Some More News - Even More News: What Should Democrats Do About Virginia?

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Hi. On today's episode of Even More News, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan talk about the Virginia Supreme Court gerrymandering ruling and how Democrats can fight back. They also discuss the Iran ceasefire being on "life support," the gold Trump statue, and the gold Trump phone.As always, we recorded right before that big thing that happened.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#EvenMoreNews #Virginia #redistrictingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, hello on today's episode. We look at the Virginia Supreme Court's gerrymandering ruling and how Democrats should respond. The Iran ceasefire being on life support, the gold Trump statue, and the gold Trump phone. Hello and welcome back to even more news. Do do do do do do do do's. I'm Katie. Hi, and thank you for that introduction to Even More News, do, do, do, do.

Hi, I'm Cody. Hello, Katie. Hello, Cody. Hello, Katie. Jonathan is also here. Hi. Hit that high note, Jonathan. Hi.

Even more news. Oh, you wanted actually high, no. Even more news, even more news. No, no. How are you guys doing? How are you doing this Monday morning? Here and activated coffee and hello. We just need to dive right in, don't we?

So this happened on Friday before our last episode came out, but obviously we didn't get to talk about it. The Virginia Supreme Court struck down their voter approved amendment, which would allow the state. to gerrymander and fight back in the gerrymandering wars. The court says, ah, ha, ha, but you've followed the wrong procedural process procedure with technicality technicals, and you can't do it. Uh-uh.

So basically, it appears, if you're just an observer, that Republicans are allowed to gerrymander to their heart's content, and Democrats are not, and you should just be happy not having representation in the United States government. And they're using the Democrats' favorite slash least favorite thing, procedure against them. It's pretty, I mean, start with upsetting and no good, but also pretty absurd the claims that are being made about this. It's actually, the reporting on this is not.

always good good the framing is is very much like well it's struck down and this and then you sort have to click through like three different things to find like an analysis of what was actually said or even a description of what was actually said if you really dig down into it what actually is going on is that they're just kind of like making up stuff and like claiming that there are issues with it that aren't really there one of the things such as one of the things that they said is so the rule the procedure is that the legislature is required to vote on this amendment on an amendment when introducing an amendment they're required to vote on it twice in separate special sessions with an election in between that is what happened yeah but

the first special session during which they voted on it was not specifically called for that specific vote. It was a special session where they voted on other stuff as well. So the rule, which doesn't say that it has to be a specifically special special session for the special session voting for the amendment specifically. It just says two special sessions with an election in between. And so they're claiming that it's absurd. It's absurd. They're claiming that because they voted on other stuff in one of these special sessions, then that special session doesn't count as a special session. Despite all the fact that this is a voter approved constitutional amendment that oh sure democracy they voted on it. Democracy. I mean it's just such a blatant power grab and it's

it's hard to sit here every week and talk about these things and not have much to say other than it's really overwhelmingly depressing because I don't I don't want to give the message or leave the impression that we're totally cooked, but it feels like we're being baked alive. And it's, yeah, it's pretty hard to grapple with. And it's also just like incredibly frustrating because they're clearly not playing by the rules and making up their own rules and then saying, you're not following the rules. Rules for thee, not for me. There are more examples. We'll get to more of them. One of the other ones is that they said that there wasn't enough time that had passed between the first vote in the special election that apparently didn't count and the election that was in

between the special sessions. But they don't specify an amount of time that needs to pass. So they're just making up that there's a time frame that it needs to fit in. We live in a timeline where you can say literally anything and just use that as your justification, whether it makes sense or not. You just keep saying it, you keep saying it, and there's going to be enough people that carry water for you that have been bought, that have their own special interests being taken care of for whatever thing in whatever way, and they are just going along with it. But it is so blatant. And again, another thing just can't seem to get past. I'm always hung up on the fact that if it was reversed, this would be civil war. There would be riding in the streets. No, we can't be

doing that. Well, they know that that's not what it is. They know they're making up special rules and they're going to just keep doing it as long as it works for them. Cody, the thing you were listing of like, well, here's the technicality they found is typically the kind of thing that I would memorize

and then painstakingly detail on here. And I decided not to because in my head, I was like, and I'm not saying you shouldn't have. I think it's good that you did. Right. Right. It's mealy-mouthed nonsense. that frankly, we just have to start doing too. And the Democrats do have some plans. I don't know if they're actually going to follow through,

but they huddled this weekend. They were on a call with Hakeem Jeffries. They were talking about some potential things. One of them is lowering the required age of retirement of Supreme Court justices to 54, thus wiping out the entire Virginia Supreme Court and just replacing them with people who will do what they want, which, you know, feels like an extreme.

move, but also you have to remember that Utah stacked their own court when the court did something they didn't like, right? There's kind of a precedent for doing tons of stuff. That's obviously not what Fox News would call it. Right. Oh, yeah. There's an idea of saying that that first special election wasn't posted the way it was required to be posted in courthouses, and so it doesn't, so it's nullified, and thus the entire

decision is nullified. okay what is it expensive mistake well so here's okay so this is so it's so stupid so yes they're just saying whatever making whatever up and there's doing it so obviously the move is either let them or do it back and then we all just live in the dirt forever and that's just what we're going to do fine we live in the dirt forever i have to point out so and this is part of the reporting issue too So what was argued was that, as Jonathan, you're pointing out, they didn't hold the vote, the legislative vote in the special session in time to post notification of the amendment on courthouse doors as required by a 1902 law. 90 days before the election. Now, the next sentence, new paragraph in this NPR report about this.

The Democrats' lawyers argued that the 1902 law had been repealed and was out of date. So here's my issue. Was it? Was it repealed? And is it out of date? Don't they keep track of this kind of thing? That actually, well, is it repealed or not? Find out that information.

And if it's not, then this is all obviously bullshit so we can move on. Like this just this like, well, they say that this law stops them from doing it. It's like, well, they say that the law doesn't exist anymore. They could say that the 19th Amendment was repealed. And so like what are we like what's going on? It's all bullshit. It's all bullshit. It's been infuriating. Egregiously bad reporting in my opinion to present it that way.

I just threw this out casually, but I want to explain an expensive mistake. I just keep thinking about with all of these elections being like, never mind we're we're not doing elections. Even though the primaries are on the way, ballots have been set. Never mind. We're canceling. We're redoing this. This all this. You guys spent so much money doing this. these states like it's not cheap to have elections and so you're telling me you did these two special sessions and all this shit and people approved it but you're throwing it out because it didn't somebody stop beforehand and say have you allowed enough time have you posted to the courthouses if that's such a big

fucking deal well no because it was repealed and it doesn't matter it's fake that's my point my point is like what do you mean what do you mean it's happened you've done this for an extended period of time been working on this and you've spent your state's money and resources and what? If they're saying, well, back then, it benefited us to have this thing and now it doesn't,

so we're going to pretend it never applied. We have no choice. That feels scummy and shitty. We got no choice because they are making up rules to say we can do a thing that you can't do. They're positing using the recent Louisiana rules, from the Supreme Court to try to invalidate the new California maps because they're saying, oh, you mentioned race when you were doing it.

Like, they are going to do this stuff and we have to be prepared to ignore it and make up our own rules. Yeah. We should talk about the Supreme Court ruling as well because information has come out that Alito's written opinion was based on just wrong information, just. Misleading information. I guess you would say. Misleading.

How about that? Sure. Alito, in his written opinion, striking down or upholding, as he says, section two of the VRA, he wrote, black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana. And the way he got that number came from a Justice Department like friend of the court brief.

Hey, you should consider that. And he lifted it almost verbatim from the Justice Department's bullshit argument. But they kind of used the wrong denominator because when you consider the number of people eligible to vote in each category, you would probably use registered voters or people eligible to vote, not total population. Right. And in that metric, white people do still vote at higher rates than black people in the state of Louisiana. bullshit, by the way. But even for their bullshit justification, they got that wrong. Or misleading.

We'll say that. But it is the wrong way to look at it. Misleading way to look at it. Absolutely. I mean, they're all just doing their little book reports and trying to find the one, like, this support, this quote I'll use. And that makes it, makes it correct. I mean, we're very close to a made up chat GPT case coming up in a Supreme. court briefing or argument that they don't check.

I mean, the fact that he lifted it almost verbatim and just like plugged it in. It's like, oh, so they're waiting. They're like, yeah, from the gibberish idiots that are running the Trump Justice Department trying to make up whatever thing. He's like, good enough for me. Those are the rules now. So anyway, we got to do it back until. And maybe, yeah, do it better, smarter, faster.

But, you know, we might have more redistricting opportunities before 2028 to try and match. that, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. And it felt very bad on Friday. Obviously, we've talked about this, Katie, like 20, 26 midterms. It's probably going to, like, the Democrats could win by the popular vote by 10 percentage points and then maybe have seven seats extra in the House, right? So it's not going to be great. It's not going to be as big a majority, but it's still only like a Republican three and a half

point advantage, which sucks. Yeah, no, the wave. the wave will take care of it. Like I, you know, for now, it's just like, it's just sucks. And it is, and it is concerning and maybe the wave won't take care of it. And it is just disheartening that like, it's like, okay, so you have this anti-democratic party and they're doing all this anti-democratic stuff. And now it's at the point where it's just, we're in this weird democracy war.

And we're just like, fucking, we'll ban gerrymandering if you'd like. they're like, well, no, we can't do that. And like, okay, then I guess we'll all do it. Oh, I guess you love it now. Oh, it was so interesting that you hated it. And it's like, okay, but like clearly you understand that you forced our hand. And like, so now we're in these democracy wars. Burn it on down.

And that's not a great place to be in. I don't love the future of that. But, you know, hopefully we win it. It's overwhelming. This is depressing. Let's move on to another topic, huh? Sure, a less of a less. A less.

A less depressing topic, certainly. Less depressing. We could do positive news, like that positive case of haunted virus. Ow! They're isolating the people. At the University of Nebraska Medical Center, apparently a very good isolation ward. Excellent.

We have some things to talk about, and the president is going to help us out here because he was talking about it just this morning. I love a helpful president. Oh, this morning. I didn't see this. Is this what you fell asleep this morning? He did.

I mean, he was a little droopy this morning. Something's going on. I just saw something about him falling and snapping awake. Was he up tweeting? He could have just been truiting really loud, really late. He was truiting all night, and now he's kind of hanging on by a thread with all these people standing behind him. All right. Pressure.

Pressure's on, big guy. Yeah, here we go. For the kind being the C-Spyre remains, it's like. It's unbelievably weak. I would say I would call it the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage, they sent us. I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm not going to waste my time reading it.

I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support. They understand. These are all medical people. Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? That prognostic. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support.

Where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living. He doesn't need to do the little play acting. We don't need the scene work. Okay, so the ceasefire is on live support. I think I could have told you that weeks ago. Well, because previously they were shooting back and forth and saying, this is not a break of the ceasefire.

We consider breaks of the ceasefire. Because it looked like a more bombing. Yeah, ceasefire operations. As always, it's hard to get a real finger on the bulls, but according to analysts... Well, he's dying, so it's really weak. Yeah, it is. It's really hard to find his veins and find a good strong pulse. And that's how he gets bruised all the time.

People are like, sir, sir, are you alive? Where's the pulse? And it bruses. He may be the living dead. From what I understand, there are certain things that Iran seems to be immovable on. From what I understand, could be wrong, reporting weird. They want to control the straight, and I think they want reparations for all the damages done. I keep seeing that as sticking points.

We'll see. Oh, we blew up one of their schools, so. We blew up one of their schools. We've destroyed essential infrastructure, all sorts of stuff over nothing. Not over nothing. Over nothing. Because they, we just felt like it. Because the other guy convinced him to do it because he felt like it.

And then over the weekend, there's also some fun clips of Netanyahu floating around, I guess, on a 16-minute's interview. One of the things Netanyahu did say was that the war is not over, that we need to remove the uranium. And then they're like, well, how are we going to do that? He's like, we're going to go in and take it. You go in and take it is what he said. You go in and take it. And then it's like, well, who's going to go in to take it? You go in and take it.

So that's where we're at on that. Yeah. Yeah, it's similar. It's over. It's not over. It'll never end. It's never happened. You know, that's just... We've already mentioned this, but more reporting has come out that the damage in the Middle East is even more extensive to our bases, further corroborating the fact that surveillance technology, places that would release satellite images have been squashed. They've been told not to release imagery. But just simply looking at other countries' images, and stuff and cross-referencing it,

you can see more granularly how much has been destroyed. And that's a lot of money that we have wasted, both in expelling our own ammunition, but then all of just the investment in the region. Hopefully it's too extensive to build all these bases back. But we need bases in our own country.

Oh, wait, that's, I see. It is funny that they treat the president the same way as the general public. like well we can't release like information about all the stuff that's blowing up of ours and they're also not showing him all the stuff that they have blown up of ours do you think that remains true uh i would say they're probably showing him AI videos and any any sort of kinetic strike that heggseth is jerking off to that day you know they're gonna show him totally jerks off to him doesn't he yeah he does so we have mentioned trump a few times the president yeah yeah why don't we why don't we dig into some more trump dates yeah well okay so so this weekend or i guess friday it may have been his golf course one of his golf courses in florida doraal had got a big old golden statue of him for some reason finally it's so ugly about time all right so let's look at a little bit of the dedication of

this golden statue, which Pastor Mark Burns, who blessed it or something, said it's not a golden calf. So just like get that image out of your head. The golden calf, you know, one of the first... Looks like it's golden cow to me. One of the early commandments, I think, did this. It wasn't like a minor one. This is one of the big ones. But anyway, that's not what this is. Okay, good. Hello, everybody. I want to thank you so much for being there today and more importantly for what you did. The statue is beautiful. You know, I saw it during the weekend. We had a big PGA tournament with a great champion and all great champions, actually, but it was a great tournament. And I got to look at it very closely, and it's incredible. And I just want to thank you. I know it was

done from love. And I want to thank Mark Burns, a pastor. He's a good pastor. He's a good man. I've known him a long time. He's been with me from the beginning, right from the beginning, maybe about two days later, right? This goes on for a long time. I don't want to, but like, he dialed in. They had a big unveiling ceremony for the gold statue of him at his golf club, and he couldn't be there.

He explains later, because there's war stuff. I got war. I got to watch the war. So he dialed into all these people who were, like, dressed up for a big ceremony. Wild. Anyway. It's a little, it's a little embarrassing.

if I'm being honest. I like some of the reporting about this. So I guess this was fundraised by crypto people and they did like a meme coin to fundraise for this. How am I supposed to pronounce it if it's got the dollar sign?

Dollar sign patriot, yeah. Whatever. It's got the dollar sign. Patriot coin. It's all caps to indicate it's a coin. Yeah, I'm like Patriot, money pay, whatever, you get it. But I like this quote,

the sculptor behind. the piece told the Miami New Times that he had to keep it hidden while late payments were being made and that the group behind it had to pay extra over copyright infringement issues. This was a cluster fuck. The sculptor Alan Galtrell told the New York Times about working on the project. I just thought that was a funny detail to share with everybody about the golden statue, not the golden calf. No, no, no. The normal golden statue of the current living, serving president. It's Serving

It's giving Something It's giving something Speaking of gold It's giving him a mood boost How about that Trump phone Speaking of boosts

Mobile Mobile Yeah it still doesn't exist And I believe people have started Getting emails who ordered the phone Saying it's just not ever going to happen So it's but it's been like a year and a half, right, of this Trump phone? Yeah, it's hilarious and expected that the Trump

phone doesn't exist and will never exist. And everyone who signed up for one was either getting scammed or knew it was a scam and wanted to do a story on it when it was revealed to be a scam. It's so wild. Absurd. Why are you even bothering getting a Trump phone? Get a real phone in the first place. Obviously, it's not going to work or it's going to be like an iPhone like painted gold. There are two they're like different versions like different renderings of it. They don't even know

what it's supposed to look like. It was originally made in America but now that's not true. I mean it's not it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist so it couldn't be made anywhere. What this is is a real return to form. This is his roots.

This is like this is what gets him going. It gets him out of bed. Yeah, it's Trump guitars. It's like do like Let's get us get there. Trump University. All of it. Trump country. Almost 600,000 people pre-order this phone,

giving $100,000 as a deposit. Wait, let me just think this is. Don't even need to do the math here. They don't have to pay it back. Everything's if you read the fine details as any grift would. It's very unclear. As already mentioned, the rendering, it might not look like that at all because it'll never exist.

It said, I guess, that's on the website that it's a fully refundable deposit, but then it's not actually. Also, they say that the phone might not even work in some of the fine print details. They're not obligated to have a phone that works. Yeah, the exact, it's so good, the exact phrasing, device compatibility, functionality, performance, and feature availability are not guaranteed. What are you buying? Tim Apple would never put out something like that. It's just the grift, the grift, the money grab, the blatant money grab left and right. As we noted, it was, you know, like most of his products, it's made in America.

Well, no, it's not. If you look at it closely, obviously, this is not made, so it can't be made anywhere. But it no longer makes the claim. It's giving a pile of dog shit. It's giving air phone. And so no longer are they making the claim that it's made in the U.S. now the language is designed with American

values in mind it's an American values it's an American proud design and it's shaped by American innovation so not quite made in America

the fact that they've switched that language means they're still are somehow trying to make it because if it was if they knew it was never going to exist they would just say Made in America, sign up right now, you know. But the fact that they're like, okay, we can't say that says to me that someone out there is attempting to make the Trump phone, thinking it would be easy, calling factories, who do I get

at Foxcon or whatever. Can't we just 3D print a plastic thing that doesn't, because it doesn't have to work? It doesn't have to do anything. It could be a picture of a phone. They could distribute this bluey camera that my son has been getting. A functional, great, get to do this. a functional bluey camera. You could do this.

They're not a sponsor of ours. I'll put it away. They also sell, I believe it's just, yeah, it's a Samsung phone. So you can go on TrumpMobile.com. And if you go to phones, you can still pre-order the T1, which is what the phone is called.

$100 refundable deposit. So wait, they can't just take a Samsung phone and make it gold? Well, if you look at the photos, they almost, did, but they can't. So you can get the T1 phone that more or less looks like a Samsung S24.

Or you can get the Samsung S24 on the website. You could probably just put a picture of him on there if you really must. On the Trump website, you can get this Samsung Galaxy S24 on the Trump phone website

and you can get it for $450 plus. How much is it sell normally? You could go on Amazon and get it for $350. Why would I want to do that? So go to trumpphones.com or whatever. Should I switch to Android?

Is this? No, Jonathan. We'll all be green on the text thread anymore. Yes. I'll be able to send images. Get your T1! Don't leave me on an island. I would hate it.

Every other thread I'm on with my friends, who I have would be very upset that now all of a sudden there's some green freak. Think green, folks. It's the future. I send stuff all the time. and it's just like, get a load of this. And then three hours later, Cody will be like,

I assume you sent something with that, but I can't see it and I don't know what it is and never will. We were going to talk about Sean Duffy's road trip reality series, you know, really getting back to his roots. Speaking of scams, I feel like we should at least address it because of all the scams that we're talking about. And I believe last episode I alluded to the fact that Sean Duffy's job

isn't to like get out there and tell people to go do a road trip. which is not, but maybe it's his job to do a road trip for seven months and just like make a reality TV show of where he and his family, he, the secretary of transportation and his family, film a reality TV show to like promote going on road trips when gas is. It's so wild. It's a little more than we'd want it to be. In so many ways. Again, another example of if this was reversed, you would lose your mind. This is nuts. It's just like, but like apparently working at some point during this, but not the full-time position that he is elected for or appointed to. That's one element of it. But the whole tone deaf idea that Americans should be vacationing should be going on road trips when take a look at any vacation town around this country. Everybody's freaking out. Tourism is down. People can afford it. Of course tourism is down. everything is astronomical.

Kevin Hassett last week proudly proclaiming that credit card spending is up isn't a good thing. It's bad. Also, we found it, you guys. We figured out who the guy that I thought looked like Kevin Hassett was. Andy Daly. Andy Daly. That's what it is.

He could be a Dandy Daly character. If Andy Daly was more famous, they would get him for SNL. They should do it anyway. They should. I would applaud. But anyway, that's a slight detour from what I'm trying to say here, which is that this is just so wildly tone deaf. My God, Sean Duffy, just,

that's all he is, is a reality TV star. Oh, and this is the last thing I was going to say, is that they, he's like, why is everyone freaking out? It's not like I'm being paid to do this. You are raising your profile with a TV show. What are you talking about? Like, whether or not you,

you got a paid vacation, first off, all of that. But also, you made a TV show. And so then as soon as you're fired from this administration, you've got a TV show. You have raised your personal brand once again. Okay, end of rant. No, you're right. He's soft launching his future right now by being a reality TV guy and continuing to be a reality TV guy and working for the reality TV president. And just I, you're so right.

I need like to highlight your point and just like underline it a bunch. you spent seven months going on a paid for road trip with your family. And probably not really. And probably not really. Yeah, you fly in, you do the scene and then you do. You did get paid. You got paid by the seven months you did the road trip. And I have to read this quote because he says, as you said, maybe he got some work done.

Literally, we keep saying he got some work done. And we keep saying the phrase some work because that's what he said. He said he did manage to find some time to do, quote, some work. That's his, like, pitch to America that this is fine, because he got to set aside some time to do some work. To be the Secretary of Transportation, to lead an entire government department. I would like to just read a quick quote from the website, because they set up a website, at great American roadtrip.org where you can scroll and look at some of the stuff

and go to the sponsors like Boeing and Toyota and many other companies that he's supposed to be semi-regulating that are sponsoring this thing. Shell! Ooh, shell! Interesting! If you go to Great American Roadtrip.org scroll down a little bit, it's got like a little explainer. Here's the first sentence. Taking a road trip in America isn't just a vacation.

It's a civic experience. Okay, so zero humans ever. Are you a robot? But are like... Thank you, chat GPT, for setting up our stupid website for... It's one of the most powerful ways... It's one of the most powerful ways to understand... All right.

Yeah, no, it's like the whole thing is that. Join us in a front row seat. But also, they didn't fix the spacing on join us in a front row seat because there's spaces in between the hyphen. Front row should be one word with a hyphen in there. It looks like they're using an M-Dash poorly, but they're using a dash poorly to say front row. But also, you don't need...

to front row isn't hyphenated. They copied and pasted it from chat GPT and then the formatting got messed up and they didn't bother to fix it. No one bothered to look at this. They didn't look at it. It's the, it's the MAGA, mega book. It's the mega book for the Department of Education is posting. They post all these memes of like cartoon characters as teachers because, oh, America's

education is back. And they're all holding books that say MAGA on it because this is the era of MAGA education. But one of them with Ms. Hoover from the Simpsons is holding a book. It says mega on it. Read it. Read it before you post it. Is that a joke? No.

It says mega and they posted it for real. Like, they don't care. If you're watching this, you're looking at it right now. We're not. It's right there. I assume you can see it. It's absurd. Ridiculous.

Katie, I'm sorry we've made you do that a bunch. You've rubbed your temples, I think, more than usual, and I'm sorry about that. I am so sleepy today and it was a weekend and it's Monday morning. you guys are the highlight of it but it's just so it's so wild and it's just it's hard to believe

yeah you gotta believe it though it's stupid it's happening everyone take a sip of your caffeine juice I'm all out and pinch yourself maybe we're all maybe this is all a dream this is a dream this is a dream

it's 2014 it might be we might be in some version of a simulation he's not the person Harmless memes. Time to log on to the internet. Ice bucket challenge. I gotta do that.

All right, guys. Like and subscribe. Leave a comment, please. Yeah, like this. And remember, we love you very much. Much. Stay safe out there. There.