Commentary: Newsom threatens Texas over power grab. He's blowing smoke

[ad_1] Think about a Washington through which President Trump was held to account. A Washington through which Congress doesn’t roll over like a canine begging for a deal with. A Washington that capabilities the best way it’s imagined to, with that complete checks-and-balances factor working.

Attractive, no?

Democrats must win simply three seats in 2026 to grab management of the Home and impose some measure of accountability on our rogue-elephant president. That’s one thing Trump is keenly conscious of, which is why he’s pushing Texas to take the extraordinary step of redrawing its congressional boundaries forward of the midterm election.

Republicans, who’ve exercised iron-clad management over Texas for many years, maintain 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats. A particular session scheduled subsequent week in Austin is aimed toward boosting that quantity by as many as 5 seats, rising the GOP’s odds of hanging onto the Home.

Enter, stage left, California’s White Home-lusting governor.

As a part of a current Southern marketing campaign swing, Gavin Newsom sat down with a progressive Tennessee podcaster to debate the Republican energy seize. (The picnic bench, rolled up shirt sleeves, beer and f-bomb confirmed the governor was being genuine, in case there was any doubt.)

“They’re not f——ing round now. They’re taking part in by a very totally different algorithm,” Newsom stated of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans. Years in the past, he famous, California created an impartial fee to attract its political traces, which states usually do as soon as a decade after new census figures come out.

However with a super-majority in Sacramento, Newsom stated, Democrats may “gerrymander like no different state.”

“We’ve been taking part in truthful,” he continued, however Abbott’s actions “made me query that whole program.” Later, elaborating on social media, the governor accused Republicans of dishonest their technique to additional Home seats and warned, “CA is watching — and you may wager we gained’t stand idly by.”

There’s a Texas expression for that: All hat and no cattle.

The actual fact is, voters took the facility of political line-drawing away from the governor and his fellow lawmakers, for good motive, and it’s not like Newsom can unilaterally take that energy again — irrespective of how effectively his chesty swagger may play with Trump-loathing Democrats.

“We have now a fee,” stated Justin Levitt, an professional on redistricting legislation at Loyola Regulation Faculty. “Not solely that, a Structure and the fee’s within the Structure. And never solely that, we have now a Structure that claims you solely get to redistrict as soon as each 10 years, until there’s a authorized downside with the present maps.”

In different phrases, it’s lower than Newsom to huff and puff and blow current Home districts down.

California voters authorized Proposition 20, which turned congressional line-drawing over to a nonpartisan, 14-member fee, in November 2010. The purpose was to introduce competitors by taking redistricting away from self-dealing lawmakers. It handed by an awesome margin, 61% to 39%, and has labored simply as supposed.

After many years of pre-baked congressional contests, when the success of 1 get together or the opposite was nearly assured, California has change into a hotbed of competitors; lately, the state — an afterthought in November balloting for president — has been key to regulate of the Home. In 2026, as many as a dozen seats, out of 52, might be no less than considerably aggressive.

“I believe it’s labored out nice,” stated Sara Sadhwani, an assistant politics professor at Pomona School and a member of the redistricting fee (Others doing the map-making included a seminary professor, a structural engineer and an investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division.)

There are two methods, Levitt stated, that Newsom and fellow Democrats may undo the fee’s handiwork.

They may break the legislation and go laws drawing new traces, face an inevitable lawsuit and prevail with a sympathetic ruling from the California Supreme Court docket. Or they may ask voters to approve totally different traces by a brand new constitutional modification, in a hurried-up particular election forward of the 2026 midterms.

Each situations appear as believable as Newsom delivering common healthcare and fulfilling his pledge to construct 3.5 million new properties a yr, to call two different extravagant guarantees.

To be clear, not one of the above condones the plot that Trump and Abbott are trying to hatch. Their actions are politically ruthless and greater than a bit of cynical. (A letter from Trump’s hand-in-glove Justice Division has offered a authorized fig leaf for the particular session. Texas was lately — expediently — notified that 4 of its majority-minority congressional districts have been unconstitutionally gerrymandered alongside racial traces, thus justifying the drawing of a brand new map.)

That’s no excuse, nonetheless, for Newsom to end-run California voters, or name a particular election that would price a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} at a time the state is gushing pink ink.

Politics rooted in vengeance is each harmful and improper, whether or not it’s Trump or Newsom seeking to settle scores.

There’s additionally the matter of delivering vacant threats. Some Democrats could thrill every time Newsom delivers one in every of his pugnacious pronouncements. That appears to be a giant a part of his presidential marketing campaign technique. However those self same voters could tire of the dearth of comply with by, as Californians have.