A warmonger sold timeshares in hell on primetime while Texas criminalized listening to children. April doesn't ask permission. Also no one got my April’s fools joke yesterday, and so I was sad. ^_^. Your paid membership is the only reason this lands in your inbox. Upgrade.

Atlanta: 70°, sunny — azaleas blooming while gas climbs past four dollars a gallon, and neither fact requires commentary.

Detroit: 37°, rain — cold enough to remember industry, wet enough to know it isn't coming back on its own.

Kansas City: 65°, overcast — the plains hold their breath under low pressure, the way a country holds its breath between a president's sentences.

New York: 45°, cloudy — gray settled into the stone, forty-five degrees and the city still moving because stopping was never the option.

San Francisco: 50°, clear — California sun with nothing to hide behind, which is more than you can say for the Pentagon.

Miami: 76°, cloudy — humidity sticks to your throat like crude oil futures.

The spray-tanned warmonger stood in the Cross Hall and told the nation his war is almost over. Thirteen dead. Gas at four dollars. Markets fell before he finished.

First time here? Welcome to The Gathering.

Editor's note: He called it "Operation Epic Fury" without a shred of goddamn irony.

The room was the Cross Hall. The lighting was designed to convey gravity. The constitutional arsonist spoke for nineteen minutes and said nothing he hadn't already posted online.

What he said: "We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly."

That's the pitch. Two to three more weeks of bombing a country whose nuclear stockpile the megalomaniacal profiteer admits he "doesn't care about" — his words to Reuters, after weeks insisting denuclearization was the point. He floated pulling out of NATO. Asian markets cratered. The Nikkei dropped 2.1%. South Korea's Kospi fell 3.9%.

The damage:

13 American service members dead, gas over $4/gallon, fertilizer prices hammering the farmers who voted for him.

Pattern: Feb 28 launch → shifting justifications → killed Iran's Supreme Leader → successor installed → regime change abandoned → no exit strategy in 33 days.

Act: Call your senators: (202) 224-3121. Demand a War Powers vote.

Even Marjorie Taylor Greene broke ranks: "All I heard was WAR WAR WAR." The Hill

When a man promises the war is almost over while promising to hit harder, believe the second part.

The sun still works. The wind still works. Renewables now account for 49% of global installed power capacity, with a record 692 GW added in 2025 — a 15.5% annual increase.

Evidence:

Solar added 510 GW — three-quarters of all new renewable capacity. Wind contributed 159 GW. Together, renewables comprised 85.6% of all new power generation globally.

Scale felt: China installed more renewable capacity in one year than entire continents have cumulatively. Africa's additions: just 1.6% of global totals. The bone-spur warlord is bombing energy infrastructure in the Middle East while the planet builds the future without us.

Expert voice: IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera called this growth a function of renewables' "competitiveness and resilience."

Every solar panel installed is a vote against the next fucking war over fossil fuel access.

Act: Switch your provider to renewables. Demand your rep support clean energy tax credits. Earth.org

The planet does not negotiate with profit margins.

A child sits in a therapist's office in Houston. The most dangerous person in the room is the state attorney general who will never set foot inside it.

Ken Paxton — the gilded-toilet despot of Texas law — declared that therapists who affirm trans youth are committing child abuse. Under his interpretation of SB 14, licensed counselors face losing their licenses, Medicaid funding, and potentially their freedom for telling a child they are believed.

Stakes:

680+ anti-trans bills in 2026. On the same week as Trans Day of Visibility, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against conversion therapy bans, and Idaho criminalized trans people using restrooms.

What the absolute fuck: a licensed professional now faces prison for not practicing conversion therapy — which the UN classifies as tantamount to torture. Trans youth who undergo it are twice as likely to attempt suicide.

Movement: Equality Texas published a Mental Health Toolkit. The National Association of Social Workers is developing First Amendment guidance for providers. 85% of Americans support trans equality — including 76% of Republicans.

Show up. LGBTQ Nation | LGBTQ Nation

They will legislate children into silence. We will not let them.

Survival wisdom — how you carry this forward: Rivera screamed those words into a crowd that didn't want her — her own community, shouting her down for being too loud, too brown, too trans. She screamed anyway. The people who need you most will not always make it easy. Show up anyway. Quiet is not an option they've left us.

Noah Schnapp soft-launches boyfriend — the Stranger Things actor posted "One month of us" with a rooftop photo, three years after coming out. The ordinariness of the joy is the point. PinkNews

Don Lemon floats presidential run — told interviewers he'd be "better than Trump." The first openly gay president remains hypothetical; the ambition is not. PinkNews

Meat may lower Alzheimer's risk for some — a Karolinska study found high-risk APOE carriers who ate more unprocessed meat had slower cognitive decline. ScienceDaily

Vision cell breakthrough — 2,700+ compounds screened across 20,000 retinal models found molecules protecting the cells that let you see faces and color. ScienceDaily

Shower drain slow again → Pour half a cup of baking soda, follow with half a cup of white vinegar, wait fifteen minutes, flush with boiling water. No chemicals. No plumber. Feeling: The gurgle of water moving freely, like your morning just lost ten pounds of friction.

Streaming subscriptions bleeding you → Audit every recurring charge tonight — the average American carries $219/month in subscriptions. Cancel two you forgot about. Feeling: The exhale of money staying where it belongs.

Produce wilting before you eat it → Store herbs upright in a jar of water in the fridge, stems down, loose bag on top. Cilantro lasts two weeks this way. Feeling: Opening the fridge to green instead of brown, like a small promise kept.

Spring radishes → Slice paper-thin, toss with butter, flaky salt, and a squeeze of lemon on warm sourdough. Three minutes. The bite is the season announcing itself.

Grow your own scallions from scraps → Stand the root ends in a glass of water on a sunny windowsill. New growth in four days. Infinite supply for zero dollars. Sovereignty starts on the counter.

Pantry meal: garlic noodles → Spaghetti, butter, four cloves garlic (minced), soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, parmesan, chili flake. Seven ingredients. Eight minutes. Feeds four. Nobody goes hungry because the week was hard.

Moving forward — your armor for today: Windsor didn't whisper that. She announced it — eighty-four years old and grinning — because the personal is legal is political, and the loop never stops. Carry that into every conversation where someone says the fight is too big. It's exactly your size. Suit the fuck up.

Three people who refused to wait.

Sylvia Rivera — Puerto Rican-Venezuelan trans activist who co-founded STAR with Marsha P. Johnson. Fought for decades for the community that kept pushing her off the stage. Died in 2002, unfunded, unbroken.

Edie Windsor — married Thea Spyer after 40 years, then sued the United States over DOMA. Won 5-4 at the Supreme Court. Changed marriage equality at 84.

Del Martin — at 87, married Phyllis Lyon after 55 years together — California's first legal same-sex marriage, 2008.

"There Are No Bubbles in the Limbo-Flavored Water, Daddy" — Wendy Parker is Eternally Irritated | Wendy Parker. Our Wendy — floating in the tepid bathwater of American collapse, blowing fart bubbles through her shit-talking snorkel, waiting for something to happen. Come float. Read

"An Eggcellent Time to Dye!" — Brandon Ellrich is So Gay | Brandon Ellrich. Brandon goes live for Easter egg dyeing — messy, joyful, queer as hell, and the community exhale you need this week. Read