Live From SXSW, With Sen. Jeff Merkley
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon to discuss voting rights, democratic reform, and what it will take to get the For the People Act through Congress. This conversation was recorded as part of this year’s SXSW.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Dahlia Lithwick, and I'm popping up in this off week for Amicus to tell you about a conversation I had recently that I think is a really worthwhile follow-on from the conversation we had last week about the big voting rights cases at the court. |
| 0:19.6 | And as part of this year's South by Southwest Festival, which is going on right now, |
| 0:24.5 | I got a chance to speak to Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon about voting about big money, dark money, |
| 0:31.0 | and about the filibuster. |
| 0:32.4 | The conversation comes as Senator Merckley and some of his colleagues in the Senate introduced S1 this week. |
| 0:40.1 | It's known as H.R. 1 in the House. More broadly, the For the People Act. Our Slate Plus members |
| 0:46.3 | have access to that full interview from South by Southwest. Here's just a snippet. |
| 0:53.5 | Hi, and welcome to South by Southwest, and today's urgently needed discussion with |
| 1:00.5 | Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon on democracy reform and voting rights and the For the People |
| 1:07.0 | Act, which is a comprehensive Senate package aimed at bolstering basic ideas of one person, |
| 1:12.7 | one vote and constitutional democracy. My name is Dahlia Lithwick. I cover the courts and the |
| 1:17.8 | Supreme Court and the law for Slate. And I host the podcast amicus. And I'm so delighted to be in |
| 1:23.6 | conversation today with Senator Merkley on this issue. So I think I'm just going to start by saying |
| 1:29.4 | that we're here to try to connect two kind of attenuated ideas, that despite Joe Biden's victory |
| 1:35.6 | and inauguration, democracy has by no means triumphed over impulses of authoritarianism and that |
| 1:42.8 | we need structural reform to bolster the kind of |
| 1:48.3 | slightly rickety infrastructure we have now. And so I think I want to start just saying there's |
| 1:55.0 | nobody I'd rather talk to about this issue than Senator Merckley, who's been working so phenomenally hard to try to draw attention to |
| 2:06.1 | and kind of shine a light on these issues. Senator Merckley has served as the junior U.S. |
| 2:11.8 | Senator from Oregon since 2009. Before that, he was the 64th speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives. He's been a leading voice in this effort to restore the foundations of democratic governance by taking on these issues we are going to discuss today, vote suppression, dark money, gerrymandering, corruption. So Senator Merkley, I want to welcome you to South by Southwest. It's really a treat to |
| 2:37.3 | get to talk to you again. Alia, thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be with you. And this is such an |
| 2:42.3 | important topic for the future of our country. So I think I want to start by just saying that |
... |
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