Today, Explained - How Trump’s maps could backfire

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

The president's push to redraw congressional maps to favor Republicans is making voters mad on both sides. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. State Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, speaking to demonstrators after the state's governor approved a new congressional map that will aid Republicans. Photo by Madison Thorn/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's today explained. I'm Sean Ramos from and I'm joined by our senior reporter, Miles Bryan. What are you reporting on? Sean, I'm here to talk to you about redistricting. A very popular trend in the United States right now. Yes, we're in the middle of a redistricting war, as you might have heard, Republicans versus Democrats. I heard, but, but it's not always that simple. Okay. Take Mike Beltron. He's a Puerto Rican guy, lives near Orlando. Republican lawmakers blew up the old congressional district he was in to make it harder for the Democrat to win. I think it's a little messed up. I think they're trying to dilute the minority votes, especially the Hispanics. Okay, Sean, but who do you think he's supported for president?

Man, Florida. Florida man, Donald Trump. You're supposed to say Kamala, but it was Trump. I did vote for Trump, yes, sir. The same guy who kicked the redistricting wars off. I went to Florida to report on the Trump voters who got the short end of the stick in redistricting. And I'm going to tell you about it. On Today, Explain from Vox. Yes, sir.

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The house will be in order. The clerk may call the roll. Today, yay. Explained, yay. Okay, Miles, why did you? you go to Florida? I should tell you where I went first. I went to Kissimmee, Florida. Kiss me. We're colleagues, buddy. Casim. Casim. Kissimme. Kissimme. Mike from the billboard helped me out with this one. Say it for me. Kissimme. Kissimme. I have like a, I keep thinking about it. Kasimi. Kasimi. Where is

Kissimme? Is that like, which part of the boot? Kissimme is a city outside of Orlando. If you close your eyes and think Florida, it's basically what comes up. There's lots of palm trees, lots of parking lots. Crossing any road means dodging like six lanes of traffic. It's really close to Disney World, so you see a lot of Disney people around. Did you go? I did not because I'm a reporter and I was focused on this story. And what defines Kissimmee politically is that it's the hub for a large and growing Latino population. Nice. Actually, I grew up in Puerto Rico. By I'm on Puerto Rico. My family is from Calle, Puerto Rico. And it's been an army family for decades. That's Ricardo. He's 50. He's a retired infantry officer and still looks the part.

The dude is built like a brick house. Kissimme. Yeah. Ricardo actually moved to Orlando in 2001 after he left the service. But we were chatting in Kissimme, which is right next door and in a county called Osceola. Back then, Osceola was about a quarter Hispanic. But since then, the area has grown exponentially. And Hispanic people make up most of that growth, Puerto Ricans especially.

Relief flights have been heading to Puerto Rico daily since Hurricane Maria hit the island. Florida officials say more than 160,000 now have arrived here in the state since the I read that a lot of people came from the island after Hurricane Maria. Have you noticed that in your own life? Oh, of course. My mother is a survivor of the Hurricane Maria incident. Now, Ricardo's always been pretty conservative, but all these new Puerto Rican voters helped elect Florida's first Puerto Rican congressperson, a Democrat named Darren Soto.

He was elected in 2016, and he's been in office since then. Okay, so a Democrat, even though Florida now a red state. Yeah, and this is where the story gets tricky because Osceola County, this area, They voted for Biden in 2020, but then flipped to Trump in 2024. Yeah, it was mentioned in a lot of stories about the great racial realignment, you know, Latino voters moving towards Trump for populist reasons. Did Brickhouse Ricardo vote for Trump, too? Yes. Ricardo, you know, he was skeptical of Trump initially in the first term, but by 2024, he was excited about Trump and making it 2019 again.

What were his policies that really appealed to you? Just being aggressive. The aggressiveness that he has in regards of business growth, the plan, you know, during his first term, everything was great to me as a business owner. So Ricardo helps get Trump elected. He's a conservative guy. He's a Republican. He even did some organizing with the party. But right now, he is extremely mad at the Florida Republicans.

Frustrated, angry, concerned, upset. Because gerrymandering? Yeah. In April of this year, the Supreme Court, gutted the Voting Rights Act. They're like racism. That's over now. I remember. The court writing that quote, the Constitution almost never permits a state to discriminate on the basis of race. This ruling is a win, I think we can say, for Republicans. And as soon as they did that, a bunch of Republican-controlled states look to redraw their maps, including Florida.

And Trump has been, you know, pushing for this, cheering it on. Truth Social. Anybody that votes against redistricting and the citizens, cess of the Republican Party in D.C. will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA primary. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis changed the congressional map for this area to include more rural, more Republican, and more white voters. Basically, spread Latino voters out over a bunch of districts, dilute them as a voting block. The new map actually drew Ricardo out of his old district, which is currently represented by Darren Soto. Really pissed him off. That's one of the things I'm on.

upset about because this realignment takes me out of the district. And as a Republican, as a voter, I think they're breaching my trust, no matter if you're Hispanic or not, or Puerto Rican or not, you don't get the right to choose. Okay, so Ricardo likes Trump, but then this gerrymandering thing happens in Florida, and he's not into it. He's having his Puerto Rican block diluted before. his eyes, are his neighbors feeling the same way? Yeah, I met a lot of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump, but were disturbed by the redistricting. People like Mike from the top of the show, who's Puerto Rican, or Yolanda, who's a immigrant from Mexico and owns a nail boutique in town.

She told me it was really important for this area to have a Hispanic representative because the Hispanic population was so big. Another voter I want to tell you about I met at an event for Congressman Soto in Kisimi. Thank you, Congressman. My name's Keith Tienateli. He's a guy named Keith Dina Tallet. Cool, Keith. That's post-33 out of the same cloud.

I've been working with Toys for Tots for Osceola County. Keith is not Puerto Rican. He's a transplant from Michigan. He kind of looks like Ned Flanders. Idaho, neighborinos. Oh. Yeah, he leans a Republican. He told me he voted for Trump.

Trump doesn't really inspire me at all. It's more lesser evil. Yeah. I hate saying it that way. A lot of people felt like that. Yes. But in 2024, the same year Keith voted for President Trump, he also voted for the Democrat congressman, Darren Soto. Even though I may be Republican-leaning, I still prefer the person.

Darren Soto has been very solid through many years. He's helped veterans out. I've seen him at all the events. He's had my vote. The redistricting, you know, I neither agree with it nor or, you know, I'm against it because there's really no, they change things so bloody often. You know, I'm sorry, I'm just kind of used to the government moving stuff around in their favor. And then when the next administration comes in, they'll probably move it around again.

My man sounds exhausted. Yeah, that sigh, Sean. That's what really stayed with me because I feel like it really conveys how frustrating and dispiriting this kind of thing is for normal people. Are you in his new district? Do you know? Do not know. Do not know yet. I'll find out where I fall. But I heard more of Keith's serious. sigh and talking to other people in Kissimme.

Here's Felix, who owns a bar downtown. Politics, that's the problem with politics. They change the system on their behalf, so it could be better for them. You sound like you kind of just accepted that you can't control this stuff. No, nobody can control anything, you know. Politics is a powerful thing. Like, if you already have a sense that the system doesn't care about you, about what you have to say, being shuffled into a district where you can make less of a

difference is the ultimate confirmation of that, right? Mm. And I also got to talk. to Darren Soto, the Democrat congressman for the area, who's facing a very difficult uphill battle to win re-election in November. All right. Can I get you a slightly farther from the fan just for noise? Maybe right here. I'm sure he's not happy. No, he's upset. And he said the stuff that I expected, you know, like that this is ripping the Hispanic community apart. But our largest population's here, and it's been split across five districts. And that is both hurting the vote of Central Florida and hurting the voice of the Hispanic community.

But he also said something that surprised me. The corruption is one of the most potent issues they have in trying to motivate people to come out to vote. That corruption makes voters angry and energized and engaged and sort of the opposite of checked out. And this is part of corruption. Changing a map in the middle of an election. I could say Republicans, Independence Democrats, corruption is the second biggest issue right now. And this is part of that, along with your ballrooms and your cryptocurrency, multi-billion dollars. pay-to-play funds and all these other things that people see.

What's more corrupt than changing the rules of the game on voters? I should say that the Florida courts have blessed the new maps, but you see his point. Okay, so of course this Democrat who might lose his seat is mad, but he has Republicans or at least Trump voters in his district kind of on his side, saying we don't like what's been done to our maps. Is that going to equal, I don't know, some sort of fist in the, air when it's election time? You know, maybe, like, the numbers are not on Soto's side.

You know, the district is now very Republican-leaning. But I did leave Kissimmee thinking that the politicians in state houses redrawing electoral maps to try to eke out a few new seats. They're making a big bet, you know, that people will largely roll over and take it, that they'll be more resigned than angry and activated, you know, more like Keith than Ricardo. And that might be right. It might be a smart bet.

But because it's a bet, it could be wrong. Well, why don't we go ask a political analyst, which it's going to be, Miles? Let's do it. But first, let's go out on Darren Soto's surf rock band. That he plays in with Democratic rep Maxwell Frost. It's called Astromax. And this track, this track, is called Wishing on a Lucky Star. Support for the show today comes from Talk Ayatree.

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What's in the box? Today, explain his back. Miles is gone, but thanks to him, you now know about some blowback from redistricting in Florida. But as you know, the redistricting is happening all over the place. It's an ongoing story. Just yesterday, Wednesday, Republicans in Georgia decided to not redraw their political maps. But many other states have Texas, California, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee. They've all done some serious partisan gerrymandering.

And Jonathan Martin from Politico thinks it could backfire. To give you the short hand, I don't think the juice is worth to squeeze for the Republicans. In the short term, you're only going to fire up black voters more in a midterm election year in which black turnout is. crucial for Democrats. So why would you be helping the opposition by, you know, encouraging them to vote more, giving them an obvious turnout issue, which is they're trying to basically, you know, dilute your voice. These maps are racist tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacists in the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. If you live in a red state, rally your local community to vote out every single republic

in every state legislature. We have the power to fight back. Now let's use it. Secondly, from just a raw political steed point, when you start cutting the salami really thin, district-wise, you risk imperiling some of your incumbents. Just take South Carolina, for example.

South Carolina lawmakers are now considering changing congressional district lines in the middle of an election cycle. Republicans backed off of the Trump demand there to redistrict their state's house seats, in part because they thought that by, you know, canceling out Jim Clyburn's black district, black majority district, they could have created as many as three competitive seats. In a pretty good structural year for Democrats, is it worth ending Clyburn's career and carving up his seat? Because you're going to run the risk of

moving those voters somewhere else. They got to go somewhere. And you could create, you know, on immediately new league, new competitive seats. And that's right, you just heard it. We have some breaking news at the State House today as the Senate has killed the bill to redraw the state's congressional maps. So I think there's moral ethical issues aside about the history of this country on race and politics.

This is a raw political standpoint. I think Republicans are being short-sighted on this in terms of ginning up black turnout and also, you know, potentially creating more competitive the House Sees. So you're saying instead of getting rid of one blue district in a red state, you might accidentally create three. Precisely.

And I think that was part of the concern in South Carolina, which is why legislators there resisted Trump's demand. Because, again, when the political weather, if you will, is favorable to your party, as it is for Democrats this year, some of these seats, which could. be a stretch, you know, get a lot more competitive if all of a sudden the African-American share in the district has gone from like 17% to 32%, right? How much is this animating voters so far? I mean, we're seeing primaries in some states. Do we have a sense of how much people are aware of this kind of wonky issue, gerrymandering,

political maps, whatever it might be? Yeah, you know, typically when you say reapportionment in a speech, the audience has fallen asleep before you even finish saying. the word, right? I mean, it's just like pretty deep in the weeds process stuff. That's starting to change, I think. And I think the question is, you know, is it gotten to the point where it's so obscene and this arms race is so out of control that the average voter says, this is just too much. And this has gone too far. Restrated, angry, concerned, upset. Secondly, more narrowly for this midterm election, have the Republicans given Democrats,

that's a turnout weapon with black voters by, between the Trump demanded reapportionment and the Supreme Court's voting rights opinion, you know, could that juice black turnout this year to levels it typically doesn't reach in midterms? Because that, to me, is the big question. Because then a lot of these races get a lot more interesting. Take Texas, for example, you know, it's a hard state for Democrats to win. They haven't won the Senate race there since 88. You know, Tala Rico's chances get a lot better to win that Senate race for Democrats if you've got historic black turnout in places like, you know, Houston and Dallas.

You take a look at these maps and the communities they divide, the voices they dilute. It is primarily black and brown. We're talking about black voters and we're talking about Donald Trump. A big story out of the 2024 election was that, you know, Trump got a lot more black voters than the typical Republican presidential candidate. Sure, he did. Are they still with him in light of what he's doing in the South and what his party's doing in the South with their maps? No. I mean, the story of Trump in 2026 is that he is effectively unraveled his own coalition, or at least he didn't sustain his own coalition. He created what was a historic Republican coalition in 24 of younger voters and black, Hispanic and Asian working class voters.

that threatened to break the back of the Democratic coalition if he had sustained it. Obviously, he's lost a lot of those folks. And now polls show the president's approval rating among black voters has dropped dramatically with only 15% giving him high marks. 41% of Hispanic adults approved of Trump's overall performance as president in March 2025 shortly after he re-entered the White House. That's since fallen to 25% in our latest poll. But you raise something that I should have mentioned a minute ago,

which is, you know, why else? not to do this if you're a Republican. It's also, you know, do you want to have a chance to rebuild that Trump 20204 coalition in 28 or 32 or beyond? If you do, it's going to be hard to keep black voters, black men, especially in the fold, if you're seen as the party that's trying to dilute their political power, right? And you can be damn sure that Democrats are going to make precisely that case. You may like them on the economy more, or maybe you want more of your tax dollars, but you can't trust Republicans because they're trying to suppress your political power.

That will be the message. And when the Voting Rights Act is gutted, it's a hell of a lot easier for Democrats to drive that message. You know, I've had some conversations with Republicans strategists. What they would be smart to do is they should go find some of the best non-white candidates in a lot of these seats that they're creating. If you want to push back against the idea that you're diluting black political power, well, hell, then go find the best black Republican you can find to win the primary. And that's the best pushback because then Republicans can say, Democrats, your problem isn't that we're redrawing the map.

It's that we're redrawn the map to help our party. And, you know, your issue is not racial. It's partisan. And I think if you had a bevy of strong black candidates running out Republicans, you could do that. Now, easier said than done, obviously. Miles, our reporter here talked to some voters in Florida who were angry about redistricting. Some had just kind of given up. They felt, I guess, just fed up with this political process.

When you talk to party officials, politicians about what they're hearing from voters right now, what are they saying? There is a profound cynicism among the electorate about not just politics, but about most every institution in America. They change the system on their behalf so it could be better for them. You know, we're approaching our 250th birthday with a pretty sour electorate. It's curdled.

People don't trust institutions. They don't think anything's on the level. Just kind of used to the government moving stuff around in their favor. They think that they're being screwed and that people with privilege and means are flourishing. and part of it's economic guys, but it's not just economic.

I think part of this is also there's just a sense that institutions are rigged. And I think part of the long tale of the Epstein stories because it proves some of the conspiracy theories. Yeah, that's right. That's how elites operate. That is real. And I think it's driven or at least reinforced by social media, the algorithms there on. and that has led to an electorate that's pretty fed up. I saw data that had 17% of American voters saying that they have faith in their government.

I mean, that's really low. It's hard to sustain a democracy when the voters don't trust the government. Don't trust any institution. I mean, it feels like Republicans were scared about these midterms, and that's what put us in this position in the first place to have this race to the body. with redistricting. Now, voters are angry and or apathetic, which might mean lower turnout than usual in the midterms, which already historically have a bit of an issue with turnout. Who does that favor? Do we know? If no one shows up, if people are fed up and cynical and just

say, forget the midterms, I'm not interested, does that help the Republicans or the Democrats? I think there's a great alienation from people who otherwise don't care about the system. or don't have faith in the system. I think that for people with education, curiosity means, you know, the Democratic base in 2026, they're going to show up. They're going to vote angry, right? The question is, you know, the people who are apathetic, who are not engaged, who are not following this stuff day in, day out, can you ever get them back, right?

You know, is there someone that can bring folks back? They can inspire people to vote happy, to vote optimistic. We haven't seen it yet. Jonathan Martin and his colleagues over at Politico are about to drop the second season of their video series on the road. If you want to watch Jonathan travel the country and eat delicious food with politicians, YouTube is the place to find it.

Miles Bryan went to Florida. I don't know what he ate. Jolie Myers supported his journey. David Tadishore and Gabriel Donatov helped him unpack once he got back. Miranda Kennedy is our executive producer. Amanalasadhi and Avi Shai Artsy Help Man. the show, Peter Balin-Rosen, Danielle Hewitt, Heidi, Mawaddy, Kelly Wessinger, Dustin DeSoto, and Ariana Aspuru, produce. Patrick Boyd mixes, Noel King co-hosts, and we use music by Breakmaster's cylinder. Today, Explain is distributed by WMIC. The show is a part of the Box Media Podcast Network. Find out more about it at podcast.com.

Listen to our show ad-free at Vox.com slash members. The band, once again, is Astromax. The song remains, wishing on a lucky star. But it's exactly what we should do I'm wishing us Support for this show comes from Odu Running a business is hard enough So why make it harder With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other Introducing Odoo

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