Politics and views in the United States

Hawaii becomes the first state to ban all corporate election spending, civil rights and voting activists protest redistricting in the South and Louisiana's Senator Cassidy – who voted to convict Trump during impeachment – loses the GOP primary.

Transcript

Welcome to 2026 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

For too long, we have lived with a legal fiction that a corporation can stand shoulder to shoulder with a human being in the political arena, that it can spend without limit, influence without accountability.

Republican Hawaii State Representative Kahani Souza says the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for corporate campaign money by redefining political donations as a form of free speech.

Hawaii lawmakers have become the first in the nation to use the state's power to define, license and regulate corporations to say they don't have those rights. 14 other states are considering similar legislation.

President Donald Trump says the clock's ticking for Iran to make a peace deal or, quote, there won't be anything left of them.

The White House insists Tehran has no negotiating leverage and continues to deny intelligence leaks that show the damage to Iran's military infrastructure has been exaggerated.

Thousands gathered in southern states this weekend to rally against the redrawing of congressional maps ahead of the midterms.

Protesters from as far as Ohio took symbolic acts, including a march across Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The Supreme Court's recent ruling to weaken the Voting Rights Act could give the GOP 200 federal, state, and local seats, often by letting legislatures break up minority districts in the South.

Black members of Congress, like Democrat Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, say Republicans want to use the ruling to create Jim Crow 2.0.

This is a precise, intentional, and coordinated assault on black people, black votes, black power, and black progress.

South Carolina's Republican governor has called a special session which could break up the state's sole Democratic-leaning congressional district.

Tennessee legislators have approved a new map which breaks up the black-majority Memphis seat, And Alabama has rescheduled primaries planned for this month as a redistricting case plays out in court.

After failing to qualify for a June runoff in his Senate GOP primary, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy took a veiled swipe at Trump, who endorsed one of his challengers.

When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you want it to.

But you don't pout, you don't whine, you don't claim the election was stolen.

Cassidy was just one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to remove Trump from office for inciting the January 6th insurrection.

And the Senate parliamentarian says the White House can't include a billion-dollar request for public money for the White House ballroom in a House spending package.

Republicans say the money is needed to bolster presidential security following a shooting at a recent D.C. dinner.

I'm Catherine Carley for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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