This Train

Legislative Obscenity in The Land of Hope and Dreams

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This train
Carries whores and gamblers
This train
Carries lost souls
—Bruce Springsteen, “Land of Hope and Dreams”

Today, the train took a turn.

I want to be crystal clear. Today, on July 3, 2025, the obscenest piece of legislation in American history passed through both houses of Congress. And in a final act of blasphemy, Donald Trump will sign this death warrant into law on Independence Day.

That’s what makes this moment unlike any other in his tenure. What once lived in the shadows of outrage is now etched into law. Immorality has been legalized. And this must be resisted.

Just hours ago, on the eve of Independence Day, the House passed President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill—218 to 214. No Democrats voted for it. Only two Republicans had the spine to say no.

Medicaid slashed. SNAP gutted. Clean energy repealed.
And nearly five trillion dollars in tax cuts—dressed up as relief for the working man but aimed squarely at the ultra-wealthy.

But take a step back. What you’ll see isn’t reform. It’s a bonfire of compassion.

It is, in effect, a bill of attainder against the poor.

And this party of sycophants—who leer and bark at the words socialist and communist like Pavlovian hounds—have borrowed the language of Marx and Engels only to invert it. Where Marx called for a redistribution of wealth to uplift the working class, they’ve twisted it: a mass extraction from the bottom up. Not to liberate the oppressed—but to feed the richest and let the rest quietly die. This is nothing more than a command economy in reverse.

This train
Carries broken-hearted
This train
Thieves and sweet souls departed

The new law will drive over 16 million Americans off their health coverage. Families will go hungry. Rural hospitals will shutter. And they know it.
They passed it anyway.

And if that weren’t enough, another measure quietly advancing would make it a federal crime to reveal the identity of masked DHS agents—those faceless men who now patrol protests, raids, and city streets in silence.

Not to protect the vulnerable. To intimidate. To shield power from accountability.
And those men will appear in every town in America now that there's $150 billion more in funding to expand our own Stasi.

This is not the America Springsteen sang of.

But the music still plays.

Dreams will not be thwarted
Faith will be rewarded
Hear the steel wheels singing
Bells of freedom ringing

I still hear it.
Maybe you do too.

I think of my father, the Vietnam Marine. And along with him, I think of all those who wore our uniform and paid the ultimate price. Most, I’m sure, didn’t bargain for this.

But even in this storm of lies and legalized cruelty, I feel a burning kind of patriotism rise in me. Not the brand on bumper stickers. Not the slogans. The deeper kind. The kind that believes, no, knows, the story isn’t over.

Because this train—this country—isn’t theirs to hijack.

Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine
And all this darkness past

We may not yet be in that tomorrow.
But we are not in the past either.
We are in the middle.
And what happens now is up to us.

As the chamber erupted in chants of “U.S.A.!” while the Speaker gaveled the vote closed, I heard another chant—older, quieter, but clearer.
I heard Springsteen’s steel wheels, ringing.

Because the train still carries saints and sinners. Losers and dreamers.
And if we fight like hell and stay awake, we might just make it to the place we were promised.

All aboard.
This train.

Happy Independence Day.
This one was for you, Jeff.