<....Using Trump’s 2024 performance in each redrawn House district as a baseline, the national environment would need to shift left by 10 points (from about R+2 to D+8) in 2026 to keep the new TX-28 and TX-34 blue. In an underwhelming “blue ripple” scenario for Democrats — say, a D+2 national environment — these seats would only end up around R+6. But what if Hispanic voters move further left than the national environment, on average?

There isn’t data on exactly how Hispanic voters broke within each of these districts in 2024, but we do have statewide numbers from the exit polls: 55 percent of Texas Hispanics voted for Trump and 45 percent for Harris. To generate some crude estimates of how Hispanics voted within each district, I combined exit poll results with 2024 turnout data, the demographic composition of each House district, and Trump’s district-level performance in 2024. I then estimated how shifts toward Democrats among Hispanic voters would alter the results in each district.⁸

If Texas Democrats win Hispanics 51-49 in 2026 in addition to a blue-ripple-type shift among other demographic groups, they’d eke out a win in TX-28 and only narrowly lose TX-34. And if Hispanics shift a couple of points further left (think 53-47 in favor of Democrats), TX-34 would also remain in Gonzalez’s hands.

How much of a wave would it take to keep the new Texas districts blue?

Projected margin in Texas' 9th, 28th, 32nd, 34th, and 35th Congressional Districts based on the state's proposed redistricting, under different potential 2026 midterm scenarios

I just can’t say it enough: that Hispanic shift really is key here. Even a moderate blue wave where the national environment moves from R+2 to D+6 wouldn’t be enough on its own to keep TX-28 or TX-34 blue. But again, if a wave of that size happens and Texas Democrats win Hispanics 51-49, they’ll narrowly carry TX-28 (D+0.8) and TX-34 (D+0.4). Because these districts are so heavily Hispanic, relatively minor shifts among that group translate to major electoral gains for Democrats.

You shouldn’t take this (very) simple model as gospel, but if anything it might underrate Democrats’ chances in these districts. Remember, Cuellar and Gonzalez outran Harris in their old districts by 12.6 and 7.6 points, respectively, which the table above doesn’t account for. If they can similarly overperform in 2026, it would take a much smaller national Democratic wave and/or reversion toward Democrats among Hispanic voters for them to retain their seats.

To be clear, none of this is good news for Democrats. It would take some much bigger shifts in the environment for the “gerrymander” to turn into a “dummymander”. (We’ve definitely seen some wishful thinking about this from the left.) And if it did, well, Republicans could just redistrict again — provided they held onto control of the state legislature.

<President Donald Trump last month tried to goad Sen. Chuck Grassley into ending the practice of giving deference to home-state senators in the judicial nominations process — a pressure campaign that quickly escalated into an all-out social media war on the 91-year-old Judiciary Committee chair.

“Senator Grassley must step up,” Trump said on Truth Social, noting that he got the Iowa Republican “re-elected to the U.S. Senate when he was down, by a lot.”

It didn’t work. Despite Trump’s threats to rally his base against Grassley, Senate Republicans rebuffed the attempts to get their colleague to give up on so-called blue slips, which allow members of the minority party power to effectively veto nominees for U.S. attorneys and district court judges who would serve their regions.

It also doesn’t look like their position will change heading into the fall, either, as Republicans have indicated they’ll seek a rules change to speed up the confirmation process for certain Trump nominees on the Senate floor but not at the committee level.

“As a practical matter, the Senate's not going to give up the blue slip,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, in an interview. “So my appeal to the president is: please reconsider. Why do we want to have this fight for nothing?”

It marks a rare instance where Hill Republicans have publicly broken with the president, underscoring how even Trump’s most loyal allies are willing to stand up to him when it comes to protecting their institution’s traditions — and their own ability to exert influence back home.

“The Senators have a real vested interest in what happens in their states,” said Mike Fragoso, a former chief counsel for nominations and constitutional law for the Senate Judiciary Committee. “At the end of the day, there’s probably very little support for what Trump wants within the conference."

Fragoso, who also served as chief counsel for former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, argued that even Republicans wary of crossing the president now have taken advantage of the blue slip policy when Democrats held power. He added that there are relatively few bench seats in solidly Democratic states that Trump could even fill now without consent from Democrats.

Ultimately, said Fragoso, the blue slip’s elimination would just expose future seats in reliably red states like Florida and Texas to being filled with progressive judges by future Democratic administrations — and without the GOP getting much in return.

Grassley has also already made changes to the blue slip practice once, in 2017, when he announced he would move forward with circuit court nominees over home state senators’ objections. Although Judiciary chairs over the years had not always strictly followed that precedent, Grassley’s decision to consistently disregard it helped Trump see hundreds of judges confirmed during his first term in the White House.

It also helped to facilitate the recent confirmation of Emil Bove to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals over objections from New Jersey’s Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim. As a senior Justice Department official, Bove was accused of recommending the administration defy court orders that would interfere with Trump’s immigration agenda.

But circuit court judges are different from district court judges: They have jurisdiction that extends beyond a senator's state, while district judges and U.S. attorneys sit entirely within a given lawmaker’s home turf. And Republicans are finding themselves protective of maintaining control over these more localized positions as Trump is struggling to overcome Democratic roadblocks to confirming additional lower-level nominees.

Most recently, a court battle has broken out over Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, after her temporary appointment expired and federal judges — not the president — installed a replacement. The Trump administration swiftly fired the court-selected pick and again appointed Habba, who Booker and Kim continue to oppose.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is also leveraging the blue slip process by promising to withhold support for Jay Clayton to be the top federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York — effectively blocking his confirmation.

Trump, losing patience, took to Truth Social in late July, calling in his post for Grassley to have the “Courage” to “step up” and abandon the blue slip “SCAM” as Democratic “SLEAZEBAGS … have an ironclad stoppage of Great Republican Candidates.”....>

<....He went on to repost a slew of messages from various users of the platform backing up Trump’s calls for a blue slip boycott and directing their ire at the longest-serving senator. One person argued that Grassley’s abandonment of the blue slip practice would be a fitting “Swan song" for his political career, with another calling Grassley a “RINO” — or, a “Republican in Name Only.”

Grassley, however, was unmoved.

“I was offended by what the President said,” he said in opening remarks at a Judiciary Committee hearing the morning after Trump's initial post. “And I’m disappointed that it would result in personal insults.”

Grassley’s colleagues defended him, too, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying there simply was no appetite to change the practice on Capitol Hill.

But while Republicans continue to make the argument for keeping blue slips for political preservation purposes, others insist there will be political consequences for not eschewing the process.

Rob Luther, who was a top administration official involved in judicial confirmations during Trump’s first term, said he has long advocated for getting rid of the blue slip policy.

The conservative base, Luther explained, will soon get agitated by the outstanding number of bench vacancies that cannot be filled because of obstacles imposed by Democrats. That will especially be the case, Luther said, because there are so few openings — only about 50 free seats, according to the U.S. courts website.

“The district court blue slip issue is going to come up this term because there just aren’t enough vacancies,” Luther said. “It’s in Republican interest to get rid of the blue slips because we really need to get some solid conservatives in these deep blue states, and it’s the only way it’s ever going to happen.”

The blue slip practice also incentivizes senators to be uncooperative with their peers across the aisle, Luther said, recalling how there were significant vacancies on federal district courts during the first Trump administration because some progressive lawmakers from deep blue states were unwilling to make a deal on nominees.

Grassley seems to have anticipated this could become a liability for Republicans. Before he became the subject of Trump’s ire on the very subject, he began polling members of his committee to see if they’d support eliminating blue slips, Sen. Thom Tillis recently said on the Senate floor.

The North Carolina Republican — a member of the panel who is not seeking reelection — said he told Grassley that even if the policy were to be rescinded, he would continue to honor it anyway by opposing all relevant nominees who lacked support from their home state senators.

That stance would likely result in nominees being reported unfavorably out of the Judiciary Committee, setting up additional procedural roadblocks on the Senate floor — a counterintuitive outcome if eliminating blue slips was designed to clear the way.

In an interview, Tillis also warned of what would happen if Republicans changed the rules and then lost control of the Senate to Democrats: “It just means that you will not have any control when the roles are reversed.

“We can't bow to pressure because of legitimate frustration in the moment,” he continued. “I get President Trump is frustrated. But I also understand, as somebody who’s spent 10 years in this institution and 10 years on Judiciary, it would be a bad idea. And he would even regret it.”>

<For all the talk of a new, lasting multiracial coalition that helped elect President Donald Trump, there are clues that this support may be wavering, particularly among Latino voters. Polls show the president’s approval rating with this group has plummeted since the last election, and a third of Latinos who voted for him say they are unlikely to back a Republican candidate in the next one.

This collapse happened for a few reasons. Latino voters are souring not only on the president generally, but also on his handling of key issues like immigration and the economy — the very topics that boosted his support with them initially. And curiously, this decline in support for the president isn’t translating into a surge for Democrats. Instead, many Latino voters express dissatisfaction with both parties.

This shifting dynamic suggests that both parties have been operating on flawed assumptions over the last few years. Democrats made the mistake of treating Latinos as a monolithic group, focusing on social justice issues while failing to address economic concerns that were pushing these voters toward the GOP.

Now, Republicans may be poised to make a similar mistake. They have largely viewed these voters as Republicans-in-waiting, banking on a rightward drift that they assume extends to the most extreme parts of the conservative social agenda. This approach risks alienating a large segment of the Latino electorate. Ultimately, both parties are learning a crucial lesson: Demographics aren’t destiny, and they need a more nuanced understanding of this diverse and rapidly changing group of voters.

Over the last decade, Trump has remade the American electorate with the help of Latino voters. Back in 2016, his highly racialized and polarizing election victory resulted in one of the worst performances with Latino voters in modern history, winning fewer than three in 10 Hispanic and Latino voters, well below average for Republican candidates.

But splits began to develop among Latino communities in the US over the next few years. Working-class, non-college educated, and male Latinos, as well as those from Florida and the Southwest, began to drift away from Democrats, particularly at the national level. They were more intrigued by Republican pitches centered around the economy, small business growth, and affordability.

At the same time, Democrats were hesitant to admit they had an issue with the Latino population, quibbling over messaging and campaign investments while missing the plot. By the time of the 2020 election, Trump had managed to not just recover his party’s losses in 2016, but expand on them, shrinking the Democratic advantage with Latinos by nearly 20 points.

Democrats, it turns out, misread Latino voters’ priorities and beliefs, gradually losing support from the peak they had from 2012 to 2016 (when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton enjoyed 40-point margins). The party largely approached Latinos as “voters of color,” marginalized minorities who could be mobilized through appeals to identity, immigrant solidarity, and social justice.

For some time, this worked, but Latinos weren’t behaving like a monolithic group. Instead, Latinos would fracture and become more dissimilar during this time, with various kinds of evangelicals, border residents, naturalized immigrants, and working-class Latinos remaining or becoming more conservative as the Democratic Party and its white, college-educated base became more progressive.

Particularly on issues like crime, immigration and the border, and gender roles and identity, the liberal positions that Democrats took — or were portrayed to take — were out of step with the views of many conservative and moderate Latinos from 2020 to 2024.

In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that the most liberal, educated, and politically engaged Democrats exerted outsized influence on their party. By the 2024 election, this created an opening for Republicans, as Latino voters expressed greater openness to Trump and the GOP’s stances on the economy, immigration, and abortion. By then, their votes had begun to follow some of their beliefs.

Republican gains came quickly

As Democrats stumbled, Republicans stuck to a different approach: treating Latinos as a new kind of white voter. They doubled down on a hawkish and xenophobic immigration message that seemed to resonate with a large minority of Latinos, spoke of the border as an issue of crime and public safety, and talked nonstop about prices and affordability to exploit the lack of trust in Democrats’ stewardship of the economy.

Republicans sought to make the old Reagan line, that “Hispanics are conservatives, [but] they just don’t know it yet,” come true by hammering home the idea that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were too radical and out of touch.....>

<....This approach worked. Latinos concerned with immigration and the economy shifted to Republicans, and Trump posted a double-digit boost in support among Latinos, shrinking the Democratic advantage another 20 points.

Continued Latino support is not a given

An array of data suggests that this advantage is looking more short-lived, largely because Republicans aren’t taking into account the nuances of Latino voters. The GOP still did not win a majority of Latinos last year — and much of the boost was from disaffected Democrats or more moderate, disengaged Latinos who don’t have the same strong ideological leanings as the primarily white MAGA base.

The most recent evidence for this divergence comes from two research projects undertaken by the Democratic-aligned Equis Research group. In the spring, they tracked growing dissatisfaction among Latino voters with Trump’s handling of the economy, cost of living, and immigration. Even among what Equis calls “Biden defectors,” those former Democrats who switched to supporting Trump in 2024, a slight majority were beginning to turn on Trump’s economic policies.

This dynamic extended to immigration, where an overwhelming majority of all Latino voters thought the administration’s actions were “going too far and targeting the types of immigrants who strengthen our nation.” Some 36 percent of Trump-voting Latinos said the same thing, and a majority of Biden defectors, some 64 percent, felt the same way.

This suggests some degree of remaining immigrant solidarity among these swingier, evolving segments of the Latino electorate and disapproval over how mass deportations and aggressive anti-immigrant policies will affect law-abiding immigrants and their families.

Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in Equis’ polling believe that the Trump administration’s actions “will make it difficult for hardworking Latinos to feel safe, by increasing racial profiling and harassing all Latinos regardless of immigration status.” In other words, there is a limit to what various kinds of Latino voters are willing to stomach.

The same dynamic is becoming clearer with regards to the economy, where Latino voters, and new Trump voters specifically, are unhappy with the state of the economy. Biden defectors, Equis finds, are net negative on Trump’s economic policies: -6 percent of support in May and -8 percent in July.

Whether this dynamic not only hurts the GOP but also helps Democrats is unclear. Although many Latino voters still believe Republicans favor the wealthy over the working class, this long-standing sentiment is no longer pushing them toward the Democratic Party. Instead, they increasingly distrust both parties on this question.

But together, these signs suggest that the GOP is going too far with their policy and ideological mission in Trump’s second term, turning off the new converts they won to their coalition over the last 10 years.

Where the parties go from here

The two major parties are making errors with Latino voters. Both have to moderate their policy and ideological approaches while bringing more nuance to how they campaign.

Latinos do have some things that bind them together, and they are not just like white voters who can ignore discrimination and scapegoating and uprooting of their extended community’s lives (as immigration enforcement is showing). At the same time, they need to be talked to with more nuance.

Democrats tried to do this in 2024, moderating on immigration, dropping the usage of the term “Latinx,” and investing in hyper-specific, hyper-local campaigning with various kinds of Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, and others. But there was only so much campaigning they could do when facing a wave of anti-Biden, anti-incumbent electoral sentiment.

Republicans, meanwhile, toned down immigration talk and zeroed in on subgroups of the Latino electorate in battleground states in 2020. They appealed to religious and ideological conservatives — Cuban, South American, and Puerto Rican communities in Florida, as well as border communities in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Some of this nuanced campaigning did carry over to 2024, but it focused more on young and male Latinos in general. And 2024 saw a return to a kind of dog-whistle, racialized, and anti-immigrant scapegoating, which helped the anti-incumbent tide.

Latino voters are rapidly changing, existing as both a racial minority and an assimilating, formerly immigrant generation. Both parties will have to find a middle ground to recover or build up their coalitions. There is no such thing as a Latino voter, but rather, various kinds of Latino voters. Each must be approached differently.>

<White House officials and a close circle of conservative lawyers are preparing for President Donald Trump to be able to hit the ground running if a Supreme Court vacancy opens up during the remaining three and a half years of his second term, according to sources inside and outside the White House.

The discussions are in early stages and focus on finding a nominee in the mold of Samuel Alito, 75, and Clarence Thomas, 77, the two oldest justices, both of whom are considered stalwart conservative jurists who have taken narrow interpretations of the Constitutional text while backing an expansive view of Presidential power. Shortlists of judges are circulating among Trump allies as they debate who can be best trusted to stick with the Court's conservative wing during an appointment that could last decades.

“We are looking for people in the mold of Alito, Clarence Thomas and the late Scalia,” said a White House official familiar with the process, referring to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. The official said it was “premature” to say the White House was getting ready for a vacancy.

Republicans currently control the Senate, which must confirm any nominee to the court. The party also controlled the Senate throughout Trump’s first term, allowing Trump to appoint three Justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett— who were all well-regarded in conservative legal circles.

Advisors close to Trump want to set the stage for the smoothest possible confirmation process and avoid the high drama of Kavanaugh’s hearings in 2018 that focused on allegations of sexual assault. Conservative lawyers around Trump are also feeling burned by a handful of recent decisions in which Barrett joined liberal members of the court and want to ensure the next nominee is someone who won’t veer from the conservative bloc.

“There’s a lot of anger at Amy Coney Barrett coming from the MAGA movement,” says Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I think you can imagine a very different type of nominee than we’ve had from Trump in the past.”

Trump will make the final decision on who to put forward for Senate confirmation, says a White House official. Key players in his administration who would be involved in vetting candidates would be Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House Counsel David Warrington and Steve Kenny, the deputy White House counsel for nominations.

Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer and bare-knuckle Trump defender, is also expected to be an influential voice in the process. “Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are irreplaceable and I hope they do not retire anytime soon,” Davis tells TIME. Just in case, Davis says he has given the Trump White House a short list of “bold and fearless” nominees for the Supreme Court, and should there be a vacancy, he plans to “play an outside supporting role” to the White House efforts.

Davis, who is founder of the Article III project, a conservative judicial advocacy group, would not confirm which names are on his list. “I have provided my recommended list to the President and his team and I am not going to discuss that list with anyone other than them,” says Davis. He stressed that “the President and the President alone will decide his judicial nominees.”....>

<....Two people familiar with the White House vetting process said that the current front runners for a potential Supreme Court vacancy are Andrew Oldham, a 5th circuit judge in Texas, and Neomi Rao, who sits on the influential District of Columbia Circuit Court. Oldham was previously general counsel for Texas Governor Greg Abbott and clerked for Justice Alito. Rao, whose parents are from India, would be the first Asian-American justice on the Supreme Court, and only the seventh woman. Rao clerked for Justice Thomas earlier in her career.

Davis has also previously floated the name of Aileen Cannon, the judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida who ruled favorably for Trump when he was being investigated for keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club.

Other conservative judges considered potential contenders for Trump to name are James Ho, another judge on Texas’s 5th circuit, and two judges in Ohio’s 6th circuit—Raymond M. Kethledge and Amul R. Thapar.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank that’s best known for spearheading Project 2025, is also expected to work to influence Trump’s decision. John Malcolm, vice president of Heritage’s Institute for Constitutional Government, can list off the top of his head more than 10 current circuit court judges he thinks would make strong justices on the nation’s highest court. Malcolm also believes Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a former assistant U.S. attorney who clerked for Alito, would be an “excellent choice.” While Lee isn’t a sitting judge, he “isn’t afraid to speak his mind,” says Malcolm, who adds that Lee has a track record of legislation and books that show he’s a textualist and originalist.

Trump entered his second term having already helped cement a conservative majority for a generation through the installation of three nominees. In recent months, that court has upheld Trump’s consolidation of power as President and bolstered his larger project to tilt the country’s public policy to the right. In June, the Court limited the ability of judges to block Trump’s policies nationwide and paved the way for the Administration to move forward with deporting immigrants to locations other than their home countries without additional due process requirements imposed by a district court judge

During Trump’s first term, he relied heavily on recommendations from the powerful conservative legal group The Federalist Society for his judicial nominations. That process produced a group of academically-minded conservative thinkers on the court that overturned the nationwide abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.

Trump will likely be looking for a different standard this time around, says Wittes, the editor of Lawfare, an online publication that closely follows the Supreme Court. “I assume the competition here would be to have shown greatest loyalty to Trump,” Wittes says. “I think one would worry that this person would be guided by loyalty rather than guided by something like principle.”>

<The Texas House voted Wednesday to move forward with a new congressional map – as Democrats continued to seek ways to resist.

The vote for the map on a second reading was 88-52. The vote on a third and final reading was also 88-52.

The map, which could add five GOP seats in Congress and has set off a national redistricting war, will need approval from the Texas Senate before going to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who will sign it.

State Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, slammed Republicans for rigging the map to influence the 2026 midterm election outcome.

“This is what people do – people like Donald Trump, people like the Republican Party of Texas. When they can’t win, they cheat,” Wu said shortly before the vote.

With Wednesday’s House vote, the map cleared a major hurdle with enough Democrats present to establish a quorum.

But some House Democrats are still refusing to be present. Twenty members were recorded absent Wednesday, according to the unofficial House roll call.

Democrats fought the map with a number of proposed amendments that ultimately failed to pass.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D) filed amendments that would have affirmed the state was following the Voting Rights Act when it drew its original map. The measures would have allowed Texas to hold 2026 elections using the current congressional district lines if the proposed map is blocked by courts. Republicans rejected those measures.

The Texas House issued civil arrest warrants against Democrats who left the state earlier this month to block a vote on the GOP map. Democrats who returned to Texas have been forced to sign a permission slip to leave the Capitol that puts them in around-the-clock custody of a state law enforcement officer.

State Rep. Nicole Collier (D) has remained in the House chamber since Monday because she refused to consent to police custody, filing a legal petition Monday against the requirement and drawing national attention to her protest.

“Nicole, we are all in that chamber with you. Thank you to you and all the Texas Democrats who are standing up for the people,” former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) posted on social media Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said she, too, is alarmed by Collier’s detention: “In a free country, state lawmakers don’t get held hostage by the opposition.”

State Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat who has not returned to the House, slammed Burrows for locking the doors to the House during proceedings on the map.

“Is this a plantation? I was born in America, not on a plantation. I’m free only because I didn’t go back,” Jones posted Wednesday.

Other Democrats have embraced their police escorts. State Reps. Venton Jones and Terry Meza brought their police escorts along to a Dallas gay bar Tuesday.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) confirmed Wednesday that Democrats will continue to be in police custody until the redistricting map is passed on a final vote.

The Texas Senate already voted to approve the map – after two Senate Democrats remained in the chamber, allowing Republicans to hold the vote – but House Democrats ran out the clock on the first 30-day special legislative session. The legislature is now in its second special session, so the Senate will need to approve the map again.

House Democrats continued to fight from the floor Wednesday, with Wu filing an amendment that would block the map until after the complete release of the Epstein files.

“Trump is in those files, and that’s why he’s fighting to keep them hidden,” Wu said in a statement. “At the same time he’s demanding Abbott ram through racist maps, he’s making sure Congressional Republicans block the release of files that could expose his decades-long relationship with a child sex trafficker. This amendment forces Republicans to choose between their loyalty to Trump and their obligation to expose sexual predators.”

With most House Democrats back in Austin, U.S. Rep Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) joined others who are pushing Senate Democrats to leave the state next to continue blocking the map.

“It’s time for the Texas Senate to break quorum! It’s time to show these republicans that respect is earned & disrespect & bullying won’t be tolerated!” Crockett said on social media Wednesday.>

<With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:

“Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We're gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”

This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on.

Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.

First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced more than 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult.

Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters.

Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections.

Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and under-resourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150 percent longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200 percent longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.

Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy. If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.

That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical.

When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.

And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Putin, who reportedly told Trump that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.

The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries.

It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.....>

<....Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote.

Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it.

And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.

And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028.

I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits.

Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.

If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point.

This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.

Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic.

So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls.

And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.

Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority.

Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.

We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form....>

<....Ronald Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing Lyndon Johnson's peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades.

But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.

It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.

This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed.

The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.

Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined.

What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.

And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.

This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no.

No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.

If we fail now, there may not be another chance.>

<Newsmax, the right-wing cable news outlet that prides itself on being a safe space for MAGA loyalists, has agreed to pay a whopping $67 million to settle a libel lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion alleged that Newsmax knowingly posted and broadcast falsehoods about the company rigging the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.

This was not just a case of sloppy reporting and commentary, or a misunderstanding in the heat of a chaotic news cycle. Dominion’s lawsuit laid it out in no uncertain terms: Newsmax aired conspiracy theories that weren’t just wrong — they were ludicrous. We are talking about 18 separate statements made on television and social media, including wild claims that Dominion’s software switched votes from President Trump to former President Joe Biden, that the company had shady ties to Venezuela and that it had paid kickbacks to corrupt officials.

This wasn’t journalism. This was a fantasy novel masquerading as news. And the price tag for that fiction is $67 million.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been down this road before. In April 2023, Fox News cut a check to Dominion for $787.5 million to make its own defamation lawsuit disappear. That case involved Fox amplifying similar conspiracy theories, pushing nonsense that its journalists and editors knew — or should have known — didn’t pass the smell test, all because the network was terrified of losing viewers to the more feverish corners of right-wing media.

And it gets better — or worse, depending on your view. Last year, Newsmax also quietly settled a related case brought by Smartmatic, another voting tech company, for $40 million. Fox News is still facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic. That one is heading for trial in Manhattan, unless the two sides come to a settlement first.

These aren’t nuisance suits filed by ambulance chasers hoping for a quick payday. These are serious allegations backed by damning evidence. What Fox and Newsmax did wasn’t just unethical — it was corrosive. It eroded trust in democracy and the legitimacy of journalism. It deepened political division and helped fuel a conspiracy theory that ultimately led to violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

So why did they do it? Because it’s good for business. The business model at partisan cable networks — left or right — isn’t built so much on informing the public but on telling the audience what it wants to hear.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, what the conservative audience wanted to hear was that Trump had been robbed. That the system was rigged. That the deep state, the Democrats and, yes, the voting machine companies had all conspired to take their hero down.

Fox and Newsmax didn’t create this delusion — but they sure as hell monetized it.

And when journalism devolves into partisan cheerleading, it’s no surprise when journalists (a term I use loosely) sitting behind anchor desks become carnival barkers, and facts take a back seat to fantasy.

The real tragedy is that millions of Americans tuned in, nodded along and believed every word. Because when you’ve been trained to distrust every institution except the television pundits you worship, even the most absurd claim starts to feel like gospel.

Maybe it’s a little schadenfreude on my part, but I won’t apologize for feeling a touch of satisfaction in seeing these media giants write giant checks for their irresponsibility. They lied. They got caught. And now they’re paying for it.

Too bad the viewers who bought the lies, repeated them at dinner tables and blasted them across social media aren’t held to account. In a just world, they would share some of the blame. Because they’re not just innocent bystanders in this train wreck — they’re the unindicted co-conspirators.

The networks sold the con. But it was the audience that bought it — eagerly, angrily and pretty much without question.

And here we are, five years later, still trying to clean up the mess.>

<A California Republican caught in President Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering plan got blindsided Wednesday night when a CNN anchor demanded to know why her grievances should be taken seriously when she refused to criticize Texas Republicans for the same maneuver.

State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares joined "The Source" with fill-in anchor Brianna Keilar to discuss Democratic plans to pass legislation Thursday to put their newly proposed map on the ballot to offset in an effort to offset expected GOP gains in Texas.

Valladares accused Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Democratic allies of breaking the state's Constitution by drawing congressional maps "behind closed doors with no transparency."

Keilar noted that the new maps that Democrats in California aim to pass include a trigger such that they would only take effect if Texas's redistricting maps become official.

"Do you hold Texas Republicans at all responsible for what you're facing in your state?" asked Keilar.

When Valladares tried to insist that the California legislation specifies any state, rather than Texas, Keilar pressed her.

"Okay. But that's the effect of this. There is a trigger. This isn't happening in a vacuum. There's a contingency. And in this case, it is Texas. So let's just be clear. If it says other states, well, it's Texas," she said with a light chuckle. "So do you have any criticism from members of your own party in Texas?"

When Valladares pivoted to insisting California voters spoke in 2008 and 2010 to take the map-drawing out of the hands of politicians, Keilar pressed her again.

"So then what do you think about what they're doing in Texas?" asked Keilar.

Valladares urged all other states to follow California's lead and adopt their own independent redistricting commissions.

"Do the right thing, uphold democracy, implement your own independent redistricting commissions," she said.

But Keilar wasn't satisfied.

"If you can't criticize Republicans in Texas for their approach, which is so different from the one that you're advocating for in California, I mean, how should voters see California Republicans as opposed to a move like this? Only when it doesn't favor them?" she asked.

"Listen, I was elected, and the 120 legislators that were elected this past November in California, to uphold the California Constitution. This isn't a Republican issue. This isn't a Democrat issue. This is an issue of political elitists in California silencing and taking the power away from California voters," Valladares replied.

Later in the segment, Keilar demanded to know what message Valladares would send Trump.

"So it has become evident that a few California Republican lawmakers are acceptable collateral damage for President Trump. If he's able to secure more Republican gains overall in states considering redistricting, what would you say to the president?" she asked.

As Valladares began to respond that she wants to protect California voters, Keilar cut her off.

"What would you say to the president? Because this isn't happening in a vacuum, this very much has to do with his request for getting more safe seats in Congress," she pressed.

"Well, I'm assuming if the president listens to this show, he is going to know loud and clear how I feel about transparency and fairness in our elections process, specifically when it comes to redistricting," Valladares replied.>

<In his novel 1984, George Orwell warned, “Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” Today, Donald Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again.

What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism.

This is America’s homegrown Taliban, and they’re no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

When the Oklahoma Department of Education rolled out its new “America First” MAGA certification exam for teachers, designed with the help of a rightwing propaganda outlet, it wasn’t about improving education. It was about making sure that any teacher who dares to acknowledge the realities of race, gender, or American history is shut out of the profession.

Applicants from California or New York now must take a test that appears to demand perfect answers on questions about civics, chromosomes, religion, and so-called gender ideology. It’s not an exam, it’s a political loyalty test, and it fits neatly into the larger pattern we are seeing in Republican politics today. They aren’t hiding their racism or misogyny anymore. They’re reveling in it.

That reality was underscored by Trump’s latest tantrum against the Smithsonian and other museums. On his Nazi-infested social media platform, Trump complained that our museums are “out of control” because they talk about “how bad slavery was,” racism, and the struggles of the downtrodden. He whined that there is “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future”

What he really means is that America should stop teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and ongoing systemic racism and instead return to a whitewashed myth of national greatness that erases Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices.

His words are a plain translation of the GOP’s broader war on what they call “woke.” Being “anti-woke” is just a thinly veiled way of saying, “We’re okay with racism and misogyny.”

And Trump is the perfect avatar for this reinvention of the Confederacy, as I detail in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.

Trump’s and his GOP’s pro-racism neofascist purges go far beyond education and museums; they’ve also gone after the federal workforce with a vengeance. They canceled the government’s annual employee survey, gutted DEI programs across every agency, and are mass-firing federal workers, particularly in agencies that employ large numbers of Black women.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run by a Nazi-saluting white South African immigrant — put more than a quarter of a million jobs on the chopping block, devastating communities where civil service has long been the pathway into the middle class.

Black Americans, particularly Black women, have disproportionately relied on those jobs for stability and upward mobility. Taking them away isn’t about saving taxpayer money: it’s a targeted attack, designed to roll back decades of progress.

At the same time, groups aligned with Trump are publishing watchlists of federal workers they call “subversives,” lists overwhelmingly filled with women and people of color. Those people are now being hounded, relocated, or forced out altogether.

Senior women and Black leaders in the military are being fired or pushed into retirement. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s only woman on its military committee, was removed. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, who had led military healthcare, was forced to resign after 32 years of service.

These purges are political, not professional. They’re designed to restore the military to a largely all-white, all-male leadership structure. And at the same time, Trump and his enablers are working to rename bases after Confederate generals and restore monuments dedicated to traitors who fought against democracy to preserve slavery.

And now Trump is claiming — against the statistics — that crime in Washington, DC is “out of control.” This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy — blame crime on Black people while turning the country into a police state — on steroids.

Racism is the thread that ties all of this together....>

<....When five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans wasted no time enacting voter suppression laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters. When Republicans on the Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Republican-controlled states immediately redrew maps to diminish the power of Black communities.

This is about keeping power in the hands of white conservatives, no matter the cost to democracy.

And the cruelty isn’t limited to our own citizens. The Trump administration has begun deporting Afghan translators who risked their lives working alongside American troops, even as they continue to apply for legal protection through Special Immigrant Visa programs. ICE agents recently detained one such interpreter — someone who had helped U.S. soldiers survive the war — because the new GOP priority is to get as many brown people out of the country as possible.

This is not patriotism. It’s ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy.

I used to believe that maybe 20 percent of white Americans were openly racist. That was based on my experience growing up and on the way racism was often hidden behind polite code.

But looking at today’s voting patterns, at the cheering crowds for Trump’s open bigotry, it seems more like 55 to 60 percent. When a majority of white voters willingly support a party that strips voting rights from Black citizens, erases slavery from classrooms and museums, fires Black leaders from government, and deports brown allies, that’s not a fringe problem. That’s a national crisis.

This kind of “othering” of racial and gender minorities is a classic hallmark of fascism. It’s what we saw in Germany in the 1930s and what Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are doing in Hungary and Russia today. You dehumanize groups of people, define them as enemies of the state, and then strip away their rights until they no longer have the power to resist.

Trump and the GOP are running this playbook right out in the open. And far too many in the media are still treating “anti-woke” rhetoric as a culture-war issue instead of what it really is: a naked declaration of racism, misogyny, and authoritarian intent.

Democrats and people of good conscience cannot let this language go unchallenged.

Every time Republicans sneer about “woke,” it should be called what it is: they’re defending racism and misogyny. They’re trying to drag us back into a world where straight white men hold all the power and everyone else is erased. This is not just an ideological disagreement. It is an attack on the very idea of equality and democracy.

Woke people must stop playing defense and start organizing. We need mass mobilizations — marches, protests, and direct action — to show that Americans will not tolerate a return to white supremacy dressed up as patriotism.

We need to pressure Democrats to go on offense, to stop using mealy-mouthed language and start telling the truth: the GOP is running on racism, period.

And we need to demand that the media stop laundering Republican talking points and call out this agenda for what it is: a fascist project to make racism great again.

The stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. If we fail to rise to this challenge, they won’t just win the next election; they’ll win the power to define who counts as an American, whose stories matter, and who has a right to belong.

This is the GOP’s vision of MAGAstan: a land where truth is outlawed, history is erased, dissent is punished, and democracy is reduced to a hollow slogan.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not patriotism. It is the same naked pursuit of power through racism, misogyny, and authoritarian rule that we’ve seen in one country after another throughout history.

And here’s the brutal truth: they’re telling us exactly who they are and exactly what kind of dictatorship they want.

The only question left is whether the rest of us will stand by in silence while America is dragged into its darkest chapter or whether we will rise up, speak out, and refuse to let our country become the authoritarian nightmare Trump and the GOP are building in plain sight.>

<On Monday, Texas Democrats returned to Austin to participate in the Trump-ordered special legislative session that will redraw the state’s congressional map in an effort to hand Republicans five more House seats. There’s no fig leaf here, no pretense of any interest in democratic principles, just a naked power play. As President Trump put it, “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”

In other words, Republicans are trying to do to the House of Representatives what they’ve already done to the Supreme Court: bend the rules, stack the deck, and ensure themselves a permanent majority. And they are succeeding. The new congressional map has already passed the Texas House.

That’s why the Democratic reaction to this is so inexplicable.

Texas Democrats had found a way to exert actual hard power in a very red state by denying Republicans a quorum — Texas law requires two-thirds of the legislators be present in the chamber to conduct business. When Gov. Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to push through a redistricting plan that would give Trump the five extra seats to which he says he is “entitled,” Democrats left the state and blocked the special session from conducting any business at all.

This infuriated Republicans. Abbott promised to keep holding special sessions until Democrats came back, threatened to charge them with felonies, and ordered that they be arrested and physically delivered to the chamber, despite the fact that refusing to attend a legislative session is not a crime. Sen. John Cornyn even asked the FBI to help track Democrats down and return them to Texas.

All of this was unnecessary. After holding out for just two weeks, Texas Democrats voluntarily returned to help Republicans subvert democracy while patting themselves on the back for their bravery.

“Texas House Democrats broke quorum and successfully mobilized the nation against Trump’s assault on minority voting rights,” proclaimed Texas House Democrat Gene Wu. “Now, as Democrats across the nation join our fight to cause these maps to fail their political purpose, we’re prepared to bring this battle back to Texas under the right conditions and to take this fight to the courts.”

I can’t believe how utterly unsuited Democrats are to the present moment. In the Texas redistricting fight, they had found a way to exercise real power. And now they are throwing that leverage away and letting Trump’s naked power grab go forward.

Why? Because winning would be hard. As Texas House Democrat Vince Perez explained, “In order for us to block this, we would probably have to quorum break through Thanksgiving. That’s a difficult thing to achieve.”

But there is more at risk here than Perez’s holiday plans. The single best way to give American democracy a fighting chance is to remove any temptation for an electoral coup in the next presidential election by ensuring that Democrats control the House on Jan. 6, 2029. If you aren’t willing to spend a few months in Illinois to achieve that, you’re in the wrong job.

We need to be cold-blooded and clear-eyed about what is at stake. For the next three-and-half years, our sole purpose is to preserve enough of American democracy that it can eventually be restored without violence. If we fail, the American political system will tear itself apart.

Think I’m exaggerating? It’s already begun.

When Democrats returned to the Texas legislature, they were forcibly detained in the chamber, and not allowed to return home unless they voluntarily placed themselves under the physical custody of the Texas Department of Public Safety. One legislator who refused to sign the paperwork was not allowed to leave the chamber overnight and was threatened with a felony for speaking to the Democratic National Committee on the phone.

There is a time for gesture politics and singing folk songs. This is not it. This is a time for results. Norms are great things when everyone follows them but only a fool plays by unwritten rules when no one else does. Democrats must accept that fighting for American democracy isn’t going to be easy and it isn’t going to be cheap. It will take them outside of their comfort zones. It may cost some people their careers and even their liberty. In generations past, that would have been thought a small price to pay. What will future generations say of us?>

<President Donald Trump returned to social media Monday with another barrage of unsubstantiated statements about the integrity of elections, following a meeting in which Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly claimed that U.S. elections were “rigged” because of mail‑in voting.

Seizing on that assertion — despite there being no credible evidence to support it — Trump promised on Truth Social to “lead a movement” to phase out mail‑in ballots and voting machines, and promote “watermark paper.” He suggested he would implement these changes with an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The post contains many other false, misleading, or unsubstantiated statements about the use of mail ballots, including claims Trump and his allies have made before — even as more Republican officials have tried to encourage voting by mail.

His claims notwithstanding, courts have repeatedly rejected allegations of widespread fraud tied to mail ballots, and many democracies around the world use them. And under the Constitution, he has no explicit authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections. Experts say that an executive order like the one Trump describes in his post would be immediately challenged in court and unlikely to take effect.

Beyond that, any major change to voting by mail before the 2026 midterms would be a logistical nightmare for election administrators, and it would disproportionately affect voters who rely on it most, including overseas service members, veterans, and people with disabilities.,

Here’s a fact check of some of the key claims in his post.

What Trump said:

“States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”

Fact:

Trump’s claim that states are “merely an agent” of the federal government in elections is false, and contrary to decades of Republican orthodoxy on this point.

The Constitution gives power to Congress and the states — not the president — to the states to regulate the time, manner, and place of elections.

Meanwhile, Republicans for decades have framed states’ rights as a fundamental principle. This stretches back to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, through Ronald Reagan’s emphasis on “federalism,” and into recent decades where GOP leaders have framed decentralization of power as protection against “big government.”

Voting has been a primary example for that very point.

For example, after the contentious 2000 presidential election, Republicans fiercely defended Florida’s right to set its own recount rules. GOP leaders and state attorneys general argued in the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that federal oversight of state election laws was unconstitutional. Over the last decade, Republicans in Congress have opposed Democratic efforts to pass federal voting-rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, arguing they represented “federal takeovers” of elections. Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2019 called the legislation “a one-size-fits-all partisan rewrite by one side here in Washington.”

In 2020, when Democrats proposed federal requirements to expand mail voting due to COVID-19, Republicans fought them off. And when Trump floated the idea of delaying the November election, Republican senators like McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio reminded him that Congress and the states control election timing and procedures.

What Trump said:

“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED”

Fact:

Many democracies use mail voting, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Some use it more extensively than the U.S. No country has “given it up” because of widespread fraud. Fraud is rare in countries that use vote by mail, as it is here.

Germany has been using vote by mail since the 1950s; in its 2021 federal election, about half of German voters cast their ballots through the mail. In Switzerland, nearly all voters receive their ballots by mail, and more than 70% of voters return them in the same way. The United Kingdom allows any voters to request a mailed ballot, and about 20% of voters take advantage of the policy. The vast majority of European countries allow at least some form of mail voting, especially for citizens living abroad or for those with disabilities.

What Trump said:

Voting machines are “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial” and “cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”...>

<....Fact:

Paper ballots still have to be counted — either by hand (which is slow and error-prone) or by machine. That’s why nearly every state that uses paper ballots still relies on scanners to tally them quickly and accurately.

Existing federal law also requires the use of at least one voting machine in every single precinct in the country, for use by voters who have disabilities that make casting a paper ballot difficult. Trump cannot invalidate federal law through an executive order, so voting machines aren’t going anywhere.

Watermarks are not a standard or proven safeguard, though some states do have them (or something like them). The places that use them still use machines to count these ballots.

What Trump said:

“Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”

Fact:

There is no evidence that one party “cheats” with mail ballots. Voting by mail is used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and in jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, Republican voters are often more likely to use mail voting, especially in states like Arizona and Florida, where Republicans championed the practice until recently. In fact, there’s no evidence that vote by mail benefits either party over the other — multiple academic studies have reached this conclusion.

What Trump said:

“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”

Fact:

Mail‑in voting has consistently been shown to operate extremely securely due to robust safeguards. In states like Pennsylvania, counties that offer ballot curing — the ability to correct errors like missing signatures — report significantly lower rejection rates, demonstrating that the system isn’t rigged, but rather is responsive and adaptable.

Votebeat’s coverage highlights what research studies have shown repeatedly: Instances of fraud in mail-in voting remain exceedingly rare. Even when ballots get rejected, that’s typically due to procedural mistakes — not attempts at manipulation or deceit. Election administrators across the country work under strict, bipartisan protocols, including signature checks and secure handling procedures, to protect integrity. Courts and election officials routinely affirm the reliability of mail ballots when these protocols are followed. In both routine practice and under close scrutiny, mail-in voting stands out as both secure and trustworthy.

What Trump said:

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS…by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Fact:

Courts have ruled that Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally change federal election rules, as they consider several lawsuits challenging his March executive order.

In halting some provisions of that executive order, for example, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in April that “our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections.” That ruling blocked Trump’s direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote.

A federal judge in Massachusetts later blocked the same provision of the order, writing that Trump exceeded his authority. That judge also blocked parts of the order telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt deadline of Election Day.

Nothing stops Trump from leading an informal movement, however. He’s arguably been doing that for years already, and while it has had some impact on policy, voters haven’t really changed their habits much.>

<First things first: No, liberals aren’t mad that sorority girls post dancing videos online for rush season.

There have been a lot of MAGA influencers reposting videos with false accusations like “You know the LIBS are seething over this” and “BREAKING: Liberals are furious.” But as Kaitlyn Tiffany at the Atlantic wrote, “The only thing that is missing is evidence of seething libs.” Despite her best search efforts, Tiffany added, “I couldn’t find a single one.” When she asked one MAGA influencer to produce the evidence of outraged feminists, “He noted that many people replied to his posts saying that they weren’t mad about the TikTok dances. But, he said, ‘I don’t believe that.’”

It’s not mysterious what’s happening here. Republican pundits found a massive success distracting the MAGA base from Donald Trump‘s Jeffrey Epstein scandal by pretending there was some major progressive outcry against a sexy ad featuring Sydney Sweeney. (Liberal didn’t really care, and right-wingers were forced to create AI videos to manufacture “evidence” for this non-existent outrage.) Eager to keep distracting the public from Trump’s myriad of scandals and failures — while also having an excuse for public horniness —MAGA influencers tried to cook up a similar fake controversy about sorority dances. But what makes this all especially pathetic is that, typically, MAGA social media prefers to throw a screeching fit about the loose morals of women who dance in online videos.

Last summer, MAGA posters rage-stroked over a video deemed “Gen Z boss and a mini,” which featured women in an office dancing and chanting about how they see themselves in the world. Right-wingers fumed, “This is cancer. No wonder modern women can’t get anyone to date them,” insisting it was proof that women should not be allowed to work outside the home. Conservatives hated the video so much that X users recirculated it in March with language about the “ruins of bastions of masculinity” and cast blame on the women for everything bad that men have experienced. This followed a similar freakout during Mardi Gras last year, when X users melted down over a video of a group of college-aged girls dancing to hip-hop at a gas station in Louisiana. This, in turn, followed another MAGA tantrum over a college-era video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., dancing with friends, which was held out as proof that she was a “clueless nitwit.”

After years of dancing videos being wielded as a rhetorical weapon against women’s rights, we’re now expected to believe, as right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly declared, that MAGA wants young women to be “hot and together and free and unmasked in every way.”

After years of dancing videos being wielded as a rhetorical weapon against women’s rights, we’re now expected to believe, as right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly declared, that MAGA wants young women to be “hot and together and free and unmasked in every way.” This was self-evidently dumb, and not just because of the obsessive relitigation of a pandemic that ended when all these sorority girls were barely out of junior high. Thanks to Republicans overturning Roe v. Wade, young women aren’t as free as they were before. It’s a reminder of how depraved right-wing attitudes are around sex that they expect young women to be “hot,” but to not have sexual desire of their own — much less act on it.

Unfortunately, closer examination reveals that these seeming contradictions make a sick sort of sense in the MAGA imagination. Girls, in this mindset, are allowed to dance and be sexy — but only for a very short time in their youth, and only to attract a husband. The expectation is that the dancing shoes will soon be put away, as these hot-and-free young women prepare to fulfill their God-given destiny as trapped helpmeets to the men they are expected to quickly marry. Sorority girls are indulged a brief moment of feeling alive, but only because, in this right-wing narrative, white sorority girls are supposedly all conservative and will soon submit to their lives of servitude....>

<....This is no exaggeration. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was one of the right-wingers celebrating the imaginary liberal-triggering powers of the sorority dancing videos. He also recently spoke at a young conservative women’s event, where he argued that the only reason for women to go to college is to get the “MRS degree” — that is, to find a husband and then become a housewife. The narrative of most far-right “tradwife” influencers is similar: They once believed in education and work, but they have now found their true calling in a submissive role. (Ignore the fact that they are professional content creators who often make more money than their husbands.) The most famous tradwife online, Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, was a ballet dancer before she got married, which makes the “put away your dancing shoes” metaphor quite literal.

We see similar attitudes on the right with women and sports. In high school and even in college, there’s a fairly broad acceptance of female athleticism among conservatives. Some even have taken up watching women’s college basketball teams during March Madness. Adult women who make sports a career, however, are loathed on the right. There’s been a scourge of MAGA types showing up at WNBA games and throwing dild0s at the players, which Donald Trump Jr. celebrated on X. As Brandy Jensen of the Defector wrote, the message is, “Stop thinking you can play this game without any d**ks involved.”

Girls are allotted a certain amount of freedom when their youth prevents them from being a real threat to male dominance. Adult women, however, can compete with and challenge men — and because of this, the right needs to see them pushed out of public life and into the kitchen. With that in mind, it becomes clearer which dancing videos will gain conservative approval or condemnation. The “Gen Z boss” and AOC videos angered them because they featured women who have professional careers and power. The outrage at the Louisiana gas station video was largely racist — they were mad that white girls were dancing to a Black hip-hop artist’s song — but MAGA was also triggered because of the context. The girls in that video were on a road trip, a symbol of American freedom that was once reserved for men. When women do it, as in “Thelma and Louise,” it signifies feminism.

The college sorority, though, has remained frozen in the right-wing imagination as a holding pen for future wives. That’s not true, of course: Many young women, if not most, join sororities to make friends, and to develop skills and connections they can use in a future career. Meeting men is nice, but that is eclipsed by these other concerns and ambitions, as many former sorority girls have pointed out in the recent social media melee. Sororities advertise to potential members by highlighting career and academic benefits — not husband-hunting. But in the MAGA fantasy life, sororities aren’t a haven for true female freedom. They are just a sequestered space for girls to act out a little under tight supervision before they are transferred to the control of their husband. The power of this fantasy is such that few MAGA influencers felt the need to ask if it’s really true that sorority sisters are uniformly conservative, much less that they’re all interested in getting the ring by spring.

Cyndi Lauper called out this dynamic over 40 years ago in her iconic recording of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” “Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world,” she trilled. And then her voice turned forceful: “I wanna be the one who walks in the sun.”

Despite the sorority-to-tradwife dreams of the online right, there is not much evidence that young women today are any more keen on leaving girlhood for a lifetime of thankless drudgery than they were in years gone by. As I wrote last year, the actual data shows that women are increasingly independent. More women than ever are working full-time and holding out for an equal partnership rather than diving into a dependent relationship with a man. That’s especially true of college-educated women.

Kirk’s “advice” to use college only as a marriage match service is nonsensical. Girls aren’t going to work hard to get into school and pay huge sums of money just to meet boys, especially when you have low-cost dating apps available. They want an education so they can use it.

Yes, even the sorority girls.>

<The idea that politicians in the United States are puppeteered by special interest groups is nothing new. But at this point, it’s not clear what (if anything) the Republican party would actually stand for if those strings were cut.

The party has become a shell that yells about principles while simply pushing the desires of organizations like the Heritage Foundation and enacting the whims of Donald Trump. While this has been becoming apparent for a while, the recent lies and hypocrisy coming out of Texas show just how deeply that rot has set in.

At Trump’s prompting, Texas Republicans have redrawn congressional district lines for the next elections, something that is typically only done every ten years after a census. The move was explicitly made to gerrymander the state to provide Republicans with five additional seats in Congress so that the GOP can take firmer control of the House in 2026. It’s a purely political move, aimed at consolidating power, not helping meet the needs of constituents.

In response to this act by the Texas legislature, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is pushing to redraw congressional district lines in his state so that Democrats get five more seats to balance out Texas Republicans’ gerrymander. That plan still requires voter approval, which will be the subject of a special election in November. Republicans have been outraged by his actions, with California Republicans attempting to sue to prevent a vote on California’s redistricting from going ahead. That hypocrisy has been loud as California Republicans refuse to criticize their Texas counterparts, and Newsom’s redistricting plan would only go into effect if Texas votes in favor of the gerrymandered redistricting.

Earlier this month, when Texas Republicans wanted to vote on this redistricting, many Democratic Texas lawmakers responded by fleeing the state to keep the legislature from forming a quorum. Republicans and right-wing pundits have been irate about this tactic, suggesting that the Democrats were abdicating their responsibility and failing to represent their constituents.

Those same concerns were not in evidence when, earlier this year, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) chose to recess Congress early. Johnson sent House members home rather than risk a vote on whether to make files associated with the investigation of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein public. Again, it’s a move designed to preserve power by protecting Trump and other prominent political figures who might be mentioned in the files, not one aimed at protecting the interests of the people.

When Texas Democrats did eventually return to the state, they were put under guard and required to get permission slips to leave the floor. It was under those conditions that the redistricting bill was passed. At the same time, Texas Republicans pushed through a sweeping anti-trans bathroom ban that will endanger the safety of both trans people and cis people who don’t conform to subjective and traditional binary gender ideals.

All of this was done during a special session that was supposedly held to provide time to address Texas’ recent floods, and Democrats were pushed to return for it through claims that they were failing to provide disaster relief by playing political games. Republicans notably didn’t seem to value that disaster funding previously, when it could have actually prevented a disaster. Instead, they are now using the dead and grieving as a pawn to move another pawn (trans people) on their political chessboard....>

<....The Republicans, across the country but especially in Texas, have made it clear that they will use whatever means they can, not to push a moral agenda or a particular policy platform. Rather, their purpose is the advancement of the will of the hate groups and shadow organizations that support them and to prop up their would-be supreme leader.

Prominent system theorist Stafford Beer stated that “the purpose of a system is what it does.” It doesn’t matter what a system claims to be: if the output is different from that defined purpose and no one tries to change it, then that output is simply what the system is for. A tap delivers water, and that’s its purpose. If it produces no water, then it is broken and needs to be fixed. If a tap that claims to produce water instead produces raw sewage and no one tries to change that, then the tap is now simply a raw sewage tap.

So it is with the Republican Party. They have claimed to be fiscal conservatives, but every recent Republican government has ballooned the national deficit (the last Republican president to leave with a smaller deficit than he started with was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961). They claim to be the party of family values, but they don’t support the polices that would help families and are attempting to roll back child labor laws. They claim to support the working class, but help to break unions and strip down workers’ rights and wages. And, of course, they claim to support the military, but their trans ban will cost the armed forces millions, decrease military readiness, and force out people who have devoted their lives to the country, all in favor of pushing the ideals of the religious groups that fund them.

Whatever the Republican Party once stood for, it is no more. A lot of the blame for that can be laid at Trump’s door, but he was really just the final nail in the coffin. At some point, they became far more obsessed with just holding power rather than with doing anything constructive with it. And that left the door open for them to be co-opted by hate groups and the authors of policy platforms like Project 2025.

The party is already fractured between the traditional Republicans and the Trumpers: without a unified purpose, it’s hard to see how they come back from this in the long term.>

<When word got out that Texas might undertake an extraordinary mid-decade redistricting at Donald Trump’s behest, a handful of top California Democratic operatives floated an idea to Rep. Zoe Lofgren: Could California respond in kind?

Lofgren, the chair of California’s 43-member Democratic delegation, consulted in June with a trusted data expert who dismissed it as absurd — a foolhardy end-run around the state’s popular redistricting panel with no guarantee of yielding enough blue seats to fully offset Texas. Deterred by those misgivings, California Democrats instead spent weeks putting up a front, dangling the threat of a countermove without making any real plans to do so.

“It seemed to me worth a bluff,” Lofgren said. “If the Texans and Trump thought they’d go through all of this and they’d end up not gaining anything, maybe they would stop.”

“But they didn’t stop,” she added. “They just doubled down.”

So did California Democrats, especially Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a matter of weeks, they bluffed themselves into the marquee political contest of Trump’s second term, a high-voltage fight to shape the outcome of the 2026 midterms and the remaining years of his presidency.

“It got very real, very fast,” recounted Newsom, whose provocative podcast appearances and social media posturing lit the fuse for this slapdash effort — and positioned him as a de facto leader of the opposition party in advance of his likely 2028 White House run.

Texas Republicans approved a gerrymandered map early Saturday morning.

POLITICO spoke with nearly 50 people involved with the California effort, including lawmakers, political operatives, staffers and redistricting wonks. Many were granted anonymity to share details of private deliberations of the tightly-guarded process, which spanned multiple states and levels of government. Together, they paint a picture of a showdown propelled not by painstaking deliberations but by its own self-generating momentum and the opportunity for a rudderless Democratic party to remake itself as a political street brawler.

What initially felt improbable was, by mid-August, inevitable. Data experts and members of Congress spent their House recess in marathon Zoom sessions drawing dozens and dozens of revisions to new district lines. In Sacramento, Newsom’s team built out a campaign apparatus for the daunting and expensive task of selling the partisan map to voters. National Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, began hitting up their donor networks in anticipation of a nine-figure ballot clash.

“This is happening in California, but it’s bigger than California,” said Mike Smith, president of House Majority PAC, the primary House Democratic super PAC. “It’s about Democrats’ effort to actually take a stand and win back the House.”

‘The threat and the action’

The rumors started as early as April that Texas Republicans were contemplating redrawing their maps this year — six years before the decennial process was due up. By June, the plan had seeped into public view, and the state’s endangered Democrats took it upon themselves to convince their counterparts outside Texas that it could very well happen.

With few options at their disposal, Texas Democrats in the statehouse and in Congress lobbied blue-state lawmakers and governors for help. Their hope was that the mere possibility of retaliatory gerrymanders would be enough to dissuade Texas Republicans, who were initially reluctant about a sudden redistricting but were facing escalating pressure from Trump.

In June and July, Democratic Texas state lawmakers and party leaders fanned out to blue states, speaking with prominent Democrats such as Govs. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Ned Lamont of Connecticut and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, who had a private meeting with Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder during a visit to neighboring Oklahoma. The request for public support also reached Newsom, who released a simple statement vowing to have Texas Democrats’ back.

The pitch was a deliberately soft sell. Democrats would not have to commit to changing their maps or even identify a mechanism to do so. Texas state lawmakers followed a tight script in their meetings with other Democrats, keeping the focus on opposition to GOP-drawn maps.

“Everyone had specific instructions on a piece of paper. At no point were they to ask to redistrict,” said a person close to the Democratic caucus.

California’s congressional Democrats were happy to participate in the chest-thumping. But at that point, it was merely a head fake. Members of the caucus were hardly enthused at the prospect of rejiggering their district maps, a process that is notoriously sharp-elbowed in the best of circumstances....>

<....“There was the threat and there was the action,” said California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the third-ranking Democrat in the House. “The Texans wanted us to make the threat, which was fine and we were all comfortable doing that. But the action we knew would be very, very hard … so we were pretty cautious about that.”

‘Two can play at that game’

Several years before the current redistricting standoff began, then-Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison had broached with Newsom an idea of pausing the state’s independent redistricting commission.

Harrison had made a similar plea to leaders in other blue states with independent panels. His worry was that Democrats were sacrificing political advantage, while Republican-led legislatures were continuing to draw partisan gerrymanders.

“Gerrymandering is a cancer to our democracy but at the same time, I don’t believe that you can just allow the Republicans to gerrymander their states and then all the blue states have non-partisan commissions,” Harrison recounted. “It just can’t work that way. Either it’s all 50 states or it’s no states.”

At the time, Newsom demurred, telling Harrison he did not think Californians would want to undermine a commission they voted to put in place.

But by this summer, the governor had changed his mind. He was increasingly convinced every political battle was a national one, and the cascade of crises in his state this year had instilled a wartime mindset. His office formed a rapid response communications team during the Los Angeles wildfires in January to bat down misleading online rumors — and incoming criticism — about the disaster. That infrastructure later amplified his furious response to Trump’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles that began in early June. Internally, his team became more open than ever to unorthodox ideas — like redrawing the state’s maps.

By late June, Newsom and his top aides were batting around options of how California could respond to Texas. The governor was in a punchy mood. He had just made a swing through the early primary state of South Carolina and then was in Tennessee to tape a sprawling podcast with MAGA-friendly podcaster Shawn Ryan.

“When you’re about to spend four hours with someone, particularly someone that’s a well-known Trump supporter … you have a sort of a mindset about what’s going on in this country and a sort of clarity. You prepare in that respect to go to battle,” Newsom said.

Amped up by his preparation for the contentious chat, he dropped his first public hints that he was considering retaliation against Texas in an interview with a liberal outlet, The Tennessee Holler.

Five days later, Trump told Texas Republicans that he wanted new maps with five additional GOP seats. Newsom responded on X, “Two can play at that game.”

The declaration came as a complete surprise to California’s congressional Democrats, including Aguilar. After coming across Newsom’s post online “just like everybody else,” he said he thought to himself, “the California delegation meeting this week just got a lot more interesting.”

A blessing from the former Speaker

The weekly delegation lunch was slated for the day after Newsom’s social media bomb, and it featured a special guest: Jeffries.

He had been invited by Lofgren who was, at that point, still in “bluff mode.” She hoped a Jeffries drop-by, which would surely get noticed on the gossipy Hill, would signal to Texans that California was considering a counterattack, even though, in truth, skepticism still reigned among many in the delegation.

Jeffries did not explicitly ask the Californians to proceed in that meeting, according to people present. He spoke about the stakes of the upcoming midterms and how Democrats’ chances of winning back the House could be endangered if Texas and other red states redrew their maps.

Also piping up was Pelosi, who had spent much of the summer until that point keeping her opinion closely held. The day before the delegation lunch, she huddled with Texas Democrats during votes on the House floor, including Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the dean of the Texas delegation. Now, her message to her California colleagues was firm: “California was not going to unilaterally disarm” if Texas crossed what she saw as a line in the sand, said a person familiar with Pelosi’s involvement.

“She was definitely one of the people that was like, ‘If they proceed down this path, we’re going down with them,’” the person said....>

<....The confluence of three major party figures — Newsom, Pelosi and Jeffries — all signaling the green light marked a significant turning point. Five days later, the Texas Legislature went into special session with redistricting on the agenda. A Texas-California collision was looking more and more likely.

The recall team reassembles

In Texas, all Abbott needed for new maps was the Legislature’s approval. But Newsom’s aides determined that would be legally fraught in California, where an independent line-drawing commission controls congressional and legislative district boundaries. Voters would have to agree to amend the state’s constitution to allow for the lines to be redrawn. A special election in the fall would be the better option.

Newsom quickly turned to his political kitchen Cabinet, most of whom were veterans of his 2021 recall battle. There was a degree of muscle memory for the reassembled team, who had familiarity with running a nationalized campaign in an off-year.

The first task was to decide the question they would put before voters. Some outside operatives argued this was a chance to do away with the commission entirely, as well as the top-two election format that partisans on both sides had grumbled about for years as an unnecessary complication.

But simply jettisoning the commission was viewed internally as untenable; Newsom’s pollster found that the panel had sky-high favorability ratings with the public (findings that would be echoed a few weeks later in a POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll). Newsom advisers argued against touching other voter-backed reforms like top-two. The focus, they insisted, had to be Texas — and Trump.

“After the first round of results, the challenge became clearer,” said one Newsom political adviser. “There was the question of, ‘Do two wrongs make a right?’ that we needed to overcome.”

The team then refined what they’d be asking of voters. The new maps would be temporary, and the measure would enshrine the panel’s line-drawing authority in law after the 2030 census. There would be language stating the maps would only go into effect if Texas or another state proceeded with a mid-decade redistricting. A fresh round of polls found a slim majority of voters backed the proposal, enough to show a pathway to success but a perilous spot for any ballot measure campaign.

The fledgling campaign apparatus started approaching donors to test their appetites for a ballot fight that could easily cost north of $100 million. Democratic funders, they knew, were burned out after losing the White House last year, and Newsom’s team assumed national Republicans would have no trouble mustering the dollars to defeat the measure.

Pelosi began tapping into her prolific fundraising Rolodex. House Majority PAC, which is aligned with Jeffries, made the California measure central to its pitch to donors, arguing that without the additional Democratic pick-ups in the state, their chances of winning the House in 2026 were significantly diminished. Stalwart Democratic allies such as labor unions pledged their support before there were even maps to rally around.

Chicken nuggets and congressional maps

In late July, as Newsom and his political team were building a campaign on the fly, the crafting of the new maps began in earnest in a separate, parallel effort.

Paul Mitchell was supposed to be in Europe with his family on a summer vacation. Instead, the state’s foremost redistricting expert was stuck at home, glued to his computer and subsisting on warmed-over chicken nuggets and Diet Coke.

Mitchell had been a consultant for the California Democratic delegation during past redistricting cycles, so he was a known and trusted quantity. He had an especially long-standing relationship with Lofgren, who called him with a task: Find five more Democratic seats to offset the Texas GOP gains.

Mitchell had been one of the loudest skeptics of the redistricting effort when the topic was first broached in June. But a month later, as he and a half-dozen other redistricting professionals started testing the feasibility of Lofgren’s request, he saw that it would be possible to draw five seats ripe for Democratic pick-up while shoring up the party’s four most vulnerable incumbents — all without running afoul of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority political representation.

“The challenge was: Can you get five seats without breaking everything?” Mitchell said. “That was my personal goal.”

Other Democratic consultants began circulating outlandish maps to maximize the party’s gains, including ones that carved regions of the state into thin “bacon-strip districts” — a redistricting term of art — that drew wildly distant cities into one long spindly seat....>