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Part One:
We speak with Kathay Feng, National Redistricting Director for Common Cause, about the two cases currently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court: one challenge by Republicans and one by Democrats to two states’ decisions to draw the boundaries for Congressional districts in ways that would significantly favor the majority political party. We learn about the history of constitutional challenges to legislative redistricting decisions — beginning with racial gerrymandering and now challenging partisan redistricting.
At the Supreme Court oral argument recently, most people were surprised to hear some conservative Justices (including J. Kavanaugh) vigorously criticizing the states’ partisan gerrymandering decisions.
Part Two:
We check in again with Steffen Schmidt, Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University, about the latest developments in politics, including:
— the idea that presidential candidates should visit Nebraska, Michigan and other states where climate change has caused once-in-a-lifetime weather crises that have (and will continue to have) devastating consequences for farmers, workers, and other ordinary Americans.
The floods also have repercussions on our national defense. Some military bases are being flooded and others have to make plans to move their operations to higher ground in order to protect themselves from future storms.
The presidential candidates could help change the national conversation on these important issues. Similarly, they could focus attention on the details of the federal budget. Within the last year, Pres. Trump has cut spending for infrastructure and shredded the social safety net. In place of those programs that benefit our people, he said he was moving that money to the military defense budget.
But instead of helping to defend our country, it appears that a lot of that military money will have to be spent on the military’s response to crises created by climate change. And even that extra money that Trump said he’d move to the military may not, in actuality, be available: the president has said that, next week, he will use billions from the military budget to build his unnecessary wall on the southern border.
Meanwhile, he now plans to cut the tiny amount of money that the federal government has previously provided to Special Olympics. Our athletes with disabilities — like our farmers, our workers, and our military — have been abandoned by the Trump administration.
