Republicans want to demonize Gavin Newsom ’s effort to give his party some extra U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms. But they have a bit of a messaging problem. After all, Newsom is very explicitly responding to the power grab Donald Trump demanded in Texas (as indicated by the formal name for the legislation the California governor is pushing to authorize a ballot initiative in November: the Election Rigging Response Act ).

Beyond the fact that Trump did it first, Republicans can’t really get too pious about what Newsom is doing because it reflects the reality that blue states, by and large, have been much more likely than red states to let independent commissions rather than partisan politicians draw their congressional and state legislative districts. Many Democrat-led sta

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