Atlanta: 48°, overcast — grief hangs low over Peach State streets today, the same gray sky that covered Selma sixty years ago.

Detroit: 27°, iron-cold and biting — Motor City bones know the marrow-deep ache of losing another giant who stood between us and the void.

Kansas City: 35°, blustery crosswinds — the wind is carrying something ancient westward, and you should listen for it.

New York: 30°, raw and unforgiving — five boroughs wrapped in cold sharp as every injustice he refused to let stand unremarked.

San Francisco: 57°, morning fog burning slow — the Bay knows how to mourn without making it about itself. Take notes.

Miami: 73°, pale winter sun — even the warmth feels muted today, like the light itself remembered it owes a debt.

The earth smells like iron and wet stone this morning and we lost the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., 84 years old and irreplaceable, while the bastards who inherited his ruined world are busy defunding the agency meant to keep it standing.

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Editor's note: Fuck every tear you'll cry trying to explain to someone raised on nothing what it cost that man to stand exactly where he stood, exactly when he stood there — just go read it and know the world is smaller now. thehill.com

The Department of Homeland Security ran out of money at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, February 14th — and you will feel this one in your lungs.

What they said: "We want to fund DHS, but only a department that is obeying the law." — Sen. Chris Murphy, D-CT

The Trump-manufactured disaster machine clangs forward on its tracks. 260,000 DHS employees now work without pay — roughly 90% of the entire department. TSA screeners stand their checkpoints. Coast Guard crews patrol their waters. FEMA staff field disaster calls. None of them getting a paycheck. The shit-gargling fuck-sticks who engineered this? ICE and CBP are just fine — both already pocketing $75 billion from last summer's "One Big Beautiful Bill" — because Trump never lets his enforcers suffer.

Here's the rotting heart of it. Democrats demanded ten reforms after federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — two American citizens — in Minneapolis in January. Body cameras. Warrant requirements. Use-of-force accountability. Republicans said no. The Senate voted 52-47, eight votes short of cloture. Congress then went on vacation. They don't return until February 23rd, meaning TSA workers miss March paychecks.

The damage:

Response: Sen. Katie Britt's stopgap was blocked by Democrats who refused another two-week delay without reform. "The path is simple: negotiate guardrails that stop the violence," Schumer said. thehill.com

The shutdown is not chaos. It is design.

There's a herd of young elephants in Pilanesberg, South Africa, that grew up without elders — and they killed dozens of white rhinos before anyone understood why.

Evidence:

Trophy hunters still specifically target the oldest elephants for their largest tusks — destroying, in a single shot, generations of accumulated knowledge that no breeding program recovers. The elders knew which plants heal, which waterholes survive drought, which humans carry danger. That's not instinct. It's culture. And we're letting turd-juggling cunt-pickles with rifles pay to erase it. Every ecosystem is a library. We keep burning ours. nationalgeographic.com

Action: Support the African Wildlife Foundation's anti-poaching efforts. Push trophy hunting bans in your state's international trade resolutions. The matriarchs are not just elephants.

Jeremy Carl, Trump's nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, once wrote that Randi Weingarten — president of the American Federation of Teachers, and a lesbian — should face the death penalty.

Stakes:

What the fuck is the actual plan here? A dick-chomping clit-goblin who wants lesbian union leaders executed is Trump's choice to represent America on human rights before 193 nations. As of last Thursday's hearing, Sen. John Curtis — a Republican — declared opposition. Sen. Jacky Rosen called Carl's record "vile." His nomination is likely dead. But the fact it existed at all — submitted twice, defended twice, seated at a confirmation table — tells you everything about the government they are constructing.

Movement: GLAAD's accountability tracker documents every anti-LGBTQ+ nominee. Lambda Legal monitors State Department policy. Contact your senators — demand they vote no on hate dressed up in a briefing folder. lgbtqnation.com

Every call made to a Senate office is a rose petal they didn't expect.

Survival wisdom — how you carry this forward: Lorde wrote those words while fighting cancer and surveillance and erasure simultaneously. Deliberate means you made a choice. It means when they came for the union leaders, the trans women, the unarmed poets in Minneapolis — you didn't flinch away, you looked directly at it. You let it be real. That's not masochism. That's the only way resistance stays honest. Take five minutes this morning. Look directly at what's actually happening. Then decide — not in panic, but deliberately — what you're going to do about it. Fear is the weather. You are not the fucking weather.

Gay Vague at the Bowl: Super Bowl LX was supposed to be queer — Brandi Carlile singing, Bad Bunny in a dress. Instead: a "gay vague" whisper. Twenty major brands slashed or killed Pride campaigns after last year's conservative backlash. Queer celebrities appeared without queer storylines — representation as Ken doll, neither offensive nor substantial. — The closet now has a sponsor. lgbtqnation.com

RFKbot Says What: RealFood.gov — launched in a Mike Tyson Super Bowl ad, powered by Elon Musk's Grok — will helpfully advise which vegetables to insert into your rectum. Not metaphorically. — Your tax dollars, hard at work. lgbtqnation.com

Poisoned Table: Researchers confirmed bananas grown near Brazil's 2015 Fundão dam collapse site contain lead and cadmium above safe limits — presenting health risks to children under six. The disaster was a decade ago. The contamination still arrives at the table. — Mining profits leave. Toxins stay. sciencedaily.com

Santorini Shaking: 300 million cubic meters of magma surged beneath Santorini in early 2025, triggering 28,000 earthquakes — tracked via AI analysis and seafloor sensors as the island literally sank centimeters in real time. — The planet is restless. So should we be. sciencedaily.com

Screen doom → body reset: When doom-scrolling locks your jaw and shallows your breath, set a 3-minute timer and do box breathing — 4 counts in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold — while standing at an actual window, not a screen. Feeling: Your nervous system unclenching like a fist that forgot it could open.

$60/month coffee habit → $12: Switch your daily café run to a French press with whole beans from a local roaster — same single-origin quality, $0.40 per cup instead of $5–7. Grind weekly, brew takes 4 minutes. Feeling: The relief of reclaiming $48 a month from a corporation that doesn't know your name.

Grocery chaos → one-list system: Keep a magnetic notepad on your fridge. The moment something runs out, write it immediately — every time, without fail. Shop only from the list. Cut impulse buys by ~30% and stop ruining meals over the one missing ingredient. Feeling: The small sovereignty of a kitchen that actually works.

Winter citrus → blood orange salad: Slice 3 blood oranges thin, layer with shaved fennel, Castelvetrano olives, olive oil, flaky salt. 8 minutes total. The crimson juice bleeds into oil like something alive. Eating seasonally is eating honestly.

Lemon → preserved lemons (zero waste): Quarter 6 lemons, pack into a jar with kosher salt, seal, leave on the counter 4 weeks. Use in everything for 6 months. Cost: under $3. They are genuinely irreplaceable. Making your own condiments is a quiet refusal to be dependent.

Pantry stew → feeds 4 in 10 minutes: Two cans white beans, one can diced tomatoes, four garlic cloves, one bunch wilted kale, olive oil, smoked paprika, vegetable broth — simmer, serve with bread. Total: ~$6. A meal this good this cheap is its own kind of resistance.

And now, your people — the ones doing it anyway.

Sasha Velour built Nightgown into a cathedral for queer artistry — rose petals from a wig reveal like something ancient and finally free — treating drag not as costume but as argument: transformation is the most radical act a body can make.

Cecilia Chung, Chinese-American trans woman and HIV-positive activist, carries the double weight of trans stigma and HIV criminalization into rooms full of bureaucrats — pressing the full heat of lived survival against cold policy until something gives. Warm as river stone. Immovable.

Fannie Lou Hamer walked out of a Mississippi sharecropper's life onto the 1964 DNC stage — beaten, electrically tortured by the state, still asking "Is this America?" in a voice that hasn't stopped echoing sixty years later.

Three different centuries, three different oppressions, one continuous act of refusal. The margin is where the most necessary people live. None of them waited for permission. Heroes don't appear. They decide.

The Epstein Files Are Eating Trump's Base — Vox. The disjointed release has anti-system voters furious — Joe Rogan calls it "the gaslightiest gaslighting shit I've ever heard." Navigator research: 63% of young men find Trump's opposition to full release "very concerning." Pam Bondi deflected Epstein survivors sitting directly behind her at her own hearing. vox.com Trump built his coalition on anti-establishment rage. The files are feeding it back to him whole.

Homan Tells Minnesota: "Say Thank You" — Mother Jones. Operation Metro Surge: 4,000 arrests, two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents, $203 million in economic damage to Minneapolis in January alone, elementary schools running 20% absent, generational trauma deposited into a community. Homan's response: gratitude. motherjones.com Organizers deployed emergency relief. Minnesota said thank you by enduring, not complying.