How Openly Partisan Gerrymandering Is Becoming Normalized

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Trump called on Texas Republicans to redraw their state's congressional maps to favor Republican candidates. In response, California voters will get a chance to approve a plan to redraw their state's maps to favor Democratic candidates. We look at how partisan gerrymandering has become more politically accepted — and expedient.

This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and voting correspondents Miles Parks & Ashley Lopez.

This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:15.4	Hi, this is Sam from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where I'm listening to the podcast while I pack for next week's
0:21.8	vacation. I don't like packing, but this is the first trip for my two young kids to the same
0:26.7	beach town that I went to every summer for many years. So I'm also really excited, and that makes
0:32.2	the stress worth it. This podcast was recorded at 12.34 p.m. on Friday, August 22nd.
0:39.1	Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but my kids, my husband and I will still be creating wonderful memories at the beach and eating all the saltwater taffy we can handle.
0:47.9	Enjoy the show.
0:51.9	That is very sweet. I just brought you all a lot of saltwater taffy. Oh, I saw that. I'm going to eat some right after this.
0:57.4	And it's only fruit flavors. I got no cinnamon, no butter, nothing to trip you up. Only fruit flavors.
1:03.7	Only the good stuff. Thanks, Tam. I'm pretty sure I've never had saltwater taffy. Well, the opportunity awaits you.
1:09.4	Okay. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
1:14.3	I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And today on the show, we're taking a deep look at redistricting and how states led by both Republicans and Democrats are working to squeeze out every advantage they can for their parties.
1:29.9	Miles, I want to start with you. Let's go with the basics. What is redistricting? Why is it important?
1:36.9	And why are we talking about it in 2025? Yeah. So, I mean, redistricting is just the kind of drawing of
1:42.9	political maps. Right. It happens every 10 years after the census. But gerrymandering, which is kind of what we're talking about now, is doing that with the explicit idea of benefiting one side or the other. This has happened in American politics, basically since the country was founded. But a few things have changed
2:01.9	since then that make it kind of especially important right now. One, in 2019, the Supreme
2:07.2	Court ruled that courts had no role in policing political gerrymandering. And they basically
2:12.3	said state legislatures can decide whether this is okay or not. And at that time, experts saw that and said,
2:19.0	oh, it's open season. I mean, there are going to be some states that just do this now,
2:22.9	explicitly knowing that they can get away with it and not get sued. Number two is that these
	...

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