Democrats face disadvantage after redistricting setbacks
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional reporter Sam Gringlas, and political correspondent Ashley Lopez.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. |
| 0:10.3 | And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. Today on the show, the U.S. House Map suddenly looks much bleaker for Democrats. |
| 0:17.2 | And Ashley, a couple weeks ago, we were talking about Dems basically fighting to a draw in this redistricting war that President Trump started last summer. But in the last 10 days or so, that has changed in a big way. Can you explain how? |
| 0:30.7 | Yeah, I think the last time we talked about this, you and I, I was saying it was a wash. It looked like both parties had drawn maps in a way that basically no one had any |
| 0:39.1 | significant advantage coming into the midterms. But I did say that there were two major wildcards here. |
| 0:44.1 | One of them was the Supreme Court was expected at some point to weigh in on a case about the Voting Rights Act. |
| 0:50.8 | That would possibly create a situation where states in the south maybe |
| 0:55.6 | had more lanes to redraw districts without having to consider a race the way they used to. |
| 1:00.8 | That broke for Republicans, and we have started to see some states in the south redistrict. |
| 1:05.4 | We already have. Tennessee has new maps. But the other thing that happened, that was also a |
| 1:10.6 | wild card that was looming all of this, over of this was the Virginia State Supreme Court was considering Virginia's referendum. |
| 1:18.5 | Basically, Virginia Democrats had created for themselves a map that was 10 to 1, 10 seats that favor Democrats to 1 favoring Republicans. |
| 1:26.9 | And now they're going back to a map that has more parity for Republicans. |
| 1:31.5 | I think it's six to five. |
| 1:32.9 | Well, and to be clear, Virginia voters approved this new map. |
| 1:36.8 | And then the Supreme Court came in after the fact and said, no, no, no, this is not legal, basically. |
| 1:43.3 | Can you explain why exactly the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that way? |
| 1:47.8 | Basically, what the court took issue with, is it a technicality. It's basically the process that Democrats |
| 1:53.0 | use through the state legislature. There were some issues that they weren't following the rules |
| 1:58.2 | closely enough. And so voters weighed in. They voted in support of |
| 2:01.9 | the referendum. And then based on a technicality, the court came back later and said, no. |
| 2:06.5 | It's just, it really cannot be overstated the whiplash that Democrats are probably feeling right now. |
... |
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