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Good evening, everyone!
I feel like we are all experiencing similar, if not the same, emotions over the chaos of this fascist regime. Some days I would love to find the nearest cozy spot and crawl in and sleep away the stress. But we have a democracy to save! And boy oh boy, are we bringing the resistance! Certainly, we can take nothing for granted. Every walk back, TACO, and defeat of the felon has been hard fought and time consuming. One of the most important take aways from this dark time is the amount of effort it takes to ensure We the People are in charge. In order for it to be a government Of the People, By the People and For the People, We the People need to continuously perform our duties to VOTE and to let our representatives know what WE want.
One of the now obvious realizations is that for far too long, the rich have become the powerful and they are corrupt. I remember when I was in the 7th grade, my social studies teacher talked about the big oil companies buying up all the plans and research for electric cars so they could bury the concept and continue to milk us for their dirty petroleum products. It clearly stayed with me. I have been a democrat my whole life and I hate injustice and corruption more than anything. This 2nd felon term has done what hasn’t been possible for decades. It has exposed the lawlessness, greed, and evil that rests in so many of our nation’s wealthy and powerful. We have a long way to go, but our country is primed to emerge from this time with greater accountability, more robust environmental protections, a concerted effort to help the 99% of the people over the 1%, strengthen our voting rights protections, and flood our education departments with enough resources to generate civic minded citizens so these changes continue for the foreseeable future.
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Living Democracy
An interesting look at how we as a nation became complacent and stopped engaging with our democracy:
✂️ We had built our political system around television. It was how candidates and officials reached voters and how anyone hungry for attention could be heard. If a tree fell in the forest and it wasn’t covered by CNN, did it make a sound?
The problem was that television was miscast as a political medium.
Television is designed to entertain us. To lull us into a state of complacency. To help us disengage.
Armed with a snack and a remote, we can slump back in our chairs and let television wash over us.
It turns us into spectators. ✂️
Democracy has to be lived. It has to be practiced every day.
✂️ Record-setting anti-Trump protests, widespread self-publishing on social media (including sites like Substack), and the pounding Republicans are taking at the ballot box is evidence that democratic engagement is alive and well. People in large numbers are using their rights to free assembly, free expression, and voting in free elections to push back against the illegitimate actions of the Trump regime.
When viewed through this lens, our collective engagement is the tool that is saving us from the harms that grew out of years of collective disinterest.
Because when we foreswear civic participation we silence our own voices.
Those who looked away with disinterest permitted individuals who wanted to engineer the political system to their selfish advantage to operate without the resistance they would have encountered if people were involved like they are today.
And if the political actions of these engaged elites produced obscene inequalities that allowed them to live privileged and apart from a great many who saw their livelihoods shattered, their earning power diminished, and their futures dimmed—well, that’s just collateral damage for a later time.
For our time.
For a time when people started tasting the bitter fruit of that period of widespread complacency.
For a time when they were finally roused to action.
It took a reactionary movement using force to impose what they could never earn through elections to kindle the kind of mass engagement that can no longer be ignored by politicians. ✂️
Yes—this moment is filled with uncertainty. But the threat to our democracy began years ago, when so many people weren’t looking.
This leaves the promise to repair our democracy to our present reengagement.
To our seeing democracy as a living organism that needs to be nurtured with our vigilance. ✂️
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Fascism Having A Tough Week, Sources Say
I missed this but the news is great and more school districts need to adopt the same policy.
✂️ Minnesota is inspiring resistance across the country. The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) in Arizona announced that any law enforcement officers who show up on campus without proper identification will be treated as “intruders,” and force schools to initiate lockdown procedures.
“If they will not identify themselves, if they will not show a badge, no matter what uniform they’re wearing or what paper they’re waving around, they are an unidentified intruder,” Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said. “At that point, the protocol is to lock the campus down.” As it should be.
The policy applies not only to school buildings, but also to buses, parking lots, and even field trips. TUSD will not honor anything less than a judicial warrant, declaring all schools “immigration enforcement-free zones.” This is something every school district in America needs to implement. ✂️
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Worth repeating…
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We can't fall into right-wing populism’s lie that the most vulnerable in society are to blame for wealth inequality in our countries. We need to build movements that tell the truth: the story of wealth inequality is not a cultural one, but a class one.
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— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@ocasio-cortez.house.gov) February 15, 2026 at 3:11 PM
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Lots of great stories at Scott Dworkin’s link.
Today’s Great News (For Everyone Except Trump)
I especially love this one:
✂️ While Trump was busy losing the world’s trust, Gov. Gavin Newsom was in Munich trying to rebuild it. On Saturday, he signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine, committing California as a “steady transatlantic partner.” It was a pledge to strengthen trade ties and help fund reconstruction in areas Putin has destroyed.
Newsom told world leaders what they desperately needed to hear: “Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years,” urging them not to let “three years of doubling down on stupid destroy seventy-five years of shared destiny.”
This is the new reality of American diplomacy. Since Trump won’t lead, others will. ✂️
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Hoo boy!
Afternoon Update:
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JUST IN: Les Wexner submitted a written statement to House Oversight ahead of his testimony on Jeffrey Epstein.
In the letter, Wexner says he was “naive” and duped by Epstein, calls him a “con man,” and insists he cut ties nearly two decades ago and had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal conduct.
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— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) February 18, 2026 at 12:42 PM
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Letters from an American -- February 16, 2026
✂️ After watching colonial lawmakers under royal rule demand payoffs before they would approve popular measures, Washington rejected the idea of profiting from the presidency. In his short Inaugural Address, he took the time to state explicitly that he would not accept any payments while in the presidency except for an official salary appropriated by Congress.
Washington noted that the support of the American people for the new government was key to its survival. He hailed the pledges of the new nation’s lawmakers to rule for the good of the whole nation, not for specific regions or partisan groups. He also predicted that the power of the government would come not from military might but from its determination to serve the needs of the public. He promised “that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of a free Government, be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its Citizens, and command the respect of the world.”
Washington put a hopeful spin on human nature to launch the institution of the presidency, but the Framers had no illusions. They constructed the Constitution to pit men’s ambitions against each other so no individual could gain enough power to become a tyrant. Later, the rise of formal political parties in the 1830s guaranteed hawkish oversight of those in power by those out of it, exposing corruption or personal vices before those exhibiting them made it to the height of the government. ✂️
Of course, we all know what happened around the time ray-gun was in office. The R party became a cult and the leaders of the R party drifted right into the gutter. That is what set the stage for the emergence of the worst ‘president’ of all time. They elected a convicted felon!
Now that felon wants his name on everything and is applying for trademark status to perpetuate the grift. It boggles the mind.
Continuing on with Heather’s Presidents’ Day letter…
✂️ In a tour of George Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon, in April 2019, Trump expressed surprise that the first president hadn’t named any of his property after himself. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”
In fact, Americans remember and revere Washington because of his reluctance to promote himself, not in spite of it. John Trumbull’s portrait of him resigning his wartime commission after negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War hangs in the U.S. Capitol as a moment that defined the United States: a leader voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator. Then, when voters made him president of the new United States in 1789, he refused a second time to become a king, emphasizing that he was the servant of the people and then, after two terms, voluntarily handing power to a successor chosen not by him but by the people.
As Washington predicted, the presidents Americans revere despite their faults—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—are those who used the enormous power of the U.S. government not for their own aggrandizement but to secure and expand the rights and the prosperity of the American people. ✂️
(bolding is mine. fuck you, felon. 😁)
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Corruption, chaos, lawlessness, part eleventy billion. (Thanks Nanny. 😁)
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BREAKING : We @democracydefendersfund.org are suing the FBI for stonewalling records on its abruptly closed investigation into Homan’s alleged pay-to-play scheme
He allegedly took 50k in a CAVA bag!
We want the tape & more & we'll fight 'til we win 👇
www.democracydefendersfund.org/prs/02.17.26...
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— Norm Eisen (@normeisen.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 5:38 PM
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Since October, federal courts have ruled more than 4,400 times that ICE is illegally jailing immigrants.
Now the agency wants to spend $38B to turn warehouses across the country into detention camps.
Remember that some of Trump's biggest supporters are private prison companies running these camps.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 2:15 PM
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Rather than turn former Honduran President Hernández over to immigration officials when he was released from prison just four years into a 45-year sentence for allowing traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S, the Trump administration paid to transport him to a posh NYC hotel.
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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) February 18, 2026 at 8:07 AM
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A very detailed explanation of how FBI bamboozled a magistrate into authorizing a raid on Fulton County’s election offices by omitting critical information that would have totally undermined any probable cause claim. Pretty clear-cut case of calculated deception of the courts.
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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 11:00 PM
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Put them all in jail as traitors and grifters!!!!! They have all made a complete mockery of our government. The examples just keep coming. I swear, this is mind blowing on every level!!
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Imagine doing this with your one precious life. Other people are out there teaching children and curing cancer and you decide to spend your time telling outrageous, laughably unbelievable lies about a dementia-addled rapist and fraud whose legacy will be nearly ending US democracy
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— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 9:48 PM
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And this is part of what we are fighting against. Always sane-washing, so-called media outlets.
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Those who are concerned and confused over Gallup ending their presidential approval polling after 88 years shouldn’t worry. It’ll certainly be magically resurrected when a Democrat wins the White House in 2028. A sudden change of heart on January 20th, 2029.
— Charlotte Clymer (@charlotteclymer.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 1:49 PM
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Then again, there’s this! Hahaha! About time!
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DebtorsPrison’s new Nonfiction Diary is here!
Thanks so much DP for always wonderful and interesting diaries. I always look forward to your emails too!
Nonfiction Views: Three books on Jesse Jackson, plus the week's notable new nonfiction
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Today is
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Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent in the Western church and takes place 46 days before Easter. As the date of Easter is calculated on the cycles of the moon, the date of Ash Wednesday will vary from year to year. The earliest possible date for Ash Wednesday is 4 February and the latest day is March 10.
Ash Wednesday is observed mainly by the Roman Catholic Church and also by some Protestant denominations such as Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans.
It takes places immediately after the excesses of the two days of Carnival that take place in Northern Europe and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.
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This day is observed on the birthday of Allesandro Volta (1745 - 1827).
Alessandro Volta was an Italian physicist, chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power. He is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane.
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This is hilarious! When the holiday calendar is questioning the origins of these days, you know something is fishy. (Ha! See what I did there??? 🤣)
Crab-stuffed flounder is, well, a fillet of flounder rolled around stuffing consisting of crab meat, breadcrumbs, and seasoning. It sounds good and all, but who on Earth made a national holiday for it?
We don’t know, that’s for sure. And we probably shouldn’t call this a “national” holiday, since it’s very unlikely to get official recognition from Congress.
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It wasn’t on the daily calendar I use, but Nanny said it is Pluto Day today! I first thought of this:
If you’re like us, you grew up with a solar system that had nine planets in it. You also grew up in world that didn’t teach new math, but that’s a rant for a different day.
Then one day they suddenly decided that designating Pluto as a planet was just wrong, and our most distant friend in the solar system suddenly was told he wasn’t good enough for the planet club anymore.
From that time on, Pluto would forever be considered a ‘dwarf planet’, which is kind of a consolation prize for those not cool enough for the big planet club. Pluto Day celebrates the discovery of Pluto in 1930, when it was designated as a planet, and that’s how it should have stayed!
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Tomorrow is
🥳🥳🥳
Tomorrow is also my one year anniversary of writing the Shade! Can you believe it? I thank you all for allowing me to share some of the things I enjoy and to bring news and inspiration to keep us in the fight to save our democracy. I’m so happy to be here with all of you! 💙
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Welcome to the comments Shady people! 😎
