forces in america. from the voting rights crackdowns and assorted government plots, to the big lie attacks on election results that can stoke actual insurrections. we know the u.s. has faced many different types of crises before, but this era has been a perfect storm of right wing demagogues, weaponized propaganda from the internet to the fox news defamation we covered, and this is key, the perfect storm includes a high powered, elite driven effort to main streak attacks on democracy and try to write them into our rules. and that part of the effort is not, let s be clear, criminal activity like january 6th. it s not something people are going to go to jail for. it is what at least lawyers and others call arguably legal attacks that are still designed to hijack democracy from within. this is our top story tonight, because this brings us to efforts to bend or break current laws and rules, to try to foster more anti-democratic outcomes that would be technically legal if these pe
states have the primary authority to establish election law. it s kind of an arcane theory. we re going to find out if, in fact, the constitution tells us that state legislatures are the exclusive and ultimate arbiter of election rules. many analysts say the outcome could potentially, quote, damage american democracy. and that s huge. it is huge, and it can be damaging. so let s look at how this works specifically. take north carolina, which went about 50% for trump in the last election, but the state s republican politicians abused their powers over map drawing to try to hand their own party 71% of their delegation. you see there. that s if you count about 40% more voting power than they won from the voters. that is a huge difference. it s self-dealing. it s distortive. it s not democratic. that effort was so braise judges threw out that attempted map.