We were told this couldn’t happen here.

Today, December 8th, Donald Trump barked at a reporter, “I think we take like 88 different shots all wrapped up in one, one big glass of stuff like that.” He pointed at a water glass and added, “And we’re going to be reducing it very substantially.” That’s the President of the United States, rambling gibberish and made-up science, describing Americans as being injected with 88 vaccines at once, in enough liquid to fill a water glass. He said this while announcing a $12 billion taxpayer bailout for farmers, farmers who are suffering because of the very trade policies he created. This isn’t just failed leadership, it’s blatant medical disinformation coming from the top of our government. And as much as I want to say this was intentional chaos, I think the simpler truth is that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and he covers it with lies and nonsense.

If you’re watching this and thinking, how is this real, how can he be the leader of what was the free world, you’re not alone. I see it in your comments every day. You want to do something. You want to help more. But it feels overwhelming, like whatever you do won’t be enough. I know that feeling. That’s exactly why I walked away from everything else and made this my full-time work. Not because it’s easy or convenient, but because I couldn’t justify doing anything else while the country falls apart in plain sight. I couldn’t let my children, or the world’s children, inherit this without a fight. So I’m doing the one thing I know how to do: write about it. I research, I learn as much as I can every single day, I connect the dots, and I tell the truth out loud. Because corporate media isn’t going to save us, especially now that they’ve surrendered their independence, their integrity, and their role as a fact-checker to the Trump Regime.

And we need to stop pretending the media we grew up with is still doing the job we once trusted it to do. Too many people still think turning on the news at night will tell them what is really happening in our country. But that’s not how this works anymore. Corporate media, even the parts that still have a few good people left, is owned, filtered, and constrained. What’s left is mostly fluff pieces with softened headlines, pro-Trump slants, and watered-down coverage masking a collapsing democracy.

Meanwhile, the independent voices actually telling the truth, many of whom were removed from long-standing corporate media positions, are doing the work with far less institutional support. And while they do the work of ten people by themselves, people with no qualifications beyond their connection to MAGA are raking in millions to spread fascist propaganda.

I know how that system works. I was inside it, thankfully not in the MAGA space. I’m an original content creator. I built PR campaigns. I ghostwrote major ads. I worked with global brands. I built a blog with income in the millions. I know exactly how easy it would be to flip sides and get rich pushing lies. There’s endless dark money ready to fund that.

What many of those who’ve aligned themselves with efforts to dismantle this country fail to realize, though, or choose to ignore, is that they won’t be spared. Eventually, the very system they helped break will turn on them, and by then, even their money won’t protect them.

And since we no longer have the kind of news reporting we had in years past, here’s what you need to know today, starting with the farm bailout.

Earlier today, Trump sat at a table with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and announced a $12 billion bailout for farmers. On the surface, making sure our farmers stay economically stable looks like a smart move. But there’s more to this story, and the timeline matters. Trump placed tariffs on Chinese goods, triggering a trade war that backfired almost immediately. China stopped buying our soybeans and turned to Argentina and Brazil instead. Since tariffs are not paid by foreign countries, they’re paid by us; they raise costs here, collapse demand abroad, and wreck the industries they claim to protect.

So now we have American farmers devastated, and Argentina, the country that replaced us in China’s supply chain, teetering on economic collapse. And how did Trump respond? He gave Argentina $20 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to help stabilize its economy (another $20 billion reportedly came from private funds). He bailed out the country that took our market. And after the bailout, Argentina removed export taxes on soybeans and struck a deal with China, which further undercut US farmers. Then, with American farmers still drowning from the mess he caused, he announced a $12 billion bailout for them, too. And to be clear, helping farmers isn’t new. We do it often, especially when markets shift or weather hits hard. But this case is different. The government directly caused the crisis, it’s now using public money to fix, and that makes it something else entirely.

That’s $32 billion in taxpayer money used to patch up a crisis he created from both ends. And he still has the audacity to call what he’s doing to this country “America First.” But we’ve seen this play before. In the 1930s, the U.S. passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, thinking it would protect American jobs. Instead, it collapsed global trade and deepened the Great Depression. Trump’s obsession with tariffs ignores that history, and his entire economic approach is stuck in a warped version of the 1980s. He still thinks slapping tariffs on everything is a sign of strength.

But even Ronald Reagan warned against that kind of thinking: “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works, but only for a short time... High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars... Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.” Trump either doesn’t understand that or doesn’t care. Because every time, it’s working families who pay the price.

We also learned today that ICE has, in fact, been arresting exactly who we feared would be caught up in this cruelty. Between January 20 and October 15, nearly 75,000 people arrested by ICE had no criminal history, according to data obtained by the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project in a lawsuit against federal officials. It’s important to understand what that actually means, because this is not how ICE was ever sold to the public. These aren’t hardened criminals. In most cases, they aren’t criminals at all. These are parents. Students. Workers. Neighbors. People who have built entire lives here. And they’re being swept into detention centers and deportation pipelines with no criminal history whatsoever.

And today we learned more about how Trump, the self-declared “peace president,” really feels about ending wars. Speaking at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, he said, “I have to say that I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the peace proposal,” before adding, “Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country... but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy is fine with it.”

While Russian missiles rain down on Ukrainian cities, Trump is scolding the Ukrainian president for not embracing a so-called “peace plan”, a plan his own allies drafted that would let Russia keep the land it stole. Most Americans hear the words “peace plan” and assume it means an end to war. But history makes it clear: appeasement in the face of aggression doesn’t bring peace. It brings the next war.

In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed an agreement handing Hitler part of Czechoslovakia, a deal that was supposed to guarantee “peace in our time.” Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and launched World War II.

Trump’s version of diplomacy follows the same failed blueprint: surrender as a strategy. He’s pressuring an invaded democracy to accept terms that benefit its invader, then selling it to Americans as leadership.

Today was also a busy day at the Supreme Court, where justices heard arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a case that could hand Donald Trump unchecked power to fire independent regulators. These are the officials responsible for enforcing laws that protect Americans from corporate fraud, predatory lending, labor exploitation, food safety violations, monopoly abuse, and financial corruption. Trump wants the ability to remove them at will and replace them with loyalists who will serve him, not the law. And based on today’s arguments, the Court appears likely to give him that power.

On the surface, it sounds like a technicality, but what he’s really asking for is the authority to gut every agency designed to serve the public. He’s demanding the Court overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a landmark 1935 ruling that created firewalls between the presidency and independent agencies. That precedent has survived nearly 90 years of political pressure, through war, scandal, and crisis, precisely because it prevents the kind of retaliation Trump is now openly seeking. His legal team is justifying his firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter under so-called Article II authority. His Solicitor General, John Sauer, told the Court that Humphrey’s ruling is a “decaying husk” and warned that federal agencies now wield “enormous power” without proper executive control.

The Court took the bait. Justice Gorsuch, in an earlier ruling, said courts should not reinstate wrongly fired officials, just give them back pay. Justice Kavanaugh floated that some entities, like the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, may deserve limited protection, but the others? Not so much. The liberal justices pushed back. They warned that this would “destroy the structure of government.” Then came the most direct warning of the day. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said plainly, as reported by The Daily Signal, that if the Court overturns Humphrey’s Executor, Donald Trump would gain “absolute power.”

And she’s right. These agencies exist for one reason: to prevent this exact scenario. They are built so that no president, not even one who surrounds himself with grifters, criminals, or fascists, can interfere with investigations or weaponize government against the people it was meant to protect. If Trump wins this case, every guardrail comes off. He’ll be able to eliminate anyone standing in his way, not because they broke the law, but because they tried to enforce it. This is how autocracy takes hold.

Earlier today, we also learned that Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Alina Habba, will “step down” from her role as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey after multiple federal judges determined she was unlawfully serving as the state’s top federal prosecutor. According to The Independent US, she said in a statement that she will now serve as a “senior advisor” to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

It’s a reminder that while many of our institutions are under attack, the lower courts, especially the federal district and circuit courts, are still holding the line. In fact, some of the most important preservation of our democracy in this moment is coming from them. They’ve kept critical guardrails in place, even as the highest court in the land inches closer to surrender.

So yes, a lot happened today, and none of it is random. The propaganda machine is working. Trump uses every press conference, every post, every talking point to push a narrative. And then, like clockwork, his surrogates, members of Congress, media figures, and cabinet officials repeat those same words. It’s coordinated. And it’s how they win the messaging war.

And that’s why I’m here every day, sharing what is really happening. Because even if some people are not ready to accept that our country is under attack from the inside, they’re seeing the truth here. And one day, when they’re ready, they might look back and remember something I said, or you shared. And realize they don’t have to keep going along with this.

And back to what can we do to stop this? Here’s the answer: whatever we can. Help someone in your community. Join a local action group. Help a migrant family find legal representation. Support independent media. Help make the truth spread faster than the propaganda.

The next 11 months will be brutal. The noise will get louder. The lies will get bolder. The cruelty will escalate. But if we stay focused, if we cut through it together, we can still hold the line and build a country from the ashes that is a place for all to belong, safely and without fear.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can help keep this work going by subscribing to my Substack; there’s a free option, or you can become a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. Paid subscriptions help me reach more people, cover more ground, and keep telling the truth about what’s happening to our country.