Ashes and Smoke: Surviving Project 2025

As a trans man living with disabilities, I have found myself in two minority communities being targeted by the second Trump regime. In just two weeks he has been steadily dismantling the government and most of our global presence, attempted to halt all national federal funding, put 60k people out of work (not including those affected by his tariffs that have lost their jobs), and struck down civil rights laws that have protected and made progress in our communities, schools and workplaces for decades.

I write because it genuinely looks like we are on the way to a Fourth Reich and I am not sure, in truth, about our survival. I have aimed to leave the US for a while now, but that need has turned dire with our liberties being rapidly torn apart, croons hoisted into powerful positions and talks of the creation of camps for homeless, poor, and those with invisible illness. Transgendered persons have only been given two options: To be a criminal for who they are, or to discontinue to exist at all.

I write this for those who have encouraged me to write. I write it for those on the outside, and those who have survived. I write this on behalf of those that did not. I write it for those who may have loved me and in spite of those that hated me. I write this with a measure of awareness that for all of my writing ambitions, this may be the only one to be broadly published, or, the only one that got the chance to be.

I am writing this for you, dear reader, so that it is clear that for as old and obvious as these lessons to humankind may be, greed and power will always make a presence, and with it shall such sinister intentions and conditions. Know that for as advanced as you feel your society may be, it is not immune from these types of malicious sentiments. Be a proactive voice in your land so as to do the best you can to protect you and yours from falling prey to it.