ET, Phone Home 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Oy Virginia: Citing a procedural violation, on Friday Virginia’s Supreme Court struck down the congressional map recently approved by Virginia’s electorate.  The state court’s 4 to 3 decision is potentially devastating for Democrats. Together with the US Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v Callais decision which effectively dismantled what was left of the Voting Right Act it means that Republicans have won the redistricting war.  Safe Democratic seats, many with Black representatives, are likely to go red in November meaning that while there’s still a chance that Democrats win the House, gerrymandering has netted Republicans twelve more seats than Democrats and as a result could help them keep control of the House.  Democrats haven’t thrown in the towel yet on Virginia.  Some state lawmakers are considering imposing new age limitations that would force the retirement of some of the state’s justices in order to reverse Friday’s ruling.  That sounds kind of nuts but then again ruling against the outcome of an election while a bunch of other states impose new Republican friendly Jim Crow style maps without voter approval sounds nuts too.  

Wars, Etcetera: The Iran war/skirmish that Trump said would be over soon is not over.  Iran rejected Trump’s one page term sheet, providing an alternative of their own that Trump then said was totally inadequate.  Trump is threatening Tehran again and at least for now Iran’s leadership is not budging, not that we know who that leadership really is.  Also, the three-day ceasefire that Trump claimed to have worked out between Russia and Ukraine, it also went up in smoke rather quickly. Despite reports that Putin knows that he’s losing and that Russians have lost 350,000 on the battlefield, not to mention the inconvenience of losing access to the internet, he’s still fighting and sending supplies to Iran. So much for world peace, so much for fair elections.  Also, maybe not such a good time for RFK, whose mandate includes keeping us safe from things like hantavirus, to move forward with banning anti-depressants like Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro. His officials say that hantavirus probably won’t get us but then again, who believes RFK, the rudderless CDC or Trump, who once assured us that the coronavirus was under control while at the same time silencing the CDC’s Nancy Messonnier for saying otherwise.  

More 💩:  North Carolina Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for having an improper relationship with a subordinate and for sexual harassment.  Another Republican, Trump endorsed Ohio Congressman Max Miller is accused of beating and burning his ex-wife.  Making things really interesting, his ex-wife is the daughter of Ohio’s sitting Republican Senator Bernie Moreno who Miller has accused of fueling the “rumors” against him to help his daughter with her custody battle. By the way, Florida Republican Cory Mills who allegedly beat up at least one ex-girlfriend, is still a sitting Congressman mostly because Speaker Johnson and Trump need his vote.  On the health care front, Trump’s fourth Surgeon General radiologist Nicole Saphier nominee has deleted a bunch of tweets in which she criticized Trump and RFK’s health care policies.  She’s still the nominee but others have been removed lesser tweets. Reports are that Trump has signed off on firing FDA chief Mark Makary.  Makary’s tenure has been controversial but ironically if he’s removed it may be because he opposed the approval of flavored vapes and has stood in the way of restricting abortion drug mifepristone.  And because a weekend wouldn’t be a weekend without Secretary of War/Beer Pete Hegseth picking another fight with Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly, Hegseth is now asserting that Kelly should be investigated for expressing concern over the US’s diminishing stockpiles of weapons.  Hegseth’s claim is that Kelly violated his oath by “blabbing on TV” about what he learned in a classified briefing. Kelly pointed out that the state of the stockpiles was discussed by Hegseth in the same “public hearing“ where he said “it would take years to replenish” the weapons. It’s no wonder the administration is releasing UFO files; they need the distraction and those videos of Trump and his motorcade driving through the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to show off his new costly taxpayer funded paint job while bizarre are not distracting enough.