Does our entire world currently orbit around one man and his psychological needs?

Nope. The sun still rises on its own. There are still kids to wake and get to school. Still groceries to shop for and meals to make. Still work to do. Doctors (real medical doctors) to see. Books to read, the beat of music, trails to hike and seas to sail and touchdowns to touch down [is that how football works?] and whatever else floats your boat and/or requires your attention. The ~8 billion people of this planet and their nation-states and churches and Labubu factories and synagogues and mosques and group chats hardly move as one — for better or for worse. Still, we're all apparently stuck for now with the reality of a sick man in the most powerful position on earth, surrounded by opportunistic sycophants.

Thank you to everyone choosing to use their voices to speak plainly — whether it's quietly, loudly, or written in legal briefs:

• Thanks and hello to my parents, who if you know them, you can see in the photos in the Alameda Post's recent piece titled Community Gathers at City Hall for Candlelight Vigil Honoring Renee Good.
• I don't have the words to write anything about ICE and CBP officers in the Twin Cities. If you want a momentary chuckle before reading whatever arrives in the next headlines, here's a copy of the VHS tape I was gifted by a Minnesotan-born friend before I headed there for college:

• As a former member of the UAW, I appreciated their straightforward statement about the President of the United States yesterday shouting fuck you fuck you and flashing his middle fingers at one of their union members in Michigan. (Trump usually seems to direct his unmasked spite primarily at women; perhaps it's informative to see that a white male talking off-script now activates his base instincts as well.)

• Congratulations to Attorney General Rob Bonta's office for successfully defending billions of dollars of transportation funds obligated by the federal government to California. Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy tried to tie those transportation funds to local acceptance of their anti-immigrant policies, including local cooperation with ICE agents. This has threatened Alameda's traffic safety improvements to Lincoln Avenue, among many projects across the Bay Area and the state. Politico reports this week that the US DOJ quietly decided not to appeal their court loss. (Duffy was apparently more successful in his initial line of work, acting on MTV's Real World.) Onward with the USDOT-funded improvements to Lincoln Ave, as well as the EPA-funded nature-based stormwater features for Central Ave!

But even if there are bright spots, it's still sad to be having to exert so much to simply defend those previously taken-for-granted values of civil liberties, of public dollars for public services, of basic kindness — with real people being hounded, hurt, and worse in the process.

I, for one, am continuing to listen for leaders who have both the care and the sophistication to blend multiple goals at once: to vigorously defend their constituents today and to systematically build places and policies that are better than what's come before.

The awful news is that with so many norms, conventions, and institutional guardrails replaced by malice and fear, almost anything may now be possible — and yet if almost anything is possible, that may still mean that with work and charity, a more perfect union may itself still be possible.