Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the trib Cast for Tuesday, July fifteenth.
Speaker 1: I'm Eleanor Klibanoff Law and Politics reporter, joined as always
Speaker 1: by editor in chief Matthew Watkins.
Speaker 2: Hello, how are you doing well? Just got back last
Speaker 2: night from Mexico City.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a that's a better location than Texas
Speaker 1: has been for the last couple of last couple of days.
Speaker 1: Much cooler, yes, yeah, temperature less humid and maybe we
Speaker 1: yes yeah. Well you know, Matthew, when you I do
Speaker 1: have a bone to pick with you, because when we
Speaker 1: discussed me becoming the law and politics reporter, I thought
Speaker 1: I had five years until I had to start caring
Speaker 1: about redistricting.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that was very naive of you.
Speaker 1: I thought the rule was every ten years, and so
Speaker 1: I thought five years from now, who knows, maybe I'll be,
Speaker 1: you know, a reclusive billionaire by then. I wouldn't have to,
Speaker 1: you know, dig in on redistricting. And now here we are.
Speaker 1: It is the middle of the decade. I have accepted
Speaker 1: this job, no takebacks, and we are getting into redistricting.
Speaker 1: So really excited to dig in on that issue today.
Speaker 3: Yes, very.
Speaker 2: Just the topic that you want to learn with like
Speaker 2: a very short notice on the fly, complicated at all.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not, which is why we're extremely excited to
Speaker 1: have a guest who knows this issue backwards and forwards.
Speaker 1: Kareem Creighton is Vice president of the Brennan Center for Justices, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Office, and a scholar on the intersection of law, politics,
Speaker 1: and race. During the twenty two ty redistricting cycle, he
Speaker 1: advised nearly a dozen local jurisdictions, commissions and legislative caucuses.
Speaker 1: Previously served as executive director of the Southern Coalition for
Speaker 1: Social Justice, where he hired and trained a litigation team
Speaker 1: to argue in two key jerrymandering cases before the US
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and, most relevant to us, served as chief
Speaker 1: of staff and special counsel to the Alabama House Minority
Speaker 1: leader during a special session on redistricting. He also helped
Speaker 1: create a video game about redistricting, which we want to
Speaker 1: talk about. Kareem, thank you for joining us. Gelighted to
Speaker 1: be with you. You know, this is an issue that
Speaker 1: I know you guys think about in the middle of
Speaker 1: the decade. You guys think about this all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, Just briefly tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your experience in Alabama, you know, with their redistricting special session.
Speaker 3: Sure happy to do that and again thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I am a native of Montgomery and got into this
Speaker 3: in part because redistricting in the nineteen nineties was something
Speaker 3: that changed politics in our state. So I have a
Speaker 3: tie to the place in part because a new member
Speaker 3: of the House Democratic Caucus, and this was outside of
Speaker 3: the nonpartisan work I had done, had taken over a
Speaker 3: very young member who mixed things, hadn't done districting before,
Speaker 3: took over and was thrown into a middle of a
Speaker 3: session to deal with a Supreme Court case that Alabama
Speaker 3: had to remedy. And so my commitment to him was, look,
Speaker 3: I'll work for a year, We'll work through the special
Speaker 3: session and anything else that comes up. What anything else
Speaker 3: turned into was this special session dealing with redistricting, a
Speaker 3: governor that found himself drummed out of office because of corruption,
Speaker 3: and a Senate because the prior Attorney general went into
Speaker 3: the Trump administration only to be fired. So a lot
Speaker 3: happened in that time, but the process for redistricting was
Speaker 3: one that definitely, you know, was very much Alabama on brand.
Speaker 3: I think other Southern states sort of have some of
Speaker 3: this too, but Alabama takes a particular version of doing
Speaker 3: what it wants to expite federal order. So the long
Speaker 3: and short of this story is it's a Republican supermajority
Speaker 3: that decided that it was going to ignore African American
Speaker 3: politically by the federal to remedy it, and they fought
Speaker 3: tooth and nail on doing it the way that they
Speaker 3: wanted to without public input, et cetera. There was it
Speaker 3: turned out a filibuster. We can do that in the
Speaker 3: state legislature that tried to slow it down. They got
Speaker 3: what they wanted anyway. But it was the time before
Speaker 3: the current fight about redistricting in Alabama, and it really
Speaker 3: was exactly what unfortunately, the legislative majority supermajority is keen
Speaker 3: to do, do what they want and force the federal
Speaker 3: government to tell them otherwise. And as you saw this
Speaker 3: time around in twenty twenty, I was in another capacity
Speaker 3: the offering some advice to the legislative minority, some of
Speaker 3: the same people from whom I worked before, and the
Speaker 3: Republican majority said, well, we're just going to do it
Speaker 3: the way we want and go and see us. And
Speaker 3: so they got sued and went through extra innings, and
Speaker 3: they're still fighting millions of dollars later out of taxpayer
Speaker 3: money to fight a case that they were definitely going
Speaker 3: to lose. We told them they were going to lose
Speaker 3: the day they drew these maps. But that's sort of
Speaker 3: the story of redistricting I think around the South right now,
Speaker 3: and it raises hard questions now with politics at the
Speaker 3: national level, that leads to even more uncertainty about the law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, a special session on redistricting,
Speaker 1: an attorney general eyeing a role in the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: governor on corruption. You know, I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: know that we're going to see echoes of that here,
Speaker 1: but you know, certainly we're you know a lot of
Speaker 1: similar similar notes playing in Texas right now. So I
Speaker 1: want to sort of just briefly and go over like
Speaker 1: a brief history of redistricting, and Kareem you jump in
Speaker 1: when I get off the rails on this. You correct me,
Speaker 1: Matthew as well. I know you've covered this issue. But essentially,
Speaker 1: right every ten years we do a census in this country.
Speaker 1: Once we find out who lives where, states redraw their
Speaker 1: electoral maps. So that we have roughly the same number
Speaker 1: of people in every district. These maps are often drawn goofy,
Speaker 1: looking to accommodate, you know, a range of different goals.
Speaker 1: Starting the mid sixties, with the Voting Rights Act, there's
Speaker 1: a law basically saying you cannot, among many other things,
Speaker 1: saying you cannot draw these districts in a way that
Speaker 1: dilutes minority vote, whether that's by putting everyone in one
Speaker 1: district altogether, or by you know, diluting them so much
Speaker 1: that their vote doesn't right to the level.
Speaker 2: The idea would be, if you have a population of, say,
Speaker 2: black voters in an area in the South, you can't
Speaker 2: put all the black voters in one districting in order
Speaker 2: to make it so that you know, the amount of
Speaker 2: power is you know, only in that one legislative seat,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the grace, or spread them out into
Speaker 2: so many districts that they're so deluded that they can't
Speaker 2: be elect there, you know, a member of their choice right.
Speaker 1: And historically this is something Southern states among others, but
Speaker 1: Southern states in particular have been quite bad at drawing
Speaker 1: those maps in a way that complies with Section two
Speaker 1: of Voting Rights Act. For a long time states head
Speaker 1: to states like Texas and Alabama had to get their
Speaker 1: maps pre approved by the federal government. That's how bad
Speaker 1: they were at this. And every single time Texas has
Speaker 1: redistricted since the Voting Rights Act went into effect, at
Speaker 1: least one of their maps have been found to be
Speaker 1: not in compliance with the Voting Rights Act. That's sort
Speaker 1: of the backdrop to all of this is that. All right,
Speaker 1: so far kareem?
Speaker 3: I think so far? Are you there? I always like
Speaker 3: you have one person, one vote came to us because
Speaker 3: of a case authored by Justice Brennan, from whom the
Speaker 3: Brendan Center is name. But you're absolutely right about the
Speaker 3: general thrust of redistricting.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, So then moving on from there where we
Speaker 1: are in Texas right now. You know, we drew maps
Speaker 1: in a little bit weirdly this time around, because the
Speaker 1: census was delayed because of COVID and other reasons. We
Speaker 1: drew our maps in sort of settled on them in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. In Texas, the legislature draws the maps.
Speaker 1: Other states do it differently. Those maps immediately faced.
Speaker 2: Oh let me let me just pause right here for
Speaker 2: a little bit of background, Like one you know, As
Speaker 2: you mentioned, this was done in a special session as
Speaker 2: opposed to the regular session because of the census being delayed,
Speaker 2: but also it was coming in a very interesting time
Speaker 2: politically for Texas, which was we were not that far
Speaker 2: off from the Bete Rourke election in twenty eighteen, where
Speaker 2: Texas was looking like it was really trending in a
Speaker 2: much bluer direction. You had seen you know, presidential election
Speaker 2: margins go from sixteen percentage points Republican victory to nine
Speaker 2: percentage point Republican victory to six percentage points veto almost
Speaker 2: wins there. And so one of the things that lawmakers
Speaker 2: did during that session was, instead of really pushing to
Speaker 2: increase their margins in the various bodies that they drew,
Speaker 2: we're talking about congressional in this one, they went toward
Speaker 2: a more an incumbent protection map, which was essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: Texas got two new seats because of population gains, those
Speaker 2: went to Republicans, but everywhere else they sort of focused
Speaker 2: on shoring up Republican majorities so that the people in
Speaker 2: the districts and the parties in power currently there would
Speaker 2: essentially be safer as the district went on. As opposed
Speaker 2: to you know, really trying to gain three, four or
Speaker 2: five more Republican seats in that map.
Speaker 1: So it is it is a somewhat sort of this
Speaker 1: is conservative map in the not both. It is both
Speaker 1: a conservative map in that it will lead to Republicans
Speaker 1: being elected and a conservative map in terms of not
Speaker 1: putting their incumbents out on a ledge.
Speaker 2: Right, because there were circumstances, you know, you could look
Speaker 2: particularly like in the state house maps in Dallas County
Speaker 2: where it looked like maybe they got a little too
Speaker 2: greedy the last time, right, and they drew a bunch
Speaker 2: of different districts that by the end of the decade
Speaker 2: had all flipped to Democrats in a way that you know,
Speaker 2: actually in twenty twenty, people thought that Democrats might have
Speaker 2: been able, like in the lead up to that election,
Speaker 2: thought that maybe they were going to flip the House.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I think you looked at what
Speaker 2: they were doing. If you knew Texas politics, you saw
Speaker 2: they're trying to prevent a situation where they're going to
Speaker 2: be in trouble in twenty twenty nine to twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: as opposed to let's just make these massive games. In
Speaker 2: the early part of the.
Speaker 1: Decade, right, And I mean a lot of this is
Speaker 1: happening in every state, right, Koreen. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about like every state is, no matter who,
Speaker 1: whether it's run by blue or red, is trying to
Speaker 1: draw a map that benefits their party.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, it's important to note a couple of things. One,
Speaker 3: you're right, states differ about how they draw maps. So
Speaker 3: Texas takes the more political approach, where the state legislature
Speaker 3: draws the map, and you know, if you've got the
Speaker 3: votes on your side of the aisle, you get usually
Speaker 3: what you want apps in the lawsuit. There are other
Speaker 3: states like California Arizona that actually draw maps by citizen
Speaker 3: independent commissions, and those actually tend to take a much
Speaker 3: more i think, focused conversation about what the community wants.
Speaker 3: So people come and present in a nonpartisan way, what
Speaker 3: they think the best communities are to kind of group together.
Speaker 3: And often not always, but most of the time, the
Speaker 3: states will say, and we don't incumbency or partisanship as
Speaker 3: a sort of fact that we're going to take into consideration,
Speaker 3: and those tend to draw districts that those groups tend
Speaker 3: to draw districts that are more competitive. One point. Don't
Speaker 3: mention about Texas, though, but you're right, there are some others.
Speaker 3: There are blue states that are driven by partisan you know,
Speaker 3: legislative driven maps, that do tend to produce maps that
Speaker 3: tend to favor their party. But the one thing in Texas,
Speaker 3: it's worth noting it did grow significantly, actually more than
Speaker 3: almost every other state. But it's important to note that
Speaker 3: growth wasn't uniform across the state. And the mistake to
Speaker 3: that that's easy to miss in this is that that
Speaker 3: growth came within communities of color, and it turns out
Speaker 3: that you didn't see a consummate growth, a concurrent growth
Speaker 3: in the representation of those communities in the districts that
Speaker 3: Republicans drew this time. Now, it's also fair to say
Speaker 3: the caveats one. Not all communities of color vote, you know,
Speaker 3: one way or the other, but we know where they live,
Speaker 3: and in those places where they live, you didn't see
Speaker 3: a growth in the number of districts in the way
Speaker 3: that you would have expected. So yes, it's probably fair
Speaker 3: to say, you know, Republicans didn't take the max plan
Speaker 3: that they could have drawn, but they certainly tried to
Speaker 3: take advantage of every bit of extra territory that they
Speaker 3: got because of these new districts there before do they
Speaker 3: take everything possible to know? But it is also key
Speaker 3: to know Texas is continuing to grow, and so there's
Speaker 3: always this question about drawing maps that make sense in time.
Speaker 3: A but five years, ten years from now, as you
Speaker 3: point out in Dallas, for example, you see such growth
Speaker 3: in the metro area and including right the suburban counties
Speaker 3: where you actually see drastic change and just who mix
Speaker 3: up the district that you can't necessarily cut your margins
Speaker 3: that close and expect it to perform the same way,
Speaker 3: you know, years after you draw the maps. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the key stats that opponents of the current
Speaker 2: maps point out was that ninety five percent of the
Speaker 2: state's population growth was by communities of color in Texas,
Speaker 2: but there were no new districts drawn, you know, for
Speaker 2: to represent those communities that in that time.
Speaker 1: Right, the two new districts that were drawn were in
Speaker 1: white dominated, were white dominated and Republican dominated. So as happens,
Speaker 1: almost like clockwork, right, Texas created these maps in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one in a special session, as you said, and
Speaker 1: they face a lawsuit by a group at the time
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, as well as a group of
Speaker 1: plaintiffs representing voters of color, saying we've been discriminated, you know,
Speaker 1: these discriminated against voters of color, and that case took,
Speaker 1: as these do, close to four years to move through
Speaker 1: the legal system, culminating in a trial last month in
Speaker 1: El Paso, where and this is important, the plaintiffs argued
Speaker 1: that these maps were drawn sort of based on race
Speaker 1: to discriminate against voters of color, and the state argued
Speaker 1: repeatedly their main point was these were not drawn based
Speaker 1: on race. They were drawn almost entirely based on partisan goals,
Speaker 1: Which brings us to, you know, a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: where we start hearing rumors that the Trump administration is
Speaker 1: pushing Texas to do a rare but not unheard of
Speaker 1: mid decade redraw of the congressional maps to try to
Speaker 1: get a couple more seats in the midterm elections.
Speaker 2: The idea here being, according to reporting of you know,
Speaker 2: representing Trump's thinking, essentially that this is going to be
Speaker 2: a hard year for Republicans nationwide. There's a decent chance
Speaker 2: that Republicans will lose the House, and one way to
Speaker 2: protect themselves about doing that is drawing more Republican seats
Speaker 2: in Texas that could help help the Republicans maintain the
Speaker 2: national majority.
Speaker 1: And now, to be fair, congressional Republicans who enjoy their
Speaker 1: districts that are drawn, you know, to support their reelection
Speaker 1: not thrilled by this. According to reporting, you know, we've
Speaker 1: heard that there's been some some real anxiety about this.
Speaker 1: There was a big question about whether or not Governor
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott would take this up in the special session.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's you talked about how there's precedent
Speaker 2: for mid decade redistructing in Texas. That last time that,
Speaker 2: of course happened, was in two thousand and three. It
Speaker 2: was pushed by Tom Delay. The difference between then and
Speaker 2: now is what happened right before that two thousand and
Speaker 2: three redistructing was Republicans one control of the Texas House,
Speaker 2: which gave them more power to draw the lines as
Speaker 2: they saw fit.
Speaker 1: For the first time like in modern history.
Speaker 2: Right this time, the same people who drew the maps
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one are in charge are in charge now,
Speaker 2: and so basically what they're being pushed to do is
Speaker 2: to change the maps that they chose for a reason,
Speaker 2: the reason that we sort of already described before incumbent protection.
Speaker 3: Long term.
Speaker 2: Of course, there have been some things that have changed, right.
Speaker 2: A lot of the growth in Texas has been as
Speaker 2: noted in communities of color in the suburbs. The most
Speaker 2: recent presidential election, a lot of those communities went a
Speaker 2: little bit to the right. They still many of them
Speaker 2: still voted Democratic, but maybe not in the same margins
Speaker 2: along the border, for example, which could possibly just the
Speaker 2: politics have changed a little bit. Right in twenty one,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people were still thinking, right,
Speaker 2: the demographic, the racial demographics in Texas are changing in
Speaker 2: a way, particularly with the Hispanic vote, that would seem
Speaker 2: to suggest that the Texas is trending in a blue direction.
Speaker 2: I think the twenty twenty four election maybe through some
Speaker 2: of that into question, particularly with the Hispanic vote, of
Speaker 2: maybe that's not the case. Maybe the Hispanic vote is
Speaker 2: actually going to turn out to be more conservative, more rightly,
Speaker 2: more Republican than maybe people had thought in years past.
Speaker 1: Right, right, I mean, before we get into like the
Speaker 1: DOJ letter and all of that, Koreem, what do you
Speaker 1: make of this, just this push by the Trump administration
Speaker 1: to try to like get squeeze a few more, a
Speaker 1: few more seats out of Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is in some ways. As I say, I
Speaker 3: think you're right about it being rare, but exceedingly so,
Speaker 3: because right the story from twenty twenty twenty twenty one. Sorry, yes,
Speaker 3: the last time around, Sorry I've lost track a few
Speaker 3: years now, it was that Republicans had taken over, but
Speaker 3: the plan that they were undoing was a plan drawn
Speaker 3: by courts, and this is one, as you rightly point out,
Speaker 3: that was drawn by the very people who are actually
Speaker 3: trying to redraw it now. Looking for the Trump administration
Speaker 3: to be asking them to do this, it definitely means
Speaker 3: that they see the risk. And it's kind of odd
Speaker 3: because if you're looking at this, I just did a
Speaker 3: rough tally of the members currently serving in Congress from Texas.
Speaker 3: You're about twenty four or so. The thirty eight members
Speaker 3: who are Republicans, more than half of them, close to
Speaker 3: like fifteen of them are in there at a most
Speaker 3: their second term of office. That means that they were
Speaker 3: the beneficiaries of the readon that was done last time around,
Speaker 3: and as you rightly point out, there's a real risk
Speaker 3: to those people if it get their districts jumbled and frankly,
Speaker 3: to get more seats anywhere, you're going to have to
Speaker 3: radically change a lot of lines. This isn't just a
Speaker 3: surgical adjustment here or there. And so for those people,
Speaker 3: you're asking them to appeal to an entirely different electorate
Speaker 3: then before, probably not with a lot of money, probably
Speaker 3: with the winds not flowing at their backs. So that's
Speaker 3: a real challenge. I think the bigger question for the
Speaker 3: question about why the administration is pushing this just now
Speaker 3: sort of raises a weird uh. I think possibility that
Speaker 3: if they think they've got to squeeze this much out
Speaker 3: to get one or two seeds, do they think that
Speaker 3: they can operate for another two years of this term
Speaker 3: with just a majority in Congress of one or two seats.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a big risk. And of course, even
Speaker 3: if they get what they want out of Texas, it's
Speaker 3: probably going to lead to some sort of lawsuit. And
Speaker 3: so then the question is is there going to be
Speaker 3: some doubt in the one or two seats that are
Speaker 3: in the House of Representatives If you know this happens
Speaker 3: nationwide where people are picking off seats hoping to kind
Speaker 3: of preserve the majority that they want. It's really I
Speaker 3: think it's not the best way of forging national policy,
Speaker 3: but it may for them be their only way out
Speaker 3: of continuing the process that they have. And I guess
Speaker 3: said the other that they set forth in terms of policy.
Speaker 3: The only other thing I'd offer here is thinking about
Speaker 3: where the electorate is since R twenty twenty one January fifteen,
Speaker 3: or yeah, even more so since the last election. You know,
Speaker 3: we've had a lot of policies that a lot of
Speaker 3: people say that they weren't anticipating, even people who voted
Speaker 3: for their president. So I think the question if you're
Speaker 3: thinking from the state's perspective, how to craft a map
Speaker 3: that's going to perform the way that you do. You're
Speaker 3: five years out from the last census. You're also in
Speaker 3: a really volatile time about where voters are and just
Speaker 3: how they think about the president, how they think about
Speaker 3: the state leadership, etc. You're playing a big gamble. I
Speaker 3: can't remember if gambley is legal in Texas, but it's a.
Speaker 2: Real question very much is not famously.
Speaker 3: Not in Alabama either, But yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, and you probably haven't seen this because it
Speaker 2: was tweeted out by Jake Sherman right before we sat
Speaker 2: down to record. But President Donald Trump, according to Jake
Speaker 2: Sherman's reports, told Republicans on a call today House Republicans
Speaker 2: that the GOP will seek five new red seats in
Speaker 2: the midterm reistructing effort in Texas. Right now that the
Speaker 2: number is twenty five to thirteen. If they sought five
Speaker 2: new seats, that would be thirty to eight, which you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, Texas is a very red state. It is
Speaker 2: not that red of the state, firstly geographically exactly. I mean,
Speaker 2: that suggests to me that they would be taking a
Speaker 2: huge risk both politically and legally and trying to get
Speaker 2: that across well.
Speaker 1: And I think, like, I mean, to your point, Kareem,
Speaker 1: these are not there's not so much as like you
Speaker 1: can't do this so easily that you can say, well,
Speaker 1: we'll make this one person a little bit more vulnerable,
Speaker 1: but make this person.
Speaker 2: Not as well.
Speaker 1: Like this is a wholesale redrawing that you're talking about
Speaker 1: that could result in making I mean, could potentially.
Speaker 3: Be a house of cards.
Speaker 1: Right, you can get overconfident, you weaken everyone. And I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly you know Texas is a red state. But like
Speaker 1: the urban centers remain very blue. There are some limitations
Speaker 1: to how tightly you can draw this.
Speaker 2: Matt, Yeah, And I think it's just worth pointing out
Speaker 2: that if you talk to Republicans privately right now, a
Speaker 2: lot of them feel this risk too. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are people who think this is a good
Speaker 2: idea Republicans. I have not talked to any of them.
Speaker 1: And if you're outside of Texas or you are you know,
Speaker 1: more on like the net looking nationally short, like, let's
Speaker 1: take a risk and see if we can get a
Speaker 1: couple more seats. If you're a text in sort of,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you certainly hold a district, but also
Speaker 1: if you are thinking like you know, I like the
Speaker 1: person who represents me. I would hate to lose them
Speaker 1: to a Democrat. Like why do you care about this risk?
Speaker 1: I mean we should say, like there is huge upside
Speaker 1: to President Trump of getting even you know, one or
Speaker 1: two more seats and holding onto that majority. And we
Speaker 1: talked about the legal threat of course, like this these
Speaker 1: new maps will be challenged in court. We will likely
Speaker 1: have another election before that. I mean there's a question
Speaker 1: of like, are we doing this so close to the
Speaker 1: next election that it could potentially if they can delay
Speaker 1: it just long enough. But realistically, the big threat is vote,
Speaker 1: you know how people vote, more than I think the
Speaker 1: legal threat of it getting blocked in time.
Speaker 2: But can we talk a little bit about the changing
Speaker 2: legal climate in which this will happen in right, because
Speaker 2: I think it now seems like maybe this trial that
Speaker 2: we went through could possibly be moot. Maybe I'm wrong
Speaker 2: about that. You can please tell me if I am.
Speaker 2: But if there's a new district what the judges said,
Speaker 2: did they even? Yeah? But I mean the legal arguments
Speaker 2: were a bit different this time than they have been
Speaker 2: in the past, and I believe that's because of a
Speaker 2: couple of Supreme Court cases that have happened since the
Speaker 2: last time Texas redistricted. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about just what has changed since the last time?
Speaker 2: I guess since the the twenty eleven maps were drawn
Speaker 2: and we went through that whole legal process.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, and thank you that was the years sort
Speaker 3: of you know, at some point together we look at
Speaker 3: this eventually discourses. But yeah, since twenty eleven, right, we
Speaker 3: had a very different Supreme Court. That's the sort of
Speaker 3: first thing to say, because that really if you think
Speaker 3: of who was on the court then versus now. The
Speaker 3: folk from on the court in the twenty eleven was
Speaker 3: Justice Kennedy. He is no longer on the court. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: he was the one that despite deciding that there shouldn't
Speaker 3: be a constitutiontional bar to mid dec eight redistricting, they said,
Speaker 3: Texas can do that if it wishes. It did. That
Speaker 3: is the court, driven by Justic Kennedy, find a Section
Speaker 3: two violation in Texas's map which required Texas to go
Speaker 3: back and do the work anyway, so right, achieving in
Speaker 3: without the you know, kind of broad legal theory that
Speaker 3: at least the plaintiffs had asked for. Just Kennedy is
Speaker 3: no longer there, And in fact, you've got a radically
Speaker 3: different court than it used to be, one that has
Speaker 3: six members that are considered quite conservative, three of whom
Speaker 3: are appointed by this current president. And so since that time, though,
Speaker 3: before you even get to you know, what this court
Speaker 3: might do, even given its differences, you've got changes in
Speaker 3: the law. You've got Justice Kennedy never let it be
Speaker 3: forgotten that, you know, took us on the path about
Speaker 3: understanding potential claims that might exist on partisan Jerry mandering
Speaker 3: only to say in one of the cases, you know,
Speaker 3: I sort of had involvement in to say, oh, we
Speaker 3: don't think that there's a constitutional limit in partisan jerry mandering.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I'm retiring. So he leaves the
Speaker 3: court to say, right, oh yeah, this tease of like
Speaker 3: power having actual leverage to stop partisenteria manager, he says,
Speaker 3: he goes away the same time. We have, as you
Speaker 3: all suggested earlier, more effort. In the assault on the
Speaker 3: Voting Rights Act, Justice Kennedy joined a majority written in
Speaker 3: a case written by Chief Justice Roberts, saying that Section
Speaker 3: five of the of the Voting Rights Act has you know,
Speaker 3: significant problems and therefore can't continue to be in force.
Speaker 3: So it lets places like Alabama and Texas off the
Speaker 3: hook to say you review to have your maps drawn.
Speaker 3: So that opens the door to what you offered about
Speaker 3: Texas's justification now for its maps. A, we can draw
Speaker 3: what we want because we don't have to get permission
Speaker 3: before we put it in place. B when we do
Speaker 3: get challenge. If we do get challenge, it'll be years
Speaker 3: after we get new people in office, and we'll be
Speaker 3: able to say it was partisanship. It wasn't race, and
Speaker 3: so we find ourselves in a space where it's a
Speaker 3: lot more hostile than it used to be. Here's the
Speaker 3: extra little touch that you get in the current era.
Speaker 3: We now have cases that try to pull back the
Speaker 3: what I think was a sort of sham of an
Speaker 3: argument that again Justice Kennedy, I'm going to get back
Speaker 3: on him, doesn't get enough criticism for this dance that
Speaker 3: he did. He said, well, I'm going to vote to
Speaker 3: get rid of for the moment, Section five. But worry not,
Speaker 3: there's Section two litigation that you can go to court
Speaker 3: improve cases of discrimination to stop bad plans. Well, notwithstanding
Speaker 3: the fact that it takes a lot of time and
Speaker 3: money to get that done, we now have an assault
Speaker 3: actually that the Fifth Circuit, where Texas is located, is
Speaker 3: perfectly involved in. That says, well, we're now going to
Speaker 3: ask whether or not it's even within our understanding of
Speaker 3: the Voting Rights Act to allow private parties to sue
Speaker 3: to vindicate their rights against discrimination. Now, I will tell
Speaker 3: you from the get go, in nineteen sixty five, nobody
Speaker 3: in that place, including people who disagreed with the Voting
Speaker 3: Rights Act, would have agreed that only the Justice Department
Speaker 3: could bring lawsuits, surely they are one of the parties
Speaker 3: they could, But the idea was to have private attorneys
Speaker 3: general throughout the country to be able to say, on
Speaker 3: behalf of voters, here's what we think is a violation
Speaker 3: of the right against discrimination. And that has been the
Speaker 3: law since nineteen sixty five. Only now because of the
Speaker 3: case at starting in the Eighth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 3: has now agreed with sort of this argument that well,
Speaker 3: maybe we should rethink whether or not private parties should
Speaker 3: bring their claims. This actually would pull the entire rug
Speaker 3: under from under the Section two litigation strategy, because it
Speaker 3: leaves only the Justice Department, which we now know has
Speaker 3: gutted its voting rights section except apparently to protect white voters.
Speaker 3: That's another conversation for another day, but that if that's
Speaker 3: the only place that you can get any kind of relief,
Speaker 3: you're limiting work to the number of people that are
Speaker 3: available to pull these lawsuits together and a political will
Speaker 3: to pursue them. That's now really what Texas among other states,
Speaker 3: is now arguing that the Court should actually consider seriously.
Speaker 3: And I think it's an open question because we don't
Speaker 3: yet know what those six members of the Court are
Speaker 3: gonna say about again something that even when he was writing,
Speaker 3: Justice Thomas never really talked about that, and he wasn't
Speaker 3: a fan of the Voting Rights Act. But we just
Speaker 3: have to see what happens. But it's a really scary
Speaker 3: time if you're thinking about what we all expected to
Speaker 3: be one of the sort of bedrock foundational principles of
Speaker 3: civil rights law that's now being pulled from under us.
Speaker 3: And again, I take it back to this I think
Speaker 3: empty promise that came from Justice Kennedy when he told
Speaker 3: us that, well, the Voting Rights Act still remains a
Speaker 3: valid tool of enforcement because you have Section two. There's
Speaker 3: an open question as to whether we will right.
Speaker 1: And I mean one of the cases I think you're
Speaker 1: referencing is this the Pedaway v. Galveston County case at
Speaker 1: the Fifth Circuit, which plays a big role in this
Speaker 1: current issue with the DJ also speaking of the DOJ,
Speaker 1: sort of political will you know, as I was saying,
Speaker 1: like this was such a this was very much a
Speaker 1: political question of will Governor Greg Abbott take up the
Speaker 1: President Trump's pressure to redistrict in this special session that
Speaker 1: sort of got an added layer of legal cover in
Speaker 1: last week, Last time is a cruel mistress. Last Monday,
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice issued a letter to Texas informing
Speaker 1: them that four of their districts for their congressional districts
Speaker 1: were unconstitutional. Three of them because their coalition districts, meaning
Speaker 1: you know, the minority groups are represented by the majority
Speaker 1: of the minority groups are from different minority groups. They
Speaker 1: put together different minority groups to create a majority minority district.
Speaker 1: That's possibly the most confusing explanation. Google coalition districts if
Speaker 1: that wasn't clear. And then the fourth district was sort
Speaker 1: of created because of two of those coalition districts. And
Speaker 1: so they said these are unconstitutional, under citing this Pedaway v.
Speaker 1: Galveston County case from the Fitth Circuit and basically directing
Speaker 1: Texas to redraw their maps because it's unconstitutional. Texas then
Speaker 1: Governor Greg Abbott said, you know, in light of these
Speaker 1: constitutional concerns, I'm going to add redistricting to the special
Speaker 1: session call. And this raised a lot of questions for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. The plaintiffs in the ongoing El
Speaker 1: Paso case feel like Texas has contradicted itself because they
Speaker 1: argued in their you know for a month of trial
Speaker 1: that these lawsuits, I'm sorry that these districts were drawn
Speaker 1: on race blind grounds, they did not consider race, and
Speaker 1: that the state of Texas has long held that coalition
Speaker 1: districts are not sort of a justifiable way to draw
Speaker 1: a map. So they felt like now Texas was sort
Speaker 1: of acquiescing or surrendering to the government's argument. Texas came
Speaker 1: back and said, essentially, we don't believe these maps were
Speaker 1: drawn on race. You know, they were drawn on race
Speaker 1: blind grounds, but we also would like to redraw them.
Speaker 1: And you know, adding something to a special session call
Speaker 1: is not the same as agreeing with it. Of course,
Speaker 1: Governor Ibbit saying in light of constitutional concerns, sort of
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of muddy water here, but either way,
Speaker 1: these you know, gives them an opportunity to redraw these maps.
Speaker 3: I just offered, Yeah, what's silly about this, and really
Speaker 3: quite rare is for the Department of Justice to weigh
Speaker 3: in and pronounce something un constitutional that hasn't been ruled
Speaker 3: on by the Supreme Court of the United States. This
Speaker 3: is one panel of a circuit, one circuit in the country,
Speaker 3: and they've given a take that by the way right
Speaker 3: flips their own precedent on this topic. It seems weird
Speaker 3: that the right, the State of Texas, right, the sovereign
Speaker 3: State of Texas, would all of a sudden find it
Speaker 3: absolutely necessary to follow what is less than a complete
Speaker 3: or final statement of what the law is that comes
Speaker 3: from a justice department that you know, again interprets voting
Speaker 3: rights law. That's you're not going to hear that every day,
Speaker 3: So you know, you do sit and wonder whether the
Speaker 3: fix is in on sort of an understanding or winkin
Speaker 3: or nod about how they want to open the door
Speaker 3: to this sort of redrawn But it is quite rare
Speaker 3: to see the Justice Department way in to make such
Speaker 3: broad pronouncements. None of this has been settled, and in fact,
Speaker 3: there's plenty of belong on the other side that says
Speaker 3: there's nothing unconstitutional about creating a district where people of
Speaker 3: color happen to be the majority of the population, particularly
Speaker 3: in a say, jurisdiction like Houston, where the population actually
Speaker 3: looks like the districts that were drawn. So it's an
Speaker 3: interesting dynamic where you see again the dance between the
Speaker 3: state all you know, all of a sudden, thinking well,
Speaker 3: clearly if the federal government told us to do what
Speaker 3: we have to where that's never been anything in state
Speaker 3: of Texas or for that matter, Alabama has sort of
Speaker 3: stopped in its tracks to say, well, we've got to
Speaker 3: rethink this thing because the federal government has suggested something
Speaker 3: to the contrary, even frankly, when the Supreme Court has
Speaker 3: told them to do it.
Speaker 2: Right, I want to take step ask a big picture
Speaker 2: question here, right, because one of the things that's sort
Speaker 2: of happening, particularly in the South, but not only in
Speaker 2: the South, I guess, is that there is a strong
Speaker 2: racial dynamic to our politics right the you know, in
Speaker 2: in the South, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white, Black
Speaker 2: voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Hispanic voters have been a little
Speaker 2: bit shifting back and forth, right. But I'm just curious
Speaker 2: kind of how you think through this idea of you know, Texas,
Speaker 2: in this lawsuit, whether they're now making this case in
Speaker 2: the past, made the argument that they made their decisions
Speaker 2: based on how to draw the lines based on politics
Speaker 2: and not race.
Speaker 1: Specifically Attorney General Ken pax And saying we drew these
Speaker 1: to make America great again.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And how I wonder if you could just talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about that kind of how difficult it
Speaker 2: is to sort of separate those two things, and has
Speaker 2: it become more difficult for plaintiffs in these cases seeking
Speaker 2: to overturn these maps to make the case that, whether
Speaker 2: it's political or not, you are diluting the power of
Speaker 2: black voters of Hispanic voters by drawing the districts these ways.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, let me start with the news flash. Politics
Speaker 3: in the South has always something to do with race.
Speaker 3: I know you're going to be shocked to hear that.
Speaker 3: It's just the fact of life, right. What that effect
Speaker 3: is and how it kind of plays out in policy,
Speaker 3: that's a different conversation. But I think one of the
Speaker 3: challenges you're rightly pointing out is, Look, the law is
Speaker 3: really messy when it comes to thinking about that truth
Speaker 3: that politics and race. It particularly in the South, I think,
Speaker 3: frankly everywhere to some degree, but in the South it's
Speaker 3: most pronounced because every you know, you name me the policy,
Speaker 3: I'll trace back to some narrative that sort of shows
Speaker 3: the way in which race has figured into why the
Speaker 3: policy was drafted or why the policy had to change.
Speaker 3: That's no less true with redistricting than anything else. The
Speaker 3: law unfortunately has sort of given us this fiction to
Speaker 3: suggest that one can either turn off the sort of
Speaker 3: racial lens or only think about partisanship in a world
Speaker 3: where we know, like think back to the Texas white primaries.
Speaker 3: We call them white primaries for a reason, right, it
Speaker 3: had a political consequence. There was only you know, one
Speaker 3: party in town where you actually had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: elect a candidate, but it was only allowed that whites
Speaker 3: participating in it. And the court told us in you know,
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties to the fifties, that's illegal or unconstitutional.
Speaker 3: The same is true here. But because our law sort
Speaker 3: of treats them as different categories partisanship and race, it forces,
Speaker 3: in some ways lied against to kind of frame arguments
Speaker 3: and theories around a world where it's only thinking about
Speaker 3: X or y, when in fact they're together. The complicated
Speaker 3: part of this comes forward in these cases called the
Speaker 3: racial gerrymanderin cases where the court is presented with this
Speaker 3: claim that, well, the state took race too much into account.
Speaker 3: What too much is we don't know, but the court
Speaker 3: has told us if you draw really weird lines, and
Speaker 3: the only way that you can explain it is race,
Speaker 3: then that's unconstitutional. Even in the nineteen nineties where Justice
Speaker 3: Kennedy was around, he was presented with cases where I
Speaker 3: could give you a compelling argument for why partisanship was
Speaker 3: the result that drove the crafting of those maps just
Speaker 3: as much as race were. Because African Americans do vote
Speaker 3: very heavily for Democrats, and whites in most of the
Speaker 3: South tend to vote Republican, there's an instance where that
Speaker 3: gets more pronounced than others, and those are the places
Speaker 3: where discrimination becomes the most volatile, I think factor to
Speaker 3: take account of where you see crossover with white sometimes
Speaker 3: voting Democrats and sometimes voting Republicans, or as you point out,
Speaker 3: Hispanics moving one way or the other, that might be
Speaker 3: a lot more complicated. But where polarization is sort of
Speaker 3: the name of the game, that's you're not going to
Speaker 3: be able to divorce those two. And I think in Texas,
Speaker 3: depending on where you are in the state, you can
Speaker 3: make much more of a claim about polarization based on
Speaker 3: race than anything else. And so in some ways it's
Speaker 3: a bit of a fiction to try to sort of
Speaker 3: distill those but the law requires us to do it,
Speaker 3: and I think that's why Texas is in the ridiculous
Speaker 3: position now of trying to make the argument that oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was all a party. It was like, well, if
Speaker 3: you look at your you know, Republican roster, you're not
Speaker 3: seeing many people of color. And so then the question
Speaker 3: gets to one that I think is most relevant, which
Speaker 3: is where's the growth in the state and are we
Speaker 3: seeing a consummate uptick in growth of you know, districts
Speaker 3: where people from those communities can direct opportunities for who
Speaker 3: gets elected versus others, and if you're not seeing that,
Speaker 3: and I think Texas this is a key case of it,
Speaker 3: particularly where you've seen cities crafted like you know, the
Speaker 3: city of Austin, I don't need to tell you has
Speaker 3: been you know, sliced in dice, you know, within an
Speaker 3: inch of its leagh. But that's all in service to
Speaker 3: keeping a majority of supermajority the way that it is.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't change the growth in the in the jurisdiction.
Speaker 3: I think that's the key thing to be thinking about,
Speaker 3: and where that growth is is with people of color?
Speaker 1: Can I ask? Because I think there's also an argument
Speaker 1: on the right that's like, you know, the voting Rights
Speaker 1: Act was important. It was important during you know, Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: during the civil rights movement. Are we just going to
Speaker 1: have this go on forever?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And like what do you sort of say to that,
Speaker 1: to the idea that, you know, maybe this has served
Speaker 1: its purpose and we can all move on into post
Speaker 1: racial America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just add on there. One of the things
Speaker 2: they make in their document cases, they make in their
Speaker 2: documents around this lawsuit is that the Texas legislature in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three was forty percent, to use their term,
Speaker 2: non white right, which is significantly more diverse than the
Speaker 2: US Congress.
Speaker 3: It is. And you know, it's funny that, right, the
Speaker 3: result of that map is due to voting rights enforcement.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of weird to make the argument, as
Speaker 3: they did in the Shelby County case that undid the
Speaker 3: Section five of the Voting Rights Tech. Well, look around you.
Speaker 3: The world is much more diverse. We don't need this anymore.
Speaker 3: And you know, Justice Ginsburg made the quite the strong
Speaker 3: argument that, unfortunately was in the descent. When you're arguing that,
Speaker 3: you know, the evidence that you're dry is evidence that
Speaker 3: you don't need an umbrella in the middle of a
Speaker 3: rain storm, and that's sort of, you know, silly thinking.
Speaker 3: But I think the best evidence of this is just
Speaker 3: looking at the way in which polarization as expressed in
Speaker 3: politics plays out and where you're seeing instances, and you're
Speaker 3: seeing it in plenty of parts of Texas where people
Speaker 3: of color are voting one way and they never find
Speaker 3: common purpose with white people who vote in an entirely
Speaker 3: different way. That means that our politics aren't the kind
Speaker 3: of coalition building adventures that we would expect, and where
Speaker 3: we're even going after districts that look like coalitions are
Speaker 3: sort of the name of the game. It really raises
Speaker 3: a question about whether or not it's that you know,
Speaker 3: kind of moment where we think everybody's come together and
Speaker 3: decided to look on issues outside beyond race, or at
Speaker 3: least in concert with other considerations. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: be the politics as it's been played out in Texas
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: I wonder another thing just to side from this brief
Speaker 2: is that the state, citing the twenty twenty four Supreme
Speaker 2: Court case Alexander versus South Carolina State Conference of NAACP,
Speaker 2: they say, basically, the state is entitled to a powerful
Speaker 2: presumption of good faith right when if you can't, you know,
Speaker 2: if you don't have the strong proof either way, you
Speaker 2: assume that the state is doing the right thing. Here,
Speaker 2: we are going into this term where it looks like
Speaker 2: there's a pretty good chance that they're going to redraw
Speaker 2: these maps. There is also a lot of evidence sort
Speaker 2: of just out there in the world that the political
Speaker 2: motivations of this, or that the motivations of this are political,
Speaker 2: you know, wanting to hold on to the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six US House in term elections. What do you see
Speaker 2: like moving forward here? Do you see this because of
Speaker 2: the legal climate we are in right now? Do you
Speaker 2: see it as even if they do dramatically redraw these districts,
Speaker 2: do you see it being difficult for plaintiff's civil rights
Speaker 2: groups and everything's to fight these maps, to overturn these
Speaker 2: maps in the future.
Speaker 3: Right It's a really good question. I would in fact
Speaker 3: tie this in some ways to the prior question you asked,
Speaker 3: what does it mean to be in a place where
Speaker 3: you don't need a voting rights Act? What we have
Speaker 3: right now? The case that you mentioned in Alexandria is
Speaker 3: a court that seems to basically say, yeah, we shouldn't
Speaker 3: question without a lot of compelling evidence, the sort of
Speaker 3: good faith of state legislatures. Now you know that's in
Speaker 3: the face of a lot of evidence suggesting to the
Speaker 3: countrary that they weren't acting in good faith. But the
Speaker 3: deeper question is, if a state is acting in good faith,
Speaker 3: shouldn't you expect that the state be able to show
Speaker 3: and prove what they're doing. Shouldn't there be an open
Speaker 3: process that's where you see what goes in, Who gets
Speaker 3: to present our arguments about why districts should be a
Speaker 3: certain way, and you have people explain themselves. That's exactly
Speaker 3: the opposite of what states like Texas engaged in and
Speaker 3: their drawing of maps. At best, you'll have a hearing,
Speaker 3: but it's a very quick hearing where people sit in,
Speaker 3: they show up, they see a map, they vote on
Speaker 3: the map, and that's done. You don't get public input.
Speaker 3: You don't hear who behind the scenes gave advice about
Speaker 3: what to do and why all that stuff. Because of
Speaker 3: decisions that have been reached by a lot of the
Speaker 3: federal courts at present, including in the Fifth Circuit, have
Speaker 3: walled off that information from plaintiffs. And to my view,
Speaker 3: I mean we say this in other context, if you
Speaker 3: don't have anything to hide, why not show it. This
Speaker 3: is a public proceeding that's supposed to benefit the public.
Speaker 3: Right now, we're in a world where in a lot
Speaker 3: of these cases, the state legislature has been entitled to
Speaker 3: some crafted privilege that isn't contained anywhere in the constitution
Speaker 3: that will prevent plaintiffs in these Section two lawsuits from
Speaker 3: just even seeing who is in the room with you.
Speaker 3: Not only did you get the elected member get the
Speaker 3: ability to shield yourself from scrutiny in a lawsuit, anybody
Speaker 3: you talk to would also be if the courts get
Speaker 3: their way here, and that actually counteracts any suggestion that
Speaker 3: good faith should be. In fact, this should be exactly
Speaker 3: the place where in any other place in the law,
Speaker 3: we would be really skeptical of taking at face value
Speaker 3: what the state says after the fact. So, to my mind,
Speaker 3: you would expect to see more open processes, more engaged
Speaker 3: public comment, and actual explanation, which, by the way, is
Speaker 3: what exactly happens when independent commissions draw maps. But the
Speaker 3: state legislature could do this as well. But when they don't,
Speaker 3: it defies logic to me to expect that we should
Speaker 3: just take what you say is the reason you drew
Speaker 3: the map without any evidence at face value. But that's
Speaker 3: what Texas basically is.
Speaker 1: Arguing now, and certainly probably all of that is not
Speaker 1: going to be improved by, you know, the speed at
Speaker 1: which they're going to have to move through this process
Speaker 1: in this special session.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just want to veer back into the politics very
Speaker 2: quickly here, because I think it's also worth asking the
Speaker 2: question will Democrats participate in this process? Right? So folks
Speaker 2: will remember from two thousand and three or you know,
Speaker 2: other times where Democrats have left the state in order
Speaker 2: to break quorum and make it so it would be
Speaker 2: impossible to pass these maps. When I was in San
Speaker 2: Antonio a few weeks ago speaking with two Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 2: at a Tributne event, I asked them this, and they
Speaker 2: both very strongly, strongly hinted, you know, I see no
Speaker 2: reason why Democrats would ever even participate in this process. Well,
Speaker 2: what is in it for them? It's interesting though, this
Speaker 2: is a I don't think anyone is happy that this
Speaker 2: has happened. But the situation has changed since then because
Speaker 2: we had these catastrophic floods in Texas. Those have also
Speaker 2: been added to the special special Special Session call both
Speaker 2: flood relief and also like what can we do to
Speaker 2: protect these communities going forward. There's all of a sudden
Speaker 2: now something here in this special Session call that Democrats
Speaker 2: are going to really feel like they need to be
Speaker 2: a part of and make sure they can get through,
Speaker 2: which in some ways hands Republicans a big bit of
Speaker 2: leverage here in terms of how they kind of get
Speaker 2: this across. It's just another sort of interesting thing to
Speaker 2: watch as this process unfolds.
Speaker 1: Right and certainly, I mean I've heard from some Democrats
Speaker 1: who say, well, the governor could do a lot of
Speaker 1: this on flood relief just himself through executive Well he's not.
Speaker 1: He's put it on the call, like you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to have to be there if they want to,
Speaker 1: you know, not sort of be forever painted with this
Speaker 1: brush of like not supporting the flood relief exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I do think that is like a layer even
Speaker 1: no one else was, you know, no one could have predicted.
Speaker 1: Of course, that has really amplified all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well special Session starts twenty first, you know, a little
Speaker 1: less than a week from today, expecting a big redistricting
Speaker 1: fight on that's going to involve you know, all levels
Speaker 1: of government straight up to the President, and a lot
Speaker 1: of eyes on that really really want to thank you
Speaker 1: Kareem for joining us. This was a great conversation. You
Speaker 1: can find the Trip Cast everywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Rob and Chris and we will be
Speaker 1: back next week.