YES!!! FEDERAL COURT UPHOLDS CALIFORNIA REDISTRICTING!
Just now the Federal District Court for the Central District of California UPHELD California’s redistricting this year in response to the Texas redistricting at Trump’s behest when he said “What I want to do is this, I just want to find, uh, 5 seats”..oh, wait, that was him trying to find 11,780 votes in Georgia – but the principle is nearly the same.
(Remember that according to a Texas Representative, the new Texas redistricting map was drawn at Mar-a-Lago! Representative Casar’s exact words were “This is a map directly from Mar-a-Lago. This is not a Texas map, it’s a Trump map. … This map was drawn by the president’s aides and delivered to Texas Republicans.” (You can read more about that here: https://annepmitchell.substack.com/p/texas-representative-levels-explosive )
But I digress, back to California!
I just love how the District Court lays it all out right out of the gate in their 117-page opinion and order (included for Notes from the Front members):
“Our conclusion probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news in the summer and fall of 2025. In the summer of 2025, the Trump administration began pressuring Texas to redistrict for the purpose of picking up five more Republican seats in Congress. The Texas Legislature obliged. In August 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would “fight back” with its own Election Rigging Response Act (“ERRA”). The stated goal of the ERRA was to counter the actions of Texas and pick up an additional five Democratic seats. The new map drawn by a private consultant, paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and incorporated into Proposition 50, met that goal exactly.”
While the nominal Plaintiff (Republican California Assemblyman David Tangipa) claimed that the action represented unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, the Court found, and you’re going to love this, that:
“Having carefully reviewed and weighed the relevant evidence, we find that the evidence presented reflects that Proposition 50 was exactly what it was billed as: a political gerrymander designed to flip five Republican-held seats to the Democrats.”
Bahahahahaha!
Bottom line? The Plaintiff’s request that the redistricting be enjoined (i.e. that the Court issue an injunction stopping it from going forward) is DENIED.
Of course there will be an appeal, but what’s good for the elephant is good for the donkey. Or, perhaps, with an homage to that old nursery rhyme, “gerry, gerrymander, whither shall I wander? Updistrict and downdistrict, and in the Judge’s champbers.”
Notes from the Front members: the full, delicious, hot-off-the-presses 117-page order (which includes a 46-page dissent) is in your inbox now!
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https://annepmitchell.substack.com/p/yes-federal-court-upholds-california
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