He still keeps searching, though there's nothing left, staked his tabs and lost, now he has to pay the cost ...
The decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the will of more than three million voters will not stand. pic.twitter.com/ZtayVJRw4T
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) May 8, 2026
Ed: Bwa-hahahahahaha. Cry harder. Jeffries is bluffing, by the way; the state supreme court is the end of the line here. It's possible to appeal this directly to the Supreme Court, but there aren't any federal or constitutional issues in play ... and after Callais, no one could possibly think that the majority here would uphold an appeal on behalf of the end run Spanberger and Lucas took to bring this referendum to the ballot in the first place. Besides, even if SCOTUS decided to look at it, it almost certainly wouldn't rush to do so.
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Axios: Why it matters: The decision is a huge boost to Republicans' chances of keeping the House in November, with even some Democrats acknowledging they basically need to run the table in November to win now.
"Damn, California and Virginia were supposed to be our bigger ones," one House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid getting out ahead of their leadership, said in a phone interview after the ruling was released.
"This means we gotta make sure we have a good wave to win the House ... we have to make sure we win a lot of those toss-ups," the lawmaker said. "Democrats now have to pitch a perfect game."
Another House Democrat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, offered a one-word reaction in a text message to Axios: "F*****ck!!"
Ed: At least that's an honest reaction that captures the real moment for Jeffries. Just wait until Virginia voters get a chance to let their Democrat representatives know how they feel about this monumental cock-up.
===
The funniest thing about this tweet is that she sort of proved her point. She forced them to reluctantly cheer her on and then left them to clean up her mess. Pretty much a “cuck chair” as she artfully referred to it. pic.twitter.com/mbsziJtfdM
— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) May 8, 2026
Ed: Lucas seems nice, and by nice, I mean "stark raving idiotic." Even without the FBI raid on Lucas' offices, this chapter has truly revealed the incompetence and malice in the leadership ranks of the Democrat Party. And not to be too nasty, but the ease in which Lucas uses "cuck" makes me wonder what her pastimes may be.
===
Scott Johnson at Power Line: Having expressed doubts about the gerrymandering project as a candidate while stumping for it once elected, Governor Abigail Spanberger has been exposed, or exposed herself, as a hack. That has to have hurt her carefully cultivated image. However, having endorsed the gerrymander on spurious high-minded grounds, of course, President Obama may be hardest hit by the court’s decision.
How sweet it is. In a variation of the satirical New York Times headline — “World ends tomorrow: Women, minorities hardest hit” — perhaps we can say : Obama, Spanberger hardest hit.”
Ed: Maybe "Temu Obama hardest hit," but Scott's right – this will do a lot of damage to Spanberger and the VA Democrat Party. They ran in 2025 as moderates, and their first act was to push through an attempt to rig the next election. Lots of voters outside of Fairfax County will remember this.
===
No vote in Tennessee (+1 GOP)
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 8, 2026
No vote in Florida (+4 GOP)
No vote in Missouri (+1 GOP)
No vote in North Carolina (+2 GOP)
No vote in Texas (+5 GOP)
Virginia’s voter-approved maps thrown out.
MAGA has rigged the system.
Ed: Why didn't these states require a referendum? Because these states didn't amend their constitutions to pass redistricting off to "non-partisan commissions" in the first place. In states where redistricting is done by legislatures, those legislatures can redraw districts at any time. States that played hide the salami with redistricting – like California – had to re-amend their constitutions to redistrict after Texas passed its new map. The system got rigged in states like Virginia and California, and Spanberger just got caught trying to rig it again. Greasy Gavin knows this, but all he has is gaslighting left.
===
Politico: Republicans just won the redistricting war — and boosted their slim hopes for holding the House.
The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week, coupled with the Virginia Supreme Court striking down a voter-approved Democratic gerrymander of four seats on Friday, has all but locked in Republican gains through redistricting in this year’s midterms, giving them as much as a 10-seat boost with November rapidly approaching.
It’s leaving Democrats — despite all the political winds in their favor — fearful that the House is back in play. Their once-surprising comeback in the redistricting race was shattered in the court room, and they are left with virtually no way to respond before November.
Ed: Not to give too much assistance to Democrats, but here's a thought: Why not try "not being crazy"? Perhaps craft an argument that appeals to voters and answers their key issues and desires, like actually enforcing immigration law, reducing crime, getting rid of homeless camps, and boosting the economy. Instead, Democrats are going for their sixth straight cycle of Orange Man Bad And He's Gonna Kill Us All. Maybe that's more of their problem than redistricting would be.
===
Got to say the RNC played it smart. Democrats were flooding money into Virginia and all of us were bitching that the national GOP weren’t even trying to keep up. But RNC lawyers KNEW the process was unconstitutional and would be killed by the courts, so they saved their money. https://t.co/0nhSqK1Lpy
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) May 8, 2026
Ed: Ehhhh ... maybe. I think they got caught with their pants down, but hoped that SCOVA would act as a fail-safe. The eventual 4-3 split in favor of reading the law as written should have been 7-0; the 4-3 split shows why it would have been preferable to defeat the referendum straight up. The $70 million dissipation only to end up with nothing is still worthy of schadenfreude.
===
Mediaite: Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Don Scott (D) announced his party “respects” the decision of the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn a new congressional map passed by the legislature and signed off on by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D), while others sounded off on the ruling.
“We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” Scott said in a public statement after Friday’s 4-3 decision. ...
Kaine said the state’s Supreme Court threw Virginians’ votes “in the trash can.”
Ed: Scott sounds like a class act. Kaine, AG Jay Jones, and Spanberger ... not so much. SCOVA didn't throw votes in the trash can; VA Dems wasted voters' time with an illegal referendum, one in which their ballot explanation was so tendentious that the results should have been thrown out on that basis alone.
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I've never seen anything fail so rapidly as what Democrats attempted to do in Virginia in my career & I've been around a long time. To his credit @JamesBlair47 understood the plot, played the long game & came out on top; saving resources & earning measurable political capital. pic.twitter.com/PZMBRVRFwC
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) May 8, 2026
Ed: Tyep, they really screwed the pooch. And the voters in rural Virginia, whom they attempted to stab in the back, will not soon forget it, either.
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WashEx: President Donald Trump and his White House are pushing South Carolina lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional districts, according to a local report.
The White House outreach comes as Trump is riding high following back-to-back wins over the last week, first from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Louisiana v. Callais and the second in Indiana, where he was able to successfully oust several state Republicans who defied him on redistricting.
Trump has reportedly spoken with South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey on two occasions, according to local news outlet the State.
“He clearly expressed his desire that we take a look at the maps now, especially in light of the Louisiana Supreme Court opinion,” Massey said.
Ed: That's the district that elects Jim Clyburn to Congress, Joe Biden's wingman and the person most responsible for rescuing Biden's primary bid in 2020. Clyburn is also a member of House Democrat leadership. I'd almost bet that Clyburn could survive a new map, but would he want to exert himself to do it? He's already 86 years old and has been in Congress since 1993.
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Lydia Moynihan: It's a little ironic that the woman now who is likely going to win the 9th Congressional District in Tennessee is a black Republican instead of a white Democrat male. But that's racist?
— Brianna Lyman (@briannalyman2) May 8, 2026
Tezlyn Figaro: It actually is
It's now RACIST to elect a black Republican pic.twitter.com/2gEVkz870K
Ed: Yes, this is the dirty little secret behind TN-09. It was crafted specifically to be a majority-black district to make it a racial set-aside, but instead, Steve Cohen has represented it for the last twenty years since Harold Ford Jr retired.
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Off the Press: Kay Ivey signed House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1 following a special legislative session focused on election readiness. The legislation gives the governor authority to schedule special elections in certain districts if court action allows the state to use previously drawn maps during the current election cycle.
In a statement, Ivey said, “With this special session successfully behind us, Alabama now stands ready to quickly act, should the courts issue favorable rulings in our ongoing redistricting cases. I thank the Legislature for answering my call to address the issue in fast order. I am grateful to Speaker Ledbetter and Pro Tem Gudger for their strong leadership and focus this week. Alabama knows our state, our people and our districts best.” – Governor Kay Ivey
State officials say the move is intended to ensure the state can respond quickly if federal courts lift existing injunctions. If that happens, Alabama would revert to congressional district maps drawn by the Legislature in 2023 and state senate maps adopted in 2021.
Ed: I suspect that these maps got held up for challenges under the authority of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. If so, the Supreme Court will likely vacate these challenges if the trial courts don't do so first under Callais. The Alabama primary takes place in eleven days, but these bills will allow her to call a new election this year under the challenged maps.
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West Virginia has draw a new redistricting map 👀
— YourFavWestVirginian (@wvfunnyguy) May 8, 2026
Nevermind, we didn’t need to! pic.twitter.com/dcmveCocD8
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Brianna Lyman at The Federalist: The massive failure was not cheap, with the state spending more than $5 million to pay for the special election while activist organizations raised upwards of $60 million to mislead voters on the proposition, Axios reported.
But the political cost for Democrats seems to exceed the monetary cost.
Virginia Democrats didn’t merely lose their own attempted power grab. They helped escalate a national redistricting fight that Republicans were better positioned to win. According to ABC 33/40, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state’s new map to “erase Democrats’ four-seat gain in their gerrymander push in Virginia.” CNN seemed to indicate in April that Virginia’s referendum galvanized a push for redistricting in Republican states as well. As Federalist CEO Sean Davis pointed out, Democrats’ Virginia gambit gave the GOP redistricting efforts in Tennessee and Alabama additional momentum.
Ed: There's more at the link. Lyman takes aim at Indiana Republicans who didn't seize the moment, and at least five of them paid a political price for it this week.
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After the FBI raid, maybe you can even make it yourself. https://t.co/LDH42jDEOf
— Benjamin Domenech (@bdomenech) May 8, 2026
Ed: She needs to make it "1 to 10."
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