00:00Moving on to other world news, Donald Trump has been defending his push for a Republican-backed plan to redraw Texas' congressional districts ahead of next year's midterms.
00:10The congressional elections could reorder the balance of power in Washington, threatening the U.S. president's agenda at the midpoint of his second term.
00:19On Monday, Texas Democrats prevented their state's House of Representatives from moving forward with a redrawn congressional map.
00:27Well, for more, we're joined now by David Shules. He's professor of political science at Hamblin University.
00:34David, tell us first what exactly happens next.
00:37The governor of Texas is threatening to remove members who are absent from their seats.
00:43But does he actually have the authority to do so?
00:47They have the authority to do so.
00:50But the complication is the fact that the Democrats have left the state of Texas and they're no longer available for easy reach.
00:58Additionally, in order to issue arrest warrants, generally a state has to do a majority vote in its legislative chamber to say we're going to issue a subpoena and to bring them back.
01:09And the very reason why the Democrats have left the state to be able to prevent the Republicans from having a quorum to be able to act may also be the reason why they're unable to issue an arrest warrant to be able to bring them back.
01:23So either under Texas rules, they may not be able to issue the warrant because of lacking a quorum or if they issue the warrant because the Democrats are out of state, they're not going to be able to execute that warrant.
01:34And do you think it's possible that the courts might intervene here?
01:39And if so, how might that play out?
01:43Well, it's possible that the courts could enter because if if a warrant is actually issued, they could perhaps try to seek what's called extradition to have the Democrats who are in other states arrested in those other states and eventually brought back to the state of Texas.
01:59That is that is certainly a possibility.
02:01Possibility. I mean, the other possibility, which I think is relatively remote, is that the courts would say that the Republicans can proceed with the numbers that they have in their legislature of state legislature to act.
02:14That I think is pretty unlikely. But but I suspect there may be efforts to try to get other states to extradite.
02:22But notice the states that the Democrats are going to.
02:24They're going to places like Illinois, which are also majority Democratic Party states, making it less likely that any type of extradition or judicial action may occur, at least in the short term.
02:37And in the slightly longer term, then, how do you think all of this is likely to play out in the midterms?
02:43Is it too early to say at this stage?
02:45I think we can start to make some predictions and that remember, keep in mind that right now, the majority that the Republicans have in the House is the closest it's been or the tightest it's been since, I think, the 1930s.
02:58They have barely a majority in there. Generally, in midterm elections, President's Party loses loses races or loses seats in the House.
03:09And so it's very, very tight. If Texas goes ahead and proceeds in terms of what's called gerrymandering, redrawing the lines, we're going to probably see other states which are controlled by Democrats, such as California and Texas, do the same thing.
03:22So I think what we're looking at here is the beginning or it could perhaps be a, I don't know, a springboard or a cascading effect where both sides, the Democrats and Republicans, are trying to redistrict in order to, I will call it the word, rig, rig the elections in 2026.
03:40And is that something you believe that the Democrats should actually try to do to balance the scales?
03:46And have they actually blocked themselves illegally from making these kind of moves, gerrymandering, as you refer to it, in other states?
03:55OK, so in terms of what they need, should they do this?
03:59I'll leave kind of that normative judgment up to the Democrats, of course, but clearly they have to do something.
04:04And there's not a lot they can do in Texas at this point except flee the state and boycott.
04:10But I think what the Democrats are threatening to do in other states is to reciprocate.
04:16Will that be enough of a sanction or a deterrence in Texas?
04:19I don't think so.
04:20I really think what we're seeing at this point now is really the whole agreement about doing redistricting once every 10 years, letting it settle and not doing it again for another 10 years.
04:31I think all of that has basically broken down.
04:34And the U.S. Supreme Court has said recently, in the last few years, that the federal courts cannot hear questions of what's called political or partisan gerrymandering.
04:45To use an American phrase, I think all the gloves are off right now.
04:49And we're just going to see a very intense redistricting and generally partisan warfare for the next 16, 18 months before the 2026 elections.
05:00And partisan warfare, as you refer to it, what does this actually tell us, David, about how polarized the U.S. actually is right now?
05:07Well, we are an incredibly polarized country, and we can actually map this out.
05:13Remember, I'm a political scientist also, and we can actually map this out over time in terms of votes in Congress, in terms of looking at, for example, number of state legislatures or state governments that are either all Democrat or Republican.
05:27By all indications, this is at least the most polarized we've been since the early 1960s.
05:32And in a polarized environment, it really becomes winner-take-all.
05:37There really doesn't seem to be any room for any kind of negotiation or agreement at this point.
05:43And because of that, that's what's really causing a lot of the problems that we're seeing right now, is that neither side wants to give.
05:50And that's being driven by this intense polarization to the point where, as I point out to Americans, you tell me what car you drive, what restaurant you eat at, where you shop, and I can make nearly perfect predictions how you vote.
06:04Because Democrats and Republicans literally live in, what, two different worlds now.
06:09And how then are voters feeling about everything?
06:11Is that the same as what you've just referred to there?
06:14It depends on which party they support.
06:16Yeah, okay.
06:19A couple of different things here.
06:20One is clearly there's a partisan breakdown among the voters in terms of, again, the best prediction of how you're going to vote is what is your party label at this point.
06:29So on so many different levels, the electorate is very, very much divided.
06:34And we can map that out in polling or survey research.
06:37However, if we do change some of the wording in some of the political rhetoric out there, there is still broad agreement on a lot of issues.
06:46But right now, the partisan overlay, I guess the superstructure we might call it here, is so powerful that it's really hard to get beyond that, even with the average American or average voter.
06:57David, we'll have to leave it there for now.
06:59Thanks so much for being with us, though.
07:00That is David Shules, Professor of Political Science at Hamline University.
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