#Michigan State Senate

[bigbadbruin343]

A great victory for workers in Michigan!

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Campaign Videos from Tonight's Down Ballot Strategy Dinner!

Indiana Gubernatorial Candidate - Jennifer McCormick

Montana Gubernatorial Candidate - Ryan Busse

US Congressional Candidate for AZ-6 - Kirsten Engel

US Congressional Candidate for CA-41 - Will Rollins

US Congressional Candidate for MI-8 - Kristen McDonald Rivet

US Senatorial Candidate for Arizona - Ruben Gallego

US Senatorial Candidate for West Virginia - Glenn Elliott

[186-3]

even if you're resigned that trump is going to win, 1/3 of the country lives in states with competitive senate elections. if democrats win the senate, there is very little that trump can do (can't even appoint supreme court nominees)

the following states all have competitive senate elections:

arizona

florida

maryland

michigan

montana

nevada

ohio

pennsylvania

texas

wisconsin

even if you don't think your state is competitive at all, THESE SENATE RACES STILL ARE, SO IF YOU LIVE IN ONE OF THESE STATES, MAKE SURE TO VOTE

and even if you don't live in one of those states, you could live in a competitive house seat. if democrats win the house, then trump can't pass any bills

and even if you don't live in a competitive state or district, your local elections matter even more than federal ones because they have a much more direct impact on your life

so VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

[dixiedrudge]

Komrade kamala’s Supporters Chant “Intifada" and "Revolution” During Her DC Ellipse Speech

Inciting Insurrection Already? View Source: Kamala Harris’s supporters are just as radical as her policies. On Tuesday, Kamala’s supporters chanted “Revolution,” “Long Live the Intifada,” and waved Palestine flags as Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse in D.C. Prior to her speech, Loomer Unleashed captured video of Kamala’s “supporters” standing around a massive line of buses parked close to the…

[batboyblog]

But I don't live in a swing state?!

every 4 years I see people talking about how they live in a red state (or more rarely a blue state) so their vote doesn't matter and I just want to briefly point out that I think nearly every state is either a swing state for the Presidential election, having a key Senate Race that will decide control of the Senate, has one or more key House races that'll decide control of the House, or is having an important Governor's race that'll could flip control of the state

Presidential Swing states:

Arizona

Georgia

Michigan

Nevada

North Carolina

Pennsylvania

Wisconsin

Key Senate Races:

Arizona

Florida

Maryland

Michigan

Montana

Nevada

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Texas

Wisconsin

States With Key House Races:

Alabama

Alaska

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

Ohio

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Texas

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Swingable Governor Races:

New Hampshire

North Carolina

there are lots of local and state level races that are very important to, but my point was basically odds are very very good, you live somewhere where your vote will help decide what America looks like in 2025. Don't get tricked into thinking just because your state isn't one of the ones always mentioned in the news as a swing state that it doesn't matter what you do

[swordandstars]

Friends!

Are you feeling hopeless in the face of the oncoming MAGA-pocalypse? Want to do something fast, easy, and free that will make a difference?

If you're in Michigan, keep reading! If you're not, signal boost this to your Mitten State Mutuals!

Michiganders, it's time to contact your state reps and tell them to vote YES on HB 6034 and HB 6035. Together, these two bills comprise the Freedom to Read Act and they severely limit the ability of assholes to ban books in the state of Michigan.

Want to read the bills for yourself? Click here:

https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Search/ExecuteSearch?sessions=2023-2024&docTypes=House%20Bill,Senate%20Bill&contentFullText=%22freedom%20to%20read%22

Tl;dr? Here's an article and video summarizing the Act from CBS News:

Not sure how to contact your Michigan state representatives? Text RESIST to 50409 and Resistbot will walk you through it.

It's easy, it takes about 5 minutes, and you can do it from your couch/bed/puddle of despair.

Tips for contacting elected officials:

1) If you're asking them to vote YES or NO on something, say that in the first line. Bonus points if you can tag the actual bill (HB/House Bill) number.

2) Only include ONE issue per communication.

3) 1&2 are because these are being skimmed by interns who keep a running tally of what each communication is about. One communication = one point.

3a) Don't be a dick to the interns. Their lives are hard enough.

4) Keep it short. One sentence very clearly stating what you want. One or two sentences about why they should care about what you want ("As a resident of your district, I know you agree that SOMETHING SOMETHING FREEDOM, SOMETHING SOMETHING LIBERTY, SOMETHING SOMETHING THINK OF THE CHILDREN.") Appeal to the person they claim to be in their campaign ads. Get it, give them clear instructions, get out.

5) No profanity.

6) No threats.

7) No memes/ slang/ sarcasm/ lols. You are cosplaying as someone who thinks salt is too spicy and whose greatest joy in life is sorting their collection of plain white socks.

8) 5, 6, & 7 are because anything you communicate to an elected official will become a matter of public record. It goes into a file. And if anyone ever pulls that file, you want to be on record as the most boring, conscientious, polite, non-threatening motherfucker who ever lived.

Now go forth and make your voice heard!

(Hey @unpretty and @official-michigan-posts, can you help get the word out?)

[xtruss]

Image: Getty Images

American Universities Have An Incentive To Seem Extortionate

They are much cheaper than the “Crisis of College Affordability” suggests

— July 23, 2023

The Cost of Many Private Colleges in America has reached $80,000 a year. The median household income in America in 2021 was $71,000 a year. This shows that college is unaffordable. Or does it?

The consensus view is that America has a college-affordability crisis and things are getting worse. According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, “college costs are out of control”. Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, and other progressives have pushed for free college and loan-forgiveness for years. The White House attempted a costly bail-out of student borrowers which the Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional. Both sides are telling a similar, but mostly inaccurate, tale. Most undergraduate degrees in America are actually affordable, and in many cases going to college is getting cheaper.

There are three main types of colleges in America: public, non-profit private and for-profit private. Public colleges are much less expensive than private ones. According to us News & World Report, which ranks colleges, the average tuition fee for students at a public college studying in their home states is about $10,000, compared with nearly $40,000 for private colleges. And most American students benefit from these lower prices. In 2021, 77% of college students (about 12m) were enrolled in public colleges. Some states are cheaper than others. Tuition in Wyoming costs $6,000 per year for residents, whereas Vermont charges $19,000.

At first glance, public colleges in America look more expensive than most of their rich-country counterparts. America ranks second-highest for fees in the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, behind England. However, this does not give a true picture.

American universities advertise a sticker price that few students actually pay. According to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, a non-profit organisation, private colleges discount tuition by over 50% on average. And contrary to the common narrative, the net cost (what students really pay) of public and private colleges has fallen.

Schools with large endowments are particularly generous. According to us News & World Report, the average student at Princeton University pays $16,600 for tuition and fees (compared with a $56,010 price tag), and tuition is free for families making $160,000 a year or less. With these tuition discounts, private colleges can sometimes cost less than public ones, though public colleges are usually cheaper.

Americans also have alternative paths to a four-year degree that can help them save money. Students can attend two-year public community colleges for less than the annual tuition cost of a four-year university degree. They can then apply those two years toward the four-year degree. The system is flexible: two-thirds of community-college students work and 70% attend part-time. This is an “interesting feature” of the American system that is less common in other countries, says Simon Roy of the oecd.

Though there are plenty of stories of students being landed with lots of debt for worthless degrees, college generally pays off. College-educated men earn $587,400 more over their lifetime than men who graduated from high school (women earn $425,100 more). This is much greater than the equivalent premium in Britain ($210,800 for men and $193,200 for women). “The expected gains from having a college degree are actually quite high in the us because the us is also one of the countries where income inequality is the highest,” says Abel Schumann of the oecd. This inequality makes college-going worth the initial cost for most people.

Why, then, is there a perception that there is some sort of general crisis in college affordability in America? One reason is that country-level comparisons, such as the analysis by the oecd, compare the sticker price of American universities with that of their peers. Sticker prices are rising while net costs remain steady and, in some cases, drop. A report from the College Board, a non-profit, shows that whereas published tuition and fees for private non-profit colleges increased from $29,000 in 2006-07 to $38,000 in 2021-22 (in 2021 dollars), the net price actually decreased from $17,000 to $15,000. The story is similar for public colleges. Published tuition and fees were nearly $8,000 in 2006-07 and rose to nearly $11,000 in 2021-22, but the net cost fell by $730.

This discrepancy between the sticker price and the net price creates confusion, but it continues because it is valuable to colleges, says Beth Akers of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. Wealthy students pay the full price, subsidising their poorer peers. The higher prices are also good for marketing. Consumers tend to associate higher prices with higher quality. And students (and their boastful parents) are flattered by tuition markdowns pitched as merit scholarships rather than discounts.

Yet even with decreasing costs and with discounts, college can still feel unaffordable to many. Plenty of citizens in countries with free or low tuition (such as Denmark) do in fact pay for college. Instead of paying a tuition bill, they pay over time with high taxes. Americans pay less in taxes, but that lump-sum tuition bill can be frightening. For those students and their families unable to pay cash, loans can be an answer. But accrued interest can quickly turn a reasonable cost into an unreasonable one. This may change soon for federal-loan borrowers: a new initiative by the Biden administration will prevent interest from accruing on federal loans for people making timely payments.

College does not benefit everyone, and the quality is highly variable. For-profit colleges are notorious for providing little value and targeting poor and non-white students. And certain majors and occupations pay better than others. College dropouts do not get the benefit of the degree (though they do get to keep the debt). On average college is affordable and worth attending, but that does not mean that every individual benefits.

Regardless of the reality, American confidence in college is declining. A poll by Gallup released this month shows that only 36% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. This is down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015. The perceived high cost of college could be driving down these results, says Jeremy Wright-Kim, an education professor at the University of Michigan. College may be relatively affordable and worth the overall cost, but Americans are struggling to believe it.■

[reasonsforhope]

"For the first time in almost 60 years, a state has formally overturned a so-called “right to work” law, clearing the way for workers to organize new union locals, collectively bargain, and make their voices heard at election time.

This week, Michigan finalized the process of eliminating a decade-old “right to work” law, which began with the shift in control of the state legislature from anti-union Republicans to pro-union Democrats following the 2022 election. “This moment has been decades in the making,” declared Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber. “By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.”

[Note: The article doesn't actually explain it, so anyway, "right to work" laws are powerful and deceptively named pieces of anti-union legislation. What right to work laws do is ban "union shops," or companies where every worker that benefits from a union is required to pay dues to the union. Right-to-work laws really undermine the leverage and especially the funding of unions, by letting non-union members receive most of the benefits of a union without helping sustain them. Sources: x, x, x, x]

In addition to formally scrapping the anti-labor law on Tuesday [February 13, 2024], Michigan also restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities. But even amid all of these wins for labor, it was the overturning of the “right to work” law that caught the attention of unions nationwide...

Now, the tide has begun to turn—beginning in a state with a rich labor history. And that’s got the attention of union activists and working-class people nationwide...

At a time when the labor movement is showing renewed vigor—and notching a string of high-profile victories, including last year’s successful strike by the United Auto Workers union against the Big Three carmakers, the historic UPS contract victory by the Teamsters, the SAG-AFTRA strike win in a struggle over abuses of AI technology in particular and the future of work in general, and the explosion of grassroots union organizing at workplaces across the country—the overturning of Michigan’s “right to work” law and the implementation of a sweeping pro-union agenda provides tangible evidence of how much has changed in recent years for workers and their unions...

By the mid-2010s, 27 states had “right to work” laws on the books.

But then, as a new generation of workers embraced “Fight for 15” organizing to raise wages, and campaigns to sign up workers at Starbucks and Amazon began to take off, the corporate-sponsored crusade to enact “right to work” measures stalled. New Hampshire’s legislature blocked a proposed “right to work” law in 2017 (and again in 2021), despite the fact that the measure was promoted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu. And in 2018, Missouri voters rejected a “right to work” referendum by a 67-33 margin.

Preventing anti-union legislation from being enacted and implemented is one thing, however. Actually overturning an existing law is something else altogether.

But that’s what happened in Michigan after 2022 voting saw the reelection of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a labor ally, and—thanks to the overturning of gerrymandered legislative district maps that had favored the GOP—the election of Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate. For the first time in four decades, the Democrats controlled all the major levers of power in Michigan, and they used them to implement a sweeping pro-labor agenda. That was a significant shift for Michigan, to be sure. But it was also an indication of what could be done in other states across the Great Lakes region, and nationwide.

“Michigan Democrats took full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. They used that power to repeal the state’s ‘right to work’ law,” explained a delighted former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, who added, “This is why we have to show up for our state and local elections.”"

-via The Nation, February 16, 2024

[phoenixyfriend]

Michigan just gave us the rhetorical weapon that could push Biden and the DNC to turn their backs on Israel.

Okay so this is amazing news. Michigan was going to be a key state in the push to get Biden, and the DNC as a whole, to start pressuring Israel, and they have just proven that they have that power.

Background: Michigan is a swing state, and it has 16 votes in the electoral college. Winning Michigan was a major factor in Biden's win back in 2020, and much of that rested on the Arab-American vote. It was also a major factor in Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in 2016. She lost the state by ten thousand, seven hundred votes.

Praxis: For obvious reasons, Arab-Americans are incredibly upset with Biden's support for Israel, and support in that demographic has gone from 59% in the 2020 election to less than 17% now. As a form of protest, Arab-Americans in Michigan started a campaign to get voters to check "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary. This is an actual box that can be checked, though some less-organized pushes also suggested writing in 'ceasefire' like New Hampshire primary voters did.

The goal was to get at least 10,000 'uncommitted' votes, as that is how many Hillary lost by.

As Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the first Arab mayor of this majority-Arab city, said:

"We're not sizable enough to make a candidate win, but we're sizable enough to make a candidate lose."

(Source: NPR, 2/25/24)

Result:

As of 10:49 PM EST, 2/27, there are thirty-nine thousand uncommitted votes, according to CNN, which is doing live coverage.

NPR was reporting 30k at 10:14.

As a caveat, New York Times is saying that each of the last three Michigan Dem Primaries had about 20k uncommitted votes, so the 35k isn't all the push for pro-Palestine stances in Congress, but that's still a jump of almost 20k, which is way, way more than the goal.

And they aren't done counting the votes yet. Barely 30% of votes are in. The goal has been blown out of the water.

Other states are reaching out for advice on how to replicate the results.

This is big news.

So can we relax?

Fuck no.

Do what Michigan did. Vote in the Dem primary, and vote uncommitted or write in "ceasefire."

But on a more daily basis, if you have a Democratic candidate, lean on this.

Tell them it will be repeated elsewhere.

This could very well lose the election for Biden and more. The Democrats can't afford another four years of Trump, and they know it. The loss of Michigan can and will tank this election for them, especially since other states that helped Biden win, like Georgia, were also won on demographics that are growing increasingly upset by the situation in Gaza.

Go to the Michigan section of this post and use that in your calls and emails.

But remember. Call your reps. Call your senators. Call your governor, if you'd like. And if they're a Democrat, you bring this up. Be polite, the staffer isn't making these decisions. They might just be an intern. But bring it up and tell them that we are going to lose the presidency if we do not sanction Israel and actually pressure them into not only pulling out of Gaza and the West Bank, but paying reparations.

[meret118]

“I have yet to find one of them that I felt was credible enough for me to actually file documentation for that voter,” he said. “So as a good steward for voter registration, which is what I’m charged with doing, I should not act upon stuff that is proven to be not credible.

”This year, election officials like Wilcox have spent valuable time sorting through pages of these mass voter challenges. And voting rights advocates worry that the trend could result in eligible voters being removed from the rolls, or from accommodations like being on lists to automatically receive ballots in the mail.

. . .

But experts and election officials who spoke to HuffPost said voters should confirm their registration status now — before the November election season heats up — just to be safe.

. . .

The month following that election, True the Vote teamed up with Georgia Republicans to challenge the eligibility of more than 364,000 voters in the state, based in part on U.S. Postal Service address-change data.

. . .

Some voters only found out their registrations had been challenged when they didn’t receive requested ballots in the mail for Georgia’s January 2021 U.S. Senate run-off election. Ultimately — after courts stepped in — the vast majority of these challenges were rejected. True the Vote’s list “utterly lacked reliability” and “verge[d] on recklessness,” a federal judge later observed.

. . .

At least one Georgia county has signed a contract to use the software, and in May, the director of the Florida Division of Elections sent county officials a list of 10,000 names to review that a local “concerned citizen” had generated with EagleAI.

. . .

Other efforts are state-based, including the “Pigpen Project” in Nevada and “Soles to the Rolls” in Michigan. Some even go so far as to go door to door to ask voters to confirm their information, raising concerns about intimidation. The Republican Party is also involved in the effort — in June, a federal judge rejected a GOP lawsuit alleging Nevada officials had failed to properly maintain voter rolls. (The GOP’s data was “highly flawed,” the state said.) A similar suit, against the state of Michigan, is ongoing.

And some states have made mass challenges even easier. In Georgia, S.B. 202, passed in 2021, allowed anyone to formally challenge an unlimited number of registrations, and S.B. 189, passed this year, requires voters to defend their registration against even frivolous challenges, sometimes at in-person hearings. It faces a lawsuit.

More at the link. Check your registration!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kamala Harris herself has now borrowed Walz’s lingo and is also calling her opponents “weird”, while Walz is all over our television screens, bolstering the vice-president’s candidacy and playing “attack dog” against the Trump/Vance Republican ticket. I’ll be honest: last month, I would have struggled to pick Walz out of a lineup. This month? I’m Walz-pilled. I have watched dozens of his interviews and clips. And I’m far from alone. He has an army of new fans across the liberal-left: from former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner, to one-time Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, to gun-control activist David Hogg. “In less than 6 days, I went from not knowing who Tim Walz is,” joked writer Travis Helwig on X, “to deep down believing that if he doesn’t get the VP nod I will storm the capitol.” According to Bloomberg, the Harris campaign has narrowed down its “top tier” of potential running mates to three “white guy” candidates: Walz (hurrah!), plus the Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Both Kelly and Shapiro have their strengths – and both represent must-win states for the Dems. Allow me, however, to make the clear case for Walz. First, there’s his personality. The 60-year-old governor would bring energy, humor and some much-needed bite to the Democratic presidential ticket. There’s a reason why his videos have been going viral in recent days. Tim Kaine he ain’t. Pick the charismatic and eloquent Walz and you have America’s Fun Uncle ready to go. Then, there’s his résumé. A popular midwest governor from a rural town. A 24-year veteran of the army national guard. A high school teacher who coached the football team to its first state championship. It’s almost too perfect! Finally, there’s his governing record. You will struggle to find a Democratic governor who has achieved more than Walz in the space of a single legislative session. Not Shapiro. Not JB Pritzker of Illinois. Not even Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. [...] Think about it. Democrats can have Tim Walz on the ticket, who called the anti-war, pro-Palestinian ‘uncommitted’ movement “civically engaged” and praised them for “asking for a change in course” and “for more pressure to be put on” the White House, or they can have Josh Shapiro, who called for a crackdown on anti-war, pro-Palestinian college protesters and even compared them to the KKK. They can have Walz on the ticket, who has reportedly “emerged among labor unions as a popular pick” after signing “into law a series of measures viewed as pro-worker” including banning non-compete agreements and expanding protections for Amazon warehouse workers, or they can have Mark Kelly, who opposed the pro-labor Pro Act in the Senate (but has since touted support for it). They can have Walz, who guaranteed students in Minnesota not just free breakfasts but free lunches, or Shapiro, who has courted controversy in Pennsylvania with his support for school vouchers. They can have Walz, who calls his Republican opponents “weird” and extreme, or Kelly, who calls his Republican opponents “good people” who are “working really hard”. This isn’t rocket science. Walz is the obvious choice. Not only is he the ideal “white guy” running mate for Harris, against both Trump and Vance, but he is already doing the job on television and online, lambasting Vance in particular over IVF treatment and insisting he mind his “own damn business”.

Zeteo News founder Mehdi Hasan for The Guardian on why picking Tim Walz as Kamala Harris's running mate is the best option (07.29.2024).

Zeteo News founder Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Guardian why Tim Walz should be Kamala Harris’s running mate. Hasan’s opinion piece is worth reading.

[socialistexan]

If y'all want some hope, there's a huge number of voters who only like Trump and only show up for Trump, and this is consistent across the entire country. Every city, country, town, everywhere.

For example, Williamson county in Texas, which is the suburbs and exurbs north of Austin. In 2020 and 2022 Williamson went blue, it also went blue in the 2024 Senate race, but Trump won the county in the Presidential race. Colin Allred got nearly the same amount of votes in Williamson as Harris (150k Allred, 149k Harris), but Cruz had 10,000 fewer votes than Trump in this one purple county.

Maga is a cult, and the Magas only care about their godking daddy Trump. They despise other Republicans just as much as they despise Democrats. They don't show up for anyone but their daddy.

It's so consistent that in states Trump won, Republicans underperformed or Democrats outright won. Gallego in Arizona, Stein in North Carolina, Rosen in Nevada, Baldwin in Wisconsin, and Slotkin in Michigan all won in swing states Trump pulled.

All of those candidates got near identical numbers as Harris, but all their Republican opponents got thousands of few votes than Trump.

People are getting confused and thinking there are 10's of millions of people who cross voted and put Trump at the top and and Democrats down ticket, but the truth is that number relatively small and the real explanation is that there are millions of voters who will show up only for Trump and no one else.

Once Trump is gone, those voters are gone, too.

[simply-ivanka]

Democrats, Blame Yourselves

Voters on Tuesday repudiated the results of progressive policies.

By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal

If Democrats want some sage counsel on how to recover from their electoral drubbing on Tuesday, we suggest they recall that classic relationship breakup line from Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not you; it’s me.”

The temptation after a defeat this humiliating is to hunt for scapegoats—fading Joe Biden, untutored Kamala Harris, Russian disinformation, benighted and racist voters. They’d be wiser to look in the mirror.

The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. Democrats lost ground from 2020 across many demographic groups, according to the exit polls. Even women moved percentage points closer to Mr. Trump. How could Democrats possibly lose like this to a man they think is Hitler? Allow us to offer a list for liberal reflection:

• The failure of Bidenomics. Democrats once understood that private business drives growth and higher incomes. Sometime in the 21st century, they came to believe that government spending creates wealth—via the “Keynesian multiplier” and other nostrums.

Thus they passed, on a party-line vote, a $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief bill that wasn’t really needed, fueling the highest inflation in decades. This robbed millions of workers of real wage gains, which haunted Democrats on Tuesday as two-thirds of voters said they were unhappy with the state of the economy.

• Cultural imperialism. Democrats took their 2020 victory as an invitation to turn identity politics into woke policy. They stood with transgender activists instead of parents who don’t want boys to play girls sports or elementary teachers to pass out pronoun pins. Republicans hammered Democrats with ads that attacked Democratic votes against tying federal funds to transgender school policies.

Democrats also began using the term “Latinx,” which sounds to many Spanish-speakers like illiterate cultural imperialism from elites. Could that and other woke policies have played a role in Mr. Trump winning 46% of the Hispanic vote and 55% of Latino men, according to the exit polls?

• Regulatory coercion. In pursuit of their climate obsessions, Democrats pushed coercive mandates, including an EPA rule effectively saying that by 2032 only 30% of new car sales can be gas-powered models. The EV mandate caused layoffs among auto workers in Michigan that Mr. Trump attacked in TV ads and on the stump.

• Lawfare. Democrats used Mr. Trump’s divisiveness to escalate against him at every turn. After calling him a Russian stooge and impeaching him twice, Mr. Biden labeled him a “fascist” and Democrats tried to bar him from the ballot.

They criminally indicted Mr. Trump—four times—and targeted his family business with a civil suit. They convicted him in New York, under an elected Democratic prosecutor who stretched the law to turn misdemeanors into felonies, in a case that wouldn’t have been brought against another businessman.

The strategy turned Mr. Trump into a martyr to GOP voters and cemented his support in the Republican primaries.

• Breaking democratic norms. Democrats decided to use taxes from plumbers and welders to forgive college loans for lawyers and grad students in grievance studies. When the Supreme Court struck Mr. Biden’s effort down as an abuse of power, he tried again and taunted the Court to stop him.

Democrats tried to override the Senate filibuster to seize control of the nation’s voting laws and impose practices such as ballot harvesting, as Mr. Biden raged that his opponents were creating “Jim Crow 2.0.”

They tried to override the filibuster to pass a national abortion law that would go beyond Roe v. Wade. They promised to override the filibuster in 2025 to bulldoze the High Court. They ran Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema out of the party for disagreeing.

All of this and other progressive preoccupations caused Democrats to lose sight of the larger public interest. They came to believe, backed by the mainstream press, that voters would tolerate it all because Mr. Trump was simply unacceptable.

This opened the door for Mr. Trump to remind voters that they were better off under his policies four years earlier. Mr. Trump won more than 72 million ballots. He improved his standing with minority voters. He gained votes even in Democratic states.

Voters were telling Democrats on Tuesday that the party has wandered into ideological fever swamps where most Americans don’t want to go. Winning those voters again will require more than firing back up the anti-Trump “resistance.”

[mariacallous]

Centibillionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the former US Digital Service—now the United States DOGE Service—has been widely publicized and sanctioned by one of President Donald Trump’s many executive orders. But WIRED reporting shows that Musk’s influence extends even further, and into an even more consequential government agency.

Sources within the federal government tell WIRED that the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry. Among them is a person who, according to an online résumé, was set to start college last fall.

Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. But already in place, according to sources, are a variety of people who seem ready to carry out Musk’s mission of cutting staff and disrupting the government.

Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Her placement in this key role, experts believe, seems part of a broader pattern of the traditionally apolitical OPM being converted to use as a political tool.

“I don't think it's alarmist to say there's a much more sophisticated plan to monitor and enforce loyalty than there was in the first term,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.

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Sources say that Riccardo Biasini, formerly an engineer at Tesla and most recently director of operations for the Las Vegas Loop at the Boring Company, Musk’s tunnel-building operation, is also at the OPM as a senior adviser to the director. (Steve Davis, the CEO of the Boring Company, is rumored to be advising Musk on cuts to be made via DOGE and was integral in Musk’s gutting of Twitter, now X, after his takeover of the company in 2022.)

According to the same sources, other people at the top of the new OPM food chain include two people with apparent software engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED is not naming because of their ages. One, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old whose online résumé touts his work for Palantir, the government contractor and analytics firm cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is its chair. (The former CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk associate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The other, who reports directly to Scales, graduated from high school in 2024, according to a mirrored copy of an online résumé and his high school’s student magazine; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic among his professional experiences, as well as a summer role at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.

Among the new highers-up at the OPM is Noah Peters, an attorney whose LinkedIn boasts of his work in litigation representing the National Rifle Association and who has written for right-wing outlets like the Daily Caller and the Federalist; he is also now a senior adviser to the director. According to metadata associated with a file on the OPM website, Peters authored a January 27 memo that went out under acting OPM director Charles Ezell’s name describing how the department would be implementing one of Trump’s executive orders, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” This has to do with what’s sometimes known as Schedule F—a plan to recategorize many civil service jobs as political appointees, meaning they would be tied to the specific agenda of an administration rather than viewed as career government workers. The order would essentially allow for certain career civil servants to be removed in favor of Trump loyalists by classifying them as political appointees, a key part of the Project 2025 plan for remaking the government.

“I think on the tech side, the concern is potentially the use of AI to try and engage in large-scale searches of people's job descriptions to try and identify who would be identified for Schedule F reclassification,” says Moynihan.

Other top political appointees include McLaurine Pinover, a former communications director for Republican congressman Joe Wilson and deputy communications director for Republican congressman Michael McCaul, and Joanna Wischer, a Trump campaign speechwriter.

“OPM is not a very politicized organization,” says Steven Kelman, a professor emeritus at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “My guess is that typically, in the past, there have been only one or maybe two political appointees in all of OPM. All the rest are career. So this seems like a very political heavy presence in an organization that is not very political.”

Another OPM memo, concerning the government’s new return-to-office mandate, appears, according to metadata, also to have been authored by someone other than Ezell: James Sherk, previously at the America First Policy Institute and author of an op-ed advocating for the president to be able to fire bureaucrats. Formerly a special assistant to the president during Trump’s first term, he is now a part of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

The return-to-office policy, according to the November Wall Street Journal op-ed authored by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is explicitly geared toward forcing the attrition of federal employees.

Last week, many federal workers received test emails from the email address HR@opm.gov. In a lawsuit filed last night, plaintiffs allege that a new email list started by the Trump administration may be compromising the data of federal employees.

“At a broadest level, the concern is that technologists are playing a role to monitor employees and to target those who will be downsized,” says Moynihan. “It is difficult in the federal government to actually evaluate who is performing well or performing poorly. So doing it on some sort of mass automated scale where you think using some sort of data analysis or AI would automate that process, I think, is an invitation to make errors.”

Last week, federal employees across the government received emails encouraging them to turn in colleagues who they believed to be working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives (DEIA) to the OPM via the email address DEIAtruth@opm.gov.

“This reminded me,” says Kelman, “of the Soviet Stalinism of turning in your friends to the government.”

The OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the people whom sources say now sit atop the bureaucracy.

“I am not an alarmist person,” says Kelman. “I do think that some of the things being described here are very troubling.”