00:00I want to get into the ramifications of this in just a minute, but let me ask you, on a
00:04more micro level, what it means for you as you look ahead to the midterms, your district, the 6th district
00:09in Louisiana, very much at the center of this case.
00:12Well, you know, I tell people all the time the issue is not whether or not Cleo field served another
00:17day in Congress, but whether or not a person who looks like me have an opportunity to serve in Congress.
00:22I think the governor and the attorney general put the cart before the horse.
00:28I mean, the Supreme Court decision is not really a final judgment until, you know, the 25-day elapse for
00:36people to file, the parties rather, to file some type of rehearing.
00:41That time has not elapsed.
00:43And, you know, people have already started voting in Louisiana.
00:48Qualifying has been had, you know, 100,000 ballots has been sent to people not only in Louisiana but overseas.
00:58Thousands of them have already cast their ballots.
01:01And to hold an election up because there is a ruling from the Supreme Court to me is unconscionable.
01:09Justin Kagan in her dissent warned that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is now a, quote, dead letter.
01:15I'm wondering if you agree that this ruling effectively ends the era of creating these majority-minority districts in the
01:21South.
01:22Oh, I agree.
01:23I mean, you couldn't have a more horrible decision.
01:27I mean, and really people in the southern part of our country, the whole purpose of the Voting Rights Act
01:33was to protect them.
01:34There was a time, you know, in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, in order to register to vote, although you
01:41had the constitutional right to register to vote and be a voter in this country, there were states like Louisiana
01:49that had all types of prerequisites.
01:52You know, you had the state to pream it to the Constitution, literacy tests.
01:56Some even required poll taxes.
01:58You had to own property.
02:00Those were unconscionable measures that many southern states took.
02:04And thus, that's why Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it for good reason.
02:12Now, there is a lot of debate as to whether not some of those same tactics take place today.
02:19And I would say in the southern part of our country, the answer is absolutely yes.
02:24You know, they're not literacy tests, but there are all types of obstacles that many African-Americans are faced with
02:33in order to access the voting box.
02:36The other thing, the real proof into Putin is how many African-Americans have been elected to Congress from, let's
02:44just take Louisiana, for example.
02:46Zero, not one.
02:47How many have run?
02:49Many.
02:50So at the end of the day, you know, and to move the test from, you know, it has to
02:55show intent and not effect.
02:58You know, I just think that's wrong, too, because, you know, who's to determine what was the intent of the
03:03legislature?
03:04You know, what about what's the effect of what the legislature did?
03:09And in this case, you know, I was in the legislature when the bill passed.
03:13You know, we're from a state that has, you know, Speaker of the House, the majority leader and one, you
03:21know, one of the I mean, only one female member of Congress.
03:24The members of the legislature wanted to protect those individuals.
03:28And that's perfectly clear.
03:30I mean, OK.
03:31And and thus, that's why the district ended up the way it ended up.
03:35I just think it's a horrible decision.
03:37And what's worse, to postpone the elections that had already started, that disenfranchised people.
03:45And I hope the court ultimately ruled that you just can't hold up the elections.
03:51You need to go forward because they had already started.
03:54The bill had already won.
03:55I said I'd start micro and I'm going to go macro.
03:57I think a consequence of this is a level of confusion about the way that congressional districts are drawn in
04:03this country and when they're drawn.
04:05And perhaps that's the point that politicians are trying to sow confusion among the electorate.
04:10But I imagine it's incumbent upon you and other Democrats now at this moment to explain to voters why this,
04:17as you see it as a bad judgment, it needs to change.
04:20What's your prescription for doing that going forward?
04:21What do Democrats need to do here as they look at a Voting Rights Act that has been, as I
04:25said, hollowed out, not just by this decision that affected Section 2, but other facets of it as well?
04:30Well, I would think that the next Congress, the the the the new Congress, should pass a Voting Rights Act
04:37that really a half T.
04:39Don't leave anything up for question for the Supreme Court.
04:43Make it clear, clear and unambiguous, you know, and really deal with Section 5.
04:50Section 5 was gutted, what, 2013 through to hold the case.
04:56Five was so important to states like Louisiana.
04:58We could always depend on the federal government to defend us when we were, you know, when our vote, you
05:07know, when legislators were trampling on our rights to access the voting box.
05:12You know, and that is very, very important.
05:17I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for Section 5 and when they took that away, Section 2.
05:23And I tell people all the time, if you tell me I got to run a certain speed, I could
05:27perhaps do that.
05:28Tell me I got to jump a certain height.
05:31You know, I could perhaps do that.
05:33But if you tell me I have to be white to be a member of Congress, I need help from
05:37the federal government.
05:38And thus, that's the whole purpose of the Voting Rights Act.
05:42And I think the Supreme Court was just absolutely wrong.
05:46I think Congress could move with all expedient fees to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and just leave
05:54nothing for question for the Supreme Court.
05:57And not to mention, I really think at this day and age, we need to probably put term limits on
06:02the Supreme Court because these justices are now acting as the lawmakers, and they ought not do that.
06:10They are there only to interpret the law, not to make it.
06:15And there are too many justices that are making law in this country.
06:20And I do think that, you know, there should be some question as to whether or not, you know, Supreme
06:25Court justices are limited in terms of their current.
06:29Congressman, before we let you go, I do want to ask you, when you look at the wider map and
06:32these redistricting efforts, obviously this latest round kicked off in Texas where they redistricted to get five GOP votes.
06:39Then that was countered in California where they got five Democratic potential districts.
06:43Virginia has got five new potential Democratic districts.
06:45Florida will likely get four.
06:46And there's a couple, a handful of others in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Utah.
06:51I am a surprising possibly Democratic district in Utah.
06:54But I'm wondering if you have any concerns that you might be trying to win the battle and lose the
06:59war as you open the floodgates for more redistricting, more of this gerrymandering.
07:03And if that's partly responsible for the bipartisan nature of politics in 2026.
07:09Well, it's a race to the bottom.
07:11You know, when a president of the United States picks up the phone and calls the governor of Texas and
07:16says, I need five more Republican seats.
07:20And then the governor of Texas just goes, right, call the legislature in the session to do just that.
07:26You know, what do you think?
07:27Wherever there is an action, there's always a reaction.
07:29And then Democrats react to that.
07:31Look, we shouldn't have mid-decade redistricting.
07:38We just really shouldn't have it.
07:40The whole purpose of redistricting is based on the census.
07:45Every 10 years, we have census in this country.
07:48And we apportion, you know, seats based on population.
07:52And we shouldn't have mid-decade redistricting in this country is too political and is wrong and it's not fair
08:01to voters.
08:02It just brings about more voter confusion.
08:05You know, people don't know who their representatives are.
08:09And I just think we need to stop it and we need to stop it like right now.
08:15A quick question unrelated to this.
08:17You sit on the House Financial Services Committee.
08:19You're on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy.
08:22You're here on Bloomberg.
08:23I want to ask you about the news of the week.
08:25That is that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is going to stick around as governor going forward.
08:29What do you make of that decision?
08:31And now that that investigation by the DOJ has been punted over to the inspector general at the Fed,
08:35are you satisfied, like it seems like Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina was,
08:40that the institution and the soon-to-be former chair are no longer as imperiled as they might have been
08:45a few weeks ago?
08:47Yeah, you know, look, we have to put confidence in our financial institutions.
08:52And I'm happy that Chairman Powell is sticking around.
08:55There's no reason for him to leave.
08:57That was really no purpose in the investigation to begin with.
09:01And we've got to stop weaponizing the Department of Justice.
09:06You know, I mean, that was just wrong.
09:08You know, if you don't like somebody, if the president doesn't like somebody in this country,
09:12he sicks the Justice Department on the person?
09:16You know, that was an unfair, you know, un-American attack to begin with.
09:23And Chairman Powell should stay as long as the law gives him the right to stay and I applaud him
09:30for doing so.
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