Week One was about honesty. This week was the record: a few specific things, documented by courts and official findings, that I think are worth understanding clearly. I wrote these knowing they would be the hardest ones for some people I love to read. I wrote them anyway. Days 8 through 14 of the series.
June 11: Not the volume. Just the record.
Part of what made my silence so easy to maintain for so long was that the information felt overwhelming. There was always something new, always something louder, always another thing to process. The volume of it made it easier to tune out than to track.
I want to try something different this week. Not the volume. Just the record. A few specific things, documented by courts and official findings, that I think are worth understanding clearly. I spent many years avoiding this kind of information because it felt like too much. I am done avoiding it. Here is some of what I found when I actually looked.
In 2025, the administration signed 225 executive orders in a single year. The most since Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. In that same year, 358 lawsuits were filed against it, more than any presidency in American history, because 358 times someone looked at what was happening and said: the law does not allow this. Many of those times, courts agreed.
I am sharing these things not to overwhelm. I am sharing them because I spent too long assuming the institutions would handle it, and I want to at least understand clearly what the institutions are saying. What they are saying is: some of this is not legal. That seems worth knowing.
June 12: Due process
This is the one I keep coming back to because I think it should stop people cold, regardless of where they stand on immigration.
Federal judges, not critics, not political opponents, actual federal judges, confirmed that American citizens were detained and deported by ICE in 2025. People born here. Citizens. Removed from their own country without warrants, without anyone verifying their citizenship. This violated the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Courts said so.
I remember reading something like that and thinking: That is terrible, but it does not affect me. And I am embarrassed by how long I thought that way. Due process is not a protection for some people. It protects everyone, or it protects no one. When it stopped applying to some people, it got smaller for all of us. Including me. Including you.
That is not a political statement. That is just what the Fifth Amendment says and what the courts found.
June 13: Accountability
I keep thinking about accountability. Specifically, about what it means when a system built entirely around it stops applying it.
In 2025, a private citizen, unelected, unconfirmed by the Senate, holding no official government position, fired federal employees, canceled congressionally approved funding, and dismantled agencies that serve millions of people. The Constitution has an Appointments Clause. It exists specifically so that the public, through elected representatives, has some say in who exercises that kind of authority. Courts found serious constitutional problems with what happened.
I would feel the same way if a Democratic president handed this level of power to a wealthy ally without a vote or confirmation. The issue is not the person. The issue is that in a democracy, accountability to the public is not optional. It is the whole point.
I did not speak up enough about accountability when I should have. I am trying to be clearer about it now. Not because I think this post changes anything on its own. Because I think silence has a cost, and I now understand that better than I used to.
June 14: Flag Day
Flag Day. It feels like the right day for this one.
Congress approved funding for low-income families, child care, and basic social services, money legally appropriated through the constitutional process. The administration withheld it, specifically from states with Democratic governors. Courts ordered it released. The money was not released.
I want to be specific about what that means, because I think the significance gets lost in the noise. Courts have no army. Their authority rests entirely on the executive branch’s willingness to comply with their rulings. When an administration decides not to comply- not because it disagrees and is appealing, not because it is working on it, simply because it will not- the court cannot force them. Only Congress can, through oversight and accountability.
And if Congress will not act, and courts cannot enforce, and the executive decides the rules do not apply to it, then we are no longer in a policy disagreement. We are in a different kind of situation.
I am not saying this to produce despair. I am saying it because I spent years not saying it, and I think that was wrong, and I am trying to be clearer now about what I actually see. What I see is a branch of government that has decided the other branches do not apply to it. And that is worth saying out loud.
June 15: The press
I want to say something about the press, because I think the frustration with the media is real and legitimate, and also being used against us. Yes, the media can be biased and sensationalized. I share some of that frustration.
But in 2025, 76 documented federal actions were taken against journalists. Reporters were detained while covering immigration enforcement. Major outlets were removed from White House press access. Thirty news organizations covering the Pentagon surrendered their credentials rather than agree to government restrictions on what they could report. That is not media criticism. That is the government using federal power to punish people for reporting.
The First Amendment exists because the founders understood something that authoritarians have always understood too: if you control what people know, you control what they can demand. A press that is afraid to report is a press that cannot hold power accountable. And a government that operates without accountability does not serve the people. It manages them.
I spent a long time thinking this was someone else’s problem. It is not. It is everyone’s problem. Including mine.
June 16: The judge
When a federal judge ruled against the administration last year, officials called for that judge’s impeachment. Not because the judge had done anything wrong. Because the ruling went against them. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative appointed by George W. Bush, said in a statement that attacking judges for their rulings is an attack on judicial independence itself.
I want to be honest about why this matters to me personally. I have spent most of my life trusting that the courts were there if I needed them. That if something truly unjust happened, to me, to someone I loved, there was a place to go. A system that would at least try to apply the law fairly. That trust was not naive. It was based on something real: an independent judiciary that did not ask who you were before deciding whether the law applied to you.
When judges are threatened for ruling against the powerful, that system starts to change. Slowly, quietly, but it changes. And when it changes, the people who lose most are the ones who needed it most to begin with. That is worth caring about. I wish I had said so sooner.
June 17: Two weeks in
This week was the documented record. Citizens deported without due process, confirmed by courts. Court orders defied. An unelected private citizen wielding government authority without confirmation. 76 federal actions against journalists. A judge threatened for ruling against the powerful. All of it verifiable. None of it alleged. Look any of it up.
I know this week was heavy. I know it is a lot to sit with. But I think sitting with it is exactly what we owe the country we say we love. Despair is a choice. Silence is a choice. So is something else entirely.
Next week, we will talk about how we got here. That one is harder, because some of the answers involve all of us.
Week Three is next.
— Patrick