[Reminder: I will hold my regular Saturday morning livestream on the Substack App at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT on August 9. Open to all. I will post the video of the livestream shortly thereafter.]
My wife provides unerring guidance for the narrative tone and topical focus of this newsletter. She is a multi-generational bellwether who reliably predicts how tens of millions of Americans are feeling. I was reminded of this when we ran an errand for one of our daughters on Friday that required us to spend about 4 hours in Southern California traffic.
When we hopped into our “grandparent minivan” with three child car seats installed, I turned on the satellite radio and tuned to MSNBC to get a head start on thinking about the news of the day. Jill immediately switched to the “Broadway Tunes” channel and said, “I can’t stand to listen to the news today.”
I suspect that many of you are feeling the same way after this last week. The story that prompted Jill to change the channel was a report that the DOJ has appointed a “special attorney” to pursue criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James and US Senator Adam Schiff. Both investigations are shocking examples of political retribution and weaponization of the DOJ in a way never before experienced in our nation’s history. But neither of those stories managed to make it to the front page of any major media outlet.
Senator Schiff was the lead “prosecutor” in the 2020 Senate trial of Trump’s first impeachment for attempting to extort Ukraine. New York Attorney General Letitia James brought a civil fraud action against Trump that resulted in a damages verdict in excess of $500 million. Trump is now using the DOJ to punish his political opponents on baseless charges. See Talking Points Memo, Brutal Day On The “Investigate The Investigators” Front.
But the impulse to look away arises from more than just Trump’s campaign of vengeance against his political opponents. The fight over mid-decade redistricting is rattling readers of this newsletter and political commentators alike. There were more stories in the political press on Friday observing that there are no “winners” in a prairie-fire redistricting battle that Trump ignited in Texas. Even as Democratic governors back the Texas legislators with threats of reciprocal redistricting, there is a feeling of “coming apart at the seams” about the entire drama.
Such unease is understandable. And yet, I think most Americans rightly assume that a day will come (soon) when we push the “reset” button on democracy and return to some semblance of the rule of law that existed prior to 2016. True, it will not be easy or painless, and there will be major tasks—like Supreme Court reform and passage of voter protection legislation—that will take a long time to accomplish.
But the infrastructure of democracy remains—the federal and state constitutions, federal and state laws, Congress and the state legislatures, the presidency and governors, and the vast corpus of judicial precedent that remains yet untouched by the “Trump exception to everything” that the Roberts Court applies to any case involving Donald Trump.
In the last six months, I have repeatedly offered the same advice: Whatever you do, don’t quit. Take a break, if necessary. Go on a news fast. Reduce the number of newsletters you read or the broadcasts you watch. Just don’t give up. Come back as soon as you can.
So, I will take a quick spin through the major news stories heading into the weekend. Engage with them as you please, or take a break. Everything will be the same on Monday. Join me on Saturday morning at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT if you would rather hear me briefly discuss last week’s stories and encourage readers to stay the course!
Join a National Day of Action on August 16, 2025
Indivisible continues to do outstanding work with its One Million Rising campaign. Reader Andrew B., who is a team leader in that effort, sent the following communication from Indivisible about a National Day of Action on August 16, 2025, in response to the anti-democratic gerrymandering efforts in Texas:
Texas House Democrats are blocking a redistricting vote in the Texas House right now to Stop the Trump Takeover. But Trump has made it clear that he’s not stopping at Texas. He’s targeting Missouri, Ohio, Florida and every state he can twist to help him steal Congress. States like Florida and New York are already fighting back.
That’s why we’re organizing a National Day of Action on Saturday, August 16, to fight back against the Trump takeover of our country.
Want to spread the word? Search for an event here: Search for an event here
Sign Up to Host An Event Near You! Sign up to host an event here!
If you have an overwhelming urge to look away from the news, consider joining hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans committed to defending democracy through coordinated national action!
2026 redistricting fight
Texas filed a lawsuit to remove from office those Texas legislators who are attempting to break the quorum in the state legislature. See CNN, Texas AG sues to remove Democratic lawmakers who remain absent from legislature.
But even as Texas stepped up its efforts to jam through a redistricting ordered by Trump, California Democrats ramped up plans to engage in reciprocal redistricting, to be triggered if Texas is successful. See The Guardian, California backs absent Texas Democrats as redistricting fight escalates.
Per The Guardian,
On Friday, the Democratic leaders of the California state legislature said they were prepared to move forward with a ballot measure asking voters to redraw the state’s House map in November should Texas follow through with its proposed redistricting plan.
“We don’t move unless they move,” California governor Gavin Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento, where he was joined by a delegation of Democratic state representatives from Texas. “But we’re not going to unilaterally disarm.”
The best way out of this situation is for Texas’s gerrymandering efforts to fail, allowing California and other states to stand down. But we should not assume that redistricting by Texas will result in an automatic shift of five seats to the GOP column. See Vox, Texas’s gerrymandering fight over its midterms map is getting messier.
The Vox article includes an interview with Texas Tribune’s Eleanor Klibanoff, who said the following:
[I] f the quorum break ends in one way or another, they [the Texas legislature] absolutely will pass the map. We’ll have the midterms in 2026. These districts seem very likely to go for Republicans based on 2024 performance.
But 2024 was a pretty exceptional year in Texas, most notably that we saw Latino voters swing so far for President Trump compared to historical precedent. And a lot of these maps are based on the idea that those same voters will go for Republican candidates across the board in 2026.
Now, President Trump is not on the ballot in 2026*. It remains to be seen** whether Latino voters are thinking, “This is what I voted for and I love this,” or if there’s any buyer’s remorse that might turn some of those seats a little bit more competitive than you would think.*
Every day, Trump engages in actions that alienate more Americans. He is in the process of creating one of the world’s largest paramilitary forces, which will be aimed directly at the Hispanic immigrant population in the US. The Center for Migration Studies says that “approximately 21,036,500 immigrants of Hispanic origin live in the United States, of which 7,410,000 are undocumented.”
Undocumented workers account for 7% of the population in Texas, and residents of Hispanic heritage account for 40.2% of the Texas population. As Trump’s army of roid-raged ICE agents continues to detain anyone they “suspect” of being an undocumented worker, they will (likely) undermine support for Trump in the Latino community—in Texas and across the nation.
There are many moving parts to this story, and we should not assume defeat (or victory) until all the votes cast in the 2026 midterms have been counted.
There are two more stories related to the Texas redistricting battle.
First, a Texas judge blocked a group led by Beto O’Rourke from raising money for the Democratic legislators who have left the state to break legislative quorum. See The Texas Tribune, Judge blocks Beto O’Rourke from funding Texas Democrats.
Second, as California’s governor is threatening reciprocal redistricting to offset gerrymandered seats in Texas, Trump has demanded a $1 billion payment from the University of California to settle claims that UCLA tolerated antisemitism during student protests. See Politico, Newsom blasts Trump’s $1 billion settlement proposal to UCLA as ‘extortion’.
Per Politico,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday blasted Donald Trump’s demand for $1 billion from UCLA over antisemitism allegations in return for millions of dollars in frozen federal research grants, describing the president’s move as an attempt to “silence academic freedom.”
Trump’s proposal targets one of the nation’s largest public university systems — a major move in the Trump administration’s battle against higher education institutions. The $1 billion settlement, which would be paid in installments over three years, would resolve alleged civil rights violations and force the school to adopt major changes to how it operates, according to a person familiar with the matter and a draft of the proposal viewed by Politico.
Trump has halted nearly $500 million in grants to the California university system, which funds medical and scientific research aimed at keeping Americans healthier and safer. The timing of the $1 billion extortion demand is too coincidental to be a coincidence. Trump is withholding medical research funds to jam through a partisan gerrymander in Texas designed to maintain a GOP majority in the House. Despicable!
Trump appears to be on the verge of agreeing to surrender Ukraine to Russia
Trump will meet with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, next week. Trump appears to be preparing the world for a “deal” between the US and Russia that would allow Russia to keep most of Ukraine’s territory seized by Russia after its unprovoked invasion.
Trump, who cannot keep a secret to save his life, told reporters the following on Friday when asked if Ukraine would be required to surrender territory to Russia. Trump replied,
“It’s complicated. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow.”
Trump is lying. There are no discussions of “swapping” Russian sovereign territory for Ukrainian sovereign territory. Instead, Trump was referring to how much Ukrainian territory Russia would keep in exchange for a ceasefire. “Swapping” Ukrainian territory for Ukrainian territory is also known as “surrendering.”
Bloomberg News described the surrender in its article, US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.
Per Bloomberg,
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Trump promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine on his first day in office. When he made that promise, most people rightly assumed that he would force Ukraine to surrender by withholding military aid. Although it’s taken more than six months, Trump has finally arrived at the logical implication of his boast that he would “end the war” in twenty-four hours.
Concluding Thoughts
There is more, but as my wife wisely suggested on Friday, we need a break, at least for a few hours. Get some rest this weekend and look for joy in the people and world that surround you!
Talk to you Saturday morning on the Substack live stream!
Daily Dose of Perspective
The Cocoon Nebula is 4,000 light years from Earth and 15 light years in diameter. It serves as a “stellar nursery”—a star-forming region that is appropriately named the Cocoon Nebula.
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