I'm watching my country surrender without a fight.

And I refuse to accept it.

They want us to believe there's no point in resisting. That it's safer to give in like they are all doing. That the smart move is to preemptively fold.

It's not.

They tell themselves, "It's just a few more years." We can survive by telling the emperor that he has beautiful new clothes and by giving him fake awards and gold medals.

By stroking his ego so hard, he can't do anything but purr like a cat.

Yesterday, Tim Cook showed us just how much we lose every time someone caves when he walked into the White House and presented Trump with a sculpture made of Gorilla Glass mounted on a gold base and a made-up award. He didn't just bend. He reinforced the illusion that Trump can't be challenged. That the only winning move is submission and payouts.

But here's the truth: he makes a lot of threats from his throne, but he cannot arrest everyone. He cannot sue everyone. He cannot destroy everyone at once without taking himself down in the process.

If the tech giants had held their ground, if the universities had held their ground, if all of them had said "no," Trump would have faced a choice: back down or take the entire economy with him. And it would be nearly impossible to cover up that level of failure.

Every single time someone surrenders, we lose.

We lose bigger than the time before.

We lose to levels we can't even begin to measure.

We lose our democracy.

The intimidation, the legal threats, the "make an example" tactics, they are all theater. Performance meant to make people self-censor. To make institutions collapse without a single shot fired.

And this week, we saw it again.

He promised to protect Medicare. To make it stronger. To ensure seniors would have affordable, reliable care.

But just days ago, his administration quietly delayed a Biden-era Medicare rule. A rule designed to rein in exploding spending on so-called "skin substitutes", bandages made from placentas, infant foreskin, fish skin, and pig skin, by covering only products proven to work through high-quality clinical trials. The rule would have cut waste, ended price gouging, and saved taxpayers billions.

It didn't vanish by accident. President Trump's team delayed it after one of the largest suppliers, Extremity Care LLC, gave $5 million to MAGA Inc., his super PAC, and after the industry launched an aggressive lobbying push to block the change.

Extremity Care's products can cost more than $21,000 per square inch, with some Medicare patients racking up bills of over $1 million, all without clear evidence of medical benefit. Medicare spent over $10 billion on these products in 2024 alone, up from about $250 million just five years ago.

The donation came on February 24, 2025. Six days later, Trump went on Truth Social to denounce the Biden-era rule, repeating industry talking points that it would harm patients, while leaving out the fact that the delay guarantees Extremity Care's products stay covered for another year.

Call it what it is, a direct payment to protect profits. A trade of $5 million for the right to keep billing taxpayers at outrageous rates.

That means at least another year where corporate suppliers can keep draining Medicare, where billions meant for care will be funneled into private profit, and into political war chests.

This isn't reform. It's surrender to the medical supply lobby. It's choosing donor comfort over public good. And like every surrender before it, it sends a message: you can buy policy if you pay the right people.

A public health tragedy unfolded today.

In Atlanta, a man opened fire near the CDC and Emory University. Bullets shattered CDC windows and riddled a police cruiser. A responding officer was shot and later died from their injuries. The suspect was also killed.

Reports on the Citizen app say he targeted the CDC because he believed RFK Jr.'s MAGA-aligned disinformation that the COVID vaccine made him sick.

If true, it is the most violent example yet of what I've been warning about for years: Disinformation kills.

It doesn't just twist facts. It erodes trust, fuels rage, and pushes people into deadly acts. A public health agency meant to save lives became a battlefield because lies took root in someone's mind.

And this isn't happening in a vacuum. The CDC itself has been under relentless attack from the same voices that profit from sowing mistrust in science. The same voices now influencing public health policy from inside the government.

When people lose trust in science, science can no longer save them. And when political leaders normalize attacking truth, tragedy will follow, sometimes in the form of a bullet.

We've seen surrender play out before.

Paramount Global settled a $20 billion lawsuit filed by Trump over a 60 Minutes interview, paying about $16 million to Trump's future presidential library. CBS staffers called it a blow to press freedom.

And I want to stop for a moment and remind us all that this is not how any of this works. There should be no settlement payouts going to a sitting president, regardless of whether he says it's for his library or his bank account. A sitting president used to be held to a higher standard. A sitting president used to be too busy running the country to be suing people because he doesn't like what they say.

Big Law firms like Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, and others quietly offered nearly $1 billion in free legal services to Trump-backed causes, dropping diversity hiring plans in the process.

Columbia University, under threat of losing $400 million in funding and facing federal oversight, gave in, agreeing to admissions changes, abolishing affirmative action, and accepting external monitors over sensitive departments.

These are not past sins. These are today's betrayals, made by institutions that still had the power to say no.

Trump has never been the worst part. The worst part is how many people and institutions surrender before the first shot is fired. How many prioritize survival over principle.

Surrender is not strategy.

Every time someone caves, the next fight becomes harder. The next line in the sand becomes easier to erase.

You might think you're avoiding trouble. But storms don't pass when the person making them knows you'll never push back.

And we know this because history just keeps repeating itself. Fascism isn't new. Authoritarian rule isn't a new thing.

And when I step back and look around, I'm disillusioned that this is happening in America. We have been fighting to put out small fires of his dictatorial ways for almost a decade, but I honestly thought most Americans were past this. They saw how he mismanaged COVID, how he instigated an insurrection, and how he turned us against each other.

I was wrong. Those on the wrong side of history like this cruelty. They would not have hidden Anne Frank. They would have turned her in and still called themselves supporters of the Jewish people.

They hide behind fake labels just like Trump hides behind his propaganda and lies. And maybe, just maybe, I am finally losing my hope in part of humanity. And that is okay. It might be slipping from those who choose cruelty, but not from the good ones.

And so I remind myself, history won't remember those who made tyrants comfortable. It remembers the ones who made them afraid.

And so as we push to not just survive, but thrive in the next three and a half years, we need to preserve our energy. I've long since stopped actively trying to convince the red hat cult to care about other people. They don't.

Instead, we need to nurture our relationships and cultivate ways to support each other that are dedicated to a better America. We need to keep the support coming for the Texas Democrats who broke quorum to block voting restrictions and now face arrest warrants if they return to their home state. They are holding a line that few of us can imagine having to hold at a cost not many of us could afford.

Each day brings us unimaginable horrors from the Trump regime. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But we are not without hope for better days. They may be loud, but there are more of us on the right side of history than there are of them. Do not lose faith.

I believe in us.
I believe in you.
I believe in tomorrow.

I’ll see you then,

Heather

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