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Redistricting battles are spreading like wildfire in both red and blue states, and increasingly the fate of America’s electoral system is at the mercy of the courts. This week, Alex speaks to Virginia Representative Suhas Subramanyam about how Democrats in the state are planning to fight fire with fire after a major setback for their efforts to redraw voting lines, and she hears from New York State Senator Mike Gianaris about the risks of diluting minority and progressive votes. Then Alex speaks to Stacey Abrams, host of Crooked Media’s Assembly Required, about the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act and why Democrats can’t abandon their values to pursue Congressional seats.

TRANSCRIPT

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Hi, everyone. If you weren’t already thinking about this year’s midterm elections, well, it is a really good time to start because there have been some massive developments in just the last few days. Two weeks ago, conservatives on the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, of course, that a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, that white voters in that district were effectively being disenfranchised. Yes, really. And the ramifications of this are very hard to overstate. The case, Louisiana versus Callais, effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2. That allowed for the creation of majority-minority districts so that voters of color, people with an actual history of voter disenfranchisement here in the U.S., would not have their votes diluted, so that the voters of the color could effectively have a seat at the table. No longer. Every day since the conservatives on the court decided this case has basically been open season in the red states down south where the VRA was doing its most essential work. Republican leaders are now scrambling to redraw maps in their favor and that basically means cracking up minority districts and diluting the power of those Black and brown voters by spreading them into other redder districts all with the goal of cleaving off as many congressional seats from Democrats as possible right before the midterms. And when I say open season, I mean open season. Louisiana Republicans, fresh off that court victory, are now back to using their old racist maps, ones that eliminate one of the two majority Black districts in the state. Here’s what the Louisiana governor had to say about that.

[clip of reporter]: Would it concern you if there were no African American representatives from Louisiana in Congress?

[clip of Jeff Landry]: That’s a decision that the legislature is going to make, but I don’t believe that if that we have to go and draw a district that guarantees us a minority representation.

Alex Wagner: On Monday, Alabama Republicans dug up their old gerrymandered map from 2023, which had been blocked on racial grounds until the Supreme Court this week, yo ho ho, lifted the injunction on the old racist map. As of this recording, Politico is reporting that Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina is planning on calling a special session of the legislature to draw new maps, which would very likely cost 17 term Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn his seat. Clyburn is one of the most powerful Democratic leaders in Congress, and he is the only Black congressman, the only Democrat, in the state. And last week, both Tennessee and Florida approved new maps that, surprise, redistribute minority communities into whiter ones. When you look at what is happening in the South, thanks to the Supreme Court, along with the redistricting fever that hit Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina earlier this year. It sure looks like Republicans have gamed the system to ensure victory in November. And no one is happier about that than the man who has put Republicans on a path to lose, Donald Trump. Here he is reacting to the court’s decision on April 29th.

[clip of Donald Trump]: When did it come out? Just now?

[clip of reporter]: No, it came out this morning, but basically very much narrows the Voting Rights Act.

[clip of Donald Trump]: Who would you consider it, a win for who?

[clip of reporter]: A win for Republicans.

[clip of Donald Trump]: I love it! Republican governor [both speaking] what about it?

[clip of reporter]: Early voting begins Saturday there, for instance. Should they redraw the map in the next couple of weeks?

[clip of Donald Trump]: I would. I mean, yeah, I would say generally I would think that they would want to do it. Some were greatly helped and some, you know, didn’t make much difference. Yeah.

Alex Wagner: The GOP believes it can gain as many as 14 seats from these new house maps. I mean, yeah, maybe. At the end of the last week, Virginia Democrats were dealt a massive blow in their efforts to balance the scales when their state Supreme Court invalidated new voter approved maps that would have given Democrats as many as four new seats in the Old Dominion. That Virginia effort was a big deal for Democrats who have successfully redistricted parts of California and Utah potentially yielding six new seats. On its face, without Virginia, the math is not great, nor is the broader attack on racial justice. And so now Democrats are being forced to regroup and rethink their strategy. If you listen to minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, it sounds like the party is ready to go pretty far. Here’s Jeffries on MeidasTouch.

[clip of Hakeem Jeffries]: It’s incredible to me that they start this gerrymandering battle and they’re upset right now that Democrats are finishing it like we said we were going to do from the very beginning and we are going to keep our foot on the gas pedal and continue to apply maximum pressure to these people until we break their gerrymandering scheme once and for all.

Alex Wagner: What does that mean exactly? How far should Democrats go to stop these new, undoubtedly racist Republican gerrymanders? Should they try to make more competitive congressional districts in blue states now that the VRA is effectively gone? If they do that, how does the party preserve the power of voters of color in the long term? And are Republicans overstating their advantage in November given just how badly things are going under President Trump? Could Democrats still win the House, even with the new maps? In other words, how do Democrats fight fire with fire without burning down the whole house? [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, what the hell is happening with the 2026 midterms and what should Democrats be doing about it? To get a handle on all of this, we’re gonna talk to Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, the Democratic representative from Virginia’s 10th District. And get his take on why offense is the best defense. Then we’ll hear from a state senator in New York, Mike Gianaris, on what traps lie ahead for Democrats getting greedy about blue state redistricting. And finally, we’ll be putting all of this into context with one of the most prominent and effective voting rights activists in this country, Crooked’s own Stacey Abrams, host of the podcast, Assembly Required. But first, my conversation with Virginia Congressman Suhas Subramanian. Suhas, thank you for joining the show and offering some insight into the absolute, what appears to be on the outside chaos inside the Old Dominion. First of all, let me just ask you what your reaction was when you heard the news that the redistricting amendment had been effectively struck down by the state Supreme Court. Cause I know what mine was and it was, fuck, what did you think? I mean, how did it go over?

Suhas Subramanian: I was shocked, honestly. I couldn’t believe it. You have four Supreme Court justices of Virginia who think they know better than millions of Virginians and two separate general assemblies. And they found a technicality, and not a very good one, to make this ruling and overturn, not just the redistricting plan, but an entire election, essentially, that we had. We put it to the voters and we told the voters, if you decide you want to move forward with this, then we’re going to move forth with it. And we even showed them the maps. And I always feel like, you know, that promise was not fulfilled because Supreme Court decided after the vote happened that they knew better. So, I am absolutely shocked. This just goes to show between this and the Supreme Court of the United States that the judiciary is compromised. It’s a political body and we need to treat them as such. So I am just shocked, dismayed, and I feel bad for all the people, the millions of people who came out and voted to move forward to even the playing field of redistricting. And you look at what other red states are doing and they’re doing far worse. And they’re doing things that are completely against their constitutions, and their Supreme Courts, because this is political, are totally okay with it. So that’s where we are today in America, and we’re going to find ways to fight back.

Alex Wagner: You know, you’ve mentioned a technicality. For people who aren’t familiar with that technicality, I mean, without getting too far in the weeds, can you explain what the fault was that the state Supreme Court found?

Suhas Subramanian: Yeah. So to do an amendment to the constitution, which is what we needed to do to do this mid-decade redistricting, you have to have two separate general assemblies vote to move a referendum forward and put it in front of voters. And so that means you have a general assembly, 100 delegates, 40 senators, they vote and then they have an election. And then you have another general assembly voted in by that election who then votes on this. And so. Uh, there needs to be an intervening election, but what the Supreme Court ruled was well early voting has started when the last general assembly voted on this and so therefore they didn’t have a full election in between the two general assemblies. But that goes completely against the spirit and really the precedent of how we treated constitutional amendments. And so it was absolutely mind-boggling that they basically redefined the word election and there’s a lot of mental gymnastics to get to a place where they overturned this, which makes me believe, you know, there’s some people that’s second guessing this and saying, well, we should have done it earlier than voted on it earlier. Well, sure, we didn’t realize what red states were doing. So it took some time to get together. But even if we had done that, I almost wonder if they would have found another reason to do this because it seemed like they didn’t want. Four of the Supreme Court justices didn’t want redistricting in Virginia because it hurt Republicans. And so they would have found another reason not to do this. That’s why this is political. That is why I and many others are angry, is because this wasn’t just a serious violation of the Constitution. It wasn’t that at all. This was a technicality that went against precedent and the way they decided it and everyone should be angry about this and I think they would have found another reason if it weren’t this one.

Alex Wagner: So the State Supreme Court basically finds a technicality to reject effectively, to toss out the voter approved redistricting referendum. And that technicality is based on the timing of early votes versus Election Day. I mean, it’s so specific and so persnickety. And that’s unfolding at the same time as Southern states are going back to old racist gerrymandered maps or adopting new racist gerrymandered maps literally days before their primaries or in the state of Louisiana after voting has already begun and now the governor is saying those votes won’t count. South Carolina is actually delaying its election. I mean how is it that those sort of states of the confederacy can bend the time-space continuum when it comes to elections, but in Virginia, the timing of elections is sacrosanct to the point that like a voter approved referendum on redistricting is thrown out because early voting had already started.

Suhas Subramanian: The problem Republicans saw many years ago was that the law and the courts conflicted with what they wanted to do.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Suhas Subramanian: What they wanted was things that were unlawful, that were unconstitutional, and what they needed was to stack the courts at every level of court, state and federal, in order to enact their agenda, otherwise it wouldn’t go through. So they don’t like a policy now, they take it to the courts, they have a whole legal infrastructure on the Republican side that is dedicated to just bringing lawsuits nonstop. And what we have is a piecemeal approach on the Democratic side of nonprofits and civil society, really good people who are doing important work. But they’re not all united. Their job is not political agenda always. And so the Republicans are very much all about making sure that we bend the law, bend the rules to get Republicans elected. Because they know that when they govern, they’re very unpopular. And so, the only way to get elected, the way to win is to bend the rules to their will and break the rules. And the only way to… Pass unpopular policies or strike down popular democratic policies is the courts as well. And so in this case, the voters decided, two general assemblies decided, but because they’ve worked so hard to stack the judiciary over the years, they were able to strike down the will of millions of people like they have done so many times before.

Alex Wagner: There’s some reporting in the New York Times about options for Virginia Democrats in the wake of this, and one of the most incendiary, controversial, I don’t know, wild ones was the idea without, again, getting too into the weeds, was to lower the mandatory retirement age for justices on the state Supreme Court and then effectively kick out the judges, appoint new ones, and make sure that those new judges approve the maps that the voters equally approved. Um, where is that plan right now? And what was the, I mean, when that was first floated, I know your quote is being sort of in favor of all hands on deck approach, but were you in favor this idea?

Suhas Subramanian: It’s a pretty extreme idea. But these are extreme times right now. These are unprecedented times. I think those justices, the four justices who decided to overturn the will of the people should not keep their jobs, frankly. I’m just outraged by their decision. But it’s a very extreme scenario. If that’s the only way to move this forward, I mean, the people have spoken, right? So, I’m open to any suggestions. Because we know Republicans would do it. We know in states like Ohio and Utah and Florida now, they’ve ignored their constitutions. In some cases, they ignored their Supreme Courts and moved forward with elections, even when the Supreme Court said they shouldn’t, right? So we know what Republicans would in the same situation. And I’m tired of being a victim of Republicans gaming the system, and then we’re not able to govern because of it, even though the people want us to govern. We would be in the majority right now in Congress, Democrats would, if it weren’t for Republicans in North Carolina gerrymandering three additional seats for themselves and flipping three seats essentially. And so that’s where we are. Imagine if we had a real check on President Trump, how much better off the country would be right now. So my goal is to get federal legislation passed. With a president that will sign it, that will make fair redistricting across the board so that we don’t have to have these conversations. But in the meantime, we have to stop being victims and complaining and start doing things. And so that’s why I won’t rule out anything. The timeline on doing things right now is very difficult.

Alex Wagner: Right.

Suhas Subramanian: One of the other reasons why I think this was political is because the Republican judges who ruled this, they waited until the very last minute so the General Assembly couldn’t respond. They tried to put off this ruling for as long as they could. So it’d be hard for the General Assembly to truly act and do things like that. And that’s another reason why I believe this was political. And they started with the conclusion that they didn’t like redistricting that favored Democrats. And then use really tortured logic to get to that conclusion.

Alex Wagner: Did you guys have a sense that these judges were going to rule this way?

Suhas Subramanian: I did not, no. In fact, two weeks ago, I was telling people, you know, the court, this is open and shut. The Republicans don’t really have much of a case. I felt like their decision was Republican talking points from back in November of last year of why this is illegal. It’s almost like they took the Republican arguments from last year and they put it on paper. That’s what it feels like. And there was a lot of discussion and the decision about. What they wish the law would be and things like that. I mean, it was very unprofessional, the whole decision from start to finish, as well as the whole situation. And after an election where millions of people have decided and to issue the ruling last minute, it’s completely unacceptable. And people want consequences. I’ve heard many people say that those justices should be gone. I think there are other avenues too, but the problem is the timing at this point. 2028 is much more realistic at this point. 2026 is a long shot. But, you know, even if it’s a long I think, you know, we have to give it all our all.

Alex Wagner: You’re saying take it. You want Democrats to take it. More from Representative Subrahmanyam and a word from New York State Senator Mike Gianaris right after the break.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: I know that the Virginia Democrats have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court and basically asked them to dismiss the ruling of the state’s Supreme Court. First of all, are you hopeful, given the makeup of the Roberts Court and the fact that the throughline does not seem to be precedent or even jurisprudence, but partisan politics increasingly? Are you hopeful that they’ll give Democrats a win on this in the state of Virginia?

Suhas Subramanian: If we had a non-political judiciary that just ruled on the facts and precedent, then the Supreme Court of the United States would either rule that both Louisiana and Virginia are at fault because early voting is part of an election, an election starts during early voting, or they would rule that, both are okay to redo their elections, which I think is the right, better decision. But any case Louisiana stopped their early voting in order to redraw their maps. And that to me sounds like the start of an election. If in Virginia, you’re going to rule at the start of an elections is early voting and you can’t redo the constitution. So, but they will come to a decision that will favor Republicans. That’s my prediction because they are a political body at this point. They are not an independent judiciary that rules on precedent and facts. And then in Florida… That Supreme Court should rule that they are doing partisan gerrymandering too. But again, we know that Republicans either won’t listen to them and will just move forward redistricting anyway, like they’ve done in other states, or that judiciary is compromised too, which I believe it is, and they will just do whatever benefits the Republican Party. So this is all part of the infrastructure Republicans have built over many decades and Democrats need to respond with the same infrastructure and we need to treat the judiciary like it is, which is a political body at this point. It is not an independent body ruling on facts, at least for the most part. There are obviously very good judges out there. I don’t want to say that every judge is political by any means, but we are getting to a point now where we’re seeing parts of our democracy getting torn down and the judiciary is ruling based on a party that they prefer. That is completely unacceptable and that’s how democracies fail.

Alex Wagner: So, I mean, I guess I have two questions. One is, what else is on the table? And two, you sit in the state, you see how this is playing out, the voters approve something and the court has basically issued a middle finger to that. Do you think this could have an unintended consequence of really firing up and motivating people to go out there and make their voices heard in a way that stands to benefit Democrats, the architects of this plan to begin with?

Suhas Subramanian: Sure, as far as what’s on the table, it’s up to the General Assembly, and I don’t know what their options are. Honestly, I’m a lawyer, but this is not my area of law. I haven’t done a deep dive into what options they have left. And so I’d heard this option being floated of the minimum age of the… I was a maximum age of the justices. I’ve heard another one about saying that the 2020 referendum that we had in Virginia to have fair redistricting is no longer valid either. Then there’s a couple of options that have been out there that seem like long shots, but they’re out there. And I like that people are even bringing them up because at least we’re trying, right? I want to at least try every option. But it seems like a long shot, but I know that they’re discussing as many options as they can. As far as, and what I also think is that we should do this for 2028 then, if 2026 is off the table, run in our districts now. People are already outraged, people are already fired up. I’ve seen Republicans come to Democratic committee meetings. I’ve see a massive shift away from President Trump and a massive response to him. What we need to understand, though, as Democrats is that nothing can be taken for granted. Republicans always have tricks up their sleeves. They’re going to still try to pass the Save America Act and make it harder to vote. They’re still going to try to do things to make this election. They’re not going to hand us the gavel, as our leadership has said. And so we have to continue to educate voters on what’s happening. To their vote and their voice. And we have to continue to be aggressive in the way that we campaign and the way that we respond when we have adversity like this. And that’s what voters want. That’s what our base voters want, that’s even what new people to the Democratic Party want right now is they want to see a party that fights more.

Alex Wagner: All right. Well, we are eager to see what the battle lines will even look like given the fact that we’re fighting in terra incognita. Suhas Subramanian, thank you so much for giving us the view from Virginia. What a strange time we live in.

Suhas Subramanian: Thank you.

Alex Wagner: The legislative session in New York ends in just two weeks, and state lawmakers there have multiple pathways to redraw the state maps, including amending the state constitution to push through a voter referendum to redistrict before the 2028 election, reforming their very gridlocked independent commission process, and figuring out how to protect any changes they make so their next redistricting cycle can’t undo it all in 2032. Fair to say, they are playing the long game, but with all of these options in the air, how do they make sure they don’t take it too far? Here’s my conversation with New York state Senator Mike Gianaris. You guys have a lot of questions ahead of you that you need to resolve in the next two weeks. And one of them is how aggressive should Democrats be about making districts more competitive? And that may involve you know, doing away with provisions that were seen as giving minorities a stronger voice at the ballot box that were, you know, ideals preserved in the Voting Rights Act, which has been effectively destroyed by the Supreme Court. And I wonder where you sit on that. I mean, everything’s changed, but, you know, the need for minority voting power hasn’t. So how do you find the middle ground?

Mike Gianaris: I’m a big advocate of fighting fire with fire, so I do believe we need to get aggressive and kind of consider whether the norms that we typically would hold dear should be reassessed considering what’s happening around the country. However, in New York at least, I don’t think we need compromise those in order to achieve our goals. We came up with a map, it was a 22-4 map I guess it was, and we had abided by all of the principles laid out in the Constitution. And so I think we have the ability to do both things in New York. We don’t have to tear apart Voting Rights Act principles in order to get more Democrats elected. In fact, the court has undergone a number of changes here in New York. The chief judge now wrote the dissent in that opinion and explicitly said that the map that legislature drew was perfectly fine. So I think, we don’t have to kind of go bend over backwards and dilute minority power in order to achieve democratic power. And the other thing I would say about that is be careful what you wish for if you go down that road, because we had a situation here in New York that back then got national attention. We had a group of Democrats in the state senate who were teaming up with Republicans and handing control over to them. You draw a district that dilutes the minority power, dilutes progressive groups’ power, you’re gonna end up with candidates elected, maybe they’d have a D in front of the name, but you’re looking at kind of a Federman or a Manchin situation where it’s not necessarily the kind of Democrats that help you govern effectively. Let’s just be careful because you want a majority that is going to be there to do the right thing and not be ungovernable.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, I mean, that’s such a… You guys were able to do it. You feel confident that New York can redraw maps to give Democrats the number of seats that they’re hoping for, but also doesn’t undermine the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and the general sort of desire for fairness and justice across all lines.

Mike Gianaris: Yeah, I do believe that. Look, the Black representation, particularly, but minority representation in general is going to take a huge hit now. You’re seeing it throughout the south. The last thing we want to do is contribute to that in New York, right? So I would be very much concerned about any efforts to do that. And by the way, we have a state version of the Voting Rights Act here in New York, so we would have to overturn our own laws to do this. And I don’t think it’s a wise idea. I don’t think it s necessary, more importantly.

Alex Wagner: Do you think that and do you worry about what’s happening in other blue states as the pressure ramps up? You know as you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen in Virginia But other states that haven’t dipped their foot in the or dip their toes in what feels like an arms is to get as many many seats as possible. Do you worry? About what happens like you guys may not have to directly address it in New York But what about other states? That may feel more pressure? To I mean effectively disenfranchised minority groups that have otherwise been protected or championed by legislation like the Voting Rights Act.

Mike Gianaris: I’m greatly concerned about it. I’m hoping that the fact that one of the leaders in Congress is in fact African-American, Hakeem Jeffries, would hopefully have some interest in not seeing his own community, his power diluted. But this is a decades-long fight that was successful up until recently in helping minorities in this country achieve political representation. Hopefully it’s not necessary I can’t speak for what’s going on in these other states and how they can draw their maps in a way that achieves the ultimate goal without doing that but It’s one of the reasons some people are advocating multiple referendum options for us so that we can kind of see how the midterms go before we have to make a decision and see what the lay of the land is. I think if there’s a Democratic majority in the House next year, the pressure will be different than if we’re still dealing with a Republican majority.

Alex Wagner: Do you think that the general sort of explicitly partisan motivations behind this wave of gerrymandering that’s happening across the country, and I’m not trying to draw a false equivalence between what the Republican party has done and the Democratic party has to, I mean, I think there is a difference between who started this and who’s trying to effectively neutralize it. But do you worry that this is going to be, I mean, there was a moment when it was all about independent redistricting commissions, right? And that felt like the right thing. And that’s not to say that Democrats aren’t still embracing that as a potential future goal. But do worry about, you know, I guess once you start doing this, regardless of what the circumstances of your starting to do this are, do you worried that it could backfire with Democrats down the line?

Mike Gianaris: I don’t. I think that ship has sailed. Republicans have proven to be more ruthless about these things than Democrats, and that’s been to their political advantage. While we’re sitting here trying to do the pure thing, they’re amassing political power. One thing the last couple of years has made clear is the independent redistricting conversation needs to be sailed federally. It’s not something states should do individually because there is a big distinction between the two parties as to who supports that of approaching who doesn’t, and then when it’s happening is… The democratic states have their hands tied and the Republicans are free to go and do what they’ve been doing. And so we’re suffering the consequences of that. This is a problem that if it doesn’t have a national solution, we need to be able to fight fire with fire.

Alex Wagner: Are you confident that like you’re on the same? Do you feel like there’s, that everyone’s simpatico on this in terms of state leadership and national leadership?

Mike Gianaris: At this point. Yes, I would say that wasn’t necessarily the case last year the year before. But we’ve gotten to the point where the stakes are clear and the consequences are clear. So yeah, I think we’re all and Leader Jeffries sent the congressmember Riley up to talk with us who we’re all familiar with, he served with us for a number of years that we had a good conversation last week. So I’m pretty sure we all want to get to the same place.

Alex Wagner: Well, good luck. Getting to the same place feels like a real herculean mission right now.

Mike Gianaris: It really is.

Alex Wagner: Thank you for your time, Senator. It’s great to hear the view from the ground, and good luck with the next two weeks. Sounds like you got a lot of discussions to have.

Mike Gianaris: I don’t know, we haven’t even finished our state budget, Alex, so… There’s a lot going on in the next two weeks.

Alex Wagner: Godspeed, Godspeed. [music plays] Up next, putting this all into context with lawyer, author, and voting rights activist, the great Stacey Abrams.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: I know how I feel about what’s happening to our democracy. I mean, just big picture, right? In the wake of the Kelly decision, in the wake of the Virginia State Supreme Court decision, in the context of the Supreme Court of the United States fast tracking, the shredding of representative democracy down South, how bad is it right now?

Stacey Abrams: We are living in an authoritarian, or let’s be more specific, we are living in a competitive authoritarian nation. And the difference matters full on authoritarianism. They don’t hide it anymore. In competitive authoritarianism, they use democratic institutions. They use democracy’s rules to dismantle democracy’s ends. And so they are using democracy’s tools like elections, like districts, like voting to strip away power. And they do so in a way that to the untrained eye seems like pure partisanship. It’s just the horse race, but that is not what this is. And that is what we’re in the midst of. They are strategically, systematically, and almost irrevocably stripping communities of power that pose a threat to their authoritarian dominion. And by the time the rest of the country catches up, it will be too late to undo the carnage. And that’s one of the reasons I tell people you can’t let the South just kind of figure it out. The South has been ground zero for 250 years for practicing soft authoritarianism, for practicing using the laws, using terms of art, like race neutral or colorblind or just saying it’s about party and not people. They’ve done this forever. And it didn’t really matter which party was in power. We’ve seen this practice. The issue is what the ends look like. And invariably, if what you oppose is a pluralistic democracy, then your pathway has to be dismantling access for people of color to participate.

Alex Wagner: I feel like after 2000, especially, nobody should have been holding their breath for the Supreme Court to do the right thing as it concerns an election. But the Kelly decision, as you brilliantly point out, is devastating. The fast tracking of these newly redrawn, hastily redrawn perversions of congressional maps in the South, in Alabama and South Carolina and Tennessee, I cannot. It shouldn’t astound me, but the fact that the Supreme Court is doing something that like, how long did it take them to come to a presidential immunity decision? I mean, this is a court that loves to be deliberative when it suits partisan gains and loves to fast track. When it’s in service, truly, as you say, of competitive authoritarianism, it has anything about the fast tracking and the behavior of the state surprised you.

Stacey Abrams: Not at all, because again, this isn’t about partisanship. Partisanship is the fig leaf. They are using partisanship to accomplish an end. And I wanna take it back to first principles. In the United States for years, for a couple of centuries, we have pretended that our goal was democracy. We were just taking different routes to get there. Democrats used Apple Maps, and Republicans used Google Maps, and independents and all those other folks used Waze. And we, but we were all aiming towards democracy. That’s what we said we wanted. We just had different policy objectives, we had different principles that guided us. But we all said, this is what we want. Where we are now is the naked revelation that this is no longer about trying to get to democracy. There are those who want democracy, which in the United States means pluralism. It means communities of difference come together, racial difference, economic difference, social class difference, all of those pieces that we want democracy of pluralistic democracy. But where we are headed right now is authoritarianism. Authoritarianism wants a concentration of power. It wants to strip people of their freedoms. And it wants to not be held accountable for the consequences of either. And democracy stands in direct objection to that. Democracy is about shared power. It’s about, you know, the granting of freedoms, the protection of freedoms. It’s without accountability. We cannot use the frames we’re used to of this being partisanship, Democrats versus Republicans. No, this is about those who believe in this concentration of power with no accountability. Competitive authoritarianism is the place we’re in now, but we’re heading towards full on authoritarianism 10 to 15 years out versus democracy. And therefore we have to stop using frameworks that made sense three years ago. Because they don’t make sense anymore. And to your point about the Supreme Court, the speed at which the Supreme court is complying is consistent with what we saw happen last year. What they did in 2025, when they approved the decimation of the federal government through DOGE, when they said it was perfectly okay for mass incarceration to happen, and it was fine for ICE to pull people of color into detention based on race and… The language they spoke and the accent they had, when it was okay a few years before that to grant presidential immunity from any consequence, when they said that you can now bribe people and that’s okay. We have watched the Supreme Court be complicit in dismantling democracy, dismantling accountability, and dismantling freedoms. That’s nothing but authoritarianism. And so no, we can’t be surprised by the speed at which they are acting on the easiest part of their job, which is stripping Black and Brown people with the right to have a voice in the election.

Alex Wagner: Given that, I mean I wonder what you think. There’s sort of two competing interests as it as it pertains to Virginia, right? On one hand, Virginia Democrats are not trying to go quietly into that good night and accept what their state Supreme Court has handed down in validating these new maps that were approved by voter referendum. So they are fighting was all they have. Today, we’re recording this on a Tuesday, they are seeking uh, they’re seeking review. They are seeking a decision from the Supreme Court to effectively get the maps that the voters approved back in action. I’m being, I’m paraphrasing wildly. So I understand that you kind of have to go for broke, pursue every avenue, but I, Ian Millhiser at Vox raises a very, I think, relevant, um, concern in all of this, which is, does Virginia really want to give this Supreme Court federal jurisdiction over how a state runs its election, even if it’s asking for relief, effectively. But given where the Roberts court is at on the host of issues that you just outlined, is it a good idea to involve them in this dispute, which they haven’t had their paws all over, unlike, of course, the VRA? Do you have a thought on that?

Stacey Abrams: I do. You want the relief that is available, but at what cost? And so it’s not, is the Supreme Court going to be involved? Because the Supreme Court has involved itself in state elections before. We have paid a lot of attention to Shelby v. Holder and the Brnovich decision and now Callais, which directly implicated the Voting Rights Act. But Rucho, Common Cause v. Rucho was not a VRA case, but that was the case that said that partisanship could be explicitly utilized for gerrymandering, which said to Black and Brown communities that weren’t under VRA maps, we’re coming for you. And so this is not new that a state is asking for federal relief and participation in elections. The danger, though, is the question that we’re asking. And I think that’s the place where I’m, I’m a bit worried about what Virginia is asking for. Because if pretext of the question is, you know, can our voters referendum hold? Okay. If it is we want you to interfere in these specific questions of the administration of an election, that’s deeply problematic. And so I think that’s where the rubber meets the road. But I do want to pull back a bit. And you didn’t ask me this, but I’m going to say it anyway.

Alex Wagner: Please.

Stacey Abrams: There is a between nullifying what is bad action. And being the person who started the fight. And so there are some people who are saying, well, Virginia and California are just like Texas and Alabama. No, there’s no comparison. I think it was Marc Elias who said, the arsonists can’t claim to be the same thing as the firefighters. It’s just, it’s two different things. And in a democracy where we acknowledge that while we have 50 independent states, we are one nation. Then it is incumbent upon members of that nation to step into the breach that is created by other members of the nation that create the problem. And that is why I tell people, do not abandon the South. They may be coming for us first, but the consequences of their behavior will impact all of us. And that’s why it is absolutely legitimate for California and Indiana for… Utah at the moment, although that could change. For any state that says we want democracy to hold, we want the democratic principle small d, not partisan d, but democracy to whole, that’s perfectly fine. That is good. That’s noble. We can have ideological differences about the policies that we want once we get on the other side. But right now, we’re fighting over whether there is another side.

Alex Wagner: Yeah. And by the way, it just bears mentioning that in Virginia and California, they went to the voters, right? There is citizen involvement in these decisions, which is paramount in all of this in terms of representative democracy.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: I get, I am deeply, not sympathetic is the wrong word, but I wholeheartedly agree with you in terms of the stakes of not giving up on the South and also this sort of seismic shift that the court’s Callais decision represents. I also wonder if you have thoughts about whether this is even good strategy on the part of, you know, racist conservative Supreme Court justices and Republicans who follow their lead. Because the unspoken truth of the Roberts Court is they believe that the only people who would ever elect a Black person are Black people. And so by basically disenfranchising Black people, you’re ensuring that they’re not going to be a lot of Black people in Congress. But the reality is not that at all. I mean, I am drawn to a tweet, a thread written by Sean Casten the Democrat from Illinois, who points out that in 2018 in his freshman class, every Black member of Congress that was elected in that 2018 class was elected in a majority white district. So if the goal here is to get people of color out of our representative democracy, I’m not sure that’s entirely going to work to say nothing of the fact that racist white people don’t often like being told they’re racist white people and it’s conscripted for the effort to like bleach our representative democracy. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like this is going to juice white turnout necessarily because it’s so transparently racist. I just wonder if it, if the end goal isn’t is actually truly served by the strategy here.

Stacey Abrams: It is because it is one piece of a larger tactical intention, and here’s why. You’re absolutely right. In the short term, they are not going to have, this is not the silver bullet that achieves all of their ends, but this is a set piece that has consistently worked every time someone has used it. And if it works, you know, if you’re going to quote Hegel, if it worked, it’s good. So in their minds, this something to use because it has before. But your point is well taken, and that’s the part of the speed. They know that in 2046, this is a majority minority country. They saw that in 2024, while it was not as seismic as people would like for it to be, there was a substantial and certainly marked shift among communities of color. It was not a death knell for the Democratic Party, but it was a meaningful shift. And what they are presuming. Is that if you align these two tactical realities, that the policymaking brings some of the, or at least the rhetoric brings some over, and then you mute and demolish the opportunities of others, that you then create a pathway for this permanence. But you also don’t have to have it forever. It just has to work for a second. You have to, if you break it in 26, that means it’s broken in 28. Then you game the system in 28 because the electoral college decision will determine who holds power. And then you look at the map going forward, you make sure that we don’t have a census that works in 2030, which means then the lines that get drawn in 2031, it doesn’t really matter who votes because you’ve done all of the pieces that you need to do to diminish, mute, or fracture the voices that could participate. That’s the end game.

Alex Wagner: Following on that, I would suggest that a lot of these redrawn districts are based on the 2024 maps, where Trump has a more multi-colored coalition than I think he would have in 2026 if he was running, and certainly that any Republican would have, in 2028, because he has been so profoundly inept at leading the country. And that’s being euphemistic. I mean, it has been an utter goat rodeo. And like, nobody’s done more work to undermine the chances of his party in terms of holding Congress than Donald Trump. And so following on your logic, like, you know, there are a lot of people saying, well, maybe these newly drawn districts are actually going to net democratic seats. Like in Florida, Ron DeSantis could be, you now, it could be a fool’s errand. He could actually just make more competitive districts. Even if that happens, the districts will be more competitive because Donald Trump is a fool. Like a ne plus ultra, like there it’s unusual that you’re going to get a president this bad, someone who’s literally raising gas prices right before an election. And so to your point, even if the hemorrhaging isn’t as bad as I think we think right now, that doesn’t mean that the structural changes are not deeply pernicious and could have a much longer lasting effect in future election cycles. Is that accurate? Am I like overstating the case here?

Stacey Abrams: No, you’re not. You’re not overstating it. But there it is one facet of the case, because they’re not just playing for Congress. They’re playing for states. They understand states rights, because that’s what Jim Crow was. Jim Crow had race neutral laws. There were some that were explicitly race based, like physical segregation on busses and trains and bathrooms, water fountains, but the voting laws were always race neutral. What they did was they made race neutral laws that only had a negative impact on Black people. And so poll taxes, because Black people couldn’t get jobs. Literacy tests, because Black people had been denied the right to read and to learn to read. Grandfather clause. You could avoid all of this. Your get out of jail free card was if your family can vote before the Civil War, which if you were in the South was not permitted for most Black people, okay? So to your point, on the congressional level, they have a math problem. But on the state level, they have an opportunity because the states are the ones who draw the congressional lines, but they also make all of the other determinations. And these rules now apply to how state legislative lines are drawn, how county legislative lines were drawn, how school board lines are drawing, city council districts. And so if what your goal is power, you don’t just focus on the power that we’ve been trained to pay attention to you. You look at all of the facets of power and you aggregate what you can. You hold the court, you hold the majority of the legislative branches of government because we can play really hard ball in Congress, but the Senate is a different map. Idaho’s not going away and Idaho’s not going blue. And so. What we’ve got to remember is that they’re also looking at long-term maps. And that’s why I started the Ten Steps campaign and why I talk about authoritarianism so aggressively. We cannot think that this is about who wins a presidential election.

Alex Wagner: Yeah. Or working or led the legislative branch at the federal level.

Stacey Abrams: This is about who holds power and how they wield that power against people. And if you understand how American government works, power sits at multiple levels. And so they are, you’re absolutely right about the math of trying to win a congressional race, but they’re saying we’ve got a lot of other pieces on the board. And to use a chess analogy, because I love chess, they play a whole board strategy and they use all of their pieces. We get really fascinated by the bishop and the queen. And maybe we let it play occasionally, but we let our pawns just get taken out because we’re like, oh, but, we’ve got these bishops. They’re like oh, that pawn can become a queen on the other end of the table. And that’s the challenge. We cannot think about this. And again, it’s not Republicans versus Democrats anymore. It’s those who want authoritarianism or what the spoils of authoritarianism can deliver versus those who wants democracy and what democracy requires.

Alex Wagner: Right. Only one side is embracing independent redistricting conditions in late 2045. And it’s the side that begins with a D. So what can be done here? I mean, there is some thinking that this is also transparently racist, that it, in fact, will juice turnout. Which is meaningful because it’s not just about the legislative branch, it’s also about what’s happening at the state level. And hopefully at the state level, then you can win state legislative seats and change the way the maps are drawn again at some point and ensure some version of representative democracy to the extent that such a thing is possible. I mean, first of all, do you think it’s true that the outrage is tangible enough at the sort of grassroots level that people are going to come out in force? To show that they are against this? And do you think that could have a meaningful impact in terms of reversing the worst effects of this?

Stacey Abrams: There’s opportunity. There’s no guarantee. And so that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m going everywhere. That’s why I was in Tennessee last week. Yeah, there is opportunity, but we have to leverage it because for people for whom democracy has been a nice concept, but never a real lived experience, then no, people being racist is not news. Like racism isn’t what is the driving force. It’s those who will oppose the racist, What do they offer? And it’s why I’ve been a little bit chagrined by those who are saying, oh, we should start running candidates in the South who are race neutral, who, you know, are—

Alex Wagner: Well, right.

Stacey Abrams Run anti-abortion white candidates in these districts because, well, we’ll come back for you later. We’ll come for people of color later. We’ll back for the disabled later. We’ll comeback for the LGBTQIA plus community later. That, that’s dangerous, because to your point, yes, you have an activation opportunity, but not if your actors are just, if not just as bad at, but who are problematic.

Alex Wagner: John Fetterman, who are John Fetterman?

Stacey Abrams: I mean, yeah, basically anybody who says, yeah they tried to steal your right to vote, let me borrow it. And but I can’t promise I’m going to do anything with it that they weren’t going to do. So we can’t just say because people are outraged, it’s enough. Outrage is our invitation to action. And there are three things we can do. We can start having conversations with people on the local level, connecting the dots. Because outrage about losing your right to vote only matters if people know what they could be voting for. So we’ve got to tell the story. That’s where connecting authoritarianism to the economics becomes an important point.

Alex Wagner: The ballroom helps with that, I would think.

Stacey Abrams: It does. But for people who have, there’s a country song I love from the 1940s. And it said, this guy told me Wall Street fell, but we were so poor, we couldn’t tell. We presume that people are paying attention to the ballroom. They’re not. There are a whole lot of votes. There were 90 million people who did not vote in the 24 election. Who, think a pox on both your houses because there’s nothing in this for me. We have to take them seriously and start showing up. That’s number one. Number two, we have to use the places where we know democracy is going to win to start putting in place voting rights laws, start putting it in place, expanded access to the ballot, and we need states like Maryland, like New York. Like Illinois, to get in the fight because this isn’t about whether Democrats or Republicans hold seats. It’s whether or not democracy has champions, and we have to keep electing democracy champions. And then third, we have keep going to court. We can’t stop going to court because they’re going to kick us out. Plessy versus Ferguson, the distance between that and Brown v. Board of Education was a lot of losses. But we don’t get to our victories if we don t make the record clear.

Alex Wagner: You mentioned New York and you mentioned Illinois on the New York front. What do you say to the New York reps who think it’s about cracking apart districts that were once protected by the VRA to get more opportunities on the board? I know you have thoughts on this, but what would the response be to that kind of horse racy, we need to reclaim the legislative branch and that will begin to fix the structural problems here. So don’t worry about having. You know minority majority districts that comport with the VRA as it once stood.

Stacey Abrams: You can’t sacrifice me to save me. It is disingenuous. It is not as bad, but it is pretty problematic. And so you can protect communities and you can also fight back against authoritarian redraws. We can do both. And it takes more time. It takes more intention. But it can be done. But, it’s a lazy response to say, Well, we’re just going to win and then we’ll again, I’m going to win, but I’ll come back for you. That’s the argument. And that undermines the credibility of the entire enterprise. So I think we have to have fair maps that are community-protecting. And let’s be clear. They start with Black people, but they go to Brown people. They go to all of us. And we cannot allow any communities of color to be sacrificed on the altar of eventual victory. We are not sacrificial lambs anymore. We are present, active, necessary components to victory. Figure it out.

Alex Wagner: Okay, let me ask you a big picture, like prediction question. I mean, what do you think representation in the South is gonna look like a decade from now?

Stacey Abrams: So if we do this right, if we use the 26 elections to activate voters, and I want to remind people, I get a lot of credit for registering people. I registered a lot. I helped organizations register a lot people. But my 2018 election, the distance between Jason Carter in 2014 and me in 2018 was 800,000 people who showed up. We did not register 800,000 people. We turned out 800,000 people. We tripled Latino turnout, we tripled the Asian-American turnout. We increased youth participation by 40%. We increased Black participation at 40%. We added numbers by promising to do the right thing. So it is not just the lines we draw. It’s the work we do for those lines to matter. And so. If we do that work nationwide, and I don’t give myself credit, it was my team, it was the teams that were on the ground, it’s all the organizations that have been waiting for someone to say out loud the quiet part, which is we should talk to everybody. It’s me talking to white people, and me talking to brown people, me talking Black people. It was us going to all 159 counties and not abandoning any state or any county or any community. If we do that work in the South… They know why they’re coming after us. Half of the black community lives there. 57% of black people live in the South. Half of a Latino population lives in the south and Southwest. Californians don’t think. But the thing is, if we do that work in those communities, we activate those voters, not as tribute, but as participants. And so in a decade, we could have the nation we keep talking about, this multiracial, multiethnic, ideologically diverse. Multi-generational democracy that is led by a South and Southwest by a sun-belt coalition that shows what we should actually be doing, guaranteeing health care, guarantee housing, guaranteeing that you can actually have a living wage as opposed to a sub-minimum wage that pretends to be a minimum wage. All of the things that most Americans say they want, if we fix it in the South, we fix that for everybody. So don’t leave us behind because we’ve been waiting for you and we’re ready to work.

Alex Wagner: Oh man, I feel like optimistic, strangely, and against all odds at the end of this conversation, Stacey Abrams. That’s why you’re you.

Stacey Abrams: You’re very kind.

Alex Wagner: Your voice is so essential in all of this, and I really feel like you clarified the picture for me profoundly, so I’m deeply grateful. Stacey Abrams, who loves country music from the 1940s, and chess. I learn something new about you every time I talk to you. And I learn new about our country. But Stacey, thank you. Thanks for your time tonight.

Stacey Abrams: Alex, it is always a pleasure and delight and an honor to be with you. You’re you’re amazing.

Alex Wagner: You’re the best. [music plays] That is our show for this week. Please don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. And if you are not sick of me yet, it’s hard to imagine. Take a look at my Substack friends. How the Hell With Alex Wagner where I write a bunch of stuff and have Substack lives. It’s a party. Last but not least, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies. Please send us an email or a one-minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com, and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.