Texas House Democrats pulled a dramatic stunt by fleeing the state earlier this month, grinding the legislature to a halt and preventing a vote on new congressional maps that could deliver up to five additional seats to Republicans. Governor Greg Abbott called a special session to address redistricting following population shifts, but the absent lawmakers have denied the necessary quorum, forcing Republicans to pursue legal remedies to bring them back.
Former President Barack Obama entered the picture on Thursday, participating in a 30-minute Zoom call with the self-exiled Democrats. Joined by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who chairs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Obama lauded their flight as a bold stand against what he termed Republican overreach.
“What we all recognize is we can’t let a systematic assault on democracy just happen and stand by,” Obama said during the call. He went on to accuse Republicans of manipulating the system because their policies lack broad appeal: “The problem that we’ve been seeing, not just recently, but this goes back a while, is that the Republicans increasingly recognize their ideas won’t sell, so we’ve got to fix the game a little bit, and by drawing maps that splinter democratic voting blocs, by packing in Democrats into one district so that they don’t have influence in other districts.” Wrapping up that thought, he added, “That’s not fair. That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.”
Obama also highlighted broader threats under the current administration, without naming President Donald Trump directly, pointing to the “militarization of cities” and the “politicization of our justice departments and our military.”
He warned, “Those are trend lines that remind us this precious democracy that we’ve got is not a given. It’s not self-executed. It requires us to fight for it. It requires us to stand up for it.” Emphasizing the need for equitable processes, he stated, “And when we have fair voting rights, and we have fair maps, and we’re fairly competing, that’s good for everybody, not just one side.”
The former president praised the Democrats’ actions for sparking a chain reaction, including California Governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement to pursue retaliatory redistricting in his state to neutralize potential GOP gains from Texas. Obama described such mid-decade gerrymandering as “highly irregular” but acknowledged it as a temporary countermeasure.
He expressed a preference for independent commissions to handle map-drawing, saying, “And my hope is that rather than have a race to the bottom where every district is predetermined based on how it’s drawn, that over time, the American people, ideally with the help of the courts, realizes that there’s a better way.”
Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, shared details of the meeting, noting that the group felt “encouraged” by Obama’s support and “remain committed to fighting for democracy, in Texas & across the country.”
An Obama spokesperson confirmed the interaction, stating that he “lauded their fight against the Republican efforts to enact an even more egregious gerrymander in Texas ahead of the midterms.” The spokesperson added that Obama “made clear that they are part of a bigger effort to protect free and fair elections and commended them for inspiring others with their actions.”
Wu emphasized the backing from national figures: “Having President Obama speak with us and support us is proof that when Texas House Democrats stand up and fight back, we don’t stand alone — we have the support of Democrats at every level who understand that when Republicans attack voting rights in Texas, they’re attacking the foundation of our democracy everywhere.”
He also criticized the need for secrecy in the call: “The fact that we have to meet President Obama from an undisclosed location and via Zoom because of Republican threats and surveillance only proves how desperate Abbott and his extremist allies have become. They know their racial gerrymandering scheme is falling apart, so they’re resorting to intimidation tactics. But President Obama’s support shows the whole country is watching — and Texas House Democrats won’t be silenced by bullies.”
Obama had previously weighed in via an August 5 post on X, declaring, “We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy.”
Republicans aren’t taking this lying down. Abbott has initiated legal action to compel the Democrats’ return and has floated the possibility of removing them from office if they continue to shirk their responsibilities. Senator Ted Cruz responded sharply to Newsom’s California plan, arguing that if Democrats there eliminate GOP districts, Texas should follow suit, which could result in a net Republican gain overall.
This episode exposes a glaring double standard. While Democrats and Obama rail against Republican map-making as an “assault on democracy,” their own party has a long track record of similar tactics. In Illinois, for instance, Democrats crafted the notorious “earmuffs” district, a convoluted shape that linked two distant Latino communities with a narrow corridor to pack voters and sideline Republican strongholds in the suburbs. This manipulation earned Illinois an F grade for partisan fairness from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, highlighting how Democrats engineer advantages when they hold power. States like Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon have also seen Democratic-led gerrymandering that tilts the scales, with poor fairness scores underscoring the partisan bias.
Obama’s meddling isn’t surprising—Governor Abbott has long called out efforts by Obama, Holder, and outside influencers to interfere in Texas redistricting. Back in 2019, Abbott highlighted how they funneled $50 million into Virginia to seize control of map-drawing there, warning that Texas was next on their list.
At the end of the day, redistricting is a constitutional duty reflecting population changes, and Texas Republicans are simply ensuring maps align with the state’s conservative leanings and growth. The Democrats’ walkout isn’t inspiring—it’s an evasion of accountability that mocks the voters who elected them. As the special session winds down, expect Republicans to push forward, undeterred by these partisan games.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
To prove their sincerity in preserving Democracy, they should undo their own Gerrymandering in every state they control. That will never happen, of course.