MSNBC Rachel Maddow detailed how a local story involving two counties in a sparsely populated state could impact the entire history of the United States of America -- from the makeup of the Supreme Court to investigations into President Donald Trump.
Maddow has been aggressively reporting Republican efforts to disenfranchise Native Americans living on reservations in North Dakota in an effort to unseat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), who narrowly won her Senate seat in 2012 with overwhelming support from Native Americans.
"Now, through one lens, this is an intensely local issue, it's derived from how a minority community in one state lives and votes and how they are being targeted by Republicans to kill off their voting rights," Maddow noted. "It's local."
"Through another lens, though, this is a big national story," she explained. "I mean, in North Dakota, Native American voters have a strong propensity to vote Democrat -- knocking them out is a very tidy way of knocking out Democratic votes."
"And specifically this year, it's a tidy way to knock Heidi Heitkamp out of the United States Senate because she's up for re-election," Maddow continued.
"Knocking her out of the Senate happens to be the Republican Party's best path towards keeping the whole U.S. Senate in the hands of the Republican Party for the next two years," she explained.
"And if the whole of the United States Senate remains in the hands of the Republican Party for the next two years, that obviously has nationwide implications for policy, for investigations and accountability with this president and this administration," Maddow noted. "It potentially has implications if something like impeachment ever comes up."
"And of course, it's the whole ball game when it comes to the possibility of another Supreme Court justice," Maddow concluded. "It is the whole ball game in terms of confirming Trump nominees, both to the administration and to the courts."
"So whether or not North Dakota Republicans succeed in this, you know, what looks like a local effort to block 10,000 North Dakota Native Americans from voting in three weeks, this isn't local news anymore, this is American history now," she said.
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