


5 Oct 2026 · 34m · 12 chapters

Interview with Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson about his uphill campaign for Congress in TN-9 after GOP-led redistricting following the Louisiana v. Calais decision. The episode argues gerrymandering and “political lynching” of Black representation are failing, and Pearson outlines priorities: gun safety, Medicaid expansion, higher minimum wage, rural hospital survival, and opposition to data centers via a national moratorium.
Justin Pearson, 31, Black state legislator; previously interned for Rep. Steve Cohen in his teens; attended Bowdoin College. He became prominent after being expelled from the Tennessee General Assembly in 2023 for protesting gun violence after the Covenant School shooting; later reappointed.
TN’s district was cut from a compact “Memphis” seat into a 200-mile, majority-rural “red blob” by splitting Memphis into thirds. Pearson says his opponent Brent Taylor won’t debate and is out of step with voters (including MAGA) on gun safety and data-center pollution.
Giles County/Pulaski—KKK founded there; Pearson says he drew 150 attendees. He cites 12 rural hospitals at risk of closing and claims data-center pollution (e.g., XAI facilities) could cause premature deaths.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Exploration of Tennessee's gerrymandering effects on the political landscape and Justin Pearson's congressional campaign.
“We've talked to analysts who see it in the numbers, candidates who are riding this momentum.”
Justin Pearson discusses his motivations for running for Congress and the challenges he faces in a racially gerrymandered district.
“But we are not afraid because, I mean, honestly, you know, when they broke up the districts, I was like, man, this is going to be tough.”
Learn about the rapid and racially motivated redistricting efforts in Tennessee.
“You've been in office for a while, friend.”
Explore the author's experience advocating for gun reform after a tragic school shooting.
“And it was the six days since the Cali decision.”
Discuss the evolution of political beliefs and the impact of past experiences.
“Or if they continue to protest, you censor them.”
Hear the personal stories that shape the author's views on gun violence and legislation.
“It sounds like, thank you, Tucker Carlson.”
Analyze the failures of current Republican policies and the importance of legislative action.
“And so they're outside, out of step with their own base.”
The discussion focuses on the reasons behind Brent Taylor's avoidance of debate and the implications for Tennesseeans.
“I read that Brent Taylor won't even debate you.”
The conversation shifts to the challenges of campaigning and addressing constituents' diverse concerns.
“Non-invasive, requires no prep, can be completed at home in about 15 minutes and is 95 % effective.”
Discussion on the implications of data centers on local communities and the environment, as well as potential legislative actions.
“My job is to address the court needs that people have, which have been threefold.”
Exploring the importance of grassroots movements and building power within the community beyond electoral victories.
“How much do you think about what your life might look like on November 4th?”
The significance of authenticity in political engagement and connecting with diverse voter bases is discussed.
“beyond just constituent services, which is a very big part, but it actually is going to be how do we get the right people in positions of power.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On What Next | Daily News and Analysis, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
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0:38Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab, to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market.
1:15Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise, or wherever you listen.
1:35Hey, it's Mary, and I've got a special offer for you, one you have not heard before, so you're going to want to keep listening. By now, you probably know it's pledge drive season around Slate, but this week, joining Slate Plus is not just something you can do for yourself. It's something you can do for the ones you love. Allow me to explain. Right now, you can give the gift of Slate Plus to the person or people in your life that you know want to join us but can't. Or maybe they should be joining, but you can give them a little nudge. Maybe Slate Plus is the perfect gift for your sister-in-law who loves advice columns, or maybe just the thing for that lawyer in your life who adores amicus.
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3:07We've talked a lot on the show about some kind of blue wave building for Democrats come November. We've talked to analysts who see it in the numbers, candidates who are riding this momentum. But I gotta say, if this wave sweeps Tennessee Democrat Justin Pearson into office, it'd be a really big deal. A brand new poll shows a 4 % difference in our race. Even Justin seems to know how big a deal it would be. I know that because online, he is gleefully sharing poll results that actually show him behind by only four points, but still. This new poll proves what we've been saying all along. We are still here.
3:50Can you talk to me about releasing that video? It was an interesting choice to me that you put out this video. This district, when it was gerrymandered, was a plus 21 district for Trump in 2024. So the fact that we are currently within four points is pretty extraordinary. You're basically saying we're so close. We're so close.
4:17Let me give you a picture of Justin real quick. He's young, just 31, already serving as a state legislator. It was actually his colleagues at the state capitol who ensured his congressional race would be a tough one. Tennessee, you might remember, was one of the first states to go all in on gerrymandering. After the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Calais let them have at it. District 9, the district Justin's running in, it went from being a blue dot to a red blob. At least, that's what the mapmakers hope it will become. I wonder if you can describe what Tennessee's gerrymandering did to your district, because I was looking at a map of it.
5:00You see a district that is basically Memphis and some beyond Memphis. It goes from that to this massive amount of land, literally going from Memphis to the suburbs of Nashville. and it looks like it's like 20 % of the state now that your district is responsible for. Yeah, no, it's 200 miles from the start of our district to the other end. And you're exactly right. It was just Memphis pretty much, Shelby County, a little bit of Tipton County. It was a pretty compact district. We've made a lot of sense because we were a large city. We're the largest cities in the state that we had our own congressperson who would share our interest.
5:44And then after the Calais decision, they decided that they wanted to take away the only majority black district, congressional district in our state. And they cut Memphis into thirds. So we have three different congresspeople representing one city now. And they stretched it as far as they possibly could to get the adequate number of people that they wanted in there, which is ultimately 750 ,000. but they wanted to make it majority rural and they wanted to give themselves such an advantage that it would be almost impossible for me or other folks like me to be able to win. And we have traveled now all 15 counties, more than once, to meet people in those districts from Fayette County to Murray County to Williamson County, which is in the suburbs.
6:27What's that like? Like walking into a rural district as someone from Memphis and just being like, hey, I want to represent you. Yeah, I love it. I'm having the time of my life. And you know what? They want me to represent them, too, because they feel like in rural areas that no one sees them, that they are always misused, actually, rather than cared for. And they think that of Republicans and honestly of Democrats, too, who used to represent these areas. They'd never held town halls. They didn't come back and knock the doors. They didn't organize consistently and continuously. Is that something you're promising to do?
7:01Like, I'll be back here if I win? I've been back to every county about three times thus far, and some more than that, because I'm committed to showing up in these places, right? These places, and here's the shocking thing that people would not expect, in a place like Giles County, right? Pulaski, where the Kukla... Tell me about Giles County. I don't know anything about Giles County. Okay, so Giles County is where the county seat is Pulaski. Pulaski is where the Ku Klux Klan was founded, right? And so when our new district was created, the city that founded the Ku Klux Klan became part of District 9.
7:34So I said, let's go there because we have an amazing organizer, Cassie, who's organizing people and bringing folks together. And she said, OK, probably 12, maybe 20 people. We walked into Pulaski, Tennessee, into the community centers, 150 people there. And we had everybody. We had farmers who were trying to figure things out. And, you know, things are really difficult right now because of beef and also diesel prices to a young lady who was working at the Dollar General making$10 an hour. Right. Like we have the spectrum of people who are showing up saying we need a different vision for our community.
8:08Did you feel any kind of way about going there? You're a young black man. Yeah. And like you're going to like the seat of the KKK. I don't know. Did you need a beat before you did that? No, you know, I pray before I give any speech and before I go anywhere. But we are not afraid because, I mean, honestly, you know, when they broke up the districts, I was like, man, this is going to be tough. I mean, the guy who represented the 9th District for years and years, Steve Cohen, he literally was like, OK, looking at this map, I'm out. Yeah, exactly. He tapped out immediately. I mean, he quit as soon as the map passed.
8:39And for me, we looked at the numbers. We said there's a possibility we can do this. And so we're going to go for it because we are quitters. But you never had a moment where you were like, should I do this, really? Not really, no. I was like, because for me, when people do things like this, it's always a question that they're asking, is this enough to make them quit? Oh, you feel like it's a challenge to you? It's a challenge. It's another challenge. And we refuse to accept it.
9:06Today on the show, why Justin Pearson took on an uphill battle in Tennessee. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.
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12:08Okay, I want to tell a few different threads of your story if we can. And I guess first thing I want to emphasize is that you have been running for Tennessee's ninth for a while. Like I think you announced almost a year, about a year ago. And at that point, you were primarying the Democratic representative Steve Cohen, who had represented the district for a while. You'd actually interned for him, I think. Is that right? Yeah, when I was like 15 and 19. When you were 15? What were you doing for Steve Cohen when you were 15? I mean, you never see the Congress. I mean, anyone who's ever entered, you never see these people.
12:38I was just picking up the phone, talking to folks. Yeah. It was great. What did you learn from that? One, I just love talking to people and trying to meet their needs and connect them with the other constituent services representatives. And, you know, being that young, it was just, it was a lot of fun. And even being in D.C., I think what I realized working up there, and again, you never really see the Congress person. But when you are watching what's happening on the floor, I think what was really interesting to me, I remember explaining to my parents, I was like, I watched one person say, imagine there's an imaginary car in the center of the well.
13:10And one person got up and was like, it's a blue car. And was screaming about it being a blue car. And another person was saying, it's a purple car. Screaming about it being a purple car. And I was like, but it's a yellow car. So like, what is going on? They just talk past each other and not talk about the thing. that's something that I witnessed sort of firsthand. It was very disconcerted by. Some people would like see that and be like, these people are idiots. I'm out. Sounds like you went the opposite direction. I went the opposite direction. I said there are better people that are needed in government.
13:36And I do believe that. I believe we need more people who run for office who are smart. And unfortunately, we have a lot of people in office who are self-centered and self-interested and are not that smart. Wow. I mean, it sounds like you gave a courtesy call to Steve Cohen to be like, hey, I'm coming for your job. And he was pissed. Yeah, I know. He was irate. It's so funny. He said, I started running for office the day Justin gave me that phone call. What? You've been in office for a while, friend. Exactly. He's like, I ran for reelection the night he gave me that phone call. When the intern told me he was coming.
14:10Some folks just don't. I mean, hey, now here's where we are. And he's retiring. So you were running and then you're a state legislator. so then what happened after that is that calais goes through and the legislators in tennessee are like great we're gonna redistrict the hell out of this we're gonna do some racist gerrymandering here so you have a front row seat to that and you're watching what's happening to the district that you're running in can you tell me about that because i remember what happened in tennessee because it seemed so fast it seemed like as soon as the baton was passed like okay you can do some gerrymandering here.
14:51Tennessee was ready to go. I mean, absolutely. Right. The Senator, U.S. Senator Marshall Blackburn put up a map, AI generated saying, take Memphis's district. The next day, the president of the United States called the governor the day of one of our black colleagues' funeral, actually. And they agreed to take the district. And then they called a special session the day of the funeral. It was just, it was, it was evil. It was a level of evil I had not seen. And I mean, the Speaker of the House was at the funeral talking. And then a couple hours later, he was calling us all back to take away the state's only majority black district.
15:26You got to understand, and what I try and remind people, the hate in vitriol that is required to take away black representation never disappeared or dissipated, right? Never disappeared, it only dissipated. And so it's the same hate that changed constitutions in the late 1800s, early 1900s to take away black political power. Same hate that lynched black people, quite literally with firearms or on lynching trees in our nation's history for registering to vote. Like it dissipated into institutions. Now they wear suits and ties, right? They don't need to have white hoods anymore. And they can use the levers of power to get to, in essence, the same results, which is the political lynching of black political power.
16:07But what we are finding in this entire campaign, What we're seeing is their attempt is going to fail because you are trying to oppress and suppress people who have struggled and have fought for the rights that they have. And so we're seeing an increase in participation in black voting, black folks voting. We're seeing an increase in participation in young people voting because they've actually drawn more attention to the need to show up and be present in this moment in time. But it was a very visceral experience in three days to have our committee meetings, the maps drawn, the vote happened, that'd be over with.
16:42And it was the six days since the Cali decision. It was the quickest form of political deprivation that we've seen in our country's history since the late 1800s. And it's the question, is that enough to make us quit? And we're saying no. Right. I mean, you have a history of basically fighting in the legislature. I think a lot of my listeners will remember you in particular from 2023. that's when there was a mass shooting at a Christian school and the covenant school six people were killed three of them just nine years old and you and some colleagues really wanted to use this moment to talk about gun reform and you were incredibly outspoken about it you to the point where you were expelled from the legislature.
17:29So it's like you made a point to make a scene for these parents and these victims. You got reappointed, I think, less than a week later. So it was a very quick thing. But certainly it's where I think you came to prominence in my mind. Can you just tell me about what you learned from that fight? Because the legislation didn't get passed, right? Certainly we know who you are. Certainly it was a flashpoint for the movement to think about gun reform in this country. But some would say, but it didn't move the needle. Yeah, I think the truth of the matter is we learned a lot from that expulsion. One of the things that we learned that we are learning as a nation now is the rise of autocracy is real and rampant.
18:19That people who are in positions of power are willing to use, manipulate and abuse their power against voices of dissent. And we were seeing what happened in Tennessee really on a national scale with the way that people are being silenced, professors are being silenced, teachers are being silenced all over the country because of the rise in really authoritarianism that we are seeing. And I think that was a canary in the coal mine kind of moment for our country. And I guess the people who expelled you would say like, well, you were out of order. You were doing something against the rules. What would you say to them?
18:51Well, I would tell them to read the permanent rules of order for the General Assembly and go to rule number 19, that when someone is out of order, your job is to call them out of order and then they have the ability to just sit down. Or if they continue to protest, you censor them. That's what the rules say. It does not say that you expelled them. They were frustrated and angry about who was protesting and what we were protesting, which was the end to the gun violence epidemic. And their response was obviously a drastic overreaction in a moment where they should have been trying to do everything they could to protect the lives of children.
19:26And they hated that we drew attention to the lack of action to address the deaths, not only of the six people killed at the Covenant School, but the hundreds of people killed across the state of Tennessee, including in Memphis and Shelby County due to homicides, the thousands of guns that get stolen due to horrible guns and trunks laws, the horrible bill that really started all of this, which was taking away people's need for a permit to carry a firearm. We were drawing attention to that. They didn't want attention drawn to it. The NRA didn't want attention drawn to it. And so they did a gross overreaction with that, which had a deleterious impact, obviously, on our democracy.
20:03But it highlighted for a lot of people, I think it highlighted just the failures of the Republican governance. It's the failures of people who want to manipulate and use their power against voices of dissent. That's really what it showed. Yeah. I mean, I think it was that 2023 protest that really led you to kind of live rent-free in some Republicans' heads. There's video of you as a college student. You went to Bowdoin, I think, in Maine. I did. Yeah. And it's become notorious, I think, in some GOP circles. I just want to talk about it, because if people know about it, they know about it. But I think a lot of people who maybe listen to my show don't so i'll describe it i think you're running for office as a student you know student president or something and first of all you look so different you look like a young republican you're in like a suit jacket your hair is so short and like right now you have like a like a little fro and um you're talking about reaching across the aisle you're like i want to work with republicans and democrats people are conservative and liberal and i want to find that I think you say radical middle.
21:13That's right. Is what you say. And like, I don't know, like you sound like you sound different to me. And I wonder if you actually think you've changed. Because I think I think what people why this video went viral or whatever for some people is that people say, well, he's changed. He used to be like this. And I don't I actually don't know if you'd see it as a change. No, I look different for sure from when I was 21 to 31 for sure. I grew my hair out starting in the pandemic and I'm keeping it because it looks fabulous. My mom always cut our hair. And so I learned to cut my own hair. So I gave myself that haircut that's in that video.
21:55Really? Yeah, I saved money by doing it. She made me buy some clippers. And so I saved thousands and thousands of dollars for many years while cutting my own hair. But yeah, look, the truth of the matter is, when I talk about it now, I talk about the solidarity dividend. You got to white folks and black folks, rich folks and poor folks. You got to get Republicans, independents, Democrats together on shared common values, common ground without sacrificing your values. It's the same thing, different words, because I still believe that we have more in common than we do apart. And what they want to say is, well, you look different and so you believe differently.
22:28And that's just not the case. I think that we have been duped. I think the system has been rigged for billionaires and that all they want to do is make us look at one another and find critique, right? Find fault. When the truth of the matter is we need to look up who's really profiting off of our pain, who's really hurting and harming our communities from data centers to oil pipelines to the lack of wages, right? Like we can't get distracted because that's ultimately what they're looking for, ways to distract us. And by finding old videos of me, that's trying to distract us from the message that I'm sharing.
23:02And the clip that they use of my speech is a great one, by the way. So people should look at it. It's the best part of the speech. It sounds like, thank you, Tucker Carlson. Like, thank you. God gave me the words. And like, now you're sharing them to millions of people. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so interesting because the implication is you disavow it now. But I don't think that you do. And I do kind of wonder if what happened at the Covenant School, the shooting, was actually an opportunity for you to work in what you called back then this radical middle. Because I think at the Covenant School, the parents were not radical Democrats.
23:37And I don't think they were necessarily Black either. Like, I don't know if they were like one or the other, but I'm just saying like, I think that was an opportunity for you to work with people who, you know, you may disagree on some things, but you can disagree. You can agree on something else. Exactly. I mean, the Covenant School was extremely wealthy, overwhelmingly white, conservative Christians, right? This is not my quote unquote base of people. but that didn't make me stop feeling, you know, just the tragedy of that mass shooting and of gun violence in particular. You know, I'd lost a classmate in January of that year from gun violence.
24:18He'd been shot and killed. The fall before that, my mentor, Dr. Yvonne Nelson, had been shot and killed. A few years ago, my cousin has been shot and killed, TJ, and it'd be after that, actually, on December 1st, 2024, where I lost my own brother through gun suicide. And so I called 988 if you're ever struggling. So this thing is intimately personal for me that we address it because the truth of the matter is, it's impacting all of us. It's impacting all of us, no matter what party you're voting for or those things, these laws and these policies have consequences. And we deserve to have elected officials who aren't beholden to private companies and industry more than they are people.
24:58And 71 % of people in Tennessee want gun safety laws, including MAGA Republicans. And so they're outside, out of step with their own base. But what I'm articulating is something that we can all get behind. You have reached prominence as someone known for speaking out and making noise when you feel like you need to make noise. And I wonder how you think about how your approach would change if you went to Washington. And I say that because I feel like the mission of being a Democrat in the Tennessee legislature is different than the mission of someone in Congress. In Congress, so much of your job is bringing resources home.
25:41And you can do that in a way that you can't necessarily as a Democratic legislator in the state legislature, the General Assembly in Tennessee. and I feel like your opponent Brent Taylor is kind of trying to make that a thing he likes to talk about you as being a chaos candidate quote unquote what would you say to someone who thinks like you're a protester not a legislator yeah no I think to people who think that I am a legislator I read every single bill that comes before me I have not only read every bill that comes before me that we voted on. Every time we get an opportunity to write a bill, I filled up my slots every time.
26:23The question is, why haven't they passed an expansion to Medicaid that would give 300 ,000 people access to health care? Why haven't we increased the minimum wage to at least $20,$25 an hour, which is legislation that I brought forward? And so my opponent, he doesn't want to take credit for the failures of the current status quo, the reality that we have the highest maternal mortality of any state in the country. We have the lowest amount of spending for per people spending in the United States of America. We've transferred$600 million of public dollars to private schools. Those are the things he doesn't want to take credit for, but he should, because Republicans have the House, the Senate, and the governor's mansion.
26:57So this level of poverty that we have, the hurt and harm that our farmers are feeling, is because of Republicans being in power for a long time in our state. And then you look at federally, they have the House, the Senate, and the White House. Why aren't our lives improving? Why is everything costing more? Why are we struggling more? Why are we suffering more? And he's a Trump-endorsed candidate. And he is wanting to continue those same policies that are hurting the people in the state currently. And so, again, he's trying to distract with these little quips and things. But the reality is I've always brought forward solutions to the problems that we have and that my constituents continue to articulate for me.
27:33In the Congress, I will be able to have more power than being in a super minority, which we currently are in the statehouse. And I'm going to leverage that to bring resources to our farmers, to bring resources to our communities and urban areas where poverty is skyrocketing and people are suffering. In fact, Tennessee is one of the only states where poverty increased. And that's because of the leadership of people like my Trump endorsed opponent, Brent Taylor. They want to keep that status quo going because it's benefiting those at the top, even though it's not benefiting working class people.
28:03And my job. I read that Brent Taylor won't even debate you. He won't. He won't. Brent Taylor. Trump endures to Brent Taylor will not debate me because he is scared. He's scared of the facts, right? The facts that he got fired. He says he won't debate you because you don't respect law enforcement, I believe was his line. All he has to say is the truth is that he's scared, right? My sister-in-love is a police officer, right? My cousin works for Memphis Police Department. It's not about that. He is afraid of standing on a stage next to me with no vision, with no plan, with no ideas about how we got into this mess and how we're going to get out of it.
28:39And he doesn't want to take ownership of the fact that the failures of him and all of his colleagues are the reason why Tennesseans are struggling today. We'll be back after a quick break. Don't forget, though, it is Pledge Drive season. And this week you can give Slate Plus. Go over to slate.com slash give plus and use the offer code whatnext50 to give Slate Plus to whoever you want.
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31:03What's the number one thing you would want to debate him about? Like if you had one exchange, where are you going? Yeah, let's talk about big money in politics and why he's taking millions or supporting Elon Musk, taking thousands and thousands of dollars from them in his campaign while they're building data centers in our community that's polluting the air that we breathe, taking millions of gallons of our drinking water and making life harder for us. And they're planning to do that not just in Memphis, but in Lawrenceburg and other places in our state. I would like to hear his response to that.
31:33I mean, I was looking at his campaign ads to just be like, what is he running on? He seems to be running on the idea that Tennessee is unsafe and he wants it to be safer, but then also just kind of vibes. He has this like line tougher than hickory, solid as an oak. But I do wonder his candidacy, because he seems to believe that he can vibe his way into office. um i do it puts the pressure on someone like you to like find the points of agreement you can make in your incredibly large incredibly diverse district and i do wonder how you're doing that because you know you have your uh your opponent saying things are unsafe i think his line was um more chaotic than a squirrel in a bait shop or something like that's a criminals coming into Tennessee.
32:27And, you know, in Memphis, you have Donald Trump sending a task force to Memphis to, you know, federally oversee what's happening there. People have been shot. But people who don't live in Memphis, who are part of your district, may see it very differently than the constituents you want to represent in Memphis. So how do you get those people talking to each other and uniting behind a vision? Exactly. I mean, my Trump endorsed opponent is completely out of touch with the reality that people are dealing with. The farmers in Bedford County are not worried about the crime that you're talking about in Memphis.
33:04They're worried about putting food on the table. And we know the root cause of crime in the first place is poverty. And people who are in Memphis and Shelby County are dealing with the minimum wage that$7.25 that he and none of his colleagues have sought to change because they want to continue to perpetuate a system of corporate and political and poverty exploitation. My job is to address the court needs that people have, which have been threefold. An affordability crisis brought on by an illegal Iran war and a need for universal child care. Second, universal access to health care because we have the highest medical debt in the country.
33:37I just got a report that 12 rural hospitals are imminently closing in the state of Tennessee. In addition to 16, we've already lost since 2005. That's what people are telling me they're concerned about, not squirrels and bait shops. And the last thing, they're really worried about data centers. They're worried about people like my Trump-endorsed opponent, Brent Taylor, saying he sees nothing wrong with data centers and that they're good for the economy. And he doesn't care how many people that they hire. They're terrified about their aquifers running dry. They're worried about the noise pollution and the air quality pollution that they're going to be dealing with and that he's just going to, you know, green light these projects and complete support of them.
34:16We got to speak to the needs of the people in District 9 and that's what I'm doing. What do you see as a victory when it comes to data centers? Like no data centers? Or do you see it as leveraging clearly these people with deep pockets who want to build something and saying, hey, if you want to build a data center, you better be funding X or Y or Z. Yeah. I mean, the truth is there's no amount of funding that they can offer for these data centers that is worth your life or mine. There's just no amount. And the truth of the matter is right now, what they are asking is that we sacrifice the lives of some of our community members for the profits of their shareholders to the tune of billions of dollars.
34:52And that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Why do you say sacrifice the lives? You mean because of pollution? Because of pollution, the amount of nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, even in Memphis and Shelby County, that's coming from XAI's facilities in Memphis and in North Mississippi, is likely to kill dozens of people prematurely every year, send people to the hospital due to asthma, COPD, and cancer. And this is research that's come out by some Harvard researchers, just if they had 41 gas turbines. But now we know they have 59 gas turbines in North Mississippi and 15 here in Memphis. And so the levels of pollution that are increasing is increasing the amount of deaths that we are going to have.
35:31Do you think you can really stop these data centers by going to Congress? Like, what would be your move? No, my first thing is we need to pass a national moratorium on data centers so that we develop regulations that do three things. The Bernie Sanders plan. It's Bernie plus some. It needs to protect people's health. It needs to protect the environment. And it needs to protect the workforce. And that's what I want to add is a federal jobs guarantee. We know a lot of displacement is going to happen due to automation and artificial general intelligence. We need to guarantee that people are going to have work that they can do and have the dignity of work.
36:06Because if we have 15 to 30 percent of our workforce interrupted by artificial intelligence, particularly if it continues on this scale, and the largest use case is really the replacement of people's jobs, we need to ensure that people have a job after that happens.
36:23How much do you think about what your life might look like on November 4th? I don't. I'm just worried on November 3rd. That's election day. You don't think about it. You're just like, I'm just driving towards that and like the election day itself. Absolutely. I'll leave it to somebody else to think about what happens November 4th. But my job is to win on November 3rd. I'm spending every waking hour doing that, talking to good people like you, raising lots of money, going to a lot of events to get people to turn out, because that's what we need. We need a turnout tsunami as it relates to voter participation this fall.
37:03And I think with us getting that, we're going to go to Congress. I think if you don't go to Congress, I wonder what you think it means. Yeah, I think we're going to have to keep building power no matter what happens. And that's what I've told a lot of people in the communities where we are talking to them and meeting them, that we are building power. This is not where it stops. Tennessee politics will never be the same again after our race and after our election to Congress. We're going back because we want county commission seats. We want city council seats. We want people serving in the office of mayor and on town councils.
37:40And so our project isn't just this electoral victory. It is making sure that we have a stronger state by the end of this. And so my work as it relates to how we support and serve these 15 counties is going to extend beyond just constituent services, which is a very big part, but it actually is going to be how do we get the right people in positions of power. And I mean, I'll be honest, I've got Republicans are coming to my rallies, right? who are in elected office, who I'm like, okay, I would tell people to support them because they've got the right mind about things. They understand the issues and they want to address them in a meaningful way for everybody in the community.
38:18They're not lost to sort of MAGA like my opponent is, but rather they have some, they're principled Republicans. And those are people you can work with. One of my strongest supporters, she's leading one of our counties as a, as a court volunteer voted for Trump in the past. They want to have people in office who actually care about people who are going to do everything they can to make their lives better. What's the number one thing you've learned from someone like that? Someone who's working on your campaign who voted for Trump? Yeah. To be authentic. I think that's what matters more than anything.
38:51I don't agree with anybody about everything, including my own beautiful, lovely wife. But I think what Trump voters, and I guess you call them Trump Pearson voters, are showing and telling me is, you know, we have to be authentic to what we believe and how we believe. And even if you have people who disagree with you, you don't buy into the corruption and you don't sell out and you don't go where the wind blows, right? I have principles, I'm pragmatic, and I'm progressive, and I'm not ashamed of any of those things. Justin, I'm really grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on the show. I'm grateful for the time with you.
39:24Thank you so much for having me. I really am happy to be here with you. State Representative Justin Pearson is running for Congress in Tennessee's 9th District. And that's our show. What Next is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down on Blue Sky. I'm Matt Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.
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Democrat Justin Pearson made national headlines in 2023 when he expelled from Tennessee’s general assembly while trying to talk about gun reform after a school shooting. That same spirit has driven him to run for Congress, despite the newly redrawn electoral map that erased the state’s only majority Black district.
Guest: Justin Pearson, state representative for Tennessee’s District 86, running for Congress.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.
Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.
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