Thanks so much for being here. I have some huge wins against Trump and his regime in this edition. A great way to wrap up the week.
We’ve been doing this since 2016, out in front against the MAGA movement. Fighting their lies and propaganda every single day. Right now we are running huge pushes to pressure Congress—letters in their inboxes, and a social media operation they can’t ignore—on top of our investigations and reporting. That’s the work. We need you in it.
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And before we jump in, be sure to like and restack this edition, especially to share the story of Christina Hernandez, who stopped the regime’s bulldozers at Big Bend. Your share could deliver the inspiration someone needs to keep going.
Trump Redrew Missouri’s Map. A Court Just Erased It.
Last September, Trump told Republicans to redraw congressional districts and pick up seats. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe called a special session and did just that. The new map cut apart Kansas City and rebuilt the 5th District into one Trump could have carried by 17 points, drawn to end the career of Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver.
Then people got signatures. Enough of them to force a statewide vote, filed by a group called People Not Politicians.
On Thursday, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled for them, unanimously. Judge Ginger Gooch barred the state from using the new districts in November or “at any other time thereafter”—unless voters approve them first.
The state’s attorney general is appealing, but for now the old lines will stay. Rep. Cleaver runs in the same district he won by 24 points. Republicans need every seat they can steal to hold the House—a petition drive in Missouri just took one back off the board.
The First Data Center On Public Land Just Got Stopped
Boulder City, Nevada, is a town of 15,000 outside Las Vegas, and 80 acres of federal land sit inside its limits. A developer from Texas, backed by a hedge fund, wanted to build a data center there. It would be the first ever approved on federal public land.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) claimed they did a study of a 19-megawatt solar farm on that same ground back in 2023. Three years later, it used that study to green-light four buildings covering 300,000 square feet and drawing 167 megawatts. Both are “industrial uses,” BLM wrote, involving technologies “predominantly electrical and solid-state in nature.”
The city council appealed, saying no one consulted them about a project within their own boundaries. Separately, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club challenged the approval as well.
They took it to the Interior Board of Land Appeals. It’s where you go when BLM already approved something and you want it undone. On Tuesday, Administrative Judge David Gunter stopped the project cold and said the appeals will likely win. Applying the National Environmental Policy Act “requires common sense,” he wrote. “A 300,000-square foot data center is a different project from a 19-MW solar power generating facility.”
BLM is still weighing more of these on public land across Nevada. It’s never studied what a single one of them does to the ground it sits on.
She Wouldn’t Sign It. It Took Seven Years.
At the VIPcare clinic in Venice, Florida, Dr. Clarissa Zafirov was the only physician on staff. According to her lawsuit, every morning she was handed a list of extra diagnoses to add to her patients’ charts that their symptoms and test results didn’t support. Each one would mean more Medicare money for the clinic.
Dr. Zafirov refused to write them down, so she says management came after her bonus. When that failed, they questioned if she knew about medicine at all.
In May of 2019, she sued over it. The False Claims Act, a law signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, lets an ordinary person drag a thief into court on the government’s behalf. The government looked at her case and passed on it, so she went at it alone.
Then a Trump-appointed judge threw her out of court. Not because the fraud didn’t happen—she never got that far. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle decided a whistleblower suing for the government is basically a federal officer, and nobody made Dr. Zafirov one. She “appointed herself,” the judge wrote. “This she may not do.”
Had that held, every whistleblower case the government refused to back would’ve collapsed. Suits like hers have already returned $7.9 billion to taxpayers.
A Trump judge tried to close that door. On Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit threw that ruling out, unanimously, in an opinion written by another Trump appointee. Whistleblowers can still sue. Dr. Zafirov’s case is back on, seven years after she refused to sign.
Christina Hernandez Found The Law They Forgot
Big Bend National Park is 800,000 acres of desert and canyon along the Rio Grande in West Texas. In June the government moved to cut patrol roads, vehicle barriers, and detection technology through it, and signed a separate $1,223,124,000 contract for the border wall going up just outside.
Christina Hernandez is Lipan Apache and runs the group that sued to stop it. Her ancestors are buried along that river. She has remains waiting to be returned to one of those sites and cannot set a date for the ceremony, because she does not know if the site will survive.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has a trick for this. He signs one waiver and a law no longer applies. He did it to at least 28 of them. The Endangered Species Act. The Clean Water Act. The statute protecting Native graves. Then four that were written just for Big Bend, crossed off one at a time.
There were five. The one Mullin skipped keeps the Park Service in charge of protecting Big Bend. Mullin also skipped two more that limit how far the regime can go in blocking someone’s religious practice.
Hernandez took those three rules Mullin skipped to a federal judge. And on August 28, when the judge asked the regime’s lawyers what they’re actually building, they had no answer. Both sides agreed to stop turning any earth until they meet and the government lays out what the project actually is. The judge hears the case again on September 15.
Since 2016, I’ve been taking on Trump and his accomplices. Their callousness has brought something out of us that should be terrifying for them—we are weathered. We have grit. We have trudged through this horror story and we are still marching forward.
Christina Hernandez didn't wait for anybody’s permission. Neither did the doctor, or the Nevada town that fought back, or the people who gathered those signatures in Missouri.
We have never bent, and at this point—with 60 days left until the midterms—we aren’t going to break.
This has been a long journey with some tough days. I’m still here because you are. And I truly believe better days are ahead. Join us as a paid subscriber today, to make sure we can sprint through November and beyond:
BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to hit the like button and restack this edition.
Onward!
Scott
1. The first data center approved on public land was stopped. Is there a data center fight in your community right now?
2. Clarissa Zafirov says she refused to sign a checklist, no matter the repercussions. Have you ever said no to something at work that you knew could cost you? What happened?
Let me know in the comments:
Main focus today: **Yosemite.** A Nevada developer wants a strip of the park for a private road. Let's stop them: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
The Missouri piece is the one I keep thinking about. They recut Kansas City to end a career. People got the signatures anyway. A court just put the old map back. Don’t tell me petitions are theater.