I'm Peter Gamuti. Thanks for being with
us. The Republican controlled state
house in Texas has passed the new
congressional maps which they hope will
deliver them five extra seats at next
year's midterm elections. It's a hugely
controversial move which has sparked
battles over redistricting across the
country. In California, Democrats are
moving to carve up their state map in
retaliation. In other Republican states
like Indiana, Missouri, and Florida,
they too are talking about tweaking
congressional maps to create more
Republican controlled seats. So, what
does it mean for politics in the United
States? Well, I'm joined by David
Goodman, Houston Bureau Chief of the New
York Times, who's been following this
story. Thanks for being with us, David.
Um, we have sort of boundary changes as
well, but it's supposed to be controlled
in the UK according to population. Can
you just explain uh briefly the process
in the US?
>> Well, thanks for having me. Uh yeah, in
the United States, it actually varies by
state and the state legislatores are
able to uh set the boundaries in many
cases and that becomes uh a partisan
political um project. Now, normally this
happens only after the once a decade
census where the, you know, population
numbers are are adjusted and you sort of
figure out where the lines uh are
supposed to go because in the House of
Representatives, each um member is meant
to represent the same number of people.
There's a one person, one vote
principle. Uh but some states like
California previously had had
independent commissions do it more like
uh I guess they have it done um in the
UK, but here a lot of states still have
state legislators do this in a partisan
manner. and and what we're seeing now is
sort of that taken to its extreme. So
Texas is very blatantly going out and
saying we're going to do this, redraw
these lines to get as much Republican
advantage as we can. These are
Republican leaders of the state who are
doing it. And that's been a challenge uh
now to these Democratic states who are
looking to counter it, but have uh
roadblocks that they've put in place to
try and take politics out of it. Now
they're trying to put the politics back
in.
>> And and just tell us about California.
Yeah. So, California has been the state
that's been uh most um ready to respond
to what Texas is doing. And Governor
Gavin Newsome in California uh put
forward a proposal uh that would try and
get around the state's independent
commission. So, there they have a
commission uh in their state
constitution that's supposed to draw the
lines. What Gavin Gavin Newsome has done
is um get the Democratic legislature
there to put forward a new plan that
would uh draw five new Democratic
districts to counteract the five uh that
Texas has drawn, but they have to bring
that plan actually to the voters. So,
what's going to happen in California is
they're going to vote it out of uh the
legislature probably today. The
Democrats think they have the votes to
do that, but then it's actually going to
go on the ballot in November and the
voters will have a chance to decide
whether they actually want to make this
change to their constitution on a
temporary basis in order to counteract
uh what's been done in Texas. So, the
California situation is a lot more
protracted and a lot more uncertain than
what's been happening in Texas.
>> Uh for a country that's supposed to be
the world's most powerful democracy,
this all looks um a bit bewildering, I'm
going to be honest. What do you think it
means uh overall for for what's coming
up in the midterms?
Well, that is the ultimate goal here.
And and Donald Trump, the President
Trump has been very explicit that what
he's after is to hold on to control of
the US House for Republicans. Now,
Republicans have a very narrow margin in
the House. And if he were to lose it in
the midterms, which is very possible
because uh often the party out of power
does take control uh in those midterm
elections, if he were to lose that
control, uh he's worried that Democrats
would then styy his uh his agenda, but
also they could launch investigations,
just make his life a lot more uh
difficult. So what this is all about is
Donald Trump trying to maintain control
of the US House and Republicans in the
states going along with this plan
because they too, you know, want to see
his agenda pushed forward and not and
not blocked by Democrats. So this is a
very raw partisan fight over the US
House of Representatives that's playing
out in each of these state houses all
over the country.
>> So I mean is literally every state now
looking at this or or is it or is
potential change focused in in certain
parts of the country?
>> Well, yeah, not every state can actually
do something about this in the time it
would take to to affect the midterm
elections. So you have discrete places
where they're they're looking to do
this. So California is one as we've
said, Texas. Uh Missouri has just said
Donald Trump said today actually that
Missouri is going to be looking at it.
Indiana. Uh the Republicans are trying
to get Indiana to go along with that.
And uh Democrats for their part are
looking at New York. Uh New York would
be complicated because they couldn't
actually get anything in place before
2026, but Illinois is another place
where Democrats have looked at. Uh the
trouble is a lot of these states are
already pretty gerrymandered, pretty cut
up to benefit one party or the other. So
the the different parties are looking at
states that have a lot of population uh
and have a lot of um seats that belong
to the other party and thinking how can
we cut these states up differently so
that our party has a greater advantage.
>> David Goodman, it's fascinating. Thank
you very much indeed for talking us
through that