Democrats made a “fundamental miscalculation” in the redistricting wars and now have “little chance” in the November midterms, argues Eric Garcia at The Independent.

Calling the Virginia Supreme Court’s nullification of a voter-led ballot initiative that allowed the creation of four Democratic congressional districts a “massive body blow,” Garcia also points to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision “virtually nullifying the Voting Rights Act” by requiring Louisiana to redraw its congressional map. There is also the Tennessee legislature turning majority-Black Memphis into another GOP seat — erasing the only Democratic seat in that state.

“And this does not count the redrawing of congressional districts in Missouri and North Carolina before the Supreme Court decision, or Alabama, which is under a court order to not redraw its map until 2030,” Garcia says. He notes that California has been the only state to respond, doing so by adding five Democratic seats to the state.

Zachary Donnini, the head of data science at VoteHub, a political news outlet, “put it bleakly for Democrats.”

Donnini says that now, instead of having to flip just three seats to take the majority in the House, Democrats will have to flip an additional nine seats — a total of twelve in all.

Democrats tried to “lead by example,” but, Garcia says, they turned their states into “laboratories for democracy” by creating “unilateral” disarmament “on behalf of the Democrats” — an act, he labels, a “fundamental failure.”

But he offers Democrats a little hope.

Texas’s redistricting plan relied on Hispanic voters, “after flirting with Trump,” to stay aligned with the GOP. That might have changed. The situation is the same in South Florida, “where the state’s normally conservative Cuban Americans have been caught in the Trump immigration dragnet.”

Pointing to inflation, the economy overall, and Trump’s Iran war, Garcia says Republicans holding on to the House might be “even more difficult.”

Democrats, however, made a “fundamental miscalculation,” Garcia concludes. “By creating guardrails and rules, Republicans did not see a reason to compromise and meet them halfway. It made them targets for weakening. Now, Democrats have put themselves in a bind. They only have themselves to blame.”

Image: Public Domain by Architect of the Capitol via Flickr

President Donald Trump is “bored” with his Iran war, but Iran is not — and isn’t ready for the war to be over, argues Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic.

The president, now in a “bind,” is tired of the war he started, and has declared victory several times, while Iran “does not want the war to come to a close.”

Trump’s GOP “is warily watching rising gas prices and falling poll numbers,” while the president “doesn’t want to be bogged down in a Middle East conflict like some of his predecessors were. He doesn’t want it to upend his high-stakes summit next week in China. He is ready to move on.”

“The president, five aides and outside advisers told me, is convinced that he can sell any sort of agreement as a win. But at least for now, the man who wrote The Art of the Deal can’t even get Iran to the negotiating table.”

Iran hasn’t even responded to Trump’s one-page memo “that is far more of an extension of the cease-fire than a treaty to end the conflict.”

Trump, Lemire says, did not expect the war to go like this. After his successful excursion into Venezuela, he “set his eyes on Iran, telling confidants that it would ‘be another Venezuela,’ a pair of outside advisers told me.”

It has not been that.

Trump expected his Iran war to last days, or maybe a week or two. It has now been months.

And while administration officials believe the blockade will be successful, experts say Iran can withstand it for months, time the president, with the midterms coming, does not have.

“It then becomes a matter of pain: Which side can withstand the most economic hardship?” Lemire asks.

Trump, impatient, has debated declaring victory and moving on.

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio went so far as to say earlier this week that the war was over,” Lemire notes. “But doing so now would leave the conflict’s goals, as outlined at various times by the president and his aides, unfulfilled.”

The president, says Lemire, “wants the war to end. He wants a deal. But deals take two parties, and there’s no evidence that Iran is interested in bailing Trump out of a dilemma of his own making.”

Image via Reuters 

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says that aliens from outer space are actually “fallen angels and Nephilim” from the Old Testament of the Bible, according to Right Wing Watch. On Friday, President Donald Trump released declassified government UFO files.

“God is the creator of the universe,” Congresswoman Boebert says in recorded video published Friday by Right Wing Watch. “He’s never not going to create.”

The Colorado Republican lawmaker said that it’s “always been something in my mind to say, ‘Well, how can we be the only ones?’ Like, God’s not going to stop creating just with us.”

“But the more I look into this,” she continued, speaking from inside a car, “the more I see the Old Testament and what was told to us there, of fallen angels, and Nephilim.”

She defended her take by saying, “this is in the Bible,” and there’s “nothing that says that fallen angels, that Nephilim just disappeared. And so I believe that this could be an aspect of it.”

Boebert went on to say that “things that we have seen…could resemble portals,” although in the video she does not explain further.

“And, you know, I mean, this is, we serve an infinite God, a God of the universe. And to say that this is the only realm, is ignorant.”

She denied that aliens are a “Marvin the Martian kind of thing.”

“But I do believe that this is more spiritual, and if you really want to go there, demonic.”

Image via Shutterstock