“This is an invasion” - Governor J.B. Pritzker

This week marks six months since I started writing about the collapse of truth in America.
Six months since I stopped waiting for someone else to say what so many of us were thinking. Six months since I realized that silence had become complicity.

I used to write about travel, but when propaganda replaced truth, even the most breathtaking places felt irrelevant. It’s hard to write about beaches when your country is burning. When COVID shut the world down, I started studying something else entirely, how viruses and lies spread. And I quickly learned that there isn’t much of a difference: both thrive in confusion, both mutate to survive, both can destroy what’s healthy if left unchecked.

When Trump was re-elected, that lesson stopped being abstract. It wasn’t just a story about disinformation anymore; it was our lives, our democracy, our future. It was the moment I understood how far the lie had traveled.

Misinformation is a mistake. Disinformation is strategy. And that’s what MAGA runs on. It’s not about misunderstanding, it’s about manipulation. It’s about keeping people angry, scared, and easy to control.

And once you start hearing it everywhere, you can’t unhear it. It seeps into the air like static, until even a walk on the beach feels heavy with someone else’s rage.

A year ago, my husband and I were walking along the water, the ocean calm, the air thick with another election cycle. Trump’s voice blared through the ads everywhere we turned with more fear, more lies, more enemies to hate. My husband said, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” I told him, “When he loses this one, it’s over.” I believed it completely. I thought America had learned.

For a few fleeting weeks, I let myself believe it. I let myself imagine that maybe this was the breaking point, that we’d finally had enough of the chaos and cruelty. I held on to that hope like a life raft as Election Day crept closer.

When it came time to vote, we went as a family, all four of us of voting age, walking into that polling place together. We dropped our ballots into the box on November 4th, and it felt like more than a civic duty. It felt like an act of faith. Not just in a candidate, but in the idea that decency could still win.

That night, I went to bed nervous but sure the country would do the right thing. Then, sometime around two in the morning, I woke up in the dark, heart racing, and realized Trump had won.

For days afterward, everything felt heavy and unreal. That shared numbness, the sense that something irreversible had happened and there was nothing we could do, hung over everyone I knew.

For a long time, I thought that numbness was safety. That if I stayed quiet long enough, maybe the storm would pass. But numbness is how it happens, isn’t it? That’s how entire nations slip, not because everyone agrees with the cruelty, but because too many people stop reacting to it.

History doesn’t repeat itself word for word, but it rhymes in terrifying ways. In the 1930s, ordinary Germans told themselves the chaos would burn out on its own. In Chile, people thought their institutions were too strong to fail. And in Hungary, they believed the courts would hold the line. But authoritarianism never arrives overnight, it creeps in while people convince themselves it can’t happen here.

And I see now that’s exactly what happened to me too. I told myself it couldn’t really happen here, not in America, not in my lifetime. I thought our checks and balances were strong enough, our people decent enough, our history clear enough. But that’s how every generation loses its footing, by mistaking the comfort of being safe for the guarantee of staying free.

For a while, I just carried that thought quietly. It sat heavy, somewhere between guilt and confusion. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what. I kept waiting for someone else to lead, someone louder, braver, more certain.

Until one afternoon in downtown San Diego, when I stumbled upon the “No Kings” protest. I hadn’t planned to go. I was just dropping my daughter off and saw the crowd. I grabbed my camera and took a picture of a young man holding a sign that said, “When your grandchildren ask what side of history you were on today, will you be proud of what you tell them?” That question knocked the air out of me, and I posted it on my Facebook page.

That photo went viral. Fifty-six thousand likes. Thousands of comments. People saying what I had been feeling, that they were scared, angry, ready to fight back. It reminded me that there were more good people than bad. That we weren’t alone.

And so I started writing again. That was six months ago today.

Now we find ourselves in what I call the long year between elections, the year where everything will be decided, not by politicians but by people. Not by who shouts the loudest, but by who refuses to give up. A little over twelve months until the midterms.

This long year is a crossing. A wilderness. The space between who we were and who we’re still trying to be. And what we do in this year will decide both which side of history we stand on, and what kind of country we will leave behind.

Because if you look around right now, it’s impossible not to see what’s happening, and how much more dire it’s grown. The air feels heavier, the lies come faster, and the line between law and power keeps dissolving.

The president has already ordered 300 members of California’s National Guard into Oregon, without permission, without need, ignoring state law and the courts. Gavin Newsom is suing him, calling it a breathtaking abuse of power.

And now, he’s also ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard to deploy to Illinois, Oregon, and other states that never asked for them. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker says no one even discussed it with him. He doesn’t need them. He doesn’t want them.

Gov. Pritzker is calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for the move, saying what every American should be saying right now: this is an invasion.

That’s what this is, Trump pitting states against states. Turning our own National Guards into political props instead of protectors. Those men and women were never meant to invade other states. They exist for emergencies, for natural disasters, for defense, not for show. This is how authoritarians work: they test boundaries, they look for silence, and if no one stops them, they push further.

At the same time, the White House is threatening mass layoffs of federal workers if budget talks “go nowhere.” Past shutdowns meant temporary furloughs. This one means permanent pink slips. That’s not negotiation, it’s intimidation dressed as governance. It’s using ordinary Americans’ paychecks as leverage.

Even a few Republicans are starting to see it. Senators like Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis are warning that Trump’s plan to freeze $28 billion in infrastructure funds for blue states is poisoning trust in government. When a president uses funding to reward loyalty and punish dissent, that’s not politics, it’s extortion.

And while this chaos plays out, the Supreme Court is preparing to hear a slate of cases that will decide the future of equality itself, on LGBT rights, guns, and race. They’re not resolving disputes anymore; they’re rewriting the moral code of the nation. And we have to ask ourselves: whose moral code will it be? The one enshrined in the Constitution, or the one drafted in the backrooms of Project 2025, written in the language of alt-right Christianity and control?

Even our history is being rewritten. Across the country, national park exhibits are quietly changing. Plaques that once told the hard truths about slavery, genocide, and stolen land are being softened or removed. It’s not education, it’s revisionism. When a country starts sanitizing its history, it’s not protecting pride. It’s erasing conscience.

Even the language itself is changing. Trump recently called Russia a “paper tiger,” a phrase lifted straight from Mao Zedong’s Cold War propaganda. That’s not coincidence; that’s mimicry. It’s the same playbook, turn the enemy into a caricature, turn yourself into the savior, and reduce global politics to a slogan.

And he’s back to joking about Canada becoming America’s 51st state, as if the sovereignty of nations is just another applause line. It’s absurd, yes, but so were the early signs of every strongman who ever tested the limits of decency before breaking them. Every time he mocks our allies or treats our neighbors as pawns, he fractures the very partnerships that once kept the world steady. He disrespects the nations that have stood beside us through war and peace alike, and in doing so, he throws the global balance off kilter.

Each of these acts, sending troops across borders, threatening mass layoffs, rewriting history, might seem separate. But together they form the pattern of an authoritarian regime: punish, distract, divide, repeat. That’s the strategy. And seeing it clearly is how we stop it.

We’ve seen this before, even here at home. McCarthy blacklists. The internment of Japanese Americans. The raids on civil rights workers. Every generation is tested by the same question: will we protect freedom only when it’s easy, or also when it’s dangerous?

Because this is how democracies fall. Not with a single coup or a single law, but by normalizing corruption until outrage turns into exhaustion. When people stop noticing, when cruelty becomes wallpaper, that’s when freedom quietly slips away.

I know some nights it feels impossible to keep faith. I’ve felt it too, that quiet voice that asks if we’re already too far gone. But every time I sit down to write, I remember that despair is what they want. It’s the silence that makes room for them. And hope, even when it trembles, is an act of resistance. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier.” I think about that often now, how choosing hope, even when it shakes, is its own kind of courage.

Every morning when I sit down to write, I think about that young man’s sign and ask myself the same question: when my grandchildren ask what I did in this moment, will I be proud of my answer? That’s what keeps me going.

From November to November, this is our window. Our chance to show that democracy isn’t an institution, it’s a living thing that survives only if we protect it.

Maybe your act of resistance looks like making yard signs, volunteering, helping a neighbor who’s struggling, or sharing a story that cuts through the noise. Every small act counts. Every person who refuses to look away keeps the light on just a little longer.

I remind myself that others have walked through darker years than this and still found the courage to build again. The marchers at Selma didn’t know if anyone would follow. The women who first demanded to vote didn’t know if anyone would listen. But they did it anyway, and because they did, we can too.

There are still sunsets, laughter, and moments of joy even as the world shakes, proof that beauty and resilience often share the same sky. That’s what we’re fighting for, the right to keep living freely. The road ahead will not be easy. Growth never is. There will be valleys before the mountain. But the America we love, the one that values truth, decency, and compassion, is still within reach. We just have to keep walking toward it.

Thank you for being here. For reading. For standing in the light. For proving that hope still has an audience.

Six months ago, I started writing because I was afraid of what silence would cost. Today, I keep writing because I’ve seen what hope can build.

Because silence is surrender.
As long as I’m still writing and you’re still reading, I know hope is still alive.
And as long as there’s hope, we still have a country worth saving.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather