The Stressful October

Apologies for the lack of blogging.

Midterms are stressing me out.

Early voting in Florida is coming up.

Get the vote out.

Kick the Republican crooks out of office, please and thank you.

Everything At Stake: 2026 Midterms

If it feels like this election cycle is the most important of our lifetimes AGAIN for the tenth or twelfth time, it's because since 2004 we've been dealing with high stakes for our nation - and for the state of Florida where I live - ever since the Bush the Lesser administration created so many mistakes - the flaws and failures of the War On Terror above all - and mishandled so many disasters - the various corporate scandals from Enron to the mortgage crisis, as well as Hurricane Katrina - that we've been trying to compensate ever since.

It doesn't help that the cyclical nature of the elections themselves - swinging towards liberals and Democrats one term, swinging towards conservative Republicans after a term or two - doesn't allow for any stability in policies, with the partisan nature of the Republicans' destructive agendas causing more chaos and harm than any good. This particular congressional term of 2025-2026 - the mass deportations and civil rights abuses, the refusal to rein in trump's corruption and warmongering - has been partisanship destruction on steroids through inaction and distraction, with far too many aspects of federal - and state - effectiveness falling apart.

If there's anything positive about the 2026 midterm cycle, it's that many signs are pointing to a Democratic "Blue Wave" similar to what happened in 2018... except this time voter anger towards trump and Republicans are higher and more visceral. There are signs that the Democrats can claim enough seats in the Senate this cycle - with Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas in play - to clinch control of both parts of Congress.

Granted, the polls are still within margin of error and could still provide narrow wins for Republicans to keep the Senate, but most of the polling - not just nationwide but at the district levels - are pointing to Dems claiming the House of Representatives... and that's AFTER all the massive gerrymandering the Republicans inflicted this year after the Supreme Court ruled they could eliminate minority-majority (also Democratic) districts.

Hoping is one thing that likely voters will show: Action is what matters, and actual voter turnout is necessary among the Democratic base - and all others among the No Party Affiliates and disgruntled Republicans - to show up by November 3rd to get their ballots in and make them count.

For Florida, that means showing up to vote in every congressional district for any Democratic candidate on that ballot. That means showing up to vote for the Democratic Senate candidate statewide. That means showing up to vote out the overlong Republican dominance at the state legislative levels as well as putting Democrats back into the governor's office along with the other executive offices up for vote.

The state attorney general election is vital this year for Democrats to win because of the current scandals surrounding the DeSantis regime, especially the Hope Florida theft of $10 million earmarked for sick kids. If the Republicans win the state AG office, that Republican - James Uthmeier, who has connections to that scandal! - will squash any further investigation or criminal charges aimed at those who stole money from sick kids, and perpetuate all future GOP scandals as the state Republicans know they will get away with all of it. Holding these crooks accountable is a key reason to show up and vote this midterms for Democrats. This is why voting for Jose Javier Rodriguez could arguably be the most important choice on your state ballot.

For the governor's office itself, the Democratic candidate is David Jolly a one-time Republican who quit that party of his own volition during the first trump regime, and has taken the role of the centrist candidate trying to appeal to both Dems and NPA/angry Republican voters. There is a risk though, as previous election attempts of centrist candidates (sigh, Crist) did not boost general election Dem turnout. This year is different due to the overall anger by the electorate, one hopes. It matters to elect Jolly because the Republican on the ballot Byron Donalds is an openly MAGA wingnut who will impose trumpian chaos at the state level.

For the U.S. Senate race, the Democratic primary voters pulled off an upset going with Angie Nixon, an openly avowed progressive who impressed the base with effective ground campaigning and an aggressive anti-trump message. The polling has Nixon neck-and-neck to incumbent Ashley Moody, who has close ties to the DeSantis crime family and involvement in the Hope Florida scandal... and thus utterly deserves to get kicked out by Florida voters angry by all the GOP corruption. Voting FOR Nixon - relax, this is the GOOD Nixon - would also contribute to the Democrats' chances of gaining control of the Senate.

There's also Democrat Annette Taddeo running for the Chief Financial Officer position, and Joey Mendoza Atkins for Commissioner of Agriculture. Voting for the Democratic candidates for Congress, state House, and state Senate depending on your district matters a lot as well, please and thank you.

Florida also has a judicial retention vote, and up for consideration this year is Carlos Muniz, appointed to the seat in 2019 by DeSantis, which should be a huge mark against Muniz for starters. The Orlando Sentinel describes Muniz as one of the most partisan justices on the state bench, who ruled on enforcing a strict abortion ban and supported blatant gerrymandered maps. Voting NO on Muniz will hold him accountable for those decisions. One other reason to vote for Jolly as governor by the by is to end the ongoing stacking of state judgeships by all the Republican governors we've had for 20-plus years: our court system is filled with Far Right partisans who'll rule in favor of their elites instead of serving the needs of the public.

Last thing on the Florida ballots will be three amendments: Amendment One is to increase the amount of money that may be retained in the budget stabilization fund (aka the Rainy Day emergency bank), and limits on how the money gets transferred; Amendment Two is to exempt farm equipment or tools from property taxes if the property is listed for agricultural needs; and Amendment Three is an expanded homestead exemption rate a nuclear bomb wiping out millions from any county and city government's revenues raised from property taxes.

I've already made my position on Amendment Three clear: raising the exemption rates to such extremes would ruin many services provided at the city and county levels, such as road maintenance, clean water supply and sewage handling, public parks, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, and more. Public hospitals and health services could lose $323 million over three years. Counties could lose up to $29.7 BILLION over five years (almost 65 percent of their revenues) and cities losing up to $12 BILLION (around 26 percent of their revenues) in that same span. 

For anyone thinking they're going to save between $600 to $1200 on their annual taxes with this amendment, consider the costs of everything else in your life going up either by counties/cities enacting more fees (if the state will even let them!) or the costs of suddenly dealing with dirty water, higher utility bills, 2000 potholes between your house and work, and your kids suddenly having no safe parks or open museums to entertain them. That $1200 you're saving from one column in your balance sheet is going to get eaten up by the other costs. It's not worth the loss of public services, and I am not saying this as an employee of a city public library I'm saying this as a homeowner who is okay with paying my taxes as a civic duty. For the love of GOD, vote NO on Three.

As for Amendment One, there's no evidence at the moment that the budget stabilization fund needs more money - it's at its highest amount (9.3 percent) in years, having recovered from the fiscal horrors of 2008 - and this move feels like a power grab by the Republicans in the state legislature. I'm thinking of voting NO on One. 

Amendment Two does address the costs of managing farms here in the state, removing some of the fiscal burdens allowing our local agribusinesses to afford equipment and other supplies. Florida needs to maintain local agriculture at least to ensure food security at this level, so this would help our communities overall. It may cut into the property taxes for our counties, but not at the extremes that Amendment Three does. I would vote YES on Two.

That all said: VOTING MATTERS, FLORIDA. Especially during a midterms that trump and his lackeys are threatening to take away our votes by hook or crook. If you're worried about your county precinct being at risk from illegal federal raids, plan ahead and do Early Voting which happens October 19th through November 1st. Check your county's Elections website to find out locations - they tend to be in centralized locations that ICE / DHS / FBI aren't keen to hit since white voters will be there - and plan to go early mornings or late afternoons depending on your work schedules.

Vote the Republican crooks out, Florida. Vote FOR David Jolly, Jose Javier Rodriguez, Angie Nixon, and every Democrat on the ballots. Vote NO on Three above all. 

PLEASE VOTE.

What If: trump Attacks the 2026 Midterms

For all the good news about the polling predicting a Democratic Blue Wave disrupting trump's plans for empire this 2026, there remains genuine concern that trump and his Far Right Republican allies will do whatever they can to deny, disrupt, or destroy the actual midterm elections.

Remember what Wilhoit observed: Conservatives believe "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Conservatives view themselves - and only themselves - as the In-Group that must be protected at all costs. When the conservative ideologues dispersed across both major parties decided by the 1980s to make themselves all Republicans, that was when the modern Republican Party came to believe only THEY were the legitimate party and that every Democratic win were "stolen" or fraudulent.

For all of trump's whining and gaslighting about "stolen" ballots or acts of mass voter fraud, it didn't all start with him: he's co-opted a long-standing narrative from the Far Right about voter fraud that's been pursued for decades (SEE Kris Kobach's entire political career). No matter if a vast majority of actual voters across the United States - a good number of them may even be angry Republican voters betrayed by their own party - will turn out for Democratic candidates this November: Republicans will refuse to accept those results (because in their minds, anyone who votes for Democrats are not REAL Americans).

Because we've seen it before in 2020.

The most obvious attack that trump and the Republicans - especially in the Red states seeing cracks in their one-party rule like Texas and Florida - will attempt is to fight the results in the courtrooms, claiming massive fraud without, you know, actually proving that fraud... again, what we saw in 2020. Just like in 2020, the courts are going to insist on proof instead of any false promises of "oh we'll find it, trust us" like trump's lawyers argued then and have been arguing in a lot of other court cases during this second administration. It's gaslighting that works on the wingnut media outlets but never convinces the judges, and it's an attack strategy doomed to fail.

One possible attack is trump threatening to send ICE and other federal agents to precincts on Election Day to "arrest all illegal voters." Again, there's no evidence of massive voter fraud being committed by non-citizens: This is trump and his racist lackeys fearmongering over immigrants. There's also the threat of sending the FBI and other agencies to the county-level elections offices (shades of the Brooks Brothers riot) to disrupt or even seize the ballots to prevent the counts. 

This all sounds scary and it should. This is also something that local activists at the state, county, and city levels are prepared to fight; because it is against the law to send armed federal agents to election sites. Lawsuits are already getting filed. trump will likely run into the same angry judges who aren't happy about getting lied to about "voter fraud" in the first place, and there's no compelling argument trump and his thugs can provide to change legal minds.

I'm seeing arguments that in spite of the actual election results - if everything turns for the Democrats and there's a massive Blue Wave at both the state and congressional levels - there's the risk of Republicans still in charge at the state level - the elections officials, the Secretaries of State, the state Attorney Generals (many of them elected Republicans unhappy in this scenario of getting voted out of power) - simply refusing to certify the results. It was the thing trump tried to force on January 6th - stopping Congress from certifying the Electoral count going to Biden - could happen on January 3rd when Congress verifies their own election results, and this could be a legitimate concern.

Derek Muller at Election Law Blog did a big article about the fears over certification blocks, and he's adamant there's little trump or the Republicans could do to stop it:

Even these calls, however, assume that the majority party is exerting control over minority delegations. That is, if a delegation currently controls a chamber, it can refuse to seat a member or a number of members in a kind of “hardball” move (with varying degrees of likelihood of success, left for another day).

That, however, is very different in kind from concern that the minority party could become the majority through some kind of “one weird trick” approach. It is that concern that is the angst of the fearmongering chronicled seriatim above.

Now, there are a range of nuanced views on how, precisely, a minority in Congress would go about doing this across these pieces. I’ll operate from the assumption that it would be Republicans denying Democrats in the House a majority, although occasional reporters I’ve spoken with worry about Democrats refusing to seat Missouri’s delegation over unlawful maps, or some Senate scenarios, which are less complicated because the Senate is a continuing body. And I’ll truck through scenarios pretty quickly.

1. As Ned has pointed out repeatedly, often on deaf ears, the House is not a continuing body. Mike Johnson ceases to be Speaker at noon on January 3. He holds no power. Whatever the House has done or decided before that is cannot bind the incoming House, including any purported findings regarding the validity of elections. It is a brand new House that will adjudicate all matters afresh.

2. If a minority of Republicans object to the seating of some Democrats on January 3, it would only happen after the Speaker’s election (presumably, Hakeem Jeffries). The more recent traditional mechanism is a “stand aside” mechanism, where members whose seats are in dispute stand aside while the remaining putative members vote on whether to seat them. That practice does not have an ironclad precedent, and the Speaker presiding over that vote may well permit the disputed members to vote on their own seating, and a majority of the body would likewise approve of that rule change. The point being, there is a ready way for the majority to thwart an effort by the minority to become the majority.

3. The most sophisticated disaster porn asks about replacing the clerk of the House on the eve of January 3, and the new clerk refusing to recognize the credentials of incoming Democrats, so that Republicans could choose a Speaker and organize the House as if they were in the majority. Ned shares good thoughts from Matt Seligman on this front.

It is worth emphasizing the clerk is not a member of the House, so the political question doctrine does not apply to the clerk’s actions in the event the judiciary is asked to intervene. But more to the point, these actions have happened before, and they’ve not been successful...

As I’ve told many reporters over the last two years on this topic, you can throw sand in the gears, but “stealing the House” is another matter entirely. And the wider the margins (both in terms of the number of votes separating the winner from a contestant, and the number of seats the House turns on), the less likely such scenarios are to occur (I have admittedly quipped that if it’s 217-217 in the House with a tight contest in the 435th race, all bets are off.)...

while it’s possible for a majority to subvert a minority (as Democrats did to Republicans in 1985), it is essentially impossible for the minority (note: which the Republicans would be after a Blue Wave election) to subvert the majority, as the chronicle above should help demonstrate.

One could argue that this moment is different, but that’s really just the assumed premise of this kind of analysis.

In short, most scenarios get basic facts or law wrong, and the most complicated scenarios require a unique convergence of factors that have never existed, a unique level of coordination that seems very unlikely, docile political opposition, and a judiciary willing to acquiesce to all these moves–and all working simultaneously. Even then, most of these scenarios could, at most, delay some organization of the House by a matter of hours or days.

As for blocking certification at the state levels, there are already laws in place requiring county and state officials to certify results once all the counting is done and verified (this is why fears that trump and his thugs will simply seize the ballots to prevent certification. Again, there are laws blocking them from attempting that). No matter what happens, if a state Attorney General or Sec of State refuses to do their duty, the courts are likely to compel them one way or another. 

This all could lead to something that's outside the purview of law, and that's trump simply ignoring every law and pulling a political coup (technically an autogolpe, but everyone understands what a coup means). This is where things really get interesting.

In spite of trump's belief - and the Supreme Court's recent rulings to give the presidency broad overreaching powers - there are still limits to what a president can do even under national emergencies. Rick Hasan also at the Election Law Blog has this to say: 

One of the most alarming threats to the upcoming midterm elections is the possibility that the president will declare a national emergency to try to postpone, cancel, or seize control of the midterms, a tactic that strongman leaders around the world have used to evade electoral accountability. Yet, any claim by the administration that a national security threat allows the president to unilaterally nationalize elections is not based in legal reality and would be an unprecedented attempt in U.S. history to interfere in elections and prevent citizens from voting.

As the Center for American Progress has detailed, no constitutional provisions, emergency powers, statutes, executive orders, Supreme Court precedents, or other sources lawfully delegate to the president any power to change election-related laws. This is true even in the face of a national security threat or an emergency—including attempted foreign interference in elections. The founders wrote the Constitution to prevent presidents from becoming kings, and they expressly gave states the power to administer federal elections, with Congress having authority to set national guidelines when needed. Exercising their clear authority, states have repeatedly demonstrated that they are able to conduct free and fair elections, even under emergencies and challenging circumstances such as the Civil War, both world wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, and—as discussed below—previous attempts at foreign interference...

This has come up before: Our nation faced legitimate national emergencies - armed insurrection by the slave-holding states, world wars, even the Korean and Vietnam wars where we had the presidency itself change hands between parties - and nobody in high office - even President Lincoln in 1862 when pro-slavery Democrats were poised to take control of the House - ever tried to declare national emergencies to disrupt or delay the elections. 

For trump to declare a national emergency over the midterm results would, once again, require facing legal challenges in court that trump and his lawyers can't win. This is when trump's last resort - ordering armed troops (either National Guards units from Republican-controlled states, or the actual military under Secretary of Idiocy Hegseth) could take place.

In that situation, trump would have to argue that the Insurrection Act - a law he violated in 2021 and got away with - applies to the midterms and use it to override the Posse Comitatus Act to deploy the military. As John May over at the Justia Verdict website notes:

Sections 251 through 255 of Title 10 of the United States Code, usually referred to as the Insurrection Act, implement the President’s constitutional authority to call forth “the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel invasions.” Section 253 has two parts. The first allows the President to use the military in a state to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws” that any portion of the state’s inhabitants are deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right. The second permits the President to deploy troops to suppress the same conduct when it “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

Many authorities believe that these sections can only be invoked in very limited circumstances. A 1964 U.S. Justice Department Memorandum states that the law may only be invoked in three circumstances: (1) when a state requests help in putting down an insurrection; (2) when deployment is needed to enforce a federal court order; or (3) when “state and local law enforcement have completely broken down.” The circumstances posited by this paper fit well within the confines of the last scenario.

That all depends on what trump can prove, not gaslight about. trump and his Republican allies could argue the midterm results are part of a "conspiracy" "hindering the execution of the laws" that would be insurrection... but it would be trump and those Republicans doing the actual hindering. The execution of laws are already in place to count and certify votes, and the Democrats aren't the ones interfering with that. It would be a question of how the Republicans would pull that argument (most likely by lying their asses off about mass voter fraud again).

It could be a situation for example in Texas where the Democrats win a plurality of US House districts, as well as state legislative offices that breaks the stranglehold the Republicans have over the last two decades, as well as winning the Governor and Attorney General offices (at which point corrupt bastards like Ken Paxton are shit out of luck). The sitting Republican governor, Greg Abbott, could apply Circumstance (1) asking trump to "put down" the Democrats Abbott would accuse of bringing in illegals to vote and "inciting insurrection".

Depending on how quickly the federal courts could shut that down, even if they could should and would, there's still a risk trump will ignore the courts and proceed with declaring any Democratic win an act of insurrection and start arresting people using ICE - or worst the military - to do so. THIS becomes the true nightmare scenario. It might explain why trump doesn't even seem bothered by how the midterms turn out: Not because he's convinced Republicans will win, it's because trump's convinced he can shut everything down by Executive dictate and force election results the Republicans didn't earn. 

Fearing that result, however, doesn't do anyone any good. Granted it's a worst-case scenario, and it depends on if the Far Right conservatives are that desperate to hold onto power that they would risk open civil war. It's better to fight the battles now, vote as best you can, side with the Democrats to drive the corrupt Republicans out of office through legal means, and get ready to fight trump and his horde for the soul and future of America.

Just be ready for anything. Stay safe.

If One Can Hope For a Big Enough Wave (w/ Update)

If the Far Right Republicans were in control of everything heading into the midterms, they wouldn't exactly be panicking like this (via David A. Graham at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican whose district Trump won by 15 points in 2024, recently released an ad critiquing the administration’s immigration enforcement, saying that Hispanic voters feel “betrayed.” Byron Donalds, the GOP’s nominee for governor of Florida, scrubbed most references to Trump from his website—a notable move considering that the foundation of Donalds’s entire career has been fidelity to the Donald. The Senate contenders Mike Rogers of Michigan and Ashley Hinson of Iowa are both calling for an end to the Iran war. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, has even suddenly changed his mind and now believes that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

The number of prominent Republicans distancing themselves from Trump has accelerated, or at least reached a critical mass, in the past 10 days. The shift is interesting—first, as an indication of what information GOP candidates are receiving privately about the president’s unpopularity and its drag on them, and second, because public critiques of Trump from Republicans have been vanishingly rare, no matter how unwise, outrageous, or unpopular his actions have been.

But the defections are perhaps better understood as a sign of normalcy, even in a deeply abnormal context. A president’s party almost always loses seats in a midterm, a result of the pendulum effect in elections. And the dynamics of this race are especially challenging for Republicans because Trump is historically unpopular, outpacing even his own poor ratings in 2018, when Democrats dominated the midterms. Trump is now presiding over persistent inflation, exacerbated by a failing war of choice in Iran. All of this predicts that GOP candidates would be wary of Trump...

Thing is, this time it feels different. After massive gerrymandering to make more congressional districts "safe" for Republican incumbents, the polling - if the New York Times numbers are accurate - is showing massive shifts - ranging from +11 to +31 (or more) - in favor of Democrats across far too many districts.

Texas and Florida would become ground zero for a possible Democratic tsunami, with the party’s chance at a large congressional majority potentially hinging on whether it could break through Republican gerrymanders in those states. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...

[image or embed]

— Eric Michael Garcia (@ericmgarcia.bsky.social) September 22, 2026 at 7:06 PM

In case the skeet disappears,
a screenshot of Garcia's observations

The thing that proved advantageous to trump and the Republicans in 2024 - a shift of (mostly male) Latino/Hispanic voters who supported trump over Harris - is now abandoning the Far Right thanks to the odious deportation attacks trump and his lackeys at DHS/ICE are inflicting on Latino communities even in must-need-their-votes states like Florida and Texas. This would explain Rep. Salazar's desperate ad pretending to oppose trump's anti-immigration policies... when everyone knows she and her fellow Republicans in Congress supported those policies and are doing nothing today to stop him.

As much as Donalds and Salazar and numerous other Far Right GOP candidates/incumbents act or say in public, they are tied to the hip with trump and his destructive ways: They never held him accountable to every constitutional violation and ethical breach he's done, not in his first term and clearly not in his second. If voters are paying any attention - and the polling suggests they are - the Republicans can't hide from their culpability in trump's crimes.

For all the conspiracy theorizing of how the Republicans - especially as trump and his lackeys at Justice and Homeland Security and the Post Office are working to disrupt the upcoming midterm voting - could just rig the results and "win" by their form of cheating (extreme gerrymandering, blocking voters at the polls above all, tricking voters to not show, those sorts of things), if they felt they could pull that off then they wouldn't be panicking like they are now. The campaigns tend to have more resources for their own internal polling work - number they don't share to the public - and whatever it is the Republicans are seeing from their own numbers have them terrified they're losing more than the US House or a couple of state governorships.

The polls may say one thing, but what matters above all is actual voter turnout. Elections always matter - I wish more people understood that - and in spite of every Far Right attempt to deny everyone else their power to vote, people need to show up in droves this October during Early Voting weeks - arguably the safest time to do it - and show up no matter what by Tuesday November 3rd for Election Day itself. 

If you're angry about how bad things are, if you're angry about inflation killing you at the gas pump and grocery store, if you're angry about unwanted wars and a military getting decimated by idiocy from trump's people mismanaging it all, if you're angry about your communities under attack by trump's masked thugs kidnapping your neighbors and their kids, you have a way to express that anger the right way.

Show up at the ballot box and vote every corrupt and inept Republican bastard out of office.

Update: Spotted this Axios report from Marc Caputo, Hans Nichols, and Alex Isenstadt where the "Oh Crap" GOP settings are at DEFCON-2.

It's looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.

Most worrisome for the GOP, there's virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism surges before the Nov. 3 election.

That's why Republicans fear the undertow imperils so many candidates once deemed safe...

The problems for the GOP are everywhere. In the battle for the Senate, once ruby-red Texas looks more in play than ever, and Florida isn't far behind. Nor is Alaska. North Carolina and Georgia look lost. Maine is problematic.

The Senate GOP campaign arm is begging donors for another $8.9 million to defend Senate seats in three states that Trump won by double digits two years ago — Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.

"We're having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls," said one national Republican pollster. "At what point do we think these guys aren't showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?"

As I've said, turnout matters. As much as getting Democrats invested in showing up, as much as getting Independent voters to show up in favor of Dem candidates, having Republican voters tune out is just as important. Granted, it's hard to get anyone to answer to polls - I admit, I've been sending every phone text request this year to BLOCKED - but even in normal circumstances you should find enough people to respond. THIS midterms, Republican voters refuse to even pretend to pollsters to back their own party.

It's hard for a partisan voter to flip to the other party - when people buy into a brand (tm), they're faithful until the brand betrays them personally - so the next-best thing is that they refuse to show, as a means to express their anger. In the gerrymandered districts the Republicans carved for themselves in Red states, even two percent of your voter base failing to show could be devastating: It's looking like five to ten percent of the GOP base won't vote.

We can't tell for certain what turnout will look like this November, because the primaries that happened earlier in the year are so poorly attended to begin with. It's one of the unspoken failures of our electoral system, that barely a quarter of registered voters show up for that stage of the process when you're choosing the candidates to represent your own party. If more people showed up for that, we might have a better idea of which way the November turnouts will go. Alas...

Political Gravity At Last Is Kicking In

It's gotten to where I don't normally trust the political polls, but good news is good news (via Tara Suter at The Hill):

President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to a historic low with the midterms only about six weeks away, according to a new poll.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating was sitting at 32 percent, the lowest of his second term and, according to Reuters, a record low for his entire political life. The fresh approval rating marks a 15-point slide from the 47 percent approval rating he had at the beginning of his second term in the same poll.

I don't think trump has ever polled well with most Americans - I've never seen him go above 50 percent approval, he might have at one point, I just didn't see it - but he's rarely slid under 40 percent during his first term mostly because the Republican voting base never abandoned him. At least until now:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also pegged Trump’s disapproval rating at 66 percent, up 25 percentage points from the start of his second White House stint...

In a polling average from Decision Desk HQ, Trump’s approval rating was 38.8 percent Monday evening, while his disapproval rating was 59.7 percent.

A recent New York Times/Siena University poll also found Republicans trailing Democrats on the issues of immigration, healthcare and the economy.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll took place Sept. 17-20 among 1,277 people and had 3 percentage points as its margin of error.

You might notice this poll happened after trump's midterms convention stunt, designed to get his approval numbers bouncing back, because rallies are his thing babe.

But his numbers are finally - FINALLY - declining among the Republican base he's trying to rally. That Reuters/Ipsos poll found that his approval among Republicans fell from 82 percent to 73 percent.

I've noted before way back in 2017 that as long as the party base - the ones who would defend their brand (tm), their standard bearer, their demagogue - remains favorable, the polls are going to skew in trump's favor more than they should. What I wrote then:

Notice the polarized numbers between the three factions of Democrats to Independents to Republicans. Of course the Republicans disapproved of the Democrats - harshly so after 1992 when the partisanship started its avalanche - for Clinton and Obama, and of course the Democrats disapproved of the Republicans from Reagan onward, and while they approved their own guys with high marks. That's not surprising...

But that's unimportant for this argument. What matters is that 87 percent approval Republicans have for Trump.

As long as Trump has that much support among the party base, there is not a damn thing the Republicans in Congress or in the Establishment can do to toss him overboard...

The polarization of polling numbers is a given: Democrats are going to favor Democratic leaders and Republicans will favor Republicans. It's a question of how skewed it gets, and staying within statistical norms. There's always going to be a fraction of party voters who don't approve, but they'll always be a significant sliver - usually around 8 to 10 percent - often made up of people angry their guy isn't partisan enough.

For trump to slide from that comfort zone of 85 percent or so of Republican voters - that he's at 73 percent and sinking - suggests that a growing faction of the regular base of the party are souring on him (and the rest of the GOP). trump and his party allies can afford to lose 10 percent of their base: they can't afford to lose 25 percent, especially as the midterms is about a month away.

All of the political issues - above all the economy, something that most voters trusted them with since the 1970s - that had been winners for the Republicans aren't in their favor now, and there's nothing trump is doing that looks to change those trends. trump's not about to give up his tariffs wars that most Americans hate, trump can't solve this mess he made in Iran and the Middle East, and trump won't admit there's a problem with inflation. 

The question now is: How does this translate into actual votes this November 2026? The answer depends on A) every Democratic voter showing up to vote Democratic, B) every Independent voter showing up and flipping votes Democratic, and C) if the Republicans pissed at trump decide to either stay home (likely) or flip Democratic (which is honestly hard to do: voting against your brand (tm) is like tearing off your own arm).

Here's hoping the answer is with massive Blue Waves sweeping into both the House and Senate seats, and enough state governments electing Democrats as Governors and State Attorney Generals to hold trump and his cronies accountable.

Elections matter. Make this unpopular trump suffer at the polls, America. Prove to him he's crashing to the ground at long last.

Desperate to Buy Off the Voters (and Cheap, Too)

Update: thanks as always to Steve in Manhattan over at Crooks & Liars including this article for Mike's Blog Round-Up! Good luck everyone, stay safe, and for the LOVE OF GOD throw every Republican crook out of office this midterms!

I didn't watch trump at his midterm egofest last night, but I saw the responses. Gods, he's never been subtle but even this reeks of desperation (via George Chidi at the Guardian(US)):

Donald Trump’s promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every US citizen if Republicans retain control of the US Congress in November’s midterm elections has sparked incredulity and accusations of bribery.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the unprecedented Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”

It comes amid extreme concern over the US national debt, which exceeded $40tn for the first time in August.

Even other Republicans questioned it (although they'll likely promote it with grins painted on their faces when trump insists).

Speaking to Politico, Chip Roy, the Republican US representative from Texas, sounded skeptical. “Well – I would like to know how they would plan to pay for … back of envelope … well over $1tn,” he said.

In the moments after Trump made the announcement, Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote on X that “this would cost about $1.2 TRILLION in just one year. That’s more than ALL THREE ROUNDS of COVID relief checks, despite no recessions. The result would be a huge spike in the deficit, and almost certainly in the inflation rate.”

The US has roughly 240 million adult citizens, suggesting the cost of $1.2tn. The federal government spent about $7tn in fiscal year 2025, with about $2tn taken on as debt.

And the funny thing is? The average American household - which depends on what expenses they're carrying from mortgages to bills to medical expenses and outstanding college loans - has around $105,000 in personal debts (note: under normal circumstances I'd be dealing with around $52,000 in debt right now. My dad - with his financial acumen - helped pay off my mortgage last year before he died. Millions of others don't get that kind of help). A meager $5,000 dividend bribe to vote for the party putting us most into debt in the first place is too cheap a payoff to be of any good to anybody.

And it is a bribe trump offers: We'll only get the money "IF" the Republicans win the 2026 midterms that was already looking like a certain Democratic Blue Wave. Everybody - including the MAGA punditry - saw it for what it is (via Malcolm Ferguson at New Republic):

“We should note though, it is not the first time he has promised a cash payment like this,” the (Fox News) network clarified shortly after Trump’s speech. “He promised Americans $2,000 rebates during his tariff policy when that was enacted, but after court challenges to the tariffs themselves, those $2,000 checks so far have not materialized.” 

Fox hosts laid these concerns at the feet of Vice President JD Vance. 

“You do the quick math, that’s about $1.3 trillion,” Brett Baier told Vance. “I can hear the critics’ heads exploding. They’re saying out loud, I guarantee you: ‘The president is bribing voters to vote for Republicans to take over the House. And then he’s bankrupting the country because the deficit debt is huge, and inflation would come back if this comes into play.’ So how do you answer those criticisms?”

Vance tried to defend it by claiming we'd get the money from other countries through trump's trade wars:

“What the president’s talking about is fundamentally a dividend for American workers. We’re taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies, but also foreign countries who’ve been taking advantage of America’s workers for pretty much my entire life,” Vance said, referring to tariffs.

In reality, the revenue brought in by Trump’s tariffs, under $500 billion, would not cover a $5,000 check for every American, which would cost $1.2 trillion. 

It’s obvious at this point that Trump’s first inclination when his back is against the wall is to dangle money in front of the masses. He’s promised cash payments multiple times, including $2,000 stimulus checks for the “tariff dividend,” a $5,000 stimulus check for the bygone “DOGE dividend,” and $1,000 checks for the Affordable Care Act. None of those ever materialized. 

Republicans, by the way, already control Congress. If Trump wanted to make this a reality, he could have by now.

If trump really wants to flip the majority of American voters - angry as hell towards a Republican-controlled government that's wrecking everything from Washington landmarks to our public schools - he would reverse course on his ruinous tariffs policies, end the fighting in Iran and the bombing of fishermen across South and Central America, stop a violent and unnecessary deportation program disrupting our communities, and apologize to voters on bended knee. Of course, trump can never admit he is wrong any anything so that will never happen.

Instead - as the corrupt con artist bastard he is - trump can only offer bribes in clear violation of the law. Social media is rampant with posts of critics pointing to the laws in the US Code trump is openly breaking:

There are at least two provisions in the U.S. Code that make it illegal to offer or accept a $5,000 "GOP Dividend" for voting. Both the offerer (Donald Trump) and the accepter (good luck with that!) are liable for fines and jail time.

[image or embed]

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@mrsbettybowers.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 11:19 AM

Just in case Mrs Betty Bowers' skeet disappears,
here is the screenshot

If you want the link to the Code for 18USC s597  and 52USC s10307c here you go. Even the offer of the payment to change votes is illegal even if the payment never goes through.

It is enraging that the corrupt Republican-controlled Supreme Court ruled that a sitting president can't be charged with crimes. trump is so crooked and reckless he believes - no, worse, he knows - the law won't touch him. However; if enough voters show up this November midterms to flip both the House AND the Senate to supermajority Democratic control (it's possible for the Senate, but EVERY seat has to flip to pull it off) these are impeachable offenses, and we can kick trump's corrupt ass out of the White House he does not deserve.

You want motivation to vote, America? VOTE THE REPUBLICAN CROOKS OUT and IMPEACH trump. That is far more valuable than that cheap-ass $5,000 bribe.

trump Himself IS the Derangement Syndrome

Wanted to share this Michael Tomasky article at the New Republic I read a few days ago:

The Venezuela announcement tracks with a very well-worn pattern. Trump raves that the deal in question is the greatest in the annals of history. It will deliver scarcely imaginable benefits. It will cost nothing. And it all happened because of Trump’s genius.

It’s been a lie every time. The tariffs were going to help farmers. Nope: Farmers are furious at Trump, giving Democrats their first potential political opening in rural America in ages. The tariffs were going to allow for elimination of the income tax. Remember that one? The war in Iran was going to take a month. The Reflecting Pool, ruined by Trump’s predecessors, was going to be thing of unparalleled beauty.

It’s tempting to call these lies, and they surely were in the sense that Trump just says everything he does is the greatest without the slightest bit of analysis or conscience entering into the equation. But they’re not just lies. They’re delusions. And delusions, in a way, are even worse than lies.

Why? Because while a liar can change course, a delusional person cannot. Trump is sitting in the mid-to-low 30s in approval. If he were merely a liar, he could try to correct course and do some things differently. He could realize, for example, that the war he started has been a disaster and is massively unpopular and, without exactly admitting it directly, sue for peace and cut his losses. A liar can acknowledge, eventually, that maybe he screwed up a little on the Reflecting Pool.

But a delusionist can do none of those things because the delusionist can’t accept that he’s done anything wrong. And he surrounds himself with people who understand that their only real job, whatever their actual specific responsibilities may be, is to keep the delusions alive and the Emperor happy.

So: A normal president two months out from what’s shaping up as a devastating midterm election would try to do things a little differently. I’m not sure in this case what exactly that would be; releasing some of the petroleum reserve, bringing beef producers to the White House and pressing them to lower prices for a period. Anyway that’s Trump’s problem, not mine. The point is that he won’t do these things because he doesn’t think anything is wrong. In fact, his plan right now is to make himself the centerpiece of the GOP’s midterm message, and to that end he will reportedly redirect part of a $400 million kitty to “television advertisements about his own record.”

That record is delulu. He mocks affordability. He says the bad polls are fake. He blames everything on Joe Biden. He tells people the economy is roaring, everybody says so (yes, everybody at Mar-a-Lago probably does say so). He boasts, as he did at that rally 10 or so days ago, that the last 19 months have been the greatest first 19 months of any administration in history.

His aides must echo every word of this palaver or risk censure or termination. Ditto Republican elected officials, as Salazar no doubt learned swiftly and loudly after her first tweet. And ditto Republican office seekers, like the Senate candidate in Minnesota (net worth: between $17 and $33 million) who says people concerned about gas prices should “take one less trip to Starbucks.”

The GOP lives in a cocoon, woven by the gossamer threads of Trump’s fantasia. Reality does not penetrate it. It’s funny to watch. But it’s tragic because it’s affecting people’s lives. People are struggling and suffering. But to say that in the Emperor’s presence is to prove only that you’re a deep-stater or a stooge or a RINO.

So, no—none of this is fixable. The economy will get worse. More and more innocent people, very much including children, will be rounded up and held in detention centers in the kind of hideous conditions we associate with a right- (or hard-left-) wing dictatorship, not the United States of America. The jaw-dropping corruption will continue and will get worse and more desperate, as indeed it has nearly every month of this administration so far. The attempts to rig and steal the midterms will only get more blatant. And next year, the hideous aspects of the Big Ugly Bill, the ones they intentionally delayed until after the midterms, will kick in, like the massive Medicaid cuts, and poor people and those in nursing homes, among many others, will suffer even more...

All trump knows is the con: Selling junk as though it's gold and profiting from the suckers who buy into it. The thing is, the con he's selling his himself: As a Great Businessman, As a Great Leader, As a Great Dealmaker, etc. That's the junk he's selling, and it's costing the rest of the world dearly.

Tomasky is bringing this all up in the context of that big Midterm Rally (tm) trump is hosting in Dallas this coming week. It's rare for a political party to hold a convention in an off-presidential election cycle - at least in the modern era, maybe back in the 1800s before the telegraph and telephone they had to meet more often to stay organized - to promote themselves, but for trump any rally is where he gets to rave and rant about himself with the delusion that the rest of the world is applauding him.

Granted, the Far Right media outlets - which now includes the broken CBS News - will try to offer wall-to-wall coverage, but the haters are likely to tune out, and the disgruntled Republican voters back home are likely going to be busy at their city halls fighting to stop another data center getting built in their neighborhoods. I don't believe trump's last set of nationally televised appearances were all that good in the ratings (trump of course will insist they were "great"), and I doubt he'll get many viewers for this.

As much as Tomasky argues that the Republican elected officials are stuck pandering to trump's delusions, it's already out there that many of the GOP candidates this midterm are avoiding this Rally (tm) like the plague. trump's approval numbers are so terrible that getting associated with him - especially in districts and states hammered hard by his tariffs and migrant deportations - is toxic. They'll support everything trump is saying when they appear on the Sunday talk shows because they know he's watching, but they dare not stand next to him for any unwanted photo ops.

trump himself doesn't care for the damage he's inflicting on others, even the ones supposedly on his side of the fence. All he cares about is branding himself the Greatest Who Ever Lived while planning to bulldoze down most of Washington DC to get his garish ugly monuments to himself built.

There's your derangement syndrome, Beltway Media. I hope you're happy.

Addendum: As I worked on this, Tomasky did a follow-up article at TNR about the potential Blue Wave coming this midterms in spite of trump and the GOP's efforts to rig the election. We can hope... and we SHOULD turn out in droves to make that Blue Wave flip the House AND Senate this November. Want to break trump's delusions? Defeat him.

Looking for the Small Victories In a By-Election Gone Wrong

Regarding the by-election in the United Kingdom between Nigel "How Much Is 5 Million In British Money" Farage and Count Binface that happened this week...

Sigh. GODDAMMIT CLACTON VOTERS, YOU HAD ONE JOB (via Alexandra Topping with The Guardian (UK)).

Dawn had long broken in the Essex town of Clacton-on-Sea when the results for the byelection came in. After a gruelling count, an atmosphere of deep exhaustion had settled over the room. Even the man with a dustbin on his head looked weary.

As it was declared that Nigel Farage had won, as expected, there was no cheering in the room, which had been boycotted by the Reform UK leader and his supporters; instead there was only an overwhelming sense of futility.

Farage forced the byelection at the start of July in an attempt take control of a narrative tide that had turned against him. After the Guardian revealed he had received a £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, in April 2024, he had been dogged by questions about his financial backing. Other revelations followed and questions mounted...

And while the people of Clacton did back Farage again, it was no overwhelming victory. He won 22,239 votes, 63.34% of the vote. Convincing, yes, but significantly short of the 72% won by David Davis in 2008 when he resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties.

With no other mainstream options, the parody candidate Count Binface, was Farage’s nearest competitor, winning 9,455 votes, or one in four of the votes cast. In his “victory speech” posted on X, he noted that this was a 10,000% increase on the 95 votes he managed against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield byelection. “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” he wrote, echoing Tony Blair’s 1997 victory speech. “Literally, because it’s past 6:30 in the morning here in Clacton-on-Sea.”

If there's any good news, it's in the "At least Farage suffered" category. A better measurement of how poorly Farage did this by-election is to look at the results of the more formal election that happened in 2024: In that election Farage secured 21,225 votes, which means he barely garnered a thousand more voters (22,239) who showed up this time around. It's a meager increase in a field where the only legitimate electoral threat was the court jester wearing the trash can. 

The overall vote count in 2024 was 45,958 people showing up, a better turnout than what showed for 2026 with 35,111. Farage did not prove himself a greater draw nor a good incumbent: Indeed, a large chunk of voters refused to show up for what was basically a circus. Without the major parties - Labour, Tories - and the viable third parties like Lib Dems and Greens to give Farage any targets, all he had going for him was a bland, racist campaign against "The Establishment" which exposed the reality that in this by-election he was the Establishment candidate.

The by-election also didn't save Farage from the fate he was facing when he resigned and forced this whole farce. He's still under investigation for his alleged financial misdeeds (from Rowena Mason and Peter Walker, also The Guardian (UK)):

Nigel Farage’s attempt to draw the sting from inquiries into his financial affairs appeared to have backfired on Friday as the standards watchdog reopened its investigation and MPs from all sides condemned the needless byelection.

The Reform UK leader declared victory in the Clacton vote as he was returned with an increased majority and gained more votes than in 2024, saying he had “stuck two fingers up at the entire political establishment”.

However, parliament’s standards commissioner immediately reopened an investigation into whether he should have declared a series of gifts provided to him shortly before the last general election.

These include a £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, first revealed by the Guardian, and further financial support from his friend and convicted fraudster George Cottrell.

I'm not a political expert on how elections work in the UK, but I doubt they are going to let Farage resign again and force another by-election so soon. From what I've read, the investigation can lead to his suspension from Parliament (not outright removal or criminal arrest) and if it's longer than 10 days it would trigger a recall petition and if successful another by-election. However, in this scenario he won't control the by-election, he'll be publicly exposed for his sins, and the major parties will jump in with better odds - probably for the Tories - to defeat him then.

It might depend on how severe the investigations against Farage would go, if it's bad enough for the legal system to charge him criminally (given Farage's arrogance and knee-jerk reactions to the matter, he's hiding something worse). He could try to make himself a political martyr and run again for the seat in a borough that's "safe" for him, but Farage has made so many political enemies across the landscape that he'll likely lose.

In sadder news, the world could have had an elected trash bin in the British Parliament. Millions are mourning the lost opportunity. /weeps

In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

The Only Truth That Is Also A Fact: The Republicans Are Beyond Saving

Over on Bluesky I reposted this skeet, because it spells out in easy terms why the Republicans cannot be redeemed.

This is an apt descriptions of Republicans now.

[image or embed]

— migas7.bsky.social (@migas7.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 10:11 AM

In case the embed fails

The modern Republican Party defends no virtue, performs no service to others, provides no leadership to our nation in any way.

In every respect, the Republican Party is still dead as a functioning political force. It is now an occupying army, treating other Americans - other humans - as targets for their greed, fear, and hate. Anyone in that party that can claim any rational capability cannot be turned around as a force for good: They have had a DECADE of trumpism to walk away, deny any support of such criminality... and they refused. They are too beholden to "owning the libs" that they cannot break from a corrupt, destructive faction.

This is why I've been screaming to the nation FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. There is nothing there to vote for, only against (against Blacks, against women, against Latinos, against gays/lesbians/trans, against fiscal sanity, against vaccines, against foreign allies, against holding any person of power/wealth accountable for their crimes).

I'm not taking crazy pills. The Republican downward spiral has been going on for decades now, and it's dragging the United States - and the world - down with it.

Just stop pandering to any Right-leaning faction you think you can appeal to. The Republicans killed the better angels of their nature ages ago. They'll just waste your time (and take your money). Just stop that. There's millions of Democratic and Independent voters to reach for to get them motivated to vote. There's millions more who aren't even registered to vote - and who can - that the Dems and other center-Left forces need to reach to get them in enough numbers to drive the corrupt GOP out of power at the state and federal levels.

Those are the Americans we need to stand up for the nation. Go talk to them, get them on board. Save the true Republic, Dems.

trump and His Cronies Aren't Even Hiding the Theft Anymore

This is how corrupt trump's administration is: he sued his own government for billions of dollars so he could then weasel out of the lawsuit and claim an imaginary settlement for a mere billion to pay off his foot soldiers among the insurrectionist ranks (from Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin at ABC News):

The Justice Department announced Monday that as part of a settlement agreement in President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney general is establishing an $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration. 

The announcement came after attorneys representing Trump informed a federal judge in a court filing earlier Monday that the president was dropping his suit against the IRS.

The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, subsequently ordered the case closed -- signaling that she does not plan to challenge the controversial settlement. 

In a brief order issued Monday, Judge Williams said she was "stripped of jurisdiction" to continue overseeing the case. She noted that the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, so there is no "settlement of record" -- leaving her with no authority to adjudicate the private settlement. 

Do you see it? There's no official settlement of record. There's no paper trail the legal system is supposed to rely on. And yet, there's a billion dollars that Congress never approved of getting set up in a slush fund that I doubt will have any real oversight to where it gets turned into a funnel of illegality where even more money gets siphoned off to gods know where.

As thought making the payment amount symbolic to make it say 1776 like it's for FREEDOM on our nation's 250th birthday is going to patch things over. GODDAMN THIS IS CORRUPT.

This is Paul Krugman over at the National Memo:

So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.

Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.

Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.

But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.

Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

If there's any true justice, trump's move here should get tied up in the courts - especially over that fact that there's no judge-approved agreement on record - long enough for the Democrats to win back Congress this midterms well enough to guarantee they will use their Article I constitutional powers to block trump and his cronies from stealing one more nickel from our nation's coffers.

This is why the Republicans are so desperate to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts, this is why the Republicans are so desperate to suppress voter turnout to keep their Senate seats safe from statewide anger. They're not that stupid to ignore the polls showing how unpopular they've gotten among even independent voters (and even enough registered Republicans willing to flip their ballots).

Voter turnout still matters: that's the good news. The Republicans can't rig enough barricades and tip enough scales to stop all of us angry at them and trump. Everyone needs to understand the mission this midterms: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS. VOTE EVERY REPUBLICAN OUT AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE BALLOT.

We can save this nation from an eternal void of Far Right grifting and greed, if we show up and vote goddammit.

The Gerrymander Wars Escalate

Any regular follower here knows I am not a fan of the gerrymander.

I've railed about it often: how it distorts true representation, suppresses voter interest and turnout, and drives the major political parties to pander more to the monied powers than to genuinely represent their districts and states.

For some time there in the late 2010s, I had some hope that legal fighting over the gerrymandering efforts by Republicans in key battleground states like Florida would end the issue: That the skewing of representation and denial of voters rights would irk even conservative-leaning courts to level the electoral field and letting sanity prevail.

Alas, the Roberts Court in 2019 nuked those hopes from orbit. All I had left were my observations that even by 2022 the GOP efforts to rig the congressional elections in their favor had turned farcical and clinging to a diminishing returns cliff - all those distorted districts and they still only have a 4-5 seat lead in the House - of their own making.

With the 2026 midterms looming - and with growing evidence that the slim Republican holdings in both the US House and Senate are slipping away - you can taste the desperation of the Far Right to impose their minority rule with escalating efforts across GOP-controlled states to skew their gerrymandered districts even more. Especially as trump himself - openly noting that losing Congress this 2026 would end his reign of madness and sadism - has been running around since 2025 - when his polling numbers slipped as ICE thuggery and tariffs increased - demanding states like Texas and Indiana redraw their districts to keep Democrats from gaining control of a divided House.

The big difference this election cycle - and a big reason why the Republicans are panicking in public - is that the Democratic Party finally decided to take the gloves off and do their own extreme gerrymandering to counter the decades of GOP mapmaking that drove us to this cliff.

I've noted before that yes, Democrats were guilty of gerrymandering in states their legislatures controlled, especially in Maryland, Illinois, and California. It's just that the Dems never pulled it to the extremes the way Republicans did in Texas, Ohio, and Florida. 

Until now: California passed a voter referendum in 2025 allowing them - the most populous state - to skew their congressional districts to where Republicans may not have any seats left; and Virginia passed a voter referendum this month allowing them to redraw districts to where mathematically speaking the Democrats can win the US House by 1-2 seats.

The Virginia results are under legal scrutiny at the moment, so it may not be settled for this midterms. In the meantime, the GOP panic that they could lose the House - and lose it for a long time, because they don't have as many nationwide voters as they'd like to keep skewing the results - has resulted in map madness in the large-population states they still control.

Florida, for example, called an emergency legislative session: Not about data centers, or AI, or education needs, or funding for the upcoming hurricane season; but about redrawing a map they already skewed 20-to-8 in their favor back in 2022. It's bad enough that they're planning to divide the Tampa metro - as huge a Democratic Party stronghold in the state you can find - so that none of the seats representing that metro will favor Dems: A clear partisan attempt to negate the rights and powers of a large number of American citizens.

The funny thing about all this? All of these Republican efforts to gerrymander themselves into permanent victory could actually help them lose it all (via David A. Graham at The Atlantic):

But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness—a foe that doesn’t always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to learn the word. Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help. Dummymanders are nothing new, but the bunch of new districts drawn in recent months mean that they could play an important role in the outcome of the midterms...

Now the action is mostly reaching its end as the deadline for finalizing 2026 maps nears, although some questions remain. (Among them: Will the Supreme Court issue a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in time for Republicans to draw new maps for this cycle? (editor's note: goddamn this foreshadowing...) The consensus among election analysts is that the redistricting will end up giving Republicans only three or four new seats, if any. But Democratic prowess in recent special elections raises the possibility that rather than a cold-blooded political hit, the GOP’s efforts could end up as a Pyrrhic victory.

In late January, a Democrat won a Texas state Senate seat in Tarrant County—in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Most House districts won’t see a shift that big, but victories like these have raised the possibility of Democrats catching enough of a blue wave that maps drawn to help Republicans might actually hurt them. The math is simple: In order to draw more districts favoring Republicans, GOP legislators had to spread their own voters a little thinner. But if they spread them too thin and Democrats have a good year, Republican candidates will become vulnerable.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked in these gerrymander wars is the role no-party-affiliate (NPA) or independent voters play in how districts get won. When they're drawing these maps, the Republicans (and Democrats) look at how much they can spread out their registered voters they expect to show up, and then pray that the third-party indy voters either side with them or fail to show... which is a huge gamble to take if you're trump's party when polling shows a lot of independent voters are pissed at trump right now. You can survive independent voter outrage if your district is +5 or +8 in favor of your party, but you can't if you've got the percentages at +1 or +2.

Many of Grofman and Brunell’s examples of dummymanders come from late in the 20th century, when Democrats still held lots of southern seats because of historic party support, but were on the verge of losing them to Republicans. For example, they write that the map Georgia Democrats drew after the 1990 census looks more like a Republican gerrymander than one drawn to help Democrats, which the authors blame on “the belief that it is good to be as thin as possible as long as you still remain breathing.” Entering the 1992 election, Georgia had nine Democratic House members. Three won, but three lost, and three more retired.

In the wake of those 1990 redistricting, the Republicans rose on the demographic - and racist - shifts from social conservative Democrats fleeing a party more inclined to defend civil (Black) rights. Those shifts were accelerated in the 2000s by the War on Terror of 9/11 and the growing evangelical Christianist voting base, which led to the Tea Party/anti-Obama fervor that drives the modern Republican base to this day.

Thing is, that partisan shift is pretty much played out. For all the ongoing outrage and demonizing the Far Right produces and consumes within their own circles, they can't increase their voting base any further. At best, they can bamboozle or enrage certain voting blocs - Latino men for example in 2024 - to side with them for one or two election cycles before their hypocritical true selves emerge and drive those blocs off.

This is one of the reasons the Republicans are not only struggling to gerrymander every state they can to favor themselves, they're also desperate to take away voting rights from everyone - Blacks, women, college-age, LGBTQA+ - they don't want voting. The conservative mindset on full display that only THEIR side should have power and rights, and everyone else needs to sit there in our cages being grateful for the crumbs thrown our way.

I'm terrified of the damage these gerrymanders are going to inflict: the lack of honest representation that will ignore the needs of our communities just as we need help from government the most.

The only true way in my opinion to end these gerrymander wars is for the rest of us - all of us - to show the fuck up at the polling stations during the midterms and vote the Republicans - the ones most responsible for propping up that child-raping, grifting, sadistic trump - out of office. As much as the Democrats are playing these mapmaking games, they're not the ones responsible for this monstrous tyrannical regime arresting families, crashing economies, and bombing schools.

We are long past due holding the Far Right accountable for all the sins they've inflicted on the rest of us. To hell with their games: VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT.

Then we'll see an end to these fucking partisan maps.