☕️ GOING F-SHAPED ☙ Thursday, April 23, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Judge Hurley guts the Virginia gerrymander, the Fifth Circuit hangs the Ten Commandments, and Judge Murphy accidentally breaks Big Pharma's vaccine pipeline — right before flu-and-covid season.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup includes: a Virginia judge torching the Democrats’ 10-1 gerrymander less than 24 hours after Election Night, the President reading 2 Chronicles in the Oval Office while AP chokes on a pretzel, the Fifth Circuit handing Texas a Ten-Commandments win and the ACLU a map to oblivion, Judge Murphy accidentally breaking Big Pharma’s vaccine pipeline right before flu-and-covid season, and Secretary Hegseth sets the vaccine mandate machine back several notches.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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Yesterday, Law Commentary ran a terrific story headlined, “Judge Strikes Down Virginia Redistricting Amendment, Voids Special Election Results.” The New York Times completely ignored this development, instead running a front-page story headlined, “How ‘Yes’ Won a Narrow Victory in Virginia’s Redistricting Battle.” It did not mention the judicial loss at all. Don’t begrudge them; they wanted to stretch out their narrative a little longer before grappling with reality.

It happened fast. Really fast. Tazewell County Circuit Judge Jack Hurley’s order was issued within a business day of the election, and within hours after the vote was final. He ordered the Commissioner of Elections not to certify the results of the state’s widely reported redistricting race— a race that would have handed Democrats over 90% of Virginia’s congressional seats even though nearly 40% of the state’s residents are registered with the GOP.

The proposed new map has been both praised and mocked for its marvelous “creativity.” Despite all that creative line-drawing, it barely “won” by only three points. In other words, they stopped counting after they got the win.

Tuesday’s ballot referendum asked voters to approve the redistricting bill —a constitutional amendment— while describing its legal effect as “restoring fairness.” I did not make that up. It could have more accurately said “to eliminate all but one Republican congressional district,” but Democrats went with the equivalent of “free Ozempic.” This violated a Virginia constitutional requirement that proposed amendments “accurately describe” their effect, which was just one of the seven things Judge Hurley found illegal.

Judge Hurley also found that the law placing the amendment on the ballot violated various clear rules in the Virginia Constitution, so he struck it down and blocked the election results from having any effect. He called the bill’s “restoring fairness” description “flagrantly misleading.” He said the bill was rushed, violating a constitutional requirement of at least 90 days between passing a bill and holding an election on it. It also broke a rule requiring amendments to wait for the next House general election— which won’t happen in Virginia until 2027. It also broke a rule requiring amendments to be limited to a single issue.

The vote itself was characteristically hinky, although no trad-media was brave enough to mention it. Independent analysts reported that the redistricting surged into first place during late-night mail-in ballot counting, featuring yet another statistical anomoly in which 73% of ballots oddly went “yes”— even though the in-person electorate only ran around 45% yes.

More oddly, there were three distinct “f-shaped” surges throughout the night’s counting in a single county, which rescued the failing bill and then barely nudged redistricting approval over the top— what the Times blandly called “a narrow victory”:

Is it just me, or do these late-night f-shaped surges always go the same direction?

President Trump noticed it, too, and called the election “RIGGED”:

Like the Times, most of corporate media ignored Judge Hurley’s order striking down the election. Maybe it will just go away if we ignore it hard enough. The last thing they need is any headlines like “Judge Immediately Strikes Redistricting Vote Down as Illegal.” Wherever trad-media did report the story, every single headline focused on the pending appeal, which hasn’t been filed or even drafted yet. For example, here’s the Hill’s version:

Not one of the stories I reviewed, including the Hill’s article, cited any actual reason for the appeal, such as whatever Judge Hurley supposedly got wrong.

Judge Hurley’s 5-page order is tight, well-written, clear, and provides very little for the appellate courts to work with. I won’t predict anything —you know how it’s going in the courts these days— but he made the order as difficult to overturn as a circuit judge could possibly do. I can’t wait to see what state AG Jason Miyares comes up with in his appellate brief.

Meantime, the Virginia referendum has failed. Its legal shortcomings are now exposed in a judicial finding —in plain language— and were so obvious that the judge got the order out the same day the vote finished counting. Calling it a mere narrative setback is far too kind.

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Speaking of things the corporate media largely ignored, yesterday, as part of a week-long Bible-reading project, President Trump read 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 (nearly 3 minutes long). The AP covered it as straight news, headlined, “‘If my people’: Here’s why the Bible passage Trump read aloud is so potent and polarizing.” The passage calls for national repentance, is often read at rallies and prayer breakfasts, and is downright frightening to progressive journalists.

CLIP: President Trump reads from the Bible in the Oval Office (2:39).

The 2 Chronicles passage the President read includes these well-known words: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

During the week-long reading event, timed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of US independence, hundreds of lay people, prominent conservative figures, politicians, and members of the administration are also reading passages, including War Secretary Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It will continue until they’ve read the whole Bible, front to back.

The AP was largely alarmed by this. It invoked the terrifying specter of Christian nationalism, whatever that is, while glancing around nervously for signs of imminent lightning strikes. So far as I can tell, there is no agreed-upon definition of “Christian nationalism,” and in Corporate Media it usually just means “whenever Christians talk about the Bible outside of church.”

So, in that sense, I suppose the AP was right. Make of this historic development what you will. But consider it in light of the next story.

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In another under-reported story, also about “Christian Nationalism” (if I understand the terminology), on Tuesday PBS reported, “Appeals court rules Texas can require public schools to display Ten Commandments in class.” The ACLU said it was “extremely disappointed” in the Fifth Circuit’s 9-7 decision overruling two lower court decisions, which means it was great news for everybody else.

Under a new 2025 law, on September 1st, Texas’s public schools would have been required to hang up Ten Commandments posters. But in two separate cases, federal judges promptly enjoined the requirement, of course, both in Texas and in Louisiana (under a similar new law). It left schools split. Some schools went ahead anyway using private funds. Others breathed sighs of relief, because the last thing they need is the words “Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery” staring down their necks every minute of the day and constantly judging them.

I’m not exaggerating. Here’s how one NBC story reported a teacher’s response to the Ten Commandments. She said the Decalogue means “zero” to her students, who apparently prefer more relatable commandments like “just be kind” and “don’t steal our art supplies”:

We obviously have a long way to go. Encouraging kids to “Be a good person” is not especially helpful without instructions as to what a “good person” does. Which is exactly what the Ten Commandments provide. Educate the educators.

Texas’s law does not punish or sanction teachers who refuse to comply. Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote for the majority and explained that hanging Ten Commandment posters does not establish any religion. “The Texas law does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” Judge Duncan wrote. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

Nevertheless, the ACLU vowed to appeal to the United States Supreme Court— where it will likely lose. In 2022, this same Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District overturned a 50-year-old “Lemon” test (Lemon is the name of a previous ruling, not the Thirty Rock character) and said courts should instead interpret the Establishment Clause “by reference to historical practices and understandings.”

Under the new Kennedy rule, lower courts are told to ask whether a particular practice fits within the nation’s historical traditions, and whether it involves actual coercion. Not just whether some hypothetical “reasonable observer” might be ‘offended,’ or might see it as endorsement. In other words, mere exposure or offense is no longer enough to show an Establishment Clause violation under the Kennedy framework.

Commentators interpret Kennedy as a “final nail in the coffin,” not only for Lemon, but also for “offended observer” standing. This means people who just feel excluded by a religious display can no longer get into federal court at all. Plaintiffs must now show a particular injury beyond their emotional reaction or their feelings of exclusion. If a particular practice —like hanging the Ten Commandments in schools— has been part of America’s historic traditions, then it is now fair play.

America is rapidly returning to its historic Judeo-Christian heritage after a fifty-year dalliance with secular humanism. Sorry, humanists.

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It’s really very funny how things work out sometimes. Just when you think all is lost, and you’re staring at Life’s Pink Slip, Providence turns around and hands you a bonus instead. So it was with this week’s Reuters story, headlined, “COVID shots, newer vaccines in limbo after US court halts Kennedy’s advisory panel.” Reuters didn’t mean the good kind of limbo, where you take coconut rum shots and try to dance under a pole.

Regular readers will recall last month’s bad news for MAHA, after Judge Brian Murphy decided that the members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee (ACIP) weren’t qualified, and he ordered them to stop meeting altogether. Next, the CDC published a proposed rule change to its ACIP standards to explicitly require the committee to include members across a broad range of fields —including vaccine injuries— and not just vaccine manufacturing. But that will take months of public comment before they can put the committee back together.

Blackpillers lost all hope. They focused on this one “loss,” a tiny blip among an ocean of wins. But I encouraged everybody to hang on, and wait to see what happens. Let them work. Voilá— behold the first surprising and encouraging turnaround.

Judge Murphy —to clever by half— accidentally created a Big Problem for Big Pharma. “The ruling leaves the CDC without a functioning advisory body to recommend new vaccines or updated uses of existing ones,” Reuters explained. It quoted —who else?— the CDC’s former Satanist Demetre Daskalakis, who complained, “It’s just uncharted territory.”

Ten minutes before that, Daskalakis was still high-fiving his corporate sponsors over Judge Murphy’s order pulling the ACIP’s plug. Whoops. (Don’t worry about Demetre. As of February, he is gainfully employed as ‘Chief Medical Officer’ at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, an LGBTQ-focused health center in New York City, and is quoted by trad-media in every single story about MAHA, Kennedy, the CDC or HHS.)

Here comes the twist, the “uncharted territory.”

Flu/Covid season is rushing toward us like an out-of-control cash train. Very soon now, all annual vaccine updates will need CDC approval and guidance for doctors and insurers. For instance, every year, both covid and flu vaccines have ‘updated’ annual formulations that must be green-lighted by the CDC, which in turn relies on recommendations from the ACIP.

Without the committee’s recommendations, the CDC can’t approve the updated jabs. Nor, without a functioning ACIP, can it approve any other new vaccines. Checkmate.

This is the most bureaucratic kind of chaos, which makes it even more entertaining than it sounds. Judge Murphy’s vaccine-panel war has left the CDC without a functioning advisory body. Unless something changes quickly, the fall vaccination season could arrive without approvals for annual flu and covid boosters, leaving those jabs and any new vaccines in limbo, with insurance coverage questions sliding around like loose scalpels in the back of a speeding ambulance.

This is exactly what happens when judges try to micromanage health agencies. Your move, Judge Murphy. What will you do now? Start reviewing vaccines in court?

💉 That wasn’t all this week’s great jab news. In a related story, the New York Times reported, “Pentagon to Stop Requiring Members of Military to Get Flu Vaccines.” Not covid. Influenza. One of the longest-standing vaccine mandates in history. War Secretary Hegseth just struck it down.

Any servicemember who wants a flu shot can still get one, for free. But Hegseth called the mandate “absurd and overreaching.” The War Secretary explained, “We will not force you, because your body, your faith, and your convictions are not negotiable.”

The Times, perhaps sensing it is losing the medical freedom war, decided to only quote Republicans. Republicans who like mandates. It reported that Hegseth’s anti-mandate move caught Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, “off guard.” Probably not thinking too carefully, Senator Wicker blurted, “You know, you do give up certain rights when you take the oath; it’s just part of it.”

But to me, this looks like part of the military’s broader mission to remake its fundamental character. Try to imagine which type of people might refuse to join our volunteer army, or might rage-quit, because it doesn’t mandate flu vaccines. Am I wrong? Let me know in the comments.

And let’s not rush past the tiny report that the rule change caught Senator Wicker off guard. The Trump Team is doing things without telegraphing them in advance, depriving the rabid media of its normal opportunity to undermine and create chaos. For our entire lives, the usual political playbook has been: (1) float a deniable trial balloon, (2) see if it survives the media gauntlet and public opinion, and (3) if it survives, then do it; and if it doesn’t look good, just say you never meant to do it in the first place and quietly sneak off for a round of golf.

President Trump has ripped that classic playbook to shreds. His strategy is simpler: just do it without telling anyone first and let the media play catch-up. It is masterful. Nobody knew you could do it this way. He’s rewriting the American political process in real time.

This would be an even bigger story if the military had banned all mandates. Measles, mumps, and polio all remain on the list (assuming a servicemember didn’t get those vaccines in childhood). Anthrax remains possibly required, depending on deployment. Since most countries require certain basic vaccines for legal entry, it’s not completely outrageous to have service members prepared for quick travel in national security emergencies.

But … who knows what might be on the chopping block next? Stand by for updates.

I know everyone wanted all vaccine mandates of any kind banned immediately in a single executive order on Day One. That would have been enormously gratifying. Instead, MAHA has been waiting impatiently for mandates to die on the operating table. But obviously, the Administration has concluded it’s better to kill vaccines with a thousand tiny scalpel cuts.

It’s slower than we’d like, but it’s happening. Stay optimistic.

Have a terrific Thursday! Slide back here tomorrow morning, for your terrific Friday roundup of essential C&C news and commentary.

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