Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the era of federal law remade in the image of Louisiana Republicans. What do I mean? Well, here we are three days after a federal appeals court in Louisiana canceled telehealth abortion drug prescriptions for the entire United States, and five days after the US Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to basically cancel the Voting Rights Act, creating an instant domino effect of white majority redistricting chaos in other states. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

Senator Raphael Warnock: This ruling harkens back to the darkest days of the Jim Crow era, when Black Americans were kept out of rooms of power. This is one huge step backwards for racial justice and for the health of our democracy.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Warnock, as aired on NPR's Weekend Edition yesterday. Our first conversation for this week will try to assess just how different an electoral world we are suddenly in without the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as it's been applied for 60 years, with Nick Corasaniti, who covers voting, democracy, and other election-related issues for The New York Times, among his latest article headlines, Voting Rights Ruling Could Fuel Era of Endless Redistricting Wars, and 'A Huge Mess': Delayed Louisiana Primaries Stoke Confusion at Ballot the Box.

As I said, Nick Corasaniti covers voting, democracy, and other election-related issues, but also, as his bio page notes, he was previously The Times New Jersey correspondent, a cherished gig, he says, for this proud native New Jerseyan. He says he splits his time between Brooklyn and Asbury Park. His latest article, in addition to all the ones about redistricting, is called Bruce vs. Donald; you can guess who named Bruce he's talking about. We'll play a clip of that Bruce and talk about that article, too, with Nick Corasaniti. Nick, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Nick Corasaniti: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Would you remind everyone, just briefly, to set up the domino effect of the last few days, what the Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday regarding race and redistricting? The way you describe it in your article is "they raised the standard for what can be considered an intentional dilution of minority voting power. Raised the standard for what can be considered an intentional dilution of minority voting power." Explain briefly what that means.

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, the keyword in what you just said is "intentional," and I'll explain. Previously, at least as to what the Voting Rights Act was, just a few months ago, there was this section, Section 2, and what that did is that effectively prohibited racial gerrymandering. If there was a population that had a minority percentage that could make up a majority district, they had to be given the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

It was just kind of based on raw numbers. You could bring lawsuits if those communities are being carved up into minorities within a bunch of districts or packed too tightly to rob these longstanding communities of their ability to exercise their vote. You didn't have to prove intent, which is extremely hard in a court of law, right? You'd have to find either documents or people saying things. That was always this kind of non-existent legal barrier.

Now, what the court did last week is they raised the standard of bringing a Section 2 claim significantly. There was a test that they applied that had been established in court precedent for decades now, called Jingles or Gingles. I've actually never known if it's a hard G or a soft G, but they've changed that test now to include intention. Now, to bring a racial gerrymandering claim against a state or a municipality or anyone who's drawing these district lines, you now have to be able to prove intent, which is just such a higher legal bar to clear.

A lot of experts I've talked to have said that that effectively guts the provision. There was a lawyer from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group based in Georgia, and he told me, he's like, "This is section 2 now in name only." That's kind of where, at the beginning, when I said intention was the key part of your phrasing, that's where that comes in.

Brian Lehrer: To get a little bit into the weeds on that before we get more into the new maps, the Supreme Court had already allowed intentional partisan gerrymandering to take place, that is, whichever party controlled power in a state could draw congressional district lines to their advantage, but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 said they couldn't intentionally dilute minority voting power as had been done in the Jim Crow era, as you were just describing it.

If Black voters overwhelmingly choose Democrats, how do the courts find the line between partisan redistricting to help Republicans and racial redistricting to dilute Black voting blocks, if they're kind of the same thing in many places? We will get more legal analysis on this tomorrow. We have law professor Melissa Murray lined up for tomorrow's show, but do you have anything on it from your seat on the redistricting beat?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, I think if you want to look at what that divergence looked like, legally leading up to this, we can actually look at the redistricting that's gone on this year, this very unusual-- I'm not going to call it unprecedented because it happened like 150 years ago with regularity, but this idea of redrawing congressional maps in the middle of a decade, with no new data from a census, and just doing it because you want to.

In every state where there was an aggressive gerrymander, either the Republicans in Texas first, California Democrats, in response, their reasoning, their justification for this was pure partisanship because the Voting Rights Act was still in effect. They were like, "Even if we're splitting up minority communities, it's not done with that intent. We're only looking at partisanship, and we're only trying to make it better for our candidates."

Now, that has worked and made their legal pathway to get their map sustained a little bit easier, but it hasn't always worked, including in the case that led to what came before the Supreme Court last week. When the Supreme Court decided that federal courts couldn't referee partisan gerrymandering, that was a big guardrail that had been removed, but there were still instances where federal courts found that a racial gerrymander was clear, even if they were trying to say it was partisan. It was still another guardrail to keep the most partisan and kind of ruthless map-drawing interests in check.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Now, even that, per the Supreme Court, is kind of out the window. Listeners, your comments and questions about redistricting after the Supreme Court gutted Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week. 212-433-WNYC, call or text. It can be about your district or your state. This applies to local races, too. State races, too. This could throw out a lot of district maps for state legislatures, maybe even city councils.

New York City has drawn lines so that there are Asian-American-population-empowered districts. There's an LGBTQ-oriented one in Chelsea that goes back decades. This could all start coming before the courts, but anything related to the redistricting wars for Congress for this year's midterms in particular, 212-433-WNYC, that's front and center, 212-433-9692 for Nick Corasaniti, who covers redistricting and other aspects of electoral democracy for The New York Times, also covering Bruce Springsteen versus Donald Trump, which we will get to with a concert clip and you can also weigh in on 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

Nick, what happens next? To begin with Louisiana itself, your article called 'A Huge Mess': Delayed Louisiana Primaries Stoke Confusion at Ballot Box, Nick, May 16th is primary day. That's next week. Is that changing?

Nick Corasaniti: As of now, it is not changing for every race in Louisiana except the House races. Now, what the court struck down as part of this voting rights ruling last week was the Louisiana congressional districts. That was the heart of the case. The court ruled those unconstitutional, but they did it with 48 hours to go before early voting began in Louisiana, and they also did it while absentee ballots and military ballots were already coming in.

There were legally cast votes in this election, and that put Governor Landry of Louisiana, who's a Republican, in a pretty tight spot. He had these maps that the courts had said you can't use, but he also had votes that were already cast and early voting in person starting imminently. After talking to his secretary of state, he chose to postpone just the House districts until sometime later this year, but voting's ongoing for the Senate. There's actually some constitutional amendments, some lower offices, depending on your parish or your district, or where you live in Louisiana.

That kind of bifurcated federal election has caused a lot of confusion because the average voter, even if they're following on the news, they don't know the ins and outs of this voting minutiae and what changes and what doesn't. Some of these ballots, there were big signs outside of polling places on Saturday, saying, "Cancellation," trying to tell voters that "You're going to have to come back when we have new congressional maps."

Now, while that's all what's happening now, there's also lawsuits filed by Democrats in state court, and they asked for a temporary restraining order to block this delayed primary. That failed, but there's still going to be a preliminary hearing. There's still litigation ongoing that could change the status quo, even as voters are voting in Louisiana right now.

Brian Lehrer: Have some people there already cast earlier mail-in votes?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, there were already cast mail votes, including from members of the military and overseas voters when the Supreme Court ruled, at least according to court documents filed by Democrats, but early voting in Louisiana is not as, say, universal as it is in some other states, but there's still absentee ballots that were coming in. Again, those military and overseas voters, they have to get their ballots out. They're mailed out like 45 days before an election, so they've had these for a while. There are votes cast in this congressional primary that will now be tossed effectively, and there will have to be a new one at least as it stands right now.

Brian Lehrer: They'll have a do-over, as kids say, on the schoolyard for those voters who have already cast ballots.

Nick Corasaniti: Exactly, and the first step to that do-over is drawing a new congressional map that'll comport with what the Supreme Court ruled last week. We haven't seen that. That will take some time. Some states, it appears that they move really fast when it comes to redistricting. There was maps drawn well beforehand they got to the point of voting, so it's going to take a little bit of time before we even know what the new congressional districts in Louisiana might look like.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another legal question from a listener. Good question. Again, we'll get to this for sure with Melissa Murray, the law professor, on tomorrow's show, but the listener writes, "I thought the courts ended nationwide injunctions. Why was this ruling possible?" I know what that relates to. Remember, Nick, last year, the Supreme Court in the birthright citizenship case, before they got to the actual content of birthright citizenship, they were taking an argument from the Trump administration that said one district court in one liberal area of the country, federal district court, shouldn't be able to issue an injunction that holds up the ending of birthright citizenship or anything else that the Trump administration wanted to do for the whole country.

Here we have two examples in the last few days: the abortion telehealth ruling, which was from one court, also in Louisiana, that now applies to the whole country, and the same thing, withdrawing the voting rights-oriented districts in Louisiana that seems to be unleashing this domino effect torrent of redistricting efforts in other states. Do you happen to know the answer to how those two things can be consistent from the same Supreme Court or the same court of appeals?

Nick Corasaniti: To the first question about the abortion access, I've not followed that issue. I couldn't speak to it. With regards to this voting issue, it's because it's the United States Supreme Court ruling on a law and offering other federal courts their guidance and their decision on how this law is to be interpreted by other federal courts. This is not coming from one local appeals court, one federal court in the Western District of Louisiana; this is coming from the United States Supreme Court.

When they rule on laws, it applies to the country. That's what's happened with regards to the Voting Rights Act. I know it could be a little confusing because it's dealing with Louisiana's congressional map at the heart of it, but what they ruled on wasn't just the map; they also issued rulings in a change to how the Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2, would be interpreted.

Brian Lehrer: Bob in Bergen County is astonished. Bob, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Bob: I'm Bob Davies. I'm the Jersey lawyer. That's who you're looking for?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, sir.

Bob: Okay, great. I've been litigating for 43 years. One of the things that I do every day of the week is deal with courts. The biggest thing that's out there in courts is the court that I'm in front of has to follow the rulings, the decisions that have been made by higher-level courts for years and years and years, and those courts don't change the basic decisions unless there's a really good reason to change it. That's called stare decisis.

I'm astonished because this Supreme Court has just decided, "You know what, for 62 years, you guys didn't realize the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional." How can they? How does that make any sense? It's deeply disappointing to me. We should have a rule of law that does not change when the Supreme Court judges change. That's what I've got to tell you.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, I may be getting ahead of the story here or ahead of what you may know or what you're involved with, but you called yourself a New Jersey lawyer. There's a headline today from POLITICO New Jersey that says Governor Sherrill will now consider redistricting. That, of course, would be to try to lock out a Republican district or two in that Democratic-leaning state. Do you anticipate that coming or do you have any thought about whether that would be a good response to this?

Bob: I don't think it's a good response. I think it is coming. Unfortunately, by making the system less stable, by allowing redistricting anytime your party controls that state, our whole system is less stable. There's less fairness in the entire system, and that I find truly distressing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. We appreciate your point of view. Let's go next to Alabama. Here is that state's Republican Attorney General, Steve Marshall, making the case that it's not about race, it's just about party, as that state, his state, Alabama now is starting to head down that Louisiana path, too.

Steve Marshall: For far too long, states that have been subject to the Voting Rights Act have been viewed from a lens that really is kind of centered on Black versus white, as opposed to other states, inappropriately, what should be Alabama viewed from a lens of red and blue. We're a conservative state. People want to elect conservative representatives, and our legislative delegation ought to have the opportunity to be able to draw districts consistent with that sentiment.

Brian Lehrer: Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, as aired on NPR's Weekend Edition yesterday. Nick Corasaniti, who covers all this for The New York Times, is with us. You report Alabama and Tennessee are convening special sessions of their legislatures in response to last week's Supreme Court ruling. What's the goal in those Republican-led states?

Nick Corasaniti: The goal is more Republican districts. That's both what's the stated goal and what will eventually happen if they're successful, but the legal grounds on which they're fighting are very different. In Tennessee, they have a late primary. Early voting hasn't started there, so they can reconvene their legislature, change some deadlines, redraw their map, and try and get rid of the last Democratic district in that state, which is in Memphis.

That was a majority-Black district. Memphis is a majority-Black city. With this ruling now, they're going to try to carve that up. At least that's what the legislature intends to do. There's nothing that they need a court's blessing on specifically as they're trying to go through this. They just have to fight a calendar.

Brian Lehrer: I looked up the stats, let me just say, I looked up the stats for Tennessee, and what I saw was the Black population is about 16% or 17%. That would be about 1 in every 6 Tennesseans is Black. I think that one district that you were talking about around Memphis is 1 of 9 congressional seats in that state. Only one was already Democratic, and it happened to be in a largely Black area. Now maybe they can rewrite that out of existence, you're saying. That's just a statistical example of who's being disempowered to what degree if they succeed in going through with it.

Nick Corasaniti: Exactly. It's going to be tough to carve up Memphis in part just because where it's located in the state, it's very easy to gerrymander and redistrict cities when they're in the center of a state, because they can be kind of split apart like a pizza pie, but when they're in the corner, you have to get pretty creative in how you Julianne the population to split into other areas, but yes, Tennessee has already been extremely gerrymandered.

They recently split apart the city of Nashville, which is bigger than Memphis, to eliminate a Democratic seat there. If they're successful in redrawing their maps and taking away the Memphis seat and making all the districts around it Republican-leaning, then there will be no more Democratic representation from the state of Tennessee.

Brian Lehrer: Here's former US Attorney General Eric Holder, now president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He was Attorney General under Obama. Eric Holder on Morning Edition today, reminding listeners that this same Supreme Court with the same justices seemed to uphold the old Voting Rights Act standard for Alabama just three years ago. Eric Holder.

Eric Holder: I expected the result that we got in the Callais case, the Louisiana case, but it is inconsistent with what this very same court did three years ago when it looked at maps in Alabama. The same court, same issue, same justices, and they said at that point that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was still viable, still strong, and on that basis ordered Alabama to redraw its district, and it was the Alabama case that led to the redrawing of the lines in Louisiana. What the court is doing three years later, the same issue, is inconsistent.

Brian Lehrer: Again, knowing you're a political reporter, not a legal analyst, after listening to Eric Holder there, do you have a sense of how that 2023 ruling, combined with the new ruling from last week, might affect how things go now in Alabama?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, Alabama, because of that ruling and because of other litigation that's gone on, they were actually banned from drawing any new maps until 2030 when we got a new census. They were in this kind of weird place where they were bound by courts to not take action. What the governor did last week was say, "I want to convene a special session that if we're able to prove that the recent Supreme Court ruling means that injunction is no longer effective or necessary, then we can redraw maps or at least revert back to our pre-2023 judgment maps."

I don't know the specifics of what legal argument they'll need to make on that or what the likelihood is, but the political reality is that they would. If they're successful legally, they'll again be able to eliminate one but not both Democratic-leaning districts in the state.

Brian Lehrer: Let's keep going. Another state now considering a new redistricting because of last week's ruling is South Carolina, at least a quarter. I looked up these stats. At least a quarter of South Carolina residents are Black is what I read. They vote largely Democratic. As it is, there is only one Democratic House member out of seven from the state. That's the veteran, the legendary Jim Clyburn.

They may try to redistrict that one Democratic and Black majority seat out of existence, leading to zero in South Carolina, even though a quarter or more of the residents are Black and they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Do you have any details about South Carolina?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, there. Well, there's two things at play in South Carolina, and that's whether they'll have the full political will and the votes in the legislature to take the kind of drastic action they would need to, to redistrict ahead of the 2026 midterms. They have a pretty high bar to clear, both in terms of the majorities or the super majorities they would need in the legislature to change their deadlines and everything to get it in line for 2026.

A lot of political operatives I've spoken to, both Democrat and Republican, think that is an unlikely but not impossible front for the upcoming midterms, but looking ahead to 2028, it's almost guaranteed that they will try, and they'll have time to do that. I think this is something that we'll see everywhere, but in South Carolina, and this is true with a lot of this ruthless gerrymandering, you can't delete voters. You can't make them go away.

You have to carve maps to try and work around and draw new contours to weaken the voting power of whoever you're trying to eliminate politically in terms of the overall representation. There are still a lot of Democrats in South Carolina. Drawing a seat or enough seats that would effectively remove Representative Clyburn's district would spread out Democrats across a bunch of other incumbents, and it can make you vulnerable in a wave election, which is what 2026 appears to be shaping up on, based on polling.

You can end up losing a couple of seats in what's known as a dummy mander, which is when you're worse off with your new maps than you were under the previous status quo. South Carolina is going to be fascinating to watch, both in the immediate and how far they're willing to go, and whether they can make all the changes they need to make, but more so, looking forward, how ruthless they're able to be using all the data and technology we have now in map drawing, whether they can effectively eliminate any Democratic representation in that state, or if they overplay their hand, and now, in the 2028 election, say there's two or three Democrats from that state, which would be considered a dummy mander or a mistake.

Brian Lehrer: To your headline, Voting Rights Ruling Could Fuel Era of Endless Redistricting Wars, what does that article envision?

Nick Corasaniti: That's basically what you mentioned earlier, Governor Sherrill talking about this, and Governor Hochul also mentioned that she wants to redistrict. We're in an extremely hyper-partisan era and give-no-inch error, right? When Trump started this recent mid-decade redistricting war, having Texas Republicans draw five new partisan seats to give them a perceived advantage heading into the midterms before a vote was even cast, that was an inflection point.

Now, everyone views this as a zero-sum game. There's no more good government reforms, there's no more playing to higher ideals. This is just raw partisan warfare, and it's going to play out with a lot less guardrails now that the Supreme Court has effectively weakened the Voting Rights Act heading into 2028. New York, Colorado have already taken steps to explore redrawing their maps. Governor Sherrill says New Jersey might get involved.

There's going to be efforts in other Democratic states, possibly Oregon. There's going to be focus on state legislatures in Arizona and in Washington. Then there's going to be Republican states like maybe Nebraska or Kansas will be focused on those state legislatures to either flip some seats that are Republican holdouts from redistricting or just completely through the whole force of the Trump administration, the Republican National Committee, to rain down and get those reticent state legislatures to redraw their maps.

You're just going to see everyone trying to eke out whatever partisan advantage they have because there's no more guardrails. We already have ruthlessly gerrymandered states both by Democrats and Republicans, and with less guardrails or effectively aside from population controls and the 14th Amendment, it's just going to kind of be this race to the bottom. Someone described it to me as if there was mutually assured destruction and both parties pushed the button to launch the missiles; that's what the next few years might look like.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "Alabama 2023 ruling also delayed Alabama's second Black district because it was too close to the election. Something like six months. How does it make sense that they haven' that with their latest ruling? It is six months to this election as well." Here's another clip of former Attorney General Eric Holder, now the Democratic Party redistricting committee, addressing that in particular.

Eric Holder: They're in the process of trying to change the electoral system while voters are in the process of voting. They're trying to stop the votes for people who were running for the House, while at the same time, there's a Senate race; there are other races for which their votes will still count. It's confusion, and it's one of the reasons why we filed suit to say that you can't do that, which the governor is trying to do by declaring a so-called emergency that's inconsistent with what the Supreme Court does under a thing called the Purcell doctrine, where you have a change in the electoral methods of doing things, and if it's too close to an election, you don't put it into effect until after the election has occurred.

Brian Lehrer: Eric Holder. Another listener writes, "Usually, the court is very slow in releasing its decisions, but they made a point of getting this one out in time for some states to implement it for the 2026 election," so that there's this suspicion obviously, Nick, that the court, the 6 to 3 so-called conservative majority on the Supreme Court was acting in a partisan way because, usually, they release decisions like this in June, but they released it in time to allow legislatures in Republican-led states, I guess by extension in all states to redraw their maps mid-decade, as you say, not just when the census occurs, and in the middle of an election season when some votes have already been cast.

Nick Corasaniti: Yes, discerning the political intentions of the court is tricky here because, well, first off, this was a rehearing, so they had actually heard these challenges last term, and then they said, "We need to reconsider this next term." They heard oral arguments in this case in October and theoretically could have ruled at any point, even last year. Had they ruled, let's say, in December, which would've been early but certainly enough time since oral arguments, there would've been a lot more Republican-controlled states that could have moved.

My colleague Nate Cohen did a study then that said Democrats stood to lose about a dozen districts across the South if the Supreme Court were to strike down the remaining provision in the Voting Rights Act, and they didn't do that. They waited until now, which is not the end of term, but is also not the earliest part of term. It puts some of these states, Louisiana and Alabama are perfect examples, in a real legal quandary about whether they're able to take the next partisan steps that they want to.

So much of this is going to be playing out in courts for, I think, the next few months, while these states grapple with legal rules about already cast ballots, whether legislatures can change primary dates and filing deadlines after votes have been cast. It's going to be very messy, but if the court were operating under the most partisan ideals and running roughshod over the dissent, they could have ruled earlier and given states like Georgia or Alabama, Louisiana, or South Carolina a much easier path to change their maps ahead of '26.

[00:31:23] Brian Lehrer: We're talking about this as kind of a Republican-led push to make it easy to gerrymander all over the country, including against what were the standards of the Voting Rights Act. From maybe a Republican perspective, listener writes, "Rhetorical question, but how many Republican congressmen are there from Massachusetts?" You see where that is getting at. As you mentioned, Virginia just recently redistricted in favor of more Democratic seats, and that's being challenged in court there at the moment, with the election for this year still hanging in the balance.

I see we have a caller from Richmond. We're going to get to her, calling from Virginia right after this, and a little more on the analysis of what the Supreme Court unleashed with last week's Voting Rights Act ruling, and a little bit of what Nick Corasaniti from The New York Times wrote on his other beat, the Bruce Springsteen versus Donald Trump beat, coming up.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we continue to talk about the new era that we are in in redistricting, right in the middle of this year's congressional midterms, after the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act decision last week, essentially gutting most of Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which had a lot to say about how districts can be drawn to lock out Black majorities, talking about it with Nick Corasaniti, who covers electoral democracy for The New York Times, also has an article called Bruce vs. Donald, which we will get to.

I want to play another clip of former Attorney General Eric Holder, who gets here to the bigger picture of what he thinks the Supreme Court unleashed last week, having to do with race, of course, but even bigger than that, listen.

Eric Holder: Well, this is a race to the bottom, and it's something that is inconsistent with what we've been trying to do with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, but once Donald Trump told the Republicans in Texas to give him five additional House seats because, as he said, he was entitled to them, we had to make a decision, are we simply going to do nothing, or are we or are we going to respond to that which they've done?

We have had to do what we did in California and in Virginia, but we've done it very differently in the sense that we have put it before the people of those states to allow them to decide whether or not they wanted to do this mid-cycle redistricting, and they voted yes in California, voted yes in Virginia, as opposed to what happened in Texas and other places where Republicans have done it, where it was simply imposed upon the voter by Republican legislatures.

Brian Lehrer: After he invoked what Democrats did in Virginia. Denise in Richmond, you're on WNYC. Hi, Denise, thanks so much for calling in. Hello from New York.

Denise: Yes. Hi, Brian. Lived in New York for 40-some years, but now down here in Virginia. If you wanted to see what would happen with naked gerrymandering, and I'm a Democrat, all you have to do is look at Virginia. In response to what Texas did, our Democratic majority down here pushed through a voter referendum to let the voters decide what to do about redistricting. Now, prior to this, we had seats, 5 Republicans, 6 Democrats; now it will be 10 Democrats to 1 Republican.

The seats, the Republicans are challenging this on a number of grounds prior to the Supreme Court ruling. Some of the challenges are pretty arcane. Like we didn't have the notice of this posted to the courthouse door a certain number of days before the referendum was voted on. The Democrats did compress the time frame for this kind of thing. There are legal challenges, but in terms of partisan gerrymandering, I don't think there's anything the Republicans can do at this point with those lawsuits because that's been thrown out of the window. We may end up with 10 Democratic seats to 1 Republican.

Brian Lehrer: Even though it's hardly a 10-to-1 electoral majority in Virginia, it's kind of the opposite of what I was describing about South Carolina earlier, right? Where they may wind up now, with zero Democrats going into the House of Representatives from there, even though probably more than a quarter of the population tends to vote Democrat. You're saying the opposite seems to be on the way to happening in Virginia, right?

Denise: Yes. Well, I would say, we were pretty much a purple state, and now we will be solidly blue. I'm not objecting.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Denise: No, I'm not objecting to that because I'm a Democrat, and I think what Trump did with Texas is crazy. I appreciate the fact that we left this to the voters. The margin, to be honest, was not that wide. It was about 3%. Virginians were almost split down the middle on this, but with that 3%, we prevailed, and with these seats, we will be a solidly blue state instead of what we were considered, I think, before, which is purple.

Brian Lehrer: Denise, thanks for weighing in on this and informing listeners in the rest of the country about those aspects of what's taking place in Virginia. It's interesting, Nick, and I guess we'll get into this probably tomorrow as well with law professor Melissa Murray when she's on the show, but Eric Holder in the clip was hailing, as a fairer way to decide on whether to do these redistrictings, having statewide votes, right?

The way Denise describes it, she didn't put it this way, but I'm taking this from her. It's not exactly classic democracy either, to do it by statewide referendum. Because if you have, let's say, in a relatively purple state, like she was describing Virginia, a referendum like this that passes by only 3 points, as she said it did, but what it does is give all the power to one party, to the Democrats, if they control the legislature, to redraw the district lines.

Well, one of the other principles of democracy is to protect minority rights, all kinds of political minorities, minority voting power, things like that, which is, of course, what the Supreme Court gutted in several of its recent decisions, but here from the other direction, you could say, well, this is not classic democracy either. If 53%, only 53%, if that's what it is, of the voters can put all the districting power into the hands of one party, that's not ideal either.

Nick Corasaniti: Yes. This gets at an idea that I've heard from a few voting rights experts, which is that the House is supposed to be our best indication of representational democracy, right? Like the Electoral College, the Senate, that's statewide votes; that's where a 50-49 or a 51-49 election can lead to a statewide rep, but you still had congressional districts that at least allowed for some voice of a political minority population in a state to get some say in the federal government.

As you could see, how this is kind of going in the current redistricting wars and what's likely to come in 2028 is that the House of Representatives ceases to be that representational body, and it starts to look a lot more like the Senate with politically homogeneous areas that are just going to always vote like that. Elections get decided in the primaries, which create further polarization and drives to the fringes, and it just becomes an even more polarized place than it already is.

It's a very bleak outlook, but it's what I've heard from a, a number of voting rights experts that again, just like Virginia, it was a 3-point thing, that if it were a Senate election, you'd be like, "Oh, well, the Democrat won comfortably, and that's how it is," but when it comes to your entire congressional representation or drawing one of the most ruthless gerrymanders in the country, which is what Democrats did in Virginia, that's where the representational aspect of what the House is supposed to be is on a sliding scale.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, your latest article is actually about none of this, I see. It's called Bruce vs. Donald. You're a New Jersey guy who still lives some of the time in Asbury Park, your bio page says, and your article says, "Bruce Springsteen's current tour, incessantly and overtly political, is unique in the band's history." Here's 30 seconds of how Bruce greeted the audience at a recent concert in LA.

Bruce Springsteen: We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, [cheering] and our sacred American promise. The America I love, the America I've written about for 50 years, that's been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration. [cheering]

Brian Lehrer: Springsteen in Los Angeles. Nick, he's always been at least somewhat political. What is it you're saying is unique?

Nick Corasaniti: The entire concert experience on this Bruce Springsteen tour has political undertones. The set list, it starts with the cover of War, with the chorus of "What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" Then into Born in the USA, which a lot of people might think is this patriotic anthem; it's got this uplifting synth line and a rousing chorus that everyone loves to scream, "Born in the USA," but it's actually a war protest song if you listen closely to the lyrics.

Everything about this is political in a way that Bruce hasn't been on tour in the past. He's certainly taken his stance moments. There's the American Skin after the murder of Amadou Diallo in 2000. There's the Devils & Dust tour in Iraq. He's always infused it. He's endorsed every candidate, but it's never been this kind of entirely encompassing message. He says that during the shows, he was like, "We weren't intending on having a full E Street Band tour right now, but I saw what happened in Minneapolis."

He writes a protest song, an extremely explicit protest song, Streets of Minneapolis, that's much more. It drops the name of former Secretary Noem and Trump in a way that Born in the USA or Devils & Dust didn't. There's a newfound edge, and I think just newfound explicitness to how Springsteen is approaching this tour and his music right now that is a step beyond just endorsing every Democratic presidential candidate and kind of writing these songs about either the working class or people who were pushed down that obviously had political overtones, but it wasn't as in-your-face.

Brian Lehrer: In our last minute, what does he hope to accomplish? Is it convince people to change their politics? Is it mobilize people who agree with him to have a large turnout in the elections? Is there an explicit goal like either of those?

Nick Corasaniti: I don't want to pretend to be inside Springsteen's head here and know exactly what his intention is, but I think he is unique, although not alone, but unique in the American popular culture, in appealing kind of across parties, where his music that spoke to the working class would appeal to both Democratic and Republican voters. I think the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan I know is former governor Chris Christie, a Republican who's run for president as a Republican, but he's as die-hard as it gets when it comes to Springsteen.

I think he knows his audience. He knows the kind of people that he can speak to, and I think he's trying to possibly bring some awareness beyond the media bubbles that we're in, where if you're only listening to Fox News or you're only listening to MS NOW, you only get that one side. I think he's hoping to break through that a little bit, but there's also just the rallying cry, as you mentioned earlier, of the devoted.

It could just be an energizing thing too, but at the same time, while I describe this concert as an overtly political performance, it's still Springsteen. You're still getting Hungry Heart, and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, and dancing around and throwing your arms up in the air and getting that "blues in the verse, gospel in the chorus" jubilation that every Springsteen show since the '70s has brought.

Brian Lehrer: Nick Corasaniti covers voting, democracy, other election-related issues, and Bruce vs. Donald for The New York Times. Thanks so much for joining us.

Nick Corasaniti: Thanks for having me.