Dear President Trump,

Can you stand all this positivity emanating from the House? It’s like a fresh breeze blew in yesterday morning and pushed aside the fetid toxic air that’s been choking the country the last two years. There’s so much to take in already and there are new things popping up every few minutes, but I’m going to send you a handful of things that have gotten my attention so far.

• More than a dozen different books symbolizing new House members’ moral compasses were used in swearing in ceremonies.
• The Black and the Hispanic Caucuses both grew. A lot!
• Deb Haaland (NM) and Sharice Davids (KS), the first two Native American Women, ever, were sworn in. The video of them hugging and crying and one of them wiping her tears with the other’s scarf was wonderful to watch.
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), the first (openly) bisexual member of Congress is also incredibly funny. You’ll have to hide your amusement, but I think even you will chuckle when you see her with Mike Pence at their photo-op. They were awkwardly trying to figure out where to stand because it was just the two of them when she quips something like – “can we get a spouse in here? just kidding, but can we?” It was awesome.
• Then there were the pictures of Nancy Pelosi looking alternately jubilant and like a cat hiding a prize mouse in her mouth.
• And how about all those pictures and videos of children in the House Chambers yesterday? And what about Pelosi formally calling the House to order for all of American’s children with all the kids up there with her? It shouldn’t be such a big deal to have our Congressional leaders focused on children (and thereby the future and everyone’s welfare since for kids to be ok, we all need to be ok), but that was the sweetest part of the breeze to me.
• Last night after I kept seeing news articles about the House having passed various pieces of legislation I found a cool website that gives a minute-by-minute account of what the House did throughout the day. Did you know they stayed in session until 10:08pm last night? And they were back at it at 9am this morning and introduced their reform package entitled “The For The People Act.” I read through the provisions and it is a great piece of work that you and your reprobate old guard are going to hate.

May we all be safe to be our selves.
May we be happy some checks and balances are coming.
May we keep pushing for healthy reforms.
May you make peace with letting go of your albatross of a wall.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson