Republicans are rigging maps and silencing voters all across the nation.

It is one of the most coordinated attacks on fair representation and free and fair elections we have ever seen.

My next guest, Jene Nelson, she's the president and director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,

and she is on the front line of the fight to protect democracy.

In fact, she just argued before

the United States Supreme Court the very important Calais v. Louisiana case. It's a landmark

redistricting case that could decide whether black voters in the South will have a real voice

in state legislatures and Congress in the years to come. In this interview, we break down what's at stake in the fight for fair maps, how these cases

will shape elections for a generation, and why the future of American democracy may depend

on what happens next in Louisiana and around the country.

But before we get into it, subscribe to Democracy Docket to stay informed about how you can defend democracy.

Janay Nelson, welcome to defending democracy.

Hey, Mark, how are you?

Good. So there is a lot going on right now in court. There's a lot going on that's not in the courts, that are in the streets, all in service of the fight for democracy.

So you sit in a very lofty perch, so hello up there, as the head of not just a civil rights

organization, but the leading voting and pro-democracy civil rights organization. So when you survey the landscape,

the good and the bad, right, the no kings protests and the and the assault on voting rights in

court, the civic activism that we see among people who are energized and the efforts by the by people to roll back history.

What do you, how do you make sense of the moment we are in?

It's hard to make sense of it. I'm glad that we're in conversation. Thanks for having me, Mark.

I've been a long admirer of your podcast and all of the communications that you send out to keep all of us so aware of what's happening in this democracy.

I think what we can say is that what is happening is absolutely senseless, but the way to make sense of it in terms of just understanding the historical underpinnings is to know that, you know, this country has battled over power, political power, since its inception.

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