I spent most of the day pacing.
Sometimes you get hit with a piece of news so wrong it feels like it lands in your chest instead of your head.
Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested this week.
Two felony charges: obstruction of a U.S. agency and harboring an undocumented immigrant.
Her crime?
Not bribery.
Not corruption.
Not taking a side gig selling influence.
No, she helped a man leave her courtroom through a side door to avoid ICE agents who showed up — without a judicial warrant — hoping to snatch him up.
She didn’t break the law.
She upheld it.
ICE had no warrant.
No judicial signature.
Just an administrative piece of paper they hoped would be enough to intimidate everyone into compliance.
In a functioning legal system, that’s not enough.
And in that moment, Judge Dugan remembered something most people in positions of power seem to have forgotten:
the law is not about pleasing the powerful.
It’s about limiting them.
She helped the man and his attorney find an exit.
She honored the architecture of due process.
For that, the FBI dragged her away.
Not quietly, not in the background.
At the courthouse itself — the place where justice is supposed to live.
It wasn’t about enforcing the law.
It was about sending a message.
Protect the system, and the system will destroy you.
There’s something deeper and darker here that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking closely.
It’s not just that they punished her for doing the right thing.
It’s that they punished her because it was the right thing.
This wasn’t a mistake.
This wasn’t a misunderstanding.
It was the system showing you exactly what it is now.
Today it was a judge in Milwaukee.
Tomorrow, who knows.
Maybe the lawyer who refuses to comply.
Maybe the teacher who tells the truth in a censored classroom.
Maybe the kid who films something they weren’t supposed to see.
The collapse doesn’t announce itself.
It doesn’t wear a flag.
It drifts in like a fog — until you can't see your own hands in front of your face anymore.
We are past the point of no return.
The only question now is how much of ourselves we can still carry through what's coming.
But then I remember Judge Dugan.
Standing there, in a small, human moment, doing the right thing when it mattered.
Not for glory.
Not for headlines.
Just because she knew the difference between what was legal and what was lawful.
And for that, they made her a criminal.
I don't know where this all ends.
I don't even know if it ends.
But I know this much:
As long as there are people willing to protect the law even when it costs them everything —
the collapse can never have us completely.
It can beat us down.
It can drag us into the dark.
But it can't own us.
Not unless we let it.