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A Statement of Democratic Principles of AUDIT USA

We do not believe democratic societies are defined by perfection, moral purity, or the absence of abuse.

We believe they are defined by their capacity to detect error, correct abuse, and restore trust through evidence.

History shows that when power—whether governmental, institutional, or private—operates without transparency and independent verification, abuse becomes not only possible but predictable. This is not a claim about motives or ideology. It is a structural reality observed across time and systems.

Our work is grounded in three principles:

Skepticism is not cynicism.
Asking for evidence is not an accusation. It is a democratic responsibility.

Transparency is not exposure.
Protecting privacy and civil rights is compatible with public verification of outcomes.

Trust must be earned through systems, not personalities.
Good people operating inside opaque systems are still constrained by what the public can verify.

Monday, January 5, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Ohio Statehouse, 1 Capitol Square, Columbus in the Rotunda

Share a reading or song.  Let’s change priorities in 2026. 

Moral Mondays are recurring demonstrations, often led by the Ohio Poor People's Campaign, calling for an end to "policy violence" through prayer, advocacy, and protest, focusing on issues like poverty, healthcare access, and social justice, with events held in the Capitol Rotunda. These events, part of a larger national movement, gather faith leaders and impacted individuals to demand action from lawmakers

I’m not going to say that we weren’t warned. Trump has been beating the war drums about Venezuela for months. The US has been shooting small motorboats and their crews, like ducks on the water, for months, while making unverified claims about whether they were drug runners. The US had built up an intimidating flotilla of carriers and support ships in the Caribbean demanding that the country’s president, Maduro resign and leave the country.

Still, I have to admit, I held onto a last straw of hope that not even Trump would be crazy enough to invade the country illegally under international law and without Congressional approval. When we started hijacking ships on the open seas and bombing ports where they were supposedly being loaded, I knew we were going from bad to worse, but still, surely someone somewhere in Washington would tell Trump to calm down and get a grip. There was no reason that the US needed to go any farther off the grid as a rogue nation.

Sunday, January 4, noon
Ohio Statehouse, meet at the McKinley statue

Down with U.S. empire!

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The U.S. government is now attacking the capital of Venezuela. If the murderous sanctions were not enough to mobilize the people of the United States and the world to put a halt to this, if the various coup attemps were not enough, if the ongoing brutal murder of over 100 boaters didn’t do it, if the no-fly-zone and naval blockade and pirating of oil tankers didn’t hit the threshold, can this do it? Can we mobilize a massive nonviolent movement against this war now? Can we bring pressure to bear on the pretense of a government on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, where the Senate has twice and the House once voted down resolutions to put a halt to the criminal action of the U.S. military? Can we shame so-called legislators who were told by the White House that there would be no war and that there was therefore no need to oppose one, and who pretended to believe that?

Will there be any standards or rules governing the world? Will the U.S. government promote a free-for-all of terrorist attacks by a war machine masquerading as representative government? Or will Congress stand up to Trump?

Email your Senate and House members now!

I’ve been struggling to imagine Elon Musk might do if he gets his trillion-dollar payday. He could spend a million dollars a day for 3,000 years.  Or, more realistically, $100 million a day for 30 years. He could spend the $290 million he invested in Trump’s election and do it 3,400 times, wherever and whenever he pleases. Or buy more media properties, spending up to twenty times the $44 billion it took for him to buy Twitter and make it into a misinformation swamp key to Trump’s reelection.

But the money the Tesla board just handed Musk isn’t guaranteed. He has to meet goals like delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles and dramatically increasing Tesla’s stock price. Ordinary citizens can prevent that, but we need to take our efforts to another level.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and local advocates are defending Ohio’s child care system after comments from the Trump administration accusing another state of child care fraud.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said states would need to provide “justification” proving that federal child care funds are being spent on “legitimate” entities. The comments followed fraud allegations in Minnesota related to the state’s child care programs, stemming from a YouTube video by a right-wing social media influencer. The allegations particularly targeted child care centers run by Somali citizens of the state.

The allegations led the Trump administration to freeze federal funding going to the child care sector in Minnesota, which owners and Democrats in the state said would cause major problems in an already struggling sector.

For the most part, 2025 was a very good year for me. I took a trip to Chicago, and I saw the Cubs. I spent a couple of weeks with good friends in Southern California and got to see pelicans and sea lions. I went to Boston and attended the convention for the National Cartoonists Society for the very first time in my life, where I got to see old friends and make a lot of new ones. I spent a few days in New York City. And at the convention for the Association of American Cartoonists, I won the Rex Bab Memorial Award.

And then I had a stroke. And maybe this is partly why my doctors and nurses thought I had a very positive attitude throughout the process, because I don't think the stroke ruined my year. That's why I wouldn’t call it a setback. If nothing else, I learned from the stroke that a shit ton of people love me.

And the stroke did not stop me from cartooning. If anything, it caused a slight pause. When I asked readers on Facebook to pick their favorites of mine from the year, they collected cartoons before and after the stroke.

This article first appeared on OtherWorlds.org.

If you want to understand how the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority has undermined democracy, you need to understand the “shadow docket.”

The shadow docket — as the court’s emergency docket has come to be known — is one of the more dramatic and corrupt ways that MAGA-aligned justices are enabling President Trump to take away our freedoms.

Normally, the justices don’t hear a case until after lower courts have considered it fully and made a final decision. But a party to a case may describe it as so urgent that quick “relief” is needed from the Supreme Court, claiming that “irreparable harm” may occur while lower courts consider it.

That puts it on the emergency docket.

Since time is supposedly of the essence, the justices don’t hold oral arguments. And if they grant the “relief” and undo the lower court’s order, they often give us little if any explanation why. Lower court judges are left without much guidance on whether or how to use the decision to guide their own decisions.

With so little sunlight, no wonder the term “shadow docket” has stuck.