Ratf**king a la D’ump & Other Atrocities

It's the day before Halloween. Since today's the day we have to be out of the old house and do a walk-through with the slumlord so we can get our security deposit back, I have to run another 'Best of' show. So I figured I'd pull out a truly frightening episode to run today.

This episode originally aired on August 12 of this year. Here's what I wrote about this episode on that day:

Just a couple of hours before I hit the air today at 3ET, the Washington Post sent a breaking news alert with the headline, “Texas Republicans dare Democrats to stay out of state another month.” (gift link)

They further explain,

“The lawmakers put new pressure on absent Democrats to return to the state, testing whether they’ll stay away another month to try to kill a plan to redraw congressional districts in favor of the GOP.”

In other words, the Republicans who rule the Texas state legislature, following the Oval Office felon’s directives, are stretching the norms of the gerrymander to do away with any districts that might vote for the Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterms.

Redistricting in the middle of the decade? Not a regular occurrence. Is it illegal?

That’s one of the questions I have for David Daley, author of three books on the subject. The one that started it all was Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count. He followed that with Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy in 2021. Unfortunately, the landscape has since changed.

Dave’s newest book, released in 2024, is Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.

Dave is also the former editor of Salon.com, and is a senior fellow at FairVote, who advocates for ranked choice voting and proportional representation, so he knows this subject.

Dave gave us the lay of the land regarding gerrymandering, apportionment and where we currently stand, and it’s not a pretty picture.

I'll be back live tomorrow to wrap up the week with Marcy Wheeler on a new edition of Emptywheel Fridays on the Nicole Sandler Show.

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