Gavin Newsom takes on Texas over congressional redistricting

Imagine a Washington in which President Trump was taken into account. A Washington in which Congress does not roll like a dog begging a treat. A Washington that works as it is supposed to do, with all of this checking and balancing thing that works.

Antrivating, right?

Democrats must win only three seats in 2026 to take control of the Chamber and impose a certain responsibility on our president of the Voyou elephant. This is something that Trump is perfectly aware, which is why he pushes Texas to take the extraordinary measure to redraw his borders of the congress before the mid-term elections.

The Republicans, who have exercised a teddy control of Texas for decades, hold 25 of the 38 seats in the Texas Congress. A special session scheduled for next week in Austin aims to increase this number of five seats, increasing the chances of the GOP to cling to the house.

Enter, stage on the left, governor of the White House in California.

As part of a recent swing of the southern campaign, Gavin Newsom sat with a progressive podcaster from Tennessee to discuss the republican power. (The picnic bench, the shirt sleeves rolled up, the beer and the bomb F showed that the governor was authenticin case of doubt.)

“They are not F – now. They play according to a set of completely different rules,” said Newsom about the Governor of Texas Greg Abbott and his republican colleagues. Years ago, he noted that California has created an independent commission to trace its political lines, which normally do once after the release of new censuses.

But with a super-majority in Sacramento, said Newsom, the Democrats could “gerrymander like no other state”.

“We played right,” he continued, but Abbott’s actions “made me question this program”. Later, developing on social networks, the governor accused the Republicans of having cheated on their way to seats at an additional house and warned: “California looks – and you can bet that we will not be strewn.”

There is an expression of Texas for that: any hat and no cattle.

The fact is that the voters have moved away from the power of the governor’s political line and his legislative colleagues, for a good reason, and it is not as if Newsom could resume this power – no matter how well his crumpled boastfulness could well play with Democrats of Trump.

“We have a commission,” said Justin Levitt, expert in redistribution law at the Loyola Law School. “Not only that, a constitution and the commission in the Constitution. And not only that, we have a constitution that says that you only reach a redistator once every 10 years, unless there is a legal problem with existing cards. ”

In other words, it is not in Newsom to blow and blow and blow up the districts of the existing house.

Voters from California approved proposal 20, which transformed the congress line to a non-partisan commission of 14 members, in November 2010. The aim was to introduce competition by moving away the self-food legislators. It went through an overwhelming margin of 61% to 39%, and worked as expected.

After decades of prior competition from Congress, when the success of one party or another was practically guaranteed, California has become a competition home; In recent years, the State – a reflection afterwards in November for the president – has been essential to control the house. In 2026, up to a dozen seats, out of 52, could be at least somewhat competitive.

“I think it worked very well,” said Sara Sadhwani, assistant policy professor at Pomona College and member of the Redecoupage Commission. (Others making the card card included a seminar teacher, a structure engineer and an investigator for the Sheriff department of the County of Los Angeles.)

There are two ways, said Levitt, that Newsom and his democratic colleagues could cancel the work of the committee.

They could break the law and adopt legislation stuck with new lines, face an inevitable trial and prevail with a sympathetic decision of the Supreme Court of California. Or they could ask voters to approve different lines thanks to a new constitutional amendment, during a special election precipitated before the middle of 2026.

The two scenarios seem as plausible as Newsom offering universal health care and making its commitment to build 3.5 million new houses per year, to appoint two other extravagant promises.

To be clear, none of the above elements tolerates the intrigue that Abbott tries to brightly. Their actions are politically ruthless and more than a little cynical. (A letter from the Ministry of Justice from Trump in Trump’s glove provided a leaf of legal figurine for the special session. Texas was recently – quickly – notified that four of its districts of the mainly minority congress were unconstitutionally Gerrymanded according to racial lines, thus justifying the drawing of a new card.)

This is not an excuse, however, for Newsom voters to California to finish, or call a special election that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars both that the state gushes to red ink.

The policy rooted in revenge is both dangerous and wrong, whether Trump or Newsom seeks to settle the scores.

There is also the question of the delivery of vacant threats. Some Democrats can empty each time Newsom delivers one of his pugnacious statements. This seems to be a large part of its presidential campaign strategy. But these same voters can get tired of the lack of follow -up, as did the Californians.

Newsom has a well-deserved reputation of too promising and sub-Livrance.

It will probably not be well serving on the national scene.