Insofar as any gerrymandered election has been “free and fair” in my lifetime, yes, I do.

(Sidebar: I’m pretty concerned about some of the proposed legislation requiring birth certificate matching for names because of the potential to disenfranchise both trans people and married women, but I hope there’s enough pushback that it doesn’t go anywhere.)

President Grandpa’s puppeteers are only successful because they’ve manipulated a washed-up reality TV star with name recognition who is more concerned with ratings than with government. Without his inexplicable cachet with the electorate, they could never get their agenda pushed through, and they know it.

The man is not all-powerful. He’s also old and out of shape. A lot of things could happen before the next election cycle that may end his party’s political reign. There’s no clear successor whom the masses of Trumpist cult members will follow. Vance? Don Jr.? I don’t think either has the charisma or reputation to take the reins.

I hope that the rest of the world is taking notes and realizing that they cannot rely on the current US government to uphold its side of any prior agreements (or even the basic tenets of etiquette in civil discourse).

I hope that every country that does most of its trade with the US is quietly looking for new markets.

I hope that Republican isolationism actually comes to pass so that the entire population of the US can feel exactly how painful it will be to cut themselves off from the rest of the world. And then in two years, I hope enough people will get off their asses and vote against the people who let it happen.

All samples were negative for common hemorrhagic fever diseases, although some tested positive for malaria.

Looks like at minimum, it’s a strain of Ebola that’s different enough not to register on a test.