Redistricting At A Crossroads

A single court signal just shifted the ground beneath the midterms. We break down how the Supreme Court’s move to let Texas’s new congressional map proceed—on a 6–3 trajectory—could mark a turn away from race-based redistricting and toward a simpler, race-neutral standard. With filing deadlines here and margins razor-thin, even a handful of seats could decide whether a reform agenda advances or stalls. We talk candidly about the legal maze built over decades of precedent, why lower courts keep splitting, and how states from Georgia and Louisiana to Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio are redrawing their strategies in real time.

From the legal weeds to the practical impact, we connect the dots: what “equal treatment” means under the Voting Rights Act, why judicial deference to legislatures matters, and how race-neutral lines could reduce litigation chaos while leaving political gerrymandering fights to state processes. Then we shift gears to some refreshing good news: research showing kids who spend more time outside move more, sleep better, focus longer, and build stronger bodies and brains. Unstructured play, safe risk, and sunlight aren’t luxuries—they are core to development and resilience in a screen-saturated world.

Want to make a difference? Use voter tools like iVoterGuide and Christian Voter Guide to research candidates early, especially for primaries where ballots are truly shaped. And at home, try a simple reset: send the kids outside, let boredom work its magic, and watch curiosity kick in. If this conversation sparks thought or action, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Your voice—and your vote—matter now more than ever.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Good News Friday
• 0:39 Supreme Court Weighs Texas Maps
• 3:12 Voting Rights Act And Race In Districts
• 6:24 Inside Baseball On Texas Redistricting
• 12:55 National Ripple: Multiple States Redraw
• 17:20 Midterms Math And Turnout Reality
• 19:33 Civic Tools: Voter Guides You Can Use
• 21:05 Health Break: Patriot Academy Promo
• 22:15 More Voter Resources And Access
• 24:12 The Case For Kids Playing Outside

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us on this Friday. We love Fridays for some good news. We've got a lot of good news to share with you today. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And our good news Fridays are available along with all of our other programming at wallbuilders.show. Wallbuilders.show for the radio. And then all of our other WallBuilders materials, information, sign up for conferences, whether you're a pastor, legislator, or get involved in one of our constitution classes. It's all there at wallbuilders.com. Wallbuilders.com. All right, guys, without any further ado, let's jump into some good news. David, where are we starting today? 

David Barton [00:00:39] Well, it's this is the time of the year when the Supreme Court may start coming down with early decisions. And so, we've had some that came out this week that are really significant. One deals with Texas, and actually I'm gonna back up further, say it deals with the potential election in the midterms, whether Republicans can keep a majority in the House and the Senate and therefore help Trump move forward, or whether that's gonna come to a screeching halt by losing the House. So, because it is such a narrow margin in the House, just a one or two vote margins, what it's been for months, they wanted to give some more some more, if you will, strength to the Republican side. So, Texas said, well, we can redistrict our state, and they did and came up with five more districts that lean Republican now. So that could be a pickup of five Republican seats, which would be a big help for Mike Johnson and the House. Well, California said, well, if you can do it, we can do it. And so, California had their initiative back when we had the election a few weeks ago for New Jersey and for Virginia that night they had an election on a referendum in California and said, well, we can get some new seats too. So, they think they can get five Democrat seats out of California by redistricting. And the Constitution doesn't have any requirement on how often you redistrict every two years, four years, three years, seven and a half months, whatever. That's up to the states on what they do. But the Constitution does specify how many people have to be in a district. Per se, and so that tells you how many you're going to get in each state. So, with all of that being said, what happened after that five came out in Texas, of course, you can imagine Democrats didn't like it, so filed suit, and there's a federal judge in Texas that said, No, no, no, you can't do that. That that's unconstitutional, and you you've really violated the 1964 voting rights act because you're eliminating some districts that clearly were black districts or minority districts. And then that was appealed onto the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a two-to-one decision. The Fifth Circuit, which generally is fairly conservative, said, no, no, there's no way you can do this. This is a this is an absolute blatant redistricting and it's a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and you can't do it based, you can't eliminate these race-based districts. And the dissenting judge in that two to one decision said, Man, what these two guys just did is the most blatant act of judicial activism I've ever seen. He said the Constitution allows the states to redistrict. That's up to them. It's not up to the judges to make the line. So it goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court initially put a temporary stay on the Fifth Circuit decision order. In other words, hey, don't enforce what the Fifth Circuit said yet. And so, this week they came out with a lifting of that order. They said the Fifth Circuit, we think overall got that decision wrong. So, we're going to let Texas move forward with its map that is drawn. Now, it was a six to three, and this is preliminary. It's not a full Supreme Court decision. This is the Supreme Court voting to lift the injunction of the Fifth Circuit. So, it's an early Supreme Court indication that it'll probably be a six to three decision on this thing, because that's what it was to lift it. And the complaint that the Supreme Court has made is listen, the Voting Rights Act, everybody gets equal treatment under the law. And to say that a district has to be a certain minority, whether it be Hispanic or black or anything else, that's no longer equality under the law. Now you're picking and choosing losers and you can't do that. So, this would really radically reshape the nation if that reinterpretation comes down that the the 1964 civil rights law does not mandate that you have to come up with black or minority districts in a state. So pretty significant so far today. 

Tim Barton [00:04:25] Well, yeah, I think it's definitely good news. And one of the things that Alito had written about this was that the lower court had failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature, which basically he's saying you were trying to read their minds and you can't really do that. And that Dad, as you're pointing out, this is a temporary reinstatement of what Texas has done because of the fact that the elections are virtually upon us. The filing deadline is happening like right now. And so to undo at this point, that's not really feasible. Obviously, there's a little bit more of what he had identified as one of the faults for the lower court. Ultimately, it's really good news that it does look like it'll at least for this midterm election go forward, and that could be a big deal with the midterm. Rick, obviously, as an attorney, I'm sure you have lots of thoughts about this. And as somebody who was a state legislator in Texas, actually helping navigate some of these decisions before. Well, what is your read on what happened from the Supreme Court? 

Rick Green [00:05:29] Well, couple of thoughts. First of all, the fact that Alito did say Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim and that, you know, to grant the injunction, they have to believe that. I think you guys are right that this 6-3, it'll probably stay 6-3 when the final, final decision comes down that would affect 2028. So that's a good sign as well. But I think it's kind of I mean, guys, let's give a little inside baseball here. It's your state senator, our good friend Phil King, who I went into the legislature with back in in ninety-eight, that that drew these lines and that was in charge of this whole process. And we know for a fact, because he told us on the air here on WallBuilders, I did not consider race at all. It was a non-issue. We did not look at that. We know, and that's why I think, like you said, Tim, the language Alito uses is that there has to be a presumption of good faith on the legislator's part. But for us, we don't even have to presume it. We know the good faith was there, and that actually what the Republicans were doing here was removing race from the equation. So, I do think it's, of course, you know, politically ironic that the Democrats that are challenging this, and of course the leftist members of the court that dissented in this, they want race to be used. They don't believe you can decouple race from party. And they assume that because, you know, a particular race is predominantly supporting a particular party, that if you draw the lines based on party, that you're being racist, which means they're the ones being racist by making that presumption. So, in simple terms, Republicans are finally trying to get away from using race. When it comes to drawing these political lines that have to be done in every state, and Democrats want to continue to use race. And, you know, unfortunately they continue to be the racist, but it you know, if people go to our website, WallBuilders.com And get American History in Black and White, they will learn that the Democrats have always been the racist party. But this is definitely very, very good news. And I think guys, so California did theirs, I think Georgia might have already done theirs. I can't remember. Okay. 

David Barton [00:07:24] Yeah, there's actually several. 

Rick Green [00:07:25] Yeah, who else is doing this? Yeah. 

David Barton [00:07:27] Just to take you through some of the others that are doing this. Utah has the courts have ruled against Utah because Utah did this. And Utah did it in such a way that they disregarded race. And their courts said, no, no, you have to regard race. You have to create a minority kind of thing here, and you can't do what you guys have done. So, the courts have ordered Utah to redraw its lines. And so that's going there. You've also got cases going in Georgia and Louisiana. They both did theirs. And so, this is it's not just Texas that's going in, it's others. 

Tim Barton [00:08:00] Hey, let me back up on Utah  and ask a question so I am confused then is it a liberal court that's telling them the redraw to give you know the quote unquote minority districts to give them back their own congressmen or was it conservative because California  I know which way they're going but I wasn't quite sure from the way you were explaining this which way is Utah going from that court?

David Barton [00:08:24] You know, Utah drew lines in such a way that they would probably end up with all Republicans out of Utah. And so, it would cost a Democrat seat. And quite frankly, I think, I hate to say this, I think the lower court’s ruling against Texas and others are probably correct based on the way the Supreme Court has come down for the last few decades saying you have to consider race. But this current Supreme Court has said, no, no, no. The Constitution takes race out of the issue. You can't do that. So I think what the courts have been doing is upholding what the Supreme Court has done for 30 years, and that's make race an issue. 

Rick Green [00:09:05] Yeah, all bad decisions. 

David Barton [00:09:06] That's right. All bad decisions. And so, what I think the court's doing now is kind of correcting itself of those bad decisions. 

Rick Green [00:09:12] I think the Utah case is, Tim, in in state court for some reason. 

Tim Barton [00:09:17] Correct. 

[00:09:18] At least it's only at the district court level. It certainly has not gone to the Supreme Court. 

David Barton [00:09:22] Oh, it's state court. Okay. 

[00:09:24] So that's why we have this schizophrenia, right? We've got these this mess of cases all over the country. And to your point, David, it should be simply it should be unconstitutional to consider race in the way that you draw the lines. 

David Barton [00:09:35] Right. 

Rick Green [00:09:35] But even recently, I think there was a case out of Alabama or Louisiana, even just two or three years ago, where the I think the court got it wrong because they were trying to uphold these old precedents that you're talking about. And so, it's kind of a it's a it's a weird quilt being created here to try to get us back to just basic, you know, draw the lines based on party, whoever whichever party's in charge is gonna get to do that. It goes back to Elbridge Jerry in Massachusetts, signer of the declaration. So, this has been a around since we've had a country, folks. But get it to where it's just based on party lines and you don't factor in race. They literally want to draw the lines to guarantee that someone gets elected based on the color of their skin. I mean, that's the if that's not racism, I don't know what is. 

Tim Barton [00:10:20] Well, Rick, to suggest that someone should not be valued by the content of their character, but instead by the color of their skin. It that does see I feel like those words are signed kind of familiar. 

Rick Green [00:10:31] Feels like we're going backwards, I. 

Tim Barton [00:10:32] Well, I'm, I don't know if I'm dreaming about this or not, but if I had a dream, I would say right, one day we could judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. And it's ironic, Democrats are going the exact opposite direction. They're saying, no, judge us based on the color of our skin. Give us representation based on the color of our skin. And this is not saying that anybody should not have a voice and not be active, but it's Democrats that are trying to fight to defend this. Again, Rick, to your point, believing that, well, if you're a black person, you can only vote Democrat or you will only support Democrat policies, etc. That's definitely not the case. And it's not inconsistent that the party that's in charge when it comes to redistricting, this this is what politicians do. This is the way it works. When you are in charge, you do redistrict, and ultimately, if people in the state don't like it, then they need to get involved and vote and choose different leaders who will do different things. That that's the way an elective Republican government works. 

Rick Green [00:11:29] Hey, and one other one other thing on kind of the inside baseball of what got us here to just make the point that it is a mess, right? All of these old decisions, the sixty-four act, I mean, all of it is messy. You know, the guy that actually issued the opinion initially against Texas is Jeff Brown, guy I ran against for Supreme Court. We campaigned all over the state together. He was the guy wanted to win. If I wasn't gonna win, it was six of us in the race. Good guy. And normally hands down good decisions. He handed down a terrible decision in this case, but just a little bit in his defense, it's because of the hodge-podge and the old bad decisions. And he was literally trying, like you're saying, David, to stay in line with the with the old Supreme Court decisions, and just so maybe way too far in the weeds, but nerding out here a little bit. I didn't know that district court, at the district level in federal courts, sometimes they do a panel. And we usually do that with the appellate courts. This was actually a three-judge panel at the district court level. Really weird. I don't I don't remember seeing that shows my ignorance, but I don't practice federal law. But there were three district judges that were involved in that initial decision, and it was two to one. And the thing that I think got Jeff really a lot of the hate mail after this is that he didn't give the dissent, the dissenting judge. I don't know that guy, but there was one dissenting judge that that was with Texas and wanted the VAPS to be able to go forward. He didn't even give him a chance to write a dissent. He literally issued this thing at the last minute after waiting like thirty days and pushing this thing to the deadline. So anyway, all that kind of nerding out and in the weeds just to say it really is messy and good people, I think, have gotten on the wrong side of this thing in order to try to keep upholding a bad system and some bad laws and bad congressional laws and bad Supreme Court decisions of the last sixty years and simplify it. You know, to clean it up, the Supreme Court should just say you can't use race whenever you're drawing the lines. Period. 

David Barton [00:13:17] And by the way, there's a lot more states that are looking at this right now. In addition to what's happened here, we mentioned Texas and California, we mentioned Utah, we mentioned Georgia, we mentioned Louisiana, but you've also got Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio, and those are red states. They've already passed or finalized new maps that would give more seats to the Republicans. And so with Missouri and North Carolina, you pick up one Republican seat in each of those, and Ohio looks like two seats there. Now Virginia is saying they're gonna pass a new thing that would give them some more Democrats, and Maryland has said he's gonna do that, but he's got opposition in the state legislature and it's not likely to do that. Indiana, they're looking at doing a new map. Florida is DeSantis is forming a committee right now to come out with new maps in Florida, and they're going after new maps. So there's a lot of states doing this. And if the Supreme Court comes up and says, hey, we're staying out of the elections, just don't make race an issue, which would be the constitutional thing, there could be a lot of change because right now the red states are willing, and the blue states either are not willing or they're unable to because their legislature is not going along with it. So 

Rick Green [00:14:28] Or because they are already did it, David. Don't forget, a lot of those states are not doing are not doing it now because they already don't have any Republicans. That's right. So, a lot of those states like, well, we did that twenty years ago, so there's nothing we could do to help. Yeah. So, I do think though, isn't it the fact that we're you're always going against the wind in the in the interim or in the off your election midterm, sorry, for the party that has the White House, right? So even getting a couple of seats here, a couple of seats there, this is still gonna be a real challenge for Republicans to hold on to the majority, part of why they're willing to fight at this level and you know, do the I think appropriate thing in in in how they're drawing these lines. 

David Barton [00:15:09] Yeah, I it is historically it's pretty much of a rarity when the party in power has an off-term election that keeps them in in in power. Now, I would say that that was not the case with like FDR when he was in, and with several of the Democrats that run for long term, they were able to maintain the Democrat legislature for like 40 years, 50 years. But in more recent era, and say and say the last half of the twentieth century, it's hard for a president to keep it in the in the off-year elections like this. And so, this this is an uphill battle anyway. And for Mike to keep it is tough because w you you've got this thing where that it's strange, but Trump's approval ratings are going up in every state, but they're still underwater in virtually every state. So, while they're going up, but what does that mean? Because he won the election being underwater then too. So, you don't know what that that polling necessarily means, but it's just not looking real pretty and real favorable, and that's why they're working as hard as they are to do what they can. That's why these states have stepped up, because that that whole Trump realignment agenda where he's trying to get America back on track, it stops. If he loses the House, it stops. Everything will be done only by executive order, so to speak, and maybe the Supreme Court if they continue to keep reading the Constitution. So, we'll see. But this this is an uphill battle for sure in this off-year election. The other thing makes it uphill is you have much lower voter turnout in these off-year elections. In these off-year elections, it's actually only one out of five Americans that chooses the winner. You only have about thirty-eight percent of Americans who vote in these off-year elections. It takes half that to win. So, you're looking at nineteen percent is who will choose who's in the House and Senate essentially. That's one out of five Americans choosing the Congress in this next cycle. So, the fact that voter turnout is so low is another thing that really complicates who gets control. And man, if we get back to citizenship and duty and understanding that if the polls are open, you go vote. It's like we talked about Daniel Webster previous occasions where they had hundred percent voter turnout w when he was running. We have records of those races where everybody voted. That was just what you did in America. We need to get back to that understanding where everybody votes every time the polls are open because that's your duty. That's what you do as a citizen. 

Rick Green [00:17:35] Amen to that. And one of our friends that we work with a lot is iVoter Guide. So iVoterGuide.com, folks. If you don't know who to vote for, you need to look up and start studying the races. Don't wait until election night, or you know, or the night before the election. Find out who's running so you can help in these, especially these primaries. I mean, this is the place where you can have the most impact in who's gonna end up on the ballot in November, and then ultimately in Congress or your state legislature or local government as well. So, yes, we have that duty every single time we have the chance to vote. We should be going to vote. Quick break, we'll be right back. We've got a lot of good news to try to share in our final minutes together. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:19:09]  Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. And as we were talking on the break, don't forget ChristianVoterGuide.com as well. ChristianVoterGuide.com doesn't go quite as deep down to the local level races, but really good questions and analysis on those higher level races. Tim, does that one go to State Rep? I think I know it does Congress, but I can't remember if it goes down to State Rep. 

Tim Barton [00:19:34] Yeah, one of the great things about Christian Voter Guide is it actually...

Rick Green [00:19:36] Depends on the state maybe? 

[00:19:38] It will it will have links to multiple other voter guides. So like iVoter Guide. 

Rick Green [00:19:42] Yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:19:42] Yes. Is one that we will help connect people with. So Christian Voter Guide is one that we have a lot of our friends that do this stuff in different states. 

Rick Green [00:19:49] Yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:19:50] We try to link all their voter guides to make it easy based on where you live. You can go to Christian Voter Guide, you can click on your state, and then we'll have a list of some of the voter guides available in your state, and to your point, some of them are very detailed and specific. Some of them are higher level. So, who your yeah governor, your senator, your congressman, et cetera, might be. But all the information you mentioned iVotor Guide, a great one. That's why we link to them on Christian Voter Guide. But ChristianVoterGuide.com is a great place to go to find all that information. 

Rick Green [00:20:19] And it really is different state to state because sometimes you get like a family policy council or somebody like that that does a really good job in that state at going deep into the elections. And even iVoter Guide. Some states they're strong, some not as strong. And so, yeah, absolutely. ChristianVoterGuide.com. So, it's sort of like a clearinghouse of voter guides where you can click on your particular state and see what's strong in in your state there. Wow, Tim, we haven't even gotten to you yet. Here we are, well past the halfway point of the program. So, I'll just blame your dad for picking such a good topic that we spent most of the program on it. But I bet you've got something completely unrelated to give us some good news on. 

Tim Barton [00:20:51] Yes. And this is something, guys, that it's a great piece of good news. Sometimes it's funny the things that are being reported as good news. And we would go, Well, well, yeah, it's obvious. But it's like one of those things where they're like, hey, scientists discovered there's only two genders. And we're like, Yeah, it's well-done science, right? This is one of those kinds of things. Something that would seem obvious, obviously, for us, for most of our listeners, they'd go, Well, that's obvious. I just want to point out there is now some official studies, some science behind this. I'm gonna start so the headline says, why playing outside is so beneficial. Now, let it sink in for a second. In the world of all of the media that our kids are growing up with so many screens around them, it is important to remind people playing outside is a good thing. There's a very extensive study done. There's several hospitals involved, a lot of doctors, some universities. So, there's a lot of different pieces of this article. And just to give some of the breakdown in the last couple of minutes, one out of ten American children aged one to five, rarely play outside, only once a week. So, one out of ten kids like virtually don't go outside at all, which is interesting. They then break it down with four out of ten, who very rarely go outside. And the reason there's some interesting connections with this is from some of the medical community, they point out there's skyrocketing obesity rates. There's rising anxiety and depression among young people, there's declining focus and fitness among young people. And so the doctors just start going through the benefits of being outside from stronger bones to sharper minds. Time and nature shapes a child's physical, emotional, and cognitive growth in ways that screens an indoor activity can't, et cetera. And it breaks it down, and it really is kind of funny. Again, just seeing the way they break some of this down. One of the professors from Queen's University School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, he said, Well, what we've discovered is when children are outdoors, they move more, sit less, play longer, and sleep better. And I feel like reading this, you're like, Well, yeah, yeah, right? Go outside, run around. Every parent who is is able, like, hope like growing up, I didn't realize the psychology that my parents played on us sometimes when they're like, hey, do you think you can run down to the end of the road and back in under two minutes? I'm gonna time you, go and you do it. And they're like, I think you can do it faster. We should try that again. I'm gonna time you. Like, they're obviously they're wearing you out strategically, right? This is the benefits of playing outside, but it actually does break down that over the past 17 years, children's health in the United States has declined due to children increasingly staying indoors. And it breaks down a lot of things that some of them, again, are very obvious, but even the idea that for many of the rising generation, they don't have as strong of immune systems. And actually it impacts their mood a lot as well because they're not outside. So, there's better physical health. And again, it's a very long article breaking this down, better cardiorespiratory fitness, improved BMI scores. They're less allergy prone immune system. So, the more they're outside playing, that the better their bodies do responding to allergies. Again, it's funny that they are having to document this, but sunlight is like nature's built-in clock. It helps kids sleep wake rhythms. Children who play outside tend to wake less at night and sleep longer. Again, it's like, well, yeah, go play outside in the sun. It's a really great thing. But here's where there's some interesting details. They document the growing brain or the brain growth development for kids that play outside without the parental engagement and interaction, where we might look and go, hey, I think the kids are bored. Should we help them? And Rick, I know you did for your kids, certainly, dad, you did it for us. Boredom was not a thing. It's like go get a stick and play outside. Like, don't come back for six hours, right? If you're thirsty, there's a water hose out there. If you're hot, go jump in the pond. Like that's this is what you did. But it points out that actually kids that spend more time outside exploring, building, engaging and hands on, fostering creativity, it's problem solving. All of those are critical building blocks for brain development. And on and on it goes. Actually, it even covers, parents, one of the reasons that kids for some parents are playing outside less is because parents are afraid of their kids getting hurt or falling off something, don't climb that tree, et cetera. And they point out that a lot of the growth and development, a lot of the lessons that need to be learned involve some level of risk. And so it's again a seemingly obvious article, but just to remind the moms and dads, the grandparents out there, screens are convenient, but they're not always as helpful for the long-term health growth and development of the rising generation. So, we need to be cautious with our screen time for lots of reasons, but this is an encouragement. I know it's winter. I know this is a different time. It's cold outside. It's still good. Send those kids outside, make them go play, let them be bored. It's gonna stimulate their brain and creativity, and that's a good thing. 

Rick Green [00:26:12] Well, my job is to somehow segue and tie our stories together. I think I have a way to do it. If you let your kids play outside and they develop their brain better and they stimulate their brain better, then they'll vote Republican because the Bible says the heart of the wise inclines to the right. So, if you're wise, you incline to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left, that's Ecclesiastes 10. So, you know, have 'em play outside, their brain will work better, and more Republicans will be elected to Congress. There you go, folks. Thanks for listening to the Good News Friday program for our week. There's more at our website, Wallbuilders.show. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.