Hello everyone. Today, we have a shocking turn of events in the GOP’s push to redistrict across the South, in which three states see the White House’s plans fall apart in the last 24 hours.
We also have major news as the federal government continues to bend under Trump’s corruption, with online gun sales about to become a reality and the DOJ considers writing him a $10 billion check, paid by the taxpayers.
1. Republican Redistricting Plans Are Falling Apart Across the South
In three separate Southern states this week, Republican redistricting efforts pushed by President Trump have stalled. South Carolina killed its redistricting push outright last night. Louisiana refused to deliver the map the White House wanted. And Mississippi punting the whole thing to 2027.
The biggest blow came Tuesday in South Carolina, where the state Senate voted 29-17 to reject a measure that would have let the legislature redraw the state’s congressional map and eliminate Rep. James Clyburn’s seat ahead of the November midterms. Five Republican state senators broke ranks to block the measure, despite a personal phone call from the President and a Truth Social post Monday night warning lawmakers he was “watching closely.”
Here’s Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, the most senior Republican to vote against the measure, explaining his decision:
Watch what happens to Massey and the four other South Carolina Republicans who voted no. Just last Tuesday, five Indiana Republican state senators who had blocked their state’s redistricting effort in December were defeated in Trump-backed primaries.
The scorecard is starting to look different than the White House expected. While the GOP has had wins in Florida and Tennessee, their momentum has slowed. South Carolina just refused altogether. Louisiana drew a 5-1 map but rejected the 6-0 map the White House wanted. And Mississippi delayed the whole effort until after the midterms.
The Supreme Court did everything it could to give Republicans an open road on redistricting. The reason the road is bumpier than expected is that Republican state legislators in these states can read polling, and the polling is telling them that drawing too aggressively could pick up one seat in the short term and cost them the chamber for a decade. And the result is that the President’s plan to lock in Republican control of the House is starting to come apart in the very states he depended on the most.
2. The Trump Administration Is Quietly Legalizing Online Gun Sales. Unsurprisingly, One of His Kids Stands to Profit.
The MeidasTouch News Network reported last night that the Trump administration’s DOJ, ATF, and USPS have all proposed regulatory changes in recent weeks that, taken together, would let Americans buy firearms online and have them delivered directly to their homes.
The proposed rules cover three pieces.
The ATF would let federally licensed dealers verify a buyer’s identity digitally instead of in person.
A second ATF rule would broaden the state permits that exempt buyers from real-time FBI background checks.
And a USPS rule would let handguns be shipped through the U.S. mail for the first time since 1927.
Together, these rules dismantle the in-person transfer requirement that has been the foundation of the Gun Control Act of 1968 for nearly 60 years.
Donald Trump Jr. has a financial stake in this. He joined the board of GrabAGun, a Texas-based online firearms retailer that explicitly markets itself as the “Amazon of guns,” and reportedly received 300,000 shares as part of his consulting agreement when the company went public last year. And his father’s administration is now finalizing the rules that would make the business model dramatically more valuable.
Here’s Don Jr. on Bloomberg late last year:
The rules are still in the public comment phase. Watch for legal challenges from state attorneys general and gun violence prevention groups once the final rule drops. And watch for state-level resistance, because several states have laws on the books that would block residential firearm delivery regardless of what the federal framework allows.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed because Lee Harvey Oswald bought the rifle that killed President Kennedy through a mail-order ad, using a fake name and an out-of-state address. The whole point of in-person firearm transfers was to make sure that could never happen again.
The administration is now trying to roll that back, while the President’s son holds stock in the company best positioned to profit. This is bad policy driven by unabashed corruption and we shouldn’t shy away from saying that loudly.
3. Trump Wants American Taxpayers to Pay Him $10 Billion. He Says Not to Worry, Because He’ll Give It to Charity.
The New York Times reported Tuesday night that the Department of Justice is having “internal discussions” about settling President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, in which Trump is the plaintiff, his own administration is the defendant, and any settlement money would come from taxpayers.
Trump filed the $10 billion suit in March 2025 over a 2019 leak of his tax returns by a former IRS contractor. The DOJ, which is representing the IRS, is led by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney.
Here is Trump being asked on Air Force One whether it is fair to ask Americans to pay for the lawsuit:
The President is negotiating with the Department of Justice he runs, through an acting Attorney General who used to be his personal lawyer, to pay himself $10 billion of taxpayer money.
Federal District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, has already questioned whether Trump can sue an agency he oversees, writing that it is unclear whether Trump and the federal government are “sufficiently adverse to each other.”
This is not complicated. The President wants money and he is using the powers of his office to get it from a government he controls. And American taxpayers are stuck with the bill. This is banana republic stuff, folks.
4. A Republican Congresswoman Just Insulted a 10-Year-Old in an Official Letter
Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina responded to a 10-year-old constituent’s fourth-grade school assignment by accusing his teachers of “indoctrinating” him with “propaganda,” in a letter that prompted his mother to publicly call the response “horrific.”
The fourth grader, Christian Mango, attends Canterbury School, a private Episcopal day school in Greensboro. In April, his class was assigned to write persuasive essays and mail them to someone in a position to act on their request. Christian chose to write to Foxx, his congresswoman, urging her to support a $5,000 federal tax rebate for electric vehicle purchases.
He sent his essay in a Canterbury School envelope clearly marked “4th grade” on the return address. Foxx wrote back a few weeks later. The letter included six articles from outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, an argument that Christian and his classmates would be responsible for the national debt, and the line his mother says crossed every line.
Here is Christian reading the closing of the congresswoman’s letter:
I served alongside Virginia Foxx for ten years in the House. This is not the congresswoman I knew. But the reason is simple: the Trumpification of the GOP has destroyed the character and judgement of more people that I once respected than I care to count.
5. U.S. Intelligence Says Iran Has Restored Nearly Every Missile Site Along the Strait of Hormuz. Trump Calls The Reporting “Virtual Treason.”
The New York Times reported Tuesday evening, based on classified U.S. intelligence, that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, retains roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, and has regained access to about 90 percent of its underground missile facilities.
The classified assessments directly contradict what the President and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have spent two months telling the country, which is that Iran’s military was “shattered,” “crushed,” and “decimated.” The intelligence community now says it is none of those things.
The President’s reaction Tuesday afternoon was to post on Truth Social that the “Fake News” reporting on Iran is “virtual treason” and that the journalists involved are “aiding and abetting the enemy.”
Watch for the next leak. Intelligence officers do not start handing classified assessments to The New York Times unless they believe their concerns are not being heard inside the building. And let’s see whether any Republican senator on the Intelligence or Armed Services Committee demands a briefing this week.
Two months ago, the President started a war with Iran and told the country it would be quick. But today, after already spending more than $29 billion on the war, no end seems to be in sight and our destroyed enemy appears to not be destroyed. The intelligence community has been trying to say so for weeks.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Nebraska Democrats Just Cleared the Path for an Independent Veteran to Take On a GOP Senator. Cindy Burbank won the Nebraska Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday night and plans to drop out before November, clearing the way for independent Dan Osborn to face Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts head-to-head. Osborn is a Navy veteran, an industrial mechanic, and the former union leader who led the 2021 Kellogg’s strike in Omaha. He came within seven points of Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, in a year Donald Trump carried Nebraska by more than twenty points. Ricketts, the eldest son of TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, has a personal net worth of roughly $200 million.
Trump Doesn’t Rule Out Sending Federal Agents to Polling Places This November. President Trump told reporters Tuesday that he would do “anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” and refused to rule out deploying National Guard troops or ICE agents to polling locations during the 2026 midterms. The same day, the Republican National Committee announced it would spend millions on an “election integrity” push across 17 states. Federal law since 1865 bans armed federal agents from places where elections are held, and any kind of voter intimidation is illegal under both federal and state law. The answer is supposed to be an easy “no.”
