Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gamble on a risky proposition countering a presidential decree to gerrymander Texas congressional districts paid off with a landslide win in California Tuesday night.
Voters approved Proposition 50, a ballot measure reconfiguring the state’s U.S. House map temporarily in response to Republican gerrymandering efforts in other states. The approved measure will set the stage for a competitive midterm election next year as Democrats go head-to-head with Republicans in their battle to win back the House.
The Associated Press called the race as soon as polls closed at 8 p.m. The special election attracted 7.2 million early voters as of Monday, according to the data from the California Secretary of State’s office.
In a speech delivered after the redistricting win, Newsom said that President Trump’s efforts to rig the midterm in favor of Republican interests “poked the bear” in California and that on Election Night “the bear roared” its defiance.
The president and his spokespeople countered with accusations of fraud and hinted at “an investigation.”
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” President Donald Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
During Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said they are working on an executive order in response to California’s mail-in voting.
“There is blatant FRAUD with their mail-in voting system,” Leavitt charged, notably providing no evidence to support her claim. “FRAUDULENT ballots are being mailed in under the names of other people and illegal aliens! There are COUNTLESS examples. And we are looking into executive action.”
In response, Newsom dismissed the president’s post as the “ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE.”
The California Secretary of State’s Office, the agency in charge of elections, referred to the president’s claims of voter fraud as “baseless.”
I only wish national coverage quoted the administration more faithfully, as you have done here, rather than sane-washing their social media BS. Voters not on Xitter (or Trump’s Temu version) get a cleaned-up paraphrase instead of the actual malevolent nonsense.
As politicians lie, our republic dies.
24/680,
Sorry, but there was no risk or gamble in Newsom or the legislature putting Prop. 50 on the ballot. It would have been the greatest
political upset of all time had it lost. We live in a quasi-socialist state, I don’t blame Newsom for boosting his 2028 resume and offsetting
the Texas move.
Firestone 11R
Making crazy claims with made-up evidence to rile up a base? Sounds familiar….where have we seen this before in history…hm…
Trump is highly polarizing. I get it. But Newsom is a political sociopath. He will say or do anything to become President. And the people of California have now endorsed the Democratic Party through the year 2030. Proposition 50 was a means to an end to help him gain entry to the White House. Instead of simply abstaining from supporting him, they marched in support. One can only assume that my fellow Californians prefer sanctuary policies where illegals get free medical care as well as cover for their often shady behavior. My sympathy lies with our own working poor who are often shut out of services.
And that sympathy doesn’t extend to the people who pick your fruits and vegetables, I assume
To W. You have chosen to highlight a small subset of illegal immigrants. I have no interest in bothering people who are quietly going about their lives. I am addressing the mass invasion aspects, where school districts, health care centers and such are being overrun. As well as the prisons. We cannot absorb the world’s poor.
“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
So, time to chisel the great words off the tablet?
Yeap, it’s time to do so. It doesn’t apply anymore to the modern times we live in.
Interesting. We never thought we’d hear a fellow American (if indeed you’re a countryman and not some Russian Bot Factory Drone) utter those words. Perhaps we really are a different country than many of us had imagined now.
Which is the small subset? Undocumented criminals are the extreme minority. The vast majority scrub your toilets and wash your dishes. They pick your fruits and slaughter your chickens. They do work no one else is willing to do. Just ask the farmers in the central valley and the ranchers in Nebraska. And when you say you, “have no interest in bothering people who are quietly going about their lives,” know that they are bothered regardless of your lack of interest. They are arrested, beaten, and deported, often to countries not of their origin.
Well said. While we need to control our own borders, immigrants are the nation’s lifeblood. We are the immigrants. The “immigrant crime” issue is a total misdirection from the facts, and top Republican leadership wallows in the hateful, disgusting rhetoric.
Let it stand. It is and has been inspiring for many years. Just don’t develop national policy from a poem. Hee Hee.
Amigo, you gotta learn to reply to individual comments.
Get your popcorn and watch the great race to the bottom:
https://www.cnn.com/politics/state-redistricting-maps-vis
The extreme partisans on both sides call this Democracy. And it won’t be temporary. Neither side will disarm.
Imagine if the intentional disenfranchisement targeted racial groups rather than members of political parties.
We are sliding into third world government. Why invade Venezuela when you can just become Venezuela?
You would have Democrats do what, exactly, in the face of gerrymandering? Take the moral high ground that yields zero political benefit?
Disenfranchisement targeting racial groups? Like disingenuous voter ID laws and efforts to suppress mail-in voting?
Spare me your sanctimony. You blithely ignore wrongdoing by the right wing, and condemn a proportionate response by the left
Both-sidesing this issue serves the interests of those who would see our nation fail.
Thanks Matt. The solid majority of votes cast for this proposition reflects, at minimum, this perspective. Regardless of where the proposition originated, the election outcome reflects the will of the people – a phrase used frequently by the opposition, and now can be turned back on it, to mean “Get over it.”
You’ve got to be kidding! Even before Prop 50 “passed” (about 5 seconds after the polls closed & millions of ballots weren’t counted yet, albeit ballot fraud & purposely misleading ads certainly guaranteed a “win”), CA was already one of the most outrageously gerrymandered states in the USA (look it up!). Conservative CITIZEN voters, eg the people who take all the financial risks & work their butts off growing our food: the farmers & ranchers, have almost zero representation, especially now, but it’s not just these salt of the Earth, butt busting Californians who are effectively silenced: over 40% of California votes were cast for Trump, but less than 10% of the districts were drawn such that they produce Republican representation in Congress. After Prop 50, Republicans will lose even more seats. How is that fair??? If Democrats can’t win with their policy positions (we’re all living with the results of possibly well-meaning but DISASTROUS policies), then they gerrymander for their own benefit to silence what little shred of a voice their opposition had to begin with.
The advertisements for Yes on 50 were, as usual, full of LIES (“preserves independent districting commissions” or whatever).
Massive voter fraud has already been reported (as usual in CA & other states): every person (many long dead &/or moved out of CA!) received a ballot. No Voter ID (as if people are truly too ignorant to know how to obtain a valid ID—-the most racist statement ever!!!).
I could go on & on, but accusing conservatives of being racist bc we don’t agree with having MILLIONS of unvetted people streaming across our borders for four years at the invitation of the “Biden” Administration (no one with a shred of integrity or intellectual honesty can deny that he was practically brain dead!). Illegal immigration is NOT what the Statue of Liberty represents: ever heard of Ellis Island? Learn about what functions it performed before labeling people as racist.
“Get over it.”
I 100% agree with Taylor!!!!
Well stated and correct. Thank you.
Faux News/OANN/”Truth”Social talking points, not necessarily reality for everyone.
Anyone interested in the breakdown on the voting results can check the demographics by county, race, income and education levels by looking a the stats posted on NPR link below.
https://apps.npr.org/2025-election-results/california.html?section=I
Thanks, Freddy, for the link – interesting to sort by different variables.
Wow, so many sore losers commenting here….