'A BIG BLOW to democracy': Watch MS NOW anchors react to GOP's redistricting efforts

[0:00] Today, the Virginia State Supreme Court struck down the congressional redistricting approved [0:05] by Virginia voters 17 days ago. It is a big blow to democracy as voters there opted for this new [0:11] map, but it's also a blow to the Democratic Party ahead of the 2026 midterms as they seek to counter [0:18] the GOP efforts to gerrymander themselves in a victory at the behest of Donald Trump. In a [0:23] statement, Virginia's Attorney General Jay Jones said this, quote, [0:27] Today, the Supreme Court of Virginia has chosen to put politics over the rule of law. [0:32] This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every [0:38] corner of the Commonwealth, and it fuels the growing fears across our nation about the state [0:44] of our democracy. My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order, and we are evaluating [0:49] every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of [0:55] Virginia's elections. As California Governor Gavin Newsom put it on social media, quote, [1:01] No vote in Tennessee, plus one GOP seat. No vote in Florida, plus four GOP seats. [1:08] No vote in Missouri, plus one GOP seat. No vote in North Carolina, plus two GOP seats. [1:15] No vote in Texas, plus five GOP seats. Virginia's voter-approved maps thrown out. MAGA has rigged the [1:23] system. And at the same time, as Virginia's democratically passed maps have been blocked, [1:30] Republican state legislatures are moving full steam ahead in passing maps specifically designed [1:36] to eliminate majority Black congressional districts without consulting their voters at all. [1:42] That happens after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier this week. [1:47] Today in South Carolina, senators debated a proposal that would allow a special redistricting session [1:52] to go forward that would eliminate the state's only Black district held by longtime Congressman Jim [1:57] Clyburn. While in Alabama today, a protester was removed from the gallery at the legislature [2:03] by state troopers there as lawmakers debated a bill to facilitate redistricting in that state. [2:09] It was signed into law earlier today. In Tennessee, lawmakers have already approved new maps, [2:15] which abolished the state's only majority Black district. While Tennessee state representative [2:21] Justin Pearson called it, quote, a political lynching that violated the rights of every Tennessean. [2:27] Here he is on the floor of the state house. [2:29] This state has legislated and legalized the worst things in humanity, including our enslavement, [2:39] and we are still here. Right in this country where, as one Black woman said, [2:46] your clancestors enslaved us, denied us of our rights, called us three-fifths of a person, [2:52] and yet we are still here. You put us on cotton plantations and tobacco plantations. You denied our human rights [3:01] and our right to exist as children of God, and we are still here. You destroyed Tulsa. [3:09] You killed and lynched Black folks on poplar trees. Shelby County, Tennessee, had the most lynchings [3:14] of anywhere in this state where you're taking this district, and we are still here. You've had three [3:21] strikes laws, mass incarceration, denied us of who we are, and we are still here, and today you'll take [3:29] the only but majority Black district from us. But I want you to know, and I want my nephew, sons, [3:35] and the future to know, no matter what you do, no matter how much you try and break us and make us bend [3:42] and make us quit, we will still be here. We will still be here. That message, that delivery of that [3:55] message, that articulation of resilience and resistance on a day in which democracy took a [4:00] very serious hit is where we start the hour with Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost of Florida [4:05] and joining me at the table, host of Politics Nation, president of the National Action Network, [4:10] the Reverend Al Sharpton. Rev, let me start with you. [4:13] I think that we are seeing the end of the second Reconstruction. The rawness and insensitivity [4:23] that is being done shows that these people are deliberately saying that as we call on the world [4:31] to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the very principles that we claim [4:38] the country has started because everybody in the country was not same status. Blacks were slaves [4:43] 250 years ago. Women couldn't vote. But we're not even going to pretend during this anniversary [4:49] that this is about democracy. We are going to, as it was put up by Governor Newsom, we're going to, [4:57] with no votes, change what we want. And if the people in Virginia vote, we'll just flip it over [5:04] in the Supreme Court. So we are approaching this 250th anniversary more like King George than we [5:12] are like those that signed the Declaration of Independence because they're saying that might [5:17] is right. We're going to rule no matter what. And we're going to use race as one of the ways that [5:23] we're going to whip everybody in line. I might remind people the black majority district in Tennessee [5:29] is represented by white. Blacks vote for whites. Blacks vote for blacks. So it's not like just black [5:35] representation. The congressman in Tennessee, the black district, is white. In fact, I'm having him [5:42] on the show this weekend and Justin, who's running against him. So, I mean, the whole idea of us bringing [5:48] the country together, they're ripping the shreds and they're doing it gleefully and they're doing it openly. [5:54] The question is, will we be able to come with the same force that our forefathers did? [5:59] What does that even look like right now? [6:01] I think you've got to organize and mobilize. There are groups. I've been on the phone all day [6:05] with National Action Network and NACP head and others. We need to be doing everything from [6:10] the streets to doing local decentralized organizing. If you get, you must remember, [6:17] Nicole, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, all of them that brought us to Voting Rights Act, [6:24] they didn't have the techniques that we have. They didn't have social media. Martin Luther King [6:29] never knew what a cell phone was. Never had email. Is that better, though, that people were together [6:34] and they were in the streets? It was better if we're not using more ways to communicate. I think [6:39] our challenge is that if they didn't have the options we have to organize, then that means that [6:46] we are falling down on the job, not that the job is insurmountable. They were getting lynched. Goodman, [6:51] Cheney, Swerner, Viola Paluisa, all of them were killed for trying to get the right to vote. [6:58] We're talking about we may miss a day or two of relaxation at home. There is no excuse, blacks, [7:06] whites, and everybody else not to be on the front lines trying to save democracy, not just for blacks. [7:12] They're going to do it all across the board. They don't even going to start with us. [7:17] Congressman, you're one of your party's best communicators, and I wonder what your [7:23] thoughts are today and what your message is to the country. [7:28] My heart is heavy for the country because we see that this is going on all across the south, [7:32] and it's important for people to realize that this isn't happening in a vacuum. [7:36] This isn't a plan that just came up because Donald Trump said to go redistrict. This is the product [7:42] of a 60-plus-year plan to bring this country into Jim Crow 2.0, an era where they've traded in [7:50] the hoods for suits and ties, an era where they are trying to use our democracy against us to take [7:56] away not just our right to vote, but our right to protest, our right to privacy, our right to health [8:02] care, our right to be able to actually have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this [8:06] country. And they see the south as a threat. And that is the reason why some of the worst voter [8:12] suppression tactics we see are in the south. Over 40 percent of these nations' black residents live [8:19] here. Most of this nation's civil rights and mass movement—people-centered movements started in the [8:25] south. So we see that they put us right in the middle of the bullseye because they know that we [8:31] will rise up and we will fight back. I want to associate myself with the dog barking along with us. [8:39] I'm sorry about that. Don't be sorry. Don't ever apologize for the canines in your lives. [8:44] I want to ask you, this has been—we were talking before we came in the air. This has been a bleak [8:50] week of news in terms of the anti-democratic forces sort of logging some legal victories and now taking [9:00] those and ramming through gerrymandered maps. What is your message in terms of sort of dusting [9:08] ourselves off and continuing the fight for democracy? Well, the first thing I'll say is what [9:14] our opposition wants us to do is throw our hands in the air and say there's nothing more left. There's [9:18] nothing we can do. We shouldn't take a part in this system. If we walk away from the fight, [9:23] our adversaries and our opposition, they are more than happy to step into our political power for us. [9:28] So we can't run away. That is what they want. We have to continue to fight. And now we understand [9:34] that we have to do it in very creative ways. And I love what the reverend had brought up. [9:39] It's all about grassroots organizing and making sure that we're going out into the communities [9:44] and empowering people. And we have to understand—and I think this is important, [9:48] because what I'm about to say might be misconstrued—we have to understand that we asked [9:52] people to go to the ballot box to protect democracy, and the Supreme Court said we're throwing it out. [9:57] We have to understand that as a result of that, a lot of people are going to feel like [10:02] it doesn't matter anymore. Us as organizers, us as leaders understanding that isn't so that way we [10:08] give up, but so we understand in the way that we message that we have to validate the root of our [10:13] people's concern. Yes, this is a broken system. Yes, I understand that you might not feel great [10:18] about our democracy right now because they're trying to break it. It will bend, but we will be the [10:23] ones to ensure that it doesn't break. And I think that acknowledgment going forth is important. We [10:29] can't gaslight people who have seen what has been going on, especially in the South, over the last [10:34] hundred years. But we have to say that we are not unique in this moment. Like the reverend brought up, [10:39] our ancestors have been here before, those before us, with less at their disposal. And they did a lot [10:45] with less and we can do the same thing. And what I do believe there's going to be a moment where we're [10:50] looking back on this era and that we're thankful that we kept marching and that we kept moving [10:56] forward. But it's going to take all of us and it's going to take elected officials. And I have to say [11:00] this, elected officials need to stop just trying to knock doors and organize three months before [11:06] election day year round. Don't be raising money and keeping it in an account for some race that might [11:11] come, spend it year round on the doors, community events, building power. So we win not just the [11:17] next election, but the next 10. That's what the right wing has done in the South. They don't make [11:22] short-term plans. They make long-term plans. And I think it's important that we do the same. And if we [11:26] do that, I believe we can win. Talk to us about your lawsuit. What is it you're trying to drive to? [11:35] Because I think a lot of people think this is kind of like, oh, done. Well, it has been a perilous [11:42] week in American democracy, right? As we witness the fallout of the Supreme Court's decision. [11:50] Lawmakers across the South are moving at lightning speed and intentionally targeting Black voters, [11:57] dismantling majority Black districts, seeking to silence Black voters, seeking to strip [12:02] power away from Black elected officials. I'm somebody who has been a lifelong civil rights lawyer, [12:10] and I have fought many of voting rights battles. But this moment is like none other. What we saw [12:18] yesterday in Tennessee is something I think we'll talk about for generations. But for now, the NAACP is [12:26] doubling down on the fight that lies ahead. We will use every tool available to beat back the [12:33] discrimination that we are witnessing in this moment. And we filed suit in Tennessee State Court, [12:41] challenging the proclamation issued by the governor that called this special session. The law requires [12:47] that those proclamations be very exact and precise in terms of the purpose for bringing the legislature [12:52] back. He said the purpose was to redraw maps. But he didn't just do that. He repealed a law that has been [12:59] on the books for five decades that actually prohibits Tennessee from engaging in mid-decade redistricting. [13:07] He also wiped away a residency requirement for lawmakers as they move forward with these new maps and wiped [13:16] away a requirement that local election officials actually tell voters what precinct they're assigned to. [13:23] So we're arguing that the proclamation was illegitimate and that this session should be [13:30] wiped off the books and that the existing maps should be used for elections this year. [13:38] Representative Pearson, you are a plaintiff in this lawsuit that was filed Thursday [13:42] in the district court for the Middle District of Tennessee. I just this is an assault on black people [13:52] in this country. And frankly, it's been happening for a while now. I when I first met you, it was [13:57] because you and two other state elected officials were kicked out of the chamber during a session [14:05] because, well, we don't even need to go through it. They kicked you all out and not anybody else. [14:11] And so you have some very impassioned words on the on the floor from the statehouse yesterday. [14:17] I know you were barred from they attempted to bar you from reentering. What is your message to [14:24] not just other elected officials and state legislatures across the country, [14:28] but black and brown voters in some of these states across the south across the country [14:32] about what it's going to take because we are, I believe, in a post reconstruction period. [14:37] Another one right now. Oh, there you go. Thank you. What we experienced and what we saw yesterday in [14:48] the state of Tennessee was a political lynching. It is very much an era of retribution that we are [14:54] entering into in the United States of America across the south, where 12 to 20 United States [14:59] House seats that are black majority are at risk of being taken away and nearly 200 seats for state [15:04] House members and state Senate members are likely to be taken away by the rise of white supremacy [15:09] and its attempt to solidify its power on behalf of the biggest white supremacist in the United States [15:14] of America, which is the president of the United States. I was expelled and my other black colleague [15:18] was expelled from the Tennessee General Assembly standing up against gun violence, [15:22] while our white colleague was not. That's not accidental or coincidental. This is a part of who [15:27] the Tennessee General Assembly is. But in this particular moment, we all have to stand up, [15:31] speak up and fight back from whatever positions we have in every part of this country. At the statehouse, [15:38] in the governor's mansions, we need to be advocating and fighting and resisting, [15:42] because what just happened in Tennessee was the largest and the most swift disenfranchisement of [15:46] black people that we have seen in at least a century. Kristen Clark, your sense of where this [15:51] fight goes next? So, a few things. I think that we're going to see a lot of battles in the courts [15:59] as civil rights lawyers and organizations like the NAACP fight back. I think that we're going to see a [16:05] groundswell of support inside of our capital houses. As lawmakers put targets on majority [16:15] black districts, people are going to show up and use their voices to speak out, as we saw yesterday [16:20] in Tennessee, as we saw today in Louisiana and Alabama. But most importantly, I think we're going [16:28] to see people on the streets in every corner of this country resisting this return to Jim Crow 2.0. [16:36] So, we are in a battle to save democracy. Justice Roberts was wrong when he put the first death [16:45] nail in the Voting Rights Act and claimed that it was a new day and that voting discrimination [16:50] was a thing of the past. We have seen racism unleashed in our political process. And in this moment, [16:57] every American needs to use their voice to speak out. [17:02] You know, I just kind of look at all of this, Representative, and I alluded to it coming in [17:10] about where the trend line of the country is going. And what a lot of this, for me, signals is fear. [17:21] Thus, the replacement theory BS that you hear a lot of folks out there, [17:24] you know, sort of sound like little crows out there mimicking. You also recognize how much the [17:33] country foundationally could change. When you look at your own legislature, when you look at the [17:39] men and women in that chamber, and you look at how they're treating you, their fear is one day, sir, [17:44] you're going to be sitting there as the speaker of that chamber. You're going to be sitting there [17:48] as the majority leader in that Senate. You may be standing there as the governor of that state one [17:53] day with the power to do to them what they're doing to us, to you right now. How do you see that [18:01] future? And what are you saying to particularly constituents your age who are for the first time [18:08] having to confront something that I went through with my parents back in the 1960s? [18:15] And now here you are, as a young legislator, already having experience, as Simone pointed [18:21] out at the beginning, what Jim Crow feels like, and sounds like, and looks like. How do you help [18:29] young people appreciate what this moment requires of them going forward? [18:35] I think the main thing that people have to realize, and what young people realize in particular, [18:41] is that we did not get this far by ourselves. The work of our ancestors, the blood, the sweat, [18:47] and the tears that they shed for 400 years in this country is how we've gotten to the point in the [18:51] places that we are. I'm running for the United States Congress, after the same women who watched [18:56] me give Easter speeches, now want to see me give speeches in the United States Congress. That is the [19:01] arc that we understand as a people, that we have persevered through everything that has been thrown at us, [19:06] from enslavement to lynching, from the burning of Tulsa to the Memphis Massacre, from mass incarceration, [19:11] to now the removal in mass of black political power through congressional seats. We have persevered, [19:18] and that perseverance does scare them. It worries a lot of people. It worries the biggest worry of [19:24] white supremacy, because they've tried everything to destroy us. They've tried everything to break us, [19:29] and it does not work. We continue to persist. We continue to fight back. We can continue to build [19:34] power, and in this moment in time, that is what we are seeing, a mass mobilization of people, [19:39] unlike anything that we've seen recently, at least in Tennessee history, but likely across the South, [19:43] to organize, to mobilize, to activate, to register more voters, but then to make sure they get to the [19:48] polls. They've broken up all these districts, thinking that we're not going to be able to compete [19:52] in them, but we are, and we're going to win. And so what the devil means for bad, God's going to turn into [19:57] good. But I do know that the history of our ancestors is our encouragement for why we have to fight, [20:03] and why we will win. Hey, good morning. It is Saturday, May the 9th. I'm Ali Velshi, [20:09] and there's a story unfolding right now in the American South that might not be at the top of your [20:13] news feed, but I happen to think it's the most urgent problem facing every one of us today, [20:19] no matter where in the country we live. It's a story you might even think you know, [20:23] because it started like so many second-term Trump emergencies, looking like a shameless power grab [20:29] by a wannabe dictator facing the electoral consequences of his deeply unpopular regime. [20:35] But two major developments in recent days have turned this cynical Trumpian scheme [20:40] into a real-time deconstruction of our multiracial democracy. [20:45] What we're witnessing as a result is the dawn of a new Jim Crow era, [20:50] one that uses the same pernicious strategy of leveraging bad faith pretense and dirty tricks [20:55] to rob American citizens of their voting rights or of the weight and value of their vote. [21:00] The first part, the laying of the groundwork, you probably remember. [21:05] Donald Trump was afraid of his party losing the midterms because his policies are so [21:09] fantastically unpopular, so he set forth a plan quite openly of targeted gerrymandering to rig [21:15] congressional district maps so that Republicans would pick up extra seats without picking up any [21:20] extra votes. It began in Texas with a phone call from Donald Trump to Governor Abbott. [21:26] Last August, Trump states his desires very plainly. [21:31] We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. [21:34] We have a really good governor and we have good people in Texas. [21:37] And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, [21:41] as you probably know. And we are entitled to five more seats. [21:47] Entitled. It spreads state to state anywhere where the Republican state house. [21:52] One of the only GOP-led states to buck the request from Trump was Indiana, [21:58] where a handful of state senators, Republican state senators, [22:01] voted down the effort to change their state map. Trump was quick to target them for retribution. [22:07] In fact, this past Tuesday in the Republican primaries in Indiana, [22:12] six of eight Republican state senators who opposed Donald Trump's redistricting effort [22:17] were voted out by the MAGA base. They were replaced by Trump-endorsed candidates. [22:23] Now, across the country, some Democrats fought back. In California and Virginia, [22:27] both states which believe that redistricting should be nonpartisan, Democrats organized [22:32] referendums to allow voters, you know, the ones who actually matter, [22:35] the choice to adopt new maps as a sort of a counterbalance. [22:39] So for a while, it was a fight. But then two rulings from two different courts changed everything. [22:45] First, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively tore down the last real remaining pillar of the Voting [22:51] Rights Act last week, erasing protections that were designed to preserve the voting power [22:56] of black communities. That cleared the way for southern states to redraw districts in ways that [23:01] will unquestionably dilute black voting rights, eliminate black majority districts, [23:07] and roll back black representation in Congress. And they rushed to do exactly that. Louisiana, [23:12] Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina all began the process for implementing [23:18] new maps. On Thursday, Tennessee's governor signed into law a congressional map. [23:24] This is, it's hard to see that these two maps look the same. Look at the one on the left, [23:27] look at the bottom left corner, the little blue thing, and look at the one on the right. [23:30] This new congressional map eliminates the only majority black district [23:36] in the entire state, which is the Democratic-held district surrounding Memphis. [23:41] You can see how they did it on this map. They took the ninth congressional district, [23:44] which included Memphis and its surrounding area, and split it into three different districts. [23:51] In gerrymandering speak, that's what's known as cracking. You take a concentrated population of voters [23:56] and you crack the block into separate districts, diluting the voting power of that group. [24:01] Every eligible voter in Memphis will get to vote this November, [24:06] but their vote will mean less by design. Yesterday, a legislative committee met in [24:12] Louisiana to discuss a new map which would eliminate one of two majority black districts in that state. [24:18] Louisiana is one-third black, and under the new map that erases a black majority district, [24:23] the state will have one-sixth black majority congressional districts. Mind you, 40,000 people [24:29] have already voted in the state's primary, which has now been suspended. Alabama Republicans are [24:35] attempting to fast track a new map targeting two predominantly black congressional districts. [24:40] Over a quarter of Alabama's population is black. They may not have a single representative [24:45] in Congress after this. They'll still get to cast a ballot this November, but their votes will mean less [24:50] less by design. Mississippi Republicans will convene for a special session on May the 20th [24:57] to discuss new state Supreme Court maps. It took Florida Republicans no time to pass a new map [25:02] which targeted four Democratic seats. South Carolina Republicans are trying to eliminate the state's [25:08] lone Democratic seat held by Congressman Jim Clyburn, but the Republican state Senate their leader [25:13] there isn't fully convinced just yet. But if they do push forward, they will have to delay their state's [25:19] primary. And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state's [25:26] new map, the one that would have benefited Democrats, the one voted in by the citizens of Virginia a couple [25:32] of weeks ago is unconstitutional. The ruling was essentially procedural. The referendum to read [25:39] district was a constitutional amendment and Virginia has a strict process for enacting constitutional [25:44] amendments. In a 4-3 split decision, judges found a flaw in how the referendum was brought to [25:50] Virginia voters and they threw it out without regard for the fact that they voted. Virginia voters [25:57] voted two weeks ago to approve the amendment, which is to say that the straight Supreme Court in [26:03] Virginia has invalidated 1.6 million votes. It's invalidated the clear preference for democratic [26:09] governance in Virginia that Virginia voters have voted for loud and clear since last November. [26:14] You may be wondering how in a functioning democracy we can land in such a place [26:18] where Louisiana's governor can suspend an election to push through a new map. And in Tennessee, [26:22] it takes four business days to disenfranchise a million black voters. Florida and Mississippi [26:27] and Alabama pushing through new maps. But Virginia can hold a whole election to decide on a new map by [26:33] popular vote and the will of the people gets tossed out by the courts. This is a flashing red warning [26:40] light that we are slipping out of being a functional democracy right now in real time. A patchwork legal [26:45] system for drawing congressional maps means some states like California have non-partisan [26:51] redistricting commissions. Virginia is also bipartisan. And other states leave it up to their [26:56] legislature. In Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in the state [27:01] legislature, which doesn't matter because the governor's a Republican anyway. They wouldn't veto it. [27:06] But this means fewer legal hurdles to jump. In Florida's case, they just ignored their state [27:12] constitution entirely. Back in 2010, Florida voters passed an anti-gerrymandering amendment. [27:19] Florida's new map is being challenged on that basis, but the Florida Supreme Court [27:23] is packed with Ron DeSantis allies. So again, it's not going to matter. Let's be clear, [27:28] this system diminishes the power of everyone's vote. You may not live in Louisiana or Tennessee or [27:35] Alabama or Mississippi, but if we are living in a system where everyone's vote doesn't carry the same [27:40] weight, it means your vote is diluted too. It doesn't matter how hard you vote Democrat in California [27:47] or New York if the system is rigged in half a dozen Southern states. That is where democracy is defeated. [27:55] In the abstractions, in the corrupting little power grabs and screams. Democracy is not defeated [28:00] because somebody stands up and says democracy ends on Tuesday. It's defeated in the dozens or hundreds [28:06] of smaller malevolent moves against it. And right now, this is the most important one. And look, [28:12] Democrats were always the underdogs in this fight. Their approach to mid-decade redistricting [28:16] was retaliatory. Democratic-led redistricting has been framed as a necessary offset to Trump's push [28:23] in Republican-led states. The disenfranchisement of black voters we're seeing now is the culmination [28:29] of a larger political project to marginalized minorities, and it's going to take more than a few [28:33] extra seats in California to fight it back. What this country needs to start thinking about [28:39] is a new reconstruction. Nonpartisan, nationwide redistricting, [28:44] redistricting, campaign finance restrictions, easier elections, [28:48] or at least elections that are easier to vote in, and a fair and just Supreme Court. [28:54] The response to measured autocracy cannot be improvised. It cannot be improvised retaliation. [29:01] Let me tell you about the states that have already enacted new maps, [29:05] and the party which stands to benefit from each. In Texas, Republicans could gain five seats, [29:09] one seat in North Carolina, one or two in Ohio, three or four in Florida, one in Tennessee. [29:16] Democrats, on the other hand, could gain five seats in California, [29:19] one in Utah. Louisiana could add yet one more in the Republican column. [29:25] But even these gains, I just want to be fair, are presumptive. Voters haven't voted yet. [29:29] Nothing is certain. What's left of American democracy is, in fact, up to you, up to voters, [29:35] defying the expectations of people who seek predetermined outcomes to elections, [29:39] who seek to choose their voters, rather than to let their voters choose them. [29:45] Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. You know, the most dramatic thing that a judge or [29:50] judges can do in a democracy is to just throw out the results of an election. That's as serious it [29:57] gets, right? It's essentially unheard of outside of really rare cases of fraud, right? Otherwise, [30:04] you don't get to just throw out an election. I mean, the idea of one person or a small handful of [30:09] people setting aside the will of the citizens, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of [30:15] citizens, that's pretty alien to our democratic traditions. It just doesn't happen that much. [30:21] That is what happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia today, shockingly, appallingly, really. [30:26] The Supreme Court of that state ruled four to three to strike down the congressional redistricting [30:32] plan that, crucially, had been approved by the state voters in a special election last month, [30:37] as we covered here at this desk, with millions of people campaigning or showing at the polls, [30:43] it won 52 to 48%. Again, weeks of campaigning, millions of dollars spent on ads by both sides, [30:50] a vigorous public debate, and the people came out, three million to the polls in that Virginia [30:54] referendum, and a majority of the people said, yes, we want these new maps. And today, [30:59] a panel of judges by the narrowest of margins, four to three, toss that result out because they say [31:04] of a technical issue with how that referendum got on the ballot, their interpretation of one word in [31:10] the state statute. They didn't just block the new congressional map, they vetoed the election. And in [31:16] so doing, they have also sent the American political system in toto, barreling back towards [31:21] Jim Crow disenfranchisement. As we've been covering closely on the show, as you now have been [31:26] following, they have handed Republicans now a huge victory in the race to the bottom, [31:32] gerrymandering arms race that Trump started to stay in power. Donald Trump is afraid of losing his [31:39] power in a free and fair election. He's very afraid of being impeached again. He said as much [31:43] earlier this year, on January 6th, in fact. You got to win the midterms, [31:50] because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to [31:56] impeach me. I'll get impeached. Find a reason? At this point, it's harder to find reasons not to [32:06] impeach him. And so Donald Trump came up with a plan to rig the midterms, a combination of [32:11] gerrymandering Democrats out of their House seats in red states, again, in the middle of the decade, [32:17] when this is just never done. It's done every 10 years of the census, but screw that, right? [32:21] So they're going to do that and then pass this national bill that would be the most [32:25] onerous voter suppression law in American history. And he was very clear about this, right? The point [32:31] wasn't to persuade the median voter, the cross pressured voter that they had the best agenda. No, [32:36] it was these two means to barricade themselves into power. He explicitly said that the point [32:44] was to engineer races where people can't vote Republicans out of office. [32:51] I'll tell you what, Republicans have to win this one. We'll never lose a race. For 50 years, [32:57] we won't lose a race. We want voter ID. We want proof of citizenship. And we don't want mail-in ballots. [33:05] Right? So that's the plan, to change the way voting happens, to change the districts, [33:11] to basically change the rules of the game rather than actually compete in the game. [33:16] And while Republicans have yet to pass those voting restrictions into law, though they've tried, [33:20] they have all across the country, with some notable exceptions like India and other places, [33:24] gone all in on Trump's gerrymandering plan. I can't stress this enough. This has never happened [33:30] before, what we're seeing. Never. There was one mid-decade redistricting in Texas [33:36] under George W. Bush. That was a huge deal. But what we've seen at Trump's direction is that in [33:40] red state after red state, they have been squeezing out blue districts. And in response to that, [33:47] Democrats have countered to try to level the playing field, to get things back to par, [33:52] to get things back to even so that voters can actually decide who should be in Congress. [33:56] In California and Virginia, Democrats in those states submitted plans for the new maps to the voters. [34:03] They didn't just ram them through. They said, look, this is our proposal. They went to the voters. [34:07] And in both states, the voters said, yes, what a novel idea. What a novel idea, giving the voters [34:14] a say in all this, in how districts are drawn, how maps are drawn, in who represents them. [34:20] The voters saying, the voters. Have you heard of them? That's the thing Republicans are trying to [34:26] destroy. Keep in mind, we already have evolved into a constitutional system that right now, [34:32] as I speak to you, is deeply structurally biased against one party, the Democrats. [34:37] It's biased against them in the Senate, where 39 million Californians get the same number of [34:42] senators as 600,000 people in Wyoming. You ever stop and think, like, why is there a North and a South [34:47] Dakota? It's biased against them in the electoral college, where smaller, more rural states with [34:53] winner-take-all rules favor Republicans. It is why, if you've been paying attention over the last several [34:59] decades of American politics, we have had not one, but two elections in the past seven, [35:04] where the Republican candidate won despite getting fewer votes than their opponent. [35:10] In every other race in the entire country, the person with more votes wins. In every single one, [35:16] except one. Now, in this system that has evolved to be structurally biased towards Republicans, [35:23] the one place where popular sentiment generally gets transferred most directly is, you guessed it, [35:30] the House of Representatives. And so now Republicans are trying to electoral college-ify [35:37] and Jim Crow-ify the House so that Democrats need to win by two or four or six points nationally [35:43] just to get the same number of seats as Republicans, to open up the possibility of an election like 2000 [35:49] or 2016, in which more people vote for Democrats, but Republicans still maintain the majority. [35:56] That is an unbelievably dangerous situation, right? It's the potential difference between a [36:03] do-nothing Congress that continues to bow to an aspiring king and a truly representative body [36:08] that restores some semblance of sanity and accountability. But deeper than that, [36:11] it's the difference between us having a democracy or not. And yet, despite all this, [36:18] Virginia Supreme Court reinforced that Republican advantage today. Again, they vetoed the voters. [36:23] You don't see it that much. You don't see courts just go like that to an election that much. [36:30] No to 1.6 million voters in their state. No to a last-ditch attempt of parody, fairness and justice. [36:37] Now, the court's majority was wrong. I think they were actually wrong on the technical meaning of [36:41] the law. If you read their opinion in the dissent, the dissent has a better part of it. [36:46] But this is part of an insane asymmetry between how democratically controlled states and Republican [36:51] controlled states have been treating this redistricting arms race that Donald Trump started, [36:56] right? On one side, Democrats are going through procedure after procedure, right? They got [37:01] initiatives. They changed the maps. Then they got initiatives on the ballots. Then they had to run [37:05] a campaign. Then they had to go to the voters. And they had to pass the new maps. On the other side, [37:11] as Semaphore puts it, Republicans are simply not limited by so many small-D Democratic restrictions. [37:16] They just convened their legislatures, which themselves, by the way, [37:20] are highly gerrymandered to begin with, that have these, like, insane 80-20 majorities. And then [37:28] that gerrymandered state legislature rams through a new gerrymandered congressional map. [37:34] Like in Tennessee, Republicans yesterday took the state's last majority minority district in [37:39] Memphis, a congressional district that has existed since 1923, because obviously there's a district [37:44] that represents one of the largest cities in the state, and cracked it into pieces [37:49] in order to give Republicans every House seat in the state. They did this while hundreds of people [37:55] protested outside. To be able to have representation. And they are stealing it. They are changing the [38:05] laws mid-game and trying to take away the voice of people. And these voices matter. It's illegal. [38:11] And it just shows you how hell-bent they are on taking away the black voice in Memphis. [38:15] Oh, they're not done. No, no, they're not done. They did it in Alabama today, too. They kept the, [38:22] get this, they kept the state house open through a tornado evacuation. Okay? The state was being [38:29] evacuated because there was a tornado. There were leaks happening in the building. This is a state [38:34] that's got its fair share of problems. It ranks near the bottom and a whole host of things. But no, [38:39] they stuck to their guns. You hear that siren in the background. And in a building being evacuated, [38:44] they got together to approve a map that eliminates one of the two majority black districts. [38:50] It really just, just hurts me. And it just disturbs me that we're at this point in 2026, [39:00] an entirely new century. And then we're still arguing over who has the right to have rights. [39:06] And of course, there's Louisiana. Last week, the Supreme Court basically killed off [39:12] what was left of the Voting Rights Act, gave that state's Republicans carte blanche to draw a new map. [39:16] Now, that election, the primary election had already started. 40,000 people had already voted. [39:23] The governor declared a state of emergency. He declared a state of emergency because he didn't [39:27] like what was happening in the vote. Today, the state legislature opened public hearings to consider maps [39:34] that would just happen to eliminate one or both of Louisiana's majority black districts. [39:39] You get the pattern here, right? One after another, so that there's no black members of Congress left [39:45] in the states of the old Confederacy. One state senator called them out on it while hearing testimony [39:52] from the only four black people to represent the state in the House since Reconstruction. [39:57] We have over 4.4 million people in the state. A third are African-American. This is a former slave state. [40:07] Since the end of slavery, these four gentlemen have represented us in Congress. That's it. [40:12] And now we want to reduce that. My public comment is anger. This upsets me. How do we not focus on race? [40:20] Think about that, right? It's the blackest part of the whole country. States of the Old South, [40:25] Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina. You see the trend. Donald Trump's plan isn't to win [40:34] over voters. It's to win elections in perpetuity by blocking voters' ability to have a say. [40:42] Choosing your voters, moving them around like pieces on a board instead of letting them choose [40:48] you. And it only works if Republicans can systematically disenfranchise black voters in [40:53] the American South. They want a new Jim Crow. They're very explicit about it. They're hard at [40:59] work trying to make it happen. And now they have a blessing from the Supreme Court. [41:02] So good to have you on the show. The NAACP almost immediately sued to block this effort from [41:15] Tennessee. Can you give us a sense of what fighting back in this moment is going to look like? [41:20] It's going to require that we remember we are the United States of America. And so we have to sit [41:26] what Tennessee is doing next to the fight that's coming out of Louisiana, next to the fight that [41:31] will follow in Mississippi and likely in South Carolina. We are watching in real time the restoration [41:38] of the very laws that pretended racial neutrality but were intended to deny black and brown voters the [41:46] right to participate in democracy, which is one of the principal goals of authoritarianism. [41:52] They do not want the people who may disagree with them to be heard. And right now in the United [41:57] States, race is the strongest predictor of political leanings. And so it's a lucky twofer. [42:02] They get the partisanship, but they also get the white supremacy that they seek. [42:06] And I sat in a hearing yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee, when the author of the legislation said, [42:12] well, this is a conservative state. We should only have conservatives. [42:16] And they intentionally erased the only black district, one of nine districts, the only one [42:23] that allowed black Tennesseans to have some voice because they've already cracked Nashville. [42:29] But we have to remember this is happening around the country and it is part of an intentional [42:34] nationwide pattern of behavior. We can be angry about Tennessee and we can laud the Tennesseans who [42:40] have fought back so ably. But we've got to remember they started in the South, but they're coming for [42:45] everyone. Part of that nationwide pattern of behavior. Also in Mississippi, the governor there, [42:52] Tate Reeves told the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview on Wednesday, they say that Mississippi [42:57] lawmakers are already preparing for a special session focused on the state Supreme Court districts, [43:02] but said he has the authority to expand that call to include other redistricting matters, [43:07] potentially, including its congressional and state legislative maps. Reeves also notes that [43:13] Benny Thompson's majority minority district was drawn race conscious, race consciously, [43:20] basically hinting that it could be targeted for redistricting. I think the thing that is, [43:25] when people hear this, immediately they start thinking, this is just, this is a black and brown [43:30] people problem, right? They're trying to keep them from voting, right? But talk a little bit about [43:36] how this is something everyone should care about. And there's a reason why, because when they, they [43:41] always, the black people might get the flu when everybody getting a cold, but you're still getting [43:45] sick. And so someone has to make sure that at the end of the day, this is not able to spread. [43:49] Exactly, Eugene. Part of the challenge is that because of the centuries of racism that attend the [43:59] United States, we have pretended this notion of race neutrality, ignoring that the systems that [44:05] created what we have, have affected everyone. I have white neighbors. And so what it means is [44:12] that when my ability to participate in elections is thwarted and undermined, anyone next to me [44:18] might, might be harmed as well. Memphis is 64% black, but that means the rest of the folks there [44:24] are affected too. And now they have to hope that their needs are being met by people who do not share [44:29] their issues. And you play the part of the clip. Imagine if you lived in the community of rent of [44:34] cattle ranchers, but you were only ever able to elect vegans. They would say that it is dietary, [44:41] you know, neutral. It just so happens that the majority are vegans. But if you're a cattle rancher, [44:46] this is going to affect your ability to make a living. It's going to affect your ability to take care [44:50] of your family. We have to recognize that in the United States, we may be 50 different states, [44:56] but we are one people. And when any of our people are denied access to democracy, [45:02] when we are denied participation, this becomes a pretext for denying it for the next group that [45:07] they decide they don't like. They may start with black and brown voters, but they're coming for [45:12] everyone. They are. Stacy, it's a real pleasure to see you again. You and I have been on the opposite [45:19] side of politics. We've worked together at Howard University. And I stand with you on this issue. [45:25] I don't know what the hell's wrong with my party. I don't know what the hell their problem is, [45:29] because they are just drunk stupid right now. Now, when you sit up there, race is a leading [45:34] predictor. Y'all don't want to talk about DEI out there. Y'all don't want to talk about race. [45:37] But everything you do touches on all of that. Everything you're doing touches on all of that. [45:44] It's hitting black people upside the head. It's hitting brown people upside the head in their [45:49] communities. So what are we talking about here? And I love what you just said. I mean, [45:55] you have this legislator saying, well, this is a conservative state, right? We should only have [46:02] conservatives. Then why the hell y'all out here, B word inserted, about California and New York and [46:10] other liberal states, other blue states? So why are you so concerned about what they're doing? [46:18] If, you know, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, we conservative. So we want all conservative. [46:23] It doesn't matter that we got black and brown liberals, Democrat, Republican in our state. [46:27] As long as they're not conservative, they don't get to vote. They don't get the right to have a [46:32] voice. What the hell are you talking about? Stacey, this breaks down to we're a simple thing. And you [46:37] know it, I know it. Everybody now got to get off their ass, I'm sorry, and get busy about the vote. [46:45] This November, you've got to overwhelm the ballot with your vote. If you want to stop this mess, [46:50] you need to start unelecting these state legislators. And I know I had a hand in putting [46:55] some of them there. To be honest about it, they turned out to be tickleheads. All right? [47:01] The reality of it is, this is the opportunity now where you begin to take your government back, [47:05] people. Stacey, talk about that piece of it, because I don't think people really appreciate how [47:11] valuable the vote has become. If you never thought it was important before, [47:16] damn it, it is the most important thing in front of you right now. [47:20] My parents grew up without the Voting Rights Act. My parents were, you know, born in 1949. [47:26] Yep. [47:26] They were in 1949. They were in college before the Voting Rights Act passed. And what we have to [47:34] understand is that there are no longer blue states and red states. There are authoritarian states [47:41] and democracy states. There are states that do not believe in the right of the people to have a say, [47:47] who want to aggregate power and foment corruption. And there are states that want to guarantee that in [47:53] this country, we have free and fair elections. We have access to the remedies that democracy is [48:00] supposed to deliver. And that no matter what goes wrong in one part of the country, [48:04] that the quality of your citizenship does not depend on your zip code and your geography. [48:09] I started the 10 steps campaign because we've got to understand that authoritarianism [48:13] is a political system designed to achieve ideological ends. And the ideological ends intended by this [48:20] regime do not include most of us. If you believe that Christian nationalism should be the law of the [48:27] land, if you want proto-natalism where women are relegated to simply serving as vessels for a man's [48:32] intention, if you believe that white supremacy should be allowed to diminish the value of everyone [48:39] else, then you want authoritarian states to win. But if you believe in democracy as the currency of [48:45] America, then you want California and New York. You want every state that's willing to fight back to do [48:51] so. But to your point, Michael, it can work. I'm from Georgia. I grew up in Mississippi. I came of age in [48:57] Georgia. It took us a while. But what we did in Georgia was not about bringing in new people. [49:02] It was about reminding the people here that democracy could deliver. We didn't get all the way there [49:07] with my races. But my races weren't the point. The point were the people. And I want us to remember [49:13] that between 2014 and 2018, when we got to work, not just registering voters, but talking to voters, [49:19] connecting the dots between their needs and an election, we were able to generate 800,000 new [49:26] voters in a single election cycle. They may not have gotten me over the finish line, but we got 16 [49:31] electoral college votes for Joe Biden. And we got two U.S. senators everywhere across this country. [49:37] When we show up and when we vote all the way down the ballot, especially to the fine print, [49:42] that's how we not only serve the purpose of winning these elections, it's how we reassert [49:47] the fact that this is a nation of elections and of leadership. But then we've got to do the work in [49:53] between. If you already live in a blue state, you need to be talking to your legislators about [49:58] passing their own statewide Voting Rights Act. You need to be talking about making sure that the [50:03] democracy in your state is as visible and as loud as possible. But overall, what we've got to remember [50:10] is that if you are in a safe place, you've got to start sending your resources, your support [50:15] and your intentions to the states that need your help. Do not abandon the South. [50:19] They incubate evil here, but they farm it out everywhere. But we also incubate the solutions [50:25] here. And we know we can win this fight. But yes, we've got to win in November. But that means [50:29] showing up for primaries. That means showing up for the general. And then it means making sure we're [50:33] paying attention in 27, in 28 and in 2030, when the census happens, because that's when they start [50:40] this all over again. We can pull this off, but we've got to start fighting now because we're [50:45] already behind, but we can catch up. Steve Cohen, the state's lone Democratic [50:50] member of Congress, whose Memphis seat is on the line in this Republican redistricting push. [50:55] Congressman, thank you for being with us. As your state lawmakers plow forward on redrawing [51:00] Tennessee's congressional map, what's at stake if this black majority district is broken up? [51:06] Well, it destroys what was some of the highlights of the 60s, one of the greatest legislative [51:10] accomplishments of Linda Johnson and the Congress in the 20th century of passing the Voting Rights [51:15] Act with Martin Luther King and John Lewis there to fight for it, among others. The people who died [51:21] for that right to vote, John Lewis' march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the march to Montgomery, [51:26] and it's all wiped out. This was to make up for years of slavery and Jim Crow and give [51:31] African-American voting districts where they had the opportunity to elect the candidate of their [51:35] choice. And they've done that in a wonderful way. Black people are very engaged in politics. [51:41] It's an important part of their livelihoods and their success and their advancements in America. [51:47] This is a great turnaround and a turn back to Jim Crow era politics in the 50s. And the Southern [51:53] legislatures, like the one in Tennessee that were off the lines in the South and all over the country, [51:58] won't be able to raise racial arguments even when they are obvious. It is obvious as the shoe on your [52:06] foot that this is a racially based gerrymandering to eliminate the Black vote, which is a core [52:13] Democratic vote. But that's why they're being eliminated. This district was not a voting rights [52:18] district. It was a district of compactness, of community of interest, of Memphians who live [52:23] together. It's a large Black population. And they've had that district. I've represented it 20 years. [52:28] And I feel like I'm going to my own funeral. I hear what you're saying. Can you explain [52:34] why you feel that Black voices and Black votes won't be heard or won't be counted in the same way? [52:42] And what options, if any, do you and your Democratic colleagues have to fight back? [52:47] African-Americans have been a majority of this district, 61% in the general of [52:54] District 9, and in a primary, 80%. 80% of the Democratic primary where the candidates basically [53:00] chosen. And I've won that district nine times in re-election with 80% Black vote and never lost a [53:07] precinct. African-American voters don't vote on race. They vote on the candidate. They want to deliver [53:12] services to deliver to Memphis and deliver constituent services. They've done it. [53:16] With this district the way it is, divided Memphis in three different maps that stretch out up close [53:22] to the Kentucky line and over towards Nashville, on the Mississippi line, and towards Chattanooga. [53:27] And then in the center, going out for one particular man, a man named Brent Taylor, [53:31] who's a House member. He drew that map for himself. Those districts will make Black voting population [53:38] in Memphis a tale of a comet. They will not get any regards from the people running in the Republican [53:44] primaries who will be the winner, because these are majority, big-time majority Republican districts. [53:49] And the Black vote will not be sought, and it will not be listened to. And there will not be offices in [53:55] Memphis to deal with constituent services, social security, Medicaid, VA issues, whatever. And there [54:00] won't be community projects that Memphis needs. Memphis is a big city, the second biggest city in [54:04] Tennessee, an iconic city in America. I have delivered. My predecessor, Cheryl Ford Jr. and [54:09] senior delivered. Nobody will deliver, because it's not going to be an important part of that [54:13] voting block. They will not get community projects. They will not get the needs they want. And one [54:17] thing that shows how foolish this is, you have a baseball team, nine players. We have nine congressmen. [54:24] You have nine players who play nine different positions and can help you different ways. [54:29] When we needed a bridge built across the Mississippi River, one of the biggest projects the states ever [54:33] sought. They came to me, the lone Democrat, the lobby Pete Buttigieg under Biden. I was able to get [54:41] Buttigieg in the Biden administration to give $450 million to this project. There will be a new bridge [54:50] built over the Mississippi River, because the Republican governor and the Republican team came [54:54] to the Democrat, the only Democrat they had who could deliver. They asked me to deliver, and I delivered. [54:59] There's going to be a Democratic president in 2028. There will be nobody to deliver. [55:04] They're doing all this for Donald Trump for one reason, to stop oversight of him in the Congress [55:09] next term. We can oversee his kleptomania, his cryptocracy and the money he's made, [55:17] his immoluments violations, his pardon violations. They don't want that. For one man, [55:22] the most heinous criminal man ever to hold the White House, ever. They're turning Tennessee [55:28] around. They're turning black folks around. They're turning Memphis around, filling a city, [55:32] a great American city. Congressman Steve Cohen, [55:35] I appreciate your passion. Thank you so much.