[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say out loud?
[Rush Lindell] Everyone's staring at the Senate like it's the whole ball game,
[Rush Lindell] and meanwhile,
[Rush Lindell] the real action is happening one floor down, in the House,
[Rush Lindell] where Speaker Johnson is working with a margin so thin you could fold it into a napkin.
[Rush Lindell] Republicans hold 218 seats.
[Rush Lindell] The Democrats need three.
[Rush Lindell] Three seats.
[Rush Lindell] And Hakeem Jeffries picks up the gavel.
[Reagan] And the map just got scrambled.
[Rush Lindell] Completely scrambled.
[Rush Lindell] April 29th, the Supreme Court drops a Louisiana v.
[Rush Lindell] Callais ruling—a six three Alito opinion that effectively guts Section two of the Voting Rights Act—and states treated it like a starter's pistol.
[Reagan] Florida,
[Reagan] Tennessee,
[Reagan] Alabama,
[Reagan] all moving within days—the Hill called it roiling the twenty twenty six midterms, and that's not an understatement.
[Rush Lindell] That's generous,
[Rush Lindell] actually.
[Rush Lindell] We'll walk through the state by state fallout:
[Rush Lindell] DeSantis targeting four Democratic incumbents,
[Rush Lindell] Tennessee cracking Memphis across three rural districts.
[Rush Lindell] It affects the potential GOP seat gains and the legal chaos still trailing every one of those maps.
[Reagan] And we're going to get into the core debate whether redrawn maps can actually stop a wave election.
[Reagan] Race to the W.H. had Republican House odds jump from 18.9 to 27.2 percent after the new maps,
[Reagan] but Democrats are still around 73 percent favorites.
[Rush Lindell] Which is the question worth asking:
[Rush Lindell] does a map change the math?
[Rush Lindell] Math,
[Rush Lindell] when the environment is moving against you.
[Reagan] twenty eighteen had an answer for that-forty one seats.
[Rush Lindell] It did,
[Rush Lindell] and we'll get to that argument.
[Reagan] Plus the retirement numbers-thirty six Republican incumbents walking out the door.
[Reagan] Ballotpedia says that's a single party record.
[Reagan] Open seats are
[Rush Lindell] Yeah.
[Reagan] where majorities actually break.
[Rush Lindell] All of that starting right now.
[Rush Lindell] The House is where power moves in twenty twenty six.
[Rush Lindell] First stop,
[Rush Lindell] the ruling that started it.
[Speaker 3] Everything.
[Speaker 3] Before
[Rush Lindell] Before we get into it, a quick reminder:
[Rush Lindell] we love hearing from you.
[Rush Lindell] If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover,
[Rush Lindell] head to the link in the description and submit your question.
[Rush Lindell] We read every single one.
[Rush Lindell] We've been watching the wrong race. This show, half of talk radio,
[Rush Lindell] every Senate obsessive with their color-coded map-all of us have had our eyes on Senate seats while the real power play is happening in the House,
[Rush Lindell] and I mean right now,
[Reagan] Mm
[Rush Lindell] today,
[Reagan] -hmm.
[Rush Lindell]
[Rush Lindell] in state legislatures that most people couldn't name if you spotted them three letters.
[Reagan] The math is unforgiving. According to Ballotpedia,
[Reagan] Republicans currently hold a 218-214 House majority.
[Reagan] with Three vacancies.
[Reagan] That's a two-seat working buffer.
[Reagan] Democrats flip three districts,
[Reagan] just three,
[Reagan] and Hakeem Jeffries picks up the gavel from Speaker Johnson.
[Speaker 3] Three seats.
[Speaker 3] I want that to land.
[Reagan] Yeah.
[Speaker 3] Three.
[Speaker 3] That's not a wave.
[Speaker 3] That's a weather event.
[Speaker 3] A bad Tuesday in four swing districts and the entire legislative agenda flips.
[Speaker 3] I'm calling this thing what it is. The Gavel Watch.
[Speaker 3] That's what we're running all episode.
[Speaker 3] THE GAVEL WATCH
[Reagan] And redistricting just made it more volatile,
[Reagan] not less:
[Reagan] ten states redrew maps for twenty twenty six; Sabato's Crystal Ball reported Republicans netted an expected gain of around six seats from redistricting,
[Reagan] but simultaneously said the map still isn't red enough to protect them from a bad political environment.
[Rush Lindell] So they drew themselves a better map and might still lose the House.
[Rush Lindell] That's-
[Rush Lindell] That's the Republican Party in a sentence.
[Reagan] I wouldn't go that far.
[Rush Lindell] No, but here's what actually scrambled everything.
[Rush Lindell] April 29th, the Supreme Court drops Louisiana v.
[Rush Lindell] Callais, a 6-3 ruling that effectively kneecaps Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,
[Rush Lindell] the legal guardrail that protected majority-minority districts for decades,
[Rush Lindell] gone. And the day the ruling landed,
[Rush Lindell] Florida passed a new redistricting bill.
[Rush Lindell] Tennessee eliminated its only majority-minority House.
[Rush Lindell] House district Alabama filed emergency motions to reinstate legislature drawn maps.
[Reagan] Brookings flagged it directly; before Callais the trajectory was trending towards a Democratic wave,
[Reagan] that ruling changed the math in Southern states almost immediately.
[Rush Lindell] So the Senate obsession was always a distraction.
[Rush Lindell] The House is where the country actually gets governed,
[Rush Lindell] and right now one court ruling just reshuffled the entire board.
[Rush Lindell] The question is,
[Rush Lindell] what does that ruling actually do?
[Rush Lindell] due to the constitutional framework underneath all of this.
[Rush Lindell] So let's talk about what Callais actually did,
[Rush Lindell] because the legal mechanics matter.
[Rush Lindell] April twenty ninth,
[Rush Lindell] Justice Alito writes a six three opinion that essentially catches Section two of the Voting Rights Act in a trap of its own making.
[Reagan] Right,
[Reagan] and the trap is interesting from a constitutional standpoint:
[Reagan] Louisiana drew a second majority-black district because a federal court told them Section 2 required it.
[Reagan] Then a separate court said wait.
[Reagan] Drawing that district with race as the dominant factor is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
[Rush Lindell] Louisiana got sued not to have the district,
[Rush Lindell] then sued to have it.
[Rush Lindell] The lawyers ate well either way.
[Reagan] They did; but here's where I'll give the majority some credit before I say why this still feels messy.
[Reagan] The tension between Section two and the Equal Protection Clause was real; courts were genuinely pulling in opposite directions.
[Reagan] Alito didn't invent that problem.
[Rush Lindell] Agreed-the Gingles framework-that's the nineteen eighty six test for proving minority vote dilution had gotten stretched in ways that were hard to defend on first principles.
[Reagan] Right; but what Callais does now is raise the evidentiary bar so high that plaintiffs essentially have to prove intentional discrimination to win a Section two claim.
[Reagan] Justice Kagan called it "all but a dead letter"
[Reagan] in dissent.
[Reagan] That's not hyperbole.
[Speaker 3] And that's the thing that matters for this episode,
[Speaker 3] because the Brennan Center noted the court reworked the 40-year-old Gingles standard three changes stacked together,
[Reagan] Wow.
[Speaker 3] and the states read that ruling like a starter's pistol.
[Reagan] Florida passed a new map the same day the decision dropped.
[Reagan] Tennessee moved within days.
[Reagan] Alabama filed an emergency petition to reinstate maps a federal court had already thrown out.
[Reagan] out.
[Speaker 3] Within hours,
[Speaker 3] not weeks-hours.
[Reagan] And Louisiana,
[Reagan] the state the whole case was named after,
[Reagan] suspended its own primaries outright; over a hundred thousand people had already cast early votes.
[Speaker 3] Over an ongoing election-that's where the legal story crashes into the real world,
[Speaker 3] and that's exactly where we're going next.
[Rush Lindell] So Florida went first and went hard.
[Rush Lindell] DeSantis signed a new map targeting four Democratic incumbents:
[Rush Lindell] Castor,
[Rush Lindell] Soto,
[Rush Lindell] Moskowitz,
[Rush Lindell] Wasserman Schultz. Four seats,
[Reagan] Wow!
[Rush Lindell] Gone,
[Rush Lindell] just like that.
[Reagan] That's the Hill's reporting from April twenty ninth; four Democratic-held districts flipped to Republican-leaning on paper.
[Reagan] The question is whether the math actually holds.
[Rush Lindell] And that's a fair question,
[Rush Lindell] Reagan,
[Rush Lindell] deadpan,
[Rush Lindell] because one redistricting expert at the University of
[Rush Lindell] The State of Florida called it a plus two or plus three map if the political environment stays ugly for Republicans—could even backfire.
[Reagan] The gerrymandering risk is real:
[Reagan] pack your margins too thin and a wave wipes you out.
[Rush Lindell] Jeffries already called it that,
[Rush Lindell] out loud,
[Rush Lindell] on camera.
[Reagan] Bold!
[Rush Lindell] Now Tennessee,
[Rush Lindell] that's where it gets dark.
[Rush Lindell] Governor Bill Lee called a special session.
[Rush Lindell] They cracked Memphis,
[Rush Lindell] the state's only majority black city.
[Rush Lindell] Black District across three separate rural districts; Three,
[Rush Lindell] Steve Cohen's seat gone.
[Reagan] And they had to repeal a fifty year old state law just to do it.
[Reagan] Tennessee had barred mid-decade redistricting since nineteen seventy-two.
[Reagan] They erased that prohibition in the same session.
[Rush Lindell] Three days they flipped fifty years of state law in three days.
[Reagan] Look,
[Reagan] I get why Republicans see this as a legal opening after Gingles.
[Reagan] But cracking a majority Black city into rural white districts that stretch hundreds of miles east?
[Reagan] That's not a clean partisan argument.
[Reagan] That's harder to defend on the merits.
[Rush Lindell] And here's something worth noting.
[Rush Lindell] The ACLU, the NAACP,
[Rush Lindell] multiple lawsuits already filed.
[Rush Lindell] Courts are going to be sorting this out well past November.
[Reagan] Which raises the question,
[Reagan] how many of these seats are really locked in versus how many are just legal chaos waiting to happen?
[Rush Lindell] Alabama,
[Rush Lindell] Louisiana,
[Rush Lindell] Arkansas,
[Rush Lindell] South Carolina,
[Rush Lindell] all moving too.
[Rush Lindell] The total potential Republican gain from all of this redistricting?
[Rush Lindell] Up to 19 new Republican-leaning seats if it all holds.
[Reagan] Big if.
[Rush Lindell] Big if.
[Rush Lindell] But, and this is what Democrats don't want to admit,
[Rush Lindell] they weren't exactly sitting on their hands either.
[Rush Lindell] California,
[Rush Lindell] Virginia,
[Rush Lindell] Utah,
[Rush Lindell] which is a story for about 30 seconds from now.
[Rush Lindell] Both sides sat in that court room acting horrified-scandalized!
[Reagan] Both parties discovered gerrymandering simultaneously-what a coincidence!
[Rush Lindell] Right; this is the part where Republicans pretend Democrats invented it,
[Rush Lindell] and Democrats pretend Republicans are uniquely evil for doing it,
[Rush Lindell] both with straight faces.
[Reagan] The Hill quoted Senator Jim Banks,
[Reagan] Indiana Republican,
[Reagan] saying:
[Reagan] If both sides are doing it, you kind of have an Arms Race,
[Reagan] which is the most honest thing anyone said about this.
[Rush Lindell] Arms Race.
[Rush Lindell] That is exactly right.
[Rush Lindell] California voters approved maps targeting five Republican districts.
[Rush Lindell] Virginia passed a Democrat-friendly map. Then the state Supreme Court threw it out post-Kalis.
[Reagan] So Utah got a court-ordered Democratic district in Salt Lake County,
[Reagan] so yes,
[Reagan] both parties are at the table.
[Reagan] TABLE.
[Rush Lindell] And you know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] The Supreme Court green lit all of this back in twenty nineteen:
[Rush Lindell] Rucho v.
[Rush Lindell] Common Cause,
[Rush Lindell] five four; Roberts writing that partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjudiciable; federal courts cannot touch it.
[Reagan] Which means Congress could have fixed it.
[Reagan] They didn't, so we got this.
[Rush Lindell] Shocked,
[Rush Lindell] absolutely shocked.
[Reagan] The Arms Race was constitutionally authorized seven years ago.
[Reagan] Go Rush,
[Reagan] nobody's inventing anything.
[Rush Lindell] Reagan,
[Rush Lindell] I would like to schedule a fake press conference-both party leaders at the podium,
[Rush Lindell] outraged,
[Rush Lindell] somber,
[Rush Lindell] demanding the other side stop the thing they started.
[Reagan] I'd watch that.
[Rush Lindell] I'd run it on a loop.
[Rush Lindell] Look,
[Rush Lindell] the comedy is real,
[Rush Lindell] but so is the question underneath it:
[Rush Lindell] more than a quarter of all congressional districts have already been redrawn mid decade.
[Rush Lindell] Does any of that actually change who controls the chamber?
[Reagan] That's the thing.
[Reagan] Maps can shift individual seats. Whether they can stop a national wave is a completely different argument.
[Rush Lindell] And that's where we're going.
[Rush Lindell] So the maps moved the number.
[Rush Lindell] Race to the WH had Republicans at eighteen point nine percent odds of holding the House before Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.
[Rush Lindell] After those new maps,
[Rush Lindell] twenty seven point two percent.
[Rush Lindell] That's real movement.
[Reagan] It's real,
[Reagan] but Rush,
[Reagan] Democrats are still sitting at roughly 73%. And that gap doesn't close by drawing lines.
[Rush Lindell] You sound confident.
[Reagan] I am actually.
[Reagan] Look,
[Reagan] political scientists have pointed out for years that
[Reagan] But packing minority voters into fewer districts often helped Republicans in the South by bleeding Democratic votes out of the surrounding seats.
[Reagan] Break those packs up,
[Reagan] and some of those surrounding districts get more competitive,
[Reagan] not less.
[Rush Lindell] Wait,
[Rush Lindell] you're saying the strategy could backfire?
[Reagan] In some cases,
[Reagan] yeah,
[Reagan] the counterintuitive outcome is real.
[Rush Lindell] I'll give you that.
[Rush Lindell] That's a real wrinkle!
[Reagan] But here's the bigger point:
[Reagan] a wave is a wave.
[Reagan] In 2018,
[Reagan] Democrats gained 41 seats.
[Rush Lindell] Wow.
[Reagan] Forty-one.
[Reagan] No map in any single cycle was going to stop that.
[Rush Lindell] Okay,
[Rush Lindell] but is 2026 a 2018?
[Rush Lindell] Trump's approval's underwater,
[Rush Lindell] sure.
[Rush Lindell] Negative 21 net.
[Rush Lindell] Special elections have broken Democratic.
[Rush Lindell] But the Brookings analysis said it themselves.
[Rush Lindell] Redistricting altered the outlook.
[Rush Lindell] That's not nothing.
[Reagan] It buys seats at the margins if Democrats need three seats and the environment gives them.
[Reagan] and give them fifteen,
[Reagan] the margins don't matter.
[Rush Lindell] And if the environment gives them four?
[Reagan] Then,
[Reagan] yeah,
[Reagan] every redrawn district counts.
[Reagan] That's the real bet Republicans are making.
[Rush Lindell] Which is why the map matters not as a wall but as a tiebreaker in a close race.
[Rush Lindell] If twenty twenty six is a six seat Democratic environment,
[Rush Lindell] Republicans may hold.
[Rush Lindell] If it's a twenty seat wave,
[Rush Lindell] no map survives.
[Reagan] Right,
[Reagan] and right now,
[Reagan] nobody actually knows which one it is.
[Reagan] This
[Rush Lindell] Nobody does,
[Rush Lindell] but I'll tell you what we do know.
[Rush Lindell] The number of seats separating a Republican majority from a Democratic House is razor thin,
[Rush Lindell] and the seat math on that, we're going there next.
[Rush Lindell] So here's the math that should be keeping Speaker Johnson up at night:
[Rush Lindell] Democrats need Three.
[Rush Lindell] Three Republicans can lose no more than Two.
[Reagan] And with Thirty-six House Republicans having announced retirement,
[Reagan] more than the Thirty-four who walked in Twenty eighteen,
[Reagan] the cycle Democrats flipped the chamber,
[Reagan] that open seat vulnerability is real.
[Reagan] The Hill reported it's already a record for single party departures.
[Rush Lindell] That number keeps me up.
[Rush Lindell] Thirty-six,
[Rush Lindell] and what gets me is the pattern:
[Rush Lindell] in Twenty eighteen,
[Rush Lindell] Republicans lost Forty-one seats.
[Rush Lindell] That's after that exact retirement pace.
[Rush Lindell] History doesn't repeat,
[Rush Lindell] but it rhymes loudly.
[Reagan] Open seats flip at historically higher rates than challenged incumbents. No name recognition advantage,
[Reagan] no franking mail,
[Reagan] no constituent service record.
[Reagan] You're starting at zero against a fired up challenger.
[Rush Lindell] Nothing like handing your opponent a blank canvas in a blue year.
[Reagan] And Cook Political Report is tracking Thirty-seven Republican open seats right now.
[Reagan] Right now,
[Reagan] even if most are safe,
[Reagan] a handful are genuinely competitive.
[Reagan] Nebraska,
[Reagan] too,
[Reagan] Don Bacon's old seat,
[Reagan] is right there in Cook's toss-up column.
[Rush Lindell] Arizona 1,
[Rush Lindell] open after Schweikert ran for governor.
[Rush Lindell] Colorado 8,
[Rush Lindell] Gabe Evans defending in a seat that nearly flipped in 2022.
[Rush Lindell] Pennsylvania 7,
[Rush Lindell] Pennsylvania 10,
[Rush Lindell] these are live races.
[Reagan] And that's before you factor in that Decision Desk put around 45 seats total in the genuine competitive.
[Reagan] Additive Zone-roughly one in ten districts decides who runs this country.
[Rush Lindell] Let me land this:
[Rush Lindell] the Senate is where the cable chyrons live; but the Gavel,
[Rush Lindell] the agenda,
[Rush Lindell] the budget,
[Rush Lindell] the committee chairs-that's the House.
[Rush Lindell] I'm holding the majority right now with a margin thinner than a single news cycle:
[Speaker 3] Yeah.
[Rush Lindell] three seats,
[Rush Lindell] two losses max,
[Rush Lindell] thirty six vacancies on my side of the aisle.
[Reagan] And the maps we've been talking about all hour?
[Reagan] They help at the margins.
[Reagan] But this many open seats in this environment?
[Rush Lindell] is exactly why the redistricting math doesn't close the deal on its own.
[Rush Lindell] The bodies still have to show up in November.
[Rush Lindell] So where does this all land for November?
[Rush Lindell] Alabama's new map,
[Rush Lindell] the one that stripped out the majority black district,
[Rush Lindell] cleared a Supreme Court emergency order on June 2nd. Florida's map survived the Florida Supreme Court on June 10th. These things are moving fast.
[Reagan] And yet the litigation isn't done.
[Reagan] Florida still has an active appellate challenge under the Fair Districts Amendment.
[Reagan] Alabama's map faces ongoing suits.
[Reagan] A federal court could still move before November; nothing is settled.
[Rush Lindell] Which is the honest read?
[Rush Lindell] You watch the map,
[Rush Lindell] you also watch the docket.
[Speaker 4] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] Both matter.
[Reagan] States that couldn't finish redistricting in time for twenty twenty six primaries-some still under court ordered maps-retain the option to redraw for twenty twenty eight.
[Reagan] The Kalli fallout doesn't end in November.
[Rush Lindell] Right; this goes beyond one cycle,
[Speaker 4] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] which brings me back to the thing I said at the top of this show.
[Reagan] The Senate Obsession
[Rush Lindell] The Senate obsession-Everyone's running Senate polls like that's where the country's decided.
[Rush Lindell] But,
[Rush Lindell] Reagan,
[Rush Lindell] the House controls the budget,
[Rush Lindell] the House controls every committee gavel.
[Rush Lindell] You want to know who actually runs Washington in twenty twenty seven?
[Rush Lindell] Watch the House map.
[Reagan] The math is brutal for Republicans:
[Reagan] Three seats-that's Democrats'
[Reagan] number-open seats from Thirty-six retirements,
[Reagan] active litigation on the maps they were counting on.
[Reagan] That's not a comfortable position.
[Rush Lindell] No margin—none—and you know what nobody wants to say—the Senate majority means nothing if Hakeem Jeffries is running the floor and the Budget Committee—nothing.
[Reagan] The Brookings piece made this point clearly:
[Reagan] the redistricting advantage is real,
[Reagan] but its actual electoral impact remains uncertain heading into November.
[Reagan] That's not pessimism,
[Reagan] that's just what the evidence supports.
[Rush Lindell] Honest!
[Rush Lindell] Which is rare.
[Rush Lindell] So here's your watch list:
[Rush Lindell] Florida appellate courts,
[Rush Lindell] Alabama federal suits,
[Rush Lindell] and every open-seat Republican district where there's no incumbent to carry the name.
[Rush Lindell] That's the race.
[Rush Lindell] That's where 2026 gets decided.
[Reagan] Keep your eyes on the House.
[Rush Lindell] All right, that's the show.
[Rush Lindell] Bottom line,
[Rush Lindell] the House is where 2026 is actually decided,
[Rush Lindell] and the Callais ruling reshuffled every map on the board.
[Reagan] And what's stuck with me is the math we ran:
[Reagan] Democrats need three seats; Republicans can lose two.
[Reagan] That's not a comfortable majority,
[Reagan] that's a tightrope.
[Rush Lindell] Gavel Watch is live,
[Rush Lindell] people,
[Rush Lindell] and those redistricted maps are still being litigated as we speak.
[Rush Lindell] This story isn't over.
[Reagan] It won't be over in 2026, honestly.
[Reagan] The fallout runs into 2028.
[Rush Lindell] Which means I'll be here,
[Rush Lindell] covering all of it.
[Reagan] Thanks for spending your time with us today.
[Reagan] If this episode made you think differently about where the real power fight is,
[Reagan] that's what we're after.
[Rush Lindell] Subscribe, leave us a five-star review, and send this to one person who needs to hear it.
[Rush Lindell] New episodes every weekday.
[Reagan] See you tomorrow,
[Reagan] Rush.
[Rush Lindell] See you then.
[Speaker 5] Takk for att du så med.