You’ll have to forgive us. The United States is suffering from selective amnesia.

Where there are so many atrocities happening at once that our brains are choosing what to remember and what to save for our nightmares.

Where the moment something goes wrong, a louder outrage follows to erase it.

Where we’re expected to forget what just happened, because the next fire needs all our attention.

Where the people responsible for chaos are counting on us not to remember.

Where Pete Hegseth, the man who oversaw Signalgate, still holds security clearance after leaking U.S. military plans through unsecured Signal chats.

Where there might be a sham investigation. But the damage is permanent, and those in command don’t actually care.

U.S. airstrike details in Yemen. Operational timing. Classified emails. Exposed to journalists, friends, and family, including Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat.

He will never unknow what he knows. And when Hegseth walks away, so does every threat he carries. He will always know too much. And I don’t think we talk about that enough.

Where his brother, Philip Hegseth, DHS senior advisor (let’s not even talk about how he received this position), is drafting DHS memos about the U.S. Army carrying out mass deportations across the country for years to come.

Where the U.S. Army might be deployed here, in the U.S., for domestic issues.

This is unheard of. And frankly, unconstitutional.

The military is not to be used against the American people. And we only know about it because it was leaked. All our worst fears about Trump’s plans for the military, confirmed.

To add more context, if true, and such a plan existed, it would be:

Unprecedented in modern U.S. history
Illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act
Unconstitutional without direct Congressional action
Politically explosive and likely unenforceable in practice

The U.S. Army cannot legally be deployed to carry out mass deportations on U.S. soil under current law. Doing so would trigger a constitutional crisis.

But here’s the part we can’t overlook: that memo leaked.

Someone saw it. Someone shared it. Someone still inside the system said no. And that matters.

That means we are not alone. That means there are still people behind the scenes who care more about country than compliance. People who are trying to slow this down from the inside. People who are risking something to get the truth to us.

And we should take comfort in that. We should take hope from it.

Because every system under siege needs internal resistance. And clearly, we still have it.

Where each abuse of power is a trial balloon, and most of them pass the test. Because while we’re all focused on the next catastrophe, the last one vanishes.

Where our selective amnesia saves us from an overload we could not carry.

Where The Appropriations Committee just passed Section 453 of H.R. 4368, quietly shielding Syngenta, the Chinese-owned manufacturer of Paraquat, one of the deadliest herbicides in American agriculture, from any future lawsuits tied to its chemical's damage.

Paraquat is a fast-acting, non-selective weed killer sprayed on massive monocrops like soy, corn, and wheat. A single teaspoon is enough to kill a human.

Because of its extreme toxicity, it has long been classified by the EPA as a Restricted Use Pesticide, limited to licensed applicators who must complete mandatory federal training every three years.

Until recently, it could only be handled in closed-system containers to prevent spills and accidental exposure. Labels were required to say:

“ONE SIP CAN KILL.”

But now, thanks to Section 453, slipped into an agriculture funding bill and approved by the House Appropriations Committee on July 22, 2025, would mean anyone harmed by Paraquat can no longer sue. Not now, and not in the future.

Victims are locked out of courtrooms, even if they followed every regulation.

The provision doesn’t make Paraquat safer. It just removes the last layer of accountability.

Paraquat exposure is linked to a 250 percent increase in Parkinson’s disease, along with lung fibrosis, kidney failure, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and pediatric leukemia, especially among farmers, applicators, and rural families who never consented to exposure but got it anyway through air and groundwater.

Over 50 countries have banned Paraquat, including China, where Syngenta is headquartered.

But the U.S. still sprays it across millions of acres of farmland. And now, by law, the companies profiting from it are immune from consequences.

That’s not regulation. That’s protection for poison.

But this isn’t just about one pesticide or one company. It sets a precedent: that corporate liability can be erased by congressional favor, even when public health is on the line.

The message is clear: if profits are big enough, the harm can be ignored.

Where reproductive freedom is under attack on every front.

Trump’s administration is now working to strip abortion access from veterans, even in cases of rape, incest, or when their health is at risk. Biden’s VA rule allowed care in those cases. This new proposal erases it.

Over 55 percent of women veterans live in states with abortion bans. Now even their federal protections are under siege.

These are women who risked everything to serve their country, only to be abandoned when they need care the most.

The right to fertility care is also becoming political.

The White House says it supports IVF access, but still has no plan to require coverage, even after promising it on the campaign trail.

Millions of Americans in red states could lose access to in vitro fertilization, and the federal government refuses to act.

The same politicians who want to ban abortion are also working to block embryos from being stored, fertilized, or implanted.

Women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

They say they want women to have more babies. They campaign on “pro-life.” They scream that every pregnancy must be carried. But the minute a woman struggles to conceive, the door slams shut.

IVF? Too political. Too complicated. Too inconvenient to protect.

Never mind that IVF can increase the risk of ectopic pregnancy, a condition that’s fatal if untreated.

And guess what the treatment is? Abortion.

So even if you desperately want a child, if something goes wrong, their policy is: die quietly.

They are not pro-life. They are not pro-birth. They are pro-control.

And women are being crushed under it from every direction.

And the irony? Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the national fertility rate continues to decline.

Turns out, criminalizing care doesn’t lead to more babies; it leads to more trauma, more isolation, more death, and more women scared to become pregnant, so they don’t.

Trump lies during the campaign with promises he never intends to keep, and then counts on our selective amnesia to kick in once again.

Where Las Vegas, the last illusion of escape, is breaking under pressure. Visitor rates are down. Hotel occupancy is down.

Vegas isn’t dying because people stopped dreaming; it’s dying because people stopped traveling from outside the U.S. for fear of being caught up in how we treat our visitors.

Those already here stopped coming because they don’t have the expendable income they used to. And they’re worried the next great recession, or worse, is right around the corner.

Where the Smithsonian removed Trump from its impeachment exhibit, replacing historical fact with convenient silence.

A spokesperson claimed the placard was just a temporary design feature. But internal sources say otherwise.

The current display claims only three presidents have faced removal, conveniently ignoring Trump’s two impeachments.

Only after national outcry did the museum announce they’d correct it.

That’s not a good-faith update. That’s a memory edit.

Even the spaces we once trusted, museums, schools, and science panels, are being rewritten in real time.

Not because the truth changed, but because telling it got dangerous.

Trump openly stated he needs five more House seats in Texas, and the Texas governor answered by launching new gerrymandering maps.

Because if you draw the map, you decide the winner.

The plan? Ram through a mid-cycle redistricting bill that would redraw congressional districts, again, without new census data, solely to give Republicans more federal seats.

It wasn’t just a local power grab. It was a blueprint to pad GOP control of Congress before the 2026 midterms. Preemptive. Targeted. Strategic.

This time, it was so brazen that Texas House Democrats fled the Capitol to deny Republicans the ability to even hold the vote.

In Texas, the state Constitution requires a two-thirds quorum of House members to conduct official business. If enough lawmakers physically leave the state, they can halt legislative proceedings altogether.

That kind of mass walkout hasn’t happened since 2021, when Democrats fled to D.C. to block voter suppression laws.

It’s rare. It’s disruptive. It’s high-stakes. And it only happens when the threat is existential.

Because this redistricting scheme isn’t just about Texas.

It’s designed to hijack House representation, flip districts without an election, and rig the 2026 outcome before voters ever cast a ballot.

They aren’t winning elections. They’re engineering them.

And the same party that once raged about “election integrity” is now redrawing democracy behind closed doors, while calling it reform.

So what do we do?

We remember.
We recycle truth.
We keep it in the air like oxygen.
We keep the momentum going.

The midterms are ahead. Then two more years.

That’s not something to dread. It’s something to aim for.

But we don’t survive by holding our breath.

We survive by living fully and staying fully aware.
We don’t wish the days away.
We don’t give Trump or MAGA the power to steal time from our lives.

Because while we wait for the next “safe moment,” they are writing the next erasure.

We talk.
We bring this up.
We name what’s happening.

Because once we forget, they win.
Because once we accept the new normal, we lose the one we had.
And because this works.

People spoke up, and the Smithsonian backtracked.

Whistleblowers are coming forward.

This is not over.

Because I still believe in America. I still believe in the American people and the American dream. I still believe in better days ahead.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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