Let’s stand in solidarity with our Haitian brothers and sisters in Springfield, Ohio. Haiti is in near lawlessness and returning could be a death sentence for many, not to mention how they might get separated from their families.
Just want to share a personal anecdote about Haitians. Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I was living in a house surrounded by dairy farms (rent in town was too expensive). One of the cornfields (corn grown to feed the dairy cows) ran right behind our house. For a couple of years while I was there, the farmer who owned the field hired Haitian laborers to harvest the corn. They were cheaper than using the mechanical harvesters that frequently broke down and did a more thorough job, leaving little to glean from the picked fields. I ran into the laborers on a few occasions. They were invariably polite, cheerful, and hard-working. Our country would be better off with more of them and fewer MAGAts.
Thank you for sharing this story. It's beautiful and touching and real. When I was very young, in the 1950s, we had family that lived in Michigan. When we good drive from Pennsylvania to visit them, sometimes we saw trucks on the highway with people from different countries; and we asked our dad what we were seeing. He would explain with great love about the migrant workers and the immigrants, who would come and help harvest the cherries and other crops. He explained that they came and would make as much money as they were able, save it, and then go home and take it to their families. He shared that it was an important part of our lives to allow people to do this because they were doing us a tremendous boon and we were helping them. I was sad and worried that people had to work physically so hard but they were so happy. To them it was an opportunity. We were blessed as sisters to have parents who saw every culture and every person as of equal value.
Your story is the perfect antidote to the chaotic, psychiatric bibble-babble this administration spews out every day of its too-long, wretched existence.
It isn’t simply that what they do is illegal, violates due process and Congressional intent, overtly unconstitutional (as well as carried out in a malevolent spirit of complete incompetence), it’s that it’s profoundly wrong. Gobsmackingly incorrect and misplaced in every way a policy or an idea could be.
During the pandemic, Rand Paul tried to make a name for himself as some sort of bizarre protector of public health by attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC as an out-of-control madman doing the bidding of Joe Biden and performing weird experiments on puppies. I remember so vividly that Dr. Fauci simply looked straight at him and said — televised and under oath — “Senator, you do not know *WHAT* you are talking about.” You could see Paul's leg twitch under his seat — how dare someone actually speak to him like that!
Now the situation is a hundred times more perilous for the health of our republic(and the tables have turned with Rand Paul now publicly excoriating — even if rather mildly — DHS and ICE). But the precept should be the same. At every public gathering, every opportunity, Congressional conference, those who know better (all of us really) must say: Noem/Miller/Trump/Whoever:
“You do not have the SLIGHTEST idea what you are talking about!”
It may seem obvious, but it isn’t. It needs to be said — every time, all the time. Calling people authoritarian, xenophobic, racist, fascist, evil — isn’t going to cut it. They’re WRONG. You must start with that, not end with it. Ultimately this is a battle for hearts and minds that must be waged with facts, not with simple name-calling.
Good post, ICTT, bolstered by a good anecdote. But the profound wrongness of these policies touches on factual, procedural, and moral aspects of life, which can lead us to use those four adjectives in expressing our passionate opposition. The trick is, and ever will be, to take the proper approach in the proper forum. We can vent on Substacks, but try to address our representatives using facts and logic. But they sometimes need to know just how strongly we feel about things.
I agree. It feels good to share these burdens with each other, but I try to call two representatives once a week and provide an earful of my discontent - to put it mildly.
Please google the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pick some names - Blumenthal, Raskin, Jayapal, Thompson ... - then go to CSpan Archives and listen to them at work for all of us. Listen to the hearing which Democrats Blumenthal and Garcia held yesterday giving DHS victims a voice.
Marimar Martinez describes being shot 5 times by CBP agent Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum, then being rushed in and out of a hospital - still bleeding profusely - and to being falsely charged with ramming Exum's SUV - which although evidence, he drove back to Maine to be repaired.
Migrants were always source of cheap labor. America was built on backs of the poor. God mad humans in different sizes and shapes. Like the animal kingdom. Snd like plants and trees. Rich diversity. Are there ugly trees which should be shot? Ugly animals who are not dangerous who should be shot? Ugly people .... who work hard and enrich the country who should be shot and deported. If your only friends are gold bars or gold frames or gold toys you're better off living in or under a monument. IMHO.
David and I continue to discuss contingency plans if we are truly forced to leave the country - temporarily. Close up the townhouse and skip town for a while. I think none of us will be exempt from trump's goons picking up any one of us randomly without cause.....
I agree that facts are essential. Unfortunately my observation is that too many people don't care about facts, they care about what they WANT to believe. There is a perception by, perhaps most, US citizens that the republican party is better at dealing with economics. Of course, if that were true why did Obama need to bail out "W's" economy and then Biden need to bail out trump's fiasco economy? More facts about the global climate crisis are every where but instead of embracing facts they embrace the oil company's out dated , inefficient and exceedingly expensive solution to world energy. Not to mention the economic boon that there would be in R and D, manufacturing and installation of renewable resources like hydrogen, wind, solar and yes nuclear fusion. Capturing the energy from the sun has endless potential. How about medical insurance for all US citizens. The fact is that socialized medicine works in 32 of the 33 of the most developed countries in the world, but for some reason it can't work here? It's much better pay to insurance companies, which are killing me at least financially, huge profits. And for what ? Higher premiums and poorer health care? But those are the facts! My question is how do we change facts into perceptions?
And thank YOU for sharing THIS story. As the grandson, son, and ultimately the husband of immigrants, I, too, grew up in a household that appreciated the value of other cultures. That made me a little "different" from many of my friends when I was growing up, and indeed later, but I also feel, like you do, that I was blessed.
I am the daughter, and wife of immigrants, and many of my friends are immigrants too, since I live in a University community in the US, the same university that drew my mom to study there and later work for, that my husband worked at and my friends do too. Many are specialists in the world in their fields since the US has up until now been able to attract such people. My husband, has many colleagues from other countries, and they all have come together in the US out of shared values and interest in learning and contributing their work and knowledge to the US and the world. Until Trump this is what made us such a desired destination. Now we are a country to be boycotted and our products too. Our Big Tech is viewed as monsters in many places, including in the US given how far right many leaders in Big Tech have swung.
After reading this (Heather’s article)I have to take a crap and I haven’t even had my coffee yet.
That one person can be so terribly destructive is an astounding feat. Yes of course he closed the KennedyCenter after destroying it. I bought the domain name: DonaldTrumpJohnkennedyCenter.org as I might play with it. I’ll probably announce that a new Donald Trump orchestra will be performing a brand new symphony work soon; “Rape of the Sabine Girls”
We here in the U.S. are extremely fortunate that we have young immigrants coming into this country to perform myriad tasks that an aging population can't do. Germany, Scandinavia, Japan and other post-industrialized nations are scrambling to entice young foreigners to immigrate so that they can handle this work. To be unaware of this, the benefit that we get from the immigrants being here do these jobs, and not eating our dogs and cats, is just plain old ignorance built on top a pile of racism and xenophobia. In other words, the KKK is now in control of the U,S. government and Donald Trump is the Grand Wizard. To get perspective on this, I recommend Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's. It really is a must-read account.
Expelling people because they are from a particular country is the most un-American thing I've ever heard of. Kristi Noem's statement of why Haitians should be banned is pure horseshit. Clearly, but unbelievably, this administration's goal is to take the next three years to get rid of all black and brown people from our (their) country. That would leave white people to pick fruits and vegetables and work in meat-packing plants. Ain't gonna to happen. It is deranged puppy-killer Kristi Noem who needs to be expelled from her position and from our country....
Not to jump to conclusions but the murderers of Alex Pretti came to MN from the southern border in TX and they both had Hispanic surnames. I hope they rot in one of the TX prisons that has no air conditioning.
Hispanic surnames are not indicators of individual character. All ethnicities have devils and angels and everything in between. And those TX prisons should get air conditioning - no matter who’s in them.
I don't disagree with any of your comment. It seem however, that the "cruel and unusual punishment" is a foreign concept to Republicans and I mean ALL Republicans.
Once they sign up as ICE agents their ethnicity no longer matters so much.
— but I get the anger / frustration but there.
wiki : "Very few federal agents are 🔻trained to do roving patrols, where they don't know who they're going to come across. That's more of a state and local police function."
There has to be trust between law enforcement agencies and the citizens they work for.
Dozens of movies and documentaries have been made about what happens when this trust is lost.
The Jacksonville police department was unable to control crime in certain parts of the city, because most of the citizens didn't trust the police department. Out of the 5 major cities in FL, Jacksonville almost always has the highest crime rates as well.
Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino, Homon, Bondi all seem to be surprised that police departments and even the national guard won't jump in and beat the shit out of anyone than isn't lily white.
Trust, once broken, is very difficult to repair. I thnk that is why the police department in Minneapolis is trying so hard to be community bound. I am now a trust skeptic.
Too logical! Too effective! It would work. But the employers are probably MAGA donors!
I have a better idea. Encourage legal immigration. Give anyone who wants to work hard, pay taxes, act lawfully - a green card and then citizenship if earned.
We NEED more workers! In all manner of jobs. From construction to medicine and science. From home health care to food production.
We are becoming an OLD country. Native Born Americans are not having kids! We need more young people to pay taxes, support social programs.
And...they bring a great variety of interesting cultures. Great food ideas! Great music! And they commit way less crime! Immigrants are how we became America. Why stop now?
maga were united by trump using hate and spite as tools, and complaints of economic stagnation, blaming whole classes of people instead of policies forwarded by the wealthy class and the powerful looking for ways to exploit others to become wealthier and more powerful.
Thanks for sharing your story, James. The maga ideology is a hateful, failing one. We really need to share the compassionate stories in the hopes that it will reach the hearts of those who need to hear it most.
Thank you, Celeste. MAGA is indeed a hateful ideology, and I pray that it be a failing one, and that it fails before it takes our country down with it. I’ve never understood the desire of the wealthy and powerful to become more wealthy and more powerful. To what end? Perhaps if I were among the wealthy and powerful I would understand better. But I doubt it.
It's about being anesthetized, James: learning to be blind, indifferent.
Anand Giridharadas has had trenchant things to say lately as he'd delved into the e-mails of Epstein's peer rich and famous. They're all skilled in deflecting from themselves any of the deep personal hurt rife among America's abandoned classes. (Not entirely abandoned. The prettier young teens got very special attention from Jeffrey's and Donald's fellow orgiasts, partiers. Then dumped.)
That's helpful, Phil. Thank you. I've learned in my own life that sometimes it takes a real shock for you to understand your own blindness and indifference. Maybe that's also true of the wealthy and powerful. Maybe the possibility of real consequences coming out of the revelations in the Trump/Epstein Pedo Files might be a sufficient shock to some of them, at least. Like the shock of not being able to buy their way out of it.
I too spend time thinking about this James. I would be having so. much fun giving my money to concerns that would lift people up. Like Jeff Bezos ex wife. I do not envy her for her resources. My envy is she gets to do so much great stuff helping others! Nothing altruistic about it - what could feel better for the giver!
When my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer (at age 96) 25 years ago, she had an in-home caregiver. Her name was Eunice; she was Haitian; and she was everything one could ask of a caregiver. Her kindness, competence and constant willingness to take on any task she saw as needed were beyond exemplary. I can't imagine her or someone like her having to live her life in constant fear of abduction.
The man who delivers our newspaper is Haitian. He is always pleasant and goes out of his way. He works seven days a week, and I’m sure he has at least one other job. We are so fortunate to have him here. (And so unfortunate to have Trump, Noem and the rest of the crime family.)
I worked at a French bank (Societe Generale) on Wall Street after graduation and many employees in the bank were Haitians, who were professional, educated, collegial and just plain nice. And I became very close friends with one of my office mates. No one, ever, considered them different, unusual, unwelcomed.....
An expat, I have many Haitian friends, and they are among the hardest-working, most skillful, and funniest people I know. Our island's former assistant manager had been a judge in Haiti before Duvalier, and he'd ride around blasting opera from his golf cart. In the 1970s, my father sponsored all five of the manager's children for U.S. citizenship, and thus the U.S. gained two attorneys, two doctors, and one research scientist.
That’s a great story, Skepticat. I hope after we have donned our gloves and masks and tossed this contemptible administration and all its functionaries into the toxic waste dump of history that our country will have many more similar stories to share.
My mother was in a skilled nursing facility for 12 years. Haitians are the backbone of the staff, from kitchen workers to registered nurses. They put up with a lot from sometimes abusive residents.
Scorcher of the day from Judge Reyes in her ruling.
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”
We need more judges, senators, representatives, govenors and mayors to speak that clearly and persuasively, calling out what Trump and his minions are saying and doing.
We lived in Rapid City, SD for almost 25 years, relocating back to Minnesota in 2015. I can safely say that the only people of color that I saw during all those years of living there were Native Americans. Rapid City is the second largest "city" in South Dakota with a population of 85,000. The largest city is Sioux Falls with a population of 220,000. The capitol of SD is in Pierre, population of 14,000. Noem's home is identified as being in Castlewood, SD with a population of around 800. She's probably not the best person to understand people who don't happen to be white. And, while Governor of SD, she was banned from all the reservations. Obviously, she wasn't doing all that well getting along with the only non-white group she had to function with in South Dakota.
Kelli, thank you for that helpful perspective on Noem and South Dakota. Interesting how clearly simple population and demographic data can paint a picture.
Thank you, Melinda. And while I am thinking of Noem, I am also reminded of what followed the public outrage after her story of shooting her young dog (puppy) and goat made the news. I give to the Humane Society of the United States. They publish a quarterly periodical. Kitty Block, the President of the HSUS soon wrote a feature article which focused on the story of what Noem did, i.e., animal cruelty.
If you have a paid subscription to The Contrarian, you are helping pay the legal bills because it covers its costs and then donates to help pay the legal bills of people with cases against the regime.
The same applies to Democracy Docket. Marc Elias and his fellow lawyers are doing a tremendous service to this country. Paying for a subscription is helping defend the rule of law and the Constitution, therefore us.
Sandy. I said the same thing before I read your comment. My biggest regret when canceling my WAPO subscription was not being able to follow Rubin. I was so glad when they started the Contrarian and they haven't disappointed.
When Rubin and Ann Telnaes left, so did I. I was regretting losing access to Alexandra Petri, but then she moved over to The Atlantic, where I was already a subscruber.
Same here. I was a subscriber for 45 years. It pained me to cancel, but when Jen Rubin and Ann Telnaes left, that was the final straw. And yes, I subscribe to both on Substack, as well as Marc Elias' Democracy Docket. I would much rather my hard earned money go to the Good Guys.
Many judges are already issuing more acerbic rulings, including Republican appointees. Retired judges and lawyers are resources for pro bono work.
Marc Elias's Democracy Docket works off donations and Substack subscriptions and has more than 100 voting rights cases in progress. He just argued a case before SCOTUS.
Why do you think that money is limiting what can be addressed at the moment?
Another hero with a broader focus. From Perplexity AI
Norm Eisen, through his work with the Democracy Defenders Fund and related groups, has been involved in numerous lawsuits challenging President Trump's policies since the January 2025 inauguration. Recent court wins against Trump-associated actions include:
Key Victories
Election Control Block (November 2025): A federal court issued a final order blocking Trump's executive order attempt to centralize control over U.S. elections, preventing potential disenfranchisement of millions. This was hailed as a major pre-election win by Eisen's coalition, including the ACLU.
SNAP Benefits Case (Late October/Early November 2025): Summary judgment granted a permanent injunction against Trump's effort to illegally cut SNAP benefits, described by Eisen as stopping an attempt to "starve Americans."
Department of Education Layoffs (Early 2025, Ongoing): District Judge Myong J. Joun issued a preliminary injunction halting mass firings (half the staff), later upheld on appeal before Supreme Court reversal; case continues with mandated filings into 2026.
Federal Worker Firings During Shutdown (October 2025): Immediate halt ordered on illegal dismissals, with Eisen calling it a rebuke of Trump's "Project 2025 playbook."
Broader Context
Eisen has pursued over 100 legal actions against Trump post-reelection, contributing to Trump's overall court record of roughly 75% losses in district courts (309 losses vs. 14 wins as of early 2026). These are preliminary or partial wins, often facing appeals, but they highlight ongoing judicial pushback on executive overreach in areas like federal operations, aid, and elections. No single "landmark" win dominates headlines as of February 2026, but the election-related ruling stands out for timing and scope.
Georgia. Thank you. Did not appreciate all the lawyers working for free or from donations. I do assume that the time involved is substantial. And its true judges are putting the ones on the govt to prove their claims. Meanwhile the amount of time for amassing evidence and doing the research has to be great. Kind of you to respond.
Happy to spread the word. You can follow Marc Elias on Democracy Docket on Substack and YouTube. He is focused on voting rights and is fighting the good fight in the courts every day. He is one of my heroes.
He was previously at Perkins Coie, one of the firms that defied the Trump executive order demanding law firms work for him. They won when the law was ruled unconstitutional in 2025. He had left earlier in 2021 to start his own firm Elias Law Group which inw has 17 partners.
He has gone up against Trump in the courts multiple times and has won each time. I think voting rights is the most important issue in the courts right now. If you can afford to donate to that cause, I would look at what he is doing. More than 60 cases in progress.
JBR, the three dots on the right margin opposite your name will give you an "edit" option on most devices (my iOS phone is hit and miss, PC always accesses it).
And, Georgia, Marc won the last 5 out of 5 cases he had before the Supremes! Pretty excellent track record. Plus, doesn't Marc just seem like a decent human being?
Glenn Kirshner cites other rulings and reasons signaling that the tide may be turning: https://glennkirschner.substack.com/p/does-anybody-else-feel-the-tide-turning. Yay Judge Reyes (and others). Prosecutors and Attorneys Generals around the country are doing good work -- Simon Rosenberg often interviews them individually on his Substack, Hopium Chronicles.
The tide is indeed turning and the cracks in the veneer of this completely illegal "administration" are widening and crumbling. We just need to keep the pressure on them.
Let us stand in solidarity with our Haitian Brothers and Sister, our Somali Brothers and Sisters, our Latin American Brothers and Sisters, our Georgian Brothers and Sisters whose votes were stolen by Trump for nefarious reasons, all of our American Brothers and sisters too who are fighting the good fight against the ICE goons. Let us stand in solidarity with the people investigating Trump's increasingly bold theft of our money be it from Venezuelan oil profits, or money we paid to the IRS.
Let us stand in solidarity with our allies in Greenland, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Ukraine and the EU. I taught in an international school on the Island of Hispanola and things back then were already very desperate for the Haitians who made beautiful paintings to sell, and one could find them in the markets in the Dominican Republic. I am sad that I only bought one painting now, because I will be unlikely to return. The poverty that Haitians lived in was deplorable, and it is only worse now.
Trump's virulent hatred of Black and Brown people all over the world, but particularly in the US takes the US back to Dixie South as well as to Nazi Germany. NO matter how we got such a president, we must do everything in our power to get rid of him. There are alleged bodies of babies and young girls and women buried in the Epstein files story, and we should insist that they be unearthed. Send in the cadaver dogs. Bring Trump and all of Epstein's cronies to justice.
New York City would not be New York City without all the immigrants who are great contributors to our communities and the economy. The city has wonderful healthcare and almost all of my doctors - primary and specialists - are originally from other countries - the best doctors I've ever had. The construction crews are often immigrants and the variety of restaurants entices us with food from around the world. Living in an all white nation would be so boring -- and then these Nazis would just find some other quality to hate in a group of people.
The American people broadly do not want to live in a racist, police state governed by a monomaniacal, self-appointed "King". And by "broadly" I mean large majorities of Dems, Republicans and Independents.
The People are rising up and standing up wherever the secret police show up.
I am proud to stand with Canadians. I am in Germany and in Indivisible Abroad I regularly meet with Americans many of whom are dual citizens like myself and Canada has very active members in both IA and in Democrats Abroad. A remarkable country.
Toward the end of my DoD career, we used cadaver dogs to try to help us find remains. We stopped using them because the places where we were using them weren't healthy for them and they never led to any recoveries. One of the handlers told us that when a dog sat down on a spot it might mean something. Or it might mean that the dog just wanted to sit down. :-)
Yes we should stand in solidarity with our Haitian citizens— we have a Haitian daughter in law and I talk a good number of Haitian students in Massachusetts public schools. They were hard working and serious about education and family.
“About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building’s Haitian staff in their apartments.”
When I was directing an anesthesiology and pain management department in NY my 2 best doctors were Haitian. The patients always requested them, we were like brothers. Good times.
About 50 million people living in the US right now are non-native born Americans. Mostly not White. What percent of these immigrants, illegal or legal, are vicious killers or welfare fraudsters? A bigger percentage than the 275 million native born Americans?
Where are the Trump/Noem goons that should be going after the killer, fraudster native born Americans?
I am reminded again that we need to stand with the *protesters too.
“In Minnesota, ICE and other federal agents have followed 🔹peaceful protestors to their homes, used chemical irritants and rubber bullets on them, and have even arrested people for standing on the public sidewalk and observing them.
This lawsuit asks the court – on behalf of these ordinary people who have come together courageously to stand up for the rights of all Americans – to halt ICE’s attack on First and Fourth Amendment rights.” Jan. 26/26
''Concentration Camps Begin With Paperwork: How Stripping Haitians of Legal Status Prepares America for Mass Detention''
Yesterday’s court ruling stopping the Trump administration from terminating Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status did more than pause a deportation order. It exposed the machinery behind it.
The effort to deport Haitians is not an isolated immigration dispute, nor is it a hardline policy disagreement over borders. It is a test case. It reveals how a government moves from law enforcement to population control, from administrative process to mass detention, and from rhetoric to infrastructure. It shows how concentration camps are not announced, but assembled quietly through paperwork, ideology, and logistics.
To understand what is happening, we have to stop thinking of deportation and detention as separate issues. They are two halves of the same system...
Not just Springfield, but other pockets around the nation. My daughter and her family in Key West have related incredible stress in their community over possible deportations. Entire areas of the community including schools, restaurants, hotels, tourism, businesses, and neighborhoods will be devastated by the loss of family, friends, employees, valued members. The fear is real and deep and profound. These Nazi policies must stop-it is unsustainable.
I have a friend whose daughter married a Haitian immigrant. Thankfully now he is a US citizen and has 2 beautiful mixed race US citizen children. He came legally to the US on a fiancee visa. I remember my friend saying, her daughter was there to pick him up at the airport in Miami and it took several hours for the immigration to let him in during regime 1.0. He was fortunate enough to marry into a family who had taken several medical mission trips to Haiti and came to love the people. He went to work as a dishwasher at a local restaurant almost immediately upon his arrival. Many of his coworkers were not kind to him. His English improved and he did have the resources to obtain US citizenship. They know other Haitians who have received letters and basically the letters want them to purchase plane tickets back to Port-au-Prince, a city, for which there are no current available commercial flights.
We need to lobby Congress to offer them permanent residency status. After the court decision Monday night, Springfield Mayor Bob Rue, a Republican, commented on these families’ need for stability and protection from “unnecessary disruption [that] creates uncertainty that serves no one.” Permanent residency would offer them that stability.
“This is bonkers.” Yup. You’re so right. So many things are terrifying and bonkers right now! So let’s be LOUD! 💔🤍💙
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.
A suggestion--I love using the app at the link below for contacting members of Congress on climate change issues. Maybe you could contact them and see if you could adapt it to use it with your database.
It's great because of the gamification aspects, and it lets you load suggested letters with some degree of profile personalization. It takes about 3 minutes to contact all three of your people in Congress, and it stores lots of topic letters. It also includes other choices on the carousel to help you get educated about issues. A great alternative to doom scrolling LOL
Intriguing. However it requires my phone number, and would not accept a landline work number, and I'm not willing to risk getting even more spam calls to my mobile so I'll continue to reach out using Resistbot. But it's great that it works out for you!
I'm testifying today at a NH House hearing on HB 1811, a measure to make children's vaccinations non-mandatory in NH. Foolishly shortsighted. Very Project 2025 in its motivation. I really don't want to witness some poor baby die from whooping cough. I really don't.
I simply call my three Washington legislators on my cell phone. They are in my contacts and it takes five minutes. I keep a call log with dates and topics. I even have some staffers names and hometowns. I frequently ask for written responses for a record of their lies. I also have two additional numbers of local offices, I sometimes call 3x each. My wife is hearing impaired and emails regularly. I pattern my topics from Jessica Craven and Robert Hubbell, but customized to my voice. Some friends use “ 5Calls”. Use whatever works for you, just keep going.
To those who say anybody deemed “illegal” should be deported, it depends on how you define the word.
The Trump administration is changing the status of not only the Haitians but others in the process of seeking asylum, visa extensions, green card applicants and even green card holders, and almost anyone reporting to authorities to follow the rules.
Artificial quotas and bounties are driving operations without regard to humanitarian considerations. We have become a xenophobic nation led by fear and repression.
Obviously were there any defensible reason to revoke the legal permission for non-citizens to be here, it should be a lawful and orderly process, and unless the individuals have committed some serious and proven crime, every courtesy extended to soften the impact of the breaking of the deal. The criminals in this case are members of the Republican regime, and they are shameless.
You mean like the 3.1 million "illegals" deported when Obama was President? Talk about incompetent and cruel -- Republicans want to hire more thugs to push down protestors and to use children as bait while costing us tens of billions more.
My mom hammered into me more times than I can count that a man should never hit a woman, or a boy should never hit a girl. Obviously, Trump, Miller, Noem, Bondi, Bovino, Homon never learned that lesson. And they never read the Ten Commandments either.
Impeach the mother fuckers NOW!! They will only continue to be sadistic thugs that prey on innocent protestors and American citizens while they pretend to be Christians.
SCOTUS is absolutely no help in assisting with the definition of "citizen" and who can legally be in the US. They are sitting on the tariffs case and won't release an opinion on birthright citizenship.
I'm surprised they haven't ruled that it is legal for the white Christian nationalists to post the 10 commandments in every school and public building in the country. If they do, they really need to quality the 6th commandment. "Thou shalt not kill." ICE and CBP make them look like hypocrites.
I wouldn't be surprised either. Bondi, Trump and Blanche think they can get by with only releasing 1/2 of the Epstein files. Too bad the victims are protected from Trump's retribution like all of the oligarchs and Republican politicos are.
I am not so sure 'we have become a xenophobic nation', I have always thought we have always been a xenophobic nation.
The difference is we had a sense of decorum yesterday and now that we have a potus giving permission to speak disgustingly about non-whites we are hearing more about it - this and social media used as a coward's megaphone to broadcast the hate.
This relentless cascade of bad news - Epstein, ICE, Voting Etc. - is a demoralizing military tactic used to take down societies, and it is being fully deployed here.
President Obama's Warning: "You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of "truth", the games won."
Who is behind this? The 1%:
Here is well over a dozen Fox, CBS, ABC, & NBC local news stations all reading an identical script sent down from their singular overlord to crash & burn alternative media in order to enhance the Oligarchy’s Overwhelming threat to our democracy:
Ultimately we are not consuming news. We are consuming a product manufactured by the richest men in human history, and that product is designed to do one thing: keep us so busy fighting our neighbors that you never notice the chains being fastened around our wrists.
There is some good news!!! A group of centrist Democrats has been putting together a detailed policy plan analogous to Project 2025 since July 1, 2025. It is unimaginatively titled Project 2029. I am very much hoping that the title and time line will change to something more like “For the People: Midterms Edition.” The first report from the group is due out in March, in line with the start of primary season for the midterms.
According to Newsweek:
"The group recently announced its leader, Chad Maisel, and said it has already enlisted 200 people for its working groups, according to the news outlet Axios, although these participants will reportedly remain secret unless they write a proposal."
According to Axios, Maisel worked at the Biden Domestic Policy Council and for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker,
This is necessary to get a rapid reversal of Trump’s most dangerous policies, as well as strategies and tactics to make that happen. Democrats can’t wait until after the midterms and waste time arguing about what to do and how to do it. To win the presidency in 2028, they need to demonstrate the ability to govern even with a hostile president.
But the effort lacks one of the most important features Democrats need—visibility of a deep bench of young party leaders working together as a shadow cabinet. This may be addressed by the group’s newly announced plan to establish an advisory panel within the next few weeks.
According to Axios, several other groups are working on their own policy documents:
"Searchlight Institute launched last year with the goal of pushing the Democratic Party to reject progressive positions the group believes have alienated voters.
Larger, more established think tanks such as The Roosevelt Institute and The Center for American Progress also have their own efforts to try to influence the next Democratic president."
This sounds like an invitation to blatant dysfunction. Crafting policy initiatives has to come from internal discussions with input from all party factions. The result needs to be cohesive and balanced or the messaging will be fragmented and confusing.
But at least it is a beginning, though 14 months later than it should have been.
I would be excited about that if it didn't start with "centrist Democrats." That is a whole lot of alarm bells. Do you think the best young leaders of the D party are going to sign on for that? Genuinely asking.
They always have been, which is why the Democratic party has worked so hard for the last 50 plus years to exclude them. The last thing they want is leadership or progressive to threaten the wealth of thier donors and supporters.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. That is why the shadow cabinet is so necessary. I am 75 and personally grossed out and horrified by a skeletal James Carville pontificating “for the party.”
There is another issue at the heart of the party’s dysfunction. Four different groups, all sitting under a big tent, each at a different table, not talking to each other. They are like high school cliques, with purity tests determining who can be invited to sit down with which group.
Horse trading among the different groups should be conducted to achieve coherence and balance across the whole platform, so that every group feels there are policies that address their main concerns. There also has to be an acknowledgement of the balancing that’s going on—addressing student loan debt and affordability for first-time homebuyers, while balancing that against the stability of Social Security for seniors, for example. Treating the problems of different constituentcies as separate leads to fragmented messaging. Whatever comes out of the discussions must be treated as a constrained system, and there must be a clear rationale for the trade-offs used to optimize it. You need EVERYONE to buy in. That gets sold by the shadow cabinet.
MAGA may have fractures now on gun control, but they all see Trump as having their back on their individual main issue, and they are willing to let the rest slide. The Project 2025 authors were left to write their cohesive game plan. Couple that with Trump’s threat of primarying anyone who disagrees with him on any issue and you have the Republican party in a nutshell.
I so agree with you about being grossed out by James Carville incessantly pontificating "for the party". It made me wonder if he ever even shuts up...So I asked the Google-ator (which didn't say no):
"Based on his recent activity, Democratic strategist James Carville has not stopped speaking publicly on politics and shows no signs of doing so.
In late 2024 and throughout 2025, Carville has remained highly active in the media, offering blunt, often controversial critiques of the Democratic party's direction and strategy. Despite criticism from within his own party and calls for him to "shut up"—most famously from Sen. John Fetterman in 2023 and various op-eds in 2025—Carville has continued to issue predictions and advice. He has frequently slammed the Democratic Party for "wokeness" and poor messaging, told progressive members to start their own party, and in early 2025, predicted a rapid "collapse" of the Trump administration."
What might be even more disturbing is that he's been married to Republican consultant Mary Matalin for almost 25 years now. Good for them if they're still happily married, but they say they just don't discuss politics. Which is highly suspicious coming from a loudmouth like Carville and I don't trust anyone that is a Trump supporter or even someone that is married to one.
Thank you Georgia, I so agree. We as a party need cohesion, hopefully with a progressive slant. We need to move beyond the Carville/Clinton moderation with positive plans for future actions, becoming proactive rather than reactive, and a vision encouraging younger generations to join.
I use the free newreader feedly.com. It lets me access all of those links without having to subscribe to them. You have to add them to a source list in the app. You can then search by topic. It doesn't do that for HuffPost, or Daily Beast or Reuters.
I call bunkum, and simplistic bunkum at that. I call out giving power to conspiracy thinking that would appeal only to Dan Bongino conspiracy-heads, only this time on the left, rather than on the right.
However much you assure yourself that everything proceeds from some script you point to as proof, it does not. People are not pre-programmed, robotic zombies, but human beings who — more often than not — turn over the tables, change course in mid-stream, suddenly discern right from wrong and act accordingly, and do so unpredictably. It has happened often in human history, it keeps happening today. There is simply no such thing as some 1% determining everything before breakfast.
Look around you. A political wedge issue they thought they could do anything at all they wanted with is suddenly blowing up in their faces. It’s flipped on its head and they are turning tail, even as they ratchet up the hostile nonsense they spew every day. That is not just good news — it wasn’t predicted.
History belongs to those who seize unexpected opportunities to turn breakthrough moments to new advantage through skill, aplomb and mastering the art and skill of bandwagonning. We are at such an inflection point right now. Put down the beloved, cherished conspiracy theories — there is no magic elixir that explains all things for all times. There’s SO much work to be done. Pack a lunch and get to it.
Alas, to those in charge we are close enough to robots for government work. See:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... In almost every act of our daily lives ... we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” —Edward Bernays, Father of Propaganda, related to Frued, Great Uncle of the Founder of Netflix
Ten Ways the 1% - Who Own Almost All Media and Which Have Radocalized Us Against One Another - Are Manipulating Us Right Now to Walk in Lockstep Into the Technocratic Incinerator, by Unknown
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable.
Many people I encounter are so brainwashed by media that they can't see two inches in front of their noses, and if you ever challenge them on the propaganda they find there, like Pavlov's dog they will call you a conspiracy theorist. They will then turn up their nose and walk away with a heightened sense of superiority.
The term "conspiracy theory" is remarkably adept at turning off all critical thinking like a light switch in a large portion of the people I have personally met.
Conditioning the public to react this way has to have been one of the most effective PSYOPs ever pushed onto the general population.
It is equal parts diabolic and brilliant, and it means that the elites can get away with just about anything with little to no scrutiny because everyone is too afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes lest they be labeled a "conspiracy theorist".
No. 7 shows how my boring middle-of-the-road views, which have grown clearer but have not changed markedly despite a lifetime observing politics from the ringside... are now, thanks to the sharp tilt to the right in the playing field since the mid-1980s, far left in my old age...
Yet I'm far too skeptical to be able to call myself a "progressive" (progress always comes with hidden costs that no one factors in) and there's a certain earthy conservatism about my world view, while those who call themselves conservative seem mostly wedded to all forms of destruction.
Philentropists...
As for no. 10, the buggers have, so far, caused far too much disturbance to my peace of mind. They can't touch my lucidity -- to the extent that it exists -- but they can through their flooding the zone with shit, do plenty to render it invisible, inaudible, unthinkable by anyone else. This, of course, does the shit-spreaders a disservice, for they deceive themselves even more than they deceive others and will inevitably end up embedded in what they spread.
I am just so fed up with their sh&t! All lies, all the time. And with straight faces!! Yes, my language has gotten horrible during these last 10 years now. Daydreaming here, but come spring and his lunches with his special people out on the patio, couldn't someone or some folks figure a final disaster for them, all in one fell swoop? .... *sigh*
"At the hearing, Miramar Martinez, a U.S. citizen was shot 5 times" but, had 7 holes in her body because 2 bullets entered 1 part of her body before striking her again.
Miramar's body is permanently disfigured but, those scars will NOT prevent Miramar to continue teaching her students. Miramar was unarmed.
The attempted Border Patrol murderer bragged about the 7 holes in Miramar's body proud even gleeful of his violent, malicious intent. "I fired 5 rounds & she had 7 holes, put that in your book boys". Even the CURRENT DOJ dismissed all charges against Miramar.
Miramar could be any one of us. Stop Trump's, impeach Noem, stop Miller's murderous attacks on anyone now!
I watched some of Marimar Martinez's detailed and horrifying testimony today, who was shot five times in Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago on Oct. 4, 2025. She said she was targeted simply because she's Latino. That she saw her life flash before her eyes when she was shot, and thought it might be the end for her. She said the Border Patrol agent's name was Exum, repeating it several times like the amount of times he shot her 7 times repeatedly.
"The government told the people they were targeting the worst of the worst, but their actions demonstrated otherwise," Martinez said Tuesday as she testified before Congress at a federal forum on federal immigration agents' use of force. "They are targeting individuals who fit a certain profile, who simply have a certain accent, a non-white skin color, just like me."
"I looked down and noticed blood gushing out of my arms and legs, and I realized I'd been shot multiple times," she said. "What happened to me in a matter of seconds on October 4th will unfortunately be with me for a lifetime."
"How many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?" Martinez said.
She's become a leading voice for reforming Department of Homeland Security use of force policies, after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.
Nearly two months after she was shot, federal prosecutors dropped assault charges that had been filed against her, and a judge dismissed them with prejudice, which prevents the government from filing them against her again.
Video from her case is expected to soon come out, offering new insight on what happened to her.
The testimony of the two women I heard, Martinez being one of them and the other the disabled woman, was riveting and horrifying. How dare the Republicans not have the basic grace to hear what they had to say. Another old adage applies to them: "I've made up my mind. Don't confuse me with the facts."
When in living memory have Republicans demonstrated anything that resembled grace? The closest thing that comes to mind is the handful of Republucan representatives who tried to protect congressional pages from being molested by the Republican speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert. Keep in mind they still didnt report the crimes, they just tried to prevent some of them.
That's the same party that put a pedophile, a fraud, and a Russian collaborator into the White House.
I can’t get over the fact that republicans don’t lose their minds as so much dysentery running out their ears. I suppose going MAGA has improved the ingestion of dead material and puss before it reaches the drain holes on either side of the numb skulls. Also I think that since their anusses (sic) are always on 🔥 it would help if they utilized actual toilet paper instead of fingers they could calm down a lot as the acidity would diminish. I guess that is my humanity reaching out for a way to calm them. As for normal people don’t let republicans get too close, and under no circumstances shake their hand. Respectfully, Pat.
I wonder if blunder-woman, Secretary Gnome, bothered to read the law or regulations underlying the program for Temporary Protected Status. I also wonder whether Blunderwoman ate the puppy she shot.
If we are asking about reading, who thinks that Trump has ever read the Constitution that he swore to uphold? Who thinks that Trump could even recite the "Pledge of Allegiance"?
Trump is only a gaseous puppet with an auto pen attached. He couldn’t think of all this on his own. Even he does stroke out, this will continue. But they all know that they can’t win the coming elections.
Yes -- well that Heather's on to Donald's next step in despotism.
He wants to take elections away from the states and park them in his own dictatorship.
Donald’s contradictions just redound around each other.
Or, rather, the crushing weight of what he intends for the federal government to inflict on the American people totally contradicts all the Republican longing for smaller government since the days of FDR, Truman, and Ike enlarging programs actually to benefit Americans – for civil rights, health, nutrition, workplace safety, the environment and for aid to allies and others abroad.
True, Donald has been killing, reducing, and corrupting agencies that do benefit Americans – and which curtail the predations of his and Putin’s oligarchs. But on top of that Donald has massively grown his private armies of masked, cruel, murderous thugs. He’s begun a national gulag of concentration camps. He arrests journalists whose truths annoy him. Desecrated the White House in gold vulgarities. And he yet covers up all his rich pals who for years raped underage girls.
Right Wing "Republican" "Small Government" was always an Orwellian label. Is ICE an example of "small government"? Is the proposed "nationalizing" of elections? Was Bush IIs militarization of police? The only thing that got smaller with Reagan and thence was anything by and for the people. Law has exploded that restricts the public's interests and favors corporate impunity and profits. Anyone here old enough to remember strong labor law, consumer protection, or antitrust?
"Republicans" (alas it used to be southern Democrats) bellow lots about "States Rights" when protecting their own gerrymandering or racism, but not so much for states disagree with oppose their agenda. For that, the Constitution is claimed to be irrelevant. Like "Citizens United", "Small Government" is an obfuscatory euphemism for radically changing who the government is by and for (hint: NOT "the People") in this country.
I am 76 and I do remember a country entirely different from what we have today. There were plenty of problems in the US back then but not like this. As so many have said this is not normal.
The sins of long ago in our youth have reached the tenth power now and that is why we need to embellish progressive political solutions. We can no longer say they did it to us as we have been that permissive vehicle responsible for the decay of our own times. It’s kinda ironic how we have hit the wall and can no longer pass the buck. Our poets our musicians our scientists even some lonely politicians have been urgently trying to usher in that sense that taking responsibly is now “our” realm. Conventional has drained us all the while on our own watch. The world is ordered by exclusion. Get rid of partisan politics. We are one. Go to rank choice voting. Take some chances by letting people decide. Just a thought. I’ve heard of other choices like universal healthcare, etc. that seem to be portend a more equal society. I think we are not stupid enough to ride the status quo which is a wild bronco when we all want to climb the mountain on a good trail horse.
I saw a Substack arguing that Trump can't interfere with the elections because the power is given to the states and, secondarily, to Congress, and nothing anywhere says the President has any power over them. It added that we shouldn't waste our time worrying about it, because it was just a distraction.
And my first thought was, "Might makes right in Trump's America."
My next thought was "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me."
Here’s a third. He’s trying to jerk your chain to see if you’ll push back. He has a long history of folding, chickening and TACO-ing out. It is part and parcel of his shtick.
There will certainly be many low-bore, low-cost, chicken-shit assaults on voting rights. But even Thune says he’s not interested in seeing Democrats filibuster the SAVE Act, much less change the Constitution itself. Despite challenges and violations, it’s still wise to bet on the 51 state and DC Secretaries of State, not on him.
I know this is a dangerous thought - but I sometimes wish the local police could arrest Trump et al for their many crimes. Never ever did I imagine that so many crimes against us all could be committed with no repercussions for the criminal class.
It would/will require a coup among Federal agencies, secret service, FBI etc., whose ranks have been decimated. Perhaps the “shadow government” should be reaching out. I have read that former DOJ members are coalescing into firms of their own.
Trump and his gang know they are losing. Since they are incapable of changing, they are trying to smash and grab everything they can while they can.
Trump is also incapable of having a strategy. He just blurts out what he is trying to do — Let’s take over the election!
The states that matter are ready for that. The Supreme Court might be a problem.
If Bondi sends her FBI to monitor elections, they should immediately be arrested. The DOJ is already too far on the wrong side of the law to be allowed to touch anything
I watched about 2-3 minutes of Dan Bongino bobbling his head up and down as he listened to a howling, wounded, demented, shrieking Baby Trump whining that Republicans should "nationalize" elections. It was all I needed to see.
The day before this mewling brat bibble-babbled his incoherent word salad via cellphone, a ruby-red Texas State Senate district in Ft. Worth chose a Democrat — an Air Force veteran and union leader who got outspent by about 20:1 — rather than the "Trump-Endorsed" candidate, who actually had that put on all of her campaign yard signs, thinking that would do the trick. It certainly did. The "Trump-Endorsed" Republican lost by double digits.
These two events were not exactly an unexplainable koinkidink of timing, to put it mildly. They’re proof not so much of our fear, but HIS. And before people convince themselves that this time the sky must surely be falling, remember this is a carnival-barking conman who loves nothing more (after gold and 🙀grabbing, of course) than to jerk other people’s chains just to see if they wince in pain or not.
A demented moron screaming incoherent blather doesn’t exactly bode for success. Quite the opposite. Despite everything, elections remain firmly and constitutionally in the hands of 51 state Secretaries of State, not the federal government.
He will scream and bitch and moan and writhe and whimper with mock pain and agony. He’s not going to be able to nationalize his own Depends, much your elections.
Enough with the crackpot accusations of illegal voting. Not happening in any percentage of alarming amounts at all. Lies.
Tiny little man who is so afraid and all his other cronies who are afraid of people who aren’t like them…they work so hard to tear down what we all love: freedom.
Don't hold your breath. Unless someone actually STOPS Trump from doing something its a fait accompli. You think a few judges orders are going to undo anything once DHS steals all the ballots and destroys all the evidence that Trump didnt win the election like Kristi Noem will say he did after they march into voting centers in blue cities and clear out all the ballots in November?
You cant unburn evidence, and the US has no method or law detailing any method for invalidating an election, even one that was materially attacked by federal law enforcement in defiance of the law.
The matter will end up in front of SCOTUS of course, but we have already seen how that story ends in Bush v Gore.
Thank you for sharing the excerpts from Judge Reyes's opinion. Re one of the topics that pervades our discussion of the news these days: Let it be known that ICE is STILL arresting protesters who follow their vehicles, claiming they are obstructing their operations. Pay whatever attention you will to whatever this administration's say (it's all lies) but do pay full attention to what they are doing, which is still whatever they want.
I just checked the State Department travel advisory for Haiti: "Reissued after addition of terrorism indicator.
Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care. Read the entire Travel Advisory."
Unbelievable that Noem tries to revoke their Temporary Protected Status while another government entity warns against traveling there. I'm so sick of racism.
Maybe I’m misreading your comment, but I am interested in way more than just the spreadsheet. But sharing it is how I have decided to take an active, helping role in our chaos right now.
My family and job as a teacher are my priority once a new day starts and I don’t spend much time on here to keep up with conversations. Professor Richardson typically posts in the 1-2 hours after my kids go to bed before I do. I read her post first on Facebook, click through some of the notes for where she got her facts, and then come here to post the spreadsheet to help encourage people to speak up. I then typically go to sleep.
It’s one (amazing) thing to learn from Professor Richardson’s daily letters, but we then HAVE to speak up. And so I post the sheet almost every day if I can because it’s a free resource and it’s how I’m using my voice. I get absolutely nothing money wise from it. I pay other people to have subscriptions in order to be able to post it 🤣
I can’t keep up with back and forth conversation comments because I choose not to be on my phone much at school or when I’m then home with my kids. I read comments to learn from others, make sure I’m answering questions asked of me, or type a quick thank you for a kind comment because I have had plenty of comments (on Facebook) where my life and my family’s have been threatened (yes all because of a spreadsheet).
To get to your last paragraph note - we are not going to be able to pinpoint the change our voices made. There will be things we never know that happened caused by us. I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. As a collective, our volume matters.
Megan, I am so sorry to see that you have confirmed my concerns about your safety due to the spreadsheet which you created and currently maintain, and consistently and freely share with the rest of us. No matter what, please stay safe!
I didn't know you were also posting to facebook, which had felt like an unsafe platform even before Zuckerberg began kowtowing to the FPFOTUS. I often wonder how his wife, a Chinese immigrant, pediatrician, and mother to their 3 daughters can be onboard with his life choices, but perhaps she is like my sisters who are all MAGAts even though we are first generation Americans. Perhaps they think that despite being POC they will be excluded from the terrorizing and illegal actions of ICE and other MAGA agencies.
Stay safe, Megan. You have more courage than I, who chooses to shelter behind a username linked to a nondescript email address.
I'm much relieved, Megan, for your embrace of non-linear realism.
You say, "There will be things we never know that happened caused by us. I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples."
I'm reading several books now on the Japanese film (and manga) artist Hayao Miyazaki. He has the same modesty as to causality. And in films like "My Neighbor Totoro," "Kiki's Delivery Service," and "Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind" he has great debts to the surprises in nature, the mix of things shifting magically, and the value of oddities we least expect.
First off Megan well said. Yes, HCR supplies the information that some may stick their heads in the sand and try to ignore the ever present situation and not bother to use her learning to speak up and become the next pebble in the pond to radiate the information out. Others will take that information and run with it as you have by providing a “spreadsheet” and unfortunately you are threatened by providing all the information in a one-stop-shopping form that is quite magnificent, to say the least.
Going to share this.. Now retired but was a SVP in Training & Development for a large company and had the privilege to travel throughout this country as well as abroad. Have always believed that “this is not a dress rehearsal” our lives no matter what have meaning and that each of us have the opportunity to be maybe a small pebble in this large pond of life to make a ripple, a difference, to make something better, learn better and leave an idea or concept that carries on to another person who will pass it on. Simply put have taken your “spreadsheet” and have emailed and passed onto hundreds of people that I’ve had the opportunity of meeting and consider acquaintances, friends and even as close as family members.
Here’s just one example— a coworker who has since retired to Maine who wasn’t that interested in politics, now is, and guess what she picked up the phone for the first time at age 71 and called her House Rep, and both Senators to voice her dissatisfaction of the illegalities of these ICE agents. While we may never know some aspects of others lives, she is a Republican and apparently her husband is as well and by some weird way has some personal contact to Collins and actually talked to her. Now does this mean anything will change for Collins votes or anything that she does, who knows. Maybe it’s just another “great concern” that comes out of the mouth of Collins, but it’s a pebble thrown into the pond to make that ripple.
Life is not for spectators and our democracy is not a spectator sport. It always requires feeding by each and everyone of us, it’s never been a given and requires our work and engagement just as life. So young lady, thank you for the work you place into a “spreadsheet”. Stay safe and healthy, you are a wonderful teacher…
Phil, I like to think I am one of the type of the Readers that you mention; I seldom write an “original” comment to the Letter, but rather engage with other readers, especially when I think I have something to add to the comment thread.
This is not the first time you’ve posted a comment that is critical of what Megan does with her spreadsheet; the first one I saw accused her of “like farming” in order to get a “top” spot in the comments section.
I had to read your post several times as it was difficult for me to determine what your complaint against her was. What jumps out at me is that she posts only about her spreadsheet for contacting elected officials, and your juxtaposition with others readers who “write intelligently, can do nuance, and are open to complications others raise.”
Your request from Readers here is “I’d like to know from those doing so of specific results validating its use…” strikes me as demanding justification for her posts. Why? Writing to Congress critters is reportedly an effective tool to communicate with not just your elected representatives, but those from other states that serve on committees that represent a vested interest/concern even though they might not be your Congress critters.
Why do you demand”…specific results validating its use.”? What justification do you have for demanding this from other Readers? Why does it matter?
Thank you, Ally, for saving me the time and effort of writing a similar post. I have to wonder if the accusatory tone of Phil's remarks, "Megan, however, always speaks only to one interest – that readers use her spread sheet to contact public officials," and especially whether his remark about Megan's post "leading all comments" on HCR's LFAA the other day is a projection of his own motivations. Out of civility I will not elaborate but as a longtime reader of HCR I do notice who the most frequent and/or wordiest commenters are, and sometimes some of those essays are posted within minutes of HCR's post, seemingly not as an actual real-time response to the topic of that day's LFAA.
Of course, appearances can be deceiving and assumptions are the termites of relationships. But I find it quite alarming that Megan is being attacked for providing an easy simple to use spreadsheet that she keeps updated voluntarily on her own time as a service to help us reach out to our legislators. I suppose since I post her link to the other Substacks that I read that maybe I too might be accused of .. something... ?
One note for those almost instant comments is that HCR first posts on Facebook and then (typically within half an hour) posts here so it’s easier to be one of the first comments. Sometimes if she posts after 10:30 on Facebook I decide if I want to stay up until 11pm or not 🤣
Well said Ally. I have to admit I skim or skip Phil’s writings, finding them often off key to the current letter and rather repetitive. My guess is they are often prewritten in order to drop first and receive the most “likes”. I find it somewhat weird for someone past sophomore year, but then I realize I’ve had elderly relatives similarly begging for attention. I’ve used Megan’s spreadsheets, finding they spur me to stop navel gazing and take action!
Phil, I am a member of Indivisable ReSisters Contra Costa. Our leaders send out newsletters whenever there are causes to attend to on top of what we are already doing. Every Thursday afternoon, Ezra Levin and Leah Goldberg, co-creators of Indivisible, hold a Zoom meeting with hundreds of thousands of us called”What’s The Plan”. It is informative and keeps us on a forward trajectory.
Megan’s spreadsheet is extremely helpful in contacting congress members. In CA, we are lucky to have Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla as our senators. I also have a progressive congressman down in SoCal, is where Darryl Issa(R) exists. Should SCOTUS grant CA the same rights as Texas to gerrymander seats, then Issa is out and boy, what a pleasure that would be!
I just want to ask if the Indivisible Zoom Mtg on Thursdays is meant for the CA Indivisible chapters or is it open to all nationwide Indivisible members? I don’t want to crash the site but I and some others I know would love to sit in and listen! Is that ok?
If the Democrats can regain the majority in the Senate and Congress, I hope one of the first laws they will pass will be to change the voting system to the one used in Australia - one person, one vote and voting is mandatory, with fines if you don’t vote.
I also wish that Trump and his cronies will be rounded up and deported, penniless, to Haiti and other countries they despise. Each one will be dropped separately in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and have to fend for themselves. That would make a good movie, too.
While I agree with everyone voting, I'm really fearful of more uninformed voters using elections as popularity contests. That got us Trump 2.0, methinks.
As long as we’re sprinkling the fairy dust of wishful solutions & retribution … my ‘wish upon a star’ is that Trump & enablers receive a sprinkling of Truth Serum.
— The truth would decimate them in every way & set us free!
I watched the hearing of ICE victims. It made me sick. I’ve read about the sadism of ordinary Germans in WWII and here we are again. Give an ordinary man a uniform, a gun, and carte blanche- well, there it goes. Without laws we have monsters.
Let’s stand in solidarity with our Haitian brothers and sisters in Springfield, Ohio. Haiti is in near lawlessness and returning could be a death sentence for many, not to mention how they might get separated from their families.
Just want to share a personal anecdote about Haitians. Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I was living in a house surrounded by dairy farms (rent in town was too expensive). One of the cornfields (corn grown to feed the dairy cows) ran right behind our house. For a couple of years while I was there, the farmer who owned the field hired Haitian laborers to harvest the corn. They were cheaper than using the mechanical harvesters that frequently broke down and did a more thorough job, leaving little to glean from the picked fields. I ran into the laborers on a few occasions. They were invariably polite, cheerful, and hard-working. Our country would be better off with more of them and fewer MAGAts.
Thank you for sharing this story. It's beautiful and touching and real. When I was very young, in the 1950s, we had family that lived in Michigan. When we good drive from Pennsylvania to visit them, sometimes we saw trucks on the highway with people from different countries; and we asked our dad what we were seeing. He would explain with great love about the migrant workers and the immigrants, who would come and help harvest the cherries and other crops. He explained that they came and would make as much money as they were able, save it, and then go home and take it to their families. He shared that it was an important part of our lives to allow people to do this because they were doing us a tremendous boon and we were helping them. I was sad and worried that people had to work physically so hard but they were so happy. To them it was an opportunity. We were blessed as sisters to have parents who saw every culture and every person as of equal value.
Your story is the perfect antidote to the chaotic, psychiatric bibble-babble this administration spews out every day of its too-long, wretched existence.
It isn’t simply that what they do is illegal, violates due process and Congressional intent, overtly unconstitutional (as well as carried out in a malevolent spirit of complete incompetence), it’s that it’s profoundly wrong. Gobsmackingly incorrect and misplaced in every way a policy or an idea could be.
During the pandemic, Rand Paul tried to make a name for himself as some sort of bizarre protector of public health by attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC as an out-of-control madman doing the bidding of Joe Biden and performing weird experiments on puppies. I remember so vividly that Dr. Fauci simply looked straight at him and said — televised and under oath — “Senator, you do not know *WHAT* you are talking about.” You could see Paul's leg twitch under his seat — how dare someone actually speak to him like that!
Now the situation is a hundred times more perilous for the health of our republic(and the tables have turned with Rand Paul now publicly excoriating — even if rather mildly — DHS and ICE). But the precept should be the same. At every public gathering, every opportunity, Congressional conference, those who know better (all of us really) must say: Noem/Miller/Trump/Whoever:
“You do not have the SLIGHTEST idea what you are talking about!”
It may seem obvious, but it isn’t. It needs to be said — every time, all the time. Calling people authoritarian, xenophobic, racist, fascist, evil — isn’t going to cut it. They’re WRONG. You must start with that, not end with it. Ultimately this is a battle for hearts and minds that must be waged with facts, not with simple name-calling.
Good post, ICTT, bolstered by a good anecdote. But the profound wrongness of these policies touches on factual, procedural, and moral aspects of life, which can lead us to use those four adjectives in expressing our passionate opposition. The trick is, and ever will be, to take the proper approach in the proper forum. We can vent on Substacks, but try to address our representatives using facts and logic. But they sometimes need to know just how strongly we feel about things.
I agree. It feels good to share these burdens with each other, but I try to call two representatives once a week and provide an earful of my discontent - to put it mildly.
I think they know and don't care. Winning counts, if it takes cheating, so be it.
Please google the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pick some names - Blumenthal, Raskin, Jayapal, Thompson ... - then go to CSpan Archives and listen to them at work for all of us. Listen to the hearing which Democrats Blumenthal and Garcia held yesterday giving DHS victims a voice.
Marimar Martinez describes being shot 5 times by CBP agent Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum, then being rushed in and out of a hospital - still bleeding profusely - and to being falsely charged with ramming Exum's SUV - which although evidence, he drove back to Maine to be repaired.
.https://youtu.be/bkRJUwaofss?si=LTFL5HDv_UnwuM6S.
I saw some of that hearing. It was astounding. And horrifying. And heartbreaking.
Migrants were always source of cheap labor. America was built on backs of the poor. God mad humans in different sizes and shapes. Like the animal kingdom. Snd like plants and trees. Rich diversity. Are there ugly trees which should be shot? Ugly animals who are not dangerous who should be shot? Ugly people .... who work hard and enrich the country who should be shot and deported. If your only friends are gold bars or gold frames or gold toys you're better off living in or under a monument. IMHO.
I live in Bagdad By the Sea, where immigrants outnumber the natives.
Like Cuba and Venezuela, Haiti also had a brain drain. Dozens, if not hundreds of Haitian physicians and nurses live and work in the US.
Check out "Continental Drift" by Dennis Banks.
David and I continue to discuss contingency plans if we are truly forced to leave the country - temporarily. Close up the townhouse and skip town for a while. I think none of us will be exempt from trump's goons picking up any one of us randomly without cause.....
I agree that facts are essential. Unfortunately my observation is that too many people don't care about facts, they care about what they WANT to believe. There is a perception by, perhaps most, US citizens that the republican party is better at dealing with economics. Of course, if that were true why did Obama need to bail out "W's" economy and then Biden need to bail out trump's fiasco economy? More facts about the global climate crisis are every where but instead of embracing facts they embrace the oil company's out dated , inefficient and exceedingly expensive solution to world energy. Not to mention the economic boon that there would be in R and D, manufacturing and installation of renewable resources like hydrogen, wind, solar and yes nuclear fusion. Capturing the energy from the sun has endless potential. How about medical insurance for all US citizens. The fact is that socialized medicine works in 32 of the 33 of the most developed countries in the world, but for some reason it can't work here? It's much better pay to insurance companies, which are killing me at least financially, huge profits. And for what ? Higher premiums and poorer health care? But those are the facts! My question is how do we change facts into perceptions?
And thank YOU for sharing THIS story. As the grandson, son, and ultimately the husband of immigrants, I, too, grew up in a household that appreciated the value of other cultures. That made me a little "different" from many of my friends when I was growing up, and indeed later, but I also feel, like you do, that I was blessed.
I am the daughter, and wife of immigrants, and many of my friends are immigrants too, since I live in a University community in the US, the same university that drew my mom to study there and later work for, that my husband worked at and my friends do too. Many are specialists in the world in their fields since the US has up until now been able to attract such people. My husband, has many colleagues from other countries, and they all have come together in the US out of shared values and interest in learning and contributing their work and knowledge to the US and the world. Until Trump this is what made us such a desired destination. Now we are a country to be boycotted and our products too. Our Big Tech is viewed as monsters in many places, including in the US given how far right many leaders in Big Tech have swung.
After reading this (Heather’s article)I have to take a crap and I haven’t even had my coffee yet.
That one person can be so terribly destructive is an astounding feat. Yes of course he closed the KennedyCenter after destroying it. I bought the domain name: DonaldTrumpJohnkennedyCenter.org as I might play with it. I’ll probably announce that a new Donald Trump orchestra will be performing a brand new symphony work soon; “Rape of the Sabine Girls”
It’s up. donaldtrumpjohnkennedycenter.org announces the new Donald Trump Orchestra symphony “Rape of the Sabine Girls.”
We here in the U.S. are extremely fortunate that we have young immigrants coming into this country to perform myriad tasks that an aging population can't do. Germany, Scandinavia, Japan and other post-industrialized nations are scrambling to entice young foreigners to immigrate so that they can handle this work. To be unaware of this, the benefit that we get from the immigrants being here do these jobs, and not eating our dogs and cats, is just plain old ignorance built on top a pile of racism and xenophobia. In other words, the KKK is now in control of the U,S. government and Donald Trump is the Grand Wizard. To get perspective on this, I recommend Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's. It really is a must-read account.
Expelling people because they are from a particular country is the most un-American thing I've ever heard of. Kristi Noem's statement of why Haitians should be banned is pure horseshit. Clearly, but unbelievably, this administration's goal is to take the next three years to get rid of all black and brown people from our (their) country. That would leave white people to pick fruits and vegetables and work in meat-packing plants. Ain't gonna to happen. It is deranged puppy-killer Kristi Noem who needs to be expelled from her position and from our country....
This is why we see suggestions that in order to prosper we should deport MAGAs & take in ‘alien’ workers such as these.
Exactly….deport the racists!!
I wish I could like your statement a thousand times!
Well, they ARE the criminals, aren't they? Do you have a country in mind? Or should they be randomly dropped in assorted locations?
Not to jump to conclusions but the murderers of Alex Pretti came to MN from the southern border in TX and they both had Hispanic surnames. I hope they rot in one of the TX prisons that has no air conditioning.
Hispanic surnames are not indicators of individual character. All ethnicities have devils and angels and everything in between. And those TX prisons should get air conditioning - no matter who’s in them.
I don't disagree with any of your comment. It seem however, that the "cruel and unusual punishment" is a foreign concept to Republicans and I mean ALL Republicans.
hmmm...
Once they sign up as ICE agents their ethnicity no longer matters so much.
— but I get the anger / frustration but there.
wiki : "Very few federal agents are 🔻trained to do roving patrols, where they don't know who they're going to come across. That's more of a state and local police function."
There has to be trust between law enforcement agencies and the citizens they work for.
Dozens of movies and documentaries have been made about what happens when this trust is lost.
The Jacksonville police department was unable to control crime in certain parts of the city, because most of the citizens didn't trust the police department. Out of the 5 major cities in FL, Jacksonville almost always has the highest crime rates as well.
Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino, Homon, Bondi all seem to be surprised that police departments and even the national guard won't jump in and beat the shit out of anyone than isn't lily white.
Noem et al are total IDIOTS in thrall to Trump.
— He sets their ‘moral agenda’ & they’re along for the ride.
Other law enforcement agencies realize they’re duds = no trust anywhere.
Ditto the rest of trump’s admin — “Garbage in, Garbage out”.
Sorry you’re going thro all this … I’m Canadian & we will suffer more along the *financial hardship line due to your resident Idiot in Chief.
Take care! 🌿
Trust, once broken, is very difficult to repair. I thnk that is why the police department in Minneapolis is trying so hard to be community bound. I am now a trust skeptic.
No Justice, No Peace
Can we negotiate a new MAGAland in Gaza and export our nationalists? Like Liberia, years ago.
Unfair to the Palestinians!
Want to stop unlawful immigration? Start arresting the employers who hire them.
Too logical! Too effective! It would work. But the employers are probably MAGA donors!
I have a better idea. Encourage legal immigration. Give anyone who wants to work hard, pay taxes, act lawfully - a green card and then citizenship if earned.
We NEED more workers! In all manner of jobs. From construction to medicine and science. From home health care to food production.
We are becoming an OLD country. Native Born Americans are not having kids! We need more young people to pay taxes, support social programs.
And...they bring a great variety of interesting cultures. Great food ideas! Great music! And they commit way less crime! Immigrants are how we became America. Why stop now?
More immigration, please!
The same holds true for the LGBTQ community.
maga were united by trump using hate and spite as tools, and complaints of economic stagnation, blaming whole classes of people instead of policies forwarded by the wealthy class and the powerful looking for ways to exploit others to become wealthier and more powerful.
Thanks for sharing your story, James. The maga ideology is a hateful, failing one. We really need to share the compassionate stories in the hopes that it will reach the hearts of those who need to hear it most.
Thank you, Celeste. MAGA is indeed a hateful ideology, and I pray that it be a failing one, and that it fails before it takes our country down with it. I’ve never understood the desire of the wealthy and powerful to become more wealthy and more powerful. To what end? Perhaps if I were among the wealthy and powerful I would understand better. But I doubt it.
It's about being anesthetized, James: learning to be blind, indifferent.
Anand Giridharadas has had trenchant things to say lately as he'd delved into the e-mails of Epstein's peer rich and famous. They're all skilled in deflecting from themselves any of the deep personal hurt rife among America's abandoned classes. (Not entirely abandoned. The prettier young teens got very special attention from Jeffrey's and Donald's fellow orgiasts, partiers. Then dumped.)
That's helpful, Phil. Thank you. I've learned in my own life that sometimes it takes a real shock for you to understand your own blindness and indifference. Maybe that's also true of the wealthy and powerful. Maybe the possibility of real consequences coming out of the revelations in the Trump/Epstein Pedo Files might be a sufficient shock to some of them, at least. Like the shock of not being able to buy their way out of it.
I too spend time thinking about this James. I would be having so. much fun giving my money to concerns that would lift people up. Like Jeff Bezos ex wife. I do not envy her for her resources. My envy is she gets to do so much great stuff helping others! Nothing altruistic about it - what could feel better for the giver!
Yes MAGA ideology is all about hate, greed and racism
When my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer (at age 96) 25 years ago, she had an in-home caregiver. Her name was Eunice; she was Haitian; and she was everything one could ask of a caregiver. Her kindness, competence and constant willingness to take on any task she saw as needed were beyond exemplary. I can't imagine her or someone like her having to live her life in constant fear of abduction.
The man who delivers our newspaper is Haitian. He is always pleasant and goes out of his way. He works seven days a week, and I’m sure he has at least one other job. We are so fortunate to have him here. (And so unfortunate to have Trump, Noem and the rest of the crime family.)
The same is true for apple orchards in northern New England. Most are picked by Haitians.
I never knew that (and I’m originally from RI). Thanks. No telling what you’re going to learn on Substack. :-)
For sure!
I worked at a French bank (Societe Generale) on Wall Street after graduation and many employees in the bank were Haitians, who were professional, educated, collegial and just plain nice. And I became very close friends with one of my office mates. No one, ever, considered them different, unusual, unwelcomed.....
An expat, I have many Haitian friends, and they are among the hardest-working, most skillful, and funniest people I know. Our island's former assistant manager had been a judge in Haiti before Duvalier, and he'd ride around blasting opera from his golf cart. In the 1970s, my father sponsored all five of the manager's children for U.S. citizenship, and thus the U.S. gained two attorneys, two doctors, and one research scientist.
That’s a great story, Skepticat. I hope after we have donned our gloves and masks and tossed this contemptible administration and all its functionaries into the toxic waste dump of history that our country will have many more similar stories to share.
Thank you. My hope is the same, and let's all hope that happens SOON.
Hear hear!
That’s true of so many immigrant groups; thank you for that personal observation.
My mother was in a skilled nursing facility for 12 years. Haitians are the backbone of the staff, from kitchen workers to registered nurses. They put up with a lot from sometimes abusive residents.
Scorcher of the day from Judge Reyes in her ruling.
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”
We need more judges, senators, representatives, govenors and mayors to speak that clearly and persuasively, calling out what Trump and his minions are saying and doing.
She gets right to the heart of the matter. Law and evidence. The Trump administration has neither. We need everyone else to be so clear.
We lived in Rapid City, SD for almost 25 years, relocating back to Minnesota in 2015. I can safely say that the only people of color that I saw during all those years of living there were Native Americans. Rapid City is the second largest "city" in South Dakota with a population of 85,000. The largest city is Sioux Falls with a population of 220,000. The capitol of SD is in Pierre, population of 14,000. Noem's home is identified as being in Castlewood, SD with a population of around 800. She's probably not the best person to understand people who don't happen to be white. And, while Governor of SD, she was banned from all the reservations. Obviously, she wasn't doing all that well getting along with the only non-white group she had to function with in South Dakota.
Kelli, thank you for that helpful perspective on Noem and South Dakota. Interesting how clearly simple population and demographic data can paint a picture.
Thank you, Melinda. And while I am thinking of Noem, I am also reminded of what followed the public outrage after her story of shooting her young dog (puppy) and goat made the news. I give to the Humane Society of the United States. They publish a quarterly periodical. Kitty Block, the President of the HSUS soon wrote a feature article which focused on the story of what Noem did, i.e., animal cruelty.
Obviously, that cruelty extends far beyond animals!
This land is their land. Artifacts go back 13,000 years.
I know. I'm an Enrolled Member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.
Noem/Trump — I am reminded of the quote …. “Having found that the Truth will yield no more milk they have gone to milk the bull.”
And only come back with sh*t.
good one!
Amen!
How in the world do you expect to get more judges, lawyers etc doing that work. And who is paying the legal bills.
If you have a paid subscription to The Contrarian, you are helping pay the legal bills because it covers its costs and then donates to help pay the legal bills of people with cases against the regime.
The same applies to Democracy Docket. Marc Elias and his fellow lawyers are doing a tremendous service to this country. Paying for a subscription is helping defend the rule of law and the Constitution, therefore us.
I Love Marc Elias. I have learned so much listening to Marc, HCR webcasts
and their guests!
Miles Taylor’s defiance.org is using donations to pay legal costs for independent journalists being targeted by these people.
Sandy. I said the same thing before I read your comment. My biggest regret when canceling my WAPO subscription was not being able to follow Rubin. I was so glad when they started the Contrarian and they haven't disappointed.
When Rubin and Ann Telnaes left, so did I. I was regretting losing access to Alexandra Petri, but then she moved over to The Atlantic, where I was already a subscruber.
Good morning, James.
Same here. I was a subscriber for 45 years. It pained me to cancel, but when Jen Rubin and Ann Telnaes left, that was the final straw. And yes, I subscribe to both on Substack, as well as Marc Elias' Democracy Docket. I would much rather my hard earned money go to the Good Guys.
Many judges are already issuing more acerbic rulings, including Republican appointees. Retired judges and lawyers are resources for pro bono work.
Marc Elias's Democracy Docket works off donations and Substack subscriptions and has more than 100 voting rights cases in progress. He just argued a case before SCOTUS.
Why do you think that money is limiting what can be addressed at the moment?
The Contrarian, under Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen continue to use subscriptions fees to fund litigation against the Fascist Trump regime.
They both left The Washington Post when Bezos got in bed with Trump and went all-in on being one of Trump's wholly owned lackeys.
Another hero with a broader focus. From Perplexity AI
Norm Eisen, through his work with the Democracy Defenders Fund and related groups, has been involved in numerous lawsuits challenging President Trump's policies since the January 2025 inauguration. Recent court wins against Trump-associated actions include:
Key Victories
Election Control Block (November 2025): A federal court issued a final order blocking Trump's executive order attempt to centralize control over U.S. elections, preventing potential disenfranchisement of millions. This was hailed as a major pre-election win by Eisen's coalition, including the ACLU.
SNAP Benefits Case (Late October/Early November 2025): Summary judgment granted a permanent injunction against Trump's effort to illegally cut SNAP benefits, described by Eisen as stopping an attempt to "starve Americans."
Department of Education Layoffs (Early 2025, Ongoing): District Judge Myong J. Joun issued a preliminary injunction halting mass firings (half the staff), later upheld on appeal before Supreme Court reversal; case continues with mandated filings into 2026.
Federal Worker Firings During Shutdown (October 2025): Immediate halt ordered on illegal dismissals, with Eisen calling it a rebuke of Trump's "Project 2025 playbook."
Broader Context
Eisen has pursued over 100 legal actions against Trump post-reelection, contributing to Trump's overall court record of roughly 75% losses in district courts (309 losses vs. 14 wins as of early 2026). These are preliminary or partial wins, often facing appeals, but they highlight ongoing judicial pushback on executive overreach in areas like federal operations, aid, and elections. No single "landmark" win dominates headlines as of February 2026, but the election-related ruling stands out for timing and scope.
Thank you Georgia for posting this.
WOW! Thx for saying!
“Man” of the Year: the judiciary (except SCOTUS).
Good to know! Thanks!
The judge who did the ruling releasing 5 year old Liam also wrote a scorcher of an opinion. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26708008-us-district-judge-fred-bierys-opinion-ordering-release-of-5-year-old-liam-arias-and-father/
Thank you, Laurie, for the link! That was an uplifting antidote to all the administration’s unceasing bulls**t.
Georgia. Thank you. Did not appreciate all the lawyers working for free or from donations. I do assume that the time involved is substantial. And its true judges are putting the ones on the govt to prove their claims. Meanwhile the amount of time for amassing evidence and doing the research has to be great. Kind of you to respond.
Happy to spread the word. You can follow Marc Elias on Democracy Docket on Substack and YouTube. He is focused on voting rights and is fighting the good fight in the courts every day. He is one of my heroes.
He was previously at Perkins Coie, one of the firms that defied the Trump executive order demanding law firms work for him. They won when the law was ruled unconstitutional in 2025. He had left earlier in 2021 to start his own firm Elias Law Group which inw has 17 partners.
He has gone up against Trump in the courts multiple times and has won each time. I think voting rights is the most important issue in the courts right now. If you can afford to donate to that cause, I would look at what he is doing. More than 60 cases in progress.
https://elias.law/
Mark Elias is one of my heroes also.
Thank you, Georgia. Your comments are always useful.
THANKK YOU, Georgia.
The Elias Law Groups' accomplishments are invigorating.
https://elias.law/newsroom/
Onus. Not ones.
That was an easy one to figure out, but thanks anyway for the correction.
JBR, the three dots on the right margin opposite your name will give you an "edit" option on most devices (my iOS phone is hit and miss, PC always accesses it).
And I agree a lot of conservative lawyers and former judges seeing the govt trying to shred the fabric of democracy and justice.
And, Georgia, Marc won the last 5 out of 5 cases he had before the Supremes! Pretty excellent track record. Plus, doesn't Marc just seem like a decent human being?
I’m waiting for someone in Congress to actually implement impeachment proceedings against Noem and Bondi and actually get it done!
I wish we could send each of them a spine so they could strap it on and do their true duty to us their constituents.
Glenn Kirshner cites other rulings and reasons signaling that the tide may be turning: https://glennkirschner.substack.com/p/does-anybody-else-feel-the-tide-turning. Yay Judge Reyes (and others). Prosecutors and Attorneys Generals around the country are doing good work -- Simon Rosenberg often interviews them individually on his Substack, Hopium Chronicles.
The tide is indeed turning and the cracks in the veneer of this completely illegal "administration" are widening and crumbling. We just need to keep the pressure on them.
Let us stand in solidarity with our Haitian Brothers and Sister, our Somali Brothers and Sisters, our Latin American Brothers and Sisters, our Georgian Brothers and Sisters whose votes were stolen by Trump for nefarious reasons, all of our American Brothers and sisters too who are fighting the good fight against the ICE goons. Let us stand in solidarity with the people investigating Trump's increasingly bold theft of our money be it from Venezuelan oil profits, or money we paid to the IRS.
Let us stand in solidarity with our allies in Greenland, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Ukraine and the EU. I taught in an international school on the Island of Hispanola and things back then were already very desperate for the Haitians who made beautiful paintings to sell, and one could find them in the markets in the Dominican Republic. I am sad that I only bought one painting now, because I will be unlikely to return. The poverty that Haitians lived in was deplorable, and it is only worse now.
Trump's virulent hatred of Black and Brown people all over the world, but particularly in the US takes the US back to Dixie South as well as to Nazi Germany. NO matter how we got such a president, we must do everything in our power to get rid of him. There are alleged bodies of babies and young girls and women buried in the Epstein files story, and we should insist that they be unearthed. Send in the cadaver dogs. Bring Trump and all of Epstein's cronies to justice.
New York City would not be New York City without all the immigrants who are great contributors to our communities and the economy. The city has wonderful healthcare and almost all of my doctors - primary and specialists - are originally from other countries - the best doctors I've ever had. The construction crews are often immigrants and the variety of restaurants entices us with food from around the world. Living in an all white nation would be so boring -- and then these Nazis would just find some other quality to hate in a group of people.
Same in D.C.
The American people broadly do not want to live in a racist, police state governed by a monomaniacal, self-appointed "King". And by "broadly" I mean large majorities of Dems, Republicans and Independents.
The People are rising up and standing up wherever the secret police show up.
We love America. Trump hates America.
Trump's war on America will fail.
I have a treasured painting I bought in Port au Prince in the late ‘70’s. I wish I’d bought more but for a broke college student it had to be enough.
OH! Wish we could see your art work!
Nice sentiments - and you are ‘standing with a Canadian’ here, 🇨🇦
— altho I wonder if cadaver dogs wd be useful after several years …
According to this article they can detect a scent buried up to 15 feet and for decades. https://mecsecurity.com/news/expertly-trained-cadaver-dogs/
I am proud to stand with Canadians. I am in Germany and in Indivisible Abroad I regularly meet with Americans many of whom are dual citizens like myself and Canada has very active members in both IA and in Democrats Abroad. A remarkable country.
https://indivisibleabroad.org/
If you scroll down to the map you see there are 3 sections in Canada, and I believe that another one is forming. Two Canadian-US citizen podcasters interviewed the founders of Indivisible Abroad on their Democrats Abroad podcast called Blue Vote Cafe. https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/indivisible-abroad-new-chapters-spring-up-around-the/id1521503554?i=1000718662813&l=ca
Toward the end of my DoD career, we used cadaver dogs to try to help us find remains. We stopped using them because the places where we were using them weren't healthy for them and they never led to any recoveries. One of the handlers told us that when a dog sat down on a spot it might mean something. Or it might mean that the dog just wanted to sit down. :-)
This is beautiful, Linda. Thank you. Them is us and us is them-what used to be a hallmark of the USA. We stand together.
Yes we should stand in solidarity with our Haitian citizens— we have a Haitian daughter in law and I talk a good number of Haitian students in Massachusetts public schools. They were hard working and serious about education and family.
Heartbreaking and heartwarming…💔
“About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building’s Haitian staff in their apartments.”
https://www.jta.org/2026/01/30/united-states/jewish-seniors-rally-behind-their-caregivers-as-350000-haitians-are-set-to-lose-legal-status
Amazing! My adopted Bubble spent her life, as the rabbi's wife, helping Russian Jewish immigrants. She wrote a book
When I was directing an anesthesiology and pain management department in NY my 2 best doctors were Haitian. The patients always requested them, we were like brothers. Good times.
About 50 million people living in the US right now are non-native born Americans. Mostly not White. What percent of these immigrants, illegal or legal, are vicious killers or welfare fraudsters? A bigger percentage than the 275 million native born Americans?
Where are the Trump/Noem goons that should be going after the killer, fraudster native born Americans?
I am reminded again that we need to stand with the *protesters too.
“In Minnesota, ICE and other federal agents have followed 🔹peaceful protestors to their homes, used chemical irritants and rubber bullets on them, and have even arrested people for standing on the public sidewalk and observing them.
This lawsuit asks the court – on behalf of these ordinary people who have come together courageously to stand up for the rights of all Americans – to halt ICE’s attack on First and Fourth Amendment rights.” Jan. 26/26
https://www.aclu.org/cases/tincher-v-noem-et-al 🦋
Exactly, Mike, what do they think they're gaining by destroying families and communities. Not much of a campaign slogan.
''Concentration Camps Begin With Paperwork: How Stripping Haitians of Legal Status Prepares America for Mass Detention''
Yesterday’s court ruling stopping the Trump administration from terminating Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status did more than pause a deportation order. It exposed the machinery behind it.
The effort to deport Haitians is not an isolated immigration dispute, nor is it a hardline policy disagreement over borders. It is a test case. It reveals how a government moves from law enforcement to population control, from administrative process to mass detention, and from rhetoric to infrastructure. It shows how concentration camps are not announced, but assembled quietly through paperwork, ideology, and logistics.
To understand what is happening, we have to stop thinking of deportation and detention as separate issues. They are two halves of the same system...
https://essayx.substack.com/p/concentration-camps-begin-with-paperwork
Not just Springfield, but other pockets around the nation. My daughter and her family in Key West have related incredible stress in their community over possible deportations. Entire areas of the community including schools, restaurants, hotels, tourism, businesses, and neighborhoods will be devastated by the loss of family, friends, employees, valued members. The fear is real and deep and profound. These Nazi policies must stop-it is unsustainable.
Living in America as a citizen is a death sentence because of the lawlessness of the United States of America Government.
I have a friend whose daughter married a Haitian immigrant. Thankfully now he is a US citizen and has 2 beautiful mixed race US citizen children. He came legally to the US on a fiancee visa. I remember my friend saying, her daughter was there to pick him up at the airport in Miami and it took several hours for the immigration to let him in during regime 1.0. He was fortunate enough to marry into a family who had taken several medical mission trips to Haiti and came to love the people. He went to work as a dishwasher at a local restaurant almost immediately upon his arrival. Many of his coworkers were not kind to him. His English improved and he did have the resources to obtain US citizenship. They know other Haitians who have received letters and basically the letters want them to purchase plane tickets back to Port-au-Prince, a city, for which there are no current available commercial flights.
We need to lobby Congress to offer them permanent residency status. After the court decision Monday night, Springfield Mayor Bob Rue, a Republican, commented on these families’ need for stability and protection from “unnecessary disruption [that] creates uncertainty that serves no one.” Permanent residency would offer them that stability.
“This is bonkers.” Yup. You’re so right. So many things are terrifying and bonkers right now! So let’s be LOUD! 💔🤍💙
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 ✊
GO Meg Go !
Thank you for making me smile! 💙
...'blush'
A suggestion--I love using the app at the link below for contacting members of Congress on climate change issues. Maybe you could contact them and see if you could adapt it to use it with your database.
It's great because of the gamification aspects, and it lets you load suggested letters with some degree of profile personalization. It takes about 3 minutes to contact all three of your people in Congress, and it stores lots of topic letters. It also includes other choices on the carousel to help you get educated about issues. A great alternative to doom scrolling LOL
Just a thought.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/183709793
Intriguing. However it requires my phone number, and would not accept a landline work number, and I'm not willing to risk getting even more spam calls to my mobile so I'll continue to reach out using Resistbot. But it's great that it works out for you!
I love learning about other resources, thank you for sharing! I will look into it more
I'm testifying today at a NH House hearing on HB 1811, a measure to make children's vaccinations non-mandatory in NH. Foolishly shortsighted. Very Project 2025 in its motivation. I really don't want to witness some poor baby die from whooping cough. I really don't.
Thank you for doing some extra heavy work today. What you’re doing is extremely important.
Thanks for continuing to provide this resource!
I simply call my three Washington legislators on my cell phone. They are in my contacts and it takes five minutes. I keep a call log with dates and topics. I even have some staffers names and hometowns. I frequently ask for written responses for a record of their lies. I also have two additional numbers of local offices, I sometimes call 3x each. My wife is hearing impaired and emails regularly. I pattern my topics from Jessica Craven and Robert Hubbell, but customized to my voice. Some friends use “ 5Calls”. Use whatever works for you, just keep going.
Power to the people!
Thank you Megan as always
thank you!
hooray, Megan!!! 💖💖💖
To those who say anybody deemed “illegal” should be deported, it depends on how you define the word.
The Trump administration is changing the status of not only the Haitians but others in the process of seeking asylum, visa extensions, green card applicants and even green card holders, and almost anyone reporting to authorities to follow the rules.
Artificial quotas and bounties are driving operations without regard to humanitarian considerations. We have become a xenophobic nation led by fear and repression.
Obviously were there any defensible reason to revoke the legal permission for non-citizens to be here, it should be a lawful and orderly process, and unless the individuals have committed some serious and proven crime, every courtesy extended to soften the impact of the breaking of the deal. The criminals in this case are members of the Republican regime, and they are shameless.
You mean like the 3.1 million "illegals" deported when Obama was President? Talk about incompetent and cruel -- Republicans want to hire more thugs to push down protestors and to use children as bait while costing us tens of billions more.
My mom hammered into me more times than I can count that a man should never hit a woman, or a boy should never hit a girl. Obviously, Trump, Miller, Noem, Bondi, Bovino, Homon never learned that lesson. And they never read the Ten Commandments either.
Impeach the mother fuckers NOW!! They will only continue to be sadistic thugs that prey on innocent protestors and American citizens while they pretend to be Christians.
SCOTUS is absolutely no help in assisting with the definition of "citizen" and who can legally be in the US. They are sitting on the tariffs case and won't release an opinion on birthright citizenship.
I'm surprised they haven't ruled that it is legal for the white Christian nationalists to post the 10 commandments in every school and public building in the country. If they do, they really need to quality the 6th commandment. "Thou shalt not kill." ICE and CBP make them look like hypocrites.
I wonder if a couple of the men on the SCOTUS come up in the Epstein files. Trump definitely has something on them…
I wouldn't be surprised either. Bondi, Trump and Blanche think they can get by with only releasing 1/2 of the Epstein files. Too bad the victims are protected from Trump's retribution like all of the oligarchs and Republican politicos are.
The Catholic school I attended taught Thou shalt no kill as the 5th commandment.
Hmmm. Interesting. But do you think it would make any difference to Republicans even if it was the 1st commandment?
Perhaps white nationalists should be made illegal. We could send them to Hungary, or better yet, Russia :)
No. Put them in open boats on the open sea and open fire.
Just pretend to open fire. Many of them would shit themselves and they would have to live with the stench until they were rescued.
Burmese in Ft Wayne IN are on the radar starting tomorrow 😡💔
I am not so sure 'we have become a xenophobic nation', I have always thought we have always been a xenophobic nation.
The difference is we had a sense of decorum yesterday and now that we have a potus giving permission to speak disgustingly about non-whites we are hearing more about it - this and social media used as a coward's megaphone to broadcast the hate.
This relentless cascade of bad news - Epstein, ICE, Voting Etc. - is a demoralizing military tactic used to take down societies, and it is being fully deployed here.
President Obama's Warning: "You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of "truth", the games won."
Who is behind this? The 1%:
Here is well over a dozen Fox, CBS, ABC, & NBC local news stations all reading an identical script sent down from their singular overlord to crash & burn alternative media in order to enhance the Oligarchy’s Overwhelming threat to our democracy:
https://substack.com/@tritorch/note/c-208406729
Ultimately we are not consuming news. We are consuming a product manufactured by the richest men in human history, and that product is designed to do one thing: keep us so busy fighting our neighbors that you never notice the chains being fastened around our wrists.
There is some good news!!! A group of centrist Democrats has been putting together a detailed policy plan analogous to Project 2025 since July 1, 2025. It is unimaginatively titled Project 2029. I am very much hoping that the title and time line will change to something more like “For the People: Midterms Edition.” The first report from the group is due out in March, in line with the start of primary season for the midterms.
According to Newsweek:
"The group recently announced its leader, Chad Maisel, and said it has already enlisted 200 people for its working groups, according to the news outlet Axios, although these participants will reportedly remain secret unless they write a proposal."
According to Axios, Maisel worked at the Biden Domestic Policy Council and for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker,
This is necessary to get a rapid reversal of Trump’s most dangerous policies, as well as strategies and tactics to make that happen. Democrats can’t wait until after the midterms and waste time arguing about what to do and how to do it. To win the presidency in 2028, they need to demonstrate the ability to govern even with a hostile president.
But the effort lacks one of the most important features Democrats need—visibility of a deep bench of young party leaders working together as a shadow cabinet. This may be addressed by the group’s newly announced plan to establish an advisory panel within the next few weeks.
According to Axios, several other groups are working on their own policy documents:
"Searchlight Institute launched last year with the goal of pushing the Democratic Party to reject progressive positions the group believes have alienated voters.
Larger, more established think tanks such as The Roosevelt Institute and The Center for American Progress also have their own efforts to try to influence the next Democratic president."
This sounds like an invitation to blatant dysfunction. Crafting policy initiatives has to come from internal discussions with input from all party factions. The result needs to be cohesive and balanced or the messaging will be fragmented and confusing.
But at least it is a beginning, though 14 months later than it should have been.
https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-project-2029-plans-spark-criticism-online-11451709
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/01/scoop-democrats-project-2029-names-leader
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/03/dems-are-quietly-forming-a-think-tank-to-help-them-win-again-00381601
I would be excited about that if it didn't start with "centrist Democrats." That is a whole lot of alarm bells. Do you think the best young leaders of the D party are going to sign on for that? Genuinely asking.
I believe progressive candidates are the future.
IMHO.
They always have been, which is why the Democratic party has worked so hard for the last 50 plus years to exclude them. The last thing they want is leadership or progressive to threaten the wealth of thier donors and supporters.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. That is why the shadow cabinet is so necessary. I am 75 and personally grossed out and horrified by a skeletal James Carville pontificating “for the party.”
There is another issue at the heart of the party’s dysfunction. Four different groups, all sitting under a big tent, each at a different table, not talking to each other. They are like high school cliques, with purity tests determining who can be invited to sit down with which group.
Horse trading among the different groups should be conducted to achieve coherence and balance across the whole platform, so that every group feels there are policies that address their main concerns. There also has to be an acknowledgement of the balancing that’s going on—addressing student loan debt and affordability for first-time homebuyers, while balancing that against the stability of Social Security for seniors, for example. Treating the problems of different constituentcies as separate leads to fragmented messaging. Whatever comes out of the discussions must be treated as a constrained system, and there must be a clear rationale for the trade-offs used to optimize it. You need EVERYONE to buy in. That gets sold by the shadow cabinet.
MAGA may have fractures now on gun control, but they all see Trump as having their back on their individual main issue, and they are willing to let the rest slide. The Project 2025 authors were left to write their cohesive game plan. Couple that with Trump’s threat of primarying anyone who disagrees with him on any issue and you have the Republican party in a nutshell.
I'm 75 also and wish Carville would STFU.
I so agree with you about being grossed out by James Carville incessantly pontificating "for the party". It made me wonder if he ever even shuts up...So I asked the Google-ator (which didn't say no):
"Based on his recent activity, Democratic strategist James Carville has not stopped speaking publicly on politics and shows no signs of doing so.
In late 2024 and throughout 2025, Carville has remained highly active in the media, offering blunt, often controversial critiques of the Democratic party's direction and strategy. Despite criticism from within his own party and calls for him to "shut up"—most famously from Sen. John Fetterman in 2023 and various op-eds in 2025—Carville has continued to issue predictions and advice. He has frequently slammed the Democratic Party for "wokeness" and poor messaging, told progressive members to start their own party, and in early 2025, predicted a rapid "collapse" of the Trump administration."
What might be even more disturbing is that he's been married to Republican consultant Mary Matalin for almost 25 years now. Good for them if they're still happily married, but they say they just don't discuss politics. Which is highly suspicious coming from a loudmouth like Carville and I don't trust anyone that is a Trump supporter or even someone that is married to one.
Thank you Georgia, I so agree. We as a party need cohesion, hopefully with a progressive slant. We need to move beyond the Carville/Clinton moderation with positive plans for future actions, becoming proactive rather than reactive, and a vision encouraging younger generations to join.
The Politico link doesn't work because of extra "that" on the end of the link. This one should get you there: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/03/dems-are-quietly-forming-a-think-tank-to-help-them-win-again-00381601
Thanks for catching that! Fixed it above.
Behind paywalls.
I use the free newreader feedly.com. It lets me access all of those links without having to subscribe to them. You have to add them to a source list in the app. You can then search by topic. It doesn't do that for HuffPost, or Daily Beast or Reuters.
Thank you.
The "Powell Memo" was a letter of intent for Project 2025.
I call bunkum, and simplistic bunkum at that. I call out giving power to conspiracy thinking that would appeal only to Dan Bongino conspiracy-heads, only this time on the left, rather than on the right.
However much you assure yourself that everything proceeds from some script you point to as proof, it does not. People are not pre-programmed, robotic zombies, but human beings who — more often than not — turn over the tables, change course in mid-stream, suddenly discern right from wrong and act accordingly, and do so unpredictably. It has happened often in human history, it keeps happening today. There is simply no such thing as some 1% determining everything before breakfast.
Look around you. A political wedge issue they thought they could do anything at all they wanted with is suddenly blowing up in their faces. It’s flipped on its head and they are turning tail, even as they ratchet up the hostile nonsense they spew every day. That is not just good news — it wasn’t predicted.
History belongs to those who seize unexpected opportunities to turn breakthrough moments to new advantage through skill, aplomb and mastering the art and skill of bandwagonning. We are at such an inflection point right now. Put down the beloved, cherished conspiracy theories — there is no magic elixir that explains all things for all times. There’s SO much work to be done. Pack a lunch and get to it.
Hear! Hear! This SNL skit reflects the change. https://fb.watch/F2Vwaaut2B/?fs=e
Alas, to those in charge we are close enough to robots for government work. See:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... In almost every act of our daily lives ... we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” —Edward Bernays, Father of Propaganda, related to Frued, Great Uncle of the Founder of Netflix
Ten Ways the 1% - Who Own Almost All Media and Which Have Radocalized Us Against One Another - Are Manipulating Us Right Now to Walk in Lockstep Into the Technocratic Incinerator, by Unknown
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable.
Spoken like a true-blue conspirator. Guess I fail at 7-dimensional chess or whatever that sophomoric bibble-babble was all about.
HEH! HEH! HEH! Gawd! Thank you.
Many people I encounter are so brainwashed by media that they can't see two inches in front of their noses, and if you ever challenge them on the propaganda they find there, like Pavlov's dog they will call you a conspiracy theorist. They will then turn up their nose and walk away with a heightened sense of superiority.
The term "conspiracy theory" is remarkably adept at turning off all critical thinking like a light switch in a large portion of the people I have personally met.
Conditioning the public to react this way has to have been one of the most effective PSYOPs ever pushed onto the general population.
It is equal parts diabolic and brilliant, and it means that the elites can get away with just about anything with little to no scrutiny because everyone is too afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes lest they be labeled a "conspiracy theorist".
Interesting.
No. 7 shows how my boring middle-of-the-road views, which have grown clearer but have not changed markedly despite a lifetime observing politics from the ringside... are now, thanks to the sharp tilt to the right in the playing field since the mid-1980s, far left in my old age...
Yet I'm far too skeptical to be able to call myself a "progressive" (progress always comes with hidden costs that no one factors in) and there's a certain earthy conservatism about my world view, while those who call themselves conservative seem mostly wedded to all forms of destruction.
Philentropists...
As for no. 10, the buggers have, so far, caused far too much disturbance to my peace of mind. They can't touch my lucidity -- to the extent that it exists -- but they can through their flooding the zone with shit, do plenty to render it invisible, inaudible, unthinkable by anyone else. This, of course, does the shit-spreaders a disservice, for they deceive themselves even more than they deceive others and will inevitably end up embedded in what they spread.
…the richest and most malignant-narcissistic and psychopathic men in human history….
I am just so fed up with their sh&t! All lies, all the time. And with straight faces!! Yes, my language has gotten horrible during these last 10 years now. Daydreaming here, but come spring and his lunches with his special people out on the patio, couldn't someone or some folks figure a final disaster for them, all in one fell swoop? .... *sigh*
I agree with Lucy. I have not been a swearer, but $hit has entered my Trump vocabulary. MAGA is a swear word.
That is is, definitely.
I swear freely and often inappropriately; either profanity or sarcasm is my second language.
It's gotten more prevalent lately.
So true, bad news sells. That explains why MSM is not covering the Monks' very positive and impactful Walk for Peace covered mostly on Facebook.
Heather:
"At the hearing, Miramar Martinez, a U.S. citizen was shot 5 times" but, had 7 holes in her body because 2 bullets entered 1 part of her body before striking her again.
Miramar's body is permanently disfigured but, those scars will NOT prevent Miramar to continue teaching her students. Miramar was unarmed.
The attempted Border Patrol murderer bragged about the 7 holes in Miramar's body proud even gleeful of his violent, malicious intent. "I fired 5 rounds & she had 7 holes, put that in your book boys". Even the CURRENT DOJ dismissed all charges against Miramar.
Miramar could be any one of us. Stop Trump's, impeach Noem, stop Miller's murderous attacks on anyone now!
It is beyond worrisome that so many creating the chaos and fear on purpose are just plain sociopaths, period...........
I watched some of Marimar Martinez's detailed and horrifying testimony today, who was shot five times in Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago on Oct. 4, 2025. She said she was targeted simply because she's Latino. That she saw her life flash before her eyes when she was shot, and thought it might be the end for her. She said the Border Patrol agent's name was Exum, repeating it several times like the amount of times he shot her 7 times repeatedly.
"The government told the people they were targeting the worst of the worst, but their actions demonstrated otherwise," Martinez said Tuesday as she testified before Congress at a federal forum on federal immigration agents' use of force. "They are targeting individuals who fit a certain profile, who simply have a certain accent, a non-white skin color, just like me."
"I looked down and noticed blood gushing out of my arms and legs, and I realized I'd been shot multiple times," she said. "What happened to me in a matter of seconds on October 4th will unfortunately be with me for a lifetime."
"How many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?" Martinez said.
She's become a leading voice for reforming Department of Homeland Security use of force policies, after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.
Nearly two months after she was shot, federal prosecutors dropped assault charges that had been filed against her, and a judge dismissed them with prejudice, which prevents the government from filing them against her again.
Video from her case is expected to soon come out, offering new insight on what happened to her.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/marimar-martinez-shot-by-u-s-border-patrol-chicago-testify-capitol-hill/
https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2026/02/03/marimar-martinez-shot-border-patrol-chicago-speaks-out-after-good-pretti-deaths-i-am-their-voice
The testimony of the two women I heard, Martinez being one of them and the other the disabled woman, was riveting and horrifying. How dare the Republicans not have the basic grace to hear what they had to say. Another old adage applies to them: "I've made up my mind. Don't confuse me with the facts."
When in living memory have Republicans demonstrated anything that resembled grace? The closest thing that comes to mind is the handful of Republucan representatives who tried to protect congressional pages from being molested by the Republican speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert. Keep in mind they still didnt report the crimes, they just tried to prevent some of them.
That's the same party that put a pedophile, a fraud, and a Russian collaborator into the White House.
I can’t get over the fact that republicans don’t lose their minds as so much dysentery running out their ears. I suppose going MAGA has improved the ingestion of dead material and puss before it reaches the drain holes on either side of the numb skulls. Also I think that since their anusses (sic) are always on 🔥 it would help if they utilized actual toilet paper instead of fingers they could calm down a lot as the acidity would diminish. I guess that is my humanity reaching out for a way to calm them. As for normal people don’t let republicans get too close, and under no circumstances shake their hand. Respectfully, Pat.
I wonder if blunder-woman, Secretary Gnome, bothered to read the law or regulations underlying the program for Temporary Protected Status. I also wonder whether Blunderwoman ate the puppy she shot.
Why read law you intend to ignore?
Gooooood question, there, J. L.!
If we are asking about reading, who thinks that Trump has ever read the Constitution that he swore to uphold? Who thinks that Trump could even recite the "Pledge of Allegiance"?
Constitution? What Constitution??
/s
Trump is only a gaseous puppet with an auto pen attached. He couldn’t think of all this on his own. Even he does stroke out, this will continue. But they all know that they can’t win the coming elections.
Unless they somehow rig them.
That he could would assume he understood “liberty and justice for all.”
Nice one, Ned.
Thanks, Anne-Louise.
Remember this is the moonbat-eyed dingbat who literally did not know what the definition of habeus corpus was.
That’s when you filet it and dip it in beer batter. Right?
Hahahahaha-hiccup.
Yes, Trump asked, "Who is he again?"
She’s such a POS.
Yes -- well that Heather's on to Donald's next step in despotism.
He wants to take elections away from the states and park them in his own dictatorship.
Donald’s contradictions just redound around each other.
Or, rather, the crushing weight of what he intends for the federal government to inflict on the American people totally contradicts all the Republican longing for smaller government since the days of FDR, Truman, and Ike enlarging programs actually to benefit Americans – for civil rights, health, nutrition, workplace safety, the environment and for aid to allies and others abroad.
True, Donald has been killing, reducing, and corrupting agencies that do benefit Americans – and which curtail the predations of his and Putin’s oligarchs. But on top of that Donald has massively grown his private armies of masked, cruel, murderous thugs. He’s begun a national gulag of concentration camps. He arrests journalists whose truths annoy him. Desecrated the White House in gold vulgarities. And he yet covers up all his rich pals who for years raped underage girls.
All his motives are strictly personal. He's enclosed in a personal bubble.
of malignant narcissism, as are his patrons and appointees; in fact the whole damned party.
Right Wing "Republican" "Small Government" was always an Orwellian label. Is ICE an example of "small government"? Is the proposed "nationalizing" of elections? Was Bush IIs militarization of police? The only thing that got smaller with Reagan and thence was anything by and for the people. Law has exploded that restricts the public's interests and favors corporate impunity and profits. Anyone here old enough to remember strong labor law, consumer protection, or antitrust?
"Republicans" (alas it used to be southern Democrats) bellow lots about "States Rights" when protecting their own gerrymandering or racism, but not so much for states disagree with oppose their agenda. For that, the Constitution is claimed to be irrelevant. Like "Citizens United", "Small Government" is an obfuscatory euphemism for radically changing who the government is by and for (hint: NOT "the People") in this country.
ditto policing women's bodies.
I am 76 and I do remember a country entirely different from what we have today. There were plenty of problems in the US back then but not like this. As so many have said this is not normal.
The sins of long ago in our youth have reached the tenth power now and that is why we need to embellish progressive political solutions. We can no longer say they did it to us as we have been that permissive vehicle responsible for the decay of our own times. It’s kinda ironic how we have hit the wall and can no longer pass the buck. Our poets our musicians our scientists even some lonely politicians have been urgently trying to usher in that sense that taking responsibly is now “our” realm. Conventional has drained us all the while on our own watch. The world is ordered by exclusion. Get rid of partisan politics. We are one. Go to rank choice voting. Take some chances by letting people decide. Just a thought. I’ve heard of other choices like universal healthcare, etc. that seem to be portend a more equal society. I think we are not stupid enough to ride the status quo which is a wild bronco when we all want to climb the mountain on a good trail horse.
He will cancel the elections altogether, calling them ‘crooked’. Any game that this pathological narcissist cannot win is ‘crooked’.
I saw a Substack arguing that Trump can't interfere with the elections because the power is given to the states and, secondarily, to Congress, and nothing anywhere says the President has any power over them. It added that we shouldn't waste our time worrying about it, because it was just a distraction.
And my first thought was, "Might makes right in Trump's America."
My next thought was "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me."
My third thought was "...
I have not figured out my third thought yet...
Here’s a third. He’s trying to jerk your chain to see if you’ll push back. He has a long history of folding, chickening and TACO-ing out. It is part and parcel of his shtick.
There will certainly be many low-bore, low-cost, chicken-shit assaults on voting rights. But even Thune says he’s not interested in seeing Democrats filibuster the SAVE Act, much less change the Constitution itself. Despite challenges and violations, it’s still wise to bet on the 51 state and DC Secretaries of State, not on him.
And support Marc Elias and those like him.
I know this is a dangerous thought - but I sometimes wish the local police could arrest Trump et al for their many crimes. Never ever did I imagine that so many crimes against us all could be committed with no repercussions for the criminal class.
It would/will require a coup among Federal agencies, secret service, FBI etc., whose ranks have been decimated. Perhaps the “shadow government” should be reaching out. I have read that former DOJ members are coalescing into firms of their own.
And exponentially (not literally) increasing our deficit. We have become a nation of debtors because of his greed. He is trying to steal Our Treasury!
"Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation." Coretta Scott King
Yup.
Hear, hear!
Trump and his gang know they are losing. Since they are incapable of changing, they are trying to smash and grab everything they can while they can.
Trump is also incapable of having a strategy. He just blurts out what he is trying to do — Let’s take over the election!
The states that matter are ready for that. The Supreme Court might be a problem.
If Bondi sends her FBI to monitor elections, they should immediately be arrested. The DOJ is already too far on the wrong side of the law to be allowed to touch anything
I watched about 2-3 minutes of Dan Bongino bobbling his head up and down as he listened to a howling, wounded, demented, shrieking Baby Trump whining that Republicans should "nationalize" elections. It was all I needed to see.
The day before this mewling brat bibble-babbled his incoherent word salad via cellphone, a ruby-red Texas State Senate district in Ft. Worth chose a Democrat — an Air Force veteran and union leader who got outspent by about 20:1 — rather than the "Trump-Endorsed" candidate, who actually had that put on all of her campaign yard signs, thinking that would do the trick. It certainly did. The "Trump-Endorsed" Republican lost by double digits.
These two events were not exactly an unexplainable koinkidink of timing, to put it mildly. They’re proof not so much of our fear, but HIS. And before people convince themselves that this time the sky must surely be falling, remember this is a carnival-barking conman who loves nothing more (after gold and 🙀grabbing, of course) than to jerk other people’s chains just to see if they wince in pain or not.
A demented moron screaming incoherent blather doesn’t exactly bode for success. Quite the opposite. Despite everything, elections remain firmly and constitutionally in the hands of 51 state Secretaries of State, not the federal government.
He will scream and bitch and moan and writhe and whimper with mock pain and agony. He’s not going to be able to nationalize his own Depends, much your elections.
Absolutely NO NATIONALIZING VOTING!
Enough with the crackpot accusations of illegal voting. Not happening in any percentage of alarming amounts at all. Lies.
Tiny little man who is so afraid and all his other cronies who are afraid of people who aren’t like them…they work so hard to tear down what we all love: freedom.
Well said Beth 🙏
Don't hold your breath. Unless someone actually STOPS Trump from doing something its a fait accompli. You think a few judges orders are going to undo anything once DHS steals all the ballots and destroys all the evidence that Trump didnt win the election like Kristi Noem will say he did after they march into voting centers in blue cities and clear out all the ballots in November?
You cant unburn evidence, and the US has no method or law detailing any method for invalidating an election, even one that was materially attacked by federal law enforcement in defiance of the law.
The matter will end up in front of SCOTUS of course, but we have already seen how that story ends in Bush v Gore.
Heather and anyone else, did you see this town hall that Mike Lawler held yesterday? It’s a doozy! https://youtu.be/hL6m5jEq1ZA?si=LxUnnSiwaL4bXw8u
He's awful, awful, awful. and is he trying to channel JD Vance with his beard and haircut? Is that now the male equivalent to Mar-a-Lago face?
Maybe he thinks he can get in on a cut of the couch action in the white house if he looks enough like Vance.
Wow! Thanks for the link. He needs to be voted out.
He never answered the question.
😡
Thank you for sharing the excerpts from Judge Reyes's opinion. Re one of the topics that pervades our discussion of the news these days: Let it be known that ICE is STILL arresting protesters who follow their vehicles, claiming they are obstructing their operations. Pay whatever attention you will to whatever this administration's say (it's all lies) but do pay full attention to what they are doing, which is still whatever they want.
I just checked the State Department travel advisory for Haiti: "Reissued after addition of terrorism indicator.
Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care. Read the entire Travel Advisory."
Unbelievable that Noem tries to revoke their Temporary Protected Status while another government entity warns against traveling there. I'm so sick of racism.
In Heather’s most recent, day before yesterday, leading all comments was Megan Rothery.
We have many readers – among Heather’s nearly three million – who write intelligently, can do nuance, and are open to complications others raise.
Megan, however, always speaks only to one interest – that readers use her spread sheet to contact public officials.
Heather likes this. She has often spoken (on her podcast) and written of the value of urging our officials to readers’ priorities.
So, given such widespread support for Megan’s project, I’d like to know from those doing so of specific results validating its use.
Maybe I’m misreading your comment, but I am interested in way more than just the spreadsheet. But sharing it is how I have decided to take an active, helping role in our chaos right now.
My family and job as a teacher are my priority once a new day starts and I don’t spend much time on here to keep up with conversations. Professor Richardson typically posts in the 1-2 hours after my kids go to bed before I do. I read her post first on Facebook, click through some of the notes for where she got her facts, and then come here to post the spreadsheet to help encourage people to speak up. I then typically go to sleep.
It’s one (amazing) thing to learn from Professor Richardson’s daily letters, but we then HAVE to speak up. And so I post the sheet almost every day if I can because it’s a free resource and it’s how I’m using my voice. I get absolutely nothing money wise from it. I pay other people to have subscriptions in order to be able to post it 🤣
I can’t keep up with back and forth conversation comments because I choose not to be on my phone much at school or when I’m then home with my kids. I read comments to learn from others, make sure I’m answering questions asked of me, or type a quick thank you for a kind comment because I have had plenty of comments (on Facebook) where my life and my family’s have been threatened (yes all because of a spreadsheet).
To get to your last paragraph note - we are not going to be able to pinpoint the change our voices made. There will be things we never know that happened caused by us. I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. As a collective, our volume matters.
Well said. Thank you!
Beautiful rejoinder to mostly nonsense. Thank you.
Megan, I am so sorry to see that you have confirmed my concerns about your safety due to the spreadsheet which you created and currently maintain, and consistently and freely share with the rest of us. No matter what, please stay safe!
I didn't know you were also posting to facebook, which had felt like an unsafe platform even before Zuckerberg began kowtowing to the FPFOTUS. I often wonder how his wife, a Chinese immigrant, pediatrician, and mother to their 3 daughters can be onboard with his life choices, but perhaps she is like my sisters who are all MAGAts even though we are first generation Americans. Perhaps they think that despite being POC they will be excluded from the terrorizing and illegal actions of ICE and other MAGA agencies.
Stay safe, Megan. You have more courage than I, who chooses to shelter behind a username linked to a nondescript email address.
I'm much relieved, Megan, for your embrace of non-linear realism.
You say, "There will be things we never know that happened caused by us. I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples."
I'm reading several books now on the Japanese film (and manga) artist Hayao Miyazaki. He has the same modesty as to causality. And in films like "My Neighbor Totoro," "Kiki's Delivery Service," and "Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind" he has great debts to the surprises in nature, the mix of things shifting magically, and the value of oddities we least expect.
Hope yours, too, Megan, is a Miyazaki family.
“Much relieved to hear of your embrace of non-linear realism”? 😜😀
What a stuffed, pompous shirt you are, Mr. Balla. Hint: she’s not here to please you or do whatever it is you think she should.
Great work Megan! Ripples indeed! The more often you post, the more that may be encouraged to pick up the phone. Thank you.
First off Megan well said. Yes, HCR supplies the information that some may stick their heads in the sand and try to ignore the ever present situation and not bother to use her learning to speak up and become the next pebble in the pond to radiate the information out. Others will take that information and run with it as you have by providing a “spreadsheet” and unfortunately you are threatened by providing all the information in a one-stop-shopping form that is quite magnificent, to say the least.
Going to share this.. Now retired but was a SVP in Training & Development for a large company and had the privilege to travel throughout this country as well as abroad. Have always believed that “this is not a dress rehearsal” our lives no matter what have meaning and that each of us have the opportunity to be maybe a small pebble in this large pond of life to make a ripple, a difference, to make something better, learn better and leave an idea or concept that carries on to another person who will pass it on. Simply put have taken your “spreadsheet” and have emailed and passed onto hundreds of people that I’ve had the opportunity of meeting and consider acquaintances, friends and even as close as family members.
Here’s just one example— a coworker who has since retired to Maine who wasn’t that interested in politics, now is, and guess what she picked up the phone for the first time at age 71 and called her House Rep, and both Senators to voice her dissatisfaction of the illegalities of these ICE agents. While we may never know some aspects of others lives, she is a Republican and apparently her husband is as well and by some weird way has some personal contact to Collins and actually talked to her. Now does this mean anything will change for Collins votes or anything that she does, who knows. Maybe it’s just another “great concern” that comes out of the mouth of Collins, but it’s a pebble thrown into the pond to make that ripple.
Life is not for spectators and our democracy is not a spectator sport. It always requires feeding by each and everyone of us, it’s never been a given and requires our work and engagement just as life. So young lady, thank you for the work you place into a “spreadsheet”. Stay safe and healthy, you are a wonderful teacher…
Phil, I like to think I am one of the type of the Readers that you mention; I seldom write an “original” comment to the Letter, but rather engage with other readers, especially when I think I have something to add to the comment thread.
This is not the first time you’ve posted a comment that is critical of what Megan does with her spreadsheet; the first one I saw accused her of “like farming” in order to get a “top” spot in the comments section.
I had to read your post several times as it was difficult for me to determine what your complaint against her was. What jumps out at me is that she posts only about her spreadsheet for contacting elected officials, and your juxtaposition with others readers who “write intelligently, can do nuance, and are open to complications others raise.”
Your request from Readers here is “I’d like to know from those doing so of specific results validating its use…” strikes me as demanding justification for her posts. Why? Writing to Congress critters is reportedly an effective tool to communicate with not just your elected representatives, but those from other states that serve on committees that represent a vested interest/concern even though they might not be your Congress critters.
Why do you demand”…specific results validating its use.”? What justification do you have for demanding this from other Readers? Why does it matter?
Thanks, Ally. Instead of having to write my own post voicing the same issues, you've done it brilliantly.
Thank you, Ally, for saving me the time and effort of writing a similar post. I have to wonder if the accusatory tone of Phil's remarks, "Megan, however, always speaks only to one interest – that readers use her spread sheet to contact public officials," and especially whether his remark about Megan's post "leading all comments" on HCR's LFAA the other day is a projection of his own motivations. Out of civility I will not elaborate but as a longtime reader of HCR I do notice who the most frequent and/or wordiest commenters are, and sometimes some of those essays are posted within minutes of HCR's post, seemingly not as an actual real-time response to the topic of that day's LFAA.
Of course, appearances can be deceiving and assumptions are the termites of relationships. But I find it quite alarming that Megan is being attacked for providing an easy simple to use spreadsheet that she keeps updated voluntarily on her own time as a service to help us reach out to our legislators. I suppose since I post her link to the other Substacks that I read that maybe I too might be accused of .. something... ?
Thank you for always having my back.
One note for those almost instant comments is that HCR first posts on Facebook and then (typically within half an hour) posts here so it’s easier to be one of the first comments. Sometimes if she posts after 10:30 on Facebook I decide if I want to stay up until 11pm or not 🤣
Well said Ally. I have to admit I skim or skip Phil’s writings, finding them often off key to the current letter and rather repetitive. My guess is they are often prewritten in order to drop first and receive the most “likes”. I find it somewhat weird for someone past sophomore year, but then I realize I’ve had elderly relatives similarly begging for attention. I’ve used Megan’s spreadsheets, finding they spur me to stop navel gazing and take action!
Yes, Gail, I often write something ahead of Heather's.
But your surmise errs as to why I do that.
I like best the interchange among other commenters -- and there's much, much less of that if one's comment lags behind in chronology.
As yours so often do.
Hear hear!!!
As I thanked Marlene, in the Bay area's Contra Costa country, it matters.
It matters that, along with everything else, the actions our peers take get some support, some positive results -- even if apparently small.
Phil, I am a member of Indivisable ReSisters Contra Costa. Our leaders send out newsletters whenever there are causes to attend to on top of what we are already doing. Every Thursday afternoon, Ezra Levin and Leah Goldberg, co-creators of Indivisible, hold a Zoom meeting with hundreds of thousands of us called”What’s The Plan”. It is informative and keeps us on a forward trajectory.
Megan’s spreadsheet is extremely helpful in contacting congress members. In CA, we are lucky to have Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla as our senators. I also have a progressive congressman down in SoCal, is where Darryl Issa(R) exists. Should SCOTUS grant CA the same rights as Texas to gerrymander seats, then Issa is out and boy, what a pleasure that would be!
Indivisible ReSisters Contra Costa are stalwart sites of "What's the Plan".
ZOOM every Thursday afternoon coming up again in 2 days, February 6, 2026.
Got it Marlene!
I just want to ask if the Indivisible Zoom Mtg on Thursdays is meant for the CA Indivisible chapters or is it open to all nationwide Indivisible members? I don’t want to crash the site but I and some others I know would love to sit in and listen! Is that ok?
Thank you, Marlene, for your notes on the positive activities you inhabit.
If the Democrats can regain the majority in the Senate and Congress, I hope one of the first laws they will pass will be to change the voting system to the one used in Australia - one person, one vote and voting is mandatory, with fines if you don’t vote.
I also wish that Trump and his cronies will be rounded up and deported, penniless, to Haiti and other countries they despise. Each one will be dropped separately in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and have to fend for themselves. That would make a good movie, too.
While I agree with everyone voting, I'm really fearful of more uninformed voters using elections as popularity contests. That got us Trump 2.0, methinks.
As long as we’re sprinkling the fairy dust of wishful solutions & retribution … my ‘wish upon a star’ is that Trump & enablers receive a sprinkling of Truth Serum.
— The truth would decimate them in every way & set us free!
The movie could be named, "MAGA - Naked and Afraid.
I watched the hearing of ICE victims. It made me sick. I’ve read about the sadism of ordinary Germans in WWII and here we are again. Give an ordinary man a uniform, a gun, and carte blanche- well, there it goes. Without laws we have monsters.