Yesterday, the 51 Democratic Texas state representatives who left the state for Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts on August 3 to prevent Republican lawmakers from redistricting Texas to give five Democratic congressional seats to Republicans went back home. Immediately, they discovered that Republican House speaker Dustin Burrows wanted them to sign a statement that committed them to showing up for the Wednesday morning vote on the rigged maps President Donald Trump demands, limiting their liberty until they enabled the Republicans’ power grab. Burrows also assigned state troopers to the Democrats to monitor their movements around the clock to make sure they were present Wednesday morning and until the final vote on the measure. Refusal to sign the commitment meant risking arrest. Representative Nicole Collier, a Black woman who represents a majority-minority district in Fort Worth, refused to sign. As Joe Sommerlad of The Independent reported, Collier said: “I refuse to sign. I will not agree to be in custody. I’m not a criminal. I am exercising my right to resist and oppose the decisions of our government. So this is my form of protest.” She said: “My constituents sent me to Austin to protect their voices and rights. I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts.” Noting that officers policing Democratic lawmakers were not on the beat, she suggested that loss made the public less safe. Told she could not leave the Capitol building without being arrested, Collier spent the night inside the House chamber. When demonstrators showed up to support her, state troopers arrested them. Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez posted a video of people outside the chamber chanting “Let Her Go!” to social media with the heading: “This is full-on authoritarianism.” In the video, he said: “This is the kind of bullsh*t that’s happening right now in the Texas legislature. Dustin Burrows has locked up Nicole Collier because she won’t sign some bullsh*t permission slip to be followed around by a DPS escort—that’s a cop following around for the next three weeks to make sure that she comes in and votes for this bullsh*t Donald Trump redistricting bill.” “What’s going on in Texas is absolutely 100% wrong and locking up members of the legislature because they won’t sign your bullsh*t document: it’s just wrong. It’s wrong. We need more people up here fighting. We need more people up here fighting alongside state representative Nicole Collier who’s doing this protest because she must. And we all must. We must fight against Donald Trump and all of this madness that’s happening in this country and fight against his constant grab for power in the United States.” Today, Collier filed a writ of habeas corpus to force the Texas House of Representative’s Sergeant-at-Arms to end her “illegal confinement” immediately. Under pressure from a deeply unpopular president to rig the 2026 elections to keep MAGA Republicans in power, the Texas governor has called the Texas legislature into session to rewrite congressional district maps to create five new Republican-dominated districts. When Democrats tried to stop this power grab, Republican legislative leadership responded by assigning state troopers to make sure they showed up to let that power grab go through. When one refused to enter police custody to perform her job as an elected legislator, the Republican leadership took away her liberty. On the road to authoritarianism, this is a whole factory of red flags. It lays bare the political power grab driving the Trump administration’s expansion of the police power. Although administration officials claim to be combating crime, they are setting up a one-state political system that will answer only to MAGA. Trump’s announcement on August 11 that he was taking control of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and calling out the District of Columbia National Guard to fight crime was in keeping with the determination to exert control over Democratic-led cities that he has exhibited since at least 2020. The government’s own statistics show that violent crime in Washington, D.C., is at a 30-year-low, but Trump describes it as a violent hellhole requiring a show of force. That show has included not only local police officers and the National Guard, but also officers from at least 10 federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This morning, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that the Trump administration is taking FBI agents away from their specialties in combatting terrorism, hackers, and spies, as well as fighting public corruption, white-collar crime, civil rights, and child sex crimes. Instead, FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino, both formerly MAGA influencers, are turning the FBI into a national police force, despite the fact that their own statistics show that violent crime rates are much lower than they were twenty years ago. One former agent told Dilanian: “You have the top two decision-makers, both with limited exposure to the law enforcement and legal system, solely making long-impacting decisions based on social and political rhetoric, conspiracy theories rooted in 'deep state' cleansing, and lack of understanding of the true implications of the decisions which they will soon walk away from and leave for others to clean up.” A map of where the troops have been seen in the nation’s capital makes it very clear they are not really there to combat crime. They are stationed in areas where they are mostly likely to be seen and to make a statement, especially around the White House and the national monuments on the National Mall. Many of them are simply standing around. They are there to demonstrate Trump’s control of the seat of government in the United States of America with an eye to convincing Americans he controls the government itself. MAGA Republican governors are rushing to be part of the demonstration of the MAGA takeover of the country’s government, sending their state’s National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. This, too, has little to do with actual crime. Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia committed troops over the past few days, but as journalist Philip Bump noted, there are 43 cities in those states that have higher crime rates than Washington, D.C., does. Today, the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee committed National Guard personnel to Trump’s crackdown in Washington, D.C. The White House seems determined to provoke confrontations: after the Army said National Guard troops would neither carry weapons nor have weapons in their vehicles, the White House said in a statement on Saturday that National Guard troops “may be armed, consistent with their mission and training, to protect federal assets, provide a safe environment for law enforcement officers to make arrests, and deter violent crime with a visible law enforcement presence.” When several masked agents assaulted and handcuffed a delivery worker near D.C.’s Logan Circle, bystanders videotaping the encounter repeatedly asked to see badges. One of the officers said: “Do I have to answer to you?” The bystander said: “You got to answer to somebody!” “Are you guys working for the U.S. government or not?” The agent answered: “Back the f*ck up.” The bystander said: “You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?” The agent made his MAGA allegiance clear. He answered: “Liberals already ruined it.” Tonight, Democratic members of the Texas House tore up the statements they had signed agreeing to let police accompany them to guarantee their appearance at the votes that would permit Republicans to rig the state’s congressional maps and said they would join Collier on the floor. State representative Cassandra Hernandez called their stance a “slumber party for democracy.” — Notes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/15/dc-police-national-guard-map-trump/ https://www.msnbc.com/news/news-analysis/trump-fbi-violent-crimes-kash-patel-project-47-rcna225307 https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5458527-national-guard-dc-troop-increase/ https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/federal-agent-dc-violent-arrest-delivery-worker-video https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/19/texas-lawmaker-spends-night-house-chamber/ Bluesky: You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. 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Tuesday, August 19, 2025
August 19, 2025
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August 19, 2025
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