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justinspoliticalcorner · 4 days ago

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Lauren Egan at The Bulwark:

“I’m angry and I’m motivated.”

If the 2018 midterm elections were defined by a wave of women running for office, Democratic officials and strategists believe that the 2026 cycle could be remembered as the year that fired federal government employees got their revenge. Although it’s early in the process and most candidates won’t file until next year, Democratic groups that help train first-time candidates say they are hearing expressions of interest in running for office from a notable number of former federal government workers—most of whom lost their jobs due to DOGE cuts or resigned from their positions out of frustration and exhaustion. In fact, there’s been so much interest from former federal employees that groups like Run for Something and Emerge, which help recruit and train new candidates, have hosted information sessions on Zoom specifically to help former federal employees navigate being first-time candidates. And while most will run for local offices, Democratic strategists see this moment as ripe for recruiting a new bench of candidates up and down the ticket who are uniquely positioned to personalize the case against Trump and the Republican party. Fired federal employees and the Democratic party could be a perfect match of supply and demand: Thousands of laid-off government experts and public servants are eager to undo the damage the Trump administration and DOGE have done to their departments and impose some accountability for the lawless gutting of the government. For their part, Democrats are hungry for a new generation of talent that can respond to the current moment and help the party move beyond the catastrophe of last year.

“You’re going to see people who have personal ties to the federal government, to the stuff that DOGE has done, who are going to step up to run,” said Amanda Litman, cofounder of Run for Something, which recruits and trains first-time Democratic candidates. “I think it really hammers home for people how deep the federal government’s roots are. It’s not just in Washington. . . . The federal government is the people who are researching cures for cancer, or making sure that your Social Security benefits have processed and that you got your check.” Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who is one of the party’s recruitment chairs for the 2026 midterms, told The Bulwark that Trump’s “unpopular policies are only helping our efforts to recruit Democratic candidates as we work to take back the House and hold President Trump and Elon Musk accountable.” Since Trump returned to the White House, there’s been a wave of interest in running for office on the left. Litman said that of the more than 200,000 people Run for Something had signed up to become potential candidates since the group launched eight years ago, some 40,000 have joined in the past five months.1 While the Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from running in partisan elections, the DOGE firings have created a large, energized new pool of candidates for Democrats to recruit from. Subreddit communities of federal workers have popped off since Trump’s return, with people trading stories about the chaos in their departments and encouraging those who have been fired to run for office. Last month, more than 1,800 people signed up for a training Run for Something billed as “From Public Service to Public Office: A Call for Former Federal Workers.”

Democratic strategists see a lot of potential in running fired employees in the midterms—particularly if Elon Musk, who heads the DOGE operation, continues to be a drag on the Republicans.

Fired federal government workers are taking their anger out by running for office on the Democratic line in the 2025-26 election cycle.

#2026 Elections #Federal Funding Freeze #Democratic Party #Emerge #Run For Something #DOGE #Hatch Act

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jones-friend · 2 years ago

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I PLAYED SOME MORE GAMES TODAY

Im beginning to rouse from my month of COVID fatigue and got 4 new games in today! 3/4 are from Pandasaurus games, which I’ll have some thoughts on later. They’re varying degrees of good!

One trend I’ve noticed is modern games like to saw two proven games in half and glue them together. Clank! is a dungeon crawler/deck builder. Arnak is a worker placement/deckbuilder. Eschaton is a deckbuilder/risklike. Emerge is if you played Yahtzee to play Carcassone.

In Emerge we are scientists exploring islands for wildlife for points. The goal is to make multi-tiered islands with lots of wildlife meeples on them. You do so by rolling dice and assigning them to actions on your player mat. There are also 4 goals to keep up with and research tokens you can find by making islands or spending unused dice. After 8 rounds the game is scored and the most VP’s wins. One aspect I enjoyed was the modifier tiles. Once per round you can remove/add/swap tiles around your board, this causes numbers to collect for different resources. Numbers are placed on your mat and can be spent together for different meeples or island tiles. So I could put a crab tile on 4 (as pictured) and spend dice from 2 and 4 to place crab meeples on my island. Islands score for the number of tiers times number of meeples.

Emerge is a bit tougher to recommend than most of my games here. I like it, it has some things I like, but it has some I don’t. I don’t think the tile abilities do enough to negate the variation and luck in rolls. You only get one roll, and granted I probably should have taken on at least one or two more tiles, but I didn’t feel they did enough compared to something like One Deck Dungeon. I feel for an optimization game, optimization enjoyers might get annoyed with bad rolls they get stuck with. There’s also a lack of meaningful player to player interaction. There’s racing for objectives first, obtaining research tokens first, and the four bird tokens that can be moved and stolen. I liked the idea of it, but I wanted more. I also felt the objectives asked a lot of you without offering enough reward for chasing them, I focused objectives while my bud islands, and while I scored all four objectives he still won by some 10+ points.

If you want a laid back dice game and you enjoy the presentation of Emerge I would say pick it up. It looks great and at times feels great to make decisions on your player mat for what goes where. If there’s an invite to a game its worth a play. Im not sure if I’d recommend picking it up unless its something you click with.

Apes together strong. After Us takes place in the post apocalypse where Apes rule the world and are racing to reach evolved intelligence. After Us is a puzzle-y deck builder. Players drsw four cards from their deck and organize them in any way they wish. You must combine costs with benefits, collects with collects, and solve the “puzzle” of what works best with what to gather resources and score victory points. The game ends when a player reaches 80 points.

Similar to Emerge theres a lot of bits I like and a few I don’t. There is a lot of simultaneous play that keeps turns from being bogged down and I appreciate that. We all assemble our monkeys together and resolve them at once. Its a brisk game that doesn’t overstay its welcome and the presentation/art is fabulous.

Where I have a bone to pick with After Us is in its RNG and player interaction. When you recruit new apes you draw from a facedown deck. You know vaguely what that ape is good at. The four types focus victory points, batteries, exile/trash, and repeat actions. You’re blind drawing from cards that don’t have specific abilities, just costs and benefits that are slightly randomized across the deck. But I ended up drawing lots of battery costs while my opponent did not, the apes I drew had a harder time with resources than my opponent’s draws, who provided and consumed similar resources. And there wasn’t an easy way out since all cards were blind draws.

The game also lacks any meaningful player interaction, its just a race. Theres a mechanic where when buying an ape you get a benefit of that clan and can pay 2 to copy a neighbor’s benefit, but it feels very stapled on last minute. Because its the only non simultaneous moment the only player interaction slows the game down.

After Us is another harder recommend. If you enjoyed Earth you will enjoy After Us. Earth similarly had low player interaction, youre all tuning engines till one pops. If you’re comfortable with that more solitaire play the puzzle of four apes in a line is enjoyable.

In Aurum players take the role of alchemists making formulas for gold. Aurum is a trick taking game with some higher level mechanics to it that will be hit or miss. There’s 5 “base metal” suits and a gold “trump” suit. Players start with a hand of base metals and one 0 gold. The leading player plays a card. The other players must follow, playing DIFFERENT suits than each other. The highest card wins the trick BUT the lowest card gains a gold card in their “collection” worth victory points. This card may also be used in tricks. At the beginning of the game players choose a number and put down a card from their hand of that number. That is their bid, they want to win exactly that many tricks. Go under and you get nothing. Go over and you score the bid in points. Match the bid and gain double the number in points.

So sometimes you wanna win the trick. Sometimes you want to force someone else to win. Sometimes you want to spend a 6-7 to lose the trick but gain a gold card of that value for points.

For a trick taking game there’s a number of things to consider. Do you want to waste a card that could take a trick on getting gold? Do you want to spend that 1-2 VP gold to ensure you reach your bid?

We played the 3 player variant and I found it to be this interesting standoff. Otherwise it plays 1v1 and 2v2.

If you’re into trick taking games and want something new. In the world of $30 medium pizzas and $10 1lb ground beef Aurum is $15. I recommend picking it up and giving it a try. It won’t work for everyone, but having a 3 player variant was fascinating. Like the other two games fantastic art direction and great quality, great presentation.

Four Humours is a prisoner’s dilemma game. Players place potions in scenes and once two scenes are full all are resolved in this order of operations how the four humors can “win” in priority order. Winning potions are placed on the board to satisfy objective cards. Whoever satisfies the most wins.

To explain the prisoner’s dilemma if you’re unfamiliar, there’s one scene in Four Humours with only two potion slots. Each can hold Choleric or Sanguine. Choleric wins if there is only one in the scene. 2+ choleric means nobody wins. Sanguine is next in priority. If Choleric doesn’t win, Sanguines all win if there are 2+ in a scene, regardless if they are owned by different players. Your opponent claims they played a Sanguine. Do you trust them? If you play your Sanguine and they played Choleric you lose. If you both played Choleric you both lose. If you both played Sanguine you both win. If you decide to screw your friend over and play Choleric to their Sanguine only you win.

And decisions like that are the core of the game. The 4-5 scene cards and 6 party tiles are all logic puzzles and bluffing/diplomacy minigames. With the mechanics behind the four humours you can goad people into making bad moves or win without actually winning the scene. You can be sneaky and crafty, treacherous or trustworthy.

Truly its mechanics are light, the game is placed between you and your buds rather than on your own playmats. With the nature of this game I wouldn’t recommend playing with less than four people, and it can hold up to six at a time. Its a great game that works off a great dilemma, trying to work around possibilities and promises of different players claiming to place different humours where feels great. Great replay value too, our game went thru about 1/2 the scenes and theres an alt game mode to explore.

I heartily recommend this one, easy pick.

One last bit before I snooze. Pandasaurus is a game company I own many games for: Brew, Dinosaur World, Wild Space, now Emerge and Aurum. Every game I’ve played from them is 80% of a really fantastic game. Its just missing a little something. The presentation is stellar, the effort is there, the creativity is apparent. I’m not trying to slam their games by any means.

Most end up relying on their theme harder than their mechanics. Games are carried at the thought of what you’re doing than the nuts and bolts behind it. Emerge, without set dressing, is a game of assembling tokens on tiles and adding base tiles to their tiles, rolling dice to do so. Wild Space is a game of playing cards to play more cards. What makes them tick is their stellar theming and A+ presentation with materials and art.

If you see this logo understand this might not be the most mechanically sound game. It also might not have the most player interaction, if any. But its going to look great at the table and each game has something that will make your brain go brrrr like the board game equivalent of a fidget spinner.

#Tabletop #board games #aurum #after us #Emerge #four humours

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