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President Trump says he’s reviewing a new Iranian proposal to end the war, and the U.S. Supreme Court weakens the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump said yesterday that he’s reviewing another Iranian proposal to end the war. But he said he wasn’t expecting it to be satisfactory. Last week, in a letter to Congress, President Trump said that the hostilities in Iran were, quote, “terminated,” but he still kept the option of war on the table. Here he is talking to reporters on Friday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I mean, do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever, or do we want to try and make a deal? I mean, those are the options.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you want to go blast the hell out of them and finish them forever?
TRUMP: I prefer not. On a human basis, I prefer not. But that’s the options.
RASCOE: In the meantime, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was designed to outlaw discriminatory voting practices and make the voting playing field equal for Black people. Senior political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So let’s start with the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court just weakened the law that had, for years, increased minority representation in Congress. They struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. What does this move mean?
LIASSON: What it means is it will be much easier for Republicans to draw districts that are now majority-minority districts represented by African Americans and Latinos. It’ll have an impact on the midterms, but an even bigger impact on elections in the future in 2028 and beyond. Florida was already set to redraw its maps to get another four Republican-leaning seats, and there are some states, like Louisiana, where primary voting had already begun, that will suspend their primaries in order to let the Republican legislature redraw maps that will potentially eliminate districts represented now by African Americans. Other states are considering aggressive approaches to redistricting – Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee – and Democrats are promising to fight back and to redraw maps in blue states.
RASCOE: So what does this all mean for the future of American politics?
LIASSON: I think in the short term, it means there’s going to be fewer African Americans in Congress. But overall, I think it means that American politics will become even more polarized, even more partisan. I think extreme gerrymandering, extreme partisan gerrymandering, will become the rule. And it also underscores a bigger problem for Democrats in the long term. You know, they will retaliate and do tit-for-tat redistricting in the short term, but they have fewer opportunities to carve out Democratic-leaning seats than Republicans do, and they can’t succeed politically in the future until they figure out how to appeal to more rural, non-college-educated voters in red states. That’s going to get even more urgent after the 2030 census, where reapportionment will mean that congressional districts will be taken away from the blue wall states in the northern Midwest and given to states in the South, like Florida, Georgia, Texas.
RASCOE: Turning to the Iran war, it continues to be unpopular. Gas prices are still up, and Trump says the hostilities have been terminated. What do you make of all of that?
LIASSON: Well, he says the hostilities have been terminated, even though he still talks about an ongoing war in Iran, because he has to notify Congress. The War Powers Act gives the president a 60-day deadline after the start of hostilities to seek congressional approval to continue hostilities. And that 60-day deadline is coming up. The war began on February 28. He wants to give himself another 60 days before he has to seek congressional approval. And in the Senate, there is a small but growing group of Republicans who are questioning the war. As you said, it’s very unpopular.
And the war itself seems to be at a stalemate. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard controls the waterway, but the U.S. has put a blockade on the strait. And as long as oil tankers can’t get through, gas prices are not going to go down. Right now, they’re over $4 a gallon in the United States. That’s a real problem for the president and his party politically. And a new Washington Post poll out today shows Trump’s approval rating on the economy at 34%. That’s very low.
RASCOE: And the Pentagon is also saying it will withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany. Why?
LIASSON: The president is doing this ’cause he’s angry at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for saying that the U.S. has no real strategy in Iran. And there are now about 36-, 38,000 troops in Germany. He wants to withdraw 5,000 of them. Some defense experts say that could hurt the United States because the U.S. needs those troops to run U.S. bases and stage operations in the Middle East.
RASCOE: That’s senior political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: You’re welcome.
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