SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats next year, after Texas Republicans advanced their own redrawn map to pad their House majority by the same number of seats at President Donald Trump’s urging.
California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has led the campaign in favor of the map, then quickly signed it — the latest step in a tit-for-tat gerrymandering battle.
“This is not something six weeks ago that I ever imagined that I’d be doing,” Newsom said at a press conference, pledging a campaign for the measure that would reach out to Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. “This is a reaction to an assault on our democracy in Texas.”
Republicans, who have filed a lawsuit and called for a federal investigation into the plan, promised to fight the measure at the ballot box as well.
California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere, contending the president was just responding to Democratic gerrymandering in other states. But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” was dangerous.
"You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”
Texas’ redrawn maps still need a final vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate, which advanced the plan out of a committee Thursday but did not bring the measure to the floor. The Senate was scheduled to meet again Friday.
After that, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature will be all that is needed to make the map official. It’s part of Trump’s effort to stave off an expected loss of the GOP’s majority in the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections.
My one hope is that this eye-for-an-eye redistricting will eventually lead to a constitutional amendment to have all congressional districts drawn via some nonpartisan algorithm rather than by state politicians. Probably over optimistic of me, though.
My only qualm with that is that if you select an algorithm, it needs to be selected, which means that the people in control of that selection can decide what’s non-partisan in the selection criteria.
I’m more in favor of defining properties that districts must have and then selecting a districting commission by lottery. Make it so you can’t be fired for being on the commission, and pay people 20% over their wage for the time they’re on the commission.
If an algorithm has an outcome that seems flagrantly incorrect, you can’t subpoena it and ask about its reasoning. The courts are already geared towards handling complaints regarding how a commission handled its responsibilities.
My only qualm with that is that if you select an algorithm, it needs to be selected, which means that the people in control of that selection can decide what’s non-partisan in the selection criteria.
Anyone with a sibling that has had to divide something equally to share it knows how to solve this. One group chooses the algorithm and the second group chooses which side they get to on.
The first group, who have the power to introduce bias disadvantaging one side cannot benefit from it, and worse, they’d hand the power to the second group. It forces the first group to choose a method with built in equality because the second group could force the first group to take the disadvantaged side.
One group chooses the algorithm and the second group chooses which side they get to on.
In practice this would require the second group to basically have a switch that switches all voters’ preferences. So I don’t think that’s gonna work here.
In practice this would require the second group to basically have a switch that switches all voters’ preferences. So I don’t think that’s gonna work here.
That wouldn’t be the variable choice by the second group in what I’m suggesting.
In this scenario if the first party choices algorithmic weights which favor their voters, given them a controlling outcome, the second party would be able to substitute their own weights making the algorithm shift the districts to give the second party the control. The rules would forbid baking the weights into the algorithm meaning the first group would work very hard to produce an algorithm producing equal representation districts without being able to swing it either way by weighting it.
this seems to assume a baked-in 2 party system I would prefer not to continue to plan around
Unfortunately I don’t think that’s how algorithm development works, not if you want to make a fair one.
You really really really don’t want to have a constitutional convention in this current political climate. Especially since republicans control more state legislators than dems do. Imagine the heinous shit the fascists will put in.
eventually lead
It’s equally likely that it will end with the US being carved into semi-official fiefdoms divided by faction as with the Guelphs and Ghibellines in medieval Italy.
Replace Guelphs and Ghibellines techbro A and techbro B, and yeah, sounds about right.
That’s not necessarily the case, unless there are massive migration movements inside the US. The split is not really per state, but mostly between urban and rural areas inside each state, instead of a large scale political segregation.
Not a US american so sorry if this is a stupid question, but why aren’t these congressional districts the same as administrative districts?
No. States are allocated a number of seats in the House of Representatives based on population. It’s up to each state to decide how to subdivide its territory into roughly equal population districts to elect each of their allocated House seats. Texas decided to redraw their map to make them advantageous to the Republican Party, so California has retaliated by redrawing their maps to be more advantageous to Democrats.
The US Senate is much more straightforward: Each state gets two senators, but they’re on non-overlapping six year terms. Only one is up for election at a time, so it’s statewide election for the seat.
How would you define an administrative district? It’s likely similar I’d imagine, but not sure where your frame of reference comes from.
Well I don’t need to, they are predefined administrative units. Take the federal state of Northrhine-Westphalia in Germany as an example:
If Republicans don’t like it they can get on board with efforts to stop gerrymandering everywhere. Glad we’re on the same page now!
or… they can gerrymander every other red state
They’re already maxed out on several.
If they’ve maxed out some, maybe they’ll be dumb enough to try to max it out even further and actually undo it.
but not every
California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader
"You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”
These people are absolute pieces of shit. He’s just saying whatever will hurt democrats without touching republicans.
Also, this is dumb as fuck. “You do what we do and what happens? Everything falls apart”.
Bitch so you KNOW you are fucking up this country AND you’re saying it out loud?!
USA. Please, how dumb folks ya have in there? ;-; How can they not see the meaning?
Many of them are very much not dumb. With the gop you have to start with the inverse of Hanlon’s razor and assume they’re evil until they can prove that they’re simply morons instead.
But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” was dangerous
We didn’t start the fire…
Controlled burns are something we learned from native peoples to care for the land, that some of us simply cannot fathom working. Fighting fire with fire is very effective indeed.
Yah, fire was never used to backburn until it was learned from some unspecified group of natives. Throughout dozens of thousands of years that humans have used fires.
Some of the hokey shit people come up with.
Yeah five is not enough.
Better to burn it all down then just let the other side burn all my shit.
Isn’t it already too late to wait until the midterms to decide this? Texas will already be electing five new Republicans to the House in November. This won’t “balance the scales” for at least another two years after that.
That means Republicans will maintain their majority for Trump’s entire 2nd term…and by then, they will have rewritten the entire playbook to make sure they all stay in power permanently. The only way to stop that, is to take back the House and Senate…now. Not two years from now. This November, now.
(Correction…I apparently don’t know what year it is.)
Isn’t the mid term 2026? It’s only 2025
Lol! Man, you just totally made my day. I don’t know what I was thinking. Thank you. Maybe there is still hope.
POV: It’s election season and you’re watching “Jerry loves drawing Salamanders” on the interdimentional cable, the best show on the Central Finite Curve!
Relevant CGP Grey video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY&list=PLkLBH5Kzphe0Qu8mCW1Leef2xSxPK1FIe&index=4
Wonder how many of those idiots will sit it out again this time.
Edit: spelling
Maybe stop fighting with fire in the first place you twat.
I’m confused. What do you think the play here is
Gasoline + Styrofoam = Napalm.
Gasoline + styOfoam = naPalm. We can all play with words but the aggressor has been planning to use it for a long time.
