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gavin newsom
Trump DOJ Sues California Over Redistricting Initiative
"These losers lost at the ballot box and soon they will also lose in court," vowed a spokesman for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Nov 13, 2025
The US Department of Justice on Thursday filed a lawsuit against California over its new redistricting plan, which was approved overwhelmingly by voters in the state last week.
The DOJ joined a lawsuit filed by the California Republican Party that alleged the state's new redistricting plan is racially discriminatory because it intends, in addition to other "racial considerations," to give preference to Latino voters, who have traditionally voted for Democrats.
"Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50—the recent ballot initiative that junked California's pre-existing electoral map in favor of a rush-job rejiggering of California’s congressional district lines," the complaint alleged.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi, in justifying the DOJ's intervention into California's mid-decade redistricting, described the effort as "a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process" and vowed that "Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand."
Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, hit back at the DOJ's allegations and vowed that the state would not be backing down.
"These losers lost at the ballot box and soon they will also lose in court," he told CNN.
California decided to commit to a mid-decade redistricting plan in response to President Donald Trump's unprecedented push to get Republicans across the country to redraw their states' maps to help the GOP maintain control of the US House of Representatives in next year's midterm elections.
Trump's gerrymandering push, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina, has been hit with several setbacks, including California's redistricting plan, as well as a district court in Utah nixing a Republican-drawn map in favor of one in which Democrats are seen as heavy favorites to pick up an additional seat.
Dave Wasserman, a senior elections analyst at Cook Political Report, wrote in a post on X on Tuesday that the Democrats’ victories in Utah and California, as well as reported plans to redraw maps in Virginia, have “pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.”
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Democratic Voters Want Fighters, Not Cowardly Cavers
The establishment wing of the party has once again sold out the people they were elected to represent.
Nov 12, 2025
If there is one key lesson from last week's blowout victory for Democrats, it's that Democratic voters want fighters. In waiting less than a week after the elections to announce their unilateral surrender late on a Sunday night, the eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus who handed Trump and his Republican allies total victory in exchange for nothing sold those voters out.
While Democratic voters in the November 4th election were elated by the first triumph in quite a while, the cavers took the wind out of their sails. There's a serious danger that some of these constituents won't bother to vote in the 2026 elections. It could cost the Democrats the election and allow MAGA to keep control of the House and Senate, while impoverishing many poor and working-class Americans. With gerrymandering, there will likely be only about 40 competitive House districts (and six or seven competitive Senate races). Many of them will be likely decided by a few thousand (or even a few hundred) votes and there's a good chance that the disillusionment with Democratic cowardice could make the difference in deciding who controls both chambers of Congress.
The two biggest stars emerging from the November 4th elections are Zorhan Mamdani and Gavin Newsom. They're from different wings of the Democratic Party—Mamdani is an unyielding progressive while Newsom is generally a moderate. What they had most in common was their willingness in this election to be fighters.
While many Democrats were wringing their hands over Texas's midterm gerrymandering, which is likely to hand Republicans five House seats, Newsom came up with the idea to amend the California Constitution to pick up five House seats for Democrats. He managed to get it on the ballot, despite the opposition of some Democrats who argued that "two wrongs don't make a right." After being the leading voice in support of Proposition 10, Newsom's amendment won in a 20-point landslide.
The result is that the handsome and articulate governor is now the likely front-runner for the 2028 Democratic Presidential nomination.
On the other side of the country, Mamdani received over 50% of the votes in a 3-way race. He mobilized over 100,000 volunteers, brought out the greatest number of voters in a New York mayoral race in years, and held huge rallies of enthusiastic supporters. He won 70% of voters under age 45 and 75% of those under 30. Many of this age group are not regular voters but jammed the polls to vote for Mamdani. They're the future of the Democratic Party, if they continue to vote in such numbers.
With his fighting outsider campaign, Mamdani became one of the leading young faces in the Democratic Party.
The victory parties for Newsom's Proposition 10 and Mamdani's mayoral win were raucous, joyous, and filled with an overwhelming sense of relief.
But the eight moderate Senate cavers couldn't wait even a week to take the wind out of their sails. Many of them, including those who were first-time voters, may be so discouraged and disillusioned that they hey won't bother showing up at the polls next November.
It may be that Republicans would have never agreed to pass the extension to the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Sooner or later, Democrats who, unlike Republicans actually care about the well-being of SNAP recipients, may have had to let the Big Ugly Bill pass. But, honestly, what was the fucking rush? Why couldn't they wait for more than a week after the elections to cave? They could have at least taken the time to explain their actions to voters and then maybe given in around Thanksgiving so as not to spoil the holiday. But if they were so desperate to unilaterally surrender after letting the country suffer for over a month in return for a non-deal they could have gotten at the beginning, why was it worth bothering with a shutdown in the first place?
If the quick surrender of so-called "moderates" depresses many who voted Democratic on November 4th so much that they won't be motivated to return to the polls next November, the Democratic cowards caucus may have made it harder for the party to win in 2026.
In any case, it's clear that people who voted for Democrats and policies on November 4th wanted fighters, not cowards. The lesson is also clear: without fighters, we're lost.
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California Voters Pass Prop 50, Punching Back at Trump in Gerrymandering Fight
"The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now," wrote David Dayen at The American Prospect.
Nov 05, 2025
The people of California dealt a huge counterpunch to Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to a 2026 midterm victory, voting overwhelmingly on Tuesday for new congressional maps that are expected to net Democrats an additional five seats in the next US House elections.
Republicans have appeared on track to cling to power after President Donald Trump pushed red states to carry out largely unprecedented mid-decade redistricting efforts. New maps enacted or approved in Texas, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina were expected to net the GOP an extra nine seats that may have proven decisive in holding off a blue wave next November.
But on Tuesday, as Democrats romped up and down the ballot nationwide, more than 5.1 million California voters almost singlehandedly stymied the Republican advance in its tracks, passing Proposition 50 with nearly 64% of the vote, and approving new maps drawn up by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats with a more aggressive partisan gerrymander.
David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote on social media that in one fell swoop, the Democrats "have largely neutralized Trump's gerrymandering push."
However, he noted that the GOP could grab a possibly insurmountable advantage if the US Supreme Court votes to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, effectively legalizing racial gerrymandering and, in the process, potentially netting Republicans at least 19 more seats.
Notably, California's maps only needed to be approved by voters in the first place to override those drawn up by the state's independent redistricting commission, which was also created by a ballot measure in 2008. Meanwhile, the new maps drawn in red states have been enacted by state legislatures without voter approval.
As the champion of Prop 50, Newsom argued that desperate times called for desperate measures, saying it was a necessary counter to Trump's "attempt to rig the 2026 election and redistrict his way out of accountability in states like Texas.”
On Tuesday night, after Prop 50's resounding passage, Newsom told a gathering of California Democrats in Sacramento that the party was "on its toes, no longer on its heels."
The passage of Prop 50 may give other blue states a shot in the arm to pursue their own mid-decade gerrymanders and further chip away at the GOP advantage.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has signaled her support for the state pursuing its own redistricting, and a constitutional amendment has been proposed to override the state's independent, bipartisan redistricting commission.
In Virginia, Democratic leaders have passed the first round of a constitutional amendment to give the legislature emergency powers to redraw maps, an effort that remained viable after Democrats held onto the state’s House of Delegates in Tuesday’s elections.
Earlier this week, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also announced the creation of a new bipartisan commission to target the state's one remaining GOP district, though some Democrats have criticized the effort as a risky gambit that could backfire and benefit Republicans.
Regardless, Dayen believes that the result in California is a decisive indication of the more confrontational approach Democratic voters are looking for in the second Trump era.
"Prop 50 was called the moment polls closed in California," he wrote. "The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now."
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