• Poll: Trump Has No Plan for Iran
• Trump in Talks with the DoJ about the Mother of all Grifts
• New Poll: A Quarter of Trump's 2024 Voters Think Deportations Have Gone Too Far
• Husted's Old Scandal May Come Back to Haunt Him
• This Is Where a Blue Wave Has to Start
• Trans Veteran and Rocket Scientist Booted Out by Hegseth is Running for Congress
• Source: Alito and Thomas Will Not Retire in June
Virginians Go to the Polls Tomorrow to Vote on Redistricting
The Great Redistricting Follies of 2026 are almost over. There are only two more acts and one of them is tomorrow, when Virginia voters will vote on this ballot question:
Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?
If the question gets 50% +1 votes, the Democratic-controlled Virginia General Assembly will pass a new map for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 House elections. The map is ready to go, so it will only take a few days to pass it. The new map is expected to send Republican Reps. Rob Wittman, Jen Kiggans, and maybe John McGuire to the unemployment office on Jan. 3, 2027. In a monster blue wave, maybe also Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith, although their districts are currently R+12. Still, a three-seat pickup is a lot when the House is currently 214D, 218R, with two vacancies in deep red districts and one in a deep blue district. After the vacancies are filled, a flip of three seats yields 218D, 217R. So if Virginians OK the gerrymander and everything else remains the same (which it most certainly won't), the Democrats would have a 1-seat margin in January. That would give every Democrat a veto over everything. Don't count on everything else remaining the same though.
Early voting in Virginia is approaching the record level set in the 2025 gubernatorial election. Early voting ended on Saturday. High turnout doesn't show which way the votes are going, though, just that there is a lot of voter enthusiasm.
Democrats called out their big gun (Barack Obama) to help with turnout:
They didn't call on the Big Dog (Bill Clinton), probably because they feel he might inspire more Republicans to vote than Democrats.
Tens of millions of dollars are being poured into this election. The amounts are unknown because there is a lot of 501(c)(4) dark money being spent. Virginians for Fair Elections has announced that it has spent $65 million supporting the ballot question. It is a 501(c)(4) and as such does not have to report where the money came from. Neither does Virginians for Fair Maps RC, which has spent $22 million opposing the measure. The total spending from all groups is probably north of $100 million. This kind of spending used to happen only in presidential races. Now it is happening all over the place. It happened in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race last year and will almost certainly happen in the North Carolina Senate race this year and probably others (especially the Texas Senate race if Ken Paxton wins the primary). Of course, as we have seen many times, the side with the biggest piggy bank doesn't always win.
There have been six polls on the ballot question. It is close. Four times "Yes" was ahead and twice "No" was ahead. The three April polls were No+1, Yes+5, and Yes+4. It could go either way.
The last act in the Redistricting Follies is Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is probably waiting to see how things go in Virginia before deciding whether to push for a new map in Florida. In order to win some more seats, he might be forced to create some districts with a 55%-45% Republican majority, and in a Democratic landslide, those seats could be washed away. Virginia is not Florida, but a huge victory for the Democrats tomorrow could be a harbinger of trouble ahead. (V)
Poll: Trump Has No Plan for Iran
You can be excused if you can't remember who is blockading the Strait of Hormuz on any given day. It's hard to keep track of, what with the competing blockades. Suffice it to say that not much oil is getting through right now and the average price of gas was $3.97/gal. this morning, down from a high of $4.17 on April 7th. But let's get to the important stuff first: What the voters think of the mess in Iran.
Here is the latest poll on Iran from Politico/Public First.
It says that only 27% of Americans think Donald Trump has an Iran plan, 15% think he doesn't have a plan but he'll muddle through somehow, and 41% don't believe he has any plan. The latter is up 3 points since the March poll. The other 17% don't know what or where Iran is. That aside, only 38% back the military strikes, a majority think the war is not in the interest of the American people, and nearly half think Trump has been spending too much time on the price of oil and not enough on the price of milk. Even 29% of his 2024 voters think he is too focused on international affairs.
One Republican strategist, the Michigan-based Jason Roe, blamed the poor showing on the lack of messaging. He said: "The American people were not conditioned to prepare for this thing." Absent a direct attack on the United States, like Pearl Harbor, Americans do not like going to war unless the president makes a strong case in advance why the war is in America's interests. Trump didn't do that. Our guess is that he was so puffed up by doing a dictator swap in Venezuela that he thought Iran would crumble in a day or two and the war would be over before anyone was even aware of it. He should have checked with his buddy Vladimir Putin, who has some actual experience starting wars with mid-sized countries in the expectation they would be over with a clean victory in a week at most.
Polling aside, reality does matter at least a little because gas is up, farmers are paying an arm and a leg for fertilizer, and many products that use oil as an input are about to get more expensive. As of this morning, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to Western shipping. Iran apparently means it. On Saturday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard opened fire on a tanker and a container vessel. Although Iran's official navy has been destroyed, the Revolutionary Guard has thousands of mosquito boats. These are small, lightweight, speedy boats that can easily catch a sluggish tanker or container ship and fire missiles or drones at them. The boat in the foreground below is a mosquito boat. The Guard's "navy" is estimated to be about 50,000 men. And since Iran is with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on DEI, they are all men:
The U.S. Air Force has trouble finding and destroying the mosquito boats because many are stored until needed in deep caves excavated along the rocky coastline. They are also too small to be easy to pick out on satellite photos.
Trump has repeatedly said that a final deal with Iran is within reach, but even with super-negotiator and Iran expert
J.D. Vance in Pakistan yesterday, there has been no progress. Yesterday, Trump
said
that he is sending Vance to Pakistan to fail again deliver another ultimatum to Iran. Iran has not confirmed that
talks will take place. That doesn't mean they won't happen, though. All we know for sure is that if Vance "negotiates"
the same way this time as last time ("take it or leave it"), the talks will fail again. Iran has the momentum and time
is on its side. It is in no hurry to reopen the Strait and Trump is in a very big hurry. Iran knows this and knowledge
is power.
It is not even clear that Vance knows what his side wants. Initially, the war was nominally about preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons—you know, those things that use U-235 or Pu-239 to go bang. But the war has suddenly made Iran realize that it has another "nuclear weapon" that doesn't use any enriched uranium or plutonium: It can close the Strait of Hormuz whenever it wants to and inflict massive damage on the entire world. And the good part about this other "nuclear weapon" is that it does not create any radioactive fallout in the region, which a U-235 weapon most certainly would. And while U.N. or I.A.E.A. inspectors could try to verify compliance with a deal relating to uranium enrichment, it is hard to imagine any deal which would take closing the Strait off the table. All that requires is a large fleet of Shahed drones, which cost about $35,000 each and which Iran can make in secret factories in large numbers. Here is the Shahed-136 model (You can't get one on Amazon—yet. Sorry.):
Now what? Probably one of these days some Republican senator will ever-so-carefully tell Trump that his war is not popular with the voters and it will cost Republicans the Senate—meaning a genuine trial when the House impeaches him next year, and no more Cabinet or judicial appointments. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told reporters: "I hope that we are arriving at an exit strategy here to bring this to a close to preserve our security interests and bring down the cost of gasoline." Who knows, maybe Hawley will someday work up the courage to say it to Trump instead of to reporters. Other senior Republicans are quietly saying that when Trump tries to get Congress to appropriate tens of billions of dollars or more for the war, senators are going to ask what the exit plan is.
Trump may or may not be aware of this, but if Vance made a deal with Iran today and a mine-free route through the Strait were opened immediately, it would take weeks before any oil got to buyers. It would take many months before all the damage Iran has inflicted on the energy infrastructure of Qatar and the U.A.E. could be repaired and production returned to pre-war levels. At least 80 oil-related facilities have been damaged, many of them severely. In case you are not an oil-price geek, the spot price for oil closed Friday at $99 vs. the futures price of $90. This means if you actually want a tanker of oil delivered right now, you gotta pay more. The two prices are normally much closer. The gap reflects the ongoing uncertainty about how long it will be before oil flows freely again (but maybe not "free" if Iran imposes a toll).
An interesting question is: "If Trump ends up with an Iranian deal worse than the one Barack Obama made in 2015, will he be able to sell it to the country?" Fox will parrot anything Trump says and his base will believe it, but will independents? Suppose he says that Iran has surrendered all its enriched uranium and NASA shot it into the sun last week. How many voters will buy that?
Trump is obsessed with Obama's deal. At a cabinet meeting on March 26, Trump said: "Barack Hussein Obama—what he did, where he gave them the Iran nuclear deal, gave them free will toward a nuclear weapon. Basically, he chose Iran over Israel and others that didn't want him to do it." This is nonsense, of course, but in the post-truth era, what matters is what independent voters believe. Now that Iran understands that it can inflict massive pain on the world whenever it wants to, it is hard to imagine it will give Trump a better deal than it gave Obama. Getting the genie out of the bottle is easier than putting it back in. (V)
Trump in Talks with the DoJ about the Mother of all Grifts
Forget the giant room for Donald Trump's balls, the $TRUMP coin, other crypto ventures, shaking down media outlets, and the other grifts so far. They are small potatoes compared to the one on deck now. Trump has sued the IRS for $10 billion for allegedly leaking his tax returns and he is mad as hell.
If this one ends up as a contested fight in court (hint: it won't), the judge will throw it out in a heartbeat. The IRS didn't intentionally leak anything—although a rogue government contractor probably did, very much against IRS regulations and policy. In any event, how can Trump prove that the leak cost him $10 billion? Is there some deal that would have netted him $10 billion absent the leak that didn't happen due to the leak? Of course not.
Trump doesn't expect to win in court. In fact, he doesn't even want to go to court. What he is now doing is "negotiating" with the DoJ for a "settlement." These negotiations happen all the time. What is very special now is that Trump is sitting on both sides of the table. His current personal lawyers are facing off against his former personal lawyer, Acting AG Todd Blanche, who is still acting like his personal lawyer. There is nothing to prevent Blanche from saying: "Look, $10 billion is absurd. How about $2 billion?" and then Trump offering to split the difference and "grudgingly" accepting $6 billion as the settlement.
In a normal lawsuit of this kind, the DoJ fights hard to pay as little as possible. In this case, if Blanche knows what is good for him (for example, if he wants a nomination to be the AG), he will offer a deal that will make Trump salivate. Getting the government to pay Trump billions without putting up a real fight would be the greatest payday ever. And it might even hold up in court. It is not even clear who would have standing to challenge a settlement. If it got to court, Blanche could admit that the IRS was at fault, say the government has to compensate Trump for it, and this is the deal they reached. If both parties agree on the amount, would the judge even have the authority to overrule the deal? The political fallout might be enormous, but Trump cares a lot more about money than he does about that, especially since there's never going to be another ballot with HIS name on it. (V)
New Poll: A Quarter of Trump's 2024 Voters Think Deportations Have Gone Too Far
Americans do not approve of Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign. According to a new poll taken for Politico by Public First from April 11-14, half of all Americans—including a quarter of the people who voted for Trump in 2024—think Trump's deployment of ICE agents is too aggressive and has gone too far. A quarter of all Americans think the deportations are going well and 11% want them to be more aggressive. Losing a quarter of your base on the most important issue for many people is not a good thing. Here are the results compared to the same poll in January.
A key finding here is that among Trump voters "too aggressive" has gone up by 4 points while "not aggressive enough" has gone up by 3 points, while "about right" has lost 7 points. In other words, 7% more Republicans are unhappy with Trump, albeit for different reasons.
Not entirely surprisingly, Trump's support is cratering with Latinos. Trump won an unprecedented 46% of the Latino vote in 2024, but now only 34% of Latinos approve of his policies, with 32% approval on immigration and 33% approval on the economy. If it continues to go downhill, Republicans could get some big surprises in South Texas, where the new House map was drawn on the assumption that Latinos would continue to support Republicans in large numbers. The gerrymander could end up being a dummymander.
A majority (51%) also say that having ICE officers in cities is dangerous. In other words, sacking Kristi Noem and replacing her with Markwayne Mullin at DHS has not had the desired effect. People don't like the policy, no matter who is in charge.
Part of the problem for Trump is that the deportations are working. In South Texas, the construction industry is facing a shortage of workers. In the Midwest, farmers can't find workers to plant their crops. In Latino-heavy areas, businesses have seen a drop-off in sales. Many of these people voted for Trump, but are now starting to feel the effects of his policies and don't like them. They may not vote Democratic in November, but some of them may stay home on Election Day. (V)
Husted's Old Scandal May Come Back to Haunt Him
Appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) is in a tough fight with former three-term senator Sherrod Brown. New reporting about an old $60 million bribery scandal that has come back may make it even worse for Husted.
The scandal is very complicated. if you want a detailed description, check Wikipedia. Here is a rough summary: Ohio FirstEnergy is an electric utility company that funneled $60 million through a dark-money 501(c)(4) strawman organization called Generation Now in order to bribe Ohio legislators into passing H.B. 6 in 2019, which gave the company a $1.3 billion ratepayer-funded bailout.
It worked like this: Former state House speaker Larry Householder (R), who was on the take from FirstEnergy and who orchestrated H.B. 6, recruited a team of 20 Republican state House candidates who pledged to support Householder for speaker if elected. Householder funded their campaigns using dark money from FirstEnergy, funneled through Generation Now. In effect, FirstEnergy bought Householder to get him to pass the $1.3 billion bill the company wanted. When this came out in 2021, Householder was expelled from the Ohio House and in 2023, along with others, convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after the company confessed to the scheme and paid a $230 million fine. In 2025, a federal appeals court upheld Householder's conviction.
Husted's position on this is that he is as pure as the driven snow and knew nothing about any of this, even though he was Ohio's lieutenant governor at the time. Recent reporting shows Husted knew plenty and has been lying about it for years. In March of this year, Husted was called as a witness in the trial of FirstEnergy's former CEO Chuck Jones and its lobbyist Michael Dowling, the people who planned the caper. The trial ended in a hung jury and the judge has scheduled a retrial for Sept. 28. Husted is likely to be called again to testify in the middle of his campaign.
Although Husted has claimed he knew nothing about anything, his calendar has been introduced as evidence and it shows many meetings with Jones, Householder, and the state's top utility regulator (who has since died), while the above was going on. Although Husted has never been charged with a crime, the large number of meetings he had with people who have been indicted or convicted in the scandal raises a lot of questions about his role in this. Evidence also shows Jones and Dowling discussing how Husted pushed for even more subsidies in H.B. 6. Screenshots of their conversations were entered as evidence. Among other things, Husted's role included extending the subsidies from 6 years to 10 years and getting the bill through the Senate. Husted's explanation is essentially "I wanted to keep the lights on for Ohioans."
Oh, and also, the AP has also uncovered evidence that FirstEnergy funneled $1 million into Husted's 2017 (failed) gubernatorial campaign via another strawman organization. The whole thing is very sleazy at best and criminal at worst. The last thing Husted needs is for the whole affair to be front and center in October and all over the news in Ohio.
Senate Republicans fully understand the gravity of the situation. The Senate Republicans' main super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is planning to spend $80 million, a quarter of its entire budget, to save Husted's neck. Although Democratic and Republican voters don't agree on much, one thing they do agree on is that they don't like politicians who are on the take from big companies, especially a hated electric utility company. Sherrod Brown's ads have to be carefully worded, but since FirstEnergy has admitted guilt and paid a fine and one of the most corrupt politicians involved is in prison, he has plenty of material to work with. How about: "Husted helped corrupt politicians and lobbyists pass a rate increase that drove your electricity bill through the roof." Pity it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. But it does fit nicely in a 30-sec TV ad. (V)
This Is Where a Blue Wave Has to Start
We and others have talked a lot about a potential blue wave, where the Democrats win dozens of House seats. Currently, the House is 214D, 218R, and three vacancies (LaMalfa, Swalwell, and Gonzales). But remember, there is no giant House election, like Hungary had last week. There are 435 separate House elections. To pull off a blue wave, Democrats have to flip a substantial number of Republican-held districts, nearly all of them with a PVI of R+x.
To a first approximation, Democrats should first shore up their own seats, then go after the low-hanging fruit next, meaning the Republican-held districts with a PVI of D+x, then EVEN, then R+1, then R+2, etc. The table below lists all 218 Republican-held seats by PVI. The second column gives the number of districts at each PVI. For example, there are four Republican-held districts that are R+1 and 11 at R+5. The last column gives the cumulative number of flips assuming they fall in order. So, for example, if the Democrats win all the Republican-held seats from D+3 to R+5, they flip 39 seats.
| PVI | Count | Cumulative |
| D+3 | 1 | 1 |
| D+1 | 2 | 3 |
| EVEN | 5 | 8 |
| R+1 | 4 | 12 |
| R+2 | 4 | 16 |
| R+3 | 6 | 22 |
| R+4 | 6 | 28 |
| R+5 | 11 | 39 |
| R+6 | 7 | 46 |
| R+7 | 12 | 58 |
| R+8 | 15 | 73 |
| R+9 | 7 | 80 |
| R+10 | 18 | 98 |
| R+11 | 18 | 116 |
| R+12 | 7 | 123 |
| R+13 | 6 | 129 |
| R+14 | 11 | 140 |
| R+15 | 11 | 151 |
| R+16 | 9 | 160 |
| R+17 | 7 | 167 |
| R+18 | 11 | 178 |
| R+19 | 5 | 183 |
| R+20 | 5 | 188 |
| R+21 | 6 | 194 |
| R+22 | 6 | 200 |
| R+23 | 6 | 206 |
| R+24 | 2 | 208 |
| R+25 | 2 | 210 |
| R+26 | 1 | 211 |
| R+27 | 3 | 214 |
| R+28 | 1 | 215 |
| R+29 | 1 | 216 |
| R+32 | 1 | 217 |
| R+33 | 1 | 218 |
The bigger the wave, the deeper the Democrats go into Republican territory. Of course, the PVI isn't the whole story. Candidate quality can play a role, as well as local issues, and how good a fit the incumbent is for the district. Still, this is a basis. If Democrats overperform by 5 or 6 points or more in all the soft Republican districts, they could flip a few dozen seats.
The above is kind of the "macroeconomic" view. Down on the ground, to pull off any kind of wave, the Democrats have to win tough districts. The easiest of the red districts are the open ones. Our retirements page shows which districts have open-seat elections. If we consider open red districts bluer than R+6, there are five of them. If we include the one R+6 open-seat district, there are six of them. Over at The Bulwark, Lauren Egan takes a close look at one tough, but potentially flippable, open-seat district. This is the one Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is leaving to run for governor of South Carolina. It is R+6 and the Democrats have about as good a candidate as they will ever get. It is Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore (ret.). Note that she didn't retire voluntarily. Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth fired her because the idea of a female former helicopter pilot who served 35 years, working her way up to being a three-star admiral in charge of 60,000 sailors, didn't fit his idea of what a "warrior" looks like. Her raising six kids while doing all this didn't impress him, either. She decided sitting around like a potted plant wasn't her thing, so she decided to run for Mace's old seat as a Democrat.
SC-01 runs along the South Carolina coast from the South Santee River almost to Georgia. How far inland it goes varies due to the gerrymandering process, but it doesn't cover much of Charleston. It is R+6, but it did elect a Democrat as recently as 2018, when Joe Cunningham won—and then lost to Mace in 2020. If Democrats want a lasting House majority, they have to win districts like this one consistently.
Lacore is not a wild-eyed partisan. She is a cautious moderate and a pretty good fit for the district, which has a median household income of $95,000 and is full of college-educated Republican retirees in places like Hilton Head and Seabrook as well as a large number of veterans. Almost 17% are Black and 8% are Latino. This is the kind of Republican district primed to flip if there is a big blue wave.
Ten Republicans have filed in the primary. The best known is Mark Sanford, who held the SC-01 seat from 1995 to 2001, then ran for governor in 2002 and won—twice. In 2009, he took a hike on the Appalachian Trail—all the way down to Argentina—where his mistress, Maria Belén Chapur, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two, lived. The South Carolina legislature considered impeaching him for dereliction of duty, but didn't end up doing it. Instead, he was censured but not removed from office. In 2013, the then-Congressman from SC-01, Tim Scott (R-SC) was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Nikki Haley after Sen. Jim DeMint resigned mid-cycle and Sanford ran in the special election and won his old seat back. He held it until he lost the Republican primary to Katie Arrington in 2018. Now he is trying for a second comeback. Although he is very well known in the state and district, the fact that he cheated on his wife very publicly and lied about his whereabouts to the media is going to be a big issue, both in the primary and general election, if he makes it there. Could be very interesting. (V)
Trans Veteran and Rocket Scientist Booted Out by Hegseth is Running for Congress
Pete Hegseth doesn't even think cis straight women, like Nancy Lacore, belong in the military, so he certainly doesn't think trans women, like Bree Fram, belong there. He booted her out and now she, like Lacore, is running for Congress. Her campaign manager is also a trans woman who was kicked out of the Space Force.
Fram served in the Air Force, during which time she was deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After 18 years in the Air Force, she transferred to the Space Force, where she served another 5 years. At the time she was kicked out of the Space Force, Fram was a bird colonel and the highest-ranking trans person in the entire Department of Defense. Here she is holding a photo of herself as a colonel:
Her path to Congress will be potentially more difficult than Lacore's, but for a different reason. She is running in VA-11, in Fairfax County, close to D.C. The district is currently D+18, so that part is easy. The hard part is winning the Democratic primary against the incumbent, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA), who won a special election on Sept. 9, 2025, to fill the seat of his former boss, the late Gerry Connolly.
Beating an incumbent is never easy, especially a fairly young one (43), when Democrats are prizing youth. Fram is in her mid-40s. Walkinshaw is a slightly left-of-center moderate; Fram is much further left. It is Bernie vs. Hillary, part 902, only "Bernie" is a gay trans woman and "Hillary" is a straight cis man. That makes it more complicated, to put it mildly. Walkinshaw is on the House Oversight Committee and the Homeland Security Committee and is doing his best to get all the Epstein files out there, something that plays well with many Democrats. He has also taken up the cause of the many federal workers who live in his district.
The new Virginia map is more favorable to Fram than the old one, so she is actively campaigning for it.
A poll of the district taken for Fram's campaign has 43% for Walkinshaw, 9% for Fram, and 48% undecided. However,
after being presented with information about the two candidates, including Bram's long military service, Walkinshaw was
at 42% and Fram at 21%. On March 31, Walkinshaw had $800,000 in the bank and Fram had $135,000. Since Walkinshaw doesn't
need to save his pennies nickels for the general election in such a blue district, even with the new map, he can
spend the whole $800K on the primary. (V)
Source: Alito and Thomas Will Not Retire in June
This would be really big news—if it is true. CBS News is reporting that sources close to the Supreme Court say neither Justice Samuel Alito nor Justice Clarence Thomas will retire in June. Many people (including us) were expecting Alito to retire, in full knowledge that Donald Trump would nominate a younger version of the justice as a replacement and the Senate would rubber stamp the nomination on a party-line vote, maybe with Sen. John Fetterman (D?-PA) siding with the Republicans.
If the leak is true—and again, this is just one leak—we are very surprised about Alito. He is now 76. He might be able to serve for another 5-10 years. According to the actuarial tables, a 76-year-old American man can expect to live another 10.3 years. If he retired in 2 months, he would be assured of a successor he would approve of. If he hangs on until Jan. 3, 2027, he is taking a risk that Democrats will control the Senate and will reject every candidate Trump sends to them. An even bigger risk is a Democratic trifecta on Jan. 20, 2029, and a nomination and confirmation of someone Alito can't stand. Maybe Alito is having a good time on the Court and thinks only he can keep up the momentum. The Court has a history of justices thinking they are immortal and then going up to the Great Bench in the Sky at an extremely inconvenient moment (see Ginsberg, Ruth Bader).
It is also possible that Alito doesn't retire in June but holds his resignation until just before the Court begins its new term in October. That would tee up a massive confirmation fight just as early voting got going. If Trump nominated a far-right candidate and Democrats went bonkers, that could affect the Senate elections by making the Supreme Court an issue.
Thomas is different. If he hangs on until Aug. 2028, he will break the record for the longest-serving justice in history. It is entirely possible he wants to stick it to the libs by breaking the record and doesn't really care who his replacement is. He is less of a partisan than Alito and more of a bitter, angry, resentful man, despite his achieving a very high position, even though he got the job because George H.W. Bush simply wanted to appoint a Black conservative to the Court and the pool of Black conservative lawyers who could get through the Senate was pretty small at the time.
Anyhow, for these reasons, we are not surprised that Thomas might well hang on for another 2 years. We're skeptical of Alito going for another rodeo, but we'll know soon enough. (V)
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Apr18 Saturday Q&A
Apr17 New Jersey: No, the Longshot Did Not Win
Apr17 Fundraising News: ActBlue Is a Beast
Apr17 Legal News: In Court, Trump Has Lost His Mystique... if He Ever Had It
Apr17 I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Gerald Ford Was a Michigan Wolverine
Apr17 This Week in Schadenfreude: Not-Exactly-Instant Karma
Apr17 This Week in Freudenfreude: The California Gambit?
Apr16 The Election in New Jersey Today Could Be Another Indicator
Apr16 Republican Senators Are Caught Between Trump and the Pope
Apr16 Vance's Bad Week Got Even Worse
Apr16 Trump's Small Tent
Apr16 Trump Wants Banks to Collect Citizenship Status of Customers
Apr16 Trump Promises Mass Pardons of Enablers before Leaving Office
Apr16 The First 2028 Cattle Call
Apr16 Data Centers Are Becoming a Hot Political Issue
Apr16 Virginia Is Trying to Make Us Obsolete
Apr15 Inflation Is Bad... Wonder Why?
Apr15 Well, That Didn't Go as Planned
Apr15 It's Tax Day
Apr15 Democrats Make "Attempt" to Remove Trump from Office
Apr15 The Dust May Be Settling in California
Apr15 Oh. Canada!
Apr15 This Could Be Interesting...
Apr14 Two Down... Two to Go?
Apr14 Donald Trump, Uniter of the Faiths
Apr14 Political Bytes: Just the Facts, Ma'am
Apr13 Vance Quit His New Job after a Day
Apr13 California Gubernatorial Race Is in Chaos
Apr13 Harris Is Running
Apr13 House Oversight Committee Will Interview Epstein's Victims
Apr13 Democrats Can't Convince Their Base to Stop Demanding the Impossible
Apr13 The Big Checks Never Came
Apr13 Todd Blanche Could Act as AG for at Least 7 Months
Apr13 Which Justices Will Quit in June?
Apr13 Orban Concedes Defeat
Apr10 Today in Diplomacy: So Much for the Theodore Roosevelt Approach
Apr10 House Divided: For Many in MAGA, It's the Day after Christmas
Apr10 What Just Happened?: First Lady Does Her Iron Lady Impression
Apr10 Legal News: We're Not Quite to the Last Mile of the Marathon
Apr10 I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: The Red Sox Did Not Retire 3B Wade Boggs' Number until 2016
Apr10 This Week in Schadenfreude: (Z) Sues Donald Trump
Apr10 This Week in Freudenfreude: Ojala Y Te Animes
Apr09 Now What?
Apr09 More about the Wisconsin Elections
Apr09 Republican Legislators Are Trying to Restrict Ballot Initiatives
Apr09 The Twenty-Fifth Amendment Is Moving Up in Popularity
Apr09 Trump Threatens to Halt International Arrivals at Blue Cities' Airports
Apr09 Vance Goes to Hungary
Apr09 Trump Is Underwater in 104 House Districts Represented by Republicans
