In case you’re wondering what kind of a news day it was, President Donald J. Trump announced that the “Department of War” was releasing “Government files related to Alien and Extraterrestrial Life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and Unidentified Flying Objects.” The president posted: “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
It’s hard to see the release of this information at this moment as anything more than a distraction from the many stories in the news that show the administration in an unflattering light.
The biggest of those stories was not that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy took his family on a seven-month road trip to film a television series called The Great American Road Trip while he was supposed to be doing his job as secretary of transportation, or that he told Fox & Friends this morning that “it fits any budget to do a road trip” on a day when the national average for a gallon of gas was $4.54.
It was not the story, written by David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater and published in the New York Times, that Trump gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to reseal the joints, waterproof, and paint bright blue the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Such contracts are supposed to be reviewed and put out for bids, but Trump ignored the review process and used an exemption designed to prevent “serious injury, financial or other, to the government” to award a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which has never before won a federal contract but which had worked at one of his golf clubs, because he wanted the work done before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.
The contract is for more than triple the $1.8 million Trump promised, and officials say the repairs will last for seven to ten years, rather than the 50 years Trump claimed. Even that might be generous: One expert warned that the motorcade the president took onto the pool yesterday to review the project was heavy enough to have sprung the newly-repaired joints between the concrete slabs that make up the pool bed.
It was not the story by economist Justin Wolfers in the New York Times explaining that the Defense Department’s claim that the war on Iran has cost taxpayers $25 billion tallies only the price of the 2,000 spent Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, the airplanes lost, and the other matériel used. It does not measure the lives lost, the disruption in global oil markets, companies shut down (like Spirit Airlines), heightened geopolitical tensions, higher interest rates, lower stock prices, lower economic growth, Iran’s new ability to charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz to fund its nuclear ambitions, and the new need for countries to increase military spending. Wolfers notes that the Iraq war cost about $3 trillion and estimates the Iran war “will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and very possibly trillions.”
In any case, Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic reported today that Trump is “bored” with the war and wants to move on. Five of Trump’s aides and advisors told Lemire that Trump is convinced he can sell any agreement as a win, but so far Iran is unwilling to bail Trump out of the war he started.
It was not the story in the Washington Post by Brianna Sacks and Kevin Crowe reporting that under Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which helps people prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, has been denying aid to states that have Democratic-led governments while speeding it to Republican-dominated states.
It was not the story by Mark Olalde of ProPublica reporting that the Trump administration has granted a two-year pause on compliance with the Clean Air Act to more than 180 facilities, like coal power plants and medical sterilizers, that are polluting in 38 states and Puerto Rico. The administration sidelined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by using a presidential exemption that can be tapped “if the technology to implement the standard is not available and it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so.”
This authority has never been used before, and other utilities say they are using the pollution controls the administration claims don’t exist. Trump has also invoked the national security justification for the pauses, claiming that the U.S. is in a national energy emergency out of concern that emerging industries, like AI and the data centers on which AI relies will not be able to get the huge amounts of energy they need. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Olalde: “The President has provided regulatory relief from certain burdensome Clean Air Act requirements due to national security concerns that critical industries would no longer be able to operate under such stringent standards.”
Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Adam Schiff of California have introduced a bill requiring the president to get Congress’s approval for such pauses in the future. Whitehouse noted that Trump’s exemptions show a willingness to “abuse every loophole available to pollute for free, damn the health consequences for Americans.”
It was not the story that the Court of International Trade in New York found Trump’s 10% global tariffs, imposed after the Supreme Court declared his “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional, to be illegal. Trump is expected to appeal. Yesterday, he threatened to impose “much higher” tariffs on the European Union if it does not approve a trade agreement with the U.S. by July 4.
The biggest story of the day was not even the dedication of the 22-foot gold statue of Trump installed at his golf course in Miami. Marth McHardy of the Daily Beast reported that a group of crypto investors paid for the $450,000 statue as part of a promotional push for their new memecoin.
No, the biggest story of the day was that after voters in Virginia turned out in record numbers to approve a new temporary congressional district map on April 21 to garner four more seats for Democrats, the Virginia state supreme court struck down the referendum. Virginia voters had agreed to the change in order to counter gerrymandering imposed by Republican legislators in Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, and Florida that is expected to gain them an additional 14 seats across the country. (Following last week’s Louisiana v. Callais Supreme Court decision, Republicans are hoping to change the lines in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina to take four more.) So far, voters in California have agreed to a temporary redistricting of California to pick up four seats there.
The court split on partisan lines, saying the process of passing the referendum violated the state’s constitution. With Trump’s job approval ratings in the low 30s, anger at rising prices, frustration at the war on Iran, dislike of the administration’s attacks on immigrants, and growing outrage at the extraordinary corruption of the administration, Republicans were so worried they would lose control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections that they began the gerrymandering wars. Now those wars have turned in their favor.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump gloated on social media. “The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
In the end, the UFO files red herring from today’s news dump didn’t appear to work. Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called the UFO files a distraction from the Iran war and said: “Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday.” The chair of the Michigan Democratic Party also commented: “If any aliens had flown over Epstein Island, you could be damn sure Trump would keep their secret. Whether aliens are out there or not, I’m more concerned about the American people here on Earth struggling to pay for food [and] rent.”
And Democrats certainly didn’t miss the Virginia decision. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, posted: “Today, in an outrageous outburst of right-wing judicial activism following the Roberts Court’s Callais decision, the Virginia Supreme Court has struck down the will of the voters. But democracy won’t end with right-wingers in black robes. Now is the time to campaign like never before for strong democracy, freedom and progress. The American people will have the final say in November. Organize!”
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Notes:
https://gasprices.aaa.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/us/politics/reflecting-pool-trump-contract.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opinion/hegseth-war-cost.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/05/08/wildfire-fema-grants-delay/
https://www.propublica.org/article/clean-air-act-exemptions-trump-emails
https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/clean-air-act-section-112-presidential-exemption-information
https://apnews.com/article/trump-global-tariffs-trade-court-df01218b89ca925015fe41c700d6beb9
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/08/trump-tariffs-trade-eu-europe-deal.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-golden-statue-honored-in-bizarre-dedication/
https://bluevirginia.us/2026/05/breaking-va-supreme-court-on-a-4-3-vote-along-partisan-lines-strikes-down-redistricting-amendment/
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5870263-virginia-redistricting-ruling-democrats/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/08/virginia-court-invalidates-redistricting-measure/
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/05/iran-war-trump-deal/687100/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-files.html
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