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'Fight the Trump Takeover' Protests Against GOP Election-Rigging Plot Planned for Saturday
"This fight is bigger than any one state," said the chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus.
Aug 15, 2025
Nationwide protests against US President Donald Trump's scheme to get Republican state legislatures to redraw their congressional maps are set to kick off this weekend.
The "Fight the Trump Takeover" movement is planning a national day of action on Saturday, August 16 that will feature coast-to-coast demonstrations from as far east as Lubec, Maine, to as far west as Anchorage, Alaska.
"Trump is trying to steal the 2026 election by rigging the system and changing electoral maps," the coalition behind the protests said on its website. "He started in Texas, but he won’t stop there. We are fighting back."
The protests are being done in partnership with several prominent progressive groups, including Indivisible, MoveOn, Human Rights Campaign, Public Citizen, and the Communication Workers of America. Some Texas-specific groups—including Texas Freedom Network, Texas AFL-CIO, and Texas for All—are also partners in the protest.
Axios reports that an "anchor rally" in Austin, Texas will kick off the nationwide events and will feature speakers including Democratic US Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett, as well as former Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke and labor activist Dolores Huerta.
The location of the Austin rally is symbolically important because Texas is trying to become the first state to redraw its maps to benefit Republicans under Trump's nationwide gerrymandering scheme, which in the coming weeks could include states such as Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and Missouri.
Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu told Axios that "this fight is bigger than any one state" because "we're defending our entire country from the Trump takeover, and I'm honored to stand with every patriotic American who refuses to let extremists rig the system."
Ezra Levin, the co-founder and co-executive director of progressive organizing group Indivisible, told Axios that Trump's plan "is as crooked as it gets" and described it as part of a larger plot to "lock in minority rule for a generation."
Democratic-controlled states, led by California under Gov. Gavin Newsom, have started to fight back against the Trump plan by proposing their own redrawn maps aimed at squeezing out Republicans in their states. Newsom this week held a big rally in Los Angeles with other California Democratic heavyweights where he stressed the need for Democrats to give Republicans a taste of their own medicine.
"It's not enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, and talk about way the world should be," Newsom said at the rally. "We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire!"
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In Response to GOP Gerrymandering, O'Rourke Calls for Dems to 'Match Fire with Fire'
"I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power," O'Rourke said in a CNN interview. "We've seen Republicans only care about being in power regardless of what is right."
Jul 21, 2025
As Republicans move forward with an aggressive effort to gerrymander Texas in the coming year, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke called on Democrats Sunday to "match fire with fire" in blue states.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last week he'd follow through on a proposal from President Donald Trump, press legislators to re-draw congressional maps to maximally favor Republicans in the Lone Star State through a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting push.
The effort may net the GOP another five seats in the 2026 midterms. Trump has suggested Republicans push their advantages in "other states" as well, including Ohio.
In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he'd attempt to subvert California's independent state redistricting commission—which seeks to draw maps as fairly as possible—to instead pursue a maximum partisan gerrymander to favor Democrats.
Democrats have tended to be at the forefront of efforts to eliminate partisan redistricting. O'Rourke, a Democrat, has previously called for his state of Texas to have its districts drawn not by political parties but by an independent nonpartisan commission.
But in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday, O'Rourke said that while he still disagreed with gerrymandering on principle, as long as Republicans are willing to use it, Democrats need to be willing to play the same game.
"I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power," O'Rourke said. "We've seen Republicans only care about being in power regardless of what is right."
Asked about Newsom's efforts in California, O'Rourke said, "We have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power."
He called on Democrats in other blue states to press their advantages as far as possible too.
"In California, in Illinois, in New York, wherever we have the trifecta of power, we have to use that to its absolute extent," he said.
Should Newsom's effort to get around California's redistricting commission succeed, it could net Democrats an additional five to seven seats in the House. With Republicans clinging to just a three-seat majority, it could prove decisive.
However, the plan is a long shot. In 2010, California voters elected to enshrine the independent commission into the state constitution.
Newsom has said that when it comes to stripping the commission of its power, "it's all on the table," including calling a special session of the state legislature and introducing another ballot measure to the public, which he said he thinks they'd win.
He also said there were "other avenues" to consider, like having the legislature draw districts "in between" censuses.
Newsom described this as a legal gray area, since the constitutional amendment only requires the independent commission to create new maps after each census, but says nothing about its role in redistricting mid-decade. However, Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at the watchdog group Common Cause, told The Guardian that such an effort was "not lawful in any way."
Newsom said that Republicans, who don't have to worry about redistricting commissions in the states they control, "are playing by a different set of rules."
"From my perspective, if we're going to play fair in a world that is wholly unfair, we may have the higher moral ground, but the ground is shifting from underneath us, and I think we have to wake up to that reality," said the California governor.
The governors of Illinois and New York, meanwhile, have stayed mum on the question of whether they may attempt similar attempts at aggressive redistricting.
Illinois has no rules against partisan gerrymandering and its maps are already heavily weighted in Democrats' favor following the most recent redistricting effort in 2021.
New York's maps are only "slightly" weighted in favor of Democrats and could be made more lopsided. During the most recent redistricting session, which was the subject of a lengthy court battle, Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to maps that left the seven seats controlled by Republicans intact.
There, the legislature can draw maps, but they must be approved by an independent redistricting committee.
According to reporting by CNN Sunday, Democrats are nevertheless looking into possible efforts to maximize their advantages in New York and other states like New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington.
In response to Trump's effort to expand Republicans' seats, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) renewed calls for "fair maps" throughout the country, though he declined to comment on Newsom's efforts.
Jeffries is reportedly meeting with Hochul about the possibility of making the maps more "fair," by which he may mean maximizing the Democrats' advantage. This would likely necessitate dispensing with the independent redistricting commission, as Newsom hopes to do.
"If Republicans want to play by these rules, then I think that we shouldn't have one set of rules for one and the other set of rules for another," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told CNN. "I think we need to even the playing board."
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'Enough Is Enough!': Thousands Protest Outside NRA Convention in Texas
"I'm just tired of the NRA subordinating children's rights for gun rights," said one gun lobby opponent just three days after the school massacre in Uvalde.
May 27, 2022
In the wake of Tuesday's massacre of 21 students and staff at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, thousands of people protested angrily in Houston Friday to protest outside the National Rifle Association's annual convention to condemn the gun lobby's deep complicity in the nation's mass shooting epidemic.
"We're building space to hold the families of Uvalde, to let them know that we are there for them, that we will stand up for them and we will be fighting for them."
With signs asking "how many more?" and chants proclaiming "enough is enough," demonstrators protested in 95-degree heat outside the George R. Brown Convention Center as NRA officials--who banned guns in the venue due to a scheduled address by former President Donald Trump Friday afternoon--welcomed conference speakers and attendees, who are expected to number around 80,000.
"I'm just tired of the NRA subordinating children's rights for gun rights," Ken Council, a 65-year-old protester, told the Houston Chronicle.
Members of the League of Unified Latin American Citizens, Moms Demand Action, Black Lives Matter, Indivisible, the Houston Federation of Teachers, and other groups took part in the protest.
\u201cParkland Shooting survivor speaks at protest outside @NRA Convention in Houston. "We will outlive the #NRA. The young people in the audience, we have the most valuable thing in politics, even more than money. We have time." #Uvalde\u201d— RA News (@RA News) 1653672841
"When you go and shoot up a school full of kids and teachers... you've taken someone's right to life away," said Ashton Woods, founder and lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Houston. "We're building space to hold the families of Uvalde, to let them know that we are there for them, that we will stand up for them and we will be fighting for them--even when this is over--to make sure we get common-sense gun reform."
Political leaders including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke--who interrupted a press conference in Uvalde on Wednesday--were all scheduled to speak.
"The time to stop Uvalde was after a Columbine...and after Sandy Hook," O'Rourke told the large crowd to loud applause. "The time to stop another mass shooting is now."
\u201cAcross the street from the NRA convention: \u201cAm I next?\u201d\u201d— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike Hixenbaugh) 1653672084
\u201cProtesters chanting \u201call children matter\u201d across from the GRB as people walk in to attend the NRA\u2019s annual meetings. @abc13houston\u201d— Courtney Carpenter (@Courtney Carpenter) 1653668461
Lee lamented that "400 million guns, 45% of the guns in the world are in the United States... Will we continue to live in the house of shame?"
Demonstrators took aim at weapons makers, the gun lobby, and the mostly Republican elected officials who collectively receive millions of dollars in campaign contributions from firearms interests while failing to take meaningful action in the face of over 1.5 million U.S. gun deaths--more than the total number of American troops killed in the nation's many wars--over the past half century.
Trump is expected to be joined on stage by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who, according to OpenSecrets.org, is the top congressional beneficiary of the gun lobby's largesse.
\u201cThe NRA\u2019s annual meeting starts today in Texas, despite 19 children and 2 educators being killed miles away at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX\u201d— Violence Policy Center (@Violence Policy Center) 1653662307
Despite misleading headlines reporting that Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would skip the NRA convention and instead appear in Uvalde, the governor--a five-figure recipient of NRA campaign cash--will still participate via a prerecorded video message to attendees.
Other Republicans not attending the convention but who receive hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in gun lobby funding also came under fire, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who blamed "wokeness" and critical race theory for the Uvalde massacre and asserted that "the solution is renewed faith."
\u201cThis group is walking around the NRA convention with a child-sized casket and holding up photos of kids killed in Uvalde.\n\n\u201cProtect our kids, not guns!\u201d\u201d— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike Hixenbaugh) 1653669168
The NRA protests follow a Thursday demonstration by faith leaders outside the convention center as well as a walkout by students at scores of elementary, middle, and high schools across the country.
On Wednesday, the organizers of March for Our Lives--the nationwide student-led gun control protests first held in the wake of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida--announced they were organizing a second such event for June 11.
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