Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e17 Episode Script
Congressional Maps
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much
for joining us. It has been a busy week.
Europe suffered a brutal heat wave,
there were massive earthquakes
in Venezuela,
and in D.C.,
the Great American State Fair opened,
with attractions including bull-riding,
a Ferris wheel,
and a speech from Donald Trump, which
one fan in particular was excited about.
Today will be
my 116th Trump rally.
People are saying that this
shouldn't be a Trump rally,
that this should be a non-political
event. What do you make of all that?
I wish they would just shut up.
He's the president.
Like, last week,
it was the president's birthday.
If he wants some bare-knuckle
boxing on the White House lawn
and people kicking each other
in the faces, fine! Great!
That is an interesting take!
Though I am not sure
he's the person to trust on whether
or not Trump is overdoing it,
given that it seems he woke up that
morning, put one hat on his head,
and then said,
"No, that is simply not enough."
Also, 116 Trump rallies?
I didn't even know
there'd been that many of them.
I know Trump
has been alive for a long time,
but nowadays he's mostly asleep,
and has doctor's appointments
approximately 450 days out of the year.
Where does he find the time?
The state fair wasn't the only thing
drawing attention in D.C. this week.
Because not far from it,
another of Trump's pet
projects continued to unravel.
The nation's Reflecting Pool,
the subject of intense focus
in President Trump's ongoing campaign
to refresh Washington D.C.,
is still looking more algae green
than America blue.
There's lots of green,
and it smells really bad.
Yeah, "There's lots of green,
and it smells really bad."
It's never a great sign when the
feedback for your national monument
sounds exactly like a review
for sex with the Grinch.
"Green. Smelly. Good communicator,
though! Three stars."
Trump's renovation
of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
continues to be
an absolute trainwreck.
It's been plagued
by enormous blooms of algae,
large chunks of blue sealant
have been peeling off,
and just this week, a trio of dead
ducks were discovered there,
prompting a spokesperson for
the Center for Biological Diversity
to say Trump was "wasting taxpayer
money turning the Reflecting Pool
into a giant duck death trap."
Which is clearly awful!
Ducks shouldn't have to worry about
getting murdered by the Reflecting Pool.
They should be worried
about getting shot by a hunter,
getting eaten by a predator,
or getting teased by me
for having a corkscrew-shaped penis.
As we have mentioned repeatedly
before, all male ducks have them,
including Donald, by the way.
Put some pants on, you pervert,
and show some dignity!
Your nephews are dead! They died
in the Reflecting Pool, Donald!
May their memory be a blessing.
And in response to all of this,
Trump shifted into full
blame-deflection mode this week,
claiming that there had been sabotage
and railing on social media
against a, quote, "crazy pro-algae
likely paid-protestor."
Which is funny even before
you realize he's referring
to this frankly excellent frog.
As for that peeling liner,
Trump offered this explanation.
We have a, I think, 290,
300-foot slit right through it.
Probably a box cutter
or a knife of some kind.
National Guard and police
have been all over the mall.
How would these vandals have gotten
so close to do something like that?
- Do you have any proof of this?
- We didn't have a lot of them then.
Who would think that somebody
would go into a pool
and take a knife and start cutting it?
But do you have proof of that?
That they used a knife?
- Do you have photos or videos?
- Well, let's put it this way.
When you have a 350,
I think it's 350, not 250,
a 350-foot slit from one end
to the other, you think that's proof?
No! No, I don't!
So, over the course of a minute there,
that slit grew from 290, to 300,
to 350 feet,
depending how prone to exaggeration
Trump felt at any given second.
Experts have noted it'd be very
challenging to cut that liner
and it's much more likely that the
repairs were "just done too hastily".
It also may not have helped that,
during them,
Trump literally drove over
the pool in his motorcade.
And yet, Trump kept pushing
the sabotage conspiracy
and his supporters kept trying
to sell it,
even when the evidence
was just laughably weak.
We haven't been able to verify
the video, but take a look.
June 19th, a male, blue shirt,
reaches in,
stays there for a little while.
He goes back down, comes back up.
Multiple times. What's he doing?
Then a female,
white tote bag, she reaches in,
needs a better angle, sets the bag
down, dives in a little deeper.
And we don't know
who these people are.
No one was stopped or questioned
by police, so no arrests.
And we don't have
the police report yet.
But what are they doing
with their hands in the pool?
Are they cutting the lining?
Are they peeling off the paint?
We don't know if they're
committing a crime.
They'll probably tell you
they dropped their wedding ring.
Wait, is that the best you've got?
That is pathetic!
As for "they'll probably tell you
they dropped their wedding ring",
yeah, maybe they did!
Maybe those people
at the Reflecting Pool
dropped the wedding ring after leaving
their wife for a 25-year-old coworker.
Jesse would know
what that is like!
It's actually one of the many
fun facts that you can learn about
on his Wikipedia page,
along with, "In November 2024,
Watters stated he had not been invited
to his mother's home for Thanksgiving."
And I do not blame his mom for that.
She's a child psychologist
and she tried her best.
Sometimes you just get one
that sucks.
Though it does now
make much more sense
that Jesse will willingly
humiliate himself
by pursuing the approval of
a withholding parental figure
that will simply never come,
and sadly,
he'll now die starving for it while
his mom spends Thanksgiving
in a warm home surrounded
by people that she loves.
It's basically "A Christmas Carol"
if Scrooge had ignored all the ghosts,
even though one
was literally his mom.
Meanwhile, the administration's
been trying to fix things
by pumping out the algae and pouring in
jugs of hydrogen peroxide.
But it is now at the point
where the National Guard have
stepped up patrols of the area,
and fencing has been put up
around the pool.
In fact, when you Google it now,
you'll find this label saying
it is "temporarily closed",
like it's a Chipotle that
the health department shut down
after finding
a dead mouse in the guac.
And the administration
is still refusing to question
whether any of this might have
been the fault of the companies
that they gave contracts to,
a hiring process that itself
now seems pretty questionable.
Repairs are adding to
the already over-budget project,
totaling more than 16 million dollars
after a pair of no-bid contracts.
One of those companies?
Greenwater Services.
The White House denied any role
in the company's hiring.
But last year, Greenwater did work
at Mr. Trump's Bedminster golf club.
Company is owned by a trust owned
by Republican donor John Cafaro.
When people say, "Doesn't Trump
make your job as a comedian easier?"
this is why the answer
is actually no.
Because how can I make that
funnier than it already is?
They gave the pool job
to a Trump crony
whose company
is literally called Greenwater,
and it looks
like he manages The Undertaker.
Come on!
No living person looks like this!
He looks like the response
to an AI prompt
of, "What if the concept of
racketeering was a person?"
And even that is barely a joke,
given that that man
actually was convicted of conspiracy
to bribe a congressman.
You know what? I give up.
Much like Donald Trump when
"The Art of the Deal" was being written,
I am simply not contributing here.
Anyway, I know that this
is far from the most important thing
happening in America right now,
but it is striking
that, even as this country
celebrates turning 250,
its capital city is dealing
with a literal swamp of corruption,
there are dead ducks
in the Lincoln Reflecting Pool,
and people are kicking each other
in the face on the White House lawn.
The symbolism here
is pretty hard to miss.
In fact, as metaphors for the current
state of things in America go,
all of that is, much like the sartorial
sense of the president's biggest fan,
a hat on a fucking hat.
And now, this.
And Now: The Delightful Rapport of
KOLR's Jeremy Rabe and Tom Trtan.
Welcome to this marvelous
Monday, I'm Jeremy Rabe.
- And I'm Tom Trtan.
- Yes, you are.
I am,
and I have been for a while.
You are really flashy today.
Colorful.
- Well, here's the thing. Guess what?
- What?
- Saturday's Valentine's Day.
- It is?
Then we'll see five people's first
names that share a last name,
and then we put the last name, and
combined, it creates a new person.
- Does that make sense?
- No, but I'll jump in.
All right, it is time to celebrate
some celebrity birthdays.
We shall guess.
I did not cheat today, did you?
I didn't even know we were
doing it until just now.
Okay, it's time for a round
of "would you rather." Are you ready?
- I'd rather not.
- Okay, go to break.
My plants have not recovered yet
from that cold snap we had last week.
They look terrible.
I'm really worried.
Maybe you got bad plants.
- I love "Schmigadoon"!
- I haven't seen it.
- Have you seen the TV show?
- No.
Did you ever see the movie "Barbie"
a couple years ago with Margot Robbie?
Absolutely not.
I look like a sofa from the 1950s.
I have no argument.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns voting.
It's the number one way to get a free
pen from a woman born in 1904.
Voting's also the subject
of this bonkers early '90s PSA.
Art is not produced in a vacuum.
Beauty cannot be regulated by the state.
Music is a reflection of our culture.
Today, our own government
is trying to tell you
what you should
and shouldn't put in your tape deck.
But there is a way out
of the vacuum.
Get to the polls on November 6th
and exercise your right.
It's your turn to speak.
Your vote is your voice.
What?!
Setting aside the fact that seems
to have been directed
by a depressed Danish teenager,
that is maybe the most
early '90s thing I've ever seen.
You've got SJP
and Robert Downey Jr.,
who, fun fact,
were a couple for seven years.
And you've got the sullen mention
of a tape deck,
which is basically like an iPod
but from the Civil War.
I'm genuinely not sure you could
get more '90s
unless they threw on Gretzky jerseys
and invaded Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
Specifically,
this story concerns the fact
that-while midterm elections
are still four months away,
some of the biggest decisions
that may decide the results
have actually already taken place.
That is thanks to a redistricting fight
that's been raging all over the country.
Republicans in Texas currently hold 25
of the state's 38 congressional seats.
The new map ups the total
they could win to 30.
California voters have approved
Proposition 50,
redrawing congressional districts
in a way
that could cost Republicans
five seats next year.
The Missouri Senate has passed
a Trump-backed congressional map
intended to help Republicans add
an additional U.S. House seat.
Louisiana state house has advanced
an updated congressional map
that is expected to remove
at least one Democrat-leaning district.
That's right, tonight, we're going to
be talking about congressional maps,
really solidifying this
as the only comedy show on TV
you feel like
you should have studied more for.
But look, that is what you get
when you tune in
to "'Yes, Unfortunately, This Will Be
on the Test' with Austin Downers."
The point is, for the past year,
Republicans and Democrats have
been at war over congressional maps,
with governors, state lawmakers,
and especially the Supreme Court
playing key roles.
It's been predicted that, thanks to this
latest batch of redistricting alone,
Republicans could gain between
three to 12 more seats in Congress
than they'd otherwise have done.
Which is significant,
because remember,
the last election gave them
just a five-seat majority.
And given so many of these fights
center on breaking up
majority-Black districts,
people in them
are understandably furious.
Chaos at the Tennessee capitol
in Nashville Thursday
as Democratic lawmakers and
protesters tried to stop legislation
breaking up the state's
only Democratic House seat.
Yelling, holding signs, calling
the move "Jim Crow 2.0",
even burning a printout
of the Confederate flag.
Yeah, burning a printout
of a Confederate flag
is a pretty powerful response there.
It effectively
communicates two things.
One, "We won't stand for rights
being stripped away"
and two, "I'm mad enough to put up
with some pretty weird looks
from a Staples employee
when we printed this out."
If you've been seeing scenes like that
and wondering how we got to this point,
tonight, we thought we'd explain
the current redistricting battles,
specifically how damaging they could be
and what could be done going forward.
And let's start with the fact
that redistricting, in and of itself,
is not a bad thing.
Populations aren't static, and district
lines should account for that.
But the thing is, exactly how and
where you draw them matters a lot,
because, as we've discussed before,
you can put a heavy thumb
on the scale of who gets elected.
Imagine a hypothetical state
with a population of 25 people.
10 belong to one party,
15 belong to the other.
Now let's say they get to send five
representatives to Congress.
Draw the lines horizontally,
you get proportional representation,
two reps from the gray party
and three from the white.
But draw the lines vertically and
the gray party would get none,
because the white party would have
a majority in every district.
Exactly. Depending on how
you draw the lines,
you can give yourself
a major advantage.
And while I do appreciate
the diagram there,
there's simply no need to "imagine
a hypothetical state with 25 people."
That is just Wyoming.
You are talking about Wyoming.
That practice of manipulating maps
to get the outcome that you want
is known as "gerrymandering"
and it's been a problem
in the U.S. for centuries.
And you should know, most of the world
doesn't let its politicians do that,
and for very good reason,
as this professor explains.
Every fall, I speak to five or six
members of the British Parliament
that come over to shadow
members of Congress,
and one of the things I have
to explain to them is,
"Here's how you get elected
to the House."
I see these shocked looks
on these British faces
and one time
one stood up and said,
"That's terrible! That's not the voters
choosing their representatives,
that's the representatives
choosing their voters."
Hey!
Stop it!
It is okay for me to do that voice.
It is not okay for you to do it.
Also, as an American, I do think
you'd have been within your rights
to say to those British politicians,
"I don't want to hear shit
about how maps should be drawn
from anyone from Great Britain."
Which, by the way, is, I'm pretty sure,
a direct Ghandi quote.
The point is, in many states,
the way we draw districts
is deeply flawed.
And even before this past year,
the Supreme Court had managed
to make it even worse.
For instance, it used to be
that redistricting was only done once
a decade, after the census,
but in 2006, the court ruled that states
can do it as many times as they want.
Then in 2013, they effectively
tossed out a requirement
that areas with a history
of discrimination
get "preclearance"
before redrawing maps.
And in 2019, they ruled that
federal courts couldn't stop states
from drawing lines
on a partisan basis.
So, if, in the helpful framing
of that clip from earlier,
the white party wanted
to draw lines in a way
that would take seats away
from the non-white party,
and there was no state law
preventing it,
the only thing stopping them would
be their own sense of shame.
All of which leads us back
to last summer,
when one of the most shameless
presidents in U.S. history
made a pretty bold request
of Texas to redraw their maps.
And he was not shy
about why he was asking.
On Texas, how many more seats
do you want the Republicans to draw?
I think we get five, and there
could be some other states.
We're gonna get another
three or four or five in addition.
Texas would be the biggest one.
And that'll be five.
Are you calling then for a complete
redrawing of the congressional map?
No, no. Just a very simple
redrawing, we pick up five seats.
Yeah, that's pretty direct.
He ordered five more Republican seats
from Governor Greg Abbott.
And as a result, in August,
Abbott signed a new congressional map
into law designed to do exactly that.
So, basically, Trump demanded
more seats, and he got them.
Which I know sounds like the answer
to the question,
"Why is Jeffrey Epstein's plane
so full?" But it's also true here.
And in the wake
of Texas' redistricting,
Democratic leaders, for once,
actually hit back hard.
California governor Gavin Newsom
announced a ballot measure
to implement new maps that'd give
Democrats up to five more seats,
essentially offsetting
what Texas had done.
Here he is making his pitch.
It's not good enough to just hold
hands, have a candlelight vigil,
and talk about the way
the world should be.
We have got to recognize
the cards that have been dealt.
And we have got
to meet fire with fire.
He's right. And now, unfortunately,
I find myself in the unpleasant position
of having to admit that
Gavin Newsom is right about something.
Because, to be clear,
I'm not a huge fan of that man,
for many reasons, from his general
"Andrew Cuomo but California" vibes,
to the fact he vetoed a bill
to limit solitary confinement,
to his responding to book bans
by posting this photo of himself
reading page 0.5 of "Beloved",
with the caption,
"Reading some banned books to figure
out what these states are so afraid of",
featuring the most orchestrated
by-a-publicist stack of books
I have ever seen.
"Oh, make sure '1984' is peeking out
from under 'To Kill a Mockingbird',
but not too much.
That wouldn't seem organic.
And this is very important:
please make sure that
'Gender Queer' is barely visible."
And look, while I don't love the logic
of, "Texas disenfranchised a bunch
of Democratic voters, so in response,
we're going to disenfranchise
a bunch of California Republicans",
I do also get
that the only real alternative
was to "whine about fairness
and then lose."
And apparently,
a lot of Californians agreed,
because Newsom's proposition
passed easily.
But the thing is,
by the time that happened,
more red states
had already entered the fray.
Missouri passed new congressional
district boundaries in September,
likely giving Republicans
one more seat
and North Carolina
did the same in October.
So, in response, Democrats in Virginia
put a referendum to voters there
that'd allow them to do a particularly
aggressive gerrymander
that'd potentially give them
10 seats to Republicans' one.
To make the map more blue,
Democrats would carve up
deep blue Fairfax County.
Where I'm standing would be
the intersection of three districts,
so that the apartment buildings
over here would be in one district,
those over there
would be in a second,
and then right over here, these
folks would be in a 3rd district.
If you drove
just a short distance away,
you'd find a fourth congressional
district, and then a fifth.
That's led to a new
Republican catchphrase,
"Don't Fairfax me," popping up.
Countering that,
"Texas started it" bumper stickers.
Now, I mean,
that is obviously very petty.
But also, as a slogan,
"Don't Fairfax me" is just nonsense.
Is it the worst one I've ever heard?
No, because that would be
Domino's new slogan, "You can't
say 'Domino's' without saying 'mmm.'"
Although, I will point out,
you also can't say "Domino's"
without saying "no",
which feels much more relevant to me.
Now, the good news for Democrats is,
Virginia's referendum passed in April.
And at that point, they'd basically
fought Republicans to a draw,
with Hakeem Jeffries even
promising "maximum warfare"
if Republicans continued to redistrict.
But unfortunately, soon after,
everything fell apart.
Because not only did Virginia's
state Supreme Court wind up
invalidating that referendum
on technicalities, just a week earlier,
the Supreme Court had handed
Republicans this massive gift.
The Supreme Court escalating
an intense back-and-forth battle
for control of Congress,
with a landmark ruling that's
already affecting some elections.
The court's conservative majority
ruling six to three
that Louisiana's current
congressional map,
with two majority African American
districts, is unconstitutional.
Democrats blasting the ruling,
arguing it weakens a key provision
of the Voting Rights Act,
aimed at prohibiting discrimination
on the basis of race.
Adding that
other majority-Black districts
are now vulnerable to being erased.
Yeah, from the six justices who brought
you such banger decisions
as "The President Is Untouchable",
"Your Uterus Is Our Legal Property"
and "Oops! All Smog" came
a brand-new decision on voting rights.
Very basically,
under the Voting Rights Act,
minority voters could previously
challenge a map
if it diluted minority representation
in their state,
regardless of whether
that was the intention.
It was to comply with that law
that Louisiana drew a map
that contained two majority-Black
congressional districts.
But in that Supreme Court case,
a group of 12 self-described
"non-African American" voters
claimed that their "personal dignity"
had been injured by the map,
which they said racially stigmatized,
stereotyped and maligned them.
While I do appreciate them specifying
that they were "non-African American",
honey, that was already clear!
"This map hurt my feelings
and now I want to talk to your
manager" more than covered it.
Yet the court sided with them,
with Alito writing that, going forward,
anyone challenging a map
could only prevail
if they had strong evidence "the state
intentionally drew its districts
to afford minority voters less
opportunity because of their race."
Basically, unless state lawmakers were
shouting slurs while drawing the lines,
they were gonna be in the clear.
And by issuing that ruling,
the court immediately set off
a new
lightning round of gerrymandering.
Because even though Louisiana
had already received
more than 40,000 absentee ballots
for its congressional primaries,
their governor quickly declared a state
of emergency and suspended elections
so that new maps could be drawn.
And unsurprisingly,
those maps then eliminated
one of Louisiana's
two majority-Black districts.
So, right now, only one of the state's
six districts is majority-Black,
despite the fact its population
is about one-third Black.
Now, understandably, many
voters there were upset about this,
but when Louisiana's governor
was asked about that,
he seemed personally offended.
I think a lot of African American
voters in this state might say
they need that protection
when it comes to the ballot box.
I mean, we'd go back
to Martin Luther King, right?
Judge a person based
upon the content of their character
rather than the color of their skin.
That is powerful stuff, Landry.
You know, that actually reminds me
of another Martin Luther King quote,
when he said,
"Can white people please learn
more than two of my fucking quotes?"
But for the record:
history shows that, without
majority-Black districts,
Black candidates in Louisiana have
basically no chance of getting elected.
In fact, "Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Alabama have never elected
a Black representative
outside a majority-Black district"
and "no Black candidate has been
elected to statewide office
in Louisiana
since Reconstruction."
And to her credit, Landry's interviewer
actually pressed him on that point.
Black voters in Louisiana have told me
that they feel like it's true,
someone who looks like you
who has not lived their experience
does not address their concerns
as well as someone who has
lived their experience would.
How is it that a little country boy
who grew up in a town
that was primarily Black,
not lived through those experiences?
But I do think a lot of folks
might say those experiences
are not necessarily the same.
You're saying I should not judge
a person
just because the person is Black.
And I agree with that.
But isn't it the opposite
that I shouldn't be judged
just because I'm white,
or Hispanic, or Indian?
I mean, here we are,
after all of the different cases,
after all of the rectification
of the sins of the past,
which certainly no one has denied,
and yet we're still trying to find some
sliver of discrimination in race.
I think a lot of people would say
you don't have to try to find it.
It's there.
I would say that it would reside
in people's hearts, not in their laws.
Okay, that man
is clearly a historic idiot,
but I will agree with him
on one point.
He shouldn't be judged
just because he is white.
He should be judged because,
one,
he just had to have the concept
of racism explained to him on TV.
Two, he's for some reason dressed
like "30 Rock"'s Leap Day William.
And three,
he sounds like Elmer Fudd
if he exclusively went to schools
named after Robert E. Lee.
Louisiana was not alone in moving
fast after that Supreme Court ruling.
Tennessee also quickly approved
a new map that slices Memphis,
a majority-Black city,
into three extremely long districts
that drag into rural areas.
And while doing so,
Tennessee Republicans insisted
that they were acting for purely
partisan reasons,
which, remember, the Supreme Court
has said is okay,
and that they were completely
unaware that in doing so
they were screwing over Black voters.
And while I've shown you
this clip before,
it is worth seeing again
just how flagrantly dumb
they were willing to pretend to be.
To the sponsor:
are you aware that Memphis
is predominantly African American?
Senator Stevens, respond.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am not.
- Senator Lamar.
- Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So, to my sponsor, who went to law
school at the University of Memphis
and lived there for three years,
you're telling me you're not aware
that Memphis is predominantly
African American, am I correct?
Senator Lamar, he's answered that.
Next question, please.
"Next question, please"?
I've got a question for you!
Are you fucking kidding me?
Because you know that guy's answer
was bad when it got a laugh so big
it sounded like that debate
was being filmed
in front
of a live studio audience.
Meanwhile, Alabama also called
a special session
to force a series of votes on its maps
at state and congressional levels.
And as you will hear
this state senator point out,
it forced one of those votes
through,
even as the building was being
evacuated for a tornado warning.
Now, you know what?
This don't even make sense.
We should have gone into a recess
and then waited
until after the weather
to take this vote.
But they want to do this so bad.
That is ridiculous.
It's true, they forced the vote
during an evacuation.
Which isn't just disrespectful
to Alabama voters
and those who fought for civil rights,
somehow, it even manages to be
disrespectful to the tornado!
Here is a storm doing its very best
to extend from the base
of a cumulonimbus cloud
and form a rapidly rotating
column of air,
and state legislators
are just willfully ignoring that
to implement racist voting maps?
Have some fucking respect!
And in case that wasn't a potent
enough summary of things,
when the Supreme Court gave
Alabama final clearance
to use a congressional map
that had previously been found
to be racially discriminatory,
the state's AG
released this celebratory video.
My job in this office
was to put the legislature
in the best possible legal position
to draw a congressional map that
favors Republicans seven to zero.
My office has never taken the charge
of our state motto lightly.
We dare defend our rights.
Stay tuned.
What a smile that is.
He looks like Mister Rogers
if he'd made a famous episode in favor
of segregation instead of against it.
But despite what he just said there,
implementing
racially discriminatory maps
is not actually an AG's job,
at all.
That's like if you went to
a Build-A-Bear Workshop
and one of the employees said,
"My job in this store
is to baptize every stuffed animal
so that they may enter
the kingdom of heaven."
No, it is very much not that.
You just wanted to do it.
And to be honest,
I'd like my platypus to go to hell,
thank you very much.
But incredibly,
I am still not done,
because Florida also
passed a new map,
which could add three to four
Republican seats.
Now, plans for that had technically
been in the works
before the Supreme Court decision,
but Ron DeSantis seemed
extra-confident afterwards.
And I'm gonna warn you,
you are not ready for the choice
he makes midway through this clip.
Sometimes, you got people
in D.C., in New York,
who may not like, and they
may say different stuff.
And we've got this guy,
Hakeem Jeffries. Okay?
And, you know, he goes out
there and he's like,
"We're gonna do maximum
warfare against Republicans.
Florida Republicans, you F around,
you gonna find out," all this stuff.
Holy shit! I never thought I'd see
blackface without the makeup,
but it seems there's a first time
for everything.
I don't have a ton to say about that,
really, except, A, fuck you,
and B, maybe someone show that clip
to Governor Lollipop here
the next time he describes racism
as something you need
to "try and find".
And when you take this redistricting
back-and-forth together,
it will, as I said earlier,
probably give Republicans
up to 12 seats in the House.
Doesn't mean they'll automatically
win the House in November.
But it makes the margin
for Democrats meaningfully smaller.
Also, everything you've seen so far
only addresses what was able
to be done before the midterms,
but it won't end there.
In the coming years,
Republicans in Southern states
could ultimately eliminate
majority-minority districts altogether,
taking America back
to the Jim Crow era,
when there were
no Black representatives
in Southern states
with sizable Black populations.
And there'll likely be major impacts
on other levels of government, too,
from city councils to school boards
to state legislatures.
And for those who fought so hard
for their voting rights,
watching them get stripped away
this fast is brutal.
Because it is worth remembering:
the progress that's being undone
happened in living memory
for many.
In fact, just listen to this man,
outside the Florida State House
in April, as they were
passing their new map.
Being 79,
I come from a Jim Crow era
where Blacks
were second-class citizens.
It will not happen again.
I feel bad about it, not for me,
'cause I have a short time being here.
But for my grandchildren,
my great-grands,
I do not want them
going through what I experienced.
Yeah. And if that
doesn't make the point here,
I really don't know what does.
So, what do we do?
Well, Democrats
aren't completely out of options.
After November, more states
under Democratic control
could pursue partisan gerrymanders
to try and offset the damage,
from New York to Maryland
to Illinois,
where one House Democrat
has said there's a nuclear option
of a 17 to zero map, meaning
no Republican districts at all.
And while initially, the idea of total
warfare here is undeniably satisfying,
it is worth remembering,
there are more red states
that could jump in and respond and
you may not like how that fight ends.
Look, the long-term goal here
should probably be
to find a way to try
and un-fuck every state's maps.
And if Democrats are able
to get back into power,
there are ways
to get to that point.
For instance, Congress could pass
a new version of the John Lewis Act,
which would, among other things,
modernize and revitalize
the Voting Rights Act
and ban partisan gerrymandering.
The House actually passed it
in 2022,
but it couldn't get past
a Senate filibuster.
But the hard truth here is, we may
need to think bigger than that.
Because a new voting rights law
isn't going to mean much
if the Supreme Court
just steps in to undo it.
That is why we also need
significant Supreme Court reform.
There's actually a House bill
that would be a start there,
providing each president equal
opportunities to appoint justices,
by establishing staggered
18-year term limits for the court.
And who knows?
Maybe that could bring about the change
that this magnificent home,
this beautiful motor home could not.
Look, the current situation
is clearly untenable.
Which is why all options
should be on the table
to get us to a system where, ideally,
if I may quote someone using
what turned out to be the least
offensive accent you heard tonight,
the voters choose
their representatives,
not the representatives
choosing their bloody voters.
And now, this.
And Now: Let's Check Back In With
KOLR's Jeremy Rabe and Tom Trtan.
That is delicious.
I mean, that is tasty.
What, Tom?
Moving on. Before we go, we're going
to be off for the next few weeks,
so I wanted to share a quick
update about soap operas.
You may remember, back in March,
we discovered that Stephen A. Smith
has been quietly playing the role
of Brick on "General Hospital"
for the last 10 years,
which filled me with, in equal measure,
immense confusion
and scorching-hot jealousy.
So, I did the only thing any sane
person would do in that situation.
I offered myself to any soap opera
that would create a role for me,
an offer that I made right before
I was shot on stage by Colonel Sanders,
which I promise made
perfect sense at the time.
Now, since then, you might've
stumbled across headlines
about my passionate request
in outlets like Soap Hub,
Daytime Confidential,
and Cleveland-dot-com.
Although, when The Daily Mail wrote
about it, they weren't quite so kind,
as their headline was
"John Oliver's Private Panic:
Late-Night Curse Spreads
and Host Prepares for Worst
as Insiders Reveal His Desperate
'Plan B'
and the Industry Whispers
Swirling About His Fate."
And first, let me say,
it is a true honor
to be featured on a website that
just this week, published the story,
"I Had So Much Sex
During My Sluttiest Ever Summer,
Until One Girlfriend Caught Me
Doing Something So Shameful,
I Thought I Might Die."
But to be clear here,
soap acting is not my plan B.
My actual plan B is, obviously,
being a Mr. Bean impersonator
for the strangest little
children's birthday parties.
And to clarify things even further,
my plea wasn't me
"preparing for the worst."
I simply offered my hypothetical
acting abilities to any soap
that would meet my terms,
which were:
I wanted to play a character
with a ridiculous name,
I wanted a juicy storyline
like murder or slapping,
and I wanted
a dramatic close-up of my face.
Well, I'm thrilled to announce
I have an update.
Because I don't know
if you've ever heard
of a little show called
"Days of Our Lives".
The American icon that gave us
unforgettable moments
like the devil possessing Marlena,
Sami Brady trying to rescue Philip
from Iraq
by going in full soldier drag,
and Bo Brady discovering
a mysterious woman in a bayou
that everyone called "Swamp Girl" until
learning she was actually a princess.
Well, I'm happy to say
that I've already taped
a week of episodes
on "Days of Our Lives".
Which is clearly a huge honor.
It's been home to some of the most
renowned soap opera actors,
like Diedre Hall, Susan Seaforth Hayes,
and John Aniston, of the Anistons.
It's also featured guest appearances
from legends like Dick Van Dyke,
Betty White, and now me!
The only other time you'd hear
my name alongside those two
would be if someone
were trying to answer the question,
"Name three celebrities
you could reasonably guess
were born in the 1920s."
But the truth is,
"Days of Our Lives" wasn't actually
the only show that reached out.
If you read that Daily Mail article,
you'd have seen that they claimed
that "General Hospital"
pitched me "an emotional role",
but I "turned it down" because,
and I quote,
"he only wants to play fun parts."
And I don't know where
the fuck they got that from.
Because if "General Hospital"
had genuinely pitched me a role,
and given me the chance
to hang out in Port Charles,
the home of Luke and Laura,
the Corinthos family, and Brick,
if they'd given me the chance
to join the ranks of guest stars
like Liz Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr.,
and of course,
the great Colonel Sanders,
then I'd have leapt at the chance.
Which is why I'm so very glad
that they actually did.
Because it means
that I now get to announce
that I will also be appearing
in "General Hospital" this summer.
Because what is funnier
than being in one soap opera?
Being in two!
You can see me on, and I cannot
believe I'm saying this,
"General Hospital" on ABC next week.
And while
I'm not going to spoil anything,
I will show you this picture
of my character.
Yes, that is me
surrounded by men with guns,
and yes, my hair has been
dipped in an inkwell.
And if you cannot tell from
my face there, I am acting really hard.
I'm acting my hardest, in fact.
I don't wanna brag,
but they did say that
of any guest star they've ever had,
I used the most takes.
Now, it is only fair
that I also show you a photo
from my time on
"Days of Our Lives",
so brace yourselves, because,
here it is!
Yes, that is real. The photo,
that is, not the hair.
I look like Elvis reincarnated
into his accountant.
I look like Rachel Maddow
after witnessing a murder.
I look like
Rogaine's worst-case scenario.
What I love most about that photo
is that even though you can only see
the back of the other actor's neck,
you can tell how much I visually
don't belong anywhere near him.
His back is an L.A. 10, and
my front is a Middle Earth three.
I genuinely cannot wait for everyone to
see what these two soaps have done.
I am so grateful that
they played along with us,
and I'm truly looking forward
to reading about it afterwards
in The Daily Mail, which I can
only guess will write something like,
"HBO Host Hits Rock Bottom
With Multiple Soap Opera Roles,
Insiders and Doctors Worry
He's 'Nearing Death'."
Well, you're gonna be
eating your words, Daily Mail,
'cause does this look like
a desperate man to you?
Not to me, it doesn't!
That's the face of a man
living his fucking dream!
I'll be on "General Hospital"
July 2nd, 3rd, and 6th,
and on "Days of Our Lives"
August 11th, 12th, and 14th.
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching,
we'll be back July 26th,
good night!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much
for joining us. It has been a busy week.
Europe suffered a brutal heat wave,
there were massive earthquakes
in Venezuela,
and in D.C.,
the Great American State Fair opened,
with attractions including bull-riding,
a Ferris wheel,
and a speech from Donald Trump, which
one fan in particular was excited about.
Today will be
my 116th Trump rally.
People are saying that this
shouldn't be a Trump rally,
that this should be a non-political
event. What do you make of all that?
I wish they would just shut up.
He's the president.
Like, last week,
it was the president's birthday.
If he wants some bare-knuckle
boxing on the White House lawn
and people kicking each other
in the faces, fine! Great!
That is an interesting take!
Though I am not sure
he's the person to trust on whether
or not Trump is overdoing it,
given that it seems he woke up that
morning, put one hat on his head,
and then said,
"No, that is simply not enough."
Also, 116 Trump rallies?
I didn't even know
there'd been that many of them.
I know Trump
has been alive for a long time,
but nowadays he's mostly asleep,
and has doctor's appointments
approximately 450 days out of the year.
Where does he find the time?
The state fair wasn't the only thing
drawing attention in D.C. this week.
Because not far from it,
another of Trump's pet
projects continued to unravel.
The nation's Reflecting Pool,
the subject of intense focus
in President Trump's ongoing campaign
to refresh Washington D.C.,
is still looking more algae green
than America blue.
There's lots of green,
and it smells really bad.
Yeah, "There's lots of green,
and it smells really bad."
It's never a great sign when the
feedback for your national monument
sounds exactly like a review
for sex with the Grinch.
"Green. Smelly. Good communicator,
though! Three stars."
Trump's renovation
of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
continues to be
an absolute trainwreck.
It's been plagued
by enormous blooms of algae,
large chunks of blue sealant
have been peeling off,
and just this week, a trio of dead
ducks were discovered there,
prompting a spokesperson for
the Center for Biological Diversity
to say Trump was "wasting taxpayer
money turning the Reflecting Pool
into a giant duck death trap."
Which is clearly awful!
Ducks shouldn't have to worry about
getting murdered by the Reflecting Pool.
They should be worried
about getting shot by a hunter,
getting eaten by a predator,
or getting teased by me
for having a corkscrew-shaped penis.
As we have mentioned repeatedly
before, all male ducks have them,
including Donald, by the way.
Put some pants on, you pervert,
and show some dignity!
Your nephews are dead! They died
in the Reflecting Pool, Donald!
May their memory be a blessing.
And in response to all of this,
Trump shifted into full
blame-deflection mode this week,
claiming that there had been sabotage
and railing on social media
against a, quote, "crazy pro-algae
likely paid-protestor."
Which is funny even before
you realize he's referring
to this frankly excellent frog.
As for that peeling liner,
Trump offered this explanation.
We have a, I think, 290,
300-foot slit right through it.
Probably a box cutter
or a knife of some kind.
National Guard and police
have been all over the mall.
How would these vandals have gotten
so close to do something like that?
- Do you have any proof of this?
- We didn't have a lot of them then.
Who would think that somebody
would go into a pool
and take a knife and start cutting it?
But do you have proof of that?
That they used a knife?
- Do you have photos or videos?
- Well, let's put it this way.
When you have a 350,
I think it's 350, not 250,
a 350-foot slit from one end
to the other, you think that's proof?
No! No, I don't!
So, over the course of a minute there,
that slit grew from 290, to 300,
to 350 feet,
depending how prone to exaggeration
Trump felt at any given second.
Experts have noted it'd be very
challenging to cut that liner
and it's much more likely that the
repairs were "just done too hastily".
It also may not have helped that,
during them,
Trump literally drove over
the pool in his motorcade.
And yet, Trump kept pushing
the sabotage conspiracy
and his supporters kept trying
to sell it,
even when the evidence
was just laughably weak.
We haven't been able to verify
the video, but take a look.
June 19th, a male, blue shirt,
reaches in,
stays there for a little while.
He goes back down, comes back up.
Multiple times. What's he doing?
Then a female,
white tote bag, she reaches in,
needs a better angle, sets the bag
down, dives in a little deeper.
And we don't know
who these people are.
No one was stopped or questioned
by police, so no arrests.
And we don't have
the police report yet.
But what are they doing
with their hands in the pool?
Are they cutting the lining?
Are they peeling off the paint?
We don't know if they're
committing a crime.
They'll probably tell you
they dropped their wedding ring.
Wait, is that the best you've got?
That is pathetic!
As for "they'll probably tell you
they dropped their wedding ring",
yeah, maybe they did!
Maybe those people
at the Reflecting Pool
dropped the wedding ring after leaving
their wife for a 25-year-old coworker.
Jesse would know
what that is like!
It's actually one of the many
fun facts that you can learn about
on his Wikipedia page,
along with, "In November 2024,
Watters stated he had not been invited
to his mother's home for Thanksgiving."
And I do not blame his mom for that.
She's a child psychologist
and she tried her best.
Sometimes you just get one
that sucks.
Though it does now
make much more sense
that Jesse will willingly
humiliate himself
by pursuing the approval of
a withholding parental figure
that will simply never come,
and sadly,
he'll now die starving for it while
his mom spends Thanksgiving
in a warm home surrounded
by people that she loves.
It's basically "A Christmas Carol"
if Scrooge had ignored all the ghosts,
even though one
was literally his mom.
Meanwhile, the administration's
been trying to fix things
by pumping out the algae and pouring in
jugs of hydrogen peroxide.
But it is now at the point
where the National Guard have
stepped up patrols of the area,
and fencing has been put up
around the pool.
In fact, when you Google it now,
you'll find this label saying
it is "temporarily closed",
like it's a Chipotle that
the health department shut down
after finding
a dead mouse in the guac.
And the administration
is still refusing to question
whether any of this might have
been the fault of the companies
that they gave contracts to,
a hiring process that itself
now seems pretty questionable.
Repairs are adding to
the already over-budget project,
totaling more than 16 million dollars
after a pair of no-bid contracts.
One of those companies?
Greenwater Services.
The White House denied any role
in the company's hiring.
But last year, Greenwater did work
at Mr. Trump's Bedminster golf club.
Company is owned by a trust owned
by Republican donor John Cafaro.
When people say, "Doesn't Trump
make your job as a comedian easier?"
this is why the answer
is actually no.
Because how can I make that
funnier than it already is?
They gave the pool job
to a Trump crony
whose company
is literally called Greenwater,
and it looks
like he manages The Undertaker.
Come on!
No living person looks like this!
He looks like the response
to an AI prompt
of, "What if the concept of
racketeering was a person?"
And even that is barely a joke,
given that that man
actually was convicted of conspiracy
to bribe a congressman.
You know what? I give up.
Much like Donald Trump when
"The Art of the Deal" was being written,
I am simply not contributing here.
Anyway, I know that this
is far from the most important thing
happening in America right now,
but it is striking
that, even as this country
celebrates turning 250,
its capital city is dealing
with a literal swamp of corruption,
there are dead ducks
in the Lincoln Reflecting Pool,
and people are kicking each other
in the face on the White House lawn.
The symbolism here
is pretty hard to miss.
In fact, as metaphors for the current
state of things in America go,
all of that is, much like the sartorial
sense of the president's biggest fan,
a hat on a fucking hat.
And now, this.
And Now: The Delightful Rapport of
KOLR's Jeremy Rabe and Tom Trtan.
Welcome to this marvelous
Monday, I'm Jeremy Rabe.
- And I'm Tom Trtan.
- Yes, you are.
I am,
and I have been for a while.
You are really flashy today.
Colorful.
- Well, here's the thing. Guess what?
- What?
- Saturday's Valentine's Day.
- It is?
Then we'll see five people's first
names that share a last name,
and then we put the last name, and
combined, it creates a new person.
- Does that make sense?
- No, but I'll jump in.
All right, it is time to celebrate
some celebrity birthdays.
We shall guess.
I did not cheat today, did you?
I didn't even know we were
doing it until just now.
Okay, it's time for a round
of "would you rather." Are you ready?
- I'd rather not.
- Okay, go to break.
My plants have not recovered yet
from that cold snap we had last week.
They look terrible.
I'm really worried.
Maybe you got bad plants.
- I love "Schmigadoon"!
- I haven't seen it.
- Have you seen the TV show?
- No.
Did you ever see the movie "Barbie"
a couple years ago with Margot Robbie?
Absolutely not.
I look like a sofa from the 1950s.
I have no argument.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns voting.
It's the number one way to get a free
pen from a woman born in 1904.
Voting's also the subject
of this bonkers early '90s PSA.
Art is not produced in a vacuum.
Beauty cannot be regulated by the state.
Music is a reflection of our culture.
Today, our own government
is trying to tell you
what you should
and shouldn't put in your tape deck.
But there is a way out
of the vacuum.
Get to the polls on November 6th
and exercise your right.
It's your turn to speak.
Your vote is your voice.
What?!
Setting aside the fact that seems
to have been directed
by a depressed Danish teenager,
that is maybe the most
early '90s thing I've ever seen.
You've got SJP
and Robert Downey Jr.,
who, fun fact,
were a couple for seven years.
And you've got the sullen mention
of a tape deck,
which is basically like an iPod
but from the Civil War.
I'm genuinely not sure you could
get more '90s
unless they threw on Gretzky jerseys
and invaded Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
Specifically,
this story concerns the fact
that-while midterm elections
are still four months away,
some of the biggest decisions
that may decide the results
have actually already taken place.
That is thanks to a redistricting fight
that's been raging all over the country.
Republicans in Texas currently hold 25
of the state's 38 congressional seats.
The new map ups the total
they could win to 30.
California voters have approved
Proposition 50,
redrawing congressional districts
in a way
that could cost Republicans
five seats next year.
The Missouri Senate has passed
a Trump-backed congressional map
intended to help Republicans add
an additional U.S. House seat.
Louisiana state house has advanced
an updated congressional map
that is expected to remove
at least one Democrat-leaning district.
That's right, tonight, we're going to
be talking about congressional maps,
really solidifying this
as the only comedy show on TV
you feel like
you should have studied more for.
But look, that is what you get
when you tune in
to "'Yes, Unfortunately, This Will Be
on the Test' with Austin Downers."
The point is, for the past year,
Republicans and Democrats have
been at war over congressional maps,
with governors, state lawmakers,
and especially the Supreme Court
playing key roles.
It's been predicted that, thanks to this
latest batch of redistricting alone,
Republicans could gain between
three to 12 more seats in Congress
than they'd otherwise have done.
Which is significant,
because remember,
the last election gave them
just a five-seat majority.
And given so many of these fights
center on breaking up
majority-Black districts,
people in them
are understandably furious.
Chaos at the Tennessee capitol
in Nashville Thursday
as Democratic lawmakers and
protesters tried to stop legislation
breaking up the state's
only Democratic House seat.
Yelling, holding signs, calling
the move "Jim Crow 2.0",
even burning a printout
of the Confederate flag.
Yeah, burning a printout
of a Confederate flag
is a pretty powerful response there.
It effectively
communicates two things.
One, "We won't stand for rights
being stripped away"
and two, "I'm mad enough to put up
with some pretty weird looks
from a Staples employee
when we printed this out."
If you've been seeing scenes like that
and wondering how we got to this point,
tonight, we thought we'd explain
the current redistricting battles,
specifically how damaging they could be
and what could be done going forward.
And let's start with the fact
that redistricting, in and of itself,
is not a bad thing.
Populations aren't static, and district
lines should account for that.
But the thing is, exactly how and
where you draw them matters a lot,
because, as we've discussed before,
you can put a heavy thumb
on the scale of who gets elected.
Imagine a hypothetical state
with a population of 25 people.
10 belong to one party,
15 belong to the other.
Now let's say they get to send five
representatives to Congress.
Draw the lines horizontally,
you get proportional representation,
two reps from the gray party
and three from the white.
But draw the lines vertically and
the gray party would get none,
because the white party would have
a majority in every district.
Exactly. Depending on how
you draw the lines,
you can give yourself
a major advantage.
And while I do appreciate
the diagram there,
there's simply no need to "imagine
a hypothetical state with 25 people."
That is just Wyoming.
You are talking about Wyoming.
That practice of manipulating maps
to get the outcome that you want
is known as "gerrymandering"
and it's been a problem
in the U.S. for centuries.
And you should know, most of the world
doesn't let its politicians do that,
and for very good reason,
as this professor explains.
Every fall, I speak to five or six
members of the British Parliament
that come over to shadow
members of Congress,
and one of the things I have
to explain to them is,
"Here's how you get elected
to the House."
I see these shocked looks
on these British faces
and one time
one stood up and said,
"That's terrible! That's not the voters
choosing their representatives,
that's the representatives
choosing their voters."
Hey!
Stop it!
It is okay for me to do that voice.
It is not okay for you to do it.
Also, as an American, I do think
you'd have been within your rights
to say to those British politicians,
"I don't want to hear shit
about how maps should be drawn
from anyone from Great Britain."
Which, by the way, is, I'm pretty sure,
a direct Ghandi quote.
The point is, in many states,
the way we draw districts
is deeply flawed.
And even before this past year,
the Supreme Court had managed
to make it even worse.
For instance, it used to be
that redistricting was only done once
a decade, after the census,
but in 2006, the court ruled that states
can do it as many times as they want.
Then in 2013, they effectively
tossed out a requirement
that areas with a history
of discrimination
get "preclearance"
before redrawing maps.
And in 2019, they ruled that
federal courts couldn't stop states
from drawing lines
on a partisan basis.
So, if, in the helpful framing
of that clip from earlier,
the white party wanted
to draw lines in a way
that would take seats away
from the non-white party,
and there was no state law
preventing it,
the only thing stopping them would
be their own sense of shame.
All of which leads us back
to last summer,
when one of the most shameless
presidents in U.S. history
made a pretty bold request
of Texas to redraw their maps.
And he was not shy
about why he was asking.
On Texas, how many more seats
do you want the Republicans to draw?
I think we get five, and there
could be some other states.
We're gonna get another
three or four or five in addition.
Texas would be the biggest one.
And that'll be five.
Are you calling then for a complete
redrawing of the congressional map?
No, no. Just a very simple
redrawing, we pick up five seats.
Yeah, that's pretty direct.
He ordered five more Republican seats
from Governor Greg Abbott.
And as a result, in August,
Abbott signed a new congressional map
into law designed to do exactly that.
So, basically, Trump demanded
more seats, and he got them.
Which I know sounds like the answer
to the question,
"Why is Jeffrey Epstein's plane
so full?" But it's also true here.
And in the wake
of Texas' redistricting,
Democratic leaders, for once,
actually hit back hard.
California governor Gavin Newsom
announced a ballot measure
to implement new maps that'd give
Democrats up to five more seats,
essentially offsetting
what Texas had done.
Here he is making his pitch.
It's not good enough to just hold
hands, have a candlelight vigil,
and talk about the way
the world should be.
We have got to recognize
the cards that have been dealt.
And we have got
to meet fire with fire.
He's right. And now, unfortunately,
I find myself in the unpleasant position
of having to admit that
Gavin Newsom is right about something.
Because, to be clear,
I'm not a huge fan of that man,
for many reasons, from his general
"Andrew Cuomo but California" vibes,
to the fact he vetoed a bill
to limit solitary confinement,
to his responding to book bans
by posting this photo of himself
reading page 0.5 of "Beloved",
with the caption,
"Reading some banned books to figure
out what these states are so afraid of",
featuring the most orchestrated
by-a-publicist stack of books
I have ever seen.
"Oh, make sure '1984' is peeking out
from under 'To Kill a Mockingbird',
but not too much.
That wouldn't seem organic.
And this is very important:
please make sure that
'Gender Queer' is barely visible."
And look, while I don't love the logic
of, "Texas disenfranchised a bunch
of Democratic voters, so in response,
we're going to disenfranchise
a bunch of California Republicans",
I do also get
that the only real alternative
was to "whine about fairness
and then lose."
And apparently,
a lot of Californians agreed,
because Newsom's proposition
passed easily.
But the thing is,
by the time that happened,
more red states
had already entered the fray.
Missouri passed new congressional
district boundaries in September,
likely giving Republicans
one more seat
and North Carolina
did the same in October.
So, in response, Democrats in Virginia
put a referendum to voters there
that'd allow them to do a particularly
aggressive gerrymander
that'd potentially give them
10 seats to Republicans' one.
To make the map more blue,
Democrats would carve up
deep blue Fairfax County.
Where I'm standing would be
the intersection of three districts,
so that the apartment buildings
over here would be in one district,
those over there
would be in a second,
and then right over here, these
folks would be in a 3rd district.
If you drove
just a short distance away,
you'd find a fourth congressional
district, and then a fifth.
That's led to a new
Republican catchphrase,
"Don't Fairfax me," popping up.
Countering that,
"Texas started it" bumper stickers.
Now, I mean,
that is obviously very petty.
But also, as a slogan,
"Don't Fairfax me" is just nonsense.
Is it the worst one I've ever heard?
No, because that would be
Domino's new slogan, "You can't
say 'Domino's' without saying 'mmm.'"
Although, I will point out,
you also can't say "Domino's"
without saying "no",
which feels much more relevant to me.
Now, the good news for Democrats is,
Virginia's referendum passed in April.
And at that point, they'd basically
fought Republicans to a draw,
with Hakeem Jeffries even
promising "maximum warfare"
if Republicans continued to redistrict.
But unfortunately, soon after,
everything fell apart.
Because not only did Virginia's
state Supreme Court wind up
invalidating that referendum
on technicalities, just a week earlier,
the Supreme Court had handed
Republicans this massive gift.
The Supreme Court escalating
an intense back-and-forth battle
for control of Congress,
with a landmark ruling that's
already affecting some elections.
The court's conservative majority
ruling six to three
that Louisiana's current
congressional map,
with two majority African American
districts, is unconstitutional.
Democrats blasting the ruling,
arguing it weakens a key provision
of the Voting Rights Act,
aimed at prohibiting discrimination
on the basis of race.
Adding that
other majority-Black districts
are now vulnerable to being erased.
Yeah, from the six justices who brought
you such banger decisions
as "The President Is Untouchable",
"Your Uterus Is Our Legal Property"
and "Oops! All Smog" came
a brand-new decision on voting rights.
Very basically,
under the Voting Rights Act,
minority voters could previously
challenge a map
if it diluted minority representation
in their state,
regardless of whether
that was the intention.
It was to comply with that law
that Louisiana drew a map
that contained two majority-Black
congressional districts.
But in that Supreme Court case,
a group of 12 self-described
"non-African American" voters
claimed that their "personal dignity"
had been injured by the map,
which they said racially stigmatized,
stereotyped and maligned them.
While I do appreciate them specifying
that they were "non-African American",
honey, that was already clear!
"This map hurt my feelings
and now I want to talk to your
manager" more than covered it.
Yet the court sided with them,
with Alito writing that, going forward,
anyone challenging a map
could only prevail
if they had strong evidence "the state
intentionally drew its districts
to afford minority voters less
opportunity because of their race."
Basically, unless state lawmakers were
shouting slurs while drawing the lines,
they were gonna be in the clear.
And by issuing that ruling,
the court immediately set off
a new
lightning round of gerrymandering.
Because even though Louisiana
had already received
more than 40,000 absentee ballots
for its congressional primaries,
their governor quickly declared a state
of emergency and suspended elections
so that new maps could be drawn.
And unsurprisingly,
those maps then eliminated
one of Louisiana's
two majority-Black districts.
So, right now, only one of the state's
six districts is majority-Black,
despite the fact its population
is about one-third Black.
Now, understandably, many
voters there were upset about this,
but when Louisiana's governor
was asked about that,
he seemed personally offended.
I think a lot of African American
voters in this state might say
they need that protection
when it comes to the ballot box.
I mean, we'd go back
to Martin Luther King, right?
Judge a person based
upon the content of their character
rather than the color of their skin.
That is powerful stuff, Landry.
You know, that actually reminds me
of another Martin Luther King quote,
when he said,
"Can white people please learn
more than two of my fucking quotes?"
But for the record:
history shows that, without
majority-Black districts,
Black candidates in Louisiana have
basically no chance of getting elected.
In fact, "Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Alabama have never elected
a Black representative
outside a majority-Black district"
and "no Black candidate has been
elected to statewide office
in Louisiana
since Reconstruction."
And to her credit, Landry's interviewer
actually pressed him on that point.
Black voters in Louisiana have told me
that they feel like it's true,
someone who looks like you
who has not lived their experience
does not address their concerns
as well as someone who has
lived their experience would.
How is it that a little country boy
who grew up in a town
that was primarily Black,
not lived through those experiences?
But I do think a lot of folks
might say those experiences
are not necessarily the same.
You're saying I should not judge
a person
just because the person is Black.
And I agree with that.
But isn't it the opposite
that I shouldn't be judged
just because I'm white,
or Hispanic, or Indian?
I mean, here we are,
after all of the different cases,
after all of the rectification
of the sins of the past,
which certainly no one has denied,
and yet we're still trying to find some
sliver of discrimination in race.
I think a lot of people would say
you don't have to try to find it.
It's there.
I would say that it would reside
in people's hearts, not in their laws.
Okay, that man
is clearly a historic idiot,
but I will agree with him
on one point.
He shouldn't be judged
just because he is white.
He should be judged because,
one,
he just had to have the concept
of racism explained to him on TV.
Two, he's for some reason dressed
like "30 Rock"'s Leap Day William.
And three,
he sounds like Elmer Fudd
if he exclusively went to schools
named after Robert E. Lee.
Louisiana was not alone in moving
fast after that Supreme Court ruling.
Tennessee also quickly approved
a new map that slices Memphis,
a majority-Black city,
into three extremely long districts
that drag into rural areas.
And while doing so,
Tennessee Republicans insisted
that they were acting for purely
partisan reasons,
which, remember, the Supreme Court
has said is okay,
and that they were completely
unaware that in doing so
they were screwing over Black voters.
And while I've shown you
this clip before,
it is worth seeing again
just how flagrantly dumb
they were willing to pretend to be.
To the sponsor:
are you aware that Memphis
is predominantly African American?
Senator Stevens, respond.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am not.
- Senator Lamar.
- Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So, to my sponsor, who went to law
school at the University of Memphis
and lived there for three years,
you're telling me you're not aware
that Memphis is predominantly
African American, am I correct?
Senator Lamar, he's answered that.
Next question, please.
"Next question, please"?
I've got a question for you!
Are you fucking kidding me?
Because you know that guy's answer
was bad when it got a laugh so big
it sounded like that debate
was being filmed
in front
of a live studio audience.
Meanwhile, Alabama also called
a special session
to force a series of votes on its maps
at state and congressional levels.
And as you will hear
this state senator point out,
it forced one of those votes
through,
even as the building was being
evacuated for a tornado warning.
Now, you know what?
This don't even make sense.
We should have gone into a recess
and then waited
until after the weather
to take this vote.
But they want to do this so bad.
That is ridiculous.
It's true, they forced the vote
during an evacuation.
Which isn't just disrespectful
to Alabama voters
and those who fought for civil rights,
somehow, it even manages to be
disrespectful to the tornado!
Here is a storm doing its very best
to extend from the base
of a cumulonimbus cloud
and form a rapidly rotating
column of air,
and state legislators
are just willfully ignoring that
to implement racist voting maps?
Have some fucking respect!
And in case that wasn't a potent
enough summary of things,
when the Supreme Court gave
Alabama final clearance
to use a congressional map
that had previously been found
to be racially discriminatory,
the state's AG
released this celebratory video.
My job in this office
was to put the legislature
in the best possible legal position
to draw a congressional map that
favors Republicans seven to zero.
My office has never taken the charge
of our state motto lightly.
We dare defend our rights.
Stay tuned.
What a smile that is.
He looks like Mister Rogers
if he'd made a famous episode in favor
of segregation instead of against it.
But despite what he just said there,
implementing
racially discriminatory maps
is not actually an AG's job,
at all.
That's like if you went to
a Build-A-Bear Workshop
and one of the employees said,
"My job in this store
is to baptize every stuffed animal
so that they may enter
the kingdom of heaven."
No, it is very much not that.
You just wanted to do it.
And to be honest,
I'd like my platypus to go to hell,
thank you very much.
But incredibly,
I am still not done,
because Florida also
passed a new map,
which could add three to four
Republican seats.
Now, plans for that had technically
been in the works
before the Supreme Court decision,
but Ron DeSantis seemed
extra-confident afterwards.
And I'm gonna warn you,
you are not ready for the choice
he makes midway through this clip.
Sometimes, you got people
in D.C., in New York,
who may not like, and they
may say different stuff.
And we've got this guy,
Hakeem Jeffries. Okay?
And, you know, he goes out
there and he's like,
"We're gonna do maximum
warfare against Republicans.
Florida Republicans, you F around,
you gonna find out," all this stuff.
Holy shit! I never thought I'd see
blackface without the makeup,
but it seems there's a first time
for everything.
I don't have a ton to say about that,
really, except, A, fuck you,
and B, maybe someone show that clip
to Governor Lollipop here
the next time he describes racism
as something you need
to "try and find".
And when you take this redistricting
back-and-forth together,
it will, as I said earlier,
probably give Republicans
up to 12 seats in the House.
Doesn't mean they'll automatically
win the House in November.
But it makes the margin
for Democrats meaningfully smaller.
Also, everything you've seen so far
only addresses what was able
to be done before the midterms,
but it won't end there.
In the coming years,
Republicans in Southern states
could ultimately eliminate
majority-minority districts altogether,
taking America back
to the Jim Crow era,
when there were
no Black representatives
in Southern states
with sizable Black populations.
And there'll likely be major impacts
on other levels of government, too,
from city councils to school boards
to state legislatures.
And for those who fought so hard
for their voting rights,
watching them get stripped away
this fast is brutal.
Because it is worth remembering:
the progress that's being undone
happened in living memory
for many.
In fact, just listen to this man,
outside the Florida State House
in April, as they were
passing their new map.
Being 79,
I come from a Jim Crow era
where Blacks
were second-class citizens.
It will not happen again.
I feel bad about it, not for me,
'cause I have a short time being here.
But for my grandchildren,
my great-grands,
I do not want them
going through what I experienced.
Yeah. And if that
doesn't make the point here,
I really don't know what does.
So, what do we do?
Well, Democrats
aren't completely out of options.
After November, more states
under Democratic control
could pursue partisan gerrymanders
to try and offset the damage,
from New York to Maryland
to Illinois,
where one House Democrat
has said there's a nuclear option
of a 17 to zero map, meaning
no Republican districts at all.
And while initially, the idea of total
warfare here is undeniably satisfying,
it is worth remembering,
there are more red states
that could jump in and respond and
you may not like how that fight ends.
Look, the long-term goal here
should probably be
to find a way to try
and un-fuck every state's maps.
And if Democrats are able
to get back into power,
there are ways
to get to that point.
For instance, Congress could pass
a new version of the John Lewis Act,
which would, among other things,
modernize and revitalize
the Voting Rights Act
and ban partisan gerrymandering.
The House actually passed it
in 2022,
but it couldn't get past
a Senate filibuster.
But the hard truth here is, we may
need to think bigger than that.
Because a new voting rights law
isn't going to mean much
if the Supreme Court
just steps in to undo it.
That is why we also need
significant Supreme Court reform.
There's actually a House bill
that would be a start there,
providing each president equal
opportunities to appoint justices,
by establishing staggered
18-year term limits for the court.
And who knows?
Maybe that could bring about the change
that this magnificent home,
this beautiful motor home could not.
Look, the current situation
is clearly untenable.
Which is why all options
should be on the table
to get us to a system where, ideally,
if I may quote someone using
what turned out to be the least
offensive accent you heard tonight,
the voters choose
their representatives,
not the representatives
choosing their bloody voters.
And now, this.
And Now: Let's Check Back In With
KOLR's Jeremy Rabe and Tom Trtan.
That is delicious.
I mean, that is tasty.
What, Tom?
Moving on. Before we go, we're going
to be off for the next few weeks,
so I wanted to share a quick
update about soap operas.
You may remember, back in March,
we discovered that Stephen A. Smith
has been quietly playing the role
of Brick on "General Hospital"
for the last 10 years,
which filled me with, in equal measure,
immense confusion
and scorching-hot jealousy.
So, I did the only thing any sane
person would do in that situation.
I offered myself to any soap opera
that would create a role for me,
an offer that I made right before
I was shot on stage by Colonel Sanders,
which I promise made
perfect sense at the time.
Now, since then, you might've
stumbled across headlines
about my passionate request
in outlets like Soap Hub,
Daytime Confidential,
and Cleveland-dot-com.
Although, when The Daily Mail wrote
about it, they weren't quite so kind,
as their headline was
"John Oliver's Private Panic:
Late-Night Curse Spreads
and Host Prepares for Worst
as Insiders Reveal His Desperate
'Plan B'
and the Industry Whispers
Swirling About His Fate."
And first, let me say,
it is a true honor
to be featured on a website that
just this week, published the story,
"I Had So Much Sex
During My Sluttiest Ever Summer,
Until One Girlfriend Caught Me
Doing Something So Shameful,
I Thought I Might Die."
But to be clear here,
soap acting is not my plan B.
My actual plan B is, obviously,
being a Mr. Bean impersonator
for the strangest little
children's birthday parties.
And to clarify things even further,
my plea wasn't me
"preparing for the worst."
I simply offered my hypothetical
acting abilities to any soap
that would meet my terms,
which were:
I wanted to play a character
with a ridiculous name,
I wanted a juicy storyline
like murder or slapping,
and I wanted
a dramatic close-up of my face.
Well, I'm thrilled to announce
I have an update.
Because I don't know
if you've ever heard
of a little show called
"Days of Our Lives".
The American icon that gave us
unforgettable moments
like the devil possessing Marlena,
Sami Brady trying to rescue Philip
from Iraq
by going in full soldier drag,
and Bo Brady discovering
a mysterious woman in a bayou
that everyone called "Swamp Girl" until
learning she was actually a princess.
Well, I'm happy to say
that I've already taped
a week of episodes
on "Days of Our Lives".
Which is clearly a huge honor.
It's been home to some of the most
renowned soap opera actors,
like Diedre Hall, Susan Seaforth Hayes,
and John Aniston, of the Anistons.
It's also featured guest appearances
from legends like Dick Van Dyke,
Betty White, and now me!
The only other time you'd hear
my name alongside those two
would be if someone
were trying to answer the question,
"Name three celebrities
you could reasonably guess
were born in the 1920s."
But the truth is,
"Days of Our Lives" wasn't actually
the only show that reached out.
If you read that Daily Mail article,
you'd have seen that they claimed
that "General Hospital"
pitched me "an emotional role",
but I "turned it down" because,
and I quote,
"he only wants to play fun parts."
And I don't know where
the fuck they got that from.
Because if "General Hospital"
had genuinely pitched me a role,
and given me the chance
to hang out in Port Charles,
the home of Luke and Laura,
the Corinthos family, and Brick,
if they'd given me the chance
to join the ranks of guest stars
like Liz Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr.,
and of course,
the great Colonel Sanders,
then I'd have leapt at the chance.
Which is why I'm so very glad
that they actually did.
Because it means
that I now get to announce
that I will also be appearing
in "General Hospital" this summer.
Because what is funnier
than being in one soap opera?
Being in two!
You can see me on, and I cannot
believe I'm saying this,
"General Hospital" on ABC next week.
And while
I'm not going to spoil anything,
I will show you this picture
of my character.
Yes, that is me
surrounded by men with guns,
and yes, my hair has been
dipped in an inkwell.
And if you cannot tell from
my face there, I am acting really hard.
I'm acting my hardest, in fact.
I don't wanna brag,
but they did say that
of any guest star they've ever had,
I used the most takes.
Now, it is only fair
that I also show you a photo
from my time on
"Days of Our Lives",
so brace yourselves, because,
here it is!
Yes, that is real. The photo,
that is, not the hair.
I look like Elvis reincarnated
into his accountant.
I look like Rachel Maddow
after witnessing a murder.
I look like
Rogaine's worst-case scenario.
What I love most about that photo
is that even though you can only see
the back of the other actor's neck,
you can tell how much I visually
don't belong anywhere near him.
His back is an L.A. 10, and
my front is a Middle Earth three.
I genuinely cannot wait for everyone to
see what these two soaps have done.
I am so grateful that
they played along with us,
and I'm truly looking forward
to reading about it afterwards
in The Daily Mail, which I can
only guess will write something like,
"HBO Host Hits Rock Bottom
With Multiple Soap Opera Roles,
Insiders and Doctors Worry
He's 'Nearing Death'."
Well, you're gonna be
eating your words, Daily Mail,
'cause does this look like
a desperate man to you?
Not to me, it doesn't!
That's the face of a man
living his fucking dream!
I'll be on "General Hospital"
July 2nd, 3rd, and 6th,
and on "Days of Our Lives"
August 11th, 12th, and 14th.
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching,
we'll be back July 26th,
good night!