#TrumpMakesUsSick
My healthcare insurance was already unaffordable at $1,700 a month. We still paid it.
Then it jumped to over $3,000 a month because of Trumpโs Big Ugly Bill.
And hereโs the part people need to remember: most of the billโs pain doesnโt even hit until after 2026 midterms. Republicans want you to vote first and feel the pain later.
After receiving a demand letter from POTUS and FLOTUS, as well as a cease and desist from Paolo Zampolli last month, I feel it is necessary to build a defense fund. Please share. https://t.co/VOKPswwnwL
The images of an Israeli regime's minister at Ashdod Port personally humiliating handcuffed humanitarian activists from the โAid to Gazaโ #flotilla (many of them European citizens) are profoundly shocking. They evoke the darkest echoes of historyโ moments when a regime, long protected from accountability, comes to see itself as exceptional, untouchable, and above the law.
In the 1930s, Europe comforted itself with the illusion that it could remain silent โ and immune โ in the face of systematic degradation of human dignity, international law, and the most basic moral principles, without ever paying a price. History delivered a brutal lesson; the normalization of lawlessness and atrocity never remains confined to its original target.
Today, the real danger extends far beyond certain conduct of an Israeli regime's official. The deeper issue lies in the complicit silence, passive acceptance, and institutionalised inaction vis-a-vis occupation, apartheid and genocide that have granted such policies & behaviour an appearance of normalcy, continuity, and growing audacity.
If the West continues to widen the gap between its proclaimed core values and its actual conduct, it will once again hsve to learn historyโs harsh lesson: endless impunity does not moderate lawlessness โ it normalizes atrocity and emboldens its perpetrators.
May 2017. Augusta, Georgia. Reality Winner was a contractor at an NSA facility. A former Air Force linguist. Spoke Farsi, Dari, and Pashto. Five years in the military before becoming a civilian contractor.
Her job was to translate intelligence reports. To analyze foreign communications.
She had top-secret clearance.
In May, she came across a classified NSA report. Five pages long. Dated May 5, 2017.
The report contained something explosive.
It said Russian military intelligence had hacked into a US voting software supplier. Sent fake emails to over 100 local election officials. Just days before the November 2016 election.
This was the strongest evidence yet that Russia had directly attacked America's voting systems.
President Donald Trump was publicly saying Russia hadn't interfered with the election. That it was a "witch hunt."
The NSA had proof he was wrong. The proof was sitting on Winner's desk.
She made a decision.
She printed the report. Folded it. Put it in her pantyhose. Walked it out of the secure facility.
A few days later, she mailed it to a news website called The Intercept.
She didn't include her name. Didn't ask for credit. Just wanted the truth out.
Then she went home and waited.
The Intercept got the document. Decided to publish a story based on it.
Before publishing, they asked the NSA to verify the document was real.
That was their mistake.
The Intercept showed the NSA scanned copies of the printed pages. They didn't notice that the printer used by the NSA had embedded tiny yellow dots on every printed page.
The dots tracked which exact printer had printed the document. Even told the time and date.
The NSA traced the dots to a specific printer. Then checked who had used that printer recently.
Six people had accessed the document on their NSA computers. Only one of them had also been emailing The Intercept from a personal account.
Reality Winner.
The FBI showed up at her house on June 3, 2017. Two days before The Intercept published their story.
They searched her home. Found a notebook with her handwritten thoughts about the leak.
She confessed within hours.
She was arrested. Charged under the Espionage Act of 1917.
The same law that sent Chelsea Manning to prison.
The same law from World War I, originally written to punish German spies.
The Justice Department announced her arrest the same day The Intercept published the story.
She spent over a year in jail awaiting trial. Couldn't get bail. The government argued she might run away to join the Taliban because she spoke Pashto.
In June 2018, she pled guilty.
The Espionage Act didn't allow her to argue she had acted in the public interest. She couldn't tell the jury why she did it. Couldn't explain that the document showed Russia had attacked American democracy.
She just had to plead guilty and accept her sentence.
The sentence was 63 months in federal prison. Five years and three months.
The longest sentence ever imposed on anyone for leaking government information to the media.
At her sentencing, she told the judge: "My actions were a cruel betrayal of my nation's trust in me."
She had to say that. It was part of her plea deal.
She didn't believe it.
She served four years in a federal prison in Texas.
She had bulimia. The prison had to give her treatment for it.
She kept teaching herself languages. Studying. Trying to stay sane.
She read books. Wrote letters. Tried to be a model prisoner.
In June 2021, she was released early for good behavior.
She had served the full sentence in real terms. Just got transferred to a halfway house instead of staying in prison for the last few months.
She was free.
But not really.
She had three more years of supervised release. Curfews. Travel restrictions. Couldn't talk to other former intelligence workers without permission.
Her name was now public forever. She couldn't get most jobs. The companies that did hire her quickly fired her when they realized who she was.
Here's what the leak actually accomplished.
The document Winner released proved Russia had attempted to hack America's election systems. The Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency in charge of election security, hadn't even known.
Two of their own sources later told CBS News that Winner's leak helped make the 2018 election more secure. Officials had been able to use the information to protect voting systems.
She had helped her country, even though her country put her in prison for it.
The hackers Russia sent never faced any real consequences. The Russian government denied everything. The FBI investigated but no arrests were made on Russian soil.
The voting software company that got hacked was never publicly identified.
Trump kept saying Russia hadn't done anything wrong. Even after the document Winner leaked proved otherwise.
She did five years and three months in prison.
The actual hackers got nothing.
Here's what makes this story so painful.
Reality Winner was 25 years old. She had served her country in the Air Force. She had top-secret clearance. She had no criminal record.
She found out something that would help protect American democracy. She tried to share it.
The news website she trusted got her caught.
The government she had served prosecuted her under a 1917 law.
The judge wasn't allowed to consider her motives. The jury wasn't allowed to hear what the document said. Her lawyers couldn't tell anyone why she had done it.
She was treated as a foreign spy.
She was 25. She made a copy of one document. About a foreign country attacking American elections.
She got the longest media leak sentence in US history.
The Espionage Act has been used like this many times in the past 15 years. Against Manning. Against Snowden. Against Daniel Hale, who exposed the US drone program.
The law from 1917 has become a way to silence whistleblowers. To make examples of them. To scare other people who might consider speaking up.
Winner was one of the most powerful examples.
She did what the system asked her to do. Pled guilty. Apologized. Behaved well in prison.
She got out. Built a small life back. Lives quietly now in Texas.
She has done a few interviews. Talks about prison reform. Talks about whistleblower protection. Talks about how the Espionage Act needs to be changed.
Most Americans have never heard her name.
The country she tried to protect punished her hard. Then forgot her.
Reality Winner. 25 years old. Printed a document. Mailed it to a website.
Got 5 years and 3 months in prison.
For showing Americans the truth about an attack on their own democracy.
The hackers got away. The leakers got the longest sentence in history.