On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to fight fire with fire, directing his outrage at Texas’s redistricting efforts. While gerrymandering has been a fairly bipartisan practice for decades, Newsom declared on X that it risks “the destabilization of our democracy,” and that he will do the exact same thing in response.
He stated that if President Trump does not call on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to cease redistricting plans, “I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states.”
Replies to Newsom’s X post quickly garnered criticism, as one user stated, “California has 52 Congressional seats and the GOP has 9 of them. That’s 17 [percent] for a state that votes nearly 40 [percent] Republican.”
Although Newsom ironically attacks redistricting as a threat to the country before vowing to engage in it, California does maintain the constitutional right to redraw its districts. Doing so could prove challenging, however, as several blue states have already been gerrymandered to a substantial level.
In late July, the New York Times noted this fact, stating, “States where Democrats would have complete control over any redistricting, such as Illinois and Maryland, are already gerrymandered heavily in their favor. Squeezing more Democratic seats out of those states would be a challenge.”
While the irony is stark, Newsom’s outrage over supposed election interference falls flat, as Texas and California have both had four standard decadal redistricting cycles since 1990. Even with rarer mid-decade redistricting taken into account, Texas has only gerrymandered on four additional occasions since 1990. Such actions are allowed as long as no racial discrimination or equal protection violations occur, meaning that timing itself is not prohibited by the Constitution.
Although Texas courts can legally order redrawing of congressional maps apart from the mandated cycle, the state’s only major, non-cyclical gerrymandering since 1990 occurred in 2003.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Ruth King
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.ruthfullyyours.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
