Welcome to Radio Free America, Aaron Kleinman’s take on stories that matter in state politics but aren't getting enough attention.
Photo via Senator Joe Manchin on X
I don’t know what your goal is in life, but it’s unlikely it’s more vile than John Roberts’, which seems to be undoing the peace settlement that resolved the Civil War. In yesterday’s Callais decision, he helped eliminate some of the last guardrails protecting nonwhite representation in the former Confederacy. In it, the court explicitly permitted using partisan gerrymandering as an excuse to eliminate seats where minority voters provide a majority of votes. In other words, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina could all draw maps that likely result in all-white congressional delegations, because all of the white congressmen would be Republican.
The next time Democrats have a trifecta, they’ll have to enact some type of court reform if they ever want to stop this slide into a new Redemption era. But there may be a solution that even a lame duck, increasingly addled Donald Trump might agree to in the last two years of his presidency. And the political genius behind this idea? Former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
Take yourselves back to the heady days of 2021, when we were vaxxing and relaxing, wondering what the deal was with milk prices and hoping this whole “vibe shift” was just a passing fad. Democrats narrowly held both houses of Congress but didn’t have the votes to get rid of the filibuster. Manchin floated a deal where the Senate would agree to a number of voting rights protections in exchange for voter ID nationwide. Then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly shot the idea down back then. But if Democrats now drop everything but a ban on partisan gerrymandering, then a lot of those objections go away. Especially because, as Democrats like Don Scott have shown, this isn’t 2021 any more. Republicans know that their opponents are willing to use every tool at their disposal in the redistricting wars.
Such a deal could work out for both parties. As Milan Singh at The Argument has shown, a lot of the arguments against it from the left are based on a coalition that doesn’t really exist anymore. He also found that voter ID is broadly popular among even Democratic voters, so it’s a political winner. But he’s perhaps too sanguine on how it’d impact Democrats electorally; when Republicans tried to overturn the 2024 North Carolina state Supreme Court election, they focused on invalidating votes from people who might have issues around their ID. People without ID still tend to be young, nonwhite and low-income. And while those voters are less Democratic than they were in 2024, they still tend to vote Democratic.
As for the other side, Republicans are already trying to gerrymander the Deep South’s Black Democrats out of existence. But, as Stephen Wolf of The Downballot has noted, Democrats can keep retaliating against them by eliminating more Republican seats in states like New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Notably in those three states, eviscerating the VRA gives Democrats a freer hand to do things like slice up Long Island horizontally to eliminate two Republican-held seats. (Here at Heartland Signal, we think Republicans would actually still be pretty competitive if partisan gerrymandering were banned nationwide; we hope to have more on that soon.)
Moreover, constant gerrymandering brinksmanship is exhausting for everyone involved. It means raising even more money and being swatted by members of your own party. And if Donald Trump gets some type of voter ID bill passed, he can assuage his deeply wounded psyche, which the Supreme Court decided in Trump v. United States is the only check on his own power.
So it’s time for the parties to start exploring a redistricting/voter ID bill that would solve a lot of problems for both sides. Win-wins are still possible in American politics, and the Supreme Court is making it so we have to find them wherever we can. Hell, we can even throw in the ballroom.
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AROUND AMERICA
Speaking of redistricting, Indiana’s primary is next week, and two of the six candidates that Trump endorsed because they supported mid-decade gerrymandering have been credibly accused of theft. Maybe they should ask the Supreme Court with help in those cases too?
Dean Kaufman in an undated campaign photo (Photo via Kaufert for Assembly)
I really want to praise my colleague Richard Eberwein’s investigation of Wisconsin State Assemblyman Dean Kaufert, which apparently caused him to announce that he was no longer running for re-election. It’s proof that this organization is who you should talk to when you want to hold the powerful to account. So it’s also an excuse to link to our brand new tip line.
Kudos to Colorado State Rep. Bob Marshall, who introduced a constitutional amendment that would bar representatives who were originally appointed to their positions from running for re-election. Colorado allows small party committees representing only a fraction of voters to fill vacant seats, and more than a quarter of their legislature originally reached office this way. It’s a system that unduly gives incumbency benefits to people who’ve never had to face the electorate. The amendment didn’t pass this session, but hopefully, they’ll take it up again. More states should consider measures like this.
Another week, another Democratic state lawmaker begging JD Vance to campaign for his opponent. In this case, it’s Minnesota state Rep. Andy Smith, who I am ready to declare as the biggest state legislative star on TikTok.
Ohio’s primary will be held on Tuesday, and keep an eye on state House District 31, where anti-vaccine activist Stephanie Stock is facing off against establishment-favored Mike Kahoe in the Republican primary for a seat. A search of the state’s campaign finance database shows Kahoe has raised four times as much money, but Stock has a number of endorsements from sitting lawmakers. This is a swing seat that will be critical for Republicans to maintain their supermajority, so they may end up spending a lot on behalf of Stock if she pulls off an upset.
I understand the left-wing suspicion of the Abundance movement, and I don’t want it to be used as a Trojan horse to sneak in Koch-inflected deregulation either. Ezra Klein’s debate with Sam Seder laid out the stakes on both sides pretty well, I think. That said, I think we can all agree that we should not have a regulatory scheme where California has to spend $1 billion to reroute a high-speed rail route around Cesar Chavez’s grave.
For months, we’ve been warning you about New Hampshire Republicans’ antisemitism problem, and it seems like NPR has finally caught on. They even got a few Republicans on record to condemn it. But so far, I haven’t seen any concrete actions taken against the offending lawmakers.
INTERNET STUFF THAT I LIKED
Jazzy horns, what if jazzy horns could fix all of our problems? What if we replaced the Supreme Court with Spyro Gyra’s jazzy horns? Well, they seemed to make things better in George H.W. Bush-era sports telecasts, as the 1989 Pistons outro uploaded by Ryan Van Dusen shows. We need to go back to 1989! To watch basketball on cable! And tell Thurgood Marshall that he needs to wait until after the 1992 election to resign!
BOOK CLUB
Photo via Grove Press/Bookshop.org
“The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai is a postcolonial… wait, so sorry. I forgot that when I use a word from academia, your eyes glaze over and you want to put on “Is It Cake?” instead. But I swear this is a fun one. It positively crackles with energy even as it explores weighty topics like how deep the scars of colonialism are. But it’s got sex and guns too, I promise.
HELP ME OUT
Thanks to everyone for the “Survivor” tips. We started our rewatch with “Tocantins,” and now I want Coach in every season of this show just so I can see him drive a new group of castaways insane. Plus, I have no idea how he functions in the outside world.
As for this week, there’s something that’s been bugging me. What do you do with those tip screens at places where you wouldn’t tip or only leave change behind 5-10 years ago? I usually just click on the lowest of the presets, but am I being a cheapskate? Or are they taking me for a ride? Hit reply and tell me what you think.
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