Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / Sherrilyn Ifill - What Happened to the Voting Rights Act_ _ The Daily Show

Transcript

Sherrilyn Ifill - What Happened to the Voting Rights Act_ _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I would imagine that your expertise is quite in demand
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, sadly.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Sadly. Explain very quickly, if you could, what has happened
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to what we call the Voting Rights Act in this
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: most recent Supreme Court decision.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, last week the Supreme Court issued a decision in
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: a case called Louisiana v. Calais that essentially removed... the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: remaining power from a key section of the Voting Rights
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Act of 1965. And in so doing, they kind of
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: rendered the act a nullity. They had already given the
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: act a body blow in 2013 in a case called
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Shelby County versus Holder. And when they issued that decision,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Chief Justice Roberts said, yes, but you still have another
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: part of the Voting Rights Act that's really strong and
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: you can use that. It's section two, it's nationwide. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: then 13- He had that in his decision. He said
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: that in 2013.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: You're okay.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: You're okay because you've still got Section 2.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: The section that he took out was Section 5. Yes.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: And then last week, they took Section 2.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And did he then go, look, Section 1. You're still okay.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: No, he did not. No, he did not.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So what did the removal of Section 5 do? So
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: let's take a step back. Historically, representation for African-Americans was
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: specifically excluded. They were excluded from voting, maybe not by
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: a specific law, but by poll taxes or other things
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: after Reconstruction. And we let that go for 80 years. Yeah.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: After 80 years, they passed the Voting Rights Act to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: ensure that representation would be granted, that people's voices would
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: be heard in those communities.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And what was the result of that? Yeah.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: So just one edit to that is that, you know,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: after the Civil War, there was an effort to ensure
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: that black people could vote. And that was through the
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: three amendments that were passed to our Constitution after the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Civil War. One ending slavery, the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and equal protection of laws. And then the 15th Amendment
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: said you cannot prevent someone from voting based on race
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: or color or or previous condition of servitude. So that
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: was supposed to mean Black people could vote. And for
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a while, Black people could vote in the South. I mean,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: we had eight members of Congress elected during that Reconstruction period,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: two United States senators. Then what you had at the
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: turn of the century was all of these states making
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: new constitutions and coming up with the kinds of laws
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: that you described, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses. If
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: your grandfather could vote in 1850, then you could vote.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: That's where grandfather clauses were? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So they came up with all these tactics to keep
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: black people from voting, and of course it was overall
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: enforced by just mob violence, the violence of the Klan
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: that really controlled so many communities.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And never explicitly said, they never explicitly said that this
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: was all done as a way to circumvent what the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: freedom meant, what those amendments to the Constitution meant.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: No, and when black people tried to challenge it, like
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: in 1911 in a case called Giles v. Harris, where
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: a black man said, Alabama won't let me register to vote.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I meet all the criteria, I should be able to register.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: The Supreme Court of the United States, in a decision
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: by the esteemed jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, there's really
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: nothing we can do about it because if we tell
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Alabama that they have to register you to vote, they're
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: not gonna do it anyway.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court was going, we could do what's right, but.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: So that meant that black people, and remember, a majority
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: of black people lived in the South. A majority of
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: black people still live in the South, right? And so, yes,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: there were communities in the North where black people could
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: exercise the right to vote, but most black people could
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: not vote until the civil rights movement pushed for voting rights.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And that culminated in that march across the Edmund Pettus
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Bridge and the brutality of Alabama state troopers. and then
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: months later, the signing of the Voting Rights Act. And
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the Voting Rights Act of 1965 completely changed the game.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: When that act was finally passed by Congress, there were
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: only 72 black elected officials in the entire United States.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: In the entire United States.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: You're not talking about just Senate House representatives.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: You're literally talking about state houses anywhere.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: 72.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: In the whole country.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: There you go. And then, of course, it started to
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: do its work. And so by 1980, right before the
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, we were up to
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: about 1,500. And then Congress... amended the Voting Rights Act
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: in 1982 to change the test used for establishing discrimination
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: under Section 2 And after that passed.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: What was the test that they used? What was the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: test prior to that and what was the test after that?
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, sure. So we had thought that the test
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: was that if you showed that a particular practice used
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: by a state resulted in black people not being able
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: to elect their candidates of choice, it violated the Voting
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Rights Act. Then the Supreme Court in 1980 in a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: decision called Mobile v. Bolden said, no, no, no. No, no, no,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: the test has to be that you have to show
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: that the jurisdiction was intentionally racist. intended, yes.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: So the guy would literally have to come up and go, yeah, no,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: we're just trying to be racist. Even though they didn't
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: do that in Reconstruction. They never did that.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Well, there were a few cases where there were some
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: interesting hearings that took place in state houses where they
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: said some things, but that certainly was not the norm
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: by 1980, which is why the effects test was so important.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So the Supreme Court says, no, it has to be
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: intentional discrimination. And Congress comes back and says, in 1982... No,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: we meant you can just show that the effects of
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the decision produced this result. And these are the amendments
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: to the Voting Rights Act in 1982. You know who
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: really was opposed to those amendments in 1982? I'm going to.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Say Oliver Wendell Holmes.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: No, a very bright young lawyer who worked in the
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Department of Justice first as a special aide to, it's
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: not going well, yeah, as a special aide to the
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Attorney General and then to the Solicitor General. And he
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: was the point person on trying to convince Congress not
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: to pass these amendments that would address the Supreme Court's
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: decision in Mobile v.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Bolden.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: And that young attorney's name was John Roberts.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: God. So this has been something he's been on for
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: some time now.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: He's a patient man. He's a patient man.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: He's a patient man.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So in terms of Section 5, Section 5, is that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the section where they said in these certain areas where
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: there were racial exclusions and laws that explicitly did that,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you would have to, before you made a change to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the way that you counted these votes, appeal to the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: United States Congress.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Well, not to the Congress. Not to the Congress, but...
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: So there's two big sections of the Voting Rights Act.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: What we were just talking about was Section 2. Section 5,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: the one that was essentially gutted in 2013, has been
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: often called the most successful provision of any civil rights
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: statute because it is the only one that allows you
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: to get at the discrimination before it actually comes into
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: law and happens. So for a number of jurisdictions that
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: had a history of voting discrimination... if they wanted to
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: make a change to some voting procedure, if they wanted
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: to eliminate an office, if they wanted to reduce the
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: number of members, if they wanted to redistrict, they had
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: to first get permission, or we called it preclearance, from
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: a federal authority, either the Attorney General or a federal
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: district court in the District of Columbia. And that's the
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: system that we worked with for many, many years until 2013.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: And so that was from 1965 to 2013, that's what happened.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: In 2006, The United States Congress overwhelmingly, in a bipartisan basis,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: 396 to 33 in the House, 58 to 0 in
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the Senate, reauthorized that provision of Section 5. But in 2013,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: John Roberts said, no, no, no. This is a stain
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: on the South. We are punishing the South. And things
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: have changed. We don't need to have this preclearance provision anymore.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: What are the metrics for how he decided things have changed?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Because I would assume... those metrics are the result of
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Section 5.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Is it literally as bad as Section 5 has worked
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: so well, let's remove Section 5?
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: That's what the late, great Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: She said that eliminating Section 5 now is like using
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: an umbrella and it keeps you dry. And then you say, well,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: let me throw away the umbrella because I'm dry, even
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: though it's raining outside. So that's what happened. So that
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: was now gone. Now we didn't have preclearance. And you
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: all may have noticed, in the last 10 years, this
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: explosion of voter ID laws and voter suppression laws, that
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: came as a result of 2013.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Because they don't have to get preclearance. Although, to be fair,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: if you were trying to get preclearance from this administration,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I would imagine they would just go, you're precleared.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: You know, it's so funny because I started out as
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: a civil rights lawyer when Bush was president.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: the Attorney General was, you.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Know, a Republican.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Bush H.W.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Or.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: H.W.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And so the Attorney General was a Republican. I remember
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the Solicitor General was Ken Starr. And I remember when
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: the first Section 2 case I ever filed went to
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, Houston Lawyers Association versus Texas, the Justice
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Department was on our side. I mean, our co-counsel was
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Ken Starr. So even Republican administrations in the past, old
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: school Republican, used to still try at least and enforce
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the Voting Rights Act. I absolutely agree with you that
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: this Department of Justice would never do that. But nevertheless,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: that was the law. So we lost that in 2013.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So all we had was Section 2, which gives people
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: like me and other civil rights lawyers, the ability to
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: sue when a law has clearly had the effect.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: So post. One was preclearance. Now you have a post appeal. Yes.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: But now they have decided essentially what the Supreme Court did.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: And I think this is really important because it gives
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: you a sense of the kind of power they're exercising
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: these days. What they did was overturn the amendments to
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Section 2 that Congress had passed in 1982. Now, they
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: didn't say that that's what they're doing. But they're saying
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: we now need to return to intentional discrimination.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to prove it in the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: way that you had to before the amendments that Congress
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: had made. That is correct.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And I should point out something else. After Congress amended
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: the Section 2 in 1982, of course it was challenged,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: and it went up to the Supreme Court. And the
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court upheld it in Thornburg versus Jingles in 1986.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Thornburg versus Jingles?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Or as Justice Alito likes to say, Gingles. It's actually Jingles, though.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: But the point, the point.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a dog sued the Supreme Court.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: The point is, the point is that they overturned not
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: only Congress's amendment, but they also overturned their own precedent,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Thornburg versus Jingles. And in the decision, Justice Alito, who
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: wrote the decision, explicitly says, we are not overturning... the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: effects test. We are not overturning Thornburg versus Jingles, even
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: though that's what they're, but that's the tell. The tell
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: is that they know how outrageous it would be for
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: them to decide to rewrite a congressional statute.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So when this was done, when the Voting Rights Act
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: was first passed through Congress, I would imagine they took
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: great pains to say, but this isn't quotas. We're not
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: advocating quotas. We're not advocating just creating districts so that
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: black people can elect black people. They must have said that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: A few times, they absolutely did. I mean, it's really important.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, they certainly said it very explicitly in the
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: 1982 amendment because that bright young lawyer, John Roberts, insisted
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: that this was quotas. And so they made it clear
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: that nothing in this provision requires proportional representation. And remember
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: the test is always whether or not the system allows
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: black voters to elect their candidate of choice. It is not...
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: The focus is not on black elected officials. The focus
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: is on black voters.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: So they're saying if you distill the percentage of black
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: voters and put them into other districts so that their
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: votes cannot be decisive... That's right. that that would be considered...
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: That's right. But they have... said that what this actually
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is is DEI or quotas. Would that be what their
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: argument is?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: That sounds absolutely correct. That is what they would say.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: And if you remember, the whole point of the Voting
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Rights Act is to protect the voting strength of minorities
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: who have been discriminated against and to protect the voting
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: rights of minorities whose candidates of choice are most often
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: not supported by the white majority. You have to prove
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: that in a case, by the way.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: This is not vibes. This is not vibes. Memphis is
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: represented by a Jewish guy, but it's a majority of, right.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It's not vibes. You actually, in the litigation, you have
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to show that there's racially polarized voting, that white voters
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: don't support the candidate of choice of black voters. You
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: have to do all of that stuff.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: You can do the math on these things.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: But you can do it. It's a real test that
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: is pretty rigorous. And so what we're faced with now
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: is just the removal of that as a measure. And
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: so how do we ensure we protect minorities?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: It brings up this sort of larger point that you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: see here, which is how is a society expected to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: ameliorate the damage done by specifically racist laws, which we
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: have had lo these many years. Yes. Is the idea
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: now that to try and address that is in itself
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: racist that it's literally he who smelt it dealt it racism?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Is that what we're dealing with?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I hate that that's what it is, but that is
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: what it is. It's literally, if you try, so basically
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: what they said, you could prove that a district had
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: this discriminatory effect, but if you try to repair it,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: if you try to remedy it by creating a district
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: that creates an opportunity for black voters to be able
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to elect their representative of choice, that makes you the racist.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: But isn't the high concentration of voters of color in
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: itself the result of policies that were explicitly racist?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Well, the only way you can actually make majority black
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: voting districts is because of segregation.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: That's my point.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Do you have another show for that?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: They wouldn't live in the density of the areas they
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: live in if not for the exclusively racist housing policies
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and other things.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. So it's not like black people are all coming
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: together and saying, let's come together and form a district.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: We are the most segregated country that we have ever been.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And that's the reason why you can create those districts.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But now what the court is allowing is any state
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: can decide they're going to redistrict. And not just a state.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: It could be judicial districts. It could be county commissions.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: It could be city council districts. And they can offer
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: any excuse. This court even explicitly said incumbent protection. So
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: if you want to make sure that, let's say, Mike
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Johnson in Shreveport, the current speaker of the House, keeps
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: his district, that's a good enough reason to undermine the
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: ability of black voters.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: So you can be partisan.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: You can be partisan. You can care about incumbents.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So what they just said, you can't do that because, oh,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: because it's a red state. So a red state is
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: allowed to go in and go, it's okay for me
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to dissolve Democratic power, just not black power. And if
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: black power is synonymous with Democratic power, so be it.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: That's pretty much the majority opinion.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question. Why, in God's name,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: is partisan gerrymandering allowed? That seems to be the root
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of the evil.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that is allowed because in 2018, the Supreme Court... Oh,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: for God's sakes.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: If this is Mr. Jingles again, I am going to
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: be very upset. No, no, no.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: In a case called Ruscio versus Common Cause, the Supreme
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Court said, this case is so interesting because it was
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: brought by Democrats challenging redistricting in North Carolina and Republicans
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: challenging redistricting in Maryland. So these two cases come together
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: and end up at the Supreme Court. Bipartisan. Great opportunity
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: to address the way in which extreme partisan gerrymandering undermines
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: our democratic system.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Taxation without representation. Yeah.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And the Supreme Court said it really looks like it
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: threatens our democratic norms, but there's nothing we can do
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: about it. We are just mere judges. We are judges
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: who can decide that abortion is not a fundamental right.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: We can decide that major questions have to be decided
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: by us.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: We can overturn the precedent.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: We can do Citizens United. We can do all the things.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: But we can't do this. And so that was 2018.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: And so that's the reason that President Trump could call
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: up the governor of Texas and say, we need five
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: more seats.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: If that were that should be illegal to any sentient person.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: That you just call up and get as many district
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: districts as you want. Right. But he could do that
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: because in 2018, the Supreme Court said partisan redistricting is
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: just something we can't. Partisan gerrymandering is something we can't address.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: It's so phenomenal because it means that our democratic institutions
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: are the architects of our democratic demise.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: That is correct.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Stunning.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: It's stunning.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Please, please tell me. Oh, and I made you sigh.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make you sigh. Please tell me
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that there is a remediation on the horizon or something
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: along the lines that this fight continues.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Well, John, I just refuse to pretend that this is
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: not as serious as it is.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I think there is a pathway forward, but that pathway
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: has many obstacles in front of it, and we have
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: to meet those obstacles. First of all, we all have
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: to overwhelmingly vote in the midterm elections because there has
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: to be a change in Congress. So there has to
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: be a change in Congress.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: The Hungary strategy is really the only way to go.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: You have to vote in such numbers that it overwhelms
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the tilted time.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Well, but there's one more piece to it.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: And because you've heard everything that I've said, and so
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: you understand that even- But.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Only retained about 20%. A lot of the names.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: I need you in my class. But as you know,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: as we just discussed, this Supreme Court is prepared to
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: overrule congressional statutes. So we need Congress to be prepared
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: to certainly pass some statutes that will protect voting rights
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: and that will deal with partisan gerrymandering, but we also
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: need a Supreme Court that is committed to maintaining democracy
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: in this country. And that means there has to be
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court reform also.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: And holding them to account. And those are, by the way, both,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and I, I so appreciate the seriousness of the matter
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in which you speak because those are certainly tall orders
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in a dysfunctional system.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: As it is certainly constituted now.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: But we don't have any choice but to fight and
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: we've got to get very serious about it.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I so appreciate you coming by and explaining this, and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: thank you for enlightening us in all measure of it.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, please check out also Sherrilyn's newsletter. It's
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: on Substack.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Sherrilyn Eifel.