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Presidential election. >> well, so as we have been talking, we mentioned a little bit here what is happening in texas and you mentioned doesn't include minorities because political trends are improving for democrats so republicans are passing restrictive measures to suppress the vote and now redrawing the districts. is this the kind of ground war that democrats are going to have to fight in these battle ground states all over the country now? >> well, you're seeing that republicans know that they don't have the voting rights act, the full voting rights act so they don't have to seek preclearan...

Hea harris county where there was huge minority population growth and we didn't add any seat to reflect the growth, you see republicans trying to silence minority voters and continue to try to do that. it will be an interesting story heading into the midterms and for sure ahead of the presidential election. >> well, so as we have been talking, we mentioned a little bit here what is happening in texas and you mentioned doesn't include minorities because political trends are improving for democrats so republicans are passing restrictive measures to suppress the vote and now redrawing the distric...

There usually are, why weren't there hearings. former attorney general holder has also filed a lawsuit about this so they can work together to uncover the information they need to meet this burden. >> pete, this is not the only place that redraws maps this year. any indication doj is looking anywhere else? >> we don't know that for sure. i think one of the biggest challenges here is the fact that the supreme court eight years ago, this is the first time since we've had a new census that the justice department no longer has a tool it historically had which was section 5 of the voting rights act...

Challenging the texas map. i think that there are some other states where work is going on now that might involve challenges as well, states like north carolina, which has a, you know, history of having their maps challenged, too. the problem is that of course republicans really control the map-drawing process in so many of these states, especially ones that are really -- really critical. so it means that the d.o.j. is going to have to look particularly aggressively as them now. they don't have the benefit in the preclearance states because preclearance is no longer an option for the d.o.j. i ...

Voting rights act. it was because they did not pass muster under preclearance. a lot of these lawsuits right now are challenging the whole notion of section 2. can you break that down for our audience? >> yeah, well, it used to be before supreme court case, a few years ago, that maps like this would have to get precleared by the justice department to make sure they didn't run afoul of the voting rights act. after that case, that no longer is the case. so it's given free reign, basically, to the states like texas to engage in discriminatory behavior and throw that to the courts on a case-by-cas...