Texas Dems hold the line to keep the nation from fraying under Trump

I've said for a few days now that Donald Trump's goading of Texas to "find" five new safely GOP congressional seats in a highly unusual mid-decade gerrymander could spark something akin to a civil war. Perhaps not a literal "military" rift between red and blue states, but a fraying of the threads that keep them "united" as a nation.

Well, it turns out I'm not the only one who thinks that. Bloomberg's Ronald Brownstein sees what I see, too: blue states matching what Texas does to counter-act their stifling of "we, the people's" ability to elect representation vs letting the representation choose us. Where does that lead us as a nation? It's ominous to consider, and more importantly, it's anti-democratic. Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that Texas' egregious actions could be what finally convinces enough Americans and House members to pursue making gerrymandering illegal - no matter the state doing it.

Texas state representative James Talarico - I think of him as "white Obama" - is a pastor, former teacher and rising star in the Democratic Party. He's everything scumbags like Ted Cruz isn't: courageous, decent and lives his morals and values. He's among the handful of Democrats refusing to give Governor Greg Abbott the legislative quorum required to pass the Trump-ordered gerrymander. Do keep an eye on him if you aren't already.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump thinks he has the power to have the Commerce Department "re-do" the 2020 census to remove undocumented people from the count. Never mind the unconstitutional nature of the order (buy when's that stopped him before?) but say he does it: doesn't that also mean Texas loses three U.S. House seats when 2.1 million immigrants aren't counted? Derp.

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Closer to home, Georgia's still fighting the Civil War in a court battle with the Sons of the Confederacy. You see, Stone Mountain Park, just outside Atlanta - the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan - had long been a magnet glorifying the Confederacy. After civil rights protests in 2020, the state drew down a lot of that, and the SOCVs are throwing a judicial hissy.

Here again, a Kemp-led Georgia (a broke clock being right occasionally) steered from pandering to Confederate fetishists, and Trump's recent emboldening of said fetishism has them itching for a fight.

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Lastly - and this is rich - Georgia attorney general Chris Carr is howling like a scalded dog because his 2026 GOP gubernatorial combatant (Burt Jones) has the benefit of a state law giving him cover to fundraise using a "leadership committee" only state legislators or governors or lieutenant governors can use prior to winning party primaries.

Here's the funny part: AG Carr has been defending the law that created that unfair advantage in court since it became law. Also, a Republican whining about there being "too much money" in campaigns when his party's done everything they could to let as much big money sicken the process for decades.