Ratcheting up the pressure in the escalating national fight over control of Congress, the California Legislature on Thursday approved a November special election to ask voters to redraw the state’s electoral lines to favor Democrats and thwart President Trump’s far-right policy agenda.
The ballot measure, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and national Democratic leaders, is the latest volley in a national political brawl over electoral maps that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If voters approve the redrawn lines on Nov. 4, Democrats in the Golden State would see the odds tilted further in their favor, while the number of California Republicans in the House could be halved.
Newsom initially said that new electoral districts in California would only take effect if another state redrew its lines before 2031. But after Texas moved toward approving its own maps this week that could give the GOP five more House seats, Democrats stripped the so-called “trigger” language from the amendment — meaning that if voters approve the measure, the new lines would take effect no matter what.
The ballot measure language, which asks California voters to override the power of the independent redistricting commission, was approved by most Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate, where they hold supermajorities.
California lawmakers have the power to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without the approval of the governor. Newsom, however, is expected later Thursday to sign two separate bills that fund the special election and spell out the lines for the new congressional districts.,,,
All posts by Rick Hasen
Federal Government Files Supreme Court Brief in NRSC Case Arguing That an Aspect of Federal Campaign Finance Law Violates the First Amendment
You can find the government’s brief on the merits here. You can find the brief of the Republican Party making similar arguments here. Because the government has taken the unusual position in attacking the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress, the Court appointed an amicus to argue in favor of the law’s constitutionality. The Democratic Party also intervened to defend the law. Their briefs will be filed later.
The Republican Party brief cites a blog post by Rick Pildes and Bob Bauer, The Supreme Court, the Political Parties, and the SuperPACs, ELECTION LAW BLOG (June 24, 2025).
“Trump says Missouri will revise congressional districts to favor Republicans”
Missouri “is IN” for redrawing the state’s congressional districts in a special legislative session, President Donald Trump proclaimed Thursday on his social media platform.
With Texas moving quickly toward a mid-decade revision of its congressional map to tilt five districts toward the Republican Party, Missouri would now be expected to follow suit to help the GOP gain one more.
Missouri has eight congressional districts, and Democrats hold two. Any proposal is likely to split the 5th District, which is mainly in Kansas City, by adding Republican voters in sufficient numbers to take it away from incumbent Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
That would give Republicans seven of the state’s seats in the U.S. House.
For nearly a month, Trump has been pressuring Gov. Mike Kehoe and legislative leaders, with calls to at least one Republican lawmaker who expressed reluctance to go along.
“The Great State of Missouri is now IN,” Trump wrote. “I’m not surprised. It is a great State with fabulous people. I won it, all 3 times, in a landslide. We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”
And Kehoe, in a statement responding to Trump, inched closer to saying he intended to call a special session. At a news conference in his office Tuesday, Kehoe said no decision had been made.
“Governor Kehoe continues to have conversations with House and Senate leadership to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians,” a statement sent by spokeswoman Gabby Picard read. “Governor Kehoe appreciates President Trump’s attention to this issue on behalf of Missourians.”..
Bob Bauer Sounds the Alarm: “Donald Trump’s Plan for ‘Honest’ Mid-Term Elections”
Bob Bauer writes, very much in line with what I wrote in the NYT yesterday:
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty….
Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.
There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.
In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”
It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.
Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways….
“Musk must face lawsuit brought by voters he convinced to sign petition in $1 million-a-day election giveaway, judge says”
A judge in Texas denied, on Wednesday, Elon Musk’s request to dismiss a class action lawsuit against him and his political action committee brought by a group of voters who participated in his $1-million-a-day “giveaway” leading up to the 2024 election.
Over the last few months, lawyers for Musk and America PAC have sought to get rid of the lawsuit brought by voters in battleground states who claim they were defrauded when the tech mogul and his PAC misled them to believe that if they signed a petition and gave away personal information, they could “randomly” win $1 million.
In reality, Musk and his PAC had pre-selected people to win the $1 million in exchange for a spokesperson contract – meaning those who signed the petition had no chance of winning.While lawyers for Musk and the PAC argued that there were “red flags” in their petition announcement that should have tipped people off that they were unlikely to win $1 million, the Texas judge disagreed.
“The Court finds it is plausible that [the plaintiff] would rely on Musk’s assertion that $1 million would be given out randomly notwithstanding his or America PAC’s later statements,” Judge Robert Pitman, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said in his order.
“Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump”
An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.
The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”
After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.
The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.
“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.
UPDATE: The 323 pages of multiple opinions are here. You can get a sense of the mess from the beginning of Justice Moulton’s opinion for himself and one other justice:
Defendants appeal from two decisions (and the resulting judgment) holding that defendants violated Executive Law § 63(12) by repeatedly submitting deceptive business records to banks, insurance companies, and the New York City Parks Department. Presiding Justice Renwick and I find that Supreme Court correctly found defendants liable. We agree with Supreme Court that the Attorney General acted well within her lawful power in bringing this action, and that she vindicated a public interest in doing so. We also find that Supreme Court properly ruled only on claims that are timely under the applicable statute of limitations. However, we would modify the remedy ordered by Supreme Court. While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
This decision is one of three issued by this Court today. Presiding Justice Renwick and I agree with our colleagues on certain points. Most importantly, we agree with Justice Higgitt, who is joined by Justice Rosado, that the Attorney General is empowered by Executive Law § 63(12) to bring this action. However, our remaining disagreements with our colleagues’ decisions are profound. In sum, Justice Friedman finds that Supreme Court’s rulings are infirm in almost every respect and would hold that the Attorney General had no power to bring this case under Executive Law § 63(12). He would dismiss the complaint outright. Justice Higgitt, while agreeing that the Attorney General had the power to bring this lawsuit, finds that errors made by Supreme Court require a new trial limited to only some of the transactions in question.Respectfully, Presiding Justice Renwick and I cannot harmonize our approach with that of our colleagues. Justice Friedman’s decision runs athwart our prior rulings in this case and misconstrues Executive Law § 63(12) and the case law that has interpreted that statute. While he justly criticizes comments made by the Attorney General about defendants when she was running for that office, he ignores that this issue has already been considered, and rejected, by this Court. Justice Higgitt’s decision contains cogent criticisms of aspects of Supreme Court’s two written decisions. However, this Court has the power to independently analyze the record made below in evaluating those decisions. That record amply justifies Supreme Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Returning this action to Supreme Court for a new trial as urged by Justice Higgitt is both unnecessary and likely terminal. It is difficult to imagine that a trial could proceed while one of the principal defendants, and a central witness, is President of the United States. The inevitable elapse of time and the attendant difficulties in recreating a vast record of testimony and documents – an exercise that is both Sisyphean and unneeded, because an extensive trial record already exists – would likely consign this meritorious case to oblivion.
Because none of the three decisions garners a majority, Justices Higgitt and Rosado join the decretal of this decision for the sole purpose of ensuring finality, thereby affording the parties a path for appeal to the Court of Appeals. Like Justice Friedman, we commend them for doing so. Unlike Justice Friedman, we do not find that this necessary measure is unfair to defendants. This Court previously imposed a stay on the judgment, a stay that defendants can seek to extend pursuant to CPLR 5519(e) until the Court of Appeals rules.
“Adams Adviser Suspended From Campaign After Giving Cash to Reporter”
NYT:
A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.
The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.
On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account….
“Obama applauds Newsom’s California redistricting plan as ‘responsible’ as Texas GOP pushes new maps”
Former President Barack Obama has waded into states’ efforts at rare mid-decade redistricting efforts, saying he agrees with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to alter his state’s congressional maps, in the way of Texas redistricting efforts promoted by President Donald Trump aimed at shoring up Republicans’ position in next year’s elections.
“I believe that Gov. Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach. He said this is going to be responsible. We’re not going to try to completely maximize it,” Obama said at a Tuesday fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, according to excerpts obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re only going to do it if and when Texas and/or other Republican states begin to pull these maneuvers. Otherwise, this doesn’t go into effect.”
While noting that “political gerrymandering” is not his “preference,” Obama said that, if Democrats “don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.”
“Supreme Court denies Republicans’ effort to stop California redistricting . . . for now”
This afternoon, the Supreme Court denied the original writ petition — filed Monday (see here) — by four Republican state legislators seeking to prevent the super-majority Democratic Legislature from enacting bills that would allow for the temporary redrawing of the state’s congressional districts.
But that is likely not the final word on the topic. I don’t read the denial as a decision on the petition’s merits.
The court’s denial order in the case — Strickland v. Weber — says, “Petitioners have failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time under California Constitution article IV, section 8.”
The key words, I believe, are “at this time.” The petition sought to prevent voting on redistricting bills, alleging action on the bills violate article IV, section 8(a), which generally prohibits action on legislation “until the 31st day after the bill is introduced.” But, when the petition was filed, and when the court denied the petition, the Legislature hadn’t voted on the bills. Those votes are expected tomorrow (Thursday).
If, as seems likely, the Legislature enacts the bills and Governor Gavin Newsom signs them, petitioners will then have a stronger argument that they have “[met] their burden of establishing a basis for relief . . . under California Constitution article IV, section 8.” But, until then, the lack of definitive positive action on the bills probably, in the justices’ eyes, renders premature a claim of a section 8 violation….
“Mississippi Supreme Court election map dilutes Black voters’ power, judge rules”
A federal judge has ordered Mississippi to redraw its election map used in voting for state supreme court justices after finding the current one dilutes the power of Black voters in violation of a landmark federal voting rights law.
U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock in Greenville sided with a group of Black citizens of the state in finding on Tuesday that the map in place since 1987 for Mississippi Supreme Court elections violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The court’s nine justices are elected in nonpartisan races from three districts to serve eight-year, staggered terms. The map’s lines are drawn by the state legislature and have changed little in over a century, according to the plaintiffs.
Black people make up about 40% of the state’s population, but Aycock noted that the Mississippi Supreme Court has had only four Black justices, none of whom have served at the same time. Each held the same seat in District 1, which includes the city of Jackson and part of the Mississippi Delta, and all four were first appointed by a governor….
“Voting officials are leaving their jobs at the highest rate in decades”
Turnover among the country’s election officials has continued to increase — now nearly five years after Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 contest led to voting officials facing more pressure and harassment.
Some 2 in 5 of all the local officials who administered the 2020 election left their jobs before the 2024 cycle, according to research out Tuesday from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The trend was especially pronounced in large jurisdictions, where the Trump campaign’s misinformation about voting often focused.
“This is in alignment with the challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that election officials are facing,” said Rachel Orey, who oversees the center’s Elections Project.For the past two decades turnover in the elections field had been increasing gradually, but the new report, which Orey worked on with UCLA researchers Joshua Ferrer and Daniel Thompson, shows how 2020 amplified the trend.
Orey first worked with Ferrer and Thompson last year to analyze a novel dataset that included more than 18,000 local election officials across more than 6,000 jurisdictions. Their initial report showed a turnover rate that rose from 28% in 2004 to 39% in 2022.
In 2024, the turnover rate increased to 41%, the highest it’s been in at least the last 25 years.
“Rising turnover is almost like a canary in the coal mine, indicating that something deeper and more structural in the way that we conduct elections needs to be fixed,” said Orey, noting specifically that elections in the U.S. are chronically underfunded….
My New One in the NY Times on How States, Courts, and the Public Can Combat the Risk Trump Poses to the 2026 Midterm Elections
I have written this guest essay for the NY Times (free gift link). It begins:
With Republicans potentially losing their current seven-vote majority in the House in next year’s midterm elections (or, less likely, their six-vote majority in the Senate), President Trump has been sending clear signals of his intent to interfere with the fairness and integrity of those elections.
After saying in a social media post on Monday that “DEMOCRATS … CHEAT AT LEVELS NOT SEEN BEFORE,” he promised to sign a new executive order aimed at “MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD” in order “to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 midterms.” Mr. Trump also promised to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN ballots and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial Voting Machines.” He also claimed that the United States is the only country using mail-in balloting. (In fact, it is used in Canada, Britain and many other countries.) Mr. Trump’s claim that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ of the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” is as legally wrong as it is politically dangerous. That can also be said about his plans to issue an executive order interfering with how states run their elections.
The fear that Mr. Trump will try to subvert the 2026 elections is real — after all, he tried to overturn the results of the first presidential election he didn’t win. But even if Mr. Trump fails to keep the House and the Senate in Republican hands, he will have delegitimized future Democratic victories in the eyes of his MAGA base….
For decades, I argued that the United States should join other modern democracies in having national nonpartisan administration of elections. What we have instead is a hyper-decentralized system that gives states the primary role in running elections, and states in turn give their counties the authority to conduct elections and count ballots. I had thought that the variety of voting rules, machines and personnel was inefficient and particularly dangerous in polarized times, when every local mistake becomes evidence of some claim of a stolen or botched election.
What I had not factored into my thinking was that centralizing power over elections within the federal government could be dangerous in the hands of a president not committed to democratic principles. It is among the many things I had thought about American democracy that have been overturned by the advent of Mr. Trump….
States can serve as the primary bulwark against this attempted election subversion. States are not federal “agents.” They control election systems and can assert their longstanding rights to run elections. This is no longer a red state-blue state issue: Either all states have the power to run elections, despite the president’s make-believe grievances, or none of them do. The Republican Party objected when President Joe Biden issued an executive order to federal agencies to encourage more voter registration. Mr. Trump seeks to exert far greater authority than anything Mr. Biden had in mind.
Courts are the second bulwark against presidential meddling in elections. Federal courts have already issued orders blocking parts of Mr. Trump’s earlier executive order that infringe on state sovereignty. Although courts, including the Supreme Court, have not been strong in recent years on voting rights protection — and things seem poised to get worse on Voting Rights Act enforcement after the court returns in October — so far they have amassed an admirable record in stopping attempts at election subversion. The most recent example was when Judge Richard E. Myers, a very conservative Federal District Court judge in North Carolina, blocked an attempt by a Republican candidate who tried to get North Carolina’s Supreme Court to retroactively change the rules for voter eligibility, after the election, in an attempt to turn his election loss into a win….
n the end, the American people also have a key role to play in pushing back against Mr. Trump’s meddling. People will need the courage to go vote even in American cities that may have federal agents swarming around them. “Voter protection” in recent decades has not meant protection from government-led violence and intimidation, but it may come down to that. Democrats, Republicans and other members of the public should monitor voting procedures, as allowed by state law, to make sure that state and county election officials stand up to federal pressure and do the right thing as they conduct elections and tabulate ballots. Local civic and business leaders need to back our election administrators, who may find themselves subjected to pressures to bend or break the rules. All of this organizing needs to happen now, not next November. To keep us from sliding further into autocracy, it is civil society we must make great again.
This remains true because even if Mr. Trump refrains from trying to run for an unconstitutional third term, he isn’t finished working to manipulate election results in his favor. To counter this, we will have to rely on the resilience of our commitment to democracy, which is far stronger than the rantings of a would-be strongman. Seen in this light, the diversity of our rules for running elections becomes our strength.
“Texas House to take up GOP congressional map delayed by Democrats’ walkout”
The Republican-led Texas House on Wednesday was set to advance a new congressional map crafted to hand five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP over fierce opposition from Democrats, who cast the plan as an attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year’s midterm election.
Republican lawmakers are pursuing the unusual mid-decade redistricting plan, which has set off a national map-drawing war, amid pressure from Trump to protect the GOP’s slim majority in Congress. The effort comes just four years after the Legislature last overhauled the state’s congressional map following the 2020 Census.
Democrats in the Texas House staged a two-week walkout over the plan in a bid to stall the map’s passage and rally a national response among blue states, where lawmakers could launch their own retaliatory redistricting efforts. The roughly two dozen Texas Democrats who returned to Austin on Monday said they were starting the next phase of their fight: putting the screws on their Republican colleagues and establishing a record that could be used in a legal challenge to the map.
Republicans have said the new districts were drawn purely to maximize their partisan advantage, arguing that the GOP’s margins of victory in 2024 supported new lines that entrenched their hold on power. They have also framed the effort as a response to Democratic gerrymandering elsewhere…
“The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis”
The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.
Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.
That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from….