Puerto Rico Board Firings Entangle Prepa Bankruptcy Dispute
The White House last week fired five of the seven members of the federal watchdog that monitors the commonwealth's finances and manages the ongoing bankruptcy of Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority, called Prepa. The board must submit a report detailing how those firings may affect Prepa's bankruptcy process by Aug. 25.
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Time Magazine
2 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
How to Fix America's Gerrymandering Problem
President Donald Trump has thrust the country into a new political battle: mutually assured gerrymandering. And the antidote is what we call 'mutually assured representation.' The current saga began in June, when Trump called for Texas to start a congressional redistricting process in the middle of the decade—rather than after the next census in 2030. Last month, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to replace the state's current House map which would favor his party. Now, Trump's push for mid-decade redistricting in Republican-controlled states appears likely to spread to Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. If this happens, Democrats would have retaliate in the states they control in order to have a chance at winning a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in 2026. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has declared her readiness to 'fight fire with fire.' In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed holding a special election in November for voters to approve a ballot initiative allowing the legislature to redraw the state's congressional map. Read More: 'Time to Stand Down': Newsom Gives Trump Deadline to Call Off Redistricting Plan In Texas, Republicans are claiming that they are entitled to five more congressional seats—even if they receive the exact same number of votes as before. To achieve this, they can redraw the boundaries of the districts that Democrats won in 2024, moving Democratic voters into heavily Republican districts where their votes will not matter, and moving Republican voters into previously Democratic districts so that they can win these seats. In 2024, Republicans in Texas won 25 of the state's 38 seats, and Democrats won 13. With this new map, Republicans could win in 30 of 38 congressional districts. The proposed gerrymander is likely to give Republicans four or five new seats even if Democrats win substantially more votes for Congress than they did in 2025. According to our calculation, this will happen even if there is a five percentage point swing towards Democrats in the 2026 elections. In recent years, just a few congressional seats have determined control of the House, and a flip of just five seats on its own might determine the national result. Partisan gerrymandering makes it harder for voters to hold their representatives accountable. Congressional district elections become uncompetitive. With reelection in the general assured, candidates are focused on catering to their own party base, which tends to be a more extreme subset of their constituents. Through this process, partisan gerrymandering often reduces effective representation in Congress and can play a role in crowding out moderate and independent voters. But here's a twist: President Trump's new wave of extreme gerrymandering may actually backfire, paving the way for electoral reform. Partisan gerrymandering is unpopular with voters, as we've seen repeatedly in recent years. Voters in states such as Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, have supported nonpartisan redistricting commissions. In 2021, Democrats tried and failed to pass the For the People Act, a bill that would have limited partisan gerrymandering nationwide and implemented non-partisan redistricting commissions in every state. But Republican senators blocked the bill. Gerrymandering reform often fails because only one party makes the necessary reforms. For instance, previous successful anti-gerrymandering measures in states like California and New York created fairer maps in each state—but actually cost the party in power (Democrats in both instances) more seats than the margin determining control of the House in 2024. One proposed solution is bipartisan redistricting commissions. These can fail when the parties cannot agree on a map. For instance, the Virginia commission deadlocked in 2022, leaving the courts to draw the maps. Then there are more radical solutions that effectively blow up the current electoral system as we know it, such as multi-member districts or aproportional representation. But we think it is unrealistic to get rid of a system that has been in place for two hundred and fifty years. Instead, we believe it is possible to make reforms that keep the current electoral system while also overcoming some of its flaws. We've developed a process-based solution that has a number of appealing properties. It's inspired by the problem parents face when dividing a cake between two children. How can they make sure everyone gets an equal slice? One child cuts the cake in two, and the other child chooses between the two pieces. Our approach, which we call the 'Define-Combine Procedure,' splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation. Read More: Gerrymandering Isn't New—But Now We Have a Solution We used real-world census and election data from 2020 in each state to forecast the results of extreme partisan gerrymandering and the Define-Combine Procedure in every state. In Texas, Republicans could draw a map where they won 30 of 38 congressional seats. If Democrats could unilaterally gerrymander Texas, they could create a map with 28 Democratic and 10 Republican seats. Depending on party control of redistricting in Texas, a whopping 20 seats could change hands. When we used the Define-Combine Procedure, the resulting map would produce 19 Republicans seats and 17 Democratic seats, with the two remaining seats changing hands depending on which party defines and which combines. This result comes much closer to the 53% of the two-party vote that Republicans won in 2020. Scaling nationwide, we estimate that extreme gerrymandering could determine which party holds almost 200 seats, out of the 435 seats in the House. Processes like ours could reduce the advantage that a party can earn just from drawing a map, with outcomes that are less biased and closer to proportional. The trick here is to use the impulse to score more seats for your party as a tool for fairness instead. It's a partisan solution for a partisan problem. One party alone cannot protect voting rights and ensure fair representation. That's why, in 1965, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Voting Rights Act—and why they continued to amend and renew it for the next 40 years. But, a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last 12 years have substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to engage in extreme partisan gerrymandering. Now, a case before the court next year is likely to further diminish its remaining provisions. Instead of settling for mutually assured gerrymandering, with less effective representation, reduced accountability, and uncompetitive elections, both parties should unite behind solutions that achieve fairer outcomes nationwide. Such an outcome seems unrealistic right now as tit-for-tat gerrymandering ramps up, but the moment when the dust settles and voters take stock of the damage done may well be the best opportunity to address the scourge of partisan gerrymandering. If we don't seize this opportunity, America will pay the price.
Bloomberg
32 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Brookfield's Atlantis Resort Secures $1.9 Billion Refinancing
Citigroup Inc. led a $1.93 billion debt refinancing for Brookfield Corp. 's Atlantis Paradise Island, the firm's luxury resort in the Bahamas, according to a Brookfield spokesperson. In the past five years, the property owner has invested more than $260 million in the resort, including a renovation of guest rooms, the Atlantis Casino and new food and beverage concepts, according to an emailed statement. That helped drive record visits to the property in 2024 and this year.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
California voters widely prefer keeping independent redistricting panel: Poll
California voters widely prefer keeping the state's independent redistricting commission, new polling shows, as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) threatens to bypass it to counter GOP gerrymandering in other states. A Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found that just 36 percent of California voters support returning congressional redistricting authority to the state Legislature, compared to 64 percent who back the independent redistricting commission. Newsom has pledged to move forward with plans for redistricting in the Golden State as a direct response to Republican-led redrawing efforts elsewhere. President Trump and others in the GOP have been urging several red states to do mid-decade redistricting and expand the party's midterm pickup opportunities. In Texas, state Democrats fled to break quorum this month over a proposal that would net five GOP House seats. To counter would-be Republican gains, Newsom has proposed putting forward a ballot measure that would bypass the independent redistricting commission for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles, before reverting to the existing system. His aim is to get the matter before California voters during a special election this fall, stressing that the redistricting would only be triggered if other red states move forward. The campaign is launching in earnest with a 'Liberation Day' event on Thursday, 'We're gonna fight fire with fire,' Newsom said, pledging to 'neutralize' whatever happens in Texas. Some experts have suggested that, despite Democrats' advantage in the blue stronghold, Newsom may have to heavily campaign to make sure such a measure gets the support it needs, due to the popularity of the independent redistricting commission that voters approved in both 2008 and 2010. The Politico poll question notably didn't specify whether a return to Legislature-drawn lines would be temporary, as Newsom has stressed. But the wide support for the commission underscores why Democrats would want to make sure any plans to bypass it would have an expiration date. The poll was taken July 28-Aug 12 among 1,445 California registered voters. The modeled error estimate is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
