Trump starting a Gerrymandering war he couldn’t finish feels a whole lot Trump starting trade wars he couldn’t finish and this Iran war he can’t finish.
He’s not playing chess people.
most gerrymanders are republican legislators saying fuck the voters
these ones are the voters saying fuck republican legislators
Ossoff: "You were talking earlier about Jared Kushner. The guy leading our diplomacy in the Middle East is bringing in billions from Middle Eastern princes and sheiks and going around the region asking for billions more while he conducts nuclear diplomacy on behalf of the country. It's obscene."
it is very funny how these people are so accustomed to essentially bullying democratic politicians that they meltdown when met with appropriate pushback.
in any case, the process to amend the virginia constitution has multiple stages where, at any point, an amendment can be defeated.
The sheer contempt publications have for their employees is absolutely gushing out of their pores. It’s bad enough that they’re insisting on doing this and debasing people’s names but that evil is compounded by how fucking nasty and mean their tone is about it.
Everyone knows the way you change the Constitution is to have six people in robes make up a new Constitution as they go along.
sucks that it’s come to this, but if congressional Republicans wanted to put up a national gerrymandering ban or multi member districts etc, it would pass *for sure*. until then fight fire with fire
Remember, Democrats have repeatedly advanced measures to ban partisan gerrymandering and Republicans have voted against them time after time.
This is the game Republicans wanted to play. OK, then.
Starting a mid-decade redistricting war only to end up with -1 seats is the same fine strategic genius and subtle grasp of game theory that brough us the Strait of Hormuz.
This is important and shocking news from NYT.
And it doesn’t mention the DRC third-country deportation program has already begun. ICE sent 15 immigrants from Latin American countries there five days ago.
gillianbrockell.com/breaking-ice...
I'm of the view that time is a much better mechanism for trying to approximate genuine consensus in a political community than an arbitrary supermajority threshold!
The GOP theory of politics is that voters will not remember or care stuff that happened six months ago, that the thing that happened today was born fully formed from DemZeus's head, and thus must be avenged.
as it becomes clear that Yes has won in VA and gerrymandering will pass, a message to Republican voters:
you brought this on yourselves
you convinced the most fairness-obsessed, That Wouldn’t Be Fair-minded voters in the country to affirmatively vote to put you in the dumpster
you earned this
The implicit media consensus is that urban voters should not be able to overrule rural voters, but that rural voters should be able to overrule urban voters, an assumption so axiomatic and unquestionable that nobody even understands they're making it.
The DOJ was created to increase the capacity for federal prosecutions during Reconstruction esp. those to be brought under the newly enacted KuKlux Klan Act.
Now the DOJ is being used to prosecute a storied civil rights organization whose central mission has been to expose & dismantle the Klan.
Trump and Republicans are straight up Nazis. These planes are the equivalent to the boxcars in World War Two. Rape, torture, child abuse… ICE is made up of rednecks, racists, skinheads, Jan 6ers, Proud Boys and ex-cops. But all of them can now just be called Nazis. What a heinous country.
"Biden skippers" slide deck
"Biden skippers" slide deck
"Biden skippers" slide deck
Why they didn't vote:
I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals
So much false equivalence in media on gerrymandering in Texas vs California & Virginia. California and Virginia maps approved by the voters. That's a huge difference not enough people pointing out
Dems have fought GOP to a draw so far in Trump’s redistricting war. The central part of Trump’s plan to rig midterms falling apart after new maps approved by voters in VA & CA. They didn’t count on Dems fighting back www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Conservatives have been trained for decades to think of Constitutions not as agreed-upon rules for fair governance, but as a series of cheat codes and loopholes that let them hold power even when the voters want to throw them out. They won't accept anything less than permanent domination of us.
last thought, and i am still thinking through this, is that not only is there nothing wrong with this, it is something to *embrace*. a project of transformation is one way to build a political party into something closer to a political movement.
if there is a path to either national nonpartisan redistricting or proportional representation, it is going to go through one party or another. but the first step toward it actually happening is for that party to win power, and you go to war with the system you have, not the one you want.
Don’t underestimate the backlash to Trump publicly ordering up a mid-decade redraw in Texas because Republicans are “entitled to five more seats.” And then getting it. That moment killed the (then still robust) Democratic resistance to maximal warfare with their own gerrymanders.
If you attend the White House Correspondents Dinner this year, you should be legally barred from using the term "journalist" to describe yourself from that point on.
This is monstrous. Just profoundly shameful behavior by our government.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/w...
MJ's @maxgrobinson.bsky.social says, "@benmckenzie.bsky.social is a gifted storyteller and he does an incredible job explaining the complex scam at hand in a way that’s breezy, informative and enraging."
Now playing in select theaters, see it Tuesday at Princeton Garden Theatre
Here’s my position on whether you buy my book from Amazon.
I would strongly prefer you don’t! First of all, the price on Bookshop is exactly the same right now (mod shipping). Libro will give you the same audio and ownership of the files! Kobo ebooks and readers are great!
People laugh about this, as they should, but it really does reveal that Trump does not even understand the category of moral leadership. I don't mean he rejects it; I mean it might as well be invisible to him.
In his world there are only mafia bosses, w/ their own competing rackets going on.
