative Anna Paulina Luna of US President Donald Trump's Republican Party. The AfD delegation would include three to four specialist politicians.
Frohnmaier to appear as speaker
According to the podcast, Frohnmaier is also scheduled to speak at the “Turning Point Action” event. The AfD politician said that this exchange would serve to secure jobs in Baden-Württemberg. For this very reason, he said, responsible politics cannot only take place at home, but must also represent economic interests where key decisions on investment and trade relations are made.
Tens of thousands of jobs, especially in the automotive industry with over 315,000 direct employees and an export quota of more than 77 percent, depend directly on stable transatlantic relations, Frohnmaier said, justifying the planned visit to Washington.
In Baden-Württemberg, the new state parliament will be elected on March 8. The AfD currently stands at around 20 percent in the polls, behind the CDU and the Greens. Frohnmaier is also deputy leader of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag and a close confidant of party leader Alice Weidel. He wants to become Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, but is not running for the state parliament.
There has been a steady stream of AfD politicians to Washington, and Anna Paulina Lunas name is mentioned in most of these articles as being a destination, a contact. She is evil personified and there should be a concerted effort to get rid of her in Florida.
Thank you. I'll be paying attention to CSPAN - the only place you can find unbiased coverage of those TPA events (even though they are hard to watch, but one has to know one's enemies).
Linda, thanks for this info.Luna won her district by 10% in 2024, not a landslide, so it is considered flippable and Earle Ford is a strong contender.He has a lot of grassroots support and states not relying on PACs or special interests.
“Ford is also a U.S. Army veteran. Ford served as an infantryman, where he trained soldiers to execute missions safely. He also worked for the IRS auditing taxpayers, including billionaires, his campaign says, which showed him “how a rigged system protects the ultrawealthy while leaving working families behind.”
Actually, because my daughter fell in love with the book, so that after reading it several times to her, my husband found it being read aloud on Libra Vox, and so we know that the color of the "ruby slippers" in the book was silver.
I used my silver slippers to return to Germany, the home country of my mother. I do go to the home country I was born in, but not right now, because I have a medical condition that prevents me from flying.
Linda, who don’t you write your governor asking him to change to emailing ballots.our post office is notorious for being slow or losing mail and packages. I often buy art from Europe and if it goes through the post office, I need to monitor it for if it gets stuck in a deport now, I call the postmaster general and immediately accuse them of having employee thieves stealing and I get action. Let’s not forget who the postmaster is in this country who was appointed by Trump. The last election, he was determined to get rid of the big mail sorters which would have caused such stress on voting by absentee ballots.
I'm don't know if you know this, I know many people I talk to don't; the Wizard of Oz was written as political satire. The Silver slipper represent the Silver standard, whereas the Yellow Brick Road represents the Gold Standard. The three companions and Toto all represent factions at play in the populist movement, and so forth.
By the way, the Lollipop Guild represented the rise of the unionized labor movement.
Read this and you'll never think of the story the same.
Yes because Baym was concerned about silver and its use in financial and perhaps mining issues. The Emerald City was not green but there were green eye glasses to wear. I loved those books growing up abd Chicago has a solid Baum connection. There are of course issues with isms but his creativity amazing.
I am in MA too. I tell everyone its only a matter of time before he comes for us, very blue and with a lesbian governor. Two things. I voiced my own concerns to my financial advisor (I am late 70s) and luckily he has me in municipal bonds and diversified assets outside the US, of course not all of it. So not immune but buffered. And we have a strong No Kings and other groups, I have been to three, others have done much more. We started the Revolution! I live in the MA town where we still have Paul Revere's foundry! I lived in the North End of Boston by the Old North Church, walked by Revere's home there often and that's not even mentioning Lexington and Concord. Nor the myriad other places of significance in NE.
We are steeped in history and resistance! And I lived for years in St. Paul and Minneapolis and still have friends there. And still fighting after all these years.
We have a group that regularly protests at the ICE facility in Burlington, and twice weekly protests here in town. There is some tension between Indivisible groups in Worcester and surrounding towns, so it looks like there will be two No Kings rallies there: one downtown from 11-1 and one at Institute Park from 1-3PM. From what I gather, one group in Worcester is not amenable to working with any other, ergo the two rallies. I'll be doing my usual marshal duties.
The “ stock” market is just that. It should be a Stake market which benefits all stakeholders such as employees and consumers as well as shareholders. Thank you for your comments.
Thank you Linda! We are from Michigan and really admire Governor Pritzker. We also live in Spain for 6 months of the year. I belong and am active with Indivisible when we are in the states but when we are here (we just arrived for our 90 days that are allowed), I can only stay in touch with my friends and other activists via email. I used to belong to DA but every meeting or activity is at least 2-3 hours away so I have never attended any of the meetings or participated in the activities.
I am sorry and disturbed about your issues with your ballots. We have always voted by mail. Our city clerk in St. Joseph (quite a small town) emails the ballots to us, we print them and fill them out and then, I too, mail them registered mail. When she receives them, she sends me an email to tell me that they have arrived and will be counted. It usually takes about a week to 10 days. I am not sure what is the issue in Germany or France but here in Spain it seems to work. I hope your ballots are enroute and will be counted!
All my best, keep working to make our world a better place.
We ask for them by email because I got my mailed ballot 2 weeks later. Germany has slowed down their mail delivery. I believe it is a cost cutting and lack of personnel reason. I will get an email from Chicago when they receive my ballot and have not yet. I will contact them by the end of the month if I have not heard, because then we will need to use our plan B.
Just sign up for Indivisible Abroad. As far as I can see Barcelona is the only city in Spain with a branch, but no worries, you can attend meetings online and start your own group when you are ready. I started one in Bremen, Germany and someone is coming to an in person meeting here from Kiel, which is 2- hour train ride from Bremen. Someone else just started one in München. So, from one in Frankfurt, we now have 3 groups in Germany. One of the leaders lives in Berlin part of the time, and Italy part of the time, and travels to England, Spain and Chile a lot so gets around, but is not in one place long enough to start a group there, except for the first one in England.
This comment of yours is so thoughtful and articulate, Linda. The Illinois primary is not until March 17.
And in Illinois, there is a grace period for ballots if they do not arrive by Election Day as long as they are postmarked before or on Election Day. So, you and your family’s ballots will almost certainly be counted.
March 17, 2026: Election Day. Absentee ballots returning to the U.S. must be postmarked before or on Election Day.
March 31, 2026: Absentee ballot receipt deadline. Absentee ballots postmarked before or on Election Day can be processed if they arrive at the Chicago Board of Elections within 14 days of Election Day. Any absentee ballot postmarked after Election Day cannot be processed, by law.
This is why I hurried my daughter who took a week to mail her ballot because being 20, she did not have printer ink and did not have time to get it for 2 days, and then did not have time to go to the post office for 2 days because she had a big presentation to prepare for and classes to attend. Still, getting hers out in a week was good. Since the absentee ballots need to be postmarked by election day, it still needs to be there by that date.
Germany has reduced their postal services and told us last year that mail would be slower. People in France say it is taking 4-5 weeks. In Denmark they are getting rid of public mailing services because most people do everything electronically, and those who are older and do not, will now have to use private mailing services. Who knows about that.
If anyone cannot fill out their ballot right away, for one, because they don't report on the judges races until shortly before the election, so we have to do all the research on our own which takes time, then they cannot get their ballot into the mail right away. I did the research, which is why my daughter could get her ballot out so quickly too.
I also sent all the information on voting from abroad to the 4 friends I have on sabbatical this year, with instructions like ask for an emailed ballot and what the various deadlines are.
Most people in the US get their candidate endorsements ready for the stateside voters not the Voter abroad. I understand that, but it makes us have to really follow the issues and do the research on our own. That slows us down. Still, it is worth it. We are tabling here to get more people to know how to vote and will be doing this until the last state's deadline for the ballots has passed. That is what Vote from Abroad and Democrats Abroad mostly does, is help people to figure out how to vote from abroad.
I was impressed with the postal service in Ireland a couple of years ago. I shipped some things back the day before returning to the US and they arrived within a week. The service at the post office in Galway was top notch. The clerk provided me with a box and taped it up for free. I only paid for postage. I'm not sure if that was normal or not, but I was very pleased.
I have a neighbor who was a state's attorney before he retired. I didn't trust the judge list from the Chgo Trib, so I used to bring him the Trib's list and ask him his opinions. He didn't comment on them all, but would sometimes point out a few and say "not good".
Sadly, he's now retired, and even more sadly, though was a Democrat for his entire career, he's gone to the dark side. 😣
you need to know that the US Postal Service has changed how they postmark mail coming in. You can no longer count on your mail being marked just simply because you leave it at the post office on election day. They now can mark the postal mark at the regional center, which could be a day or two later. This is a huge change that was specifically done by the current postmaster general who is a supporter of Trump. We need to get the word out that you cannot trust mailing in your ballot this year as being postmarkedif left on the day of the election. I would tell all people to drop your mailed vote a week before the election deadline just to make sure it’s actually counted.
excellent point. I just find it incredibly annoying that is pseudo government agency is allowed to do something like this without a law being written with the subsequent approval of Congress.
The one time I had to mail something by a postmarked date, I had to take our quarterly taxes in to be postmarked. I was expecting a grouchy mail clerk; instead, I got one who said "I am SO glad you know you need to get that hand-stamped" and was very friendly.
Ally, I am within a 3 mile radius of 4 postoffices. I'm there monthly mailing packages to my grands in another state. Every one I go to, I've been treated very well.
I live in Japan and each year since the year 2000, mailing in our absentee ballots has become more and more difficult. I finally gave up on the post office because the Japanese post office told me flat out, they can’t guarantee how long my ballot would take to get to America, even by special delivery for $20. So I started sending my ballots by DHL which sometimes cost $80. At least it got there. But the next challenge is, does your signature on your ballot match the one they have on record. Do you sign your name exactly the same each time?
Fortunately, I’m registered in a small town in California so my brother went over to the voting office with samples of my signature and let me know which one was in their records.
For the last two or three elections, my ballot arrived a few days before the election with the envelope torn and parts missing, or didn’t arrive at all.
All I can say is don’t assume your ballot will get there on time, or be counted.
Please note: things may change and we have to be aware and wary!
System Taking Effect December 24, 2025
DECEMBER 08, 2025 BY ED ZOLLARS, CPA
Summary of the Final Rule The United States Postal Service (USPS) has adopted a final rule (FR Doc. 2025-20740) adding Section 608.11, "Postmarks and Postal Possession," to the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM). The rule formally defines postmarks and identifies the types of markings that qualify as such. Its primary purpose is to improve public understanding that while a postmark confirms the USPS possessed a mailpiece on the date inscribed, that date does not necessarily align with the date the USPS first accepted possession of the item. The rule clarifies that the USPS does not postmark all mail in the ordinary course of operations and that the absence of a postmark does not imply the USPS did not accept custody.
Impact on Postmarking Timing The rule clarifies that the date displayed on a machine-applied postmark represents the "date of the first automated processing operation" performed at a processing facility, rather than the date the mail was dropped off.
Potential Delays: Because most postmarks are applied at processing facilities, the date inscribed may be later than the date the mailpiece was first accepted by the USPS. This discrepancy is expected to become more common due to the implementation of the "Regional Transportation Optimization" (RTO) initiative and the adoption of "leg-based" service standards.
Operational Reality: The rule codifies the operational reality that postmarking operations often cross calendar days or occur after transportation from a retail unit, meaning the postmark date is not a "perfectly reliable indicator" of the date of mailing.
Ensuring a Postmark on the Date of Delivery To assure a postmark is applied on the same day a document is delivered to the USPS, individuals must utilize specific retail services. The final rule outlines the following methods:
Request a Manual Postmark: Customers may present a mailpiece at a retail counter and request a "manual (local) postmark". This postmark is applied at the time of acceptance, so the date aligns with the date the USPS took possession.
Postage Validation Imprint (PVI): When a customer pays for postage at a retail counter, the PVI label applied by the employee also indicates the date of acceptance.
Certificates of Mailing: Customers may purchase a Certificate of Mailing, or use Registered or Certified Mail, to obtain a receipt that serves as evidence of the date the item was presented for mailing,.
I'm pretty sure the "Board of Peace" is just the front for another Trump grift. Given his background, I'm sure Chancellor Merz is aware of this, too. Still, it doesn't hurt for his representative to be a fly on the wall at these meetings (except that the Trumpies will cite German attendance as an endorsement). Just don't put any money into anything that has to do with Trump. I also just saw that the Pope declined an invitation. He probably didn't want the Vatican to be shaken down for a billion.
Having lived in Illinois and California, I applaud the efforts of Governors Pritzer and Newsom to bypass any financial dealings that go through Trump or his cabal of grifters.
Howard Lutnick and Trump are not only corrupt but they are also pedophiles and Bessent has withheld tens of billions of Congressionally approved funds. And they still managed to add over $2 trillion to the national debt in 2025 while tanking the economy.
JL, I second that emotion. I have to say though, that this administration makes it harder and harder! I do NOT want them to steal my humanity and have the void filled with anger and hate. I have to stifle those instincts.
I love smart people like you - unlike Donald Trump who feeds off of ignorance - and gorges himself and others like him. Please stay strong - even from afar. Thank you for your efforts!
Dear friends in this thread. I fear for your financial future if you are highly invested in this stock market. The bubble will soon burst. Nobody can know when. But the warnings from economists and financial experts are many. The AI bubble is greater than any other in our history. Too much money is being thrown at the wall like spaghetti - seeing what will stick.
The S&P 500 has historically been viewed as a relatively safe and conservative index. But it ain't anymore. Too many companies are now tied to the AI fantasy of big rewards.
The truth is that there is no way that the trillions of market evaluation based on AI will see a meaningful ROI in our lifetimes. Did you notice the desperate ads for AI during the Super Bowl?
In 2000, there was a wake up call. Duh. Just because a company had a web site and added .com to their name didn't mean they would be any more successful. The list of companies that went up in smoke was long. And retirement portfolios were decimated.
In 2008, it happened again. There were warnings. But for most of us the "bundled crap mortgage" fiasco was a shock. Our family's portfolio was invested for "conservative growth" in major company mutual funds. In a week, it all collapsed by 40%. Our "financial advisor/broker/stock salesman" came to visit. "I am so sorry. I really thought we could go to cash more quickly. But there were too many sellers and not enough buyers." He drove away in his red Maserati.
In 2026, the warnings are loud and clear. The markets are dominated by a new technology that is just beginning and it has not demonstrated how or to what degree it will pay dividends to investors. Sooner or later, someone at a big firm will downgrade a company like NVIDIA from "strong buy" to "hold". Not even "sell". Then look out below.
Please. Many here are near retirement or in it. Prepare yourselves. Long term holding is sensible if you have a long term ahead. If you need your portfolio to pay bills over the next five or ten years...don't be sucked into FOMO. Cash is king.
Social Security’s main retirement trust fund is now projected to run out of reserves in 2032 — a year earlier than previously expected — according to the Congressional Budget Office. If Congress takes no action, benefits could face an automatic cut of about 20%, though roughly 80% of payments would still be covered by ongoing payroll taxes. MIAMII HERALD FEB. 18, 2026.
+++++++++
Readers are probably receiving Social Security benefits or will apply soon. Threats of “bankruptcy” of the two Social Security Trust funds abound in the media, and Trump Administration budgets have cut operational funding. There is reason to worry.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, support the trust funds, they might be secure.
If the wage cap was increased - or better yet, removed entirely - the Social Security Trust Fund would be in far better shape. It would also help if we had more immigrants paying into the system to make up for the declining number of native-born Americans in the labor force, as immigrants tend to be younger.
Bill, diversification is everything. Yes, everyone should have emergency funds in easily liquidated accounts, but I'd mention another spin on the "cash is king". Our dollar is worth less and less, and when inflation rates are greatly higher than those of a passbook or even a CD, you are falling behind.
My sister retired 13 years ago with a small pension which is NOT INDEXED to inflation. She relies heavily on her SS, and mentioned that, this year, the Medicare increases and the raise on her HOA fees wiped out her SS increases. In a shocked voice she told me "I'm getting poorer!" (And yeah, she's a Trump voter, but honestly DID think he'd reduce prices. She was an uninformed voter. I print the Letter out for her daily now. Not uniformed any longer.)
Our Dad left the bulk of his very small "estate" to her 13 years ago, and she should have invested it in something other than CDs. You couldn't get her to put even a small portion of it into ANYTHING else.
Finances are very, very complicated. I agree with some of what you say. We also had losses in 2008, but we held on. As many in the stock market have seen, we have more than made up our losses. I hope you have recovered, but if you did sell everything at a loss, I suspect you didn't.
Cash in the mattress does nothing. "Cash" in the bank falls behind. Stocks can rocket up--and down. If you are 65 and healthy, and have family history of longevity, you're going to need that money to last 20-30 years.
Not trying to be critical with you, just pointing out that investing is a complex issue and Trump is (bad word used as a verb) all over the US and world economy.
Clearly you are well versed on the subject. We did ultimately recover from the 2008 disaster. I grabbed some 2009 bargains. It was easy picking.
I think what is core to guiding investors is time frames. If I were 10 or 20 years younger, I would be very diversified. But we need our modest retirement assets now. They are our income. The plan is simple. Enjoy life carefully yet fully and die broke.
Yrump's Board of Peace is the only international organization I can think of that he supports, aside from criminal ones. It therefore is meant to take the place of the United Nations. He surel6 does not support tha5. And we may seen him attempt to force it to leave New York. He has the power to do that, courts of law be dawned. He would then buy the real estate.
His Board of Peace, he being the self-proclaimed "King of Peace" will be a Board of Trustees appointed by him to govern the world. With him as its enforcer
Note with what complacency the New Yirk Times reports that "he" is getting ready to wage war on Iran. "He" of course meaning "we". And every time he says "we" he means "he".
First rule of Democrscy. Never leave it to someone else to do something you consider of importance especially as it relates to civic duty. Thomas Paine. You woukd hs e been better advised to fly home with your mail in ballot and to have mailed it in from the same post office as that with the zip code of the addressee. Better yet, to have hand delivered it to the office in the addressee.
In general, it looks as if voting by mail will be a bad idea as that is exactly what the DOJ, FBI, DN8, CIA, DHS are intent on disrupting.
Bring it on. Let them try to mess with vote by mail here in Massachusetts. We've got a Secretary of State whose bite is a lot worse than his bark and he's itching for a fight. Bondi and Noem don't faze him. And we'll all be backing him up. Bring it on.
Linda, I am appalled that it takes more than 5 weeks to get ballots from Germany to Illinois. It was no slower at the end of the 19th century. That is deliberate tampering in my view and needs to be stopped! We have been letting Republican operatives to do enormous damage for the past half-century, others not stopping them, thinking good Americans wouldn't do such harm to the people. Boy were we wrong!
Thank you so much, Linda for all you have done and continue to do. I have great respect for Gov. Pritzker as well as Gov. Newsom. They provide a glimmer of hope when we so desperately need it.
Long after this foul regime is history — and one day it WILL be but the memory of a receding nightmare — we will look back and remember all those acts of simple decency and humanity by some that made it possible for all of us to get through, to resist, to re-claim a republic stolen from us.
In the meantime though — such a prodigious amount of work to be done! Yesterday, Contrarian Senior Editor Tom Dickinson published “Inside Trump’s ICE Concentration Camps” on his Substack page, which I hope people will search for and take the time to read and digest. With the billions appropriated to DHS, ICE and the CPB in the Big Ugly Bill, an interstate system — not of ‘temporary detention centers’ but permanent concentration camps — is being built in this land, something that has never before happened in America.
To “house” the tens of thousands of abductees (75% without any criminal record whatever — some even holding green cards or awaiting asylum petitions) hundreds of warehouses, facilities and buildings are being built, set up and run by private, pay-to-play contractors doing the dirty work of doling out physical abuse, hunger and despair in Texas, Florida, California — mostly in rural areas far removed from public scrutiny.
Recalling Stanley Kramer’s 1961 masterpiece, “Judgment at Nuremberg” when former Nazi Minister of Justice Ernst Janning takes the stand —not in self-defense, but in remorse and self-incrimination — there is this cold reminder for all who said they had no choice…
“Maybe it’s true we didn’t know all the details of the concentration camps,” he tells a hushed tribunal. “But if we didn’t know, it is because we didn’t WANT to know…”
Who would have imagined the day would come when comparisons between us and early Nazi Germany would actually start to make sense.
The word is out on those prison profiteers: on one of their 'earnings calls' the point was made that they weren't making enough, but that they had been assured that ICE was going to increase the number of detainees, so their earnings would increase, and soon. I can't imagine a lower class of humans than those who would make money by inflicting misery on their fellows. Makes used car salesman and even many politicians seem like choir boys.
And I think Anthony Davis and Ron Filipkowski hit the nail on the head yesterday. The concentration camps aren’t being built for deportations, they will be holding camps for a free labor force. Slave labor, if you will. It makes perfect sense, if the dictator and Gruppenfuhrer Miller deported all of those they round up, then the concentration camp business goes away and there will be nothing left for ICE to do. What was the sign over the gate to Dachau; Work Will Set You Free. This is a neo-Nazi regime, operating from the same playbook with the same goals in mind as the original, a “master” race that is white, “christian”, male-dominated fully in charge and calling all the shots. But it’s not going to work here. The dictator is on borrowed time. His dementia proceeds apace and his carcass is falling apart, and it’s a good bet he won’t see Christmas. Without him this fascist enterprise loses most of its steam. Second, this is a big country and the resistance is building by the day. The ICE thugs aren’t going to corral us and the military won’t go along with it. He can try to fuck with November elections all he wants, but we will be voting in all 50 states and we will throw a lot of his Congressional bootlickers to the curb. I just wish we had a Churchill to remind us daily to never give up. Some folks seem to need that.
And while we are effectively protesting the concentration camps, this Nazi Administration is leasing space for 🧊 in and near metropolitan areas in every state. Secretly leasing space. No-bid contracts. The only possible explanation is to have staging areas for suppressing voters at the polls in November. Bannon gave the game away: 🧊 surrounding polling places. Demento said he would assure proof of citizenship “by himself” - ie by calling out his Brown Shirts.
Corecivic. I checked and have no connections. For decades since I learned some of the Roman Catholic nuns were trying to be social justice aware with their stock donations I have been trying to find appropriate financial guidance. It’s not easy and scary when doing it all by yourself. There are other issues with some of the private equity and hedge funds.
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
An eloquent and very substantive speech, and thanks to HRC for sleuthing such oratory out. I wish a lot more people were hearing it. I think it makes a real difference.
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
I didn’t need to see the video you provided, Heather, because you quoted him perfectly. I felt a lot of emotion just reading his speech. I truly admire him in that he seems to respect his staff and the people of his state. To wipe out medical bills for so many people really lifts them out of despair. People want to work hard for someone like that because they feel heard. They feel loved.
We all want that and the only way we are going to get it is to constantly fight back. Like one of my t-shirts says “Rage Against The Regime”.
Unfortunately, the Epstein story re: (Prince) Andrew is drowning out all other newsworthy stories this morning. I was hoping to hear something about Pritzker’s wonderful “speech”….How to bring attention to this important expression of hope !!!
As a child, I used to get up early to read the obituary section of the paper to see if my despicable 3rd grade teacher had passed away overnight.
After a few months, my sister noticed me reading the obits ( not the comics) and she told me the newspaper reported yesterday's news, and "Ms Mason would have been dead / school canceled the prior day."
I was bummed out.
However, with the advent of the high speed internet, I have reverted to awaken from my nightmare ridden sleep at 3AM in the hope mortality had intervened a moment earlier.
I hope to live long enough to gleefully sing " Ding Dong the King is Dead" with all the other munchkins world wide.
My bands played selections from "Wicked" in the past couple of years. Loved it! We had the assignment to watch the movie (not nearly as good as the musical, BTW) to get the gist of the songs we were playing.
FWIW, both my auditioned and non-auditioned community bands played it; there is a horn solo in one of the pieces, and our non-auditioned horn player knocked it out of the park; it is my good fortune to sit behind the horns, and my "back row seat" was the best in the house.
What meant the most to me (from an address having many meaningful points) was Pritzker's reminder of all that the man in DC is costing us--state governments, organizations, individuals--because of what must be spent to challenge or defend the litigation he indulges. To say nothing of what he is making the federal government pay for his frivolous, malicious lawsuits. I wish there were a way, down the line, to claw back this money. He's suing the government for $10 billion?? Sue him for $100 billion. Make him pay for his waste, fraud and abuse.
A great speech that reaches far beyond Illinois. Governor Pritzker’s address is not only a state policy roadmap, it is a statement about what democratic leadership can look like in a moment of national strain. For Americans watching from other states, the speech signals that there are governors willing to defend institutions, protect civil rights, and challenge federal overreach without retreating into cynicism or spectacle.
To the broader public, the meaning is twofold. First, it models a version of government that takes everyday pressures seriously. Rising housing costs, healthcare bills, and energy prices are not abstract talking points; they are daily burdens. By addressing them directly and proposing structural changes, the speech affirms that policy can still respond to lived reality. Second, it reframes patriotism as care for the community rather than grievance politics. Invoking Progressive era reformers and speaking in moral language about justice and love, Pritzker situates today’s conflicts within a longer American tradition of expanding rights and opportunity.
For many Americans, the speech offers something rare right now: evidence that principled, accountable governance remains possible.
I am so proud of my governor and my fellow Illinoisans who stand up with him against the horrors inflicted by this regime. Backbone matters. Integrity matters. Empathy matters. And yes, love matters most of all.
This is how we win! Please, deeply fair and fairly progressive…we forget the Progressives used to think about the bigger picture of fairness.
We must win and win big to overcome the likely voter suppression attempts. My Dad was born and raised on the SouthSide, worked at a steel mill to pay for College, NorthWestern. And the taught in Evanston. In the 50’s Chicago was changing and he loved Jazz of all flavors…so he lived the City with the Broad Shoulders…workers making things, the hog butcher of America! Then moved to the adventure of Alaska!
Spot on Governor Pritzker. I can’t help but make the connection to Elsa at the end of Frozen learning that love is the answer to her powers, but maybe that’s because I’m down with the flu and pneumonia and my girls love watching Frozen, so it’s fresh on my mind 🤣
Anyways - my usual - Be LOUD. Don’t give up. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Or Winston, the protagonist in Orwell's "1984" realizes that love is the power that elevates one from and keeps one from sinking into the totalitarian abyss. The member of the fascist government that Winston encounters, understands the power of love too, and what to do to get rid of it, just as Trump is trying to do. I wish us all luck in our love of people and democracy and the constitution and the rule of law.
Yes. And love is a power that is infinitely stronger than any idea of luck. Don't forget to love yourself, everybody. Take care of yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and love is winning the marathon. MAGA is emptiness.
Sadly, after much psychological torture, Winston succumbs. The last line in the book: “He loved Big Brother.” Let’s keep fighting back. There is no alternative.
Thank goodness for Orwell. With a little trepidation, I picked "1984" off the shelf and reread it for the first time in 50 years. What a terrific read, and I am so grateful he gave that perfect picture of totalitarianism to us. It's a very compelling story. Hard to put down. I got to the shocking part... and I just skimmed from there. Having read it in high school, I knew. I invented my own happy ending, but was renewed in inspiration to keep resisting the WH.
For me, the mother of millennials Harry Potter comes to mind. It was his mother’s love that saved Harry from Voldemort and the wise old Wizard knows it’s only love that can save the Wizarding World when the Ministry falls into the hands of fascists again. He knows that love is more powerful than any kind of magic
For your consideration on what to write your representatives and senators about today:
Important developments in the treatment of refugees who have not gotten lawful permanent resident (green card) status after one year are being reported by Law Dork.
This is the perfect catch-22 situation:
1. On March 25, 2025, DHS has put a hold on processing refugees to “adjust their status.”
2. On November 21, 2025, the DHS issued a memo saying that all persons granted refugee status since the beginning of the Biden administration can have their status re-examined.
2. DHS is now saying it has to find any refugee who hasn’t “adjusted their status” (obtained a green card) after a year of residency and detain them until they are reprocessed. Under this new memo, they can be detained for more than 48 hours (the previous maximum) up to a time that is ”not indefinite” but is unspecified.
4. This means that any refugee admitted since the beginning of the Biden administration who got a green card could have their status revoked. They would then be subject to immediate detention and deportation.
5. This also means that anyone applying for refugee status receives only a one-year “safe haven” until DHS resumes processing refugee applications. After that, you can be detained and deported immediately.
Refugees are the people with the fewest resources to rebuild their lives. This is yet another example of sadistic cruelty by the Trump administration.
To make matters worse, DHS has found a pet judge who is restricting online public access to the documents in the case, allowing the public to see the documents only by going to a courthouse to obtain them.
Georgia, I sent the law dork document to some people who I think could use it but, may I also copy your comments and send them on to the same people? Please let me know. Thanks!
It also made me think of Bad Bunny's sign at the Super Bowl halftime show: The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love. Wishing you a swift recovery, Megan!
Thank you. I am not good at “resting” but am trying.
I should be asleep right now, but I’m snuggling my 2 year old who most likely is starting to get sick too since she keeps waking up crying ❤️🩹 Thankfully my husband will be home from work soon and we can tag team the rest of the night.
Many thanks for all you are doing every day. You are an inspiration to all of us seniors to push harder and do more that will have an impact.
This year's flu is nasty. I hope it passes quickly for you and your family. Take the time you need to rest and recuperate, hard as that is with little ones. Things get back to normal a lot faster that way. As a single parent, it took me a ridiculously long time to figure that out.
Oh, my goodness gracious! You have a three year old AND you are waving the banner of hope for many of us who have marched to see a government that is true to its ideals and foundation for years. I am 76 and have been marching for decades. Thank you. You are my hero.
Another possibility for your consideration on what to protest today to your members of Congress. Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell focused on the fallacy of using the presumption of regularity when addressing anything the Trump administration does, since it is "the most powerful criminal syndicate in history". I wrote what follows yesterday afternoon when it became clear that the SAVE acts had enough votes to pass if the filibuster were not in place.
The only thing preventing the SAVE America Act from becoming law is the filibuster…
Senate Republicans could still try to use the filibuster “nuclear option” on a category of bills.
The “nuclear option” is a maneuver in which a simple majority creates a new precedent that effectively overrides the 60‑vote filibuster rule, ending debate without formally revising it. The majority leader (or another senator) brings up a bill, makes a point of order that cloture on that kind of measure should be decided by a simple majority, and the presiding officer rules that under existing rules, 60 votes are required. A majority then votes to overturn the chair’s ruling; that vote itself is by simple majority and, once successful, becomes a binding precedent that 51 votes are enough to end debate on that category of business (e.g., nominations, or a class of legislation if they go that far).
You need at least 51 senators (including the VP as a tiebreaker) who are willing not just to support a given bill, but to vote to overturn the chair and permanently relax or end the filibuster for that category of measures. Political Wire reported that the SAVE Act passed that threshold in the Senate.
Past uses of the "nuclear option" have chipped away at the filibuster (for most nominations in 2013 and for Supreme Court nominations in 2017), showing the chamber accepts this as legitimate precedent‑making even though it is controversial.
More recently, commentators and some senators have described several 2025 majority actions—such as changing how certain budget baselines are treated—as “nuclear” because they used similar majority‑driven precedents to reshape the rules of procedure, showing that the tactic is not confined to confirmation fights.
The budget baseline change let them lock in permanent extensions and new cuts without showing the full sticker shock that a strict current‑law baseline would reveal. Politically, it gave Republicans a way to say they were “avoiding a tax hike” rather than passing a giant tax cut, because the adjusted baseline treated the Trump tax cuts as the default, and OBBB as preventing that default from expiring.
Assuming the filibuster will not change is an example of believing in the presumption of regularity. In normal times, that was enough to prevent using the "nuclear option," but we are no longer in normal times.
The issue then comes down to defining an appropriate, narrow class of legislation for the Rules to prevent the use of the filibuster.
If only that were the headline in the WSJ with an editorial shaming the companies that are the Trump enablers, and then having it trickle down to the right-wing blogosphere. It needs to be tied up with a bow connecting it to the Epstein files and Epstein’s connections to AI investments and Russia.
House Republicans failing to show up to question Wexner yesterday was shameful. That needs to get more traction in the media.
In her videos as well as her letters, HCR has often reiterated the belief that there are many voices that are rising, not just one leader of the opposition. She is highlighting that tonight. It is a critical way to give hope when there appears to be few rays of sunshine. Her knowledge of our past is a critical bridge to the future we all want for America. Paths forward are multiplying as those voices are heard, repeated and given prominence. Thank you HCR and all others who continue to speak, act and believe in the promise of America.
Not for nothing are we remembering today words the late Jesse Jackson once made famous — “keep hope alive.” For nobody can live long without that. Whatever else may be taking place around us, we cannot live without the simple joys a normal life bestows. They give strength and courage to face — and solve — what feel like impossible and overwhelming challenges in a struggle we don’t yet know how to win.
But as Governor Pritzker and others remind, we’re actually stronger than they are. They fight for ugly, cruel, base things in order to hold onto power already slipping from their grasp — we fight to preserve the best and noblest our republic has to offer everyone.
To continue with all the World War II analogies, the line from “Casablanca” when Victor Laszlo tells Humphrey Bogart, “welcome back to the fight, Monsieur Rick — this time I know our side will win” comes to mind.
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
JD, I wrote about AOC speaking in Berlin at the Technical University to over 1000 students on Sunday after she had spoken on two panels at the Munich Security Conference.
It was an amazing uplifting talk, and AOC is certainly meeting the moment. An important piece of that is reaching out to democratic politicians around the world, and building alliances as the far-right has been doing for the past 50+ years.
In misogynistic America, she will have double baggage. I was raised to think I was strong and capable, not because I was told that but because I was not hovered over or treated as helpless. Also, I didn’t have deficits that held me back as many do. I didn’t consider females as lessers although the road had more potholes. My Mom mothered eight children while working in a hosiery mill (sometimes at home when she had an infant). No helpless women and men who carried their load. Great but flawed role models. AOC speaks to all, but do some have ears for a female voice in this climate. It is as toxic as CO2. Sorry for the digression, but we have been so blocked by jealous power for too long.
Thank you, JD. This is indeed, as you say, critical. It also helps when it is tempting to give up because there is so much going on. We each do what we can. None of us has to do everything. We answer what calls us. Someone else is answering what is calling them.
I am increasingly convinced that Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
And it is deliberate and relentless, often aided by that power gene in females. May it go extinct, along with the jealous hatred. Maybe we prove that empathy and caring are stronger traits for survival - of us all.
Interesting speculation, Loren. I know that generational trauma is a thing, and exists in all of the cultures/races that have been the target of racially based torture (in the US I am familiar with Black and Indigenous peoples). It is also in the families of our veterans whose wartime trauma is passed biologically to their children and their children.
I have not seen any studies on this particular component, but I have seen evidence that the "family tradition" sexual abuse does exist, and that the trauma of abuse does not prevent one from abusing their own children (thinking here of several families of three generations that I dealt with in my time in law enforcement) where I saw three, and once, four generation that engaged in that behavior.
By "Jane, where are you when we need you?" are you referring to Jane Fonda? If so, she is now on Substack. And five days ago, she posted a video responding to some letters she has received from her Substack subscribers. Here she is...
This year marks the 50th anniversary of my U of Michigan doctoral dissertation.
I was already then anticipating Heather’s concerns in her books, podcasts, and Letters from an American.
By 1976 I’d gotten my B.A. in Ann Arbor, joined the army to become a translator/interpreter of Vietnamese, and leaving it had to spend my last day in a Ft. Dix, NJ hall where TV screens all day looped continuous sports product infomercials. As if that entire war served no more than U.S. materialism.
I’d not known then, April 4, 1972, of the Powell memo of August 23, 1971.
I’d not known of Heather’s concerns for how former U.S. enslaving classes had morphed into the new shopping malls, fast food franchises along all the new interstates, fossil fuel behemoths taking over all foreign policy, and the new far-right foundations of the Powell memo soon ridding American schools of humanities, crushing students in bank debt, propelling tides of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and allowing U.S. and world ruling elites to rape as many underage girls as Donald’s pals could traffic to them.
The dissertation I began in 1976, “Appalachia and Detroit,” was a personal travelogue, as if older strands of American culture and regionalism might vie with what I could only see as the consumerism taking over then.
How minor in comparison the vulgarities of 50 years ago, as they segued into the raping, corruption of an entire political party, and the setting up of American state terror, murder campaigns, and a gulag of concentration camps as the barely dehumanized of then became those fulsomely more so now?
Ah you saw the story that Harriet Arnow writes in her book The Dollmaker then the tv film starring Jane Fonda! It took me decades to make that assessment and the other multilayered migrations that happened as well.
These words of Governor Pritzker really good. No politician is perfect or without issues. This speech was stellar and should go down in history Phil. He used history and human narrative to relay we are not finished yet. I really needed this.
Phil, I started my university journey at the U of Michigan in good old Ann Arbor, but transferred to university in Chicago my home city after facing racism of which I had been mostly sheltered from during my time growing up. It was not from classmates for the most part who were cool, and with whom I made good friends, but from faculty. However, my history interests took me back home as well.
Both my parents, Linda, were open, fair-minded people.
My father totally so, his own parents immigrants from the first decade of the 20th-century, both then thereafter speaking Hungarian and Slovak. A bit of English.
My mother, too, fiercely against prejudices of any kinds. But she grew up at first in a poor white farming family -- with a typical residual lack of familiarity with blacks -- from rural Clinch River Valley, east Tennessee, absent blacks. Later, during the Depression, she and her two sisters and mother took the train to live in Los Angeles, where my grandfather had a job. His family somewhat upper middle class in Knoxville
When I started Ann Arbor, late summer 1965, I had requested my room be a triple. One of the other guys (he white, too, like me) was from the thumb area of Michigan -- he jumped into sports reporting and after college ended up being a national politics and features writer of some repute.
Third guy in our room was a very thin, somewhat short black guy from Flint. Great, gregarious, laughing personality. Sharp on seeing people. Very, very popular with all the other blacks on campus -- many came to our room to listen to newest Motown singles.
But for the full year I never told my mother I had a black roommate. They met at the end of that year -- my mother laughing at the year's-long trepidatious silence from me.
Phil, I went to Michigan after you did, but I also had a roommate from Flint and one from another country. Both of them dropped out because they could not adjust. I then was placed with a Michigan farm girl, who also ended up dropping out, but not before she and our other roommate who was Greek American and from a large city in Michigan treated me terribly. I will not list the things they did to me. The Greek American one was then left with me after the roommate dropped out and started being really nice to me once she fell in love with a guy I was friends with. I accepted her change, but never let go of knowing how small minded she was. She is now an opera singer in Michigan. I had to live with her voice exercises and she also was one of those women who intentionally used a baby voice to talk, and had a baby persona which was based on the Disney character Mini Mouse. She and the other roommate were absolutely horrid to me in hundreds of different ways, and this is what anyone faces who integrates a school system. They even complained to the RA about me speaking German to my mom when she would call, but that is because they would pull up chairs whenever I had a phone conversation and sit and listen with stony faces. They had moved my bed to one side of the room, and pushed our wardrobes into being a divider of the room. They used my bed to socialize on with their friends, and they stole my things and hid them or threw them away. I am now going to put those memories away because that is a long time ago and I am around nice people now.
Thanks Phi, I was already sensitive to all those things before going, and it is a part of why I transferred away, because I could not see spending four years of my life around people who would tell me things like my TA did, who totally counted on me to have a section discussion that even though I had earned an A on all my work, he gave me a B plus because "he needed to save all the As for the White men since he was forced to grade on a curve."
So, what could I do? I had to accept that my gender and color did not warrant my getting the grade I had earned. In another class, the Black Professor felt I was uppity to be taking a graduate class, even though I had had the prerequisites in high school, and she gave me a B even though I was better prepared than many graduate students because she did not give As to undergraduates is what she told me. Then another TA, failed me on a paper because I argued for affirmative action in the Bakke case, because she felt it was an untenable position even though I defined all my terms, and made a good case. She made me rewrite it on another topic. Up until then I had felt she was fairly cool, and frankly, being "biracial" in the community I grew up in was common, so I was more accepted there, than I was in Michigan as a state.
Many years later when a friend had bought a house in an up and coming retreat destination for Chicagoans in Michigan, we used his house to start our circle tour of Lake Michigan. I was somewhat worried about the Michigan militia at the time. We ended up having a great experience, but my friend had made fun of my worries. This was 25 years ago. So, when some militia like characters had a plot to kidnap and kill Governor Whitmer, I reminded him of his ridicule of my concerns, and he admitted that I had actually had my finger on the pulse. So, that is the kind of sensitivity I developed at Michigan too.
Many times I've wondered why the University of Chicago is not considered in the same class as Northwestern and Stanford. So many Nobel winners in science including Enrico Fermi the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor.
One of my physics professors at Iowa State was a graduate student at University of Chicago under Fermi. He told us the story of the night they "started" the first man-made nuclear reaction. Everyone in the lab was petrified because even though they all believed in the science it had never been done before.
Or, one. Of an astronomy professor named Losh -- Doc Losh. She was already very old when I started in Ann Arbor, in 1965. But my white roommate, David, took her astro class -- because he was covering sports for The Michigan Daily and her classes famously had many athletes in them.
Turned out she liked having the jocks up front in every class -- so she could engage them often. But it was her grading which was legendary. As David, my white roommate reported, it was true that she kept to her form: A for athletes, B for boys, C for co-eds.
Thank you for sharing this, Linda. And your other personal experiences below. When you do this, you tell your readers about real things that happen(ed) to real people, people whom we hold in high regard. It's not just theory or speculation.
I believe that stories that share the lived experience of real people (or fictional stories that are wise to the experiences of real people) are often strongly bonding and often motivating. Statistics can fill out our picture in important ways, but shared human experience call upon our values, integrate thought with feeling.
It's dispiriting how ugly meanness gets, including deliberate homicide and cruelty. It is persistent enough through the centuries to demonstrate a deep seat in human nature. I think we so need to understand it better, as so many ugly scripts keep running though each generation, more so or less so, but same scripts with a different cast of actors. I think we need better understand the causes, and it's not just a devil with horns. I think we already know some ways to make societies more just, but don't prioritize them. Inclusivity is part of what helps and divide and conquer destroys, as we are seeing.
Phil -- I grew up in Michigan and my family is full of U-M grads -- my Dad got his JD there (on the GI bill), my Mom got her BA, I got my BA and my cousin got his MBA. I love Ann Arbor -- I hardly ever get back there these days, since my parents are no longer with us.
The right words at the right time to counter the wrong idea that the world is only a place where the strong do what they will, the weak endure what they must — and that God wants it that way, too.
Of all the sickening nonsense Trump, Rubio, Miller, Noem and every Republican nitwit, half-wit, hypocrite, liar, criminal, thief, scalawag, cockwomble and dipshit out there engage in through their words and deeds, this always feels to me the most repulsive, the most self-serving, the most cynical.
Every speech I've heard from Governor Pritzker has been an oration worthy of comparison to FDR or JFK or Lincoln. It takes a lot of money to run for the Oval Office, and if only billionaires can make the attempt, this is the billionaire who is worthy of the job. Imagine the elation when we get back to "precedented times".
100% agree! I have made it a goal to see or read every speech of his since he captivated me with his commencement speech at Northwestern University in June 2023. https://youtu.be/NhuIU_kXJDE?si=JV6I2OreyyX_U_pS
Heraclitus, a favorite of mine, observed that you never step in the same river twice. That rhyming thing. Every life, every era, is a unique experiment; and yet some dynamics remain fundamentally constant. Physics and human principle.
I just had to read every inch of this, and the part that stayed in my throat was the contrast: billions “illegally confiscated,” tariffs and market losses, medical debt erased on the one hand then masked, unaccountable federal agents and kids getting tear-gassed on the other. That’s the whole fight in one frame: does government protect people, or does it punish them.
And then Pritzker’s turn to love…a love that doesn’t wave flags, love that shows up as parishioners forming a human chain, moms in the pickup line with cameras, bicyclists shielding vendors, people outside on the coldest day and that that hit me hard. Because that’s what survives every regime: ordinary courage, practiced in public. Thank you for putting that kind of hope on the record. Www.xplisset.com
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
If ICE behaves like a violent paramilitary secret police, then for all intents and purposes, that is what it is: no badges and wearing masks to conceal identity, wearing military gear that veterans say is more than they wore in war time, violently assaulting unarmed, nonviolent US citizens and sometimes killing them, failure to observe the rule of law such as due process, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, warrant less search and seizure, warrant less home invasion, abduction of children, unmarked cars with bogus license plates, photographing peaceful US citizens and cataloging them in facial recognition files without their permission, threatening and terrorizing peaceful, law abiding citizens and dehumanizing them by falsely calling them violent terrorists, etc.,etc..
If you think that what ICE has been doing in Minnesota and around the country is not really authoritarianism/fascism, then view a video of what happens in Russia:
“Looks like brutal ICE thugs in Minnesota, but it's brutal KGB thugs in Moscow.
Here is a link to a recent article by prominent Russian/American journalist and author of eleven books (including “Surviving Autocracy”) and Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”.
“State Terror Has Arrived” (in America) by Masha Gessen, NYT 1/24/2026
“Daily edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop Guild….” Well done, Governor Pritzker.
Harry Potter fans will recall Professor Dolores Umbridge’s daily barrage of “reforms” nailed onto a ginormous wall in seeming permanence and perpetuity until one day — all the framed lies, petty retributions, acts of race hatred and Death-Eaters infecting an ancient institution to force capitulation to the Dark Lord came crashing down.
Thank you, Heather, for informing us about Governor Pritzker’s speech. He is a fireball who is not afraid and I love him for that. You and the governor give me hope. Many thanks 🙏
I just had to read every inch of this, and the part that stayed in my throat was the contrast: billions “illegally confiscated,” tariffs and market losses, medical debt erased on the one hand then masked, unaccountable federal agents and kids getting tear-gassed on the other. That’s the whole fight in one frame: does government protect people, or does it punish them.
And then Pritzker’s turn to love…a love that doesn’t wave flags, love that shows up as parishioners forming a human chain, moms in the pickup line with cameras, bicyclists shielding vendors, people outside on the coldest day and that that hit me hard. Because that’s what survives every regime: ordinary courage, practiced in public. Thank you for putting that kind of hope on the record. Www.xplisset.com
Pritzker is my governor and I applaud every word that he said. Illinois is the state I vote in, and I hope my ballot reaches there from Germany in time. I got my ballot via email on the 31 of January, and printed and filled it out the next day. Then I took it to the post office on the next Monday and paid extra to have it fly registered to Chicago. I also guided my daughter in her voting and mailing it via registered mail in her German city as well. We have not yet been notified that it has arrived, but our mail ballots arrived last week, probably too late to get back in time via mail. People in France have been telling me their mail is taking 4-5 weeks to reach their US destinations. Some states allow one to fax or email ones ballot in, Illinois does not. So, we use the increasingly antiquated system of postal mail to participate in our right and duty as citizens to vote.
However that is not all. We are both members of Democrats Abroad in Germany which has a lot of branches. I am also a member of Indivisible Abroad, apparently a terrorist organization according to Trump, as in the Doublethink that is described in 1984. I also started a local group of Indivisible in my German city. We are already planning the next No Kings rally here. All of the Americans I know who are involved in Democratic politics abroad in both groups have a strong love of country and justice and we are working from afar to stand up for our country. Currently a group of us from several countries in Europe in Indivisible Abroad, is working on a plan to boycott Big US Tech such as Scott Galloway has started, and the Chaos Computer Clubs of Germany are doing the same. I know that members of both IA and DA will be joining us in getting citizens of our European countries to join in.
Financially, I too will suffer. My husband and I earned all our income in the US, and have to transfer money to Europe where we have retired and where our daughter is attending University (we are the old parents of a young adult), and we must pay for everything by turning our dollars into Euros, so as the dollar has weakened it costs us more to live. We also are willing to lose money in our pension funds in order to stand up to the beast. Recently the US stock market, which is propped up by overvaluation of big tech according to Paul Krugman, is not doing so well compared to other countries. According to Jeff Tiedrich, and others the US stockmarket, as measured by market cap is number 8. Canada's being number 1 and Germany's number 2.
I also stated a political book club which has been going since 2 summers ago, started to read Project 2025 collectively, and now we read books that help us better understand democracy and how we can support it. To that end we just finished reading Orwell's "1984" and since we meet weekly we went through it slowly. Our final meeting was about the appendix which explains the use of language in the fictional land of the story Oceania, but also a way that fascists in general use language. This is what Trump and his followers do, and it would help to recognize it. I wrote a piece about the words that I think best describe what Trump does, because it is important to understand.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/the-language-of-the-fascist-regime?r=f0qfn
I have to say I wish that Friedrich Merz understood this and perhaps he does, but still, he is sending someone to observe in the Trump Board of Peace meeting. Staying as far away as possible is important.
If you read my piece on the language of fascists you will understand what I think this board is really about. You can say that if he understands, then he is sending someone to keep an eye on the fascists under the guise of supporting Gaza's rebuilding. Germany will offer money for this, but I do not think it should give money to Trump to run it.
As Pritzker noted Illinois has given more than its share of money and it is not getting it back. Too bad Pritzker was not at the Munich Security Conference this past weekend. There California Governor Gavin Newsom invited leaders in other countries to make deals directly with him and his state with its huge economy as measured by GDP, thus circumventing Trump and his tariffs. I don't know how he can do it, but Newsom should be teaching this to Governor's like Pritzker as well. All Blue State Governors should be running their economies in ways that circumvent Trump. And yes, they should be suing Trump for withholding funds, as they are doing with great state AGs like Illinois' Kwame Raoul who went to the same school that I did only after me.
Thank you. You've given me some points to make in my next letter to Governor Healey. Like you, my savings are largely invested, so the stock market's craziness is a worry. And I, too, am in a state that sends more to Washington than it receives. Being a blue state makes us a target. I'll have to check with our AG - she is one who would sue T**** any time it's necessary.
James, In Solidarity!✌🏽 Let us know what you are saying to your governor. I have written Pritzker about Blue State collectively suing the Trump administration for these antics and the need for democratic politicians to go out and make connections beyond he US with other democratic politicians in other countries, the way the far-right has done. They are all buddies with Viktor Orban for example. Can we say that about any democratic politicians outside the US that all of the democrats are going to see and align with. The members of the AfD in Germany are constantly coming to the US and seems they are regularly getting together with the very stupid, but also evil, Anna Luna of Florida. I am reading about this regularly in the German publication Politico Berlin.
I call Luna “Lunatic” but I feel she is an agent for Russia, like Tulsi Gabbard. Plays dumb but is dangerous.
Still working on our German citizenship papers but I think my daughters, my sister, and I are getting close now. Have to work on my husband next. He has an Irish ancestry somewhere.
We are invested also but do have some foreign stock. I do know if you look at when we had the Great Depression years, those who stayed in the stock market, even with a few dollars, survived. They suffered but purchased stocks that were pennies on the dollar. When things improved (and we will get there!), those people made out like bandits! I am hoping we never reach those abysmal years but look, I never thought we’d be here in this state of craziness.
As Paul Krugman and Catherine Rampell have pointed out, the international stock markets have outperformed the US markets by over 10% since the inauguration.
Any broker worth their weight will have their clients invested in international markets as well as domestic. Diversity is the key to long term investing.
I am in those and I thank my steady advisor for that often.
I have suggested to Mr Klugman in his Substack to think on doing ore than just talking and writing. It sees the Nobel prize winners have mainly siloed themselves. He could go out of the box and think on how economics affect chikdren as Jane Addams saw in her work at Hull House or how economics affects public and occupational health as Dr Alice Hamilton did as well as Hazel Johnson. It was not only Rachel Carson who had the mind and vision.
Then these folks coukd create whistle stop train tours and talk to people at the station or public areas and buildings. Or go to peoples homes . Whatever and connect in a visceral level. They could highlight an area to visit with a path. Similar but different from the monk peace journey. Back away from the elite circuit and do what Mother Joones did for a couple of weeks.
Or, as Jeff Teidrich calls her, "An Appalling Lunatic". Very appropriate!
I agree. She is super super dangerous to German democracy, so I assume she is meeting with others. See the article I posted in response to James Vander Poel.
I've been hearing bits and pieces about Anna Luna. Having once lived in Florida, I've never been impressed with that state's congressional delegation - two loathsome Republican senators and 20 of 28 Republican representatives. Thanks for the warning.
Here is an article from the Landtag Baden-Württemberg
https://www.landtag-bw.de/de/aktuelles/dpa-nachrichten/afd-spitzenkandidat-reist-kurz-vor-wahl-zu-us-rechtskongress-619642
Here is the English Translation.
AfD top candidate travels to US shortly before election...
Baden-Württemberg state parliament
Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD's leading candidate for the state elections in Baden-Württemberg, wants to fly to the US a few days before the state elections. He will travel to Washington from March 3 to 5 to attend an event entitled “The Alliance of Sovereign Nations,” the member of the Bundestag announced. The podcast “Inside AfD” was the first to report on the trip. The state election in Baden-Württemberg will take place on March 8.
AfD member of the Bundestag Anna Rathert announced the flight of a delegation to an international congress of right-wing parliamentarians on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. She said she had initiated the meeting on March 4 and 5 together with US Representative Anna Paulina Luna of US President Donald Trump's Republican Party. The AfD delegation would include three to four specialist politicians.
Frohnmaier to appear as speaker
According to the podcast, Frohnmaier is also scheduled to speak at the “Turning Point Action” event. The AfD politician said that this exchange would serve to secure jobs in Baden-Württemberg. For this very reason, he said, responsible politics cannot only take place at home, but must also represent economic interests where key decisions on investment and trade relations are made.
Tens of thousands of jobs, especially in the automotive industry with over 315,000 direct employees and an export quota of more than 77 percent, depend directly on stable transatlantic relations, Frohnmaier said, justifying the planned visit to Washington.
In Baden-Württemberg, the new state parliament will be elected on March 8. The AfD currently stands at around 20 percent in the polls, behind the CDU and the Greens. Frohnmaier is also deputy leader of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag and a close confidant of party leader Alice Weidel. He wants to become Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, but is not running for the state parliament.
There has been a steady stream of AfD politicians to Washington, and Anna Paulina Lunas name is mentioned in most of these articles as being a destination, a contact. She is evil personified and there should be a concerted effort to get rid of her in Florida.
Thank you. I'll be paying attention to CSPAN - the only place you can find unbiased coverage of those TPA events (even though they are hard to watch, but one has to know one's enemies).
Linda, thanks for this info.Luna won her district by 10% in 2024, not a landslide, so it is considered flippable and Earle Ford is a strong contender.He has a lot of grassroots support and states not relying on PACs or special interests.
“Ford is also a U.S. Army veteran. Ford served as an infantryman, where he trained soldiers to execute missions safely. He also worked for the IRS auditing taxpayers, including billionaires, his campaign says, which showed him “how a rigged system protects the ultrawealthy while leaving working families behind.”
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/778235-earle-ford-self-reports-400k-raised-for-cd-13-bid-to-unseat-anna-paulina-luna/
🎶 I'm from the Lolipop League, the Lolipop League and I want to welcome you to 🎶 Muskism Land.
Anybody seen Dorothy? She's got those red, blue 🥿.& Purple slippers.
We need 'em now!
Actually, because my daughter fell in love with the book, so that after reading it several times to her, my husband found it being read aloud on Libra Vox, and so we know that the color of the "ruby slippers" in the book was silver.
I used my silver slippers to return to Germany, the home country of my mother. I do go to the home country I was born in, but not right now, because I have a medical condition that prevents me from flying.
You are flying very high Linda. No place like home.
.
Linda, who don’t you write your governor asking him to change to emailing ballots.our post office is notorious for being slow or losing mail and packages. I often buy art from Europe and if it goes through the post office, I need to monitor it for if it gets stuck in a deport now, I call the postmaster general and immediately accuse them of having employee thieves stealing and I get action. Let’s not forget who the postmaster is in this country who was appointed by Trump. The last election, he was determined to get rid of the big mail sorters which would have caused such stress on voting by absentee ballots.
I'm don't know if you know this, I know many people I talk to don't; the Wizard of Oz was written as political satire. The Silver slipper represent the Silver standard, whereas the Yellow Brick Road represents the Gold Standard. The three companions and Toto all represent factions at play in the populist movement, and so forth.
By the way, the Lollipop Guild represented the rise of the unionized labor movement.
Read this and you'll never think of the story the same.
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/so-was-the-wizard-of-oz-an-allegory-for-populism
Yes because Baym was concerned about silver and its use in financial and perhaps mining issues. The Emerald City was not green but there were green eye glasses to wear. I loved those books growing up abd Chicago has a solid Baum connection. There are of course issues with isms but his creativity amazing.
And a great big bucket of disinfectant.
I am in MA too. I tell everyone its only a matter of time before he comes for us, very blue and with a lesbian governor. Two things. I voiced my own concerns to my financial advisor (I am late 70s) and luckily he has me in municipal bonds and diversified assets outside the US, of course not all of it. So not immune but buffered. And we have a strong No Kings and other groups, I have been to three, others have done much more. We started the Revolution! I live in the MA town where we still have Paul Revere's foundry! I lived in the North End of Boston by the Old North Church, walked by Revere's home there often and that's not even mentioning Lexington and Concord. Nor the myriad other places of significance in NE.
We are steeped in history and resistance! And I lived for years in St. Paul and Minneapolis and still have friends there. And still fighting after all these years.
We have a group that regularly protests at the ICE facility in Burlington, and twice weekly protests here in town. There is some tension between Indivisible groups in Worcester and surrounding towns, so it looks like there will be two No Kings rallies there: one downtown from 11-1 and one at Institute Park from 1-3PM. From what I gather, one group in Worcester is not amenable to working with any other, ergo the two rallies. I'll be doing my usual marshal duties.
Just what we need, fight amongst ourselves!
Seems like the equity ice is getting thinner.
The “ stock” market is just that. It should be a Stake market which benefits all stakeholders such as employees and consumers as well as shareholders. Thank you for your comments.
Thank you Linda! We are from Michigan and really admire Governor Pritzker. We also live in Spain for 6 months of the year. I belong and am active with Indivisible when we are in the states but when we are here (we just arrived for our 90 days that are allowed), I can only stay in touch with my friends and other activists via email. I used to belong to DA but every meeting or activity is at least 2-3 hours away so I have never attended any of the meetings or participated in the activities.
I am sorry and disturbed about your issues with your ballots. We have always voted by mail. Our city clerk in St. Joseph (quite a small town) emails the ballots to us, we print them and fill them out and then, I too, mail them registered mail. When she receives them, she sends me an email to tell me that they have arrived and will be counted. It usually takes about a week to 10 days. I am not sure what is the issue in Germany or France but here in Spain it seems to work. I hope your ballots are enroute and will be counted!
All my best, keep working to make our world a better place.
Hi Colette,
We ask for them by email because I got my mailed ballot 2 weeks later. Germany has slowed down their mail delivery. I believe it is a cost cutting and lack of personnel reason. I will get an email from Chicago when they receive my ballot and have not yet. I will contact them by the end of the month if I have not heard, because then we will need to use our plan B.
Here is Indivisible Abroad's website. https://indivisibleabroad.org/
Just sign up for Indivisible Abroad. As far as I can see Barcelona is the only city in Spain with a branch, but no worries, you can attend meetings online and start your own group when you are ready. I started one in Bremen, Germany and someone is coming to an in person meeting here from Kiel, which is 2- hour train ride from Bremen. Someone else just started one in München. So, from one in Frankfurt, we now have 3 groups in Germany. One of the leaders lives in Berlin part of the time, and Italy part of the time, and travels to England, Spain and Chile a lot so gets around, but is not in one place long enough to start a group there, except for the first one in England.
This comment of yours is so thoughtful and articulate, Linda. The Illinois primary is not until March 17.
And in Illinois, there is a grace period for ballots if they do not arrive by Election Day as long as they are postmarked before or on Election Day. So, you and your family’s ballots will almost certainly be counted.
Best,
David
Thanks David.
These are the deadlines I was given.
March 17, 2026: Election Day. Absentee ballots returning to the U.S. must be postmarked before or on Election Day.
March 31, 2026: Absentee ballot receipt deadline. Absentee ballots postmarked before or on Election Day can be processed if they arrive at the Chicago Board of Elections within 14 days of Election Day. Any absentee ballot postmarked after Election Day cannot be processed, by law.
This is why I hurried my daughter who took a week to mail her ballot because being 20, she did not have printer ink and did not have time to get it for 2 days, and then did not have time to go to the post office for 2 days because she had a big presentation to prepare for and classes to attend. Still, getting hers out in a week was good. Since the absentee ballots need to be postmarked by election day, it still needs to be there by that date.
Germany has reduced their postal services and told us last year that mail would be slower. People in France say it is taking 4-5 weeks. In Denmark they are getting rid of public mailing services because most people do everything electronically, and those who are older and do not, will now have to use private mailing services. Who knows about that.
If anyone cannot fill out their ballot right away, for one, because they don't report on the judges races until shortly before the election, so we have to do all the research on our own which takes time, then they cannot get their ballot into the mail right away. I did the research, which is why my daughter could get her ballot out so quickly too.
I also sent all the information on voting from abroad to the 4 friends I have on sabbatical this year, with instructions like ask for an emailed ballot and what the various deadlines are.
Most people in the US get their candidate endorsements ready for the stateside voters not the Voter abroad. I understand that, but it makes us have to really follow the issues and do the research on our own. That slows us down. Still, it is worth it. We are tabling here to get more people to know how to vote and will be doing this until the last state's deadline for the ballots has passed. That is what Vote from Abroad and Democrats Abroad mostly does, is help people to figure out how to vote from abroad.
Brava! We need more citizens like you here - to help get all those to vote who sat on their duffs in the last election.
Still asking my daughter weekly if her boyfriend in Texas has registered to vote by mail.
I was impressed with the postal service in Ireland a couple of years ago. I shipped some things back the day before returning to the US and they arrived within a week. The service at the post office in Galway was top notch. The clerk provided me with a box and taped it up for free. I only paid for postage. I'm not sure if that was normal or not, but I was very pleased.
All of the information that you cited about Illinois election law is accurate.
It comes straight from the Chicago Board of Elections who sent me a long list of the rules and regs. They have been great!
Are none of the Thurn und Taxis left alive? They didn't have highspeed trains or planes but managed to deliver the mail.
I have a neighbor who was a state's attorney before he retired. I didn't trust the judge list from the Chgo Trib, so I used to bring him the Trib's list and ask him his opinions. He didn't comment on them all, but would sometimes point out a few and say "not good".
Sadly, he's now retired, and even more sadly, though was a Democrat for his entire career, he's gone to the dark side. 😣
you need to know that the US Postal Service has changed how they postmark mail coming in. You can no longer count on your mail being marked just simply because you leave it at the post office on election day. They now can mark the postal mark at the regional center, which could be a day or two later. This is a huge change that was specifically done by the current postmaster general who is a supporter of Trump. We need to get the word out that you cannot trust mailing in your ballot this year as being postmarkedif left on the day of the election. I would tell all people to drop your mailed vote a week before the election deadline just to make sure it’s actually counted.
You can ask a USPS postal clerk to apply a manual (or hand stamped) postmark to a letter at the retail counter to ensure it receives that day's date.
excellent point. I just find it incredibly annoying that is pseudo government agency is allowed to do something like this without a law being written with the subsequent approval of Congress.
The one time I had to mail something by a postmarked date, I had to take our quarterly taxes in to be postmarked. I was expecting a grouchy mail clerk; instead, I got one who said "I am SO glad you know you need to get that hand-stamped" and was very friendly.
Ally, I am within a 3 mile radius of 4 postoffices. I'm there monthly mailing packages to my grands in another state. Every one I go to, I've been treated very well.
Indivisible (or someone) needs to buy or post ads about this in every state.
I live in Japan and each year since the year 2000, mailing in our absentee ballots has become more and more difficult. I finally gave up on the post office because the Japanese post office told me flat out, they can’t guarantee how long my ballot would take to get to America, even by special delivery for $20. So I started sending my ballots by DHL which sometimes cost $80. At least it got there. But the next challenge is, does your signature on your ballot match the one they have on record. Do you sign your name exactly the same each time?
Fortunately, I’m registered in a small town in California so my brother went over to the voting office with samples of my signature and let me know which one was in their records.
For the last two or three elections, my ballot arrived a few days before the election with the envelope torn and parts missing, or didn’t arrive at all.
All I can say is don’t assume your ballot will get there on time, or be counted.
Please note: things may change and we have to be aware and wary!
System Taking Effect December 24, 2025
DECEMBER 08, 2025 BY ED ZOLLARS, CPA
Summary of the Final Rule The United States Postal Service (USPS) has adopted a final rule (FR Doc. 2025-20740) adding Section 608.11, "Postmarks and Postal Possession," to the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM). The rule formally defines postmarks and identifies the types of markings that qualify as such. Its primary purpose is to improve public understanding that while a postmark confirms the USPS possessed a mailpiece on the date inscribed, that date does not necessarily align with the date the USPS first accepted possession of the item. The rule clarifies that the USPS does not postmark all mail in the ordinary course of operations and that the absence of a postmark does not imply the USPS did not accept custody.
Impact on Postmarking Timing The rule clarifies that the date displayed on a machine-applied postmark represents the "date of the first automated processing operation" performed at a processing facility, rather than the date the mail was dropped off.
Potential Delays: Because most postmarks are applied at processing facilities, the date inscribed may be later than the date the mailpiece was first accepted by the USPS. This discrepancy is expected to become more common due to the implementation of the "Regional Transportation Optimization" (RTO) initiative and the adoption of "leg-based" service standards.
Operational Reality: The rule codifies the operational reality that postmarking operations often cross calendar days or occur after transportation from a retail unit, meaning the postmark date is not a "perfectly reliable indicator" of the date of mailing.
Ensuring a Postmark on the Date of Delivery To assure a postmark is applied on the same day a document is delivered to the USPS, individuals must utilize specific retail services. The final rule outlines the following methods:
Request a Manual Postmark: Customers may present a mailpiece at a retail counter and request a "manual (local) postmark". This postmark is applied at the time of acceptance, so the date aligns with the date the USPS took possession.
Postage Validation Imprint (PVI): When a customer pays for postage at a retail counter, the PVI label applied by the employee also indicates the date of acceptance.
Certificates of Mailing: Customers may purchase a Certificate of Mailing, or use Registered or Certified Mail, to obtain a receipt that serves as evidence of the date the item was presented for mailing,.
What a worker you are, Linda. Entirely admirable. And the best is that all your efforts are well-directed. Chapeau, as they say in France!
Danke Anne-Louise. ✌🏾
Bitte schön!
✌🏾
I'm pretty sure the "Board of Peace" is just the front for another Trump grift. Given his background, I'm sure Chancellor Merz is aware of this, too. Still, it doesn't hurt for his representative to be a fly on the wall at these meetings (except that the Trumpies will cite German attendance as an endorsement). Just don't put any money into anything that has to do with Trump. I also just saw that the Pope declined an invitation. He probably didn't want the Vatican to be shaken down for a billion.
Having lived in Illinois and California, I applaud the efforts of Governors Pritzer and Newsom to bypass any financial dealings that go through Trump or his cabal of grifters.
Howard Lutnick and Trump are not only corrupt but they are also pedophiles and Bessent has withheld tens of billions of Congressionally approved funds. And they still managed to add over $2 trillion to the national debt in 2025 while tanking the economy.
Thank you and all who prefer love to hate.
JL, I second that emotion. I have to say though, that this administration makes it harder and harder! I do NOT want them to steal my humanity and have the void filled with anger and hate. I have to stifle those instincts.
I love smart people like you - unlike Donald Trump who feeds off of ignorance - and gorges himself and others like him. Please stay strong - even from afar. Thank you for your efforts!
Truly, that should be "Bored of Peace" because he never allows a single moment of it.
Dear friends in this thread. I fear for your financial future if you are highly invested in this stock market. The bubble will soon burst. Nobody can know when. But the warnings from economists and financial experts are many. The AI bubble is greater than any other in our history. Too much money is being thrown at the wall like spaghetti - seeing what will stick.
The S&P 500 has historically been viewed as a relatively safe and conservative index. But it ain't anymore. Too many companies are now tied to the AI fantasy of big rewards.
The truth is that there is no way that the trillions of market evaluation based on AI will see a meaningful ROI in our lifetimes. Did you notice the desperate ads for AI during the Super Bowl?
In 2000, there was a wake up call. Duh. Just because a company had a web site and added .com to their name didn't mean they would be any more successful. The list of companies that went up in smoke was long. And retirement portfolios were decimated.
In 2008, it happened again. There were warnings. But for most of us the "bundled crap mortgage" fiasco was a shock. Our family's portfolio was invested for "conservative growth" in major company mutual funds. In a week, it all collapsed by 40%. Our "financial advisor/broker/stock salesman" came to visit. "I am so sorry. I really thought we could go to cash more quickly. But there were too many sellers and not enough buyers." He drove away in his red Maserati.
In 2026, the warnings are loud and clear. The markets are dominated by a new technology that is just beginning and it has not demonstrated how or to what degree it will pay dividends to investors. Sooner or later, someone at a big firm will downgrade a company like NVIDIA from "strong buy" to "hold". Not even "sell". Then look out below.
Please. Many here are near retirement or in it. Prepare yourselves. Long term holding is sensible if you have a long term ahead. If you need your portfolio to pay bills over the next five or ten years...don't be sucked into FOMO. Cash is king.
Social Security’s main retirement trust fund is now projected to run out of reserves in 2032 — a year earlier than previously expected — according to the Congressional Budget Office. If Congress takes no action, benefits could face an automatic cut of about 20%, though roughly 80% of payments would still be covered by ongoing payroll taxes. MIAMII HERALD FEB. 18, 2026.
+++++++++
Readers are probably receiving Social Security benefits or will apply soon. Threats of “bankruptcy” of the two Social Security Trust funds abound in the media, and Trump Administration budgets have cut operational funding. There is reason to worry.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, support the trust funds, they might be secure.
https://www.ssa.gov/agency/donations.html
If the wage cap was increased - or better yet, removed entirely - the Social Security Trust Fund would be in far better shape. It would also help if we had more immigrants paying into the system to make up for the declining number of native-born Americans in the labor force, as immigrants tend to be younger.
Not gonna happen without a revolution.
Only 6 years to go. Congress has been aware of this since about 1986.
I've asked administrators from both parties why doesn't SSA advertise that donations can flatten the curve and extend the default date beyond 2034?
IMHO because the current administration and Congress want default.
Bill, diversification is everything. Yes, everyone should have emergency funds in easily liquidated accounts, but I'd mention another spin on the "cash is king". Our dollar is worth less and less, and when inflation rates are greatly higher than those of a passbook or even a CD, you are falling behind.
My sister retired 13 years ago with a small pension which is NOT INDEXED to inflation. She relies heavily on her SS, and mentioned that, this year, the Medicare increases and the raise on her HOA fees wiped out her SS increases. In a shocked voice she told me "I'm getting poorer!" (And yeah, she's a Trump voter, but honestly DID think he'd reduce prices. She was an uninformed voter. I print the Letter out for her daily now. Not uniformed any longer.)
Our Dad left the bulk of his very small "estate" to her 13 years ago, and she should have invested it in something other than CDs. You couldn't get her to put even a small portion of it into ANYTHING else.
Finances are very, very complicated. I agree with some of what you say. We also had losses in 2008, but we held on. As many in the stock market have seen, we have more than made up our losses. I hope you have recovered, but if you did sell everything at a loss, I suspect you didn't.
Cash in the mattress does nothing. "Cash" in the bank falls behind. Stocks can rocket up--and down. If you are 65 and healthy, and have family history of longevity, you're going to need that money to last 20-30 years.
Not trying to be critical with you, just pointing out that investing is a complex issue and Trump is (bad word used as a verb) all over the US and world economy.
Miselle,
Clearly you are well versed on the subject. We did ultimately recover from the 2008 disaster. I grabbed some 2009 bargains. It was easy picking.
I think what is core to guiding investors is time frames. If I were 10 or 20 years younger, I would be very diversified. But we need our modest retirement assets now. They are our income. The plan is simple. Enjoy life carefully yet fully and die broke.
Yrump's Board of Peace is the only international organization I can think of that he supports, aside from criminal ones. It therefore is meant to take the place of the United Nations. He surel6 does not support tha5. And we may seen him attempt to force it to leave New York. He has the power to do that, courts of law be dawned. He would then buy the real estate.
His Board of Peace, he being the self-proclaimed "King of Peace" will be a Board of Trustees appointed by him to govern the world. With him as its enforcer
Note with what complacency the New Yirk Times reports that "he" is getting ready to wage war on Iran. "He" of course meaning "we". And every time he says "we" he means "he".
First rule of Democrscy. Never leave it to someone else to do something you consider of importance especially as it relates to civic duty. Thomas Paine. You woukd hs e been better advised to fly home with your mail in ballot and to have mailed it in from the same post office as that with the zip code of the addressee. Better yet, to have hand delivered it to the office in the addressee.
In general, it looks as if voting by mail will be a bad idea as that is exactly what the DOJ, FBI, DN8, CIA, DHS are intent on disrupting.
Bring it on. Let them try to mess with vote by mail here in Massachusetts. We've got a Secretary of State whose bite is a lot worse than his bark and he's itching for a fight. Bondi and Noem don't faze him. And we'll all be backing him up. Bring it on.
Go Bill Galvin!
Linda, I am appalled that it takes more than 5 weeks to get ballots from Germany to Illinois. It was no slower at the end of the 19th century. That is deliberate tampering in my view and needs to be stopped! We have been letting Republican operatives to do enormous damage for the past half-century, others not stopping them, thinking good Americans wouldn't do such harm to the people. Boy were we wrong!
Amazing entry, Linda. Thank you.
Salud!
🗽💜💫
Thanks!
Thank you so much, Linda for all you have done and continue to do. I have great respect for Gov. Pritzker as well as Gov. Newsom. They provide a glimmer of hope when we so desperately need it.
Fabulous. I am dazzled and humbled by what you have written.
Long after this foul regime is history — and one day it WILL be but the memory of a receding nightmare — we will look back and remember all those acts of simple decency and humanity by some that made it possible for all of us to get through, to resist, to re-claim a republic stolen from us.
In the meantime though — such a prodigious amount of work to be done! Yesterday, Contrarian Senior Editor Tom Dickinson published “Inside Trump’s ICE Concentration Camps” on his Substack page, which I hope people will search for and take the time to read and digest. With the billions appropriated to DHS, ICE and the CPB in the Big Ugly Bill, an interstate system — not of ‘temporary detention centers’ but permanent concentration camps — is being built in this land, something that has never before happened in America.
To “house” the tens of thousands of abductees (75% without any criminal record whatever — some even holding green cards or awaiting asylum petitions) hundreds of warehouses, facilities and buildings are being built, set up and run by private, pay-to-play contractors doing the dirty work of doling out physical abuse, hunger and despair in Texas, Florida, California — mostly in rural areas far removed from public scrutiny.
Recalling Stanley Kramer’s 1961 masterpiece, “Judgment at Nuremberg” when former Nazi Minister of Justice Ernst Janning takes the stand —not in self-defense, but in remorse and self-incrimination — there is this cold reminder for all who said they had no choice…
“Maybe it’s true we didn’t know all the details of the concentration camps,” he tells a hushed tribunal. “But if we didn’t know, it is because we didn’t WANT to know…”
Who would have imagined the day would come when comparisons between us and early Nazi Germany would actually start to make sense.
The word is out on those prison profiteers: on one of their 'earnings calls' the point was made that they weren't making enough, but that they had been assured that ICE was going to increase the number of detainees, so their earnings would increase, and soon. I can't imagine a lower class of humans than those who would make money by inflicting misery on their fellows. Makes used car salesman and even many politicians seem like choir boys.
CoreCivic’s CEO is Patrick Swindle. Is there a more appropriate name for a guy running a company that profits on human misery?
And I think Anthony Davis and Ron Filipkowski hit the nail on the head yesterday. The concentration camps aren’t being built for deportations, they will be holding camps for a free labor force. Slave labor, if you will. It makes perfect sense, if the dictator and Gruppenfuhrer Miller deported all of those they round up, then the concentration camp business goes away and there will be nothing left for ICE to do. What was the sign over the gate to Dachau; Work Will Set You Free. This is a neo-Nazi regime, operating from the same playbook with the same goals in mind as the original, a “master” race that is white, “christian”, male-dominated fully in charge and calling all the shots. But it’s not going to work here. The dictator is on borrowed time. His dementia proceeds apace and his carcass is falling apart, and it’s a good bet he won’t see Christmas. Without him this fascist enterprise loses most of its steam. Second, this is a big country and the resistance is building by the day. The ICE thugs aren’t going to corral us and the military won’t go along with it. He can try to fuck with November elections all he wants, but we will be voting in all 50 states and we will throw a lot of his Congressional bootlickers to the curb. I just wish we had a Churchill to remind us daily to never give up. Some folks seem to need that.
I think Mark Carney is Churchill
This makes no sense to me. Carney is Canadian and he’s pulling Canada away from the US. Rightly so, I might add.
WW2 was global.
And while we are effectively protesting the concentration camps, this Nazi Administration is leasing space for 🧊 in and near metropolitan areas in every state. Secretly leasing space. No-bid contracts. The only possible explanation is to have staging areas for suppressing voters at the polls in November. Bannon gave the game away: 🧊 surrounding polling places. Demento said he would assure proof of citizenship “by himself” - ie by calling out his Brown Shirts.
Yes we will! Yes we can! Yes we must!…
From your lips to Gods ears!!! Hope hope hope we can break free from this rot and damage from the monsters grip!!!
From your mouth to gods ears, John.
Corecivic. I checked and have no connections. For decades since I learned some of the Roman Catholic nuns were trying to be social justice aware with their stock donations I have been trying to find appropriate financial guidance. It’s not easy and scary when doing it all by yourself. There are other issues with some of the private equity and hedge funds.
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
JB Pritzker, Leadership...
An eloquent and very substantive speech, and thanks to HRC for sleuthing such oratory out. I wish a lot more people were hearing it. I think it makes a real difference.
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
I didn’t need to see the video you provided, Heather, because you quoted him perfectly. I felt a lot of emotion just reading his speech. I truly admire him in that he seems to respect his staff and the people of his state. To wipe out medical bills for so many people really lifts them out of despair. People want to work hard for someone like that because they feel heard. They feel loved.
We all want that and the only way we are going to get it is to constantly fight back. Like one of my t-shirts says “Rage Against The Regime”.
Unfortunately, the Epstein story re: (Prince) Andrew is drowning out all other newsworthy stories this morning. I was hoping to hear something about Pritzker’s wonderful “speech”….How to bring attention to this important expression of hope !!!
As a child, I used to get up early to read the obituary section of the paper to see if my despicable 3rd grade teacher had passed away overnight.
After a few months, my sister noticed me reading the obits ( not the comics) and she told me the newspaper reported yesterday's news, and "Ms Mason would have been dead / school canceled the prior day."
I was bummed out.
However, with the advent of the high speed internet, I have reverted to awaken from my nightmare ridden sleep at 3AM in the hope mortality had intervened a moment earlier.
I hope to live long enough to gleefully sing " Ding Dong the King is Dead" with all the other munchkins world wide.
“No one mourns the wicked.”🎶
but i can do summersaults until i gleefully break an arm
That made me laugh out loud. At 79, I would break an arm even trying a somersault. Maybe even chortling in my joy.
At 76 caution is also my mantra with the antics in days gone by the sunshine when it's cloudy. But the laughs are valuable!
My bands played selections from "Wicked" in the past couple of years. Loved it! We had the assignment to watch the movie (not nearly as good as the musical, BTW) to get the gist of the songs we were playing.
FWIW, both my auditioned and non-auditioned community bands played it; there is a horn solo in one of the pieces, and our non-auditioned horn player knocked it out of the park; it is my good fortune to sit behind the horns, and my "back row seat" was the best in the house.
The obits have been called the Irish comic strip!
What meant the most to me (from an address having many meaningful points) was Pritzker's reminder of all that the man in DC is costing us--state governments, organizations, individuals--because of what must be spent to challenge or defend the litigation he indulges. To say nothing of what he is making the federal government pay for his frivolous, malicious lawsuits. I wish there were a way, down the line, to claw back this money. He's suing the government for $10 billion?? Sue him for $100 billion. Make him pay for his waste, fraud and abuse.
My father always said (not in words) that love is a verb, not a noun. He was so right.
Buckminster Fuller once wrote "God is a verb, not a noun." I think he and your father were referring to the same reality.
A great speech that reaches far beyond Illinois. Governor Pritzker’s address is not only a state policy roadmap, it is a statement about what democratic leadership can look like in a moment of national strain. For Americans watching from other states, the speech signals that there are governors willing to defend institutions, protect civil rights, and challenge federal overreach without retreating into cynicism or spectacle.
To the broader public, the meaning is twofold. First, it models a version of government that takes everyday pressures seriously. Rising housing costs, healthcare bills, and energy prices are not abstract talking points; they are daily burdens. By addressing them directly and proposing structural changes, the speech affirms that policy can still respond to lived reality. Second, it reframes patriotism as care for the community rather than grievance politics. Invoking Progressive era reformers and speaking in moral language about justice and love, Pritzker situates today’s conflicts within a longer American tradition of expanding rights and opportunity.
For many Americans, the speech offers something rare right now: evidence that principled, accountable governance remains possible.
I am so proud of my governor and my fellow Illinoisans who stand up with him against the horrors inflicted by this regime. Backbone matters. Integrity matters. Empathy matters. And yes, love matters most of all.
Thank you.
This is how we win! Please, deeply fair and fairly progressive…we forget the Progressives used to think about the bigger picture of fairness.
We must win and win big to overcome the likely voter suppression attempts. My Dad was born and raised on the SouthSide, worked at a steel mill to pay for College, NorthWestern. And the taught in Evanston. In the 50’s Chicago was changing and he loved Jazz of all flavors…so he lived the City with the Broad Shoulders…workers making things, the hog butcher of America! Then moved to the adventure of Alaska!
Made me cry.
Pritzker is running for presidency in 2028. And I think he will win. Unfortunately we may have to wait another four years for a woman president.
It seems to me that we keep making the same sad mistake
Spot on Governor Pritzker. I can’t help but make the connection to Elsa at the end of Frozen learning that love is the answer to her powers, but maybe that’s because I’m down with the flu and pneumonia and my girls love watching Frozen, so it’s fresh on my mind 🤣
Anyways - my usual - Be LOUD. Don’t give up. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
Or Winston, the protagonist in Orwell's "1984" realizes that love is the power that elevates one from and keeps one from sinking into the totalitarian abyss. The member of the fascist government that Winston encounters, understands the power of love too, and what to do to get rid of it, just as Trump is trying to do. I wish us all luck in our love of people and democracy and the constitution and the rule of law.
Yes. And love is a power that is infinitely stronger than any idea of luck. Don't forget to love yourself, everybody. Take care of yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and love is winning the marathon. MAGA is emptiness.
Sadly, after much psychological torture, Winston succumbs. The last line in the book: “He loved Big Brother.” Let’s keep fighting back. There is no alternative.
Thank goodness for Orwell. With a little trepidation, I picked "1984" off the shelf and reread it for the first time in 50 years. What a terrific read, and I am so grateful he gave that perfect picture of totalitarianism to us. It's a very compelling story. Hard to put down. I got to the shocking part... and I just skimmed from there. Having read it in high school, I knew. I invented my own happy ending, but was renewed in inspiration to keep resisting the WH.
Yessss - that’s a much better (and more academic) connection ☺️🤣
For me, the mother of millennials Harry Potter comes to mind. It was his mother’s love that saved Harry from Voldemort and the wise old Wizard knows it’s only love that can save the Wizarding World when the Ministry falls into the hands of fascists again. He knows that love is more powerful than any kind of magic
The strength of love is found everywhere in the arts. For me, it was Nancy Drew and "A Wrinkle in Time."
For your consideration on what to write your representatives and senators about today:
Important developments in the treatment of refugees who have not gotten lawful permanent resident (green card) status after one year are being reported by Law Dork.
This is the perfect catch-22 situation:
1. On March 25, 2025, DHS has put a hold on processing refugees to “adjust their status.”
2. On November 21, 2025, the DHS issued a memo saying that all persons granted refugee status since the beginning of the Biden administration can have their status re-examined.
2. DHS is now saying it has to find any refugee who hasn’t “adjusted their status” (obtained a green card) after a year of residency and detain them until they are reprocessed. Under this new memo, they can be detained for more than 48 hours (the previous maximum) up to a time that is ”not indefinite” but is unspecified.
4. This means that any refugee admitted since the beginning of the Biden administration who got a green card could have their status revoked. They would then be subject to immediate detention and deportation.
5. This also means that anyone applying for refugee status receives only a one-year “safe haven” until DHS resumes processing refugee applications. After that, you can be detained and deported immediately.
Refugees are the people with the fewest resources to rebuild their lives. This is yet another example of sadistic cruelty by the Trump administration.
To make matters worse, DHS has found a pet judge who is restricting online public access to the documents in the case, allowing the public to see the documents only by going to a courthouse to obtain them.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/exclusive-senior-dhs-officials-double
Georgia, I sent the law dork document to some people who I think could use it but, may I also copy your comments and send them on to the same people? Please let me know. Thanks!
It's always OK with me to send my comments on to people with attribution if you think they are providing useful information.
🤬🤬🤬🤬………..
It also made me think of Bad Bunny's sign at the Super Bowl halftime show: The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love. Wishing you a swift recovery, Megan!
Good one!
Get well. Wishing you a full recovery.
Thank you. I am not good at “resting” but am trying.
I should be asleep right now, but I’m snuggling my 2 year old who most likely is starting to get sick too since she keeps waking up crying ❤️🩹 Thankfully my husband will be home from work soon and we can tag team the rest of the night.
Many thanks for all you are doing every day. You are an inspiration to all of us seniors to push harder and do more that will have an impact.
This year's flu is nasty. I hope it passes quickly for you and your family. Take the time you need to rest and recuperate, hard as that is with little ones. Things get back to normal a lot faster that way. As a single parent, it took me a ridiculously long time to figure that out.
Oh, my goodness gracious! You have a three year old AND you are waving the banner of hope for many of us who have marched to see a government that is true to its ideals and foundation for years. I am 76 and have been marching for decades. Thank you. You are my hero.
Flu AND pneumonia! Just like that! Keep warm and take care of yourself.
Another possibility for your consideration on what to protest today to your members of Congress. Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell focused on the fallacy of using the presumption of regularity when addressing anything the Trump administration does, since it is "the most powerful criminal syndicate in history". I wrote what follows yesterday afternoon when it became clear that the SAVE acts had enough votes to pass if the filibuster were not in place.
***********************************************************************************************
The only thing preventing the SAVE America Act from becoming law is the filibuster…
Senate Republicans could still try to use the filibuster “nuclear option” on a category of bills.
The “nuclear option” is a maneuver in which a simple majority creates a new precedent that effectively overrides the 60‑vote filibuster rule, ending debate without formally revising it. The majority leader (or another senator) brings up a bill, makes a point of order that cloture on that kind of measure should be decided by a simple majority, and the presiding officer rules that under existing rules, 60 votes are required. A majority then votes to overturn the chair’s ruling; that vote itself is by simple majority and, once successful, becomes a binding precedent that 51 votes are enough to end debate on that category of business (e.g., nominations, or a class of legislation if they go that far).
You need at least 51 senators (including the VP as a tiebreaker) who are willing not just to support a given bill, but to vote to overturn the chair and permanently relax or end the filibuster for that category of measures. Political Wire reported that the SAVE Act passed that threshold in the Senate.
Past uses of the "nuclear option" have chipped away at the filibuster (for most nominations in 2013 and for Supreme Court nominations in 2017), showing the chamber accepts this as legitimate precedent‑making even though it is controversial.
More recently, commentators and some senators have described several 2025 majority actions—such as changing how certain budget baselines are treated—as “nuclear” because they used similar majority‑driven precedents to reshape the rules of procedure, showing that the tactic is not confined to confirmation fights.
The budget baseline change let them lock in permanent extensions and new cuts without showing the full sticker shock that a strict current‑law baseline would reveal. Politically, it gave Republicans a way to say they were “avoiding a tax hike” rather than passing a giant tax cut, because the adjusted baseline treated the Trump tax cuts as the default, and OBBB as preventing that default from expiring.
Assuming the filibuster will not change is an example of believing in the presumption of regularity. In normal times, that was enough to prevent using the "nuclear option," but we are no longer in normal times.
The issue then comes down to defining an appropriate, narrow class of legislation for the Rules to prevent the use of the filibuster.
Doesn’t seem like much of a barrier, does it?
https://politicalwire.com/2026/02/18/trumps-election-bill-tops-50-votes-in-senate/
Georgia, thank you for "the most powerful criminal syndicate in history."
That is stunning, and makes sense. Orwell said (paraphrasing) that the most important thing is to repeat the obvious.
If only that were the headline in the WSJ with an editorial shaming the companies that are the Trump enablers, and then having it trickle down to the right-wing blogosphere. It needs to be tied up with a bow connecting it to the Epstein files and Epstein’s connections to AI investments and Russia.
House Republicans failing to show up to question Wexner yesterday was shameful. That needs to get more traction in the media.
From MSNOW on other violations of the "presumption of regularity" by the Trump regime in their attack on voting rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__BF5KNKEoA
Sending healing prayers, Megan!
Yes
Wishing you a speedy recovery, Megan!
Thank you Megan. Hope you recover very soon
Hope you're better soon, Megan!
Feel better beautiful lady!
Megan, take care of yourself! I had flu and pneumonia last month and it took a turn—I am STILL not fully recovered.
Thank you, Megan, as always. Take care of yourself! Love from here.
In her videos as well as her letters, HCR has often reiterated the belief that there are many voices that are rising, not just one leader of the opposition. She is highlighting that tonight. It is a critical way to give hope when there appears to be few rays of sunshine. Her knowledge of our past is a critical bridge to the future we all want for America. Paths forward are multiplying as those voices are heard, repeated and given prominence. Thank you HCR and all others who continue to speak, act and believe in the promise of America.
Not for nothing are we remembering today words the late Jesse Jackson once made famous — “keep hope alive.” For nobody can live long without that. Whatever else may be taking place around us, we cannot live without the simple joys a normal life bestows. They give strength and courage to face — and solve — what feel like impossible and overwhelming challenges in a struggle we don’t yet know how to win.
But as Governor Pritzker and others remind, we’re actually stronger than they are. They fight for ugly, cruel, base things in order to hold onto power already slipping from their grasp — we fight to preserve the best and noblest our republic has to offer everyone.
To continue with all the World War II analogies, the line from “Casablanca” when Victor Laszlo tells Humphrey Bogart, “welcome back to the fight, Monsieur Rick — this time I know our side will win” comes to mind.
Welcome to the fight, ye ostriches who stir
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
JD, I wrote about AOC speaking in Berlin at the Technical University to over 1000 students on Sunday after she had spoken on two panels at the Munich Security Conference.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/aoc-had-a-berlin-audience-eating?r=f0qfn
It was an amazing uplifting talk, and AOC is certainly meeting the moment. An important piece of that is reaching out to democratic politicians around the world, and building alliances as the far-right has been doing for the past 50+ years.
In misogynistic America, she will have double baggage. I was raised to think I was strong and capable, not because I was told that but because I was not hovered over or treated as helpless. Also, I didn’t have deficits that held me back as many do. I didn’t consider females as lessers although the road had more potholes. My Mom mothered eight children while working in a hosiery mill (sometimes at home when she had an infant). No helpless women and men who carried their load. Great but flawed role models. AOC speaks to all, but do some have ears for a female voice in this climate. It is as toxic as CO2. Sorry for the digression, but we have been so blocked by jealous power for too long.
Thank you, JD. This is indeed, as you say, critical. It also helps when it is tempting to give up because there is so much going on. We each do what we can. None of us has to do everything. We answer what calls us. Someone else is answering what is calling them.
As HCR said, pick up and carry our own torch. It is ours alone.
What a beautiful speech, and what a beautiful historical service you provide in preserving it, Heather.
A brilliant State of the Union speech. He went deep. What our country needs to do, and stop the “deer in the headlights” mentality.
Am I too old to demonstrate -
Jane, where are you when we need you?
And Tom & Tim
My bones are thin
And all the flowers are in my garden
This time the battle’s not in Asia
It’s on the street outside my door
With Jets of Love nests
Masks and gasses
They’re not even cops anymore
What’s at stake?
Well, everything it seems
Speech and peace and freedom
This doesn’t feel like ‘69
It’s a whole lot worse this time
It’s a whole lot worse this time.
The future of our descendants is at stake, in America and on Mother Earth
I am increasingly convinced that Trump, the ChristoNazis and the MAGAT rabble -- most notably because of their utter absence of empathy (and their fanatical belief empathy is a sin) -- actually mark the emergence of a new subspecies of (sub)human, Homo sapiens inhumanus, its sociopathy -- including the replacement of the love-instinct with a far-more-powerful hate instinct -- the (deliberate) product of five decades of relentless neoliberal conditioning. (See https://news.yale.edu/2025/03/06/violent-experiences-alter-genome-ways-persist-generations )
And it is deliberate and relentless, often aided by that power gene in females. May it go extinct, along with the jealous hatred. Maybe we prove that empathy and caring are stronger traits for survival - of us all.
Interesting speculation, Loren. I know that generational trauma is a thing, and exists in all of the cultures/races that have been the target of racially based torture (in the US I am familiar with Black and Indigenous peoples). It is also in the families of our veterans whose wartime trauma is passed biologically to their children and their children.
I have not seen any studies on this particular component, but I have seen evidence that the "family tradition" sexual abuse does exist, and that the trauma of abuse does not prevent one from abusing their own children (thinking here of several families of three generations that I dealt with in my time in law enforcement) where I saw three, and once, four generation that engaged in that behavior.
We have a woman who always comes to our demonstrations who is 103. No one is too old or too young.
By "Jane, where are you when we need you?" are you referring to Jane Fonda? If so, she is now on Substack. And five days ago, she posted a video responding to some letters she has received from her Substack subscribers. Here she is...
https://substack.com/@janefonda
Yes, of course. I was reflecting on another time, when Jane would show up in the park - rawhide and beads and cause a ruckus. It's a poem ...
We weren't living under a Fascist Regime in 1969. We still had a Democracy.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of my U of Michigan doctoral dissertation.
I was already then anticipating Heather’s concerns in her books, podcasts, and Letters from an American.
By 1976 I’d gotten my B.A. in Ann Arbor, joined the army to become a translator/interpreter of Vietnamese, and leaving it had to spend my last day in a Ft. Dix, NJ hall where TV screens all day looped continuous sports product infomercials. As if that entire war served no more than U.S. materialism.
I’d not known then, April 4, 1972, of the Powell memo of August 23, 1971.
I’d not known of Heather’s concerns for how former U.S. enslaving classes had morphed into the new shopping malls, fast food franchises along all the new interstates, fossil fuel behemoths taking over all foreign policy, and the new far-right foundations of the Powell memo soon ridding American schools of humanities, crushing students in bank debt, propelling tides of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and allowing U.S. and world ruling elites to rape as many underage girls as Donald’s pals could traffic to them.
The dissertation I began in 1976, “Appalachia and Detroit,” was a personal travelogue, as if older strands of American culture and regionalism might vie with what I could only see as the consumerism taking over then.
How minor in comparison the vulgarities of 50 years ago, as they segued into the raping, corruption of an entire political party, and the setting up of American state terror, murder campaigns, and a gulag of concentration camps as the barely dehumanized of then became those fulsomely more so now?
Ah you saw the story that Harriet Arnow writes in her book The Dollmaker then the tv film starring Jane Fonda! It took me decades to make that assessment and the other multilayered migrations that happened as well.
These words of Governor Pritzker really good. No politician is perfect or without issues. This speech was stellar and should go down in history Phil. He used history and human narrative to relay we are not finished yet. I really needed this.
Phil, I started my university journey at the U of Michigan in good old Ann Arbor, but transferred to university in Chicago my home city after facing racism of which I had been mostly sheltered from during my time growing up. It was not from classmates for the most part who were cool, and with whom I made good friends, but from faculty. However, my history interests took me back home as well.
Both my parents, Linda, were open, fair-minded people.
My father totally so, his own parents immigrants from the first decade of the 20th-century, both then thereafter speaking Hungarian and Slovak. A bit of English.
My mother, too, fiercely against prejudices of any kinds. But she grew up at first in a poor white farming family -- with a typical residual lack of familiarity with blacks -- from rural Clinch River Valley, east Tennessee, absent blacks. Later, during the Depression, she and her two sisters and mother took the train to live in Los Angeles, where my grandfather had a job. His family somewhat upper middle class in Knoxville
When I started Ann Arbor, late summer 1965, I had requested my room be a triple. One of the other guys (he white, too, like me) was from the thumb area of Michigan -- he jumped into sports reporting and after college ended up being a national politics and features writer of some repute.
Third guy in our room was a very thin, somewhat short black guy from Flint. Great, gregarious, laughing personality. Sharp on seeing people. Very, very popular with all the other blacks on campus -- many came to our room to listen to newest Motown singles.
But for the full year I never told my mother I had a black roommate. They met at the end of that year -- my mother laughing at the year's-long trepidatious silence from me.
Phil, I went to Michigan after you did, but I also had a roommate from Flint and one from another country. Both of them dropped out because they could not adjust. I then was placed with a Michigan farm girl, who also ended up dropping out, but not before she and our other roommate who was Greek American and from a large city in Michigan treated me terribly. I will not list the things they did to me. The Greek American one was then left with me after the roommate dropped out and started being really nice to me once she fell in love with a guy I was friends with. I accepted her change, but never let go of knowing how small minded she was. She is now an opera singer in Michigan. I had to live with her voice exercises and she also was one of those women who intentionally used a baby voice to talk, and had a baby persona which was based on the Disney character Mini Mouse. She and the other roommate were absolutely horrid to me in hundreds of different ways, and this is what anyone faces who integrates a school system. They even complained to the RA about me speaking German to my mom when she would call, but that is because they would pull up chairs whenever I had a phone conversation and sit and listen with stony faces. They had moved my bed to one side of the room, and pushed our wardrobes into being a divider of the room. They used my bed to socialize on with their friends, and they stole my things and hid them or threw them away. I am now going to put those memories away because that is a long time ago and I am around nice people now.
I am so so sorry that happened to you Linda. How completely awful and inexcusable.
Sorry, Linda.
But it heightened you to sensitivity, energy, and determination regarding all kinds of injustices.
Thanks Phi, I was already sensitive to all those things before going, and it is a part of why I transferred away, because I could not see spending four years of my life around people who would tell me things like my TA did, who totally counted on me to have a section discussion that even though I had earned an A on all my work, he gave me a B plus because "he needed to save all the As for the White men since he was forced to grade on a curve."
So, what could I do? I had to accept that my gender and color did not warrant my getting the grade I had earned. In another class, the Black Professor felt I was uppity to be taking a graduate class, even though I had had the prerequisites in high school, and she gave me a B even though I was better prepared than many graduate students because she did not give As to undergraduates is what she told me. Then another TA, failed me on a paper because I argued for affirmative action in the Bakke case, because she felt it was an untenable position even though I defined all my terms, and made a good case. She made me rewrite it on another topic. Up until then I had felt she was fairly cool, and frankly, being "biracial" in the community I grew up in was common, so I was more accepted there, than I was in Michigan as a state.
Many years later when a friend had bought a house in an up and coming retreat destination for Chicagoans in Michigan, we used his house to start our circle tour of Lake Michigan. I was somewhat worried about the Michigan militia at the time. We ended up having a great experience, but my friend had made fun of my worries. This was 25 years ago. So, when some militia like characters had a plot to kidnap and kill Governor Whitmer, I reminded him of his ridicule of my concerns, and he admitted that I had actually had my finger on the pulse. So, that is the kind of sensitivity I developed at Michigan too.
Many times I've wondered why the University of Chicago is not considered in the same class as Northwestern and Stanford. So many Nobel winners in science including Enrico Fermi the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor.
One of my physics professors at Iowa State was a graduate student at University of Chicago under Fermi. He told us the story of the night they "started" the first man-made nuclear reaction. Everyone in the lab was petrified because even though they all believed in the science it had never been done before.
😔
You brought back some memories, Linda.
Or, one. Of an astronomy professor named Losh -- Doc Losh. She was already very old when I started in Ann Arbor, in 1965. But my white roommate, David, took her astro class -- because he was covering sports for The Michigan Daily and her classes famously had many athletes in them.
Turned out she liked having the jocks up front in every class -- so she could engage them often. But it was her grading which was legendary. As David, my white roommate reported, it was true that she kept to her form: A for athletes, B for boys, C for co-eds.
Thank you for sharing this, Linda. And your other personal experiences below. When you do this, you tell your readers about real things that happen(ed) to real people, people whom we hold in high regard. It's not just theory or speculation.
I believe that stories that share the lived experience of real people (or fictional stories that are wise to the experiences of real people) are often strongly bonding and often motivating. Statistics can fill out our picture in important ways, but shared human experience call upon our values, integrate thought with feeling.
Small minded idiots. Glad you made it through that intact.
I've never understood petty (and not so petty, for that matter) meanness.
It's dispiriting how ugly meanness gets, including deliberate homicide and cruelty. It is persistent enough through the centuries to demonstrate a deep seat in human nature. I think we so need to understand it better, as so many ugly scripts keep running though each generation, more so or less so, but same scripts with a different cast of actors. I think we need better understand the causes, and it's not just a devil with horns. I think we already know some ways to make societies more just, but don't prioritize them. Inclusivity is part of what helps and divide and conquer destroys, as we are seeing.
I'm glad the story had a happy ending!
Had no idea there were so many of us UM alums here! Go Blue! I was there from 1968-72, when I headed to London for my MA.
Phil -- I grew up in Michigan and my family is full of U-M grads -- my Dad got his JD there (on the GI bill), my Mom got her BA, I got my BA and my cousin got his MBA. I love Ann Arbor -- I hardly ever get back there these days, since my parents are no longer with us.
Interesting; Someday, we should talk my friend.
Hello Phil… Good Observations Phil… Thanks for sharing… Materialism is a Disease that the Predatory Epstein Class Exploits…
Following the money.
“love is the light that gets you through a long night.”! Thank you, Governor Pritzker! And to Heather for sharing this hope-filled piece. 🙏🏼💓🥰
Hope based on grasping a full compass of realities. It's essential for human progress and resilience.
Pritzker is a real leader.
We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. —Dr. Marin Luther King Jr.
The right words at the right time to counter the wrong idea that the world is only a place where the strong do what they will, the weak endure what they must — and that God wants it that way, too.
Of all the sickening nonsense Trump, Rubio, Miller, Noem and every Republican nitwit, half-wit, hypocrite, liar, criminal, thief, scalawag, cockwomble and dipshit out there engage in through their words and deeds, this always feels to me the most repulsive, the most self-serving, the most cynical.
That garment is a patchwork quilt. Jesse Jackson 1988 Democratic National Convention Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RCARIpVDLU
Every speech I've heard from Governor Pritzker has been an oration worthy of comparison to FDR or JFK or Lincoln. It takes a lot of money to run for the Oval Office, and if only billionaires can make the attempt, this is the billionaire who is worthy of the job. Imagine the elation when we get back to "precedented times".
100% agree! I have made it a goal to see or read every speech of his since he captivated me with his commencement speech at Northwestern University in June 2023. https://youtu.be/NhuIU_kXJDE?si=JV6I2OreyyX_U_pS
Heraclitus, a favorite of mine, observed that you never step in the same river twice. That rhyming thing. Every life, every era, is a unique experiment; and yet some dynamics remain fundamentally constant. Physics and human principle.
I just had to read every inch of this, and the part that stayed in my throat was the contrast: billions “illegally confiscated,” tariffs and market losses, medical debt erased on the one hand then masked, unaccountable federal agents and kids getting tear-gassed on the other. That’s the whole fight in one frame: does government protect people, or does it punish them.
And then Pritzker’s turn to love…a love that doesn’t wave flags, love that shows up as parishioners forming a human chain, moms in the pickup line with cameras, bicyclists shielding vendors, people outside on the coldest day and that that hit me hard. Because that’s what survives every regime: ordinary courage, practiced in public. Thank you for putting that kind of hope on the record. Www.xplisset.com
It's past time Democratic Governor's across America put their National Guard troops on notice that they may be called up in November to protect citizens voting rights from encroachment by the Federal Government via ICE or other forms of Federal police.
The Second Amendment clearly gives each State the authority to use its "armed militia" to protect its citizens from tyranny.
Let the Trump administration know we will do this if pushed.
Thank you, and Governor Pritzker, for your focus on love.
It made me proud that I was an Illinois resident during my graduate student days in Champaign-Urbana.
If ICE behaves like a violent paramilitary secret police, then for all intents and purposes, that is what it is: no badges and wearing masks to conceal identity, wearing military gear that veterans say is more than they wore in war time, violently assaulting unarmed, nonviolent US citizens and sometimes killing them, failure to observe the rule of law such as due process, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, warrant less search and seizure, warrant less home invasion, abduction of children, unmarked cars with bogus license plates, photographing peaceful US citizens and cataloging them in facial recognition files without their permission, threatening and terrorizing peaceful, law abiding citizens and dehumanizing them by falsely calling them violent terrorists, etc.,etc..
If you think that what ICE has been doing in Minnesota and around the country is not really authoritarianism/fascism, then view a video of what happens in Russia:
“Looks like brutal ICE thugs in Minnesota, but it's brutal KGB thugs in Moscow.
https://substack.com/@gavinrocks/note/p-185322852?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action”
Here is a link to a recent article by prominent Russian/American journalist and author of eleven books (including “Surviving Autocracy”) and Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”.
“State Terror Has Arrived” (in America) by Masha Gessen, NYT 1/24/2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/state-terror-has-arrived.html
There is no “bothsides” for tyranny! When the mainstream media accommodate fascism, it enables it.
“Daily edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop Guild….” Well done, Governor Pritzker.
Harry Potter fans will recall Professor Dolores Umbridge’s daily barrage of “reforms” nailed onto a ginormous wall in seeming permanence and perpetuity until one day — all the framed lies, petty retributions, acts of race hatred and Death-Eaters infecting an ancient institution to force capitulation to the Dark Lord came crashing down.
May it be so with us today.
That is just a great comparison! Thank you. In the words of Captain Picard, in Startrek, Next Generation, "Make it so".
Thank you, Heather, for informing us about Governor Pritzker’s speech. He is a fireball who is not afraid and I love him for that. You and the governor give me hope. Many thanks 🙏
Well said Gov Pritzker