Turn Out the Lights When You Leave

I stayed longer than I should have.

For years, I told myself this country was in a rough patch — that democracies wobble, that we’d find our footing again. I watched the rise of disinformation, the gerrymandering, the purges, the rise of armed “poll watchers,” the normalization of lies. I saw ICE raid homes at 2 a.m., I saw journalists arrested, I saw peaceful protests treated like insurgencies. And still, I stayed.

Because I believed.

I believed in the power of courts. In elections. In the basic decency of most people, even when things got ugly. I believed there was still a floor somewhere. A hard limit that, once crossed, would awaken the better instincts of the public.

But I was wrong. And I know that now — because of this week.

The Supreme Court, in a stunning sequence of rulings dropped over three days, didn’t just weaken democracy. It actively redefined it. Or more accurately, it hollowed it out and left the name on the door.

Let’s recap what they did, in case you blinked:

- They kneecapped federal agencies — stripping away the power to regulate on everything from climate to consumer protections. A gift to corporate litigants, but a blow to every working American who thinks clean air and fair labor laws matter.

- They gutted judicial authority by stripping courts of the ability to issue nationwide injunctions, even against blatantly unconstitutional policies.

- They gave ICE and DHS the green light to deport migrants to dangerous third countries without hearings — without due process — all via a shadow docket emergency order.

Read that again. WITHOUT DUE PROCESS.

So in actuality, ICE now has the green light to deport anyone — because without due process, what’s to stop them?

This is not a legal fine-tuning. This is a dismantling. This is a systematic transfer of power to the executive branch and the federal agencies aligned with it, combined with a dangerous unraveling of the legal pathways to challenge abuse.

And the worst part?

No one’s coming to stop it.

I used to think Congress might act. That the press would shout fire. That people in the streets might shift the weather. But we’ve had a decade of slide and a thousand last straws — and still, the response is polite hand-wringing, headlines buried below the fold, and vague promises of civic engagement.

We are out of lifeboats. The last institutional guardrail just handed the keys to the executive and said, "Do as you will."

And I don’t care to watch what comes next.

I’m not fleeing in panic. I’m not writing this from a bunker or planning to build one. I’m not part of some organized resistance movement. I’m just someone who’s paid attention.

And this week made it clear that what just happened isn’t a bad chapter. It’s the end of the book — and the sequel is something far darker.

I’ve spent years doing everything right. Voting. Organizing. Calling my representatives. Donating. Showing up. I didn’t believe democracy was a spectator sport.

But now I don’t believe it’s a functioning system at all.

What we have now is legalized discretion with no oversight. Armed bureaucracy with no accountability. And courts that call it balance.

Somewhere right now, a panel show is treating this like a game of ideological chess. A law professor is saying the implications are “complex.” Meanwhile, a teenager in Chicago is watching his undocumented mother get detained without cause and shipped to a country she doesn’t remember — no trial, no appeal, no rights.

And the Court says that’s fine — as long as it’s “within the outer bounds” of federal discretion.

I used to believe there would be a line. A red line. A moment so egregious that the country would collectively say, “No more.”

This week made it clear: there is no line. Just a long gray slide into normalization — where everything is justified if it’s done slowly enough.

So I’m leaving.

Not out of cowardice. Not out of rage. Out of grief.

I loved this country — and I still love the memory of what it tried to be. I’ve hiked its canyons, taught its students, built a life here with the stubborn hope that we could do better. But that hope has limits. And mine ran out sometime between Thursday and today.

I won’t stick around for the sequel this time. The executive orders. The loyalist courts. The mass surveillance rebranded as “protection.” I’ve seen it before. I know how it goes.

If you’re staying, I wish you strength. Maybe you still believe there’s a way back. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.

But if you’re the last one out —

Turn out the lights.