Brian Lairn on WNYC, we turn now to the redistricting battle in Texas. It's playing out in its next

chapter today now that the Democrats from the state legislature have returned to the chamber.

It's likely the Republican majority will vote to enable redistricting to add five congressional seats, likely to go to Republicans that are currently held by Democrats.

President Trump has been personally involved in this, encouraging the Texas Republicans

to basically help him keep a majority after next year's midterms.

Now, the larger questions, which we'll also get into, are whether that would pervert democracy,

whether it would violate the Constitution even, whether it would violate the Voting Rights Act. This is a very

important piece of this conversation that may not be getting enough attention because minority

voting power would be diluted. Also, whether the Supreme Court would even uphold that remaining

pillar of the Voting Rights Act, if the question comes before them. Another question is,

who started it? Republicans say they're responding to Democrats. Partisan gerrymandering and other

states. We'll try to fact-check that. And of course, this matters so much because control of

Congress next year will matter so much to so many kinds of policy that affect so many Americans.

Our guest on this is Jeffrey Weiss, distinguished adjunct professor and senior fellow at New York

Law School, where he directs the New York Census and Redistricting Institute, but he is also one of

the country's foremost experts on all things redistricting and

gerrymandering around the United States. So Professor Weiss, thanks for coming on for this.

Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Can you start with just the latest

news as you're watching it develop? What is the Texas legislature trying to do or likely to do now to change what kinds of congressional districts there are in the state?

Well, the Texas legislature, which met in the last few weeks, were tried to meet but couldn't get a quorum because most of the Democrats left the state to prevent a quorum or enough members for the legislature to act.

The governor has to call the legislature back again, and the Democrats having declared victory in publicizing this issue across the country

so that people are aware of what's going on, they're back in session. So it's

...