Summary: Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court reached two significant decisions on cases affecting voting rights in the United States. The first dealt a blow to the fate of fair voting maps, where the court found that partisan gerrymandering was an issue “beyond the reach of the federal courts,” thus punting the decision to the states to decide for themselves. The second questioned the reasoning of the Trump administration’s inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census—a question that has since been struck down and settled by President Donald Trump’s own U.S. Department of Justice, though much remains uncertain. Sound confusing? To parse through the legalese, we spoke with Ari Berman, senior reporter for Mother Jones, about the state of voting rights; the tension between the political and democratic aims of gerrymandering; and what he calls a “new arms race for redistricting.”
