'BradCast' 7/1/2019 (Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern)
b"On today's 'BradCast':\\xa0 MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal reporter at Slate, joins us for one last time in this year's SCOTUS term to make sense of Court's most recent, very consequential rulings. Stern explains the Court's 5 -4 partisan split ruling allowing extreme partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts to continue, which he calls a "crushing defeat for voting rights" and a "fiasco for democracy."\\xa0 The anti-democratic practice has allowed Republicans to block fair representation at both the state legislative and Congressional levels since 2010, effectively punishing American voters for their political affiliations. Stern argues, "Partisan gerrymandering is uniquely evil and difficult to fix, because it...entrenches a certain political party's power almost indefinitely, and creates a map that will hold even if the state votes against that party," but details pathways for voter action on the state level. Stern also explains the ramifications of the Court's 5-4 ruling temporarily blocking the Trump Administration from adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census and next steps.\\xa0 The not-as-good-news is Chief Justice Roberts gave the Administration the opportunity to find a better pretext, or as Stern summarizes: "Lie better next time."\\xa0 Then we open up the phone lines to listeners, who weigh in on the Supreme Court's rulings and on last week's two-night 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates. New polling shows substantial gains for Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren since the debates, with former Vice President Joe Biden falling back. Pretty seismic shifts after one single debate, with about 11 more to come in the months ahead..."