A preface: I have debated about sharing this. A week ago, after the ICE raids in Camarillo, I had the worst panic attack I’ve experienced in over 30 years. (Shoutout to Zoloft for holding it together. F off, RFK, Jr.) Hours of sobbing, shaking, nausea, and complete loss of control into the early morning hours, led me to do the only thing that ever brings some clarity: write. The next day I started to write, while still reeling from the emotional hangover. A few days later, I was struck with another panic attack, this time as I was driving (thankfully close enough to home to make it back in one piece.) This sent me back into a spiral of heartbreak. I picked up where I had left off, and kept writing.
Many of you know who my cousin is. Being public about it is something I’ve struggled with. I live with real fear about what posting something this raw might bring. I am living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil. But I know that staying silent only deepens the ache. There’s so much more I could say, and maybe someday I will. It’s a long read. I’m wordy AF.
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Last night, I found myself in a stage of grief I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. A grief that’s been living inside me for years—quiet, but constant. It comes from being so close to the root of something violent and vile in this country. I cried until I couldn’t breathe, hours of sobbing, gasping, shaking, sick to my stomach with a weight in my chest that was too heavy to fight. I was having a panic attack I couldn’t escape. Maybe it was ten years of anger and pain finally breaking through the surface. Maybe it was the most recent ICE raids turning my rage into sorrow. Whatever it was, something in me cracked wide open and has shaken me to my core.
I think many of us are grieving. Grieving a world that feels more cruel than kind. A future that feels further away each day. I grieve for the country we could be… one with unmatched wealth, intelligence, and potential. A nation with resources to ensure everyone lives with dignity, equity, health, and safety. A nation with enough technological and medical advancements to be something truly extraordinary. But instead, those resources and that wealth are being hoarded by a few, poisoned by ego and power, devoid of empathy, starving the rest. Our privilege has been wasted on cruelty and torture, targeting the very people who make our communities whole—the hardest workers, the most vulnerable, the ones who carry this country on their backs. A society is only as strong as its most vulnerable, and ours are at their weakest. This is not by accident, but by design. Your design, Stephen.
Then there’s the grief I carry inside my own family- the most personal and painful. I grieve a cousin I once loved. A boy I watched grow up, babysat, and shared a childhood with. The kid I made fun of for his obsession with Michael Jackson and Ghostbusters. The awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention, yet was always the sweetest with the littlest family members. A kid that reminded me of Alex P. Keaton, young, conservative, maybe misguided, but lovable and harmless. Or so I thought. But I was so deeply wrong. And the realization that I didn’t know you at all? It guts me. I grieve what you’ve become, Stephen. And I grieve what I’ve lost because of it. I grieve your children I will never meet. I grieve the future family you’ve stolen from me by choosing a path so filled with cruelty that I cannot, and will not, be a part of it. I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own.
I grieve for the power you’ve been given and for those around you who have enabled it. I grieve for the family I once loved, who lifted me up, who helped me through life, who made me feel safe, who now leave me feeling unsettled and even afraid. I grieve the realization that maybe I never really knew these people at all. My heart breaks every day, over and over.
But most of all, I grieve for those directly harmed by your actions For the communities here in Los Angeles, our shared home, for all of California, and the rest of the country terrorized by the cruelty you have brought upon us all. I grieve for the families shattered by cruelty dressed up as “immigration policy.” Targeting hardworking, vibrant community members who are being terrorized for simply being brown. This was never about criminals. Or “illegal” entry. And now, with the passing of this bloated, grotesque bill—stuffed with more funding for ICE than most countries spend on their entire military, I’m left speechless. Where does this hateful obsession end? What are you trying to build besides fear? Immigrants were a part of your upbringing. Is this cruelty your way of rejecting a part of yourself?
People always ask me, “What happened to you?” I don’t have a clear answer. I can only surmise it was a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition—all of it mangled into something cruel and hollow, masquerading as strength. You were born into privilege, into safety, and wealth. And somehow, you’ve weaponized all of it. I didn’t see the descent until it was too late. And now I’m left with guilt and shame. Could I have done something? My sister recently asked me, “If social media had existed back then—if we had seen the horrific videos of you in high school, would we have spoken up? Would we have intervened?” Yes, we absolutely would have. I grieve that we never got that chance.
And here’s where it hurts even more: we were raised Jewish.
Stephen, you and I both know what that means. We were raised with stories of survival. We learned about pogroms, ghettos, the Holocaust—not just as history, but as part of our identity. We carry the trauma of generations who were hunted, hated, expelled, murdered, just for existing. We were taught to remember. We celebrated holidays each year with the reminder to stand up and say “never again.” But what you are doing breaks that sacred promise. It breaks everything we were taught. How can you do to others what has been done to us? How can you wake up each day and repeat the cruelty that our people barely escaped from? We were taught to never forget where we came from. But you seem to have erased it all. And it devastates me. To be this close to the cruelty, through you, has left me ashamed and shattered.
I try to fight your harm in every way I can. But it will never be enough. I can’t undo what you’ve done or who you have become. I can’t outmatch your reach or power. I feel helpless. The panic attacks haven’t stopped since the grief cracked open. The tears won’t stop, and the weight on my chest is constant. This isn’t about politics. This is about humanity. About decency. And you have lost yours.
You’ve destroyed so many lives just to feed your own obsession and ego and uphold an administration so corrupt, so vile, I can barely comprehend it. As surreal as it all feels, this IS reality. As much as I try to disassociate from it, the truth remains—being this close to such deep cruelty fills me with shame. I am gutted. My heart breaks that this is the legacy you have brought to our family. A legacy I never asked to share with you, and one I now carry like a curse.
