Recap of this week in the revolution: Protesters say no to Trump takeover. Texas prepared to vote on redistricting plan while Trump's erratic behavior confuses MAGA bots. Trump regime takes over D.C. and scores companies on their fealty. Join the revolution by turning your community into a Sanctuary Community.
The good...
Image by Andy Thrasher from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal Public Domain dedication.
Across the country, people gathered together to protest the Trump regime's plans to redraw the Texas congressional maps mid-decade in order to give Republicans more representatives in Congress.
While the protests were centered around the Texas redistricting plan, 34 states had planned protests to send the message that the people of the United States of America are not going to stand for this kind of behavior.
The bad...
Left: Both parties equally represented in each district. Right: 3/4 districts strongly favor party 1
The Democrats who fled Texas to stop the redistricting vote have signaled that they are prepared to end their standoff and return to Texas if California moves forward with its plans to counter the new Republican gains in Congress.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a special session of the Texas House to force the vote on the redistricting issue when they return.
It is inevitable that the Texas Democrats have to return to Texas and that the Republican majority will eventually pass the redistricting bill. But the Democrats' stand-off brought national attention to the way Texas Republicans were prostrating themselves to their king.
The controversy has kicked off a nationwide scramble to redraw congressional districts in at least 8 states.
The Trump regime has been utilizing AI slop to prop up its leader for a long time now. NBC news is now reporting on a previously-undescribed network of bot accounts on X-Twitter that automatically post positive messages in response to members of the regime.
At this time, it is unclear who is responsible for this network of bots. This bot army was active during the 2024 election cycle, pushing false praises of Trump's candidacy. The network is now praising key officials in the Trump regime.
Gone are the days of paying for workers in a troll-farm in Russia to falsely imply approval of even the most deplorable of people. Now, we can train custom Large Language Models to do this automatically, 24x7.
On the bright side...as the right-wing extremists argue over the Epstein files, the bots are getting confused and posting obviously-conflicting statements just minutes or hours apart. So actually, this AI slop is doing a pretty good job of mimicking the real-life slop currently running our country.
The ugly...
Police car ("Barricade") from the 2007 Transformers movie with the slogan "to punish and enslave" instead of the traditional "to protect and serve." If only the Trump regime were as honest as the Decepticons.
Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in Washington D.C. this week, and is using the declaration as an excuse to take over the D.C. police force and send more National Guards into our city streets.
While Donny 2-Dolls is claiming that he is taking control of the city's police force in order to fight crime. The problem is that, as of last year, D.C. was reporting violent crime at a 30-year low. The Trump regime has never let the truth stand in the way of their takeover of this country, and this latest move proves that they aren't about to start now.
The emergency powers that allow him to take control of the D.C. police are only valid for 30 days unless Congress authorizes an extension. But given how eagerly the Republican majority line up to lick their king's boots, it seems likely that his order will be extended indefinitely. This is the führer's vision of America under his regime:
"When you walk down the street, you're going to see police or you're going to see FBI agents. We're going to have a lot of agents on the street. You're going to have a lot of, essentially military. And we will bring in the military if it's needed."
Today, he's talking about Washington D.C. But you can be sure that he wants this for every city in every state in what used to be a free country.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay.
The Trump regime is rating companies based on their loyalty to Donny 2-Dolls and using the results to decide how they want to interfere in their operations: Using the power of the federal government to reward high-scoring companies and punish low-scoring ones.
All fascists keep a list of friends and enemies for this purpose, and Trump is no exception.
What can you do this week?
Image by 🆓 Use at your Ease 👌🏼 from Pixabay.
The Trump regime is targeting sanctuary cities, snatching innocent people off the streets and disappearing them to concentration camps with no way to contact their friends, family, or legal representatives.
Communities around the country are responding by organizing themselves as "Sanctuary Communities," providing assistance to anyone who is threatened by Trump's Gestapo. Sanctuary communities monitor and document ICE raids, establish early-warning systems for ICE activity, witness and record arrests and disappearances and provide this information to the media, voice their concerns about local law enforcement collusion with ICE, and much more.
It's not difficult to turn your community into a sanctuary community, but it's not without risk, either. The Trump regime is not only targeting anyone who is non-white or dares to speak a language other than English, but they are actively targeting anyone willing to help their neighbors and take a stand against fascism.
Keeping you informed...
Political cartoon printed in 1812 in reaction to gerrymandering districts in Massachusetts. The newspaper called the practice the "Gerry-mander" from Governor Elbridge Gerry, who signed the bill allowing redistricting, and depicted it as a salamander (at the time, "salamander" was often used in reference to a dragon-like mythical creature).
The first shots have been fired in what may someday be known as the "Great Gerrymandering Wars of the 2020s." At least 8 states are considering redrawing their congressional districts in advance of the 2026 election, though such efforts are typically reserved for the years immediately following a national census.
This is not the first time this has happened. Up until 1842, some districts had more than one representative in Congress and voters in these districts could vote for multiple candidates. The result? All of the representatives in that district belonged to the majority party, drowning out the votes of people in the minority. "By one estimate, Democrats had rigged the system so that they could win two-thirds of House seats with just over half of the popular vote."
The Apportionment Act of 1842 stopped this practice and mandated that each district could only send one representative to Congress. But single-representative districts are still prone to gerrymandering—drawing congressional maps to deliberately ensure a majority of representatives belong to one party over the other. For a while, politicians engaged in bipartisanship and ticket-splitting, which minimized the effects of the gerrymandering. That changed in the 1990s when the parties started to become more polar and stopped working together to solve problems.
In 1842, Congress made a choice to defend representative government. Today, we need them to do it again. The next natural step is to move towards proportional representation—electing multiple representatives from each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them. So, if one party is supported by one third of the voters in the district, approximately one third of the representatives will be from that party. In short, we would have fewer districts in each state, which makes it harder to gerrymander (there are fewer borders to move around), and each district would have more representatives, chosen by the proportion of the popular vote they receive.
On the lighter side...
