Transcript of GOP Redistricting Bust, Lula Wins Brazil Election, Protest Spread In Europe

We find out soon how redistricting worked out for Republicans.

The party tried to gerrymander its way to an election win. President Trump's party is so unpopular, Republicans are having to fight to keep the districts they created.

I'm Leila Faldon, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Brazil's president won reelection on Sunday. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated a right-wing challenger. The challenger is the son of a right-wing president who was jailed for trying to overturn an election. And The Sun claims this election was unfair, too.

Also, student-led movements are sweeping across European cities. 400,000 people protested in France over the weekend. Young people are in the streets of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Albania. But how much power are they gaining? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. We are nearing the end of election season. Former President Obama spent part of the weekend rallying Democrats in Michigan and Ohio. President Trump is doing everything he can to motivate his party's base to vote. And we're also going to win a Republican House and a Republican Senate.

Recent polling and recent history lean against that result. The president's party usually suffers in the midterms. Republicans did plan to keep control of the House of Representatives through redistricting, tilting more seats toward the party in power. We have an update this morning on how that plan is working out.

NPR's senior political correspondent Tamara Keith has been looking into it. Tam, good morning.

Good morning.

What did you find in 15 districts drawn specifically to favor Republicans?

Well, only 5 of them are rated by the Cook Political Report as either likely or solid Republican. Most are toss-up or lean towards Democrats winning. These are districts that under the new lines would have gone for President Trump, by a significant margin in 2024. Trump and his political team put a lot of pressure on Republican-led states to redraw these districts. Here's how Nathan Gonzalez of Inside Elections describes the current state of play.

Redistricting was supposed to be a firewall for Republicans in this midterm election, and it has just not turned out that way.

Instead, these are some of the most expensive and competitive House races in the country.

Oh, they're having to spend money to even have a chance at keeping them. So—

Truckloads.

Wow. the president's political team make of the idea that redistricting didn't work?

A Republican strategist involved with midterm races, but who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, pushed back on that characterization, saying redistricting creates new battlefields. It doesn't create outcomes. These are certainly battlefields with a positive outcome for Republicans very much in question in 2/3 of the seats drawn to favor the party's candidates.

Okay, so why would gerrymandering not help as much as the people who did it probably expected it would.

Yeah, you know, some of these lines were drawn based on the Trump 2024 electorate, which was a real high watermark. Since then, key pieces of the Trump base have soured on the president, including young voters and Latino voters. The president's approval rating is now at a new low. A number of Democratic incumbents who were directly targeted in the new maps decided to stick it out and fight. This includes people like Congressman Don Davis of North Carolina. And what he told me is that the lines in North Carolina's 1st Congressional District may have changed, but the issues are universal.

You hear so often about affordability, inflation, and cost, but I believe this is becoming, for many, about survivability, just how they're able to make it and survive, you know, during these tough times. Okay, I know that was the seat that Republicans felt sure to gain in North Carolina. So how's it working out?

Well, Republicans are nervous about it, so much so that last week President Trump called the Republican candidate in that district, Lori Buckout, onto stage with him. She's a retired Army colonel who lost when she ran there 2 years ago, but now the lines are more favorable, and she leaned into that in front of the MAGA crowd at Trump's rally.

And that's simple math.

There are more of us. All you gotta do is get out the vote. With the new lines, President Trump would've won this district by more than 10 points just 2 years ago. Now it's a toss-up.

Math is a little different. Tamara, thanks so much.

Yep, sure thing.

NPR's Tamara Keith. The president of Brazil came back to win Sunday's runoff presidential election.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat back his toughest election challenge to date. It's a victory for the leftist president against the right-wing wave that has swept much of the Americas.

NPR's Carrie Cohn is in Brasília, the capital of that country. Carrie, welcome.

Good morning.

Okay, there was this initial round of voting. Lula came in second, not first. How did he make it to first place this time?

It was pretty remarkable. His campaign seemed to really kick into high gear after that loss in the first round of voting. And in the last weeks, Lula was just holding huge marches, trying harder to engage with younger voters, women, and even older voters. He needed to get out the vote. Some 33 million Brazilians had sat out that first round. And polls just predicted he was done. He would need to pick up a large majority of fresh votes in the second round to win. And that's exactly what he did. Brazilians went to the polls and he captured millions of new votes. He outperformed Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former far-right president, by more than 4 million votes. I think Lula, who turns 81 tomorrow, was even shocked by the turnaround himself. Here he is last night, very hoarse. speaking to ecstatic supporters in São Paulo. I would like to thank the Brazilian people for the generosity they have shown me for such a long time, he said. He gave a particular shout-out to Brazil's young people, who he said took to the streets to defend democracy. And this was a theme in the last weeks of his campaign, That really appears to have galvanized voters that the return of a Bolsonaro to power would be an existential threat to Brazilian democracy.

Okay. Did Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president, accept these results?

No, he did not. He asked for the results to be annulled. He said that what happened in Brazil yesterday was, quote, not normal. He too seemed stunned by Lula's win. Here he is speaking to reporters late last night outside his party headquarters in Brasília. It's inexplicable what happened, he said. Bolsonaro pointed to a late ruling by the Supreme Court yesterday. It ordered polls to stay open for 2 more hours, but both candidates had requested that extension, citing transportation problems and bad weather. But the order to leave the polls open was made on Lula's request. Bolsonaro, however, complained that allowing the polls to stay open, quote, changed the rules in the middle of the game.

I just want to be totally clear on this. Bolsonaro's side also asked for the polling to be extended, but then when it didn't work out for him, he said it was unfair. Is that what you're telling me?

Yes, that's right. But the Supreme Court ruled on just Lula's petition to keep the polls open for 2 more hours.

Okay. So how does Lula's victory fit in with other elections in the hemisphere?

Lula appears to have put the brakes on that right-wing swing sweeping Latin America. 7 conservative presidents have been elected in the last 18 months. President Trump likes to take credit for those wins, especially as he's been asserting more dominance in the region. Trump and Lula have frequently clashed, and Lula warned that if Bolsonaro won, Trump would trample Brazilian sovereignty and would come for Brazil's resources, including its rare earth mineral reserves. Many Latin American leaders have called to congratulate Lula. The White House so far has been silent.

NPR's Carrie Kahn, thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Okay, young people are shaking things up across Europe. In countries from France to Serbia, grassroots protest movements begun by students are calling for a change in direction.

In Serbia, they are having a huge impact. A student-led movement beat the party of the longtime nationalist leader in parliamentary elections Sunday.

We start in France, where demonstrations against the government took place again over the weekend. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley had another not-quiet weekend in Paris. Hi there, Eleanor.

Hi, Steve.

Okay, we have seen quite a bit of violence in recent weeks. Was the government at least able to avoid that?

Yes, largely it was, with huge security on the ground and partly by banning protests in some cities and changing protest routes in others. Still, more than 100,000 people demonstrated in Paris according to government figures. I out there despite the last-minute change to their route to avoid Place de la Bastille. That's the Bastille Plaza, a site for uprisings and of course a revolution more than 200 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

So while the government may be relieved that it avoided the looting and violence, uh, this movement is not waning. More than 400,000 people came out nationwide. And remember, it started in mid-September with high school students demanding better conditions. Now a broad swath of society has joined in. unions, public sector workers calling for more public spending and decrying a capitalist society where they say the rich are getting richer.

How does this affect the political landscape in France, given that we're 6 months ahead of a presidential election?

Yes, well, the far-right party, uh, the National Rally, is capitalizing on scenes of violence and looting that we've seen around the protests. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who's running for president for the 3rd time, formally launched her candidacy this weekend at a 2-day rally of her party in the town of Orléans, about 100 miles south of Paris, under heavy security. Here she is at the rally. So she's talking about the state of the country after 10 years of President Emmanuel Macron. She uses words like decline, ruin, erasure, riot, and chaos. She's calling for law and order and a renaissance of France. Polls show her as the front-runner in the presidential elections next spring. It seems the battle lines are being drawn, Steve. The protesters in the street are from the left. For them, she is a horror, but the center is largely absent. Macron cannot run again, and no one wants to associate with him because he's so unpopular, and a viable centrist candidate has not yet emerged.

Wow.

How does that circumstance in France fit in with these other protests throughout Europe?

These protests have taken place in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Albania, and other countries. The spark that sets them off is sometimes different, but what we're seeing, like schools or affordable housing and even corruption, But what they have in common is they're mostly leaderless. They're being led by young people who are angry about the world that's being left to them. Something astounding happened yesterday in the small but influential Balkan country of Serbia. Listen to this. That is the joy sweeping Serbia's capital of Belgrade last night after the party of longtime strongman Aleksandar Vučić was defeated. by a student movement. And here is one of those students, Petar Vojnović, 22 years old.

It's crazy out here.

Everyone's screaming victory, victory. It's everyone celebrating that we got rid of corruption and, uh, primitivism. This movement began 2 years ago as a student protest movement after a roof collapsed at a train station, killing 16 people. The protesters said the shoddy construction highlighted government corruption, lack of accountability, and mafia involvement. They kept up the pressure for 2 years, holding hundreds-mile-long marches, and their powerful movement eventually drew a huge swath of citizens from the middle class and opposition voters who had long wanted a different future and saw finally that it could be possible.

NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris, thanks so much.

Thank you, Steve.

And that's Up First for this Monday, October 26th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

And I'm Leila Fadel. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Tina Craya, Tara Neal, Mohammad Al-Bardisi, and Olivia Hampton. It was produced by Iman Maani and Nia Dumas. Our director is Katie Klein. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes. Our technical director is Stacy Abbott. Join us again tomorrow.