3638 - Death of the Voting Rights Act; The Coming Oil Shock w/ Rory Johnston, Ari Berman

Summary

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Podcast Summary – Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3638: "Death of the Voting Rights Act; The Coming Oil Shock"
Guests: Rory Johnston (Commodity Context), Ari Berman (Mother Jones)
Air Date: May 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles two urgent, intertwined crises: the catastrophic oil shock triggered by war in the Strait of Hormuz, and the alarming dismantling of the Voting Rights Act following recent Supreme Court decisions. Host Sam Seder is joined by oil market expert Rory Johnston to break down the current and future economic repercussions, and by renowned voting rights reporter Ari Berman to unpack the Supreme Court’s latest assault on American democracy. The tone throughout is urgent, irreverent, and deeply critical of current policy and legal trends.

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Key Segments & Discussions

1. Opening News & Political Context

(00:00–10:53)

• Sam Seder recaps chaotic headlines: Trump's reversal on Project Freedom in the Gulf; White House working with China; skyrocketing gas prices; Republican legislative stunts; Trump’s lawsuits and attacks; FDA and DOJ controversies.
• Seder uses the news as a springboard for broader critiques of transparency, Republican strategy, and the pervasive influence of Trumpism.

Notable Commentary

• On vaccines and public health:

  "It is just a question of odds. Do you want to increase your odds?"
  — Sam Seder (03:36)

• On Trump’s overnight policy U-turns:

  "It is strange that you would institute a policy and then reverse it two hours later."
  — Sam Seder (07:18)

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2. Project Freedom and the Oil Market Crisis

(10:53–46:46)

Background: Strait of Hormuz Blockade

• Trump’s Project Freedom—US attempts to reopen the Hormuz shipping strait—was abruptly paused, leading to widespread confusion and speculation (21:57).
• Media and White House spin is mocked; Seder calls out the absurdity of the administration’s explanations.
• The Iranian military’s actual impact on US strategy remains murky due to information blackouts.

Rory Johnston Interview

(starts 22:23 – core interview 23:04–46:46)

Oil Shock Context & Supply Deficit

• We’re not returning to prewar oil markets:

  "The world that was before the Iran war… is largely gone… We’re never going back."
  — Rory Johnston (23:04)

• Gas prices are up 50% from prewar levels; the closing of Hormuz has created a “historic, largest-in-history supply deficit.”

• Before the war, oil was actually heading for a global supply glut—now reversed entirely by the crisis (24:12).

Market Dynamics

• OPEC and Russia had to abandon production cuts due to losing market share to US/Canada/Latin America (25:26).
• Seder and Johnston discuss incentives for war:
  • Higher oil prices are windfalls for producers, but most didn’t want this level of chaos (27:40).

    "While US Shale producers are making, you know, bank... the volatility is quite damaging."
    — Rory Johnston (30:14)

Oil Pricing & Futures Trading

• Markets are paralyzed: traders fear the Trump admin might "open Hormuz" via a sudden social media post, wiping out bets overnight—massive volatility, no one wants to commit (34:15–37:06).
• Even if war ends today, a billion-barrel deficit persists—takes a year of strong surplus to recover, and that’s even before counting infrastructure damage (38:34).

Who Can Replace Lost Supply?

• Only a handful of countries—US, Canada, Guyana, Argentina, Brazil—can potentially make up the difference, and even then only slowly (38:34–40:44).
• Strategic downstream infrastructure (refineries, etc.) has been damaged, limiting how quickly production can rebound (40:42).

Iran’s Position

• Claims about Iran facing permanent damage if forced to shut wells are overstated. Iran previously recovered from near-total export bans; could, if needed, destroy/dump oil to keep operating (42:28).

Long-Term Effects

• Johnston warns: this crisis will likely accelerate the global transition away from oil, renewing focus on energy security and affordability—an echo of the rhetoric from 20 years ago (30:14–31:30).
• Wild card: As long as the admin keeps promising the end is “just weeks away,” no one will commit to new durable investments in alternative supply/infrastructure (46:07).

Notable Exchanges & Quotes

• On comical White House spin:

  "It’s just geriatric bedtime stories. It really is. Like Peter Pan, except you’re just 85."
  — Sam Seder (10:53)

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3. The Death of the Voting Rights Act

(48:22–82:44)

Ari Berman Interview

(starts 48:22)

Historical Arc: Decades-Long Demolition

• Shelby decision in 2013 gutted key VRA provisions, starting the domino effect.
• Chief Justice John Roberts has orchestrated a four-decade “war” to kill the law, achieving his goal with the 2026 decision.

  "John Roberts has had a four decade... war to kill the VRA. And it looks like he’s finally succeeded." — Ari Berman (49:41)

Why the Voting Rights Act Was Needed

• Protected Black voters in the South from disenfranchisement via poll taxes, literacy tests, and other racist barriers.

• The heart was Section 5 preclearance, requiring federal approval for changes in certain states/localities—a key tool to block discrimination before it occurred (51:04).

• Section 2 (nationwide), the remaining guardrail against racial discrimination in voting, has now also been effectively neutralized.

Breakdown of the 2026 Supreme Court Decision

• Decision brands efforts to create majority-minority districts as themselves “racist”—completely inverting historical intent (55:02–56:06).
• Under the new interpretation, only intentional discrimination counts; the Court ignores evidence and history of systemic and outcome-based (de facto) racism (56:52).
• Partisan gerrymandering is tacitly greenlit—if discrimination is for “party advantage,” it is "race-neutral" (59:14).

The Purcell Principle Ignored

• Supreme Court interjects changes mid-election in Louisiana, rewriting rules after tens of thousands of votes already cast—a violation of their own precedent (56:52–58:20).

Implications & The End of Multiracial Democracy in the South

• As gerrymanders proliferate, Black representation is erased even in majority-Black districts (68:17–70:22).
• Ari Berman underscores the cyclical pattern: after Reconstruction, racist intent was concealed by "neutral" laws (poll taxes, literacy tests). The Court has now enabled similar outcomes—without transparency or restraint.

  "They just completely either ignored or they knew this outcome was going to happen. This is what they want to happen. They want Republicans to be in control of Congress. They want white people to have more power than black people, because that's ultimately what's happening here." — Ari Berman (70:22)

Supreme Court Untethered from Precedent or Law

• The Court is poised to block even new voting rights legislation as "unconstitutional."
• Berman: Only Supreme Court reform can meaningfully address this abuse of judicial power (75:45–77:22).

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4. Immediate Election Threats

• Republican officials flout democratic norms, openly calling to cancel or "redo" elections already underway, under cover of redistricting (77:22–81:37).
• Berman worries that if Trump tries to suspend or dramatically curtail the general election, the current Court may enable him.

  "At this point, the guardrails are off, in other words." — Sam Seder (81:37)

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Notable Quotes & Excerpts (with Timestamps)

• On the White House's Hormuz messaging:
  "The White House must know what they’re doing. It’s just geriatric bedtime stories."
  — Sam Seder (10:53)

• On the historic nature of the oil shock:
  "We are down roughly a billion barrels of oil relative to what we thought we were going to produce this year. This is by far the largest supply shock in history."
  — Rory Johnston (36:40)

• On the erasure of Black representation:
  "You’re talking about taking away districts for people that fought for decades to get fair representation... Talking about basically rolling back an entire civil rights movement."
  — Ari Berman (68:17)

• On Supreme Court's new doctrine:
  "Partisan gerrymandering is now such a blanket term... basically impossible to imagine a situation in which they would strike down any voting map for being discriminatory at this point, unless it was somehow something that would benefit Republicans."
  — Ari Berman (61:38)

• Alito’s logic and racist intent:
  "He said that partisan advantage, in other words, gerrymandering, that takes place to help a particular party is okay, and that it is race neutral... It just so happens that black people vote for Democrats a lot."
  — Sam Seder (59:14)

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Timestamps – Key Topics

• 00:00–10:53 – News, vaccine PSA, opening satire on media and White House spin
• 21:57–46:46 – Rory Johnston interview on the oil crisis, market mechanics, global consequences
• 48:22–82:44 – Ari Berman interview on VRA, Supreme Court, American democracy in crisis
• 77:56 – Georgia’s GOP lawmaker endorsing election suspensions
• 81:37 – Final warnings about the lack of institutional guardrails
• 82:44–End – Closing remarks; call for Supreme Court and political reform

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• The episode is sharp, irreverent, and deeply alarmed about both economic and democratic backsliding in the US.
• The hosts and guests fuse expertise with satire, exposing the naked partisanship and historical reversals in US institutions.
• Both crises—oil and voting rights—are depicted as culminating from years of bad-faith policymaking, opportunism, and systemic rot.
• The conclusion is stark: these are not temporary setbacks, but potential tipping points in American history.

Highly recommended for anyone wanting a bracing, in-depth overview of May 2026’s twin American crises—and the structural forces driving them.

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Transcript

[Sam Seder]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, May 6, 2026. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Rory Johnston, oil market researcher, founder of the Commodity Context. Then Ari Berman, author, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones. Meanwhile, Trump freezes Project Freedom hours after it starts. White House supposedly believes the war ending agreement is near as it asks China for help. Of course this happens every time a Treasury yields break 4.4%. Gotta gotta help the bond market. Gas Prices however are 50% higher than pre war levels or 600% more in RFK Jr. Math. Republicans insert $1 billion for Trump's ballroom into their mass deportation reconciliation bill. Trump extracts revenge on Indiana lawmakers who wouldn't gerrymander. Almost half a dozen of them lost their primaries showing that to be a Republican is to be a Trumpista report. FDA has blocked publication of multiple studies showing the safety of the COVID 19 and shingles vaccines. DOJ challenging the constitutionality of the Presidential Records act and slow walking Freedom of Information act requests. In their pursuit of being the most transparent and open administration ever. Trump attacks the Pope again this on the eve of Marco Rubio's visit to the Vatican. And the Trump regime sues the state of Colorado to abolish its 37 year old assault weapons ban. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. It is Wednesday, or what Emma Viglin would call hump day if she were here today. She's not.

[Ari Berman]

You owe her royalties now.

[Sam Seder]

Yes, indeed. Oh yeah, that's. That's the sound I'm hearing that fan. We'll get to stuff in just a moment. We've got obviously a lot to get to today. I will just say that this report on the safety of both the COVID 19 vaccines and the shingles vaccines is a good opportunity to remind you to if you can, because I. It's now it's like it's. It's more pricey for a lot of people to get a COVID 19 booster. It is very much worth your while because as far as I can tell, most of these studies suggest that your chances of getting some type of long Covid illness increases with every time that you get infected with COVID That doesn't mean that There can't be people out there who have gotten Covid seven times and have no impact on them any more than it means that if you smoke two packs a day, you're guaranteed to die of lung cancer. It is just a question of odds. Do you want to increase your odds? I will also tell you that not only does research show that the shingles vaccine prevents shingles, which is a horrible thing to get, it also supposedly has sort of a side benefit of perhaps inhibiting types of dementia. I will also add for full disclosure that the shingles vaccine is a little bit painful and you have to get two of them, which is tough because you get your first one, it's just like, oh, I'm getting a shot. And then you're like. It's literally like someone smacks you in the head with a two by four. I mean, it only lasts 24 hours, 36 hours, not even. But it's unpleasant. But it's unpleasant enough that I know people who've gotten the first one and didn't get the second, but you got to buck up. The second one's usually easier. Actually. That's my PSA for the day. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio was on television or, you know, was giving a press conference sometime yesterday for I think like an hour and a half, basically justifying Project Freedom. And then they reversed Project Freedom, which was to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, presumably because we have the biggest oil shock perhaps ever lasted two hours. One ship may have gotten through. There were also reports of the potential of a ship, US guided ship or battleship being sunk. There were also reports of refuelers being shot down. It's very difficult to get actual information out of there. And I don't know why it is so, so difficult. I mean, we're only now months a plus into it, finding out that the Iranians were able to inflict, I don't know if devastating is the right word, but serious debilitating strikes on over a dozen U.S. bases. I think it was like 16. And now like satellite photos are coming out and people are seeing like, oh, wow. So the potential that Iran was able to inflict a lot more damage on our Project Freedom than has been reported is very possible. We just don't know. And in that instance, what would you do if you were a major news organization and you were talking to Donald Trump's closest fans, the sort of like the white knuckled hanger ons in the Republican Party, which is, you know, be honest with you, like 85% of the Republican Party Would you go on and say, fog of war, we're not sure exactly what's happening. It is strange that you would institute a policy and then reverse it two hours later. Or would you say Donald Trump is a genius and is performing 64 multi dimensional chess? We report. You decide. Go ahead. The President says based on the request of Pakistan and other countries, we have

[Rory Johnston]

mutually agreed that while the blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project

[Sam Seder]

Freedom will be paused for a short

[Rory Johnston]

period of time to see whether or

[Sam Seder]

not the agreement can be finalized and signed.

[Rory Johnston]

We suspect the President is letting the Iranians save face. The enemy just yesterday said they controlled the strait.

[Sam Seder]

That was obviously a lie.

[Rory Johnston]

And watching the Americans escort ship after ship out of the Gulf and them not being able to do anything about

[Sam Seder]

that was going to be humiliating. Not only were they going to lose

[Rory Johnston]

whatever military prestige they had left.

[Sam Seder]

Pause it for one second. Is he saying now, is he saying hypothetically, seeing the usher ship after ship through the Gulf, Is he saying hypothetically, or is he claiming that's what happened in those two hours? Incidentally, oil is not shipped on hovercrafts that go that quickly. So you know how Trump doesn't like to humiliate people. Yes. You know, go back a little bit. I mean, this is. I like to take the high road when possible.

[Rory Johnston]

Were they going to lose whatever military

[Sam Seder]

prestige they had left in the region?

[Rory Johnston]

Their negotiators weren't going to be able to fight for their position after they lost their last bargaining chip.

[Sam Seder]

The commander in chief must believe that the Iranians are serious about surrendering if he's going to pause Project Freedom for the sake of a deal. Because you could also continue Project Freedom during the negotiations. You know, you do want to get

[Rory Johnston]

these foreign ships moving.

[Sam Seder]

The President must know what he's doing. Find out how insane in the brain the regime really is. Which one that is exactly. That is the amount, like, just the absolute shamelessness to be able to say those words. I mean, the guy who wrote those words, I think is like, I'm proud of myself. This is a great piece of fiction. But to say those words and know, like, oh, I'm not shooting, like some type of ad or movie or TV show. Like, I'm not playing a newscaster. I'm actually a newscaster, and I'm saying these things. The White House must know what they're doing. It's just geriatric bedtime stories. It really is. It's like, life is beautiful for 60 nights. Like Peter Pan, except for you're just 85.

[Ari Berman]

This original Trump tweet is very funny.

[Sam Seder]

We have mutually agreed that while the

[Ari Berman]

blockade will remain in full force and

[Sam Seder]

effect, Project Freedom will be paused.

[Ari Berman]

That's like someone saying, we have mutually

[Sam Seder]

agreed that our friendship will remain in full force, but project our relationship will be paused for a short period. Oh, my God. I just, I cannot believe, like, that this guy can say this with a straight face. So the idea, just to be clear, they start Project Freedom within, I don't know, like 15 minutes. The Iranians get together and go, oh, guys, we are so screwed here. We can't. We have no options. We have absolutely no way of stopping this. Let's contact the White House right now and say, we're willing to negotiate. Let's get to an agreement. And so that maybe that takes five or 10 minutes. Somebody's got to find the phone and they call the White House and, you know, Trump has his secretary answer the phone. It's the Iranians. They want to have an agreement. Okay, let me just check with Pakistan. And within, like, they're, they're so efficient. Within, like 45 minutes, they're like, stop. We're going to stop Project Freedom. Because it really occurs to me that these guys backs are against the wall and I don't want them to feel embarrassed. That's going to be hard for them. I'm going to let them save face. The President must know what he's doing. You're getting so fast. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. I mean, this is a legitimate question. Do you think at the White House they're like, enraged or beside themselves that Waters was able to figure out what's going on? Because now the Iranians, who must be monitoring what Jesse Waters is saying, they know that, like, the whole point of us was to save face. Don't humiliate these people. And now, like, everybody knows that Waters knows that we're actually embarrassed. We can't go forward with this. He's blowing up the deal. I bet you they're really upset at the White House. Act like you've been there before. Jesse, Incidentally, this is the guy who met his current wife. I was just about to say that I think it was in her tires. Well, I mean, he was married to somebody else. And then to meet this wife, the way that he sort of put themselves, each other in a position, she was already a subordinate at his work. Right. But to his credit, he didn't want to have to say, maybe because the reason why he had his job was because the guy before him had said to his Producer, you know, we've got to get together and you're going to loo for my balls or whatever it was. It was because. And so he, he came up with the brilliant idea of, of slashing his producer's tires so that she couldn't leave the parking lot one night and he had to drive her home. Need a ride? And so this is a guy who, you know, can think about like 12 dimensional chess, 12 dimensional predation. Oh, here it is. Say, baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up. That's Bill O'Reilly. Oh, good. Yeah. What was the context for that one? Well, that was his, the audiobook of his novel. Oh, right.

[Ari Berman]

Say baby.

[Sam Seder]

Say, baby, put down that pipe and

[Ari Berman]

get my pipe up.

[Sam Seder]

I'm in. I know you think out of context that you think you know what that means, but that you probably don't, but the truth is you do. Not hard to, not hard to decode that. No, I'm just assuming it was a lead pipe that she was protecting herself from. Bill O'Reilly with. Exactly. In a moment, we'll be talking to Rory Johnston about the specifics of just how big of an oil shock we're going to feel, how this is all working. I mean, that's what this whole thing has come down to at this point. But first, a couple words from our sponsors. First sponsor is product I found very helpful for me, they actually tell you in the prompt talk about a specific time when your healthy eating went out the window. Always. My healthy eating went out the window always. I don't, and I don't get enough sun. And for years my doctor would tell me, you have a problem, you need more vitamin D. And then I would go to the pharmacy, I would buy a multivitamin, I would take it for 30 days or, you know, I'd miss a bunch of days for reasons I'll explain in a moment. And then I would forget to re up it. And the beauty about ritual. There's two things that I love about ritual. One is allows me to hit the key nutrient goals from a daily multivitamin. But the big thing for me is a, they send it on a regular basis monthly, so I never run out. Two, it is easy on your stomach, so when you remember to take it, you can just take it in that moment. You don't have to say like, oh, wait, I got to wait till I eat something and then you forget to take it. And then the other thing I like about it is I've come to understand that, like, you can get vitamins and if you don't know where it's sourced, you have no idea what's actually in the vitamins, what kind of heavy metals may be in the production process of where it comes from, et cetera, et cetera. Rituals Essential for Men is a science backed multivitamin has 10 key nutrients including omega 3 DHA to support heart and brain health and vitamin D3 to support normal muscle and immune function. And incidentally my doctor now says every year when I get my blood test I got my vitamin D is up and he's happy. Designed to be gentle on the stomach with a minty essence in every bottle. That helps taking a multis actually enjoyable. Instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% on your first [e-mail] majority that's ritual.com majority for 25% off your first. We'll put the details in the podcast and YouTube description. Also this episode brought to you by Wild Grain what is Wild Grain? It is amazing. It is the Wild Grain is the first baked from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, seasonal pastries and fresh pastas. Unlike store bought options. Although I don't even see store bought frozen. I mean you see it in the box. It's all that processed stuff. Wild grain uses simple ingredients, ingredients that you can pronounce and they use a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly and richer in nutrients and antioxidants. There's no preservatives, there's no shortcuts. And here's the beauty for someone like myself, you get fresh baked breads, croissants, pastries, cookies in 25 minutes or less. You literally, you don't thaw it, you take it out of the freezer, you drop it on a baking sheet and it is. You got like homemade bread. It's nuts. Wild Grains boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box and a new protein box. I make my kid fresh croissants on the weekend and it takes me about the same amount of time as it does to toast a piece of bread, but they're delicious. Imagine having fresh bakery quality bread, pastries and pasta at home without any trips to the store. And you don't have to take my word for it. They have over 40,000 5 star reviews and have been voted the best food subscription box by USA Today for three years in a row. Imagine bringing to like, you know, somebody invites you to dinner and you bring a fresh loaf of sourdough bread. It's nuts. For a limited time, Wild Grain is offering you $30 for your first box, plus free croissants for life when you go to wildgreen.com majority to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free croissant for life when you visit wildgrain.com majority or you can use the promo code Majority at checkout. We'll put all the information in the podcast. YouTube description Quick break. When we come back, Rory Johnston, oil market researcher, founder of Commodity Context, which provides in depth analysis of this current crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. We'll be right back after. Sam. Live. Let's play the clip. Hold open. Okay, okay. Yeah, cold open. That's what I meant.

[Rory Johnston]

As President Trump has said, and the facts clearly bear out, the United States of America holds all the cards. There is no scenario here in which if they decide to join a ladder

[Ari Berman]

of escalation, they wind up getting the last say.

[Rory Johnston]

But our preference is for these straits

[Ari Berman]

to be opened to the way they're supposed to be, open back to the way it was.

[Rory Johnston]

Anyone can use it. No mines in the water, nobody paying tolls.

[Sam Seder]

That's what we have to get back to.

[Rory Johnston]

And that's the goal here.

[Sam Seder]

The goal of our war in Iran is to get into a time machine and get back to the point where we were before we had attacked Iran. And that is because of oil shocks and gas prices not just in this country, but around the world. In this country, gas is now 50% higher than it was when we entered, we decided to attack Iran. Joining us now, Rory Johnson, oil market researcher, founder of Commodity Context. Rory, thanks so much for joining us. What are the chances of us getting back to where we were before?

[Rory Johnston]

I mean, the world that was before the Iran war. That world is largely gone. We're never going back to that exact world. But we will have to get back to a world in which the Strait of Hormuz is open. So the question is, how do we get from right now when the strait is closed, shut and double blockaded to a state where at least you have some ships able to cross Hormuz again? Because without those ships crossing Hormuz, the world is still staring down a massive historic largest in history supply deficit in the oil market that will continue to press prices higher.

[Sam Seder]

All right. So even, okay, my understanding now is, I mean, in this country, gas prices are at least 50% higher, like on average than they were whatever it was 45 days ago, which is Just shocking. Like, it just seems like this is the one button you could press where that would happen. Like there's almost no other way. It seems like there would be no other way to sort of say, like, I want gas prices to go up this quickly. This is the one lever I can pull.

[Rory Johnston]

Well, and again, I think, you know, to your point, not only in a normal market is that, is that true, but prior to the war, the world was staring down an ever larger supply glut of oil. We, you know, the outlook, my outlook prior to this war was for prices of crude oil and gasoline to head steady is steadily lower over the next 18 months, not even remain flat. So even relative to that, why was

[Sam Seder]

even higher, why was that, was that, is that because of slowing economic activity, is because China is developing more sustainable energy? What caused that glut?

[Rory Johnston]

Yeah, so interestingly, a lot of people looked at demand, but ironically in this context, demand was actually recovering and rebounding to where it was the prior year. The main thing that drove that glut was that OPEC had rapidly unwound its production cuts because it had spent the last three years artificially restraining supply to keep prices artificially higher. And eventually that proved unsustainable and they needed to walk it back. And that was basically they were doing full, like pull the band aid off and release back massive amounts of oil. At one point, at the end of last year, supply was growing globally at more than three times the pace of demand. And demand was actually growing pretty healthily.

[Ari Berman]

Again.

[Sam Seder]

Is that increase in supply was because Russia was sort of like desperate to sell their oil? Like there was a lot. It wasn't just coming from opec, it's just OPEC was the last sort of straw, as it were, or the last, I don't know, dam to just open it all. I mean, is that basically what was going on?

[Rory Johnston]

Well, Russia was actually part of the broader OPEC plus deal, so it was unwinding its production along the same line. Over the past three years, OPEC had cut something like 6 million barrels a day of oil from the global market to try ever, ever, kind of slippingly to keep prices around kind of 80 to $100 a barrel. And that proved unsustainable because in part, demand was slower. Non OPEC plus supply from the United States, from Canada, from a lot of Latin America was growing very quickly. So basically after that unsustainable attempt to keep prices higher, they were like, wow, this is failing and now we have to go back for market share because we've hemorrhaged all of this market share to non OPEC producers. So it was really that that was coming off.

[Sam Seder]

It raises the question before we get into sort of like, you know, what happens if this whole thing ends tomorrow in the straight of Hormuz? I want to, I want to get to there. But it does raise the question as to the incentive structure for different parties to encourage something like this. Because like, like we're saying like one lever going from prices that are sinking to prices that are skyrocketing and the costs associated with that oil. I mean, broadly speaking, I would imagine in a specific sense, not the case there, there are cases where this is not true. But broadly speaking, certainly for American producers, the cost of producing that one barrel that may have been $60 two months ago and now is $110, you know, maybe at the end of this week, I don't know the specific prices, but the cost of producing that same barrel of oil has not changed.

[Rory Johnston]

Yeah, that's, that's entirely correct. And when you look at commodity, so

[Sam Seder]

that means they're just making that much more profit. Right? Like, I mean, if somebody came to me and said, sam, here's a button where the majority report can do exactly the same thing tomorrow as it did today, except for people are going to pay double for it and all you got to do is press this button, I'll be like, okay.

[Rory Johnston]

I think the challenge here is, from the kind of Trump administration's perspective is that while US Shale producers are making, you know, bank in this kind of environment, there's no doubt that profitability has exploded in this environment. Prior to this war, we actually saw prices basically at break even points for US Shale. And this was the first year we were expecting to see a contraction in overall U.S. crude oil production for the first time since 2020. So I think this definitely shakes that loose. And I think there's a tendency, and I would say there's a tendency to almost sanity wash the Trump administration's agenda here that they're saying, oh, they meant to close the strait of Hormuz. Oh, this is part of this broad kind of effort to starve China of energy and to kind of flex US Energy dominance. But I would say generally that my, you know, base, my, my bias is entire crisis so far is that the Trump administration and Trump himself never meant to get into this quagmire, never meant to get into a multi week, multi month, you know, closure of Hormuz. Because now they're desperately, and as you played at the beginning, Rubio at this stage basically Is like, if we could just go back to where we were, like mid February, that would be great.

[Sam Seder]

Yes. Mulligan, Mulligan, please. Well, my point is not that the Trump administration planned this, but that there are parties who have access to the Trump administration. It could be countries, it could be producers who might say, like, yeah, bomb Iran. Like, no matter what the outcome is, I'm going to benefit. And so, you know, those, you know, I don't, I don't think Trump has the level of competence to, you know, come up with this plan. But I do think that there are people who say, like, it's in my best interest if there's a war with Iran. That might be from an ideological perspective. It might be because, you know, Israel perceived Iran as a threat. But there are other entities that would say, like, war in Iran is good for my business, and so I'm gonna encourage it. And, you know, I can't imagine a lot of people thought, like, it would become this much of a mess. But if I'm an American oil executive, I'm not sitting there lamenting this either.

[Rory Johnston]

Here's the thing, and I, And I think there is. I think this is a common kind of accusation towards the industry. But the one thing I will say here is that when I'm speaking to industry and people at the corporate side, they don't love this either. I think while it's obviously a boon to profitability, the volatility is quite damaging. And there is this view towards the long term of the industry, because at the same time, while this is absolutely booming, boosting profits in the near term and likely for the next year or two, at least in the longer term, like 10 years from now, Asia in particular is guaranteed to be consuming less oil. This is going to accelerate the energy transition because I think at one point, you know, the particularly mounting inflation and cost of living concerns, the kind of classic, more altruistic climate, climate concern kind of energy transition process and mandate. And the argument for it was kind of coming under fire and wasn't quite as effective. I think reframing this as one about this is about affordability. This is about energy security. This is about the future and kind of reducing dependence on the Middle East. Basically where the energy transition conversation was almost 20 years ago. Now, I think returning to those same talking points is what we're going to see from the kind of energy transition community for the next decade. I think we're going to hear lots about Hormuzz for the next decade to come.

[Sam Seder]

Right. And the reason why I would Imagine Exxon and Chevron, I think it was the other day, said, yeah, we're not going to be increasing production is because they don't want to build out the capacity, pay for the capacity, and then five years from now be like we're operating at, I don't know, 70% capacity. I'm just making up numbers. I have no idea how that works, but I would imagine that's the idea, right?

[Rory Johnston]

Absolutely. And I think particularly even into the shorter term, if the Trump administration keeps telling the market that this is two to three weeks away from ending every two weeks. I think, you know, no one has confidence, trader. Oil traders don't have the confidence to bid prices higher right now because it could get, they could get blown out to the downside by a true Social post this morning, as they basically did. And I think the same thing goes for investment. Who's going to, you know, at the best, US Shale responds faster than any other producers in the world. And it still takes them four to six months between investment decision and production. So who knows where we're going to be in four months, let alone six months.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, can you talk about that, that trader mentality? Because I'm not sure people fully understand this or I should stop projecting. I don't fully understand this. The idea is when I'm trading oil, I'm not trading oil today. I'm trading oil in some time period out in the future. I don't know if it's 60 days, 90 days, 30 days, 120 days. And I'm trying to predict what the price is going to be then. And if the Straight of Hormuz opens up tomorrow, the price is going to be very different than it would be if it's closed two weeks out and then opens up, or four weeks out and then opens up and six weeks out and open up. Like there's so much volume, like potential, sort of like twists and turns once you get a week out that it's impossible to predict what the price is going to be in the future. And so if I bid if oil, correct me if I'm right, but if I'm wrong, if oil is $100 today and I think this is going to continue on, I might say, like, hey, I'll buy oil at 110 and deliver it to people at 120 because it's going to be 120 in six weeks. But if I buy it, or even if I buy it at 100 today and it's 110 in six weeks, I'm doing great. But if it's $98 in six weeks, I'm screwed. And so nobody's willing to necessarily put upward pressure on the price of oil because that's not going to be delivered for a while when oil could be much cheaper in the future.

[Rory Johnston]

So I think let's split this in two pieces. So I think there are. When you're talking about futures, when most of us Google the price of oil, what we normally see is what we call the prompt futures contract for WTI or Brent. These are the two major global benchmarks. Those are trading for some future date. So Brent right now, prompt Brent, which is the global benchmark that's trading for July delivery right now. But there are nearer term deliverable contracts for crude oil in what we call spot markets, or essentially for immediate delivery. And one of the hallmarks of this crisis is the blowout between those prices, what we call backwardation, or essentially a big premium on current barrels, what Bloomberg called asap deliverable barrels, which I like that framing. And the big thing here is that that incentivizes inventory drawdowns and everything else. So that is what we would expect to see. That I think is a degree of normal. The element that you're talking about, this kind of inability or difficulty for traders to get especially long or kind of bid these prices higher is I think those prices are the value of a July deliverable barrel today, slightly different than what the price will actually be in July. Those are slightly different things. But even in the shorter term, and that's in most traders are in that prompt futures contract, even as a proxy of today, they bid high. But as soon as you get to like 1 10, 11 15, sure, the fundamentals of supply and demand are still bullish and pointing up, but if at any moment Trump can come onto True Social and say Hormuz is opened and then prices on that day fall $15 a barrel in 15 minutes. It doesn't really matter. You're going to get blown out of your position anyways. So I think, even if, you know, one thing I've heard a lot right now is that traders by and large in the oil market are all bullish, but very few of them are buying. And I think that's the kind of element that the, you know, the volatility is so wide and kind of the downside risk is so acute. Given the propensity to kind of bid these prices down on these True Social posts or whatever else, I think that's what's really freaking the market out and making it harder and Harder to anticipate or to pull forward some of that suspected, you know, supply loss. And just to put in perspective here, even if we were to reopen today, the Strait of Hormuz, we are down roughly a billion barrels of oil relative to what we thought we were going to produce this year. That is a staggeringly large volume of oil and is the equivalent of a very, very severe deficit over the entire course of a normal year. And we've got that in two months. This is by far the largest supply shock in history. But at this stage, given the markets apprehension with this pricing else we've been talking about, it feels like we're going to need to wait until inventories draw down just truly worrying levels, until the market starts responding higher.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, all right, so there's, there's two different things that I want. Those are the two questions I had next. We're down a billion barrels for the year if it ends today. Yep. The capacity to make up that deficit is what? Like, because it seems like not only we down a billion, a billion barrels for the year in terms of world usage, and it feels like because of the existing inventories that people had and being spent down the. The, the snake has swallowed the rat, but it hasn't made it even remotely down the body yet. We can see it, but it hasn't. It hasn' process through the system yet. But staying on the billion barrels, the capacity to make up those barrels, you know, if there was a, if everything got rebuilt, I'm asking like, what is the capacity for that? And then also sort of like secondarily, is there also, even if it was to end today, is there an automatic deficit because of all the infrastructure that may have been destroyed? And our capacity to get back to parity is not only there, but even if we go at full tilt, there's still going to be an even greater deficit.

[Rory Johnston]

Yeah. So I think actually two questions and then one leads into the other very nicely. So what is the capacity to fill in for this market? If we just snap back to where we were on February 1, before any of this really got going, when we had that surplus in the market we were looking at again, it was supposed to be a very oversupplied market. In 2026, that market was looking at maybe 2, 2 to 3 million barrels a day on average expected oversupply. It would take the entire year of that level of surplus in order to fill back in that billion barrel deficit or billion barrel kind of hole we've created in the market. With the closure of Hormuz. But to your point, we don't know the full extent of the damage in the, in the Middle East Gulf and there's very unlikely that we're going to snap perfectly back into what was that surplus environment prior. So we need to, you know, we need to grow supply elsewhere as well. So where is it going to come from really? Outside of opec, there's five countries right now that make up the vast bulk of non OPEC plus production growth. That's the United States and Canada, Guyana, Argentina and Brazil. Those are the countries that combined are going to need to do a lot of heavy lifting in a future where we even get Hormuz reopened. Because again to your point, there has been damage in the region to infrastructure, but we don't know the full extent of it because many of the Gulf monarchies are very, very tight lipped about the full extent of damage. They don't want to be seen as weak and kind of losing any of this war. What we do know is that of the 13 million barrels a day of production and then just for context, we're talking about a roughly 100 to 105 million barrel a day market. So give or take, you know, 10 to 15% global supply hole that shut in production in the Gulf. That's confirmed. We know that's currently offline, that mostly hasn't been damaged to our knowledge. What has been damaged to our knowledge is downstream infrastructure. So things like refineries, petrochemical facilities and stuff like that. But I think one of the biggest telling pieces of information where to get is after Hormuz gets opened and after we can get tankers back into the Gulf to start refilling so that these wells can restart.

[Sam Seder]

What's the number of exactly barrels?

[Rory Johnston]

Okay, exactly. Are they loading crude oil or are they loading diesel? Because if the refineries have been damaged, then they'll just be loading crude because they can't refining it domestically. And that's going to cause other problems down the line.

[Sam Seder]

What of the ability. I mean, and I guess there's a similar story in terms of like nitrogen, right? And a similar story in terms of helium that are going to implicate food supplies and chip making too, is my understanding. But on the flip side, what is Iran's capacity to. You know what I've been, I've been reading and I don't know, I have, you know, I can't make an assessment of this. Maybe you can. That Iran also has its own window, that its stocks of oil are getting to the point where they can't Store it anywhere. They can't get it on enough trains going east, I guess, or north. And they only have so many boats that are on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz and they have only so many facilities to store oil. And that if they stop their oil drilling, they have a problem because these are low pressure wells. And if you stop a low pressure well, it can be really damaging to the wells and very difficult to restart them. And then they'll have done themselves a long term injury. How much of that is true and what parts of it are, are, or are not true?

[Rory Johnston]

So this has become a major talking point of the Trump administration and one of the justifications of the blockade, essentially that up until the blockade, one of the weird aspects of the crisis is that Iran had continued to export oil, which no one had really expected. You know, if Hormuz was closed, Hormuz was going to be closed, particularly with the US Navy floating off the coast. Very bizarre that it took six plus weeks for them to get into a blockade. But now the blockade is going. The argument is that like you're saying, after enough time they'll fill up their inventory, they'll fill up their tankers that are available and they'll be forced to shut in. First thing I'll note is that that 13 million barrels a day of other shut in Gulf production that's already been shut in. So for anything that the Trump administration is saying that they're going to put pressure on Iran through this, the rest of the Gulf has already been feeling a much larger amount of pressure for a much longer period of time. The other thing is that I'm pretty skeptical of the claims that if they were to shut in, there would be permanent damage. So, you know, this is mainly talking about exports and export volumes, let's say a million and a half barrels a day that was mostly zeroed out through 2020. So we know that they had already shut in these wells before and they got them back to where they are without that much trouble once sanctions allowed. So I would say I'm not, I'm not that worried about this. And if, and even if that was the case, like, if Iran was actually in like an existential kind of death spiral here, they could just literally produce oil and like dump it into the, dump it into the Gulf or set it on fire or whatever. They could keep, they could keep it flowing if they wanted, if the real worry was long term damage. So I'm not that worried about that. But I think to, you know, to the Trump administration's argument. There's no doubt that they are. Now, Iran is now earning less money from its, from its exports because it's able to export less oil. But it's also been letting the blockade has largely been letting other empty tankers back into the Gulf, which have then proved to be more storage capacity for Iran. So it's a major talking point. But also we've now seen that after, you know, a little bit of time now, Trump is apparently unwinding or considering unwinding the blockade. So it doesn't seem like it's working.

[Sam Seder]

Fox News host explained to me that he's doing that to help Iran save face. So I don't know if you've contemplated that. All right. Well, this has been very helpful, Rory. And so just very briefly, the helium and the nitrogen aspect, like, is it a similar dynamic? Is there an ability to, I mean, like, how far out do you need to have nitrogen to have the fertilizer for there to be food grown in the summer of. I don't know if we're talking about the summer 2026 or 2027. Well, it'd be 2027, I would imagine.

[Rory Johnston]

Yeah, I would say I'm not, I'm not as well read on the nitrogen or kind of the fertilizer. I mean, urea is also a major one that people are talking about or the helium space. But to this point, the same logic applies other, you know, to the degree that, you know, these commodities can be produced elsewhere with enough lead time because many of them are derivative products of the oil and gas industry in the Middle East. So there is oil and gas elsewhere. The United States could produce more helium and urea if it wanted or and if the market, if the market kind of facilitated it. But that's what we haven't seen. So I would say with a long enough timeline, yeah, we can find new supplies for this stuff. But again, we go back to is this about to end? Because the Trump administration keeps saying it's about to, which disincentivizes anyone from actually making these durable investments that would be required to diversify away from the strait in the first place.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, I'm suspect that we're going to see that type of, I mean, production, unless, of course, we were to nationalize it. And I guess my sense is, you know, if we're, we're worried about oil production Act.

[Ari Berman]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I mean, if we're worried that oil refineries are national security risk and our lack of helium, I say let's let the US Government get into that. Business and then we don't have to worry about the vagaries of the market. But that's for another day. Rory Johnston, really appreciate your time. We will link to commodity context. Thank you.

[Rory Johnston]

Thank you so much, Sam. And great to join you.

[Sam Seder]

Thanks. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Ari Berman, author and national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones. We'll be right back after this. Sam.

[Rory Johnston]

It.

[Sam Seder]

We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin out today. Joining us once again, Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones, author of Give Us the Ballot and Minority Rule, two books that are go deep into both the Voting Rights act and generally voting in this country. Ari, welcome back to the program. You and I, well, you and I have been having these conversations for probably a couple decades, but really we have been tracking on this iteration of the program since 2013. The Shelby ruling by the Supreme Court, that was the beginning of the end of the Voting Rights act, led by a Supreme Court that was, or I should say orchestrated by a Supreme Court that was led by a guy who's had this dream to get rid of the Voting Rights act since he was just a wee lawyer in the Reagan administration. Do tell.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, we keep talking about it and it keeps getting worse.

[Sam Seder]

Yes, it's true.

[Ari Berman]

Every conversation we have about this just is more and more depressing, dire because that unfortunately, is a state of democracy right now in America. And you're right, I mean, John Roberts has had a four decade, over 40 year war to kill the Voting Rights act. And it looks like he's finally succeeded. It started when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department where he led the effort to try to weaken the Voting Rights Act. At the time that was ultimately unsuccessful. Then he worked his way to become chief justice. And very quickly after becoming chief justice, he gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act. And then he said, oh, don't worry about the other parts of the Voting Rights Act. But then of course, they came for those parts of the Voting Rights Act. So it's really been a three part demolition of the law in 2013, 2021 and now in 2026. And now basically the law remains in name only.

[Sam Seder]

All right. Give us the abridged version of A, why we needed the Voting Rights Act. Younger people, older people may not be aware of why we needed it at this point. And then B, let's go through the various sections of the Voting Rights act that have now been either completely wiped out or so undermined that they might as well have been completely wiped out.

[Ari Berman]

Well, we needed the Voting Rights act to end the widespread disenfranchisement of black Americans in the South. When you had a situation and in places like Mississippi, only 6% of African Americans were registered to vote. And you had things like poll taxes and literacy tests and grandfather clauses and all white primaries that prevented black Americans from voting all across the segregated South. And that was a key part of how white supremacy was maintained during the Jim Crow era. And so the Voting Rights act got rid of that. It got rid of that through getting rid of those literacy tests and poll taxes and all those other suppressive devices by registering millions of Americans, by really making multiracial democracy possible for the first time. And the centerpiece of the law was Section 5 of the Voting Rights act that required states with a long history of discrimination to approve their voting changes with the federal government. That was the part of the law that blocked discrimination before it had even occurred. That was what the Supreme Court essentially got rid of in 2013. Then there was.

[Sam Seder]

And let me just interject here, that pre clearance provision, as it was referred to, wasn't just states in the South. It was specific counties across the country, a couple of which were in Queens. I mean, in New York. Right. For preclearance as well.

[Rory Johnston]

Yeah.

[Ari Berman]

It wasn't just the South. It included some parts of the north, some parts of the West. But I think the biggest impact came in the south, because those were the places that the people that passed the Voting Rights act knew once you got rid of a literacy test or a poll tax in Alabama or Mississippi, they were just gonna try to pass one. And so this really put the onus on the states to prove that they were not discriminating. And that part of the law blocked 3,000 discriminatory voting changes from 1965 to 2013. And so had a huge impact, not just in the 1960s, but in the decades since. So that was the part of the Voting Rights act that this court got rid of in 2013. Then there was another part of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, which applied nationwide, which prevented racial discrimination in voting, both in terms of voting laws and also voting maps. And the way that Section 2 was used, most notably with redistricting, was it was used to create majority minority districts, particularly majority black districts throughout the South. And that's what the Supreme Court went after enrolled was unconstitutional in their decision last week.

[Sam Seder]

And let. I mean, walk us through this decision. And there's. There's actually sort of like, multiple levels of egregiousness in this decision, ranging from the actual decision to the certification of changes in the certification of the decision and the notion that it's sort of like distinct from the Voting Rights Act, Purcell, the sort of the Purcell doctrine, which is sort of just like how you employ these things. But so, so walk us through this. And we should also say during Shelby you had people like Scalia who blessedly has passed, but unfortunately has been replaced by just as odious people who was saying that, who said at that time that A, A racism is basically over in this country and B, he ignored that the Voting Rights act had been reauthorized. I think it was. What was it in 2008 or 2000? 4006, 2006, by the Senate and the House, like 99% reauthorized. And Scalia said, if I'm not mistaken, something to the effect of like, the only reason why they reauthorized it and voted for it is cuz they were more or less like embarrassed to be seen as being racist.

[Ari Berman]

I mean, he said, he said the Voting Rights act had led to a perpetuation of racial entitlement. And then he mocked the act itself and said the Voting Rights act, how could anyone vote against that? And like he was the only man in America brave enough to do anything about it. And I think that's kind of like how the Supreme Court views themselves now. Like they are the only people brave enough to take down the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And so the decision is egregious in terms of the substance of it. No doubt about it. I mean, they basically just ignore 250 years of discrimination in America to get this ruling. They completely rewrite the 15th amendment. They basically say when you consider race under the 15th amendment, that is unconstitutional. The 50th amendment was explicitly about race. It says that the right to vote shall not be abridged or denied on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

[Rory Johnston]

Right.

[Ari Berman]

So it explicitly mentions race because it was about getting rid of slavery and giving black men the right to vote. And the Voting Rights act was the tool to effectuate the 15th Amendment. So they completely turned it on its head. And then in terms of the timing, the Supreme Court has said over and over, you shouldn't change voting laws in the middle of an election. They said that Texas redistricting map, which they put in place in December, was too close to the election to block. The primaries were 15 weeks away at that point. When they allowed the Texas map to go into effect. They then allowed a Louisiana map to go into effect, essentially starting a new redistributing process in Louisiana with 17 days before the primary when people had already voted.

[Sam Seder]

42,000 votes.

[Ari Berman]

42,000 people had already voted by mail. And so they have now created a whole new redistricting arms race. You have Tennessee's going first and then Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina. I mean, they have completely interjected themselves in this election in a way that is totally contrary to what they claimed was their stated principle about how elections are supposed to work.

[Sam Seder]

And we should say that stated principle was exercised like two or four years ago. Right. I mean, wasn't there like a case like in Alabama where they said like probably racially gerrymandered, but we can't get to it because we're too close to the election? I feel like even in 2022, Louisiana made Louisiana, the state made that argument. You can't intercede even though you found this to be racial bias because we're so close to the election.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, they've repeatedly done this. They've repeatedly interpreted their so called Purcell principle in a way that basically just makes it so they can strike down any Democratic map they don't like or reinstate any kind of Republican map they do like or Republican restriction on voting. But this, I mean, this is the most vulnerable, flagrant violation of the so called Purcell Principle I've ever seen. Because, I mean, primaries were under.

[Sam Seder]

The votes have been cast.

[Ari Berman]

Votes have been cast and they're just flat out canceling elections. And this is, by the way, the very thing that people are worried about in November, which is could they do stuff like this? And we keep saying no, they can't do it and then they're doing it. So, I mean, like, I am very weary of saying you can't do anything. Based on how the Supreme Court is operating and how Southern states are acting right now and what the Trump administration is doing, I think we should be very, very clear of saying this cannot happen, this will not occur. Based on the events we've seen in the last week, it's very clear that they are willing to go as far as they can possibly take it to retain power. And absent some kind of crazy, crazy insurrection like argument, they're going to get a green light from the Supreme Court.

[Sam Seder]

Let's talk about Alito. In his decision here, he had said, and I don't have the exact lines in front of me, but he said that partisan advantage, in other words, gerrymandering, that takes place to help a particular party is okay, and that it is race neutral by if you can show that it helps one party more than another. Why couldn't you take the words poll tax and do the exact same test? Why couldn't you say. Why couldn't you say literacy tests and do the exact same texts? I mean, his argument is that because most. You're getting confused. They want to disenfranchise Democrats, not black people. It just so happens that black people vote for Democrats a lot. So it looks like. But it's not intended to discriminate against people because of their race.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly. That was the exact problem during Jim Crow, which is that poll taxes and literacy tests, they didn't explicitly mention race. And that was one reason why the segregationists, that's where they came up with the idea. That's how they came up with them, and that's why the Supreme Court ultimately upheld them as well. That this was the history of white supremacy in this country, that everyone knew what was going on, but it wasn't illegal because it wasn't specifically mentioned in that way. And Alito knows that. I mean, they're basically just coming up with new tests that they can figure out how to disenfranchise black voters but make it seem like they're not doing it. So it's very clear what the agenda is here. It's just kind of amazing that they can say it with a straight face when everyone knows what's going on. And by the way, even on partisan gerrymandering, when in the Russo case in 2018, when they said that partisan gerrymandering claims shouldn't be brought in federal court, they said in that decision, gerrymandering is bad, but we don't think the federal court should have a role in policing it. Now they've gone to gerrymandering is good. And by the way, you could basically do it in any form you want. Like, partisan gerrymandering is now such a blanket term. Like legislatures have to be given a presumption of good faith when they do it, even if they're clearly doing something that's blatantly partisan. And that this effort to do partisan gerrymandering just completely can mask any kind of racial gerrymandering at this point. So it's basically impossible to imagine a situation in which they would strike down any voting map for being discriminatory at this point, unless it was somehow something that would benefit Republicans.

[Sam Seder]

Right. But I want to just lay this out because there's this concept in US Law, history, de jure racism, which is like explicit racism in the laws. Like, you know, well, white people and black people can't get married. Anti miscegenation laws. Or, you know, you could, if you passed a law that said black people can't vote. And then you have de facto racism, which is divorced of intent, because sometimes it's very difficult to assess intent, because sometimes people obfuscate what their intent is. But even if it isn't, even if you don't mean to be racist by disenfranchising significant amounts of black people, it still is racist. Right. Like. And that de facto racism is. What is the whole point of. Not the whole point, but a vast. A very big point of why we had a Voting Rights act is because even if you don't mean to be racist, included in that is we can't, you know, we can't get into your heart and sort of like, say, you're only 49% racist in this. The idea is that we want to have a society where race has obviously been a significant problem. We want to make sure that it doesn't come back, even if we don't mean it to. And that's why we were ensuring districts. If you had a state like Tennessee, where you have. I don't know what it is across the state, I think in Memphis, it's like 60% black, that you will have a representative who is black. And regardless of whether Democrats vote for black people. I mean, if black people vote for Democrats or Republicans. And that is gone now.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, well, so most legislators are smart enough not to just flat out say, I'm passing this map to disenfranchise black people, which is why intentional discrimination is hard to prove rather than just showing the effects of discrimination. And it was disturbing in the opinion to see Alito basically say intentional discrimination is required under the 15th Amendment, because he just basically rewrote, under his interpretation, the 15th Amendment. I mean, the 15th Amendment never said that. And also, there's a whole backstory here, which is in 1980, there was a case out of Alabama where the Supreme Court ruled that intentional discrimination was required to create a majority black district. And Congress overruled them in the 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. And that's what John Roberts was working on at the time. He was working on trying to make it so that you had to prove intentional discrimination, because he knew that would lead to many, many, many fewer violations of the VRA ultimately being proved. And the fact that they lost this fight before Congress, but then just decided to totally overrule Congress and resurrect their position from 40 years ago was pretty astonishing to me in terms of how this court operates. Like, there's no deference whatsoever to precedent, to overwhelmingly popular laws, to laws that have been reauthorized multiple times. I mean, it really feels like the court thinks that they're the only people that can properly interpret the Voting Rights Act. And I think, to me, it's just another example of how the court is just totally untethered from the law at this point.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, who knows if they actually think what they're doing is right or if it's just like, we're gonna win. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what we do. We gotta win. We gotta have the power.

[Ari Berman]

Power.

[Sam Seder]

It could go either way. But I. But I want to just hit this point. Like, it seems to me that from a rhetorical standpoint, the issue isn't whether we can improve. We can prove racist intent. It seems to me that, like, we can look at outcomes that in and of themselves, regardless of intent, are racist. Like, you know, it doesn't matter. If I meant to get somebody wet when I was wielding a hose, I did it. And the idea is that we don't want people to be wet. I'm just using this as an example because it's obvious. And. But that's. I mean, that's what's here. Like, clearly, we're going to have a Congress that is going to have far less black people in it. At the end of the day, we're going to have areas of the country where there's a majority of black people, and it's going to be because of the nature of the gerrymander, it's going to make it impossible for a black person to get elected. And it doesn't matter if, you know, like, if the Republicans did this just because they want to control Congress and so they want more Republicans or not, or if they did it because they don't like black people. First off, both things can be true, but more importantly, it doesn't matter. The idea is you cannot pursue a partisan advantage if the cost is racist.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, well, that's right. I mean, the ultimate thing that should matter is the result, what happens as a result. And that's why I think also just looking narrowly at the politics of it is wrong. Right, because you're not just talking about redrawing one district here, redrawing one district here. I mean, you're talking about taking away districts for People that fought for decades to get fair representation, that were disenfranchised for so many years. And you're talking about states like Mississippi that where the population's 40% black, they could have no blacks members of Congress. And so the state where Martin Luther King was killed is now not going to have any more majority black districts. I mean, just this is talking about. Talking about basically rolling back an entire civil rights movement. You're not just talking about eliminating one seat here to benefit Republicans or two seats there. I mean, this is a systemic dismantling of the civil rights era and of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. And what we learned from history is that once you dismantle these districts, it's often very, very difficult to get them back. I mean, during Jim Crow, when they were the first black office holders and they were ousted from office, it took 100 years for black people to get reelected again. And it was only because of the Voting Rights act that they did. And I'm not saying that same kind of situation is going to happen here, but it was that kind of history that Alito completely ignored in his decision. And he, like Roberts did in Shelby county, had this. Had this sort of triumphant racial progress narrative, right? I mean, he got the actual facts wrong. He said the black white turnout gap is narrowing. In fact, it only narrowed in 2008 and 2012 when Obama was on the ballot. It's widened since.

[Sam Seder]

And it's actually widened, which incidentally, 2008, 2012, coincidentally, I mean, I should say really not coincidentally, were before 2013, when their assault on the Voting Rights act,

[Ari Berman]

and it's specifically widened because of their assault on the Voting Rights Act. And so they ignored all of that evidence. And I think they just. They just completely either ignored or they knew this outcome was going to happen. This is what they wanted. I mean, my. My view at the end of the day is this is what they want to happen. They want Republicans to be in control of Congress. They want white people to have more power than black people, because that's ultimately what's happening here. And they want to be in charge of everything and above all the other branches of government in terms of how they operate. And I just don't know how anything gets done in this country without the composition of the Supreme Court changing.

[Sam Seder]

I think it was. I don't know if it was like 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I think I asked you to fill in for me on this show. I don't know if you remember this, and I think you did. I can't remember, but I do remember the guest that you wanted was Eric Foner.

[Rory Johnston]

And

[Sam Seder]

I. It was relevant because. Or it is relevant is because Reconstruction. And Foner was the. Is most associated with the sort of like, revisionist history of Reconstruction and the one who sort of like plugged a major hole in the Lost Cause myth and the Dunning School. I think it was right of history that argued that Reconstruction failed because of black incompetence essentially, as opposed to, like, programs and violent coups and killing. In South Carolina, they drove like, literally, like killed and then drove South Carolinian politicians out of the state. But the point being that the. As Reconstruction falls apart essentially because it's. Or I should say is dismantled and it's allowed to be dismantled by the union government or what had been the union government, we see the re emergence of applying all of these racist laws, but under the guise of some other agenda. We should have an electorate that can read. We should have an electorate that can afford to pay. We should have whatever it is. We're back in that era in many respects, like we are in a post Reconstruction era, at least in the context of the Supreme Court. And. And that era of the Supreme Court lasted essentially from, I don't know, just roughly 1870 up until at least until the New Deal. And then sort of like the vestiges of it remained, at least in terms of the laws, well into 1960 until the voting Rights Act. And at least part of it was undermined that court by FDR threatening to court pack. We're back to where that is. Is really your point?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, and I think it was Janee Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that said the Supreme Court has turned the Reconstruction Amendments into the Redemption Amendments, meaning that they have taken amendments that were supposed to enshrine equality into the Constitution and instead use them as weapons to target the very groups that the Reconstruction Amendments were met to enfranchise. And so this is why it's deeper than just one decision on the Voting Rights Act. I mean, they've completely eviscerated the 15th Amendment to the Constitution itself. And the whole notion of multiracial democracy is really under threat, particularly in the South. I mean, there's not gonna be multiracial democracy in the south anymore in most Southern states. I think people don't really realize this, that, like, outside of Georgia, like, there's gonna be all white office holders all across the south in the region that has the largest percentage of black Americans. I mean, it's really insane to think that we are headed back to that point that we're gonna go before the 1980s in terms of how representation looked. And so it's really, really alarming what's gonna happen. I don't know what Congress can do about it, because the other scary part of the opinion was basically by reinterpreting the 15th Amendment, there's even an open question about whether Congress could pass a new Voting Rights act or whether the Court would just strike that down.

[Sam Seder]

From the Court's perspective, they're implying that it would be unconstitutional.

[Ari Berman]

Exactly.

[Sam Seder]

To pass a law that has been law of the land for 50, 65 years.

[Ari Berman]

So in Shelby county, they actually said Congress could pass a new Voting Rights Act. In Calais, they didn't even. They suggested they couldn't. I mean, so that's another way that the Court has further eviscerated the right to vote. And so, basically, that's why I think Supreme Court reform has to be the most important issue for the Democratic Party right now. I mean, aside from what its economic platform, like, what it will do to help everyday Americans, that the need to reform this Supreme Court, to me, rises above all other rights because basically, this is what ties everything together. The Supreme Court is the major impediment to everything. And not only is it the impediment to everything, it makes it impossible to have a fair election in the first place. I would argue that we were deprived having a fair election in 2024 because the court gave Trump King, like power and he was not held accountable for the insurrection. I mean, that profoundly shaped the course of the last presidential election. And now you're talking about the 2026 election. Just as Democrats had fought Republicans to a draw in this gerrymandering arms race, the Supreme Court steps in and now is going to allow Republicans to pick up potentially a half a dozen more seats for the midterms, let alone what they're gonna do in 2027, 2028. And so that's why I just think that reforming the Supreme Court, whatever the ideas may be for it, has to jump to the front of the line in terms of the ultimate solution to this problem.

[Sam Seder]

You said earlier that Georgia may be the only state that remains having a contingency of black elected officials. I may have some bad news for you. This is a clip of. Who is this guy? What number is it? This is Representative Buddy Carter, and this is what he recommends the Georgia does in the wake of this Supreme Court ruling. And I'm glad that Tennessee and Alabama

[Rory Johnston]

are redrawing their districts.

[Sam Seder]

And I think that Georgia should do the same thing. Yes, we have started early voting, and, yes, it would be inconvenient, but. Inconvenient?

[Rory Johnston]

It's never too late to do the right thing. And the right thing is for the

[Sam Seder]

governor and for the legislature to call a special session to redistrict so that

[Rory Johnston]

Georgians will be represented by people who represent their values.

[Sam Seder]

We shouldn't have to suffer through the next two years just because it's inconvenient

[Rory Johnston]

to do it now. We need to suspend the House races,

[Ari Berman]

and we need to go ahead and

[Rory Johnston]

redistrict so that the Georgians would be represented in the next two years by

[Ari Berman]

people who represent their value.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Rory Johnston]

If you could just even take a moment and kind of, you know, walk our audience through, how might redistricting really impact the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans in the state of Georgia? Well, I could.

[Sam Seder]

We could potentially pick up two to

[Rory Johnston]

three seats in the state of Georgia,

[Sam Seder]

and that's important because that could impact the national majority. It actually could be the difference between us. We don't need to. I mean, it might be. Democrats are trying to respond by redistricting. But let's get to the heart of the matter. One, he calls it inconvenient that the election's already started. Like. Like. Like people have already voted. It would be inconvenient for all those people who voted to have to find out where they're supposed to vote now, because they theoretically would be in a different district. And then to revote. That would be inconvenient. You'd also have to probably print up new ballots. That would also be inconvenient. But then it would give Georgians the opportunity to be represented by people who share their values. What does that mean?

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, I mean, that's a clear dog whistle right there. I mean, presumably what they're saying is, you know, only white Republicans can represent the values of Georgia, let alone the side that the people that are elected in those districts they want to dismantle are choosing people who fit their values. But to me, it's just crazy, Sam, that suspending elections is now the default position of the Republican Party under Trump. I mean, we went from arguing that Trump would have no power to suspend the midterms, which I think is still true to now. All of these states just outright declaring emergencies to suspend elections. And the worrisome thing here is that's what Trump wants to do for November. Like, if Trump can't cancel the election, he wants to have some kind of emergency declaration in which he can say no mail voting, no voting machines, one day of voting, whatever it might be, and people are just assuming that would be held unconstitutional. I think it would be unconstitutional. Whether or not it would be held unconstitutional, though, and whether or not Republicans would speak up against it, to me, is a whole nother story. And the way that the Supreme Court has interjected themselves in this gerrymandering arms race in the middle of it, to me gives me a lot more pause about how far they'll go to protect the vote in November. I think if, for example, Trump issues a new executive order and it goes before the Supreme Court, I really would feel like all bets are off in that case. I don't think that the decision on the insurrection that they made, which was such a half assed lawsuit, to me, is enough to make me feel like, okay, I'm comfortable with the idea that if Trump tries to suspend the election or get rid of voting methods, that we just automatically assume the Supreme Court will strike him down.

[Sam Seder]

At this point, the guardrails are off, in other words. Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent and Mother Jones author of Give Us the Ballot, Minority Rule, Herding Donkeys, if you want to go back that far as well. But honestly, if folks want to understand the sort of everything that's involved in the Voting Rights act and all the implications of a minoritarian rule in this country, it would be hard, hard pressed to do better than Ari's two books. Ari Berman, thank you so much for joining us. I want to say always a pleasure, but a little bit harrowing. Getting more harrowing. Like, usually it's just depressing, but now it's also depressing and harrowing.

[Ari Berman]

Yeah, that's, that's that. I guess I'll be on my tombstone one day.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I hope I'm around to see that. I mean, I'm just saying, like, I don't want to pass. I don't want to pass anything. So you know what I mean?

[Ari Berman]

Don't kill me yet, Sam. I've been here a long time.

[Sam Seder]

Hang in there, hang in there is all I'm saying.

[Ari Berman]

Talk to you soon. All right, thanks.

[Sam Seder]

I didn't mean it that way. I mean, people understand what I meant, right? It sounded like you're talking to your arch nemesis. No, it's just like when I first started interviewing Ari, he was just like, young. He's like a kid. And now I realize we're both old and it's gotten, just, just gotten worse. I don't know, the whole thing is depressing. And I, around this time last year, probably Maybe like, I feel like in the summer of last year, I was like, you know, I was coming around on the idea that I wouldn't say coming around. I was beginning to really be concerned that the 2026 elections were not going to happen in some fashion or another. And then by fall, I think I was like, no, I just don't think there's a mechanism. And now I am back at there's we're watching mechanism. Like, I'm willing to take a bet that that 43,000 voters in Louisiana, the majority of them were Democratic voters. We know who the most motivated voters are. Like, we see this poll after poll, see it's special election after special election. We see, you know, early voting results versus election day results. I mean, you can't know this for a fact, although I imagine like they probably have data as to like, you know, Democrats versus Republicans that may even be out there by now. But I would feel very confident saying the, the majority of those votes cast were cast by Democrats. And I would also feel confident in saying that those Democrats might be more likely to revote than the Republicans who have revoted. But still the net effect is going to be you've been able to take a bunch of Democratic votes off the board and that's the agenda here. There's no reason to believe they're not going to do some iteration of this during the 2026 election. Now, it may not. They may not have be able to have, they may not have as much opportunity to do it to maintain the House. They might, but it's not inconceivable to me that like, you know, in a place like Ohio or a place like Iowa or Kansas, I mean, there's North Carolina or, you know, Georgia, Other states where they might be able to impact the Senate elections, they may be able to impact the House in terms of like, control. You know, the point is, is that the Supreme Court, which honestly I think you'd be very hard pressed to have found anybody two months ago who would say, I think plenty of people would say, like, they're getting rid of the Voting Rights Act. I mean, Ari has been saying that for years, but I think you'd be very hard pressed to find anybody who'd say, like, they're going to completely ignore Purcell, like they're not going to allow an election that is already casting ballots. Never mind, like, we're a certain amount of days out from election. Nevermind that they've printed the ballots. There's been over 40,000 votes cast and they're going to Just like, do over. This is so urgent. We got to do it over. I think you'd have been hard pressed to find anybody who believed that the Supreme Court would be that nakedly. That would be that naked. I mean, I don't, you know, That's it for us today. Oh, I also wanted to say before we go, this is a belated one day late. Happy birthday to regular listener, my friend Henry. Henry, this goes out to you. Happy birthday, buddy. It's my thing to never celebrate a birthday on the day of the birthday. I believe in extending it. It's very kind of you. Yeah. Why should someone have only one birthday? Why not two birthdays?

[Ari Berman]

You definitely didn't forget. You just like to stretch it out. That's very nice of you.

[Sam Seder]

Thank you. It's nice to be recognized. I appreciate that, folks. It's your support that makes the show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, you also get the fun half where you can IMs. And I am determined to take phone calls today, which means that we probably won't take phone calls today. We also might make one. Oh, that's right. Yes. Actually, that's a very good point. Should we just do that now? Yeah. Look, New York city has a 5 billion plus deficit because Eric Adams was not just super, super shady from a criminal perspective. Remember the Trump administration stop prosecuting him. But also, unsurprisingly,

[Rory Johnston]

is,

[Sam Seder]

unsurprisingly is also, is also incompetent. And so we have this big deficit. Zoran Mamdani ran on a platform of providing material benefits for people. We're going to need to tax the wealthy in this state. And I want to encourage all of you. Is this Kathy Hochul's number? Is it 518? Is this the number to her main office? Yeah, her main office at the governor's in Albany.

[Ari Berman]

As far as I know, that's what I'm looking at right now. Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

All right. Well, I want to encourage people. We're going to put up the chiron with Governor Hochul's number and encourage the governor to get behind raising taxes on the ultra wealthy in this state. We got a lot of people with a lot of money now. I know, but there's only so many fur sinks that you can have in your house. And so we need to get this going. 518474. I guess I can be public with this number. It's a public number. It's above your head. Right now? Yeah.

[Ari Berman]

On the screen.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, there we go. All right, I'm gonna just.

[Ari Berman]

Hello, we've reached the office of Governor Kathy Hochul.

[Sam Seder]

Our normal business hours are 9am to

[Ari Berman]

5pm Monday through Friday. To contact the governor directly, you may send a fax to 518-474-1513 or send mail to the honorable Kathy Hochul, New York State Executive Chamber, State Capitol, Albany, NY, 12224. You may also contact her through her website at www.Governor.ny.gov. to best address your call, please choose from the following. To leave a message sharing your ideas and opinions to help shape New York's

[Sam Seder]

Future, please press 1.

[Ari Berman]

To speak to an agent, please press 2. To repeat these options, please press 3.

[Sam Seder]

I think I want to speak to an agent. Affordability. This could be one of those situations where we could be spending the entire rest of the program. Even my phone just said, do you want to put this call on hold? We'll give it another minute or two and then I'll call back and leave a message. Classic. People are trying to figure out like if this is a Bruce Hornsby or.

[Ari Berman]

I was thinking it was Bruce Hornsby.

[Sam Seder]

Somebody was also saying against the Wind. That would be Bob Seeger. Right? Right. Ain't nothing gonna break a my stride. All right, I'm gonna give it another 30 seconds and then I'll call back and we'll do. Oh, geez. Wouldn't it be nice to be the type of person that enjoys this kind of music? Great. Yeah. Except for the show part. I feel like. I feel like it's doing a disservice to the audience at one point. Oh, yeah. You know what we should have, instead of just calling Kathy Hochul, we should have right here as a chiron, where you can order this album. All right, I'm going to call back and I'll leave the message and hopefully.

[Ari Berman]

Hello, you've reached the office of Governor Kathy Hochul. For normal business hours are 9am to 5.

[Sam Seder]

I'm gonna press one through Friday to contact. Record your message at the tone. When you are finished, hang up or press pound for more options. Governor, it's Sam Cedar. We've never met, but I am a constituent of yours in New York State and I'm also a tax paying constituent of yours. I think it's fine that I'm just a constituent. I live in New York. But nevertheless, I am calling to urge you, my highest sense of urgency, to protect essential services, reject any cuts in New York City or frankly, anywhere in the state. To health care, to food assistance, to public sector staffing. Donald Trump and the Republicans have cut enough on a national level in New York. We got to be doing the opposite. And instead what you should be doing is helping. Raising taxes on people who have obscene amounts of wealth. The wealth inequality we're experiencing in this country are levels that we haven't seen in 100 years. And large corporations, the ultra wealthy, they can afford to help the rest of us get better. Services cuts would drain our children's schools, mean people losing health care and food security, while the Epstein class is getting major tax breaks from Republicans nationally. You got to pick a side and you should be on the side of average New Yorkers. The legislature and the majority of voters support taxing the wealthy. The governor should side with working families. And again, not the richest people in the world. Don't cut services. Tax the Epstein class. Thank you very much. Appreciate the time. I tried to speak directly to you, but the whole time was just too long. I hope you understand. To send this message, press pound or hang up to play it. Your message has been sent. Sweet.

[Ari Berman]

If you would like to try an

[Sam Seder]

extension, you may do so now.

[Rory Johnston]

Goodbye.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, shoot. You thought too long about that, Sam. Trying to guess which one is Cap. I should have just hit one, right? Yeah, that's gotta be. That's gotta be the governor. Big dog. All right, folks, we're gonna see you in the fun half. Just a reminder, your support makes this show possible. Also, just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10 off Matt. What's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, we had an extra little fun half yesterday because Emma Viglin joined us for about an hour. So go check out that episode that's up there on YouTube. All right. Alright, we'll see you in the fun half three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow, what? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program. Fun half. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun path. No, me.

[Rory Johnston]

Keen, you did it.

[Sam Seder]

Fun path.

[Rory Johnston]

Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Seder]

Fun path. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy.

[Ari Berman]

It's all the boys today.

[Rory Johnston]

Fundamentally false. No.

[Sam Seder]

I'm sorry. Women. Stop talking for a second.

[Rory Johnston]

Let me finish.

[Ari Berman]

Where is this coming from?

[Sam Seder]

Dude.

[Ari Berman]

But.

[Sam Seder]

Dude. You want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.

[Ari Berman]

Hi.

[Sam Seder]

Me? This thing? Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. If it's me. Hello, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Rory Johnston]

Sports.

[Ari Berman]

We can discuss free markets. And we can discuss capitalism.

[Sam Seder]

I'm going to go par. Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Rory Johnston]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Seder]

We nailed it. We said so what's 79 plus 21? Challenge.

[Ari Berman]

Matt. I'm positively quivering.

[Sam Seder]

I believe 96. I want to say. 8 5, 7, 2, 1 0, 8 3, 5, 5, 011 half. 3, 8, 9, 11.

[Ari Berman]

For instance.

[Rory Johnston]

$3,400. $1,900.

[Sam Seder]

5, 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually. You're making me think less. But let me say this. You can call it satire.

[Rory Johnston]

Zimbabwe goes in.

[Sam Seder]

Satire.

[Rory Johnston]

On top of it all, my favorite

[Sam Seder]

part about you is just like every day, all day.

[Rory Johnston]

Like everything you do.

[Sam Seder]

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously. Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I don't know.

[Ari Berman]

But you should know,

[Sam Seder]

people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it. I do love that. Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'.

[Rory Johnston]

Clock.

[Sam Seder]

We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So. Screw room. Sent to a gulag.

[Rory Johnston]

Outrageous.

[Sam Seder]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you.

[Ari Berman]

Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Bye.