How Redistricting Could Reshape The Midterms (Live 10th Anniversary Special)

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Speaker 5 Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast live.

Speaker 5 I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

Speaker 2 I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

Speaker 6 I'm Ashley Lopez.

Speaker 7 I also cover voting. I'm Mara Lyason, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Speaker 5 And Mara, you have a cold.

Speaker 3 I do.

Speaker 5 But you are so dedicated that you're here anyway.

Speaker 3 I am.

Speaker 5 And we are on stage here at NPR headquarters in Washington. This episode marks 10 years since we started this show.

Speaker 5 And it's amazing to be here in NPR Studio 1 with 200 of our most loyal listeners and my parents.

Speaker 5 So, by applause, how many of you have been listening to the pod for more than three years?

Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 5 how about more than five years?

Speaker 5 More than eight years?

Speaker 5 Okay, so who is an OG that goes all the way back to 2015?

Speaker 5 So no matter how long you've been listening, thank you for being here tonight. And a little bit later, we will reflect more on that milestone.

Speaker 5 But first, we have a lot to cover over multiple segments with other people you know and love from the podcast crew who will be out here soon.

Speaker 5 So let's start with the upcoming midterm elections and a big story taking shape that could influence the outcome in 2026. That is mid-decade redistricting.

Speaker 5 And Miles, I don't know if we want to go full schoolhouse rock here, but can you just briefly tell us what's going on with this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I feel like there's a big distinction here that we have to draw. Because when we say redistricting, that happens every 10 years, right after the census, every 10 years.

Speaker 2 political boundaries are drawn. What we're really talking about here is gerrymandering, which is when those lines are drawn specifically for political gain.

Speaker 2 And I should note that that does happen to some extent every cycle and has basically for the entirety of American politics because in most states, politicians have some role in kind of like signing off on those maps, and those are pretty self-interested creatures to some extent.

Speaker 2 But what we're seeing right now, where it's happening super quickly in the middle of a decade, and explicitly to try to impact who controls the House of Representatives after midterms next year, that is where we get into uncharted territory.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and Mara, I want to talk about the politics of all this because the politics are

Speaker 5 just on display.

Speaker 5 It is naked political ambition right now.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. The politics of this is that Donald Trump started this tit-for-tat spiral of partisan, mid-cycle partisan redistricting.

Speaker 7 He told Texas state legislature, Texas Republican governor, go find me five more seats. And they did.

Speaker 7 And they redraw the maps so that Republicans would have a better chance of winning in more seats in Texas. So then California followed suit.

Speaker 7 California is a big blue state, probably the Democrats' best chance to eke out some more Democratic-leaning seats.

Speaker 7 And to do that, they have to pass a referendum, which will be on the ballot on Tuesday, that overturns the nonpartisan redistricting commission that California voters chose because they wanted to get partisanship out of redistricting.

Speaker 7 This is the tragedy of this.

Speaker 7 But That's a political norm. Nonpartisan redistricting is a norm that has been thrown overboard like so many other political norms in the Trump era.

Speaker 7 And I think the bottom line about the politics of this is it shows how nervous and uncomfortable the Republicans are with their chances to keep the House.

Speaker 7 If they were confident, they wouldn't be doing this. You could say the Republicans have reason to be confident.

Speaker 7 Right now, only three Republican House members represent districts that Kamala Harris won, and 13 Democrats in the House are in districts that Donald Trump won.

Speaker 7 So it seems like Democrats should be on the defensive. But what we know from history is that midterm elections are very bad generally for the party in power, and that means the Republicans.

Speaker 7 And so those are the two forces at work. You've got history.
Of course, historical rules only work till they stop working. But we know that in the past, the party in power does pretty badly.

Speaker 7 And then we have these structural advantages that Republicans have with redistricting. And we can talk about some of those later.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And Ashley, you are just back from California, just back from a reporting trip there. I want to ask you lots of questions about that.
But first, can we just run through all the states?

Speaker 5 Mara mentioned a couple of them, but I feel like every day I wake up and there's another state that's talking about doing this.

Speaker 6 Right. So so far, I'm going to talk about the voluntary ones because there are some court-ordered states in the mix.
So out of the voluntary states, obviously we talked about Texas. That's a,

Speaker 6 so far it's been three states. We started with Texas.
They have created a five-seat, five more seats that are favorable to Republicans.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to say it's an advantage to them because elections haven't happened yet.

Speaker 6 And then we have Missouri. They held a special legislative session and they drew up one more favorable seat for the Republican Party.

Speaker 6 But I should note that there is a voter referendum in the works in Missouri, so that could be like a wild card in this that could, you know, change things.

Speaker 6 We just don't know how that's going to pan out.

Speaker 6 And then there's North Carolina. They also, in a special session, redrew their map to create one more favorable seat for the VOP, the GOP.

Speaker 6 And that state was already pretty gerrymandered, so they can only squeeze one seat out of there. Out of the 14 seats, 10 are held by Republicans.

Speaker 6 And then, of course, there are some, we're watching for some court-ordered Ohio, Utah.

Speaker 2 I would also just note, just getting to Mara's point about kind of the underlying, a little bit of the underlying tragedy here, is that while I mentioned that gerrymandering has been a part of American politics for a really long time, in the recent elections, it actually hasn't affected the impact of the House.

Speaker 2 There's actually been the last few election cycles, a direct direct correlation with whoever wins the national popular vote winning basically that amount of seats in the House of Representatives in the last few cycles, which is like a beautiful thing to see, right?

Speaker 2 When the number of votes correlates to the number of representatives. And so it just seems like we're moving away from that now.

Speaker 5 So, Ashley, we're not in the prediction business, and also people haven't voted yet. And also, these maps are based on kind of old census data.

Speaker 5 But do you have a sense of how these numbers in theory shake out?

Speaker 6 So, yeah, I mean, I think this is all very up in the air. For one reason, I don't think all states are kind of done here.

Speaker 6 I think there are still some states that are looking at doing this as well beyond California, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina.

Speaker 6 You know, like I mentioned, there's the court-ordered states. There's also like Illinois has been thrown out there, Virginia.
Like, there are other states looking at this.

Speaker 6 And depending how things shake out, and, you know, one party looks at the numbers and gets nervous, maybe some states start to take another look at this. So we'll see.

Speaker 6 Right now, it does look like, like, look, if California, if Prop 50, also, this hasn't happened yet, if Prop 50 passes and Texas, Texas and California will kind of like even each other out.

Speaker 6 They'll kind of like cancel each other out.

Speaker 6 We're looking at a handful of more seats that could be more favorable for Republicans.

Speaker 6 We just don't know. This is all like guesswork at this point.
And I think we're also still a couple months out from when primaries have to start getting like, you know,

Speaker 3 people have to put their names in that.

Speaker 6 Exactly. Right.
So we still have some time. But yeah, that's looking like so far a little bit of an edge so far for Republicans.

Speaker 2 I don't want to throw one more monkey wrench into this system.

Speaker 3 But do it.

Speaker 2 I just want to say, just for these people here, I feel like they're going to appreciate it.

Speaker 2 Another thing to watch is that in the next year, the Supreme Court is also expected to rule on a key portion of the Voting Rights Act that protects minority voting rights.

Speaker 2 And if that, many people expect that portion to be gutted, if that happens, it is going to make.

Speaker 2 this current redistricting it could make this current redistricting battle look like small potatoes because basically that portion of the Voting Rights Act protects more than a dozen currently held seats by black Democrats, mostly in the South.

Speaker 2 And the thought is that if that thing gets gutted, there's going to be a race in a number of Republican-led states to redraw those districts to get those politicians out of office.

Speaker 2 And so that is going to be another thing. It's possible it doesn't happen in time.

Speaker 3 It's possible it doesn't happen at all.

Speaker 2 It's possible it doesn't happen in time to affect the maps for midterms, but it's just another big thing to watch.

Speaker 5 Ashley, let's go back to California.

Speaker 5 You were there reporting. This is one of those states that created a nonpartisan citizens commission.
People in the state voted to get rid of gerrymandering and it was popular at the time.

Speaker 5 And now it looks like these maps are going to get enough support that they're, you know, like

Speaker 5 nonpartisan citizens commission. What?

Speaker 5 So you've been talking to voters. How do people feel about this ballot measure?

Speaker 6 You know, the thing that stood out to me is, is: you know, when I'm reporting, like, I try to think of who's like the ideal person I want to hear from. I'm curious what they want to think.

Speaker 6 And the first person that came to mind is someone who, with gusto, voted in 2008 and 2010 for the Independent Redistricting Commission and is now in this position of like, well, I'm a Democrat.

Speaker 6 I kind of want to, you know, react to Texas. So I'm going to have to now take a vote that is telling my state lawmakers to bypass this thing that I voted for.

Speaker 6 And I found zero people who remember how they voted for the Independent Redistricting Commission.

Speaker 3 It was popular.

Speaker 6 It was popular. And, you know, and I think in theory, a lot of people were like, yeah, this is a good thing.
I don't like partisan gerrymandering. I'm not like...

Speaker 6 super enthusiastic about the fact that I'm going, like I'm telling my state lawmakers to gerrymander on behalf of one party.

Speaker 6 But, you know, what I heard time and time again from especially yes voters, especially Democratic yes voters, was like, they feel like something needs to happen.

Speaker 6 Something needs to be done in reaction to a presidency that they are not aligned with, that they're very nervous about.

Speaker 6 And they're very, and for the most part, I mean, there's polling that suggests, and Amara probably has more to say about this, like Democrats are not happy with their leaders.

Speaker 6 And a lot of it stems from the fact that they feel like Democratic leaders aren't doing enough to react to Trump. Now, they don't have a lot of power.
You know, they don't have Congress.

Speaker 6 They don't have the White House. You know, like it's, it's, they're kind of structurally at a disadvantage.
But you know where they have power? They have power in California.

Speaker 6 And so voters there were really happy. like you know democratic voters i should say republican voters not so happy uh democratic voters were actually very happy to vote for the measure.

Speaker 6 Uniformly, I heard the same thing. They're happy to counteract Texas.

Speaker 2 One thing I think of, and I want to bring Mara in here, is that for a long time on the voting beat, there's been this kind of truism that

Speaker 2 when politicians do this to kind of nakedly advantage themselves, voters really don't like it.

Speaker 2 And I guess I'm just wondering, Mara, is there going to be some sort of political backlash to this battle?

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's in midterms or at some point to all of this redistricting.

Speaker 7 The short answer is no.

Speaker 7 And here's the thing about democracy. Democracy is rules.
That's all it is. And it only works if both sides abide by the rules.
That's it.

Speaker 7 And when one side decides it's not going to abide by the rules and it's not going to honor the nonpartisan redistrict commissions, like in the state of Ohio, that voters voted for it, but then the Republican legislature just ignored it,

Speaker 7 it doesn't work. And in terms of Democrats being angry at their leaders, what Ashley just said, they don't want their leaders to bring a water gun to a knife fight.
And that's what's happening here.

Speaker 7 So it's a downward spiral.

Speaker 7 You can't just disarm and say, we believe in good government and nonpartisan redistricting, where Texas and these other red states are going to carve up the maps so that they get all these other districts.

Speaker 7 So I don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle, but this is how democracy devolves. But I do think that

Speaker 7 this is not an equal fight. I mean, Republicans have a structural advantage in redistricting for a number of reasons.
One of them is that they have more trifectas.

Speaker 7 A trifecta is when the governor of a state and the state legislatures are controlled by the same party. More states have Republican governors and state legislatures than have Democratic trifectas.

Speaker 7 So it's easier for them to draw maps that help them in a partisan way. The other reason that the Republicans have an advantage is

Speaker 7 that

Speaker 7 Republican voters, where they live, they are just distributed more efficiently. They're sprinkled throughout the heartland for electoral purposes.

Speaker 7 Democratic voters are clustered inefficiently for electoral purposes in metro areas and on the coasts. So they're much easier to gerrymander because they're clumped together in big bunches.

Speaker 7 So they have a lot of advantages that just have to do with how the population has sorted itself out.

Speaker 5 And we are not even really going to get into what this means for representation?

Speaker 7 Aaron Powell, that's the other thing.

Speaker 7 One of the things that what Miles was talking about, how great it was, was when you have the national vote for the House of Representatives actually reflected in the number of seats that each side won.

Speaker 7 That's great. What you don't want is minoritarian rule, where the party that gets fewer votes ends up with the majority of seats.
How do they do that? They do that with partisan redistricting.

Speaker 7 That's how they do that. And that's minority rule.

Speaker 7 There are states that used to be Wisconsin, we've had to change there, Wisconsin, North Carolina, other states where the Democrats could win a majority of the statewide votes for legislature or congressional delegation, and the Republicans could still end up with 70% of the seats.

Speaker 7 Like, how does that work? It works by stretching the rules to the breaking point or ignoring them altogether.

Speaker 6 So I was just going to say, there's another how we got here story that has to do with the Supreme Court. I know this is one of Miles' favorite's rants.
It's like,

Speaker 6 but, but, you know,

Speaker 6 there are ways to backpedal from this. There were ways to avoid this.

Speaker 6 Partisan gerrymandering and hyperpolarization, yes, are a reality, but like, you know, we got here because the Supreme Court told states that they could do this. Like it is totally fine.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, I think this is going to be like a reality in politics for as long as we don't have constraints by law.

Speaker 5 And to do something very on-brand for me, I'm going to close this out with a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger Schwarzenegger that I'd love to get you guys to react to.

Speaker 11 You're going to do it in his voice?

Speaker 5 I am not. My Arnold voice is a little rusty.
I'm out of practice.

Speaker 5 But he is the former California governor, also the Terminator,

Speaker 5 who terminated partisan gerrymandering in California by backing the Citizens Commission. And here's what he said.

Speaker 5 He said, it saddens him to see political parties, quote, trying to out-cheat each other rather than out-perform each other.

Speaker 5 But he just sounds like a man from a different time.

Speaker 5 Like, what does this, everything we've just talked about, say about the state of our politics, or maybe the state of our democracy?

Speaker 2 He sounds like a man from a different time and specifically before the 2024 election to me, because that, in a lot of ways, was a watershed moment, not just because Donald Trump is the one asking these states to do this, but the fact that a plurality of voters looked at the fact that he tried to overturn an election in 2020 and said either either we don't care about that or it's not as big of a deal as these other things or we don't believe he did that for whatever, however way they're justifying that, they okayed it.

Speaker 2 And I do think that there's a dotted line from that to now politicians being more emboldened to mess with the machinery of democracy in ways that advantage themselves.

Speaker 2 And that's why this doesn't just stop here, too. You know, I think

Speaker 2 you did a story, was that this week or last week about the possibility of Trump running for a third term.

Speaker 5 Oh, that was this week.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's not, these are the sort of things that would be insane 10 years ago, but it is a slow, as how do you put it? Basically, this is how democracies kind of dissolve slowly.

Speaker 2 It's not like one big crash. It's like, okay,

Speaker 2 everything, when people are this comfortable pushing the rules in this direction, this is what happens. And I don't know where it goes from here.

Speaker 7 You know, we have to give Donald Trump his due here. I mean, this is his project, and he is

Speaker 7 quite happy pushing

Speaker 7 the edges of the envelope. He asked states to do this, and he has no compunction about the rules.
He famously said in 2015, I can stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters.

Speaker 6 I will say, I mean, this is uncomfortable for me because I don't usually like being the optimistic person here. I think a lot of this is strategic.
I don't think that everyone's values have changed.

Speaker 6 Because I will say, every voter I talked to that was like, I don't love partisan gerrymandering, but I think in this case it's important.

Speaker 6 That means that people still do care about, you know, whether or not the game is fair or politics are fair or democracy is fair.

Speaker 6 It's just right now, strategically, this is where a lot of Democrats find themselves.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I don't know where we go from here, but I will say I did hear from a lot of voters that they were like pretty disgusted that politics, the game is in the mud, but they're like, if the game's in the mud, we play in the mud.

Speaker 6 And this is just where we go from here.

Speaker 6 But I do think everyone, I heard uniformly folks say i do wish this were just banned federally and prop 50 is only temporary yeah you should say that it's temporary it's for what three cycles it's 20 20 30 what after the census they will go back to the independent redistricting commission so it will be 2026 and 2028.

Speaker 5 yeah all right well it is time for a quick break and we will be back in a moment with more from this special live episode of the npr politics podcast

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Speaker 10 We are back after some musical chairs with a new group here on stage in NPR Studio 1. Hello, everyone.
I'm Sarah McCammon.

Speaker 8 I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore.
I also cover politics.

Speaker 9 I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House.

Speaker 15 And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

Speaker 10 So for this segment, we're going to talk about some of the big themes of the upcoming midterm elections, the things we're keeping an eye on, and what might happen next fall.

Speaker 10 Domenico, I want to start with you. You are our polling expert here.
What are voters saying so far about the big issues on their minds?

Speaker 15 They're the same issues, really, that a lot of people have been talking about. Obviously, cost of living is a huge piece of it.

Speaker 15 Whether you can afford where you can live, whether you have a job that pays well and is doing better than inflation, if you can afford your groceries.

Speaker 15 Same sort of issues that we heard about in the 2024 campaign. Now, obviously, during the shutdown that's been taking place, health care has also been something that's been highlighted.

Speaker 15 And that's because Democrats feel like it's an issue that works for them. They have much better polling numbers on health care than Republicans do.

Speaker 15 And they also see it as a huge issue, the fact that there would be tens of millions of people seeing their premiums increase at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 15 And Republicans, again, running on immigration and crime. You see that a lot in these 2025 elections that are coming up on Tuesday as well.

Speaker 10 Now, Elena, you spent a lot of time talking with younger voters who were a big and growing share of the electorate. What are you hearing?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, we should say the reason I'm like so obsessed with this is because this group, Gen Z and Millennials, so people under 45, are going to make up more than half of the electorate in 2028.

Speaker 8 So it's a huge chunk of potential voters. And they're kind of a political question mark, especially the latter half, the younger, the young, so to speak, as they would say.

Speaker 8 And yeah, like Domenico said, I mean, the economy is front and center. It's what pushed a lot of them to shift towards Trump in the 2024 election.

Speaker 8 And so what I've been seeing talking to people for the last few years and this year is that the economy financial issues, once again, are front and center.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you've been talking to the truly young.

Speaker 8 The true youngs.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I don't know. The old millennials.

Speaker 8 Right. Only in this beat do I feel old, but I do.

Speaker 3 I still say

Speaker 15 Gen Z and Millennial combined is a pretty big group now.

Speaker 15 And they're kind of pushing 40, right?

Speaker 3 They are

Speaker 3 past 40. Past 40.

Speaker 10 Wow. And so on the economy, Elena, I mean, that was such a big issue last year.
Domenico says it's a big issue. Now, I mean, what are you hearing from those under 40s about the economy specifically?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I wanted to do a story specifically on this because for years now, I've been here over six years and the great Marlison has this phrase. I think it was a story.
I don't know.

Speaker 8 She used to always be like, generations screwed.

Speaker 3 And I was like, oh my God.

Speaker 8 Cause, you know, Gen Z and Millennials have like a hard financial hand. Like it's really hard to buy a house.
It's really expensive to, you know, start out.

Speaker 8 And, you know, people have a lot of student loans, et cetera. And so I was like, I want to put a call out out that asks just like, how much have financial concerns shaped your life if you're under 40?

Speaker 8 And so we put it out. In five days, we got over 1,100 responses.
And it's not a representative sample necessarily, but we got people from almost every state in the country.

Speaker 8 And really, Sarah, like the big takeaway is like what we're saying. Like people feel so worried about the future.

Speaker 8 They feel increasingly pessimistic that they will not have the lives their parents had, the so-called American dream, having a better life than your past generations who brought you there.

Speaker 8 And they also feel like politically disaffected, like no one sees the plight that they have.

Speaker 10 I think what's so interesting is we've been talking about this, you know, really since the millennial generation, which was hit hard by the recession of 08, and it hasn't really gotten much better.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 8 It's like those people graduated during recession and the youngest of this Gen Z generation watched their parents lose their jobs and then everyone lose their jobs during COVID and now no one can afford housing.

Speaker 9 But I think the thing that gets really flattened in these conversations though is that there's a when we say voters care about the economy, that conflates a lot of big things together.

Speaker 9 Because what Domenico is talking about is very real concerns about shorter-term cyclical things. For example, prices.

Speaker 9 I realize tariffs aren't cyclical, but they are a thing that can actually be turned on and off.

Speaker 9 There are cycles to unemployment, and people can look at those things and rightly or wrongly connect them to the president. But what you're talking about seems to be more structural things, right?

Speaker 9 The education education system. Can I buy a house? Is there housing supply? Is this economy built for this generation or that generation?

Speaker 9 And so the thing that I always wonder, and I'm curious if you have a thought on this, is are those structural issues driving how people vote?

Speaker 9 Or, I mean, if you think there ain't no way I'm ever going to afford a house,

Speaker 9 why would it matter who I vote for?

Speaker 8 Yeah, well, I do think that it's the really unique thing about these two generations, especially Gen Z, is they really are driven by issues over party. And we've been seeing that for years.

Speaker 8 But it was, I mean, put on display last year when we saw this big shift to the right with Trump. And so I think it's a very like message-driven, in some ways, I hate saying this, vibes-driven group.

Speaker 8 You know, it's like a lot of people did not feel like the Democratic Party was seeing their economic concerns. And so, yeah, I think it's in many ways an issue thing.

Speaker 8 And people are willing to forego maybe traditional political norms in order to defy the status quo.

Speaker 15 I think that's what's different now than 2018, you know, the the first midterm that Trump was president for, where Trump lost, you know, 40 seats in the House.

Speaker 15 This time around, one, I think people are a little more used to Trump, but I think on the Democratic side, we've seen really bad numbers for Democrats themselves about how Democrats think about Democratic leaders.

Speaker 15 I mean, our polling had about 30 points different where Republicans had like almost 8 in 10 Republicans had a positive view of Republicans in Congress, and it was only like less than half of Democrats who had a positive view of Democrats in Congress.

Speaker 15 That's very different than 2018. And when you need an activist base to get out in an election year, that's a midterm or an off-year election, that's a real wildcard for Democrats.

Speaker 10 Okay, speaking of midterms and Trump, Danielle, you cover the White House. And of course, Trump won't be on the ballot in 2026, but

Speaker 10 this is the thing, right? In midterm elections, especially midterms right after a presidential election, this is often seen as a referendum on the party in power.

Speaker 10 Typically, the party in power doesn't do so well. What are you seeing? How is this shaping the conversation?

Speaker 9 I would imagine Trump is more on the ballot than he was in 2018. Yeah, it is true that people are more used to Trump, as Domenico was saying.

Speaker 9 But then again, Trump is taking so much more power and taking responsibility for so many more things than he was back around 2018.

Speaker 9 You think about the tariffs he did back then versus now, it's a pinch of dirt versus a mountain. And so,

Speaker 9 if you are voting and looking at that ballot and thinking about what member of Congress do I want to vote for, and if you're voting for a Republican, you are likely voting for someone who is going to cede their power to Donald Trump.

Speaker 9 Tariffs, for example, are something the Constitution lays out for Congress. Congress has handed that to Trump.
So, I think Trump is very much on the ballot.

Speaker 15 And we're in a more hardened political era.

Speaker 15 I mean, the fact is, you know, Trump has, we always say, a high floor and a low ceiling when it it comes to polls because, you know, he started out, it was probably his best polling numbers when he started out the second term here.

Speaker 15 And those just cratered in the first few months of his presidency.

Speaker 15 And they flattened out to where they had been basically through the entirety of his first presidency, around, you know, 39 to 42, 43%.

Speaker 15 And with independence, it's in the low 30s. And independents are such a key in midterm elections.
in those swing districts.

Speaker 15 The only problem for Democrats, even though this should be the kind of thing that's like a layup for the party out of power, is that structurally, we've seen more flips in the House in the last 20 years than we did post-Reconstruction.

Speaker 15 The last time that we've had this many changes of control of power was after the Civil War through Reconstruction. And the margins are closer than they've ever been.

Speaker 15 So when you've got those kind of structural changes where the districts have been redistricted to the point where you've got like, you know, less than 10% of the House that winds up being up for grabs, it makes it that much harder to find seats that you can actually flip.

Speaker 10 I want to go back to another major issue for voters and another issue where Trump has taken decisive action, and that's immigration.

Speaker 10 Domenico, you mentioned crime and immigration being at the top of voters' minds yet again. We have now seen the administration carry out in its ongoing massive immigration crackdown.

Speaker 10 How do you expect this issue to shape the message going into 26?

Speaker 15 Well, immigration is huge. And I think that one thing that we've seen in polling is that the numbers of people who think that Trump has gone too far has now gone over a majority of people.

Speaker 15 You even hear some Republicans in Congress who will say that, you know, I want them to go after the hardened criminals.

Speaker 15 I don't necessarily want them to go after the guy who's picking strawberries or working as a dishwasher and paying taxes and otherwise being a good person and good citizen without being a citizen of the country.

Speaker 15 And so I think that that's one area where there might have been a lot of people who weren't sure how far Trump was going to go.

Speaker 15 But when you talk to people and why they say that they disapprove of Trump, the deportations is one thing that you always hear.

Speaker 15 And I'm going to be really interested on Tuesday to see, for example, in New Jersey where Trump won over a lot of Latino voters and was able to close the gaps in some of the bigger counties in North Jersey.

Speaker 15 What are those numbers going to be like on Tuesday? places in the counties with high Latino populations and how does that wind up changing? Right.

Speaker 10 You know, I was really curious about that after the 2024 election and I spent some time in Pennsylvania talking to Latino voters who supported Trump, many of whom had recent ties themselves or their family members to immigration.

Speaker 10 And what I did hear was this sense that, well, you know, he's going to go after the criminals, not us. So I too am really curious about where that lands.

Speaker 10 You know, speaking of those elections on Tuesday,

Speaker 10 New Jersey, Virginia, there's a big mayoral race in New York that's getting a lot of attention. Elena, what are you watching there?

Speaker 8 Yeah, we have to talk about New York because it's in me and Domenico's contract to always talk about New York if we're going to be on the pod.

Speaker 8 That's just how it is. And so, yeah, I mean, I'll start there,

Speaker 8 which is, I think, well, all of these elections are the first time that Democrats are going to, you know, potentially get like a big win since the big loss of 2024. So that's one thing.

Speaker 8 And I think New York City is a really interesting example because it's a place where we're seeing the Democratic divides and rift on full display.

Speaker 8 You know, Zoron Momdani, the Democrats nominee for mayor in New York, is running against Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of the state.

Speaker 8 And Mom Dani is very much running as a new generation Democrat in some ways. You know, he's 34, he's a Democratic socialist.

Speaker 8 His central campaign platform is like, I want to make New York less expensive. He talks about housing, groceries, all the things we were just saying, really.

Speaker 8 And he's gotten really popular.

Speaker 8 So I'm really curious to just see what it's like for Democrats because they are still sorting through what their vision for 2026, for 2028 looks like, right? Other than we are not Trump.

Speaker 10 Okay, but that's New York, right? And I feel like the Midwesterners on the stage should remind everybody, right, Danielle, that the rest of the country isn't New York.

Speaker 9 I am loath to say that we should draw lessons from the New York mayoral race, but I'm going to say that, yes, we can draw a lesson from this because...

Speaker 9 Zoran Mamdani, to me, is a wildly talented politician, right?

Speaker 9 He has been putting out these videos where he looks authentic, funny, relatable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like a real person, right?

Speaker 9 To me right now, a big issue the Democratic Party has is not just left versus center and old versus young. Those things very much apply, but it's very much about how the party views selling policies.

Speaker 9 Because the question is, do you focus group things to death, pull people to death, and say, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? We'll do it.

Speaker 9 Or do you put someone out there who can sell things and who can say, you know what's a policy you might like? X, Y, Z. And you think about Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 9 How many people had heard of Medicare for All before he stepped onto a national stage? Like, not a thing that was even on people's radars. Now, has it happened? Absolutely not.

Speaker 9 But my point is, if you can get other people who are good salespeople, assuming Mandani is, out there for the Democrats, it's not so much about

Speaker 9 what policies are people going to like. It's what policies can we sell people on.
And the Democratic Party needs to figure out the balance there.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, selling policies and selling themselves are really important factors all the time in politics, right?

Speaker 15 And I think that there's this sort of juxtaposition that we've been seeing about how Democratic leaders want to talk about Zoran Mom Dani versus some of the other people who are running in this race.

Speaker 15 I mean, I thought it was funny watching CNN a couple of weeks ago, Dan and Bash had Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on, and she asked him, Does Mom Dani represent the, quote, soul of the Democratic Party?

Speaker 15 And he immediately started talking about Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sheryl and saying that they are, you know, also part of the party.

Speaker 15 And Abigail Spanberger is the Democrat who's running for governor in Virginia, and Sheryl, the Democrat who's running for governor in New Jersey.

Speaker 15 And Sheryl, almost every ad that she's in, you see her with a bomber jacket on. She's a former Navy helicopter pilot.
So she's playing that playbook to say she's tough.

Speaker 15 She's playing up her military roots. And Spanberger is taking this sort of reserved approach, talking about how she's for tradition, tradition of service.

Speaker 15 It's a very different way that all three of them are selling themselves. And I think that there are going to be lessons to be learned from each of their campaigns.

Speaker 10 Danielle, what else will you have your eye on as we look ahead to Tuesday and to next year?

Speaker 9 I'm not just saying this because I cover it a lot, but I'm really curious how much Trump continues to lean into his whole trade and tariffs

Speaker 9 worldview and policy package, because he just struck this trade deal with China, he says.

Speaker 9 We don't know the exact details of it, but apparently China is going to buy a bunch more soybeans from the U.S., which will help a lot of American farmers, which will ease up some pressure on Trump and a lot of red state senators and House members.

Speaker 9 So if this deal holds, then, well, that's the problem. We don't know if it's going to hold actually, because the last deal that China and the U.S.
struck in Trump's first term didn't stick.

Speaker 9 China didn't live up to its end of things, right? So my question is, does Trump stick with his tariffs?

Speaker 9 Does he at some point throw this trade deal out the window because he gets mad at China one day and try to raise tariffs again? Does he keep trying to raise tariffs on other countries?

Speaker 9 If the Supreme Court blows up all of his tariffs and the arguments for that are next week, does he try to impose other tariffs that are more legal? And do voters punish him for that?

Speaker 9 Because he really likes imposing tariffs.

Speaker 9 He likes going to these countries and writing those letters and making deals or at least attempting to make deals, but feeling like he can throw his weight around. He likes it, voters don't love it.

Speaker 9 And it is the one issue, or one of the few issues, that Republicans in Congress have been very, very willing to push back, or somewhat willing, let me rephrase that, somewhat willing to push back against him on.

Speaker 10 With our thanks to Elena, Danielle, and Domenico, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

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Speaker 5 And after some musical chairs, we are all back.

Speaker 5 I'm Tamara Keith, and it is time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

Speaker 2 I'm Miles Parks. Sarah McCammon and Mara Lyason are back on stage with me for Can't Let It Go.
Mara, let's start with you.

Speaker 11 What can't you let go of?

Speaker 7 Well, this is what I can't let go of this week. At NPR, we try to produce compelling stories and compelling podcasts, and we even have a word for some of these.
It's called driveway moments.

Speaker 7 You're sitting in your car listening to something on NPR in your driveway and you don't get out of your car because you don't want to miss a single second.

Speaker 7 So, my friend Marvin Krizlov had a slightly different kind of driveway moment. This summer, he was driving in the Berkshires.
It was a dark and stormy night.

Speaker 7 He was listening to Northeast Public Radio.

Speaker 7 And before we hear Marvin tell his story, the most important thing for you to know is that Marvin is okay.

Speaker 16 I careened down an embankment, went through the wooden fence, and then I ended up upside down with airbags. And here's the thing, the story kept playing.

Speaker 16 So even as I was going through this crash tumble, I was listening to the story and I was sitting there with the airbags deployed and I continued to listen.

Speaker 16 I even unbuckled and I I was thinking, oh, this is such an interesting story. Maybe I should continue to listen to it.
And my friend and then the police came and I was somewhat sad.

Speaker 16 In fact, I was sad that I could not hear the end of the story.

Speaker 7 Wow. The moral of that story is if you are having a driveway moment and you are not in your driveway, please pull over.

Speaker 5 Did he like go look up the story so he could see how it ended?

Speaker 3 That is high praise.

Speaker 10 I'm so glad your friend is okay.

Speaker 11 Sarah, what can't you let go of?

Speaker 10 All right, mine is a little less of a happy story.

Speaker 10 Did you guys hear about the research monkeys on the loose in Mississippi?

Speaker 3 Oh, yes. Uh-huh.

Speaker 10 So what happened for those who didn't hear about this is a truckload of rhesus monkeys used in research was being transported from one facility to another.

Speaker 10 The truck carrying them turned over and a bunch of the monkeys got loose.

Speaker 10 And now at the time, the driver apparently mistakenly believed that they were both aggressive and infected with diseases like COVID, hepatitis C, and herpes, which is the one that I can't get my head around.

Speaker 10 So Tulane University, which operated the research facility that they apparently were coming from, later said, to be clear, the monkeys were not carrying diseases.

Speaker 10 But at the time, people thought they were, and there was a lot of concern in Jasper County, Mississippi, where this all happened. Can we play the 911 tape?

Speaker 4 We got 21 monkeys that was on this. We got five of them on the run, and we got to neutralize something out here in a minute.

Speaker 10 So that tape is a little hard to hear, but he said there were monkeys on the run, and they were preparing to, quote, neutralize them.

Speaker 3 Is that the happy ending? I said it did not.

Speaker 3 There's a few monkeys on the run, but the rest are dead. I'm not worried about the people.

Speaker 2 I'm mad at the people for neutralizing them.

Speaker 5 They weren't even infected.

Speaker 10 I don't know. Obviously,

Speaker 10 I cannot let that story go.

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 10 What about you, Miles? I hope it's something happier.

Speaker 2 It is, actually.

Speaker 2 Much happier for me personally.

Speaker 2 So what I cannot let go of is that this week, my toddler thought Steph Curry was me.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 2 That, if you know me at all, that is the peak of existence, folks. I love basketball more than anything.
And so Sunday mornings, which has now become kind of one of my favorite times having a toddler,

Speaker 2 my wife and my baby play at the playground and right next door is a basketball court where I play pickup basketball, which is really special for me because I grew up going with my dad to the YMCA and watching him play pickup basketball.

Speaker 2 And so now I get to have this moment where I'll be like playing and then I'll sit a game out and like my daughter will come over through the fence and we'll talk and we'll have this moment.

Speaker 2 But then now when I take her to the playground, which we go to a lot, anyone who's playing basketball, she points at and she's like, dad, dad. Like, well, I'm with her.

Speaker 2 And she still thinks those people are dad dad. But this culminated this week, I have a bookmark with Steph Curry on it.
And she brought it over to me and she pointed at it and she said, dada.

Speaker 3 And I was like, heck yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 2 that's literally what I can't let go of. And I will never let go of it for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 That's great.

Speaker 5 Does she think that the word dada actually means basketball?

Speaker 3 I think we're not going to investigate it.

Speaker 2 She, I I feel like, probably has just seen me drain some three-pointers out there.

Speaker 2 And so it's just like the shot looks really similar.

Speaker 5 And you're dealing the ball.

Speaker 3 Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 I've won a lot of championships or something. I don't know.
I don't know. We're not going to dig too deep.
Okay. She's a perceptive baby.

Speaker 11 Take the win.

Speaker 3 Tam, what can't you let go of?

Speaker 5 So, what I can't let go of is this podcast.

Speaker 3 I'm not quitting, I promise.

Speaker 3 you can't let go of the podcast, literally. No.

Speaker 5 I wrote some great words, and I'm an embarrassment to myself. Here we go.

Speaker 5 I love this podcast. I have been doing this for 10 years, so I better love this podcast.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I love it so much because it is truly like just going into the studio and hanging out with my friends because that is what it is.

Speaker 5 And it happens to be that my friends in the studio make me smarter every single time, which is a gift.

Speaker 5 Also, I love this podcast because of our audience who have shared little pieces of their lives with us through time stamps. We have met your babies.
We played a role in some marriage proposals.

Speaker 5 We celebrated retirements and graduations. We hiked to so many mountains.

Speaker 5 Like so many mountaintops all over the world.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, can we just say that it has been one

Speaker 5 hell of a decade in political news? So much has happened.

Speaker 5 So much has changed. And you've been there with us through it all.

Speaker 5 So I have a prop.

Speaker 5 In 2017, I

Speaker 5 made these shot glasses.

Speaker 5 It was July of 2017,

Speaker 5 and they say,

Speaker 5 we survived the first six months of 2017.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I possibly bought them in bulk, and there may be a lot at my desk still.

Speaker 5 But like, if only 2025 me could have gone back in time and warned sweet little naive young reporter me that surviving the first half of 2017 was really only the beginning.

Speaker 5 You know, that would have been a hot tip.

Speaker 5 You know, we have just been hit with one tsunami of political news after another,

Speaker 5 and yet we are all still here. We are all still standing.

Speaker 5 So I would like to raise a tiny and empty glass

Speaker 5 to 10 years of the NPR Politics Podcast.

Speaker 5 I love Mara's Kauff.

Speaker 3 She's a trooper.

Speaker 7 That can be edited out.

Speaker 5 And to another 10 years of the NPR Politics Podcast. May we someday live in less interesting times.

Speaker 2 All right, that is it for this very special live 10th anniversary edition of the NPR Politics Podcast. Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi.
Our editor is Rachel Bay.

Speaker 2 Our producers are Brent Bachman, Casey Morrell, and Brea Suggs.

Speaker 5 Our audio engineers tonight are Neil Teebault and Andy Huther. Thanks to Elena Moore, Ashley Lopez, Daniel Kurtzlaben, Domenico Montenaro, and all of you for joining us on the show.

Speaker 10 And special thanks to Krishna DevCallimer, Beth Donovan, Bill Wright, Stacey Foxwell, Tracy McKeever, and the entire entire NPR facilities, marketing, and security teams for their help in getting this event off the ground.

Speaker 10 I'm Sarah McCammon.

Speaker 8 I cover politics.

Speaker 2 I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

Speaker 5 I'm Tam Rakith. I cover the White House.

Speaker 7 And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Speaker 10 And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

Speaker 2 This podcast was recorded at

Speaker 2 this podcast was recorded at, then Tam will say the time, and then we'll do the next part. Okay, so we don't do that.
Anyway, we're going to try that one more time. This is great.

Speaker 2 You guys are doing awesome.

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