Terrible Things Are Happening

This is the reality of where we are, and anyone who might disagree is living in a fantasy. It’s time to take off the rose-colored glasses and WAKE UP to things like the murder of Renee Good (and others), Minnesota, ICE, Venezuela, Greenland, and what’s happening in your communities and mine, too.

Will you join the growing numbers of us who refuse to allow this travesty to continue? When this hell is finally over and we can once again breathe, will you be on the right side of the roaring rapids?

I’m cautiously optimistic that a slight ray of light might be emerging.

According to John Pavlovitz, this will all be over soon, America. The sundowning of the MAGA movement is upon us. The signs are everywhere.

As much as History can be an albatross in moments like these, alerting us to the terrifying ways in which we are repeating the past pathologies of inhumanity, she can also be a source of comfort; a reminder of the inevitability of the endings of all evil things.

If we consult her with a clear head, she’ll remind us that all brutal empires fall,
that all hateful movements dissolve, that every seemingly bulletproof regime reaches its extinction, and that all malevolent momentary victors eventually find themselves defeated and driven out.

Every time the pendulum has swung wildly toward barbarism in a society, it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe back toward justice again.

And History tells us that, despite the story in our heads or the one that comes through the partisan propaganda that we’re continually saturated by, our brutal national nightmare is likely in its final hours.

Few cults survive the passing of their leaders, and MAGA will not outlive the departure of Donald Trump from the White House or from this earth, whichever comes first. Read the full story here: https://johnpavlovitz.com/2025/12/02/the-maga-nightmare-is-almost-over-america/

I have edited this to add an important and powerful letter from Hillary and Bill Clinton to James Comer, responding to their refusal to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein:

WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
January 13, 2026

Chairman Comer,

We want to take a moment, given everything, to address you directly.

This past year has seen our Government engage in unprecedented acts, including against our own citizens. People have been seized by masked federal agents from their homes, their workplaces, and the streets of their communities. Students and scientists with visas permitting them to study and work here have been deported without due process. The people who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol have been pardoned and called heroes. Agencies vital to the country’s national security have been dismantled. Universities, media companies, and law firms have been subjected to threats to their funding, access, and licensing unless they made concessions and surrendered their right to constitutionally protected free speech. American troops have been deployed on the streets of our towns and cities. The Justice Department has been used as a weapon, at the direction of the President, to pursue political opponents. And most recently and searingly, an ICE agent killed an unarmed mother only days ago.

Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences.

For us, now is that time.

We are lucky by virtue of the positions we held, and the protections afforded by them. But we are not blind. Every day we see the country we have dedicated our lives to improving take step after step after step backwards.

As chairman of this powerful congressional committee, you have immense power to target anyone and subject them to closed door interrogation and more. The decisions you have made, and the priorities you have set as chairman regarding the Epstein investigation, have prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role.

The facts speak for themselves: You subpoenaed eight people in addition to us. You dismissed seven of those eight without any of them saying a single word to you. You made no attempt to force them to appear. In fact, since you started your investigation last year, you have interviewed a total of two people. Two.

A legal analysis prepared by two law firms and provided to you yesterday makes clear your subpoenas are legally invalid. You claim your subpoenas are inviolate when they are used against us yet were silent when the sitting President took the same position, as a former president, barely more than three years ago. We call on you to release that analysis to the public to allow them to see how this is yet another example of the casual disregard of the law of the land. All the while, you have done nothing with your oversight capacity to force the Department of Justice to follow the law and release all its Epstein files, including any material regarding us as we have publicly called for.

Over the last year in the House, extending health care for Americans in any state succeeded only because enough Republicans joined with Democrats. The fact that the public and we are seeing any of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files is only because four Republicans, out of 220, joined every Democrat to reach the minimum number of Members to force a vote. You were not one of those four. Even now, despite the Department of Justice’s failure to follow the law the Congress passed, you have chosen not to consider subpoenaing the sitting Attorney General to follow the law.

Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment. This is not the way out of America’s ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves.

Indeed, bringing the Republicans’ cruel agenda to a standstill while you work harder to pass a contempt charge against us than you have done on your investigation this past year would be our contribution to fighting the madness.

We have tried to give you the little information we have. We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific. If the Government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be be the focus of your work – to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so. Instead, you have forced the victims to relive their painful experiences, while doing little to give them and everybody else what’s deserved: truth and justice. There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.

You accepted the least from those who know the most but demand the most from those who know the least. To say you can’t complete your work without speaking to us is simply bizarre.

You have asked what we know. To answer your inquiry, we are providing you with the same or more than seven of the other eight individuals you subpoenaed regarding the handling of the Epstein investigations and prosecutions, which may be why you have not publicly released their written statements.

We expect you will say it is not enough. We expect you’ll reject it. You may even set out an empty empty chair chair o or stand in front of the cameras and outright dismiss what we have provided. We expect you will direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt. You may even release irrelevant, decades-old photos that you hope will embarrass us. You will say your caucus, and the Speaker and the President are behind you 100%. We hope, perhaps in vain, that they will not allow you to singlehandedly hijack the Congress by unilaterally making this decision for your colleagues, your party, and our country.

You will say it is not our decision to make. But we have made it. Now you have to make yours.

We are prepared to make our case to your 45 committee members, and if need be, more. Importantly, we also will defend ourselves in the public arena and ensure this country knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing so, instead of helping the American people who need this Congress’s work and protection.

For most people, maybe even the bulk of the Congress, today will be the first they learn of this dispute. We are confident that any reasonable person in or out of Congress will see, based on everything we release, that what you are doing is trying to punish those who you see as your enemies and to protect those think are your friends.

Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it.

Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are signing away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history.

Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.

Sincerely,

[signed] Bill Clinton Hillary Rodham Clinto

No Kings Day 2.0 Rally For Democracy

This was the largest single day protest in US history. We showed up to rally against the authoritarian policies of that orange POS and alleged corruption in his administration. We showed up because that’s what this country is all about.

We are anti-fascists. Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups, and individuals. It began in European countries in the 1920s.

Have you witnessed any of the ICE kidnappings? I haven’t personally, but I have seen videos of some in a nearby town. It’s absolutely disgusting.

It’s estimated that 10,000 people showed up to protest against the fascist regime in my very own little beachy town and a conservative estimate of 50,000 in San Diego. New York had 350,000 show up and there were 100,000 in Chicago and Boston.

Wherever you live, I hope you were able to participate. We’re the true patriots, we’re the ones who respect the Constitution and Bill of Rights and equality for all.

The Bill of Rights is CLEAR, this regime is in violation of so many of our basic rights:

First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This was one of my favorite signs:

In addition to all the senior citizens and veterans who have consistently shown up to support freedom, this time there were a lot more young people, and that’s awesome.

The message is powerful…REMOVE THE ORANGE POS and RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!

Those of us in Southern California had another total bizarre shitshow to deal with. The sofa loving Vice President decided to stage dangerous war games by firing live rounds OVER our major freeway and OVER homes in a repugnant self glorifying display of power at Camp Pendleton. For safety, the California Highway Patrol had to shut down Interstate 5 for most of the day to feed the ego of a sociopathic lunatic. This narcissistic exhibition was touted as a celebration for the Marine Corps birthday–however, the MC birthday is on November 10, so it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out he chose THIS day to attempt to disrupt our peaceful protests and cause trouble. And since the rethugs have shut down the government, all of those soldiers from Camp Pendleton were working without a paycheck.

Also in California, we have an important item on the November ballot; Proposition 50, which authorizes temporary changes to congressional district maps in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting. I already voted a resounding YES and I hope it passes. I like the way our Governor Newsom responds to the lunacy in Washington and look forward to voting for him in the next presidential election.

If you need any more evidence that we need to remove that demented, evil orange POS, check out his response to today’s rally for democracy:

Federal Agents March Through L.A. Park, Spurring Local Outrage

Why isn’t this a bigger deal? Have you heard about what happened in Los Angeles? Your city could be next. Mine, too.

This isn’t a crew on location shooting a scene of a disaster film, this is real life. We are living in a nightmare.

APNews

Federal officials said it was an immigration enforcement operation, though it was unclear if anyone had been arrested. “It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said as she condemned the action.

It had been a quiet morning in MacArthur Park, a hub in one of Los Angeles’s most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Children at a summer camp were playing outside, but the park was otherwise largely empty.

Then, dozens of armed federal agents began marching over soccer fields and grass berms, based on footage of the incident. Military-style vehicles blocked the street and a federal helicopter flew overhead.

They wore fatigues, masks and helmets and marched in lines. Some were on horseback. Camera crews followed alongside them.

Los Angeles leaders have grown weary after thousands of National Guard troops and Marines arrived nearly a month ago and immigration raids have become a regular, visible occurrence. But they took particular umbrage at Monday’s extraordinary show of force in MacArthur Park and issued a swift and furious rebuke.

“What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” Mayor Bass said in a news conference on Monday afternoon, adding that she had traveled regularly into conflict zones as a member of Congress.

Dozens of federal agents were observed in the park, many arriving in armored military vehicles. They were joined by 80 California National Guard troops under the command of President Trump, according to the office of Governor Gavin Newsom, who criticized the effort and has tried to stop the federalization of Guard members through a lawsuit.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to specific questions about the purpose of the operation at MacArthur Park or whether anyone had been detained.

“The operation is ongoing,” she wrote in an email. “So that should be a message in of itself.”

Asked to clarify that message, she responded that it was an immigration enforcement operation and that such efforts “are not in one single location.”

To many local leaders, the Monday march through MacArthur Park seemed designed to intimidate immigrants and residents, rather than to carry out targeted enforcement. Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the president of the Los Angeles City Council, derided the display as a stunt made for TikTok.

“If you want to film in L.A., you should apply for a film permit like everybody else,” he said during an afternoon news conference. “Stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody who lives in this great city and disrupt our economy.”

Ms. Bass said that once she arrived, she had demanded to speak to the person in charge of the operation at the park. She was handed a phone, through which, she said, Mr. Bovino told her that he would be “getting them out of the park,” apparently referring to federal agents.The agents left the park a short time later, she said. From New York Times by Jill Cowan and Mimi Dwyer

***

These questions need to be answered: when are good people going to rise up and put an end to this dystopian nightmare? When is enough, enough?

They ripped away health care. They denied food assistance to children. They exploded the nation’s debt, shuttered Social Security offices, rural hospitals, and decimated federal employees and the VA, along with kidnapping mothers and fathers and students. When is enough ENOUGH?

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Sunday Vibes

Today’s mood: out of the loop by choice…

I don’t want to hear about that orange POS or worry about WW3 or the economy or ICE or any of the other no good, terrible, very bad things that are going on. I want to bask in my ignorance.

Just for today I want to be the innocent who waters her garden and talks to crows and delights in butterflies and believes in the inherent goodness of humanity.

This Beach Boys song seems to convey the vibe of the day, only good vibes! Here’s Good Vibrations studio footage. I know that Leon Russell played on a version of GV, but I don’t see him here:

NO KINGS! Attend June 14 National Day of Action

I’m so proud of the San Diego community that stood strong to protect and defend the ICE kidnapping that happened on May 30 at a local restaurant, Buona Forchetta.

A video of the ICE raid showed heavily armed and masked agents (modern day Gestapo) dressed in full tactical gear surrounding the restaurant. A large crowd of community members pushed back at the ICE agents, surrounding their vehicles and yelling. The ICE agents deployed flash bang smoke grenades which broke up the crowd.

A local politician questioned why ICE agents were carrying machine guns and “aggressively shoving people against the walls,” handcuffing all the employees. He said the warrant for the raid, which was signed by a federal judge, instructed ICE agents to arrest everyone and detain all the employees.

“I don’t know how a federal judge signs off on that,” he said. “What about the rights of those citizens?” He said the warrant didn’t indicate reference to any of the workers having committed violent crimes.

Another politician said that the TWENTY armed agents who burst into the restaurant traumatized the staff and the owner.

Can you believe this is actually happening? And THIS, too…

The orange POS has planned a military parade in Washington, D.C. for his birthday on June 14. This display of might is intended to intimidate opponents and solidify his image as a strongman on our dime—we won’t stand by while that happens.

Instead of allowing this military farce to overwhelm the day, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption.

It’s significant that the new Pope also chose this day to appear in Chicago as hopefully millions of people gather and celebrate the election of its native son — and first North American pontiff — Pope Leo XIV.

Have you seen the news that the orange POS sent the National Guard to Los Angeles EVEN THOUGH our Governor did NOT request their presence?

Did you hear that the orange POS has made it ILLEGAL to wear masks in public UNLESS you’re a member of his ICE gestapo?

Do you understand what is going on? This is not a drill; democracy is in trouble. According to the nonprofit, Third Act, our role is to bring the power and wisdom of elders to this movement, to ensure our voices are heard loud and clear to protect our democracy and our rights.

I think I’ll join my friends and neighbors locally on June 14. Rise up! RESIST!

Repeating History | Where We Are

This is exactly where we are. It’s happening all over again, but this time, HERE, in the United States. Who will have the necessary courage to stop this nightmare?

From media sources:

+ Did you all see the video of the ICE agent breaking a car window near the border? He wasn’t an ICE agent. He’s the founder of Veterans on Patrol, a FAR-RIGHT MILITIA patrolling the border for migrants. They’re basically deputizing militias to act as federal agents. This is dangerously out of control.

+ A U.S. born citizen was arrested in Florida for entering the state as an “unauthorized alien.” His mother and a community advocate showed his birth certificate during a hearing in Leon County. The judge said she had no authority to release him. Update: He has now been released.

+ This happened in Boston. Trump’s ICE Gestapo took away a little girl in a Winnie the Pooh shirt who was on her way to school.

+ A 19 year-old living in New York — Family has an asylum case pending with no criminal record or tattoos, ICE grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to his building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled. He is in CECOT (El Salvador)

Even more disgusting and tone deaf to the destruction of democracy and while all of this is going on around us, was the spectacle of half a dozen entitled women taking a very expensive ten minute joyride to cosplay being an astronaut.

The Blue Origin “flight” took the women more than sixty-two miles above Earth, crossing the internationally recognized boundary of space and giving them a few moments of weightlessness. It’s an insult to every real astronaut who spent years training for space exploration. I. CAN’T. EVEN.