Saturday, May 9th, I'm Ali Valshi.

There's a story unfolding right now in the American South that you might not, might not be at the top of your news feed, but it is the most urgent problem facing every one of us today, no matter where we live.

It's a story you might think you know because it started like so many second term Trump emergencies, looking like

a shameless power grab by a wannabe dictator facing the electoral consequences of his deeply unpopular

regime. But two major developments in recent days have turned this cynical Trumpian scheme into

real-time deconstruction of our multiracial democracy. And what we're witnessing as a result is the

dawn of a new Jim Crow era, one that uses the same pernicious strategy of leveraging bad faith,

pretense, and dirty tricks to rob American citizens of their

voting rights or the weight and value of their vote. The first part, the laying of the groundwork,

you definitely remember. Donald Trump was afraid of his party losing the midterms because of his

policies being so fantastically unpopular, so he set forth a plan, quite openly, of targeted gerrymandering to

rig congressional district maps so that Republicans would pick up extra seats without having to

pick up any extra votes. Again, as you recall, it began in Texas with a phone call from Donald

Trump to Governor Abbott last August. Trump plainly states his desires.

We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats.

We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas.

And I won Texas.

I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know.

And we are entitled to five more seats.

Entitled to five more seats. It's Fred, state to state, anywhere where the Republican State House,

one of the only GOP-led states to buck the request from Trump was Indiana, where a handful of

Republican state senators voted down the effort to change their maps.

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