r/TheLib

After all the gerrymanders are over, analysis by G. Elliott Morris suggests that in the worst-case scenario Democrats will need to win the House popular vote by four points to flip the chamber. A poll earlier this week had them leading on the generic congressional ballot by 11. Needless to say, we’re still well positioned for a blue wave in November… if we can get our voters counted and our victories certified.

Tomorrow night, we’ll have two opportunities to get involved in the work of protecting this election. At 7:00PM ET, Third Act Maryland is bringing together folks from VoteRiders, VoPro Pros and Red2Blue to talk about how we can get plugged into the work of registering voters, educating folks about rule changes, ballot curing, staffing voter hotlines and poll watching. 🗳️ We can sign up for this info session here. 🗳️

If we’re familiar with the work and ready to lead, the organizers of the Good Trouble Lives On Weekend of Action scheduled for July 17-19 will be running a call for potential event hosts, also at 7PM ET! They’re asking folks to run registration drives, status checks, poll worker recruitment and Know Your Rights trainings in a summer festival of democracy! 🗳️ Hosts can sign up to learn more here. 🗳️

The deportation forces are not above the law in Hennepin County, Minnesota if nowhere else. Yesterday their lead prosecutor Mary Moriarty announced charges against an ICE agent for the second time, this time against Christian Castro for four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Castro shot a man named Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the thigh, firing through a front door while in the process of chasing Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, who lived in his apartment complex. Homeland Security then accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating officers with a broom handle and snow shovel, calling it “attempted murder” by “violent criminal illegal aliens” and blaming Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey for encouraging assault against law enforcement. Both were charged with crimes. Those charges were dropped, and video eventually publicly released proved this story was a lie. (Both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna are also, incidentally, in the country legally.)

That prosecutors are attempting to hold officers accountable for this flagrant violence and misconduct is positive, and they indicated they were still investigating the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. The bad news is no one appears to be following Hennepin County’s lead. Prosecutors in Durango, Colorado are charging a CBP officer with misdemeanor assault for attacking a demonstrator, but these are the only deportation agents facing legal consequences so far. While state and local governments face serious challenges indicting federal officials for crimes on the job, it’s not impossible, and we need frontline agents carrying out Trump’s agenda to go forward knowing they are not immune.

🗣️ If we’re in areas that have been terrorized by the deportation machine, let’s reach out to our own local prosecutors and state attorneys general and tell them it’s time to step up like Hennepin County did and commit to prosecuting any crimes by ICE and CBP agents to the fullest extent of the law. We can find scripts and language here. 🗣️

Swamp the swamp!! Blanche just dodged congressional interrogation saying that the application to receive payout so let's do.

With no re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz in sight and experts suggesting we'll see the national average price of gas reach $5 a gallon as early as June, the Trump regime is trying to do something, anything, to indicate to the American people that they care. Their latest suggestion: suspending the federal gas tax.

The federal gas tax is an easy punching bag, and it’s frequently an early target when politicians need to look like they’re doing something about gas prices. (It’s already been suggested by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle since Trump began his war, although congressional leadership does not seem enthusiastic.) But pausing it will not in fact do much to help consumers. We pay 18.3 cents in federal taxes for each gallon of gasoline and estimates suggest we’d only see prices fall 10-16 cents, meaning we’d be reducing today’s average national price to $4.34 at best – still higher than it was a month ago, and still climbing. Furthermore, every dollar we end up saving as consumers from a gas tax suspension is a dollar that’s not getting used for the highway and mass transit repairs that that tax is supposed to be funding.

Activists and Democrats led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Ro Khanna have been pushing a real solution to put money back in our pockets. They’ve proposed a windfall profits tax on the fossil fuel industry (the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, S.4111/H.R.7960), which return some of the excess money they’re making off this crisis to American households. And there’s plenty to return: Big Oil, who donated massively to elect this president, made $30 million *an hour* extra for the same amount of oil in just the first month of the war, and could ultimately clear more than $200 billion in excess profits off Trump’s “excursion.” Trump has been openly gleeful about how this war is driving more oil sales from Texas. That’s money that’s better used by regular working folks who are trying to make ends meet.

Let’s reach out to our members of Congress and urge them to ignore Trump’s band-aid with the gas tax, and support the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act as a real answer to rising gas prices. We can find scripts and language to use here. We can also send this message via Resistbot by texting SIGN PJIYXQ to 50409.

Also in today's Rogan's List:

• After primary day in Nebraska, help Dan Osborn shake up the Senate and the state Dems protect the blue dot in the legislature
• Join Red Wine & Blue to flood social media with the truth about the attack on voting rights TOMORROW at 7:30 PM ET
• Talk about what works to flip Congress TODAY with Volunteer Blue at 4:00PM ET
• Six days left until the Georgia primary… and until we flip two supreme court seats! Today, we can phonebank for Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin from 6-8PM ET here or any time by signing up here! We can also commit to shifts over the next few days here (new sessions just added all weekend) and put this DemCast USA social media toolkit promoting our progressive candidates here!