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Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Dems to Return as California Prepares Counter-Redistricting
California Newsom speaks about the 'Election Rigging Response Act' at a press conference at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles on Aug. 14, 2025. Credit - Mario Tama—Getty Images 'Today is Liberation Day in the State of California,' Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday, as he formally launched an ambitious campaign that would redraw maps in the Democratic state to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas. At the campaign launch in Little Tokyo, Newsom followed through on his warning to President Donald Trump, spearheading a plan to hold special elections in the Golden State in November. The vote, if the legislature approves, would allow the state to seek California approval to redraw its congressional district maps if another state pushes through with redistricting. Newsom said California's redistricting plan was a direct response to Trump's plans to 'rig the system' and secure future Republican election victories. 'It's not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, and talk about the way the world should be,' he said. 'We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire.' The plan escalates a multi-state political standoff, as Republicans hope to keep their slim majority in Congress after 2026 midterms and Democrats hope to break Trump's control of the federal government. As Border Patrol officials swarmed outside Newsom's event Thursday, in an apparent show of force against his efforts to lead an anti-Trump resistance movement, Newsom said he will 'not be intimidated.' Several attendees carried 'Defend Democracy' placards, while Newsom and multiple speakers spoke at a podium that read 'Election Rigging Response Act.' A new website for a campaign with the same name shows financial backing from the House Democrats' principal super PAC and Democratic megadonor Bill Bloomfield. The campaign's launch comes as Texas' Democratic lawmakers, who have fled their state in protest of a redistricting push led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, have indicated that they plan to head home upon the advice of their lawyers. Their return, which could come as early as Monday, may pave the way for the Republican redistricting plan to push through in Texas, though the Democrats also cited California's initiative, which they said would 'neutralize' Texas', as a reason to go back. Trump earlier said that Republicans 'are entitled to five more seats' in Congress. The California Governor also urged other blue states to 'stand up' against Republican congressional redistricting plans. 'We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country,' he said. Newsom—who is seen as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—then appeared to direct his message to the rest of the U.S.: 'I hope we are waking up to this reality. Wake up America. Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health. His war against the American people.' California's redistricting plan On Monday, California's legislature—which is exactly three-quarters Democratic—plans to introduce several bills ahead of the November election. Under proposed legislation, the state would retain its Citizens Redistricting Commission—an independent commission currently composed of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independents, which has drawn congressional district maps since 2010. But this commission's maps would be temporarily replaced—until 2030—by maps that the state's Democratic supermajority legislature draws if Republican-led states like Texas go ahead with their own partisan redistricting plans. The legislative package will also contain a bill calling for a special election on Nov. 4, 2025, for Californians to approve or reject this plan as well as a bill to reimburse counties for administering the special election. The Democrats' new maps have yet to be released, and Newsom said they will come out 'in the next few days.' But California is aiming to flip five GOP seats in direct response to five seats Texas Republicans wish to secure in their redistricting. Politico obtained a chart outlining which Republican districts are targeted in the plan. Though not final, the list reveals that the state's 1st, 3rd, and 41st districts may be completely flipped from safe Republican seats to safe Democratic seats, while six other seats, including one held by a Republican, will tilt further in the Democratic direction. The uphill battle ahead While Newsom said he was confident in California's legislative leaders to pass the package, it won't necessarily be easy. California's Secretary of State imposed an Aug. 22 deadline for lawmakers to vote on the bill and declare that a special election will take place. This means the bills will have to sprint through California's legislature, getting the approval of lawmakers in both chambers, right after they've returned following a summer recess. Redistricting the blue state would also be an expensive undertaking. In a letter responding to questions from Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, whose district is at risk of being flipped, the Riverside County registrar of voters said that it could cost the county up to $16 million to hold the special election. CBS reported that the special election could cost up to $4 million in San Joaquin County and up to $6.8 million in Sacramento County. And those millions could be spent on an initiative that so far seems unpopular among the state's residents: a recent poll by Politico and the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research showed that California voters prefer the current independent commission over Newsom's plan to have the legislature redraw the maps. Also complicating Newsom's efforts is a well-funded opposition. The independent commission was considered a bipartisan triumph when it was first created in 2008, under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has since opposed Trump. The reform aimed at removing political bias from the democratic process was bankrolled by Charles Munger Jr., a Palo Alto physicist and son of the late billionaire Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime business partner. Today, Munger looks set to challenge Newsom's effort : in a post on an X account created just last month, he said: 'Any attempt to undermine the nonpartisan California Redistricting Commission will be strongly opposed in the courts and at the ballot box.' Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for Munger, said in a statement that he 'will vigorously defend the reforms he helped pass.' Tan added that Munger's previous successes show that they 'have the resources necessary' to counter Newsom's gerrymandering efforts. According to Politico, Munger has already recruited consultants to kickstart his opposition campaign. Schwarzenegger could also be a powerful spokesperson against the movement. 'He calls gerrymandering evil, and he means that,' Schwarzenegger spokesperson Daniel Ketchell told Politico. 'He's opposed to what Texas is doing, and he's opposed to the idea that California would race to the bottom to do the same thing.' Texas Democrats to head home The Texas House Democratic Caucus had said that they would return home after California lawmakers introduced their redistricting proposal, and after the legislative session that Texas Gov. Abbott called ends Friday. State Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic leader, said that 'as Democrats across the nation join our fight to cause these maps to fail their political purpose, we're prepared to bring this battle back to Texas under the right conditions and to take this fight to the courts.' The Texas Democratic lawmakers fled in a bid to prevent their state's legislature from achieving the required quorum to advance the Republicans' redistricting plans. Abbott threatened them with arrest and removal from office and has said that he will call for another special session with the exact same agenda to make sure that the Texas redistricting plan moves forward. 'There will be no reprieve for the derelict Democrats who fled the state and abandoned their duty to the people who elected them,' Abbott said. 'I will continue to call special session after special session until we get this Texas first agenda passed.' Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.S. Army vet, laid-off federal employee, campaigns for Congress in NY-24
Aug. 4—LOCKPORT — Alissa J. Ellman thinks that her current representative in Congress isn't doing the job right, isn't representing the community and isn't listening to constituents. So she's running to do the job herself. Ellman, 41, said she decided to run for Congress in New York's 24th Congressional District after seeing how Rep. Claudia L. Tenney, R-Cleveland, has aligned herself with President Donald J. Trump and supported legislation like the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that makes cuts projected to kick thousands of New Yorkers off Medicare and Medicaid. Ellman shared a story of heading to a Tenney congressional office for a protest organized by the Lockport-based Democracy Center. She said she went inside the office with an older woman who was asking the aides about the future of Medicaid coverage for her older, disabled son. Ellman recounted the woman expressing concern that her son would lose health care coverage, lose access to the residential treatment he'd been benefiting from for years, and would be reliant on her into her advanced age. "Her aide pushed a pamphlet of propaganda at her about Donald Trump, and said 'Claudia Tenney wants you to know she supports every single decision Donald Trump is making right now,'" Ellman said. "And it just broke my heart in that moment." She said that pushed her to read up more about Tenney, and she didn't like what she read. "I just thought, 'this person is terrible,'" she said. "We really need new representation, we need a working class person to represent the working class people that live in New York 24." Ellman thinks she is that person. Born and raised in Allegany County, she's an Army veteran who served through the early part of the War on Terror. She worked for the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs and then became a contractor with the U.S. Department of Defense and Halliburton in Kandahar. After seven years in the military and military-adjacent work, Ellman went to college and got a teaching degree, working as a special education teacher in Lockport, which she did for about a decade before encountering serious health problems. "I became extremely ill, I took a leave of absence from my job and I found out I had a pheochromocytoma, which is a rare adrenal cancer and it probably was brought on by toxic exposures and burn pits in Afghanistan," she said. After years of recovery and proceeding through the COVID-19 pandemic, Ellman took a job in the Buffalo office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in the education division, helping veterans make use of their educational benefits like the G.I. Bill. Ellman did that work for months — until she was laid off by the Trump administration's "DOGE" efforts. "I was working there diligently and doing a very good job until I was laid off at the end of February without so much as an email," she said. "They just logged me out of my computer." That summary firing pushed Ellman into the spotlight for the first time. She joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., at this year's presidential address to Congress and stood as an example of a federal worker fired without cause. She said she's exactly the kind of "normal" local resident, impacted by federal decisions, who can bring a perspective relevant to people in NY-24, something she said Tenney lacks. "When I look around us, I am sad about that, because I don't think Claudia Tenney knows what it's like to be working class. When you don't know that, it's very difficult to represent or understand the interests of working class people," she said. She noted she's a native of the district and has lived in Lockport for years, well before it was included in the current district, and contrasted that with Tenney, who has moved around central and western New York for years as she has pursued offices at the state and congressional levels. Ellman pitches a moderate message. She said she has concerns that leftward reactions to conservative pushes could pull the country in the wrong direction. But she maintains that opposition to the Trump administration's priorities is key, and core to what she wants to do in Congress. She said she believes that Trump's priorities, and the material impact those decisions are having on Americans now, will drive voters to Democrats like her. "I care about what working class people have to say, they deserve real representation in government, and honestly that includes anybody who voted for Donald Trump," she said. "The reason they voted for him was because they want change, and they are hoping that what he's going to do is what he said he would. I'm not convinced that's exactly what's happening." Ellman said she thinks farmers are opposed to the indiscriminate immigration crackdown that is taking away migrant farmhands, and to the tariffs that are wreaking havoc on bottom lines and long-term plans for all businesses. She said she thinks the thousands of rural residents who voted for Trump didn't want to see their Medicaid or Medicare coverage lapse, or their local hospitals close because of a reduction in the number of patients they're treating with insurance. And she said she thinks of the older mothers, concerned about their dependent children's futures who are coming to their local congresswoman's office to ask for help. "If I was sitting in that position, if I was in Claudia's position, I would be bending over backwards to reassure them, to find a solution or an answer for them, and to explain as thoroughly as I could what they needed to do to provide for their families," Ellman said. The message can't be entirely "oppose Trump," however, Ellman said. She called for a Democrat "Project 2029," a response to the controversial legislative and power-positioning plan established by key players in the Trump administration known as "Project 2025." "There has to be some sort of plan, and that needs to be our own Project 2029," she said. "You need to gather experts to understand the nuances, and as far as I have been able to tell, we don't have one." Ellman's own plan includes a better tax structure and enforcement for corporations and large companies. "Amazon uses the roads a lot more than just you or me, and they should be paying the exact same tax rate, if not more, than you or me," she said. She said she wants to see health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid restored to their previous funding levels, and widely believes that health care should be within reach for all. She wants to see the social safety nets, like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, preserved for future generations. Ellman said she owns a gun herself, and is supportive of the Second Amendment. She's up against at least two other Democratic candidates for NY-24: Diana Kastenbaum and Steven W. Holden Sr. If all three are successfully able to establish their campaigns and complete the petition process, they'll appear against one another in a primary in about 10 months, in June 2026. They'll go up against the Republican nominee, presumably Tenney who has no declared GOP opponents as of now, in November 2026.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Guest Editorial: A letter to my faint-hearted congresswoman
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a guest editorial by Jim Shultz. Shultz is an occasional CNHI columnist and founder/executive director of the Democracy Center. He resides in Lockport, N.Y. Reach him at: jimshultzthewriter@ Republican members of Congress across the country have chosen, in the Trump era, to no longer participate in public town halls. This includes my congresswoman in western New York, U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney. My public letter to her is not only about her, but also the other cowardly Congress members. Dear Congresswoman Tenney: Your face has been a presence recently at citizen town halls across your district. More than a thousand of your constituents have gathered in meeting halls to express their concerns about the chaos unleashed on America by President Trump. It isn't actually your face. It's a life-size cutout in your absence. That's because, since Trump took office, you have refused one request after another to meet with the people you supposedly represent. We understand the reason why; it's fear. You are afraid to meet with veterans who want to know why you talk so much about being their champion and then stay silent while President Trump and Elon Musk take an axe to veterans services. You say how much you support children, but are afraid to meet with parents and teachers who are concerned about cuts in education. You won't meet with constituents concerned with cuts in health care or environmental protection. You are afraid to meet with anyone who wants to ask you hard questions. Last week, you blamed local newspapers for reporting your absence. Your chief of staff scolded one paper, 'You are doing a disservice to your readers and giving local journalism a bad name.' The problem is not reporters doing their jobs. The problem is your refusal to do yours — to listen to the people you are supposed to represent. Coward is not a word I use lightly. But when a congresswoman is unwilling to meet with her own constituents in public, that is not only cowardice, it is arrogance. Here is another word I don't use lightly — concentration camp. I am the grandson of Jews who fled Europe. I understand quite well what that word means. Last week, as Christians celebrated the peace teachings of Jesus Christ, you marked Holy Week with a taxpayer-funded junket to a concentration camp in El Salvador. A prison is where governments confine people who have had their day in court, with rules about treatment. A concentration camp is where you throw people who you grab off the street (no legal process required) and leave stockpiled until they die. The only rule is brutality. The concentration camp that you visited in El Salvador is the same hellhole where Trump is dumping hundreds of people he has labeled as foreign terrorists — no proof needed. One of them is a young father who was living in Maryland. The Trump administration admitted his deportation was 'an administrative error.' The Supreme Court ordered his return. Even Joe Rogan said that shipping him there was wrong. But you weren't concerned about any of that on your visit. You just wanted to make sure you got your photo taken standing in front of cells of shirtless men with shaven heads, a handy political souvenir. Here are a few other people who have been caught in Trump's new policy of 'disappearing' off the street. A terrified young woman (a foreign student with a legal visa) was nabbed outside her apartment in Boston. Her sin was publishing a pro-Palestinian opinion article that Trump didn't like. In Florida last week, ICE grabbed a native-born U.S. citizen and tossed him in jail. They kept him there even as his frantic mother presented his U.S. birth certificate in court. It is not hard to imagine why you don't want to answer any hard questions from your constituents about all that. You are safely gerrymandered into a lopsided Republican district designed to hand you easy victories every two years. Your concern is not with representing us. What you really care about is how many times you can get on Fox News in a week and keeping President Trump happy. If that means that veterans, farmers, children, and the elderly suffer cuts that make their lives harder, what do you care? If innocent people are tossed into brutal foreign cells with no hearing, so what? You have other things on your mind. Last week, you boasted about 'a massive fundraising' of more than a million dollars — most of it from wealthy corporations and special interest groups. That is who you really represent, Rep. Claudia Tenney, not us. There is an expression, 'If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.' Your constituents have a good deal to say to your face right now, even if it has to be your cardboard cutout.
