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Hello, America. It’s Erick Erickson. It is May 13th. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon.

But before I get to those, I asked a question yesterday about whether or not it was smart for Republicans to engage in the Democratic primaries, elevating fringe candidates. Chris said the Republicans should focus on their policies to help the nation thrive. John says, I think it’ll backfire. Too many Democrats are on the fringe anyway. It’s a defensive move and that is bad. The Republicans need a good offensive playbook. And Cal said Democrats have done that to Republicans with some success. And that’s true. And that’s actually kind of why I support it. Yeah, it has the potential to blow up. You know, Hillary Clinton famously supported Donald Trump in 2016 behind the scenes thinking he would be the easiest Republican to beat. And look what happened. But also, I think it’s worth doing.

Now, these are “The Four Things You Need to Know”.

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👀 MUST READ: CIA escalates secret war on cartels with deadly operations inside Mexico - CNN

🚨 BREAKING: Gunshots fired as chaos erupts in the Philippines Senate. - NYT

🔥 OVERTURNED: South Carolina Supreme Court overturns Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions in deaths of wife and son - AP

🔨 NEWS: Pentagon considering renaming Iran war ‘Sledgehammer’ if ceasefire collapses - NBC

‼️ PROBLEM: Army cuts training as service is short billions of dollars - ABC

👉 RICK SCOTT: Victory In Iran, Nothing Less - Dailywire

🏡 NOTABLE: Nobody’s socializing with their neighbors anymore - Axios

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

Is it possible to like Marco Rubio any more?

The Producer Price Problem

Wholesale prices jumped sharply in April, posting their biggest monthly increase since March 2022, a sign that inflation pressures are still building behind the scenes.

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Also, at 2pm ET today, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp will join me live. You can hear our conversation here.

If you missed the prior conversations:

Chris Carr

Rick Jackson

Brad Raffensperger

Start with the bunkers.

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran is rapidly restoring missile bunkers and launch sites bombarded by the U.S. and Israel, raising serious questions about Washington’s claims of weakening Tehran’s military capabilities. This is not a minor setback for American war aims — it is an indictment of the entire theory that airstrikes alone can defang the Islamic Republic. According to U.S. intelligence reports, Iran has been able to dig out the bombed entrances and return the sites to full operation hours after an attack. A recent CNN investigation found that while 77 percent of visible tunnel entrances had been hit, activity at those sites resumed quickly.

The Pentagon struck 11,000 targets in Iran over five weeks. Eleven thousand. And yet U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that half of Iran’s missile launchers remain intact, and thousands of one-way attack drones are still in the country’s arsenal. One U.S. official put it bluntly, saying, “They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region.” Iran has not been defanged. It has been inconvenienced.

Part of the reason is what Tehran has built underground. One missile city, outside the central Iranian city of Yazd, extends more than 1,500 feet into a mountain consisting of a type of granite that can withstand crushing pressures. Airstrikes target entrances and ventilation shafts — but they cannot reliably kill what lies beneath. Meanwhile, Iran has been using bulldozers to dig out missile launchers buried in underground bunkers and returning them to service with remarkable speed. The bunkers are not a vulnerability. They are a strategy.

Now factor in what Russia and China are doing behind the scenes.

Experts say battlefield evidence points to a far more interconnected war effort, reflecting deepening partnerships that have helped Iran replenish its military, improve targeting, and blunt Western operations during the conflict. This is not a conventional patron-client relationship. The Russia-Iran relationship has evolved far beyond the simple purchase of hardware — it is also based on learning and sharing data. Russia has reportedly provided Iran with satellite imagery and damage assessments, enabling Tehran to constantly calibrate and improve its strikes against U.S. and regional targets. The signatures of Russian drone swarm tactics, refined on Ukrainian battlefields, have now surfaced in Iranian operations.

Beijing’s contribution is equally dangerous. U.S. intelligence and defense analysis indicate China is supplying drone components and industrial materials used to sustain and expand Iran’s drone production, including engines, batteries, and electronic systems. More alarming still: a Chinese company used AI to analyze satellite imagery of U.S. assets at Prince Sultan Air Base in Riyadh just days before a devastating Iranian attack. China is not a bystander. It is a co-belligerent hiding behind plausible deniability, testing its systems and tactics against American forces at minimal cost to itself.

Defense analysts have called it a “factory versus factory” war, with Iran and its backers producing inexpensive precision weapons that are designed to exhaust the expensive, sophisticated systems the U.S. and its Gulf partners rely upon. The cost asymmetry is real and deepening.

Then there is Pakistan — supposed neutral, supposed mediator.

As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. Among the aircraft reportedly sent to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan was an Iranian Air Force RC-130, a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering variant of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules tactical transport aircraft. A country cannot simultaneously broker peace and harbor the air assets of one combatant. That Pakistan has done so — while Beijing publicly celebrates Islamabad’s “mediator” role — tells you everything about the actual alignment of interests at play.

What does Iran want in return for peace? According to its own state broadcaster, the terms include U.S. war reparations, recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and the complete removal of American sanctions. In other words, Tehran is demanding that the United States pay for the privilege of losing. That is not a peace proposal. It is a victory lap dressed up in diplomatic language.

The hard truth is that every pause in pressure is a gift to Iran’s reconstitution effort. Every round of inconclusive talks is a window for Moscow to deliver more targeting data, for Beijing to ship more drone components, and for Islamabad to quietly expand the protection it offers Iranian assets. The ceasefire has not stopped the war — it has merely slowed one side of it.

There is no comfortable middle ground. Either Iran’s missile and drone capacity is permanently broken, its regime stripped of the will and ability to threaten the region, its nuclear program ended, or the conflict resumes on terms progressively more favorable to Tehran. History offers no examples of a determined, externally supported adversary that chose permanent restraint because its enemy stopped pressing. Iran will rebuild. It is rebuilding now, today, while negotiations go nowhere.

The only way out of this conflict is through it — to a decisive conclusion. Anything less is simply a longer road to the same fight, but with growing numbers of Americans dead, the longer we wait.

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Hello, America. It’s Erick Erickson. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” for May 12th.

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🚨 DISTURBING: New report details ‘systematic’ rape and sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel - CNN

🔥 OOPS: Amazon employees giving AI ‘unnecessary tasks’ to inflate token use - NTN

‼️ MUST READ: Redistricting Makes the House Map a Bit Redder, but Not By Enough to Protect Republicans from a Wave - Center For Politics

🗑️ STUNNING: NYC dumping record $43B into public schools — at a whopping $44K per pupil — despite plummeting enrollment, poor test results - NY Post

🇺🇦 NOTABLE: Ukraine and U.S. move toward landmark drone defense deal - CBS

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

Stat of the day:

Gas Tracker:

Inflation

The year-over-year U.S. inflation rate for April climbed to 3.8%, marking the highest reading in more than three years.

Nearly 40% of the month-over-month increase was driven by surging gas prices, with most of the remaining inflation tied to rising food and shelter costs.

For the first time in roughly three years, inflation over the trailing 12 months (3.8%) outpaced average wage growth (3.6%), underscoring the reality that many American workers continue to lose ground financially.

Bloomberg’s Javier Blas highlighted the impact on beef prices since President Donald Trump’s first term:

NYT Lies?

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote a bizarre piece yesterday claiming to unearth a litany of sexual assaults against Palestinians in Israeli prisons, some of which were perpetrated by dogs the IDF trained to rape inmates.

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As you are aware, I do not think individual polling in America is accurate. But polling averages have held up in the past decade quite well. The 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections all hovered around the polling averages in terms of the popular vote. Remember, Trump won the electoral college in 2016, but Clinton came close to the polling average in terms of popular vote.

Midterm elections, which tend to have lower turnout than presidential election years, tend to conform better to polling averages.

This is a snapshot of where the midterms stand 176 days from the midterms, based on a pretty in-depth review of seven major pollsters and their crosstabs. I relied on a couple of pollster friends and also Claude.AI to dig deep into the data and pull together the data for a comprehensive snapshot of where things are right now.

As I always say, events change things. As the pollsters I worked with noted, the polling trajectory for the GOP right now is not good, even with redistricting trends, but there are events outside the scope of existing public opinion that can dramatically change things.

For now, with 176 days to go, here is where the 2026 election stands.

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Hello, America. I’m Erick Erickson. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon for May 11th.

Before I get to those, I asked for your thoughts on redistricting, and a number of y’all chimed in.

Mark says, “I agree with Eric. Partisan redistricting is bad. I don’t like it as it’s manipulative and seeks an advantage. I don’t understand why districts can’t be divided by the state’s counties. That seems equitable to me.”

In that part, one of the problems is that some southern states just kept dividing counties into smaller counties so that rural voters could continue to outnumber cities for a while for legislative reapportionment issues. And so that southern play there, particularly in a place like Georgia, where we have 159 counties, has a lot to do with why you can’t just divide them up by counties. However, you can keep them compact and avoid needlessly breaking up counties as necessary.

Thomas said districts are based on population, but we have AI good enough now to feed it the population data of a state and tell it to split the state into X number of districts of equal population within a few hundred to avoid splitting small towns. Given guidance like make the districts as close to a square as possible, that would take 90% of the human influence out of it.

Pack Mule John responded, “I don’t like it. I agree with Eric. If the politicians did what they were supposed to do, we wouldn’t have to do it.”

John Peterson says, “We should be able to draw geographically logical districts without gerrymandering, but how would you ever get the politicians to give up control?” That there is part of the problem.

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🚨 BREAKING: 17 Americans from hantavirus-hit ship arrive in U.S., including 1 who tested positive - CBS

🇨🇺 NEWS: US intelligence-gathering flights are surging off Cuba - CNN

➡️ BEN SASSE: Habits for Humanity in the Age of AI - WSJ (free)

🔥 MUST WATCH: A massive wildfire is 0% contained in the Everglades near the Miami-Dade County line. - X

💣 TOTALLY NORMAL: North Korea updates constitution to require automatic nuclear strike if Kim Jong Un is assassinated: report - Fox News

‼️ BRUTAL: America’s job market optimism gap is the worst in the world - Axios

⚾️ COX: In memory of Bobby Cox, here’s 16 minutes of him getting ejected. - X

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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The Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of the Democrats’ redistricting effort last week is more than a procedural footnote. It is a consequential ruling that has reshuffled the electoral math heading into the midterms in ways that could meaningfully blunt what remains an uphill environment for House Republicans. According to the Cook Political Report, the breakdown now stands at 209 seats leaning Republican, 209 leaning Democrat, and 18 true toss-ups. That is a tighter picture than Democrats had been banking on, and Blair’s redistricting gambit paid off thanks in no small part to the Democrats’ rushed response.

The structural headwinds facing House Republicans have not disappeared. History is not kind to the president’s party in midterm elections. Economic anxieties linger. Eighteen toss-up seats is still enough for Democrats to reclaim the majority. But the margin that once looked comfortable for Democrats now looks razor thin. A governing majority built on a few seats is barely a majority at all. Blair turned what could have been a blowout into a knife fight, and that matters enormously for the legislative agenda of the next two years.

Republicans started the fight in Texas, though now they insist they picked the fight in Texas because of Democrats in New York. It was a risky move that saw California rush through a redistricting plan with voter support to get rid of a nonpartisan redistricting commission. However, we should note the nonpartisan commission was highly partisan with some members being long time progressives who just suddenly declared themselves Republicans to satisfying the commission. The newer lines are even more draconian than the old lines. But in many Democrat states, the states were already carved up to partisan extremes.

Unable to prevail on the merits, the response from the left has been rage. We are told that democracy is under attack. We are told that the Virginia Supreme Court must be restructured, its justices replaced, or its authority curtailed, because it reached a conclusion Democrats did not like. Some have gone further, suggesting the ruling should simply be ignored in the interest of the people’s will.

It is worth pausing to absorb the irony. These are the same political voices who were entirely comfortable when the United States Supreme Court struck down same-sex marriage bans that had been approved by voters in a majority of states. When the courts overrode the expressed democratic will of millions of Americans on that question, there were no op-eds demanding that justices be removed or rulings ignored. The courts were celebrated as a bulwark of rights against majoritarian overreach. The constitution was a living document, properly interpreted by an independent judiciary.

Now, with Democratic electoral power on the line, the Virginia Supreme Court is suddenly an illegitimate obstacle to the people’s voice. The constitution is a technicality. The law is an inconvenience.

The throughline in Democratic thinking on courts and constitutions is not principle. It is outcome. Courts that deliver Democratic victories are independent guardians of democracy. Courts that do not must be delegitimized. That is not a constitutional philosophy. It is a power philosophy wearing constitutional clothing.

I was not alone in my doubts about the mid-decade redistricting strategy. Everything had to go right. Remarkable, almost everything did. The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the plain language of Virginia’s law. The United States Supreme Court upheld the color-blindness of the American Republic in Louisiana v Callais. The pieces fell in place and, perhaps, now both sides will consider real nonpartisan redistricting, though most objective observers believe that would help Republicans more than Democrats.

The Democrats may still capture the House. But it will be a much harder-earned Democratic victory than anyone anticipated, and one man’s willingness to pick the right fight at the right time is a significant reason why.

The Gender Radicalization Gap

Presumed Black Privilege is Starting to Fade

🎧 IMPORTANT: Make sure you check out my new podcast, Four Things To Know This Afternoon.

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Hello, America. I’m Erick Erickson. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” today, May 8th.

But first, I asked your thoughts on the Iran war. Well, you gave them to me.

Sue said, “We have done what no other administration dared to do. We touched the third rail of international politics. We started it. We must finish the job or it will surely end badly. For the first time in my memory, the Middle East is willing to support us, but they are also relying on us to carry the big stick. If we don’t smack down Iran, we leave these other countries totally vulnerable.”

Judy said, “Eric, yes, they’ve gone this far and promised the Iranian people freedom from the oppressor, so yes. Bomb the crap out of the regime, get rid of them, arm the people if we have to, capture their oil supply and let the people choose whether or not to welcome the Shah back in with the constitutional monarchy.”

Mark said, “I think we should remember our main goal was to accomplish keep Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. If we do not accomplish this objective, then why did we start this war? We also need to play a major role in replacing the Iranian regime. As George H.W. Bush stated, we need to stay the course. We are in deep now. Finish the job. Declare an end to this war. Declare victory and bring our troops home.”

Congressman John Linder also commented and noted in his time in Congress, being with members in the Middle East and leaders there, they all wanted something done about Iran and now is the time to rally Arab nations to go with us and deal with Iran. Thank you for the comments.

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🚨🚨BREAKING. The United States has struck two empty Iranian oil tankers trying to run the blockade.

TUNE IN NOW. THE SHOW IS LIVE.

👽🛸Aliens. The President has released a group of documents about potential UFO’s. Don’t get your hopes up. Ironically, some of the footage comes from the moon landings, which will put the people who believe in UFO’s but not moon landings in a very difficult position.

🇺🇸🇸🇾. Marco Rubio expects an Iranian response to the American proposal today.

💰Labor. The economy added 115,000 new jobs, more than expected.

📈Inflation. The downside is that inflation is higher than wage growth so people are losing money even as they have jobs.

💱Tariffs. The Federal Court of International Trade has ruled Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs are, again, a violation of law.

🔫Guns. The United States Postal Service is considering allowing people to ship handguns through the mail.

Jobs.

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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The Virginia Supreme Court just ruled that the Democrats’ redistricting plan in Virginia is unconstitutional because the Democrats failed to follow the proper procedure.

The map will revert to the 6 Democrat / 5 Republican seat split, though, in the current political environment, two to three of the Republican seats in the present map remain very vulnerable to flipping to the Democrats.

It is time for the President of the United States to finish the job in Iran. Yesterday, the President engaged in what he called a “love tap.” He needs to love the Iranian leadership to death.

If we’re going to pay high gas prices, at least make it worth it. Allowing Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leadership to fester will cost more lives long term. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiraties, and others are furious that the President has pulled punches, even after Iran bombed an oil export facility in the United Arab Emirates.

The President and his team seem desperate for a deal. In the process, Iran is learning that if it holds the United States’s economy hostage, they can have their way with us. The only way to show them otherwise is for us to finish them.

We cannot and should not negotiate with a regime premised on starting the apocalypse and being willing to lie, cheat, and steal to do it. Our Arab allies sided with us and agreed to support us.

In letting Iran keep lobbing missiles and drones at our allies, we are showing our allies that being allies with us is worth very little.

There were good reasons not to start the fight. There are no good reasons to end it once started until the job is finished. It is time to end the Ayatollah and his regime.

By the way, last night, while many of you were sleeping, Iran fired more missiles at the United Arab Emirates, all of which targeted civilian infrastructure. We must stand with our allies.

Across the Atlantic

The Labor Party just got wiped out in local elections, and the Reform Party had stunning success. The Conservatives did poorly, but Labor just got wiped out. The Reform Party went from no seats to lots of seats. Labor went from lots of seats to no seats in many areas that had been historically Labor strongholds.

There might be a new Prime Minister within a week.

Do Not Mourn for Steve Cohen

Let me show you a picture.

Notice the red squiggly lines. Notice the division of the Nashville area and the odd, narrow connections in East Tennessee. That was the highly gerrymandered Tennessee map that Congressman Steve Cohen supported while in the Tennessee legislature. He was fine carving up parts of Tennessee to minimize Republican gains.

Here is the map Tennessee Republicans just adopted.

You’ll forgive me for not being outraged, given what Steve Cohen was comfortable with to preserve his power. I’d also note how much media coverage this is getting compared to many Democratic gerrymanders that shut out the GOP.

We Should All Hate The Press Even More

Just a few stories for you to consider this morning:

You will note from that tweet that the New York Times does not note “the accused” pled guilty. He admitted he did it. No, to the New York Times, he was just “the accused.”

Rittenhouse did not open fire “at a 2020 civil rights rally in Wisconsin.” He shot two people who attacked Rittenhouse during a violent riot. One of the men shot was a convicted sex offender.

ICE actually arrested people involved in a child pornography ring. That’s a pretty big detail to leave out in order to generate rage at ICE.

Kemp and Loeffler Are Trying to Save Georgia

Last night, Josh McKoon, the Chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia, decided to come after me on social media for my criticisms of the Republican Party. McKoon tried to take credit for a Middle Georgia special election win in the Georgia State Senate. That’s my district. I voted in it. There were Democrat poll watchers at my very Republican precinct. There were Democrat poll watchers at every single precinct. There were no Republican poll watchers.

After all the bellyaching about stolen elections and ensuring election integrity, the local and state Republican Party did nothing. In fact, I went to the victory party for the winning Republican state senator. The Chairman of the state GOP was not there, but I got an earful from state legislators who did show up. They vented about the party’s incompetence in both that race and the other state legislative special election in a Republican district that the Republicans lost.

Here is a sample of text messages I received from members of the state legislature last night after I pushed back against McKoon. Note that one is from someone who volunteered in the Middle Georgia election McKoon claims the state GOP played a role in winning.

Luckily for Georgia, Governor Kemp’s political organization and Kelly Loeffler’s Greater Georgia have picked up the slack of the incompetent state Republican Party, which is spending more energy demanding that Governor Kemp unconstitutionally halt the ongoing election to change the rules than getting people out to vote.

After seeing the state party flailing, Kemp and Loeffler’s groups fired up last week, along with some outside pro-life groups. Now, suddenly, Republican voters are showing up at the polls. Democrats are still up by nine percent, but yesterday Republican voters, for the first time in early voting, outpaced Democrats.

I’m sure the state GOP will take credit for it, but the GOP only started outpacing the Democrats after Kemp, Loeffler, and outside pro-life groups decided they needed to step up to save the Georgia Supreme Court, since the state GOP is distracted still by the 2020 election and demanding an unconstitutional halt to the current election.

Was it Worth It, Heritage?

The Heritage Foundation imploded with a mass staff departure of around SIXTY after its President, Kevin Roberts, doubled down in defense of Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s softball interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Carlson and too many at Heritage argued that Fuentes’s “groyper” movement needed to be engaged and brought into the movement.

Now, Carlson is attacking and criticizing President Trump and Fuentes is openly declaring himself a supporter of the Democrats and urging his listeners to vote for the Democrats.

The Carlson defenders in and around Heritage argued for NETTR — no enemies to the right. They insisted we should be able to agree to disagree and remain in union with those who now openly champion radical Islam, the Democratic Party, and breaking with Donald Trump.

Was it really worth it, Heritage? Was it really worth it to defend those who wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire and lose so many major members of your staff to Advancing American Freedom and elsewhere? It is kind of ironic that the “Heritage Americans” sold out the Heritage Foundation for the progressive Left.

“Broke every single promise.”

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Hello, America. It is May 7th. I am back. I’m Erick Erickson. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon.

My apologies for the last couple of days. I was traveling and it made it just difficult to be able to get it done in the setup I was in, but I am back.

I actually want to start with a question to you guys. So some friends of mine have been talking about the Iran situation and they’re like, if we’re going to keep paying high gas prices anyway, why not blow the hell out of the Iranians instead of these half measures that keep the regime in place and the rest of us held hostage to their whims? I’m interested in y’all’s take. Is this a prevailing opinion: if we’re going to suffer, we might as well go in and wipe out the regime if we can? Or should we completely back down, cave, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and hope for the best? What says you?

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TUNE IN NOW. THE SHOW IS LIVE.

🚨🚨BREAKING: NEW CUBA SANCTIONS. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions Thursday on Cuba’s military-industrial enterprise, its leader and a state-owned natural resources company.” Axios.

🛑Do Not Pass Go. Saudi Arabia’s anger at Trump’s deal with Iran is so extensive that the nation is refusing to allow the United States to use its air bases inside Saudi Arabia.

Gas. The political fallout from high gas prices is shaping the American response to Iran, which is part of why the Arab allies are so upset. They went out on a limb to back Trump against Iran and feel like the limb is being sawed off to save Republicans in the United States.

🍾Congrats. Clarence Thomas is now the second longest serving Supreme Court Justice in history.

💵 Liability. The on-going drip drip drip against Kash Patel is coming from inside the house. More and more in the White House are ready to see him go, but it probably won’t happen till after the election. The latest hit is on his personalize bourbon, which he has branded “KA$H.” The FBI keeps denying the stories. They may be fiction. But perception becomes reality after a while, even in the White House.

🚨A Dem Senate? Democrats increasingly think they have a real shot at taking the Senate.

The Problem. The GOP has an enthusiasm problem. They simply are not showing up at the rate they did in 2022.

Moral of the Story. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is only Secretary of Health and Human Services because Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana supported his nomination. As a thank you, RFK allies are working to defeat Cassidy in Louisiana. Cassidy tried to make peace with Trump by supporting RFK and it has not worked out.

Must Read: To End Racial Gerrymandering, Congress Needs to Act (WSJ) Editor’s Note: The Alabama Attorney General will join me on air today to talk about Alabama’s redistricting.

The Party of Trump

Though Podcastistan may have broken with Donald Trump and Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson have become progressives despite the Heritage Foundation coddling them, the GOP is still mostly the party of Trump.

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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Who ever said it seems to think Senator Tim Scott does not exist. Before moving to the United States Senate, Tim Scott represented the First Congressional District of South Carolina, in which Fort Sumter resides. Yes, a black man represented the congressional district wherein the Civil War started and he is a Republican.

Democrats do not care. They do not care that of the 58 black members of Congress, a majority represent districts where whites outnumber blacks. They are screaming about redistricting in Tennessee, claiming how awful it is that black people will now be denied representation. The congressman who just got redistricted out of his district in Memphis is a white guy.

Identity politics breaks people’s brains.

Ten years ago yesterday, as Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for President with a vacant Supreme Court seat most likely to be filled by Hillary Clinton, progressive Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet wrote a provocative piece about what the Left could do with their new found power in a 5-4 progressive Supreme Court with Hillary Clinton filling Antonin Scalia’s seat. Tushnet wrote, as Ed Whelan accurately documents,

The Left “should be compiling lists of cases to be overruled at the first opportunity on the ground that they were wrong the day they were decided” and should “aggressively exploit the ambiguities and loopholes in unfavorable precedents that aren’t worth overruling.” 

Rather than try to “accommodate the losers” in the culture wars, the Left should take a “hard line” against its fellow citizens. “Trying to be nice to the losers didn’t work well after the Civil War.” And “taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.” 

“Finally (trigger/crudeness alert), f*** Anthony Kennedy.” (Except Tushnet doesn’t use asterisks.)

I know a number of Republicans who opposed Donald Trump who became hardcore Trump supporters after Tushnet dropped his essay. The Left’s mindset is all about maximum power at all times.

That thinking pervades their political activism even now. They do not want to accommodate the other side. They want to wield power.

Where the Right has gone wrong in its thinking is to presume that it should wield the power in the opposite direction of the Left instead of dismantling the power. Even now, the GOP in Washington is hoarding power, refusing to destroy the power. The Left will eventually come back. We know their goals. In the United States, there is no such thing as permanence in politics.

But, with redistricting, the GOP can slow down the Left. Increasingly, progressives are realizing with the Supreme Court’s Callais decision they can no longer rely on majority-minority districts to preserve their power. The GOP, without having to draw insane lines, could gain as many as 45 seats between redistricting and a 2030 census without the flaws and errors of the 2020 census. Even the Biden Administration acknowledged how fundamentally flawed the 2020 census was.

All of this will just drive the Left further off the cliff. Between a rabid progressive burning down the Palisades in Los Angeles, which the media has still largely downplayed, to the various assassination attempts and escalating violence, the Left is going to come even more unhinged as it is pushed further from power.

But we should remember Tushnet’s stated desires ten years ago when he perceived the Left on the cusp of a Hillary Clinton presidency and a 5-4 Supreme Court progressive majority. He spoke for many of his fellow travelers.

And now, ten years later, the Left cannot even acknowledge a black man representing South Carolina as a Republican because it would interrupt their mythologies of power, victimhood, and control. The Left needs more time in the wilderness.

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🚨🚨🚨BREAKING. The FBI has raided the office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L Louise Lucas along with a marijuana dispensary next door to her office.

The Show is Live. TUNE IN NOW.

🌟A Star is Born. Rubio before the press corps filling in as White House Press Secretary. From DJ Marky Marco to Press Secretary to Secretary of State to National Security Advisor to Archivist of the United States to Deputy Junior Librarian of Congress — is there anything that guy can’t do?

🏅Reigning Champ. Donald Trump took out a majority of Indiana State Senators who had opposed his redistricting bid. But it is probably not enough to get Indiana to now redistrict. The other big winner is Senator Jim Banks who helped fund the effort.

🧾A Bill of Goods. The United States and Iran might have a one-page memo to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war. The regime wins.

🚨🚨Gas. Gas prices are 50% higher today than they were before the Iran War. This is a political problem for the President and the GOP.

☭ The Communists Reap What They Sow. After Mamdani attacked Ken Griffin in an ad, Griffin says his company will grow in Florida, not New York.

Presented Without Comment

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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I support bombing Iran and destroying the regime. I presumed there had to be a plan, and I have had friends with deep roots inside the Trump Administration tell me this was all very much an impulse play by the President flying by the seat of his pants.

I did not believe it. But as I see it playing out now, I am wondering if they really were right. There never really was a plan. There was a hope to bomb them into submission. The President saw Venezuela and was on top of the world.

So he decided to use the American military against Iran. Until he decided otherwise.

Having had the Secretary of Defense announce Project Freedom yesterday morning, the President says he is already pausing it in hopes of a deal with Iran. But Iran is not going to give up its nuclear material

A new report suggests that, after the latest attacks on Iran, our intelligence community believes Iran is still only a year from being able to make a bomb.

Our Gulf State allies, including the United Arab Emirates, which just left OPEC for us, are concerned Iran is playing the President. Iran has repeatedly attacked the UAE in the past few days, including hitting an oil facility.

And the President is acting as if nothing is happening.

I’d like to believe there was a plan. But it seems the Trump Administration actually did underestimate Iran’s ability to gum up the Strait of Hormuz and affect global oil prices. The Atlantic reported last week, based on sourcing close to the Vice President, that some in the White House believe the Secretary of Defense oversold the war to the President and overestimated what could be accomplished swiftly.

We have provoked a monstrous regime. We need to finish off that regime now. Whatever we are currently doing is not going to do that. I can only hope the President realizes the Iranians cannot be trusted and decides to actually take them out.

But there needs to be a real plan beyond just lobbing missiles in their direction and hoping for another Venezuela.