If you’re in or near Boston I hope you’ll join us on September 25th for a Happy Hour we’re hosting at the Lamplighter Brewing Co in Cambridge. We’re cohosting it with STAT News, the medical news website. STAT co-founder Rick Berke and I will have a quick discussion about the news of the day and then it’s drinking and chatting. I’ll be there and a bunch of other TPMers will be there. We’ve done these in New York and DC for the last handful and this is our first outside of our two home cities. Only a couple dozen tickets are left. So if you’re interested the details are here.

With one half of them beaming in from occupied D.C., Kate and Josh are back on the regular schedule to talk the capital takeover, budding Democratic resistance and Trump’s candid election rigging.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I’d heard reports that the Pentagon was sending out official emails to Pentagon employees telling them about the great new opportunities available working for ICE and the CBP. Then I was told about this new listing at USAJobs — the official jobs board for the U.S. government. It says the Department of Homeland Security is creating something called the ICE/CBP “Volunteer Force” which is open to all civilian DOD employees.

The listing reads …

Last night I got an email from TPM reader LE. She started by explaining that she’s been reading TPM for at least a couple decades, going back to earlier early adulthood phases of her life, and is now a state legislator in a midwestern state. So the idea that state governments are central to the current moment is of great interest and resonated with her. (A side note: this introduction warmed my heart on many levels.) But she asked, more as a rhetorical question, than as a question to me: what specifically? Yes, state power is clearly critical but just what elements of state power should we be focusing on, where are the specific resistance points?

I had perhaps an over-convenient answer: I’m focused on the big picture. The small picture, well, good question …

But it did make me start thinking: If the concept is right, operationally what’s first? If state officials are saying what should we be doing, what should people advise?

This got me to thinking and I thought of various ideas and various ways of answering the question. So let me share a few of those, not in any comprehensive way but as a way of starting a conversation.