1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Good job Texas. Eager gerrymandering to please DJT seems to have backfired. CA is sure to negate any gains. And now Texas voters are angrier than ever. On to the other plan…voter suppression. When the guy who on Jan. 5, 2021, told the world that “all hell will break loose tomorrow,” and on Jan. 6, it did, is now saying “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again… We will never again allow an election to be stolen,” we’re listening. And believing. Steve Bannon continued his thoughts on his podcast: “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.” Is it the royal ‘we’? Or is it the federal ‘we’?  Bannon is the single most influential person in the MAGA movement. What Steve Bannon says goes.    Bannon’s remarks weren’t pulled out of thin air. And the timing is no coincidence. It echoes what Trump also said this week, when he doubled down in the Oval Office about his plan to take control of elections.  It’s not the first time Trump has said this. Last August, he said the same thing on social media: “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 … to do.”   Bannon’s remarks also follow Trump’s recent declaration that Republicans should “take over” elections and “ought to nationalize the voting.” Election-denier, aka House Speaker, Mike Johnson also falsely claimed that elections were “fraudulent.”    “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on Election Day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost… It looks on its face to be fraudulent.” He added: “Can I prove that? No.”  No one can. No one has. No one will. Ever. Because it’s not true. Trump’s policies are hated. They are ruining the country. They are killing the GOP as a viable political party. No one will vote for what they are trying to shove down our throats. So disrupting our right to vote is the next logical step. And a constant rejecting of the results of any election that doesn’t put MAGA in charge. Voter suppression isn’t always done quietly through laws and the courts. Trump has figured out that he can normalize voter intimidation and election subversion by talking about it regularly in the open.  But it is one thing to destroy our rights in a time before modern communications could organize resistance. It is quite another thing to overthrow a nation of 348 million people who are forewarned. And we are forewarned. P.S. Last week’s release of some of the Epstein files showed while Bannon portrays himself as a populist defender, he worked closely with Epstein to launder his image and craft political messages. He’s a fraud. But an effective one. He’s not a populist. But he plays one well. And he’s all over the Epstein files. Just like the boss.