There is a dimension to the latest developments in the redistricting wars that isn’t hidden precisely but isn’t getting the attention it should. Put simply, Donald Trump’s interests are rapidly diverging from those of his House Republicans.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just introduced a new Florida House map which purports to net Republicans an additional four seats in November. But Florida incumbents are more than a little spooked about it. They don’t like it. When you aggressively gerrymander a state, you do more than create more seats for your party. You also create some level of risk that that map will amplify a wave election into a true blowout. Thin the margin of your safe seats enough to create some more safe or favorable seats and all those existing seats become a bit more vulnerable. It’s only a real danger in a wave election. But that’s precisely what 2026 looks like.

This morning I was reading this Puck article about the public relations woes of the AI industry. In short, having the CEOs and industry leaders tell everyone for years that their product will lose jobs for half the population and quite possibly lead to the extinction of humanity led to some serious reputational challenges for AI. (The article is paywalled. But that and what follows includes the gist.) Author Ian Krietzberg correctly notes that this isn’t just blather or bad messaging. It’s an investment strategy. Silicon Valley venture investing is essentially a well-oiled FOMO machine. Getting people to invest means pumping up the disruptive, game-changing nature of the product. Disruptive dislocation is the basis of all Silicon Valley venture investing since it’s the basis of the stratospheric growth of a small percentage of bets which makes the whole economy make sense.

But that’s not the entirety of it. Or rather the mentality of the key players in the space is so bound up and shaped by the dynamics of the investment logic. In so many words, it breeds a feral mentality and personality type. It’s no accident that you have architects of that world having famous mottos like “move fast and break things.” It’s a culture based on hyperbole and valorizing transgressive attitudes and actions.

Straight off their hugely consequential ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which gave the Voting Rights Act of 1965 its final gutting, justices turned to the issue of temporary protected status for those fleeing turmoil in Haiti and Syria. Oral arguments began as soon as Justice Kagan finished reading aloud a portion of her dissent in Callais.

Success for the Trump administration in this case would set the stage for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to be ejected from the country, predominantly immigrants from a group that the MAGA movement has made a point of targeting. Vice President JD Vance and a cadre of MAGA aligned influencers infamously leapt on white nationalist talking points to stoke conspiracy theories about the large Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, which, they baselessly insisted, was eating pets. A lawyer for the Haitian TPS holders argued Wednesday that racial animus played a clear role in the administration’s decision to terminate the program for this group, a claim the conservative majority was ready to wave away.

You can see this new indictment of James Comey as an outrage. And it is — it’s a wantonly illegitimate act and abuse of power. I see it as more and clearer evidence of his crashing out and collapse, more direct and absurd lashing out at people on his grudge list while he is unable, unwilling to or lacks the mental wherewithal to right his own political ship.

It’s difficult to imagine anything more perverse, authoritarian, diseased or corrupt than the immediate push to back President Trump’s “ballroom” as a response to security failures revealed in the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It involves so many overlapping bad ideas, bad motives and even bad people that it requires a some organization and staging to cover them all.

Let’s dive in.

First, despite the chorus of claims, this was not in any sense a security failure. It was a success. A man rushed a security perimeter inside the Washington Hilton — far from the actual festivities and protectees — and he was stopped. Initial reports suggested the gunman was stopped just before or even while entering the ballroom. Neither is true. He was on a different floor. The point of Secret Service security is not to prevent every violent incident but any that endanger the President or other protectees.

One of my great meta-journalistic interests is to observe the moments when more or less obvious political realities enter D.C. conventional wisdom. They’re not strongly overlapping Venn diagrams. They often diverge pretty dramatically. I noticed one of those moments Saturday when Axios published this piece entitled “Term-limited Trump mortgages GOP’s future.” The headline mostly speaks for itself. President Trump won’t face voters again. So he’s increasingly indifferent to his political standing or perhaps more specifically unwilling to shift from or limit unpopular policies. It’s true that there are big consequences for Trump in the midterm elections. But even in the biggest blowout election Democrats aren’t going to gain supermajorities that would allow them to pass veto-proof legislation or remove Trump from office. Given the scale of High Court corruption, investigations will amount to trench warfare.

As the Iran war drags on, I wanted to share some thoughts on the proper context in which to see the conflict. Donald Trump lost this war in its very first days. Everything that has happened in recent weeks — the threats, the negotiations, the live-on-social-media breakdowns — has simply been a matter of trying to get free of that fact. This isn’t a political attack. It’s simply an accurate appraisal of what we all see. More importantly, it is the only way to understand what is happening now. Everything that’s happening today and for weeks has been focused on breaking Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, something it didn’t have before the war started. That’s the definition of failure: fighting a war and continuing a war to clean up the mess the war of choice actually created. By this measure, the best way to achieve what is now the central war aim — opening the Strait — would have been simply not to start the war in the first place.

In a late-night Truth, Trump claims that the Southern Poverty Law Center was part of his grand, imagined conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and writes that his DOJ’s politicized prosecution of the non-profit is a step toward overturning his electoral defeat.

(Hat tip to law professor and election expert Rick Hasen who, like us, is not really sure what Trump is going for here beyond a kind of bête noire word cloud.)

Here’s U.S. Attorney for DC “Judge” Jeanine Pirro announcing that her office is dropping its investigation into the chair of the Federal Reserve:

Her attempt to save face here is accomplished by claiming the Fed Inspector General will take over her work. But, as various reporters have noted, Powell himself had already asked the IG to look into cost overruns. It’s not clear anything new is happening.

I mentioned this a bit earlier on Ari Melber’s show tonight when we were talking about the high-profile MAGA defections of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and others. I’ve seen various theories: It’s about the Iran War. It’s about AI Jesus. Yes, it’s about all those things, but as off-ramps more than causes or drivers. Trump looks like the weak horse and no one wants to bet on or be associated with the weak horse.