California Secretary of State Shirley Weber on Monday pushed back against a torrent of misinformation on social media sites claiming that mail-in ballots for the state’s Nov. 4 special election are purposefully designed to disclose how people voted.
Weber, the state’s top elections official, refuted claims by some Republicans and far-right partisans that holes on ballot envelopes allow election officials to see how Californians voted on Proposition 50, the ballot measure about redistricting that will be decided in a special election in a little over three weeks.
“The small holes on ballot envelopes are an accessibility feature to allow sight-impaired voters to orient themselves to where they are required to sign the envelope,” Weber said in a statement released Monday.
Weber said voters can insert ballots in return envelopes in a manner that doesn’t reveal how they voted, or could cast ballots at early voting stations that will open soon or in person on Nov. 4.
Weber’s decision to “set the record straight” was prompted by conspiracy theories exploding online alleging that mail ballots received by 23 million Californians in recent days are purposefully designed to reveal the votes of people who opposed the measure.
“If California voters vote ‘NO’ on Gavin Newscum’s redistricting plan, it will show their answer through a hole in the envelope,” Libs of TikTok posted on the social media platform X on Sunday, in a post that has 4.8 million views. “All Democrats do is cheat.”
GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz earlier retweeted a similar post that has been viewed more than 840,000 times, and Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a conservative commentator, called for the November special election to be suspended because of the alleged ballot irregularities.
The allegation about the ballots, which has been raised by Republicans during prior California elections, stems from the holes in mail ballot envelopes that were created to help visually impaired voters and allow election workers to make sure ballots have been removed from envelopes.
The special election was called for by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in an effort to counter President Trump urging GOP-led states, notably Texas, to redraw their congressional districts before next year’s midterm election to boost GOP ranks in the House and buttress his ability to enact his agenda during his final two years in office.
California Democrats responded by proposing a rare mid-decade redrawing of California’s 52 congressional boundaries to increase Democratic representation in Congress. Congressional districts are typically drawn once a decade by an independent state commission created by voters in 2010.
Nearly 600,000 Californians have already returned mail ballots as of Monday evening, according to a ballot tracker created by Political Data, a voter data firm that is led by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed congressional boundaries on the November ballot.
Republican leaders in California who oppose the ballot measure have expressed concern about the ballot conspiracy theories, fearing the claims may suppress Republicans and others from voting against Proposition 50.
“Please don’t panic people about something that is easily addressed by turning their ballot around,” Roxanne Hoge, the chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party, posted on X. “We need every no vote and we need them now.”
Jessica Millan Patterson, the former chair of the state GOP who is leading one of the two main committees opposing Proposition 50, compared not voting early to sitting on the sidelines of a football game until the third quarter.
“I understand why voters would be concerned when they see holes in their envelopes … because your vote is your business. It’s the bedrock of our system, being able to [vote by] secret ballot,” she said in an interview. “That being said, the worst thing that you could do if you are unhappy with the way things are here in California is not vote, and so I will continue to promote early voting and voting by mail. It’s always been a core principle for me.”
As California voters receive mail ballots for the November special election, which could upend the state’s congressional boundaries and determine control of the House, billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer said Thursday he will spend $12 million to back Democrats’ efforts to redraw districts to boost their party’s ranks in the legislative body.
The ballot measure was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats after President Trump urged Texas leaders to redraw their congressional districts before next year’s midterm election. Buttressing GOP numbers in Congress could help Trump continue enacting his agenda during his final two years in office.
“We must stop Trump’s election-rigging power grab,” Steyer said in a statement. “The defining fight through Nov. 4 is passing Proposition 50. In order to compete and win, Democrats can’t keep playing by the same old rules. This is how we fight back, and stick it to Trump.”
Steyer’s announcement makes him the biggest funder of pro-Proposition 50 efforts, surpassing billionaire financier George Soros, who has contributed $10 million to the effort.
Steyer founded a hedge fund whose investments included massive fossil fuel projects, but after he learned of the environmental consequences of these financial decisions, he divested and has worked to fight climate change. Steyer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Democratic candidates and causes and more than $300 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.
Steyer plans to launch a scathing ad Thursday night that imagines Trump watching election returns on Nov. 4 and furiously throwing fast food at a television when he sees Proposition 50 succeeding.
“Why did you do this to Trump?” the president asks. The ad then shows a fictional TV anchor saying that the ballot measure’s success makes it more likely that Trump will be investigated for corruption and that the records of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will be released. “I hate California,” Trump responds.
The advertisement is scheduled to start airing Thursday night during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The late-night show was in the spotlight after it was briefly suspended by Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC last month under pressure from the Trump administration because of a comment Kimmel made about the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The esoteric process of redistricting typically occurs once every decade after the U.S. Census to account for population shifts. The maps, historically drawn in smoke-filled backrooms, protected incumbents and created bizarrely shaped districts, such as the “ribbon of shame” along the California coast.
In recent decades, good-government advocates have fought to create districts that are logical and geographically compact and do not disenfranchise minority voters. At the forefront of the effort, California voters passed a 2010 ballot measure to create an independent commission to draw the state’s congressional boundaries.
But this year, Trump and his allies urged leaders of GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to boost Republicans’ prospects in next year’s midterm election. The House is closely divided, and retaining Republican control is crucial to Trump’s ability to enact his agenda.
California Democrats, led by Newson, responded in kind. The state Legislature voted in August to call a special election in November to decide on redrawn districts that could give their party five more seats in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest in the nation.
Supporters of Proposition 50 have vastly outraised the committees opposing the measure. Steyer’s announcement came one day after Charles Munger Jr., the largest donor to the opposition, spoke out publicly for the first time about why he had contributed $32 million to the effort.
“I’m fighting for the ordinary voter to have an effective say in their own government,” Munger told reporters. “I don’t want Californians ignored by the national government because all the districts are fortresses for one party or the other.”
A longtime opponent of gerrymandering, the bow-tie-wearing Palo Alto physicist bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created the independent commission to draw California’s congressional districts.
Munger, the son of a billionaire who was the right-hand man of investor Warren Buffett, declined to comment about whether he planned to give additional funds.
“I neither confirm nor deny rumors that involve the tactics of the campaign,” Munger told reporters. “Talk to me after the election is over.”
Generally speaking, it’s a grand time to be a Republican in the nation’s capital.
President Trump is redecorating the White House in his gold-plated image. The GOP controls both houses of Congress. Two-thirds of the Supreme Court was appointed by Republican presidents.
In California, the outlook for the GOP is far bleaker. The party hasn’t elected a statewide candidate in almost two decades; Democrats hold a nearly 2-to-1 voter registration edge and have supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature.
That’s long been the story for a state party stuck in the shadows in a deep-blue coastal state.
Will O’Neill, chairman, Republican Party of Orange County, Mark Mueser, Dhillon Law Group, Shawn Steel, RNC National Committeeman, Garrett Fahy, chair, Republican National Lawyers Association, and California State Assembly member David Tangipa during the Redistricting Lawfare in 2025 session at the California GOP Convention in Garden Grove, CA on Saturday, September 6, 2025.
(Eric Thayer / For The Times)
However, amid a sea of “Trump 2028” T-shirts, red MAGA hats and sequined Americana-themed accessories, California Republicans had a brief reprieve from minority status this weekend at their fall convention in Orange County.
Members of the California GOP — often a fractious horde — were energized and united by their opposition to Proposition 50, the ballot measure crafted by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders to redraw the state’s congressional districts to counter gerrymandering efforts in GOP-led states. Newsom accused Republicans of trying to “rig” the 2026 election at Trump’s behest to keep control of Congress.
Voters will decide its fate in a Nov. 4 special election and receive mail ballots roughly four weeks prior.
“Only one thing really matters. We’ve gotten people in the same room on this issue that hated each other for 20 years, probably for good reasons, based on ego,” said Shawn Steel, one of California’s three members of the Republican National Committee and the chairman of the party’s anti-Proposition 50 campaign, on Saturday. “But those days are over, at least for the next 58 days. … This is more than just unity. It’s survival.”
If approved, Proposition 50 could cost Republicans five seats in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives and determine control of Congress during Trump’s final two years in office.
More than $40 million has already poured into campaigns supporting and opposing the effort, according to reports of large donations filed with the secretary of state’s office through Saturday.
Spending has been evident as glossy pamphlets opposing the effort landed in voters’ mailboxes even before lawmakers voted to put Proposition 50 on the ballot. This weekend, ads supporting the measure aired during the football game between the University of Michigan and the University of Oklahoma.
At the state GOP convention, which drew 1,143 registered delegates, alternates and guests to the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove, this priority was evident.
Republican candidates running for governor next year would normally be focused on building support among donors and activists less than a year before the primary. But they foregrounded their opposition to Proposition 50 during the convention.
“I’m supposed to say every time I start talking, the No. 1 most important thing that we can talk about right now is ‘No on 50,’” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a GOP gubernatorial candidate, said Saturday as he addressed the Log Cabin Republicans meeting. “So every conversation that you have with people has to begin with ‘No on 50.’ So you say, ‘No on 50. Oh, how are you doing?’”
Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton are the two most prominent Republican candidates in the crowded race to succeed Newsom, who will be termed out in 2026.
The walls of the convention hotel were lined with posters opposing the redistricting ballot measure, alongside typical campaign fliers, rhinestone MAGA broaches and pro-Trump merchandise such as T-shirts bearing his visage that read “Daddy’s Back!” and calling for his election to an unconstitutional third term in 2028.
Though California Republicans last elected statewide candidates in 2006, they have had greater success on ballot measures. Since 2010, the party has been victorious in more than 60% of the propositions it took a position on, according to data compiled by the state GOP.
“We need you to be involved. This is a dire situation,” state Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Fresno) told a packed ballroom of party activists.
The California GOP Convention in Garden Grove, CA on Saturday, September 6, 2025. (Eric Thayer / For The Times)
Attendees of the Redistricting Lawfare in 2025 session at the California GOP Convention in Garden Grove. (Eric Thayer / For The Times)
Tangipa urged the crowd to reach out to their friends and neighbors with a simple message that is not centered on redistricting, the esoteric process of redrawing congressional districts that typically occurs once every decade following the U.S. census to account for population shifts.
“It’s too hard to talk about redistricting. You know, most people want to get a beer, hang out with their family, go to work, spend time,” he said. “You need to talk to the Republicans [and ask] one question: Does Gov. Newsom and the legislative body in Sacramento deserve more power?”
“No!” the crowd roared.
Should the measure pass, lawyers would challenge the new lines in federal court the next day, attorney and former GOP candidate Mark Meuser said during a separate redistricting panel.
But rather than rely on the courts, panelists hoped to defeat the measure at the ballot box, outlining various messaging strategies for attendees to adopt. Voter outreach trainings took place during the convention, and similar virtual classes were scheduled to begin Monday.
Even with the heavy focus on the redistricting ballot measure, gubernatorial candidates were also skittering around the convention, speaking to various caucuses, greeting delegates in the hallways and holding private meetings.
More than 80 people have signaled their intent to run for governor next year, according to the secretary of state’s office, though some have since dropped out.
Despite being rivals who both hope to win one of the top two spots in the June primary and move on to the November 2026 general election, Bianco and Hilton amicably chatted, a two-man show throughout some of the convention.
Hilton, after posing alongside Bianco at the California MAGA gathering on Friday, argued that the number of Californians who supported Trump in the 2024 election shows that there is a pathway for a Republican to be elected governor next year.
Pointing to glittery gold block letters that spelled MAGA, he said he wanted to swap the first A for a U, so that the acronym stood for “the most useless governor in America, Gavin Newsom.”
“The worst record of any state, the highest unemployment, the highest poverty, the highest taxes, the highest gas prices,” Hilton said. “If we can’t rip these people apart, then we don’t deserve to be here. They’re going to be asking for another four years. They don’t deserve another four minutes.”
California gubernatorial candidate Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks at the California GOP Convention in Garden Grove.
(Eric Thayer / For The Times)
At a Saturday gathering of roughly 60 delegates from the conservative northern swath of California, Bianco said he would never say a bad word about his Republican opponents. But, he argued, he was the only candidate who could win the election because of his ability to siphon off Democratic votes because of his law enforcement bona fides.
“Democrats want their kids safe. They want their businesses safe. They want their neighborhoods safe. And they can say, ‘I’ll vote for public safety.’ They’re not even going to say I’m voting for a Republican,” Bianco promised.
As he raised his hands to the crowd with a grin, Bianco’s closely cropped high-and-tight haircut and handlebar mustache instantly telegraphed his law enforcement background, even though his badge and holstered pistol were hidden beneath a gray blazer.
Later, after Bianco addressed a crowd of Central Coast delegates sporting more cowboy hats and fewer button-down shirts, Hilton walked to the front of the room and spoke in his clipped British accent about how another attendee had promised to take him pig hunting.
California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at the California GOP Convention in Garden Grove.
(Eric Thayer / For The Times)
“We weren’t talking about police officers, I want to make that clear!” a man yelled from the crowd.
“Exactly,” Hilton continued, explaining how his family had a salami business in Hungary and he had gotten his hands plenty dirty in the past, “doing every aspect of making sausage, including killing the pigs.”
John L. Burton, the proudly liberal and pro-labor lawmaker who shaped California politics and policy over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, auto emissions, guns and foie gras, has died. He was 92.
With his brother, Rep. Phillip Burton, and college buddy, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Burton was integral to the organization that dominated Democratic politics in San Francisco and the state starting in the 1960s.
Burton was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and Congress a decade later. Laid low by cocaine addiction, he did not seek reelection in 1982. But he returned to Sacramento after getting clean and became the Capitol’s most powerful legislator as Senate president pro tem from 1998 until term limits forced him to retire in 2004.
“I think government’s there to help the people who can’t help themselves. And there’s a lot of people that can’t help themselves,” Burton said, describing his view of a politician’s job in an oral history interview by Open California.
Burton’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his family on Sunday.
“He cared a lot,” said Kimiko Burton, his daughter. “He always instilled in me that we fight for the underdog. There are literally millions of people whose lives he helped over the years who have no idea who he is.”
An L.A. Times writer described Brown, always dapper and cool, as a piece of living art. In contrast, Burton was performance art — rumpled, often rude, too fidgety to sit in long policy meetings. Some people sprinkle conversation with profanities. Burton doused his sentences with expletives, usually F-bombs.
John Burton with then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2011.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
He was quick to yell but could also be charming. He bought pies from a fruit stand off Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento and delivered them as apologies to targets of his rants. An aide once gave him a T-shirt with the phrase: “I yell because I care.”
Unlike most politicians, who dress to the nines, Burton wore ties reluctantly and showed up at meetings with governors wearing guayaberas, rarely with his hair in place. When cameras weren’t around, he drove through San Francisco delivering blankets to homeless people.
One of Burton’s many intensely loyal aides was Angie Tate, whom he hired to be his political fundraiser in 1998 knowing she was pregnant with twins. After she gave birth three months early and tried to return to work, Burton insisted that she take a year off, fully paid. She worked with him for the rest of his days.
In later years, he created John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit group to mentor foster youth and seek policy changes. One such bill extended services for foster youth until age 21, rather than the previous cutoff of 18.
“I don’t think there is a person who has done more for foster kids than John Burton,” said Miles Cooley, a Los Angeles entertainment attorney who was in foster care when he was a child and sits on the board of Burton’s foundation. “He wasn’t speaking truth to power. He was yelling it.”
From his early days in public life, Burton, a lawyer and Army veteran, advocated for greater civil rights, opposed the death penalty, and was an antiwar activist, protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam in October 1963, when the U.S. had fewer than 17,000 troops there.
As state Senate leader four decades later, Burton joined folk singer Joan Baez at a protest of President George W. Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. As California Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, he presided as the party changed its platform to oppose capital punishment.
“John Burton was liberal when it was popular to be liberal and he was liberal when it was not popular. I always admired that,” said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, a Republican who tangled with Burton in the Legislature and later when they chaired their respective political parties.
A party chair’s job is to win elections. That requires money. In 2008, the year before Burton took over the state Democratic Party, the California Republican and Democratic parties raised and spent roughly equal sums. By 2016, his final campaign as chair, the Democrats were outspending the Republicans $36.2 million to $17.7 million.
He promoted a ballot measure in 2010 that allows the Legislature to pass the annual budget by a simple majority rather than the previous two-thirds supermajority, allowing the Democrats to pass a legislative session’s most important measure — the budget — without Republican votes, further marginalizing the GOP in Sacramento.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Treasurer Fiona Ma were among the politicians, most of them women, who joined Burton on the convention stage in 2017 for his farewell as party chair. Former state Sen. Martha Escutia serenaded him with a rendition of “Bésame Mucho.”
“John is the chief architect of the Democrats’ dominance in California,” Pelosi said at the time.
Burton paid tribute to the people who had helped him, saying, “You’re only as good as your staff,” and closed by exhorting party loyalists to raise their middle fingers and give a Burton-like cheer to then-President Trump.
Although Burton was a partisan, his closest friend in the Senate was Ross Johnson of Fullerton, who was Senate Republican leader. Sharing a quirky love of song, the unlikely duet interrupted a Senate floor session with a rendition of “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
They also shared a distrust of authority and collaborated to curb law enforcement’s ability to seize individuals’ assets without a trial. Burton and Johnson shaped campaign finance law with a ballot measure permitting political parties to accept unlimited donations, enhancing parties’ power. As a sweetener for voters, the measure required rapid disclosure of contributions.
John Lowell Burton, born in Cincinnati in 1932, was the youngest of three brothers. After his father completed medical school in Chicago, the family relocated to San Francisco, where Dr. Burton cared for patients whether they could pay or not.
Burton lettered in basketball at San Francisco State College and kept a clipping of a newspaper box score showing he scored 20 points against a University of San Francisco team that included young Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He met Brown at San Francisco State and they became lifelong friends. A bartender in his younger days, Burton was arrested for bookmaking in 1962, but was cleared.
The Burton brothers reflected a dichotomy in California politics, rising from the left while Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ascended from the right, against the swirl of the Bay Area’s brand of radical politics. John Burton and Brown won their Assembly seats in 1964, the same year that voters approved a ballot measure backed by the real estate industry giving property owners the right to refuse to sell to people of color. Courts later overturned it.
The Burton-Brown organization spawned a who’s who of leaders, including two San Francisco mayors — George Moscone, who was a high school friend, and Brown, the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. Burton was a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s father, a state appellate court justice, and watched young Gavin’s high school sports games. Brown gave Newsom his start in politics with an appointment.
Barbara Boxer worked for John Burton during his time in Congress, before succeeding him in 1982 and winning a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. When Boxer retired in 2016, Brown helped promote Boxer’s successor, Kamala Harris.
Pelosi is most consequential of all. Phillip Burton’s widow, Sala Burton, succeeded him in Congress. As she was dying of cancer, Sala Burton told John that she wanted Pelosi to succeed her, and he used all his connections to help Pelosi win the congressional seat in 1987.
Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton at the California Democratic State Convention in 2017.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In November 1978, Burton declined an invitation from Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Mateo, to accompany him to Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult, once a force in San Francisco politics. On Nov. 18, as Ryan’s plane was about to depart with cult defectors, one of cult leader Jim Jones’ followers assassinated the congressman. Jones led a murder-suicide resulting in more than 900 deaths.
On Nov. 27, 1978, with the city convulsed by the Jonestown cataclysm, Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor, sneaked into City Hall and assassinated Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Burton fell hard in the months and years after, drinking heavily, huffing nitrous oxide and freebasing cocaine. He missed congressional votes, and aides feared he would be found dead. In 1982, he checked into a rehab facility in Arizona and did not seek reelection.
Burton’s eclectic circle of friends included national political figures, Hollywood glitterati, football coach John Madden, North Beach topless dancer Carol Doda and, from his bartending days, Alice Kleupfer, a cocktail waitress.
In this small world, Kleupfer’s son James Rogan won an Assembly seat from the Burbank area as a Republican in 1994, was elected to Congress in 1996, and helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Politics aside, Burton and Rogan shared a connection through Kleupfer.
That friendship mattered on May 30, 1996, when Republicans, holding a short-lived 41-39 seat advantage in the Assembly, rushed to approve tough-on-crime bills. One bill would have made it a crime for pregnant women to abuse drugs, a response to accounts of babies born addicted to cocaine. The GOP-led Assembly seemed certain to pass it when Burton stood to speak.
Though not a commanding orator, Burton spoke from the heart about how cocaine “takes total control of your life,” and how he spent days freebasing in hotel rooms, refusing maid service because he didn’t want anyone to see him.
“It took me, somebody who at least has got a fair set of brains sometimes, who comes from a background that is not deprived, who at the time I was doing it — and I’m not proud to say — was a member of the House of Representatives, and it took me two years to get off this drug, which is the most insidious drug you can imagine,” Burton said.
Floor speeches rarely change minds. But after Burton pleaded with Republicans not to “turn these young women into criminals,” Rogan, then-Speaker Curt Pringle and a few other Republicans withheld their votes. With the bill pending, Republicans conferred behind closed doors and quietly dropped the bill.
“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t scripted. It was pure John Burton,” said Rogan, who went on to become a Superior Court judge in Orange County. Burton was the only Democrat who had the relationships and gravitas to derail the bill.
For most of his time in office, Burton served under Republican governors. He butted heads with them and on occasion won them over.
When young Assemblyman Burton sought to decriminalize marijuana, Reagan, implying that Burton was a nut, quipped that the San Franciscan was the one man in Sacramento who had the most to fear from the squirrels that populate Capitol Park. Burton answered by calling reporters to the park and trying to feed squirrels a copy of some Reagan-backed legislation.
“There’s some benefit to people thinking you’re nuts,” Burton said in an interview.
Though he was a relatively junior legislator, Burton took a lead role in Reagan’s 1971 welfare overhaul, pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments for welfare recipients, something he fought to protect over the years.
He disparaged Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, for his efforts to limit welfare by calling him “the little Marine.” Burton had a “wicked sense of humor and a “colorful” way of expressing it” but was “a straight shooter,” Wilson said.
“With respect to legislative leaders, as Democrats, I would say that the combination of John Burton and Willie Brown negotiating budget and policy solutions during a time of crisis in the Reagan Cabinet Room was some of the finest policy and political talent California has ever seen,” Wilson said.
Voters elected Burton to the state Senate in 1996, and senators elected him Senate president pro tem in 1998, the year Gray Davis was elected governor, the first Democrat to hold that office after 16 years of Republicans. The relationship was strained.
In appearance, temperament and approach, they were opposites, and they clashed. Davis was a centrist who tried to be tightfisted. Burton, often dismissive of Davis, tried to pull him to the left. When it suited their interests, however, Davis signed legislation that Burton advocated, and Burton carried administration legislation.
“It ain’t brain surgery,” Burton said in 2021 of the art of turning a bill into a law. But few legislators could handle a lawmaking scalpel like Burton.
As Senate leader, he shepherded legislation to buy the last large stands of old-growth redwoods, increase public employee pensions, restrict guns and expand the right to sue, including for victims of sexual harassment. He was the target of such a suit in 2008. It was settled a few months later.
Burton routinely blocked legislation that increased the length of prison sentences but was a favorite of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards. He was, after all, pro-labor.
In 2002, Burton carried legislation ratifying the prison officers’ contract negotiated by the Davis administration granting officers a raise of roughly 35% over five years, and boosting their pensions. Later that year the union, run by the fedora-wearing Don Novey, celebrated Burton’s 70th birthday by donating $70,000 to his campaign account.
Often, Burton sought no credit for what he helped others accomplish, as Fran Pavley discovered. In 2001, her first year in the Assembly, Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat, proposed far-reaching climate change legislation to authorize the California Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.
Lobbyists for automakers shifted into overdrive, airing ads warning California that AB 1058 would dictate what cars people could own. The oil industry, drive-time talk radio hosts, and even Cal Worthington and his dog Spot piled on. AB 1058 looked like roadkill.
Burton’s solution: Hijack another bill and insert the contents of Pavley’s bill into it. With that bit of legerdemain, AB 1058 died, AB 1493 was born, and the auto industry’s campaign crashed.
Burton didn’t attend the ceremony when Davis signed the bill. Nor did he accompany Pavley a decade later when President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony embracing the California concept in nationwide fuel-efficiency standards.
Pavley said she had never seen a politician work so hard for a bill for no credit, ”and I haven’t seen it since.”
Burton took special interest in certain issues. He was, for example, appalled at the force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to produce foie gras. In one of his final bills, he battled restaurant owners and agricultural interests to ban the practice. It passed the Senate by one vote.
In a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill against the wishes of some chefs, he included Burtonesque doggerel: “Save Donald Duck. F— Wolfgang Puck.”
Schwarzenegger signed the bill and sent Burton a photo of himself and Burton in the governor’s office looking at the bottom of the governor’s shoe with a note: “I got duck liver on my shoe!” In the background of the photo, there’s an image of Reagan, smiling with his head tilted back as if he’s having a good laugh.
Burton, who was divorced twice, is survived by his daughter, attorney Kimiko Burton, and two grandchildren.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — California Republicans again asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan from the November ballot, arguing that the hastily assembled initiative violates the state Constitution.
In a 432-page lawsuit, Republican lawmakers said the effort by Democrats to unwind the state’s nonpartisan congressional districts is a violation of Californians’ rights to fair and nonpartisan electoral maps. The party made a similar argument last week in an emergency petition to the state Supreme Court that was denied without a hearing.
The ballot measure was crafted by Democrats as a retaliatory strike against the GOP-led Texas Legislature, which has passed new congressional districts that would help Republicans pick up five seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
The California plan, which is headed to voters Nov. 4 under the name Proposition 50, would throw out the state’s nonpartisan maps in favor of boundaries that would tilt the scales for Democrats.
The lawsuit filed Monday against California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber and the state Legislature argues that the ballot measure is actually asking voters to answer two questions: first, whether Congress should amend the U.S. Constitution to require independent redistricting nationwide; and second, whether to scrap the nonpartisan districts in the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections in favor of partisan lines that help Democrats.
That double-barreled question is an “illegal, take-it-or-leave-it choice,” said Michael Columbo, an attorney for the plaintiffs, that “forces a person in favor of independent commissions into a conundrum” and violates the state constitution, which limits ballot measures to a single issue.
That argument is “weak,” said David A. Carrillo, the executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center.
“The common subject here obviously is redistricting,” Carrillo said.
President Trump said Monday that the Justice Department will sue California over the plan “pretty soon, and I think we’re going to be very successful in it.” He didn’t explain what legal standing the administration would have to challenge the state Legislature.
In a post on the social media site X, Newsom said of the Trump threat: “BRING IT.”
A spokesperson for Weber said the department had no comment on the lawsuit.
“Trump’s toadies already got destroyed once in court,” said Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for the Yes on 50 campaign, in a statement. “Now they are trying again, to protect Trump’s power grab and prevent voters from having their say on Prop 50. They will lose.”
The lawsuit also argues that the state Legislature violated the state Constitution by proposing new congressional districts, despite the fact that voters in 2010 passed a measure giving that power to an independent panel.
Republicans argue that in order to comply with the state’s current redistricting laws, Democrats should have first asked voters to suspend independent redistricting, then passed new maps afterward.
At the heart of the legal fight, Carrillo said, is voters’ tremendous power to amend the California Constitution, including who drafts the state’s congressional districts.
“Voters gave this power to the commission they created,” Carrillo said. “The voters can therefore modify or withdraw the power they conferred.”
The California Supreme Court has occasionally removed voter initiatives from the ballot, Carrillo said, but it’s rare, controversial and reserved for the most extreme cases. It’s “very unlikely the court would reach for the nuclear option,” he said.
Also Monday, opponents of the ballot measure filed a public records act request with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, seeking communications between his office, Newsom and prominent Democratic strategists about how Prop. 50 will appear on the ballot.
The group, formed by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and run by former California GOP chair Jessica Millan Patterson, said Democrats had called for transparency and ought to provide it too.
“Voters deserve to know if these top Democrats are actively trying to put their thumb on the scale for how their partisan power grab will be portrayed in what should be an impartial analysis,” Patterson said.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
Millions of dollars began flowing into campaigns supporting and opposing an effort to redraw California’s congressional districts on the November ballot, notably $10 million from independent redistricting champion Charles Munger Jr.
The checks, reported Friday in state campaign finance disclosures, were made on Thursday, the day the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special election to replace the congressional districts drawn by an independent commission in 2021 with new districts that would boost the number of Democrats elected to Congress in next year’s midterm election.
Munger, a GOP donor and the son of a billionaire who was Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting in California. He donated $10 million to the “No on Prop. 50 – Protect Voters First” campaign,” which opposes the proposed redistricting.
“Charles Munger Jr. is making good on his promise to defend the reforms he passed,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, which opposes the ballot measure and includes Munger.
A spokesperson for the campaign supporting the redrawing of congressional boundaries accused Munger of trying to boost the GOP under the guise of supporting independent redistricting.
“It’s no surprise that a billionaire who has given extensively to help Republicans take the house and [former Republican House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy would be joining forces to help Donald Trump steal five House seats and rig the 2026 midterm before a single American has voted,” said Hannah Milgrom, spokesperson for “Yes on 50: the Election Rigging Response Act.” “Prop 50 is America’s best chance to fight back – vote yes on November. 4.”
The campaign backing the ballot measure received $1 million on Thursday from a powerful labor group, SEIU’s state council; $300,000 from businessman Andrew Hauptman; and a flurry of other donations, according to the California secretary of state’s office. That is on top of the $5.8 million the campaign reported having in the bank as of July 30, including millions of dollars in contributions from House Majority PAC, which is focused on electing Democrats to Congress, and Newsom’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign.
Redistricting typically happens once a decade after the U.S. census. Trump asked Texas lawmakers to redraw their congressional districts earlier this year, arguing that the GOP was entitled to five more members from the state. In response, California Democrats have pitched new district boundaries that could result in five more Democrats being elected to Congress.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to temporarily redraw California’s congressional districts has more support than opposition — but with many voters undecided, the measure’s prospects remain uncertain, a new poll found.
One thing, however, has become clear: Newsom’s standing with voters appears tethered to the fate of his high-stakes redistricting gamble.
The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, conducted for the Los Angeles Times, asked registered voters about the Newsom-backed redistricting push favoring California Democrats, which serves as a counterattack to President Trump and Texas Republicans reworking election maps to their advantage.
When voters were asked whether they agree with California’s redistricting maneuver, 46% said it was a good idea, while 36% said it was a bad idea. Slightly more, 48%, said they would vote in favor of the temporary gerrymandering efforts if it appeared on the statewide special election ballot in November. Nearly a third said they would vote no, while 20% said they were undecided.
“That’s not bad news,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “It could be better. With ballot measures, you’d like to be comfortably above 50% because you got to get people to vote yes and when people are undecided or don’t know enough about initiatives, they tend to vote no just because it’s the safer vote.”
Among voters who regularly cast ballots in statewide elections, overall support for redistricting jumped to 55%, compared with 34% opposed.
That, DiCamillo said, is significant.
“If I were to pick one subgroup where you would want to have an advantage, it would be that one,” he said.
The high-stakes fight over political boundaries could shape control of the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority. Newsom and Democratic leaders say California must match Texas’ partisan mapmaking move to preserve balance in Congress. Texas’ plan creates five new Republican-leaning seats that could secure the GOP’s majority in the House. California’s efforts are an attempt to cancel those gains — at least temporarily. The new maps would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections.
However, critics say that the plan undermines the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission and that one power grab doesn’t negate another.
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Not surprisingly, the partisan fight over election maps elicited deeply partisan results in the poll. Nearly 7 in 10 Democratic voters said they would support the redistricting measure , while Republicans overwhelmingly (72%) panned the plan.
The effort has by all accounts moved swiftly, with newly reworked maps released late last week and, by Monday, lawmakers introduced legislation to put it before voters. Lawmakers approved those bills Thursday, which secures the measure’s place on the ballot in November.
Newsom, who has become the face of California’s redistricting effort, has seen his once-stagnant approval ratings tick upward as he takes on Trump and Republican leaders. Beyond the high-profile push to reshape the state’s congressional districts, his office has drawn recent attention with a social media campaign that mimics Trump’s own idiosyncratic posts.
More voters now approve than disapprove of the governor’s job performance (51% to 43%), which represented a turnaround from April, when voters were split at 46% on each side. The poll, which surveyed 4,950 registered voters online in English and Spanish, was conducted from Aug. 11 to 17.
A majority of respondents — 59% — back Newsom’s combative stance toward Trump, while 29% want him to adopt a more cooperative approach. Younger voters were especially supportive of Newsom styling himself as Trump’s leading critic, with 71% of those between 18 and 29 years old backing the approach.
Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach, said having Newsom as the face of the redistricting campaign would have been more of a liability a month ago. But Newsom’s profile has been rising nationally during the spiraling fight over congressional maps and been buoyed by his prolific Trump trolling, which has struck a nerve with conservative commentators. That has opened up a lane for Newsom to spread the campaign’s message more broadly, he said.
“If he keeps this pace up, he’s right on a pressure point,” Lesenyie said.
Political scientist Eric Schickler, who is co-director of the Berkeley Institute that conducted the poll, said asking Californians to hand back control of redistricting to politicians — even temporarily — after voters made the process independent would normally be a tough sell.
“Voters don’t trust politicians,” Schickler said. “On the other hand, voters see Trump and don’t like what he’s doing. And so it was really a test to see which of those was more powerful and the results suggest, at least for now, Newsom’s winning that argument.”
Winning in November, however, will require pushing undecided voters over the finish line. Among Latino, Black and Asian voters, nearly 30% said they have yet to decide how they would vote on redistricting. Women also have higher rates of being undecided compared with men, at 25% to 14%. Younger voters are also more likely to be on the fence, with nearly a third of 18- to 29-year-olds saying they are unsure, compared with 11% of those older than 65.
Among Democrats, there are still some skeptics about the proposal. One in 5 polled said they were undecided. A quarter of voters with no party preference say they are undecided.
“That suggests there are a bunch of votes left on the table,” Schickler said. “While I wouldn’t be surprised if the margin narrows between now and November, this is a good place for the proposition to start.”
SACRAMENTO — Ratcheting up the pressure in the escalating national fight over control of Congress, the California Legislature on Thursday approved November special election to ask voters in November to redraw the state’s electoral lines to favor Democrats and thwart President Trump’s far-right policy agenda.
The ballot measure, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and national Democratic leaders, is the latest volley in a national political brawl over electoral maps that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If voters approve the redrawn lines on Nov. 4, Democrats in the Golden State would see the odds tilted further in their favor, while the number of California Republicans in the House could be halved.
Newsom initially said that new electoral districts in California would only take effect if another state redrew its lines before 2031. But after Texas moved toward approving its own maps this week that could give the GOP five more House seats, Democrats stripped the so-called “trigger” language from the amendment — meaning that if voters approve the measure, the new lines would take effect no matter what.
The ballot measure language, which asks California voters to override the power of the independent redistricting commission, was approved by most Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate, where they hold supermajorities.
California lawmakers have the power to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without the approval of the governor. Newsom, however, is expected later Thursday to sign two separate bills that fund the special election and spell out the lines for the new congressional districts.
Democrats’ rush to the ballot marks a sudden departure from California’s 15-year commitment to independent redistricting, often held up as the country’s gold standard. The state’s voters stripped lawmakers of the power to draw lines during the Great Recession and handed that partisan power to a panel of independent citizens whose names are drawn in a lottery.
The change, Democrats said, was forced by an extraordinary change in circumstances: After decades of the United States redrawing congressional lines once a decade, President Trump and his political team have leaned on Republican-led states to redraw their district lines before the 2026 midterm elections to help Republicans retain control of the House.
“His playbook is a simple one: Bully, threaten, fight, then rig the rules to hang onto power,” said Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. “We are here today because California will not be a bystander to that power grab. We are not intimidated, and we are acting openly, lawfully, with purpose and resolve, to defend our state and to defend our democracy.”
Republicans in the state Assembly and the state Senate criticized Newsom’s argument that Democrats must “fight fire with fire,” saying retaliation is a slippery slope that would erode the independent redistricting process California voters have chosen twice at the ballot box.
“You move forward fighting fire with fire, and what happens? You burn it all down,” said Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City). He said Trump was “wrong” to push Gov. Greg Abbott to redraw Texas’ lines to benefit Republicans, and so was California’s push to pursue the same strategy.
Democratic Assembly member Marc Berman speaks during a meeting of the California State Assembly at the California State Capitol on August 21, 2025 in Sacramento.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
State Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), who co-authored the bill drawing the proposed congressional districts, said Democrats had no choice but to stand up, given the harm the Trump administration has inflicted on healthcare, education, tariffs and other policies that affect Californians.
“What do we do? Just sit back and do nothing?” Gonzalez said. “Or do we fight back and provide some chance for our Californians to see themselves in this democracy?”
Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) said the effort is “a corrupt redistricting scheme to rig California’s elections” that violates the “letter and the spirit of the California constitution.”
“Democrats are rushing this through under the guise of urgency,” Jones said. “There is no emergency that justifies this abuse of process.”
Three Assembly Democrats did not vote in favor of the constitutional amendment. Jasmeet Bains (D-Delano), who is running for Congress against Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the San Joaquin Valley, voted no. Progressive Caucus chair Alex Lee (D-San Jose), and Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), did not vote.
Democrats will face an unusual messaging challenge with the November ballot measure, said Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach.
The opponents of mid-decade redistricting are stressing that the measure would “disadvantage voters,” he said, which is “wording that Democrats have primed Democrats on, for now two administrations, that democracy is being killed with a thousand cuts.”
“It’s a weird, sort of up-is-down moment,” Lesenyie said.
How did we get here?
Trump’s political team began pressuring Abbott and Texas Republicans in early June to redraw the state’s 38 congressional districts in the middle of the decade — which is very uncommon — to give Republicans a better shot at keeping the House in 2026.
“We are entitled to five more seats,” Trump later told CNBC.
Some Texas Republicans feared that mid-decade redistricting could imperil their own chances of reelection. But within a month of the White House floating the idea, Abbott added the new congressional lines, which would stack the deck against as many as five Texas Democrats in Congress, to the Legislature’s special session in July.
By mid-July, Newsom was talking about California punching back. In an interview with the progressive news site the TN Holler, Newsom said: “These guys, they’re not f—ing around. They’re playing by a totally different set of rules.”
Democrats in Texas fled the state for nearly two weeks, including some to California, to deny Republicans the quorum they needed to pass the new lines. Abbott signed civil arrest warrants and levied fines on the 52 absent Democrats while they held news conferences in California and Illinois to bring attention to the fight.
While the Texas drama unfolded, consultants for the campaign arm of House Democrats in California quietly drew up maps that would further chop down the number of Golden State Republicans in Congress. The proposed changes would eliminate the district of Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) and dilute the number of GOP voters in four districts represented by Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao and Darrell Issa.
The Democrats agreed to return to Texas last week and pointed to California’s tit-for-tat effort as one measure of success, saying the Golden State could neutralize any Republican gains in Texas.
Since then, other Republican-led states have begun to contemplate redistricting too, including Indiana, Florida and Missouri. Trump’s political allies are publicly threatening to mount primary challenges against any Indiana Republican who opposes redrawing the lines.
In California, the opposition is shaping up as quickly as the ballot measure.
California voters received the first campaign mailer opposing the ballot measure a day before the Legislature voted to approve it. A four-page glossy flier, funded by conservative donor and redistricting champion Charlie Munger Jr., warned voters that mid-decade redistricting is “weakening our Democratic process” and “a threat to California’s landmark election reform.”
Republicans have also gone to court to try and stop the measure, alleging in an emergency petition with the state Supreme Court that Democrats violated the state Constitution by ramming the bills through without following proper legislative procedure. The high court Wednesday rejected the petition.
A wave of legal challenges are expected, not only in California but in any state that reconfigures congressional districts in the expanding partisan brawl.
Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) said Thursday morning that a lawsuit challenging the California ballot measure would be filed in state court by Friday evening. He said Republicans also plan to litigate the title of the ballot measure and any voter guide materials that accompany it.
And, he said, if voters approve the new lines, “I believe we will have ample opportunity to set the maps aside in federal court.”
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party.
Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried.
Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump’s increasingly authoritarian impulses? That’s essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign.
As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California’s own congressional districts to favor Democrats.
His goal: counter Trump’s drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own.
It’s a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom’s political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party.
The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions.
But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom’s ill-fated dinner at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols — a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt and still haunts the governor’s national reputation.
The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom.
The strategy could be a boon for Newsom’s 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it’s also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads.
“It’s great politics for him if this passes,” Maviglio said. “If it fails, he’s dead in the water.”
The path forward — which could determine control of Congress in 2026 — is hardly a straight shot.
The “Election Rigging Response Act,” as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights.
But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters.
If passed, the initiative would have a “trigger,” meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort.
“I think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday.
“We’re not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We’re going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party,” Martin said, adding that they shouldn’t be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist.
For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is “some heartbreak” to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president “willing to rig the election midstream,” she said.
Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground.
“The response that I get is, ‘Finally, we’re fighting. We have a way to fight back that’s tangible,’” Friedman recounted.
Still, despite the state’s Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs.
A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state.
(Newsom’s press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.)
California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state’s congressional districts, however.
While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a “life and death” battle against “Trumpism” and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California’s Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective.
“Wake up, America,” Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. “Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people.”
Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself.
Much of Liao’s group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom’s digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X.
The missives have largely mimicked the president’s own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the “caps lock” key.
“DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT.’ FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS ‘STEP,’ ” one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself.
Some messages have also ended with Newsom’s initials (a riff on Trump’s signature “DJT” signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase “Liberation Day,” or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom’s smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month.
Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed.
Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president’s first term and move away from his party’s prior “resistance” brand.
Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom’s embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy.
Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump’s victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal.
Newsom’s reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump’s unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said.
Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides’ posts mocking Trump’s own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president’s own unhinged social media utterances.
“If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” Newsom said last week. “So to the extent it’s gotten some attention, I’m pleased.”
In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke.
“To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, ‘Wow, this is really outlandish.’ But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,” Liao said.
At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what’s-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan.
And he’s betting the house on his deep-blue state’s willingness to fight fire with fire.
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report.
L.A.’s plan to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games was already facing a thorny set of challenges, including the scramble to secure lucrative sponsorships and the search for buses to shuttle athletes and spectators across the region.
Now, organizers could soon be faced with yet another threat: a proposed ballot measure that, according to city officials, could force at least five Olympic venues to go before voters for approval.
Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, filed paperwork in June for a ballot measure requiring L.A. voters to sign off on the development or expansion of major “event centers” such as sports arenas, concert halls, hotels and convention facilities. The measure takes aim not just at permanent projects but also temporary structures, including those that add more than 50,000 square feet of space or 1,000 seats.
Former City Councilmember Paul Krekorian, who heads Mayor Karen Bass’ Office of Special Events, identified five Olympic venues that could be subjected to a citywide election, including the Los Angeles Convention Center, the John C. Argue Swim Stadium in Exposition Park and the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in the San Fernando Valley, which is set to host skateboarding, 3-on-3 basketball and other competitions.
“The proposed measure would make vital projects essential for our city and these Games potentially impossible to complete,” Krekorian said in a statement to The Times. “It would also require costly special elections before even relatively small projects could begin.”
A representative for LA28, the nonprofit organizing the Games, declined to confirm whether any Olympic venues would be affected by the proposal, saying only that it is monitoring the situation.
Unite Here has billed the proposal as one of its responses to a business group that is seeking to overturn the so-called Olympic Wage passed by the City Council in May, which hikes the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour in 2028.
The union has not begun gathering signatures for the proposal, which is under review by the City Clerk’s office. If it qualifies, it likely wouldn’t appear on a ballot until June 2026. Nevertheless, it has already raised alarms at City Hall, where some elected officials have portrayed it as irresponsible.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents coastal neighborhoods, said she fears the measure will force a citywide vote on an Olympic venue planned at Venice Beach, which is set to host road cycling, the marathon and the triathlon. She said it would also be more difficult for the city to attract new hotels and possibly expand its Convention Center.
“This is an absolute assault on our local economy. It’s spiteful and politically motivated,” she said.
Park, who voted against the $30 tourism minimum wage, has been at odds with Unite Here for more than a year. Councilmember Tim McOsker, whose 2022 election was backed by Unite Here and who supported the minimum wage hike, also voiced concerns, calling the proposed ballot measure “an attack on workers.”
McOsker, whose district includes the Port of Los Angeles, said he believes the proposal would force a vote on a plan to create a temporary viewing area for Olympic sailing at Berth 46 in San Pedro. He also fears it would trigger a citywide election for a 6,200-seat amphitheater planned in San Pedro’s West Harbor, a project that is not connected to the Games.
“This is bad for people who build things, bad for people who operate things, bad for people who work in buildings like these,” he said. “[The proposal] harms real people and it harms the economy.”
Ada Briceño, co-president of Unite Here Local 11 and also a candidate for state Assembly, declined to answer questions about the criticism of the proposal. Two other Unite Here representatives did not respond to The Times’ inquiries.
The union’s proposal, titled “Ordinance to Require Voter Approval of Major Development Projects,” argues that sports arenas and other major event venues “do not always justify their cost.”
Unite Here spokesperson Maria Hernandez told The Times earlier this year that the proposal would apply to Olympic venues that reach a certain size, but declined to give specifics. She said it was not clear whether the ballot proposal would impede efforts to expand the Convention Center, saying in an email that “it depends on the timing.”
The ballot proposal would not apply to athletic venues planned by LA28 in other nearby cities, such as Long Beach, Carson, Inglewood, Anaheim and El Monte. As a result, L.A. could face the potentially humiliating prospect of hosting a Games where only a handful of venues are within city limits.
“If it makes it on the ballot, there are projects and events that will be moved out of the city of Los Angeles rather than trying to win at the ballot box,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., a business group.
The city’s future economic health could depend on the success or failure of LA28. Under its host agreement, the city would be on the hook for the first $270 million in losses if the Olympics end up in the red.
Critics have also voiced concern that the quadrennial athletic event could displace low-income tenants, particularly those who live near Olympic venues.
Voters should have been given the opportunity to decide whether L.A. should host the Olympics from the very beginning, said Eric Sheehan, spokesperson for NOlympics, which opposes the 2028 Games. Nevertheless, Sheehan voiced little enthusiasm for the union proposal, saying it doesn’t go far enough.
“What would be stronger would be the chance for Angelenos to vote on whether or not we want the Olympics at all,” he said.
The proposed ballot measure from Unite Here states that hotels can have harmful effects on a city, impeding the construction of new housing and creating a burden on social services. It goes on to offer similar warnings about large-scale development projects, saying they “often involve significant expenditures of taxpayer money” — an argument disputed by some city officials.
Those projects “may take the place of other projects that otherwise could have more directly benefited city residents,” the measure states.
Times staff writer Thuc Nhi Nguyen contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he’s considering calling a special election on Nov. 4 to ask voters to approve new congressional maps in California in an effort to thwart President Trump’s plan to redistrict Republican-controlled states and hold onto power of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.
“I think there’s a growing recognition in this country, not just with Democrats, independents, but also Republicans, that de facto the Trump presidency ends in November of next year if the American people are given a fair chance and a voice and a choice. We’ll take back Congress,” Newsom said. “The President of the United States recognizes that, so he wants to rig the game, wants to change the rules midterm.”
The governor has cast his call to gerrymander California as a response to Trump’s request for Texas and other states to reconfigure their maps to pick up seats in 2026.
“We’re going to respond in a transparent way, an honest way, but it’s in response,” Newsom said. “But I’m not going to sit back any longer in a position, a fetal position, in a position of weakness, when in fact California could demonstrably advance strength and that’s what we intend to do.”
Under Newsom’s plan, the California Legislature would need to take a vote to send a ballot measure to voters.
Newsom said voters would be given the maps of new congressional districts. A special election would be held on the first Tuesday in November asking voters to adopt the maps and allow the new districts to remain in effect through 2030 when California would return to the independent redistricting system that’s currently in place.
California’s Independent Redistricting Commission would craft new maps after the next census to be put into effect in 2032.
The governor said he’s in the early planning states of the process and doesn’t have an estimate yet for the price tag of a statewide special election. Newsom called the cost of preserving Democracy “priceless.”
“There are many local elections that first Tuesday already on the ballot, so it requires significant less resources than a special election that didn’t already have regular elections considered,” Newsom said. “So that could be very meaningful in mitigating the cost.”
Newsom promised more information in the weeks ahead.
In 2010, California voters drove the foxes from the henhouse, seeing to it that lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento would no longer have the power to draw congressional districts to suit themselves.
Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is talking about undoing voters’ handiwork.
Newsom said he may seek to cancel the commission, tear up the boundaries it drew and let Democratic partisans draft a new set of lines ahead of next year’s midterm election — all to push back on President Trump and Texas Republicans, who are attempting a raw power grab to enhance the GOP’s standing in 2026.
It’s also highly presumptuous on his part, reflecting an increased arrogance among lawmakers around the country who are saying to voters, in effect, “Thank you for your input. Now go away.”
In two other states, Alaska and Nebraska, lawmakers similarly tried but failed to, respectively, overturn voter-passed measures on paid sick leave and a hike in the minimum wage.
“It’s a damning indictment of representative democracy when elected officials are scared of the will of their own voters,” said Alexis Magnan-Callaway of the Fairness Project, a union-backed advocacy group that focuses on state ballot measures.
It is indeed.
But it’s part of a pattern in recent years of lawmakers, mainly in Republican-led states, undercutting or working to roll back voter-designed measures to enshrine abortion rights, expand Medicare and raise the minimum wage.
To be clear, those measures were passed by voters of all stripes: Democrats, Republicans, independents.
“People are transcending party lines to vote for issues that they know will impact their communities,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive organization. By ignoring or working to nullify the result, she said, lawmakers are helping contribute “to what we’re seeing across the country, where people are losing faith in our institutions and in government.”
And why wouldn’t they, if politicians pay no mind save to ask for their vote come election time?
In a direct attack on the initiative process, at least nine state legislatures passed or considered laws in their most recent session making it harder — and perhaps even impossible — for citizens to place measures on the ballot and seek a popular vote.
There can be issues with direct democracy, as Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice pointed out.
“There can be times when systems can be abused to confuse voters,” he said, “or where voters do things without maybe fully understanding what it is they’re doing, because of the way ballot measures are drafted or ballot summaries are offered.”
But it’s one thing to address those glitches, Morales-Doyle said, and “another thing to just basically say that we, as the representatives of voters, disagree with what voters think the best policy is and so we’re going to make it harder for them to enact the policy that they desire.”
That, Newsom said, is the fighting-fire-with-fire reason to tear up California’s congressional map and gerrymander the state for Democrats just as egregiously as Texas Republicans hope to do. “We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or, we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment,” the governor asserted.
Taking Newsom’s gerrymander threat at face value, there are two ways he could possibly override Proposition 20.
He could break the law and win passage of legislation drawing new congressional districts, face an inevitable lawsuit and hope to win a favorable ruling from the California Supreme Court. Or he could call a costly special election and ask voters to reverse themselves and eliminate the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, at least for the time being.
It’s a hard sell. One presumes Newsom’s message to Californians would not be: “Let’s spend hundreds of millions of your tax dollars so you can surrender your power and return it to politicians working their will in the backrooms of Washington and Sacramento.”
But that’s the gist of what they would be asked to do, which bespeaks no small amount of hubris on Newsom’s part.
If elections are going to matter — especially at a time our democracy is teetering so — politicians have to accept the results, whether they like them or not.
