The Leopard Will Always Eat Your Face

Even if you vote for it

I just got back from Mexico, or I guess I should say I got back last night, and have spent most of today doing laundry and working and feeling numb. I can’t say I’m surprised that the president and his cohorts have managed to pass the Big Ugly Bill…and I think we should make them fully own this Bill since every Democrat and Independent voted against it - so let’s please call it the Trump MAGA Republican Budget Reconciliation Bill of 2025 so that there is no confusion about who is responsible when the people who voted for this start to feel the leopard eating their faces.

I would have been more surprised if the two Republicans in the House who were holding out - had managed to convince enough of their colleagues to do the correct thing for the American people. I guess if you were wondering whether any Republicans in the House or Senate had a shred of integrity left, now we know the answer is Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. That is it. Two.

I suppose there was this tiny part of me holding onto some bit of hope that they’d pull off a miracle - that maybe other people who work on the House floor and have constituents, might remember what they’re supposed to be doing. To whom they owe loyalty - namely, the people who voted for them, not the man selling a new line of fragrances from the Oval Office. Maybe someday I’ll learn.

Underneath the numbness I feel a river of rage and grief. I’m not on SNAP or Medi-Cal, my kids don’t rely on free lunches at school, I’m not in danger of being deported or detained in Alligator Alcatraz, I’m not a veteran about to lose my PTSD benefits, I don’t rely on low-cost housing, I don’t live in a state with hurricanes or tornadoes (wildfires, yes, but we have the fourth-largest economy in the world in California, and I suspect we’ll be okay even without FEMA - maybe our governor will withhold our federal taxes, and I hope he does)...but I worry for every single person who is going to be impacted by what just happened. Even the people who aren’t understanding what just happened yet.

Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash

I will have to figure out what to do when the repercussions of the Trump MAGA Republican Budget Reconciliation Bill start to affect the Affordable Care Act, because that’s how I get my health insurance benefits, and subsidies will now expire at the end of December. So who knows, maybe I will go on Medi-Cal. Someone please explain how it was more important to sink $170 billion into the Trump/Miller Racist Mass Deportation Scheme to Make America White for the First Time - than it was to make sure American citizens could afford healthcare. Sure hope I don’t get skin cancer (again) or breast cancer or any kind of cancer, and I hope you don’t, either.

You do realize they want all this ICE money so they can build a whole bunch of places like the reprehensible Alligator Alcatraz they put up in eight days in the Everglades, right? There are already reports of flooding - Democratic lawmakers who should be allowed inside any detention center in their state to check on detainees and make sure there are no human rights violations (there are), were barred earlier today due to “safety concerns.” So it’s unsafe for the lawmakers to enter, but it’s somehow safe for the detainees?

We can’t house people experiencing homelessness, we can’t feed our hungry kids, but oh wow, we can build a huge sadistic concentration camp where the POTUS and his cabinet-members can fantasize about alligators as guards, and talk about wanting 116,000 more beds to detain supposed hardened criminals in eight days.

Please let me know if we’re talking about hardened criminals like this wife of a veteran who missed her immigration hearing because she was a minor at the time, living in a homeless shelter with her mother, and had no idea there even was a hearing. She went to her legal immigration appointment with her husband, their toddler, and their breastfeeding infant, in an effort to “do things the right way” and she was handcuffed and taken from them.

Tell you what. I’d rather she was home with her babies than have the president and puppy-killer Kristi Noem illegally impound FEMA funds to build cages for moms. How come Trump’s supporters are okay when he breaks the laws? I really don’t understand that. I’d rather be able to afford health insurance. I’d rather make sure people can afford groceries. We don’t have 116,00 hardened criminals in this country who are undocumented immigrants.

It’s very hard to not be incensed when we have an Act named after Laken Riley - a nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant who was here illegally. Obviously, this is horrific. My heart breaks for Laken’s parents, her sister, her friends - her entire community. Their lives will never be the same. I cannot imagine anything worse than losing a child to a violent end, and the thought of it makes me sick, instantly. I’m writing through tears. Full stop. Where I have a difficult time is when we get to the numbers. There is no data, zero, that suggests the presence of immigrants leads to higher crime rates.

What I find enraging as a mother with two school-age children in this country is that we have no Act named for even one child killed at the hands of our (sadly) countless domestic terrorists who are American-born school shooters. We are not building cages for those boys, nor should we. No one deserves to be treated like an animal, but spare me the narrative that undocumented immigrants are the hardened criminals causing all this death, when we have school shootings week after week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and all we get from the party building cages for Brown people are “thoughts and prayers.” The hypocrisy is so thick it could choke you.

It’s strange, because you used to be able to find a lot of this data on our National Institute of Justice (government) website, and I know that because I’ve written about it before. But now when you Google “data about crime rates of undocumented immigrants vs. United States citizens” the U.S. government website still appears first in the search, but when you click on it, you get this:

Isn’t that nice? It’s almost like the current administration doesn’t want people to know that crime rates of undocumented immigrants are a lot lower than U.S. citizens. You know why? Because it takes a lot to leave your country of origin, come to the United States, seek a better life, and try to provide for your family in a country where the immigration system is broken and has been for decades, you have to pay taxes, and you do not receive benefits. Most people in that scenario are not going to risk deportation by breaking the laws of the country they worked so hard to get into. A country where the large majority of undocumented immigrants are, and have been, “trying to do it the right way” - have never broken any laws, and are, in fact, contributing to things like Social Security.

Not only are we going to ignore all that data, the Trump MAGA Republican Reconciliation Budget Bill removed the $200 excise tax on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles because…why? Because let’s not make anyone pay extra if they’re planning to kill someone and want to do it without waking the neighbors? Or let’s give people access to rifles that are easier to handle, because god knows we aren’t killing enough babies in this country as it is? From the party that just cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. So YES to unplanned pregnancies, NO to abortions, affordable childcare, PTO, healthcare, free school lunches, Medicaid, SNAP, sane gun control legislation…and YES to tax breaks for billionaires. Got it.

Since tomorrow is Independence Day - yay, America, woot, woot!! - here are some widely accepted pillars of democracy. Meaning, things most people agree you need if you want a democracy to sustain. Seemed like a good time to shout them out:

• Free and fair elections, hmmm

• Rule of law (laws apply to everyone equally including the president, booyah)

• Separation of powers, aka checks and balances. Y’know, like Congress controls the purse strings, the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution and doesn’t get political, oops!

• Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, the right to peaceful protest, the right not to be deported for expressing an opinion, the right not to be tear-gassed for defending your neighbors, the right to due process for everyone in this country including immigrants, the right to Habeas Corpus

• A free press - oops again, please take the time to read this piece by Jim Acosta. It’s about the dismantling of our free press by the man who’s been screaming Fake News! for a decade. He always telegraphs what he’s doing - every accusation is a confession.

Anyway, it’s a tough day and a tough time and a very tough chapter here in America. So many people do not seem to grasp what’s happening here. The thing is, they will. Now they will. This isn’t just going to affect people like me, who didn’t vote for this and didn’t want it. It isn’t just going to affect the “woke libs” - it’s coming to a city near you. It will be there when your rural hospitals get shut down, it will be there when your mom has to move in because her Medicaid benefits don’t cover assisted living or nursing home costs. It will be there when your granddaughter is hungry because your son-in-law left and your daughter has to work, but makes just enough not to qualify for SNAP, but not enough to buy groceries. Hope you can help. At least all the Brown breast-feeding moms will be in cages, though. Happy Independence Day, way to go!

I’m not numb anymore. The rage took over, but underneath it is a very deep sadness. I don’t want anyone’s grandkids to go hungry, not even people who voted for this. I don’t want anyone’s mom to be scared and feeling like a burden. I don’t want people to be dealing with natural disasters and not getting help from FEMA. I don’t want anyone to be sick, and unable to afford healthcare. I don’t want any of it.

The only hope I can find right now is that maybe, maybe the people who voted for this will finally see what we’ve been saying the entire time. Maybe they’ll understand these awful people in the White House do not care about anyone but themselves, and the 902 other billionaires in the United States (yes, the president and many of his friends are on the list, what a shocker).

I do think you ought to see Trump’s latest financial disclosure if you haven’t. If you voted for this man and are still supporting him, or this party that just voted for the Trump MAGA Republican Reconciliation Bill - and you are not on the Forbes list of 902 billionaires - does it not bother you that the POTUS made $57 million just last year hawking his wares from behind the Resolute Desk? Using the Office of the Presidency to get rich, rich, rich while he makes life for the rest of us so much harder? I wasn’t kidding when I said he just launched a new line of fragrances. Sometimes I use humor as a way to not lose my mind, so I started renaming them: Eau du Corruption, Parfum de la Traître, Stench L’Orange.

But really, it’s the smell of the leopard’s hot breath as it’s eating your face. Bummer.

Look, I’m tired from travel. I’ll bounce back. We’ll fight back. We’re better than this by a long shot, the 30% of us who fought like hell to make sure this didn’t happen, and I suspect we’ll be joined by the people who haven’t been paying attention soon. Maybe after that we’ll get a few more people who suddenly realize this wasn’t such a good idea after all. We’ll figure it out, we’ll start where we are, we’ll plant a new garden. Maybe it will be full of wildflowers. Maybe it will be beautiful. Stranger things have happened.

Hang in there, friends. Tomorrow I’ll be celebrating you.

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