Letters from an American - October 15, 2025

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

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October 15th, 2025. Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Louisiana v. Calais and Robinson v. Calais, which together challenge a federal court decision outlawing a racial gerrymander in the state of Louisiana. At stake is Section 2 of the 1965 V. Rights Act, which declared, no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color. About a third of the people who live in Louisiana are black, and when Republicans in the Louisiana state legislature redrew the state's congressional

districts after the 2020 census, they gerrymandered through packing and cracking. They packed as many black voters as they could into one district and then cracked the rest across five others. This meant that out of the state's six districts, only one is majority black. Because voting patterns map on to racial patterns in Louisiana. This means that black voters cannot elect representatives of their choice. As Mediba K. Denny of Talking Points memo notes, Louisiana has never had a black senator and no congressional district other than the majority black district has elected a black representative. The state hasn't had a black governor since reconstruction. So black voters sued over the new map and federal courts agreed that the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They told the

legislature to draw new maps that created a second majority black district. To stop that change, a group of people who described themselves as non-African American voters sued, saying that drawing a map to create a majority black district is itself an illegal racial gerrymander. In the past, the Supreme Court has upheld the principle that if a state has used race to determine districts, it must show that it has a compelling reason to do so. In 2017, it said, this court has long assumed that one compelling interest is compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the past, the court saw that interest as served by guaranteeing the creation of majority minority districts to guarantee that black, brown, and Asian-American voters can

elect the lawmakers they prefer. In today's hearings, the right-wing majority indicated it opposes the use of race in redistricting, suggesting the previous understanding of this issue is unconstitutional. Overturning the decision of the lower court would finish the gutting of the Voting Rights Act the Roberts Court began with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision. This shift shows the willingness of the right-wing majority on the court to gather the power of the U.S. government into its own hands. The actual name of what we know is the Voting Rights Act is an act to enforce the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and for other purposes. Congress passed it after more than 80 years in which state-list.

legislatures refused to acknowledge the 15th Amendment, which reads, section one, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2, the Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. When it passed the Voting Rights Act, Congress did what the 15th Amendment required it to do, to protect the right of racial minorities to vote. As political scientist Jonathan Ladd notes, now though the Supreme Court is on the cusp of saying that it, rather than Congress, can determine how to enforce the right of

citizens to vote. That the Supreme Court appears to be taking aim, at a constitutional amendment added to the Constitution during Reconstruction is a little too on the nose. When the federal government stopped enforcing the 14th and 15th amendments, former Confederates took control of their states and instituted a one-party region that lasted until the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Today, Nate Cohn of the New York Times explained that striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Voting Rights Act could eliminate more than a dozen districts in the South currently held by Democrats. Republicans could win virtually uncontested control of the South, and so could control

the House of Representatives, even if they lost the popular vote by a significant margin. Cohn writes that Democrats would need to win the popular vote by between five to six points in order to win the House if the court strikes down section two. But since gerrymandering depresses turnout of the losing party's voters, Republicans would appear to hold the country even more firmly, making the United States as a whole reflect the American South from about 1874 to 1965. Such a one-party state would give the leader of that party whatever power party officials permitted. We are already seeing what that could look like. Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported today that the Trump administration is stepping up its effort to remove

Venezuelan leader Nicola Maduro from power. This effort has been spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, director John Ratcliffe. Last month, the administration told Congress that it considered Venezuelan drug cartels non-state armed groups whose actions constitute an armed attack on the United States, meaning that the U.S. is at war. This declaration covered for the strikes on Venezuelan boats, which the administration claims were importing drugs to the U.S., although it has offered no proof of that assertion. Sources in the administration talked told the journalists that a presidential finding authorizes the CIA to conduct operations in the Caribbean

and to take covert action against Maduro and his government. A presidential finding, also called a memorandum of notification, is a classified directive issued by the president to authorize the CIA to conduct a covert operation the president claims is necessary for national security. Findings are supposed to be transmitted to key congressional committees to keep Congress informed of the actions of the U.S. government, but lawmakers cannot make the information in them public. That multiple U.S. officials were willing to discuss the presidential finding with the New York Times journalists, suggests the administration wanted to leak this information. Perhaps, as legal analyst Asha Rangappa suggests, to make it sound like there is least,

legal cover for what they are already doing, or as legal analyst Alison Gill suggests, to do an end run around Congress. Trump promised during the 2024 campaign that he was not going to start a war and promised to stop the wars. He has campaigned heavily to win a Nobel Peace Prize, nonsensically claiming to have stopped at least seven or eight wars. But the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have gotten hotter during his administration, and Barnes & Pager note that the U.S. military is also building up its resources in the region near Venezuela. The Pentagon has deployed 10,000 troops to the area, stationing most of them on bases in Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Navy has sent eight warships

and a submarine. This buildup comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth has demanded that media outlets report only information authorized by department officials or lose their press credentials. All but a single far-right opinion network refused, leaving the department's actions unscrutinized by the excellent journalists who had been covering the Pentagon. The Pentagon Press Association today said its members were still committed to reporting on the U.S. military, but make no mistake, It said. Today, October 15, 2025, is a dark day for press freedom that raises concerns about a weakening U.S. commitment to transparency and governance, to public accountability at the Pentagon, and to free speech for all. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that at least one of the U.S. strikes in the Caribbean, the one on September 19th, targeted a boat that had left Colombia and was manned by Colombian nationals. The journalists note that the deliberate targeting of Colombians suggests that the U.S. military's campaign against suspected narcotics trafficking groups in the Caribbean is wider,

than previously believed. Last week, the deputy director of the CIA, Michael Ellis, made himself the CIA's general counsel. Yesterday, Trump compared the strikes on drugboats with public executions, Hamas supporters have carried out in Gaza in the wake of the ceasefire deal there. They killed a number of gang members, Trump said, and that didn't bother me much,

to be honest with you. That's okay. It's a couple of very bad gangs. You know it's no different than other countries, like Venezuela sent their gangs into us, and we took care of those gangs. Today, Trump announced that he has the power to pay furloughed troops by taking any unused funds Congress appropriated for fiscal year 2026 and using that money to pay the troops. As budget and tax specialist Bobby Cogan notes, this is, wildly illegal. Only Congress can appropriate money and determine how it is spent, a constitutional requirement reinforced by the Anti-Deficiency Act clarifying that it is illegal for the government

to spend money that was not appropriated for that purpose. The military is funded on an annual basis, so when funding ran out on September 30th, so did money to pay the troops. Kogan explains that Trump is turning to the account for research development testing and evaluation, or RDTE, which was funded for two years and still has money. But, as Kogan points out, that shift creates another problem. As soon as the money is taken to pay the troops, it becomes unusable because that money ceased to be available on September 30th. Kogan notes Trump's order should also be unnecessary.

Congress would pass a measure to pay the troops easily if only House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, would call the House into session. Democrats have been begging Johnson to bring such a measure to the floor. Trump says that because he is commander-in-chief, he has the right to this power. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts.

Recorded with music composed by Michael Mawes.