There’s a bitter contradiction unfolding in Latino politics: Latino voters are increasingly rejecting Republicans because of ICE overreach—even as the ICE agents who killed Alex Pretti were themselves Latino. 1/5 A short 🧵to explain The unmasking of the agents involved in Pretti’s killing won’t calm the outrage. It sharpens it. The issue isn’t ethnicity—its power, impunity, & an enforcement culture that treats entire communities as suspect.

BUT Latino ICE agents complicate things 2/5

When Empires Decline

History rarely lets us pin imperial decline to one man. But at the pace of American devolution, Trump’s name will likely be etched into the story,perhaps in faux gold.
The fall of empires follows patterns. What differs is how people respond to lost status.🧵 Some societies accept decline with realism & adapt.

Others suffer a kind of phantom limb syndrome, lashing out at a world that no longer bends to them. The Aztecs fell to Spanish power with resentment. Faced with diminishment its leaders chose destruction over accommodation. 2/5

In the waning days of the reign of Roman Emperor Caligula, we see a ruler who began with public favor & ended in absolute isolation.

His descent into decadence and self-worship wasn’t sudden — it was a slow erosion of norms that eventually ate the institutions around him. 1/5🧵 Caligula’s final months were marked by divine pretensions, humiliating demands & the humiliation of political rivals.

Sound familiar?

He famously declared himself a god, tightened his grip on power, & punished dissent with cruelty that turned colleagues into conspirators. 2/5

Do protests work?

Like a lot of us, I’ve spent too many hours in early 2026 doom-scrolling. Last night I saw Rachel Maddow asked whether protests after the murder of Renee Good would matter—or whether protests ever matter at all.

Her answer stopped me cold. 🧵 Maddow cited the 3.5% Rule: political scientists have found that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained, nonviolent protest, authoritarian regimes topple.

In 30+ years of political consulting, I’d never heard this.

So I looked deeper.

There’s real evidence behind it.

January 6 is not a “difference of opinion.”

It was an attack on the basic rule that keeps democracies alive: losers accept the result.

Pretending otherwise is how republics rot from the inside. 🧵 The most dangerous part wasn’t the broken windows.

It was the lie that elections only count when your side wins — and that force is an acceptable response when it doesn’t.

Venezuelans make up a very small portion of the total U.S. Latino electorate, accounting for approximately 1% of the U.S. Hispanic population as of 2021 data. 

As for voters it’s probably half a percent above or below that - most of it located in Florida. 🧵 What about Cubans?

Both Cubans and Dominicans each make up less than 7% of eligible Latino voters. 

Again, Cubans are most determinative in Florida.

So will the Venezuelan situation impact the Latino vote?

In two decades of conducting this major poll of Latinos, Pew notes that it has never seen Latinos say their situation is worse than the year before.

Pew poll shows Latino support for Trump is slipping

npr.org/2025/11/24/nx-… ▪The economy was a main reason so many Latinos crossed over to vote for Trump in 2024, but they are really down on how they view it now — 78% rated economic conditions today as only fair or poor.

As the rhetoric heats up about mid-term redistricting I thought it important to offer some thoughts before the political nuclear button is pushed.

There are a whole lot of reasons why midterm redistricting in CA & TX is a bad idea. Here’s a few: 🧵 The first major problem is Democrats have a lot more to lose than Republicans if GOP Governors go all in on a partisan grab to control congress. Here are the ‘trifecta’ states where Republicans can quickly dominate the country’s map.

The public backlash to anti-immigrant fever has arrived. The Gallup poll released yesterday shows some of the biggest short term moves on public sentiment on immigration that I’ve seen in decades.

And it’s really bad news for Republicans. 🧵 Gallup showed that most of the dramatic move in public sentiment came from shifting attitudes among Republican voters who now view immigrants much more positively than a year ago.

It’s actually improved from just a month ago.

Why?

The election of Pope Leo represents one of the most strategically astute ecclesiastical decisions in modern Catholic history. The specter of JD Vance, a recent convert whose interpretation of Catholic teaching is filtered through the lens of American evangelical nationalism. Vance's public statements reveal a theological worldview fundamentally at odds with Catholicism’s compassionate social teachings. This stark contradiction becomes strikingly pronounced when contrasted with Pope Francis's repeated calls for compassion toward migrants.

The College of Cardinals has issued a bold repudiation of nativism & signaled a renewed commitment to justice, inclusion, & leadership in the face of American moral decline.

This isn’t the first time it has done so.The Church, of course, has a storied history of politics 🧵 Pope Pius XII was elected in 1939 in the face of similar rising threats to the global order and dehumanizing politics. open.substack.com/pub/greattrans…

A little history you likely haven’t heard about ‘Mass Deportations’ as we near a historic change in immigration policy.

Thousands of US citizens were rounded up the last time the US did this - maybe over a million, many children open.substack.com/pub/greattrans… The first mass deportation of Mexicans & US citizens of Mexican descent occurred during the Great Depression when farm jobs were prioritized for white Okies, dustbowlers & ‘real Americans’ over Latino citizens.

The government also wanted New Deal dollars going to whites first.

The Selzer poll was a big bolt of lightning and thunder in a race defined by very little movement in polling numbers.

This is great news for Harris -no other way to spin it. Great for the narrative, momentum & even if the numbers aren’t perfectly accurate they show big movement Why does that matter in swing states? Well Almost all of the movement in this poll towards Harris came from Republicans and Independent women.

In fact the poll shows Trump losing 11% of GOP voters in one of the whitest most conservative states in the country.

The racial slurs at Trumps rally in Madison Square Garden could cost him the election. Why?

First, even if it just moves Pennsylvania marginally its game over and it’s likely to move Latino’s and Republicans there.

Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino plurality in PA and Harris is doing best in PA with Latinos of all the swing states.

PA had huge Latino rightward shifts in 2020 & 2022 meaning there was a lot of Democratic crossovers to Republicans. That existing registration history suggests they can also be brought back.

There are three issues proven to move Republican voters past ‘The Bannon Line’ from 2020.

January 6
The Big Lie
Dobbs

Focus on these three issues and you win the race. Harris can pass the Bannon line and get a record number of Republican votes.

https://twitter.com/andrewfeinberg/status/1843687491435438336

You do not need a permission structure to defend your body or your country.

I’m deeply honored & grateful for those Republicans who have the courage to step forward against Trump. Everything helps at this moment.

But let’s be clear - we’re way past a ‘permission structure’

So what’s going on with the Latino vote?

Another credible poll comes out showing Trump gaining ground.

It’s not a methodology problem. No it’s not a sample size problem.

It’s really. So what gives? Here’s the latest poll that came out today.

No doubt there’s gonna be some panic and the talking heads are gonna start telling us the polls bad for whatever reasons they can conjur up. nbcnews.com/politics/2024-…

The biggest tell is the first paragraph “The very early polling on a Harris-Trump election suggests a reset in the fight over Latino voters. The Hispanic electorate now looks more in line with the other Trump-era elections of 2020 and 2022 than with a wide partisan realignment.”

https://twitter.com/carlosodio/status/1823725844818485513

The 2020 and 2022 campaigns were the ‘partisan realignment’…(not really sure what that means actually)

This isn’t a reset as much as it’s a return to a historically low range of a Democratic nominees support level at this point in the race.

A PAC supporting Kamala Harris is up with a new ad focused on housing and homeownership - take a look and let’s discuss how this effects Latino voters shall we? More than any other policy specific on the economy homeownership explains Latino men drifting to the GOP - homeownership is central to both the Latino economy and is a critical first step into the middle class.

The Biden years have been tough on Latinos here

Oh boy. This is big. The Kamala Harris campaign is on the air with a new ad and it’s a banger - take a look at it and then let’s discuss, shall we?

https://twitter.com/mediumbuying/status/1821882462017855925

I can’t explain how significant a shift this is for Democrats. It’s extraordinary and it is a complete reversal of basically everything they’ve been doing since 2012.

In fact, it’s basically a repudiation of that approach.

This is very good news.

Kamala Harris just dropped an ad targeting Latino voters. Here it is - take a look and then let’s discuss, shall we? This is a biography ad seeking to introduce Harris to Latinos. Which Latinos? We’ve got some strong clues and that tells us a lot about how the campaign is looking at Latino voters

Good news is the ads are also in English (Thank God) so they’re making progress

In 2020 when The Lincoln Project led the effort to move Republican voters away from Trump and to Joe Biden we used the phrase “The Bannon Line” to explain that moving a marginal 4-5% of GOP voters would determine the winner.

We exceeded those numbers in every swing state. This year the numbers look different and in looking at the same swing states where The Lincoln Project made a difference there is the potential for greater gains.

The data from primary states is showing Trump fatigue setting as well as new messaging opportunities