As of Thursday, Jan 15 2026, we're still here.

Apologies, but no real post today. I know I warn about going short and then it’s twice as long, but tonight I’m fairly certain I will be asleep before I write the final sentence of this post. I am le tired, I will take a nap, then I will fire ze missiles.¹

Typing about a thesis that matters either to me or to the actual world while exhausted is… dumb. So I am not going to do that and will save bigger fish (ICE) for another night.

But there’s one thing so simple I can talk about even while nodding off at my laptop and waking up worried the drool on my keyboard is going to short it out.

And it is a thesis, a statement, a…. deep belief that keeps going around. And it goes like this:

Trump is going to cancel the midterms.

I hear it come up both as a prediction of how bad things will get, and as a comeback to anyone who says the midterm elections will help thwart some of Trump’s power. It just hovers out there in any conversation about the year: “Well, if we HAVE elections // If Trump doesn’t cancel the elections // If the elections even happen.”

And I want to acknowledge the good-faith part of this. People who don’t want to be caught off guard by Trump destroying more of democracy and who understand he is capable of anything.

But… to do it he has to be able to do it. Like, “you can just do things” is a philosophy capped by “the things you can do.”