GEOFF BENNETT: For more on redistricting politics and President Trump marking six months in office, we're joined now by our Politics Monday duo.

That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

It's great to see you both.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Good to be here.

GEOFF BENNETT: So we just heard the former Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke endorse partisan gerrymandering amid redistricting battles in Texas.

Amy, there are Democrats who say this is bad practice... AMY WALTER: Right.

GEOFF BENNETT: ... it's not something that Democrats should emulate, this mid-decade redistricting, but they warn it's the party's only chance to flip the Lower Chamber and potentially be a check on President Trump after the midterms.

AMY WALTER: That's right.

GEOFF BENNETT: What are your takeaways?

AMY WALTER: Sorry.

This is really a fascinating time for the Democratic Party, and I thought the former congressman summed it up pretty well when he said that the vision within the party right now is between those who are sort of acquiescing or doing things status quo and those who are standing up and fighting.

And the question is, how much stomach do voters and Democratic leaders have for a fight?

In California, if the governor were to try to redistrict, it's going to be very challenging.

He either goes to the legislature, have the legislature, which is obviously heavily Democratic, draw those new lines, which they will be sued because right now it is in the Constitution that an independent redistricting commission draws those lines.

So take the risk of getting the courts to throw it out.

Or you go to voters, which is how this got on the ballot and how it was voted in the very first place, and say, let's just take this redistricting away from this commission that we love, that we said is going to do all of the things that legislators won't do, which is to be nonpartisan, which is to look at communities of interest.

No, we want to bring this back to legislators and basically say, we're going to do to you what Texas Republicans are doing to Democrats there.

So it definitely muddies the water on this whole question of who's breaking norms, right?

You can say, well, we're only breaking norms because they did, but you're still breaking them.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Yes.

And... GEOFF BENNETT: And, Tam, what stands out to you about all that?

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, and then they will break norms because you broke norms.

And it's a cycle that certainly our politics are in the midst of that cycle right now.

I do think that Democrats have a little bit of buyer's remorse for their support in the past for these independent redistricting commissions.

The idea was that this sort of thing shouldn't be so terribly partisan, that there -- that you could create districts that are competitive and therefore you would have elected representatives who are more responsive to their voters.

I don't know that we have necessarily seen that in California.

But I think that this is one of those things that gets a lot of attention.

But it, as Amy says, would be extremely complicated for Governor Newsom to actually execute.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

Meantime, I want to shift our focus to the White House and President Trump really putting his credibility on the line with his hardcore MAGA supporters over his possible, over his alleged ties to the late convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

There's new polling, Amy, that shows overwhelming public interest in transparency.

A CBS poll finds 89 percent of Americans say they want the DOJ to release all of the info they have connected to the Epstein case.

These days, you can't find 89 percent of Americans agreeing on what day it is.

And yet they're agreeing on that.

I mean, what are the what are the fault lines for the president here?

AMY WALTER: Well, it does seem, if you break it out, though, and ask how salient is this issue to you when you think about Donald Trump and the job that he's doing, then the number drops considerably; 36 percent of voters say this is important to me as I evaluate the job that Donald Trump is doing, compared to more than 60 percent who say it's the cost of living that I am using as my gauge.

It's also pretty clear even within the Republican universe of voters that, while they would like to see this transparency, they're not necessarily holding it against Donald Trump.

They are even less likely to say this matters to them in how they judge the president.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Tam, we saw the president over the weekend apparently trying to do everything he could to ignite new political fires to distract from this Epstein matter.

He's saying the Washington Commanders should play again as the Redskins.

Today, we saw the administration release the FBI files related to Dr. King over the objections of the King family.

How much pressure is the president or the DOJ feeling on this issue?

TAMARA KEITH: Here's the thing.

The president would like to spend this week spiking the football about his very successful first six months in office.

That's what he would like to spend the entire week doing.

But, instead, these Epstein questions are continuing.

And what we also saw today is the White House kicking a Wall Street Journal reporter out of the press pool for an upcoming presidential trip, because the president doesn't like The Wall Street Journal's coverage of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

This relationship was a friendship that, according to the president's account, ended in the early 2000s.

It ended before Jeffrey Epstein became a registered sex offender.

However, the president has sued The Wall Street Journal and now his White House is taking an official action.

All of this indicates that this is a story and also all the words the president is saying indicates that this is a story he just wants to go away.

Any way he can get it to go away, he is going to try to get it to go away.

GEOFF BENNETT: Amy, Tam mentioned the six-month mark of the second Trump term.

What Trump views as his signature achievements apparently right now, according to the polls, are unpopular with voters.

And his approval rating has started to slide.

Again, the CBS polling shows 56 percent disapprove of his immigration policy; 47 percent say the Big Beautiful Bill will hurt their families.

What does it say that with the president views as success is, the American public, according to this polling, views skeptically.

AMY WALTER: Right.

Two things.

One, Republicans really like it.

But the second -- and I think this is really important -- you think about what Donald Trump really has been successful in, in his first six months, it is amassing and using executive power in a way that we haven't seen in the modern era from a president and also getting support in amassing that and using it from the Supreme Court.

So in that sense, he has been very successful.

If you're measuring it, though, on what people think the president should be doing, what he should be spending his time on, here's where he's really falling behind.

That same CBS poll found that 70 percent of voters think the president isn't doing enough to handle cost of living.

So he was ostensibly elected on two issues, securing the border, putting the price of stuff down.

The border, much more secure, but people don't really like what they're seeing with the deportation policy, and prices still haven't gone down.

GEOFF BENNETT: And there are a range of metrics we could use to judge his success, polling being one, but on Capitol Hill it's still business as usual.

I mean, Republicans are falling in line and then doing what they can to support his political agenda.

TAMARA KEITH: Absolutely.

Essentially, anything President Trump has wanted, he has gotten.

Sure, members of Congress, Republicans have expressed grave reservations about various things that the Trump administration is doing or asking them to approve.

And in the end, all but a couple of them have voted yes.

So clearly President Trump has a compliant Congress.

If there is a lever of power he can push, he has been pushing it these whole six months.

GEOFF BENNETT: Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thanks, as always.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.