It’s a problem that whenever I listen to Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, I become frustrated, instead of inspired. It’s a problem that they make me feel hopeless instead of hopeful. It’s a problem that whenever I get their fundraising notices (which I’ve tried to block), I am motivated to respond with invectives and profanity instead of money. It’s a problem that Democrats project weakness, cowardice, and complicity, instead of strength and resolve. It’s a problem that listening to Democrats makes me want to tune out, to know less, to care less.

Maybe it’s just me. In fact, I desperately hope my reaction is unique, that I’m allergic to fecklessness in some psychologically specific way. When I see people out in the streets protesting, I see energy, I see passion, I see people willing to risk it all. I see everything that I don’t see in Washington. I see people who are not waiting for the Democratic Party to remove its head from its fatally bloated ass.

The people are leading. This week, for the first time, a poll showed that abolishing ICE was more popular than funding it. But too many Democrats remain committed to protecting Trump’s Gestapo, while many, many more would rather just not talk about it at all. No matter how many people ICE shoots dead in the streets, Schumer would rather talk about the price of eggs.

I just don’t know if the people who stand to politically benefit from the energy in the streets, the Democrats, can benefit from it if they spend all their time telling people to not care about the things they care about. For every person who looks at the uselessness of Washington Democrats and says, “I have to do more,” how many others say, “There’s nothing I can do”? How can we expect people to literally risk their lives to defend their communities when their leaders won’t risk a mean tweet from an imaginary Republican they’ve invented in their head?

My mother and sister went to a protest last weekend, then packed anti-ICE bags (bags with whistles, eyewash, and contact information for lawyers) to be given out to protesters. I was supposed to go too, but I bailed. Hopelessness got the better of me. They say in Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer,” but for me it’s despair.

Current Issue

February 2026 Issue

I’ll work myself out of it. I always do. I just have to remember that being against something evil is more than enough justification for action. I just have to be motivated by our lack of options, instead of enervated by it. I just have to remember that I’m a Democrat by registration, not by temperament.

The Bad and the Ugly

• Illinois and Minnesota have sued the Trump administration over ICE’s illegal and unconstitutional occupations of the states. I mean, it’s either this or arming state militias and fighting the civil war that Trump thinks his side will win this time, so I guess this first.
• The Trump administration will stop processing visas from 75 countries. Almost all of them are in Africa, the Middle East, and South America—as if you had to guess which countries our white supremacist president was going to target.
• The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the New Jersey district court judge who ruled that kidnapped Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil should be freed from detention did not have proper jurisdiction over the case. Khalil will appeal but… have you met the Supreme Court recently? The ruling opens the door for Khalil to be re-abducted.
• Speaking of the Supreme Court, in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, the court ruled that a Republican candidate has the right to challenge government action “affecting the counting of votes.” The vote was 8–1. Even though the Republican who brought the case is trying to exclude some mail-in ballots, there’s an argument to be made that the ruling will  actually be good for democracy, as it should theoretically give Democrats standing to object to, say, Trump’s stealing ballot boxes. I, however, tend to agree with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, in which she pointed out that the Republican plaintiff was not able to show actual harm from mail-in ballots, and thus his case should have been dismissed.
• The Department of Justice executed a search warrant on the home of a Washington Post reporter, which is a “highly unusual and aggressive” attack on the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. It’ll be interesting to see if the Supreme Court even cares.

Inspired Takes

• Both US senators from Massachusetts wrote for The Nation this week. Elizabeth Warren wrote about how to “re-vitalize” the Democratic Party (I wonder if she senses that there are more people like me who look at the Democrats with despair), while Ed Markey wrote about Trump’s “nuclear delusions.”
• Laura Jedeed, a writer and anti-ICE activist, managed to get hired by ICE. No matter what you might have suspected about ICE’s recruitment practices, it’s worse than you thought.
• Dr. Jason Johnson explains that opposing ICE is an easy win for Democrats. Which it is. But Johnson doesn’t explore the fact that Democrats have a submission kink for losing.

Worst Argument of the Week

Donald Trump gave an interview to The New York Times in which he talked about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I’ll just quote him: “White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college.… So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.”

And, there’s more: “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people—people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”

You don’t have to be an expert in white supremacy to understand the core animus Trump is expressing here: White people “deserve” jobs, opportunities, and anything else they want. Non-white people do not. Any non-white person who holds a position holds it at the expense of some more deserving white person, and that is “unfair” to the white person.

Folks, that’s MAGA. That’s Trumpism. That’s the whole freaking reason Trump has been part of our lives for a decade, right there. Any explanation or analysis that seeks to explain Trump without understanding his core racial beliefs, and how popular those racial beliefs are with his racist fans, fails its first contact with reality.

White folks like Trump will never accept equality. They will always see a non-white person as less deserving than a similarly situated white person. All Trump has done is expose that there are more white people who are like Trump than white people would have you believe.

Most white Democrats are still struggling with what to do with this information. But I’ve had 10 years to process it, and I’ve come to one overarching conclusion: fuck ’em. If a majority of whites will not accept equality, then the majority of whites must be defeated by everybody else.

It’s that simple. It’s always been that simple. A majority of whites have never accepted equality. They’ll never like it. But they can be forced to deal with it.

What I Wrote

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for two cases involving bans on transgender athletes’ participation in interscholastic women and girls’ sports. I listened to it so you didn’t have to. Trans people are going to lose, again, and it’s probably only the beginning of the parade of horribles.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

Earth’s oceans once again shattered heat records last year. It’s difficult to understand just how much extra heat the oceans absorbed in 2025. Here’s how Hawaii-based reporter Jeremy Yurow put it: “The amount of heat the oceans soaked up last year is difficult to comprehend: 23 zettajoules more than 2024. That’s roughly the same amount of energy the entire world uses in 37 years.”

That’s 37 years of Earth’s total energy output being sunk into our oceans in one year.

People will die: Hotter oceans lead to worse storms.

People will starve: Hotter oceans kill coral reefs, which devastates coastal fishing.

People will drown: Hotter oceans lead to more ice melting and rising sea levels.

Oh, and at some unknown tipping point, desalinated ice water will interrupt the Gulf Coast current and turn coastal North America, which is heated by warm water coming up from the Gulf OF MEXICO, into an icebox.

But none of this will bother Elon Musk or any of the tech bros who are consuming as much power as possible to produce AI-generated child porn. None of this will bother Joe Manchin or any of the coal bros who make billions off of greenhouse gas–producing power. None of this will bother Donald Trump, who can’t blame rising sea temperatures on Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

This should be urgent news, but nobody in power in our country is doing a damn thing to stop it. That’s why I’ve classed this unmitigated existential horror as  “unrelated to the current chaos.” It’s not even a real issue to the people with the political power to do anything about it.

Like I said, I’m pretty gripped by despair right now. I’m part of a failed party, a failed country, and a failed species. No matter how wide I open the aperture of the lens to let the light in, everything appears bleak.

I won’t give up, though. I have children. I have to properly model “fighting despite unwinnable odds,” because that is going to be their whole life.

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