The President Has Abandoned His Oath Of Office

Before assuming the most powerful office in the world, the President of the United States places a hand on a Bible and recites a 35-word oath written into the Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That is the oath that Donald Trump has abandoned.

Not just in spirit or in practice. But in its entirety. He is not upholding the Constitution. He is not protecting the people. He is not even pretending to do the work. He has left the presidency functionally vacant while using the power of the office to enrich himself and punish the public. He’s not leading. He’s not governing. He’s looting. He tore down the whole East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom! He has walked away from every duty of the presidency while clinging tightly to its force. He wants the title but not the responsibility. And we are paying the price.

And now, with the country weakened and distracted, he’s demanding even more power to bulldoze Project 2025 into law in one unstoppable sweep by torching the filibuster and clearing the path for unchecked rule.

The filibuster is the last tool that stops any one party from pushing through laws without resistance. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s a Senate procedural rule, one that says most bills need 60 votes to move forward. If it’s gone, whoever has the majority can push through untold damage to our democracy. It would usher in raw, unchecked power. That’s why Trump has posted five times in the past day demanding the Senate “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER” and “USE THE NUCLEAR OPTION.” This isn’t about helping people. It’s about dismantling one of the only safeguards the Democrats have left to limit or slow Trump’s complete authoritarian takeover.

And here’s the twist no one wants to admit: Democrats helped open that door. In 2013, Senate Democrats partially changed this rule so that confirming judges and Cabinet picks only needed a simple majority, just 51 votes, instead of the usual 60. They were trying to break through Republican obstruction. But that rule change ended up helping Trump. He used it to fill the courts and staff his administration with people loyal only to him. That’s how Trump packed the courts. That’s how he filled his cabinet. That’s how he secured the power he now abuses.

And now, since he controls the Republicans in Congress, if he can get them to “nuke” the filibuster entirely, there will be no meaningful legislative resistance left. He’ll have a rubber-stamp Senate ready to force through every piece of Project 2025, every extremist policy, every authoritarian power grab, unchecked, unchallenged, and unstoppable.

And once that legislative firewall is gone, the consequences won’t be abstract. They’ll be even more grounded flights, more empty grocery carts, and more families wondering how they’ll make it through the week. Because when Trump controls Congress and the rules that once restrained him are gone, the sabotage becomes law.

We are facing dark times that are going to get worse. We just don’t know how much worse. Today the FAA began cutting over 700 flights due to air traffic controller staffing reductions triggered by the government shutdown. Millions have lost their SNAP benefits for the past week. And just when people thought help was coming, the cruelest president in modern history and the Supreme Court loyal to him slammed the door shut. In breaking news, just as I went to publish this, the Court has now paused an order requiring the Trump administration to pay full SNAP benefits. People were told the aid was coming. They were hopeful. And then, this. This is calculated cruelty. Trump could have let the funds be released. He should have insisted that if there was a way to release them a week ago, he should have demanded it. But tonight, he did the complete opposite and instead found a way to stop Americans from having food to eat. What kind of horrible president does that? What kind of demented person does this? He wants the people all so hungry and so tired that they can’t fight back.

This is just another form of economic destabilization that authoritarian regimes have long used to break public resistance. Hitler and Mussolini both leveraged economic crises complemented by manufactured food insecurity and starvation to justify consolidating power, while suppressing dissent through engineered scarcity.

Meanwhile, no employment data is being released. The U.S. Employment Report was officially delayed because of the ongoing shutdown, preventing the public from seeing job trends or losses, just as uncertainty and layoffs are rising. Why? Because the shutdown works in their favor. No data means no accountability. No headlines. No hard questions. Trump and his circle of billionaires, loyalists, and hangers-on are getting richer while the rest of us ration groceries and medication. They profit from volatility, buying up stocks when the market dips, selling when it recovers, and securing no-bid contracts through political connections. The longer the chaos continues, the more they stand to gain financially. While your neighbor is skipping meals, they’re placing bets on the collapse and cashing out. For them, volatility isn’t danger. It’s opportunity.

And he’s not just abandoning us at home. He’s walking away from the world stage too. The United States will not attend the G20 Summit in South Africa. Not the President. Not the Vice President. Not even a diplomat. This marks the first time in modern history that the world’s largest economy has simply chosen to stay home. World leaders from across the globe appealed for the U.S. to participate. Trump ignored them and claimed the decision was due to an alleged international human rights violation, but that wasn’t true. The real reason is much simpler: he’s lazy, and he just didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to do the work. He didn’t want to sit in a room with other leaders, face facts, or answer hard questions because he knows they can see him for what he is: a fraud. He doesn’t care about diplomacy. He doesn’t care about the world. He doesn’t care about America’s role in it. He wants the power without the obligation. The influence without the labor. This absence isn’t just symbolic. It leaves a leadership vacuum at a time when global coordination is critical. Climate collapse, war, economic instability, none of it matters to this administration.

Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom is flying to Brazil for global climate talks, stepping into the role of statesman while our actual president snacks on popcorn at a Lions vs. Commanders football game. And you have to wonder. Maybe Trump is avoiding these international summits because he’s facing some kind of cognitive or physical decline. His team can barely manage his public appearances. He drifts off to sleep during high-stakes meetings. He slurs, he stumbles, and he often looks completely lost. When he stands beside real leaders, the contrast is impossible to miss. So instead, he hides in stadiums, where the crowd cheers no matter what he says. Where he can pretend to be strong. While Trump poses for cameras and applause, Newsom is quietly doing the work he refuses to do. Because someone has to.

And just like he’s walking off the world stage, he’s reshaping the one at home, one cruel, authoritarian step at a time. Because every move they make is another test. Another push against the line of what we’ll tolerate. This week, his administration announced new guidance allowing officials to deny visas to immigrants with health conditions, specifically including heart disease, cancer, respiratory conditions, diabetes, obesity, and sleep apnea. These are not contagious diseases. These are manageable conditions that millions of Americans live with. But now they’re being used as grounds for rejection.

They’ll say it’s about protecting resources. But that’s exactly what Nazi Germany said when they began sorting people by “fitness”, racial hygiene, they called it. In Nazi Germany, this meant eliminating anyone deemed a burden to the idealized Aryan society, those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or any condition seen as “impure.” It was pseudoscience used to justify eugenics and genocide, all under the banner of national strength. Different language. Same intent. ICE is already detaining people based on looks, accents, and location. And now we’re saying illness makes you unworthy of a future here. It’s not new. It’s just America’s turn.

We’ve seen this before in our own history. The 1924 Immigration Act explicitly aimed to keep out “undesirable” races and people with disabilities, influenced by the same eugenics movement that shaped Nazi policy. The Chinese Exclusion Act and quotas targeting southern and eastern Europeans were rooted in the same idea: that some lives are worth less than others.

Every night I remind myself that I’ll wake up to new, fresh hells, and every day, I do. They push a little further each time. And because it doesn’t feel like collapse, people don’t recognize it. They call it normal. They tell themselves it’s temporary. But it’s not normal. And it’s not temporary. It’s strategic. And it won’t stop with the people they are targeting right now. It never does.

I saw a video today that broke me. ICE grabbed a father by the neck while he held his infant child. He began to seize. His partner screamed and fought to reach him, likely because he has a seizure disorder. She knew what was happening. She was trying to protect both him and their baby during a medical emergency. And no one helped. The police just stood there and watched.

We have to face what is happening. We need to demand that our local police protect and serve their communities. I know this opens up a complicated state vs. federal conflict, but enough is enough. We can’t keep standing by while 1930s and 1940s Germany plays out right in front of us. Watching that video made me physically sick. What kind of country are we now? How far are we willing to let this go?

And I’ll be honest. I’m devastated. There are moments when I can’t breathe under the weight of it. Moments when the cruelty, the apathy, the silence become so heavy that I feel like I might disappear inside the grief. I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do with it. I don’t know where to put the heartbreak. But I know I’m not alone. I know some of you are carrying it too.

And so tonight, I am not leaving you with hope, not because there isn’t any, but because hope without truth is denial. I’m leaving you with the truth for the moment we are in. We are at a crossroads where one side is starving the most vulnerable among us, collecting fellow humans and treating them like problems to be erased, as if they were less than human. While the other side is begging the country to help stop it.

And yet we have to keep pushing forward. I know we are tired. I know we are heartbroken. I know it feels like too much. But if we stop now, they win. If we keep going, together, they don’t stand a chance.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather