The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Supreme Court OKs Texas Redistricting, Trump Dismisses 'Affordability'

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

It was another busy week in the political world. We discuss the Supreme Court’s approval of Texas' redrawn congressional map, Democrats' performance in a Tennessee special election, and President Trump's dismissal of worries about "affordability" as a "con job." This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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12.41 p.m. on Friday, December 5th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we know with these classes that bear will be one step closer to be a great citizen. Oh, goodness. All right. Here's the show. Nice pun. Good luck with that. I really hope it works out because raising a puppy is really hard. But a corgi puppy. A corgi puppy. That is next level cute. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I'm Tamara Keith. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montan, our senior

political editor and correspondent. And it's been a busy week in the wide world of politics. So let's try to make sense of at least some of it. I want to start with news about redistricting. It came in last night. The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing Texas to use a gerrymandered map in next year's midterms. That's after a lower court had blocked it. Ashley, catch us up here. Yeah. So I mean, obviously the Texas legislature earlier this year drew its congressional map to create five more seats that would be favorable to Republicans. And there was, of course, a legal complaint, a lawsuit that was filed. But I mean, one thing in the backdrop of all this is like, one, this was at Trump's urging, right? Like it was purely and very obvious political motivations here. But this other thing

that was sort of happening in the background is that the Department of Justice was one of the reasons that some lawmakers said they did this. The DOJ sent a letter to. to Texas officials that basically urged them to dismantle minority coalition districts. So like, you know, congressional seats that give black and Latino voters representation in Congress. So this was one of the motivations for the legal complaint that was filed. And it was why the court, this like three judge panel that heard this case for nine days said, hey, you cannot do this. While partisan gerrymandering is allowed by law, having any sort of racial motivation for redrawing maps is not cool. And so this was struck down. The new mass were struck down.

And then, of course, Texas officials were like, well, let's send an emergency request to the Supreme Court for them to step in. And that's what happened here. And why ultimately did the Supreme Court say they were going to let this map go into effect? In short, they did not buy the argument that this was purely a racial gerrymander. They think that this was clearly about partisan motivations and there wasn't a need to, like, strike down the maps on a constitutional level because, as we've said many times on this podcast, the Supreme Court has said, hey, if you want to create political districts that favor one party over another, that's fine. It's when races entered into the question. That is not okay, but partisan gerrymandering is. Yeah, I mean, this was a six-three ruling with the conservatives on one side, the liberals on the other.

Another example of why it's important in picking a president. because they can pick Supreme Court justices. And, you know, there's a real fine line between political gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering. The court, like Ashley said, says that political gerrymandering's fine. But when 85 to 90 percent or so of black voters vote Democratic, then it can be easy to say that you're politically gerrymandering, but also affecting all of the black voters in the state. So we've been describing this as potentially up to five additional Republican seats for Texas. Is that what it's looking like, Ashley? Yes, this is potentially five more seats that are favorable for Republicans. But there's also

this thing happening in California where now lawmakers are going to create a possible five more seats for Democrats there. This was always going to be kind of a wash what happens in Texas. The bigger question is like, okay, well, now we have, you know, on the Republican side, Missouri and North Carolina have added. a seat or two there. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that Republicans, Donald Trump, really wanted to be able to juice how many seats they could get out of Texas in particular because Trump saw potentially five new seats out of Texas. You know, when California went ahead and passed their ballot initiative to be able to go ahead and do mid-decade redistricting as well, that, again,

like Ashley said, could offset what Texas does. And Democrats have had. some victories in some other places like Utah as well. And Republicans may not get as many seats as they would have wanted out of these things. And, you know, we've talked about before the potential for boomeranging. But when you take a seat that, you know, might be 57% you know, in favor of a Republican, then move that down to maybe 53% in favor of a Republican in a Democratic wave year, those are the kind of seats that could get picked off as well. So a lot of nuance here that doesn't quite just cleanly add up to, you know, Republican advantage. Domenico, with this Supreme Court decision now out there, we've already seen something of

an arms race among states to try to redistrict for partisan advantage. Do you expect that now that is going to just amp up? Because there is sort of like a permission structure there now. Well, I mean, if there was anybody who had any pause about doing it in a partisan way, they certainly don't need to, according to the Supreme Court. You know, the Supreme Court had already ruled that partisan gerrymandering was okay, and now it reemphasized that and underscored that. So it's going to be one of those things where if there's a state legislature that wants to be able to blatantly partisan gerrymander, they certainly allowed to do that.

Ashley, where could we see more of this happening? So lawmakers in Indiana have not stopped sort of looking at this for right now. We've also heard Virginia Democrats, you know, they had big wins there during this election cycle. So there are conversations there. I heard a lawmakers say that, you know, they could get a 10 to one map out of the next legislative session that they hold that would favor Democrats. Another state to watch is Florida lawmakers started their hearings on potentially redrawing their maps as well. That's already a map that is pretty generous. verymandered right now. So that's another big state to watch because it's got a lot of congressional

seats. I want to stick with the congressional maps for a moment and talk about a special election for a house seat near Nashville. It happened this week and ordinarily not such big news, but Democrats, despite losing there, did overperform. Tell us what happened. Yeah. And, you know, this is again, another special election in this 20-25 year where we've seen Democrats make double-digit overperformance from the previous year. I mean, this was a seat, like you said, that Trump and the prior congressman won by 22 points. The Republican, in this case, won by nine. That's 13 points. And that's in line with what we've seen this year, where Democrats have had a double-digit over-performances. I mean, on average, they've overperformed by 14 to 16 points.

depending on whether you include the Virginia and New Jersey governor's races as well. When you continuously have an overperformance by one party over and over again, especially in the double-digit category, that is a huge signifier of potential wave election coming in the following year, at least at this point. And when you look at the number of Republicans who are retiring from Congress, pretty high number of Republicans who are retiring from Congress right now, that's another indicator.

So right now, Republicans are a bit on their back foot. They're hoping redistricting can help them. They're hoping that tweaking their message like the Republican congressional candidate did in Tennessee 7 was able to talk more about the cost of living and that maybe that can help them. I think they're going to have to hope mostly that views of the economy become more positive because we know the party in power usually gets more credit and more blame than perhaps they deserve when it comes to the economy. So I think one of the worries that Republicans should draw from this is if you look at this district, this is one of those carve-outs during the gerrymander in Tennessee in 2022 that broke up Nashville, this big bluish city in the middle of the state. And this is the sort of thing that Texas Republicans did, which is they are breaking up suburbs and big cities like Houston and in the Dallas area and in Austin. What happened in this congressional race is that this seat got competitive because it had these pieces of the Nashville County there, Davidson. This is a place where the Democratic candidate did really well.

And some of the surrounding suburban counties got a little bit more competitive. And I mean, this is the sort of nightmare scenario for Republicans moving into the midterms is like, well, if we break up all these districts and, you know, we get these left-leaning, purplish suburbs all across the country, now being more competitive. because they just have fewer Republicans in them. It's a big question if, yeah, even if it's a wave election or not even such a big wave election, this could put a lot of those seats up in the air for them. For the most part, you know, Republicans did start spending a lot of money towards the end in this race, and I think that really helped them. And that Democratic candidate was maybe, you know, maybe not the best fit for some of these more

conservative-leaning, purplish counties around Nashville. But, you know, if there are some better candidate, that are a better fit for some of these suburban counties. It is going to be very interesting to watch next year. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll have more in a moment. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com.

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go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. And I want to take some time to talk about some signs of pushback that are happening within the Republican Party. We saw a little bit of it this week with scrutiny given to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And we talked about that on the pot earlier this week. But increasingly, voters of all stripes think affordability is the main issue that will drive

their political decisions. And Domenico, President Trump this week, again, called the concept of affordability a Democratic con job. You know, he ran on a promise to bring down prices. So how does this wash? Yeah, it's really something. I mean, he continues to downplay the idea that the cost of living is really important to people. You know, I mean, he wants to be able to try and say that Democrats are just using this as some kind of a hoax. You know, it repeatedly comes up as the top issue for people, the strongest motivating issue for people at the top of public opinion polls because I feel like they can't afford housing or health care or paying. their bills month to month and that that's become a tighter and tighter squeeze. And his economic

ratings have not been very good. They blame him for making things worse on the economy, saying that his tariffs, for example, have raised prices. So it's a real difficult position that he's in. And one that, again, he tries to kind of wriggle out of by downplaying the affordability argument and by going to culture war issues. Ashley, what do you make of this? Do you think, think that this is going to be an enduring challenge headed into the midterms. I mean, short of everyone's money woes going away, this is not going to go away. And I think like every single time the president says something like this, dismissing people's sort of material problems right now, I could just hear like Democratic operatives, like loading this into like whatever ad they're going

to be running next year. I mean, I don't think that the economy is something that is an issue that's going to go away. It's hard to see it being sort of, you know, eclipse. by some other big issue, we have a lot of foreign policy stuff happening right now. And voters say, we've been looking at things like immigration voters who say, well, we want the president to be focusing more on housing prices and health care prices. Like, those are the things that really matter to us. So I see no situation in which all of a sudden this becomes less of a liability for Trump, especially as time goes on. He owns more of the economy. It's harder to blame things on the former president the further away you get from that last administration.

Yeah, I mean, all that's true, right? I mean, people's problems with being able to pay for things aren't just going to go away. I mean, Tam, what is the White House saying about all this? The White House is saying a lot of things. The president's economic advisors, who previously had said that Q4, it would be his economy, are now saying early next year the policies will go into place. People will get the tax refunds. They'll feel better. You just need to be patient and wait. As we've talked about, the president has described it as a con job. I talked to a senior administration official who attempted at some length to explain to me that the president calling it a con job was not dismissive, but was instead the president just saying

that Democrats had an affordability problem before and they shouldn't be able to put it on him now. But there is some action. Early next week, President Trump is set to travel to Pennsylvania. He has done almost no domestic travel that hasn't been to attend sporting events or to golf at one of his resorts or disasters. Very little domestic travel related to messaging or selling his policies to the American people. That changes on Tuesday when he goes to Pennsylvania to try to sell his affordability agenda. The question that I have is, what is the message going to be? Is he going to be in this defensive crouch that we saw all week where he's talking about affordability being made up as an issue? Or is he going to do what this White House official told me his message would be,

which is, I feel your pain. We've done a lot, but there's more we have to do. And I guess I'm waiting to see also if this trip is a one-off or if it really is going to be a ramping up of his messaging to the American people, which the White House has been promising for like a month now. But what we usually see with Trump when he goes on these kinds of trips is he can meander into a lot of different spaces. And I think that he's always been most comfortable talking about the other, talking about immigration, talking about the people he doesn't want in the country. And that's really a big reason why he's had such a high floor with his base because he goes on Screeds talking about people from other countries like he did this week and talking about Somalis. I don't want them in our country. I'll be honest with you.

Somebody who said, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don't want them in our country. I can say that about other countries, too. I can say it about other countries, too. We don't want them to help.

We have to rebuild our country. You know, our country's at a tipping point. We could go bad. We're at a tipping point. I don't know if people mind me saying that, but I'm saying it. We could go one way or the other. and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Yeah, he also referred to Minnesota Democratic House member Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant, as, quote, garbage and said Somalis should, quote, go back to where they came from.

The remarkable thing here is this all just sort of sprung up in the past week, which initially his focus had been on people who came from Afghanistan. after the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan immigrant. Yeah, look, I mean, in this country, we've had a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric that's gone back, you know, hundreds of years. You know, a lot of white nationalists in the country and people within the Trump administration admire former president Calvin Coolidge, for example, for signing the Immigration Act of 1924 into law. And a lot of the rhetoric that you heard then you hear kind of reflected in a lot of what Trump has to say, but it's sort of playing a switcheroo with what the country was. I mean, back then, you know, they were upset about bombings that happened that had some Italians involved. So they were kind of against, you know, southern Europeans coming into the country. There were issues with Jews in Eastern Europe being pro-socialism, so they didn't want them in the country. And the son of a Polish immigrant who shot and killed. McKinley. So then there became this anti-immigrant fervor to keep people out who they thought were not assimilating well. I mean, it's very similar language to what we hear from Trump and his base now. And when you have economic concerns that we see across the board, there's a lot of pointing fingers at the other. And this is what Trump has done over the last decade. Yeah. And the Trump administration in the past week or so has specifically and clearly said they want to prioritize assimilation. I mean, I think like the important part of this is the timing of all this. Trump has been getting some flack

from his base. I mean, we saw Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green announced that she is very frustrated with Trump and is now deciding to leave Congress because of this. We've heard other members of Congress express concern about the direction of the party. So, you know, if the base is in trouble, go back to the hits. That's what Trump is doing. He's talking about the stuff that always seem to animate, you know, his base voters, the most loyal parts of the party. So I guess partially this isn't that surprising. And that is something I'll be watching as he does this event in Pennsylvania. Does he stick to the economy or does he go to the greatest hits?

All right, let's take another break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. I will go first. This has been a week of drunken animals, and I am here for it. Well, okay, one of them was a teetotaler. One of them got very drunk. So first, there was the story of the raccoon, a.k.a. Trash Panda in Virginia, who broke into a liquor store and raided not the top shelf,

but the bottom shelf, then passed out. in the bathroom. It's the bottom shelf that usually gets you passed out, right? I mean, yes. It's hard on the liver. The bottom shelf is hard on the liver, hard on the head,

hard on everything. So there was that. And then last night, I saw a story that just made me so happy. A baby fur seal in New Zealand went a little wayward and ended up in a pub.

And it is just the cutest thing in the whole wide world. And they said a lot of things about like there were a lot of jokes about on the rock. Yeah, I assume that, like, Seale just wanted pets and love and attention, because I think of them like sea dogs, which I think is, like, universal. I will say for raccoons, though, they look like burglars. Like, are we not supposed to assume they'll do burglar-type behavior because they got, like, those little patches over their eyes?

I don't know. I feel like we should let it. We should allow it to happen. Allow it to happen. Yeah. We're not letting crime fester keep the raccoons out. What are we talking about here? I like a little good chaos.

No, no raccoons. As long as they're only stealing the cheap liquor. Yeah, exactly. Dmitico, what can't you let go of? Well, it's also animal-related and a sweeter side of the story because we're talking about Flora the cat, who was reunited with her family last week after a 15-year separation. Whoa.

It went missing during an apartment move where it sort of wandered off. They lost the cat when she was a kitten. It was microchip. Fairfax County, Virginia. Oh, there you go. Went into a shelter, and they figured out who would belong to, and they were reunited after 15 years. Ashley, what can't you let go of? I'm kind of keeping in the theme of, like, DMV stories here.

Recently, there was the first ever Taco Bell, D.C. 50K. Oh, yes. Yeah. So this is something that happens in Denver, but now it's over here, much to my chagrin. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. But basically, it's a 50K where you. where you stop at different taco bells and eat there, you know, as you run. And I say that this is like my worst nightmare because, and by the way, it's nine taco bells.

You run to nine taco bells, you eat at them, and then you keep running. And I have a metaphobia, which is like I have like, I have a phobia of people vomiting. Like if someone even tells me they're nauseous, I get into a panic attack and flee. Well, I guess the running is good for you. You could be part of this. But if I'm running in here, people who are feeling sick, like, That is not good. Like, that is, I mean, already running is terrible, but that is just, like, my worst nightmare.

But anyways, I think it's pretty interesting that so many people were, it was hundreds of people doing this. And I cannot believe so many people wanted to, in the cold, chow down on, like, the food that is the hardest to digest and then go for a run. But you know what? I know, I don't want to yuck people's yom, but sounds woof. I have to say, I set my personal record in a half marathon, now many years ago, when I didn't realize I was going to be doing a half marathon. the next morning, and I ate at Taco Bell the night before, and then I got up the next morning and ran my best race ever. Are you saying it gave you the runs?

Oh, no. Everything was contained, fully contained. I usually try not to encourage the dad jokes, but that was pretty good. I mean, that was just sitting there for me. Yeah. All right, that is all for today. Our executive producer is Mathani Maturi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs.

Our editors, Rachel. Bay, special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer and Kelsey Snell. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanar, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.