Donald Trump is a racist, genocidal authoritarian who should never have been able to run for president a second time after trying to overthrow the government in 2021. As the kids say, that’s it. That’s the skeet.

However, he did run, he won, and here we are. We do not have the time, the energy, or the fucks to document every creepy thing he says, every terrible EO he signs, and every law he breaks. It is, as has been noted, a firehose of shit.  

What we will focus on are the items that will significantly impact our communities and are part of the coup. Even by narrowing it down that way, there is still too much going on to fast.   

Trump is doing a genocide against Trans people, and this is not a distraction.

We have a definite LGBTQIA bias, not going to lie. But even saying that, we don’t know what else to call the Trump administration’s war on trans people. He has signed numerous EOs obsessed with trans people. He is threatening to fund hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, he is threatening schools that allow trans athletes from participating in sports, he is threatening to purge the military of trans service members, and he is threatening to cut funds for schools that provide care and recognization of trans students. Taken together, this is an attempt to drive transgender people from our society. That is a genocide. It is never a distraction to name and fight back against a genocide.

This is also illegal. In 2020, The Supreme Court ruled that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender does so in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It is true that since then, Trump has been made immune from laws. It’s also true that there are cases before the Supreme Court right now that might strip gender-affirming care from minors. And we all know that Obergefell will probably be overturned.

So, we need to let the NCAA know we won’t abide by a ban on trans athletes. We need to let hospitals know we won’t let them stop providing gender-affirming care. We need to reach out and help trans inmates who are in danger of being transferred to prisons that do not match their gender identity. We need to check in on our trans family and friends. We must provide them with support and mutual aid to get them through this time.  

Some people argue that this might be a distraction from “real issues“. Those people can fuck off. Again, this is a genocide, and genocides are bad. We fight back against those.

Trump is trying to deport folks and end birthright citizenship. He wants to run internment camps for immigrants.

The good news on this front is that after Trump 1.0, people have a good sense of what it means to know your rights when ICE shows up. You don’t open the door. You don’t tell them anything. You do community defense. These systems are already in place: someone in your community is doing this work, and you can plug in with them.

But what is concerning about Trump 2.0 is the attempt to end birthright citizenship and his turning towards internment camps. These are not Nazi camps. These are American camps. Americans have a long history of this, from its treatment of Indigenous peoples to Japanese internment. We do this. We should stop pretending we never have, and not do it again. Trump wants to turn Gitmo into a camp for migrants. He wants to build facilities that could hold up to 40,000 people. He wants to ship people to work camps in El Salvador.

It is important to note that it is 100% legal for people to show up in the United States and ask for asylum. It is important context to point out that a lot of people are fleeing from violence that we are responsible for.

It also does not fucking matter. Because, again, we should not be okay with folks being rounded up and placed in camps. We should not be okay with people losing their citizenship.

Trump is supporting the DOGE takeover of the government.

There is so much going on here, but much of that is Elon doing whatever he is doing with his army of young programmers. For Trump, the word to know is “Impoundment.” The Impoundment Control Act was a law Congress passed more than 50 years ago after executive overreach by Nixon. These days, that seems almost quaint.

But here is the deal. We have three branches of government. And the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress. Congress gets to spend the money. The administration has some discretion depending on the type of spending or how the law was worded. But by allowing Elon to stomp around cutting off programs, Trump has given us a pretty clear constitutional crisis. He is deciding how money should be spent and is not following the budgets passed by Congress. This violates the ICA, it pisses all over the Constitution, and is a power grab.