There Is No Right Way to Live Through a Fascist Takeover

There are days when I wonder what history will call this time. A breakdown. A coup. A slow-motion collapse.

Will it remember those of us that pushed back, that stood up and said “not today, not on my watch”? Or will it focus on those that deep down knew they were on the wrong side of history, but liked the way it felt?

Because on the days when I’m extra tired. When I have to push through the non stop onslaught of bad news, I think about this. I think about my legacy decades before I should be.

And I know that you are tired too.

Tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Tired from carrying grief in one hand and rage in the other, trying to keep both from falling while making breakfast or paying bills or helping a child with their homework.

Tired of pretending this is normal when every part of us knows it isn’t.

But if no one has told you this today, let me be the one to say it:

You’re doing it right.

There is no right way to live through a fascist takeover. There is only your way. And if you’re still standing, still resisting, still finding joy where you can, still telling the truth, then you are doing it exactly right.

Because this week, the lies got louder. But the resistance did too.

In California, Governor Newsom announced a coalition of governors forming a new Public Health and Safety Alliance, because the federal government has walked away from its most basic responsibility: protecting public health.

Trump dismantled the CDC, replaced science with ideology, and left states to fend for themselves. Now, this alliance of governors is stepping in to safeguard access to vaccines, medication, and life-saving data from being twisted by politics.

“Politics has no place in public health,” Newsom said.
Because when science is silenced, people die.

But there’s another layer here, one we can’t ignore.

We’re still paying federal taxes. Still funding a government that abandoned its post. And now states like California are left scrambling, stretching their own budgets to cover what used to be federal responsibility. That’s not just dereliction. That’s theft.

And while I’m thankful for Newsom and every governor standing up to do the right thing, it also feels like the beginning of something we haven’t named yet. A soft kind of secession. A slow, forced unraveling of what was once united.

What happens to the people trapped in states where science has been erased? Where public health is a culture war battlefield? Not everyone can pack up and move. “Just leave” isn’t a solution, it’s a surrender. They deserve protection too.

Because I still believe in the United States of America.
Not Trump’s version. Not the divided states he’s carving out, one crisis at a time.
The real version. The one we were taught to believe in, even when it failed us.

And while this alliance is the best option we have right now, it still leaves millions behind. It still costs us more. It still makes us more vulnerable.

Because viruses don’t stop at state lines. They don’t check for party affiliation. They don’t care where you live or who you voted for. Public health is national. Global. Collective.

So yes, I’m grateful Newsom is doing this. But I hate that he has to.
And I hate that even when we lead with courage, we’re still playing defense.

Meanwhile, air traffic controllers are sounding the alarm, not just for themselves, but for all of us.

The FAA has furloughed over 11,000 employees, halting essential services like training new air traffic controllers, conducting aircraft certification inspections, and overseeing safety programs. Another 17,000 are working without pay, including the very people guiding our planes, inspecting our skies, and keeping passengers safe.

But how long can they keep showing up?

They’re not superheroes. They’re human. Many are already stretched thin, commuting long distances and working brutal shifts. When paychecks stop, gas tanks do too. Groceries run out. Childcare disappears. And eventually, even the most dedicated worker has to make an impossible choice: show up unpaid or stay home and survive.

In a system as intricate as aviation, you can’t just remove thousands of people and expect nothing to give. This is one of the most complex, high-stakes networks in the world. A single lapse, a misread altitude, a missed maintenance check, a tired voice in a control tower, can lead to catastrophe.

We’ve been here before. After Reagan fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers during the 1981 PATCO strike, it took more than a decade to recover.. The system became leaner, more fragile, and dangerously dependent on the goodwill of overworked professionals.

Now we’re repeating that history, this time under the weight of a politically driven shutdown.

This isn’t sustainable. This isn’t safe. This is sabotage by neglect.

And the only reason this government is shut down is because Republicans chose cruelty over care. They chose posturing over policy. They held funding hostage, not because Democrats refused to compromise, but because they refused to cave to a plan that would gut healthcare subsidies, slash social programs, and shift the burden onto working families.

This isn’t a fiscal debate. It’s a power play.

And Mike Johnson is taking it one step further.

He is still refusing to seat Arizona’s newly elected Democratic Congresswoman, despite her election being certified. It has been weeks now. Over 700,000 constituents, American citizens, have no voice in the House of Representatives because one man decided the rules don’t apply to him.

Why? Because if she’s sworn in, it would allow Democrats the votes they need to further the release of the Epstein files.

That’s what this is about. It’s not justice. It’s delay. It’s another test balloon to see how far they can stretch the Constitution before it snaps. If they can silence one certified voice now, what will they do when multiple Democrats win in 2026 or 2028?

Will they block them too? Will they leave entire states voiceless?

This is how autocracies grow, not with a bang, but with the quiet normalization of obstruction. With procedural sabotage. With the slow erosion of norms that used to be sacred. Every time we allow it, it becomes precedent. And every precedent becomes the new floor from which they sink lower next time.

This isn’t just about one seat. It’s about whether your vote still counts if the other side doesn’t like who you picked.

Because if elections don’t translate to representation, we’re not a democratic republic anymore.

While Republicans are busy erasing representation and dismantling domestic programs, Trump is quietly reshaping how the world sees us, and how we’re allowed to see the world.

This week, for the first time in modern history, the U.S. passport dropped out of the top ten most powerful travel documents in the world. That may sound like a bureaucratic shift, but it’s actually a warning sign, a red flag waving over our global standing.

Under Trump’s isolationist policies, American travelers now face more restrictions than they have in decades: mandatory visas for countries we once entered freely, new financial bonds, tighter background checks, and additional layers of scrutiny. Our mobility is no longer assumed. It has to be earned, country by country.

This isn’t just about travel. It’s about control. It’s about restricting our access to information, to global perspective, to connection. Because the more you see, the harder it becomes to fall for the lie that America is the only place where people are free. Or were free.

When you leave the borders of your own country, you see how others live. You hear how their governments treat them, how their children are educated, how their healthcare systems work, how their workers are valued. You begin to question why we can’t have those things too. And people who question don’t blindly comply.

That’s why autocrats fear open borders, not because they let people in, but because they let ideas out.

This is not accidental. It is deliberate.

Trump doesn’t want Americans traveling freely. He wants us walled in, physically, politically, psychologically. He wants our vision of the world limited to cable news and propaganda that he controls, not personal experience and connection.

And this matters not just for individuals, but for our democracy. Isolation breeds misinformation. It breeds fear. And fear is how they keep control.

And while everyday Americans are losing access and credibility abroad, Trump just quietly doubled a bailout package for Argentina, from $20 billion to $40 billion.

No congressional debate. No transparency. No accountability. Just a backdoor deal pulled from private funding streams.

Sometimes, yes, global stabilization efforts are necessary. Supporting other nations during economic collapse can help prevent regional chaos and broader international fallout. But that’s not what this looks like. This isn’t a strategic act of diplomacy, it’s a pattern of erratic, secretive spending with unclear motives.

Argentina is in economic crisis. That much is true. But this is also the same country now selling soybeans to China, a deal that once belonged to American farmers before Trump’s own tariff war drove China to seek suppliers elsewhere.

So now, in an ironic twist, we’re pumping billions into Argentina, after our policies pushed them to the front of the line, and our farmers are left with empty silos and broken trade promises.

And if it was $20 billion last week and $40 billion this week, what’s it going to be next month?

Where’s the oversight? Where’s the benefit to the American people?

Because while Trump sends billions abroad without process or explanation, our own economy is stuck in shutdown mode. Federal workers are going unpaid. Military families are rationing groceries. Families are wondering if their childcare subsidies will vanish next.

This isn’t smart global strategy. It’s reckless favoritism. A distraction. A headline he’ll use to inflate his image as a dealmaker, while we foot the bill.

And while the financial screws tighten and shutdown chaos grabs the headlines, something even darker leaked out, something that should have set off alarms in every newsroom and hallway of power.

2,900 pages of Telegram chat logs. Not from some anonymous fringe militia. But from the National Young Republicans.

This is not a college club. This is not a group of immature teens saying reckless things online. These are staffers. Operatives. Future candidates. People between the ages of 18 and 40, working in politics today or positioning themselves to run tomorrow. The name might say “young,” but these are grown adults. And their messages were not just edgy or offensive, they were violently explicit.

They joked about watching people burn in ovens, like in the Holocaust. They praised Hitler. They shared rape fantasies. They talked openly about violence as a political tool.

And when confronted with the horror of these messages, the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, didn’t condemn them. He didn’t call for resignations or an investigation or a moral reckoning.

He dismissed it all with a smirk and a single line:
“I’m sick of the pearl-clutching.”

That is the second-highest official in our government. That’s the voice of power, telling a generation of extremists: don’t worry, you’re fine. Keep going.

This is not normal. And it cannot be normalized.

Because this is how democracies don’t just die, but rot from the inside out. Not with one loud crash, but with a quiet shrug. When hatred becomes networking. When cruelty becomes culture. When resumes include fascist talking points and party leaders look the other way.

It starts with Telegram chats. It ends with legislation, raids, and orders signed in the dead of night.

We are not alarmed because we’re delicate. We’re alarmed because we’ve seen this before. And history doesn’t end well for the countries that ignore the warning signs.

And the rot doesn’t stop in group chats or private channels.
It climbs ladders. It wears robes.
It settles into the highest court in the land, rewriting the rules not with slurs, but with silence.
Because some power doesn’t shout.
It whispers through rulings.

The Supreme Court is now preparing to gut the Voting Rights Act, again.

This time, they’re going after the requirement that states with a proven history of racial discrimination must prove their voting maps aren’t designed to suppress minority voters.

That protection has been a lifeline. It kept some of the worst abuses in check. It ensured that districts couldn’t be carved up to silence Black communities or dilute their power.

Now, the Court wants to call this burden “unfair.” They say it’s time for “race-neutral” redistricting.

But that’s just a mask over the same old suppression.

Jim Crow didn’t vanish. It morphed.

No more literacy tests at polling places. No more poll taxes or jelly bean jars to count.
Now the tools are digital. Quiet. Calculated.
The suppression lives in the software, hidden in algorithms, behind legal jargon, buried in district lines.

It’s surgical. And the outcome is the same.

Black and Brown communities cut into pieces. Their voices divided across counties, their power dissolved.

And when they protest? The same forces that gerrymandered them out of representation will call it “election integrity.”

If this protection falls, Republicans would gain a powerful tool to redraw dozens of districts without oversight. According to Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter, weakening or striking down Section 2 of the VRA could hand Republicans at least 19 additional seats in the House, just from map manipulation alone.

This isn’t just a legal debate. It’s a power grab.

And just when you think the script can’t get any darker, they turn the page, from erasing votes to erasing voices.

That plan includes this: the State Department just revoked the legal visas of six foreign nationals who had spoken out against Charlie Kirk after his assassination.

They had done nothing illegal. They broke no law. They were not inciting violence. But they expressed dissent, and the government punished them for it.

This isn’t just a bureaucratic decision, it’s a warning shot. Six foreign nationals legally here on visas were deported because they criticized Charlie Kirk. They didn’t incite violence. They didn’t break laws. They spoke out, and they were punished.

Today it’s visas. Tomorrow, it could be green cards. Naturalized citizens. Children born here with only one parent who was an American by birth.

The lines always move in regimes like this. The goalposts shift until no one feels safe unless they’re silent.

Then came the announcement: Trump’s administration plans to fire missiles from U.S. warships onto California land.
Not in response to any threat. Not for defense. But for a spectacle.

Missiles. Fired from American warships onto American soil.
During fire season.
While shutting down one of California’s major freeways, a vital artery connecting cities, businesses, and families.

This isn’t policy.
It’s propaganda.

It’s the kind of authoritarian distraction meant to flood the news cycle.
To drown out the sound of protestors chanting “No Kings” in cities across the country, rallies that shake the ground.
Rallies Trump wants everyone to forget.

Governor Newsom was clear: “Put aside your vanity parade and pay our troops instead.”

Because while this president plays war for the cameras, our troops are unpaid.

This is not about national security.
It’s about national dominance.
It’s the kind of power performance authoritarians use when they’re losing control.

But not everyone is surrendering.

Brown University rejected a White House backroom deal offering special treatment in exchange for loyalty. They said no. Because academia matters.

Authoritarians always target universities. They fear ideas. They smear the educated. They call inquiry elitist and truth propaganda.

But Brown said no. And they are not alone.

When the Department of War, now rebranded under Pete Hegseth, demanded that journalists sign new contracts surrendering their First Amendment rights, they walked out.

CNN. NBC. Even Fox. Even Newsmax. They refused to comply. Only OANN signed.

Free press is not conditional. It is the last firewall against unchecked power. It was the press that uncovered Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon Papers. Watergate. Without reporters behind those walls, we lose the stories that could save us. We lose the oxygen that makes resistance possible. Every journalist who turned in their badge this week became a first responder in the fight to save our democracy.

Some days I can’t catch my breath between the headlines. Some days I’m folding laundry while reading court rulings, or stirring dinner while replaying the sound of sirens from a protest video. And still, I feel everything. That’s part of the resistance too, refusing to harden, refusing to disappear into numbness. We are still human. That matters.

So if today you are grieving, raging, laughing, marching, calling, hiding, writing, teaching, parenting, healing, or simply surviving, you are doing it right.

Because someday, history will give this moment a name.
A chapter heading. A warning. A line that students underline in textbooks.

But you? You’ll already know what it felt like to live through it.
To hold the line. To whisper the truth when others went silent.

And that matters. More than they want us to believe. You are what hope looks like when it gets tired but doesn’t quit. You are the firewall.

Still here. Still resisting. Still refusing to forget what this country is supposed to be.

Let history name it later. For now, we live it, and we don’t back down. We keep going.

That’s how we win.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather