Most mornings I wake up and wonder if today will be the day. Will I turn on the news and learn that Donald Trump has died overnight? Will this be the week when his bad diet, venous insufficiency, and lack of exercise have caused a morbidly obese body to give out? Can this possibly be the day America finally breathes freely without the malignant narcissist and sociopath who is choking it to satisfy his own greed and vanity? Do I dare hope for change in today’s America?

I do not feel bad about this. While I don’t wish death on anyone, it’s impossible to see what’s happening to our country and not want it to be liberated. But that won’t solve America’s problems. On the day after, we will still have several major obstacles to overcome.

1. Vice President J.D. Vance

When I think about J.D. Vance taking the oath of office to replace him, I want to crawl back into bed and pull up the covers. Vice President Vance, the man of three names and flexible faiths, is a creature of the billionaire class. He most particularly belongs to Peter Thiel, the immigrant who bought the vice presidency for his protegé with a large donation to Trump’s campaign.

Vice President Vance holds no values greater than what he is told and paid to do by the men of the nerd reich.

Make no mistake, what he is being paid to do is implement Project 2025 to benefit his masters. That effort has been underway for all of Trump’s second administration.

When I tracked it a year ago, Project 2025 was just under 50% complete. Fortunately, that number has grown only to between 53% and 55%, mostly because of courageous judges.

Unfortunately, this number also corresponds to ~283 of 532 of Project 2025’s recommended actions that have already been put into motion.

Having a new POTUS in the White House who is not demented, obsessive, insecure and vain might seem a real benefit. But an amoral man who is intelligent and focused on implementing the rest of Project 2025 scares me a lot. If you aren’t sure he would do that, remember Vance wrote the introduction to that document.

2. The Trump Administration

Changing presidents also won’t change the Trump administration. The Cabinet of incompetent, ignorant, devious, dangerous, mendacious and greedy billionaires and wanna-be billionaires will still be running the federal government.

Courtesy of South Park

The Cabinet includes Pete Hegseth, a not-ready-for-prime-time Fox News commentator who is hollowing out the United States military.

On his watch, we have lost our dedicated and experienced senior command officers. He’s replaced them with people like him who are content to go along and get along in order to get ahead.

Our supplies of munitions are running out because he doesn’t understand how to run an organization, plan ahead, manage the country’s largest budget or actually defend America when we’re at war. What’s important to Secretary Hegseth is flash and image, not substance. The comic-book image he holds is of a macho white male military scoured of women and people of color,

Others, like Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick smirk as they rig the financial game in their favor, raking in big bucks for themselves at our expense.

In addition, the dismantling of America’s public lands continues. Here’s an itemized record of nearly everything the Trump administration did to America’s public lands in 2025. And these 70 items don’t include the eight months of 2026.

Meanwhile, millions of children are going hungry, America’s farmers are losing their farms, two American citizens have been shot to death in the street, thousands of legal immigrants have been kidnapped and disappeared, and historic Washington is being demolished in favor of gaudy monuments on steroids.

3. The Old-Guard Democrats

The Congress is full of old-guard Democrats who don’t see the need for radical change. To them, their job is getting money from PACs and corporations to fund their campaigns so they can stay in office and enjoy the perks.

They talk about working across the aisle, refusing to recognize that no one on the other side wants to work with them. When charged with confirming Republican nominees, they whiff. First they make a statement, then ask a few perfunctory anodyne questions, and hit YES.

Keeping people like Pete Hegseth out of the cabinet and Brett Kavanaugh otf the Supreme Court doesn’t occur to them. They follow tradition and do things the way they’ve always been done. But that way not only doesn’t work anymore, it’s destroying America’s democracy.

Change at Last?

Here, at least, we have some hope for change. The American people are fed up. It took a while—probably far too long—but the majority have reached the breaking point. We learned that from the results of primary elections around the country.

The candidates winning their primaries often have what the press likes to call radical views. Because in today’s America, fighting to keep our democracy has seemingly become radical.

The polls tell us that Democrats are scoring ahead of Republicans even in states that have been reliably red. The Republicans are running scared. We can look ahead to the midterm election and feel some hope that things will change. To accomplish that, though, we all have to vote and vote Blue in November.

Hoping for Change in Today’s America

So, when I wake up and it’s just another day in Donald Trump’s America, I don’t despair. The American people are powerful. We may be a sleeping giant but when we wake up, we can change the world.

Today, however, I would be satisfied to just change America back to the way it was before Donald Trump came down his golden escalator.