Newsoms

With the fate of President’s Trump’s right-wing agenda at stake, the California ballot measure crafted to tilt Congress to Democratic control has turned into a fight among millionaires and billionaires, a former president, a past movie-star governor and the nation’s top partisans.

Californians have been inundated with political ads popping up on every screen — no cellphone, computer or living-room television is spared — trying to sway them about Proposition 50, which will reconfigure the districts of the largest state congressional delegation in the union.

Besides opposing pleas from former President Obama and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s powerful, left-leaning labor unions are another factor that may influence the outcome of the Nov. 4 special election.

Unions representing California school teachers, carpenters, state workers and nurses have plowed more than $23 million into efforts to pass Proposition 50, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure reports about donations exceeding $100,000. That’s nearly one-third of the six-figure donations reported through Thursday.

Not only do these groups have major interests in the state capitol, including charter school reform, minimum wage hikes and preserving government healthcare programs, they also are deeply aligned with efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats to put their party in control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 election.
“There are real issues here that are at stake,” said veteran Democratic strategist Gale Kaufman, who has represented several unions that have contributed to Newsom’s committee supporting Proposition 50.

“There’s always a risk when making sizable donations, that you’re putting yourself out there,” Kaufman said. “But the truth is on Proposition 50, I think it’s much less calculated than normal contributions. It really is about the issue, not about currying favor with members of the Legislature, or the congressional delegation, or the governor. Even though, of course, it benefits them if we win.”

High stakes brings in big money from across the nation

Newsom’s pro-Proposition 50 committee has raised more than $116 million, according to campaign disclosure filings through Thursday afternoon, though that number is sure to increase once additional donations are disclosed in the latest fundraising reports that are due by midnight Thursday.

The multimillion-dollar donations provide the best evidence of what’s at stake, and how Proposition 50 could determine control of the House during the final two years of Trump’s presidency. If the Democrats take control of the House, not only could that derail major parts of Trumps agenda, it probably would lead to a slew of congressional hearings on Trump’s immigration crackdown, use of the military in American cities, accepting a $400-million luxury airliner from Qatari’s royal family, the cutting of research funding to universities and the president’s ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, among many others.

The House Majority PAC — the Democrats’ congressional fundraising arm — has donated at least $15 million to the pro-Proposition 50 campaign, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) was in Los Angeles to campaign for the ballot measure last weekend. Obama joined Newsom on a livestream promoting the proposition Wednesday, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin hosted a bilingual phone bank in Los Angeles on Thursday.

“Make no mistake about what they’re trying to do and why it’s so important that we fight back,” Martin said. “We’re not going to be the only party with one hand tied behind our back. If they want a showdown, we’re going to give them a showdown and in just a little under two weeks it starts right here with Prop. 50 in California.”

Billionaire financier George Soros — a generous donor to liberal causes and a bogeyman to Republicans — has contributed $10 million. Others have chosen to fund separate entities campaigning in favor of Proposition 50, notably billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer, who chipped in $12 million.

On the opposition side, the largest donor is Charles Munger Jr., the son of the longtime investment partner of billionaire Warren Buffett, who has contributed $32.8 million to one of the two main committees opposing Proposition 50. The Congressional Leadership Fund — the GOP’s political arm in the House — has donated $5 million to the other main anti-Proposition 50 committee and $8 million to the California Republican Party.

Although Republicans may control the White House and Congress, the California GOP wields no real power in Sacramento, so it’s not surprising that Republican efforts opposing Proposition 50 have not received major donations from entities with business before the state.

The California Chamber of Commerce opted to remain neutral on Proposition 50. Chevron and the California Resources Corp., petroleum companies that have given to California Republicans in the past, also remain on the sidelines.

In contrast, Democrats control every statewide office and hold supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature. The pro-Proposition 50 campaign has been showered with donations from groups aligned with Sacramento’s legislative leaders — with labor organizations chief among them.

Among the labor donors, the powerful carpenters unions have donated at least $4 million. Newsom hailed them in July when he signed legislation altering a landmark environmental law for urban apartment developments to boost the supply of housing. The California Conference of Carpenters union has become one of the most pro-housing voices in the state.

“This is the third of the last four years we’ve been together signing landmark housing reforms, and it simply would not have happened without the Carpenters,” Newsom said at the time.

Daniel M. Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, pointed to a letter he wrote to legislators in August urging them to put redistricting on the ballot because of the effect of Trump’s policies on the state’s workers.

“These are not normal times, and this isn’t politics as usual. Not only has the Trump administration denied disaster assistance to victims of California’s devastating forest fires, he’s damaging our CA economy with mass arrests of law-abiding workers without warrants,” wrote Curtin, whose union has 70,000 members in the state. “The Trump administration is now unilaterally withdrawing from legally binding union collective bargaining agreements with federal workforce unions. The President has made it clear that this is just the beginning.”

Proposition 50 was prompted by Trump urging Republican leaders in Texas to redraw their congressional districts to boost the number of GOP members in the House and keep the party in control after the 2026 election. Newsom sought to counter the move by altering California’s congressional boundaries in a rare mid-decade redistricting.

With 52 members in the House, the state has the largest congressional delegation in the nation. But unlike many states, California’s districts are drawn by an independent commission created by voters in 2010 in an effort to end partisan gerrymandering and incumbent protection.

The state’s districts would not have been redrawn until after the 2030 U.S. census, but the Legislature and Newsom agreed in August to put Proposition 50, which would give Democrats the potential to pick up five seats, on the November ballot.

Money from California unions pours in

Although much of the money supporting the efforts comes from wealth Democratic donors and partisan groups aimed at helping Democrats take control of Congress, a significant portion comes from labor unions.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 700,000 healthcare workers, social workers, in-home caregivers and school employees and other state and local government workers, has contributed more than $5.5 million to the committee.

On Oct. 12, the union celebrated Newsom signing bills ensuring that workers, regardless of immigration status, are informed about their civil and labor rights under state and federal law as well as updating legal guidance to state and local agencies about protecting private information, such as court records and medical data, from being misused by federal authorities.

“Thank you to Governor Newsom for … standing up to federal overreach and indiscriminate, violent attacks on our communities,” David Huerta, president of SEIU California, said in a statement.

Huerta was arrested during the first day of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles in June and charged with a felony. But federal prosecutors are instead pursuing a misdemeanor case against him, according to a Friday court filing.

An SEIU representative did not respond to requests for comment.

The California Teachers Assn., another potent force in state politics, has contributed more than $3.3 million, along with millions more from other education unions such as the National Education Assn., the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.

CTA had a mixed record in this year’s legislative session.

Newsom vetoed a bill to crack down on charter school fraud, Senate Bill 414. The CTA opposed the bill, arguing that it didn’t go far enough to target fraud in some of the schools, and had urged the governor to reject it.

Newsom signed CTA-backed bills that placed strict limits on ICE agents’ access to school grounds. But he also vetoed union-backed bill that would have required the state Board of Education to adopt health education instructional materials by July 1, 2028.

CTA President David Goldberg said their donations are driven not only by issues important to the union’s members, but also the students they serve who are dependent on federally funded assistance programs and impacted by policies such as immigration.

“It’s about our livelihood but it really is about fundamental issues … for people who serve students who are just incredibly under attack right now,” Goldberg said.

“The governor’s support for labor would be exactly the same with or without Proposition 50 on the ballot. But he would acknowledge this year is more urgent than ever for labor and working people,” said Newsom spokesperson Bob Salladay. “Trump is taking a wrecking ball to collective bargaining, to fair wages and safe working conditions. He would be backing them up under any circumstances, but especially now.”

Critics of Proposition 50 argue that these contributions are among the reasons voters should oppose the ballot measure.

“The independent redistricting commission exists to prevent conflicts of interest and money from influencing line drawing,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, the committee backed by Munger Jr., who bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure to create the independent commission. “That’s why we want to preserve its independence.”

Other labor leaders argued that although they are not always in lockstep with Newsom, they need to support Proposition 50 because of the importance of Democrats winning the congressional majority next year.

Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the powerful California Labor Federation, said the timing of the member unions’ donations of millions of dollars to Newsom’s ballot measure committee for an election taking place shortly after the bill-signing period was “unfortunate” and “weird.”

“Because we have so many bills in front of him, we were gun-shy,” she said, noting that the federation has sparred with the governor over issues such as the effect of artificial intelligence in the workplace. “Never be too close to your elected officials. Because we see the good, the bad, the ugly.”

Times staff writers Andrea Flores and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the words “Cutting Utility Bills,” Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last month a package of energy bills that he said “reduces the burden on ratepayers.”

Tucked into one of those bills: a paragraph that could allow Southern California Edison to shift billions of dollars of Eaton fire damage costs to its customers.

Among other things, the bill allows Edison to start charging customers for any Eaton fire costs exceeding the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund.

“I was shocked to see that,” said April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which tracks state government actions on utility-sparked fires. “It’s effectively a bailout.”

Other amendments in the 231-page bill known as SB 254 helped not just Edison, but all three of the state’s biggest for-profit utilities, further limiting the costs that they and their shareholders would face if the companies’ equipment ignited a catastrophic wildfire.

Previous legislation championed by Newsom, a 2019 bill known as AB 1054, already had sharply limited the utilities’ liabilities for wildfires they cause.

Staff in the governor’s office declined a request for an interview. In a statement, Daniel Villasenor, a spokesman for Newsom, called SB 254 “smart public policy, not a giveaway.”

Newsom’s staff noted that the state Public Utilities Commission would later review Eaton fire costs, determining if they were “just and reasonable.” If some costs billed to customers were rejected in that review, Edison shareholders would have to reimburse them for those amounts, the governor’s office said.

According to the legislation, that review of costs isn’t required until all Eaton claims are settled, leaving the possibility that customers would have to cover even costs found to be unreasonable for years.

“That will be expensive news to a lot of people,” said Michael Boccadoro, executive director of the Agricultural Energy Consumers Assn. “It is unfortunately what happens when major policies are done in the final hours of the Legislature with little transparency.”

Damages for the Eaton fire have been estimated to be as high as $45 billion — which could greatly exceed the $21-billion fund.

Homes in Altadena lay in ruins after the Eaton fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Sheri Scott, an actuary at Milliman, told state officials in July that insured losses alone range from $13.7 billion to $22.8 billion. That estimate doesn’t include payments to families who were uninsured or underinsured, or compensation for pain and suffering.

The bill allows Edison to issue bonds secured by new payments from its electric customers for Eaton fire costs that can’t be covered by the $21-billion fund.

Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison spokeswoman, said the company supported the bill’s language because the bonds secured by customer payments provide a lower cost of borrowing than if the company used traditional financing. “Every dollar counts for our customers,” Dunleavy said.

“There are a lot of variables here,” Dunleavy added. “The investigation is ongoing and there is not an estimate of the total cost of the Eaton fire.”

Newsom’s office noted that under the amendments the utilities won’t get to earn a profit on $6 billion of wildfire prevention expenditures. Customers will still have to pay for the costs, but they won’t be charged extra for shareholders’ profit.

Since early this year, Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric had been lobbying Newsom and state legislative leaders, urging them to bolster the $21-billion fund because of concerns it could be exhausted by the Eaton fire’s extraordinary cost.

Videos captured the Jan. 7 inferno igniting under a century-old transmission line that Edison had not used for 50 years. The wildfire swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing at least 19 people.

Edison now faces hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims. The suits accuse Edison of negligence, claiming it failed to safely maintain its equipment and left in place the unused transmission line, which lawyers say Edison knew posed a fire risk.

“We’ll respond to the allegations in the litigation,” Dunleavy said, adding that the company inspects and maintains idle lines in the same way as its energized lines.

Even though the government’s investigation into the cause has not been released, Edison announced in July that it was starting a program to directly pay victims for damages.

The company has also begun settling with insurance companies that paid out claims for properties they insured in Altadena that were destroyed or damaged.

Limiting Edison’s liability for Eaton fire

The utility is expecting to be reimbursed for most or all of the settlements and the costs of the fire by the $21-billion wildfire fund that Newsom and lawmakers created through the 2019 legislation, according to a July update Edison gave to its investors.

The first $1 billion of damages is covered by an insurance policy paid by its customers.

After state officials warned that the Eaton fire could deplete the state fund, Newsom said in July he was working on a plan to create an additional fund of $18 billion.

Two days before the Legislature was scheduled to recess for the year, three lawmakers added complex language to SB 254 to create what Newsom called the new $18-billion wildfire “continuation account.” Before the bill was amended, consumer groups had been supporting it because it aimed to save electric customers money.

The late amendments required the Legislature to extend its session by a day to meet a state constitutional rule that says proposed legislation must be public for 72 hours before a final vote.

“It’s impossible to believe that legislators could have understood all of this in 72 hours,” Maurath Sommer said. She noted that Newsom’s 2019 law, AB 1054, was introduced and quickly passed in a similar manner. “And it is clear now how poorly that effort fared in achieving the claimed objective of protecting public safety.”

Boccadoro said he believed the amendments were added to a bill favored by consumer groups to give it “some political cover.”

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), one of bill’s authors, said she believed utilities needed protection from wildfire liabilities because of a legal doctrine in California known as inverse condemnation, which makes them responsible for damages even if they weren’t negligent in starting it.

“This is the best possible deal for ratepayers as we navigate the truly devastating impacts of the climate crisis,” Petrie-Norris said of the legislation. The other two authors — state Sens. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) and Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) — did not respond to requests for interviews.

After the bill passed, both Edison and PG&E praised its provisions in presentations for investors.

Edison called the bill “a key action” that demonstrated lawmakers’ support of its “financial stability.”

The amendments added to the protections that utilities gained in 2019 through Newsom’s AB 1054. At that time, PG&E was in bankruptcy proceedings. It had filed for protection after its transmission line was found to have ignited the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.

PG&E explained in a September presentation that before Newsom and lawmakers changed the law in 2019, utilities that wanted to pass fire damage costs to customers “bore the burden of proving” that their conduct related to the blaze was reasonable and prudent.

Newsom’s 2019 law changed that standard, PG&E said, so that the utility’s conduct was automatically deemed reasonable if state regulators had granted the company what the law called a safety certificate.

Since 2019, the state has regularly issued the companies these certificates — even when regulators find maintenance and safety problems.

Edison received a safety certificate less than a month before the Eaton fire, even though it had thousands of open work orders, including some on the transmission lines in the canyon where the fire started.

To get a certificate, the utilities must submit a plan to state regulators for preventing their equipment from sparking fires. They also must tie executive pay to the company’s safety performance, with bonuses expected to take a hit when more fires are sparked or people are killed.

Even though Edison failed at key safety measures last year, The Times found that cash bonuses for four of its top five executives rose. The company said that was because of their performance on responsibilities beyond safety.

With a safety certificate in hand, Edison told investors in July that the maximum it would pay for the Eaton fire under the law’s limit was $3.9 billion, a fraction of the expected costs. The utility said the wildfire fund would reimburse it for all the costs, unless an outside party can raise “serious doubt” that it had not acted reasonably before the fire.

The SB 254 amendments also clarified key language in the 2019 law — clarifications that Edison told investors in September were “constructive for potential Eaton fire losses.”

That language allows utilities that cause repeated major wildfires within a period of three years to reduce what they must pay back to the fund for a second fire if they are found to have acted imprudently.

“This certainly does not seem to encourage utilities to stop causing fires,” Maurath Sommer said of the provision.

Edison’s Dunleavy dismissed concern about the provision. “Safety remains our top priority,” she said.

Campaign contributions to Newsom

The three utilities have long been generous political donors to both Democrats and Republicans in California, including to Newsom and current legislative leaders in Sacramento.

Edison, for example, gave $100,000 to Newsom’s campaign last year to pass the mental health initiative known as Proposition 1.

This summer Edison gave $190,000 to the state Democratic Party, which is helping Newsom campaign for Proposition 50, which would redraw congressional districts.

Newsom’s staff didn’t respond to questions about the contributions.

Dunleavy said that the company’s political donations are not charged to customers. She said Edison gives contributions to politicians who share its commitment to “safely serve our customers.”

Newsom said in 2019 that the bill capping utilities’ fire liabilities would “move our state toward a safer, affordable and reliable energy future.”

He and lawmakers said the law would make the public safer by requiring the utilities to do more to prevent fires, including aggressive tree trimming and the installation of more insulated wires.

Even though the utilities have raised electric rates to charge customers for billions of dollars of fire prevention work, their electrical equipment continues to spark blazes.

According to Cal Fire statistics, if the Eaton fire is confirmed to have been ignited by Edison’s transmission line, at least seven of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires would have been caused by the three utilities’ power lines. Two of those utility-sparked fires happened after the 2019 law passed.

Edison’s lines ignited 178 fires last year — 45% more compared with 2019. The company attributed last year’s increase to weather conditions that created more dry vegetation.

The governor’s staff said they disagreed with claims that the legislation reduced utilities’ accountability. They pointed to a measure in the 2019 law that requires a utility to reimburse the wildfire fund for all damages from a fire if its actions are found to constitute “conscious or willful disregard of the rights and safety of others.”

Advocates for utility customers have repeatedly said they believe that standard is too high to keep California utilities from causing more fires.

“Instances of utility mismanagement could easily fall short of the ‘conscious or willful disregard’ standard yet nonetheless cause a series of catastrophic wildfire events,” wrote the commission’s Public Advocates Office in a filing soon after the 2019 law passed.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out forcefully Monday against the partisan effort to redraw California’s congressional districts that voters will decide in a November special election.

“They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California,” Schwarzenegger told hundred of students at an event celebrating democracy at the University of Southern California. “It is insane to let that happen.

The Hollywood action star turn Republican governor urged the students to vote against the redistricting measure, Proposition 50.

The special election in November would redraw the districts and probably boost the number of Democrats California sends to Congress, an effort championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to counter efforts in GOP-led states such as Texas to send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Schwarzenegger has long championed political reform. During his final year as governor, he prioritized the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting. Four former members of the independent commission were recognized by Schwarzenegger at the event, and he had lunch with them and members of the university’s student governmentafterward.

He said he grew interested in the esoteric process of redistricting when he was governor and realized that districts drawn by politicians protected their political interests instead of voters.

“They want to dismantle this independent commission. They want to get rid of it under the auspices of we have to fight Trump,” Schwarzenegger said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because we have to fight Trump, [yet] we become Trump.”

Since leaving office, Schwarzenegger has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation. The governor’s remarks were being recorded by the anti-Proposition 50 campaign in what could easily be turned into a television ad.

Outside, student Democrats passed out fliers in support of Proposition 50.

The event, a discussion with USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim marking the International Day of Democracy, was scheduled to take place before conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at a Utah college campus.

Schwarzenegger reflected on Kirk’s death as he warned about the fragile state of democracy.

“That someone’s life was taken because they had a different opinion, I mean it’s just unbelievable,” Schwarzenegger said, noting that Kirk was a skilled communicator who connected with young people, even those who disagreed with him. “A human life is gone. He was a great father, a great husband, and I was thinking about his children — they will only be reading about him now instead of him reading to them bedtime stories.”

He warned that the nation’s political climate was spiraling.

“We are getting hit from so many angles and we have to be very careful we don’t get closer to the cliff. When you fall down there, there is no democracy,” Schwarzenegger said, blaming social media, the mainstream media and the political parties for dividing Americans. “It’s very important that we turn this around.”

He urged the hundreds of students who attended the event to show that people can disagree politically without demonizing one another.

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.”

Just how unsafe are American streets?

To hear President Trump tell it, killers lurk in every shadow not already filled by rapists and thieves.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t nearly as dire, pointing out that crime numbers are down.

But “numbers mean little to people,” Newsom lamented during a press gaggle in his office Thursday, where he ruthlessly trolled Trump with a flags-and-all setup that appeared to mock the president’s marathon Cabinet meeting earlier in the week.

Yes, folks, midterm elections are coming and crime is high — in our consciousness if not in reality. Although violent crime and some property crimes have declined in most California cities (and in many major cities across the country), the perils of city living remain stubbornly stuck in our collective psyches.

This angst has augured in another get-tough era of crime suppression, culminating with the fulfillment of Trump’s authoritarian fantasy of National Guard troops patrolling in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and potentially more cities to come.

Newsom is now offering up what many have framed as a counterpunch to Trump’s military intervention: A surge of California Highway Patrol officers in strategic locations across the state, basically Newsom-controlled cop boots on the ground to mirror Trump’s troops.

But looking at Newsom’s deployment of more CHP officers as no more than a reaction to Trump misses a larger debate on what really makes our communities safer. Understanding what makes cops different from soldiers — and Newsom’s move different from Trump’s — is ultimately understanding the difference between repression and public safety, force and finesse.

Newsom has been using the CHP to supplement local police departments for years. In 2023, when the Tenderloin area of San Francisco was plagued by open drug use, making it the favorite right-wing example of a failed Democratic-run city, Newsom sent this state force in to help clean it up (though that work continues). The next year, he sent it into Oakland and Bakersfield, both places where auto theft, retail crime and side shows were rampant.

Now, he’s expanding the CHP’s role in local policing to include Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire and some Central Valley cities including Fresno and Sacramento.

In each of those places, mobile teams of around a dozen officers, all of whom will volunteer for the job, will target specific crimes, criminals or problem areas. These officers won’t just be patrolling or responding to calls like the local force, but hitting targets identified by data or intelligence, or making their presence known in high-crime neighborhoods.

Here’s where Trump’s military approach has an overlap with Newsom’s — and where the two men might agree: It is true that a visible show of armed authority deters crime. Whether it’s the National Guard or the Highway Patrol, criminals, both petty and violent, tend to avoid them.

“We go in and saturate an area with high visibility and view patrol,” said Sean Duryee, commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, standing at Newsom’s side. “The people that have a problem with that are the criminal community.”

The approach seems to be working. I can throw the numbers at you — 400 firearms seized in San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Oakland; 4,000 stolen vehicles recovered in Oakland; more than 9,000 arrests statewide.

But numbers really don’t matter. It genuinely is how a community feels about its safety. Across California, many if not the majority of small and mid-sized law enforcement departments are understaffed. Even big departments such as Los Angeles struggle to hire and retain officers. There are simply not enough cops — or resources such as helicopters or K9 teams — to do the work in too many places, and citizens feel it.

Using these small strike teams of CHP officers fills the gap of both manpower and expertise. And by aiming that usage precisely at troubled spots, it can make underserved communities feel safer, and crime-ridden communities actually be safer.

Tinisch Hollins is the head of Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy group that works to end over-incarceration and promote public safety beyond just making arrests. She is “obviously not a huge proponent of sending law enforcement into communities like that,” she said.

But she lived in San Francisco when homicides topped 100 per year, and now lives in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, where the local police have been so understaffed and plagued by scandal that local leaders declared a state of emergency.

She has seen how the CHP has “made an impact” in the Bay Area.

“There are some very effective things happening,” Hollins said.

That buy-in from community, especially skeptical community, is a massive departure from the militarization of Trump, and also hints at the deeper difference between troops and cops.

California has been on the cutting-edge of law enforcement reform for years, though it is a conversation that has fallen from favor and headlines in the Trump era.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, California outlawed controversial carotid restraints that can cut off breathing. The state put in place a method for decertifying officers found guilty of serious misconduct. It increased age and education standards for becoming a peace officer, increased transparency requirements and put more oversight on the use of military equipment by civilian forces, just to name a few reforms.

Most significantly, Newsom is championing a new vision of incarceration and rehabilitation modeled after successful efforts in Norway and other places that centers on the simple truth that arresting people does not end crime.

Most people who are convicted and incarcerated will return to our streets after a few years at most, and if the state does not change their outlook and opportunities, they will also likely return to crime — making us no safer than the day they were first put into cuffs.

But for a time, it seemed to some as if these reforms with their focus away from enforcement and toward alternatives to incarceration had gone too far. Images of marauding groups of retail thieves invading stores filled the news, and reasonably caused anxiety — leading to Californians passing the still-unfunded, tough-on-crime Proposition 36 that sought to create stiffer penalties for some drug and property crimes, along with mandated treatment for addiction, but which could also take money from rehabilitation programs.

As much as Trump, Newsom’s use of the CHP is the response to that pushback on reform, an acknowledgment that enforcement remains a key piece of the crime-stopping dilemma.

But Hollins points out that the rehabilitation aspect, the most innovative and arguably important aspect of California’s approach to crime, is getting lost in the current political climate.

“It’s not just arresting people that brings crime down,” she said. “The [penal] system isn’t going to deal with the drivers of the crime.”

This is where Newsom needs to do better, both on the ground and in his explanations. It may not be popular to talk about rehabilitation, and certainly Trump will seize on it as weak, but it is what works, and what makes the California method different from the MAGA view of crime.

For Trump, the be-all and end-all is the arrest, and the subsequent cruel glee of punishment. He has called for harsher and longer penalties for even minor crimes, and recently demanded the blanket use of the death penalty in all murder cases charged in Washington, D.C. His is the authoritarian view that fear and repression will make us safer.

“We lost grip with reality, the idea that the military can be out there in every street corner the United States of America,” Newsom said Thursday.

Or should be.

Soldiers on our streets just make even law-abiding citizens less free, and ultimately does little to fix the problems of poverty and opportunity that often start the cycles of crime.

This is the showdown happening right now on American streets, and ultimately the showdown between the Democratic view of crime prevention and Trump’s — soldiers or cops, the easy spectacle of compliance induced by the barrel of a gun or a complicated and imperfect system of community and law enforcement working together.

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.

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.

Former President Obama endorsed it, while California’s former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, told the New York Times he would fight it. The effort faced opposition this week in Sacramento during legislative hearings, where Republicans blasted it as a partisan game-playing. California Republicans attempted to stall the process by filing an emergency petition at the state Supreme Court, arguing that Democrats violated the California Constitution by rushing the proposal through the Legislature. The high court rejected the legal challenge Wednesday.

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.”

COTTONWOOD — When the talk turned to politics at the OK Corral bar in this historic stagecoach town on Tuesday night, retired nurse Ovie Hays, 77, spoke for most of the room when she summed up her view of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan.

“I don’t want Democrats around,” she said. “They have gone too far in controlling us. We won’t have a say in anything.”

Nearby, a man in hard-worn cowboy boots agreed with Hays — using much more colorful language. He works as a ranch hand and said he’d just come from fixing a goat pen.

“The morons in charge, and the morons that put [those] morons in charge need to understand where their food comes from,” he said. He declined to see his name printed, like a lot of folks in this part of Shasta County and neighboring counties.

In its current form, California’s 1st Congressional District, which sweeps south from the Oregon border almost to Sacramento, is larger than Massachusetts or Maryland or eight other states.

This is farm and forest country. From the glittering peaks and dense forests of Mt. Shasta and the Sierra Nevada, rivers course down to the valley floor, to vast fields of rice, endless orchards of peaches and golden, rolling grassland full of more cows than people. Voters here are concerned with policies that affect their water supply and forests, given that the timber industry limps along here and fires have ravaged the area in recent years.

This is also Republican country. For the last 12 years, this district has been represented by Congressman Doug LaMalfa, a rice farmer from Oroville who is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.

During a Chico town hall meeting, attendees hold up red cards to indicate their opinion on a statement made by Rep. Doug LaMalfa.

(Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee)

But if voters approve the redistricting plan in November, the deep-red bastion that is LaMalfa’s district will be cleaved into three pieces, each of them diluted with enough Democratic votes that they could all turn blue. The northern half of the district would be joined to a coastal district that would stretch all the way down to the Golden Gate Bridge, while the southern half would be jigsawed into two districts that would draw in voters from the Bay Area and wine country.

Northern California finds itself in this situation because of power plays unleashed by President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Newsom and others. To ensure GOP control of the House of Representatives, Trump pressured Abbott to redraw Texas’ congressional maps so Republicans could take more seats. Newsom responded by threatening to redraw California’s maps to favor Democrats, while saying he’d holster this pistol if Texas did the same.

The California Legislature is expected to approve a plan Thursday that would put new maps on the November ballot, along with a a constitutional amendment that would override the state’s voter-approved, independent redistricting commission. If voters approve the new maps, they would go into effect only if another state performs mid-decade redistricting. Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans, while also bolstering some vulnerable Democratic incumbents in purple districts.

Now, voters in Northern California and other parts of the state find themselves at the center of a showdown.

The Silver Dollar Saloon in Marysville, a part of Northern California where a number of voters say that urban California doesn’t understand the needs of rural California.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

And from Marysville to Redding this week, many — including those who call themselves Democrats — said they were outraged at what they saw as another example of urban California imposing its will on rural California, areas that city people generally ignore and don’t understand.

“Their needs and their wants are completely different than what we need here,” said Pamela Davis, 40, who was loading bags of chicken feed into the back of her SUV in Yuba City. Her children scrambled into their car seats, chatting happily about the cows and ducks they have at home on their farm.

Davis, who said she voted for LaMalfa, said voters in California’s cities have no understanding of water regulations or other policies vitally important to agriculture, even though what happens in farming areas is crucial to the state overall.

“We’re out here growing food for everybody,” she said. “Water is an issue all the time. That kind of stuff needs to be at the top of everybody’s mind.”

For years, folks in the so-called north state have chafed at life under the rule of California’s liberal politicians. This region is whiter, more rural, more conservative and poorer than the rest of the state. They have long bemoaned that their property rights, grazing rights and water rights are under siege. They complain that the state’s high taxes and cost of living are crushing people’s dreams. The grievances run so deep that in recent years many residents have embraced a decades-old idea of seceding from California and forming a “State of Jefferson.”

At the Riviera Mobile Estates community in Anderson, Calif., a “State of Jefferson” flag flies alongside the Stars and Stripes.

(Los Angeles Times)

Some residents, including LaMalfa, said if redistricting were to go through, it could further fuel those sentiments. And even some voters who said they abhorred Trump and LaMalfa and planned to vote in favor of the redistricting plan said they worried about the precedent of diluting the rural vote.

Gail Mandaville, 76, was sitting with her book group in Chico and said she was in favor of the plan. “I just am really, really afraid of the way the country is going,” the retired teacher said. “I admire Newsom for standing up and doing something.”

Across the table, Kim Heuckel, 58, said she agreed but also wondered whether a member of Congress from a more urban area could properly represent the needs of her district. “I’m sorry, but they don’t know the farmlands,” she said. “We need our farmers.”

We do, chimed in Rebecca Willi, 74, a retired hospice worker, but “all the things we stand for are going down the drain,” and if the redistricting in Texas goes forward, “we have to offset it because there is too much at stake.”

In an interview, LaMalfa predicted that California’s voters would reject the redistricting plan. “We’re not going anywhere without a fight,” he said.

But should it pass, he predicted that his constituents would suffer. “We don’t have Sausalito values in this district,” he said, adding that politicians in the newly redrawn districts would be “playing to Bay Area voters; they won’t be playing towards us at all.”

One of the biggest issues in his district recently, he noted, has been concern over wolves, who have been roaming ranch lands, killing cattle and enraging ranchers and other property owners. With redistricting, he said, “if it doesn’t go to the dogs, it will go to the wolves.”

King Gavin is at it again!

That’s the cry coming from Republicans across California as Newsom pushes the state Legislature to approve a November special election like none this state has ever seen. Voters would have the chance to approve a congressional map drawn by Democrats hoping to wipe out GOP-held seats and counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Trump-driven redistricting.

The president “doesn’t play by a different set of rules — he doesn’t believe in the rules,” the governor told a roaring crowd packed with Democratic heavyweights last week at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. “And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. … We have got to meet fire with fire.”

California Republicans are responding to this the way a kid reacts if you take away their Pikachu.

“An absolutely ridiculous gerrymander!” whined Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the state’s rural northeast corner, on social media. Under the Democratic plan, his district would swing all the way down to ultra-liberal Marin County.

The California Republican Party deemed the new maps a “MASTERCLASS IN CORRUPTION” (Trumpian caps in the original). National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Christian Martinez said “Newscum” was giving “a giant middle finger to every Californian.”

Intelligent minds can disagree on whether countering an extreme political move with an extreme political move is the right thing. The new maps would supersede the ones devised just four years ago by an independent redistricting commission established to keep politics out of the process, which typically occurs once a decade after the latest census.

Good government types, from the League of Women Voters to Charles Munger Jr. — the billionaire who bankrolled the 2010 proposition that created independent redistricting for California congressional races — have criticized Newsom’s so-called Election Rigging Response Act. So has former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fierce Trump critic who posted a photo of himself on social media working out in a T-shirt that read, “F*** the Politicians / Terminate Gerrymandering.”

I’m not fully convinced that Newsom’s plan is the MAGA killer he thinks it is. If the economy somehow rebounds next year, Republicans would most likely keep Congress anyway, and Newsom would have upended California politics for nothing.

I also don’t discount the moderate streak in California voters that pops up from time to time to quash what seem like liberal gimmes, like the failed attempt via ballot measure to repeal affirmative action in 2020 and the passage last year of Proposition 36, which increased penalties for theft and drug crimes. Nearly two-thirds of California voters want to keep redistricting away from the Legislature, according to a POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll released last week.

If Californians reject Newsom’s plan, that would torpedo his presidential ambitions and leave egg on the face of state Democratic leaders for years, if not a generation.

For now, though, I’m going to enjoy all the tears that California Republicans are shedding. As they face the prospect of even fewer congressional seats than the paltry nine they now hold, they suddenly care about rescuing American democracy?

In this image from video, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa speaks at the U.S. Capitol in 2020.

(House Television via Associated Press)

Where were they during Trump’s fusillade of lawsuits and threats against California? When he sent the National Guard and Marines to occupy parts of Los Angeles this summer after protests against his deportation deluge? When his underlings spew hate about the Golden State on Fox News and social media?

Now they care about political decency? What about when LaMalfa and fellow California GOP House members Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa — whose seats the Newsom maps would also eliminate — voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 victory? When the state Republican Party backed a ridiculous recall against Newsom that cost taxpayers $200 million? Or when the Republican congressional delegation unanimously voted to pass Trump’s Big Bloated Bill, even though it’s expected to gut healthcare and food programs for millions of Californians in red counties? Or even when Trump first pushed Abbott to pursue the very gerrymandering Newsom is now emulating?

We’re supposed to believe them when they proclaim Newsom is a pompadoured potentate who threatens all Californians, just because he wants to redo congressional maps?

Pot, meet black hole.

If these GOPers had even an iota of decency or genuine care for the Golden State, they would back a bill by one of their own that I actually support. Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose seat is also targeted for elimination by the Newsom maps, wants to ban all mid-decade congressional redistricting. He stated via a press release that this would “stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”

That’s an effort that any believer in liberty can and should back. But Kiley’s bill has no co-sponsors so far. And Kevin: Why can’t you say that your man Trump created this fiasco in the first place?

We live in scary times for our democracy. If you don’t believe it, consider that a bunch of masked Border Patrol agents just happened to show up outside the Japanese American National Museum — situated on a historic site where citizens of Japanese ancestry boarded buses to incarceration camps during World War II — at the same time Newsom was delivering his redistricting remarks. Sector Chief Gregory Bovino was there, migra cameramen documenting his every smirk, including when he told a reporter that his agents were there to make “Los Angeles a safer place, since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves.”

The show of force was so obviously an authoritarian flex that Newsom filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding to know who authorized what and why. Meanwhile, referring to Trump, he described the action on X as “an attempt to advance a playbook from the despots he admires in Russia and North Korea.”

Newsom is not everyone’s cup of horchata, myself included. Whether you support it or not, watching him rip up the California Constitution’s redistricting section and assuring us it’s OK, because he’s the one doing it, is discomfiting.

But you know what’s worse? Trump anything. And even worse? The California GOP leaders who have loudly cheered him on, damn the consequences to the state they supposedly love.

History will castigate their cultish devotion to Trump far worse than any of Newsom’s attempts to counter that scourge.

SACRAMENTO — One accusation hurled at Gov. Gavin Newsom for his retaliatory redistricting move against President Trump and Texas Republicans is that he’s overriding the will of California voters. Rubbish.

The flawed argument goes like this:

Californians — once upon a time — voted overwhelmingly to ban partisan gerrymandering and strip the task of drawing congressional seats from self-interested legislators. In a historic political reform, redistricting was turned over to an independent citizens’ commission. Now, Newsom is trying to subvert the voters’ edict.

“It is really a calculated power grab that dismantles the very safeguards voters put in place,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement last week, echoing other party members. “This is Gavin the Gaslighter overturning the will of the voters and telling you it’s for your own good.”

Again, baloney.

Power grab? Sure. Overturning the voters’ will? Hardly.

Newsom is asking voters to express a new will–seeking permission to fight back against Trump’s underhanded attempt to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other red states so Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

First of all, that anti-gerrymandering vote creating the citizens’ commission was 15 years ago. It was a wise decision and badly needed, and still a wonderful concept in the abstract. But that was then, this is now.

Just because a ballot measure was passed one or two decades ago doesn’t mean it has been cast in stone. Would Californians still vote to ban same-sex marriage or deny public schooling to undocumented children? Doubtful. Circumstances and views change.

Second, that 2010 electorate no longer exists. Today’s electorate is substantially different. And it shouldn’t necessarily be tied to the past.

Consider:

• Of the 23.6 million adult California citizens in 2010 — the eligible voters — an estimated 3.6 million have died, or more than 15%, according to population experts at the state Finance Department.
• In all, “at least half of the voter registration file is totally new compared to 2010. And that might even be an understatement,” says Eric McGhee, a demographer at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “There’s been a lot of turnover. It’s a different electorate.”
  People have left the state and others have moved in. Millions of kids have become voting adults.
• There are roughly 6 million more Californians registered to vote today than 15 years ago — 23 million compared to 17 million. “That’s a pretty huge change,” says Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., who has drawn the proposed new Democratic-friendly California congressional maps for Newsom.
• And the partisan makeup of registered voters has become more favorable toward Democrats, who enjoy a nearly 2-to-1 advantage. In last year’s presidential election, Democrats accounted for 46% of registered voters and Republicans 25%. In 2010, it still seemed somewhat competitive. Democrats were at 44% and Republicans 31%.

PPIC researchers recently reported that “partisanship now shapes the state’s migration — with those moving out of the state more likely to be Republican and those moving in more likely to be Democrat. … This process makes California more Democratic than it would otherwise be.”

So, Newsom and Democratic legislators are not thumbing their noses at the voters’ will. They’re asking today’s voters to suspend the ban on gerrymandering and adopt a partisan redistricting plan at a Nov. 4 special election. The good government process of map drawing by the citizen’s commission would return after the 2030 decennial census.

The heavily Democratic Legislature will pass a state constitutional amendment containing Newsom’s plan and put it on the ballot, probably this week.

It would take effect only if Texas or other red states bow to Trump’s demand to gerrymander their congressional districts to rig them for Republicans. Trump is seeking five more GOP seats from Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to oblige. Republicans already hold 25 of the 38 seats.

Newsom’s plan, released Friday, counters Texas’ scheme with a blatant gerrymander of his own. It would gain five Democratic seats. Democrats already outnumber Republicans on the California House delegation 43 to 9.

Neither the governor nor any Democrats are defending gerrymandering. They agree it’s evil politics. They support redistricting by the citizens’ commission and believe this high-road process should be required in every state. But that’s not about to happen. And to stand by meekly without matching the red states’ election rigging would amount to unilateral disarmament, they contend correctly.

“It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be,” Newsom declared at a campaign kickoff last week. “We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.”

But polling indicates it could be a tough sell to voters. A large majority believe the bipartisan citizens commission should draw congressional districts, not the politicians who they don’t particularly trust.

“It’ll be complicated to explain to voters why two wrongs make a right,” says Republican strategist Rob Stutzman, a GOP never-Trumper.

Former GOP redistricting consultant Tony Quinn says: “There is no way to ‘educate’ voters on district line drawing. And Californians vote ‘no’ on ballot measures they do not understand. … It’s sort of like trying to explain the basketball playoffs to me.”

But veteran Democratic strategist Garry South doesn’t see a problem.

“The messaging here is clear: ‘Screw Trump’,” South says. “If the object is to stick it to Trump, [voter] turnout won’t be a problem.”

Gerrymandering may not be the voters’ will in California. But they may well jump at the chance to thwart Trump.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom’s decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
The TK: Trial in National Guard lawsuit tests whether Trump will let courts limit authority
The L.A. Times Special: Hundreds of Californians have been paid $10,000 to relocate to Oklahoma. Did they find paradise?

Until next week,
George Skelton

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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.

What’s the difference between Harvard and UCLA when it comes to fighting President Trump’s attacks?

It may come down to how much Gavin Newsom wants his shot at the White House.

Harvard appears to be on the brink of caving to the president’s demands around claims of antisemitism and a host of issues that most would describe as policies for inclusiveness and diversity, but which Trump derides as “woke,” whatever that means.

The storied university may pay out a huge settlement — rumored to be about $500 million — to pacify an administration increasingly bent on domination of American institutions. Armed with that success, the president has targeted UCLA by freezing more than $500 million in federal grants and demanding a payout of about $1 billion.

“We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom on this extraordinary public institution,” Newsom said recently. “We are not like some of those other institutions that have followed a different path.”

Let’s hope that’s true.

Technically, the University of California is run by the Board of Regents, of which Newsom is a member. But Newsom has so far appointed or reappointed several voting members, and you’re not going to convince me that the rest will go rogue on this decision on how to battle for the soul of UCLA, one of the most important the board will ever make.

So Newsom will be the decider, to steal a phrase from President George W. Bush.

And deciding to capitulate not only looks bad, but has terrible consequences that would dog a candidate Newsom. Not to mention crippling California as a whole.

Harvard may hold a place in the American psyche as the best of the best, but when it comes to actual impact, UCLA and the University of California system are in an entirely different league. More than 1 million Californians hold a degree from a UC, with about 200,000 currently enrolled across the system. Each year, UCLA alone contributes more than $2 billion to the local economy, and adds to the body of human knowledge with its unparalleled research in ways that money cannot quantify.

“With all respect to Harvard, the University of California dwarfs Harvard in terms of size and scale and the impact on the country,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told me. “When you look at the UC just in terms of science and healthcare and helping to birth Silicon Valley, helping to birth the pharmaceutical industry, the UC has a cultural, educational and economic relevance unlike any other institution on the planet.”

The stakes are simply higher for California. Harvard, a private university, can not only withstand more financially, but ultimately matters less. UCLA, with great respect to UC Berkeley, is the “people’s university,” as Zev Yaroslavsky puts it. He’s a former L.A. County supervisor and current director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“There is a difference between a Harvard and a UCLA, or UC Berkeley or UC San Diego or University of Michigan,” he said, and if the president managed to extract his pound of flesh, “it would bankrupt the No. 1 public university in the United States.”

The problem is this is a lose-lose situation. If the university settles, it is going to be forced to pay a tribute of hundreds of millions of dollars. While it may be able to lower the purposefully debilitating $1 billion Trump is demanding, it will still pay a price that damages it for years to come. But at least it will know the number.

If the university doesn’t settle, it risks years of litigation with no certainty of an eventual win.

On Tuesday, a federal court in a separate lawsuit ordered the administration to unfreeze more than $80 million in funding that is currently being withheld. But even with that win, the entire UC system remains in jeopardy of the president’s agenda, and there is no reason to believe the Supreme Court would side with California if or when the case made it that far.

But even if UCLA were to settle, what’s to stop Trump from coming back next year for another bite? As Yaroslavsky points out, give a bully your lunch money once, and they’ll keep coming back for more.

“There’s always a temptation to negotiate and work it out,” said Wiener, the state senator. “I don’t think that that’s an option here.”

Neither do I, though the business-minded decision would be to cut a deal. But we also have a larger issue to consider.

Education is resistance to authoritarianism, and crushing it has long been a goal of the far right. Point being, educated, free-thinking folks often prefer diversity and democracy.

In 2021, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy,” which summed it up well.

“We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” he said. And here we are.

If the university of the fourth-largest economy on the planet signals that it can’t stand up to this, what university will risk it?

“California needs to say, ‘No, we’re not going to give him control over the UC, we’re not going to pay him taxpayer dollars as extortion,’” Wiener said. “If California can’t say no, then I don’t see who can.”

So once again, California — and Californians — are a line of defense. It’s up to us to let our leaders know that we don’t want our taxpayer-funded universities to cave to this assault, and that we expect our governor to fight.

It’s in his best interest, and ours.

SACRAMENTO — Three years ago, a series of political advertisements in Florida kicked off a war between Gov. Gavin Newsom and oil companies over blame for California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices.

In a jab at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom ran ads contrasting Florida’s conservative policies with California’s liberal stances on abortion, education and LGBTQ+ rights.

The Western States Petroleum Assn., a trade group that represents the industry, responded with a warning for Floridians about the cost of gas and electricity in Newsom’s Golden State.

“Gavin Newsom is banning gas cars and shutting down California oil production,” the association’s ad stated. “California can’t afford Gavin Newsom’s ambition. Can Florida?”

It turns out, the price of California’s battle with oil — both politically and at the pump — may be too much for the governor and the state to bear.

Now with two oil refineries expected to shut down over the next year, the Democratic governor has halted his fight with the industry he accused of price gouging and targeted in two special legislative sessions.

A Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington is slated to close by the end of the year and a Valero facility in Benicia announced plans to shut down in April. The closures could reduce California’s in-state oil refining capacity by 20%, setting off alarm bells for the Newsom administration.

Having fewer California refineries would increase reliance on foreign oil and drive up gasoline prices once again — a financial jolt for consumers that the governor wants to avoid.

Instead of lambasting the industry, Newsom is now directing his administration and asking lawmakers to try to help refineries remain open.

“My optimism now is that this is a pivot,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and chief executive of the association. “This is a turn.”

The turn

In April, Newsom sent a letter to Siva Gunda, the vice chair of the California Energy Commission, requesting that he “redouble the state’s efforts to work closely with refiners” to ensure access to reliable transportation fuels and “that refiners continue to see the value in serving the California market” even as the state transitions away from fossil fuels.

Newsom included a request for Gunda to recommend changes by July 1 to the state’s approach to maintain adequate oil supply. The letter was sent days after Valero notified the Energy Commission of its intent to close the Benicia refinery.

Gunda responded in late June with a warning that the state “faces the prospect of continued reduction in in-state petroleum refining capacity that outpaces demand decline for petroleum-based fuels” and offered industry-friendly suggestions to boost supply.

In short, California’s efforts to reduce consumption of gasoline have gotten ahead of consumer demand for zero-emission vehicles. Gunda said the state needs to increase investor confidence in refineries to enable them to maintain operations and meet demand.

Newsom has downplayed the change in approach.

“It’s completely consistent,” he said at a recent news conference. He’s also not naive, he said.

“We are all the beneficiaries of oil and gas,” he said.

“So it’s always been about finding a just transition of pragmatism in terms of that process.”

His comments this summer have marked a noticeable change in tone from a Democratic governor whose climate change advocacy became synonymous with attacking the oil industry.

Although now in limbo due to actions taken by the Trump administration, Newsom set a goal for 100% of in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks to be zero-emission by 2035.

In 2022, Newsom also pushed legislation at the statehouse that banned new oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes and schools.

In a special session months later, Newsom urged lawmakers to place monetary penalties on excessive oil company profits. Newsom accused the oil industry of intentionally driving up the cost of gasoline as retribution for the state’s policies to phase out dependence on fossil fuels in an effort to curb climate change.

Lawmakers balked and Newsom backed off his initial request for them to pass an oil profits penalty. Instead, lawmakers gave state regulators more authority to investigate gasoline price surges and potentially place a cap on profits and penalize oil companies through a public hearing process.

The governor called a special session redux in 2024 after Democrats pushed back on his request to approve new requirements on oil refineries in the final days of the regular legislative session. Lawmakers ultimately approved a state law that could lower gasoline price spikes by giving regulators the authority to require that California oil refiners store more inventory.

Reheis-Boyd said the change reflects that the governor is realizing that reducing supply without reducing demand only increases costs.

The “truckloads of data” required from the industry through the special sessions also showed that refineries weren’t gouging customers, she said, and gave state officials insight into why refineries struggle to maintain their operations in California.

“When Valero announced they were leaving California, the next day, their stock price went up. And that just says everything you need to know, right?” Reheis-Boyd said. “You have to send a market signal that says, ‘We’re open for business here. We need you. We want to collaborate with you as we all plan for this lower-carbon economy in the future, but that pace and skill has got to match up.”’

What’s to come

When California lawmakers return to the state Capitol next week to begin the monthlong slog until they adjourn for the year, industry-friendly bills await them.

Among the considerations is Newsom’s proposal to make it easier to drill new wells in oil fields in Kern County. His plan also would streamline new wells in existing oil fields across the state if companies permanently plug two old wells.

Later this week, the Energy Commission is expected to consider pausing a possible cap on oil industry profits and suspending potential new state oversight of the timing of refinery maintenance. The state is also reportedly attempting to intervene to find a buyer for the Valero plant in Benicia.

While the oil industry is hopeful, environmentalists are dismayed.

California is at a crucial inflection point in its transition to clean energy, said Mary Creasman, chief executive of California Environmental Voters. With federal climate rollbacks, the world is watching the state.

“Now is not the time to retreat,” she said. “Now is the time to double down and innovate the way through this. That’s what this moment calls for. That’s the leadership we need nationally and the leadership we need globally.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California’s redrawn congressional districts could be bad news for these Republicans
The TK: Apple commits another $100 billion for U.S. manufacturing amid Trump tariffs
The L.A. Times Special: Millions of Californians may lose health coverage because of new Medicaid work requirements

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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions have reached a new low. In his efforts to look like a “fighter” ahead of a potential run for the presidency in 2028, he’s willing to ignore democratic rules in pursuit of political aims, setting aside the state’s independent redistricting system to counter Texas Republicans’ proposed partisan gerrymander. Newsom and his allies want to maximize the number of California Democrats elected to Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

In 2008 and 2010, California voters passed ballot initiatives that gave the power to draw the state’s legislative and congressional district lines to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, a 14-person independent body composed of five Democrats, five Republicans and four people who are registered with neither of the two major parties. Potential commissioners go through an extensive vetting and selection process (which the state Legislature participates in) and are prohibited from many forms of political activism, including donating to candidates, running for office or working for elected officials.

Since the latest redistricting, in 2021 — triggered as usual by the constitutionally mandated decennial census — the map crafted by the commission has survived legal and political challenges, and the current districts are set to be in place through the next round of redistricting in 2031.

Now Newsom wants to prematurely redraw the lines and craft his own partisan gerrymander for the November 2026 midterm elections, wresting control of the process away from the commission and giving it instead to the Democratic majority in the state Legislature. Last week, Newsom confirmed that he will call a special election to get voter approval for this end-run around the commission, but even dressed up with a vote, this is cynical politics, not democracy, at work.

Newsom’s excuse is the sudden partisan redistricting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Trump are backing to increase the number of Republicans elected to Congress from that state, and in turn, to enhance the party’s chances to retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) calls the Texas action a “Trumpian power grab,” and Newsom assails it as the “rigging of the system by the president of the United States.” (Recent public opinion research conducted by Newsom’s pollster revealed that the public is more likely to support a California redistricting maneuver if the fight has Trump, not Texas, as the central villain.)

But two wrongs don’t make a right.

A key difference between the proposed line redrawing in Texas and the California plan is that the former, however brazen, is legal and precedented, while the latter specifically contravenes California law and the expressed will of the state’s voters. In Texas, legislators are entrusted with drawing district lines, and a mid-decade partisan gerrymander they executed in 2003, again to boost Republican representation in the U.S. House, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (except for one district whose lines violated the Voting Rights Act).

But California voters explicitly placed the drawing of district lines in the hands of the independent citizens’ commission to take politicians out of the process. Commissioners draw district lines based on numerous factors, including laws, judicial decisions and population shifts. They’re bound by a basic rule: District lines cannot be drawn to purposefully benefit a specific party or candidate. And all the commission’s deliberations must happen in public. The maps they’ve devised have been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans; and that’s one of the many reasons why California voters entrusted the commission with this important power.

If Newsom gets his way, California’s districts for the 2026 midterm will ensure the election of as few Republicans as possible. Recent reports suggest that his gerrymander will mean Republicans win only four out of 52 House seats (9%), compared with the current California delegation, which includes nine Republicans (17%). Republicans make up about 25% of California’s registered voters and statewide Republican candidates have won roughly 40% of the vote over the last few election cycles.

The fact that Newsom’s plan returns the power to redistrict to the citizens commission after the midterms makes it no less a subversion of the democratically expressed will of California’s voters. To add insult to injury, the cost of the special election to ratify the scheme is estimated to be about $60 million in Los Angeles County alone, with statewide costs likely exceeding $200 million.

By bending electoral rules in service of their own political interests, Newsom and California Democrats become no better than Abbott and Texas Republicans. And Newsom’s hypocrisy strains the credibility of his argument that Trump and his allies are diminishing democracy.

If Newsom moves forward with his cynical plan, Californians will at least have the power to reject it at the ballot box this November. Voters should reinforce their commitment to minimizing the role of partisanship and politics in redistricting, and to the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

Lanhee J. Chen, a contributing writer to Opinion, is an American public policy fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a Republican candidate for California controller in 2022.

FLORENCE, S.C. — After nearly six months of President Trump in the White House, California Gov. Gavin Newsom descended on a coffee shop in this small South Carolina city to preach his gospel of resistance.

Suddenly, Democrats here felt they were witnessing a spiritual and political revival: After all the pain and trauma of the 2024 election, they seemed in the presence of an uplifting leader with the savvy to awaken the Democratic grass roots.

“I’ve been so depressed,” Marion Wagner, a retired postal worker, said as she waited for Newsom at his first stop in LilJazZi’s cafe Tuesday. “This is a ray of hope.”

“Thank you for suing Trump!” Suzanne La Rochelle, the executive director of the Florence County Democratic Party, told the tall, svelte 57-year-old West Coast politician after he delivered his political sermon.

“This is just the jolt that South Carolina needs,” said Joyce Black, a 63-year-old grant writer, pumping her fist.

Newsom promoted his more than 2,000-mile jaunt from California to South Carolina as a bid to help the party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026 and connect directly with rural Deep South communities that had been overlooked by Republicans.

But most people believed the governor, who is mulling over a White House bid in 2028, was in the Palmetto State to forge connections in a crucial election state that traditionally hosts the South’s first presidential primary. There are a dozen competitive House districts right now in California, but not a single one in South Carolina.

The state’s Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who rescued former President Biden’s 2020 campaign, addressed the elephant in the room when he joined Newsom in Camden, S.C.

“As we go around welcoming these candidates who are running for president, let’s not forget about school boards,” Clyburn said.

Newsom grinned awkwardly and the crowd roared with laughter. Jokingly, Newsom turned around as if looking for another, unidentified, politician behind him.

Clyburn stopped short of endorsing Newsom, but he told The Times “he’d be a hell of a candidate.”

“He’s demonstrated that over and over again,” Clyburn said. “I feel good about his chances.”

Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor who was first elected governor in 2018, would face steep hurdles if he threw his hat into the race for president.

Just being a Californian, some argue, is a liability.

The Golden State boasts the world’s fourth-largest economy and is a high-tech powerhouse. But as income inequality soars along with the cost of living, Republicans paint the state as the poster child of elite “woke” activism and rail against its high taxes, rampant homelessness and crime.

The signs Republican activists waved outside Newsom’s meet and greet in Pickens, a staunchly red county that voted 76% for Trump, distilled the GOP narrative:

“Newsom, your state is a MESS & you want to run this country. NO WAY!”

“Keep your socialist junk in CA!”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to visitors at Awaken Coffee in Mullins, S.C.

(Sam Wolfe / For The Times)

Tamra Misseijer, a Pickens County middle school teacher, said she and her husband moved from Woodland Hills to South Carolina in 2021 because they could no longer afford to raise their eight children there. Compounding their frustration, she said, homeless people threw needles and sex toys over her fence into their yard. She also lashed out at the restrictions Newsom imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We traded … unconstitutional lockdowns and masks for freedom and fresh air,” the registered Republican’s placard said. “High crime, looting & destruction for peace and order.”

Even some Democrats worry that Newsom is too progressive, too rich and too slick to win over working-class and swing voters in Republican and closely divided states.

Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney, former state senator and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, predicted Newsom would find it hard to find a foothold in many places in South Carolina.

“He’s a very, very handsome man,” Harpootlian conceded. “But the party is searching for a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and desires. I’m not sure that’s him.”

Dismissing Newsom as “just another rich guy” who became wealthy because of his connections with heirs to the Getty oil fortune, Harpootlian said he did not think Newsom was attuned to winning back blue-collar voters.

“If he had a track record of solving huge problems like homelessness, or the social safety net, he’d be a more palatable candidate,” he said. “I just think he’s going to have a tough time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”

Newsom’s tour was organized last week by the South Carolina Democratic Party to energize the grass roots and raise money.

Party Chair Christale Spain said that she invited a bunch of prominent national Democratic leaders to tour the state, but that Newsom was the only one to immediately agree to jump on a plane.

After an email and a few text messages, a Newsom advisor said, Newsom raised $160,000 for South Carolina’s Democratic Party — nearly two-thirds of what the Democratic National Committee gives the party for its annual budget.

Newsom — who traveled to Georgia in 2023 for a much-hyped debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina in 2024 to stump for Biden — said national Democratic leaders have abandoned people in the rural South.

“I’ve got a little gripe with my party,” Newsom said at a packed gathering in Fisher Hill Community Baptist Church in Chesterfield. “We let you down for decades and decades.”

Newsom sidestepped the question of whether he would run for president, arguing that Democrats couldn’t afford to wait three and a half years for a savior.

“I think one of the big mistakes for any party, but particularly the Democratic Party, is looking for the guy or gal on the white horse to come save the day,” he said.

But Newsom offered a glimpse of what a potential presidential campaign might look like: He touted his record of filing 122 lawsuits against Trump during his first time in office, he celebrated California as the “most un-Trump state in America,” and he railed against Trump’s recent immigration raids in MacArthur Park as a display of “cruelty and vulgarity.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with Mullins, S.C., Mayor Miko Pickett, right, as they walk downtown on Tuesday.

(Sam Wolfe / For The Times)

Even though Newsom sought to focus on the damage wrought by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — or as he called it, the “Big Beautiful Betrayal” — Newsom did not go into detail on how this would hurt Americans in their healthcare or pocketbooks. Instead, he talked about “restoring the soul of this country” and dwelt largely on culture war issues.

“What we’re experiencing is America in reverse,” Newsom told supporters in Camden. “They’re trying to bring us back to a pre-1960s world on voting rights. You know it well: civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and not just access to abortion, but also access to simple reproductive contraception. It’s a moment that few of us could have imagined.“

But even as Newsom warned about book bans and immigration raids as fundamental assaults on democracy, he resisted the idea that America is a nation neatly divided by east and west, rural and urban, Democrat and Republican.

“Don’t forget California is a large red state,” he said, noting he represented 6 million Trump voters, more than the entire population of South Carolina.

After the 2024 election, Newsom said he, like many other Democrats, turned off the cable news.

“I just, I tapped out,” he told the crowd at the church. “I never thought that would happen. All those years of self-medicating, watching Rachel Maddow with a glass of white wine or a beer. I thought I would never give it up. … The election, you know, it’s a body blow.”

It didn’t take him long to jump back in. On Nov. 7, two days after the election, Newsom convened a special session of the state Legislature to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights” against the incoming Trump administration.

He said Democrats across the country, from California to South Carolina, bore a responsibility to take action.

“We’re not bystanders in this world,” he said. “We can shape the future, we have agency. … You could have dialed it in to stay home. You could have given in, given up. You could have fallen right on the cynicism, the negativity, all the anxiety that I’m sure you’re all feeling about this moment.”

Many in the crowd were clearly awed by Newsom. Some swooned over his “beautiful hair” and “charisma.” Others marveled at his ability to stand up to Trump with clarity and compassion.

One woman informed Newsom her friend was “in love with you, by the way.” Another told friends she blanked out when she met him, so starstruck that she could not come up with words.

“He’s a cool dude,” Carol Abraham, wife of the mayor of Bennettsville, said after Newsom spoke at a meet and greet on Main Street. “He has swag.”

After Newsom wrapped up his talk at Fisher Hill Community Baptist Church, Bryanna Velazquez, a 31-year-old business owner wearing a “Jesús era un immigrante” T-shirt, waited in a long line to thank Newsom for speaking out against the immigration raids.

“I’m married to a Mexican, so it means a lot,” she told him.

Her husband was a citizen, Valazquez said, but still, she was afraid.

“The fact that he is brown makes him a target.”

Since Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, Newsom has taken on the role of the president’s most outspoken Democratic critic while taking steps to defy left-wing orthodoxies and broaden his national appeal in a country that, politically, is far different from California.

In March, he infuriated the progressive wing of his party by hosting conservatives such as MAGA loyalists Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast and breaking away from many Democrats on the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

“My position is I don’t think it’s fair,” he told reporters Tuesday. “But I also think it’s demeaning to talk down to people and to belittle the trans community. … These people just want to survive and so I hold both things in my hand.”

It is too early to say how many Americans will get on board with Newsom as he experiments with how to balance competing ideas of common sense and sensitivity in the hyperpartisan culture wars.

As the California leader of the Trump resistance stressed the importance of standing tall and firm and pushing back, he also called for more grace and humility, invoking the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We’re all, as Dr. King said, bound together by a web of mutuality,” he said in Florence, playing to his Deep South audience. “We’re many parts, as the Bible said, but one body. One part suffers, we all suffer.”

“Let’s not talk down to people,” he told the crowd in Chesterfield. “Let’s not talk past people, good people who disagree with us.”

“Amen,” a man said. “That’s right,” a woman murmured.

July 1 (UPI) — The Trump administration has approved California Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s request for disaster relief following last month’s riots in downtown Los Angeles, the Small Business Administration announced Tuesday.

President Donald Trump and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler approved the state’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan declaration that will allow small businesses to apply for up to $2 million in low-interest EIDL loans.

“Gavin Newsom let the migrant mob torch Los Angeles,” Loeffler wrote Tuesday in a post on X.

“Now he’s asking SBA for disaster relief to fix an estimated $1 billion in damage. It’s another Newsom crisis that POTUS is cleaning up for law-abiding citizens and small businesses.”

SBA disaster assistance teams are also providing on-the-ground support to those impacted, according to Loeffler.

Hundreds were arrested last month for looting and vandalism at dozens of businesses after days of protests directed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

During the riots, the Trump administration deployed thousands of National Guard troops to help law enforcement officers, who called the “unlawful and dangerous behavior” a “concerning escalation” after demonstrators flooded LA streets and freeways.

Newsom blamed Trump’s decision to call up the National Guard for creating the escalation, calling it a “breach of state sovereignty.”

“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom said on June 8. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”

Days later, Trump accused Newsom of failing to protect communities and said without the intervention, Los Angeles “would be burning to the ground right now.”

Newsom has not commented on California’s disaster relief approval.

“Gov. Newsom allowed a mob to rampage Los Angeles — standing with violent rioters, paid protesters and criminal illegal aliens over law-abiding citizens. Despite an estimated $1 billion in damage, he refused federal relief for weeks, insisting that the riots were peaceful even as small business owners stood in the rubble,” said Loeffler.

“Although the SBA has approved California’s disaster relief request and will begin delivering immediate aid to the innocent victims, Gov. Newsom must take accountability for his state-sanctioned crisis.”

Today we discuss presidential politics, window treatments and disasters of the natural and man-made variety.

Time for Gavin Newsom to start measuring those White House drapes.

Huh?

You know, president of the United States. I’m thinking something Earth-friendly, like recycled hemp.

Wait, what?

Did you catch the nationally televised speech the governor recently gave? The one about “democracy at a crossroads.”

I did.

It was a fine speech and the governor made some important points about President Trump’s reckless commandeering of California’s National Guard, his administration’s indiscriminate immigration raids and the wholly unnecessary dispatch of Marines to Los Angeles. (From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Venice Beach.)

Newsom was plenty justified in his anger and contempt. Trump, acting true to his flame-fanning fashion, turned what was a middling set of protests — nothing local law enforcement couldn’t handle — into yet another assault on our sorely tested Constitution.

Newsom’s speech certainly “met the moment,” to use one of his favorite phrases.

I’ll grant you that. Unlike a lot of extracurricular activities aimed at boosting his presidential prospects, Newsom was addressing a Trump-manufactured crisis unfolding right here at home. It was a moment that called for gubernatorial leadership.

Just the kind of leadership despondent Democrats need.

So it’s been said.

It’s not much of a leap to see Newsom leading the anti-Trump opposition clear to the White House!

Actually, that’s a bigger leap than it takes to clear the Grand Canyon.

Granted, Newsom’s speech received a lot of raves from Democrats across the country. Many are desperate for someone in a position of power to give voice to their blood-boiling, cranium-exploding rage against Trump and his many excesses. Newsom did a good job channeling those emotions and articulating the dangers of an imprudent president run amok.

But let’s not go overboard.

There is no lack of Democrats eager to take on Trump and become the face of the so-called resistance. There is no shortage of Democrats eyeing a 2028 bid for the White House. Those who run won’t be schlepping all the political baggage that Newsom has to tote.

Such as?

Rampant homelessness. An exploding budget deficit. Vast income inequality.

Plus, a lot of social policies that many Californians consider beneficent and broad-minded that, to put it mildly, others around the country consider much less so. Don’t get me wrong. I love California with all my heart and soul. But we have a lot of deep-seated problems and cultural idiosyncrasies that Newsom’s rivals — Democrat and Republican — would be only too happy to hang around his neck.

So let’s not get too caught up in the moment. The fundamentals of the 2028 presidential race haven’t changed based on a single — albeit well-received — speech. It’s still hard to see Democrats turning the party’s fate over to yet another nominee spawned in the liberal stew of San Francisco politics and campaigning with kooky California as a home address.

Stranger things have happened.

True.

That said, 2028 is a zillion political light years and countless news cycles away. First come the midterm elections in November 2026, giving voters their chance to weigh in on Trump and his actions. The verdict will go a long way toward shaping the dynamic in 2028.

Well at least Newsom has brought his A-game to social media. His trolling of Trump is something to behold!

Whatever.

You’re not impressed?

I think it’s best to leave the snark to professionals.

I do, however, have some sympathy for the governor. It’s not easy dealing with someone as spiteful and amoral as the nation’s ax-grinder-in-chief.

Consider, for instance, the disaster relief money that fire-devastated Southern California is counting on. Helping the region in its time of desperate need shouldn’t be remotely political, or part of some red-vs.-blue-state feud. Historically, that sort of federal aid has never been.

But this is Trump we’re dealing with.

To his credit, Newsom tried making nice in the days and weeks following the January firestorm. He ignored the president’s provocations and held what was later described an an amicable session with Trump in the Oval Office. Their working relationship seemed to be a good one.

But few things last with the transactional Trump, save for his pettiness and self-absorption. Asked last week if his “recent dust-ups” with Newsom would impact the granting of wildfire relief, Trump said, “Yeah, maybe.”

He called Newsom incompetent, trotted out more gobbledygook about raking forests and then soliloquized on the nature of personal relationships. “When you don’t like somebody, don’t respect somebody, it’s harder for that person to get money if you’re on top,” Trump said.

Yeesh.

Responding in a posting on X, Newsom correctly noted, “Sucking up to the President should not be a requirement for him to do the right thing for the American people.”

Hard to argue with that.

Yet here we are.

The nation’s second-most populous city is occupied by National Guard and Marine troops. Thousands of people — displaced by disaster, their past lives gone up in smoke — are hostage to the whims of a peevish president who always puts his feelings first and cares nothing for the greater good.

The midterm election can’t come soon enough.

Johnny had Ed. Conan had Andy. And Gov. Gavin Newsom? A single-use plastic water bottle.

In most of the YouTube video recordings of Newsom’s new podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” a single-use plastic water bottle lurks on a table nearby.

Sometimes, it is accompanied by a single-use coffee cup. Other times, it stands alone.

Typically, such product placement would raise nary an eyebrow. But in recent weeks, environmentalists, waste advocates, lawmakers and others have been battling with the governor and his administration over a landmark single-use plastic law that Newsom signed in 2022, but which he has since worked to defang — reducing the number of packaged single-use products the law was designed to target and potentially opening the door for polluting forms of recycling.

Anti-plastic advocates say it’s an abrupt and disappointing pivot from the governor, who in June 2022, decried plastic pollution and the plague of single-use plastic on the environment.

“It’s like that whole French Laundry thing all over again,” said one anti-plastic advocate, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of angering the governor. Newsom was infamously caught dining without a mask at the wine country restaurant during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Newsom’s efforts to scale back SB 54, the state’s single-use plastic recycling law, has dismayed environmentalists who have long considered Newsom one of their staunchest allies.

“Our kids deserve a future free of plastic waste and all its dangerous impacts … No more,” Newsom said in 2022, when he signed SB 54. “California won’t tolerate plastic waste that’s filling our waterways and making it harder to breathe. We’re holding polluters responsible and cutting plastics at the source.”

Asked about the presence of the plastic water bottle, Daniel Villaseñor, the governor’s deputy director of communications, had this response:

“Are you really writing a story this baseless or should we highlight this video for your editor?” Villaseñor said via email, attaching a video clip showing this reporter seated near a plastic water bottle at last year’s Los Angeles Times’ Climate Summit. (The bottles were placed near chairs for all the panelists; this particular one was never touched.)

More than a half-dozen environmentalists and waste advocates asked to comment for this story declined to speak on the record, citing concerns including possible retribution from the governor’s office and appearing to look like scolds as negotiations over implementing SB 54 continue.

Dianna Cohen, the co-founder and chief executive of Plastic Pollution Coalition, said that while she wouldn’t comment on the governor and his plastic sidekick, she noted that plastic pollution is an “urgent global crisis” that requires strong policies and regulations.

“Individuals — especially those in the public eye — can help shift culture by modeling these solutions. We must all work to embrace the values we want to see and co-create a healthier world,” she said in a statement.

On Thursday, Newsom dropped a new episode of “This is Gavin Newsom” with independent journalist Aaron Parnas. In the video, there wasn’t a plastic bottle in sight.

Frame it as a call to action or a presidential campaign announcement, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s address to America on Tuesday has tapped into our zeitgeist (German words feel oddly appropriate at the moment) in a way few others have.

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said during a live broadcast with a California flag and the U.S. flag in the background. “The moment we’ve feared has arrived.”

What moment exactly is he referring to?

President Trump has put Marines and National Guardsmen on the streets of Los Angeles, and granted himself the power to put them anywhere. Wednesday, a top military leader said those forces could “detain” protesters, but not outright arrest them, though — despite what you see on right wing media — most protesters have been peaceful.

But every would-be authoritarian ultimately faces a decisive moment, when the fear they have generated must be enforced with action to solidify power.

The danger of that moment for the would-be king is that it is also the time when rebellion is most likely, and most likely to be effective. People wake up. In using force against his own citizens, the leader risks alienating supporters and activating resistance.

What happens next in Los Angeles between the military and protesters — which group is perceived as the aggressors — may likely determine what happens next in our democracy. If the military is the aggressor and protesters remain largely peaceful, Trump risks losing support.

If the protesters are violent, public perception could further empower Trump.

The president’s immigration czar Tom Homan, said on CNN that what happens next, “It all depends on the activities of these protesters — I mean, they make the decisions.”

Welcome to that fraught moment, America.

Who would have thought Newsom would lead on it so effectively?

“Everybody who’s not a Trumpist in this society has been taken by surprise, and is still groggy from the authoritarian offensive of the last five months,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at the embattled Harvard University, and author of “How Democracies Die.”

Levitsky told me that it helps shake off that shock to have national leaders, people who others can look to and rally behind. Especially as fear nudges some into silence.

“You never know who that leader sometimes is going to be, and it may be Newsom,” Levitsky said. “Maybe his political ambitions end up converging with the small d, democratic opposition.”

Maybe. Since his address, and a coinciding and A-game funny online offensive, Newsom’s reach has skyrocketed. Millions of people watched his address, and hundreds of thousands have followed him on TikTok and other social media platforms. Searches about him on Google were up 9,700%, according to CNN. Love his message or find it laughable, it had reach — partly because it was unapologetically clear and also unexpected.

“Trump and his loyalist thrive on division because it allow them to take more power and exert even more control,” Newsom said.

I was on the ground with the protesters this week, and I can say from firsthand experience that there are a small number of agitators and a large number of peaceful protesters. But Trump has done an excellent job of creating crisis and fear by portraying events as out of the control of local and state authorities, and therefore in need of his intervention.

Republicans “need that violence to corroborate their talking points,” Mia Bloom told me. She’s an expert on extremism and a professor at Georgia State University.

Violence “like in the aftermath of George Floyd, when there was the rioting, that actually was helpful for Republicans,” she said.

Levitsky said authoritarians look for crises.

“You need an emergency, both rhetorically and legally, to engage in authoritarian behavior,” he said.

So Trump has laid a trap with his immigration sweeps in a city of immigrants to create opportunity, and Newsom has called it out.

And it calling it out — pointing out the danger of protesters turning violent and yet still calling for peaceful protest — Newsom has put Trump in a precarious position that the president may not have been expecting.

“Repressing protest is a very risky venture,” said Levitsky. “It often, not always, but often, does trigger push back.”

Levitsky points out that already, there is some evidence that Trump may have overreached, and is losing support.

A new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 76% of Americans oppose the military birthday parade Trump plans on throwing for himself in Washington, D.C. this weekend. That includes disapproval from more than half of Trump supporters.

A separate poll by Quinnipiac University found that 54% of those polled disapprove of how he’s handling immigration issues, and 56% disapprove of his deportations.

Bloom warns that there’s a danger in raising too many alarms about authoritarianism right now, because we still have some functioning guardrails. She said that stoking too much fear could backfire, for Newsom and for democracy.

“We’re at a moment in which the country is very polarized and that these things are being told through two very different types of narratives, and the moment we give the other side, which was a very apocalyptic, nihilistic narrative, we give them fodder, we justify the worst policies” she said.

She pointed to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when some protesters placed flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns, and act of peaceful protest she said changed public perception. That, she said, is what’s needed now.

Newsom was clear in his call for peaceful protest. But also clear that it was a call to action in a historic inflection point. We can’t know in the moment who or what history will remember, said Levitsky.

“It’s really important that the most privileged among us stand up and fight,” he said. “If they don’t, citizens are going to look around and say, ‘Well, why should I?”

Having leaders willing to be the target, when so many feel the danger of speaking out, has value, he said.

Because fear may spread like a virus, but courage is contagious, too.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is up to his old tricks, trying to ram major policy change through the state Legislature on short notice. And again lawmakers are pushing back.

Not only lawmakers, but the Legislature’s nonpartisan, independent chief policy analyst.

The Legislative Analyst‘s Office has recommended that legislators hold off voting on what the governor seeks because they’re being pressed to act without enough time to properly study the complex matter.

Newsom is asking the Legislature to “fast-track” construction of his controversial and costly water tunnel project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The $20-billion, 45-mile, 39-feet-wide tunnel would enhance delivery of Northern California water to Southern California.

Delta towns and farmers, environmental groups and the coastal salmon fishing industry are fighting the project and the governor’s latest move to expedite construction.

If there are any supporters at the state Capitol outside the governor’s office for his fast-track proposal, they’re not speaking up.

“Nobody’s told me they’re excited about it,” says state Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton), an East San Francisco Bay lawmaker who is co-chairman of the Legislative Delta Caucus. The 15-member bipartisan group of lawmakers who represent the delta region strongly oppose the tunnel — calling it a water grab — and are fighting Newsom’s bill.

The black mark on the governor’s proposal is that he’s trying to shove it through the Legislature as part of a new state budget being negotiated for the fiscal year starting July 1. But it has nothing to do with budget spending.

The tunnel would not be paid for through the budget’s general fund which is fed by taxes. It would be financed by water users through increased monthly rates, mainly for Southern Californians.

Newsom is seeking to make his proposal one of several budget “trailer” bills. That way, it can avoid normal public hearings by legislative policy committees. There’d be little scrutiny by lawmakers, interest groups or citizens. The measure would require only a simple majority vote in each house.

“We’re battling it out,” says Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), the Delta Caucus’ co-chair whose district covers the delta as it enters San Francisco Bay.

“This is not about the project itself. This is about how you want to do things in the state of California. This [fast-track] is comprehensive policy that the budget is not intended to include,” says Wilson.

Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek issued a report concluding: “We recommend deferring action … without prejudice. The policy issues do not have budget implications. Deferring action would allow the Legislature more time and capacity for sufficient consideration of the potential benefits, implications and trade-offs.”

The analyst added: “In effect, approving this proposal would signal the Legislature’s support for the [tunnel], something the Legislature might not be prepared to do — because it would remove many of the obstacles to move forward on the project.

“Moreover, even if the Legislature were inclined to support the project, some of the particular details of this proposal merit closer scrutiny.”

Newsom tried a similar quickie tactic two years ago to fast-track the tunnel. And incensed legislators balked.

“He waited now again until the last moment,” Wilson says. “And he’s doubled down.”

She asserts that the governor is seeking even more shortcuts for tunnel construction than he did last time.

“There are some people who support the project who don’t support doing it this way,” she says. “The Legislature doesn’t like it when the governor injects major policy into a budget conversation. This level of policy change would usually go through several committees.”

Not even the Legislature’s two Democratic leaders are siding with the Democratic governor, it appears. They’re keeping mum publicly.

Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) has always opposed the tunnel project. So quietly has Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), I’m told by legislative insiders.

McGuire and Rivas apparently both are trying to avoid a distracting fight over the tunnel within their party caucuses at tense budget time.

Newsom insists that the project is needed to increase the reliability of delta water deliveries as climate change alters Sierra snowpack runoff and the sea level rises, making the vast estuary more salty.

He also claims it will safeguard against an earthquake toppling fragile levees, flooding the delta and halting water deliveries. But that seems bogus. There has never been a quake that seriously damaged a delta levee. And there’s no major fault under the delta.

The tunnel would siphon relatively fresh Sacramento River water at the north end of the delta and deliver it to facilities at the more brackish south end. From there, water is pumped into a State Water Project aqueduct and moved south, mostly to Southern California.

“A tunnel that big, that deep, is going to cause a lot of problems for agriculture and tourism,” says McNerney. “One town will be totally destroyed — Hood. It’s a small town, but people there have rights.”

Newsom’s legislation would make it simpler to obtain permits for the project. The state’s own water rights would be permanent, not subject to renewal. The state would be authorized to issue unlimited revenue bonds for tunnel construction, repaid by water users. It also would be easier to buy out farmers and run the tunnel through their orchards and vineyards. And it would limit and expedite court challenges.

“For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay. We’re done with barriers,” Newson declared in unveiling his proposal in mid-May.

But lawmakers shouldn’t be done with solid, carefully reasoned legislating.

On policy this significant involving a project so monumental, the Legislature should spend enough time to get it right — regardless of a lame-duck governor’s desire to start shoveling dirt before his term expires in 18 months.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Candidates for California governor face off about affordability, high cost of living in first bipartisan clash
The TK: State lawmakers considering policy changes after L.A. wildfires
The L.A. Times Special: Homeland Security’s ‘sanctuary city’ list is riddled with errors. The sloppiness is the point

Until next week,
George Skelton

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