When It Happens Overseas, We Call It a Failed State. In Texas, We Call It Tuesday.
If the FBI clashing with state police over lawmakers happened overseas, it’d be breaking news. In the USA, it barely makes the ticker.
There’s a song that’s been in my head all week, the Isley Brothers’ Footsteps in the Dark. That slow, uneasy groove where the singer keeps hearing movement he can’t see. “Lookin’ down dark corridors… something’s up ahead… should I keep this same direction or go back instead?”
That’s Texas right now. Footsteps you can’t see. Billionaires moving in shadows. Lobbyists passing instructions in quiet hallways. Maps being redrawn in rooms you’ll never enter. And while you’re craning your neck to see what’s coming, the media especially the Washington Post is running interference, feeding you surface level “partisan squabble” framing while the real story unfolds out of sight.
Redistricting battle underscores an age of partisan divisiveness
Because today, the Post ran a piece about a state seizing its political future mid-cycle which is the kind of stunt we call a coup when it happens overseas but somehow made it read like an argument over HOA bylaws.
Here’s what they printed, word-for-word, and what it actually means when you strip away the varnish.
The Tell
“Because we can,” said Texas state Rep. Mitch Little (R), when asked why Republicans were moving forward with a mid-decade remapping of the state’s 38 congressional districts.
That’s the ballgame. No policy justification. No constitutional reasoning. Just because we can. It’s the legislative equivalent of flipping off the voters and daring them to do something about it. If a foreign leader said this while bulldozing election rules, the State Department would call it a “troubling erosion of democratic norms,” the U.N. would issue statements, and pundits would start whispering about sanctions. Yet here, the Post just prints it without even a follow-up question, as if it’s a perfectly valid governing philosophy.
This is the mafia running the map room with a crew that’s not even bothering with ski masks because they know the cops work for them.
The Normalization Trick
“Governors of blue states, such as New York and California, say they may respond in kind by reworking their own maps.”
This is classic bulls*** both-sides framing taken to the point of absurdity. Sure, some blue states may redraw but are they threatening to arrest lawmakers to force a vote? Are they considering using law enforcement to physically compel attendance? Are they dangling the possibility of fines, imprisonment, or even physically hauling people back to the chamber under guard? No.
The magnitude of coercion matters, and so does the intent behind it. One is standard political maneuvering; the other is turning law enforcement into a weapon against elected representatives. To pretend these are equal acts is like saying both sides “compete in sports” when one side is setting fire to the stadium, bribing the referees, moving the goalposts mid-game, openly declaring “just f*** it” on the field as they cheat, and then calling it a fair win.
Historicizing the Crisis to Death
“The corrosive forces that brought the nation’s politics to this point long predated Donald Trump.”
This is where urgency goes to die and where the narrative gets buried under a mountain of context designed to make the present look less alarming. By stretching this moment into a 40-year history lesson, the Post effectively hands today’s offenders a convenient smoke screen, letting them hide in the long shadow of the past. It’s true gerrymandering existed before Trump, and it will exist after him if left unchecked.
However, armed robbery existed before Bonnie and Clyde, too, but that didn’t stop newspapers from screaming bloody murder when those two were in the middle of their spree. You don’t shrug at a stick-up just because stick-ups are old news; you recognize that this one is happening in real time, with new weapons, more ruthless operators, and a willingness to smash through norms your grandparents assumed were unbreakable. Pretending it’s just another chapter in a long book is exactly how the bad actors turn the page without ever facing consequences.
The Coup in One Sentence
“More than 90 percent of congressional districts [are] already looking to be a lock for one party or the other.”
Read that again. Ninety percent. That’s elections in name only. That’s a democracy where the scoreboard is set before the game starts and the referees have already been bought. When nine out of ten contests are effectively predetermined, voting becomes a ritual rather than a real choice like civic theater designed to maintain the appearance of consent. The Post drops it like trivia and moves on, as if this isn’t a flashing red warning light for anyone who still believes in competitive democracy.
It’s the equivalent of telling sports fans the championship bracket was filled out months ago, but insisting they should still buy tickets, paint their faces, and cheer like it matters. By normalizing this reality instead of treating it like a scandal, coverage like this turns the extraordinary into the everyday and that’s how public outrage gets anesthetized into passive acceptance.
Trump’s Open Confession
“Just a very simple redrawing, we pick up five seats,” Trump said in July.
Five seats. In a closely divided House, that’s the difference between investigations into January 6 and a cover-up. Between a national abortion ban and no such bill ever reaching the floor. Five seats is the margin between democracy still breathing and democracy with a pillow over its face. And here’s this guy, saying the quiet part out loud like it’s a damn boast at a mob meeting and the Post just nods politely and moves on.
That’s not a throwaway line; that’s a confession. It’s like catching someone on tape saying, “All we gotta do is take the getaway car and we’re home free,” and the reporter decides to describe the upholstery instead of the crime. This is the kind of raw, naked power grab that should have reporters spitting coffee and pounding the table, not quietly filing it under ‘colorful quote.’ The fact that it slid by without a single follow-up is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple.It’s is the kind of soft-glove treatment that lets these bastards keep pulling the same f******* con right in front of us.
Why the Coverage Is So Soft
Access journalism – Don’t make the calls stop coming.
Access journalism is the devil’s bargain in political reporting. It’s the idea that your job depends on keeping the people you cover happy enough to keep answering your calls and inviting you into the room. It means softening your questions so you don’t get iced out of the cocktail circuit, framing stories to avoid offending the insiders who hand you scoops, and sometimes sitting on uncomfortable truths because burning a source would close the door for good. It’s not about informing the public so much as protecting the relationship, which is why it so often results in articles that read like press releases with a byline.
Fear of “liberal bias” accusations – File off every sharp edge until the knife won’t cut.
Fear of "liberal bias" accusations is the journalistic equivalent of walking on eggshells while wearing lead boots. You’re overcompensating so hard to avoid the appearance of leaning left that you end up leaning so far right you tip over. It means reporters bend over backwards to prove they’re "balanced," even when one side is torching the rulebook. They water down language, bury the lede, and avoid calling out obvious lies because they know the second they do, some comms director will scream "bias" and conservative media will spend a week using their name as clickbait. Instead of standing firm in the facts, coverage gets laundered into something so neutral it’s meaningless. It’s self-censorship dressed up as fairness.
Statehouse illiteracy – Statehouse illiteracy is when national political reporters, often based in D.C., parachute into state-level stories without fully understanding the unique rules, procedures, and power levers at play in those legislatures. They don’t grasp how quorum rules can be weaponized, how procedural choke points can be used to stall or ram through legislation, or how local political culture shapes the tactics used. Without that knowledge, they can’t convey the urgency or the stakes accurately. Instead, they flatten the story into generic “partisan squabbles,” missing the fact that, in certain states, these maneuvers are effectively legal coups.
Complexity avoidance – Complexity avoidance is the tendency for reporters and editors to shy away from stories that require deep explanation, especially when the mechanics are intricate or the history is long. Redistricting law, voting rights cases, and legislative procedure aren’t as “sexy” as a scandal with a face or a bomb threat overseas. So they get boiled down to oversimplified bullet points or buried under lighter political fare. This leaves the public with a shallow understanding of issues that determine the balance of power for decades, which is exactly what bad actors count on — that the complexity will be too boring to get full coverage.
Referee culture – Referee culture is the outdated mindset in political journalism that treats both parties like opposing teams in a sporting event and the reporter as the neutral umpire calling balls and strikes. In practice, this means giving equal weight to unequal actions, refusing to say one side is lying even when the evidence is overwhelming, and framing power grabs as just another “move” in the game. It’s an obsession with appearing fair rather than being truthful, and it creates a false equivalence that protects the aggressor. When one side is dismantling the stadium and the other is trying to save it, calling them both ‘equally combative’ isn’t neutrality — it’s complicity.
Footsteps in the Dark
This is where that Isley Brothers track comes in. The slow, steady sound of something moving just out of sight.
Billionaires and political operatives aren’t making speeches about stealing your representation. They’re slipping through “dark corridors,” making the deals, handing down the orders. And while you’re distracted by horse-race polling, they’re asking the only question that matters: can control endure?
The answer, in those backrooms, is always yes — unless someone on the outside sees the footsteps for what they are and calls them out.
Now, Here’s How You Cover It Honestly
This is where
comes in right after we’ve dissected how the Post pulled its punches.Then she brought on Maya Wiley, and Wiley didn’t do the polite, beltway tap dance either. She dropped it like a brick: “This is about power — pure and simple — and about locking in a minority rule structure that silences voters. And let’s be clear — this is the very thing the Voting Rights Act was designed to stop.” Boom. That’s the indictment right there. Wiley called out exactly how the Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 5 handed Texas the keys to pull this crap mid-cycle without anyone in Washington throwing a flag.
Next up, Isaiah Martin and if you thought he was going to sugarcoat it, forget it. He named the target: “They are targeting districts where Black and brown voters have finally gained a foothold, and they are doing it now because the courts have greenlit partisan gerrymandering. This is precision targeting — they know exactly which communities to dismantle.” That’s not subtle. That’s someone telling you where the knife is going in and how deep.
And Reid kept her foot on the gas. She spelled out the national game plan Texas today, Georgia and Florida tomorrow. “Maps decide laws,” she told viewers, “and when you decide the maps, you decide who gets to write the laws, who enforces them, and who gets ignored.” That’s the part the Washington Post leaves out while they’re busy both-sides-ing this mess into oatmeal. Reid wasn’t doing a panel chat; she was doing a warning siren. You either get what’s happening here, or you’re gonna wake up wondering why your vote doesn’t count anymore.
The Real Story
This isn’t “Texas being Texas.” That’s the lazy shrug that lets people tune out. This is a portable blueprint for locking in one-party rule, and it works anywhere you’ve got a legislature willing to pull the trigger. Once you lock in the maps, you lock in the laws — every law. Abortion bans. Voting restrictions. Book bans. Labor crackdowns. Climate denial. You think you’re fighting these battles one at a time? You’re not. You’re fighting the same war, and the front line isn’t in the courtroom or at the protest …. it’s in the damn map room.
And here’s the ugly truth: once the map is fixed, every “fight” downstream is staged. The abortion ban is already written before the first hearing. The anti-labor bill is already passed before the first press conference. They’re just letting you yell at each other for sport while the outcome’s locked in a safe upstairs. That’s why they pour so much money into map-rigging lawyers and court challenges because it’s cheaper to win the blueprint than it is to win an actual election. You could swap “Texas” out for Georgia, Florida, Ohio, or wherever else they decide to test this, and the playbook works exactly the same. They’re not trying to win your vote. They’re trying to make your vote irrelevant.
Call to Arms
If you’ve read this far, you already know better. This isn’t a story to scroll past; it’s a red flare in the night sky. And if we don’t treat it like one, you’ll wake up one election cycle from now to find the map already drawn, the winners already chosen, and your vote nothing more than a decorative sticker.
So here’s the deal: you can sit back and hope the watchdogs start barking, or you can be the one to make noise. Talk about it. Share it. Hammer your local press to cover it with the urgency it deserves. Support the people and platforms that are willing to burn bridges to tell the truth, because access journalism sure as hell isn’t going to save you.
And if you want this voice to stay unbought, uninvited to the cocktail circuit, and unwilling to both-sides the demolition of democracy as well as keep cutting through the noise, then chip in as a paid subscriber today. Not tomorrow. Not “when things calm down.” Now. Because they’re not waiting, and neither can we.
Shaking my weary head. Should I go on in the same direction or go back instead? Fuck it. Knowledge is power. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Keep bringing the smoke and fire mister. I have learned much in this forum and am grateful for it.
PS: Restacked!
Seeing through the smoke screens 👏
Everybody forgot about the price of eggs