1: Ari Berman on Trump’s Plans to Steal the Midterms

Summary

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The Al Franken Podcast

Episode: Ari Berman on Trump’s Plans to Steal the Midterms

Guest: Ari Berman (Mother Jones National Voting Correspondent)
Date: March 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Al Franken is joined by Ari Berman, renowned elections reporter for Mother Jones, to dissect the mounting threats to democracy and election integrity ahead of the 2026 midterms. The conversation is set against the backdrop of escalating political tensions, war with Iran, and Donald Trump’s escalating efforts to cast doubt on elections—and, as Berman details, to exploit state-level machinery to clinch Republican victories. The discussion is rich, candid, and laced with humor, but heavy with warnings about unprecedented tactics being deployed to undermine fair elections.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Context: Trump, War, and Popularity (03:33)

• The episode opens with Franken decrying Trump’s newly announced war against Iran, highlighting his plummeting popularity and the broken campaign promises that have eroded public trust.
• Quote:

  “As I record, Trump has announced that we’re about to strike Iran. And as you hear this, he has... is calling for the Iranian people to take down the ayatollah and his regime.”
  — Al Franken (03:50)

2. State of the Union Address & Trump’s Campaigning from the Podium (06:17)

• Berman had to endure Trump's unusually combative and fact-averse State of the Union speech, calling out “disgraceful” lies, especially on immigrants and election fraud.
• Quote:

  “Just Trump basically making it into a campaign speech… he’s just talking like he’s on Newsmax for two hours.”
  — Ari Berman (07:51)

• They play a clip where Trump repeats the false claim that “foreign countries are paying the tariffs,” and lament that there was little protest from within Congress.

3. The ‘Ballot Seizure’ in Fulton County, Georgia (08:49)

• Discussion turns to the alarming recent raid to seize ballots in Fulton County—a move Berman identifies as setting a dangerous new precedent.
  • In 2020, such actions were considered off limits. Now they’re happening, with Trump loyalists in Georgia exploiting newly granted state power to oversee and even potentially take over local election administration.
• Quote:

  “There’s no good outcome to them taking the ballots… The thing that really worried me about the taking of ballots was it just showed how far they’re willing to go.”
  — Ari Berman (09:03)

4. The Immigrant Voting Myth and Voter Suppression Tactics (11:21)

• Berman meticulously debunks Republican claims that noncitizens voting is a widespread problem:
  • Utah found zero cases among 2.1 million voters; Georgia found 9 in 8.2 million; North Carolina found 7 in 7 million.
  • Emphasizes that these cases are almost always mistakes, not intentional fraud.
• Quote:

  “It just doesn’t make any logical sense why someone who comes here, documented or undocumented, would risk fines, prison, and deportation to cast a ballot. I mean, it doesn’t make any rational sense. And, of course, it’s not backed by the data, either.”
  — Ari Berman (13:17)

5. Talk of ICE at the Polls & The Politics of Intimidation (13:32)

• Franken and Berman play a Steve Bannon clip calling for ICE to “surround the polls.”
  • Berman explains that, legally, ICE cannot operate at polling places, but the threat of immigration enforcement alone can suppress turnout, especially among eligible voters in immigrant communities.
• Quote:

  “They don’t need to be at the polls to be able to suppress votes.”
  — Ari Berman (14:13)

6. Changing Latino Voting Patterns and Texas Redistricting (15:07)

• Recent polling shows Trump and the GOP losing ground with Latino voters in Texas, putting at risk the very districts they redrew to gain an advantage.
  • ICE’s deportations among Cuban Americans threaten to alienate a key block in Florida as well.

7. GOP State Takeover Threats and Legal Changes in Georgia (17:09)

• Georgia’s post-2020 law gave the state election board (now “MAGA majoritarian”) unprecedented oversight over up to four counties.
  • Berman worries about potential voter roll purges and reductions in polling access, especially in majority-Black Fulton County, home to 10% of the state’s population and key to Democratic success.

8. The Legal Landscape: Insurrection Act, Voting Rights Act, and Supreme Court Moves (24:06, 27:21)

• Could Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military in elections? Berman doubts it would stand, thanks to the Constitution’s clear limits on federal election powers.
• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is under threat at the Supreme Court—if narrowed or struck down, several key majority-minority districts could be dismantled, potentially flipping up to 19 House seats.

9. The ‘Save America Act’ and the ‘Show Your Papers’ Voting Laws (32:44)

• The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship (passport or birth certificate) for voter registration and push voter ID requirements, along with a controversial provision to force states to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Berman highlights that this would inadvertently disenfranchise many Republican constituencies (married women with changed names, rural voters) and is premised on unsound data.

10. Voting Access: Elimination of Early Voting and Dropboxes (38:25)

• Trump and the right are pushing to confine voting to Election Day—a move even GOP strategists reject, knowing it would hurt their own voters.
  • Aggressive limits on dropboxes (e.g., one per county in massive Texas jurisdictions) are already having suppressive impacts.

11. Can Trump Use DOJ, FBI, or ICE to Sway Elections? (41:32)

• Berman stresses that, although Trump wants to use federal muscle, decentralization and legal checks make large-scale interference difficult. Still, the tactics are disruptive and exhaust trust in the electoral process.

12. Midterm Predictions and Redistricting Chessboard (45:23)

• Franken and Berman run through key Senate races: Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Maine, and North Carolina. Georgia is surprisingly safe for Democrats, thanks to backlash against ballot seizures.
  • The redistricting arms race sees Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, California, Virginia, and Florida all engaged.
• Quote:

  “As Trump and his party look more likely to lose the midterms, the kind of insane schemes they draw up to try to influence the election are going to become crazier and crazier.”
  — Ari Berman (48:36)

13. Should Democrats Impeach Trump if They Win the House? (48:36–51:00)

• Discussion veers into the possibilities and perils of impeachment, citing emoluments and the magnitude of grift by the Trump family as potential grounds.
  • Berman emphasizes the value of restoring Congressional oversight regardless of impeachment.

14. Epstein Files and the Politics of Accountability (50:12–52:14)

• Disgust over selective scrutiny of the Clintons in the ongoing Epstein scandal, with suggestions that DOJ is withholding damaging records on more powerful Republicans, possibly including Trump.
• The episode ends on a somber note about the importance of oversight and investigations under a possible Democratic Congress.

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On new GOP tactics:

  “A lot of things that Trump was talked off the ledge with in 2020 are now happening.”
  — Ari Berman (09:03)

• On the danger of ballot seizures:

  “If they were to appoint someone… that would basically sideline the Democratic majority on the Fulton County election board and allow them to do things like close polling places, cut early voting locations, remove voters from the rolls.”
  — Ari Berman (17:59)

• On Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act:

  “If [the Supreme Court] were to find that this key part of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, or just narrow it to the point of irrelevancy… that would allow Louisiana and other Southern states to redraw their districts in a way that would take away these majority minority districts that are held by Democrats.”
  — Ari Berman (27:46)

• Berman’s bottom line:

  “All you’re doing is killing your own voters in the process.”
  — Ari Berman (41:09)

• On the Republican base:

  “Republicans show up for Trump. I mean, Trump has a base, he has a MAGA base that will show up for him. And they don’t show up in midterms.”
  — Al Franken (37:34)

• On Trump’s obsession with power:

  “We’ve never seen someone that was so afraid of losing like Trump is right now… The practical consequences of this is going to define his last two years in office. Investigation after investigation after investigation…”
  — Ari Berman (52:45)

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Important Segments and Timestamps

• [03:33] Trump’s Iran war, State of the Union, and electoral backdrop
• [07:51] Berman on Trump’s “Newsmax” campaign speech at SOTU
• [09:03] Ballot seizure in Fulton County and implications for democracy
• [11:21] Debunking the noncitizen voting fraud myth
• [13:32] Steve Bannon, ICE at polls, and the politics of intimidation
• [15:07] Shifting Latino vote and GOP redistricting dilemmas in Texas/Florida
• [17:09] State election board takeover strategies in Georgia
• [24:06] Insurrection Act and SCOTUS immunity for Trump
• [27:21] Future of Section 2 of Voting Rights Act & possible seat losses
• [32:44] The SAVE America Act and effects of draconian voting laws
• [38:25] Attacks on early voting and dropboxes
• [41:32] Trump’s attempts to wield DOJ, ICE, and the limits of federal power
• [45:23] 2026 midterm predictions and redistricting chessboard
• [48:36] Should Democrats impeach Trump? The oversight imperative
• [50:12] Epstein files, the Clintons, and the DOJ's selective pursuit

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Tone and Style

The conversation maintains Al Franken’s characteristic dry wit and skepticism, with Ari Berman bringing a mix of urgency and detailed research. Both use humor to drive home the seriousness of the threats to American democracy, closing with an open call for vigilance, oversight, and restored accountability.

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For listeners seeking an expert breakdown of current political maneuvering around U.S. elections, this episode serves as an engaging—and chilling—primer on just how far the rules are being bent, and what’s at stake this November.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Hey everybody, we've got a great one today. You know, for a change, Ari Berman, who covers elections for Brother Jones magazine, returns to talk about how Trump and the Republicans plan to steal the midterms. Turns out they've given it a lot of thought. Fortunately, Trump's not very popular these days. It seems that Americans are not happy with the way he's handling, well, pretty much anything. He's underwater on all the stuff he he ran on in 24 the economy, immigration, and the Epstein files. And now he's taken us to war, which he very specifically said he wasn't going to do. As I record, Trump has announced that we're about to strike Iran. And as you hear this, he has and is calling for the Iranian people to take down the ayatollah and his regime. As you'll recall, we struck Iran last June when Trump claimed that we had obliterated their nuclear enrichment program. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Just this past week, envoy Steve Witkoff said in a Fox News Interview that Iran is just a week away from having weapons grade nuclear material. This all goes back to Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, which the P5 plus 1, the U.S. france, Great Britain, the UK, China and Russia and Germany entered into back in 2015. Iran agreed to reduce its enrichment of uranium to 3.65% in exchange for sanctions relief. But like an idiot, Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018, mainly because Obama, his administration, had negotiated and we have been unable to get Iran to stop pursuing a nuclear weapon since. Anyway, as I speak, this war has just started and it seems that we are in a full scale conflict with Iran and that now the objective is regime change. And with our military bases in the region, that will no doubt mean the Iranians will be targeting our troops. And as we've seen historically, regime change doesn't always work out well, especially in the Middle East. I'm not sure why we're doing this. Yes, the Iranian regime is despicable. It recently killed thousands of protesters. It's hard to think of a worse regime in the world. But then again, Trump doesn't seem to have a problem with. Putin rolled out the red carpet for him as he killed tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers and targets civilians and kidnaps its children. Iran is a huge country, 90 million people. That's more than Germany or Japan each had back in World War II. We have tens of thousands of troops in the region which Iran will be heading, so we pray for their safety. In the meantime, Congress should immediately return to D.C. and after briefings and debate, vote on whether or not to authorize this war. Well, Ari Berman from Mother Jones is with us. It's a great one, you know, for a change. So your national voting correspondent for Mother Jones, welcome back.

[Ari Berman]

Thank you. Yeah, as long as we still have elections, I'm the voting.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, good point. And I know you'll always agree to come back because if you don't, I'll release the photo of you with my daughter and some other drunken friends laughing and.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's not Epstein level. You're making it sound a lot more incriminating than it.

[Podcast Host]

No, no, it's just.

[Ari Berman]

I was going to do a drinking game to see how long it would take for you. Did not have to wait long.

[Podcast Host]

It's a. You guys are having fun. Boy, did I hate the State of the Union address. It was longest and hits. Did you watch it?

[Ari Berman]

No.

[Podcast Host]

Good for you.

[Ari Berman]

Life's too short. I went to sleep, saw the highlights the next day.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, smart Good move. It beat his record from last year. It was 100 minutes or something, but it's the ugliest speech I've ever seen. Did you see the highlight of him attacking all the Somalis in America?

[Ari Berman]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

That was disgraceful. CNN did a quick fact check after the speech, and it was exhaustive. It was an amazing number of lies. And he said for the umpteenth time that foreign countries are paying the tariffs. And, Peter, can you just play this? Countries that were ripping us off for

[Ari Berman]

decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Podcast Host]

And, of course, Johnson and Vance are behind him. They aren't going like, that's not true. You know, Americans pay the tariffs. I don't know why one Democrat didn't yell. I guess Hakeem Jeffries told them not to say anything. So I think that was early in the speech. What light. Oh, what of the highlights you saw? What jumped out at you? Anything?

[Ari Berman]

Well, just Trump basically making it into a campaign speech. You know, the State of the Union is supposed to be presidential. Right. And he's just talking like he's on Newsmax for two hours.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Ari Berman]

And I mean, the part that I had to cover and follow was what he said about voting. He didn't say anything new about it, but the fact that he's calling Democrats cheaters in a State of the Union speech and saying the only way they win is if they cheat, which, of course, is the same kind of thing he said all the time in 2020 when he knew he was gonna lose. That was a pretty low moment, even for someone like Trump to go there in a presidential address. And I think it was a window into how he's approaching things, which he's already sort of preemptively trying to contest the 2026 midterms and trying to figure out what he can do to challenge the results like he did in 2020. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

I think taking the balance out of Fulton county, you know, they're going to come back and say there was a lot of fraud, but I don't think most Americans will believe them.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, there's no good outcome to them taking the ballots. I mean, there's no way that this ends well for American democracy. And the thing that really worried me about the taking of ballots was it just showed how far they're willing to go and how so many of the things that Trump was talked off the ledge with in 2020 are now happening. Right. Because he wanted to do this kind of thing in 2020.

[Podcast Host]

He wanted to take the voting machines. Yeah.

[Ari Berman]

He wanted to take the voting machines, and I'm sure he would have loved to take the ballots as well. And basically he was told, you can't do that. You don't have the power to do that. And he subsequently said he regretted not doing it. He said he thinks the National Guard is too weak to do. Wasn't that he had any moral problems with it. He said the National Guard was incapable of doing it. But I mean, the fact that they just went in and took these ballots

[Podcast Host]

and Tulsi Gamberg has what to do with it. I mean, she is Director of National Intelligence. I mean, I guess maybe didn't. Didn't Italian satellites change the voting totals in on machines?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, they can't seem to figure out if it was Italy, Iran, Venezuela. I mean, maybe they were all working in cahoots.

[Podcast Host]

I think Venezuela had to do. They designed the, the voting machines that. Yeah, FOX had to pay. What, for how much?

[Ari Berman]

700, $787 million to admit that it was all a bunch of lies. But the thing about Gabbard is her only portfolio with regards to elections would be to prevent foreign interference in elections.

[Podcast Host]

Well, that's the Italian satellites.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. Well, there you go. But when this affidavit was released, basically showing the evidence they had to try to get the search warrant, I thought there would at least be some kind of allegation of foreign interference to explain why Gabbard was there. There wasn't even allegation of it. So all these crazy theories that you're talking about, they didn't even make it into the affidavit, which raised any even more questions about what she was doing there. But I think the Fulton county raid shows that a lot of things are on the table for 2026 that didn't happen in 2020.

[Podcast Host]

It's setting up the. See, they're going to come back and say Trump got more votes in Fulton county than were there. And that's why we have to, you know, interfere. One of the things in the speech, they said that immigrants come in, illegal immigrants come in and vote and, and, and vote for Democrats, and Democrats bring them in to do that. Now, Now. Okay, that doesn't happen. I mean, every once in a while, I suppose, an immigrant comes in, gets, starts his path to citizenship and thinks they can vote. But aren't the numbers. These kinds of things are tracked or tested, and it's minuscule. Right.

[Ari Berman]

It's an infinitesimally small number of people that you're talking about. I mean, states audit their voting rolls all the time. So that's the best indication of this. Utah just audited their voter rolls. Out of 2.1 million voters, they didn't find a single non citizen who was registered to vote. Georgia did a review of 8.2 million people on its voter rolls. They found nine cases of people that were non citizens who were registered to vote. North Carolina did a similar audit of 7 million voters. They found, like, seven people. So you're talking about, like, such a small handful of people who honestly would just largely be registered through a mistake, right? Through some interaction with DMV or wherever. Or every once in a while you have a case of a legal permanent resident, someone who's been here a long time, was a green card. There was a case of a mayor in rural Kansas who. He was elected mayor, and he thought, okay, well, I'm elected mayor, I can vote. And by the way, he voted for Trump and said he would do it again. But, like, that's pretty rare. And it just doesn't make any logical sense why someone who comes here, documented or undocumented, would risk fines, prison, and deportation to cast a ballot. I mean, it doesn't make any rational sense. And, of course, it's not backed up by the data, either.

[Podcast Host]

Now, Bannon has been spreading the same bullshit about undocumented immigrants voting here. Can we play this, Peter? He's basically saying that ICE should be at the voting booths if they don't

[Ari Berman]

have illegal aliens voting, if they don't have these phony migrants that are here on these phony programs that are at the polls. And you're damn right we're going to have ICE surround the polls come November.

[Podcast Host]

We're not going to sit here and

[Ari Berman]

allow you to steal the country again.

[Podcast Host]

Okay? Now, is it legal? I mean, ICE can't show up at the polls, can they?

[Ari Berman]

No. I mean, there's. There's a lot of rules about what you can and can't do at polling places. Just sending. I mean, Bannon can talk about this as much as he wants, but he doesn't have the power to unilaterally do it. The administration actually just said in a call with election officials, ICE is not going to be at polling places Now. Now we'll see. I would argue that ICE operations in conjunction with an election, meaning if ICE is present like they were in Minnesota or like they could be in other places in the run up to the election, that in and of itself could have a chilling effect on people's ability to participate. So ICE doesn't need to be at the polls. To be able to suppress votes. But I. What happened in Minnesota led, as you know very well. Al, you're from there.

[Podcast Host]

Yep.

[Ari Berman]

Had a big backlash effect, and I think made it less likely that this kind of thing is going to happen in the future.

[Podcast Host]

AM Americans now are against our immigration policy by a healthy margin, including, you know, Texas is. They created five new seats, and part of them are in Latino areas. And Latinos went for Trump in Texas, I believe, in the last election, but they aren't now.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. Trump. The latest poll I saw just showed that Trump doesn't have majority support among Latinos anymore. And in Texas, that's raising real questions about whether Republicans are going to pick up those five seats that Trump wanted in Texas, I mean, they could still pick up three seats, but they could lose those two majority Hispanic districts that they drew. And it also may give Republicans some pause elsewhere. I know Florida is still considering whether to redistrict. I mean, how aggressive do they get if there's some regression in terms of how Republicans are doing with Latino voters? ICE has been deporting a lot of Cuban Americans or Cubans in Florida that

[Podcast Host]

can't be popular with the Cuban population there.

[Ari Berman]

No, I mean, I think it's a very staunchly Republican community, but I think there's. There's fissures that are emerging. So this has gone from an area of strength. This was the highest polling issue for Trump immigration, to a major vulnerability of his that has real electoral consequences.

[Podcast Host]

So. Okay, let's go back to Fulton County. Trump was recently in Georgia, and he told the crowd they cheated like dogs in Fulton County. So the seizing the ballots there was really about setting up these midterms, was about creating uncertainty about the fairness of these elections. Right?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. I mean, it's as much about 2026 and 2028 as it was about 2020 when it came to seizing the ballots. And it could play out in a number of different ways. They could, as you said, they could say, we now know it's fraudulent, therefore we need to do these kind of raids all across the country. Right. And we need to seize the voting machines and invoke the Insurrection act and declare a national emergency and do all that stuff. They could also hope that people may not turn out in Fulton county, which is home to Atlanta, the largest county in the state, may not turn out for fear that they're worried their ballots are going to be taken again. Right. There's also a very specific thing in Fulton county, which is that Georgia changed its voting laws after the 2020 election. In response to Trump's lies, one of the things they did was give the state election board, which now has a

[Podcast Host]

Trump aligned majority, treated to the board,

[Ari Berman]

MAGA majority and they could take over Fulton County. They, according to law, they have the power to take over up to four elections offices they view as underperforming. And they've been trying to get these records from Fulton county for a while. I mean, MAGA members from the state election board showed up at the Fulton county raid and said this was our subpoena. So they were quite literally taking credit for it and they were taking selfies and they were, they were on Bannon show and this was like a huge culmination of their efforts and they have to go through a process and it's not at all clear that's going to happen. But if they were to appoint someone, the state election board were appoint someone in charge of Fulton county, that would basically sideline the Democratic majority on the Fulton county election board and allow them to do things like close polling places, cut early voting locations, remove voters from the rolls.

[Podcast Host]

How often can they, when can they remove voters from the rolls? Like 30 days.

[Ari Berman]

Georgia has a, has a unique system where you can try to challenge eligibility before the election, but then there's all these post election challenges. And the other thing they did in that 2020 law was was they allowed unlimited challenges to voter eligibility. So right wing election deniers have been challenging tens of thousands of people's eligibility in Georgia counties. They've been unsuccessful because they haven't provided the evidence, but also because the largest counties in Georgia have Democratic majorities on their election board. But if, for example, there was to be someone running Fulton county elections that was subservient to the MAGA majority in the state election board, they could greenlight those kind of voter challenges. And that would have a really big impact in Georgia because Georgia has a competitive U.S. senate race. John Ossoff's up again. And they also have races for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state attorney general. I mean, every statewide race is up in Georgia in 2026. So there are dynamics that are unique to Fulton County.

[Podcast Host]

And Fulton is by far the largest county in the state.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, it's 10% of the state. It's the largest county in the state. It's home to Atlanta. It's got a huge black population. So there were real reasons, I think, why they picked Fulton county in terms of the first county they were going to try to seize the ballots in.

[Podcast Host]

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[Podcast Host]

And we are back with Ari Bur government. I'm wondering, can Trump invoke the Insurrection act if he say, you know, wants to, I don't know, send troops into elections?

[Ari Berman]

I mean, this is all uncharted territory. Theoretically, he could invoke it. Now, whether it would actually be upheld by the courts.

[Podcast Host]

Maybe he shouldn't have insulted Coney Barrett and Gorsuch.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, you know, yeah, that wasn't very smart. He might need their. He might need their votes because, I

[Podcast Host]

mean, he said what, that their families were embarrassed.

[Ari Berman]

I mean, this was another thing where I just was crazy that it didn't get more attention. Like, imagine if Biden had attacked the families of a Supreme Court justice, how much blowback there would have been? And just like, it's just he was

[Podcast Host]

saying their families would be embarrassed for them. What else did he say? Oh, that they're in the pocket of foreign actors.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. I don't know what. I mean, this is a court that has given Trump King, like, power. I mean, I would argue the Supreme Court is a major reason why Trump won the 2024 election. The fact that he didn't have to go to trial on inciting the insurrection, I think was a major reason that he won. So, I mean, they've enabled him. The Supreme Court ruled that he has immunity. Prosecuted. Yeah, he had immunity. I mean, they basically said he had immunity. So it made it very, very difficult to be able to try him. And that was always the most important case. Right. The other things were consequential, but they were.

[Podcast Host]

The Florida judge wasn't going to allow that to go forward.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, that may have been the easiest slam dunk case in terms of the classified intelligence in Mar a Lago, but. Yeah, but again, these were sort of like the New York case, the Florida case. These were. The main reason why Trump should not have been reelected was because he incited insurrection. That kind of like got to the heart of the matter. And that would have happened in the middle of an election year, and Americans were denied hearing that evidence, and so people's memories faded from that. So the Supreme Court has enabled him in so many different ways. But I do think that the decision on the National Guard was revealing in terms of what Trump might do for elections, because they basically said, absent some kind of national emergency, you can't use the military for regular law enforcement. And presumably the same kind of thing holds where you can't use the military to do elections enforcement either, because that's not their job.

[Podcast Host]

But he can say there's an emergency, and that would eventually, hopefully, work its way up to the corridor.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, I guess the idea was that he would do it, and then they would create such a climate of fear or whatever. They would do things so quickly that courts couldn't respond to them. But I think it's. It's very clear in the Constitution that the President has very little power with regards to elections. And Trump is trying to circumvent that every way he can. But he's basically boxed in by the fact that the founders were afraid of a king like dictator unilaterally taking power. So they. They gave a lot of power to the states. And that is something that Trump keeps trying to circumvent through executive orders and other means, but he keeps running up to the reality that the Constitution is very clear that states, with oversight from Congress, control the elections in America, not the President.

[Podcast Host]

Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, is. Is that going to the court? That's before the court, right?

[Ari Berman]

Yes. Just waiting on a decision.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

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[Podcast Host]

And if that happens sooner rather than later, they're going to get rid of these, like, majority minority districts, that kind of thing that we're.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. I mean, it could. It could have a huge impact on the midterms if it happens soon, because if they were to find that this key part of the Voting Rights act was unconstitutional, or just narrow it to the point of irrelevancy, which I think is the more likely outcome.

[Podcast Host]

Explain what it is. Explain section what Section two is.

[Ari Berman]

So Section two prohibits dilution or denial of voting rights for people of color. So it both protects, like, against voting laws that would discriminate against people of color. But in the context of redistricting, which is what this case from Louisiana is about, it prevents dilution of the minority vote. And the way it's been used in redistricting is it has allowed the creation of majority minority districts, districts in which blacks, Latinos, or other minorities combine to have a majority.

[Podcast Host]

And this is because states like, particularly in the south, would gerrymander or draw districts so that minorities would have any representation in color.

[Ari Berman]

You had these states like Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia that had these huge black populations. But the congressional delegations and the local delegations were all white. And so after the Voting Rights act passed in 1965, civil rights groups started bringing litigation to create new seats, particularly for black voters that have been underrepresented for such a long time. And then more recently, the supreme court ruled in 2023 that Alabama had to create a second majority Black district. And then that led to Louisiana having. Creating a second majority black district. This was. And this was pretty cut and dry. And the fact that the Supreme Court, the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, it was Roberts, and he got Kavanaugh to agree to it in Alabama. And, I mean, it seemed pretty straightforward that Louisiana was just doing what Alabama did. And in fact, Louisiana has a larger black population than Alabama. But then a group of what they called non African American plaintiffs, they can't just call them white voters, but they added.

[Podcast Host]

They added a second majority.

[Ari Berman]

It is second majority minority district in Louisiana that was challenged by a group of white voters. It was heard once by the court. The court punted the case and said it wanted to reopen the case to challenge the Constitution of the Voting Rights act, which is a very ominous sign. And then Louisiana came in and said, you should strike down the Section two of the Voting Rights act and say that it doesn't pertain to redistricting. And if that were to happen relatively soon, that would allow Louisiana and other Southern states to redraw their districts in a way that would take away these majority minority districts that are held by Democrats. And it depends on what the timing is, but it could shift 5, 10, even potentially up to 19 seats if it happens soon. If it happened in June, when these blockbuster cases usually come out, it would be a lot harder for states to redraw their districts for 2026. It would still be a big deal, but it would have less effect on the midterms.

[Podcast Host]

Well, we think that the Democrats will do well in the midterms, but there have been a number of districts. I mean, there's been gerrymandering, like in Texas. And California passed something to compensate for that. Five seats. What other states have been doing this. This is like Missouri. Is that one seat or.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. So it started basically with a big Republican advantage. It started with Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, and that theoretically gave Trump seven new seats. Then the Democrats fought back in California. They passed the map that could give Democrats five more seats. A dish. A district in Utah was basically redrawn. That would give Democrats another seat. So then they basically pulled mostly even. And then Trump started pressuring other states. They didn't follow through. Like, Indiana didn't want to do it. Kansas, Nebraska, they didn't want to do it. It kind of lost steam. It was, it was so, so like just braz. Partisan that even in Republican supermajority states, they were like, we. This is just, this is just too much for us to do. And then the big two wild. There's sort of like a few different wild cards that Virginia Democrats were trying to do it in April through a referendum. Like in California, they have to clear some hurdles in the courts because these red counties keep blocking the referendum from happening. And then they have to appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court. But assume that happens and it passes, that will give Democrats something like two to four new seats in Virginia. Then Florida is going to do it in April. That could give Republicans four new seats. So Virginia and Florida could kind of cancel each other out. So the big wild card is the Supreme Court, because if the Supreme Court were to strike down Section two of the Voting Rights Act, Republican states could rush in and redraw their, their maps. Some Democrat states could do it, too, but I think it would be harder for them to do it in time for the midterms.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, let's talk about the Save America Act. Is that the iteration that's now before?

[Ari Berman]

That's the new iteration of the SAVE Act?

[Podcast Host]

What was the difference between the old SAVE act and the new Save America Act?

[Ari Berman]

The SAVE act was basically just to show your papers bill mandating that someone would have to show a birth certificate or a passport to register to vote. The Save America act still has that as its centerpiece, but they added a voter ID requirement, I think largely just for messaging purposes, to say the usual things. Everyone has an id, so what's the big deal? And they also added another provision that hasn't gotten much attention that would require states to hand over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security. That's something that the Department of Justice has been trying to get states to do. They've sued 25 states.

[Podcast Host]

I know that when Bondi, when Minnesota was trying to get rid of ice, she said, we'll hand in your voter rolls.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, and that was a big tell. I mean, because this was something that had not gotten a lot of attention, the fact that DOJ wanted all 50 states voter rolls.

[Podcast Host]

So what are in voter rolls? I mean, if they, if this bill passes, which it won't. Right. Or they have to get rid of the filibuster or what do they have to do to pass this Save America?

[Ari Berman]

They have to circumvent the filibuster, which as you know from being in the Senate is very hard to do. There's, there's not 50 votes for doing it. Now they're saying have a talking filibuster. Make Democrats stand up there all day.

[Podcast Host]

Well, you need 60. You need 60. They don't have 60. We had 60. We had 60. Like for the Affordable Care Act.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. You know, back when Democratic senators were elected from places like South Dakota and Nebraska and North Dakota.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ari Berman]

North Dakota, wasn't it? Both Dakotas.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ari Berman]

At one point. Point. Yeah. Heidi Heidkamp. Right.

[Podcast Host]

And Dorgan.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah. Anyway, they don't have 60 votes. They don't even have 50 votes for the talking filibuster. That Thune basically poured cold water on this whole thing recently and basically said the votes aren't there. And that was clear from the beginning. The votes aren't there. It's just there's been so much crazy sentiment whipped up by Trump and Musk and sort of the right wing influencer Echo sphere. So, yeah, it's not going to pass the Senate, but of course they're getting a lot of political mileage out of it because then if it doesn't pass, they can. Well, first Trump will try to issue another executive order that'll likely be blocked and they can say, this is another reason why it's clear Democrats are cheating. Therefore we have no choice but to do more things like seize the ballots, et cetera. So they'll use the failure of the bill as a reason to try to contest the election.

[Podcast Host]

Now, in the bill, you need a, either a birth certificate or a passport, is that right?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, those are the most common documents you need to register. So I mean, that's a lot more burdensome than requiring photo ID to vote because people don't carry their passports or their birth certificates around with them. The Brennan center for justice did a study. They found that 21 million Americans don't have ready access to their citizenship. I think that probably understates the number because there's a lot more people that are affected.

[Podcast Host]

So you need a passport or a birth certificate to vote in, register or to, to register. Yeah, well, you don't carry if you can't register. No, no, but I know, but you can. I guess to register you can bring your, your birth certificate. Now that I oddly, that works against Republican women because Republican women are more likely to change their name when they get married. So your birth certificate doesn't work. If you've done that, there's two ways

[Ari Berman]

it hurts Republican constituencies. First, 69 million married women have taken their partner's name. So their, their married name is different than their birth certificate name. Married women who take their partner's names are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. So it hurts Republicans more there. Secondly, you have to show your documentation in person at an elections office. And if you live in a rural area, for example, in a place like Wyoming, you have to travel a long way to be able to reach an elections office. It's not like going to the dmv. And so those two parts of the bill, the married women part and the show your papers in person and elections office part, those hurt Republicans more than the Democrats. And so this whole bill is sort of premised in the idea that like Democrats are going to be hurt more than Republicans. Republicans. I would argue that's not true based on the data. I would also that it's just also not true based on the coalitions of the party. Because burdens on voting tend to hurt people that are less motivated to participate. Democrats are a lot more motivated to participate, so they're much more likely to drive five hours to show their papers in person than Republicans are right now. So the whole, the whole premise of the idea I think is wrong.

[Podcast Host]

But Republicans show up for Trump. I mean, Trump has a base, he has a MAGA base that will show up for him. And they don't show up in midterms,

[Ari Berman]

they don't show up in midterms. And also Trump won infrequent voters, low frequency voters in the last presidential election. Those are the people that are usually have problems with these kind of barriers to voting. Regular voters tend to find a way to circumvent obstacles that are put in their path. Infrequent voters have a harder time doing it. They're less familiar with the system or they decide not to vote at all. And so the whole idea that, I mean first off, it's premise on a lie that non citizens are voting and that there's rampant voter fraud. But even, even if you just look at the politics of it, the idea that Republicans would do better when fewer people vote, not even sure that's true anymore if you look at the midterm environment.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so Republicans want to eliminate early voting. Can you vote only on election day? Is that it?

[Ari Berman]

That's their ultimate plan? Like, that's what, that's what, like Trump and the election denial people want. They want, like to go only back to election day. Now, every smart Republican strategist would say that's insane. And they don't want to do that. I mean, Republicans have eagerly embraced early voting and even mail voting, despite what Trump has said. And so the smart Republicans hate when Trump says we should have no male voting because that would undercut their get out the vote efforts. In places like Florida, they would even hate even more if they said no early voting, because in places like Texas, they have three weeks of early voting. And that's a major way that Republicans get to the polls. And so if you're basically saying you only have one day to vote, that makes it very hard to track who's cast their ballots because you're eliminating the earlier options that you can use to check people off the list in terms of get out the vote efforts. It also means that you, if there's any kind of problem with voting on election day, you don't know who's gonna be most inconvenienced by it. So it's just crazy to think that we're gonna essentially eliminate the way that half, I mean, half of all Americans vote through mail or through early voting. So the idea that you're just gonna eliminate the voting methods used by half the public, I don't think that would be very popular.

[Podcast Host]

Well, he laid out the exceptions in the State of the Union speech.

[Ari Berman]

Well, they're pretty narrow. I mean, basically saying military people overseas, people who illness. I think there was to get to the polls. Yeah, but of course, when, when it came time to co. To vote by mail in Texas under Covid, fear of COVID was not a reason to get a mail ballot. So I mean, like this, this would, this would disenfranchise a lot of Republicans and I think take it. Whatever advantage that Republicans have built with turnout, doing things like getting rid of mail voting, getting rid of early voting would eliminate those kind of things.

[Podcast Host]

Now, do they get rid of dropboxes, for example? I mean, if you have to show your id, a Dropbox doesn't work, does it?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, they're already trying to get rid of dropboxes, but yeah, I mean, theoretically that would make it tough to be able to have a Dropbox. There's already lots of restrictions on dropboxes. For example, like places in Texas, places in Ohio have said, like, you can have one Dropbox per county. So like in Harris County, Texas, which has like 3 million people, has one Dropbox. I mean, they've sort of effectively eliminated them already, but I just don't think the Republicans have thought this through, to be totally honest with you. I think they're so fixated on these lies that Democrats are cheating. They have not thought about the fact that they are promoting bills that could hurt their own voters. Okay, most. And I don't think we can appeal to them morally on this issue. So I'm just trying to appeal to them politically. Like, like, like, you may believe that this is a hill you want to die on, but at the end of the day, all you're doing is killing your own voters in the process.

[Podcast Host]

Now Trump controls DOJ and the FBI and ice. Can he use them to limit Republican losses in any way?

[Ari Berman]

Well, I mean, that's what he wants to do, but the question is, can he actually do it in a situation where so much power is decentralized and given to the states? And so, like, DOJ is suing states to get their voter rolls, they haven't had a lot of success in doing it. The FBI did convince a judge to let them have access to the ballots in Fulton county, but once we saw the evidence, which was not really evidence, it was a bunch of recycled complaints from election deniers, it raised a lot of questions about why a judge gave them that search warrant in the first place, and I think may make it harder to do in other places. So that's really the clash that we're seeing it play out in the midterms, which is Trump's desire to use the federal government in unprecedented ways and particularly use law enforcement in unprecedented ways to try to control voting, versus the fact that he doesn't really have the power under the Constitution to do any of that. And so we're sort of entering uncharted territory here and what ultimately happens.

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[Podcast Host]

predictions, predictions in terms of It's a long way away when I see people predict, oh well, this is going to be a Democratic sweep. It seems like it, but I get nervous. But how many Senate seats are in place? Is this right? Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Maine and North Carolina.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, I think those are in different tiers. Like Georgia seems safer. Ossoff has sort of consolidated the vote. The Fulton county stuff has really create a major backlash in Georgia, too. I mean, again, a lot of things that Trump does is counterproductive. And if if he wanted to depress Democratic votes in Fulton county with this raid, I'm based on my conversation with people in Georgia, he's done the opposite. He's pissed so many people off that I think you can almost guarantee there's going to be a high turnout of Democrats in Fulton county because of this. So Georgia is looking pretty Safe. North Carolina, they have Roy Cooper, the former governor, running. I think the conventional former governor. He has a good chance y Maine, sort of a wild card, depending on what happens with the primary. I think Texas sort of similarly, we don't know what's going to happen with the primary and how that's going to play out. Alaska, possible. They had a strong recruit in terms of Democrat, member of the House running. What else?

[Podcast Host]

Ohio. Sherrod.

[Ari Berman]

Ohio. I mean, Sherrod Brown's running again. Old friend. Yeah, but it's a, it's much tougher state than it used to be. So Democrats pretty much have to win. I think if there's what, there's six there, they have to win four of those or something like that.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[Ari Berman]

I think they have to win at least four of those races to take back. I mean, that's going to be tough, but not out of the realm of possibility. It just depends on whether the overperformance we've seen in some of these special elections, how much of that holds. Like, I don't think you're going to expect that Democrats are going to overperform by 17 points like they did in that Texas Senate district. But if they overperform by half of that right. Then some unexpected places could flip and maybe more in the House than the Senate, because it's hard to just sort of unexpectedly win a Senate race. But what I'm guessing is if there's kind of a wave environment that Democrats are going to pick up House seats that weren't on people's radar. And also some of the redistricting that they did could backfire because they did this very hastily. In certain places, like Texas, they used Trump's political performance in 2024, Trump's in a completely different place than you were in 2024.

[Podcast Host]

Also, midterms are different. Trump voters vote for Trump and don't show up midterms.

[Ari Berman]

I mean, there were reasons why Republicans in Texas didn't want to redraw the districts. It wasn't like because they were such great people. It was because they were worried about the unpredictability of a midterm environment and doing this so quickly. But I think what we should expect is that as Trump and his party look more likely to lose the midterms, the kind of insane schemes they draw up to try to influence the election are going to become crazier and crazier and more and more likely.

[Podcast Host]

Here's a question. If Democrats get a majority in the House and this isn't from your election expertise. If they get the majority, should they impeach Trump? And for what? And what exactly?

[Ari Berman]

I mean, there's going to be so many more impeachable offenses than there were before. I mean, it's really just a. I think it's less a question of morality because I think there'll be lots of reasons to impeach him.

[Podcast Host]

I think the emoluments clause, I mean,

[Ari Berman]

yeah, the grift alone is probably impeachable.

[Podcast Host]

Well, it's. You're not supposed to make money from being president, and the family is. It's now at over $4 billion or something.

[Ari Berman]

It's insane. Yeah. I mean, so I think it's just really a political question because obviously it wouldn't succeed in the Senate, and they do want to try to do something that then would maybe allow Trump to have some kind of comeback narrative. But the most important thing to me is just to have oversight back, because there's so many scandals that have gone under reported. And you even look at Epstein, look at how. What's happening in England with powerful people being held to account with Epstein compared to here, where the only people that seem to be being held to account are Bill and Hillary Clinton. I have to imagine that if Democrats get subpoena power, if they're in charge of overseeing the Department of Justice, things like that, they can start to do things to get accountability that have heretofore been impossible to achieve.

[Podcast Host]

Now, why are they subpoenaing Hillary? I mean, I don't think. I don't know.

[Ari Berman]

It's just. It's crazy to me that of all the Republicans that have been linked to Epstein, and of course, now we know that there's records of Trump that weren't included, that the Clintons are the only people that are gonna get deposed.

[Podcast Host]

Well, let's talk about that for a second. It's a weird thing to end on. I suppose

[Ari Berman]

it's been such an uplifting conversation otherwise.

[Podcast Host]

Well, this seems like a real accusation from a woman who went to the FBI on four different occasions to make her allegations against Trump, that he raped her when she was 13 and 14.

[Ari Berman]

I mean, we don't know what happened. I mean, this particular accusation may not be credible, but I think just the bigger fear is that they're just taking out everything that pertains to Trump. Right. Which is very plausible in terms of what this administration might do. So, I mean, it seems hard to imagine that more powerful Republicans aren't implicated in this. Remember, there was also when Ro Khanna and Massie and the other people went to see these records. I think they also said there was someone mentioned in corresponding with Epstein who they said got more votes than Jeb Bush in Iowa. That only leaves a handful of people they're talking about corresponding with Epstein around that time. So there's clearly people that have been, that are named in the Epstein files that the DOJ is protecting for one reason or another. And that I think that's the kind of thing that, that's the kind of seeming cover up that Americans want to know more about.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I don't want this thing to be true about Trump. Or do I? I don't know. It's pretty sordid and a weird note, I guess to end on, but.

[Ari Berman]

But yeah, I mean, it's just the point of back, back to what we were talking about. I think that Democrats in control of the House and possibly the Senate and having subpoena power, being in charge of committees, having, you know, investigative staffs, I mean, I think they can obviously block legislation from happening, but there's not a lot of legislating being done in Congress right now. I think it's the oversight and the ability to get material that wasn't out already, but also to spotlight things like you said, the graft and things like that that are going under the radar I think would be really, really consequential. And clearly that's why presidents don't normally care that much about a midterm. Obviously they don't want their party to lose. But we've never seen someone that was so afraid of losing like Trump is right now. And I think that's partly just because of his ego. He's obviously a narcissistic baby, but it's more so. The practical consequences of this is going to define his last two years in office. Investigation after investigation after investigation based on all the immoral and likely legal things he did in his first two years in office.

[Podcast Host]

Better note and on. Thank you.

[Ari Berman]

Always here to play cleanup for you.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke. The great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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