Texas Dems Resort to Wild Measure to Protest Fascist Surveillance

Texas is treating Democratic representatives like convicted felons for trying to stop the GOP’s illegal gerrymandering efforts.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows is forcing every Democrat to stay with a state trooper at all times if they want to exit the House chamber, in response to their leaving Texas to protest Governor Greg Abbott’s redistricting efforts. The state legislature is set to return on Wednesday, but it’s unclear just how long Democrats will be followed home by law enforcement.

“The speaker announced, once quorum was restored, that the call of the House would remain, and any member that was out because of the quorum break would be required to sign a permission slip agreeing to be under the authority of [the Texas Department of Public Safety] in order to leave the Capitol. I refused,” Democratic Representative Nicole Collier told NPR’s Texas branch. “I refused to sign the permission slip to be able to leave the Capitol. I disagree with that authoritarian tactic that they have taken.”

Over 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s attempt to reshape voting districts to favor Republicans to gain more House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

This is a blatantly unethical power grab, and the Texas GOP knows it, which is why it’s trying to hold Democrats hostage unless they have a police officer by their side. If this was happening in any other country, words like “authoritarian” or “draconian” would likely be used. Yet Texas Democrats are being forced to capitulate, scared to even leave the House floor to sleep in their homes.

Collier, meanwhile, has at least temporarily accepted her fate.

“I will have to stay here; I hadn’t really given [it] much thought. What matters to me is making sure I resist, and fight back, and push back. I’m sure I’ll fall asleep eventually, whether that’s in my chair or on the floor,” Collier continued, referring to her forced detainment in the House chamber.

Texas Democrats have already been threatened with arrest and expulsion. This State Trooper watch is yet another aggressive escalation by a state government that has cast basic democracy aside.

“This was my night, bonnet and all, in the #txlege,” Collier posted this morning, accompanied by a picture of her asleep in her House Chamber chair.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo needs a little push to regain his Cuo-mentum—and he’s hoping Donald Trump will give it to him, Politico’s New York Playbook reported Tuesday.

Speaking at a fundraiser in the Hamptons Saturday, the former New York governor said that he anticipates Trump and other top Republicans will direct support his way in an effort to stop New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who trounced Cuomo’s Democratic primary efforts by double digits.

“We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo said, referring to Curtis Sliwa, the 71-year-old, ever-bereted GOP candidate. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

When asked by an attendee whether he or his team was in conversation with the White House, Cuomo was vague but not dismissive when he said, “Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very well.”

“I believe there’s a big piece of him that actually wants redemption in New York. He feels that he was rejected by New York. We voted for Hillary Clinton. Bill de Blasio took his name off things. So I believe there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him,” Cuomo continued.

“I also believe that he’s not going to want to fight with me in New York if he can avoid it.”

But it was Cuomo who said that he was not “personally” looking to do battle with Trump and compared their relationship to a “dysfunctional marriage,” according to The New York Times.

Earlier this month, the Times reported that Cuomo had spoken with Trump about New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani excoriated the reported call as a “betrayal” of the entire city. Cuomo denied that the conversation had taken place.

Cuomo also claimed that he would decline the president’s endorsement. But while rubbing elbows with the Hamptons’ wealthy donors, Cuomo seemed markedly less opposed to working with Trump—and even open to being part of his “redemption,” whatever that would mean.

Mamdani slammed Cuomo for courting Trump’s support. “At (another) Hampton’s fundraiser with Republican donors on Saturday, Andrew Cuomo said it plainly: he’s expecting Trump’s help to defeat us in November. ‘I feel good about that,’ Cuomo said. New Yorkers won’t,” Mamdani wrote Tuesday on X.

On Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump somewhat clarified his murky plans for the Russia-Ukraine war, giving his word—notoriously fickle as it is— that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground.

Earlier in the week, the president met with EU leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump had also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska a few days before.

Trump on Monday couldn’t be pinned down on whether U.S. troops would be sent to aid Ukraine, merely stating that European countries would provide the “first line of defense” and “take a lot of the burden,” whereas the U.S. will “be involved” and provide “a lot of help.”

In his Tuesday morning Fox News appearance, he promised that there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“Well, you have my assurance, you know, I’m president,” Trump said.

However, he added that European nations such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are willing to put “boots on the ground”—and claimed that they would not be acting as “a part of” NATO. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest with you,” the president said.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of providing U.S. air support to such European ground troops, saying, “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you could talk about, by air.” He repeated that he doesn’t think this would “be a problem.”

It seems that, for now, Trump remains committed only to putting American boots on the ground in Democratic-run cities.

Representative Elise Stefanik was not well received when she returned to her district in upstate New York.

The congresswoman received a particularly hostile reception from her constituents during a ceremony in Plattsburg Monday evening. More than half of the attendees at the event, intended to mark the renaming of the Clinton County Government Center, were actually protesters, according to the local NBC affiliate NBC 5.

The crowd jeered at Stefanik both times she approached the podium, calling the staunch MAGA supporter a “traitor,” while others chanted, “Shame.”

“You sold us out,” cried one protester.

“You’re a Nazi,” shouted another.

Yet another protester yelled on repeat that Stefanik needed to “unseal the Epstein files.”

Stefanik chided the protesters, claiming that the renaming ceremony for her “dear friend” was the wrong time and place to attack her—but her constituents disagreed. Instead, they argued that Stefanik had been so absent in their district that they were left with no other choice.

“Well, Elise has not shown up in our district for months and months,” protester Mavis Agnew told NBC 5. “She won’t hold a town hall, she won’t take questions. She’s never in her office. People show up at her office constantly; door’s closed. Her representatives, her employees won’t talk to her.… So this was her first appearance, the first opportunity we had to let her know we’re unhappy.”

But Stefanik wasn’t willing to recognize that her support for Donald Trump’s agenda was the basis for her hometown hatred.

“It is a disgusting disgrace that this is what the far left does, rather than understanding that his family has been through a tremendous amount. It was about honoring his legacy,” Stefanik told NBC5 after the event, referring to John Zurlo, for whom the center was renamed.

Stefanik isn’t the only Trumpian legislator who has gotten scorched during the summer recess for voting against the needs of their constituents. Earlier this month, Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was excoriated during a town hall for failing to protect SNAP benefits, veterans’ programs, and health care access, which combined with voters’ simmering resentment for Flood’s lagging on the release of the Epstein files.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his meeting with Donald Trump Monday may have been their “best” yet—not a particularly high bar—but that doesn’t mean that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to play ball.

During CNN’s News Night Monday, Josh Rogin, lead global security analyst for CNN, said that it had certainly been a “much better meeting than the last time.”

“But I think it’d be going too far to say that Putin has agreed to a meeting with Zelenskiy,” Rogin added. “In fact, the Kremlin put out a statement right after this meeting and they said, ‘No, we’ll have meetings at a high level,’ but they didn’t say with Putin and Zelenskiy.”

Trump reportedly called Putin in the middle of his meeting with several European leaders to begin making arrangements for a trilateral summit between himself, Zelenskiy, and Putin. But as Rogin pointed out, Russia hasn’t actually agreed to such a meeting. In a statement, Moscow said only that the leaders had discussed “the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations.”

Rogin continued, “And then they said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re totally against NATO troops in Ukraine.’ So, the two big deliverables out of this meeting, Russia has already rejected, which kind of gets to the core of the issue, which is President Trump said 50 times today that he believes Putin wants peace. And I don’t know, call me skeptical. I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t buy it.

“And I’m basing that on all the evidence. Everything Putin says. Everything Putin does. Everything we know. And that’s what you see those European leaders doing. They’re testing that. They’re saying to President Trump, ‘If he gives you a ceasefire, he’s gonna stop killing Ukrainians at least for a couple days, then maybe he’s serious. And if he doesn’t, then he’s not serious.”

At the end of the day, the clearest signal that Putin could give that he wants to end the killing is, well, to stop killing. But he hasn’t done that.

Trump already appears to have agreed with Putin’s demands to permanently seize Crimea, and to block Ukraine from its long-awaited NATO membership. Moscow has demanded even more territory from Ukraine, while Zelenskiy has insisted that his country will not cede land to Russia.