Nevertheless, Xi Persisted

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest. May 14th, 26, Nevertheless, She Persisted Edition. I am David Plotz of CityCast in Washington, D.C.C. From Yale University Law School, The New York Times Magazine, and most importantly, book leave. Yes. Emily Baslon. You really embrace that book leave bit there. That was good.

I like that. I need all of the encouragement I can get. Thank you very much. And now he still doesn't have a job and I'm giving up. Yes. I outlasted him longer than Justice Breyer. I actually wrote one for this week and I was like, you know what? I just don't care anymore.

I don't care. He's just unemployed, whatever. He had a meeting with an editor this week. He just told us that. That's something. This is John Dickerson. You congratulations, John. You are greater than my imagination.

I feel this is a triumph. I think I might just wallow in this success. This week on the Gab Fest, what will come out of the Xi Jinping Trump Summit? Then have we lost the Iran War? And then how badly were the latest round of gerrymandering hurt? Democrats and hurt the nation. Plus, we will have cocktail chatter.

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donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated over 200 million donations and counting. Head over to bombus.com slash political and use code political for 20% off your first purchase. That's BOM, BAS.com slash political, code political, a checkout. We're joined by Jane Perlis, host of the podcast, Face Off U.S. versus China, which is produced by our producer, Nina Porzuki, by the way. And Jane, of course, is the former New York Times China correspondent? Jane, what is China hoping to get out of this week's summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping? And what can the U.S. hope, if anything, to get out of it? Well, we're just midpoint. And everybody, the Chinese side and the American side is being very cautious from what I can see on what they're saying. We've had a good. grand banquet in the Great Hall of the People where Trump has sort of swooned all over the Chinese predictably and Xi Jinping has said nice things about Trump. We don't really know what's gone on behind and maybe nothing much has gone on behind, but we do know what both sides want. China wants

Trump to keep tariffs as they are and in exchange, China will buy beef, beans and Boeing's American products, which all do very well in swing states, by the way. Trump would probably seem to want to want some help on Iran, and in exchange, the thinking goes. China would like the United States to reduce its armament packages to Taiwan, ideally to get out of Taiwan altogether. That's probably not going to happen. I mean, it might if Trump had total say, but there are people in Congress, of course, who are very attached to Taiwan.

So that's basically the equations that both sides want. And we'll probably come out of that with various degrees of fulfillment of those things, I would guess. Although I have to say on Iran, I think the Chinese are going to be very cautious. I mean, there is this saying by Napoleon, if your adversary is making a mistake, don't help him out.

Just let him continue where he's going. And, you know, China historically doesn't like to get in the middle of a mess and they don't like to do public diplomacy. And I'm not convinced that they really want to do much private diplomacy with the Iranians either. I mean, they're hurting a bit, but not that much from the Iran crisis. Jane, what about the role of the very high-level chips that China would need to catch up to the United States and the AI race? Do you think that's something that could be up for being a bargained way here? And is that something that Americans should worry about in terms of Trump?

giving up too much? Well, as you've probably seen, Jensen Huang hitched a very dramatic ride on Air Force One. He sort of jumped on the plane in Alaska, and I know that he travels not like a billionaire, but like a hitchhiker. He literally had a backpack on his back as he got on Air Force One. I thought that was kind of neat. I mentioned Jensen Huang because his Navidia chips are at the center of this, and Trump has said that he gave a green light. a few months ago for Navidia chips to be sold to China.

But what's interesting is the Chinese haven't given the green light for those chips to actually appear in China. And I think some people think that China, Xi Jinping would like their own chip makers to catch up to Navidia and don't want Navidia's chips to be swamping all around China as a sort of a free gift, if you like. They would really like their own tech guys to develop. nevidia's equivalent. Jane, I want to use a phrase the president uses a lot to step back just a little bit, which is who has the cards? Is it obviously in knowable who has the cards in this relationship

What does a world where China is dominant and ascendant and the United States is weaker and declining look like? How is it different than the world today? Is the dollar no longer the reserve currency? Is, you know, our global relations carried out differently? just curious. I'm thinking about what my children's life might be like in 30 years. I think your children will see a far more dominant China, and you may see a China that has surpassed the United States in the world, certainly in 30 years, and for sure a more dominant China in Asia. I think, you know, the Chinese keep saying the West is declining, and by that

they mean, we're going to take over Asia pretty soon. What does that mean? It means that I think your children will no longer see American allies in Asia. Japan and South Korea will be in very different positions. They probably have their own nuclear weapons, assuming we're all still alive, which is sort of a gloomy thought, but nuclear weapons are going to play an increasing role in all of this because there are no treaties, et cetera, and the Chinese are expanding their nuclear arsenal a lot. This is the kind of thing that I'm worrying about. And I think that you'll see the Chinese being far more dominant in world trade. They're all dominating, but they'll be far more dominant. And who knows, by then, the Chinese may be

dominating American manufacturing. Maybe American car companies will no longer exist, and it will be hybrid companies with China, or it will be Chinese companies that will be producing cars if we still have cars. I mean, 30 years is a long way away. So it's a little hard to extrapolate. I'm not a science fiction writer, David, but I think you'll see a lot more of China everywhere you go, particularly in Asia, and maybe also in Europe, because Europe seems to be getting weaker and weaker, if I may say, and Russia is clamoring at their doorstep, and China and Russia are partners together. So that's a pretty eerie world to look at. And maybe the United States will be reserved just to the Western Hemisphere, which is what Trump seems to want. This question is a little out of order,

but I'll ask anyway, if we get to that world that you are imagining for us in 30 years, will we look back on this moment and Donald Trump's presidency as the key turning point that allowed China to ascend in the way you're describing? Could. And you know what, Emily? Maybe the turning point is Trump's intervention in Iran because already the Chinese are saying, look, the United States can't even fight a war properly in Iran. One of their most prominent spokesman just yesterday said, Wushin-Boh, this guy in Shanghai who is authorized to talk basically for the government, he said, look, the Americans can't even fight the war in Iran without taking their prize weapons

out of Asia, meaning aircraft carriers and troops and missiles out of South Korea. What he's saying is basically the United States has had to denude its allies in Asia in order to fight in Iran. And for the Chinese, that's a very telling point, I have to say. James, just keep going down that road, which is to say, what case are they making? Are they making the case to their neighbors, which is the U.S. will abandon you when it is convenient or play that out a little bit more in terms of how they see Iran as a possible opportunity? Well, I think they see the U.S. being bogged down in Iran and that South Korea and Japan, the two most important allies of the United States in Asia getting increasingly nervous. Maybe they see that American

troops in South Korea and Japan will be drawn down. Remember, there are more than 50,000 American troops in Japan. Maybe the United States is going to need those troops. There are more than 30,000 troops in South Korea. Maybe they'll need some of those. And they'll probably continue with rhetoric that makes the United States more skittish, more nervous, feeling more like the secondary power that China wants it to be. They'll just keep pressing and pressing and pressing. And they're already pressing, I might say, on other countries or countries in Southeast Asia, like Australia, like Singapore, like the Philippines, like all those countries that are very important allies of the United States. China is beavering away to undermine American positions there.

And I might add, those countries are responding. I mean, the Australian Prime Minister goes to China quite a lot. Singapore's always had a long relationship with China. They're doing quite well, thank you very much. Jane, just as a last question bringing it back to the summit, are there things that in an impetuous Donald Trump, and we know that Donald Trump is an impetuous person, an impulsive impetualist Donald Trump could do in this summit that would be lastingly damaging for the U.S.? I don't know whether everybody would agree would be lastingly damaging, but I think he could set the table for the United States support of Taiwan to be reversed, to set the ground for that.

I'll tell you why. There's a very strong element in Congress for Taiwan, but the American people don't really know what Taiwan is. I mean, how many people know that Taiwan is an island democracy 90 miles from China, but 8,000 miles from the United States? And why do the American people care? about sending troops to defend this thing called Taiwan. I mean, I don't mean to be disrespectful to Taiwan, but I don't think it's a big thing in the American electorate,

and I think the Chinese know that, and they can keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And that would be considered to be really, what can you say, the beginning of the end for the United States in Asia. Jane Perlis is the host of the podcast. Face Off U.S. v. China. Jane, thanks so much for coming on the Gaffa. Thank you.

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Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quince.com slash GabFest for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash GabFest for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash GabFest. Atlantic had an article with the headline Checkmate in Iran by Robert Elena Kagan this week. Robert Elena Kagan, a noted realist writer on foreign policy. And Elena Kagan argues, to my mind, pretty persuasively, that the U.S. has completely lost the war

with Iran, like completely. He basically says the U.S. has no real path to victory. The war has given Iran global leverage through its control of the Strait of Hormuz, that our Gulf allies have now been significantly weakened because Iran has this control. They're also annoyed at us. The global economy is undermined. We've gutted our supply of munitions and revealed our military limits, and it's basically an abject defeat. Articles in the Post and the Times and elsewhere also were that our own intelligence assessments say that are vaunted by Pete Hegseth military victory is maybe not as vaunted as we think that Iran still has access to almost all of its missile sites. It still has significant munitions it can use and the government of Iran can likely

hold out for months against an American embargo. So Emily, Trump and his allies are calling this reporting treasonous and false and insist we have utterly devastated Iran. And what a victory, who's right? Huh. Well, I don't think I'm going to go with the treason argument. And it is kind of breathtaking. I mean, I think even though nothing is surprising anymore, we have to pause on how much the Trump administration is going after the press for just reporting things. Also, had Seth going after Senator Mark Kelly for talking about how U.S. munitions were low when and accusing Kelly of revealing information from an internal briefing, a secret briefing. And Then Kelly said, no, no, I was quoting you.

There's just this fury about information coming out about the war that puts the administration in a bad light. And they don't respond to the content of the information so much as just the gall in their view of anyone who would contradict them. And it is really striking and fills me with gloom. Though I hope that people see it and don't like it. In terms of who's right, I mean, what I take from this. is the way in which the Strait of Hormuz is now revealed as this, forgive me, like Trump card that Iran has. And I feel like that was, it's not like the geography changed, like that waterway was there before, right? But Iran hadn't tried to take control of it and put in these strip mines and block ships from passing in the way that it has. And now it seems to be able to really continue that for an extended period of time. Then of course, there was Trump's promise that,

the U.S. was going to escort trips across, but that seems to have been scuttled because we were not allowed to use the bases we wanted to use in Saudi Arabia. And so it just shows that we don't, that the U.S. does not have command of the regional politics here in a way that, I mean, I'm surprised by that. The way that you should when you start a war. Yeah. In the way that you should when you start a war. And I just more and more think that the earlier reporting in the Times that, you know, Pete Hegseth and Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump this was going to be an easy walk in the park like Venezuela and he went for that and there wasn't a whole lot of thinking about plan B and C and D just seems to be true. And now Trump is also asking the intelligence communities

to figure out what it would mean if he just declared victory. And I get why he's asking because I don't exactly see what other good option he has. And that's basically Elena Kagan's argument. Right. You can't declare defeat. It's not like we're it's like you don't declare defeat and end the war, but you can declare victory and end the war. John, what would that mean? And what But with Iran controlling the straight, like what would it even mean to declare victory? I just said, once again, we got to quote, William, to Comsa-Sherman, every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster. And the reporting, consistent reporting in the Times and the journal of the president thinking

this was going to be easy, seems to have led us there. And I'd also, and I'll come back to your question, David, about what would it mean to declare defeat? Ian Bremmer had a very useful list of all the things that Trump said he was going to do with this war, rescue the Iranian people, choose the next Iranian leader, take the oil and the ballistic missile program, and support for regional proxies, remove the enriched uranium, and end the nuclear enrichment capabilities. The only one on that list that has, where there is not a zero, is probably support for regional proxies, which has been made more difficult by this war. every other thing that Trump claimed this war was in the service of has not happened and shows no

chance of happening because, as Elena Kagan points out, you would have to go maximalist, which means ground troops. It means even more destabilization. And that what has been revealed is not just the control of the Strait of Hermuz, which is important. And which now when you think about the, if the point of this was to deny Iran a weapon, in fact, it is handed Iran a weapon, which is this proved the test case about how effective the Strait of Hormuz can be. But also the Iranian attacks on other Arab countries that have damaged or slowed their natural gas production is another way in which Iran has shown that it can hurt the global economy. So a full-throated U.S. attack, ground troops, and the rest could invite a retaliation that could cripple the global economy for years, not just for many months. What would defeat look like?

Here's the problem. The president is already polling showing. and world leaders think, like, what did you do this for? And what was the point? And if you declare, if you even implicitly declare defeat, then what was the point of this war? No, declare, I think it's declare victory. You can't declare defeat. Right. Well, you declare victory, but in, you, you declared victory out loud, but implicitly, you're declaring defeat. And that's what Elena Kagan's essentially saying, is that that, is that solution is the only, it's the least bad option. And yes, you declare victory. and you try and sell it.

The problem is, as we've talked about before, the country has a vote. The rest of the world has a vote. And no one thinks the U.S. is winning by the measurements that count. Which, by the way, when we go back and hear Pete Hegseth talking about we negotiate with bombs, day by day, that looks dumber and dumber. Maybe there's some magical way in which this ends up where that turns out to be true. But certainly after you read the Elena Kagan piece, you realize just how moronic that saying that in public. is. But essentially, David, it would be to say, we got Iran to do something about enrichment.

And so the whole point of this was to deny them a nuclear weapon. And so we, you know, we did that. I mean, it'll just be to try and sell it and use words in a way that the common meaning of those words, you know, will be warped into something new. But, I mean, I don't, I don't know how this ends. So I think it was Tom Friedman, I believe, in the Times, who argued actually that there's a different path that maybe the world needs to pursue, which isn't. So there's the path that you're describing as basically just saying accepting, okay, Iran is kind of one. They also have control of this and they are going to exercise control, whether they're going to collect tolls on every ship every day. We don't know. but it's clear that that control over the strait is a weapon that they have and they're going to use it to be able to participate in the world economy and to exercise leverage. And so they now have that. That is the model of declaring defeat. There's another model, which is to go totally, go to war, destroy the regime, and the costs of that are so profound, like the cost in lives. And there's not support in the world for it. There's not support in the United States for how that would damage us. It would damage the Gulf economies. It would be incredibly.

costly and deadly. The way that Friedman, the path that Friedman laid out is that we can't have a world in which regional powers are exercising control over key choke points in the world economy and the way that Iran has now choked off the Strait of Hormuz. And so we simply can't have a world where other key passages, whether it's the Panama Canal, whether it's going around in the South China Sea where it is accepted that a power can just say, nope, I am going to squeeze this off. And sorry, global economy, you are now paying a tax to us. We can't have that. And therefore, the world has to prevent Iran from exercising control in the world by which he is implying, it's, you know, kind of Europe and Asian powers plus the United States, actually need to go

and police that straight and allow ship traffic to continue. Does that seem at all plausible to you, Emily. No. Oh, no, I want to hear because I also paired these articles in my head and thought that they were talking about the same problem, but finding different arguments to make about them. And I didn't think Hagan really addressed the issue that Friedman is putting front and center of what you just said, that we cannot as a world have this waterway that one country controls and demands tolls for. John, you had a strong. Well, if you were going to make that case, you have to persuade the other countries to join. in this global policing process. And you know who doesn't do very much of that negotiating with the other countries in a good faith way that is based on shared interests and a common history of shared norms and responsibilities is Donald Trump. Like what you've described that Friedman describes is maybe a reality that everybody comes to. And in fact, let's go even one step further, it's a reality that Donald Trump has talked about.

I mean, it's not unlike saying, okay, nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This is what that looks like. Like, you have to do, you have to engage in maybe it's been executed poorly, but like somebody's got to take the, you know, got to stop it, the nuclear program. And that's what, that was the effort here. You can talk about these things, but like somebody has to take action. And, you know, obviously the Europeans and Asia and the rest want a straight. that's open and predictable and all the rest, but nobody's stepping forward. Can I just say one other thing is Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed on 60 Minutes,

and his definition of success was that all enriched uranium is out of Iran, which Iran has said is not going to happen, that the enrichment sites are dismantled, which Iran does not want to do, and that it gives up its support for proxies and basically shrinks to nothingness its ballistic missile production. The reason I said before I didn't see any way in which you can declare victory while simultaneously declaring defeat is not only because the president has said they cannot have a nuclear program. And so any declaration of victory has to have no Iranian nuclear program and the Iranians seem totally unwilling to do that, but also Israel has listed those demands, which also seem quite maximalist relative to where the war is right now. I mean, I guess I can imagine that in the end, something like what Friedman is talking about will be necessary. but wouldn't the like the part that seems like total like sort of wishful thinking to me is the idea that they're going to come in on the side of the U.S. Like that they're going to bail out Donald Trump and the United States.

Like when they show up and negotiate whatever this is, it's going to be on their terms. And in some way that I would imagine that the United States will lose. And this is like a general theme right now. How much long term damage is Donald Trump doing? And obviously it relates to the summit in China as well. Did you guys read about the new acronym? So there's taco and now there's nacho, Nacho Not a Chance, Hormuz opened.

And the principle of Nacho is John Gaffa. John Gaffaude. John Gaphaas so much his camera lost sight of him. Well, I think because you got to because obviously somebody is out there furiously scribbling on a whiteboard, macho. Let's figure out what does macho mean? No, nacho goes with taco. You need salt.

There'll be salsa. Guac. We'll have guac. Oh, my God. It's a Mexican food set of acronyms. You have to have some time of Mexican food to make Facebook. Boy, you really, really intentionally tanked Oman. That would be burrito.

I just came up with that. Oh, wow. What? Oh, my God. You're creative faculties released from having to come up with ideas of what I might be doing with myself. Now they can be put towards burrito, taco, guacamole, and the rest. The point of the point of nacho salsa and the like is. Yes.

The point of nacho is that is the idea that this is now just the world economy is now that there's suddenly an extra tax on petroleum. because access to a significant source of petroleum has been shown to be unreliable, and therefore people are going to have to pay extra to get access to that petroleum, which means petroleum prices globally are going to be higher, which hurts, you know, the world. And it really helps China. It really helps China because China is investing in kind of the non-petroleum energy market by building what they're calling the electrostate.

And so this is another example of the sort of side effects of, of this war, you know, you go to war to protect, in some sense, you're going to war against Iran to secure energy, to protect the energy market. But all you've done is made energy markets more unreliable. And that has helped your global rivals. Good job. Can I, one other thing that I think we should give in mind that I don't know the answer to this, but we've talked about it before. When and if this all ends, even if the president declares victory, this sort of declare victory out loud implicitly declared defeat, is that he has said that he wants an agreement that's more powerful than the one Obama put together through the JCPOA, whether that is going to be true.

It seems quite dim the chance that Iran will give up more than it did in that agreement. But, of course, the equation of that agreement is not what did Trump get, what did Obama get, because the cost day by day by day, not just in money, but in the disruption you're talking about David, the Pentagon came out this week and said the war cost, I can't remember, is it, 26 or 29 billion? 29 billion. 29 billion. That's a bogus number.

Totally not true. Meanwhile, they're asking for 100 billion. Right. Four more than the week before and not counting the $4 billion, at least, that it'll cost to rebuild those things that have been blown up by the Iranians, which the times and post have shown is a longer list and more comprehensive than anything that the Pentagon has said has been attacked. But nevertheless, the point is.

is that if you're going to make that comparison between what was the preexisting condition that was the JCPOA that Trump got out of and whatever Trump gets out of this war, you have to account for all of the costs. And then whatever he got, even if it's marginally better than JCPOA, which looks highly, highly, highly improbable, what was it worth the cost? Can we close just on a political question for you, John, which is, what is it that Republicans in Congress and elsewhere, want as a resolution to this war.

Because, of course, what they want and what Trump will allow them to have are very different things. And of course, this party is now completely subservient in most ways to what Trump is doing to his whims. So their desires might be totally irrelevant. But what is it that if John Cornyn and Mike Johnson could wave a magic wand, what do they want to happen? I think they want something to say about this.

war and that it has come to a conclusion. So they want some kind of, even if it is this public, you know, Declaration of Victory, Private Declaration of Defeat, they want something they can say, you know, the president stepped up. He saw a threat. He took on that threat. And now Iran has been denied a nuclear weapon for 50 years or forever. And of course, there will be stories as there already are that that's not the case, that it's very much not the case. and in fact, Iran might be emboldened and more hardened and they don't care. They just want a thing they can say out loud and just keep saying, which is basically we won. Because a fight in which you are saying we won and your opponent is saying, no, you didn't,

is better than gas at, you know, heading towards $6. I mean, again, this is the best they can possibly get. It's not so great because it's not only is the war another way in which the administration has taken its eye off the ball. We had inflation numbers this week. But the gas pump every time you go is a reminder that the administration and the president either took his eye off the ball or did things to make people's conditions worse. So I think they just, they want something they can say, even if it requires them to hold up an apple and say, this America, ladies and gentlemen, is an orangutan. Like, that's better than what's happening at the moment. Can we just on one more

politics question. I wanted to ask you guys what you thought. You know, Trump said this when he was asked whether he takes into account Americans' financial pain in thinking about negotiating with Iran. He said absolutely not. I don't think about it for one second. I mean, obviously, he thought he was like being a tough guy in that moment. But I think that is totally fine for him to say, and you want presidents to say that. What you don't want is a president to go to war

without the goods and for possibly not sufficiently serious reasons. But I mean, if you're in the middle of a war and you really think you're denying Iran a nuclear weapon, then like, yet that's more important. And there's a cost. And that's why we should pay attention when we elect presidents, because they get to make decisions about what costs we bear for things that that president thinks is more important. That's all, it's all fine. Politically, it's awful for him because, you know, it's a soundbite that can be used. People already believe it. It talks about the thing people care the most about. Nobody thinks this war is actually to stop Iran from

having a nuclear weapon or that it was started for that reason. And even if it was, they don't approve of the fact that he's done it. So it's a political disaster. But as a matter of being a president, I think it's a perfectly fine thing to say. It's dragged me as the completely right thing to say like in the middle of World War II. Not right now because of all the undermining structural weaknesses we've been talking about. You're right about tough guy. I think the other political thing that you hear Republicans saying is, you know, well, I know this is uncomfortable, but like, would you rather have a nuclear bomb in your kindergartner's recess? Like, you know, they escalate the, the mushroom cloud.

And they'll keep doing that. So by the time we get to November, it'll be like, would you rather have a nuclear bomb in your breakfast cereal? You know, it'll just get more and more extreme.

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Republicans are winning the gerrymandering war, and America is losing. This week brought more news about how Republicans are going to remake congressional districts during this midterm cycle to dilute Democratic voters. And Democrats are failing to do the same nearly as effectively. Alabama is going to move a primary in time to draw maps that zero out districts held by black Democrats. Louisiana is doing the same post the Supreme Court ruling about the Voting Rights Act. Mississippi is doing the same to South Carolina's governor just called a special session to do something similar. Meanwhile, Virginia's Supreme Court threw out a map that likely would have eliminated for Republican seats in that state. So, John, just quickly adding it up on this. this gerrymandering piece, what does it look like each party has done in this really dismal, bad for the world, bad for the country, bad for the future, spasm of mid-decade re-jerrymandering? It really is a spasm of awfulness. It's happened so fast and turned so quickly. I mean, two weeks ago, many of us were believing and writing that because despite the fact I don't have a job, I do have a substack. So anyway, the, the,

We don't mention that. Yes, I know. We try and keep that quiet. It's like people in the early aughts who, you know, left wherever they worked. And they were like, I'm in consulting, right? And they were like consulting with their cat. Anyway, there was a period where it was like basically not only was Donald Trump's folly in Texas a folly, but it looked like Democrats were going to pick up a seat.

Now the case is on the outside, worst case scenario for Democrats. there are possibly 17 pickup opportunities for Republicans. Let me give you the math. On April 22nd, this is based on the numbers from the Cook Political Report. So on April 27th, there were 200 locked up secure Democratic seats, 202 locked up secure Republican seats. We should talk back to your point, David, about how awful this is for democracy.

419 seats where it's basically predetermined who's going to win. The transmission lines of democracy are not strong. But in that case, there were 18 toss-up seats, and where you had 217 Democrat locked up, 202 Republican locked up, the Democrats needed to basically win one of the 18 toss-up seats to regain control of the House. The more they won, the bigger their majority. Then May 13th, by May 13th, that was yesterday, the number of Democratic seats that are locked up has dropped to 208 because of these gerrymandering gesticulations.

The number of locked up Republican seats is up to 209. That means Democrats need under that scenario to win 10 out of 18 toss-ups to regain control. If the maximum situation of Republican success happens, there will be 203 locked up Democratic seats, 214 locked up Republican seats. Democrats would then need to win 15 of 18 toss-ups to take control of the House. So that's how quickly things have flipped in terms of just the basic map. Emily, this is just appalling. I mean, it's appalling what the Democrats did in California, what the Democrats did in California,

what they were trying to do in Virginia, but it is deeply, deeply are appalling how the Republicans have taken this to its extreme. And just for all of us who are citizens, it's a disaster. You're going to have situations like in Tennessee, Tennessee is a state where 40% of voters are Democrats vote for Democrats is very likely you'll have no House seats represented by a Democrat. And, you know, something similar was in mind for Virginia. it's it's just bad on every front and it's the Supreme court's callous, stupid, weak decision that has put us here. I mean, right.

So we don't have anything like proportional representation in the Constitution or in any federal statute. And so we have gotten further and further away from protecting anything like that, right? And this is a series of decisions because the Supreme Court ruled out any federal statute. case, any federal challenge based on partisan gerrymandering in a case called Rucho versus Common Cause. That was in 2019. And so what was left was the Voting Rights Act protection of minority opportunity districts. And now that is gone. And indeed, in the decision in Justice Samuel Alito's opinion in this latest case, Louisiana versus Calais, he said, as long as the state is

redistricting for partisan advantage, as opposed to intentional racial discriminatory. reasons, that's fine. So that's where we are. And, you know, there also is this latest development about timing. The court had a choice about whether to immediately let its judgment go into effect, which has it did. And that is what has unrolled this whole latest wave of states like Tennessee, which was what the other party not Louisiana was asking for. And they chose to go ahead, even though it's very unusual for them to make a move like that above the objections of the other party. And also, it was totally at odds with the way the court handled redistricting in the wake of a decision in Alabama in 2022. So in other words, in both Louisiana and Alabama's case,

Republicans are benefiting from the court's decision about redistricting, even though the court is flip-flopped, completely reversed itself on whether, you know, the map gets to go into effect in the next election or not. So that's also just really bad for the court in a week in which Chief John Roberts was moaning the idea that people think that the Supreme Court is political. There's just something very rich about all of this. Yeah, he could have decided that they could have come down with the same decision about the VRA, but not done this timing piece and done something towards fixing the condition that he was complaining about, which is that people think that the court is too political.

Right. You know, it's possible there'll be enough of a wave election, right? If Democrats are ahead on the generic ballot by like, what, five or six points, John, then More than four. Then they could still win all of those toss-up seats you identified a few minutes ago. Then it will look like maybe this didn't matter a whole lot. But these underlying problems for democracy are going to remain. And they're going to be with us in future elections. And you know, what you were talking about, David, where you just have basically like no federal representation for a big group of voters in lots of different states is really troubling. And in southern states in particular, a lot of the people in that unrepresented group are black people. And so we're sort of reverting in this, like, weird way back to this previous regime in which that was true, even though, of course, one of the justifications for Samuel Alito's opinion is that, like, everything's groovy and we don't have to worry about discrimination against black people anymore.

I mean, oddly, we're in this position where the Senate might be now easier for the Democrats to capture than the House. And everything is becoming the electoral college. We all look, you know, when you as an American every four years look at the electoral math. I mean, it's a form of math that nobody else in the world ever has to do because no one has this insane system that we have. And you look at it and any person looking at it says, this is a really weird way to elect somebody. This is a very unusual and stupid way to decide who the president is going to be that this winner take all states and people's votes don't matter in a lot of states effectively. But what we've done is now with this kind of gerrymandering everywhere, gerrymandering for partisan reasons is A-OK, is make the House also effectively like the electoral college, where if you control a state, you will cut up its congressional district so that you also control fully its congressional delegation. That's a disaster. It's just a disaster.

Emily, I have like a Supreme Court precedent question. look, I don't, I think, you know, a number of our justices are quite happy with this outcome. And politically, I think if you looked at Nolito or Thomas, they think this is hunky dory. I don't think, I think that Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts in particular and even Justice Gorsuch are not, they're people who are like believe in the fundamentals of American democracy. and they do they do kind of think that the that the plain field and how things unfold is important and that that you can't just simply have a majoritarian country, it doesn't work. You know, they don't believe that as much as other justices, the justices who have opposed these rulings do. But is there any world in which the partisan gerrymandering is so toxic and so damaging and so clearly antithetical to what

everyone thinks democracy should be that the Supreme Court can revisit that ruling. Well, first of all, I would just note that, you know, Chief John Roberts in particular has a long record of these kinds of rulings going back to Shelby County, which was the ruling that got it another part of the Voting Rights Act. And I think the Voting Rights Act, yes. I'm just, I'm not, I don't think, I don't have any hope for that. I mean, the partisan gerrymandering is like a feels to me a very different temperature, a very different activity than this question around race. Because partisan gerrymandering, you're allowing legislators to pick. It's like, I'm going to pick who votes for me. I get to pick. Yeah. And he has a number of decisions in which he has gone along with or furthered that agenda in a way that would seem at odds with what is best for the democratic process.

And I think you can glean from that jurist prints that he sees threats to the country differently than you do or than I do, right? that there's this idea of this embattled Republican minority that needs to be protected in the country. I think that's kind of a through line. But in terms of what a remedy would be, I don't have any faith in the Supreme Court to change this. But Congress, and I mean, maybe this is even more pleased to say. Yes, I was going to say. But I'm going to say it anyway. I mean, this is 100 percent something that we could have a new law about. Like there are technocratic solutions to this problem, right? You could create a national standard that has some provisions like compactness of a district in it and something about the partisan composition of the state that gets taken into account so that you set limits on gerrymandering. I mean, this is some and you could also have a rule against mid-decade redistricting.

Like this is not rocket science. The Congress could legislate about that. Right. But the problem with Congress, this is where I'm going back to why this sort of happens. to be the Supreme Court is that Congress has now self-selected. It's selected people who have chosen this path. They have been elected using this path where full partisan gerrymandering is part of the package of becoming a member of Congress. And that's why it has to be fixed by another branch that is not as subjunctive to that issue. And that's why having only 18 competitive

districts is the problem, because everybody else was elected through the system that you're saying that you're talking about, David. Right. No, you're totally right. You believe. locked in a system that has the worst incentives in it. The problem is that, David, I think for the solution you're talking about, you need some kind of court reform. And for a variety of reasons, Congress would have to be in on that too, right? Because, yeah. Or you need the or you need, I guess what I'm trying to ask is, is there anything in the

Rucho decision that is like, oh, wow, this is so bad that actually, you know, if a new plaintiff brought a new set of facts, we would reconsider this. Right. They could come up with a major question. I mean, they can, like shoehorn to come up with a new way of thinking. Sure. They can do whatever they want. They can just say, like, we were wrong.

That was dumb and we take it back. Like, they do that. They have done that in the past. It's just hard to imagine this conservative majority making that ruling. Emily, on Rucho or other instances with respect to partisan gerrymandering, did the court majority in the court say, it's not so bad to have partisan gerrymandering? Or did they say this is an issue where we don't have, where it's, It's not our role in the shared power system to engage in this, which seems to me if we're trying

to get to David's Nirvana, which is suddenly, you know, a coconut falls on the head of John Roberts. And he says, oh, you know, I've got a new workaround that will actually get at this underlying problem of democracy, which is that you can't have a transmission between the way people feel and the governing that's done by the people who represent them if so many of those people who represent them are locked up in a system where the incentives are contrary to the people who live in the actual district. Was it, Emily, that they made the decision based on thinking partisan gerrymandering was not that bad or that they were like, no, this isn't the role for the Supreme Court?

The latter. They said at that point, they were still saying, well, partisan gerrymandering, distasteful. But it is not our job. It is not the job of the federal courts to police this. I mean, they did leave open the route of state courts, you know, providing remedies for gerrymandering based on state constitutions. And that has happened. I mean, that is the case in Pennsylvania, for example.

Right. But it's happened in states where, like, it happens in democratic states. They're blue or purple. And it just, like, therefore it exacerbates the inequity. No, completely. And then when Virginia tried to undo it, they got all tangled up because they didn't do it fast enough. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you.

I feel like we could talk for a long time and not come to an answer of which branch of government is the most or least likely to save us because they are not. necessarily conjoined, right? They're intertwined and they all seem like they are going in the wrong direction right now. Let's go to cocktail chatter. When you're having a gerrymander, a drink that is made up of ingredients and come from very different parts of a state and are very, very unusual ingredients because you have a gerrymander district. that includes your mountains, your plains, your ocean, all in one district. What are you going to be chattering about, John Dickerson?

First, I'm going to be talking about the definition of the word cocktail, which we were thinking about Mrs. Dickerson and I, and I can't remember why we didn't get. I think the cocktail got in the way of figuring out where it came from. But then my colleague, Annie Cohen, found the definition because May 13th was World Cocktail Day. And apparently... Can we guess? like country of origin or things like that? Sure.

Sure. I don't know if my answer will solve it for you, but go for it. I think it's probably it's a French word. It's a French derivation is my guess. And something to do with cook, like a chicken, like weirdly something chickeny. Huh. Okay. Well.

I'm wrong. But that was just a guess. It could be. It could be. I'm sure that like the term 86th, there are like, 98 different definitions of it. But the one that Annie found was from in 1806, the newspaper editor Harry Croswell, who students of First Amendment law will know because it was his paper that was in an incredibly fascinating case where Alexander Hamilton essentially defends the paper

and in New York law anyway leads to the idea that basically truth is a sufficient defense in libel cases. And it turns out to be a case where Croswell claims that Jefferson had been using this guy named James Thompson Calendar, who Gapfest listeners have heard about before, to smear the federalists, everybody from Washington and Adams, including Ann Hamilton. And basically, the defense was, yeah, well, Cromwell was telling the truth and therefore it's not libelists. Anyway, sorry, Croswell, not Cromwell, that's another guy. Anyway, but that's not the point here. Croswell was the first one who wrote about a cocktail when a reader challenged his definition of it and said it is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters. He goes on. It is vulgarity.

Sorry, three, two, one. It is vulgarly called bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate because a person having swallowed a glass of it is ready to swallow anything else. Can I now give the leading entomological theory? Yes. The cocked tail horse. In 18th century, cocked tail horses were non-thoroughbreds with docked tails, which made their tails stand up straight like a roosters. The term came to represent mixed breed or mixed drink. I would like to say, like cock, like that's...

Sure. You're saying the right animal, but the right idea. Yeah. Also, in your, in your, your etymology, David, the idea was that the drink was originally a stimulated liquor used as a morning pickup, something that cocks up your tail. So the idea was that the way you got the horse to, like, raise his tail was to give him some gingery drink. All of these things being totally true.

All right. What a victory. What a victory for all of us to discover the origins of cocktail chatter in all of our specific ways. Emily, what is your coctail chatter? I help run a project called the Law and Justice Journalism Project. And I have been reading some good journalism from both North Carolina and Pennsylvania because we're running regional fellowships programs this year. And so in relation to this, I really just love this window. into really good local journalism. And in particular, on the site, Penn Live, there's a series that some Penn State students are doing about the Moshannon Valley Processing Center and ICE. And it's an eight-part series.

And one of the stories that just posted was about a couple who ended up in custody because their lawyer made one mistake. It's just great to see students doing this kind of work. All right. By the way, did you see the Politico piece that the courts overwhelmingly rebuked Trump's ICE policies with 10,000 rulings in which they said, basically ICE had overstepped the boundary of their authority. Yeah, Politico's been doing such a great job of the tracker work that they've been doing.

Kyle Cheney has been so on it. And so that's great. The students who wrote the piece on ICE on Penn Live I was talking about are called, are named Chloe Bland and Alexa Calvinese. My chatter, before I get to it, I just want to talk about it. Some GabFest listeners I had just the delightful day with in Italy, Don and Dana in Umbria. They, when they heard I was coming to Umbria, they reached out because they live in Umbria and there have been GabFest listeners since like their OG GabFest listeners from Italy.

And we had an incredible day together at a, went to a truffle restaurant, walked on an ancient aqueduct. And they're just delightful, delightful people. If you're going to Umbria, try to find them. And can I just throw in a shout out for Megan from Talls Bagels, who was a long time at GabFest listener too and was standing in line in front of us and had to shout out to the Gab Fest. They're everywhere. We love it. My chatter is a piece by Simone Stoltzoff in the Atlantic about a guy named Max Hawkins, who was a software engineer. And Max Hawkins decided to randomize his life. And basically what he did is he created.

an algorithm that whenever he was going to go to a restaurant or a coffee shop or do an activity, it would just send him somewhere random to do it. Like, whatever, he would go to whatever restaurant it told him to go to, even if he had no particular interest, desire. And it's an extraordinary story about like what it means to have habits and what it means to kind of try to deliberately introduce yourself into new people and new situations. You would end up going to, you know, like flower arranging class. He was looking, you know, he had needed to want to do something on a Saturday.

It would send him to a flower arranging class and he would learn to flower arrange and meet all the people who are flower arranging. And it, in some, it's a, it's a very inspirational story about an extreme version of openness to the world. And also about how hard it is to adopt that. And I'm, I still remember, like, one of my favorite days I ever spent with, with my son Gideon is one labor day. We were just like screwing around, couldn't think of what to do. And we decide to take a kind of mini road trip for the day where we just, whatever a deck of cards told us to do, we made a set of rules. Like if you got a jack, you turned right. If you got a queen, you turned left.

If you got an ace, you went to the next restaurant you saw. And we just spent the day doing that. And it just took us like to really weird places. And we had an amazing day. I think both of us would look back and say that was one of the most memorable days we've ever spent together. I love this piece in the Atlantic. All right, listeners, you've got chatters. You email them to us at gabfest.atslate.com. Please keep them coming. So many good ones coming through. And our GabFest listener chatter this week comes from Brent in Ann Arbor. My chatter is about an eye-opening article from the Guardian from late April about unregistered Americans. Illegal immigrants got a lot of news coverage, but presumably they have paperwork from their home countries. These are Americans in which their parents, due to anti-government fanaticism, refused to register their births with the government.

government. Later in life, because they lack a birth certificate and often vaccination records or any proof of their existence, it causes them so many hardships. They cannot get a driver's license, rent an apartment, open a bank account, use trains or buses, and on and on. The article gives examples of some cases in which they were able to overcome these obstacles. Is there a legislation that could improve the circumstances of these unregistered Americans? The full article is called the unregistered Americans because of their parents they do not exist. I always look forward to the show each week, and it would be great if we could get McKay Coppins to give us some gambling advice about how long David will keep suggesting career paths for John. Oh.

Perfectly landed. That's all for our episode this week. We also have a bonus episode in your feed. We're going to talk about what terrible things are happening at the FDA now. God, I can't even imagine. There's probably some new horror this morning. That is just for Slate Plus members who get great stuff for their subscription. They get discounts to live shows.

They can hang out us at a cocktail party in advance of a live show. Cocktail party. They get bonus episodes on other Slate podcasts. They never hit the paywall on the Slate site. So if you are a member, thank you. Enjoy our segment about the FDA. If you are not a member, please subscribe to Slate Plus directly from the political GabFest show page on Apple Podcasts on Spotify. Or right now, go visit slate.com slash GabFest Plus to get access wherever you listen.

That's our show for today. The Political Geh Fest is produced by Nina Porzuki, whose new nickname I've declared is Zooks. Our researcher is Emily Diddo. Our theme music is by They Might Be Giants. Ben Richmond, a senior director for podcast, O'Bell, Executive Producer of Slate, and Hillary Fry's editor-in-chief of Slate for Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson. I'm David Klotz. Thanks for listening.

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