All posts tagged "democrats"

'Women are more brave': MTG, Mace and Boebert praised as GOP men cave in Epstein civil war

WASHINGTON — It’s becoming increasingly clear to a handful of powerful MAGA congresswomen that their fight to release more Epstein files now pits them against some of the most powerful politicians in the Republican Party.

Bring it on, they say.

“Sometimes, you just have to f—ing do what you gotta f—ing do,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) told Raw Story at the Capitol. “Excuse my language.”

Before Congress’s August recess, there were 10 Republicans willing to publicly buck President Donald Trump and force his political lapdogs — Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders — to hold a vote on releasing details of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, sex trafficker and longtime Trump friend who died in federal custody in August 2019.

“The women are more brave in the face of the White House,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Raw Story.

Massie is the lead Republican sponsor of the Epstein discharge petition, a formal mechanism that forces a vote on any measure supported by more than half the 435-person House, an effort that has made Trump and GOP leaders uneasy for months.

Their efforts to quash the move have left most Republican men neutered, but they haven’t been able to dissuade three GOP congresswomen from their demand for full disclosure — or at least as full as appropriate, given minors are involved.

‘Close to home’

Most of his victims are still alive. That doesn’t mean the judicial system and its alleged congressional enablers haven’t made them feel powerless.

“The thing that got me was these women have been fighting for 30 years for justice and still don't have it. You have people who don't want to help them, and to me, it's infuriating,” said Mace, a rape survivor herself.

“It hit close to home.”

In the ring with fellow Republicans, Mace is joined by firebrands Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). They have yet to cave.

“The truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth,” Greene told a large crowd outside the Capitol this week, as a group of Epstein victims gathered to speak.

“All of the fault belongs to the evil people that do these things to the innocent. This is the most important fight we can wage here in Congress, is fighting for innocent people that never received justice. And the women behind me have never received justice.”

Even MTG’s Democratic critics hailed her effort.

“I thought Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking was very, very powerful in terms of a signal to other Republican congresspeople,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), co-sponsor of the discharge petition with Massie, told Raw Story.

“The tone of this was not partisan. There are partisan fights: California redistricting is a partisan fight, the president militarizing the streets [is] a partisan fight.

“This is actually an issue that can bring this country together, and, frankly, the president can get credit if he releases the files.”

Trump doesn’t want credit. Rather, he continues to reverse campaign promises to release the files, dismissing survivors as perpetuating a “hoax”.

Following the president’s demands, this week Republican leaders tried to get out in front of the issue by releasing upwards of 30,000 Epstein-related files, many of which were public already.

“I think it’s a massive win,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who had supported the push for full disclosure, told Raw Story, adding: “I've always been pushing for the documents to be housed publicly somewhere for everyone to be able to access.”

Others panned the move.

“There's a lot of redactions. Like the flight logs, I mean, we have entire pages that are blocked out and blacked out, and I don't think those are all victims,” Boebert told Raw Story.

‘I don’t buy that’

At the Capitol, Epstein survivors — or surviving family members — concurred.

“Were you able to see some of the documents that came out last night?” Raw Story asked Sky Roberts, who lost his sister, abuse victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, to suicide earlier this year. “Just all the black on there, all the redactions?”

“The people in these files are, like, politicians,” Roberts said. “They aren’t interns. They are very wealthy and powerful people, and it shouldn't be up to the survivors to have to release that list.”

Some GOP congressmen have now distanced themselves from the discharge petition they tried to force on party leaders, to bring a vote on the House floor.

“You're not signed on to the discharge petition anymore?” Raw Story asked Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), the day after Epstein survivors met members of Congress. “Why not?”

“I'm afraid of what the ladies told us yesterday is that they were saying that some of them could be outed publicly,” Burchett said. “I want them to remain anonymous. They don't need to be hounded by the press or people or freaks out there.”

Raw Story asked: “What do you make of your supporters and the president’s supporters saying you’re now a part of a cover-up?”

“I don’t buy that,” Burchett said.

Tim Burchett and AOC Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) shares a fist-bump with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Cover-up or not, Republican men have undeniably retreated.

“What do you make of the men kind of bailing on this?” Raw Story asked Massie. “Before recess, you guys had about 10 [supporters] and now it's the dudes who bailed?”

“The women are more brave in the face of the White House,” Massie said.

“And look at who the women are: They're supporters of Donald Trump: Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“This isn't political. I know some Democrats are trying to make it political and some Republicans are trying to make it political. But our base — and even the Democrat base — are all in the same place on this.”

‘Moving pieces’

Some female Trump fans on Capitol Hill say they are giving the administration time to reverse course.

“Obviously, there's a lot of moving pieces, but we are going through them right now,” Luna said, praising the administration for its files release this week. “And there has been some stuff that was not previously up there.”

While Luna went from endorsing the discharge petition in July to removing her endorsement, she says she isn’t judging GOP colleagues on the other side of the scandal.

“Every member has a right to do what they feel is best, but I think the files have been released. So if there's more, we'll find out in the investigation,” Luna said.

“It sounded like you were saying that you could still support the discharge petition — just not now?” Raw Story asked.

“If there's stuff that hasn't been released that we need and then we're getting blocked, yeah,” Luna said. “But I'm not going to do that without … looking through all the documents myself.”

Like Trump, Luna campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. But she remains dubious of Democrats who she accuses of piling on late.

“Why now?” Luna asked. "It just seems there’s a little bit more to the story than a lot of people are saying.”

‘Burn the system to the ground’

Congress just returned from summer recess, with the federal government slated to run out of funding at the end of the month.

Still, some say there's no bigger issue than righting Epstein’s wrongs.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) departs in tears from a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein survivors. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

“This might not be the biggest issue in America right now, but it is the issue everybody can agree on,” Massie said. “Honestly, I think a lot of people are going to be embarrassed on both sides of the aisle.

“Powerful political figures will be embarrassed, but that's not a reason to not do this, to avoid embarrassment for somebody.

“Again, I don't think Jeffrey Epstein was particularly partisan in his sexual malfeasance … he committed many crimes. It's basically a group of people that don't need to belong to a party, because they don't report to the law when they do.”

What’s universally agreed upon is the Epstein saga isn’t going anywhere.

Raw Story asked Mace: “Before you guys left town for August recess, there were about 10 of you supporting the discharge petition. Right now, it seems like all the men are trying to bail. Is that just the old boys club at work?”

Mace smirked.

“I hope that more will join us,” she said. “We need to burn the system to the ground and start over.

“I'll do anything to help the Epstein victims. I'll do anything I can in my power to help them.”

This Dem bruiser punches back at Trump but only a team effort will achieve a TKO

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker isn’t pulling any punches. On Tuesday, he gave a speech calling out Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s fascist cosplay, their lies and distortions, and predicting federal troops will soon be on the streets of Chicago.

Pritzker came right out and said Trump is doing all this for his own wealth and power:

“None of this is about fighting crime or making Chicago safer. None of it. For Trump, it's about testing his power and producing a political drama to cover up for his corruption.”

Ominously, he added:

“Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: Once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?”

Pretty much every time a nation tips toward authoritarianism — as America is doing today — there’s a strongman at the center of it.

The idea goes back at least to Thomas Carlyle, whose “Great Man” theory argued that history is the story of exceptional leaders whose charisma and force of will bent the times to their shape. From Napoleon to Hitler to Trump, we see the pattern over and over.

It’s no accident that Republicans have remade themselves into a cult built around one man whose sheer audacity and appetite for power dominates the news cycle and the national conversation. After all, as Malcolm X famously said, “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” The GOP hasn’t stood for anything other than the interests of the morbidly rich for at least 44 years, so its base voters were sitting ducks for a demagogue with a good sales pitch.

It’s also no accident that Democrats appear, by contrast, weak and divided, a chorus without a soloist, trying to make an argument while their opponent simply shouts. In an age of television and social media this is an existential liability. If we’re going to stop today’s Trump-driven slide into fascism, Democrats must grapple directly with this reality and build an alternative form of charismatic leadership.

That does not mean mimicking Trump’s grotesque personality cult (although California Governor Gavin Newsom’s satire is spot-on and is working). The Democratic Party should not, and cannot, center itself around one authoritarian figure. But it does mean understanding that media is not neutral, that charisma matters, that the public imagination is moved more by spectacle and story than by policy papers.

If Democrats don’t field leaders who can seize the camera, hold attention, and embody a vision, then they’ll forever be fighting from behind while Trump and his enablers drown out every other sound.

Voters, after all, are human beings, not spreadsheets. They’re moved by the emotional gravity of people they trust, admire, or even fear. Republicans learned this long ago and built their machine around it. Democrats can no longer afford to pretend that calm reason, logic, and rational policies will carry the day without their own powerful messengers.

One way to answer this problem is to reject the premise that only one Great Man can command attention. Imagine instead a bench of great women and men, a shadow cabinet of governors, senators, and policy innovators who step into the spotlight issue by issue. Rather than waiting for one savior figure, Democrats could show the country that they have a team of giants ready to govern.

To show America not just one alternative to Trump but an entire government-in-waiting.

A practical way to operationalize this idea is to create a visible Democratic shadow cabinet, as I proposed back in May. In parliamentary systems, this is how opposition parties signal to the public that they are ready to govern: they line up ministers-in-waiting who mirror the actual cabinet and speak with authority on their issue areas.

Democrats could adapt this model by assigning leading governors and senators to clear portfolios and making them the public face of the fight.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could take the economy, standing up every time Republicans peddle trickle-down nonsense. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer could own healthcare, drawing on her state's record of expanding coverage and protecting reproductive rights. Newsom could be the climate voice, touting California’s leadership on renewables and electric vehicles. Pritzker could hold the voting rights portfolio, a relentless reminder that democracy itself is under siege.

Each of these figures is already capable of commanding national attention, but the effect would multiply if the roles were coordinated and reinforced.

The press would know who to call on any issue, and Americans would see not a muddle of competing Democratic voices but a disciplined government-in-waiting.

Rapid responses, monthly press events, and consistent messaging would project competence and readiness in contrast to the chaos of Trumpism.

This is not just about communication strategy: it’s about showing the country that Democrats have the people, the policies, and the charisma to step in tomorrow if the public gives them the chance.

This idea is not unprecedented. In parliamentary systems, opposition parties have long organized “shadow cabinets” to show voters they’re ready to take power at a moment’s notice. In the UK, Labour and the Tories alike have named shadow ministers to every portfolio, each one responsible for criticizing the government and putting forward an alternative vision.

It works because it projects competence. Voters can see the depth of the bench, not just the figure at the top. In times of crisis, this has been decisive. When Winston Churchill rose to power, it was not only his charisma but the fact that the public knew there was a team of capable ministers around him that gave Britain confidence.

Democrats would do well to borrow this model and Americanize it. Instead of being a collection of individuals jostling for position, they could present themselves as a disciplined bloc with defined roles, each amplifying the other.

At the same time, Democrats must stop letting Washington gridlock define their image.

The truth is that blue states already govern some of the largest economies in the world. California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Michigan, and Massachusetts together represent a bloc of prosperity, innovation, and rights protection larger than most nations. By acting through interstate compacts and model laws, those states can prove that Democrats deliver even when Congress stalls.

Coordinated carbon markets, clean procurement policies, abortion shield laws, voting rights protections, and labor standards can all be advanced at the state level. This is how Canada built its national healthcare system, province by province until the federal government could no longer ignore it. It’s how the early American labor movement forced reforms onto the national stage.

Call it soft secession if you want, though the better term may be the Blue States Bloc. The message is simple: if Republicans sabotage governance in Washington, Democrats will show the country how it is done in the states. It’s strength, not retreat. It’s evidence, not just rhetoric.

This is where narrative judo becomes essential. Republicans — and the corporate media — paint Democrats as weak, divided, indecisive. Democrats must flip that story on its head.

They must say clearly: we lead together because we are a coalition, not a cult. They must remind Americans that our system was designed not for one man to dominate but for leaders to share power. They must repeat, over and over, that diversity is competence, that depth is resilience, that collective leadership is how democracy works.

Instead of apologizing for the absence of a single Great Man, Democrats can show that they have something better: a team of proven leaders, each charismatic in their own right, each capable of commanding attention when the issue is in their domain. This isn’t weakness; it’s the true antidote to authoritarianism.

History is filled with moments where the survival of democracy depended on whether its defenders could command attention with the same force as its enemies. In Weimar Germany, democrats ceded the stage to demagogues and paid the price. In Spain, anti-fascists failed to unify and lost to Franco.

In contrast, during the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, leaders rose from the crowd and became the visible face of resistance, embodying the movement in a way that gave courage to millions. We shouldn’t kid ourselves: Americans are living through the same sort of crisis. The question is whether Democrats can find the discipline to project strength and charisma in time.

And when the time comes to choose a presidential ticket in 2028, that choice should be the culmination of years of visible leadership, not a scramble at the last minute. A Pritzker-Newsom ticket, or some other pairing of governors who have already shown themselves as national executives-in-training, would make the case that Democrats are ready to scale up.

Their record in the states would become the national campaign platform. Jobs growth, climate leadership, healthcare expansion, protection of rights: all would be proof points. They wouldn’t have to argue in the abstract. They could simply say: “We already govern like a nation. Now we’ll do it for the whole country.”

None of this will happen by accident.

Democrats must choose to stop ceding the stage to Trump. They must stop assuming that reason alone will defeat spectacle. They must understand that media is the battlefield now, that charisma is not optional, that in an era of constant feeds and fragmented attention the messenger is as critical as the message.

And they must realize that the perception of weakness is fatal. Authoritarians thrive when their opponents look uncertain, divided, and unready. “Strongly worded letters” are fuel for them. The only way to blunt Trump’s charisma is with charisma of our own, wielded not by one savior but by a disciplined coalition that embodies both competence and passion.

Carlyle was wrong to think that history is only made by solitary Great Men. History is also made by movements, by coalitions, by generations who decide they will not be ruled by a tyrant.

But Carlyle was right about one thing: people follow leaders they can see and believe in. If Democrats want to save this republic from sliding into fascism, they must stop hiding their leaders and start elevating them, not in dribs and drabs but as a chorus of commanding voices.

Trump’s cult of personality isn’t the only way charisma can work. It can also be the charisma of democracy itself, embodied in leaders who respect the people, who work together, and who are ready to govern.

And they must begin now. Not in 2027 when the next campaign is already underway, not in 2028 when it’ll be too late, but today. Governors, senators, mayors, party leaders must convene, assign portfolios, step into the spotlight, and begin the disciplined work of shaping the public imagination.

Because if Democrats don’t seize this moment and fill the stage with our own chorus of leaders, Trump will fill it for us, and America will be left with nothing but the hollow echo of one man’s ambition.

‘Get the deal done’: GOP hardliner hails new Jan. 6 committee as Dems cry foul

WASHINGTON — This week House Republicans formally launched their long awaited new January 6 subcommittee. Unlike the first select committee, which investigated the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, the new panel is tasked with investigating the investigators.

“I want to see all the documents and find out how many lies were told by the people that were sitting on that committee,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said on Thursday. “That's what I want.”

The former chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined 211 of his fellow Republicans — with only Rep. Kevin Kiely (R-CA) voting present, as not a single Democrat joined the effort — in unveiling and then establishing a “Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6, 2021.”

It will be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). He’s been helping the GOP rewrite the record on J6 for years but now he’s got a formal if hyper-partisan mandate, along with subpoena power hailed by Biggs and others on the far-right.

“Now I think the structure is going to really be much more helpful for it,” Biggs said. “In other words, I think the structure is necessary. It's a good structural change.”

‘I’ve done that’

The panel will have eight members, including three Democrats appointed after consultations between Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

The subcommittee’s subpoena power is expected to be a gamechanger.

“I think so, yeah,” Biggs said: “In talking with Chairman Loudermilk about it, he's been doing some good work. I've watched what he's done. We've talked. I think he just needed a new structure, and I think it's gonna provide the structure necessary to get the deal done.”

The first January 6 committee was formed in 2021. It staged high-profile hearings in 2022 and issued its report in January 2023, shortly after Republicans re-took the House.

That committee consisted of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — deputy chair Liz Cheney, then representing Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, then a congressman from Illinois.

Both no longer sit in Congress, Cheney having lost her seat, Kinzinger having retired.

On Wednesday, Kinzinger posted a meme of the actor Will Ferrell beckoning a confrontation and said: “The fact that the so-called moderates in the House voted for this, is especially corrupt. But bring it on, happy to remind America how you guys attempted a coup.”

The next day, a Democrat who sat with Kinzinger on the original committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), told Raw Story the new panel was another instance of the GOP “trying to rewrite history.

“That's just kind of clearly what they've done since January 6,” he said. “This all fits the narrative.

“And it's dangerous. We'll see where they take the committee but it's dangerous behavior.”

Still, Aguilar has no desire to sit on another J6 panel.

“No. I’ve done that,” Aguilar said.

‘Distraction, deflection’

Loudermilk’s previous efforts to investigate the January 6 investigation and investigators were carried out from his perch on the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story she was “so infuriated” by Loudermilk’s new effort.

“It’s distraction, deflection,” Dean said.

“And I have said that the president pardoning insurrectionists, pardoning criminals, violent criminals, was a whitewashing, an attempt to rewrite history, and most importantly, he was pardoning himself. This is a continuation of that.”

On returning to power this year, Donald Trump pardoned around 1,500 offenders convicted over their actions on Jan. 6 2021, as part of the mob that listened to Trump speak then stormed Congress, in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

Dean also lamented what she called “the stupid, the insane fight over the plaque” — a memorial to police who defended Congress which Republicans have refused to display.

“I actually went to the archives, to the basement, to see the actual plaque,” Dean said. “They have it. It's there. Oh, it's been there for months. It's done.”

“I don't know at what point the fever breaks,” Dean added of a Republican party in Trump’s grip.

“At what point do they say, ‘No, this is too much?’ Do you think Epstein might do it?”

Even through emotional and high-profile appearances on Capitol Hill from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, House GOP leaders are refusing to release files relating to the late financier and sex offender who was long close to Trump.

Groceries, rents, tariffs

On the other side of the Capitol on Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told Raw Story Republicans should focus on kitchen table issues, not rehashing old wars over January 6.

“Maybe they should be focused on the price of groceries,” Klobuchar said. “That might be better.

“Maybe they should focus on the tariffs and what's happening to people, not just their grocery bills, but their health care and their rent. So that would be a much more useful thing.”

There seems little chance of that.

Raw Story caught up with Rep. James Comer (R-KY), a leading Trump ally and chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Asked about the new Jan. 6 panel, he deflected.

“Trying to just keep up with my own portfolio,” Comer told Raw Story before lauding the new committee he expects “to investigate the investigators, to see if they were truthful in what they put in that final report. That’s what I understand.”

This Democratic nobody just showed Chuck Schumer how to lead

I’m going to talk about Hakeem Jeffries’ recent appearance on CNN in which he made another one of his tone-deaf remarks about evil being a distraction from what’s important to the American people.

But before you say what I know you’re going to say, let me say he’s not hopeless yet! Leaders can change. They must be pushed. They must be made to hear the roar. Anyway, if Ken Martin can do it, so can Jeffries.

As you may know, Ken Martin is the head of the Democratic National Committee. Until recently, he was a dictionary squish. In Minnesota, a close friend of his was assassinated by a man who is clearly in thrall to Donald Trump. Yet when the opportunity came to blame Trump for creating the conditions for cold-blooded murder, Martin blinked. All he could do, in so many words, was ask why we all can’t get along.

But then something happened.

Martin grew a spine!

He was asked recently whether the Democrats should shut down the government in the next funding face-off if Trump keeps doing crimes (my word) like using “the Justice Department to go after his enemies or if he keeps National Guard troops on the streets?”

Martin said yes!

“You have a fascist in the White House,” he said. “We cannot be the only ones playing by the rules with a hand tied behind our back. That old playbook, the norms that used to have guardrails on our democracy and protect all of us, that doesn’t exist anymore.

“We gotta throw that playbook out the window, because the Republicans have.

“We cannot be the only party that’s playing by the rules anymore. That’s why I said this isn’t your grandfather’s Democratic Party, where you bring a pencil to a knife fight. We are bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. Donald Trump wants a showdown. The Republicans want a showdown. We’re gonna give it to them.”

This heel turn is new. Earlier this year, during the most recent funding showdown, Chuck Schumer said a handful of Senate Democrats would vote with the GOP to keep the government running, even though they knew the president would prosecute a totalitarian agenda. In essence, Schumer had argued, it was better to bargain with evil than fight it.

Now Martin is saying: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

And that fighting spirit is almost certainly the consequence of traveling the country and listening to Democratic voters, who are tired of the Democrats asking the Republicans for permission to get along with the Republicans.

Jeffries can do the same. But we have to push him in more ways than one. Right now, the main focus is getting him to stop using the word “distraction.” Last Sunday, he again used that formulation on CNN.

“We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he is deeply unpopular. The one big ugly bill is unpopular, ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans is unpopular, enacting tax breaks for their billionaire donors is deeply unpopular, and that’s why a lot of this is taking place.”

But I think “distraction” is only part of a larger problem.

Though he accuses Trump of diverting our attention away from the fact that he’s cheating us, Jeffries still accepts as valid the president’s “reasons” for doing things — in this case, commandeering local law enforcement and replacing police departments with US military personnel to patrol major cities, like Washington and Chicago.

The president’s “reasons”? Crime is so out of control that it’s tantamount to a national emergency demanding a military response.

That’s a lie.

We are seeing historically low levels of crime, especially violent crime.

But instead of calling out the lie, presenting the facts, and accusing Trump of attempting to grab power, Jeffries implicitly concedes that there’s some truth to it. He probably figures there’s no point in arguing the point and that he’ll make more hay by dismissing Trump’s power grab as a distraction before redirecting us to things like healthcare that he believes will be convincing to voters who believe Trump’s lies.

In other words, Jeffries is doing what Schumer was doing, which is what all centrist Democrats do: accept as valid the premise of the lies in order to make themselves seem moderate (especially not the “radical left Democrats” that Trump would have everyone believe), and as such, portrays themselves as honest brokers who care about “things that really matter to the American people.”

But when you accept as valid the premise of the lie, you forfeit the opportunity to confront it. You might even find yourself looking weak and on the defensive, as Jeffries did. When asked if people in Chicago are manufacturing concerns about crime, he sputtered and bumbled through the rest of the interview, spending his time trying to prove that his party cares about crime as much as Trump does, thus deepening the false impression that he cares at all. For God’s sake, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Congress looked like he was on trial!

Trump does not care whether there are high rates of crime in American cities. If there is, so be it. If there isn’t, he’ll lie about it. He’ll accuse the local cops of faking the data. (He’ll get his congressional goons to validate the allegation by launching an investigation into it.) What’s important isn’t the substance of the allegation but whether the allegation justifies what he wants to do. If it does, he’ll send in the troops. If it doesn’t, he’ll find some other rationale for his malign goals.

Facts don’t matter to Trump, because he doesn’t care what’s true. That seems to be the conclusion that Ken Martin finally came to. There is no point in searching for good faith in a president who has none. There is no point in compromising with a criminal when all a criminal sees in compromise is more reason to commit more crimes.

Go ahead, Martin seemed to say. Shut down the government.

But stay focused.

Because “playing by the rules” is the biggest distraction of them all.

Jeffries could prove hopeless, but not yet! As I said, if Ken Martin can make the journey from bargaining with evil to fighting it, he can too.

Here's how blue states can devastate Trump's Confederacy

Don’t despair as authoritarianism marches around us. There is a thing that comes next. And it may come soon, as the realization spreads that blue states contribute the lion’s share of resources funding Trump’s mad theater of destruction.

As Democratic leaders consider how best to respond to a president’s unprecedented and unconstitutional efforts to harm them, they hold more cards than their attacker realizes.

Truth behind the ruse

By now everyone knows that Donald Trump is planning to deploy tanks and armed troops to occupy Democratic-controlled cities under one of two party lines: to “fight crime,” or to round up “illegals.”

But what some analysts have warned about since January is becoming clearer by the day: these reasons are pretextual. As ICEv rounds up migrant farm workers, food delivery men, and people who run stop signs, those arrests are building the scaffolding to let Trump stay in power and out of prison beyond 2028.

Governors in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Missouri and other red states are dispatching their own National Guard troops to support Trump's “crackdown on crime” outside their own borders, despite these states governing cities with murder rates twice as high as that of D.C. Given that they govern the worst per capita violent crime rates in the country, these self-proclaimed “states rights” champions obviously don’t give a damn as they prepare to invade their sovereign neighbors.

Trump, JD Vance and Stephen Miller are now explicitly threatening domestic political opponents — Democratic-run states and cities — with military occupation.

That is the real reason behind the “Big Beautiful Bill” that funded the world’s largest police state.

That is the real purpose behind $45 billion to build new concentration camps, and a 265% increase in ICE’s detention budget.

Miller just admitted as much on Fox News, saying, “The Democrat [sic] Party…is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat [sic] Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

So there we have it. Democrats have been Trump’s true “enemy within” all along. Democrats are the intended targets of illegal occupying forces, concentration camps, and tank-mounted rifles in the streets.

If this doesn’t sound like a red declaration of civil war against half the nation, nothing does.

Trump now has a domestic military force funded with a budget 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system, where 155,933 inmates are currently incarcerated, some of them for life. Trump is now spending more on ICE than most nations spend on their entire military budgets.

When the concentration camps are built, it’s not hard to piece out who will fill them.

Stop paying for incompetent cruelty

Democratic leaders are responding to an unprecedented situation, where a US president is literally attacking them for partisan reasons.

Acting outside the scope of his Article II powers, Trump is also withholding billions of dollars in previously appropriated funding for services and programs blue states have paid into and rely on. He’s also trying to dictate state law by withholding federal funding from states with policies he disagrees with, like DEI, climate programs, and “sanctuary” policies for undocumented but otherwise law abiding immigrants. Although several funding freezes have been halted by federal courts, a Trump-packed high court has reversed most of those rulings.

The good news is that blue states hold far more resources than red states. If they decide to give Trump a taste of his own unconstitutional medicine by withholding, escrowing, or otherwise diverting federal tax dollars, fighting fire with fire, Trump’s vindictive plans could backfire.

The concept of blue states as federal donor states and red states as federal welfare states is gaining traction.

In a brilliant essay, “It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About Soft Secession,” the analyst Chris Armitage writes:

“Currently, Massachusetts sends $4,846 more per capita to the federal government than it gets back. New Jersey and Washington are in the same position, bleeding thousands per person annually. Over five years, New York alone contributed $142.6 billion more than it received. Meanwhile, red states pocket $1.24 for every dollar they send to Washington. Blue states are essentially paying red states to undermine democracy.”

Awareness of this funding disparity is spreading like fossil-fueled wildfires. Democratic-led states have already introduced legislation to allow states to withhold federal taxes if the federal government unconstitutionally refuses to fund them. Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin have introduced bills. California and Washington are not far behind.

Democratic leaders could also pass legislation and ordinances instructing state and municipal employees to alter their federal withholding forms to cut off federal revenue. They could encourage residents statewide to withhold federal taxes, or put them into escrow.

As Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs expand, comptroller creativity will spread.

Soft secession?

Congress controls the purse under the 16th Amendment. Under the Supremacy Clause, any state law designed to obstruct federal tax collection likely would be unconstitutional.

But consider that Trump and his supporters have already lit the Constitution on fire by withholding hundreds of billions of dollars Congress previously appropriated for education, health, climate, foreign aid, medical research and social services.

Consider that Trump’s unilateral passage of tariffs is also unconstitutional.

Ditto the deployment of armed forces against unarmed citizens.

Why should blue states stand on constitutional ceremony when the Trump-packed Supreme Court refuses to?

This essay is not written lightly. It’s a dramatic paradigm shift reflecting a house divided, and with it long-held assumptions about federalism, including taxation. Democrats pay disproportionate taxes because we assume it will promote the greater good. But when our resources are used not to help the common man, but to maim him, we must examine those assumptions.

The University of Toronto, former Yale historian Tim Snyder writes, poignantly:

“It is one thing to believe that federal taxes are worthwhile because they are being spent to redress inequalities in health care or education. It is another to watch the federal government spread disease and ignorance. It is one thing to pay taxes every year, in the knowledge that eventually the power in the White House will change every four or eight. It is another to be confronted with a president who talks about third terms. It is one thing to believe that the Constitution will ultimately preserve the country. It is another to recognize that those in power scorn it.”

A new kind of civil war is here, but Democrats did not invite it. When our backs are against the wall, facing the firing squad of a rogue president, complicit party, and corrupt high court determined to destroy us, we must act in our own self-interest. Freedom and our nation’s survival depend on it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free

Trump’s dark vision has a weak spot. Here’s how to hit it

The nightmare is already upon us, but too many are simply sleepwalking through their days, leaning on carefully crafted and long assumed structures of normalcy, where you go to the office, pay the phone bill, check your feed, take the kids to swim lessons, go to a game — activities that reaffirm that everything is as it should be, it's okay, life today entails all that was thought guaranteed just last year, last decade, last generation.

It is the dream, the one you were taught to expect in school, promised by parents, told by leaders.

But that framework of normalcy is the battered social infrastructure of the past. Because life in America right now is not okay. Slowly, at a varying pace, Americans are opening their eyes to the fact that the expectations of an American life, the birthright to freedom and opportunity, an absolute right to our own thoughts, the ongoing expansion of civil rights, advances in science, creative new arts — all no longer a given, indeed are slipping away.

We awaken to the nightmare of the new reality, where nothing is as it was, no right is irrevocable, facts no longer unassailable, no conventional wisdom predominates, national unity is no longer even desired, national sanity now a punchline. That is our waking reality.

Those with open eyes see a pale truth, one exposed without pancaked bronzer.

In the summer of 2025, the GOP and Donald Trump are in control of a post-Constitution America, a post-fact culture, a post-science society, a post-"United" States, a neo-theocratic nation in which Trump stands as the Republican God on Earth. Trump and the GOP have laid the marble foundation for one-party rule into the foreseeable future, building a ballroom in which they can drink in power and dance for decades, encamped in a newly hardened White House, a perimeter patrolled by troops and light armor.

Between now and the certification of the 2026 elections, Americans writ large, regardless of party, must both wake up to this new reality and decide if it is worth the fight to get that birthright back: fight for a normal life in an enlightened democracy, a middle class existence with vacations and savings, a citizens' republic where votes matter, one in which facts exist as reported, alternative views are expected and respected, where certain cherished values override day trading in political transactions.

We will be challenged to fight for all of it by fighting for real elections that really matter. As things are now, we cannot count on that right. Many fight hard. Too many lean on vapid "normalcy."

Let's set out reality as it is, wide awake.

Trump is already altering perfectly accurate elections. He demanded and received five more seats out of Texas. He wants control of the vote, writing an unconstitutional executive order outlawing mail-in voting and requiring paper ballots. He has specifically said that ridding this country of the normal right to vote would "get rid of politics" forever. Meaning one-party rule, and in this party, that means all power, post-Constitutional, flows from one unstable man.

The Founders' nightmare, our waking reality.

In so doing, Trump is already posturing for a win in 2026 or the basis on which to fight a possible loss. He is setting up the framework needed to contest seating a Democratic-run House of Representatives. He declared real crime statistics "fake," to create a false emergency to call in troops. The result is a military occupation of our capital, answering only to the president.

Breathe that naked fact in. That's what dictators do: use troops, guns, and armor to secure the seat of government. He has already said he will do it in other Democratic cities … Now consider what he is willing to do next November. Is there any reason to believe he will accept the reality of an election? Or create his own if needed, leading to "one-party rule."

One also has to awaken to the propaganda. Please remember that propaganda is not used to convince anyone to believe any one story or explanation. No, propaganda is infused into every statement, interview, press conference, meme, whatever, so overwhelmingly that citizens give up on even the very idea of truth, that select facts exist as knowable and pertinent.

In the post-Constitution propaganda state, every report on every subject, even prices or unemployment numbers, all are said to come with a political angle and are thus rendered debatable and deniable. Every announcement implies an agenda. If a news outlet cites rising costs or job losses, the response will be that it is a fake story by the "liberal media" that hates America and is out to get Trump.

This administration tosses aside bad news like a bone of fried chicken. It could be someone citing crime statistics in D.C., a mediocre Bureau of Labor report, a military bomb damage assessment, rising prices, a jury finding regarding rape in a civil case, Epstein victims, or even the undeniable need for vaccinations — they can all be scoffed at and rage tweeted as just the product of someone wanting to stop America from being great. In a propaganda-infused fascist state, plain and obvious facts no longer exist, never mind matter. The post-truth administration no longer seeks reality.

Only the message matters. And the message is that America is the "hottest" country in the world. In the post-truth existence, Trump has ended six wars and deserves a Nobel Prize. He has record-high approval ratings, higher than any president ever. The administration has done more than any in history.

It is all branding, it is all propaganda. Try finding the "truth" in any of it.

More Americans are awakening to at least that truth. But too few are fighting. California Governor Gavin Newsom has become an overnight hero by finding a foothold for real resistance.

A genius within Newsom's organization decided to hold a mirror up to the outrageously ridiculous behavior that we're now conditioned to see as "normal," only to show how freaking bizarre this shit looks when coming from anyone else. Its brilliance flows from the fact that it's based on what people see and feel, not so much a fight for truth. In a post-truth, "branded" society, this mirror is the leading Democratic message: be the anti-matter in all Trump matters, drain the message's power with a reverse image.

Newsom isn't wasting a lot of time arguing principles or what is right or best. That is implied. He is fighting for the sake of a fight. The fight itself becomes sufficient truth. If utter insanity is the coin of the realm, then invest billions in crypto-crazy cash and bank it right back at them. In this post-normal context, Newsom has landed a blow.

There are many other ways to resist and fight back. There are, in fact, truths that are felt rather than messaged. You feel it when you go to get groceries, and a frozen pizza is $10. The pizza went up $3 in two years, while your paycheck stayed the same. This is a hard truth that Trump cannot circumvent: the "feel."

People wanting democracy and normalcy must act. Democrats must invest in outreach to that feeling: you feel you are falling behind, and we know it. No matter how "hot" the country may be, you feel increasingly left in the cold. To fight back in the propaganda dictatorial state, movements must be based on the mood, not necessarily facts, and then message the ever-living hell out of it on every screen in existence.

All government legitimacy comes from some level of consent. We consented to Trump's election because he won, and that's what Constitution-based Americans do. But as he grabs for post-Constitutional power, consent must be withdrawn.

It can be done with movements and protests. But ultimately, it will likely take turning the tables and shaking the administration's waking assumption, the one in which Americans acquiesce to increasing dictatorial power by continuing to go about their normal everyday lives, working, consuming, and sleepwalking. Crash that dreamy predicate.

It will take economic boycotts of certain companies, even sectors, perhaps a national "savings" movement where people forego discretionary spending to slow the economy, perhaps even general strikes, protests that fly above facts and arguments but go right to messaging and what people feel. The republic needs a shakeup that alters presidential assumptions about normal Americans.

But no plan or movement can work until enough citizens awaken to the post-truth world and see that nothing is normal, no matter how many PTA events or farmers' markets they attend. For now, at least, Newsom's message is the true north for those not so much "woke" as "awoken."

From Newsom's foothold, outreach should not focus on Americans' heads, but their gut, the only truth available. Home in on that vast majority that knows it's left behind and share the message that they're valued and matter because they are and do. Provide reasons to feel included, involved, even optimistic, thereby empowered. And then act together in any way but "normal."

For now, Newsom is pointing the way. In a post-fact, post-Constitution, propagandized America, perhaps the only reliable counterpoints lie in mirror images, the lenses by which it's easiest to see that things are not okay. Forget normal messaging. Go for the "feeling" that this abnormal situation requires a gut reaction, something unexpected, something that awakens them to a new reality. The slumbering giant pushes back. It is now okay to do just that.

Jason Miciak is a columnist for Rawstory, former Assoc. Editor at Occupy Democrats, an American Attorney and Author. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and is available for speaking or consulting engagements.

Only one top Dem knows how to turn the tables on Trump and his sniveling minions

The president has been working hard trying to convince Americans that crime is so bad right now that he has no choice but to send armed military to patrol major cities to restore law and order, in the process stripping citizens of rights and liberties in the name of public safety.

Unfortunately, the reaction among Democratic leaders has been mixed, to put it mildly, but I think California Governor Gavin Newsom has shown a way forward. He said that if Donald Trump truly cared about crime, he would “invest in crime suppression” in states like “Speaker Johnson’s state and district.”

Look at the murder rate in Louisiana, he said. It’s “nearly four times higher than California’s.”

The implication, of course, is that neither Trump nor the Republicans in the Congress actually care about crime. They only say they do as a smokescreen for trying to subdue, control and “own” their perceived liberal enemies residing in cities and states governed by Democrats.

And because Newsom’s allegation — that Trump and the Republicans care less about crime than they do political oppression —rang so loudly and clearly, the House speaker was asked on Fox to respond. What I want to tell you is that it was a sight to behold!

“We have crime in cities all across America and we are against that everywhere,” Johnson said. “My hometown of Shreveport has done a great job of reducing crime gradually. We’ve got to address it everywhere that it rears its ugly head, and I think every major city in the country, the residents of those cities are open to that, and anxious to have it, and we’re … the party that’s going to bring that forward.”

Amazing! Why? Because in that brief moment, the Republican leader of the United States Congress sounded just like a Democrat would sound after being attacked by a Republican.

Johnson does not counterattack. He did not say Newsom was lying (Newsom was not lying). Instead, Johnson did what his counterpart Hakeem Jeffries often does after a Republican lays into him. He retreated to a “reasonable man’s” position to show that his party is the party that really cares about crime.

How did this happen?

First, Newsom told the truth. Red-state crime surpasses blue-state crime.

Second, by telling the truth, he questioned Trump’s intentions. If crime is such an emergency in Washington and Chicago that he has to send in the military to restore public safety, why isn’t he doing that in Louisiana? Why isn’t the House speaker demanding law and order? The implied answer is they don’t really care about law and order, only whether what they say about it leads to the subjugation they desire.

But importantly, Newsom did not accept as true anything Trump and the Republicans say about crime and public safety. He did not validate any of their lies. He did not concede any ground to them. He did not say to himself, “Well, Americans really are concerned about crime and Democrats shouldn’t ignore that.” He knows Trump does not care, and did not cover up bad faith with good faith. Most of all, he did not, as historian Timothy Snyder often warns, surrender in advance.

The result?

Johnson retreated. In the face of attack, he tried making himself seem like “the adult in the room.”

“We’ve got to address [crime] everywhere that it rears its ugly head.” He did what Democrats do. That’s amazing.

Most Democrats do not have the megaphone that Newsom has. Most are not going to force Fox to ask high-level Republicans to respond to them. Even so, what Newsom is doing is replicable. Do not accept in any way the lies told by Trump and the GOP, even when, or especially when, those lies come out of the mouths of independent voters. The Republicans do not mean what they say. They do not act in good faith. Overlooking this fundamental truth inevitably makes things worse.

This is why I see potential disaster in efforts by a “new coalition” of more than 100 “new Dems” in the House to show voters they really care about immigration reform. The Washington Post reported on the group’s “bipartisan” proposal, a mix of increased “border security” and more ways for immigrants to reside legally. And while that may sound reasonable, it’s not, because it accepts as true the allegations against undocumented immigrants: that they are committing serious crimes.

They are not. Entering the US without authorization is a misdemeanor on par with reckless driving and breaching the peace. Because it’s also a civil offense, judges hear cases in immigration court, not criminal court. “Unlawful entry” doesn’t rise to a felony unless it’s been done many times over, and most immigrants, once they come, they stay.

This is not news to the Democrats, but they have ceded this ground over and over for decades in the mistaken belief that it was better to compromise with the Republicans than to fight them head on, even though the Republicans, especially after 2016, did not act in good faith.

They said the immigration issue was about “law and order.” They said it was about “border integrity.” They said it was about an important thing that mattered to everyone. It was never so. The immigration issue was always about maintaining the dominance of white people in America.

But by accepting the Republicans’ lies in “the spirit of bipartisanship,” the Democrats made the lies real. They also made themselves complicit in turning immigrants into threats so monstrous that the president was justified in creating a secret police force (ICE) that is now breaking the law and profaning the Constitution to expel “the criminal aliens.”

Worst of all perhaps is that while finding “common ground” with liars and bigots, the Democrats have not mounted an unadulterated defense of immigration. It is good, in and of itself – for our economy, our communities and our culture. We should want more immigrants to become Americans. We should make it easier for them, not harder. And we can do that by upholding the true meaning of law and order.

That immigration is an essential good is implicit in recent polling that shows the uglier Trump gets with immigrants, the less popular he gets. To me, that suggests an opportunity for the Democrats. But before they move ahead, they should follow Gavin Newsom’s example in believing bipartisanship does not require surrendering in advance.

'No trust': Congress's return re-ignites major headaches for MAGA

WASHINGTON — It may now be fall, but that doesn’t mean Congress finished its summer homework.

After taking August off, Congress returns this week to face basically the same teetering stack of unfinished business that was on its plate at the end of July.

A government shutdown looms, even as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal threatens to doom President Donald Trump and the stack of nominees before the Senate has only grown longer.

Buckle up. It’s promising to be a feisty fall in the nation’s capital.

Smoke, mirrors, subpoenas

While the Epstein scandal seems to have united Democrats around a common enemy, on the GOP side of the aisle many on the far right blame fellow Republicans for attempting to bury the story.

That has veteran Republicans fuming — in their sedate congressional way.

“I see us being able to get our work done, the question is, do others?” 14-term Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) told Raw Story.

“I am a person who goes to fix, not fight. You know that. We need to understand that we've got to see the bigger picture, and that is the job the American people also sent us here to do.”

When it comes to the far right, the answer remains no — especially when it comes to Epstein.

GOP leaders’ heads are likely pounding but their lingering, months-long headaches should be a surprise to no one, especially after Speaker Mike Johnson caved to pressure from Trump and recessed the House early in July, to avoid a vote on whether to release the Epstein files.

At the time, rank-and-file Republicans were wondering why the party’s big plan was to effectively kick the can down the road.

“Does leadership really think this issue isn't going to be front and center when y'all come back in September?” Raw Story asked veteran Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).

“No,” Norman said. “Nothing's going to change.”

“You made a promise to your people?” Raw Story asked.

“And the promise is going to be kept,” Norman said, “should it be in 30 days or should it be in 45.”

That doesn’t mean GOP leaders haven’t tried to wag the dog. For example, August brought an announcement from House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) that the committee had “issued deposition subpoenas to Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, and Alberto Gonzales for testimony related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein.”

Smoke, mirrors and subpoenas may not work this time, though.

Raw Story asked: “Do you think your leadership believes that we're not going to be asking these same questions in September?”

“I don't know what they think. They’re attorneys, I'm not. That's the difference,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said, before a horse broke his rib during the August recess.

“I’m over it,” he said. “We need to get on with it.”

Nothing’s really changed.

“Your position on forcing release of Epstein files (that don’t endanger victims) hasn’t changed since July, right?” Raw Story texted Burchett, in August.

“Right,” replied the congressman — who in October 2023 was one of eight Republicans who ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

‘Not good for the country’

Democrats seem to have exploited the Epstein drama to their political advantage, but rank-and-file members say the extended, GOP-induced impasse isn’t about scoring a win.

Since leaving town in July, they haven’t taken their eyes off the ball.

Raw Story asked: “When you guys come back in September, are we going to be having the same conversation?”

“Yes,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI).

“How frustrating is that?” Raw Story pressed. “Or is it good? Does it mean you guys are–?”

“I don't think it's good,” Dingell interjected. “I don't think it’s good policy. It's not good for the country.

“The budget expires September 30th and people are going to talk about the budget all August. They're going to talk about Epstein all August. And we're going to come back and people are going to be demanding files.”

When it comes to trying to avert a government shutdown at the end of September, Dingell said, she and her fellow Democrats will still be smarting from the Trump administration's rescissions package, which gutted foreign aid programs and left many local public media outlets struggling for survival — even after large bipartisan swaths of the 118th Congress approved those spending levels.

Additionally, Dingell didn't know then about Trump's hugely controversial “pocket rescission” of $4.9bn in foreign aid, announced at the end of August, to uproar and predictions of a shutdown for sure.

But she said her party hasn’t forgotten about Trump's charred-earth approach to spending conventions.

“They’re gonna wanna know: Are we going to have a regular order or are we going to get f––––d again?” Dingell told Raw Story, bluntly.

“There's already a debate happening within the Democratic Party about whether to allow a shutdown or whether you all should salvage it,” Raw Story pressed. “Is that the wrong debate you guys are having?”

“No it's not,” Dingell said. “If you don't have an appropriations process that's real, that if what you're going to do is going to get rescinded, why the f––– should you vote for it?”

'No trust at this point'

At least one former Trump cabinet secretary has a few reasons why Democrats should avert a shutdown at all costs.

During Trump’s first term, proud cowboy hat-wearing Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) served as Interior Secretary.

Zinke vividly remembers how when the government runs out of congressionally approved cash, as it did twice during Trump’s first term, cabinet members swiftly amass new powers.

“I had a lot of latitude of what was ‘key and essential’ — I didn't shut down the parks,” Zinke told Raw Story. “I could’ve. The previous administration did. The previous administration brought concertina wire and chain link fence around the monuments and the [National] Mall. Remember that?”

Last spring, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) faced blowback from both the party’s progressive wing and rank-and-file electeds for voting to keep the government funded, even as Democratic priorities weren’t included in the spending measure.

While many Democrats are itching for a fight with Trump, Zinke says they should think twice before withholding their support from this fall’s government funding package.

"So there is an argument that shutting it down is going to give the Trump administration more power,” Zinke said.

“I think it's more power but for a shorter amount of time, because you really can't sustain a long-term government shutdown. The consequences are too great, but you can do it for a short period of time and it gives you an enormous amount of executive power."

While Democrats fear empowering President Trump and his cabinet even more, many don’t view him, Johnson and Vice President JD Vance as honest negotiating partners.

“You guys have no trust at this point?” Raw Story asked.

“No,” Dingell replied.

“What can they do to regain your trust or is it just gone?”

“Let's see,” Dingell sighed. “We'll see.”

Only one thing can stop Trump turning the US into Russia

Governor Gavin Newsom is doing exactly what he had to do with his redistricting plan in California: attempting to stop Donald Trump rigging the 2026 midterms election in Republicans’ favor.

When you have a president bent on maximizing his autocratic power and positioning his party to dominate federal elections and create virtual one-party rule, no response is too extreme.

Newsom didn’t choose to create five Democratic-leaning House districts out of territory currently held by Republican lawmakers. He threatened it as a tactic to get Trump and his obeisant Texas governor and lawmakers to back off their gerrymandering scheme to rig the election.

Since Texas went through with the redistricting, Newsom had the choice of allowing Trump’s attempt to steal the House to go unchallenged or to counterattack and re-level the playing field.

That Trump would attempt to rig the 2026 midterms should shock no one.

This is the guy who lied that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — who coerced governors, state legislatures, and election officials to change votes, who created fraudulent elector slates to cast fraudulent electoral votes, who tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the electoral certification process, and who incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol in an attempt to halt the presidential certification of Joe Biden.

It is also no coincidence that three of Trump’s most admired political pals – Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — enjoy virtual one-party rule, their parties having long-established strangleholds on election results and governmental power. Thinly veiled autocracies today, the erstwhile democracies of Russia, Hungary, and Turkey have been crushed.

This is exactly what Trump and his Project 2025 chums have in mind for the US.

Trump is attempting to kneecap the Democratic Party’s chances in all future elections through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Measures such as eliminating mail-in voting, disallowing voting machines, reducing the number of polling places, eliminating election-day registration, and requiring proof of citizenship are all aimed at suppressing the vote of minorities who traditionally support Democrats.

Trump’s successful ploy to add five Republican districts in Texas is part of a grander scheme to reshape America’s governance system and render the two-party democratic system defunct.

In virtual one-party systems, the ruling party controls all branches of government, Trump’s obvious goal.

In one-party rule autocracies, opposition parties and shows of public dissent are often suppressed through legal, political, or violent means. Power is centralized within the ruling party and its authoritarian leader, with no democratic system of checks and balances to restrain it. Constitutions are reinterpreted or rewritten to help the ruling party and its authoritarian leader remain in power indefinitely.

This is the direction the US is headed. We have an overreaching, power-grasping president and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that obediently does his bidding. Atop the judicial system is a pliant Supreme Court filled with Trump appointees. Federal judges who rule against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders are maligned and served with lawsuits.

Authoritarian bullying is rampant. Trump punishes universities and states that refuse to bend a knee to his demands. He calls out the national guard to militarize Democratic-controlled cities and launches sham investigations of Trump’s critics conducted by the servile heads of the DOJ and FBI. Trump signs executive orders that violate states’ and the federal legislature’s rights. These anti-democratic acts are just the beginning.

Trump may steal the 2026 House election by other red states following Texas’s gerrymandering lead coupled with repressive voting laws that disenfranchise traditional Democratic voters. Republicans’ one-party rule would then be given two more years to entrench itself in the manner of Putin’s, Orban’s, and Erdogan’s parties. Democracy as we have known it would no longer exist.

With his redistricting plan, Newsom is pushing back. Other Democratic states may follow suit. But Trump’s election scheme has created a chillingly dark day for American democracy. Thanks to Trump, the winning party in 2026 must out-manipulate the other, since winning fairly is no longer an option.

Democrats must win the House by hook or by crook in 2026 to save America from becoming an autocratic, one-party rule country. Every anti-democratic act that Trump commits provides more striking evidence of the intent.

Governor Newsom did not stand by and let Trump’s dirty election tricks go unchallenged. If other Democratic leaders and the vast majority of voters follow suit, Trump’s second attempt to destroy American democracy will be his last.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

Inside the Trumpist plot to fix the midterms — and all elections after

With the midterms more than a year away, Donald Trump and his enablers have launched a new war on voting rights. Its immediate target is November 2026; its ultimate goal is the institutionalization of one-party control of the federal government. This political “final solution” is the last step in MAGA’s quest to extinguish liberal democracy in America.

The war is being fought along legal and political fronts that stretch across the marble halls of the Supreme Court, Trump’s executive orders, Steve Bannon’s seedy podcast, the transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a latter-day Praetorian Guard, and threats to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Supreme Court and voting rights

When it comes to voting rights, no single institution has been more destructive than the nation’s top judicial body under the hypocritical leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts.

In his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, Roberts promised to serve as chief justice in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” That was nonsense then, and it’s nonsense now.

Roberts has always been a Republican insider and activist, dating back to his stint in the early 1980s as a crusading young lawyer in the Justice Department, where he wrote upward of 25 memos suggesting strategies to limit the scope of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark legislation passed by Congress in 1965 to outlaw racial discrimination in voting.

In 2013, he made good on his lifelong mission by authoring the infamous 5-4 majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, one of the most regressive rulings in Supreme Court history.

Shelby gutted sections 4 and 5 of the VRA, which had required state and local jurisdictions, mostly in the South, with histories of egregious voter suppression, to obtain advance federal approval — a process known as “preclearance” — before making changes to their election procedures. Roberts declared in Shelby that “things have changed dramatically” since the passage of the VRA and that racial discrimination in voting no longer took place.

Shelby left Section 2 of the VRA as the last remaining bulwark of the law. That section prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language.

Both the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have long recognized the right of private parties and organizations to file lawsuits under Section 2 to challenge “racial gerrymanders,” which occur when a state uses race as the primary factor in redistricting to dilute the voting power of minority populations. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have used Section 2 litigation to force the creation of numerous majority-Black or “majority-minority” voting districts to give minorities a fair chance to elect candidates that reflect their views.

All that could change when Roberts and his Republican benchmates hear oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais on October 15.

The case stems from a complaint brought by a group of individuals who describe themselves in court filings as “non-Black voters.” They contend Louisiana violated their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection when it created a second Black-majority voting district in 2024 to give Black voters, who comprise nearly a third of the state’s electorate, proportional representation in the state’s six-member congressional delegation. If the court agrees with them, it could gut Section 2, leading to the elimination of an estimated 11 Black-majority districts, all held by Democrats, across GOP-controlled Southern states.

Such a decision would neuter what little remains of the VRA.

Texas and California

Even if the court rules against the “non-Black” plaintiffs in Callais, it has given its blessings to another method of election rigging known as “partisan gerrymandering” — the practice of drawing state voting districts to benefit the political party in power.

In 2019, by way of a 5-4 majority opinion penned by Roberts, Rucho v. Common Cause, the court held that partisan gerrymandering, no matter how disproportional or extreme, presents a “nonjusticiable political question” that lies beyond the jurisdiction of federal judges to alter or correct.

Both parties have traditionally engaged in partisan gerrymandering, but the GOP has perfected the technique in the wake of Rucho, with Texas as a prime example. Responding to a direct demand from Trump, the state has drafted a new congressional voting map designed to give Republicans an additional five House seats. Other Republican states, including Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio, are likely to heed Trump’s plea and revise their voting maps before the midterms.

The GOP’s moves have finally awakened a fighting spirit among Democrats, but the outcome of the counterattack is uncertain. Led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California has set a special election for this November to consider a ballot proposition that would suspend the state’s current congressional map, which was drawn by an independent commission, and replace it with one that could give Democrats a five-seat boost to match the Texas power-grab.

Democrats in New York, Illinois, and Maryland reportedly are exploring ways to follow Newsom’s lead.

Meantime, the Texas redo is a done deal, offering Trump and the GOP a clear path to retaining their stranglehold on federal power. Redistricting experts predict that if the GOP gambit in Texas and elsewhere succeeds, the party could hold the House until 2050.

Executive orders, proclamations, rants

Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s 2024 Roberts-authored decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), Trump has made good on his pledge to be a “dictator on Day One” of his second term, releasing a torrent of autocratic executive orders and proclamations.

These include an executive order issued on March 25 with the Orwellian title of “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” Among the order’s many directives is a requirement for voter ID to prove citizenship, and a prohibition on counting mail-in ballots that are sent in by Election Day but delivered afterward.

On April 24, federal district court judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee who sits in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction, blocking the ID requirement and other provisions, noting that “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states — not the president — with the authority to regulate federal elections.”

Unfortunately, the judge’s order failed to address the constitutionality of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which in many respects tracks the executive order. The SAVE Act was passed by the House on April 10 and is now pending before the Senate.

Undeterred by the courts, Trump has doubled down on his demands, vowing to impose nationwide voter ID by presidential fiat, ban mail-in ballots and replace voting machines with hand counting. In remarks delivered at the White House on August 18, he claimed that “mail-in ballots are corrupt,” and no other country permits them. In fact, some 34 countries allow them.

Trump has also demanded a new census that would exclude undocumented aliens to be conducted as soon as possible. The census is mandated every 10 years by the Constitution and is used to determine how many House seats are apportioned to each state. To date, no census has been conducted mid-decade, and never have the undocumented been excluded.

Impact on women

The election law changes demanded by Trump and the GOP will also undermine the voting power of women.

According to the Pew Research Center, despite the Democratic Party’s declining approval ratings, women remain 12 percentage points more likely than men to affiliate with the Democrats.

Exit polling conducted by CNN after the last election found a similar gender gap, showing that women nationwide voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a 10 percent margin. Black women in particular have been the most reliable supporters of the Democratic Party. In 2024, a whopping 92 percent of Black women opted for Harris, continuing a decades-long trend.

Women also hold more liberal values than men on a variety of key political issues, such as abortion access, gun control, environmental protection, and racial justice. This is especially true of younger women between the ages 18 and 29. A permanent one-party state controlled by Trump and the GOP will set back women’s interests indefinitely.

Steve Bannon and ICE

On his War Room podcast on August 19, right-wing fulminator Steve Bannon upped the ante in the voting rights war, calling for the deployment of ICE to monitor polling places to ensure that “If you don’t have an ID — if you’re not a citizen — you’re not voting.”

It is, of course, illegal under federal law to deploy the military or armed federal troops to patrol polling places as monitors or observers unless they are needed to repel an armed invasion. A section of the US Code makes it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to do so. The Voting Rights Act also prohibits federal agents from intimidating voters, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1868 generally proscribes using the military as civilian law enforcement.

These safeguards could easily be circumvented by an ICE army that will be 10,000 strong by the midterms simply by staging high-profile immigration enforcement operations anywhere in blue cities on Election Day. The intimidation effect would be palpable.

Insurrection Act

Should all other options for election-rigging appear unavailing by 2026, Trump will have one final card to play: declaring a national emergency and invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to delay or even suspend the elections. The act provides an exception to the prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act, and as Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department will no doubt argue, all other federal statutes.

Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests, and again this past June in response to protests in Los Angeles. Never in American history has the act been invoked to disrupt an election. But if Trump feels sufficiently threatened by a potential loss of power, there is little reason to believe he would not choose to become the first. Nor could we count on the Supreme Court to try to stop him.

In the end, as always, the fate of the American experiment with democracy will depend not on our institutions, but on our collective will to preserve it at the ballot box and beyond. Each of us has an obligation to spread the word and peacefully resist in whatever way we can.