An earthquake occurred today in the Commonwealth of Virginia that was felt at the highest levels of power in the U.S. House of Representatives, particularly shaking the minority leader of the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries. On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the unconstitutional push by the Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly. The Virginia high court voided the proposed constitutional amendment and “temporary” partisan gerrymandering by Democrats that would break up the current congressional district map from its current representation of six Democratic and five Republican congressional seats to 10 Democratic and one Republican to represent the Commonwealth of Virginia in the U.S. House. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that “the legislative process employed to advance the proposal” violated the state constitution and the integrity of the referendum vote, which “incurably taints” the referendum. As a result, the Virginia Supreme Court directed that the district maps issued by the court in 2021 after partisan deadlock for the upcoming congressional elections until 2030. The author of the opinion, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, noted that “under the proposed new map approximately 47% of Virginians that voted for representatives of one of the major political parties in the last congressional election would now be represented by 9% of Virginia’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives — while the approximately 51% of Virginians that voted for the other major political party would now be represented by 91% of Virginia’s congressional delegation.” Because the General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during early voting in the previous 2025 election, the court majority noted “that 1.3 million Virginians were denied their constitutional rights to have a voice in the debate over whether their Constitution should be amended — thereby eroding one of the core rights that Article XII, Section 1 was intended to safeguard.” The aftershocks of this political earthquake in Virginia will shake Democrats in the District of Columbia and across the nation. The Democrats will no longer be able to rely on the additional four seats they have been counting on to blunt GOP gains and help take over the House of Representatives in 2026. And with the recent case of Louisiana v. Callais that outlawed racial gerrymandering, the Democrats are on their heels, having counted on California and Virginia to withstand losses in other states. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent end to race-based gerrymandering has upended the legal framework for political districting that had been in place for the past 50 years. As a result, Florida and Tennessee have already moved to adjust their maps, while lawmakers in Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi are reviewing the ruling and weighing swift action to bring their districts into compliance with the Constitution. Momentous political events have happened over the past month since the ground-breaking Callais decision. Despite the delay in the issuance of the opinion by the Supreme Court minority, conservatives and GOP legislators have started the late push for fair and constitutional district lines across the country. Just prior to the Callais decision, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a special session to redraw the congressional lines and added four additional Republican-leaning seats to represent the state in Congress. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee was next to call the state legislature into session, and the legislature promptly passed a new map over opposition that eliminated the seat of Congressman Steve Cohen in Memphis. Alabama lawmakers are now likely to vote on new district maps to comply with the Voting Rights Act, a change that would shift representation from five Republican and two Democratic to six Republican and one Democratic and could trigger new elections. Because South Carolina and Mississippi also have racially focused congressional districts, they may be next to revise their maps and ensure maximum representation under the law. Adam Kincaid, a prominent redistricting strategist serving as the president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust summed up the ruling as a fiasco: “Democrats were already at a cash disadvantage. Then they set $70 million on fire in a pursuit of an unconstitutional gerrymander.”

Mehek Cooke, senior national security and legal analyst at the Daily Signal, warned that the growing fraud scandal in Ohio is not an isolated case but part of a systemic failure across welfare programs nationwide. Appearing on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” Thursday, Cooke said she discovered widespread health care fraud last December that is allegedly draining billions in taxpayer dollars. She brought this evidence to government officials, but many failed to take it seriously. “This was the tip of the spear,” Cooke said of Ohio, pointing to similar fraud cases in other states. “Any time you have a welfare program, there’s going to be fraud because government is so complacent.” Cooke described her firsthand efforts to investigate suspicious activity in Ohio’s home health care system, including making door-to-door inquiries in areas receiving significant taxpayer funding in Franklin County. Several whistleblowers alerted Cooke in December to alleged home health care fraud in Ohio, claiming that patients were entering doctors’ offices claiming they needed home health care services. Upon evaluation, providers determined that they did not qualify for those services, but some of these individuals then threatened that if paperwork was not rubber-stamped, they would return to providers who would approve it. After receiving this information, Cooke said she brought the alleged fraud to the Ohio attorney general’s office and the Department of Medicaid. Cooke also visited close to 100 home health care offices. What she found raised serious concerns about whether services were being legitimately provided. “So when you knock on doors, most of these people are in the Somalian community. They don’t speak English, so I’m wondering how they’re even providing services,” Cooke said. “It’s hidden behind closed doors.” Cooke pointed to the concentration of funds in specific areas as a major red flag. Ohio has spent approximately $1 billion to $1.6 billion on home health care, she noted. Franklin County alone accounts for 38% of that spending, and within the county, roughly 40% is disproportionately concentrated in just two ZIP codes, amounting to about $243 million, based on statistics from Ohio Auditor Keith Faber. “At some point, the state has to ask, what’s going on in these two ZIP codes?” she said. “But they didn’t. Our governor came out and said it’s the cost of doing business.” Cooke criticized state leadership for failing to provide transparency, saying key agencies have not released basic funding data despite repeated public records requests. She said the lack of enforcement is not due to a lack of authority but a lack of political will. “Prosecutors need evidence of fraud, and that responsibility starts with the governor’s office and the attorney general’s office,” Cooke said. “But if leadership won’t provide the information, cases can’t move forward.” Cooke highlighted Ohio Auditor Keith Faber as one of the few officials actively investigating potential fraud, but she warned that audits take significant time. “People are complacent in the state of Ohio and in so many of these agencies,” Cooke added. “It’s not their tax dollars. It’s ours. They don’t care about Ohioans. They don’t care about Americans. They just want to keep funneling money out the door as long as they get paid.” Without immediate accountability, Cooke warned, taxpayers will continue to fund a system vulnerable to exploitation.

Brian Kemp lacks urgency. Georgia’s Republican governor is like a man who learns that the Chattahoochee River is about to breach its banks, and then rather than surround his home with sandbags, he naps in the basement.  Republicans are bracing for a potential flood of Trump-hating Left-wing voters who could hand Democrats the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s April 29 Louisiana v. Callais ruling, racially gerrymandered, Democrat-leaning districts are now unconstitutional. Republicans now have the opportunity, indeed the obligation, to create constitutional, race-neutral, GOP-friendly districts. This should happen swiftly, long before November 3’s mid-term elections. Peach State Republicans are begging Kemp to call a special session for this purpose. What’s the rush? Kemp responds. He prefers to ignore redistricting and extend this injustice for two more years. “The Supreme Court’s decision,” Kemp stated, “allows states to pass electoral maps that reflect the will of the voters, not the will of federal judges.” He added: “Voting is already underway for the 2026 elections, but it’s clear that Callais requires Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle.” Kemp moans about early voting in Georgia’s May 19 primary elections. However, Louisiana’s U.S. House primaries were set for May 16, three days earlier. After Callais, Republican Governor Jeff Landry suspended that vote, so legislators in Baton Rouge could craft color-neutral maps. House primaries will resume thereafter. Under the steady leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida lawmakers handled this April 28-29. No fuss. No bother. Done.  Tennessee’s legislature and GOP Gov. Bill Lee did likewise on Thursday.  “It’s a form of Jim Crow terror,” Democrat State Rep. Justin Jones whined as Republicans split the majority-black Ninth Congressional District. Underscoring the absurd immorality of racial redistricting, Democrat Steve Cohen has represented this “black constituency” since 2007. Cohen is white.  Kemp is no stranger to special sessions. Indeed, on Oct. 26, 2023, a federal judge found Georgia’s districts insufficiently black. That very day, Kemp ordered state lawmakers to convene that November 29 and re-draw political maps. Kemp got busy in 2023. But in 2026, with the entire Trump/GOP agenda at stake, Kemp snores. Kemp should postpone May 19’s primary elections; tap state legislators to re-draw constitutional, color-neutral districts; and re-schedule the primary for, say, six weeks hence: Tuesday, June 30. Convenient? No. Constitutional? Yes.  Make no mistake: Kemp’s betrayal will trap Georgia’s citizens this November inside legislative lines that the Supreme Court has deemed racially discriminatory—and unconstitutionally so. Does Kemp savor unconstitutional racial discrimination? His proposed two-year interval of injustice embodies institutional racism, something every Republican should treat like a peanut allergy. Had Callais gone the other way, try to imagine a Democrat governor saying, “Relax. Forget about 2026. We’ll bolster our race-based districts in 2028.” Inconceivable! “Georgia voters are already being asked to vote on a QR-coded voting system that violates three Georgia statutes, the Help America Vote Act, and President Trump’s March 25, 2025 Executive Order 14248 issued to the Election Assistance Commission,” says Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA. “Now we are being asked to vote in unconstitutionally drawn voting districts. When does this madness end?” “It is incomprehensible,” sighs Cleta Mitchell, Esq., Senior Legal Fellow with the Conservative Partnership Institute. She observes that Georgia’s legislature adjourned on April 3 without replacing prohibited QR-code-reading voting machines.  “So, the Governor MUST call a special session to select a legally approved system for the 2026 general election,” Mitchell explains. “If Governor Kemp and the moronic Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger cared about conducting elections in accordance with the laws and constitutions of the U.S. and Georgia, the congressional primaries would be postponed, just as they were in 2020 due to COVID. Kemp would call a special session immediately, to solve both problems—lawful congressional districts and lawful voting systems. Instead, they do nothing. Governor Kemp’s hostility to doing the right thing is shocking but is nothing new.”    ​We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Orange County, Calif. — Thousands of gallons of herbicides have been sprayed into flood channels that flow straight into the ocean—right in the same creeks where more than $26 million in taxpayer dollars have already gone toward saving the endangered steelhead trout. For more than two decades, state and federal agencies have funneled millions into a fish passage project on San Juan and Trabuco creeks. Yet county crews kept spraying the chemicals, including during the steelhead’s spawning season, according to records obtained by local activists. Save the Fish In 2003, California state biologists made the first sightings in decades of steelhead trout below the I-5 culvert. By 2004 and 2005, the national nonprofit Trout Unlimited launched efforts to remove barriers at the nearby Metrolink bridge and I-5.  During that time, the California Department of Fish and Game agreed to fund a roughly $1.2 million fish passage, otherwise known as a “fish ladder,” to open an estimated 13 miles of upstream habitat. But the ladder was never built because of engineering, flood control, bridge stability, and pipeline concerns. From the mid-2000s to 2017, planning, studies, modeling, and stakeholder negotiations continued under Trout Unlimited, which raised an estimated $2.4 million. By 2013, the U.S. Forest Service began upstream check dam removals as part of broader habitat work in Cleveland National Forest. The project shifted in 2017 when CalTrout took over leadership from Trout Unlimited because of stalling. CalTrout raised another estimated $2.1 million by 2021. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) granted the project $9.3 million in 2024. In conjunction with the state, major federal help arrived in late 2024 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) via the bipartisan infrastructure law, which awarded the project $14.6 million. Chemical Soup Just a decade after the first spotting of the rare steelhead trout, Orange County Public Works (OCPW) began an active National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and Integrated Pest Management program that includes aquatic herbicide applications in San Juan Creek.  Among the chemicals allowed was glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits. County officials turned to aquatic herbicides because “mechanical methods” like mowing or hand-pulling were 10 to 25 times more expensive than spraying. Despite the permit expiring in 2018, the county—through the Orange County Board of Supervisors—continued allowing herbicide spraying. By 2024, county records show herbicide use, including glyphosate, to eradicate “nuisance weeds” in the flood control channels, including San Juan Creek. What About the Fish? But there was an exception to the spraying. According to the Los Angeles Times, OCPW stated that they do not spray during bird nesting season or when endangered Southern California steelhead trout may be swimming upstream to spawn, which is from December to April. However, records obtained by the local activist group Creek Team OC, which blew the whistle on the spraying, showed that OCPW applied glyphosate in January 2025 across roughly 70 acres of the creek channel. Just months later, in July 2025, outside the spawning season, records show the county conducted a second major spray using triclopyr and imazapyr, with an estimated 8 tons of the diluted chemicals used in the waterways. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) launched a probe into OCPW in April, announcing there is “currently an investigation into complaints of potential violations of the Fish and Game Code in San Juan Creek.” “We are performing a compliance review to confirm whether OCPW has met all reporting and monitoring requirements under the Agreement,” CDFW spokesman Cort Klopping told the Voice of OC at the time. “We are also evaluating what changes may be necessary in OCPW’s new Agreement, which is currently in draft form, to ensure that impacts to fish and wildlife resources and protected species (e.g., CESA listed species) are avoided moving forward,” Klopping added. The CDFW did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on whether NOAA would be involved in the probe. In an exclusive interview with the California Courier, Creek Team OC said that when it first raised concerns about spraying during spawning season, it tried to reach out to CalTrout but was dismissed. “They had no interest in helping us. I asked for their help. They denied it,” Creek Team OC member Brent Linas said. Bethany Nelms, another member of Creek Team OC, also noted that one of her first approaches was reaching out to the agency, but she quickly realized they had “resistance” to the group’s help. “That was literally one of my first approaches,” Bethany Nelms told the Courier. “I’m like, ‘I need to tell these people. They must not know this is happening or they’d be really upset.’” “The resistance and hesitancy was really surprising to see until I realized that they were scared. They didn’t want to lose their funding. They didn’t want to not be able to progress things. They knew the county was going to come back one way or another,” Nelms added. Endless Money With more than $24 million in taxpayer dollars already put into the unfinished project, the plan still has no confirmed deadline. A public post from CalTrout shows that a request for proposals regarding a construction manager was issued in March, with project trackers listing the plans as “current.” However, with no exact date in sight, the once-under-$2 million project now appears on track to cost an estimated $45 million in taxpayer funds. During a local town hall meeting with Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, a public official was pressed on the timeline for the fish passage project, but no hard deadline for when plans would be available to the public was announced.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson.  Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Sami Winc: So Victor, let’s turn to California.  And recently—the, we know as, well a lot of our viewers know—California has a jungle primary, where the primary is all the parties are in. And the last—the two that are on top are on the ballot for November. Well, no surprise, but our chair of the Democratic Party in California, Rusty Hicks, has decided that this does not work as a primary process.  Victor Davis Hanson: I thought it worked great. It always got the results the law is—they drafted the law.  They said they had 60% Democrats, so they could ensure that in most all—and it worked. We haven’t had a Republican statewide officeholder since Arnold Schwarzenegger left, what, 20 years ago? We have supermajorities in both legislatures, of Democrats. All the old Schwarzenegger judges are all retiring. They’re wonderful judges, but they’re all termed out. That’s not the right word. They’re retiring. And so they got the judiciary, they’ve got executives, they got the legislative branch, all because of these jungle primaries. And the real cause, four million people have left the state the last 15 years.  And these were Reaganite, Deukmejianite, Pete Wilson-type, Schwarzenegger-types. They’re gone. Vanished. That’s it.  Sami Winc: And we know why that is. Another thing about this governor’s race is some of the candidates for governor who are on the Left are already talking about new taxes that they would impose. The most recent one is—I forget the candidate’s name—but he wants to have a tax on EVs, since they avoid the high gas prices, that they would tax EVs.  Victor Davis Hanson: Their message to us, the voters, is, well, you know, we lost $240 billion on high-speed rail. And we’ve lost another $250 billion in COVID hospice entitlement fraud. We didn’t really lose it because the money, as Barack Obama said, it’s spread around. We spread the money around. Spread the wealth. So people got money, but, you know, we need—as for bookkeeping—we’ve lost a half a trillion dollars, so we want you to pay.  Now, you have the highest income tax in the nation. How high are they gonna go? I don’t know. 13.3%. They go much higher, and they’ve got, I think, the fifth—when you add the county add-ons—fifth-highest sales tax. The highest gas taxes. The highest electricity cost outside of Hawaii. The highest gasoline in the continental United States.  Everybody’s angry. I was very curious about that. There’s a national crisis because gas, at its lowest point, I think it was $1.88 or $2 national under Trump before the war, and now it’s up to $4. Any time in the last five years I was driving and I saw $4 gas, I just pulled over and filled up. I just saw it yesterday. It was $6.20. They’re mad that they have to pay California prices, but we in California pay that every day. And it’s even worse than that, Sammy. We pay it every day, and then we keep electing the people who charge us that.  That’s what’s so weird about that debate stage. I looked at a clip today. Porter—she came up with a brilliant idea that if she self-critiqued like she was in a Korean prisoner of war camp. Would you please critique yourself? So she said. And she had that—you know—about being mean to people. And then Becerra—poor Villaraigosa didn’t know what he was talking about. Becerra just gave basically, everything is great, and we’re gonna give you more great things. And then Bianco and Hilton were pretty good. And the guy from San Jose, McMahon, or whatever his name is—he was just—  Sami Winc: Yeah, that was the EV tax guy.  Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. I’m not them and I’m not them. I’m in the middle. I’m not Left or Right. I’m just nothing.  Sami Winc: Would it surprise you that the Palisades arsonist has revealed himself to be Left-wing? Some of his social media posts are—or sorry, these are the history of his searches on his computer. Free Mangione and kill billionaires. And it’s—  Victor Davis Hanson: He did. I mean, if you think about the assessed evaluation of that beautiful Pacific Palisades, it must have been, I don’t know, billions of dollars. He destroyed it. Killed 12 people. And he’s a hero, probably. And the $100 million was raised for private charities. It’s all gone. They blew that on—the NGOs took that money. I mean, there’s nothing there. Boy, I get back to those videos of LA in the ’50s. If you had a guy like Sam Yorty, whom I wasn’t particularly fond of, but he was a good mayor, in the early ’60s—he would have just gone on there—that would have been all rebuilt by now.  But the subtext was a Leftist burned it down because he hated wealthy people, and he knew a communist mayor. And I say that because she used to visit Cuba—Castro—Karen Bass. And he knew that she wouldn’t rebuild it and would try to have high-density affordable housing. You know what I mean? That’s just a buzzword for we’re going to—look outside Rome or Amsterdam or Paris. We love those high-rises. They have a little bit of lawn. And then the bus picks everybody up. And that’s what they want. Not for them. Not for them. They want a big, beautiful, gracious John Kerry or Elizabeth Warren house. That’s what they want. Or Nancy Pelosi’s three mansions or Barack Obama’s four. That’s what they want.  Sami Winc: Or Bernie Sanders’ three homes.  Victor Davis Hanson: He has three too. Yes, he does. One on the lake, of course. They have to have one. If you’re a Democrat and you’re a Socialist and you want high-density housing for everybody else, it’s absolutely important one of your many houses has to be on the lake. I think his is on Lake Champlain.  Sami Winc: Champlain, isn’t it?  Victor Davis Hanson: And Barack has two. He has one on the Atlantic and one in the Pacific, on the shore. And I don’t know about—Dianne Feinstein had one at Lake Tahoe, a mansion. They usually have them pretty near the sea.  Sami Winc: Yeah, and doesn’t it seem funny to you that they are offended by billionaires, but they want to take more money from the people via all of these excise taxes and things like that? And they’re just fine with the fraudsters that are taking it from them. Like, that’s OK. They’re spreading money around, but a billionaire doesn’t do that.  Victor Davis Hanson: They don’t believe it—when money is stolen or wasted, they think, well, who got the money? The people did. So they don’t mind. And then Hasan Piker, the Marxist pro–Luigi Mangione—he had a new Porsche. So I just did, before we started, I was curious. I said to Grok—and I’m going to check it with ChatGPT—does Hasan Piker have a Porsche, and how much is it worth? $200,000. Some people say he has Cartier jewelry or something, a watch or something.  Sami Winc: He looks like he has that kind of stuff on him.  Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. So you have a $200,000 Porsche, and you’re defending the guy who killed a middle-class person who worked his way up. UnitedHealthcare. I have UnitedHealthcare. I had over a million dollars in medical fees. There’s only been one little dispute. One dispute on a PET scan that I may end up having to pay, but I doubt it. I wrote them a very nice note.  So when he says that they just poach on people, I don’t know what he’s talking about. They insure millions of people. And they’re in financial trouble, mostly because of the medical fraud on the part of the Left, you know?  But it’s so weird that they’re not even shameless. So this Piker guy—and you praise murderers that kill what you call enemies of the people, or social murders, because they are social murderers—and then you are so brazen you drive around in a $200,000—wouldn’t a true Marxist say, well, I like that $200,000 Porsche, but let me do the math. Ah, I could buy four or five Honda Civics for the people, and I’d like to help them. And if we all—I suggest we all have a program that nobody on the Left buys expensive cars. No. This is nothing about ideology. That’s just the way they gain power for themselves and money.