A look at Trump's plans to restrict voting

NPR News Now is your podcast source for updates every hour on the U.S. military action in Iran. President Trump calls it a war and says the goal is regime change. He also says U.S. casualties are possible. With news changing rapidly, listen to NPR News Now. New episodes at the top of every hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terri Gross. Election season is underway with primaries today in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing Congress to pass legislation, the SAVE Act, that would change how every American citizen registers to vote and votes. Predictions are that millions of American citizens would be unable to fill the ID requirements. It would cause chaos at the polls, make it chaotic for counties and states overseeing elections. and possibly make it challenging to decipher who really won. But Congress seems unwilling to pass that, so President Trump is threatening to issue an executive order that would do all that and more. My guest Rick Hassan is an expert in election law. He founded the popular Election Law blog. He's a professor of law and political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law and the author of numerous books, including A Real Right to Vote, How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy, and the forthcoming book, Unbent Arc, The Rise and Decline of American Democracy, 1964 to 2024. Rick Hassan, welcome back to Fresh Air. I want to start by expressing my condolences. I know that your mother died in late February, about a week ago, and I'm very sorry. Thank you. I'd like to talk with you about the executive order or orders that President Trump is threatening to sign. One of them, this story was broken by the Washington Post last week, and it has to do with a conspiracy theory. Would you describe the conspiracy theory? Well, there are a number of conspiracy theories and a kind of whole election denial complex that's floating out there. People who believe that there was or claim that they believe that there was interference in the 2020 elections and the 2024 elections by various foreign entities, including China and Iran. And the idea would be that Donald Trump would use his powers to protect the national security of the United States by imposing a number of various restrictions on how people register to vote, how people vote, and how states tabulate, that is, how they count the votes. So can you be more specific about how this executive order, which we'll explain in a minute, ties in with this conspiracy theory about foreign interference in 2020 and 2024, leaving out, by the way, Russia, which really did try to interfere and which did have bots and stuff that were interfering with reality, with truth? Right. So, you know, there's different kinds of interference that have been alleged. You're referring back to what happened in 2016 when the Russian government had a kind of influence operation to try to sway public opinion through various impersonation and false statements and things that were posted on social media. People debate how much of an effect that had, but that was trying to kind of hack the minds of the American people. It wasn't actually hacking voting machines. Some allegations that the Russians had probed some voter registration databases, not to really do anything, but maybe just to show that they were trying to have some kind of interference. But there's been no proof of any changes in votes, changes in voter registration databases or anything else. Same thing in 2020. There were allegations that Russia and China and Iran tried to do influence operations, tried to get Americans to fight each other, get us to be more polarized, to influence who might be voted to undermine people's confidence in the integrity of the elections. But again, nothing that showed actual interference with voting machinery or tabulation. And yet these conspiracy theories claim that there's something wrong with the voting machines. This may be why Telsey Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was reported in Puerto Rico looking at voting machines back, I think it was in January. why perhaps the FBI was seizing ballots and other records from Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump had claimed in the 2020 election that there was interference that led to Joe Biden's victory in the state of Georgia. None of this is, of course, true, and it has been investigated. But it does seem to potentially serve as a background for pretextually claiming foreign interference as a basis for Trump to try to interfere with how elections are being run. So tell us more about what's in this document that The Washington Post wrote about last week. So this document was a document not prepared by anyone in the administration, but prepared by a group of election deniers, people who have long claimed that there could be some kind of national security reason for messing with elections. And what this executive order that was drafted by these activists purports to do is to claim that this threat of foreign interference would give the president vast powers over elections to change everything from how people register to vote, what documents they would need to prove to register to vote, whether they could register to vote online. It would ban basically all means of registering to vote except those that would be in person or by mail. And it would require the production of documentary proof of citizenship. And let me explain what that is because that's different than voter ID. So voter ID, you go to the polls. Maybe you're going to take out your driver's license or something like that. This is different. This is in order to register to vote. you would have to provide evidence that you're a citizen of the United States, which basically consists of either a passport or your birth certificate or your naturalization certificate. If you've changed your name, for example, because you got married, you'd also have to provide evidence of your name change. These are not the kind of documents that people have easy access to. This would be a huge impediment to people voting. It would essentially require everyone to re-register to vote. It would change— So you'd have to start from scratch. Even if you voted for decades, you'd still have to prove your citizenship with those documents. And getting those documents sometimes requires, you know, writing to the city and, you know, asking for a copy of it. And paying for it as well. And paying for it, right. Everything I'm telling you about this, what's in this draft executive order that these activists have come up with, is supposed to be implemented in time for the 2026 elections. So it's really an impossible task if this is actually what gets produced. And I'm kind of skeptical that this document would be the executive order. But it does kind of give us a window into the thinking of these conspiracy theories. So they change voter registration. They would change the requirements for identification at the polling places, imposing a national system for that. They would require states to match the voter registration with federal databases to try to figure out who's a citizen. We don't have a good database of who is an American citizen. They would change the rules for how ballots had to be tabulated. They would change the timetable for the receipt of ballots by mail. They would eliminate most absentee balloting, and then they would require all lawsuits to be brought in federal court rather than in state courts. It would be essentially a federal takeover of elections, making registration and voting much more difficult on a time frame that would be impossible to do in time for the 2026 elections. Is there anything constitutional about any of this? We've got to go to the Constitution. The Constitution has a provision. It's in Article 1 of the Constitution, which is the part that deals with Congress's powers. It's in Article 1, Section 4. And it basically says that states can set the time, place, and manner for running elections subject to Congress passing laws that override those rules for congressional elections. So, for example, Congress has passed laws that say that when you elect members of Congress, you have to do it from single-member districts. If you've got a state with 10 representatives, you can't have everyone elect all 10. You have to draw 10 equally sized districts. So Congress has that power. But it's a power to pass laws that regulate how federal elections are conducted. What is in the Constitution is about states and Congress. There is nothing about the president. And in fact, there have been a number of lawsuits over Trump's earlier executive order from back in last August when he tried to mess with that federal form for how people can register to vote in congressional elections. There have been a number of lawsuits where the courts have said the president has no role to play in the conduct of federal elections. And so just out of the gate, the idea that the president could unilaterally do this through an executive order, some kind of royal edict that changes how our elections are run, that's a nonstarter as far as the Constitution goes. So, if Trump issues a similar executive order, in order for that to not go into effect, it would have to go through the courts, which is a slow system. And then it becomes a question of, is there a stay that's put on that executive order? Or does it go through and then maybe get rescinded? And, I mean, I can imagine such chaos just in the court system. Well so we have a little bit of experience with the earlier Trump executive order which is the one that was issued in August that among other things would make it harder for people to register to vote using this federal form for voter registration It would require people to produce that documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote And what we know is that multiple courts have issued preliminary injunctions. So these are orders before the case has been fully adjudicated that say, in the meantime, while this case is pending, your rules, your executive order is put on hold. So an executive order is not a law. It's basically the president directing parts of the federal government to do certain things. And those certain things that Trump tried to direct different federal officials to do, and also to direct states to do, which he has no power to do through an executive order, These were put on hold pending a full trial. And we've now had, on various aspects of this executive order, full trials. And we got one of our first opinions back in early February from a federal district court in Washington, D.C. that permanently stopped these things. So let me say then that election deniers want to totally remake the election system. Let's look at who some of them were because there was also a meeting, a recent meeting that was convened by Michael Flynn, who was President Trump's first and very brief national security advisor. And he's been accused of commiserating with Russians, right? Sure. I mean, there's just there's a whole constellation of people. These were people who I think got activated in the aftermath of the 2020 election. That was the election that was conducted during COVID. That's the election that Biden beat Trump. Trump filed 60 something lawsuits trying to overturn the results. It led to the January 6th insurrection. I'm just trying to bring listeners back to that time. And this is where the conspiracy theories really blossomed. And the people haven't stopped since then. And they've organized and they've claimed that fraud is rife in elections. All of their claims have been debunked. There is no basis. It's important to say this, I think. There is no basis to believe that there was either foreign or domestic interference that could have changed the results of the 2020 elections in any state, much less than enough states to swing the electoral college. These are people who are authoritarian and who are trying to have the president seize more power. This is about trying to change our elections so that they will no longer be democratic and we would no longer have the kind of free and fair elections that we need in order to continue to have the kind of democracy that's been promised to us since the passage of the Constitution. What would it mean to nationalize the elections? And Trump has said he'd like to do that. He did say that, but he also said that there were 15 places where we need to take over elections. Not clear exactly what he means by that. I think we talked about this when we discussed my 2012 book, The Voting Wars, that most other advanced democracies have national nonpartisan election administrations. So if you go to Canada or Germany or Australia, they have a civil service body that runs elections. There's a lot to be said for that. And back in that book, I advocated for that to try to rationalize our elections so that the voting machinery would be uniform. We'd have uniform rules. It would be easy to vote. And we'd have all kinds of safeguards. But I've now recanted that because I think American democracy is too weak. What we've seen with the Trump administration is that Donald Trump is trying to use every power at his disposal to direct the federal government to do what he wants, regardless of the safeguards that are built in. And so I think American democracy could not handle federalizing or nationalizing elections because it would raise the potential to concentrate power in the hands of a tyrannical president. What do you think the odds are that President Trump would issue the kind of executive order that we're talking about? I think there's a good chance that another executive order comes out on voting. Trump has said multiple times he's going to do it. He had a post on his Truth Social media site that said that we're going to have voter ID in this country whether Congress passes the SAVE Act or not. So he's going to do something. But the executive order might be just for show. He might know, as he does with some things that he does, that the courts are going to stop him. But that's just one lever among many that Trump could try to use to interfere with the 2026 elections. Let me talk about some others. One is what we saw in Georgia recently with the FBI coming in and seizing ballots. Now, those ballots were seized for a past election, the 2020 election. What would happen if the FBI gets some judge to sign a search warrant and tries to seize ballots in an election that has not been called yet? Then we'd be breaking the chain of custody and it would be impossible to know if ballots were added or changed or taken out of account. It would essentially nullify an election. So that's one thing I'm worried about. I'm worried about him. Can I stop you there? So in an attempt to protect the integrity of the election, they would be ruining it by confiscating the votes. Yeah. And I think we should take a step back here and recognize that the greatest threat to free and fair elections in 2026 is interference from the federal government. And that's an astonishing thing to say when it's been the federal government. If you think back to the Voting Rights Act in 1965, it was a federal government that helped protect free and fair elections. And now we need to worry about how the federal government might interfere with state processes for running elections and for tabulating the ballots. Well, I think another possible way of interfering would be to declare voting machines critical infrastructure. I think they've already been declared that and use that as an opportunity to confiscate voting machines. So well before Trump, when we saw attempted interference from foreign countries, including Russia, the Department of Homeland Security declared our voting systems part of critical infrastructure. That was perfectly appropriate to do because we need to have that protection. And until the second Trump administration, there was a federal agency called CISA that was working with state and local election officials to assure that voting machines were not going to be hacked. There was not going to be some kind of interference with how elections were going to be run. And unfortunately, the Trump administration now has taken CISA and kind of taken it out of the business of protecting elections, leaving state and local officials on their own. But the idea that the voting system has been declared critical infrastructure could serve as a pretext for Trump to try to interfere with voting machines or the tabulation of ballots in the 2026 midterm elections. So what else could President Trump do with an executive order? Well, he could potentially send federal troops into polling areas. When the president's spokesperson was asked about this, she essentially said there were no plans to do so, but there was no unequivocal, of course, we would keep the federal troops away from polling places. I actually think that it's really hard to send troops in and that would get some kind of public reaction. If you're going to try to mess with an election, it's much easier to mess with it on the back end when votes are being tabulated than on the front end when people are voting. Although I think talking about the potential for troops to be in the streets during election season, that itself is a way of demobilizing the electorate. I mean, think about this. There are many people who are on the cusp. More people vote in presidential elections than congressional elections. Presidential elections get the most public attention. People are deciding, should I stay home? Should I vote? If they think that they might be hassled or there might be problems at the polling place, they might just stay away. And it might not just be Democrats who stay away. It might be those Trump voters. You know, Trump appealed to a lot of these infrequent voters, voters who don't have a long history of voting. This may be in some ways very self-defeating, all of this talk about interfering with the elections. It's going to cause some people to not show up at the polling place. Well, we have to take another short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Hassan. He teaches law and political science at UCLA, where he's the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He's also the founder of the election law blog. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can't even legally sell Greenland. And whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that does not want to be sold is one question. But on Planet Money, we are more interested in how we even got to this moment and how we might gracefully get out of it. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Something I don't understand both about the SAVE Act, which has stalled in the Senate, in this talk of executive orders, it's going to be as hard for Republicans to register and vote as it will be for Democrats. Some people say it will make it harder because there's more Republicans in rural areas that would have trouble getting to an official election place where you can prove your citizenship and therefore register. So what's in it for Republicans? What's in it for conspiracy theorists to advocate for changes in election law that would make it difficult for Republicans as well as Democrats? I think that both Republicans and to some extent Democrats are stuck in a mindset that is probably outdated, which is that if you make voting and registration harder, it is going to help the Republican Party. You know, 20 years ago, we'd say that the Republican Party was made up of whiter, older, more affluent voters. These are people who tend to live in the same place, who tend to be longtime registrants in the same place in order to vote. And young people, people of color, people who move a lot, poor people, more likely to be Democrats. and therefore they're the ones who are most likely to be caught up in new changes in voter registration and voting. But times have changed, and the coalitions of the parties have changed. It used to be that in midterm elections it was Republicans who turned out more because they were the more affluent college white people Now a lot of those people have moved over to the Democratic Party And so it is not at all clear that if the SAVE Act passed or if Donald Trump were able to do some of these new restrictions by executive order, that it would actually ignore to the benefit of the Republican Party. I think more likely the thinking of those who've actually thought it through and who've noticed this demographic change is that this would be part and parcel of this kind of long-term push to claim that there's massive fraud in elections to overturn the results of democratically conducted elections. This might be the reason, too, why the Justice Department has sued in, I believe it's 24 states now, to try to collect unredacted voter registration information to create some kind of massive database, which they could then use as a pretext to claim that there's a lot of fraud in how American elections are conducted. How much genuine fraud is there really? So fraud is extremely rare. Let's just take the case of non-citizen voting. In 2016, Donald Trump claimed that there were 3 million non-citizens who voted in the 2016 election. That was coincidentally the amount by which Hillary Clinton beat him in the popular vote. There were investigations all over the country looking for how many non-citizens actually voted in the election. There weren't 3 million or 300,000 or 30,000 or 3,000 or 300. There were about 30 cases of possible non-citizen voting in the United States. It's a tiny, tiny percentage. And it's unsurprising about that because if you're a non-citizen and you vote, you're committing a felony. You could be deported. You could face criminal penalties. You'd have to have so many people voting in a presidential election to sway it that, you know, you'd have this conspiracy of millions of people voting who are ineligible and no one would know about it. I mean, it's just ludicrous. Same thing with voter impersonation fraud. Someone goes to the polls claiming to be someone else. We can count probably on one hand the number of proven cases of impersonation, voter fraud in the last election. I mean, these things are happening on a very small basis. In some small elections, especially in places where there might be a media desert, not newspapers or others watching to see what's going on, we have seen some election fraud. We have some examples of that in Patterson, New Jersey, in a city election in Bridgeport, Connecticut. There have been places. These are generally not fraud activities committed by voters, but instead by elected officials and election officials who are trying to interfere with the elections. And when you compare the number of genuine fraudulent votes to the number of people who are disenfranchised by recent voting laws, who comes out ahead? Yeah, well, here we have some good data. So back in, I believe it was the early 2010s, Kansas passed one of these documentary proof of citizenship laws. And this, again, is a law that would require you to provide your naturalization certificate, your birth certificate, your marriage license, things like that. We know that when Kansas tried to put this law in place, 30,000 people had their voter registrations put on hold until a federal court issued a preliminary injunction saying you can't enforce this law while we have a trial. Of those 30,000 people, more than 99% of them were eligible to vote. And so it has a huge disenfranchising effect. The case over this documentary proof of citizenship law went to trial in a case called Fish v. Kobach. This was a case that was defended by Chris Kobach. He's one of the famous election deniers. He was the Secretary of State of Kansas. He's now Kansas' Attorney General. He tried to prove that non-citizen voting was a big problem in the elections. He said that the amount of fraud in the elections was the tip of the iceberg. And when the federal district court judge issued her ruling, and she was, I believe, a George H.W. Bush appointee, she said, There is no iceberg. There is only an icicle, and it's made up mostly of administrative error. We know the amount of non-citizen voting in the United States is trivial compared to the disenfranchising effects of documentary proof of citizenship laws. Yet that's the very law that the SAVE Act, which has passed the House and is pending in the Senate, would impose nationally in the United States. Getting back to Trump trying to get access to voting rolls from states and succeeding in some instances, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, tried to make a deal with Minnesota. We'll pull out ICE in return for you turning over voter rolls. What did you make of that when you heard it? I thought it was outrageous. The idea that you would condition something related to immigration enforcement, law enforcement on this wish list to get the voting rolls, there's no real connection to it. It struck me as a form of extortion. It had a kind of mafia feel to it, you know, that if you don't give us what we want, we're going to continue to hurt you and your citizens. I just think the two issues have no connection to one another, and the idea that she would bring it up as a potential quid pro quo is just not worthy of the Department of Justice or what we would expect in an attorney general. Well, let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Hassan. He teaches law and political science at UCLA, where he also directs the Safeguarding Democracy Project, and he's the founder of the popular Election Law blog. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. I want to play a clip of something that President Trump said during his State of the Union address about how he'd like to change how elections are administered. I'm asking you to approve the Save America Act. To stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. That cheating is rampant in our elections. It's rampant. It's very simple. All voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote. And no more corporate mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. None. And this should be an easy one. And by the way, it's polling at 89%, including Democrats. 89%. Let's just go through what Trump said in the State of the Union address. He said that, you know, 89% of American people are for voter ID. That doesn't mean they're for the form of voter ID that Trump wants, which is a much more extreme, hard-to-get form of voter ID. Well, so there's two things, right? One is what you have to show at the polling place. And what the Save America Act would do is allow for a very narrow set of IDs that would be allowed. So, for example, it would exclude student identifications, which, of course, is something that many students who are in college who don't drive. That would be their primary form of identification. But also, both the SAVE Act and the SAVE America Act would impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements to register to vote. So that's different than voter ID, and there's not public support for that. There's public support for general voter identification requirements, but not for show me your papers. You can't register to vote unless you could produce an original of your birth certificate or your naturalization certificate and your marriage license, if you've changed your name, or your passport. Passport, I believe, still costs $180 to get. So this would kind of have a skewing effect towards those who are wealthier who could produce these kinds of documents. There's not public support for that. There's another part of the Voting Rights Act, one of the civil rights bills that's being contested in court now. Can you talk about that? So the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had an important amendment that was made in 1982. It's commonly referred to as Section 2. And it's the part of the Voting Rights Act that requires, in the context of redistricting, the drawing of districts where minority voters, Black, Latino, Native American, Asian American voters, get a chance to elect a candidate of their choice. It has led to great growth in the number of minority preferred candidates. And if you look at Congress now of the 435 members, over 100 of those members identify with one of these communities. There's a case in front of the Supreme Court now called Louisiana v. Calais. It's a complicated case. It was first argued last March where the Voting Rights Act itself was not really at issue. Instead, the question was whether it violated the Constitution for the state of Louisiana to take race too much into account in how they drew district lines. We had expected an opinion in the Calais case at the end of the Supreme Court's term last June. Instead of an opinion, we got an order from the Supreme Court saying the case was going to be re-argued. In the middle of the summer, on a late Friday afternoon in August, the Supreme Court said, here's what we want you to brief in our re-argument. And it was about whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act might now be unconstitutional. It's an issue where the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. And now the Voting Rights Act itself is potentially going to be either struck down or, I think much more likely, Section 2 is going to be reinterpreted to be toothless. It will still be a law in the books, but it will be almost impossible for minority voters to be able to elect their candidates of choice through Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And what impact do you think this would have I think this would be a terrible setback for American democracy It would mean that not just Congress but our state legislatures our city councils our county boards our school districts would be much wider, much more homogeneous. We would have much less representation. And when it comes to Congress, where there's concern that Republican states might redraw congressional districts to get rid of these districts that have been required by Section 2 and create more white Republican districts, I think there will also be pressure in Democratic states to eliminate these districts, spread out those reliable Democratic voters into more districts to create more Democratic districts that will also elect the first choice of white voters rather than the vote choices of candidates of color. And so while the partisan implications are not completely clear and might benefit Republicans to some extent, it's going to be a real loss for fair representation in the United States. You would like to see our Constitution updated, but you'd specifically like to see a new constitutional amendment regarding voting. What would you like it to say? Well, let's talk about the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to vote. It simply says that if you're going to hold an election, you can't discriminate on the basis of race or gender or age between 18 and 21. We don't have an affirmative right to vote like most other modern constitutions have. Instead, the Constitution says you only have the right to vote in the House, and the qualifications to vote are those set by states. So there's no federal constitutional guarantee of anyone to be able to vote. And if we go back to the 2000 election, to Bush versus Gore, the case in the Supreme Court that ended the dispute over who got Florida's electoral college votes. In that case, the Supreme Court said that state legislatures get to choose the manner for choosing presidential electors. And even though states have given that ability to vote to voters to vote for president, states could take it back in future elections and have state legislatures directly appoint electors. So all of this is to say that we don't have strong voting rights protections like most other advanced democracies do in their constitutions. So if you look at the Constitution of Germany or Canada, it'll say if you're a citizen and you're at least 18, you get the right to vote. If we had that and we had other things that protect the equal weighting of votes and fair distribution of political power, we'd be much stronger as a democracy. And it would be much harder for someone like a Donald Trump to mess with and interfere with the conduct of elections. Thank you so much for your time today and for explaining some really complicated things that are going on in our election system right now. Well, I'm really glad that we're having this chance to have this conversation because now is the time for people to pay attention and be vigilant. We can't wait until November. Rick Hassan is the founder of the Election Law Blog, and he's a professor of law and political science as well as director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law. His latest book is called A Real Right to Vote. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Later in the day, the Supreme Court announced an emergency decision pertaining to redistricting and the midterms. A lawsuit filed by four New Yorkers challenged the map of a district redrawn in 2024 by Republicans to include parts of both Staten Island and Brooklyn. The lawsuit argued that the redrawn map was unconstitutional under New York State's constitution because it diluted the power of black and Latino voters. A lower court ruled in favor of the Democrats. The Republican representative from that district asked the Supreme Court to pause that ruling until the map could be redrawn. The Supreme Court agreed and overturned the lower court's stay. That decision will likely help Republicans keep that congressional seat in the midterms. Rick Hassan wrote on his blog that for him, the headline was Justice Alito's concurrence, which says race-conscious redistricting is odious. Hassan is concerned because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which, as we discussed, is being challenged in another case before the Supreme Court, prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race. Hassan says yesterday's decision is, quote, bad news, not just for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but for more voting protection in the States, unquote. After we take a short break, John Powers will review a new Japanese film about a gangster son who dreams of being a star in Kabuki theater. This is fresh air. The new Japanese film Kokuho set box office records in its home country. It's now playing in theaters here. The movie, which received an Oscar nomination for Hair and Makeup, tells the story of a gangster son who dreams of being a star in Japan's famously rigorous kabuki theater. Our critic at large, John Power, says, Kokuho carried him away into a fascinating subculture whose demands are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Like millions of people around the world, I was hooked by the figure skating competition at the Olympics. It enthralled me with its extraordinary display of prowess and grace, but also with its fragility, its constant sense of precariousness. Years of hard work could go poof at any second. As I watched, I kept thinking of the gorgeous new movie Kokuho. I'll explain why later. But first, let me say that Kokuho is set in and around the world of kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running nearly three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live-action film of all time. You can see why. It's bursting with emotion and beauty. Its costumes, hair, and makeup are dazzling. Lee Sang-il's film tells a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history, the quest for perfection, and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure, which is what the word kokuho means. When we first meet the hero Kikuwo, he's 14 and playing a female role in an excerpt from a famous kabuki play. Men play all the roles in kabuki. His performance is seen by a kabuki star, Henai. That's Ken Watanabe, who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuwo's Yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Henai takes him in as a protege, teaching him to become an onagata, a male actor who plays female roles. There is one snag. Hinai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who's slated to be his artistic heir, and in the kabuki world, artistic status passes from generation to generation. Naturally, we expect Kikuo and Shunsuke to become rivals, and in a way they do. Yet as they share the sometimes cruel ordeal of their training, they become friends and acting partners. Each sees how the other is trapped. Despite his fanatical dedication, Kikuo is considered a low-born outsider, complete with a Yakuza tattoo on his back, that the hidebound kabuki culture doesn't want to accept. In contrast, Shunsuke is expected to become a luminary like his dad, even though at some gut level he doesn't even like kabuki. Born into a role he doesn't want, he'd rather party than practice. We follow their entwined fates over the decades, a sometimes melodramatic dance of triumph and humiliation, complete with sexual rivalries and ignored children. Played with riveting dry ice intensity by Yoshizawa Ryo, Kikuo becomes positively Faustian in his desire for greatness. While the less gifted but far more likable Shunsuke, that's the very enjoyable Yokohama Ruse, labors to escape his destiny. With their friendship providing the dramatic pull, Kukuwo tackles grand themes. It paints a portrait of a late 20th century Japan still suffocating beneath musty ideas about birth and cultural inheritance. And in Kukuwo's struggle to become Japan's greatest kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connection. We also have the pleasure of learning about a ravishing art alien to most of us. Normally, when we hear the phrase kabuki theater in America, often in the political realm, it's used derisively to suggest something ritualized, empty, pro forma. But watching Kukuho, you see how shallow this notion is. The kabuki scenes we're shown are thrillingly performed by Yoshizawa and Yokohama, who each spent a year and a half training to do the film. They make us feel the primal power in Kabuki's blend of dance, music, and acting, as it tells tales of love suicides or women who reveal themselves to be serpents. Just as Olympic skaters must perform certain compulsory leaps and loops and are judged on how well they do them, so Kabuki actors have certain gestures they must perform in a role, and they are expected to do them perfectly. Yet one can be technically flawless and still be middling. For a skater, the true measure of greatness is the expressive artistry of the free skate. For a kabuki actor like Kikuwo, what makes you a national treasure isn't merely doing every dance and gesture to perfection, but imbuing them with a huge, almost mythic emotion. Kukuwo captures how wondrous that can be, and the pain required to get there. John Powers reviewed Kokuho. It's now playing in theaters. Tomorrow on Fresh Air Morgan Neville talks with us about his new documentary Man on the Run about Paul McCartney after the breakup of the Beatles Neville's made documentaries about Fred Rogers, Pharrell and Orson Welles He won an Oscar and a Grammy for his film 20 Feet from Stardom about backup singers Hope you'll join us To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited By Phyllis Myers, Ann Reba Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper Roberta Shorrock directs the show Our co-host is Tanya Mosley I'm Tariq Rose you