The Voting Rights Act Is Again Under Attack

What A Day

Crooked Media

News, Daily News

4.6 • 12K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Voting Rights Act turns 60 today. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, with the goal of ensuring that Black Americans could actually exercise their constitutional right to vote. But the landmark legislation — or at least what’s left of it — is facing new challenges. Roughly a decade ago, the Supreme Court gutted one of its key provisions. And late last week, the justices signaled they could be ready to strike a second major blow to the law. It all comes amid an increasingly ugly redistricting fight that’s pitting red states against blue states ahead of next year’s midterms. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, joins us to talk about the latest threats to the Voting Rights Act, and why decades later we’re still talking about decades after its passage. And in headlines: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly weighing a full occupation of Gaza, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force on the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Rwanda became the third African nation to agree to take in U.S. deportees.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Wednesday, August 6th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today, the show enjoying
0:07.0	another episode of A Republican Town Hall Goes Horribly Wrong. Here's Nebraska Republican
0:12.9	Representative Mike Flood finding out just how his constituents feel about President Donald
0:18.1	Trump's big, beautiful law, gutting Medicaid.
0:21.2	And more than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future.
0:30.9	You're doing great, sweetie.
0:39.8	On today's show, Trump signs an executive order establishing a task force on the 28th Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
0:46.9	And Rwanda becomes the third African nation to agree to take in U.S. deportees.
0:52.2	But let's start by talking about the Voting Rights Act, which turned 60 today.
0:57.0	The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed at the peak of the civil rights movement.
1:01.5	It was aimed at ensuring that the constitutional right to vote could actually be enjoyed
1:05.5	by actual Black Americans.
1:08.0	Before its passage, millions of them were subject to bullshit voting tests that
1:12.0	kept them out of the voting booth and out of political power. And when I say bullshit voting tests,
1:17.5	I mean like literacy tests, moral character tests, or the so-called grandfather clause, which helped
1:23.8	ensure that no one whose grandfather couldn't vote, say, because they were slaves,
1:28.7	would be able to do so themselves.
1:30.8	The Voting Rights Act ended that, but now it's at risk, or at least what's left of it.
1:36.3	About a decade ago, the Supreme Court gutted one key pillar of the Voting Rights Act.
1:40.6	And now it's facing a second major challenge, which ties back to our new favorite word,
1:46.7	redistricting. We've been talking a lot about redistricting on the show lately. As of our recording time,
1:53.4	Tuesday night Eastern, Texas Democrats are still in Illinois and New York to prevent Republicans
	...

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