@mattvanswol Speaking as a liberal, I have no problem with people who are conservative. In the before Trump era. I had Republican friends. GOP now stands for everything I despise. I do not say anything to anyone about their beliefs. My brother is MAGA. If he talks to me I talk to him.
Without California, America doesn’t eat.
Nearly HALF of your vegetables...
Over 3/4 of your fruits and nuts...
ALL harvested in California — powered by immigrant farmworkers who keep this country running.
BREAKING: Trump administration strips Social Security benefits from a Black American cancer patient by claiming that she is “not lawfully present in the U.S.”
This is what Trump’s intentional cruelty looks like in 2026.
Ramona Rakestraw, 59, was born at Parkland Hospital in Dallas in 1966. She has never left Dallas County — not for vacation, not for work, not for anything. And yet somehow, the federal government has decided she is “not lawfully present in the U.S.”
Her crime? Existing while sick.
Rakestraw has battled kidney disease for decades. She endured a transplant. She returned to dialysis. In 2024, she was diagnosed with cancer. Through it all, she survived on Supplemental Security Income — her only source of income — and Medicare Part B.
Then in October, the payments stopped. Why? Because her “immigration status” was suddenly under review.
“I’m not an immigrant,” she said. “I’ve never even left Dallas County — let alone the country.”
Let that sink in. A lifelong Texan. Born in an American hospital. Fighting cancer. Forced to march down to a Social Security office with her birth certificate in hand to prove she belongs in the country where she was born.
And still, she received a letter stating: “We cannot pay you benefits because you are not lawfully present in the U.S.”
This is the human cost of a system so obsessed with rooting out “illegals” that it can’t tell the difference between a Dallas native and a border crossing.
Her Medicare was eventually restored. Her SSI — her only income — was not.
Now she’s appealing, drowning in paperwork while undergoing dialysis and cancer treatment. Sixty days to fight a bureaucratic accusation that should never have happened.
This isn’t about paperwork errors. It’s about a government climate that treats citizenship as suspect and vulnerable Americans as disposable.
Ramona Rakestraw isn’t asking for special treatment. She’s asking for the benefits she’s legally entitled to — the benefits she paid into with a lifetime of perfectly legal existence in this country.
Born in Dallas. Fighting for her life. And now forced to fight her own government just to survive. That’s not just incompetence. That’s a system that’s lost its humanity.
Please like and share this sad story!
@MbarkCherguia As an English teacher, I was surprised to learn when I returned a paper with a variety of notes from me to the student he couldn't read it. He brought it back to me asking what I wrote. I had to remember to print my comments to him.
My 2 rescue dogs in their Sunday best today. Hank and Chance.
Wouldn’t it be cool if everybody who had a rescue shared them in this thread to show the world that rescue dogs are the best option.
Shelters and rescues all around the world full of great dogs. Go for it👇
This isn’t rumor. It’s locations. Warehouses. Former prisons. Real towns.
ICE is quietly building a national detention network—and communities are fighting back.
Know where the camps are planned.
Stop them before they open.
BREAKING: Fulton County, Georgia announces a massive lawsuit against Trump's corrupt FBI and Justice Department over their shocking partisan raid on the county's election hub.
This is what fighting for democracy looks like in action...
Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. stated that the county will be filing a motion in the Northern District of Georgia that will challenge "the legality of the warrant and the seizure of sensitive election records, and force the government to return the ballots taken."
The news come in the wake of the unprecedented raid last week on the election center during which the FBI seized the center's 2020 ballots, tabulator tapes, ballot images, and voter rolls. This is the same FBI that's being run by Kash Patel, a MAGA hatchet man who is deeply involved with covering up the Epstein files.
The nakedly partisan operation in Fulton was attended by Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard despite her role having nothing to do with election integrity. The New York Times revealed earlier today that Gabbard then met with some of the FBI agents involved in the raid and during that meeting she called Trump on her cell phone. Trump then "addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry, the three people said."
Since Georgia is the centerpiece of Trump's deranged lies about the 2020 election being stolen, it looks like his administration is looking to manufacture support for the "stolen election" narrative in order to suppress the vote during the midterms.
"All I know is that as long as those boxes had been in the control of the county in this facility, they were safe and secure," Robb Pitts, chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, previously stated. "I can no longer, as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta but the citizens of the world that those ballots are still secure."
Thankfully, Fulton is fighting back with this new lawsuit.
“I’ve asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” said Commissioner Arrington. “The search warrant, I believe, is not proper, but I think that there are ways that we can limit it. We want to ask for forensic accounting, we want the documents to stay in the State of Georgia under seal, and we want to do whatever we can to protect voter information.”
“They got copies of our voter rolls and all the original ballots,” he added. “Now we cannot verify that we’ve received everything back because there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized.”
Please ❤️ and share to demand that a full investigation into the FBI's raid!
A UAE investor secretly gave Trump $187 million and his top Middle East envoy $31 million. And then Trump gave that investor access to sensitive defense technology that broke decades of national security precedent.
Brazen, open corruption. And we shouldn't pretend it's normal.
If you have any information about the location of our dear friend Savannah Guthrie’s wonderful mother Nancy, please call police in Arizona. She is missing.
"A 2-year-old boy was breastfeeding in detention. One 6-year-old boy had leukemia. An 8-year-old girl began wetting the bed. A 14-year-old girl engaged in self-harm...None of these children or their parents had a criminal history anywhere in the world."
https://t.co/SAmOXx7y8O
WSJ: There is a whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard that is so sensitive that it is "said to be locked in a safe," and the administration has spent months trying to figure out how inform Congress.
In impoverished countries, I see moms carry their babies for miles to get them vaccinated, because they understand that vaccinations save lives. And in the US I see charlatans diminishing vaccines in ways that will cause kids to die.
POWERFUL—“We are not savage, we are not animals, we are not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans. The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love." BAD BUNNY at #GRAMMYs#IceOut