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- [00:00]
A
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, Allbirds or skims, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for the shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify, upgrade your business and get the same checkout, skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com audioboom all lowercase go to shopify.com audioboom to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com audioboom hey everyone.
- [01:10]
B
Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the Bulwark. And I have the fantastic Lizzie Fletcher, Congresswoman from Texas, here to explain all that's happening with this Texas redistricting case to me. Lizzie, thanks for being here.
- [01:24]
C
Glad to be here. Always glad to be with you, Sarah.
- [01:26]
B
I can't believe I just called you Lizzie. I should call you Congresswoman Fletcher like a grown up. The problem is Congresswoman Fletcher and I know each other because we both went to Kenyon and she was five years older than I was and so we were at reunion together and we were on a panel. So that's how it started.
- [01:46]
C
And honestly, most people call me Lizzie because I put it on everything. You know, fun fact, I put it on the ballot even though I was a practicing lawyer putting Elizabeth on everything. Cause I was like. But everybody knows me as Lizzie, so you know, you're welcome. There's a lot of like team Lizzie merch. I can get you that. And it's all good. So I'm perfectly happy for you to call me Lizzie. Please do.
- [02:07]
B
Okay. I just, I sometimes forget decorum is still an important part of our system. And you are a congresswoman and a. I know, I know. It's all so sad and depressing. Well, you know what? It looks like to some degree, there are still rules, there are still courts, and one of them just ruled there in Texas that the new congressional map for 2026 that the President of the United States pushed on Texas as mid cycle redistricting in order to procure more Democratic, I'm sorry, they'll cut that to, to get more Republican House seats, squeeze them out of Texas. The court said no. They said that they have to stick to the lines passed in 2021. So three judge panel that ruled that. Can you just unpack? Sort of. Because we talked about this going back when this first broke and now lots has happened. A lot of stuff has happened since then. But what is this ruling mean and will it stick?
- [03:11]
C
Yep. Okay, so huge questions. I'm going to try to break it down a little, but I want to start where you started because I do think it is really important to take a minute and think about this opinion that this panel just issued. It was a two to one ruling and I think that there are many things about it substantively that are hugely important to talk about. But, but I also think, you know, when it came down, first of all, I was so excited to see the court reaching the right result, especially after I know how much hard work the team put into this. When I say the legal team, I mean the lawyers. And as a lawyer, I can say these lawyers cannot get enough shout outs. They did an incredible, incredible job. They were ready to go as soon as the map was signed. They'd been working on this and pouring their heart and souls into this for years. There's a big legal team and I'm so grateful to them. And I'm also really grateful that the judge who issued this 160 page opinion, it ran in Texas, you know, we elect our judges. He was on the Texas Supreme Court for many years as a Republican judge. He was appointed to the bench by President Trump and he issued this opinion that found that Texas Republicans, Governor Abbott and all of those who were involved in this process discriminated against black and Hispanic Texans, not only in what they said about the map, but in the map itself. And so it really gives me not only the substantive appreciation for the result that it brings us, but also a lot of hope that we don't need to give up hope. There are still really good people out there who are doing the right thing, who are looking at the facts and the law and reaching the conclusions. Everything is not a foregone conclusion. And as we head into 2026 and we think about the elections and all this stuff that we're working on, like, it just gives me a lot of hope we can get there. Like we can, we can turn this stuff around. Obviously, the elections gave us a lot of that hope, a lot of other things. But I just want to point out kind of starting with, you know, the judge that issued this opinion, this is a real profile in courage, and we don't see that many of those around here these days. And so I think that that is important. Now, substantively, what it does is the plaintiffs, there are five different plaintiff groups that all work together and ask the court to temporarily stop the map that Governor Abbott signed earlier this year, the 2025 map, from going into effect for the 2026 elections, and basically asked for a preliminary injunction requiring the 2026 elections to go forward on the existing congressional map, which they were already in court arguing was discriminatory, but that we would use that map for the next election and have the court look at and REDRAW Potentially the 2021 map, but that that which is the status quo would stay in effect for the 2026 elections, and then the court will take up the substance and look at the map overall for a permanent remedy. So that's where we are. The state of Texas immediately appealed. It will have a direct appeal to the United States Supreme Court. So it's headed to the Supreme Court. It is fully anticipated that the governor and the state of Texas will ask the Supreme Court, if the district court doesn't do it, to stay the judge's order. So that's the next thing we're looking for, is to see whether the order enjoining use of the new map and requiring use of the 2021 map, the existing congressional districts we have now will get stayed or will continue as the Supreme Court takes up the case.
- [06:57]
B
You got any? Are we optimistic about the Supreme Court? I mean, you're a lawyer, so, you know, the ruling that came out from two out of the three judges, did it make the kind of compelling case that the Supreme Court might be unlikely to overrule, or does it seem like there are flaws in it or something that the Supreme Court could just. Any little thing they could use to sort of procedurally or technically give Trump what he wants.
- [07:23]
C
So my read on it is this is an incredibly thorough, well researched, well thought out, well articulated opinion. Like I said, It's 160 pages replete with maps and other things. But it really is kind of a brutal review of what the Texas Republican leaders did in this case. It really systematically exposes how race was used illegally to configure the map and how Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans illegally used race to describe it, to promote it, to justify adopting it. And so I think that it's. It's a really important, clear roadmap as to why this injunction was issued and why it should stay in place. And I think that the other thing about it is that there was a dissent. And the dissenting opinion is it's very passionate, but it is not a clear articulation of what's wrong with the evidence. You know, the injunction really lays out all of the evidence and shows why the court reached this result. And the other important thing to know, because there's so many things about voting rights and voting cases, and we can talk about it a lot more, but basically this case was brought on constitutional grounds and they only had to reach one finding, which was that the state of Texas discriminated against minority voters in Texas with this map and violating the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution. And so it's not a voting rights case. There's no VRA claim that's going to get mixed up with the other VRA case that the Supreme Court's currently considering. So in that sense, it's pretty straightforward. And I am optimistic. I mean, I think the court reached the right result and the Supreme Court should allow this injunction to stand.
- [09:18]
B
I'm glad you you because we are seeing the Supreme Court kind of got the Voting Rights act and that. So that's an interesting point that I had not considered, which is that they that you're saying the lawyers specifically tried to stay out of that framework because they know the Supreme Court is can get funny about that and instead focus narrowly on the law there in Texas. Actually, I want to remind you of something you told me when we talked last about this case, because it stuck with me and it seems even truer today than it was when we talked about it, which was even if the Supreme Court were to overturn, overrule the ruling, which I hope it doesn't, but if it did, the Republicans can't feel as great about Texas even with the new maps, because Hispanics, more than just about any other demographic, are just the bottom is dropping out of them for Trump. And so to the extent that the new maps were redrawn, with a little bit of a bullish read on the political realignment that Hispanics could be giving to Republicans, that seems not to be true anymore. And so you told me at the time, hey, Sarah, even if this happens, I still think we can do better than they think we can do. You still feel that way?
- [10:39]
C
Absolutely, I still feel that way. And when you look at what they did, they essentially made two of the districts that Democrats currently hold in South Texas much more difficult based on the assumptions they made coming out of 2024 and the election results in 2024, I think that that was an overestimation. And certainly what we saw in the elections in New York, Jersey and Virginia and across the country, you know, local elections in Texas, too, you saw a shift back in terms of Democrats winning and picking up ground everywhere. But also, they took those two districts and thought they made them more Republican. We've always thought we could compete. They'll be hard. You know, they're not easy races. These are frontline races. Either way, we feel very optimistic that we can pick up the other district in the Valley, which is currently held by a Republican. But under either map, we feel really good about our chances of actually picking that up. And then in the new map, they had drawn another district kind of outside of San Antonio. We feel very strong about that one. But certainly we know that the efforts that they've undertaken to disenfranchise voters are also going to backfire. People are mad, and everybody in Texas should be mad, because ultimately, what they're doing, and ultimately, the reason people hate gerrymandering is because you want it to matter when you go to the ballot box, right? You want to be able to say, throw the bums out or you're doing a great job. And it's the people who draw the maps, draw them in a way that it doesn't matter what you do that's just bad for democracy. No matter who you're going to vote for, in the end, it takes away the agency and the beauty of citizenship for all of us who are trying to participate in this process. And so, you know, my view the whole time has been that this is going to anger everyone, and it should anger everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike. And I think that that's definitely what we saw in Texas. The pushback against these maps was huge. And so I think they really did overplay their hand, and they. Maybe they should be happy to stop where they are, take the loss and keep going, rather than try to fight this in the Supreme Court. Because I think that what they're trying to do is so undemocratic with a not just a capital D, but a lowercase D, that it's really gonna backfire.
- [13:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, I hate gerrymandering, but I gotta say, and I'm gonna. This is. Maybe I'm gonna push on this a little bit. I've always been anti gerrymandering, but Donald Trump, because he does not want the oversight of a Democratic Congress, he fears it more than anything else. He came in, right, and he. He pushed Abbott to do this mid cycle redistricting doesn't happen, but it kicks off a redistricting war.
- [13:27]
C
Right.
- [13:28]
B
And so California now passed just in this last election overwhelmingly, they're going to redo their maps. Abigail Spanberger, with her overwhelming defeat in Virginia, she could redraw her maps. How do you, since you, you're taking sort of a, this is bad for democracy and I believe that. I agree with it. But I'll just say for myself, I spent many years really trying to hold the line on norms trying to hold the line on just because they're doing it, you know, we can't do it. We got to do what's right. But like you also can't unilaterally disarm and, and not do. So how do you see it? Like, should Abigail Spamberger go in there and do the mid cycle redistricting that she's certainly going to get pressure to do in Virginia and make those maps tilted in Democrats favor because Trump kicked off this cycle, or should she stay pure? Matt, tell me what you think.
- [14:21]
C
Well, I love the way that you asked the question and I think it is true that I not only support the outcome in this case, but I also supported Prop 50 and our volunteers were making phone calls into California and I welcomed Governor Newsom when he came to take his victory lap in Houston because what they're doing is important, which is fighting back. And you have to see the bigger picture. And I think that that's one of the challenges that so many of us have right now is that there are a lot of people that are operating in the way that it was. Right. And maybe that's where you were referring to yourself, sort of holding onto the before times. And then there's also people who are operating in the how it should be. Right. And that's where we all want to be, how it should be. But we have to operate in the how it is. And right now there is no way we're going to have real democracy reform, real into gerrymandering and, and other things unless Democrats take back control of the House and the Senate and ultimately the White House. We have to win in 26, we have to win in 28. And look, I'm not just saying that. When I was first elected to Congress in 2018 and came in in 2019, HR1 was the Democrats marquee legislation. The very first bill we entered, it's a democracy reform package. It included independent redistricting commissions. It included voting reforms like making election Day a federal holiday, dealing with campaign financ. Finance and really overhauling a lot of the problems that we know are real in our system. But we cannot get there unless we operate in the now. And so we have to do everything we can to make sure that we win back the House and that Republicans aren't rewarded for what they did in Texas and what they're doing in Missouri and what they're doing in Indiana. We cannot unilaterally disarm in this moment. And we can't just sort of be happy to be on the high road because we have got so much at stake in these elections. You see it across the country. It's not just norms. This administration is doing things that are unlawful, unconstitutional, un American. We have to turn things around. And so I think it is absolutely fair to say we, we are going to match the energy we are going to match and we are going to fight this fight as it needs to be fought. And I think that that is a fair position. That doesn't mean that we don't think that gerrymandering reform is necessary and that it shouldn't change. And a lot of people, including people working on this case, have been fighting this gerrymandering for years in so many different ways in court and other places. But we have to win back the House, we got to win the Senate and we got to take back the White House. That's the only way we're actually going to be able to make these reforms.
- [17:12]
B
Yeah, I would have accepted turnabouts, Fair play. They started it. Any of those. I would have taken any of those as an answer because they did. I mean, everybody was, this is why Texas is so important, what happened there, because it really was a shock to the system to say, oh no, we're just going to randomly do this redistricting without a new census the way that it's always done. And so yeah, there's, there's, there's no choice but to, but to fight back. And I think for people who try to play gotcha with the argument about democracy by saying, oh well, you now supported in Virginia, I say, you know, let's, let's talk in good faith here about what's actually happening. So getting back to the Texas case, I don't know, I'm not deep enough in it to ask you super smart questions. I basically have asked you the ones that I have that as a high level political observer. I do. But like, is there something you could tell me and our audience about what's happening there on the ground that you think is really interesting or that you think we need to know or you think we need to be looking for going forward? Like, you want to tell us something nerdy about it? I'll take anything.
- [18:24]
C
Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, I mean, obviously I can get really nerdy really quickly, but I think what. What I would say sort of big pict sure is what you just said, which was this. What was happening in Texas was sort of shocking to a lot of people, but it wasn't totally shocking to us. Number one, Texas has done this before. Thank you, Tom Delay. Texas did this 20 years ago, mid decade redistricting. But I think what was so important in this moment was that the Texans really fought back, right? You had our legislators who were fighting in the legislature, who broke quorum, and they really raised the awareness across the country of what was happening and how bad it was. They also were able to build a record that the lawyers could use in the legislature of why the legislators were doing this, what they were doing, what the intent was. And so they really did an incredible job. And then there are all these people who have just been working so hard as a coalition to take this on. So like I said, we had volunteers who were out responding to this, talking to neighbors during the redistricting, putting in comments, testifying before the legislator, taking buses to Austin. Like, people really mobilized around this. And of course, then you had this incredible legal team. I really can't say enough about how great the lawyers are, and the work that they did is just tireless, round the clock. And I think that, you know, my takeaway in all of it is one, the court reached the right result and it should stand, but. But two, it should give us all so much hope that when we come together, right, when we mobilize, we really can change things. I think for many of us, this has been a very difficult year. I saw a headline now, I can't remember where it was probably on the bulwark now that I say that, but right after the elections where it was like, okay, Democrats just ended their year long shiva. I don't know if you saw that, but it's been a rough year. It's been a rough year. And I think that like the elections, what we saw in the redistricting is that there are a lot of good people out there trying to do the right thing. And we just need to organize and mobilize all of that energy. And it makes me feel very optimistic that we can move that forward into the 2026 election, certainly, but into 2028, because it's been a crazy year, right it's been a crazy year and a lot of bad things have happened. And I think a lot of people are worried that this is where we're stuck and this is where we have to be. I think this is where we are and we have to respond in the moment. But I think we can get to a much better place. And I think that the kind of coalition that came together around this should give us all a lot of hope for the future.
- [21:04]
B
That kind of optimism is why people come to my videos. And I'll tell you what, it must, something good must be happening because jvl yesterday, his newsletter was like, maybe it's going to be okay, guys. Which. So some, some kind of tide is turning here. Okay, Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, thank you so much for sitting down with us breaking this Texas redetric and thing, because it is, you know, it's funny. It is a. It's one of those complicated, wonky things. But I'll just say as a matter of communications tactics and strategy, one of the things the people did in Texas is they went and like, left the state after. Right. So that they couldn't do it right away. And I think when they did that, everybody's like, why are they doing this? Like, why did they run off to different states and they got to get brought back. They raised the salience of this. They showed people what it looks like to fight back and to say, we're not going to just do it. And even though it didn't have, like, a clear plan of what was going to happen, they weren't going to be gone for forever. They did make this an issue that now has become, even if it's not something that is, you know, everybody understands the ins and outs of. People have understood that it is one of the ways to really fight back in this moment. And that is really important. So I join you in your hope and thanks for joining us and bringing it.
- [22:19]
C
Thanks, Sarah. It's always so good to be with you and I appreciate the chance to talk about this. You know, I love to talk all things Texas almost as much as all things Kenyan. So look forward to next time sometimes.
- [22:30]
B
Well, when we, when, when we've saved democracy, we'll do our Kenyan podcast where we make people just listen to us talk about, you know, Gambier, Ohio, and why it's so great.
- [22:38]
C
I love that. I'm right there for it. Can't wait.
- [22:41]
B
All right, thanks.
- [22:42]
C
Thanks.
- [22:43]
A
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, Allbirds or skims, sure. You think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making selling and for the shoppers, buying. Simple for millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet and the not so secret with Shopay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com audioboom all lowercase go to shopify.com audioboom to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com audioboom.