A congressional map model making the rounds on social media this weekend is turning heads for one very simple reason: it shows Republicans winning 280 House seats. The map, shared by conservative commentator Eric Daugherty on May 10, applies compact, population-based district boundaries across the country without partisan gerrymandering. The result is a staggering 124-seat gap between Republicans and Democrats. Under the model, Democrats hold just 156 seats, with zero tossups. That is the kind of map that would give Republicans a governing majority so large it would reshape what is possible in Congress.

The Trump administration is done talking. It is now hauling New Mexico and Albuquerque into federal court. The Justice Department announced Thursday that the United States has filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction against the State of New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Attorney General Raul Torrez, the City of Albuquerque, and Mayor Timothy Keller. The case, United States v. State of New Mexico et al., No. 1:26-cv-01471, is now before the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. At the center of the dispute are two measures the DOJ says are designed to sabotage federal immigration enforcement: New Mexico’s HB9, branded the “Immigrant Safety Act,” and Albuquerque’s ordinance O-26-15, known as the “Safer Community Places Ordinance.” The Justice Department alleges both laws violate federal supremacy and infringe on authority that belongs exclusively to the federal government under the Constitution. Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against State of New Mexico and City of Albuquerque for Obstructing Federal Immigration Enforcement. https://t.co/kzuJb4Iq0r — Cord.

Minnesota allowed nearly 19,000 people to register to vote or update their registrations on Election Day 2024 using a system called “vouching,” where another person confirms a voter’s address in lieu of standard proof of residence. That is the finding from records obtained by America First Legal from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office. The total figure is 18,898. Of those, 5,457 were brand-new Election Day registrations, and 13,441 were updates to existing registrations. Both categories relied on vouching rather than conventional documentation to verify that the voter lived at the address claimed. Perhaps more striking than the number itself is what the state says it does not know. AFL requested breakdowns by vouching method, residential facility totals, certified lists of facility employees authorized to vouch, and any reports of suspicious or unlawful vouching activity. Minnesota’s response: it either does not record that data or has no responsive records. Minnesota voter “vouching” is designed to facilitate election fraud It must end Vouching de-legitimizes our elections by inviting noncitizen voting and dilutes every vote lawfully cast by a U.S. citizen https://t.co/cBv7ltc8s2 — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 10, 2026 America First Legal released the records it obtained and provided the year-over-year context: AFL says the records show 18,898 Election Day registrations or registration updates using vouching in 2024, up from 10,278 in the 2022 midterms and 17,616 in the 2020 presidential election. The 2024 figure includes 13,441 updates to existing registrations and 5,457 new vouched-for registrations. In 2020, the breakdown was 12,547 updates and 5,069 new registrations. In 2022, it was 8,063 updates and 2,215 new registrations. The records fight did not stop at the topline number. AFL says it requested data that would distinguish between general registered-voter vouching and residential-facility staff vouching, along with facility-specific totals, certified lists of authorized facility employees, and reports of suspicious or unlawful vouching-related activity. The state response, as AFL described it, was that Minnesota either does not maintain the vouching-method data or had no responsive records for many of the categories that would make the system auditable after Election Day. To be clear, none of this proves that a single fraudulent vote was cast through vouching. What it does show is that a state processing nearly 19,000 vouched registrations or updates in one election cannot tell the public how those vouches broke down, who authorized them at residential facilities, or whether any red flags were ever raised. That is not evidence of fraud. It is evidence of a system that would have no idea if fraud occurred. Alpha News provided additional local context, including the state’s defense of the system: Under Minnesota law, a person seeking same-day registration can have a registered voter from the same precinct sign an oath confirming the person’s address. A registered voter may vouch for up to eight people. Staff at residential facilities, however, are not bound by that eight-person limit and can vouch for all eligible voters living in the facility. The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office defended the practice, telling Alpha News that vouching has been part of state law for more than 50 years. The office said vouching accounted for less than 0.6% of all votes cast in the 2024 general election. It also emphasized that vouching is used only to confirm a voter’s residence in the precinct, while the voter must still provide a Minnesota driver’s license or ID card number, or the last four digits of a Social Security number, for identity verification. The office added that vouchers sign oaths under penalty of perjury and that any discrepancies must be referred to local law enforcement. The state’s 0.6% figure is technically accurate but somewhat beside the point. The concern is not whether vouching is common across all voters. The concern is whether the state can verify the integrity of the nearly 19,000 transactions that did use it. Based on the records AFL received, the answer appears to be no. The Minnesota Secretary of State page on Election Day registration lays out how vouching works: The state’s Election Day registration guidance lists several ways a voter can prove residence at the polling place, and one of them is vouching. A registered voter from the same precinct may sign an oath confirming the person’s address. That voter may vouch for up to eight voters, and someone who was vouched for cannot then turn around and vouch for another person. The guidance also creates a separate route for residential facilities. A staff person can confirm the address of eligible voters living in the facility, and that staff member may vouch for all eligible voters who live there after proving employment at the facility. That means the state itself publicly acknowledges two different vouching paths: ordinary same-precinct voter vouching and residential-facility staff vouching. That distinction is exactly why the missing breakdowns matter. Without those records, the public can see the total number of vouched registrations and updates, but not how the process was actually used. The residential-facility carve-out is one of the sharpest parts of the story. A single staff member at a nursing home, group home, or similar facility can vouch for every eligible voter in the building. There is no cap. And as AFL’s records request revealed, the state does not maintain certified lists of which employees are authorized to do it. There is no publicly available data showing which facilities used vouching or how many residents were vouched for at each one. Records show thousands in Minnesota used ‘vouching’ to bypass ID rules https://t.co/S5tsWEnI8u — Off The Press (@OffThePress1) May 10, 2026 Minnesota is one of 21 states that allow same-day voter registration. Vouching is the mechanism that makes same-day registration work when a person does not have a utility bill, bank statement, or other qualifying document on hand. The policy question is not whether the system exists. It is whether the state has built any infrastructure to audit it after the fact. Based on the records AFL obtained, the answer is that the state tracks the total number of vouched registrations and updates but not the details behind them. No breakdown by method. No facility-level data. No reports of suspicious activity. That means the only real safeguard is the oath signed by the voucher, which carries a perjury penalty that is only meaningful if someone investigates. With 2026 midterms approaching and Minnesota once again expected to be competitive in key races, 18,898 is not a rounding error. It is a volume of election activity that should come with the same level of documentation and transparency the state applies everywhere else in its system. If the vouching process is as clean as the Secretary of State’s office says it is, proving it should be easy. The fact that the state cannot produce the data to do so is the real story. What do you reckon?

A Mexican national living illegally in Kansas City, Missouri has pleaded guilty to six alien-smuggling offenses tied to a conspiracy that used Canada as a pipeline to move migrants from Central America, South America, and Mexico across the northern border into New York. Edgar Sanchez-Solis was no distant coordinator. Prosecutors say he personally drove a van full of illegal border crossers in May 2023, then led Border Patrol agents on a high-speed pursuit before a sheriff’s office finally stopped the vehicle. The guilty plea, announced this week by the Justice Department, is the latest case exposing a pattern that most Americans still associate only with the southern border: organized smuggling networks running foreign nationals into the United States through Canada’s comparatively relaxed visa system. International human smuggling ring exploiting Canadian visa system thwarted by US https://t.co/Y7EKOegmKD — John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) May 10, 2026 The Justice Department laid out the scope of the conspiracy and the Canada-route details: Edgar Sanchez-Solis, a Mexican national unlawfully residing in Kansas City, Missouri, pleaded guilty to six alien-smuggling offenses for his role in coordinating and personally participating in smuggling events. The operation moved foreign nationals from Mexico, Central America, and South America into Canada, then across the U.S. northern border into New York. Prosecutors described a network that used drivers to pick up migrants in designated areas and transport them into the interior of the United States. In one May 2023 event, Sanchez-Solis drove a van carrying illegal border crossers and fled Border Patrol agents at high speed before being stopped by a local sheriff’s office. First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Sarcone III said Sanchez-Solis “exploited Canada’s lax visitor visa policy and used Canada as a waypoint for unvetted aliens from Mexico looking for a route into the United States.” Sentencing is scheduled for September, and the plea exposes Sanchez-Solis to five to 15 years in federal prison. Pay attention to Sarcone’s language. He did not describe this as a gap in American enforcement. He called it a Canadian vulnerability that smugglers deliberately targeted, treating Ottawa’s visitor-visa rules as a front door to the United States. The Sanchez-Solis case is not an isolated incident. A separate prosecution in the same corridor shows just how brazen these northern-border networks have become. International human smuggling ring exploiting Canadian visa system thwarted by US https://t.co/V5bV3Dc72r — Just the News (@JustTheNews) May 10, 2026 The Center Square connected the Sanchez-Solis prosecution to a broader pattern and reported on a second case that underscores the human cost of the smuggling trade: The report ties the Sanchez-Solis operation to the Swanton Sector, where record-high illegal crossings occurred during the Biden administration. In a separate Vermont case, Tyshan Murray of Elizabeth, New Jersey was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to transporting aliens who crossed from Canada into the United States. Murray was apprehended in September 2024 after picking up nine Irish citizens near Richford, Vermont, following their illegal northern-border crossing. When Border Patrol stopped his vehicle, agents found the nine illegal border crossers crammed into the rear seats while young children sat in the rear cargo compartment on top of luggage, completely unrestrained. A prosecutor requested a 33-month sentence, citing the reckless endangerment of the children and Murray’s extensive criminal history. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophard said alien smuggling across the northern border creates national-security risks and endangers the lives of those unlawfully entering the country. As of May 8, Joint Task Force Alpha operations have produced more than 455 domestic and international arrests, more than 400 convictions, and more than 345 significant jail sentences, according to Justice Department figures. Children unrestrained in a cargo area, sitting on luggage, while a convicted smuggler drives them deeper into the country. That is the reality of what “lax visitor-visa policy” produces at the operational level. For years, the northern border was treated as an afterthought in Washington. The southern border consumed all the political oxygen while the 3,987-mile Canadian frontier operated on a kind of honor system. Smuggling networks noticed. They routed migrants through Canadian airports and then funneled them south into New York and Vermont through rural crossing points that did not have the infrastructure or manpower to stop them. The Justice Department’s Joint Task Force Alpha numbers tell a story of belated but aggressive enforcement: 455 arrests, 400-plus convictions, 345-plus significant prison terms. Those numbers reflect a real shift in priority, but they also confirm the scale of the problem that was allowed to metastasize. Sanchez-Solis faces up to 15 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in September. Murray is already serving his 18 months. The smuggling pipelines they served are bigger than any two defendants, and until Canada tightens its visa system, the northern border will remain an open invitation for the next network willing to pack children into a cargo hold. What’s your perspective?

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a new take on the American Revolution, and it sounds a lot like her old take on everything else. Speaking Friday at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics alongside Democratic strategist David Axelrod, Ocasio-Cortez declared that the colonists who broke from Britain were really waging a class war. The Founders, in her telling, were not fighting a distant, unaccountable government. They were fighting rich people. “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time,” she said. “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time” – AOC pic.twitter.com/PGmDnLa9DU — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 8, 2026 There is a lot wrong with that sentence, and critics were happy to walk through it. The American colonists revolted against the British Crown and Parliament, not against wealthy individuals. Their chief grievance was taxation without representation, imposed by a government an ocean away that offered them no voice. Many of the Founders themselves were among the wealthiest men in the colonies. George Washington was one of the richest people in America when he led the Continental Army. Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson were men of considerable means. The idea that they launched a revolution against people like themselves requires ignoring most of what actually happened. The New York Post reported on the remarks and the swift backlash: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made the comments during a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics with Democratic strategist David Axelrod. Ocasio-Cortez said the American Revolution was “against the billionaires of their time” and added that her side was declaring independence from “an extreme marriage of wealth and the state.” Critics responded that the Revolution was about British government power, taxation without representation, and monarchical control, not a war against wealthy people. The report pointed to founding-era wealth as part of the rebuttal, including George Washington and other Founders who were among the richest figures in the colonies. Senator Mike Lee said the Revolution was not against billionaires but against a distant, overly intrusive government with no limits on its power to tax, regulate, and consume the substance of citizens it claimed to serve. Senator Ted Cruz also responded that a ninth grader writing that answer on a history test would get an F, and that the Revolution was financed in significant part by American free enterprise. Senator Mike Lee’s response was direct and worth reading in full: No, AOC, the American Revolution was NOT “against the billionaires of their time.” It was against a large, distant, overly intrusive government that recognized no limits over its own authority to tax, regulate, and eat out the substance of the citizens it claimed to serve. https://t.co/OzQegCugsZ pic.twitter.com/F96FSwNHJ4 — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 8, 2026 Lee’s framing is the one that actually matches the historical record. The Declaration of Independence lists grievance after grievance against King George III and his government. It says nothing about wealthy colonists being the problem. The entire document is an indictment of state power exercised without consent. Senator Ted Cruz put a finer point on it, saying that any student who wrote Ocasio-Cortez’s answer on a history exam would receive a failing grade. He noted that the Revolution was a revolt against oppressive government and that American free enterprise helped finance the war effort itself. But the billionaire remark was not the only thing Ocasio-Cortez said at the University of Chicago. She also laid out a broader economic vision that sounded like a warm-up speech for something bigger. The Daily Caller reported on the fuller scope of her comments: Ocasio-Cortez recast the American Revolution as an uprising against the ultra-wealthy rather than against an overreaching crown. During the University of Chicago conversation she argued the country needs to revisit older tax structures because taxation involves “the construction and organization of oligarchy in the economy.” She added the caveat that she was targeting the system rather than individual wealthy people, a familiar rhetorical move that lets the speaker attack wealth while maintaining plausible goodwill toward the wealthy. The congresswoman has made similar arguments elsewhere. On a recent podcast she declared, “You can’t earn a billion dollars,” claiming that fortunes of that size necessarily come from rule-breaking and labor abuse. Ben Shapiro pushed back, arguing that billionaires become wealthy by innovating, taking risk, and offering better goods and services at prices people choose to pay. Ocasio-Cortez also sidestepped questions about a 2028 presidential run during her sit-down with David Axelrod, saying her ambition was “bigger than that” and that she wanted to change the country through policies such as single-payer health care, living wages, workers’ rights, and women’s rights. That last detail is the quiet part. “Her ambition was bigger than that” is the language of someone already looking past a House seat from New York. She may dodge the 2028 question for now, but the policy wish list she rattled off reads like a platform, and the revolutionary framing she keeps reaching for tells you exactly how she sees herself in the story. A longer clip of the remarks confirmed the full context of what she told the Chicago audience: AOC: “America was founded in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. It’s actually the most American thing in the world for us to be fighting for the working class. It’s actually patently un-American to transform our… pic.twitter.com/FBpOMcVp7g — Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 10, 2026 What Ocasio-Cortez is doing here is not complicated. She is retrofitting the founding of the country to justify a modern progressive economic agenda. If you can convince people that America was born out of a revolt against the rich, then every policy aimed at redistributing wealth becomes patriotic by definition. It is a neat trick, but it requires rewriting the actual history. The American Revolution was fought against a government that taxed without consent, quartered soldiers in private homes, dissolved colonial legislatures, and denied basic rights to its own subjects. It was a revolt against concentrated state power, not concentrated private wealth. The men who signed the Declaration risked their fortunes, their reputations, and their lives to limit the reach of government. That story does not help Ocasio-Cortez’s argument, so she told a different one. How does that sound?