The Gerrymander Wars Come to Staten Island / Measles Cases Keep Going Up

This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. RelyaQuest. Agentic Defense for the Enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. The gerrymandering wars continue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. As a New York state judge orders a new house map that could cost Republicans a seat on Staten Island. Plus, the Trump administration official dismisses measles outbreaks as a cost of doing global business. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the journal's opinion pages, columnists Kim Strassel and Alicia Finley. President Trump helped to kick off an unusual round of mid-decade redistricting last year when he pressured Texas to redo its U.S. House map, hoping Republicans could pick up a few seats here and there and help Speaker Mike Johnson retain his slim majority in November's elections. But California has now responded in kind, and the tit-for-tat isn't over yet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this month called a special legislative session for April to help the GOP perhaps pick up another few seats. The Virginia legislature, meantime, is moving a constitutional amendment that would let lawmakers redistrict again before the midterm elections if voters approve that in coming months. Kim, starting out with the big picture, is it too early to take a guess at the final scoreboard here, whether Republicans who began this mid-decade redistricting might end up ahead by a seed or a few, whether Democrats might end up ahead, or whether despite all of this activity, we might end up in a wash, a partisan wash in November. Yeah, it's way too early to know. And let me explain a couple of reasons why. One is that we're still waiting to see. how things turn out in some of these states that you just mentioned. And there's some real gains for either side to be made in those particular competitions if they were able to pull it off. So in Virginia, for instance, to give you an example, there are 11 members of the House from Virginia. Right now, Republicans have five. If Virginia is able to pull off this voter ballot initiative because the voters will have to essentially give their approval to the General Assembly going around the state's bipartisan independent redistricting commission. But if they do give permission to do that, and if Democrats are very aggressive, they could change the maps to become 10 to 1 in favor of Democrats. So they could pick up essentially four or five seats in that state. Similarly, if Florida were to go ahead.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said that he wants to wait to call a special session until April because he wants to see how a Supreme Court decision comes down that has to do with redistricting. But if Florida were to move ahead, right now about 20 of Florida's 28 congressional seats are held by Republicans. Again, if they were to be very aggressive in their gerrymandered, they could pick up four or five. You've had what went on in Texas. You've got California's redistricting plan, which is now being challenged. by the US government and by different plaintiffs in front of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has now asked California to respond. to some of the arguments that have been made to decide whether or not they're going to take up this case. So you have the actions of the states out there, which are still very much in play. And then you have the actions of the judiciary. And a lot of this is going to hang on the Supreme Court decision that is being decided that deals with a district in Louisiana and whether or not they essentially get rid of what's left of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has to do with racial gerrymandering. If they were to do that, all of the kind of decision-making changes in many, many states and the litigation potentially changes. It's ongoing in all these states. So this is not just a question of one or two moves. I mean, there are 10, 15 things that are going to need to be settled here before we have any idea of who comes out ahead of this. One thing I will note, though. that if this ends up being a free-for-all and if all states are very aggressive, Republicans do have a lot more running room to pick up seats than do Democrats. One place that guidance from the Supreme Court on racial gerrymandering might be important is this state ruling in New York on the Staten Island House District that is held by Republican Nicole Maliatakis. State judge last week ruled that the design of that district essentially makes race. Racial vote dilution guaranteed. Let's listen to a clip of Representative Malutakis responding on New York 1 on Friday. Democrats already have an advantage. This is the only competitive seat in the entire city of New York, where 40% of voters are registered Democrat. 27% are Republican and conservative in the remainder are independent third parties. So despite this advantage that they have, The voters of this district fired the Democrat that was representing this district in 2020, and they elected me. And so it's very disheartening now that this law firm doesn't care about the will of the people and that they feel they can come in here and just change it. On the point about those numbers, New York State overall, 43% of voters supported President Trump in 2024. And the Republican Party in those House elections won 27%. of New York seats or seven out of 26. And what's interesting, Alicia, about what this judge has done is the ruling is based on a provision in the New York State Constitution that voters added in 2024 that says that under a totality of the circumstances, minority voters must be allowed to have the same opportunity as others to elect candidates.

of their choice. So the Staten Island district, Staten Island itself is not big enough population to have a house district on its own. So for years, I think since about 1982, the district that we're talking about here has included Staten Island and then a little piece of Brooklyn right over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. And what the plaintiffs in this case want is they want to take that Brooklyn piece and give that to a different district. And they want Staten Island to be grouped in with a chunk of lower Manhattan. The judge goes through some of the statistics in this case. So apparently in 1980, he says Staten Island was about 85% white. Now it's 57% white, 20% Latino, and 9% black. But Alicia, the claim here is that those Latino and black voters are not having the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice. but they are still only 29% of Staten Island. And so it raises the question here of if this is vote dilution, then if there's a district that is 20% black and Hispanic and elects a Republican, is that vote dilution? Should the courts get involved here and say we need to add in some voters from over here to make this district more likely to elect a Democrat? Well, I think this ruling, which was by a state judge, was somewhat convoluted. Now, the New York state law, her constitutional amendment that you alluded to, basically grafted parts of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and parts of this 1986 Gingles decision that said that legislatures. must draw majority minority districts when they are reasonably compact. And in order to ensure that minority groups can essentially choose their representative choice, the majority groups cannot defeat that candidate. And it's been interpreted in every which way by federal courts. And here it seems like the state court is doing so again in a very distorted way. And the reasoning here is that, well, minority groups automatically are inclined to vote for Democrats, and therefore this area should be represented by... Democrats. Now, I think you look at the 2024 results across the country, not just in New York, and you saw actually a shift toward Republicans, especially among many of these demographic groups, especially Latinos and Asians. So it wouldn't necessarily guarantee that a Democrat would represent this area. But that is essentially what the plaintiffs in this case are angling for us to get a Democrat. in this seat based on this kind of a contrived and concocted reading of the state law and this 1986 Gingles pressed it. Now, I think one reason there may be a reluctance for the state to go ahead and redraw this district.

at least at this point, is because the Supreme Court still hasn't handed down this decision in Louisiana that essentially has challenged this Gingles precedent. And so, therefore, if the Supreme Court were basically to overturn Gingles, that would really undermine the basis for which the plaintiffs and the state would redraw this district. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. This podcast is brought to you by ReliQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminate cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. RelyaQuest. Agentic Defense for the Enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com. Planning for retirement and all the things that go with it can be stressful. That's why Fisher Investments partners with you to understand your unique goals and needs so that they can build a tailored plan that helps you achieve a comfortable retirement. Whether you need help with financial planning, estate planning, tax optimization, or social security, Fisher has specialists to help. Fisher Investments. Now that's clearly different wealth management. Learn more at Fisher Investments.com. Investing in securities involves a risk of loss. Welcome back. Alicia mentions that the judge focuses in this ruling on statistics that he cites from an expert witness. on racially polarized voting. So according to this expert witness in the judge's ruling, in all federal state and city elections from 2017 to 2024, the black voters in this Staten Island House district voted together for the same candidates about 91% of the time. Latinos did about 88% of the time. And Asian voters in this district voted together about 59% of the time. But as Alicia mentions, Kim, those statistics can and do move. President Trump in 2024 made pretty sizable gains for Republicans among Hispanic voters. And the difficulty with these kinds of... rulings, I think, from judges who are applying broadly worded constitutional provisions is they don't really have any guidance about how they're supposed to use that broad language in the Constitution and apply it.

a judge to try to change things that way judicially instead of via voters and elected representatives in the state legislature. And I think all of those questions about who decides this and on the basis of what are all weighing on the Supreme Court's mind as they look at this decision. Let's turn to the measles numbers, which unfortunately only seemed to be getting worse. 2025 was the worst year of measles outbreaks in the United States in a long time. We now have the data in here is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2025, almost 2,300 total cases in the United States. The breakdown by vaccination status, 93% of those in people who were unvaccinated or whose MMR vaccine doses were unknown. The hospitalization rate overall was 11%, 243 cases. of hospitalization, 18% of those in children under the age of five, and then three measles deaths record in the United States. Now, here we are sitting in the, you know, mid to late January. We already have 415 total measles cases reported Alicia, a big outbreak down there in South Carolina. And an interesting comment hereby a leader at the CDC recently on a press call, Ralph Abraham, who is the principal deputy director at the CDC was asked about whether the U.S. might lose its measles elimination status that was achieved a couple of decades ago and signifies a lack of domestic transmission. And he said he didn't think it was that big of a deal. He's saying, quote, it's just the cost of doing business with our borders being somewhat porous. pointing to global and international travel. And Alicia, start with, is that the reality of where these measles cases are now coming from in the United States? Well, I think there are many isolated cases that are brought in by, you know, foreigners who weren't vaccinated. And that's how some of these outbreaks are starting. But they only make up about 2% or less of the cases. The reason why these outbreaks are growing, rather, is because of relatively low vaccine. vaccination rates. Measles is among most contagious viruses known to man or scientists. Every person who gets measles will on average infect about 18 others who are susceptible, meaning that they haven't previously been infected with measles or haven't been vaccinated. And so when you get these pockets of the country with low vaccination rates, measles can spread pretty rapidly. And that's when you saw in Texas last year in the Mennonite community. And now you're seeing that in kind of a rural places in South Carolina where you've had more than 700 cases identified. That probably underestimates them at the number because there are actually some kids who, you know, like as with other respiratory viruses, aren't very symptomatic.

But this has resulted in large-scale quarantines and school closers, actually. And it's not just the elementary schools. You're actually seeing this. You're seeing outbreaks in high schools. Vaccination rates did decline during the pandemic by several points, in part owing to declining public trust in vaccines and government health officials. But the low vaccination rates actually preceded the pandemic. When you have kids in high schools, all of a sudden getting sick with measles, it suggests that seven, eight, nine years ago, You know, when they were kindergartners, they weren't getting vaccinated. And you see this in the vaccination rates and that have been declining again in many states. But they were already below the herd immunity levels or levels that are required to achieve herd immunity, which is 95%. And this is why you're having more and more outbreaks in the U.S. And it's not just the U.S. You are also seeing this in Canada. Canada lost its measles elimination status. Last year, it actually has. had bigger spread than in the U.S. And some of that actually has to do with vaccination hesitancy. It was long more common among the left than it was actually among the right. So the new phenomenon of vaccine skepticism among conservatives has been kind of fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Previously, you have to recall that he really was a man of the left. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. This podcast is brought to you by ReliQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminate cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. Kim, I worry that we are in for some pain here in the years to come. Just looking at these vaccination rates, as Alicia says for measles, given its transmissibility, the herd immunity rate is suggested to be about 95%. The CDC figure for South Carolina schools is 91.2%. And remember, if that's the state overall, then that means that there are some communities that are probably higher than that, much higher probably, and there are some communities that are lower than that. But South Carolina isn't even on the low side here looking at the U.S. map. Next door, Georgia, 86.8%. Minnesota, 86.5%. Washington State, 90.9. Oregon, 90.5. Idaho, 78.5. So it is.

Not just red states, not just blue states. There are all sorts of states in here that have vaccination rates that are lower than the public health authorities would suggest is wise, given how quickly measles can spread through a population that does not have any immunity to it. And Kim, I think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr..'s messaging on this has been part of the problem. I think it might help. I get that all the vaccine hesitancy, the skepticism of public health authorities we have. coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it would help, I think, if we had somebody who was a real trusted physician leading the federal government's response to these things. Yeah, I think Alicia just touched on the really worrisome aspect of this, which is the new bipartisan nature of vaccine skepticism. I mean, vaccine skepticism has been going on for a long time and it was largely on the left. And this way precedes the pandemic. You know, I was writing about the trial lawyers who were engaged with really trying to drive the vaccines cause autism message like. 15, 20 years ago, but it was more isolated along the left in communities that happen to support people like trial lawyers. And the right and also public health authorities were the bulwarks against this. The people that said, no, look, the science simply does not show that. And it's been repeated to not show that again and again. And then entirely because of politics, I mean, well, you got the backlash due to the forced COVID vaccination, which was one of the worst mistakes public health authorities could ever have made. That made a lot of Republicans very suspicious of vaccination in general and made them more susceptible to that kind of skepticism. And then in this sort of grand and horrific political bargain, Donald Trump decided to give, you know, support to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. in return for his voters in the election and his ending his presidential run, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. And the next you know, He's HHS secretary, and this guy is the hero of the trial lawyer left who has led the call on vaccine skepticism and basically made it his mission sense being an HHS secretary to fuel distrust. We have all kinds of the CDC recently updated its vaccine safety webpage to state that it's simply not true that vaccines don't cause autism, that it's not an evidence-based claim. That's false. So we have our public health authorities now spreading. fear. We've got the trial lawyers doing their damage. We have Republicans who've sort of jumped in on this because they're all part of this new Make America healthy weirdness that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. is doing. And those numbers, unless we turn something around here, are going to continue to fall in terms of herd immunity. And those cases are going to continue to grow up. And the victims here are not just the kids of the parents who are not getting them vaccinated. But I would like to point out, it's also the kids that are immunocompromised. can't get vaccines, and so are more at risk at the older and elderly, who might have been inoculated a long time ago, but that resistance is waning. There's a lot of people that are going to be victims of this other than those who simply decide to opt out. Thank you, Kim and Alicia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pw podcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button, and we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch.

Planning for retirement and all the things that go with it can be stressful. That's why Fisher Investments partners with you to understand your unique goals and needs so that they can build a tailored plan that helps you achieve a comfortable retirement. Whether you need help with financial planning, estate planning, tax optimization, or social security, Fisher has specialists to help. Fisher Investments. Now that's clearly different wealth management. Learn more at Fisher Investments.com. Investing in securities involves the risk of loss.