The dust hasn’t settled from their tussle over troop deployment. The question over federal intrusion into state and metropolitan jurisdiction continues as its two opposing advocates prepare to squabble over another, possibly more lasting issue.
The nation’s focus was directed to Texas as President Donald Trump maneuvered to “redistrict” the individual geographic regions within the state into new voting blocks for upcoming elections. It is a sort of political reshuffling of the cards, ideally to reflect the current status of demographics within a given area. “Republicans love watching us fight for a Great Cause,” Trump said.
Redistricting is typically done concurrently with the U.S. Census every ten years to determine the number of seats within the U.S. House of Representatives to each congressional area. The President took it upon himself to initiate this latest directive, between the usual dates of 2020 and 2030, to keep the Republican House majority within the Lone Star State in the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump rival California Governor Newsom began assembling a war chest to counter the machinations of the incoming president shortly after the election in 2024. This was, perhaps in anticipation of the conflict the Democrats perceived was inevitable with the transition of the Trump administration.
He reached out to the state lawmakers in a carefully worded press release that seemed to leave room for cooperation with Trump loyalists, provided the Reputations are willing to do so. “…When there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action,” Newsom said.
This was an overt attempt to appear bipartisan, provided those on the other side of the aisle were cooperative. Newsom and his ally, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, are presently embroiled in litigation over Trump’s attempts to federalize National Guardsmen for deployment into municipal and state jurisdictions. “We asked the court to grant a permanent injunction to stop the Administration from using the military for domestic law enforcement and maintaining a standing army in Southern California,” Bonta said on August 13 after he awaited a decision on the trial on the use of military force in civilian law enforcement.
The Golden State is no stranger to legal conflict with outside entities, as its Department of Justice is allotted $2.5 million per annum alone just for litigation. Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra filed some 110 lawsuits on behalf of the state against the Trump administration, to the tune of $41 million during his first term. Of these, 76 are still pending, according to the independent nonpartisan news organization, Cal Matters.
“Those maps, they could be prepared by the legislature,” Bonta said. “I think that’s the thinking here. The legislature would prepare the maps and then those maps would be presented to the people to vote.”
Not mentioned in the midst of this is the impact of redistricting on the governor’s political future. The devastating defeat in November sent the Dem hierarchy back to the drawing board to determine the party direction for the future. Newsom is due to term out in 2026, and is considered a guiding light for campaign 2028. His recent contrivances indicate he may be copying pages from the Trump playbook.
This is a rebuttal from the adage of grace from First Lady Michelle Obama. “When they go low, we go high,” she declared at the 2016 Democratic Convention. The current debacle over redistricting and leverage in the country’s political future suggest a continuation of courtroom theatrics to garner votes, and possibly erosion of the state’s moral compass for the sake of “saving democracy,” according to Newsom.
