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Drop Site Daily: May 6, 2026

Shamai Leibowitz Informed Comment  I am a Jewish American-Israeli, and a veteran of the IDF. But according to the University of Michigan administration, I am someone who needs to be protected from the truth.  On May 2, the University did not merely censor this year’s commencement speech. It treated the mention of Palestinian humanity as a […]

The FBI raided the Portsmouth, Virginia, office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, a Democratic leader in the state behind its redistricting victory, on Wednesday, ostensibly over corruption allegations.  Lucas, an 82-year-old great-grandmother, has been a frequent critic of Republicans and President Trump, and is an ally to Virginia’s Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger. Fox News covered the FBI raid live. NOW: An FBI raid is unfolding at the office of Virginia Democratic State Sen. Louise Lucas — and it’s already drawing serious attention.Multiple people on the scene are reportedly being taken into custody as agents move through the area.The office sits near several cannabis… pic.twitter.com/WIcn9xrzOy— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 6, 2026The bureau reportedly has multiple search warrants, and is also raiding a cannabis dispensary co-owned by Lucas next door. Lucas has frequently advocated for marijuana legalization, and in 2022, her business was found by the Virginia Mercury to be selling delta-9 THC, a substance illegal to sell in Virginia, although many of the products in her store were found to be mislabeled. Lucas is combative on social media, posting memes in support of Virginia’s redistricting effort and going toe-to-toe with Republicans like President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz. That could be why she’s being targeted by the FBI, which under director Kash Patel has vindictively pursued Trump’s critics. This story has been updated.

The FBI raided the office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, a Democratic leader in the state behind its redistricting victory, on Wednesday, ostensibly over corruption allegations.  Lucas has been a frequent critic of Republicans and President Trump, and an ally to Virginia’s Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger. Fox News covered the FBI raid live. NOW: An FBI raid is unfolding at the office of Virginia Democratic State Sen. Louise Lucas — and it’s already drawing serious attention.Multiple people on the scene are reportedly being taken into custody as agents move through the area.The office sits near several cannabis… pic.twitter.com/WIcn9xrzOy— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 6, 2026This is a developing story.

President Donald Trump dismissed claims Wednesday that the White House ballroom has suffered cost overrun after its price tag skyrocketed from $400 million in private donations to $1 billion sourced from American taxpayers. Trump claimed that there was no cost overrun because he’d previously announced that the cost of construction had gone up. “The only reason the cost has changed is because, after deep rooted studies, it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal, which would not have been adequate to handle the necessary events, meetings, and even future Inaugurations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This was a necessary change, it was done long ago, but the Fake News failed to report it, trying to make it look like there was a cost overrun. Actually, it is coming in ahead of schedule, and under budget!” Trump added. Trump originally claimed that the project would only cost $200 million, but that number later ballooned to $300 million, and then $400 million after he decided to tack on extra construction. The ballroom had previously been paid for by private donors, many of whom held multi-figure federal contracts.  Then, earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley requested $1 billion for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom’s construction. Trump is simply pretending the outrage is over the old price tag, and not the exorbitant one Senate Republicans hope to pass, which will come at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. Trump’s defense rings especially hollow, considering that the DOJ launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the cost of renovations to the Fed’s office buildings. The suit was a pretext to attack Powell as he tried to maintain the agency’s independence from the White House. In March, Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas for the criminal case against Powell, finding that the government has produced “essentially zero evidence” to substantiate its claims.

Only 17 percent of voters nationwide give Chuck Schumer a positive approval rating.

Mississippi Republicans plan to hold a vote to redraw the state’s congressional map in a building central to the legacy of segregation.The special legislative session is scheduled to take place on May 20 in what is now known as the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, ostensibly due to renovations in the House chamber in the newer Capitol building. But the Old Capitol was the site of Mississippi’s vote to secede from the union over slavery in 1861, as well as the location where lawmakers met to establish the state’s 1890 constitution enshrining Jim Crow segregation against its Black population.“I was a little taken aback with the location of the Old State Capitol,” Democratic state Representative Kabir Karriem, who heads Mississippi’s legislative Black caucus, told The Guardian. “Even though they said that they were doing some remodeling, the optics of it are horrific for 1.2 million Black folks here in the state of Mississippi.”The redistricting vote is only possible because of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act set up to protect the voting rights of Black Americans across the South. The Supreme Court ruling removed protections against racial gerrymandering, allowing states like Mississippi to redraw their districts without any protections for Black voters.The chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party, Cheikh Taylor, said the special session was about “power, and making sure Black Mississippians never have enough of it to threaten the people who currently hold it.”“And now they plan to do it in the Old Capitol, the same building where Mississippi voted to secede from the Union over slavery, and where white supremacist delegates crafted the 1890 Constitution that stripped Black citizens of their voting rights and ushered in decades of poll taxes, literacy tests and racial terror,” Taylor, who is also a state representative, said in a statement. “Rep Kabir Karriem is right. It is a slap in the face to the 1.2 million African Americans in this state. It is also a confession. They are returning to the scene of the crime to try and finish the job.”Republican-run states across the country are hastily moving to redraw their districts, not just because of the Supreme Court but also at President Trump’s urging as he attempts to avert a bloodbath for the GOP in November’s midterm elections. Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black people of any state in the U.S., at about 38 percent. Soon, they may not have a single member of Congress working in their interest.