The Virginia Supreme Court threw out an election where 3 million people voted. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended elections. Tennessee and Florida, have already passed new Republican-leaning congressional maps with many other states, like South Carolina, fighting to join them. We are not even two weeks post-Callais.
Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, joins Tim to discuss the immediate fallout after the disastrous SCOTUS decision. Berman emphasizes how the Supreme Court has, over the past decade, whittled away at the Voting Rights Act and practically sanctioned gerrymandering. All signs point towards an unsteady, rigged election system come November.
Ari Berman is Mother Jones‘ national voting rights correspondent. He’s the author of the new book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, as well as Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
This is Tim Dickinson, senior editor here at The Contrarian, and our guest today is Ari Berman. He is the ace voting rights reporter at Mother Jones, as well as the author of Minority Rule, the Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People. Ari, how you doing?
Ari Berman
Hey, Tim, good to talk to you, thanks.
Tim Dickinson
These are bleak times in terms of our, democratic retrenchment here. I think people realize that something really big has happened at the Supreme Court, but can you, sort of, from a 30,000-foot view, help explain what Callais has done and set in motion over the last couple weeks?
Ari Berman
What the Callais decision did narrowly was strike down the creation of a second-majority Black district in Louisiana. What it did in the larger run was effectively kill the last remaining tool of the Voting Rights Act, because the Supreme Court has now weakened the Voting Rights Act on 3 different occasions. In 2013, in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, they ruled that states with a long history of discrimination no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government, so that was the first major blow against the Voting Rights Act. Then in 2021, they ruled that it was going to be much harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws under the Voting Rights Act. That was the second major blow. And then they basically ruled that majority-minority districts, those districts in which people of color can elect their candidates of choice, are no longer protected under the Voting Rights Act, and by extension, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. And that’s what they ruled in Callais, and that, of course, has opened up this crazy bid to redraw maps in all of these southern states with alarming speed. to eliminate majority Black districts throughout the South.
Tim Dickinson
And so the basic idea is that you can gerrymander your heart’s content as long as you can sort of have it the color of this is partisanship rather than racial discrimination, is kind of the gist of it.
Ari Berman
Yeah, that’s basically the gist of it. I mean, the Supreme Court has been moving towards this position for a while now. I mean, first off, they ruled a few years ago that partisan gerrymandering couldn’t even be challenged in federal court.
So that kind of took the gloves off before with gerrymandering writ large, because before, the court had basically said, gerrymandering is bad, but we don’t exactly know what to do about it. And then they basically said, gerrymandering is bad, but we’re not going to do anything about it. And now they’ve moved from gerrymandering is bad to basically legislatures can gerrymander whenever they want, as long as it’s for partisan reasons, and they’re basically saying, well, if they happen to target black voters in the South, it’s just because Black voters happen to vote Democrat, in which case there’s really no problem here.
And the problem with that is that, well, A) Black voters are being targeted based on their race. But B) there’s really no way to, to unlink race and party, particularly in a region as racially polarized as the South. And then C) they are now very, very quickly dismantling districts that have existed for decades, and dismantling districts that provide really the only representation for Black voters in the South, who, of course, were the ones who were enslaved and disenfranchised and, you know, briefly had the right to vote during Reconstruction, then had that right taken away for nearly 100 years until the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
Tim Dickinson
Well, so let’s move to Tennessee, which is, like, the sort of clearest example of where this is happening. You had a district over Memphis, or surrounding Memphis, that had been there. I understand for about a century that they’ve now, and it was a Black Opportunity District, And now they’ve cracked that into 3 different districts and separated those voters among states, among districts that sort of snake into disparate and distant parts of Tennessee. Can you walk us through what happened there?
Ari Berman
That’s right. Memphis has actually had its own congressional district since 1923. Obviously, it hasn’t always been represented by someone who Black voters could vote for, because for many years, Black voters were disenfranchised in Tennessee. But for the last 30 years, maybe, 30, 40 years. That district was one in which Black voters could elect their preferred candidate. It just so happens that they had elected a white Democrat to the Congress in Steve Cohen, but it is a majority Black district, and they just dismantled it into three parts. They made it stretch 200 miles all the way to rural Tennessee. That was the kind of thing that the Voting Rights Act was very clear you couldn’t do, previously, and then just the speed in which they did it was really remarkable. I mean, you had a district that has existed for decades, and basically in three days, they completely dismantled it, and did so in very overt ways.
I mean, there was one legislator who walked into the chamber wearing a Trump flag. he was later told to take it off. There was a lot of racially charged rhetoric. Black members of the legislature were told not to speak. There were huge protests, and so this is really indicative of the climate that we’re facing, where, you know. Tennessee now has a all-Republican delegation. It’s a 9-0 Republican map. So they no longer have any Democrats, they no longer have any districts in which Black people can elect their candidates of choice.
I mean, so this is one-party rule. I mean, this is exactly what happened in the Jim Crow era. There were no districts in which people of color could elect their preferred candidates. One party, at that point. that time it was the Southern Democrats just ruled the entire… all the South, and now you’re going back to those days again, where it’s Southern Republicans that are basically saying, we’re entitled to every single seat in the South, and the law’s not gonna stop us. In fact, the Supreme Court is encouraging us to do this.
Tim Dickinson
Right, and we should specify that it’s not just black voters, but it’s also brown voters, as we’re seeing in Florida, where they, I think, move quickest of all to implement new maps. Can you talk us through a little bit about what’s happened in Florida and what Ron DeSantis put through?
Ari Berman
Yeah, they passed a map that would give Republicans four new districts. This was supposed to be in response to what Virginia did, but of course the Virginia map is now longer in effect, so basically, it doesn’t equal out at all. Republicans are four seats ahead, just in Florida. There’s some question about whether they are four seats ahead. I think some seats are thought of as to be somewhat competitive there. They also targeted Democratic members, but also rejiggered minority communities to make these districts more white. The contrast between Florida and Virginia, I think, is really illuminating. I know we haven’t talked about Virginia yet, but, I mean…
Both of these states have state constitutions that prohibit partisan and racial gerrymandering, right? The Virginia map was just invalidated, I think, based on a small legal technicality. to essentially overturn an election in which 3 million people voted for that referendum. In Florida, you have the governor, Ron DeSantis, basically openly saying that Florida’s prohibitions on gerrymandering are unconstitutional, and that he admits that the map he’s passing violates the Florida Constitution, but he’s basically saying that what the voters did to the Florida Constitution is unconstitutional.
So it’s going to be very interesting to see if the Florida Supreme Court applies the same standards that the Virginia Supreme Court does when basically saying. our governor told us that this map is unconstitutional. Now, what I’m expecting is that it’s going to be a different result. That… DeSantis packed that court, that the Florida Supreme Court is going to ignore, unlike the Virginia Supreme Court, how that map violates the state constitution. But I mean, if there was any kind of consistency among state courts here, the Florida map would be the first one that was thrown out for violating constitutional amendments and the process of terms of how these maps are supposed to work.
Tim Dickinson
I think that’s a good, jumping-off point to leap into Louisiana, which, of course is at the heart of the Callais decision, and where the governor has now, suspended primary elections that were already in process with early voting, something like 40,000 votes already cast, and now this election is in limbo. Can you talk us through a bit about what’s happening there, and what maybe some of the countermeasures could be in terms of challenging that move?
Ari Berman
Well, this is just wild, because the Supreme Court has said over and over, you shouldn’t change voting laws in the middle of the election, and then Louisiana just outright suspends an election, and it’s hard to interfere with voting more than just canceling an election altogether, specifically just for the U.S. House. I mean, so, there’s widespread confusion in Louisiana. As you said, 42,000 people had already voted by mail, and they’re basically debating, should we eliminate one or both majority black districts here?
And so, the net effect is that, the elections are suspended, there’s gonna be less minority representation in Louisiana. Things have also gotten very contentious there. There was a hearing, that lasted 8 hours on Friday. They had to continually go into recess, because, basically the white defenders of the map, couldn’t defend how they weren’t being racist, essentially. And…
Tim Dickinson
I laughed just not to cry there, I apologize. Yes, go ahead.
Ari Berman
I mean, and then the governor was basically saying, well, if you don’t like what I— he was on 60 Minutes — Governor Landry was saying, well, if you don’t like it, take it up with the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t tell Louisiana that they had to suspend their elections. I mean, obviously, they gave Louisiana an opening to do this, but it’s just remarkable to me the speed in which these Southern Republicans are rolling back Decades and decades and decades of progress when it comes to civil rights, and just kind of openly celebrating the return to white rule.
I think that’s the kind of thing that we had hoped we would get beyond. And, you know, Alito spent a lot of time in his majority opinion in Calais talking about racial progress. Turns out he got a lot of those facts wrong. He said the black and white turnout gap was narrowing. In fact, it was widening. If you look at all the elections after Barack Obama was on the ballot, and since the Supreme Court got the Voting Rights Act, he also got basic facts wrong about how for example, black turnout outweighed white turnout. That wasn’t actually the case in Louisiana. But even if you believe his narrative of racial progress, the events of the last week have told a completely different story about, in fact, the country moving backwards with alarming speed, and the history of the country with the greatest history of racism.
Tim Dickinson
Right, and it wasn’t that… I mean, that was John Roberts’ original, conceit, right, was that the South has made so much progress that we don’t need to be, you know, safeguarding these maps and having federal review of redistricting. You know, and yet now we’re just heading back to… people are calling it Jim Crow 2.0, or even John Crow in honor of the Supreme Court Justice. Where are we headed, and what is this… It just seems… the stampede that we’re talking about is just proceeding with such velocity, and showing how much this animus just continues to be part of our democratic system.
Ari Berman
Yeah, and I think it’s really hard to argue now that this isn’t a return to some form of Jim Crow. I mean, I think you could have a legitimate debate about whether changes to voting laws would ultimately return to that place, because, of course, if you cut early voting, or you require ID, or do things like that. voters can still cast a ballot. They have to navigate those barriers, but they can still vote. If you just eliminate a district altogether in which Black voters can elect their candidates of choice, I mean, you essentially silence their voting power.
And so I think that this is a much more direct return to the Jim Crow era than some of the things that have come before that. But I mean, it’s clear that there’s gonna be… there’s gonna need to be a more multi-part strategy to counteract that. First, there’s going to have to be a lot more emphasis on organizing and a lot more resources in southern states, right? These are thought of as places that are too red for the National Democratic Party to invest in. They often ignore these places, and they can’t do that anymore. I mean, they’re going to have to win in some tougher Republican districts, and they’re going to have to build coalitions. that transcend the usual divides of party and race to be able to win in some of these places.
And so, Dems have been able to do that in certain places. They’ve been able to do that in places like Kentucky, for example. It wasn’t so long ago that Louisiana had a Democratic governor, so this is possible, but it’s going to take a lot more investment. I think blue states are going to have to be a lot more aggressive. Whether there’s time to do so in 2026 remains an open question, but certainly 2028, there were a number of states that sat out this round of the redistricting wars. I’m thinking of places like New York, and Colorado, and New Jersey, and Illinois. I mean, larger blue states. And, I mean, they’re going to have to get involved here, because the red states aren’t stopping. I mean, even if they don’t do it in 2026, I mean, it’s very clear they’re going to do this in 2028. So I would say the Democratic Party needs to be a lot more aggressive. They need to focus a lot more on state elections, right? Because we’re talking about the battle for Congress, but I mean, when it comes to redistricting, it’s really going to be a battle that’s fought at the state level, in state legislatures, and who your state legislature is, who your governor is, that matters a lot.
So many of those races are up in 2026, there’s 100 races for example, for things like governor, state attorney general, secretary of state, so many state legislative chambers are up, as well. And so, I think just the… an emphasis on state-level organizing, to me, has to be a much bigger part of what Democrats and progressives do moving forward.
Tim Dickinson
To your point about taking the country back, South Carolina is possibly going to go from a 6-1 Republican to a 7-0. They’re trying to sort of redistrict in a way that would get rid of Jim Clyburn’s seat, which is just, like… I don’t know, it really hits home when you start… you’re just like, this stampede isn’t just gonna stop with Tennessee, or it’s not just gonna stop with Louisiana. So, I guess there’s two things I wanted to talk about. One is, like, the Virginia response, right? Is there something there that can be done in the short term that is, you know, really takes the gloves off and starts to play by the same rules that DeSantis is trying to play by. And I’ll leave that as the first question, but I have a second question coming up.
Ari Berman
Well, there’s debate about that right now. I mean, I just saw that the leader of the Virginia, state senate said they’re not going to do that. I mean, basically, the plan there was to somehow either override the court or somehow change the court itself. Like, lower the retirement age, have a different kind of court to be able to push this through. I don’t know whether either of those things are really, feasible. I mean, I just keep going back to the fact that Virginia was only the second state in which voters were actually able to weigh in on gerrymandering.
The first was California, so there hasn’t been a single Republican state in which voters have been able to weigh in on the map. And the fact that the courts basically overturned an election, invalidated 3 million votes on minor tactical grounds, it’s still kind of shocking to me. I mean, I could see like, even if you were, like, a stickler for procedure, first off, there was even a debate about whether they were right about their interpretation of the Virginia Constitution, because they essentially said they did it too close to early voting. They have to pass this constitutional amendment twice, and the first time they passed it was during early voting, so it was too close to the election. And what the dissent in the Virginia Supreme Court said was, actually, early voting isn’t the election. The election is election day. So there’s even a debate about that, but let’s just say there isn’t even. Let’s say they even agreed on that point. Do you invalidate an election retroactively? Because of a minor procedural error? I mean, that to me is really, really alarming, and it’s also alarming in the context of Trump tried to overturn the election based on procedural errors in 2020?
I mean, he was lying about the errors, but he alleged they were there, and you could easily see them trying to do the same kind of thing in 2026 and 2028. And, you know, I covered a North Carolina State Supreme Court race in which they tried to overturn the election based on what they claimed were procedural errors, and ultimately, they persuaded two courts in North Carolina to overturn that election before the federal court stepped in. So this, to me, this is like the most tangible example of a court overturning election that we have in a long time, and that’s really, I think, sets a frightening precedent, but…
Tim Dickinson
We have, I mean, we have an election thrown out in Virginia, one suspended in Louisiana, like, this is… these are, like, you know, the lights are flashing.
Ari Berman
Well, exactly, and it’s funny because it does because Trump didn’t do it, it’s not quite reaching the level of attention of if Trump just asked for it to be suspended, right? It’s sort of thought of as, like, these are normal political skirmishes, but the courts are doing the exact kinds of things that Trump wants to be done in November that he tried to do in 2020.
Tim Dickinson
Interesting.
Ari Berman
You know, suspending elections, overturning elections, retroactively canceling elections, and so that… that makes me nervous beyond just, like, who’s up and who’s down in the redistricting wars. I think we should be looking at this more in terms of, like, not just who’s up or down in the redistricting wars, but, like, ultimately what this means for, free and fair elections.
That said, Democrats can still win two of these four districts in Virginia. And you can imagine if there’s a major voter back. backlash, they could win more places. And what I was assuming, even before all this redistricting news, was that Democrats were going to have an expanded map. based on how things were going in special elections and how unpopular Trump is. And you would imagine that these court decisions have motivated Democratic voters even more.
So, I mean, I don’t believe that saying go vote is enough to overcome a rigged system. I think we need to unrig those systems, but I think you could imagine a situation in which at least some of this backfires on Republicans, if not in these districts, than in other districts where people are also paying attention.
Tim Dickinson
Right. As you talk about these redistricting wars, you know, Texas moved first, and then California moved, and then it sounds like Florida and Virginia are kind of interlinked. As you get a little bit more diffuse from that, I think it’s a little bit of a hard sell, maybe, to some voters. I mean, I live in a state that is, you know, has Portland, and I live in Oregon. I’ve got Portland as a sort of a bright blue metropolis, and it gets more purple, and then there are some hinterlands that are really, like. Idaho, right?
And so me, as a person who believes in representative democracy, the idea that somebody from Eastern Oregon is going to be represented by, you know, a Portland metropolitan local in some sort of cracked district that extends, you know, you could pick up a seat or two. You know, there’s an element to this where the fight is dirty, but how do you explain to people who are remote from the South, remote from some of these shenanigans that they need to… Engage in this fight in a way that feels yucky, and feels, untoward.
Ari Berman
Yeah, I mean, no, I totally get that, and I mean, I have a lot of concerns about what a long-term gerrymandering war will mean for American democracy. I mean, I think it’s gonna lead to more polarization, more partisanship, less competition, less representation, and I think that’s ultimately going to be bad for American democracy and make people even more cynical of the system.
The question is, do you believe that the race for the U.S. House should be fair? And right now, it’s not fair. I mean, right now, Republicans are 10 seats up in the race for the House. And so, Democrats—
Tim Dickinson
On the basis of unfairness, on the basis.
Ari Berman
On the basis of unfairness, exactly. I mean, they are historically unpopular, they have done absolutely nothing as a legislative body, and yet they are 10 points ahead simply because they not only controlled more states in terms of redrawing the maps, but they controlled the courts that oversee the implementation of the maps themselves. And so they’re 10 seats ahead. Just because of redistricting alone.
And the thing is, if you want the race for the House to be fair, the counter moves are gonna have to happen in the places where Democrats have power, right? In places like California, in Oregon, in Washington, in other Democratic states, and that means that they’re going to have to pass maps that you wouldn’t pass in ordinary times, that you might not even defend in ordinary times, but it’s being done not based on representation in that state so much, but to make the race for the House and American politics writ large more fair.
This is not the route I would have preferred to go. I would have much rather had A national ban on partisan gerrymandering, so that you just couldn’t do this anywhere. The problem was how this has evolved over time, is blue states, because they believed in good government, passed restrictions on gerrymandering. And red states didn’t do that. And so you had a situation where one side was playing by one set of rules, and the other side is playing by another set of rules. And that ultimately didn’t lead to fairness on a national level. In fact, it’s led to unfairness on a national level, because red states have been able to redistrict, and blue states, with the exception of California, really haven’t been able to respond.
Tim Dickinson
Well, I think that’s a great place to leave it. Do you have any other big thoughts or little thoughts you want to make sure our listeners come away with?
Ari Berman
Just that I think I would not just view this as a purely partisan story. I think the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is much bigger than partisan politics. The Voting Rights Act transcended partisan politics. It really made America a multiracial democracy, and without it, I really do worry about the future of America as a multiracial democracy.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Ari, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate your time.
Ari Berman
Talk to you. Thanks so much, Tim.
Tim Dickinson
Take it easy.
