BREAKING: Trump SLAMMED with BOMBSHELL lawsuit

You and your law firm, the Texas maps were just passed out of the state legislature. That's when you made your news. Can you explain what just happened?

Yep. Look, the Texas legislature thought they could pass these maps in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. and nobody would notice. Well, I'll tell you, my team, we noticed. We filed our lawsuit at 8 a.m. this morning. I told Texas that if they passed this map, they would get sued and they would lose. I've made good on the first of those promises. Let's see what happens with the second.

So as it relates to these maps that were passed in Texas, a lot of folks are looking at what happened in Texas as the allegory to what's happening in California. And so they'll say, well, if you can sue in Texas,

how does that not open up California for a lawsuit as well? Okay, so first of all, let's just start with the fact that what Texas did was completely illegal, you know, and so so like before people start to say, well, Texas and then California and going California, you know, what Texas did here was they reopened their maps to gerrymander what was already a gerrymander. They were already being sued by my team and others over their first map. They made a worse racial gerrymander, actually

a pretty explicit racial gerrymander, because after all, it was Pam Bondi who sent the letter saying, you need to reconfigure the racial composition of these districts. I have a feeling that Ken Paxton's right now pulling his hair out saying, I really could live without Pam Bondi And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. important. The legacy media has been has bought off on the spin that Republicans have spread, that somehow they have a get out of jail free card for mid-cycle redistricting. That is not the case. And so this lawsuit also takes on the process they used to do mid-cycle redistricting

and the way in which they use partisanship and race to do this. And we believe that that is not protected by prior rulings of the Supreme Court and leaves them exposed there as well. So can you talk a little bit about how

California's process doesn't fall into the same trap that Texas did? Yeah, so obviously the

California process is totally different. I mean, it is a ballot initiative that's going to be voted on by the people of California. So first of all, the first map wasn't drawn as a partisan map by the legislature. It was actually drawn by a nonpartisan revision commission. Even here, the legislature itself is not responsible for the map. This will again be the people of California. I mean, obviously, they passed the necessary legislation,

but this is going to go to a popular referendum in the state of California. So on that metric, it's very different. But the main reason why it's different is it's not a racial gerrymandering. California didn't get together and say, hey,

we just got a letter from the Department of Justice ordering us or asking us to engage in racial sorting of voters because they don't like that Hispanics and Black voters have as much political power as they do. And so the state of California didn't get that letter

and then Gavin Newsom say, oh, you know what? Let's now screw over minority voters. They didn't do that. So these really are apples and oranges. But I want to add one final point. And I think this goes to something

that I think I've heard Governor Newsom say to you on your show. I think if you went to Gavin Newsom or you went to other Democratic governors and said, look, if we could wave a magic wand and the courts say no mid-cycle redistricting,

would you take that deal? I think you'd say yes. Yeah. So in some sense, I think if you're Gavin Newsom, great. They can't do it. We can't do it.

Missouri can't do it. Florida can't do it. No one can do it now. Again, I think that we cannot morally equate these. We can't legally equate them. But if if that were the results, if people are going to criticize this lawsuit and say, yes, but Mark, if you want everything, they could strike down all mid cycle redishment. I guess. Yes, that's true. That is possible. But like I think that's a deal that any Democrat

would take. And he certainly didn't Democratic governor. Right. I mean, look, it was, there's only one party that tried to pass H.R.1, which included a provision that would ban gerrymandering nationwide. It was every single Democrat voted for that. Every Republican voted against it. There's no ambiguity as to where Democrats stand with regard to the scourge that is gerrymandering, the differences that Democrats are not looking to unilaterally disarm in the way that Republicans are hoping that Democrats will. Just a note for the audience here. Look, I have been on a tear focused on the fighters and there is nobody who exemplifies

that better than Mark. And this lawsuit is another testament to exactly that. One small step, completely free, that we can all take to support his work is to sign up for his YouTube channel. It's completely free to subscribe. It's called Democracy Docket.

I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. If you're not yet subscribed, elevate his voice, go ahead and subscribe.

You know, Brian, I'm glad you did that because people ought to know, I watch Brian's channel every day. I mean, like literally I watch every piece of content that he puts up and it is unbelievably important at this time that all of you do as well. Because not only does it support a creator who is really doing, frankly, a public service, I mean, doing a service

to the whole country, but it's also really informative. I mean, the interviews he does with Gavin Newsom have been the most important interviews, in my view, in the fight for democracy. The interviews he did with the Texas legislators, the interviews he's done, the interviews he's done with Governor Pritzker, the interviews I've seen him do with Democratic House and Senate leaderships are really, really informative and important.

So please make sure you are subscribed to his YouTube channel. Also check him out on his social, the other social media channels as well, which are also really great.

Thank you.

Mark, have other states lost similar cases that relate to the crux of this case right here, which I presume is section two of the Voting Rights Act?

Yeah, so one of the things that really has frustrated me in the last few weeks about how the legacy media has covered Texas is they have sort of assumed that Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and the Republicans are doing everything lawful. And I have no idea why, by the way, they would start with that assumption.

I mean, what is it about Greg Abbott's past behavior, the Republican Party's past behavior, that Donald Trump instigates things? Like, what about past behavior leads you to believe that what they are doing is probably legal? Right?

It's not. I mean, what they are doing here is racially gerrymandering, violating Section 2, and also, we believe, violating one person, one vote in the way in which they are doing this mid-cycle redistricting. And if you ask about precedent, there is lots of precedent striking down maps

for being racial gerrymandering. I ought to know. I sued and I have sued and won four cases in the US Supreme Court striking down Republican maps for being racial gerrymandering. That is actually one of the claims that even conservative justices like Justice Thomas

tends to be pretty hard on states around racial gerrymandering. Section two, we have won. My law firm won and argued in the Supreme Court, the Alabama Section 2 case that won. My law firm was involved in the Louisiana case that struck down the Louisiana map under Section 2. So, you know, these are tried and true

paths to strike down exactly the kinds of maps that Republicans have done here. But in addition to that, and this is the thing that drives me crazy, is the lazy media says, oh, the Supreme Court has already said Texas can mid-cycle redistrict. No, what the Supreme Court said in 2006 was that where the first map was drawn by a court, that the legislature can mid-cycle redistrict

because the Constitution preferences legislative drawn maps over court drawn maps. So essentially what they said is, look, Texas legislature didn't get a chance to draw its map in the early 2000s, so we're going to let them do it in 2006.

I thought that was a wrong decision. I think I still think it's the wrong decision. But that is quite different than what is happening here, which is that Greg Abbott already got his chance to do legislative redistricting for Congress. And they did. They passed a horrific gerrymander,

and by the way, an illegal map that we were already in court over. What they're doing here is taking a second bite

at that apple.

And the Supreme Court has never confronted that. And so this is going to be a multi-pronged fight against this effort, both under the traditional claims for racial adjournment in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but also these other claims to see whether or not the Supreme Court really intended that Greg Abbott can

now, every two years, optimize his map to screw over minority voters to help Republicans and or whether the Supreme Court wants to back away from that.

What are the implications in that ongoing lawsuit challenging Texas's maps prior to this?

So look, I mean, this is now going to, in some sense, supersede those prior lawsuits. In other words, what we filed here was an amended complaint. We basically said, look, we were already before you. We'd like to change our complaint to address the new map. So, you know, there are parts of the old map that are still in place that didn't get touched entirely.

So pieces of it will continue, but really this is a really a new lawsuit. It is functionally a new lawsuit around what they have done here. If we win, it will stripe down the map virtually in its entirety, as it should be, and force a redraw that would benefit minority voters,

Hispanic and black voters, but really also undo the horrific gerrymandering that we're seeing.

Just a technical question here. Does amending your existing lawsuit, does that allow the process to move forward a little bit quicker as opposed to starting from the very beginning?

Great point. Yeah, it does. And in fact, the court knew this was coming. We've been very transparent about what we were planning on doing. And I told Grodavit we'd sue him. But in more formal legalistic terms, the court knew this was coming. So the court has already scheduled a status hearing on this for next week. And we're going to be pressing for this to get pushed along as quickly as possible. And yes, as because it is part of an existing case, you know, it's the amendment of an existing case. There's already the players are already here, you know, the court judges, judges here, everybody's, everybody's already assembled. So this, this should move much, much faster.

In terms of speed, what would be the ideal scenario for you? Would it be to get some type of injunction on the new maps that were just passed out of Texas?

Yeah. So we're going to move for injunctive relief and all, everything we're going to move for injunctive relief. And everything we're going to do is to get this resolved in time for 2026. One of the tenets that I have brought to this area of law now for more than a decade is that voters can lose through delay. And I'm not saying, by the way, there are not

other lawyers who have this mindset. But I am very proud when I say that they passed the map at 2 AM and we had a lawsuit on file by 8 AM. There's a reason I emphasize that. When Georgia passed its big voter suppression law in 2021, we sued six minutes after the governor signed it.

Here, we actually filed even before the governor signed it, because he said he would, he will. And so I really believe that those of us in the pro-democracy movement, if we think we are better off taking sacrificing speed for completeness, I think we're making a mistake. I think we need to understand that democracy

is in peril today. Democracy will be in peril in 2026. And the prospect of getting more complete relief in 2029 is not worth it if what you are giving up is free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.

Right, right. In the event that you are successful, that this lawsuit is successful and there is a situation put in front of us where Texas would have to redraw the maps. How do we have confidence in a system where the folks in charge are the very folks who are redrawing maps in a way that doesn't comport with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, who have

gerrymandered these maps to within an inch of their lives? Who would engage in this process so that it actually is fair and complies with the ruling set down by the judge?

So this is a great question. And look, this is where the court, this is not a perfect process. The perfect process would be that the legislature wouldn't have done this. The perfect process would be that Republicans in the House who are now whining and crying, the congressional delegation from California are like crybabies wetting their diapers because they now want there to be a ban on mid-cycle

and partisan voting. And they had their chance. They had their chance at the federal level. So the ideal would be that they would have voted for the Freedom to Vote Act, and they would have created a bipartisan vote out of the House that

would have then put pressure on Republicans in the Senate. You know, everyone beats up on the fact that Democrats didn't break the filibuster. Look, I thought that they should have done it with a filibuster as well.

But let's not forget, the reason why that was an issue was not a single Republican in the Senate was willing to vote for this. And so these Republicans who are now crying about it could have done something. So ideally, this would have done at the national level. If the court rules in striking down a map, the first chance to fix it goes back to the legislature now.

We've seen circumstances, though, where the legislature can't politically. It won't fix it because it has to pick winners and losers. And it gets paralyzed. And the court draws the map. We've also seen circumstances in which the legislature does. And I point you to Louisiana, where everybody said,

oh, you're going to win a section 2 case in Louisiana, but it's not going to matter because Louisiana legislature does a redraw. Well, they did a redraw and created a second Black Opportunity District that has now resulted in another Black member of Congress

from Louisiana. So sometimes the constraints the courts will put on them in how they redraw the map are such that it sort of cabins in their ability to do harm. But it's not a perfect process. I would still urge Republicans to join with Democrats

and pass a federal national solution to this. But the time has long since passed that Democrats should put our faith in Republicans. Any time that democracy rests on Republicans doing the right thing, you're heading down the wrong path. We need to fight fire with fire.

If they bring a gun to the fight, we don't just not bring knives. We bring missiles. We need to be in full battle mode. That's the reason, Brian, why I always come to you first

with these cases and news about this. It's the reason why your interviews that you've done, whether it's with Governor Newsom or frankly, or with Governor Pritzker or frankly, across the board have been so impactful because you are bringing the fight to this.

Well, I appreciate that. And look, I would echo that sentiment. Uh, again, my focus here has been on elevating and platforming the fighters. There's nobody who better encapsulates that than you. This lawsuit is a testament to that again. So for everybody who's watching right now, to reward the folks who are actually meeting this moment with the urgency that it deserves,

one small step we can all take is to subscribe to DemocracyDoc, and I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. The link to my channel is on the screen as well. If you're not subscribed to both of them, go ahead and subscribe. Completely free, great way to support our work and independent media more broadly. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen.

I'm Mark Elias. I'm Mark Elias.

This is Democracy Watch.