From what I’ve read, that only applies if the President is incapacitated (presumably temporarily). He can re-assume the office just by saying that he’s ready to return to the job. Removing a President who claims he’s able to hold the office require a 2/3 majority of both the House and Senate.

The only messages Trump has are lies and bigotry, and even his supporters aren’t buying his lies anymore. Normalizing his demented horseshit as some kind of coherent economic message is how we got to where we are today.

There are two types of gerrymandering, packing and cracking. A packed district is where you concentrate voters from the opposition party into one district. You give up a seat, but the remaining districts swing more heavily in your favor. A cracked district is what you are describing, where you dilute the margins of the opposition party by breaking up their strongholds into multiple districts and combine them with areas that vote in your favor.

This was not a “middle of nowhere” district as it included a chunk of the city of Nashville and its suburbs. It was a classic cracked gerrymander as Republicans split Nashville into multiple districts and combined them with large swaths of red countryside (see also the notorious Austin gerrymander in Texas). The margins can sometimes be close enough in a cracked district for the opposition party to win, but in this case it was unlikely as it was Trump +22 in 2024 (in spite of including some of Nashville).

Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome’s.

I don’t think a bullshit investigation of a high profile, decorated veteran is going to go as well for the fascists as they think it’s going to.

Yes, mostly rain on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Rain and 45 F is pretty much the default for winter here; you’d probably like it. I don’t mind the cold (within reason), but the constant cloudiness gets to me. I miss the sun already, and the rainy season has just started.

The weather. Moved from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. I like it here, but even after three decades the winter gloom still gets to me.

First thing that crossed my mind, too.

It depends on how many of the gerrymandered districts are packed (large Democratic majorities) and how many are cracked (Democratic population centers are split up into multiple districts with small-ish Republican majorities). Cracked districts can be won if Democrats turn out in record numbers. Packed districts just produce more lopsided majorities in favor of the Democratic candidate.

Of course, this gerrymander is only one of the voter suppression tactics that Texas Republicans will use to lower Democratic turnout.