Monday, July 7, 2025

IT'S EQUALITY SINCE 1776

Democracy Is Equality, and That’s What Terrifies the Fascists

From the beginning, democracy was not built on the fantasy that all men and women are the same. We are not equal in strength, intellect, ability, judgment, or education. The founders knew this well. Instead, they envisioned something radical: that despite our differences, we would all be equal in power, equal in the right to shape the laws and institutions that govern us. Equality, in this sense, was the foundation of self-government. It was the core principle behind the Declaration of Independence, later enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Democracy, then, is not about sameness. It is about shared sovereignty. It declares that "we the people" are the rulers, not kings, popes, billionaires, or CEOs. We agreed to bind ourselves to laws we helped create, enforced by a government that is our servant, not our master. It was the antidote to monarchy, oligarchy, and autocracy, a government of equals.

And that is precisely what the fascists now fear and fight.

The authoritarian project currently sweeping America, championed by Trump and detailed in Project 2025, is not about policy. It is about power. It is about reestablishing hierarchy where democracy demands equality. It is about returning to a time when a few ruled over many, when race, gender, wealth, or religion conferred political privilege.

The new autocrats don’t believe in equality. They may pay lip service to it, but at their core, they are terrified by the idea that the poor, the immigrant, the Black, the Brown, the female, the queer, the disabled, all are equal stakeholders in this nation. That is why they attack voting rights. That is why they suppress books, muzzle teachers, and dismantle public institutions. That is why they elevate wealth to sacred status and push for a theocracy that claims divine order as justification for inequality.

They are reviving the lie of natural hierarchy, the idea that some are born to rule and others to serve. This lie has been repackaged as "meritocracy," but its essence is as old as feudalism. In their world, we are returning to lords and peasants, white over Black, rich over poor, men over women.

But democracy does not survive in such a hierarchy. It cannot.

We the people is not just a phrase but a declaration of equality. And if we lose that, we lose everything. Democracy dies not just when we stop voting, but when we stop believing that we are all equally entitled to rule ourselves. It dies when we let oligarchs and zealots redefine citizenship as a privilege rather than a birthright.

The current regime is not just anti-democratic. It is anti-equality. It yearns for a return to aristocracy, only this time cloaked in religion, racial superiority, and the unchecked power of capital. It is a monarchy dressed as populism. It is fascism with a smile.

The answer is not to moderate our demands. It is to reaffirm the founding promise: that democracy is equality in action. It is the only system that declares, despite our differences, that every citizen stands on level ground before the law and has an equal say in shaping our collective destiny.

This is not just a political fight. It is a moral one.

William James Spriggs

Sunday, July 6, 2025

WAR, NOT POLITICS

This Is Not Politics. This Is War.

Let’s stop calling it politics.
Let’s stop pretending this is another election cycle, another partisan dispute, another red-versus-blue contest with campaign ads and polite disagreements.

This is not politics. This is war.

Not a war with bullets, but a war of truth versus lies.
A war of freedom versus submission.
A war of the Constitution versus the cult.
A war between We the People and the would-be king.

We are no longer debating policy, tax rates, or school budgets. We are fighting for the right to exist as a free people under a democratic charter. That charter, our Constitution, is being burned in plain sight. Its protections are being shredded, its principles mocked, and its balance of power erased.

Trump and his followers have declared it. They no longer pretend to believe in democracy. They no longer feel the need to couch their ambitions. Through Project 2025, they have announced their goal: to erase our republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime, with Trump as its ruler and a coalition of billionaires, religious extremists, and enablers to keep him there.

This is not an exaggeration. This is not a metaphor.
This is real. And it is happening right now.

So no, this is not politics. This is a fight.
And in this fight, there is no middle ground.

You are either with the Constitution or against it.
You are either with democracy or against it.
You are either a citizen or a subject.

And if you are with the Constitution. If you still believe in the Declaration of Independence, in equality before the law, in government by consent of the governed, then you must fight.

Fight not with weapons, but with unyielding will.
Fight in courts, classrooms, boardrooms, statehouses, and your community.
Fight at the ballot box, on the airwaves, in print, and online.
Fight by organizing, protesting, educating, exposing, and voting like your life depends on it—because it does.

There is no normal to return to. There is no neutrality to retreat to.
Trump and his movement have made that impossible.

This is us vs. them, not by choice, but by necessity.
Us: the sovereign citizens of a free republic.
Them: the loyalists to a king who never deserved a crown.

This country was born in rebellion against a monarch. We declared our independence in writing, in blood, and in principle. We said no to tyranny once, and now we must repeat it, with the same urgency, clarity, and unity.

Because if we fail to fight truly, there will be no second chance.

This is not politics. This is history.

Which side are you on?

William James Spriggs

HOW TO REPEAL BBB

Repealing the “Big Beautiful Bill”: Can Democrats Undo the Trump Blueprint in 2029?

Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, a sweeping package of legislative and regulatory changes, was never just policy. It was a statement of dominance: a restructuring of American government, economics, and civil life to cement minority rule by the wealthy and powerful. It was rushed through with unapologetic arrogance, tailored to serve oligarchs, gut public services, roll back civil liberties, and centralize power under a cult of personality.

With the possibility of Democratic control in 2029, the question looms: Can it be undone?

The answer is yes, but not easily, and not all at once. What Trump and his supporters enacted was not a single bill, it was a long-term architecture for autocracy. Dismantling it will take more than a majority vote. It will require discipline, courage, and a strategy that acknowledges the scale of the damage.

1. The Power of Repeal, With Control of Congress and the White House

If Democrats control the House, Senate, and the presidency in 2029, they can introduce new legislation to repeal or replace the provisions in Trump’s bill. But this will only work if they have:

  • A working majority in the House,
  • At least 50 Senate seats and a Democratic vice president to break ties,
  • Or 60 Senate seats to bypass the filibuster.

In other words, they’ll need unity and urgency.

2. Using Budget Reconciliation for Speed

For budget-related provisions, like tax giveaways to billionaires or funding cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Democrats can use budget reconciliation, which allows passage in the Senate with a simple majority. This process helped pass the Affordable Care Act and the Biden American Rescue Plan.

However, reconciliation is limited:

  • It can only be used once per budget cycle.
  • It must involve items that have a direct budgetary impact.
  • It cannot include unrelated policy measures (thanks to the “Byrd Rule”).

So while reconciliation could help reverse Trump’s tax code shifts or restore gutted social funding, it won’t touch regulatory rollbacks or civil service purges.

3. Rolling Back Regulations with the Congressional Review Act (CRA)

If Trump’s government implemented regulations late in his second term, Democrats in 2029 could use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn them quickly with a simple majority. This tool is time-sensitive—only applicable within a 60-legislative-day window of the regulation’s finalization.

But the CRA only applies to regulations, not laws. And once used, it prohibits reissuing a “substantially similar” rule. So while useful, it’s a scalpel, not a sword.

4. Counter-Legislation: Rebuilding, Not Just Repealing

Even if Democrats cannot repeal every part of Trump’s legacy outright, they can counter it with affirmative legislation:

  • Restore protections for federal workers,
  • Reinstate environmental and civil rights regulations,
  • Expand public education and healthcare access,
  • Legislate voting rights and democratic reforms.

This won’t simply be about going back to “before Trump.” It must be about going forward, offering a new vision grounded in justice, equality, and democratic renewal.

5. The Real Battle: Political Will

Perhaps the biggest challenge isn’t legal or proceduralists’ political will. Repeal requires Democrats to govern boldly, not timidly. They must abandon the myth of bipartisanship with a party still devoted to authoritarianism and minority rule. They must make the case to the American people that Trump’s bill was not a policy victory but a betrayal of the republic.

They must be willing to say:

“This wasn’t just bad law. It was immoral, undemocratic, and un-American. And we’re not going to live under it.”

If Democrats do win in 2028, the window for repeal will be brief. Trump’s plan was designed to be durable, to lock in power for a generation. Delay is defeat. Half-measures will not be enough.

The moment must be met with clarity and courage.

Because if we’ve learned anything from Project 2025 and Trump’s second term, it’s that autocracy doesn’t fade on its own. It must be dismantled, piece by piece, law by law, lie by lie.

And that begins with the repeal of the Big Beautiful Bill.

William James Spriggs

Saturday, July 5, 2025

WE ARE THE SOVEREIGN

We Are the Sovereign: A Republic, Not a Kingdom

There is only one true sovereign in this nation: We the People.

That was the defining break with monarchy in 1776. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t just a list of grievances but a revolution of sovereignty. It declared that the government does not derive its power from kings or elites, but from the consent of the governed. And in the Constitution, that idea became law: power flows from the people upward, not from a ruler downward.

We are the sovereign. You. Me. All of us together, not ruled, but self-governing.

But today, we are under siege.
Not from a foreign king.
But from a homegrown pretender to the throne.

Donald Trump and his minions have tried to hijack the sovereignty that belongs to us all. They do not serve the people. They serve only him. They do not represent a republic. They represent a cult. They have pledged not to the Constitution, but to a man. And in doing so, they have betrayed the very foundation of this country.

They act as if Trump is the sovereign, as if he holds the crown, and they are his court. They do not criticize him, question him, or check his power. They submit. They surrender their own agency, duty, and patriotism to stay in his favor.

But that is not American. That is monarchism in disguise.

This is not a clash between right and left, red and blue.
This is a clash between constitutional sovereignty and personal dictatorship.

Trump and his supporters are trying to invent a new sovereignty, one where power is inherited, not earned. One where laws serve rulers, not citizens. One where dissent is punished, and loyalty to a single man replaces loyalty to the republic.

But there is no such sovereignty in America. The only legitimate sovereign recognized by our founding documents, our democratic principles, and the blood shed in their defense is the people.

We are the sovereign. Not Trump. Not Congress. Not the Court.

And because we are the sovereign, we are also the guardians.
It is on us to stop the creeping return of monarchy in red hats and gold towers.
We must remind our fellow citizens that the flag does not belong to a party.
Again, it is on us to declare that this nation belongs to all of us, not to one of us.

We are not subjects.
We are not pawns.
We are not loyalists to a would-be king.

We are citizens of a republic, and we are the sovereign.

Let no one forget it. And let no one take it from us without a fight.

William James Spriggs

Thursday, July 3, 2025

TRUMP'S MESSAGE

Trump’s Overreach Wasn’t a Mistake—It Was a Message

Donald Trump has overreached. Again.

He pushed through his so-called "big beautiful" legislative package—an authoritarian wishlist so radical, so transparently biased in favor of the ultra-wealthy, and so openly designed to dismantle the U.S. government, that any rational observer might ask: Why go so far?

Why make it so blatant? Why push so hard, so fast, and with so little effort to disguise the harm being done to working people, democratic institutions, and the very fabric of the Constitution?

The answer is as chilling as it is obvious:
Trump doesn’t believe there will be any honest elections to stop him.
He does not fear losing power.
He does not fear backlash.
He does not fear the people.

Because he does not intend to give the people another meaningful chance to choose.

This overreach is not a strategic misstep; it’s a declaration. Through Project 2025 and its legislative offspring, Trump and his enablers have made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in governing under a democratic system. They want to replace it with a permanent, hereditary, and fully consolidated regime where elections are performative, dissent is punished, and power never changes hands.

Let’s stop pretending this is politics as usual.
This is not the run-up to the next election. This is the run-down of the entire democratic process.

Trump is already behaving like a man with no intention of leaving. And why would he? A captured Supreme Court insulates him, a Congress stuffed with loyalists, a media landscape he manipulates at will, and a security state increasingly complicit in protecting power, not liberty. He has normalized corruption, trivialized cruelty, and, most importantly, proven that he can get away with all of it.

And so he pushes further.
Not because he miscalculated,
But because it’s working.

Democrats, meanwhile, remain locked in a delusion that this is just another dark chapter in American politics and that the next election will be the turning point. But what if there is no real "next election"? What if free and fair voting mechanisms are dismantled or distorted beyond recognition? What if we're already past the tipping point?

Trump has no reason to worry about political fallout. He’s a self-declared king in a system designed for presidents. He’s the head of a dynasty, not a party. And if allowed to continue unchecked, he will name his successor and solidify a generational autocracy that will take decades, if ever, to undo.

The grim truth is this: we are not awaiting an election. We are living through a slow-motion coup. The paperwork has already been filed. The power structures are being reshaped. The laws are being rewritten. The institutions are being hollowed out.

If Democrats continue to behave as if this is business as usual, they will lose not just an election, but also the country.

This is not a call for partisan resistance. It is a call for existential resistance.

Everything, every hard-fought right, every fragile freedom, every meaningful vote- hangs in the balance.

The time for caution is over.
The time for compromise has passed.
The time for action, decisive, organized, and unrelenting, is now.

Because Trump hasn’t just overreached.
He’s shown us the endgame.

And if we don’t respond with the seriousness this moment demands,
That game will be over for all of us.

William James Spriggs

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

  

A DIRGE FOR THE FOURTH

A Funeral Dirge for the Fourth of July

There is no name for what this country has become.

It is not America the Beautiful.
It is not the United States because it is not united.
It is not a republic, a democracy, or a shining city on a hill.

What it resembles now is something darker: a broken nation, run by a self-declared strongman and propped up by an oligarchy of billionaires who ensure that he remains in power. The people, the actual people, are no longer stakeholders. They are pawns. Or worse: they are forgotten.

This is not hyperbole. This is reality.

The once sacred institutions of American democracy, the checks and balances, the civil service, the judiciary, and the free press, have been bent to the will of a man who leads a cult, not a country. There are no “co-equal branches of government” anymore. The executive has swallowed the legislative and intimidated the judiciary. It is government by one man, for the few, at the expense of the many.

Democracy, as we knew it, is gone.
We warned of this in 2024, when Project 2025 was first published, a detailed, unapologetic blueprint for dismantling the republic and rebuilding it as an authoritarian regime cloaked in nationalism and false piety.

Now, in 2025, it is no longer theory. It is a fact.

The government no longer serves the people. It serves the rich-the very rich, the obscenely rich—and no one else. Even the merely wealthy have no power compared to the oligarchs who own the seats of influence, the airwaves, and the halls of power. Meanwhile, the poor, the working class, and the undereducated have no lifeline. Social services are gone. Public education is gutted. Labor rights are vanishing. Healthcare is reserved for those who can afford it, which is to say: the elite.

And who belongs in that elite?
Only those who meet the unspoken, but deeply enforced, requirements of Trump’s America: white, loyal, wealthy, and unquestioning.

Through his weaponized immigration policy, Trump has engineered a racial sorting process under the guise of law and order. He is not enforcing borders. He is enforcing a hierarchy. A racial caste system. A new version of Jim Crow, made more efficient by technology and sealed by propaganda.

The environment? Abandoned.
Innovation? Replaced with slogans.
Science? Silenced.
Faith? Hijacked by the state.

We are not heading toward theocracy. We are already there, just waiting for the curtain to rise fully.

So, what is there to celebrate this Fourth of July?

Fireworks in a graveyard? Flags on a battlefield already lost?
This is not independence. It is subjugation with branding.

Yes, some still fight, those who resist and dream of reclaiming the republic. They are the ones who remember what America could be. But they are no longer fighting to improve it. They are fighting to resurrect it.

America, as we knew it, no longer exists.

And so on this Fourth of July, don’t raise a glass in celebration.
Raise it in mourning.
Not for the America that was perfect, because it never was.
But for the America that once aspired to be better.

Now, that aspiration has been buried beneath the boots of autocracy.
And all we can hear, if we’re honest, is the sound of a funeral dirge.

Let it ring, not as surrender, but as a warning.
The republic will not come from pageantry if it is to be reborn.
It will come from resistance.

William James Spriggs

 

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

YOU DON'T MATTER

You Don’t Matter: The Truth Behind Trump’s Legislative Wrecking Ball

At this very moment, Congress is voting on what Donald Trump is proudly calling his “big, beautiful” legislative package, a sweeping, calculated disaster cloaked in patriotic language and populist theater. But beneath the surface, it is nothing less than a brutal betrayal of the American people.

You don’t matter.
Not if you’re working-class.
Not if you rely on public healthcare.
Not if you’re raising children, caring for an aging parent, or just trying to get by.
You. Do. Not. Matter.

This legislation, crafted by the Heritage Foundation, backed by billionaires, and rubber-stamped by sycophants, is not policy. It is plunder. It is a roadmap for locking in the privileges of the wealthy elite while gutting what little is left of the American social contract. If passed, these laws and changes will outlive Trump’s presidency and become embedded in the country's legal infrastructure, extremely difficult to reverse, and nearly impossible to repair.

Here’s what’s really in the package:

  • Tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, permanent and deep
  • Drastic reductions to Medicaid and Social Security
  • Elimination of environmental regulations that protect your air and water
  • Expanded religious exemptions to allow discrimination under the guise of faith
  • A complete dismantling of the federal workforce, replacing civil servants with loyalists
  • Defunding of public schools while redirecting funds to elite private institutions

And what do you get?

Maybe, maybe, a temporary bump in your paycheck that will vanish with the next price hike. Perhaps a vague promise of “freedom” while your local hospital shuts its doors. Maybe a job program that pays less than your bills requires and has no benefits.

If you are a MAGA supporter, this part is for you.
Even you don’t matter.

This legislation does not serve you. It will not help your town, your school, or your child. It will not save your job, reduce your rent, or lower your prescription costs. It only helps the rich stay rich, and get richer still. And you are simply the disposable fuel powering their engine.

This is the ultimate “thank you” from the man you’ve supported for years:
You don’t matter.
Your loyalty is irrelevant.
Your needs are a nuisance.

This is no longer about the party. It’s about survival. It’s about calling this moment what it is: an economic war on working people, dressed in a flag and fed to you on cable news as victory.

It is time to say no to all of it.
No to being used.
No to being silenced.
No to being lied to while your life gets harder, your care gets worse, and your dignity disappears.

This legislation must be fought piece by piece, exposed, and rejected. For what it is: a cruel monument to greed, passed on the backs of the forgotten. Of you.

Because, as long as Trump is in power, the message is the same:
You don’t matter.

But if we rise together, and vote, protest, and organize.
We can make sure they hear us.
And we can change the message to:
We matter. All of us.

William James Spriggs