Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

12 – 270 to win

To win the presidency, the Electoral College needed to be won. There were a total of five hundred and thirty-eight votes up for grabs with a victory for either Edward Roberts or Maria Arreola Rodriguez possible by taking at least two hundred and seventy of them. Like the 2024 election, the ’28 presidential race was based on the reapportionment of individual totals for states within the union following the outcome of the last census. Some states had gained Electoral College votes and others had lost some; most remained the same number which they had at the 2020 election though. California had the most (54, down from 55) with Texas in second place at (41, up three). Eight states at the other end of the scale, plus the District of Columbia which was treated as a state for presidential election purposes, had the minimum of three. Forty-seven states were using the winner-takes-all method of how they would give their votes to the Electoral College while three others – Maine, Nebraska & Washington – would split their semi-proportionally based upon congressional districts and the state-wide popular vote. The paths of the White House for the two candidates ran through many different calculations. They had their base (states which it was near impossible for them to lose) and then those they were almost certain they would take. On top of them were the swing states. The media narrative was that MAR and Roberts needed to win these to beat the other. Of course, that wasn’t fully the case. Should a surprise crop up in a big enough previously safe state, or several of them, then the swing states, those Purple ones on the map, could swing the other way but the White House could still be gained. The general focus was on the need to get two hundred and seventy to win though.

Due to the geographic spread of the United States coast-to-coast across North America, the polling stations on November 7th closed at different times. Meanwhile, results came in faster from certain states than they did from others who shared the same time zones. News come out of selected states concerning county-level victories long before the state-wide total came out. False rumours and truths believed to be lies until they weren’t came. The candidates and their campaign staffs were updated constantly with all sorts of news. There was so much which went as expected… and then so much which didn’t.

The Democrats believed that they were going to do well in Michigan and Minnesota: two of those Purple states. It was thought by MAR and those closest to her that they needed to win more than just the two of them for ultimate victory but towards them their attention was upon long after the polls closed. Good news came out of Michigan. Not so good news was received from the voting tallies in Minnesota. The vote for the Democrats was down in Virginia and also under pressure in Maine as well. As the night wore on, MAR held those two Blue states against Republican efforts to swipe them from under her but Minnesota was not going to swing towards the Democrats. News came from out of Washington in the Pacific North-West. The vote split there looked bad at first glance with the Republicans looking likely to take four of the twelve but it could have been worse. But then came the reports of more counts in Michigan going the Democrats’ way. It swung Blue the later the night got and its fifteen votes in the bag. Winning Michigan alone wasn’t enough though. North Carolina and Pennsylvania were being won by the Republicans. Control over the state legislatures in each was in their hands and they had sufficiently supressed the vote in urban areas within them to ensure their swing. With the victories which MAR had achieved, running on that strong socialist message, victory didn’t look like it was going to happen.

Roberts and his campaign threw all that they could at those swing states as well as the two Blue and one Red state which split their Electoral College votes. Michigan was written off early but taking the other trio of Purple states and winning votes in Maine and Washington, plus defending ever so well in Nebraska, worked out just as planned. The Republicans were aiming to reach three hundred votes in Electoral College, or just short of that total depending upon the split in Washington state. New Hampshire was a bit of a problem though but even in the worst case scenario, should the Democrats manage to turn that Red state into a Blue state (at least in this one particular election), Roberts was going to take the White House with all that his campaign believed that he was going to win. There was nothing to indicate, especially early in the night, that anything serious was going to go wrong with how the campaign had been fought despite all of those horrific Black Swan events in October.

Then Florida happened.

Florida was a Red state. All branches of state government and the judiciary were controlled by the Republicans. They had two senators there and twenty-six (of twenty-nine) congressmen/women. Roberts hadn’t campaigned physically in the state but surrogates had. The Republican candidate had taken the victory there for granted, just as his party had. There was no indication of any problem until a few weeks past, just after the singer Teyo was shot in West Palm Beach. He was popular there and his funeral had been held locally when MAR had attended. Running for re-election to the Senate as the same time as Roberts sought the presidency was incumbent Senator Luis Vargas Garcia. He too was expected to cruise to victory. Alas, Vargas had made some pretty nasty comments about Teyo after his death, and MAR’s appearance in Florida. He wasn’t very popular even before this and was facing a well-financed Democratic opponent whom everyone but that candidate himself seem to have written off. Vargas dragged down the Republican vote. Democratic voters turned out in droves with a number of them – a vocal minority – ‘doing it for Teyo’. The Republicans had had some late-stage worries but these hadn’t been paid attention to at the very top because the Democrats’ national campaign wasn’t focused on Florida. The Democrats would take two seats in the House of Representatives, beat Vargas (their only victory in thirty-five – one of them a Special – Senate races) to take his Senate seat and also swipe Florida in the presidential race. Huge turnout despite all Republican efforts to limit likely Democratic voters took place. Counties in the southeast, where Miami & West Palm Beach were, as well as in the centre (around Tampa and Orlando) plus in the northeast (Jacksonville) all went for MAR by small yet significant margins. African-American and Hispanic voters elsewhere in the country were voting for the Republicans in greater numbers than ever before but not enough of them did so in Florida. Many of the Republican-supporting ones actually stayed at home due to distaste for Vargas and the belief that the state would never flip…leading the Democrats to squeak it.

The Republicans had taken their eye off the ball. Florida’s thirty-one votes in the Electoral College went to the Democrats. Roberts saw all that he was sure to win taken from him so suddenly, so unexpectedly. Meanwhile, MAR had done the seemingly impossible by grabbing a ‘safe’ Red state such as Florida. She’d gone and won the White House! Livestreaming from her home, reactions to incoming results from MAR and her wife had brought many emotions on show. Nothing before was like what was witnessed by watching supporters when the news arrived from Florida. The screams of celebration, the dancing on the sofa and the chant of ‘doing it for Teyo’ were something special.

The results of the Electoral College were two hundred and seventy for the Democrats with the Republicans gaining two hundred and sixty eight. The magic ‘270 to win’ had been achieved.

[James G]

Democrats: Arizona (12), California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Florida (31), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), Oregon (8), Rhode Island (3), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), plus D.C (3), plus split Maine (3) & split Washington (8).
Total: 270
Republicans: Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Minnesota (9), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (16), North Dakota (3), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), Pennsylvania (19), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (41), Utah (6), West Virginia (4), Wisconsin (10), Wyoming (3),plus split Maine (1) & split Washington (4).
Total: 268



(click on image to enlarge)

[James G]

13 – Real change

On election night, and into the early hours, Edward Roberts had been at his campaign headquarters in Austin. The Texan state capital was a Republican stronghold (a recent thing) in a state which had gone even more redder in this election: Democrats in Texas were going to be increasingly more marginalised afterwards. When the ‘Florida shock’ happened, Roberts considered conceding the race afterwards. He had had no intention of being like the 45th President when that awful man lost in 2020 and instead was thinking of following the example set by Ohio Governor Roy Allen when he was defeated in ’24 and quickly admitted defeat. However, Roberts held back because his campaign team were telling him that there was still a chance that Michigan might not go Blue as all forecasts said it might do. The Democrats were already claiming victory there in that swing state but nothing could be certain at that early stage. Roberts didn’t think he would win the fifteen Electoral College votes from there because he felt it wasn’t his night but he did believe there was no harm in waiting a few more hours just to be sure. Then Ericka Cook put in a call to Austin. She was the Governor of Florida and had just finished up giving the losing Senate candidate Vargas an earful for how he had dragged the Republican vote down across Florida. Talking to Roberts, Cook told him that there was no way that Florida would cast its thirty-one Electoral College votes for an ‘illegal alien’. Maria Arreola Rodriquez was born in Mexico as the child of two Mexican nationals. Her US birth certificate and adoption papers were fraudulent. Her candidacy for the presidency was illegitimate. Florida couldn’t, wouldn’t certify the victory of someone who was unconstitutionally unable to fill the office of the presidency. Cook berated Roberts for not doing what Senator Stokes had wanted and pushing that matter ahead of the election but, in the same breath, said that that was all immaterial now. Roberts had messed up there but she was going to see him in the White House come January.

The Governor of Florida was never a favourite of Roberts and he had successfully resisted some calls within the party to have her as his vice presidential pick. She was too combative and too outspoken for his taste. Regardless, she set about doing everything she could for him. Within minutes of that phone call, she was on television saying the same thing about MAR. Florida wouldn’t be giving its votes in the Electoral College to the Democratic candidate: that she assured the nation and the watching world. Technically that wasn’t up to her due to how the state laws were in Florida but she had the real power down there. If Cook said it wasn’t happening, only the highest court in the land could stop her. The Republican incumbent Senator Harry Dunn, who had just won re-election up in Wisconsin, said the same thing – calling MAR an ‘illegal alien’ – a few hours later. The Roberts campaign HQ had just received word from Michigan that the Democrats had that state in the bag but now this was happening. By the morning, the exact same description of MAR was being made by leading Republicans nationwide. It wasn’t the Roberts’ campaign doing this. Cook was working hand-in-hand with Senate Majority Leader Green as they went on the offensive: she was looking at a Senate race in 2030 and wanted to play a big role there upon a possible arrival. Green had been one of those who had resisted attacking the question of MAR’s birth status ahead of the election, agreeing with Roberts that it would do them no favours with voters, but he had changed tack. MAR might have thought that she had won and the news media was calling the presidential race for her, but there were those with power, real power, who weren’t going to stand aside and let her take the White House no matter how many voters she had convinced to send her there.


The ‘illegal alien’ allegation against MAR had been made many times before, even ahead of her running for Congress. The supposedly new claims made by the blogger Maddie Chen in October had been the most serious and MAR’s campaign had resorted to legal action. When there had been noises out of states such as Alabama and Missouri ahead of the election about taking the matter of her legitimacy – a lack of – to the Supreme Court, that had caused some worry but nothing had come of it due to that putting a halt on things by the Republican leadership. Made once again after her stunning victory, MAR responded to these comments by Cook, Dunn & then so many others by denying that they had any truth to them. She was born in the United States. That was that. Defeated Republicans, she said, were trying to rob the American people of the president which they had voted for.

What the president-elect – her campaign and most of the media called her that – wanted to talk about instead was what would come with her presidency. There would be change, real change. She said she would honour her campaign promises. Americans would get what they voted for under her presidency. There would be no selling out, no betrayals: not this time from this Democratic winner. However… there was going to be a problem with that. The House and the Senate remained under the firm control of the Republicans. The Democrats had won back one seat in the latter (making it 59 to 41 there) and were up four seats in the former (House totals stood at 240 to 195). That defeat for Vargas in Florida had come alongside the Republicans losing two House seats there and one more each in Colorado, Idaho, Michigan & Utah; the Republicans had won two seats back in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In a nationwide vote with every House seat and more than a third of the Senate up, these were the only changes. Almost twenty per cent of the House seats had been uncontested too where one of the two parties, who’d long ago each worked to lock-out any minor parties form even getting a long-shot chance, had decided that it wasn’t worth challenging for a seat in an unfriendly state. Nationwide, in all contests, there was an overall drop in turnout. Races in Florida, swing states and many Blue & Red states out West had seen higher numbers but everywhere else, the totals were down. Voters had stayed at home where the party which they supported stood no chance of winning or was certain to win. So entrenched the parties where in their safe states, that many voters hadn’t voted because they had believed that their vote wouldn’t change anything.

All of the highlights of MAR’s campaign promises were opposed by the Republicans. She expanded much upon Walsh’s agenda from 2024, which she had been so in support of them before he’d governed as a neo-Liberal puppet of the Republicans, for her own. Congress under the complete control of the Republicans was never going to support a Democrat with a socialist agenda which she wanted. There would be no end to private healthcare, no student debt forgiveness, no Green New Deal, no wealth tax, no return to national protection for abortion & gender recognition, no cut in military expenditure, no re-evaluation of the United States’ international alliances, no abolishment of the Electoral College, no entry of DC & Puerto Rico into the union, no federal job guarantee, no federal court packing, no abolishment of ICE and no wide-ranging gun controls. As president, MAR wouldn’t be able to achieve any of that. The Democrats didn’t have control of Congress and there was a Republican-friendly, or at least pro-conservative, Supreme Court.

Real change wasn’t going to happen should MAR get to the White House.


Roberts didn’t concede that race to take the presidency. Michigan had been taken by the Democrats and Florida had been ‘won’ by them too. That was what the narrative was from the left-leaning media, Democrats and MAR herself. However, his fellow Republicans and right-wing media outlets asserted that the supposed victory by the California congresswoman was illegitimate. She didn’t meet the requirements of the constitution to be president and shouldn’t even have been able to run for the White House. There were several weeks before many state-wide counts would finish up – they’d been called early by the media and the two campaigns but nothing was official until every vote was tallied – and time before official certification would came was spent in arguments. The networks ABC and NBC each backtracked on calling MAR the president-elect and there was a massive dispute on Wikipedia among editors over that title. The outcome of the 2028 United States Presidential Election was now ‘disputed’. Governor Cook in Florida repeated her assertion that her state wouldn’t certify MAR as the winner there. Democrats in Florida took the matter to that Red state’s supreme court ahead of that. Other legal action was underway elsewhere. Alabama joined with an initial joint effort by Republican legislators in Kentucky and Missouri to bring that matter before the United States Supreme Court. California, Illinois, New York & Rhode Island all launched counter legal action to the same body to head that off.

A week after the election, DaJuan Anderson died. MAR’s VP candidate had been in a coma for a month since the Omaha Bombing but an infection defeated the efforts of the very best doctors to keep him from death. On November 15th, he lost his fight to live. Such a passing threw more fuel onto the fire concerning the outcome of the election. The nation waited to see what effect that would have as the court cases went onwards and states got ready to being certifying the results. Meanwhile, as lawyers were busy with court motions, there were storm clouds gathering elsewhere.

[James G]

14 – Gathering storms

After seizing control of Taiwan, fighting off the Americans while doing so, China inherited all of the territorial claims of that once ‘rebellious province’. These included the few outposts of Taiwanese military presence which had been down in the South China Sea among the Spratly Islands. They were taken near to the end of the fighting on Taiwan itself, after the ceasefire with the Americans had been agreed. When the US Navy went away licking its wounds, the Chinese Navy moved down into the South China Sea to take those tiny islands in the face of, eventual, minimal resistance from the defeated Taiwanese. Other countries had their own military presence in those islands: Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The new additions to the already extensive Chinese presence cemented China’s strong influence in the region. During 2027 and then into ’28, many countries within East & South East Asia who had once been at odds with China came to an ‘understanding’ with Beijing. The Philippines and South Korea recognised the new reality and finally came out of the American sphere of influence when it was clear that the United States was no longer the power it once had been. Filipino forces left their possessions in the Spratly Islands. Those weren’t ceded to China and Manila still claimed them, but they no longer had any air & naval assets, nor troops, in the region. Malaysia was next to fall in line. The work was harder for Beijing’s diplomats, but China got its way. Out went Malaysian military elements. That just left the Vietnamese who had their long-standing presence.

China wanted all of the Spratly Islands. They claimed an historic right to them and promoted legal claims: all disputed by their neighbours. Fishing rights, control of the sea-lanes for defensive purposes and the potential hydrocarbon rights (what was under the sea in terms of oil and gas) were desired in Beijing. With the Americans gone, attention turned to getting the Vietnamese out. In Hanoi, there had been secret glee when the Americans were giving a hiding by the Chinese like they were in January 2027. However, the leadership in Vietnam were no fools. They realised straight away that they would be next in the firing line. Previous aggression was reined in. Vietnam would keep what it held and no longer push its own extensive claims over the Spratly Islands. There was a good relationship with Russia and, on that basis, Hanoi had the belief that they had checkmated any Chinese hostile intentions for them. Unfortunately, unbeknown to the Vietnamese, the pieces on the board were being rearranged. Beijing and Moscow came to their own understanding with regard to South East Asia. Hanoi was an expendable pawn in Moscow and was traded away without anyone telling the Vietnamese. Should it come to a conflict, Russia wouldn’t make a move to intervene.

At the beginning of November 2028, as American prepared to go to the polls, China started sortieing their fleet. The People’s Liberation Army Navy had taken many losses in that short conflict with the Americans but was still quite a force. Several flotillas set sail including two of them each built around an aircraft carrier. The Americans, the Australians, the Indians, the Japanese… everyone really, took notice. It was unexpected and troubling. The deployment was huge and had to be expensive. What was the purpose? That became clear on the 9th: two days after Americans had voted for who they wanted to see as their next president but with the outcome of that still undecided. The fleet sortieing covered from afar what was happening closer to Chinese shores. Using the excuse of what was declared by Beijing to be ‘Vietnamese military aggression’, which was the flight of one of their fighter aircraft near to a Chinese-controlled island, China responded with overwhelming force. They started engaging Vietnamese military forces in the Spratly Islands. Warnings were sent to Hanoi that if Vietnam expanded the conflict, if it tried to strike elsewhere, there would be dire consequences. Hanoi could have fought back. They could have done something on the border between the two countries or even made an attack against Hainan Island from where many Chinese activities in the South China Sea against Vietnamese forces were being supported from. None of that was done though. They were too frightened in Hanoi. The Russians had been asked for support and declined. America wasn’t going to come to Vietnam’s aid, even in the name of enforcing international peace. Vietnam lost its island possessions with China winning another short, victorious war close to home.


The Chinese used land-based air power and a flotilla of medium-sized warships in their Spratly Islands operations against the Vietnamese. Anything else was overkill. Their carriers went elsewhere, much further away. There were three full-sized aircraft carriers in service with two more under construction in late 2028: another one had been sunk by an American submarine attack the year before. The pair sent out each had its own air wing with naval versions of the FC-31 strike-fighter and escorting destroyers & frigates carrying arsenals of missiles. The northern flotilla went out from Ningbo into the Western Pacific and past the Japanese-owned Ryukyu Island before conducting at-sea exercises between Japan and the Northern Marianas. There were Japanese naval vessels out and their aircraft were in the sky. American forces left on Okinawa, after the mutually-agreed pull-out of the majority of them earlier in the year, posed no concern to the Chinese and their operations. From out of Zhanjiang, the southern flotilla crossed the Luzon Strait and into Philippine Sea to conduct exercises there. There were live firings of missiles out of the way of shipping lanes and many carrier air landings. Easily within range of the second carrier was Guam, an island rocked by ballistic missile strikes on US Air Force & US Navy facilities the year beforehand; Okinawa was between the first carrier and the Chinese mainland.

The Chinese had barred the way forward from any possible American effort to push towards their homeland again. Their navy conducted blue-water carrier air operations out in the Western Pacific as a sign of the superiority that they had.

Such news of what the Chinese were up to broke in America as the post-election dispute continued. The majority of the country was distracted but there were those who wished to see something done. Those seeking vengeance for what had happened twenty months beforehand included senior officers in both blue and white. America had lost thousands of airmen and sailors the year beforehand and revenge was wanted. The US Air Force had a couple of B-21 Raider stealth aircraft ready for possible action over China – they believed they wouldn’t be taken down by Chinese missiles as a trio of B-2 Spirits had been – and the US Navy was marshalling its carriers as well as the all-important submarine force it possessed in the Pacific. The Pentagon had war plans for engaging the Chinese once more, detailed ones with much work done to see them succeed. President Walsh was in no mind to launch a war though. If America was attacked, then conflict would come but he wouldn’t do what he had in 2027 and strike at the Chinese first. He was told that East & South East Asia were going to be lost forever if he didn’t act, but he considered his hands bound. It was clear that in the coming year, and beyond, China was going to do more than it was now yet he would be out of office by then. No repeat of what so many Americans saw as the folly of Operation Eastern Dawn was made. One only had to look at the opposing forces, beyond those carrier flotillas. The Chinese still had their anti-carrier ballistic missiles, they had a growing (size and capability) submarine force of their own and were fielding a handful of their own stealth bombers: the latter being their H-20s. Unlike in the last conflict, when China had ‘only’ hit Guam and Wake Island, Walsh expected that Chinese bombs would fall upon Hawaii, Alaska… and even California. He wouldn’t put his country in the position to face attacks like that just because the Chinese were taking a few tiny islands away from the Vietnamese.

And they knew that in Beijing too.


There was the more pressing gathering storm of possible warfare with a peer-level adversary in November 2028 for Walsh to worry about. On the other side of the world from the South China Sea, the situation in the Baltics was looking at that time explosive. Like Beijing, Moscow was taking advantage of Walsh’s term of office running out and polarising political disputes surrounding his successor. No territory was to be gobbled up as it would mean war with not just the United States but Britain and a good portion of Europe too. Yet, another step towards an eventual goal of President Makarov’s – that being territorial acquisition – was taken.

On the night of November 11th, there were the murders in the Latvian city of Daugavpils of two spies from Britain’s MI-6 plus the four-man SAS team protecting them. The spooks were meeting with a source and he, plus his own bodyguard, were killed as well. The slaying of all eight was done quickly, quietly and gruesomely. A leak was shut and a message of strength sent. In the early hours of the following morning, a huge bomb blast rocked one of the military posts right inside Daugavpils. No warning had come from that MI-6 source of what was about to happen. The death toll was more than a dozen and this included a trio of Americans there part of the NATO mission in the Baltics to defend them against Russian forces on the borders. Minutes later, up in Estonia, another explosion rocked that country’s parliament building. It was empty of politicians but still meant to be guarded: another nine deaths occurred including an American servicewoman.

Doing these killings and planting those bombs were Latvian and Estonian nationals. Since last year, native born citizens of those two countries, and to a lesser extent Lithuanians too, had been waging a terror campaign in the Baltics. While citizens of these countries, they were ethnic Russians though. The majority didn’t even usually reside in the Baltics: like many ethnic Russians from the region, in years past they had emigrated elsewhere within the European Union. Back now and acting on behalf of Moscow, they’d been causing all sorts of trouble. It was all part of a grand scheme by Makarov where he made repeated claims of ethnic Russians being the victims of the trio of governments who resided in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. NATO had peacekeepers on the ground while over in neighbouring Poland there was a large military force ready to enter should Russia invade. These two attacks were far from isolated and certainly not the worst of attacks made since this whole crisis started last year. They were done at this time for the specific purpose of seeing the outcome though.

[James G]

15 – Theft

Election Day 2028 had been one without any serious violence seen across the United States. The co-ordinated and extensive security effort undertaken at a federal- & state-level ensured that there were no shootings, bombings or vehicle-ramming attacks which could take place. Voter intimidation still happened though either overt or in the shadows. The presence of national guardsmen near polling stations and police forces on full tactical alert couldn’t stop that. Disenfranchisement in this manner of so many Americans happened even without the risk of being killed when voting. In the immediate aftermath, when it became clear that the outcome of who would be the next resident of the White House wasn’t going to be at once settled, the security effort was supposed to be something carried on with. There were fears of more of the horrendous political violence which had plagued the country for the past years continuing.

However, as per usual during the Twenties, the partisan divide saw a quick end to the maintaining of a strong guard against terrorism. Arguments and different wishes for outcomes won out over unity. States pulled back their National guard units and police officers were reassigned. This began after the polling stations closed and in the week following November 7th, those out to do harm watched as all of that opposition melted away. Their time to strike came.


The night that the news came that DaJuan Anderson, the Democratic VP candidate, had died of his injuries following the month’s terror attack in Nebraska, there was a big protest in New York City. That was his hometown, where he had made his name as a ‘people’s champion’. Anderson had moved on from his City role to serve his State but he had never sold out. From Albany he fought the ‘good fight’ against corruption and sought criminal justice reform while serving as New York State Attorney. A very popular pick for Maria Arreola Rodriquez as a running mate, especially as she wasn’t as popular in the East as she was in the West, Anderson had held the hopes of many New Yorkers in him before the Omaha Bombing which put in a coma and then the infection in hospital which killed him. A co-ordinated effort by varied supporters and affiliates put together a march: there had been some groundwork done because while so many hoped he would live, many feared he would eventually not survive. Without permits and no permission from the city authorities, tens of thousands gathered in the Big Apple after dark on November 15th. They went towards City Hall in downtown Manhattan with three separate marches – coming from the Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn/Queens – aiming to meet there. Mayor Angela Duke, who’d failed in her own run for the Democratic nomination, and never been on the very best of terms with Anderson too, heard about it late. She decided not to act. There was opportunity for her to come out for or against the unauthorised march which was going to bring much of New York to a halt, but she did nothing.

NYPD acted rather than waiting for the mayor to make up her mind. They knew that the vast majority of those marching in memory of Anderson and calling for MAR to be made president would be peaceful. The event was going to attract trouble though from a minority. They responded in force, aiming to police the march and try to stop it erupting into another riot like what had happened back in July. Nothing went to plan for neither the police nor the march organisers. The routes set weren’t followed and there was traffic everywhere. Troublemakers turned up and things got out of hand. The NYPD reacted with force, too much, and got back at them what they gave out. The Big Apple was a city of sirens, burning fires and full Emergency Rooms by midnight.


That New York City protest had called for justice to be delivered upon Anderson’s killers. It had also been about upholding what participants saw as the result of the presidential election: victory for the Democratic candidate. There had been several of those beforehand, larger ones than the one in the Big Apple, though none had seen the violence erupt that was witnessed in New York. People were angry at what they saw as the ongoing attempt at theft by the Republicans and they came out to protest against this. In great numbers each time. Before the Big Apple, there had been marches in Boston, Miami, Mobile (in deep Red Alabama no less), Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Seattle. After the one in New York City, cities such as Chicago, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, Phoenix, Portland & Tampa all saw more of them. These were all becoming more and more co-ordinated. Not involved on an official level, the presidential campaign of MAR did lent help though with organisation. Revolución was involved in getting the message out and helping especially in the Red states where some of those cities were: it was far more difficult to organise there without the cyber-warfare (that’s almost what it was) efforts of Revolución defeating state-level attempts to forestall them. There was violence which came through November while those court cases were being fought. The anger from supporters of MAR, those who had voted for her, and they expressed their rage. Police forces in some cases were more restrained than they had been in New York yet that wasn’t the story in certain states. Antifa turned up in Newark and Portland while there were shooting incidents by right-wing militia against protesters in Wisconsin’s biggest city. Deaths and injuries occurred. Extensive property damage was done and chaos ruled the streets on certain nights. A few governors once more called out their National Guard. In Michigan, when there was a smaller protest than what had been seen in Detroit, national guardsmen were shot at when on the streets of the city of Grand Rapids. They believed that they had been taken under fire by what they deemed ‘Antifa terrorists’ but later investigations would fail to find any truth in that. One guardsmen returned fire, striking a trio of civilians with wayward and uncontrollable shooting.

The Grand Rapids Massacre – so it was deemed by those on the left – was a cause of national outrage. MAR was at a (peaceful) event in San Francisco the next night. Revolución arranged their first own protest march after that shooting killed three in Michigan and she was in attendance where close to seventy thousand turned out: a bigger crowd was wanted, and would have been gotten, but an agreement with the state authorities in California limited that number. Addressing the killings of those in Grand Rapids, MAR expressed the feelings of so many across the country. Those people were murdered! They were massacred, she said, because those responsible for their killing knew they would get away with it. When she got to the White House come January, she would make sure that nothing like that happened again. Real change was going to happen across the country. Such remarks were well received by the crowd in California and among supporters nationwide who watched online & on television. Yet, what she said didn’t go down too well among all Democrats, those who had never been fully aboard the ‘MAR train’. Seeing her inaugurated as the 49th President was what they wanted but unhappiness was felt about how she hadn’t (in San Francisco nor before when asked) criticised other violence which had occurred during protests in support of her. Then there was that comment about Michigan and its sovereign National Guard. MAR’s words were interpreted by some in a manner which made them uncomfortable. She’d spoken in years past about curtailing the independence of state-level military forces and was blaming those in Grand Rapids for what had happened so quickly with no full understanding of all that went on there. It wasn’t presidential.


In Idaho, Damian Kowalski had been elected as Congressman on November 7th. He was a Democrat running in a Red state who defied expectations and won a House seat away from a Republican incumbent. Winning Boise handily, and making significant inroads into the suburbs too, Kowalski snatched away that seat by running a good campaign against an ultimately lazy opponent. He had yet to be sworn into office before he was murdered. The White Star Militia shot him dead, evading his personal protection. That militia group operated across several states in the western half of the United States and was a recent creation due to many mergers of multiple former independent organisations. They were already banned in California and Nevada with other Blue states aiming to do the same. That wasn’t the case in Red states including Idaho. Governor Brad Winkelman knew Kowalski personally. They were on opposite sides of the partisan divide and the governor had supported the incumbent yet he had regarded Kowalski as a good person. That new Representative for Idaho had the interests of the state’s people at heart, even those who strongly disagreed with him. He’d been shot because of the ‘(D)’ after his name instead of a ‘(R)’.

Winkelman had been trying to get the White Star Militia – and other ring-wing gun nuts organised to commit violent acts – banned in Idaho but to no avail. The legislature would have none of that. There was no way a ban would come into force even after that murder, even if Winkelman, very popular in his state, threw everything he could at trying to achieve such an end. Furious, the governor found himself powerless. He wanted to do something in response, for his state and his people, but could do nothing. There was no opportunity on the horizon that he could see to put a stop to what was happening to Idaho, as well as the rest of the country. Other Republicans across the country shared such desires as his. They wanted an end to everything that was happening, just as Democrats did too. However, the crazies had long ago taken over the asylum – the statehouse in Boise among them – and such events as the Kowalski assassination were allowed to carry on.

After the Kowalski murder, there were more violent acts during late November. The nation still had eyes on the legal dispute concerning the presidential election outcome but with security levels easing up, and tensions as high as they were, terror attacks commenced. A car bomb went off in Madison, the state capital of Wisconsin. Passing by in another vehicle was Senator Dunn. He was at the forefront of the media battles over MAR’s legitimacy for the presidency since that began and was back home in Madison. It was a huge blast and his armour-plated vehicle took the full brunt of that explosion set off with perfect timing. Dunn would survive and the self-declared People’s Revolution Front – a new group and thought by the authorities to be a cover name for something else – wouldn’t achieve their desired kill yet they came pretty close to killing a hate figure among many on the far left. The Black Liberation Army (still many, varied groups all operating under one name yet with few connections between them) had a success in one of their own kill missions. A sniper acting under their banner blew the head off Antonio Linton. He was Florida’s Secretary of State and who would personally certify who Florida gave its disputed Electoral College votes to once the Supreme Court made their decision. Linton had come up to Washington with Governor Cook and was killed on the streets of the nation’s capital. In Tennessee, Governor Naomi Harber was another BLA target where a drone laden with explosives was flown towards her official residence in Nashville. It was shot at by a Tennessee National Guard air defence unit – drones had already been used elsewhere in recent years – stationed in that city and slammed into the ground short of its target.

The American Insurgent Army was neither on the left nor the right… it wasn’t in the centre either though. Not Blue nor Red, not racist yet not multi-racial, the AIA defied all traditional simple explanations about where it sat among the nation’s all-consuming partisan divide and the terror groups who alleged they spoke for those. Federal authorities knew all about that organisation and what it stood for though. The AIA was apocalyptic in their outlook and wanted to rid the nation of what they saw as the terror imposed by the federal government upon ordinary people regardless of whether that was a Democratic or Republican one. The AIA had murdered Anderson but also targeted a Republican elected officials at state-level in North Carolina. They had stolen those biological weapons samples from Fort Detrick too, aiming to cause what those in Washington feared was unknown terror somewhere. Hunting down the AIA was the job of a federal task force formed from various agencies. Arrests had been made of people on the edges of the group and there was one possibly high-level figure in custody yet real success eluded the government. The AIA operated in cells, stayed off the internet and had counter-intelligence people who had previous government service hunting terrorists among their ranks. Hiding was what the AIA could do very well.

The AIA struck against those hunting them. In Phoenix, they managed to get a three-man team into the field office being used by that task force for operations in the South-West. Using automatic weapons, these military veterans gunned down dozens of people including clerical staff in that office plus the car park outside. When Phoenix PD sent a SWAT team, and Arizona national guardsmen also closed in, the AIA kill team then blew themselves up rather than be captured alive to be questioned. The symbolism of this, undertaken by men who’d fought suicide bombers abroad then did the same thing on home soil, was meant to send a message to Washington of capability. No one in Washington underestimated them beforehand and certainly not afterwards.

[James G]

16 – Jellyfish

Maddie Chen had fled her home in Los Angeles back in October the day after she posted that blog, with attached documents, asserting that Maria Arreola Rodriquez wasn’t an American citizen. She’d long thought her address was secret but it was discovered and her home was attacked with a Molotov Cocktail. Being regularly called every name under the sun online including that very day a ‘Ch*nky B*tch’ (she was Taiwanese, not Chinese!) was one thing: being the target of an arson attack was something else entirely. To Kansas where a friend resided was where Chen had first gone and she’d thought she would be safer in that Red state rather than Blue California. Alas, that wasn’t to be. Within days, someone from outside Kansas arrived after tracking her down and sought to throw acid in her face. Her friend, also Taiwanese, all the same to the left-wing racist who went after her, so she wrote in her next blog, was mistaken for her. Unable to go ‘home’, because her nation was occupied by the People’s Liberation Army, Chen had gone to Toronto. She had friends in Canada and hid out there with far more success than across the border back in the United States. Supporters of MAR, Democrats who allowed her homeland to be crushed by communist colonisers, had hacked her blog and when she had tried to use a different hosting service, a denial-of-service attack brought that down. Defeated she wasn’t though. Using a friend posting from the US Virgin Islands, and on multiple new websites, there was another ‘Chen Drop’ during the weekend ahead of the expected Supreme Court decision concerning the legitimacy of MAR to become the president. Further evidence was presented by the vengeful Chen about where MAR was really born. It wouldn’t be part of that court case but it was out there on the internet for all to see. Hackers went after those sites and had some success but, by then, the latest information Chen shared with the world about the California congresswoman’s exact place & date of birth was out there. This added to questions being asked about Chen. Who was she working for? The Republicans? The Russians? The Chinese? Oh, that all made her mad… especially the last accusation!

The same weekend – November 17th, 18th & 19th – there were further protests in cities nationwide against efforts to ‘steal the election’. Coast-to-coast, in Blue states and Red states, people came out on marches against what they believed was happening. MAR had won, Roberts had lost and that was that! There was violence. Some of that was the fault of those attending the protests (mostly outsiders) and on other occasions it was the authorities to blame. Very ugly scenes were seen in Albuquerque, Baltimore, Buffalo, Houston, Indianapolis, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland and San Diego. Then there was what happened in St. Louis. That Missouri city in the middle of the country was physically cut off from Illinois over the river by lines of state troopers there at the governor’s orders, but it was the city’s residents, not those from Blue Illinois who the authorities were paranoid about, who rioted when faced with police brutality. A good chunk of the downtown was smashed up, the seat of fires and full of the injured. Four people lost their lives, two of them police officers who were deliberately targeted to be murdered. Images of the shocking scenes filled the television and computer screens of the nation. Hurt protesters screaming about being attacked by the police were rather memorable. Caught on camera was the death of one of those protesters: the other one’s death wasn’t, leading to some to say he was forgotten about. Abby Turner was shot from behind (the shooter unknown) and fell dead in front of a camera in the midst of a live broadcast. There were some who would say that that was rather convenient and that she was a ‘crisis actor’, but she was an ordinary young woman from St. Louis out marching for what she regarded as democracy. Because of that, she had been shot dead for all the world to see.

MAR made the chant of ‘say her name’ during her next livestream event when talking to supporters nationwide. She’d used ‘say his name’ the day before, talking about both DaJuan Anderson and Damien Kowalski. Now she urged everyone to say aloud the name of whom she called the latest victim of this assault on democracy being launched by the Republicans. Abby Turner wasn’t to be forgotten. Attacks against protesters there in Missouri and elsewhere were also brought up by MAR. Their movement, that of people power, was under violent attack. She stated her anger against all of the actions undertaken by police officers, state troopers and national guardsmen. What she didn’t mention was the other violence, that committed by people who said they were her supporters. Other Democrats nationwide had addressed this but MAR wouldn’t. She was silent on all of that with a full focus on what had been done to her side. That didn’t play too well among all fellow Democrats. She also spent the weekend moving forward with preparations for what she would do when she reached the White House in January… seemingly pretending that the matter before the Supreme Court wasn’t happening.

Shauna McCleary, newly-elected in Oregon for the US House, was announced as MAR’s vice president to replace Anderson. McCleary was named by MAR after the Democratic nominee just decided to have her. This wasn’t cleared with the party establishment and came completely out of the blue. It was going to be difficult to have McCleary assume that office even if the Supreme Court decision went the Democrat’s way. There were Cabinet appointees named as well. None of them were big names, none were part of the establishment nor had any notable government experience. These people were outsiders. They were committed activists who were never going to even get a hearing before a Republican-controlled Senate. What was MAR thinking in doing all of this? Some said she was putting her fingers in her ears, closing her eyes, shouting ‘I don’t care’ and carrying on as if all the stops being put out ahead of her weren’t even there. But they were.


Off in distant Pennsylvania, fourteen year-old Alicia Norris ran away from home. She’d met someone online and sneaked out of her family residence, past those meant to be on watch and off to meet a woman who she’d found a romantic connection with online. There was a meet beside the kerb and Alicia went into a vehicle. Inside was that woman but also two men. They quickly bound her hands and threw a hood over her head so she couldn’t see nor shout loud enough for anyone to hear. Alicia had been first deceived and then kidnapped. She was no ordinary teenager though. Her father was the state’s governor. Dwight Norris had stepped up from the lieutenant-governorship last year when his predecessor was murdered during that outrage in Harrisburg and then won the special election to replace him officially come November 2027. A year later, Norris, a moderate Democrat, was still in office in Pennsylvania when the Republicans had just turned the state from Purple to Red: they had two senators and eleven of seventeen congressmen/women. His daughter had been snatched – from where she was supposed to be extremely safe – by members of the ‘Pennsylvania Patriots’. They were a right-wing militia who, along with others, had been attempting to turn Pennsylvania in a battlefield of a civil war which they sought. Governor Norris had done all that he could to stop them and, in reply, they went after his family.

The FBI was involved at once. Then President Walsh was told and he used his authority to direct federal efforts from parts of the US Intelligence Community in the hunt to track down those who had taken that child. Encryption smashing was done by the National Security Agency to tear through firewalls which the Pennsylvania Patriots had used during their internet ruse to lure Alicia. The truth about her online girlfriend was revealed and this helped lead the FBI to where she would be found. They had her location in less than twenty-four hours and this was confirmed by a CIA experimental drone running a ‘training flight’ (no matter what executive order Walsh might have signed, the CIA couldn’t officially act domestically) over the rural western half of Pennsylvania. That drone had some very secret detection gear fitted which even the president didn’t know the full details about. The Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was sent in. The best of the FBI’s assault force hit the Pennsylvania Patriots hard. Alicia was pulled out of the hiding place alive. She’d been kidnapped for political reasons to be used as a pawn in a fight against her father. Whether the Pennsylvania Patriots had intended to return her, dead or alive, that wasn’t known. Yet they had subjected her to repeated sexual assaults and she saw their faces. The HRT killed one of those militia members but took another five prisoners. Norris’ daughter would be returned to her family yet the trauma she had suffered wasn’t going to be something she would be able to forget. Nor would he when the details were revealed to him.


Associate Justice Susan Meadow had been assassinated in late 2023 and the 47th President hadn’t been able to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court resulting from her death. Walsh had met the same Republican resistance too when it came to any nominee he’d put forward. For almost four years, the nation’s top court had only had eight judges: six of them with a conservative outlook. Walsh had eventually filled that vacant seat. He’d nominated Kelvin Singleton and that nomination had been approved by the Senate. The Republicans there had allowed him to put a liberal-minded justice on the bench as part of a quid pro quo made in the summer of 2027 between the president and Senate Majority Leader Green. There had been other things which Walsh had gotten the obstructionist Green to agree too including such items as reforming & renaming the Bureau of Indian Affairs – to become the Bureau of Native American Relations – and other trivial progressive-minded issues. Green had gotten much else in exchange, far bigger things. The huge increase in defence spending following the Taiwan Conflict overseen by a new Secretary of Defence, one he’d picked, was the biggest but there were other things too. Walsh had believed that he was securing his ‘legacy’ with a Supreme Court judge and tinkering elsewhere. Green, like everyone else, knew that Walsh’s legacy would actually be a military defeat inflicted by China… and it would be later on what happened in the last months of his presidency.

The Supreme Court had returned to its six-to-three conservative dominance with Singleton on the bench. Cases heard before the justices were generally won along those lines. As to that new judge, he was regarded by many as not even a true liberal. Green wouldn’t have allowed him there, even with that big majority in-place, if he was due to the appointment being a lifetime one. On the left, Singleton was seen as a lightweight and a jellyfish. He was hopeless and had no backbone. His presence there wasn’t going to sway his fellow justices on any important matters: everyone knew that. When the Supreme Court began deliberating the outcome of November 7th, Singleton was one of the nine who would decide who would be the next president. The case brought before them – Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida – concerned the petitioner’s push to have Florida give its Electoral College votes to her electors in that Red state. The responder argued that MAR was an illegal alien and had provided what Florida’s Secretary of State (Antonio Linton had been in Washington doing this when he was assassinated) said was evidence to that effect: that had come from the first Chen Drop back in October. The arguments had been made and the justices were considering their decision. That was expected to come on the Monday – November 20th – and would effectively decide if MAR was an American citizen as well as whether Florida would disregard the majority of votes cast in that state.

Deliberations were secret. The proceedings ahead of the justices had been broadcast live but afterwards, in their chambers, there were no cameras. Leaks came out over the weekend. None of this could be confirmed, naturally, but there were those who believed what they were hearing about how things were progressing with what the justices would decide: others dismissed such leaks as nothing but lies. Governor Pierce was one of the former. He trusted what he was hearing. All six of those conservative justices, plus ‘Jellyfish Singleton’, were going to side with Florida. They were taking all that so-called evidence presented by the known troublemaker Chen as gospel. California’s governor had seen it all himself and had trusted lawyers and legal professors look over it all. It was all one big lie. It was a lie which they were believing there in Washington though. At the same time as he was hearing all of that, and raging at the theft which the Republicans were seemingly successfully pulling off, Pierce was also dealing with attempts to see anarchy in his state. He was using the California Highway Patrol, backed up by the National Guard he had on standby to intervene, to patrol the stateliness of California to keep out those coming in seeking to make trouble. Militia groups from Red states in the West want to intervene with violence against Californians protesting in support of what they, and he, believed was the president-elect. No help from the federal government was being given despite Pierce asking. Those people, the White Star Militia who’d recently killed that Idaho congressman-elect chief among them, were domestic terrorists. Pierce was working with a few fellow governors but had no help from Washington.

His gravest fears were that the Supreme Court would decide in favour of Florida. All votes for MAR nationwide, not just in Florida but everywhere else including California, would be effectively rejected. The Republicans were going to steal the White House like they did in 2000 and 2016, once more unleashing chaos upon the nation. All he was hearing from out of Washington was that those there were going to let that happen. Pierce wanted to stop that. His mind, like those of others with influence, was turning to acting decisively, doing whatever it would take. In what manner that action would be, he didn’t know.

Meanwhile, his eyes were on what would happen come the Monday. The country, much of the world as well, were similarly directing plentiful concern and fascination into the outcome of Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida.

[redrobin65]

Very good. When this America does fall into civil war, it will cause a truly insane amount of chaos worldwide. Just imagine the economic fallout alone, nevermind the massive power vaccum.

[gillan1220]

Great. Now we got a shit ton of birther conspiracy theories.

[James G]

Jan 20, 2021 19:51:10 GMT redrobin65 said:

Very good. When this America does fall into civil war, it will cause a truly insane amount of chaos worldwide. Just imagine the economic fallout alone, nevermind the massive power vaccum.

Thank you.
I have some ideas about fallout indeed. We're already in a Second Great Recession here... it'll be Great Depression #2.

Jan 21, 2021 3:37:00 GMT gillan1220 said:

Great. Now we got a shit ton of birther conspiracy theories.

Loads of them here.
Coming up next is that Supreme Court decision.

[James G]

17 – Illegal alien

In a seven-to-two majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that there was compelling evidence, proof even, that Maria Arreola Rodriquez wasn’t a natural born citizen of the United States of America. Florida could therefore follow state law and refuse to grant its thirty-one Electoral College votes for her because she was an illegal alien illegible for those votes.

Thus, on November 20th 2028, the United States Supreme Court, not the voters, choose the next president.


The relationship between Maria Arreola Rodriquez and the Big Tech firms primarily based in California’s Silicon Valley had been a stick which many political opponents of hers, Democrats and Republicans alike, had often tried to beat her with. MAR had defended herself – well too – by pointing out the big inconsistency in their attacks: there was no financial nor regulation gain in it for them with the friendly relations. She didn’t take money from those companies and had consistently voted for better regulation as well as tax windfalls on the billionaire owners. Big Tech allowed her to reach the people. Facebook and YouTube gave her a reach which she otherwise wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere. On those platform she reached voters without having to travel extensively across the nation – raising already alarming global emissions – and social media websites like those encouraged political involvement from the young. Her congressional campaigns had all been done mostly online and she had then ran for first the Democratic nomination then the presidency in the same manner. It was safer for her and her campaign team to use the internet rather than travel to dangerous areas: supporters too didn’t have to gather in big public events (travelling to rallies and harming the environment) where they could be targeted either. None of this reasoning had ever won over the critics. This was the Twenties though and almost everything was online now… apart from voting.

When the Supreme Court made its decision on the matter of Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida, MAR was on her own YouTube channel. There was a split screen. To the left was the Supreme Court in Washington, to the right was a camera feed from the dining room of her California home. Viewers – Americans and those elsewhere in the world – watched her reaction live to what those justices decided. The shock on her face and the verbal reaction which came wasn’t going to be forgotten anytime soon. MAR spoke unscripted once that ruling was delivered off in the distant nation’s capital. This was a coup. The assault on democracy was now completed by this decision. Who elected those judges!? What legitimacy did they have in a democratic society? She told her audience that her presidential campaign had won the popular vote and the Electoral College: both, as was how it was meant to be done. She was whom the majority of voters had cast their ballots for to be the next president. That was all being taken away from them by those unaccountable to all Americans.

MAR assured the nation that she was an American. She was born and raised in the United States. The lies told her about her supposed illegitimacy for the position of the next president had been done so to deny not just her the White House, but her identity too. The Supreme Court was calling her an illegal alien, an undocumented migrant and, basically, a fraud. She was an American citizen, born in this country! Your vote has been taken away from you, she told those watching who had cast their ballots for her almost a fortnight beforehand. The Supreme Court was saying that all of those votes were now going to go into the trash. MAR told her supporters, and called upon those who didn’t vote for her too, to join together to fight against this great injustice. Together, she finished her remarks with, we must stop this coup!


President Walsh was out of office in two month’s time. Once a firm ally of his, back when he was running for the White House in 2024, the relationship between him and MAR had been destroyed once he got there. She decried his alleged betrayal of all that he’d said he stood for when he governed as a moderate instead of the progressive which he had said he would. The facts on the ground with a hostile, Republican-controlled Congress had been what Walsh saw as the reason for what he’d been unable to do and how he had to govern. MAR and those like her refused to accept his decision to compromise and try not to tear the country apart. On the morning of November 8th, he had called her to congratulate her on her ‘win’. She hadn’t even taken the call. A fellow Democrat she was but MAR refused to talk with him. Like everyone else in his party, and half of the country, he was outraged at the Republican’s behaviour following the defeat of their candidate Edward Roberts. That nominee himself was more of a moderate than others… but he was still part of that party which had ripped America in half to make every little thing partisan. The actions of Florida’s governor and how she used what Walsh believed was a pack of lies to try and overturn the will of the nation’s voters was despicable. However, Walsh was a true believer in the United States Constitution. That gave the Supreme Court the power it had. In the days leading up to their decision being announced, Walsh had come to realise that they were going rule for the defendant in Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida. Everything was pointing that way. He had sought to limit the effects of the unpleasant fallout he foresaw coming.

One of the actions he took was to speak with Cabinet members and administration figures the weekend before the decision. The kidnapping – and subsequent successful rescue – of the teenage daughter of Pennsylvania governor did distract from some of that though. However, Walsh got the message out to those at the top level of the government. They would support the decision of the Supreme Court as they were constitutionally-bound to do so. Come what may, the law was the law. If those nine justices decided for either the plaintiff or defendant on the matter of to whom Florida could award its Electoral College votes to, then the country’s leadership was to be bound by that. To act against such a ruling, even speaking out, was not to be done. His vice president, Cicely Blair Padley, had told Walsh she would do as he asked. She then went to her native California right after that ruling was announced and did the exact opposite.


Padley was a seventy year-old African-American. She had been a congresswoman in California for decades and had never had much of nationwide public profile when in the US House. After retiring in 2020, she’d been asked by the 47th President (the two of them knew each other well) to serve in her administration as the Secretary of Housing & Urban Development. The office holder appointed by the deceased 46th President had fallen gravely ill and resigned a month after the new president took the oath of office in February 2023. Padley was HUD Secretary for almost a year and a half. She fought for the poor nationwide and did all that she could when, like her boss, was at the mercy of the Republicans in Congress. A second retirement had been on the cards for her until the vice presidential pick of Walsh had been hit with sex scandal right on the eve of the ’24 Democratic Convention. Walsh had turned to her. Padley was at first glance an odd choice. But, as the Democratic Party establishment agreed, she was just what was needed at that urgent time. Her long and distinguished career had seen her fight against racism and for the poor. Her progressive credentials were impeccable and she was hardly going to be caught on camera in bed with a married couple like the unfortunate Colorado senator had been. Padley could bring in the African-American vote, it been agreed, especially among the socially conservative members who wouldn’t vote for the Republicans but might have stayed at home. That reasoning had been sound. Padley had delivered upon all that was hoped of her in ’24… and more too. Walsh couldn’t have won without her on the ticket: yet another good-looking young-ish Caucasian male wouldn’t have done all that she had for turnout in that year’s presidential race.

In the role of Vice President, Padley hadn’t been a sell-out. She battled behind the scenes – with leaks telling the public what she was doing – against Walsh’s moderate governance. No one had ever deluded themselves that she had presidential ambitions of her own though. She’d long put such silly ideas to rest saying that she only wished to serve, not lead. Padley was the subject of much jest. She was an internet meme with images of her expressions put to use for gags by those who found such things amusing online. Looking harmless, like the aged & wise grandmother she was, internet humour had her in various situations with many a focus of her in front of ‘the big red button’. Her legendary, but rarely seen, anger was comedy stock for stand-up comedians. At times, should the mood take her, she played along with that and won significant public affection. Padley did look harmless but she was a smooth political operator: she wouldn’t have had the career she had otherwise. The majority of Republicans didn’t focus much hatred against her because she wasn’t feared by them. Only the far right made the effort and that was down to her race and gender rather than any concern about Padley as a political force. There were a good few million Americans who prayed every night for Walsh’s death so she could take the presidency. She was so sensible, so honest. A very different America it would be with her in the White House! But she didn’t want to be president. Again and again, Padley had said that. There had been no serious talk of her running in 2028 for the Democratic nomination when Walsh was forced by his party to not run again. Once MAR was the party’s nominee, Padley had publicly supported her but not directly campaigned for her as that wasn’t considered by her to be the done thing for a vice president.

Live on both the internet and television, Padley stood beside MAR later that night. She spoke of the ruling made by the Supreme Court back in Washington and declared her opposition to what the Republicans had done using that body. They had disenfranchised the country. Seventy-eight million Americans had had their votes thrown aside as if they were nothing. The winner of the presidential election, and who Padley said had to be the next resident of the White House, was an American. MAR was no illegal alien: she was a citizen of this country which they all shared. Surprising even MAR with what came after that, Padley attacked the US Constitution which had allowed for those justices to make that decision. The framers of the Constitution were slave-owners and not believers in democracy. They were corrupt and had created a corrupt system, one which those out to cheat the American people of its democratically-elected president-elect had used to their own ends. The situation where Americans lived under a system with the Electoral College, a Senate and the Supreme Court wasn’t democracy. For Padley to say all of that, to say what was thought the unsayable by someone in her position, caused jaws to drop nationwide. The Constitution, with all of its flaws, was something which the vast majority of Americans held sacred. Padley had taken office sweating on a bible to protect & defend it: MAR was seeking to do the same in front of the US Capitol in exactly two month’s time. Just like her president would be, there would be many Americans furious at what Padley said. She wanted them angry though.

Padley, and then echoing her MAR next, called upon the American people to fight against this greatest of all injustices. Democracy had to be defended or it was going to be finished in the country which they all called home. What the Supreme Court and the Republicans had done, plus what the undefendable founding fathers had all allowed to happen, couldn’t stand. Fight, fight against it all: such was their call.


End of Part One

[gillan1220]

Imagine the chaos this would be if the Supreme Court making a decision thinking a legal U.S. citizen is not an American. This is gonna resonate in the ages to come.

[James G]

Jan 22, 2021 16:15:30 GMT gillan1220 said:

Imagine the chaos this would be if the Supreme Court making a decision thinking a legal U.S. citizen is not an American. This is gonna resonate in the ages to come.

The thing is...





...she isn't.

[James G]

(This interlude is - like most things I write - longer than planned. It is almost a short story. I hope readers like it.)




Interlude


18 – A better life

April 2nd 1990 / Sonoyta, Sonora

Doctor Alverez found the woman in great distress, just as he was told. Childbirth was never easy on any expectant mother though. He had no time to comfort her, leaving that to her female travelling companions, and instead focused on saving the lives of both her and her child. There was a lot of blood because this was a difficult birth. He did what he could and it was enough. His years of experience were put to work. The mother survived: the child too. A new life came into the world and one more wasn’t taken by God… not today anyway. There were others in need whom he needed to see. Before he moved on though, helping more unfortunates making such a perilous journey as this now mother and child were, he sternly recommended rest. He told the young woman not to continue with her travels northwards for several weeks. It would be best for her and for the baby too. She promised him that she wouldn’t. Dr Alverez didn’t believe her. He could only wish her and the child, a little girl, well and he’d later pray for their safety on the journey.

There were others in need in this border town. So many more required his assistance. He had to leave them.


April 14th 1990 / Modesto, California

Terry and Janice Niles were Christian aid volunteers. They’d travelled throughout Latin America in the past decade helping people in need, including across many warzones. Back to their native California they had come last year though. The couple had returned to help people from the region who’d made their way over the border from Mexico to escape war and poverty but found injustice upon reaching America. There was also their niece too: Lenora. She was thirteen and had given her parents an awful lot of trouble. The Niles’ took her into their care with the promise to reform her. Lenora had had no choice but to stay with them. In the small city of Modesto, the Niles’ worked at a community hospital which helped migrants who’d come into California and travelled this far north. Treatment was free with medicines paid for by donations. Word-of-mouth among migrants brought them to the hospital: they would hear that there would be no fear of the authorities when seeking treatment. No one wanted to question their immigration status nor extort them with huge fees.

Today, a pick-up truck arrived carrying a young woman and her baby. The driver, Michael, was known to Niles’ but not to his two passengers. He said that he had found them beside the road and it was clear they needed help. Michael brought them to the community hospital rather than the city one because the woman, Lucia, had said she wouldn’t go somewhere from where she might start down the road of deportation. Terry and Janice thanked him, and promised him a meal later, before they took his passengers inside. The child was healthy. Janice thought she was about two weeks old and asked for the name. Maria, she was told, born when they were back on the other side of the border. As to the mother, she was gravely ill. She was bleeding post-natal and in a lot of pain. There was a doctor on-site who Lenora, who’d come to have a look at the crying baby, quickly fetched. He attended to her while the Niles’ and their niece took the little Maria to get her some milk. Lenora was still rather rebellious and had been causing her aunt and uncle grief while they were in Modesto yet around babies, she would behave. Janice believed that her niece had a desire for one for herself, soon. She’d been trying to keep Lenora away from boys, especially older boys whose lives were driven by one thing, but that was a difficult task when she and her husband were always so busy. In addition, Terry wasn’t the type of man whose presence would frighten off hormone-driven boys.

Lenora was present when the news came that the mother, Lucia Reyes Ortiz, had died. She was holding the adorable Maria Ortiz – no paternal name had been given to the baby – as the Niles’ discovered that the only known relative this child had passed away. That brought a tear to her eye. She heard more discussions which took place that evening too, ones which she didn’t realise she would remember for many long years afterwards. Maria had been born south of the border and her mother was unmarried with her family having thrown her out for being in that situation. Lenora’s aunt and uncle spoke of making sure that, no matter what, the little girl would get a better life than what her mother had had.


May 20th 1990 / Modesto, California

The Arreola’s were childless. They had been trying to get pregnant since they had married more than a dozen years beforehand but had been unable to conceive. Each craved for a child yet none would come. They’d been to see the right doctors and had been told the news that there was a problem with Dante, not Blanca. He was infertile. Perhaps there was hope with that news, the doctor had said… No, the Arreola’s walked away after that. If they couldn’t conceive together, then they wouldn’t. Together they agreed that they wouldn’t be blessed with any children: that wasn’t to be their future.

Then they met Maria.

Giving what little financial support they could afford, the Arreola’s helped out with some of the costs at the community hospital as did many others too. They lived in Modesto with both teaching there while working towards a brighter future. Visits were occasionally made to the hospital by them with the legal scholar Dante and his economically-minded Blanca helping out with the bookkeeping. Today when they came, they saw Lenora holding a baby: she held that baby a lot, worrying her aunt about the emotional attachment. She showed off the little Maria to them and spoke of how the child was an orphan. The Arreola’s fell in love with the baby, unaware that Lenora had an even stronger attachment.

Talking with the Niles’, the subject come up about what fate awaited Maria. The Niles’ lied to the Arreola’s like they had to others as well. They said that the baby was born here and the mother died here. A few dates were changed in this story. Dante wanted to know what they were going to do with Maria because she couldn’t stay here forever. California, like everywhere else, had laws about such things. Janice said that they were already in the early stages of dealings with the county but Dante urged them to hurry less they get in trouble. He would aid them. He knew a lawyer – who would help pro bono – and would get involved himself as much as legally possible. Blanca added that they two of them didn’t want to see the community hospital get into trouble. As to Maria, Blanca asked to hold her. Lenora was weary of handing her over but did so… a mistake which would haunt her for the rest of her life.

That baby was in the arms of Blanca, with Dante’s holding his wife, and a family was made complete.


September 1st 1990 / Salida, California

They moved into a new home outside of Modesto, up the road in the smaller Salida, just ahead of Maria coming. The Arreola’s had more room now and today the baby became theirs. Dante and Blanca had completed the legal adoption of the orphaned Maria. They had finished all the necessary paperwork and interviews, something given a rush by a friend who worked for Stanislaus County. As they took Maria into her first home, they had with them a copy of her birth certificate (also provided by the county). It gave her date of birth as April 10th 1990 and the place of birth was stated on that legal document as Modesto, California. Of the lies there, they knew nothing. They wouldn’t have played along, they would have loved Maria just the same had they known she’d been born eight days earlier south of an imaginary line.

They were good people.

From her new home in Salida, Maria Arreola Rodriquez would be raised with her parents intending to tell her the truth, as they knew it, about her birth mother once she was old enough. They weren’t going to keep anything from her though had no knowledge that they knew only a falsehood. Why would they have any suspicion that the good, honest Niles’ would lie to them?


September 16th 1990 / Modesto, California

Lenora was being sent away the following morning. Back to the Imperial Valley, down in Southern California, the Niles’ were dispatching their niece to. The latest incident of her acting out was far too much for Terry and Janice. Aged fourteen now, she had the evening before sneaked out of the apartment above the community hospital and hi-hiked up to Salida. That was where Maria had gone and Lenora had followed. The police had brought her back with the county sheriff’s deputy warning her & them of the dangers which awaited teenage girls doing such a thing. When he’d left, Lenora had refused to promise not to do such a thing again. What had been her intentions should she have reached the Arreola’s house, Terry and Janice couldn’t know. Those wouldn’t have been anything good though. She’d been too attached to that baby and acted like it was hers. Maria wasn’t. Terry would drive her to Indian Wells the following morning back into the custody of her parents. The Niles were thinking of Lenora, they told her. She wasn’t being punished, just protected.

She saw it as them taking her away from her baby.

Lenora had always been wayward, long before she came up to Modesto once the Niles’ had returned from El Salvador. She’d drunk, shoplifted, smoked marijuana and gone for car rides with older boys. What no one knew was that she was fire-bug too. Lenora liked to set things aflame. To see a fire burn through buildings stirred feelings of pleasure deep inside her.

Come ten o’clock that night, she set the apartment on fire. Lenora had planned it, quickly but effectively, and therefore her aunt and uncle had no way out. She wanted to get even with them for taking Maria away from her and sending her to the other end of the state so there was no chance of her rescuing the baby from the clutches of the Arreola’s. Killing them was her intention. Burning down more than just the apartment, the community hospital too, wasn’t though. Lenora would be gravely upset afterwards when she discovered that a total of six people died: she only meant to kill two.

Lenora blamed her aunt and uncle for the deaths of those extra people. She took no responsibility. No one put that on her either. The fire would be deemed an accident and the teenager was told she was very lucky to escape unscathed from the inferno. To Indian Wells she would go though, far away from Maria. A foolish hope had been in her that the Arreola’s would take her in so she could be with Maria after the Niles’ death. They were of no mind to do anything like that. Rage she would but impotent as to her fate she also was.


November 3rd 2020 / Hurricane, Utah

Lenora had moved to the town of Hurricane the year beforehand. She left her husband – her second – behind up in the city of Provo and took a job as a prison nurse in the southern part of Utah, near the state lines with both Arizona & Nevada. It was a job she had done before elsewhere in both Utah and Arizona in the past. The advertised job for work at the Purgatory Correctional Facility (what a name!) was poorly paid but it was a new start. She had the right qualifications and an eagerness to move to the other side of Utah with haste. This November, the United States, like the rest of the world, was in the grip of a pandemic. Purgatory had been hit hard by COVID-19 and she was working double shifts. Lenora took a short canteen break late in the night with the television news being all about the election. She’d voted for Trump and held hope that he would win.

While having her coffee, on the news coverage came something very unexpected. They were taking about a congressional race in California, one won by a young Latina. The name was instantly recognisable: Maria Arreola Rodriquez. She was thirty, the commentator said, and a left-wing firebrand. That newly-elected US House Representative would be going to Washington after her victory.

It was her Maria!


July 4th 2021 / Alamo Oaks, California

Contra Costa County police officers arrested Mrs Lenora Muir in the backyard of the small home which the congresswoman resided in with her partner. Maria Arreola Rodriquez wasn’t home but Ms. Bree Davis was. Davis had dialed 911 when spotting the prowler and, as this was the home of the recently-elected and high-profile Member of Congress, the response was quick. There had been threats against MAR before and the sheriff was determined to put a stop to outsiders coming into his community to pose a danger to the woman the people had elected. His politics were far from aligned from those of MAR but that was immaterial.

Muir gave the officers a struggle. They had to use the Taser on her when she bit one and tried to run. The sheriff was later pleased that his officers didn’t shoot her because that would have caused a whole lot of grief. When he had the Utah resident at his station, she caused more of a scene there too. She spat, tried to bite and shouted obscenities. She kept on saying that ‘her Maria’ would be coming her to get her out of custody.

MAR didn’t come.

The sheriff hadn’t thought that she would. Why, if the crazed Muir was to be believed, would she remember someone from when she was a newborn, let alone come get her out of jail when she’d been trying to break into her house? It didn’t make any sense to him. Yet… he was a law enforcement officer and heard strange things every day. He’d talk to the congresswoman the next time he saw her but leave out some details less it took away from the seriousness of the threat. He wanted her to live somewhere more secure and that would be his message.


December 30th 2027 / Pasadena, California

Maddie Chen had checked out the story before taking the meeting. It held water. She would have much preferred to deal with this all online but the woman she came to the park to meet would have none of it. At noon, near the fountain in Pasadena’s Central Park, Mrs Lenora Coleman (third husband, new last name) showed up.

Lenora told the story in person just as she had done over the internet. The main theme, as before, was about the rejection from ‘her Maria’ which Lenora had suffered. Lenora had had years to get angry and had done so. Chen hated MAR just as much, though for different reasons. What she came to hear was all the juicy details about what had happened back in 1990 though: the lies that where told. Lenora insisted that the Arreola’s didn’t known the truth of what her deceased aunt and uncle had done but Chen was dubious about that. It was a bit too outlandish. What was more interesting for her was details of where and exactly when MAR was born. She needed that to dig deeper. Lenora didn’t know those facts though. It was somewhere south of the border, over in Mexico, right at the beginning of April 1990. The birth hadn’t happened in Modesto nor in mid-April. That was all that Lenora knew.

Chen gave her some money. That was for expenses, she said. Lenora took the $1000 without hesitation. Telling Lenora that she needed more, Chen promised her more money, much more, if she could get proof. Lenora told her she would try. When the older woman left, Chen wondered whether she would see her again. Could that woman really help her bring down the China-loving, filthy socialist Maria Arreola Rodriquez?


September 27th 2028 / Glendale, California

Nine months later, after spending ages tracking her down, Lenora arranged another meeting with Chen. The blogger said that she thought that Lenora had forgotten all about her because it had been so long. No, Lenora told her, things had just taken a very long time to get done. She had kept her word though and found what Chen wanted: proof.

Lenora told her the story of the accidental fire all those years ago in Modesto and how she, alone, had escaped the blaze. There had been destruction of medical records there then at that community hospital. Chen told her she knew all about those. The ‘missing records’ attack had been used by others in the past attacking Maria Arreola Rodriquez about whether she was a United States citizen or not. Lenora presented a bundle of folders. She handed them over to the Taiwanese-American and was amused to see how Chen was surprised. The younger woman was born into a world of the internet and this was all too 20th century for her! Chen explained that there were extra copies of important records kept elsewhere, not in the hospital, just in case something happened. They had been forgotten about by everyone including her: until recently. The records had taken her some time to track down and she’d spent a great deal of effort, and money, to get them all without letting those in Modesto she’d spoken to become aware of her intent. She assured Chen that they were legitimate.

There were no births at the community hospital in neither March nor April 1990. She urged Chen to make sure, using other sources, that no other births in the immediate area were recorded who someone in MAR’s presidential campaign could say might have been hers at another facility. Chen quickly told her that there weren’t. Others had looked before her and she had done so herself.

This is the proof you need, Lenora told her. Destroy her, for me. Oh… and I’m short of money.

The two of them agreed a fee. The money would be wire transferred in a few days. Lenora asked where the $10’000 would come from and Chen told her not to worry: she had backers, those eager to take MAR down. Lenora warned her not to cheat her. Chen gave her word that she wouldn’t. The blogger wanted something more… for an extra fee. Would Lenora sign a sworn affidavit in front of a lawyer? That was something that Lenora agreed to do. Lenora said she would because she still wanted that revenge for the rejection that had been so cruelly done. Once she had loved Maria, now, like Chen, she hated her. A smile beamed ear-to-ear when she left the busy galleria where they met.


November 11th 2028 / Washington, District of Columbia

The birth records, those with a lack of one for a child born to Lucia Reyes Ortiz there in California, along with a medical report stating that she had given birth up to a fortnight beforehand over in Mexico, were included in the evidence presented by Antonio Linton. Florida’s secretary of state added to them that affidavit from Mrs Lenora Coleman too. The United States Supreme Court was given what Maddie Chen had provided to Florida.

Linton would be soon assassinated and Chen was hiding out in Toronto. Lenora was spoken too though and, through a video link from his nursing home, the aged Michael Flowers, in that truck that day in April 1990 which had stopped beside the sidewalk, also made a statement to them. He was only helping out, doing what he thought was right: unlike Lenora, Michael wasn’t driven by vengeance. Judges asked him questions and he only told the truth.

It was all enough for seven of those justices. When the Supreme Court made its ruling nine days later on the matter of Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida, finding in favour of the respondent, what Chen had found (and surreptitiously paid for too) did what she intended it to. There was evidence, the real truth, that Maria Arreola Rodriquez wasn’t an American. No matter that her parents had been lied to, regardless of the good intentions of Lenora’s aunt & uncle for a better life for a baby, the truth mattered. ‘Lies’ so many would scream yet it was reality of the whole situation.

MAR wasn’t a United States citizen and couldn’t be the 49th President.

[gillan1220]

Alright, what now?

[James G]

Jan 23, 2021 18:39:02 GMT gillan1220 said:

Alright, what now?

Part Two will be starting tomorrow.
Things will go even crazier than they already are. We'll see a split.