Now, how should Americans meet these tumultuous times with midterms looming, voting rights rollbacks and gerrymandering have left many in the U.S.

questioning the state of their democracy.

In his new book, "The Crooked Places Made Straight," Reverend and Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock offers a new perspective on navigating these times.

He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss what he calls the most corrupt administration in American history.

- Thank you, Christiane and Senator Raphael Warnock.

- Welcome to the show.

- Great to be here with you.

- You have a great new book out this week called "The Crooked Place is Made Straight."

And that of course is a quote from the book of Isaiah.

Tell me about that passage and what it means to you.

- Well, this book is a sermon, if you will, in the public square.

And it actually began as a sermon that I preached at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where I still serve in this moment where we're going through a dark period in our country.

The question is how do we move forward?

And I use the book of Isaiah as the sort of the moral background or support for the book.

And it's this wonderful passage that people know if you go to church or even if you've heard Hamil's Messiah, he says, "Every valley shall be exalted.

Every mountain and hill shall be made low.

The crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

It is a kind of reimagining.

The people are in exile, and they're wondering how do they get back.

And in a real sense, this text suggests that it's not about returning, it's about a reimagining.

And I think that's a relevant moment in our country.

There's a way in which we're going through our own kind of political exile, meaning the things that you would have taken for granted in an earlier time, in my own lifetime, seem to be slipping away.

People's ability to make their lives work, to take care of their families, slipping away.

We have the most corrupt administration in American history.

and a sense of dignity with which we talk to each other slipping away, people's trust in institutions, in the banking sector, in politics in Washington, even in religious institutions.

And so there's a temptation, I think, to say, "Well, we need to return."

The prophet says, "We need to do more than return.

We need to reimagine where we was, wasn't working."

And I think that's true in this moment.

It is my message of challenge and hope for a country I deeply love.

In your book, you talk about wealth inequality, and you say, "Vast wealth inequality seems intractable and it's getting worse, with tragic implications not only for the poor and working class, but for the future of the whole land.

Why does wealth inequality threaten the future of America?

Because it's unsustainable.

I mean, even rich corporations need people to be able to buy stuff.

And this growing wealth inequality that is fueled by pure greed, at the end of the day, is unsustainable.

Those of us who are relatively blessed, most Americans don't have a passport.

Those of us who've been outside the country and have had the ability to visit other places.

We've seen places where there are a few very, very wealthy people at the top and everybody else is at the bottom.

Those places have high fences around those mansions because, you know, when you've got that kind of inequality, you try to, you know, surround yourself with high walls.

I don't want a country with high ideals.

I want a country where every child has a chance.

Here I sit as a United States senator, but I'm a kid who grew up in public housing.

The year I went to college, the tuition room and board at the school I wanted so badly to attend that I got to attend Morehouse College was equal to my parents' income.

But I had a narrow path, but a realistic path, that allowed someone who grew up in public housing, the first college graduate in my family, to earn four degrees, including a PhD degree, to become the pastor of the church where Dr.

King served, Ebenezer Church, and now a U.S.

senator.

What keeps me up at night is the reality that if I were that 15 year old kid today, it'd be much harder.

Why is it harder today?

Oh, because we've seen a whole Oh, because we've seen a wholesale assault on the kinds of programs that give people, everyday people, a path to make their lives work.

And they are, you know, these things are called, you know, government programs.

Well, last week, we heard an announcement that for the first time in human history, there's something called a trillionaire.

That's not good news.

That's bad news.

That is an indication of the way in which wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top in our country through our tax policies and other policies.

Poor people aren't just poor, they are impoverished.

Someone has taken away their gifts, their work, without allowing them to participate in the prosperity that they are creating.

America gave me a chance.

It was a narrow path, but I had a path.

And so every single day I'm fighting for that kid who grew up on Cape Street in the Caton Homes Housing Project.

And it is for me more than a political concern, it is a moral mandate.

that my own success is tied up with my neighbors.

That's the message of this book.

And that's what guides my politics every single day.

- In quoting Isaiah, you say that God's vision for the land is equity.

And it's sort of the moral mandate that I think suffuses the book of Isaiah.

Tell me how that played a central role for you.

How do you define equity in that sense?

Well, I'm glad you point that out because, you know, equity has become a dirty word of late.

And what's ironic is that many of the people who endorse this and support it are like me, people of the book.

They're Christians.

They're people of faith.

And I wonder quite frankly, what book they are reading.

There's some 2000 verses in scripture that tell us how to treat the poor.

The prophet literally says that those who crush the poor, insult their maker.

That to minimize, to malign, to criminalize poor people, the way in which our country does in so many ways, is an insult to the one who is the sovereign Lord of all, and who has created us in God's own image.

And so I call us back to that.

You know, when they passed the one big ugly bill last summer, that's what I call it.

because it was a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.

They took a trillion dollars out of Medicaid.

Hospitals in rural counties all across Georgia, and disproportionately red counties, are suffering as a result of the one big ugly bill.

They put forward draconian cuts to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

They kicked veterans and seniors and children off of SNAP.

But before they did that, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, gathered with several legislators, they held hands, they kneeled, and they prayed a prayer before cutting a trillion dollars out of Medicaid.

I just want to know what were they praying about, and to what God were they speaking?

Because the God of Isaiah has harsh words for politicians who do not care for the most marginalized members of the human community.

It is in the very first chapter of Isaiah.

He says, "Your princes," read politicians, "Your princes are rebels.

They are companions with thieves.

Even though you pray many prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood.

Everyone, Isaiah says in the first chapter, everyone he said is looking for a bride.

They do not stand up for the widows and the orphans.

Those are the people who need a little bit of help.

The text and the scriptures that the Speaker of the House and I read talks about these issues.

And I would call on all of us who are people of the book to be attentive to that aspect of our faith.

And I'm calling on all of us as American people, those who claim no particular faith tradition at all, to renew our faith in one another and what we can do when we see our destiny as tied up with that of our neighbors.

Let me talk about a more current contemporary issue being faced right now, because in your maiden speech in the Senate floor in 2021, you said, "We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights, unlike anything we've seen since the Jim Crow era."

This is Jim Crow in new clothes.

That was five years ago.

Are you still seeing that in this moment, and how?

Oh, not only am I still seeing it, it's gotten worse.

Sadly, it's gotten worse.

The Supreme Court's decision in this Louisiana case is, quite frankly, a slap in the face of Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, other patriots like Viola Loizzo, a white woman, wife of a Detroit Teamster Union leader who was literally killed fighting for voting rights.

Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, two Jews and an African American who lost their lives in a dark moment in our country fighting for voting rights, Medgar Evers, who was shot and killed in his own driveway.

The Voting Rights Act is stained with the blood of martyrs.

It is stained with the blood of patriots who understood that there's nothing more important than your voice.

Your voice is your human dignity.

And the way that gets expressed in a democracy is through the vote.

And so there are those who are saying, "Well, who's stopping you from voting?"

And they'd rather not hear this, but hear me out, even if you disagree.

Hear me out.

The reality is, black people had the right to vote since the 15th Amendment was passed.

They had the right to vote on paper 100 years before Martin Luther King Jr.

marched on any street, on paper.

But there were all of these tricks, gerrymandering one of them, other kinds of ways of blocking access that black people suffered through during the Jim Crow era.

None of those things that they used, like grandfather polls and literacy tests, were explicitly about race.

And yet we had to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Why?

Because the reality is, craven politicians know how to find ways to hold on to power.

And for about 50 or 60 years, that legislation has helped us to get closer to our ideals.

The last time it was passed in the Senate, it was passed under a Republican president.

It passed the Senate 98 to 0.

But today's Republican Party is not the same Republican Party of just 20 years ago.

They are at war against the democracy because they've moved into such an extreme position.

They know that Americans are not in line with them.

And so they're playing with the lines, gerrymandering, with the help of the Supreme Court, so that the people cannot hold Donald Trump and his enablers in Congress.

We're helping him enrich his family by engaging in all manner of corruption while ignoring our families.

They're trying to make it hard for ordinary people to hold them accountable.

And so we have to show up this November and say that at the end of the day, they're not going to be able to do that.

We have to show up this November and say that at the end of the day, this is the people's house.

Well, you're talking about the Supreme Court decision, which outlawed gerrymandering based on racial lines.

Are you in favor of some gerrymandering?

Do you think blue states should gerrymander?

If I had my brothers, we'd get rid of gerrymandering.

And I actually have legislation to do that.

What the Supreme Court did was a partisan move.

They said you can engage in gerrymandering, but you can't have these majority-minority districts, districts that were created to address the reality of what happens here in the South so often.

get rid of it all.

Donald Trump called into Texas and said I need five more seats.

And so they started this process of reapportionment in the middle of the decade.

Who does that?

That's not something we've done.

And Democrats have had to respond in kind because we cannot unilaterally disarm.

Not just so Democrats can win, but literally we're in a fight in our view for the democracy.

We're fighting for the right to have elections in future years.

And so I support what California did.

I support what Virginia did.

I think we have to try to find light of where we are, this arms race, to try to save a democracy.

But I have a piece of legislation that would ban gerrymandering.

So far, we could end this tomorrow.

And we could give the people their voice so that the people are picking their officials, rather than the politicians trying to pick their voters.

How would you ban gerrymandering?

Just have nonpartisan commissions, do it geographically as in your bill.

And that might mean that certain districts that are there to make sure blacks are represented would no longer be that way.

Is that what you would want?

Yeah, you would have bipartisan commissions to draw the lines rather than politicians.

And yes, here's the thing.

I believe that black folks who wanna be in office can compete and we can win.

You're looking at one.

I won statewide in Georgia.

Nobody's saying that black people can't get elected, that white people will not vote for black folk.

of gerrymandering altogether.

But if you get rid of minority, majority districts, but allow partisan gerrymandering, the reality is that gerrymandering is inextricably connected to race.

The Supreme Court knows that.

How could you not know that?

It is inextricably connected to race.

And yes, I would take my chances with the American people.

I think if we got rid of gerrymandering, we would get better quality candidates because you wouldn't just be so focused on your primary.

We don't have enough competitive congressional districts in this country.

where a Republican could win or a Democrat could win.

And good people have to get in that fight, make their argument, and convince the folks in that district that they will be a champion for their everyday concerns.

I think we'd get a lot more movement on legislation.

We'd get a lot more done in this building because of that kind of bipartisan consensus.

And I think it would require that you have a better crop of candidates.

I cast no aspersions on my colleagues.

But I think we'd get better people if you had to compete at that.

You begin and you end The Crooked Place is Made Straight with a wonderful metaphor, which is America as a cathedral.

And now we're about to have our 250th birthday of that cathedral.

What gives you hope?

Oh, I'm full of hope.

And yet I'm clear-eyed about the challenges that face us.

America is a grand cathedral.

But cathedrals take a long time to build.

They take decades.

And in that time, you see wars, fluctuations in the economy, ups and downs.

And the skilled artisans who do that work know that they very well may not even live to see this majestic marvel come to fruition.

And yet they do that work for the next generation.

America is a grand unfinished cathedral on a whole range of issues, but we are summoned to this moment to do that work.

And I'm inspired that I get to do it every single day.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you, keep the faith.