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Tag: congressional district

  • Supreme Court, with no dissents, rejects GOP challenge to California’s new election map

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    WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that California this fall may use its new election map, which is expected to send five more Democrats to Congress.

    With no dissents, the justices rejected emergency appeals from California Republicans and President Trump’s lawyers, who claimed the map was a racial gerrymander to benefit Latinos, not a partisan effort to bolster Democrats.

    Trump’s lawyers supported the California Republicans and filed a Supreme Court brief asserting that “California’s recent redistricting is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

    They pointed to statements from Paul Mitchell, who led the effort to redraw the districts, that he hoped to “bolster” Latino representatives in the Central Valley.

    In response, the state’s attorneys told the court the GOP claims defied the public’s understanding of the mid-decade redistricting and contradicted the facts regarding the racial and ethnic makeup of the districts.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed re-drawing the state’s 52 congressional districts to “fight back against Trump’s power grab in Texas.”

    He said that if Texas was going to redraw its districts to benefit Republicans so as to keep control of the House of Representatives, California should do the same to benefit Democrats.

    The voters approved the change in November.

    While the new map has five more Democratic-leaning districts, the state’s attorneys said it did not increase the number with a Latino majority.

    “Before Proposition 50, there were 16 Latino-majority districts. After Proposition 50, there is the same number. The average Latino share of the voting-age population also declined in those 16 districts,” they wrote.

    It would be “strange for California to undertake a mid-decade restricting effort with the predominant purpose of benefiting Latino voters and then enact a new map that contains an identical number of Latino-majority districts,” they said.

    Trump’s lawyers pointed to the 13th Congressional District in Merced County and said its lines were drawn to benefit Latinos.

    The state’s attorneys said that too was incorrect. “The Latino voting-age population [in District 13] decreased after Proposition 50’s enactment,” they said.

    Three judges in Los Angeles heard evidence from both sides and upheld the new map in a 2-1 decision.

    “We find that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming,” said U.S. District Judges Josephine Staton and Wesley Hsu.

    In the past, the Supreme Court has said the Constitution does not bar state lawmakers from drawing election districts for political or partisan reasons, but it does forbid doing so based on the race of the voters.

    In December, the court ruled for Texas Republicans and overturned a 2-1 decision that had blocked the use of its new election map.
    The court’s conservatives agreed with Texas lawmakers who said they acted out of partisan motives, not with the aim of denying representation to Latino and Black voters.

    “The impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion.

    California’s lawyers quoted Alito in supporting their map.

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    David G. Savage

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  • Court battle begins over Republican challenge to California’s Prop. 50

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    Republicans and Democrats squared off in court Monday in a high-stakes battle over the fate of California’s Proposition 50, which reconfigures the state’s congressional districts and could ultimately help determine which party controls the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms.

    Dozens of California politicians and Sacramento insiders — including GOP Assembly members and Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell — have given depositions in the case or could be called to testify in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles over the next few days.

    The GOP wants the three-judge panel to temporarily block California’s new district map, claiming it is unconstitutional and illegally favors Latino voters.

    An overwhelming majority of California voters approved Proposition 50 on Nov. 4 after Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched the redistricting plan as a way to counter partisan gerrymandering in Texas and other GOP-led states. Democrats acknowledged the new map would weaken Republicans’ voting power in California, but argued that it would just be a temporary measure to try to restore the national political balance.

    Attorneys for the GOP cannot challenge the new redistricting map on the grounds that it disenfranchises swaths of California Republicans. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that complaints of partisan gerrymandering have no path in federal court.

    But the GOP can bring claims of racial discrimination. They argue that California legislators drew the new congressional maps based on race, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, which prohibits governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on race or color.

    Republicans face an uphill struggle in blocking the new map before the 2026 midterms. The hearing comes just a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to temporarily keep its new congressional map — a move that Newsom’s office says bodes poorly for Republicans trying to block California’s map.

    “In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’s, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. “That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

    In Texas, GOP leaders drew up new congressional district lines after President Trump openly pressed them to give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. A federal court blocked the map, finding racial considerations probably made the Texas map unconstitutional. But a few days later, the Supreme Court granted Texas’ request to pause that ruling, signaling that they view the Texas case — and this one in California — as part of a national politically motivated redistricting battle.

    “The impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California),” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued, “was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

    The fact that the Supreme Court order and Alito’s concurrence in the Texas case went out of their way to mention California is not a good sign for California Republicans, said Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

    “It’s hard to prove racial predominance in drawing a map — that race predominated over partisanship or other traditional districting principles,” Hasen said. “Trying to get a preliminary injunction, there’s a higher burden now, because it would be changing things closer to the election, and the Supreme Court signaled in that Texas ruling that courts should be wary of making changes.”

    On Nov. 4, California voters approved Proposition 50, a measure to scrap a congressional map drawn up by the state’s independent redistricting commission and replace it with a map drawn up by legislators to favor Democrats through 2030.

    On Monday, a key plaintiff, Assemblymember David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno) — who serves on the Assembly Elections Committee — testified that the legislative panel was given only four days to analyze the redistricted maps and was not allowed to vote on them.

    “In the language of the bill, it actually states that the Assembly and Senate election committee prepared these maps,” Tangipa said. “This was a lie.”

    Tangipa claimed his Democratic colleagues repeatedly brought up increased Black, Latino and Asian representation to further their argument for redistricting.

    “They were forcing, through emergency action, maps upon us to dismantle the independent redistricting commission,” Tangipa said. “They were using emotionally charged arguments, racial justifications and polarized arguments to pigeonhole us.”

    Defense attorneys, however, referenced multiple instances in depositions and online posts where Tangipa had claimed that there was some “partisan” or “political” purpose for the existence of Proposition 50. Tangipa denied this and maintained that he believed that the redistricting effort was race-conscious since his conversations on the Assembly floor.

    The hearing began with attorneys for the GOPhoming in on the new map’s Congressional District 13, which currently encompasses Merced, Stanislaus as well as parts of San Joaquin and Fresno counties, along with parts of Stockton. When Mitchell drew up the map, they argued, he overrepresented Latino voters as a “predominant consideration” over political leanings.

    They called to the stand RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende, who said he observed an “appendage” in the new District 13, which extended partially into the San Joaquin Valley and put a crack in the new rendition of District 9.

    “From my experience [appendages] are usually indicative of racial gerrymandering,” Trende said. “When the choice came between politics and race, it was race that won out.”

    Defense attorneys, however, pressed Trende on whether the shift in Latino voters toward Republican candidates in the last election could have informed the new district boundaries, rather than racial makeup.

    The defense referenced a sworn statement by Trende in the Texas redistricting case: the Proposition 50 map, he said then, was “drawn with partisan objectives in mind; in particular, it was drawn to improve Democratic prospects” to neutralize additional Republican seats.

    Many legal scholars say that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Texas case means California probably will keep its new map.

    “It was really hard before the Texas case to make a racial gerrymandering claim like the plaintiffs were stating, and it’s only gotten harder in the last two weeks,” said Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University.

    Hours after Californians voted in favor of Proposition 50, Tangipa and the California Republican Party filed a lawsuit alleging that the map enacted in Proposition 50 for California’s congressional districts is designed to favor Latino voters over others.

    The Department of Justice also filed a complaint in the case, contending that the new congressional map uses race as a proxy for politics and manipulated district lines “in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.”

    Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew up the maps, is likely to be a key figure in this week’s battle. In the days leading up to the hearing, attorneys sparred over whether Mitchell would testify and whether he should turn over his email correspondence with legislators. Mitchell’s attorneys argued that he had legislative privilege.

    Attorneys for the GOP have seized on public comments made by Mitchell that the “number one thing” he started thinking about was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles” and the “first thing” he and his team did was “reverse” the California Citizens Redistricting Commission’s earlier decision to eliminate a Latino district from L.A.

    Some legal experts, however, say that is not, in itself, a problem.

    “What [Mitchell] said was, essentially, ‘I paid attention to race,’” Levitt said. “But there’s nothing under existing law that’s wrong with that. The problem comes when you pay too much attention to race at the exclusion of all of the other redistricting factors.”

    Other legal experts say that what matters is not the intent of Mitchell or California legislators, but the California voters who passed Proposition 50.

    “Regardless of what Paul Mitchell or legislative leaders thought, they were just making a proposal to the voters,” said Hasen, who filed an amicus brief in support of the state. “So it’s really the voters’ intent that matters. And if you look at what was actually presented to the voters in the ballot pamphlet, there was virtually nothing about race there.”

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    Jenny Jarvie, Christopher Buchanan

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  • Contributor: I’m a young Latino voter. Neither party has figured us out

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    On Tuesday, I voted for the first time. Not for a president, not in a midterm, but in the California special election to counter Texas Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts. What makes this dynamic particularly fascinating is that both parties are betting on the same demographic — Latino voters.

    For years, pundits assumed Latinos were a lock for Democrats. President Obama’s 44-point lead with these voters in 2012 cemented the narrative: “Shifting demographics” (shorthand for more nonwhite voters) would doom Republicans.

    But 2016, and especially the 2024 elections, shattered that idea. A year ago, Trump lost the Latino vote by just 3 points, down from 25 in 2020, according to Pew. Trump carried 14 of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border, a majority-Latino region. The shift was so significant that Texas Republicans, under Trump’s direction, are redrawing congressional districts to suppress Democratic representation, betting big that Republican gains made with Latinos can clinch the midterms in November 2026.

    To counter Republican gerrymanders in Texas, Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats pushed their own redistricting plans, hoping to send more Democrats to the House. They too are banking on Latino support — but that’s not a sure bet.

    Imperial County offers a cautionary tale. This border district is 86% Latino, among the poorest in California, and has long been politically overlooked. It was considered reliably blue for decades; since 1994, it had backed every Democratic presidential candidate until 2024, when Trump narrowly won the district.

    Determined to understand the recent shift, during summer break I traveled in Imperial County, interviewing local officials in El Centro, Calexico and other towns. Their insights revealed that the 2024 results weren’t just about immigration or ideology; they were about leadership, values and, above all, economics.

    “It was crazy. It was a surprise,” Imperial County Registrar of Voters Linsey Dale told me. She pointed out that the assembly seat that represents much of Imperial County and part of Riverside County flipped to Republican.

    Several interviewees cited voters’ frustration with President Biden’s age and Kamala Harris’ lack of visibility. In a climate of nostalgia politics, many Latino voters apparently longed for what they saw as the relative stability of the pre-pandemic Trump years.

    Older Latinos, in particular, were attracted to the GOP’s rhetoric around family and tradition. But when asked about the top driver of votes, the deputy county executive officer, Rebecca Terrazas-Baxter, told me: “It wasn’t immigration. It was the economic hardship and inflation.”

    Republicans winning over voters on issues such as cost of living, particularly coming out of pandemic-era recession, makes sense, but I am skeptical of the notion that Latino voters are fully realigning themselves into a slate of conservative positions.

    Imperial voters consistently back progressive economic policies at the ballot box and hold a favorable view of local government programs that deliver tangible help such as homebuyer assistance, housing rehabilitation and expanded healthcare access. In the past, even when they have supported Democratic presidential candidates, they have voted for conservative ballot measures and Republican candidates down the ticket. Imperial voters backed Obama by a wide margin but also supported California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. This mix of progressive economics and conservative values is why Republican political consultant Mike Madrid describes Latino partisanship as a “weak anchor.”

    The same fluidity explains why many Latinos who rallied behind Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020 later voted for Trump in 2024. Both men ran as populists, promising to challenge the establishment and deliver economic revival. For Latinos, it wasn’t about left or right; it was about surviving.

    The lesson for both parties in California, Texas and everywhere is that no matter how lines are drawn, no district should be considered “safe” without serious engagement.

    It should go without saying, Latino voters are not a monolith. They split tickets and vote pragmatically based on lived economic realities. Latinos are the youngest and fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., with a median age of 30. Twenty-five percent of Gen Z Americans are Latino, myself among them. We are the most consequential swing voters of the next generation.

    As I assume many other young Latino voters do, I approached my first time at the ballot box with ambivalence. I’ve long awaited my turn to participate in the American democratic process, but I could never have expected that my first time would be to stop a plot to undermine it. And yet, I feel hope.

    The 2024 election made it clear to both parties that Latinos are not to be taken for granted. Latino voters are American democracy’s wild card — young, dynamic and fiercely pragmatic. They embody what democracy should be: fluid, responsive and rooted in lived experience. They don’t swear loyalty to red or blue; they back whoever they think will deliver. The fastest-growing voting bloc in America is up for grabs.

    Francesca Moreno is a high school senior at Marlborough School in Los Angeles, researching Latino voting behavior under the guidance of political strategist Mike Madrid.

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    Francesca Moreno

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  • 4 takeaways after Proposition 50’s big win in California

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    Proposition 50’s big win Tuesday night is a political earthquake that is being felt nationally.

    Here are four takeaways:

    1. Trump toxicity in California.

    Prop. 50 supporters tried to make the ballot measure a referendum on President Trump — and it clearly worked.

    California has been a blue state for decades, but Trump’s second term has been particularly trying for critics.

    Huntington Beach resident Miko Vaughn, 48, supported Proposition 50 and saw the battle as a proxy war between President Trump and Newsom. It’s just “against Trump,” she said. “I feel like there’s not much we can do individually, so it does feel good to do something.”

    Indeed, a CNN exit poll of California voters found that about half said their vote on Prop. 50 was a way of opposing Trump.

    “Trump is such a polarizing figure,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA. “He commands great loyalty from one group of people and great animosity from others.”

    2. End of an era

    Proposition 50, a ballot measure about redrawing the state’s congressional districts, was crafted by Democrats in response to Trump urging Texas and other GOP-majority states to modify their congressional maps to favor Republicans, a move that was designed to maintain Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

    California has been somewhat of an outlier. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created—and voters approved in 2010—an independent redistricting commission aimed at keeping politics out of the process of drawing congressional districts.

    The panel of 14 citizens works to create districts for state lawmakers and for members of Congress that are contiguous and roughly equal in population. The districts must also follow the federal Voting Rights Act and group together “communities of interest,” a wide-reaching term of art for people who share languages, cultures, backgrounds, interests, ways of life or other traits.

    Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach, said the vote over Proposition 50 marks the end of an era for this process—and perhaps for the hope for fair politics.

    Many political scientists have long opposed political gerrymandering, applauding states like California for moving to an independent model where politicians aren’t determining boundaries. But not enough states joined California in that effort, Lesenyie said.

    “California probably should have done this—against my better judgment—a long time ago in acknowledging that our politics have become so extremely polarized and that we can’t in California hold that dam break back by ourselves,” he said.

    3. Big win for Newsom

    Newsom has emerged as a foil to Trump this year, challenging him on a variety of issues from environment to immigration and mocking him on X.

    Prop. 50 was a risk for Newsom, but it immediately became a rallying cry for Democrats looking for a way to fight back. Now, he can take his victory lap.

    “After poking the bear, this bear roared,” Newsom said Tuesday night.

    Newsom said he was proud of California for standing up to Trump and called on other states with Democrat-controlled legislatures to pass their own redistricting plans.

    “I hope it’s dawning on people, the sobriety of this moment,” he said.

    Newsom recently announced he is considering a run for president in 2028.

    4. More polarization

    The biggest loser from Tuesday night? California Republicans.

    California has 43 Democrats and nine Republicans in the House. Proposition 50 would shift five more House districts into competitive or easily winnable territory for Democrats.

    The new map would eliminate the Inland Empire district of Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), the longest-serving member of California’s Republican delegation, and create a new seat in Los Angeles County that would skew heavily toward Democrats.

    The map would also dilute the number of GOP voters in the districts represented by Reps. Doug LaMalfa in Northern California, Kevin Kiley in Greater Sacramento, David Valadao in the San Joaquin Valley and Darrell Issa near San Diego.

    The maps would apply to the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. After the 2030 U.S. Census, California would return to having its lines drawn by the independent redistricting panel.

    Prop. 50 opponents cried foul, saying they were disenfranchised. Trump has mused about cutting some funding to California. And a lot of GOP voters are angry.

    California Republicans on Wednesday filed a lawsuit arguing the redistricting maps are unconstitutional because they use voters race as a factor in drawing districts.

    Race engine builder and Republican Robert Jung, 69, said “the changes are politically motivated.”

    “It doesn’t seem right to do this just to gain five seats. I know they did it in Texas, but we don’t have to do it just because they did it,” the Torrance resident said.

    Disabled Army veteran Micah Corpe, 50, added Prop. 50 is the result of Newsom believing he can “do whatever he wants because he doesn’t like Trump.”

    Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.

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    Hannah Fry, Alex Wigglesworth, Connor Sheets, Jessica Garrison

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  • As Californians decide fate of Prop. 50, GOP states push their own redistricting plans

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    WASHINGTON — The hurried push to revise California’s congressional districts has drawn national attention, large sums of money, and renewed hope among Democrats that the effort may help counter a wave of Republican redistricting initiatives instigated by President Trump.

    But if Democrats succeed in California, the question remains: Will it be enough to shift the balance of power in Congress?

    To regain control of the House, Democrats need to flip three Republican seats in the midterm elections next year. That slim margin prompted the White House to push Republicans this summer to redraw maps in GOP states in an effort to keep Democrats in the minority.

    Texas was the first to signal it would follow Trump’s edict and set off a rare mid-decade redistricting arms race that quickly roped in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom devised Proposition 50 to tap into his state’s massive inventory of congressional seats.

    Californians appear poised to approve the measure Tuesday. If they do, Democrats potentially could gain five seats in the House — an outcome that mainly would offset the Republican effort in Texas that already passed.

    While Democrats and Republicans in other states also have moved to redraw their maps, it is too soon to say which party will see a net gain, or predict voter sentiment a year from now, when a lopsided election in either direction could render the remapping irrelevant.

    GOP leaders in North Carolina and Missouri approved new maps that likely will yield one new GOP seat in each, Ohio Republicans could pick up two more seats in a newly redrawn map approved Friday, and GOP leaders in Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas and Florida are considering or taking steps to redraw their maps. In all, those moves could lead to at least 10 new Republican seats, according to experts tracking the redistricting efforts.

    To counter that, Democrats in Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would give lawmakers the power and option to redraw a new map ahead of next year’s election. Illinois leaders are weighing their redistricting options and New York has filed a lawsuit that seeks to redraw a GOP-held district. But concerns over legal challenges already tanked the party’s efforts in Maryland and the potential dilution of the Black vote has slowed moves in Illinois.

    So far, the partisan maneuvers appear to favor Republicans.

    “Democrats cannot gerrymander their way out of their gerrymandering problem. The math simply doesn’t add up,” said David Daly, a senior fellow at the nonprofit FairVote. “They don’t have enough opportunities or enough targets.”

    Complex factors for Democrats

    Democrats have more than just political calculus to weigh. In many states they are hampered by a mix of constitutional restrictions, legal deadlines and the reality that many of their state maps no longer can be easily redrawn for partisan gain. In California, Prop. 50 marks a departure from the state’s commitment to independent redistricting.

    The hesitancy from Democrats in states such as Maryland and Illinois also underscores the tensions brewing within the party as it tries to maximize its partisan advantage and establish a House majority that could thwart Trump in his last two years in office.

    “Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Bill Ferguson, the Maryland Senate president, wrote in a letter to state lawmakers last week.

    In Illinois, Black Democrats are raising concerns over the plans and pledging to oppose maps that would reduce the share of Black voters in congressional districts where they have historically prevailed.

    “I can’t just think about this as a short-term fight. I have to think about the long-term consequences of doing such a thing,” said state Sen. Willie Preston, chair of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus.

    Adding to those concerns is the possibility that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could weaken a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act and limit lawmakers’ ability to consider race when redrawing maps. The outcome — and its effect on the 2026 midterms — will depend heavily on the timing and scope of the court’s decision.

    The court has been asked to rule on the case by January, but a decision may come later. Timing is key as many states have filing deadlines for 2026 congressional races or hold their primary election during the spring and summer.

    If the court strikes down the provision, known as Section 2, advocacy groups estimate Republicans could pick up at least a dozen House seats across southern states.

    “I think all of these things are going to contribute to what legislatures decide to do,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice. The looming court ruling, he added, is “an extra layer of uncertainty in an already uncertain moment.”

    Republican-led states press ahead

    Support for Prop. 50 has brought in more than $114 million, the backing of some of the party’s biggest luminaries, including former President Obama, and momentum for national Democrats who want to regain control of Congress after the midterms.

    In an email to supporters Monday, Newsom said fundraising goals had been met and asked proponents of the effort to get involved in other states.

    “I will be asking for you to help others — states like Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and more are all trying to stop Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts. More on that soon,” Newsom wrote.

    Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called a special session set to begin Monday, to “protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair.”

    In Kansas, the GOP president of the state Senate said last week that there were enough signatures from Republicans in the chamber to call a special session to redraw the state’s maps. Republicans in the state House would need to match the effort to move forward.

    In Louisiana, Republicans in control of the Legislature voted last week to delay the state’s 2026 primary elections. The move is meant to give lawmakers more time to redraw maps in the case that the Supreme Court rules in the federal voting case.

    If the justices strike down the practice of drawing districts based on race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated the state likely would jump into the mid-decade redistricting race.

    Shaniqua McClendon, head of Vote Save America, said the GOP’s broad redistricting push underscores why Democrats should follow California’s lead — even if they dislike the tactic.

    “Democrats have to be serious about what’s at stake. I know they don’t like the means, but we have to think about the end,” McClendon said. “We have to be able to take back the House — it’s the only way we’ll be able to hold Trump accountable.”

    In New York, a lawsuit filed last week charging that a congressional district disenfranchises Black and Latino voters would be a “Hail Mary” for Democrats hoping to improve their chances in the 2026 midterms there, said Daly, of FairVote.

    Utah also could give Democrats an outside opportunity to pick up a seat, said Dave Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. A court ruling this summer required Utah Republican leaders to redraw the state’s congressional map, resulting in two districts that Democrats potentially could flip.

    Wasserman described the various redistricting efforts as an “arms race … Democrats are using what Republicans have done in Texas as a justification for California, and Republicans are using California as justification for their actions in other states.”

    ‘Political tribalism’

    Some political observers said the outcome of California’s election could inspire still more political maneuvering in other states.

    “I think passage of Proposition 50 in California could show other states that voters might support mid-decade redistricting when necessary, when they are under attack,” said Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute. “I think it would certainly provide impetus in places like New York to move forward.”

    Similar to California, New York would need to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment, but that could not take place in time for the midterms.

    “It might also embolden Republican states that have been hesitant to redistrict to say, ‘Well if the voters in California support mid-decade redistricting, maybe they’ll support it here too,’” Wice said.

    To Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University, the idea that the mid-decade redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.

    “It is a symptom of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism,” he said. “And, unfortunately, our tribalism is now breaking out, not only between each other, but it’s breaking out between states.”

    He argued that both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.

    “I am worried about what the end result of this will be,” he said.

    Ceballos reported from Washington, Mehta from Los Angeles.

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    Ana Ceballos, Seema Mehta

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  • Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris rally Californians to vote on Prop. 50

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and a slew of other national and California Democrats on Saturday rallied supporters to stay fired up in seeking passage of a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections.

    While polling suggests Proposition 50 is likely to pass Tuesday, volunteers must continue knocking on doors, phone banking and motivating voters through Election Day, they said. Newsom told volunteers they ought to follow the model of sprinters, leaving it all on the field.

    “We cannot afford to run the 90-yard dash. You Angelenos, you’ve got the Olympics coming in 2028. They do not run the 90-yard dash. They run the 110-yard dash. We have got to be at peak on Election Day,” Newsom told hundreds of supporters at the Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. “We cannot take anything for granted.”

    Hours earlier, Republicans spoke out against the ballot measure at John Wayne Park in Newport Beach, before sending teams into neighborhoods to drum up votes for their side.

    “What Proposition 50 will do is disenfranchise, meaning, disregard all Republicans in the state of California,” state Assembly member Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) said. “Ninety percent of 6 million [Californian Republicans] will be disenfranchised.”

    Prop. 50 would redraw California’s congressional districts in an attempt to boost the number of Democrats in Congress. The effort was proposed by Newsom and other California Democrats in hope of blunting President Trump’s push in Texas and other GOP-led states to increase the number of Republicans elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. But even if voters approve the ballot measure that could flip five California districts currently represented by Republicans, it’s unclear whether that will be enough to shift control of the House unless there is a blue wave in the 2026 elections.

    The party that wins control of the House will shape Trump’s final two years in the White House and determine whether he is able to continue enacting his agenda or whether he faces a spate of investigations and possibly another impeachment attempt.

    The special election is among the costliest ballot measures in state history. More than $192 million has flowed into various campaign committees since state lawmakers voted in August to put the proposition on the ballot. Supporters of the redistricting effort raised exponentially more money than opponents, and polling shows the proposition is likely to pass.

    As of Friday, more than a quarter of the state’s 23 million registered voters had cast ballots, with Democrats outpacing Republicans.

    Newsom was joined Saturday by Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, other Democrats and labor leaders.

    Harris, in a surprise appearance at the gathering, argued that the Trump administration is implementing long-sought GOP goals such as voter suppression.

    “This fight is not about sitting by and complaining, ‘Oh, they’re cheating,’” the former vice president said. “It’s about recognizing what they are up to. There is an agenda that we are witnessing which feels chaotic, I know, but in fact, we are witnessing a high-velocity event that is about the swift implementation of a plan that has been decades in the making.”

    Several speakers referred to the immigration raids that started in Los Angeles in June and deep cuts to federal safety nets, including the nutrition assistance program for low-income families and healthcare coverage for seniors and the disabled.

    “We know there’s so much on the line this Tuesday. And a reminder, Tuesday is not Election Day — it’s the last day to vote,” Padilla said. “Don’t wait till Tuesday. Get your ballots in, folks…. As good as the polls look, we need to run up the score on this because the eyes of the country are going to be on California on Tuesday. And we need to win and we need to win big.”

    Padilla, a typically staid legislator, then offered a modified riff of a lyric by rapper Ice Cube, who grew up in South Los Angeles.

    “Donald Trump — you better check yourself before you wreck America,” said Padilla, who is considering running for governor next year.

    Nearly 50 miles southeast, about 50 Republican canvassers fueled up on coffee and doughnuts, united over the brisk weather and annoyance about Newsom’s attempt to redraw California’s congressional districts.

    Will O’Neill, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, equated this final push against Prop. 50 as the California GOP’s Game 7 — a nod to Friday night’s World Series battle between the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays.

    “Orange County right now is the only county in Southern California that has a shot of having more Republicans than Democrats voting,” O’Neill said. “We expect that over the next three days, around 70% of everyone who votes is gonna vote no on 50. But we need them to vote.”

    Ariana Assenmacher, of California Young Republicans, center, organizes during a gathering of Republican Party members pressing to vote no on Proposition 50 in the upcoming California Statewide Special Election at John Wayne Park in Newport Beach on Saturday, November 1, 2025.

    (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

    O’Neill labeled the measure a “hyper-partisan power grab.” If Prop. 50 passes, it will dilute Republican power in Orange County by splitting communities and roping some residents into districts represented by Los Angeles County politicians.

    Dixon also rallied volunteers — which included a handful of college students from across the state: “Be polite. Just say thank you very much. Just like Charlie Kirk would. Don’t [stimulate] an argument. Just be friendly.”

    “They’re squeezing out what very little representation Republicans have in the state,” said Kristen Nicole Valle, president of the Orange County Young Republicans.

    “We will not be hearing from 40% of Californians if Prop. 50 passes.”

    Randall Avila, executive director of the Orange County GOP, said the measure disenfranchises Latino GOP voters like himself.

    Nationally, Trump managed to gain 48% of the Latino vote, a Pew Research study showed, which proved crucial to his second presidential victory.

    “Obviously our community has kind of shown we’re willing to switch parties and go another direction if that elected official or that party isn’t serving us,” Avila said. “So it’s unfortunate that some of those voices are now gonna be silenced with a predetermined winner in their district.”

    Not all hope is lost for Republicans if Prop. 50 is approved, Avila said. A handful of seats could be snagged by Republicans, including the districts held by Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Derek Tran (D-Orange).

    “If the lines do change, that doesn’t mean we pack up and go home,” he said. “Just means we reorganize, we reconfigure things, and then we keep fighting.”

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  • Voters in poll side with Newsom, Democrats on Prop. 50 — a potential blow to Trump and GOP

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    A Nov. 4 statewide ballot measure pushed by California Democrats to help the party’s efforts to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and stifle President Trump’s agenda has a substantial lead in a new poll released on Thursday.

    Six out of 10 likely voters support Proposition 50, the proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies to redraw the state’s congressional districts to try to increase the number of Democrats in Congress, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times. About 38% of likely voters oppose the ballot measure.

    Notable in an off-year special election about the arcane and complicated process of redistricting, 71% of likely voters said they had heard a significant amount of information about the ballot measure, according to the poll.

    “That’s extraordinary,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll. “Even though it’s kind of an esoteric topic that doesn’t affect their daily lives, it’s something voters are paying attention to.”

    That may be because roughly $158 million has been donated in less than three months to the main campaign committees supporting and opposing the measure, according to campaign fundraising reports filed with the state last week. Voters in the state have been flooded with political ads.

    Californians watching Tuesday night’s World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays saw that firsthand.

    In the first minutes of the game, former President Obama, Newsom, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other prominent Democrats spoke in favor of Proposition 50 in an ad that probably cost at least $250,000 to air, according to a Democratic media buyer who is not associated with the campaign.

    According to the survey, the breakdown among voters was highly partisan, with more than 9 out of 10 Democrats supporting Proposition 50 and a similar proportion of Republicans opposing it. Among voters who belong to other parties, or identify as “no party preference,” 57% favored the ballot measure, while 39% opposed it.

    Only 2% of the likely voters surveyed said they were undecided, which DiCamillo said was highly unusual.

    Historically, undecided voters, particularly independents, often end up opposing ballot measures they are uncertain about, preferring to stick with the status quo, he said.

    “Usually there was always a rule — look at the undecideds in late-breaking polls, and assume most would vote no,” he said. “But this poll shows there are very few of them out there. Voters have a bead on this one.”

    In the voter-rich urban areas of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay area, Proposition 50 led by wide margins, the poll found. Voters in Orange County, the Inland Empire and the Central Valley were pretty evenly divided.

    Redistricting battles are underway in states across the nation, but California’s Proposition 50 has received a major share of national attention and donations. The Newsom committee supporting Proposition 50 has raised far more money than the two main committees opposing it, so much so that the governor this week told supporters to stop sending checks.

    The U.S. House of Representatives is controlled by the GOP but is narrowly divided. The party that wins control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections will determine whether Trump can continue enacting his agenda or whether he is the subject of investigations and possibly another impeachment effort.

    California’s 52 congressional districts — the most of any state — currently are drawn by a voter-approved independent commission once every decade following the U.S. census.

    But after Trump urged GOP leaders in Texas this summer to redraw their districts to bolster the number of Republicans in Congress, Newsom and other California Democrats decided in August to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan redrawing of the state’s district boundaries. If passed, Proposition 50 could potentially add five more Democrats to the state’s congressional delegation.

    Supporters of Proposition 50 have painted their effort as a proxy fight against Trump and his policies that have overwhelmingly affected Californians, such as immigration raids and the deployment of the National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.

    Opponents of the proposition have focused on the mechanics of redistricting, arguing the ballot measure subverts the will of California voters who enacted the independent redistricting commission more than a decade ago.

    “The results suggest that Democrats have succeeded in framing the debate surrounding the proposition around support or opposition to President Trump and national Republicans, rather than about voters’ more general preference for nonpartisan redistricting,” Eric Schickler, co-director of IGS, said in a statement.

    Early voting data suggest the pro-Proposition 50 message has been successful.

    As of Tuesday, nearly 5 million Californians — about 21% of the state’s 23 million registered voters — had cast ballots, according to trackers run by Democratic and Republican strategists.

    Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans among the state’s registered voters, and they have outpaced them in returning ballots, 52% to 27%. Voters who do not have a party preference or who support other political parties have returned 21% of the ballots.

    The Berkeley/L.A. Times poll findings mirrored recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California, CBS News/YouGov and Emerson College.

    Among voters surveyed by the Berkeley/L.A. Times poll, 67% of Californians who had already voted supported Proposition 50, while 33% said they had weighed in against the ballot measure.

    The proposition also had an edge among those who planned to vote but had not yet cast their ballots, with 57% saying they planned to support the effort and 40% saying they planned to oppose it.

    However, 70% of voters who plan to cast ballots in person on Nov. 4, election day, said they would vote against Proposition 50, according to the poll. Less than 3 in 10 who said they would vote at their local polling place said they would support the rare mid-decade redistricting.

    These numbers highlight a recent shift in how Americans vote. Historically, Republicans voted by mail early, while Democrats cast ballots on election day. But this dynamic was upended in recent years after Trump questioned the security of early voting and mail voting, including just recently when he criticized Proposition 50.

    “No mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting, Yes to Voter ID! Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being ‘shipped,’” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”

    GOP leaders across the state have pushed back at such messaging without calling out the president. Urging Republicans to vote early, they argue that waiting to cast ballots only gives Democrats a greater advantage in California elections.

    Among the arguments promoted by the campaigns, likely voters agreed with every one posited by the supporters of Proposition 50, notably that the ballot measure would help Democrats win control of the House, while standing up to Trump and his attempts to rig the 2026 election, according to the poll. But they also agreed that the ballot measure would further diminish the power of the GOP in California, and that they didn’t trust partisan state lawmakers to draw congressional districts.

    The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 8,141 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Oct. 20 to 27. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Voter turnout exceeds expectations in California’s Prop. 50 special election

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    Early voter turnout is exceeding expectations in California’s Nov. 4 special election over redrawing the state’s congressional districts, a Democratic-led effort to counter Republican attempts to keep Congress under GOP control.

    “We’re seeing some pretty extraordinary numbers of early votes that have already been cast, people sending back in their ballots,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a livestream with former President Obama on Wednesday.

    More than 3.4 million mail ballots have been returned as of Wednesday, with votes from Democrats outpacing ballots from Republicans and Californians registered as not having a party preference, according to a ballot tracker run by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell. Mitchell is deeply involved in the Democratic effort, and drafted the proposed congressional districts on the Nov. 4 special election ballot.

    That’s roughly the same number of ballots returned by this time in the White House contest between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and then-former President Trump in 2024, notable because turnout during presidential elections is higher than in other years.

    About a million more ballots had been turned in by this point in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall Newsom, but that was during the COVID pandemic.

    This year’s turnout is also especially significant because Proposition 50 is about the esoteric topic of redistricting. Redrawing congressional districts is usually a once-a-decade process that takes place after the U.S. census to account for population shifts.

    California’s 52 congressional districts currently are crafted by a voter-approved independent commission, but Newsom and other California Democrats decided to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan gerrymandering to blunt Trump’s efforts in GOP-led states to boost his party’s numbers in the House.

    Obama, who has endorsed Proposition 50 and stars in a television ad supporting the effort, on Wednesday said the ballot measure will affect the entire country.

    “There’s a broader principle at stake that has to do with whether or not our democracy can be manipulated by those who are already in power to entrench themselves further,” Obama said. “Or, whether we’re going to have a system that allows the people to decide who’s going to represent them.”

    About 51% of the ballots that have been returned to date are from registered Democrats, while 28% are from registered Republicans and 21% are from voters who do not express a party preference.

    It’s unknown how these voters cast their ballots, but the Democratic advantage appears to give an edge to supporters of Proposition 50, which needs to be passed by a simple majority to be enacted. About 19.6 million ballots — roughly 85% of those mailed to California voters — are outstanding, though not all are expected to be returned.

    The current trend of returned ballots at this point shows Democrats having a small edge over Republicans compared with their share of the California electorate. According to the latest state voter registration report, Democrats account for 45% of California’s registered voters, while Republicans total 25% and “no party preference” voters make up 23%. Californians belonging to other parties make up the remainder.

    Mitchell added that another interesting data point is that the mail ballots continue to flow in.

    “Usually you see a lull after the first wave — if you don’t mail in your ballot in the first week, it’s going to be sitting on the counter for a while,” Mitchell said. But ballots continue to arrive, possibly encouraged by the “No Kings” protests on Saturday, he said.

    A spokesperson for the pro-Proposition 50 campaign said they are taking nothing for granted.

    “With millions of ballots still to be cast, we will keep pushing to make sure every Californian understands what’s at stake and turns out to vote yes on Nov. 4th to stop Trump’s power grab,” said spokesperson Hannah Milgrom.

    Some Republican leaders have expressed concerns that the GOP early vote may be suppressed by Trump’s past criticism about mail balloting, inaccuracies in the voter guide sent to the state’s 23 million voters and conspiracy theories about the ballot envelope design.

    “While ballot initiatives are nonpartisan, many Republicans tend to hold on to their ballots until in-person voting begins,” said Ellie Hockenbury, an advisor to the “No on Prop 50 — Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” campaign committee. “As this next phase starts — and with nearly two weeks until Election Day — we expect already high turnout to continue rising to defeat Proposition 50 and stop Gavin Newsom’s partisan power grab.”

    Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the other major group opposing the proposition, said the data show that the voters who have returned ballots so far are not representative of the California electorate.

    “Special elections tend to be more partisan, older and whiter than general elections, which is one of the reasons we’ve been concerned about the speed with which the politicians pushed this through,” she said.

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  • Supreme Court might upend Voting Rights Act and help GOP keep control of the House

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    WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court may help the GOP keep control of the House of Representatives next year by clearing the way for Republican-led states to redraw election districts now held by Black Democrats.

    That prospect formed the backdrop on Wednesday as the justices debated the future of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Louisiana.

    The Trump administration’s top courtroom attorney urged he justices to rule that partisan politics, not racial fairness, should guide the drawing election districts for Congress and state legislatures.

    “This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect a Black or Latino candidate.

    Too often, he said, the civil rights law has been “deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a state’s constitutional pursuit of political ends.”

    The court’s conservatives lean in that direction and sought to limit the use of race for drawing district boundaries. But the five-member majority has not struck down the use of race for drawing district lines.

    But the Trump administration and Louisiana’s Republican leaders argued that now was the time to do so.

    If the court’s conservatives hand down such a ruling in the months ahead, it would permit Republican-led states across the South to redraw the congressional districts of a dozen or more Black Democrats.

    “There’s reason for alarm,” said Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulous. “The consequences for minority representation would likely be devastating. In particular, states with unified Republican governments would have a green light to flip as many Democratic minority-opportunity districts as possible.”

    Such a ruling would also upend the Voting Rights Act as it had been understood since the 1980s.

    As originally enacted in 1965, the historic measure put the federal government on the side of Blacks in registering to vote and casting ballots.

    But in 1982, Republicans and Democrats in Congress took note that these new Black voters were often shut out of electing anyone to office. White lawmakers could draw maps that put whites in the majority in all or nearly all the districts.

    Seeking a change, Congress amended the law to allow legal challenges when discrimination results in minority voters having “less opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice.”

    In decades after, the Supreme Court and the Justice Department pressed the states, and the South in particular, to draw at least some electoral districts that were likely to elect a Black candidate. These legal challenges turned on evidence that white voters in the state would not support a Black candidate.

    But since he joined the court in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that drawing districts based on race is unconstitutional and should be prohibited. Justices Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented with Thomas two years ago when the court by a 5-4 vote approved a second congressional district in Alabama that elected a Black Democrat.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote the opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast the deciding fifth vote but also said he was open to the argument that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

    That issue is now before the court in the Louisiana case.

    It has six congressional districts, and about one-third of its population is Black.

    Prior to this decade, the New Orleans area elected a Black representative, and in response to a voting right suit, it was ordered to draw a second district where a Black candidate had a good chance to win.

    But to protect its leading House Republicans — Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — the state drew a new elongated district that elected Rep. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat.

    Now the state and the Trump administration argue the court should strike down that district because it was drawn based on race and free the state to replace him with a white Republican.

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    David G. Savage

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  • ‘Democracy is on the ballot,’ Obama says, urging Californians to pass Prop. 50 in new ad

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    As Californians start voting on Democrats’ effort to boost their ranks in Congress, former President Barack Obama warned that democracy is in peril as he urged voters to support Proposition 50 in a television ad that started airing Tuesday.

    “California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama says in the 30-second ad, which the main pro-Proposition 50 campaign began broadcasting Tuesday across the state. The spot is part of a multimillion-dollar ad buy promoting the congressional redistricting ballot measure through the Nov. 4 election.

    Proposition 50 was spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democratic leaders this summer after President Trump urged GOP-led states, notably Texas, to redraw their congressional districts to boost the number of Republicans elected to the House in next year’s midterm election, in an effort to continue enacting his agenda during his final years in office.

    “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama says in the ad, which includes footage of ICE raids. “With Prop. 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks. Prop. 50 puts our elections back on a level playing field, preserves independent redistricting over the long term, and lets the people decide. Return your ballot today.”

    Congressional districts were long drawn in smoke-filled chambers by partisans focused on protecting their parties’ power and incumbents. But good-government groups and elected officials, notably former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have fought to take the drawing of congressional boundaries out of the hands of politicians to end gerrymandering and create more competitive districts.

    Obama, long a supporter of ending gerrymandering, had already endorsed the ballot measure.

    In California, these districts have been drawn by an independent commission created by voters in 2010, which is why state Democrats have to go to the ballot box to seek a mid-decade partisan redistricting that could improve their party’s chances in five of the state’s 52 congressional districts.

    The ad featuring Obama, who spoke Monday on comedian Marc Maron’s final podcast about Trump’s policies testing the nation’s values, appears on Californians’ televisions after mail ballots were sent to the state’s 23 million registered voters last week.

    The proposition’s prospects are uncertain — it’s about an obscure topic that few Californians know about, and off-year elections traditionally have low voter turnout. Still, more than $150 million has been contributed to the three main committees supporting and opposing the proposition, in addition to millions more funding other efforts.

    Obama is not the only famous person to appear in ads about Proposition 50.

    In September, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office and has campaigned for similar reforms across the nation since then, was featured in ads opposing the November ballot measure.

    He described Proposition 50 as favoring entrenched politicians instead of voters.

    “That’s what they want to do, is take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” the Hollywood celebrity and former governor says in the ad, which was filmed last month when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”

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    Seema Mehta

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  • He’s back! Schwarzenegger aims to terminate gerrymandering once again in California

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    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of an independent commission to draw California’s congressional districts, returns to state voters’ TV sets on Tuesday in a new ad opposing a November ballot measure by state Democrats to boost their party’s ranks in Congress.

    A committee opposing Proposition 50, which would replace districts drawn by an independent commission with ones crafted by partisans, plans to spend $1 million per day airing the ad statewide. Schwarzenegger describes the ballot measure as one that does not favor voters but is in the interest of entrenched politicians.

    “That’s what they want to do is take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” the Hollywood celebrity and former governor says in the ad, which was filmed last week when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”

    Redistricting is the redrawing of congressional boundaries that typically occurs once a decade following the U.S. census to account for population shifts. The process rarely attracts the attention it has this year because of a heated battle to determine control of a closely divided Congress in the final two years of President Trump’s tenure.

    After Trump urged Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts earlier this year to boost the number of Republicans in the House, California Democrats, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, countered by putting a rare mid-decade redistricting on a special-election November ballot that would likely boost the number of Democrats in the body.

    Schwarzenegger, long a champion of political reform, is not part of any official Proposition 50 campaign. Since leaving office, he has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation.

    His remarks were filmed, and the ad is being aired by the most well-funded effort opposing Proposition 50, which is bankrolled by Charles Munger Jr., a major GOP donor who underwrote the ballot measures that created California’s independent commission.

    Munger has already donated $30 million to a campaign opposing the November ballot measure, according to fundraising disclosures filed with the secretary of state’s office. The other large opposition effort has raised more than $5 million. The main group supporting Proposition 50, led by Newsom, has raised more than $54 million.

    These fundraising figures are based on required disclosures of large contributions. More complete fundraising numbers must be filed with the state on Thursday.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • ‘It’s all at stake’: As Prop. 50 fight intensifies, Newsom, partisan influencers rally their bases

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    The multimillion-dollar jousting over redrawing California’s congressional districts to boost Democrats and counter President Trump was on full display in recent days, as both sides courted voters less than a month before ballots begin arriving in mailboxes.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, national Democratic leaders including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a slew of political influencers held an hours-long virtual rally Tuesday afternoon, urging Californians to support Proposition 50 in the Nov. 4 special election. Speakers framed the stakes of the ballot measure as nothing short of existential — not just for Democratic interests, but also for democracy.

    “It’s all at stake. This is a profound and consequential moment in American history. We can lose this republic if we do not assert ourselves and stand tall at this moment and stand guard to this republic and our democracy. I feel that in my bones,” Newsom said Tuesday afternoon.

    If passed, Proposition 50 would gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats, bolstering the fates of several Democrats in vulnerable swing districts and potentially cost Republicans up to five House seats.

    California’s congressional districts are drawn by a voter-approved independent commission once a decade after the U.S. census. But Newsom and other state Democrats proposed a rare mid-decade redrawing of the districts to increase the number of Democrats in Congress in response to similar efforts in GOP-led states, notably Texas.

    Tuesday’s virtual rally, which was emceed by progressive influencer Brian Tyler Cohen, was a cross between an old-school money-raising telethon and new media streaming session. Popular podcasters and YouTubers such as Crooked Media’s Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor (alumni of former President Obama’s administration), Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch and David Pakman shared the screen with political leaders, with an on-screen fundraising thermometer inching higher throughout.

    Cohen argued that people like him had been “begging” Democrats to fight Trump. And now elected officials had done their part by getting Proposition 50 on the ballot, he said, urging viewers to donate to support the effort.

    Warren argued that Trump was a “would-be king” — but if Democrats could retake control of either house of Congress, that would be stopped, she posited.

    “And if we have both houses under Democratic control,” Warren continued, “now we are truly back in the game in terms of making our Constitution work again.”

    The exhaustive list of speakers represented the spectrum of the modern left, with standard-bearers such as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, alongside rising stars including Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). A number of California delegates, including Sen. Alex Padilla and Reps. Ted. Lieu, Robert Garcia, Pete Aguilar, Jimmy Gomez and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, also spoke.

    The event had been scheduled to take place Sept. 10 but was postponed after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier that day.

    Jessica Millan Patterson, the former leader of the California Republican Party and chair of an anti-Proposition 50 committee, accused Newsom of “scrambling for out-of-touch messengers to sell his scheme.”

    “For Gavin Newsom, it’s all distraction and deflection. Instead of addressing the $283 million price tag taxpayers are stuck with for his partisan power grab, he’s hosting a cringeworthy webinar packed with DC politicians, out-of-state influencers, and irrelevant podcasters, all lining up to applaud his gerrymandered maps,” Millan Patterson said in a statement Tuesday.

    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office and has campaigned to stop gerrymandering across the nation after his term ended, forcefully denounced Proposition 50 on Monday.

    “They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California,” Schwarzenegger told hundreds of students at an event celebrating democracy at the University of Southern California. “It is insane to let that happen.”

    The former governor, a Trump foe who has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC, said the effort to dismantle the independent commission’s congressional districts to counter Trump are anti-democratic.

    “They want to get rid of it under the auspices of we have to fight Trump,” Schwarzenegger said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because we have to fight Trump, [yet] we become Trump.”

    And on the morning of Sept. 10, opponents of the ballot measure rallied in Orange County, speaking about how redrawing congressional districts would dilute the voice of communities around the state.

    “We’re here because Prop. 50 poses a serious threat to Orange County’s voice, to our communities and to our taxpayers. This measure is not about fairness. It’s about power grab,” said Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen during a rally at the Asian Garden Mall in Little Saigon, a Vietnamese hub in Westminster. “And it comes at the expense of our taxpayers, our small businesses and our minority communities.”

    She noted that Little Saigon would be grouped with Norwalk in Los Angeles County if the ballot measure passes.

    “Ask anybody in this area if they even know where Norwalk is,” Nguyen said.

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    Julia Wick, Seema Mehta

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  • Schwarzenegger decries polarization, criticizes Newsom’s gerrymandering effort

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    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out forcefully Monday against the partisan effort to redraw California’s congressional districts that voters will decide in a November special election.

    “They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California,” Schwarzenegger told hundred of students at an event celebrating democracy at the University of Southern California. “It is insane to let that happen.

    The Hollywood action star turn Republican governor urged the students to vote against the redistricting measure, Proposition 50.

    The special election in November would redraw the districts and probably boost the number of Democrats California sends to Congress, an effort championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to counter efforts in GOP-led states such as Texas to send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives.

    Schwarzenegger has long championed political reform. During his final year as governor, he prioritized the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting. Four former members of the independent commission were recognized by Schwarzenegger at the event, and he had lunch with them and members of the university’s student governmentafterward.

    He said he grew interested in the esoteric process of redistricting when he was governor and realized that districts drawn by politicians protected their political interests instead of voters.

    “They want to dismantle this independent commission. They want to get rid of it under the auspices of we have to fight Trump,” Schwarzenegger said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because we have to fight Trump, [yet] we become Trump.”

    Since leaving office, Schwarzenegger has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation. The governor’s remarks were being recorded by the anti-Proposition 50 campaign in what could easily be turned into a television ad.

    Outside, student Democrats passed out fliers in support of Proposition 50.

    The event, a discussion with USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim marking the International Day of Democracy, was scheduled to take place before conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at a Utah college campus.

    Schwarzenegger reflected on Kirk’s death as he warned about the fragile state of democracy.

    “That someone’s life was taken because they had a different opinion, I mean it’s just unbelievable,” Schwarzenegger said, noting that Kirk was a skilled communicator who connected with young people, even those who disagreed with him. “A human life is gone. He was a great father, a great husband, and I was thinking about his children — they will only be reading about him now instead of him reading to them bedtime stories.”

    He warned that the nation’s political climate was spiraling.

    “We are getting hit from so many angles and we have to be very careful we don’t get closer to the cliff. When you fall down there, there is no democracy,” Schwarzenegger said, blaming social media, the mainstream media and the political parties for dividing Americans. “It’s very important that we turn this around.”

    He urged the hundreds of students who attended the event to show that people can disagree politically without demonizing one another.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Millions of dollars of special-election redistricting TV ads scheduled to start airing Tuesday

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    Millions of dollars worth of political TV ads are expected to start airing Tuesday in an effort to sway Californians about a November ballot measure seeking to send more Democrats to Congress and counter President Trump and the GOP agenda, according to television airtime purchases.

    The special-election ballot measure — Prop. 50 — will likely shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives and determine the fate of many of Trump’s far-right policies

    The opposition to the rare California mid-decade redistricting has booked more than $10 million dollars of airtime for ads between Tuesday and Sept. 23 in media markets across the state, according to media buyers who are not affiliated with either campaign. Supporters of the effort have bought at least $2 million in ads starting on Tuesday, a number expected to grow exponentially as they are aggressively trying to secure time in coming weeks on broadcast and cable television.

    “This early start is a bit stealthy on the part of the no side, but has been used as a ploy in past campaigns to try to show strength early and gain advantage by forcing the opposing side to play catch up,” said Sheri Sadler, a veteran Democratic political media operative who is not working for either campaign. “This promises to be an expensive campaign for a special election, especially starting so early.”

    Millions of dollars have already flowed into the nascent campaigns sparring over the Nov. 4 special-election ballot measure that asks voters to set aside the congressional boundaries drawn in 2021 by California’s independent redistricting commission. The panel was created by the state’s voters in 2010 to stop gerrymandering and incumbent protection by both major political parties.

    The campaign will be a sprint — glossy multi-page mailers arrived in Californians’ mailboxes before the state legislature voted in late August to call the special election. Voters will begin receiving mail ballots in early October.

    Redistricting, typically an esoteric process that takes place once a decade following the U.S. Census, is receiving an unusual level of attention because of partisan efforts to tilt control of Congress in next year’s midterm election. Republicans have a narrow edge in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the party that wins control of the White House often loses congressional seats in the following election.

    Earlier this summer, Trump asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to redraw his state’s congressional districts to add five GOP members to the House, setting off a redistricting arms race across the nation. California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an effort to boost the number of Democrats in Congress, negating the Texas gains for Republicans, but it must be approved by voters.

    The coalition opposing the effort is an intriguing mix: former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wealthy Republican donor Charles Munger Jr., former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-San Jose), the chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus, and Gloria Chun Hoo, the president of the League of Women Voters of California.

    Many partisans — in both political parties — opposed independent redistricting when it was championed by Schwarzenegger and Munger in 2010.

    Jessica Millan Patterson, the former state GOP chairwoman who is leading McCarthy’s effort to oppose new congressional boundaries, demurred when asked about the dissonance. Voters, she said, made their choice clear at the ballot box about their preference to have an independent commission draw congressional districts rather than Sacramento politicians.

    “The people of California have spoken,” she said, adding that most voters agree that an independent commission is preferable to partisan politicians drawing districts.

    The “Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” committee that Patterson leads plans on focusing on conservative and right-of-center voters, and will be well funded, she said.

    McCarthy was a prodigious fundraiser while in Congress and his long-time friend, major GOP fundraiser Jeff Miller, is raising money to oppose the ballot measure.

    Schwarzenegger is not part of the McCarthy effort, instead backing the good-government message of the Munger team. Patterson argues that anything the former governor does only brings more attention to their shared goal, even if he isn’t part of their effort.

    “Gov. Schwarzenegger is Gov. Schwarzenegger,” Patterson said, pointing to an X post of the global celebrity wearing a T-shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering” while working out on Aug. 15. “He is a celebrity, a box-office guy. He’s going to make sure reasonable people know that we don’t want to put this power back in Sacramento. He will bring the glitz and glamour, like he always does.”

    Schwarzenegger has long championed political reform. During his final year as governor, he prioritized the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting. Since leaving office, he made good governance a priority at his institute at the University of Southern California and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation.

    “Here are some of the things that are more popular than Congress: hemorrhoids, Nickelback, traffic jams, cockroaches, root canals, colonoscopies, herpes,” Schwarzenegger said in a 2017 Facebook video. “Even herpes, they couldn’t beat herpes in the polls,”

    The former governor is reportedly backing the effort by Munger, the son of a billionaire, who bankrolled the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting in 2010. Munger has donated more than $10 million to an effort opposing the November ballot measure; the organization he funded has booked more than $10 million in television spots through Sept. 23.

    “These ads are the start of our campaign’s effort to communicate directly with voters about the dangers of allowing politicians to choose their voters and abandoning our gold standard citizen-led redistricting process,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Munger-backed Voters First Coalition.

    Supporters of the effort to redraw the districts argued that Republicans are trying to cement GOP control of the nation’s policies.

    “Trump cronies … are spending big to defeat [Prop.] 50 and help Trump rig the 2026 election before a single person [has] voted,” said Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for the campaign. “They are spending big — and early — to trick California voters into allowing Trump to keep total control over the federal government for two more years. “

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Padilla sidesteps questions about a possible run for governor, says he is focused on redistricting

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    SACRAMENTO — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Wednesday brushed aside questions about whether he might jump into California’s 2026 governor’s race but declined to rule out the idea.

    Padilla instead said he was wholly focused on promoting the special election in November when voters will be asked to redraw California’s congressional districts to counter efforts by President Trump and other GOP leaders to keep Republicans in control of Congress.

    “I’m focused and I’d encourage everybody to focus on this Nov. 4 special election,” Padilla said during an interview at a political summit in Sacramento sponsored by Politico.

    The 52-year-old added that the effort to redraw congressional districts, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to similar efforts in GOP-led states, is not solely about the arcane process known as redistricting.

    “My Republican colleagues and especially the White House know how unpopular and damaging what they’re doing is, from gutting Medicare, nutrition assistance programs, really all these other areas of budget cuts to underwrite tax breaks for billionaires,” Padilla said. “So their only hope of staying in power beyond next November is to rig the system.”

    In recent days, Padilla’s name has emerged as a possible candidate to replace Newsom, who cannot run for another term. The field is unsettled, with independent polling conducted after former Vice President Kamala Harris opted not to run for governor showing large numbers of voters are undecided and with no clear front-runner.

    Padilla pointed to his more than quarter-century history of serving Californians at every level of government when asked what might be appealing about the job.

    “I love California, right?” he said. “And I’ve had the privilege and the honor of serving in so many different capacities.”

    In 1999, the then-26-year-old was elected to the Los Angeles City Council. At the time, the MIT grad still lived with his parents — a Mexican-born housekeeper and a short-order cook — in Pacoima.

    Padilla continued his steady climb through the state’s political ranks in the decades that followed, serving in the state Senate and as California secretary of state. Newsom appointed him to fill Harris’ Senate seat in 2020, making him the first Latino to represent California in the Senate, and Padilla was elected to fill a full term in 2022. His current Senate term doesn’t end until 2029, meaning he wouldn’t have to risk his seat to run for governor.

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    Seema Mehta, Julia Wick

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  • Millions of dollars flow into redistricting battle on the November ballot

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    Millions of dollars began flowing into campaigns supporting and opposing an effort to redraw California’s congressional districts on the November ballot, notably $10 million from independent redistricting champion Charles Munger Jr.

    The checks, reported Friday in state campaign finance disclosures, were made on Thursday, the day the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special election to replace the congressional districts drawn by an independent commission in 2021 with new districts that would boost the number of Democrats elected to Congress in next year’s midterm election.

    The move is an effort by California Democrats to counter Texas Republicans’ and President Trump’s efforts to boost the number of GOP members.

    Munger, a GOP donor and the son of a billionaire who was Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting in California. He donated $10 million to the “No on Prop. 50 – Protect Voters First” campaign,” which opposes the proposed redistricting.

    “Charles Munger Jr. is making good on his promise to defend the reforms he passed,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, which opposes the ballot measure and includes Munger.

    A spokesperson for the campaign supporting the redrawing of congressional boundaries accused Munger of trying to boost the GOP under the guise of supporting independent redistricting.

    “It’s no surprise that a billionaire who has given extensively to help Republicans take the house and [former Republican House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy would be joining forces to help Donald Trump steal five House seats and rig the 2026 midterm before a single American has voted,” said Hannah Milgrom, spokesperson for “Yes on 50: the Election Rigging Response Act.” “Prop 50 is America’s best chance to fight back – vote yes on November. 4.”

    The campaign backing the ballot measure received $1 million on Thursday from a powerful labor group, SEIU’s state council; $300,000 from businessman Andrew Hauptman; and a flurry of other donations, according to the California secretary of state’s office. That is on top of the $5.8 million the campaign reported having in the bank as of July 30, including millions of dollars in contributions from House Majority PAC, which is focused on electing Democrats to Congress, and Newsom’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign.

    Redistricting typically happens once a decade after the U.S. census. Trump asked Texas lawmakers to redraw their congressional districts earlier this year, arguing that the GOP was entitled to five more members from the state. In response, California Democrats have pitched new district boundaries that could result in five more Democrats being elected to Congress.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Interactive: How California is reshaping its congressional districts

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    The Democrats, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are hitting back at the Texas Republican lawmakers with a proposed redistricting map of California. The Proposed Congressional Map aims to add five Democratic seats in the upcoming elections.Redistricting, which typically happens every decade as the census updates, has created a new battleground between the Democrats and Republican-led states. President Donald Trump first prompted Republican district representatives in the GOP stronghold of Texas to redraw congressional lines to give the party an advantage in the upcoming elections. What followed was a two-week standoff in which Democratic Texas House representatives fled the state to stall the vote.Texas’ new congressional maps were eventually passed in an 88-52 vote, creating five new Republican-leaning seats.California’s Democratic leaders Thursday moved forward with an effort to change the congressional district maps. California currently has 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; 43 of these seats went to the Democrats, while nine went to the Republicans in the 2024 election.The five California Republicans targeted by the redistricting plan include Reps. Doug LaMalfa in District 1, Kevin Kiley in District 3, David Valadao in District 22, Ken Calvert in District 41 and Darrell Issa in District 48.Each of these five districts is shown in the maps below. See if you can guess how these districts will be redrawn by trying our puzzle game below.

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    The Democrats, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are hitting back at the Texas Republican lawmakers with a proposed redistricting map of California. The Proposed Congressional Map aims to add five Democratic seats in the upcoming elections.

    Redistricting, which typically happens every decade as the census updates, has created a new battleground between the Democrats and Republican-led states.

    President Donald Trump first prompted Republican district representatives in the GOP stronghold of Texas to redraw congressional lines to give the party an advantage in the upcoming elections.

    What followed was a two-week standoff in which Democratic Texas House representatives fled the state to stall the vote.

    Texas’ new congressional maps were eventually passed in an 88-52 vote, creating five new Republican-leaning seats.

    California’s Democratic leaders Thursday moved forward with an effort to change the congressional district maps.

    California currently has 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; 43 of these seats went to the Democrats, while nine went to the Republicans in the 2024 election.

    The five California Republicans targeted by the redistricting plan include Reps. Doug LaMalfa in District 1, Kevin Kiley in District 3, David Valadao in District 22, Ken Calvert in District 41 and Darrell Issa in District 48.

    Each of these five districts is shown in the maps below. See if you can guess how these districts will be redrawn by trying our puzzle game below.

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  • California Republicans push Democrats on transparency, timeline for redistricting

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    SACRAMENTO — California’s push to redraw the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats faced early opposition Tuesday during legislative hearings, a preview of the obstacles ahead for Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies as they try to convince voters to back the effort.

    California Democrats entered the redistricting fray after Republicans in Texas moved to reconfigure their political districts to increase by five the number of GOP members of Congress after the 2026 midterm elections, a move that could sway the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections.

    The proposed map of new districts in California that could go before voters in November could cost as many as five Golden State Republicans their seats in Congress.

    In Sacramento, Republicans criticized Democrats for trying to scrap the independent redistricting process approved by voters in 2010, a change designed to remove self-serving politics and partisan game-playing. GOP lawmakers argued that the public and legislators had little time to review the maps of the proposed congressional districts and questioned who crafted the new districts and bankrolled the effort.

    In an attempt to slow down the push by Democrats, California Republicans filed an emergency petition at the California Supreme Court, arguing that Democrats violated the state Constitution by rushing the bills through the legislature.

    The state Constitution requires lawmakers to introduce non-budget bills 30 days before they are voted on, unless the Legislature waives that rule by a three-fourths majority vote. The bills were introduced Monday through a common process known as “gut and amend,” where lawmakers strip out the language from an older pending bill and replace it with a new proposal.

    The lawsuit said that without the Supreme Court’s intervention, the state could enact “significant new legislation that the public has only seen for, at most, a few days,” according to the lawsuit filed by GOP state Sens. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach and Suzette Martinez Valladares of Acton and Assemblymembers Tri Ta of Westminster and Kathryn Sanchez of Trabuco Canyon.

    Democrats bristled at the questions about their actions, including grilling by reporters and Republicans about who had drawn the proposed congressional districts that the party wants to put before voters.

    “When I go to a restaurant, I don’t need to meet the chef,” said Assembly Elections Committee chair Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz).

    Democrats unveiled their campaign to suspend the independent redistricting commission’s work Thursday, proposed maps of the redrawn districts were submitted to state legislative leaders Friday, and the three bills were introduced in the legislature Monday.

    If passed by a two-thirds vote in both bodies of the legislature and signed by Newsom this week, as expected, the measure will be on the ballot on Nov. 4.

    On Tuesday, lawmakers listened to hours of testimony and debate, frequently engaging in testy exchanges.

    After heated arguing and interrupting during an Assembly Elections Committee hearing, Pellerin admonished Assemblymembers Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) and David Tangipa (R-Clovis).

    “I would like you both to give me a little time and respect,” Pellerin said near the end of a hearing that lasted about five hours.

    Tangipa and the committee’s vice chair, Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo (R-Tulare), repeatedly questioned witnesses about issues that the GOP is likely to continue to raise: the speed with which the legislation is being pushed through, the cost of the special election, the limited opportunity for public comment on the maps, who drew the proposed new districts and who is funding the effort.

    Tangipa voiced concerns that legislators had too little time to review the legislation.

    “That’s insanity, and that’s heartbreaking to the rest of Californians,” Tangipa said. “How can you say you actually care about the people of California?

    Berman dismissed the criticism, saying the bill was five pages long.

    In a Senate elections committee hearing, State Sen. Steve Choi (R-Irvine), the only Republican on the panel, repeatedly pressed Democrats about how the maps had been drawn before they were presented.

    Tom Willis, Newsom’s campaign counsel who appeared as a witness to support the redistricting bills, said the map was “publicly submitted, and then the legislature reviewed it carefully and made sure that it was legally compliant.”

    But, Choi asked, who drew the maps in the first place? Willis said he couldn’t answer, because he “wasn’t a part of that process.”

    In response to questions about why California should change their independent redistricting ethos to respond to potential moves by Texas, state Sen. Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) was blunt.

    “This is a partisan gerrymander,” she said, to counter the impacts of Trump administration policy decisions, from healthcare cuts to immigration raids, that are disproportionately impacting Californians. “That’s what we’re talking about here.”

    Her comments prompted a GOP operative who is aiding the opposition campaign to the ballot measure to say, “It made me salivate.”

    California Common Cause, an ardent supporter of independent redistricting, initially signaled openness to revisiting the state’s independent redistricting rules because they would not “call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarianism.”

    But on Tuesday, the group announced its opposition to a state Senate bill.

    “it would create significant rollbacks in voter protections,” the group said in a statement, arguing that the legislation would result in reduced in-person voting, less opportunities for underrepresented communities to cast ballots and dampens opportunities for public input. “These changes to the Elections Code … would hinder full voter participation, with likely disproportionate harm falling to already underrepresented Californians.”

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    Seema Mehta, Laura J. Nelson

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  • To counter Texas, California lawmakers take up plan to redraw congressional districts

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    SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Monday kicked off the process to redraw the state’s congressional districts, an extraordinary action they said was necessary to neutralize efforts by President Trump and Texas Republicans to increase the number of GOP lawmakers in Congress.

    If approved by state lawmakers this week, Californians will vote on the ballot measure, labeled Proposition 50, in a special election in November.

    At a news conference unveiling the legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said they agreed with Gov. Gavin Newsom that California must respond to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the 2026 midterms by working to reduced by half the number of Republicans in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

    They said doing so is essential to stymieing the president’s far-right agenda.

    “I want to make one thing very clear, I’m not happy to be here. We didn’t choose this fight. We don’t want this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park). “But with our democracy on the line, we cannot run away from this fight, and when the dust settles on election day, we will win.”

    Republicans accused Democrats of trying to subvert the will of the voters, who passed independent redistricting 15 years ago, for their own partisan goals.

    “The citizens seized back control of the power from the politicians in 2010,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), flanked by GOP legislators and signs in the Capitol rotunda that said, “Rigged map” and “Defend fair elections.”

    “Let me be very clear,” DeMaio said. “Gavin Newsom and other politicians have been lying in wait, with emphasis on lying … to seize back control.”

    After Trump urged Texas to redraw its congressional districts to add five new GOP members to Congress, Newsom and California Democrats began calling to temporarily reconfigure the current congressional district boundaries, which were drawn by the voter-approved independent redistricting commission in 2021.

    Other states are also now considering redrawing their congressional districts, escalating the political battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressional districts are typically reconfigured once every decade after the U.S. census.

    Newsom, other Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders launched a campaign supporting the redrawing of California’s congressional districts on Thursday, and proposed maps were sent to state legislative leaders on Friday.

    The measures that lawmakers will take up this week would:

    • Give Californians the power to amend the state Constitution and approve new maps, drawn by Democrats, that would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections, if any GOP-led states approve their own maps.
    • Provide funding for the November special election.
    • Return the state to a voter-approved independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional districts after the 2030 census.

    Whereas Texas and several other GOP-led states are considering an unusual mid-decade redistricting to keep the Republican Party’s hold on Congress, Ohio is an anomaly. If its congressional districts are not approved on a bipartisan basis, they are valid for only two general elections and can then be redrawn.

    McGuire said California would go forward if Ohio does.

    “The state of Ohio has made it clear that they are wanting to be able to proceed. They’re one of the few states in the United States of America that actually allow for … mid-decade redistricting,” he said. “We firmly believe that they should cool it, pull back, because if they do, so will California.”

    Republicans responded by calling for a federal investigation into the California Democratic redistricting plan, and vowed to file multiple lawsuits in state and federal court, including two this week.

    “We’re going to litigate this every step of the way, but we believe that this will also be rejected at the ballot box, in the court of public opinion,” DeMaio said.

    He also called for a 10-year ban on holding elected office for state legislators who vote in support of calling the special election, although he did not say how he would try to do that.

    McGuire dismissed the criticism and threats of legal action, saying the Republicans were more concerned about political self-preservation than the will of California voters or the rule of law.

    “California Republicans are now clutching their pearls because of self-interest. Not one California Republican spoke up in the Legislature, in the House, when Texas made the decision to be able to eliminate five historically Black and brown congressional districts. Not one,” he said. “What I would say: Spend more time on the problem. The problem is Donald Trump.”

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    Seema Mehta, Laura J. Nelson

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  • The Special Election That Could Give Democrats Hope for November

    The Special Election That Could Give Democrats Hope for November

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    In late 2021, Tom Suozzi made an announcement that exasperated Democratic Party leaders: The third-term representative would give up a reelection bid for his highly competitive New York House district to mount a long-shot primary challenge against Governor Kathy Hochul.

    Suozzi got trounced, but the ripple effects of his ill-fated run extended far beyond his Long Island district. Democrats ended up losing their narrow majority in the House, in part because the seat Suozzi vacated went to a little-known Republican named George Santos. He’s not so little-known anymore. Nor is he in Congress, having been expelled in December after his colleagues discovered that his stated biography was a fiction and that his campaign was an alleged criminal enterprise.

    Steve Israel: How a perfectly normal New York suburb elected a con man

    In a special election next week, Suozzi will try to reclaim the seat he abandoned—and bring the Democrats one step closer to recapturing the House. He’s made amends with party leaders (including Hochul), but he’s not apologizing. “I don’t regret any of my decisions,” Suozzi told me recently. “When things don’t work out, that’s the way it is.”

    A pro-business moderate, Suozzi helped start the cross-party Problem Solvers Caucus in the House after Donald Trump won the presidency. He told me that his penchant for bipartisanship makes him “a very poor candidate” in a Democratic primary—he’s now lost two such gubernatorial campaigns by more than 50 points—but a much better one in a general election.

    Officials in both parties give Suozzi a slight edge; he has more money and is much better known than his GOP opponent, Mazi Pilip, a county legislator who spent her teenage years in Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. But Suozzi is trying to run as an underdog, shunning a Democratic brand that he believes has been soiled on Long Island by voter frustration with the migrant crisis, the high cost of living, and turmoil overseas. He’s kept his distance from President Joe Biden, who, according to both Democratic and Republican strategists, is no more popular in the district than Trump. “If I run my campaign to say, ‘I’m Tom Suozzi. I’m the Democrat, and my opponent’s the Republican,’ I lose this race,” Suozzi said at a rally before members of the carpenters’ union on Saturday.

    The third congressional district borders the blue bastion of New York City and includes a sliver of Queens, but Republicans have clobbered Democrats across Long Island in recent years. Tuesday’s special election represents the Democrats’ first attempt to claw back some of that territory and test out messages that they hope can resonate in suburban swing districts across the country this fall.

    Like other Democrats, Suozzi is emphasizing his support for abortion rights, an issue that has helped the party limit GOP gains since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But he’s also pitching himself as a bipartisan dealmaker—his campaign slogan is “Let’s fix this!” Suozzi is betting that voters are angered as much by congressional inaction on issues such as immigration and border security as they are by Biden or his policies. If he’s right, the GOP’s rejection this week of a bipartisan border deal that its leaders had initially demanded will play into his hands.

    Whether Suozzi’s campaign proves effective next week will offer clues about the swing districts that could determine control of Congress. A win could point the way for Democratic candidates to redirect attacks on Biden’s record and ease fears that the border impasse could be an insurmountable liability this fall. But his defeat in a district that ought to be winnable for Democrats would suggest that the party is in real trouble as the general election begins.

    Next week’s election will also serve as a test of whether Democrats can turn out voters for a candidate who, like Biden, doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm.

    Read: Is Biden toast?

    Suozzi, 61, is a familiar figure on Long Island; he became a mayor at 31 and then won two terms as a county executive overseeing a population of 1.3 million people in Nassau County. But he’s also suffered his share of defeats. Eliot Spitzer beat him by more than 60 points in the 2006 primary for governor. Suozzi then lost two campaigns for county executive before winning a House seat in 2016. “He felt that he was destined to be president of the United States,” former Representative Peter King, a Republican who served alongside Suozzi in the House and has known him for decades, told me. “Tom started off as the young superstar, and then suddenly you become old.”

    On Saturday, local labor organizers amassed several hundred members of the carpenters’ union in a banquet hall for the rally. Most of them had been bused from outside the district, and many of them weren’t exactly excited to be there. “We’re here under protest,” one union member grumbled as I searched for actual Suozzi supporters in the crowd. The murmuring laborers showed so little interest in the speakers who were touting Suozzi that the candidate at one point awkwardly grabbed the microphone and implored them to pay attention.

    Some of the attendees who did live in Nassau County weren’t thrilled about the Democrat, repeating attacks from GOP ads that have been airing nonstop in recent weeks. “Suozzi’s terrible on the border,” said Jackson Klyne, 44, who told me he didn’t plan to vote for either Suozzi or Pilip next week. A Biden voter in 2020, Klyne said that “it would probably be Trump” for him in November.

    Suozzi must also win over Democrats who are unhappy that he abandoned his congressional seat to challenge Hochul, leading to the election of Santos. “It was a dangerous choice,” Stephanie Visconti, a 47-year-old attorney from New Hyde Park, told me. “I thought it was self-serving.”

    Visconti volunteers with Engage Long Island, an affiliate of the progressive organizing group Indivisible that endorsed a primary challenger to Suozzi for Congress in 2020. But she fully backs him now; on Saturday, she and other members of the group were knocking on doors for his campaign. “He is the right candidate for right now,” she said, citing the need for Democrats to win back control of the House. “Looking at the global big picture, this for us is the first step toward making bigger and broader changes.”

    Biden carried the district in 2020, but Republicans have been ascendant on Long Island ever since. They swept the House races in the midterms and won big local races again last year. Santos defeated the Democratic nominee in the third district by seven points in 2022, and Suozzi isn’t sure he would have won had he been on the ballot. When I asked him what he’d say to people who argue that he bears some responsibility for Santos’s election, Suozzi replied, “‘Thank you for your endorsement, because you’re saying I’m the only person who could have won.’”

    Republican leaders are relying on Biden’s unpopularity and their party’s prodigious turnout machine to keep the seat. They picked Pilip as their candidate—the special election had no primary—in part because in the aftermath of October 7, they hoped that her connection to Israel would resonate in a district where about 20 percent of the electorate is Jewish. (Suozzi is also a longtime supporter of Israel. Within a week of Pilip’s selection, he traveled there to meet with the families of hostages held by Hamas.)

    With only a few exceptions, Pilip has kept a low profile for a political newcomer. She’s agreed to just one debate with Suozzi, three days before the election, and she hasn’t held many publicly promoted campaign events. (Her campaign did not make her available for an interview.) Nassau County Republicans scheduled their biggest rally of the election for a Saturday, when Pilip, who observes the Sabbath, would not be able to attend. She filmed a short video to be played in her absence. “The strategy is intentional,” Steve Israel, a Democrat who represented the third district in the House for 16 years, told me. “She is untested, and Republicans fear that she will say something that could effectively lose the election. They’d rather take their lumps for hiding her.”

    That approach could be risky given the district’s experience with Santos. “We’ve already had someone we didn’t know. We don’t want that again,” Judi Bosworth, a Democratic former town supervisor, said as she campaigned with Suozzi.

    Abortion has been a central issue in the race; Democratic ads have warned that a vote for Pilip could lead to a national ban. But in the closing weeks, the migrant crisis has come to the fore. GOP commercials blame Suozzi and Biden for the “invasion” at the southern border, and Suozzi has criticized Pilip for opposing the bipartisan border-security deal unveiled this week in the Senate. Although national issues are dominating the race, neither candidate wants to be associated with their party’s leaders in Washington. Pilip, until recently a registered Democrat, has declined to say whether she voted for Trump in 2020 and has yet to endorse his comeback bid. When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke at a rally for Suozzi on Saturday, the Democrat’s campaign did not invite the press. The day before, the Pilip campaign kept quiet about an appearance by Speaker Mike Johnson.

    The outcome next week could have an immediate impact in the narrowly divided House, where Republicans have only a three-vote majority. Earlier this week, Republicans fell just one vote short of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; a Suozzi victory would likely keep it on hold, at least for the time being. But Suozzi wants to make a deeper impression in a second stint in Congress. He has campaigned not as a dispassionate centrist but as an impatient negotiator anxious to get back to the bargaining table.

    He had wanted a bigger job altogether, but he assured me that he would not be bored by a return to the House. I asked him what message his victory would send. He rattled off a list of bipartisan deals he wants to strike—on the border, Ukraine, housing, climate change, and more. “If I win,” he said, “I can go to my colleagues in Washington and say, ‘Wake up. This is what the people want.’”

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    Russell Berman

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