YOU ARE THE REASON
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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wallacepolsom
Mike Driver
todays bird
oozey mess
we're not kids anymore.
Jules of Nature
Keni
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One Nice Bug Per Day
occasionally subtle
The Bowery Presents
Not today Justin
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Origami Around
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@redistrictgirl
"Yeah I support economic justice, everyone deserves a safety net! My opinion on femininity and women's rights? Umm... Medicare for All!"
The American left keeps falling into the stupid trap of coddling white men and the Democratic establishment is... the Democratic establishment. Platner should have never made it to primary day, and he only made it there because everyone else also refused to put up a candidate worth a damn.
i think they should allow everyone in the world to vote in american elections
You guys joke, but reactionary brainrot usually only applies within one's own polity. Every country would benefit from global outside input, but especially the US
https://www.startribune.com/klobuchar-pitches-moderation-in-governors-race-rebuffs-redistricting-push-for-minnesota/601839171
Nominating Amy Klobuchar as governor of Minnesota could very well cost us a federal trifecta in 2028. We need to coalesce around an alternative and vote in the primary (DO NOT FUCKING SKIP THE PRIMARY.) I'm partial to Kobey Layne but I'll vote for whoever has momentum.
"dem president wouldve been just as bad" and the current administration is trying to reinstate Jim Crow laws. fucking hilarious you guys were in 2024
The Redistricting Wars
So, uh... a lot has happened over the past fifteen months. The second Trump administration has performed a series of what can be generously called "huge swings" and less generously called "constitutional crises" in order to enact various components of their agenda and cement the President's legacy in American history (and finances). Republicans have generally been in disarray when trying to legislate and in their response to scandals like Mr. Trump's presence in the Epstein files. But the party has been united in trying to lock Democrats out of power moving forward, most notably in gerrymandering (if you don't know what that is, it's altering the boundaries of congressional districts to secure additional representation for a political or demographic group and less representation for others). Their goal is to hold the House of Representatives regardless of the popular vote.
This started with the President's push to take advantage of his impressive performance in South Texas in 2016 by altering majority-Hispanic districts to be Republican-leaning. This is illegal according to the text and spirit of the Voting Rights Act, but perfectly legal according to the Supreme Court. California Democrats immediately countered with an ultimately successful referendum to alter an equal amount of seats in their state to be Democratic-leaning, and thus began a flurry of actions to gain the upper hand in the political terrain before November's midterm elections. As of April 21st, the following six states have redrawn their House of Representatives maps (excluding Utah, which actually undid an illegal Republican gerrymander on court order):
California (in favor of Democrats, 5 additional Harris-won seats)
Missouri (in favor of Republicans, 1 additional Trump-won seat)
North Carolina (in favor of Republicans, 1 additional Trump-won seat)
Ohio (in favor of Republicans, 1 additional Trump-won seat)
Texas (in favor of Republicans, 5 additional Trump-won seats)
Virginia (in favor of Democrats, 4 additional Harris-won seats)
Of note is Florida - Governor DeSantis and state Republicans will try to push through one more map, but we don't know the design of the map or how courts will affect its implementation this year.
On paper, the combined known quantities look like a net one-seat gain for Democrats, which would be really funny. But it's important to note that not all gerrymanders are created equal - some achieve the target party composition with ease, while others backfire. So which will happen for each of these maps, and how will that affect the midterms overall? Let's break things down, state by state:
California
2024 Results: 43D - 9R, 2026 SAPPHIRE Projection (April 21): 48D-4R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 13 (Old) -> 12 (New)
This is a REALLY impressive (is that the right word?) map. Of the 48 Democratic seats here, Republicans only have more than a 10% chance to win *one* this year according to my fundamentals model, and it's the 22nd district in the Central Valley, a seat that was already close in 2024. Not only have Democrats succeeded in their goal, they also shored up lots of existing seats in the event of a future red wave like Districts 13 (the San Joaquin Valley) and 27 (Lancaster and surrounding cities).
Missouri
2024 Results: 2D - 6R, 2026 SAPPHIRE Projection (April 21): 1D - 7R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 1 (Old) -> 2 (New)
This is another highly competent map. The 5th district (Kansas City) has been torn to shreds here and is basically an auto-flip for the GOP. Meanwhile, the 2nd district south of St. Louis has also been fortified for Republicans a bit. It's still gettable for Democrats, but if they flip it, it will probably just add to a larger cushion.
North Carolina
2024 Results: 4D - 9R, 2026 SAPPHIRE Projection (April 21): 3D - 10R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 3 (Old) -> 10 (New)
Likely under pressure from the President, North Carolina Republicans drew a new map that tries really, really hard to kick Representative Don Davis out of his seat in the northeast corner of the state's 1st district. It might not work - he has a 1-in-4 chance of hanging on - but the road is noticeably tougher for him in a seat Trump won by 12 points in 2024. Other than that, the map doesn't do a lot. The GOP didn't even shore up the 11th district, which remains a fringe battleground. In addition, this map has a high backfiring ceiling. In a generationally successful cycle, Democrats could theoretically sweep all thirteen seats and wipe the Republican bench in a pivotal swing state. That's a *very* marginal possibility (only ~1%), but it's a risk politicians don't usually take.
Ohio
2024 Results: 5D - 10R, 2026 SAPPHIRE Projection (April 21): 4D - 11R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 6 (Old) -> 7 (New)
WEAK.
There are a lot of byzantine rules in Ohio redistricting meant to deter gerrymandering, and I guess they worked. Republicans are only projected to flip the Toledo-based 9th district this cycle, and their redraw likely had minimal effect - it was already pretty Trumpy, and incumbent Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur is going to be tough to unseat, so that race is close to a tossup. The 1st district in Cincinnati saw the biggest swing between the old and new maps, but again, there's a strong Democratic incumbent here, so it goes from a solid seat to a likely hold. Other than that, the GOP punted on Akron's 13th district and just used it to keep liberals out of other seats. Didn't work that well, though - in a sufficiently big blue wave, they could feasibly lose three seats they currently hold.
Texas
2024 Results: 13D - 25R, 2026 Projection (April 21): 8D - 30R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 5 (Old) -> 8 (New)
The map that started this whole headache is... less than impressive. That topline projection looks eye-popping, but the actual changes are a little sloppy. There are new seats for the GOP in Dallas and Houston, sure, but look at South Texas and you won't see much deep red. It feels plausible that Democrats hold steady in the region if the voters that defected to Trump there in 2024 revert to their former patterns. There's even an outside chance (~1 in 8) that Republicans turn out to have spread themselves too thin south of San Antonio and *lose* the 15th district in the state. Of course, the 2024 voting patterns could always hold and the GOP gets everything they wanted here. That's not a guarantee, though.
Virginia
2024 Results: 6D - 5R, 2026 Baseline: 10D - 1R
Potentially Competitive Seats: 5 (Old) -> 5 (New)
When I ran the numbers on the map that was passed via referendum earlier tonight, I said "Dear God" out loud to myself. There's a major caveat here - since the filing deadline is a ways away, we can't factor incumbency into our estimates, so the SAPPHIRE projection isn't available yet. But just looking at the partisanship and demographic trends, Democrats were incredibly savvy here. Even if Republicans have another 2024-esque cycle, each of these seats has them as a 25-75 underdog at best to start, and their absolute ceiling is basically what they have right now. Democrats, meanwhile, are almost certain to win at least 9 seats and have over a 90% chance of winning the tenth seat this year. This is the most unrecognizable map of the redraws, but the stats don't lie here.
Conclusion
If you look at the headlines, you'd imagine that Democrats fought the redistricting wars to a draw this cycle. But if you dig deeper, they basically unequivocally won - their two new maps are arguably the two most effective, while most GOP maps have significant fail or backfire conditions, ranging from incumbent overperformance to demographic reversion to terrible worst-case scenarios. House Republicans need to hope that they can get through a Florida map that avoids those pitfalls or they may be in trouble not just this year, but for the rest of the decade.
To anyone here boycotting Kamala Harris because you listen to permanently online losers saying she’s “”pro-genocide””: fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.
“Genocide Joe” is no longer running and Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro, the latter of which has a lot of dicey connections to the IDF.
We’re getting the best realistic ticket for progressives and some of y’all still don’t think it’s enough?
Fuck you.
How did this go lol
This person dmed me after this btw
To be fair to OP this was posted two weeks before Harris decided to nuke her campaign. However, it was unsurprising when she nuked it because every Democratic operative combined has roughly the brain power of a walnut and two nickels and we should all stop listening to anything those operatives say.
SAPPHIRE State Ratings - 2025/26
Hello everyone,
I've posted very sporadically on Tumblr over the past year because the past year of politics has not been very electoral, but since people will start yapping about the 2026 midterms soon, I wanted to take a broad look at the political landscape using a forecast mechanism I call SAPPHIRE. In short, this mechanism is designed to look at previous election results in a polity, account for the national environment and turnout dynamics in each one, and spit out a composite probability of a given party winning the polity in a cycle with a given national environment. The idea is that "if the generic ballot has a result of ___ nationally, can a party win here if this or that batch of demographic trends happens, and how likely are said trends to happen?" will give us a stronger estimate than looking at one or two elections and linearly extrapolating (which other forecasters LOVE to do).
The big map at the top represents the favored party in each state given a D+3 national environment. Lighter colors mean that a state is closer to a coin flip. I chose the D+3 figure because it lands more or less in the middle of recent generic ballots in high-engagement elections (which have been happening more and more often, and is likely in 2026.) No, I don't believe that Trump's win last year means Democrats are no longer more likely to win the popular vote.
Here, the main "swing states" are North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada - both parties would have at least a 40% chance of winning the state in an average year (for comparison, those are the odds an elite NBA shooter has of hitting any given 3-pointer.) There's also a "blue wall" of Democratic-leaning swing states in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and now Georgia. These states are still likely to split, but it's unlikely that Republicans would take all of them. Further from the battlefield are New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Ohio. There's a handful of bright red states that Democrats have the same odds of flipping as you would of drawing a single ace from a deck of cards. Most of the states are deep blue or red - flipping one of those would at least be the equivalent of rolling a natural 20 (you nerd), most likely exponentially harder.
Of course, one of the benefits of SAPPHIRE is that it translates very well if we change the national environment. So here's what a red wave like the past two federal elections would look like...
...Now that seems familiar. Republicans would be clear favorites in all the swing states we discussed, except for the former reach states of Minnesota and New Hampshire (which very well might still flip in this scenario). While unlikely, Maine, New Jersey, Virginia, and New Mexico would also be plausible to turn red under some circumstances. Now, for the opposite, a blue wave like in 2018...
This is a similar story to the previous map in reverse. Democrats become markedly favored to win all the conventional swing states (though Republicans could still feasibly peel off one or two), Ohio and Florida become real battlegrounds (where Democrats probably win at least one), while a few other redder states become meaningfully competitive (about the same odds as rolling a six on a dice, maybe somewhat higher).
So does the conventional wisdom about only seven states meaning anything hold? Sort of - the six Biden/Trump 2024 states and North Carolina are the only ones we would expect to always be competitive. But when the electorate as a whole makes a decisive choice, unexpected places can come into play.
The goal of the American right, led by the Theilist factions and looney evangelicals, is the explicit destruction of our system of government and way of life. Everyone should be on board with not only stopping them, but punishing them for trying to do something so heinous.
A quick note on district to national swing conversions
In an individual polity or political district, we would generally expect weaker sensitivity to national trends the more lopsided the district in question is. In short, this is because elections consist of individual votes, not bloc percentages. Elections where a political party gains a ton of votes usually happen because the voters of one party are energized or dis-energized. We can also imagine that swing voters, while still a factor, generally exist proportionally less in lopsided districts. While individual demographics will obviously confound these factors, as a rule of thumb, the average district swing graph from one election to the next will probably look something like this:
Where the x-axis is percentage of votes for a party in a previous election, and the y-axis represents the percentage gains they make in a subsequent one. More lopsided districts (further towards the end) either have no opposition to discourage or base to encourage, so we see little to no improvement for the original party there, while districts closer to the national distribution of the prior election will see the most elasticity. So in short, small gains in elections are actually a lot more meaningful in more typically-lopsided districts - it suggests something about the electorate may be different from usual.
WAR IS OVER
The 80-year-old Democrat told WBEZ in an Illinois exclusive that age was a factor in his not seeking a sixth term in Congress.
RFK Jr.’s Autism Rhetoric Makes No One Healthy
Many terrible things have happened over the past 87 days (and counting). The global economy has been kneecapped, healthcare has been stripped away from vulnerable populations domestically and abroad, dissenters have been kidnapped and disappeared, and massive security breaches in our national infrastructure are now commonplace. Yet somehow, nothing has pushed my buttons quite like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims on Wednesday that autism is an epidemic that “destroys families and more importantly… destroys our greatest resource, our children.” Of course, this fearmongering is primarily intended for use as a cudgel in the Trump administration’s campaign to discredit vaccines, but the pure inhumanity of the remarks on autism itself should not be lost and could easily spiral into discriminatory or genocidal activity in the context of a reactionary and authoritarian government.
I would be remiss to approach this topic without discussing my own perspective on it. As you may have guessed if you followed my election coverage last year, I am autistic myself. Doctors in the early 2000s told my parents to expect that I would never live an independent lifestyle. However, thanks to rapid and strong interventions as well as sacrifice from my entire support network (not least of all myself as a young child!), I was in fact able to develop healthy speech, social skills, and general life skills. I maintain a full-time job and livelihood that most of my neurotypical peers find challenging to achieve while remaining unabashedly myself. I inspired my mother to become a behavior analyst, for crying out loud.
With all this in mind, my resentment towards antivaxxer depictions of autism should be fairly clear - they fail to depict my experience and erase the work I and others put in throughout my life as a pipe dream. I’m not trying to be a feel-good inspiration, but my experience is real and my remaining needs shouldn’t be ignored because my life isn’t as bad as it “should be.” Of course, the picture here is broader than my own experience, and that’s where Mr. Kennedy’s epidemic claims frighten me most.
It is true that most autistic people struggle to hold jobs and “go out on a date”, as the Secretary claims. Profoundly autistic people also may not engage in most everyday activities the same way neurotypical people do. But in the context of the Trump administration as a whole, these talking points are chilling. One of the most frightening statements was slipped in alongside these cherry-picked observations: “These are kids who will never pay taxes.”
Let’s ignore the infantilization in the choice of words for a moment. The implication of “never pay taxes” is that autistic people take up more economic resources more than they contribute. The Republican Party has laser-focused its economic messaging over the past 45 years on personal responsibility and self-sufficiency. We now have a GOP official in an administration that regularly introduces new barriers to healthcare and withdraws health-related foreign aid complaining that autistic people don’t help the national budget. If this rhetoric continues, discrimination against the neurodivergent community in healthcare could very well be emboldened as a “cost-saving” measure. Profoundly autistic people could lose their lifelines as they are regarded as dead weight on the budget. More fortunate individuals might simply be viewed as lazy “welfare monarchs” who should never be provided aid to overcome their disability, a common intersectional attack on marginalized groups.
And here’s the kicker - regardless of whether or not an autistic person pays taxes, has a job, or “writes a poem” (another bizarre point from Mr. Kennedy), they have worth by virtue of being a person. If life is worth living (and I think most people without depression would agree on that front), we should encourage life itself no matter how it touches the government’s budget or whether it checks all the boxes we expect a life to have. And I’m sorry, Secretary - your dramatic griping about autism on Wednesday doesn’t make any lives healthy, and not just because of the malaria and measles you inexplicably support. It will “destroy” more than autism ever could.
NOT AN APRIL FOOLS’ BIT.
Free Marcy Rheintgen.
“I’m not a political activist,” she maintained. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
This Ides of March, stab the Senators *then* stab Caesar.
Decided to move my “fuck donald trump” posts exclusively to Bluesky, where they will make my profile much less difficult to navigate.
Chuck Schumer twelve hours ago:
Electoral powerhouse
Ideologically respectable across the tent
Fantastic at whipping votes
Concerns over strategy handwaved by entire Democratic leadership
Chuck Schumer now:
DOA after this term
Drawing heat from the entire base, both progressive and centrist
Has failed to gain explicit support on the CR from even a single Democratic senator not named John Fetterman
Criticized not just by firebrands like AOC, but leaders like Jeffries and even ghouls like Seth Moulton
He’s making Kevin McCarthy and John Boehner look like master strategists. I’m stunned.
day 13 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* elon took over several important treasury mechanisms. reminder that he wasn’t elected to or confirmed for anything
day 14 of saying fuck donald trump
day 15 of saying fuck donald trump
day 16 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump backed off the tariffs for a month, possibly(?) excluding china, in exchange for imaginary bs
* one of the goons elon hired to take over the treasury payments system was confirmed to have a linkedin username of “bigballs”
day 17 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the usps stopped taking all deliveries from china and hong kong
* doge reportedly started pushing changes to the treasury payments codebase. this is unfathomably reckless and again, very VERY illegal.
* the white house began preparing an executive order to abolish the department of education. again, incredibly illegal. usaid is even worse, considering they didn’t even prep the executive order and are just shutting it down on friday
* Trump started talking about ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
day 18 of saying fuck donald trump
day 19 of saying fuck donald trump
day 20 of saying fuck donald trump
day 21 of saying fuck donald trump
day 22 of saying fuck donald trump
day 23 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the administration explicitly ignored a court order for the first time. that is very, very bad.
day 24 of saying fuck donald trump
day 25 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* elon musk used the treasury to steal money from a private bank account
day 26 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the department of justice is imploding over a deeply unethical order from trump to stop investigating eric adams
day 27 of saying fuck donald trump
day 28 of saying fuck donald trump
day 29 of saying fuck donald trump
day 30 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the DOJ was asked to investigate Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez
day 31 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump issued an executive order claiming that only he and the attorney general (among the executive branch) can interpret the laws
day 32 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump ended a tweet with “long live the king”
day 33 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the doj put in an inquiry to a sitting congressman who criticized elon musk
* the trump administration tried to take direct control of usps
day 34 of saying fuck donald trump
(i’m appreciating days without a “today” entry more and more)
day 35 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
*obm sent out a stupid “what did you do this week or you’re fired” email to every federal employee
day 36 of saying fuck donald trump
day 37 of saying fuck donald trump
day 38 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump floated creating $5M “gold cards” for immigration
day 39 of saying fuck donald trump
day 40 of saying fuck donald trump
day 41 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
a diplomatic meeting blew up because trump and vance wouldn’t stop being assholes to zelenskyy
day 42 of saying fuck donald trump
day 43 of saying fuck donald trump
day 44 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* tariffs on products from mexico and canada started
day 45 of saying fuck donald trump
day 46 of saying fuck donald trump
day 47 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* he undid the tariffs. lol
day 48 of saying fuck donald trump
day 49 of saying fuck donald trump
day 50 of saying fuck donald trump
day 51 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
a prominent palestinian protester got disappeared
the stock market took another dive
day 52 of saying fuck donald trump
day 53 of saying fuck donald trump
day 13 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* elon took over several important treasury mechanisms. reminder that he wasn’t elected to or confirmed for anything
day 14 of saying fuck donald trump
day 15 of saying fuck donald trump
day 16 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump backed off the tariffs for a month, possibly(?) excluding china, in exchange for imaginary bs
* one of the goons elon hired to take over the treasury payments system was confirmed to have a linkedin username of “bigballs”
day 17 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the usps stopped taking all deliveries from china and hong kong
* doge reportedly started pushing changes to the treasury payments codebase. this is unfathomably reckless and again, very VERY illegal.
* the white house began preparing an executive order to abolish the department of education. again, incredibly illegal. usaid is even worse, considering they didn’t even prep the executive order and are just shutting it down on friday
* Trump started talking about ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
day 18 of saying fuck donald trump
day 19 of saying fuck donald trump
day 20 of saying fuck donald trump
day 21 of saying fuck donald trump
day 22 of saying fuck donald trump
day 23 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the administration explicitly ignored a court order for the first time. that is very, very bad.
day 24 of saying fuck donald trump
day 25 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* elon musk used the treasury to steal money from a private bank account
day 26 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the department of justice is imploding over a deeply unethical order from trump to stop investigating eric adams
day 27 of saying fuck donald trump
day 28 of saying fuck donald trump
day 29 of saying fuck donald trump
day 30 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the DOJ was asked to investigate Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez
day 31 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump issued an executive order claiming that only he and the attorney general (among the executive branch) can interpret the laws
day 32 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump ended a tweet with “long live the king”
day 33 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* the doj put in an inquiry to a sitting congressman who criticized elon musk
* the trump administration tried to take direct control of usps
day 34 of saying fuck donald trump
(i’m appreciating days without a “today” entry more and more)
day 35 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
*obm sent out a stupid “what did you do this week or you’re fired” email to every federal employee
day 36 of saying fuck donald trump
day 37 of saying fuck donald trump
day 38 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* trump floated creating $5M “gold cards” for immigration
day 39 of saying fuck donald trump
day 40 of saying fuck donald trump
day 41 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
a diplomatic meeting blew up because trump and vance wouldn’t stop being assholes to zelenskyy
day 42 of saying fuck donald trump
day 43 of saying fuck donald trump
day 44 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* tariffs on products from mexico and canada started
day 45 of saying fuck donald trump
day 46 of saying fuck donald trump
day 47 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
* he undid the tariffs. lol
day 48 of saying fuck donald trump
day 49 of saying fuck donald trump
day 50 of saying fuck donald trump
day 51 of saying fuck donald trump
today:
a prominent palestinian protester got disappeared
the stock market took another dive
day 52 of saying fuck donald trump
