Democrats weigh court purge as gerrymandering ruling shifts 40 House seats

Sunday, May 17, 2026 · from 3 podcasts

Bitcoin And Breaking Points Peter St Onge Podcast

A Supreme Court ruling on political redistricting enables Republicans to redraw maps, which analysts project could flip 40 House seats.
Democrats in Virginia are threatening to force all seven state Supreme Court justices to retire to overturn a similar anti-gerrymandering decision.
Economist Justin Wolfers warns the cost of the Iran conflict could reach trillions, far exceeding the Pentagon's public $25 billion estimate.

Virginia Democrats are considering lowering the state Supreme Court’s mandatory retirement age to the mid-fifties. The move, reported on Breaking Points, would purge all seven sitting justices. Their goal: to appoint loyalists who will reverse a recent court decision that voided voter-approved redistricting maps. This judicial hardball comes weeks after a federal Supreme Court ruling clarified that political redistricting is legal, even if it impacts minority-heavy districts that lean Democratic.

That federal ruling has unlocked a potential 40-seat Republican advantage by 2028, according to analyst 538. On the Peter St Onge Podcast, host Peter St Onge cited Axios analysis showing an immediate 18-seat swing, with Texas gaining six seats, Florida four, and Alabama and Georgia two each. "This sets the stage for 2028," St Onge said. "A durable Republican majority would strip power from swing-vote moderates."

"The national gerrymandering battle is heavily lopsided, with Republican states like Texas and Florida gaining seats while Democratic efforts in places like Virginia are blocked."
- Emily Jashinsky, Breaking Points

The conflict is escalating beyond map-drawing into an institutional arms race. In Utah, Republicans engaged in court-packing to protect their maps. Now, Virginia Democrats are weighing the same tactic. The principle, as Breaking Points framed it, is that neither side is willing to unilaterally disarm when control of the House is shifting from the ballot box to the bench.

Meanwhile, the economic backdrop is turning volatile. Economist Justin Wolfers warned on Breaking Points that the true cost of the ongoing Iran conflict could reach into the trillions - dwarfing the Pentagon’s stated $25 billion price tag - when factoring in debt service, veteran benefits, and market damage. Consumer strain is evident, with the Costco CFO noting members are swapping beef for chicken and tuna to save money.

This domestic pressure cooker exists alongside a foreign policy deadlock. Netanyahu has signaled an open-ended conflict targeting Iranian nuclear sites, while Trump has rejected Iranian diplomatic proposals as "totally unacceptable." As the gerrymandering war reshapes the political landscape at home, the stakes for military and economic stability abroad are simultaneously ratcheting higher.

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Bitcoin And Breaking Points Peter St Onge Podcast

#Elections #Corruption #War

Pentagon Iran Supreme Court

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Stretch Sketch | Bitcoin News • May 15

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Politics (6)

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with a 15-9 vote, aiming to create a federal framework for digital asset trading, stablecoins, and intermediaries, splitting oversight between the SEC and CFTC.
Chairman Tim Scott framed the Clarity Act as a turning point to protect consumers, foster innovation in the US, and counter illicit financing, emphasizing its role in addressing a regulatory gray zone.
Senator Elizabeth Warren led opposition, arguing the Clarity Act was crypto industry-written, weakened investor protections dating back to 1929, preempted state anti-fraud rules, and enabled risky bank exposure to volatile crypto.
Democratic amendments to the Clarity Act, proposed by senators like Warren, Reed, and Van Hollen, aimed to strengthen sanctions against crypto mixers, block illicit stablecoin flows, and outlaw DeFi protocols used for money laundering, but were rejected.
Republicans, led by Senator Cynthia Lummis, argued that existing bill sections already tie digital asset intermediaries to the Bank Secrecy Act and expand Treasury's special measures authority, providing sufficient federal oversight.
Signal announced it may exit Canada if forced to comply with Bill C-22, a lawful access bill requiring surveillance capabilities that could compromise end-to-end encryption, with VPN provider Windscribe echoing similar concerns.

Protocol (5)

Macroeconomic factors, including rising 10-year US Treasury yields at 4.52% and April's 3.8% CPI, are driving Bitcoin's recent institutional sell-off, with analysts linking these to Middle East tensions and elevated energy prices.
MicroStrategy's STRC preferred stock, offering an 11.5% monthly dividend, saw a record daily trading volume of $1.53 billion, fueling the company's Bitcoin acquisitions and creating a predictable monthly ex-dividend cycle.
MicroStrategy plans to repurchase $1.5 billion of its 2029 convertible notes at a discount, paying $1.38 billion, listing available cash, equity offerings, and potential Bitcoin sales as funding sources.
Strive's SATA preferred stock will offer daily cash dividends from June 16, with a 13% annual rate effectively yielding 13.88% due to more frequent compounding, aiming to amplify Bitcoin holdings.
Thorchain halted all trading after a cross-chain exploit for $10.8 million, impacting deployments across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BSC and causing its native token, RUNE, to drop 12%, prompting a warning about DeFi risks.

Macro (1)

Japan's 10-year bond yield reached 2.72% after a 3.5% rise, marking its highest level in a very long time, reflecting global bond market stress also impacting Dow Jones, S&P, and NASDAQ.

AI & Tech (1)

The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) became the fastest-growing ETF in history within five weeks, tracking computer memory chipmakers like Micron, which the host views as an AI-driven bubble despite ongoing build contracts.

#Regulation #Markets #Fed #Banking

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

5/11/26: Bibi Demands More War, Dire Economic Warnings, VA Maps Struck Down • May 11

Trump rejected an Iranian diplomatic proposal outright, calling it 'totally unacceptable', signaling a continued deadlock in post-war negotiations.
Netanyahu stated the war with Iran is not over and hinted at plans to physically remove enriched uranium from Iran, refusing to give a public timetable.
The Iran war's true economic cost is massively understated, with economist Justin Wolfers estimating a final bill in the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars, far beyond the Pentagon's $25 billion figure.
Justin Wolfers estimates the war has wiped about $3 trillion off the value of S&P 500 companies, with stocks about 5% lower than they would otherwise be.
The Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved redistricting referendum on a procedural technicality, blocking a Democratic gerrymander that would have created an 11-1 partisan advantage.
Democrats in Virginia are reportedly brainstorming radical countermeasures, including lowering the state Supreme Court justice retirement age to the mid-50s to replace the entire bench and then challenge the underlying constitutional amendment.
The national gerrymandering battle is heavily lopsided, with Republican states like Texas and Florida gaining seats while Democratic efforts in places like Virginia are blocked, forcing Democrats to win the national popular vote by an estimated 4 points just to take the House.
A bipartisan group of Democrats is pushing for transparency about Israel's nuclear arsenal, arguing it is essential for securing a verifiable non-proliferation deal with Iran.
Hassan Piker invoked a JFK quote, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,' to describe the political radicalization stemming from gerrymandering and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
The U.S. munitions stockpile is severely depleted from the 40-day Iran war, with Senator Mark Kelly warning it will take years, not months, to rebuild the arsenal.
Trump is publicly attacking the financial concessions of past Iran deals while facing pressure from hawks like Mark Levin, creating an 'escalation trap' risk where he might launch a new military operation to avoid perceived humiliation.

Also from this episode: (1)

Business (1)

Economic strain is already visible, with a Kraft-Heinz CEO reporting negative cash flows and depleted savings among lower-income brackets, and a Costco CFO noting consumers are switching from beef to cheaper poultry and canned goods.

#War #Macro #Elections #AI Infrastructure #Markets

Peter St Onge Podcast

Ep 172 Weekly Roundup: GOP Could Redistrict 40 Seats • May 11

Peter St Onge says the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering could immediately shift 18 House seats to Republicans, with a long-term swing of 30-40 seats, moving the House from being Republican one-third of the time to almost half the time.
St Onge cites Axios analysis showing the ruling could yield six new Republican seats in Texas, four in Florida, two each in Alabama and Georgia, and flip four battleground seats, leaving at least six Southern states with no Democratic districts.
He argues in states Trump won against Kamala Harris, Democrats hold 69 congressional seats, but Republicans hold only 39 in states Harris won, creating a 30-seat disparity. 538 estimates a 40-seat swing if all states redraw aggressively.
He cites USDA data showing 14,000 SNAP beneficiaries own luxury cars like Ferraris and Bentleys. St Onge claims fraud consumes roughly one in four SNAP dollars in states that report honestly.

Also from this episode: (8)

Business (2)

St Onge states the United Arab Emirates left OPEC after 58 years, tired of OPEC's production caps that idled a third of its capacity, costing the nation $30-40 billion annually.
He claims OPEC's share of global oil exports fell from nearly 90% in the 1970s to just over half today, weakening its pricing power. A full cartel collapse could drop oil prices to $40-45 and gasoline to $2 per gallon.

Politics (6)

St Onge says 4.5 million people have lost SNAP benefits since last July due to tightened rules, but another 30 million recipients are either scamming the system or do not genuinely need assistance.
St Onge notes SNAP enrollment exploded from 3 million in 1969 to 45 million when Obama left office. He argues 80% of current recipients may not need aid, based on Massachusetts's enrollment jumping from 3-12% of residents 25 years ago to 15.4% today.
He states the European Parliament's 'Democracy Shield' would create a censorship body that already oversees the takedown of 80 million posts monthly, with an independent study finding up to 99.7% of those were legal.
St Onge claims European authorities arrest over a thousand people per month for speech violations. He cites a UK think tank estimating thought crime policing consumes 650,000 hours annually while 90% of violent and sexual crimes go unsolved.
He argues Argentina's President Javier Milei cut housing costs 70% in two years by eliminating rent control and deregulating leases, which tripled rental listings and brought 200,000 vacant units to market.
St Onge contrasts this with New York's 1.4% vacancy rate and 50,000 vacant apartments whose owners refuse to rent, despite 165,000 families waiting for housing. He notes St. Paul's rent control crashed building permits by 80%.

#Elections #Energy #Macro #Regulation