All posts tagged "elections"

Is this key service about to save Trump from a midterms mauling?

It’s not just a brand new year; it’s a midterm election year. And the stakes this coming November are mind-boggling, so, of course, Republicans are starting to do everything they can to rig the election.

Just a week ago, for example, Trump’s Postal Service changed the rules about getting your mail-in ballot postmarked so it’ll be counted. Instead of postmarking letters when they’re received, Post Offices will now postmark them when they get “processed,” which may happen days later.

In the 2024 presidential election, the feds estimated that around 104,000 mail-in ballots nationwide weren’t counted because they were postmarked late; with this change, the number this fall and for 2028 could be in the millions.

Meanwhile, Republican secretaries of state are enthusiastically purging voters from the rolls as they get ready for this fall. Remember, reporter and economist Greg Palast found, using official federal and state numbers, that in 2024:

“Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

“And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.”

You’d think we each have a right to vote, rather than voting being just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways.

Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled, for example, that we have a right to own a gun. As a result, before a state or local government can take away your gun, they must first go before a judge to prove the necessity of doing so.

But, Republicans on the Court tell us, Republican secretaries of state can eliminate your right to vote without even telling you; how does that make sense?

After all, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment.

The 19th Amendment references “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”

The 24th Amendment starts, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”

The 26th Amendment is all about, “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote…”

Additionally, the Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, says that Congress can make federal laws that overrule state laws restricting or regulating voting:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…”

And, sure enough, Congress did just that in 1993 when it passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes referred to as the Motor Voter Act because, among other things, it provided for the option of instant voter registration when a person gets a driver’s license in every state in the union.

Now known as 52 U.S. Code § 20501, this law of the land opens with:

The Congress finds that -

(1) the right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right

(2) it is the duty of the Federal, State, and local governments to promote the exercise of that right and

(3) discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups, including racial minorities.

And it wasn’t a particularly contentious law when it was passed: every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it (Rockefeller missed the vote) as did all but two Republicans.

So how did we get from the Constitution repeatedly asserting a “right to vote” and Congress passing a law that unambiguously proclaims that right, to the current state of affairs where states regularly and methodically deprive citizens of their “right” to vote and instead claim that it’s merely a privilege?

As I lay out in The Hidden History of the War On Voting, much of the blame rests with the most conservative and regressive of our federal institutions, the Supreme Court.

The first real test of the NVRA came in 2018, when Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, went on a voter-purge binge (that hit Black, student, and elderly neighborhoods particularly hard) and was sued by the A. Phillip Randolph Institute for violating Ohio citizens’ constitutional right to vote.

In a bitter 5-4 decision, the Republican majority ruled in Husted v Randolph that purging voters because they failed to return a junk-mail-like postcard was entirely legal.

It’s a practice that was called “caging” back when Karl Rove’s guy was allegedly doing it and it was illegal then but has, since that Court ruling, spread to pretty much every Republican-controlled state in the nation.

They’ll identify a part of the state that they consider particularly “prone to fraud“ — in other words, filled with a lot of Black and brown people — and mail postcards that look like junk mail into those precincts. When people failed to return them, they are automatically removed from the voting rolls. In most cases they don’t even know they’ve been purged until they show up to vote and are turned away.

Justice Samuel Alito’s decision was particularly biting, claiming that the arguments made by the citizens who’d lost their right to vote were “worse than superfluous” and their argument that they shouldn’t have to regularly check in with the Secretary of State’s office to stay on the voter rolls represented logic “no sensible person” could agree with.

Sensible or not, in his dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that around 4 percent of Americans move every year. Yet, he wrote:

“The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters — nearly 20 percent of its 8 million registered voters — as likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll....”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was even more scathing.

“Congress enacted the NVRA against the backdrop of substantial efforts by States to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters,” she wrote, “including programs that purged eligible voters from registration lists because they failed to vote in prior elections.

“The Court errs in ignoring this history and distorting the statutory text to arrive at a conclusion that not only is contrary to the plain language of the NVRA but also contradicts the essential purposes of the statute, ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.”

She then quoted the “right to vote” NVRA preamble noted above, and, essentially, accused the conservatives on the Court of helping Republicans in the states they controlled engage in massive racial and economic discrimination in the voting process.

“[This decision] entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate. … Our democracy rests on the ability of all individuals, regardless of race, income, or status, to exercise their right to vote.”

The “right to vote” took another hit when the State of Florida’s Supreme Court ordered a recount of the 2000 presidential election but five Republicans on the US Supreme Court ignored the 10th Amendment (“states’ rights”) and stopped the recount.

That was a good thing for George W. Bush because when the Florida vote was later recounted by a consortium of newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post, they found, as the Times noted on Nov. 12, 2001:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won...”

Nonetheless, Chief Justice William Rehnquist dismissed all the nation’s concerns about the Court flipping the 2000 presidential election in that totally partisan 5-4 decision, writing in his opinion:

“[T]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”

Which casts us in a pretty terrible light. As Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) points out:

“The constitutions of at least 135 nations — including our fellow North American countries, Canada and Mexico — explicitly guarantee citizens the right to vote…”

Instead, Raskin notes, because of five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court we’re in the company of countries like Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, and Pakistan.

Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda and they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to suppress the vote and thus rig the system.

That’s why they’ve already successfully passed previously-unthinkable major voter suppression laws in 18 states and have them pending in many more. They’ve changed the law in Georgia and several other states so that they can now throw out the votes from entire neighborhoods or cities where they don’t like the outcome; all they have to do is vaguely assert a “suspicion of fraud.”

Between the massive gerrymandering effort the GOP has launched nationwide and the Post Office’s changes that’ll hit Blue states with high levels of mail-in voting (some only have mail-in voting), the next few elections are going to be a real challenge for Democrats.

Additionally, as you’re reading these words, millions of voters are being purged from the rolls in Red states, particularly in Blue cities with significant minority populations.

As a result, this fall we’re going to have to show up in absolutely overwhelming numbers just to get squeaker victories in these now-heavily-rigged Republican-controlled states.

Unless enough of us stand up, speak up, and get active to regain control of Congress this fall and push legislation protecting American voters, Republicans will continue to eviscerate the voting right they’ve now turned into a privilege until it becomes completely meaningless.

And that will signal the end of America as we know it.

Republicans started this key battle in the states but they should beware the backlash

When the Indiana state Senate recently rejected a mid-cycle partisan redistricting of its congressional delegation, it was not only a rebuke to President Donald J. Trump. It also upheld a norm that has guided American democracy for more than a century.

Since the early 1900s, states have almost never redrawn congressional maps outside the decennial census, except to comply with court orders or to make minor technical corrections. That restraint has served an important stabilizing function.

History suggests that midcycle gerrymanders lead to greater division and polarization, and more volatility in the Congress. And the impact may hit closer to home, if Virginia voters uphold Democratic legislators’ current effort to reshape the state’s political maps.

Earlier fights

America has experienced mid-decade redistricting battles before, including a failed attempt in Virginia’s legislature by GOP leaders in 2013 but they have largely been confined to the 19th century. Between 1870 and 1896, mapmaking became a weapon in a relentless partisan war. And the federal courts largely ignored review of these plans.

During this period, “partisan gerrymandering” was indistinguishable from “racial gerrymandering,” as Black voters were a monolithic Republican voting bloc targeted by Democrats, primarily in the South, which was rebuilding after losing the Civil War and facing scores of newly franchised voters who had previously been enslaved. Democrats in Alabama redrew congressional maps in the mid-1870s to pack nearly all Black Belt counties into a single district to reduce Republican seats.

Ohio was the biggest culprit in the 19th-century redistricting wars. It had the third-largest congressional delegation at the time behind New York and Pennsylvania. As control of the state’s General Assembly flipped between Republicans and Democrats between 1876 and 1892, partisans in the legislature redrew maps seven times, creating massive swings in the makeup of their congressional delegation, and influencing which party had the majority in the U.S. House.

Like today, the impetus for these state actions came from national leaders. In 1878, the Democratic Speaker of the House implored Ohio and Missouri to act to save their majority. The two states complied, flipping nine seats to the Democrats and preserving their slim majority in the House.

Because the U.S. House was smaller then (293 members in 1878 versus 435 today), small swings in congressional delegations had greater impact. And, like today, small party majorities in the House made partisan gerrymanders attractive options to gain an advantage or fight the opposition.

In 1888, for example, Republicans in Pennsylvania responded to Ohio’s efforts by carving 21 pro-Republican districts out of 28 statewide, just enough to move the House into GOP hands.

The era was marked by shifting majorities, rapidly redrawn maps, and sudden swings in the size and orientation of state delegations. There were fewer states, no “one person, one vote” standard, no independent commissions and virtually no judicial review. Redistricting was a political free-for-all. Party leaders gradually concluded that midcycle redistricting was creating too much chaos, and their numbers dramatically decreased after 1896.

For more than a century, we believed we had left this chaos behind.

Why Texas matters

Apart from Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005, recent mid-cycle revisions have been rare and used mainly to correct errors or comply with court orders.

The 2025 Texas mid-cycle gerrymander marks a return to this earlier era and has opened a new front in our partisan conflict. Conservative legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina quickly joined this Trump-supported effort to influence the midterms by passing new maps.

Democrats felt they had no option and moved forward with their own plans. California voters have now authorized a new Democratically flavored map for 2026, and Virginia Democratic state legislators proclaim their desire to create a 10-1 Democratic congressional majority in a state where Republicans received 42.2 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election. New York and Illinois may soon follow.

States race to outmaneuver rivals, each pushing the envelope of partisan advantage. The redistricting process risks becoming a rolling, perpetual conflict rather than a once-a-decade recalibration.

Supreme Court retreat

The Supreme Court’s role is central to this shift. The court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has been eroding 50 years of federal court redistricting oversight since landmark cases like Baker v. Carr (1962), which established the “one person, one vote” principle and forced states to draw districts of equal population size.

In LULAC v. Perry (2005), the Court upheld the practice of mid-decade redistricting for partisan purposes. But its most significant decision was Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), where the Supreme Court held that federal courts should not review partisan gerrymanders, defining such disputes as “political questions.” And, in the recent Texas case, the majority ignored evidence that race was considered by the legislators and upheld the map as a “purely partisan” action — thereby shielding it from federal scrutiny.

Racial gerrymandering remains reviewable under Shaw v. Reno (1993), but the pending case of Louisiana v. Callais could restrict that avenue as well. The erosion of federal oversight returns primary authority to the states — just as in the 19th century.

The gamble

History shows hyper-partisan maps can backfire. In the 1880s and 90s, parties would gain power in state legislatures and proceed to draw new maps with small margins for error. Missouri Democrats in 1892 engineered a 13–2 partisan advantage in its delegation — only to lose eight seats two years later when the national tides shifted and the Republican landslide brought GOP control of the U.S. House.

Texas may face similar risks. The state’s new map relies heavily on 2024 voting patterns. By 2026, an anti-Trump backlash coupled with demographic shifts — especially among Hispanic voters — could make several engineered “safe” seats unexpectedly competitive.

Barriers exist in other states as well. California has provided itself some protection against court challenges because its map enjoys the imprimatur of a constitutional amendment approved by the voters.

Virginia legislators are trying to do the same but will need to convince voters to approve a constitutional amendment before new maps are adopted.

Missouri’s plans are now threatened by a 300,000-signature petition drive that mayplace the GOP’s new maps directly before the public for an up-or-down vote. Expect court challenges to these maps to include arguments they are too late in the cycle to be implemented, a claim that the Supreme Court has found appealing in the past.

Power in the states

As the U.S. Supreme Court withdraws from oversight, state laws and constitutions grow more significant. The problem is that every state has its own constitution, laws and precedents. Today, 11 states restrict mid-decade redistricting, including Colorado, where its Supreme Court struck down a 2003 Republican attempt to redraw congressional districts after the party gained control of the legislature. Several other states permit challenges to partisan gerrymanders.

In 2022, the Alaska Supreme Court invalidated two state senate districts as constitutional violations of equal protection.
Michigan and Wisconsin courts have historically shown willingness to engage such claims.
Oregon and New York constitutions explicitly prohibit map-drawing that favors or disfavors parties or incumbents.
Courts in New Mexico and Kentucky acknowledge a willingness to evaluate partisan-gerrymander claims, even as they have not yet overturned them.
State supreme courts in North Carolina and Ohio struck down partisan gerrymanders, only to reverse themselves after political turnover on the bench.

Yet uniformity remains elusive. Courts in Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina presently embrace the U.S. Supreme Court’s view that partisan gerrymanders are “political questions” better left to legislatures. And the composition of state Supreme Courts can change dramatically, and with it, rulings on the constitutionality of partisan maps. This patchwork ensures that challenges will succeed in some states but not others, deepening an already troubling trend toward national division.

A nation dividing itself

Texas did merely not redraw its congressional lines. It revived an old practice at precisely the moment when federal oversight is diminishing and partisan stakes are growing. The result is a redistricting system that increasingly resembles the volatile 19th-century environment — only now with a larger Congress, more diverse electorate, sophisticated data tools and far more at stake.

If this trend continues, redistricting will shift from a decennial process to a continuous political battlefield, intensifying division among the states and accelerating the geographic, political and cultural split already reshaping the nation.

David J. Toscano is a practicing attorney in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he formerly served as Mayor. He also served fourteen years in the Virginia House of Delegates, including seven as Democratic Leader. He is the author of "Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives," and "Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020," and writes a column called “Fights of Our Lives” at https://deltoscano.substack.com/

Red state shows Trump may get the message enough is enough in 2026

It’s almost impossible to fathom the extent of the fall of democracy in our nation in one year — but 2025 indeed saw an assault on our freedoms across the board from the most authoritarian president and administration in recent history. Unfortunately, those same tendencies have trickled down through various state governments as well, and Montana is no exception.

But take heart, fellow citizens, while we were numbed by the shock and awe attack on our institutions, laws, policies, and liberties, there are significant signs that the people and the courts are realizing we must fight back and demand adherence to the law, the Constitution, and the tenets of humane treatment for our people and the environment.

In that regard, the new year opens with a tremendous court victory here in Montana that found the Department of Environmental Quality illegally approved a Big Sky area subdivision. The state’s approval of septic systems for eight lots in the Quarry 1 subdivision was challenged by Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, which contended the agency failed to fully analyze the likely impacts to the already impaired Gallatin River.

The ruling, which granted Waterkeeper summary judgment on their claims, found the state’s water quality regulatory agency “was arbitrary, capricious and unlawful and in violation of the Montana Constitution, MEPA [Montana Environmental Policy Act] and the WQA [Water Quality Act].”

The significance of the Court’s decision cannot be understated, since coming right behind Quarry 1 is another major subdivision, Quarry 2 — which will face many of the same problems. Namely, too close to the river, sitting on top of porous river gravels, and a very active downgradient layer of groundwater that ultimately carries pollutants and nutrients directly to the Gallatin River.

The “development at any cost” policies of Montana’s current administration are indeed coming with costs — and those costs affect us all in the loss of our clean and healthy environment, our incredible fisheries and wildlife legacy, and the destruction of our natural landscapes. As the impacts stack up, so do the court challenges — from gravel pits to subdivisions to mines as Montanans say “enough is enough.”

On the national scene, we are likewise seeing a rising and determined resistance to the destructive and divisive policies of the current administration. Once again, the challenges are arising across the nation as Americans realize the freedoms, liberties, and norms of governance we once took for granted must now be actively, fiercely, and continually defended.

The Supreme Court recently ruled the administration cannot send the National Guard into Chicago because the president lacks the legal authority to do so. Likewise, the administration’s policies are being challenged on a host of issues from the brutal and racist immigration raids to the lawless slaughter of those merely suspected of transporting drugs to undeclared wars and bombing sovereign nations without Congressional approval.

Despite the constant barrage of self-aggrandizing proclamations from the president, he is not everyone’s “favorite president.” Across the board, polls show more than six in 10 Americans do not approve of him, his administration, or his illegal policies and actions.

Make no mistake, 2026 is the year we must stand together and stand up to defy the intimidation of the press, attacks on free speech, and disregard for the law and Constitution.

Renowned actor George Clooney just rendered some sage advice to those who capitulated to Trump’s threats saying: “If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go f— yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country. That’s simply the truth.”

Indeed, it is — enough is enough.

George Ochenski is Montana's longest-running columnist and a longtime environmental activist, concerned with keeping Montana's natural beauty clean and safe. He writes from Helena and appears in the Daily Montanan weekly.

Ten things you can do to beat Trump this year

Trump 2.0’s second year may be even worse than the first. That’s because Donald Trump, his sycophants, and the billionaires behind him know that with the coming midterm elections, 2026 could be their last unconstrained chance to suppress democracy and siphon off America’s wealth for themselves.

So, what can you do? Here are the 10 most important actions you can take in 2026:

1. Protect vulnerable immigrant communities

This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE accelerates its brutal roundups, detentions, and deportations, many hardworking and longstanding members of our communities and their families are endangered and understandably frightened.

ICE is arresting immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, health care sites, shelters, and relief centers — thereby deterring families from sending their kids to school or getting help they need, and threatening the health and well-being of entire communities.

What can you do? Join with others in a voluntary effort to alert vulnerable people in your community to where ICE is. Check in with local and state officials to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, courts, and shelters.

Meanwhile, order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards | Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.

2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community

Trump continues to make life far more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, changes in how such laws are enforced, and encouragement of bigotry and hate.

Work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.

3. Demand action from your Democratic and Independent leaders

Senators must block Trump nominations, require quorum calls, object to unanimous consent, and keep the public aware of the terrible things Trump and his regime are doing. Urge your Democratic and Independent House members to be loud and vocal, to cause good trouble, and to vote against all Republican initiatives.

Tiny Republican margins in both chambers give Democrats and Independents enormous power, if they stick together. Make sure your Democratic and Independent members of Congress know you’re counting on them to do so. [The phone number of the Capitol switchboard operator is (202) 224-3121.]

4. Help Democrats and Independents take back Congress

This is crucial. Compliant, corrupt, and cowardly Republicans in the House and Senate have enabled Trump and the people around him — Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and JD Vance — to harm tens of millions of people. It’s vitally important that they’re booted out when the midterms are held in November and that they become the minority starting in January 2027.

Watch for open seats or retirements in close districts, using sites like GovTrack.us and Cook Political Report.

A good canvassing app for organizing is Reach.vote (also see here), providing means for letting supporters engage their personal networks via text/calls from their phones.

To connect with your local Indivisible group, start by visiting the Indivisible website to use their group map and find chapters in your congressional district, then find local events and actions on Mobilize.

5. Make the 250th Anniversary of America about our duties to the Constitution and the world

Trump and his sycophants want to make the 250th about loyalty to Trump and to white Christian nationalism.

Don’t let them. Say it loudly and clearly: America’s challenge isn’t that we’re losing our whiteness or dominant religion or that too many foreigners are coming here. Our real challenge is preserving the ideals of democracy, the rule of law, equal justice, voting rights and civil rights, and social justice.

The 250th will be an opportunity for us to emphasize that “patriotism” has little to do with flag salutes or national anthems; it’s about what we owe one another: taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping the nation going. Paying taxes rather than lobbying for lower taxes, refraining from large political contributions that corrupt democracy, blowing the whistle on abuses of power, volunteering time and energy to improving our communities and rebuilding our democracy.

6. Join with others to take progressive initiatives

Local and state governments retain significant power. Join groups moving your city or state forward on climate change, human rights, voting rights, and counteracting the power of large corporations, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level.

Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders. Again, Indivisible is a good source of information; you can find your nearest Indivisible group here.

7. Demonstrate against Trump’s tyranny

The two No Kings protests in 2025 were important — revealing the depth and breadth of the resistance across America, reassuring millions of Americans that they aren’t alone and aren’t crazy, encouraging millions more to join the resistance.

More than 7 million of us marched in the second No Kings protest on Oct. 18. It was enough to rattle Trump (who posted an AI-generated cartoon of himself defecating on the marchers). And it put us within reach of the 3.5 percent of a population researchers have found to be a precursor for overthrowing a tyrant.

This year, help make our protests even larger and their effects even greater.

8. Organize or participate in boycotts of companies enabling the Trump regime and/or treating workers like sh--

Never underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock.

What to boycott? Start with Elon Musk’s X, Tesla, and Starlink internet service. Also: Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks, and any companies that advertise on X or Fox News.

Support unions by joining picket lines, encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize, and boycotting anti-worker firms. Encourage union pension funds to divest stock in corporations that are enabling or encouraging the regime (especially Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Meta, and Amazon).

Here’s a good source.

9. Support groups litigating against Trump

In 2025, the district courts and courts of appeals held the line against many Trump initiatives. In 2026, they’re likely to be even more important. (You can track the federal cases against the Trump regime here.)

The best groups spearheading federal litigation deserve your support. They include these:

American Civil Liberties Union has brought numerous civil liberties cases against the Trump regime, including those related to public health and immigration policies.
Earthjustice has filed several lawsuits over environmental regulations and funding freezes.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics has been in the forefront of lawsuits against Trump for conflicts of interest, corruption, and ethical violations.
Natural Resources Defense Council has used litigation against Trump’s regressive climate policies.
Democracy Forward has mounted important legal challenges against Trump’s trampling of voting rights and the Constitution.
Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders seeking to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Public Citizen and Common Cause have challenged actions related to Trump’s moves against voting rights and equal opportunity.

10. Spread the truth

Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone repeating lies and Trump propaganda, including local media, contradict them with the truth.

Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, The Bulwark, More Perfect Union, Matt Stoller, and Mehdi Hasan.

And, of course, this Substack.

In addition to these 10 actions, please ALSO be sure to:

Take care of yourself and your loved ones

Don’t become so obsessed by what Trump and his sycophants are doing that you neglect your own well-being. It’s important that you take time for yourself, read a good book, or watch an absorbing TV series. See friends. Meditate. Take long walks. Find something to laugh at every day.

And hold your loved ones tight.

We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity. We need to stay healthy for this fight. We need to be fortified by those we care about. And we need to be there for those we love.

Keep the faith

Do not give up on America. Do not fall into the traps of cynicism and defeatism.

Remember, Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points, and even then it was a scant plurality rather than a majority. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker.

America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it — or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.

The forces of repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. We cannot allow them to.

We will never give up — not in 2026. Not in 2027 or 2028. Not ever.

We are winning. We will prevail.

Robert Reich is a emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

In 2026, this hardball GOP tactic will help us rebuild the Democratic Party and win

Earlier this week, I published an article about how Republicans have spent millions funding the Green Party since 2016 to bleed votes away from Democrats, and how useful idiots on the left have enthusiastically participated because they don’t understand the difference between a first-past-the-post versus a parliamentary electoral system.

The responses have been enlightening: there are still progressives who think the solution is to complain about the Democratic National Committee, trash people who point out these simple political realities, and promote Green and Working Families Party candidates even more aggressively to “scare” Democrats.

As if any of that would work.

The simple reality is that progressives shouldn’t just be fighting the hard right that’s captured the GOP: we should be learning from them. They had this come-to-Jesus moment back in 2008 when, to their shock and horror, America elected our first Black president.

Instead of just complaining, they got active and in just one short decade “conservative” activists completely took over the RNC, purged it of its “moderates,” and now are transforming America into something entirely new based on the models of Russia and Hungary.

I’m not suggesting that we should be learning from the GOP’s bizarro economics; we shouldn't be discovering their selfish morality, misogyny, or racism; or selling ourselves out to the world’s richest men and women.

But there is a vital lesson progressives must learn, which is how the far right took control of the Republican Party in the wake of that 2008 election and forced the entire conservative establishment to lurch so far to the right that they’ve even dumped people like Liz Cheney and George W. Bush.

If progressives hope to have any shot at transforming today’s Democratic Party, kicking out the corporate sellout Democrats and replacing them with real-deal progressives, then we need to get to work right now to do exactly what the Tea Party successfully did a decade and a half ago to take power within the GOP and then nationally.

And it starts in our own backyards.

Let me introduce you to the now-defunct Concord Project, a right-wing organization that, in 2009, was in charge of the Tea Party taking over the GOP.

The Concord Project expanded their get-out-the-vote strategy beyond just traditional phone banking, canvassing, and putting up “vote Republican” signs. Instead, they decided to infiltrate local politics by encouraging Tea Partiers and hard right conservatives more generally to become “Precinct Committee Members.”

Here’s their pitch in their own words from one of their Obama-era YouTube training videos:

“What’s the most powerful political office in the world? It is not the President of the United States. It’s Precinct Committeeman.”

So why is a Precinct Committeeman (or person) so important?

“First, because precinct committeemen and only precinct committeemen get to elect the leaders of the political parties; if you want to elect the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country, then you have to become a precinct committeeman.”

As in the oldest and most basic governing reality in a republic: political power flows up from the bottom.

It starts with local Precinct Committeemen and women — people who are either appointed or win local elections with very few votes at stake, in some cases only 10 or 20 votes — to gain positions that pretty much anyone can hold but which wield enormous power. (Typically they’re voluntary, but in some states or cities they even carry a small salary.)

It’s Precinct Committee Persons who elect district, county, and state party officials and delegates, who choose primary nominees who then go on to hold elected office, and who draft a party's platform.

They’re also generally the first people elected officials meet with when they come back into the district. And those officials listen carefully to what Precinct Committee persons have to say. As a result, they’re massively more influential than average citizens.

So, the Concord folks told their people, if far right Tea Partiers moved in and took over Precinct Committee seats then they’d also be able to nominate a slew of Tea Partiers to hold higher offices within the Republican Party primaries.

And those Tea Party Republican Party primary candidates would then be winnowed down in the primary to one Tea Party Republican to run against the Democrat in the general election. This way, Tea Partiers would end up dominating the GOP.

That was their pitch: take over the Republican Party from the inside, from the bottom up. And it worked.

Control the primaries — as the Precinct Committee Members do — and you control the ultimate candidate, the election, and ultimately the nation, as we’ve seen repeatedly since the Tea Party era.

This is from a video they posted in January of 2010, with the same Concord Project Representative encouraging people in the Tea Party to do exactly what I just described:

“This video is for all the people out there in the Tea Party movement, the 9/12ers, just good decent people who are really fearful of what’s going on in the country and want to do something to fix things and they’re not sure what to do. Well, I’ve got a solution for you. The best way to ensure that conservatives win that all-important primary election is to become a real ball player in the ball game of politics. And that ball game is called party politics.

“And this is a secret, they don’t want the party establishments, any incumbents don’t want you to know about this and that’s why I’m telling you about it. Only precinct committeemen get to vote for, to elect party leaders. Only precinct committeemen can vote to endorse candidates.”

Again, that was in 2010, 11 months before that November’s elections.

In 2008, half of the Republican Party’s Precinct Committeemen positions around the country were vacant.

But by 2011, motivated by the efforts of the Concord Project, the Tea Party (which has now mostly morphed into MAGA) had swept in to fill the gaps: they’d filled up the Republican Party and there were no empty GOP precinct committee-person seats anywhere in the country.

And we saw the results of that Precinct Committee takeover first with big Republican victories in 2012 and most recently in the 2024 election: the GOP is now being driven largely from the bottom up by hard-core rightwing activists who’ve taken over the party and are also seizing control of school boards and other local offices.

In 2012, just three years after this campaign to get movement conservatives into the inner workings of the GOP, Tea Party candidates got onto nearly every ballot around the country and Tea Partiers picked up 87 new seats in the US House of Representatives and nine new seats in the Senate.

And even though the Tea Party didn’t then control a majority within the GOP in Congress like MAGA does now, they did control the Republican Party’s platform because they had control of the Precinct Committees.

Progressives need to do the same thing, only within the Democratic Party.

The rules about how to become a Precinct Committee Person vary from state to state, so step one is to show up at your local Democratic Party, sign up, and find out who the players are and what the rules are.

Even the names of these positions vary, as former Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper notes on his excellent Substack newsletter Pepperspectives:

“In Cincinnati, we call them ‘precinct executives.’ Elsewhere, they are called ‘committeemen’ or ‘committeewomen.’ In other places, ‘ward chairs.’ Whatever they’re called, they are the basic unit of each city or county party structure in the country.”

If we’ve learned one thing over the last few years, it’s that the Democratic Party shifted to the corporate/neoliberal “center” with Clinton and Obama and its establishment has been highly resistant to moving back to its FDR roots by adopting real progressive change or elevating genuine progressives (like AOC) to senior/leadership positions.

And as we see right now in Trump and his parade of horribles, this unwillingness to stand up and fight is leading to the dismantling of programs that progressives fought so hard for over the entire last century.

We’ve been too often losing these fights, and to win them takes more than union protests in Wisconsin, No Kings marches, or even voting, although those are all important.

But to really take power, like the Tea Party did in three short years, it will take an infiltration of the Democratic Party itself through claiming Precinct Committee positions, as well as simply showing up regularly at the meetings.

If this year, starting now, we execute the same strategy the Tea Party did when the billionaires funding it first set out to take over the GOP, then we can move the Democratic Party back to its progressive roots and finally see the progressive reforms — and election victories — that we’ve been fighting for.

So, in response to the skeptics and cynics who responded to my article yesterday, I’d add the favorite line of my dear friend the late talkshow host Joe Madison. Whenever people would call into his SiriusXM show to complain about Democrats, he’d always say: “So, what are you going to do about it?”

We have 11 months before the next national elections and your mission is to show up at your local Democratic Party headquarters and begin the infiltration.

Good luck and get started!

Republicans are folding their beach chairs before a massive blue wave crashes

By Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University.

The midterm elections for Congress won’t take place until November, but already a record number of members have declared their intention not to run — 43 in the House, plus 10 senators. Perhaps the most high-profile person to depart, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), announced her intention to resign from Congress entirely on Jan. 5 – a full year before her term was set to expire.

There are political dynamics that explain this rush to the exits, including frustrations with gridlock and President Donald Trump’s lackluster approval ratings, which could hurt Republicans at the ballot box.

Rather than get swept away by a prospective “blue wave” favoring Democrats — or possibly daunted by the monumental effort it would take to survive — many Republicans have decided to fold up the beach chair and head home before the wave crashes.

As of now, two dozen Republican House members have either resigned or announced their intent to not run for reelection. With only two exceptions — Republicans in 2018 and 2020 — this is more departures from either party at this point in the election calendar than any other cycle over the past 20 years.

There is also growing concern within the House Republican caucus that Greene is a canary in the coal mine and that multiple resignations will follow.

As a political scientist who studies Congress and politicians’ reelection strategies, I’m not surprised to see many House members leaving ahead of what’s shaping up to be a difficult midterm for the GOP. Still, the sheer numbers of people not running tells us something about broader dissatisfaction with Washington.

Why do members leave Congress?

Many planned departures are true retirements involving older and more experienced members.

For example, 78-year-old Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler is retiring after 34 years, following mounting pressure from upstart challengers and a growing consensus among Democrats that it’s time for older politicians to step aside. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker who will turn 86 in March, is also retiring.

Sometimes, members of Congress depart for the same reasons other workers might leave any job. Like many Americans, members of Congress might find something more attractive elsewhere. Retiring members are attractive hires for lobbying firms and corporations, thanks to their insider knowledge and connections within the institution. These firms usually offer much higher salaries than members are used to in Congress, which may explain why more than half of all living former members are lobbyists of some kind.

Other members remain ambitious for elective office and decide to use their position in Congress as a springboard for another position. Members of the House regularly retire to run for a Senate seat, such as, in this cycle, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). Others run for executive offices, including governor, such as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).

But some are leaving Congress due to growing frustration with the job and an inability to get things done. Specifically, many retiring members cite growing dysfunction within their own party, or in Congress as a whole, as the reason they’re moving on.

In a statement announcing his departure in June, Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC), mused that “between spending another six years navigating the political theater and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with my family,” it was “not a hard choice” to leave the Senate.

What’s unique about 2026?

In addition, there are a few other factors that can help explain why so many Republicans in particular are heading for the exits leading up to 2026.

The shifting of boundaries that has come with the mid-decade redistricting process in several states this year has scrambled members’ priorities. Unfamiliar districts can drive incumbents to early retirement by severing their connection with well-established constituencies.

In Texas, six Republicans and three Democrats — nearly a quarter of the state’s entire House delegation — are either retiring or running for other offices, due in part to that state’s new gerrymander for 2026.

All decisions about retirement and reelection are sifted through the filter of electoral and partisan considerations. A phenomenon called “thermostatic politics” predicts that parties currently in power, particularly in the White House, tend to face a backlash from voters in the following election. In other words, the president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterms.

In 2006 and 2018, for example, Republican members of Congress were weighed down by the reputations of unpopular Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Trump. Republicans had arguably even greater success in midterm elections during Barack Obama’s presidency.

Currently, 2026 looks like it will present a poor national environment for Republicans. Trump remains highly unpopular, according to polls, and Democrats are opening up a consistent lead in the “generic ballot” question, which asks respondents which party they intend to support in the 2026 midterms without reference to individual candidates.

Democrats have already been overperforming in special elections, as well as the general election in November in states such as New Jersey and Virginia, which held elections for governor. Democrats are on average running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris’ performance in the 2024 election.

As a result, even Republicans in districts thought to be safe for their party may see themselves in enough potential danger to abandon the fight in advance.

Retirement vs resignation

One final, unique aspect of this election cycle with major consequences is not an electoral but an institutional one.

House conservatives are quietly revolting against Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership style. That members may be frustrated enough not just to retire but resign in advance, leaving their seats temporarily vacant, is a notable sign of dysfunction in the U.S. House.

This also could have a major impact on policy, given how slim the Republicans’ majority in the lower chamber is already. Whatever the outcome of the midterms in November, these departures clearly matter in Washington and offer important signals about the chaos in Congress.

Not all billionaires are bad — here's how the good ones can bring down Trump

There are reportedly about 900 billionaires (probably more) in the US. About 5 percent can be described as enlightened people who know the importance of contributing to organizations that advance justice. They are also appalled by the Trump dictatorship and are not placated simply because he gave them tax cuts, deregulation, and maybe corporate welfare. On their minds is the well-being and freedoms of millions of their fellow Americans, whose lives are being cruelly and viciously wrecked by President Donald Trump, as he destroys the federal civil service.

I’ve talked with some of these very rich people (VRP) and heard them say they want to get engaged, so appalled are they by the lawless, egomaniacal, self-enriching, violent plutocrat Trump and his dump. Trump and COMPANY are only going to get MUCH WORSE. What follows are some suggestions on how the VRPs can get underway.

1. Sponsor a massive day of protest demanding the impeachment or resignation of Tyrant Trump.

More will turn out than did the 7 million Americans marching in hundreds of communities under the “No Kings” banner. A growing majority of people already want this to happen.

With skilled management and verification, these marchers can be asked to take out their iPhones and contribute what they can to create strong local groups that resist Trump’s ongoing wreckage of our basic social safety net; our regulatory health, safety, and economic protections; and our voting rights against Trumpian planned interference in the 2026 elections. Even with just an average of a $10 contribution, at least $100 million would be raised on the protest day to give Americans daily organized power to focus on the White House’s outlawry, violent actions, and thievery. People organizing where they live, work, and raise their families is the first step to reclaiming our democracy.

2. Sponsor a group to counter Trump’s shattering of the Internal Revenue Service.

At the IRS, Trump has fired thousands of staff responding to calls by middle-class taxpayers, and hundreds of highly skilled accountants and lawyers working on many cases of giant tax evasions by big corporations and the super rich. Many of these cases have been dropped, and the already starved IRS budget was cut sharply by the Trumpsters.

This project can be ably assisted by seven outspoken former IRS directors from both parties who have already testified and written open letters warning that the shoe will heavily drop next year, with tens of billions of uncollected dollars adding to the federal deficit and, worse, longer delays for taxpayers’ inquiries. (See, “More Tax Breaks For the Wealthy” by Jesse Drucker, New York Times, Nov. 10, 2025).

3. Take on the further shredding of our preparedness toward climate violence and 'not if, but when' pandemics.

(See, The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics by Dr. Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker). This should be an easy one to organize and fund with advocates by the VRP. Trump is boosting oil, gas, and coal (the sources of omnicidal greenhouse gases) while crazily doing whatever he can to depress or stop commercial solar energy and wind energy projects. The project would have the public health and scientific professions as well as the solar industry behind it.

4. Counter Trump's slurs — with slurs.

This project is bold because the VRP know they would be assailed by Tyrant Trump. But the case against his extortion of companies, law firms, and universities, forcing them to engage in bribery if they comply with his unlawful demands, is powerfully grounded. Trump — the Bully-in-Chief — likes to dish out the slander and libel, calling for the impeachment of any judge ruling against his misrule, and naming other critical law enforcers as “deranged,” “crazy,” “communist,” “crooked,” “low IQ,” and more. A drive to counter these slurs and hurl some back at Trump would drive this thin-skinned Führer to more self-immolating performances, further lowering his dropping polls.

5. A broad-ranging counterforce can cover the largest shutdown of federal agencies and programs in American history.

Vastly immobilized from their congressionally mandated missions are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Education, and the US Agency for International Development. The latter’s illegal abolition is already costing many lives lost overseas, endangering millions of children and adults who are without medicines, food supplements, shelter, and safe drinking water. All kinds of other mandated missions have been cut at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, NOAA (weather research and forecasting), US Department of Agriculture, assistance to people with disabilities, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, AmeriCorps, Medicaid, and food programs for tens of millions of Americans, and much more.

6. Corporate and plaintiff tort lawyers can address the slumber of state Bar Associations and the American Bar Association.

They are supposed to be the First Responders to the destruction of the Rule of Law and our Constitution by the Rule of Raw Power criminal attacks by the Trump regime. Recall Trump’s 2019 declaration, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President,” which he is exhibiting every day with his brazen, boasting serial violations and blatant racism.

Waking up the legal profession would receive support from both lawyers who see themselves as Republicans or Democrats. They just need jump-start leadership — as the lessons of reformist history demonstrate time and time again. (See our letter to the Bar Associations.)

7. Activate the grassroots to turf out this prostrate GOP-dominated Congress.

Contrary to their sworn vows to uphold the Constitution and the faithful execution of the laws, Congress is facilitating or enabling the deepening fascist state driven by the White House’s seizure of authority exclusively given to Congress by our Founding Fathers.

This project would activate the grassroots, which has been calling for strong action at Town Meetings nationwide. Such efforts need funds. The Super Rich are sitting on trillions of dollars of “dead money.” It only takes a few dozen of them to save the Republic with “live money” comprising a fraction of 1 percent of their assets. Most of them are looking over their shoulder to see who takes the first steps.

Who takes the first steps? Aristotle had the answer over 2,000 years ago. He said: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

In 2026, this is how we take back Congress and restore decency in DC

As we bid goodbye to 2025 — and all the thuggery, corruption, squalor, and cruelty it spewed — I want to thank you for standing up to it.

Thank you for your activism and your tenacity.

Thank you for not giving up hope, despite the daily horrors.

Thank you also for receiving my posts, sharing them, commenting on them, and becoming a member of this community.

My purpose in sending you at least one post a day (and sometimes more, with apologies to your inbox) has been, first, to assure you that you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.

You’ve received that assurance and run with it.

I’ve also wanted to fortify your resolve and strengthen your arguments.

You’ve excelled beyond my wildest imaginings.

My third goal has been to help you get through this nightmare without drowning in denial or despair.

You haven’t drowned. You’ve swum — sometimes against raging currents in your community and state — and you set an example for other swimmers.

One of the most important lessons of this horrendous year is that it’s been up to us — up to you and me and everyone we can reach — to stop this scourge.

Not with violence, but with good trouble.

Not just in rage at politicians who have been too willing to allow Donald Trump to tyrannize the country, but with the steadiness, stamina, and organization necessary to force them to respond to the people rather than to the tyrant or the billionaires behind him.

Not with anger at those of our fellow citizens who fell for Trump’s lies, but with an understanding that the reason those lies were seductive was because so many of our fellow citizens have been shafted by the system.

So, it has been up to us to contain this menace.

It will continue to be our responsibility.

Most of the people who in previous decades sought to justify their power by claiming they were the “leaders” of America — CEOs, Wall Street bankers, presidents of our major universities, heads of our giant media corporations, managers of the nation’s giant law firms, directors of our largest and most prestigious nonprofits — have lacked the courage to stand up to Trump and his tyranny.

Some have shamelessly sucked up to him — flattering him, presenting him gifts, enabling him, making excuses for him.

Their behavior should be a lasting reminder that we are the real leaders of America, we are the voices of democracy, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for — not them.

Your leadership this year has included:

Organizing and mobilizing for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City, Katie Wilson’s victory in Seattle, and gubernatorial and special election wins across America.

Participating in the largest demonstrations in American history.

Bombarding your members of Congress with telephone calls and letters. Attending their town halls and demanding answers.

Boycotting big corporations that are enabling this tyranny (Palantir, Tesla, Home Depot, Amazon) and shafting their workers (Starbucks, Walmart, Amazon).

Protecting the vulnerable in our communities. Letting them know when ICE is in their neighborhoods. Demanding that local officials not cooperate with tyranny. Organizing food banks and pantries.

And sharing these posts with your friends and colleagues so they have the facts, arguments, and analyses they need to effectively resist.

Despite this squalid year, our resistance is growing. Despite the loathsome person occupying the Oval Office, we will prevail.

In 2026 — if we work hard — we will take back Congress and restore some decency to our government.

I write and post every day because I believe in your values. In your thoughtfulness. In your determination to leave this nation and this world a better place than they were before Trump.

Thank you for helping preserve what’s good in America.

Onward.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Here's why this year's midterms will be chaotic, hopeful … and the most dangerous ever

There can be absolutely no doubt that the 2026 midterm elections will be the most chaotic, confusing, and potentially destabilizing elections the United States has ever experienced.

That may sound like a lunatic exaggeration but when you connect all the dots, it reveals itself to be more of a rational explanation.

What’s coming isn’t a single crisis, but a convergence of failures and alarming questions. There is a political storm brewing that combines redistricting madness, Republican infighting, questionable candidates, Donald Trump’s destabilizing presence, geopolitical uncertainty, and a technological leap in political manipulation for which voters are unprepared.

The confluence of these forces threatens to overwhelm the electorate and undermine trust in the democratic process itself. Only a fool would predict the outcome.

The mayhem begins with redistricting, upon which every midterm strategy rests. A Supreme Court decision effectively blessing Texas’s discriminatory congressional map has opened the door for states to redraw districts in nakedly partisan ways. Indiana said no to Trump but that doesn’t mean other red states won’t try. California has led blue states in responding.

With federal voting-rights enforcement largely gutted, red-state legislatures are freer than ever to marginalize Black and brown voters, using last-minute mapmaking trickery and other tactics to further marginalize them and stop them voting.

That uncertainty will bleed into Election Day itself. Voters may not know which district they live in, who represents them, let alone who is running or even what documentation they need until weeks, or days, before voting begins.

Add to that the likely presence of self-appointed “election monitors,” emboldened by Trump and his DOJ, hovering around polling places, and the conditions for confusion and intimidation are baked in.

Layered atop this is a Republican Party that controls the House, Senate, and White House, yet is visibly fracturing. Just months ago, Democrats were criticized for disunity. Now it’s the GOP entering 2026 divided, defensive, and rudderless, Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson extremely weak at best.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a MAGA firebrand, will soon be out of Congress following a break with Trump over issues including the Epstein files and cost-of-living pressures. That rupture was notable not because Greene suddenly became a moderate, but because it signaled rare dissent within MAGA ranks, driven by economic anxiety that will only intensify in deep-red districts this year. Greene may be revealed as a dissident savant.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), part of GOP House leadership, abruptly suspended her campaign for New York governor and announced she would not seek reelection to the House. She cited a protracted primary but if you look deeper, she might be taking her cues from Greene — and getting out of the way of a trainwreck.

Look at her very public criticism of Johnson. It underscored a broader problem: the GOP’s growing difficulty recruiting and retaining high-profile candidates in competitive races. Johnson is weaker than any speaker in recent history. While his boat sinks, his crew is fleeing. He elicits zero trust.

An endorsement from Trump can now be a liability. If a candidate tries to pull away, he will try to end their campaign and career. Increasingly, Republicans are deciding the safest course is to step aside altogether. Again, Greene is the bellwether.

Retirements are piling up, legislative gridlock is endemic, and frustration has grown so acute that House Republicans are resorting to discharge petitions against their own leadership, i.e. on the Epstein files and expiring Obamacare subsidies.

This is a party struggling to govern itself. The aftermath of the 2025 government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, only reinforced that perception. Republicans failed to deliver on promises to address rising health-care costs, opting instead for avoidance.

Johnson spent 2025 adjourning the House to sidestep difficult votes, further hollowing his fragile authority. When his speakership collapses — and it will — another messy leadership fight will unfold in full public view, reinforcing voters’ impression of a party incapable of governance.

Compounding it all is a GOP messaging vacuum. Democrats have largely unified around affordability and health care. All they need to do is stick to these issues. There’s no need to harp on Trump because voters are extremely dissatisfied with his autocratic crawl.

Republicans have no coherent narrative. Trump has repeatedly dismissed “affordability” — voters’ top concern — as a “Democratic hoax,” insisting elections will hinge on tax cuts in his so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that clearly favor the wealthy. A giant reckoning is coming.

Trump is attempting to claim credit for an economy that millions experience as failing them. As costs rise and wages lag, and jobs disappear, that disconnect has become politically toxic.

Hovering over everything is Trump himself — not just his politics but his health and stamina. Once seen as an inexhaustible force, he appears increasingly erratic. His public appearances are weak. He naps, openly. His messaging is disjointed and bizarre.

His approval ratings are in his proverbial golden toilet and will be flushed further down in 2026, particularly among independents and working-class voters who once supported his coalition.

That creates a dilemma for Republicans. Trump’s personality makes selective withdrawal unlikely. He is apt to insert himself into races where he is unwanted, turning local contests into referendums on himself, injecting volatility into already fragile campaigns.

Yet even all this dysfunction may be eclipsed by the biggest wild card of all: the political manipulation of artificial intelligence.

The MIT Technology Review recently issued a stark warning: the age of AI-crafted political persuasion is here. Campaigns and outside groups are deploying machine-generated messaging, tailored to individual voters.

Deepfake audio and video can fabricate candidate statements, spreading faster than fact-checkers can respond. AI chatbots can conduct conversations, at massive scale.

MIT suggests 2026 could be the first true “AI election,” in which voters are forced not only to decide whom they trust, but whether anything they see or hear is real. Most remain largely unaware of how pervasive and sophisticated these tools have become — a knowledge gap bad actors want to exploit.

Layer AI chaos atop shifting districts, unexpected resignations, leadership vacuums, Trump, and a Republican Party that can’t agree on what “affordability” even means, and you’re left with an electorate entering the voting booth with less clarity than at any point in modern history.

The midterms won’t just be messy. They’ll be confusing, illogical, at times openly sinister. They may also be the most consequential such elections the country has ever faced, which is precisely what makes this moment so dangerous.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Repeat after me: this progressive pipe dream only helps the GOP

Here we go again, only this time it appears to be the Working Families Party that’s fixing to help elect Republicans. They’re proudly proclaiming that by the 2028 presidential election they hope to have candidates on the ballot in 18 states. The party’s national director, rapper/musician Maurice “Moe” Mitchell, told the Guardian:

“Less and less (sic) people are identifying as being a Democrat or Republican. The brand of the Democratic and the Republican parties are underwater consistently. I don’t think there’s been a better and more right time for a third party to emerge in this country that speaks to the interest of everyday working people. I believe that our time has come.”

You’d think by now we would have learned that having progressives seize control of the Democratic Party is a hell of a lot more successful strategy for rebuilding our democracy and our middle class than running against it. In Florida in 2000, for example, Ralph Nader on the Green Party’s ticket got 97,488 votes, while George W. Bush “won” Florida — and thus the White House — by 537 votes.

It strains credulity to assert that the majority of Nader’s voters would have either voted for Bush or not voted at all, which is why when David Cobb ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2004, he explicitly told people in swing states like Florida not to vote for him but to cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate John Kerry instead.

Vanity candidate Jill Stein had no such moral compunction with her Green Party candidacy in 2016. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin provided Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton that year, and, in each of those states, Stein pulled more votes than Trump’s margin.

(In Michigan she got 51,463 votes andTrump won by 10,704; in Pennsylvania she won 49,678 versus Trump’s margin of 46,765; and in Wisconsin Stein carried 31,006 votes but Trump only won by 22,177.)

In other words, had progressives not voted for Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000, Al Gore would have become president, and we never would have been lied into two illegal wars, given trillions in tax breaks to billionaires, or gotten John Roberts and Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.

Had progressives in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin not voted for Jill Stein in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have become president and America would have been spared the trauma of 500,000 unnecessary Covid deaths; Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch on the Court; another $5 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires; and the ongoing DOGE assault to our democracy.

America would be a very, very different country with a progressive Supreme Court and an expansion, rather than the destruction, of New Deal and Great Society programs that built and sustained the middle class. In other words, ironically, we’d be a lot closer to the goals of the Green Party today if they’d never run a presidential candidate in those elections.

This is not to say the Democratic Party is perfect. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is now hiding an autopsy of the 2024 election, there are still on-the-take Democrats in the neoliberal Problem Solvers’ Caucus and taking piles of cash from AIPAC and corporate PACs, and in many states genuine progressives in the mold of FDR and LBJ are still viewed by the party’s bosses with a jaundiced eye.

But America — with our 250-year-old operating system — is one of only a handful of democracies worldwide with first-past-the-post (FPTP) winner-take-all election systems, which pretty much force a nation into a two-party system. Under those circumstances, a third party will always pull votes (and, thus, victories) away from the main party it’s most closely aligned with philosophically.

This is why Republican donors have historically been so enthusiastic about supporting the Green Party and Democratic donors occasionally pitch in for the Libertarians.

Reporting from AP, CBS, and others document a broad 2024 GOP-linked network that helped Stein and Cornel West with ballot access and legal support in swing states including Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and others, often using Republican-aligned lawyers and consultants who have also worked for Donald Trump or state GOP organizations.

In 2016, so many Republican donors and politicians had helped fund Stein’s effort that the federal election commission forced her to return a fraction of it, almost a quarter-million dollars.

Most likely they’re now courting the Working Families Party, following Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular win running on both the Democratic and Working Families tickets in New York (Mamdani voted for himself on the Working Families ballot.)

But while the synergy of Working Families and Democrats worked in New York, that was only because it’s one of a tiny handful of states (including Oregon, Mississippi, Connecticut, and Vermont) that has fusion voting or its equivalent, allowing a single candidate to appear on the ballot under multiple parties.

Whether New Yorkers voted for Mamdani on the Democratic ticket or the line for the Working Families Party, the result was the same: a vote for Mamdani.

Anywhere else in the country, though, it would have been a vote drawn away from the Democratic Party because when the Founders put our system of voting together our form of democracy was a new thing. Voting was a novel experiment, by and large, after Europe had been ruled for almost two millennia by kings and queens.

It wasn’t until the year the Civil War started, 1861, that British philosopher John Stuart Mill published a how-to manual for multi-party “parliamentary democracies” in his book Considerations On Representative Government.

It was so widely distributed and read that nearly all of the world’s democracies today — every one of them countries that became a democracy after the late 1860s — use variations on Mill’s proportional representation parliamentary system.

In Mill’s system, if a political party gets, say, 12 percent of the vote then they also get 12 percent of the seats in that country’s congress or parliament. A party that pulls 34 percent of the vote gets 34 percent of the seats, and so on.

The result is a plethora of parties representing a broad range of perspectives and priorities, all able to participate in the daily governance of their nation. Nobody gets shut out.

Governing becomes an exercise in coalition building, and nobody is excluded. If you want to get something done politically, you have to pull together a coalition of parties to agree with your policy.

Most European countries, for example, have political parties represented in their parliaments that range from the far left to the extreme right, with many across the spectrum of the middle. There’s even room for single issue parties; for example, several in Europe focus almost exclusively on the environment or immigration.

The result is typically an honest and wide-ranging discussion across society about the topics of the day, rather than a stilted debate among only two parties.

It’s how the Greens became part of today’s governing coalition in Germany, for example, and are able to influence the energy future of that nation. And because of that political diversity in the debates, the decisions made tend to be reasonably progressive: look at the politics and lifestyles in most European nations.

In our system, though, if a party gets 12 percent of the vote — or anything short of 50 percent plus one — they get nothing. Whoever gets 50-percent-plus-one wins everything and everybody else gets nothing, which is why we always end up with two parties battling for the higher end of that 50/50 teeter-totter.

Australia and New Zealand have diminished the damage third parties can do to the main, established parties, by using a voting system called ranked choice voting. In a system like that I could have voted for Nader as my first choice in 2000, with Gore as my second choice. When it becomes apparent that Nader isn’t going to make it, my first choice is discarded by the system and my vote for Gore becomes the one that gets counted.

Over 300 communities in America are now using ranked choice voting (including my hometown of Portland, Oregon) and it works great. Moving from FPTP to proportional representation at the federal level would require amending the Constitution, though, so that’s not going to happen any day soon: ranked choice voting is a nearly-as-good alternative.

At the national level, though, the best way to solve the problem of some Democratic politicians not being as progressive as we’d like is to get active by joining the Democratic Party and becoming a force for positive change within it. To stand up for public office and actually elect more progressives to office, something that can only be done within the Democratic Party.

To not “throw away your vote,” but to help rebuild the party that brought America Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, Medicare, Medicaid, free college, regulatory agencies that defend and protect the environment and working class people, support for people in poverty, the end of legal apartheid, and that built the world’s first real middle class.

Yes, there are corrupt and bought-off politicians within the Democratic Party. Ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court fully legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision and its predecessors, there have been more than a few Democrats who have enthusiastically put their hands out. The most obvious and cynical ones call themselves corporate “Problem Solvers” or, to a lesser extent, the neoliberal “New Democrats.”

But voting for a third-party candidate and thus handing elections to Republicans won’t solve that problem: if anything it will make it worse, because the entire GOP has committed itself to being on the take and, as we saw with Nader and Stein, third-party candidacies often simply hand more power to the GOP.

Try to find, for example, even one Republican who isn’t benefiting from the billions in oil dollars that have flowed through the Koch network over the years and is thus willing to do something about climate change. Republican governance and their fealty to the fossil fuel industry is literally destroying our planet.

This is why real progressives like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Zohran Mamdani, and Pramila Jayapal stay and work within the Democratic Party. For progressives to take over the country, they know we must first take over the DNC. (Yes, Bernie is an independent and Zohran prefers the Working Families party, but both ran as Democrats.)

In other words, every one of us should be working to get inside the Democratic Party and take it over! It’s what hard-core conservatives did with the GOP over the past 20 years, starting with the Tea Party and the MAGA movements, and it’s what progressives must do today with the Democratic Party.

No third-party candidate has ever won the White House, and none ever will until we have nationwide ranked choice voting. And this is not a small or incidental issue: the stakes for 2028 may well include the continued survival of America as a democratic republic.

So, the next time somebody tells you how they’re going to only vote for “the best candidate,” you may want to give them this little Civics 101 lesson, along with the phone number, website, or email address for their local Democratic Party. And get behind the movement to bring ranked choice voting to national elections.

And, hopefully, the Working Families Party folks will turn down all the Republican money that will be dangled in front of them and choose not to run candidates in places where there isn’t either fusion voting or instant runoff voting.

We can’t afford any more George W. Bush’s or Donald Trump’s, who were both brought to us, in part, by Democratic-leaning voters thinking they were doing the right thing by voting for third party candidates.