Free Republic

When I found Darshan Smaaladen earlier this month, she had joined several hundred of her neighbors at a “No Kings” demonstration in Orange County, California. Not that she was there to protest. “Rallies are great,” Smaaladen told me, “but they don’t get people out to vote.”A year ago, Smaaladen had helped lead a successful campaign to recall two ultraconservative members of Orange County’s school board. Now the 52-year-old mother of three was using the “No Kings” protest as a campaigning ground for Proposition 50, the ballot measure orchestrated by Governor Gavin Newsom that would redraw California’s district map to add...

Sometimes the truth doesn’t just contradict the narrative—it obliterates it entirely. When the liberal media sets up a segment to indict the Republican Party over an issue, the last thing they expect is for their guest to flip the script with bipartisan accountability. When Jake Tapper tried to make Republican redistricting the villain in America's gerrymandering crisis during Sunday's State of the Union, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't having it. The former California governor delivered a masterclass in bipartisan reality that left CNN's host scrambling to change topics. Tapper opened by framing the Texas redistricting debate as Trump "cooking the books" to...

How many people just realized that Dems had as many as 20 extra seats based on years of unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering?

As Californians start voting on Democrats’ effort to boost their ranks in Congress, former President Obama warned that democracy is in peril as he urged voters to support Proposition 50 in a television ad that started airing Tuesday. “California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama says in the 30-second ad, which the main pro-Proposition 50 campaign began broadcasting Tuesday across the state. “Democracy is on the ballot Nov. 4.” The spot is part of a multimillion-dollar ad buy promoting the congressional redistricting ballot measure through the election. Proposition 50 was spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California...

Former President Barack Obama is begging California voters to back Governor Gavin Newsom’s gerrymandering bill in a desperate attempt to counter redistricting efforts in Republican-controlled states. The GOP-led redistricting efforts were launched in response to a “census error” that undercounted predominantly red states, thus costing congressional seats and electoral votes, as well as Democrat-led gerrymandering in stated like Illinois and Maryland. After Texas formally introduced a mid-decade redraw of its confessional maps that phased out five districts currently controlled by Democrats, Newsom responded by announcing that California would be doing the same. The California governor’s plan is controversial, as the...

Former President Barack Obama and California Governor Gavin Newsom are urging Californians to vote in favor of Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would replace the state’s independent redistricting system with a legislature-approved map projected to eliminate several Republican-held congressional districts. On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X, “Listen to @barackobama,” sharing a new video featuring former President Barack Obama encouraging voters to support Proposition 50 in the state’s November 4 special election. In the video, Obama says: “California, the whole nation is counting on you. Democracy is on the ballot November 4. Republicans want to steal enough...

Two voters lacked standing and, additionally, failed to show how Blacks were weakened by maps for the North Carolina Senate, a federal judge has ruled. “Plaintiffs ignore the progress that North Carolina has made over the past 60 years and seek to use Section 2 to sort voters by race in order to squeeze one more Democratic Senate district into the map,” wrote Judge James Dever of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The ruling in Rodney D. Pierce and Moses Matthews v. The North Carolina State Board of Elections, et al. says racial gerrymandering...

Score another victory for President Donald Trump in the high-stakes political battle between Republicans and Democrats over congressional redistricting. GOP Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri on Sunday signed into law a new congressional map, Missouri First, that is likely to hand Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of next year’s midterms elections. Missouri, once considered a swing state that has dramatically shifted to the right over the past decade and a half, is the latest battleground in the congressional redistricting showdown after the passage of new maps in GOP-dominated Texas and a redistricting push by...

WASHINGTON – Louisiana is now urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule a key section of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, which would throw out the state's congressional map that has two minority-majority districts. “The Constitution forbids sorting voters by race. And telling legislators drawing maps to think about race, but not think too much about race, is an untenable standard,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said after releasing Wednesday afternoon a 58-page brief filed with the Supreme Court. Louisiana had previously defended the maps, saying they had created them under protest when a federal judge ruled a previous map...

California’s Democratic supermajority quickly pushed through a redistricting measure that favors their party. Voters will consider it in November. The effort was in response to Texas Republicans adopting a redistricting plan favoring their party, which they took up at Trump’s behest. In an evening social media post about a supremely partisan battle that could reshape American political power for generations, President Trump sounded ebullient.“Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” Trump wrote, of the nation’s most populous red...

The Texas redistricting battle is entering a new front as the fight turns to the courts, where Democrats and civil rights groups are expected to challenge the newly passed maps. Texas House Democrats who had fled the state to stall the maps said that they were returning “to the House floor and to the courthouse” this week — and several groups signaled they are ready to sue as soon as Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signs the legislation. But experts forecast Democrats will face an uphill climb to stop or even stall the maps, which could net five GOP House seats,...

Editorial Gerrymandering is an idea that should be terminated the independent redistricting movement here, has vowed to fight Newsom with the same vigor that his character as a Thank goodness for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not only did he utter one of the top lines in movie history—“I’ll be back”—but he’s also bringing muscle to the fight against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s scheme to take Ventura County and the rest of the state back to the days when shady politicians decided who spoke for us in Sacramento and Washington. Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response Act” is a constitutional amendment that, if passed by California...

The state’s new congressional lines have yet to be approved, but would-be candidates are jockeying behind the scenes. Supervisor Hilda Solis hasn’t publicly announced her candidacy, but she’s already lining up support for a potential new southeast L.A. County congressional seat. As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to redraw California’s congressional maps plays out at the state Capitol and on the national stage, a quieter but no less bloody scramble is simultaneously underway. Newsom’s plan — a bid to counter President Trump’s drive for more GOP House seats with his own California show of force — still needs to be approved...

The voters of California don’t support his gerrymandering scheme.California Gov. Gavin Newsom has cast himself as a defender of democracy in the gerrymandering war that erupted after Texas Democrats fled the Lone Star State in a futile attempt to kill a GOP redistricting plan. This is obviously part of an ongoing effort to bolster his national profile ahead of a probable presidential run, but it has forced him to adopt an Orwellian position on redistricting. Newsom is telling Golden State voters that, to save democracy from evil Republicans, they must allow him to usurp the power of a redistricting commission...

The battle between Texas and Democrat states over gerrymandering seems likely to touch on the biggest driver of Democrat gerrymandering which fundamentally altered the political balance of power in state after state. Louisiana v. Callais is likely headed for a big Supreme Court decision that will fundamentally change how the Voting Rights Act enforces minority districts. There’s nothing to celebrate about the 60th anniversary of the VRA, a civil rights era relic which long ago stopped fighting segregation and instead enforced partisan gerrymandering with no end in sight. When the Supreme Court began allowing VRA ‘monitoring’ of elections in some...

Thousands gathered in cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump's plan to keep control of Congress after the 2026 midterms by pushing Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps in favor of Republicans. The president’s push for the rare and aggressively partisan redistricting, while centered on Texas so far, has set off a furious response among many Democratic state leaders and party activists. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that he was moving forward with a plan to redraw his state’s lines, and allow voters to approve it in November. On Saturday, progressive activists, labor...

The Texas House Democrats who abandoned their state in protest of the Republican-led redistricting effort will return home after Gov. Greg Abbott (R) took “emergency action” to begin removing the absent legislators as they refused to show up for work. Multiple sources revealed the news to ABC13 on Tuesday, though the exact date the Democrats will return to the state capitol in Austin was not confirmed. The state House had only 95 members present for the second day in a row on Tuesday, with Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) predicting that the session will end and a new one will start...

DONALD “TACO” TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, “MISSED” THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE “BEAUTIFUL MAPS,” THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR “MAGA.” THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in a Monday letter is urging President Trump to call off the map-drawing arms race, saying he should end a redistricting war that is sparking battles across the country. Newsom warned that GOP pushes to draw more favorable maps ahead of the midterms were “playing with fire” and pledged that California would stand down if red states did the same. “This attempt to rig congressional maps to hold onto power before a single vote is cast in the 2026 election is an affront to American democracy,” wrote Newsom, who has launched a redistricting effort in...

Gavin Newsom is letting the Chinese buy up Pacific Palisades land.. American contractor works in both the Pacific Palisades and Altadena area and confirms Chinese nationals are calling him and asking to buy up 5-6 lots at a time He says China is buying so many properties, it’s “going to turn both Altadena and Pacific Palisades into the type of neighborhoods where you drive down and all of the signage is in Chinese.” “Do you know who's buying up all of the property in the LA fire zones? It's the Chinese. And I've avoided saying this for a while because...