KEY POINTS
Donald Trump said the Department of Justice will sue California over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to draw a new congressional map.
Newsom, a Democrat and 2028 presidential contender, promptly responded on social media: “BRING IT.”
Trump has praised a similar effort by Texas Republican legislators to codify a new map that would give the GOP an even greater advantage in key House seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
While I genuinely hope this will serve as a wake up call (not in the seemingly fake and preformative way done by the California governor) for the locals, from my time living there I have my doubts, it seems that Americans are a bit too well off and risk averse to take action.
Perhaps it may make sense to share a vignette from an Asian country I was travelling in.
We took the train from a regional capital to a smaller city. A week later, we were on our way back to the regional capital to catch a plane.
We go to the railway station and find out that Maoist rebels bombed the railway. So we we find a driver with an off-road vehicle to travel through the jungle road (it was in a terrible state, don’t think a regular car would have managed) to the regional capital.
On the way through the jungle we approach a group of burned out trucks with the military surrounding them. We ask them what happened. The military said the Maoist rebels stopped the trucks, let the drivers go (I believe they were actually treated well and the military said they were dropped off at the nearest village completely unharmed and with their belongings). The truck drivers were merely employees and get shit pay with significant dangers (trucks are often heavily overloaded, you constantly see them crash because of this).
So you might say, well what does this have to do with the US? While I don’t support Maoists (even though they likely had good reasons as that region was particularly corrupt and did not benefit from broader national economic growth), one has to admit that they definitely are not risk averse and are willing and able to go through.
To cite another (fictional) example, it’s like that scene in The Godfather 2 where Michael Corleone sees the commitment of the Cuban rebels and realizes that the Batista regime is not going to hold after he sees the Cuban rebel blow himself up to take out the goon leader, rather than face arrest (and likely torture and death).
America is not that kind of place (for better or worse).
P.S. Note this is not doomerism, nothing is final until it is. That being said nothing in this world comes easy. Freedom is not a mere polemic statement. Freedom requires painful, scary choices and immense sacrifices.