They are tearing down America’s moral and civic foundation right in front of our eyes.

Loyalty is rewarded not to country, but to cruelty. Truth is treated as treason, and treason is treated as honor.

You can feel it in every headline, in every conversation. The ground shifting. The air tightening.

A nation that once claimed to value courage and sacrifice now glorifies violence and betrayal.

We are watching the erosion happen in real time, the pillars of democracy flipped upside down one after another until the whole structure shakes.

Because this is not just destruction. It is the twisting, cheapening, and corrupting of values and institutions that are supposed to be honorable, protective, truthful, and sacred.

I’m from the United States of Violation.

I’ll never forget the day America turned on itself. January 6th, 2021. We were still mostly at home because of the pandemic. My husband and I had gone for a walk, just something ordinary to break the quiet. When we came back, my daughters called out: “Turn on the TV. You have to see this.”

And I did. And what I saw felt like the ground splitting open beneath me. A mob waving MAGA flags where the American flag should have been. Fists pounding. Windows breaking. The halls of Congress under siege.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure our government would survive the night. I didn’t know if Pence would hold the line. I didn’t know if Congress would certify the election. I didn’t know if democracy itself would live or die. That was the day I realized the breaking point had come. Not in theory, not in warnings, not in history books, but in real time, on my television, with my children watching beside me.

And what stunned me most was this: I thought there were lines Americans would never cross. But I was wrong.

Because now, almost five years later, Ashli Babbitt, who tried to break through a barricaded door in the Capitol that day and was shot by police as members of Congress were being evacuated, will be buried with full military honors.

A demonstrable traitor, wrapped in the flag she betrayed.

Full military honors mean “Taps,” a folded flag, a ceremonial honor guard.

These honors are supposed to belong to patriots. And now they are being handed to someone who tried to overthrow her own country.

This is not patriotism. This is violation. While she is honored, children are being lowered into graves every week without it. Children gunned down in classrooms and on playgrounds. Children who had no folded flags, no speeches, only parents clutching pictures and memories. This is the upside-down world we live in now: traitors celebrated while the innocent are left to die.

And it doesn’t stop there. Children are dying, yet instead of protecting them, vaccines that save lives are stripped away. Families are desperate for help, yet the tools of medicine are turned into weapons of propaganda. RFK Jr. now says he will “investigate” SSRIs and mass shootings. SSRIs are antidepressants taken safely by millions of Americans to treat depression and anxiety. His conclusion is already written. He will blame the medicine, just as he is preparing a “study” that blames autism on vaccines.

Because this isn’t really about medicine at all. It’s about deciding who gets to count as fully human. RFK Jr. has already told us who he believes are the undesirables: autistic people, people with ADHD, people who take SSRIs, people who vaccinate. And Trump has made his own list clear through years of policy and rhetoric. Brown people targeted by ICE raids. Immigrant families torn apart at the border. Communities of color singled out for surveillance, roundups, and blame. The poor written off as a burden instead of citizens. The list of who belongs in Trump and RFK Jr’s America grows smaller and smaller. This is not about public safety. It is not about mental health. It is about scapegoating, about building a country where dignity and protection are reserved for the few, and everyone else is treated as disposable.

History warns us what this looks like. The Nazis didn’t just burn books. They burned science. They expelled Jewish scientists. They shut down research. They smeared doctors. They turned knowledge into propaganda. Because truth was their greatest enemy. Germany lost some of its greatest minds, including Albert Einstein, who fled to America and changed the course of history. They weakened their own nation by purging truth.

And that is what is happening here. When they strip away vaccines, they are burning science. When they smear SSRIs, they are burning medicine. When they silence teachers, they are burning knowledge. Truth itself is on trial. That is what violation looks like.

Mary Trump said it best: he is the most powerful man on the planet, and it’s still not enough. Mary is not just his niece. She is a trained psychologist who has studied him for decades. And her warning should terrify every one of us. Because when a man like that feels cornered, when he feels the vultures circling, he will take everyone down with him.

Picture a drowning man thrashing in the water. He knows he’s going under. So he grabs anyone he can reach. And in his panic, he drags them down, too. That is Donald Trump. And that is what he is doing to America.

He is drowning, and unless we fight like hell, he will take the rest of us with him.

And you don’t have to look far to see what that looks like in practice. The cruelty isn’t limited to Washington, D.C., or to one man in the Oval Office. It filters down. It seeps into every agency, every decision, every abuse of power.

In Washington State, firefighters battling the largest wildfire of the year, men and women risking their lives to save homes and families, were arrested mid-operation by Border Patrol. They were detained on immigration charges and pulled off the line while the flames still raged. The entire 42-member crew was removed from the fire. Their reward for saving lives was punishment.

And what country does that to their heroes? The United States of Violation does. That’s who.

At the Department of Homeland Security, Trump has installed Heather Honey into a role overseeing election integrity. Most Americans have never heard of her, and that is exactly the problem. Honey is not a career expert in elections.

She is a Pennsylvania activist who pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud after the 2020 election. She produced a flawed report claiming tens of thousands of people voted illegally, and Trump himself cited her work to try to overturn the results.

Her claims were investigated and debunked, but that didn’t matter. Now, instead of being discredited, she has been rewarded with power. She is in charge of protecting the very system she tried to undermine.

Elevating an election denier into that position is not irony. It is a direct violation of democracy itself, because it hands the keys of trust to someone who has already tried to break it.

And Trump keeps dangling spectacle after spectacle, even floating a Republican National Convention before the midterms. National conventions have always been held in presidential election years, not midterms. They exist to nominate a presidential candidate and adopt a party platform. But Trump wants one early, in 2026, to stage another performance, to dominate the headlines, to turn democracy into theater. Because he doesn’t govern. He destroys, then distracts with spectacle.

And our allies see it too. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal, said out loud what many world leaders whisper behind closed doors: “The top leader of the world’s foremost superpower is, objectively, a Soviet or Russian asset. He operates as an asset.”

This should stop us cold. Because Portugal is not just any country. It is a founding member of NATO, the alliance built to stand against Soviet aggression and later Russian expansion. For a NATO founding leader to say the President of the United States is a Russian asset is more than an insult. It is an alarm bell.

It means trust is broken. It means the foundation of global security is shaking. And it means that what is being violated here is not only our Constitution and our democracy, but the very alliances that have kept the world from sliding into chaos for seventy-five years.

This is violation.

Piece by piece, brick by brick, they are tearing it all down. This is not patriotism. It is not leadership. It is violation of everything sacred about America.

But here’s what I need you to hear. Even in my heartbreak. Even in my fury. I refuse to give up. Because giving up means surrendering this country to a drowning man and the movement that worships him.

Giving up means handing our future to people who want fewer children alive, fewer families whole, fewer truths spoken. Giving up means letting violation become the new definition of America. And I will not do that. Neither should you.

The fight is not futile. It is painful. It is heartbreaking. But it is necessary. Because every time we show up, in protests, in courtrooms, at school board meetings, at the ballot box, we keep America from being dragged completely under. We stand for the children who deserve to grow up. We stand for the scientists and teachers and firefighters who deserve honor, not handcuffs. We stand for the truth that cannot be drowned.

I am from the United States of Violation. But I will not let that be the final word and I hope you won’t either.

What we can do right now is contact Senator Bill Cassidy’s office and tell him we will not forget his role in pushing RFK Jr.’s agenda.

Cassidy is a physician himself, and instead of standing up for science, he helped open the door for junk studies that attack life-saving medicine and vaccines.

He needs to hear that this is unacceptable, from his constituents and from the rest of us who will not sit quietly while science is violated for politics.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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