Q Toon: So Help Us God

I, Donald Berzilius Trump, don't need to solemnly swear anything, believe me. My presidency will be the most goodly, amazing, amazing presidency you have ever seen, I'm telling you. I have terrific ideas for upholding the Constitution, especially the part about my secret plan to replace Obamacare, which was a terrible disaster, everybody says so. But I can promise that I will, to the best of my ability, which is the best ability, I can assure you, preserve, protect and defend the most exclusive private school system you have ever seen and I'm gonna make the public school system pay for it. You're gonna be so tired of me bringing back jobs from those lying rapists in Mexico that you won't mind losing Medicare and Social Security, or clean air and water, or a free press, or whatever it is that I put Ben Carson in charge of.

Q Toon: Gonna Party Like It's 1921

I figured that enough of the weekly papers which run my cartoon are going to run "double issues" this week (meaning that they won't publish next week), that their editors will be looking for something with a year-end theme.

Donald Berzilius Trump is assembling an incredibly right-wing cabinet. Recent Democratic presidents have always felt compelled to include some Republicans in their cabinet; Barack Obama named three to his inaugural cabinet and was vilified as a ultra-liberal extremist anyway. Even George W. Bush named a token Democrat as Secretary of Transportation. There's no seat at the table in Trump's White House for anyone but Republican ideologues, tycoons and racists, however.

But since I draw for the LGBT press, I couldn't draw this cartoon without sounding the alarm for the future of marriage equality.

If you think my concern is unwarranted, consider all the efforts in Republican statehouses to legislate marriage inequality. In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court ruled that while husband and wife are both recorded as parents to a child, even if one of them is not related by blood, same-sex parents are not.

Several states have put forth so-called religious liberty laws to the effect that anyone can discriminate against same-sex couples as long as they claim religious belief as their excuse. And by anyone, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that that means any corporation: your employer can refuse family leave, your insurer can refuse to cover your spouse; your hospital can refuse to let one spouse make decisions on behalf of (or even visit) an unconscious spouse.

It's not just wedding cakes, and with no check on their power, Republicans have promised that it's about to go national.