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Last Thursday, even as California’s chaotic primaries demonstrated the need for a nationwide election integrity law, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) voted to kill the SAVE America Act. This would be understandable if the bill were unpopular with the electorate. But its requirement that voters in every state must provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote and produce a photo ID when casting a ballot are wildly popular among Republicans and Democrats. Yet, because its passage is one of President Trump’s top priorities, TDS forced them to ignore his agenda.

To get a sense of how bereft the Democrats are of genuine principles, a good place to start is their defense of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. This is the “oyster farmer” they hope can unseat five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins in November. And, in that cause, they are willing to overlook a lot of controversies surrounding Platner. Among these is the tattoo of a Totenkopf, the insignia of the Nazi SS, which he sported on his chest for 18 years. Yet, when Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was asked about Platner on ABC News, he pivoted to President Trump.

One hardly has to be a political junkie to know that midterm elections rarely turn out well for the party that holds the White House. It has happened only once this century, when the Republicans picked up 8 House seats and one Senate seat during the first midterm election of George W. Bush’s presidency. There are two factors at play this year, however, which may allow the GOP to duplicate that feat. First, the leader of the Republican Party has built his political career on defying history. Second, the Democrats have recruited a very large number of truly weird candidates.

For a sense of how bereft the Democrats are of credible leaders and sensible policy ideas all one has to do is listen to the remarks of former Vice President Kamala Harris on the Win with Black Women podcast. She proposed a “no bad ideas brainstorm” in which Democrats would discuss “What we need to do, and think about doing, around the Electoral College … expanding the Supreme Court … statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.” Harris, whom most polls of Democrat voters show as the front-runner for their party’s 2028 presidential nomination, said this as if offering fresh ideas.

The evening of April 21 there were a lot of smiles to be seen on the faces of Virginia Democrats. The voters of the Old Dominion had gone to the polls and approved an amendment to the Commonwealth’s constitution allowing a radically redistricted congressional map. No one was happier than Virginia’s new Democrat Governor, Abigail Spanberger, who had reversed her position on partisan gerrymandering to dramatically increase her party’s power in Congress. Like her Democrat accomplices (snip) she assumed that the challenges to the amendment under consideration by Virginia’s Supreme Court (SCOVA) would immediately collapse once “the people had spoken.”

The evening of April 21 there were a lot of smiles seen on the faces of Virginia Democrats. The voters of the Old Dominion had gone to the polls and approved an amendment to the Commonwealth’s constitution allowing a radically redistricted congressional map. No one was happier than Virginia’s new Democrat Governor, Abigail Spanberger, who had reversed her position on partisan gerrymandering to dramatically increase her party’s power in Congress. Like her Democrat accomplices in the General Assembly she assumed that the challenges to the amendment under consideration by Virginia’s Supreme Court would immediately collapse once “the people had spoken.”

If the title of this column seems to exaggerate the potential impact of last week’s Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, it’s probably because most political pundits have focused on its effect below the Mason-Dixon Line. But the majority-minority congressional districts that will need to be altered pursuant to the Court’s ruling are far more pervasive than most realize. Ballotpedia, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey, estimates that these racially gerrymandered districts account for 148 seats in the House of Representatives. This is about one third of the House’s 435 districts.

During a press conference held shortly after an armed gunman ran through a security barrier at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with the obvious intention of shooting President Trump and other members of his administration, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked this question: “Respectfully, why do you think this keeps happening to you?” Trump answered, “The people who do the most, the people who have the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after.” And by “they,” Trump meant Democrats. He has, for obvious reasons, studied presidential assassinations and knows that all but one of the victims were Republicans.

I wouldn't say nobody. That's the problem. One side keeps playing games while the other side keeps demonstrating its seriousness. That pattern will likely repeat itself today in Islamabad, but the US plans to let it unfold in the open so no one will get confused. Donald Trump has sent J.D. Vance again to lead the negotiations with Iran to end the war on American terms. It's not clear yet whether Vance, Steven Witkoff, and Jared Kushner will see anyone across the table, but the US will show up as the ceasefire deadline approaches:

A great deal of national news coverage concerning Virginia has focused on the attempt by its new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her confederates in the General Assembly to circumvent the commonwealth’s constitution in order to radically gerrymander the state’s congressional district map. This maneuver has, however, overshadowed another of their equally dubious legislative actions. A bill proposing that Virginia join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) passed both houses of the General Assembly in February, and Gov. Spanberger signed it into law on April 13.

Virginia’s redistricting referendum is not going as well as the Democrats evidently expected. The official date of the special election is April 21 but early voting began on March 6, and the number of ballots cast in heavily Republican areas of the state has been far higher than in their Democratic counterparts. The Old Dominion doesn’t register voters by party, but the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) publishes early vote totals by congressional district. (snip) Thus far, of the 676,502 Virginians who have voted, 55 percent cast their ballots in the five districts held by Republicans.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that, despite a 53-47 Republican majority, the U.S. Senate is a graveyard for President Trump’s agenda. This is largely the fault of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who has never been a strong supporter of the President. Despite this, most Republicans hoped that Thune would work to advance Trump’s priorities, particularly after his decisive 2024 victory provided the momentum for the GOP to retake the Senate. But Thune’s refusal to get the SAVE America Act passed and his surrender to the Democrats on DHS funding — without additional money for ICE or CPB — dashed any hope.