Progressive Watch
After the Virginia Supreme Court threw out a new congressional district map that eliminated four GOP seats, progressives want to purge the court and replace it with more loyal progressives. The plan is to lower the mandatory retirement age of judges to below the youngest member of the VA Supreme Court so they can put progressive activists in to take their place.
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A newly released NewsGuard/YouGov poll found that nearly one-quarter of respondents believe the assassination attempt targeting President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet at last month’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was staged. 45% believed it was real, and 32% were unsure.
Broken down by party affiliation, 34% of Democrats said they believed the incident was staged, compared with 23% of independents and 13% of Republicans.
The national survey of 1,000 Americans was conducted by YouGov from April 28 to May 4. It was commissioned and published by NewsGuard, a company that rates online media outlets for reliability.
About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was staged according to a new survey.
Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans. https://t.co/h30QujSIO2
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 11, 2026
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Agitators shouted “fascist” and obscenities over the weekend outside a Portland, Oregon, hotel where they believed FBI Director Kash Patel was staying, according to Fox 12 Oregon and several posts on social media. Patel was reportedly attending a friend’s funeral.
The agitators gathered outside the Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland. Some of the videos were posted on social media on Saturday; others were posted on Sunday.
Portland (May 9) — @Tommy4Trump420 was assaulted at a protest outside the Sentinel Hotel where leftists allege that Kash Patel is staying. The conservative streamer has been repeatedly assaulted and has had his home and vehicles vandalized.pic.twitter.com/NDoMVHWAtV
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Even if it wasn’t obvious before, it’s certainly been abundantly clear since the start of President Trump’s second term in office that Democrats have no qualms whatsoever about fanning the flames using outright lies and purposeful deception to the point it spurs their outrage mobs to take violent action in the name of “democracy” and “social justice.”
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Idea criticized by legal scholars
Democrats should push through legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of Virginia Supreme Court in order to remove justices who ruled a gerrymandered map unconstitutional, a “democracy” scholar argued.
Quinn Yeargain, who uses “they/them/theirs” pronouns and whose real name is Tyler, made the argument on Saturday. Yeargain is the “1855 Professor of Law of Democracy” at Michigan State University, according to the scholar’s faculty website.
Writing at Downballot, Yeargain said Democrats should lower the retirement age to 54, outwardly saying the goal would be to remove the youngest justice who made what the professor considers the wrong decision.
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A protest sign outside Alabama’s statehouse on May 7.Kim Chandler/AP
In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.
Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.
“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”
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A large group of teenagers on e-bikes allegedly ganged up on a man who was riding a scooter with his wife on the boardwalk in Huntington Beach, California, over the weekend — and kicked and stomped him and hit him in the face with a glass bottle, KTLA-TV reported.
The Huntington Beach Police Department confirmed to KTLA that a report was taken in connection with the incident, which occurred around 8 p.m. Saturday in the area of 103 Pacific Coast Highway.
‘Come here on Friday night, on Saturday night. … It’s chaos; it’s terror.’
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A cluster of high-profile political attacks in the U.S. spotlight the nation’s extreme divisions—but they don’t necessarily signal a broader uptick in politically inspired brutality, experts say.
Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans are increasingly worried about political violence. The latest round of concern was sparked on April 25, when a 31-year-old man stormed the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C., during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance. Secret Service agents arrested the armed man before he could get to the ballroom where the event was being held. He has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president—which would represent the third serious attempt on Trump’s life since 2024. The man has pled not guilty to this and related charges.
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Democrats must stop conceding that the only answer for various racist voting laws is that Democrats just have to vote more and harder and better.
We try to keep despair out of these pages, tough as the times are. That’s why I didn’t write about Friday’s Virginia Supreme Court’s decision striking down new voter-approved congressional maps for extremely dubious reasons (read Virginia political expert Carolyn Fiddler’s awesome explanation of the ruling here).
Coming after the Supreme Court (of the United States) decision invalidating Louisiana’s congressional maps for taking race into account, the Bayou State’s immediately postponing upcoming elections as a result, and Tennessee’s swift move to use the SCOTUS ruling to wipe a majority-Black congressional district literally off the political map, last week was the worst for voting rights since the court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder ruling struck down two vital sections of the Voting Rights Act. I admit to not seeing much light down this tunnel that afternoon.
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No one agrees on when, where, or how capitalism began, or whether it had a beginning at all, but everyone agrees that capitalism, the word, first appeared in the 19th century. Capital and capitalist slipped into use, unnoticed and unremarked, in the 13th and 17th centuries. Capitalism burst through the barricades of political argument in the 1830s, announcing immediately the hostility of its user. “Long live capital!” cried the French socialist Louis Blanc in 1839. “Long may we go on to attack capitalism, its mortal enemy, with even more intensity.” As much as the word named something, so did it identify its speaker—as a worker, a radical, a hater.
If capital was viewed as a thing and capitalists as people, capitalism was something else. Blanc described it as an act, the taking of collective wealth and turning it into individual or private profit. Proudhon claimed it was a citadel, casting medieval and military shadows across the land. Despite his obvious interest and extensive writing on the subject, Marx steered clear of the term.
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Despite years of harsh rhetoric on China, Trump has continued to publicly praise Chinese President Xi Jinping. Just last week, he described Xi as a “good man” and a “smart man” with whom he has “a very good relationship”.
But behind the warm language lies mounting pressure. The summit comes at a moment when Washington is struggling to convert its military and economic power into diplomatic outcomes, particularly in the Middle East.
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When Donald Trump visits Beijing this week, the focus of think tankers and pundits will largely be on what the policy outcomes will be, and there is a tendency to lean towards the negative. Will China deepen the trade war? Will Trump bristle at Xi’s stance on the war against Iran?
But for the trajectory of the relationship between China and the United States, the summit could play a constructive role, facilitating a peaceful recognition of the shift in power dynamics between the two countries and globally. Perceptions in both countries of one another, and of the role each seeks to play in the world, will be shaped by the art of the summitry and what the meeting between the two leaders conveys.
Historically, high-profile summits have proven to be important turning points in U.S. foreign policy by mediating enduring tensions in bilateral relations. The 1959 US-Soviet summit humanized the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in the eyes of some Americans. The 1972 Nixon visit to China allowed pro-rapprochement sentiment to emerge and circulate in American public discourse, contributing to ongoing discussions and debates on diplomatic normalization for years following the summit. The 1985-87 US-Soviet summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were crucial for transforming bilateral distrust into trust.
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- Confident in China’s power, Xi is ready to host an unpredictable Trump The Washington Post
- As Trump Heads to Beijing, China Is ‘Locked and Loaded’ for a Fight The New York Times
- US standoff with Iran deepens and strait remains closed after Trump rejects latest proposal AP News
- Trump and China’s Xi set for talks spanning Iran, nuclear, trade and AI Reuters
- Iran, China and AI collide in Trump’s legacy-defining week Axios
The former Mayor of Arcadia, California has pled guilty to being a Chinese Communist Spy, Eileen Wang pled guilty to charges she cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party through a website called “US News Center.”
A mob of far-left progressive anti-Israel terrorists assaulted Jews as they were coming out of their synagogue. When cops arrived, the mobs attacked the cops. The response from Mamdani’s office has been tepid, with only three arrests announced as a follow-up.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht has announced his intentions to leave the Democrat Party. He accused them of being antisemitic. He stated, “… acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party. I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t. I am no longer registered with any political party,”
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Democrats want to rewrite the Virginia Constitution because the State Supreme Court rejected their unconstitutional maps.
The New York Times reports that Hakeem Jeffries and top Democrats in D.C. are considering asking Virginia legislators and Governor Spanberger to pass legislation to “retire” the members of the Supreme Court and then replace them en masse.
New York Times: The conversation reflected the desperation and fury that have gripped the party after the state Supreme Court struck down a favorable map that had been ratified by voters. The most dramatic idea they discussed — which would involve an unusual gambit to replace the entire state Supreme Court, with a goal of reinstating their gerrymandered map — drew mixed reactions on the call, said the people, and it was not clear that it would even be viable, or palatable to Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly. (NYT).
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As star correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s future at “60 Minutes” remains unclear, journalists at the legendary news show are being careful not to offend their new boss.
Following Bari Weiss’ controversial hiring as CBS News’ editor in chief, compliance is the name of the game.
A source close to the “60 Minutes” staff told Daily Kos the editorial team is hesitant to pick up the phone or answer texts from people critical of new management.
The nervousness isn’t unfounded. Alfonsi’s time with CBS has come into question after she openly spoke against Weiss and the editorial decisions coming from the top.
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Charged with federal crimes for allegedly making false statements to banks and making wire transfers in the names of companies that didn’t exist, the Southern Poverty Law Center hired Hunter Biden’s lawyer (among many others) and signaled an Orange Man Bad defense: Mean Donald Trump is having us prosecuted as a partisan attack, because we’re politically left and he’s politically right.
Previewing the strategy with an opening salvo on April 28, the SPLC’s small army of lawyers filed a 27-page brief (and do remember that page count) demanding that the courts protect their client against the DOJ’s cruel public lies on scary Fox News. The SPLC posted the whole brief on its website, and you can read it here. It claims that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has falsely claimed that the SPLC never told law enforcement about things learned from its informant program, when they actually did. Screenshot of the opening statement, after a long table of contents and table of authorities that took up five whole pages:
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A school district in Virginia is using a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) filter on its use of generative AI (GenAI) in schools to inject a race-focused lens into teacher and administrative decision-making.
According to documents obtained by Defending Education, Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS), a far-left school district surrounding Charlottesville, and which includes Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, has built its GenAI policy based around its “anti-racism” policy, which is inherently discriminatory against white students in favor of other races.
“While schools should engage in good judgement and do their due diligence when it comes to Artificial Intelligence integration, the fact that the district is vetting AI based on its compliance with diversity, equity, and inclusion should be concerning for parents,” Rhyen Staley, Director of Research at Defending Education, told The Federalist. “By only allowing the use of AI and information sources that reflect a leftwing political bias, district administrators are setting a precedent that is harmful to the learning process and neutrality of schools.”
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May Day demonstrations have spread across the United States, increasingly serving as vehicles for hostility toward American institutions and values. Those who celebrate these demonstrations should confront the lived reality of people from former communist countries—individuals who were not free participants but were forced each May 1, like prodded cattle, to march with their children in orchestrated displays of loyalty to party power. Refusal was not dissent; it was a punishable offense that could cost one’s livelihood, freedom, or even life.
Last week, the sign outside the Victims of Communism (“VOC”) Museum in Washington, D.C., was vandalized by a radical mob celebrating May Day and embracing communist ideology—an incident documented by the VOC Memorial Foundation, which shared photographic evidence on its official social media channels. This act was disgraceful—but not surprising. The VOC LinkedIn announcement states: “The VOC Museum teaches the violent truth about communism. That’s why we are never surprised when Marxists threaten us and vandalize our schoolhouse—they want to stop our mission.”
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Inside Iran, the BBC has been speaking to people struggling with the impact of the war.
The authorities have imposed an internet ban, but using trusted sources, special correspondent Fergal Keane has been hearing from those traumatised by conflict and government repression.
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Last week, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced it had gathered more than 1.5 million signatures—nearly double what it needed—to put a sweeping new wealth tax on California’s November ballot. The initiative is called the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.
The name is designed to make you stop reading. Don’t.
SEIU has spent months positioning itself as the champion of nurses, teachers and caregivers. What it has actually done is run a $24 million campaign to put a measure on the ballot that could eventually be used to tax virtually any Californian who owns assets—with no return trip to the ballot box required.
The woman behind the Virginia special election to effectively eliminate 4 GOP U.S. House seats is now under FBI investigation. Virginia’s State Senator L. Louise Lucas saw her offices raided, along with other businesses connected to her.
So far, only anonymous sources are cited as claiming this is connected to a corruption investigation directly linked to her. She is considered the main driver of the Virginia gerrymander election plan that is currently under legal scrutiny.
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Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) publicly confessed to working with foreign governments to undermine U.S. policy in Cuba.
She declared, “I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, other countries in Latin America trying to figure out how to get oil there. I’ve called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba.”
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Democrat Gov. Tim Walz is facing mounting scrutiny after Vice President JD Vance confirmed that federal authorities are investigating whether Minnesota officials failed to properly respond to massive fraud allegations tied to taxpayer-funded programs across the state.
The investigation follows a sweeping federal operation carried out across the Minneapolis area late last month.
FBI agents and federal investigators executed more than 20 search warrants targeting businesses connected to child care services, autism treatment programs, and other publicly funded operations.
Federal officials say the probe centers on allegations involving fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, abuse of state and federal child care assistance programs, and broader misuse of taxpayer dollars.
Trump administration officials have suggested the total amount under investigation could ultimately reach into the billions.
“[Minnesota is] under investigation by our great vice president,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday.
“They’re finding a lot.”
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Turning Point USA Frontlines reporter Savanah Hernandez has filed a civil lawsuit against Christopher, DeYanna, and Paige Ostroushko after they were caught on video violently attacking her at an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, while the journalist was covering the event.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota, accuses the Ostroushko family of assault and battery stemming from the April 11 protest outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. According to the complaint, Hernandez was “viciously and repeatedly attacked” while reporting on demonstrations connected to what organizers called “National F*ck ICE Day.”
Hernandez announced the civil suit on X, writing, “I promised to use every legal avenue to hold the Ostroushkos responsible and will be working with @MurdockJDF as we continue to pursue justice.”