Free the People | Week in Review

The good...

Chances of Democrats flipping the Senate increase as midterm election approaches [Link]

Image by Venita Oberholster from Pixabay.

As support for the Trump regime continues to wane, Democrats are finding themselves competitive in states that once seemed solidly Republican. This is opening up opportunities for them to flip seats in the midterm election. It seems likely that Democrats will win a slight majority in the House this fall. For a while, it seemed like there was only a slim chance they would also regain control of the Senate. But now there are multiple possible paths to Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress for the remainder of Trump's term.

It's certainly not a sure thing that Democrats will win either chamber, and if they do, it's likely that they will only have a very slim majority, which will make it difficult for them to pass significant legislation. But the indication is that the Trump regime is losing support as it continues to abuse its power and wreak havoc on our democracy.

Supreme Court blocks Missouri gerrymandered maps [Link]

Missouri's Secretary of State Denny Hoskins ordered local election authorities to use new district maps favoring Republicans despite orders from a federal judge telling him to hold off on the new maps. In an emergency hearing this week, the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue and ordered Missouri to revert to their previous district maps for the midterm elections. The Missouri Supreme Court found Hoskins in contempt for using the new maps in the primaries, but chose not to impose any penalties.

Aside from the blatant immorality Hoskins demonstrated, he has also done significant damage to the midterm elections in general. The new district maps were used for the primaries that have now concluded, but the state will have to revert back to the previous maps for the general election in November. Candidates who won the primaries in August have been certified for the ballot in the district they won, but that district may no longer hold the same constituents in November.

Missouri was the second state to rush for the opportunity to kiss their king's boots when Trump asked for states to find him more Republican seats in Congress last year. Hundreds of thousands of voters in Missouri signed a petition to ask for the state to vote on whether or not to adopt new district maps. The signatures were submitted in December, but Hoskins ignored them until the day of the primaries when he rejected the voters' request. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the redistricting referendum required voter approval, and the issue is now on the November ballot and the state is reverting to its original district maps. The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the state court ruling, but the Supreme Court refused the request.

The bad...

Trump attempts to buy votes by promising $5,000 checks to all adults if GOP wins [Link]

Image by Hanna from Pixabay.

Donny 2-Dolls promised to pay every American adult $5,000 if the GOP wins the midterm elections. Attempting to buy votes is probably the most un-American thing any president could do. Even if the Republicans win the midterms, we all know he won't deliver on this promise, the same way he failed to deliver on his other promises to bribe Americans into supporting his lunacy. He promised to give all Americans $2,000 in tariff rebate checks in 2025, but didn't do so. He promised to give all Americans a $5,000 DOGE dividend, but didn't do so. There's absolutely no chance that he'll pay $5,000 to every American adult even in the unlikely event that the GOP wins the midterms.

This idiotic idea would cost more than $1 trillion, and can not happen without congressional approval. Considering the country already has a $1,8 trillion annual budget deficit, recently brought the national debt to a new all-time high of $40 trillion, and is embroiled in an unending war with Iran that has already cost taxpayers over $100 billion, this is a truly foolish promise to make, as well as being disgustingly immoral.

Russell Vought lets companies get away with exploiting Americans [Link]

“Impeach Russell Vought” by Joe Flood, CC BY-NC 4.0.

Russell Vought leads the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which is responsible for protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by financial institutions. But it turns out that it's hard to hold misbehaving financial institutions accountable for their actions, so...he won't.

Vought has already tried to dismantle the CFPB, ordered mass layoffs of its employees, and desperately tried to choke off its funding. His attempts have completely failed because the CFPB was created by and is funded by Congress, and only Congress can shut it down.

Vought has claimed that this approach has been successful by pointing to a startup company called Bilt that offers credit cards specifically used to make rent and mortgage payments. The company failed to protect its customers during a critical transition that led to significant financial hardship for its customers. Instead of sending CFPB examiners to ensure that customers got relief for their hardships, Vought's CFPB trusted the company's promise that they had fixed the issues. Just a few weeks later, Bilt again failed to follow regulations, leading to additional harm to their customers that caused their credit scores to go down (Which can have cascading consequences, as credit scores are used to determine lending rates, insurance rates, and more).

The issues with Bilt are merely one example of the underlying problem. Having completely failed in his attempts to shut down the CFPB, Vought has resorted to undermining everything the bureau does. He ordered the bureau to shift its focus to deregulation (Just getting rid of the laws that corporations are expected to follow) and to just trust companies to fix any problems the bureau might find without facing any consequences or follow-up investigations. If he can't get rid of the CFPB, he's determined to render it completely ineffective, which still leads to the same result: American consumers get screwed over and the U.S. government does nothing to protect them.

The ugly...

Trump regime rolls out new USPS rules that are likely to disenfranchise large numbers of voters [Link]

United States Postal Service worker, Salt Lake City, UT. Image by bobjgalindo from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Donny 2-Dolls ordered the Postal Service to create new rules for handling mail-in voting back in March, but the order was immediately challenged and blocked in the courts because the federal government does not have the authority to dictate how states handle elections. But last week, Trump's sycophantic Supreme Court overruled the block and allowed the Trump regime to move forward with the changes to the USPS.

The new system being rolled out to comply with the regime's order is hastily built and full of errors that could potentially disenfranchise large numbers of voters. Under the new system, a single error on one ballot could potentially prevent thousands of other, valid ballots from being delivered to voters or returned for counting.

Trump knows he is losing his grip on power, and if he loses majority control of Congress in this election, he might actually face the consequences of some of his most egregious crimes against America. So he's doing everything he can to try to undermine the integrity of the electoral process in the midterm elections. If he is successful in keeping the "wrong" people from voting in this election, he can also use the same tactics in 2028 to try to maintain his stranglehold on the country indefinitely.

The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)

Judges in some areas deliberately delay habeas corpus cases [Link]

Image by Peter H from Pixabay.

When immigrants are detained unlawfully by ICE agents, their only recourse is to file a habeas corpus petition, asking for a judge to determine whether their detention is lawful. With the recent surge in ICE depredations in our communities, the number of detainees filing habeas petitions has increased significantly, but an investigation by ProPublica found that certain judges have been taking significantly longer to rule on these cases than others.

The longest wait times have been in Mississippi and Louisiana, two deep red states. Of course, wait times have been growing longer for all immigration cases as the system is becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cases it's being presented with. Our immigration courts were already overworked and understaffed before the Trump regime launched its aggressive campaign against immigrants. But for at least half of the cases resolved in Mississippi have taken 92 days or longer. This is not the immigration case itself, to determine whether the immigrant has a legal right to remain in the United States. This is just the hearing to determine if the detention of that individual is lawful. That means these migrants are spending months in prison before being told whether their imprisonment is even legal. Conditions in most of these detention facilities are appalling, if not downright inhumane.

Some states have done better than others in handling the surge in habeas petitions: Minnesota has a median close time of 12 days. That's still a long time to spend in prison waiting to see if you should even be there, but it's a lot more reasonable than 92 days.

The stupid...

Trump tries to rename New Mexico to New America [Link]

Trey Parker and Matt Stone mock the idea of renaming New Mexico to New America by renaming their popular show "South Park" to "South America."

This week, the United States' Idiot-in-Chief floated the idea of renaming the state of New Mexico to "New America." While the very idea seems so ridiculous that some have dismissed it as satire, it does come after the president issued very real orders to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario to Lake America. Besides that, it's not even a little bit funny.

This land has been called New Mexico since the 1560s, when Spanish settlers dubbed it "Nuevo México." To most residents of New Mexico, this proposed name change is seen as just another attempt by the Trump regime to weaponize the government against the people. This proposal comes just days after the Trump regime sued New Mexico for providing in-state tuition and state-funded financial assistance to undocumented immigrant students, making many residents see this as just another example of the regime's string of attacks on people of color in the United States.

Trump holds unconventional convention [Link]

Is the circus in town? Nope...that's the Republican National Convention. Image by AnnBoulais from Pixabay.

Every four years, the Democratic and Republican Parties hold their national conventions to nominate their candidate for president. The parties do not hold a convention during mid-term elections...at least, they didn't until this year.

Even though there is no presidential election this year, Donny 2-Dolls ordered the Republican Party to hold a convention anyway. Like the obedient lapdogs they are, the Party obeyed their king's order and hosted an out-of-cycle convention in Dallas, Texas. The event has less in common with a Republican National Convention, and more in common with a Trump campaign rally, leading many to refer to it as "Trump-a-palooza."

While we're here serving our neighbors, billionaire megadonors and their puppet politicians are clinking their Champagne glasses.

They are toasting to their own corruption. They are celebrating corrupt tariffs, billionaire tax breaks and a new forever war that are all driving up costs.

James Talarico, Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives