Ari Berman on the GOP’s Gerrymandering Plot

The Al Franken Podcast

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4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With Donald Trump and the Republican Party low in the polls, Texas is resorting to one of their favorite ways to win voters: cheating. They’ve drawn new maps to implement unprecedented gerrymandering, taking away five Democratic-held seats - all done at Trump’s insistence, of course.

We're joined by Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, to walk us through Texas Governor Abbott’s scheme. Democrats are attempting to fight back in Texas and across the country… even if it is a fight they are likely to lose.

We discuss how the Supreme Court continues to erode voting rights and how Chief Justice John Roberts is NOT the moderate that he'd like us to think that he is.

If history is any indication, Democrats SHOULD have a successful midterm election. But history may not be enough to overcome this gerrymandering lollapalooza and the attacks on voting rights.

READ Ari's work in Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/author/ari-berman/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. We got a great one today. You know, for a change, Ari Berman, Mother Jones National Voting Rights correspondent, is back.
0:18.9	This time to discuss how Republicans in Texas are attempting to add
0:22.4	five new gerrymandered seats for the upcoming 2006 midterms. That's unusual. Usually
0:30.6	seats are gerrymandered at the beginning of decades after the nationwide census, but President
0:36.8	Trump himself called Governor Greg Abbott
0:40.1	and told him that Texas needed to add five Republican seats mid-decade.
0:45.8	This is all about who will control the House of Representatives after the midterms.
0:52.0	Texas Democrats fled the state to prevent Republicans from having a quorum
0:56.7	to change the maps. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he will fight fire with fire and add
1:03.4	five Democratic seats before the midterms. It's getting crazy. Other Republican states like Ohio,
1:09.2	Missouri, Indiana, and Florida have threatened to do likewise,
1:14.0	and as you'll hear Ari explained, Democrats may be able to add some seats in states like Illinois and New Jersey,
1:21.1	but only a few, New York won't be able to until 2008, and and ultimately, Democrats will lose this battle.
1:31.2	So the midterms better be a way for the Democrats.
1:34.7	Right now, Trump is underwater in the polls, but there's a long way to go till next November,
1:41.5	and it doesn't help that the Democrats are underwater, too.
1:45.5	I guess no one is particularly happy with anyone.
1:50.7	Trump continues to shake down TV networks, universities, law firms, and corporations.
1:56.1	Harvard looks like it's about ready to fork over $500 million to save its $9 billion in federal research
2:03.6	contracts. Navidia is paying the U.S. government 15% of its revenue from chip sales to China.
2:11.5	So Trump is exerting his power to get the federal government some more cash flow in ways that
2:17.4	we've never seen before.
	...

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