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Tag: Democrats

  • Politically connected Democrat Jonathan Kinloch avoided mandatory jail sentence after third drunk driving arrest

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    Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority

    Wayne County Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch.

    Wayne County Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch, a longtime political activist and Detroit Democrat, never served a 30-day jail sentence after getting busted for his third drunk driving in a little over three years in 2003, Metro Times has learned.

    Records show that a judge and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office mishandled Kinloch’s sentencing, allowing him to avoid jail even though state law required him to spend at least 30 days behind bars. From the beginning, the case was riddled with errors, eyebrow-raising decisions, and false promises.

    While the arrest was 20 years ago, the case raises serious questions about whether political connections may have shielded Kinloch from consequences that ordinary defendants face.

    Kinloch is the brother of Detroit mayoral candidate Solomon Kinloch, the senior pastor of Detroit-based megachurch Triumph Church. Solomon Kinloch is facing Detroit City Council Mary Sheffield in the November general election after coming in second place in the Aug. 5 primary. Residency questions have plagued his campaign after moving from Oakland County to Detroit in March 2024. He said he was living with his brother in an upscale condo complex downtown.

    The strange case involving Jonathan Kinloch began on Aug. 14, 2003, when Detroit police pulled him over and discovered he was drunk and driving with a suspended license. For reasons that still remain unclear, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office didn’t charge Kinloch until February 2005, a year-and-a-half after he was pulled over. He was eventually charged with a felony count of third-offense drunk driving and a misdemeanor count of driving with a suspended license and faced up to five years in prison.

    In a May 26, 2005 letter to the prosecutor, Kinloch requested “a lesser charge,” saying he was “embarrassed and sorry for my horrible choices” and had received out-patient treatment for substance abuse.

    “If the spirit and intent of our drinking laws are to both punish, rehabilitate and stop individuals from drinking and operating a motor vehicle, then it has worked for me,” he wrote.

    At the time, Kinloch was serving on the Detroit Board of Zoning Appeals and was running for a seat on the Detroit school board, which he would win in November 2005.

    In exchange for him pleading guilty to a second-offense misdemeanor charge, the prosecutor’s office dropped the third-offense charge and the misdemeanor for driving with a suspended license.

    Still, state law requires a minimum 30-day sentence for someone convicted of driving drunk for a third time, even if the charge is reduced.

    “If you plead guilty, or if you are found guilty, you will go to jail for at least 30 days,” William Maze, who describes himself as the state’s “leading drunk driving defense attorney,” wrote on his website. “Recently, even the Wayne County Jail has been holding people for the full term. Worse still, many courts impose longer terms. Sixty days for a garden variety OWI 3rd is not unusual, and some judges impose a six month sentence.”

    In September 2005, Wayne County Circuit Judge Vonda R. Evans sentenced Kinloch to 30 days in jail and six months of non-reporting probation. During the hearing, Kinloch said he no longer drinks and pledged “there will be no problems with me, at all,” according to transcripts of the sentencing hearing.

    Evans responded, “I believe that.”

    Instead of ordering him to jail at the sentencing hearing, which is the standard practice, Evans agreed to Kinloch’s request to serve his jail time after his probation was over in September 2005. Then, the judge said, he could serve his jail time “every other weekend.”

    “In light of the fact that you’re taking a new job, this court believes that there’s a necessity that we need to have him there,” Evans said. “And that’s with the city. And so, therefore, the court is going to put that at the end.”

    “You’re going to do this 30 days,” the judge told Kinloch.

    She added, “You have to do that. That is statutorily required.”

    But that’s not what happened. At the urging of the probation department in January 2006, Evans dropped the jail requirement, allowing Kinloch to walk free.

    Then in March 2007, after a Detroit Free Press reporter inquired about the lack of jail time, Wayne Country Prosecutor Kym Worthy insisted her office was never notified of the hearing in which Kinloch’s jail sentence was waived. A day before the article was published, Assistant Prosecutor Paul Bernier filed a motion urging the judge to enforce the sentencing agreement or withdraw the plea deal.

    “A Court that accepts a plea agreement must honor said plea agreement entered into by the Defendant and the Prosecution or allow the party to withdraw the plea,” Assistant Prosecutor Jamie Wittenberg wrote to the court.

    In a follow-up filing in August 2007, the prosecutor’s office said it “was unable to object to the order of termination” and therefore has a right to intervene.

    In January 2008, Evans acknowledged the problem with waiving Kinloch’s sentence and agreed with prosecutors that they could require Kinloch to serve his jail time or withdraw the plea agreement.

    But despite the prosecutors’ harsh language and insistence on forcing Kinloch to serve his sentence, they never followed through, allowing him to dodge jail time after the media stopped asking questions, Metro Times has discovered.

    Suspecting “fraud may have been committed in court,” community activist Robert Davis sought police and court records under the Freedom of Information Act in late July. After getting no response from prosecutors, Detroit police, or the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office within the required 15 business days, Davis filed a lawsuit this week in hopes of forcing the records to be disclosed, but that may not happen.

    “Something nefarious is going on here,” Davis tells Metro Times. “The judge entered an order granting the prosecutor’s motion. Then the prosecutor’s office did nothing.”

    He adds, “Somebody committed fraud on the court. It’s quite obvious.”

    Davis also pointed out that Kinloch’s first name is misspelled in court filings — “Jonathon” — which he says makes it conveniently difficult to find his case online or in court records.

    Kinloch, 56, tells Metro Times he pulled no political strings but was relieved he didn’t have to serve his jail sentence.

    “It was a scary time, and it was 20 years ago, and I did everything the court required of me,” Kinloch says. “The probation department said I had fulfilled my obligations and recommended that [jail time] be deleted from my sentence.”

    Asked about the prosecutors’ role in the case, Kinloch says his lawyer told him that Worthy’s office could not intervene after the judge waived the jail time.

    “I don’t know,” he says. “From what I was told, there was nothing she could do.”

    But there was, and Worthy’s office didn’t act.

    It’s unclear why no action was taken because Worthy’s office declined to comment, citing the FOIA litigation with Davis. But Metro Times’ questions have nothing to do with the search for public records.

    On Friday, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory C. Blackburn denied Davis’s request for records, saying, “We were unable to locate any documents related to your request.”

    City spokesman John Roach says Detroit’s law and police departments plan to disclose the records if they still exist, but finding them may not be easy.

    “DPD is in the process of researching this to see what if any records related to this incident still exist, given it took place more than two decades ago,” Roach tells Metro Times. “Once they have the answer, they share with the Law Department whatever they find — or don’t find — for a response. The city processes about 8,000 FOIA requests a year, the majority of them related to DPD.”

    After Davis’s lawsuit was filed, the sheriff’s office responded that it had no records showing that Kinloch spent time in jail.

    According to the judge, Kinloch spent just three days in jail.

    Kinloch was appointed to the Wayne County Board of Commissioners in January 2021 to replace the late Jewel Ware. He was elected to a four-year term last year.

    Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan appointed Kinloch to the Detroit Board of Water Commissioners in April 2018, a position he still holds. Kinloch is also the chairman of the Democratic Party’s 13th Congressional District, chairman of the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority, a member of the Wayne County Housing Commission, and a vice chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.

    He previously served as a liaison to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and held seats on the Detroit Library Commission, Wayne County Planning and Development, and Wayne County Board of Canvassers.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • A Small Army of Overpaid TikTokers Is Not Going to Save the Democratic Party

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    By all accounts, the Democratic Party should be riding high right now.

    Its political enemy, the Trump administration, has ushered in an era of dysfunction and corruption at the federal level that is unparalleled in the modern era. Under the guise of downsizing and modernizing the federal government, Trump and his cronies have rolled out a string of bizarre policies and initiatives that are deeply unpopular with a majority of the American people—whether that’s screwing with social benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, instituting a tariff regime that is clocking small businesses, or threatening to ruin America’s health agency.

    For any oppositional party, such a floundering, faux-pas-laden agenda would seem to present a political opportunity that is just begging to be exploited.

    And yet, somehow, the Democrats have never been more unpopular. A slew of recent polls have consistently found that Democrats are increasingly viewed as weak, ineffectual, and “lost” by their own voters. At the same time, the party is suffering a registration crisis, as large numbers of voters seem to be fleeing the party. The consensus seems to be that the Democrats stand for nothing, can get nothing done, and are incapable of standing up to Trump.

    The apparent crisis of faith plaguing the party’s base would explain this week’s story from Wired, which revealed an alleged secretive arrangement between a group of social media influencers and a Democrat-aligned dark money group. The influencers, many of whom have substantial followings on sites like TikTok and Instagram, were apparently offered $8k a month to amplify “Democratic messaging on the internet,” the report claims. Wired writes:

    Democrats hope that the secretive Chorus Creator Incubator Program, funded by a powerful liberal dark money group called The Sixteen Thirty Fund, might tip the scales. The program kicked off last month, and creators involved were told by Chorus that over 90 influencers were set to take part. Creators told WIRED that the contract stipulated they’d be kicked out and essentially cut off financially if they even so much as acknowledged that they were part of the program. Some creators also raised concerns about a slew of restrictive clauses in the contract.

    …According to copies of the contract viewed by WIRED that creators signed, the influencers are not allowed to disclose their relationship with Chorus or The Sixteen Thirty Fund—or functionally, that they’re being paid at all.

    STF has since disputed parts of the report, if not the part about a left-leaning influencer operation. When reached for comment, an STF spokesperson said that Chorus was doing “crucial work to spread a pro-democracy message to Americans” and seemed to deny parts of the Wired report, specifically claiming that creators had “always been encouraged to talk about their involvement in the program.” Whatever the exact stipulations of the contract, and despite the fact that the report doesn’t mention any direct ties between the operation and the DNC, it doesn’t take much to see this sort of quiet web marketing as the future of the Dems’ online campaign strategy.

    Oh, how the mighty have fallen. At one point, the Democrats were seen as the frontrunners in the political race to dominate the internet. Indeed, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign is classically thought of as a masterclass in digital marketing—one that leveraged social media and other online tools not merely as a fundraising method, but also as a way to recruit and retain canvassers in ways that had never been demonstrated before.

    Of course, Obama’s breakout campaign took place when Facebook was only four years old and Twitter (which was still called Twitter back then) had barely been born. A lot has changed since then, and, in the interim, conservatives have fought hard to close the digital skills gap. In the immediate aftermath of Obama’s election, the GOP scrambled to figure out what it had done wrong. “The left was far ahead of us,” said Erik Telford, a strategist for the conservative Americans for Prosperity group, in 2009. “The efforts that Obama put into internet campaigning and what he accomplished were extraordinary,” the rightwing operative admitted.

    Since then, the GOP and its allies have proven increasingly adept at leveraging digital platforms to their advantage. It has benefited from a constellation of politicos and private sector actors who are simpatico with its agenda. Steve Bannon, the mastermind behind Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, notoriously leveraged a psychological warfare contractor (Cambridge Analytica) to target potential voters with politicized messaging. Similarly, during this past election, Trump enjoyed the endorsement of Elon Musk, who owns X, a platform that was roiled by unhinged MAGA propaganda in the lead-up to last year’s election.

    Now, it can easily be said that MAGA or MAGA-adjacent forces control large portions of the online information ecosystem in which most Americans “live.” Whether it’s the male-oriented podcast circuit that helped Trump get elected (thanks Joe Rogan!), an ecosystem of unhinged alternative media sites (sites like Rumble and Kick that basically act as the web equivalent of AM radio), Fox News, or several social media platforms that act as vectors for rightwing messaging (e.g., X, Truth Social, Parler), it’s clear that conservative forces have an advantage.

    By contrast, what novel digital communications strategy have the Democrats come up with since 2008? You would be hard-pressed to think of an answer. Thus, the recent foray into murky influencer marketing—a strategy that, for all intents and purposes, seems bereft of imagination or ingenuity. Yet to focus too much on the means by which Democrats get their message across is to distract from the real problem the party actually faces: they have no message.

    Or, at the very least, the message that the party has doesn’t seem to be one that its voters want to hear. Case in point: Critics have lately claimed that all Democrats need to beat their conservative foes is “their own Joe Rogan.” Yet a recent interview conducted by comedian podcaster Adam Friedland, who has sometimes been dubbed the “Joe Rogan of the left,” didn’t offer much hope on that front.

    The interview was with Richie Torres, who, in happier times, was championed as the future face of the broadly geriatric political party. Lately, however, there’s been significant daylight between Torres’ ideals and those of the party’s base. A report this week found that Torres, a self-described “pro-Israel” democrat, was urging the White House to “speed up bomb deliveries to Israel” at the very same time that he was “adding defense contractors like Lockheed and Northrop to his portfolio” (the companies that, you know, make most of those bombs). During this week’s interview, Friedland pelted Torres with questions about the death toll in Gaza, to which Torres, sounding really bored, just kept saying “war is a tragedy” with about the same emotional register you’d use to order a sandwich at Subway. Unlike Democrats’ alleged efforts to astroturf TikTok with glowing support, the Friedland interview went viral.

    In short, even when the “Joe Rogan of the left” gets involved, Democrats crumble when asked to defend their policies. If you can’t convincingly answer a simple question like, “Is killing innocent civilians a bad thing?” there isn’t much hope for your success in long-form interviews.

    Democrats have struggled to answer basic questions about their policies because to do so would expose the fact that the party is deeply out of step with its base. Indeed, the Democratic Party line continues to be unequivocal support for Israel, despite the fact that a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that a whopping 77 percent of Democrats believe it is committing genocide in Gaza. The Democrats also still seem deeply uncomfortable criticizing America’s billionaire class, despite the fact that another recent poll found that 54 percent of liberal Democrats don’t believe billionaires should even exist. A recent poll of registered Dems found that a vast majority view Bernie Sanders favorably (he is more popular than AOC, Chuck Schumer, and Gavin Newsom and, according to another poll, second only to the Pope and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in national popularity) but, as far as can be discerned, the Democratic Party leadership views him as a meddlesome pariah to be diverted and quashed at every turn.

    Whether they’re using an MSNBC segment, a bullhorn, a TikTok influencer, or simply standing on a street corner shouting, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for Democrats to get voters to accept messages that they fundamentally disagree with.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • The Magic Phrase Behind Donald Trump’s Power Grab

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    Hi, I’m Tim Marchman, WIRED’s director of politics, science, and security, and I’m filling in for Jake this week.

    On August 7, the White House issued an executive order giving political appointees authority over federal grant-making. This made the nonpartisan experts who have long decided how agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation direct funds subordinate to, well, commissars.

    Nestled in the order was a phrase that’s become increasingly familiar to me over the past seven months as I’ve read piles of boring documents issuing from the administration, trying to figure out what it’s doing.

    “Discretionary awards must, where applicable,” it read, “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

    This phrase, and variants, come up a lot. It has popped up everywhere from the White House’s description of the Office of Presidential Scheduling (it works to “create an agenda that strategically advances the President’s priorities,” apparently) to a website where the Coast Guard explains that its secretary is assigned to “fully align the Service to execute the President’s priorities.”

    “It’s become a sort of all-purpose catchphrase from this administration,” says Zachary Price, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, “and they’re also particularly assertive about claiming this power of the unitary executive branch to direct how different agencies perform their functions. So it fits into the general style of this administration, of wanting pretty strong top-down control.”

    Examples abound. A February executive order, for instance, said that going forward, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would “review independent regulatory agencies’ obligations for consistency with the President’s policies and priorities.” An April memo from the acting administrator of the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) offering guidance to bureaucrats at affected agencies on implementing the order explains what happens when a significant regulatory action is submitted to OIRA for review: “Executive Branch reviewers review the materials for consistency with the President’s priorities, adherence to statutory requirements, and analytic cohesion.”

    What exactly the president’s priorities are go unstated; the emphasis the president’s paper pushers put on them, though, raises questions about what happens when they conflict with those of others—including the authors of the Constitution.

    The Importance of Showerheads

    Talk about the president’s priorities certainly didn’t originate with President Donald Trump. His predecessors, including in the Biden and Obama administrations, used the phrase, and setting priorities for the part of the federal government they oversee is a central part of the president’s job.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t something new in the expansive use of the phrase and its variants, though, or that there aren’t issues with defining the job of officials throughout the executive branch as intuiting the priorities of a man who on a given day may be focusing on the Cracker Barrel logo, Roger Clemens’ Hall of Fame case, or his long-standing feud with Rosie O’Donnell.

    “Agencies like the Coast Guard have a strategic priority-setting process,” says Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School. “It isn’t normally a bunch of officials sitting around and wondering what the president thinks today. It’s a really weird instruction.”

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    Tim Marchman

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  • On U.S. direction under Trump, Californians split sharply along partisan lines, poll finds

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    California voters are heavily divided along partisan lines when it comes to President Trump, with large majorities of Democrats and unaffiliated voters disapproving of him and believing the country is headed in the wrong direction under his leadership, and many Republicans feeling the opposite, according to a new poll conducted for The Times.

    The findings are remarkably consistent with past polling on the Republican president in the nation’s most populous blue state, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll.

    “If you look at all the job ratings we’ve done about President Trump — and this carries back all the way through his first term — voters have pretty much maintained the same posture,” DiCamillo said. “Voters know who he is.”

    The same partisan divide also showed up in the poll on a number of hot-button issues, such as Medicaid cuts and tariffs, DiCamillo said — with Democrats “almost uniformly” opposed to Trump’s agenda and Republicans “pretty much on board with what Trump is doing.”

    Asked whether the sweeping tariffs that Trump has imposed on international trading partners have had a “noticeable negative impact” on their family spending, 71% of Democrats said yes, while 76% of Republicans said no.

    “If you’re a Republican, you tend to discount the impacts — you downplay them or you just ignore them,” while Democrats “tend to blame everything on Trump,” DiCamillo said.

    Asked whether they were confident that the Trump administration would provide California with the nearly $40 billion in wildfire relief aid it has requested in response to the devastating L.A.-area fires in January, 93% of Democrats said they were not confident — compared with the 43% of Republicans who said they were confident.

    In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, the effect is that Trump fared terribly in the poll overall, just as he has in recent presidential votes in the state.

    The poll — conducted Aug. 11-17 with 4,950 registered voters interviewed — found 69% of likely California voters disapproved of Trump, with 62% strongly disapproving, while 29% approved of him. A similar majority, 68%, said they believed the country is headed in the wrong direction, while 26% said it’s headed in the right direction.

    Whereas 90% of Democrats and 75% of unaffiliated voters said the country is on the wrong track, just 20% of Republicans felt that way, the poll found.

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the poll.

    Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the findings prove Trump’s agenda “is devastating communities across California who are dealing with the harmful, real life consequences” of the president’s policies.

    “The Trump Administration does not represent the views of the vast majority of Californians and it’s why Trump has chosen California to push the limits of his constitutional power,” Padilla said. “As more Americans across the nation continue to feel the impacts of his destructive policies, public support will continue to erode.”

    G. Cristina Mora, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, or IGS, said the findings were interesting, especially in light of other recent polling for The Times that found slightly more nuanced Republican impressions — and more wariness — when it comes to Trump’s immigration agenda and tactics.

    On his overall approval and on other parts of his agenda, including the tariffs and Medicaid cuts, “the strength of the partisanship is very clear,” Mora said.

    Cuts to Medicaid

    Voters in the state are similarly divided when it comes to recent decisions on Medicaid health insurance for low-income residents, the poll found. The state’s version is known as Medi-Cal.

    For instance, Californians largely disapprove of new work requirements for Medicaid and Medi-Cal recipients under the Big Beautiful Bill that Trump championed and congressional Republicans recently passed into law, the poll found.

    The bill requires most Medicaid recipients ages 18 to 64 to work at least 80 hours per month in order to continue receiving benefits. Republicans trumpeted the change as holding people accountable and safeguarding against abuses of federal taxpayer dollars, while Democrats denounced it as a threat to public health that would strip millions of vulnerable Americans of their health insurance.

    The poll found 61% of Californians disapproved of the change, with 43% strongly disapproving of it, while 36% approved of it, with 21% strongly approving of it. Voters were sharply divided along party lines, however, with 80% of Republicans approving of the changes and 85% of Democrats disapproving of them.

    Californians also disapproved — though by a smaller margin — of a move by California Democrats and Gov. Gavin Newsom to help close a budget shortfall by barring undocumented immigrant adults from newly enrolling in Medi-Cal benefits.

    A slight majority of poll respondents, or 52%, said they disapproved of the new restriction, with 17% strongly disapproving of it. The poll found 43% of respondents approved of the change, including 30% who strongly approved of it.

    Among Democrats, 77% disapproved of the change. Among Republicans, 87% approved of it. Among voters with no party preference, 52% disapproved.

    More than half the poll respondents — 57% — said neither they nor their immediate family members receive Medi-Cal benefits, while 35% said they did. Of those who receive Medi-Cal, two-thirds — or 67% — said they were very or somewhat worried about losing, or about someone in their immediate family losing, their coverage due to changes by the Trump administration.

    Nadereh Pourat, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, said there is historical evidence to show what is going to happen next under the changes — and it’s not good.

    The work requirement will undoubtedly result in people losing health coverage, just as thousands did when Arkansas implemented a similar requirement years ago, she said.

    When people lose coverage, the cost of preventative care goes up and they generally receive less of it, she said. “If the doctor’s visit competes with food on the table or rent, then people are going to skip those primary care visits,” she said — and often “end up in the emergency room” instead.

    And that’s more expensive not just for them, but also for local and state healthcare systems, she said.

    Cuts to high-speed rail

    Californians also are heavily divided over the state’s efforts to build a high-speed rail line through the Central Valley, after the Trump administration announced it was clawing back $4 billion in promised federal funding.

    The project was initially envisioned as connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2026, but officials have since set new goals of connecting Bakersfield to Merced by 2030. The project is substantially over budget, and Trump administration officials have called in a “boondoggle.”

    The poll found that 49% of Californians support the project, with 28% of them strongly in favor of it. It found 42% oppose the project, including 28% who strongly oppose it.

    Among Democrats, 66% were in favor of the project. Among Republicans, 77% were opposed. Among voters with no party preference, 49% were in favor while 39% were opposed.

    In Los Angeles County, 54% of voters were in favor of the project continuing, while 58% of voters in the Bay Area were in favor. In the Central Valley, 51% of voters were opposed, compared with 41% in favor.

    State Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José), who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, said political rhetoric around the project has clearly had an effect on how voters feel about it, and that is partly because state leaders haven’t done enough to lay out why the project makes sense economically.

    “Healthy skepticism is a good thing, especially when you’re dealing with billions of dollars,” he said. “It’s on legislators and the governor right now in California to lay out a strategy that you can’t poke a lot of holes in, and that hasn’t been the case in the past.”

    Cortese said he started life as an orchard farmer in what is now Silicon Valley, knows what major public infrastructure investments can mean for rural communities such as those in the Central Valley, and will be hyperfocused on that message moving forward.

    “There is no part of California that I know of that’s been waiting for more economic development than Bakersfield. Probably second is Fresno,” he said.

    He said he also will be stressing to local skeptics of the project that supporting the Trump administration taking $4 billion away from California would be a silly thing to do no matter their politics. Conservative local officials who understand that will be “key to help us turn the tide,” he said.

    Last month, California’s high-speed rail authority sued the Trump administration over the withdrawal of funds. The state is also suing the Trump administration over various changes to Medicaid, over Trump’s tariffs and over immigration enforcement tactics.

    Mora said the sharp divide among Democrats and Republicans on Trump and his agenda called to mind other recent polling that showed many voters immediately changed their views of the economy after Trump took office — with Republicans suddenly feeling more optimistic, and Democrats more pessimistic.

    It’s all a reflection of our modern, hyperpartisan politics, she said, where people’s perceptions — including about their own economic well-being — are “tied now much more closely to ideas about who’s in power.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Colorado’s legislature has filled a third of budget shortfall by slashing tax breaks. Here’s what comes next.

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    More than $250 million down, another $530 million to go.

    That’s how much of a projected $783 million state budget hole the Colorado legislature filled by the time a special session called to address the impact of the federal tax bill ended Tuesday afternoon — and the larger amount that still remains. Erasing the rest of the red ink will fall to Gov. Jared Polis, who plans to rebalance this year’s budget in the coming days through a mix of cuts to state funding and a big dip into the rainy-day fund.

    Over six days, the legislature’s majority Democrats fulfilled their part of a plan worked out with the governor’s office: to pass legislation that is expected to generate enough revenue to close about a third of the shortfall projected for the state’s budget in the current fiscal year, which began July 1. They ended tax breaks and found other ways to offset declining state income tax revenue, while leaving spending cuts largely for Polis to decide.

    “What we did here in this special session is soften the blow,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who chairs the legislature’s budget committee. “But when the federal government cuts $1.2 billion in revenue from the state with a stroke of a pen, after we’ve already cut $1.2 billion (from the budget) in the regular session, that’s a tough deficit to come back from in a way that doesn’t impact the people of Colorado.”

    The special session ended with 11 bills going to Polis for final approval. Five sought to fill the budget gap, largely by ending tax incentives for businesses and high-income earners.

    The single largest revenue-raising measure, House Bill 1004, will auction off tax credits that can be claimed in future tax years for a discount. Backers expected that bill to bring in an additional $100 million to state coffers this year, at the expense of about $125 million in future years.

    Together, those measures add up to $253 million in revenue to reduce the projected deficit — money that Democrats say represents averted cuts to Medicaid, schools and hospitals.

    “Colorado legislators stepped up and helped protect children’s food access and minimized the devastating cost increases to health insurance premiums across the state, to the best of our ability,” Polis, who signed two of the new bills earlier Tuesday, said in a statement.

    The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee expects to meet Thursday to hear Polis’ plan to address the remaining $500 million or so, including mid-year spending cuts. 

    As part of his call for a special session on Aug. 6, Polis announced a statewide hiring freeze. He said in an interview before the session started that he hoped to avoid cuts to K-12 education, but he has left all other options on the table, including Medicaid program spending. 

    The plan also factors in a significant use of reserves to offset some of the remaining gap.

    Partisan debates

    Over the past week, Republicans fought the Democrats’ bills, but strong Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers all but preordained the outcome. 

    “Not only did we increase taxes, we’re balancing the budget on the back of small businesses,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican on the budget committee.

    One of the bills heading to Polis would erase a fee paid by the state to businesses for collecting sales taxes — an outdated subsidy, according to Democrats, and an unnecessary new burden now put on businesses, according to Republicans.

    Republicans said before the session that they’d likely challenge several bills in court over allegations that they violate provisions in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights that require voter approval for tax increases. Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican who’s also on the budget committee, said bills going to the governor that would eliminate some tax credits and allow the sale of tax credits against future collections seemed particularly vulnerable to a challenge under TABOR.

    Debate throughout the special session took a distinctly partisan edge. Democrats laid the cuts on congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump and called the federal tax bill a de facto theft of benefits from the poorest Coloradans to benefit the wealthiest.

    Republicans countered that the federal bill delivered much-needed tax cuts, and they said Democrats sought to yank those away instead of cutting partisan priorities.

    Legislators begin to gather in the Senate Chambers before the start of another day of the special legislative session at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on Aug. 26, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

    Bills on wolves, artificial intelligence

    Other bills passed sought to respond to different aspects of the federal bill, formerly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as well as other priorities.

    Lawmakers stripped general fund money away from the voter-approved program to reintroduce wolves in the state, though releases are expected to continue this winter. They tweaked ballot language for a measure about taxes for universal school meals to allow that money to go to general food assistance, as well, if voters approve it in November.

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    Nick Coltrain, Seth Klamann

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  • Redistricting battles intensify California, Texas and now Indiana

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    The feud over redistricting continues across the country with new developments in Indiana, California and Texas. Multiple media outlets are reporting that Indiana state lawmakers are in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for more Republican seats in Congress. This comes after Vice President J.D. Vance met privately with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun earlier this month. For any redrawing of the congressional map in Indiana, Braun would have to call a special session to start the process, but lawmakers have the power to draw new maps. Republicans in the U.S. House outnumber Democrats in Indiana, limiting the chances they can pull off an additional seat.Things are also heating up in California. On Monday, Trump threatened to sue California over its plan to allow voters to decide whether to redistrict before next year’s election. Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on social media responding to the president with two words: “Bring it.” Newsom approved a special election that will take place in November for residents to vote on a redrawn congressional map. Republican lawmakers in California filed a lawsuit Monday aiming to remove Newsom’s redistricting plan from the November ballot. If the congressional map is approved, it could help Democrats win five more seats in the House next year.In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott is planning to sign into law a new congressional map that includes five more districts, favoring Republicans. Trump has pushed for the map to help the GOP maintain its slim majority in Congress in 2026. The timing of this is noteworthy because Republicans normally lose seats in the House during the midterms. Democrats are expected to challenge the new Texas map in court.Keep scrolling for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    The feud over redistricting continues across the country with new developments in Indiana, California and Texas.

    Multiple media outlets are reporting that Indiana state lawmakers are in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for more Republican seats in Congress. This comes after Vice President J.D. Vance met privately with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun earlier this month.

    For any redrawing of the congressional map in Indiana, Braun would have to call a special session to start the process, but lawmakers have the power to draw new maps.

    Republicans in the U.S. House outnumber Democrats in Indiana, limiting the chances they can pull off an additional seat.

    Things are also heating up in California. On Monday, Trump threatened to sue California over its plan to allow voters to decide whether to redistrict before next year’s election. Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on social media responding to the president with two words: “Bring it.”

    Newsom approved a special election that will take place in November for residents to vote on a redrawn congressional map. Republican lawmakers in California filed a lawsuit Monday aiming to remove Newsom’s redistricting plan from the November ballot.

    If the congressional map is approved, it could help Democrats win five more seats in the House next year.

    In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott is planning to sign into law a new congressional map that includes five more districts, favoring Republicans.

    Trump has pushed for the map to help the GOP maintain its slim majority in Congress in 2026. The timing of this is noteworthy because Republicans normally lose seats in the House during the midterms.

    Democrats are expected to challenge the new Texas map in court.

    Keep scrolling for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

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  • California voters undecided in 2026 governor’s race, but prefer Newsom over Harris for president in 2028

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    Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to forgo a run for California governor has created a wide-open race in next year’s election to run the nation’s most populous state, according to a poll released Tuesday by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times.

    Nearly 4 in 10 registered voters surveyed said they are uncertain about whom they will support in the 2026 contest to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    “It’s very unsettled. Most of the voters, the plurality in this poll, are undecided,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, which was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. “They don’t really know much about the candidates.”

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    Among those who had a preference, former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine had a small edge as the top choice, with the backing of 17%. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, was the only other candidate who received double-digit support, winning the backing of 10% of respondents.

    DiCamillo said Porter’s unsuccessful 2024 U.S. Senate campaign boosted her recognition among California voters, but cautioned that she had a small, early lead more than nine months before the June 2 primary. Bianco’s support was driven by voters focused on crime and public safety, taxes and the budget deficit, perennial concerns among GOP voters, according to the survey.

    Other top candidates for governor — former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state legislative leader Toni Atkins, current California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former state Controller Betty Yee, wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and conservative commentator Steve Hilton — received single-digit support as voters’ first choice in the poll. A few potential candidates also had single-digit support, including billionaire Los Angeles businessman Rick Caruso, former Trump administration official Ric Grenell and former GOP state Sen. Brian Dahle.

    The survey is among the first independent public polls since Harris announced in late July that she would not run for governor in 2026, dramatically reshuffling the calculus in a crowded race that the former vice president was widely expected to dominate if she mounted a campaign. The poll also took place after Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis dropped out of the contest this month to run for state treasurer instead.

    “It’s pretty wide-open,” DiCamillo said. “And when you look at the second-choice preference, first and second together, it’s bunched together.”

    When voters were asked to rank their top two choices, Porter received 22% as the first or second choice, Becerra got 18%, Bianco notched 15% and Hilton won 12%, according to the poll.

    None of the politicians running are well known by Californians compared with the state’s last three governors: Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor, who during his two terms as governor has positioned himself as a foil to President Trump ; former two-term Gov. Jerry Brown, who along with his father left an indelible imprimatur on California’s history; and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a global celebrity who returned to the Hollywood limelight after he left office, along with launching efforts to fight climate change and support independent redistricting nationwide.

    A pressing question is whether anyone else enters the race, notably Caruso, who has the ability to self-fund a campaign. The deadline to file to run for the seat is March 6.

    Whoever is elected as California’s next governor will face the difficult task of contending with a hostile Trump administration and an electorate looking to the state’s next leader to address its most pressing concerns.

    Economic issues are top of mind among all registered voters, with 36% saying the cost of living is their greatest concern and 25% focusing on the affordability of housing, according to the poll. But there were sharp partisan disparities about other issues. Democrats were more concerned about the state of democracy, climate change and healthcare, while Republicans prioritized crime, taxes and immigration.

    Two of California’s most prominent Democrats, Newsom and Harris, are longtime friends grounded in their Bay Area roots and both viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates.

    As a potential White House hopeful, Newsom has an edge over Harris among Californians overall as well as the state’s Democrats, according to the poll.

    Roughly 45% of the state’s registered voters said they were very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running, compared with 36% who expressed a similar sentiment about Harris. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of registered voters and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not run for president again after two unsuccessful White House bids — in the primary in 2020 and in the general election in 2024.

    “She lost, which is always a negative when you’re trying to run again,” DiCamillo said. “It’s interesting that even after Harris bowed out of the governor’s race, most Californians don’t really think she should run for president.”

    While he described Newsom’s support as a “mixed bag” among the state’s registered voters, DiCamillo pointed to his strength among Democrats. Nearly 7 of 10 registered Democratic voters in the state said they are very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running for president, compared with 54% who expressed similar feelings about Harris.

    The poll took place during a tumultuous period as Trump’s far-right policies begin to hit their stride.

    Drastic cuts to healthcare, nutrition, reproductive rights and other federal safety-net programs are expected to disproportionately affect Californians. The Trump administration‘s aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles and across the state and country have caused the nation’s partisan divide to widen, driven by the president’s decision to deploy the military and target all undocumented immigrants, including law-abiding workers. Higher-education institutions across the nation have been targeted by the Trump administration, including UCLA, which is being threatened with a $1-billion fine.

    Californians were surveyed shortly before Democratic state lawmakers, trying to fight the Trump administration’s agenda, voted Thursday to call a special election in November to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The action was taken to counter gerrymandering efforts in Texas and other GOP-led states as both parties fight for control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

    The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 4,950 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11 to 17. 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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  • Trump says he’s fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook

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    President Trump announced Monday that he’s fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook after months of public attacks against the central bank. In a letter posted on social media, Trump accused Cook of making false statements on mortgage documents, actions he claimed were “gross negligence” and “potentially criminal.”

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  • DNC chair says Democrats can’t be only party that plays by the rules, urges members to fight

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    Top Democrats emphasized party unity and railed against President Trump’s policies on the first day of the Democratic National Committee’s annual summer meeting in Minneapolis Monday. CBS News correspondent Nidia Cavazos has more.

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  • Sen. John Hoffman addresses Democrats 2 months after shootings:

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    Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman, who was shot nine times in his home in a politically motivated attack earlier this summer, told his fellow Democrats to choose “governance over grievance” and implored all Americans to reject political violence in his first public appearance since the tragedy. 

    The four-term senator continues to recover from his injuries the night an accused assassin shot him and his wife, Yvette, inside their Champlin home June 14, before he murdered former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in a tragedy that rocked the state. 

    Hoffman received a standing ovation as he walked on stage at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis Monday. He said the shootings served as a “wake-up call” and that it was a political attack on public service “aimed squarely and slowly at our party.”

    Prosecutors say the accused killer, 58-year-old Vance Boelter, had a hit list with names of several Democrats on it and that he also visited the homes of other DFL lawmakers that night. 

    “We must recommit ourselves to governance over grievance, to service over self, and to action over anger. Terror in the night is not legislative reform. It’s heinous. It’s absolutely heinous,” Hoffman said. 

    He has only spoken out publicly a handful of times since the attack, including an interview on a local radio station. He also left a video message for legislators at a national conference. This marked his first in-person public appearance at an event like this. 

    “I’m still slowly recovering from my gunshot wounds — nine of them,” Hoffman said. “If you want to see the pattern on my body, it’s the same pattern that’s in my red door that I no longer have, although I do still have a long way to go.”

    He spent three weeks in the ICU earlier this summer, and on Monday, he wore a purple splint around his left pointer finger, which he told the crowd had a rod in it. Yvette Hoffman sustained eight gunshot wounds. 

    “We must call Americans to action in ways that don’t incite intimidation and political violence, right? Having our own homes violated by pure evil cannot be the new normal, right? Amen,” he said. “I believe all Americans and Minnesotans want to talk to each other again without being demeaned and without the threat of violence.”

    Melissa Hortman remembered for her leadership, ‘LFG’ mantra

    Hoffman — whose Senate district includes the late Hortman’s House district in the north Twin Cities metro — also remembered his colleague, friend and “political kid sister” who died in the attack, calling her the most consequential House speaker in state history. 

    Hoffman said it’s the job of Democrats to honor the speaker emerita’s legacy and uphold the values she and her husband Mark held dear.  

    There were also touching tributes to Melissa Hortman from DNC Chair Ken Martin and from Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, who worked as her campaign manager many years before he worked alongside her in the Legislature.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Tim Walz, and Attorney General Keith Ellison also reflected on her life and legacy on day one of the three-day DNC meeting.

    “We lost a giant, a friend, a fighter, a quiet revolutionary who led with brilliance and humility, with grace and grit, the kind of leader who doesn’t come around very often, and certainly one who can never, ever be replaced,” an emotional Martin, who led the Minnesota DFL Party before being elevated to his national role, said. 

    Martin recalled Hortman’s mantra “LFG,” which stands for let’s go with an expletive in between those words. She used the phrase during the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions when Democrats took back total control of the State Capitol. 

    They had just a one-seat majority in the Senate and narrow margins in the House, but Hortman, alongside the late DFL Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, ushered in some of the most consequential state policies in a generation, passing progressive priorities like paid family and medical leave, carbon-free energy standards, legalizing recreational cannabis, codifying abortion rights, restoring felon voting rights and much more. 

    “Instead of playing it safe, instead of being cautious, instead of putting a finger in the wind, worrying what in the hell would happen if they led and seeing every decision through the lens of how you get reelected. Melissa said, ‘LFG,’” Martin said. 

    Hoffman invoked the saying as he closed his remarks. 

    “I hope that the decisions that we all make will help move our party and our country forward and into a better future for everyone, and as Melissa would say, let’s f******* go.”

    Caroline Cummings

    Caroline Cummings is an Emmy-winning reporter with a passion for covering politics, public policy and government. She is thrilled to join the WCCO team.

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  • California Republicans sue to block Congressional redistricting plan

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    By Brad Brooks

    (Reuters) -California Republicans filed on Monday their second legal challenge against Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan, which aims to give Democrats five more Congressional seats amid a nationwide scramble for advantage in 2026 elections.

    The lawsuit filed by Republican lawmakers argues that the redistricting plan goes against the California constitution and requirements that political maps be drawn by an independent redistricting body.

    “This is an issue about good governance in the state of California,” said Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, at a press conference announcing the legal action. “Californians deserve to have the right to choose our legislators.”

    The effort by Newsom and Democrats in California’s legislature to rework the state’s Congressional maps was passed last week. It came in response to Texas Republicans pushing through new Congressional maps in that state that could give the GOP five more seats in Congress, as urged by President Donald Trump.

    Trump is asking several Republican-led states to redraw their Congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterm elections in an effort to retain control of the House.

    California Republicans had already filed one lawsuit to stop Newsom’s redistricting plan, but it was rejected by the state’s supreme court last week.

    On Monday, lawmakers filed an emergency petition before the top court against the California legislature and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

    “The Constitution’s guardrails on redistricting are essential to ensuring that Californians are spared from the political influence and inherent turbulence of perpetual map-drawing in the hands of the Legislature,” the lawsuit read.

    Weber’s office declined to comment.

    Hannah Milgrom, a spokeswoman for Newsom, said in a written statement that the Republican legal challenge would fail.

    “Trump’s toadies already got destroyed once in court. Now, they are trying again – to protect Trump’s power grab and prevent the voters from having their say … They will lose,” she said.

    Trump told reporters in Washington on Monday that his administration could challenge California’s redistricting with its own lawsuit. Newsom on X said, “bring it.”

    The Texas redistricting plan that passed the Senate early on Saturday is also the target of legal action.

    A group of 13 Texas residents filed a lawsuit against their Governor Greg Abbott over the weekend, arguing the redistricting plan was racially discriminatory.

    (Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; editing by Donna Bryson and Nia Williams)

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  • DNC vice chair Malcolm Kenyatta on Trump, Democratic Party’s future

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    Leaders of the Democratic National Committee have a lot to grapple with as they gather this week in Minneapolis for their annual summer meeting. DNC vice chair and Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta Joins “The Takeout” to discuss.

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  • Contributor: Democrats will pay for ignoring base’s qualms about Gaza

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    As the Democratic Party searches for direction in the post-2024 landscape, its leaders seem bent on alienating their own base over Gaza. This is not a matter of nuance or tactical positioning; it’s a profound moral and political miscalculation.

    That failure is on vivid display in the decision by House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Redlands) to help lead a delegation of mostly freshman Democratic representatives recently to Israel. The trip included meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption in Israel and is the subject of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Polling makes the disconnect impossible to ignore. In July, Gallup found that just 8% of Democrats approve of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, with disapproval overwhelming. Pew Research Center reported in April that 69% of Democrats now hold an unfavorable view of Israel — a striking shift from just a few years ago. And Data for Progress has consistently found supermajority Democratic support for a permanent ceasefire; in May 2024, 83% of Democrats backed a permanent ceasefire, and in a June 12, 2024, poll a majority of Democrats said they believed Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza.

    Aguilar’s role makes this especially galling. He isn’t a backbencher; he’s a high-ranking member of the Democratic Party leadership. That gives him a particular responsibility to model principled conduct for newer members. Instead, he’s showing them the wrong lesson: that obedience to the donor class matters more than representing constituents. The point is underscored by his fundraising: OpenSecrets reports Aguilar received about $678,000 from donors categorized as “Pro-Israel” in the 2023–24 cycle.

    The mechanics of that influence are no mystery. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and allied pro-Israel PACs reward loyalty with torrents of campaign cash and punish dissent with lavishly funded primary challenges. Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush — both outspoken critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza — have been textbook examples: Bowman was unseated after record outside spending flooded his race, and Bush faced a barrage of super-PAC money that ultimately toppled her. The incentive structure is clear: Toe the line and your coffers swell; cross it and a financial juggernaut rolls over you.

    There is a political price for complying with this pressure, however. The Institute for Middle East Understanding, using YouGov, found that among voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020 but chose someone else in 2024 “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was the top issue for 29% nationally — ahead of the economy — and 20% in battleground states. Those results point to a straightforward conclusion: Ignoring Democratic voters on Gaza depresses enthusiasm and peels away enough support to matter in close races.

    Gaza is politically damaging not only because of the issue itself — though the moral stakes could hardly be higher — but also because it has become a measure of where leaders’ loyalties lie. Voters read it as a test of whether their representatives will stand with the people who elected them or with wealthy donors and foreign lobbies. Fail that test and many will assume you might betray them on other critical issues in the future.

    The Democratic leadership’s unwillingness to adapt is not just bad politics; it’s a betrayal of basic democratic principles. Rank-and-file Democrats overwhelmingly want an end to the carnage, an end to unconditional military aid to Israel, and policies rooted in human rights and international law. Yet too many leaders seem more concerned with keeping favor in donor circles than with honoring the public’s will.

    If Democrats hope to retain their coalition, they need to realign policy with their voters’ values: call for a permanent ceasefire; condition U.S. military assistance on compliance with international law; and replace photo-op delegations with diplomacy that centers on justice and accountability.

    Until then, every AIPAC-sponsored trip led by a party leader will read like a declaration of priorities — and a reminder of the price the party will continue to pay at the ballot box.

    George Bisharat is a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco and a longtime commentator on U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

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    Ideas expressed in the piece

    • The Democratic Party elite continues to cling to pro-Israel policies despite a dramatic shift in voter sentiment, with DNC chair Ken Martin exemplifying this resistance by backing resolutions that maintain commitments to Israel’s “qualitative military edge” while pressuring pro-Palestine delegates to water down alternative proposals[3]. The party leadership’s obedience to pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel contradicts the clear will of Democratic voters who increasingly oppose the status quo[3].

    • Polling data consistently demonstrates overwhelming Democratic opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, with just 8% of Democratic voters approving of Israel’s military campaign according to recent Gallup surveys, down dramatically from earlier periods in the conflict[5][6]. This represents the lowest approval rating among Democrats since polling began on the issue, creating a stark disconnect between party leadership and base voters[5].

    • The influence of pro-Israel campaign contributions is evident in the behavior of Democratic representatives who continue to participate in AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel despite their constituents’ opposition, with California representatives receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from pro-Israel groups while ignoring polling showing 92% of Democrats oppose Israel’s actions[2]. These trips occur while Gaza faces unprecedented humanitarian devastation, with over 60,000 Palestinian civilians killed and two million people facing starvation[2].

    • The declining number of Democrats willing to participate in AIPAC trips reflects growing awareness among elected officials of their constituents’ opposition, with recent delegations representing the smallest ever congressional group of Democrats to visit Israel as many invited House members reportedly declined to participate[4]. This trend suggests that elected officials are beginning to respond to public pressure despite continued lobbying efforts[2].

    Different views on the topic

    • Pro-Israel Democratic organizations argue that divisive resolutions calling for arms embargos and Palestinian state recognition would damage party unity and provide political advantages to Republicans, particularly as the party approaches midterm elections where maintaining cohesion is crucial for retaking Congress[1]. These groups contend that such measures fail to address the root cause of the conflict by not mentioning Hamas’s October 7 attacks or the terrorist organization’s role in perpetuating the war[1].

    • Supporters of continued military aid to Israel maintain that arms embargos would actually prolong the conflict and extend suffering on both sides, arguing that pressure should instead be directed toward Hamas to accept ceasefire deals and release hostages[1]. The Democratic Majority for Israel emphasizes that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would reward terrorism and embolden Israel’s adversaries in the region[1].

    • Pro-Israel advocates stress that the fundamental relationship between the United States and Israel remains strong due to shared democratic values and mutual security interests that have endured for over 75 years, suggesting that temporary political pressures should not override these longstanding strategic considerations[1]. Congressional delegations to Israel are defended as necessary to witness firsthand the aftermath of terrorist attacks and assess ongoing security threats[4].

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  • Redistricting Map May Not Be the Success Story Republicans Think It Is

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    Texas Republicans celebrated a victory last week as the House and Senate approved new congressional districts amid criticism that the lines are racially gerrymandered. But the success of the redistricting effort hinges heavily on whether previous GOP voters will stay true to their party in 2026.

    House Bill 4, introduced by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, was approved August 20 in an 88-52 vote. During an eight-hour discussion in Austin, Hunter stood firm in his position that although mid-decade redistricting is unusual, it’s not illegal, nor is drawing new boundaries in an effort to gain more GOP congressional seats, which was his intent when he introduced the legislation.

    The Senate adopted the new map along party lines in an 18-11 vote early Saturday morning. Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, was planning a filibuster but Republicans blocked it in a rare procedural motion that ended the debate.

    “The One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. “I promised we would get this done, and delivered on that promise.”

    University of Houston law professor David Froomkin agreed that a state is entitled under existing federal law to engage in “extreme partisan gerrymandering for partisan advantage,” but it doesn’t appear that’s what’s happening, he said.

    “If the state were in fact doing that, the map would be perfectly legal, but I think there’s strong reason to think that’s not in fact what the state has done,” he said. “They’re invoking that logic, but likely disingenuously. The premise underlying this redistricting plan was that there was a racial problem with the prior map that needed to be corrected.”

    “That’s the position that the Department of Justice took in demanding that the state of Texas engage in this redistricting effort,” he added. “It’s a rationale that the governor accepted as the original justification for a mid-decade redistricting. Republicans backed off of that logic once it became clear that it would pose a legal obstacle to the new map. A court will have to determine whether the new rhetoric that the map is motivated by politics not race is the true motive.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2017 Cooper v. Harris case that the North Carolina General Assembly “used race too heavily” in redrawing two Congressional districts following the 2010 Census.

    In modern-day Texas, Republicans originally theorized that the state’s prior congressional maps, approved after the 2020 Census, were racially gerrymandered and in order to resolve that problem, it was necessary to engage in race-conscious redistricting, Froomkin said.

    Democrats were quick to point out that at the time the maps were approved in 2021, Republicans testified under oath that they were “race blind.”

    The 2021 map is being challenged in federal court, with civil rights groups alleging they violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. Department of Justice was originally among the plaintiffs in that case and withdrew when Donald Trump became president.

    “In fact, the state and the Department of Justice were incorrect to think that the prior map was a racial gerrymander,” Froomkin said, adding that he believes the map approved last week is a racial gerrymander. “To be clear, I also think they’ve violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is a separate issue but one that no doubt will be litigated.”

    “It’s not just a power grab, it’s an attack on free society,” he added. “What Texas and other states are doing with these gerrymanders is trying to insulate an authoritarian government from democratic accountability.”

    Texas Democrats — bolstered by constituents who oppose the map and party officials including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — avoided voting on the map for about two weeks, fleeing the state to break quorum. A few Democratic legislators, including Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, didn’t come back. Those who did voted against the map and vowed to challenge it in court.

    The new Texas map is poised to add five GOP seats in 2026 primaries, an effort to retain President Trump’s narrow majority in Congress. California Gov. Gavin Newsom promptly launched a redistricting effort in his state to add more blue seats and counter the effort in Texas. Under California law, this still has to be approved by voters in November.

    The districts planned for a flip from blue to red are District 9 (held by Rep. Al Green of Houston), District 28 (held by Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo), District 32 (held by Rep. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch), District 34 (held by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen), and District 35 (held by Rep. Greg Cesar of Austin). At least six other districts were redrawn to improve GOP performance. Almost all of Texas’ 38 districts were altered.

    “Four of the five new districts are majority-minority Hispanic,” Hunter said before last week’s vote in the House. “Each of these newly-drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance. While there’s no guarantee in electorate success, Republicans will now have an opportunity to potentially win these districts.”

    click to enlarge

    The Texas House of Representatives approved new congressional districts on August 20, with Democrats vowing to challenge the map in court.

    Texas Legislative Council

    But the new map doesn’t guarantee Republican victories in the 2026 midterms, Froomkin said.

    “The new map is premised on a guess about the voting behavior of Latino Texans, and that guess might turn out to be wrong,” he said. “The maps will go into effect. The question is, will the people put up with it? We can already see a backlash taking place. The Trump administration is horrifically unpopular. Guesses about how people are going to vote in 2026 based on the 2024 numbers may be misleading.”

    Members of the Texas Majority PAC, which advertises that it is dedicated to electing a Democrat to statewide office, gathered for a Zoom call last week to analyze redistricting data. Katherine Fischer, director of the PAC, said Republicans will almost certainly flip Districts 9 and 32.

    “We think it is possible, though challenging, to hold CD 35,” she said. “We think it is very possible to hold CD 28 and CD 34. Those are the Valley and South Texas ones. We believe that CD 15, which is currently a Republican district, will be the most competitive it’s been since 2020 redistricting and is a potential flip for Democrats.”

    The strategy behind the new map is based on the assumption that Trump’s 2024 numbers are an accurate metric to determine how competitive the districts are, Fischer said, adding that she thinks the Republicans overplayed their hand.

    “[Governor] Abbott was tasked with finding five new seats for Trump, but there are too many Democrats in Texas to gerrymander them away completely,” she said. “The data tells us that Texas Democrats can compete to hold most of these seats, and may have new flip opportunities. We intend to fight for every single seat.”

    Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis joined the call and said the maps reveal the likelihood that the GOP’s “voter suppression efforts” will backfire. “Communities that Republicans hoped to suppress are energized, and Democrats are ready to turn that energy into real, competitive elections,” she said.

    Froomkin said once Governor Abbott signs the bill into law, the maps will be used for the 2026 midterm elections. No member of Congress loses their seat immediately but some, if not all, of the five Democrats in the seats slated for flips will not seek re-election in their now heavily Republican districts.

    Rep. Al Green has said he could run in Congressional District 18, where a special election is planned in November to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death earlier this year. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, Rep. Jolanda Jones, and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards are among more than 20 candidates who have filed for the CD 18 seat. Former candidates Corisha Rogers and Rain Eatmon dropped out of the race last week, saying they would endorse Menefee.

    Referencing the fact that the 2021 map is still under review in federal court, Froomkin said such cases take a long time to adjudicate.

    “They involve the presentation of a lot of factual information that takes time to gather,” he said. “I expect that Voting Rights Act challenges to the new map, similarly, will take a lot of time to adjudicate.”

    While the plaintiffs won’t necessarily be just the Democratic lawmakers who fought fiercely against the legislation at the Capitol last week, many of those legislators are likely to be involved and are attorneys who appear prepared to gather technical information about the decomposition of districts and the voting behavior of those who live there.

    Once the new map is approved, the case against the 2021 version doesn’t necessarily become moot just because it’s no longer in effect, Frromkin explained.

    “It could be the case that a court would grant preliminary relief to plaintiffs challenging the new map and say that map can’t immediately go into effect, in which case the old maps, at least for the time being, would still be in effect,” he said.

    Republicans Double Down

    Prior to the passage of the bill, some GOP lawmakers appeared to be frustrated with their party leaders. Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows threatened to remove quorum-breaking Democrats from their seats, assess hefty fines, and arrest them. Not much of that has happened, leading some GOP legislators and watchdogs to believe that the party was rolling over for the Dems.

    Letters were issued Friday afternoon notifying Texas House Democrats who fled the state that they’d have to pay about $9,000 each in fines for “impeding the action of the House.”

    Shortly after the Speaker’s opening remarks early last week, the quorum breakers were asked to sign permission slips so a DPS trooper could tail them until the Legislature reconvened a couple of days later. Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, refused and spent two nights in the House of Representatives. At least six other lawmakers joined her on the second night.

    When Collier went into a House bathroom for a Zoom call with Newsom and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, during the August 20 floor debate, authorities accused her of committing a felony.

    Froomkin, the law professor, said Abbott and other Republicans have made some threats, particularly that of criminal prosecution, that they weren’t authorized to make. And when the July 7 letter came from Trump’s Department of Justice strongly suggesting that Texas redraw its map, Abbott didn’t have to do it, Froomkin said.

    “The governor clearly made a number of threats that were beyond his legal power,” he said. “It seems like those threats were effective. The Democrats returned sooner than a lot of people expected they would, and I think that is likely attributable to the governor’s threats of criminal prosecution, which I found shocking. The suggestion that state officials would use their official powers to persecute members of the opposition simply for taking positions on legislative matters is extremely unusual and disturbing.”

    “It seems like we’re entering a new era in politics in which incumbents try to use every ounce of their power in order to try to maintain their power,” he added. “There’s no doubt that the goal of the new map is straightforwardly to dilute and diminish the political power of communities of color, and it is part of a broader plan to do that on the national stage.”

    But most Republican lawmakers have doubled down on the decision to redistrict, lauding the measure as a historic victory for the right and sharing their endorsements from Trump and Abbott.

    Reps. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, announced a celebratory dinner toasting the passage of the maps last week, and Cain promptly filed the day after the House vote to run for the newly drawn Congressional District 9.

    Burrows said when the House convened on August 18 that his responsibility now that a quorum was established was to maintain an atmosphere of decorum and respect until “the job is finished.”

    “No one here needs a reminder that the last few weeks have been contentious,” he said, referencing the walkout of at least 50 Democrats in early August. “From this point forward, the rules of engagement are clear. Debate is welcome but personal attacks and name-calling will not be tolerated.”

    Name-calling ensued almost immediately, primarily accusations from Democrats that the bill was racist and that some of its authors and supporters were too.

    Hunter emphasized that the law allows redistricting for political performance. He repeatedly explained that the map was developed by Butler Snow LLP law firm at his direction and became frustrated with several Democratic legislators who questioned him about the process, saying they were permitted to interrupt and talk over him.

    “I’m standing with Republican members,” he said. “What’s wrong with Republicans standing up and stepping up and being honest, which you don’t like? The Supreme Court says we can do political and partisan redistricting. We will not agree on this issue. We will push forward.”

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, also took issue with the accusations.

    “You call my voters racist, you call my party racist, but yet we’re expected to follow the rules,” she said. “Well, that double standard ends today. I have traveled all over this country for the better part of a decade and I can tell you that more and more minority voters are voting their values, not their skin color. And many of them are moving to Texas to escape the blue states because their values have been successfully gerrymandered into suppression.”

    click to enlarge

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, said the new redistricting map is not racist but reflects the will of the people and the majority party.

    Screenshot

    Pierson further pointed out that Trump won Hispanic voters in Texas. “I get it, you don’t like that,” she said. “In 2024, Democrats lost. President Trump won big. You’re losing at the ballot box but you will not silence the majority in the state of Texas. You can throw your tantrum. You can leave, you can run, and you can ignore the will of the rest of the voters, but it’s honestly time to pick a new narrative. The racist rhetoric is old. News flash: Democrats do not own minorities in Texas.”

    Many Democratic lawmakers allege the redistricting effort involves “packing and cracking,” or widening the GOP advantage by unconstitutionally compressing people of color into some districts while spreading them throughout others to reduce their ability to elect their preferred candidates.

    It’s hard to predict what will happen in a legal battle because the U.S. Supreme Court has “sent some signals that the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is uncertain,” Froomkin said.

    “There are two cases before the Supreme Court that put the future of the Voting Rights Act in question,” he said. “In one of them, the court is planning to rule in a few months on the constitutionality of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and a number of experts expect that this court will be hostile to section 2. That will of course dramatically shake up the redistricting process, particularly in southern states like Texas.”

    “In the absence of the Voting Rights Act, southern states would be able to completely gerrymander maps so as to deny minority communities any political representation, as they largely did before 1965,” he added.

    The actions of the federal government in micromanaging state legislatures is unprecedented, the law professor added. “That is another really surprising development,” he said. “The Republican Party used to, at least rhetorically, be a party that embraced federalism. Today, a Republican administration is trying to aggrandize federal power at the expense of states, including by coercing states to participate in the federal executive’s agenda.”

    What’s Next for Special Session No. 2

    Sixty-nine bills were read into the record on August 18 and referred to committees. More followed throughout the week, ranging from THC regulation to STAAR test elimination. Most were aimed at improving emergency preparedness and enhancing youth camp safety standards, a response to the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods. Several have already passed at least one chamber.
    Public hearings were held last week before the Select Committee on Flooding and Disaster Preparedness, at which several parents testified about the loss of their children at Camp Mystic during the Hill Country floods.

    Democratic lawmakers criticized Republicans for not putting flood victims ahead of redistricting. Republicans said they could have passed bills sooner if the Democrats hadn’t fled the state.

    Following the House passage of the redistricting bill, Abbott announced the addition of three more items to the special session agenda: Legislation imposing punishment for legislators who are willfully absent during a session; authorizing the purchase of Ivermectin over the counter; and proposing a groundwater study of East Texas aquifers by the Texas Water Development Board.

    Burrows has said he hopes to finish the second special session by addressing all 22 items on the governor’s agenda before Labor Day weekend.

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  • Most California voters disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, poll shows

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    Most California voters strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies and believe that raids in the state have unfairly targeted Latinos, according to a new poll.

    The findings, released Sunday, reflected striking emotional reactions to immigration enforcement. When voters were asked to describe their feelings about news reports or videos of immigration raids, 64% chose rage or sadness “because what is happening is unfair.”

    Among Democrats, 91% felt enraged or sad. Conversely, 65% of Republicans felt hopeful, “like justice is finally being served.”

    Such divisions were consistent across 11 questions about the administration’s overall immigration strategy and specific aspects of the way enforcement is playing out in the state, with divisions along partisan lines. The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll was conducted for the Los Angeles Times.

    Democrats almost unanimously oppose President Trump’s tactics on immigration, the poll showed. Most Republicans support the president, though they are not as united as Democrats in their approval.

    “It was essential to show the strength of feelings because Democrats are strongly on the negative side of each of these policies,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “That struck me. I don’t usually see that kind of extreme fervor on a poll response.”

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    The poll found that 69% of respondents disapprove of the way immigration enforcement is being carried out in the state.

    Among Democrats, 95% disapprove, as well as 72% of voters with no party preference or others not affiliated with the two major parties, whereas 79% of Republicans approve.

    The poll was completed online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11-17 by 4,950 registered voters in California.

    A question that showed the least unified support among Republican voters asked respondents whether they agree or disagree that federal agents should be required to show clear identification when carrying out their work. The question comes as immigration agents have carried out raids using face coverings, unmarked cars and while wearing casual clothing.

    Some 50% of Republicans agreed that agents should have to identify themselves, while 92% of Democrats agreed.

    G. Cristina Mora, IGS co-director and a sociology professor at UC Berkeley who studies race and immigration, helped develop the poll questions. She said the poll shows that Republican voters are much more nuanced than Democrats. They also split on questions about due process, birthright citizenship and immigration enforcement in sensitive locations.

    “Republicans are much more fractured in their thinking about immigration across the state,” Mora said.

    Mora said she developed the question about agent identification in response to the recent bill led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that would require immigration officers to display their agency and name or badge number during public-facing enforcement actions, similar to police and other local law enforcement.

    Padilla also spearheaded a letter last month to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons seeking information about the agency’s policies regarding the identification of agents while on duty. ICE has justified the tactics by stating that agents are at risk of doxxing and have faced increased assault on the job.

    “The public has a right to know which officials are exercising police power, and anonymous enforcement undermines both constitutional norms and democratic oversight,” Padilla and 13 other Democrats wrote in the letter.

    Another poll question that garnered mixed support of Republicans asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, “ICE agents should expand immigration enforcement into schools, hospitals, parks and other public locations.”

    Among Republicans, 53% agreed with that statement, though fewer than 1 in 3 agree strongly. Meanwhile, 94% of Democrats disagreed.

    Shortly after Trump took office, his administration rescinded a 2011 memo that restricted immigration agents from making arrests in sensitive locations, such as churches, schools and hospitals. Since then, agents have been filmed entering locations that were previously considered off limits, putting immigrant communities on edge.

    Schools in Los Angeles reopened this month with “safe zones” in heavily Latino neighborhoods and changed bus routes with less exposure to immigration agents. An 18-year-old high school senior, Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz, was walking his family’s dog in Van Nuys when he was taken into federal immigration custody.

    Mora said the varied responses illustrate how California Republicans view the Trump administration’s immigration tactics with “degrees of acceptability.” They might feel strongly that immigrants with violent criminal histories should be deported, she said, but the takeover of MacArthur Park, when a convoy of immigration agents in armored vehicles descended there in a show of force, or the enforcement actions outside of public schools “might have been a step too far.”

    Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who wrote a book about how Latinos have transformed democracy, said the split among Republicans is consistent with national polling. The trend is problematic for Trump, he said, because it means he is losing big swaths of his base.

    “This is becoming viewed as overreach more than it is immigration control,” he said. “The idea sets a frame for it, but the actual implementation is widely unpopular.”

    Republicans were largely united in response to other questions. Asked about the Trump administration’s proposal to do away with birthright citizenship — which confers citizenship to all children born in the U.S. regardless of their parent’s legal status — 67% of GOP respondents approved, and most of them strongly approved. By contrast, 92% of Democrats disapproved, and as did seven in 10 respondents overall.

    Mora said she was surprised by the fact that Latinos didn’t stand out as substantially more opposed to Trump’s actions than voters of other racial and ethnic groups. For example, 69% of Latino voters said ICE raids have unfairly targeted Latinos, just five percentage points higher than the 64% of white non-Latino voters who agreed.

    “You would imagine Latinos would be through the roof here, but they’re not,” Mora said. She said this reminded her of research around the tendency for Latinos to individualize their experiences instead of seeing them as racially unjust.

    Broadly, 72% of Latinos disagree with the way the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws in California, while 25% approve and 3% have no strong opinion.

    Among Latino voter subgroups, older men and third-generation (or beyond) women are the more likely to support the way immigration enforcement is being handled in California, with 38% of Latino men over age 40 in agreement compared to 11% of Latinas ages 18-39, although among both groups majorities disapprove.

    Madrid said that’s consistent with national polling showing a decrease in support for Republicans among Latinos after record gains in the last presidential election. The question, he said, is whether Trump’s approval ratings among Latinos could regress substantially enough to flip control of Congress in the midterms.

    “We’re not there yet,” he said.

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    Andrea Castillo

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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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  • Letters: Let’s invest in the Bay Area’s greatest asset: nature

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    Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.

    Invest in Bay Area’s
    greatest asset: Nature

    Re: “Bay Area needs unity to solve its problems” (Page A9, Aug. 17).

    I second Russell Hancock’s recent call for bold regional leadership in this period of “federal ruckus.” As climate impacts intensify, California must act now to build climate resilience for tomorrow — and for future generations.

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  • Democrat consultants tell politicians to stop using terms like ‘LGBTQIA’ and ‘cisgender’

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    If you ask this consulting firm, Democrats aren’t unpopular because they compromise with Republicans to maintain their corporate interests — it’s because they talk about the rights of LGBTQ+ people and other minorities too much.

    Centrist think tank Third Way recently released a list of words it believes Democratic politicians should avoid, referring to them as “wildly out-of-touch social positions.” The list includes even neutral community descriptors such as “LGBTQIA” and “BIPOC.”

    “The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness,” the group wrote. “To please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.”

    Words on the list include: privilege, triggering, othering, microaggression, holding space, body shaming, subverting norms, systems of oppression, cultural appropriation, existential threat, the unhoused, food insecurity, housing insecurity, person who immigrated, birthing person, cisgender, deadnaming, heteronormative, patriarchy, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, allyship, and incarcerated people.

    Third Way insisted that it is “not out to police language, ban phrases or create our own form of censorship” — though its list is eerily similar to Donald Trump‘s list of banned words. His administration issued the guidance after he signed executive orders removing all references to DEI in the federal government, as well as mandating that the federal government deny the existence of trans people by recognizing only two sexes despite the scientific and medical consensus that sex is a spectrum.

    Trump’s banned words include: advocate, assigned at birth, assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth, biologically female, biologically male, Black, breastfeed + people, breastfeed + person, chestfeed + people, chestfeed + person, female, females, feminism, gender, gender based, gender based violence, gender diversity, gender identity, gender ideology, gender-affirming care, genders, immigrant, LGBT, LGBTQ, men who have sex with men, MSM, Mx, non-binary, nonbinary, people + uterus, pronoun, pronouns, segregation, sex, sexual preferences, sexuality, they/them, trans, transgender, transsexual, and women.

    Both Third Way and Trump take issue with gender neutral parenting terms, with the former specifically criticizing “birthing person” and the latter banning terms like “breastfeed” or “uterus” if the word “person” is attached to them.

    There is no evidence to suggest that supporting legal rights for trans people have cost Democrats politically. Whereas Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign largely ignored trans issues, the GOP spent over $215 million on anti-trans attack ads — about $77 for every trans person in the U.S. — which a post election study showed had no impact on voters’ decisions. Only 18 percent of registered voters in a separate September Gallup poll said candidates’ positions on trans rights is “extremely important” to them.

    While some Democrats have attempted to distance themselves from the trans community by using the same GOP talking points about “men in women’s sports,” many have harshly condemned the strategy as not only cruel, but short-sighted and ineffective. Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said during an April party dinner: “Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants — instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.”

    This article originally appeared on Advocate: Democrat consultants tell politicians to stop using terms like ‘LGBTQIA’ and ‘cisgender’

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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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  • CA redistricting special election approved; Proposed congressional maps no longer hinge on Texas

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    It’s official. California voters this fall will be asked to approve Democratic-drawn congressional maps, after the Legislature approved a bill Thursday calling for a special election in the fall. Earlier Thursday, California’s Democratic leaders moved forward with an effort to change the congressional district maps so that they heavily favor Democrats, regardless of what Texas or other Republican states do. (Video below: Gov. Newsom, Democratic lawmakers answer questions about the redistricting special election.)The effort that was promoted by California Democrats as a way to counteract efforts in Texas to send more Republicans to Congress will no longer rely on the action in the Lone Star state or others that allegedly spurred redistricting efforts, according to legislative documents KCRA 3 obtained Thursday. Democratic state lawmakers in the California Assembly made changes to the legislation known as ACA 8 on Thursday morning, minutes before they began debating and voting on the proposed ballot measure that would present the new maps to voters in a special statewide election this fall.(Video below: Gov. Newsom speaks with legislative leaders at a bill signing.)The changes clarifying that the maps do not rely on Texas or other states were put in a separate bill that lawmakers are prepared to approve on Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders have repeatedly insisted that California would have no need to enact new Congressional maps if Texas and other GOP states cease redistricting efforts. It has been part of a bitter fight between states over which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives halfway through President Donald Trump’s term.But now the legislation, known as the Election Rigging Response Act in California, has all references to any red state’s redistricting efforts stricken out of the language. That special election would ask voters to allow the new, politically drawn maps heavily favoring Democrats to take effect 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. It could be a legal gamble in the state, where voters in 2008 and 2010 took the power away from politicians to draw Congressional districts and gave it to an independent, citizens-led redistricting commission. (VIDEO BELOW: How did we get here?)The change comes a day after the Texas House approved new Congressional maps that attempt to remove five Democrats from its representation and replace them with Republicans. The maps are now halfway through that state’s process. The Republican-controlled state Senate was scheduled to vote on a map Thursday night. “Yesterday, Texas moved forward with their Trump power grab so this notion of “conditioning” is no longer applicable — it is self-evident that California will need to move forward in response to what Texas has done,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement.The governor’s office noted California’s change is also meant to simplify the question that is presented to voters this fall. Republican states will no longer be mentioned in the ballot measure, which will ask voters to simultaneously approve the new politically drawn congressional maps and support independent redistricting nationwide. The act of redrawing district lines to specifically favor a political party is known as gerrymandering, a once taboo practice to openly admit to that is now being boasted by both Democrats and Republicans.California Democrats began publicly advocating for redistricting after President Donald Trump called on Texas to send five additional Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump made the request because midterm elections could typically lead to shifts in power.California lawmakers approved legislation Thursday that will establish the Nov. 4 special election. The Assembly approved ACA 8 with 57 ayes and 20 nos, with Democrat Alex Lee abstaining from the vote. Democrat Dawn Addis was absent on Thursday.The state Senate then voted to approve ACA 8 on a 30-8 vote. The ballot measure is expected to be known as Proposition 50. The cost of a special election is not yet public, but it is expected to cost at least $200 million, which is around what it cost for the 2021 election that attempted to recall Newsom from office. Newsom signed two pieces of legislation later Thursday that outline the logistics for the special election and provide resources and money for it. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    It’s official.

    California voters this fall will be asked to approve Democratic-drawn congressional maps, after the Legislature approved a bill Thursday calling for a special election in the fall.

    Earlier Thursday, California’s Democratic leaders moved forward with an effort to change the congressional district maps so that they heavily favor Democrats, regardless of what Texas or other Republican states do.

    (Video below: Gov. Newsom, Democratic lawmakers answer questions about the redistricting special election.)

    This content is imported from YouTube.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.



    This content is imported from Twitter.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

    The effort that was promoted by California Democrats as a way to counteract efforts in Texas to send more Republicans to Congress will no longer rely on the action in the Lone Star state or others that allegedly spurred redistricting efforts, according to legislative documents KCRA 3 obtained Thursday.

    Democratic state lawmakers in the California Assembly made changes to the legislation known as ACA 8 on Thursday morning, minutes before they began debating and voting on the proposed ballot measure that would present the new maps to voters in a special statewide election this fall.

    (Video below: Gov. Newsom speaks with legislative leaders at a bill signing.)

    This content is imported from YouTube.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

    The changes clarifying that the maps do not rely on Texas or other states were put in a separate bill that lawmakers are prepared to approve on Monday.

    This content is imported from Twitter.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders have repeatedly insisted that California would have no need to enact new Congressional maps if Texas and other GOP states cease redistricting efforts. It has been part of a bitter fight between states over which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives halfway through President Donald Trump’s term.

    But now the legislation, known as the Election Rigging Response Act in California, has all references to any red state’s redistricting efforts stricken out of the language.

    That special election would ask voters to allow the new, politically drawn maps heavily favoring Democrats to take effect 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. It could be a legal gamble in the state, where voters in 2008 and 2010 took the power away from politicians to draw Congressional districts and gave it to an independent, citizens-led redistricting commission.

    (VIDEO BELOW: How did we get here?)

    The change comes a day after the Texas House approved new Congressional maps that attempt to remove five Democrats from its representation and replace them with Republicans. The maps are now halfway through that state’s process. The Republican-controlled state Senate was scheduled to vote on a map Thursday night.

    “Yesterday, Texas moved forward with their Trump power grab so this notion of “conditioning” is no longer applicable — it is self-evident that California will need to move forward in response to what Texas has done,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement.

    The governor’s office noted California’s change is also meant to simplify the question that is presented to voters this fall. Republican states will no longer be mentioned in the ballot measure, which will ask voters to simultaneously approve the new politically drawn congressional maps and support independent redistricting nationwide.

    The act of redrawing district lines to specifically favor a political party is known as gerrymandering, a once taboo practice to openly admit to that is now being boasted by both Democrats and Republicans.

    California Democrats began publicly advocating for redistricting after President Donald Trump called on Texas to send five additional Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump made the request because midterm elections could typically lead to shifts in power.

    California lawmakers approved legislation Thursday that will establish the Nov. 4 special election.

    The Assembly approved ACA 8 with 57 ayes and 20 nos, with Democrat Alex Lee abstaining from the vote. Democrat Dawn Addis was absent on Thursday.

    The state Senate then voted to approve ACA 8 on a 30-8 vote.

    This content is imported from Twitter.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

    The ballot measure is expected to be known as Proposition 50.

    The cost of a special election is not yet public, but it is expected to cost at least $200 million, which is around what it cost for the 2021 election that attempted to recall Newsom from office.

    Newsom signed two pieces of legislation later Thursday that outline the logistics for the special election and provide resources and money for it.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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