Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn is pretty hyped that she just got confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security that the agency “will not move forward with the proposed ICE facility” in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Weird. You’d think that Blackburn would be all in on having an Immigration and Customs Enforcement mass detention facility in her beloved state, given how much she praised ICE agents as “heroes” after one of them murdered Minneapolis resident Renee Good. The primary role of those “heroes” is to arrest, assault, abduct, and imprison immigrants. Why wouldn’t you want the most visible fruit of their labors—sprawling warehouse prisons—in your state?
ICE had said that the warehouse in Lebanon would bring 7,216 jobs to the area, contribute $829.5 million in gross domestic product, and bring in more than $167 million in tax revenue. How dare Sen. Blackburn block the good people of Tennessee from all these jobs and money!
Blackburn is being NIMBY as hell here, obviously. But there is one reason she has a right to be irked: ICE officials didn’t actually tell anyone that they purchased a giant warehouse in Lebanon, which is kind of a weird thing to do when you are busy touting all the economic benefits to the surrounding community. Why would you keep that on the down low?
Blackburn can join New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a fellow Republican who was also happy to announce earlier this week that after she had a little chat with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there would no longer be an ICE mega-prison in the Granite State.
Of course, Ayotte then showered praise on Noem for “continued cooperation between DHS and New Hampshire law enforcement to secure our northern border, keep dangerous criminals off our streets, and ensure our communities are safe.”
So, gotta secure the border, gotta keep those dangerous immigrant criminals off the streets—but definitely cannot incarcerate them in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Got it, governor!
Blackburn and Ayotte are in bad company with GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who also reached out to Noem to explain that his state, of course, should not have to bear the burden of the brutal immigration mass incarceration scheme the Trump administration has going, even though Wicker otherwise adores it.
And let’s not forget that Maine Sen. Susan Collins engaged in some maximum brow-furrowing to make sure that ICE thugs didn’t invade her state. You will not be surprised to learn that the Republican Collins did not see fit to remark on the brutality of ICE’s actions in Minnesota while getting her precious state out from under the same threat.
This is going to keep happening, both because ICE has so much money to spend on warehouses and because many of them were actually slated to open in red states. That might be because the administration figured that states that loooooove private prisons would also adore ICE facilities, but it turns out that is not the case!
Pretty much everybody hates the idea of these concentration camps being in their backyard. That’s why pressure on companies initially inclined to sell to ICE or run warehouses for ICE has worked in multiple states. Even the most craven capitalists apparently don’t want to be known as your friendly local concentration camp owner.
The Trump administration is trying to get around this problem by just not telling local or state governments where or when they’ve purchased facilities, in the hopes that they can somehow just get them built out … before anyone notices?
Barricades block a drive outside a warehouse as federal officials tour the facility to consider repurposing it as an ICE detention facility on Jan. 15 in Belton, Missouri.
It seems unlikely they’re going to be able to stand up a prison for 5,000+ people without the city or county figuring it out. Some warehouses are even being purchased through third-party brokerages so that no one is even aware it’s ICE.
Surprise, Arizona was the site of a secret purchase, and even Paul Gosar, one of the dumbest, hardest-right members of Congress, was a wee bit, um, surprised about the whole thing and demanded “transparency” from Noem.
But after she sent Gosar a fact-free letter promising that totally, yes, DHS will absolutely do everything by the book and all incarceration will be super safe and humane, Gosar effusively thanked her and then pivoted to somehow blaming the Democrats and the shutdown, because of course.
President Donald Trump’s brutal immigration agenda is spectacularly unpopular. And while Republicans are happy to fantasize about mega-warehouses holding immigrants in desperately terrible conditions, they just don’t want the whole unseemly mess in their backyards.
Health influencer Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, brought her inactive medical license to a Senate hearing Wednesday, where she promoted the feel-good propaganda about proactive health over reactive medicine—while dodging questions about science, medicine, and her habit of boosting treatments that coincidentally align with her brand and bank account.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts pressed Means on the Trump administration’s decision to expand production of glyphosate, a herbicide suspected of causing cancer. Means, like many “Make America Healthy Again” hypocrites, has been suspiciously silent about the corrupt big-business move despite having previously criticized the chemical’s use.
“Do you think President Trump's executive order promoting the production of glyphosate, which you yourself have said likely causes cancer, will put American families' health at risk?” Markey asked.
After hemming and hawing about the “complex” issue, Means admitted, “I am very gravely concerned about the health impacts of these chemicals.”
“I understand that,” Markey responded. “Doctor, I'm just trying to help you to agree with yourself.”
Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont simplified things for Means, asking her directly whether, in all her optimistic talk about proactive health, she believed health care was a “human right.”
“My focus is on ensuring that Americans have access to the best health care in the entire world,” Means responded.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia pressed Means on her previous statements about the efficacy of vaccines, asking Means if she agreed with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent false claim that the flu vaccine doesn’t protect children from serious illness or hospitalization.
“Sen. Kaine, as I've said, I believe vaccines save lives and are an important part of our—” Means said.
“I'm not asking about the general,” Kaine interrupted. “[Kennedy’s] statement is ‘There is no evidence that the flu vaccine’—and I wanna be scrupulous about this—’prevents serious disease or that it prevents hospitalization or death in children.’ You're an MD.”
Kaine continued to press Means as she squirmed to avoid answering directly. It was pretty striking.
x
KAINE: Last month, Sec. Kennedy stated 'there is no evidence the flu vaccine prevents serious disease or hospitalization or deaths in children.' Do you agree with that statement?
MEANS: I believe vaccines save lives
KAINE: I want to be scrupulous. Do you agree with him?
Even the world’s wishiest-washiest Republican senator from Maine, Susan Collins, asked Means about her experimentation with psychedelics, which Means has promoted as a health treatment.
“What did you mean by saying that you heard an internal voice whispering to you, saying, 'It's time to prepare'?” Collins asked.
“In my meditations and prayers at that time, I had a sense something ominous was coming,” Means responded.
x
COLLINS: In 2021, you began using illicit psychedelic mushrooms. Do you stand by what you said in your book encouraging people to try psychedelics?
MEANS: There is exciting work being done in this area that needs to continue
Giles: So Angel has decided to step up his harassment of you?
Cordelia: By sneaking in her room and leaving stuff at night? Why
doesn't he just slit her throat or strangle her while she's sleeping or
cut her heart out? What? I'm trying to help.
Giles: Yes. Uh, uh, look, it's-it's classic battle strategy
to throw one's opponent off his game. He-he-he's just trying to provoke
you. Uh, to taunt you, to, to goad you into, uh, some mishap of some
sort.
Xander: The nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah approach to battle?
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #998. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
His Español may be “no bueno,” but his universal child care plan is, as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it, “muy bueno.”
In partnership with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mamdani rolled out an expansion of the city’s free child care program last month. And with the deadline coming up on Friday, Mamdani promoted the program with the help of progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Speaking in Spanish, Ocasio-Cortez reminded families that—if they have a child turning three or four in 2026—they qualify for free child care regardless of language or immigration status.
"Any New York City parent, regardless of your occupation, income, or immigration status, is eligible to sign their child up," she said. "Free child care is one of the most important ways we can make our city more affordable for everyone."
Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor of New York City on Jan. 1.
The sanctuary city has a longstanding history of not asking or tracking immigration status in public schools. But the child care program has already ruffled some feathers on the right, with some lamenting that free child care for “illegal aliens” will raise rent for New Yorkers.
But according to the press release, funding for the program comes from Hochul’s office.
But as the public opinion of the Trump administration’s immigration tactics has been declining, lawmakers and politicians on the left have been bolstering support for immigrants.
For example, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the release of $35 million in humanitarian aid to—with the support of philanthropic partners—“help connect families to legal support, food assistance, and other essential resources.”
So while President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda doesn’t seem to be cooling off just yet, we can at least rely on some Democratic leaders to support all of our neighbors.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota brushed off CNN’s attempt to wring contrition out of her after shouting back at President Donald Trump during his ponderous State of the Union address Tuesday night.
When Trump launched into a hateful attack on Somali communities—using it as justification for his heinous immigration operations in Minnesota—Omar fired back, “You have killed Americans.”
“Should you have just boycotted the address, and do you think you violated the guidelines set out by your own leader?” asked Wolf Blitzer, instead of addressing Trump’s racism toward Somalis.
“No, I think it was really unavoidable,” Omar replied. “The president talked about protecting Americans, and I just had to remind him that his administration was responsible for killing two of my constituents.”
President Donald Trump, like all bullies, is also a coward, so it isn’t surprising that during a State of the Union address where he boasted and raged for hours, one word was notably missing: Minneapolis.
You’d think that since Operation Metro Surge—the federal immigration operation that left two Americans dead in the city—was such a big deal, such a heroic endeavor, that it would have played a central role in Trump’s address, but nope, nary a mention.
Yes, Trump did take aim at Minnesota more broadly, blaming Somalis and Somali-Americans for his fever dreams of massive fraud, because hey, you gotta play the hits, right?
In case you’re keeping score at home, Trump says the supposed fraud in Minnesota is now up to $19 billion or perhaps more. However, the state’s most recent two-year budget was $66 billion. If, just for simplicity’s sake, we peg the state’s yearly budget at half that ($33 billion), then Trump is claiming that the fraud swallowed the equivalent of over one-half of the state’s entire yearly budget.
Trump’s numbers are fictional, of course. For example, the federal government gives Minnesota about $467 million annually for low-income child care subsidies, which are ostensibly the locus of all this fraud.
President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24.
Yet, even if the so-called fraud was all real, the administration’s antics during Operation Metro Surge were appalling enough that Minnesota’s top fraud prosecutor at the state’s U.S. attorney’s office, Joe Thompson, quit in disgust.
While Trump was busy making up numbers and trashing the state’s Somali community, he somehow didn’t think to tout whatever made-up numbers Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had from how the immigration operation made Minneapolis so super safe.
Perhaps he gave it a miss because DHS had to admit that its whole “worst of the worst” website was filled with errors about the charges immigrants faced?
Or maybe it was because many of the terrible worst-of-the-worsts that Minneapolis and Minnesota were supposedly harboring were … already incarcerated in the state. Minnesota then turned them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of their time served, no street abductions needed.
But why didn’t Trump brag about arresting Black journalists for the crime of reporting the news? His administration worked hard to get an indictment of reporter Don Lemon. Why not shout it from the rafters during the State of the Union?
Or perhaps Trump could have boasted about how pregnant people in the Twin Cities metro area were so scared they would be kidnapped by federal agents that many stopped going to prenatal visits? Why didn’t Trump want to highlight that amazing achievement?
And what, no boasts about executing dangerous antifa terrorists like Alex Pretti and Renee Good?
Surely, Trump should have highlighted ICE’s brave abduction of multiple kids, including five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, from a single elementary school. Noem stood strongly behind the nobility of kidnapping children, so why can’t Trump? Isn’t this worth claiming as one of your first year’s biggest accomplishments?
Although Trump’s brain is nothing but Adderall and spiders by now, even he knows that ICE’s brutalization of Minneapolis did not play nearly as well as he had hoped, so he kept his mouth shut.
Republicans are in deep crap heading into this November’s midterm elections. 2025’s off-year elections were a warning sign for Republicans in the first year of President Donald Trump’s term, while special elections in the last month have turned into a flashing red alarm for the GOP.
As such, you wouldn’t blame them for hoping that Trump would use Tuesday’s State of the Union address to refocus their party’s message around issues that voters actually care about.
Americans are saying in no uncertain terms that the economy tops their list of concerns, and they’re angry at Trump’s broken promise to lower prices “on Day 1.” His polling is beyond abysmal. A CNN poll earlier this week had his disapproval rating at 63%—his lowest ever. He never hit 60% disapproval in that same poll during his entire first term.
But worse than that, 68% of respondents said Trump “Hasn't paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.” Just 32% think he did.
Trump used his latest State of the Union Address to claim “this is the golden age of America.” Few Americans agree.
Republicans certainly aren’t feeling so golden right now. During the record-long speech, Trump bragged about record stock market gains, as if those have in any way trickled down to the very people that elected him. Bragging about economic gains accruing for the nation’s wealthy didn’t work for former President Joe Biden, and there’s even less reason it will work for Trump. Mark Halperin reported that senior Republican campaign officials recently told their own party officials that “Trying to argue about wages being up will not help; voters have to feel it.”
President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24 as Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson listen.
Instead of connecting with that voter anxiety, Trump bragged about tax cuts for billionaires, claimed “no inflation” and said “prices are plummeting downward,” bragged about how all his job creation was in the private sector (conveniently ignoring that the country only created 181,000 jobs in all of 2025), and claimed he secured $18 trillion in new investment—a number so ludicrous that the libertarian CATO Institute called it “mostly fake,” “wildly exaggerated,” and “ridiculous.”
He defended tariffs, which poll poorly, and he attacked the Supreme Court for its decision striking down those tariffs, even though people overwhelmingly approve of the ruling by a 57-23 margin, according to YouGov.
And Trump leaned heavily into his most racist and bigoted anti-immigrant rhetoric, trying to cling to a once-winning issue that has turned sharply against Republicans. During the GOP briefing Halperin reported on, Republican campaign officials, including Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, admitted that “Taking credit for closing the border does not resonate much.”
But Trump didn’t just fail to connect with voters’ economic anxiety. He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies. At a time when the nation is still basking in the warm sportsmanship of American athletes at the Olympic Games in Italy, Trump lashed out at his perceived enemies, taking repeated and nasty shots at the Democrats, blue states and cities, and various ethnic groups.
At one point he screamed, “They are crazy!” while pointing at the Democrats in the chamber. He couldn’t handle Democrats not standing and cheering for his every utterance, when he’s so used to being surrounded by obsequiousness.
This might get the rabid MAGA base hyped, but it’s not going to pay any electoral dividends for the GOP.
If anything, Trump’s overall message was, “The country has never been better, but WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”
As Halperin reported from that GOP campaign strategy briefing, “[Fabrizio] acknowledged that Donald Trump will do what he wants to do, say what he wants to say, not be data driven. Everyone else has to stay on message and be driven by the data.”
In an endless speech, Trump barely gave lip service to the economy, the one issue driving the election, preferring to spend the bulk of his time on his culture war favorites.
Trump’s Tuesday night performance proved, more than ever, that Republican candidates are on their own.
Bondi droned through MAGA’s talking point that it was somehow scandalous that Democrats refused to give standing ovations during Trump’s nearly two-hour snoozefest. In particular, she defended his grotesque invocation of the tragic murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina, which Trump brought up to distract from his failing immigration policies.
x
This entire Pam Bondi on Fox & Friends was bizarre. She was unable to express a coherent thought.
Fox host Ainsley Earhardt tried to steer Bondi toward something more substantive, claiming that Trump’s tough-on-crime posturing proves he isn’t racist. Conveniently left unmentioned, though, was Trump’s lie that Zarutska’s accused killer “came in through open borders.” In reality, the accused killer was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“President Trump has made America safe again,” Bondi responded, “and that's what he's doing, and in turn, that makes Americans feel safe to go to work, to have jobs, to be able to go to church, to be able to function in our country—and be safe—and that's what's driving our economy—Donald Trump making America safe, and that's why our economy is at a record high.”
That’s not a word salad as much as it’s words in a blender.
Mainstream media outlets reacted to President Donald Trump’smeandering, bigoted State of the Union speech on Tuesday night with another round of stories seeking to normalize his abnormal behavior. The practice,called “sanewashing,” has been a feature of mainstream coverage of Trump since he became a political figure in 2015.
The New York Times, for instance,referred to Trump’s behavior as merely “put[ting] on a show” and that he had “made clear that his political strategy is to paint Democrats as unpatriotic and ‘crazy.’” Writer Katie Rogers described Trump as using “the slashing style of a natural campaigner and the instincts of a onetime reality television producer.”
In the pro-Trump Washington Post, Karen Tumulty’s analysis of Trump’s speech determined that when he spoke he had been working to “reframe” America, which is arguably the most polite way possible one could characterize his blatant lying. To Tumulty and the Post, Trump tried to “paint a new reality for the majority of Americans who, according to polls, say they are dissatisfied with what he has done in the first year of his second presidency.”
Like the Times, the Post also gave a nod to Trump’s “showman’s theatricality.”
Over at Politicothe narrative was that Trump “sticks to the script” and that Republicans were “breathing a sigh of relief.” While the Politico team seems to be bending over backward to reward Trump a win, the leader of the free world being able to read a speech isn’t exactly the highest of bars.
The speech these outlets are doing their best to make into a historical pivot point was nothing to cheer about. Trumplied at length about purported economic improvements on his watch and doubled down on failed policies like tariffs that are causing demonstrable harm to the economy.
x
Donald Trump killed two of my constituents. He is a liar and should be ashamed of himself.
And when he wasn’t lying, he was being racist. He used his office and the speech to sling racist attacks at Black immigrants, specifically the Somali people residing in Minnesota. The slurs prompted a response from Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar,who yelled back at Trump, “You have killed Americans.”
This is the behavior that the Times, Politico, and the Post have reported on as if it were perfectly normal at the presidential level. But it isn’t.
Since 2015, the mainstream press has worked overtime to present an image of Trump that doesn’t match up with reality. They simplyomit his worst offenses or summarize his statements and actions without providing context to their audiences. When he makes disastrous mistakes, theyare morphed into mere “blunders” andat moments like the State of the Union this drive to clean up after Trump goes into overdrive.
Fortunately, this strategy isn’t really working among the public at large.
A CNN polltaken in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s speech found that among viewers of the speech it was the worst received of any State of the Union address this century. Trump underperformed against Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but also his fellow Republican, George W. Bush.
The finding was in linewith pre-speech polls that have shown Trump cratering on key issues, even on immigration—which used to be his strength.
The media is doing its best to mislead what Trump is saying and doing, and while that calls into question their ability to tell the truth, people aren’t buying the spin from them or Trump.
Congressional Republicans declared that Trump's nearly two-hour speech—in which he bragged about how everything is great again and offered no actual solutions to improve American lives—was the best thing they'd ever seen. Yes, really.
"President Trump just delivered the greatest State of the Union Address that reminded everyone what putting America First looks like!" Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, who wore a Trump tie that he had Trump sign after the speech, wrote in a post on X. "Also—check out my tie! Thank you to the greatest President of my lifetime."
Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas wears a Trump-themed tie in 2024.
"This was the GREATEST State of the Union Address in the history of our nation," Rep. Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican still desperate for Trump’s endorsement in her gubernatorial bid, wrote in a post on X. "President Donald J. Trump IS making America Great Again."
"My legs are going to be sore tomorrow," Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York Republican, wrote in a post on X, referring to how many times he stood and clapped for Dear Leader. (I honestly threw up a little in my mouth after reading that one.)
Even GOP lawmakers vulnerable in this year’s midterms—who, if smart, would be distancing themselves from an unpopular president—fluffed Trump.
"It was an inspiring and patriotic State of the Union speech tonight!” Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, whose race is rated a toss-up by the political handicapping outlet Inside Elections, wrote in a post on X that included two American flag emojis. “Hard to believe how little the democrats stood and clapped while we celebrated America!"
In fact, a number of GOP lawmakers went with the post-speech message that Democrats should have stood and clapped like seals for Trump and the people he used as political props. It’s likely because Trump was visibly frustrated that Democrats remained seated as he gave his divisive speech that attacked Democrats. Why on earth would Democrats cheer for that?
"Democrats refused to stand for the mom of a Ukrainian refugee murdered by a career criminal. They refused to stand for protecting Americans as their first duty. They refused to stand for ending taxes on tips. Some even refused to stand for our Team USA men’s hockey team," Rep. Tom Tiffany, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote in a post on X.
Shocker: Democrats refused to stand for bad policies and for using a tragic murder to demonize immigrants.
President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address on Feb. 24 as Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson clap like seals.
"The main message here was the stark contrast between the optimism of President Trump, the direction we want to take the country, and Democrats sitting in their seats refusing to stand up and celebrate this great country," Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said of Trump's speech, which he described as optimistic even as Trump spoke of murder, bloodshed, and death for much of the address. "I think it was a clear contrast."
Ultimately, Trump's speech won't change his party's fate in the November midterms.
This speech was typical Trump fare, bragging about how great he is and declaring that he has made the country great again, even as Americans say they are struggling with the cost of living and think Trump is focused on the wrong things.
CNN’s reaction poll found that even among the speech’s heavily Republican audience, reviews came in worse than previous addresses Trump has given.
“Nearly two-thirds of speech-watchers said they had at least a somewhat positive reaction to Trump’s speech, with a smaller 38% offering a very positive response. That’s a few points cooler than the reception to his address to Congress last year and falls below the ratings for his first-term speeches in CNN polling,” CNN wrote of their poll findings, which came from a sample that CNN said “was about 13 percentage points more Republican than the general public.”
Trump’s address was bad and won’t help Republicans this fall, no matter how much they declare that it was the best speech in the history of the world.
Locals filled a Bastrop County commissioners meeting earlier this week to push back against a proposal to memorialize bigoted far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.
After County Commissioner David Glass proposed a “Charlie Kirk Corridor” in the up-and-coming tech hub neighboring Austin, over a hundred people aired their grievances until the motion was inevitably tabled.
"I'm going to take a breath and have some more conversations with my constituents," Glass told the Austin American-Statesman.
It’s unclear why Glass would be vying for a Kirk memorial in his county, of all places, but the area isn’t a nobody on the map. Bastrop County is home to about 115,000 residents—as well as many of billionaire Elon Musk’s corporations.
Though Bastrop County used to be a quieter area, it has shot up in growth since Muskpacked up what was once known as Twitter from its home in California and relocated it to the little-known area.
As Daily Kos has previously reported, the Tesla CEO built residential and commercial areas for his employees throughout the area. Residents now have Musk’s company towns. They even have Ad Astra, Musk’s attempted Montessori-style school that seems to be operating today as a “licensed child care program” for roughly 10 children under the age of 5, according to The New York Times.
But all of this economic movement, despite locals’ alleged environmental violations, is great for the town and—for Glass—he seems to be interested in expanding further. The county commissioner has recently been pushing for Texas State University to bring its campus to the area as well.
Daily Kos contacted Glass for comment on this story but did not hear back before publication.
It’s unclear if Glass’ push for a Kirk memorial is an appeal for more MAGA-aligned businesses to break ground in his area or if Glass just really loves the far-right pundit with a history of racism.
However, regardless of his motives, Glass’ constituents clearly feel differently about the matter.
After a grueling year of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to treat breast cancer, Sadia Zapp was anxious — not the manageable hum that had long been part of her life, but something deeper, more distracting.
“Every little ache, like my knee hurts,” she said, made her worry that “this is the end of the road for me.”
So Zapp, a 40-year-old communications director in New York, became one of millions of Americans to start taking an anxiety medication in recent years. For her, it was the serotonin-boosting drug Lexapro.
“I love it. It’s been great,” she said. “It’s really helped me manage.”
The proportion of American adults who took anxiety medications jumped from 11.7% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2024, with most of the increase occurring during the covid pandemic, according tosurvey datafrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 8 million more people, bringing the total to roughly 38 million, with sharp increases among young adults, people with a college degree, and adults who identify as LGBTQ+.
Even as psychiatric medications gain public acceptance and become easier to access through telehealth appointments, the rise of a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, known as SSRIs, has triggered a backlash from supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement who argue they are harmful. Doctors and researchers say medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro are front-line treatments for many anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and are being misrepresented as addictive and broadly harmful even though they’ve been proved safe for extended use.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried broadening SSRI use. During his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing, he said he knows people, including family members, who had atougher time quitting SSRIsthan people have quitting heroin. More recently, hesaid his agency is studyinga possible link between the use of SSRIs and other psychiatric medications and violent behavior like school shootings.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makaryhas also suggestedthat SSRI use among pregnant women could lead to poor birth outcomes.
For many people, however, the side effects are mild and tolerable and the benefits of treating chronic anxiety are worth it, saidPatrick Kelly, president of the Southern California Psychiatric Society. “The statements about SSRIs were just not grounded in any sort of evidence or fact,” Kelly said of Kennedy’s comments.
Arecent comprehensive studyshowed that over half of people with generalized anxiety disorder taking an SSRI saw their anxiety symptoms reduced by at least 50%. Side effects prompted about 1 in 12 to stop taking an SSRI.
“When it’s being done right and when you’re also using appropriate therapy techniques, SSRIs can be really, really helpful,” saidEmily Wood, a psychiatrist who practices in Los Angeles.
MAHA Blames Anxiety on Poor Diet, Lack of Exercise
Supporters of MAHA have partly blamed poor dietary choices and the increase of a sedentary lifestyle for the rise of a number of health problems, including anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. As a remedy, they have called for measures such as reducing consumption of ultraprocessed foods, whichstudies inrecent yearshave connectedto depression and anxiety, and cutting back on screen time in favor of exercise.
Psychiatrists often encourage ahealthy dietand exercise as anadjunctive therapyforanxiety and depression. Wood said those who can manage anxiety without medication should also consider talk therapy. The proportion of American adults using mental health counseling boomed from 2019 to 2024 as teletherapy grew in popularity, federal data shows. “Anxiety disorders are amongst our psychiatric disorders that really respond well to cognitive behavioral therapy,” she said.
But medication can help.
Studies show the risks of taking SSRIs during pregnancyare lowformother and child. By contrast, “depression increases your risk for every complication for a mother and a baby,” Wood said, adding that recent statements by government officials about SSRI use during pregnancy are “potentially leading to real harm for these women.”
Zapp takes Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized such anxiety medications, claiming they are addictive and harmful. Health care clinicians say they have been proved safe, and they point to broader social changes to explain their increased use.
Addiction, though, is a possibility with benzodiazepines such as Xanax that are often a second line of treatment for anxiety. These controlled substances can alsoincrease the risk of opioid overdosein patients taking both types of drugs. During congressional hearings last year, Kennedy also decried benzodiazepine overuse as a problem.
While benzodiazepines are effective for short-term use, they require monitoring and care, Wood said.
“Those are really great meds for acute anxiety and not great as long-term anxiety medications, because they are habit-forming over time,” Wood said. “If you’re taking them on a daily basis, you’ll need more and more to get the same effect, and then you have to come down from them in a tapered way.”
And anincreasing number of peopleare also occasionally taking beta-blockers such as propranolol for anxiety. Some people use beta-blockers to prevent a racing heart before a public speech or other big moments, even though they are not FDA-approved for treating anxiety and are prescribed “off-label.”
Beta-blockerscan cause dizziness and fatigue, but they are “nonaddictive, really helpful for bringing down the autonomic nervous system, going from fight or flight to something more neutral, and really safe,” Wood said.
Social Shifts Drive Increased Use of Anxiety Meds
A number ofleadingtheoriescould explain why so many more people are taking anxiety medication,includingincreased social media use, more isolation, and heightened economic uncertainty, physicians and researchers say.
Plus, the medicines are relatively easy to get. Many people obtain SSRI and benzodiazepine prescriptions from their primary care physician. Others obtain the medicationsafter a brief teletherapy appointment.
Many social media influencerstalk abouttheirmental health struggles, easing some stigma among young people and encouraging them to get help. About a third of teensin a recent studysaid they get mental health information via social media.
Still, increased access to anxiety medication can be a problem when combined with a trend of self-diagnosis based on social media trends. A Google search for “buy Xanax online” leads to sponsored promises of same-day treatment, though fine-print disclaimers clarify that a prescription is not guaranteed.
“I think increased access is good, but that’s not the same thing as, you know, ordering Xanax online,” Kelly said.
Young adults are largely driving an increase in anxiety medication use. The proportion of Americans ages 18 to 34 taking anxiety medication rose from 8.8% in 2019 — the first year such survey data became available — to 14.6% in 2024. By contrast, the rate didn’t change much among adults 65 and older, CDC data shows.
The pandemic and covid lockdowns greatly increased stress among many American adults,particularly young adults.
And data shows more women than men take anxiety medication.Jason Schnittker, a department chair and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, said that’s because they’re more likely to need them. They are also likelier than men to report when they feel anxious, and doctors are “inclined or see anxiety more readily in their female patients than their male patients,” Schnittker added.
Broader trends could also be at work. Schnittker said studies have shown anxiety growing more prevalent among ensuing generations for much of the 20th and 21st centuries. Schnittker, author ofUnnerved: Anxiety, Social Change, and the Transformation of Modern Mental Health, said growing income inequality could be partly to blame, with people feeling stress over improving their economic status. Social and religious activities have been replaced by more isolation. And people have become more suspicious of others, creating a sense of unease around strangers.
For Zapp, the cancer survivor, it took a few months on Lexapro before she started seeing clear results. When she did, she said, it felt like her mind was less noisy, making it easier to focus. She also underwent talk therapy, but now her chronic anxiety is stabilized on medication alone.
“It definitely helped me get back to my day-to-day in a way that was productive and not just riddled with my anxieties throughout the day,” she said.
Zapp, a communications director in New York, is one of millions of Americans to start taking an anxiety medication in recent years. “It’s really helped me manage,” she says.
KFF Health News’ Holly Hacker, Maia Rosenfeld, and Lydia Zuraw contributed to this report.
++ I only vaguely follow the Olympics, as in only the sport events I'm interested in. For the winter Olympics it's figure skating. Because of this, I kinda got myself caught up with the sensation of Alysa Liu and her truly inspiring story and the outcome of her winning gold simply by just being herself, returning back to the sport after deciding retire some years prior and doing so on her own terms, and having passion for what she loves and having fun. For all the technical and professional elements of the sports competition, the pure joy and confidence in what she was doing is what most of all take away when watching programs like that. Her performances, her general attitude about life, as well as her kindness, support and excitement towards her fellow competitors, it was quite infectious and it's great to see something this positive and uplifting come out of the Olympics.
++ An official music video was released by the cast of A/B/O Desire for "Master of Desire", the drama's theme song. I literally was all chin!hands watching it! (✿◠‿◠) The video itself is visually stunning, and just seeing them all together for this and with them paired off with their respective couples just made me so happy, specifically that of Gao Tu/Shen Wenlang. Anything with them, please, I need more little itty bitty crumbs of those two!
++ Girls Like Girls is an upcoming film by Hayley Kiyoko, adapted from a book she had wrote that is titled and based off of her iconic 2015 song/music video of the same name. I wasn't aware that she had written a novel nor that this film was in the works at all, but that makes this discovery so much more amazing for me. I do remember back when the video music was released that people were saying that it could be its own story in itself, so, whether or not this was taken into account at the time, I like that Hayley wanted to take a step further with her own creation.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger offered a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s depiction of the nation as being in a “golden age” during his State of the Union, arguing in her Democratic rebuttal that costs remain high for many Americans more than a year into his second term.
Her message, that families are still struggling under Trump’s policies, is one Democrats plan to carry nationwide ahead of the midterm elections. Party leaders point to Spanberger’s double-digit victory in Virginia last November as validation of a disciplined, cost-focused campaign they now hope to replicate across the country.
"Democrats across the country are laser-focused on affordability in our nation’s capital and in state capitals and communities across America," said Spanberger. “In the most innovative and exceptional nation in the history of the world, Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night.”
Spanberger delivered the speech from Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum with restored 18th-century buildings, drawing on the site’s role at the heart of Virginia’s early opposition to British rule and connecting that legacy to the current political moment.
She had far less time than the Republican president to make her case. Trump’s address to Congress stretched for just over an hour and 48 minutes, during which he described a nation with lower costs than when he took office, declaring, “This is the golden age of America.”
Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24.
He also goaded the Democratic side of the House chambers throughout the speech for not standing, increasing his insults throughout the speech and calling them “crazy.” But Democrats inside the chamber largely didn't react, sitting silently. Texas Rep. Al Green was removed from the chamber barely two minutes into the president’s address after holding a protest sign reading “Black People Aren’t Apes!”
As viewership tends to drop the longer the speech runs, the response has become one of the more perilous assignments in politics. Now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio was widely mocked forreaching for a water bottleduring the GOP response in 2013. Other rebuttals have quickly faded from memory.
Even with the time disadvantage, Democrats argue the political winds are shifting in their favor.Spanberger’s win in Virginiawas followed by other high-profile Democratic victories, including a special election earlier this month in Texas, where a Democratflipped a reliably Republican state Senate districtthat Trump carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.
Democratic Sen.Alex Padillaof California delivered the party’s Spanish-language response. In June, Padilla wasforcefully removedfrom Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles as he tried to speak up aboutimmigration raids,
“They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,” Padilla said in his speech. "As our parents taught us: if you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting."
Padilla described the nation as “living a nightmare that divides and destroys our communities," and urged those watching to “prepare, starting today, for your voice to reverberate this November.”
Some Democrats chose to make their point by skipping Trump’s address. Counterprogramming events are planned, including a “State of the Swamp” featuring Democratic lawmakers alongside state and local leaders and celebrities.
In fact, he spent just a few minutes talking about the economy—the most important issue to voters as midterm elections approach—and instead spent the rest of the never-ending speech talking about murders and blood and other dark and depressing things that likely had average viewers wondering what on earth he was blathering about.
Worse for Trump and Republicans is that when he did talk about the economy, he only boasted about how great it’s doing, saying it is “roaring like never before.” Yet he did not offer any plans for how he would bring costs down and help Americans afford their rising cost of living, which is what Americans want to hear.
For example, he boasted that "100% of the jobs created under my administration have been in the private sector." Yeah, all 181,000 of them—the lowest annual job creation number in decades?
He crowed that the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 50,000 under his tenure, even though the market is now 800 points below that. And the stock market in the United States is actually faring worse than other countries’ markets.
Americans don’t believe Trump’s economy is great, no matter how many times Trump declares it to be true. In fact, CBS News released a poll before the speech that found 60% of Americans say that Trump makes things seem “better than they really are.”
Aside from rambling like a buffoon and being a raging asshole—reminding a national audience why they dislike him so much—Trump bragged about other head-scratching things that are unlikely to help boost his popularity.
He gloated about having “lifted 2.4 million Americans—a record—off of food stamps." Again, that’s not because he helped people but because he cut the program and stripped food aid from millions.
In fact, Trump slammed Democrats for not voting for the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—which slashed health care for the poorest Americans in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Rather than cower, Democrats stood and clapped, proud of themselves for not voting for that unpopular legislation.
Trump’s speech coincided with his approval rating hitting second-term lows—rivaled only by the dismal approval ratings he notched after he incited a violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A spate of polls released before Trump’s address found a host of bad news for Trump, including that his approval with independents is at just 26%, that Americans disapprove of his performance on every major issue, and that his approval has fallen even among Republicans who he needs to turn out for midterm elections in November.
The nonsense he spewed in Tuesday’s speech—the longest on record—is unlikely to change that.
While we all just suffered through that absolute buffoonery, here’s a final reminder: This utterly embarrassing display won’t matter when it comes to the November midterms. Feelings about Trump are baked in, and nothing he said in that speech will change the minds of Americans.
It took two days and several mistakes along the way, but I managed to get through to the SNAP people and do the interview. I forgot that my rent was raised by $25 and the interviewer caught that-- which was embarrassing. But now I'm anxious that it might look like I'm not telling the truth. I pay rent with a rent check and cash (through work around the house) but the bank statements I sent don't show the cash part. So I sent rent receipts even though they didn't ask for them! Just in case.
But with the new algorithms, I'm worried such little discrepancies will be flagged and I'll lose SNAP. Then I'll have to do a hearing and who knows how that would go?
I've been panicking or treating for panic for 3 days now. Finally, the worst is behind me.
All I have left this week is filing taxes and making a medical appointment that could lead to surgery (gallbladder). I'm tackling one thing at a time (or one set of things at a time) and then leaving off to recover from all the AAAAAHHHH! in my system. One of my triggers is being scrutinized by a stranger. I grew up being falsely accused of wrong doing-- or of at least being secretly evil. So when I'm being evaluated by bureaucratic minions, I'm always freaked out. I act guilty even though I'm not!
I'm also triggered by anything medical or dental, so there's that to face as well.
I hate being this way. I'm much better at dealing with it-- or at least functioning with it-- than I used to be. But it's still massively challenging for me. I can hardly wait until this week is over!
Pundits will breathlessly pontificate about what the speech means and how it may help Trump fix his abysmal approval rating ahead of the midterm elections.
President Donald Trump turns to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his State of the Union address on Feb. 5, 2019.
But before Trump utters even a single word, we’re here to tell you that his SOTU address will not matter one single iota for the outcome of November's midterms.
Here’s why.
First, SOTU addresses are blips in time that will be forgotten by the public by the weekend—much less by the midterm elections that are more than eight months away.
Second, there’s tons of recent historical data to prove that SOTU addresses are meaningless.
Remember former President Joe Biden's final SOTU address, where Democrats rejoiced over his ability to get through a speech without having a senior moment? Reviews of the speech were good, and Democrats temporarily believed that Biden could survive an election cycle.
And yet, the speech did nothing to change Biden’s approval ratings. You know why? Because the audiences for SOTU addresses are usually friendly toward the president, since their supporters are the only ones who want to sit through a boring speech.
That means that SOTU reaction polls are bunk because people who watch are primed to support Trump regardless. And data shows that SOTU speeches have no impact on Trump’s or the GOP’s electoral standing.
Just look at 2018, when Trump's SOTU address was viewed favorably by 75% of viewers. And what happened in that midterm election? Democrats rode a massive blue wave to the House majority, leading to Trump's agenda being thwarted and his ultimate impeachment—twice.
At the end of the day, Trump usually blows up whatever he says in a canned speech the second he speaks off the cuff. He is utterly incapable of staying on any message, let alone one that is popular with the public. This SOTU address will be no exception.
Former President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on March 1, 2022.
Though, of course, caveats apply.
Viral moments can have a lasting impact. For example, if Trump vomits all over himself or has a rage-induced stroke as he stares down the Supreme Court justices who blocked his tariffs, that could cause him even more problems.
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio appeared on CNN Tuesday, where he cowardly dodged questions about whether GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas should resign amid a reported sex scandal involving a married former staffer who later died by suicide.
The scandal has prompted some Republicans to call on Gonzales to step down. But when asked by CNN’s Manu Raju for his opinion on the matter, Jordan weakly refused to take a stand.
“I leave that up to the voters in San Antonio, in South Texas, in Mr. Gonzales’ district,” he said.
“Are you supporting him for re-election?” Raju pressed.
“We were, but there's also the guy who's, now some of our colleagues are supporting Mr. Herrera. If Mr. Herrera wins, that's fine,” Jordan replied.
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CNN: Some of you fellow Republicans want Rep. Tony Gonzales to resign. Do you want him to resign?
JIM JORDAN: I leave that up to the voters in South Texas. I've always sort of taken that position
CNN: Are you supporting him for reelection?
JORDAN: Ahhh. We were.
Jordan’s reluctance to take a clear stance on Gonzales is made even more craven by the fact that Gonzales repeatedly opposed Jordan’s attempts at becoming House speaker in 2023.
Whether it’s an unwillingness to honestly investigate the Epstein files or the Ohio State University controversy—where former wrestlers accused a team doctor of sexual abuse and alleged that Jordan was aware—he’s clearly too cowardly to protect people from predators.
Never one to miss an opportunity to brag, President Donald Trump decided that the Angel Families event at the White House on Monday was the perfect time for him to big up himself over how many people have attempted to assassinate him.
Wait, what?
Reasonable people might take stock of multiple attempts being made on their lives in a different way. They might reflect on the fragility of life, contemplate their own mortality, do some soul-searching about how this all came about, and what makes people so angry and fixated that they try to kill you.
But Trump is not a reasonable person by any metric, so for him this is just another opportunity to boast that he is extremely important. “You read about all these crazy shooters, but they only go after consequential presidents. They don’t go after non-consequential presidents.”
In case you are wondering which other presidents count as consequential, as far as assassination attempts are concerned, Trump name-checked Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. “They were consequential. They only go after consequential. So maybe I want to be a little bit less consequential.”
Before Trump so thoroughly captured the GOP, think how furious they would all be about this erasure of John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of former President Ronald Reagan.
Of course, this world’s weirdest braggadocio that he’s “got a lot of people gunning for me” happened at an event that had nothing whatsoever to do with Trump or assassination attempts. Rather, it was for “Angel Families,” the term Trump invented last year for people who have lost family members in crimes by immigrants. Trump had declared Feb. 22 “National Angel Family Day, where he would be “paying solemn tribute to the second anniversary of Laken Riley’s murder.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, holds a poster with photos of murder victims Sarah Root and Laken Riley as she speaks on Capitol Hill, Feb. 27, 2024. House Republicans have passed a bill that would require federal authorities to detain unauthorized immigrants who have been accused of theft, seizing on the death of Laken, a nursing student in Georgia.
So solemn! Such a tribute! Those families were probably so very comforted by Trump explaining how he’s so consequential.
He also used the time to push his lies about elections, unhappy even in victory: “I got, probably, 85 million votes. They say 78 million, 79 million. They cheated in this election too.”
Also, per Trump, if he had been elected in 2020, anyone who was killed by an undocumented immigrant would instead be alive today.
Trump has to do quite a bit of self-soothing here, as he can’t condemn the latest assassination attempt as the product of some left-wing progressive plot. Instead, it looks like Austin Tucker Martin, who breached Mar-a-Lago’s north gate armed with a gun and carrying a gas canister early on Sunday and was killed by Secret Service, was actually a staunch Trump supporter who was foolish enough to believe Trump genuinely cared about breaking up a pedophile cabal.
Instead, those supporters have been faced with the fact that, rather than bringing down the deep state Democrat pedophile cabal, Trump instead seems to be engaged in a whole-of-government effort to protect Epstein and hide his own involvement.
Hence, the pivot to bragging that racking up attempts on one’s life is good, actually.
This latest security breach follows several attempts on Trump’s life, the most notable being in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a rally on July 13, 2024, when a bullet grazed his ear.
Trump’s need for approval, to be seen as the bestest and the mostest, is boundless. And apparently, even assassination attempts are no exception to this rule.
CREATURE: I’m vegetarian!
FRED: Really? With those choppers?
CREATURE: Okay. I eat fish and occasionally vermin. But that’s it, I swear! You believe me, don’t you?
FRED: You’re still breathing, aren’t you?
CREATURE: More like hyperventilating. You scared the cream cheese out of me. What are you doing? Don’t do that. Come on, get a room!
FRED: Sit down! Any monkey business and I’ll chop you down like a cherry tree.
CREATURE: So we’re just going to sit here like this?
FRED: Maybe.
CREATURE: Can you give me a time frame? ’Cause I got a bladder the size of a Jujube.
“I'm a big fan of Kash Patel. I think he's doing a good job,” Cruz said. “You know what? I would have loved to have been in that locker room, and I don't know a guy on planet Earth that wouldn't have been thrilled to be celebrating.”
Of course, Cruz is no stranger to suffering from acute hypocrisy. One of his most cowardly moments was in 2021, when Texans faced dangerous blackouts during severe winter weather. But Cruz and his family tried to flee the country for a vacation in Cancún, Mexico.
After being busted, Cruz stood in front of cameras—like a man—and blamed his kids for leaving his constituents in the lurch.
Conservative media figures are having yet another very public fight with each other following the announcement of a new video series by podcaster Candace Owens targeting Erika Kirk, wife of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. It is the latest in a series of public spats rocking the conservative world and causing headaches for an ailing Republican Party.
Owensreleased the trailer for “Bride of Charlie: An Investigative Series” on Monday. In the video Owens criticizes Erika Kirk for her actions following her husband’s death and makes a series of accusations related to Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Charlie that’s now run by Erika. These include the involvement of foreign governments, trafficking , and financial impropriety.
Candace Owens, center, was Turning Point USA’s director of communication when she attended the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit with TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 26, 2018.
It should be noted that Owens, who once worked for Turning Point USA, has a history of making absurd and disproven claims,including the allegation that French President Emanuel Macron ordered her assassinationafter Owens claimed his wife, Brigitte Macron, is a man. So there is the possibility that everything she is alleging about Erika Kirk is a made-up fantasy. Or maybe not.
Either way, members of the conservative media sphere are extremely mad about Owens’ crusade.
Columnist Meghan McCainsaid the video was “Pure, unadulterated, fucking evil.” She added, “Who in God's name would put a woman whose husband was brutally assassinated in front of the entire world through this?”
Conservative writer Rod Drehersaid Owens is a “monster” and “deranged.” Babylon Bee’s Seth Dillonlamented, “What would Charlie have to say about this?” Bonchie, a contributor to the site RedState,wrote, “Everyday, there’s some new line being crossed by this lunatic that makes me wonder whether certain people will finally speak up.”
The video series is an escalation of Owens’ crusade against Erika Kirk. Following Charlie’s murder, Owensbegan pushing several conspiracies around the killing. Owens and Erika Kirkreportedly met for several hours in December to discuss the issue, but Owens was clearly undeterred.
For years she was financed by conservatives and given a platform via outlets like the Daily Wire, run by conservative media figure Ben Shapiro. Back then, they were perfectly happy to cheer Owens onwhen she pushed smears and conspiracies about liberals and Democrats including former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Owens, who is Black, was a perfectly acceptable person on the rightwhen she defended right-wing racism.
But now that her venom is aimed at one of their own, suddenly it is a problem and Owens is a “monster.”
It’s a convenient turn of events.
The Owens controversy is the latest phase in the conservative media world’s internal war. As President Donald Trump’s political approval has dwindled, many media figures who profited handsomely from the MAGA movement have begun infighting.
Figures like the antisemitic pundit Nick Fuentes, who fostered relationships with Republican members of Congress while attacking Jewish people,have become a problem. Factions of the right continue to support figures like Fuentes and Owens, while others decry their toxicity.
These battles are likely to continue dogging the Republican Party, which has been unable to distance itself from conservative media. After all, Trumpbestowed the Medal of Freedom to deceased bigot Rush Limbaugh and the party has always beenjoined at the hip with outlets like Fox News.
Erika Kirkrecently endorsed Vice President JD Vance as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2028. It’s probably only a matter of time until Owens’ swirl of allegations ensnares him and others in his orbit.
The right built this noxious problem from the ground up, and now they will have to deal with the fallout.
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #998. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
MS Now reporter Lisa Rubin confirmed the bombshell reporting by NPR indicating that allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by President Donald Trump have been missing from the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice.
“MS now can report that there is at least one witness for whom three interviews with the FBI in rapid succession in 2019 are missing,” Rubin explains. ‘You might say, ‘Well, what's the big deal about that?’ Well, the big deal about that is that we can also confirm that that woman is the same person who in a 2025 FBI presentation is identified to have accused Donald Trump of a sexual assault when she was between 13 and 15 years old.”
An internally circulated powerpoint slide deck titled “Prominent Names,” found among the millions of released documents, includes redacted allegations stating that Epstein introduced the accuser to Trump, who then allegedly sexually assaulted her in the mid-1980s, when she was a minor:
[Redacted] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out. (date range 1983-1985, [Redacted] would have been 13-15)
The woman who made those allegations was reportedly interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019. However, only one of those interviews, one in which Trump was not mentioned, appears in the files released by the DOJ. NPR reports that at least 50 pages of notes from the other interviews remain missing.
The Trump administration’s effort to cover up the release of the Epstein files have now given way to new, more craven excuses, as evidence exposing how predatory, grotesque, and pathetically insecure most of Trump’s rich friends are, continues to leak out.
In a Feb. 11 memo sent to the Republican National Committee and the party’s top congressional leaders, MAHA Action president Tony Lyons urged the GOP to fully embrace the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, calling it a “once in a generation political gift” that could reshape the party’s coalition just as dramatically as MAGA did nearly a decade ago.
The MAHA movement is essentially Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy-laden health populism, mixing anti-Big Pharma rhetoric, food and agriculture regulation fights, and vaccine “choice” messaging into a toxic brew of wellness culture and institutional distrust that Lyons is trying to repackage as an actual, winnable, electoral coalition.
Lyons opens by acknowledging reality: Democrats currently hold a 46–41 lead in the House generic ballot, according to polling from Donald Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio (last seen telling Republicans that their president can’t bail them out this November).
But the memo’s grand theory rests on something much thinner: focus group message testing.
Fabrizio’s firm isolated voters who “prioritized health issues”—supposedly 14% of the electorate, though no methodology is provided—and dubbed them the “MAHA Winnable Middle.” While this group preferred a generic Democrat by 5 to 1 when first asked, they flipped to backing a Republican by nearly 2 to 1 when that Republican was described as “focused on removing harmful toxins from our food, limiting pesticides in agriculture, and making sure our kids are not overmedicated.”
Here’s a competing message test: Will you vote for the candidate who wants more harmful toxins in food, more pesticides in agriculture, and more overmedication of children?
Who would say yes to that?
Of course voters respond favorably to the promise of clean food, lower prices, transparency, and sensible health policies. That doesn’t mean they’re joining a political movement. It means they answered a carefully constructed prompt designed to make one side sound reasonable and the other side sound extreme.
That’s “message testing.” You write a paragraph that makes your side sound like common sense and the opponent sound reckless, strip away party labels and governing records, and then treat the results like a revelation.
In the real world, candidates aren’t “generic.” They have party affilitaion, voting histories, donors, media ecosystems, and policy records. None of that disappears just because a focus group liked the phrase “remove toxins.”
That 5-to-1 split in their initial test isn’t mysterious. Voters who care deeply about healthy food and sustainable, organic agriculture already lean Democratic for a reason. It was Democrats who had an actual organic farmer, Jon Tester of Montana, in the Senate before Republicans booted him out.
And if “toxins” are suddenly a great moral crisis, why are MAHA types so quiet while Trump pushes expanded production of glyphosate, the herbicide most commonly found in RoundUp?
Then there’s the thing everyone already knows: The MAHA movement is driven in large part by vaccine skepticism.
Lyons admits as much, noting that “a slim majority of voters are not convinced there are negative health impacts from vaccines.” But 54-45 isn’t “slim”: That’s a 9-point advantage for the pro-vaccine side—and even that number is buoyed by Republican voters, who make up most of the vaccine skeptics to begin with.
And that’s with this bullshit framing. Of course people say they’re concerned about “negative health impacts.” Liberals are concerned about drug safety too, which is why we defend a rigorous, independent scientific process that tests, verifies, and continuously monitors vaccines. Caring about safety doesn’t lead to being anti-vaccine. Undermining the institutions that ensure safety does.
So what’s the memo’s advice? Reframe anti-vaccine ideology as “choice.” Dress it up in softer language.
Angela Smith, of Fredericksburg, listens at the Freedom Fight for Vaccine Choice at the Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 25, 2023.
But the consequences aren’t abstract. As vaccine skepticism spreads, preventable diseases once considered eradicated are reappearing, including a massive measles outbreak in South Carolina that has nearly hit 1,000 cases, with children literally fighting for their lives. That might not move Republican-voting conspiracy theorists still pushing their ivermectin obsession, but it’s certainly not winning persuadable voters.
If MAHA was truly a transformative political force, Republicans wouldn’t need to tiptoe around its core message—they’d be running on it. Instead, the memo urges nuance and careful phrasing, because they know the raw version doesn’t sell.
Ultimately, the things MAHA claims to champion—safer drugs, healthier food, fewer environmental toxins—aren’t partisan tenets. This is generic stuff everyone cares about. The real divide shows up when it comes to science, regulation, and who actually confronts industry power in the real world.
That 5-to-1 gap in their own initial test is the most revealing number. No amount of carefully worded messaging, outside the vacuum of a focus group, will turn MAHA into the “once in a generation” political gift Lyons is desperately trying to sell.
01-04 the x-files 05-12 starfleet academy 13-16 st voyager + discovery 17-20 sw prequel movies + mandalorian 21-26 fallout 27-31 comics 32-36 misc tv 37-40 movies (eileen, inside out, batman returns)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave Fox News a preview of President Donald Trump’s upcoming State of the Union speech, blaming former President Joe Biden for creating the affordability crisis after he left office.
Trump’s propaganda princess suggested he would highlight “everyday Americans who are directly benefiting from his policies,” and announce new initiatives intended to “tackl[e] the affordability crisis that Joe Biden created one year ago.”
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Karoline Leavitt: "The president will be making a few new policy announcements to continue tackling the affordability crisis that Joe Biden created one year ago." (Joe Biden was no longer president one year ago.)
We are apparently supposed to believe that one month after Trump was inaugurated, Biden slipped into the White House, pulled all of the economic levers (probably using an autopen!), and created the affordability crisis Americans face today.
Despite claiming to have “solved” inflation already, Trump has done next to nothing to address rising costs. Between his ill-advised tariff policies and the so-called Big Beautiful Bill—which slashes health care funding for tens of millions of Americans in order to funnel money to the wealthiest 1%—the administration and the GOP are making things all the harder for working families.
The Trump administration is offering up strange justifications for a potential U.S. attack on Iran, even as a top U.S. general has been privately warning that conflict could endanger American lives.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt justified a possible strike by arguing that chanting from Iranians presented a threat to security.
“Iran chants, ‘Death to America,’ so you tell me if that’s a threat,”Leavitt told reporters.
President Donald Trump has argued that an attack on Iran is needed to curb the nation’s nuclear capability. The claim is at odds with his owncontention last year that American strikes he ordered on the nation had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. At the time, Trump derided reports about a leaked Pentagon assessment that his strikes had done little to impede Iran’s nuclear program.
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Leavitt on Trump's incoherent rhetoric: "Operation Midnight Hammer was an overwhelmingly successful mission that did in fact obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. That does not mean that Iran may never try again to establish a nuclear program that could directly threaten the United States."
Leavitt tried to have it both ways, telling reporters, “Operation Midnight Hammer was an overwhelmingly successful mission that did in fact obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities.” She added, “That does not mean that Iran may never try again to establish a nuclear program that could directly threaten the United States and our allies abroad.”
At the same time, Trump has been claiming that Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is in lockstep with his belief that action against Iran would be an easy success.
“General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won,”Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, shown in December.
But reporting has emerged that Caine has made a different assessment behind closed doors.
The New York Times reported that Caine has told Trump an attack on Iran has a high risk of American casualties, and that an attack would lower U.S. stockpiles of weaponry. Similarly, a source familiar with the Trump administration’s planningtold Axios that Caine is a “reluctant warrior” on Iran who expressed concerns about extended American entanglement in the region.
Trump has a track record of dismissing concerns about endangering American lives while pursuing his foreign policy. In his first term, after Americans were airlifted from Iraq for traumatic brain injuries following a 2020 Iranian strike against them, Trump insisted that they had merely had “headaches and a couple of other things.”
Trump and his team are pushing for a military conflict ashis approval ratings fall. The public disapproves of his actions on issues like the economy, immigration, and tariffs.
Trump may believe that he can get the public to rally around him on a military action, but to get there, he continues to mislead and offer up justifications that are weak and implausible.
A growing chorus of Republicans are calling on Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales to resign, after text messages surfaced showing him pressuring an aide who later died by suicide to send him sexually explicit photos of herself.
Yet Speaker Mike Johnson is protecting Gonzales, saying Gonzales deserves due process and thus won't make a determination on whether he should resign until an investigation plays out. It's transparently an effort by Johnson to ensure he doesn't lose a reliable GOP vote from his extremely narrow majority.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
“It is my understanding there’s an investigation in the state of Texas on these matters and has been going for some time, and the Office of Congressional Conduct has also, it’s been reported, they’ve been looking at it and all of that was news to me," Johnson told reporters on Monday. "But I … think as in every case like this, you have to allow the investigations to play out and all the facts to come out.”
Of course, there's little doubt that what Gonzales did was wrong.
Congressional ethics rules clearly state that members of Congress are not permitted to have sexual relationships with their staff.
“A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner may not engage in a sexual relationship with any employee of the House who works under the supervision of the Member,” the House Code of Conduct states.
And there is clear text message evidence that Gonzales had a sexual relationship with his congressional aide, who even more disturbingly appeared uncomfortable with Gonzales's advances.
"Send me a sexy pic,” Gonzales texted his aide Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who later self-immolated after reports that she had been iced out by staff after they learned she was having a sexual relationship with their boss.
Santos-Aviles replied, “you don't really want a hot picture of me.”
"Yes I do,” Gonzales responded, adding, "Hurry."
To which Santos-Aviles texted back “No, I just don't like taking pictures of myself."
In another exchange, Gonzales asked Santos-Aviles about her favorite sexual positions, including one message in which he asked her if she liked "anal." Santos-Aviles responded that Gonzalez was going “too far.”
The messages are disturbing, and unequivocally show Gonzales violated the House code of conduct.
But Johnson has just a bare majority, with 218 votes to Democrats' 214. That means he can afford to lose just one vote if every House member is present. If Gonzales resigned, that would further narrow that number and hamper his ability to get legislation passed. So rather than force Gonzales out, the supposedly God-fearing speaker is letting Gonzales stick around.
While Johnson is protecting Gonzales, the few female GOP lawmakers in his conference say Gonzales needs to step down.
Even South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace is calling for Gonzales’ resignation.
"These text messages are disgusting and inexcusable," Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) wrote in a post on X. "A Member of Congress. Harassing his own staffer in the middle of the night. Asking for explicit photos. Pressing her on sexual positions. Regina Santos-Aviles told him he was going too far. He did not care. He kept going."
Mace added that Gonzales "should resign immediately and be held fully accountable for what he’s done."
"She is gone now. Her son is growing up without his mother. And Tony Gonzales is campaigning like nothing happened," Mace said. "We have ZERO tolerance for those who abuse their power over others. Zero. It does not matter what party you are in, what title you hold, or how powerful you think you are. You do not get a free pass."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) responded to a post on X that had screenshots of the text messages Gonzalez sent Santos-Aviles with a simple request: "@RepTonyGonzales, RESIGN!"
"It is time for Tony to let someone else represent the great people of TX. Tony, you should drop out of the race," Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) wrote.
Even some male Republican lawmakers said Gonzales needs to go.
"America deserves better," Rep. Brendan Gill, a fellow Texas Republican, wrote in a post on X. "Tony should drop out of the race."
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said Gonzales needs to “do the right thing and resign."
Of course, Gonzales faces voters one week from today in Texas’ March 3 primary. He already faced a tough primary reelection battle against Republican Brandon Herrera. Now that his inappropriate affair has been all over the news in the final days of the race, it’s possible he’ll lose his primary fight.
Yet that’s not enough. Gonzales needs to leave Congress early. We won’t hold our breath for Johnson to do the right thing and make Gonzales go.
The Supreme Court’s decision to block President Donald Trump’s tariffs is a hefty 170 pages long—but only a dozen or so pages constitute the actual opinion of the court, thanks to a fractured majority opinion.
Huge chunks of this monstrosity are mostly just the conservative justices hammering away at their colleagues. It’s just grievances all the way down.
The less said about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 62-page (!!) dissent, the better. You can tell that he’s the sort of guy who thinks his every thought is perfectly formed and divinely inspired, which is why his dissenting opinion is longer than anything else in the decision.
Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018.
But Kavanaugh didn’t even need all of those words. His real job is to just flatter Trump and make sure he gets his way. Since he couldn’t land a majority opinion in this case, he used his dissent to draw Trump a roadmap on how to just keep on tariffin’ even after this ruling.
Honestly, you probably could have done that in, like, five pages, Brett.
Somehow, even though Justice Neil Gorsuch was in the majority, his concurrence is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages.
So when it comes to the major questions doctrine, everyone on the Supreme Court except Gorsuch is doing it wrong, you fools. And when it comes to Congress? Well, everyone is also stupid and bad because they won’t understand that legislating is hard and takes time, and they should get off their butts.
It’s some awfully weird sentiment coming from a dude who’s spent the last year by and large joining his conservative colleagues in ignoring the executive branch's unconstitutional encroachment on Congress’ powers.
Sure, we’ve told you multiple times that what you do doesn’t matter, and we will let Trump do what he wants, but how dare you not legislate anyway!
Gorsuch didn’t spare Justice Clarence Thomas, framing his view as “Congress may hand over to the President most of its powers, including the tariff power, without limit."
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017
Surprisingly, Gorsuch is not wrong here.
Thomas did exactly that. His dissent tried to punch an enormous hole in the nondelegation doctrine, one big enough to drive a Trump-shaped tariff through, and it was so out of pocket that even the reliably craven Justice Samuel Alito didn’t join it.
Broadly, the nondelegation doctrine says that Congress can’t delegate its power to legislate. It delegates other power all of the time, such as giving government agencies authority to develop regulations. But turning over legislative power is a no-no.
But wait! What if Thomas could just decide, single-handedly, that the nondelegation doctrine bars Congress only from delegating legislative power related to deprivation of life, liberty, or property? That would basically allow Congress to give away much of its constitutional power to legislate, allowing Trump full tariff power.
That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito. But, hey, at least Thomas kept it to 18 pages. Small blessings.
And I'm getting paid for every last one of them, including the 6 hours when the house slept and so did I. Normally, we're not actually supposed to sleep on an overnight shift - but almost everybody really does, so it's more like "don't get caught" - but c'mon.
For everybody at home, leaving without a replacement is not simply a fireable offense but an actual, factual crime. Also, I'm not sure how I would've gotten to the bus. I mean, it's right outside the door, and buses were running all night, but man, it was brutal out there. We needed a little shoveling, and neither I nor manager wanted to shovel, so we had to wait for the neighbors to get their sidewalks and then sorta patch us into theirs. (The transportation issue is also why I'm not blaming any coworkers who didn't come in. It was impossible. I genuinely don't think that this was a fixable issue, Staten Island got a lot of snow.)
In retrospect, what probably ought to have been done would have had to have been done in advance:
1. Manager should've taken as much discretionary money as possible, agreed to let staff order Chinese or whatever for two, three meals - something that reheats nicely - and offered to pay all our carfare home in advance, and then used that to straight up bribe at least one extra staff member to stay over the storm. With three of us, we could've had one on each floor and also could've more easily arranged sleeping shifts so somebody was awake at all times.
2. She also should've called up the families of those residents who frequently go home for an overnight and asked if they'd take their relatives from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. That's suboptimal for a lot of reasons - there's a reason they all live in a residence instead of with their families! - but it would've lightened the burden on us significantly if we'd had even just our two or three easiest residents away visiting their sisters and brothers.
But we all survived! My replacement actually showed up at midnight last night! But she declined to wake me on the grounds that I wasn't going home at midnight, and she was quite right. And then another staff member showed up this morning, and 90 or 100 minutes later my bus finally showed up. (And yes, I do insist on getting paid for that last hour and a half as well. I wasn't just sitting around, I was doing laundry, and supervising on the basement so that everybody else could handle the upper floors, and walking the guys out to their van so nobody slipped on ice.)
I'm home now, I showered, and I have the rest of the week off, off, off. Yay me!
If this happens again, I'm bringing a change of clothing.
Two days before the assault began, former and future President Donald Trump delighted in telling radio show “Clay & Buck” how the Russian dictator’s aggression showed his “savvy” and "genius.” Trump’s remarks came on the same day that Biden announced new sanctions against Russia following Putin’s declaration that he would recognize two regions of Ukraine as independent states and deploy Russian troops there.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump frequently claimed that his special relationship with Putin would allow him to end the war “in 24 hours.” And yet, even before he was inaugurated for a second term, Trump began retreating from that promise.
In the year since returning to office, Trump has embarrassed the United States on the world stage, attempting to bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a White House visit, straining the U.S.'s standing with our NATO partners, and making little, if any, progress toward a peaceful resolution.
Estimates say that Putin’s war has killed up to 1.8 million people, with no clear end in sight.
From the roof of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in Portland, Oregon, federal agents late last month watched as thousands of people marched past the processing center in protest. Families and children were among the daytime crowd, which had gathered for an event advertised as family friendly.
Video of the ensuing chaos showed a young girl — wearing a pink sweater with butterflies — in visible distress as a volunteer medic sprays water on her face. At one point the ponytailed girl said, “Owie, it burns.”
“She was confused, stunned, upset, crying,” a witness said. “It shattered me.”
Weeks earlier in Minneapolis — where federal agents have injured and killed civilians as part of a massive immigration enforcement operation — an agent threw a flash-bang that rolled under an SUV stopped in traffic. It set off smoke inside the vehicle, forcing a family with children in the passenger seats to run into a nearby home. A 6-month-old in the car stopped breathing briefly.
A person holds a Minnesota state flag as federal immigration officers deploy tear gas on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis.
“I stopped and I looked at my baby and I was just like, ‘Wake up, you have to,’” the mother told CNN. She administered CPR before taking her infant to the hospital.
As the Trump administration expands militarized operations ensnaring U.S. citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, agents’ use of tear gas and other chemical irritants as crowd control measures is worrying medical professionals and public health experts, who say such exposure could disproportionately impact children and other vulnerable populations.
“People have to realize these chemicals are not safe,” said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and member of the American Lung Association’s board of directors. “We don’t know the long-term effects. We don’t understand their effects on children. Assume that children should have zero exposure to these chemicals.”
Tear gas — a catch-all term to describe chemical compounds that cause irritation to people’s eyes, lungs, mouth, nose and skin within seconds of exposure — has been deployed around residential streets and public spaces in at least four major American cities since last fall.
While at least one entity is tracking immigration-related demonstrations in the United States, there is no substantive monitoring on the exact number of times tear gas is deployed, who is deploying it and why, and what chemicals are being released into the air. Critical details like proximity of impact, length of exposure and whether an incident involved a vulnerable group is also unknown.
“This gap makes it difficult for the public, for researchers and for policymakers to quantify the impact or identity of these toxic air pollutants across states,” said Julie A. González, a demographer and environmental justice scholar.
Several types of chemical irritants are often lumped into a broad definition of tear gas, including those found in devices that disperse smoke when launched and pepper spray. Exposure to these “riot control agents” can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For people with diseases that impact their heart or lungs, the side effects can be more serious, said El-Hasan. They can be worse for children.
“Children’s bodies are different than adult bodies,” he said. “They’re growing. They take more breaths per minute than adults.”
Dr. Sarita Chung, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital, noted how children’s height can add potency to exposure.
“Children are usually closer to the ground, where there is greater gas vapors,” she said. “Or it’s more dense, and so they’re going to breathe in more.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has repeatedly defended its use of tear gas and other chemical irritants during its recent immigration operations. Law enforcement — not just federal but state and local — have used these chemicals legally for decades to disperse crowds. But citizens are challenging in court whether the federal government’s recent use of force, including tear gas deployment, has been excessive and unconstitutional.
Representatives for DHS, ICE and CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment about its use of riot control agents. But an agency spokesperson specifically claimed the incident in Portland last month involved an unruly crowd. The same spokesperson also said the Minneapolis family was not targeted — though she initially blamed the family in a since-deleted post on X.
“It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots,” the post read. “PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN.”
But some of these incidents involving children occurred outside of organized protest. The family in Minneapolis told news outlets that they were headed home after a child’s basketball game at the time that their vehicle was damaged. In early November, a masked federal agent pepper sprayed into a vehicle near a Sam’s Club in Chicago. The car was being driven by a man who had been attempting to go grocery shopping with his 1-year-old daughter. The chemicals spread into the child’s eyes.
“My daughter was trying to open her eyes,” the man told reporters. “She was struggling to breathe.”
The Oregonian reported on a 3-year-old who lives across the street from the ICE facility in Portland whose mom routinely rushes her inside from an apartment balcony when chemicals are deployed. Tear gas has been released on busy commercial streets in Minneapolis, with video showing a parent holding a toddler and running away from the smoke.
Federal agents lobbed tear gas and flash bangs at protesters in front of the ICE building on Jan. 31, 2026, in Portland, Ore
“You can’t just say, oh, avoid the tear gas,” El-Hasan said. “You’re basically talking about random incidents or incidents where very innocent people are just being exposed to these toxic substances.”
El-Hasan said if an adult or child has asthma and is exposed to tear gas, it should be assumed that the irritant will get into the body. He recommended anyone who is asthmatic to have an inhaler and take preventative medication if possible. He also suggested they see a medical profession within 24 hours.
“We have no great understanding, at least none that has been published, on what the long term effects of these chemicals are on children,” El-Hasan said. “The only thing that we can do is just have people understand what to do if their children or they themselves have been exposed to tear gas, and to do that very quickly afterwards.”
But the public’s perception of tear gas use could get reshaped by the emerging imagery and videos of children being exposed to these chemicals.
In Chicago last fall, the repeated deployment of tear gas on residential streets during a weekslong immigration enforcement operation led a federal judge to admonish federal government officials as a temporary restraining order restricting tear gas use was in place.
“Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told then-Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino during an October court hearing, according to Reuters. “They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.”
Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents on Jan. 12 in Minneapolis.
Weeks later, Ellis ordered federal agents to give at least two separate warnings before using tear gas and other chemicals on crowds, and to only use them if there was an immediate threat of physical harm.
The use of tear gas dates back a century, when soldiers deployed it during World War I. Its use is now prohibited in international warfare.
That protest, known as the Forgotten March, was linked within weeks to the death of a 3-month-old baby, Bernard Myers. Bernard’s parents claimed exposure to tear gas — the family said they were in a private home that was filled with smoke — contributed to their child’s death. Newspapers at the time reported that while hospital officials said the child died from an intestinal disorder, doctors also reportedly said: “the gas certainly didn’t do any good.” There was public distrust after military personnel visited the hospital to view the boy’s body.
Anna Feigenbaum is a professor at the University of Glasgow and author of the 2017 book “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today.” She highlights Bernard’s case in her book as well as the use of tear gas in residential areas that often results in children being in close range and exposed to the chemicals.
“There’s a long history of children being tear gassed, once tear gas started being used domestically,” she said.
The disproportionate impact of tear gas extends beyond children. In 2023, scientist Asha Hassan was part of a team that published a survey-based study on the adverse health effects of tear gas on reproductive health following the 2020 protests against police brutality that followed the death of George Floyd. They found people reporting uterine cramping, early menstrual bleeding, breast tenderness and delayed menstrual bleeding.
Federal immigration officers deploy tear gas at protesters on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis.
Hassan, a professor at the University of Minnesota and an expert on reproductive health, police violence and disability-related research noted that the public’s baseline for understanding the safety of tear gas is limited because it has mostly involved studying the impact of tear gas on young healthy men in a training environment in the 1960s.
“Applying or understanding what we know from that long ago, about some of these gasses to populations that all have different bodies — including people who have uteri, people who have chronic conditions, and children — we actually don’t know,” Hassan said. “We actually don’t have the data to say how this might impact their bodies disproportionately or differently than what this original research shows.”
People who have been impacted by tear gas exposure have sought legal justice in recent years. In December, residents of an affordable housing complex just 300 feet from the ICE building in Portland filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government’s repeated use of tear gas, smoke grenades and other chemical munitions has seeped into their homes and poses environmental and health risks.
“You have a government that regulates everything from serving sizes to what can go into your soda to what can be in your water,” said Jennifer Brown, who was part of a team that published research in 2021 on the use of tear gas and its unknown long-term health impacts. “How is it, then, that it’s OK to use unregulated chemicals on a broad range of civilian populations, especially when these chemicals are banned in war?”
Brown’s research concluded that tear gas has been poorly studied, and guidelines on its use do not properly account for variables like duration of exposure. Under the federal government’s own definition of tear gas, “long lasting exposure or exposure to a large dose” may cause blindness, glaucoma and respiratory failure.
Separately, the decontamination process after tear gas exposure is already challenging for adults: The federal government recommends that people not only throw away their clothing after exposure, they’re told to cut it off instead of pulling it over their heads. Anything that touches the clothing should be sealed into a bag that’s then placed into another bag.
And yet, there is no universal protocol for how law enforcement should discard tear gas canisters and other related residue. In Minneapolis, the chemicals have been left on piles of snow, which can then melt into sewer drains. It’s all hazardous waste, Brown said.
“They shouldn’t get anywhere near your skin, your clothes, your house — but both the physical detritus of the canisters themselves and anything that the gas itself touches — it gets into your house, it’s now on your floors. It’s on your linens. It’s on your clothes. Are you washing your clothes in your washer? You really shouldn’t. You should dispose of them as hazardous waste,” she said.
It’s unclear for now if there will be more accountability over the use of tear gas near children. In Portland, the city’s mayor highlighted the January 31 incident in demanding that ICE agents resign.
“To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children,” he wrote in a statement.
Chung helps oversee a council on the health effects on children after disasters for the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said the council is monitoring additional instances of tear gas deployment around children, in case it shapes future communication with health care professionals about treatment guidelines.
“Tear gas is harmful for the health of children,” she said. “The decontamination process can be challenging, and especially if it’s done in a crowd, and if children are separated from their families, then we need to be diligent about reunification processes to make sure that the children get quickly reunited with their families.”
TARA: Well, at least she didn't do too much damage.
XANDER: Are you kidding? Double-glazed windows ain't cheap. And the jamb needs to be completely repaired. (pauses) Oh dear god, I'm the grownup who sees the world through my job. I'm like my uncle Dave the plumber. I must be shunned.
If you've made it this far you've probably gathered that my name is Brandyn, and yeah I'm testing the waters here. I'm used to social media but never did anything live journal related and definitely don't entirely fit in with capital F Fandom spaces (Though all respect to the queer men, gals, and non-binary pals that spend their time in the trenches and help elevate certain fandoms, I like Star Trek and Gundam, I respect my history).
Mostly want to use this space to post a bit...vulnerably? Not necessarily in terms of my personal life or a place to vent necessarily (Though that's not off the table), but a space removed from the more performative persona I've put on for some other sites (Namely LeagueOfComicGeeks, cause big comic fan. Can find me under fatboyftw there). Not that I'm bitching, I love being known as a snarky but insightful asshole but it can take work to maintain. Alongside the inherent cynicism that having a space only dedicated to one niche hobby inherently brings since once you reach a certain threshold of something and learn how the sausage gets made you tend to get more bitter and critical. I love shouting into the ether about stuff but traditional social media has a way of getting me a bit heated sometimes, lmao.
So I'm going to use this space to be chill and just mainly talk about things I enjoy, comics and otherwise. A place I can go when I wanna post something that on another site I might have to defend or explain a bit more than I have the mental energy to do. As for what I would be posting about well, as we've established comics. Comics of all kinds, love the entire medium, not just superhero stuff. But also the occasional manga/anime, Kaiju Films, video games, and chats about fiction writing since it's not something I do nearly enough but something I love to do.
If any of that seems interesting then feel free to follow...subscribe...whatever it's called here.
(Yes if you check my profile this is just my first post copy and pasted, I realized I didn't have another introduction in me, I'm sowwy)
Things I need to remember: • Asking for help is not, as it turns out, fatal. • Laughing is easier than pulling your hair out, and doesn't have the unfortunate side effect of making you look like a plague victim. • Even the biggest tasks can be defeated if taken a bit at a time. • I can write a paper the night before it's due, but the results are not all they could be. • Be thorough, but focused. • Trust yourself. • Honesty, always.
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