# Nothing You Can Do Can Stop Us

An episode of [Letters from an American](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1730358737), 3 Sep 2026, 11 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/214065415/a3b32d35aca2f76cb67d93abb7ef6e3b.mp3

September 2, 2026 Some pundits interpreted Trump’s 2024 win as a permanent political realignment, Others disagreed, seeing the swing toward Trump as due to anti-incumbent feelings, Republicans set out to redistrict states to guarantee control of Congress after the 2026 midterm election, The redistricting may have backfired, Anti-incumbent feeling has turned against the Republicans, In January voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a historically Republican dominated district in Tarrant County, Now Republicans are panicking, Trump is talking about nationalizing voting, rigging the election, sending armed officers to the polls, but every effort has been blocked by the courts or failed in Congress, Courts blocked Trump’s attempt to use the USPS as a gatekeeper to stop ballots from being delivered to voters, but the plan has continued in spite of the court order, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is not ruling out sending ICE agents to the polls although federal law prohibits it, In Tarrant County Texas the Republicans are cutting the number of polling places, in spite of voter outrage. Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ- Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe You can also find me: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] \[music\]
[0:09] SPEAKER_00: Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place.
[0:16] SPEAKER_00: September 2nd, 2026.
[0:20] SPEAKER_00: A number of pundits,
[0:21] SPEAKER_00: especially Republican pundits,
[0:23] SPEAKER_00: interpreted Trump's win in 2024 as a permanent political realignment,
[0:29] SPEAKER_00: proving that post-World War II liberalism was dead.
[0:33] SPEAKER_00: That conviction appeared to help feed Trump's insistence that he had won a landslide
[0:38] SPEAKER_00: and had a mandate to enact draconian policies.
[0:43] SPEAKER_00: Skeptics disagreed with this interpretation,
[0:46] SPEAKER_00: noting that Trump's victory in the popular vote was small,
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: more people voted for someone else than for him,
[0:53] SPEAKER_00: and that the 2024 election appeared to be determined by inflation and the pandemic,
[0:59] SPEAKER_00: two things that had little to do with political positions.
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: Rather than being an embrace of a political ideology,
[1:06] SPEAKER_00: it appeared the swing toward Trump had more to do with anti-incumbent feeling,
[1:10] SPEAKER_00: especially over inflation.
[1:13] SPEAKER_00: Still, after the 2024 election,
[1:16] SPEAKER_00: hopeful Republicans set out to redistrict states to try to guarantee they would hold
[1:21] SPEAKER_00: on to control of Congress after the 2026 election.
[1:25] SPEAKER_00: They redrew districts based on the idea that what they thought was
[1:29] SPEAKER_00: a new coalition would last— Banking especially on Hispanic voters continuing
[1:34] SPEAKER_00: to cast their ballots for Republicans.
[1:37] SPEAKER_00: With that expectation,
[1:38] SPEAKER_00: they created gerrymanders that shaved their margins thinner than they had been
[1:43] SPEAKER_00: before the redistricting.
[1:45] SPEAKER_00: And then,
[1:46] SPEAKER_00: in the elections of November 2025,
[1:49] SPEAKER_00: dramatic gains by the Democrats across Texas made some observers wonder if
[1:54] SPEAKER_00: the gerrymandering of Texas hadn't been a dummymander,
[1:59] SPEAKER_00: teeing districts up for Democrats in a blue wave.
[2:03] SPEAKER_00: After the election, G.
[2:05] SPEAKER_00: Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted that
[2:08] SPEAKER_00: the anti-incumbent feeling had turned against the Republicans and
[2:13] SPEAKER_00: that voters were even more strongly opposed to Republicans than they had been
[2:17] SPEAKER_00: against the Democrats in 2024.
[2:20] SPEAKER_00: He explained that,
[2:38] SPEAKER_00: And then,
[2:39] SPEAKER_00: in a special election on January 31, 2026,
[2:43] SPEAKER_00: voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democrat in
[2:48] SPEAKER_00: a historically Republican-dominated district in Tarrant County.
[2:53] SPEAKER_00: Democrat Taylor Remitt,
[2:55] SPEAKER_00: an Air Force veteran and machinist,
[2:58] SPEAKER_00: defeated right-wing Republican Lee Wamsgans for a seat that Republicans have held
[3:04] SPEAKER_00: since the early 1990s.
[3:07] SPEAKER_00: Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign,
[3:13] SPEAKER_00: the Wamsgans campaign spent $310,000, while Remit spent nothing.
[3:19] SPEAKER_00: And Daniel Nashanian of BoltzMag posted that overall,
[3:23] SPEAKER_00: Wamsgans spent nearly $2.2 million more than Remit in the campaign.
[3:30] SPEAKER_00: Both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wamsgans.
[3:37] SPEAKER_00: Voters flipped a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024 to Remitt,
[3:44] SPEAKER_00: electing him by a 14.4 point margin.
[3:47] SPEAKER_00: Without the minor party candidates in the vote,
[3:50] SPEAKER_00: the swing from the Republican in 2024 was 32 points toward the Democrats.
[3:57] SPEAKER_00: Liz Crampton of Politico noted that Republicans are in full-out panic mode after
[4:03] SPEAKER_00: the election, especially over the swing of Hispanic voters toward Remitt.
[4:08] SPEAKER_00: Republican consultant Mike Madrid referred back to the newly gerrymandered maps and
[4:13] SPEAKER_00: the voting patterns of young Hispanic men when he told Crampton,
[4:17] SPEAKER_00: they've banged three of these five new Republican seats on a demographic
[4:22] SPEAKER_00: that Democrats were never able to turn out for 30, 40 years.
[4:27] SPEAKER_00: Now, though,
[4:28] SPEAKER_00: they had turned toward Democrats as Trump's arrests,
[4:31] SPEAKER_00: detentions, and deportation policies had angered and upset them.
[4:38] SPEAKER_00: In the wake of the election,
[4:39] SPEAKER_00: Trump immediately began talking about nationalizing voting in the country,
[4:43] SPEAKER_00: despite the provisions in the U.S.
[4:45] SPEAKER_00: Constitution establishing that states,
[4:48] SPEAKER_00: not the federal government, are in charge of elections.
[4:53] SPEAKER_00: If you think about it,
[4:54] SPEAKER_00: a state is an agent for the federal government in elections,
[4:57] SPEAKER_00: Trump said during a press conference at the White House in early February.
[5:02] SPEAKER_00: I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.
[5:07] SPEAKER_00: Trump's allies began talking about rigging the election by sending armed officers to the polls.
[5:13] SPEAKER_00: Steve Bannon said on his podcast,
[5:15] SPEAKER_00: You're damn right we're going to have ice around the polls come November.
[5:19] SPEAKER_00: We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.
[5:22] SPEAKER_00: And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want,
[5:27] SPEAKER_00: but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.
[5:32] SPEAKER_00: Since then,
[5:33] SPEAKER_00: the administration has worked hard to take over the midterm elections,
[5:37] SPEAKER_00: but so far everything it has tried has been blocked by the courts or failed
[5:41] SPEAKER_00: in Congress.
[5:42] SPEAKER_00: It is zero for 23 in its effort to take over state voter data.
[5:47] SPEAKER_00: A process that mistakenly flags citizens as non-citizens with a failure rate of at least 14%.
[6:04] SPEAKER_00: Courts also blocked Trump's attempt to use the United States Postal Service,
[6:09] SPEAKER_00: or USPS,
[6:11] SPEAKER_00: as a gatekeeper to stop ballots that
[6:13] SPEAKER_00: the federal government decides shouldn't be delivered,
[6:16] SPEAKER_00: even though state agencies determined they should be.
[6:19] SPEAKER_00: We learned yesterday that despite court orders,
[6:22] SPEAKER_00: the administration's plan to use the USPS to impose federal control
[6:27] SPEAKER_00: on elections has continued.
[6:30] SPEAKER_00: It has rushed into place a system
[6:33] SPEAKER_00: a whistleblower warns would throw out entire batches of up to 10,000 ballots if
[6:39] SPEAKER_00: a single one gets rejected.
[6:42] SPEAKER_00: This is a deliberate attempt to skew the midterm election.
[6:46] SPEAKER_00: An analysis by Charles Stewart III of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
[6:51] SPEAKER_00: or MIT,
[6:52] SPEAKER_00: Election Data and Science Lab shows that Democrats vote by mail more
[6:57] SPEAKER_00: than Republicans.
[6:59] SPEAKER_00: In 2024, 37% of Democrats voted by mail, while only 24% of Republicans did.
[7:08] SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile,
[7:09] SPEAKER_00: Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen told reporters yesterday
[7:13] SPEAKER_00: that he is not ruling out sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
[7:18] SPEAKER_00: or ICE, agents to the polls.
[7:21] SPEAKER_00: The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to
[7:25] SPEAKER_00: that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone
[7:28] SPEAKER_00: that we have been actively tracking down, Mullen said.
[7:32] SPEAKER_00: ICE's job is immigration, customs enforcement.
[7:36] SPEAKER_00: That's their job.
[7:37] SPEAKER_00: If we're serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be.
[7:42] SPEAKER_00: Maya Yang of The Guardian notes that Mullen's threat flies in the face
[7:47] SPEAKER_00: of federal law,
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: which prohibits armed agents from any place where a general
[7:53] SPEAKER_00: or special election is held.
[7:57] SPEAKER_00: Last night,
[7:58] SPEAKER_00: in Tarrant County,
[7:59] SPEAKER_00: Texas, county commissioners tried an even cruder way of rigging the election.
[8:04] SPEAKER_00: As Cecilia Lenzen of the Texas Tribune reported,
[8:08] SPEAKER_00: They voted three to two along party lines to get rid of 92 of the polling sites
[8:14] SPEAKER_00: the county had in 2022 before the midterm election.
[8:19] SPEAKER_00: In 2022, there were 316 election sites.
[8:24] SPEAKER_00: The Republican commissioners cut that number to 224.
[8:29] SPEAKER_00: They also cut three sites for early voting from 50 to 47.
[8:34] SPEAKER_00: Republicans voted for the cuts.
[8:36] SPEAKER_00: Democrats voted against them.
[8:39] SPEAKER_00: It's not about cost.
[8:41] SPEAKER_00: This is about power.
[8:42] SPEAKER_00: This is very political.
[8:44] SPEAKER_00: This is campaigning from the days, said Democrat Alyssa Simmons.
[8:50] SPEAKER_00: Throughout the eight-hour meeting about the cuts,
[8:53] SPEAKER_00: speakers from the audience called on the commissioners to increase,
[8:56] SPEAKER_00: rather than decrease,
[8:58] SPEAKER_00: the number of voting sites for the more than 1.3 million people registered to vote
[9:04] SPEAKER_00: in Tarrant County.
[9:06] SPEAKER_00: Those 1.3 million people are more than live in Wyoming,
[9:10] SPEAKER_00: Vermont, Alaska,
[9:12] SPEAKER_00: North Dakota,
[9:14] SPEAKER_00: South Dakota,
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: Delaware,
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: Rhode Island,
[9:16] SPEAKER_00: or Montana, and about the same number of people who live in Maine or New Hampshire.
[9:23] SPEAKER_00: Voters in Tarrant County had plenty to say to the Republican commissioners about the cuts.
[9:29] SPEAKER_00: One constituent warned, you guys are out.
[9:33] SPEAKER_00: When County Judge Tim O'Hare refused to look at him, the man called out the disrespect.
[9:38] SPEAKER_00: What could possibly be so important, Mr. O'Hare?
[9:42] SPEAKER_00: Can you listen to me, please?
[9:43] SPEAKER_00: Hello?
[9:45] SPEAKER_00: Hello?
[9:46] SPEAKER_00: Can you look at my eyes, please?
[9:49] SPEAKER_00: O'Hare answered, I can hear every word you're saying.
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: You can use your minute however you choose.
[9:56] SPEAKER_00: The man responded, I want you to look me in the eyes.
[10:01] SPEAKER_00: When O'Hare still wouldn't,
[10:03] SPEAKER_00: the man continued, Yeah, look down because down is what you're going in November.
[10:09] SPEAKER_00: So keep looking where you're going, okay?
[10:11] SPEAKER_00: Because this is what we're doing after this from now until November.
[10:16] SPEAKER_00: Whether you cut those places or not,
[10:19] SPEAKER_00: We're going and we're knocking on doors and we're bringing people out
[10:23] SPEAKER_00: and we're telling them where the voter locations are
[10:26] SPEAKER_00: and we're helping them get there.
[10:28] SPEAKER_00: And nothing you can do can stop us from removing you in November.
[10:41] SPEAKER_00: Letters from an American was written by Heather Cox Richardson.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Denham, Massachusetts.
[10:50] SPEAKER_00: Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.

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