Majordoma

Divided Argument

Will Baude & Dan Epps

Politics, Government, Justice, Legal, Supreme Court, News, Law

4.8 • 766 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We dissect the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision and its sweeping narrowing of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, exploring how it could reshape redistricting, weaken majority‑minority districts, and intensify debates over race and partisanship in elections. We unpack the Court’s reasoning, its treatment of precedents like Allen v. Milligan, the updated Gingles framework, and the procedural moves after judgment, while weighing whether this is primarily a textual ruling, a constitutional avoidance maneuver, or a broader shift in how political power and racial representation are viewed in election law. The discussion also features Justice Kagan’s dissent, Justice Jackson’s separate view, and what the ruling might mean for future litigation and party outcomes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, yay, oh, yay, oh, yay, oh, yeah.
0:03.5	The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court.
0:08.1	Unless there is any more question to be able to find an argument in this case.
0:11.0	All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States are in mind us to give their attention.
0:20.2	Welcome to Divided Arguement, an unscheduled, unpredictable Supreme Court podcast. I'm Dan Epps.
0:25.6	And I'm Will Bowdo.
0:27.2	So, Will, we are now in our third episode, I think, in this GodisBlock Partnership.
0:32.5	So hopefully we continue to have a new stream of listeners. And this episode, we're going to talk about a higher profile case.
0:39.9	So maybe this will bring in some new folks.
0:43.9	So if you're new to the show, I'm sorry.
0:49.0	I don't really know what else to say to people who are new to the show.
0:52.6	So last time, I think we managed to not talk about our principal cases until, you know,
0:56.5	about 20 minutes and 40 minutes into the hour long recording.
0:59.7	So let's surprise people by.
1:01.4	Yeah, I think we're going to talk about very little other than our principal case.
1:06.2	But you said you had two quick things you wanted to flag for people.
1:10.2	Yes, two quick things.
1:11.7	Some people have complained in the comment section on the divided argument blog,
1:16.5	where I encourage people to comment on and discuss our episodes,
1:19.8	that we did not talk about Justice Thomas's recent remarks about progressivism.
1:25.2	I have not listened to these remarks.
1:27.5	They are somewhere in my listening queue,
	...

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