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Ep. 32 (Video version): SCOTUS Gutted the Voting Rights Act. What's Next? (Mimi Marziani, Esq.)
37 Plays18 hours ago
Constitutional law attorney, voting rights expert, and former president of the Texas Civil Rights Project Mimi Marziani joins Kate and Alex to break down the Supreme Court's Callais decision — and what it means for Texas, for redistricting, and for democracy itself.
Plus: Mimi's clients are refusing to be silenced, Alex's daughter turns four, and Kate announces she's hanging a shingle.
What we discuss:
- What the Callais decision actually holds — and why Justice Thomas's concurrence may be more honest about it than the majority opinion
- The 25-year arc from Bush v. Gore to Crawford to Shelby County to Rucho to Callais — a slow burn with a fast finish
- Why the court reaching out to decide a question the parties didn't ask is virtually unprecedented, and what Citizens United has in common with it
- The immediate-effect ruling and why the only plausible explanation is to benefit Republicans in the 2026 midterms
- The Texas redistricting fight: how a 150-page federal court finding got swatted away on the shadow docket
- The Republican Party of Texas lawsuit seeking to restrict primary participation — and Mimi's amicus brief
- Tennessee's new map, the Memphis dismemberment, and what comes next
- Why 2030 redistricting is the stakes underneath the stakes — and why Texas is about to gain five more congressional seats
- What it would take for Congress to act: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the filibuster, and what 2029 might look like
- The one thing standing between Republicans and unlimited gerrymandering: losing
"Republicans in Texas believe in Texas Democrats more than Texas Democrats do." — Mimi Marziani
Read Mimi's new article: Weaponized Oversight: Texas’s Escalating Campaign Against Nonprofit Advocacy & the Chilling Effect on Speech and Association, 45 Rev. Litig. (forthcoming 2026), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6748785.
Support the show:
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Background
00:00:01
Kate Rumsey
Welcome back. Our next guest is a constitutional law attorney, voting rights expert, and a former president of the Texas Civil Rights Project. She and her firm have represented people you might know, like Powered by People, and she's testified before Congress and has taught at UT Law, including...
00:00:12
Mimi
Thank
00:00:16
Kate Rumsey
One of the students here on my podcast, Alex Clark, was one of her students, and she also happens to be my NYU Law classmate, so we called her here to break down the recent Supreme Court decisions and what it means for Texas. So welcome to the podcast, Mimi.
00:00:33
Mimi
Awesome. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. be happy to be here anyway, but as you noted, go back long way with both of you. it's really a pleasure.
00:00:42
Kate Rumsey
I know. Well, speaking of, I wanted to take us back to May of 2008 at Madison Square Garden. That's 18 years ago, right? That we both crossed the stage at NYU Law's graduation ceremony, which is insane.
00:00:57
Kate Rumsey
I cannot believe it's been 18 years. But if you could catch me and Alex up, like, how did you end up being in Texas doing constitutional law voting rights?
00:01:02
Mimi
Thank you.
00:01:06
Kate Rumsey
Because I don't recall when we, like, I knew you in law school that you had a connection to Texas.
Professional Journey and Work with Wendy Davis
00:01:16
Kate Rumsey
Thank
00:01:17
Mimi
after law school, I started my practice in New York. I clerked. worked for the Brennan Center for Justice, where I really honed my election and political law expertise.
00:01:28
Mimi
I spent a little time in private practice at Sullivan and Cromwell doing big, complex litigations. But somewhere along the way, life happened.
00:01:37
Mimi
I got married someone from Texas, my husband, otherwise known as my husband. And he got job opportunity in Texas.
00:01:42
Kate Rumsey
Ha ha ha.
00:01:46
Mimi
At first, he was flying back and forth to New York, but then An amazing woman named Wendy Davis, who hopefully all of y'all have heard of, decided to stand up for 11 plus hours in a historic filibuster protesting new restrictions on women's reproductive rights. And then she announced that she was running for governor. And I had the opportunity to move to Texas to serve as her in-house counsel. And so I leapt at that chance. I moved to Texas.
00:02:23
Alexander Clark
Uh.
Complex Feelings and Beliefs about Texas
00:02:33
Mimi
will note though, By this point, I have been Texas for 12 years, had two kids here. And, you know, I sometimes joke that, you know, I feel like a therapist would say that I have complicated relationships with the state, but I really believe in the promise of Texas. And I do really believe that we are on the precipice of pretty significant social and political change.
00:02:58
Alexander Clark
that gubernatorial race in 2014 was pretty pivotal in my life, too.
00:02:58
Kate Rumsey
Amazing.
00:03:03
Alexander Clark
had been one of the first crop of Battleground Texas fellows the summer before in 2013, after my first year of teaching in San Antonio. And then after my second year of teaching, I became staffer. I was first time in my life paid to do political work and started out as a field organizer, became a campus organizer.
00:03:25
Alexander Clark
When I was at UTSA registering voters and trying to bring Wendy Davis on campus, I would run into all these issues with administrators because they thought that I was just another college student. And that was my design.
00:03:37
Alexander Clark
I wanted to fit in.
00:03:39
Mimi
Thank
00:03:39
Alexander Clark
But I would tell them, like, well, I don't think that's, you know, why are you giving me all these issues? what the law is. You should be helping me. They didn't really care what I had to say. But one phone call or one email from Mimi, suddenly, know, the red carpet was rolling out. It's like,
00:03:54
Alexander Clark
Would you like a table for voter registration?
00:03:54
Kate Rumsey
Oh, wow.
00:03:56
Alexander Clark
When can we get the candidate to come and speak? Come on down. course you can. I was like, wow, being a lawyer matters.
00:04:02
Kate Rumsey
Who is this Mimi person?
00:04:06
Alexander Clark
Even though I was a pre-law student in undergrad, I had never really made the leap to go to law school until the experience I had on Battleground Texas.
00:04:16
Alexander Clark
And seeing Mimi, not to make you blush or anything, but
00:04:20
Alexander Clark
Mimi was a hero, right? She's like, I wanted to be like her. And so it is very meaningful to me to have you on the podcast.
00:04:24
Kate Rumsey
Wow.
00:04:28
Alexander Clark
It was meaningful for me to intern for you whenever were at the Texas Civil Rights Project and to take your election law class.
00:04:34
Alexander Clark
And so what a full circle moment.
00:04:36
Mimi
Well, thank you so much.
00:04:38
Alexander Clark
And so I wanted to get out there, but I do have a question for you, which is, What is your political origin story? I mean, was was coming in house for Wendy? Was that like your first kind of professional foray into politics to?
00:04:38
Mimi
mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:04:52
Mimi
Yes, it was. had done little bit of volunteerism here and there, probably most notably for President Obama's re-election campaign.
Supreme Court and Voting Rights
00:04:59
Mimi
I was in the legal boiler room in Philadelphia in 2012.
00:05:05
Mimi
But I will say, mean, I've often described myself as a radicalized partisan, that I really came into politics, I actually think the way that most normal people do. I grew up in the American South. I saw all sorts injustices because of structural racism and the many, many years of buildup and, know, honestly, the still segregation of my Southern community.
00:05:29
Mimi
And led to me asking a lot of policy questions throughout my kind of educational career, ultimately decided that I wanted to be lawyer and, know, seek to address some of those, some of those root causes of injustice.
00:05:42
Kate Rumsey
you
00:05:46
Mimi
And, know, I think even, you know, when I started working at the Brennan Center, I did not consider myself particularly partisan. And it was, mean, sadly, this is a good segue to the conversation we're having today.
00:05:58
Mimi
was extraordinarily... disgusted, for lack of better word, by what I saw starting around 2008, where the Republican Party very cynically started manipulating the rules of voting to try to gain electoral advantage. And it just struck me that, you know, so at odds with American values and with how our constitution has been constructed.
00:06:28
Mimi
it ultimately has, you know, led me on a much more partisan path that, you know, I would love to someday back, get to a place.
00:06:38
Mimi
I mean, it wasn't that long ago. mean, namely 2006, where bipartisan, overwhelmingly bipartisan majorities of Republicans and Democrats passed the Voting Rights Act amendment. in Congress. It actually passed in 2006, 98 to zero in the Senate. Think about that for a second. Literally nobody voted against the Voting Rights Act, including from the Republican Party.
00:07:06
Mimi
And George W. Bush, Texan, Signed it into law at a ceremony at the White House where he invited, you know, all of the kind of major civil rights leaders to be there in the Rose Garden.
00:07:21
Mimi
And, you know, I say that and that sounds like a different planet. Like that's so far from where we are 20 years later.
00:07:25
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:07:28
Mimi
It's like you can't even imagine
00:07:30
Kate Rumsey
Yeah, I mean, I think about that is such a bygone era. I mean, you and I graduated then we saw Barack Obama get elected the fall. I remember was in starting my first job New York and Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and we went the financial recession it feels like ago. that we were dealing with all of that.
00:07:49
Kate Rumsey
And then now speeding up to now and what we're dealing with with the Supreme Court. And I'm wondering if we can contextualize the recent decisions, because I, as a new lawyer, did a project on voter ID and We have seen since then gutting of parts of the Voting Rights Act with regard to preclearance, which meant that the southern states under the original VRA had to get preclearance from the DOJ in order to do anything with their voting laws. And then the Supreme Court under this
00:08:23
Kate Rumsey
more conservative Supreme Court said, just not an issue anymore. We don't have racism like we did in the 60s and 70s. So we don't need that preclearance thing.
00:08:31
Mimi
Right. Hold on.
00:08:33
Kate Rumsey
Be gone with you.
00:08:33
Alexander Clark
Well, yeah, we don't.
00:08:34
Kate Rumsey
Right.
00:08:35
Alexander Clark
It's not a problem anymore. I think my favorite line from the Shelby County decision was RBG saying, you know, it's like getting rid of your umbrella during a rainstorm because you're not getting wet.
00:08:48
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. I mean, do you see this recent decision in the context of those in the past that we've been dealing with?
00:08:58
Mimi
You know, I think in some ways, and look, hindsight is always clear or whatever that phrase but I do think that there has been slow burn to get here.
00:09:08
Mimi
And perhaps we are seeing an acceleration from the Supreme Court. And I do think after the most recent decision in Calais, you know,
00:09:17
Kate Rumsey
Thank you.
00:09:19
Mimi
It is very difficult, and we can get to that, but I don't see how anybody can argue that this current Supreme Court is not deeply compromised. And it's like, I mean, they're not adhering to precedent. They are not respecting Congress's important role in this system. And they are just blatantly, mean, I wish, it breaks my heart to say this, they're just blatantly putting a thumb on the scale in favor of their preferred
00:09:48
Kate Rumsey
Thank you.
00:10:11
Mimi
You know, there's all sorts of things one could say about that, including that the Supreme Court was like, don't ever quote this decision again.
00:10:20
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:10:20
Mimi
know, it's like nothing to see here.
00:10:21
Alexander Clark
This is not president.
00:10:21
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:10:22
Alexander Clark
It's a one-off. Yeah.
00:10:22
Mimi
Yeah.
00:10:23
Mimi
Let's forget this happened today. But ever since that decision, you can see that there was a push by certain Republican operatives to start manipulating election rules for political gain.
00:10:37
Mimi
This then led us to 2008, the Crawford decision, where the Supreme Court, even though it had in a voter ID case, even though it had evidence that photo ID would extraordinarily burdensome for poorer people and certain smaller groups of people, and that it was passed, I mean, maybe more importantly, and that it was passed for no reason other than to try to punish Democratic voters, Supreme Court greenlighted it.
00:10:52
Kate Rumsey
you
00:11:06
Mimi
Then you Citizens United in 2010. then you had the Shelby County decision in 2013 did away with, dismantled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which was the really important innovation that made sure that states with history of discrimination in voting had to go and get permission from the federal government before they could change their rules. And this was really important, not only as a legal weapon against those rules, but it also had kind of a built-in deterrent effect because states like Texas had to send an email, I mean, is how it usually started, the Department of Justice and say, you know, we're going to, we want to enact this photo ID law, but, know, here are the reasons we think it's not going to have a discriminatory effect.
00:11:54
Mimi
Obviously, Texas's photo ID law did and does have racially discriminatory effect, like the initial litigation, for instance, found that, you somewhere around 600,000 registered Texans who are black and Latino lacked ID much higher rate than Anglos in Texas. And so, of course, it was blocked by Section 5 until that Shelby County decision. But I think you can look at each of these decisions and you're starting to see the groundwork for what we've seen most recently. And then actually, I'd probably add to that the 20, think it's 19 decision in Rucho where the Supreme Court said, you know what, partisan gerrymandering is too hard
Partisan Manipulation and Personal Perspectives
00:12:36
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:12:36
Mimi
It's too hard for us to make a decision on. And so we're just going to say that federal courts can't intervene. And all of those things have kind of like led us to where we are today.
00:12:46
Kate Rumsey
Well, I think about this in the terms of like what I do daily, which is in federal criminal law. And we see a lot of the Supreme Court saying, hey, Congress hasn't spoken. Like we can't extend these laws in this way. One example is an immigration what's happening right now. I've been speaking to different bar associations, including in Minnesota, about how we have an action under Congress, a statute that says that you can sue federal law enforcement if they violate your constitutional rights. The Supreme Court then said, well, this doesn't really apply to the Department of Homeland Security because Congress really didn't speak to that. And that's these are really administrative officers and Congress needs to speak.
00:13:26
Kate Rumsey
And it's so you just put these two things together like, well, Congress did speak with the Voting Rights Act.
00:13:32
Mimi
Yeah.
00:13:33
Kate Rumsey
And now you're dismantling it. And I understand under Calais, like it's different, like there's constitutional grounds and statutory grounds. But it just seems to me like there's such a contradiction, as you're saying, as to what the Supreme Court is signaling.
00:13:46
Kate Rumsey
Like you want Congress to step Congress obviously is not in a lot of ways.
00:13:51
Kate Rumsey
We've got the filibuster and we've not passed legislation, like you're saying. But also you're striking down what Congress has spoken on. And it just seems so frustrating to me to see both.
00:14:01
Mimi
You know, it's and it's deeply is deeply cynical. I mean, first, though, I will totally admit, mean, Congress is part of the problem here that Congress absolutely could and should have stepped in in this like, you know, whatever this 20 year period, 25 year period that I've just described and passed laws.
00:14:15
Kate Rumsey
Thank
00:14:24
Mimi
to try to counteract the Supreme Court's decision making, especially ones that, you know, that overtly trample on laws that Congress has made. And, know, I think that the loss of that muscle, like the dysfunction in Congress and the loss of this muscle has been extraordinarily problematic for our constitutional system.
00:14:45
Mimi
You know, Congress is not supposed to be the Supreme Court's, you know, little sister. It's supposed to be a co-equal branch of government. And we've seen both the presidency and the Supreme Court really get elevated over Congress.
00:14:59
Mimi
So that is a huge problem.
00:15:00
Kate Rumsey
Thank you.
00:15:01
Mimi
And The first, the Constitution is actually really clear. You know, after the Civil War, 15th Amendment said that there shall be no racial discrimination in voting and that Congress can pass appropriate measures to enforce it.
00:15:10
Alexander Clark
Thank
00:15:20
Mimi
Obviously, took Congress a while. There was reconstruction and then obviously the massive contraction of rights that happened for many, many, many years until you reached the civil rights movement.
00:15:31
Kate Rumsey
Thank you.
00:15:31
Mimi
But then Congress did it, passed the Civil Rights Act, which was, know, I think by, mean, I guess I challenged someone to find another one, but it's, in my understanding, the most successful civil rights law country has ever seen.
00:15:45
Mimi
And it has brought in this 50 year plus period of multiracial democracy, including going back to Obama, the first black president of the United States, something that, you know, there were people alive when he was elected that thought they would never, ever see that.
00:16:05
Mimi
And noted was reauthorized as recently as 2006. Importantly, in 1982, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act. And actually, in response to a Supreme Court decision, it included language that the Calais Court just completely disregarded, where it said it's not just discriminatory intent that Congress was concerned about, that it was concerned about the entire opportunity
00:16:33
Mimi
of racial minorities to elect candidates of choice. And there's been case law that's built up around that, but that's the language of the statute. And Calais, the Supreme Court, I mean, first very cynically, think disregards the language of the 15th Amendment, which puts this ball in Congress's court, not in the court's court.
00:16:53
Kate Rumsey
Mm-hmm.
00:16:54
Mimi
Second, completely ignores the legislative history and the plain language of these 82 amendments. By basically telling us that, you know, in order to be constitutional, that you have to show discriminatory intent in some way and possibly most cynically at all of all.
00:17:14
Mimi
Justice Alito, writing for the majority, claims that he's not, you know, striking down Section 2, which I can only imagine is because he is, he thinks politically that is better for the court. But instead, creates this ridiculous new test that no plaintiff is ever going to be able to match because...
Gerrymandering and Minority Representation
00:17:36
Mimi
I mean, it says somehow you have to submit evidence. And as a litigator, I mean, I have no idea what this would look like. You have to submit evidence that the racial minority
00:17:45
Kate Rumsey
you
00:17:49
Mimi
that the way that they would choose their candidate of choice is completely disentangled from partisan politics, even though we have a two party system and that's how they're operating.
00:17:58
Alexander Clark
Thank
00:17:59
Mimi
So like, you know, Mark Elias said this the other day, and I think he is correct, that, you know, basically what you would have to show, mean, I think that if you can show that all the black voters in Louisiana would actually vote for a Republican and therefore satisfy the state's partisan goals in redistricting. think you could have that district. But if you can't make that showing, which given that Black voters in America tend to vote for Democrats at like 85, 90 percent chance, you know, it's just not at all clear how you're going to be able to show that, you know, race and politics are disentangled and establish these minority opportunity districts.
00:18:53
Alexander Clark
Indiana and Iowa and North Carolina.
00:18:55
Mimi
Okay.
00:18:56
Alexander Clark
Florida and Ohio, Republicans were like, never again. We got to change the game because this doesn't feel good because you said in 2006, 98 to zero we have the election of Barack Obama.
00:19:09
Alexander Clark
And it does seem like the entire movement from the court, not just with the VRA, but like you mentioned with campaign finance laws and everything else has been to move away from having people be able to cast a ballot that matters, like in the sense that like it's actually going to have a chance to affect the outcome or select a candidate of their choice.
00:19:32
Alexander Clark
And I mean, I'm just going to shoehorn it in here because you're involved in this case, too. This is like the thread the Republicans are pulling on to the extreme.
00:19:44
Alexander Clark
Like there is a current lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas right now where, you know, the Republican Party of Texas is saying the 5% of voters during a midterm, the 10% of voters maybe during a presidential election.
00:19:49
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:20:00
Alexander Clark
That's way too many people showing up and voting in our primary.
00:20:03
Mimi
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:05
Alexander Clark
Do you want to talk about that? Because you filed an amicus brief in this case.
00:20:07
Mimi
Sure. Sure.
00:20:08
Alexander Clark
I'm trying to get one up, but we'll see how it goes.
00:20:09
Mimi
Yeah. I mean, will say before I do, though, I just I think it is really important for folks to recognize the through line that you were kind of hinting at.
00:20:21
Mimi
I do think that, you know, Obama was elected. The Republicans had an opportunity then. know, there's kind of a famous autopsy report that came out, I
Republican Strategies and Legal Battles
00:20:30
Mimi
think, after...
00:20:31
Mimi
It was actually after Obama was reelected.
00:20:33
Alexander Clark
After Romney, right?
00:20:34
Mimi
Yeah, there's this, the Republican Party had an opportunity to reinvent itself and better cater to the American people.
00:20:34
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:20:42
Mimi
And instead, they chose to double down on grievance politics. They chose to double down these taxidermists.
00:20:52
Mimi
And And to justify it, the Republicans had to claim that there was voter fraud, which of course is vanishingly rare.
00:21:02
Mimi
And then Trump comes and he just supercharges all of this. He's like, you think you have grievances? Let's talk about grievances, right? Like you think you have voter fraud?
00:21:12
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. They have all the grievances.
00:21:12
Mimi
Let's talk about voter fraud. And it's just, and it's blown up.
00:21:16
Alexander Clark
And if you lose this date, I'm sure you can find me 11,000 however many votes and we can turn that over too.
00:21:20
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:21:20
Mimi
Exactly.
00:21:20
Kate Rumsey
Can you, Georgia? Yeah.
00:21:22
Mimi
Yeah. And so now we find ourselves in 2026 and the Republicans aren't even they're not even pretending. They're just saying we're I mean, this is how you get to Trump calling Governor Abbott last summer.
00:21:36
Mimi
literally on the heels of this horrible tragedy in central Texas, little girls dying at a camp. Trump calls Abbott and doesn't say, know, what can we do to make Texas safer for Texans? What can I do to support your, the people of Texas during this massive tragedy? He says, get me five more seats because I think I deserve it in Texas.
00:22:00
Mimi
And, and Abbott You know, you're telling me to jump?
00:22:03
Kate Rumsey
said, yep. Yeah.
00:22:05
Mimi
How high? And shoved through these maps. And there's no, we can talk about the Texas redistricting, but at the end of the day, there's just, there's no justification for it other than Trump wanted it. And the reason Trump wants it is because he doesn't want to have to face any accountability by a Democratic president.
00:22:23
Mimi
Party controlled House of Representatives. And like, it's just I mean, they went from kind of like pretending like they weren't trying to rig things to just blatantly saying, yeah, we're trying to rig it because we don't think we can win outright this November.
00:22:34
Kate Rumsey
We're doing it.
00:22:37
Mimi
I mean, it's just a challenge.
00:22:37
Kate Rumsey
Right.
00:22:37
Alexander Clark
Yeah. And so now we have this new opinion come out when we more squarely talk about because all of that process seems like it's about to get supercharged even further.
00:22:42
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:22:46
Alexander Clark
Like just when you think this could be like the top is the worst it could be something new happens. And so after this lawsuit has has finalized the opinions out, we have new announcements from states saying don't like our gerrymandering.
00:23:02
Mimi
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:03
Alexander Clark
We're going to gerrymander even harder.
00:23:07
Mimi
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:07
Kate Rumsey
Yeah, I mean, what's the...
00:23:07
Mimi
I mean, it's going to be horrible. I mean, it's already horrible, like you're seeing. And because of the Texas litigation where, you know, a federal court in El Paso, in a 150-page decision, found that there was, that Texas, of course, was considering race when it was drawing the new maps that we have right now.
00:23:26
Mimi
Because, ironically, they were kind of claiming that to try to save face and not look like they were just, you know, bending over for Donald Trump. And then the court said, well, race was predominant, predominating in these maps.
00:23:41
Mimi
And Alito, you know, and the federal judge halted the maps, goes up the Supreme Court in a shattered docket decision in December. Alito says, we all know it's really about politics.
00:23:53
Mimi
So and also, by the way, I think we're too close to the primary for us to do anything about it.
00:23:53
Kate Rumsey
you
00:23:58
Mimi
And then you fast forward. And just last night, the Supreme Court has now allowed. In another shadow docket, they are allowing Alabama to move forward with new maps, even though their primary election is next week. And even though their map was found to be not just violating Section 2, but violating the Constitution because it was racially discriminatory. I mean, it's just like it's I can't even mean, they didn't try to justify it.
00:24:31
Mimi
And I was kind of joking with somebody. I'm like, but in their defense, don't think they can justify it. So I guess that's why they just issue a shatter docket and hope nobody notices.
00:24:37
Kate Rumsey
Blatant. Yeah.
00:24:40
Mimi
Yeah.
00:24:40
Kate Rumsey
I mean, can we go straight into the Calais decision? Just like what is the ultimate holding? Because we're not allowed to have racial gerrymandering, but we can, I'm guessing now from this holding, partisan gerrymandering. Is that really what we're dealing with?
00:24:57
Mimi
So the Supreme Court had already said in Rucho a couple of years ago that partisan gerrymandering was basically, you know, non-justiciable is the legal word, basically.
00:25:07
Alexander Clark
We're not going get into You y'all deal that.
00:25:08
Mimi
Yeah, we're not going to touch it.
00:25:10
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:25:10
Mimi
We're not going touch it.
00:25:12
Mimi
Amazingly, in Calais, Alito does a couple of things, again, that I think are incredibly cynical. One, he claims that he's not overturning Section 2, although if you read Thomas's concurrence, he's kind of like, woohoo, we just struck down Section 2.
00:25:27
Mimi
So he's like, I don't know, I guess they didn't have their...
00:25:29
Alexander Clark
You always count on Thomas to tell you.
00:25:30
Kate Rumsey
Or a parade.
00:25:31
Mimi
Yeah, they're talking points. We're not in order. And the dissent obviously is like, I mean, you've rendered it useless. But the actual holding is that because there has been this tension between, know,
00:25:46
Mimi
this argument that racial discrimination is trigger strict scrutiny. And then the question of whether or not compliance with Section 2 can be considered compelling state interest.
00:25:59
Mimi
And the thing that's very weasely, the leader does, is he says, well, you know, complying with Section 2 can be a compelling interest, but only if compliance matches this new crazy test that involves, you know, giving me a map that somehow completely takes action.
00:26:19
Mimi
race out of the equation and disentangles partisanship. And then Kate, to your point, and then he just says, you know, and takes into account kind of traditional redistricting values, including partisanship.
00:26:26
Kate Rumsey
you
00:26:33
Mimi
And so just I know that sounds very technical, but, you know, to say it otherwise, Rucho, at least the court is kind of holding its nose and saying like, know, partisan, partisan redistricting, partisan gerrymandering is kind of distasteful, right? Like it's like we don't like it, but we can't do anything about it.
00:26:51
Mimi
By the time you get to this decision, Alito is essentially elevating partisan gerrymandering to some sort of God-given right to state legislatures.
00:27:02
Mimi
And it's like, so in order for anyone to challenge a map under section two, They have to take into account the partisan aims of a state.
00:27:02
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:27:12
Mimi
And so this is one of the things that the Supreme Court dinged the plaintiffs for in Texas, even though the plaintiffs had all this evidence. It got 150 pages that went into the decision of how race predominated in drawing these new maps.
00:27:29
Mimi
They got their hands slapped for not like producing, somehow producing this like unicorn of a map where, you know, there's minority opportunity districts and it still achieves.
00:27:44
Mimi
the Republican Party's goals in the maps.
00:27:44
Alexander Clark
Thank you.
00:27:47
Mimi
I mean, it's just completely, completely wild. And again, I mean, I guess the last thing I'll say in Calais is that the, you know, I mean, the dissent, I think, does a terrific job of just calling them out that this, you know, that essentially Alito, the sleight of hand is like creating an impossible standard and he knows it's an impossible test.
00:27:53
Kate Rumsey
All right.
00:28:10
Alexander Clark
Well, now that Kalei has enshrined the God given right to discriminate, uh, in the hands of state legislatures, that really raises the stakes, on a practical level for all of us who are listening and wanting to get involved and to be a part of the mission, the mission, Texas, to make sure we, we flip the state because, state legislatures are, they've always been important, but
00:28:17
Mimi
right.
Future Challenges and Opportunities in Texas Politics
00:28:33
Alexander Clark
increasingly so it seems,
00:28:36
Alexander Clark
What's to stop the Texas legislature in 2027 from redistricting again with even fewer guardrails?
00:28:42
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:28:43
Alexander Clark
We.
00:28:44
Mimi
Only two things.
00:28:44
Mimi
Or, I mean, really, it's one thing. I mean, the political process. And, you know, and it's like, you know, it sucks because it's like, you know, somehow we have to kind of out-organize and out-hustle
00:28:48
Alexander Clark
Right. Yeah.
00:28:58
Mimi
where when this playing field has been decidedly rigged. But that is the only option here. And I do think, you know, to have some optimism, I think that the Texas map, I think the Republicans overplayed their hand. I don't think that they're going to get five new Republican seats. We'll see.
00:29:17
Mimi
But I mean, that's what the voters can make sure that's true. And I think that that's also going to be true in some of these other states as well.
00:29:23
Kate Rumsey
Mm-hmm.
00:29:27
Mimi
I don't know them as well as Texas to be able to say that. And, you know, and I think then more broadly, like I do think that this should be a rallying cry.
00:29:36
Mimi
I mean, like this is it's really it's. It's jaw dropping. I mean, it is really egregious. You know, a couple technical points that I think are worth lifting up and hopefully, you know, I don't know this is what gets people in the streets, but at least for lawyers to think about.
00:29:53
Mimi
There is only I'm only aware in the last like 25 years or so, at least in, know, law of democracy world of two cases. where the court has done what it just did in Calais. So if you remember, what actually came to it was different question about these Louisiana maps.
00:30:13
Mimi
And it sent a note back to the plaintiffs and said, no, we actually want to decide a separate question. We want to decide basically the core question of section two and its constitutionality.
00:30:26
Mimi
That's not what the parties asked it to decide. I mean, it reached out. And mean, and that's, you know, if you think about John Roberts famously saying that the court calls balls and strikes, I mean, that's like the umpire saying like, you know what, we're actually going to play basketball today.
00:30:37
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:30:41
Mimi
I know you came to play baseball, but we're going to do something else. And the only other, yeah, right, right, right, right.
00:30:46
Alexander Clark
We heard that Michael Jordan, even though he's on the baseball team, he can shoot some hoops, so pull him up.
00:30:50
Mimi
Like, Exactly. Like Robert showed up and he's like, I think my team's way better at basketball. I think I'd like to play that game. And the only other case that I can remember the court doing this is Citizens United.
00:31:03
Mimi
It did the exact same thing. That was a very technical campaign finance question about whether pay-per-view movies could be a campaign ad and regulated under the campaign finance law. And they sent the question back to the parties and said, no, we want hear kind of this much bigger issue about the constitutional rights of corporations and
00:31:22
Kate Rumsey
you
00:31:25
Mimi
money in politics. So I think that that is worth just underscoring that piece of it that, you know, the court did not have to decide this. This is not usually how it works. The parties bring stuff to them. It's not that the court gets to make up what it's going to decide. And then number two, Normally, the court makes a decision and there's think it's a 45-day period before the judgment issues, which is pretty, for litigators, it's pretty common that there's some sort of period.
00:31:52
Mimi
Well, the Supreme Court decided to find good cause to overrule that normal period and have this go into effect immediately. And the only conceivable reason for that is to allow Republicans to take advantage of this decision for the 2026 midterms.
00:32:11
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:15
Mimi
the court thinks that's a good reason. But I raise those are fairly technical points. But I think that for lawyers in particular, maybe, and, you know, look, particularly lawyers who are not as partisan as, know, for instance, I am.
00:32:26
Mimi
I think it's worth thinking and sitting with that because those are deeply troubling moves, deeply, deeply troubling moves that I think show that the court is as moved away from being any sort of neutral umpire in this situation and is showing some very troubling signs of favoritism that it's not supposed do.
00:32:48
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. Well, I wonder, like, what is next, right? Like, I think there's we had precedent for a mid census redistricting here in Texas.
00:32:58
Kate Rumsey
And then you now have the ability to, as we're saying, partisan gerrymander. I know some of our state reps have been sounding the alarm. One of them, friend of the podcast, Mihaly Plesa, up here in North Texas.
00:33:10
Kate Rumsey
wrote an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News about it, and she's anticipating that this is going to be happening every two years in our legislature, and that's what we're going to be experiencing until, as you're saying, we get involved in the political side and elect new people.
00:33:22
Mimi
Yeah.
00:33:23
Kate Rumsey
But you're also seeing it across other states. I mean, I think didn't Virginia, they actually elected and voted on new maps as an electorate and went up to their Supreme Court, and now they're appealing it to the U.S.
00:33:34
Kate Rumsey
Supreme Court. So Is this are we going them this U.S. Supreme Court decide in favor of Democrats that, OK, they are partisan gerrymandering and that is
Hope for Democratic Change
00:33:45
Kate Rumsey
permitted.
00:33:45
Kate Rumsey
So think it'll be very interesting to see.
00:33:47
Mimi
Yeah, I mean, and the Supreme Court has, you know, I think the more analogous to, mean, I don't think it's analogous in many ways because it didn't have the racially discriminatory aspects, but the court has made clear at least that it is going to be hands off of partisan gerrymandering. And so it did not intervene in California's map.
00:34:05
Mimi
The Virginia one is somewhat more complicated because the state Supreme Court said that the Virginia map violated state procedural rules. I haven't looked at the substance enough to have an opinion one way or another, but that's obviously a much harder thing.
00:34:19
Mimi
There's probably legitimate reasons for the U.S. Supreme Court, unfortunately, not to get involved. I think the thing that is... that we'll see know, what, I mean, supposedly, like even under this decision, like you can still bring case to challenge a map for being racially discriminatory under the constitution.
00:34:40
Mimi
And think the question is gonna be, how, you know, where the court goes with that. I mean, this is like, I think the most charitable reading of the Calais decision is, and I think, and again, I think that it's like very hard, you know, but you cannot reconcile it, I think, with like the actual text the Voting Rights Act.
00:34:58
Mimi
But the, you know, someone like John Roberts would probably tell you that, you know, as he's actually put it, that the best way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. And all racial discrimination,
00:35:12
Mimi
Needs to be held to strict scrutiny.
00:35:12
Kate Rumsey
Good or bad.
00:35:14
Mimi
And, you know, that is that's been a theme through also like affirmative action type type cases. I think that it will be very telling to see what happens as more of those cases get up to the court. I mean, Tennessee last last week.
00:35:29
Mimi
The Tennessee legislature, an entirely white delegation, just voted on a new map that completely dismantles the city of Memphis's political power.
00:35:41
Mimi
And the only way to do that is to chop the black population in half and spread them out. And it is just, you know, they're going to argue, of course, that that's only partisanship.
00:35:51
Mimi
But, you know, this stuff starts to look exactly like what you saw before the civil rights movement.
00:35:52
Kate Rumsey
We'll see.
00:35:55
Alexander Clark
Thank you.
00:35:58
Mimi
And I'm going to have, you know, I just have a hard time believing that there's not some evidence that, you know, that there was some intentional discrimination there. I mean, I guess we'll see.
00:36:09
Mimi
And cases will continue to pop
00:36:14
Alexander Clark
Well, and just to remind everyone of the stakes you said, you know, based the seems I agree like going to be a great year for Democrats politically. And so maybe they're not going to get the five seats they tried to draw for themselves.
00:36:26
Alexander Clark
But come 2030, because of all of the new people who just come our population has just been exploding. We're about to get another five additional seats.
00:36:35
Mimi
Yep.
00:36:36
Alexander Clark
And so whoever's in charge of the legislature or governor's mansion or all of the various actors who are involved in that kind of process, that's really going to be the critical moment where we have to have some some power, some hand in that process, because forget whether these five seats are going to go to Republicans this year.
00:36:56
Alexander Clark
Like, how is the split of 10 seats going to happen in 2030?
00:37:01
Mimi
Completely. And I think that, I mean, look, what I'm about to describe is not going to be easy, but there is a way out of this. And it's through first the political system that, you know, All of us need to be electing people who believe in democracy and they believe in a level playing field and they are willing to, you know, maybe put, mean, God forbid, put partisan advantage aside in favor of things that actually work for voters. So we're going to have to get that done.
00:37:32
Mimi
Ideally, there can be a pro-democracy majority in Congress and in the presidency after 2028. And then think that it's going to be imperative to pass pro-democracy reform at the federal level.
00:37:45
Mimi
And it's going to have to be big and bulky. And it's like, this is our 1960s moment all over again. And Congress can prohibit partisan gerrymandering, right?
00:37:57
Mimi
Like nothing in these different organizations.
00:37:57
Alexander Clark
And they've already tried, right? Like that wasn't, wasn't, was it the John Lewis voting rights act that would have, would have created independent commissions throughout the country and gotten rid of partisan gerrymandering?
00:38:02
Mimi
That's right. That's right.
00:38:07
Mimi
It would have, I don't think it mandated independent commissions, but it did prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
00:38:10
Alexander Clark
Okay.
00:38:13
Mimi
And actually, you know, I know it didn't pass. So it's always, you know, like it's hard to go through the what ifs, but it came so close.
00:38:19
Alexander Clark
Well, I think it's worth pointing out because, and this happened on Fox News with James Tallarico, they would try to get him into, well, you like it whenever your side does it, but you don't like it whenever Republicans do it.
00:38:27
Mimi
Yeah.
00:38:29
Alexander Clark
But every Democrat voted for that piece of legislation and every Republican voted against
00:38:34
Mimi
including Joe Manchin and Christian Sinema, the only reason that didn't pass is because at the end of the day, Christian Sinema and Joe Manchin would not, they wouldn't go take the next step of making some sort of exception to the filibuster.
00:38:48
Alexander Clark
Right.
00:38:48
Mimi
But literally every, and all the Democrats were willing to do that, you know, even ones from blue states.
00:38:56
Mimi
And so I do think that, you know,
00:38:56
Alexander Clark
Right.
00:38:59
Mimi
You know, look, a lot has changed, obviously, in our democracy. And don't know that what is going to what should be passed if we have the chance to do it in 2029 should look exactly like what was proposed before. But I do think that we're going to need really big thinking D.C.
00:39:15
Mimi
to pass structural reform. And then I totally agree with you, Alex. Also, everybody needs to take seriously redistricting in 2030 and control of state legislatures and other important seats. And again, you know, that's, I mean, think that,
00:39:35
Mimi
We'll see what happens in 2026, but I do think that at the end of the day, the best thing that we could do to curb this sort of abuse of gerrymandering is for Republicans to not benefit from their attempt to game the system.
00:39:50
Kate Rumsey
Right.
00:39:51
Mimi
I just don't think there's a better way for them to learn that lesson.
00:39:55
Kate Rumsey
And I think it gives us hope though, if we can segue into our like more hopeful part of this podcast, which is that look how many people voted in our primary. Look at who were electing Taylor Remitz huge win.
00:40:07
Kate Rumsey
We've got an incredible opportunity in this midterm.
00:40:09
Mimi
Yeah.
00:40:10
Kate Rumsey
All the stars have aligned for us to have a big win. think we've mentioned this so many times in other episodes of just how we are, we're there. We're better on messaging.
00:40:20
Kate Rumsey
We have better infrastructure. We've got candidates in every race. We are doing a really great job here in Texas, and I think that we're moving towards that so that we can, by 2028, have a better handle of the legislature to then gear us up for redistricting fights.
00:40:23
Mimi
Yeah.
00:40:36
Kate Rumsey
So I'm definitely hopeful all that.
00:40:36
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:40:39
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:40:40
Mimi
Yeah.
00:40:41
Alexander Clark
A Taylor Ramette swing applied across the state will make them really regret their attempts to gerrymander.
00:40:45
Mimi
Oh.
00:40:46
Kate Rumsey
Yeah, 40 points. Yeah.
00:40:48
Alexander Clark
But yes.
00:40:49
Mimi
Yeah.
00:40:50
Mimi
I mean, I sometimes joke that like Republicans believe like Republicans in Texas believe Texas Democrats more than Texas Democrats do.
00:40:54
Kate Rumsey
you
00:40:58
Mimi
But I mean, there's a lot of things leaking right now from Republicans in Texas, and they're very nervous about November. And I think that they should be. I mean, it's like, you know, the signs that we're seeing from the
00:41:07
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
Personal Updates and Call to Action
00:41:10
Mimi
I feel very strongly that Democrats have great candidates on the ballot. And, you know, this Paxton-Cornyn fight on the Republican side in particular, and to some degree for the AG's race, too, I think is really damaging all of these candidates. And you're seeing it in some of the polling that's coming out around Republicans right now, that they're not very, Texas Republicans are not very excited about these candidates.
00:41:40
Alexander Clark
Well, Mimi, you hit the nail on the head, and we're trying to change the fact that Texas Democrats need to buck up and be a little more optimistic. Republicans are great about sharing their good news, spreading their gospel.
00:41:40
Kate Rumsey
Thank
00:41:51
Mimi
Yeah.
00:41:51
Alexander Clark
We got to get into the habit, and we got to get those muscles flexing. We got to get the reps in. So this segment is called Good News.
00:41:57
Mimi
Yeah.
00:41:59
Mimi
Good. All right.
00:42:00
Alexander Clark
What is something in your life, personally or professionally, that is just so good? You got to share it.
00:42:07
Mimi
So my law firm has been representing a number of nonprofits that have been targeted from the state unjustly. And that's obviously extremely unfortunate.
00:42:16
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:42:29
Mimi
That's like, yeah.
00:42:29
Alexander Clark
It means he's going win the runoff though, right?
00:42:31
Mimi
Hats off to him. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. mean, who knows if it will win, but he has a real good shot of it. But I think the thing that is good about this is, know, not only been...
00:42:43
Mimi
winning in court. But there has been incredible movement of these small, you know, many of them grassroots community groups, and they have tiny budgets, tiny staffs, they're volunteer driven, know, they have looming over their head the law enforcement arm of the state of Texas, state with a GDP the size of Germany, and they're not giving up. They're getting up every day and they're talking to voters about the issues that matter. They're registering voters. They're testifying the legislature. And I have to tell you, I find that, you know, both really inspirational and And I think it's working. think that part of this whole thing is to, excuse my language, but is to scare the shit out of everybody and get everyone to stop talking and stay home. And we've seen over and over that these groups that have been targeted, groups and individuals, including, you know, Beto Empowered by People that have been targeted by the state have refused to do that. And I think that that has been really empowering thing for Texans.
00:43:44
Alexander Clark
Texans don't scare easy.
00:43:44
Kate Rumsey
Yay, howdy.
00:43:45
Mimi
Exactly.
00:43:45
Alexander Clark
My good news, completely unconnected to anything political. My daughter turned four yesterday.
00:43:52
Mimi
Oh my gosh, happy birthday.
00:43:53
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:54
Alexander Clark
Yeah.
00:43:55
Mimi
Yeah.
00:43:55
Alexander Clark
And so we have a Gabby's dollhouse themed birthday party coming up on Saturday.
00:43:59
Mimi
Mm-hmm.
00:43:59
Alexander Clark
And I'm just it's just such a kids are the best markers of time.
00:44:06
Alexander Clark
Time flies. I'm just so proud of her. She's we're reading like we always do before bed last night. And we have these like five minute Marvel stories because I'm a big nerd and she loves them now, too, which is great.
00:44:19
Alexander Clark
We were going through one of her favorite five minute stories and she would like from memory. Tell me verbatim word for word was coming next.
00:44:29
Kate Rumsey
Oh, I love that. Yeah.
00:44:30
Alexander Clark
So the future is bright in our young people, at least at the Clark House.
00:44:33
Mimi
Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no.
00:44:34
Alexander Clark
Kate.
00:44:34
Kate Rumsey
love that.
00:44:35
Mimi
That's amazing.
00:44:36
Mimi
I love that.
00:44:38
Kate Rumsey
Well, my good news back to professional is that we're all lawyers here and it's kind of fun to be able to talk to you about this, Mimi, that I, as of yesterday, left my big law firm job I am never thought I'd do this, but I'm hanging a shingle as well.
00:44:52
Kate Rumsey
So all three of us are going have our own law firm.
00:44:53
Mimi
Wow.
00:44:55
Kate Rumsey
I know Alex is putting up the guns.
00:44:55
Mimi
Yeah.
00:44:57
Alexander Clark
Entrepreneurs.
00:44:58
Alexander Clark
Let's go.
00:44:59
Kate Rumsey
I've just felt really called to represent people in the federal criminal system and especially in this administration, using my experience in the DOJ being able to hold this administration accountable, because it's not just about representing someone and declaring their innocence, but it's also making sure that law enforcement is doing their job, making sure the prosecutors are doing their job, making sure the judges are doing their job.
00:45:20
Mimi
Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:24
Kate Rumsey
And I feel very called to do that. It's very hard to do that in a big law firm. Right now, the DOJ is basically gutted. Like half the jobs are empty. They're providing bonuses to get people to come to work for them.
00:45:36
Mimi
I know. I know. know.
00:45:37
Kate Rumsey
It's insane. And so there's not a lot of, yeah, $20,000, yeah.
00:45:38
Mimi
It's like you can go to ICE or you can go to DOJ. Just pick one, right?
00:45:41
Alexander Clark
On the app.
00:45:41
Mimi
You get 50 grand if you walk in dark.
00:45:44
Kate Rumsey
So there's not a lot of white collar criminal matters that big law firms tend to take on. And I feel like, you know, to get back into the court and to the system, I want to take on matters having lower overhead, lower rates and being able to do it on my own at a law firm.
00:45:58
Kate Rumsey
So really excited about that. So that's my that's my big good news. TBD on my law firm announcement, but it'll be it's in the process right now.
00:46:02
Mimi
Oh, that's so exciting.
00:46:07
Alexander Clark
Well, now that you've announced that, Kate, I just want to take a moment to recognize the three of us are all going to have our name on the door.
00:46:07
Kate Rumsey
So taking off a little bit of time.
00:46:07
Mimi
Really exciting.
00:46:16
Alexander Clark
am Clark of Ryman Clark PLLC.
00:46:16
Kate Rumsey
Yes.
00:46:18
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:46:19
Alexander Clark
got Mimi of Marziani Stevens and Gonzalez PLLC. And then, you know, in due time, you will make your announcement.
00:46:24
Mimi
Mm-hmm.
00:46:27
Kate Rumsey
Yeah. Rumsey Law. Yeah. I keep joking with my husband that he'll join forces with me, but...
00:46:29
Alexander Clark
Ramsey Law, there you
00:46:29
Mimi
Yeah.
00:46:34
Alexander Clark
go.
00:46:34
Alexander Clark
OK.
00:46:34
Mimi
That's amazing, too.
00:46:34
Kate Rumsey
Another day. Yeah, another day.
00:46:36
Kate Rumsey
right. Well, that's our good news. Before we head into our last segment, I want to put a plug for our Patreon. So if you'd like to support us as independent media and help us to ferry the cost of this podcast, you can become a member on our Patreon for a few dollars a month, or you can support us by giving us a five-star review wherever you find your podcasts. All right, Mimi, we have our last segment. We always give our guests the last word.
00:46:57
Kate Rumsey
on what is it going to take to flip the state from your perspective? Like, are we going to flip it? We talked a little bit about it, your hope that, you know, what we're going to do in the next decade. But what do you think it's going to take, not just from a legal perspective, but messaging, infrastructure, candidates? I mean, what do you think we need to be doing?
00:47:16
Mimi
You know, this might sound a little cliche, but I think the number one thing is all of us have to leave it all on the field in 2026. I wish, like, if you think about 2018, where the national wins were similar, but I think that they're going to be more intense in favor of Democrats in 2026.
00:47:36
Mimi
You know, if you go back to this time in 2018, I mean, Beto became Beto, but I'm not sure he was at this point in 2018.
00:47:44
Alexander Clark
He was not.
00:47:44
Kate Rumsey
Oh.
00:47:44
Mimi
You know, he was still relatively unknown congressman from Paso.
00:47:49
Mimi
And We didn't have, as you noted before, the infrastructure that, I mean, this would be a whole nother podcast, but I am so proud and excited to have played some role with Alex in the infrastructure that, I mean, look, and it's never an escalator.
00:48:07
Mimi
You take steps forward and steps back, but there has been increasing infrastructure that has been built since Wendy ran in 2014, and And it's stronger than ever.
00:48:10
Kate Rumsey
Thank you.
00:48:15
Mimi
There's outside groups. There's a bigger political apparatus. There's more money in this state. And there's lessons that have been learned from previous cycles. And I think that we have this stuff that was not there in 2018. And then we have really, really strong candidates starting with James and Gina at the top of the ticket. And so have...
00:48:36
Mimi
decided for myself at least that this cycle I am going to do everything, everything in my power because none of us want to wake up the after election day and mean, see another 200,000 vote gap like it was in 2018.
00:48:51
Mimi
I mean, that is like in a state as big as Texas, like you can fill that gap block walking over the weekend in Houston. So that's what we really need.
00:48:59
Kate Rumsey
right.
00:49:00
Mimi
And look, everybody plugs in in different ways. I think that You know, media is super important. I think, you know, being on the doors is super important. I think those of us with policy and legal skills, you know, you can plug into the campaigns through that way.
00:49:15
Mimi
But whatever it is, fundraising, obviously, whatever it is, think everybody that it's, you know, today is the day to ask yourself, what are you going to do? And to, know, 15% that, increase it and then go for it.
00:49:29
Kate Rumsey
Yeah, increase it. I know. I mean, I think we're so close. 2018 was a big lesson for us. And if we can all knock one more door, donate one more dollar, or champion the candidates and people that we have on this podcast, then I think that we're getting there.
00:49:45
Alexander Clark
And do it earlier, right?
00:49:45
Kate Rumsey
I think do it earlier.
00:49:47
Mimi
Yeah.
00:49:47
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:49:48
Alexander Clark
Beto's record breaking hall that year. Half of it came in like the last month of the race.
00:49:48
Mimi
Yeah.
00:49:52
Mimi
Right. Right.
00:49:53
Alexander Clark
Whenever finally there was a poll that showed he could win.
00:49:55
Mimi
Right. It's way more useful now. Actually, my last little plug on this. Sorry, I know I'm taking too much time. But, you know, I think it's important. You don't have to. mean, love James and Gina myself, but it doesn't have to be at the top of the ticket. You know, that it's actually there are so many people who are sitting on the sidelines in our major cities in Texas more than enough to fill the whatever couple hundred thousand gap that Democrats face right now. And so I think that another really good tactic to get involved is to think about your local candidates, your commissioner's court, your city council, your district attorneys, whoever is running in your backyard. And if you knock on doors for them and turn out more Democratic voters, that is going to benefit the entire ticket. And so I just like to remind people that we often think about it top down, but I actually think bottom up can be very, very powerful in politics as well.
00:50:51
Kate Rumsey
sort of our mantra around this podcast is supporting like down ballot candidates, including John Rosenthal, who we just had a fundraiser for. So not that he's like super down ballot. He's still a statewide, but you know what I mean?
00:51:01
Mimi
Yeah. Yeah, he is a lovely, is fantastic.
00:51:03
Kate Rumsey
It's not just things.
00:51:05
Alexander Clark
Yeah, he's fine.
00:51:05
Mimi
He's fantastic.
00:51:05
Kate Rumsey
Yeah.
00:51:06
Mimi
I wish for my, I hope for my kid's sake that he wins because he will make us a lot safer in the state.
00:51:06
Kate Rumsey
Never.
00:51:11
Kate Rumsey
Yes. 100%. Well, Mimi, how can we support you and follow what you do?
00:51:46
Mimi
There's a bit of a call to action for lawyers. And then next month, I will be in D.C. with the American Constitution Society a panel talking about how smaller firm lawyers can help in this in this moment.
00:51:56
Kate Rumsey
Mm-hmm.
00:52:00
Mimi
And of course, there has been a massive contraction of big firms taking on pro bono
00:52:04
Alexander Clark
you
00:52:06
Mimi
work or just generally being brave enough to stand up to the federal government or the state government. And so I think that this is a really important time for those of us whose name is on the door take advantage of that privilege and that power. So that's another thing that I'd love for people to tune into.
00:52:27
Kate Rumsey
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Mimi. We really appreciate you. It was fun to catch up with you and reminisce about our NYU Law Days.
00:52:33
Mimi
I know, it's wild.
00:52:35
Kate Rumsey
can't believe it.
00:52:35
Mimi
Wait
00:52:38
Mimi
a minute.
00:52:40
Kate Rumsey
Well, we will see our listeners next week, and I'll sign off by saying God bless Texas.