Atlanta: 48°, sunny — warm enough to lull you into false comfort, just like Republicans who "rebuke" Trump on Tuesday and vote with him by Thursday.

Detroit: 26°, mostly cloudy — the gray lid of February pressing down on a city that has always known something about being left behind.

Kansas City: 42°, cloudy — overcast like a cover-up, the atmosphere refusing to commit.

New York: 32°, mostly cloudy — the temperature at which Stonewall's empty flagpole rattles in the wind — a ghost of cloth where a flag used to live.

San Francisco: 50°, mostly cloudy — fog off the Bay moving in slow as grief, the city still furious, still beautiful, still standing.

Miami: 71°, sunny — paradise-adjacent, where warmth feels borrowed and federal cruelty still reaches you through the sunscreen.

The Pride flag is gone from Stonewall. ICE killed two Americans in Minneapolis. The EPA just burned its legal authority to protect the planet.

Welcome to Thursday — the kind of shit-storm that wears a tuxedo. First time here? Join the Gathering.

Editor's note: Six Republican spines materialized out of thin air today and voted against Trump's turd-juggling tariff bullshit — proof that even cowards occasionally stumble across the right side of history. The Hill

The streets of South Minneapolis smelled like tear gas and grief for weeks. Two American citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by ICE agents during the Trump administration's militarized occupation of Minnesota. Now Tom Homan, the cock-gargling shit-weasel serving as border czar, is announcing a drawdown.

What he said: "We are not surrendering the president's mission on immigration enforcement."

At its peak, 3,000 federal agents occupied the Twin Cities. A federal judge found ICE violated at least 96 court orders since January 1. Emergency room visits at Children's Minnesota dropped 25% — not because kids got healthier, but because families were too terrified to come in. A 5-year-old sat home for seven days with a ruptured eardrum.

The damage:

A "drawdown" is optics management dressed as mercy.

Source: The Hill

Imagine learning that the law keeping corporate polluters from legally poisoning your lungs no longer exists. That's today. The Trump administration formally rescinded the 2009 Endangerment Finding — the scientific-legal framework requiring the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

What the ass-ramming cock-socket Lee Zeldin called it: "The single largest act of deregulation in the history of the USA."

Evidence:

This is what the fossil fuel industry paid $750 million in campaign contributions to purchase.

Action: Earthjustice is already in litigation mode. Sierra Club needs your support. Call your senators.

Source: Earth.org

On February 9, under cover of "government-wide guidance," federal agents quietly removed the rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City — the literal birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The National Park Service cited a January 21st memo restricting flagpoles to the U.S. and Interior Department flag. What it actually means: the shit-gargling fuck-sticks in this administration looked at the holiest ground in queer American history and chose to strip it bare.

Stakes:

What the actual fuck does it say about a government that fears a piece of cloth?

Movement: Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal organized a rally at Stonewall on February 11. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called it "an outrage." NY State Sen. Erik Bottcher: "We will not be erased." Show up: LGBTQ Nation

They stole the flag. They cannot steal what Stonewall means.

Survival wisdom: This morning, as you read about the empty flagpole, Lorde's words aren't abstraction — they're instruction. Your freedom is knotted to every family too terrified to bring a sick child to the ER, every person ICE is hunting in Minneapolis, every body this administration is trying to make invisible. The fucking flag is gone, yes. But the 1969 rebellion that made that ground sacred? They cannot touch it. Carry the uprising today, not just the symbol.

Blue Film finally gets a theatrical release in May — a queer cam-boy drama with a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score that Sundance and SXSW were "scared" to show. — Art that frightens gatekeepers is usually the art that matters. PinkNews

Bobbi Campbell & Zelda Rubinstein — the nurse who became AIDS' first "poster boy" in 1981 San Francisco, and the Poltergeist actress who risked her entire career to tell gay men to "play safely" a full year before Elizabeth Taylor made it fashionable. — History remembers who showed up first. LGBTQ Nation

Yellowstone's wolf mega-cascade — the beloved story of wolves triggering a 1,500% surge in willow growth — may be dramatically overstated, based on circular modeling and methodological errors. — Even the science we love deserves honest revision. ScienceDaily

Europe's "untouched" wilderness was being actively reshaped by Neanderthals and early hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years before agriculture — hunting megafauna and using fire altered forests and grasslands in measurable ways. — We have always been the variable. ScienceDaily

And now, your dispatch from people doing the actual work.

Malcolm Kenyatta — first openly gay Black man elected to Pennsylvania's legislature, now DNC vice chair. His voice moves through a room like thunder wrapped in velvet, and he's been refusing to whisper since before the party caught up with him.

Robert Garcia — first openly gay immigrant elected to Congress, Afro-Latino, ranking member of House Oversight. Sharp, specific, and completely unintimidated by the moment.

Ocean Vuong — queer Vietnamese-American poet whose words don't just land in the brain; they bruise the body. When a poet makes you feel safer just by existing, that's political as hell.

Three queer men — one Black, one Afro-Latino, one Vietnamese-American — holding ground at every level of public life. Visibility this specific isn't decoration. It is armor, and it is evidence, and it is the proof of a future they're building in real time.

News exhaustion is a physiological state → Set a hard 9 PM stop on doomscrolling using Screen Time (iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (Android) to auto-lock news apps. Replace 20 minutes with something body-based: stretch, shower, or write anything by hand. Feeling: Your nervous system remembering it lives in a body, not a feed.

Grocery price creep is real and measurable → Use the free Flipp app to compare weekly store circulars before you shop. Households using grocery comparison apps report saving $30–$60/month on a typical $400 grocery budget — that's up to $720 back in your pocket annually. Feeling: The quiet dignity of small financial sovereignty.

Kitchen sponges are bacterial catastrophes → Microwave it damp for 90 seconds (kills 99.9% of bacteria, per USDA research) or replace every 2 weeks. Better: switch to Swedish dishcloths ($1–$2 each, last 6–12 months, fully compostable). Feeling: The satisfaction of a system that actually works.

Blood oranges are at their absolute peak right now → Slice into rounds, drizzle with olive oil, scatter with fresh mint and flaky salt. Four minutes. The color is pornographically beautiful, the flavor is tart-sweet and wild. February's one gift: the fruit that looks like a sunset.

Grow green onions for free, forever → Stick the root ends of store-bought green onions in a glass of water on a sunny windowsill. They regrow in 5–7 days, indefinitely. Cost after the first bunch: $0. Every vegetable you grow yourself is an act of food sovereignty.

Pasta e Ceci (7 ingredients, feeds 4, under 10 min): Fry 3 garlic cloves in olive oil, add 1 can crushed tomatoes + 1 can chickpeas + ½ cup pasta water, cook 1 cup small pasta directly in the sauce until absorbed, finish with chili flakes and more oil. One pot, dinner that tastes like someone's grandmother cares about you.

Moving forward — your armor for today: Baldwin understood that survival is relational — it's not about individual toughness, it's about who sees you and who you see back. Today's headlines are designed to make you feel alone in the dark. They're not. Across Minneapolis, New York, Atlanta, and Detroit, people are showing up — at courthouses, at flagpoles, at community tables. Your job isn't to fix all of it. Your job is to mirror and magnify someone today. That's enough. That's the whole fucking thing.

Cops Are Buying GeoSpy, an AI That Geolocates Photos in Seconds — 404 Media | Joseph Cox. Internal police emails confirm at least two agencies have purchased this Boston-built AI — it reads architecture, soil type, and spatial features to pinpoint photo locations in seconds, no GPS metadata required. Read The administration wants to track protesters and immigrants through AI photo surveillance; the EFF warns this could produce wrongful arrests — and it's already in use.

O'Reilly Says Bondi Decided to "Throw Hand Grenades" at Epstein Hearing — The Hill | Sophie Brams. AG Pam Bondi called Jamie Raskin a "washed-up loser lawyer," was accused of lying under oath about Trump's ties to Epstein, and appeared to have a binder labeled "Jayapal Pramila Search History." Read Eleven Epstein survivors sat in that room. Every single one raised their hand when asked if the DOJ had still not met with them.