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'They Are Creating the Opportunity to Shrink Democracy More': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed Ball and Strikes' Madiba Dennie about the Supreme Court's threat to the Voting Rights Act for the November 7, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Balls & Strikes: The Republicans Justices Are Getting Ready to Finish Off the Voting Rights Act

Balls & Strikes (10/13/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: For those not trying not to see it, it's clear that the Trump administration is trying to use every political lever available to entrench white political supremacy: in governance, in foreign and domestic policymaking, in education, in culture, in public knowledge and public imagination. The heart, if you will, of that effort is the familiar hatred and fear, and one of the spines is voting rights. You can use the trappings of democracy as cover for your corrupt racist system if you can somehow make sure that wide swaths of the country's people don't actually have a voice in terms of who they choose to represent them in the halls of power.

Pushing non-white people out of the electoral process has been the glimmer in the eye of many a politician, and many techniques have been tried. But the conservative majority of today's Supreme Court sees that goal in their sights, with Louisiana v. Callais ([link removed]) looking like their chance to use their special power to achieve a long-desired end.

Of course, Black and brown people aren't going gentle into that good night. There's no way advocates of multiracial democracy will let this Supreme Court be the last word on our political voice or possibilities.

Helping us see what's happening is Madiba Dennie; she's the deputy editor and senior contributor at the legal analysis site Balls and Strikes ([link removed]) . She's also author of The Originalism Trap: ([link removed]) How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back. She joins us now by phone from Brooklyn. Welcome to CounterSpin, Madiba Dennie.

Madiba Dennie: Thank you so much for having me.

JJ: Before we start on Louisiana v. Callais in particular, I wanted to say I appreciate the descriptor ([link removed]) of Balls and Strikes as “premised on the reality that interpreting the law is an inherently political act with real-world consequences.” I think often the law is presented to us laypeople as something that exists in some pure form somewhere, and you dust it off and apply it, and then, wherever the chips fall, well, that's “the law”. We would do better to get free of that understanding of how the law works, wouldn't we?

MD: Yeah, it's a very useful myth that obscures, as you were saying at the very start, that this is really a longstanding political project. This didn't emerge out of nowhere. Pure application of law did not create this, either. These are things that conservative legal actors desired and sought out and are too often accomplishing.

JJ: So help us see what's at work in this case: "packing and cracking," conflated "Black" and "partisan." What's going on here in real-world terms?
Brennan Center: Gerrymandering Explained

Brennan Center (8/9/25 ([link removed]) )

MD: Well, Louisiana v. Callais, you really have a smorgasbord of political scheming. There's a lot happening here.

So the case arises out of Louisiana's redistricting in the wake of the 2020 census. The 2020 census showed that the population in the state had shifted; the Black population was growing. Roughly one in three Louisianans are Black. But when it came time to redraw the state's electoral maps, the Republican legislature deliberately drew the maps ([link removed]) in a way to limit Black people's political influence to just one of its six congressional seats. So, again, Black people are a third of the population, but only in one of these six seats could they actually exercise any sort of political choice.

And the way that the legislature accomplished this is through what's called “packing and cracking.” ([link removed]) So they packed as many Black people as possible into this one district, said, “All right, Black folks, you can have that one, over there.” But as for the others, they cracked the Black population, putting just little bits of Black people in these five other districts, knowing fully well that politics are so racialized in the state, that there's such a strong history ([link removed]) of people voting on race lines, that no matter who these Black folks like, white people will vote as a bloc to overcome their vote. So it constrains the ability of Black people to make a political choice on equal terms with other voters.

This is very plainly unlawful. The 15th Amendment ([link removed]) of the Constitution guarantees that citizens' right to vote will not be diluted or infringed on the basis of race. But that's what gerrymandering like this does. Because these voters are Black, they are being denied the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

And so that's why we have the Voting Rights Act ([link removed]) . The Voting Rights Act is a landmark law enacted in the '60s to finally implement the promises of the 15th Amendment, and the other amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War, saying, “OK, we are going to really make sure that if some policy, whether it's a voter requirement or whether it's gerrymandering or what have you, whether there's some law or regulation that results in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote because of race, that's unlawful, that violates the Voting Rights Act.”

And so here's where things start to get interesting in Louisiana v. Callais, because courts looked at the maps that the Republican legislature produced and said, “Yeah, this violates the Voting Rights Act. It's discriminatory. Go back, do it again. You’ve got to make a new map ([link removed]) .” So the Republicans begrudgingly go and make a new map that no longer discriminates against Black voters.

And then they get sued again ([link removed]) , this time by a group of white voters. And this group of white voters says that the second map is actually also illegal, because fixing a racial gerrymander is also racial gerrymandering. So, yeah, their argument is that by taking race into account, they too are engaging in racial discrimination, because this is on the basis of race.

And so this is really a perversion of what the Voting Rights Act and what the Constitution are supposed to do. That's very much not what that means. We're trying to empower people of color and expand the political process with the Voting Right Act, and with the Reconstruction amendments ([link removed]) , and here we're seeing it really twisted on its head, saying that you can't fix an injury that occurred on racial lines, because it also involves race.

So it creates this world where, if the court is to accept that, it just preserves the racist maps in the first place. So it leaves it untouched, because it deprives you of an opportunity to do something about it. It takes these critical tools away. So that is really what the court heard oral argument about recently.

I should also note that this was the second time they heard oral argument about these maps. They heard oral argument for the first time months ago ([link removed]) , but they were dissatisfied with it, because under the law that exists, the map that the legislators made to fix the previous racist map, clearly that was legal. You are allowed to consider race insofar as your map before was racist and you're fixing it. There's a lot of law that supports that ([link removed]) , as well as a lot of common sense.

And so the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court realized they weren't quite happy with the way that case was going, and they wanted to switch things up a bit. So they invited the parties to submit some additional briefing, and they rescheduled the case for new arguments ([link removed]) , which were heard recently.

And this time, the question was different. No longer were they asking about whether or not the maps complied with the Voting Rights Act or not. Now they're asking if fixing a map under the Voting Rights Act, if that complies with the Constitution. And their argument here was, again, that there's some sort of inherent tension between remedying racial gerrymandering and illegal racial discrimination.

JJ: I think that a lot of people are cottoning on now to the sheer weirdness, the idea that you can use race, or perceptions of race based on skin color, to wrestle people out of their homes and demand to see their papers ([link removed]) . But colleges, for example, can't acknowledge the race of applicants, because that's unfair ([link removed]) .

I understand that disinformation and confusion and chaos and fear are part of the point, but I think a lot of folks imagine that Supreme Court justices are somehow using a different kind of rationality than the bozo at the end of the bar. I just wonder, have the last couple of years, or decades, should they have changed our understanding of the actual role of the Supreme Court? Because it used to be, they have life term appointments, that means they're above politics. I feel like that's over, and we need to be in a place where we're reimagining the role of the Court, period.
Madiba Dennie

Madiba Dennie: "They are OK with using race to hurt people. They are not OK with using race to help people who are actual victims of racism."

MD: Yeah, 100%. The life tenure doesn't so much insulate the justices from the political happenings, but it rather empowers them to be able to carry out their political program forever, for the rest of their natural lives. Because these are, without any sort of unique insight, it's really no different from the bozo at the end of the bar saying, “That seems racist to me, actually,” or “Where's White History Month?” It's the same kind of thing. “Where's the Straight Pride parade?” It's the same sort of nonsense.

It's like, well, when you've been discriminated against, it's a little bit different. Remedying a harm is different than inflicting harm. So if you want to go through Jim Crow, then we'll talk about what kind of reparative measures are necessary.

But the conservative supermajority on the court is utterly disinterested in the idea that the Constitution has a role to play in actually addressing any of these historic and present injustices, even though, quite literally, that's what the Reconstruction amendments were made for. But they don't like that idea. And so they're using this, really, overly formalistic notion about racial discrimination, where just any sort of consideration of race at all, even thinking about race, even if you're fixing a racial injury, that too becomes off limits.

And yet, though, as you pointed out, apparently it's fine to use race when you're snatching people off the street; apparently that's a fair thing to think about, for probable cause and making these stops. So what would be more accurate to say is that they are OK with using race to hurt people. They are not OK with using race to help people who are actual victims of racism.

JJ: And none of this is hypothetical. When the Supreme Court took out Section Five ([link removed]) of the Voting Rights Act, we saw an immediate uptick in discriminatory voting practices, right? States were champing at the bit to do what they already wanted to do, and the court just unleashed them to do that. So this is not imaginary. This is not what might happen. This is what we can expect to happen.

MD: Yeah, we have evidence. We know what these states do ([link removed]) when they're left to their own devices. That's why we have the Voting Rights Act, so that the federal government could create and enforce these national standards, to protect voters regardless of what state they're in, by saying they shouldn't be left to the whims of individual legislators.

And it's really especially egregious when you think about it in the context of voting and gerrymandering, because people are supposed to be able to pick the elected officials who ostensibly represent them. But by keeping people away from the vote, and by making it harder, even if they do vote, for their votes to count the same as everybody else's, by gerrymandering, what they're saying is that the elected officials get to pick their voters, rather than the other way around.

It is just completely contradictory to the idea of a democratic government. And there's really no good reason for this as a matter of law, as a matter of common sense, or good politics, like thinking about actually making a working democracy. It is unrelated to any of that, very much related to doing the opposite, and unwinding, reversing all the strides that the country has made over the past few decades to making democracy real for everyone.

JJ: And I guess what galls me, along with the reality, is the rhetoric that somehow this is about fairness, or somehow this is about equitable representation, or somehow it’s anti-discriminatory. They're just employing this language that they know is going to tickle something in people's brains, and think that it means what people understand it to mean, and they know they're using it against its purposes.

And that's why I'm so angry at news media, because I feel like they're in a place to say, “Yes, they're using these words. They don't mean them in the way you understand them, in the way that history has presented them, and let's actually unpack what they're actually doing, rather than what they're saying.”

So I just wonder, what would you ask folks to keep front in mind in terms of questions? What can we ask of news media? This is going to go forward. What should we keep in mind as we're reading the reporting on Louisiana v. Callais, and all of the other assaults on voting rights?
SNCC: Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines

SNCC ([link removed])

MD: Yeah. Well, I think that with Louisiana v. Callais in particular, I think it's really important to remember that the court literally asked for this. There was no reason for them to take this extra step. This is just something they wanted to do. And I feel like this is another thing that gets lost. We think about, “Oh, this case just happened to get before the court, and I guess they're taking the opportunity.” It's like, no, it actually goes further than that. They are creating the opportunity to shrink democracy more. They are making chances for themselves, and I think that's important to remember.

I also think it's important, regardless of what they actually say, what they say their reason is: What are the facts? What is their actual reason? Does the reason they're giving make any sense? Why would they pursue this?

Also, what would make this illegal? If they say that, “Oh, this is unconstitutional,” say “why?” And they say, “Oh, because of this amendment,” it's like, OK, but explain how that would actually mean that is illegal, because it doesn't really follow. It doesn't make sense to say that constitutional provisions that were created to allow Black folks ([link removed]) , and later other marginalized people, to participate in the political process, it doesn't make sense to say that that actually means you have to allow Black voters to be disenfranchised. You can't square that circle.

So I would love to see media and people, regular folks alike, just sort of really interrogate, “So what do you mean by that?” Take the next step. Ask the question: “When you say that this is illegal, why?” Or when you say that this is a problem, what makes it a problem?

And this is perhaps the most important thing: What is the consequence of your action? What are you actually doing here? What is the real-world effect? Because we aren't talking about something in the abstract. We're talking about people's real ability to make themselves heard at the polls.
Brennan Center: Effects of Shelby County v. Holder on the Voting Rights Act

Brennan Center (6/21/23 ([link removed]) )

In the same way that we see what happens without the Voting Rights Act, we saw the surgical precision of racist laws that were passed ([link removed]) as soon as the Supreme Court took away another chunk of the Voting Rights Act a decade ago, we also see what happens when we have the Voting Rights Act. When the Voting Rights Act was passed, the amount of Black people who were able to participate in democracy skyrocketed ([link removed]) . Voter registration jumped super high. There were way more Black people elected to office, because Black voters were able to make those choices. More funding was allotted to infrastructure projects ([link removed]) in Black communities, because Black people had people who
actually represented them.

So this is not just a nice, feel-good “It'll be nice to have.” This is something we have a right to, because it deeply affects how we are able to live, whether we have the same rights to representation as everybody else, whether our needs can be met, whether we can actually take part in self-governance. And so it is a deeply gross perversion of the ideals embedded in the Reconstruction amendments to say that somehow compels the court to bless racial discrimination instead. It doesn't make any sense, and people should recognize it as racist nonsense.

JJ: Your colleague, Jay Willis, wrote about ([link removed]) how Republican Congress members are already skating where the puck's going to be, as they call it. They're already planning their pro-Republican redistricting. And so what does that suggest--some of us are like, “What's the Supreme Court going to say?” And other folks are like, “Well, we already know what they're going to say, and we're already acting on it.” What does that say to the rest of us?

MD: Yeah. Well, I think it would benefit folks to really look at how the Republican politicians who were elected to office and the Republican politicians on the bench are working together, how one political project furthers the other. We are seeing the judiciary, specifically the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, most egregiously, really change the rules of the game, allow legislators to go for it, to live out their racial discrimination dreams and craft new districts accordingly, think about how they can best maximize the political power of a dwindling white conservative minority, while artificially suppressing the political power of everyone else. Republican electives are actively already working on this, because they know that the Supreme Court is on their side.

So I think another thing that folks must think about when we look at all of the harm the Supreme Court is doing is remembering that they didn't do it alone. This is a group project, although they're more than carrying their weight, but it is a group project. And if we are serious about repairing our democracy–or perhaps making a new, real democracy–we also have to think very seriously about court reform.

JJ: We've been speaking with Madiba Dennie, deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes. They’re BallsAndStrikes.org ([link removed]) . She's also author of The Originalism Trap: ([link removed]) How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back, which is out from Penguin Random House. Thank you so much, Madiba Dennie, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MD: Thank you.


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