Prologue

After eight years of President DeSantis, the Republicans nominated perhaps the weakest candidate in their history, former Texas Governor George P. Bush, who lost the 2032 election to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand when, ten days after election day, North Carolina certified her victory by just over 2000 votes. That, on top of her winning Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia by an aggregate of 7,000 votes, had made election night a nail-biter, unlike the electoral landslides won by DeSantis in 2024 and 2028.

Democrats also barely squeaked out majorities in the Senate (52—48) and House (220—215), but based on claims of 'winning the popular vote by millions' (every single vote of which was excess votes from California), they claimed a mandate to govern, and immediately set about implementing their platform.

The very first act of the new House and Senate, on January 6th, was a pair of two organizing resolutions which allocated two-thirds of all seats on committees to Democrats, gave the chairperson of the committee veto power over minority members, and stripped minority members of subpoena rights. That was, of course, tit-for-tat against Republicans who had implemented similar, yet less severe organizing resolutions in 2023 in retaliation for Democratic treatment of the Republicans during the first two years of the Biden administration.

After the organizing resolutions pass, the first act of the Senate was to repeal the filibuster completely. Immediately after this was done, a bill was rammed through the House and Senate to increase the Supreme Court to fifteen members, giving President Gillibrand six appointments, which she made the same day. Dispensing with hearings, all six nominees were approved the following day, effectively flipping the Supreme Court from 7—2 conservative to 8—7 progressive. That same bill had doubled the number of Federal judges, and by the end of January, the Senate had confirmed 900 new judges, turning the Federal Judiciary majority progressive almost overnight.

After completely remaking the courts, the House and Senate turned to implementing their entire progressive platform, which included a national ban on not just the sale of new combustion engine vehicles, but all sales of combustion engine vehicles as of January 1st, 2034, as well as am immediate $2.00/gallon 'carbon tax' on gasoline sales and a ban on extraction of oil, gas, or coal from federal lands.

Protests had broken out in many states in the Midwest, South, and Great Plains, but the thing that kicked over the hornets' nest were the bills which completely remade the economy.The minimum wage was increased to $25/hour and price controls were institute. Corporate taxes were trebled, compensation with stock was made illegal, and unions were guaranteed half the seats on the board of every public company.

Companion bills reformed the federal income tax — capital gains were taxed _higher_ than ordinary income, the top tax marginal rate was increased to 90% on amounts over $500,000, withdrawals from retirement plans that exceded $1000 per month were subjected a tax surcharge of 50%, and inheritance taxes were increased to 90% on all estates over $2.5 million.

On March 1st, when churches were stripped of their preferential tax treatment and subjected to federal employment law, including for ministers, protests turned violent, and President Gillibrand activated the National Guard to put down what was termed an insurrection.