Supreme Court Ends Race-Based Redistricting: An Inside Look | J. Christian Adams

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin and joining me today is J. Christian Adams with the Public Interest Legal Foundation. He's been on the show before. He's going to give us an update on a case he's already been working on in Philadelphia that we talked about the last time he was on the show. And we're going to talk about the recent Supreme Court ruling, redistricting, and how that affects this year's elections and beyond. Christian, thanks so much for joining me today.

[00:00:42] J. Christian Adams, The Jenny Beth So tell me, what did you think of the Supreme Court decision about Calais and Louisiana? J. Christian Adams, The Supreme Court Court Court. the right thing. They got it right. We had been working on this case from the beginning, actually.

[00:01:07] We almost took it ourselves, but we worked with Eddie Grime, who argued the case. Weird case, because the Supreme Court held it over for second arguments. It's been going on for years. But what the court did, Jenny Beth, was say, you can't use race as a criteria to allocate power. You can't say, let's create a black district in Louisiana. It doesn't work that way. That's

[00:01:33] what they did, is they created a black district, and they used that terminology. I'm not just using that gratuitously. That's literally what they said on the floor of the Louisiana House. And the Supreme Court said, look, race has got to fade into the rearview mirror. We shouldn't be allocating power on the basis of race. If you're going to do it,

[00:01:56] if you use race at all, it's only allowed as a remedial step after a finding of a Voting Rights Act violation. You can't just say, we think there should be diversity in redistricting, or let's create racial coalition districts. No. The Supreme Court put an end to that, and really that's what the founders of this country wanted. That's what the authors of the Civil War

[00:02:21] Amendments, the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act. That's what they were trying to bring into reality, a color-blind institution, a country where content of character matters more than color of skin. So I have a few follow-up questions from what you were saying, and I completely agree. We want to

[00:02:42] make sure that it is content of character and not the color of skin. Let's go back to the first question that I have. You said that the Supreme Court held it for second argument, so I'm not an attorney, and I'm sure we've got non-attorneys listening. Explain what that means and why that's unique. Sure. So normally the court will agree to hear a case, they'll schedule briefing, they'll

[00:03:09] schedule the argument, and then they'll decide it usually by like June 30th of every year. That's like the big day where everything's definitely decided. What happened here was really weird. On June 30th of 2025, while all of us were hitting the refresh button to see what the opinion was going to be in this case, the court said, we're going to hold this over for a whole second round of oral

[00:03:35] argument. Stay tuned. We'll tell you what we want to hear. About a month later, they issued an order saying, we want the parties to brief the 14th and the 15th Amendment to the Constitutions. Now, folks, if you don't know what the 15th Amendment is, the Constitution, please go read it because the founders in 1870 passed the 15th Amendment and said, no more use of race in the right to vote.

[00:04:02] Okay? We're done with that. Now, at the time, it seems like it only applied to freed slaves, but that's not the case. The authors were very clear. This was a universal right, that you don't have race infiltrating elections. It's an incredible moment in human history. If you think about it, Jenny Beth, it would only happen in America. This went on for 1870, and here we are 2026,

[00:04:30] before the Supreme Court finally was like, this really means what it says. You can't use race in elections. And how many decades have we suffered from the left imposing race, race, more race, onto our allocation of power? And I think that what you just said about it being the left is really important because it was Democrats in the South who were segregating and imposing restrictions on Black

[00:04:59] people trying to vote, which led to the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. And Democrats opposed the Voting Rights Act to begin with. Eventually, it did get passed. And then in recent years, Democrats have tried to use the Voting Rights Act to just—what the Supreme Court essentially was saying is,

[00:05:22] now you're using it to justify race-based districting, and you can't do that either. But it's come from the left, it seems like, most of the time, if not all the time. Yeah. And I'll give you an even more dastardly example is after the Civil War during Reconstruction, when white Republicans, Black Republicans

[00:05:49] were beginning to elevate their involvement in civil society, it was the Democrats like Wade Hampton in South Carolina, the white leagues in Louisiana that took to the streets and started just shooting them all, like literally murder. Murder was a tool of the trade to prevent Republicans and white and Black freedmen from the ballot box. I mean, that's just reality. Folks might not want to hear that,

[00:06:17] but it's not small stuff. They were playing for keeps and killing a lot of people along the way. And of course, we oppose that, and that never should have happened. And any kind of segregation and discrimination based on race is wrong. And that's what the Supreme Court affirmed. Yeah. You know, look, you can take it a step higher and really attach wickedness to it,

[00:06:46] right? It's sinfulness. I mean, when you view people as racial objects, as opposed to having the divine representation of the creator, you are willing to do bad and ugly things. And this country has suffered for hundreds of years with this issue from our beginning. But the beautiful thing about the Supreme Court opinion is it provides a way forward where we can all treat people the way they want to

[00:07:15] be treated. We can all treat people as individuals with dignity and stop using race to allocate power. And I agree with that. We've seen outrage from the left. They say we're going backwards in time. It's going to lead to segregation. It's going to harm black voters. It is intended to segregate society again. How do you, Christian, respond to that?

[00:07:43] I hope I can give you an answer that angers the left so they cover this podcast, okay? Like Right Wing Watch. Do they exist anymore? I don't know. Look, they got greedy. They got greedy with their racial entitlements. That's what that's all about, Jenny Beth. They're mad because they no longer get a political subsidy based on skin color. That's just reality. It's not going to result in segregation. It's not going to result in more discrimination. Quite the opposite. It's going to

[00:08:10] end it. But they're greedy with getting set aside seats, just like they were greedy about college admissions. And then they're very angry that suddenly you can't get into a better college, not because your grades, but because, you know, who your grandfathers were. They're greedy there. They're just greedy. They love power. They love entitlement. They love to get something for nothing. And in this case, it was seats in Congress. And by the way, seats in the school boards.

[00:08:38] Jenny Beth, the Supreme Court's opinion is not just about Congress. It's going to affect school board, county council, municipal utility districts in Texas. It's going to affect state legislatures. It's a massive decision that is a landmark decision like Brown v. Board. And when you were just saying that they are greedy, I think that is an accurate assessment. And they

[00:09:03] were the ones who have power are power hungry and want more power. And they're okay storing the pot, angering and scaring people, even if they're not being honest, just so that they can work to accumulate more power. And I think that's part of what we're seeing from their outrage right now. It's outrage because they can't hold on to that power as easily. And then they're willing to

[00:09:30] make others be outraged falsely, scaring them, thinking that somehow the Supreme Court decision is going to go back. I want to say re-segregate. I don't know if that's even the right word, but go back to a time when we were segregated. And none of us want that. And the Supreme Court, you even said there would be a remedial step if they found that there was a violation of the voting rights. Explain that.

[00:09:58] Right. So the only time you can use race to draw a district line is if a court, a federal court, has found that a jurisdiction, a county, a state, whatever, has done a bunch of stuff. And by the way, I'm not going to do a law lesson, but you have to prove 11 steps to what I'm about to tell you. You have to go through this long gauntlet of showing that black and white people

[00:10:25] vote differently. It's called racial polarization. You have to show the minorities keep losing elections because of structures. You have to show a history of discrimination. You have to show all these things. And if you prove it all in court and you carry your burden, you then can say, okay, well, you get to draw a school board seat that ensures the minority voters get an opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. But it's tough. I've tried these cases. It's not easy to win.

[00:10:55] So don't think that like race has still got this loophole. I think the court hit the right balance and how they preserve this ability to sue and get a remedy, but say nowhere else. Can you do this? By the way, you talk about the reaction. Bearing false witness is the business model of the left, right? This is what they do. They stoke outrage, hatred toward America, dishonesty about what's really

[00:11:24] happening. So what you described is not a surprise. It's what they do best. Yeah, they do. And we've seen real life consequences of that with assassination attempts, actual assassinations. And no matter what, no matter which side of the aisle, political violence is absolutely wrong. But not but, period. No matter what, it is wrong. And that means that you and I

[00:11:52] as leaders and people who use our voices to advocate for the issues that we care about and other people like us and people in elected office, we have the right to speak. And we also have to make sure we're using that right responsibly, not because we're required to necessarily, but because we understand that we lead people and people follow. And the left doesn't seem to care how much they stir things up.

[00:12:22] They just don't care. The more outraged people are, I think, the better the left thinks they will be. And I don't subscribe to that kind of thinking. And I won't do it for clicks and I won't do it for attendance at a rally. And I think that the left is on very dangerous ground when they do that. Spot on. I mean, this is, like I said, their business model. But even the murder of people, I mean, they take it. This is not fantasy. I mean, they're literally, you know, corporate

[00:12:52] executives being gunned down on the streets of Manhattan by a leftist. Charlie Kirk. I mean, look, we're no longer in the age of speculation about their capacity to kill. And so that is wickedness unleashed on the earth. I mean, this is who they are. They can't help themselves. And thanks for calling them out. Okay. So now we have the Supreme Court decision. And what are the, tell me what the

[00:13:18] practical applications for it are. And if you don't cover some things, I may ask, but you take the lead on that. What are you seeing as the practical applications of the ruling? So Public Interstitial Foundation filed a lawsuit against Illinois in the next few days after the ruling in the Supreme Court. And we sued Illinois, Jenny Beth, because they actually have statutory

[00:13:42] racial redistricting criteria. Like the law says in Illinois, you must try to create these racial coalition districts. They're called coalition districts where you have blacks and Hispanics glue together to create a majority district. And you have the governor, Pritzker, saying that we need to have diversity in our legislative maps. We need to elect people based on skin color. Hello? No, you can't

[00:14:10] do that. That's what the 15th Amendment's all about. And so we sued Illinois. We're hoping that this is a slam dunk, but you never know, do you anymore? And we're going to strike this down. And by the way, Jenny Beth, there's other states that have similar rules. They passed these mini state voting rights acts, states like Virginia, Connecticut, Washington, New York, and any state that uses race in their state statute to

[00:14:38] create racial preferences in allocating power, we're going to sue. Well, and that is good. You should be suing. When it comes to Illinois, what you were just saying about having the coalitions, isn't that part of the issue that Texas ran into? And that's why they had to redistrict because they were doing coalitions of minorities? So that came out of my case. The PILF was involved in defending Galveston

[00:15:05] County. It's the Petaway case, Petaway v. Galveston. We won that in Bonk in the Fifth Circuit, meaning the entire Fifth Circuit, because we reversed precedent. That case said that the Voting Rights Act does not require coalitions. Okay. You can't sue to get a coalition. I know it might sound like a nuance, but you got me. I'm going to play lawyer. It didn't say you had to blow up coalitions, the Petaway case. You didn't have to disentangle them. Got it.

[00:15:35] And that created sort of this confused mess sometimes in the Texas saga. Well, Texas is now going to, they have dismantled four coalitions. Four or five seats in Congress are now going to go Republican. Well, that caused California to respond to Texas and they passed a racially saturated map in California to get rid of Republicans. And so we're suing California and the Kelly case is going

[00:16:04] to be a huge help to show that California illegally drew districts to allocate congressional seats on the basis of race. And you're suing California as well. You just said that, right? Yeah. We represent a plaintiff called NOISE, which sounds like a sound, but it's N-O-Y-E-S. Okay. I want to come back to Texas, but tell us more about what you're doing in California and how they were allocating based on

[00:16:31] race. And then we can come back to Texas in a minute. Here's an easy example you'll understand. And it's, you know, Maxine Waters. Okay. Maxine Waters comes from two congressional seats designed deliberately to only elect black people. Okay. Now California said, oh, we're trying to just help Democrats. This is about partisanship. No, no, no, no. Because they created these black outcome

[00:17:00] districts in Los Angeles and Compton. When they could have done it differently and elected Democrat shows, they really don't care about electing Democrats. They elect, they want to elect a certain kind of Democrat based on race. All through the state, we have evidence like this. And I'm not going to walk through the whole state, but it boils down to the fact that California claims they wanted to elect Democrats, but in fact, they only wanted to elect certain races of congressmen. And that's what

[00:17:28] our expert in California shows. That's why I have confidence after Calais that the California maps are in serious danger. Yeah. Well, and I'm, if they have written down that they were using race any, anywhere, then it seems to me that would be evidence to, to, to reinforce that that was the wrong criteria to use. Jenny Beth, it's so funny. There's an exhibit in the case. The legislators in Sacramento were given

[00:17:58] spreadsheets of every new congressional district and it had the map and everything. And this is what the legislatures were relying on in Sacramento. It didn't have the political data on the spreadsheet. It only had race data. It had black, Hispanic, Asian, and then wait for it, other, like anybody who wasn't part of the Democrat racial coalition was other. And this is what the legislature relied on to

[00:18:23] pass these maps. So it was crazily, starkly open. And Jenny Beth, this raises an interesting point that you can might think about. Nobody in California is used to being held accountable. Are they? Like they, they live in a world where there's no accountability. So they're brazen about what they do because they don't think anyone's watching. Yeah, they are brazen. And the crazy thing is if they

[00:18:46] had just used D versus R or Democrat versus other or whatever, their maps probably would hold up and you wouldn't even have a case, but they were used because gerrymandering based on political affiliation, elections have consequences and politicians can exercise that power if they choose to. But you can't do it just based on race. That's what the Supreme Court has said. Am I right about that?

[00:19:12] You are bullseye. If you do it a hundred percent for politics, you're, you're protected. A case called Rucho versus common cause. I argued a case in the fifth circuit and won it on behalf of Tarrant County, Texas, which is Fort Worth. They did it totally for politics, created more Republican seats. Dallas wiped out all the Republicans. So did Harris. So did Bexar County. They, they wiped out all the Republicans on County council for partisan reasons. And therefore they were protected from doing it.

[00:19:40] And that might frustrate people. If you're Democrat in, in Texas, and if you're in the Northeast and you're Republican, you might be frustrated by it. But, but that is, we've had gerrymandering based on politics. I think as long as we've had districting of congressional seats and other political seats. If you don't like it, defeat the other side. I mean, that's, that's the remedy that the founders

[00:20:05] envisioned in a representative democracy where you can wipe out the house, right? Every two years, every state legislature gets the opportunity to get rid of their house. They can flip the whole thing. Now I know some of you are saying, well, that's not practical. Okay. Try. Try. Right. And, and, and you never, you know, I, it, it, a lot of things that seem impossible

[00:20:33] actually wind up being possible. And we can point to president Trump's first election in term and his second term for that. Sometimes it seems like it's completely impossible, but when you set your mind to it and create a plan and work the plan, oftentimes you, you can make a difference. Okay. Now I want to loop back in, into Texas for a minute, because you were saying about, so we're talking about the racial

[00:21:03] coalition districts and that a court, I think the fifth circuit court is what you said, ruled that they could not based on the voting rights act have the coalition, uh, based on a coalition or the congressional district based on a coalition of races. And that's why Texas had to redistrict. And then you said it, it doesn't, a state can still do choose to do that, but they're not required to do

[00:21:30] that. And I guess Texas must've thought they were, they were required to do it. And you can maybe elaborate if I have that part wrong, but the point I wanted to highlight here also is that even though the fifth circuit made that decision about Texas, what we don't want in what the Supreme court has stopped is nationwide injunctions. Right. So even if it was, if that was going on in, in Illinois and

[00:21:58] there was a problem with it, you would have had to sue separately in Illinois anyway, because we don't want nationwide injunctions. Am I right about that? Oh yeah, exactly right. The look, we've got a hard road ahead of us now after Calais, we're going to have to go tackle all of these race centric election laws one at a time. And by the way, we got to get a right Jenny, but this is stinkingly hard

[00:22:24] law, legal work. Um, it is some of the most complicated law in any area, except maybe any trust. And so it's a hard thing to do. Um, I'll tell you, there's other States on the horizon. We're going to, we're going to ding with constitutional lawsuits, um, because we've got to get race out of politics. It is so corrosive. It's so dangerous. Look, look at the history of humankind, like the,

[00:22:51] the, the horrible, wicked things that have happened to people because of race allocating power. You know, you look at the 20th century, the, the, the horrors of the 20th century were because race became central to the allocation of power. And we just have to move beyond that. We have to, we have to respect individual dignity. And I know that, that, that we've gotten used to it in this country, haven't we? It's like, oh, well, yeah, you get into Harvard because of who you are and

[00:23:21] what you've accomplished. We became desensitized to it. And I'm just hopeful that we're entering a new era. I am hopeful too. I don't think that it's that as we enter into this new era, it's going to be easy. Transition is never easy. Change is never easy. And your kids, um, I think are a little bit younger than my kids, but they're about the same age. My children went through the public school system

[00:23:51] and they learned about race from school and the school system taught them about, it was not me teaching them to judge people based on the color of the skin, but the school system taught them to differentiate between people based on the color of the skin, which is exact. When I was in school, that's what they were trying to teach us not to do. And you and I both want to get to a point where

[00:24:18] we really are looking at the content of character and we're looking beyond skin color, whether it comes to congressional districting or anything else in America. And I think it, it's not going to be easy to, to get there. And I suppose that just seems like a naive, stupid statement, but. It's not, it's not naive or stupid, but here's the best part, Jenny Beth from, from 15, 20 years ago.

[00:24:46] It no longer works to call us racist because we don't care because we know we're on the moral high ground, not you guys. We know we're on the side of righteousness and, and treating people the right way, not you guys. So there was a time like in the two thousands where if you want to shut down a Republican, call them a racist and they'd be like, oh my gosh, whatever you want, I'll give you, just don't call me a racist. Those days are so far gone. Part of it's people like Andrew Breitbart

[00:25:15] who got us here. You know, that was his, his mantra was like, don't care about what they say about you. Just say what's right. That's right. And Christian speaking of when you were saying that, and then you brought in Andrew, I was already thinking of this exact moment in time. And then you mentioned him. That's, that is what they couldn't find anything else to complain about with the tea party movement when we started, because we were advocating for less government spending for more

[00:25:44] responsibility with our tax dollars and not to have a government takeover of our healthcare. And we just wanted less government. I went into members of Congress office and would tell them what we're advocating for. And one person, one member who was on the appropriations committee said to me that they didn't know what to do with us because normally people come in and they want money and they can allocate money and make them go away, but they couldn't make us go away because they didn't,

[00:26:12] they didn't know how to deal with it. Cause all we wanted was less of everything. And, uh, we didn't want Obamacare and we protested Obamacare the weekend that it was passed into law. And we had a great, wonderful, peaceful protest where we cleaned up everything after ourselves on the Saturday before it passed into law late in the night, Sunday or early in the wee hours, Sunday, Monday morning. And on that

[00:26:37] Saturday, Nancy Pelosi and, and John Lewis walked out of the cannon office building across the street. Like they were hiding in the tunnels all the rest of the time. But for this, they walk across the street and then immediately say that we were racist and spitting on them and all sorts of other stuff. And we were not in it. We, we just simply, that wasn't happening. We did not do that. And

[00:27:04] in that, that harmed us, they harmed the reputation of our movement because they were calling us racist. Well, Andrew Breitbart put up like, I think a hundred thousand or $200,000 reward and said, yeah, there were video cameras all around. Show us, prove it. And nobody could ever prove it. He was worried to death that he was going to have to like take a, sell his house to pay for it because

[00:27:29] he didn't have the money to pay for it. But there was nothing, there wasn't, it didn't happen. And they kept using that and using that against us. And honestly, the attacks did hurt the Tea Party movement, but then we didn't go away and they attacked us with the IRS and they, they did everything they could to attack us. And we just, we didn't go away. We kept fighting. Maybe the way we fight

[00:27:55] changed. And then President Trump came on the scene and they attacked him. And then they would attack everyone who went to his rallies. And I personally think there are two things that helped shine the brightest light on the hypocrisy from the left and the lies about racism from the left. One is that President Trump had so many people who went to rallies to see him across the country. Now,

[00:28:23] so many people have gone. And before that, I, I just don't think we had as many people going to presidential rallies, but they would go, they would see firsthand what happened at the rally. And then they turn on the news and see the lies from the media. And they knew that what they were seeing on the news is not at all what happened at the rally. And so they began to realize what, like it really reinforced to them that what the news was saying is just lies. It's not all real.

[00:28:54] And then when everything locked down and our kids' school went into, onto the kitchen table on, on their computers, and we actually heard what was happening in the classroom, that was a second light. And, and we realized just how bad it was in their school system. And I think both of those things have really helped us just go, Oh yeah, you're going to call us that. Go ahead and call us that

[00:29:19] because you're the hypocrite. You're the one who's judging people by race. It is not me. Yeah. What a terrific exposition of what's been going on in the country. I remember the Andrew, a hundred thousand dollar thing or the, the, I forgot all about the spitting stuff. Whoa. I remember this now. And that's one of the first times, frankly, Jenny, I'm trying to think, when did anybody ever stand up to the accusations before that? The, the model before Andrew was to

[00:29:49] try to do everything you could to prove that you were not a racist. And that usually involved like a grant to the NAACP, right? Yeah. You know, like, Oh, give them money to shut them up. That, that was the business model for a long time on the race left is to shake down corporations for donations or else they'd be picketed as racist. So Andrew was, Andrew was a, a, a, a, a pioneer in

[00:30:14] giving us an alternative reaction model, uh, which of course, I will never forget the Martin Bashir interview with Andrew on MSNBC where Bashir put up, uh, a, a, some tweet or something about Michelle Obama and a monkey. Like, and, and Bashir says, Andrew, what do you think of that? And he goes, what does it have to do with me? Like, I don't have anything to do with that. But in the past, you know, whether it's a Bush administration official or whatever would go to great pains to

[00:30:43] show how much they disagree and how horrible it is. And we all, and, and they would like buy into the accusation. And Andrew was like, I didn't do have anything to do with that graphic. You just put up Martin Bashir and I'm not going to play your game. I'm not going to accept your premise. And so Andrew was this tremendous pioneer in the space. Yeah, he really was. And I want to give, um, a shout out to one other person who stood by us during that time. And Andrew was, was absolutely

[00:31:11] a pioneer. And then the other person is Herman Cain and he was from Atlanta and he was one of our biggest advocates. He just loved what the Tea Party movement was doing. And, oh, he had such a great smile. And when those accusations started coming and they were coming, I mean, it was just constant. And we were on the SPLC's website and it was, it was actually kind of a nightmare, everything that we went

[00:31:38] through. Um, I, I reached out to Herman Cain and I said, Herman, how am I supposed to respond to this? And he just said, you just keep going. Cause you and I both know you're not racist and you just keep going. And, and he stood by us and didn't walk away and he didn't let those lies intimidate him either. And I really appreciate that about both of them. I miss them both, but we are very lucky. They were part of our, our movement, both the Tea Party movement and part of the conservative

[00:32:07] movement. Yeah. I miss them greatly. I mean, I, Andrew was so bold. Like he rushed into the fight. Like there was a CPAC, uh, when the left was outside protesting and getting rule unruly. There's a great video. I go watch it a bunch of times. He runs outside and starts yelling, behave yourself. And he walks right into the mob. It's incredible stuff. Yeah. He just, oh, I miss him.

[00:32:35] Okay. So you're suing Illinois that we should be looking for additional suits. And then what about the redistricting that is happening from this proactively? Of course, Louisiana is redistricting because the case was about them. Other States like Tennessee have, have redistricted. Some have looked at it. Some are not Georgia. Uh, governor Kemp has called a special session, but it won't apply

[00:33:01] until the next election cycle, which I act. I think that if you use race to create these districts, you need to go fix it right now, especially if the Republicans control the legislature. And even if it means there's a special round of elections, that's my opinion on it. And it isn't because of raw political power. It's because you can't be using race in that manner. Maybe you still wind up with the

[00:33:28] same number of Democrat and Republican seats. I don't know, but we shouldn't be doing it based on race. Yeah, I agree with you, but a word of caution. And, and, and, and I, I really had a chance to talk about this in a broader audience because things have been happening so fast. Just because a black person was elected doesn't mean that race was behind the election, like the draw. So it is a dangerous

[00:33:54] game to hunt for black elected officials to redraw. That will result in a federal court saying potentially that you targeted this district because of the race of the incumbent. And then the federal court will restore it. And that would be remedial restoration. So sort of this ham handed hunt for

[00:34:19] black elected officials is a very dangerous game. It's like playing with a firearm that you don't know whether it's loaded or not. Good. Christian, I agree with you on that. And I don't even, I think that if they are doing that and they're doing it because of the race of the elected official, then that is racist in and of itself. So you can't do that. If, if they were looking at spreadsheets, the way that you describe what California was doing, as they were

[00:34:47] redistricting and they were looking at the racial content of those districts and the, the, the population, the, the, the makeup of the population as they were deciding the districts, that is what the Supreme Court said they can't do. Right. I agree with you. And I wouldn't want them just going, oh, well, this elected official is black. Therefore we must redistrict that, that would be completely wrong in my opinion.

[00:35:12] And I don't want to sound like the Oracle that, that says, um, you know, you guys don't know what you're doing, but this is so doggone complicated, this law, this area of law to figure out. In fact, if it was a remedial, uh, minority majority district versus a, let's assume like in South Carolina, which might really be real, that they said, we need to make sure Jim Clyburn keeps this majority

[00:35:38] minority black elected seat. Oh, wait problem. But figuring out what evidence is relevant in this space is so stinking complicated, um, that I am afraid that if someone doesn't know what they're doing, they bungle it. That's all I'm saying. Okay. And I think that that is a good cautionary tale. And it's something that the activists need to hear. We need to make sure that as, as any of these seats, if they are re if redistricting happens that we're, we're sticking within the law

[00:36:08] and not, we're sticking within the constitution and that we're not doing anything racist either. Right. Okay. That, that makes sense. Um, then you had the last time that we talked, you taught, talked about a case in Philadelphia. So remind everyone about that case and then give us an update. In October of 2024, voters all around Philadelphia and also Pittsburgh,

[00:36:38] who had Trump signs in their yard, got death threats in the mail. You heard that correctly. Letters threatening to kill them and their pets in the dead of a cold winter's night. That was literally the terms in the, in the letter, uh, shooting them. So you would think that somebody would have been arrested by now considering it was what? Almost two years ago. Well, no,

[00:37:06] Jenny Beth, they must've put inspector Clouseau on the case at the FBI because nobody's been arrested. The public interest legal foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of two of the victims who got the death threats. Who did you sue? People ask. We sued John and Jane Doe. So we could conduct discovery and investigation of the postal inspection service. And frankly, the DOJ.

[00:37:31] One of the reasons we did this is to get the DOJ and the postal inspection service, and frankly, the local police to do their job. It shouldn't be a C3 charity like PILF to go out there and try to enforce federal civil rights laws. Well, unfortunately, I'm here to tell you, Jenny Beth, that the results have not been good because the DOJ, the U S attorney's office in Philadelphia has been fighting us every

[00:37:57] step of the way. They've been resisting us in court. They've been opposing our efforts to get evidence. They have been defending incompetence that occurred probably from the postal inspection service. And to this day, nobody has been arrested. In fact, I think they bungled the investigation so badly that they probably let evidence slip out that can never be recreated. So it is a bad story.

[00:38:25] I will tell you, if the president knew about this, he would flip his lid that his voters could be threatened with death and nothing happens. Does the president not know about it? Well, you're asking the wrong person. I mean, look, he's so busy. It's understandable if this has never crossed his transom, but, um, you know, maybe someone ought to tell him that, that his voters who had

[00:38:52] signs in their yards got death threats in the mail and the U S attorney's office in Philadelphia has been opposing our efforts to bring someone to justice. And this is crazy because his, you're saying that the, it's the U S that's a federal government that that's under his jurisdiction right now. Correct. It's under the department of justice's jurisdiction. It's a presidential appointee in charge

[00:39:19] of the U S attorney's office in Philadelphia, Senate confirmed and picked by the president. Who's not protecting the president's voters. We've sent letters to them, uh, asking for a meeting. We haven't heard back. Can you believe that we've asked the U S attorney, just meet with us. Let's talk. No response. And let me just be clear about something. So you've sent letters to the U S attorney. Is it possible that some bureaucrat who works for the U S attorney just isn't conveying

[00:39:48] that information all the way up the chain? That's one answer. I, I, I know that this has been covered extensively. I've written about it in the Washington times. Hans and I've written about it at the Hill, uh, about the death threats to Trump voters. So, uh, you know, this is a civil rights violation. You can't threaten to kill people because of how they're going to vote. No, you can't, you can't, you can't, you're not allowed to threaten to kill anyone, but you certainly

[00:40:13] cannot do it because of how they're going to vote or because they had a Trump sign in their yard. And in light of what, when you and I talked the last time, I don't think that, I think it was more than nine months ago. So it was more than it was before Charlie Kirk had been assassinated in light of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the fact that there was another assassination attempt on the

[00:40:37] president's life. Anyone who is threatening harm and murder of, of Trump supporters. And if it had happened to Biden supporters, I would feel the same way, but it didn't. It happened to Trump supporters. So in this, they need to be held accountable. There needs to, they need to be made, um, an example. So other people understand you cannot do that. We can't have political violence in this country.

[00:41:04] And when you're threatening violence, you, you just can't do that. It's wrong. Yeah. Jenny Beth, I feel very passionate about this because Philadelphia is a pretty wild place. I have a long history there. You can't do it. You have to take it top priority. It ought to be of the DOJ to make arrests in this case. You can't send written. These are like letters that came in the

[00:41:28] mail that someone had to lick and had fingerprints all over, uh, and DNA, right? All sorts of ways and had to drop them in a mailbox where there were probably cameras all around. So like do something about it. Don't just like make a charity public interseal foundation, try to figure out who did this. That's not our job. Do your job, Pennsylvania. Do your job, U S attorney, do your job, FBI,

[00:41:54] do your job, lower Marion police department, the Pennsylvania state police, Jenny Beth, the Pennsylvania state police hold us in writing. We never even open an investigation. Why would they not open an investigation? They, their own citizens' lives were being threatened. This is part of the problem that's metastasizing is when one side gets death threats, let's say a black

[00:42:20] church, a Democrat congressman, like swarms of FBI agents show up, right? An abortion clinic, you'll keep adding to the list. When it's a conservative, uh, a redneck, I'm just gonna use that term because I know many rednecks. I'm related to some, uh, when it's a, a, a Trump voter with a Trump sign, law enforcement has a different attitude and we know it because it happens over and over again.

[00:42:48] And in Philadelphia, for somebody to have a Trump sign in their yard, they understand that they're probably, it is an act of courage because they are such a minority. I mean, it's a city that votes like nine out of 10 for, for the Democrats. So for them to do that and to stand up and say, this is who I'm supporting to all of their neighbors. It does take an act of courage. And I think that the letters

[00:43:13] were meant to intimidate so that they would never publicly, publicly support Republicans again. Yeah. And, and I'm going to say something now that, um, it's what I believe. So it's the truth. I think the people who have bungled this, who work at the FBI, the DOJ and the U S postal inspection service, there's names associated with this. They should be fired. Like they should be getting the letter, the fork in the road, but it's not a fork in the road. It's a trap door through the floor.

[00:43:43] They should be getting notice that they no longer have jobs in the federal government because they dropped the ball. Yeah. I think that you, you are right about that. This is, this is just absolutely outrageous. Christian, what is the statute of limitations on it? Uh, that's a good question. I know it's at least two years. And so we still have about six months, even if it's two years, I think it might be longer. Um, but you know, that's something the U S attorney ought to focus on, shouldn't they?

[00:44:12] Yeah, they absolutely should. Um, I, I, I will do what I can to help make sure people are aware of this. We'll use this podcast to, to help make sure that people know, because this is just absolutely outrageous. And it, it really is bothersome that in this day and age, the political violence is not being taken more seriously. And I forgot, I'm sorry. No, go ahead.

[00:44:37] $5,000 reward. If you have information and we already gotten some tips, if you have information as to who might've sent these death threats, you get $5,000 from the public interest legal foundation. We have a reward and you know, idiots talk boyfriends become ex-boyfriends, right? And there might be a girlfriend out there who knows who did this. Yeah. Well, I, I hope that somebody steps up and frankly, I hope that it isn't the 501c3

[00:45:06] nonprofit who has to figure it out. The government should be stepping up to protect citizens. If the law has been broken, they should be stepping up to help, help protect citizens. And it's just absolutely outrageous that, that it, it's taken this much and we still don't have a government law enforcement agency taking it seriously. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. So is there anything else that public interest legal foundation is working on?

[00:45:35] Well, there is, but you know, we don't have the time, but I mean, we're look, we're still doing voter roll cases. We have a cert petition going to the Supreme court because Hawaii denied us the voter rolls. Uh, and so we think voter rolls are covered by the NVRA, the federal law that we have a right to see them. Uh, the ninth circuit said they aren't. Uh, so we're going to go to the Supreme court. We'll see what happens there.

[00:45:59] Well, I hope that you get that you get the ruling that it is. Um, what would that also include, and maybe it wouldn't, I'm just asking, cause as you mentioned it, I thought of how some states charge an outrageous amount of money for the voter rolls that it makes it very difficult for anyone to get the rolls. Would that include, include that or not in, if it goes to the Supreme court,

[00:46:24] we have already won that fight. We sued Mexico, uh, and they reduced their rate. Then Alabama was the worst. They wanted $30,000 for the voter rolls in Alabama. So we threatened to them and said, look, the statute, the federal law says reasonable. And 30 grand is not reasonable for a couple of clicks of a button on a data set. And the good news is Jenny Beth, after they got our threat to sue them,

[00:46:50] they changed the law in Alabama and they reduced the cost, uh, down, I think to, to, to, to 1,000. Right. But, um, Hey, look, 1,000 is better than 30,000. Yeah. And maybe there's a legitimate need to, to charge some money for it. But I, even a thousand seems like a lot to me considering that it is just a few clicks and then you send a file.

[00:47:16] I agree. Um, okay. Well, I'm glad that you're working on that. And then I know that you're not exactly working on this because you focus more on lawsuits, but we've been working on the Save America Act. And I just wonder what, what you think of, of that, especially since we're trying to clean up the national voter registration act to make sure that states can require proof of citizenship,

[00:47:43] because right now the way it is, they, they cannot. Yeah. One of the most frustrating things I ever hear is that non-citizens aren't getting on the rolls and voting. Uh, in fact, who was it just, Oh, it's the Cato Institute. They came out with a report yesterday that said in one particular state, there's only one non-citizen who ever got registered. I was like, what you guys are off your rockers, like smoking too much pot over at Cato. And you know, it's like, you guys do not see the data that

[00:48:13] PILF has been collecting. We recently tried to help Louisiana. We intervened in a lawsuit that the secretary of state in Indiana filed against the election assistance commission to get the right to require documentary proof of citizenship in Louisiana. So this is a problem that's not going away. It's a problem that has fixes and it's a problem. The left is just totally dug in on that. They deny happens. Yeah. And the, and the only thing I can come up with for the motives of the left is that

[00:48:42] they want to make it easy to vote and easy to cheat. And they don't want to do anything at all to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Yeah. Well, crazy motivations. I, I, there's so many, uh, possibilities as to what motivates them. I think you had one there. Um, they're also in a weird state of psychological denial. Like I, I really think a bunch of them don't think this is happening.

[00:49:08] And I've got a great slideshow that I'll use where I show voter registration forms. And there's a question, are you a citizen? Yes or no. And they'll mark no. And they'll still get registered. Like the election officials are screwing up. Like everyone's screwing up everywhere. Yeah. And, and, and I, I believe that that can happen and the mistakes can happen. That's why we're trying to get this fixed so that we rectify those mistakes and we make it more difficult for

[00:49:36] mistakes to happen. And it, over 80% of Americans agree with us on this issue. The fact that Congress, it's not Congress, it's a Senate. The fact that the Senate won't get it done is just very frustrating, but we're, we keep working and we're looking for other angles so that we can try to get it passed into law. Very good. Well, thank you for having me. I think. Yes. Well, thank you so much for being

[00:50:02] on. I appreciate it. And where can people go to get more information, Christian? Publicinterestlegal.com. Or is it .org? It's a org. I can't believe I said .com. Let me do that again. Publicinterestlegal.org. Very good. Thank you so much. And I will make sure that we help get the word out that Trump voters were receiving death threats and we need to make sure that the people who issued those threats have accountability. Thank you, Jenny Beth. If you enjoyed today's conversation,

[00:50:32] go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit TeaPartyPatriots.org.