(The Minnesota Senate Building. Image via mn.gov)

Written by: Anonymous 

On March 17, 2025, a group of Republican senators in Minnesota proposed bill MN SF2589, a piece of legislation that would add what they termed “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to the state’s official list of recognized mental illnesses. This bill is currently in committee at the time of authorship.

Somehow. 

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is defined as “an acute sense of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of Donald J. Trump” by the bill, written by men with no qualifications to fabricate a mental illness. 

A fully released PDF version of this unmitigated bovine excrement can be found here for those bold enough to bear its horrid stench, but I’ll give you the Sparknotes version: 

Saying anything “hostile” against Donald Trump means you’re mentally ill. Doing anything that can be perceived as “overt acts of aggression and violence” against people who support the president, even if they started it, means you’re mentally ill. If you don’t wholeheartedly support Donald Trump and every single one of his policies and decisions, you are mentally ill in the eyes of the state. 

The words in quotes are kept purposefully vague and ill-defined in the text, so you can tell that this broad definition will be applied to anything, even dissent-flavored. Even non-violent protests will most likely fall under the umbrella of “hostile” or an “act of aggression” under these vague terms. 

Not only is this a blatant mockery of real mental illnesses like anxiety or depression, but it also serves to kill the right of free speech and the right of assembly, both granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution, in the state. Citizens of the United States can protest and speak freely without fear of government. Full stop.

Any infringement on these rights is Unconstitutional. Also, full stop. 

What this bill does is that it weaponizes governmental power and the state’s legal system to penalize political criticism and disagreement with the current regime by equating dissent to a mental illness, something to be cured and not listened to. Through this, any opposition is delegitimized to simply being sick. 

Quite frankly, this bill makes me sick. 

The Trump administration certainly deserves criticism as well. 

During the first few months of his reign, Trump has signed executive orders decimating scientific research funding, has weaponized public funding to silence political protests and manipulate political curricula in universities, has manipulated immigration law and border control methods to forcibly deport those who publicly oppose him as terrorists, withdrew U.S. funding from the World Health Organization, and has spouted misinformation that blames Ukraine for the war that has decimated their country after Russian invasion during the Pandemic. 

Currently, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has issued a Red Flag Alert for Trump’s persecution against trans people. 

And of course, how could we forget that Trump’s largest financial backer during his bid for presidency, Elon Musk, who donated nearly $300 million towards the PAC supporting Trump’s campaign—hit not just one, but TWO Sieg Heils at Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Allegedly. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. must have been rolling over in his grave the whole time. 

And, under this state bill, to vocalize having a problem with any of that, never mind protesting it, makes you mentally ill. 

The four senators listed as responsible for the most nonsensical and borderline satirical bill in American history are Eric Lucero, Steve Drazkowski, Nathan Wesenberg, and Glenn H. Gruenhagen. 

However, there is a missing author on the bill’s current version.

Author Justin Eichorn has been removed from the bill and has resigned from his position entirely after he was arrested on March 17, 2025, after charges of soliciting sex from a minor as an act of prostitution as part of a sting investigation against sex trafficking. 

This is the man who, a month earlier, propositioned cutting spending to “strengthen families” and “empower parents” by reducing the spending that he says was to be used to cover a funding deficit for special education and disability services. 

Is it irony or just blatant hypocrisy at this point?

The other authors are worth scrutiny as well.

In addition to the absolute abomination to the written word meant to demean and delegitimize genuine criticism and dissatisfaction against Donald Trump’s openly fascist regime, the non-removed authors have made some questionable life decisions.

Lucero has also been the rotted mind behind a state senate bill based on the TikTok Chemtrail conspiracy theory that, as someone who does study science, is complete unmitigated pseudoscience that is more likely to be found in a sci-fi novel than a textbook. 

Drazkowski, clearly a wise and reasonable man who isn’t out of touch at all, used to be well known for his public statements arguing against a bill to end childhood hunger when 20% of children in his district qualified for free or reduced lunch. 

Wesenberg, who used to be a conservation biologist, is also known for his anti-vaccine rhetoric and called them “death-shots” on record in an anti-vax rally with the rest of this brigade of questionable individuals. While the fight for habitat and species preservation is admirable, it does not qualify you to give medical advice on vaccine safety compared to actual medical doctors. 

To provide the needed data missing from this declaration, severe adverse effects with the COVID-19 vaccine have happened, but they certainly do NOT occur often enough to call them a death shot like they’re the finishing move for a sniper in some cheesy Street Fighter rip off.

True, an estimated 65% of people have experienced adverse effects from the vaccine. However, out of all the people who have experienced adverse effects, only 5% have required hospitalization. 

In addition to using a made-up statistic to simultaneously dismiss scientific studies as “lies” and continue his thoroughly pig-headed climate change denial, Gruenhagen is also known for his “education” bill that would force public high schools in the state to teach about the “Creator” in opposition to science that effectively died in committee, sent his colleagues in the senate a surgeon’s instructive video on gender-affirming operations he labeled as “extremely graphic and disturbing” unprompted in an attempt to childishly dissuade them from voting to protect trans people, and has voted to try and keep conversion therapy legal in the state.

What a guy. 

Conversion therapy is generally considered an abhorrent and dangerous practice, comparative to torture, by most people, including the Human Rights Campaign, due to its malicious targeting of vulnerable minorities and proven psychological and physical harm against people. It has also long been proven not to work.

So, these are the people who should be talking about mental illnesses? Clearly, they got their relevant credentials from the same place they get their “facts”: their imagination. 

If this piece of canine fecal matter isn’t immediately laughed out of committee, I genuinely recommend that anyone who isn’t a die-hard MAGA maniac to get out of DOGE ASAP in all seriousness. If something like this law—which has absolutely no factual basis or evidence supporting it—gets passed, then anything can get passed, even if it is to the detriment of the Minnesotan people, so long as it supports the current regime. 

If you can be deemed mentally ill for speaking out against the government, democracy is truly dead.

This is an opinion piece.