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Nice, hope this is just an opening act, and I'd suspect it is. The trouble with long running bombing campaigns is you have to keep picking new targets. Ok, maybe not actually a problem...

000

Wouldn't surprise me if that is the plan. They did that with those warehouse strikes until they burned most of them down. This could easily just be the start of a campaign against data centers.

It was always the reason the GOP lost a race. Folks were bussed in from out of town. Also tossed around on the edges, and used to justify voter id rules as that came into vogue. And certainly, the rich have always been wary of letting the full public vote, from the very start of the republic.

000

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 12h

That's not true. Republicans have been complaining about non-citizen's voting for decades before Trump, they were just quieter about it, because it smacks of racism that the party liked to keep on the 'down low' before Trump came along. I'd here it almost every election that I can remember.

100

That's true they should pay, but the whole point of the SAVE act and similar Voter ID rules is that they know the expense and inconvenience of getting the ID will suppress voters the tend to vote Democratic. The rest of it is just a smokescreen to get uninformed people to support it.

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 12h

Given modern tech, we could let the poll workers snap a pic and attach it to your registration file every time you vote in person. That would be confirmation of identity and proof if someone tried to cheat, win-win and we wouldn't need to add whole new infrastructure to issue voting IDs.

000

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

There should be a low personal maximum that anyone can contribute to political campaigns, like 5K total, across all races, PACs or whatever per election. Any non-living 'person' shouldn't be able to contribute a dime. Make every race a 'small donor' race, and make every voter matter.

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Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I don't care if the polls are off or not. We need to crush the Republicans. We need wins so big no cheating will save them, a repudiation so deep that they will think twice before trying the nonsense of the last decade again. We need that, and we need every vote to wash the stink off the USA.

000

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Yeah, it was a totally different era in many ways, and Republicans still had souls and standards. It took well on 20-30 years of talk radio, televangelism, and general corruption to completely break that down to the toxic stew that sloshes in the heads of modern 'conservatives'

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Depends on the size of the Senate majority. If there is a big and united majority, I say give Trump's nominees their hearings, expose their corruption and lies, and then vote them down. If we're relying on Fetterman for the majority, then the Majority leader should just sit on all nominees.

000

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

You'd have my support. The trouble to keep in mind is that you also need someone to watch the watchers. If you IOPC gets corrupted, you've got to have a way to clean it up as well.

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I'm all for having public impeachment investigations of Senate trials for all of Trump's crimes, but I don't expect him to be removed from office until we can work out how to get the 67 votes needed for a conviction in the Senate.

060

Any representative can do that, and often do, and they usually go nowhere, just as these won't. Until the leadership of the house changes, there will be no impeaching Trump, even after, it's an even bet just due to the fact that there aren't the votes for conviction in the Senate.

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They could have sorted out a few 'loyal' units by now, if they wanted to, but I'd not bet on either Trump or Hegseth having the competence to pull off something like that. It could get really messy, but I expect the military would go to extreme lengths to not get involved.

000

There certainly is a fair bit of MAGA in there, but there's also a lot of general diversity in the lower ranks, and professionalism in the non-brass officer ranks. There's been a sad amount of purging in the upper brass ranks, but they may simply find their orders ignored if they back a coup.

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ICE probably, but there really aren't that many of them, and most of them are big man babies, if they back a coup they'll start getting punched back at, and I think most of them would fold and run. The military is a trickier bet.

100

Massive protests. I think a lot of people still think the system is basically working and they can vote Trump and the GOP out, but if Trump takes that away, makes a play at being President for life, and starts giving smarmy speeches about what he's 'saving' us from... People won't take it.

1221

If the Republican states choose to follow Trump's play with an 'emergency' they are only hurting themselves. I also think we're past the point where there would be a passive public response to such a blatant power grab. I'd like to hope canceling elections is that bridge too far for most people.

On January 3rd 2027 the only House Representatives that can be seated are those certified as winners of the November election ( or special election after that). For the senate it's only the 1/3 of senators up for election this year.

Except it's the states that run election, not the federal government. Trump can declare a nation emergency, and all the blue and purple states can show him the middle finger. If the red states don't run elections, then that will just give the democrats a bigger majority next year.

Let's spin it this way, this is the time to jump on the bandwagon and be on the right side of history sending the Republican party back to the void from which it sold it's soul. We want not just to win, but to crush them and remove from them every lever of power they have abused. Every vote helps.

000

Very much so, Imagine Biden's first term if we hadn't needed Manchin and Sinema's votes. It could have been entirely different, and all for the want of a couple more 'normal' Democrats. Every extra seat we win this year makes everything easier two years from now.

I wish it was otherwise, I'd love nothing more than to see Trump and his regime all removed from office, but unless something breaks, we'll never get the votes in the Senate for conviction. I am in favor of impeachment, but I'm under no illusion that we'll get convictions, at least not yet.

The bigger a win we get this year, the better shape we'll be in for 2029. We want a majority strong enough that we don't need the votes of Fetterman and other weak Democrats. The harder we fight now, the easier it will be then.

That will be our chance to elect someone who can make real changes and start fixing things. We will have to choose carefully and do our best to pick someone who can both win the race and will lead congress to pass major reforms.

We didn't get in the hole in a day, we won't get out of it in a day. Get a majority in the house and senate lets us stop new GOP laws, keeps Trump from making idiotic appointments, and gives us the ability to run congressional investigations. It sets us up for 2028.

230

That will make it easier to hold to account those at the top who gave the orders, and get us justice faster, and an unassailable public record that can be used to push back against the inevitable attempts to rewrite history later.

If you prosecute everyone, then it all gets tied up in court, things get locked down to protect trials, defendants muddy the waters with lies trying to escape punishment. If we make a process to let the small fry lay everything out it will get the full story out faster than the spin machine.

100

We want as much of what was done out there in the public record. As much as I'd love for all the small fry to twist in the wind as well, I think the best way for us to really tackle the rot of this regime is to make public how deep it went and how toxic.

100

I lean more towards a truth and reconciliation committee type operation, you testify, explain all the illegal stuff you did fully and truthfully, you get immunity from prosecution for those crimes. With some exceptions for top level crimes. Keep it all open and public.

100

Former Iowan here, and yeah from what I've been seeing from friends and family the decades of GOP mismanagement and going down culture war rabbit holes instead of making life better has finally started to sink in. Hopefully it's enough to get them to kick the GOP to the curb.

020

It's time. Do it next year so we don't have to have that fight in 2029. And we can force Trump to veto two years worth of popular Democratic bills.

020

The biggest hurdle will be the filibuster. A lot can be done through reconciliation, which can't be filibustered, but has to directly affect the budget. Now, I'm all for tossing the filibuster, but many older Dems aren't, so we'd need a pretty big Senate majority to have a chance.

It would basically take an unprecedented collapse of the Republicans for that to happen. Given that the GOP still has a working media bubble for their most committed supporters, I don't see that collapse happening. So mathematically possible, but very unrealistic.

030

Sadly, very unlikely. The best would could probably get is a filibuster proof majority in the senate, but we'd have to win all but 2 of the currently GOP held states to get a Senate super majority. With all of the gerrymandering, it's probably hard to get 67% of the house as well.

141

So temper you expectations accordingly. The midterms are about putting up roadblocks to slow down the last 2 years of Trump's term. We won't have a chance to get any new and serious change until after the next Presidential election, presuming we pick a good candidate.

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Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Sadly true. A Democratic congress can do several things, but unless they can get a super majority, they can't make new law, remove Trump from office or much else immediate action. They can run public investigations, impeachment trials, and block Trump appointments, but that's largely it.

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And yes, anyone going along with Trump on this is aiding in his destruction of our Democracy. Heck even just not explaining what 'fake news' really means should be enough to put any reporter on the wrong side of history.

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Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

As such the media outlets that put out real news get slapped with the 'fake news' label because reality is toxic to the image Trump and his minions want to project, not because the reporting is in any way wrong, they just don't like the content.

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Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Remember in the right wing dictionary fake news doesn't mean lies. Fake news is when some reports the truth on things the regime doesn't want reported. It's an Orwellian style phrase. Good fact vs Bad fact. Fake news is bad facts, at least for the regime.

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Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

No kidding, I am so, so sick of flag worshipers when we really should be paying reverence to the amazing land of this country and all the wonderful people and places inside it.

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In McConnell's case, if he resigned the GOP would be down a vote, or possibly have a Dem governor replace him, pending a legal fight. In Feinstein's case, if she'd have resigned the Dems could have lost control of important Senate committee ( Judiciary ) due to senate rules.

Farleven @farleven.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Certainly, they're not the same. We're far into edge case territory with this kind of thing. I would agree that the GOP tends to do it for bad things, but it is usually done for a combination of political reasons or that the Senator isn't competent enough to resign.