Other's Journeys

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350205/-Virginia-Democrats-seek-to-reshape-House-map-to-counter-Trump-redistricting-push?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

Virginia Democrats are taking steps to redraw their state’s U.S. House districts, hoping to boost their party’s chances in next year’s midterm elections and counter President Donald Trump’s push for more partisan districts in Republican-run states.

Virginia House Speaker Don Scott sent a letter Thursday to members telling them to convene Monday for a special session but did not state a reason. The purpose includes congressional redistricting aimed at gaining more Democratic-held seats, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because they are not authorized to publicly discuss them.

Virginia would be the second state with a Democratic-led legislature after California to enter a national redistricting battle with enormous stakes. If Democrats gain just three more seats, they would take control of the House and effectively impede Trump’s agenda.

Republican lawmakers in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina already have approved new congressional maps aimed at helping their party win more seats and retain the slim GOP House majority. And even more states are considering redistricting as the battle front widens.

A spokeswoman for Democrats' House campaign arm characterized Virginia's effort as the party pursuing "every available tool to counter Republicans’ desperate attempts to steal the midterms.”

“Virginia’s decision to convene and preserve the right to consider a new map in 2026 is critical in the fight to ensure voters have fair representation,” said Courtney Rice, communications director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Republicans vowed to fight. Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore said Democrats missed their opportunity to carry out this procedure by 2026 and that it's “too late constitutionally” to do so.

“We are going to do everything legally we can do to stop this power grab,” Kilgore said.

Voting districts typically are redrawn at the start of each decade to account for population changes noted by the census. But Trump took the unusual step over the summer of urging Republican-led states to reshape key districts to try to buck a historical trend of a president’s party losing seats in midterm elections.

Virginia currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who ran in districts whose boundaries were imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census.

The effort to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts comes in the final weeks before the Nov. 4 state legislative and statewide elections. But Monday's session is just the start of what could be a long legislative process, running past the election.

Because Virginia’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, the electorate must sign off on any changes. And any proposed change to the constitution must first pass the legislature in two separate sessions. Democrats are scrambling to hold that first vote this year, so that they can approve the change a second time after a new legislative session begins Jan. 14.

Voters still would have to approve a change in the constitution to allow using the new House map. And that vote would need to occur before congressional primaries, which are currently set for June 16 — though dates for such elections have been pushed back in the past.

In many states, congressional districts are drawn by state lawmakers, subject to the approval of the governor. But North Carolina’s new map, which received final approval Wednesday from the Republican-led Legislature, did not have to go to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Those changes target a swing district held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis by adding areas that contain more Republican-leaning voters.

Like Virginia, California has a constitutionally established redistricting commission, which approved maps after the 2020 census. California voters are to decide in a Nov. 4 election whether to temporarily suspend those districts and instead use a map approved by the Democratic-led Legislature that could help Democrats pick up as many as five additional seats.

No voter approval is necessary for the revised districts in Missouri, North Carolina or Texas, though opponents in Missouri are gathering petition signatures to try to force a statewide vote on their new map.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350205/-Virginia-Democrats-seek-to-reshape-House-map-to-counter-Trump-redistricting-push?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350103/-Meet-the-grifty-fundraiser-behind-Trump-s-gaudy-ballroom?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

If you’ve been wondering how exactly the whole “companies bribe the president by contributing to his gaudy monstrosity of a ballroom” thing works, join the club.

Now, now. These aren’t bribes; they’re donations!

Just ask Meredith O’Rourke, one of President Donald Trump’s top fundraisers who is apparently in charge of this thing. She doesn’t work for the government. In fact, she literally works for Trump’s campaign—still.

O’Rourke isn’t just good at getting bribes, er, donations. She specializes in the sort of complicated, shady fundraising that this ballroom requires.

Remember how during his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump oddly set up a GoFundMe for Hurricane Helene relief? Donors gave money to the GoFundMe, and GoFundMe then turned around and paid out that donor money—but only after taking a small chunk per transaction.

Weird that those deep-pocketed donors didn't just donate to existing charities, right? Well, if they did that, Trump wouldn’t know exactly how much those donors gave in an effort to impress him. And that’s the O’Rourke difference! 

Back in October 2024, coverage of this decidedly odd arrangement was all about how O’Rourke helmed the effort and how generous those deep-pocketed right-wingers were—like Bill Ackman, the Heritage Foundation, and Dana White—to the tune of $7.7 million. 
That’s a lot of money! People in North Carolina must have been so grateful! 

About that …

All of it went to religious charities with ties to Trump, and literally only $25,000 of the $7.7 million could be connected to a specific charity and donation. Mtn2Sea Ministries acknowledged that it used its $25,000 to buy gift cards for rural communities in Clinch County, Georgia. Another group admitted that it got $5.2 million but didn’t explain what it did with that money. 

But, hey, what really matters is that Trump learned how much his rich donors are willing to spend to get his attention.

O’Rourke was also behind the “dedicated VIP experience” offered to donors willing to give big money to Trump’s pathetic birthday parade. 

But maybe you’re exceedingly rich and corrupt but feel like a military parade is a bit too flashy. If you’re more of a low-key sort, O’Rourke put together a candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, where $1 million got you a seat at the dinner but $5 million got you a one-on-one meeting with Trump. 

It’s not clear how requiring seven figures to get in the room with Trump isn’t a donation, because if it’s not a donation … it’s a bribe.

Now, how about that ballroom! 

Sure, Trump said he was going to pay for the ballroom, but now that’s been dialed back to, “President Trump is generously donating his time and resources to build a beautiful White House ballroom, a project which past presidents only dreamed about.”

Thanks to O’Rourke’s creative fundraising, where she—a private citizen—has partnered with the Trust for the National Mall—a private charity—which supports the National Park Service—a government agency—all of those delicious donor dollars can be laundered through the Trust, resulting in a sweet tax write-off. 

Despite the Trust somehow being the conduit for hundreds of millions of dollars in ballroom donations, there’s nary a mention of the ballroom,Trump, or O’Rourke anywhere on its website.

Nonetheless, companies are falling over themselves to make donations to “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House,” and it’s all thanks to O’Rourke. 

Everybody wins—except the American people. 

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350103/-Meet-the-grifty-fundraiser-behind-Trump-s-gaudy-ballroom?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350047/--Cancer-doesn-t-care-Citizen-lobbyists-unite-to-push-past-Washington-s-ugly-politics?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

By Noam N. Levey for KFF

Mary Catherine Johnson is a retired small-business owner from outside Rochester, New York. She voted for Donald Trump three times.

Lexy Mealing, who used to work in a physician’s office, is from Long Island. She’s a Democrat.

But the women share a common bond. They both survived breast cancer.

Related | World’s premier cancer institute faces crippling cuts and chaos

And when the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network organized its annual citizen lobby day in Washington last month, Johnson and Mealing were among the more than 500 volunteers pushing Congress to keep cancer research and support for cancer patients at the top of the nation’s health care agenda.

The day is something of a ritual for groups like the cancer organization.

This year, it came as Democrats and Republicans in Washington slid toward a budget impasse that shut down the federal government. But these volunteers transcended their political differences and found common ground.

“Not one person here discussed if you’re a Democrat, if you’re a Republican,” said Mealing, one of 27 volunteers in the New York delegation. “Cancer doesn’t care.”

Every one of the volunteer lobbyists had been touched in some way by the deadly disease, which is expected to kill more than 600,000 people in the U.S. this year.

Johnson said each of her mother’s 10 siblings died from cancer, as did a lifelong friend who died at age 57, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters.

Like many of the New York volunteers, Johnson also said she’s worried about the state of politics today.

“I think we’re probably the most divided that we’ve ever been,” she said. “That scares me. Scares me for my grandchildren.”

Katie Martin, a cancer volunteer from outside Buffalo, also worries. She and her daughter recently drove past political protesters screaming at one another on the street.

“My daughter is silent and then starts asking, ‘What is this?’ And I don’t know how to explain it, because it doesn’t even make sense to me,” she said. “It’s very heartbreaking.”

Mealing said she can barely watch the news these days. “A lot of Americans are very stressed out. There’s a lot of things going on.”

Americans are indeed split over many issues — immigration, guns, President Trump. But helping people with cancer and other serious illnesses retains broad bipartisan support, polls show.

In one recent survey, 7 in 10 voters said it’s very important for the federal government to fund medical research. That included majorities of Democrats and Republicans.

“It’s rare in today’s environment to see numbers like that,” said Jarrett Lewis, a Republican pollster who conducted the survey for patient groups. “But almost everybody in this country knows somebody who’s had cancer.”

Similarly, a recent KFF poll found that three-quarters of U.S. adults, including most Republicans who align with the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement, want Congress to extend subsidies that help Americans buy health insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

These subsidies, which are critical to people with chronic illnesses such as cancer, are among the main sticking points in the current budget impasse in Congress.

As the cancer volunteers gathered in a conference hotel in Washington, they focused on their shared agenda: increasing funding for cancer research, retaining insurance subsidies, and expanding access to cancer screening.

“We may not see eye to eye politically. We might not even see eye to eye in social circumstances,” said Martin, the Buffalo-area volunteer. “But we can see beyond those differences because we’re here for one cause.”

The state delegations practiced the pitches they would make to their members of Congress. They ran through the personal stories they would share. And they swapped tips for how to deal with resistant staff and how to ask for a photo with a lawmaker.

On the morning of their lobby day, they reconvened in a cavernous ballroom, decked out in matching blue polo shirts and armed with red information folders to leave at each office they would visit.

They got a pep talk from a pair of college basketball coaches. Then they headed across town to Capitol Hill.

The army of volunteers — from every state in the country — hit 484 of the 535 Senate and House offices.

Not every visit was an unqualified victory. Many Republican lawmakers object to extending the insurance subsidies, arguing they’re too costly.

But lawmakers from both parties have backed increased research funding and support for more cancer screening.

And the New Yorkers felt good about the day. “It was amazing,” Mealing said as the day wrapped up. “You could just feel the sense of, ‘Everybody stronger together.’”

When evening came, the volunteers met on the National Mall for a candlelight vigil. It was raining. Bagpipes played.

Around a pond near the Lincoln Memorial, some 10,000 tea lights glimmered in little paper bags. Each luminary had a name on it — a life touched by cancer.

John Manna, another New Yorker, is a self-described Reagan Republican whose father died from lung cancer. He reflected on the lessons this day could offer a divided nation.

“Talk to people,” he said. “Get to know each other as people, and then you can understand somebody’s positions.  We have little disagreements, but, you know, we don’t attack each other. We talk and discuss it.”

Manna said he would be back next year.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/24/2350047/--Cancer-doesn-t-care-Citizen-lobbyists-unite-to-push-past-Washington-s-ugly-politics?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=