Literally.

On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would be adjourning early (yet again) and would not be back in session until after the November midterm elections.

Coincidence?

We think not.

Despite their weak attempts to project strength and confidence, Trump and Johnson are reading the same polls we are.

Republicans aren’t just behind in blue districts, or battleground districts, or even light red districts. They’re behind in ruby-red, solidly Republican (or so we thought) districts.

To make matters even worse, Republicans are staring down the very real possibility that all of that gerrymandering they did back in 2025 to try and rig the 2026 midterms will blow up in their face and end up handing the Democrats additional seats because of how toxic Republicans have become nationwide. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Republicans are collapsing across literally every demographic: with voters in every race, in every state, at every level across the country.

When you realize that, Johnson’s scramble to get Republicans back home to try and salvage whatever’s left of their careers starts to make a lot more sense.

And yet, that still isn’t the full picture.

Not only has Republican leadership sent the House home early this week, it’s the fifth time.

House members will only work 84 days between January and November of 2026. From July through November of this year, members of the House were in session for just 6 days.

Yet they’ll still collect their full six-figure salaries.

To give some context, Americans will have worked 223 days between January and November.

While you’re putting in 40, 50, even 60 or more hours every single week, 5 days a week, House Republicans have been punching the clock and refusing to show up for work. If you did that, you wouldn’t get paid, and you’d get fired pretty damn fast.

For Republicans?

Perks of power.

Mind you, this is the same Republican Party that has unilaterally blocked universal paid leave at every turn. The contradiction is deafening.

All this begs the question: why do the same Republicans that are now going home to beg you to send them back to Washington seem to hate their jobs so much?

The answer is quite simple: when the going gets tough, they’d rather skip town.

Just this week, Representative Thomas Massie (a Republican) began collecting signatures for a new discharge petition compelling Trump and his MAGA-infested DOJ to release the rest of the Epstein Files (where Trump is mentioned more than 38,000 times). Massie also introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – and he very well may have had 218 votes for it. In a Republican-majority Congress.

At the same time, Republicans are being drowned in calls from constituents demanding they pass new regulations on AI development and data centers in the wake of the damning revelations about AI’s very real potential to kill us all within a decade, and the much closer possibility that AI could have the power to take down the entire internet in just 6 months to a year.

Rather than, you know, stay in Washington and address the needs of Americans, they’ve once again bowed before the Dear Leader, who forbade them from passing any new regulations, providing any more transparency for survivors of Epstein (we all know why), or doing anything else that might make our lives even slightly better.

So keep this in mind as you balance your job (or two), child care, health care, groceries, rent, and soaring gas prices. While you’re doing that, just know Republicans are at home relaxing and collecting a salary you pay.

If they hate showing up to work so much, why don’t we do them all a favor and send them packing for good?

No matter what games they try to play or rules they try to rig, we can wash these insider-trading, Trump-glazing swamp monsters away in just 45 days.

The choice is yours to make. Let your voice be your vote, and let us unite as one to tell Trump and MAGA that not only are their days numbered, but their time is up.

There is perhaps no industry in America that has received a warmer welcome from Donald Trump than artificial intelligence.

Trump has embraced AI with an evangelical fervor he usually reserves for skyscrapers, ballrooms, and anything to do with himself. He has promised to make America the world’s AI superpower (at any cost), stood alongside tech oligarchs to announce hundreds of billions of new dollars to tech and AI companies, and repeatedly insisted that the country needs to build massive data centers – opposition be damned.

That alone would be concerning enough. But this week, the people actually building that technology gave us a rather horrifying reason to ask whether Trump’s embrace of AI is becoming something much more dangerous than his latest billionaire-backed economic crusade against the working class.

Last week, a researcher who spent the last 3 years working at OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned.

In announcing his resignation, he said that AI companies are “gambling with our lives,” despite the fact that the people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

You heard that right. Experts building the AI models hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people use on a daily basis – ChatGPT, Gemini, Azure, Claude, and more – are convinced they’re quite literally designing humanity’s own demise.

In response, a current Anthropic employee tasked with “alignment science,” agreed saying “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” He said Anthropic was the only company that could be trusted with such a technology, and so they were racing to build it to prevent it being used for ill.

Which is pretty much the same logic that led us to develop the atomic bomb, setting off 50 years of nuclear arms races?

As if it couldn’t get any worse, the Anthropic employee also conceded that none of the major tech companies have a plan to solve the problem of aligning artificial intelligence with human interests.

Nor are they even working on a solution.

And now, the people running those companies are asking Washington to do something about it.

Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the industry to “pace the frontier,” sounding the alarm in saying that AI development is moving faster than our ability to make it safe. Within hours, CEOS at OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek all publicly endorsed the call for a slower pace of development. They’ve asked for legislation mandating testing and for the government to step in and determine whether sufficiently dangerous AI systems should be blocked.

To put a finer point on that: the CEOs of some of the most powerful companies in the world are telling us that their own technology is advancing too quickly and that they don’t have the capability to regulate themselves without government intervention.

What has Donald Trump’s response been to all of this?

Pedal to the metal. Creative destruction. Gamble with our wealth, our health, and our very lives.

On Monday, Trump rejected the calls for new guardrails, declaring that the only control AI needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT” and calling efforts to regulate AI and data centers a “SICK conspiracy.” (Trump also came out in favor of flock cameras at the same time, by the way.)

And if AI does rise up?

“We’ll be fine,” Trump says.

Somehow, we’ve landed in the timeline where the people with the strongest reasons to avoid regulation are now the ones begging for it, and the man tasked with passing regulation is not only refusing to lift a finger, but promising to unilaterally block it.

Lately, data centers have emerged as a focal point of the AI development race. Without them, the biggest AI models currently hurtling forward wouldn’t be able to. Or at least not quite as fast. Among Americans from every walk of life or political affiliation, they’ve also drawn near-universal opposition.

In typical Trumpian fashion however, he’s decided to ignore your fears and push on because it’ll make him and his billionaire buddies richer – even if it kills us all in the process.

And if you oppose them?

Trump calls you “backwards” and “poor.”

You definitely wouldn’t oppose them because of valid concerns over the environmental, economic, or social impacts of haphazardly throwing up data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. Or because of the fact that AI is advancing faster than any technology ever while running entirely unchecked by a Congress full of old octogenarians who have no idea how social media platforms make money (it’s ads), much less any of the intricacies of artificial intelligence.

And of course, you definitely wouldn’t oppose them because these tech companies’ own employees are saying it could kill all of us.

Anyways, according to Trump, what any “rational” person should do is “Let Data Reign.”

Trump isn’t describing AI as one industry among many competing for investment, or for land, or for energy resources. He’s describing it as our economic destiny – or our collective fate.

What Trump really means, though, is we must let data reign over us. If Trump had his way, he’d keep his billions, his houses, his jets, and his golf courses, while we sacrifice, suffer, and lose in the name of further enriching the special interests that have bought the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to facilitate the “rapid and efficient buildout” of AI data centers and related infrastructure.

Trump’s goal was clear: build more data centers, build them now, and remove any obstacles standing in their way.

More than a year later, data from Erin Brockovich suggests there are over 300 data centers currently under construction, receiving permitting, or pending approval.

In a year.

Though perhaps the most important factor that often gets missed is:

The American people won’t benefit in any meaningful way.

The companies building America’s AI infrastructure are some of the wealthiest on the planet, led by the richest people in the world. The trillions of dollars expected to be generated by AI development won’t be going to regular people trying to get by; it’ll be going to the wealthiest among us, serving only to exacerbate income inequality and erode your buying power in a time where things already cost too damn much.

American communities can’t benefit from wealth they don’t own. But they can absolutely be harmed by it.

This week, we’ve also learned that these same models have been used by the Houthis to autonomously direct missiles to strike U.S. positions in the Middle East. We’ve been warned by those at the very top that, if left unregulated, another AI testing zone breach could bring down the entire internet. We’ve seen universal agreement (if you ignore McDonald’s biggest customer) that AI humanoid robots could turn on humans and wipe us out entirely.

To call that merely scary would be the understatement of the century.

Today, Trump stands on an island of one. It isn’t hyperbole to say that our historically unpopular age-addled, weight-rattled 80-year-old president is the only person standing against AI regulation – ‘till death do us part, apparently.

Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, in favor of or opposed to AI, or frankly couldn’t care less about any of it, we can all agree that the federal government shouldn’t be flagrantly ignoring the will of everyday Americans in favor of the same under-regulated, under-taxed oligarchs when even they are now pleading for regulation.

Even when the experts and CEOs tell us AI may kill us all, what’s Trump’s response?

Let Data Reign.

With this president, the only game he’s interested in playing is Monopoly – except we’re already 10 turns and hundreds of billions of dollars behind.

Welcome to Field Office, the newsletter that serves as the election desk from Headquarters.

On National Voter Registration Day, there’s nothing more fitting than bringing you the news that will save our democracy.

I’m Markus Batchelor, the National Political Director at People For the American Way. I’ve spent much of my career in and around elections.

I started my career as an organizer and elected official in Washington, D.C., learning what politics looks like from the other side of the ballot — knocking doors, talking with neighbors, and building coalitions; Iearning about the seemingly small decisions made in local elections that can have enormous consequences.

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to take that work to a national level. As National Political Director, I work across our elections and political programs, including our endorsements and electoral work, helping connect the organization’s longstanding work on democracy and political power to the races happening across the country.

Over the past year, I’ve also gotten a much closer look at something else: how quickly the political conversation moves online.

That’s a big part of why, on National Voter Registration Day, I’m so excited to introduce Field Office, Headquarters’ new weekly newsletter to help voters learn a little bit more about candidates across the country.

Here, we’ll go deeper into the elections, people, and places shaping the political landscape.

We’ll bring you election news, analysis, explainers, field notes, and practical information for voters. We’ll look beyond the daily political churn to understand what is happening in particular states and communities — and why it matters.

Why “Field Office”?

Politics doesn’t just happen in Washington.

It happens in states and congressional districts. In county election offices and statehouses. At candidate events and community meetings. In conversations between neighbors. And, ultimately, at the ballot box.

Headquarters has become a place to follow the broader political moment — particularly for people who increasingly experience politics through their feeds. Headquarters was created as a digital media ecosystem designed to meet people where they are and connect political information with opportunities for civic participation.

Field Office is the next layer of that work.

On a campaign, the field office is where the work gets done. It’s where organizers meet voters, volunteers come together, and campaigns get a closer look at the communities they’re trying to reach.

That’s the idea behind Field Office.

This is where we’ll get beyond the daily political frenzy and get closer to the people, places, and races shaping the 2026 elections and beyond.

And I’m particularly excited to lead it.

I’ve spent years thinking about elections from different vantage points — as a Washingtonian and former elected official, as someone who has worked with and around candidates and campaigns, and now as People For’s National Political Director working on elections and political engagement nationally. People For already has an active 2026 elections and endorsements program across states around the country.

Field Office gives me — and the broader Headquarters team — another way to bring that experience into the conversation.

Not just from Headquarters.

From the field.

So consider this our first dispatch.

The 2026 midterms are underway.

The Field Office is open.

I’ll see you out there.

— Markus

Markus Batchelor is National Political Director at People For the American Way and leads the Field Office project within the Headquarters ecosystem. He previously served as an elected member and Vice President of the D.C. State Board of Education and is an alumnus of People For’s Young Elected Officials Network.

Twenty-five years ago, America came to a standstill.

No matter where you were or what you were doing, your life came to a screeching halt as we watched in horror at the scene in New York City, Arlington, and Pennsylvania.

2,977 people lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and the world changed forever.

In those first moments, Americans had no idea who was behind it, whether we were safe, or whether there’d be a world to wake up to on September 12th.

As America grappled with the horror of what had happened, something else was happening, too.

The world was running to our defense.

Nations around the world, friend and foe alike, lowered their flags in remembrance. Our allies opened their airspace, shared intelligence, offered military support, and stood beside us as we reeled from the deadliest terror attack in world history.

None did more for us than Canada.

When airspace across North America closed, thousands of Americans were stranded wherever their plane happened to be flying over. In Gander, Canada, more than 6,500 passengers landed, unsure of where they were or how they’d get home.

Not only did Canada allow planes to land that day, but Gander — a town of just 10,000 — opened its doors, homes, and hearts to all of them.

They housed pregnant mothers, vulnerable seniors, pets, anyone who needed a home and had nowhere to go.

Without a moment of hesitation, they clothed, fed, and cared for them for more than 5 days before they were able to travel home.

In the midst of so much tragedy, bloodshed, and violence, the world witnessed the very best of humanity in Gander. America did, too.

Canada wasn’t alone, either. In London, the Queen ordered the Star Spangled Banner be played at Buckingham Palace. In France, the next day’s front page simply read, “We are all Americans now.” NATO planes flew over American skies, protecting a land thousands of miles from their own.

And when we were ready to strike back, our allies followed us into war. For the first and only time in its history, NATO invoked Article 5 – saying an attack on one is an attack on all.

Thousands of troops from our NATO allies joined in our war in Afghanistan, dislodging the Taliban and taking the fight right to Al-Qaeda’s front porch.

How have we repaid that kindness 25 years later?

We’ve gone after the very same allies who opened their doors to thousands of stranded Americans and who sacrificed their own sons and daughters in our defense.

In Canada, Donald Trump has launched a full-scale trade war, imposing 50% tariffs on more than $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Trump has demanded total control over Canadian minerals, threatened Canadian sovereignty, and destroyed America’s relationship with one of our closest partners.

In Greenland, Trump threatened military action against a fellow NATO member because they wouldn’t let us annex their territory. Just this month, Trump posted a map portraying the United States stretching across Canada, Greenland, and Iceland, prompting condemnation from the very same allies who once dropped everything to come to our defense.

In Ukraine, Trump has walked back American support for President Zelenskyy’s government, berated him in the Oval Office, and refused any further support even when Ukraine is on the cusp of victory against Russia, something that seemed impossible just a few years ago. This despite the fact that Ukraine, too, came to America’s aid in the wake of 9/11 even though they weren’t in NATO, weren’t protected by the American defense umbrella, and had no obligation to do so. For no reason other than to defend American freedom and security, they showed up in our hour of need. In theirs, Trump has undermined Ukraine at just about every turn. That’s not just betrayal – it’s sickening depravity.

In Europe, Trump has sought to boost far-right parties and destabilize ally governments to advance his own personal agenda. He’s demanded repayment of aid we gave to Europe in the wake of Putin’s senseless assault on Ukraine and threatened to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies. When our allies refused to join Trump’s disastrous war of choice in Iran, he openly threatened to pull the United States out of NATO altogether.

In other words, we’ve shit on every ally who rallied behind us when we needed it most. Because of Trump, the world thinks Americans have entirely forgotten who was there for us in our darkest hour.

While our president has, we assure you we haven’t.

As hard as it may be for those on the outside looking in to understand, there remains a vast majority of Americans who know that our security, our prosperity, and our future rests in the strength and resilience of our alliances around the world as much as it does on our own military.

Donald Trump has spent years saying we don’t need allies. That NATO is a money-sucking pit that has never brought anything good back home to America.

All we need to do is look back to September 11th to see just how wrong he is.

NATO proved its worth to America. We just seem to have forgotten.

25 years on from the darkest chapter of the 21st century, it is incumbent upon each of us to do all we can to build an America worthy of the values we saw the world stand for that day.

Let’s start from the top.

For months, the United States and Canada have been trying to negotiate their way out of a trade war Trump started last year … for no apparent reason. At the beginning of last week, it looked like a deal was imminent.

Until it wasn’t.

All we know for certain is that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered his negotiators to return to Canada and end negotiations with the United States. In announcing his decision, he said that Trump involved himself at the eleventh hour, making non-negotiable demands that went far beyond what Canada was willing to accept – including American dominion over Canadian rare earth minerals and Canada’s ability to negotiate future trade deals on its own terms.

According to Trump, Canada refused to submit, and would now pay the consequences.

He responded by immediately imposing 50% tariffs on more than $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Canada responded in kind.

Refusing to be upstaged, Trump went even further and signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

Across the way in Ontario, the Premier (akin to a governor in the U.S.), Doug Ford, responded by putting up a huge sign reading: “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.” He also echoed the thoughts of millions of Americans and Canadians alike in telling Trump to “Kiss my ass.”

Then Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting Trump-haired geese shooting machine guns on the newly named “Lake America”

Two countries that have been longstanding allies should be working together. Instead, the citizens of both nations watch as the president posts AI geese and bickers with a provincial leader.

And on top of Trump’s ravings, tariffs cost money.

They aren’t paid by Canada just because Trump says they are. They’re paid by you. At the same time that Americans are in universal agreement that things cost too much, Trump is deliberately making your goods more expensive.

That, unfortunately, is only the beginning of the embarrassment. Which brings us to Iran.

Trump’s Iran war is roaring on in the background. His war of choice crossed the 6-month mark (of a supposed “5-week war”) with no end in sight.

On August 24th, Trump trotted out his Treasury Secretary to announce what he called an “economic D-Day.”

Secretary Bessent billed it as no different than the Allied D-Day in 1944 (rather disrespectful to those who died and the veterans alike, if you ask us). The plan would isolate Iran economically, sever its financial lifelines, and force Tehran to capitulate – all without needing to fire a single shot more.

It was, supposedly, the administration’s answer to a very simple question: how the hell do we get out of the stupid war we began?

Just five days later, Trump bombed Iran again. Iran retaliated. Around and around we go. After announcing the plan that would end the war “within weeks” without any more fighting, we were right back to fighting a war we still couldn’t explain how to end.

Not liking the reality he’s in, Trump decided to once again turn to his favorite new tool and post an AI video of Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens” (newsflash: we didn’t drop a single bomb).

So, just to be clear: We have a president who cannot end the war he started, cannot explain how the war ends, and is using AI to create a make-believe world to sustain his fragile ego.

That isn’t strength. It’s sad, destructive flailing from an addled man well past his prime and well beyond his britches (literally and figuratively).

Unfortunately for all of us, there are real consequences to that flailing.

A Pentagon assessment warned that extending major military operations in Iran was imperiling our ability to respond to threats elsewhere, including threats to the homeland.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered USS Lincoln – which had been in active service for 271 consecutive days – was relieved only after its sailors literally began jumping overboard. For context, a typical tour of duty lasts 180 days (with multiple port calls during the tour, which the USS Lincoln went without).

While Trump has spent his term jumping from one self-inflicted crisis to another while ignoring your needs, your wallets, and your well-being – whether it be by deploying American soldiers to another forever war, endangering our health by gutting the FDA, shooting protestors in American streets, or the countless other examples – here’s what’s really been going on:

⛽ Gas prices remained above $4 per gallon for the entirety of August for the first time ever.

💰 The national debt crossed $40 trillion (with $3.9 trillion of that since January of 2025 alone.)

📈 Inflation has surged to 3.4% (and likely to go higher).

🤑 American billionaires have become so rich that we have our first trillionaire.

📹 Flock cameras have invaded American cities, expanding the reach of the surveillance state to levels never before seen.

🏭 Data centers have cropped up across America, poisoning your water, skyrocketing your energy bills, crashing your home prices, and further rigging the economic playing field. (Which, by the way, if you’re opposed to data centers you’re backwards and poor, according to Trump).

🦠 Two Americans have died of Measles for the first time since the dawn of the 21st century.

All of this leads us to ask: what the hell happened to America First?

Under Donald Trump, America has come last. Every. Single. Time.

You come last.

This isn’t about left versus right anymore (though it never really was).

It’s about Trump versus everyone. Whether you’re MAGA, DSA, or anywhere in between. None of us are better off under Trump, and things are only going to get so, so much worse.

If you’re feeling helpless, we have a solution: vote. Vote for Democrats, for Independents, for anyone willing to stand up to Trump in every race, in every state, at every level.

Let’s make November the first step to taking our country back, not for the few, but for the many.

We’ll see you out there.

In 2024, Donald Trump promised to “Make America Healthy Again.”

Like nearly every other promise he made, he lied.

Since retaking office, the FDA has issued over 2,450 recall enforcement reports. That means, on average, there have been roughly 4 recall reports issued every single day since Trump’s term began. If you open the FDA’s recall page right now, there’s a very long list of items that definitely don’t belong in Americans’ food or products: alfalfa sprouts contaminated with E. coli and salmonella, bread with metal, IV drip solution riddled with fiberglass, fruit bars containing foreign matter, lettuce linked to a massive cyclospora outbreak, and so, so many more.

You see, Trump and RFK Jr. – the same buffoons who came into office promising to “make America healthy again” – DOGE’d the Department of Health and Human Services in 2025. They gutted our federal health apparatus and fired many of the people whose entire job is to keep dangerous products off your dinner table.

Since 2025, the FDA has fired more than 3,000 of its own employees. This has decimated much of its food-safety infrastructure, including scientists, inspectors, and other personnel supporting the inspection and recall process. For all those who say they support downsizing the government without any thought of the consequences? Here’s your answer.

The work of guaranteeing food safety is a giant, complicated system. It requires laboratories capable of identifying pathogens, inspectors who know what a contaminated facility looks like, epidemiologists capable of connecting seemingly unrelated illnesses across the country, and so many more moving parts.

In other words, it requires experts. Experts that are few and far between, and who Trump, DOGE, and MAGA cast aside without so much as a second thought for your health, well-being, or safety.

Though, when you think about who Trump put in charge of HHS, it starts to make a bit more sense.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a physician, nor a scientist, nor does he have any other qualifying credentials other than an unholy bargain with Trump in 2024 to end his presidential campaign and endorse him in return for dominion over America’s healthcare regime.

To refresh your memories, this is the same RFK who has promoted thoroughly discredited claims that vaccines cause autism (as does Tylenol, apparently?) for years. He now has the power to institutionalize his crackpot conspiracies by removing vaccine recommendations and to promote his lunacy behind the seal of the department tasked with keeping America healthy.

Since assuming his role, RFK Jr. has warned Americans about the great dangers of fluoride in our water making kids gay and posted videos manhandling snakes. All the while, he ignores the significant increase in Measles cases, cyclospora outbreaks, and daily FDA recalls.

The Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t exist to impose personal preference on Americans’ food choices, or to film a cooking show, or to tell Americans to “proteinmaxx.”

It’s there to make Americans healthy by making sure the things Americans consume are safe.

At the bare minimum, that means quickly identifying contaminated drugs, regularly inspecting facilities, and tracing outbreaks. All of which require a robust, staffed, and functioning government – something we’re sorely lacking as a direct result of Trump’s DOGE obsession.

To understand just how broken our food regulation system has become, think back no further than this summer, when we all collectively swore off iceberg lettuce because of a fear of getting cyclospora and having explosive diarrhea for days or weeks. It’s been decades since we had such a universal fear of food, and that’s precisely because the FDA couldn’t tell us with any degree of certainty which sources were safe, which weren’t, and what to do next. When a crisis hit, they weren’t so much as found flat-footed as entirely on their ass. At our expense.

In a positively groundbreaking discovery, it turns out that a government filled with career civil servants – those whose only interest is the health and well-being of all Americans regardless of which party is in power – works far better than one filled with obsequious, servile acolytes whose top priority is glazing Trump at every turn.

We guess it really shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise when you consider the fact that our healthcare apparatus is being run by an 80-year-old fat guy and a crackpot conspiracy theorist who spends half his life in a tanning bed.

It also really shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the assault on America’s food-safety infrastructure was spelled out in Project 2025 before Trump even ran for office again. It called for “dramatically rethinking” (AKA, defunding) the federal government’s role in food and agriculture. The chapter of Project 2025 concerning the USDA claimed the department has expanded “far beyond” its original mission.

The same is true for the FDA. The Heritage Foundation, whose “experts” helped write much of Project 2025, have spent years arguing that the FDA’s regulatory authority was far too expansive. The plan (whose progress you can view here) included a wholesale deregulation of most products we use in our everyday lives – because for-profit corporations definitely know better.

Project 2025 gave them the blueprint.

Trump and RFK Jr. put it into practice.

For those of us who are actually interested in making America healthy again, we need to tell Trump, Kennedy, and all the other MAHA weirdos to get the hell out of our lives by getting the hell out of our government.

On Tuesday, that list became even shorter by the passing of Dolly Parton, who died at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. In a nation bitterly divided, the announcement was immediately followed by an outpouring of sadness, shock, and universal grief.

People of all generations and walks of life remembered the same woman, the same songs, the same unmistakable voice, and, perhaps more than anything else, the same extraordinary kindness.

Dolly Parton represented a vision for America that feels like it’s almost been lost forever. She lived by the ideals of generosity, of empathy, of humility, and of tolerance and acceptance towards those around her. Her life, work, and legacy is that of service to those that need it most and of using every tool in her disposal to benefit as many people as she possibly could.

We can’t help but see the contrast between the values she lived by compared to those of Donald Trump and his MAGA lackeys. Today’s Republican Party, in many ways, exists in direct opposition to many of those same values.

Take Donald Trump, for instance. He built his political identity not around empathy and compassion but grievance, vengeance, and division. His hateful rhetoric has led millions of Americans to view their fellow citizens not simply as people they disagree with, but as the enemy. He has often fomented an “us versus them” mentality in the minds of Americans, labeling the immigrant as an invader, the opponent as a traitor, the poor as burdens, the transgender community as a mortal threat, asylum seekers as criminals, and compassion in any form as weakness.

Where Dolly Parton was known for her generosity of spirit and kindness of heart, Trump has made cruelty a central feature of his political identity. He has relished releasing videos of American missiles blowing up fishing boats in the Gulf of Mexico; he’s ignored indiscriminate ICE arrests and killings of legal immigrants, American citizens, and anyone in between; he’s championed tax cuts for the rich while launching a war of choice that has sent your prices sky-rocketing. Where Dolly spent her life looking for ways to give more to people who had less, Trump has preyed on the fears and prejudices of millions of Americans, convincing them that anyone struggling is someone else’s problem.

Perhaps most importantly, where Dolly understood her success presented an opportunity to help others, Trump has spent his life treating success as proof that he – and he alone – is entitled to more.

The difference couldn’t possibly be more stark.

Dolly Parton grew up poor in the mountains of Tennessee. Donald Trump grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth in Manhattan.

Dolly Parton never forgot where she came from, and when she became one of the most successful entertainers in American history, she used that success to make sure other people had opportunities she didn’t. Donald Trump bragged about his ability to not pay workers, get away with sexual assault, and otherwise rig the system in his favor.

Dolly’s Imagination Library has distributed over 300 million free books to children around the world. Trump and MAGA have sought to defund her library and end the very programs that have brought literacy and literature to millions of underprivileged children.

Rather than turn her back on her upbringing, Dolly single-handedly helped revitalize an entire region, injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into the east Tennessee economy through her Imagination Library, Dollywood, and countless other philanthropic pursuits.

Contrast that with, say, JD Vance, who has seemingly shunned his Appalachian roots in favor of helicopter rides on Marine Two to get from one side of Washington to the other for his kid’s sports practice and other assorted private events because taking a car like a mere plebian (in a motorcade, might we add) is far too basic for his new tastes. Oh, and just as an aside, JD, the supposed “son of Appalachia” hasn’t said a word about Dolly’s passing.

For many, Dolly’s death has hit so hard because we feel as though her vision for a better, fairer, more empathetic tomorrow may have passed with her.

It didn’t.

In her life, Dolly’s most valuable contribution was the power of her example. She was a living example of what it looks like to have enormous success without losing sight of the people who have less, of what it means to disagree without hating, of how much good one person can do, and of the age-old saying that love, indeed, is more powerful than hate.

Dolly embodied these truths, but she didn’t own them. They live on in each of us and in our effort each day to put just a little more good into the world than when we woke up. It is incumbent upon us — now more than ever — to take the love Dolly embodied and spread it around the world.

Dolly Parton was a titan, and the world is a little less loving without her in it. At the same time, her passing reminds us of the great promise of America – that anyone can come from anywhere and do anything. That means that we can stop a wannabe fascist dictator and build a future we can all be proud of.

In January of this year, ICE was in crisis. Their landmark project, Operation Metro Surge, had ended in catastrophic failure. The country was in revolt following the murder of multiple American citizens alongside countless videos, images, and stories of ICE officials indiscriminately targeting and terrorizing minority communities.

In other words, the administration’s hallmark project blew up in their face in spectacular fashion.

In response, Trump threw out Kristi Noem (and Corey Lewandowski, her weird envoy who she’s rumored to be having an affair with), and brought in new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a guy who once threatened to fist-fight Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a Senate hearing. (Bernie Sanders had to break them up.) Together with Border Czar Tom Homan, they promised reform and an end to the chaos.

Instead, ICE has continued killing people in the streets, in their detention camps, and in cold blood. As if it couldn’t get worse, ICE just rolled out a plan to disperse electric shock gloves to all their agents – a weapon that sounds more like something you’d find in a torture chamber.

The gloves, known literally as the G.L.O.V.E., are designed to deliver up to 380 volts and to instantly overwhelm a target’s muscles, demobilizing them.

ICE is billing these as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” – because the best way to de-escalate an arrest is obviously to surge electricity through a person’s body.

Six months after we were told order had finally come to ICE, the agency’s answer to a failed strategy is to resort to even more extreme, violent, and painful tactics.

Specialized electric shock gloves don’t come cheap. 20 million of your tax dollars are going towards the purchase of thousands of pairs, through yet another no-bid contract handed out by Trump. Between the botched reflecting pool, astronomically expensive ballroom, and the countless other no-bid sweetheart deals given out to Trump’s billionaire buddies, have any of these actually benefitted regular Americans, like, at all?

To add insult to injury, this latest expenditure is in addition to spending nearly $500 million on a new fleet of aircraft for ICE that have been sitting on a tarmac in Louisiana doing absolutely nothing, because they sort of forgot that planes need … pilots?

You’d be hard-pressed to imagine a more perfect metaphor for Trump’s approach to immigration:

Step 1: Fearmonger with cherry-picked (or entirely inaccurate) statistics to manufacture a crisis.

Step 2: Throw obscene amounts of money at the issue (because the same people who say we can’t invest in education, or healthcare, or anything that actually benefits Americans suddenly have $80 billion lying around for ICE.)

Step 3: Hastily roll out half-baked plans with unqualified and under-trained agents.

Step 4: Backtrack, blame someone else, and pretend none of it was your idea when it all fails miserably.

The worst part is while Trump and MAGA have exploded the ICE budget to surpass that of every other federal law enforcement agency combined, they’ve eviscerated what little transparency remained.

In June, ICE quietly eliminated its requirement to investigate and report the deaths of any detainees within 30 days of their release. Apparently, Trump has decided that whatever happens to someone inside an ICE detention camp couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their death a few days after leaving it, right?

That’s where the flailing becomes impossible to avoid. If Trump and his goons truly believe that their draconian, inhumane, and terribly inefficient immigration regime is popular and effective, why are they working so hard to hide it?

Between January and May 2026, ICE reported 18 deaths in its custody, on track to surpass the previous high set the year before.

That’s 18 families with an empty chair at the table. That’s parents, spouses, sons, daughters, and neighbors who died so that ICE could save a few bucks and Trump could cut a few corners. That also ignores the countless families with empty chairs because their loved ones are in detention camps with no end in sight to their internment.

Rather than reform a system that is literally killing people, Trump’s solution is to just stop reporting when it happens. Smoke and mirrors is all he knows how to do, and we’re all in his crosshairs.

Put simply, this isn’t the machismo behavior we’ve seen Trump display when he thinks he has a winning hand. It’s the behavior of an old man desperately trying to control the narrative around a policy that’s become impossible to defend.

If you were to ask Trump, all of this is meant to “Make America Safe Again.” But how is this safe for anyone?

For those courageous enough to stand up against Trump’s draconian immigration policy, or those unfortunate enough to “fit the bill” for what Trump and his goons think an illegal immigrant looks like, it certainly isn’t safe for them.

Perhaps that’s ultimately why the administration is so obsessed with the idea that ICE is winning. Because if ICE were actually winning, there wouldn’t be a need to spend millions of your taxpayer dollars on increasingly desperate new tools, or hundreds of millions on aircraft that can’t get into the air, or pulling out every stop to try to hide the consequences of what happens inside Trump’s detention camps.

What Trump and MAGA are hoping we all collectively forget is that our government is one of, by, and for the People. We have a right to know what our government is doing in our name and with our money.

And if they won’t tell us?

It’s our responsibility to make them by showing up in the courts, in the Congress, and most importantly, at the ballot box.

If “Make America Safe Again” requires electric shock gloves on the front end and hiding the true body count on the back end, perhaps it’s time to ask who exactly we’re being made safe from – and who the real danger is.

To understand how we got here, you first have to understand the story of these three planes.

Plane One: Air Force One

First brought into service in 1990, Air Force One has served 6 presidents, flown millions of miles around the world, and been one of America’s most enduring symbols of power and prestige on the world stage.

Yet for Trump, a man accustomed to gold adorning (literally) everything, the 30-year-old plane has long failed to live up to his expectations. It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t luxurious enough. It wasn’t Trump enough.

So in 2025, Trump demanded a new one. Trump wanted something grander. He also really wanted a plane to take with him after he left office – at taxpayer expense – to put in his presidential library.

Enter Plane Two.

Plane Two: Qatari Force One

Just a few months after retaking office, Trump accepted a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jet, “donated” from the government of Qatar. This type of gift from a foreign government is totally unprecedented, mainly because it’s literally illegal thanks to the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that bars federal officials from accepting gifts or other benefits from foreign governments without Congress’s approval. Obviously, this immediately raised glaring questions about corruption and conflicts of interest.

On the exact same day as the jet “gift” was announced, Trump also announced a $96 billion Boeing deal by Qatar Airways, part of a broader U.S.-Qatari deal valued at more than $243.5 billion. On the same day. But sure. Just a gift.

Trump was thrilled.

But there was a problem.

The plane was nowhere near being ready to serve as Air Force One. It had to be gutted, swept for bugs, and then retrofitted at a cost (to the American taxpayers!) of more than $400 million.

When it was hastily rolled out as the new Air Force One and went on its first overseas trip to Turkey, it hit a snag: it didn’t have the defensive capabilities that the old Air Force One had. The plane Trump had wanted so bad wasn’t actually able to do the one thing it was supposed to do — protect the president. In the face of his own war in Iran and a credible safety threat, his fancy plane was totally useless.

Which brings us to Plane Three.

Plane Three: The Escape Plane

After the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was facing what is now being called a “credible assassination threat” against him from Iran.

So Trump’s team devised an elaborate ruse.

Trump would publicly board the old Air Force One while cameras rolled for reporters, his staff, and the world to see.

Then the reporters, who typically stand on the tarmac outside while Trump boards, were loaded onto that same plane. Once they were seated, they were told to shut their window shades because “Secret Service requested” it. What was then reported was that he flew the old Air Force One to England, where he then transferred to his new Qatari jet for the final flight back home.

That wasn’t true.

In reality, after boarding Air Force One, Trump then slipped off the plane through a separate exit into … an airport catering truck. This nondescript truck drove across the tarmac to the third plane, which he ultimately flew to England before being whisked back onto Air Force One to make his camera-ready exit from the plane, as if he’d been on it all along.

The journalists in the press pool who flew with Trump had no idea. The American people had no idea. Worst of all, perhaps, many of his own aides, and even members of his Cabinet had no idea. They boarded the plane believing the president was on board with them, when in reality, they were being used as an expendable decoy.

Analysis courtesy of the Washington Post

For a decade now, Trump has been promising that Americans are never safer, nor America stronger, than when he’s at the helm. Yet after years of making the world more dangerous by attacking our allies, pulling out of international arms control deals, launching new wars across the world, and otherwise shitting on 80 years of American global leadership, we all now know that the President of the United States had to be smuggled out of a foreign country in a catering truck while other Americans were unknowingly left behind on a decoy plane.

When it came time to choose, Trump didn’t make sure everyone around him was safe. He made sure he was.

And if you thought it couldn’t get worse, it does!

Once everyone was on Trump’s Qatari jet for the trip back to the States, Trump was asked by reporters why they’d been told to close the blinds on Air Force One during their flight.

Trump responded by saying he’s “number one on [Iran’s] list,” before adding:

“But if I go, you go. Right?”

When Trump actually thought he might go down, he not only chose not to warn those around him, but left them to be sitting ducks on a plane that quite literally could’ve been blown out of the sky.

Even after the flight, the White House lied about what happened. Trump said he’d used the old plane “for old time’s sake.” The White House denied reports about his Qatari jet lacking defensive capabilities, and went so far as to subpoena the New York Times reporters who reported on the security concerns surrounding his Qatari jet. They were ordered to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan in an effort to force them to reveal their sources in a gross violation of First Amendment freedoms.

After a federal judge pushed back on their attempts, the DOJ withdrew the subpoenas, even as prosecutors made careful note that they reserved the right to subpoena the reporters again in the future.

Think about this in its entirety.

Had the Iranian threats been acted upon, hundreds of people — including the Secretaries of State and Treasury — would’ve died because the President of the United States lied to them.

Put simply, in Trump’s America, it doesn’t matter whether you support him or not. It doesn’t matter whether you’re MAGA or not. Man or woman, adult or child, if Trump has to choose between himself and you? He’s choosing himself every day of the week.

Trump promised America First. Turns out he meant Trump First.

The cost? Just upwards of $100,000 per month.

Trump’s posts on Truth Social are presidential statements. Truth Social is the social media platform that he started when he was kicked off Twitter (after inciting a riot and trying to overturn an election). It’s where he announces the latest ending of the war in Iran, before announcing the war is back on, and then off, and then on (you get the idea). Truth Social is where Trump endorses allies, punishes enemies, introduces legislation, pressures senators to vote for legislation or else, and literally everything else that has major implications for Americans’ financial, physical, and social well-being.

Today, the big banks, trading firms, and billionaires can now buy early access to those words, guaranteeing that they will always be one step ahead of you.

Translation: Trump’s move quite literally guarantees that you can never catch up, and you can forget about getting ahead. The rich will get richer, and the rest of us will all get poorer.

The presidency is supposed to be a public institution. The president’s words may be consequential, but they aren’t supposed to be a premium service available to whomever can afford the subscription. The presidency belongs to every American, and yet Trump is now auctioning it off to the highest bidders.

It’s hardly the only example.

We all already know the big ones: Trump’s $1.6 billion ballroom, his $30 million reflecting pool (that’s currently sitting empty), his $400 million Qatari jet (that’s apparently only good for sitting on the tarmac, given its lack of defensive capabilities), or the at-least-$100 million ‘Arc de Trump.’

Now, Trump has reduced the presidency to nothing more than a glorified Cameo service.

On Tuesday, Trump “plugged” Scotts Miracle-Gro from the Oval Office, praising the company’s “great grass” and highlighting the work it had done for the White House.

Their stock price soared immediately after.

This all seems well and good until you realize that, in effect, Trump had been pimped out.

You see, Scotts Miracle-Gro gave more than $500,000 to Trump’s Super PAC in 2024. To return the favor, Trump signed an executive order in February 2026 invoking the Defense Production Act to bolster domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides (which are known to cause cancer, by the way), describing the chemicals as important to America’s agricultural strength and national security.

After Trump destroyed the South Lawn for his UFC boxing ring, Scotts contributed $1 million to help restore the grass. Definitely no strings attached, because corporations only ever do things out of the goodness of their hearts, right?

Was Trump’s executive order a reward for Scotts’ donations? We don’t know. All we know for certain is that Trump has always been in it for himself, loves to make a quick buck, and doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as he wins. You can draw your own conclusions from there.

The obliteration of the line between Trump’s personal enrichment and public office on Truth Social is also hardly a new development.

To give just a few examples of Trump profiting off of his office:

• Trump purchased $700,000 worth of Nvidia stock days before announcing the company would invest $500 billion in A.I.

• Trump purchased $4,000,000 worth of Tesla stock just before announcing federal subsidies for Tesla would be continued.

• Trump purchased a combined total of as much as $1,160,000 worth of Palantir stock just before publicly praising their weapons technology.

• Trump purchased at least $600,000 worth of stock in Boeing, RTX, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin just before posting a video praising the F-22 Raptor (made newly relevant because of Trump’s war of choice in Iran).

Trump has turned the presidency of the United States into a for-profit personal venture where he will leverage the Oval Office to profit off of insider information, reward allies, and say whatever for whomever is willing to give him money.

In 2026, Trump has effectively put the presidency behind its own paywall. The office meant to serve you is occupied by someone solely concerned with serving himself.

What Trump has done is more than a “conflict of interest.” It is the corruption of the very concept of public office. The presidency is supposed to be the ultimate public trust. Under Trump, it’s become the ultimate private asset.

He has forsaken his oath to the Constitution, to the country, and most importantly, to you. By every measure, Trump’s profiteering off of the presidency is the most corrupt thing any president has done.

When Trump said his presidency was going to be historic, little did America know he meant historically corrupt.

But while Trump has bet on his billionaire buddies, we’re betting on you. Go vote to Make America, well, America Again.

Stop complaining.

At a recent event (to promote data center investment, of course), Trump brushed off Americans’ concerns over the sprawling facilities, telling supporters that communities would be “foolish” not to welcome them.

“You can’t fight it. You have to go with it,” Trump declared.

That’s an easy thing to say for someone who will never have to live with the environmental and physical consequences.

Data centers have risen to the forefront of the conversation in the last few years as they have begun cropping up in communities all across America. If you’ve been lucky enough to avoid them entirely, here’s the recap: They’re warehouse-sized complexes packed with servers that consume staggering amounts of electricity, guzzle millions of gallons of water, generate constant industrial noise, and require enough power to rival entire cities.

Needless to say, folks aren’t huge fans!

Across the country, residents have packed zoning meetings, flooded county board hearings, and organized grassroots campaigns to stop new projects from being built near their homes.

They’re not just opposed to them because they’re eye sores. After a data center comes online, electricity bills for the community soar. Home values, the single-largest component of net worth for tens of millions of Americans, collapse. Farmland turns bad. Rivers and streams become contaminated and toxic. Their noise creates a constant, unending hum disrupting local wildlife and making everyday life unbearable. Even worse, these facilities create virtually zero permanent jobs once construction is completed, leaving communities to saddle 100% of the burden without any lasting benefit.

Worst of all?

Communities aren’t being given a voice. Tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google are requiring local officials, state regulators, and city council members to sign non-disclosure agreements before they can learn about the massive power demands, resource drain, and environmental impacts. Permits are being rushed through, zoning is being revised silently, and Republicans at every level of government are doing whatever they can to keep the public out of the process.

Why, you might ask?

Follow the money. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and all the rest of the tech oligarchs spending billions to build AI data centers are the same ones who “donated” millions of dollars to Trump after his election and have spent disgusting amounts of money lobbying Washington to accelerate AI infrastructure. Funny how the party that’s spent the last 20 years warning about the dangers of Big Tech suddenly can’t do enough to help it expand.

In perhaps the most egregious example, a planned solar energy and storage facility approved in 2023 on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management was changed at the last minute to not be an energy creator (as solar energy is) but to build a data center that will consume more energy than the entire city it sits next to.

If you ask Trump though, all of that is just foolish. Communities should embrace something that brings no real benefit yet significant local costs to their health and wealth all because it will make Trump’s disgustingly rich tech friends even richer. At your expense.

Some Democrats at the local, state, and federal level have insisted on something truly groundbreaking: oversight and regulation (sarcasm intended).

In two separate hearings on the impacts of data centers on drinking water and local environments, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held up two jars of cloudy, dirty, undrinkable water from a local community in Morgan County, Georgia after Meta opened a new data center in the area. In doing so, she underscored the fact that it’s overwhelmingly impoverished, underprivileged, or minority communities facing the brunt of the unlivable conditions data centers create in their surrounding environments.

In another hearing, Ocasio-Cortez asked whether Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg would ever live next to one of their own data centers. Representative Ocasio-Cortez then asked the committee members themselves, seated all around her, to raise their hand if anyone – Republican or Democrat – wanted to live next to a data center. Not a single member did.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a first-in-the-nation moratorium on data center construction to protect local economies and energy resources, and to allow state policymakers and experts enough time to properly assess just how profound an impact new data center construction will be.

In Virginia, the data center capital of the world, Democratic lawmakers approved new taxes on data centers after years of Republican-backed tax breaks helped fuel its explosive growth. The message was simple: if you’re going to build facilities that will place enormous demands on public infrastructure, ignoring the very real public health impacts, you’re going to help pay for the consequences.

Environmentalist launched a website tracking where data centers have been, are being, or will be built across the United States, underscoring that there are still, by a 2:1 margin, far more data centers currently under construction or that are trying to be brought online than currently exist. In short, the detrimental effects we’ve already seen are just the beginning.

So, to make sure we’ve got it right, Republicans …

• Are aware of how damaging data centers are to local economies, environments, and livelihoods

• Know how little long-term benefit data centers bring

• Refuse to live near them

… and yet want to do whatever it takes to build more, to build faster, and to bulldoze through any regulations that stand in their way.

Got it.

Let’s also put this in perspective: in 2026, people living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world are still having to fight for clean drinking water. If that doesn’t tell you that there’s a catastrophic imbalance of power and wealth within the United States, then we don’t know what will.

The party that holds every lever of power has become the party that asks for forgiveness rather than permission. The only problem is you’re the one facing the consequences of their willful negligence. By contrast, Democrats aren’t seeking to stop AI in its tracks, but to not lose sight of who politicians serve: the people. Common-sense, reasoned regulations that protect communities, individuals, and the environment shouldn’t be controversial, and certainly aren’t foolish, as Trump would have you believe.

In Trump’s America, your needs, your health, and your prosperity aren’t just secondary; they’re expendable. You’re expendable. In Trump’s America, each of us are but means to his destructive ends, and until we elect leaders courageous enough to stand up to him, we’ll continue to be powerless to stop him.

In other words: it’s miserable.

The FDA announced that, during its investigation, it had detected Cyclospora in a produce sample connected to Taylor Farms, one of the country’s largest fresh produce suppliers. Within days, headlines spread across social media identifying Taylor Farms as the likely culprit.

Then, suddenly, the FDA walked back its findings, saying additional testing showed the result was likely a false positive, and that there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude Taylor Farms was responsible after all.

Seems weird. Probably just an error.

Or is it?

Almost immediately, social media was flooded with accusations that the Trump administration had pressured the FDA to protect a politically connected company. Fear spread that the politicization and corruption of the federal government was hiding public health information from Americans and making them sick.

As a direct result of its past actions, millions of Americans no longer trust this administration to separate the public interest from its own political and financial interests.

That’s not an accident. It’s a clear pattern.

Let’s dive in:

🥬 Taylor Farms, Inc. donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s Super PAC in 2025. Then, less than a week after returning to office, the Trump administration delayed enforcement of the FDA’s new Food Traceability Rule – a regulation that would’ve required companies to keep far more detailed records of where their food comes from and where it goes to. Seems like those records might be helpful right about now! The produce industry was vehemently opposed and had spent years lobbying against the rule. Then, Trump came along.

🏥 In the midst of Trump’s DOGE chaos, a USAID-funded program that monitored and helped contain the flesh-eating New World screwworm in Central America was eliminated. At the time, Trump called it another example of wasteful foreign aid serving no benefit to the American people. Months later, screwworm has resurfaced in the United States for the first time since 1966, forcing the administration into launching an emergency response projected to cost taxpayers $1 billion to address a clearly avoidable crisis.

💰In just one example (among many) of crypto-related corruption, the SEC quietly paused its civil fraud case against crypto billionaire Justin Sun. Of course, this just happened to coincide with Sun dramatically increasing his financial ties to Trump’s own cryptocurrency ventures which have seen his personal wealth balloon by $1.2 billion in just one year.

At the same time, the administration began pulling back enforcement actions against several major cryptocurrency firms and publicly opposed any legislation that would seek to impose regulations on the crypto industry. In doing so, Trump sent a clear message to the wealthiest Americans: They had a friend in Trump.

📱The latest move selling out regular Americans in favor of the wealthy and well-connected came when Truth Social, Trump’s preferred mode of ranting and raving, announced that it would begin offering Wall Street traders early access to market moving presidential announcements (for a hefty price, of course).

In doing so, Trump has now effectively monetized privileged information that could influence stock prices before regular Americans have a chance to react. He’s literally created a structural barrier to your success.

Viewed individually, each of these moves can be plausibly explained. That is, if you’re willing to bend over backwards to accept it. Viewed together, though, they tell a very different story.

They tell the story of an administration that has obliterated the line between governing for the public good and rewarding friends, donors, and political allies.

What we do know, though, is that Trump has made one thing crystal clear: if you’re willing to pay enough, MAGA is perfectly comfortable putting thousands of Americans at risk.

In other words: In Trump’s America, unless you have $1 million to fork over, you’re expendable.

It didn’t go well.

Over the course of 5 hours, Blanche lied, obfuscated, and sputtered in his attempt to show unquestioning loyalty to Trump – a requirement of every MAGA nominee.

We watched every second so you didn’t have to. Here are the biggest take-aways.

1. “I’m His Lawyer.”

If there was one moment that summed up the hearing, it was this one.

While fielding what were supposed to be softball questions, Republican Senator John Kennedy asked: “Are you and Trump friends?” To which Blanche revealed the worst-kept secret in Washington: “I’m his lawyer.”

He tried to backtrack immediately: “Or.. was his lawyer.” But his knee-jerk reaction told the truth.

It was a remarkable slip for someone insisting throughout the hearing that he could independently oversee the Justice Department (though, if you were to look at what he’s done already at the helm of the Justice Department, you’d know this isn’t true.)

Blanche has resigned from his private practice where he personally defended Trump in his Stormy Daniels hush-money payments trial (and subsequent conviction on 34 felony counts), the classified documents case, and January 6th election interference case. The only problem is Blanche’s entire pitch to senators rests on the pipe dream that he would suddenly become an at-least-somewhat impartial steward of the law.

When pressed, Blanche didn’t sound like an Attorney General-in-waiting, but more like a well-trained defense attorney still making arguments on his client’s behalf.

The Attorney General does not exist to be the president’s personal attorney. The Attorney General should not profess their love for the Commander-in-Chief. The AG is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, responsible for upholding the law and prosecuting all those who violate it, including the president himself.

Whether you want to call it a Freudian slip or just force of habit, one thing is perfectly clear: under Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice will remain the Department of Trump.

2. Blanche’s Own Words Used Against Him

The Todd Blanche who sat before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday wanted you to believe that he was mild-mannered, less combative, and more independent than his long-forgotten predecessor Pam Bondi.

Just one hitch: his own words.

Senator Dick Durbin made sure to remind us of Blanche’s now-infamous moment after Trump elevated Blanche to Acting Attorney General, where Blanche loudly declared: “I love you, sir.”

Durbin made clear that the comment revealed the extraordinary personal loyalty Blanche has shown Trump, raising obvious questions about whether, or if, he’ll ever tell the president “no.”

Blanche tried to brush it off, and almost half-heartedly insisted he could separate personal feelings from professional responsibilities.

Senators didn’t buy it.

3. The Epstein Blunder

In perhaps the most emotional exchange of the day, Senator Cory Booker blasted Blanche over the Department of Justice’s mishandling of the Epstein files, and more importantly, of the survivors themselves.

During the hearing, Blanche refused to commit to personally meet with any survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s atrocities, despite repeated requests from senators, advocates, and survivors alike.

It was only afterwards, when Blanche realized he wouldn’t have enough votes to be confirmed otherwise, that – finally – he relented and met with a group of Epstein survivors. But this does nothing to take away from the fact that he was willfully and intentionally absent when it counted.

When the DOJ was considering how to deal with the Epstein files and whether to suppress them or not (spoiler: they tried, and failed, to do just that) Blanche wasn’t just radio silent. He flew to Florida and interviewed Epstein’s chief abetter Ghislaine Maxwell to see what she’d say about Trump, after which she was moved to a posh minimum-security prison, a move unheard of for people convicted of crimes involving sexual assault and trafficking.

Then, when the DOJ finally capitulated following the GOP-controlled Congress’s direct rebuke of Trump by demanding the release of the Epstein files, Blanche refused – again – to meet with survivors, and instead published personal, identifying details of Epstein’s victims, forcing them to live through the trauma all over again.

Todd Blanche meeting with survivors now does nothing to erase what he did then.

Blanche spent the entirety of his hearing trying to sell senators on an impossible proposition: that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer can somehow become an independent Attorney General simply by taking a different oath.

In the words of Senator Booker:

“We don’t need your promises. We have your record.”

So, in summary:

⚖️Todd Blanche is Trump’s lawyer. He said it himself.

🏛️Todd Blanche is an “independent law enforcement official” … except when it comes to anything attached to the name “Trump.”

🤝Todd Blanche claims “no one is above the law” … yet created a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay January 6th rioters who broke into the Capitol on Trump’s command.

📂Todd Blanche claims survivors deserve justice … but he spent 9 hours with Ghislaine Maxwell, and had not even met with Epstein survivors until he was forced to for the sake of getting confirmed.

👥 Todd Blanche says he’ll serve the American people … but if yesterday is any judge, we know he has only one client: Donald J. Trump.

While these are two recent and high-profile examples, Congress has been riddled with politicians past their prime hiding their poor health from voters, even while some actively seek re-election.

The question isn’t why older Americans continue serving in public office. After all, experience is an asset. The question is why so many lawmakers refuse to relinquish power until death, illness, or the ballot box forces them to.

The 119th Congress is among the oldest in American history. It’s filled with lawmakers who have occupied the same seats for decades, protected by incumbency, fundraising advantages, and, in many cases, gerrymandered districts so uncompetitive that the only meaningful contest is the primary.

The generational imbalance is staggering. Just one member of Congress belongs to Gen Z, or roughly 0.1% of the entire legislative branch. Even when Millennials are included, Americans born after 1980 make up only about 13.5% of Congress, despite comprising over 42% of the population together.

Many will decry this as proof of Congress’s dysfunction, and how its aging membership is a clarion call for term limits, age limits, or some other means to force elected officials to take a bow and exit stage left when their time has come and gone.

Make no mistake: We should consider all of the above. But what concerns us isn’t simply that Congress is so old. It’s that instead of making room for new generations to gradually assume leadership, too many lawmakers cling to power until circumstance, rather than choice, determines it’s time to leave.

A stagnant Congress filled with the same people from one term to the next will inevitably lose touch with the Americans who must live with the consequences of their decisions.

However, the most obvious consequence is also the most uncomfortable to talk about: too many members of Congress stay in office until they physically can’t anymore.

While McConnell’s extended, unexplained, and alarming absence from the Senate is the latest example of members hiding health issues by quite literally hiding from their constituents, he’s hardly alone in this.

We’ve watched lawmakers disappear from public view for weeks at a time. Others have shown difficulty in doing their jobs in committee hearings, public remarks, and district events, all the while insisting they’re fit for another term. Senator Graham is the 16th lawmaker to die in office since 2020. Public service shouldn’t end only when incapacity, illness, or death makes the decision for you.

That’s bad for Congress. That’s bad for voters. Most importantly, it’s bad for the next generation of leaders waiting for the chance to serve.

But the damage extends beyond who occupies an office.

Experience is valuable. Institutional knowledge matters. Especially at a time when Donald Trump and his MAGA movement continue attacking the institutions that underpin American democracy. But experience isn’t a substitute for understanding the world as it exists today. The experiences that shape a lawmaker’s instincts determine the questions they ask, the problems they recognize, and the priorities they bring to Washington.

Congress exists to represent the American people. That means understanding how ordinary Americans actually live.

Many members of Congress were independently wealthy before they ever took office. Some were CEOs. Others were lawyers or venture capitalists. Many have now spent decades inside the political bubble.

For many of them, it’s been years (or decades) since they searched for a job, worried about paying student loans, tried to buy a home, or struggled with the rising cost of child care and everyday necessities.

You can’t legislate what you don’t understand, and you can’t represent what you don’t reflect.

Artificial intelligence, for example, is poised to become one of the defining technologies of this century, reshaping everything from education and health care to national security and the economy. If you looked at Congress’s record, though, you’d barely know it. There has been no comprehensive AI legislation, relatively few hearings, and far too many moments where lawmakers have demonstrated they don’t understand the technology they’re supposed to regulate.

Representation isn’t only about race, gender, geography, or party affiliation. It’s also, and perhaps most importantly, about perspective. Our current Congress overwhelmingly reflects yesterday’s generations, not today’s, and certainly not tomorrow’s.

This isn’t an argument that older Americans shouldn’t serve in Congress. Far from it. A healthy legislature benefits from experience just as it benefits from fresh perspectives.But leadership and service are meant to be passed on, not held indefinitely — and good leaders know when it’s time to pass the torch.

For too many members of Congress, stepping aside has become the exception instead of the expectation. At a moment when the country is confronting enormous challenges from artificial intelligence and climate change to housing costs and the future of democracy itself, we can’t afford an institution that waits for the next generation only after the last one is forced to leave.

On Monday, millions of Americans watched Belgium dismantle the United States, thrashing us in a 4-1 rout and knocking us out of the World Cup. For Trump, it means that he can add Team USA as yet another entry to what is becoming an astonishing losing streak.

Since taking office, every single game Trump has involved himself in has only brought defeat after defeat.

Let’s run it back, shall we?

🌀 Trump attends the College Football Playoff National Championship. The Miami Hurricanes lose 27-21.

🏈 Trump shows up to the Super Bowl. The Kansas City Chiefs, his preferred team, lose 40-22.

🏀 Trump paralyzes New York City and attends the Knicks game. The Knicks lose, blowing their winning streak. At the next game, where Trump is not in attendance, the Knicks win the championship.

⚽ Trump personally wades into Team USA’s World Cup controversy. Belgium wins 4-1, knocking us out of the World Cup.

Honestly, given his track record, we’re surprised he hasn’t started betting against his teams on Kalshi ahead of time. In light of the countless other instances of insider trading, someone should probably look into that.

Ahead of Team USA’s match against Belgium, Trump became part of the tournament’s story after publicly weighing in on the controversy surrounding Folarin Balogun’s red card, taking a victory lap Monday morning when the decision was ultimately reversed.

Unfortunately for Americans (and many things with Trump are so often unfortunate), overturning the red card didn’t overturn the scoreboard.

At the same time, Trump’s insistence that the red card be rescinded exemplifies the perfect irony and contradiction of MAGA. Just a week after the Supreme Court only narrowly preserved birthright citizenship in direct opposition to Trump’s attempts to upend it, the Don was out to bat for a player who would not be considered an American citizen under his proposed plan. Flo contributed three goals and one assist in four appearances during the 2026 World Cup — birthright citizenship is starting to sound pretty good, right?

To add insult to injury, Team USA was let down by a poor performance from Christian Pulisic. He failed to find the back of the net and left the game early after his self-inflicted ankle injury. The Right-wing right winger, who has been known to do the Trump dance as his goal celebration, watched the final stretch from the sidelines as Belgium piled on goals.

Which brings us back to the Trump Curse.

Trump got involved. Balogun’s red card was overturned. America had its star. The right had its narrative.

But Belgium had the final score.

Sure, you can overturn a red card. But just like the 2020 election, you can’t overturn a fair-and-square loss.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesson here. Perhaps presidents should spend less time lobbying FIFA and more time addressing the affordability crisis facing every American every day. Maybe MAGA should stop trying to exploit sports by hosting UFC fights on the South Lawn of the White House, celebrating Trump’s first-of-its-kind “FIFA Peace Prize,” or actively courting (and making shady deals with) the Saudi-backed LIV, and start fixing the hole that Trump’s dug for us.

We’re not saying Donald Trump possesses supernatural powers capable of dooming every team he supports. At least, not entirely.

We’re just saying that the next time your favorite team is chasing a championship, you may want to check whether a certain large-framed 80-year-old is on the guest list.

While this is good news, you won’t hear us thanking them.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re relieved that America’s very basic rule of automatically becoming a citizen of the country you’re born in hasn’t been stripped away. But the fact that it was ever in doubt, and that the Court was unable to muster a unanimous decision upholding the literal text of the Constitution should give anyone who values our Republic and our (supposedly) inalienable rights no comfort.

The Court ruled 5-4 to strike down Trump’s claim that birthright citizenship is not guaranteed in the constitution. Put that into perspective. 4 Justices believed that the text of the 14th Amendment, which reads that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” doesn’t mean what it obviously says. Only 5 Justices – the slimmest majority – unequivocally disagreed.

In effect, birthright citizenship was but one shift in logic and one vote away from being struck down. One. On a case that should’ve been 9-0.

To say our rights are hanging by a thread is not so much an understatement as an exercise in optimism.

This decision also does nothing to take away from the very real ways in which the Court has continued its decades-long assault on voting rights, reproductive freedom, public safety, regulatory independence, and the near-unlimited power of billionaires to buy our elections.

To put this into context, here is a brief (but wholly insufficient) summary of the Court’s most recent surrender where they ruled to:

• Allow Trump to fire heads of independent agencies charged with regulating federal elections, bust monopolies, and most importantly, prevent Trump’s power grabs.

• Upend immigration law, paving the way for MAGA to stop asylum seekers fleeing persecution, imprisonment, and death from entering the United States.

• Green-light Trump’s moves to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for refugees from Haiti and Syria (and Venezuela, and Afghanistan, and soon possibly Ukraine, Nicaragua, and so many more).

• Bar trans athletes from competing in sports.

• Obliterate limits on coordination between political parties and campaigns, giving billionaires free reign to not just influence but dominate our elections.

These decisions don’t exist in isolation, but also follow the Court’s rulings that:

• Gutted the Voting Rights Act, where Republicans (at Trump’s demand) have redrawn their maps to decimate Black and Brown representation in Congress.

• Castrated lower courts’ abilities to stop Trump’s anti-democratic and anti-American agenda.

• Overturned Roe v. Wade, the first removal of a Constitutional right in our living memory.

• Gave Trump immunity for the many crimes he’s committed, and will commit, as president.

Make no mistake, the Supreme Court has backed Trump at every step, and they are hellbent on undermining your rights and freedoms whenever Trump and his MAGA lackeys demand it. Today’s ruling doesn’t change that.

The Supreme Court majority is rotten to its core with Justices who twist the law into pretzels to give Trump whatever he wants. The Court is only as strong as its members, and this lot are the weakest we’ve ever seen.

Clarence Thomas is 78.

Samuel Alito is 76.

John Roberts is 71.

If neither Justices Alito or Thomas retire this year, the next Congress, and certainly the next President, may very well consider 3 Supreme Court nominations in the next 5 years.

Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a generational change on the Supreme Court and turn back the MAGA tide in 2026 and 2028.

The point?

Vote like your rights and freedom depend on it, because they quite literally do.

The Reflecting Pool is a 16-million-dollar algae-infested, lining-torn screw up. It’s also the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s second term.

In April of this year, Trump announced that the Reflecting Pool would be getting a “much needed” renovation, the latest in his litany of renovations-turned-shitshows across Washington since he took office.

At the time, we were told it would take “maybe a week.” It would cost just $1 million (added on to the 200 million, then 400 million, then 600 million, then 1.6-billion-dollar ballroom; 90-million-dollar refurbishing of the Qatari-donated Air Force One; 15-million-dollar “Arc de Trump” and so much more).

Trump lied.

The Reflecting Pool renovations dragged on. And on. And on. Every few days, Trump promised the renovations were nearly finished and the end was in sight. Remind you of any other conflict that doesn’t seem to end?

In June, seven weeks behind schedule and more than $15 million over budget, the Reflecting Pool was finally reopened to the public looking almost the same as before.

For about a day.

Within a week of its reopening, a rampant algae bloom turned the “American blue” pool a muddy green. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump’s “state-of-the-art” lining (installed in a no-bid contract by one of his buddiest who also owns a company called — we wish we were joking — Greenwater Services) cracked, broke, and was seen floating on the surface. We certainly aren’t experts, but isn’t pool lining supposed to be on … the bottom?

Anyways, Trump, the “master builder,” first resorted to posting AI images of the Reflecting Pool in a very odd and silly attempt to convince us to not believe our lying eyes. Like, seriously, how dumb does he think America is?

After this (obviously) failed, Trump then claimed that there was a sinister plot to cut a 350 foot gash in the pool’s lining (longer than a whole football field, by the way). A plot that wasn’t caught on camera despite DC now being one of the most heavily policed cities in the world with the still-ongoing deployment of the National Guard. Antifa is getting so good they can apparently operate invisibly these days!!

We’ve now learned that the American people will be footing the bill for draining, removing, and redoing the renovations to fix what has become the most famous swamp in the world. What’s that saying about fool me once, shame on you?

While all of this is fascinating in the sense that it’s so incredibly bone-headed, it’s also the perfect metaphor for how Trump has turned the government into the very swamp he was elected to drain.

Think about it.

The Reflecting Pool renovation was pitched as a simple fix. It was supposed to be fast, cheap, beautiful, and the product of Trump’s unmatched genius as a builder. Instead, it is a bloated, over-budget disaster handed out through no-bid contracts to politically connected allies who delivered a worse product than they were paid (by your tax dollars!) to replace.

Sound familiar?

Ten years ago, Trump came to DC promising to dismantle the corruption, cronyism, and insider dealing that has supposedly infected the federal government. Instead, he’s brought back the spoils system that would make even the most corrupt nineteenth-century party bosses blush.

The experts are gone. Agency heads haven’t been chosen based on their expertise or literally any relevant experience, but based on their personal devotion (and often donations) to the Dear Leader and his causes. Government contracts have overwhelmingly flowed to Trump lackeys and political allies. Trump and his family have increased their wealth by billions of dollars through backdoor crypto grifts at his supporters’ expense. The line between public service and private enrichment hasn’t been blurred so much as entirely obliterated.

This is an administration where billionaires openly shape policy from group chats. Where the same men making military decisions then go and bet on those operations before they happen and make more money in an hour than many of us will make in a year (or two, or ten). Where cabinet secretaries behave more like influencers, and where the day-to-day operations of the government are more unhinged than an episode of Veep.

In Trump’s America, everything is a spectacle.

The only problem is that eventually reality shows up.

The reality is that, through all of this, your grocery prices have stayed high and gotten higher. Your gas prices have stayed high and gotten higher. Your ability to buy a home, save for retirement, support your family, or afford basic goods has stayed non-existent.

The reality is that the government promised savings and instead produced exploding costs, ballooning contracts, and a ballroom whose price tag has climbed from the hundreds of millions into a billion or more.

So no, the Reflecting Pool wasn’t ruined by some invisible army of saboteurs operating under the cover of darkness. It was ruined by the same thing poisoning so many other things across America: arrogance, incompetence, corruption, and the belief that you can get away with bad governance and the people won’t notice the stench.

When Donald Trump holds his MAGA rally on the National Mall on July 4th, and they do a fly-over of his “new and improved” capital, just know that his backdrop will be the very swamp he created.

The year is 2006, and the American public is not happy.

A Republican president is drowning in low approval ratings. An unpopular war in the Middle East dominates the headlines. Corruption scandals have become destabilizingly normal. Prices are rising without an end in sight. Voters overwhelmingly feel like the country is on the wrong track.

Amidst all of this, many have begun to contemplate an idea that seemed impossible just two years before: a blue wave washing across the country and taking with it Republican incumbents in battleground districts and ruby-red states alike.

After all, George W. Bush had just handily won re-election in 2004, winning the popular vote while making seismic gains among historically Democratic voting groups. Republicans controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Politically, they seemed untouchable.

Until November.

In the 2006 midterms, Democrats gained 31 House seats and 6 Senate seats, flipping control of both chambers of Congress and reshaping the political landscape overnight.

But the story doesn’t end there. The 2006 wave election turned out to be a prelude to another Democratic wave in 2008, ushering in a new era in American politics.

It’s impossible to understand how Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 without understanding the role that young people played in powering those victories.

Young people registered, engaged, and turned out at historic levels. They knocked doors, registered voters, organized on campuses, and volunteered in their communities at some of the highest rates ever seen in the United States.

Without them, Democrats up and down the ballot would’ve lost, and the story of America since would look quite different.

Fast forward to 2026, and once again, the American public isn’t happy.

A Republican president is struggling with catastrophically low approval ratings. Yet another conflict in the Middle East is dominating the headlines (though allegedly it’s now over for what feels like the 60th time.) Corruption scandals are a dime a dozen. Prices are high and just keep climbing, and voters, by a 3-to-1 margin, believe the country is on the wrong track.

Once again, people have begun to openly talk about the possibility of a Democratic wave in November.

Republicans, running scared, are once again seeking to dismiss the idea while also redrawing the maps and rigging the rules because of how scared they are of the voters.

Sound familiar?

The similarities we see between 2006 and 2026 are impossible to ignore. The presidents may have changed and social media may have replaced cable news, but the same failed policies of the same failed party haven’t, and the underlying political conditions are eerily similar.

Once again, young people are positioned to decide what happens next.

You see, Gen Z came of age during COVID, the Black Lives Matter movement, January 6th, and Donald Trump’s return to office. All of this to say — resistance is no foreign concept to us. Just like Gen X and Millennials before us, we’re infuriated about the direction this White House has taken the country. We see a Republican Party whose only goal is to please Donald Trump, all while selling out our future to AI companies, the uber-wealthy, and huge corporations. We see a political class increasingly disconnected from our economic realities, cultural values, and vision for the future.

In a tale as old as time, young people once again find ourselves cleaning up a mess we didn’t create.

Nevertheless, there’s a lesson from 2006 and 2008 that is just as important as the election results themselves.

Those victories proved that voting matters, and yet they also proved that voting alone isn’t enough.

For too long, we’ve treated elections as the endpoint rather than the beginning. We mobilize, organize, donate, knock doors, and vote. Then, we go home, pat ourselves on the back, and assume the work is done. Meanwhile, the politicians we just elected go to Washington and make their compromises and unholy alliances, all the while drifting further away from the urgency that fueled their victories in the first place.

Genuine political power isn’t merely the ability to elect leaders, but to influence what they do after they’re elected.

Campaigns, then, aren’t the goal; they’re the vehicle. We aren’t just trying to win an election, but to win the power to enact policy. To enact change.

Organizing during elections isn’t enough. There is a need for a 24/7, constant organizing machine. We must reward courageous leaders and shun complacent ones, no matter their party. We must demand action, not rhetoric. We must demand that politicians be responsive to our needs over any other influence.

In 2026, history may very well be rhyming again, with young people writing the story.

The real test won’t be whether we can elect leaders, but whether we can make them deliver.

In 2006, young people helped change history. In 2026, we’re going to do it again.

The challenge we face this time is making sure that history doesn’t end up right back where it started.

We’re ready. Are you?

The milestones we’ve celebrated at Headquarters so far have been pretty typical. The first article. First viral post. First follower.

But we’ve added a new (and bizarre) milestone to the list. The White House officially added us to the “Media Offender” list on the White House website.

And honestly? We’re flattered.

Flattered because we know that means that the work we’re doing gets under the leader of the free world’s (very orange) skin. This tells us that our mission to hold MAGA accountable for their chaos, deceit, and corruption is working.

This would be funnier if it weren’t so worryingly revealing about Trump’s actual priorities.

In 2024, Trump ran on issues like the economy. On ending forever wars. On restoring a “dead” country.

But to no one’s surprise, he’s been the same useless, dangerous, incompetent fool he’s always been.

His only legislative “accomplishment” has been that not-so-beautiful bill. 30 million Americans will be kicked off their healthcare and tens of millions of families will lose access to SNAP and WIC programs that reduce child poverty and starvation — all while his billionaire buddies get massive tax breaks.

Your gas prices are up. Your grocery prices are up. Housing is less affordable, college is unaffordable, healthcare is only for the privileged few, and for young people, retirement is as much of a pipe dream as the American Dream itself has become.

If none of this were true, and if this administration was actually as strong as Trump likes to say it is, they wouldn’t need an enemies list. If their “accomplishments” spoke for themselves, there wouldn’t be a need to attack the creators, outlets, and journalists reporting on them.

Only weak governments led by weak, ailing men fear scrutiny.

Headquarters’ mission is to expose this truth. In the wake of Trump’s second election, he forged an unholy alliance with corporations and the uber-wealthy at the expense of everyday Americans.

Since then, media empires like CBS, The Washington Post, and other outlets have seen their editorial staff gutted, management reshuffled, and legacy journalists fired or muzzled. Instead of being the places where truth is brought into the light, these outlets have increasingly become the places where the truth goes to die.

At Trump’s urging, Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show was abruptly canceled despite rave reviews. Jimmy Kimmel Live was temporarily yanked off the air, and his show has faced similar pressure to be terminated. 60 Minutes has hemorrhaged its best reporters and its leadership has taken a sharp rightward lurch, pushing the program to parrot many of Trump’s talking points.

Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, has regularly threatened to launch investigation and revoke broadcasting licenses from media outlets reporting negatively on the administration, and Trump has leveraged his authority to approve mergers to exact political benefit. Media access has shifted from actual journalists to MAGA-aligned influencers masquerading as “reporters” (as if being able to hold a phone and hit record is the only requirement.)

All of this is to say: Trump targeting us isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a broader strategy to silence opposition and end American democracy as we know it. Influencers and online creators are just the newest front in Trump’s war on free speech.

Headquarters refuses to give in to the capitulation that has gripped legacy media. For the last five months, we’ve brought you the news the White House wants to keep quiet. We’ve exposed Trump’s corruption, abuses of power, backroom deals, and the very real ways this administration threatens our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Trump publicly placed a target on our back. This latest broadside against the First Amendment is meant to be a warning.

We wear it as a badge of honor.

You see, those in power are always afraid of losing it. In pursuit of keeping their power, they will always reveal what scares them most: the people.

We’re proud to bring to light the ugly truths Trump would rather keep secret to tens of millions of people every week. We’re proud to fight for the America that could and should be. We’re proud of the part we’ve played, and will continue to play, in standing up to the brazen corruption, authoritarianism, and bullshit spewing out of this White House every day.

So, we’re grateful to President Trump for acknowledging our pro-democracy, pro-freedom, and pro-America organization. We pledge to you that we’ll never bow, never bend, and never cease fighting for all of our futures.

See you out there. The fight is only just beginning.

With the start of June, we are once again celebrating Pride Month, a time when we embrace the idea that love is love. When we celebrate the best of who we are and the progress we’ve made as a nation in the fight for a fairer, freer future for all Americans to share.

Pride is also a time when we acknowledge the struggle we’re still in to preserve and expand the freedoms we’ve already won. As part of our ongoing fight, we must acknowledge the growing attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and the threat this poses not only to their freedoms, but to all of our freedoms to love who we love openly and with pride.

In stark contrast to the LGBTQ+ movement of love and understanding, Trump has sought to erase the suffering of the past and the hard-won progress of the gay rights movement.

On his first day in office, Trump rescinded every Biden-era executive order protecting LGBTQ+ individuals and couples. He signed an Executive Order to kick every transgender service member out of the military for no reason other than their gender identity. He repealed rules preventing workplace discrimination on account of anyone’s sexual identity (straight people included!)

During Elon Musk’s ill-gotten (and rather stupid) DOGE cuts, Republicans canceled dozens of research grants related to LGBTQ+ health, including defunding HIV and AIDs prevention and treatment grants to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

In perhaps his most blatant move yet, Trump ordered the National Park Service to take down the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument. It was only amidst withering public backlash (because — surprise, surprise — Americans actually support gay rights!) that Trump backed down, and the Pride flag once again flies above Stonewall today.

Following each of these moves, it would’ve been easier to roll over and accept the decisions rather than stand up and fight back. Some would even go so far as to say that such moves are reflective of the opinion of a majority of the country.

They’re dead wrong.

Polls regularly place national support for gay rights at 65% or higher. States across the country have held referendums where pro-LGBTQ+ ballot measures passed by massive margins. Or think of anecdotal evidence in your own lives — the grandparent, uncle, or family friend who (maybe surprisingly!) showed their support for the community. The vast majority of the country is in favor of same-sex marriage, equal benefits, and of the integration of the LGBTQ+ community into society.

That reality is remarkable precisely because it was far from inevitable.

For decades, it was seen as politically risky to stand with gay Americans. Democrats were told that supporting same-sex marriage, for instance, would alienate moderates and place the party outside of the mainstream of American life. Time and time again, politicians were told to triangulate, to compromise, to give up on basic questions of equality.

Rather than capitulate, millions of Americans organized, marched, and continued to tell their stories. Despite the long odds, the gay community continued to make the case that they deserved the same rights, and that “We, the People” meant all of us.

Slowly but surely, the country changed.

Pride Month is important not just because of the progress that has been, but because it tells us that progress is only possible when people are willing to fight for it with everything they have, regardless of how popular it may be in that moment.

Take the controversy surrounding GOP Representative Andy Ogles as an example. To mark the start of Pride Month, he posted a tweet saying “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.” Within hours, he faced withering pushback from voters, Republican leaders, and, well, basically everyone.

He deleted the tweet and embarrassingly tried to blame a staffer for his own fuck-up. Such language would’ve been celebrated by large corners of the country ten or twenty years ago, and yet today it is a source of universal condemnation.

In 2024, Trump largely ran on fear. Fear of the “other.” Fear of the immigrant. Fear of the gay or lesbian couple. Fear of each other.

Not anymore.

On immigration, once Trump’s strongest issue, he’s now deeply unpopular following the militarization of America through the National Guard, deploying ICE into American cities, inciting riots and attacking protestors, and the wholesale targeting and racial profiling of the Hispanic community. There are countless stories of immigrants, whether legal or not, being imprisoned, deported, and dying in American custody.

On reproductive freedom, Trump moved to block access to mifepristone, launching “studies and reviews” into the medication’s safety and efficacy. Trump’s hand-picked justices formed the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, gutted the Voting Rights Act, defanged the EPA, and a whole host of other generation-defining decisions setting the country back decades.

In each of these moves, Trump has been on the wrong side of public opinion.

Make no mistake: Trump wants us to think the country has turned its back on decades of social progress. He couldn’t be further from the truth.

America is a land of possibility; of a belief in the power of the People to determine for ourselves what happiness looks like. The government has no place deciding whether or not gay or lesbian couples can get married. It has no place deciding which history we honor and how we do it. It has no place telling others that our nation, one whose very foundation is built on immigration, is hostile to those seeking to share in the American Dream.

This year, Pride isn’t just about looking back and honoring the work of others. It also means looking forward and rededicating ourselves to the work of building a nation worthy of our loftiest goals of equality, happiness, and prosperity for everyone.