"The president is unhinged. He is unwell."

In a hallway, a stray moment caught on camera between two lawmakers.

Congresswoman Madeleine Dean turned to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and said what millions of us have been thinking: “The president is unhinged. He is unwell.”

Johnson shot back, dismissive: “A lot of folks on your side are too.”

Dean’s disbelief was immediate: “Oh my god, please. That performance in front of the generals?”

Johnson shrugged: “I didn’t see it.”

Dean didn’t let go: “It’s so dangerous! Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”

And she’s right. He is. Johnson didn’t even deny it. They both know it. We all know it. The world knows it. And that is her point.

And that shrug from Johnson, the highest-ranking Republican in the House, third in line to the presidency, tells us everything about the country we now live in. Once, a Speaker brushing off concerns about a president’s fitness would have been front-page scandal. Now it’s a casual non-denial in a hallway. Once, norms held. Now they’re ash.

We keep telling ourselves the Constitution will save us. That somewhere in those pages is the emergency brake. That if a president goes too far, there is a lever to pull. We whisper it like a prayer. The 25th Amendment.

But prayers don’t stop dictators.

And the 25th has never been pulled. Not once. Not when Nixon was drinking, spiraling in paranoia, talking to portraits in the White House, aides whispering about whether he could last another week. Not when Reagan’s staff worried he was forgetting meetings and repeating himself in the late 1980s. They considered the 25th in both cases. They didn’t act.

The 25th has four parts. Sections 1, 2, and 3 have been used before; Section 3 is the one presidents invoke when they hand power to a VP for a medical procedure, like George W. Bush did during colonoscopies. But Section 4, the one that lets the Cabinet and vice president declare a president unfit against his will, has never been touched. And it won’t be now.

Because Trump has built a government where loyalty is the only qualification. JD Vance isn’t vice president because of competence. He’s there because he’ll never invoke the 25th. Pete Hegseth isn’t “Secretary of War” because of experience. He’s there because he’ll never turn on Trump. Every Cabinet member has been chosen for one trait: obedience.

The 25th Amendment doesn’t work in a government stacked with courtiers. It’s a lifeboat on a ship the captain already sank.

And here’s what we don’t want to admit: the decline is visible. Watch Trump in 2015. He was never eloquent, but he was coherent. Now he loops, rambles, rages, circling endlessly around a stolen election and enemies in his head. We don’t need a doctor’s note. The proof is on tape. He is not the same man who first ran.

And so I keep asking: is he even making these decisions anymore? Or is he just being given familiar things to sign while the machinery of Project 2025 and Stephen Miller’s playbook churns behind him?

That clip from his first day back in office plays in my mind often, the one where he sat at the desk with a stack of executive orders, seemingly unsure what he was even signing. Did he even know? He didn’t seem to care. He signed anyway. That is the pattern. That is the danger.

But it isn’t just the 25th that’s worthless. The Hatch Act is supposed to stop taxpayer resources from being used for partisan politics. It was written in 1939 to make sure government jobs aren’t turned into campaign tools. It’s supposed to keep taxpayer-funded staff neutral. On paper, the penalties are serious: fines, suspension, even removal from office.

But for top staff, the only person who can enforce it is the president. Which means under Trump, it is another dead law.

Multiple officials violated it in Trump’s first term, according to The Office of Special Counsel. Trump ignored it. Kellyanne Conway violated it so many times that OSC formally recommended she be fired. Pete Hegseth’s partisan spectacle this week, standing before nearly 800 generals, would have been a clear violation under any other president. Under Trump, it’s rewarded.

The Hatch Act has bark but no bite because Trump has decided the only thing that matters is loyalty.

And now the propaganda is openly funded with our dollars. For the first time in our history, our government websites are blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

HUD even posted a banner on its website that read:
“The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”

That’s not a shutdown alert. That’s campaign propaganda. And it is a very dangerous line to cross.

And it goes deeper than just websites to propagate Project 2025. Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, admitted the plan: use the shutdown to fire federal workers permanently. Not pause them. Not furlough them. Fire them. Entire programs, WIC, food assistance, scientific research are being gutted, not temporarily, but permanently.

This isn’t budgeting. It’s demolition.

And while the public sector is gutted, the FCC is isolating communities from information. They just killed Biden-era Wi-Fi programs that gave poor and rural kids internet access. More than 200,000 hotspots gone. Millions cut off. That means kids in small towns who used to finish homework on library Wi-Fi or on school-bus routers are now simply cut off. This isn’t about saving money. This is about control. A child without internet is a child without access to independent voices. This will create more of Trump’s favorite people, “the uneducated”. He knows and has said that “smart people don’t like him”. He is counting on the uneducated to keep voting for him and his agenda.

Now the FCC is considering lifting the ban on mergers among the Big Four networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox. In the early 1980s, more than fifty companies owned most of America’s media. By the late 1990s, that number had shrunk to fewer than ten. Today, it’s just a handful. If the Big Four are allowed to merge, Trump won’t need to control dozens of outlets. He’ll only need to control wo or three. When fewer companies own the news, it’s easier for one president to pressure or control them. This is not deregulation. This is censorship through consolidation. It’s how propaganda takes root with direct access to viewers.

And in New York, $18 billion in infrastructure funding has been frozen. The Hudson River rail tunnel. The Second Avenue Subway extension. Lifelines for millions. Paused not because of engineering. Not because of budget. Because the projects had diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. This is the “war on woke” in practice. Not about pronouns. Not about language. About strangling infrastructure because equity offends Trump’s white-male base. About punishing millions for the sake of ideology.

And while the country is punished, the military is being bent to his will. Hegseth’s gathering of 800 top generals this week wasn’t a strategy session. It was a loyalty test. Officers clashed with him, but the message was clear: submit or be sidelined. And this is where our interest must remain. How will our brave and honorable service members meet this moment? When the tests turn into orders? When the loyalty demanded is no longer to the Constitution but to a man? When they are asked to cross lines they swore never to cross?

And now the Pentagon is preparing random polygraphs and mandatory NDAs for thousands of Defense Department staff. Polygraphs are notoriously unreliable. Everyone knows they don’t measure truth; they measure fear. And that’s the point. Sign the NDA or risk your career. Submit to the polygraph or risk your clearance. This isn’t counterintelligence. This is authoritarianism. This is how every regime cements itself: they go after the military first, because they know it’s the one institution that could stop them.

And then there is the propaganda. Trump shared an AI-generated video about “medbeds” — the conspiracy that alien technology can cure cancer, regenerate limbs, and reverse aging. It looked like Fox News. It featured Lara Trump. It promised miracle cures. It was fake. He deleted it. But millions saw it. And desperate people believed it.

Imagine being sick. Imagine watching a loved one die. Imagine clinging to hope for a cure. And then the president of the United States shares a video promising salvation if you keep him in power. That isn’t politics. That is exploitation.

And here’s the darker truth: this “medbeds” idea isn’t rooted in any science. It came from QAnon circles about “alien” technology. A sitting president brought a ridiculous QAnon fantasy into the mainstream. That’s the shift. Conspiracies used to rise from the fringe. Now they flow from the top down. From the president’s own account. That’s how you blur reality until truth dissolves.

And we have to stop and ask: does he actually believe this? Is he sitting in bed at night, scrolling through obviously fake videos, and hitting “share” because he thinks they’re real and worth spreading? This man is trusted with nuclear codes. He could start a world war with dire consequences in the blink of an eye. Could our enemies plant fake videos for him to see, manipulating him into unthinkable actions?

And it doesn’t stop there. He also shared AI fakes of Schumer and Jeffries saying things they never said. His followers believe those too. They think the videos are real. Our adversaries likely do too, or at least know how easily his base will believe them. That is the danger of a population trained to distrust every independent outlet until only one voice remains.

Each of these things would be enough on their own to question a president’s fitness. Together they form a pattern.

The safeguards are gone. The brakes don’t work. The Constitution is paper submerged in gasoline just waiting for someone to light a match.

The 25th Amendment is off the table. The Hatch Act is ignored. The budget process is weaponized. The military is intimidated. The media is consolidated. The desperate are exploited.

This is not dysfunction. This is authoritarianism.

History has shown us the pattern. Generals swearing loyalty not to a constitution but to a man. Ministries purged of dissent. Independent newspapers captured. Desperate citizens promised miracles that never come.

We are not 1933 Germany. But we are following the same script. Believing safeguards will save us when the safeguards have already been dismantled. Pretending the emergency brake will stop the train when the wires have already been cut.

And so the only question left is the one Madeleine Dean asked in that hallway. The president is unwell. How far are we willing to let this go?

I don’t want to live in a country where poor kids lose internet because the government wants them ignorant. Where the evening news comes from two or three companies loyal to one man. Where generals are forced to pass loyalty tests instead of defending the Constitution. Where the sick are fed AI-generated lies about alien cures. Where partisan propaganda is blasted out from taxpayer-funded websites.

And yet here we are.

That’s why today’s call to action is simple. NPR and PBS are still standing. Barely. Trump dismantled the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which once funded them, and they now survive only on donations.

They are two of the last independent still mainstream voices we have. They tell the truth. They publish facts. They tell stories corporate media ignores. And in a country where the FCC is cutting access and the White House is pushing propaganda, they are a lifeline.

If you can, donate. Even a little. Keep them alive. Keep them free.

Trump wanted them to starve. Let’s prove he can’t.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather