Little Donnie just might have an aneurysm:

A flurry of Republican retirements has led to 42 open seats, many of them the sort of well-entrenched incumbents in competitive districts whose retirements are the most valuable for Democrats. The Democrats have succeeded in recruiting well-funded and strong candidates in many of the battlegrounds, which has tended to lessen the advantage of incumbency even in the districts where Republicans are running for re-election. A court decision in Pennsylvania has eliminated the party’s gerrymander there.

Democrats appear highly competitive in many conservative districts. Already, there are polls showing Democrats ahead in Kentucky’s Sixth District, West Virginia’s Third, North Carolina’s Ninth, New York’s 22nd and Montana’s at-large district. Mr. Trump won each by at least 10 points.

We should issue the obligatory caution about counting chickens before they hatch and go vote, but things are looking much better than I thought they would, even as recently as a few months ago. And it looks like we're making headway in many rural districts, which is fantastic news:

When all else fails, use intimidation and coercion:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and demanded that they turn over internal e-mails related to their research. Their findings contradicted earlier work showing that global warming had paused, and Smith, a climate change skeptic, has accused them of altering global temperature data and rushing to publish their research in the June issue of the journal Science.

On Tuesday, seven scientific organizations representing hundreds of thousands of scientists sent an unsparing letter to Smith, warning that his efforts are “establishing a practice of inquests” that will have a chilling effect.

This is standard operating procedure for these ignorant bullies. They don't want these e-mails for scientific purposes, they just want to parse the communications for any little nugget they can take out-of-context to create a nefarious conspiracy. But this is not just a "partisan" issue; the not-so-invisible hand of the fossil fuel industry is pulling Lamar Smith's strings:

The right-wing nutters are becoming apoplectic:

It is infuriating to hear that these people in the House are seriously looking to replace Boehner with his co-conspirator Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McCarthy — whose voting record is slightly to the right of Renee Ellmers — has stood with Boehner as House conservatives have been retaliated against.

He’s stood with Boehner as attempts to kill Obamacare, stop amnesty, and halt debt ceiling increases have been squashed. (As have fellow House leadership team members Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry.) McCarthy and other House leaders have fretted over demanding the defunding of Planned Parenthood because the fight would likely lead to a government shutdown. Tell me again what’s so bad about a government shutdown.

Bolding his. Aside from the fact that Soldiers, Sailors, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard will have their paychecks stopped this time around, if you'd take a peek outside your ideological bubble you would realize that a super-majority of US citizens do *not* want the government shut down. But go right ahead, that may be the only thing that could make Republican gerrymandering of the House a secondary consideration. And the fact Boehner has allowed the House to vote 55 times (or maybe more, I've lost count) to repeal Obamacare, the only thing that's been "squashed" is the taxpayers' expectation of responsible governing from that body. The crazy is going to get epic before this is over.