Recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom grabbed headlines with a series of brash social media posts that heralded his even brasher moves to respond to attempted election-rigging in Texas. Here’s a Q. & A. about what’s happening.
Why is Gavin Newsom suddenly the social media king?
“King” is overstating it, but as the kids might say, he broke Twitter with an ongoing series of tweets attacking and mocking President Trump’s attempt to force Texas to redraw its electoral maps to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterms. Newsom’s tweets have copied Trump’s (in)famous style of all-caps, over-the-top braggadocio, and personal insults and taunts.
For example, here’s just one of them:
DONNIE J. AND KaroLYIN’ LEAVITT WILL HAVE THEIR (LITTLE) HANDS “FULL” TODAY. WHOOPS. I, GAVIN CHRISTOPHER NEWSOM, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR (MANY SAY), WILL HOST THE GREATEST PRESS CONFERENCE OF ALL TIME. AFTER THAT — “THE MAPS” WILL SOON BE RELEASED. VERY MUCH ANTICIPATED. HISTORY MADE. THE GOP’S RIGGED GAME IS OVER!!!! THE PEOPLE RETAKE CONGRESS. YOU’RE WELCOME, AMERICA! LIBERATION DAY!!! THAT IS WHAT MANY ARE CALLING IT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. — GCN
Isn’t that rather unseemly?
Definitely in a president; yes in a governor, though the whole point of Newsom’s trolling of Trump this way is to point out the outrageous overreach of the election rigging he is trying to pull off in broad daylight.
And yes, they’re also rather hilarious.
What exactly is this redistricting argument all about?
Two hundred and eighteen, baby! That’s how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are needed to control the chamber. And control of the chamber gives the majority party a lot of power; it can investigate the administration, it can kill bills it hates and repeatedly bring forth bills it loves but everyone else hates; it controls the whole legislative process on the House side. Currently, the Republicans hold just 220 seats, which means they can only lose a teeny tiny portion of their caucus on any given vote before it would lose the vote, especially with the Democrats being historically united in opposition. Pretty much everyone has been expecting that the Democrats would benefit from a typical midterm vote against the in-party, and it would not take much to flip the House. So when the president told Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to rejigger his districts to make sure the Republicans picked up a few more seats there, that made Democrats sweat that it could be “game over” for them.
Gerrymandering is an age-old practice of politicians selecting their voters instead of the other way around.
Can Texas do its own electoral maps? Doesn’t it need to work with the federal government?
Texas can do pretty much whatever it wants. Elections in the United States are, for better or worse, handled on the state and local levels. So it is sleazy that Abbott would simply say “Aye, aye, sir!” and call a special session of his GOP-controlled legislature to rewrite the maps, but it’s not illegal.
How have the Democrats responded?
If the Democrats were looking for something that would energize their base and their elected officials, Trump and Abbott gave it to them.
First, the Democrats in the Texas legislature fled the state to prevent a quorum from being established. They came to Chicago, where they enjoyed fine dining and adulation from folks such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker and former President Barack Obama. Abbott, in turn, blew a gasket and threatened to boot all of the Democrats from the legislature and/or have the fleeing legislators arrested and returned to Texas, which is the only way you could get many people to visit Texas. Illinois Judge Scott Larson rejected the request from Abbott (he said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “failed to present a legal basis” for the arrest warrants from another state) (and if you’re wondering how an attorney general could miss the “legal basis” in his case, just know that Paxton is not exactly well loved in Texas, either).
The latest is that the legislators-in-exile said they would return if Texas ended the special session (which was due to expire anyway, though Abbott has said he can just keep calling new ones into existence as long as it takes), and if California carried through on its threats to rejigger its electoral maps.
Wait, can California do that?
Not as easily as Texas. In 2010, more than 60 percent of California voters approved Proposition 20, which removed responsibility for the congressional maps from the legislature and gave it to a nonpartisan commission. Newsom can’t just ignore that. Instead, he is asking the legislature to have voters go over the heads of the commission members and approve a new, Democrat-friendly congressional map.
We’re back to this being unseemly, then, aren’t we?
Yes, and Governor Newsom seemed to recognize that when he said President Trump “doesn’t play by a different set of rules. He doesn’t believe in the rules. . . . We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire.” Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes the Newsom plan and has also taken to social media to share a photo of himself pumping iron and “getting ready for the gerrymandering battle.” Whether the former centrist Republican has any political sway in a state full of progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans remains to be seen.
Newsom’s press office reacted to Republican anger at the redistricting plan by tweeting “For a crew that’s always triggered, it’s wild they don’t understand what a trigger is. California is ONLY doing this because Texas pulled it first. They stop, we stop. Simple as that.”
So this is a case of the bad GOP and the good Democrats?
No. Both parties have been gerrymandering their states for decades, centuries even. It’s an age-old practice of politicians selecting their voters instead of the other way around.
Who will win?
Some analysts say the Republicans have a bit of a stronger hand, controlling more state governments and therefore better able to gerrymander the heck out of them. (This, by the way, is why it matters that people vote in every election and not just the big presidential ones that get them all excited. While president, Obama was criticized for not paying attention to down-ballot elections, which led to Republicans gaining solid control over many more state legislatures. Elections have consequences.)
Will all of the states do it? Will all of the Democratic-controlled states do it? Will all of the re-gerrymandered districts vote the way the politicians expect them to? Will weak or outrageous candidates lose otherwise safe seats? Too many questions and not enough answers. But for now, Democrats are energized and Republicans are angry, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom is in the center of it all.
