 It's December the 8th, 2021. It's Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock. It's time for What Now, America? I'm Tim Apichell, your host. Today's title is DOJ says Texas Redistricting is an illegal scheme. In the last 10 years, Texas population has grown by 4 million new residents. And of that 4 million, 95% are minorities. And Texas as a result of the 10 year census in this population increase, Texas has gained two extra seats from 36 to 38. The two new seats though are in a white voting district. And that's the point of this show. Merrick Garland, the United States Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Texas for violating section 208 of the Civil Rights 1964 Act. And basically to challenge the redistricting that has taken place in Texas. Last month, the Attorney General's office filed suit against Texas regarding the Senate bill that they passed, the new voting's right bill they passed, restricting the ability to aid people with disabilities or clarify any questions that may be on the voting ballot. So we have two federal lawsuits against Texas over these new voting right bill, the new voting bill that Texas enacted. So with me today to discuss that is Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Morning. Morning, Tim. Jay, before I ask you a question, I wanna go over a couple of quotes. One from Merrick Garland, the United States Attorney General. He said, the Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society. And assistant attorney general, Christian Clark said, Silver Rights Division is committed to protecting the fundamental right to vote for all Americans. Given those quotes and given the lawsuits, will the voters of Texas get a fair shake from these new efforts to gerrymander the district's severely gerrymander them? Will they get a fair shake and will that fair shake take place in your opinion before the midterm election of 2022? No. And then the second one, no. Remember that the, first of all, a couple of reactions there. What's up, Merrick Garland? So, well, Texas and a dozen other states have been doing this since the Biden came into office and before. The Republicans have got a national plan going. Some say a conspiracy where all Republican governors legislators are aiming to deprive minorities of their votes. And it's systematic and it doesn't stop at gerrymandering. It's all into suppression as well. So they're not about to stop and they're gonna fight this. That's the one thing. And I guess the question is whether Merrick Garland has the will, the resources, the determination, the support of Biden to fight back because there's a lot of states involved. And don't forget that Texas, I believe, is in the Fifth Circuit. My sister in law, Linda Greenhouse, wrote a piece for the New York Times 10 days ago, maybe two weeks ago, about the Fifth Circuit. It's really special. The Fifth Circuit is all stacked with Trump judges. So even assuming that this succeeds at the federal district court level, it's gonna go to the Fifth Circuit for sure. The Court of Appeals covering Texas. And they're not gonna give it a good time. They're not gonna give Merrick Garland a good time. And finally, it has to go to the Supreme Court because whatever happens, it'll be taken to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled not to want to go that gerrymandering was the business of the states and the federal government shouldn't get involved. You know, it was a perverse federalism thing they got going. So if you ask me, A, whether Merrick Garland really means it, I'm not sure. He's been slow, tentative. I'll muller back a couple of few years ago. And I do not have, personally, do not have confidence in him or the people he supervises. And D, it's gonna go a torturous route through the courts. Not at all clear what will happen, even though it's obvious that this is a racial maneuver, a racist maneuver to deprive people of vote. And of course, ultimately in the Supreme Court, I have no confidence in the Supreme Court. And my sister-in-law also wrote an article and a book about the Supreme Court. And her article was something about gaslighting. And the book is likewise, the Supreme Court lost its way. So we can't count on them, especially a view of that earlier precedent. And then finally, your question was, is this gonna happen in time for the 2022 elections? No, it's not, that's, what is that? 10 months away, that's all it is. And 11, maybe. It's not gonna get concluded. And even if we would be very optimistic and say, oh, they're gonna stop Texas, what about all those other states? Not clear the Supreme Court's gonna have all the other states in front of them when they address this, and they may not address it in time. And finally, a point you didn't ask about is this really confuses people, doesn't it? It confuses people, the suppression and the gerrymandering. It confuses voters as to, can I vote? How do I vote? How do I make sure? How do I register? Am I gonna be in the wrong district? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do to exercise my franchise? And that kind of confusion enhanced by all this litigation that is now to follow in various states, not only Texas, or should follow in various states. It's gonna confuse the public. So we won't have public confidence in the courts. And for that matter, we won't have public confidence, public clarity on what people have to do. So I am, again, sorry, guys, pessimistic. Okay, well, to make a hit on the point you made about, it was 2019, the Supreme Court did say, hey, this gerrymandering is in the state preview and the Supreme Court doesn't wanna really get involved in this. At the same time though, they also said that the Department of Justice no longer has oversight or sign off authority on gerrymandering maps of all states. So they took off a huge component of what is fair and just and who's overseeing this whole process of gerrymandering redistricting. Let me ask you this. If the Supreme Court said that they're not interested in getting involved in this, why would they take up this particular case? Would they take it up as a result of the civil rights violation? Or does it pertain back to gerrymandering? No, if you have no confidence in them, they'll do the wrong thing. And they'll say, we told you before, we're not interested. And they'll say, that's the threshold issue here. So you don't think they'll take the case? Well, that's a possibility. They won't even grant it, sir. But no, I think they will grant it, sir. And then they will say what they said before or some modified version of what they said before. And there will be no real comfort to the people who wanna vote in Texas or the other states that follow suit. Okay, thank you. Cynthia, good morning. Jay mentioned the fifth district of Texas. And he said it's heavily laden with Trump appointee judges. If the DOJ prevails in this particular lawsuit, will that give other states who are planning extreme redistricting maps? Will that give them pause and will they back down or will they just forge ahead regardless of what the DOJ prevails or doesn't prevail? I think they're going to forge ahead. I think that we need to be ready for that. And I think unless Congress passes a law to go back in time, because what was it 2013 when the Supreme Court just sort of neutered the whole Voting Rights Act when they didn't have to get permission to do their redistricting, now we have to prove that it isn't fair as opposed to them having to prove that it is fair before it can go into effect. So all of these things could go into effect first and then we'd have to go back and challenge them. So it's an uphill battle either way. And I'm sure that all of the Republicans already know this. But for me, the most important part of all of this and nobody seems to talk about it much. They talk about the people that are disabled and how it's going to affect them. And we talk about how people of color are going to be disenfranchised. But we don't talk a lot about the fact that just about every single one of these states that's going through all these crazy new voting laws are making it so that the legislature gets control over the final say, which means it doesn't matter who votes, it doesn't matter what vote, it doesn't matter what votes come in, they can change them to whatever it is that they want. And until we start to really focus on that factor alone, none of the rest of it's gonna make any difference anyway. So this DOJ lawsuit doesn't address that remedy at all. So if you listen to Merrick Garland's speech about the filing of this recent lawsuit, he basically implied that it's up to the Congress to remedy this problem and institute or approve and implement the voting rights federal laws that are proposed, that are going nowhere. Do you agree with that position that this is not gonna be remedied by the Department of Justice whatsoever? I don't think it will be. I think Congress needs to do something. And until they do, it's not gonna go anywhere. And I got a quote from Ken Paxton, the Texas state's attorney general, right? He called the redistricting suit absurd and a ploy by the administration. He said, I am confident that our legislatures, I can't say it either now, redistricting decisions will be proven lawful and this preposterous attempt to sway democracy will fail. Peace. All right, yeah, well, that says it all because that's what they're trying to do. Make it fail. They don't have the demographics anymore and that's why they're doing these things. Jay, what is your number one concern of all the things that the states have passed in these new voting right or these new voting bills? What's your number one concern or what is consistent among all those bills that give you pause? Well, let's break it down. We had some of the points already. Number one is suppression, making it hard for people to vote. They've done that in a number of states. They did that a long time ago, actually, last year. That's one thing. The second thing, of course, is this reapportionment and they have done that and they're doing that. And I agree with Cynthia that this suit isn't gonna stop them for one second. And the third is they're switching out the secretaries of state and the voting officials. I guess, and you can add one more on that, which is too hard to actually connect this in terms of a civilized legal approach. But they're intimidating people. There were those people who were calling election officials and threatening to kill them all over the country. So they're hollowing out the election structure, the infrastructure of elections in the country. Those four things that I can think of, maybe there's more. So you asked me, which is the one I'm most concerned about? I'm most concerned about the underlying conspiracy that brings all those four things together. But it's called the Republican Party. It's just like we learned about the Willard Hotel and the fact that these guys were meeting and planning and hatching all these violent plans. There was a photograph of a shirt that was a t-shirt that was taken before the insurrection. And it said something about civil war coming January 6th. So they knew they could print t-shirts in advance. There was a national conspiracy of conspirators about January 6th. And it was not limited to the moaks who went, to the the ruffians who went to the Capitol, wasn't limited to them. A lot of them really didn't know what they were there for. But it was those who created the plan. Okay, well, we also have a plan, not too far distant about voting. And whatever the motivation is, and I agree with Cynthia there, worried about the demographics, they're worried that in a fair election, they would lose. But the reality is these got the four things and I'll add one and that is the litigation itself. As I said before, the litigation itself and the rhetoric is going to, is already confusing people as to what their rights are, confusing people as to whether voting is still voting. I think a lot of people deep down are saying voting. We gave that up and we don't have voting anymore. You can't rely on voting, you can't rely on the courts, you can't rely on Congress. The country is coming apart. But this conspiracy, which includes both ends of it, the insurrection end and also the voting things is what concerns me. I think we're in a country where already we are past a tipping point, we are past. May I say that again? We're past a tipping point and there is no recovery. And I totally agree with the point you just made a minute ago. Why isn't Merrick Garland handling the other points of this conspiracy? Just dealing with the Texas statute is just one element of many and he's not dealing with the others. So even if the Republicans lose, which is very unlikely in my opinion, even if the Republicans lose on this gerrymandering issue, they have all the other issues and they're gonna keep on doing it. And Merrick Garland is light years behind them. Well, I guess of all the things you mentioned, and Cynthia, you definitely mentioned it too, is the ability for the legislature of all these states to appoint either their secretaries of state or those that are charged to oversee the aftermath of the election to make sure it was a fair and honest election. That's, I'd like to get your read on that one, Jay. To what degree does that concern you? Well, that's the, I mentioned that in my list. If you switch out the voting officials or secretaries of state and then you adopt statutes that allow the legislature or the specially appointed, and breakaway secretary of state, then you switch the public vote to something else. You switch the certification across the Washington, you switch it, just switch it. You dump on whatever the public did. And that is also in their inventory that is also in the conspiracy that is also gonna happen. And so if some of these other things fail, as I said, and they may in the courts, who knows what, there's always that. You ignore the public vote, just ignore it. Or you have these phony baloney election officials who are loyal only to Trump and what he wants from them. And it'll get me 11,780 votes and bang, there you go. 11,780 votes, that's gonna happen again, ignoring the public vote, fabricating votes. So that's maybe one of the bottom line strategies here, but it's definitely in the lineup. It's definitely in the kit bag, and we will see that. So I would be concerned with that connected with all the other things we talked about. And Merrick Garland's not doing anything about that far as I know. All right, last question on this topic, Cynthia, to what degree does the federal voting proposed bills have a chance of seeing daylight and passing? What's your opinion on the current status of that? Unless they get rid of the filibuster, it's not gonna go anywhere because you can sure bet the Republicans are not gonna vote for it. Well, let me interrupt and say elimination of the filibuster or a modification of it. I would like to see a modification of it because I think its general purpose is sound to enhance bipartisan work. And I get that part, but it doesn't seem to ever be used that way. It's been misused over the years when it didn't even come into existence until the Jim Crow days, right? So, I mean, its inception was not based in a good thing. And so I think I would like to see it changed, not completely gone away with, but I would like to see it change for sure. I'd like to weigh in on that if I may. Sure, go ahead, Jay. You know, change, then you're not saying what, you're not saying exactly what the change would be or wouldn't be. And there has been really no public conversation of what it would be or not be. And that means, you know what that means, guys? That means negotiations and compromise. Well, we have seen, let's take BBB for example, Build Back Better, let's take that one and how we have been involved in an infinite duration of compromise and negotiation and more negotiation, more compromise, and then breach of any agreements. You know, negotiation and compromise does not work in this Congress. If you set out tomorrow morning to try to negotiate a some kind of change rather than, you know, a binary approach, you know, you either have it or you don't have it, I think you'd be involved in a negotiation that would last until at least November 2022. So my view of it, not to disagree with you, but my view of it is we gotta throw the whole thing out because that's the only way to get past this kind of slugfest, which never ends. Compromise and negotiation, although Biden, I guess still believes in it, has gotten him nowhere. Well, on the table of that right now is what just happened with the debt ceiling, right? The Republicans let the Democrats vote for it by themselves. What is, I heard that this morning and I went, they did what? McConnell said, okay, he made a deal with Schumer that the Democrats could vote for it all by itself and let it go. I'm like, hold on a minute. So they want no part of that even. They don't even wanna fund the country. They want everything to just be obstruction and that's where it's always gonna be. So I agree with you there. Jay, I'm just hoping that we could do some sort of modification that would bring cinema and mansion along too, because otherwise we can't get rid of it all the way unless we get rid of them in 2022. So I don't know. All right, well, let's put this topic to bed. I agree with both of you is that things will be rather bleak if a federal law does not get passed by Congress and that takes Joe Manchin and minimally the revision of some of the filibuster, but we'll see. Let's go to Joe Biden, President Biden and his, we'll call it a Zoom meeting. It wasn't a Zoom meeting, but it was a telecom meeting with Vladimir Putin. And Cynthia, I don't know if you saw any reports on it. I know you watched some late night TV and the mockery they made of that, but what was your impression of Biden's meeting with Putin? Well, he's talking a really tough story afterwards and I hope that he will stick to it. And I think he will. He's pretty much a guy of his word, but he can't do it all by himself. He needs the rest of NATO to come in too, you know? And so for Putin to give that statement about how he's not really doing this, you know, they're just trying to make a big mountain out of a molehill. He's not, you know, there's nothing aggressive with what he's doing. Oh, right. We all know how many troops he's put on the border. So we know that's a lie. Plus we know he lies. And it's just putting out all this misinformation and I'm really worried at how Biden can fight against that. You know, how can he keep that misinformation or first address it and then get rid of it here in America? And I don't know if that's possible, but the four night time guys last night, they all picked on the whole meeting and they would just, they're making so much fun of two old guys on Zoom. They've got Biden's the front top of his head showing and Putin's going back the camera up, back the camera up. And then... Well, two old guys that have the ability to push a nuclear button. So, you know... It's not that funny. And that's why sort of where I was going with that too is that... Did you have any reaction to Biden saying that US troops would not be dedicated to any invasion of Russia into Ukraine? Was that something that he should have or should have not have said or stated? Well, I think what's happening now is both Russia and China see America as weak. So they are going to try to take advantage of the fact. And I think anything that happens on that score that isn't just tough talk, tough, this is what I say, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, and not going diplomatically to China Olympics is not what I mean. I mean more aggressive stances that need to be made. And they need to show the rest of the autocrats around the world that, you know... Yeah, America is not as weak as you think. And that's the thing that I'm the most worried about. Alrighty. Jay, you know, they mentioned... We haven't gotten all the details of this meeting between the two leaders. But one thing that did kind of come out of it was something called the Normandy Process, which is a result of the 2015 Minsk Agreement that hasn't been fully implemented. And the Normandy Process basically says that Germany and France will oversee the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. It sounded like that was an olive branch that was waved that can reduce the temperature of this pending incursion. What's your thought about where we are with this and whether or not this Normandy Process has any merit or not? We're nowhere with it. You know, as you guys mentioned before, where is NATO? He shouldn't be there alone. But Ukraine is not a NATO country. No, but where is NATO? NATO should be concerned about this. The leaders of NATO should be standing there with him. They should be on the Zoom call. Where are they? You know, he's alone. And that means his power, his influence is diminished, his authority in the meeting is diminished. I also want to mention one thing that I think is coming down the pike. You have Russia standing on the border with what is it, 200,000 troops. And they've softened up Ukraine. You know, they've done hacking on Ukraine's institutions. They've made it clear that, you know, they feel that Ukraine is ethnically part of Russia and they're gonna do what they did in the South. They did the same thing in the South, didn't they, a few years ago? And they took territory in the South the same way. They're gonna do it again. This is part of the expansion back to the USSR. That's what he wants to do, that is doing it so obvious. And talking nice to him, trying to negotiate with a pathological guy. You know, we saw what happens when you try that. Okay, what I'm getting to though is to the extent we get into a hubbub with China over anything where it directs the attention of the media and the world west to China. That's when Biden is gonna have a headache with Putin. That's when Putin is gonna move into Ukraine, okay? And it goes the same way in reverse to the extent that Putin goes ahead and takes territory in Ukraine. That's when she makes more rattling sounds and maybe even takes Taiwan. The two of them are playing a game with us. It's the whipsaw game, watch out. That's where we live. Those guys, you know, collaborate. And we are, may I say, mostly alone. Alrighty. You know, we've come to the end of our show and there's a lot of more questions I'd like to ask but unfortunately we just ran out of time. So Cynthia, I'm gonna go to you with closing comments about these topics that we've discussed today or anything else that's been on the horizon for you as far as what you're thinking about. Well, I'd like to see the January 6th Commission both faster. And I think I pretty much said how I feel about that. If it's okay, I'd like to give a dull comment. I mean, a dull quote. Go ahead. We're running out of time, but please do. Famous Republican, staunch Republican. You know, there was an article in the Washington Post called Democracy Dies in Darkness. And I'm pretty sure that was the title of his speech and the whole article. I recommend everyone to look it up, but I just wanna say a couple of things from it that I thought were so important. He's talking about how he, when he first came into the White House and came to the Capitol and started working as the Kansas Senator. And he's looking out at the, you know, the monuments and stuff. And then on January 6th, he says that inspiring view came back to me as I watched the January 6th riots at the Capitol. I imagined the view of those monuments and headstones obscured by clouds of tear gas. I thought about the symbol of our democracy consumed by anger, hatred and violence. There's been a lot of talk about what it will take to heal our country. We have heard many of our leaders profess bipartisanship, but we must remember that bipartisanship is the minimum we should expect from ourselves. America has never achieved greatness when Republicans and Democrats simply managed to work together or tolerate each other. We have overcome our biggest challenges only when we focused on our shared values and experiences. These common ties form much stronger bonds than political parties. All righty, to the great late Bob Dole. Jay, you get the last word today. I only just say there are so many things happening that are undermining our country on the rule of law, on democracy and the process of it and socially. These are really existential threats to the country. They're happening now. And to my observation, there is very little happening to countervail what they are doing. And so I am very worried. I don't see the leadership that I would like to see in dealing with them, either domestically or internationally. And therefore, I think what happens is that the international crowd that is Putin and Xi Jinping take advantage of our weakness. Unless we solve our weakness and we're a long way from that, we're gonna be weak internationally. And thus, we're not gonna be the same country we wanna be. All righty. Well, I wanna thank you, Jay Fidel, Cynthia Lisa and Claire. Thank you for your observations and your comments. Please join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Apachella and we'll see you then. Aloha.