An ICE Piñata and Utah's Republican Legislature Get What They Deserve

I had a marvelous time at the No Kings protest yesterday, of course, but not as marvelous as this evening at Liberty Park, where I gathered with friends and acquaintances to celebrate someone's birthday by destroying a piñata shaped like an ICE agent.

This was near the drum circle, an amazing weekly celebration I just found out about where people drum in a circle. The park is huge, the crowd is huge, and it gives off the "cool multicultural city" vibe that my previous hometowns never have. I'm sure half the people there were on drugs, and I intend to be on drugs there too at some point, though I'm taking a break from that stuff for a few weeks so I don't fry my brain. Anyway, several people noticed what we were doing and loved it. They laughed, they cheered, they took pictures, they got in line to take swings at it. I didn't get to swing because I let everyone go ahead of me because I loved seeing them have fun. There was enough stuff inside for everyone, and without being greedy, I scored a granola bar, a papaya, a few Hi-Chews, an "Abolish ICE" pin, and a Ruth Bader Ginsberg T-shirt. I love how this turned into a community event. I love how complete strangers had their day brightened. This picture doesn't even show all the people who were there.

I had such a great time that I completely forgot about getting raped when I did my taxes this morning because I have a contract job. It was also an uplifting reminder that as much as things suck right now, the United States is not a full totalitarian state yet. That's not for lack of trying, of course, and it's not to deny that things suck. ICE agents are terrorizing communities and violating people's constitutional rights with near impunity. Still, nobody arrested us for laughing as we beat an effigy of one to death. The orange taint would love to have people thrown in prison for things like that, but he can't, just like he couldn't cancel Jimmy Kimmel for mocking him, execute Democratic senators for reminding the military not to obey illegal orders, or rig all the elections since 2024 where his party has gotten curb-stomped, including just a few days ago in his own home district in Florida. He acts as if he already has unlimited power, and he does a lot of damage and gets away with a hell of a lot more than he should, but the checks and balances are still holding him back and making him look stupid. So don't lose hope, and don't freak out about him canceling the midterms. He can't do that.

Speaking of Republicans cheating because that's the only way they can maintain power, their embarrassing campaign to repeal Utah's anti-gerrymandering law failed again this week. This law was passed by voters in 2018 through Utah's referendum process, and it would have forced the legislature to draw fair maps so that Salt Lake City's substantial Democrat population wasn't split across four districts, but the legislature refused to do that, and eventually a judge approved a map for them, and they complained that the judge wasn't allowed to do that, and the judge said she wouldn't have had to do that if they'd done it like they were supposed to, and the Utah Supreme Court upheld that, so the legislature used our tax dollars to hire people from out of state to gather signatures for a referendum to let voters decide whether to repeal the legislation they already voted for. There have been many documented instances of signature gatherers lying about what the referendum was for. There have been many documented instances of people discovering that someone else had signed their names to it. This referendum met the threshold of enough signatures in enough districts to put their Prop 4 repeal on the ballot, but this week, enough people had their signatures removed that it doesn't anymore. The best part is that a few years ago, the legislature made the referendum process more difficult.