THE FARCE fights fascism with fearlessness. Subscribe to fuel the Farce—free or paid, your support matters. You can always drop us a tip.

Kristi Noem has become what she always meant to be. 

Dig if you will this picture of her from 2019 next to her portrait from 2025. Yes, it looks like she’s on her fifth season of “Real Housewives of Maralago,” but that’s too easy. 

The transformations of Noem and Marco Rubio, especially in their glowing, cadaverous eyes, resemble what happens in the movie Sinners after the vampires gnaw at their victims' flesh. Except, these victims begged for it. 

The person they are now is the same as who they were before. They’re just done hiding the humanity they occasionally had to act out to fit into a non-MAGA world. Now they are unhinged and supercharged by the bite of Donald Trump’s lust for power and hatred of any virtue this country ever aspired to. And the power he’s vested in them.

So they’re thirsty. So thirsty to please Trump that their favorite thing to do is feast in public. That’s how you get Kristi Noem testifying to Congress, saying the writ of habeas corpus is the exact opposite of what the Constitution intended. 

What is habeas corpus?

Before we sink into their lies, let’s get a definition of habeas corpus from the US federal judiciary:

Latin, meaning "you have the body." A writ of habeas corpus generally is a judicial order forcing law enforcement authorities to produce a prisoner they are holding, and to justify the prisoner's continued confinement.

Now let’s break our brains with the filthy, supplicating fascism of Kristi Noem.

This is very one of the few instances where we can say that we know what the Founders intended and they all intended the same thing—namely, the right of (white men) to be able to get into a court and say, “You cannot just do whatever you want to me.” 

Hamilton defended the lack of a Bill of Rights in the original Constitution in Federalist 84 by noting, “The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus, the prohibition of ex post facto laws…are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any [the Constitution] contains.” His frenemy Thomas Jefferson listed it in his second inaugural as one of the “essential principles of our Government.”

They all meant the same thing because they understood the tradition of using habeas corpus to stop mad kings from doing whatever they wanted, dating back to at least the Magna Carta, which is why it’s laid out in Article I of the Constitution, where Congress derives its powers.

There are a few things on here

Trump, like Elon Musk, and anyone who has received their bite doesn’t lie to be believed. They lie to be repeated. 

They are trying to make lies true. 

This is what they want their base, especially, to believe. And they want to press to repeat it, so there’s some “debate” about what this essential right is that’s doing its best to hold us back from becoming a fascist police state.

We also know that these vampires only perform for one master—the one who created them. And this is just telling us how Trump views the law, or lack thereof, when it comes to him, which we already know.

However, this is also a flaming warning sign. Just like Stephen Miller going out to answer a planted question about WHEN Trump will suspend habeas corpus, this is a threat specifically to the judiciary. He said, “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

And that threat is telling the courts to get out of the way and stop insisting, as centuries of law have, that everyone in America has a right to get their day in court.

We are all civics teachers now

People who understand the threat we face need to realize that our only garlic or wood in the long run will be the people. That’s why we need to be fixated, as 

Anat Shenker-Osorio reminds us that “sustaining mass resistance, refusal, and ridicule” is, in fact, the only thing that has successfully confronted a fascist regime.

As Bruce Springsteen said:

“The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.”

That’s some good civics right there. 

National Democrats ranting about due process and habeas corpus probably won’t lure the 3.5% of the population we need to join the mass resistance at a peak moment. However, it is something we can do and should do with our neighbors as we strive to strengthen the bonds of community and trust, which are natural antidotes to fascism.

If you know anyone in the military, letting them know about the GI Rights Hotline—1-877-447-4487—is some real good civics. Because the chances of us getting through this without Pete Hegseth getting his dream of turning tanks on civilians, whom he imagines to be Democrats, are slim.

Live free, or surrender to the undead

The last five months have been an excellent lesson in cowardice and depravity dueling for dominance. 

But we’ve also witnessed the power and good we do as Americans, as it has been stolen from us. And we’ve seen the glory of the rights that Americans have had to win over and over and over.

MAGA only has a vampire endgame in mind. We take the bite and join the pillaging, or we become chum for others who might.

That might make it scary to stick our necks out, and that’s how they want us to feel. That’s why you can’t build a mass resistance without refusal and ridicule. And that’s all this kind of assault on our humanity deserves.

THE FARCE fights fascism with fearlessness. Subscribe to fuel the Farce—free or paid, your support matters. You can always drop us a tip.

We Rate Shenanigans
by MichiganMama

Inspired by Srđa Popović (activist leader who helped topple Serbian president Milošević using laughtivism and other non-violent actions), and WeRateDogs (truly one of the best things on the Internet), We Rate Shenanigans celebrates the harmless pranks happening that just might do some good.

A group of LGBTQ climbers and advocates hung a 55x35 foot transgender pride flag in the middle of Yosemite’s famous El Capitan rock formation. I’d love to see anyone in this administration just try to take it down. (And I don’t mean by cowardly ordering someone else to do it.)

Rating: 1500 vertical feet of total pretty shenanigans