Supremes say that Texas redistricting maps can stay in place (12-05-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Alrighty, let's talk about redistricting. Oh, this is actually a pretty big deal. Okay, So we've been tracking a lot of the Great Redistricting War of twenty twenty five as it's been unfolding. Right North Carolina one of the battlegrounds where this has occurred. Now, we haven't we. Haven't really got a lot of litigation about our redrawing of the map. There is some, but I'm not sure it's going to go anywhere. But this is the case out of Texas where they redrew their congressional map in a mid decade redistricting. I'm not going to go over all the history of it. I've covered it before in the past, but they were responding to litigation that's why they're redrawing their lines. They had to redraw the lines because they got sued by the Biden DOJ and they lost. They had to redraw the maps, and this is the result of it. It just so happened. They redrew it with more Republican seats. Okay, so they got sued, but their redrawing of their maps also led to the redrawing of maps in California. Now, California had to put it to voters to suspend their own constitutions so they could jerrymander because their constitution turns all of the redistricting over to a quote unquote independent Redistricting Commission, which somehow or another always draws maps that are gerrymandered to favor Democrats. Now they don't call them jerrymanders because Democrats are advantaged. When Democrats talk about fair maps, they mean maps that advantage them. This is why I forget what the exact number is, but it's California. It's got like almost sixty seats, I want to say, between fifty and sixty congressional seats, I want to say, and like all of them except for nine, were Democrats. Even though Democrats are always talking about proportional representation whenever they're arguing against maps in Republican states. So, for example, in North Carolina, they're like, we're a fifty to fifty state, right, so we have fourteen seats in North Carolina, and the Democrats argue that because the presidential races are so close and the voting patterns and voter registration, so therefore they should get seven of the fourteen seats. That's always in their argument a proportional representation model. Now that's not anywhere in the constitution. That's not anywhere in the state constitution. Nowhere does it say that you're supposed to be allocated a proportional number of seats. Okay, this is just a new standard that they have made up, and they only apply it to states that are controlled by Republicans when the Republicans are drawing the maps. When Democrat controlled states draw their maps and they jerrymandered the bejeebis out of them and they don't give Republicans any seats at all, that's not a jerrymander. There's no argument for proportional representation being made by Democrats in those states like Maryland, New York, and actually New York was the one that started all of the mid decade redistricting. They did this, They tried to draw a map that squeezed out every Republican and it was so gerrymandered that even the Democrat controlled. It's not the Supreme Court, it's like the Court of Appeals in New York. I don't know why they call the Court of Appeals. It's the highest court in New York. And the Supreme Court is not actually the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals is, but whatever. It went all the way up to that court, and that court smacked them down and said, this is a gerrymander, this is illegal, and they smacked them down. Back to California, they've got, like I think it's it, maybe like fifty three or fifty four seats, and all but nine of them are controlled by Democrats. Yet forty percent of California voters voted for Trump, which would indicate that California should have somewhere in the neighborhood of about I don't know, twenty five seats no for Republicans. Republicans in California should control about forty percent of the seats. According to the argument made by Democrats in every other state, not controlled by Democrats, but they don't care about the standards. See, this is not about a consistent application of a standard. This is about getting a quote fair map. And again, a fair map to Democrats is a map that advantages them, and so they don't make that argument. In fact, they put it to voters to change their state constitution just this one time, just for this one time, to allow the politicians to draw a map that gives even more advantage. I think now Republicans are down to four seats, so less than ten percent of the seats in the Congress. In the House control will be controlled by Republicans. Fewer than ten percent, but forty percent of the state votes Republican. You don't hear proportional arguments being made in California. You don't hear these this argument being made in Maryland, or in Illinois, or in literally the entire New England states. Every single one of the New England states, like none of them have a Republican representative, zero Republican representatives, even though if I remember correctly, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of about a third to forty percent of the voter's vote Republican up in New England, but you would never know it because they don't ever get to send a Republican representative to the US House of Representatives. So Texas gets sued, and the Supreme Court yesterday revived the Texas map because there was a lower court ruling that said, no, you can't use this map. And Democrats were like, that's right in your face. We win, and Republicans are like, hang on, we're going to the US Supreme Court, and so they did, and the US Supreme Court has said the Texas map that Democrats hate that can remain. This will add up to potentially depending on the election and depending on the candidates and all that. Because I've talked about the downside of doing these redistricting these new maps is that you've got solid Republican seats, but you want, like a next door district to become a little bit easier for Republicans to win. So you move some Republican precincts into that other district. But now you have watered down your solid red seat, and now that's solid red may be leans red, and now that's a harder seat for Republicans to protect. Right, So like sometimes they call this a dummy mander map. Instead of a jerrymander, it's a dummy mander, which is basically what Democrats did in North Carolina back in twenty ten because they couldn't they couldn't follow the rules pass constitutional maps, and so they tried to make it so they could keep as many seats as possible and they ended up losing like all of the toss up seats, all the close seats, they lost them all. So and that's because of demographic shifts. So the maps that the Republicans drew in Texas will be used for the midterm elections, but the litigation will be allowed to proceed. Now, the three leftists on the Supreme Court, they dissented, they said the lower court or sorry, the majority ruled that the lower court probably made a mistake when it invalidated the map and called it a likely racial gerrymander. See and when Democrat judges call these things racial gerrymanders, like they know how that's going to get weaponized. Democrats have been doing this for twenty years. Whenever there's a whenever there's a map that they sue over because of the lack or the loss of Democrat seats, they accuse Republicans of being racist and drawing the lines even when there is no evidence, like zero evidence that race played any role. How can they make these arguments, I mean, besides being just dishonest? Right, how do they make these arguments? You know? Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of this, to understand experiences. 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Around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit Creative video dot com. So where we left off was the courts determining that the Texas redistricting map was a racial gerrymander. This was the lower court ruling. US Supreme Court tossed that out. I'll explain why they're rationale in a minute, but the argument is always that whenever there's a quote jerrymander redistricting map done by Republicans, Democrats always say it's racial. The judges say it, the lawyers say it, the activists say it. Everybody says it's a racial gerrymander. Why well, sam Alito pointed this out a decade ago in a North Carolina redistricting case that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and he was arguing against this inconsistent application of standards when it comes to the judicial rulings, and he was pointing out in the descent he lost, but in his descent he outlined the problem with this line of attack, with this rationale, which is Democrats have a lock on the black voting population. Right, It's like nine out of ten black voters vote Democrat. If you are to draw a redistricting map and you are only looking at party information, You're only looking at the voter registration information in order to do the groupings, in order to put precincts where you want them to be so you can protect incumbents, and you can draw a map that's advantageous to you as the Republican party using the voter registration information. Just looking at d's and dors, it's going to look like a racial gerrymander. There's no way around it. Democrats know this. They don't ever say that. They just accuse you of being a racist to shame you into drawing a map that gives them more power. That's it. And Alito pointed this out, like I said a decade ago in a Supreme Court ruling DIY, it's the same argument they're using on the Texas maps. There is absolutely zero evidence that the Republicans used race to draw these maps. They did not. All the evidence is that they simply used D and R. They looked at partisan advantage, which by the way, is legal. You're allowed to do that. You may not like that, and if you don't like that, then you should pass a law that says, you can't use that information, but Texas is allowed to do it. North Everyone's allowed to do it if they don't have any state prohibition. So that's what they did. And what did the Democrats say, Well, we look at the outcome, and the outcome is you've got cracking and packing, which is basically to say that no matter how you draw the lines, we're going to accuse you of being a racist. Because cracking is when you split up a district. You crack an area, right, you split it apart, you send one group over to this district, the other half of the group over to this other district, so you've cracked that population. Or you pack the district. You take the population and you put them all in one district. And you can't do that either. So you can't split them up and you can't pack them together. You can't crack, you can't pack. So what do you do, Well, just let the Democrats draw the maps, that's essentially what they're saying. Just let us draw the maps because we're the only ones that can do it without any kind of racial bias. And that's just a lie. See that all of this is just a construct, that's all it is. So the District Court. This is, according to the Supreme Court ruling, the district Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal state balance in elections. So this is what is called the Percel rule, named after a previous court ruling per Sell, and it essentially says that you can't you can't be tinkering with or changing the rules of an election as it's going on, definitely, or if it's too close to the election, you cannot create like, you can't create all this confusion and chaos as the state is getting ready to administer an election, because they're not going to be able to administer the election cleanly. It's going to pose all sorts of administrative problems. So this is the Purcell rule. In their dissent, the Libs on the Supreme Court, in the descent, written by Justice Atlanta Kagan, chastised their colleagues the Republicans for intervening based on its perusal over a holiday weekend of a cold paper record. Today's order disrespects the work of a district court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge, that put aside every consideration except getting the issue correct, and today's order deserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race or party Billy and voting patters. Her descent actually prompted a response from three of the court's conservatives, Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch, and they sided with Texas. They rejected the notion that the state Republicans redrew the map based on race. They wrote, Here's what they wrote. Quote First, the dissent does not dispute because it is indisputable. Does not dispute that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map was partisan advantage, pure and simple. That's what Alito wrote. See Alito has been consistent on this for years. They looked at partisan data. They drew a map based on the partisan data. That's not illegal. And just because you have these voting blocks that are predominantly minority and Democrat, doesn't mean that when you look at the partisan data, it doesn't mean that you're looking at the racial data. That's not the fault of the Republicans. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. And we'll get John on because John wants to talk about the redistricting topic that I just wrapped up. Hello John, Welcome to the program. Hey Pete, how are y'all? Hey good? What's going on? I was telling about the redistricting stuff. I wish the states would just do it every ten years with the sets. It just they do because under this logic, anytime the party changes an iota, they're going to redraw the maps every six weeks. So the reason Texas redrew the map was because they were under litigation. So like California, they did a mid decade red redraw. Like they did that on their own. There was no litigation that prompted them to do that. Texas did a redraw. North Carolina, yes, and North Carolina did one, but North Carolina doesn't have any prohibition against doing it. Some states do, some states limited to only mid decade or only you know, after the census. But this time I would. Like to see the states just take initiative and only do it in response to the census rather than just anytime the win check right? So what happened? So what do you say then when the census is UH is incorrect? What do you do when the census makes mistakes? I guess that's it. I guess you got to do the census people. You have to what. Well, I guess you got to do the census people. This came up a couple of years ago when North Carolina picked up a seat from. Out west from Utah. Well, Utah didn't get the seat and they wanted it right, right, But in this case the twenty twenty census, they undercounted about half a dozen states. They overcounted about a half a dozen states. And when you look at the breakdown on the undercounts, it was like five of the six states that they undercounted were Republican states and five of the six states they overcounted were Democrat states, leading to a difference. I think the number was something like it was somewhere around ten seats that Republicans should have otherwise picked up in the red states but did not because of the census mistakes their errors. So it would that be sufficient to allow a state to do a redraw. If it's every again, I think it's gonna be every ten years. At some point, you either believe the figures or you don't. Right, But when we know, well, but they audit their numbers, right, they go through and they check and see if they did it correctly. And that's what they found was they did not do it correctly. It was COVID. Remember it was twenty twenty, and so they did not They made a bunch of mistakes and it altered the makeup of the US House of Representatives to the detriment of Republicans. So we're just supposed to say, okay, well, sorry, census screwed up, like undercounting way more Republican states overcounting Democrat states, and oh look at that. How it just kind of all goes in one direction basically to advantage the Democrats and the Republican controlled states. Are just supposed to say, Okay, I guess we got to live with this. Well my logic, I don't care which party is this are just I just don't want to see him change again anytime the wind shifts, like Mary Poppin. But that's not what happened here. This is a response. So with the text hang on, hang on, they fond. No. What I'm saying is the Texas state. The Texas map was done because of litigation, so they had to redraw it. That's and so it just happened to fall and it did. They didn't initiate that process for any other reason but for the lawsuits that were launched by the Biden administration. So that's why they end up having to redraw their districts. So that takes that one off the table. The other states then that started responding to the Democrat states that were doing the mid decade redraws, and like New York State, they were the first one to do it before Texas. Then California came along, Illinois is talking about doing it again, and so the Republican states were doing it in response to California and New York. So Republican states should not respond. I don't care who's leading it. It just becomes tiresome comic. Oh okay, but I'm all right, but I understand the principle. But I'm asking in reality, when you see Democrat controlled states that are trying to draw their districts to change them, when they are breaking your principle, what should Republican controlled states do in response? Nothing. I mean, ultimately, I have you got to have faith in the court system. They do exactly what they did. You take it to the court and say is it wrong? Is it right? Well, California is allowed to do it. If you think they're breaking the rules, and. They know they followed the rules, they went along and they put it to the voters. They suspended their own state constitution just for this one redraw or maybe two, and so they are ignoring their independent redistricting Commission, and so they didn't break From what I can tell so far, they haven't broken any laws. Now maybe that there is pending litigation for it, but what so. But my question still remains is but hang on, John, My question still remains is what are Republican states supposed to do when Democrat states advantage themselves to the point of taking power in the US House or representatives. Are the Republicans just supposed to say, oh, well, got to wait till the next census. No, I didn't say that. If the senses is dishonest or messed up, then they should respond and they should be allowed to do so. But again, the mid what's wrong with why don't we change it again two years from now or four years from now, or just every even number or whenever we feel like it. When does it stop? Right? Well? I mean, yeah, I don't know. Every state is different. They've got different rules. Our state we're allowed to draw it whenever I think we want. I don't think there's any limitation on it. Now. If you don't want that to be the case. Everything has to be on the ballot anyway, all their provisions. What do you mean, all their provisions. Anytime California wants to do a proposition, it always goes in front of all their state voters. Okay, but that's not necessary. I mean, that's not about the maps. Oh, you're right, everything can set its some rules. I would just like to have some uniformity. I don't think it needs to come out of DP that. First of all, you've got to believe that the census is fair. If it's not, then you need to address it there. Right. But if it's not fair, the redistrict in response to that. Right. But if it's not fair and there were errors made that disadvantaged the Republicans to the point where they do not control a large majority that they should have otherwise controlled, then there's no there's no recourse for another decade. Well, I don't want to disadvantage either party. I would like to have a lot. I'm talking about this, I'm talking about what we're in right now. Well we're in right now? Is what I just laid out that the census undercounted Republican states and it overcounted Democrat states and it led to a swing of like ten seats. What's that? But it's a reason that we're response to the census, which I would like to be neutral from the get go. I would too, but it wasn't. They made all these mistakes. So this is the state legislatures saying, Okay, day, well the census screwed up, and so we're going to make corrections to the US House of Representatives composition because of the mess up at the census level. So look, I mean, I understand if you want that as a principle. I think the way to address it is you go for a state law change that says you're only allowed to redraw districts every ten years and that's it. You put a cap. In North Carolina, here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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Are you I'm doing all right, sir, how are you? I am fantastic. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Hey, I have to preface my remarks with I'm one of those people on my core philosophy is local control and state rights. So the big issue I have with John is number one. I don't want the federal government making a national mandate on these maps period. I think the states need to do it. And what do you do in situations where we had the big hurricane in Louisiana and all those people got moved into Charlotte and into North Carolina? What do you do when people don't like their government and they're exiting New York and California and a lot of them are coming to North Carolina. We need to be able to locally see our numbers and be able to count our own people and say here's what we have. And I do agree there needs to be a law, some kind of regulation, but if we have a population boom, we should be able to have our local government say hey, we need to have a recount, we need to redo our maps. I don't want the federal government regulating when I can do my maps because they don't have as good a grasp on our population as we do locally. Well the sense I mean, I'm trying to remember, I believe that the maps are drawn based on the census data from the decade census, right, So I don't think you're going to be able to capture like a growing population during a mid decade redraw. Does that make sense because you're you're always going to be using the twenty twenty census data. I think I don't think. I'm not sure I agree with that. I think we ought to have local people who know what our populations are that report them on an annual basis. We should have that annual audit. Well, that would I think. I think that's I think that's different because in the Constitution it talks about the apportionment of the seats based on the census, which is done every ten years. So I'm not sure that you're allowed to I'm not sure you would have to get that. I think you would have to open that up to allow because I mean, the Census does updates to their data all the time, right, we all know this. They're constantly updating the data. But the population counts every decade that they do in order to do the apportionment. I think that's what they always have to go by where they draw the match. And I have no problem with the decade count Yeah they want to do that, great, But when we have updated local information, we should act on the updated information. So again it goes back to the legislation and laws. I think we need to write something, but I don't want the government telling us how we're going to do stuff locally. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's that's the only thing I wanted to throw out there. I got you, George, I appreciate the call. Yeah, I think I think we are constitutionally prescribed to use the decade counts twenty twenty census in order to draw the districts, no matter what year you're drawing the districts. I don't think you get to do like any kind of updated census data because so remember, like how they do this is they take the total population count of the country, right, and that includes illegal aliens. Okay that and that's another point of contention, because you know, you take a bunch of illegal immigrants and you put them in into an area. They don't get to vote, right, But now you're going to use them to pump up your numbers, your population numbers. And so when they take the total count across the country, they divide that total number, like three hundred and fifty million people. Let's say you divide by four hundred and thirty five, because that's how many house seats there are, and that's what you that's how you get the population size for every district. And right now that number is somewhere around eight hundred thousand. I think it's like eight thirty or something, but it's like eight hundred thousand people per congressional district. And then depending on your states total population, that determines how many seats you get. And that's why some states lose, some states gain. If your state does not even have eight hundred and thirty thousand people, if it's only got half a million people, you get one seat. That's it, okay, but and then all the rest of it. So that's how they apportion all the rest of the seats throughout the nation. North Carolina's got fourteen, right, And that also then ties into the number of Electoral College votes you get. So if a state is losing population, like New York, like California, Right, like Illinois, they're losing population. Might that be an incentive to bring a bunch of people in that will help bolster your population numbers while also providing an advantage of them not being able to vote you out. Of office, right because they can't vote. If you bring in a bunch of illegal immigrants, you pack them into Chicago and that helps keep your population numbers up, so you minimize the loss of your congressional representation and your electoral college influence and they don't get to vote you out of office. How awesome is that for you? Right? Seven oh four number on the text line says love your show. But the ten minutes the two of you have been going around and around, it wasn't ten minutes. He was only on for like seven he saying the same thing. He wasn't getting your point. Yeah, look, I mean he only wants to John. I think it was John. He only wanted there to be districts drawn every decade. Okay. But and if that's what you want, then pass a state law because the states determine that. Right, That's what I was saying. But I was also trying to probe to find out, like, what are states supposed to do when they see a system that is not apportioning the congressional representation fairly and correctly, What then do you do? What do you do when a Democrat state that does not have the same you know, prohibition on redrawing districts only every ten years, when a state like New York comes along and produces one of the most gerrymandered maps ever seen in American history, to the point where their own party on their Supreme Court rejected the map, saying this is illegal, like this is too much even for us. You know, what do you do when they're trying to steal seats out of the US House of Representatives and the Electoral College? Do you just sit back and take that or do you then respond in kind? Another seven oh four number says cheaters should not be rewarded for cheating. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the two candidates for president were aliens and they said that it's a two party system, you have to vote for one of us, right, thus ensuring their enslavement. Yes, and also it gave us the best campaign slogan in history. But tonight I say we must move forward, not backward. Upward not forward and always swirling to curling, whirling twas freedom. Right. And then of course was it Kang and King and Kang or something whenever the two aliens they were they were running against each other, and then they you know, one of them won, and then they rip the masks off, and then they enslave all the all of the people, and I think Homer says something like, don't blame me, I voted for the other guy, you know, which is the same enslavement. So a classic Halloween episode of the Simpsons. So yeah, look, I don't know what else to do when when our countrymen have broken this redistricting process so badly, I don't know what else to do except fight fire with fire. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.