A “they’re coming for our guns” moment for the left
Public Notice’s Noah Berlatsky looks at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s full-tilt social media war with the orange moron. I posted some examples on Sunday, but Berlatsky considers where digital meets physical meets emotional:
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he’s moving forward with a ballot initiative which would allow Democrats to put in place a partisan gerrymander in the state. The Trump administration was so enraged at this act of defiance that officials sent ICE troops to stage a raid in Little Tokyo outside the Japanese American National Museum as Newsom held a press conference there last Thursday.
The sight of federal agents terrorizing people at the site of a where Japanese Americans were rounded up for internment in World War II was stark and sickening. Newsom responded with a fiery rebuke.
“He’s a failed president,” he said. “Who else sends ICE at the same time we’re having a conversation like this? Someone who’s weak. Someone who’s broken.”
Trump is a blustering bowl of orange Jell-O. He’s not just a failed president, he’s an utter disaster as a human being. And so are his lieutenants who quiver at the idea that people of diverse backgrounds can live and thrive alongside one another. I half expect Trump to issue an executive order mandating the manufacture of only white bread and light beer.
Newsom is leading the counterattack against Republican efforts to rig the 2026 elections with mid-decade gerrymandering of congressional districts. Try me, Texas, says the governor of the most populous state. I’ll see your bet and raise.
In that context, Newsom’s threat to retaliate in kind is not a divisive attack on good governance. It is, instead, the only hope for democracy. Bipartisanship right now is appeasement. Democrats cannot and should not hide behind neutrality and fairness as MAGA incinerates the remaining tatters of our republic.
Newsom and other Democrats joining this battle are right to fight. And by fighting, they are demonstrating just how weak Trump is. When you bend the knee, MAGA looks invincible. As soon as you stand up, though, the orange god starts to look like a fetid bag of wind.
This isn’t the civil war Meal Team Six fantasizes about fighting. It’s the one Trump started with very blue, very populous states. And what looked like a slam dunk for him weeks ago today looks like a trench war he could lose. If Texas pulls the trigger first, blue-state governors are prepared to respond in kind. And then some.
More, Trump is treating blue states and cities as partisan enemies. He’s (unconstitutionally) sent National Guard troops into LA; his tariffs and attacks on immigrant laborers also threaten to decimate California’s economy. National guard troops invaded Washington DC last week, and Trump’s been threatening other cities as well, including Chicago, Oakland, New York, and Baltimore.
Trump has made very clear to voters and leader that this is not some abstract technical battle over district lines. He has told blue states, and Democratic voters, that he wants to disenfranchise and subjugate them.
Fuck that. This is a “they’re coming for our guns” moment for Americans who don’t live in fear of the Other. Now, can Democrats muster the same fire and fury that the NRA once did on gun laws?
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