Why? To block a vote in the state legislature. President Donald Trump wants Texas to redraw political maps before the 2026 midterm elections. The redistricting would let Republicans hold onto their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The response: State Republican leaders have moved to discipline Democratic lawmakers who have left the state. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) asked the state Supreme Court to expel Texas’ top House Democrat, and the Texas statehouse issued arrest warrants for Democrats who left.

A longer history of gerrymandering: At the risk of sounding like a bad wedding toast, Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines gerrymandering as creating “election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw the state’s congressional districts is just one example of this practice. 

Is it illegal? Not always. Redrawing maps to give one political party a leg up has been allowed. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has nodded to this (as Dave noted in yesterday’s video) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced plans for partisan redistricting in California if Texas Republicans’ plan goes through. But the U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled against states that have weakened Black voters’ electoral power through gerrymandering.

Interview with an AI avatar: Jim Acosta, an independent journalist and CNN’s former chief White House correspondent, drew controversy for interviewing an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver. Oliver was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Critics on social media said Acosta could have instead interviewed school shooting survivors. Oliver’s father, Manuel Oliver, said he took comfort in hearing his son’s voice again.

Days later, former CNN anchor, now NewsNation anchor/pundit Chris Cuomo fell for a deepfake of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. The AI-generated video shows AOC critiquing American Eagle’s recent ad with Sydney Sweeney, which many social media users have called out as eugenicist. (Dave covered the ad last week, by the way.) Cuomo reshared the deepfake on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Ocasio-Cortez replied to the post, pointing out that it was a deepfake and prompting Cuomo to delete his post.

What if we kissed in the White House ballroom 👉 👈 We can’t. Because it’s fake — or rather, an AI-generated rendering of it is. President Donald Trump is actually planning a ballroom addition to the White House, but a fake rendering of the project has been spreading online. To spot misinformation like this, the News Literacy Project recommends finding out who would have credible information, looking at the account that posted the image, checking their sources and searching the web to see if credible reporting supports the claim you found online.

What happened: The Bureau of Labor Statistics released July’s jobs report, which showed that jobs growth had stalled. Without evidence, Trump accused Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer of rigging the numbers to make him look bad. He also accused McEntarfer — again, without evidence — of faking numbers to make the Biden/Harris administration look good ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Labor data and you: The Federal Reserve uses labor data when setting interest rates. Where that data guides them could impact how much you pay for things like a mortgage or a car loan, The New York Times explains.

Big picture: This fits into Trump’s broader assault on truth. He and his administration are spreading conspiracies about “any government economic data which does not fit neatly into Trump’s political narrative,” notes CNBC’s Erin Doherty. There’s also the larger pattern of Trump targeting people he views as political opponents.

I was so strong: We’re at the end of this section and I didn’t even make one “You’re fired” joke.

Please keep reading even if you’re not retiring: This week, Dave unpacked how much money you can expect from Social Security when you do retire. It’s part of his partnership with Free the Facts, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that empowers young Americans to learn and lead.

How much money will I get? Basically, it’ll be a percentage of the money you made while you were working. That percentage is called the “replacement rate.” The more money you make, the lower your replacement rate is. So let’s do some manifesting together: If I make — oh, I don’t know — an average of $171,000 per year for every year of my career, I’d get 20% of that as Social Security income. 

That’s assuming we’ll get Social Security at all. Because I was an infant when the “Boy Meets World” finale aired, a detail I included to make Dave feel old, I won’t be eligible for Social Security until the 2060s. But the program’s trust fund is forecasted to run out of money by 2033, meaning benefits for more than 60 million people will be cut unless Congress works to stop it.