Virginia Reeling. Iran: Too Confused to Field Negotiating Team? DOJ Finds No ‘Fine People’ at Southern Poverty Law Center. Hemingway Does Alito. Trump Goes to Lion’s Den—at Media Prom. More
Yes, Virginia did it.
Virginia voters narrowly approved a Democratic redistricting plan (and here). The Dems put forth an aggressive plan that radically alters the landscape for Virginia politics, possibly signaling curtains for Republicans in a heretofore purple state:
The new map is designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the upcoming midterm elections.
The newly passed constitutional amendment will temporarily bypass the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to implement a new congressional map until 2030, when mapmaking responsibilities will return to the commission.
The redistricting plan is a naked power grab by Dems. Virginia’s new map transforms a Dem edge of 6-to-1 into an overwhelming advantage of 10-to-1. In other words, the Commonwealth now joins the ranks of one-party states, and we know how that works out. National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar wrote last night (“Virginia Democrats Cast Republicans into the Outer Darkness on a Bare Majority Vote“) after the results were clear:
D.C.-area Democrats, with little more than a slight majority, have voted to federally disenfranchise the rest of the state’s Republicans. Why? Because they could. There is no “bright side” to tonight’s vote for Republicans.
The Supreme Court of Virginia could still strike down the new map — the case was put on procedural hold to be reviewed on the merits after the referendum — but that is a slim reed on which to hang one’s hopes. Republicans should never bet on a judicial deus ex machina.
It would seem, therefore, that these are Virginia’s new congressional lines until 2032 at least. The state will be represented in Congress almost entirely by Fairfax County, and most of its “downstate” representatives will hail from within a 50-mile radius of Washington, D.C. Who knows what Virginia will look like demographically once the state returns to court-drawn maps in 2032 — or what will happen to the state’s Republican Party after it has been locked out of nearly all power and relevance for six years?
Former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is calling upon the state Supreme Court to step in. Here is Governor Youngkin’s response to the passage of the Dem redistricting scheme on X. Former President Barack Obama is ecstatic over the vote.
Twinkly Brit Piers Morgan admitted yesterday on “The Five” that he has “no idea” what is going on with regard to Iran. Ditto Ms. Must. Ditto Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, who fell for Iranian propaganda, pronounced the terror regime’s fabricated exploit “awesome” and then tried to wiggle out by saying he was just being sarcastic.
Well, most of us aren’t that dumb. (By popular demand, another Chris Murphy item, by Townhall’s David Strom.) The U.S. and Iran delayed negotiations in Islamabad in what a Wall Street Journal headline calls “a high-stakes game of chicken.” This may be good news because, as the WSJ report indicates, Iran’s negotiators may be in disarray:
During the meetings, aides told Trump that Iran’s government wasn’t a unified entity, with hardline factions in Tehran unwilling to bend to the president’s demands. Questions were raised at the White House about whether Iran was really even in a position to negotiate and stick to any commitments.
The New York Post cover this morning acknowledges that President Trump has extended the Iran ceasefire and displays a panel of eight women Iran plans to execute with the injunction: “Save Them!“
This is the first time I’ve seen a reference to the actual people of Iran, as opposed to their monstrous leaders, in a long time. Meanwhile, three container ships in the Strait of Hormuz were hit by Iranian fire after the ceasefire was announced. This Just In: Iranian media says Iran has two container ships in custody. They are Panamanian- and Liberia-flagged tankers.
Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York addresses President Trump’s frustration and Iran’s delaying tactics. “Moral Inversion and the Iran War” at The Free Press examines a new poll that finds Democrats under the age of 50 view terror-exporting Iran more favorably than Israel.
Couldn’t happen to nicer bunch of people. Not. “Southern Poverty Law Center Charged with Defrauding Donors with Payments to Extremist Informants” is an AP headline:
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with more than $3 million paid to informants through a now-defunct program to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups. Prosecutors allege some of the money was used by extremists to carry out other crimes, but court papers did not include specific examples.
I don’t want to be the skunk at the garden party because the SPLC has a loathsome and reckless habit of designating conservatives as fomenting “hate,” but the charges seemed vague last night when Acting AG Todd Blanche discussed them on the Ingraham Angle. SPLC, however, did pay informants involved with the deadly Charlottesville, Va., incident that gave rise to the spurious “fine people on both sides” slur on President Trump. If it can be proven that the informants egged on the protests on covert behalf of SPLC, it might put the kibosh on at least one hate-spewing group: the awful SPLC itself.
The publication of a new Mollie Hemingway book is An Event. Hemingway’s “Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution” came out yesterday. Hemingway calls Alito the “Most ‘Courageous’ SCOTUS Justice You’ve Never Read About (Until Now)” at the Federalist, while at the same fine outlet, Shawn Fleetwood writes about Hemingway’s book today. Hemingway discusses her new book on Larry O’Connor’s show. Hemingway aired an intriguing idea on “The Megyn Kelly Show”—that Chief Justice Roberts, not Justice Alito, as has been bruited about by hopeful Alito-detractors, will be the Court’s next Justice to step down.
Socialist Concept of “Your” Retirement Funds. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine has announced that he will repurpose $4 billion of the city’s roughly $320 billion in pension funds to develop “affordable” housing. City Journal calls this risky and points out that the money belongs to pensioners, not housing projects. Allison Shrager writes:
Levine’s Housing Investment Initiative is not just poor risk management; it is also misguided and ill-timed. After the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 devastated the value of affordable housing, investments with real-estate firms Related Companies and Hudson Companies declined by 69 percent. Why inflict more damage? If these regulations continue in their current form, the affordable housing sector of the real-estate market has poor prospects for profitability, let alone competitive returns. The outlook will only worsen if the Rent Guidelines Board approves Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promise to freeze rents. He recently placed six sympathetic appointees on that board to make it happen.
Landlords of rent-stabilized housing are already struggling. A rent freeze would push more of them into bankruptcy, devaluing mortgages that the city would buy and further eroding the profitability of affordable housing investments. Even the New York Times concedes that market-rate investors shy away from affordable housing because the returns are so low.
This plan takes Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum about socialism and running out of other people’s money to a whole new level.
President Trump will go into the lion’s den this weekend. This is the den formally known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Journalists misleadingly refer to the affair as “nerd prom” because they think this makes them feel like they were smart in high school. James Kirchick of The Free Press takes a novel position on the impending dinner: both the journalist and President Trump are vain, so they will fit right in with each other. Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson (and, yes, before you check Google, they’re both still with us) are demanding that the journalists in attendance confront President Trump. (This could backfire.) Most of the journalists who will attend had their consciousnesses formed (and their egos expanded) way back in the Watergate era, when journalists actually did bring down a Republican president. I wish I were going this year. It might be fun for once.
