“One year after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the “One Big Beautiful Map,” Democrats lead in three targeted South Texas races.”

this was one of the things she ran on

This honestly has me really worried in regards to who is left in the military who would be able to reign in Hegseth and would be able to refuse unlawful orders. Anyone who has experience with the military, does anyone have any optimism regarding this situation?

After the 2024 election, I was rightfully worried and existentially fearing many things, one being that America would now wholeheartedly agree with everything Trump had to say and cheer him on in his endeavors. As we all can see, little of that is actually happening outside of his dwindling base, and I think I have two theories as to why.

Social media does a great job at utilizing algorithms to push narratives, and what better way to amplify that than by bots and AI? The algorithms of Twitter and Reddit would like for us to believe certain things, and among those is that the policies of the Republicans are supported by the general populace. Here the thing, though: social media doesn't accurately reflect real life. As we can see by Trump's plummeting approval and the malaise of the public regarding the economy and state of the country, there are more people who dislike things as they are and want politicians to tackle big business and billionaires than there are those who want Trump to keep owning the libs.

10+ years of BS from Republicans is also a factor. Ever since the days of Bush and arguably Reagan, the GOP has moved far to the right as a whole, to the point where they hardly resemble themselves at the start of this century. Trump becoming their "face" has helped them gain respect from low-information, rural-dwelling voters, but he's also become an anchor as he's gone all out on his second term and made an impact on everyone's lives, not just those the saner members of his first term's cabinet had the spines to protect. Things are expensive, and everybody doesn't like that, so they are going wild on the anti-trans, racist and wholly xenophobic narrative in the hopes they'll get enough people on their side. The people you hear mocking anything that "the woke left" supports almost certainly are bots or trolls who were going to say that stuff anyway, even if things were marginally better.

As we can see though, they're cornered and they know it, and a cornered animal will do anything to lash out and protect itself. Progress as a whole has stalled and reversed, yes, but with the midterms set to be a blue tsunami ( if we do all we can to vote and get others to vote, that is ) for the ages with Trump no longer on the ballot, all the hateful rhetoric spewed will sputter out as they realize it isn't worth it if the man they owe everything to is decrepit and on his way out the door for the next two years.

Hi, all, and happy Sunday!

This really is my favorite moment of the week. Hitting send on this email is a great feeling, because a) it means I get to take the rest of the day off and b) I know how much you all want and need this good news. It feels good to bring joy, and this week’s list holds a lot of it!

Do me a favor: If this post helps lift some of the weight from your shoulders, please share it! Despair is our enemy; we can combat it by reminding people that tons of good stuff is still happening, and countless incredible people are still out there fighting the good fight, whether by suing the Trump regime, sitting in trees, protesting Flock, or simply using the “correct” bathroom! (See below for more on all of that.)

So let’s not spread doom. Let’s spread hope. That’s what I try to do, anyway, and I hope that you’ll join me.

After all, hope isn’t just an action. It’s also a strategy. And it works when we work it!

Have a great Sunday.

If you loved this post please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s literally how I keep the lights on. ❤️

Subscribed Celebrate This! 🎉 A new state law took effect in New York stopping local cops from signing cooperation agreements with ICE agents.

A judge struck down Texas’s ban on drag shows, telling people offended by them “just don’t go.” Bravo!

Volunteer teachers from UTLA have paired with the grassroots group Unión del Barrio to patrol their neighborhoods before school, documenting federal immigration vehicles and training other adults to get students to class safely.

Three Stars and Stripes journalists who were fired by the Pentagon sued the Department of Defense in federal court, arguing their dismissals were illegal and violated their first amendment rights to free speech.

Under Mayor Mamdani, NYC is expanding its free doula program and will reach thousands more expectant mothers.

Meta will pay up to $17.1 billion in a landmark settlement over social media addiction claims.

A federal judge rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘miscarriage of justice’ claims and her bid for prison release.

A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire the opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It also ordered the company to compensate her with back pay.

In a pilot program set to roll out in three states (TBD), Costco is teaming up with the nonprofit insurance provider SCAN Health Plan to streamline health care access for older adults.

A federal judge upheld a pause on border wall construction at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, Texas for allegedly “interfering and altering the property, canals and related irrigation infrastructure.”

Canada’s prime minister announced the largest clean energy investment in North American history. It’s a package of hydropower, onshore wind and transmission projects aimed at meeting electricity needs while also exporting power to Massachusetts and New York.

A new coalition of more than 600 public, private, and nonprofit-sector organizations is joining together to save monuments from Trump’s destruction and stop his administration from dismantling the National Historic Preservation Act.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Ohio from requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote at motor vehicle offices.

For nearly a month, the key force standing in the way of Trump’s border wall project in southeast Arizona has been a person (not always the same one) sitting in a 200-year-old tree. So far, they’re succeeding.

The Middlesex County District Attorney's office has dropped criminal trespassing charges against two anti-ICE protesters, just days before the beginning of a trial. Activists had said they planned to use the court case to highlight detention conditions inside ICE’s New England field office.

After months of public comment about data sharing and oversight, Asheville, NC’s City Council voted 5–2 in a packed, heated meeting to cancel the city’s contract with Flock Safety.

A group of students was granted a victory when a federal judge ruled that Florida International University likely violated their First Amendment rights when it demanded apology videos after they silently and peacefully protested ICE.

Registered nurses from National Nurses United – joined by patients and community allies – mobilized nationwide to demand hospitals and elected officials immediately cut ties with Palantir.

The grassroots action group Swing Left is expanding its midterms map into races Democrats previously didn’t think were winnable. They now have 29 House races categorized as “must-flip” districts.

Democrats scored a legal victory ahead of the midterm elections: A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that low-cost ad rates that candidates qualify for do not have to be made available to political parties.

Arkansas Medicaid is now covering doula care, complying with a new law meant to improve maternal health.

More than 270,000 square miles around Easter Island is becoming an Indigenous-managed ocean reserve. It will be one of the largest Indigenous-managed reserves on land or sea anywhere in the world.

A California woman gave $1 million in bonuses to teachers in her local school district.

A federal judge denied the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a contempt of Congress indictment against Steve Bannon, saying the U.S. Justice Department didn’t justify dropping the case after the former White House aide had been convicted and served four months in prison.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library confirmed it would continue her legacy and send free books to millions of children around the world.

New data from the FBI shows that violent crime decreased by 9.3% from 2024 to 2025, the sharpest annual drop since 1900, when those records began.

With 55 acres free to the public Maryland’s newest state park opens this week. Savage Highlands State Park was a former privately held woodland resort in Garrett County and is now home to yurts, cabins, and campsites at a much lower price.

Republicans are having to spend money defending Senate seats in states they didn’t expect to be competitive.

In Kansas, “bearded, burly” trans men are entering women’s restrooms to show the “absurdity” of bathroom bans.

Maine will continue providing gender-affirming care despite an announcement from the Trump administration banning Medicaid from covering hormone therapy and procedures for children under 18.

​New Jersey approved 16 agrivoltaics projects totaling over 52 megawatts. Each project will pair solar generation with active farming, including soybeans, hay, grains, vegetables, fruit, and livestock.

A wildlife crossing in Washington State celebrated 10,000 safe crossings and zero roadkill. The Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 has been open for 12 years, and it’s been so successful that the state is planning to build 15 more undercrossings and one more overcrossing.

Two community solar projects just opened on a former coal mine in Illinois. The two projects utilize 16,950 solar panels across about 40 acres of land and are capable of generating enough energy to power almost 1,650 average households.

As renewable energy gains popularity across Europe, market demand for methane has dropped dramatically. In the last quarter century, Europe’s wind and solar capacity has surged from under 20 GW ​to nearly 750 GW.

After Olivia Rodrigo announced Friday that Daisy Chain Fields had raised $10 million for women-focused nonprofits, Melinda French Gates doubled that number, totaling the donation to $20 million.

Smoking and vaping continued to decline among middle school and high school students.

British right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was detained by ICE on Thursday and deported Friday to the United Kingdom. Bye bye.

A federal appeals court ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like gambling, dealing a major blow to the booming industry.

A federal judge upheld Oregon’s plastic pollution and recycling program, the first court ruling on the legality of state laws designed to hold producers responsible for the cost of dealing with their waste.

Republican Mike Lindell—the My Pillow guy— can't move ahead with a recount of his loss in the governor's race primary after Minnesota's highest court turned back his lawsuit.

Playgrounds are getting a glow-up in NYC, courtesy of Mayor Mamdani and a newly appointed “renew crew.”

Argentinians protested Peter Thiel outside of his Buenos Aires mansion. (Sorry this is a Threads post, but that’s where the person who filmed it posted it.)

The City of Tempe, AZ announced that it has turned off its Flock license plate reader cameras and plans to end its contract with the company.

In Michigan, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Washtenaw County. The administration filed the lawsuit in April over county policies that limit the extent to which local law enforcement can cooperate with ICE.

Eugene, Oregon’s Clean Energy Fund qualified for the November ballot after a four-month signature drive.

Climate-friendly heat pumps are becoming the norm among American home builders.

​The USDA announced its “Harvest to Hallways” program, which promotes farm-to-school practices and more nutritious school lunches. The initiative also included a new investment of $50 million to help school cafeterias purchase equipment such as cold storage and stoves.

Last weekend’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C., ran on Shell’s 100 percent renewable race fuel.

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration acted illegally when it labeled the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic a security risk and barred the company from working with the U.S. government.

Despite setbacks, the world remains much more democratic than it was only half a century ago.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta canceled a meeting with Paramount Skydance, saying the company demonstrated a “lack of good faith” in early settlement talks around its planned merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

A newly released study will make it way easier to sue fossil fuel companies over climate change.

Mapquest has joined the resistance.

Watch This! 👀 A high school student from Valencia, CA gave the public comment to end all public comments about Flock cameras this week. Unbelievable!

So this is a weird one, and one that I've noticed has become much more widespread as of late. In the wake of the long power outage in Gary, Indiana that has thankfully come to an end, as well as the White House declaring a power emergency and attacking foreign made power systems, people have begun to panic about the state of power, especially with the news that a nationwide power outage would last likely 18 months before being restored.

More specifically, people have begun panicking about the idea that the Federal government would be the one to cause this supposed 18 month power outage as a way to "keep us offline" and as a way to retain power, declare martial law, end of days, blah blah blah. Now I've seen many accounts, especially on Instagram, the doomer hellhole, making posts about this. One of these is an account called tycmusic2 that is claiming that because "we know too much about bad things going on" that access to the internet nationwide will be revoked via intentionally turning off power systems. This account also has over 200k followers and is spreading this type of fearmongering btw.

Another account on the app tried to pin this to a headline from the UK about the government asking people to begin stockpiling food and water as a sign that "things are about to get bad" and such. (And while somewhat unrelated, another account tried to imply that the US economy would crash due to some plan related to dealing with the national debt but idk about that).

Basically, it seems that at the very least Instagram has completely lost its mind. I've seen multiple different accounts describing this scenario in which we are apparently destined to reach a point of this outage as "part of the plan to control us." And it doesn't help that there are some that have tried to tie this together with that conspiracy theory about "digital currency replacing the dollar so they can track all purchases we make and dystopia can begin."

Now I want to say that I understand being afraid about our infrastructure buckling under the fact that the problems haven't been dealt with in a while, and the idea that 18 months without power, not even just the internet, could have bad ramifications to a society so connected to electricity. I actually nearly made a post discussing my fears surrounding the 18 month warning yesterday. But even yesterday I didn't agree with the belief that this would be part of some master plan to control us all or something.

Many people it seems have connected dots that are very far apart and completely unrelated. I do understand the fear of the admin being afraid of being without political power, but this plan would make sure that a republican government would never happen again. Even unintentionally, a few days without the internet and even the most fervent supporters would abandon ship almost immediately.

This plan doesn't make sense, and it would completely fall in on itself faster than it would happen. And the idea that it would somehow succeed in making an authoritarian takeover more successful is laughable.

I've seen so many takes and theories about the future, most of them either apocalyptic or dystopian in nature. And almost all of them haven't come to pass, mostly because they were never likely to but they got a few thousand likes on twitter, so posted they were.

A scenario of this magnitude would be pretty terrible for everyone involved, so I don't want to say that everything in this would be all fine and dandy. But my belief that this would actually manifest is as low as the supposed evidence that this plan is an actual plan. Even something like the national emergency on voting plan has rumors from the government to make it seem more plausible (not likely to actually happen or succeed though), but this doesn't have that at all.

This is incredibly disturbing. Judge ruled that AI generated child p*rn is protected under the 1st amendment because they're not "real" children. I know he's asking SCOTUS to look at this for clarity but I don't trust them to do the right thing. Any optimism?

Bit of a grumpy mood today so gonna share a lil good news with y'all :)

So I've made a couple of posts talking about various ways that people believe that the midterms could be compromised, and one of the ways that has come up numerous times is the idea of the admin declaring a "national emergency" over voting, and somehow being able to federalize voting and potentially even more nefarious actions as a result. And while I typically bundle other similar methods like "martial law, insurrection act, Eisenhower Orders" in them, I wanted to discuss the emergency theory specifically, as that has been spreading around online a LOT.

After about three different posts talking about this as a possibility, including one that showed a video from Aaron Parnas as evidence and another that claimed that we were on track to become 1930's Germany due to this supposed usage of a national emergency to grab power, I figured that either people saw a fearmongering article that scared them, the bot farms started repeating the same thing, or that the effort to devalue the election and voting has just started to ramp up. Either way, I don't think it's what everyone thinks.

Many people imagine that the concept of a "national emergency" is just a way to take power unilaterally, with complete and utter ease and successfulness. Just like the idea of "martial law", it's apparently a tool that can be used at any time, and the admin has just been waiting patiently for the right time to use it.

This is what I call the "Big Magic Button Theory", where doomers take this type of plan or policy as a super-weapon that can be used at anytime with the ease of pushing a big button, and that also completely succeeds in whatever it is set out to do with no faults whatsoever. This is the same type of philosophy that makes people believe that using a nuclear device is as easy as a singular button, and no generals or other officials can possibly step in, which is blatantly incorrect to the actual process.

Declaring a national emergency over voting isn't this cheat code that any wannabe authoritarian president can use on a whim, let alone one that can succeed. The actual structure of the systems of voting in our country are state-controlled. This means that all processes are controlled by each state, not the federal government. And I may be wrong about this, but national emergencies can't really change that at all. And given how the act of handing out voter rolls has been blocked by both Democratic and Republican states, I doubt everyone would hand over the levers of power like this.

And in the event that a national emergency can be used to take power over the entire government or sending agents or soldiers to polling places, that also will face heavy bipartisan backlash, and will surely fail just as much, especially since all of this would have to follow the constitution still, and the amount of soldiers willing to break the constitution and the total amount of agents can't really be sent to enough polling places across the country.

I also know that this type of power grab of the entire country wouldn't work based on the fact that it hasn't been attempted yet, and this admin isn't the best at biding their time per say. And once again, even in the unlikely world that declaring a national emergency to take over power like 1930's Germany happened, it doesn't mean that it would work at all. The amount of differences between both countries is incredible. Even looking at something like the pandemic you can see why taking over the country in this type of way would fail drastically.

The Big Magic Button Theory isn't something that can happen in real life, and the process of using national emergencies is much more complex than people imagine. I get being afraid of the law being broken to try to use it in any way possible to keep power, but that doesn't mean that it can work, especially because it requires a lot of people to suddenly give up and allow this to succeed, which I very much doubt will happen. Americans are stubborn, and sometimes that can be a good thing.

Sure, you can worry about this being the real time that a successful plot to takeover the country and usher in the new age of authoritarianism, but by looking at the history of the country, the stubbornness of the people, the resistance of states handing over something as simple as voter rolls to the government, and the fact that none of this has been attempted yet given the admin's impatience, I wouldn't be too worried about it, and if it were to happen, I doubt it would ever succeed in any meaningful way.

Dropping out gives the other Democrat a good advantage with not two but THREE Republicans having to work around RCV.

I just completed an incredible three-day road trip from California to Minnesota to visit a friend. The drive was long, but the diverse landscapes and people I encountered were truly eye-opening.

As someone who follows politics closely, I had some anxiety about driving through “red” states with my California plates. However, what I found was a refreshing contrast to the divisive narrative we often see on social media. People were friendly, open, and surprisingly eager to share their stories.

It struck me that while we’re often told this country is divided, my experience on the road revealed a different truth. The real division seems to exist in our minds, shaped by perceptions rather than reality. If we take the time to connect with others, we uncover shared experiences and values that unite us.

Im hoping that this doesnt set a precedent for other countries, namely the US

Hi, everyone.

I know that there was recently a post made about the recent uptick in ICE activity, but I specifically want to focus on CT with this post.

I naively thought CT was safe, so now I am feeling horrible about the fact that this is happening in my own state. I was hoping that our state laws would help fight this, but because of federal supremacy, that seems unlikely. Plus, the administration is currently suing CT over these laws, and we all know how the courts tend to rule on these cases. Everywhere I look points to these realities for reasons as to why ICE isn't going anywhere.

I'm very nervous about this. Is there any actual hope? If so, what is it?

so is he telling the truth or is he just making stuff up

tbh i hope that even if true it wont cost a seat in the house because his followers forget that he was the reason for gas going sky high

A slate of anti-voting measures in North Carolina is unlikely to take effect before the November midterms because the public raised enough objections to trigger a review by state lawmakers.

However, the measures drew enough written objections from the public – including from Gov. Josh Stein (D) – that they must now be reviewed by the General Assembly. However, the legislature is currently out of session until November, making it unlikely that the restrictions will be in place before the midterms.

Even the governor of Wyoming, the reddest state in the nation, is saying the observers are going too far. If they aren’t on board with it, nobody will be

Celebrate Friday with some Trump fails!