Tag: gerrymandering

Teachers Union Helps Fund Newsom’s Radical Redistricting Push Ahead of 2025 Vote

According to Campus Reform, “The California Teachers Association (CTA) has given $3 million to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign for Proposition 50, a redistricting measure that will appear on the state’s Nov. 4, ballot, according to state campaign finance filings.”

The CTA or California Teachers Association’s contribution went directly to Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50.

The radical vengeful measure originated from a three bill package in July where the Dems used a ‘gut and amend’ tactic on A.B. 604, S.B. 260 and A.C.A. 8 in order to help give the legislature control of redistricting for 2026, 2028, 2030 election cycles.

The state’s independent Group would eventually assume control, finally in the year 2031.

According to Assemblyman Carl DeMaio “If this redistricting scheme goes through, voters will have no reason to trust politicians.”

DeMaio told Campus Reform. “Politicians will choose their voters; voters will not choose their politicians.”

Sonja Shaw, who’s running for Superintendent of Education in California, condemned the Union’s support for this proposition.

Shaw wrote on X “The California Teachers Association is behind every attack on our kids, pushing confusion in classrooms, protecting only those who fit their narrative, and selling out teachers to back Newsom’s gerrymander…”

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Missouri Governor Calls Special Session For Redrawing Congressional Map

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on Aug. 29 that he was calling state lawmakers back to the capital for a special session tasked with redrawing the congressional district lines ahead of the 2026 election.

His announcement came just hours after fellow Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Texas’s new congressional voting map, setting the stage for the GOP to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives.

Scheduled to begin Sept. 3, T.J.Muscaro reports for The Epoch Times that Missouri’s redistricting also appears to give Republicans help in the coming midterms, as Kehoe’s proposed map looks to stretch a Kansas City-area district – currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver—into Republican-leaning rural areas.

“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government,” Kehoe said in a statement.

Cleaver is one of two current Democratic-controlled districts in the state. The other is in St. Louis, held by Rep. Wesley Bells. There are six total congressional districts in Missouri.

Cleaver decried the decision to alter his district in a statement.

“This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines; it will silence voices. It will deny representation,” he said.

The state’s Democratic House Minority Leader Ashley Aune also spoke out against the change, accusing Kehoe of looking to “steal a congressional seat for Republicans.”

However, Missouri Democrats are unlikely to stop their Republican colleagues from passing the new map.

While they could filibuster in the Senate, Republicans have procedural means to shut it down, and the number of Democrats is too small for their absence to prevent a quorum.

Meanwhile, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking voters to approve a new congressional map that seeks to help his party win five seats as a response to Texas’s new map favoring Republicans.

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Big money and names power the campaign to influence California voters over a new congressional map

It’s either a plan to save democracy from President Donald Trump’s attempts to rig elections or a power grab by Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats.

The race to define Newsom’s push to redraw California’s congressional map before the 2026 midterms is underway with about five weeks until voters can begin casting early ballots on Proposition 50. The prevailing narrative could determine which party controls the U.S. House for the last two years of Trump’s second term.

Days into the campaign, supporters and opponents each brought in more than $10 million. That’s a fraction of the $100 million-plus expected to be spent to win over voters by Nov. 4. The contest also is drawing some high-profile state politicians, including actor and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Here’s a look at the campaigns and how they’re ramping up.

A national redistricting fight

The California ballot question is part of the unusual mid-decade redistricting that Texas Republicans kicked off last month at Trump’s direction. By pressing GOP-led states to redraw congressional district boundaries in the party’s favor, the president hopes to prevent Democrats from taking control of the U.S. House in the 2026 elections.

Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to regain the House majority, which would give them the power to subpoena Trump, investigate his administration and block his legislative agenda.

Republican state lawmakers in Texas passed a bill aiming to make five Democratic-held congressional seats more winnable for the GOP. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law Friday.

California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature responded in kind. Lawmakers last week approved a plan, which Newsom quickly signed, to ask voters to approve new House district boundaries that shore up shaky Democratic districts and pick up as many as five GOP-held seats.

Newsom and Democratic allies are mobilizing

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California Supreme Court Backs Newsom, Allows Legislators to Seize Power from Voters

The California Supreme Court rejected an emergency petition Wednesday filed by Republicans to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) $200 million special election to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts.

It was the second time in as many weeks that the state’s highest court, which has a 6-1 Democrat-appointed majority, had given Newsom and his party the green light to go ahead with their redistricintg scheme.

As Breitbart News had reported earlier in the week, Republicans said that the redistricting law and the special election Newsom is holding to enact it are both unlawful and unconstitutional.

Sacramento-area NBC affiliate KNBC reported that the court’s decision did not seem to be accompanied by any opinion on the issues at hand.

Effectively, California’s highest judges allowed the legislature to seize the power to draw congressional districts away from voters, even after the voters amended the constitution to prevent them from doing so.

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Judge rules Utah’s redistricting violated rights; orders new maps by 2026

The Utah Legislature violated voters’ rights by approving congressional boundaries that split Salt Lake County, Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson ruled.

She said lawmakers bypassed the independent redistricting commission established by voters and drew maps that unlawfully favored Republicans. The ruling means new congressional maps must be drawn ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Gibson said when Legislators enacted the new Congressional Map in 2021 using HB 2004, it violated the law already established and “cannot lawfully govern future elections in Utah.”

The Legislature has until Sept. 24 to redraw districting lines so they align with the ballot initiative called Proposition 4. The plaintiffs and third parties will also have the opportunity to submit maps, which could be used if the legislature’s maps do not meet the requirements.

Gibson’s ruling is the latest in a saga of court hearings regarding Utah’s congressional districts.

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Newsom Prepares To Violate State Constitution To Save ‘Democracy’ In Redistricting Battle

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom is moving ahead with a controversial plan to redraw his state’s congressional maps by overriding the state’s non-partisan redistricting commission to counter redistricting moves by Republican lawmakers in Texas.

Newsom has launched a $100 million campaign that is backed by Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Federation of Labor Unions and a handful of billionaire donors.

Lawmakers in California approved the redistricting plan on Thursday, labeling it “Democracy’s Best Bet.”

However, serious concerns remain as to whether Newsom’s plan can survive legal scrutiny for a number of reasons.

In 2010, a decisive percentage of California voters (62-38) passed Prop 20 which took redistricting out of the hands of politicians and created an independent citizens commission in the state constitution.

Constitutional attorney Mark Meuser says Newsom’s redistricting plan would violate California’s constitution by holding hearings on a bill less than 30 days after introduction and by drawing maps without authority.

Meuser also says Newsom’s plan runs afoul of the state constitution by drawing maps contrary to its requirements and by drawing mid-decade maps, which are prohibited.

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Texas Senate Passes Redistricting Map Favoring Republicans

The Texas Senate on Aug. 23 passed a bill that will redraw Texas’s congressional maps and increase Republicans’ hold on the state’s U.S. House delegation by as many as five seats.

Its passage in the early hours of Saturday morning came after a daylong session.

After passing the Republican-dominated upper chamber in an 18 to 11 party-line vote, the bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it into law.

In line with a request from President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice, the bill would redraw the state’s congressional boundaries to favor Republicans.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Aug. 21 signed a legislative package to authorize a Nov. 4 referendum to redraw California’s congressional maps in favor of Democrats. The changes are expected to be approved in the Democratic stronghold.

The map could increase Democrats’ hold on California’s U.S. House delegation by as many as five seats, endangering several previously safe Republicans.

On Thursday evening, the state Senate’s Special Committee on Congressional Redistricting met to discuss the bill, voting 5–3 in favor of reporting the bill to the Senate with a favorable recommendation.

The Texas House of Representatives passed the legislation on Aug. 20, after the more than 50 Democrats who had left the state earlier returned after it became clear that California would approve a legislative response to Texas’s passage of the bill.

Those Democrats returned to the state after a two-week standoff, during which the state Legislature was unable to achieve a quorum and was therefore gridlocked.

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Democrat Rep. Al Green Is Fired. His Response Was to Call It Racist.

Representative Al Green, who has served Texas’s 9th Congressional District since 2005, will finally leave office. 

The Texas Legislature, led by Republicans, passed a legal redrawing of congressional maps that effectively eliminates District 9. Green, best known not for legislation but for shouting down President Trump during his address to Congress in March 2025, will be removed from office after nearly two decades of loud, ineffective, and divisive politics.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Al Green called the redistricting racist. But the only racial injustice here is the Democrat Party’s decades-long abuse of district lines to cling to power.

In his angry press release, Green declared that the elimination of his district—along with TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33—was part of a “racist, unconstitutional scheme” led by President Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

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Hypocrite Obama scorns gerrymandering — unless it benefits HIM

Former President Barack Obama this week inserted himself into the national debate over partisan gerrymandering with his proprietary blend of self-righteousness, self-interest and duplicity.

With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushing through a new congressional map to benefit Republicans and California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeking to do the same for Democrats, Obama lent a weary world his wisdom.

“Over the long term, we shouldn’t have political gerrymandering in America, just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas,” he began in a Wednesday post on X.

“But,” he stipulated.

But of course.

“Since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Gov. [Gavin] Newsom has approached this,” insisted Obama.

“He’s put forward a smart, measured approach in California, designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”

Who didn’t see that one coming?

Obama’s high opinion of himself has only ever been matched by his scorn for the masses.

He hopes no one will notice his blatant projection: Obama himself personally participated, to put it lightly, in a highly beneficial gerrymander over 20 years ago.

Without a doubt, the former president’s initial suggestion has merit. 

It would be wonderful if House districts were drawn so as to be maximally representative of discrete communities, and to keep representatives maximally attuned to their constituents’ interests.

Perhaps one day the two parties will come together to ensure as much.

Alas, that’s not the world we live in today.

As it stands, both sides are locked in an unforgiving battle to enshrine the most structurally advantageous maps into law in as many states as possible.

In Illinois, where Texas Democrats initially fled to deny Abbott the quorum needed to pass his new map, Democrats represent 14 of 17 districts, or more than 82% of the state.

Yet Kamala Harris won Illinois last year by fewer than 11 percentage points, 54.4% to 43.5%.

Democrats achieved this feat by creating a map so preposterous that even Stephen Colbert felt compelled to ask Prairie State Gov. JB Pritzker about it during an otherwise softball interview.

In New Jersey, where President Donald Trump won 46% of the vote in 2024, the GOP holds just 25% of the congressional seats.

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“We’re Gonna Punch These Sons of B*tches in the Mouth” – Newsom Threatens MAGA, Lashes Out at Texas Republicans For Passing New Congressional Map

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) lashed out at Texas Republicans for passing a new Congressional map that gives the GOP five more US House seats.

Last week, the Texas House failed to achieve quorum for the sixth time since early August, stalling the GOP’s redistricting plan. Only 95 lawmakers showed up for the 10 a.m. session, once again falling short of the 100 needed to reach a quorum.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened the derelict Democrats with arrest and removal from office if they didn’t return to the Capitol.

After two weeks on the run, Texas Democrats finally returned to the Capitol this week.

On Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives approved a redistricting plan that hands five additional U.S. House seats to Republicans, cementing the GOP’s dominance in the state delegation from 25 to a potential 30 out of 38 seats.

The Texas House of Representatives passed the congressional redistricting bill by an 88–52 partisan vote.

Newsom went off on Texas Republicans during an appearance on The Siren podcast on Wednesday and threatened to punch back with his own redistricting map.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast on Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some people’s sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

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