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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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I’ve had decent results tapping the “nothing ever happens” sign, so I guess my predictions look like this.

  • 80% chance of invoking the Act and deploying troops. Conditional on that,
  • 70% it looks like the Greg Abbott strategy, just extended to states other than Texas.
  • 20% of something closer to martial law.
  • <10% of troop presence anywhere near the 2026 elections.

Putting numbers to these makes me realize how unsure I am. It’s hard to frame the predictions without getting way too detailed.

The long and the short of it is: I expect Trump to take any options that look like a Strong Leader Doing Something. In the absence of a flashpoint, Doing Something means scaling up existing red-state policies, not suspending elections.

It’s easy to see a route which leads to Trumpocracy. That doesn’t mean the route is likely.