Texas Dem Who Rejected Authoritarian Tactics Threatened With Felony

On Tuesday, Texas Representative Nicole Collier chose to sleep on the floor of the state House rather than be subject to draconian 24-7 state trooper surveillance if she were to leave.

Now, on Wednesday, she shared that she was threatened with a felony
unless she exited a bathroom while on a DNC call with Senator Cory Booker, Governor Gavin Newson, and other Democrats.

This comes as some Texas Democratic officials remain under the watch of law enforcement, a move GOP House Speaker Dustin Burrows and Texas Republicans levied after more than 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s blatantly political effort to reshape voting districts to gain more GOP House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

While the redistricting vote is likely to occur now that they’re back in the state, Texas Democrats are still looking to exhaust any options they have in regard to delaying or obstructing the power grab of a vote.

They’ve even floated an amendment that would block the redistricting vote until the Epstein files are released, an issue that has fallen from the public eye after weeks of dominating the news cycle due to a well-orchestrated campaign of distraction by the Trump administration.

“That is outrageous,” Cory Booker said live as Collier updated the call about her situation. “What they’re trying to do right there is silence an American leader, silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. And I hope everybody took note of that. The fact that she can’t even let her voice be heard is frickin’ outrageous.”

The Trump administration should just unseal the Epstein files on its own, a judge determined Wednesday.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Richard Berman threw out the Justice Department’s third attempt to unseal the grand jury records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s case. Berman argued in a 14-page decision that it would make much more sense for the government to make its “trove” of Epstein-related documents available to the public instead of petitioning the court to release the limited grand jury materials that are protected by law.

“A significant and compelling reason to reject the Government’s position in this litigation is that the Government has already undertaken a comprehensive investigation into the Epstein case and, not surprisingly, has assembled a ‘trove’ of Epstein documents, interviews, and exhibits,” Berman wrote. “And, the Government committed that it would share its Epstein investigation materials with the public.”

Berman further disregarded the DOJ’s appeal for the grand jury materials as little more than a “diversion” from the “breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.”

“The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct,” Berman argued.

The order follows a similar decision last week by another Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, who denied a DOJ request to unseal grand jury testimony related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and longtime accomplice. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for abducting and grooming underage girls for Epstein’s abuse, though her decision to comply with the Justice Department earlier this month earned her a sudden transfer to a minimum-security prison.

Engelmayer wrote in his decision that the administration’s argument that the grand jury materials “​​would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes is demonstrably false.”

Much to Donald Trump’s chagrin, the botched rollout of the Epstein files has continued to plague his administration. The president has tried dozens of strategies since the beginning of July to peel attention away from the base-shattering issue, including suggesting that the FBI should expend resources to prove his invented claim that the entire case against Epstein is actually a Democratic “scam.”

A reminder that prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together and partied at casinos together with underage girls. Trump penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the sex trafficker’s 50th birthday, and was quoted in a 2002 New York magazine profile as saying that he had, at that point, known Epstein for 15 years, referring to him as a “terrific guy.”

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had to hear just how much Washington, D.C., hates them as they attempted a friendly photo op with Donald Trump’s federal forces Wednesday.

As Vance, Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller walked through Washington’s Union Station, surrounded by a gaggle of photographers and guards, it was immediately clear that they were unwelcome there.

“Oh look, it’s couch-fucker!” one person shouted in a video shared to X by HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney. “You gonna fuck a couch, buddy?”

The shouting built to a crescendo, and it became difficult to make out the jeers of individual onlookers. But one sentiment was clear: “Go fuck a couch, JD Vance!” the first heckler shouted.

The Team Trump trio had arrived to deliver burgers (bought at the Shake Shack in Union Station) to National Guardsmen hanging around the train station, well within the sights of their own photographers. Six red-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington’s streets, tasked with stopping crime—the rate of which was already down.

The group took a few questions from the press, shouting their answers over the chants of dissidents. Miller tried to dismiss the demonstrators as “elderly white hippies.”

Vance strained to hear a question over the sounds of people in the train station. The question was: “Polls show that a majority of D.C. residents don’t support the guard here. So what’s your message to the majority of D.C. residents?”

“I’m highly skeptical that a majority of D.C. residents don’t want their city to be—to have better public safety and more reasonable safety standards within Washington, D.C.,” Vance said over the shouting. “I don’t know what poll you’re talking about, maybe the same poll that said that Kamala Harris would win the popular vote by 10 points.”

Vance then ended the question session, clearly irritated.

In fact, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 65 percent of D.C. residents did not think that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard would make the city safer.

As Vance glad-handed National Guard troops, chants of “Free D.C.” could be heard in the background.

Another video shared by HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic showed the trio departing the station while deafening boos echoed off the high ceilings, the large hall bristling with contempt.

“Boo! Get out of here,” cried one onlooker.

It seems that the residents of D.C. have spoken—and they want Trump’s cronies gone.

Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.

With just over a year until midterms, one of America’s two main parties is hemorrhaging voters, losing registered voters in all 30 states that track registration by political party. The change has been observed in blue, red, and swing states alike.

In total, some 2.1 million voters ditched the Democrats in favor of alternative politics between 2020 and 2024, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The drop has resulted in more registered independents, but it has also become a boon for the GOP, which gained 2.4 million new voters over the same period.

Last year marked the first time since 2018 that more Americans checked “Republican” on their voter registration forms than “Democrat.” The downward trend has sparked serious concern among Democratic strategists, who have identified it as a “hidden-in-plain-sight crisis” that needs a solution before the next presidential election.

“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told the Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”

The most contentious battleground states have also experienced the liberal erosion. Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania all saw support peel away from Democrats over the last four years.

“In North Carolina, Republicans erased roughly 95 percent of the registration advantage that Democrats held in the fall of 2020, according to state records as of this summer,” reported the Times. “In Nevada, Democrats suffered the steepest percentage-point plunge of any state but West Virginia between 2020 and 2024.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are working overtime during Trump 2.0 to minimize future turnout at the voting booth. Since Inauguration Day, the administration has tried and failed to force Americans to show proof of citizenship at the voting booth and has attempted to take away the option of mail-in ballots.

Donald Trump and his allies have also made a target of voting software designed to identify potential voter fraud, advanced a Homeland Security agenda that has made immigrants fearful to legitimately participate in the American electorate, and generally undermined trust and confidence in the country’s process to elect its leaders.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night confused Armenia with another, somewhat similar-sounding nation, leading him to mistakenly claim he’d brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Albania.

The gaffe, which occurred while he was calling in to conservative commentator Mark Levin’s eponymous radio show, is only his latest geographical flub.

The president raved on air about his peacemaking efforts, repeating his false claim about having ended six wars during his second term.

“It’s, you know, a lot of amazing, amazing things,” Trump said, before attempting to mention his recently arranged Azerbaijan-Armenia peace declaration, which moved the countries toward peace—but did not fully end their 37-year-long conflict.

“You saw the Azerbaijan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that,” the president said.

Not only did Trump incorrectly call Armenia “Albania,” but he also hesitated uncertainly while stating the name of Azerbaijan. He ultimately bungled the country’s pronunciation (“the Aber … baijan,” he said), so much so that The Mark Levin Show’s transcript of the episode, as of this writing, has him as saying “Arab or Bhaijaan.”

In a recent Fox News appearance, Trump puzzlingly added an extra seventh war to his already misleading list of six accomplished peace deals. Perhaps the mysterious seventh was this fictional conflict between Armenia and Albania.