Over the past few months, thousands of volunteers have turned out in support of Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh, two democratic socialists who have emerged as leading Democratic candidates in the mayoral races of New York City and Minneapolis, respectively. In spite of pushback from the Democratic Party establishment, Mamdani and Fateh have mobilized a critical mass of voters who support bold and progressive ideas.
But the past few months have also seen a surge in Republican efforts to consolidate power by overriding the will of voters. On June 26, the Miami City Commission voted 3 to 2 to postpone this year’s mayoral election to November 2026. Had it not been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on July 21, the decision would have allowed the current mayor, Republican Francis Suarez, and the commissioners themselves, all of whom are term-limited, to hold office for an additional year.
In an attempt to justify the decision that would have extended his mayoral tenure—one that he had openly lobbied for—Suarez claimed that the goal of postponing the election was to boost voter turnout, which tends to lag during off-season elections. “Miami shouldn’t be holding elections when so few vote,” Suarez said. “It’s costly, outdated, and leads to results that don’t reflect the city.”
But for many, the move appeared less like a good-faith effort to improve election turnout and more like a blatant power grab. Having already served nearly eight years, the additional year would have enabled Suarez to bypass term limits and strategically position himself for higher office—an ambition he has long pursued publicly.
The son of two-time Miami mayor Xavier Suarez—who is in fact running again in the election his son tried to postpone—Francis Suarez made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for President in 2024. Since then, he has expressed interest in becoming the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, even traveling to the capital of Riyadh for lunch with President Donald Trump and hosting an “Arabian Nights” themed Mayor’s Ball earlier this year.
Xavier Suarez’s announcement that he would run to succeed his son as mayor, which came shortly after the decision to postpone the election was ruled unconstitutional, has reinforced suspicions among voters and other mayoral candidates that the entire episode was a calculated political power play to further the Suarez family’s political influence.
“Miami politics wrote the book on political opportunism,” Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based lawyer and MSNBC analyst, tells The Progressive. “This is just the latest outrage and episode in what a lot of people call the Banana Republic of Miami.”
While ultimately unsuccessful, the attempt to repeal term limits by overriding voters—along with President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions that he may run for another term in 2028—sets a dangerous precedent that treats voter input as optional, and term limits not as legal constraints, but rather as optional guidelines that can be disregarded. Miami mayoral candidate Eileen Higgins said in a statement following the ruling, “I’ve said from the start: Moving elections must be done the right way, through a transparent process and with voter approval.”
Similar attempts at political overreach have also taken place in Texas, where on July 21, in the wake of devastating floods and at the urging of Trump, Republican Governor Greg Abbott declared a special legislative session for Congressional redistricting. Typically, each U.S. state convenes every ten years to redraw voting maps based on new census data. However, since Texas most recently passed a redistricting plan in 2021, Abbott’s push for a mid-decade redistricting session devolved into a major political battle, which culminated on August 23 with Texas Republicans successfully passing a heavily gerrymandered map in favor of the GOP.
Unlike in the case in Miami, Texas Republicans, as well as Trump himself, have been overt in their objective to maintain Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives. A close look at the new Republican-drawn voting maps reveals that the changes carve out as many as five additional Republican seats by fragmenting Democrat-held districts, specifically in the urban centers of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Austin. This could be enough to tip the scales and preserve the slim Republican House majority in the upcoming midterm elections.
“The gerrymandering that is taking place now—the gerrymandering of a gerrymandering that happened just four years ago—amounts to a GOP gangbang to seize power from ordinary people and push through more repressive policies and [repeal] those democratic policies that people desperately need,” Jim Hightower, former commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture and longtime political activist, tells The Progressive.
Hightower, a regular contributor to The Progressive for more than a decade, explains that what is happening in Texas is not a new phenomenon, but rather an outgrowth of a larger systemic problem of political overreach by Republicans, one Texas has experienced in the past.
“We have done this before,” Hightower says. “We had a fight back in 1980. Back then the Democrats had to prevent the stealing of a [primary] election by presidential candidate John Connally. He was trying to move up the primary election so it could be first or second in the country, and would propel him toward the Republican nomination in the presidency.”
Hightower emphasizes that a bold and defiant response by Democrats has been crucial in preventing previous political overreaches from succeeding—and that such resistance remains vital today. He says he is optimistic that, despite the upswing in conservative efforts to cling to power, both legislators and ordinary citizens are actively pushing back against these authoritarian tactics and working to advance broader reforms. Hightower mentions as an example the growing traction of the Money Out of Politics Movement, noting that this movement seeks to undercut the accumulation of money and power among a small elite, which lies at the heart of political corruption.
While the resistance to Republican overreach in Miami offers a momentary victory, it does little to slow the momentum elsewhere, as the situation in Texas makes clear. Many experts continue to issue grim warnings about the damage the Trump administration has inflicted—and continues to inflict—on American democracy. Yet they also emphasize the need for sustained, organized opposition. Echoing this call to action, Hightower offers a note of hope, describing himself as “an optimist in a pessimistic time.”
“People recognize that we don’t have power. That’s why people don’t vote. And that is beginning to change because we’re running candidates at a local level who have local credibility [who can] then can move on up into the system. That’s where we’re at. We’re in the process of rebuilding democracy itself.”