OUR RIGHT TO VOTE IS A SUPER POWER. USE IT. OR LOSE IT.

Early voting starts in Texas tomorrow. Yesterday, around the world, people gathered at more than 3,000 No Kings: Vote Early events. The Big Lie Trump launched in 2020 is alive and well in the Republican bloodstream. Republican-dominated state legislatures have since consistently and persistently restricted access to our right to vote. They continue to hunt for the unicorn of non-citizen voter fraud. Even though that is actually as rare as a unicorn. In 2021 at least 19 states passed 32 laws to make voting more difficult. Since the 2024 election, 22 states have passed 47 laws that restrict the vote. States have closed polling places in Black and Latino districts. Required new paperwork to vote. Reduced early voting. And restricted the use of student IDs for voter identification. And the federal government is using the DOJ and our legal system against our voting rights. So No Kings took citizens to the streets to demand our votes. But just at the height of the events, Meta took down the main No Kings organizing page on Instagram for about four hours. Meta didn’t respond to the No Kings team. And once the account was viewable again, Meta told them in their response email that they made a bad call. Still though, No Kings administrators had no access to the account. Which blocked their ability to post about the day’s events. Meta later claimed the issue was technical, saying, “When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That’s what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today’s day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as it should and we sincerely apologize.” Coincidence? Reuters reported on a story out of Brazil claiming that in internal communications, Meta employees acknowledged that the company had restricted the Instagram accounts of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the country’s recent election. The story says the employees’ messages also recommended accounts related to his challenger, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing ex-president who tried to overthrow Lula’s government. Senator Bolsonaro did much better than expected in the election, and the two face a runoff. This can no longer be seriously viewed as ‘shit happens’ when realizing how increasingly vulnerable we all are to decisions made by powerful technology platforms. Platforms that have the power to determine who gets heard and who gets silenced. Elon Musk. Meta. And a president who has their backing. “I can always say that the next president will get a lot of credit for what I’ve done. Please remember it was me, not them,” Donald Trump says. No worries there.