URGENT!! Latest Trump News [5PM] 9_30_2023 - BREAKING NEWS Today Sep 30, 2023
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00:00 How soon do you think we could see Kevin McCarthy face a challenge for his speakership, since
00:06 you said some of the far right were very upset with what he did?
00:12 It's fitting that that's your first question, because of course many of us who have been
00:15 covering this process, and frankly the entire McCarthy speakership since January, have been
00:20 wondering the same thing.
00:22 Members of the far right part of this Republican conference have been clear.
00:25 Matt Gaetz said quite literally, "If McCarthy turns to his left and averts a shutdown in
00:30 bipartisan fashion, he will move to trigger what's called a motion to vacate," or basically
00:35 trying to oust or fire the speaker.
00:38 That's a concession that McCarthy himself made to get this job in the first place back
00:42 in January, allowing only one member of the House to trigger that.
00:47 Then the open question becomes, if it's filed, when does that filing happen?
00:51 Membership can buy themselves up to two days before that vote takes place, but then it
00:55 becomes a guessing game of if Democrats, especially moderate ones that are maybe in redder districts
01:00 or purpler districts, step in to save the speaker.
01:04 Is the preference from Democrats to continue working with someone that they know, as opposed
01:09 to an unknown speaker?
01:10 And then of course there's the reality that you can't replace McCarthy with nobody.
01:15 And right now, while there's several names that you could float, no one seems to be the
01:19 consensus choice.
01:20 And so, even if there's momentum or energy behind relieving McCarthy of his duties as
01:26 speaker, it's not entirely clear who those hardliners would even want in that position.
01:31 All right.
01:32 Thank you, NBC's Ali Vitale on Capitol Hill.
01:36 We'll go back to you, if needed.
01:39 But joining me now is Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania.
01:43 Senator, thank you for joining us.
01:46 The ball is in the court of you and your Senate colleagues after the House passed a 45-day
01:54 continuing resolution to fund our government.
01:58 What can you tell us about the negotiations that are taking place right as we speak?
02:04 Yeah, Reverend Al, great to be with you.
02:08 First and foremost, I think the result of today's work will be that the government will
02:13 be funded.
02:14 That's very important for the American people.
02:17 All that people depend upon with regard to the federal government, the Women, Infants
02:22 and Children's Program and programs like that that help the vulnerable will be funded.
02:27 We'll be able to do food safety inspections and do so much else to protect public health.
02:34 And our military and our national security will be funded.
02:37 So that's the good news, because I think when the Senate takes up this bill—we don't
02:41 know when—in the next several hours at the latest, the government will be funded.
02:47 So that's good news.
02:48 Now, just after the CR bill passed without the support of several hard-right House Republicans,
02:55 Speaker McCarthy went out and stood on his conservative credentials, criticizing Democrats
03:00 as the source of today's contention, constantly alleging that Democrats and the president
03:06 are neglecting security at our southern border.
03:10 What do you make of the speaker's plight after today, Senator?
03:14 Well, if it weren't such a serious, grave topic, the funding of the federal government,
03:22 what the speaker is trying to do is deflect blame, because the country knows that the
03:28 only reason there is drama here, the only reason why so many people believe the government
03:34 would shut down, is because of an extreme group of House Republicans.
03:40 And for whatever reason, the speaker can't get them in line.
03:42 But the good news is, the good news is we're going to be able to fund the government.
03:47 And as soon as this bill passes the Senate, job one, going forward in the next couple
03:52 of days, will be to make sure that we get substantial funding for Ukraine, for Ukraine's
03:59 military.
04:00 And we—and I want to support a measure, and we'll support a measure, that will be
04:05 beyond the dollars that were proposed, about $6 billion.
04:08 We've got to fund that effort against Vladimir Putin and defeat him.
04:14 And I hope our House Republican colleagues will join us in being on the side of Ukraine
04:19 and democracy, rather than Putin and autocracy.
04:23 Let me give our condolences over the loss of your colleague this weekend, California
04:28 Senator Dianne Feinstein, who passed away Friday morning at the age of 90, after serving
04:34 nearly 31 years in the Senate.
04:37 The longest-serving woman in the chamber's history.
04:41 We have Congresswoman Barbara Lee on the show tomorrow.
04:44 She's running to fill Feinstein's seat, along with Congressmembers Katie Porter and
04:49 Adam Schiff.
04:51 How do you personally remember your late colleague, Senator Casey?
04:55 Reverend Al, we all have our own personal moments that we had with Dianne Feinstein.
05:02 First and foremost, she was a giant in the Senate.
05:05 No one knows anything about intelligence.
05:07 I happened to be on the Intelligence Committee the last three years, but she served for decades
05:13 on that committee, the Judiciary Committee.
05:15 All the fights that she waged for people who didn't have a voice, and for our national
05:19 security and so much else.
05:21 But I think, personally, for me, just recalling a moment my wife, Theresa, and I had in 2015,
05:27 when we went to San Francisco for a couple of days, we saw my daughter, and we did some
05:34 work out there.
05:35 But Dianne had us over to her house and was so gracious and such a great host.
05:42 And I'll never forget that moment.
05:44 She was a wonderful person, in addition to being a champion for people without a voice,
05:50 and a very, very strong and capable and effective legislator.
05:53 So we're going to miss her personally, but also miss her leadership.
05:57 Let me bring this home a little.
05:59 You have your own Senate race to win, a race that could determine the majority in the Senate.
06:05 Your Republican opponent is businessman David McCormick, who announced his bid this week
06:13 or last week.
06:15 He's running unopposed this time, after losing the last GOP Senate primary to Dr. Oz, who
06:21 went on to be defeated by your now colleague John Letterman.
06:25 Now, McCormick wasted no time trying to blame you for a mass looting incident in Philadelphia,
06:33 claiming you and your Democratic colleagues are soft on crime.
06:38 What's your response, Senator?
06:39 Well, first of all, it's pretty clear, I think, from the record, and the people of our state
06:44 know me well.
06:45 They know my record.
06:47 The Republican Party in Washington is really the party that's voted over and over again
06:52 to take away money from the COPS program, take away money from the Byrne justice grants
06:59 to go to prosecutors and help us fight crime across the country.
07:04 And he's supporting all those cuts.
07:06 In fact, he was commending House Republicans on these terrible cuts they were going to
07:11 make to the women, infants and children's program and so many others.
07:15 So I look forward to that debate about who's going to support public safety.
07:20 I have a strong record.
07:22 And I hope that as we start out a campaign, I hope people will go to BobCasey.com and
07:27 support our campaign.
07:28 All right.
07:30 Thank you for being with us, Senator Bob Casey.
07:32 Switching from Senate to House, joining me now is Congressman Dan Goldman, Democrat of
07:39 New York.
07:40 He sits on the House Oversight Committee and served as lead counsel in the House impeachment
07:45 of President Trump in 2019.
07:48 Congressman, the continuing resolution passed overwhelmingly in the House just a few hours
07:54 ago after weeks of contentious debate that ultimately led down to just hours before the
08:01 deadline and a potential crisis for the nation.
08:05 Being on the House floor today, what were your thoughts watching this last-ditch vote
08:10 after all of that?
08:13 Why did we need to wait this long?
08:16 This is exactly the continuing resolution that we had always been advocating for, a
08:23 clean continuing resolution that extends the time so that we can work on the appropriations
08:28 bills at the levels that both parties agreed to last June in the Fiscal Responsibility
08:35 Act and ultimately that we get the disaster relief.
08:39 Now, we need to get Ukraine funding.
08:41 That is absolutely paramount.
08:42 But we don't have to get it in this bill right now.
08:45 There are other ways that we can do that, and it was paramount to keep the government
08:49 open.
08:50 The Democrats stayed united.
08:52 We stayed very unified and persistent in the way that we thought this should be done.
08:59 The Republicans tried every which way to reduce spending, to jam through their very draconian
09:06 border bill that will not actually help things, that will make things worse.
09:11 And we stood the line, and ultimately they caved, and they came to us because they knew
09:17 that we had the right position.
09:18 Now, I want to talk to you about what else Republicans in the House were up to in this
09:25 week while a shutdown loomed.
09:27 An impeachment inquiry against President Biden began in the Oversight Committee on which
09:33 you sit.
09:34 I want to play you this moment from your colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responding to a screenshot
09:41 of a text message introduced as evidence by Republican Congressman Byron Donalds.
09:49 Roll the clip, please.
09:51 Earlier today, one of our colleagues, a gentleman from Florida, presented up on this screen
09:57 something that looked, appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating
10:03 an explosive allegation.
10:06 That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image.
10:13 Now, members on staff of both sides of the aisle were reportedly stunned by this moment
10:21 and others from the hearings.
10:23 You know firsthand how thoroughly prepared your party for their impeachment proceedings
10:29 against Trump was.
10:31 What is your take on what you saw from Republicans this week?
10:37 It was embarrassing, Rev.
10:39 It really was.
10:40 I mean, what came out at that hearing was not only, as Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez pointed
10:46 out, misinformation, fabricated evidence, but it was also very clear that the Republicans
10:53 were using evidence from a different time period to make allegations against President
11:00 Biden.
11:01 They're using evidence from 2017.
11:03 He wasn't president or vice president in 2017.
11:06 They're alleging that the Biden DOJ blocked the Hunter Biden investigation, yet they show
11:12 an email from 2020, when Donald Trump was president.
11:16 I repeatedly tried to get in additional witness testimony that directly contradicted many
11:23 of the things that my Republican colleagues were saying.
11:26 And of course, it was very noteworthy, Rev, that in the very first hearing, part of this
11:31 impeachment inquiry, so to speak, they had no fact witnesses.
11:35 They had no witnesses who had any direct knowledge of anything.
11:38 And the witnesses that they did bring as their quote-unquote experts said that they do not
11:44 have enough evidence for impeachment.
11:47 So it was a complete bust, and we were very happy that they were able to bring this out
11:52 to the American people, and we were able to expose the sham that this impeachment is.
11:57 Now, NBC polling out this week found nearly three in five voters do not think the House
12:04 should move forward with impeachment of President Biden.
12:07 Only one in three Republican voters say impeachment will impact who they send to Congress.
12:15 Why do you think House Republicans are moving forward with this effort anyway?
12:19 Do you think it's connected to the legal problems affecting their guy, former President Trump?
12:27 I think it all has to do with Donald Trump, and he's made it very clear.
12:31 He has said he wants President Biden to be impeached because he was impeached.
12:35 He doesn't care, of course, about the evidence.
12:37 He doesn't care about the facts.
12:38 He never has.
12:39 But he is directing things from his home down in Mar-a-Lago, and his mob soldiers up here
12:46 on the House of Representatives are doing what he wants.
12:49 And I think that polling is going to change significantly after our hearing, especially
12:53 because Fox News ran the hearing live all day long.
12:58 Ordinarily, Chairman Comer, Chairman Jordan, they get up on Fox News, and they have, you
13:04 know, celebratory panelists or hosts who are lauding them and propping them up and making
13:09 all these conclusions.
13:11 On Thursday, they got a different taste of what was really in the evidence, and I hope
13:17 that they realize the fallacy that this whole impeachment investigation is.
13:22 Yeah, I noticed the fox wasn't in the henhouse.
13:25 Congressman, before you go, you joined 49 House Democrats this week calling on Supreme
13:31 Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from an upcoming high court case impacting
13:38 executive agencies, after recent reporting found that he had visited events held by the
13:44 conservative Koch network.
13:46 Attorneys for which are currently asking the Supreme Court to overturn a rule giving executive
13:53 agencies broad authority to implement regulations.
13:57 What's at stake here, Congressman?
14:00 Well, this is both a perpetuation and continuation of the unethical behavior that Clarence Thomas
14:07 has clearly been using and doing for the last two decades.
14:11 But in this particular instance, there is a clear conflict of interest related to forthcoming
14:16 work before the Supreme Court.
14:18 Clarence Thomas, who is known to be very intransigent in his views from the beginning 30 years ago
14:25 to now, has actually flip-flopped on this specific issue, which the Koch network has
14:30 been advocating against for decades.
14:33 And now the Koch network is bringing a case in front of the Supreme Court to overturn
14:39 a very settled precedent that is used far and wide throughout the United States for
14:44 legal interpretation.
14:45 And Clarence Thomas was at a donor event trying to help the Koch network raise money.
14:51 That is a clear conflict of interest, and he must recuse because of it.
14:57 Congressman Dan Goldman, thank you for being with us tonight.
15:01 Coming up, Donald Trump tries to trick Americans into thinking he's pro-union with the visit
15:07 to Michigan during the auto worker strike.
15:11 But don't be fooled.
15:12 I'll explain why in this week's "Gotcha."
15:15 And we're watching Capitol Hill as the Senate takes up a last-minute spending bill to avoid
15:21 a government shutdown.
15:22 Stay with MSNBC for the latest.
15:26 But first, my colleague Richard Louis with today's top news stories.
15:30 Richard?
15:31 Rev, good afternoon to you.
15:32 New York City is drying out after nearly seven inches of rain led to widespread flooding.
15:37 Subways, buses have resumed normal service.
15:40 Police say a sea lion that briefly swam out of her enclosure in Central Park was rescued
15:46 and is now back at the zoo.
15:48 The French government assures Parisians it will solve a bed bug problem in time for the
15:52 Summer Olympics less than a year from now.
15:55 The blood-sucking insects were found on subways, theaters and even at the airport.
16:00 And the White House wishes former President Jimmy Carter a happy 99th birthday.
16:04 The former president's birthday celebration was moved to today instead of tomorrow, the
16:09 day of his actual birthday, due to the uncertainty surrounding a government.
16:13 This week, a day after President Biden became the first sitting president ever to join a
16:20 picket line, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for his
16:26 own union rally.
16:28 But his show of solidarity for the United Auto Workers was underwhelming, to say the
16:34 least.
16:35 Trump's event was held at Drake Enterprises, a non-union auto parts factory uninvolved
16:42 in the strike, located in Clinton Township, a suburb 20 miles north of Detroit.
16:49 He wasn't invited by the employees, but rather by the company president.
16:54 NBC journalists on hand could only find a handful of actual UAW members, and the others
17:01 at the event reported speaking to people wearing union shirts and carrying union signs were
17:09 actually not in the group at all.
17:13 Maybe that's just as well, because Trump's speech was not exactly inspiring.
17:19 Take a listen.
17:20 It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what you get, because in two years, you're all
17:25 going to be out of business.
17:26 You're not getting anything.
17:28 What they're doing to the auto industry in Michigan and throughout the country is absolutely
17:33 horrible and ridiculous.
17:35 It doesn't matter what the hell you're getting an hour.
17:39 Do me a favor.
17:40 Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me.
17:44 Now, Trump wants organized labor to back his campaign, but he sure hasn't done much to
17:52 earn that support.
17:53 In fact, quite the opposite.
17:55 As president, Trump stacked his National Labor Relations Board with anti-union appointees
18:03 and packed the courts with conservative judges who ruled against unions in case after case.
18:11 When GM workers went on strike for two months in 2019, Trump barely lifted a finger to help
18:17 them.
18:18 It was Democratic presidential hopefuls who visited the picking lines, including Joe Biden,
18:24 Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar.
18:28 The Biden campaign took aim at Trump's record with auto workers in an ad that aired on Fox
18:35 this week, right before the second GOP presidential debate.
18:40 Here's a clip.
18:41 He says he stands with auto workers, but as president, Donald Trump passed tax breaks
18:48 for his rich friends while automakers shuttered their plants and Michigan lost manufacturing
18:53 jobs.
18:54 Trump's half-hearted support of the UAW this week is par for the course.
19:00 In the 1980s, he hired non-union, undocumented Polish workers to do the demolition work paving
19:09 the way for Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, paying them as little as $4 an hour.
19:15 In 2016, as president-elect, he told carrier workers at a plant in Indianapolis he'd save
19:23 their jobs from being moved to Mexico.
19:26 A year later, roughly half were laid off.
19:30 Union members worked too hard.
19:32 To high-electric nation, let's bring in my political panel, Michelle Goldberg, opinion
19:39 columnist for The New York Times, and former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.
19:46 Charlie, the Senate will be voting later today on short-term spending—a short-term spending
19:52 bill, to be exact—after the House passed a bipartisan deal to avert a shutdown.
19:57 The bargain was a turnaround for Speaker McCarthy, who had struggled to appease hard-right members
20:04 of his own caucus.
20:06 What do you think will be the fallout from this showdown?
20:10 Well, I suspect the speaker will face a motion to vacate the chair, that is, to remove him
20:17 from office at some point from those hard-liners.
20:20 I think that's coming.
20:21 It's inevitable.
20:22 The speaker threw down the gauntlet, I believe, last week and told those guys, "Go ahead.
20:26 Offer the motion."
20:28 And I'm pleased that the speaker chose to do the right thing today by bringing up a
20:33 bipartisan bill.
20:34 I've been saying for weeks, this is a very easy issue to resolve.
20:38 All they had to do was just put a bill on the floor that was a clean funding bill, and
20:42 they would get a strong bipartisan vote, probably around 300 votes.
20:45 They got 335.
20:46 The Senate's going to take it up, and they'll revisit the Ukraine battle for another day.
20:51 But I expect a motion to vacate from Matt Gaetz and the others.
20:55 Whether they'll be successful or not, I don't know.
20:57 But I do suspect the Democrats have to make a decision.
21:00 If they choose not to help McCarthy, the House will go back into chaos.
21:04 If they choose to help him, obviously, they probably don't want to do that because of
21:08 the impeachment inquiry.
21:10 So I think it's up in the air just how this will resolve itself, what the outcome will
21:14 be.
21:15 But it seems pretty certain, though, that the motion to vacate is coming.
21:18 Michelle, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi warned minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and others
21:25 in his leadership team against bailing out Speaker McCarthy, according to multiple Democrats
21:31 who spoke privately with Politico.
21:34 Do you think Democrats in the House did the right thing, joining with Republicans, to
21:39 avert a shutdown?
21:41 Yeah, absolutely.
21:42 I mean, they absolutely did the right thing passing this bill.
21:45 And there's a reason that the Democratic vote was almost unanimous, except for one congressman
21:51 who objected to the fact that they had stripped out funding for Ukraine.
21:55 But this is what Democrats wanted, a clean, continuing resolution.
21:59 This was a sort of total capitulation on the part of the right, because they failed in
22:04 their maximalist attempt to use the government shut down as leverage to get kind of really
22:11 unpopular policies, policies that are not even necessarily that popular, in some cases,
22:16 with their own party, never mind the country at large.
22:19 That doesn't mean, though, that Democrats now need to save McCarthy from the kind of
22:25 unwieldiness in his own caucus.
22:28 I mean, I think, you know, Democrats I've talked to are willing to think about saving
22:33 McCarthy, but they need something in exchange.
22:35 It would need to be a real power-sharing agreement.
22:38 They're not just willing to say, well, you get to kind of continue being Speaker and
22:43 pursuing.
22:44 Let's also remember that the reason they started this impeachment inquiry in the first place
22:48 was as an inducement to Republicans not to shut down the government.
22:52 That was the reporting in August, that if they—you know, that McCarthy would sort
22:57 of give them this as a bone and that they would be less likely to shut down the government
23:02 because they would want to continue their inquiry.
23:06 And instead, they just decided that they would try to shut down the government and they would
23:09 just declare the impeachment inquiry essential, and then they weren't able to shut down the
23:14 government.
23:15 So, he—this leadership, although he showed leadership today, he's an incredibly, you
23:21 know, kind of meek and waffling figure most of the time.
23:24 You're not suggesting that the hard-right members of his caucus didn't keep their
23:31 word.
23:32 But anyway, Charlie, let's switch gears to the GOP primaries, from frontrunner Donald
23:38 Trump and Nikki Haley traded bobs on social media in the wake of this week's second
23:45 Republican debate.
23:47 After Trump called Haley disloyal on social media and said he would never pick her as
23:53 a vice presidential running mate, Haley responded by saying Trump's post proves her campaign
24:00 is gaining momentum.
24:01 Now, Haley has certainly drawn media attention after two strong debate performances.
24:07 The question is, who's watching?
24:10 This week's debate drew the lowest ratings since 2015.
24:15 Do you see Haley or any other Republican candidate gaining momentum right now?
24:21 I don't.
24:23 It seems to me that there are too many of these candidates running against Donald Trump
24:27 are running for second place, which is really last place in a primary.
24:31 So I think really what needs to happen is that these candidates who are challenging
24:35 Trump need to take him on front and indirectly.
24:38 I've been mystified why they've been committing these acts of political malpractice, other
24:42 than maybe Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson and a few others.
24:45 But they really need to explain why Donald Trump is too great a risk for the Republican
24:49 Party.
24:50 And they have to make that case, the case to fire Donald Trump as the leader of the
24:56 party.
24:57 They have not done that.
24:58 I mean, too many of them.
24:59 And then Vivek Ramaswamy, I'm not sure what he's doing up there.
25:02 He certainly isn't running for president.
25:04 He wants something, but he's never going to be president.
25:06 He's certainly not going to be the Republican nominee.
25:08 So again, I run a lot of campaigns.
25:12 And when you're running against somebody, you need to draw a sharp contrast with the
25:16 person who's leading.
25:17 And they're just not doing that.
25:18 I hope they do.
25:19 They need to do it collectively, because Trump otherwise dominates the narrative.
25:24 And they can't break through.
25:25 So it was an interesting debate.
25:28 It's an undercard.
25:29 You know, it's nice to watch the fights leading up to the big one, but there was no big fight.
25:33 And so that's where we're stuck.
25:35 Michelle, let's turn to California.
25:38 Let's turn to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the complicated task of appointing
25:44 someone to the Senate after the passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein.
25:49 Now, Newsom has said he would appoint a black woman to finish out her term.
25:55 One of the options is Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who will be on this show tomorrow, who
26:00 is running for the seat.
26:03 And however Newsom has said, it would be unfair for him to appoint anyone who's running in
26:10 a contested primary.
26:12 Now, Congresswoman Lee has said it would be insulting for Governor Newsom to appoint a
26:18 different black woman as a mere caretaker for the office.
26:22 What should the governor do, given the circumstances?
26:25 I mean, I think the governor is in an extremely difficult position, given the contradictory
26:31 promises that he's made, right?
26:33 I mean, if he's promised to appoint a black woman, it's obvious that the most—you know,
26:38 the most obvious person for that position is clearly Barbara Lee.
26:41 If he's also promised not to make an appointment that would seem like he was putting his thumb
26:45 on the scales of this primary, then, you know, to kind of basically—to appoint Barbara
26:51 Lee, there's no way that you can appoint Barbara Lee and then say, "But I'm not endorsing
26:55 her for the seat the next time around."
26:59 So, you know, honestly, I think that he just—I think that as insulting and kind of suboptimal
27:05 as it is, he does have to appoint a sort of a caretaker for the seats, and then let the
27:11 voters decide who's going to be the nominee in the next general election.
27:17 Charlie, what would be your advice to the governor?
27:20 What should he do?
27:21 He's in a tight squeeze here.
27:23 Well, if his intention was to appoint a black woman, he should just do so.
27:28 I would have advised him not to say that up front, because now he's raised expectations
27:33 for Barbara Lee and others.
27:34 And I work with Barbara Lee in the Congress, so I'm a friend.
27:37 But it's clear he's going to go for a caretaker.
27:39 It'll likely be an African-American woman, just as he said he would appoint.
27:44 And that'll disappoint Barbara Lee, but it will make the other candidates running for
27:47 the U.S. Senate and Democratic primary quite happy.
27:50 So that's what I think Newsom will do.
27:52 And if he's smart, he'll do it quickly and not let this fester too much longer.
27:56 He's going to have to find a qualified black woman that wants to be just a caretaker.
28:02 We'll see.
28:03 Michelle Goldberg and Charlie Dent, thank you both.
28:07 After the break, how some states are sidestepping the rules to deny black voters representation,
28:16 and what can be done about it as we fight for fair election.
28:21 As the 2024 election draws closer, the struggle for equitable electoral representation, especially
28:28 for communities of color, is playing out in statehouses and in the courts.
28:35 Joining me now to talk about some of the most recent flashpoints in the fight for a fair
28:41 democracy is Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice
28:48 at the New York University School of Law.
28:51 Michael, thank you for joining us.
28:53 And let's start our conversation in the battleground state of Ohio.
28:58 The state's Supreme Court has rejected four congressional maps in just the past three
29:05 years for being overly partisan.
29:08 This week, a commission of lawmakers, including five Republicans and just two Democrats, passed
29:14 a fifth redistricting plan after negotiations held largely behind closed doors.
29:21 What's your take on this latest proposal, and why has the process dragged on for so
29:26 long?
29:27 Well, you're exactly right, Reverend, that what you are seeing all across the country
29:32 is a struggle over representation with big, big implications for the outcomes of elections,
29:39 for racial fairness, and many other things.
29:42 In Ohio, the state Supreme Court has struck down the maps over and over and over again,
29:48 and the legislature, which basically controls this commission, has simply ignored what the
29:54 state Supreme Court has done.
29:57 Those of us who care about fair maps, we're trying again, but it may well be the case
30:02 that the answer has to come from voters through a ballot initiative to create a strong and
30:07 independent redistricting commission.
30:10 And interestingly, one of the people who's pushing for that is the former chief justice
30:15 of the Ohio Supreme Court, who is a Republican.
30:18 Wow.
30:19 Now, also this week, the Supreme Court rejected a second attempt by Alabama Republicans to
30:25 use a congressional map with just one majority.