x01a Research Archives

News Source
EXCERPT:

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was not pleased with the Louisiana v. Callais decision. She filed a dissenting judgment, which enforced the ruling with immediate effect because it relates to the upcoming elections. Ms. Jackson’s dissent was ripped apart by Justice Samuel Alito, who academically called her a moron—this is becoming a common occurrence. Even liberal justices have sought to steer clear of attaching their names to her opinions.

Alito called her dissent on the judgment utterly irresponsible. And now, after all that bellyaching from Ms. Jackson, she denied a motion to recall the Callais judgment. No justices dissented.

This case is settled. It involved Louisiana creating a majority-black congressional district after the initial map was invalidated under VRA. Now, this map was struck down as unconstitutional, with the court limiting its interpretation of Section II of the Voting Rights Act, which allows congressional apportionment based on racial quotas.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The redistricting war for the 2026 midterms is on – and it may be the most aggressive mid-decade, multi-state map fight of the modern era.In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the redistricting fight accelerated across the country. GOP-led states such as Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee began moving or preparing to move on new congressional maps, while Virginia Democrats pushed a mid-decade redraw of their own.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping new congressional map into law on May 4 that could increase Republicans’ advantage in Florida’s House delegation from 20-8 to 24-4.

Louisiana delayed its congressional primaries while lawmakers begin work on a new map. Tennessee Republicans have released a proposal that could eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held congressional district, while Alabama and other Southern states are weighing how far the Callais ruling allows them to go. But this is by no means just a red-state story.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have worked very hard to claim they don’t give taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants. Or, any taxpayer-funded benefits, really. They do a lot of arguing semantics and nitpicking over rhetoric, and doing both in bad faith. AKA “independent” “fact” checking. Well, California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter just treated the op as if it were her ex-husband and she was holding a pot of mashed potatoes.

There was a debate this week with Porter and the other candidates running for California governor. The question of giving free healthcare (aka, paid for by taxpayers) to illegal immigrants came up. Porter, like the other Democrats on stage, was all about it.

Yes. And that’s what I think Californians deserve as answers to these questions.

She has a point. If I were a Californian, I would want to know a clear “yes” so I knew not to vote for that person.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Trump White House is in panic mode, treating a likely blue wave like an alien invasion. The votes aren’t even cast, and they’re preparing their team for gridlock and the likelihood of being subpoenaed into oblivion.

According to The Washington Post, the White House Counsel’s Office has been quietly holding internal briefings for political appointees, walking them through how congressional oversight functions and how to handle it effectively. The sessions reportedly last around half an hour and include a presentation covering the basics of oversight and recommended best practices.

According to two anonymous sources familiar with the meetings, staff have been advised to be mindful of written communications and to respond promptly to any inquiries from Congress. All of this comes as the administration appears to be quietly acknowledging the real possibility of major Democratic gains in this fall’s midterm elections.

“It’s obvious to everyone that it’s very likely,” said one of the two officials, who attended a private briefing, the outlet reports. “It was a sober-eyed conversation.”

While one official insisted that “This is nothing new,” some of the meetings during the past month have had “a strong overtone” of the midterms, two people said.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Medication abortion is back at the US Supreme Court—which is exactly where abortion opponents want it. Last week, in a late Friday afternoon move guaranteed to stoke maximum confusion and panic, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Food and Drug Administration rule allowing telemedicine prescription of mifepristone, one of two drugs that make up the gold-standard abortion-pill regimen. On Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito put that ruling on pause until May 11.

But even as abortion advocates expressed relief that telemedicine abortions can continue for a few more days, the order by Alito—the same ultraconservative who wrote the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022—was at best a reprieve. At some point soon, the court’s right-wing supermajority could drastically curtail or cut off access by mail to an extremely safe and effective drug that has been used by hundreds of thousands of women a year since Dobbs, including in states where abortion is banned. Almost two-thirds of abortions in the US now happen with pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

News Source
EXCERPT:

As Republicans destroy historic Black-majority House districts in the South, they are being compared with segregationists George Wallace and Bull Connor.

In the last speech of his life, delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis on April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the legacy of the student civil rights activists of the early 1960s: “I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

The next day, King was assassinated just blocks away, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel—hallowed ground which now serves as the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Few cities are so closely associated with the civil rights movement of the 1960s as Memphis. And fewer still have so rich a history of struggle and success in making real the promise of representative democracy.

News Source
EXCERPT:

President Donald Trump has made the SAVE America Act a central GOP priority ahead of the midterms. Voters still don’t know how to feel about it.

New results from The POLITICO Poll show that while many Americans support some core provisions of the SAVE America Act — such as requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote — that support is not overwhelming. And they are far less certain about the sweeping elections bill overall, even as Trump has for months pressured Republican lawmakers to pass it.

Democrats in particular oppose much of the SAVE Act, and many of them are unenthusiastic even about the voter ID provisions that generate the broadest support — a sign that Trump is prioritizing legislation that has little crossover appeal.

A 42 percent plurality of voters who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 back requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote, including when registering by mail. But that number is dwarfed by the three-quarters of Trump 2024 voters who support such a measure, according to the survey conducted by Public First.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles the U.S. military fired during Operation Epic Fury take months to put on contract and years to produce.

Whether driven by U.S. military operations or support to partners, the challenge of quickly replenishing U.S. munitions is not new. Exquisite munitions often take an exquisite amount of time to manufacture and deliver. Defense officials, in turn, frequently want to compress that time as much as possible, seeking to restock fast and mitigate future risks.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has illuminated the challenge of accomplishing this feat. It also offers lessons for how the U.S can accelerate munitions production timelines in a crisis. Indeed, the U.S. experience attempting to surge munitions production from 2022 to 2024 did not reveal uniform failure in boosting production rates, but rather, sharp variation across weapons. Production rates of some munitions expanded meaningfully after 2022. Others stagnated. Interestingly, the emergency authorities and supplemental funding unleashed after 2022 were not responsible for this variation, as the full results of those initiatives and investments are still yet to come. Instead, decisions that pre-dated the Russo-Ukrainian War drove this variation.

The true lesson from the Ukraine crisis is that the United States cannot solely rely on improvisation to surge munitions production. Surge is indeed distinct from peacetime manufacturing or the mobilization of commercial entities to support wartime production demands. The Department of Defense should treat surging production as a core competency to be developed and rehearsed well in advance of a crisis.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she does not want to see authorities “monitoring” church services in her province in light of a new federal law that criminalizes religious expression and belief when quoting parts of the Bible.

“I don’t want to see the police monitoring Sunday services!” Smith told a crowd of nearly 1,000 Christians and pastors over the weekend while speaking at the Alberta Christian Leadership Summit.

“Faith is to be expressed openly and carried into the public square.”

A host of Alberta and Canadian Christian politicians gathered with pastors of churches to talk about faith and its importance in society. Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) was there with a booth.

Smith was invited to be the main speaker at the event, which saw hundreds gather to share the importance of Christianity in public life and politics. Her speech touched on several issues, but she did speak out against the controversial Bill C-9.

News Source
EXCERPT:

IRAN has blasted drones and missiles at the UAE for the second day in a row as the ceasefire in the Middle East is stretched to its limits.

It comes as Donald Trump tries to force open the Strait of Hormuz with “Project Freedom”.

A drone attack in the UAE yesterday Credit: Reuters
Iranian strikes have ignited massive fires at Fujairah port -the UAE’s primary oil export terminal Credit: x

Iran chillingly warned it was “just getting started” after unleashing a barrage of missiles towards the UAE yesterday.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Virginia Democrats are clearly panicking. Rachael Bade, co-host of The Huddle, elaborated on what former Democratic Party operative and fellow co-host Dan Turrentine mentioned this week about the fate of the Old Dominion’s new congressional map. It grants Democrats a 10-1 advantage, but the state Supreme Court refused to dismiss the challenge to the map, setting the stage for serious intra-party battles.

The legal warnings were reportedly repeated endlessly, but to no effect. Now, Democratic leaders at both the Virginia and national levels could face a heavy setback if the maps are invalidated. Bade outlined the criteria the court could use to strike down the maps. Sure, the map might get approved, but if the Virginia Supreme Court sides with just one of these points, the map is cooked:

AND THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR SOME BIG NAMES. Per Dan’s reporting, Governor ABIGAIL SPANBERGER’s staff is quietly sniping at state Senate majority leader SCOTT SUROVELL and state Senate kingmaker LOUISE LUCAS — two lawmakers who pushed back hardest on the legal warnings last fall.

[…]

If this effort goes down, those quotes won’t age well. “People are lining up behind the scenes to go public, I think, very quickly if this does not go through,” Dan foreshadowed.

BUT HERE’S THE THING — Pointing fingers won’t let Spanberger off the hook, which we discussed at length on the show. Yes, she may have privately raised concerns about the effort early on. But she’s the one in the ads. She’s the face of this thing. As our other co-host SEAN SPICER put it bluntly: “She ate the political cookie on this one.”

The other name in the crosshairs if this goes down? House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES. Dan is already hearing from some Virginia Dems who say the Democratic leader pushed too hard despite legal concerns. (Though, let’s be fair to Jeffries — he would have been slammed by the party if he hadn’t leaned in, and his team would likely wear such criticism as a badge of honor.)

News Source
EXCERPT:

FDA Officials have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a DHS spokesman confirmed.

The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency, who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare.

In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid-19 vaccine studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals. In February, top F.D.A. officials did not sign off on submitting abstracts about studies of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a major drug safety conference.

The withdrawal of the studies is the latest step by the administration to try to limit access to vaccines. It has sharply cut research funding for vaccine development, released unvetted information casting doubt on vaccines, and blocked other information supporting their safety, most recently a paper on Covid vaccine effectiveness by career scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Your Majesty,

We’ve both had a very busy week. While you enjoyed the pageantry of your American state visit, red carpets, garden parties, and carefully staged moments of compassion, I stood outside the White House with a chair reserved for you – waiting. Not as a spectacle. Not as a stunt. But as a survivor asking to be seen.

I prepared that moment with care. I studied the traditions you value – Darjeeling tea, cucumber sandwiches, the details that matter in your world. In mine, what matters is this: You didn’t show up.

Your visit celebrated 250 years of America’s history. I watched as you stepped onto American soil, greeted with flower bouquets as the red carpets rolled out for you. I hoped you had heard about my efforts.

While you met President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania attending cultural engagements, mingling with those who sit in power, I amplified unheard voices, preserving stories, standing with people who have nothing, who have been ignored for too long. You missed the opportunity to be a king who could’ve been remembered as the one who stood alongside us in this pivotal moment where abuses of power are coming to light.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A coalition of civil rights groups has filed suit to stop a new law allowing Texas law enforcement to return illegal aliens to a port of entry and arrest them for unlawful entry.

According to Just the News, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a class-action lawsuit on Monday seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the law.

Senate Bill 4, which makes illegal entry into Texas a state crime, is set to take effect next week after a federal appeals court vacated a lower court ruling last week that had prevented its enforcement since 2024.

The new law also authorized state magistrates to order certain individuals to leave the country if they are convicted.

Just the News reports that after the bill was signed into law in 2023, multiple groups sued, arguing the law is unconstitutional and a district court and panel of Fifth Circuit judges agreed.

The class-action lawsuit names the Texas Department of Public Safety and its director as defendants and calls for a restraining order and to block four key provisions of  SB 4.