That is really disappointing. I personally know people who don't pay attention to what's going on in the country, and don't vote, either because they feel helpless to change it, or they're just too consumed with living and making ends meet. I try to influence those people whenever I can, pointing to what elected leaders are doing (or not doing) and how it translates to the hardships they're having. Trump 2.0 is a perfect opportunity to do that. I don't know all the answers, but really believe if we all do what we can we can change this dynamic with the people around us the tide will eventually turn.
Other responses I have heard as someone who registers people to vote: 1) “I don’t do politics,” (to which I reply “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”), 2) “All/both candidates are the same.” In my state our AG won by only 280 votes and I ask people they think the other candidate would have filed as many lawsuits to support our rights as she has? I also ask people what issues/values are important to them?
Our spirits surely have taken a drubbing. One way to lift them might be to be making a commitment to vote no matter what Trump does to try to keep us from the polls in November and starting now with a list of friends whom we can make certain that they will vote, too. That is what I am doing. Like Hungary, the turnout must be unprecedented and the results invulnerable to shenanigans.
Carole, I agree. At the same time, there was (and is) sooo much misinformation and disinformation. Soo many couples where 1 voted one way and 1 the other or 1 voted and the other didn't. I cannot imagine being in those relationships!
Like a women that I saw on line walking behind her husband during his Podcast about being a Flat Earth advocate. "You still talking about that s@!# again!" What that must be like. Peace.
Christopher Armitage - researcher, author, anti-trafficking activist and substack writer - has filed a motion to disbar John Roberts.
His request is based on Roberts continual lying on his annual reports about his family income (oops, I made that 'mistake', again) and his years' of failing to recuse himself from cases where there is a clear appearance of conflict of interest.
Any US citizen can request Roberts' disbarment. The more, the merrier.
And nothing will change. In fact it will get worse, because T will get to select the next justice. The time to have woken up was when McConnell denied an Obama SCJ appointment and gave it to T. Then under the same circumstances, he gave T a SCJ appt to T at the end of his first term so that BIDEN would not have that appt.
I read the post. I am not disagreeing with what is suggested about embarrassing Roberts and believe he should be disbarred.
The fact is that no one noticed what the GOP has been doing for decades starting with Reagan who ended the Fairness Doc, allowed Fox news on air, increased messages of hate and put far right judges on the court, while TWICE refusing to believe women. Not even McConnell's 2-faced behavior on SC justices and federal judgeships created even a whisper about what was happening. Like Roberts, McConnell wants reassurance that he will be respected for what he has done. He is delusional.
I felt isolated as I researched info that NO ONE was talking about. WHEN I commented or posted about what I noticed happening with the GOP and the news media, there was little to no response.
There are still many people CHOOSING to blame the Dem party - when it is the actions of the GOP and the FACT that the public was misinformed or not informed at all about how the GOP was working to take control - not only of the court, but of our democracy to give power back to RICH WHITE RACIST GREEDY MEN. P2025 WAS the plan and 98% of journalists worked hard to ignore it.
NOW, because of the racism, misogyny, self absorption and ignorance of too many Americans, neither embarrassing Roberts or disbarring him will change our trajectory unless many millions more wake up.
If we don't stop the GOP, then our history books will go back to pure worship of white men and full of lies. Roberts won't have to worry.
Norm and team, I am thankful every day we have people like you who are anticipating and planning for these “bad outcomes” and then laying out how we can fight back. It is SO DEPRESSING to watch our country move backwards, and therefore really helpful that you keep us from getting despondent and instead empower us to take action.
It’s even more annoying becoming the laughing stock of the advanced, industrialized nations of the world. I knew the educational system of the United States was a disaster, but I believed at least our elected representatives and judicial members had managed to get a decent education, alas , not so.
Sorry to disappoint you, but EDUCATION was not the cause of what's happening. Greedy, rich white racist men who had the benefit of very good educations wanted to stop POC & women from having any power. McConnell was so angry, especially when Obama was elected a 2nd time that he contacted Bannon, who had been in Europe studying the tactics of the alt-right.
But McC was NOT the person that took the first Hitler step. It was Reagan who ended the Fairness Doc. He was a racist, who appreciated Heritage Society ideas. Sadly our news media chose helping the GOP over protecting our democracy. They increasingly stopped using facts & evidence in their reporting. They used persuasive writing with opinions and beliefs instead of analytical articles with facts and evidence. It wasn't obvious because Fox News was so extreme. But the rest of mainstream news journalists repeated GOP opinions and beliefs as if they were true. They said the GOP was better for the economy. But starting with Reagan, the GOP only enriched the rich with its trickle down, tax loopholes for the rich, and deregulation of industries owned by the rich. NOT ONCE did I ever hear any journalist point this out.
There was no question that this was true when T was supported by the GOP in 2016. NOT ONCE did I hear mainstream news media mention anything significant about T's background. They had raked HRC unmercifully for BENGHAZI - echoing every claim the GOP made about her. But T's 7 failures as a businessman, his racist behavior, his lawsuits to avoid anything he didn't like - such as paying people for work they had done.
Did you ever ask yourself why Tapper through Biden under the bus for his poor debate, when he had said NOTHING about T being unfit for office with his word salads, lies and bigotry.
Obama warned us at the end of his presidency. Yet MILLIONS ignored the warning. They were too racist, misogynistic, self absorbed and/or ignorant of the responsibilities that go with our rights. At least 90M people did not vote or voted for a 3rd party candidate WHO COULD NOT WIN, because Harris was just not good enough. POC VOTE. Their 1st question: which of these 2 candidates is least likely to hurt my family and me. In 2016 and 2024, the answer was clear. And now there are concentration camps across the nation filled with human beings being cruelly treated BECAUSE people did NOT bother to think about what would happen to immigrants or about what needed to be done to protect our democracy. White people chose not to see the danger. They voted for the bigot & liar, did not vote or voted 3rd party. This was not poor education. It was a bunch of kids who wouldn't play the game because they didn't have the candidate they wanted or just choose one of the other options I mentioned above. It was not the party that failed. It was news journalists and voters who failed to do what was right.
Alito says, " Our Nation has made great strides in eliminating racial discrimination in voting".
I listened to a C-SPAN call in program for a few minutes the day after the Calais ruling. Three out of five people were thrilled with the ruling. Their comments? " This is a great thing! Now they no longer have power!" and " This is a good thing. There are too many ignorant Black people in Congress!". Alito the Fool.
He probably can't look in a mirror or that will destroy the vision he has of himself. Thomas has been part of every single SCOTUS decision that has been chipping away at the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed since the second half of the 20th century. One of the last hurdles is the Loving v Virginia case from June 12, 1767 that made all state laws prohibiting interracial marriages as unconstitutional. Who is to say that in the near future there is a group of Southern While Evangelical Christian ministers that decides to challenge that ruling all the way back to SCOTUS. What would Thomas do then, with his own marriage on the line?
that's a good question, but it's quite unlikely that the decision to scrap loving v. virginia would/could be retroactive. remember what thomas said after the dobbs decision. he basically said he'd welcome a case to outlaw contraception and marriage equality. sometimes i wonder if we are living in some alternate universe where it's 1892 and not 2026.
If friends feel helpless or overwhelmed we can remind them that in a little over a year, the regime has erased fundamental freedoms: a woman's control over her body, the right to drive a car free from unreasonable stop and search, the confidence that the DOJ will enforce the law, the right to live live unmolested by government so long as we abide by the law. And it has conscripted us to pay for giant tax cuts for the rich as well as an inordinate share of the cost of operating the country. It is baking in a gig economy that ensures economic desperation of workers, and it is assuring that our children are undereducated to assure generations of workers who can't afford to fight back. And that is only in one year. Only by giving the Democrats enormous majorities in both houses and in the state legislatures can we rebuild the guardrails of the Rule of Law.
I've always had the idea that the environment in which he grew up, apparently wonderful grandparents notwithstanding, left him with the deeply buried belief that he doesn't deserve the remarkable life he lives. I wonder if his personal benchmarks of success include the patronage he receives from his white 'masters'.
Excellent suggestions to fight the flagrant segregationist ruling by the majority SC. The one statistic that I found both appalling and inexplicable is that 90 million folks decided not to vote in the 2024 election. Another evidence of almost a third of this country's population who, it would seem, don't care about the country we live in. Take a lesson from Hungry, voting is the only way we can begin to repair the Republican damage to "We the People"!!!
Unfortunately, only a small minority, and probably very very few of the non-voters watch PBS, much less donate and have access to the streaming of all their programming. But, if I could, I'd ask them to watch "Black Snow." It's a documentary of a Russian woman who lived with her family in a coal mining town in Siberia (?). Everybody around her is sick. The ground is literally on fire. She researches the impact of coal dust on health. She tries repeatedly to get the government to help. Her husband drives a coal truck and wishes she would shut up. She doesn't. The governor of her State (or province or whatever) shows up with his entourage to "listen" and then gaslights her repeating the State lie. She functions like a "journalist" in a country that gave up on freedom. She is followed and harassed by State thugs. This is what we will become ... a dictatorship propped up by the wealthy ... and this is the pivotal year to see what will happen.
To the extent that that shocking number includes acquaintances, family or friends, we must make our mission to persuade them why their vote is crucial!!!! And to be sure that they are registered to vote.
Freedom Summer! Let's mobilize an army of volunteers to register voters across the South this summer. I think retirees are ripe for this action - we have been showing up in droves for No Kings. Let's really make it count.
I am white and voted against the convicted felon despite it being agains some of my best interests.... How many brown and black voters voted for him? How many did not vote? I am doing my part but those most affected do not!
The illegality, corruption, and incompetence of Trump's 2nd term is such a perfect example of what can happen when people don't take their right to vote seriously. I'm hoping this will influence people's voting and civic actions, so we need to keep pointing all of it out.
Florida has the Fair Districts Amendment, but somehow, DeSantis has managed to circumvent it with his illegal mid-decade partisan redistricting effort, proving once again that these people could not care less about the will of the voters. How do we get consequences for this kind of obviously illegal behavior?
Ladies, get out there and fight for minorities! Do you have any doubt that women, although not a minority, will be next on the list? Trump's SAVE Act, if passed, would make it more difficult for married women to vote. HIs anti-DEI policies are being enforced against women as well as against minorities. If we don't fight now, who will fight for us?
We need to be able to sue and censor the Supreme Court for incompetence and the damage the majority has done to our Nation. We should be able to recall corrupt Supreme Court justices. The partisan decisions of the Roberts court are blatantly unwise and unjust.
The key focus needs to be to reestablish the outcome test instead of the means test. Correlation is not causation., i.e.,"A" implies "B" is not the same as "B" implies "A". The fact that minority voters tend to be Democrats is being used to hide the desire to hobble their political power. Those with slavery in their hearts are using party affiliation to mask their intent. A means test for indirect application of power is VERY hard to prove. An outcome test is almost trivial. Find a way to reestablish the outcome test as basis for the Civil Rights laws, especially including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
SCOTUS is denying reality by asserting that discrimination is over. That inherited social disease is durable through the generations. Amend the law. An explicit outcome test would settle the issue. Setting the granularity of gerrymandering could make the outcome more stable, e.g., the unit of map granularity could be defined to be a county (~no gerrymandering effort can split a county into more than one part). Of course there is an issue with very populated counties. Mathematically there is no perfect solution. Every way of expressing the will of a population and creating a single decision is a mapping from a space of high dimensionality to a single outcome. Each decision can in principle realign subsets of voters. No once and done gerrymandering process can adjust itself dynamically per issue.
Facts, logic and laws are strictly forbidden in the MAGA-verse. They live in the Alternate "Reality" where the Union lost the Civil War and even King Don hugs the wrong flag.
so alabama and tennessee are wasting no time in acting to redraw those maps. i guess they will be parading around with the confederate flag. in 1964 we took a family vacation to florida. i was 13 years old. we stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms. i got out of the car and was horrified to be met by segregated bathrooms. whites only could walk on a nice sidewalk to their restrooms. however, there was the sign, "whites only." the "colored" restroom was up a dirt hill to an outhouse. just then a black woman and her little girl began that walk up the hill. i wanted to run up to her to tell her we weren't all racists and that i was so sorry. but my father told me to go use the white bathroom. that memory lay buried in my brain until yesterday. it hit me like a ton of bricks. women of every race are next. some men now feel emboldened to say we shouldn't be allowed to vote.
435 Congress Representatives, 100 Senators, nine Supreme Court Justices and one President, a total of 545 people make up the three branches of our Federal Government! There are 340 MILLION PEOPLE in this country! We The People are being taxed and governed without representation.
People give up. They don't vote or cast frivolous votes because they know that their vote doesn't count. They give up when the people truly represented by our government are the morbidly rich, techbros, oligarchs, Christian Nationalists, white males and Putin.
There is something that we can do to make gerrymandering more difficult and dilute the influence of big money. We must start contacting our Democrat and Independent candidates for Congress and Senate now. We must demand that the cap on the number of Representatives in Congress be removed! The number of Representatives was caped at 435 in 1929. It was an Act, not an ammendment. An Act can be repealed! There's nothing the Supreme Court can do about removing that cap and increasing the number of Representatives.
"We The People are being taxed and governed without representation."
Of course we are. You just don't like the current state of affairs.
"People give up. They don't vote or cast frivolous votes because they know that their vote doesn't count."
Most people who do vote primarily care if there is a (D) or (R) behind the candidate's name, but occasionally some important topic (like the economy) changes the dynamics enough to flip voter affiliation. Otherwise they are too lazy to see what each side promotes or worries about. We're inundated with special-interest funded campaign ads full of half-truths or outright lies...both parties do it every single election cycle.
"There is something that we can do to make gerrymandering more difficult and dilute the influence of big money."
Here's a suggestion: Perhaps a simple computer program with the minimal information needed such as state, county and municipal populations and total number of districts to be drawn. Nothing about age, sex, political preference, race or any other demographic data.
Or ten random people from across a state and give them about a week to figure things out. It couldn't be any worse than the partisan-gerrymandered mess we have now.
Don't understand the 90 million non voters.
Why? Don't vote. Don't complain.
I need the Contrarians to bolster my spirits.
That is really disappointing. I personally know people who don't pay attention to what's going on in the country, and don't vote, either because they feel helpless to change it, or they're just too consumed with living and making ends meet. I try to influence those people whenever I can, pointing to what elected leaders are doing (or not doing) and how it translates to the hardships they're having. Trump 2.0 is a perfect opportunity to do that. I don't know all the answers, but really believe if we all do what we can we can change this dynamic with the people around us the tide will eventually turn.
I get basically 2 reactions. A shoulder shrug, ie. Why try. Or, I pray.
Yea, I get that too sometimes. I just persevere, taking a step back when I need to.
Other responses I have heard as someone who registers people to vote: 1) “I don’t do politics,” (to which I reply “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”), 2) “All/both candidates are the same.” In my state our AG won by only 280 votes and I ask people they think the other candidate would have filed as many lawsuits to support our rights as she has? I also ask people what issues/values are important to them?
Our spirits surely have taken a drubbing. One way to lift them might be to be making a commitment to vote no matter what Trump does to try to keep us from the polls in November and starting now with a list of friends whom we can make certain that they will vote, too. That is what I am doing. Like Hungary, the turnout must be unprecedented and the results invulnerable to shenanigans.
Carole, I agree. At the same time, there was (and is) sooo much misinformation and disinformation. Soo many couples where 1 voted one way and 1 the other or 1 voted and the other didn't. I cannot imagine being in those relationships!
Like a women that I saw on line walking behind her husband during his Podcast about being a Flat Earth advocate. "You still talking about that s@!# again!" What that must be like. Peace.
Christopher Armitage - researcher, author, anti-trafficking activist and substack writer - has filed a motion to disbar John Roberts.
His request is based on Roberts continual lying on his annual reports about his family income (oops, I made that 'mistake', again) and his years' of failing to recuse himself from cases where there is a clear appearance of conflict of interest.
Any US citizen can request Roberts' disbarment. The more, the merrier.
Read all about it. Join in.
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/i-filed-for-robertss-disbarment-then
And nothing will change. In fact it will get worse, because T will get to select the next justice. The time to have woken up was when McConnell denied an Obama SCJ appointment and gave it to T. Then under the same circumstances, he gave T a SCJ appt to T at the end of his first term so that BIDEN would not have that appt.
I wonder if you read the post?
The main point is to humiliate Roberts in the history books. He cares a lot about his standing.
Disbarring him will not stop his Supreme Court tenure. All you need for that is, if I understand correctly, approval from Congress and the Executive.
I read the post. I am not disagreeing with what is suggested about embarrassing Roberts and believe he should be disbarred.
The fact is that no one noticed what the GOP has been doing for decades starting with Reagan who ended the Fairness Doc, allowed Fox news on air, increased messages of hate and put far right judges on the court, while TWICE refusing to believe women. Not even McConnell's 2-faced behavior on SC justices and federal judgeships created even a whisper about what was happening. Like Roberts, McConnell wants reassurance that he will be respected for what he has done. He is delusional.
I felt isolated as I researched info that NO ONE was talking about. WHEN I commented or posted about what I noticed happening with the GOP and the news media, there was little to no response.
There are still many people CHOOSING to blame the Dem party - when it is the actions of the GOP and the FACT that the public was misinformed or not informed at all about how the GOP was working to take control - not only of the court, but of our democracy to give power back to RICH WHITE RACIST GREEDY MEN. P2025 WAS the plan and 98% of journalists worked hard to ignore it.
NOW, because of the racism, misogyny, self absorption and ignorance of too many Americans, neither embarrassing Roberts or disbarring him will change our trajectory unless many millions more wake up.
If we don't stop the GOP, then our history books will go back to pure worship of white men and full of lies. Roberts won't have to worry.
Norm and team, I am thankful every day we have people like you who are anticipating and planning for these “bad outcomes” and then laying out how we can fight back. It is SO DEPRESSING to watch our country move backwards, and therefore really helpful that you keep us from getting despondent and instead empower us to take action.
@Laura
It’s even more annoying becoming the laughing stock of the advanced, industrialized nations of the world. I knew the educational system of the United States was a disaster, but I believed at least our elected representatives and judicial members had managed to get a decent education, alas , not so.
Sorry to disappoint you, but EDUCATION was not the cause of what's happening. Greedy, rich white racist men who had the benefit of very good educations wanted to stop POC & women from having any power. McConnell was so angry, especially when Obama was elected a 2nd time that he contacted Bannon, who had been in Europe studying the tactics of the alt-right.
But McC was NOT the person that took the first Hitler step. It was Reagan who ended the Fairness Doc. He was a racist, who appreciated Heritage Society ideas. Sadly our news media chose helping the GOP over protecting our democracy. They increasingly stopped using facts & evidence in their reporting. They used persuasive writing with opinions and beliefs instead of analytical articles with facts and evidence. It wasn't obvious because Fox News was so extreme. But the rest of mainstream news journalists repeated GOP opinions and beliefs as if they were true. They said the GOP was better for the economy. But starting with Reagan, the GOP only enriched the rich with its trickle down, tax loopholes for the rich, and deregulation of industries owned by the rich. NOT ONCE did I ever hear any journalist point this out.
There was no question that this was true when T was supported by the GOP in 2016. NOT ONCE did I hear mainstream news media mention anything significant about T's background. They had raked HRC unmercifully for BENGHAZI - echoing every claim the GOP made about her. But T's 7 failures as a businessman, his racist behavior, his lawsuits to avoid anything he didn't like - such as paying people for work they had done.
Did you ever ask yourself why Tapper through Biden under the bus for his poor debate, when he had said NOTHING about T being unfit for office with his word salads, lies and bigotry.
Obama warned us at the end of his presidency. Yet MILLIONS ignored the warning. They were too racist, misogynistic, self absorbed and/or ignorant of the responsibilities that go with our rights. At least 90M people did not vote or voted for a 3rd party candidate WHO COULD NOT WIN, because Harris was just not good enough. POC VOTE. Their 1st question: which of these 2 candidates is least likely to hurt my family and me. In 2016 and 2024, the answer was clear. And now there are concentration camps across the nation filled with human beings being cruelly treated BECAUSE people did NOT bother to think about what would happen to immigrants or about what needed to be done to protect our democracy. White people chose not to see the danger. They voted for the bigot & liar, did not vote or voted 3rd party. This was not poor education. It was a bunch of kids who wouldn't play the game because they didn't have the candidate they wanted or just choose one of the other options I mentioned above. It was not the party that failed. It was news journalists and voters who failed to do what was right.
Alito says, " Our Nation has made great strides in eliminating racial discrimination in voting".
I listened to a C-SPAN call in program for a few minutes the day after the Calais ruling. Three out of five people were thrilled with the ruling. Their comments? " This is a great thing! Now they no longer have power!" and " This is a good thing. There are too many ignorant Black people in Congress!". Alito the Fool.
what about the ignorant black good for nothing male on the not so supreme court???
He probably can't look in a mirror or that will destroy the vision he has of himself. Thomas has been part of every single SCOTUS decision that has been chipping away at the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed since the second half of the 20th century. One of the last hurdles is the Loving v Virginia case from June 12, 1767 that made all state laws prohibiting interracial marriages as unconstitutional. Who is to say that in the near future there is a group of Southern While Evangelical Christian ministers that decides to challenge that ruling all the way back to SCOTUS. What would Thomas do then, with his own marriage on the line?
that's a good question, but it's quite unlikely that the decision to scrap loving v. virginia would/could be retroactive. remember what thomas said after the dobbs decision. he basically said he'd welcome a case to outlaw contraception and marriage equality. sometimes i wonder if we are living in some alternate universe where it's 1892 and not 2026.
If friends feel helpless or overwhelmed we can remind them that in a little over a year, the regime has erased fundamental freedoms: a woman's control over her body, the right to drive a car free from unreasonable stop and search, the confidence that the DOJ will enforce the law, the right to live live unmolested by government so long as we abide by the law. And it has conscripted us to pay for giant tax cuts for the rich as well as an inordinate share of the cost of operating the country. It is baking in a gig economy that ensures economic desperation of workers, and it is assuring that our children are undereducated to assure generations of workers who can't afford to fight back. And that is only in one year. Only by giving the Democrats enormous majorities in both houses and in the state legislatures can we rebuild the guardrails of the Rule of Law.
amen to all you said, sharon!
I've always had the idea that the environment in which he grew up, apparently wonderful grandparents notwithstanding, left him with the deeply buried belief that he doesn't deserve the remarkable life he lives. I wonder if his personal benchmarks of success include the patronage he receives from his white 'masters'.
Similar thoughts regarding tim scott.
i agree wholeheartedly.
A true Uncle Thomas
Gee would you use similar statements like that against the corrupt white justices?
ABSOLUTELY! it apples equally to the white rapist and racists
Sounds like Alito isn't the only fool.
Excellent suggestions to fight the flagrant segregationist ruling by the majority SC. The one statistic that I found both appalling and inexplicable is that 90 million folks decided not to vote in the 2024 election. Another evidence of almost a third of this country's population who, it would seem, don't care about the country we live in. Take a lesson from Hungry, voting is the only way we can begin to repair the Republican damage to "We the People"!!!
Unfortunately, only a small minority, and probably very very few of the non-voters watch PBS, much less donate and have access to the streaming of all their programming. But, if I could, I'd ask them to watch "Black Snow." It's a documentary of a Russian woman who lived with her family in a coal mining town in Siberia (?). Everybody around her is sick. The ground is literally on fire. She researches the impact of coal dust on health. She tries repeatedly to get the government to help. Her husband drives a coal truck and wishes she would shut up. She doesn't. The governor of her State (or province or whatever) shows up with his entourage to "listen" and then gaslights her repeating the State lie. She functions like a "journalist" in a country that gave up on freedom. She is followed and harassed by State thugs. This is what we will become ... a dictatorship propped up by the wealthy ... and this is the pivotal year to see what will happen.
Thank you for posting that example of courage and determination.
To the extent that that shocking number includes acquaintances, family or friends, we must make our mission to persuade them why their vote is crucial!!!! And to be sure that they are registered to vote.
Freedom Summer! Let's mobilize an army of volunteers to register voters across the South this summer. I think retirees are ripe for this action - we have been showing up in droves for No Kings. Let's really make it count.
I am white and voted against the convicted felon despite it being agains some of my best interests.... How many brown and black voters voted for him? How many did not vote? I am doing my part but those most affected do not!
The illegality, corruption, and incompetence of Trump's 2nd term is such a perfect example of what can happen when people don't take their right to vote seriously. I'm hoping this will influence people's voting and civic actions, so we need to keep pointing all of it out.
ANOTHER WAY TO FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY- BRING THE MAGA PEOPLE BACK TO REALITY
Maybe you have looked into https://leavingmaga.org/ too. I see that they are helping.
Billboards in rural red states would help them get leads.
https://leavingmaga.org/our-billboards-are-going-viral-and-supporters-are-making-their-own-signs/
I just donated a little bit, maybe you would want to consider it too.
This woman's story was rather interesting:
Why She Joined MAGA—and Why She Left | Victoria Hearst on Trauma, Politics, and Texas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiqIwJAEmkI 26:39 min
Florida has the Fair Districts Amendment, but somehow, DeSantis has managed to circumvent it with his illegal mid-decade partisan redistricting effort, proving once again that these people could not care less about the will of the voters. How do we get consequences for this kind of obviously illegal behavior?
Ladies, get out there and fight for minorities! Do you have any doubt that women, although not a minority, will be next on the list? Trump's SAVE Act, if passed, would make it more difficult for married women to vote. HIs anti-DEI policies are being enforced against women as well as against minorities. If we don't fight now, who will fight for us?
We're following Robert Hubbell's suggestion and calling this modern-day version "John Crow" or "John Roberts Crow"
We need to be able to sue and censor the Supreme Court for incompetence and the damage the majority has done to our Nation. We should be able to recall corrupt Supreme Court justices. The partisan decisions of the Roberts court are blatantly unwise and unjust.
If a SCOTUS justice does not retire or die in office, the only other remedy is impeachment. Good luck with that.
The key focus needs to be to reestablish the outcome test instead of the means test. Correlation is not causation., i.e.,"A" implies "B" is not the same as "B" implies "A". The fact that minority voters tend to be Democrats is being used to hide the desire to hobble their political power. Those with slavery in their hearts are using party affiliation to mask their intent. A means test for indirect application of power is VERY hard to prove. An outcome test is almost trivial. Find a way to reestablish the outcome test as basis for the Civil Rights laws, especially including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
SCOTUS is denying reality by asserting that discrimination is over. That inherited social disease is durable through the generations. Amend the law. An explicit outcome test would settle the issue. Setting the granularity of gerrymandering could make the outcome more stable, e.g., the unit of map granularity could be defined to be a county (~no gerrymandering effort can split a county into more than one part). Of course there is an issue with very populated counties. Mathematically there is no perfect solution. Every way of expressing the will of a population and creating a single decision is a mapping from a space of high dimensionality to a single outcome. Each decision can in principle realign subsets of voters. No once and done gerrymandering process can adjust itself dynamically per issue.
Facts, logic and laws are strictly forbidden in the MAGA-verse. They live in the Alternate "Reality" where the Union lost the Civil War and even King Don hugs the wrong flag.
"The arc of the moral universe doesn't bend toward justice unless we bend it." My new motto! Thank you!
so alabama and tennessee are wasting no time in acting to redraw those maps. i guess they will be parading around with the confederate flag. in 1964 we took a family vacation to florida. i was 13 years old. we stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms. i got out of the car and was horrified to be met by segregated bathrooms. whites only could walk on a nice sidewalk to their restrooms. however, there was the sign, "whites only." the "colored" restroom was up a dirt hill to an outhouse. just then a black woman and her little girl began that walk up the hill. i wanted to run up to her to tell her we weren't all racists and that i was so sorry. but my father told me to go use the white bathroom. that memory lay buried in my brain until yesterday. it hit me like a ton of bricks. women of every race are next. some men now feel emboldened to say we shouldn't be allowed to vote.
435 Congress Representatives, 100 Senators, nine Supreme Court Justices and one President, a total of 545 people make up the three branches of our Federal Government! There are 340 MILLION PEOPLE in this country! We The People are being taxed and governed without representation.
People give up. They don't vote or cast frivolous votes because they know that their vote doesn't count. They give up when the people truly represented by our government are the morbidly rich, techbros, oligarchs, Christian Nationalists, white males and Putin.
There is something that we can do to make gerrymandering more difficult and dilute the influence of big money. We must start contacting our Democrat and Independent candidates for Congress and Senate now. We must demand that the cap on the number of Representatives in Congress be removed! The number of Representatives was caped at 435 in 1929. It was an Act, not an ammendment. An Act can be repealed! There's nothing the Supreme Court can do about removing that cap and increasing the number of Representatives.
"We The People are being taxed and governed without representation."
Of course we are. You just don't like the current state of affairs.
"People give up. They don't vote or cast frivolous votes because they know that their vote doesn't count."
Most people who do vote primarily care if there is a (D) or (R) behind the candidate's name, but occasionally some important topic (like the economy) changes the dynamics enough to flip voter affiliation. Otherwise they are too lazy to see what each side promotes or worries about. We're inundated with special-interest funded campaign ads full of half-truths or outright lies...both parties do it every single election cycle.
"There is something that we can do to make gerrymandering more difficult and dilute the influence of big money."
Here's a suggestion: Perhaps a simple computer program with the minimal information needed such as state, county and municipal populations and total number of districts to be drawn. Nothing about age, sex, political preference, race or any other demographic data.
Or ten random people from across a state and give them about a week to figure things out. It couldn't be any worse than the partisan-gerrymandered mess we have now.