There's a slogan used by those who support redistricting reform that is worth starting with today: "Voters should pick their politicians; the politicians shouldn't be able to pick their voters." But the process of designing districts -- for U.S. House of Representatives seats as well as state legislative seats -- has long been a political process. The word "gerrymandering" was coined to describe a Massachusetts governor (Elbridge Gerry) who, while serving in office in 1812, approved a district so convoluted that a newspaper drew it as a mythical lizard with the name "the gerrymander." The name stuck, which shows you this sort of thing has been going on for over two centuries now.

Usually these battles are fought immediately after the decennial Census, as states have to adjust to a new number of House members (whether fewer or more). But it's not illegal for a state to redistrict mid-decade, which has been happening more and more frequently over the past couple of decades.

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Today's job numbers are bad. There's no getting around it. So Donald Trump reacted to this bad news by immediately firing the messenger. Which is really bad. "Banana republic" bad, in fact. We should all expect Trump to name the next head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who will then dutifully report next month that "in August, America added eight million new jobs, thanks to our Dear Leader's brilliance." Because that is obviously what Trump wants to hear, instead of any proof that the fantasy world he inhabits in his head is rosier than the actual reality in which the rest of us live.

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As we head into the next few years, America will be experiencing more and more 250th anniversaries. Unlike the bicentennial we went through in 1976, these events will apparently be called by a number of different names (take your pick): semiquincentennial, sestercentennial, bisesquicentennial, or just quarter-millennial (I'm sure we'll all settle on one of these, by next July 4th). In any case, and whatever you call it, last Saturday was the 250th birthday of what became today's United States Postal Service.

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Today, former Vice President Kamala Harris ended all the speculation about her mounting a campaign to become California's next governor. By doing so, she amped up a bunch of speculation about her mounting a campaign to become president in 2028. As a Californian, I have to say I am relieved that Harris won't be running for governor next year, and I am also profoundly unexcited about the prospect of Harris running for president.

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A half-century ago, a piece of conventional political wisdom was born. President Richard Nixon was eventually forced to resign his presidency due to the Watergate scandal -- the first time this had ever happened in America -- and the phrase: "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up" was born. The quote is not ascribed to any individual, it just became a commonplace way of talking about the scandal that engulfed Nixon and his administration. Today, in a sort of meta way, the White House is once again engulfed in a scandal, except this time it is once-more-removed. It's not the crime or the cover-up, it has now become "the cover-up of the cover-up" that bedevils Donald Trump.

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We have to begin today with an absurdity. It's been that kind of week....

This week, Donald Trump proved once again -- beyond the shadow of a doubt -- that his understanding of basic mathematics would be considered sub-par in any random fifth-grade math class in this country. Most 10-year-olds could spot Trump's glaring error, to put that another way.

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Back in the before-times... back when politics was fairly normal... we all had a special name for the time of year when Congress gives itself a 5- or 6-week vacation and political stories are thin on the ground. It was called the "Silly Season." It earned this moniker because in the dearth of actual political news being made, the mainstream media political types would zero in on some story that was (for one reason or another) just completely ridiculous. Mountains were made out of molehills. Idiotic stories would get blown out of proportion and enormous amounts of ink and airtime were devoted to dissecting whatever silly story everyone was obsessing about. A good time would be had by all, until Congress finally returned in September and started generating some actual political news once again.

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Lo and behold, Democrats have finally found a good political narrative, heading into their big summer break. For once, they have woven a few disparate political issues into one poignant, easy-to-understand storyline. And for once, they are (so far, at least) all singing in unison from the same songbook.

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Congress is eagerly getting ready to take an enormous chunk of time off once again. The Republican House of Representatives even pushed their final day in session up by one day, to get a jump on their extended "August break." But to be fair, they didn't do this because they were over-eager to go on vacation, instead they did it out of political necessity, since they had earlier announced that there wouldn't be any more floor votes until after the break. And they did this because they are terrified of the entire Epstein files issue. So my question at this point is what are their own voters going to say to them when they do go back to their home districts? Are we going to see lots of videos of town halls where their constituents rake them over the coals for not forcing the public release of the full Epstein files, or will it be more of a non-issue?

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Why is Russia so special to Donald Trump? Why does Trump always give Vladimir Putin a free pass? Those are questions that have long been asked (for various reasons), ever since Trump entered politics. But no matter what the actual answer is (many have speculated, but nobody truly knows, other than Trump himself), the fact that Trump treats Vladimir Putin's Russia with kid gloves is an incontrovertible fact.

The most recent glaring example of this is how Russia has (up to this point) been declared exempt from Trump's global trade war. Trump has been all over the map with his tariff threats, but one part of it has remained consistent: a 10 percent tariff on all countries, no matter what. This initially included every country Team Trump could find on a map -- including one solely populated by penguins -- but not Russia.

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