Hi, this is Josh Marshall.

This is the Josh Marshall podcast featuring Kate Riga.

It is just after 12 noon on Friday, May 8th, we are doing an emergency edition of the pod in reaction to, mainly in reaction to the news out of Virginia today, where the state Supreme Court has overruled the referendum that enabled redistricting

in Virginia. Obviously, this also comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Calais decision.

So both of those together have, we've gone from a situation where it seemed like the whole

redistricting wars were going to end up

being a wash, maybe even a slight democratic advantage, to now one where the picture is potentially

pretty dramatically different.

You might see four seats moving, you know, four seats the Democrats thought they had in Virginia.

We hear different suddenly disappearing going back into the Republican column.

And then in response to the Calais decision, possibly a dozen majority African-American seats disappearing across the South.

So anyway, that is what we are going to discuss today.

Kate, tell us what just

happened in Virginia. And, well, let's start with that. What just happened in Virginia this

morning? So this is something Democrats have been worried about for a while because the referendum was

passed like April 21st, I think, and we just hadn't heard anything from the court since then,

and they blocked kind of the certification of those results. And basically what they said is

this was kind of procedurally breaking the rules, you know, that early voting had already

begun. And, you know, this is kind of typically a two-year process that they did in six months.

Now, of course, it's pretty galling about that, right?

As you look over at Louisiana, where like 40,000 votes have already been cast, you know,

before the governor suspended the primary.

...