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Sunday, May 17, 2026

Press Is Attacking Pratt, Ignoring the Dems Attacking Courts, and Overlooking the IdiAOC About Virginia

Press Is Attacking Pratt, Ignoring the Dems Attacking Courts, and Overlooking the IdiAOC About Virginia

Brad Slager | May 13, 2026

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Press Is Attacking Pratt, Ignoring the Dems Attacking Courts, and Overlooking the IdiAOC About Virginia — *Townhall Media*

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News Avoidance Syndrome – POLITICO

How do you tune your ears to only hear one side?!

At Politico, Josh Gerstein wrote a gushing piece on SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and in it, he opens with her defense of the courts from critical attacks:

You have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people. I just wish that people really focused on that and, therefore, stood up in some ways for the judiciary, when people — judges are being attacked and undermined, that is really an attack on our society.

Gerstein then helps her out and fills in the blanks. The attacks on the court come from a predictable (to Josh) President Trump.

Not mentioned at all by Gerstein are the lengthy examples seen from Democrats the past couple of weeks, as they had scathing outrage over the Louisiana redistricting decision, and, of course, the calls to impeach the members of Virginia’s state Supreme Court.

Speaking of attacks on the judiciary, we have this prime example. In an impromptu presser outside the Capitol, the deeply cerebral U.S. Rep Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) spoke on the matter of Virginia’s redistricting drama. She expressed dismay and disapproval that SCOVA ruled the new voting maps that were drawn were unconstitutional, specifically because the court ruled after the voters cast their votes.

Now we will leave it to interpretation whether it was willful deception by her or ignorance, but the Democrats had gone to the court and specifically filed to have them rule on things after the vote, and the court complied. Either way, she was peddling misinformation.

But none of the gathered journalists dared to challenge her on this detail in the matter.

Both Kinds of Standards – THE INDEPENDENTS

History, once again, began with Trump’s inauguration.

There is an old chestnut spoken in legal circles that during a trial, you should never ask a question of a witness for which you do not already know the answer. This is wisdom that Mehdi Hasan could have heeded before looking bad. Another wise phrase is that it is never wise to repost Aaron Rupar.

In uttering his disgust with the way the president treats the press, Hasan asked when it became acceptable for the president to insult the media.

Now, I could get deep in the weeds with Hasan and point to the times our early presidents had contemptuous relationships with the newspapers, but instead, we just need to backtrack a couple of years. You remember Joe Biden, don’t you, Mehdi?

He was the president who saw journalist Steve Baker arrested, and he is on the record insulting Peter Doocy in Trumpian fashion. Just thought I’d help you with the research…you did not want to engage in it yourself.

Prose & Contradiction – POD SAVE AMERICA

Suddenly, past comments are a serious matter…unlike what we were told weeks ago.

Many people are recognizing that in the race for Mayor of Los Angeles, Spencer Pratt is making waves and impressing more people. A sign that he is worrying the Left is seen in the Pod Save Bros deciding to try to lash out at the candidate. Jon Favreau dug up an old tweet from Pratt where he was touting Alex Jones – from about 15 years ago.

Not only is this the kind of exposé to cause shrugs across the country, but it is also particularly amusing to see this from the same guy who tried to platform Graham Platner and excused away his years of deeply problematic posts.

Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – POLITIFACT

When you try recasting a Democrat by saying “that’s not what he said”, maybe don’t post what he said…?

In an effort to clean up for U.S. Rep. Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) and to slam his critics at the same time, PolitiFact saw a need to clean up after the minority leader regarding his comments about “Maximum Warfare.” We get the trademarked methods of this site when it needs to recalibrate the facts to deliver a narrative. Republicans are taking his words out of context, and “The soundbite lacks larger context.”

The effort by Amy Sherman is to not give more, but less, as she narrows his words to mean only, and strictly, the redistricting efforts taking place.

Small problem for Amy, however. She not only gave Jeffries’ full quote, but her cleanup attempt also had his poster used at that presser displayed, where he distinctly says, “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All The Time.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/bradslager/2026/05/13/press-is-attacking-pratt-ignoring-the-dems-attacking-courts-and-overlooking-the-idiaoc-about-virginia-n2676050?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-mp8eKupvVt&utm_term=&_nlid=mp8eKupvVt&_nhids=ncrzZsxWINqDls

Democrats Doomed to Cling to Their Poisonous Policies, Says ... The Atlantic?

Democrats Doomed to Cling to Their Poisonous Policies, Says ... The Atlantic?

Ed Morrissey

The phrase "quit while you're behind" comes to mind ... for everyone else but Democrats, apparently. Now, even The Atlantic has begun sending warning flares.

The current freakout over Louisiana v Callais may fill up campaign coffers, but the party's determination to cling to racial set-asides in all areas of policy has alienated its former core constituency, warns Richard D. Kahlenberg. Working-class voters want policies that improve their lives directly much more than they worry about diversity, equity, and inclusion quotas in either the public or private sectors. Watching Hakeem Jeffries et al propose utter nihilistic destruction of public institutions as a response to color-blind policies and rulings will shortly spell disaster for Democrats:

Racial preferences in college admissions have long been deeply unpopular, and three years ago, the Supreme Court declared them unlawful, in a sweeping ruling that portended doom for other race-conscious policies to promote diversity or remedy past discrimination. Some research indicates that, in the aftermath of the civil-rights era, the achievement gap between rich and poor students now dwarfs the gap between white and Black students. Even so, well-intentioned blue-state Democrats keep pushing for race-based affirmative action, to their own political detriment, rather than supporting a much fairer policy of providing a leg up to economically disadvantaged people of all races.
In February, the California State Assembly passed, by a 54–14 vote, a measure seeking to place on the November ballot a change in the state constitution to allow racial preferences in K–12 education and in higher-education scholarships. (The state Senate has not yet acted on the measure.) In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a 375-page Racial Equity Plan last month that said, “New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation and racial oppression”; among other measures, the plan reaffirms the city’s intent to steer contracts to minority-owned businesses. Late last year, Democratic supermajorities in the Maryland House and Senate overrode Governor Wes Moore’s veto of legislation to study reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.
In huge swaths of the country, the Democratic brand has become anathema. The party will struggle to recapture the White House and reclaim the Senate unless it can persuade some red-state voters to take a fresh look at it. One obvious move would be for the Democrats, who have hemorrhaged working-class voters, to abandon their stubborn support for politically radioactive racial preferences. Significantly more Americans believe that economically disadvantaged people of any race deserve special consideration in admissions and employment decisions, and such efforts do not run afoul of laws against racial discrimination. Nevertheless, many Democrats cannot bring themselves to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling—or the public’s attitude—even when doing so would help their prospects immensely.

"Anathema" would explain the 2024 election results ... had Democrats nominated someone who could speak competently and coherently on policy. Unfortunately, Kahlenberg's eventual theory went untested because Democrats anointed Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden on the ticket after Biden's senility went on full display in the June 2024 presidential debate on CNN. Harris not only couldn't speak on policy, she also avoided policy entirely as part of the Democrat strategy to "disqualify" Trump and set up Democrats as the only alternative. That strategy blew up in their faces as Trump won the popular vote and all seven swing states to dominate the Electoral College, but Democrats have refused to change their strategic approach since then.

We'll get back to that point again shortly. First, Kahlenberg wonders why Democrats won't listen to voters. He quotes a study from professors at UC Berkeley (!) and Yale that recognizes how unpopular their positions on DEI, LGBTQ, Israel, and social policies in general are with voters, particularly in the working class. A move away from these positions would generate enough benefit at the voting booth to make them competitive, but ...

First, there is substantial variation across issues in the effects of moving to the elite middle. For Democratic candidates, the largest gains from moving to the elite middle tended to be on social and cultural issues, such as affirmative action and LGBTQ issues, where the party’s standard positions are relatively unpopular. For Republicans, the largest gains tended to be on economic issues (healthcare, minimum wage, and Social Security), where the party’s standard positions diverge most from voter preferences.

In other words, there's gold in them thar middles, for politicians willing to credibly stake their claims and policies there. Abigail Spanberger and Virginia Democrats succeeded by doing just that – only to betray voters with an extreme-Left power grab that blew up in their faces. Just because Spanberger lied through her teeth doesn't negate Kahlenberg's argument, although it does make it more difficult for voters to trust Democrats claiming to be moderates.

So why won't Democrats give up support for these policies? The party has suffered an ideological capture by the Left, not through working-class liberal populism but by Academia-based, Queer Theory activists determined to rule rather than govern. John wrote earlier about Jamelle Bouie's argument, which explicitly makes the case for rule rather than governance. Bouie wants to save the democracy village by destroying it, to use the old Vietnam War reference; Democrats aren't interested in winning hearts and minds, to extend the analogy further. They are only interested in power, to impose their agenda on a populace that keeps rejecting it.

If anyone doubts this, Virginia serves as an example again. Having violated the state constitution in their attempt to impose a gerrymandered map, Democrats now want to eliminate the state supreme court and the entire state government rather than appeal to voters legally and legitimately on policy. Instead, their approach can be summed up thusly: You will be made to care.

By any means necessary.

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/05/13/democrats-doomed-to-cling-to-their-poisonous-policies-says-the-atlantic-n3814905?utm_source=twdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Online Lib Lawyers: Dumb or Lying?

Online Lib Lawyers: Dumb or Lying?

Kurt Schlichter

Online Lib Lawyers: Dumb or Lying? — *AP Photo/Susan Walsh*

I was a lawyer for about 30 years, and I’m picky. I despise bad lawyers. They are both intellectually insulting and professionally offensive. I dealt with a lot of bad lawyers in my time: dishonest ones, devious ones, and a lot of dumb ones. Now, I don’t define a bad lawyer as somebody who just disagrees with me. Literally every lawyer I encountered disagreed with me—that’s how law works. There’s a difference between disagreeing with me and being an idiot. But most of the lawyers out there in the political sphere are idiots.

Now, I need to inject a note of caution because, as you’re well aware, there is always a question that arises when a leftist talks – whether he is an idiot or thinks you are an idiot. In other words, are these lawyers on Twitter stupid, or do they believe that you are stupid enough to believe them? Let’s look at the recent decision in Callais. Contrary to what you’ve been told—which is that the U.S. Supreme Court said black people can’t have representation in Congress—what the Court held is that the Voting Rights Act, which is designed to ensure that everybody has a fair chance to participate in the political process, does not require certain districts to be designed so that only black people can be elected. Note that the black people in these Black districts are always Democrats. If they were black Republicans, the Democrats wouldn’t care, of course. It’s like with illegal aliens. If there were hordes of lawyers flooding our borders and driving down hourly rates, every attorney in America would be complaining that Tom Homan is too much of a sissy and needs to ramp up deportation times 100 plus mine the Rio Grande.

In any case, the Constitution is clear that you can’t discriminate on the basis of race. It violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. And the statute at issue, the VRA, doesn’t even talk about creating black districts. That’s an invention. So, there’s a rationale behind this decision, one that’s not simply “Republicans hate black people.” But you wouldn’t know that from the legal discourse. Instead, you get the impression from all the idiot lawyers that we’re about to re-enter the era of the Democrat KKK because we are not deciding about representation on the basis of race. It’s like they didn’t even read the decision, but it’s not necessary for them to read the decision—not for the purpose that they have, which is propaganda, not explaining exactly what’s going on. You think that the Constitution, in fact, allows racial districting. That’s a dumb but wrong analysis, but lots of people are dumb and wrong. But they’ve skipped over the part about analyzing what the Court said and went straight to the helping-Democrats-with-their-propaganda-messaging part.

What happened in Virginia is similar in that none of them actually talk about the law. If they talked about the law, normal people might think, “Wait a minute, this decision kind of makes sense.” In fact, the Virginia decision makes a lot of legal sense. When you hold a referendum on an issue, the rules for that referendum apply. That shouldn’t be a surprise—all elections have rules, although Democrats don’t seem to like that. They prefer Calvinball, in which the rules change to let them win every time. But that’s not how the law works; that’s how children and communists work.

So what happened in Virginia? Well, a few years ago, they changed the Commonwealth’s constitution to require that a nonpartisan board control redistricting. That itself is constitutionally suspect, but that’s not an issue here in this case. Well, with the Republicans fighting back against Democrat gerrymanders—yeah, the Democrats started it, no matter how much they lie about who threw the first punch—the Democrats decided that they needed to redistrict Virginia to score an extra four seats. However, that pesky constitutional amendment that they supported got in the way. With a very narrow majority after that weird apple-doll-faced CIA agent wine woman got elected, they decided they were going to give it a try. Now they’re very specific about how you must have an election between the time the legislature proposes a constitutional change and the time the people vote on it. That’s right there in the Constitution. It gives the people of Virginia the chance to tell their legislature whether they do or do not want to proceed with a referendum. Well, since elections are now like four months long, when the Democrats proposed it, the intervening election was already going on, and 1.3 million Virginians had already voted. You see the problem—the intent is to let the people have a say through an intervening election, and those who already voted don’t get to have their say. Remember, every vote counts, according to Democrats, except when it’s inconvenient. In any case, the Virginia Supreme Court decided that the word “election” means election and therefore invalidated the referendum because the Democrats did not have an intervening election. There were also a whole bunch of other reasons it could have thrown it out—other violations of the rules—but one of the principles is that the court stops when it gets an answer. So those issues were never addressed.

Of course, you never hear this from the Democrats. They never tell you what’s going on. They never try to explain how “Oh, it was perfectly proper to have an intervening election when 1.3 million people had already voted and were effectively disenfranchised,” because that’s obviously insane and ridiculous. Instead, their answer is usually that the Virginia Supreme Court is part of the giant right-wing conspiracy. The best answer any of them ever gave is to complain about a “technicality”—the “technicality” being that the Democrats violated the law. Well, I guess that’s a kind of “technicality,” since the law is by nature technical. In any case, the stupid-versus-lying question arises yet again.

See, here’s the thing about the law. You either have the law, or you have something else to determine how power is exercised. And there’s only one something else. That’s raw power. If you don’t have the law, you just have the will of the guy who’s stronger. And, unfortunately for the Democrats, the guys with the guns are always stronger. They should know that, since they love Chairman Mao, who famously observed that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Right now, we have all the guns. We have all the training. We have all the cards, except one. We don’t always have the law. Sometimes the law requires us to do things we don’t want to, and we submit—for now. You see, the law is not just a sword. It’s a shield. And the big mistake the Democrats are making is that they don’t understand that they’re the ones who really need that shield. But if they keep going the way they’re going, they may well find out.
The hard way.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2026/05/13/online-lib-lawyers-dumb-or-lying-n2675910?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-3FbHKBG3y5&utm_term=&_nlid=3FbHKBG3y5&_nhids=ncgMncgztDQnls

Saturday, May 16, 2026

JD Vance's Explosive Fraud Crackdown Is About to Make Some Blue-State Governors Very Nervous

JD Vance's Explosive Fraud Crackdown Is About to Make Some Blue-State Governors Very Nervous

By Ben Smith

Vice President JD Vance took the podium Wednesday afternoon, and dropped the biggest anti-fraud announcement of the Trump administration yet. A $1.34 billion Medicaid deferral against California. A nationwide moratorium on new hospice and home health licenses. A first-ever Medicaid War Room. And a 50-state ultimatum: prove you are prosecuting fraud, or lose your federal, anti-fraud funding.

As my colleague Ward Clark reported earlier on Wednesday, the task force has (so far) accomplshed a $1.4 billion suspension of fraudulent hospice and home health operators.

'That Is Stopping Today': VP Vance, Dr. Oz Announce Pause in Medicaid Payments to MN Over Fraud

Some next level stuff from Vance:

This is just basic good government, pushing back on anyone who would frame the crackdown as partisan. "We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare. But we can't do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters.

.@VP on stopping rampant fraud: "You may think of this as purely a red state or blue state issue. That’s actually not true [...] This is just basic good government [...] We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare. But we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters. So we encourage — whether it’s California or New York or Maryland or Ohio — we encourage people to work with us."

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz broke down the California deferral: $630 million in billing from the top 5 percent of outlier providers, $500 million tied to personal care spending growing at twice the national rate, and $200 million in questionable immigration-related expenditures. Oz called it "the largest deferral we've ever made."

The hospice numbers were starker. One-third of all U.S. hospice providers are located in Los Angeles alone. Federal officials believe at least half are fraudulent, which is the context behind 800 suspensions. Of those 800 operators, fewer than 20 called to contest it. "At least 780 are not even trying to claim that they're not fraudulent," Vance said flatly.

The state-level failures were just as damning. Hawaii: zero indictments through its entire Medicaid fraud program. New York: nine indictments on a $100 billion program. Indiana, with one-third of New York's population, produced four times as many. "Hawaii, New York, California — they have completely not taken the fraud issue seriously," Vance said.

Letters went out Wednesday to all 50 state Medicaid programs demanding proof of active fraud prosecution — or else.

JUST IN: JD Vance CONFIRMS the Trump administration is PROBING governors for potential CRIMINAL liability in covering up fraud "We've seen reports of, for example, Gavin Newsom in California or Tim Walz in Minnesota getting these reports that there were fraudulent activities happening in their states and they're looking the other way." Walz and Newsom are going to have some sleepless nights coming up

Task force executive director Andrew Ferguson put it plainly: "Some states have turned anti-fraud money into a jobs program for blue state lawyers."

For states that won't act, the administration now has the tools to act for them. The new Medicaid War Room, a cross-agency, real-time claims monitoring operation, pairs CMS, the DOJ, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and state partners to stop payments before they go out the door. Its predecessor, the Medicare Fraud War Room, has already stopped over $2 billion since launching in 2025. Oz's bottom line: fixing Medicare fraud alone could "double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund."

Vance also put Democratic governors on notice, saying the administration is examining whether Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz "looking the other way" on known fraud rises to criminal liability. Minnesota already sued over an earlier deferral, and lost its bid for a restraining order.

OJ Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, in an email, called the announcement "music to the ears of every conservative state financial officer." His message to the White House: "Look no further, help is already here." On Wednesday, Vance said:

We are not going to have a generous country if Americans think that they're paying their taxes not to needy people, but to fraudsters.

With roughly $94 billion in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments estimated for 2025 alone, the administration is signaling this crackdown is only getting started.

You can watch the full event below:

I'm California Dreaming About Karen Bass Losing Her Job

I'm California Dreaming About Karen Bass Losing Her Job

Stephen Kruiser

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Canzzebrusook felt that capers could be both ostentatious and amusing if served with crème fraîche and a hint of irony.

While this is specifically about the Los Angeles mayoral race, it's also about being in the political minority for a long time.

Even though California remained perfectly blue for the purposes of the 2024 presidential election, there were some redward shifts in precincts similar to those we saw elsewhere. It may not have been a revolution, but it was encouraging.

To the surprise of none of us on the right, California keeps swirling down the toilet while the Democrats are in charge. That's led to some very faint hopes for the Republican Party in both the gubernatorial race and the mayor's race in the City of Angels. Republican Steve Hilton is solidly in the top two for the open "jungle" primary for the race for governor. The top two advance to the general election, no matter the party.

In Los Angeles, former reality television star Spencer Pratt is running as a Republican, and his campaign has been absolutely brilliant. His experience in television is evident in the production value of every ad, as well as in his charisma in front of the camera. What's really helped his candidacy, though, is the fact that he lost his home in the Palisades Fire, enabling him to hit Bass hard in her greatest area of vulnerability.

Because California is still California, Bass leads in the polls. Pratt has been surging of late, however, thanks to independent voters. He's a real street fighter, which helps when mixing it up with veteran politicians. This is from something Catherine wrote yesterday:

Mayor Karen Bass’s Los Angeles uses taxpayer funds to provide free needles to drug addicts, fueling the homeless drug crisis in the city rather than solving it. Bass is now suddenly distancing herself from the program as her Republican opponent, Spencer Pratt, has released a devastating new ad on the pernicious program.

Here's the ad:

Her disastrous handling of the Palisades Fire may be, as I wrote earlier, her biggest vulnerability, but her tenure as mayor is a laundry list of brain-dead policies and failures. She should have already been laughed out of this race. Pratt may have a real shot.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.

The California GOP has been one of the biggest clown cars in American politics for a couple of decades now. It probably doesn't know what to do with a couple of candidates who could win when they weren't supposed to. Think of a football team riding a 20-game losing streak that finds itself within a field goal — or even ahead — against a superior opponent in the fourth quarter. It's rarefied air, and teams like that rarely know how to close the deal.

Very often, municipal and state races that seem like gimmes for one party could have been won by the underdog with a slightly better turnout in a handful of precincts. If said underdog party doesn't have the organization to get more people to the polls, the best it can do is come oh-so-close and forever wonder what might have been.

The Republican Party at large has never been very strong with its get-out-the-vote efforts. President Trump has begun to change that culture, but the California GOP probably hasn't gotten up to speed on that. Every election day, Democrats deploy an army of union lackeys to drag people to the polls, whether they want to go or not. It's a formidable obstacle to overcome.

The wild card in the Los Angeles mayoral race is the unmitigated awfulness of Karen Bass. It's nigh on impossible to put lipstick on the pig that is her legacy as mayor. Pratt has the money to keep attacking Bass for the duration. He may very well be able to inspire a flood of independent voters to propel him to victory. He's so good at staying on message that some Democrats could shed their blinders. His potential path to a win is loaded with ifs, but the fact that he's in the conversation at all is miraculous.

I lived in Los Angeles for almost 25 years and have long called it my second hometown. It's heartbreaking to see what it has become. It's only been eight years since I left, and the damage that the Democrats have done in that relatively short period of time has been staggering. I'm too jaded to get my hopes up about Spencer Pratt knocking off Karen Bass, but not so jaded that I've stopped believing in miracles.

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2026/05/14/the-morning-briefing-im-california-dreaming-about-karen-bass-losing-her-job-n4952825?utm_source=twdailyamvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl