Ari Berman

His new piece on Substack is titled, They Are Moving This Fast Because They've Done the Math.

I'm returning to the show with our friend Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center.

His new article in Mother Jones is entitled SCOTUS Hands Trump, a Temporary Win in His Crusade to Restrict Male Voting.

Thank you both for being here.

Yeah, and those are really great tips.

I'm going to ask you to just make sure you email those right to me so we can put those on the sub stack as well, because we want to make sure that we show everybody.

You know, Ari Berman, what I have been saying to people is that Donald Trump's scheme to steal the election is to try to force everyone through the maw of same day voting on Election Day.

so that then Homeland Security can deploy ICE to harass people at the polls and potentially remove people from line so that they can cut the number of people who even had the chance to vote.

Quote, as the nation's justice correspondent, Ellie Mistal, put it in a mournful post-Calais column, Calais was the decision that many people credit for being the ultimate decision that undermined the Voting Rights Act, Quote, the ruling effectively ends the VRA and with it the all too brief era of multiracial democracy in America.

And as Ari Berman added in a piece for Mother Jones, Calais may have been written by Alito, but it represents the life's work of Chief Justice John Roberts, who's been trying to kill the Voting Rights Act for more than 40 years.

The problem for Roberts is that his schtick just isn't working anymore.

Any lingering pretense of impartiality ended with his stunning majority opinion in 2024's Trump v.

With the midterm elections less than 10 weeks away, the Supreme Court has handed President Trump a temporary victory in his attack on mail-in voting.

We'll speak to Ari Berman of Mother Jones.

Plus, we'll be joined by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on his recent online fight with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and how extreme economic inequality is reshaping the country.

There's so much conspicuous consumption at the top.

We'll link to your latest Substack piece, "The Washington Post Fired Me.

I Fought and Won My Job Back." Coming up, with the midterm elections less than 10 weeks away, the Supreme Court has handed President Trump a temporary victory in his attack on mail-in voting.

We'll speak to Ari Berman of Mother Jones.

Back in a minute.

Then came the Roberts Court.

By Ari Berman and Pema Levy.

On the next page, it shows Representative Cleo Fields, one of four black representatives from Louisiana since Reconstruction.

He lost his seat for the second time because of the Supreme Court's decisions on racial gerrymandering.

The Southern Strategy is the headline here.

This is Ari Berman.

Jim Crow was dead and buried, then came the Roberts Court, hence the Klan robe and the black robe.

John Boy Roberts.

But that relationship, or lack thereof, one senior election official told MS now, quote, "The trust has been so decimated, the threats we're getting are coming from within the government now." And that is where we begin today with MS now White House reporter Laura Barrón-López, who is bylined on that incredible reporting.

Also with us, civil rights attorney and president of the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, Maya Wiley is here, and a voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, Ari Berman, is with us as well.

It is good to see you all.

Laura, this is your report, and talk us through it.

Thank you

...

Ari Berman, always grateful for your expertise.

Thank you.

He's the author of the book Minority Rule, The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People and the Fight to Resist It.

Please welcome back to the show Ari Berman to make sense of our current times.

Ari, welcome back.

Hey, Francesca.

The question is whether they'll be successful.

And that's where I'm less certain and more hopeful that they won't be successful.

Ari Berman, thank you so much for joining me again.

I have probably going to have a million more questions for you.