Today in Politics, Bulletin 366. 5/8/26

… The VA Supreme Court struck down the redistricting referendum in a 4-3 decision. NBC: “Lawmakers are required pass a constitutional amendment through 2 consecutive legislative sessions with an election in between before placing it on the ballot. Republicans argued that the legislature first passed the amendment when early voting was already underway ahead of VA’s 2025 statewide elections. Dems tried to counter by saying that Election Day itself, not the start of early voting, is the relevant date.”

… I would note that even returning to the original maps is likely going to lead to Democrats picking up two new seats in VA based on current polling and projections, but it will not be the 4 seats they hoped to get with the referendum.

… VA AG Jay Jones: “Today the Supreme Court of VA has chosen to put politics over the rule of law by issuing a ruling that overturns the April 21st special election on redistricting. This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every corner of the Commonwealth, and it fuels the growing fears across our nation about the state of our democracy.”

… Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to Semafor: “If the VA Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before 3 million Virginians cast their ballots.”

… Gavin Newsom: “No vote in Tennessee (+1 GOP). No vote in Florida (+4 GOP). No vote in Missouri (+1 GOP). No vote in North Carolina (+2 GOP). No vote in Texas (+5 GOP). VA’s voter-approved maps thrown out. MAGA has rigged the system.”

… Neera Tanden: “It would be great if the folks who pushed independent commissions a decade ago in mostly blue states would acknowledge they didn’t see how GOP would hack this system.”

… AG Jones then filed a petition with the court to stay the ruling pending the state’s appeal to the US Supreme Court. Since this deals with an issue of the state constitution, it is extremely rare for the Supreme Court to weigh in unless it can be shown the state court’s ruling conflicted with the US Constitution. Unlikely to work but worth a try.

… TN Rep. Justin Pearson had a heated confrontation with the Sergeant at Arms blocking the door as TN Republicans were redrawing maps seeking to eliminate the single Democratic congressional district in that state behind closed doors. The new map breaks up the state’s only Black-majority district. He was ultimately escorted out but had some choice words for state troopers on the way out the door.

Photo - Nicole Hester, The Tennessean

… Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted that his reporting on Iran is being criticized because he is Jewish: “It was just a matter of time until the Antisemites come out of their filthy holes and join the campaign of lies against me. The classic tropes: Mossad, controlling the world, trying to make money. Decent people here should come out publicly against this kind of hate.”

… The antisemitic attack Ravid posted came from an anonymous account on X named ‘The Oak’ with 220 followers.

… Axios CEO Jim VandeHei posted: “A lot of people on X should feel tremendous shame and remorse for terribly uninformed attacks on Barak Ravid, hands-down the most wired, hardest-working Middle East reporter. You sided with Iranian bots and lies and anti-Semites. Some of you actually know better. Do some soul-searching.”

… ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt: “The antisemitic attacks on Axios reporter Barak Ravid are outrageous and horrific. These are the same antisemitic tropes Jews have faced for generations. In 2016, we documented more than 19,000 antisemitic tweets aimed at Jewish journalists as part of a coordinated campaign.”

… “This hate continues to this day and is designed to silence and delegitimize their work. I stand with Barak - an excellent, principled, and respected reporter - as he faces this onslaught of vile harassment.”

… Are we allowed to criticize his reporting and not be considered antisemitic? Asking for several million friends.

… Former reality TV star, Fox host and now Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy went on Fox today with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy (who is currently a Fox host) to announce that he has been creating a reality TV show over the past 7 months which is about to be released: “I wanted to lean into America’s 250th birthday. Rachel and I met on a road trip on a reality TV show. So over the course of 7 months we did a road trip with the kids, and our motto is ‘to love America is to see America’.”

… Pete Buttigieg responded: “I love a good road trip, but this is brutally out of touch: a Trump Cabinet member making a documentary about himself while regular families can’t afford road trips anymore, because Trump and his war put gas prices through the roof.”

… Juliet Jeske with Decoding Fox News: “Is this why there have been so many near misses at airports lately?”

… Melanie D’Arrigo with the NY Health Campaign: “Taxpayers paid for a 7 month family vacation for the transportation secretary, but kids cancer research was deemed wasteful spending by Republicans.”

… Punchbowl: Trump’s ballroom security money is in trouble. Several House and Senate R’s are privately raising alarms about the $1B in the GOP’s reconciliation bill and the political pitfalls of funding anything ballroom-related. One House R: “A first-year political science major would know not to ask members to take this vote and we hope the speaker does too.” Another: “There is no way in hell that this will get 218 votes on the floor.”

… “Senate Dems are meanwhile preparing to make the vote-a-rama as politically painful as possible for the GOP. Chuck Schumer said Dems’ focus will be all about high costs. Dems plan to argue GOP is funding ICE and the ballroom while neglecting cost of living concerns.”

… Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Tucker Carlson’s podcast: “The people who are funding the ballroom, the arch, the rebranding of the Kennedy Center are the people who have Trump’s ear. They’re the billionaires, and they’re the same people who are in the Epstein files.”

… The Secret Service closed off everything with a half-mile radius of the Lincoln Memorial last night with no reason given as people were forced to leave the area for several hours. It turned out the reason was that Trump wanted to inspect the progress of his paint job at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool. He stopped by the work crew and answered questions from the press:

• On Hantavirus: “We should be fine. Q - Should Americans be concerned that it’s going to spread? Trump: I hope not.”

… I’m getting flashbacks to a very dark time.

• “It’s very much-we hope-under control. It was the ship, and I think we’re going to make a full report about it tomorrow. We have a lot of people, a lot of great people, are studying it. It should be fine. We hope.”

• “Gas prices are way down. Have you looked?”

… $4.59 here in Maine today.

• Trump then turned to the workers and said to them: “I told my people we have to go to Iran and blow them up a little bit. These guys work so hard to make things beautiful, we’re not going to let a nuclear weapon ruin it.”

• ABC’s Rachel Scott: “Why focus on all these projects as gas prices are soaring? Trump: Because I want to keep our country beautiful. This was a disgusting place. You probably don’t see dirt, but I do. Such a stupid question that you asked. Maybe you can understand dirt better than I can baby, but I don’t allow it. This is one of the worst reporters. She’s from ABC fake news and she’s a horror show. A question like that is a disgrace to our country.”

… I’m still waiting for the first hero to stand up and say something to Trump as he berates and personally attacks another female reporter who asked a legitimate question. It will probably never happen because some things are more important than decency and courage. I guess.

• Trump then pointed at Scott and said to Doug Burgum, “she’s a bitch” as Burgum laughed.

… Political consultant Doug Landry: “Why is DRIVING IN THE REFLECTING POOL the most normal thing about this?! 1) Why is Trump wearing an overcoat? It’s currently 60 degrees! 2) Why is Doug Burgum wearing a tuxedo!? 3) Why is the border czar there?!
4) Why is the DHS secretary there?!”

… CNBC: “Surging gas prices due to the Iran war sent consumer sentiment to a new low in the early part of May. The Survey of Consumers posted a 48.2 preliminary reading, down 3.2% from April’s prior record swoon and off 7.7% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 49.7. Inflation fears were the primary driver of the continued trend lower in consumer attitudes.”

… “One-third of respondents mentioned gas prices as the biggest cause of concern. However, another one-third also cited tariffs - both connected to Trump, who launched an attack on Iran in late-Feb and announced an aggressive slate of tariffs in April 2025.”

… Survey director Joanne Hsu: “The downward trend is owing to a surge in concerns about high prices both for personal finances as well as buying conditions for major purchases. Taken together, consumers continue to feel buffeted by cost pressures, led by soaring prices at the pump. Middle East developments are unlikely to meaningfully boost sentiment until supply disruptions have been fully resolved and energy prices fall.”

… Financial Times: “Wall Street’s rebound since late March has been driven by the smallest number of stocks on record, pushing US market concentration to an all-time high and prompting warnings about the ‘fragility’ of the rally. The S&P 500 index has soared more than 12% since the start of April, when news of a ceasefire in the Middle East war sparked a storming rally, propelled largely by a handful of Big Tech stocks.”

… “Analysts at UBS said that a measure of how many stocks were materially contributing to the index’s performance - so-called ‘effective constituents’ - hit a record low of 42 last week, far below the level of about 100 that has been typical in recent decades. Just 5 tech stocks - Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Broadcom and Apple - have accounted for more than half of the S&P’s recent gains.”

… Valerie Noel, head of trading at Syz Bank: “What looks like broad market resilience is, to a large extent, a small group of megacap technology and AI stocks pulling the index higher, while much of the rest of the market has had a more difficult period. That raises fragility risk. If sentiment towards AI-linked names reverses, the downside could be significant.”

… Fox Business host Stuart Varney: “The admin is expecting a $2.1 trillion deficit for the 2026 fiscal year. That’s up from $1.8 trillion the last fiscal year. Most of the increase is in defense spending.”

… National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group seeking to halt construction of Trump’s ballroom, filed a scathing rebuke to a recent DOJ motion accusing it of lying repeatedly to the court. The filing they referenced was made after the incident at the WHCA dinner, which Trump attempted to use to further justify the ballroom:

• “Defendants claim that the National Trust was ‘shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified, & cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.’ This statement is false: The National Trust has never been shown non-public plans.”

• “The Defendants claim that the National Trust was “asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built. This statement is false: The military did not request that the National Trust not file this suit.”

• “Defendants also ignore the reality that—to date—construction has continued unabated. Work at the East Wing site has not been paused for even a single minute, because the injunction has not yet gone into effect. But, the Defendants claim, the events at the WHCD show this lawsuit must be dismissed immediately because it ‘endangers the lives of all Presidents, current and future.’ That statement is not only utterly unprofessional. It is reckless.”

… NYT: “A grinding war in Iran has so severely drained American firepower that Chinese analysts are openly questioning Washington’s ability to defend Taiwan. That shifting calculus threatens to undercut Trump’s leverage in his high-stakes summit next week with Xi Jinping.”

… “Since the war began in late Feb, the US has burned through around half of its long-range stealth cruise missiles and fired off roughly 10 times the number of Tomahawk cruise missiles it currently buys each year. To some Chinese military and geopolitical analysts, the war has done more than deplete US munitions stockpiles, it has also shattered America’s aura of dominance.”

… Yue Gang, a retired colonel of the People’s Liberation Army: “This has significantly diminished the US military’s ability to project its combat power, laying bare the shortcomings of its global military hegemony.”

I think the best thing I read in response to the disappointing decisions on congressional districts from SCOTUS and the VA Supreme Court was to compare our situation to Hungary. The person wrote that Viktor Orban used every conceivable lever to rig elections in Hungary and it finally took people rising up in overwhelming numbers from anger to overcome that.

I still absolutely believe we will be able to overcome what they are doing because enough people are seeing how much their policies are hurting them every day, along with the blatant corruption. Not as many as we would like and not as fast as we expect but people are waking up.

As long as we stick together and keep fighting we will win. We won’t end the toxic reign of MAGA in any single election - this is a marathon, not a sprint - and I’ve signed up for the long haul. But we will get it done. Ultimately the corruption, infighting, lack of character, idolatry of a deeply-flawed person, and incompetence will be their undoing.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.

… Trump held a ‘Mother’s Day’ luncheon for Gold Star moms who lost sons and daughters in combat at his new Mar-a-Lago replica ‘Rose Garden Club’ at the WH. A few quotes from his speech:

• "Right up here, you probably noticed the new black granite. It's been so well received. People can't even believe it, because the stones were all broken and really in bad disrepair."

• "Thank you Janice. Hi! You look great. That's a beautiful hat - who lost her son, Marine Captain Jesse Melton. I heard he was an outstanding, uh, they give me lists and they tell me about people. They said, 'Jesse was outstanding,' Janice. They have the word 'outstanding.'"

• "We cut drug prices by 90%. You could say 500%, 600% depending on the way