This year marks America’s 250th birthday. This should be a season of celebration, patriotism, BBQs and beers. Instead, the core founding principle of a government for the people, by the people, is at risk of failure.
Rigging election maps isn’t new to the Trump era — but gerrymandering is now radically accelerating. Since Trump called up Texas Governor Ken Paxton last summer demanding 5 seats in the House of Representatives, states across the country have followed in an unprecedented wave of mid-decade redistricting. Even Democrats — who so often fail to meet fire with fire — felt the urgency of the moment, redrawing maps in California and Virginia (albeit in these cases, with the support of the voters).
This week, Trump’s FBI raided Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas — the highest ranking Democrat in the VA state legislator and the woman who led the charge in passing a statewide redistricting measure. Fox News was on the scene at the time of the FBI raid, apparently tipped off in advance. Given Trump’s outrage over the successful passing of new maps in Virginia (which heavily favor Democrats), the raid appears retaliatory.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is perhaps the most fundamental piece of legislation to come out of the Civil Rights movement — and the Supreme Court just gutted a core element of it. Section 2 ensures congressional maps can be drawn to fairly represent minority communities. Republicans, in some “reverse racism” bullshit that spits on the spirit of the law, said drawing such districts discriminates against white voters. Guess who Trump’s Supreme Court sided with. Now Republican states can continue their gerrymandering efforts without worrying about discrimination suits.
Immediately following, southern states got back on their bullshit. Florida rushed through new maps, despite a state constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2010 that prohibits redistricting that intends to favor or disfavor a political party or candidate. Louisiana governor Jeff Landry suspended the state’s primary election in an attempt to rush through a new map that will eliminate the state’s only Democrat (and racially diverse) district. Not only does this put 42,000 absentee ballots already cast at risk of being tossed, racial minorities in the state are at risk of losing equal representation entirely. Now, voters are threatening a recall election. Tennessee is proposing a new map that would carve up the majority Black district of Memphis. Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina are also now considering redistricting efforts to suppress the votes of racial minorities.
Meanwhile in Fulton County, Georgia, the Trump administration is continuing to seek evidence of election fraud — or rather, given the fact there isn’t any evidence, create some.
The DOJ is now demanding the names of every 2020 election worker in Fulton County — a government backed doxxing.
Yesterday, a judge ruled that the DOJ can keep the 2020 election ballots seized in a raid by federal law enforcement in January. These ballots were counted three times in 2020 — including once by hand. Yet Trump’s DOJ, 6 years later, is still on the hunt to find evidence of election fraud.
As the DOJ continues poking around in Fulton County, their investigation is likely to soon target other contested states like Michigan and Arizona.
While currently lacking support in the Senate needed to pass, it’s important to recognize what Trump’s obsession with the SAVE Act signifies. The bill would require Americans to provide a passport and birth certificate in order to register to vote — despite the cost of a passport being unaffordable for many, and the fact birth certificates often do not match current legal names for marries women. All of this to curb the threat of “non-citizens” voting.
Here’s the problem — non citizens are already barred from voting. We already confirm citizenship at the time you register to vote — the state cross checks your social security number to confirm you are a U.S. citizen.
As for incidents of non-citizens attempting to vote anyway, all evidence proves this is exceptionally rare. In Michigan, a key swing state, only 15 credible cases were identified in 2024. That’s 0.00028% of more than 5.7 million total ballots cast — hardly a big enough problem to risk the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans.
Unless that’s exactly the fucking point.
Radical action is required to prevent our future elections from being rigged by Trump and the MAGA Republicans. Despite current attacks, court challenges have been successful at blocking the worst of Trump’s agenda. Democracy Forward is one such organization leading the legal fight — you can support them here:
Meanwhile, as mainstream news continues to play both sides, independent reporting and resource sharing is fundamental for the fight ahead. Help support Stay Angry by upgrading to a paid subscription (at $5 per month, it costs less than a cup of coffee).
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