We’re Gonna Need More Popcorn…

If Texas Wants To Play Dirty, Kathy Hochul, Gavin Newsom, And JB Pritzker Are Ready To Get In The Mud by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Texas using its ‘hey let’s do something about flood warnings’ special session to cheat like the dickens. Read on Substack

The Texas Lege is in special session and putting together a redistricting plan aimed at adding five new Republican-leaning congressional districts, in hopes that might improve the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House in next year’s midterms. No, there hasn’t been another Census that you forgot about, they just want to rig the electoral map for Daddy Trump.

During a committee hearing on the gerrymandering plan Thursday evening, a Democratic candidate for Congress, Isaiah Martin, was tackled and arrested because he wouldn’t yield the floor after his time expired. Martin was testifying to a state House committee against the plan, which is likely to chop up the 18th Congressional District where he’s running to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in office in March.

“You need to have shame. History will not remember you for what you have done. It is a shame,” Martin yelled out as he was shoved to the ground. “It’s horrific for what you have done. You should all be ashamed. America will rise up against you!”

Here’s video from Austin TV station KVUE:

Martin was booked into Travis County Jail on charges of “criminal trespass, disrupting a meeting or procession and resisting arrest,” but eventually all the charges were dropped. But not quickly: Instead of simply being booked and released Thursday, Martin was held in the jail for about 26 hours, only getting out at 9:30 p.m. Friday — and then he told reporters he plans to be at a second redistricting hearing being held today in Houston.

The special session of the Lege was called to pass disaster relief following the deadly flash floods in the Texas hill country a few weeks ago, but Republicans decided — after Donald Trump told them to do it — that it was also a dandy opportunity to try to prop up the slim and increasingly unpopular GOP majority in Congress.

Before his time ran out and his mic was cut off, Martin condemned Republicans for turning a deadly disaster into a power grab:

“And you choose, after we literally got out of one the worst mass casualty events in our state’s history, to go and gerrymander people out of their seats. That’s what you have chosen to do with your time,” Martin said. “Because you are scared of Donald Trump. You are scared and terrified because you are seeking an endorsement.”

Dems Name ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ Tune In Three Notes

Also on Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s not ruling out the possibility of redistricting in her state if Texas and Ohio insist on artificially juicing Republicans’ chances. Speaking at an unrelated event in Buffalo, Hochul answered a reporter’s question by saying, in effect, hell yeah, if they’re gonna play dirty, we’re not going to take it sitting down: (vid on the page)

“All’s fair in love and war. We are following the rules. We do redistricting every 10 years. But if there’s other states violating the rules and are trying to give themselves an advantage, all I’ll say is, I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries.”

In answer to a follow-up question, Hochul added, “I’m not surprised that they’re trying to break the rules to get an advantage. But that’s undemocratic, and not only are we calling them out, we’re also going to see what our options are.”

That could be easier said than done, because unlike Texas, New York actually has a bunch of dumb clean-government laws aimed at preserving electoral fairness, including a constitutional provision specifying that redistricting can only be done once every 10 years, following the US Census. Lousy stinking good government!

In 2022, the state’s highest court threw out a Legislature-drawn electoral map that gave an advantage to Democrats (22 D-advantage seats and four R-leaning seats, compared to the prior map’s 19-8 split), so the maps were redrawn by a state court. That gave Republicans a chance to win more seats in Congress, but the good news here is that thanks to Trump’s fuckery and to their support of the Big Ballocky Buggery Bill that everyone hates (and that not even Republican voters are all that fond of), many of those narrowly elected Republicans are likely to be in trouble next year anyway.

Finally, on Friday, following separate meetings with groups of Democrats from the Texas Lege, Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-California) and JB Pritzker (D-Illinois) both committed to pursuing redistricting as well, but only if Texas passes its gerrymander.

“This is not a bluff,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Friday afternoon, minutes after meeting with Democrats from the Texas House. “This is real, and trust me, it’s more real after listening to these leaders today, how existential this is.”

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois issued a similar pledge. “Everything is on the table,” he said on Friday.

Pritzker added that he considered redistricting in between Censuses to be “cheating,” but if Texas Republicans go ahead and “take this drastic action, then we also might take drastic action to respond.”

As in New York, redistricting in either state could be a heavy lift, since Illinois’s electoral maps were already redrawn in 2021 to add one Democratic district and eliminate two Republican-advantaged ones — a move that also led to more extreme Republicans winning their primaries for the remaining R-leaning seats.

In California, district lines are drawn by an independent commission, but Newsom said Friday that he’s considering several different options that could change that process in time for the 2026 election. That could include maybe a voter referendum, or getting a two-thirds vote in the state Lege to allow changes. He said after meeting with the Texans, “We have got to fight fire with fire,” emphasizing that it’s really up to whether Texas goes ahead with its gerrymander.

And back in Texas, Democrats in the Lege are considering all their (very limited) options. Friday’s trips to meet with Pritzker and Newsom took place while the special session was in recess, but the idea of blocking a quorum in the state House by skedaddling from the state — a time-honored tradition in Texas politics — is just one thing Dems are looking at if it becomes necessary. If they do that, each member could be fined $500 a day for being absent, under a 2021 rule change Republicans passed after the last time Democrats went on Rumspringa, that time to delay passage of Republicans’ voter-suppression bill, which eventually passed anydamnway, because electoral fuckery is a time-honored tradition for Texas Republicans, the end. (snip)

I just saw this, and thought I’d pass it along here.

I’ve loved Elayne Boosler since the 1980s!

Priorities

(This is here in part because clicking through to read on Substack for free is good for her numbers, and she deserves all the numbers. -A)

My Thoughts on the ‘Gen Z Stare’ by Charlotte Clymer

And I do have thoughts. Read on Substack

Legacy media is very concerned with the ‘Gen Z Stare’

In the past week, there’s been robust discourse in legacy media about the so-called ‘Gen Z Stare’ and the bursts of generational conflict it reportedly captures.

It’s gotten write-ups by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, NBC News, ABC News, CNBC, Newsweek, Indy100, Axios, Fortune, Vox, Vice, Business Insider, The Independent, Forbes, Buzzfeed, Slate, HuffPost, Glamour, People, and Marie Claire, among others.

As a millennial, I am apparently urged to be concerned about this phenomenon of Gen Z folks supposedly failing to appropriately interact with me through sufficiently pleasant facial expressions, so I thought it might be helpful to offer my thoughts:

The sitting president of the United States is currently covering up a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children and likely implicates a number of powerful people who are currently out in the world and free to continue preying on children.

The sitting president of the United States just successfully pressured Paramount and CBS to cancel the #1 late-night talk show on broadcast television as part of what appears to be a blatant bribery deal because the host has been critical of him.

The sitting president of the United States just got the extremist Republican majority in Congress to strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage by the end of 2026 and upwards of 17 million Americans when you account for new federal work requirements. (snip-MORE; it’s succinct and quick, and it’s all good facts for grocery/other places lines, for discussion.)

Open Windows, Clay Jones

Happy Birthday, Pedo by Clay Jones

Donald Trump’s birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein Read on Substack

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Donald Trump wrote a “racy” birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein way back in 2003. I’m shocked too. Who knew he could write?

This letter is part of the Epstein Files from the investigation by the Department of Justice. One of the MAGA talking points is that if there were anything in those files with Trump’s name on it, then the Biden administration would have released it to help the Democrats with the 2024 election. Take note that the Biden administration did NOT release it.

The question, “Why didn’t Biden release it?” is based on the presumption that Joe Biden is as corrupt as Donald Trump and would politicize the DOJ. Despite the MAGA narrative, Biden never politicized or weaponized the DOJ.

And there is something to this, because Trump is upset, and threatening to sue the WSJ, its owner, News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch. WSJ reported that the letter was part of a book of messages organized by Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Maxwell was convicted 16 years later in 2019 for aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors.

The letter, signed by Trump, wishes Epstein a happy birthday and tells him, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” The letter featured lines of typewritten text framed by a drawing of a naked woman, with Trump’s name signed below the woman’s waist.

Hmmmm. Whatever could that secret be, and has anyone checked the age of the woman in the naked drawing?

Trump issued a denial, saying, “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women. It’s not my language. It’s not my words.” It’s true, you don’t write a picture. Unfortunately for Trump, the letter was written in crayon. (snip-MORE. Also, the card was written in 2003, when POTUS had a few more words in his vocab.)

Killing satire by Ann Telnaes

CBS cancels The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, claiming it was “purely a financial decision” Read on Substack

The timing of the cancellation is suspect since Colbert publicly criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, just a few days ago for settling a $16 million lawsuit with Trump while also looking to get approval from the FCC for a merger worth $8.4 billion. As Colbert described during his monologue, a “big, fat bribe”.

Paramount is just another media company looking to keep on Trump’s good side in order to benefit their bottom line. As any other autocrat, Trump has a very thin skin and doesn’t like getting ridiculed so expect more of this. Not a good sign for satirists or editorial cartoonists…or free speech in general.

A few months ago I was interviewed by Jeffrey Brown of the PBS Newshour and talked about how important it is for a democracy to protect the rights of editorial cartoonists and satirists (at end of the segment). (snip)

Margolis & Cox, Take Two by Clay Jones

A long song for MargoCox Read on Substack

Ya’ll already knew I was a stinker. This cartoon is from December 2023, on the death of Norman Lear. I’m repurposing it with a few changes for Margolis & Cox, the racist cartooning duo I had a little spat with a couple of days ago, which I wrote about.

I sent this to my clients, but it’s not a regular syndication cartoon. They will get another cartoon today.

Nothing new with those racists, I just want to ask them a question. Cox is the artist and Margolis is the writer, right? So why does Cox need Margolis if he’s only going to write tropes that have already been done a million times? Look at this cartoon and remember, they said I can’t draw. Again, it doesn’t matter how well you draw (and they don’t draw well) if your ideas are shit.

Creative note: I had a few qualms about doing this, not about pissing off Margolis, Cox, or Cagle. I couldn’t care less about what mood this puts them in. I was concerned about repurposing an old cartoon. I’m no Dave Granlund. I don’t care about his mood either. But I decided this is special, and what better way to call them out than with a cartoon?

I have discovered over the years that many people who criticize others for a living can’t take criticism, especially if they’re MAGAts.

Music note: I listened to Verbena.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see it-)

Gym Jordan News Pertinent To Our Interests-

Rep. Jim Jordan faces deposition about OSU sex abuse scandal

The powerful Ohio Republican coached wrestlers who say he knew team doctor Richard Strauss molested them but did nothing to protect them.

By Corky Siemaszko

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican Party’s top inquisitors in Congress, is expected to be deposed Friday about allegations that he failed to protect the wrestlers he once coached at Ohio State University from a sexual predator, four plaintiffs in lawsuits against the university told NBC News.

Jordan, who was the assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994 before he got into politics, has repeatedly and publicly denied any knowledge that the team’s doctor, Richard Strauss, was preying on the athletes.

It will be the first time Jordan has be questioned under oath by lawyers representing hundreds of former OSU students, both athletes and nonathletes, who are suing the school for damages in federal court in the Southern District of Ohio. Jordan is not a defendant, but he is referred to in some of the lawsuits alleging he was aware of the abuse.

Jordan, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, is known for his combative questioning of witnesses and for avoiding suit jackets during it.

Reached for comment, Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye released a variation of the statement Jordan’s team has been using since July 2018, when three former OSU wrestlers told NBC News that Jordan was lying when he claimed he did not know that Strauss molested them under the guise of giving physical examinations. (snip-a bit MORE)

We Need The Mystery, Inc. Gang! (Scooby Doo!)

Succinctly and well written.

Pretty Weird by Charlotte Clymer

Pretty damn weird. Read on Substack

[takes very deep breath]

Pretty weird that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years for her involvement in a sex trafficking operation that was all in service to one man and no other clients and that man is now dead and the Department of Justice and FBI falsely claimed they released “raw” surveillance video of the area near his jail cell the night before he was found dead, which was later discovered by Wired to have been spliced and edited and inexplicably missing three minutes of footage and that man was a close friend of Trump for 15 years and Trump is actively trying to block Maxwell’s SCOTUS appeal on her conviction under a non-prosecution agreement that was previously reached with a U.S. Attorney who later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor and Trump now claims the whole thing is somehow a Democratic hoax perpetrated by Obama and Comey even though both of Epstein’s arrests by federal authorities happened under Republican presidents—the second one under Trump himself—and yet, the entire Republican Party—including Trump—and the rightwing media apparatus supporting them were somehow tricked by Democrats into specifically campaigning LAST YEAR for transparency on the Epstein scandal and pledging to release the files on the operation and his attorney general said the client list is on her desk and under review just a few months ago but now claims the client list never existed, which prompted the most intense infighting in the MAGA movement we’ve ever seen last week and it’s really anyone’s guess at this point why this is so but for some reason, Trump has no interest in releasing the files to clear his own name and the Republican Party have collectively decided to forget they’ve spent the past six years raising a ruckus over this very thing and House Republicans—again, many of whom have campaigned for transparency on this—just unanimously voted against releasing the files, without any real justification, except for the nine House Republicans who curiously declined to vote on it and refuse to offer a credible explanation for that decision while House Democrats unanimously voted for releasing the files despite being the party that’s behind said hoax.

Pretty weird.

Clay Jones Says

Stop Talking About Epstein by Clay Jones

Donald Trump is clearly getting frustrated Read on Substack

Donald Trump wants you to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

First, what’s with that “boys and girls” crap? Does he still envision himself as the nation’s “daddy?” Second, a perfect administration? Sorry, TACO, but we’ve seen Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, and others of your team in action. You have clearly stocked your pond with the least qualified and dumbest fish of all time.

But I get it. Trump wants people to stop talking about Epstein, when previously, he encouraged his cult to talk about Epstein. Look at this tweet from his number one idiot offshoot from 2023.

Is Trump protecting “those scum bags” or is he one of those scumbags? Hmmm? Trump and Jeffers used to party together. Trump told us they were very similar, as they both liked women, with Epstein liking them on the younger side. Was Trump talking about young women, or did he make that statement because he knew about the pedophilia? What did Trump witness, or take part in, when he flew on Epstein’s plane?

Trump talked about his administration being “perfect,” while it was his stupid and unqualified Attorney General who went on Fox News and claimed the Epstein Client List was on her desk, and then later said it never existed. How is that perfect?

But ya know, I don’t think there ever was an Epstein Client List. When did we first hear of this supposed client list?

I believe it was MAGAts who first claimed that there’s an Epstein Client List, because they used it against Biden. But it’s been said so much, “clientlistclientlistclientlistclientlistclientlist,” that it has even gaslighted liberals.

I’m seeing memes from some of my liberal friends asking why Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison if there’s not a client list. If the only evidence against her is a client list, then she wouldn’t be in prison. How would a client list convict her? There’s a whole hell of a lot more evidence against Epstein than a supposed client list.

And what would the client list be for? He wasn’t in the business of pedophilia, right? It was an activity, a hobby. It was terrible and messed up, but that’s not how Epstein made his millions. I’m sure there is a list of his clients for his finance business.

Now, Trump is being yelled at by MAGAts. How sweet is that? They really want the client list released, which probably doesn’t even exist. It’s not the first time Trump claimed something that’s not true. Trump never did prove that Obama was born in Kenya. He never proved he won the 2020 election. He still hasn’t proven White Genocide in South Africa. We haven’t even seen all the fraud DOGE supposedly found.

But to MAGAts, not releasing the Epstein Client List, or the Epstein Files, makes Trump as bad as the Deep State, which, by the way, also hasn’t been proven to exist.

There are files on Epstein, and Bondi has said she’s not releasing those either. Fuck the client list, let’s see those files. While I don’t believe there is a client list, and feel free to disagree with me, there are Epstein files. Neither Trump nor Bondi has explained to us why those aren’t being released.

The best way to distract a MAGAt is with another conspiracy theory or bigotry. Remember, MAGAts love Trump because they hate the same people. So over the weekend, Trump threatened to revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship, even though a president doesn’t have that power. Did it work to distract the MAGAts. No, it just gave them something else to rave about while still howling for the Epstein Client List.

Good luck getting your base, Donald, to stop talking about the thing you wouldn’t shut up about. Usually, MAGAts do whatever you say. Maybe you need to remind them that they’re in a cult.

Squirrels: If you’ve ever visited the White House, you probably noticed the squirrels. There are a lot of squirrels at the White House. The fences that keep me and you out are ineffective against squirrel penetration. They go wherever they want. Ronald Reagan used to collect acorns from Camp David to feed the squirrels at the White House. Ike hated them because they would bury acorns in his golf green. But, there aren’t just grey squirrels at the White House, but also black squirrels. To be more specific, black Canadian squirrels.

Things like this fascinate me. I noticed them in Central Park too, but I haven’t researched that yet.

During the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the guy in charge of the National Zoo or the Smithsonian asked Canada for some black squirrels. They’re not native to the United States, though they’re the same squirrels as our grey ones except for the black coats, which might be thicker. It’s cold in Canada, yo.

So, we traded some grey squirrels for their black squirrels, and some either escaped from the zoo, or a few were released. One version explains that they were released at the zoo, with expectations that they would stay on the zoo grounds, but again….fences. Squirrels ignore them.

Today, Washington, DC has black squirrels, and they’re not going anywhere. It’s estimated that half of the squirrels in the city are descendants of the Canadian squirrels, even though the zoo originally only got a few of them. Squirrels are rodents, and rodents screw a LOT.

Not everyone feels the way Ike did, and there’s some civic pride in the black squirrels. There was even a bar in Adams Morgan named the Black Squirrel.

And that’s why there is a black squirrel in today’s cartoon.

What I hope is that Donald Trump notices all the Black immigrants all over his lawn that he can’t do anything about. (snip-MORE)

2 Pieces of News from “them” Magazine-

A Drag Queen Was Detained by ICE in San Francisco. Activists Are Fighting to Get Her Back

Hilary Rivers was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing in June.

By Samantha Riedel

Community activists in San Francisco are rallying to support Hilary Rivers, an immigrant drag queen who was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing nearly two weeks ago — one of the latest LGBTQ+ victims of the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportations.

Rivers fled his home in Guatemala due to “traumatic and severe” persecution for being gay, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week. (His legal name is not being widely reported to protect his confidentiality, advocates told the nonprofit news platform 48Hills.org shortly following the drag performer’s arrest.) On June 26, Rivers attended a scheduled asylum hearing, where the government’s motion to dismiss his case was denied; Rivers was then arrested by ICE agents as he left the courtroom. That combination — in which the government attempts to dismiss an asylum case, then immediately arrests the asylum seeker for deportation — has become an increasingly common tactic for U.S. immigration police in the past several months, and one that is sometimes conducted with cooperation from courthouses themselves. (snip-MORE)

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Hoaxers Have Falsely Blamed Trans People for Violent “Terror Attacks” 12 Times Since 2022

A new analysis from Wired saw such cases after plane crashes, shootings, and more.

By Samantha Riedel

Transgender pilot Jo Ellis was falsely accused of killing 67 people earlier this year — and unfortunately, she isn’t alone: right-wing hoaxers have blamed trans people for at least 12 incidents of violent death in the U.S. since 2022, according to a new analysis in Wired.

Ellis, a part-time pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, filed suit against right wing influencer Matt Wallace in April, after Wallace shared false claims that Ellis was responsible for the January helicopter crash at Ronald Reagan International Airport that killed dozens. The crash was later determined to be an accident caused by years of poor safety practices at the airport. But Ellis soon found herself on the receiving end of right-wing hatred thanks in part to people like Wallace, who posted on Elon Musk’s X platform that the crash “may have been another trans terror attack.”

Wallace has since deleted the post about Ellis, as Wired noted. But the key word in that post was “another.” In the past two years, right-wing disinformation accounts — such as Chaya Raichik’s “Libs of TikTok” — have spread similar false accusations against trans people on at least a dozen occasions, according to Wired’s analysis of news reports across that period. (snip-MORE)