AMNA NAWAZ: The Virginia Supreme Court's decision today to strike down a voter-approved congressional map is a major shakeup in the national redistricting battle.

To discuss that and developments in the war with Iran, we turn now to Brooks and Marcus.

That's "The Atlantic"'s David Brooks and Ruth Marcus of "The New Yorker."

Jonathan Capehart is away.

Great to see you both.

So, the Virginia Supreme Court striking down that map is a huge blow to Democrats.

Virginia Democrats are now saying they will appeal.

But I want to put to you what Governor Gavin Newsom of California, where they did change the map to benefit Democrats after voters back the move, posted this.

He listed states that now have new Republican-leaning maps, pointing out there were no votes here in Tennessee, in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas.

He ends with this: "Virginia's voter-approved maps are thrown out.

MAGA has rigged the system."

David what do you make of that?

Are Republicans rigging the system?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he's got a lot of company, I would say.

This is a classic case of how democracy decays.

People have always been doing gerrymandering.

It started getting worse in the 2010s, 2020s, when you had states like North Carolina, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

These had totally rigged maps.

But the inhibition -- and they were Democrat and Republican.

The inhibition was, you only did it on the census, did it once every 10 years.

So there was some constraint.

Trump blew through that restraint.

And now you can redistrict whenever the hell you want to.

And that's what Texas did.

That's what Gavin Newsom did.

Only honorable Indiana has restrained, but most of the others are doing it.

And now we are stuck in a pseudo-democracy, where voters, when voting for House candidates, do not in most cases have the actual power to throw out a party that's doing badly.

And so that democratic check is more or less gone.

There are very few swing seats.

So an election is not going to swing very far either way.

And we're probably locked in at least for the near future with a 50/50 House, whoever happens to win control.

And that itself is self-polarizing, because the parties just stay unified and never cross lines when they got 51 percent or 49 percent.

And so this is just how democracy ends.

And what we need -- Ruth, my constitutional lawyer, will tell us how to do this.

We need some sort of constitutional amendment, so this is taken out of the democratic process.

Like the Federal Reserve, let somebody else do it.

Let Jerome Powell come in and redistrict.

But we can't live with this system.

AMNA NAWAZ: Ruth, how democracy ends.

RUTH MARCUS, "The New Yorker": I thought I was going to be the gloomy one here.

(LAUGHTER) RUTH MARCUS: I have been outdone.

This was a terrible week for democracy.

And I'm just going to add a few points to everything that David said, which I agree with.

Number one, you mentioned Indiana.

Indiana was the only state that -- where Republicans stood up to the pressure to redistrict and redistrict in the middle of the cycle.

What happened in Indiana this week?

Donald Trump financed and fueled the effort to throw the lawmakers, Republican lawmakers, who bravely stood up.

They lost their legislative seats.

You said that Virginia is going to appeal.

Good luck with that.

This is the Virginia Supreme Court interpreting the Virginia Constitution.

They might find some way to get into federal court, but they're not going to get out of it successfully.

And so we are stuck in this terrible cycle.

Nobody should feel good about what Virginia did.

Nobody should feel good about what California did.

But Texas went first.

Texas went first, at the urging of Donald Trump.

And we have a situation -- and it's crazy to ask Democratic states, which have tried to get the partisanship out of districting, to just sit on their hands while the system is being rigged by the other side.

We have now unleashed this never-ending and constant now, as you say, because we don't wait for a new census cycle of retribution, and not just retribution, but assault on democracy, because the fundamental point of democracy is that voters get to decide who represents them.

No longer.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, to that point, can I just get you both to briefly weigh in on this idea, which is that some voters wanted this, right?

In Virginia, voters wanted new maps.

Does that make it different?

DAVID BROOKS: No.

They care about their party more than their country.

They care about their party more than democracy.

And that's why we take things sometimes out of the hands of voters.

We don't want voters setting Federal Reserve -- setting interest rates, because they will not be responsible about it.

That's no knock on other people.

We would do the same thing.

RUTH MARCUS: I don't think you're being fair to the voters here, because, look, voters in Virginia tried to institute a regime that took partisanship out of this.

Voters in California tried to institute a regime that took partisanship out of this.

But they were foiled.

And they were responding in kind, even though we don't like that.

And so I would blame -- more than voters, I would blame the Supreme Court, not for what it did last week, which was terrible and -- it's the one-two punch of this redistricting effort that was going on, combined with being unleashed by the destruction of the Voting Rights Act last week.

But even more than that, in 2019, when the Supreme Court said, oh, partisan redistricting, partisan gerrymandering, we don't like that.

It's really terrible, but we're courts.

We really can't handle it.

Goodbye.

AMNA NAWAZ: Fair to say, I think, a lot of litigation ahead.

We're going to be talking about this a lot more.

I do want to ask you both to weigh in on the latest when it comes to the Iran war.

We saw the U.S.

carrying out more strikes on Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, which remains largely closed.

David, this war is now over two months old.

We have no idea when it will end or how.

Average gas prices are up to $4.50.

National polling shows six in 10 Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the war.

I know you have argued the war was worth it to unseat a hard-line Iranian regime, but what should the president do now?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I would say I had skeptical hopefulness, because the Iranian regime at the beginning of the war was -- is truly evil.

But we seem to have to learn this over and over again that you can't win a war with airpower alone.

And, to me, the most significant thing that I learned this week come from a CIA report, in an assessment that's floating around now, that 70 percent of the Iranian missiles are still there, 70 percent of the launchers are still there.

The Iranian regime is able to withstand the blockade for another three or four months before real pain hits.

So, the blunt fact is whatever hopes one might have had for some sort of better Iran, this isn't working.

And I started three or four weeks ago, decided we just got to call it a defeat and get out.

And I think that's what the administration should do.

RUTH MARCUS: Well, you know they're not going to call it a defeat.

(LAUGHTER) RUTH MARCUS: But, look, voters do not like Donald Trump's war any more than they like Donald Trump's ballroom.

But if I were advising him, which I never would be doing except on PBS, I would tell him, number one, stop the bluster.

When he goes from we're going to destroy civilization to it was just a love tap and back and forth and between these things, he just loses all credibility with the American people and with the regime.

And, number two, he doesn't have to declare defeat.

He just has to declare peace his honor, even though there's not much honor to be had here.

The Iranian people are not going to be freer when this war is done with, or incursion or excursion or whatever euphemism you use.

The regime is not going to be a better regime.

It's actually going to be a more hard-line regime than the one that we started with.

And so the question is whether he can come up with something that at least looks like he's dealing with the nuclear program that he already told us he obliterated during the last war.

Good luck with that.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's turn now to the Vatican visit by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week.

He was also in Rome today, of course, meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni But he was dispatched to the Vatican.

David, as you know, largely to try to smooth things over with Pope Leo, whom the president has attacked multiple times online.

The fact that he was dispatched at all, what does that say to you?

And do you think he achieved the smoothing over of relations?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's better than J.D.

Vance, who was telling the pope that he should learn something about theology.

RUTH MARCUS: Be careful when you talk about theology.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

So I think that comment probably meant J.D.

was not going to go over there.

And there's been a general shift, if one cares about these things, within Republicans in the focus groups that I have seen and read about, where, when they're asked who do you support for 2028, almost no hands go up for J.D.

Vance, but Marco Rubio seems like a normal grownup in the room.

And it is true.

If you had asked me in 2010 or 2015, say, who are the 10 senators who are pretty good at being senators, Rubio would have been on my list.

He's a serious guy.

He had a very good staff.

He dealt with real issues.

He seems like a normal guy.

And when the mishegoss is over with Trump, he at least has a slightly better shot than somebody like J.D.

Vance, who's totally in the tank.

Having said that, I think, when the mishegoss is over -- and Ruth can explain the word.

(LAUGHTER) RUTH MARCUS: We could ask the pope.

DAVID BROOKS: We could ask the pope.

That somebody far away from Trump is going to be wanted, yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: But do you think he achieved what he set out to achieve at the Vatican?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's OK to see them.

I mean, it was somewhat awkward, but I think it was OK, yes.

It was better than where we were two weeks ago.

AMNA NAWAZ: Better than where we were two weeks ago.

Ruth.

RUTH MARCUS: Though he did kind of bring the pope an odd gift.

He brought him a crystal football.

And the pope said something like: Wow, well, thank you, I guess.

It was along those lines.

DAVID BROOKS: It could have been a mezuzah.

That would have been bad.

(LAUGHTER) RUTH MARCUS: It could have been -- well, we got to stop this, David.

(LAUGHTER) RUTH MARCUS: I think that it was good for Rubio not to present himself there as the alternate to J.D.

Vance.

I think the president is enjoying playing them off against each other and letting them audition.

But I also think this is yet another war with -- not just with the pope, but with the first American pope, that is ill-advised on the part of Donald Trump.

And why he keeps doing it and doing it and talking about the pope as soft on crime, weak on crime and supporting nuclear weapons is crazy.

His numbers and the Republican Party's numbers with Catholics, who make up a big -- very big percentage of the vote and Republican Party support, are cratering.

And this is a pope who -- and I think I'm allowed to say this -- does not seem like he really wants to turn the other cheek when it comes to Donald Trump.

He is not pretending that the president isn't lying about him.

He doesn't mention him by name, but he says, when people say untruths, I'm going to respond.

And so I don't think this is the last makeup session that we're going to see from the Trump administration to the Vatican.

AMNA NAWAZ: I know we still have to get to midterms, only because you both mentioned 2028.

I want to ask you briefly, do you think him being dispatched says anything about the future of the Republican Party, about Marco Rubio?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, he's the next logical choice.

But I would say 2028 is going to be the era of the mother of all vibe shifts.

I think it's going to be an era where Americans have all stripes and in all different ways say, enough.

And we saw in England this week, we could see here, where the Green Party and the Reform Party displace the previous major parties.

It won't work the same here because of our system.

But that's a sign of a country saying, enough.

RUTH MARCUS: And we came up with the Rubio slogan tonight, which is less mishegoss, which for anybody out there who doesn't know what it means, it means craziness.

AMNA NAWAZ: We will see if he chooses to adopt that or not.

Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, thank you so much.

Great to talk to you.