Author: sauer@technologists.com

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Democracy Docket: Advocates File Immediate Legal Challenge to Texas Gerrymander

Hours after Texas lawmakers approved a new gerrymandered congressional map Saturday morning, Texans asked a court to block it.

The plaintiffs*, a group of Black and Latino Texans, filed an amended complaint in an ongoing challenge to the electoral districts Texas drew in 2021. The amended complaint alleges that the new map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment by diluting the voting power of Black and Latino communities.

It also argues that the redistricting violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause “because it unnecessarily and unjustifiably considers racial and partisan demographics as part of a voluntary, mid-cycle redistricting,” and because it is “malapportioned” in violation of the principle of one person, one vote.

In addition, the plaintiffs argue that the new redistricting “intentionally destroy[ed] majority-minority districts and replac[ed] them with majority-Anglo districts.” This was done, the plaintiffs charge, “explicitly because of the racial composition of those districts.”
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Rolling Stone: Thanks, Trump: ICE Just Gassed a Public School Into Submission

PORTLAND, Ore. — Donald Trump’s forces have tear gassed a public school into submission. Or at least into fleeing its longtime campus.

The local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) complex in Portland has become a near-nightly flashpoint this summer for local activists demonstrating against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign — marked by masked agents snatching law-abiding non-citizens from court houses; Home Depot parking lots; garment factories; taco trucks; and city streets.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – August 21, 2025

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Last night, just before midnight, Trump cheered on the Texas Republicans and called for Florida, Indiana, and other states to do the same thing. He also called for Republicans in the state legislatures to “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING” and “go to PAPER BALLOTS before it is too late.” “If we do these TWO things,” he wrote, “we will pick up 100 more seats, and the CROOKED game of politics is over. God Bless America!!!”

The president of the United States is openly admitting that his party cannot win a free and fair election.

Instead of appealing to voters with popular policies, he is calling for rigging our elections so that his party cannot lose. This appears to have been the plan all along. In July 2024, Trump told an audience of evangelical Christians that if they voted for him in November, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
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Thom Hartmann: The Authoritarian’s Secret Weapon: They Never, Ever Leave Voluntarily

Every gerrymander, purge, and press attack tightens the screw — until the system is locked and the tyrant holds the only key…

Jay Kuo: The Redistricting Wars

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Rebecca Solnit: On Not Surrendering in Advance, or During, or At Any Point Thereafter

A friend of mine reminded me that the word encourage literally means to instill courage; we can do that or its opposite with how we speak, with what we say, with how we show up. It’s not the only work we can do during this emergency, but it’s an important part of it. It’s a big part of how we express a spirit of defiance, of resoluteness, how we act with the knowledge that emotions and attitudes are contagious, be they fear or courage, strength or weakness, kindness or cruelty.

Which is why it makes my head explode – picture this head as a volcano and these words as lava – when people surrender in advance verbally, which they do all the time about politics. There’s a lot of “I believe that we will lose” on social media and in the news. One way it shows up is when journalists report on some of the rubbish spewing from the mouth of the geriatric clown/felon we have to call president as though his every utterance had the weight of law, as though words will become actions, as though the actions will succeed, as though they will not be met with opposition, as though they believe he will win.

The current case in point is: a few days ago, after the latest installment of his periodic ritual submission to Vladimir Putin, Trump said Putin told him to go after mail-in ballots. Now first of all, if one of the world’s most dictatorial dictators gave a president of the United States advice on attacking democracy, that should have generated a lot of heated headlines and screaming politicians urging outrage in ways that have the power to put him on the spot and maybe make him walk it back.
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Dean Blundell: Trump Didn’t Arrange An “Historic” Peace Summit – Europe Forced Its Way Into the Room

And it took less than 12 hours for Trump to walk it all back on Fox News.
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Monday (Aug 18): In front of the cameras and a wall of European flags, Trump flirted with U.S. participation in security guarantees for Ukraine—even leaving the door cracked to some U.S. role “on the ground” after a deal. Europeans called it movement; markets called it noise; Moscow recoiled.

Tuesday morning (Aug 19): On Fox, Trump walked it back, giving his “assurance” there would be no U.S. troops and shifting the burden to Europe. In the same media swing he reprised the blame-shifting—saying the war really started over NATO and Crimea, and urging Zelenskyy to “show flexibility.” That’s the classic Trump pattern: say whatever looks strong in the moment, then retreat to a pro-Kremlin frame once the pressure’s off.

Translation: Europe’s decision to pack the Oval Office was the only way to get Trump to mouth the words “security guarantees.” The instant that the United Front left town, he reverted. Exactly as expected.
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Fortune: Even if you can’t trust the data, these 13 warning signs will tell you the economy is in trouble

For decades, statistics that came directly from the U.S. government, especially from agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have long been the gold standard for measuring the health of the American economy. But this trust has been shaken by recent events, including substantial downward revisions to jobs data, bruising political accusations, and the unceremonious dismissal of Erika McEntarfer, the BLS’s top official, at the beginning of the month. The resulting uncertainty has left many Americans asking: If official government data can’t be trusted, how can you know if the economy is struggling?
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So this invites the question: If you cannot trust official numbers, what concrete signs reveal economic trouble? Economists point to several alternative indicators that, individually and collectively, offer insight—often visible without needing to consult official statistics. Here are the telltale signs the average person, or a skeptical observer, should watch for

Beyond the numbers: Recognizing economic distress

1. Labor market conditions
2. Consumer behavior and social signals
3. Business activity
4. Alternative and composite data
5. Public mood and media reporting

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Fortune: AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over

“Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given,” Rui Ma wrote on X after returning from a recent tour of China’s AI hubs.

For American AI researchers, that’s almost unimaginable. In the U.S., surging AI demand is colliding with a fragile power grid, the kind of extreme bottleneck that Goldman Sachs warns could severely choke the industry’s growth.
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Meanwhile, David Fishman, a Chinese electricity expert who has spent years tracking their energy development, told Fortune that in China, electricity isn’t even a question. On average, China adds more electricity demand than the entire annual consumption of Germany, every single year. Whole rural provinces are blanketed in rooftop solar, with one province matching the entirety of India’s electricity supply.
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James Eagle: Europe’s diplomatic counterstrike

European leaders did something remarkable this weekend. One after another, they announced they would stand beside Zelensky in Washington.
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If Trump could force Ukraine’s surrender in a closed-door meeting, he would establish a new rule. America decides. Europe obeys. The post-war order would be dead.

So Europe acted. Not with diplomatic protests. Not with angry statements. With action that Trump couldn’t refuse: they announced their attendance to Monday’s meeting in rapid succession. Trump faced an impossible choice. Accept them all or reject the entire European alliance.

The White House claims the European leaders were invited, but the sequence of events tells a different story. No formal invitations appear to have been issued. Instead, European capitals began announcing their attendance in rapid succession, creating a diplomatic fait accompli.
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Michael B. G. Froman: After the Trade War

Remaking Rules From the Ruins of the Rules-Based System

The global trading system as we have known it is dead. The World Trade Organization has effectively ceased to function, as it fails to negotiate, monitor, or enforce member commitments. Fundamental principles such as “most favored nation” status, or MFN, which requires WTO members to treat one another equally except when they have negotiated free-trade agreements, are being jettisoned as Washington threatens or imposes tariffs ranging from ten to more than 50 percent on dozens of countries. Both the “America first” trade strategy and China’s analogous “dual circulation” and Made in China 2025 strategies reflect a flagrant disregard for any semblance of a rules-based system and a clear preference for a power-based system to take its place. Even if pieces of the old order manage to survive, the damage is done: there is no going back.
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Patricia J Wentzel: Sounding the Alarm Part 1

Lock them all up!

This week I’m giving you something a little different: three posts in response to the President’s Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” which offers a barbaric solution to homelessness: lock them all up.

To understand the implications of the order, it is helpful to know a few things about homelessness especially in regards to people with mental health and substance use disorders among the homeless. California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, a landmark study of homeless people by UCSF’s Margot Kushel in 2021, conducted interviews with people living on the streets throughout California. The study found that “Even if the cause of homelessness was multifactorial, participants believed financial support could have prevented it. Seventy percent believed that a monthly rental subsidy of $300-$500 would have prevented their homelessness for a sustained period.” This points to the unsustainability of rents in California that are driving poor people into homelessness.
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