Stateside with Kai and Carter: Stacey Abrams on why gutting of the US Voting Rights Act is ‘evil’

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The US supreme court demolished the 1965 Voting Rights Act when they ruled in Louisiana v Callais in April that states can’t consider race in redistricting. Southern states from Tennessee to Alabama have rushed to erase majority Black districts, sparking chaos for the midterm elections. Kai Wright talks with Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist and former Georgia house minority leader, about the fallout from the decision, and why, even now, she thinks the way forward is still through engaging more voters to participate in democracy: “They have fractured communities and said we’re going to scatter these seeds. Our job is to grow.”. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Guardian.
0:09.4	My nieces and nephews, they are the first generation to lose civil rights since reconstruction.
0:16.8	This is evil.
0:18.6	But it's also so pedestrian.
0:23.0	They can't win on their ideas, and so their solution is to silence the other side.
0:29.4	But this time, what they have done is misread the moment.
0:34.1	And that's the part that gives me not optimism, but determination.
0:37.8	Optimism says I'm sure we'll win. Determination says I'm going to win.
0:48.4	I'm Kai Wright. I'm Carter Sherman. And from The Guardian, this is Stateside.
0:54.1	Carter, here we are. It is the first this is Stateside. Carter, here we are.
0:55.3	It is the first episode of Stateside.
0:58.1	I know.
0:58.6	I'm so excited.
1:00.1	I feel like over the last few years, I have just felt so overwhelmed by the news.
1:05.8	Something happens and I have all these questions.
1:08.7	Why is this happening?
1:10.1	Who's responsible for it? Generally, I want to know how we
1:13.3	can make it stop. And one of the things I've been doing to try to get those answers is I go to my
1:19.2	colleagues at The Guardian and I ask them these questions and they've been able to tell me what they think.
1:24.2	But I see this show as an opportunity to bring their expertise to a broader audience to help
1:29.7	other people get these answers. And frankly, for you and I to also go to some of the world's
1:33.7	biggest thinkers and put questions to them. So that's what we're doing here. And, you know,
	...

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