This isn’t so much a solution in search of a problem as it is a solution designed to make you think there’s a problem.

What’s this caucus now?

The Shari’a Free America Caucus was conceived by two Texas congressman at, of all places, the White House Christmas party. (I mean, who doesn’t celebrate the holidays by dreaming up ways to persecute other religions?) It now has some 60 members, including McGuire.

As one Christian conservative in Illinois put it, the caucus “has everything to do with exposing Sharia and protecting women and girls from financial, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.”

Maybe. The template for HB 5512 is 15-year-old draft legislation written by a Brooklyn lawyer who admitted at the time that its purpose had nothing to do with the law—it was to get people asking “what is Sharia?” Oklahoma put that version, tastefully named “Save Our State,” before voters. Seventy percent approved it. A federal court struck it down for violating the First Amendment.

The Shari’a Free America Caucus has other proposals. One would bar foreign nationals who adhere to Sharia law from entering or remaining in the United States. Another would halt all immigration until security reforms are in place. Another would remove tax-exempt status from organizations with alleged ties to terrorist groups, including CAIR, the one that designated the caucus a hate group.

The putative problem…

Sharia is Islamic religious guidance derived from the Quran and other writings. It covers two distinct domains; one is religious practice (prayer schedules, dietary rules, marriage, etc.). This is the domain that most American Muslims actually engage with.

The other domain covers public laws. This is what exists exists in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and parts of Nigeria, where courts impose corporal punishment, restrict women’s rights, and treat apostasy as a crime.

What HB 5512’s supporters say they’re worried about is this domain having legal force in the United States. Their best real-world example seems to be a New Jersey court ruling from 2008 in which a judge denied a Muslim woman a restraining order against her husband, citing the man’s religious beliefs.

…is not a problem.

Sharia law has no legal power in the United States and never will; the Establishment Clause prohibits any religious system from being imposed as state law.

Besides, American courts already treat Islamic arbitration and contracts the same way they treat Jewish and Catholic religious law: They enforce voluntary agreements, void coerced ones, and apply constitutional standards. The cases where women have been harmed are real but rare, already remediable under existing law, and not unique to Islam. Indeed, an appellate court overturned that New Jersey ruling. The system worked.

McGuire’s district includes the Islamic Society of Central Virginia, a mosque in Charlottesville that’s been around for decades. There are no documented instances of Sharia law being applied in any VA-05 court. It’s never come up at any of McGuire’s town halls, including the ones where his team is clearly planting questions.

Incidentally, when he was a state senator, McGuire was the only state senator to vote against raising the marriage age to 18.

And there’s no justification—no legal one, at any rate—for singling out Sharia. As one interfaith group that works on domestic violence put it, “If Sharia is unconstitutional, so would be the religious codes, doctrines, and theological frameworks of all faith traditions, including the Jewish Halacha, the Catholic Code of Canon Law, the Presbyterian Principles of Order and Government, and the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline.”

CAIR has invited every caucus member to visit a mosque in their district. As far as I can tell, McGuire’s office has not responded.

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A few Republicans have put out tepid responses criticizing this horrific threat. Most, including VA-05’s John McGuire, have said nothing. (The person answering the phone at his D.C. office simply told me they hadn’t spoken to him about what his president just called “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”)

This is McGuire’s most recent utterance:

If you’re in Congress and you’re not doing something about this—pushing to invoke the 25th Amendment, or signing on to another War Powers bill, or at least saying something—there are only two options:

1. You’re okay with America threatening to wipe out a whole civilization.

2. You’re not okay with America threatening to wipe out a whole civilization, but you’re afraid to say anything about it.

In the first case, you’re a monster. In the second, you’re a coward. Which is it, Congressman? Are you wicked, or just fearful?

McGuire’s DC office: (202) 225-4711

Kaine: 202-224-4024 Yesterday he called for getting Congress back in session “deliberate on how we can fulfill the responsibilities we were entrusted with and preserve our democracy against the tyranny our Founders foresaw.” I say fuck deliberating, but at least this beats silence.

Warner: 202-224-2023

A shooting on Old Dominion University’s campus has left Americans asking how someone who pled guilty to helping ISIS was able to enroll at an American university.

The unsettling answer is that Virginia Democrats passed a law forbidding public colleges from asking applicants about their criminal history.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., told The Daily Signal of the shooting.

And with Northam’s law on the books, “it all just seems preventable,” the former Navy SEAL added.

“I was in the House of Delegates, and I voted no on that bill. It’s called Ban the Box law,” McGuire said, adding that he believes the tragedy at Old Dominion could have been prevented if Democrats hadn’t passed the legislation.

Here is McGuire’s logical chain: Ban the Box → ODU didn’t know about the shooter’s terrorist history → Shooter got on campus → Attack happened.

Bullshit.

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Thirty-seven states have Ban the Box laws, including the notoriously pro-criminal jurisdictions of Georgia and Texas.

McGuire is implying that if Virginia hadn’t kept ODU from asking Mohamed Bailor Jalloh about his criminal past, the school could’ve prevented him from carrying out his plans. But McGuire never explains how knowing Jalloh’s history—assuming he’d have divulged it if asked—would have helped.

Maybe ODU could have refused to admit him? But the attack wasn’t enabled by Jalloh’s status as a student. Nothing in the reporting I’ve seen suggests that he badged in to the building or was checked at an entrance. He walked into a room and asked if it was an ROTC class. He didn't need student credentials to do that.

If anyone is at fault, it’s the federal government.

Jalloh was released from federal prison in 2024, having served most of an 11-year sentence for a plot to kill U.S. troops. At the time of the ODU attack, he was on federal supervised release. He was visited by a supervision officer just twice a year, most recently last November.

Why was a man who wanted to kill American soldiers released from prison early? Because he had completed a drug treatment program, which under federal law would qualify him for early release. The law specifically exempts people convicted of terrorism-related charges, but the Bureau of Prisons says Jalloh got out because of a loophole that they’ve since closed.

At the same time, Congress is underfunding the part of the federal court system that’s responsible for supervised release. Last year, the U.S. court system warned that the GOP’s budget would require “steep cuts to funding for clerks of court and probation and pretrial services.” Plus, last year the DOJ terminated more than $76 million in grants that supported community supervision. And, as a convicted ISIS supporter on supervised release, Jalloh was exactly the kind of person that should have attracted attention from the FBI’s counterterrorism unit, which has been hit by Trump’s budget chainsaw.

None of this has anything to do with Virginia Democrats or banning the box. They’re federal failures under both the Biden and Trump administrations. Just the kind of thing the House Oversight Committee and freshman congressman John McGuire should be looking into.

John McGuire, tastefully using a school shooting to promote his gun law

As we’re reminded after every school shooting, Republicans are against politicizing them by making them an opportunity to talk about gun laws. So naturally, John McGuire just politicized a school shooting by making it an opportunity to talk about gun laws.

On Monday, just days after the Old Dominion attack, he introduced a bill that would allow private citizens to sue state and local governments if they’re injured by a firearm in a gun-free zone. (Certain restrictions apply.) It would also zero out federal funding of law-enforcement equipment for governments that maintain gun-free zones.

I’m not sure whether Old Dominion’s no-guns policy would make it liable under McGuire’s law. But consider a different example. It’s illegal in 14 states to carry a gun into a bar. (Even Texas!) Under McGuire’s law, every bar in those states is a gun-free zone. If you got shot in one, you’d be able to sue the state.

I’d be surprised if this bill would pass constitutional muster. But the bigger news is, Republicans now think it’s okay to talk about gun laws in the aftermath of a shooting. So we can count on never again being told, “This is not the time.” Right?

Donald Trump has been floating the idea of trying to take over the 2026 midterms from states run by Democrats, sending armed guards to polling stations, or outright canceling the election.

What if the attack on Iran is laying the foundation he needs to do it?

I’m not suggesting that this is why he’s bombing Iran. Distracting attention from the Epstein scandal is the plausible explanation there. Nor am I saying that Trump actively wants Americans to be attacked.

But three things are clearly true: The war gives Iran more reasons than ever to kill Americans. Trump has made it harder to prevent these attacks. And he’s looking for ways to exploit the results.

John McGuire has been silent about all of it.

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Let’s break it down:

Trump is giving Iran more reasons to kill Americans.

• The ayatollah is a spiritual leader for tens of millions of Shiites, the vast majority of whom are peaceful—but his death gives the few murderous extremists even more reason to take revenge. (As of this writing, it’s too early to know for sure what motivated the attacks that have happened since the bombing started.)

• Trump had no succession plan for Iran, and the newly chosen ayatollah is even more hard-line and implacable than his father was. He’s unlikely to continue the fatwa against pursuing nuclear weapons that his father issued and now has reason to avenge the death of his father and attacks on his country.

• The threat will not decrease anytime soon. In 2024, a man named Asif Merchant tried to hire hitmen to assassinate U.S. officials to avenge the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which had happened four years earlier.

Trump is making it harder to prevent attacks.

• In late February, the FBI fired a dozen agents and staff responsible for monitoring threats from Iran. They had extensive experience developing sources and knowledge about its plans. The stated reason was that they had investigated Trump and Kash Patel during the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

• These firings were part of a larger exodus of some 300 national security experts from throughout the FBI under Trump.

• The attorney general disbanded a group at the FBI specifically tasked with countering influence on our elections from China, Russia—and Iran. Under this administration, the number of surveillance warrants issued for counterterrorism has fallen by half.

• U.S. Cyber Command hasn’t had a permanent leader since last year.

• The State Department shut down two groups responsible for countering violent extremism last year. Homeland Security has cut more than a third of the staff who worked on violence prevention.

• There are credible allegations that the White House blocked reports from the FBI about the threat of attacks in the U.S. after the war started.

Trump is planning to use attacks as an excuse to seize more power.

• Nine days before the war started, Heather Honey—the senior Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity—attended a summit on why Trump should declare a national emergency on voting.

• An executive order declaring that emergency has already been drafted. With it, Trump would try to take unprecedented power over elections, supposedly to protect them from foreign interference.

• There’s some precedent for the idea. After the 9/11 attacks, Trump’s old friend and attorney Rudy Giliuani proposed canceling New York’s mayoral election.

• Trump has been tying the Iran war to election interference from the moment he started it.

Where is our congressman in all this?

“I want you and your family to be able to live, work, and raise a family in peace.”—John McGuire

McGuire serves on the Oversight and Armed Services committees in the House. From his perch on Oversight, he has grilled Tim Walz about welfare fraud in Minnesota and Bill and Hillary Clinton about their ties to Epstein.

He has not, however, asked any questions about why the administration gutted so much of its counterterrorism expertise, why the president has any business trying to wrest control of elections from the states, or why the administration walked away from Iran’s offer to stop accumulating nuclear materials.

Even though he’s a freshman congressman, McGuire could demand a hearing on any of these issues. His failure to do so is cowardly and despiccable, and it’s putting American lives at risk.

“Of course he said that, he’s just a Trump lackey.” I hear this said about John McGuire a lot, and though it may be true, it’s a copout. Yes, he meets our low expectations by saying the banal, illogical, and ignorant things we’ve learned to expect from him. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore them. I refuse to believe that the only time to call a politician out is when he says something that is unexpectedly banal, illogical, and ignorant.

So here’s a roundup of five whoopers McGuire has told about Iran so far. It’s an impressive tally, considering it’s only been a week.

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This isn’t a war.

McGuire: “President Trump’s actions do not constitute a war with Iran, rather he is carrying out a swift and targeted military action to take out a threat to our nation and the world.” Twitter, March 5.

This one’s so dumb, it’s barely worth responding to. But such is life with John McGuire. In his Feb. 28 launch announcement, Trump said, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.” On March 2, he said he expected the operation to last “four weeks or less” and referred repeatedly to “the war front.” The next day, Trump said, “We’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly.” It’s a goddamn war.

Iran insisted on its right to pursue nukes.

McGuire: In negotiations with Iran, “All we say is, it’s a red line. You cannot have a nuclear weapon. All they did is push back.” Fox News, March 5.

Hmm. Here’s the first paragraph of the JCPOA, which Iran signed in 2015: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” That’s the same JCPOA that Trump ripped up during his first term.

As for whether they kept their word, here’s Trump’s chief intelligence officer just last year: “The intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

It’s not even true that they refused to eschew nukes during the most recent negotiations. Iran’s president did it on February 26, two days before Trump attacked: “When the religious leader explicitly states that we will not pursue nuclear weapons, this is a position rooted in theological and jurisprudential beliefs, not a political tactic that can be changed.”

Iran was on the verge of having nuclear weapons.

McGuire: “They still have over 900 pounds of refined uranium, and that’s enough to build 10 bombs.” Washington Watch with Tony Perkins, March 2.

Factually true but highly misleading. McGuire is conflating a bunch of separate issues here: whether the uranium they have can be used to make a bomb now (it can’t, though it wouldn’t take long to do), whether they were still trying to make a bomb at all (Trump’s own intelligence chief said they weren’t), and whether they had a missile capable of reaching the United States (they didn’t).

The uranium in question is enriched to 60 percent purity, not the 90 percent you need to make a weapon. Last May, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that it would take Iran “probably less than one week” to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make its first bomb, but there’s no evidence that it was trying to do so. As Tulsi Gabbard, the head of national intelligence, told Congress a year ago, “The intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” (Never mind that Trump claimed to have obliterated their nuclear program in last summer’s attacks.)

And, according to America’s own intelligence agencies, even if Iran did restart the program, it wouldn’t be able to make a nuclear warhead capable of reaching the United States until 2035.

Critics of the war are undermining morale.

McGuire: “Imagine you’re down range, you’re next to your brothers, you don’t know whether they’re going to make it, and you’ve got politicians back home trashing what you’re doing. That just destroys morale.” Fox News, March 5.

If it’s true of critics now, it was also true of people like the rotten SOB who said stuff like this:

“In war, you’re going to have casualties. That happens.”

“The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.”

“We made a terrible mistake getting involved in Afghanistan in the first place. It's a mess, it's a mess and at this point we probably have to [leave U.S. troops there] because that thing will collapse in about two seconds after they leave."

“You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’ ”

“Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing?”

Trump consulted Congress.

McGuire: “They went through the Gang of Eight. They're doing things right.” Interview on local TV, March 2.

The best you can say is that Trump informed Congress. Consulted, not so much. Mark Warner, who unlike McGuire is an actual member of the Gang of Eight (an octet of congressional leaders who get classified briefings on military operations): “By the president's own words, ‘American heroes may be lost.’ That alone should have demanded the highest level of scrutiny, deliberation and accountability, yet the president moved forward without seeking congressional authorization.”

Vote for the redistricting referendum

Early voting has started for the April 21 referendum that would let the General Assembly redraw the congressional map if another state does it first. You can apply for a mail-in ballot, register, check your status, and find your polling place here.

McGuire, who’d almost certainly be booted from his seat if the map changes, challenged the ballot’s wording in court. The Virginia Supreme Court is allowing the election to proceed while it weighs legal questions about the redistricting.

Here’s John McGuire on the SAVE Act, the election bill that narrowly passed the House and Republicans are now trying to cram through the Senate: “When you talk about Democrat leaders, that are elected, there’s opposition. But for the people on the street, when I go around the district and talk with anyone who may be Democrat, Republican, independent, they’re like, yeah, it’s a no-brainer.”

I feel certain that the number of people who have run into John McGuire on the street and struck up a conversation about the SAVE Act is about as big as the number of elections that have been decided by the votes of non-citizens.

But I’ll bet that even if McGuire has had those on-the-street chats, he hasn’t explained what the bill would do, because it makes both registering to vote and voting itself an onerous task for tens of thousands of people in the 5th district.

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If McGuire were honest, he’d tell them:

• You’ll have to register in person with a government election official—no completing it online or through the mail, or in a voter registration drive. You’re going to the county courthouse, or you’re not getting registered.

• You’ll have to prove you’re a citizen. To do that, you’ll need a passport, or a birth certificate plus a government-issued photo ID with exactly the same name that’s on your birth certificate. Student IDs—like those issued by Liberty University and UVA—don’t count. Even government employees’ IDs don’t count, except for members of the military.

• If the names on your ID and your birth certificate don’t match (if, say, you changed your name when you got married), you’ll need yet another document, like a certified marriage license, that links your birth name to the one on your ID.

• If you move houses, you’ll need to re-register, which means going through this rigamarole again.

• If you show up to vote and you’re not already listed on the rolls as a citizen, you’ll have to cast a provisional ballot and then within a few days go to an election office with all your documents if you want your ballot to count.

• Election officials who let someone register without showing the proper documentation will be subject to criminal prosecution as well as private lawsuits. Take that, all you underpaid government bureaucrats who are trying to rig our elections!

• As far as I can tell, if Virginia draws new congressional districts, we won’t have to re-register. We’ll just updated cards in the mail that reflect the change.

• Under the even harsher and odiously named Make Elections Great Again act:

  • Universal mail-in voting, like Washington and Oregon do, would be outlawed.

  • States would have to share their voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security for verification.

  • If you live in a state that refuses to do that, you’d have to prove you’re a citizen and show photo ID every time you vote, regardless of how long you’ve been registered.

How the SAVE Act would affect VA-05

Assuming national trends hold true here, about 56,000 people of voting age in the 5th district don’t have easy access to a birth certificate or passport. That number might be even higher, given the large concentration of college students in the district—more than 60,000, about a third of whom are from out of state. And there are around 180,000 married women in the district, many of whom have photo IDs that don’t match their birth certificates.

Roughly 100,000 households in VA-05 earn less than $50K a year; they’re three times less likely to have a passport than higher earners are. It costs $17 to get a copy of your birth certificate in person, and more if you want it mailed in 2 to 4 weeks. $53 if you need it faster than that. Shades of Jim Crow poll taxes.

That’s not to mention the burden for people in rural areas. A would-be voter in Bachelors Hall, for example, will have to register in Chatham, an hour’s drive round-trip.

Knowing all this, Congressman McGuire, would you still say it’s a no-brainer?

There’s zero evidence that voting by non-citizens is anything more than a rounding error in elections. But even Republicans are starting to drop the pretense that this is anything other than an attempt to stave off defeat in November and an excuse to intimidate Democratic voters by stationing armed federal agents outside polling places. As Trump put it: “If we don't pass the SAVE Act, we'll lose the midterms and lose the country forever.”

Here’s hoping.

—Boot

I’ve heard from sevcral readers this week that McGuire’s office is refusing to even state a position on the violence in Minnesota. Standard answer: “I haven’t spoken to the Congressman about that.” Evidently they have more important things to talk about, like showerheads.

McGuire did find time to file a bill that’s supposed to increase the housing supply by giving older folks a tax incentive to sell to first-time home buyers. It will benefit almost no one.

Here’s why. Under McGuire’s proposal, if you’re over age 65 and sell property for less than $500,000 to a first-time buyer, you’d be exempt from all capital gains taxes on the sale, no matter how big your profit is.

But this overlaps a lot with current tax law. You can already exempt up to $250,000 of profit on the sale of your primary home if you file singly and $500,000 if you file jointly, as long as you’ve lived there at least two out of the past five years.

In other words, McGuire’s bill would create a new incentive for a tiny slice of the population: homeowners who are 65 or over, who are selling for under $500k, to a first-time buyer, but who don’t qualify for the primary residence exclusion (likely because they’re selling a vacation home or a rental property).

Over on Blue Sky, @tjsleakyroof skewered McGuire’s bill in a single sentence: “oh gosh yes truly one of the biggest obstacles to home ownership is the capital gains tax on selling your vacation home.”

Honestly, that tells you all you need to know. But if you want to dig into the data, do read on. Because McGuire’s proposal would increase the number of homes on the market by maybe 1 percent.

Crunching the numbers

To figure this out, I enlisted the help of ChatGPT. Here are the annual numbers just for Virginia, drawing from various real-estate sources:

1. Number of homes sold each year in Virginia: ~106,000

2. Number of those that are vacation/rental sales: 16,000 – 21,000

3. Number of those under $500K: 9,000 – 13,000

4. Number of those that are sold by people 65 and up: 3,100 – 6,200

As the Ronco guy used to say: But wait, there’s more!

Three thousand to six thousand is just the maximum eligible population.

We also have to subtract:

• Sellers who already owe no tax: Many of these owners bought decades ago or have gains small enough that they already fall under existing tax thresholds.

• Organic sellers: Most seniors sell because of life changes (downsizing, medical needs, or moving to assisted living). They would sell regardless of a tax break.

Research suggests only about 15 to 30 percent of eligible sellers actually change their behavior because of a tax incentive. When you apply those filters, this policy would likely result in only 900 to 1,000 “new” listings per year. That’s less than 1 of Virginia’s annual housing turnover.

The red tape factor

McGuire’s proposal requires the buyer to sign an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that they’re purchasing for the first time.

If a seller has two offers—one from a move-up buyer with a clean 20 percent down payment and one from a first-time buyer requiring an affidavit—which one do you think they’ll pick? McGuire’s bill adds a layer of risk to a real estate closing that most sellers will simply avoid.

And then there’s the cost

The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t estimated the cost of McGuire’s proposal yet. But I asked ChatGPT to estimate the number of additional homes that would go on the market and the cost in lost tax revenues. It put the price tag at somewhere between $500 million and $2.5 billion a year to generate 30,000 to 60,000 home sales for the entire country.

I’m no economist and no housing expert, but I bet there are better ways to use a billion dollars to help people buy homes.

—Boot

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That’s it. Thanks for reading, and please make some calls, whatever message you want to use. This won’t stop with Minnesota. Virginia—now with a Democratic governor and a legislature that’s standing up to Trump’s election-fixing schemes—is a bigger target than ever.

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I know I’m late getting this out the door…

If McGuire were honest about what he did in 2025

He’d say:

I voted to take away health care from 160,000 of my lowest-income constituents.

I voted to raise insurance rates on 37,000 of my constituents.

I voted to cut benefits that help 110,000 of my constituents, and 27,000 veterans throughout Virginia, buy groceries and pay the rent.

I voted to cut school meals for 50,000 low-income students in my district.

I voted to get rid of early childhood education for 1,200 children from poor families in my district.

I voted to cut teachers and after-school programs at 109 schools in my district.

I supported a plan to stop giving vaccines to poor kids in other countries and let 1.2 million of them die in the next five years. And to literally burn 50 tons of food aid.

I was silent while President Trump created two cryptocurrencies, creating an avenue for billions of dollars in unchecked bribes to him. And I’m on the Government Oversight Committee!

I co-sponsored a bill that would take mifepristone off the FDA’s list of approved drugs.

After months of complaints from constituents, I finally started holding town halls, by phone, where I planted questions, stretched the truth, and outright lied.

I was good with threatening the jobs of the 10,000 federal workers who live in my district.

I supported a plan to make it harder to detect tornadoes and other severe weather.

I claimed that President Trump is strengthening America's cybersecurity even though he's gutting our cybersecurity programs.

I never repudiated the effort to get President Trump to serve a third term in office.

I was fine with President Trump seizing control of elections, a power that the Constitution gives to Congress and the states.

I gave a thumbs up to President Trump for extorting private companies into helping causes he supports.

What a year it was!

In the first two weeks of 2026, McGuire has already managed to be silent on ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minnesota. And he’s gung ho about deposing Nicolas Maduro even though it has nothing to do with helping his constituents.

Aren’t you looking forward to another 12 months of this?

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Now, most bills never become law; most never even get out of committee. Indeed, the only one of his that’s been moved out of subcommittee is #1 on the list below.

Even so, the list of McGuire’s bills tells you a lot about his legislative priorities. Regardless of whether they get signed into law, are these the issues that matter to you and your family and your neighbors? It’s not a rhetorical question!

The bills he wrote this year would:

1. Allow an emergency route to be built from Wintergreen, across a patch of national park land, to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

According to congressional testimony, there’s only one road out of Wintergreen, which can get clogged during emergency evacuations with deadly results. (Many of the 100-plus people who died in the Lahaina fire two years ago were trapped in their cars while trying to get out.) Most of the new evacuation route has been built, but the National Park Service has refused to allow construction of the portion that would involve pouring gravel across roughly 30 feet of national parkland. McGuire’s bill would require the feds to green-light the project.

Co-sponsors: Seven other Virginia reps have signed on to the bill. The two that haven’t are Bobby Scott from VA-03 (Norfolk and Newport News) and Don Beyer from VA-08 (Arlington and Alexandria).

FWIW, the National Parks Conservation Association opposes the bill, arguing that Wintergreen developers should finish the road on private land.

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2. Tax non-citizens at least $10 billion a year more for sending money home.

Under current U.S. law, remittances are taxed at 1 percent. (Send $100 home and you owe Uncle Sam a dollar.) McGuire’s bill would increase that to 15 percent, with exceptions for citizens and U.S. nationals.

Lowball estimates put the annual figure for remittances from the U.S. at $100 billion a year, and the range of figures I found online suggests that at least 70 percent of that comes from noncitizens. If McGuire’s bill becomes law, that adds up to at least $10 billion in new taxes paid by people sending money home—or, in other words, $10 billion less going back to families who often really need the money. Not to mention the additional paperwork for every company that does wire transfers, because the bill would require them to prove to the government that they’ve verified the citizenship status of every customer.

Republicans, the party of lower taxes and less bureacracy!

Co-sponsor: Republican Michael Rulli of Ohio.

3. Force electric utilities to drop DEI policies.

McGuire’s bill would prohibit state regulators from okaying rates charged by any electric utility that “engages in, or retains or employs a consultant or an advisor to promote or enforce, a diversity, equity, or inclusion practice.” It’s named, apparently without irony, the Fair, Affordable, and Inclusive Rates Act.

“Churches, small business, and low-income households, shouldn’t be forced to pay extra to fund woke, leftist social engineering projects,” McGuire explained in his newsletter this week. “Businesses should care about delivering reliable, affordable, and FAIR services to the public.”

Co-sponsors: None.

4. Let bigger trucks haul crops and logs on Virginia interstates.

Current law doesn’t allow trucks over 80,000 pounds on interstate highways. McGuire’s bill would allow Virignia to issue permits to go as high as 90,000 pounds.

Co-sponsors: Virginia Democrat Eugene Vindman and Republicans Robert Wittman and Morgan Griffith.

5. Make it easier to mine domestic uranium.

I wrote about this one back in March.

Cosponsors: Seven Republicans from other states.

6. Expand federal law enforcement in D.C.

This fall, House Republicans passed a tranche of bills they said were designed to fight crime in Washington. McGuire’s contribution would create a federal commission charged with expanding immigration enforcement, beautifying federal monuments, and issuing concealed-carry permits faster. (This is explicitly mentioned in the bill.)

The mayor, attorney general, and city council chairman are opposed to the whole legislative package.

Co-sponsors: Four Republicans from Louisiana, Georgia, California, and Mississippi.

7. Add new reporting requirements for the Veterans Administration.

McGuire’s VA Data Transparency and Trust Act would require the federal government to produce enhanced annual reports tracking the number of vets receiving care, health conditions, outcomes, and various other metrics—some of which are already reported, some of which are not.

Congressional Democrats have worried that Trump might try to weaken the VA’s reporting requirements. It’s not clear to me whether McGuire’s bill would address their concerns or exacerbate them. In any case, if the bill becomes law, it may come down to whether the VA interprets it as replacing the existing list of data it has to report, or simply adding to it.

Co-sponsors: Eight Republicans.

8. Clarify that shooting down a drone isn’t as illegal as blowing up a passenger jet.

Under federal law, it’s a felony to “willfully damage, destroy, disable, or wreck any aircraft.” So, technically, taking down someone’s $100 hobby drone could be prosecuted under the same law that bans blowing up a passenger jet. In practice, prosecutors haven’t used the law that way, but McGuire’s bill would clarify that these laws apply to manned aircraft only. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t address what happens if, say, a protestor takes down a drone run by police or ICE. But it seems like a good start.

Co-sponsors: None.

9. Finishing renaming the Department of Defense.

Trump renamed the Department of War by executive order earlier this year, but the change won’t be complete without an act of Congress. McGuire’s bill, the Peace Through Strength Act, would do it.

Co-sponsors: None.

10. Require the government to set up a web page where you can monitor the building of the border wall.

Co-sponsors: None.

Plus…

McGuire introduced a resolution honoring Hampden-Sydney college on its 250th anniversary and offered an amendment about artificial intelligence to a bill on protecting the electricity supply chain.

The official history of the White House at whitehouse.gov has a few benign historial photos documenting the addition of the East Wing, the addition of the Briefing Room, etc. Then there’s a string of increasingly bizarre entries, including this one:

Along with:

I asked ChatGPT to assess the “Biden” screencap. Its response: “The screenshot appears to be from a webpage styled to look like whitehouse.gov, but the layout and content strongly suggest it is not an authentic White House page—the real White House site does not publish partisan or speculative content like the text shown.” Well bless your heart, GPT.

Granted, defacing whitehouse.gov is quite literally the least of the Trump administration’s wrongs. I’ll be back to cataloguing the serious shit in my next column.

In case you missed the news, former VA-05 congressman Tom Perriello announced he’s running again. At least one candidate has already dropped out since then, though Albemarle supervisor Mike Pruitt says he’s staying in. Maybe this means that the pollsters and money folks are seeing serious evidence that McGuire is beatable, though I remain skeptical (but hopeful). Of course, the odds will flip entirely if the state redraws the congressional map in time for next year’s elections.

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Could Democrats’ success in Virginia this year mean John McGuire might lose in 2026?

It’s a natural question, and I haven’t seen anyone else try to answer it, so I looked at some voting data. But buyer beware: I’m not an election expert and I don’t have access to polling data. This is a rudimentary analysis at best.

To get a sense of how much things have changed since McGuire’s election in 2024—how much VA-05 may be shifting toward the left, at least temporarily—I compared Abigail Spanberger’s performance in the district with Gloria Witt’s in her congressional race against McGuire last year.

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Witt lost the 5th district to McGuire by 15 points. Spanberger lost it to Winsome Earle-Sears by 8 points.

It looks to me like Spanberger narrowed the gap by making big gains in a few areas, fighting to a virtual tie in Lynchburg (where McGuire beat Witt by 9 points), Nelson County (ditto), Fluvanna County (ditto), and Prince Edward County (where McGuire won by five).

But those gains weren’t enough to offset VA-05’s diehard red counties, where Spanberger didn’t make a dent. She lost Campbell, Halifax, and Pittsylvania counties, for example, by essentially the same 30- and 40-point margins that Witt lost them by last year.

Even if a Democratic challenger in VA-05 starts off with the same support that Spanberger got here, 8 points still seems like a tough hill to climb. But there’s a lot I don’t know. Does Spanberger’s relative success in the district suggest there’s momentum that could close the gap even more in 2026? Where could a challenger to McGuire—who won by 66,000 votes—pick up enough ballots to make it a close race? Is McGuire more popular among VA-05’s Republicans than Earle-Sears? Does a gubernatorial election even tell you much about a congressional one that won’t be held for another year?

If you have thoughts or expertise on any of this, please post a comment or drop me an email.

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What about redistricting?

A reader recently asked how plans to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts might affect McGuire. Unfortunately, I can’t answer the question because Democrats haven’t said what their new map might look like. The Daily Signal’s Joe Thomas claims to have it, but he got it from the GOP, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Even if it’s genuine, it may not be the only map under consideration.

Although I don’t know what the map might look like, I’ve read up on what it takes to put it into effect. Here’s what I’ve found—some of it has been well covered, other parts not so much.

1. The 2026 Assembly approves a constitutional amendment and moves the candidate filing deadline.

It takes a constitutional amendment to give the General Assembly the power to draw a new congressional map. The 2025 Assembly proposed one last month, and now the new Asssembly that convenes in January has to approve it.

I think they’ll also need to move the candidate filing deadline, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment.

2. Voters approve the amendment in a statewide referendum no earlier than April 15.

The Virginia constitution says that once the Assembly approves a proposed amendment, they have to wait at least 90 days before having a statewide referendum on it. That would put the earliest possible referendum on April 15, and that’s only possible if the Assembly approves the measure on the first day of its session.

There’s the rub. Right now, state law says the deadline to file for the primary is April 2—well before April 15. If the Assembly doesn’t push that deadline back so it comes after the referendum, we’ll be in for weeks of electoral chaos. Imagine:

1. Congressional candidates declare in existing districts, meeting the April 2 deadline for filing paperwork and petitions signed by thousands of voters in their district.

2. Then voters approve the amendment to allow redistricting, two weeks or more after the candidates have filed.

3. The Assembly draws a new map, reshaping the districts that candidates have just filed for.

Now, let’s assume the Democrats have a map drawn up and ready to go as soon as the referendum passes. (Insert Will Rogers joke here.) Republicans will surely try to at least tie things up in the courts long enough to keep the status quo through next November. Even setting aside the question of how small-d democratic it is to rush something like this through with little time for public comment on the map itself, a lot still has to happen. Election officials have to certify candidates’ paperwork. Candidates have to reach their new voters. Voters—including members of the military and other people living overseas—have to learn about the candidates and their new district.

How would all that work? If the map changes after you declare, do you have to gather all new signatures and petitions? What if you don’t live in that district anymore? (Virginia doesn’t require members of Congress to live in their districts, but it’s a reasonable expectation that they do.) Could the state update the voter rolls in time to reflect the new map? Could ballots be sent to overseas voters and returned in time?

Maybe these are all solvable problems, but I suspect they’re why I wasn’t able to find a precedent for redrawing maps after the filing deadline and why the Assembly will probably have to revise the calendar. And, again, this is assuming that a court doesn’t put a hold on the map for, say, disenfranchising Republican voters.

3. Nominees for the new districts are selected in the June 16 primary.

Then it’s on to runoffs and the general election in November.

This is nuts!

Yes it is. But red states are already trying to do it. It’s easier in Texas, for instance, because the state Legislature already has the right to redraw the congressional map. And it all goes back to Donald Trump, the world’s most deranged Chaos Muppet, who kicked off the whole redistricting gambit.

(From Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.com :

Chaos Muppets are out-of-control, emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C. Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and—paradigmatically—Animal, are all Chaos Muppets.)

At least the Virginia version isn’t a permanent power grab. It’s only effective through 2030, and it has a trigger clause so it only kicks in if another state goes first.

—Boot

Happy Saturday! Here’s a quick look at Rep. McGuire’s activities this week:

• Was named an AbilityOne Congressional Champion “for my work to expand job opportunities for Americans facing disabilities and opportunities for our nation’s veterans.”

• Was quickly lambasted in comments on his post:

  • “Is this some sort of parody? 😂😂 C’mon now — are they not aware of the cuts and loss of benefits you personally voted for? This has got to be some sort of parody to bring your guilt to surface, no?”

  • “What a joke. You’re ending job training programs, you’re taking away housing for the homeless, you’re stripping people of healthcare, you’re taking food from children & the elderly. You deserve no awards or recognition.”

  • “Please provide the text and results to date of the legislation you’ve sponsored and passed regarding veterans since you’ve been in Congress. Please provide details about the number of new jobs for veterans in your district that you assisted in creating, when that happened and where these jobs are located. Your staff doesn’t seem to know. Thanks.”

• Met with a lobbyist for veterans and their families.

• Was quickly lambasted in comments on his post:

  • “ACA subsidies would be of support? Secondarily you could not gut the VA?”

  • “You could support us by not raising our healthcare costs, closing our commissaries, and firing VA staff.”

• Voted to end the shutdown. “Last night, I voted to reopen the government for the American people. This vote ensured we finally paid service members, federal workers, and resume critical services for our farmers and struggling American families.”

• Was quickly lambasted in comments on his post:

  • “It will pay. It hasn’t paid (past tense). Additionally you were on district work since September 19th and had zero in person town halls. You have yet to actually represent us”

  • “What about healthcare costs for the American people? What are you going to do about that?”

• Appeared in a he said / he said interview on 29News that shed no light on what was actually at stake in the shutdown. He explained that the shutdown “creates anger and anger gets people to the polls.” It sure does, Congressman! The MAGA party would know.

• Was quickly lambasted in comments… just kidding. Nobody’s commented. The story only has 59 views on YouTube and I’m probably four of them.

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I have nothing to add on the shutdown

Except this: I get why people are pissed at Tim Kaine for voting to end it. But remember there’s a chance that McGuire and the rest of the House will vote on extending the healthcare subsidies that were the sticking point of the shutdown—the ones that 37,000 of McGuire’s constituents rely on.

I haven’t found any public statements by McGuire about his stand on the subsidies, but his history doesn’t make me optimistic that he’ll vote for them. So he’ll need some nudging.

To paraphrase Barack Obama: Don’t boo. Nudge!

Okay, I’ll never earn a living as a speechwriter…

An update on McGuire’s financial situation…

Back in April, I flagged a great Hunter Index post pointing out that McGuire was the only member of Congress not to have failed his legally required financial disclosure. The last person to fit that description? George Santos.

Looks like McGuire filed the following month, on May 13. These seem to be the key points:

• He and his wife, real estate agent Tracy McGuire, own two rental properties in Richmond and Henrico County that each generated between $15K and $50K in income last year.

• Tracy McGuire owns a business called House in the Woods, which generated between $100K and $1 million last year. The address listed for House in the Woods matches a 22-acre property in Manakin Sabot with a 4,500-square foot, 4-bedroom/6-bathroom house that Zillow values at $1.4 million. (The address is a matter of public record, but I’m not publishing it.)

• John McGuire’s business, Seal Training PT, generated between $50K and $100K last year.

• He owns stock in UnitedHealth—which is perfectly legal but notable, given that he sits on a subcommittee that regulates health care. He also owns owns shares of Meta, Netflix, and ServiceNow and has a retirement portfolio with a broad range of funds.

• His only listed liabilities are three mortgages, presumably for the two rentals and a personal home. I guess “voting against the interests of your constituents” is not, technically speaking, a liability.

You can see his main disclosure here.

…and campaign finances.

Here’s the FEC’s list of political donations to McGuire this year. Interesting reading if you have the time and inclination. The top individual donors—at $25,000 each—are Michael Kehoe, who runs Richmond-based Kinsale Insurance, and Ben Davenport of Chatham-based Davenport Energy. Other big donors include Florida retiree Dave Flory ($15,500), Farmers Livestock Exchange VP John Good ($15,300), and Lawrence Page of Page Auto Group in Richmond ($15,000).

I didn’t realize individuals could give such big amounts. Turns out there’s a thing called a joint fundraising committee, which can raise unlimited money and then divvy it up among a candidate’s other committees, where the usual financial limits apply. The more you know!

—Boot

Yesterday, John McGuire sent out a newsletter expressing concern about how the government shutdown is hurting the most vulnerable members of VA-05:

This week, I met with leaders from local food banks and rural hospitals to discuss how the shutdown is affecting the most vulnerable members of our communities.

There’s no question that the shutdown is causing a lot of hardship, and it’s going to get worse. Personally, I’m torn about whether and how long Democrats should keep it going. And our local food pantries and rural hospitals need all the support they can get, whether there’s a shutdown or not.

But it’s richer than cheesecake for McGuire to fret about vulnerable constituents while opposing tax credits that help them buy health insurance. As I wrote earlier this week, if those tax credits expire, monthly premiums will double or even triple for 37,000 of our neighbors.

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And that’s not the only one of his policies that harms vulnerable people. Since taking office, McGuire has been in favor of:

• leaving 160,000 of his constituents on Medicaid with worse health insurance or none at all

• cutting SNAP for 27,000 veterans in Virginia

• eliminating Head Start for 1,200 kids in VA-05

• cutting free or subsidized school meals for 50,000 students in our district

• putting 10,000 constituents’ jobs on the chopping block because they work for the federal government

• cutting educational services at 109 schools in VA-05

• allowing 1.6 million children in poor countries to die in the next five years because the administration doesn’t want to pay for vaccines and bed nets anymore

• burning 500 tons of food aid overseas because the administration was too incompetent to distribute it

• weakening our ability to predict deadly storms

The thing is, I have no trouble believing that McGuire genuinely cares about vulnerable families. As someone who spent time in the foster system as a kid, he surely knows what it feels like to be at fate’s mercy. But I can’t square that with the impact of the positions he’s taking. Is it possible to be that ignorant of the harm he’s doing to his constituents?

You can email McGuire or call his DC office at (202) 225-4711.

Help me connect with the folks running in VA-05 next year

I’m interested in doing Q&As with anyone who’ll be running in the congressional primary next year. That includes the Democrats who’ve signed up as well as any Republicans who get into the race, including McGuire himself.

But no one’s heard of me and they’re not likely to jump at the chance to answer an email that comes in over the transom from a guy whose hobby involves sitting in his basement banging out Substacks. So if you’ve got a connection to any of the campaigns, email me at boot@watchmanva5.com.

-Boot

As you’ve probably read, Democrats in Congress won’t vote to reopen the government unless Republicans agree to extend tax credits that help people buy health insurance. Although they haven’t made a formal proposal, Republicans variously would like to see these tax credits wind down entirely or be cut down to a mere nub reformed.

The closest thing to a public statement that I can find from John McGuire is an op-ed that he cosigned, which repeats the lie that the Democratic party wants to give “taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants.”

I’ll come back to that subject below, but for the moment let’s stick with tax credits for health insurance. Right now, these credits help 37,000 of our neighbors in VA-05 lower their monthly premiums.

How much more will they pay if the tax cuts expire? It depends on where they live, how much they make, and how many people are at home. I plugged a few examples into this handy calculator provided by KFF, using the median income for each locality.

In Danville, a single parent with two kids who makes $43,000 will pay $150 more every month—that’s an 84 percent increase.

In Lynchburg, a family of two adults and two kids who makes $60,000 will pay $225 more every month, a 300 percent increase.

In Charlottesville, two adults in their late 50s with no kids at home and both earning $70,000 will pay $600 more every month, up 60 percent from today’s premium.

In Fluvanna County, a family of five earning $92,000 will pay $1,649 more per month. That’s almost 20 grand more a year and a 250 percent increase.

You can also run the numbers by a household’s poverty level instead of its income. For example, in Danville, a family of four living at twice the poverty level will pay $246 more every month, a 230 percent increase.

Here I was, thinking the Republican party opposed tax hikes.

Side note: Starting in 2026, insurers in Virginia will be able to charge you more if you smoke. The legislature passed a law this year to permanently prohibit them from doing this, but Glenn Youngkin vetoed it. Although federal law caps the extra fee at 50 percent, Virginia might have a lower ceiling. I couldn’t find a definitive number, though.

No, Democrats are not proposing taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants

McGuire’s latest newsletter has this to say about the shutdown. Note the second bubble, on health care:

“According to section 2141 of the Democrats’ counterproposal to fund the government, they are demanding a provision that would give illegal aliens access to free healthcare.”

Not true. Federal law prohibits using federal programs to pay for health care for people who are here illegally, except for emergency room care, and nothing in the Democrats’ proposal would change that.

What Democrats want is to repeal some restrictions that Trump and congressional Republicans recently placed on exactly which non-citizens can get Medicaid and CHIP. It used to be, for instance, that refugees and asylees were eligible, but Trump’s One Big Odious Bill struck many of them—including Afghans and Ukrainians—off the list. Democrats want to put them back on.

In other words, Democrats aren’t proposing anything new; they’re proposing a return to the way it was. And they don’t want health care for illegal aliens; they want to reinstate it for the refugees, asylum-seekers, and other non-citizens who are here legally. What a fiendish plot!

I’m glad there’ll be big protests here in VA05 and around the country today, and I hope the news coverage shows massive crowds. But while No Kings is a snappy slogan and fits nicely on a posterboard—and it identifies a real problem—it also obscures an even bigger threat.

No Kings, a message about Trump, lets his enablers off the hook. Entire institutions—the Supreme Court, Congress, the Republican Party writ large, corporations, some of the country’s best colleges and universities—are actively complicit in the abrogation of our rights to speak our minds and gather where we wish. They need to feel the heat too. (It’s great that UVA rejected Trump’s latest extortion attempt. If only the board had had enough spine to save Jim Ryan’s job.)

Besides, a monarchy might be prefereable if the alternative is life under the thumb of Trump and his cronies. Would you be that upset if America went in the direction of England, Sweden, Japan, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, or Denmark?

These days, most kings and queens are bound by a constitution, norms, traditions, and thriving political parties. If you’ve watched The Crown, you know that Elizabeth could never simply wave her hand and make things happen. She couldn’t even let Margaret marry the man she loved because Parliament, the Church, and public opinion were against it. Imagine what would’ve happened if she’d mused about sending the Army to patrol the streets of Manchester.

So if you’re out on the streets today, thank you. Make lots of noise about Trump. And consider making some of it about everyone who’s helping America descend into something much worse than a monarchy.

- Boot

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I made this a while ago, after a reader pointed out the resemblance, but I never found a good use for it. Yesterday’s news about Jimmy Kimmel is as good an excuse as I’ve seen to mock Trump and his ilk, since that’s all Kimmel did.

What’s especially galling is that Kimmel’s suspension is indefinite. How long it lasts is completely up to the whims of Trump and his FCC. That’s tyranny, when the government can make your boss take away your livelihood and not even have to tell you when you’ll get it back.

You know who doesn’t get indefinite sentences in America? Criminals. Rapists, sex traffickers, and murderers. Kimmel’s punishment is more capricious that whatever happens to the person who murdered Charlie Kirk.

- Boot

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Back in May, I took a break from writing the Night Watchman. It turns out that writing two posts a week about John McGuire does not bring you contentment.

The hiatus went on longer than I expected. As the summer turned to fall, I kept thinking: There’s a lot going on; I should get back to it. But I just couldn’t get going.

As Trump sent federal troops to L.A. and D.C. in the name of public safety, I looked into murder and violent crime rates around the country. Surely there were lies to call out, and indeed there were. Just last week, I looked at historical parallels—how the Charlie Kirk murder is or isn’t analogous to the Reichstag fire. I thought about the hypocrisy of flying flags at half-staff for Kirk but not for a Minnesota legislator.

Finally I realized why I wasn’t moved to write about warning signs and hypocrisies and all the rest: They’re beside the point. None of it matters as much as resisting the Trump regime’s destruction of our civil liberties, because our freedoms are not being taken away. They have been taken away.

J.D. Vance says he’ll use the FBI, IRS, Treasury, military, and every other arm of the federal government to attack people for saying things he doesn’t like. He’s telling his voters to rat out their neighbors if they speak ill of the dead. That’s not a sign of encroaching tyranny. It is tyranny.

(Vance is threatening the Ford and Soros foundations because they maybe gave grants to The Nation at some point. There is no logical or legal distinction between this and using the power of the federal government to pursue every one of The Nation’s paid subscribers. Here’s their subscription page.)

I’m not saying nothing else matters. We still have to hold the administration accountable for taking school meals from kids and letting a million children die and all the other horrors it’s inflicting on the world.

But we won’t be able to do those things if we can’t speak without fear of retribution. That’s why nothing else is as important as wrenching our civil liberties out of Donald Trump’s wretched little hands and back into our own.

Reporters should be grilling Trump about this at every single press avail. And if you’re in a congressional hearing and you ask more about Jeffrey Epstein than you do about this, you’re wasting our time and failing at your job.

For the rest of us who aren’t politicians and professional reporters, I’ll be damned if I know where to draw the line. We all have day jobs and want to watch movies and go out to eat and play with our kids. But my political engagement will never stray far from pushing back against the tyranny we’re living under.

As for this Substack, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know I want to get back to writing here occasionally. At a time when it’s getting harder to speak up without fear, the worst thing you can do is to stop speaking up at all.

Of course, if I practiced what I preach, every post would come back to this point. And maybe they all will. I have no idea.

Anyway, I’ll be here, not twice a week, but from time to time. I hope you will too.

- Boot

P.S. I haven’t checked my email in months, so if you sent me a personal message, I apologize for missing it. If you were just checking in on me because of the long silence (as at least one or two of you did), thanks for doing that.

P.P.S. Trump has become so brazen with his dictatorial moves that the name Night Watchman doesn’t even really make sense anymore. They’re not trying to hide their actions in darkness—they’re doing it all in broad daylight. But as they say in my home state, you dance with the one that brung ya.

Spoke of

• The miracle of life.

Did not speak of

• The 1.2 million children who will die in the next 5 years because President Trump stopped funding vaccination programs in poor countries.

Thanked

• Elon Musk, who put those vaccination programs in the wood chipper.

Took time to

• Vote to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Held

• A telephone Town Hall.

Misrepresented

• Many facts in his town hall.

Celebrated

• National Nurses Week.

Did not celebrate

• His votes to cut Medicaid for 160,000 constituents.

Has co-sponsored

• The Pregnancy Is Not An Illness Act of 2025, which among other things would nullify the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

Has not co-sponsored

• The MEME Act, which would prohibit the president and other federal officials from inviting bribery by creating cryptocurrencies, as President Trump has already done.

  • Here’s how the crypto thing works: Trump has created two new currencies, $TRUMP and $MELANIA. He, his family, and his business partners own large shares of both. He gets a trading fee every time someone buys or sells any of the remaining coin. He also profits when the price goes up.

  • Trump is driving the price up by offering the biggest coin holders special access to the White House. This is happening in public.

  • Because it’s crypto, nobody knows who’s buying or how much they buy. Anyone, including corporations and foreign governments, can let the White House know they’ve bought in, which makes Trump money, and then ask for favors in return.

Noted

• Military Spouse Recognition Day

• Renaming VE Day

Did not note

• That he’s voted to cut benefits for 27,000 veterans throughout Virginia.

Ate lunch at

• The T-Room in Lynchburg.

• Ann’s Family Restaurant in Nelson County.

Did not eat lunch at

• Schools attended by any of the 50,000 kids in his district whose free and reduced-price meals he’s voted to cut.

Boasted about

• Returning over $200,000 to constituents.

Did not boast about

• Voting to cut the $18 million in food and cash benefits that his constituents get every month.

Shared

• A selfie with his dog, Remington.

Thankfully, did not share

• A selfie featuring his, er, “Smith & Wesson.”

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After getting considerable grief for being out of touch with his constituents, John McGuire held his second town hall Tuesday night by phone.

Unlike a lot of the congressman’s critics, I didn’t think the calls were screened to favor him. But I can’t explain the comment posted on his official Facebook page by an account called Amherst County Republican Committee: “Congressman, I haven’t got my script yet. I can’t remember if I’m called 5 or 7.” (I assume they meant to type “caller.”) My first thought was it must be a spoof account set up to parody Republicans, in which case it’s a good joke. But if that’s what it is, they’re doing a good job of hiding the parody part. The account looks pretty straight to me. Maybe it’s real and got hacked?

Anyway, my sense that calls weren’t screened is just based on the nature of the ones that got through. Some callers had pointed questions, while others barely made sense. One woman asked what McGuire can do about property taxes—which is nothing, he explained, since they’re levied by state and local governments. Another expressed concern for a man she saw on TV who said he’d been scammed out of his “SIMS check.” (McGuire was understandably puzzled and referred her to his district office.) These didn’t strike me as questions that would pass a careful screening process—staffers don’t knowingly set their boss up to NOT have an answer for a constituent.

But when he did get serious inquiries, McGuire made several claims that deserve a fact-check. Here’s a short and probably incomplete list.

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1. “Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the country, and they have the most deaths by guns.”

True, but it doesn’t make the point he wants it to.

Chicago does have strict gun laws, and it does have more gun-related deaths than any other city in the country—a fact that’s made it a favorite target of the anti-gun-law crowd. But the implication that gun laws don’t reduce gun violence is wrong. When you adjust for population size, cities and states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun violence.

Top 5 cities by per-capita gun deaths in 2023: Birmingham AL, Memphis TN, St. Louis MO, Portsmouth VA, and Camden NJ.

By this measure, Chicago is safer than several cities in Virginia. It ranks 40th in per-capita gun deaths, lower than Portsmouth, Hampton, Roanoke, Newport News, and Richmond.

Top 5 states by per-capita gun deaths in 2022: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Missouri.

California, with the strongest gun laws in the country, ranks 44th in gun deaths per capita.

McGuire also mentioned using a gun to defend your home. Each year, there are roughly 1,300 “defensive gun uses” in the United States—that’s .39 incidents per 100,000 people. You’re more likely to accidentally injure yourself or someone else than to use a gun in defense of your home.

2. “A month or so ago we brought over half a billion dollars in tariffs and it’s doubled in just one month.”

It’s true that tariff payments under the Trump regime roughly doubled between March and April, though the estimates of the dollar amount that I’m seeing are quite different from what McGuire said: $9 billion in March, nearly doubling to $17 billion in April.

McGuire getting the number wrong isn’t as problematic as his implication that tariffs are paid by other countries or foreign companies. As even Bing will tell you, they’re paid by companies here in America that import products from overseas. “We brought in billions in March and it doubled in just one month” is another way of saying “we raised taxes on American companies and consumers—and then we doubled them in just one month!” I’m sure we’ll be seeing that in McGurie’s re-election ads next year.

Another tariff-related claim: “Ninety countries are now coming to the table, trying to eliminate their tariffs on American goods and services.”

The Trump administration has been saying this a lot. They’ve never published a list of the 90 countries, though news reports have mentioned negotiations with the U.K., South Korea, India, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and the E.U. Ninety countries would be nearly half the countries in the world—not impossible, but unlikely, and not to be taken seriously until they provide a verifiable list.

3. “Under the Biden administration, we were buying energy from countries that don't like us.”

He’s right, but the energy import/export picture is more complicated than he’s allowing. For one thing, the U.S. has been a net energy exporter for years. In fact, we exported more energy in 2023 than in any other year on record. But we also import energy products, including crude oil.

Why would we import crude if we already produce it domestically and have enough to sell abroad? The answer is pretty interesting.

U.S. refineries—especially those on the Gulf Coast—were built decades ago to process heavy, sour crude oil (so named because it’s thicker and higher in sulfur than other types). But much of the oil produced in the U.S. today is light, sweet crude, which many U.S. refineries aren’t optimized to process in bulk. To run efficiently, refineries blend imported heavy crude with domestic light crude.

According to government data, 87 percent of our imported crude oil comes from five countries:

1. Canada

2. Mexico

3. Saudi Arabia

4. Brazil

5. Venezuela

Until recently, Venezuela’s the only one on that list that would qualify as a country that doesn’t like us. But with his tariffs, taunts about the 51st state, and disregard for the western liberal order, Donald Trump is doing his best to alienate other countries on that list. It’s smart to reduce imports from adversaries. It’s not so smart to turn importers into adversaries.

4. “President Trump has promised we will not cut Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security.”

True! President Trump has promised that. But it’s not a promise he can keep. The budget blueprint calls for $880 billion in cuts to programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Its biggest program? Medicaid. The committee simply doesn’t oversee enough non-Medicaid funding to avoid cutting healthcare for the poor.

5. “I bought a pickup truck in 2019 with zero miles. I just went over 245,000 miles.”

This settles the mystery I wrote about earlier this week—it’s physically impossible for him to have covered that many miles in the four months he’s been in Congress. What he said last night makes it clear that he’s talking about the past six years. It’s entirely fair of him to use that number to make a point about how well he knows the 5th district, as he did last night. But it’s misleading at best to suggest—as he has also done—that it shows how much he’s shown up for constituents since taking office in January.