Better in their words…

JEFF CHILDERS MAY 9, 2026

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the all-good-news Weekend Edition Roundup: the Virginia Supreme Court strikes down a $70-million Democrat gerrymander; Pete Hegseth invites home the warriors discharged for refusing Biden’s jab; Trump quietly brokers the longest Russia-Ukraine ceasefire of the war; and the Pentagon’s much-anticipated UFO files prove the only aliens worth worrying about are already running our state legislatures.

 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Sometimes a headline is so delicious and satisfying that I simply mustscreen-grab it for you, and this morning’s New York Times version was one of the best yet:

Imagine the excruciating pain experienced by the NYT headline editor forced to greenlight a headline including “Huge Blow to Democrats” and a “major victory for Republicans.” Anyway, that’s how badly Democrats are taking the final inglorious end of their most hopeful gerrymander law, which would have swapped Virginia’s current 6D-5R maps for 10D-1R.

The gerrymandering law was so flawed that not even Virginia’s liberal Supreme Court could rescue it. They’d approved the gerrymandering bill after 40% of voters had already cast ballots without it. The court, not unreasonably, was skeptical of changing the ballot in mid-election.

It was a setback, and for a reaction, the Times reported on progressives’ emotions. “Democrats seemed despondent over the decision,” the Times wrote. “They had invested eight months and nearly $70 million to pass the referendum.” That’s a lot, even in 2026 dollars. Will anybody be fired?

Now, as the Times said, it’s all “wiped away.” They just lost $70 million of donor money that can no longer be spent on the midterm races. Money shredder go brrrrrrr.

It’s not like we didn’t warn them. Mike Young, Virginians for Fair Maps, said: “On the first day Democrats tried to enact this scheme, we said it was illegal and unconstitutional.” Kamala “Chuckles” Harris, who herself was installed without a single primary vote, laughably complained that Virginia’s Supreme Court “ignored the will of the people.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem “Praise be to Allah” Jeffries (D-NY) whined bitterly, “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.” Don Scott, Virginia House Speaker and the named plaintiff in the case, said “voices of the people matter” even as he pushed the referendum through with 40% of ballots already cast.

The most ironic grousing was excreted by Gavin “Hairdo” Newsom, who spat, “MAGA has rigged the system.”

Alert readers will recall that it was the Virginia gerrymander that made all this Democrat despondency politically possible. Remember that, before Virginia’s Dems rushed the last-minute measure onto the in-progress ballot, Indiana Republicans had high-mindedly declined to “unfairly” redistrict that red state (and then paid the price).

But, after Virginia’s blatantly illegal trickery and all-costs maximalism, Republicans all around the country became highly motivated.

So now, between this Virginia ruling, SCOTUS’s Voting Rights Act decision (Callais), and state-level redistricting in TX (+5), FL (+4), MO (+1), NC (+1), TN (+1), LA (+1), SC (+1), and AL (+1), the Cook Report projects Republicans will net +8 House seats from redistricting alone. Democrats went from only needing to flip +3 seats to needing +11— a nearly insurmountable margin.

They literally redistricted themselves into a worse position than where they’d started. “While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering,” the article admitted, “they are broadly struggling to keep up.” That’s one way of putting it.

🔥 Yesterday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tweeted about the decision. He finally said what I’ve been telling you since last fall (and on which I recently doubled down on in my polycrisis article). As far as I know, this is the first time a top Trump Administration official has made this prediction. Behold, the last two paragraphs of Todd’s tweet, which I’d argue describes the polycrisis without naming it:

Meanwhile, overnight, Virginia’s Democrats launched a long-shot petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. I would explain how wildly unlikely that is, but the Times grudgingly made the case for me, right in its own story:

I give their SCOTUS appeal zero chances. They almost certainly know it, too. It’s probably just a play for time. For what? Who knows.

In one amusing clip, Bill Maher was gobsmacked. “It seemed only a few weeks ago, maybe months ago, that it would be impossible for the Democrats to lose this election- no way,” he began. “Well, headline today: way.”

CLIP: Bill Maher explains how “Republicans are winning the gerrymander war (1:28).”

We expected corporate media’s unmitigated gaslighting that Trump’s redistricting battle plan would backfire. But too many Republicans who should have known better also boarded the doom bus. For example, Representative Jay Obernolte (R-CA) said, “It was a mistake to go down this road.” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) called GOP gerrymandering “bad for our country” and said “nobody should ever go down this route.”

But now, the President has been fully vindicated— even by the Grey Lady herself. Doubters are now welcome to apologize.

Like I keep saying: Let the man work.

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I apologize for all the “I told you so’s” lately, but what can I say? We’ve been awash with opportunities lately. Next up: I’ve told you the covid wars weren’t even close to over. Yesterday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a Department of War COVID-19 Reinstatement and Reconciliation Task Force. They are making everything new again.

CLIP: War Secretary Hegseth announces back pay and restitution for all discharged soldiers who refused jabs, even if they don’t return to service (2:22).

Between August, 2021 and January 2023, about 8,700 courageous servicemembers were involuntarily discharged or separated by the Biden Administration for declining the military’s mandatory experimental covid shots. Around 4,000 were not even honorably discharged, but got ‘general’ discharge terms along with a reprimand, which penalized their re-enlistment options and reduced their benefits.

“Under the leadership of President Trump,” Hegseth said, “the War Department is committed to doing everything we can to make it right. We want warriors of conscience — warriors who made a principled stand for truth.” (The phrase ‘warriors of conscience’ would have gotten a 2022 Pentagon staffer fired. Same words. Same office. Different planet.)

Any servicemember discharged for refusing the covid jab, who wishes to re-enlist, will be reinstated at their original rank with full back pay and benefits. “You were mistreated by the Biden Pentagon, and we are fixing that injustice.”

Second, “even if you do not intend to return to service,” the Secretary continued, “the War Department will provide a path for resolution of unearned bonuses, upgrades to discharge characterizations that will unlock your well-deserved benefits, and removal of adverse documents from your service files.”

Finally, he addressed the future: “I have directed a review of policies and decision-making to ensure that we do not go down this path again.”

This is terrific news for our servicemembers. Both those who bravely resisted Biden’s tyrannical jab mandates, and even those who gave in— who’ll now never face mandates like them again. (Last month, Hegseth even canceled long-standing flu shot requirements, making that seasonal jab optional for the first time.)

It’s easy to connect these dots: flu shots made optional last month; covid-mandate discharges undone this week; a directed policy review behind both. The Biden-era mandate culture isn’t just being repealed— it’s being nuked from orbit.

But more significantly, this proves the backlash against covid mandates continues. It shows people are still as quietly furious now as they were back when Biden was stiff-legging it across the lawn and the Autopen was scribbling like a runaway robot. Covid still remains a powerful political tool, so powerful that corporate media completely ignored Hegseth’s announcement. They remain terrified of it. And they should be terrified.

This still isn’t over, not by a long shot.

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The President quietly made more history yesterday, this time in the all-but-forgotten Proxy War. Reuters reported, “Trump says Russia and Ukraine have agreed to his request for a 3-day ceasefire and a prisoner swap.”

To frame this the proper way: Just imagine the political possibilities if Trump wraps both the Iran War and the Ukraine war before the midterm elections. Suggestively, Democrats have been doing their level best to memory-hole their brave little green-sweatsuited comedian. What Proxy War?? Last week, James Woods noticed the deafening silence:

Three years ago, Zelensky was Churchill in a green hoodie. Now he can’t even get a Ukraine-flag-in-bio.

Since the Proxy War started in February 2022, Ukraine and Russia have made several attempts at short cease-fires, usually on major holidays (Christmas, Easter, the usual ones). All prior ceasefires held like duct tape in a tornado. All were quickly violated by one side or the other within hours.

The new, historic, three-day ceasefire deal came after “substantive talks” between US and Ukrainian officials in Miami yesterday, with US envoys scheduled to visit Kiev “in coming months.” Trump’s ceasefire is the longest of the war so far, and was the first brokered by the Americans. It is best viewed as a trust-building exercise— get both sides to honor three days, and then push for an extension.

The POW exchange —1,000 per side, meaning 2,000 families will be reunited— gives both leaders a quick optics win to help sell the ceasefire domestically. It’s a textbook Art-of-the-Deal incremental close— and the first one Putin’s picked up the phone for.

The Proxy War is back on the midterm menu.

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Here we go again! Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “U.F.O. Files Released by U.S. Shed Light on What the Government Knows.” The Department of War released the first set of 162 documents out of “millions of records, including some that exist only on paper”— which are all apparently being reviewed for declassification by someone who must be consuming near-fatal amounts of caffeine.

According to the official announcement, the government was providing “maximum transparency” by dumping over 160 files dating back 80 years. This first set included FBI case files, intelligence reports, and videos from military platforms worldwide.

Naturally, the internet went wild. People were expecting high-definition, 4K footage of little green men shaking hands with the President. They were expecting blueprints for hyperdrive engines. They were expecting, at the very least, a clear photograph of an alien spacecraft.

But we got what more of what we always get: grainy, flickering, jumpy shots of blurry dots flapping around like gnats on the camera lens.

It is difficult to explain this consistent blurriness. We live in an era where a teenager on TikTok can accidentally film a crystal-clear, slow-motion, high-definition video of themselves falling off a hoverboard. We have satellites that can read the expiration date on a discarded Yoplait container from low Earth orbit. We have Ring cams with better resolution than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yet, somehow, whenever a multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art military aircraft encounters a highly advanced extraterrestrial vessel, the resulting video looks like it was filmed through a jar of Vaseline by a person suffering from severe hiccups.

One of the newly released videos, for example, purports to show an “eight-pointed star” streaking across the sky in 2013. The footage, shot using an infrared sensor, shows a blob that looks less like an interstellar cruiser and more like a lint ball stuck to a microscope. The official description notes that it has “arms of alternating length,” which is exactly how I would describe a squished Daddy Longlegs.

Another file includes a “composite sketch” with an “FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay” depicting a metallic object hovering over a field. Translated from bureaucratese: “We had a guy draw a picture of what somebody said they saw, and then we put a fancy border on it.”

There is also a transcript from the Apollo 17 astronauts describing “very bright particles or fragments” tumbling past their window, which they said looked like the Fourth of July. The official caption noted that a preliminary analysis suggests it could be a “physical object.” Thank goodness for the experts. Without their ‘preliminary analysis,’ we might have assumed the astronauts were just hallucinating space confetti.

The pro-alien and no-alien camps were having a pretty crazy day. Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist who used to lead the Pentagon’s anomaly resolution office, tried to burst the bubble. He stated that there is no bombshell evidence of aliens in these files. He explained that many of these viral videos of speedy, pill-shaped objects are actually just “the thermal bloom of jet engines” captured by infrared cameras.

In other words, the military is chasing its own exhaust fumes. Which is fine so far as it goes. They have to chase something. But then why collect the fume videos into classified files? It’s a rare federal program that concludes “we didn’t actually need to investigate this.”

True believers insisted that the government is still covering up the realevidence. They pointed out that, if aliens can master faster-than-light travel and anti-gravity propulsion, they can certainly invent a cloaking device that makes them look exactly like a blurry dot on a Navy pilot’s targeting screen.

Personally, I am starting to think that the aliens are doing this on purpose. They’re gaslighting us. If you were a highly advanced inter-dimensional being visiting a planet where the dominant species spends its time arguing about “kings” on the internet and eating deep-fried Oreos at state fairs, would youwant to be seen clearly? Of course not. You would keep your distance, fly erratically, and make sure you always look like a smudge.

While we may not yet have the definitive proof we were hoping for, we do have 162 new files to analyze, debate, and turn into profitable YouTube discussion videos. And who knows? Maybe the next batch of declassified files will finally contain the smoking gun. There’s still ‘millions’ of pages to go.

Until then, the only aliens we can see clearly are the ones in front of the cameras, screaming “MAGA rigged the system” while losing 26-7 in Alabama. Maybe Fox Mulder was right — the truth is out there. He just had the wrong ‘there.’

Have a wonderful weekend! And Happy Mother’s Day to all our C&C moms. We shall return on Monday morning with more essential news and caffeinated commentary.

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