Supermoon Rising, Democracy Waning

As the night sky keeps its promises, Trump hides in the dark, Johnson stalls for Epstein, and America faces a choice: silence or disruption.

Good morning, friends. Pour yourself something strong, because the country’s going to need it. If you step outside tonight, you’ll see the first of three consecutive supermoons, harvest, beaver, and cold, lining up to remind us that the universe keeps its promises even if the United States government can’t keep its lights on. The moon will rise bigger, brighter, and more dependable than anything happening on Capitol Hill, where Speaker Mike Johnson has locked the doors, handed House Republicans a paid vacation, and stalled the swearing-in of Adelita Grijalva. Why? Does he not think Arizona is entitled to representation, or is it because her vote would trigger a discharge petition for the Epstein files. Johnson is now Hostage-in-Chief, holding the entire legislative branch captive to protect Donald Trump from daylight.

And that’s where the week’s strangest rumor, “Grindr-gate”, collides with the shutdown. Is Johnson secretly on gay dating apps while pushing conversion therapy with his wife? Snopes says the screenshots are likely fake. But here’s the kicker: when the second-in-line to the presidency actively suppresses the release of incriminating documents, refuses to seat a duly elected Democrat, and turns Congress into a bunker, it suddenly doesn’t matter if the Grindr profile is real. He’s already compromised. He’s already blackmail material. Trump taught his party that shame doesn’t disqualify you; it’s the currency of power.

Trump himself is lurking behind White House curtains, skipping his usual golf outings. Every time he vanishes from public view, speculation about his health spikes. Officially, we’re told he has “chronic venous insufficiency”, in plain English, swelling legs, “cankles”, and that otherwise he’s in “excellent cognitive health.” Unofficially, his behavior suggests otherwise. He spends his days hiding during the shutdown, fantasizing about putting his face on a $1 coin (illegal, but when has that ever stopped him?), ripping up the Rose Garden to turn it into Club MAGA, and posting AI death videos of U.S. forces blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats. Some of those “cartel smuggler” boats look suspiciously like 16-foot skiffs, incapable of reaching US shores, but judge, jury, and executioner Trump doesn’t do transparency. He just adds another notch to his kill-feed and calls it policy.

Abroad, Trump has stumbled into what he thinks is his big Roosevelt moment. Hamas announced it is willing to release all Israeli hostages if conditions are met, even offering to hand Gaza over to an independent technocratic body. Trump crowed on Truth Social that “lasting PEACE” is at hand and demanded Israel halt its bombing long enough to see it through. Netanyahu smiled and nodded, the IDF started sketching out the first phase, and Mahmoud Abbas cautiously welcomed the plan. The catch, of course, is that Hamas hasn’t agreed to disarm, Trump’s “technocrat” clause is fuzzy at best, and Gaza City is still under siege with famine at the gates. If this “deal” actually sticks, Trump will claim Teddy Roosevelt-level glory; if it collapses, it will be one more grim stage prop in his traveling show of chaos.

Back home, the authoritarian scaffolding grows bolder. Trump’s memo NPM7, signed last week, redefines dissent as terrorism and orders the military to prepare for “domestic combat” in American cities. Anti-racism? Extremism. Gender equality? Terrorism. Criticism of ICE? Pro-democracy or anti-fascisim? All threats to national security. The Department of Justice is told to prosecute opposition with maximum charges, the IRS to strip NGOs and universities of tax status, and a new “Joint Terrorism Task Force” to dismantle not violent plots but networks of thought. It’s Stalin’s Article 58 and Hitler’s Malicious Practices Act with a Mar-a-Lago spin. Fascists mean what they say, and Trump is saying it out loud. He has turned the law into a weapon, hollowed out institutions, and created a pseudo-democracy where loyalty replaces truth.

And through it all, the shutdown grinds on. Twenty million Americans face skyrocketing healthcare premiums as subsidies vanish. Families in Georgia who paid $37 a month will soon pay $964. Roanoke households will see costs double to more than $2,000 a month. No wonder polls show Americans blaming Trump and Republicans by margins of 12, 17, even 25 points. The GOP controls all branches of government, and yet their master plan is to blame immigrants and trans kids while sending House Republicans home on vacation. Sheldon Whitehouse summed it up perfectly: if you want to know whose shutdown this is, look who’s enjoying it. Trump, grinning as he inflicts pain. Russ Vought, sharpening his knives like it’s puberty all over again. Senate Republicans at fundraisers. Johnson barricading Congress to protect Epstein’s secrets.

Meanwhile, artists keep reinstalling a statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands on the National Mall, a monument to the truth Johnson and Trump are desperate to keep buried. Like a toppled Confederate general forced back onto the square, it keeps rising from the rubble, just as the truth keeps surfacing no matter how tightly they try to seal the vault.

In the words of Richard J Murphy, fascists mean what they say. Trump told the generals to prepare for war in American cities, and he signed the order to make dissent a crime. The “bars” are already being built, and if people hesitate, hoping it will all blow over, then silence becomes complicity.

History shows that when people move together, governments notice. Massive, coordinated stoppages have brought real leverage before, think the vast general strikes that ground economies to a halt and force bargaining at scale, and more recently European unions have used single-day national actions to make governments feel the political cost of policy choices. Those are the precedents we should study, not romanticize: they worked because they were organized, disciplined, and backed by institutions that could sustain pain for a purpose.

The first rule is legal and ethical: whether a tactic is protected or exposes participants to criminal or civil liability depends on sector, contract status, and local law. The U.S. labor code protects many union actions but not every form of work stoppage; some tactics, sabotage, violent disruption, or targeting life-saving services, cross clear moral and legal red lines and will destroy public support. That means one of the earliest moves must be to bring unions, labor lawyers, and rights groups into the room so that actions are planned within lawful boundaries and accompanied by legal observers and a rapid-response legal fund. Organizers who skip that step are not brave, they’re reckless.

With those guardrails in place, pressure tactics that scale political cost without needlessly harming civilians are obvious and battle-tested. Rotating, union-led “rolling” strikes in key sectors, transport, docks, grocery distribution, transit, can be designed so that each day’s actions are sustainable and reversible, inflicting political pain while allowing workers to return to their jobs. Work-to-rule and deliberate slowdowns convert compliance with existing rules into leverage; they’re low-visibility, hard to criminalize if coordinated through unions, and they frustrate the people in power without endangering lives. Coordinated consumer withholding and targeted boycotts shift the burden away from frontline workers and onto corporate revenue streams; coupled with tight communications, they can make the economic consequences unmistakably political. Visible picket lines and targeted strikes make pain political rather than personal, provided mutual-aid networks are ready to fill any gaps so communities don’t starve while officials feel discomfort. And when federal employees are furloughed, private-sector solidarity actions, carefully timed and legally coordinated, transform bureaucratic theater into a broad national accountability campaign.

Disruption works when it is strategic, lawful where possible, morally defensible, and backed by the institutions that can sustain it.

The supermoon will rise bigger, brighter, and steadier than the men trying to govern us. It will keep its orbit while they hide in ballrooms, bunker offices, and digital death videos. Trump can mint fake coins, Johnson can delete fake Grindr accounts, but the light of the moon will keep exposing everything they want hidden.