BENSON BYTE: Carrie Severino Weighs in on BLOCKBUSTER VA Ruling Overturning New Democrat Redistricting Effort

At Walmart, we're helping our associates build meaningful careers. One way we're doing that, investing $1 billion in training and education. Last year, more than 100,000 associates earned promotions. Combined with benefits like 401K matching and paid parental leave, we're proving that Walmart isn't just a place to work, it's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash grow at Walmart. Now it's time for another Guy Benson, Guy Benson Fight, where we bring you the day's most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit Guy Benson.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Carrie Severino is the president of JCN, the Judicial Crisis Network, co-author with Molly Hemingway of their bestselling book, Justice on Trial, the Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court and a true go-to expert on really all things legal in the confirmation process in particular. Carrie, I'm Harry. We rhyme. Welcome to Guy Benson. Great to be here, Harry. Great to be with you. You're not surprised that the Virginia State Supreme Court throughout. the Democrats redistricting scheme. You're not surprised, are you? Well, you know, I'm not surprised on the grounds of the idea that this was wrong, 10 ways from Sunday how they tried to do this. But I'm pleasantly surprised because the Virginia Supreme Court isn't always known for making the most conservative decisions. So the fact that they could see this very clearly violated the Virginia Constitution at a minimum was a pleasant surprise to me. Yeah, I'm thinking Mr. Magoo is on line one and also could see that it was all the things that you just said. But correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding, and you would know this better than I, but I have spent a good amount of time on this. The composition of the court, and it's one of the few in the country, I think there's like seven, where the legislature... picks the Supreme Court. So it is unusual in our country for it to be done this way. And I think sometimes you get lucky because in Virginia, which is pretty much it's close, maybe a 51-49 or some say 50-50 type deal, even though Democrats have been winning more often until Glenn Youngkin. And of course, had a great election, you know, in the most recent election process. But the way the court is configured... Democrats were in the majority in the legislature for three of them. Republicans were in the majority for three of the appointments. And then it was a split legislature for one of the appointments. It's almost like a coin flip where you actually have a fighting chance. I mean, if it's in a, as you know, Carrie, if it's in another state, forget about it. It wouldn't matter that it's unconstitutional, that they didn't do it right, that the question was worded terribly and the whole thing was a hot mess. But there would be states that their Supreme Court would simply, you know, whatever you want to call it, jury nullification. They would just say, oh, it's all good. You know, residents voted for it. It looks good to us.

But I think you had a fighting chance in the Commonwealth of Virginia. What do you think about that comment? Yeah, I'm very grateful. They didn't just rubber stamp it. And you're so right, there are a lot of states that would have done so. This is something people often, it's not on our radar. We talk about the U.S. Supreme Court and absolutely justifiably, because that is the highest court in the land. They decide a lot of things. But we forget 90% of cases are actually decided in the state courts. So federal cases are certainly important, but state courts often fly under the radar, and that allows them to do some very goofy stuff. You have these kind of judges that might just be there politically and not really be doing the right thing legally. So the fact that they could see how off base this Virginia constitutional amendment process was and really called out what was happening, which is that they were trying to shove this in in a way that really packed in their votes and made it happen. not on the time frame of the Constitution, the Virginia Constitution was requiring it to do. So not only were they trying to rush redistricting in a time that wasn't constitutionally when it normally happens, which is you have to wait for the votes to be recounted to the census and do it then. They wanted to do it out of season for purely political reasons, but they also tried to push it. constitutionally under virginia because you're normally supposed to do it with an election in between but they held the first of these two votes they're supposed to have not but not it was election between but literally during the election uh because our election season is so long and i think that's what the court finally said yet you just can't play blast and loose the timing like that carrie severino visiting on Guy Benson could not agree more with that comment right on spot on and Lest we not forget, the governor Abigail Spanberger promised during the campaign. She's not for this. She won't support it. She won't do it. I mean, just such brutal, blatant, immediate. conversion intellectual dishonesty it's really disgraceful how they went about this i really had a lot of faith that the virginia supreme court was going to do exactly what they did and and i know that the democrats at the national level and at the state level in the commonwealth of virginia are going bananas right now because they love and respect the courts when it goes their way but then when it doesn't go their way they trash the courts that's not lost on me carry one bit how about you Absolutely. When they talk about the court is behaving illegitimately, they did the same thing when the Supreme Court came out with some great decisions last week. They call it illegitimate. That's just...

Translate that, that means I don't like what they did. They don't have any argument for why it violated law. There absolutely could be arguments in certain cases. It's not that you can never call a court illegitimate, but you don't call it illegitimate just because you disagree with the bottom line. In this case, the court, not only do I agree with the bottom line, but the court did a great job of defending, again, why you have to follow the constitutional procedure. And I think there are other things. They could have. found major issues with in the way this was passed for my part as a virginia resident when i went in and and was voting on this i was just flabbergasted to see how outrageously unfair the language itself is my kids could see through like really you're going to just say up or down yes or no, do you want a redistrict to promote fairness? And that's how you're describing this? And Carrie, how about temporary? They really highlighted how temporary it would be. This was kind of like, hey, you know, just vote with us. Just vote yes. It's only temporary. Don't, you know, like this would not have stayed. And I'll tell you what, I think the Virginia Supreme Court really saved the day here because if you took... Basically, the ballot question, they said it was 51-49, but I think when all the votes were counted, it was a half a point better than that on the side that prevailed. So, you know, instead of 51, it was like 51.5 to 48.5, but still very, very close. Near 51-49 deal. And yet the end result would have been that it would have been one Republican member of the House of Representatives from Virginia. That would not be representative. of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Carrie. Yeah, but if you voted that I want fairness, that's what you get, which is really amazing. 10 to 1. 10 to 1 is fair. And even with that kind of language, the fact that it was so close. And that you had 49% of the people saying, yeah, no, we see through you. That kind of says a lot right there. This state is a purple state. It's not a 90-10 split. It's a very closely divided state. And so the idea that fairness is being promoted by doing this was really outrageous. And then they were trying to. shove it in under the wire on this timing when what Virginia requires, they're trying to slow walk the process. And I like how the court described it. They said, this is deliberately difficult to get a constitutional amendment. We don't want them to be able to just... Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FN Radio 20. 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 order to order. Please drink responsibly. Steam roll and get these in. And what in Virginia requires is you have to have the legislature vote on it. Then you have to have an intervening election so that if you don't like how your legislature later is voted, you can vote the bums out. And then they go after having it twice with an intervening election, then it goes to the people. Well, what they did is they pushed a vote through on a special session in ways that themselves were a little shady. It wasn't the topic they were supposed to be voting on. And they did it.

Four days before the election. So not an intervening election. They wanted to bake it in so that this would be normal by the time we got to the next census and that it would be very hard to undo. It would just be... self-evident. I mean, these districts would stand. So it was never temporary. And I think it was completely dishonest to tell people before they voted that it would be temporary. So no matter what you do, don't worry, because you'll get a redo. Don't worry. This is nothing after all. And it's just terrible. I want to make sure before we run out of time, Carrie, there's another what I think is a big deal. And that is the behavior of associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. whose conduct, I think, is so abysmal, it's so terrible that even her fellow Democrats, Sonia Sotomayor, publicly criticized her. Rich Lowry has an excellent piece in The New York Post about that she is heck bent, and he uses a different word, but I want to be family-oriented on Guy Benson. So I sanitized it a little bit, but she used another word that rhymes with Bell on destroying the Supreme Court. What is your take on this? Yeah, Ketanji Brown Jackson, unfortunately, has not, she really seems to be a lot about talking, making her own points and reveling in the spotlight, the media is giving her, and not really doing a great job of what she should be there for, which is just interpreting the Constitution, interpreting the law. Unfortunately, I think the liberal media isn't doing her a great service here because anytime she says anything, they just. you know, seal clap and say, this is the best thing I've ever heard. When, in fact, that's not really what we're seeing here. And I think it just encourages her, unfortunately, to say things and, you know, try to be more and more... rhetorical in her opinions and not really founding them on actual solid reasoning. I don't think that's even doing her own side of a good service. There are justices in the court like Justice Elena Kagan, who is very canny, very strategic in the way that she tries to make arguments that she thinks will peel off conservative justices and in some cases have been successful in doing so. I think Ketanji Brown Jackson is kind of full of sound and fury and sometimes signifying nothing. Couldn't agree more. And that's your line of the day so far. Seal clap. I loved it. The fact that one of her fellow Democrats publicly said what they said about what she was talking about, I think says a lot. You know, if it had been one of the conservative members of the court, then it would just look like it's a six three court, which I think you and I would probably agree. It's only sometimes a six three court. This court is not solidly six three. Do you agree with that? Yeah, no, it really depends on the case. There's definitely cases that come out 5'4, and sometimes not with the lineup you might expect, you know. But there's also a large number of cases.

that come out unanimously or near unanimously. And that includes some of the things we thought were going to be some of the more controversial decisions. It was a really important case that just came down regarding crisis pregnancy centers and whether the state of New Jersey could basically bully them into disclosing their donors who wanted to remain anonymous. And the court unanimously smacked that down. So there are moments of clarity that can even reach the whole court. In our two-minute drill that we have, Carrie, I would love your analysis on, and I've heard John Roberts, who I've been disagreeing with more than I thought I would as of the last several years compared to his earlier years on the court. But on this issue where they made what I thought was a very correct and courageous decision about not discriminating. When Chief Justice Robert says the best way not to discriminate is not to discriminate based upon color or whatever, of course, Democrats are going absolutely crazy over this Supreme Court decision. What are your thoughts relative to what this means? I think it's an earthquake what their decision means. Yeah, so I think you're talking about the redistricting case that just came down. And you got people telling the most egregious lies, basically making it sound like the court just overturned the Voting Rights Act. Not at all. They're actually looking at what the text... of the Voting Rights Act said and said, no, no, that's what we're going to enforce. We're not going to enforce these other things that have been invented along the way. The majority minority district idea, that was something a court invented later on. We're not playing those games. And they said, look, if you can actually show that a state is discriminating on the basis of race, heck yeah. Well, that is a fair thing. Even if they're in Clarence Thomas said, he doesn't think it even deals with redistricting. The court as a whole, there weren't five votes for that. And they said, okay, fine. If you can show that they're redistricting to try to make it impossible or very difficult for one racial group or another to vote, then we'll look at that. But you don't get to just go in, you have to actually clarify what's happening there. You can't just say, well, this doesn't favor the Democrats, and therefore it's racist, just because, you know, more black vote Democrats or something. You have to really control all of your experiments here and look at it fairly. And I think the result of this case is that a lot of districts that states have been strong-armed into looking at race in making and are actually going to be found unconstitutional because this court is very serious about a colorblind constitution. They say, yeah, the states shouldn't be discriminating one way or the other when it comes to race in districting, and they shouldn't be looking at race, period. I think that's a great development. This is where our country should have been from day one, given the 14th and 15th amendments. but I'm glad they're getting to it now. I think you're spot on. Carrie Severino, wide-ranging we covered a lot. Great to visit with you. Thank you. That was yet another Guy Benson bite. For full episodes of Guy Benson, go to Guy Benson.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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