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President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.

We’re joined by a mother-daughter duo from Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” Roishetta and Kamea Ozane are part of a group of environmental activists on a national tour to confront the financial backers of destructive natural gas projects that have devastated their community. The “Toxic Billionaire Tour” is targeting the offices of major banks and the homes of executives, who “sit here in New York and in offices in D.C. [and] make decisions for our community, decisions that are killing our children, decisions that are harming our air, our water and our life.” Roishetta Ozane is the founder and director of environmental justice organization The Vessel Project. Her 12-year-old daughter Kamea, like many residents of “Cancer Alley,” lives with asthma that is exacerbated by the polluted air and water around her home. “Right as soon as you walk outside of my house, if you look over, you can see the industries from right outside of my front yard, and from the industries you can see the bulging fires, and you can smell this really toxic air.”

(Unfortunate reminder: Indy escaped that boulder.) ...IN MEMORIAM... ...NEXT WEEK!... * * * As The BRAD BLOG's former longtime toon sherpa PDiddie always reminded us: "With editorial cartooning increasingly an endangered species, please consider supporting them if you possibly can." * * * The BRAD BLOG is looking for someone --- other than [...]

As discussed on today's BradCast, there are a few things you should know about all of these supposed Donald Trump "trade deals" you have been hearing about in recent days, in advance of his iron-clad August 1 deadline (until he changes it again --- oops, too late, and too late again) for implementing new [...]

Jagpreet Singh is the Political Director for DRUM Beats and in an in-depth interview, he examines how and why South Asian voters in New York City mobilized for Mamdani and what lessons the election holds for the rest of the nation.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.