#Representative Tony Gonzales

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 9, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 10, 2024

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria yesterday took oxygen away from the airing of President-elect Trump’s interview with Kristen Welker of NBC’S Meet the Press. The interview told us little that we didn’t already know, but it did reinforce what we can expect in the new administration.

As Tom Nichols pointed out after the interview, when Donald Trump ran for the presidency this year, he “wasn’t running to do anything. He was running to stay out of jail. The rest he doesn’t care about.”

Nichols was reacting to the exchange that began when Welker asked the president-elect: “Do you have an actual plan at this point for health care?” Trump answered: “Yes. We have concepts of a plan that would be better.” “Still just concepts? Do you have a fully developed plan?” Welker asked.

The answer, nine years after Trump first said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something cheaper and better, is still no. He went on to add, “I am the one that saved Obamacare,” although he spent his first term trying to weaken it.

Trump also reiterated his plans for revenge against those he perceives to be his enemies. He told Welker that when he is president, the Department of Justice should pursue and jail the members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee. He singled out committee leaders Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY).

But it was in his insistence on one specific lie that Trump was most revealing. He told Welker that there were “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years. They’re walking down the streets. They’re walking next to you and your family, and they’re very dangerous.”

This statement sets Trump up to be a strongman who will save America from great danger, but it is a lie that has been repeatedly debunked. It originated in a September 2024 letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) listing 13,099 people convicted of homicide as being “non-detained.”

As Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato blog explains, “non-detained” does not mean free to roam the streets; it simply means that those in prison for homicide are not currently detained by ICE. Once they have served their sentences, they go back onto ICE’s docket to be deported unless their countries of origin don’t have repatriation agreements with the U.S., a condition that affects a very small number of people. Releases of criminal migrants into the U.S. dropped during the Biden administration from the numbers released during Trump’s term. In addition, as Nowrasteh points out, the 13,099 figure covers at least 40 years.

Welker tried to correct Trump: “The thirteen thousand figure I think goes back around 40 years,” she said. “No, it doesn’t,” Trump insisted. “It’s within the three-year period. It’s during the Biden term.”

Trump was intent on making Welker and the television audience accept an egregious lie, despite the fact it has been thoroughly debunked. His insistence echoed his determination in January 2017 to make the American people accept his lie that his inauguration crowd was bigger than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, although we could see with our own eyes that he was lying. He was demanding we reject our own experience and instead let him define how we see the country.

Trump built on a history of narrative shaping that ran through the Republican Party. In 2004 a senior advisor to President George W. Bush famously told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” believing that people could find solutions to problems based on their real-world observations. But such a worldview was obsolete, the aide said. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.… We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

America’s right wing has been able to shape reality in large part because of the 1996 advent of the Fox News Channel (FNC), the brainchild of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Shows on the FNC used clear, simple messaging with colorful graphics that told a story of an America overwhelmingly made up of white, rural folks who hated taxes and an intrusive government, and would do fine if they could just get the socialist Democrats to leave them alone. To spread the new channel, Murdoch initially offered ten dollars per subscriber to each cable company that carried it.

That right-wing echo chamber has expanded until it is now so strong that nearly 70% of Republicans falsely believe Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite the fact that the FNC had to pay more than $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for defamation after it lied to viewers about that election.

Trump has built on that Republican narrative to create a fantasy world that is badly out of step with reality. It is not easy to see how he will reconcile his vision with real-world events.

He and his supporters might try simply to tell voters that they have done what they promised, and hope that story sells.

When Trump threatened to put a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico until Mexico stopped undocumented migrants from crossing the border, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told Trump that "encounters at the Mexico–United States border have decreased by 75 percent between December 2023 and November 2024.” Trump then simply told reporters that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” and his supporters trumpeted on social media that Trump had closed the border with one phone call.

But convincing people of an alternative reality might be harder with issues closer to home.

Trump has vowed to place a tariff wall around the U.S., for example, at the same time he has promised to bring down the price of consumer goods. “Economists of all stripes say that ultimately, consumers pay the price of tariffs,” Welker told him on Sunday. “I don’t believe that,” Trump answered. He might not believe it, but producers do: car manufacturers as well as major shopping chains have warned that tariffs will force them to raise prices.

On other issues, Trump will have a vocal and established opposition. After his threat to go after the members of the January 6th committee, former representative Liz Cheney said in a statement: “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting.“

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history.”

Cheney called for the release of the evidence and grand jury material special counsel Jack Smith assembled “so all Americans can see Donald Trump for who he genuinely is and fully understand his role in this terrible period in our nation’s history.”

Nobel laureates generally try to stay out of politics, but today more than 75 of them in medicine, chemistry, economics, and physics wrote a letter to senators urging them not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services. They object to Kennedy’s stand against the scientists and agencies he would oversee. They noted that he has no credentials or relevant experience and that he has opposed life-saving vaccines, promoted conspiracy theories, and attacked the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Putting him in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, they write, “would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.”

There is also the chance that the Fox media empire will not effectively push a right-wing narrative much longer. The Murdoch family is in a struggle over control of that empire after the death of the 93-year-old Rupert. He and his eldest son, Lachlan, want to lock the company into its current political slant, but at least two of the three of Murdoch’s other children who are set to inherit the company do not share their father and brother’s politics.

Rupert has been trying to change the terms of the family trust to cement Lachlan’s control of the empire, but today a commissioner in Nevada ruled against him. Edward Helmore of The Guardian noted that the decision likely means that even if the children do not take the media empire in a different direction, divided leadership will weaken the right-wing message.

Almost 30 years after the Fox News Channel began to shape American politics with a fictional narrative, a different Fox media empire would almost certainly disrupt the right-wing bubble. A lawyer for Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch said they will appeal the decision.

Finally, Pennsylvania law enforcement officials today arrested a “strong person of interest” in the shooting of United Healthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. Tonight a court document shows 26-year-old Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[faerie-hideaway]

U.S. users email your representatives this, and make sure to include your zip code:

I am your constituent. I am strongly in favor of defunding Israel. I want my opinion logged on every single one of these pieces of legislation. It is an atrocity that the USA is sending our taxpayer dollars, weaponry, and other support to Israel in order to aid in the genocide of the Palestinian people. It does not reflect the will of your constituents, and I demand that you correct this by voting for/against the following bills, resolutions, and legislation.

To be frank, I will be basing my vote for you in upcoming elections on this issue. I will be watching closely to see how you vote on issues regarding funding to Israel. I will not vote for you in the next election if you vote to send any money, support, or weaponry to Israel. I will be voting for you if you vote to block money, support, and weaponry to Israel.

This is the current legislation I am for, and the current legislation I am against. I would like your office to record my opinion for each bill, and I would like you to take this into consideration when you vote.

I am FOR the following, and expect you to vote for this and co-sponsor, either now or when matching legislation reaches your office.

H.Res. 786: by Rep. Cori Bush

H.Res. 388 by Rep. Rashida Tlaib

H.R. 3103 by Rep. Betty McCollum

I am against Joe Biden’s proposal to spend billions of dollars on Israel via a package for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and the US border. Biden is asking for $100 BILLION for this package and it is only 1 YEAR'S worth of funding. This is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable, and I am against you voting for ANY bill that spends even $1 on Israel. I do not care what else is in the bill. If it gives money to Israel, I am against it.

I am AGAINST the following, and expect you to vote against this and not co-sponsor, either now or when matching legislation reaches your office.

S. 3083 by Sen. Bill Hagerty [R-TN]

S.Res. 417 by Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer [D-NY]

H.Res. 797 by Rep. Cory Mills [R-FL7]

S. 3081 by Sen. Steve Daines [R-MT]

H.Res. 796 by Rep. Ernest “Tony” Gonzales [R-TX23]

S.Res. 413 by Sen. Marco Rubio

H.R. 552 by Rep. Lance Gooden

H.R. 5959 by Thomas Tiffany

S. 3081 by Sen. Steve Daines

H.Res. 789 by Rep. Jefferson Van Drew

H.Res. 771 by Rep. Michael McCaul

H.R. 5932 by Rep. David Schweikert

H.Res. 768 by Rep. Michael McCaul

H.Res. 770 by Rep. Zachary (Zach) Nunn

H.Res. 701 by Rep. Bradley “Brad” Schneider

H.Con.Res. 61 by Rep. Janice “Jan” Schakowsky

S. 2587 by Sen. Jon Tester

H.Res. 606 by Rep. Andrew Ogles

S. 2413 by Sen. Robert “Bob” Menendez

S. 2438 by Sen. Christopher Coons

H.R. 4709 by Rep. Josh Gottheimer

S.Con.Res. 14: by Sen. Tom Cotton

H.Con.Res. 57 by Rep. August Pfluger

H.R. 4665 by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart

S. 2265 by Sen. Dan Sullivan

S. 2226 by Sen. John F. “Jack” Reed

H.Res. 581 by Rep. Gregory Steube

S. 2240 by Sen. Christopher Coons

H.R. 4564 by Rep. Claudia Tenney

H.R. 4365 by Rep. Ken Calvert

H.R. 4076 by Rep. Chris Pappas

H.R. 3932 by Rep. Michael Turner

H.R. 3907 by Rep. Lois Frankel

S. 1802 by Sen. Gary Peters

H.R. 3792 by Rep. Joe Wilson

S. 1777 by Sen. Jacky Rosen

H.R. 3393 by Rep. Carlos Gimenez

H.Res. 409 by Rep. Carlos Gimenez

S. 1637 by Sen. Marco Rubio

H.R. 3266 by Rep. Brad Sherman

S. 1504 by Sen. Tom Cotton

H.R. 3099 by Rep. Michael Lawler

S.Res. 188 by Sen. Robert “Bob” Menendez

H.Res. 346 by Rep. Randy Weber

H.R. 2973 by Rep. Cathy Anne McMorris Rodgers

S. 1334: by Sen. Jacky Rosen

S. 1300 by Sen. Benjamin Cardin

H.Res. 311 by Rep. Ann Wagner

H.R. 2670 by Rep. Mike Rogers

H.R. 2531 by Rep. Bradley “Brad” Schneider

S. 1143 by Sen. Jerry Moran

H.R. 1777 by Rep. Joe Wilson

H.R. 1218 by Rep. August Pfluger

H.R. 1102 by Rep. Chip Roy

S. 510 by Sen. Tom Cotton

S. 489 by Sen. Rick Scott

S. 430 by Sen. James Risch

S. 431 by Sen. James Risch

H.R. 987 by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

H.Res. 92 by Rep. Josh Gottheimer

H.Res. 76 by Rep. Max Miller

H.R. 687 by Rep. Gregory Steube

H.R. 211 by Rep. Gregory Steube

S. 224 by Sen. Tom Cotton

S. 189 by Sen. Marco Rubio

I am against any legislation that allows troops to deploy to the Middle East in support roles for Israel, as proposed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

I am against Netanyahu’s ground invasion of Gaza, which will inevitably lead to mass killings of Palestinian civilians and escalate violence. If there are any future bills supporting this, you need to vote against them and not co-sponsor.

The U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act stipulate that only Congress can authorize the president to use military force in a foreign war, except in cases of self-defense. Previous administrations from both parties have ignored this, with unauthorized strikes in places like Syria and Libya. I want you to stand against ANY use of military force that supports Israel or hurts Palestine.

And of course, I am against the usual funding of $3.8 billion PER YEAR to Israel. This 10-year agreement began in 2016. I do not want a renewal in 2026, and in the next election, I will vote for representatives who WILL NOT VOTE TO FUND ISRAEL. I will be keeping track of how you vote now, and I will not vote for you if you decide to fund Israel in any way.

I am a single-issue voter for this. I want you to defund Israel. I do not want a single dollar spent on supporting Israel. I will be paying attention to how you vote in the upcoming weeks and months, and if you vote to fund or provide weapons, troops, or intelligence to Israel, I will NOT vote for you in the next election.

We are paying attention to the budget. We know when you're giving aid to a country committing genocide instead of helping your constituents in the USA. Both myself and tens of thousands of other constituents have spent years saying that we don’t want our hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to Israel. The lack of willingness to fund anything for American citizens, but the quickness with which you take action for Israel is telling. It is unacceptable.

As an elected official, you have the opportunity to listen to the public and stand against genocide. Israel is currently committing war crimes against Palestine. You can stop this by defunding Israel. THOUSANDS of Palestinian people have been killed, 1/3 of them children, in just a couple of days. One child every 15 minutes is being killed. YOU can prevent this by refusing to send additional weapons and funding to Israel.

We are currently spending BILLIONS of dollars EVERY YEAR on Israel. I do not want my money going towards the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. Not a dollar more.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson 12.9.24

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria yesterday took oxygen away from the airing of President-elect Trump’s interview with Kristen Welker of NBC’S Meet the Press. The interview told us little that we didn’t already know, but it did reinforce what we can expect in the new administration.

As Tom Nichols pointed out after the interview, when Donald Trump ran for the presidency this year, he “wasn’t running to do anything. He was running to stay out of jail. The rest he doesn’t care about.”

Nichols was reacting to the exchange that began when Welker asked the president-elect: “Do you have an actual plan at this point for health care?” Trump answered: “Yes. We have concepts of a plan that would be better.” “Still just concepts? Do you have a fully developed plan?” Welker asked.

The answer, nine years after Trump first said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something cheaper and better, is still no. He went on to add, “I am the one that saved Obamacare,” although he spent his first term trying to weaken it.

Trump also reiterated his plans for revenge against those he perceives to be his enemies. He told Welker that when he is president, the Department of Justice should pursue and jail the members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee. He singled out committee leaders Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY).

But it was in his insistence on one specific lie that Trump was most revealing. He told Welker that there were “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years. They’re walking down the streets. They’re walking next to you and your family, and they’re very dangerous.”

This statement sets Trump up to be a strongman who will save America from great danger, but it is a lie that has been repeatedly debunked. It originated in a September 2024 letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) listing 13,099 people convicted of homicide as being “non-detained.”

As Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato blog explains, “non-detained” does not mean free to roam the streets; it simply means that those in prison for homicide are not currently detained by ICE. Once they have served their sentences, they go back onto ICE’s docket to be deported unless their countries of origin don’t have repatriation agreements with the U.S., a condition that affects a very small number of people. Releases of criminal migrants into the U.S. dropped during the Biden administration from the numbers released during Trump’s term. In addition, as Nowrasteh points out, the 13,099 figure covers at least 40 years.

Welker tried to correct Trump: “The thirteen thousand figure I think goes back around 40 years,” she said. “No, it doesn’t,” Trump insisted. “It’s within the three-year period. It’s during the Biden term.”

Trump was intent on making Welker and the television audience accept an egregious lie, despite the fact it has been thoroughly debunked. His insistence echoed his determination in January 2017 to make the American people accept his lie that his inauguration crowd was bigger than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, although we could see with our own eyes that he was lying. He was demanding we reject our own experience and instead let him define how we see the country.

Trump built on a history of narrative shaping that ran through the Republican Party. In 2004 a senior advisor to President George W. Bush famously told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” believing that people could find solutions to problems based on their real-world observations. But such a worldview was obsolete, the aide said. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.… We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

America’s right wing has been able to shape reality in large part because of the 1996 advent of the Fox News Channel (FNC), the brainchild of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Shows on the FNC used clear, simple messaging with colorful graphics that told a story of an America overwhelmingly made up of white, rural folks who hated taxes and an intrusive government, and would do fine if they could just get the socialist Democrats to leave them alone. To spread the new channel, Murdoch initially offered ten dollars per subscriber to each cable company that carried it.

That right-wing echo chamber has expanded until it is now so strong that nearly 70% of Republicans falsely believe Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite the fact that the FNC had to pay more than $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for defamation after it lied to viewers about that election.

Trump has built on that Republican narrative to create a fantasy world that is badly out of step with reality. It is not easy to see how he will reconcile his vision with real-world events.

He and his supporters might try simply to tell voters that they have done what they promised, and hope that story sells.

When Trump threatened to put a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico until Mexico stopped undocumented migrants from crossing the border, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told Trump that "encounters at the Mexico–United States border have decreased by 75 percent between December 2023 and November 2024.” Trump then simply told reporters that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” and his supporters trumpeted on social media that Trump had closed the border with one phone call.

But convincing people of an alternative reality might be harder with issues closer to home.

Trump has vowed to place a tariff wall around the U.S., for example, at the same time he has promised to bring down the price of consumer goods. “Economists of all stripes say that ultimately, consumers pay the price of tariffs,” Welker told him on Sunday. “I don’t believe that,” Trump answered. He might not believe it, but producers do: car manufacturers as well as major shopping chains have warned that tariffs will force them to raise prices.

On other issues, Trump will have a vocal and established opposition. After his threat to go after the members of the January 6th committee, former representative Liz Cheney said in a statement: “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting.“

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history.”

Cheney called for the release of the evidence and grand jury material special counsel Jack Smith assembled “so all Americans can see Donald Trump for who he genuinely is and fully understand his role in this terrible period in our nation’s history.”

Nobel laureates generally try to stay out of politics, but today more than 75 of them in medicine, chemistry, economics, and physics wrote a letter to senators urging them not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services. They object to Kennedy’s stand against the scientists and agencies he would oversee. They noted that he has no credentials or relevant experience and that he has opposed life-saving vaccines, promoted conspiracy theories, and attacked the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Putting him in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, they write, “would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.”

There is also the chance that the Fox media empire will not effectively push a right-wing narrative much longer. The Murdoch family is in a struggle over control of that empire after the death of the 93-year-old Rupert. He and his eldest son, Lachlan, want to lock the company into its current political slant, but at least two of the three of Murdoch’s other children who are set to inherit the company do not share their father and brother’s politics.

Rupert has been trying to change the terms of the family trust to cement Lachlan’s control of the empire, but today a commissioner in Nevada ruled against him. Edward Helmore of The Guardian noted that the decision likely means that even if the children do not take the media empire in a different direction, divided leadership will weaken the right-wing message.

Almost 30 years after the Fox News Channel began to shape American politics with a fictional narrative, a different Fox media empire would almost certainly disrupt the right-wing bubble. A lawyer for Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch said they will appeal the decision.

Finally, Pennsylvania law enforcement officials today arrested a “strong person of interest” in the shooting of United Healthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. Tonight a court document shows 26-year-old Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder.

[misfitwashere]

December 9, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 10

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria yesterday took oxygen away from the airing of President-elect Trump’s interview with Kristen Welker of NBC’S Meet the Press. The interview told us little that we didn’t already know, but it did reinforce what we can expect in the new administration.

As Tom Nichols pointed out after the interview, when Donald Trump ran for the presidency this year, he “wasn’t running to do anything. He was running to stay out of jail. The rest he doesn’t care about.”

Nichols was reacting to the exchange that began when Welker asked the president-elect: “Do you have an actual plan at this point for health care?” Trump answered: “Yes. We have concepts of a plan that would be better.” “Still just concepts? Do you have a fully developed plan?” Welker asked.

The answer, nine years after Trump first said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something cheaper and better, is still no. He went on to add, “I am the one that saved Obamacare,” although he spent his first term trying to weaken it.

Trump also reiterated his plans for revenge against those he perceives to be his enemies. He told Welker that when he is president, the Department of Justice should pursue and jail the members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee. He singled out committee leaders Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY).

But it was in his insistence on one specific lie that Trump was most revealing. He told Welker that there were “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years. They’re walking down the streets. They’re walking next to you and your family, and they’re very dangerous.”

This statement sets Trump up to be a strongman who will save America from great danger, but it is a lie that has been repeatedly debunked. It originated in a September 2024 letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) listing 13,099 people convicted of homicide as being “non-detained.”

As Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato blog explains, “non-detained” does not mean free to roam the streets; it simply means that those in prison for homicide are not currently detained by ICE. Once they have served their sentences, they go back onto ICE’s docket to be deported unless their countries of origin don’t have repatriation agreements with the U.S., a condition that affects a very small number of people. Releases of criminal migrants into the U.S. dropped during the Biden administration from the numbers released during Trump’s term. In addition, as Nowrasteh points out, the 13,099 figure covers at least 40 years.

Welker tried to correct Trump: “The thirteen thousand figure I think goes back around 40 years,�� she said. “No, it doesn’t,” Trump insisted. “It’s within the three-year period. It’s during the Biden term.”

Trump was intent on making Welker and the television audience accept an egregious lie, despite the fact it has been thoroughly debunked. His insistence echoed his determination in January 2017 to make the American people accept his lie that his inauguration crowd was bigger than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, although we could see with our own eyes that he was lying. He was demanding we reject our own experience and instead let him define how we see the country.

Trump built on a history of narrative shaping that ran through the Republican Party. In 2004 a senior advisor to President George W. Bush famously told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” believing that people could find solutions to problems based on their real-world observations. But such a worldview was obsolete, the aide said. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.… We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

America’s right wing has been able to shape reality in large part because of the 1996 advent of the Fox News Channel (FNC), the brainchild of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Shows on the FNC used clear, simple messaging with colorful graphics that told a story of an America overwhelmingly made up of white, rural folks who hated taxes and an intrusive government, and would do fine if they could just get the socialist Democrats to leave them alone. To spread the new channel, Murdoch initially offered ten dollars per subscriber to each cable company that carried it.

That right-wing echo chamber has expanded until it is now so strong that nearly 70% of Republicans falsely believe Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite the fact that the FNC had to pay more than $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for defamation after it lied to viewers about that election.

Trump has built on that Republican narrative to create a fantasy world that is badly out of step with reality. It is not easy to see how he will reconcile his vision with real-world events.

He and his supporters might try simply to tell voters that they have done what they promised, and hope that story sells.

When Trump threatened to put a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico until Mexico stopped undocumented migrants from crossing the border, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told Trump that "encounters at the Mexico–United States border have decreased by 75 percent between December 2023 and November 2024.” Trump then simply told reporters that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” and his supporters trumpeted on social media that Trump had closed the border with one phone call.

But convincing people of an alternative reality might be harder with issues closer to home.

Trump has vowed to place a tariff wall around the U.S., for example, at the same time he has promised to bring down the price of consumer goods. “Economists of all stripes say that ultimately, consumers pay the price of tariffs,” Welker told him on Sunday. “I don’t believe that,” Trump answered. He might not believe it, but producers do: car manufacturers as well as major shopping chains have warned that tariffs will force them to raise prices.

On other issues, Trump will have a vocal and established opposition. After his threat to go after the members of the January 6th committee, former representative Liz Cheney said in a statement: “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting.“

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history.”

Cheney called for the release of the evidence and grand jury material special counsel Jack Smith assembled “so all Americans can see Donald Trump for who he genuinely is and fully understand his role in this terrible period in our nation’s history.”

Nobel laureates generally try to stay out of politics, but today more than 75 of them in medicine, chemistry, economics, and physics wrote a letter to senators urging them not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services. They object to Kennedy’s stand against the scientists and agencies he would oversee. They noted that he has no credentials or relevant experience and that he has opposed life-saving vaccines, promoted conspiracy theories, and attacked the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Putting him in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, they write, “would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.”

There is also the chance that the Fox media empire will not effectively push a right-wing narrative much longer. The Murdoch family is in a struggle over control of that empire after the death of the 93-year-old Rupert. He and his eldest son, Lachlan, want to lock the company into its current political slant, but at least two of the three of Murdoch’s other children who are set to inherit the company do not share their father and brother’s politics.

Rupert has been trying to change the terms of the family trust to cement Lachlan’s control of the empire, but today a commissioner in Nevada ruled against him. Edward Helmore of The Guardian noted that the decision likely means that even if the children do not take the media empire in a different direction, divided leadership will weaken the right-wing message.

Almost 30 years after the Fox News Channel began to shape American politics with a fictional narrative, a different Fox media empire would almost certainly disrupt the right-wing bubble. A lawyer for Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch said they will appeal the decision.

Finally, Pennsylvania law enforcement officials today arrested a “strong person of interest” in the shooting of United Healthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. Tonight a court document shows 26-year-old Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder.

—

[graymanbriefing]

Dead Drop: ICE National Data Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, September 27 2024 [PDF] BLUF: A U.S. Representative obtained data from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions who have entered the U.S. and were either released or detained. The data, as of July 2024, is summarized by those in detention, and those who are not in detention (non-detained docket). Approximately 7 million non-citizens are on the non-detained docket (released unmonitored with the U.S.). Among the non-detained are 425,431 convicted criminals and 222,141 with pending criminal charges. This includes 62,231 convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 with drug convictions, 13,099 convicted of homicide.  2,521 convicted of kidnapping, and 15,811 convicted of sexual assault. There are an additional 1,845 with pending homicide charges, 42,915 with assault charges, 3,266 with burglary charges, and 4,250 with assault charges. There are 662,566 non-citizens wi...(access document via Telegram/Signal by joining at www.graymanbriefing.com)

[macwantspeace]

US Rep Gonzales has Uvalde in his district [San Antonio to El Paso along the border]. He had the balls to say that guns sucked after the Uvalde massacre. >“What is frustrating me is, I firmly believe that House Republicans are going to lose the majority. And we're going to lose it because of ourselves,” Gonzales said in an interview with Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman at The Texas Tribune Festival. “We’re getting outraised. We’re getting outspent.” He added that the messaging from Democrats “is at a different level than where we’re at.”

Most people, Gonzales said, “just want their lives to be better. They want to feel safe in their communities. They want their kids to feel safe in school. They want more money in their pockets. These are real issues. … Yet the House Republicans continue to get in their own way, and I worry if we stay in this spot, we’re gonna be in the minority.” When Congress gets back in session they need to move forward on gov funding. End of fiscal year is September 30. But they already have the Chaos Caucus promising to put junk legislation into that. They want "Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act". Some fluff about getting proof of citizenship, etc, so "illegals" don't vote. Thus far....already have a 1996 law for this. And it ain't been happening.

[pscottm]

Brandon Herrera is a YouTube star who makes a living shooting large guns for people to watch on small screens. The 28-year-old gun influencer, known online as “The AK Guy,” has built a following of more than 3 million followers with videos including a reenactment of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and another in which he carefully examines a firearm behind a Rhodesian flag, a symbol adopted by white nationalists. And he just might be elected to represent Uvalde, Texas — the site of a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school — in Congress.

After the 2022 massacre that killed 19 children and two adults, Congress passed the first gun-control legislation in decades, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It expanded background checks for those under 21, closing the “boyfriend loophole” that allowed some people convicted of domestic violence to buy a firearm and increasing funding for mental health and school safety. Tony Gonzales, Uvalde’s current representative, was one of 14 House Republicans to vote for it, prompting not only his censure by the Texas GOP but also Herrera to challenge him for the Republican nomination. During the primary this past march, Herrera received just under 25 percent, but thanks to two other candidates, Gonzales was held to less than 50 percent, forcing them into a runoff.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Four More Years

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 22, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 23, 2024

With the passage of the national security supplemental bill through the House of Representatives on Saturday, Punchbowl News noted today, President Joe Biden became the winner of this Congress. When the Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, they vowed to impeach Biden and members of his Cabinet, overturn the signature legislation the Democrats had passed in 2021 and 2022, and force the Democrats to accept draconian  immigration policies. 

Instead, the impeachment effort against Biden collapsed into ridiculousness as, after months of hearings by the Committee on Oversight, Democrat Jared Moskowitz of Florida moved to impeach Biden and asked committee chair James Comer (R-KY) to second the motion. Comer refused. That admission that the point of the investigation into Biden was to create media soundbites against him was widely assumed to be the end of that project. Last week, on April 17, the top Democrat on the committee, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, called it “a propaganda experiment” and asked Comer: “What is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for and keep this nonsense going?... Tell America right now.” Comer answered: “You’re about to find out very soon.”  

The House did, in fact, vote to impeach Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—the first time that a cabinet secretary has been impeached in almost 150 years—but senators refused even to hold a trial, saying that Mayorkas’s implementation of Biden’s policies in the absence of congressional legislation to provide more security at the border was not a high crime or misdemeanor. 

House Republicans did not get the deep cuts they wanted to funding for the Internal Revenue Service, measures to address climate change, social welfare measures, or the budget in general. Instead, leaders have had to rely on Democrats to carry the weight of keeping the government funded, while Republicans have repeatedly been caught touting the internal improvements they voted against. Republicans demanded a strong border security measure, forced senators to spend months hammering one out, and then killed it in an astonishing own goal, at Trump’s demand. And the extremists did not succeed in abandoning Ukraine. 

Instead, they have had a bruising fight in which they threw out their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and had trouble replacing him. Shortly thereafter, he left Congress, leading the way for more than 20 Republican representatives, including five committee chairs, who have said they will not seek reelection. They had to expel one of their own members, George Santos (R-NY), a serial liar who is under indictment for crimes associated with campaign financing—only the sixth time in U.S. history the House has expelled a member. 

In November 2023, extremist representative Chip Roy (R-TX) charged his colleagues with throwing away their shot at changing the country. He demanded one of them “explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done.” 

Now those opposed to the extremists are firing back, publicly charging them with killing border security. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) went further, telling Dana Bash of CNN on Sunday: “It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags. Matt Gaetz [R-FL], he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Bob Good [R-VA] endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”

The chaos of the House has shifted the weight of governance toward the White House, and Biden has taken advantage of that shift to put in place measures popular with the majority of Americans. Today, on Earth Day, Biden also honored the idea of a government that works for the people when he spoke at the Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia, a national park developed in the 1930s by the government’s Works Progress Administration under the New Deal.

Biden called attention to the country’s historic investment in addressing climate change under his administration. He noted that that investment has created a clean-energy manufacturing boom that has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in private-sector investment and created more than 270,000 new jobs. 

In Virginia, Biden announced $7 billion in federal grants for solar projects for more than 900,000 low- and middle-income households, saying those projects would save those households about $400 a year annually, more than $350 million total. The projects will also create nearly 200,000 jobs. 

Biden also announced the launch of the website to apply to join the American Climate Corps (ACC), an initiative modeled after New Deal president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Over its nine-year existence, the CCC employed more than three million young men improving the nation’s public lands, forests, and parks, many of whom earned their high school diplomas thanks to the educational opportunities connected to the program. 

When the administration unveiled the American Climate Corps program last year, more than 42,000 young people expressed interest within weeks. The first ACC jobs will start in June. Beginning this summer, ACC members will have access to training in trades, thanks to a partnership between the program and the North America’s Building Trades Unions’ nonprofit partner TradesFutures. 

This national shift toward a government focused on the good of ordinary Americans is facing a backlash.

As right-wing voices have lost control in Congress, they have worked aggressively to take over states. There, they have pushed extreme abortion bans, gutted labor laws including for child labor, restricted voting, banned books from public schools, worked to privatize education, and so on—precisely the sort of reactionary state movements the U.S. Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to undermine from the 1950s to the 1970s. 

Today, on Earth Day, The Guardian reported that Louisiana’s flagship state university, Louisiana State University (LSU), has permitted oil and chemical companies to influence research and teaching activities concerning climate change in exchange for donations to the university. 

The attempt to cement right-wing dominance in the states in opposition to a more liberal national government is a political tradition almost as old as this country, but in 2024 it is being challenged. On Friday, April 19, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), despite a letter from the Republican governors of six southern states—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—warning the workers that unionization would stop auto manufacturers from expanding in their states.

Similar votes, with similar opposition from Republican leaders and business interests, failed in 2014 and 2019. This time, 73% of the workers voted to join the UAW, which has just negotiated strong contracts with the Big Three U.S. automakers. In a statement, Biden said: “Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose. In fact, the growing strength of unions over the last year has gone hand-in-hand with record small business and jobs growth alongside the longest stretch of low unemployment in more than 50 years. I will continue to stand with American workers and stand against [Republicans’] effort to weaken workers’ voice.”  

Tennessee reporter Phil Williams noted that the Beacon Center, a right-wing think tank in the state, tried to tell Tennesseans that the UAW has a “radical political agenda,” but its own latest poll shows that the people of Tennessee view the UAW’s unionization efforts in the state favorably. (The research also shows that only 12% of likely voters in Tennessee believe the current U.S. tax system is “fair and effectively supports public services.”) 

Today also saw the opening statements of The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. The prosecution outlined a 2015 meeting in Trump Tower in which Trump, his then-fixer Michael Cohen, and David Pecker, the chief executive officer of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, struck an agreement to influence the 2016 election by finding negative information about Trump and hiding it, publishing flattering stories about Trump, and attacking Trump’s political opponents. 

The defense said Trump is innocent and called Cohen a liar, pointing out that he is a convicted felon (without noting that he committed crimes in Trump’s service). 

Pecker took the stand for about 20 minutes before court ended for the day. He is expected to testify again tomorrow. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[filosofablogger]

King Ron???

Every day there is something new that DeSantis or his henchmen have done to further stifle civil rights, human rights.  The latest is the board of trustees 9-3 vote to shut down one college’s diversity office.  Others will no doubt follow.  Seems to me that we can all see where this path ends. Also in Florida there is Senate Bill 1316, titled Information Dissemination.  The bill would, in part,…

[deanwasalwaysbi]

23 Republican Senators & 124 Congressmen signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking for a 50 state ban on mifepristone, a drug safer than tylenol that is standard treatment for abortion & miscarriages, "due to safety concerns". The brief DARES to argue that banning the life saving drug would save women from 'reproductive control'. (x) These 147 people would rather have women die of sepsis than let women control their own bodies. If your representatives are on this list, call them and tell their office you will be voting against them in the next election because they asked SCOTUS to throw the US medical drug system into chaos at the cost of American lives.

United States Senate

Lead Senator: Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS) John Barrasso (WY) Mike Braun (IN) Katie Britt (AL) Ted Budd (NC) Bill Cassidy (LA) Kevin Cramer (ND) Mike Crapo (ID) Ted Cruz (TX) Steve Daines (MT) Josh Hawley (MO) John Hoeven (ND) James Lankford (OK) Mike Lee (UT) Cynthia Lummis (WY) Roger Marshall (KS) Markwayne Mullin (OK) James Risch (ID) Marco Rubio (FL) Rich Scott (FL) John Thune (SD) Tommy Tuberville (AL) Roger Wicker (MS)

United States House of Representatives

Lead Representative: August Pfluger (TX–11) Robert Aderholt (AL–04) Mark Alford (MO–04) Rick Allen (GA–12) Jodey Arrington (TX–19) Brian Babin (TX–36) Troy Balderson (OH–12) Jim Banks (IN–03) Aaron Bean (FL–04) Cliff Bentz (OR–02) Jack Bergman (MI–01) Andy Biggs (AZ–05) Gus Bilirakis (FL–12) Dan Bishop (NC–08) Lauren Boebert (CO–03) Mike Bost (IL–12) Josh Brecheen (OK–02) Ken Buck (CO–04) Tim Burchett (TN–02) Michael Burgess, M.D. (TX–26) Eric Burlison (MO–07) Kat Cammack (FL–03) Mike Carey (OH–15) Jerry Carl (AL–01) Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (GA–01) John Carter (TX–31) Ben Cline (VA–06) Michael Cloud (TX–27) Andrew Clyde (GA–09) Mike Collins (GA–10) Elijah Crane (AZ–02) Eric A. “Rick” Crawford (AR–01) John Curtis (UT–03) Warren Davidson (OH–08) Monica De La Cruz (TX–15) Jeff Duncan (SC–03) Jake Ellzey (TX–06) Ron Estes (KS–04) Mike Ezell (MS–04) Pat Fallon (TX–04) Randy Feenstra (IA–04) Brad Finstad (MN–01) Michelle Fischbach (MN–07) Scott Fitzgerald (WI–05) Mike Flood (NE–01) Virginia Foxx (NC–05) Scott Franklin (FL–18) Russell Fry (SC–07) Russ Fulcher (ID–01) Tony Gonzales (TX–23) Bob Good (VA–05) Paul Gosar (AZ–09) Garret Graves (LA–06) Mark Green (TN–07) Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA–14) H. Morgan Griffith (VA–09) Glenn Grothman (WI–06) Michael Guest (MS–03) Harriet Hageman (WY) Andy Harris, M.D. (MD–01) Diana Harshbarger (TN–01) Kevin Hern (OK–01) Clay Higgins (LA–03) Ashley Hinson (IA–02) Erin Houchin (IN–02) Richard Hudson (NC–09) Bill Huizenga (MI–04) Bill Johnson (OH–06) Mike Johnson (LA–04) Jim Jordan (OH–04) Mike Kelly (PA–16) Trent Kelly (MS–01) Doug LaMalfa (CA–01) Doug Lamborn (CO–05) Nicholas Langworthy (NY–23) Jake LaTurner (KS–02) Debbie Lesko (AZ–08) Barry Loudermilk (GA–11) Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO–03) Tracey Mann (KS–01) Lisa McClain (MI–09) Dr. Rich McCormick (GA–06) Patrick McHenry (NC–10) Carol Miller (WV–01) Mary Miller (IL–15) Max Miller (OH–07) Cory Mills (FL–07) John Moolenar (MI–02) Alex X. Mooney (WV–02) Barry Moore (AL–02) Blake Moore (UT–01) Gregory F. Murphy, M.D. (NC–03) Troy Nehls (TX–22) Ralph Norman (SC–05) Andy Ogles (TN–05) Gary Palmer (AL–06) Bill Posey (FL–08) Guy Reschenthaler (PA–14) Mike Rogers (AL–03) John Rose (TN–06) Matthew Rosendale, Sr. (MT–02) David Rouzer (NC–07) Steve Scalise (LA–01) Keith Self (TX–03) Pete Sessions (TX–17) Adrian Smith (NE–03) Christopher H. Smith (NJ–04) Lloyd Smucker (PA–11) Pete Stauber (MN–08) Elise Stefanik (NY–21) Dale Strong (AL–05) Claudia Tenney (NY–24) Glenn Thompson (PA–15) William Timmons, IV (SC–04) Beth Van Duyne (TX–24) Tim Walberg (MI–05) Michael Waltz (FL–05) Randy Weber, Sr. (TX–14) Daniel Webster (FL–11) Brad R. Wenstrup, D.P.M. (OH–02) Bruce Westerman (AR–04) Roger Williams (TX–25) Joe Wilson (SC–02) Rudy Yakym (IN–02)

If your representatives are on this list, call them and tell their office you will be voting against them in the next election because they asked SCOTUS to throw the US medical drug system into chaos at the cost of American lives.

Help to patients who have to cross state lines to get medical care by donating to your local abortion fund here. (x)

[conniejoworld]

This is the full list of all Republican House representatives who voted against the sick leave measure:

Robert Aderholt, Alabama 4th district

Rick Allen, Georgia 12th district

Mark Amodei, Nevada 2nd district

Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota

Jodey Arrington, Texas 19th district

Brian Babin, Texas 36th district

Jim Baird, Indiana 4th district

Troy Balderson, Ohio 12th district

Jim Banks, Indiana 3rd district

Andy Barr, Kentucky 6th district

Cliff Bentz, Oregon 2nd district

Jack Bergman, Michigan 1st district

Stephanie Bice (OK), Oklahoma 5th district

Andy Biggs, Arizona 5th district

Gus Bilirakis, Florida 12th district

Dan Bishop, North Carolina 9th district

Mike Bost, Illinois 12th district

Kevin Brady, Texas 8th district

Mo Brooks, Alabama 5th district

Vern Buchanan, Florida 16th district

Ken Buck, Colorado 4th district

Larry Bucshon, Indiana 8th district

Ted Budd, North Carolina 13th district

Tim Burchett, Tennessee 2nd district

Michael Burgess, Texas 26th district

Ken Calvert, California 42nd district

Kat Cammack, Florida 3rd district

Mike Carey, Ohio 15th district

Jerry Carl, Alabama 1st district

John Carter, Texas 31st district

Buddy Carter, Georgia 1st district

Madison Cawthorn, North Carolina 11th district

Steve Chabot, Ohio 1st district

Liz Cheney, Wyoming

Ben Cline, Virginia 6th district

Michael Cloud, Texas 27th district

Andrew Clyde, Georgia 9th district

Tom Cole, Oklahoma 4th district

James Comer, Kentucky 1st district

Connie Conway, California 22nd district

Rick Crawford, Arkansas 1st district

Dan Crenshaw, Texas 2nd district

John Curtis, Utah 3rd district

Warren Davidson, Ohio 8th district

Rodney Davis, Illinois 13th district

Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee 4th district

Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida 25th district

Byron Donalds, Florida 19th district

Jeff Duncan, South Carolina 3rd district

Neal Dunn, Florida 2nd district

Jake Ellzey, Texas 6th district

Tom Emmer, Minnesota 6th district

Ron Estes, Kansas 4th district

Pat Fallon, Texas 4th district

Randy Feenstra, Iowa 4th district

Drew Ferguson, Georgia 3rd district

Brad Finstad, Minnesota 1st district

Michelle Fischbach, Minnesota 7th district

Scott Fitzgerald, Wisconsin 5th district

Chuck Fleischmann, Tennessee 3rd district

Mike Flood, Nebraska 1st district

Mayra Flores, Texas 34th district

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 5th district

Scott Franklin, Florida 15th district

Russ Fulcher, Idaho 1st district

Matt Gaetz, Florida 1st district

Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin 8th district

Andrew Garbarino, New York 2nd district

Mike Garcia, California 25th district

Bob Gibbs, Ohio 7th district

Carlos Gimenez, Florida 26th district

Louie Gohmert, Texas 1st district

Tony Gonzales, Texas 23rd district

Anthony Gonzalez, Ohio 16th district

Bob Good, Virginia 5th district

Lance Gooden, Texas 5th district

Paul Gosar, Arizona 4th district

Kay Granger, Texas 12th district

Garret Graves, Louisiana 6th district

Sam Graves, Missouri 6th district

Mark Green, Tennessee 7th district

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia 14th district

Morgan Griffith, Virginia 9th district

Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin 6th district

Michael Guest, Mississippi 3rd district

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 2nd district

Andy Harris, Maryland 1st district

Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee 1st district

Vicky Hartzler, Missouri 4th district

Kevin Hern, Oklahoma 1st district

Yvette Herrell, New Mexico 2nd district

Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington 3rd district

Jody Hice, Georgia 10th district

Clay Higgins, Louisiana 3rd district

French Hill, Arkansas 2nd district

Ashley Hinson, Iowa 1st district

Trey Hollingsworth, Indiana 9th district

Richard Hudson, North Carolina 8th district

Bill Huizenga, Michigan 2nd district

Darrell Issa, California 50th district

Ronny Jackson, Texas 13th district

Chris Jacobs, New York 27th district

Mike Johnson, Louisiana 4th district

Bill Johnson, Ohio 6th district

Dusty Johnson, South Dakota

Jim Jordan, Ohio 4th district

David Joyce, Ohio 14th district

John Joyce, Pennsylvania 13th district

Fred Keller, Pennsylvania 12th district

Trent Kelly, Mississippi 1st district

Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania 16th district

Young Kim, California 39th district

David Kustoff, Tennessee 8th district

Darin LaHood, Illinois 18th district

Doug LaMalfa, California 1st district

Doug Lamborn, Colorado 5th district

Bob Latta, Ohio 5th district

Jake LaTurner, Kansas 2nd district

Debbie Lesko, Arizona 8th district

Julia Letlow, Louisiana 5th district

Billy Long, Missouri 7th district

Barry Loudermilk, Georgia 11th district

Frank Lucas, Oklahoma 3rd district

Blaine Luetkemeyer, Missouri 3rd district

Nancy Mace, South Carolina 1st district

Nicole Malliotakis, New York 11th district

Tracey Mann, Kansas 1st district

Thomas Massie, Kentucky 4th district

Brian Mast, Florida 18th district

Kevin McCarthy, California 23rd district

Michael McCaul, Texas 10th district

Lisa McClain, Michigan 10th district

Tom McClintock, California 4th district

Patrick McHenry, North Carolina 10th district

Peter Meijer, Michigan 3rd district

Dan Meuser, Pennsylvania 9th district

Mary Miller, Illinois 15th district

Carol Miller, West Virginia 3rd district

Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa 2nd district

John Moolenaar, Michigan 4th district

Alex Mooney, West Virginia 2nd district

Barry Moore, Alabama 2nd district

Blake Moore, Utah 1st district

Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma 2nd district

Greg Murphy, North Carolina 3rd district

Troy Nehls, Texas 22nd district

Dan Newhouse, Washington 4th district

Ralph Norman, South Carolina 5th district

Jay Obernolte, California 8th district

Burgess Owens, Utah 4th district

Steven Palazzo, Mississippi 4th district

Gary Palmer, Alabama 6th district

Greg Pence, Indiana 6th district

Scott Perry, Pennsylvania 10th district

August Pfluger, Texas 11th district

Bill Posey, Florida 8th district

Guy Reschenthaler, Pennsylvania 14th district

Tom Rice, South Carolina 7th district

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 5th district

Mike Rogers, Alabama 3rd district

Hal Rogers, Kentucky 5th district

John Rose, Tennessee 6th district

Matt Rosendale, Montana

David Rouzer, North Carolina 7th district

Chip Roy, Texas 21st district

John Rutherford, Florida 4th district

Maria Elvira Salazar, Florida 27th district

Steve Scalise, Louisiana 1st district

David Schweikert, Arizona 6th district

Austin Scott, Georgia 8th district

Joe Sempolinski, New York 23rd district

[stlhandyman]

Supreme Court, U.S FILED In The OCT 2 2022 Supreme Court ofthe United States  RALAND J BRUNSON, Petitioner,

Named persons in their capacities as United States House Representatives: ALMA S. ADAMS; PETE AGUILAR; COLIN Z. ALLRED; MARK E. AMODEI; KELLY ARMSTRONG; JAKE AUCHINCLOSS; CYNTHIA AXNE; DON BACON; TROY BALDERSON; ANDY BARR; NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN; KAREN BASS; JOYCE BEATTY; AMI BERA; DONALD S. BEYER JR.; GUS M. ILIRAKIS; SANFORD D. BISHOP JR.; EARL BLUMENAUER; LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER; SUZANNE BONAMICI; CAROLYN BOURDEAUX; JAMAAL BOWMAN; BRENDAN F. BOYLE; KEVIN BRADY; ANTHONY G. BROWN; JULIA BROWNLEY; VERN BUCHANAN; KEN BUCK; LARRY BUCSHON; CORI BUSH; CHERI BUSTOS; G. K. BUTTERFIELD; SALUD 0. CARBAJAL; TONY CARDENAS; ANDRE CARSON; MATT CARTWRIGHT; ED CASE; SEAN CASTEN; KATHY CASTOR; JOAQUIN CASTRO; LIZ CHENEY; JUDY CHU; DAVID N. CICILLINE; KATHERINE M. CLARK; YVETTE D. CLARKE; EMANUEL CLEAVER; JAMES E. CLYBURN; STEVE COHEN; JAMES COMER; GERALD E. CONNOLLY; JIM COOPER; J. LUIS CORREA; JIM COSTA; JOE COURTNEY; ANGIE CRAIG; DAN CRENSHAW; CHARLIE CRIST; JASON CROW; HENRY CUELLAR; JOHN R. CURTIS; SHARICE DAVIDS; DANNY K. DAVIS; RODNEY DAVIS; MADELEINE DEAN; PETER A. DEFAZIO; DIANA DEGETTE; ROSAL DELAURO; SUZAN K. DELBENE; Ill ANTONIO DELGADO; VAL BUTLER DEMINGS; MARK DESAULNIER; THEODORE E. DEUTCH; DEBBIE DINGELL; LLOYD DOGGETT; MICHAEL F. DOYLE; TOM EMMER; VERONICA ESCOBAR; ANNA G. ESHOO; ADRIANO ESPAILLAT; DWIGHT EVANS; RANDY FEENSTRA; A. DREW FERGUSON IV; BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK; LIZZIE LETCHER; JEFF FORTENBERRY; BILL FOSTER; LOIS FRANKEL; MARCIA L. FUDGE; MIKE GALLAGHER; RUBEN GALLEGO; JOHN GARAMENDI; ANDREW R. GARBARINO; SYLVIA R. GARCIA; JESUS G. GARCIA; JARED F. GOLDEN; JIMMY GOMEZ; TONY GONZALES; ANTHONY GONZALEZ; VICENTE GONZALEZ; JOSH GOTTHEIMER; KAY GRANGER; AL GREEN; RAUL M. GRIJALVA; GLENN GROTHMAN; BRETT GUTHRIE; DEBRA A. HAALAND; JOSH HARDER; ALCEE L. HASTINGS; JAHANA HAYES; JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER; BRIAN HIGGINS; J. FRENCH HILL; JAMES A. HIMES; ASHLEY HINSON; TREY HOLLINGSWORTH; STEVEN HORSFORD; CHRISSY HOULAHAN; STENY H. HOYER; JARED HUFFMAN; BILL HUIZENGA; SHEILA JACKSON LEE; SARA JACOBS; PRAMILA JAYAPAL; HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES; DUSTY JOHNSON; EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON; HENRY C. JOHNSON JR.; MONDAIRE JONES; DAVID P. JOYCE; KAIALPI KAHELE; MARCY KAPTUR; JOHN KATKO; WILLIAM R. KEATING; RO KHANNA; DANIEL T. KILDEE; DEREK KILMER; ANDY KIM; YOUNG KIM; RON KIND; ADAM KINZINGER; ANN KIRKPATRICK; RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI; ANN M. KUSTER; DARIN LAHOOD; CONOR LAMB; JAMES R. LANGEVIN; RICK LARSEN; JOHN B. LARSON; ROBERT E. LATTA; JAKE LATURNER; BRENDA L. LAWRENCE; AL LAWSON JR.; BARBARA LEE; SUSIE LEE; TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ; ANDY LEVIN; MIKE LEVIN; TED LIEU; IV ZOE LOFGREN; ALAN S.LOWENTHAL; ELAINE G. LURIA; STEPHEN F. LYNCH; NANCY MACE; TOM MALINOWSKI; CAROLYN B. MALONEY; SEAN PATRICK MALONEY; KATHY E. MANNING; THOMAS MASSIE; DORIS 0. MATSUI; LUCY MCBATH; MICHAEL T. MCCAUL; TOM MCCLINTOCK; BETTY MCCOLLUM; A. ADONALD MCEACHIN; JAMES P. MCGOVERN; PATRICK T. MCHENRY; DAVID B. MCKINLEY; JERRY MCNERNEY; GREGORY W. MEEKS; PETER MEIJER; GRACE MENG; KWEISI MFUME; MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS; JOHN R. MOOLENAAR; BLAKE D. MOORE; GWEN MOORE; JOSEPH D. MORELLE; SETH MOULTON; FRANK J. MRVAN; STEPHANIE N. MURPHY; JERROLD NADLER; GRACE F. NAPOLITANO; RICHARD E. NEAL; JOE NEGUSE; DAN NEWHOUSE; MARIE NEWMAN; DONALD NORCROSS; ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ; TOM O'HALLERAN; ILHAN OMAR; FRANK PALLONE JR.; JIMMY PANETTA; CHRIS PAPPAS; BILL PASCRELL JR.; DONALD M. PAYNE JR.; NANCY PELOSI; ED PERLMUTTER; SCOTT H. PETERS; DEAN PHILLIPS; CHELLIE PINGREE; MARK POCAN; KATIE PORTER; AYANNA PRESSLEY; DAVID E. PRICE; MIKE QUIGLEY; JAMIE RASKIN; TOM REED; KATHLEEN M. RICE; CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS; DEBORAH K. ROSS; CHIP ROY; LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD; RAUL RUIZ; C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER; BOBBY L. RUSH; TIM RYAN; LINDA T. SANCHEZ; JOHN P. SARBANES; MARY GAY SCANLON; JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY; ADAM B. SCHIFF; BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER; KURT SCHRADER; KIM SCHRIER; AUSTIN SCOTT; DAVID SCOTT; ROBERT C. SCOTT; TERRI A. SEWELL; BRAD SHERMAN; MIKIE SHERRILL; MICHAEL K. SIMPSON; ALBIO SIRES; ELISSA SLOTKIN; ADAM SMITH; CHRISTOPHER H. V SMITH; DARREN SOTO; ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER; VICTORIA SPARTZ; JACKIE SPEIER; GREG STANTON; PETE STAUBER; MICHELLE STEEL; BRYAN STEIL; HALEY M. STEVENS; STEVE STIVERS; MARILYN STRICKLAND; THOMAS R. SUOZZI; ERIC SWALWELL; MARK TAKANO; VAN TAYLOR; BENNIE G. THOMPSON; MIKE THOMPSON; DINA TITUS; RASHIDA TLAIB; PAUL TONKO; NORMA J. TORRES; RITCHIE TORRES; LORI TRAHAN; DAVID J. TRONE; MICHAEL R. TURNER; LAUREN UNDERWOOD; FRED UPTON; JUAN VARGAS; MARC A. VEASEY; FILEMON VELA; NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ; ANN WAGNER; MICHAEL WALTZ; DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ; MAXINE WATERS; BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN; PETER WELCH; BRAD R. WENSTRUP; BRUCE WESTERMAN; JENNIFER WEXTON; SUSAN WILD; NIKEMA WILLIAMS; FREDERICA S. WILSON; STEVE WOMACK; JOHN A. YARMUTH; DON YOUNG; the following persons named are for their capacities as U.S. Senators; TAMMY BALDWIN; JOHN BARRASSO; MICHAEL F. BENNET; MARSHA BLACKBURN; RICHARD BLUMENTHAL; ROY BLUNT; CORY A. BOOKER; JOHN BOOZMAN; MIKE BRAUN; SHERROD BROWN; RICHARD BURR; MARIA CANTWELL; SHELLEY CAPITO; BENJAMIN L. CARDIN; THOMAS R. CARPER; ROBERT P. CASEY JR.; BILL CASSIDY; SUSAN M. COLLINS; CHRISTOPHER A. COONS; JOHN CORNYN; CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO; TOM COTTON; KEVIN CRAMER; MIKE CRAPO; STEVE DAINES; TAMMY DUCKWORTH; RICHARD J. DURBIN; JONI ERNST; DIANNE FEINSTEIN; DEB FISCHER; KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND; LINDSEY GRAHAM; CHUCK GRASSLEY; BILL HAGERTY; MAGGIE HASSAN; MARTIN HEINRICH; JOHN HICKENLOOPER; MAZIE HIRONO; JOHN HOEVEN; JAMES INHOFE; RON VI JOHNSON; TIM KAINE; MARK KELLY; ANGUS S. KING, JR.; AMY KLOBUCHAR; JAMES LANKFORD; PATRICK LEAHY; MIKE LEE; BEN LUJAN; CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS; JOE MANCHIN III; EDWARD J. MARKEY; MITCH MCCONNELL; ROBERT MENENDEZ; JEFF MERKLEY; JERRY MORAN; LISA MURKOWSKI; CHRISTOPHER MURPHY; PATTY MURRAY; JON OSSOFF; ALEX PADILLA; RAND PAUL; GARY C. PETERS; ROB PORTMAN; JACK REED; JAMES E. RISCH; MITT ROMNEY; JACKY ROSEN; MIKE ROUNDS; MARCO RUBIO; BERNARD SANDERS; BEN SASSE; BRIAN SCHATZ; CHARLES E. SCHUMER; RICK SCOTT; TIM SCOTT; JEANNE SHAHEEN; RICHARD C. SHELBY; KYRSTEN SINEMA; TINA SMITH; DEBBIE STABENOW; DAN SULLIVAN; JON TESTER; JOHN THUNE; THOM TILLIS; PATRICK J. TOOMEY; HOLLEN VAN; MARK R. WARNER; RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK; ELIZABETH WARREN; SHELDON WHITEHOUSE; ROGER F. WICKER; RON WYDEN; TODD YOUNG; JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR in his capacity of President of the United States; MICHAEL RICHARD PENCE in his capacity as former Vice President of the United States, and KAMALA HARRIS in her capacity as Vice President of the United States and JOHN and JANE DOES 1-100.  

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-380/243739/20221027152243533_20221027-152110-95757954-00007015.pdf

[deadbilly]

Take all of the imagery you have seen of the over 14,000 Haitian migrants camped under an international bridge in the small Texas border town of Del Rio and add the complications of disease, public excrement, unbearable heat, and heightened frustrations. It has led to violence that has injured Border Patrol officers.

Now close your eyes and imagine it is 100 times worse.

Because that’s what it is, said Texas Representative Tony Gonzales, the freshman Republican who represents 42 percent of the border. The overwhelmed city of Del Rio had been in a rapidly deteriorating crisis situation when illegal immigrants first began surging into the community in January, but Gonzales now says the situation here is a “Category 5” and that the environment is unlike anything he has ever seen before.

“I arrived here today to pure chaos,” he said. “I’ve never seen it in this environment. There literally is no border left.”

Gonzales said Del Rio is in dire straits. “There’s no doubt there’s COVID here, there’s measles, tuberculosis, all kinds of diseases,” he said. “You’ve got kids running around in nothing but diapers. A handful of port-a-potties—my God, the stench is terrible. This is not good for the migrants. It is not good for the residents. It’s not good for wherever our government is sending them in the interior of the country.”

Despite the Department of Homeland Security insisting repeatedly the Haitians would be deported, as of Tuesday, it had only removed 1,000 of the estimated 15,000 under the bridge. Multiple news organizations including CNN reported that buses have been escorting them to a nonprofit organization in town where they purchase bus or plane tickets. They are then moved to a gas station where buses pick them up and take them to other parts of the country.

Shame we can’t get 15,000 immigrants camped outside the homes of people like Ben Sasse, Mitch McConnell, Ladybugs Lindesy Graham or the dozens of other quislings who allowed things to get to this point.

[dyingforbadmusic]

Henry Harrison Mayes Roadside Cross in Cecile, OH

Couldn't locate the cross on google streetview but it must have been around here: https://goo.gl/maps/nmemsHV5fMZEdULQ7

Cross is now at the museum https://goo.gl/maps/NNfPR6GDEWtiZMrK7

https://brucegerencser.net/2015/07/get-right-with-godconsult-the-bible-when-making-a-decision-and-keep-america-communist-free/

Public sentiment leads to old cross staying, new cross planned

Blessings in disguise

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 11:00 AM

By NANCY WHITAKER Progress Feature Writer CECIL – The old cross sign will remain in Paulding County, which was good news for a lot of people who have become attached to the cross that has stood for the past 49 years. Now, a second cross is in the works, thanks to enthusiastic public support. The original cross, which stands on old U.S. 24 approximately a quarter-mile east of the Vagabond, was placed there in 1966 by an old preacher from Kentucky. Harrison Mayes had promised God after surviving a serious coal mining injury that he would dedicate his life to God and his ministry. The homemade cross bears the message, “Get Right With God.” A few weeks ago, a woman from southern Ohio spotted the old sign in Paulding County and wanted to place it in the American Sign Museum. Following a social media post, there was a lot of support to try and keep the old rugged cross in the county. The founder of the American Sign Museum, Tod Swormstedt, explained in a telephone interview how and why the traveler happened to want the cross from Paulding County. “My girlfriend was trying to surprise me for my birthday next week by obtaining the sign for the Sign Museum,” he said. “However, I got an email stating that due to social media and the media, the owners had decided to keep the cross and let it remain where it was.” Continuing, he said, “I am very glad that so many people got excited and wanted to keep the sign.” He also advised that the sign be removed and put in a place out of the weather. Landowner Roger Nicelley said Monday that the sign isn’t going anywhere. “This cross isn’t going to leave. It should stay right where the guy felt lead to put it. Its message is intended to come from that spot,” he said. “It’s staying here; I never did want it to go.” Nicelley was contacted about a month ago by a representative from the Cincinnati museum. He was told it is basically a formalization of one man’s private collection and continues to be privately owned. Although the cross is probably in the Ohio Department of Transportation right-of-way along old U.S. 24, Nicelley has been a contact for people through the years who have wanted to do maintenance work on the sign. Through the years, Roger has cut back tree branches and brush that has threatened to cover the sign’s message. “I’ve never claimed it to be mine,” said Roger. He added that it has developed a lean this year and if it fell, it would land on his property. Anyone who is interested in helping maintain this piece of Americana should feel free to contact Nicelley at 419-899-2279. With a chuckle, Roger noted, “Since this all has come up I find myself humming ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ quite a bit.” In the meantime, county resident Jack Fetter read the story in the Progress last week and was shocked at the history behind the cross sign. He noted, “I have been taking care of a cross for 25 years I knew nothing about.” Jack also said that the saying “Get Right With God” is what drew him to care for the cross. Those words always have been his mission and played a vital part of his ministry. He said that the saying has always made his heart beat a little faster each time he heard or read those words. He said he was always happy to see the old cross. Fetter recalled, “In 1985, Tony Gonzales Jr. painted the sign as a project scholarship to attend Youth For Christ Camp. The sign was also repainted in 1997.” He added, “Up until 2008, I have been back and forth to the cross site many times to trim bushes and trees that blocked the sign.” Fetter also had some other good news to share. Thinking the old cross was going to be donated, he started right away working on a project to construct a new cross, which will be a replica of the old one. The old cross measures 13 feet tall and the letters “Get Right With God” are all roofing shingles, painstakingly cut out by hand by Harrison Mayes, who placed the sign there in about 1966. The so-called “Roadside Evangelist” spread God’s word by placing his wood, metal and cast concrete signs in 44 states. “I have a lot of volunteers who

are willing to help with the project and we are looking at three different sites at the current time,” Fetter said. “Any of the three sites will be very visible from both sides.” Tony Gonzales III has volunteered to bring some of his wrestling team to help with the mound of dirt and stone for the foundation of the new cross. Hartzog Lumber is going to help assist with some supplies and Fred Merritt, another volunteer, is busy designing the plans for the new cross. It is hoped that the new cross will last another 49 years like the one Harrison Mayes built. Fetter said, “I was just so happy to hear of the interest in the old cross and while it does need to be out of the weather, it made me realize that through the years many, many people noticed the cross and we just don’t know the impact it had on many lives.” Fetter disclosed that tentatively, the new cross sign will be up by this fall. Fetter asks that if anyone has any questions to email him at jkfetter@tds.net. “The old cross remaining in the county is indeed a blessing and the support I am getting on constructing a new one has also been a blessing,” Fetter said. Somewhere above, the preacher known as “God’s ad man” must be smiling. – Additional reporting by Denise Gebers

https://web.archive.org/web/20211220160703/https://progressnewspaper.org/Content/Home/Home/Article/The-old-rugged-cross-still-carries-a-message/-2/-2/190177

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

On Monday, Texas lawmakers gave a first glimpse at what the state’s new congressional districts may look like. The redrawn map was highly anticipated given that Texas gained two additional congressional seats — the most of any state — during the reapportionment process and because Republicans are fully in control of the state’s redistricting process. Yet the new map, if passed, would not substantially alter the topline partisan breakdown of Texas’s seats. It appears that Republican mapmakers prioritized defending the GOP’s current seat advantage over trying to significantly expand it.

Overall, this map creates 24 solid or likely Republican seats, 13 solid or likely Democratic seats and one swing seat in the Rio Grande Valley. (The state’s two new districts will be placed in the Austin and Houston metropolitan areas, as those two areas fueled much of the state’s population growth since 2010.) But this isn’t that much different than what Texas’s map currently looks like: At present, the delegation is made up of 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

This is still a very good map for Republicans, though, because mapmakers strengthened the GOP’s advantage in the state by making a number of potentially vulnerable seats held by Republicans much redder, with the newest Houston-area seat also drawn so that it’s favorable to Republican candidates. As the table below shows, the current map has 11 Republican incumbents in seats that were less than 20 points more Republican than the country as a whole, according to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric.1 But on the new map, all but one Republican-held seat would be R+20 or stronger for the GOP.

GOP incumbents are protected in Texas’s new proposed map

Change in partisan lean in Texas congressional districts held by Republicans, from the current map to the first draft plan proposed by the Texas Legislature

District Partisan lean GOP Incumbent Old New Old New Change Beth Van Duyne TX-24 TX-24 R+3.5 R+22.3 R+18.8 Dan Crenshaw TX-02 TX-38 R+9.1 R+26.6 R+17.6 John Carter TX-31 TX-31 R+11.2 R+27.3 R+16.1 Roger Williams TX-25 TX-25 R+16.4 R+31.8 R+15.4 Troy Nehls TX-22 TX-22 R+8.3 R+23.7 R+15.3 Michael McCaul TX-10 TX-10 R+9.2 R+24.5 R+15.2 Chip Roy TX-21 TX-21 R+10.2 R+24.5 R+14.2 Van Taylor TX-03 TX-03 R+10.5 R+23.6 R+13.0 Randy Weber TX-14 TX-14 R+24.6 R+35.3 R+10.6 Jake Ellzey TX-06 TX-06 R+11.2 R+21.0 R+9.8 Pete Sessions TX-17 TX-17 R+18.2 R+26.2 R+7.9 Tony Gonzales TX-23 TX-23 R+5.1 R+12.8 R+7.7 Michael Burgess TX-26 TX-26 R+23.3 R+26.4 R+3.0 Jodey Arrington TX-19 TX-19 R+52.1 R+53.3 R+1.3 Louie Gohmert TX-01 TX-01 R+50.3 R+49.9 D+0.4 Michael Cloud TX-27 TX-27 R+28.8 R+27.8 D+1 Lance Gooden TX-05 TX-05 R+29.8 R+27.0 D+2.8 Kay Granger TX-12 TX-12 R+30.2 R+24.3 D+5.9 Brian Babin TX-36 TX-36 R+50.7 R+34.9 D+15.8 Kevin Brady* TX-08 TX-02 R+49.7 R+29.9 D+19.8 Ronny Jackson TX-13 TX-13 R+65.9 R+45.1 D+20.8 August Pfluger TX-11 TX-11 R+64.3 R+41.0 D+23.3 Pat Fallon TX-04 TX-04 R+56.3 R+29.7 D+26.7

*Incumbent is retiring.

Incumbents were placed in the district that contains the largest population share of their old district. They may not necessarily seek reelection in that district.

Partisan lean is the average margin difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall. This version of partisan lean, meant to be used for congressional and gubernatorial elections, is calculated as 50 percent the state or district’s lean relative to the nation in the most recent presidential election, 25 percent its relative lean in the second-most-recent presidential election and 25 percent a custom state-legislative lean.

Given that the GOP controls the redistricting process in Texas, it might seem strange that it wasn’t more aggressive in trying to flip a seat or two held by Democrats. But population growth and demographic shifts in Texas have arguably benefited Democrats so significantly that Republican mapmakers were mostly left playing defense — concerned that some GOP incumbents might soon become vulnerable.

At the top of that list is Rep. Beth Van Duyne, the only Texas Republican defending a seat that President Biden carried in 2020. The new map lines, however, would shift Van Duyne’s district between Dallas and Fort Worth nearly 20 points to the right, meaning that she likely has far more to worry about in a primary than in a general election now after winning by only 1.3 points last November.

Three other Republican incumbents in seats that were less than R+10 also saw their districts move at least 15 points to the right. Rep. Dan Crenshaw ranks among these members, although it’s not clear which seat he may run in: About one-third of his current district is in the new 38th District, but the same is true of the new 2nd District, too, which may also be open, considering Rep. Kevin Brady of the current 8th District is retiring. Either way, Crenshaw — a rising star in the GOP — would be far safer than he is now. 

Rep. Tony Gonzales of the 23rd District is the only Republican incumbent who wouldn’t end up in a seat that’s at least R+20, but his perennial battleground district would be reforged into a relative GOP stronghold: His district would be R+13 under the new lines. Like Van Duyne, Gonzalez would breathe far easier under this new map, after he only won by 4 points in 2020.

In order to make many of these seats safer for Republicans, GOP lawmakers moved more Democratic voters into seats that the GOP had previously targeted but now seem to have abandoned. For example, the seat held by Democrat Lizzie Fletcher, who unseated a Republican incumbent in 2018, would go from D+1 to D+25. Meanwhile, the Dallas-area seat represented by Democrat Colin Allred, who similarly ousted a Republican incumbent in 2018, would go from D+2 to D+25. It’s a similar story for almost every other Texas Democrat under this plan. (In some instances, Republican mapmakers also made some super-red seats a slightly paler shade, “unpacking” some GOP voters to boost Republican-held seats. For instance, Rep. Van Taylor’s 3rd District outside of Dallas shifted east to take some red turf from Rep. Pat Fallon’s 4th District.)

One of the biggest takeaways from this map is that almost every seat — Democratic or Republican — would be uncompetitive at its baseline. All but two seats would lean at least 10 points more Democratic or Republican than the country as a whole. 

And it’s heavily Hispanic South Texas that holds both of those exceptions. This is a potentially important development as that region might hold opportunities for the GOP since Biden performed worse there than past Democratic presidential candidates. Most notably, the 15th District, represented by Democrat Vicente Gonzalez, would become more Republican-leaning on the new map. He was already facing a difficult reelection bid, as he narrowly won his 2020 race by 3 percentage points after winning reelection by 21 points in 2018. But now under the new map, his district would go from D+2 to evenly split. Meanwhile, Rep. Henry Cuellar’s 28th District would actually become slightly bluer — it only moved from D+4 to D+7 — and could be in play in 2022. (Rep. Filemon Vela’s 34th District doesn’t fall neatly into this category because it went from D+5 to D+17, but it is the other border seat in Texas, and it seems to have gotten a little friendlier toward Democrats, although Vela won’t seek reelection.) 

Another notable change under the new map is that it would result in a smaller share of districts with Hispanic majorities despite the addition of two new congressional districts. This could make the map vulnerable to a racial gerrymandering lawsuit considering Texas’s Hispanic population has driven the bulk of Texas’s population growth since 2010. According to census data, the current congressional map included 18 districts with white majorities and nine with Hispanic majorities. But the newly proposed map doesn’t give Hispanic voters any more clout: There are now 19 districts that have white majorities and still nine districts with Hispanic majorities, based on the voting age population.

This is only the first draft of Texas’s new congressional map, so it could still change before it’s passed by the GOP-controlled legislature. The Senate Redistricting Committee is expected to take up the congressional map on Thursday. But remember the GOP ultimately controls the redistricting process in Texas. That said, past congressional maps proposed by Texas lawmakers have been endlessly litigated — and it’s possible that could happen again this time around.