Right now, the fascists are carrying out an unprecedented power grab in the state of Texas. The Republican majority in the Texas state legislature is working to redraw the map for the 2026 elections so that they would gain five additional congressional seats.¹

This was carried out at the direction of Donald Trump, and Texas is only one of many Republican-controlled states where Trump wants this done.

Trump is openly moving to steal the 2026 elections—if there even are elections. And the Trump fascist regime is viciously going after any political rivals that oppose these moves.

Nothing short of a mass nonviolent uprising to drive this regime from power will defeat this fascism! 

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The struggle in Texas has escalated over the last week. First, 57 Democratic legislators made a bold move—they left Texas so that the legislature would not have what they need to approve their election-rigging map. The Democrats vowed to stay away until the current special session of the legislature ends on August 19. (See sidebar on “quorum-breaking.”)

The Republi-fascist response to this legal parliamentary maneuver has been to unleash all manner of punishment and pigs to force the “runaway legislators” to return. 

The Texas House Republicans immediately imposed $500-a-day fines against each Democrat for every day they don’t show up. 

But that was only the beginning. Texas Governor Greg Abbott petitioned the state Supreme Court to expel from office Rep. Gene Wu (the leader of the Democratic caucus). Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is working to expel 13 other Democrats as well. 

Paxton has also launched multiple investigations and threats of prosecution for bribery against the legislators themselves as well as prominent supporters like liberal billionaire George Soros and former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Bribery is a serious offense—a second-degree felony punishable by 2-20 years in prison! There is not a shred of evidence for this accusation. But these threats are, nonetheless, very intimidating. And, they are an effort to come up with some kind of legal pretext—some allegation of illegal acts—to try to justify Texas or federal law enforcement going out of state to abduct and arrest the Texas Democrats.

And yes, we said “federal” as in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which Texas U.S. Senator John Cornyn claims to have enlisted in the campaign to “locate and arrest” the Democratic legislators. Trump also chimed in, saying that the FBI “may have to” get involved. 

All this illustrates what the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) said in 2021 in Something Terrible, or Something Truly Emancipating:

The Republicans have become a fascist party—a party based on open and aggressive white supremacy, male supremacy and other oppressive relations—a party convinced that only it deserves to rule, moving to manipulate elections and suppress votes in order to gain and hold onto power, refusing to accept the outcome of elections it does not win, determined to gut and pervert “the rule of law,” trample on people’s rights, and adopt what amounts to an undisguised capitalist dictatorship, ready to use violence not only against masses of people but also against its rivals in the ruling class.

Further Leap by Fascists, and Need to Defend Democrats Against Those Attacks

Now think about what has been happening in Texas: The Republicans are using the powerful positions of authority that they already have—the state legislature, the governorship, the state attorney general—to enforce their drive to get total power. And they are trying to involve the FBI, a very large and powerful policing institution that supposedly exists to prosecute federal crime. Using the FBI to crush the political resistance of the Democratic Party to a Republican power grab in the state legislature would be a huge leap towards an outright police state, where the truly vast repressive powers of state and federal government are at the disposal of that ruling (Republican) party to enforce and defend their fascist agenda.

And it would be a further leap in the fascists using the armed force of the state to crush their political opposition.

In this context, the response of the Texas Democrats has been important and they must be defended against fascist attacks. Democratic governors like J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, and others, who have openly stated that they will use their power to prevent Texas authorities from arresting them should also be defended.²

But the Overall Democrat Response Is Out of Step with the Extreme Danger

But while some of the Democrats are sounding the alarm about these attacks on the 2026 elections, their overall response is profoundly not commensurate to the extreme danger we are facing. Several Democratic governors have announced that in response to Texas rewriting their electoral maps—openly and illegitimately moving to rig the 2026 elections—they would respond with their own aggressive pro-Democratic rewriting of the electoral maps.

To justify this Democratic Party counter-gerrymandering, Eric Holder (attorney general under Obama) used an analogy to World War 2: “I mean, it’s like the Germans have invaded France. Are you going to just say, ‘Well, we’re against war and we’re for the resolution of disputes in a peaceful way’? Sometimes you have to take up arms. And when confronted with this authoritarian, anti-democracy effort, we have to take up arms.”

But while Holder seems to be sounding the alarm about the extreme urgency, his remedy is totally out of step. What he is actually saying is "the German Nazi's have invaded France, so in a year and a half we'll vote against them." 

That's crazy—and it will not work! 

First, the extreme horrors mount day by day—horrors of families torn apart, of women and LGBT people terrorized, of history rewritten, the environment destroyed, stores of scientific knowledge erased and much more! Second, this fascism is already very far along to being locked down and fully consolidated—with resistance crushed, and any space for meaningful protest obliterated.

We cannot fight these fascists by relying on the norms and mechanisms of the system that's given rise to this fascism—norms and mechanisms which the fascists are actively shredding!

As we said above, what's needed—urgently—is a mass nonviolent uprising of millions aimed at nothing less than driving this fascist regime from power.

This regime is ILLEGITIMATE—doubly so! Not only is fascism always illegitimate, but the Trump fascist regime is using the mechanisms of power to illegitimately seize and consolidate fascist rule. 

This fascist regime must be STOPPED and it must be defeated—now. To quote from the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, in his essential social media message, Revolution #125, "Not the courts, and not the Democratic Party: Decent people, mobilizing massively and relentlessly, are the force that must be relied on to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism":

Ongoing protests, and powerful mobilizations all over the country, have been very important, and they show the potential for what must be done. But all this must make a leap, soon, to become a massive popular uprising, determined to actually defeat this fascist regime, uniting around the urgent demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go—NOW!

This means “no business as usual.” It means protest and resistance building day after day: non-violent but sustained and relentless—responding to repression by the fascist regime with even greater outpourings of resistance—uniting all who can be united, in continually growing numbers, motivated by the necessary sense of urgency, aiming to create a profound political crisis and major shifts and “realignments” throughout society, including in the dominant institutions of power, so that this illegitimate fascist regime cannot function, and is actually removed.