 So last week, Republican lawmaker from Texas, Ronnie Jackson said something that somehow flew under the radar. And I think the reason why it didn't get picked up by the press is because it's not necessarily surprising. But still, what he said was the quiet part out loud. He said that Republicans would effectively rig the elections in 2022 and take back the house easily. And I'm paraphrasing this isn't his exact words, but basically he explained very clearly how gerrymandering is going to be used effectively by Republicans to give them power once again. And you'd think that this should further, you know, make the push for the For the People Act be that much easier, like Democrats can point to this and say, look, Republicans are already admitting that they wanted gerrymander their way to victory. Let's get the For the People Act passed, call mansion, call cinema, tell them to support it. But it's not because again, this kind of went under the radar. And David Daley of The Guardian does a phenomenal report where he actually brings it into perspective and explains that this individual isn't lying. They don't have to do much gerrymandering to take back the house in 2023. In fact, given the Republican Party's ruthlessness and willingness to do whatever to maintain power, they're going to do that. So let's get to the article here. In Washington, the real insiders know that the true outrageous are what's perfectly legal and that it's simply a gaffe when somebody accidentally blurts out something honest. And so it barely made a ripple last week when a Texas congressman and Donald Trump's former White House physician said aloud what's supposed to be kept to a back room whisper. Republicans intend to retake the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 through gerrymandering. We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country. Representative Ronny Jackson told a conference of religious conservatives that alone should get us the majority back. He's right. Republicans won't have to win more votes next year to claim the U.S. House. In fact, everyone could vote the exact same way for Congress next year as they did in 2020 when Democratic candidates nationwide won more than 4.7 million votes. The Republicans and narrowly held the chamber, but under the new maps that will be in place, the Republican Party would take control. How is this possible? The Republican Party only needs to win five seats to wrench the speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi. They could draw themselves a dozen or more through gerrymandering alone. Republicans could create at least two additional red seats in Texas and North Carolina and another certain to in Georgia and Florida. Then could nab another in Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and New Hampshire. They won't need to embrace policies favored by a majority of Americans. All they need to do is rework maps to their favor in states where they hold complete control of the decennial redistricting that follows the census, some of which they have held since they gerrymandered them 10 years ago. Now they can double down on the undeserved majorities that they have seized and dominate another decade. If Republicans aggressively maximize every advantage and crash through any of the usual guardrails and they have given every indication that they will, there's little Democrats can do. And after a 2019 Supreme Court decision declared partisan gerrymandering a non-justiciable political issue, the federal courts will be powerless as well. So if you're wondering why Republicans refuse to support the For the People Act, even Joe Manchin's compromise, it's because of things like this. They are counting on gerrymandering to be their ticket to victory come 2022 and beyond. And just think about this. If they are able to redraw district lines in this way, which they likely will be able to, that's 10 years of them being in control, surpassing the IPCC's deadline to actually meaningfully tackle climate change. So I don't really know what to say. I think that the solution is obvious. If the For the People Act is not passed, Republicans are absolutely going to dominate the next decade. Or I should say continue to dominate because they've been pretty dominant in state legislatures and at the local level. But what the For the People Act would do, even if it isn't perfect, even if it isn't a panacea and it's not going to save democracy, it would create independent commissions that redraw districts on nonpartisan grounds. So it actually doesn't account for who's going to win this seat. It just looks at the populations and does it in a nonbiased way. Republicans don't want this to be the case because they're counting on gerrymandering to win. They're deeply, deeply anti-democratic and in everything that they do, it shows and it's not just that they're anti-democratic. I mean, we've covered the videos of Republicans calling for Donald Trump to be reinstated with the military coup, Marjorie Greene calling for her political opponents to be jailed. They're outright authoritarian at this point. The Republican Party is a threat to democracy and now they're not even hiding the fact that they don't care, that they are vocally antagonistic towards the prospect of democracy and enhancing democracy in the United States. So it worries me that a lawmaker can essentially say the quiet part out loud and admit that they want to gerrymander their way to victory and then like nobody pays attention to this. Democrats should be using this to further fuel their push for the For the People Act. They should be blasting this quote on every single news network screaming at the top of their lungs and the fact that they're not highlighting this is a failure on their part and really it speaks to the factlessness of Democratic Party leadership. But I mean, look, if we actually allowed Republicans to effectively rig elections by redrawing districts so there's a lot more safe seats, then I mean, what does that mean for future generations and the planet? I mean, it may be the case already that we've passed the climate tipping point as some scientists are suggesting, but still it's not just about climate change. It's about, you know, all this time where Republicans will have a strong hold and the health care crisis will continue, the housing crisis will continue, food insecurity will continue to be an issue and Republicans won't want to do anything about it. Not that, you know, Democrats are super willing to help out working people, but I mean, it just, things get that much worse when we have this party that has gone insane, that is deeply authoritarian, taking control by any means necessary. So I mean, I don't know what else to say. If, you know, people don't see this as an issue regardless of what team they're playing on, then there's no hope for American democracy.