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INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — A former assistant principal at an elementary school in Virginia is due in court for trial, accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school that was later used to shoot his first-grade teacher. Ebony Parker’s criminal trial is set to start Monday in Newport News, Virginia. Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the eight bullets in the gun that was brought into the classroom of Richneck Elementary schoolteacher Abby Zwerner in January 2023, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives. The court’s order is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

The National Rifle Association is suing Virginia Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger for her signing of a measure to make illegal the buying, selling, importing, manufacturing and/or the transfer of assault weapons in the state. The NRA filed lawsuits in both federal and state courts, arguing the law is unconstitutional. Supporters argue the legislation removes "weapons of war" from the streets, making Virginia safer from violence, but opponents argue the law punishes law-abiding citizens, WRIC reported. “As promised, we are taking Abigail Spanberger to court," the NRA, the Second Amendment rights group said in a statement. "Throughout the legislative session, the...

Sounds like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has conceded defeat in the 2026 redistricting battle, but like George Costanza and the Jerk Store, he’s already plotting his revenge in 2028. If you take a deep breath, you can smell the failure laced with no small amount of humiliation… “In advance of 2028, where we will have additional states that will come online, including but not limited to New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Maryland,” says Jeffries. “That’s at least seven states. We will be able to unleash a decisive and forceful response to what they are...

WASHINGTON — Vulnerable Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican, is under fire after she agreed with a radio show host who said that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — the highest-ranking Black lawmaker in Congress — should get his “cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.” NBC News Icon Kiggans, one of Democrats’ top targets in the November midterm election, later posted that the host “should not have used that language” and that she did not condone it. But that did little to satisfy Democrats, who have condemned Kiggans and urged her to formally apologize. The second-most powerful House Democrat has called...

The Democrats have not been sending their best people for a long time, but at least they can avoid the errors an elementary school child makes. Not disgraced Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, however. As The Gateway Pundit reported, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the Democrat Party’s rigged gerrymandering referendum last week in a 4-3 decision, ruling the entire sleazy process to sneak it onto the ballot was unconstitutional from the start. This was the latest devastating blow to radical Democrats’ blatant attempt to rewrite Virginia’s congressional maps mid-decade and hand themselves a super-majority in the U.S. House by turning...

Democratic officials in Virginia asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to reinstate a congressional map that would benefit their party ahead of this year’s midterm elections, the latest map drawing appeal to reach the high court amid a flurry of mid-decade redistricting. The emergency appeal follows a decision from the state Supreme Court last week that voided Democrats’ attempt to redraw Virginia’s US House map via an April referendum in a way that would help Democrats pick up four additional seates. The Democrats are asking the US Supreme Court to effectively put that order on hold for this year’s...

RedState reported Sunday on the sheer desperation that has set in among Democrats at the state and congressional levels after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the process state Democrats used to put their gerrymander referendum on the ballot was a violation of Virginia's Constitution. Advertisement This effectively nuked the Democrats' plan to implement a new map that potentially would net them another four seats in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, which would have made the congressional delegation 10-1 Democrat-Republican. Perhaps the most extreme of the measures that, per The New York Times, were being considered during a...

Democrats are struggling to respond to a major redistricting setback in Virginia, with some party leaders discussing an audacious and possibly far-fetched idea for trying to restore a congressional map voided by the court but showing little indication they have a clear plan. During a private discussion on Saturday that included Democratic House members from Virginia and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, the lawmakers vented anger at their defeat at the Virginia Supreme Court, spoke about a collective determination to flip two or three Republican-held seats under the existing map and discussed a bank-shot proposal to...

On Friday's CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish gave Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) free rein to lecture Republicans on the evils of partisan redistricting, complete with hyperbolic comparisons to Jim Crow poll taxes and literacy tests. The guest warned that GOP moves in the South would backfire, as blue states could retaliate by wiping out Republican districts on the West Coast: "Republicans are gonna come to regret it... We can have a West Coast where there's not a single Republican district. That can be done." Nice Republican districts you got there — wouldn’t want to see nuthin’ happen to them!...

Screencap of YouTube video. People in the left are absolutely frothing at the mouth over the decision by the Virginia Supreme Court that tore down their effort to gerrymander the state. Hasan Piker, an America-hating, self-proclaimed communist and streamer, who Democrats just can’t seem to get enough of, has alsready suggested violent revolution as a fix for the problem. It’s just amazing how political violence has become so normal for people on the left. They just want their way and will do anything to get it. FOX News reports: Leftist streamer calls violent revolution ‘inevitable’ as Democrats explode over Virginia...

F.B.I. agents on Wednesday searched the business office of a powerful Democratic state legislator in Virginia who had played a key role in a high-stakes congressional redistricting fight. The legislator, L. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, is a senior leader in the State Senate, where she has served for more than 30 years. Two people familiar with the case said the search was related to an investigation opened during the Biden administration that has continued, examining possible corruption and bribery related to marijuana dispensary businesses. The F.B.I. agents executed a search warrant at an office in Portsmouth, Va., for businesses that...

While I was combing over the news of the day, trying to decide what to write about, I kept running into two recurring themes: redistricting drama and Democrats doing and saying ridiculously dumb stuff. That's when a thought occurred to me... instead of redistricting each individual state, let's just come together as a nation and redistrict all Democrat politicians right on out into the Pacific. Or up to Canada, since I guess leaving them in the ocean would be cruel. Then again, so is sending someone to Canada. Of course, that's not going to happen, but I do want to...

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down the state’s recently passed redistricting referendum, dealing a massive blow to Democrats who hoped to gain several seats from new House maps. The redistricting ballot measure passed by three percentage points in late April in what was seen at the time as a major win for Democrats, who stood to gain as many as four seats from redrawn maps ahead of the November midterms. The Virginia Supreme Court decision comes amid an ongoing partisan gerrymandering war and as Republican-led states across the South are working to redraw their House districts after a...

As one might imagine, the reactions to Friday's Virginia Supreme Court ruling are fast and flowing, with the state's Republicans doing a victory dance while the state's Democrats - and high-ranking Dems in Congress - cope and seethe. Not surprisingly, Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) isn't talking much about "maximum warfare" at the moment, but he does seem to think Democrats may have another option or two on the table.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections. The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion. Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S....

We’re four months into Abigail Spanberger’s tenure as governor of Virginia, and things couldn’t be worse for Democrats’ rising star. There’s a civil war in the party apparatus. The referendum to redraw the maps from a 6:5 Dem advantage to a 10:1 Dem advantage, thus giving the party an almost certain majority in the House, seems doomed to fail judicial review. Privately, the parties involved have been sniping each other.It’s beginning to leak into the press.

On Wednesday, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seen carrying boxes out of the offices of Democratic Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, a powerful ally of Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D). A SWAT team also raided a cannabis dispensary located next to the Lucas offices in Portsmouth, according to a Fox News report. Lucas is known for owning several dispensary businesses and had previously been accused of selling illegal marijuana products. The FBI confirmed 10 locations were being served with court-authorized criminal warrants. The federal investigation appears to be related to alleged illegal marijuana sales as well as alleged political corruption....

Federal agents on Wednesday morning raided the Portsmouth office of state Sen. Louise Lucas, one of Virginia’s most powerful Democratic lawmakers, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigations confirmed Wednesday, after multiple news outlets reported an extensive law enforcement operation that included FBI agents, SWAT teams and court-authorized searches tied to several locations across the commonwealth. FBI spokeswoman Cassandra Temple told The Mercury at the scene: “We are conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity today.” She wouldn’t confirm or answer any other questions, including whether anyone had been arrested. ..... Adjacent to Lucas’ office is The Cannabis Outlet, a hemp-...