I’ve written a number of times about the central role of state sovereignty in resisting Trump’s growing tyranny and the critical fact that states control the administration of elections. With that in mind, I want to flag what I think is a key part of that equation. It’s not meant to be alarmist. It’s simply a matter of preparation.

As we’ve discussed, states control the administration of elections, subject to Congress setting standards for the administration of elections. This critical fact isn’t just a matter of law. It’s about the machinery of government. The states are there and the federal government isn’t. Trump can dash off a million executive orders but that doesn’t make them real or meaningful. More dangerous, he might try to use Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or federal troops to create a climate of intimidation at the ballot box. That threat is real. But because of the structure of our elections, the key danger point likely comes later. Let’s assume the 2026 election or more likely the 2028 election goes more or less unmolested. Now in January 2027 the new representatives and senators show up for the new Congress. Are they seated? Or do congressional Republicans somehow refuse to seat them, arguing that their elections were somehow illegitimate, that they didn’t follow one of Trump’s legally meaningless executive orders?

This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one of the most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons. Twenty-something Brandon Lutnick, pictured above on the left in a 2016 photo, is the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald. (He must be hella talented!)

I want to focus in on two news items today.

The first is the report that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will soon announce she will not run for re-election. This isn’t a total surprise. There were signs this was coming. But it’s still an important development and one that signifies something larger. She’s now the second Republican senator up for reelection next year who has opted to retire. The first was Sen. Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Not long after this Ernst news was reported, we learned that conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is also opting not to run for reelection next year. It’s hard for me to imagine that Ernst’s final decision wasn’t impacted by Tuesday’s blow out win by Catelin Drey in an Iowa state senate special election race, in what is normally a strongly pro-Trump district.

It goes without saying that both Ernst and Bradley likely realized that these were at least going to be difficult races — Democrats have won four of the last five Wisconsin court races. And quite possibly they’d lose. But this also reminds us that one of the usual factors in a blow out or wave election cycle is that a non-trivial number of incumbents see what’s coming and retire. That tends to magnify the wave party’s advantage because the in-party has an even harder time holding a seat without the power of incumbency.

Now I’m not predicting a wave election. Iowa certainly will still be a very challenging race even without Ernst in it. My point is simply that a lot of the building blocks of a wave get determined well before any votes get counted. The people who speak with the most credibility and authority about the political environment going into 2026 are Republican incumbents. And they’re starting to speak pretty clearly. It started with the Spring town halls, or the lack thereof.

GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado was apparently just a no-show at his own town hall on Wednesday. Technically it wasn’t a town hall but rather a public meeting in which Hurd would meet with members of the Montezuma County Commission. Point being, it wasn’t one of these things where Democrats put on a town hall because the member won’t call one. It was one he was involved in organizing. Anyway, apparently Hurd found out shortly before arriving that more than a hundred people had shown up because just after the event began, Montezuma County Commission Chair Jim Candeleria announced that Hurd wouldn’t be able to make it because an aide he was traveling with had a “medical emergency”.

No word on how the dog is doing after it ate Hurd’s homework.

Kate and Josh discuss Trump’s “firing” of a Fed governor, his eyeing of Chicago as ripe for takeover and Kate and Josh Kovensky’s scoop on the DOJ’s efforts to eradicate gender-affirming care nationwide.

Two ideas I heard from TPM Readers today:

The first is from TPM Reader BT, who recommends that big cities hold military occupation referendums. Needless to say these would not constrain President Trump. But they would make clear what the population of the city wants. I think it’s a really good idea. You need to think outside the box.

The second is from TPM Reader JB. He asks whether courts could begin holding Zoom hearings for people at risk of getting picked up by ICE at the courthouse. For immigration hearings and check-ins this is a nonstarter since President Trump controls that process. But I see no reason why true Article 3 courts couldn’t do something like that. That doesn’t mean they will of course. But it’s an idea worth raising.

I’m by no means the first one to note this. But it’s so important that I want to make sure it’s at the top of your mind. Have you noticed that out of the blue all of Donald Trump’s enemies seem to be getting investigated for mortgage fraud? Letitia James, Adam Schiff and now Fed Board member Lisa Cook; and it’s the pretext for her purported firing by President Trump?

Well, it turns out there’s a reason. Bill Pulte is Trump’s Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an agency created as part of the Global Financial Crisis reforms. From that post he finagled his way into being the head of Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae, the quasi public institutions which back a huge percentage of American home and student loans.

We’re seeing lots of news today about the occupation of Washington, D.C. and the president’s takeover of the Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department, as well as clear signals that he plans to expand this program to other big blue-state cities. I want to step back from the particulars to try to see the situation as a whole and consider the political ways to react to it. This builds on the point that grew out of my conservation with a TPM Reader a week and a half ago which is that the narrow issues of legality are mostly beside the point — not irrelevant, but at best secondary. The president views states and municipalities controlled by political opponents as something akin to conquered territories which must be bent to his will by force. This includes budgetary coercion and as close as he can get to military occupation. This is un-American, outside the constitutional order and, not least in importance, unpopular.

He has done this by exploiting various loopholes, taking advantage of a compliant and corrupt Supreme Court and resorting to expedients in which his power is most un-reviewable despite his actions clearly violating the plain intention of the laws in question. None of these technicalities change the fact that these are all violations of the liberties Americans are entitled to.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is plowing ahead with plans to gerrymander California’s congressional map to match the partisan gerrymander speeding to passage in Texas. He’s also been on a nonstop crusade going back a couple weeks — one half elaborate parody, one half frontal assault — using memes, all-caps, and boffo trash talk to attack Donald Trump. Not everyone likes Gavin Newsom. Personally, I’ve never been strongly in the fan or hater camp. But Newsom is doing exactly what we should be expecting of every Democratic politician today, especially those in executive office at the state level and especially those looking for promotions or to remain in office.

One benefit of what is happening in DC is that Donald Trump is giving every major city a preview of the plan, the model they want to pursue. Only in the every other major city in the country, he’ll lack a key tool: the takeover of the local police force. The courts will likely still allow deployment of National Guard and federal police organizations: ICE, CBP, DEA, FBI etc. That’s a lot. But local governments control over their police organizations and the apparatus of local government is a major difference. Every state and major municipal government needs to be stepping forward now with what their plan is. There’s no excuse for being caught off guard or unprepared.