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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Edit: See Silence7’s comment below, unlisted planned locations and expansions may undermine the conclusions.

    My observations:

    The list adds more evidence that Trump/Miller are actively planning to use ICE to interfere with polling in 2026 and (their hope is) 2028. The following states are states that are potentially contestable either as Biden '20-Trump’24 swing states or are close enough to swing that ICE’s racial profiling against primarily Latinos may swing demographics. These are getting high amounts of ICE buildout (Edit: Per the limited, incomplete list of planned locations on Wired):

    • Arizona (2)
    • Florida (5) (*2026 senate seat)
    • Michigan (3) (*2026 senate seat)
    • North Carolina (2) (*2026 senate seat)
    • Pennsylvania (5)
    • Texas (6) (*2026 senate seat)
    • Virginia (3) (*2026 senate seat)

    California is also getting 5, and that may reflect the plan to use it as the next flashpoint state. Since California may be seen as more likely to be volatile, I could imagine the plan is to replicate Minnesota in California this summer. They may assume they will succeed in getting Fox News-ready violent response footage if they continue acting illegally, and use that propaganda to try to give cover to the Insurrection Act, leading to an antifa “anti-terrorist” push, which then is used nationwide to justify ICE at high-value House/Senate swing district polling stations in the fall.

    States that Trump were previously trialing ICE takeover but are safely democratic (Oregon, Illinois) are NOT getting significantly more offices, which again suggests they don’t intend to try to swing those. Neither is Minnesota. That is likely because Trump (i.e., Miller) isn’t going to risk more bad PR there. He knows murdering Nice White People™ is the red line for most of the low-information public who will shrug at “is it or isn’t it” fascism otherwise. Minnesota served its purpose as proving ground for the tactics and violence they plan to use.



  • Types of congresspeople:

    • I’m here for the power: Mostly staying.

    • I’m here because I believe in true left causes: Mostly staying.

    • I’m here because I am a democrat and there’s literally nothing wrong: Mostly staying.

    • I’m here for the money or conservative principles, never intended to change anything, and didn’t sign up for this shit: Retiring to my Swiss chalet.

    The article cites some democrats that are retiring to run for higher office. Great, anecdotal, but the only data they provide shows it’s basically a Republican retirement wave. Overall I think it’s a wash.

    The retiring republicans will be replaced in small part by democrats if there is a blue wave and reasonably fair election, but many are fake MAGA (i.e., voting with Trump 100% of the time, but they don’t like it and privately think it beneath them) who will be replaced by true-believer MAGA who are going to try to actively push us faster into fascism.















  • Ok, let’s play response bingo:

    Mike Johnson: “I haven’t seen it, I don’t know.”

    Hakeem Jefferies: “This disgusting, terrible, vile, atrocious racism has no place in our government so I call on Republicans to do the right thing, and will just be over here while they wait out the controversy.”

    Chuck Schumer: “Ohhh, this is gre-I mean, terrible. Trump’s polls will definitely drop by at least 2% points in the fallout over this, allowing me to write my magnum opus. Watch your mailbox, this is gonna be a two-pager that your intern is going to be very sorry to have to half-read once, Mr. President. But I’ll be the bigger man here - Israel needs at least $10 billion more to protect themselves from seasoned 5-year-old Hamas soldiers, and we’ve shamed ICE enough, so let’s not get distracted from passing some mudderfudding BILLS y’all.”

    John Thune: “I soundly condemn the comments made yesterday, which I won’t describe, name or attribute to anyone and that will not alter anything I do whatsoever. Now that this is past as of seven words ago, we need to move on, focus on the President’s agenda, and make America great again.”

    Elon Musk: [resharing the same meme posted by obvious Russian bot] ☝️ 🍉🍉

    Miss anybody?



  • That’s effectively what’s happening.

    The USPS, under DeJoy (who has long been trying to undermine the USPS from within), has posted this site, which attempts to debunk (i.e., gaslight) over what the change is. They claim the same process applies and only is being clarified, but that’s false since now postmarks will use the process rather than the sending date and that’s a major change. This is key:

    While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location. [emphasis added]

    This is entirely to help support GOP legal challenges that will claim that laws which allow election-day postmarked mail-in ballots to be counted can be struck down, because they will encompass votes that took place after election day, and therefore selectively invalidate mail-in ballots. It’s essentially poisoning the reliability of postmarks to allow for ballot suppression.

    Here’s a PBS story about it as well. It also notes that the staffing crunches at the USPS and closing processing facilities will exacerbate the issue since “processing” times will increase, especially for high-volume days like election day.

    Edit: David Steiner, not DeJoy, is the current postmaster general.