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- [00:00]
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This message comes from Babbel. Babbel's conversation based language technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world with lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com NPR spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com NPR rules and restrictions may apply. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
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B
I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
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C
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
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Today on the show, Florida is the latest state to enter the redistricting arms race. Yesterday, the state's legislature approved a new congressional map meant to boost Republicans chances of keeping control of the US House of Representatives. Ashley, what can you tell us?
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B
So, top line, this map would create about four more seats that could favor Republicans in the midterms this year. And the way Republicans are doing this is by breaking up some Democratic districts in Broward county as well as some districts in the Tampa and Orlando areas. These are some of like the fastest growing parts of the state. Also really diverse to be really important during presidentials. When Florida was a swing state, this is known as the i4 corridor. So it is kind of interesting that they're messing with that part of the state because swing voters lately have been swinging back to the Democratic Party. So that's something to watch. But yeah, there are a couple of long term members of Congress there that that could be poised to, to lose their seat depending how things shake out this year.
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A
Just want to jump in here really quickly, me and you both from Florida. And this is a really, I can't believe this hasn't happened before that we're talking Florida on a pod. Not to leave you out, Domenico, but I don't know, feels good. Um, Domenico, for people who are trying to keep a tally of where this redistricting arms race has gone, where are we at at this point? Who has the advantage?
- [02:05]
C
Well, we thought things were trending in Democrats direction after the Virginia redistricting ballot initiative passed narrowly that would allow Democrats to redraw that state and maybe get something like four seats out of Virginia. But now it looks like the pendulum's swung back a little bit more in Republicans favor again with this Florida map, if it goes through. And with the Supreme Court case this week that essentially said that there are racially gerrymandered districts that have to be redrawn.
- [02:39]
A
I do wonder you kind of touched on this, Ashley, about this idea that gets, I feel like it's gotten brought up in every state that has redistricted this question of like, is there the potential for a dummy mander, basically, where a legislature tries to redraw a map with one political goal in mind, but it ends up backfiring. Can you detail, I guess, whether that's possible, likely what questions we're going to be watching for in terms of whether this map is going to play out the way that Republicans in the Florida Legislature clearly hope it will?
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B
Yeah, I mean, I don't know about likely, but definitely very possible. And we don't even have to look that far back to see where existing seats that were drawn just a few years ago have already sort of backfired on Republicans. There were some state House races recently in Florida, including in these areas in the Tampa area and in Palm beach, where Mar a Lago is, which is just north of Broward. There were some seats there that were flipped that were drawn to favor Republicans, but Democrats overperformed. And that has been a trend this year, that Democrats have been overperforming in a lot of places. I mean, that's not to say that for sure there's gonna be that kind of performance come November. But there is a very high risk that Republicans made some seats that were, you know, let's say plus 10, Republican now making them plus seven or even lower. And if there's a wave election that is not gonna cut their way, probably,
- [04:03]
C
yeah, we've seen Democrats overperform in special election after special election, in congressional race after congressional race in this past year, plus of Trump being in office by double digits. So anything that is a seat that, you know, was won by less than 10 points or could be a less than 10 point advantage, that could be something that winds up being competitive, especially in a high wave. I also think there's the issue of Latinos in South Florida, and it's a little reminiscent of what Texas Republicans tried to do in assuming that the results from 2024 would be the results that happen in 2026, that Latinos in particular would stay in the Republican column. Now, Latinos in South Florida are not the same as Latinos in Texas. Different migratory patterns from where families came from, different amount of time being in the country in some respects. But you know, it can backfire on you if you think that a group that has just swung your way in one election is gonna continue to stay that way, especially since we've seen Latinos overall across the country really move away from Trump in big numbers in this past year.
- [05:15]
B
Plus, yeah, and one other note on Florida Latinos. South Florida Latinos are different than Central Florida Latinos. Like there is a big Puerto Rican population that grew a lot after Hurricane Maria in Central Florida. Democrats were hoping that they could possibly mobilize those voters for then Vice Kamala Harris, but that didn't quite pan out. We have seen trends where Latino voters have been shifting back towards the Democratic Party and Puerto Rican voters in particular tend to vote more with Democrats than definitely Cuban and Venezuelan voters in South Florida.
- [05:48]
C
Just when you think things are gonna be exactly the way you think they'll be in politics is when they're not.
- [05:53]
A
The next question I have about this Florida map, I guess is whether it is legal because I know that Florida has some sort of statewide anti gerrymandering provision or something. Ashley, can you explain that or how this map is going to work in practice?
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B
So Florida has an outright ban in its constitution against partisan gerrymandering. So gerrymandering that favors one party over the other as well as any maps that favor or disadvantage an incumbent. And these maps, you know, lawmakers are saying that was not the intent here, which is important. But you know, if you just look at the context in which these maps were drawn, they were drawn during an all out partisan gerrymandering fight. So, you know, if there are legal challenges to these maps, which I assume there are, that is going to be a hard case to make, which is that there was no intention to disadvantage Democrats in this.
- [06:47]
C
Although the state Supreme Court is probably one that sides more with Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of the state, then with Democrats. So it's probably something that would pass muster at least in that court.
- [07:00]
B
So DeSantis actually appointed six out of the seven justices in the state Supreme Court. Every single one of them was appointed by a Republican. So that court is very friendly to Republicans.
- [07:11]
A
Okay, so Domenico, the other thing that's playing in here is the Supreme Court decision from yesterday that weakens Section two of the Voting Rights Act. Everyone should go listen to our podcast yesterday where our colleague Hansi Lo Wang helpfully explained a very complicated ruling from the Supreme Court. But I'm wondering if that's going to play in to this whole thing, considering this map was approved just a couple hours after that ruling came out.
- [07:33]
C
Well, it's clearly been the trigger for this event, right? I mean, I think that Florida was thinking about redrawing maps, but this certainly makes it a little bit more of a legal case that they can make to say, well, look, here's the district that, you know, we want to redraw even by a little bit, to be able to change it and align, in their view, with the Supreme Court, while doing this in a way that someone like President Trump would like very much. And I also think it's interesting, we haven't heard a lot about Ron DeSantis in the past year or so. And, you know, when you look to 2028, someone like Gavin Newsom was able to use redistricting, the Democratic governor of California, in a way to sort of elevate his platform of how to fight back against Republicans. And now here you have somebody who's really been looking for a lane in the Trump era to also boost himself for 2028, and this might give him a little bit of that. Certainly the most sunlight we've seen on DeSantis since Trump has been in office for the second term.
- [08:31]
B
I don't think any part of this was really all that surprising to him. It is also kind of interesting that, you know, he moved the special session to come out around the time that the VRA opinion came down. I think there was, like, maybe a few hours that state senators had to even look over the opinion. And, you know, when they looked over it, they didn't seem to have any problem with moving forward with the maps. But, yeah, I mean, and also to Domenico's point, I mean, Ron DeSantis is term limited, so his political star is sort of waning right now, and there's not a lot of places for him to go with in Florida. Those, you know, he could run for Senate at some point. You know, who knows if he will? I think, you know, he ran for president. I don't know if those ambitions are gone. But, yeah, I think he is positioning himself for to at least be in Trump's favor, moving out of this role that he's been in.
- [09:18]
C
I think for the people who've run for president, the fire's never gone right, probably.
- [09:22]
A
It does feel like a little bit of a politically fraught calculation, though. I know you mentioned Newsom, who's obviously elevated himself using redistricting, but Abigail Spanberger has kind of had a little bit of an opposite impact in terms of it seems like it's complicated already. Her first year of governor of Virginia, who's somebody who was kind of identified as a more moderate candidate overseeing this very explicitly partisan power grab, for lack of a better term, I think is it's a complicated thing.
- [09:51]
B
Yeah, it's a tough spot. Voters don't like gerrymandering, but they don't like people just taking the punch and rolling over, either.
- [09:57]
A
All right. Well, let's take a quick break and more in just a moment.
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This year, for the first time in NPR's history, public media is operating without federal funding. That means NPR needs your support now more than ever. I'm Brittany Luce from It's Been a Minute. Please do your part to keep independent, reliable news coverage strong and support the podcasts that get you through the day by making a gift to for Public Media Giving days. Head over to donate.NPR.org
- [10:25]
A
and we're back. So we've been talking about redistricting in Florida and this new map that was passed by the Florida legislature yesterday. Is the great redistricting arms race over? Is our national nightmare finally done?
- [10:39]
B
No, no, not at all. I think this might be the beginning of what could be redistricting fights that are poised to happen every two years now. I mean, I don't see how we get out of this being a Groundhog Day situation every single time there's a big election coming. That's besides the fact that there's stuff in short order that could still happen, there are other states that might start looking at their maps. South Carolina has come up. Missouri, I mean, Missouri might be unlikely because they just redrew their maps. They just did a big partisan gerrymander. And I mean, there's only so much juice you can squeeze. Right. Like, it's gonna be hard for them to figure out another way to advantage Republicans there. But yeah, I but now that the court has said we one, do not care if you gerrymander for partisan gain, and two, the rules around race no longer are what they are. I mean, it has opened up a lot of lanes. The question is how close to filing deadlines everyone is when primaries start. And by the way, legislatures can change that. That is not immovable. It is just a matter of political will. And the open question is what states have the political will right now to do that?
- [11:43]
C
Yeah, it's kind of like we have a permanent campaign, you know, industrial complex maybe, where we're always kind of talking about the next presidential election or the next congressional election. It feels like that's where we're headed with redistricting when it used to be something that was once a decade. Now that that Pandora's box has been opened, it doesn't seem like we're going to be going back anytime soon.
- [12:07]
A
Yeah. And I guess as I'm saying that I'm realizing that Louisiana also another state that, like, I mean, the whole ruling yesterday was about Louisiana. So there's definitely at least one state who seems likely to do it too.
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C
And as we know now, Louisiana, their governor at least is saying that they wanna reschedule some of these congressional primaries that are supposed to take place next month. So we're watching out for what they're gonna wind up doing.
- [12:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's tempting to look at this everything through the lens of, like, how does this affect who's gonna control Congress? But this is how people are represented in their government. I mean, how does this actually impact voters, do you think, Ashley, on a
- [12:43]
B
basic level, if you're a voter in one of these districts, that changes. It confuses you. You don't have the same lawmaker representing you as you did before. And then what happens a lot is these districts split up. Communities, voting groups or neighborhoods that were together aren't anymore. It makes it harder to organize politically. Just like on a basic Democratic level, it's harder to have, like, solidarity in your voting district if it changes every two years. That's really hard to do. It also disempowers vot imagine being a Democratic voter who used to be able to elect Democrats in your congressional district, and now knowing that you have been literally drawn out of the possibility of doing that and then zooming out. I mean, there are some downstream effects of having fewer competitive districts, which this whole gerrymandering war has brought us to. I think we have the fewest amount of competitive districts moving into this election than we've ever had. And what that means is that voters really only have influence in elections during primaries. And a lot of voters don't vote in primaries. There's just like a lot of drop off in turnout for primaries. And also there are states that don't allow independent voters and people who are unaffiliated to vote in those elections. So it just affects like, one, who votes when their vote matters, and then two, how accountable lawmakers are to their voters. If it's clear you don't need any independents or voters from the opposite party to vote for you, I think it affects what you do and the policies you make.
- [14:17]
C
Yeah, it's hard enough to keep track of the news every day to let alone keep track of who your member of Congress is going to be or where the lines are that are drawn in your district and which office you can call to complain about, you know, a pothole, you know, all the way up to more important issues in your community. So that's something that relationship that members of Congress have with their community is something that is definitely affected by increased redistricting or at least will be over time.
- [14:47]
A
Well, so the last time that redistricting before this whole thing happened was really in the news to the level it is now was post 2010, after 2010 census. And there was this, it's been widely reported on the sort of Republican effort of state legislatures to really focus on mapmaking, which then you saw this trend across the country in a lot of places to move towards more nonpartisan redistricting. Is there any world where that's where this is headed? It's not just going to be in every two year fight that maybe there's going to be a pendulum swing because voters don't want to see their maps redrawn every two years.
- [15:21]
C
No, we saw a good government effort made mostly by Democrats in many states to try to have independent redistricting, to set a model for ways to do it. And now, given what President Trump did in asking text Texas to go and find him five congressional seats, that triggered this response from Democrats to kind of fight fire with fire. And we've seen that now in California, in Virginia and other places that are certainly willing to do that. And they're saying these are temporary measures, but there's not going to be some kind of detente where they all hold hands and jump the plank together and say, yeah, sure. It's more likely that they'll say, sure, let's try that. And then one of them steps back until the other one falls in the ocean. And that's kind of, I think, more of where our politics are right now, where there's not a lot of good faith happening across the aisle.
- [16:13]
B
Yes, this was started by President Trump, but this was codified by the Supreme Court. Like the rules are what they are. Because the justices said this is okay.
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And they said we're not gonna police partisan gerrymander in that decision. They were kind of like, this seems bad, but it's not our place basically to step in here, which does the same thing in effect.
- [16:33]
B
Yeah. I mean, if you're drinking down the street and the cop says, I won't fine you for that, that's to me, it's okay to drink in street. Like, what are we talking about here? It's kind of a tough thing to tell a bunch of people that you will not be penalized. We are not gonna do anything in our legal power to protect voters in this situation. And so if you have the incentive to draw maps that favor your party and your colleagues. I think it's inevitable that it's gonna happen unless. Yes. And I also think, like, things will probably get worse before people get tired enough and there's change.
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A
All right, I wanna switch topics here a little bit to some. Some pretty major campaign news that we got this morning. Governor Janet Mills in Maine, a Democrat, is suspending her campaign for Senate there. What do you guys make of this?
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C
Which we should get rid of the euphemism of suspending our campaign. She's dropping out, right? I mean, she's not running anymore.
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I didn't even realize I was speaking in euphoria. But totally you're out.
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C
It's one of those things.
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B
She gone.
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C
We always talk about someone suspending. She could always jump back in, but you could always jump back in if you dropped out. But she's dropping out because she said that she doesn't have the capability of raising money, which I found really interesting. And I reached out to some Republican and Democratic sources to find out if they think that that was really the reason. And you know what they sort of think is this is a chicken and an egg kind of thing. She was down in the polls to Graham Platner, who's a progressive upstart oyster farmer in Maine who had had a lot of support from outside progressive groups and notable politicians. And you know, she wasn't able to raise money cuz she was down in the polls. So this is somebody who is a popular governor. She's someone who Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer thought cut a good profile for a state that's got a kind of purplish tint to be able to defeat longtime Republican incumbent senator in Susan Collins. Susan Collins has been there for almost 30 years and has beaten back a lot of challengers in that time. Republicans are confident that they will, because Platner is less known, be able to use a lot of opposition research. This is gonna become a really ugly, negative campaign that in some respects is gonna come about his biography. Now, that said, the Democrats, the progressive part of the party, has a lot of the energy behind Platner. And you wanna have a candidate who's got energy behind them and not somebody who's just seen as, you know, the same old way, the same establishment way of doing things. Plus, I think she really got hurt by the fact that she was almost 80 years old herself. Janet Mills.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah. I mean, to be clear, there is virtually no world where Democrats find a way to retake the Senate without winning Maine. So I guess I'm wondering what this means, if it's going to be Platner versus Collins. What do you think that means for Democrats in the broader goal?
- [19:24]
C
Well, Democrats have a core four that they see as the states that are most likely to get them on that path to four, and that's Maine, North Carolina, Alaska and Ohio. And you might notice that Alaska and Ohio have been pretty red places for several election cycles. Right. Maine is difficult because you have again, an entrenched moderate Republican incumbent in the state. So they really need Maine. Democrats have no path without winning Maine. And even so, they still have some hurdles to overcome because a place like Alaska, which I think is the majority maker, I think whichever party wins Alaska probably wins the Senate majority. And Republicans are pretty confident that they're gonn hold that state. But Democrats like their candidate there in Mary Paltola. So I think that Maine is a Keystone in this 2026 midterm if Democrats are going to have any chance at taking back the Senate.
- [20:16]
A
All right, we can leave it there for today. Tomorrow on the podcast, we're going to hit all the other political news that we did not get to this week. Don't miss it. Hit that follow button wherever you listen to your podcasts. And make sure to listen. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
- [20:28]
B
I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
- [20:30]
C
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
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A
And thank you for listening to the Impure Politics podcast.