As in any presidential election year, the lion’s share of attention goes to the White House race. And of course this year’s is perhaps the most storied and improbable in our 248-year history as nation—a convict is running against a prosecutor. Had this been written as a fiction story 20 or so years ago, publishers would have panned it as being too far-fetched and outlandish. But here we are.

Meanwhile two other spheres of state electoral activity also have national importance: the contests for seats in the the “Lower House” or House of Representatives and the Senate, also known as the Upper House.

Any casual observer of American politics over the past couple of decades knows what can happen if the White House and Congress are not on the same page. And of late, they haven’t even been in the same book.

The House, under the thumb of far-right extremists has once again brought the country to the brink of a government shutdown.

Checks, Balances and Gridlock

Our government was designed to be self-balancing and self-correcting. Largely it has been, but since the time of Reagan, Republicans have been on a long program to undo and bypass constitutionally designed mechanisms and weight things in their interests. Ultimately the voters are the final voice in matters but Republicans had answer to that as well.

The long-term plan hinged on salting the Supreme Court with conservative and religious radicals. And those voices now hold a super-majority in the court. After decades of complaining that earlier courts were “legislating” from the bench, Republicans are now utterly enjoying the Roberts court which is doing just that. The latest edict being their unconstitutional granting of Presidential immunity to Trump.

An earlier radical decision from this court gutted the 1964 Voting Rights Act and opened the door for states to suppress voting under various guises on their states. What better way to get unpopular measures into place than prevent them and those creating them from running afoul of voters.

We won’t go into a full listing of the abuses on this front, but the bottom line is that the planting of far-right judges all up and down the Federal judiciary and at SCOTUS have put us on dangerous constitutional grounds.

Meanwhile the far-right members of Congress that call themselves the “Freedom Caucus,” of which the Speaker is a card-carrying member, are attempting to coerce further voting suppression into the next government funding measure. It hasn’t and won’t work, but it will just cause unnecessary turmoil, again.

The Senate while all this has been going on has a near even split necessitating tie-breaking votes from the Vice President to get anything meaningful passed.

In both the upper and lower houses of Congress reside members who were involved in varying degrees with the insurrection of January 6th. And thus we have members of Congress who for some unfathomable reason have not been prosecuted for their actions and involvement. Why is a question for another day. But this is who we have gumming up the works in D.C.

Project 2025

In spite of their best efforts, the first—and hopefully last—Trump administration failed to accomplish most of his dictatorial ambitions. This was largely due to the actions of Congress after the 2018 midterms and non-political professionals in government service. Trump’s backers and fanboys don’t want to see this happening again and have ginned up an extensive plan, Project 2025, to make his next term the nail in our Constitution’s coffin.

Trump of course, in his usual inept and contradictory way, says he doesn’t know anything about it, never heard of it, etc. All the while, what few policy positions he does profess come directly from the 900 or so pages of Project 2025.

If Trump manages to get elected, it is not an exaggeration to say that this will be our last presidential election for the foreseeable future. He has already promised to be a “dictator on day one.”

The ACLU has a very complete digest of what Project 2025 will do to our country and our rights. But even more simply, the two easiest comparisons are Hungary and Russia: two countries run by autocrats who control their legislators, their courts and their media.

The Three-House Strategy

In a nutshell, we need to not only secure the White House from the grasp of Trump and the Republicans, but both the upper and lower houses of Congress. This is the only way to secure forward motion for the country.

This means we need to pay attention to all the other races that will be decided November 5th. Every house race, every Senate race, every state and local election is important. For example, in my district in Florida I will be supporting Whitney Fox for Congress against Anna Paulina Luna—whose entire first campaign featured her posing with an AR-15 and only really saying “Trump.” Also, I’ll be supporting Debbie Mucarsel-Powell to unseat the cadaverous Rick Scott from the Senate. Rick Scott is infamous for somehow not getting convicted and imprisoned for the largest ever Medicare fraud in history committed by the company where he was CEO. And there’s also the matter of the policy position statements he authored calling for the end of Social Security and Medicare.

Also happening around Florida are various local school board races where DeSantis backed candidates are seeking seats. Many of these are women who are also members of a hate group called Moms for Liberty, better known as the Minivan Taliban.

There is an old saying, “All politics is local.” This could not be more true. If we pay attention to only the national contests, we can lose at the state and local levels. We need the entire spectrum to shut down the specter of Project 2025.

There is no way to minimize the dangers that this “transition” plan represents to the United States and our way of life.

Imagine Army or national guard trucks rolling into your neighborhood with soldiers going door to door to arrest suspected immigrants and carting them off for deportation. Imagine tens of thousands of government professionals sacked because they were not considered loyal to Trump, or Vance.

Picture the massive detention camps that would be thrown together in the desert somewhere, run by for-profit prison companies—because “everyone knows” private companies are “more efficient.” But while people await their deportations, their labor would be auctioned off to nearby companies—the “payment” going to the prisons, not the detainees.

These horrors and others are clearly visible between the lines of Project 2025. And it up to each of us to put a full stop to it, permanently. And the only way we can do this is with the Three House Strategy.

Find out everything you can about your state and local races and the people running. A simple cheat these days is to simply refuse to vote for any Republican. But that does not always work. In some local races, candidates may be running for “non-partisan” positions and thus be hiding their true affiliations. You have to be diligent.

Remember, the reason Republicans have been suppressing voters and voting is that our votes against their insane proposals are what they actually fear. You have power as a voter. Collectively we have all the power we need to end Project 2025 once and for all.