Fridays in Trumpland: 1.17.2025
The End of Intermission
This week is the last week of the Biden administration. Come Monday at noon, we’re in it, so to speak.
And if it feels to you like we’re racing toward the end times, you’re not alone.
This week, a subscriber on my daily YouTube broadcast asked me if it felt this bad to me back in January 2017, days before Trump took office the first time.
The answer is a resounding no.
Back then, I– like many folks trained as lawyers– believed that the institutions would hold, that accountability would come, that he wouldn’t make it through four years— or even the first year— without being impeached and removed and prosecuted and convicted and sent to prison.
Those beliefs were not without basis.
Now, though, everything is different.
This week, we saw Trump sentenced– if you can call it that– to unconditional release for a conviction on 34 felonies that could have carried up to four years each in prison time. A few days later, Jack Smith dropped a report that said without question that had the American public not been so stupid, conned and/or disaffected, Trump would also have been convicted of crimes related to January 6th. But no.
Then, we watched as a malevolent misogynist, accused rapist, white nationalist drunk seemingly sailed toward confirmation as the new Secretary of Defense despite not being able to name a single country in ASEAN.
We watched as Trump’s nominee for Attorney General refused, repeatedly, to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, or that she would not investigate Liz Cheney.
We watched as Trump’s OMB nominee and Project 2025 architect Russel Vought put veterans benefits on the chopping block, and as his nominee to run the EPA, Lee Zeldin, flunked a basic science quiz from Senator Whitehouse on the causes of climate change.
And that’s just for starters.
Immigration raids began in California in anticipation of Trump’s return this week, and workplace raids were threatened in D.C. under the despicable description of “showcase raids,” designed to terrorize and silence undocumented people.
We watched as Speaker Mike Johnson removed the lone Republican anti-Russia backstop, Rep. Mike Turner, as Chair of the House Intelligence committee— just as news dropped that Russia had been planning to bomb cargo planes headed to the U.S.
And in the middle of it, President Biden gave a farewell speech that stated the obvious: we are teetering on the edge of oligarchy, if not already over that edge.
Meanwhile, an Israel/Hamas ceasefire hangs in the balance, with Netanyahu delaying final resolution and continuing to bomb families until his best bud Donald Trump takes office and can claim full credit for ending the war.
And then to cap off the week, late last night, one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets exploded over Turks and Caicos on lift off, raining fire in the sky.
It seemed a fitting end to the last days of democracy, at least as we have known them for the last four years, in this brief pause between acts.
Everything is different now.
Yesterday morning, I woke up gut-wrenchingly sad. This is not, generally, in my nature. I am one of those folks who works hard to cultivate hope, even in very dark times.
To check myself, I got on the phone before 8 a.m. with a friend and colleague, someone with whom I organized mass mobilizations during the first Trump era. We remarked on how it is a bizarre thing to long for 2015– a year that happened to be one of the worst years of my life, personally– with a certain nostalgia.
Back then, there was at least hope that we were moving in a forward direction.
Hell, last November 4th, I had hope that we were moving in a forward direction.
The question now is how we are going to find hope even in the midst of collapse, how we are going to find hope in the face of harm, how we are going to find hope when we are terrified, how we are going to find hope in the maze of crazy.
The answer, I think, lies in the idea that we can find hope in each other, and in what is possible when we take care of one another, in even in the smallest of ways.
I am 53, soon to be 54. I organized my first protest when I was 16, to try to get Harvard, when I was a summer student there, to divest from South Africa. That was also the summer I volunteered for my first campaign, for Michael Dukakis, as he launched a bid for the presidency.
During that window of time almost 40 years ago, I naively saw a future that, I believed, only bent in one direction– toward justice– and I believed that if I was simply a part of putting pressure on the arc along with others, even if it took most of my life, that future was downright inevitable.
Now, I see instead the pressure on the other side– the decades-long plan to rot the GOP from the inside out, to tear the Constitution to shreds, to alter the information distribution system and the free press until they bent and then broke, to arm white supremacists with more guns than we ever thought possible, to front candidates who with each election would roll back more and more of our rights, to pack the Supreme Court with christo-nationalists, to move the Overton window over and over and over again until one day, the return of a convicted-corrupt-malignant-narcissist-adjudicated-rapist-wanna-be-fascist-dictator would feel normal, because god forbid we elect a Black woman instead.
All this has been by clear design.
And even with the wildly imperfect Biden years, the breather of a recovery from the worst of the pandemic, the packing of the courts with more Democratic nominees than any president in history, American bombs still rained down on Gaza, and the far right never took their boots off our necks.
So now, as the Biden intermission ends, what are we to believe about the future?
I believe that what’s coming is going to be very hard.
I believe that this reprieve hasn’t been much of one.
I believe that it is not possible for any of us to quit organizing and mobilizing and building community, because I care too much about generations to come, and my children, and other people’s children, and still, yes, about the arc of justice.
I believe that when I burst into tears over all that we have lost, and all that we still have left to lose, it is a sign that my humanity survives.
I believe that if we fight to maintain our empathy, and to help each other to survive, it will be a step in the right direction, and that the future we want is built on a series of small steps, always.
I believe that out of the ashes of Los Angeles, the land can heal itself.
I believe that, despite what’s coming next, and even if I don’t live to see it, with the right choices that begin now, and in that sequence of small steps, this nation, this world, can do the same.
I will hang on to that hope, and I will keep going.
We will do it together.
Because there is no other option. This is it. We’re in it now.
Welcome, as it were, to Act II.
Interested in learning how to build community where you live, and to move the needle forward in small and meaningful ways that make a real difference right now?
This was a sublime letter Elizabeth. I am, on the daily, grateful to have found you when I did. I think this was meant to be. I don't know where I am headed with all of this, but I do know you are helping me figure it out. I have had a life of privilege, but also my share of sorrows and tragedy. Sometimes I feel that as an older woman, there isn't a whole lot left. But that can't be true. So I start again. Help my niece get back on her feet. Donate to food pantries. Call my representatives. Participate in this great experiment. Stay alive. Don't give up. Find joy. Thank you. It is ultimately up to me to figure it out, and I will keep chopping wood and carrying water. Thank you for being a light for me and so many others.
Thank you Elizabeth. Beautifully written with love and knowledge. We have our eyes open and are together. You are here and I am grateful.