I had a very interesting morning at the Day Job. The DLC’s think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, held a forum on the changing politics of judicial nominations, featuring Stuart Taylor of National Journal, Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington University and The New Republic, and yours truly.PPI’s Will Marshall moderated and introduced us, and after citing Taylor and Rosen’s impressive legal resumes, mentioned my law degree from the University of Georgia and said: “It’s good to have some kudzu among the ivy here today.” After some consideration, I decided to take that as a compliment.It fell to me to serve as the defender of Democrats who voted against Roberts’ nomination, and, more generally, to remind everyone of the real roots of the recent polarization of judicial nominations, in the devil’s bargain the GOP has made with the Cultural Right. I also took issue with the idea that it would be just peachy keen for progressives if abortion policy were returned to Congress and state legislatures.If you’re interested, the forum will probably be offered up to insomniacs at some point this weekend over CSPAN or CSPAN2. Or you can check out the streaming video available via CSPAN3. If you do, please kindly ignore my face-made-for-radio and listen to what I said. I did wear a cool red-white-and-blue donkey tie.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 17: Looking at Newsom’s Complicated Plan of Retaliation for Trump’s Texas Power Grab
Democrats desperately want their politicians to fight back against Trump’s outrages, and California Governor Gavin Newsom has a plan for one kind of retaliation. I discuss the pros and cons at New York.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a national political opportunity is rarely passed up by California governor Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate whose heavily Democratic state is both a target for and a major point of resistance against Donald Trump’s regime. So when Texas Republicans bent to Trump’s demand for a mid-decade re-redistricting of the state’s congressional map in order to gin up a few extra U.S. House seats for the GOP prior to the 2026 midterms, Newsom was predictably quick to respond, as Politico reports:Gavin Newsom suddenly can’t stop talking about Texas gerrymandering — and a provocative idea to counter it in California.
“On podcasts and social media, the California governor has threatened that if Texas follows President Donald Trump’s advice and redraws its congressional districts to shore up the GOP’s slender House majority, California should throw out its own maps to boost Democrats, circumventing or overhauling the state’s voter-approved redistricting commission.
“It’s a proposal capturing the imagination of a Democratic Party spoiling for another fight with Republicans and desperate to regain a foothold in Washington. This week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries privately huddled with members of the California delegation to discuss redistricting at the bloc’s weekly lunch. And in California, text threads are ablaze with discussions of what a redraw would look like, who would benefit, and how it would affect active efforts to recruit candidates and raise money.”
The idea of matching Texas in partisan audacity is catnip to Newsom, who has long engaged in long-distance rhetorical battles with the GOP leaders of the red megastates of Texas and Florida. But there’s a bit of a problem with a tit-for-tat response to the Lone Star State. In Texas, the legislature fully controls redistricting; it can do whatever it wants short of violating the increasingly toothless federal Voting Rights Act or “one person, one vote” considerations. California, by contrast, conducts redistricting via an elaborate citizens-commission process approved by voters in two constitutional-amendment ballot initiatives passed in 2008 and 2010.
Efforts to emulate the Great Texas Power Grab in California will require some risky legal and political work-arounds that will offend not just the opposition party but some actual voters. Newsom has obviously thought about that but seems willing to take the plunge via one of two strategies, as Punchbowl News reports:
“Newsom can call a special session. The legislature would put a proposition on the ballot that would “pause” the commission or rescind its redistricting power. California voters would have to approve this in a special election. They might not …“[A second] path is less likely because it is more complicated and legally murky. The California legislature would embark on redrawing districts under the theory that it is permitted because the state’s constitution is silent on mid-decade redistricting. And if the California constitution doesn’t address that scenario, then Democrats could do the mid-decade redraw without the commission.
“This strategy would depend on surviving a legal challenge. Newsom called it ‘a novel legal question.’ It’s a risky tactic, but could be done more expediently than a ballot initiative.”
It appears that California’s Democratic U.S. House members are onboard with the scheme, at least publicly, even though it might make some of their own districts marginally more competitive. It’s unclear, even if everything works out, that California could completely offset the Texas action: Punchbowl News estimates that a two-to-four-seat Democratic gain is possible in a legislative redistricting that ignores all the competition-enhancing principles of the current system; Trump has asked Texas Republicans for five more seats. And while there’s some talk of Texas backing down in the face of California’s threat, I wouldn’t count on that at all — this is Donald Trump demanding an egregious gerrymander, and it’s always possible the California gambit could backfire in the courts or at the ballot box.
California is significantly more Democratic in its voting preferences than it was when the citizens commission was adopted in order to take partisan politics out of the redistricting process. And without any question, highly partisan Democrats in and beyond California will love the idea of competing with the very worst Republican practices in imposing one-party rule in Washington and in the states. But some progressives and probably many independents will still be offended, and a few are making their voices heard already, Politico notes:
“‘Trying to save democracy by destroying democracy is dangerous and foolish,’ said Assemblymember Alex Lee, the head of the state Legislature’s Progressive Caucus. ‘By legitimizing the race to the bottom of gerrymandering, Democrats will ultimately lose.’
“Or as one Democratic political consultant granted anonymity to speak freely put it, ‘The idea of taking away the power from the citizens and giving it back to the politicians — the optics of that is horrendous and indefensible.’
“The consultant said, ‘That’s insane. That’s a crazy hill to die on.'”
There’s also some grumbling that this is a self-serving Newsom gambit, but asking California Democrats to subordinate their good-government instincts to the mission to match Republican partisanship will be a tempting proposition for most.