Marilou Johanek

Never underestimate the fury of women facing dystopian hell. They will regroup, resist and never retreat. This fight for equal and unalienable rights will be epic.

On a trip to Ireland, we ducked into a Dublin pub to grab a quick pint and wound up getting an earful on the American presidential race from nervous Europeans. Their anxiety about the U.S. election was off the charts.

Are we the frogs in the boiling frog metaphor, Ohio? Have we grown numb to the everyday outrages of historic corruption, extremist lawmaking, abuses of office, attacks on voters, and attacks on rights? We will soon find out.

Judging by his foreword, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance appears to be a true disciple of the Project 2025 dystopian vision of a homogeneous, hierarchal society of power that would have women surrender social agency and bodily autonomy to put men in charge.

Political gaslighting is having a banner election year, whether it's Trump calling Jan. 6 thugs who beat police officers "great patriots," or Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine pretending anti-gerrymandering reform is the real gerrymandering.

Project 2025 looks to impose publicly-funded religious education on America. Ohio already has that. Not only is the state handing out $1 billion to subsidize private and religious schools, the recent capital budget provided construction funding too.

In Ohio, ultra-right wing lawmakers foist unpopular, unwarranted and often harmful stupidity on an unsuspecting public. It’s legislative malpractice but that’s how GOP supermajorities roll under the sweet gerrymandering deals they cut for themselves.

Ohio Republican politicians aren’t taking any questions on their extremist agenda to ban invented threats, ignore real ones, claw back rights, reduce women to breeders, welcome polluters to state parks, or defund public education to pay for private schools.

Ohio’s proposed “drag ban” is written in a way that leaves much left up to interpretation; which is extremely dangerous. This wording could easily be interpreted to implement all manner of harassment of trans people just for existing at public events.

According to JD Vance and the Trump sycophants, the American tenet that we are a nation of laws, not men, does not apply to the criminal tax fraudster/coup plotter/adjudicated rapist/classified documents hoarder/newly convicted felon.