#National Hat Day 2024

[thewhimsyturtle]

Bonus GRUMPs in my new origami hat for National Hat Day yesterday: No hat is complete until it has been worn with GRUMPs!

[brian-in-finance]

Instagram

•••••

•••••

WHAT THE STARS ARE SAYING

Check out why so many famed actors use Backstage

Trusted since 1960

Founded in 1960, Backstage has a storied history of serving the entertainment industry. For over 60 years Backstage has served as a casting resource and news source for actors, performers, directors, producers, agents, and casting directors.

Over that time, Backstage Magazine has also appeared on numerous TV shows, such as “Mad Men,” “Entourage,” “Glee,” “Oprah,” NBC's “Today” show, Comedy Central's “@Midnight”, NY1's “On Stage,” and “Saturday Night Live,” as well as multiple mentions on shows like “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” “Girls,” and appearances in films such as “13 Going on 30,” the Farrelly brothers' “Stuck on You” and Spike Lee's “Girl 6,” and even a mention in Woody Allen's short-story collection “Mere Anarchy” and Augusten Burroughs' novel “Sellevision” – and Backstage has received accolades from multiple Academy Award-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning actors and directors. (Plus, the hit musical “The Last Five Years” even includes Backstage in its lyrics: “Here's a headshot guy and a new Backstage / Where you're right for something on every page.”)

CAITRÍONA BALFE

ACTRESS

"I still get Backstage emails 'cause I still subscribe to Backstage. [Backstage is) kind of the Bible in the beginning, which is amazing. Samuel French and Backstage go hand in hand, you know? You go there for your plays when you're in classes, and then you get your Backstage."

Backstage 1

•••••

Brian’s Note: The following story originally appeared in April 2015. Most recent update is December 2020.

The Gorgeous Determination of Caitríona Balfe

Caitríona Balfe is on the move. That's been true most of her adult life— especially the 10 years she was modeling for Victoria's Secret, Dolce & Gabbana, and others—but as she sits on the rooftop patio of a West Hollywood hotel in mid-March, she mentions that she's pulling up stakes from Los Angeles.

"It just feels silly to have an empty place for 10 months until I figure out what I'm doing with my life," the Irish-born actor says. "I've rented the same place for the last four years and now I have to give it up." Her apartment is being razed to put in condos, but her departure from L.A. is extra poignant considering this is the city where Balfe journeyed when she decided to put aside that successful modeling career and focus on the vocation she'd always wanted: acting.

Photo: Luc-Richard Elie

"I've moved so much since I was 18," she says. "I mean, l've lived so many places. New York, I lived in for almost eight years [while modeling], and that's been the longest of anywhere since I left Ireland. But L.A. is where I came and said, 'OK, this is what I wanna do with my life.' "

She refuses to think of her move as a permanent one, though. "I'll be back," she declares, "but it feels really sad. My little apartment, it's got so many memories."

Balfe's sadness is no doubt mitigated by the fact that part of her need to move is due to the precipitous rise in her fortunes. She'll soon be flying to Scotland to shoot the second season of "Outlander," which returns to Starz April 4 to conclude Season 1.

When last we saw Balfe's Claire, the resourceful British nurse who comes home after World War |I only to be inexplicably teleported into the 18th-century Highlands, she was half-naked with a knife to her breast. Don't worry: Claire will get out of that scrape, but more perils await-to say nothing of the emerging multi-era romantic triangle developing between her, the Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and her 20th-century husband, Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), who wonders where she's gone.

Based on the much-beloved Diana Gabaldon novels and developed for television by "Battlestar Galactica" rebooter Ronald D. Moore, "Outlander" is an ostensibly lush period-piece-within-a-period-piece drama that's consistently richer and thornier than its romance-novel trappings suggest. And much of the credit goes to Balfe, who had managed small parts in films such as “Super 8” and “Now You See Me” before landing the central role in this adaptation.

In person, Balfe is far less imposing than the steely Claire, who has to weather the dangers of being a woman in sexist, violent Scotland in the 1740s. Cast late in the preproduction of “Outlander”—Moore has mentioned in interviews how hard it was to find the right Claire—she didn’t have time to consider what the role would do to her life. “I’m so bad on social media," she confesses on this warm afternoon, nestled underneath a cabana. "I had set up an account on Twitter maybe a year or so before I got this job and had, I thought, a lot of followers — 250 or something, and most of them are my friends. Within about a month or two, it was thousands of people — and my phone, I didn't know how to turn off the alerts, so it was just going all the time. That was the beginning of the awareness."

Growing up in the small Irish community of Monaghan, Balfe had considered acting from an early age. ("I was devastated that I wasn't a child actor," she says, smiling. But after traveling to Dublin to study theater, she changed course once she received an offer to model. It wasn't a secret passion of hers, but who turns down a trip to Paris? "My parents felt that I should finish college," Balfe recalls, "but l'm slightly headstrong, so l took their advice and I completely ignored it."

Over the next decade, she lived in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, her modeling inexperience hardly a detriment. "You'd be amazed how little information or training goes into it," she says. "When I first arrived in Paris, I was told to take a bus to the office. I left my suitcase — I barely spoke any French — and someone took me across the street, helped me buy a Carte Orange. They printed out five addresses that I had to go to that day, and then they sent me off." She still remembers at 18 riding the subway alongside 16-year-old aspiring Russian models, who knew no French or English, homesick and sobbing their eyes out. "That was just the way it was," says Balfe. "You become pretty tough. When I went to Japan, it was similar: They would drive you to their castings, but the minute you got a job, it would be like, 'Here's an address, here's a map. Good luck.' They don't have signposts in English in Japan, so the map and the address are not always very helpful."

Hear Balfe recount her early misadventures in modeling and you can't help but think of Claire, who's equally thrown to the wolves once she arrives in the 18th century amid people wary of the English in general and assertive women in particular. "Honestly, l've been in so many situations in my life where you just are completely displaced," Balfe says. “You have to adapt very quickly and figure it out. I definitely think that informs Claire a lot. It helped me understand her."

Did moving to Paris at such a young age teach Balfe that she can cope in any circumstance? "I think I didn't really realize that until many years later," she replies. "I have a great knack of not thinking about things and just going for it. You learn the hard way sometimes that you're able to get through, but sometimes it's quite tough when you're in a situation where you don't know anyone and you're trying to find your way around cities. But if an opportunity presents itself and it seems like a good idea, l'm just like, 'OK, let's do it, then I'll figure it out.'”

The decision to reconnect with her acting ambitions was conducted just as boldly. Ready to quit modeling, she moved to Los Angeles because a writer she was dating lived there. He was the only person she knew, but she had read a Vanity Fair interview with Amy Adams in which she said she trained with Warner Loughlin. "I could walk to that place from my ex-boyfriend's house," she says, "so l was like, 'Well, I'm gonna go there because I can't really drive. I started from scratch. I didn't have any managers, I didn't know any agents, I hadn't acted in almost a decade." But she just kept taking classes, moving from Loughlin to the studios of Sanford Meisner and Judith Weston. "I think when I first got here, I had a nice little air of delusion: 'It's gonna work out,'" she says with a laugh. “You just don't know how."

And then came "Outlander." By email, Moore admits that he didn't know Balfe's work until her audition tape came unsolicited to his office from her agent. Once she was chosen for Claire, he made it clear how demanding the job would be. “I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead," he writes. "Because the story was being told from Claire's point of view, Cait was going to be in every scene, every day for months, which is an extraordinary amount of work, far beyond what most actors are ever asked to do."

Moore's warning didn't faze Balfe. Writes Moore, "After she met with the president of Starz... and it was clear that she was going to land the role, I walked her to the elevator and just before the doors closed on her, I said 'Your life is about to change forever,' and she gave me a grin that was both thrilled and slightly nervous. I never saw her hesitate after that."

She's never hesitated before. As Balfe prepares to say goodbye to L.A. (for now, she thinks back to her early days in the city, trying to convince casting directors that she was more than just a model. "I went on many, many, many, many auditions that were Hot Girl No. 2 — you wanna shoot yourself," she says, laughing. "But, you know, I'm very lucky that l was even getting those auditions in the beginning. And it toughens you up. At least for me, to have that fuel to prove people wrong—it definitely spurs me on and makes me wanna work harder." Then she smiles conspiratorially. "And shove it to them."

Backstage 2

Remember… I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead. — Ronald D Moore

[reasonsforhope]

"According to National Coalition for the Homeless, 40% of the country’s homeless youth population is comprised of LGTBQ+ teens. 

When New York native Austin Rivers took up knitting during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was this staggering figure that drove him towards action. 

“I don’t have the capacity to build a shelter, the network or the connections to help in that way, but what I can do is knit,” Rivers told NBC News. 

“And I know that New York City is cold, so I decided I would start knitting and create this nonprofit.”

That’s when he founded Knit the Rainbow, an organization that distributes free handmade garments to those in need. 

And nearly five years after it was first created, Rivers’ knitting collective isn’t just serving the queer community in New York City.

Their nationwide network links local yarn stores and local nonprofits with over 550 volunteers from 45 states. 

As of 2024, they have collected and distributed over 25,000 winter garments — including sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, and socks — throughout homeless communities in New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, and beyond. 

Once clothing items are shipped to Rivers’ apartment, he works with volunteers to unpack boxes, tag and sort donations, and pack and deliver them to local shelters that provide housing to LGBTQ+ and HIV+ homeless youth. 

Although the organization’s impact is wider, and the piles of mail have grown higher, Rivers still has a hand in day-to-day deliveries. 

“We’re going to do it whether it’s rain, or snow, or shine,” Rivers said in his NBC News interview, pulling a handcart topped with boxes. 

Those clothes could be the difference between frostbite and hospitalization, especially in cities that often drop below freezing in the wintertime. 

But Rivers also noted that every handmade item — knitted, crocheted, or stitched — has a dual impact, because every piece of clothing is made with love. 

“A lot of the times, the reason that they’re unhoused is because they were kicked out by their families,” Rivers said. 

“We’re not just providing warmth, but we’re also providing that love and that compassion that they so often don’t have.” 

To the members of the community Knit The Rainbow served, he had a clear message.

“There are thousands of people out here that are constantly thinking of you and using their hands to make things for you,” Rivers emphasized. “So don’t give up. Keep going.”

To download free knitting [and crochet] patterns, donate a garment, or sign up to volunteer, you can visit the organization's website to get started." 

‍-via GoodGoodGood, December 23, 2024

[probablyasocialecologist]

We’ve lived through a Trump government before, from 2017 to 2021, and liberals didn’t exactly distinguish themselves with the strength of their opposition. In fact, they were pathetic.   Back then, a movement of anti-Trump liberals dubbed themselves the “#Resistance,” but very little actual resistance went on among them. Instead, what we got was performative nonsense, worship of institutions and procedures for their own sake, and a lot of impotent whining. There was the “pussy hat” march in Washington D.C.; the safety pins on people’s lapels; the wave of social media accounts like “Alternative National Park Service” that claimed to be resisting Trump’s appointees by making snide posts; people like the Krassenstein brothers, who claimed to be resisting Trump himself by making snide posts; the “In This House We Believe” yard signs; the much-hyped Mueller Report, which landed with a wet plop and accomplished nothing; the impeachments, narrow as they were; Nancy Pelosi’s sassy clap; the endless “orange” and “Drumpf” jokes. None of it did anything in particular, besides making the #Resisters feel good about themselves. The hats did not protect women’s reproductive rights from Trump and his Supreme Court nominees. Trump was not removed from office by Robert Mueller, impeachment, or any of the institutions liberals turned to for salvation. He was not cowed by all the mean tweets; he wasn’t even reading them. He just forged ahead, doing enormous damage everywhere he turned. By its own terms, the whole #Resistance movement was a failure.  Now, signs of the same weakness are starting to re-emerge, and they’re coming directly from the same Democratic leadership that just face-planted in the election.

[...]

Already, these Democratic (mis)leaders are policing the bounds of acceptable dissent. Obama’s message is that you may have “disagreements” with Trump over little things like violent mass deportation, but you have to respect the fact that he is president and treat his government as a legitimate one. You must “respect the office, if not the man,” as the phrase goes. Through his actions, Biden sends the same message. Trump is to be considered an opponent, but not an outright enemy. You may march in your hats and make your jokes, and above all you may vote for Democrats and donate money to their so-called “fight fund.” But you have to accept that your “point of view won’t always win out.” You may not challenge the “norms” that make up the Way Things Are, even though Trump is gleefully trampling them every day. It’s a perfect example of what former Bernie Sanders advisor David Sirota calls the “tyranny of decorum,” and it’s a recipe for a second #Resistance that’s just as feckless as the first.

12 November 2024

[reality-detective]

This 👇 was on a Julian Assange channel I follow.

BOMBSHELL! Kamala Harris on the Run! White Hats Track Her Every Move as Trump’s Return Signals the Fall of Deep State Puppets – GITMO Awaits!

Kamala Harris, once the Deep State’s rising star, is now running for cover. After Trump’s 2024 victory, her world turned upside down. The tables have turned, and Kamala is the hunted.

The White Hats are closing in, determined to bring her to justice. Her role as a puppet for elite manipulation is over, and she’s on a one-way path to GITMO. Every hidden action, every deal she struck in secret, has now come to light. She’s no longer a vice president; she’s a fugitive running from the truth.

Kamala’s True Role Exposed

For years, Kamala’s rise was orchestrated to serve the Deep State’s agenda. Her carefully crafted image was nothing more than a mask for elite interests. Behind the public’s view, she was maintaining the Deep State’s grip. But the 2024 election changed everything. With Trump’s win, the patriots gained the power to bring truth to light.

Kamala’s allies and covert connections are now unraveling, and the White Hats are relentless, exposing her network. Her connections to the CIA, FBI, and other shadowy agencies have turned into her greatest liabilities.

Nowhere Left to Run

Kamala’s escape routes are gone, and her elite handlers can’t protect her. The White Hats track her every move. This isn’t just about an election—it’s a strategic takedown of one of the Deep State’s most embedded operatives. And the destination is set: GITMO. She isn’t just another official—she’s a symbol of betrayal, a puppet of globalist interests now facing real justice.

GITMO Awaits: The End of Kamala’s Reign

The facility at GITMO, a site for traitors to the nation, is ready. Kamala’s undermining of democracy and her ties to globalist operatives are being exposed. This isn’t just punishment; it’s about reclaiming America’s integrity. Patriots have uncovered her schemes, her role in destabilizing elections, and her betrayal of the people.

Trump’s Direct Orders

With Trump’s return, the military is acting with purpose. His orders to bring Kamala to justice are not about vengeance—they’re about dismantling every figurehead of the Deep State. Trump’s military allies are ready to see this mission through. Many who once protected her are now cooperating with the White Hats, understanding the stakes.

Kamala’s Fall Sends a Message

Her capture isn’t just personal; it’s a warning to every elite operative who thought they could manipulate the system. The White Hats won’t stop until every corrupt figure has faced justice. Kamala’s downfall is proof that Trump’s America won’t tolerate treason. Patriots everywhere are seeing the truth unfold.

Justice for the People

Kamala’s arrival at GITMO is more than symbolic—it’s the restoration of justice. She represented a corrupt system, but now patriots are reclaiming their nation. Her day of reckoning is near, and the people are watching. This is only the beginning; Trump and the White Hats are dismantling the Deep State piece by piece. In Trump’s America, betrayal will not go unpunished. 🤔

- Julian Assange

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Daily updates!)

An older (published in January 2024) but interesting and comprehensive look at long Covid's effect on Latino families and communities in the US.

By Lygia Navarro and Johanna Bejarano

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. It is part of a series produced in partnership between palabra and Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB) with the collaboration of reporters Lygia Navarro and Johanna Bejarano. *Some people interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss private health issues.

Victoria* is already exhausted, and her story hasn’t even begun. It’s late January 2021 in rural Sunnyside, Washington. The town of 16,000 people is a sleepy handful of blocks flecked with pickup trocas, churches on nearly every corner, and the twangs of Clint Black and Vicente Fernández. Geometric emerald chunks of farmland encircle the town.

Thirty-nine-year-old Victoria drags herself back and forth to her parents’ bedroom in a uniform of baggy burgundy sweatpants, scarf, knit hat and mask. Always a mask. As the eldest sibling, her unspoken job is to protect the family. But COVID-19 hits before they can get vaccinated.

When Victoria’s mamá got sick and quickly infected her papá, Victoria quarantined them. She shut them in their room, only cracking the door briefly to slide food in before retreating in a fog of Lysol.

Working in the health field, Victoria knows if they make it through the first 14 days without hospitalization, they will likely survive. Yet, caregiving drains her: Keeping track of fevers. Checking oxygen saturation. Making sure they’re drinking Pedialyte to stay hydrated. Worrying whether they will live or die.

Five days in, COVID comes for Victoria. Hard. Later, when she repeatedly scrutinizes these events, Victoria will wonder if it was the stress that caused it all — and changed her life forever.

At the pandemic’s onset, Victoria’s family’s work dynamics fit the standard in Sunnyside, where 86% of residents are Latino. “Keeping the members of your household safe — it was hard for a lot of families,” Victoria says. Living in multigenerational homes, many adult children, who’d grown up in the United States with access to education, had professional jobs, and switched to working from home. Their immigrant elders, who’d often only been able to finish fourth grade, braved the world to toil in fields, produce packing plants, supermarkets, or delivery trucks. As Leydy Rangel of the UFW Foundation puts it: “You can’t harvest food through Zoom.”

More than three decades ago, when 6-year-old Victoria’s family migrated from rural northern Mexico to this fertile slip of land cradling the zigzagging Yakima River, their futures promised only prosperity and opportunity.

According to oral histories of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation — who white colonizers forced out of the Yakima Valley in 1855 — the valley’s fecund lands have fed humans since time immemorial. Soon after the Yakamas’ removal to a nearby reservation, settler agriculture exploded.

By World War II, employers were frantic to hire contracted bracero laborers from Mexico — themselves descendants of Indigenous ancestors — to harvest the valley’s bounty of asparagus, pears, cherries and other cornucopia. This was how Victoria’s family arrived here: her abuelo and his brother had traveled back and forth to Washington as braceros decades before.

Victoria’s path took similar twists, in a 21st century, first-gen way. She moved all over the country for her education and jobs, then returned before the pandemic, bringing a newfound appreciation for the taste of apples freshly plucked from a tree that morning, and for the ambrosial scent of mint and grapes permeating the valley before harvest.

Today, agriculture is the largest industry fueling the Yakima Valley, the country’s twelfth-largest agriculture production area. Here, 77% of the nation’s hops (an essential ingredient in beer) and 70% of the nation’s apples are grown. Latinos, who constitute more than half of Yakima County’s population, power the agricultural industry.

While the area’s agricultural enterprises paid out $1.1 billion in wages in 2020, 59% of the low-wage agriculture jobs are held by undocumented folks and contracted foreign seasonal laborers doing work many Americans spurn. Latinos here live on median incomes that are less than half of white residents’, with 16% of Latinos living in poverty. Also in 2020: as they watched co-workers fall ill and die, Latino farmworkers repeatedly went on strike protesting employers’ refusals to provide paid sick leave, hazard pay and basic COVID protections like social distancing, gloves and masks.

“Every aspect of health care is lacking in the valley,” Yakima Herald-Republic health reporter Santiago Ochoa tells me.

In interview after interview, Yakima Valley residents and health care workers sketch in the details of a dire landscape:

The state’s busiest emergency room. Abrupt shutdowns of hospital facilities. Impoverished people without transportation or internet access for telehealth. Eight-month waits for primary care appointments. Nearly one in five Latinos uninsured. More than half of residents receive Medicaid. Resident physicians cycling in and out, never getting to know their patients. Not enough specialists, resulting in day-long trips for specialized care in bigger cities. With its Latino essential workforce risking their lives to feed their families — and the country — by summer 2020, COVID blazed through Yakima County, which quickly became Washington’s most scorching of hot spots. Not only did Yakima County tally the highest per-capita case rate of all West Coast counties (with Latinos making up 67% versus, 26% for white people), it also saw more cases than the entire state of Oregon. Ask Latinos here about 2020, and they shiver and avert their gazes, the trauma and death still too near.

Their positive tests marked just the beginning of terrifying new journeys as COVID slammed Victoria and many other Yakima Valley Latinos. Mix in scanty rural health care, systemic racism and a complicated emerging illness, and what do you get? Chaos: a population hardest hit by long COVID, but massively untreated, underdiagnosed, and undercounted by the government and medicine itself.

It won’t go away The cough was the first clue something wasn’t right. When Victoria had COVID, she’d coughed a bit. But then, three months later, she started and couldn’t stop.

The Yakima Valley is so starved for physicians that it took five months to see a primary care doctor, who attributed Victoria’s incessant cough to allergies. Victoria tried every antihistamine and decongestant available; some brought relief for three, maybe four weeks, and then returned spasms of the dry, gasping bark. A few minutes apart, all day long. The worst was waking up coughing, at least hourly.

Victoria had chest x-rays. An ear, nose and throat specialist offered surgery on her nose’s deviated septum. As months passed, the black hair framing Victoria’s heart-shaped face started aging rapidly, until it was grayer than her mother’s.

Over a year after the cough began, an allergist prescribed allergy drops, and Victoria made a chilling discovery. Once the drops stopped the cough for a month, then two, Victoria realized that the extreme fatigue she’d thought was sleep deprivation from coughing all night persisted.

“The exhaustion comes from within your soul, it overpowers you,” she says. “It’s intolerable.”

And her mind was foggy. When interrupted at work every 10 minutes by a coughing jag, Victoria hadn’t realized COVID had substantially altered her brain. “There are things in my brain that I should have access to, like words, definitions, memories,” she says. “I know that they’re there but I can’t access them. It’s like a filing cabinet, but I can’t open it.”

Before long, the cough resurfaced. Sometime in 2021, reading COVID news for work, Victoria learned of long COVID: new or lingering health issues persisting at least three months after COVID infection.

How to get help if you think you might have long COVID Talk to your doctor, and if your doctor doesn’t listen to your concerns, bring a loved one to advocate for you at your next appointment. Bring this article (or other materials on long COVID) to show your doctor. Ask your doctor about seeing specialists for long COVID symptoms, such as a cardiologist (for dysautonomia symptoms like dizziness, heart palpitations and shortness of breath), a gastroenterologist (for digestive problems), or a neurologist (for chronic nerve pain). Ask to be referred to a long COVID clinic (if there is one in your area). Now four years into the pandemic, there is still no treatment or cure for long COVID. COVID long-haulers (as they call themselves) have reported over 200 varied symptoms, with fatigue, dizziness, heart palpitations, post-exertion exhaustion, gastrointestinal issues, and brain dysfunction among the most common.

Long COVID is far from a mysterious illness, as it’s often called by the medical establishment and some media. There are precedents: for at least a century, historical documentation has shown that, while most recover, some people remain sick after viral or other illnesses. Yet funds for research have been severely limited, and sufferers ignored. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – sometimes called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME/CFS — is a prime example. Like ME/CFS, long COVID afflicts many more women (and people assigned female at birth) than men, with women comprising as many as 80% of COVID long-haulers. Most long-haulers are in their 30s, 40s and 50s — the busiest years for women with children, who often put their own needs last.

What should have been instantly clear, given how disproportionately Black and Brown communities were hit by COVID, was that long COVID would wallop Americans of color. Yet, the U.S. government waited until June 2022 to begin tracking long COVID. Even now, with 18 months of data showing Latinos are the population most impacted by long COVID, palabra is among the very few media outlets to report this fact. Are the nation and the medical community willfully ignoring Latino long-haulers — after sending them into clouds of coronavirus to keep society’s privileged safe?

Fighting for a diagnosis When Victoria mentioned long COVID, her doctor didn’t exactly ignore her: she listened, said “OK,” but never engaged on the topic. Same with Victoria’s allergist and the ear, nose and throat specialist. All they could do, the doctors said, was treat her symptoms.

“I’m highly educated and I know that you have to be your own advocate. But I kept asking, kept going on that line of thought, and they had nothing to say to me. Absolutely nothing,” she laments.

Victoria understood science on long COVID was limited, but still expected more. “All of the treatments we tried, it was as if COVID hadn’t existed. They should at least say that we need to investigate more, not continue acting like it wasn’t a factor. That was what was most frustrating.”

Just as Victoria fought to have her illness validated by doctors, 30 miles away in the northern Yakima Valley town of Moxee, 52-year-old María* waged a parallel battle. Both felt utterly alone.

When the pandemic began, María became the protector of her husband and children, all asthmatics. When she fell ill New Year’s Day 2021, she locked herself in her room, emerging weeks later to find her life unrecognizable.

Recounting her struggles, María reads deliberately from notes, holding back tears, then pushes her reading glasses atop her head. (María moved here from northern Mexico as an adult, and feels most comfortable in Spanish.) Her dyed brown hair, gold necklace and lightly made-up face project convivial warmth, but something intangible behind her expression belies a depth of grief María refuses to let escape. When I tell her I also have long COVID, and fell ill the exact same month, she breathes out some of her anxiety.

María’s long COVID includes chronic, full-body pain; memory lapses so severe she sometimes can’t remember if she’s eaten breakfast; such low energy that she’s constantly like a battery out of juice; unending shortness of breath; joint inflammation; and blood flow issues that leave her hands a deep purple. (The only time María ventured to the hospital, for her purple hands, she says staff attempted to clean them, thinking it was paint.) Like Victoria, María used to enjoy exercise and hiking in the valley’s foothills, but can do neither anymore.

María has no insurance, and receives care at the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, created in 1978 out of the farmworkers’ movement. The clinic’s multiple locations are the valley’s main providers of care irrespective of patients’ ability to pay.

Whereas Victoria’s doctors expressed indifference to the idea of COVID causing her health complaints, María’s doctors not only discounted this connection, but made serious errors of misdiagnosis.

“Every week I went to see my doctor. She got so stressed out (at not knowing what was wrong with me) that she stressed me out,” María says. “My doctor told me, ‘You know what? I think you have multiple sclerosis.’” María saw specialists, and afterwards, even without confirmation, María says her doctor still insisted she had MS. “I told her, ‘No. No, I don’t have multiple sclerosis. It’s COVID. This happened after COVID.’ I was really, really, really, really, really, really insistent on telling them that all of this was after COVID.”

Latinos uncovering the connections between their ill health and COVID is rare, partially due to the plummet in COVID coverage on Spanish-language news, says Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, a long-hauler and head of the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio long COVID clinic. There has been no national public education on long COVID, in any language.

“It’s hard for people to understand what the real impact of long COVID is now and in the future,” says Lilián Bravo, Yakima Health District director of public health partnerships and the face of COVID updates on Yakima Valley television early in the pandemic. “We’re looking at a huge deficit in terms of people’s quality of life and ‘productivity.’”

Eventually, María’s doctor sent her to another specialist, who said that if she didn’t improve within a month, he’d operate on her hip. María’s never had hip problems. “He said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do,’” and then put her on a strong steroid medication that made her vomit horribly, María says. She hasn’t tallied what she’s spent on medical bills, but after paying $1,548 for a single test, it must be many thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, María’s family and friends kept insisting her maladies were psychological. “I never accepted that. I told them: ‘It’s not in my head. It’s in my body.’” It wasn’t until more than a year after becoming ill that María finally saw a rheumatologist who diagnosed her with long COVID and other immune dysfunctions. “I told her, ‘Yes, I knew that my body wasn’t working. I knew that something was wrong.’ I felt like I could relax. Finally someone is telling me that it’s not all in my head.” Once María was diagnosed, her extended family switched to asking how she was feeling and sympathizing with her.

Victoria, on the other hand, has never received a long COVID diagnosis. At Victoria’s request, her doctor referred her to the state’s only long COVID clinic, at the University of Washington in Seattle, but Victoria’s insurance, Kaiser Permanente, refused to pre-approve the visit — and the clinic wouldn’t accept cash from her. At present, the clinic isn’t even accepting patients from the Yakima Valley or any other part of Washington — they are only accepting patients in King County, which includes Seattle.

Victoria’s family hasn’t accepted her health struggles either. “I’d say, ‘I know that you think I’m crazy,’” Victoria says, chuckling, as she often does to lighten her discomfort. “My mom would fight with me: ‘You forgot to do this! Why are you so spacey?’ ‘Mami, it’s not that I forgot. In reality, I completely lost track of it.’” If Victoria is fatigued, her family asks how that’s possible after a full night’s sleep. “I’ve found that I have to defend myself. When I try to explain to people, they hear it as excuses from a lazy person — especially being Latinos.”

Karla Monterroso, a 42-year-old California Latina long-hauler since March 2020 who spent her first year bedbound, says, “(With long COVID), we have to rest in a way that, in our culture, is very difficult to achieve. We really judge exhaustion.” In fact, pushing physically or mentally for work can make long-haulers much sicker. Karla says Latino ethics of hard work like those of Victoria’s parents “aren’t the principles that are going to serve us with this illness.”

Long COVID diagnoses in Latinos are still too rare, due to untrained family medicine physicians and medical stereotypes, says Verduzco-Gutierrez. (Doctors might see blood sugar changes, for example, and assume that’s just because of Latinos’ high rates of diabetes, rather than long COVID.) She says “misinformation on long COVID” is rampant, with physicians claiming long COVID is a fad, or misdiagnosing the bone-deep exhaustion as depression. When Verduzco-Gutierrez’s own doctor invited her to speak to their practice, the assembled physicians weren’t aware of basic research, including that the drugs Paxlovid and Metformin can help prevent long COVID if taken at infection. In Washington, physicians must complete training on suicide, which takes 1,200 to 1,300 lives in the state yearly, but there’s no state-wide training on long COVID, which currently affects at least 498,290 Washingtonians.

Cultural skepticism about medicine — and entrenched stigmas about illness and disability — mean Sunnyside conversations about aftereffects don’t mention COVID itself. Victoria’s relatives push traditional herbal remedios, assuming that anyone still sick isn’t doing enough to recover. “(People suffering) feel like they’re complaining too much if they try to talk about it,” Victoria says. Meanwhile, her parents and others in her community avoid doctors out of stubbornness and mistrust, she says, “until they’re bleeding, when they’re super in pain…, when it’s gotten to the worst that they can handle.”

“People in this community use their bodies for work,” Victoria says. “If you’re Latino, you’re a hard worker. Period,” says Bravo. “What’s the opposite of that, if you’re not a hard worker? What are you? People don’t want to say, ‘I came to this country to work and all of a sudden I can’t anymore.’”

Victoria sees this with her parents, who’ve worked since the age of 10. Both have health issues inhibiting their lives since having COVID — her dad can’t take his daily hour-long walks anymore because of heart palpitations and shortness of breath, and her mom began getting headaches and saw her arthritis worsen dramatically — yet neither will admit they have long COVID. Nor will their friends and family. “If they noticed the patterns of what they themselves are saying and what their friends of the same age are suffering after COVID,” Victoria says of her community, “they’d hear that almost everyone is suffering some type of long COVID.”

Long COVID’s deep impact on Latinos The “back to normal” ethos is most obvious in the absence of long COVID messaging while as many as 41 million adults now have — or have recovered from — long COVID nationwide. “The way that we’re talking about the pandemic is delegitimizing some of (long COVID’s) real impacts,” says Bravo of the Yakima Health District.

Even with limited demographic data, statistics show a nationwide reality similar to Victoria’s Sunnyside. Through a recurring survey, the Census Bureau estimates that 36% of Latinos nationally have had long COVID — likely a vast underestimate, given that the survey takes 20 minutes to complete online (Latinos have lower rates of broadband internet), and reaches only a sliver of the U.S. population. Experts like Verduzo-Gutierrez believe that true rates of long COVID in Latinos are higher than any reported statistic. California long-hauler Karla Monterroso agrees: “We are underdiagnosed by a severe amount. I do not believe the numbers.”

This fall, a UC Berkeley study reported that 62% of a group of infected California farmworkers developed long COVID. Weeks later, a survey from the University of Washington’s Latino Center for Health found that, of a sample group of 1,546 Washington Latinos, 41% of those infected became long-haulers. The Washington results may also be an undercount: many long-haulers wouldn’t have the energy or brain clarity to complete the 12-page survey, which was mailed to patients who’d seen their doctor within the prior six months. Meanwhile, many long-haulers stop seeing doctors after tiring of the effort and cost with no answers.

“Our community has not bounced back,” says Angie Hinojos, executive director of Centro Cultural Mexicano, which has distributed $29 million in rent assistance in Washington and hasn’t seen need wane. “That is going to affect our earning potential for generations.” The United Farm Workers’ philanthropic sister organization, the UFW Foundation, says union organizers hear about long COVID, and how it’s keeping people out of work, frequently.

Cultural and linguistic disconnects abound between doctors and Latinos on long COVID symptoms, some of which, like brain fog and fatigue, are nebulous. If doctors lack patient rapport — or don’t speak their language — they’ll miss what patients aren’t sharing about how long COVID changed their lives, work and relationships. That’s if Latinos actually go to the doctor.

“If you’re working in the orchards and your muscles are always sore, it’s just part of the day-to-day reality,” says Jesús Hernández, chief executive officer of Family Health Centers in north-central Washington. “If you’re constantly being exposed to dust and even chemicals in the work environment, it’s easy to just say, ‘Well, that’s just because of this or that,’ and not necessarily be readily willing to consider that this is something as unique as long COVID.”

Even Victoria says if not for the cough, she wouldn’t have sought medical advice for her fatigue. “There are a lot of people out there that are really tired, in a lot of pain and have no idea why. None,” says Karla, who was a nonprofit CEO when she became sick. “I have heard in the last three-and-a-half years the most racist and fatphobic things I have ever heard in my life. Like, ‘Oh, sometimes you got to lay off the beans and rice.’ I have a college education. I’m an executive. I am in the top 10% of wage earners in my community. If this is my experience, what is happening to the rest of my people?”

Conspiracy theories and misinformation As Yakima Valley’s Latino vaccination rates continue dropping, I hear all the COVID conspiracy theories: the vaccine has a chip that’ll track you; the vaccine makes you and your children infertile; COVID tests are rigged to all be positive; that hospitals get paid more for COVID patients. Victoria laughs at the most absurd one she’s heard. Her mom’s explanation for her health problems nearly three years after COVID: the vaccine.

Across the Latino United States, social media algorithms and WhatsApp threads promoting COVID disinformation proliferate. Last summer, Latino Center for Health co-director Dr. Leo Morales did a long COVID community presentation just south of Yakima Valley. The audience’s first question: Are vaccines safe? “This is where we’re still at,” Morales says. “That’ll be a big stumbling block for people…in terms of getting to talking about long COVID.”

One morning in early November, Morales and his team gather in Toppenish at Heritage University, where 69% of students are Latino, to present their survey data. Neither presenters nor attendees wear masks, an essential tool for preventing COVID transmission and long COVID. “The only conversation that I’m having about COVID is in this room,” says María Sigüenza, executive director of the Washington State Commission on Hispanic Affairs.

Yakima Valley health institutions are also ignoring long COVID. Of the two main hospital systems, Astria Health declines interview requests and MultiCare reports that of 325,491 patients seen between January and November 2023, 112 — or 0.03% — were diagnosed with long COVID. The Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic, where María’s doctor works, refuses to let me speak to anyone about long COVID, despite providing patient information for the Latino Center for Health’s survey. Their doctors simply aren’t seeing long COVID, the clinic claims. Same with the other main community provider, Yakima Neighborhood Health Services, whose media officer responds to my interview requests with: “It’s not going to happen.”

“I think they’re not asking, they’re not looking,” Verduzco-Gutierrez says. “Do the doctors just…look at your diabetes or your blood pressure, but not ask you, ‘Did your diabetes get worse when you had COVID? Did your blood pressure get worse? Did you not have blood pressure problems before? And now do you get dizzy? Do you get headaches? Do you have pains?’” She believes that many, if not most, Latinos with long COVID aren’t getting care, whom she calls “the ones that we’re missing.”

An uncertain future The outlook for Latinos with long COVID is grim. Cultural stigma and ableism cause now-disabled long-haulers to feel shame. (Ableism is societal prejudice and discrimination against disabled people.) Disability benefits are nearly impossible to get. Long-haulers are losing their homes, jobs and insurance. Latinos’ overrepresentation in sectors that don’t offer sick pay and are heavily physical — cleaning, service, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, homecare and healthcare among them — may automatically put them at higher long COVID risk, given ample anecdotal evidence that pushing through a COVID infection instead of resting can lead to long COVID. Latino care providers will become ill in greater numbers, imperiling the healthcare industry.

But Latinos may not be clear on these factors, says long-hauler Karla Monterroso. “My tío had said…'We must be defective because we get sick more than the white people.’ And I’m like ‘No, tío. We are exposed to the illness more. There’s nothing defective about our bodies.’ I’m afraid for us. It’s just going to be disability after disability after disability. We have to start in our small communities building caring infrastructure so that we can help each other. I am clear: No one is coming to save us. We’ve got to save us.”

Disability justice advocates worry about systems unable to cope with inevitable disabling waves of COVID in the future. “(Latinos) aren’t taking it as serious as they should,” says Mayra Colazo, executive director of Central Washington Disability Resources. “They’re not protecting each other. They’re not protecting themselves.” Karla sees the psychology behind this denial: “I have thought a lot about how much it takes to put yourself in danger every single day. (You have) to say ‘Oh, it’s fine. People are exaggerating,’ or you get that you’re in existential hell all of the time.”

Reinfection brings additional risk of long COVID, research shows, and Verduzco-Gutierrez says, “We still don’t know the impact of what is going to happen with all these reinfections. Is it going to cause more autoimmune disease? Is it going to be causing more dementia? Is it going to be causing more cancer?” She believes that every medical chart should include a COVID history, to guide doctors to look for the right clues.

“If we were to be lucky enough to capture everybody who has long COVID, we would overwhelm our (health) system and not be able to do anything for them,” Victoria says. “What’s the motivation for the medical field, for practitioners to find all those people?” For now, Victoria sees none. “And until that changes, I don’t think we will (properly count Latino long-haulers),” she adds.

Flashes of hope do exist. In September 2023, the federal government granted $5 million each to multiple long COVID clinics, including three with Latino-specific projects. In New York City, Mt. Sinai Hospital will soon open a new long COVID clinic near largely-Latino East Harlem, embedded in a primary care clinic with staff from the community to reach Latino long-haulers. Verduzco-Gutierrez’s San Antonio clinic will teach primary care providers across largely rural, Latino South Texas to conduct 15-minute low-tech long COVID examinations (the protocol for which is still being devised), and will deploy community tools to educate Latinos on long COVID.

Meanwhile, at the University of Washington long COVID clinic, staff are preparing a patient handbook, which will be adapted for Latinos and then translated into Spanish. They will also train primary care physicians to be local long COVID experts, and will return to treating patients from the whole state rather than just the county containing Seattle. After palabra’s inquiry, the UFW Foundation now has plans to survey United Farm Workers members to gauge long COVID pervasiveness, so the Foundation can lobby legislators and other decision makers to improve Latino long-hauler care.

Back at the Yakima Valley survey presentation, attendees brainstorm new care models: Adding long COVID screening to pediatric checkups, given that long COVID most impacts child-bearing-age women, so moms can bring information to their families and community. Using accessible language for long COVID messaging, or, as Heritage University nursing faculty member Genevieve Aguilar puts it: “How would I talk to my tía, how would I talk to my abuelita? If they can understand me, we’re good to go. If they can’t, olvídate. We have to reframe.”

More than anything, personal narratives will be the key to open people’s minds about long COVID — although that path may be challenging. In Los Angeles, Karla has dealt with a lack of full family and community support, in part, she believes, because her body represents COVID. “I am living, breathing proof of a pandemic no one wants to admit is still happening, and that there is no cure for what I have. That is a really scary possibility.”

While Karla does identify as disabled, Victoria and María don’t. Victoria has learned to live and move within her physical limits. At work, she sometimes feels inhibited by her cognitive issues. “I tell my boss all the time, ‘Oh man, you guys hired such a smart person. But what you got was after COVID, so it’s not the same.’” At times, she worries about the trajectory of her career, about how her work’s intense problem-solving wears out her brain. Will she be able to pursue larger challenges in work in the future? Or will long COVID ultimately make her fail?

Victoria tells me she “remains hopeful that there is a solution.” In a surprising twist, her cough completely disappeared eight months ago — when she became pregnant. (Other long-haulers have seen their symptoms improve with pregnancy, as well, likely due to immune system changes allowing a pregnant person’s body to not reject their baby’s growing cells). Victoria is optimistic that her other symptoms might disappear after she gives birth. And that, maybe someday, her parents will admit they have long COVID, too.

[kathlare]

orange chaos

Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman

Summary: Amid the lively chaos of King’s Day in Amsterdam, Lando finds himself navigating the energetic festivities and an unexpected injury.

Wordcount: 1.3 k

Warnings: none

full masterlist // request over here!

April 27th, 2024 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

The canals of Amsterdam were alive with color. Boats packed with people decked out in bright orange, the national color of the Netherlands, drifted lazily through the water, music blasting and drinks flowing. The atmosphere was electric. Lando leaned back against the railing of the boat, laughing at one of Martin’s outrageous stories about a disastrous set he’d played in Ibiza years ago. He wasn’t sure if it was the chaos of King’s Day or the several drinks he’d had, but he felt completely at ease.

—Mate, drink up!— Martin called out, passing him another glass. Lando grabbed it without hesitation, clinking it against Martin’s before taking a swig. That’s when it happened. The moment the glass hit his lips, he felt the sharp sting, followed by the unmistakable taste of copper.

—Shit!— Lando exclaimed, pulling the glass away to see the jagged crack along the rim. Blood began to drip from the bridge of his nose, the cut small but annoyingly precise. He swore under his breath as he pressed a napkin to it.

Martin doubled over laughing, his orange bucket hat slipping over his eyes. —Oh my God, mate! You’ve actually managed to injure yourself while drinking! That’s a new one.—

—Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,— Lando grumbled, tilting his head back slightly and holding the napkin against the cut. The orange of his hoodie only made the red more vivid.

Martin, ever the instigator, pulled out his phone and snapped a quick photo. —This is gold. You look like some sort of bandaged gladiator,— he said between fits of laughter. —Amelie has to see this.—

—No, no, don’t...— Lando started, but it was too late. Martin was already video calling her.

Amelie’s face appeared on the screen, her eyebrows raised in curiosity. She was sitting in what looked like a trailer, her hair pulled back and a script in her lap. —What’s up, Marti... Oh my God, Lando, what the hell happened to you?—

Lando groaned. —Hi, Ames. Nice to see you too.—

Amelie leaned closer to the camera, squinting at him. —Is that... a bandage wrapped around your face? Did you get into a bar fight or something?—

—No!— Lando said, exasperated. —I cut my nose on a broken glass. And before you say anything, it wasn’t my fault.—

—Oh, sure,— Amelie teased, her laughter bubbling through the phone. —So the glass just... jumped at you? Classic.—

Martin, still laughing, chimed in. —I swear, Ames, it was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. He’s sitting there, trying to look cool, and bam! Broken glass, blood everywhere.—

—Thanks for the support, mate,— Lando said dryly, rolling his eyes.

Amelie was laughing so hard now that she had to set her script aside. —I wish I was there to see it,— she managed between giggles. —You’re such a disaster.—

—Well, I wish you were here too,— Lando said, his tone softening. —But, you know, not to laugh at me. To, like, enjoy the chaos. And maybe keep me from injuring myself.—

Amelie’s teasing smile shifted into something more affectionate. —You’d still find a way to hurt yourself, even with me there.—

—Probably,— Lando admitted with a grin. —But at least you’d kiss it better.—

—Bold assumption,— she shot back, though the playful glint in her eye betrayed her.

—Don’t act like you don’t like an excuse to baby me,— he said, leaning into the flirtation.

Amelie rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide her smile. —How’s the party? Besides the obvious injury.—

—Insane,— Lando said, glancing around at the packed boat. —You’d love it. Everyone’s in orange, the music’s loud, and the drinks are... well, apparently dangerous.—

—Sounds like my kind of chaos,— she said wistfully. —But instead, I’m stuck in Indianapolis, pretending to be in the Upside Down. Not quite the same vibe.—

—I’ll trade you,— Lando offered. —You can party with Martin, and I’ll fight some Demogorgons or whatever.—

Amelie smirked. —Tempting, but I think I’ll stick to my fake monsters. They’re probably less hazardous than your broken glass.—

—Fair,— Lando conceded. —But next year, you’re coming with me. No excuses.—

—It’s a deal,— she said, her voice softening again. —But only if you promise not to injure yourself next time.—

—No promises,— Lando said with a wink.

Martin, who had been quiet during their back-and-forth, finally interrupted. —You two are disgustingly cute, you know that?—

Amelie laughed. —That’s your fault for calling me, Garrix.—

—I regret it deeply,— Martin deadpanned, though his grin betrayed him.

—Alright, I’ll let you two get back to your boat shenanigans,— Amelie said, still smiling. —But, Lando, please try not to bleed out, okay?—

—I’ll do my best,— he said, flashing her a boyish grin.

—Bye, Amelie,— Martin said, waving dramatically at the screen.

—Bye, guys,— she said, blowing a kiss toward the camera before the call ended.

Lando stared at the phone for a moment after the call ended, a small, private smile on his lips. Martin clapped him on the back, jolting him back to the present. —Mate, you’re so whipped.—

—Shut up,— Lando said, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

The party raged on, but Lando’s thoughts kept drifting back to Amelie, her laughter still ringing in his ears. Even thousands of miles apart, she had a way of making everything better. Broken glass, bleeding nose, and all.

The party showed no signs of slowing down, and neither did Martin’s enthusiasm for filling Lando’s glass. The music thumped in time with the swaying boat, and the laughter of their group carried over the water like an anthem of carefree chaos. Lando had lost count of how many drinks he’d had; all he knew was that his mind felt light, his limbs loose, and his tongue dangerously unfiltered.

Martin was recounting yet another ridiculous tour story when he noticed Lando staring into his half-empty glass, the smile on his face softer than usual.

—You’re quiet,— Martin said, nudging him. —What’s going on in that drunk little head of yours?—

Lando laughed, the sound more wistful than amused. —Just thinking.—

—Dangerous,— Martin teased, taking another sip of his drink. —About what? Or, let me guess... Amelie.—

Lando’s cheeks flushed, and he looked away, trying to mask it with a chuckle. —Shut up.—

Martin grinned, clearly onto something. —Oh, come on, mate. It’s written all over your face. You can’t stop smiling every time she’s mentioned, or when she calls, apparently. You’ve got it bad.—

Lando hesitated, his drunken inhibitions clashing with his usual instinct to play it cool. He swirled the liquid in his glass, watching the way it caught the light, before finally speaking. —I don’t know, man. It’s just… different with her.—

Martin’s eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t expecting Lando to actually open up. —Different how?—

Lando exhaled deeply, the alcohol loosening his tongue further. —She’s… she’s not like anyone else. She gets me, you know? Like, really gets me. I can be myself with her, completely. No filter, no walls. And she’s just... amazing. She’s funny, and smart, and talented, and so, so beautiful. And when she smiles, it’s like... I don’t know, like everything’s right with the world.—

Martin blinked at him, momentarily stunned into silence. Then he smirked. —Mate, you’re not just whipped... you’re in love.—

The words hung in the air, heavier than the party atmosphere around them. Lando didn’t respond immediately, his gaze fixed on the shimmering water. He downed the rest of his drink before answering, his voice quieter now. —Yeah. I think I am.—

Martin let out a low whistle, leaning back against the railing. —Well, shit. I didn’t think you’d actually admit it.—

Lando shrugged, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. —It’s the truth. And, honestly, it scares the hell out of me. Like, what if I mess it up? What if she doesn’t feel the same way?—

Martin shook his head, his expression surprisingly serious. —Lando, if you think she doesn’t feel the same, you’re blind. Did you not see the way she was looking at you earlier? She’s just as into you as you are into her.—

—You think so?— Lando asked, his voice tinged with a rare vulnerability.

—I know so,— Martin said firmly. —Now, the real question is, when are you gonna tell her?—

Lando laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. —I don’t know. It’s not exactly easy to drop the ‘I love you’ bomb on someone, you know?—

—Well, you’d better figure it out, mate,— Martin said, clinking his glass against Lando’s. —Because if you don’t, someone else might. And you’d be an idiot to let her go.—

Lando nodded, the weight of Martin’s words settling in his chest. He glanced at his phone, the thought of Amelie’s laughter and the way her eyes lit up when she teased him replaying in his mind. He didn’t have all the answers, but one thing was clear—he had to tell her. And soon.

For now, though, the night wasn’t over. The boat swayed as another wave of cheers erupted from the crowd, and Martin handed him another drink, grinning mischievously. —Come on, lover boy. Let’s make some more memories to regret tomorrow.—

Lando laughed, clinking his glass against Martin’s. —Cheers to that.— But even as he joined in the revelry, his thoughts never strayed far from Amelie.

[mirrorball-leclerc]

paint the town red - part seven

THE PEOPLE'S PRINCE IS VICTORIOUS

series masterlist

MONACO 2024

scuderiaferrari posted new stories

mr. lechair hard at work before media day for the monaco grand prix

pouty chili in his chilli hat

I'M GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT! YOU ASK FOR SEB CONTENT I GIVE YOU SEB CONTENT!

working hard or hardly working mr. mcqueen?

everyone could sense the pressure ferrari held today. everyone seemed to expect them to lead to charles to victory for the first time at his home race. it's not that it was impossible for them, they could do it, they knew that better than anyone, but they had an entire country counting on them. the pressure had been there for imola, but it was completely different for monaco. time and time again charles had been failed by his team and people hoped this would be the time things would change for the monegasque. everytime victory or a podium had been within his grasps ferrari had found a way to rip that away from him. not this time though, this time things were different, no matter what happened charles leclerc would be on the podium in 1st place at his home grand prix.

the camera's caught the moment sam wilson waved enthusiastically at will buxton. he laughed before approaching sam, who was wearing a ferrari shirt. he had both driver numbers on his shirt, all the avengers and co present did, as a way to support both drivers.

"captain america, a pleasure seeing you at the monaco grand prix," will said. sam smiled, "please, i'm off duty, it's just sam."

"well, sam, how excited are you for the race today?"

"super excited," sam answered. he gestured towards charles garage, "i know those guys are more excited than me, the hometown hero is on pole."

"do you think he'll win today?"

"hell yeah. there is no doubt in my mind about it."

"very well, it was nice talking to you," will said, excusing himself.

"bye!" sam shouted as he walked towards charles garage, most likely to find bucky.

the cameras focused on charles, as he pointed to something, bianca at his side. she gestured towards the wheels and charles nodded.

"it seems charles and his race engineer have great communication this year," will pointed out before he and the cameraman left towards a different garage.

inside the ferrari garage charles turned to bianca, "do you think it'll rain today?"

"yes," the brunette replied, biting her lip, "which is why we're putting you on mediums, that way we can extend our first stint. once it starts to drizzle, eventually leading to harsher rain, we'll pit you for inters. everyone will go for hards, starting on softs, meaning they'll have to pit again for inters."

"you really thought this through didn't you?"

bianca sighed, "i'm running on 3 hours of sleep because harley and i stayed up all night creating a backup plan for every little thing that could go wrong. we have an entire nation's eyes on us, waiting for their prince to be crowned. i needed to have back up plans."

"i'm not a prince," charles laughed.

"you are to them. you're the people's prince, they've been waiting for this victory since 2018. you've been waiting for this moment for so long, i'll be damned if you don't win today."

charles placed a hand on her shoulder, "i trust you, which is saying a lot considering my last engineer. we've got this."

bianca shook her head, "you've got this. you'll win today, i know it."

charles gave her a cheeky smile, "if i win today will you go on that second date with me?"

she laughed, ignoring the fact that there were two super-soldiers with super hearing in the ferrari garage. she was lucky there was too much noise for them to focus on her conversation with charles, "yes."

"great," charles said, "now i know i'll win."

"go get in the car," she ordered, laughing a bit. charles also laughed, "okay."

the moment he sat in the car, he tuned everything and everyone out. it was the same thing he did for every race, but this time it was amplified by 10, nothing and no one would stop him from emerging victorious at his home grand prix for the first time ever. this win wasn't even for him, it was for his papa, who had wished to see charles win their home grand prix. there was a certain determination in him for this race, a determination he hadn't felt in a long time.

"radio check," charles heard bianca's voice.

"do you think you could convince peter to play that one lady gaga song when i win? he knows the one," charles replied. bianca's laughter rang in his ears, "copy."

the five lights went out charles was gone, carlos behind him defending from max. red bull's upgrades seemed to help them out but it wasn't long before carlos was able to get away from him, leaving the red bull in the dust. a safety car during lap 27 allowed ferrari to double stack it's cars, a move that had previously failed them in the past. not this time, the team was ready with both sets of interns, the rain beginning a lap earlier. the other teams having to pit for inters again after already having pitted for hards, just like bianca had predicted.

charles was going to prove to those that had called him a waste of seat last season that he was a great fucking driver. he was going to win his home grand prix. the when didn't matter anymore, after today charles leclerc would be a winner of the monaco grand prix, the first in nearly 100 years to do so. he was going to go down in monaco's history. charles was so focused on his race that he failed to notice the checkered flag, or even hear the crowd roaring in glee and pride.

the ferrari garage had erupted into chaos, bucky was seen lifting arthur onto his shoulders and running out towards the pitwall, sam and steve grabbing lorenzo. pepper stark-potts stands with pascale, comforting the woman who is crying tears of joy. some team members are seen running out, waving the monaco flag high.

"with this of the late jules bianchi, who said to ferrari, ‘you’ve got to take this guy, you’ve got to make sure that he gets to formula 1’ and what a gift that was to give. in 2017, charles leclerc lost his father and in his final days he told his father a white lie, that’s he’d made it to formula one, that he’d signed the contract. it wasn’t true then, but his driving has made it true now, and look what he’s done with the opportunity! the grandstand he saw built as a kid growing up, now rise for him, and for the first time in 93 years this fabled race is won, by one of their own! charles leclerc wins the monaco grand prix to achieve his dream, victory in his home race! well done charles leclerc, it’s mission accomplished, destiny fulfilled, you’ve got that one forever.”

"CHARLES, YOU ARE THE WINNER OF THE MONACO GRAND PRIX! TU L'AS FAIT!" lorenzo's voice was heard telling charles. charles voice was a mess of italian, french, and english, but one phrase was clear, "we did it papa. we did it."

the car comes to a stop at the parc ferme, where charles jumps out of his car, standing on top of it his finger goes up, a classic nod to sebastian who laughs in the crowd. the camera pans to his family, who stand surrounded by avengers, in the middle of it all, watching him as he basks in his win. carlos and max, who complete the podium, rush to him before he has a chance to jump into the arms of his team. the moment the helmet and balaclava come off, the tears are evident, he jumps into the arms of his team, who slap him congratulating him, they're just as ecstatic as him, they know how long he's waited for this. he ends up in front of his family, all four of them crying together, before he parts ways with them, his mother whispers something to him and he nods. he hugs bianca, the brunette returns it, and charles moves on to hug sebastian. he's whisked away to do his interviews and to the cool down room.

“you did it,” carlos tells him in the cool down room, “you finally did it.”

"you're next," charles whispers and carlos laughs, it's a tender moment between the two teammates before emotions get the best of charles.

charles cries again and carlos hugs him. max enters the room to spot charles crying, he frowns at carlos before joining the hug. despite whatever angle the media will try to spin later, they know it’s simply a friend comforting another. later, charles will sob in the arms of his best friend as he realizes his childhood dream has come true. he is a winner of the monaco grand prix.

on the podium he shines, a prince finally crowned, twitter will say minutes later. the people’s prince of monaco had finally earned the win he fought so hard for. the tears still glisten in his eyes. his finger goes up again, and crowd's cheers are deafening. as he receives his 1st place trophy, he gives it a kiss holding it up and pointing it towards the sky, a clear reminder of who this win was for. the crowd scream with joy as their prince finally gets the win they all longed for.

liked by pierregasly, arthur_leclerc, tonystark and others

scuderiaferrari charles leclerc, winner of the monaco grand prix, future world champion.

tagged: charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc

view all comments

username i sobbed. i literally sobbed when i realized what had just happened.

username THE CRYSTALS WORKED BITCHES! CHARLES LECLERC IS THE WINNER OF THE MONACO GRAND PRIX!

↳ username HELL YEAH THEY DID! WE CAN FINALLY SAY CHARLES IS THE WINNER OF THE MONACO GRAND PRIX

username this is the most normal ferrari caption i've seen. now carlos to win his home grand prix next

↳ scuderiaferrari that's the plan bestie! both our boys will win their home grand prix this year.

username ferrari being cocky about charles winning the championship is so hot of them. they've got such a lead over everyone else that they know they're going home with the championship one way or another.

pierregasly tu l'as fait charles!

landonorris congrats charles! you deserved this one!

↳ scuderiaferrari are you implying he didn't deserve his other wins 🤔?

↳ landonorris DO NOT PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH PARKER!

olliebearman arthur's still crying...

↳ arthur_leclerc MY BROTHER JUST WON THE MONACO GRAND PRIX BEARMAN! LET ME BE!

↳ user28 supportive brother arthur crying over charles's win is so cute.

samwilson YEAH! THAT'S IL PREDESTINATO RIGHT THERE!

america_chavez who knew an f1 race would make tony emotional?

↳ c_barton TONY CRIED? AND I MISSED IT? THAT'S SO NOT FAIR!

joaquintorres well that was an experience. congratulations charles!

↳ scott_lang C'MON THE NEW GUY WENT BUT I DIDN'T EVEN GET AN INVITE?

↳ tonystark you said you were busy, that's why you didn't get an invite. joaquin was available, hence the invite.

harleykeener HELL YEAH! NOW IT'S TIME TOPARTY! DRINKS ON TONY!

↳ alex_albon i'm in!

↳ tonystark i never agreed to that?

↳ biancastark-potts you're a billionaire, you can afford it. don't be stingy.

liked by peterparker, america_chavez, katebishop and others

biancastark_potts monaco, i think i like you

comments have been restricted by user

samwilson PAUSE! WHO IS THAT!

america_chavez monaco? is that what we're calling him now?

↳ biancastark_potts don't make me tell stephen what happened the other day

↳ america_chavez understood, i know nothing.

harleykeener so that's why you left the party early

↳ carlossainz55 you know who else left early, right?

↳ harleykeener no?

↳ carlossainz55 i will text you

tonystark STOP HIDING MY PHONE! I'LL FIND OUT WHO HE IS ONE WAY OR ANOTHER BIANCA!

↳ biancastark_potts no, you won't, because not even nat and buck have figured out who it is. if the two spies can't figure it out, you won't either.

↳ natasharomanoff she's good tony. i haven't got a clue who it is.

↳ buckybarnes i desperately want to know who it is so i can warn the poor guy to run for the hills.

↳ biancastark-potts fuck you bucky.

alex_albon you're telling me i know something the avengers don't? oh my god this is great.

↳ samwilson spill albon. what do you know?

↳ alex_albon no can do wilson. i'm being blackmailed, my own girlfriend has turned against me.

↳ lilymhe i want to know how far they're willing to take this thing. both bianca and the avengers.

↳ georgerussell63 the avengers wish they were us right now

↳ biancastark_potts WHO ELSE KNOWS?

↳ landonorris me and charles know too!

↳ biancastark_potts oh for fucks sake.

wandamaximoff second date?

↳ biancastark_potts went well, a third one is up in the air.

↳ michellejones she says this so no one will follow her on her date.

↳ biancastark_potts zip it jones.

↳ michellejones tell me everything

↳ biancastark_potts deal.

you just had to tell someone didn't you?

AMERICA KNOWS! AND WANDA! AND MJ! I'M ALLOWED TO TELL PEOPLE!

can those losers be trusted to keeping a secret?

the twitch quartet has been vowed to secrecy! except for alex, he accidentally told lily. she scolded him for telling her, so the secret is safe with her.

they are more so happy they can hold something over the avengers.

oh god. we're doomed.

series taglist: @celesteblack08 @be-your-coffee-pot @evans-dejong @elliegrey2803 @bingewatche @arkhammaid @sunflower-golden-vol6 @lorarri @melanier7 @ironspdy @mypage-myfandoms @vellicora @you-bleed-just-toknowyouarealive @enchantedthoughts @stopeatread @hobiismyhopeu @lilsiz @alessioayla @niniluvsainz @au-ghosttype @fulla02 @cowboylikemets1989 @six-call @embrosegraves @justtprachisblog @bionic-donut @rmeddar123 @nichmeddar @landonorizzz @unluckyyoshi @raizelchrysanderoctavius @burningcupcakefire @spilled-coffee-cup @jamie-selwyn @cool-ultra-nerd @kami10471633 @int3rnetgf @fernandoswarcrimes @skynel09 @arieltwvdtohamflash @mimolovescookies @brekkers-whore @camdensreg @mycenterfold @dear-fifi @chiliwhore @tygecjjd @nothaqks @nataliambc @formulaa1d @prongsvault @kaa212 @julesbabey1 @julesbabey @georgeparisole

strikethrough means i couldn't tag you

¡leclerc-s speaks! monaco is so special it deserves it's own chapter. i hope i did the racing scene justice, they are not my forte. if the race strategy seems familiar, no it doesn't (i'm unoriginal and i know nothing about race strategies. lol.)

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet for me. enjoy!

[2sgf]

Solstice ☀️ Sol ☀️ Sunny

he/him ⭐ they/them ⭐ she/her

28 years old ; tme two-spirit first nations wo/man

@mermen is my moonlight 🌙

★ minors do not follow or interact thank you

☆ white supremacists, transmisogynists, sex bioessentiallists, TERFs, and anyone who follow these kinds of beliefs will be blocked

★ if you notice i've interacted with anyone who follows the above ideology or they have interacted with me, please let me know! i might have not noticed

☆ feel free to dm me any donation posts or anything else you need boosted. i will do my best to boost it during the day.

★ i always read abouts, carrds, rentrys, & pinned posts! i might forget to like posts after, or might unlike them after some time to keep my likes clean

☆ i try to keep others' blacklists in mind but if i forgot to tag something, feel free to send me an ask or a message! i will do my best to remember but the dissociation might fuck with me so if it's something important but niche you need tagged, i might need multiple reminders so just unfollow if you're worried about it...

★ disabled, neurodivergent polyfrag system

☆ remade on july 18th 2024

art blog: @solsunbeam

more about under the cut! ^^ not necessary to read

☀ my socio-political beliefs: land back, pro palestine, anti-colonization, harm reductionist, anti-canada and anti-usa, anti capitalism, defund & dismantle the police, prison abolitionist, anti child family services, pro family reunification, better funding for social services, pro universal healthcare (including mental health resources, optometry, AND dentistry), antipsychiatry, pro universal basic income, decriminalize drugs, sex bioessentialism is rooted in white supremacy, and may all the catholic churches burn down thank you

☼ i don't 'debate' any of the above with anon asks. if you want more info on why i hold these beliefs, you can ask me privately via message. though, i may block you if your vibes are bad. if you deeply disagree with the above, then i rather you block me than try to convince me otherwise. i'll save us both the time and just block you.

☀ in general i block whenever i feel i need to

☼ i occasionally post about the above, but this blog will also contain a mish-mash of my interests, personal posts, fashion pictures, nature pics, and like.... idk whatever ✌🏽

☀ mutuals this is your sign to ASK FOR MY DISCORD! come. enter my dms. let me send you pictures of my cats.

☼ interests: poetry, art, films, fashion, video games, animation, plants, comics, child welfare, trauma recovery, disability rights, tarot, witchcraft, the occult, linguistics, lolita fashion, and all kinds of other stuff

☀ video games: kingdom hearts, fire emblem, legend of zelda, animal crossing, final fantasy, supergiant's hades, minecraft, mario bros, pokemon (mostly gens 1-5), sonic the hedgehog, undertale, deltarune, // anime/manga: witch hat atelier, dungeon meshi, sailor moon, revolutionary girl utena, yugioh duel monsters, card captor sakura, madoka magica, hunter x hunter, ghibli movies, and other stuff lol

☼ alters may or might not tag their posts as [alter name].txt feel free to refer to them as their name! but we all respond to the collective name as well <3

☀ my final message...... peas and lov on planet erth....... goodnight

[dollsofthewest]

AG Cowgirl Outfits

Following in the footsteps of @enby-dollhouse and @doll-collecting-aerialist, who did posts on the variety of ballerina and tennis outfits respectively, I wanted to do my take on a section of AG outfits I love: cowgirls! Saddle up and let's head out!

Rootin', Tootin' Cowgirl (1998)

Okay, so maybe this is the outfit that inspired me to do this post in the first place. This is adorable. It's rootin'. It's tootin'. I love the bright blue color. It's advertised as a Halloween costume, but doubles just fine as a fancy rodeo outfit. I do like the idea that you can be the sheriff, or the bandit, or both at the same time! And lest we forget to mention that black cat trick-r-treat bucket!!

Molly's Dude Ranch Outfit (2004)

Is anybody doing it like Miss Molly? This outfit was not connected with any book but released as part of a "Summer Fun" collection. I like to imagine Molly went to a dude ranch near Yellowstone National Park, or maybe somewhere along her Route 66 Adventure. It's cute and pretty authentic to rodeo shows. Also, look at her little canteen!

Nicki's Ranch Outfit (2007)

Most cowgirls don't wear the fancy rodeo costumes like a lot of people think: those are for the shows and fairs! During her daily work, Nicki wears her own pink version of modern jeans, chaps, and boots. And of course her staw hat to protect her from the sun.

Rustic Ranch Outfit (2008)

Another practical outfit; it may look impractical to wear a skirt but I've seen girls who prefer it, if they are riding side-saddle. The vest is kind've plain, but it comes with a horse-themed scrapbook and a (faux) leather Western Hat.

Western Riding Outfit (2010)

Definitely a casual pick for our cowgirl. Fit for farm or school, everybody knows exactly what animal is this American Girl's favorite. Like Nicki, this girl wears a straw hat, but she'll need sunblock if she's going to ride all day with those short sleeves and skirt!

Western Plaid Outfit (2014)

I like to think of this as Abercrombie Horse Girl. I'm not sure how practical that dress is for horse riding, and I'm a bit worried about those loose band around her boots. Still, this girl has something not previously seen, even with Nicki, and that's the very important helmet! Always wear a helmet while horse riding!!

Pretty Pink Riding Outfit (2014)

Sold at the same time as the previous one, so you could choose which outfit you wanted with your life-saving helmet. This girl is wearing what I liked to call Gucci Horse Girl.

Blue-Ribbon Riding Outfit (1998)

I forgot this one so I'm adding it here to show you what I would consider an Ideal Horse Riding outfit. Helmet: check! Proper boots: check! The coat even comes with functional pockets and inner thigh padding. She certainly gets the blue ribbon from me for best dressed!

Maryellen's Cowgirl Outfit (2022)

Ah, a return to classics! This is about as stereotypical "cowgirl" as you can get. As far as I'm aware, this is meant to be her Halloween costume, which tracks with how popular cowgirls & cowboys were during the 1950s. Lookin' cute, Miss Maryellen!

Lila's Horseback Riding Outfit (2024)

I think when Glen Campbell sang "Rhinestone Cowboy" he wasn't talking about this. Still, maybe this is what horse girls these days wear? It's a shame to see a modern girl without a helmet, but you can't deny this fits Miss Lila's style to a tee!

What is your favorite AG cowgirl/horse-riding outfit? What would you like to see made in the future?

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/5/2024

i am going to do my absolute fucking best to stay off the internet today. also the next time i write one of these i will be goddamn thirty. yeesh.

listening

it took three hours to make a normally brisk 50-minute trip back from the airport on sunday bc there were simply so many accidents. my phone wasn't charging, i was kind of locked into the one way i actually knew how to get home, it was pouring, and the only radio station that was reliably coming through was the local dad rock station.

i don't think i've ever actually heard this song all the way through before! i have of course heard the chorus in eight billion advertisements and trailers etc, but i tuned in right at the lyrics

I was a willow last night in my dream I bent down over a clear running stream Sang you the song that I heard up above And you kept me alive with your sweet flowing love

big ren faire lady of shallott vibes.

-

reading

witch hat atelier, the first twelve volumes that are out in english anyway. let's yoink the setup from the fan wiki.

Coco, a girl living in a small village, had been dreaming of becoming a magician since little. But people who don't know how to use magic since birth are unable to become magicians, or witness the moment magic occurs. But one day, Coco accidentally saw Qifrey, a magician that was visiting the village casting a spell. Ecstatic to finally know how magic works, she tries it immediately and transforms her mother into a stone statue. With the help of Qifrey and his disciples, Coco will embark in a magical journey to save her mother.

this gets a lot of ghibli comparisons, and i get it-- there's a lot of concern about healing scars from a near-cataclysmic magical war, lots of contraptions, bucolic countryside, loving shots of food, etc. i think there is a focus on academia and cohort-building, and how networking is a profession all to itself, that we do not generally see in ghibli films. i think the comp pull should go beyond the aesthetics, as well, but ghibli is still a good comp-- the world of witch hat atelier is dangerous and can hurt or kill you, but it treats the reader's heart with the same care a ghibli movie will. things may not be happily ever after or go perfectly at all times, but there are no twists for the sake of twists, and it doesn't sneer or make fun of you for caring about a character. there are no whedonesque "well THAT happened!" moments. these characters are going to learn and grow and you will learn and grow along with them goddamnit. it is queer but incidentally queer. the folx side of the fags-folx spectrum will feel very welcome here but this is not a tenderqueer kind of gay book. characters are incidentally gay because of course they are, that's just how the world works, look at all the fullness of human expression you can encounter in your one short life, why NOT be gay

i did not expect this series to kickstart a fresh wave of grief for my own academic experience. coco leans on her cohort so much and they truly do work together to solve problems and come up with good solutions and i wish i had had that kind of astronomy experience. it's kind of cold comfort that i don't know and have never heard of a woman having a good astronomy experience.

witch hat atelier: very fun to sink into the details on a page (Kamome Shirahama knows how functional but pretty clothes work), endlessly charming veneer on a very taut game of political ethics happening in the grownups' background

-

watching

happy noirvember!!!

Another Man's Poison (1952, dir. Rapper) courtesy of Kanopy's little revolving carousel of new noir films.

An English mystery writer (Bette Davis) kills her husband, then tries to kill a man (Gary Merrill) posing as her husband.

In his review in New Statesman and Nation, Frank Hauser wrote "No one has ever accused Bette Davis of failing to rise to a good script; what this film shows is how far she can go to meet a bad one."

a plot that could only happen in a country where appearances are everything. i must agree with mr hauser and most of the critics of the time who said Huh???? to the script and basic premise. AND the ending is a little too pat. a breakneck ninety minutes filmed in three months where its stage play bones show. however i really like Bette Davis and it's so much fun to watch Bette Davis pace around an English manor house like a caged tiger.

-

playing

fallow week, i am having a consistent problem with the now five year old gaming rig overheating and once i solve that issue i am very excited to play Red Dead Redemption the original (thank you again @pasta-pardner !)

-

making

deep cleaned my entire house. drove three hundred miles this weekend to pick up my sister and her friend from the airport, go to the ren faire, come back from the ren faire, and take them back to the airport. houston delivered to me some of the worst fucking driving experiences i have ever had here. really upsetting torrential downpour for nearly an hour on a road with no shoulder to speak of.

the actual ren faire was fun! i did not realize how vital a chair or bench with a fucking back was to my rest and recovery. it was nice to go with fellow adults and not help wrangle several small children, as fun as a kid-friendly experience can be. got my overpriced gyro for the year. got my bootleg anime merch for the year. wish it hadn't rained but i feel very smug for packing enough umbrellas and ponchos.

[thewhimsyturtle]

👒  Happy National Hat Day!  🎩

Presenting . . . a special new hat Mom folded just for me that is so light I didn't even notice I was wearing it! 😎🐢

[truth4ourfreedom]

THE LEFT IS GETTING SERIOUS AND PULLING OUT ALL OF THE STOPS TO STAY IN POWER! GET READY!!!!

BOOOM!

Judy Byington Bombshell Report!

Cyber Attack Nationwide Communication Blackout Planned For Nov. 5 Election

DayBreaking News Alert!

Judy Byington’s explosive new report exposes plans for a massive cyber attack aiming to unleash a nationwide communication blackout on Nov. 5, Election Day! Prepare yourselves; this is a warning you can’t ignore. Spread the word before it’s too late!

Free and fair election in 2024? Forget it. The Election Fraud Machine has been hard at work, creating chaos and tampering with early voting across the nation.

On Nov. 5, the Deep State Elites are set to launch a cyber attack to manipulate results, silence communication, and paralyze the nation. Their endgame? Martial Law, giving Biden control to cancel the election and keep the Biden-Harris puppet show running, all in the name of keeping their Global Elite handlers in power.

But it gets worse: Deep State biometric scanners, satellites, and AI have been spotted erasing Trump votes in early voting districts. White Hat Military Alliance has struck back, destroying Dominion voting machines in Ohio that were flipping Trump votes. The Ohio Attorney General has even indicted six non-citizens who illegally cast ballots in previous elections.

In Washington and Oregon, fires at ballot boxes have obliterated thousands of ballots that will never be recovered, all thanks to Antifa, who many believe orchestrated the attacks.

In Texas, election fraud arrests are piling up, while in Utah, voter fraud cases are ignored, leaving dead voters receiving ballots before living ones! No investigation, no answers—just silence from election offices.

Last week in Pennsylvania, non-English speaking “citizens” sporting Harris Walz stickers were pushed to the front of voting lines, directed by “translators” while actual Americans waited outside. Police in the state shut down a voting booth for “overwhelming Republican turnout.” Trump supporters arrested simply for encouraging freedom to vote! Voter suppression is in full swing.And in Florida, people discovered a mysterious box of ballots by the Turnpike. Who left it there? Authorities haven’t figured it out, but the implications are chilling.

Democrats are now fighting to prevent drop box surveillance in Georgia—why would they oppose election transparency unless they have something to hide?Illegal immigrants and non-citizens have been handed voter IDs and social security benefits. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian “refugees” now receive American taxpayer money and voter IDs, ready to cast their votes this November.

Reports reveal that 46 out of 50 states confirmed Biden lost the 2020 election in their state, but Congress ignored this to certify Biden’s victory without any investigation.

And it’s not just election fraud—Byington exposes horrifying secrets in her re-released book, “22 Faces”, detailing how Satan-worshipping elites subject children to ritual abuse to maintain control over their victims. Upon its release, “22 Faces” faced vicious attacks by pedophiles desperate to bury the truth. They smeared the book with one-star reviews to suppress its exposure of Satanic Ritual Abuse.

Help expose these monsters: leave a review on Amazon to ensure “22 Faces” reaches the light. The more we reveal, the more innocents we can save.

They want us silent; we won’t be. Spread this message.Join, while it's not too late:

https://t.me/EtheFriendQ

[mariacallous]

Dar Leaf and Richard Mack don’t seem like they would pose a threat to US democracy.

Leaf, a sheriff from Barry County, Michigan, always has at least two pens clipped neatly to his shirt pocket and speaks softly with a Midwestern accent. When we meet at an April event in Las Vegas, Nevada, Leaf is immaculately dressed in a sheriff’s uniform, replete with the polished gold star.

Mack also wears a gold star—even though he’s no longer a sheriff. But in the Ahern Hotel ballroom in Vegas, Mack played the part. In a ten-gallon hat, Mack was genial; shaking hands with guests, joking with vendors, and taking selfies with supporters.

This wasn’t an average get-together. Leaf and Mack were at a conference for the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, a group described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-government organization with links to many other extremist groups. Constitutional sheriffs are actual elected sheriffs who also believe they are the ultimate legal power in their county, and that no federal or state authority can usurp their authority. They also believe that a sheriff’s power stems directly from the constitution, and that they can disregard any laws they deem unconstitutional—a belief that is not grounded in reality.

Leaf is on the board of the group; Mack is the founder. And there are hundreds of members around the country.

In Las Vegas, Mack referred supporters and journalists to Leaf, who was, he said, “doing more than anyone to uncover election interference” in his role as sheriff.

A staunch Trump supporter, Leaf has spent the last four years investigating voter fraud in the 2020 federal election in Barry County—even though Donald Trump won decisively there. He has attempted to seize voting machines, pushed wild conspiracies, and ultimately became the focus of state investigations himself. In at least one case, Leaf appears to have inspired an election official to refuse to verify a vote—an ominous warning ahead of the 2024 US election.

The conspiracies have also taken a physical turn: According to emails shared exclusively with WIRED by the nonprofit group American Oversight, Leaf has run a militia training course advising “potential jurors, homeschoolers, ladies and gentlemen” to “get a standard AR-15 type military grade weapon” and “500 rounds of ammo.” The emails also show that, ahead of the most consequential election in a generation, Leaf is in regular contact with a wide variety of election conspiracists.

Leaf and a number of his colleagues in the Constitutional Sheriff movement say that they have “posses” to patrol polling stations, monitor for “illegal” immigrant voters, and help sheriffs respond to reports of fraud—or anything else—on election day.

Mack, meanwhile, has been the driving force behind the modern day Constitutional Sheriffs movement. In the last six months, Mack’s group has mobilized across the US, building relationships with powerful figures close to Trump, training armed militias, and laying out plans for when Democrats inevitably, in their view, try to steal the election. They’re laying the groundwork to challenge the outcome of next month’s vote—and recruiting sheriffs to help them assert control if Trump loses.

“In a swing state like Michigan or Wisconsin, where the difference in the state's outcome is 50,000 to 70,000 votes, if a sheriff becomes an obstacle, then that could undermine that state's credibility, says Will Pelfrey, a professor of criminal justice and homeland security at Virginia Commonwealth University. “In a swing state, that could undermine the entire national election.”

A WIRED investigation reviewed hundreds of documents and conducted dozens of interviews over the course of the last six months. We found that the Constitutional Sheriff movement believes it is the last line of defense to protect American elections. At conferences in Las Vegas and Florida, as well as online in group chats and Zoom meetings, their discussions often turn to how sheriffs can utilize their unique power in order to, they say, safeguard democracy.

For years, sheriffs like Leaf who believe they have unlimited power to interpret and enforce the laws of the land have operated on the fringes. But as the election approaches, they have been increasingly empowered by those close to Trump and are more committed than ever to ensuring a Republican victory up and down the ballot. At all costs.

Today, one in four sworn law enforcement officers in the US report to a sheriff. In addition to running county jails, sheriffs and their deputies make approximately 20 percent of all arrests in the nation, according to one estimate, translating to around 2 million arrests every year. In nearly one in three US counties, sheriff departments are the largest law enforcement agency, meaning sheriff’s offices are the primary law enforcement agency for 56 million people.

“Sheriffs are really beholden to nobody,” says Pelfrey. “Once elected, a sheriff has tremendous power, and there have been sheriffs who have been convicted and still hold office. It's a bizarre thing. It shouldn't exist, but sheriffs are not beholden to a governor or to a president, and the only way to enforce state or federal laws for a recalcitrant sheriff is the National Guard. And that's not a viable system.”

At the April event in Las Vegas, Mack worked the room incessantly. Together with Leaf, he built links with the leaders of the election denial movement, discussing and preparing for the recruitment of like-minded citizens to patrol polling stations and stop “illegal” immigrants from voting in the election. The event was a veritable who’s who of the right-wing election denial movement, including former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, pillow salesman Mike Lindell, and the de facto leader of the movement, disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

On stage, Flynn told the sheriffs they have “a huge role and responsibility in this country” and that only their local-level work will halt voter fraud. During his speech, Byrne said that constitutional sheriffs would need to play a vital role in fighting the influx of “15 million military-age men.” He also claimed that a “well-regulated militia is not a dirty phrase” and urged sheriffs in attendance to build “surge capacity” by partnering with local militias.

“The constitutional sheriffs, or any sheriff in this county, have mega power at the county level,” Lindell told WIRED in Las Vegas. He suggested that sheriffs could arrest voters for illegally voting in the wrong county, adding that they could “put a moratorium” on the voting machines if they suspect fraud is taking place. And he cited Leaf, who spoke at the event, as an example that all sheriffs should follow.

“Our job is basically to make sure that my guys are educated on the election laws, start looking for the violations, trying to get the election clerks to start paying attention if somebody drives in and they've got a whole van full of people that look like they're not from around our area, and they can say no and then make them take it through the courts,” Leaf told WIRED that week, referencing the conspiracy that “illegal immigrants” were being relocated over the border by Democrats to sway the election in favor of Kamala Harris.

To make sure his deputies follow his lead, Leaf said he is working with others to produce a guide on how to properly police elections—something he said he was going to share with all sheriffs across the country in time for the US elections.

“The role of the sheriff has always been to maintain the peace, and he's your chief law enforcement officer and chief conservator of the peace of your county,” Leaf said. “And when you get people cheating on elections, that's disturbing the peace. You violated somebody's peace.”

None of these claims of constitutional power and control are true.

“There is no constitutional basis for their claims to power, zero, it's just not in the constitution,” says representative Jamie Raskin, the congressman from Maryland who spent decades working as a constitutional law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. “County sheriffs have no more sovereign-state political power than municipal police chiefs or mayors or county commissioners. The whole claim is completely fictional. It's a pure fabrication.”

Still, anyone paying attention is nervous: Leaf has publicly defended members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia who plotted to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. “It’s just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that,” he told a local news outlet. “Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan, if it’s a felony, you can make a felony arrest.” And he has run an eight-week militia training course, called Awaken Our Constitution’s Sleeping Militia Clauses, that he openly advertised on his Facebook page as recently as January.

The contents of the course, according to emails reviewed by WIRED, are based on a 2010 booklet from Brent Allen Winters, a sovereign-citizen believer, titled “Militia of the Several States,” which outlines a belief that armed militias are granted their power not from the constitution but from God, harking back to a time during the American Revolution when men in some areas were fined for not bringing their guns to church. The booklet even cites the Old Testament as justification for organizing an armed militia.

As Winters and Leaf see it, a member of a militia has two duties: “Armed defense of the land from enemies foreign and defense of the law of the land from enemies domestic.”

In one slide, titled “Do Your Duty,” which was shown to attendees of Leaf’s training course, Winters wrote: “Get started. Get a standard AR-15 type military grade weapon. Get 500 rounds of ammo.”

“There should be militias connected with every sheriff,” Leaf told The Guardian in July.

Experts like Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights and someone who has closely chronicled the Constitutional Sheriffs movement for years, are also tracking how the organization is now interacting with other extremist, “paramilitary” groups.

”The Vegas CSPOA conference was about more than recruiting far-right sheriffs,” Burghart claims. “It was about plotting a road map for coordinated election interference and insurrection 2.0.”

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Trump and his advisers were scrambling to challenge the election results when a relatively unknown former Army Reserve lieutenant colonel named Ivan Raiklin started tweeting. Raiklin told Trump that he should play the “Pence card” and force then vice president Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the election.

While Raiklin cited a real provision of the US legal code, his plan had no basis in law. Trump retweeted and endorsed Raiklin’s plan, and while it ultimately went nowhere, the “Pence card” was a precursor to the Trump internal legal team’s coup memo that laid out a plan for Pence to overturn the election result on January 6, 2021.

Four years later, Raiklin is now a superstar in the world of election denial. Ahead of the 2024 election, he has a new scheme to guarantee Trump’s win. It involves the constitutional sheriffs.

Raiklin has compiled a “Deep State target list” of more than 350 names, reviewed by WIRED, that includes elected Democratic and Republican lawmakers, FBI officials, journalists, members of the House January 6 committee, US Capitol police officers, and witnesses from Trump’s two impeachment trials. His plan is to get constitutional sheriffs to round up those people in livestreamed swatting raids so they can be punished for treason. Raiklin, who is closely connected to Flynn’s organization, also wants sheriffs to “deputize” people into armed militias or “posses” to help facilitate the arrests.

“We have hundreds of thousands that want to participate in retribution,” Raiklin said in a June video interview with Cliven Bundy, a Nevada cattle rancher who became a far-right icon after a dispute in 2014 over grazing fees led to an armed standoff with federal authorities. “Some people call it accountability.”

Raiklin met with Mack at the Las Vegas conference and tried to recruit sheriffs to his cause. In June, Raiklin and Mack met again and had “a good discussion,” according to Mack, who would not expand on what exactly the pair discussed. Raiklin refused to speak to WIRED in Vegas and didn’t answer questions sent afterward.

While Trump has not endorsed the Constitutional Sheriffs movement directly, he has spent recent years courting sheriffs around the country. In September 2018, Trump stood in the White House surrounded by almost four dozen sheriffs. Front and center was Thomas Hodgson, then sheriff of Bristol County in Massachusetts.

Hodgson was there to present Trump with a plaque, and praised him for his “strength of purpose” and “commitment to [his] convictions.” The inscription read in part: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” A supporter of the Constitutional Sheriff movement, Hodgson was tapped by Trump in late 2019 to become an honorary chairman of Trump’s Massachusetts reelection effort.

Trump held around a dozen meetings with sheriffs at the White House during his four years in office, more than any other president—and that’s not counting the regular appearances of sheriffs at Trump rallies and campaign stops. Mark Lamb, a constitutional sheriff from Pinal County, Arizona, spoke at Trump rallies in his home state and in Illinois. Trump also emboldened sheriffs by removing Department of Justice oversight that the Obama administration had put in place and restarting a program to allow sheriffs departments to buy military-grade weapons at discounted prices.

“Trump’s tough-guy, xenophobic, and conspiracy-minded persona gave sheriffs a new model in the White House,” writes Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy. “Under Trump, constitutional sheriffs had a friend and protector at the highest level of government.”

While Mack’s group is at the forefront of the Constitutional Sheriffs movement, there are many other sheriffs across the US who hold similar beliefs about the power of sheriffs. The movement has also found purchase with other prominent right-wing groups. In 2021, the Sheriff’s Fellowship was launched by the Claremont Institute, an influential far-right think tank involved in the drafting of Project 2025, whose stated goal is to see the US revert to a Christian-centric nation based on principles espoused by the founding fathers. The fellowship, which was funded by Trump’s former secretary of education Betsy DeVos, is a five-day training course in “American political thought and institutions” and has featured multiple self-identified constitutional sheriffs, including Leaf.

The closer constitutional sheriffs get to the mainstream GOP, the more cause for alarm.

“The danger of authoritarian attack on the democratic process is at its peak when you get an alliance between extremist vigilante groups like [the Constitutional Sheriffs] with elements of the actual political system, like a political party,” says Representative Raskin. “That's a dangerous combination if Donald Trump is going to be leading the Republican Party into election denialism and a determination to prevail over the rule of law, and you have violent paramilitary groups backing them up.”

Richard Mack’s law enforcement career began with rejection. “My father had just retired from the Bureau a few years earlier and I wanted to follow in his footsteps,” Mack wrote in his 2009 book titled The County Sheriff. “But, this dream never happened as I had some problems with one of the Bureau's entrance tests.” He instead decided to join the Provo (Utah) Police Department in 1979, where he says he immediately became a “by-the-numbers jerk” whose primary goal was writing as many tickets as possible.

In 1982, Mack went undercover on the narcotics beat. “I had to live in the bars, drink, smoke, and act like the biggest partying druggie there ever was (something totally foreign to my conservative Mormon upbringing),” Mack wrote.

The assignment opened Mack’s eyes to what he saw as the injustice of the drug war and how it was targeting US citizens rather than organized crime groups. Disillusioned with the police force, in 1988 Mack moved home to Safford, Arizona, and successfully ran for Graham County sheriff. This was where the Constitutional Sheriff movement began.

Constitutional sheriffs claim their power comes directly from the founding fathers, even though there is no mention of sheriffs in the constitution. Many sheriffs—including Leaf—cite a quote from a Thomas Jefferson letter as their justification for the importance of the position: “The office of Sheriff [is] the most important of all the Executive offices of the county.” The line was indeed written by Jefferson, but the letter focuses on Jefferson's complaints about lifetime appointments of local judges and how they abuse their office, Pishko writes in her book.

The roots of the modern day Constitutional Sheriffs movement originate in the far-right Posse Comitatus group, which was formed in the early 1970s by William Potter Gale, a minister of a militant antisemitic, white-nationalist quasi-religion known as Christian Identity. Gale lionized the idea of the county sheriff as a protector of the ordinary citizen who had the power to call up posses or militias to root out communism, fight the desegregation of schools, and remove—or even execute—federal officials.

Over the years, the ideas popularized by Gale would inspire a variety of far-right groups, individuals, and movements, including Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Incidents like the sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 1990s, the latter of which resulted in dozens of deaths, would be used as further evidence by figures like Mack who already believed the federal government was overstepping.

At the same time, Mack coordinated with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the Brady Bill, signed into law by then president Bill Clinton in 1993. The law mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers—carried out by sheriffs. For sheriffs like Mack, who almost uniformly view Second Amendment gun rights as sacred, this was too far.

In 1997, the Supreme Court sided with Mack and the NRA, finding that the provisions in the bill that forced sheriffs to perform the background checks were unconstitutional. Mack was no longer a sheriff, but he catapulted to fame on the far-right for standing up to the government. He became a regular on the militia and pro-gun speaking circuits and even did PR work for Gun Owners of America, a more hard-line version of the NRA.

Over the next decade, Mack continued to mix in far-right circles. In the early 2010s, he became a board member of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia led by former Army paratrooper Stewart Rhodes, who is currently serving an 18-year sentence for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot. (Mack said he left the Oath Keepers around a decade ago when it became too militant, but CSPOA continued to support the group on its podcasts and newsletters in the years since the attack on the Capitol, helping raise money for Rhodes’ legal fund.)

In 2011, Mack founded the CSPOA to “take America back, Sheriff by Sheriff, County by County, State by State.” In 2014, Mack, together with members of the CSPOA and the Oath Keepers, was part of the now infamous armed standoff between the federal government and the Bundy family in Nevada.

The popularity of the CSPOA has waxed and waned over the course of its 13-year-old history, but the Covid-19 pandemic and protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 brought sheriffs back to the fold.

Mack reportedly encouraged sheriffs to ignore restrictions by federal and state officials meant to curb the spread of Covid; he also helped facilitate the spread of anti-vaccine disinformation as a board member of the conspiracy group America’s Frontline Doctors, a role for which he was, at one time, paid $20,000 a month. Mack, who to this day still refers to himself as “Sheriff Mack,” has not been a sheriff for almost 30 years. He unsuccessfully ran for other sheriff positions, and even governor of Utah and US senator in Arizona.

In interviews, Mack comes across as reasonable, repeatedly pointing out that the CSPOA is a nonviolent movement. But in the private members-only webinars he broadcasts weekly to his subscribers, he portrays a much darker side. In an August webinar, he said that his group was “obsessed” with monitoring next month’s vote and the “probability” that the election will be stolen as a result of the millions of illegal aliens being shipped into the country. In another webinar earlier this summer, Mack pushed an even darker conspiracy, that Democrats will allow Trump to win to instigate a civil war:

“The only way I see Trump winning is if they decide they want Trump to be in, that those who cheated last time are actually going to make sure he gets in,” Mack said. “Why do they want Trump in? Because they want the civil war to begin, and the violence that will be happening across this country will be horrendous.”

In September, Leaf appeared in Orlando, Florida, to discuss what extremism experts say is a “far-right blueprint for the next insurrection.” He was speaking at a conference organized by the Florida Foundation for Freedom, a group run by the CSPOA. Leaf was there to show other sheriffs how to take action.

The conference’s speaker list included a variety of election conspiracists with links to Trump—including far-right figure Mark Finchem, who is currently running for a seat in Arizona’s statehouse—and Christian nationalists, including Bill Cook, the founder of America’s Black Robe Regiment. Also speaking at the conference was Mary Flynn O’Neill, a director at America’s Future, the nonprofit run by her brother, Michael Flynn.

The event was organized by Bill Mitchell, the head of CSPOA’s Florida chapter, to promote a blueprint he created for constitutional sheriffs in other states to connect with like-minded election officials. The details of the plan were outlined in a seven-page document published on the foundation’s website, on CSPOA-headed paper.

“Take back the states, one constitutional sheriff at a time,” Mitchell said during a summer presentation about the plan.

When WIRED spoke to Mitchell, he denied that his plan was focused on disrupting the election. But the document clearly calls for citizen-led, local posses aligned with the CSPOA to recruit like-minded sheriffs, county commissioners, and supervisors of elections. Should those officials refuse to take action as directed, the plan states, allied sheriffs or posse-led grand juries will relieve them of their duties.

“Instead of a January 6–style centralized mass insurrection, these Florida activists developed a blueprint for a county-by-county-style revolt,” says Burghart, who analyzed the plan on IREHR’s website.

It’s not just Florida. In Las Vegas, Bob Songer, the sheriff in Klickitat County in Washington state, shared a 32-page guide with other sheriffs on how to recruit a posse, revealing that his own has 150 members. Leaf outlined how, when his Michigan election fraud investigation was going nowhere, he created his own “election investigation posse” consisting of two cybersecurity experts and a “clerk” to gather evidence.

Mack has also espoused his view that every sheriff should have his own posse. In a recent members-only webinar, viewed by WIRED, Mack and Sam Bushman, CEO of the CSPOA, wondered about the possibility of veterans temporarily moving to Leaf’s county in Michigan and being deputized to help his investigations into election fraud.

Mack’s views on the power of posses is deep-seated: “People get all upset when they hear about militias, but what���s wrong with it?” Mack reportedly said in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing at the NRA's national membership meeting, in which Mack was honored as the organization's law enforcement Officer of the Year. “I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to call out my posse against the federal government if it gets out of hand.”

“There's no federal constitutional prohibition against a posse,” says Will Pelfrey, a professor of criminal justice and homeland security at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It's kind of terrifying, because you're empowering a lot of fringe people to do something that they probably shouldn't be doing.”

It’s not exactly clear how many constitutional sheriffs currently exist. Back in 2014, the group claimed it had 485 sheriffs signed up. In 2017, Mack told High Country News the group had 4,500 fee-paying members. By 2021, that number had risen to 10,000, Mack told VICE News, adding that his group had “trained 400 sheriffs.” Two years later, Mack told AZCIR that his groups had trained 1,000 sheriffs.

When WIRED asked Mack how many sheriffs were currently members of the CSPOA, he said 300 sheriffs could be described as “really solid.” He would not divulge how many paying members the group has.

While Mack and the CSPOA are the most prominent part of the Constitutional Sheriff movement, there are many other sheriffs who espouse the same beliefs. A 2022 survey conducted by the Marshall Project found that close to 50 percent of the sheriffs polled agreed with the constitutional sheriff mantra that “their own authority, within their counties, supersedes that of the state or federal government.”

Many sheriffs have also shied away from publicly aligning themselves with Mack, something the former sheriff readily admits. And yet Trumpworld, the election denial movement, and some of the most prominent far-right influencers are now seeking to team up with the sheriffs to influence the outcome of the US election.

In September, election denial group True the Vote told its followers that it was working with sheriffs to monitor drop boxes. While Mack told WIRED he hasn’t spoken to True the Vote about this specific plan, he has confirmed that the CSPOA is still actively working with True the Vote, though he declined to say in what capacity. Bushman also wouldn’t give details of their collaboration, but said: “It's more than just supporting what they're doing.”

In multiple conversations with Mack over the last six months, he repeatedly asserted that the CSPOA advocates only for nonviolent action in efforts to combat the alleged (and unproven) widespread voter fraud that is now the group’s driving force.

But Mack also maintains deep ties to Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers and is publicly meeting with figures like Raiklin, who in August also posted an ominous threat on X referencing the recent assassination attempt against Trump: “In a duel, each side gets one shot. They missed 36 days ago. Now it's [our] turn.”

Earlier this month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned that “election-related grievances” could motivate domestic extremists to engage in violence around the election.

In a recent phone conversation, Mack’s tone sounded more deflated than antagonistic; he admitted that he was “frustrated” that more sheriffs were not taking a more active role in policing elections, a practice that has led to voters feeling intimidated in the past.

“President Biden and his administration have just caused so much extra work for the sheriffs, it's really hard to get them to focus on elections,” says Mack. Every sheriff in this country should verify the security and integrity of the voting in their county. Every single one.”

Dar Leaf, for one, remains focused. As he prepares to police an election while continuing to investigate the last one, he is clear-eyed about where the threat is coming from: immigrants and Democrats. He claims that America has received “other countries’ garbage,” and as a result, he needs to act.

“Any police officer who thinks that machine is bad or something criminal is going on,” Leaf says, “we have a duty to seize it.”

[foreverlogical]

In a New York Times profile of the Michigan Republican Party, state Rep. Lisa McClain offers a quintessentially stoic midwestern insight about the ailing state party that perfectly sums up the GOP's national dynamic too.

“It’s not going real well," McClain told the Times' Nick Corasaniti.

“The ability to raise money," she continued, "we’ve got a lot of donors sitting on the sideline. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. It’s just a plain fact. We have to fix that.”

Though McClain was assessing the divide between the state's monied benefactors, such as former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and its Trumpy grassroots activists, she may as well have been talking about national GOP donors' frantic search for a savior as the MAGA grassroots coalesce around Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination.

In fact, Corasaniti's piece—an anatomy of GOP dysfunction encapsulated by the Republican Party in a Rust Belt swing state—mirrors rifts emerging across the country at both the state and national levels. Corasaniti portrays a party coming apart at the seams after its drubbing in the '22 cycle in a state where Republicans roundly lost the gubernatorial contest, every statewide executive office (e.g., attorney general and secretary of state), and control of both legislative chambers. A hat trick, if you will.

The key cast of characters includes:

Tudor Dixon, 2022 gubernatorial nominee, Bible-thumper, anti-abortion activist, and former right-wing news host.

Fervent 2020 election deniers Kristina Karamo and Matthew DePerno, 2022 GOP nominees for secretary of state and attorney general, respectively.

Meshawn Maddock, former co-chair of the Republican Party and leader of Women for Trump, who has been charged in the fake elector scheme.

The DeVos family, longtime Republican Party donors and Michigan establishment heavyweights.

Every one of those is effectively a stand-in for similarly situated Republican players in GOP apparatuses around the country.

Following Michigan Republicans' midterm election implosion, a round of rapid-fire finger-pointing broke out, with MAGA party officials blaming Dixon for a toxic near-total abortion ban position and soft fundraising, Dixon blaming both the party and old-guard donors for her campaign's collapse, and party officials chastising donors for insufficiently funding their cuckoo election-denying candidates.

Corasaniti writes:

A state party autopsy days after the election, made public by Ms. Dixon, acknowledged that “we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the party” and that Mr. Trump “provided challenges on a statewide ballot.”

True enough. On the national stage, every 2024 Republican hopeful but Trump is presently trying to thread the needle of enthusing high-dollar donors while managing to peel away pro-Trump voters open to alternatives.Campaign Action

Back in Michigan, establishment type Dave Trott, a retired GOP congressman and former state party donor, dished about the Republican elite's distrust of former GOP co-chair Maddock, a MAGA activist.

"Meshawn was never connected to the donor base, and so having her as the vice chair [of the party] for a lot of us was a showstopper,” Trott explained. "We just knew she would never be someone that would be rational in her approach to state party politics."

In response, Maddock expressed a reciprocal lack of trust in the party's establishment muckety-mucks.

“The state party needs the wealthy RINOs who often fund it to come to terms with what the actual voters on the right want,” Maddock told the Times. Wealthy donors, she added, need to treat the base "with an ounce of respect for once.”

The same could be said of national Republican donors who have never crossed paths with actual base voters and apparently still believe Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin can save them from Trump.

That same mutual distrust and disgust between establishment Republican donors and state party officials is also playing out in Georgia, where popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp warned well-heeled donors earlier this year they could "no longer rely on" the state Republican Party to win elections. Kemp has effectively built a parallel political apparatus after urging donors to abandon the pro-Trump state party.

And then there are the anti-abortion zealots pointing fingers at everyone else for their own deeply unpopular position. Dixon's support for a strict abortion ban doomed her candidacy, just like the efforts of Ohio Republicans to ban abortion there sank an anti-abortion ballot measure earlier this month.

Following that loss, the nation's premier forced birther group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life 

America, castigated establishment Republicans and the business community for not pulling their weight in the battle to pass the measure, which would have significantly raised the bar for enshrining abortion protections in Ohio's constitution.

All across the nation, the Republican Party is reckoning with the deal it cut with the devil. In swing states like Michigan and Georgia, red states like Ohio, and nationally, the GOP is cracking up as different factions variously cling to or reject Trump. The damage done may not be fully realized until voters cast their ballots next year, but the Republican Party is entering 2024 in a position so precarious that it almost defies historical comparison.

[reality-detective]

Oh the irony that Air Force One hasn’t flown with a Presidential Call Sign since January 21, 2021, to present day…

But all Department of Defense Aircraft have… 🤭

But no irony when you know what’s in Legislation.

President Trump became a Wartime President with the Federalizing of 1,000,000 Reserve Components to Active Duty with Executive Order 13912 and a National Emergency plus DIRECTING the Secretary of Defense equal authority to do so in Executive Order 13919.

The only person who can Federalize the National Guard to Active Duty is the President via Title 10.

Read the first paragraphs in those orders and you’ll find Title 10 INVOKED with:

10 United States Codes §12302 and §12304.

When people say, “that was 4 years ago”…

Governors only have control of their National Guard for STATE Emergencies only.

Nebraska and Arkansas sent National Guard to Texas = Federalized.

CIC Trump told the whole world that day: “this is a Military Operation”.

Border = Federal issue.

So, explain why the Adjutant General of Texas was standing in Fatigues (Field Grade Uniform) with the Governor and “Former” President (Trump), on February 29, 2024, in Del Rio, Texas, while “Biden” whom the average American thinks is sitting President “was in” Brownsville, Texas?

The Adjutant General reports to the state chief executive UNLESS the National Guard are Federalized by Title 10.

The ONLY President who’s Federalized and INVOKED Title 10 is 45.

And the FIRST appearance the Adjutant General makes on World TV is with 45? 😎

45 DASH 47

45 is 46 and will be 47.

45 + 46 + 47 = 138

Donald Trump = 138

Why do you see him wearing this 👆 hat?

He hasn’t lived 77 years to get this far and make a mistake with a comma and a dash. 🤔

If you still don't believe... Go here 👇

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/900203/000090266421005276/powerofattorney.htm