Supreme Court Shift: Discussion centers on recent rulings curbing racially driven majority-minority districts under the Voting Rights Act and how this escalates redistricting battles.
Redistricting Arms Race: Both parties increasingly rewrite maps mid-decade to maximize partisan advantage, breaking prior norms and making gerrymandering a constant contest.
District Competitiveness: Removing mandated racial outcomes may reduce guaranteed safe seats and create more competitive districts, changing incumbent dynamics.
Political Sorting: The guests foresee stronger state-level polarization and internal migration as maps visually and practically harden states into solid red or blue.
State vs. Federal Tensions: Heightened contrast between DC and assertive states could grow, with policy and enforcement diverging more sharply across regions.
2026 Outlook: Republicans appear poised to push aggressive maps pending court approvals, while Democrats may roll back anti-gerrymandering rules; House control may hinge on turnout and finalized maps.
No Stock Pitches: Despite mentions of gas prices as an election factor, no specific public companies, GICS sectors, subsectors, or investable themes were pitched.
Transcript
Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, editor-inchief here at the Mises Institute. And with me are two of our contributing editors. We've got Connor O'Keefe and we've got Tho Bishop. And this week we're going to talk a little bit about gerrymandering and some recent Supreme Court decisions that I think are going to really affect the way that uh states interact in Congress and the the way people elect their representatives in Congress. Uh but before that though, we got what we got events coming up and we got a book giveaway going on right now. Right. >> Absolutely. We got a big one coming up next week. Rothbard University, our first Rothbard University ever celebrating this great year of Rothbard. Um, again, if still have a few spots remaining, though they are going fast. If you've ever wanted to do do Misesu, you know, you got time off uh next weekend, check out Rothbard University. We'll of course have great video content from that coming up as well, very, very soon thereafter. Um, but moving on to June, if you are in the free state of New Hampshire, do check us out in Windham, New Hampshire, where we're going to be discussing why is the health care system broken. We got a lot of great experts that have uh researched that topic. It's going to be a great opportunity to to get together, great socializing uh June 27th and New Hampshire. It's been a few years since we were up that way. So, very excited to be up there. And as you mentioned, another aspect of the year, Rothbart. We're trying to get Rothbard books everywhere that we can. And we've got a free copy of the uh Anatomy of the State, one of the most important works of political realism that you can possibly have. If you've already read it, need a physical copy, get one. If you've got friends that need it, I've already got a few that I've given out to some of my local groups here. Um we are giving them away until May 31st. Again, free if you're domestic. If you're in the United States, there's unfortunately some shipping things that we can't control internationally. Um, but if you want to get your copy of Anatomy of the State, you can find that at misesus.org/state. And for more information about all those events, you can find those at misesus.org/events. >> All right. Well, thank you, Tho. Let's let's talk about this Supreme Court decisions. Louisiana versus Calala, I guess is how they say it. Um, I I wasn't really engaging in this at all. And then I started seeing all of this stuff in my Twitter feed that was all maps. It was all suddenly I'm seeing all these maps of various states. This is how we're going to redistrict it now after the Supreme Court decision. So, I of course had to look up what what are they talking about? What are all these maps? And it turns out there's a significant change uh in the court's interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. Uh and I think this continues kind of what we've we've started to see more and more from this current court. Most most of it to the good, I think, unless we're talking about police powers and foreign policy and things like that. I think the court's been okay on some of this stuff. So though, yeah, tell us tell us the basics here. the decision, why people are talking, why people are showing me maps in my Twitter feed and and all of that kind of bring us up to speed. >> Yeah, the the ex genre of fantasy congressional district building is is very fascinating to see uh play out. Uh that's that's that's pure autism. Uh I I can I can respect that. Um so so really I mean if we're going to simplify this in one word that word would be escalation because this is you know we have the Supreme Court case but this is part of really a broader conversation a broader trend of the explicit weaponization of congressional districts of the breakdown of norms of how these things are built and designed and I'm not trying to dare suggest with any sort of naive to say that the congressional alignment process has ever been uh uh you know nonpartisan or balanced or neutral, right? That that's always a facade. But what is interesting are changes to the way that the partisan gamesmanship of these congressional district allocations have been done. And added to that is the Supreme Court striking um the racial dynamic explicitly of these things. So, if we're looking backwards, um, this kind of we could really in some ways go back to our good friends at the Census Bureau back in 2020 during CO where they delayed the offering of census, you know, congressional realignments there and, you know, until Biden came in and, oh, golly gosh darn looks like Florida has fewer seats than they otherwise would have expected, right? Um and so so that's part of the background there is that you have the I think more or less an accurate view that Democrats used the crisis and their better uh maneuvering of the deep state if you will um to gain them a few seats just in terms of typical posts census congressional realignment. And so that led us to the midterms this year where Trump early on was saying we need to rewrite red state maps. we need to find new congressional seats. And you know, you had some timidity in some states. Um there was some very interesting stuff that's happened in the midterms in states like Indiana whose state government refused to realign their districts to create more Republican seats. You had Virginia and you had California that completely rewrote their districts to to maximize Democrat representation. And you've got very fun seats in Virginia now where like Arlington, Virginia now has like five members of Congress with the way that they've now done a little squiggly lines up there. Um California, they they overturned like their their alleged independent board to have their you know they're packed in there to remove a few red seats there. Um but the Supreme Court aspect of it as well is again a massive massive change that will have long lasting impact beyond the short-term you know partisan uh boilover right now. And that's again striking a further erosion of the um voting rights act particularly the your racially dictated outcomes of that where you've had kind of protected racially driven seats particularly within the south um and now you have states like Alabama states like Tennessee um states even including Florida that are rewriting their seats right now to remove aspects that the Supreme Court has now has now dictated to be unconstitutional. And there's even some additional gamesmanship here and and you know there's a broader conversation we can have about the breakdowns and norms of the Supreme Court itself as an institution. Something we've brought up a little bit in the past. But even there is that the announcement of this ruling with the Louisiana case was like delayed with some people including former including members of the Supreme Court saying the reason this this outcome was delayed was to try to delay it to the point where nothing can be done. Right? So again, you know whether or not you care about the nuts and bolts of these congressional maps, right? whether you care about team red or team blue from a you know from a Rothbardian standpoint from a from a from our point of view at the very least there needs to be an appreciation that this is yet another example of long-standing uh political norms of civility of the facade at the very least the facade of normal procedure governing the basic functions of congressional repres representation the like and this becoming really an arms race between red and blue. Um, you know, again, doing this mid- district, right? Typically, mid-district redistricting like this is typically the byproduct of a court case challenging something and coming out. You know, this sort of level of multi-state redrawing of lines on both sides is something as far as I can tell has not been done to this capacity since like the 1800s where this a little bit more popular. This was a little more common back then, but within a common political era, this is something completely unprecedented. And so again, is at the very least something to acknowledge just in terms of, you know, the the breakdown of business as usual at Washington, which typically is where those cracks line where we can find, oh, this is kind of interesting. This is this is a little fun. This this could this could lead to some something spicy and more interesting down the line. >> Connor, what's your initial reaction to all this? >> Basically, the same as though not to be boring. Um, this is not an issue I've really uh read a lot about. Um although this ruling has made me revisit that. Um but that's that is I share the same impression that really I and for more background that you kind of touched on there though typically these kinds of redistricting uh battles would happen when the census came out. So once every 10 years and it was sort of siloed to that but now that that president's being overturned by Trump really I guess led the charge last year um to do it in the middle of the the decade and um then that got a shot in the arm by this Supreme Court ruling. And so it really does seem like we're uh to to your point taking a big step towards a scenario where this is almost a constant battle. And what's just kind of interesting about it is well I mean there's a lot going on. Um but an interesting dynamic is just how much the when we talk about the I guess the naive view of democracy. Um, under the naive view of democracy, gerrymandering or setting up congressional districts is this kind of necessary annoying evil that we're supposed to just pretend that there are these public servants that we can just rely on to, you know, not have a commitment to one party or the other and they'll come together and they'll put together these districts so then we can have our democracy and have uh our elections and it's all sound. And the Democrats have bought into that view a lot more. And so you have these blue states where they essentially have legislated all these restrictions on this whole process and like these independent boards and all this stuff which they're now in like the last week uh freaking out about because the red states are going to town now. Um, and I don't have the numbers memorized, but it looks like they could really there's potential for uh the Republicans to overturn like I think over 10 seats, like up to 13 or so, which is significant with how close Congress has been. Um, there is also potential for the Democrats to overturn seats. Um, I think realistically right now it's in the same ballpark. It's around 10. Um but it would be like double that if they were able to basically get rid of these old restrictions. Um so they are institutionally incentivized now to stop pretending like we can just have this pure democracy. This naive uh democracy thing is becoming a real burden on them and it's sort of I mean there is a competitive nature to it there. If they try to stick with that they're going to be losing. And so, um, by all indications, right now, it seems like they're they're abandoning that fast, which we're basically moving towards a situation where these battles over setting congressional or district maps are constant. And neither side is really pretending like, oh, this is this purely independent uh process. And that is in in terms of the the theme we're always coming back to uh the point that was making very productive in terms of getting people to understand the actual system we're living under. It's going to be really hard to keep up this sort of the naive vision of democracy under those conditions. And so that's a positive. >> Yes. If you're a listener surprised by this outcome, then that is why you need to visit mises.org/state to get your copy of anatomy in the state because I do not think Rothbart would be surprised by this escalation on this ballot right now. Well, the whole way that people think about representative democracy, quote unquote, right, is it I know that Jonathan Newman likes to use this example, but it is very useful. It's the example of the gnomes who collect underpants in uh South Park. This is his old episode where these gnomes would come into your room at night and they would collect your underpants and then take them to their to their kingdom under the ground. And the boys from the show, they go down and they find these piles of underpants. And they ask the gnomes, "Why why are you collecting all these underpants?" And they say, "Well, to make profit because we want to profit." He says, "Well, how how does collecting underpants profit you?" So, they show him this chart that they've written on the wall, and it says step one, collect underpants, and then step two is just a big question mark, and then step three is profit. And so they're sure that this will lead to profit. They're just not quite sure on what the mechanism is that actually leads to that. And so he's used that for many economic uh examples. But here, representative democracy is the perfect example for that. Okay. So we we have a democratic system. Step one, we have like elections of sorts and we have districts with people in them. All right. Step two, giant question mark. Step three, people are represented by their elected members of Congress. Okay. Right. Well, what is the mechanism by which you are represented? Now, there is no actual answer here even if you're reading the academic literature on democratic theory, right? It's like how are people represented? All sorts of debate, right? Obviously, the minds of the voters are not transferred into the mind of the quote unquote representative, right? This obviously doesn't happen. So, how is the representation take place? Uh there are many different examples, but the one that's relevant here is well, we draw a district so that people are represented. So that the the people within the district have a bunch of common uh a bunch of things in common and then they're represented. Okay. Well, so now what we're saying is that the way you are represented depends on how you draw lines on a map in each of these states. Is that how that works? And how do you ensure that people are actually uh have common things in common? And what are the proper things for people to have in common? And so arbitrarily what the Supreme Court decided, what the Voting Rights Act sort of implied, but by no means commanded, but the but the way the Supreme Court commanded, and here I'm riffing off of Judge Justice Thomas, who said the court should have never interpreted section two of the the Voting Rights Act this way, but they did, which is that, oh, we have to have these minority or these majority minority districts. That's majority hyphen minority districts meaning the the majority of the population in the district is minority groups. And so they invent the courts invented this idea the majority minority uh uh district where the courts basically mandated well the proper way to draw the lines on the map is to ensure that these certain select minority groups are therefore made the majority. So you're you're creating this artificial community where you're drawing a bunch of lines on a map and the and you've seen the maps, right? The lines can be absurd, right? The the the district can be basically a street uh wide, like one street width in places and then it goes to one town and then it goes onto another town and and it it has these bizarre octopus-l like shapes and things like that. And so we've decided that what's really important for representation is racial stuff. So you have to draw the district that creates this majority within this racial group. This just an arbitrary thing they made up. It's not based they just decided it's not going to be based on socioeconomic group. It's not going to be based on religion. It's not going to be based on some other factor. No. No. We decided it's going to be based on this racial group. Why? because we just decided that that's it. And so I guess that maybe is the question mark in there is we have some sort of democratic stuff. That's step one. Step two is a bunch of federal judges decided you must draw lines on a map that make certain races the majority in a district is step step two. And then step three, I guess, is representation happens. So you can see how artificial and like bizarrely just invented the whole thing is and of course is something that's only been happening since the 1960s as well. Most of American history of course would look at this and think what a strange strange way of doing things. But this is all what we've come to expect I think out of the uh the civil rights generation right who are all dying off. And I think that's why we're starting to see the court finally start to push back on it a little bit. those people the people you guys know people like this I mean it depends on how you've encountered them I mean I used to play poker with a bunch of really they're now really really old but even then at the time they were really old white leftists and some of the some of these guys all it took was like the slightest mention of like the south or civil rights or something and they would tell you the same story for the hundth time about how they marched in Selma or something like that right ab that was their whole life was wrapped up upon glory days in the 60s, absolutely obsessed with it. But since half of them are dead now and another 10 million will be dead soon, I think the courts are starting to really push back against that and say, "Hey, maybe we could return to being like a normal country where race doesn't determine every single law in America related to uh what private businesses can do, what how elections can happen and all of that." And I think that's some of the some of the motivation here. But just like you say, Connor, I think it really starts to illustrate just how much of the whole electoral system is completely arbitrary and an invention of federal judges. >> Well, the irony here is that again like some of the ways this is being done is explicitly to degrade that that localized aspect of sort of common political concerns, common uh uh community issues in order to explicitly take advantage of deep wells of predictably partisan support. Right? That's the entire foundation of the Virginia maps is again like they know they have a a heavy hub of Democrat voters in the Northern Virginia area. And so therefore, we're going to bend these things so that you've got multiple districts that then extend out into the boonies of Virginia. And we're going to use this this deep-seated pocket of reliably left voters here in order to dictate the outcomes here. And again, that that is what is being done in the name of democracy. >> Right. >> Right. and and like like it's it's like that that is again yeah it's not it's not there's nothing interesting or or intellectually fulfilling in pointing out the this hypocrisy right like okay surprise surprise this is the way things are gone but it's important to just recognize and I think that is one of the promising aspects of this is just the the scales falling from people's eyes in terms of just getting real on how this process goes because when we talk about minority majority districts everyone knows that we're talking about guaranteed Democrat footholds in red states, right? That's the reality of the situation. And it's funny, it's like someone someone was obvious like, "Oh, well, South Carolina is going to redistrict and they'll never be able to vote for a right for for a black representative ever again when you've got Tim Scott as the senator, you know, for the for the seat and not an endorsement of of Tim Scott." But like, if your concern explicitly is the racial threshold, then it's kind of difficult to make that argument when you've got, you know, Tim Scott as a senator, you had Nikki Haley, right, as a statewide governor, right? And so, so the concern really is not race. race is simply a facade for reliable political machines in these districts to provide the self-determined outcomes, right? And finally, and that was a taboo, right? Like Republicans for the longest time refused to talk about that, right? Because golly gosh darn, they don't want to be seen as racist. And I think that's one of the dynamics that has shifted here now. And and again, it doesn't mean that this is going to improve the political system or or anything like, you know, some lofty goals, but at the very least, it is it is a a greater level of of just realism in terms of how these mechanisms actually work. re a willingness at a state level to act to to support your team, right? And again, that that is not going to resolve in better broader electoral outcomes per se, but hopefully it will chip away at all these lies and myths and the the you know, schoolhouse rock version of our government. And what's very interesting is again like this was the issue you there was the the the primary as I mentioned earlier in in Indiana a state that refused to do this and you had I think like six senate state senate incumbents which usually those are very hard seats to pull because most people don't care enough about state legislators in the first place to to really get you know rip roaring mad at at state legislators to even have some sort of interesting you know grassroots movement to overturn some aloof uh uh you know member of the state legislature and sometimes you in the way that can sometimes sometimes get the congressional level and they're completely wiped out because you know it was pointed out like hey look we had the opportunity to add to our team. This is a reliably red state. These people refuse to reward our team and therefore they got to go. And so again it's it's these are these are things that are happening simultaneously within this you know on this particular issue. And and and the irony is that if you're really concerned about democracy, this is actually arguably in some ways an improvement if you want to dilute reliably like hardcore never in a million years, you know, 97% odds in Kalashi districts because the way that you stack these things is that you have to take away from a pool of voters from somewhere and use that to and weaponize that against another group that is of the other side or a lot more moderate. And so the byproduct of that is that you get lower margins, you know, lower lower reliable reliably partisan margins in some of these states. I mean, I know that some of the conversations in Florida is like, oh golly, gosh darn, they're they're they're eroding some of their built-in advantages here. Could that end up being a surprise Democrat candidate? You know, regardless of what your your opinion is on the individual outcomes of these races, if you're really team democracy and team representation and team your vote matters, then you should be fully in favor of doing that. But of course, that's not what any of these people really care about. They just care about points on the board, red or blue, at the end of the day, because everything, you know, we talk about congressional races as local level. At the end of the day, this is all just what is best for your national team. And so, you know, again, there's no value in pointing out the hypocrisy. Everyone here listening to this product is probably aware of this hypocrisy, but at the very least, we now have more people recognizing the hypocrisy. And so, I think that at the very least is something that we can at least acknowledge as being a positive. >> Yeah. So, right, the this leads to more competitive districts, right? is is the reality because as you were saying, we all know uh majority minority district. This is a district that's always going to have a Democrat. That's just what that means. Translation, majority minority district, guarantee Democrat seat. That's and that's interesting. That's a good point, by the way, that was stated, I think, maybe in the at least in some of the legal language leading up to the Cala decision, but maybe even in the majority um uh decision itself, noting that actually what what you can do is you could define these districts that are supposedly drawn to represent a particular group, but what they're really drawn for is to represent Democrats. >> Yeah. like that's the there's no like actual objective standard that differentiates the two. Is this a district drawn to guarantee a Democrat rep or is this a district drawn to guarantee a rep of a certain racial group? The fact of the matter is it's drawn we can't say, right? Because it's just when we take the ven diagrams of of oh, how could we draw this district to guarantee a Democrat in it forever versus how could we draw this district to guarantee a black person in it forever? It's the same district. The lines are the same, right? So that that's that's something that the judges brought up which was right which is it is it a Democrat district or is it a majority minority district? And in the real world there doesn't seem to be a distinction between the two, but you're right. If you had, say, a bunch of square districts, right, they would be way more competitive because you just wouldn't know how those elections would turn out and you wouldn't have these, oh, 99% of incumbents get reelected sorts of things because Democrat demographics would change within those squares or there would be more evenly divided population and that sort of thing. The way they draw it now is from what I've seen and when I look at the way they get drawn in the the last couple of cycles when I've been a grown-up and I've looked at the whole redistricting process is there's always these agreements, right? Is all right, this is Colorado. There's seven districts historically. You know, in the past there was seven. We're going to have two of these districts will be guaranteed to Democrats. two of these districts will draw to uh guarantee to Republicans and uh well say three because it's because the Republicans control the legislature will give three Republicans a district but we'll set aside one or two districts that will be competitive districts. These are the competitive districts in the state. This is like an unspoken or maybe even sometimes spoken thing where we're just determining ahead of time which are the competitive districts and which aren't because we're going to draw the districts in that way to have some guaranteed districts for this side, some for that side. And it's all a negotiation and we've just agreed that there's going to be a couple of districts in there that are going to be competitive. the the philosophy, the religion of democracy was supposed to be that all of these districts would be competitive in some way, right? That it wouldn't be predetermined when in reality it is being predetermined with the small set aides of actual not predetermined districts and then we just call that oh your vote matters when in reality in most of these districts your vote doesn't matter at all. Uh so that seems to be the reality. This is why we are team expand Congress so that you can actually have, >> you know, something resembling actual political action in most of these congressional districts that are otherwise just by product a byproduct of, you know, who could raise $2 million the fastest and things like that as well. >> Well, that's a valuable point that needs to be said, by the way. Just if you had much smaller districts, you wouldn't be able to jerrymander in nearly the same way. It just would be much much less of an issue. But Connor, you were going to say >> it it would be closer to actual representative that like if it was like on the I mean imagine if it was like the level of a neighborhood where you could just walk down and and yell at the guy that's representing you. Like that's it's not you know our ideal system but it's a lot closer to what we're supposed to idealize um as it works. But that's a really interesting part. I hadn't really thought about that because you know focusing on like the optics side of it. I was going to say that um at least right now, I think the uh the the thing that would be like the most that would cause the most chaos from that optic standpoint would be if the Republicans do well in the midterms as a result of this effort because I think everybody's expecting with gas prices going so high. I mean, Trump just saying what I think yesterday that he'd be fine with $8 gas or whatever. Like they they are, you know, sprinting towards a brick wall when it comes to how voters or at least the voters, you know, that matter like on the kind of independent um side of of Republicans. Uh they're sprinting towards a brick wall uh on that when it comes to, you know, what voters think. And so if then they're able to through redistricting fashion together uh you know a situation where they actually gain seats then it that that's going to create a situation where everybody understands that okay the midterms are decided not by voters but by these maps before the voters even show up. And so it creates that that will be elections going forward. It'll be all about those battles. But then to your point, then that kind of creates a when everybody snaps to that being the focus, then you after enough time, you almost imagine getting to like an equilibrium where it's all every district now is kind of up for play and it's like now now you're actually fashioning the competitive races where to your point, I was uh reading it. So out of I guess it's what 435 uh house races, it's like 30 that are competitive. So like like most people are just, you know, you're it doesn't really matter if you show up and vote or not. It's you're just irrelevant. But yeah, like going uh a couple years or a couple election cycles down the road if this plays out the way we're talking about here, we we can get to a situation where now um it's almost like undoing the it's undoing itself where and you know, maybe that wouldn't be great in the long term. Okay, now democracy is great. Uh but it's kind of like um it's an interesting cyclical dynamic there where this is like you're basically like forcing them back into like this institutional meritocracy where they they have to play the game as it actually exists. And doing that means they have to actually if you want to win power or win seats in Congress, you need to fashion uh winning districts. And so it'll be about essentially yeah getting to that. I I think it's kind of like an equilibrium in ways, but that that's you're you're kind of blowing my mind there that I hadn't really thought about that how we'll actually make steps towards more competitive races as a result. >> Well, and of course the pluralist fantasy was always well these districts they they represent the interest groups. They represent mobilization. They they roughly correspond to the will of the majority, right? that that the people they get together and the through the process of interest groups and voting they they make their voice heard and that therefore they are represented then in the legislature uh whether it be state or federal but that's not how that works at all. Right? That's just as you said that's what this election is going to illustrate. Right? Is that the the will of the people is really the will of the maps. Right. If we if we redraw the maps in a certain way, we get one outcome. If we draw them in a different way, we get a different outcome. And that's actually what is the will of the majority. It's not some magical process between the voters making their voice heard. It's how do we draw the lines? How is the process crafted in such a way to predetermine the outcome? And that's the real reality then of this thing that they call democracy. So, it's something quite different from what the myth says. >> And something that kind of builds off of this general theme is I think one of the most fascinating things we've talked about at large on misa.org on on various podcasts is, you know, the current American political landscape has been one of demonstrated willingness for political migration internally. And so that's one of the interesting So, I'm not suggesting this is the case, right? If you didn't leave California with everything that went on with COVID, right? Are you going to leave California because you now don't have the facade of congressional representation because they they redid your map? If you were unwilling to leave Virginia with everything that went on over in COVID, are you willing to do so because now you're a you know, your your congressional district is enslaved to uh to to Arlington, Virginia. Right. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe in Virginia now that you got, you know, an attorney general willing to, you know, praise killing kids, maybe that changes your mind a little bit. But but as this escalation though continues to build and as this facade of representation continues to decline, I think that does further elevate these broader conversations that we've already seen motivate people on COVID, on school choice, on a variety of these other, let's call it the cliche of kitchen table issues, the these at-ome neighborhood issues. Does this further add to the political migration component to it that could further, you know, end up kind of taking away some of the importance of congressional representation within the state, but then leads to an arms race in terms of population mobility because again like Florida's going to gain more seats as a result of political migration. Texas is going to gain more seats already. Are those trends further emboldened by this as well? Is something I think is is one of the more interesting story lines to to follow going forward. Yeah, that's uh the question is is this an accelerationist move, right? Does this accelerate things toward the US dividing up into more distinct camps? Uh and I think it probably does, right? I was looking at certainly in people's minds >> it will. >> Oh yeah. >> Uh yeah. The question is would you move because your Congress member is no longer would you move your whole state because your Congress member is no longer a member of your party? That seems unlikely. But in your mind, you're going to be thinking in a certain way. >> Yeah. I I think psychologically you get closer to feeling like you're politically vanquished. And so maybe you're willing to buy, you know, you're willing to buy time because it's an emergency and yeah, everyone's going crazy and yeah, it's incred incredibly painful for my life, but there's got to be normality at the end of the day. Well, if there's increased polarization and if you increasingly recognize that you are part of a political minority that the state government more than in lock step with the federal government perhaps, but your state government, which I think theoretically is viewed as less partisan, less evil, right? You know, people very rarely talk about their state legislators if they're an Epstein island pedo, right? I think we typically see that state leadership as a little less sinister to the extent that you think politicians are sinister. But does this further break that trust and do you further lose faith in the political process at large and therefore does that move you to exit by feet more and more and again I could very well see this as a continuing trend because I'm still you know meeting people in the panhandle that you know even even in the year 2026 saying yeah like you know we got rid of co we were already thinking about moving but finally golly gosh darn I had to leave now because things ain't getting better and and I'm sure it can go the other way right you know golly gosh darn we had to get rid of the Santa the Satan and and and whatever. And so now I'm I'm going to Colorado. I'm going to be your neighbor, Ryan. Right. I think that can work both ways as well. But I think this further accelerates the the very clear political uh uh uh polarization and the the further that is emboldened within how people think politically, the more that is going to break down this this general facade of civic norm. >> Well, I think about Oh, go ahead, Connor. If you add in what we're currently seeing, which is sort of this disillusionment, but I don't know how widespread it is, but it seems to exist, this disillusionment with the idea that voting works, that like, yeah, you can actually like we can fix the country by voting. Um, if you add that into it, then you could see it not even just being I'm going to go somewhere where the state government agrees with me more and more about going to a place where the culture is more in line with your values. And essentially, and that could be inside states too. It could be like on a district-by- district level, people basically sorting uh and I guess politics is a big part of it, ideology, you know, the differences between people living in Brooklyn and rural Alabama. um that the sorting could be it's almost like uh the the actual like deacto nations of that make up the United States getting more defined like that kind of sorting that kind of above politics that would be incredibly productive. >> Yeah. Cuz I I think we're seeing functionally the elimination of purple states, >> right? And obviously there's some you some of that has moved, right? We can talk about the rust belt as being more, you know, political bellweathers than what Florida used to be and yada yada. But I mean Virginia was a state that voted 5% in favor of Camala last time around. like she she won by 5% of the vote give or take and yet this is what you're getting out of Virginia. Now I get this for state elections in the meantime, right? And they you know they go from a red governor to a blue governor, whatever. But it's a five it's a plus five Democrat state that is operating as an appendage of the Democratic party. That change I mean that that has to change your view of what your state politics looks like. Again, ignoring the fact that they elected a lieutenant governor that has no problem killing kids. Um like like that has to change the way that you view this political body. Well, think of the visuals, right? The uh I've I've seen the maps that they're putting out for the maximalist uh approach, which is every every state government now is going to maximize its own party's advantage in each state. So, if that does occur, what the map shows is that basically what you've then got is a bunch of solid red and solid blue states, right? So, uh, New Mexico then is permanently, uh, a blue state, right, in all of the districts. Now, historically, that hasn't been the case at all. Uh, and while the state has definitely drifted blue in the last 20 years, there was no guarantee that was going to continue forever, right? But the but now the idea is no, draw the maps so to maximize it in every way. And then I could also see this process bleeding down to the state legislatures as well, right? Which is right. It was those norms you speak of though, which is well, we'll just draw the state senate districts and all of the state representative districts to maximize party advantage here as well. But just look the think of the psychological effect of the map, right? is I I look at the map now and every state it's a it's a map of congressional districts and every blue state is completely blue and every red state is completely red. What that tells me in my mind is there are red states and blue states not pockets of red not pockets of blue whatever they're just simply these are states that have sorted themselves into red or blue and the congressional map shows me that that is the case. So I think in that sense it really is an accelerationist change here because it it just encourages more sorting and I think creates the impression that there's been more sorting than has even occurred and this this I think will drive that home >> and and I think then this is a good thing I think like even if even if that leads to crazier things happening in blue states and again there's going to be plenty of stuff in red states going to be bad grant I'm not trying to make this a good versus evil thing by any means when it comes to you know practical politics but I think it's going to lead to to to greater compacts of states which can only have the potential which has the potential to provide greater tensions between DC and state power and maybe those tension tensions constantly rotate, right? We've already kind of seen that play out in the Trump years, right? You had uh you know you had Andrew Cuomo doing his best John Cal John C. Calhoun impersonation at various points. You have Gavin Newsome being this great states rights champion when Trump is in and then you've got the the the Santis led resistance during Biden and now we're getting same sort of stuff you know ICE resistance whatever during Trump 2.0 No, but like that can only be a good thing in terms of heightening explicit partisan differences between DC and the states and and and yeah, I think if there's going to be any sort of mechanism again I can be I I think accelerationism as at a at the national level is often a a a you know a fool's errand if you will like yes it's very interesting seeing these norms break down and and the institutional facads break down whatever but I don't think the outcomes of that are going to you know it's going to lead to DC doing less things right but accelerationism at the at the at the the state level has a lot better, I think, capacity for them to, you know, utilize muscles that Washington would rather not see used. >> Well, this is the part of the show where we do predictions. So, the question is, Connor, uh, will this have much of an effect on the 2026 election? Will it matter that much? Are we going to have to wait till 2028 to even see much of an effect here in terms of how Congress turns out? Or will the Republicans just chickenen out? Uh what do we call this? Cocko Congress always or no Rocco. Republicans always chickenen out. Will it be that they'll be like no we have to maintain norms. We have to play fair. So all the blue states will go totally blue and the Republican states will remain a mixture because of uh so will will that change in 2026 or we will start to see a real change uh in the subsequent years? What's how's that going to play out? I it seems like the Republicans are serious about doing it right now. And I think the big factor is whether it stands up to scrutiny in various courts. Um there I think right before we recorded I think was it Tennessee um just gave the green light for for one of the maps. And so it's not even really about like predicting. It's it's like there's a a set list of um maps out there and they're being reviewed. Um, and so it seems like the Republicans have already made the decision there. I think the dynamic, uh, if I had to predict, is that this will work well for the Republicans. The midterms won't be as painful as they would have been without this effort. The Democrats panic and start getting rid of some of the anti-jerrymanding, Jerry mandering restrictions. Um, and then things get more chaotic the next time around. >> So, yeah. Like >> it wouldn't surprise me at all if the the narrative after the midterms is similar to what we saw during 2022 where everyone was expecting a red wave and he kind of got a red mist, right? It was an underwhelming midterm performance. It wouldn't surprise me at all if you got something like that um during the midterms. That's cuz like even with again like the price of gas, if if we're really dealing with $8 gas, then hey, I'm I'm I'm open to changing my opinion on that. Um but but let's let's assume that it's not the case. Um, let's let's assume even gas prices are relative to what they are right now. What I'm not convinced is that uh the the the Trump vote that has turned because that's one of the interesting things in the polling is that Trump's approval ratings have tanked, but the Democrats have not benefited on the either side. And so I think that you could just see lower turnout as a whole, right? And so then then it all comes down to, you know, what are the pockets that have the most likely outcome, most likely voters, how partisan are them? And then it's going back to just, you know, how are the districts written? And so, you know, I I think that right now I'd still put the the odds advantage on the Democrats taking the House and I I think there will be very interesting ways that they could use the theater of Congress and investigations and all that sort of stuff that could have interesting ramifications going forward for that. But I I think anyone expecting a a blue wave um I think the lesson of 2022 is that I mean Biden was extremely unpopular in 2022. I I think I think it's it's the the the area for genuine voters changing voter behavior is is I I don't think I don't think the other side is making the case to win over disaffected Trump voters, right? And so therefore, it's just about turnout and it's just about reliable voters and that that battle is a lot less interesting than you know massive uh you know grassroots trend one way or another. >> All right. Well, with that we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode of Power and Market Podcast. Thank you Connor. Thank you though. Thank you everyone out there for listening today. We will be back next week with more. So we'll see you then.
The Great Gerrymander War
Summary
Transcript
Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, editor-inchief here at the Mises Institute. And with me are two of our contributing editors. We've got Connor O'Keefe and we've got Tho Bishop. And this week we're going to talk a little bit about gerrymandering and some recent Supreme Court decisions that I think are going to really affect the way that uh states interact in Congress and the the way people elect their representatives in Congress. Uh but before that though, we got what we got events coming up and we got a book giveaway going on right now. Right. >> Absolutely. We got a big one coming up next week. Rothbard University, our first Rothbard University ever celebrating this great year of Rothbard. Um, again, if still have a few spots remaining, though they are going fast. If you've ever wanted to do do Misesu, you know, you got time off uh next weekend, check out Rothbard University. We'll of course have great video content from that coming up as well, very, very soon thereafter. Um, but moving on to June, if you are in the free state of New Hampshire, do check us out in Windham, New Hampshire, where we're going to be discussing why is the health care system broken. We got a lot of great experts that have uh researched that topic. It's going to be a great opportunity to to get together, great socializing uh June 27th and New Hampshire. It's been a few years since we were up that way. So, very excited to be up there. And as you mentioned, another aspect of the year, Rothbart. We're trying to get Rothbard books everywhere that we can. And we've got a free copy of the uh Anatomy of the State, one of the most important works of political realism that you can possibly have. If you've already read it, need a physical copy, get one. If you've got friends that need it, I've already got a few that I've given out to some of my local groups here. Um we are giving them away until May 31st. Again, free if you're domestic. If you're in the United States, there's unfortunately some shipping things that we can't control internationally. Um, but if you want to get your copy of Anatomy of the State, you can find that at misesus.org/state. And for more information about all those events, you can find those at misesus.org/events. >> All right. Well, thank you, Tho. Let's let's talk about this Supreme Court decisions. Louisiana versus Calala, I guess is how they say it. Um, I I wasn't really engaging in this at all. And then I started seeing all of this stuff in my Twitter feed that was all maps. It was all suddenly I'm seeing all these maps of various states. This is how we're going to redistrict it now after the Supreme Court decision. So, I of course had to look up what what are they talking about? What are all these maps? And it turns out there's a significant change uh in the court's interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. Uh and I think this continues kind of what we've we've started to see more and more from this current court. Most most of it to the good, I think, unless we're talking about police powers and foreign policy and things like that. I think the court's been okay on some of this stuff. So though, yeah, tell us tell us the basics here. the decision, why people are talking, why people are showing me maps in my Twitter feed and and all of that kind of bring us up to speed. >> Yeah, the the ex genre of fantasy congressional district building is is very fascinating to see uh play out. Uh that's that's that's pure autism. Uh I I can I can respect that. Um so so really I mean if we're going to simplify this in one word that word would be escalation because this is you know we have the Supreme Court case but this is part of really a broader conversation a broader trend of the explicit weaponization of congressional districts of the breakdown of norms of how these things are built and designed and I'm not trying to dare suggest with any sort of naive to say that the congressional alignment process has ever been uh uh you know nonpartisan or balanced or neutral, right? That that's always a facade. But what is interesting are changes to the way that the partisan gamesmanship of these congressional district allocations have been done. And added to that is the Supreme Court striking um the racial dynamic explicitly of these things. So, if we're looking backwards, um, this kind of we could really in some ways go back to our good friends at the Census Bureau back in 2020 during CO where they delayed the offering of census, you know, congressional realignments there and, you know, until Biden came in and, oh, golly gosh darn looks like Florida has fewer seats than they otherwise would have expected, right? Um and so so that's part of the background there is that you have the I think more or less an accurate view that Democrats used the crisis and their better uh maneuvering of the deep state if you will um to gain them a few seats just in terms of typical posts census congressional realignment. And so that led us to the midterms this year where Trump early on was saying we need to rewrite red state maps. we need to find new congressional seats. And you know, you had some timidity in some states. Um there was some very interesting stuff that's happened in the midterms in states like Indiana whose state government refused to realign their districts to create more Republican seats. You had Virginia and you had California that completely rewrote their districts to to maximize Democrat representation. And you've got very fun seats in Virginia now where like Arlington, Virginia now has like five members of Congress with the way that they've now done a little squiggly lines up there. Um California, they they overturned like their their alleged independent board to have their you know they're packed in there to remove a few red seats there. Um but the Supreme Court aspect of it as well is again a massive massive change that will have long lasting impact beyond the short-term you know partisan uh boilover right now. And that's again striking a further erosion of the um voting rights act particularly the your racially dictated outcomes of that where you've had kind of protected racially driven seats particularly within the south um and now you have states like Alabama states like Tennessee um states even including Florida that are rewriting their seats right now to remove aspects that the Supreme Court has now has now dictated to be unconstitutional. And there's even some additional gamesmanship here and and you know there's a broader conversation we can have about the breakdowns and norms of the Supreme Court itself as an institution. Something we've brought up a little bit in the past. But even there is that the announcement of this ruling with the Louisiana case was like delayed with some people including former including members of the Supreme Court saying the reason this this outcome was delayed was to try to delay it to the point where nothing can be done. Right? So again, you know whether or not you care about the nuts and bolts of these congressional maps, right? whether you care about team red or team blue from a you know from a Rothbardian standpoint from a from a from our point of view at the very least there needs to be an appreciation that this is yet another example of long-standing uh political norms of civility of the facade at the very least the facade of normal procedure governing the basic functions of congressional repres representation the like and this becoming really an arms race between red and blue. Um, you know, again, doing this mid- district, right? Typically, mid-district redistricting like this is typically the byproduct of a court case challenging something and coming out. You know, this sort of level of multi-state redrawing of lines on both sides is something as far as I can tell has not been done to this capacity since like the 1800s where this a little bit more popular. This was a little more common back then, but within a common political era, this is something completely unprecedented. And so again, is at the very least something to acknowledge just in terms of, you know, the the breakdown of business as usual at Washington, which typically is where those cracks line where we can find, oh, this is kind of interesting. This is this is a little fun. This this could this could lead to some something spicy and more interesting down the line. >> Connor, what's your initial reaction to all this? >> Basically, the same as though not to be boring. Um, this is not an issue I've really uh read a lot about. Um although this ruling has made me revisit that. Um but that's that is I share the same impression that really I and for more background that you kind of touched on there though typically these kinds of redistricting uh battles would happen when the census came out. So once every 10 years and it was sort of siloed to that but now that that president's being overturned by Trump really I guess led the charge last year um to do it in the middle of the the decade and um then that got a shot in the arm by this Supreme Court ruling. And so it really does seem like we're uh to to your point taking a big step towards a scenario where this is almost a constant battle. And what's just kind of interesting about it is well I mean there's a lot going on. Um but an interesting dynamic is just how much the when we talk about the I guess the naive view of democracy. Um, under the naive view of democracy, gerrymandering or setting up congressional districts is this kind of necessary annoying evil that we're supposed to just pretend that there are these public servants that we can just rely on to, you know, not have a commitment to one party or the other and they'll come together and they'll put together these districts so then we can have our democracy and have uh our elections and it's all sound. And the Democrats have bought into that view a lot more. And so you have these blue states where they essentially have legislated all these restrictions on this whole process and like these independent boards and all this stuff which they're now in like the last week uh freaking out about because the red states are going to town now. Um, and I don't have the numbers memorized, but it looks like they could really there's potential for uh the Republicans to overturn like I think over 10 seats, like up to 13 or so, which is significant with how close Congress has been. Um, there is also potential for the Democrats to overturn seats. Um, I think realistically right now it's in the same ballpark. It's around 10. Um but it would be like double that if they were able to basically get rid of these old restrictions. Um so they are institutionally incentivized now to stop pretending like we can just have this pure democracy. This naive uh democracy thing is becoming a real burden on them and it's sort of I mean there is a competitive nature to it there. If they try to stick with that they're going to be losing. And so, um, by all indications, right now, it seems like they're they're abandoning that fast, which we're basically moving towards a situation where these battles over setting congressional or district maps are constant. And neither side is really pretending like, oh, this is this purely independent uh process. And that is in in terms of the the theme we're always coming back to uh the point that was making very productive in terms of getting people to understand the actual system we're living under. It's going to be really hard to keep up this sort of the naive vision of democracy under those conditions. And so that's a positive. >> Yes. If you're a listener surprised by this outcome, then that is why you need to visit mises.org/state to get your copy of anatomy in the state because I do not think Rothbart would be surprised by this escalation on this ballot right now. Well, the whole way that people think about representative democracy, quote unquote, right, is it I know that Jonathan Newman likes to use this example, but it is very useful. It's the example of the gnomes who collect underpants in uh South Park. This is his old episode where these gnomes would come into your room at night and they would collect your underpants and then take them to their to their kingdom under the ground. And the boys from the show, they go down and they find these piles of underpants. And they ask the gnomes, "Why why are you collecting all these underpants?" And they say, "Well, to make profit because we want to profit." He says, "Well, how how does collecting underpants profit you?" So, they show him this chart that they've written on the wall, and it says step one, collect underpants, and then step two is just a big question mark, and then step three is profit. And so they're sure that this will lead to profit. They're just not quite sure on what the mechanism is that actually leads to that. And so he's used that for many economic uh examples. But here, representative democracy is the perfect example for that. Okay. So we we have a democratic system. Step one, we have like elections of sorts and we have districts with people in them. All right. Step two, giant question mark. Step three, people are represented by their elected members of Congress. Okay. Right. Well, what is the mechanism by which you are represented? Now, there is no actual answer here even if you're reading the academic literature on democratic theory, right? It's like how are people represented? All sorts of debate, right? Obviously, the minds of the voters are not transferred into the mind of the quote unquote representative, right? This obviously doesn't happen. So, how is the representation take place? Uh there are many different examples, but the one that's relevant here is well, we draw a district so that people are represented. So that the the people within the district have a bunch of common uh a bunch of things in common and then they're represented. Okay. Well, so now what we're saying is that the way you are represented depends on how you draw lines on a map in each of these states. Is that how that works? And how do you ensure that people are actually uh have common things in common? And what are the proper things for people to have in common? And so arbitrarily what the Supreme Court decided, what the Voting Rights Act sort of implied, but by no means commanded, but the but the way the Supreme Court commanded, and here I'm riffing off of Judge Justice Thomas, who said the court should have never interpreted section two of the the Voting Rights Act this way, but they did, which is that, oh, we have to have these minority or these majority minority districts. That's majority hyphen minority districts meaning the the majority of the population in the district is minority groups. And so they invent the courts invented this idea the majority minority uh uh district where the courts basically mandated well the proper way to draw the lines on the map is to ensure that these certain select minority groups are therefore made the majority. So you're you're creating this artificial community where you're drawing a bunch of lines on a map and the and you've seen the maps, right? The lines can be absurd, right? The the the district can be basically a street uh wide, like one street width in places and then it goes to one town and then it goes onto another town and and it it has these bizarre octopus-l like shapes and things like that. And so we've decided that what's really important for representation is racial stuff. So you have to draw the district that creates this majority within this racial group. This just an arbitrary thing they made up. It's not based they just decided it's not going to be based on socioeconomic group. It's not going to be based on religion. It's not going to be based on some other factor. No. No. We decided it's going to be based on this racial group. Why? because we just decided that that's it. And so I guess that maybe is the question mark in there is we have some sort of democratic stuff. That's step one. Step two is a bunch of federal judges decided you must draw lines on a map that make certain races the majority in a district is step step two. And then step three, I guess, is representation happens. So you can see how artificial and like bizarrely just invented the whole thing is and of course is something that's only been happening since the 1960s as well. Most of American history of course would look at this and think what a strange strange way of doing things. But this is all what we've come to expect I think out of the uh the civil rights generation right who are all dying off. And I think that's why we're starting to see the court finally start to push back on it a little bit. those people the people you guys know people like this I mean it depends on how you've encountered them I mean I used to play poker with a bunch of really they're now really really old but even then at the time they were really old white leftists and some of the some of these guys all it took was like the slightest mention of like the south or civil rights or something and they would tell you the same story for the hundth time about how they marched in Selma or something like that right ab that was their whole life was wrapped up upon glory days in the 60s, absolutely obsessed with it. But since half of them are dead now and another 10 million will be dead soon, I think the courts are starting to really push back against that and say, "Hey, maybe we could return to being like a normal country where race doesn't determine every single law in America related to uh what private businesses can do, what how elections can happen and all of that." And I think that's some of the some of the motivation here. But just like you say, Connor, I think it really starts to illustrate just how much of the whole electoral system is completely arbitrary and an invention of federal judges. >> Well, the irony here is that again like some of the ways this is being done is explicitly to degrade that that localized aspect of sort of common political concerns, common uh uh community issues in order to explicitly take advantage of deep wells of predictably partisan support. Right? That's the entire foundation of the Virginia maps is again like they know they have a a heavy hub of Democrat voters in the Northern Virginia area. And so therefore, we're going to bend these things so that you've got multiple districts that then extend out into the boonies of Virginia. And we're going to use this this deep-seated pocket of reliably left voters here in order to dictate the outcomes here. And again, that that is what is being done in the name of democracy. >> Right. >> Right. and and like like it's it's like that that is again yeah it's not it's not there's nothing interesting or or intellectually fulfilling in pointing out the this hypocrisy right like okay surprise surprise this is the way things are gone but it's important to just recognize and I think that is one of the promising aspects of this is just the the scales falling from people's eyes in terms of just getting real on how this process goes because when we talk about minority majority districts everyone knows that we're talking about guaranteed Democrat footholds in red states, right? That's the reality of the situation. And it's funny, it's like someone someone was obvious like, "Oh, well, South Carolina is going to redistrict and they'll never be able to vote for a right for for a black representative ever again when you've got Tim Scott as the senator, you know, for the for the seat and not an endorsement of of Tim Scott." But like, if your concern explicitly is the racial threshold, then it's kind of difficult to make that argument when you've got, you know, Tim Scott as a senator, you had Nikki Haley, right, as a statewide governor, right? And so, so the concern really is not race. race is simply a facade for reliable political machines in these districts to provide the self-determined outcomes, right? And finally, and that was a taboo, right? Like Republicans for the longest time refused to talk about that, right? Because golly gosh darn, they don't want to be seen as racist. And I think that's one of the dynamics that has shifted here now. And and again, it doesn't mean that this is going to improve the political system or or anything like, you know, some lofty goals, but at the very least, it is it is a a greater level of of just realism in terms of how these mechanisms actually work. re a willingness at a state level to act to to support your team, right? And again, that that is not going to resolve in better broader electoral outcomes per se, but hopefully it will chip away at all these lies and myths and the the you know, schoolhouse rock version of our government. And what's very interesting is again like this was the issue you there was the the the primary as I mentioned earlier in in Indiana a state that refused to do this and you had I think like six senate state senate incumbents which usually those are very hard seats to pull because most people don't care enough about state legislators in the first place to to really get you know rip roaring mad at at state legislators to even have some sort of interesting you know grassroots movement to overturn some aloof uh uh you know member of the state legislature and sometimes you in the way that can sometimes sometimes get the congressional level and they're completely wiped out because you know it was pointed out like hey look we had the opportunity to add to our team. This is a reliably red state. These people refuse to reward our team and therefore they got to go. And so again it's it's these are these are things that are happening simultaneously within this you know on this particular issue. And and and the irony is that if you're really concerned about democracy, this is actually arguably in some ways an improvement if you want to dilute reliably like hardcore never in a million years, you know, 97% odds in Kalashi districts because the way that you stack these things is that you have to take away from a pool of voters from somewhere and use that to and weaponize that against another group that is of the other side or a lot more moderate. And so the byproduct of that is that you get lower margins, you know, lower lower reliable reliably partisan margins in some of these states. I mean, I know that some of the conversations in Florida is like, oh golly, gosh darn, they're they're they're eroding some of their built-in advantages here. Could that end up being a surprise Democrat candidate? You know, regardless of what your your opinion is on the individual outcomes of these races, if you're really team democracy and team representation and team your vote matters, then you should be fully in favor of doing that. But of course, that's not what any of these people really care about. They just care about points on the board, red or blue, at the end of the day, because everything, you know, we talk about congressional races as local level. At the end of the day, this is all just what is best for your national team. And so, you know, again, there's no value in pointing out the hypocrisy. Everyone here listening to this product is probably aware of this hypocrisy, but at the very least, we now have more people recognizing the hypocrisy. And so, I think that at the very least is something that we can at least acknowledge as being a positive. >> Yeah. So, right, the this leads to more competitive districts, right? is is the reality because as you were saying, we all know uh majority minority district. This is a district that's always going to have a Democrat. That's just what that means. Translation, majority minority district, guarantee Democrat seat. That's and that's interesting. That's a good point, by the way, that was stated, I think, maybe in the at least in some of the legal language leading up to the Cala decision, but maybe even in the majority um uh decision itself, noting that actually what what you can do is you could define these districts that are supposedly drawn to represent a particular group, but what they're really drawn for is to represent Democrats. >> Yeah. like that's the there's no like actual objective standard that differentiates the two. Is this a district drawn to guarantee a Democrat rep or is this a district drawn to guarantee a rep of a certain racial group? The fact of the matter is it's drawn we can't say, right? Because it's just when we take the ven diagrams of of oh, how could we draw this district to guarantee a Democrat in it forever versus how could we draw this district to guarantee a black person in it forever? It's the same district. The lines are the same, right? So that that's that's something that the judges brought up which was right which is it is it a Democrat district or is it a majority minority district? And in the real world there doesn't seem to be a distinction between the two, but you're right. If you had, say, a bunch of square districts, right, they would be way more competitive because you just wouldn't know how those elections would turn out and you wouldn't have these, oh, 99% of incumbents get reelected sorts of things because Democrat demographics would change within those squares or there would be more evenly divided population and that sort of thing. The way they draw it now is from what I've seen and when I look at the way they get drawn in the the last couple of cycles when I've been a grown-up and I've looked at the whole redistricting process is there's always these agreements, right? Is all right, this is Colorado. There's seven districts historically. You know, in the past there was seven. We're going to have two of these districts will be guaranteed to Democrats. two of these districts will draw to uh guarantee to Republicans and uh well say three because it's because the Republicans control the legislature will give three Republicans a district but we'll set aside one or two districts that will be competitive districts. These are the competitive districts in the state. This is like an unspoken or maybe even sometimes spoken thing where we're just determining ahead of time which are the competitive districts and which aren't because we're going to draw the districts in that way to have some guaranteed districts for this side, some for that side. And it's all a negotiation and we've just agreed that there's going to be a couple of districts in there that are going to be competitive. the the philosophy, the religion of democracy was supposed to be that all of these districts would be competitive in some way, right? That it wouldn't be predetermined when in reality it is being predetermined with the small set aides of actual not predetermined districts and then we just call that oh your vote matters when in reality in most of these districts your vote doesn't matter at all. Uh so that seems to be the reality. This is why we are team expand Congress so that you can actually have, >> you know, something resembling actual political action in most of these congressional districts that are otherwise just by product a byproduct of, you know, who could raise $2 million the fastest and things like that as well. >> Well, that's a valuable point that needs to be said, by the way. Just if you had much smaller districts, you wouldn't be able to jerrymander in nearly the same way. It just would be much much less of an issue. But Connor, you were going to say >> it it would be closer to actual representative that like if it was like on the I mean imagine if it was like the level of a neighborhood where you could just walk down and and yell at the guy that's representing you. Like that's it's not you know our ideal system but it's a lot closer to what we're supposed to idealize um as it works. But that's a really interesting part. I hadn't really thought about that because you know focusing on like the optics side of it. I was going to say that um at least right now, I think the uh the the thing that would be like the most that would cause the most chaos from that optic standpoint would be if the Republicans do well in the midterms as a result of this effort because I think everybody's expecting with gas prices going so high. I mean, Trump just saying what I think yesterday that he'd be fine with $8 gas or whatever. Like they they are, you know, sprinting towards a brick wall when it comes to how voters or at least the voters, you know, that matter like on the kind of independent um side of of Republicans. Uh they're sprinting towards a brick wall uh on that when it comes to, you know, what voters think. And so if then they're able to through redistricting fashion together uh you know a situation where they actually gain seats then it that that's going to create a situation where everybody understands that okay the midterms are decided not by voters but by these maps before the voters even show up. And so it creates that that will be elections going forward. It'll be all about those battles. But then to your point, then that kind of creates a when everybody snaps to that being the focus, then you after enough time, you almost imagine getting to like an equilibrium where it's all every district now is kind of up for play and it's like now now you're actually fashioning the competitive races where to your point, I was uh reading it. So out of I guess it's what 435 uh house races, it's like 30 that are competitive. So like like most people are just, you know, you're it doesn't really matter if you show up and vote or not. It's you're just irrelevant. But yeah, like going uh a couple years or a couple election cycles down the road if this plays out the way we're talking about here, we we can get to a situation where now um it's almost like undoing the it's undoing itself where and you know, maybe that wouldn't be great in the long term. Okay, now democracy is great. Uh but it's kind of like um it's an interesting cyclical dynamic there where this is like you're basically like forcing them back into like this institutional meritocracy where they they have to play the game as it actually exists. And doing that means they have to actually if you want to win power or win seats in Congress, you need to fashion uh winning districts. And so it'll be about essentially yeah getting to that. I I think it's kind of like an equilibrium in ways, but that that's you're you're kind of blowing my mind there that I hadn't really thought about that how we'll actually make steps towards more competitive races as a result. >> Well, and of course the pluralist fantasy was always well these districts they they represent the interest groups. They represent mobilization. They they roughly correspond to the will of the majority, right? that that the people they get together and the through the process of interest groups and voting they they make their voice heard and that therefore they are represented then in the legislature uh whether it be state or federal but that's not how that works at all. Right? That's just as you said that's what this election is going to illustrate. Right? Is that the the will of the people is really the will of the maps. Right. If we if we redraw the maps in a certain way, we get one outcome. If we draw them in a different way, we get a different outcome. And that's actually what is the will of the majority. It's not some magical process between the voters making their voice heard. It's how do we draw the lines? How is the process crafted in such a way to predetermine the outcome? And that's the real reality then of this thing that they call democracy. So, it's something quite different from what the myth says. >> And something that kind of builds off of this general theme is I think one of the most fascinating things we've talked about at large on misa.org on on various podcasts is, you know, the current American political landscape has been one of demonstrated willingness for political migration internally. And so that's one of the interesting So, I'm not suggesting this is the case, right? If you didn't leave California with everything that went on with COVID, right? Are you going to leave California because you now don't have the facade of congressional representation because they they redid your map? If you were unwilling to leave Virginia with everything that went on over in COVID, are you willing to do so because now you're a you know, your your congressional district is enslaved to uh to to Arlington, Virginia. Right. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe in Virginia now that you got, you know, an attorney general willing to, you know, praise killing kids, maybe that changes your mind a little bit. But but as this escalation though continues to build and as this facade of representation continues to decline, I think that does further elevate these broader conversations that we've already seen motivate people on COVID, on school choice, on a variety of these other, let's call it the cliche of kitchen table issues, the these at-ome neighborhood issues. Does this further add to the political migration component to it that could further, you know, end up kind of taking away some of the importance of congressional representation within the state, but then leads to an arms race in terms of population mobility because again like Florida's going to gain more seats as a result of political migration. Texas is going to gain more seats already. Are those trends further emboldened by this as well? Is something I think is is one of the more interesting story lines to to follow going forward. Yeah, that's uh the question is is this an accelerationist move, right? Does this accelerate things toward the US dividing up into more distinct camps? Uh and I think it probably does, right? I was looking at certainly in people's minds >> it will. >> Oh yeah. >> Uh yeah. The question is would you move because your Congress member is no longer would you move your whole state because your Congress member is no longer a member of your party? That seems unlikely. But in your mind, you're going to be thinking in a certain way. >> Yeah. I I think psychologically you get closer to feeling like you're politically vanquished. And so maybe you're willing to buy, you know, you're willing to buy time because it's an emergency and yeah, everyone's going crazy and yeah, it's incred incredibly painful for my life, but there's got to be normality at the end of the day. Well, if there's increased polarization and if you increasingly recognize that you are part of a political minority that the state government more than in lock step with the federal government perhaps, but your state government, which I think theoretically is viewed as less partisan, less evil, right? You know, people very rarely talk about their state legislators if they're an Epstein island pedo, right? I think we typically see that state leadership as a little less sinister to the extent that you think politicians are sinister. But does this further break that trust and do you further lose faith in the political process at large and therefore does that move you to exit by feet more and more and again I could very well see this as a continuing trend because I'm still you know meeting people in the panhandle that you know even even in the year 2026 saying yeah like you know we got rid of co we were already thinking about moving but finally golly gosh darn I had to leave now because things ain't getting better and and I'm sure it can go the other way right you know golly gosh darn we had to get rid of the Santa the Satan and and and whatever. And so now I'm I'm going to Colorado. I'm going to be your neighbor, Ryan. Right. I think that can work both ways as well. But I think this further accelerates the the very clear political uh uh uh polarization and the the further that is emboldened within how people think politically, the more that is going to break down this this general facade of civic norm. >> Well, I think about Oh, go ahead, Connor. If you add in what we're currently seeing, which is sort of this disillusionment, but I don't know how widespread it is, but it seems to exist, this disillusionment with the idea that voting works, that like, yeah, you can actually like we can fix the country by voting. Um, if you add that into it, then you could see it not even just being I'm going to go somewhere where the state government agrees with me more and more about going to a place where the culture is more in line with your values. And essentially, and that could be inside states too. It could be like on a district-by- district level, people basically sorting uh and I guess politics is a big part of it, ideology, you know, the differences between people living in Brooklyn and rural Alabama. um that the sorting could be it's almost like uh the the actual like deacto nations of that make up the United States getting more defined like that kind of sorting that kind of above politics that would be incredibly productive. >> Yeah. Cuz I I think we're seeing functionally the elimination of purple states, >> right? And obviously there's some you some of that has moved, right? We can talk about the rust belt as being more, you know, political bellweathers than what Florida used to be and yada yada. But I mean Virginia was a state that voted 5% in favor of Camala last time around. like she she won by 5% of the vote give or take and yet this is what you're getting out of Virginia. Now I get this for state elections in the meantime, right? And they you know they go from a red governor to a blue governor, whatever. But it's a five it's a plus five Democrat state that is operating as an appendage of the Democratic party. That change I mean that that has to change your view of what your state politics looks like. Again, ignoring the fact that they elected a lieutenant governor that has no problem killing kids. Um like like that has to change the way that you view this political body. Well, think of the visuals, right? The uh I've I've seen the maps that they're putting out for the maximalist uh approach, which is every every state government now is going to maximize its own party's advantage in each state. So, if that does occur, what the map shows is that basically what you've then got is a bunch of solid red and solid blue states, right? So, uh, New Mexico then is permanently, uh, a blue state, right, in all of the districts. Now, historically, that hasn't been the case at all. Uh, and while the state has definitely drifted blue in the last 20 years, there was no guarantee that was going to continue forever, right? But the but now the idea is no, draw the maps so to maximize it in every way. And then I could also see this process bleeding down to the state legislatures as well, right? Which is right. It was those norms you speak of though, which is well, we'll just draw the state senate districts and all of the state representative districts to maximize party advantage here as well. But just look the think of the psychological effect of the map, right? is I I look at the map now and every state it's a it's a map of congressional districts and every blue state is completely blue and every red state is completely red. What that tells me in my mind is there are red states and blue states not pockets of red not pockets of blue whatever they're just simply these are states that have sorted themselves into red or blue and the congressional map shows me that that is the case. So I think in that sense it really is an accelerationist change here because it it just encourages more sorting and I think creates the impression that there's been more sorting than has even occurred and this this I think will drive that home >> and and I think then this is a good thing I think like even if even if that leads to crazier things happening in blue states and again there's going to be plenty of stuff in red states going to be bad grant I'm not trying to make this a good versus evil thing by any means when it comes to you know practical politics but I think it's going to lead to to to greater compacts of states which can only have the potential which has the potential to provide greater tensions between DC and state power and maybe those tension tensions constantly rotate, right? We've already kind of seen that play out in the Trump years, right? You had uh you know you had Andrew Cuomo doing his best John Cal John C. Calhoun impersonation at various points. You have Gavin Newsome being this great states rights champion when Trump is in and then you've got the the the Santis led resistance during Biden and now we're getting same sort of stuff you know ICE resistance whatever during Trump 2.0 No, but like that can only be a good thing in terms of heightening explicit partisan differences between DC and the states and and and yeah, I think if there's going to be any sort of mechanism again I can be I I think accelerationism as at a at the national level is often a a a you know a fool's errand if you will like yes it's very interesting seeing these norms break down and and the institutional facads break down whatever but I don't think the outcomes of that are going to you know it's going to lead to DC doing less things right but accelerationism at the at the at the the state level has a lot better, I think, capacity for them to, you know, utilize muscles that Washington would rather not see used. >> Well, this is the part of the show where we do predictions. So, the question is, Connor, uh, will this have much of an effect on the 2026 election? Will it matter that much? Are we going to have to wait till 2028 to even see much of an effect here in terms of how Congress turns out? Or will the Republicans just chickenen out? Uh what do we call this? Cocko Congress always or no Rocco. Republicans always chickenen out. Will it be that they'll be like no we have to maintain norms. We have to play fair. So all the blue states will go totally blue and the Republican states will remain a mixture because of uh so will will that change in 2026 or we will start to see a real change uh in the subsequent years? What's how's that going to play out? I it seems like the Republicans are serious about doing it right now. And I think the big factor is whether it stands up to scrutiny in various courts. Um there I think right before we recorded I think was it Tennessee um just gave the green light for for one of the maps. And so it's not even really about like predicting. It's it's like there's a a set list of um maps out there and they're being reviewed. Um, and so it seems like the Republicans have already made the decision there. I think the dynamic, uh, if I had to predict, is that this will work well for the Republicans. The midterms won't be as painful as they would have been without this effort. The Democrats panic and start getting rid of some of the anti-jerrymanding, Jerry mandering restrictions. Um, and then things get more chaotic the next time around. >> So, yeah. Like >> it wouldn't surprise me at all if the the narrative after the midterms is similar to what we saw during 2022 where everyone was expecting a red wave and he kind of got a red mist, right? It was an underwhelming midterm performance. It wouldn't surprise me at all if you got something like that um during the midterms. That's cuz like even with again like the price of gas, if if we're really dealing with $8 gas, then hey, I'm I'm I'm open to changing my opinion on that. Um but but let's let's assume that it's not the case. Um, let's let's assume even gas prices are relative to what they are right now. What I'm not convinced is that uh the the the Trump vote that has turned because that's one of the interesting things in the polling is that Trump's approval ratings have tanked, but the Democrats have not benefited on the either side. And so I think that you could just see lower turnout as a whole, right? And so then then it all comes down to, you know, what are the pockets that have the most likely outcome, most likely voters, how partisan are them? And then it's going back to just, you know, how are the districts written? And so, you know, I I think that right now I'd still put the the odds advantage on the Democrats taking the House and I I think there will be very interesting ways that they could use the theater of Congress and investigations and all that sort of stuff that could have interesting ramifications going forward for that. But I I think anyone expecting a a blue wave um I think the lesson of 2022 is that I mean Biden was extremely unpopular in 2022. I I think I think it's it's the the the area for genuine voters changing voter behavior is is I I don't think I don't think the other side is making the case to win over disaffected Trump voters, right? And so therefore, it's just about turnout and it's just about reliable voters and that that battle is a lot less interesting than you know massive uh you know grassroots trend one way or another. >> All right. Well, with that we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode of Power and Market Podcast. Thank you Connor. Thank you though. Thank you everyone out there for listening today. We will be back next week with more. So we'll see you then.