“It looked like a salamander.”
That’s how a Boston newspaper described the twisted shape of a new voting district in 1812. Governor Elbridge Gerry had signed off on a redistricting plan so blatantly engineered to keep his party in power that one district coiled across the map like a mythological beast.
The salamander has a history in mythology far different from the small amphibian we picture today. The ancient Greeks believed they could extinguish fire. Saint Augustine used salamanders to illustrate the Christian concept of purgatory –– not everything that burns is consumed, he said. In Europe, salamanders were dragon-like in appearance, with fire-breathing proclivities.
Thus was born the term Gerry-mander — a joke at first, but then, like the supposed fire-breathing nature of ancient salamanders, something far less benign, and far more dangerous. Today, the voting district of Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a hard G like the name Gary) isn’t funny anymore.
Today, politicians have access to software that can sort voters with microscopic precision — by race, income, zip code, education, and how long someone spent viewing the posts of Kamala Harris on TikTok vs. the videos made by Donald Trump.
They can draw districts that all but guarantee the outcome of an election before a single vote is cast. The fire-breathing creature is no longer a myth, and the corruption that follows its slimy trail is harming us all.
In Texas, Republican lawmakers, at the request of President Trump, are pushing for a new redistricting plan to give themselves an even greater political advantage than the one they already have in the 2026 midterm elections. And Texas isn’t alone. Similar power grabs are underway in multiple other states.
But this is not about giving your team every advantage in an otherwise fair matchup. This is a wholesale rigging of the game, and it’s time the rest of us call this extreme partisan gerrymandering what it really is: a form of government corruption.
Here’s why:
1. Politicians get to choose their voters
In a healthy democracy, voters choose their representatives. In an unhealthy democracy, one that is rapidly sliding towards authoritarianism, politicians are selected for their party allegiance and voting districts are chosen for them to ensure their stronghold on power.
After the 2010 census, Republicans in Wisconsin used this detailed demographic data to create new maps that strongly favored them, and it worked. By 2018, Democrats won 53% of the statewide vote, but Republicans held 63 of 99 seats in the legislature — nearly two-thirds of the seats.
Democrats have used gerrymandering to their advantage too. After the same census in Maryland, maps were redrawn to break a Republican stronghold, and the effort to flip a congressional seat from red to blue was successful.
When parties draw maps to protect themselves, they shield themselves from accountability, and voters become little more than pawns on a map: it’s corruption via cartography.
2. Destroying competition and incentivizing extremism
When maps reliably create voting districts that aren’t competitive across party lines –– which party will win is a foregone conclusion in most districts –– the only real competition politicians face is in primary elections. But primary elections have notoriously low voter turnout, and the people who do show up tend toward the political extremes. Choosing a candidate based on ideological purity is often more important to a primary voter than picking a leader with workable ideas that are more broadly appealing.
In 2024, Trump beat Harris in Texas by a 56%–42% margin. But the new maps proposed by Republicans are poised to give red voters a 79%–21% advantage.
Democracy thrives with a broad marketplace, where the best ideas, no matter which party generated them, should be able to rise to the top. Extreme gerrymandering eliminates this competition that is inherently good, and moves the country toward –– you guessed it –– authoritarianism.
3. Cloaking power in legitimacy
Perhaps the most insidious effect of gerrymandering is how it makes elections seem democratic. But in reality, the map is inherently unfair. It’s akin to saying your youth football league is going to play competitive games by the rules, but in reality, the high school varsity team is routinely matched against ten-year-olds who are all under five feet tall and haven’t even begun puberty.
In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering is a "political question" beyond federal judicial scrutiny unless racial discrimination is involved. Now, Texas leaders are threatening to arrest or expel legislators who have left the state in an effort to keep the redistricting vote from coming to the floor. These are all things that further add to the notion that elections might seem to comply with the principles of democracy, but in truth, they more closely align with, yes, authoritarianism.
Why the salamander still matters
We treat bribery and lying under oath as illegal, because both subvert trust in government. So it’s time we call a spade a spade and admit that gerrymandering is being used to entrench power, deny competition, and insulate incumbents from being accountable to voters. And that is every bit as much a corruption of governmental power as taking money under the table.
Democracy is more than voting: it requires meaningful competition, and the efforts to eliminate it are the result of a fire-breathing beast we’ve created out of thin air.
GONE: mRNA Vaccines
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has canceled nearly $500 million in vaccine-development projects, a move that experts warn could weaken the country’s ability to respond to the next pandemic. The decision, announced by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., affects 22 federally funded efforts to develop mRNA-based vaccines for viruses like COVID-19, influenza, and bird flu.
mRNA vaccines, first widely used in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic, were credited with saving millions of lives. Instead of introducing a weakened or dead virus into the patient like traditional vaccines, they instruct cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response. “Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, “we would have had millions of more COVID deaths.”
But Kennedy has questioned the safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines, even though the technology has been developed for decades. (mRNA vaccines were used to fight the Ebola virus, for example, but because Ebola only impacted countries on the continent of Africa, the vaccine was not commercially available in the US.)
“After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefit for these respiratory viruses,” Kennedy said, referring to COVID-19 and flu vaccines. The HHS will shift funding to research to traditional whole-virus vaccines.
The newly canceled projects include work by major vaccine makers like Pfizer and Moderna. In May, HHS revoked a $600 million contract with Moderna for an mRNA bird flu vaccine. Kennedy has also removed COVID vaccines from the CDC’s immunization schedule and replaced all the members of the federal vaccine advisory panel.
The decision to cancel mRNA research funding “signals a dangerous complacency,” said Rick Bright, former head of HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency that manages vaccine research. “Disinvesting from mRNA strips us of one of the fastest tools we have to contain the next pandemic.”
It is also a departure from the stance of the first Trump administration. During the pandemic, Trump authorized Operation Warp Speed, a public–private partnership that led to the creation and widespread use of mRNA vaccines against Covid. It was widely considered a success.
The Confederate Return
A bronze statue of Confederate general, Freemason, and potential Klan member Albert Pike is scheduled to be fully restored and reinstalled by October. The statue, which honored Pike in his role as a Freemason, was toppled by protesters in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020, and was put into storage by the National Park Service.
The NPS is now restoring the statue as part of President Trump’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order instructed the Department of the Interior to determine whether “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology,” and to “re-instate” the public monuments if so.
DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a longtime opponent of the monument to a man who was unabashedly opposed to equal rights for Black Americans, said she will reintroduce legislation to move it permanently to a museum, where it can be treated as a historical artifact rather than given a position of honor in the city. She noted that “Pike served dishonorably. He took up arms against the United States,
misappropriated funds, and was ultimately imprisoned by his fellow own troops. He resigned in disgrace after committing a war crime and dishonoring even his own Confederate military service.”
New Epstein Subpoenas Issued
The House Oversight Committee has given the Justice Department until August 19 to hand over all files relating to the federal investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The House committee also subpoenaed former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and eight former attorneys general and FBI directors for sworn depositions. The subpoenas are part of a wider congressional investigation into how Epstein’s case was handled and whether any powerful people were protected.
The committee says it targeted individuals with direct oversight or public connections to Epstein’s prosecution and broader network. Bill Clinton was subpoenaed because he flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times in the early 2000s and was photographed receiving a massage from a woman later identified as a victim. Hillary Clinton was included due to reported ties between her political network and Maxwell. The subpoena mentions that Maxwell's nephew worked for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and for the State Department while she was Secretary of State.
The former AGs and FBI directors served during key periods of Epstein’s legal history — including the controversial 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida and the federal investigation that followed more than a decade later. These officials include Alberto Gonzales, who led the Justice Department when the original plea deal was negotiated, and William Barr, who oversaw the department when Epstein was arrested in 2019 and later died in custody.
The committee says the goal is to understand how the criminal justice system handled Epstein’s case across two decades — and why so few people were charged despite government claims that more than 1,000 victims were harmed.
An attorney for one of Epstein and Maxwell’s victims, Sigrid S. McCawley, wrote, “To date, law enforcement has only arrested these two individuals for crimes against countless young women and girls, and the Government’s suggestion that no further investigations are coming is a cowardly abdication of its duties.” She added, “Any effort to redact third party names smacks of a cover-up.”
The Speedway Slammer
Florida appears ready to build a second immigration detention center, this time southwest of Jacksonville. State records show officials have approved a $39,000 contract for a weather station and lightning alert system at what’s being called the “North Detention Facility.” It would be located at Camp Blanding, a Florida National Guard training site.
The new facility would add to the state’s current detention center in the Everglades, which goes by the name “Alligator Alcatraz.” That site officially opened last month and is made up of tents and trailers set up over a few days. So far, the state has signed more than $245 million in contracts related to it.
President Donald Trump has praised the Everglades center as a tough place for what he called the “worst of the worst,” and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said it could serve as a national model for other states that want to run their own detention systems. Civil rights lawyers have sued over the Everglades facility, claiming detainees are being held without charges, denied legal access, and kept in unsafe conditions. Florida officials dispute these claims
The Department of Homeland Security is also expanding detention capacity in other states. DHS announced a new partnership with Indiana this week to open what officials are calling the “Speedway Slammer” — a facility that will provide an additional 1,000 beds at the Miami Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison about 65 miles north of Indianapolis, where the Indianapolis 500 is held annually.
“Thanks to [Indiana] Governor Braun for his partnership to help remove the worst of the worst out of our country,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who added that the facility would house criminal illegal aliens arrested by ICE. “Avoid arrest and self-deport now using the CBP Home App,” she suggested.
The Indiana facility is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to expand state-run detention under the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which funds 80,000 new ICE detention beds and boosts state-federal cooperation.
Blackburn and Mace Running for Governor
Two sitting members of Congress — Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina — have entered the 2026 races to become governors of their home states. Neither state has ever had a female governor before. Both races are open contests, as Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee cannot seek third consecutive full terms.
Blackburn announced her campaign Wednesday in a video that opened with images of President Donald Trump. She promised to make Tennessee "America’s conservative leader" and said she would prioritize job creation, energy production, and defining “our boys and girls the way God made them.” Blackburn, who has served in public office for over 25 years, is joining a primary field that includes Representative John Rose, also a strong Trump supporter.
Mace launched her campaign Monday at The Citadel, where she made history in 1999 as the first woman to graduate from the military college. She later became the first Republican woman elected to the US House from South Carolina.
Mace has described herself as “Trump in high heels” and says she would focus on school choice, criminal justice reform, and eliminating the state income tax. Her opponents in the crowded field include Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, Attorney General Alan Wilson, and Representative Ralph Norman.
Both races are expected to be competitive — and closely watched nationally as Democrats and Republicans jockey for control of governor's seats and state legislatures.
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