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Month: August 2025

They’re Taking Your Vote!

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 19, 2025

No, it’s not South Park satire

Public domain (Kodak EasyShare Z612 ).

The flag-hugging patriarch of the Party of Trump showed once again last week where his real political allegiance lies. President Donald Trump, the convicted American felon, rolled out a literal red carpet in Anchorage last week and all but bear-hugged Russian President Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal.

Knowing Trump is still convinced he never lost the 2020 presidential election, Putin advised his American asset that it was because mail-in voting is not secure.

“He said: ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. … It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections,’” Trump recounted to Fox News. Putin said (and Trump believed him) that “no country” has mail-in voting.

This, of course, is bullshit (PolitiFact):

Data compiled by a Sweden-based organization that advocates for democracy globally found in an October 2024 report found that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting, which it refers to as “postal voting.”

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that of the 34 countries or territories, 12 allow all voters to vote by mail and in 22 permit only some voters to vote this way. 

But the nonsense is not Putin’s point. Russia holds pro forma democratic elections Putin always wins. Naturally, Trump rises to that idea like fish to bait.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump declared that he wants mail-in balloting banned as well as “‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” Moreover, Trump claims the authority (he does not have) to dictate how states run their elections:

Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.

Never mind that the Constitution delegates that authority to the states. His Lordship hath spoken (The Guardian):

In a White House meeting alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said: “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they’re corrupt.”

Trump openly pursues a suite of election changes to ensure American elections are just as “honest” as Russia’s. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday ticked through three vectors by which Trump means to ensure it is “structurally impossible for Democrats to control Congress again.” It takes a criminal mind, something both Trump and Putin share.

In addition to “banning” mail-in balloting, Trump is pressuring Republican-controlled states to redraw district maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to secure additional Republican seats even where they lose a majority of the vote.

Third, Trump demands a new mid-decade census using “the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.” He alleges that the one performed in 2020 was invalid because it counted persons in the country illegally. Never mind that the 14th Amendment requires apportionment be based on “counting the whole number of persons in each State” and assigns that responsibility to Congress, not to the Executive branch.

Unless he gets a new census, Trump means to preemptively discredit election results by alleging that the districts are themselves improperly drawn, Maddow suggests. He may even try to preempt the 2026 elections themselves on that basis.

Journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff appeared with Maddow. He posted Monday to Bluesky:

This is step one in how we lose free and fair elections. It’s not that Trump will “cancel” the midterms.

It’s just everyone has to vote in person, and urban downtowns will be filled with ICE checkpoints and intimidating National Guard troops to “double check” that only citizens vote.

Graff told Maddow that the suite of “subtle and not-so-subtle” Republican efforts aim “to change who gets to vote, how they vote, and subtly shape the electorate” to ensure illegitimate, Republican minority rule.

#MAGA fascism is no longer creeping

In Texas meanwhile, Republicans locked state Rep. Nicole Collier of Fort Worth inside the House chambers after she refused to permit a state police minder to follow her everywhere to ensure they can secure her presence for a quorum. Texas Democrats returned Monday from a two-week “exile” meant to deny Republicans a quorum for passage of the more-heavily gerrymandered redistricting map Trump demanded.

Texas Republicans are holding Collier as a political prisoner. #MAGA fascism is no longer creeping. They’re burning the rulebooks. The water is boiling, little froggies. They’re disappearing people off the streets.

I’m naturally a behind-the-scenes activist (and still am). But events lately cannot go unanswered. It is not enough to consume the news and respond on social media. Or even, as one often hears, to call your senators’ offices daily. Those calls get logged but no one else sees them. Resistance must be public to become contagious enough to build a movement. And not just angry but joyful. Get loud. Create “I’ll have what she’s having” moments. “The attention economy favors the bold.“

They’re taking your vote, fergawdsakes! Don’t take my word for it.

* * * * *

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The Big Meeting

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

It was insufferable but at least JD Vance kept his trap shut this time and they didn’t demand that Zelensky express his undying fealty to Donald Trump. It was mostly just Trump blathering about himself, as usual, lying and talking nonsense about DC restaurants and mail -in voting. And dumb questions:

This was a typical moment of the joint meeting with the European leaders and Zelensky:

Laura Loomer — Shadow Secretary of State

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

I don’t know what Loomer has on Trump but she’s got a tremendous amount of power in this administration and it’s just plain bizarre:

The Trump administration announced Saturday that it had paused approvals of visitor visas for people from Gaza, a key pathway for those seeking medical care in the United States, including young children who arrived in recent weeks with serious conditions.

The State Department said it would assess the process behind those visas. “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review,” the department said in a statement on X Saturday morning.

The move came after an intense lobbying campaign by the right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who called the incoming flights a “national security threat” in a flurry of social media posts starting on Friday that targeted a nonprofit aiding in medical evacuations.

What??? Looney Loomer makes some accusations and within days the State Department is on the case?

Seriously, there is something incredibly weird about all this. Loomer has incredible clout, more than Charlie Kirk, Sean Hannity or Steve Bannon. She precipitated the firing of half the national security council and members of the Pentagon and now has managed to change a humanitarian policy with a couple of tweets in a matter of hours.

Somebody in the White House has to know what this is all about and be concerned about it. Loomer is completely nuts and a danger to all of them. When is someone going to spill the beans on this?

Think Radically, People

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

Brian Beutler wrote a piece last week brainstorming ideas about resistance. Josh Marshall riffed on it a couple of days ago. Basically, they both make the point that it’s very hard to resist state power in the hands of despots but not impossible. One of our unique, clunky governmental structures is federalism which confers quite a bit of power on individual states and we are seeing them flex it in opposition to Trump’s aggressive attempts to usurp it. (I wrote about this right after the election.)

Beutler has a couple of out-of-the-box ideas that are worth considering. The first, which he admits is a real gut check, is a relaxation of gun laws in blue states. I’m horrified by the idea but it’s worth thinking about the argument he lays out:

  • For all the past decades of right-wing revolutionary cosplay, the second amendment was actually written in anticipation of the kind of despotism the state and state-adjacent paramilitaries are now visiting on blue America;
  • Washingtonians and residents of other cities are no less entitled to exploit the Supreme Court’s batshit second amendment jurisprudence than anyone else;
  • Rightist fantasies about armed vigilantes stopping armed miscreants are stupid, but that doesn’t mean every other argument for keeping arms is also stupid. If you were among the people Trumpists have in bad faith accused of treason, would you maybe want to keep a gun in your home?

I don’t think I could ever feel ok about owning a gun but who knows where I’d be after a few years of this. After all, we have armed, masked thugs roaming the streets of my city right now. The bigger consideration that springs from this idea is how we should start thinking about civil disobedience. This is a very tough question right now, These people are ruthlessly asserting police power in record time.

The other idea he throws out is less terrifying to contemplate. Gavin Newsom mused in a tweet recently that perhaps California should start withholding its income taxes since we are being treated like a vassal state and contribute far more than we ever take out of the federal coffers. Beutler writes:

But of course, the federal government collects income taxes from millions of individual earners, through their employers, not from state governments. Newsom’s tweet thus scanned to sophisticated readers as an idle threat.

What if it weren’t so idle? California is a big employer. It can presumably suspend withholding. It can create incentives for others to do the same. Gavin Newsom could at the very least mount a tax-protest campaign large enough to overwhelm federal enforcement. Other Democratic governors and influential Americans could join in solidarity. In the aftermath of another blue-state natural disaster, and in the face of the GOP’s callous indifference, measures like these could generate sympathy.

“It would require a massive mobilization of collective action where you would have to have discipline and scale and multiple millions of people and corporations not paying their federal income tax because they want to take a stand,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told me last week. “It would be like a mass protest. And like, you know, could it happen? It could happen. Like really good organizing. The governor saying, I’m gonna be the first, I’m not gonna pay my taxes, and I want you all to join me—like big influential leaders saying that.”

I would support this. It’s very radical and would provoke a right wing primal scream heard ’round the world. But if all the big blue states banded together and we were able to muster a critical mass among the population this could be very effective.

I don’t know if any of this is realistic but I like that people are thinking along these lines. Trump’s authoritarian take-over is unprecedented and it’s going to take some radical thinking to get us out of this. Using whatever institutional power we have to fight back is absolutely necessary, especially since so many of our other civil institutions have failed so miserably in the face of Trump’s threats.

Not Enough Gold

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

He really needs to up his game. I’m still seeing a wooden table and a few unadorned bits of white trim. And frankly, I don’t understand why the new AF1 isn’t going to be painted completely gold. Why is he holding back?

Making China Great Again

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

Trump is just handing the future to China, on science and medicine, on clean energy, on soft power. It's truly just insane.

— Clara Jeffery (@clarajeffery.bsky.social) 2025-08-17T19:54:11.754Z

An excerpt (with gift link)

China’s biotech industry is part of its expansion of soft power around the world this century. The country is increasing pharmaceutical exports to countries in Southeast Asia. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese enterprises like CanSino and Sinovac developed and exported large quantities of Covid vaccines to the developing world.

The rise of this industry is also fueling a very strong bench of life sciences talent in China. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and major Chinese universities produce four to five times as many medical graduates annually as the United States does. And when Nature polled American scientists recently, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the United States. A Chinese venture capitalist told me that if the ethnically Chinese among those 75 percent went back to China, it could supercharge the country’s efforts.

And while China’s biotech industry may be focused on making drugs ultracheap, that talent is laying the foundation for the country to achieve innovative breakthroughs, too. Consider Likang Life Sciences, a Chinese company whose new cancer vaccine, which uses mRNA editing, is undergoing clinical trials for F.D.A. approval. The vaccine is designed to activate patients’ immune system to target their specific cancer and attack it. It is swiftly moving through the Chinese regulatory process and has recently become available to select patients in part of Hainan Province.

The kicker? Likang is planning to offer this product for around $21,000 — a small fraction of the price that Western companies like Merck or Moderna would offer for similar products. (For its part, the United States just canceled nearly half a billion dollars of federal funding for mRNA vaccine research targeting respiratory infections.) An investor in Likang that I spoke to isn’t optimistic that the treatment will be made available to Americans, given the current U.S. hostility toward Chinese businesses and their products. (Look no further than the Biosecure Act, the uncertain status of TikTok and existing restrictions that companies like Huawei and BYD face when attempting to do business in the United States.) 

China isn’t alone in taking up the slack caused by the snake oil cranks at HHS who are destroying America’s biotech industry but it does appear that they are super-charging their own industry. It’s a big country with a vast amount of talent and resources and it’s ready to take the mantle and run with it.

We have long heard the trope that this would be the China Century and it appears that the United States is now devoted to making that come true. That’s nice. It’s very sad for Americans and the world which will continue to be at the mercy of a military giant run by weirdos and fascists unless we decide to sober up and at least return to civilized behavior.

The Next Step

Published by digby on August 18, 2025

I didn’t know that the states are merely “agents” for the federal government and must do as the president tells them “FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY. Interesting.

I’m going to guess someone’s dusting off the old Mike Flynn ideas about using the military to monitor elections. Why ever not? By the time the 26 election rolls around every Democratic district will be occupied by federal troops of one kind of another.

Mainly, I think this little tantrum is in reaction to something he said after the Alaska debacle:

Lol. He also said Putin told him no other country in the world has mail-in voting.

Guess what? He was either lying about the conversation or Putin punked him:

Trump always doubles down when he’s caught in a lie or proven to have been a gullible moron.

Update — Oopsie:

The right-wing cable channel Newsmax has agreed to pay $67 million to settle a libel lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems had brought against the channel for falsely claiming that the voting machine company had rigged votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

The settlement, which the companies completed on Aug. 15, was disclosed in an S.E.C. filing by Newsmax. It noted that Newsmax would make the payments in three installments by Jan. 15, 2027.

To Be Or Not To Be?

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 18, 2025

Mad Trump disease overtakes federal law enforcement

When Americans behave really badly, well-meaning politicians like Joe Biden cringingly tell us that it’s not who we are. But the truth is it’s who some of us are. It’s who some of us have always been going back to slavery and witch burnings. That’s why we hire police, enforce the rule of law, and live by a constitution. Our problem today is that the flag-hugging autocrat presiding over an Oval Office kitsched up with gold-painted accents from Home Depot has filled his administration with not-who-we-ares. They take perverse delight in behaving badly. They mean to terminate the Constitution with extreme prejudice, and your unalienable rights with it.

SAN BERNARDINO, CA: Trump’s Gestapo shoots at a family that fled when they refused to ID themselves and smashed the family’s windows. (Last week they chased a man from Home Depot onto the 210 freeway and he was struck and killed: www.latimes.com/california/s…)

— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) 2025-08-17T14:48:45.503Z

The Washington Post this morning reviews how ICE thugs violently arrested a Venezuelan food delivery driver outside a northwest D.C. coffee shop. Marisa Kabas reported on that incident on Saturday. I mentioned it on Sunday and other violent arrests by ICE in California: A Festival Of Cruelty.

A Homeland Security spokesperson dismisses by omission the violence of ICE thugs and claims Cristian Enrique Carias Torres, illegally in this country, has “repeatedly failed to appear for multiple court dates in Maryland related to a long list of traffic crimes.” White House spokesliar Karoline Leavitt naturally claims Torres has a “suspected gang affiliation.” 

Leavitt trots out her gang affiliation before cameras every day while making excuses for gang behavior by masked ICE secret police. Too harsh? Behold the professionalism of ICE’s finest.

Reporting on the D.C. incident, Kabas writes:

“You guys are ruining this country. You know that, right?” one bystander said to the agents at one point during the incident. An agent, ironically clad in a rainbow face mask, replied “Liberals already ruined it.”

In late June, ICE agents in Los Angeles slammed into the ground Andrea Velez, 32, a U.S. citizen on her way to work. The Guardian recounts that masked men jumped out of an unmarked vehicle and began chasing down street vendors and others. Velez froze:

Suddenly, she recalled, one of the men slammed her to the ground and placed her into his car. The men had “Police” vests, but otherwise were in plainclothes and didn’t identify themselves. She didn’t know why they had taken her.

The men, it turned out, were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deportation officers. They were looking to question people about “whether they were lawfully present” in the US, an agent later wrote. Velez is a US citizen who grew up in downtown, not far from the incident.

“They just came out ready to attack anyone,” said Velez, in her first interview since her arrest. “I thought they were kidnapping me.”

📍𝐋𝐎𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒, 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐀:U.S. citizen Andrea Velez was slammed to the ground by ICE agents, held 48 hours, and denied water for 24, despite showing ID. #AbuseofPowerWatch

— Abuse of Power Watch (@abuseofpowerwatch.bsky.social) 2025-08-13T14:27:39.205Z

Back in the Ice agents’ car, Velez said the officer driving appeared furious about how the incident had played out: “He was screaming in rage.”

She overheard him on the phone discussing “how many bodies they had gotten”, she said, and referring to her as an “alleged US citizen”.

This is what the Trump administration considers professional law enforcement. It’s what they screen for in recruitment: thugs and bullies drunk on power. As I keep asking, were these costumed clowns trained over Zoom or over the weekend?

Once they realized their mistake, the agents who arrested Velez trumped up (there’s a double entendre for you) a charge that 4 ft 11 in Velez had assaulted an officer. The government dismissed the charges 16 days later, but not before she spent two nights in jail.

This may not be who “we” are, but it is who Trump administration thugs are:

Two Canadian toddlers were held for weeks at a remote Texas facility that is at the centre of a court case alleging inadequate access to safe drinking water, medical care and legal assistance. One of the children was held for 51 days – more than double the legal detention period for migrant children in the United States.

This is a “to be, or not to be” moment for this country, for Americans who still (naively maybe) believe in the founding ideals behind the United States, and for those of us whose brains haven’t been eaten by mad Trump disease.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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Bring It On

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 18, 2025

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?

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501
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Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Hey MAGA. What Are You Going To Do About This?

Published by digby on August 17, 2025

Have your electricity bills gone up precipitously? It’s becoming a problem all over the country:

Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That’s especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime.

In Pembroke Pines, Fla., Al Salvi’s power bill can reach $500 a month.

“There’s a lot of seniors down here that are living check to check. They can barely afford prescriptions such as myself,” says Salvi, who’s 63 and uses a wheelchair. “Now we got to decide whether we’re going to pay the electric bill or are we going to buy medication. And it’s not fair to us. You’re squeezing us between a rock and a hard place.”

Al Salvi moved to Florida from New Jersey about a decade ago, hoping to stretch his disability benefits further. But rising electricity bills and other expenses have forced him to make tough choices about his family budget.

Why is this happening?

Power-hungry AI data centers are one factor driving high prices

Power-hungry data centers have been popping up all over, to serve the boom in artificial intelligence. The Energy Department projects data centers and other commercial customers will use more electricity than households for the first time ever next year. That’s a challenge for policymakers, who have to decide how to accommodate that extra demand and who should foot the bill.

“Regulators always play catchup,” says John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “The growth of data centers is far outpacing the response by grid managers, public utility commissions across the country, and they’re racing to catch up.”

Natural gas exports also push prices higher

The soaring price of natural gas is also pushing power prices higher. More than 40% of electricity is generated using natural gas. As more gas is exported as liquid natural gas, the competition from foreign customers is driving up the price utilities have to pay here at home.

It’s going to get worse now that the government has decided that renewable energy isn’t worth investing in (since Trump doesn’t like the “look” of wind and solar) even though it’s cheaper.

And by the way:

The federal government currently spends about $4 billion a year to help low-income families with energy bills. But Wolfe says that’s not enough to cover rising cooling costs in the summer. And President Trump’s proposed budget would end the assistance altogether.

But are egg prices too high? That’s all that matters.