Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Iranian economy teeters on the brink of total collapse, with inflation skyrocketing to a staggering 100%. Meanwhile, America’s naval blockade at the Strait of Hormuz has effectively choked Iran’s oil exports, delivering a devastating economic blow. Tehran’s leadership lies in tatters after precision U.S. and Israeli strikes, leaving the nation virtually rudderless. The blockade’s enforcement has already turned back 44 commercial vessels, effectively sealing off shipping routes to the Indian Ocean.
President Trump has declared victory in the military operation against Iran, stating emphatically that the United States has “already won.” In his characteristically blunt assessment, Trump announced that U.S. forces have “destroyed their navy, destroyed their air force…their anti-aircraft equipment, their radar equipment, their leadership. Their leadership is destroyed. We’ve destroyed everything.”
Among the operation’s primary objectives, Trump has repeatedly emphasized that Iran must never obtain nuclear weapons.
Iran’s unseen leader Mojtaba Khamenei – named to succeed his father after U.S. airstrikes eliminated him early in the conflict – remains defiant. Despite his government’s shattered state, Khamenei insists on reclaiming control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. President Trump has countered with an ultimatum: unless Iran completely relinquishes its grip on the strait, he will target Iranian power plants and bridges with devastating strikes.
Congress, invoking the War Powers Act of 1973, demands that the Trump administration either seek congressional authorization or cease military action. From a constitutional standpoint, however, Congress cannot unilaterally restrict presidential war powers through legislation. The law Democrats repeatedly cite is, in fact, unconstitutional.
On May 1, 2026, President Trump formally notified Congress that hostilities between the United States and Iran had concluded. No shots have been fired between the two countries since April 7. Despite the questionable constitutionality of the War Powers Act, Trump’s notification arrived precisely on the resolution’s deadline. Nevertheless, President Trump cautioned that the Iranian threat persists. In his letter to Congress, he explicitly stated that “the threat posed by Iran to the United States and U.S. Armed Forces remains significant.” In essence, President Trump has ended the shooting war while maintaining strategic vigilance.
Democrats remain critical, claiming the president never received congressional authorization to engage Iran militarily in the first place. As WLT Reports astutely observed, “…objection tells you more about the Democratic playbook than about the situation itself. If Trump had sought congressional authorization, those same senators would have spent weeks slow-walking hearings and turning the process into a political circus. The War Powers Resolution exists to prevent open-ended, unauthorized wars. Trump met the standard. No shots fired in nearly a month. Hostilities terminated. Notification delivered on time.”
According to Fox News and other news outlets, based on a presidential quip during a recent speech, Trump is now setting his sights on Cuba. The island nation, however, appears financially prepared to abandon communism. This time, no shots will likely need to be fired.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
One wonders if leftist political violence is now beginning to ooze its way into local conservative candidate races. There has been no evidence that the following situation is that kind of thing, but one definitely wonders…
The body of Barry Christian, a Republican Oklahoma state Senate candidate reported missing earlier this week, has been discovered inside a truck parked in an off-the-beaten-path rural area.
After mysteriously vanishing on Tuesday, the candidate was found dead two days later.
No evidence has been uncovered, or has been made public if any such evidence exists, regarding the cause of Christian’s death, but on the surface the whole thing is looking highly suspicious. Christian was reported missing on Tuesday after he failed to attend a scheduled meeting and was last seen driving the same truck found by officials, according to the Harmon County Sheriff’s Office. His truck with his dead body was found in a secluded wooded area. His daughter and family have released statements regarding the loss, and my heart goes out to them. Any loss, but especially one shrouded with this kind of mystery, must be horrendous to go through and my prayers and love go out to them.
Christian’s campaign site described the candidate as the kind of candidate the violent leftists that have performed assassination attempts on Donald Trump, and a successful murder of Charlie Kirk, would extremely hate. Conservative. MAGA. A small-town-America steeped-in-faith Christian candidate who vowed to proudly stand with President Trump and “fight for the traditional conservative values that make America great” if elected into office.
Again, there is no evidence regarding who murdered Christian, or if even it was a murder in the first place, for the investigation has only just begun – but on the surface this is exactly the kind of scenario that, on the surface, looks very suspiciously like the kind of thing that a violent political activist determined to kill his/her opposition would commit.
Hopefully, time will reveal the truth behind the mystery.
Waiting patiently.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
After nearly a year of investigation, according to FBI Director Kash Patel, prosecution of James Comey for his coded threat against President Donald Trump is necessary. An indictment has now been issued. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the indictment reflects a straightforward application of federal law prohibiting threats against the president.
The argument against the indictment is that it violates the First Amendment. In response, Blanche said that prosecutors will need to prove intent at trial, arguing that threats against the president are not protected speech. For the indictment to have been brought, a grand jury has already found sufficient evidence to proceed.
The alleged threat stems from an Instagram photo of sea shells spelling the numbers 8647, which Comey captioned, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” The 86 is a slang term for “to reject,” or “to get rid of.” It also means, “to kill,” of which the enemies of Donald Trump have recently adopted. Comey insisted he did not know what the numbers meant.
Comey later deleted the Instagram post, saying in a follow-up that he assumed the sea shells were a political message.
Comey has responded to the indictment stating he is “innocent and still not afraid.”
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
A bill has passed both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, funding all Department of Homeland Security agencies short of ICE and Border Patrol. President Donald Trump signed the bill Thursday afternoon. The new law formally ends the partial government shutdown.
Republicans indicate they plan to propose a reconciliation package that will not need to meet a 60-vote cloture in the U.S. Senate to separately approve funding for ICE and Border Patrol for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
The partial government shutdown lasted 76 days.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
In 1812 the term “Gerrymander” originated when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a redistricting plan to favor his political allies by manipulating district boundaries. Newspapers, critical of the practice, quipped that the new boundaries of one district resembled that of a salamander. A political cartoon depicted the contorted district as a “Gerry-mander” (with a hard “g” – it’s pronounced Gary-Mander), combining the governor’s name with the amphibian shape. Gerrymandering had actually been around since the founding of the country, albeit as an unnamed practice, with evidence reaching back into the first decades of the United States’ system under the Constitution of the United States in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
In 1788 the Anti-Federalists in Virginia drew congressional maps forcing federalist (federalist based on support of Federalism, not a member of the Federalist Party) James Madison to run against Anti-Federalist James Monroe in the same district hoping to keep Madison out of Congress. Madison won, anyway. A few decades later, Monroe became a staunch ally of Madison.
Gerrymandering intensified after the Apportionment Act of 1842 which mandated single-member districts, making gerrymandering a key tool in electoral politics. Since the very start, gerrymandering has been a key tool that has especially flourished during periods of extreme partisanship to establish both a partisan advantage, and in some cases racial discrimination.
Louisiana v. Callais has been ruled on by the United States Supreme Court, with the case centering on Louisiana’s map and whether state lawmakers were forced to improperly draw districts based on race. Despite being in an age of reverse discrimination thanks to a relatively long history of Affirmative Action, and more recently DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), none of which are constitutionally or lawfully supported, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that Louisiana was not required by law to create an additional majority-minority district.
Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion wrote, “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been used historically by partisans to claim districts dilute minority voting strength, which allows Democrats to use a racial twisting of districts in their favor. The Supreme Court ruling regarding Louisiana v. Callais reins in the gerrymandering practice where leftist legal teams pressure states to use race in redistricting which violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Alito explained that the Louisiana v. Callais decision is a warning to lower courts who have stretched Section 2 in a manner that has been compelling race-based decision-making. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution – not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”
Texas, California, Virginia, and Florida – along with a nice long list of other states – have been lobbing cannonballs at each other with their own redistricting schemes and Louisiana v. Callais could very well have a rippling effect on each of those battles.
According to Black Voters Matter, as a result of the ruling Republicans could end up with a significant advantage over new maps, perhaps swinging 19 districts in the direction of the GOP.
At about the same time, the Virginia State Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Scott v. McDougle, regarding the Democrats’ attempt to gerrymander Virginia in such a way that it would guarantee that 10 out of 11 congressional seats go to Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. While Virginia narrowly approved the redistricting referendum on April 21, County Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. ruled back in January that the constitutional amendment that ended up on the ballot violated the state constitution. On April 24, Virginia’s Attorney General Jay Jones, Democrat, filed a motion for an emergency stay of Hurley’s order. The Virginia Supreme Court denied their emergency stay – which means at the moment the Democrats’ gerrymandering scheme is currently dead in the water.
In Oregon, Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against the state, filed in 2024, charged that state officials have refused to remove ineligible voters from voter rolls, and in 35 of Oregon’s 36 counties the number of voters registered exceeds the number of voters who legally exist in those counties. Since 1998 Oregon has been a mail-in-ballot-only state, and the state’s registration method uses a motor-voter law which automatically registers a voter upon receiving a driver’s license – opening up the opportunity for ineligible voters to be added to the voter rolls without any regulatory supervision or oversight. Meanwhile, widespread voter roll maintenance failures have been occurring across the state. Judicial Watch has now won their case, resulting in Oregon being required to remove possibly up to 800,000 ineligible names on the state list of voter registrations, a number confirmed by Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read. About 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal. The remaining 640,000 inactive records will be process through future list maintenance efforts.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, explained, “Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections.” Federal law demands that states take reasonable steps to remove ineligible voters, those who have died, those who have moved, and those who have become otherwise inactive.
Colorado recently removed 372,000 ineligible voter names due to a Judicial Watch lawsuit and settlement. Kentucky has removed 735,000 ineligible voters from their rolls, New York City 918,000, and Los Angeles 1.2 million in recent voter roll maintenance operations.
According to North Carolina election officials, roughly 34,000 deceased individuals have been identified on the state’s voter rolls, yet another failure the Trump administration has been pointing fingers at over the last year. These irregularities are the reason the Trump administration is pressuring states to fix their voter rolls. The discovery comes as an added benefit of North Carolina’s effort to verify the citizenship status of registered voters.
As the U.S. Congress still fights over the passage of the SAVE America Act, which would require voter identification and proof of citizenship to register to vote, and while the voter rolls around the country are being cleaned up, polls show the current fight for the 2026 midterms to be an even split. If the poll is accurate, and it is also true (as I’ve believed for a very long time) that the Democrats manipulate elections with non-citizen voting, dead-people voting, and a variety of other corrupt election tactics, the purging of ineligible voters from the rolls, the courts disallowing their partisan gerrymandering tactics, and the passage of the SAVE America Act (which I believe will eventually get passed), the Republicans should be able to gain seats in both Houses of Congress through the midterm elections of 2026 – if GOP voters and voters disgruntled with the Democratic Party come out in droves – and I expect that they will.
Already, 71 percent of voters plan to participate in the midterms, and 67 percent of voters are already considering the 2028 presidential election.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
The Left’s Violent Behavior Encouraged by Violent Rhetoric
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Remember when you played cops and robbers as kids? There was never any doubt who the good guys and bad guys were. If you steal? Bad. Liars? Bad. Soldiers from armies trying to take over the world? Bad. Americans versus Commies? The socialist commies were the bad guys. The ones who wanted to kill their opposition? Bad guy for sure. There was no question that the socialist goose-stepping commies who wished to kill anyone who got in the way of their lust for power were the bad guys. Even as kids, nobody had to tell us who the good guys were, and who the bad guys were.
There were no assassination attempts against Presidents Obama and Biden by deranged, gun-wielding conservatives because true conservatives are not violent by nature, and there is no public rhetoric from the Republican Party activating any crazy radicals that may or may not exist in conservative MAGA ranks. Sure, I have no doubt those presidents received death threats. Every group has its crazies. But Republicans tend not to be the breeding ground for violent political killers. Pretty much every mass shooting has been by crazed leftists, after all – and lately by woke trans-individuals who have bought into the ungodly transgender agenda. Of course, lefties always default to January 6 to try to prove there is such thing as violent Trump supporters – which means they had to manufacture it with agitation and a production that Hollywood might be jealous of in order to show that anyone other than them might have a politically violent bone in their body.
There have been three assassination attempts against President Trump (that we know of), and Republicans have been pointing at Democrats for their dangerous rhetoric that many believe is instigating the political violence.
There’s an old saying. Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire. Violent rhetoric is the same. The language of violence coming out of the mouths of Democrats is a verbal expression of a physical desire. They claim Trump is a modern-day Hitler, they call for “Maximum Warfare,” and to be honest their violent rhetoric is becoming a popular feature among candidates in the Democratic primaries.
While Democrats say they condemn the violence that has led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and multiple attempts on the life of President Trump out of one side of their mouths, the fantasies of murder continue to escape from the other side. In 2022, Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones texted about putting “two bullets in the head” of a former Virginia Republican House speaker, and wishing gun violence upon the man’s children. Democrat Eugene Vindman re-endorsed Jones’ after the text came to light, not viewing the violent rhetoric as a disqualifier for political office. Virginia Democrats then overwhelmingly elected Jones, along with Abby Spanberger for governor (who campaigned as a moderate, but has been anything, but), and Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor.
Former administration staffer Maura Sullivan posed with a man holding a sign that included “86 47,” radical left shorthand for “86-ing” (getting rid of or killing President Trump) as first encouraged by former FBI Director James Comey’s seashells post on social media.
In Maine’s Senate race, Democrat candidate Graham Platner has suggested that violence is a justifiable means to forwarding social change. He’s running against longtime Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins, and has since deleted his comments posted on Reddit. He wrote that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history. [A]n armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” Platner, described himself at the time as a “communist” and expressed a loathing for all police officers. This is the same Democrat who once had a Nazi symbol on his chest, but shrugged it off as fellow democrats rallied around him.
Leftist lawyer-turned-TV reporter Mike Sacks has not only called for defunding ICE, but while calling Trump adviser Stephen Miller a fascist, added (paraphrasing a Michelle Obama mantra), “When they go low, we kick them in the teeth.” Jolanda Jones, a Texas Democrat, used the same Michelle Obama slogan, but said, “If they go low, I’m going to the gutter.” She then urged Democrats to “fight ugly.”
According to an NBC News poll, 60% of registered voters believe “extreme political rhetoric” was a key contributor in Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Republicans blamed rhetoric by the widest margin – Democrats not so much.
Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told the Federalist in an email, “Voters are waking up to just how reckless and unfit this party has become.”
I hope so.
A leftist Wisconsin brewery owner is promising free beer on the day President Trump’s death is on the minds of federal law enforcement officials, urging the next would-be Trump assassin to improve his “marksmanship.” “Well, we almost got #freebeerday,” Bangstad wrote in now-deleted posts after a gunman stormed past a security post, set on murdering President Donald Trump and administration officials in attendance at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
And, let’s not forget Madonna dreaming of blowing up the White House.
President Trump is not the first Republican to receive this kind of rhetoric, though it seems to be on steroids with 45/47. On July 11, 2007, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams gave a keynote speech to the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas, Texas, remarking with laughter and applause from the audience, “I mean right now, I could kill George Bush, no problem…I would love to be able to do that.”
And while the word “kill” is likely used by opponents of every President, an American Thinker study revealed the word “kill,” and its derivates used within the same sentence has appeared as follows for three of our recent Presidents:
Bush in 2001: 1,280
Obama in 2009: 2,608
Trump in 2017: 7,890
These usages occurred within the first six months of their respective presidencies according to the Lexis-Nexis database.
Republican Presidents, and John F. Kennedy who would definitely be considered a Republican today, who were assassinated or subjected to attempted assassination all were victims of repeated calls for political violence against them. If history reveals anything, it is that when our political and academic culture is creating violent pro-assassination rhetoric, it creates a cultish desire among their followers to carry out the violence.
The line between words and weapons has been dangerously erased, and the consequences are now playing out in blood. As the body count rises and assassination attempts become a terrifyingly regular news cycle, the left’s violent rhetoric is no longer just background noise – it’s a loaded weapon pointed at the heart of our republic. History has shown us that when a political culture normalizes calls for murder, it inevitably produces murderers willing to answer that call. The question is no longer whether this dangerous language will lead to more violence, but how many more lives will be shattered before we acknowledge that words have consequences and those who incite murder must be held accountable before their fantasies become our reality.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary