Badlands Daily: 5/1/26 - Redistricting Chaos, 17th Amendment, DeLauro Embarrasses Herself

CannCon and Chris Paul close out the week with a Friday discussion show that earns its runtime. Louisiana delays its house primaries after the Calais decision while Rep. Cleo Fields cries that "people have already voted," which is hilarious given the Virginia Democrats argued the opposite in their own Supreme Court hearing. CannCon and Chris dig into the downstream constitutional implications of ungerrymandering, including whether a GOP-dominant state legislature landscape creates the runway to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, restore state election of senators, and drain money from senate races by taking away the celebrity glamour of running statewide. Trump's whiskey tariff deal with Scotland on behalf of Kentucky opens a conversation about pre-constitutional state sovereignty and whether Trump is optically separating from the British imperial relationship or quietly reasserting it. The fourteenth amendment, the Federal Reserve, and the Creature from Jekyll Island tie it all together. Then CannCon plays the Rosa DeLauro versus Lee Zeldin appropriations hearing where DeLauro claims Zeldin made up Loper Bright, West Virginia v. EPA, and the major questions doctrine. Chris breaks down why this is exactly what institutional delegitimization looks like in real time.