From Washington: How Gerrymandering Is Reshaping Politics & Driving Extremism

0:00Sunday, September 6th, 2026. I'm Jared Calper. Fewer midterm race is considered competitive after states redraw congressional lines in a Jerry Mandarin arms race. A long time ago, we thought this should happen once every 10 years, but apparently now it happens once every 10 minutes. I'm Jessica Brosenthal, foreign cash in U.S. elections, Capitol Hill digs deeper into major campaign finance vulnerabilities. How did their entire compliance team leave Act Blue after the 2024 election? Because some shady things were going on and they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and now they're running for the hills. This is the Fox News rundown from Washington. In November, 435 seats in the U.S. house will be on the ballot, but in just a fraction of those is the outcome of the election in much doubt.

1:02In July, the Fox News power rankings put just 16 house races in the toss up category. Another 23 fallen the lean Democrat or leans Republican columns. Everything else is considered either a likely or solid win for Republicans or Democrats. It points to a narrow majority regardless of whether Republicans hold or Democrats flip the next Congress. It also explains why so much effort and so much money was put into a redistricting arms race this summer with California and Texas triggering several states to redraw congressional district boundaries in the middle of the decade years ahead of schedule. But one party looking for an electoral advantage is nothing new. Think Tammy Hall or say Ohio in the 2010s. So here's what happened in Ohio. Obviously following what happened in 2010 across the country with project red map. You saw state legislatures across the country that were basically stolen from the voters.

2:04Josh Roltonberg is a journalist and co author of the new book draw the line in Ohio. It's a look at the history of a gerrymandering fight in that state and whether or not all this new map making is good for the country and voters. But Ohioans did not like what happened in their own state and so on two different occasions in 2015 and in 2018 more than 70% of the voters decided with a constitutional amendment to change the way that the state did congressional and legislative redistricting. So obviously they were going to wait for 2020 for the next census to come out because well, a long time ago we thought this should happen once every 10 years, but apparently now it happens once every 10 minutes. So what happened obviously in 2020 we had COVID and so it delayed the census data getting to the state of Ohio. But once it did and 2021 came around, then you had this newly formed Ohio redistricting commission. It was bipartisan, but it was five Republicans and two Democrats and there was supposed

3:06to be a spirit of compactness, contiguity, proportional representation, reflecting how voters have voted over the past 10 years. It's 54% Republican, 46% Democrat. But what we saw ultimately was that the Ohio redistricting commission prioritized the protecting of incumbents more than they did drawing fair districts and the Ohio Supreme Court shot down maps over and over and over again. But instead of complying with the court's law, the commission just took their case to federal court and a federal court said, well, you know what you guys, if you can't figure it out, you have to have an election. And so we're just going to go ahead and put in place unconstitutional maps just so you can have an election. Ohioans obviously didn't like that. They went to the ballot in 2024, thinking that they could reform this process again. There was a lot of momentum behind the ballot initiative to change to an independent commission. But in the end, it was the Ohio ballot board that literally fudged the language to say

4:09that this new form of redistricting would require gerrymandering. And so you had voters go into the voting booth thinking that they were voting to ending gerrymandering. And instead they voted against their own best interests. And this is where we get to today. Ohio is not unique in trying to figure all of this out. And this goes back to maps that have been drawn in Maryland and North Carolina. Those both faced Supreme Court challenges. And I remember covering that several years ago in which the Supreme Court kind of threw up their hands and said, listen, a political party's not a protected class. There are federal laws and federal protections to ensure that you're not gerrymandering to disenfranchise minorities, disenfranchised black voters. But disenfranchising Republicans in the case of Maryland or disenfranchising Democrats in the case of North Carolina as those cases presented themselves wasn't a constitutional question. And so it has left the states with a lot of discretion in deciding where to draw these likes, hasn't it? 100%.

5:09But when you have gerrymandering that's taking place on both sides of the aisle and it's happening on one state with Democrats on one state with Republicans, clearly we have a problem. We have a five alarm fire. And the fact that this isn't happening now once every 10 years, the fact that this is happening now as I joked once every 10 minutes. Because if you saw what you saw this year and you think that that was a lot, just wait till the midterms are over. Because every state that didn't get into it is going to get into it. So what we need right now is a national standard to get rid of this once and for all. That's going to require action from Congress, right? And you point out that in Ohio, there was a desire to protect incumbents. It's going to be incumbents that are deciding what this federal legislation, what these federal guidelines, what this federal standard ends up looking like. Sure. But here's what we know about Congress. Number one, especially at this moment in time. They have abdicated their duty. They look to the president right now to see what they should or shouldn't do.

6:10And I'm not going to just put that on Republicans. I would say if the situation was reversed, Democrats would look towards a Democratic White House to see what's going on right now. So if Congress isn't going to do its job, what we need to do now, knowing that we have a presidential election coming up in two years, we need to ask every one of these presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, will you do anything to end partisan gerrymandering? Because this country is way too divided right now. And gerrymandering, one state, gerrymandering, and other state isn't going to make us closer. And let me ask you, Jared, if you are a minority party voter in a state that has been rigged against you, and all you've been told your whole life is your power comes from your voice and your vote. And you take it away in a moment where we have seen nothing but a rise in political violence. What do you think it's going to lead to? So we know that Congress needs to do something about this because our country is going in a wrong direction right now, and we are on the brink of losing it completely. What is gerrymandering and what is redistricting?

7:13Because I know that you'll hear Republicans say, well listen, Massachusetts isn't an entirely Democratic state, right? It's not only Democrats that live in Massachusetts, but it's only Democratic congressional districts. So their congressional map reflect the way that folks register. Is that what you are aiming for or is there more nuance to the difference between redistricting and a political advantage gerrymander? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there's technical terms for both, right? Redistricting is the process that happens every 10 years to redraw maps. Gerrymandering is when it's done to favor one political party over another, right? Those are the technical terms. But you don't have to be a gerrymandering expert to figure out what's redistricting and what's gerrymandering. Okay, if you look at a map and you see in Ohio a district snake from Cleveland to Toledo, you know that those communities do not think alike. If you look at what happened in Virginia that was tried, there was a giant lobster claw. Obviously, you had those districts that don't think alike.

8:17You know, come up with a different couple, the original one, the salamander in Massachusetts. It looked like a weird shape. When you look at a map, just an average everyday person, you're looking for a color. A couple different things. Number one, is it a close geometric shape? If it is, then you know that there wasn't a lot of shenanigans into drawing it, right? That's number one. Number two, can I draw a line from one end of the district straight through to the other? Or is it going with weird shapes? If it's going with weird shapes, then you know it was drawn intentionally to keep certain areas apart and or together. And then the last part is communities of interest. Because a or the urban areas and rural areas, they tend to think alike. We live Jared next to the people that we tend to think like. But when all of a sudden, we are grouped into a district with people that don't think like us, we are not going to get the representation we deserve. So that's the difference between redistricting and gerrymandering. Keep the communities together that have the same priorities.

9:18And that way, you will get moderate representation that reflects your vote. So when you talk about moderate representation that reflects a community, is the aim here to have more competitive house races, fewer competitive house races, or no change in the number of competitive house races? Why should somebody have a safe seat when you hear that, right? You're talking about the midterms right now. And it's like, oh, there's 435 seats that are up there right now. But really, how many are up for grabs, right? 30. So that's a fraction. And what does that mean, right? What it means is, of course, you're likely to have potentially a moderate candidate because the other side has to worry about the other side to get that vote. But when you're in a quote unquote safe seat, there's no accountability. I can act however I want to act as I represent you. And I know that there is no way for you to vote me out. So what ends up happening is you have primary elections that are more important than general

10:19elections, because I know I'm going to win the general if I get through in the primary. But when it comes to the primary, if it's me versus four other people, then I know in order to get the base, to get the plurality of the vote, well, I'm going to go the furthest from the center because that's going to grip all that's going to have all of the priorities that my party wants. That's not the way that Washington or state capitals work. You're not going to get everything you want. You have to compromise. But if we have people on the far left and the far right, how are they going to get to the middle? It's pretty far away. What is the incentive for parties to support something like this, right? If the outcome of what we have seen across the country is a more advantageous democratic map, like in California or in New York or a more advantageous Republican map, like we have seen in Florida or Texas, why would members of those parties, leaders of those parties say, you know what, we need to figure out a way to make this more competitive?

11:20What's the incentive? So I think you're asking the wrong question. And it's clear. I do that sometimes. Well, it's not your fault. But a lot of people are asking this question. There is no incentive for parties to do this, for lawmakers to do this, right? They say without saying it, they don't trust the voters to back their policies. That's what gerrymandering really is. Our message isn't working. So we don't trust the voters to show up on election day and vote for our policies. We need to ensure victory. And the only way to do that is to suppress the rights of other people. That's what the parties are saying. But now we need to wake up the people to say enough is enough. And it can't be Jared that my life gets better because your life gets worse or your life gets better because my life gets worse. It shouldn't be that way. It should be if we're running against one another, it should be your policies versus my policies. And then an electorate that is fairly drawn should get to decide which of us wins. It shouldn't be that you have more eggs in the basket than I do. And even if I have better policies, I can't win.

12:22So we need to wake the people up to know that they are the ones that have the power here. In this country, we deflect a lot to the lawmakers and to the president. But we pay their salaries. You would never in any business allow your employees to treat you like this. And what happens if your employee goes off the rails from what your mission is, they get fired. We should be firing lawmakers across the country that are not representing us in the way that we deserve. I mean, it sounds like then what you are advocating for in this book and certainly to this interview, it was almost a grassroots political movement. 100 percent. 100 percent. 100 percent? And you want this to become an electoral issue for voters and for candidates. So when I talk to different people and different people, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're coming to. And most people that I've come across, they truly vote for one reason, right? Whether it's to back your party or a straight day or your straight, there's straight R just down the ballot, or you care about a single issue. And that's what you think about when you're in the voting booth. But what I tell them all the time is if you take a look at the issue that you care about

13:27and it's not getting solved. Well, why do you think it is that it's not getting solved? Well, it's not getting solved because you can't obviously have a compromise with your lawmakers and they are not pushing things forward. Well, if they're not doing it, then you need to get to the deeper level here. And while I'm very glad that Jerry Mandarin is now in the political zeitgeist right now, this is something that people need to pay attention to. That's why I'm saying, yes, 2026 midterms are coming up here in 10 minutes. But in two years, we're going to have a presidential election. And if we know that Congress advocates its duty to the president, then we need to ask these candidates, are they going to make this a policy position? Because we are so close, Jared, from the next sense is coming out, the Voting Rights Act now section two, having been gutted that every state in this country is five minutes away from being all blue and all red. So what do you tell a Republican voter that's going to be in that disenfranchised place that's a fully democratic state and vice versa?

14:28We can't have it get there. So yes, we need to have a grassroots movement across the country right now to wake everybody up to say enough is enough. The lawmakers have had their shot. And this isn't the way that we want things to go. And that was going to be my final question is we have a sense is coming up in 2030. That will give the data, the information for states to start this process of the every 10 year redistricting that is traditionally done. We'll find out how many seats in Congress each state has. You want to see legislation, you want to see a solution that sounds like before that 2030 date. So let's put it in perspective, Jared. Republicans control Washington right now across the board. If they were so upset about what Democrats are doing in different states, Mike Johnson could put a bill on the floor today. Let's ban Jerry Mandarin once and for all. John Thune passes it. Donald Trump signs it and my book is no longer relevant. I'll just go home. Right. That's not going to happen. Go to the other side of the aisle. Democrats have been advocating for the John Arlewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That would do in a bunch of things.

15:29But at the same time, you've had House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffery saying out loud that we are going to fight fire with fire. And in our book, we have a line that says, you know what happens when you fight fire with fire, you don't put out the flames, you just burn the whole house down and you can't have that. So yes, we do need to have legislation right now. What exactly is the specific solution? Rurian, I point to different things. But the point that we will make is there are a lot of proposals right now that are on the table that need serious consideration because they are a lot better than the status quo. And yes, it needs to happen right now. The book is draw the line in Ohio. It is I think a timely book. It looks back. It looks forward where we are headed. There it is right there. Draw the line in Ohio. Josh appreciated. Jared, thanks, Raby. Happy to come back again and talk more.

16:30The Committee on House Administration first began investigating Act Blue in 2023. Over concerns, the platform might have been accepting donations and violation of federal election law, allowing foreign contributions for political campaigns and candidates. Then a New York Times report revealed a law firm working with Act Blue told the organization their chief executive, Regina Wallace Jones, may have misled lawmakers about how they vet donations to ensure they're not from foreign sources. She had said they conducted multi-layered screenings, but the law firm concluded that might not be the case, writing this presents a substantial risk to Act Blue. The organization serves as a fundraising platform for various democratic causes, campaigns and candidates. Earlier this summer, I had a congressional hearing, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan was among many to question Wallace Jones. Your board chairman said, Act Blue accepted up to 38 million contributions in 2024 that had the signs of foreign origin. How much fraud is too much fraud? On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer the question,

17:33pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution. This was her answer for repeated questions. An Act Blue co-founder pleaded the Fifth during his closed-door deposition in August, and this week sources told Fox News another Act Blue board member Kimberly Peerler Allen also pled the Fifth during her hearing. Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith tried to talk to her in the halls of Congress as she left her interview. What did you have a chance to say to the committee today? Sorry, I already got to get on her way. Oh, don't worry, I'm on it with you. What would you have a chance to say to the committee? So where's the investigation going as those called before lawmakers refused to talk? Well, clearly that Act Blue had become a Monday laundering operation for the Democratic Party, and that's very unfortunate. We spoke with Texas Republican Congressman Pat Fallon earlier this week. Their compliance and fraud prevention was severely lacking, and they actually were training their employees to do almost no verifications. Like, for instance, if somebody used PayPal, their software didn't even vet that at all, and they found internal internally,

18:37we've seen that they found instances, scores and instances where foreign money was actually accepted. And that's a major nodule. That's a violation of federal law, and people can, you know, there's criminal penalties to be had. And if they were on the up and up, then why is everyone that used to work for Act Blue taking the Fifth Amendment? Also, why did their entire compliance team leave Act Blue after the 2024 election? I'm talking everybody, because some shady things were going on, and they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and now they're running for the hills. Tell us why such a big part of this is the acceptance of donations from credit cards, while not requiring that CVC or CVV number. Is that the big red flag that donations weren't necessarily from the people that they said they were from? You'd red flag, because then you're accepting donations from somebody. They say they're so, you know, they're A, and they're actually person B. That's why we all go through that when we make purchase online. I can't remember the last time they didn't require me to give that three-digit number on the back of my credit card,

19:39and yet, Act Blue wasn't doing that or enforcing it. It is really one of those things that make you go, and now we know why is because they just wanted to get money in the door, and they really didn't have much of a concern as to where it was coming from when federal law clearly states that United States citizens and only United States citizens can donate to campaigns. What do you all suspect here? Like, how much money do you think may have flowed toward democratic campaigns or candidates from foreign organizations or individuals? I've heard a few numbers, but they might pertain to a specific year. Is there an estimate? It's into the millions. It's hard to say right now. It's vast, and it's definitely game-changing. You can see it, and they're reflected in their fundraising numbers now. They're far down from where they were in previous election cycles. And again, that's one of those, why would it be the case if it weren't for the fact that, yes, they were not doing things the right way, you know, previously? If everyone's pleading the fifth, it sounds like three so far.

20:40What happens now? If Congress keeps running into a wall, is there another investigation that should happen, or is happening regarding this? If Congress can't get the answers, they want or need? Yeah, there's three committees of jurisdiction. And what you need to do, what we do on the oversight committee, is we go where the evidence leads us. And that's the best way to do an investigation. And you continue to try and find as much as you can. I mean, under when Joe Biden was president, the oversight committee found lots of very interesting things that should have been vetted and then prosecuted by the Department of Justice, but the Biden Department of Justice wouldn't do it. One of the people of course was butterbite, and he gave him a blanket part, so we couldn't pursue that moving forward. But so that's what we're focused on doing. Chairman, co-hosted in an excellent job, and we're going to continue to do that. Well, right now, we're talking about fundraising. Everyone is raising money right now, or maybe most of it has wrapped up for midterms. What do you think Republicans need to do over these next couple of months? Or are voters vines for the most part made up by September?

21:43Most, I'll say this, and this is a great question. Most voters vines are already made up. However, for those small, that small percentage, that's not. They're going to make the difference in a lot of these races. We've got about 21 house seats that will determine who's in the majority moving forward. And what the Democrats have decided to do is say, you know, we're going to make a affordability, the issue, which I find rather ironic, considering that they were the ones that created the affordability crisis in the first place by spending literally trillions of dollars that we didn't have while Joe Biden was president and using COVID as an excuse. If you remember, the inflation rate got to 9, nearly 9% when Joe Biden was president. It's nowhere near that now. It's a fraction of that. And we'd be in a better spot if we weren't in a conflict with Iran. Like, frankly, it was necessary considering they were about, they were on the precipice of being a nuclear armed. And do we have to remind folks that this is a binary choice? And the party that is going to be more fiscal responsible. And by the way, Republicans have a long way to go and do where I want us to be.

22:46I want us to work towards a balanced budget in the next seven to 12 years. I want us to reduce the debt to GDP ratio and not act as if money falls from the sky. But we're far better at it than the Democrats are who don't even want to have a discussion on how to fix social security or how to balance a budget. But on that affordability issue, how do Republicans come back concerns over tariffs previously and currently gas prices? Because it does seem like if you believe the polls of the Trump administration is getting a bulk of the blame, especially for gas prices. Yeah, because people go to the pump and gas is higher than it was and president Trump is in office. What they don't realize is you know what both Bushes both Clinton's Biden, Harris and president Trump had in common. They also they would not allow Iran to go nuclear. And he's the one on his watch that had to take action. And there was a consequence for that. But he's also cut a great deal with Venezuela who has higher oil reserves. I believe that even Saudi Arabia. So I think the price at the pump, the election is not today. We're at early September. The election will be in two months.

23:48I do believe personally that gas prices will go down. And there are other commodities and things that have gone down. And I do think that gas will be under control. But you have to also remind them that he did something to that was really critical and crucial for national security. So history tells us the party empowered this point is likely to lose the majority in the house. But there's a lot of talk about the possibility that GOP loses the Senate as well after these midterms. What would that mean for the next two years for Republicans and President Trump's agenda? Is there anything you see getting done in that scenario? Unfortunately, the way the left is taken a left turn. It's like left turn after left turn after left turn like a NASCAR race. You know, the DSA, and there's I think now maybe 38 candidates that would be by any fair definition described as hard or very far left. And now it doesn't, I don't know how many of them will in general elections. But it's not likely. And now, to your first point, the house, we might hold the house.

24:49We might defy gravity because it is a different environment. It's not an easy one. It's certainly difficult. But we can't defy it. There's nobody voting in an elections in September. Number one, number two, there's really about 21 house seats that are going to determine the majority. And I believe the word about 209. So of those seats, you know, we need to win about a third of them. And we will maintain the majority. So when you see those polls of generically Democrats are plus five or six over Republicans, this isn't going to be decided generically across the board. It's going to be decided in those 21 districts. And candidates matter in those 21 districts. So there's going to be very few, I'd say a couple of hundred thousand people voting that will determine the direction that's the house. Now, on the Senate, Republicans certainly have an easier path to hold the majority. And it's going to be German. They just fumbled the ball. I think the Democrats gave away Michigan because that nut that they nominated is literally an orbit around Neptune. He is crazy. He's an American hater. He's down in the polls.

25:49And I don't think that's going to improve. So that was a gift that'll be a flip towards us. So I'm every confidence that Republicans will hold the Senate when it's all said and done. Yeah, to your point, it could be a very different vibe, though, in January, with at least a few new members of Congress who are Democratic Socialists from New York, maybe Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania. What do you anticipate? Are you going to be, you know, eating popcorn, watching the other side? Or is this going to really impact everything and everyone? Definitely going to impact us all when you have people that serve in the United States Congress that don't believe in their heart of hearts that the United States of America is on balance, a force of good in the world that they don't believe that where the greatest country history is ever known. Though that's a problematic thing. Those are adversaries from within. And it's not healthy because it also has an effect. I saw it with some of the squad, if you will, on the Oversight Committee in 2021, when the Republicans were on the minority, that you had like moderate chairs that were being influenced and afraid that the AOCs of the world were going to come after them with their allies

26:50in Democratic primaries. So they were really affecting their priorities and their agenda and moving it hard to the left. And that's not good for America, we're going to move it forward either. So I think we're going to probably, unfortunately, see more of that. Or at least the rhetoric will get even hotter. Texas Republican Congressman Pat Falon, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Take care and don't miss. Stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at FoxNewsPodcasts.com. Listen, Add Free on Fox News Podcasts plus on Apple Podcasts. And, prime members can listen to the show Add Free on Amazon Music.

27:52And for up to the minute news, go to FoxNews.com.