Louisiana rushes to redraw congressional maps after Gov. Landry suspends primaries

[0:01] This past week, chaos and protests broke out in statehouses as Republicans and Democrats [0:07] raced to draw new congressional maps. [0:10] What is usually an arcane process has become an unprecedented political free-for-all. [0:15] At stake is control of Congress in November's midterm elections. [0:20] With a razor-thin margin, both parties are rushing to draw new lines, hoping to tilt [0:25] the House of Representatives in their favor. [0:28] Adding fuel to the fire, a landmark Supreme Court decision 11 days ago found a congressional [0:34] map in Louisiana was unconstitutional. [0:38] The court said legislators relied too heavily on race to draw the lines. [0:43] And that's where we went. [0:45] Louisiana's Republican governor and his party are already moving to carve out new districts, [0:50] and many Black voters we met fear their district will be wiped off the map. [0:56] I just don't understand why there is nobody able to stop this train. [1:02] You see all the wrong. [1:04] You see it's racist. [1:08] You know it. [1:10] This past Monday, it was a packed house at the Galilee Baptist Church. [1:14] There is a fight for freedom. [1:17] The spiritual anchor to the west side of Shreveport, where for many, the memories of Jim Crow run [1:23] deep. [1:25] One by one, the constituents lined up with questions about the fate of their congressional district. [1:31] Their Democratic congressman, Cleo Fields, didn't have many answers. [1:34] Sometimes you get a setback to be set up. [1:37] I mean, don't underestimate that power of the vote. [1:41] That's what they are trying to take away. [1:43] Right. [1:44] Congressman Fields has served the people of Louisiana for most of his life. [1:48] First elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, he lost, then won again in never-ending [1:55] redistricting battles. [1:57] Now he could be facing another loss. [2:00] Do you believe this will not be your seat when and if this map is redrawn? [2:05] I think it's highly unlikely. [2:08] You have said this is not about you, your job, the seat that you hold personally. [2:13] I'm just occupying the seat. [2:16] And that's one of the things people get confused with. [2:19] When there's a voting rights seat created, it guarantees a black an election. [2:26] No, it doesn't guarantee a black anything. [2:29] It just gives a black an opportunity to win an election. [2:35] And that's why they even passed the Voting Rights Act. [2:38] The 1965 Voting Rights Act was created to protect minority voting power. [2:43] In Louisiana, which has one of the highest percentages of black residents in the country, about 30 percent, [2:50] there has never been a black politician elected to Congress in a district where whites are in [2:55] the majority. [2:56] The recent Supreme Court ruling virtually gutted the landmark legislation, but some say its [3:02] time has passed. [3:04] There are conservative African Americans who've spoken out in recent days and they have praised [3:09] this court's ruling. [3:11] And they say that there's proof of real racial progress. [3:14] Oh, there is progress in the nation, you know, but there is not progress in the southern part [3:22] of our country to the extent that you should do away with the Voting Rights Act. [3:27] You tell those same folk to come here and run for office and get elected. [3:34] The sixth district stretches more than 200 miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. [3:40] During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts called it, quote, a snake that runs from one [3:46] side of the state, angling up to the other, picking up black populations as it goes along. [3:53] The case was brought by a group describing themselves as non-African American voters. [3:58] They sued Louisiana under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which says the government [4:03] must treat everyone equally under the law. [4:07] In its ruling, the court called the sixth district map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. [4:13] Named after founding father Elbridge Gerry, gerrymandering is the process of redrawing political voting [4:19] lines to benefit the party in power, and it's perfectly legal. [4:24] Elbridge Gerry created a district resembling a salamander, thus gerrymander. [4:31] A snake in Louisiana was a lobster in Virginia and earmuffs in Illinois. [4:36] Yeah, it absolutely looks like a snake. [4:40] Congressman Cleo Fields acknowledges black representation in Washington has grown in ways [4:45] that once seemed impossible. [4:48] This Congress has more black members than at any point in history, 63. [4:53] Is that not progress? [4:55] Yeah, it's progress. [4:57] But it's not progress for Louisiana. [5:00] There are people who in this state and others just will not vote for a black person for anything. [5:08] You tell me I have to jump a certain height, that's the rule, I can work to do that. [5:13] Run a certain speed, if that's the rule, let me work at it, I can do that. [5:19] But if you tell me in order to be elected to Congress, you have to be white, there's nothing [5:26] I can do about that. [5:27] I need help from my government. [5:30] In the United States, we get equal rights. [5:33] No one gets extra rights. [5:36] This past Tuesday, we went to Baton Rouge and met Governor Jeff Landry at the governor's [5:42] mansion. [5:43] A close ally of President Trump, he dominates Louisiana politics. [5:47] The colorful, conservative Cajun was the state's attorney general before winning the top job [5:54] in 2023. [5:54] You cannot say that we are all created equal and that states must treat everyone equal [6:00] under the law and then allow a law to sort people based upon race. [6:05] Following the Supreme Court decision, Governor Landry declared a state of emergency and abruptly [6:11] suspended Congressional House primaries right as voting was starting, ordering a do-over [6:17] at a future date, leaving voters dazed and confused. [6:22] You declared a state of emergency. [6:25] What exactly is the emergency? [6:26] We've got the highest court of the land says the map that you have is unconstitutional, [6:32] so we don't have a map under which our voters can vote on. [6:37] This country has held elections during the Civil War, during two world wars, elections [6:43] still went on. [6:44] We're going to have an election, and we're actually going to have an election on election [6:48] day. [6:49] But voting was already happening. [6:51] As we sit here right now, more than 45,000 ballots have been returned. [6:55] What happens to those? [6:56] Oh, those ballots are discarded and those voters will vote again in November. [7:01] You say that like it's not a big deal. [7:03] Well, it's not a big deal. [7:05] It's not my fault. [7:07] If anybody has a grievance, take it to the United States Supreme Court. [7:11] Legal challenges over redistricting have consumed Louisiana, with federal courts repeatedly [7:17] forcing lawmakers to redraw maps. [7:19] Our voters are tired of it. [7:21] I mean, does not Louisiana deserve some clarity? [7:25] How do you want to see this look? [7:27] I want Louisiana to be finally unshackled from the decades of litigation. [7:34] Would it concern you if there were no African-American representatives from Louisiana in Congress? [7:40] That's a decision that the legislature is going to make. [7:42] But I don't believe that we have to go and draw a district that guarantees us a minority [7:52] representation. [7:53] Redistricting usually happens at the beginning of each decade using census data. [7:59] But last summer, President Trump pushed Texas Republicans to redraw maps in hopes of gaining [8:04] five seats ahead of the midterms. [8:07] California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom responded by pushing a redistricting plan of [8:12] his own that could give Democrats in his state five additional blue seats. [8:18] And former President Obama, who has publicly opposed gerrymandering in the past, is now pushing [8:23] Democrats to fight back and pick up as many congressional seats as they can. [8:29] The political tit-for-tat has turned into a coast-to-coast gerrymandering arms race. [8:34] And Republicans are feeling increasingly confident, following court rulings in their favor in Louisiana [8:40] and Virginia. [8:44] This past week, their efforts to redraw maps led to protests at the State House in Tennessee [8:51] and Alabama. [8:52] Whoever draws the maps now has no legal requirement that the map be drawn in any way to protect [9:02] the political power of minority groups. [9:04] Steven Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor who studies the Supreme Court, predicts gerrymandering [9:10] will lead to an even more polarized Congress, dominated by lawmakers representing the extremes [9:17] of both parties. [9:18] Steven Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor who studies the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, [9:19] instead of, you know, once every 10 years per the Constitution, states saying, oh, we've [9:23] got to redraw our maps because we have more data about who our people are. [9:26] Now it's let's redraw our maps whenever it's to our partisan political advantage to do so. [9:31] Is the biggest difference now President Trump's in office? [9:33] Oh, no. [9:34] No. [9:35] In fact, to me, the president is, has, has no, it's, he's irrelevant in this issue right [9:43] now. [9:44] He's been heaping praise on you for this. [9:46] Well, I'm sure that the president would like to see the House of Representatives stay [9:51] in Republican control. [9:52] I do have to ask you point blank. [9:55] Has the president asked you to redraw maps in order to help him in the midterm? [10:01] The president has not asked me to redraw the maps. [10:05] That job falls to the Republican supermajority in Louisiana's state legislature, which is [10:10] already hard at work redrawing the maps, capitalizing on the Supreme Court's ruling. [10:17] Justice Alito suggested, in his opinion, that there's less institutional racism today. [10:22] Well, I would agree with that. [10:24] I mean, think about it. [10:25] Barack Obama was elected twice as the United States president. [10:31] We've had a number of minorities elected. [10:34] We've seen a rise of Republican candidates who are black get elected. [10:38] I mean, are we really trying to drug up the past only to continue a failed narrative? [10:43] What's the failed narrative? [10:45] Well, the failed narrative is that actually that people in Louisiana are racist. [10:51] That basically we won't elect black people. [10:54] I mean, I disagree with that. [10:56] But no black candidate in Louisiana has been elected to a statewide office such as governor [11:01] or attorney general since Reconstruction. [11:05] For many, Governor Landry's words fall flat. [11:08] Pastor Timothy Hunter, Linda Scott and Donnie Sutton have spent their lives in Shreveport and [11:14] fear the future could soon resemble the past. [11:18] The reality is, at the end of the day, it's going to dilute the black vote. [11:22] That's the whole purpose. [11:24] This Republican Congress is all about making America Jim Crow again. [11:31] There's no more checking balances. [11:32] Everything that was there to guard against this type of geomandering is destroyed. [11:37] So there's nobody to stop the trade. [11:40] Can you separate politics from race in this district? [11:43] No, you can't. [11:46] Not in all of these southern states. [11:48] We've come a long ways, but not with this when it comes to race and not with the schemes [11:52] that they're putting up before us. [11:55] It's just a disgrace. [11:56] But we must keep pressing forward. [11:59] We have to. [12:00] Too many people have suffered and died for us to have these rights. [12:03] I think a lot of African-American voters in this state might say they need that protection [12:10] when it comes to the ballot box. [12:11] I mean, we go back to Martin Luther King, right? [12:15] Judge a person based upon the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. [12:21] Black voters in Louisiana have told me that they feel like it's true. [12:25] Someone who looks like you who has not lived their experience does not address their concerns [12:31] as well as someone who has lived their experience. [12:34] Well, how is it that a little country boy who grew up in a town that was primarily Black, [12:41] not lived through those experiences? [12:43] But I do think a lot of folks might say those experiences are not necessarily the same. [12:47] Well, you're saying I should not judge a person just because the person is Black. [12:53] And I agree with that. [12:55] But isn't it the opposite that I shouldn't be judged just because I'm White or Hispanic or [13:01] Indian? [13:02] I mean, here we are after all of the different cases, after all of the rectification of the [13:10] sins of the past, which certainly no one has denied, and yet we're still trying to find [13:16] some sliver of discrimination in race. [13:20] I think a lot of people would say you don't have to try to find it. [13:23] It's there. [13:24] I would say that you find that it would reside in people's hearts, not in their laws.