Year In Review: Trump, Gerrymandering & Redistricting
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we approach 2026, the NPR Politics Podcast is taking a look back at the year that was in different political areas. Today, we explore how President Trump pushed Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps with the hope of getting more Republican members of the House of Representatives, and how that led to an escalation of partisan gerrymandering throughout the country.
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and voting correspondents Miles Parks & Ashley Lopez.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's Miles Parks. We're almost to the end of 2025, and it has been a tough year for NPR and for local stations. |
| 0:07.6 | But despite the loss of federal funding for public media, despite the attacks on the free press, we're still here for you. |
| 0:13.3 | With your support, NPR will keep reporting the news. And here at the politics podcast, we'll keep reporting the news and tell you how it affects you in your community and get you ready for the midterms. |
| 0:23.6 | If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. |
| 0:27.2 | We see you and we appreciate you. |
| 0:29.4 | If not, please join the community of public radio supporters right now, before the end of the year, at plus.npr.org. |
| 0:36.9 | Signing up unlocks a bunch of different perks like bonus |
| 0:39.5 | episodes from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you |
| 0:44.9 | listen. Visit plus.mpr.org today. Thank you. |
| 0:53.4 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 1:00.3 | I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. |
| 1:04.1 | And today on the show, we want to take a look at what's happening this year with redistricting. |
| 1:09.1 | That's the process where states draw the maps to decide which |
| 1:13.1 | voters their members of Congress will represent. And Miles, for some background, this is something |
| 1:19.4 | that happens on a regular basis, but usually every decade or so, and it is 2025? It is 2025 and going into 2026, and we are talking about it, right? |
| 1:34.3 | Yeah, this is something that in modern electoral history usually is attached to the census. |
| 1:39.7 | So the census basically counts where people are, and then districts are drawn based around those counts. |
| 1:46.5 | And I will note that, like, in recent history in the last few decades, there would usually be a |
| 1:50.5 | few states that were sort of stragglers where a state would draw a district and then somebody |
| 1:54.8 | would sue, and then the court would say, you have to redraw this. And so there would be here |
| 1:58.0 | and there a case where a state would have to redraw mid-decade. |
| 2:01.9 | But a few years ago, the Supreme Court basically gave the OK to partisan gerrymandering in a |
... |
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