Happy shutdown, everyone! I want to apologize for my absence, and I thank everyone who inquired as to whether I had been black bagged or surrendered to the regime. I am frazzled, but I have not spent September as indolent as it appeared. The pace and gravity of the month’s news made it difficult to complete any project before the next one radically changed its context. This has been a grim time, and I want to record its shape generally before I return to the backlog of stories.
During the Labor Day holiday weekend, amid rumors that President Donald Trump was ill, dying, already deceased, or at least physically and mentally failing, I eschewed the traditional cookout to look at photographs of his royal feet. I called so many colleagues to gauge their opinions of his thick, swollen ankles and bruised hands that I fear some now find me strange. I have developed a grand unifying theory that much of the current political dramas emerged from attempts to mitigate problems caused by Mr. Trump’s hurting feet. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart went further to imply that the so-called Leader of the Free World is receiving the same treatment as “Make-A-Wish Kids.” I concur.
Mr. Trump’s brief disappearances from the public eye at the start and end of September are the tell us a story—every 30 days, the Mandarin Mussolini is unable to subject us to his bullshit personally. Tearing down half the White House to build a ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden to create an ugly replica strip mall patio, mistaking television for reality, ruminating on his own mortality, begging for a Nobel Peace Prize—the president is sick, certainly and mind as well as body, and our whole country is made to decay alongside him.
Before I completed that essay, the president ordered the Navy to strike a Venezuelan boat in international waters, which Senator Rand Paul called “despicable and thoughtless.” Three similar attacks were conducted over the next few weeks. I cannot imagine this is legal. Either these were fishing boats, and we killed civilians for no reason, or they were stuffed full of drugs, in which case we still had no authority to murder anyone. The death penalty has never been an accepted consequence for narcotrafficking, no matter how rabid Scruff McGruff becomes. We are apparently “at war” with drugs again, but this time with the actual military. Based on reported discounted cocaine prices, the drugs may be winning.
Processing that news, in despair and fury, I pounded my fists onto the tabletop in the Partisan Hex office and shouted, “He can’t keep getting away with this!” That blow shattered the cheap IKEA LAGKAPTEN into two pieces, resulting in a never-ending drudgery of office refurnishing for much of September. This has also contributed to production delays of the previously-mentioned article All the President’s Feet, updates on Jeffrey Epstein happenings around DC, and extended thoughts on the assassination of Charlie Kirk (which I have revised with excruciating care to ensure I do not get canceled).
After that furniture-wrecking tantrum, I attended Representatives Ro Khanna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie’s press conference with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein in Washington, D.C., where I wondered if bipartisanship might live again on the fringes. These three came together to deliver justice to the victims of Mr. Epstein, who was taped calling himself Mr. Trump’s “closest friend.”
September also saw the release of the infamous Epstein birthday book, including Mr. Trump’s poem about sharing “many wonderful secrets” with the sexual predator. Does this mean the president lied to the public when he claimed he had “never wrote a picture,” that the letter did not exist? Did he lie on court filings when sued Rupert Murdoch for libel? He now claims the signature, which looks like every photo of his signature, was a forgery. If that is a lie, too, we should start to suspect that he is lying for a reason, and that he may wish to conceal something more damning than the mere fact of his friendship with the pedophile financier.
I was moved to see Ms. Greene, undoubtedly a “true believer,” stand unflinching in front of signage calling her beloved president a pedophile. I harsh on her excessively, but I learned something from her. Whatever form of Epstein files finally manifest may or may not “prove” the worst about Mr. Trump—“enigmas never age” is sus as hell, though—but even if evidence reveals the president a lifelong virgin, all Americans deserve the opportunity to revel in the destruction of anybody ruined by association with the billionaire child predator.
The military occupation of Washington, D.C. continued past September 10-ish, which I had noted the expiration of the emergency declaration, but it has become tedious. There is little for the National Guardsmen to do, so they mostly pick up litter. In pursuit of the aesthetics of a dominating security state—big man, big soldiers, big guns, and a submissive and breedable public—the president wasted time and money and created unacceptable fear and hostility in the District. Under Mr. Trump’s heavy-handed authoritarian bullshit, the day-to-day in the city feels more unsafe, not less.
An internal memorandum from the Pentagon was “accidentally” sent to the Washington Post. Reportedly, the National Guard’s morale is low. They feel “shame” for participating in the occupation of the capital. This has no doubt been helped by nearly every young woman in the DMV giving maternal, disappointed frowns and shaking their heads as they walk by armed Guardsmen.
As I scrambled to link some facts of the city’s subjugation to the president’s feet, Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk was tragically, violently, and publicly murdered by a meme-rotted sniper, which birthed a national nightmare. As something of a pundit myself, the death of even a commentator I find despicable, encouraged me to take a more leisurely length of time reconstructing my office. I do not respect Mr. Kirk’s political enterprise, but I measured my words regarding his rhetoric to avoid aggravating any mutual acquaintances.
I hate political violence. My great fear through both Trump administrations has been the senseless escalation of combat in the streets. Also terrible has been the GOP’s transparent attempt to use this as an “inciting incident” to “crack down” on the left—nay, all of liberalism, classical or otherwise—broadly. Revenge, not reconciliation, has been this administration’s response.
Bizarrely, the president designated “antifa,” which is not an organization, as a domestic terror organization, and anti-fascism as an extremist ideology. Am I fucked too? I have never, even as a reckless youth, drawn an anarchy symbol on anything, but I use the words “fascist” and “authoritarian” to describe Republicans when they apply.
The environment around the assassination has been censorious. Acquaintances had their workplaces “put on blast” for saying on Facebook or TikTok that they did not think the slain podcaster ought be sainted. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr engineered the cancellation, however brief, of Jimmy Kimmel for even lesser wrongthink for suggesting the killer might have leaned Republican.
I fear the ire of The Man too. I am brash, rude, combative, and say way meaner shit about Republicans—everything that I want to see reflected in other Democrats. But I am not prepared to fend off the whole of MAGA. Most people are not. Much of the GOP now feels comfortable openly trying to crush dissent, instead of celebrating it as an American custom. That must end. Dear Reader: I promise it will never be “free” or painless to shut me up. Still, this conservative mass-snitching campaign was cause to “keep my head down.”
So, it is fair to say that I felt a chill. My speech has not been chilled, just I felt chilling. So I put on a leather jacket and lit a cigarette, because this is still America. I am confident that no matter what twisted plans the president harbors for organizations and voices on the left and center, the First Amendment will not permit their conclusion.
Another terrible thing that happened in September was Partisan Hex’s merchandise store, the Print-on-Demand publisher Spreadshop, mass-removed designs using the “trademark” “TRUMP.” The world-famous “TRUMP IS A BITCH” shirt, unfortunately, was banned in this wave. This is bad for the country. Victory requires dissent. Not merely on the battlegrounds of Reddit or Twitter or Facebook or whatever, but in the tangible world. Many Americans no longer know whether they are “allowed” to use their voice, but these shirts made the public aware they can say whatever wild, rude shit they want. Disgracefully, with these actions, Spreadshop suggests they are not. I have attempted to contact them for clarification for weeks to no avail.
Everybody (except, apparently, Spreadshop, ABC, CBS, the degenerated Amazon Washington Post, NBC, all these mega-billion-dollar media corporations who paid the president settlements or took down my merchandise instead of defending their speech in court) understands that the most reliable weapon against authoritarianism, as cliché as it sounds, is our voice. The Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that money is speech. It follows that speech is money and shit-talking is a campaign contribution. If political speech is worth money, then I can talk a lot of it, and I will. We must.
Most years, I mark this time by reflecting on the tragic events of September 11th. In 2025, they did not even consume the whole day’s news cycle. Half the president’s face went slack on video during a 9/11 memorial—it was clear he was not doing well—and the public barely took notice.
As September closed, Secretary of Defense and DUI hire Pete Hegseth gathered all of America’s generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia. The speeches Messrs. Hegseth and Trump gave to the assembled leaders were chilling, comical, and completely incoherent. Mr. Hegseth called officers fat, out of shape, and said that they should buy his book. Mr. Trump told them that they would be “us[ing] American cities as ‘training grounds’ to fight a ‘war from within.’” Not good!
As recently as 2024, reporters called former Vice President Kamala Harris fear-mongering and alarmist for warning that Mr. Trump would use the military on his enemies. But he has. There are troops in Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Illinois, and Memphis, Tennessee. The president openly singled out cities with Democratic mayors (not hypothetically—he calls them “Democratic cities” explicitly) for invasion and occupation by soldiers. Was this really not a “red line” for anybody?
Was this fascist spectacle a turning point or a comedy of errors? It might have been a farce. Reports said that Mr. Hegseth became “manic,” and “crawling out of his skin” after the assassination of Mr. Kirk, that the ex-Fox News host feared for himself in a manner unbecoming a man who claims a martial character. Mr. “Warrior Ethos” is jittery, short-tempered, screaming at his staff, and making erratic decisions. Has he been enjoying gin, perhaps despite his explicit promise during his confirmation to abstain? This self-aggrandizing stunt from Mr. Hegseth gave him no love, approval, or gravitas. It was a miserable failure. He is a so fundamentally unserious and vain that it is not possible for any person of merit to respect him as he is now.
Mr. Trump was a last-minute addition to Mr. Hegseth’s party. Author Michael Wolff, whose veracity I question but whose understanding of Mr. Trump’s psychology is on point, said: “Trump, who is lazy, lets other people be in charge, until they’re perceived as being in charge. Then they’re no longer in charge.” That is what happened here. This was a celebration of Mr. Hegseth’s ego, and Mr. Trump could not allow anybody else to be centered. And so, both men “showed their asses” to every general and admiral in the United States Armed Forces.
In his speech, which in a movie would have been that of a villain before launching an all-out-attack on the world, Mr. Trump does not appear to be coherent. He barely kept his eyes open. It looked to me like Mr. Trump could not think clearly, that his failing body and brain were autonomously regurgitating the vile rhetoric of national destruction.
That same night, the government shut down. One of my all-time favorite videos from a previous shutdown under former Speaker John Boehner:
Federal websites now present pop-ups blaming the “radical left” for the Republicans’ failure to keep the government funded. This is illegal. The Hatch Act, which is a law and not a suggestion, prohibits public offices from partisan campaigning. Violations must be prosecuted. This conservative rhetoric is also nonsense, bullshit, and lies, but I repeat myself. Republicans own the White House, the House, and the Senate—their inability to pass a continuing resolution reflects their own abilities. They are not adept at governing. Cloture requires sixty votes, and the GOP does not have sixty votes. They cannot advance the CR as-it-is in the Senate. Several Democratic votes are needed before the legislation can be passed. Those are the rules.
Any Senate majority worth a damn can easily work out a CR with their friends from across the aisle. Republicans who refused to negotiate with Democrats cannot be shocked that they now lack Democratic votes. Democrats have good, specific: extending subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans and restoring Medicaid funding cut in the “Big Bitch Bill.”
Mr. Trump, instead of negotiating in good faith, fictionalized Democratic demands as “free health care for illegal aliens” and “transgender for everyone,” then shared AI videos mocking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Mr. Trump’s supporters will repeat those lies. Sad! He respects his own voters so little that he makes them parrot falsifiable nonsense, and they paint themselves as fools for his pleasure.
Mr. Schumer mentioned after meeting with Mr. Trump that this was the first time the president understood the effects of the expiration of the subsidies—namely, dramatic price rises of premiums for individuals and small businesses who purchase their insurance through the ACA state marketplaces. Could it be Mr. Trump has not been engaged in the substance of his presidency? Has he instead been “riffing?” His supporters may not care, but Congressional Republicans ought to worry whether their “king” is aware of legislative details while ostensibly negotiating them. If it is acceptable to them that the amount Americans pay for healthcare is at the mercy of a “dealmaker” who knows nothing, then Republicans have no standards.
And so, as of October 1, 2025, the government is shut down.
Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, the architect of Project 2025 and a really odious person, asked agencies to plan mass reductions-in-force—layoffs—instead of furloughs, and further, Mr. Trump has clarified that he intends to target funding to hurt blue states and called whichever programs would be cut (before any had been cut) “Democrat scams.” Nothing says “good faith” like hostage-taking. Fucking terrorists.
This is not a one-off. Mr. Trump repeatedly makes comments indicating his will that by the 2026 midterms, the Democratic Party will be gone and there would be no blue states. This is worrying. Best case scenario, he hopes to win resounding victories, but combining this with his threats to cut New York’s funding if they elect Zoran Mandami, or Key Bridge funds in Maryland because Governor Wes Moore insensitively invited him for a walk (despite his hurting feet!), Mr. Trump is targeting not the politicians in blue states, but voters.
Obama’s “No red America, no blue America” speech is as obsolete as the VCRs that recorded it in 2004. Now, America has a president who loudly, publicly, and constantly identifies cities and states as Democratic for the purposes of hurting them and revenging himself on his political opposition. We have already become a country that punishes its citizens for being in the “wrong” political party, or simply living in a region whose population leans in one of two directions. If the GOP accepts this—and they are—then they rank with history’s most sickening villains. Mr. Trump seems to attempting to create an environment where people are forced to vote for Republicans because they fear punishment. He should fuck himself.
Federal workers and the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces will have bare cupboards because Mr. Trump could not come to negotiations. Mr. “Art of the Deal” is now unwilling or unable to cut deals. Has he become artless? I suspect that his reticence to meet with Democrats is fear that Mr. Schumer, who he has known a long time, would notice his infirmities and “roll him.” The president’s condition might be bad enough that, just as former President Joe Biden was concealed from public view, Mr. Trump too is hidden from his enemies.
Beating MAGA again will not be sufficient. Enough moral lines have been crossed—rampant corruption, “Alligator Alcatraz,” deportations to CECOT, kids in cages, the J6 insurrection—that before any new civic compact can be drawn, some percentage of Americans must become good again and rededicate themselves to principles they abdicated. Otherwise, we will be a nation partly governed by the unrepentant, who will try to do it all again every four years.
There is the old metaphor: “The tree of liberty withers unless refreshed by the blood of tyrants.” I never thought of this as a celebration of violence so much as a warning that the tree could be killed by malign forces in time. That is the meaning of autumn to me, a time of darkening and decay. The season has other qualities, too. In the rain and waning light, deep inside shaded, places where things rot, the atmosphere is “dank.” Do you understand? Strong, sharp, funny, and incontrovertible truths, preferably in the form of image macros—memes—only “danker” in this environment.
“Dank memes” alone do not end authoritarian regimes (electoral victories are the ultimate end and means), there is an unprecedented amount of shit to sling. Democrats must stop expecting Messrs. Schumer or Jeffries to save us—there is no secret plan. This is new to them, too, and they will nobly die on the hill of respectable politics. If the moment calls for something else, then someone else will have to do it. The good news is there are tens of millions of Democrats in this country who should be motivated to take lower roads because they, and not our party leadership, are the ones the president promises will “totally disappear off the map” in 2026. It is not popular to say this, because we are a party who prefers to “set and forget” our leadership, but the voters must put their own backs into this effort.
There is little reason, for example, not to raise your voice when talking on your cell phone in the supermarket. Let everybody in your aisle know about evil shit you saw on the news. I do this. Often people approach me in checkout and ask to shake my hand. Wear a DONALD IS A BITCH or SHOW US YOUR FILES t-shirt, or slap a FUCK DOGE sticker on your car. Saturate your community with your point of view. Else, if things are their worst portents—and they may be—you will have gone useless and silent into the fatal wintering of American democracy. Could not be me.
If I am quiet, it is because I am busy or lazy, not intimidated. If this sounds self-aggrandizing, then you misunderstand—I seek that all my countrymen of good character and conscience be made so grand. If September showed us the end of the light, in October we must use what remains.