April 22, 2026 - Dems Notch Gerrymandering Victory in VA

There's a list circulating right now — eleven scientists, engineers, and researchers who have died or gone missing since 2022. The White House is talking about it. The FBI has launched a review. President Trump called it "pretty serious stuff." Stack the names together — NASA, MIT, Los Alamos, Caltech — and it looks like a pattern. Feels like something.

But look honestly at the cases. The Caltech astrophysicist shot on his porch? A suspect is already in custody. The MIT fusion physicist? Authorities linked his killing to a gunman from a separate mass shooting with a personal connection to the victim — someone who had gone to school with him in Portugal. The defense contractor who vanished? He walked away from his home carrying a gun, leaving behind his phone, wallet, and car — the profile of a mental health crisis, not a foreign intelligence operation. The retired Los Alamos employee who went missing? He was 78 and hadn't worked there in eight years. This isn't a pattern. It's a list. And a list is not the same thing as a pattern.

Consider the larger context: there are tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, researchers, and government contractors in the United States. Some of them die every year. Some go missing. Some suffer violent ends under entirely ordinary circumstances. We don't hear about those — because nobody makes a list of them. The list only gets made when there's a story to tell.

We've been here before — repeatedly.

In 2001, a string of shark attacks received blanket coverage after an eight-year-old boy lost his arm at a Florida beach on the Fourth of July. Tom Brokaw. Katie Couric. Time magazine cover. The "Summer of the Shark." Every subsequent bite became national news. Helicopters filmed sharks migrating off the coast. Experts were summoned. People in Montana were calling shark researchers in a panic. When the data came in, worldwide attacks were actually down from the prior year — 76 versus 85. Fatalities dropped from twelve to five. The sharks hadn't changed. Only the news hole had.

In 2019, a cluster of American tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic triggered mass trip cancellations and FBI inquiries. Nearly sixty percent of travelers pulled out. Tourism — seventeen percent of the country's economy — collapsed. The FBI found no connection between the deaths. The State Department confirmed there had been no increase compared to prior years. In a country visited by 2.7 million Americans annually, some people die of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure. Reported together, it looked like a conspiracy. It wasn't.

And then there's Halloween candy. For fifty years, parents have been warned to inspect their children's trick-or-treat haul for poison and razor blades. A sociologist named Joel Best spent decades searching for a verified case of a stranger killing a child with tampered candy. He found zero. The two real child deaths linked to poisoned candy were both committed by family members. The actual leading danger on Halloween is being struck by a car — a story that never quite gets the same airtime.

We are extraordinarily good at finding connections that don't exist — especially when someone hands us a well-formatted list, impressive credentials, and a hungry news cycle. The eleven names are real. The pattern isn't.

##

Virginia voters narrowly approved a mid-decade redistricting plan that could give Democrats a key advantage in the fight for House control, though legal challenges and looming decisions in other states may still reshape the broader midterm landscape.

The Hill

The UK has passed landmark legislation to permanently ban smoking for anyone currently 17 or younger, while also tightening vaping restrictions, in an effort to create a “smoke-free generation” and improve public health.

People

Iran fired on three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, escalating tensions and further complicating fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire efforts as global energy markets remain on edge.

Associated Press

Bobby Olivier argues that Bruce Springsteen’s politically charged Newark concert condemning President Donald Trump is undermined by high ticket prices and commercial practices that the author views as hypocritical and out of touch with his working-class image.

NJ.com

The FBI is now leading an investigation into a series of deaths and disappearances involving scientists and staff tied to sensitive US labs, though officials say the cases—spanning several years—appear unrelated and rooted in personal or isolated circumstances rather than any coordinated plot.

CBS News

In rare joint interviews ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary, former presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton emphasized democratic values, with Bush praising the First Amendment and Obama stressing that America has “no kings,” while urging unity despite deep political divisions.

NBC News

After nearly seven decades as a Democrat, lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz says he is switching to the Republican Party, citing what he sees as the Democrats’ increasingly mainstream anti-Israel stance despite his continued disagreements with GOP policies.

The Wall Street Journal

Thomas L. Friedman argues that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline policies have isolated Israel diplomatically and morally, urging President Donald Trump to pursue a NATO-backed strategy in Lebanon as a more sustainable path to regional stability.

The New York Times

New polling suggests President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have fallen into the mid-30s amid the Iran war and economic concerns, drawing parallels to George W. Bush’s steep decline during the Iraq war and signaling potentially dangerous political territory.

CNN

Dave Mason, co-founder of Traffic and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has died at 79, leaving behind a celebrated career that included the hit “We Just Disagree” and collaborations with icons like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

The Hollywood Reporter