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Zohran Mamdani leads in fundraising for New York City mayoral contest
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 20:21
Zohran Mamdani pulled in almost double the funds of his nearest rivals for New York City mayor between early July and mid-August, as the candidates prepare for the crucial post Labor Day push to the November poll.New York’s City’s campaign finance board said on Saturday that the democratic socialist, who won the Democratic party nomination in June against former state governor Andrew Cuomo, raised $1,051,200, with an average donation of $121 recorded equally from donors in and outside the state.Cuomo raised $541,301, with an contribution size of $646. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, running as an independent, raised $425,181, with an average donation of $770. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa brought in $407, 332.Mamdani’s fundraising dominance is mirrored in a polling advantage. Last week, a Siena poll placed him at 19 points ahead of Cuomo, his nearest rival, who is also running as an independent. A 12-poll average from Decision Desk HQ puts Mamdani ahead of Cuomo by 13 points.Mamdani, who has proposed rent freezes on almost a million rent-stabilized apartments in the city, free buses and childcare, city-run grocery stores, and elevated taxes on Columbia and New York University to subsidize city colleges and trade schools, has been consistently ahead in fundraising over rivals.In March, he asked his campaign’s grassroots supporters to stop donating, and directed his primary campaign staff to encourage supporters’ focus to volunteering efforts. His campaign funds on hand are put at $4.4m, and his campaign is eligible for $2.2m more in matching public funds.Last week, it was revealed that the anti-billionaire candidate had received a donation of $250,000 to a political action committee from Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of late hedge fund billionaire Jamie Simons.Adams is barred from receiving matching campaign funds, the city campaign finance board having found he had violated related laws. Cuomo has begun transferring money from a $7.5m state campaign account to his city campaign account and has $1.2m on hand. Cuomo is in line for a payout of about $400,000 from public funds.Pressure on the two trailing candidates, Adams and Sliwa, to step out of the race is likely to increase next month, but both have said they are unwilling to do so.Last week, Adams repeated his resistance to dropping out after a close adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was indicted for allegedly running a political-favors scheme that included receiving seafood and an acting role opposite Forest Whitaker.Politco reported last week that Cuomo told supporters at a fundraiser he expects Republican leaders, including Donald Trump, to urge Republican voters to switch from Sliwa to stop Mamdani, whom Trump has branded “a 100% Communist Lunatic”. Mamdani has said he is “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare”.Cuomo said on Friday that “a lot is going to happen” between now and the November vote. “I don’t think the public even knows who the assemblyman is, what he represents, what his positions are. So I think the more they find out about him, the less they’re going to like him, and … his appeal is going to drop dramatically.”Mamdani, meanwhile, has accused Cuomo of lying about his coordination with Trump and says the former governor, who bitterly clashed with Trump while in office, is now seeking the president’s help.“It’s par for the course for Andrew Cuomo,” Mamdani said on Tuesday. More
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Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Bernie Sanders in urging US to end Gaza famine
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 18:35
Amid mostly silence in Congress, some US lawmakers on opposite sides of the political spectrum spoke out Saturday over a UN-backed report warning of famine in parts of Gaza.“Let’s be clear: President Trump has the power to end the starvation of the Palestinian people,” Vermont’s politically independent senator Bernie Sanders posted on X. “Instead he is doing nothing while watching this famine unfold. Enough is enough. No more American taxpayer dollars to Nethanyahu’s [sic] war machine.”Sanders, who also pushed resolutions to ban selling US weapons to Israel, has long been consistent about his concern regarding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the war.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the outspoken, far-right Georgia Republican, also called for greater compassion for Palestinians in a social media post Saturday, a day after UN secretary general António Gutteres described the famine in the territory as a “failure of humanity”.The US representative, in a departure from the majority of her peers in Congress, described the Gaza humanitarian crisis as a genocide last month. In a long post on X, she then said that while Israel’s war against Hamas was justified, the suffering of civilians was not.“Does Hamas deserve it? Yes,” Greene wrote, in part. “Do innocent people and children deserve it? No.”“The innocent people in Gaza did not kill and kidnap the innocent people in Israel on Oct 7th,” she continued. “Just as we spoke out and had compassion for the victims and families of Oct7, how can Americans not speak out and have compassion for the masses of innocent people and children in Gaza?”Greene linked the entirety of US financial and military aid to Israel to the conflict, arguing that it “means every U.S. tax payer is contributing to Israel’s military actions”.“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” Greene concluded. “And I will not be silent about it.”The post received an almost immediate response from far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who reportedly petitioned the White House to suspend the entry of injured Palestinian children from Gaza to the US.Greene and Loomer, both claiming the mantle of Maga authenticity, have bitterly clashed on the issue, with Loomer falsely describing Palestinian children as a “national security threat” and “Islamic invaders”.Loomer, who is Jewish, once claimed that her ban from social media platforms for anti-Muslim hate speech was antisemitic, while Greene infamously shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory that wildfires in California might have been started by Jewish space lasers.On Saturday, Loomer hit out at Greene, falsely accusing her of calling for Palestinians from Gaza to be resettled in the US and asking: “Why are you advocating for GAZANS to come to the US? How is Islamic immigration ‘America First’?”The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last week that parts of Gaza are experiencing a “man-made” famine in the Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City, site of a new Israeli offensive.“As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed,” the report said. “The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that an immediate, at-scale response is needed.”The Israeli agency heading aid distribution in Gaza, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), rejected the report, saying it “relies on partial, biased data and superficial information originating from Hamas”.On Saturday, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said on X that “the [international] media is missing the real story of ‘famine’ in Gaza. Hostages ARE starving, Hamas is getting fat, & the UN declares famine while 92% of THEIR food is stolen to be sold by Hamas. Meanwhile UN food sits rotting in sun. The UN should declare itself corrupt & incompetent.”In her post, Greene wrote that if the US were being bombed day and night, with millions killed or injured, and the world said “Americans voted for their government so they deserve it… How would you feel? What would you think? What would you do?” More
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US immigration officials intend to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Uganda
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 15:59
US immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Uganda, after he declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.The Costa Rica offer came late on Thursday, after it was clear that the Salvadorian national would probably be released from a Tennessee jail the following day.Ábrego declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family. Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.According to official documents posted online, the DHS told Ábrego’s attorneys on Friday afternoon that the “DHS may remove your client … to Uganda no earlier than 72 hours from now (absent weekends)”.Immigration and Customs Enforcement also directed Ábrego to report to its Baltimore office on Monday, according to records posted online.Ábrego entered the US without permission in about 2011 as a teenager after fleeing gang violence. He was subsequently afforded a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador.The 30-year-old was initially deported by federal immigration officials in March. Though the Trump administration admitted that Ábrego’s deportation was an “administrative error”, officials have repeatedly accused him of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to charge him with crimes related to human smuggling, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.Before his deportation, Ábrego had lived in Maryland for more than a decade, working in construction while being married to an American wife.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Ábrego was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his attorneys, who feared the Republican administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed. Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case in Maryland, which requires immigration officials to allow Ábrego time to mount a defense.Separately, in a statement earlier this week, Uganda said that it agreed to a “temporary agreement” with the US to accept some asylum seekers who are deported from the country.Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, permanent secretary of Uganda’s foreign ministry, said: “The agreement is in respect of third country nationals who may not be granted asylum in the United States but are reluctant to or may have concerns about returning to their countries of origin.”Waiswa added: “This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted. Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda. The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented.” More
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Judge blocks White House from defunding 34 municipalities over ‘sanctuary’ policies
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 14:57
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to 34 “sanctuary cities” and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement, significantly expanding a previous order.The order, issued on Friday by the San Francisco-based US district judge William Orrick, adds Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Boston, Baltimore, Denver and Albuquerque, to cities that the administration is barred from denying funding.Orrick, an Obama appointee, previously ruled it was unconstitutional for the Trump administration to freeze funding to local governments with “sanctuary” policies, limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).The April ruling came after cities including San Francisco, Sacramento, Minneapolis and Seattle sued the administration over what they claimed were illegal executive orders signed by Donald Trump in January and February that threatened to cut off funding if Democrat-controlled cities do not cooperate.Cities and counties suing the administration contend that the executive orders amount to an abuse of power that violate the constitution. The administration argues that the federal government should not be forced to subsidize policies that thwart its control of immigration.The administration has since ordered the national guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC, both cities with sanctuary designations, under a law-and-order mandate. On Friday, Trump said Chicago is likely the next target for efforts to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration.“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding: “And then we’ll help with New York.”The number of people in immigration detention has soared by more than 50% since Trump’s inauguration, according to an Axios review published Saturday, reaching a record 60,000 immigrants in long-term detention or around 21,000 more than at the end of the Biden administration.Separately, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, last week issued fresh threats to 30 Democrat-led cities and states, including to the governors of California, Illinois and Minnesota, and the mayors of New York, Denver and Boston, to drop sanctuary policies.Bondi said in the letter that their jurisdictions had been identified as those that engage “in sanctuary policies and practices that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States”.“This ends now,” Bondi wrote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrat leaders uniformly rejected the Trump administration’s assertion. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in response that Bondi’s order was “some kind of misguided political agenda” that “is fundamentally inconsistent with our founding principles as a nation”.The accelerating confrontation between the administration and Democratic-led jurisdictions comes as the Pentagon began ordering 2,000 national guard troops in Washington to carry firearms.US officials told NBC News that the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had authorized national guard members who are supporting local law enforcement will probably carry weapons but troops assigned to city beautification roles would not.The official said troops supporting the mission “to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training”, according to the outlet. More
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Maha is backing this ‘natural’ infertility treatment. Is it the right’s path to limiting IVF?
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 12:00
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View image in fullscreenFor Erica L and her husband, in-vitro fertilization was the “nuclear option”.After two years of trying to conceive, Erica and her husband had no idea why they could not have a baby. Doctors said only that they had “unexplained infertility”, a non-diagnosis of a diagnosis that is given to an estimated 15% of people trying to conceive. Erica was not ideologically opposed to trying IVF, but felt daunted by the price and unpredictability.Then Erica stumbled across a clinic that specialized in “restorative reproductive medicine”, or RRM. The clinic did bloodwork on Erica and her husband and urged them to eat well-balanced foods and take supplements, as well as prioritize exercise and sleep. Erica also started tracking her temperature and menstrual cycle in intense detail.“We wanted to do everything that we could to try to have a baby as naturally as possible,” said Erica, who asked that her full last name not be published. “There’s a lot of invasive things that I just wasn’t comfortable with.”Restorative reproductive medicine is a decades-old name for a constellation of therapies that are meant to revive the “natural” fertility of people trying to conceive. Often, RRM entails prescriptions for hormones, supplements and lifestyle changes – such as adopting a better diet – as well as closely analyzing one’s menstrual cycle. Its practitioners also sometimes use aggressive surgeries to root out endometriosis, a common and chronic condition that occurs when tissue that is similar to uterine tissue grows outside of the uterus. And, critically, RRM practitioners avoid the use of assisted reproductive technology such as IVF.Top Republicans, rightwing organizations and even White House officials have recently begun to rally behind RRM, seizing on its promise to enhance fertility without resorting to IVF. Many anti-abortion conservatives revile IVF because it can create unused embryos – a practice they see as unethical, if not murderous, as they believe life begins at conception.Yet IVF remains staggeringly popular, to the point that Donald Trump pledged to make it free in the wake of a 2024 Alabama supreme court decision that imperiled the procedure. Now, conservatives are trying to pare back that commitment – and some fertility doctors, including ones who offer RRM, worry that the right is co-opting RRM as a Trojan horse in order to sell a fertility agenda to voters while undermining IVF.Backed by several high-profile anti-abortion groups, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly introduced legislation to bolster government-funded research and education on RRM. In March, the Heritage Foundation – the influential thinktank behind the notorious Project 2025 – released a 63-page report that endorsed RRM and slammed IVF.Then, in July, the Department of Health and Human Services posted a notice soliciting applications for a $1.5m grant to fund an “infertility training center” that would expand access to resources for “holistic infertility treatments” rather than assisted reproductive technology. In August, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is backing away from the president’s campaign promises about IVF, although a White House spokesperson rebutted that claim.View image in fullscreenDr Kaylen Silverberg is a reproductive endocrinologist who has advised administration officials, including Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, about IVF. During his discussions with officials, Silverberg said he was asked about RRM.“I’ve been doing this for 31 years, and I’d never even heard the term,” said Silverberg, who is also advisory board chair of the advocacy group Americans for IVF. “So I started doing research about it. I realized that restorative reproductive medicine is just a pseudonym for a basic infertility evaluation.”Silverberg’s view is shared by many mainstream fertility doctors and organizations, who say that the difference between their work and RRM is less scientific than ideological. In their view, RRM is a rebranded version of everyday fertility medicine, minus IVF.RRM, with its focus on optimizing the body’s “natural” rhythms, is tapping into a growing interest in holistic health and wellness – one that is being increasingly politicized and expertly leveraged by the “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) movement.But support for RRM alone, Silverberg said, cannot fulfill Trump’s campaign promises. “The problem is going to be if – and this is a big if – anybody tries to limit expansion of fertility access and care and coverage to restorative reproductive medicine.”‘There is another option’RRM is not a monolith. Some of its leading organizations and adherents take no position on IVF and reject the idea that RRM is ideologically driven or a new name for old medicine. Instead, they are drawn to RRM’s stance that infertility is not itself a disease but a symptom of something else that has gone wrong.Established in 2000, the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine (IIRRM), the preeminent group championing RRM, maintains a registry of RRM clinicians and collects data about its techniques’ efficacy.Dr Monica Minjeur, who was trained in family medicine and serves as the US director of communications and development for the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, said RRM is “not an anti-IVF movement”. As far as Minjeur knows, no one in Congress has approached the institute to discuss RRM.“We will never say: ‘IVF should go away.’ We just mostly want people to realize: ‘Hey, there is another option,’ because so many couples are told IVF is your only option,” said Minjeur, who added that she is a Democrat.View image in fullscreenSome RRM advocates and groups do oppose IVF and have long aligned themselves with conservative causes such as the anti-abortion movement. One of the most well-known RRM techniques is NaPro Technology, which usually involves such tactics as cervical mucus tracking and has been pioneered by the anti-abortion Saint Paul VI Institute since the 1980s, when the Vatican condemned IVF. The institute’s website presents NaPro Technology as an alternative to IVF, which it calls “a highly abortive technology that often forces women to make abortion-related decisions”.In June, a new thinktank, the Maha Institute, held a roundtable discussion about women’s health and fertility. In her introduction to the discussion, Maureen Ferguson, a commissioner for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom with longstanding ties to the anti-abortion movement, sang RRM’s praises.“Traditional women’s health and fertility care has relied heavily on big pharma bandaids and workarounds that circumvent a women’s reproductive system,” Ferguson said. “Women of all political stripes appreciate healthcare that works in harmony with their body and restores health.”IIRRM wants to harness Maha advocates’ enthusiasm but is wary of being equated with the movement, according to Minjeur and Dr Tracey Parnell, the institute’s global director of communications and development. They described RRM and Maha as two sides of a Venn diagram.“We want to bring increased health to women and men and families,” Minjeur said of Maha. “Beyond that, there are definitely a fair amount of differences.”Parnell added: “We really truly are open to quite broad collaboration without being co-opted.”The rise of wellness cultureThe Make America Healthy Again movement is perhaps the best illustration of a broader push within American conservatism to incorporate the historically leftwing language of holistic health and “natural” treatments – in short, “wellness” – to advocate for traditionally rightwing aims, such as convincing women to have big families.This push started to gain steam in the years after the Covid pandemic, as trust in mainstream medicine started to falter: a survey of nearly half a million US adults found that trust in physicians and hospitals declined from roughly 72% to just 40% between April 2020 – the month after the pandemic broke out – and January 2024. As trust eroded, the wellness industry exploded. Between 2019 and 2023, it grew from $5.3tn to $6.32tn, according to the Global Wellness Institute, which defines wellness as the ongoing and individual pursuit of “optimal holistic health and wellbeing”.“Wellness” can encapsulate a wide range of activities, from undeniably healthy behaviors (such as exercising and eating nutritious foods) to practices that may be dangerous (such as drinking raw milk). These activities are yoked together by a deceptively simple ethos, according to Amy Larocca, author of the book How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time.“In wellness, things that are natural are superior to things that are not,” Larocca explained.Wellness’s sales pitch can be particularly appealing to Americans, given the astronomical costs of traditional healthcare in the US. A single IVF cycle can run tens of thousands of dollars and most states do not require insurers to cover it. By contrast, countries such as Denmark and Sweden cover vast swathes of fertility treatments, including IVF.RRM treatments tend to cost far less than IVF, and may soon get even cheaper. In June, Arkansas’s Republican-dominated state legislature became the first in the country to pass a law requiring state insurance to cover RRM therapies.But critics say there is little quality evidence that RRM is more effective at helping people have babies than mainstream fertility medicine. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons are worried that other states may follow Arkansas’s lead; last week, the medical organizations sent a letter to urging the National Governors Association to reject pro-RRM legislation.Women’s health and infertility are especially ripe breeding groups for wellness because mainstream medicine routinely fails to take either seriously. Between 2013 and 2023, just 8.8% of research funded by the National Institutes of Health focused on women’s health. Women are also more likely to have their medical concerns dismissed. When women and people of color show up at emergency rooms with signs of chest pain, they usually wait longer; women are also less likely to be admitted.‘Many sobbing women’A year after Erica started working with the restorative reproductive medicine clinic, the clinic told her: “We’re really concerned that you’re not pregnant yet. You should be pregnant.”The RRM specialists suggested that Erica might have endometriosis, which affects about one in 10 women and girls worldwide and is believed to be a leading cause of infertility.It is also profoundly understudied. In 2023, a mere 0.06% of the NIH’s $47bn budget was earmarked for endometriosis research. Because many doctors dismiss the symptoms of endometriosis or lack the expertise to recognize it, it generally takes between five and 11 years to get a diagnosis.Erica went ahead with a surgery to diagnose and remove endometriosis tissue. RRM practitioners have suggested that the condition can be treated by a “one-and-done surgery” – as one RRM surgeon put it in the Heritage Foundation report – that aggressively excises endometriosis tissue.A month later, Erica got pregnant. Erica estimated that she and her husband spent, in total, about $2,500 on RRM.“We definitely wouldn’t have our daughter without them,” she said of RRM specialists.View image in fullscreenMany of RRM’s prescriptions are common sense: if you are trying to get pregnant, it can be helpful to take a holistic view of your health and know as much about your menstrual cycle as possible. But mainstream reproductive endocrinologists are skeptical of RRM’s position that infertility itself is not a disease, which runs counter to the World Health Organization’s definition of infertility. They also suspect that RRM may over-rely on surgery to treat endometriosis. One recent review of infertility treatments published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that while surgery can help mild cases of endometriosis, doctors should use IVF when it is severe. When treated with IVF, almost 40% of women under 35 who have endometriosis get pregnant within a single cycle, the review found.“We do a lot of surgery and other treatment options that can optimize a woman’s fertility. But in the end, there are many diagnoses that cannot be solved with those elements alone and need a very effective tool like IVF,” said Dr Rachel Weinerman, a reproductive endocrinologist and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University’s school of medicine. “You need to have a whole toolbox available to decide what is the right tool for that specific patient.”Dr Eve Feinberg, a reproductive endocrinologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg school of medicine, first heard of RRM when she started treating patients who had tried it. If patients stick with RRM and defer the use of assisted reproductive technology for too long, Feinberg warned, some may become so old that they lose their chance to have biological children.“I’ve had many sobbing women in my office who really missed out on their fertility window by trying endless numbers of years of this method, who weren’t given the truth and weren’t given a chance to explore other methods because they were misled and they were told that this would work for them,” she said. “I counsel my patients that IVF has limitations. It doesn’t work for every patient. I didn’t feel like these women were adequately counseled in that way.”In an extensive memo it shared with the Guardian, IIRRM rejected many of the critiques of RRM as unfounded, including the idea that it over-relies on surgery. Physicians who provide IVF too often default to it, the institute contended, adding that it would welcome more research comparing RRM to conventional medicine.As someone who eats a mostly plant-based diet, runs religiously and avoids makeup, Feinberg considers herself to be more “natural” than most. She understands the appeal of the wellness-style language that surrounds RRM.“It’s being marketed as being holistic. It’s being marketed as being natural and ethical,” Feinberg said. But, she continued: “I think RRM plays into this fallacy that we can understand everything and we can fix everything. 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Trump’s attacks on the ‘Blacksonian’ have a history in a century-old myth
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 11:00
It should surprise no one that former cast members from reality shows that ran for more than 15 seasons are running out of new material. Days ago, Donald Trump, former star of NBC’s The Apprentice and current US president, posted a lengthy Truth Social rant in which he (again) threatened the country’s leading cultural institutions to adhere to his political ideology. The target was one he has had in his crosshairs before – the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) – which Trump called “OUT OF CONTROL” in his post. “Everything discussed [in NMAAHC exhibits] is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was,” Trump unloaded. “WOKE IS BROKE,” he continued through his customary use of all caps and misplaced capitalization of common nouns. “We have the HOTTEST Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”The tirade left many wondering what exactly Trump saw as the upsides of slavery, but also where they had previously heard this recycled talking point. The comment seemed to echo comments made just days prior by his fellow reality show bully Jillian Michaels, a former trainer on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, the weight-loss competition show that launched alongside The Apprentice in 2004. Michaels had been making her rounds in media and public appearances, rebranding from verbally abusive fat shamer to Maga influencer.On CNN’s NewsNight, the host Abby Phillips moderated a roundtable discussion on Trump’s months-long overreach into cultural institutions such as the Kennedy Center and the NMAAHC. Michaels hijacked the conversation into a lament about slavery’s prominence in the massively popular museum’s displays on US history. “[Trump] is not whitewashing slavery, he’s not,” Michaels said. “You cannot tie slavery to just one race, which is what every single exhibit [at NMAAHC] does.” Turning towards the representative Ritchie Torres, who was seated beside her, Michaels unloaded popular far-right talking points. “Do you realize that only less than 2% of white Americans owned slaves?” she continued. “Do you realize slavery is thousands of years old? Do you know who was the first race who tried to end slavery?”Torres’s interjections that slavery was a system of white supremacy, not a set of individual white acts, went unaddressed by the TV star. (From 20% to 50% of the white population in southern US states owned enslaved people, and all white people nationwide benefited from slavery’s racial order. Michael’s false claims prompted Phillips to later post a public correction.)The tirade was an escalation of Trump’s previous open declarations to “restore truth and sanity to American history”, an effort to overhaul exhibits and installations across federally operated museums and galleries and politicize their content, with the NMAAHC locked squarely in the administration’s sights for what it called “corrosive ideology”. Previous edicts about the museum, lovingly nicknamed “The Blacksonian” by many of its patrons, had not specifically identified slavery as the White House’s gripe. But Trump’s Truth Social post more directly reflected a return to a century-old tactic to minimize chattel slavery as “not that bad”.If we have learned anything from reality television, it is that every narrative is scripted. No matter how easily their claims were debunked, both Michaels and Trump were in lock step in their effort to vindicate white people from their role in slavery, both by insisting that slavery’s conditions and aftermath are overblown, and refuting that it played a major role in US history.These assertions are a refresh of a century-old “lost cause” myth spearheaded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), an organization of more than 100,000 white women who set out to make slavery respectable again by rebranding the Confederacy’s bloody image. The “genteel ladies” campaign euphemized slave trading as a “celebration of memory” and “a southern way of life”. Like Michaels, Trump and like-minded slavery deniers, proponents of “the lost cause” promoted an outlandishly misleading account of history in which slavery was both irrelevant as the cause of the American civil war, and benevolent because Christianity and plantation life, they said, benefited African-descended people who were otherwise unfit for civilization.UDC members capitalized on their social status as wives and mothers to indoctrinate children, notably through catechisms, the control and production of school textbooks, essay and scholarship contests, and their spinoff organizations, like the Children of the Confederacy. Their purported concern for white children provided a gender-appropriate cover for their goals to terrorize Black people in the south. They took full advantage of the threat of lynching that loomed over any Black person, including children, who dared to challenge a white woman. Confederate statues and memorials, which UDC lobbied to have strategically placed outside courthouses and in public squares, parks and other spaces, were meant to intimidate African Americans who were merely engaging in civic life.Trump’s obsessive preoccupation with the Smithsonian’s 19th installation signals that history is repeating. Since its 2016 opening, the NMAAHC has welcomed more than 10 million in-person visitors, with families and school groups driving much of that number. Across seven floors and 12 galleries, the museum offers a remarkably comprehensive deep dive into the story of Black life in the US. It is as accessible to grammar school pupils as it is impressive to nationally celebrated historians.On his initial tour in 2017, Trump lauded the institution as “a shining example of African Americans’ incredible contributions to our culture, our society and our history”. Today, the museum serves as a go-to supplement for the Black history curriculums that many American public school systems have stripped or disbanded under Republican state legislatures’ “anti-woke” policies.Trump’s Truth Social post went on to announce that he had instructed his attorneys to “go through the museums and start the exact same process that has been done with colleges and universities”, comparing the funding cuts the administration has wielded over university curricula and research to an overhaul of NMAAHC’s exhibits relevant to slavery.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s a play right out of the UDC’s book: the daughters understood that they had lost the war but could win the battle for the national narrative if they could successfully undermine Black progress and Black accounts of slavery in educational institutions. Vindication, as the organization deployed it, was a tool for vengeance, not justice – divorced from all reality and set on a narrative in which they insisted they were the victims of the very war their families provoked. They perfected a manipulation of public memory that controlled the racial hierarchy by controlling education.The late sociologist and historian James Loewen, who studied Confederate monuments across the US, once explained that the past is what happened, history is what we say about the past, and some of us believe that should be the same thing. We are locked in a battle, however, with those who seek to pervert history and replace it with a fiction that absolves their present-day wrongdoing.UDC members continued to lobby for revisionist school curricula and the placement of Confederate memorials well into the 20th century, where they fought against Black progress in the civil rights movement. Ultimately, backlashes against Confederate monuments successfully removed nearly 100 of them in the protests following the state murder of George Floyd. Still, hundreds more remain, including those Trump has recently replaced. He is clinging to a century-old storyline hoping to be renewed for another political season. But it’s old material that isn’t nearly as effective when your opponents already know the playbook.
Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man More
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‘A new political era’: fresh Democratic faces seek office to prevent their party from ‘sleepwalking into dystopia’
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 11:00
Earlier this year, Liam Elkind seized an opportunity to ask his longtime congressman, Jerry Nadler, what everyday New Yorkers like himself could do to help Democrats stand up to Donald Trump. Nadler’s response, according to Elkind, was to “donate to the DCCC” – the group that helps House Democrats keep their seats. Deeply unsatisfied, the 26-year-old decided to run for office against the 17-term incumbent.In Georgia, Everton Blair also sought answers from his long-serving congressman, David Scott, at a panel event earlier this year. When Blair asked him about Democrats’ legislative strategy, the 80-year-old lawmaker was dismissive. “I don’t know who sent y’all,” he said. Blair, 34, is now making a bid for Scott’s seat.Jake Rakov began to worry when he noticed his former boss, 70-year-old California congressman Brad Sherman, repeating the same anti-Trump talking points he’d deployed eight years prior. To Rakov, 37, it was a sign that the Democratic party’s ageing establishment “wasn’t going to learn”. He is now one of two millennial-aged Jakes challenging Sherman.View image in fullscreenA year after Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office emerged as a major liability in the 2024 presidential election, followed by Trump’s return to power , demand for generational change has reached a fever pitch. A wave of younger, social-media savvy candidates, frustrated by what they see as an ossifying, out-of-touch Democratic establishment, is launching primary challenges against some of their party’s most senior incumbents.The insurgents charge that party elders have failed to act with urgency as Trump targets Democratic cities, voters and values, and they say they’re no longer willing to wait their turn.“If what happened last year was not a wake up call for the Democratic party that we need to do things differently and that we need to let some new voices in, then we should all be deeply worried about the future of the Democratic party,” said Luke Bronin, a 46-year-old who is running against Connecticut congressman John Larson, 77.The 119th Congress is the third oldest in US history, and three members – all Democrats – have died in office this year. More than a dozen House Democrats who will be 70 or older by election day 2026 are facing challengers, according to an analysis by Axios, though not all have said whether they plan to seek re-election.But the push to replace longtime incumbents isn’t just about age, says Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, a former chief of staff to New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is running for the San Francisco congressional seat long held by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.They say it’s about energy, vision and, crucially, how hard they’re willing to fight – which could explain why octogenarian brawlers like Maxine Waters haven’t faced calls to step aside while some relatively younger members, such as 50-year-old André Carson, have drawn challengers.“It’s being a part of a system for so long you just don’t actually think it’s your job to renew it,” Chakrabarti said.View image in fullscreenPelosi, 85, who stepped down from her leadership position to make room for a new generation in 2022, has not yet said whether she plans to seek re-election. A spokesperson for Pelosi declined to comment.While their campaigns are textured by local issues and cultural references – Elkind touts his go-to bagel order (un-toasted everything with whitefish salad) and Chakrabarti pitches a publicly owned utility for San Francisco – their broader messages chime: Democratic elders have grown complacent, clinging to a broken status quo – with devastating consequences.Democrats’ popularity has cratered to record lows and the party has bled voters – especially young people, first-timers, and Black and Latino Americans.But the incumbents are pushing back. They argue their years of experience have delivered tangible results. “These guys would start off with zero seniority, just when the district needs the most help,” Sherman, the California congressman, said in an interview. He dismissed claims he’s been timid on Trump, noting he introduced articles of impeachment against him in 2017 and, earlier this year, confronted the president at an in-person briefing on the Palisades fire that devastated parts of his district.“The key to fighting Donald Trump is beating him in the 2026 election,” Sherman said. “If we don’t take the House back in 2026 we may not have elections in 2028.”Many challengers align politically with the incumbents they’re trying to unseat – several have voted for their opponent in the past. They argue the intraparty divide is not left-versus-center but a clash between “the fighters and the folders” – those who see the Trump era as a troubling but passing chapter and those who see it as a constitutional emergency that will determine the survival of American democracy.The younger candidates say the party needs to “meet voters where they are” – on social media, on podcasts, at red county diners and rambunctious town halls. They want leaders who can speak plainly about the ways the Trump administration is hurting working-class Americans – and how Democrats would help.But they also say it can’t only be about Trump. The party needs a full-scale reimagining of what Democrats stand for and how they communicate that to voters – a type of messaging they’ve struggled to articulate in the Trump era.Democrats haven’t always embraced primaries. They can be costly and time-consuming, and create headaches for general election races. But in the midst of deep party introspection and generational friction, more are embracing the contests as a way forward.Groups such as Leaders We Deserve, led by former Democratic national committee vice-chair David Hogg, are actively backing young candidates challenging “asleep-at-the-wheel” incumbents. The effort sparked an internal firestorm and ultimately led Hogg to step down from his role at the DNC.Republicans are watching the primary battles unfold with glee. “Democrats are engaged in a battle between the socialists and the party dinosaurs – and it’s only getting uglier,” Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the national Republican congressional committee, said.Next year’s elections will test Democrats’ desire for generational change but it may not resolve their identity crisis. Some districts will elevate centrist candidates, while others might embrace a democratic socialist. Some crave an anti-establishment streak, ideology aside.And some veteran lawmakers have already chosen to relinquish power. In May, Democratic congresswoman Jan Schakowsky announced that her 14th term representing Illinois’s ninth district would be her last, saying in a statement: “It is now time for me to pass the baton.” Before she made the decision public, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive political influencer, had already launched a campaign for the seat, asking Democrats: “What if we didn’t suck?”Primed for Congress, but not waiting for an openingAmong the contenders in Democratic primaries are local and state political leaders for whom Congress makes sense as a next logical step. In years past, they might have opted to wait for a retirement and then seek an endorsement from the outgoing congressman. Not any more.View image in fullscreenAt 46, Luke Bronin has a lengthy résumé of service: a lawyer, former Obama administration official, navy reserve intelligence officer and, most recently, mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. But he stresses that he’d also bring “an outsider’s commitment to making some bigger changes”.Bronin has spoken with Larson, the longtime incumbent in Connecticut’s first district, including an hourlong conversation in recent months. What was missing, he said, was any recognition that the job has fundamentally changed since Larson arrived in Washington in 1999.“I didn’t hear a sense of urgency that we need to hear from every single member of Congress,” Bronin said.Bronin thinks Democrats need to be “relentless and clear” about the ways Trump is making life worse for Americans, and “equally relentless and clear” about the Democratic party’s vision for improving their daily lives. He wants to see “an intense focus on issues like housing and healthcare and childcare”, and for Democrats to spread these messages in friendly and unfriendly forums.In a statement, the Larson campaign said the district needs a “proven fighter” to protect against Trump’s attacks on social security and Medicare.“That’s Congressman Larson. That’s why he’s backed by progressive groups, labor, and working people alike,” the campaign said. “What they don’t need is someone pretending to be a new voice who’s actually been in politics [for] decades that’s always been more focused on running for higher office than delivering results.”Chakrabarti, who has spend much of his political career working to elect progressives to Congress, said he began to seriously consider a run himself after listening to a New York Times podcast interview with Pelosi just days after the November election. He had expected Democrats’ crushing defeat to trigger a reckoning – but instead heard a defense of the status quo.It confirmed for Chakrabarti what he had long feared: the Democratic party was “sort of sleepwalking into this dystopia”.But progressives like Chakrabarti take hope from the success of state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary this summer.“When I look at the moment today, the appetite for change, it completely dwarfs what I saw in 2018,” Chakrabarti said, referring to the election year in which Ocasio-Cortez toppled one of the most senior House Democrats as a political unknown.“We’re at the point of a dawn of a new political era.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe crowded primariesSeveral candidates have filed to run in Georgia’s 13th district, a solidly blue area in the Atlanta suburbs, a sign of the vulnerabilities among older members and the enthusiasm to replace them. Scott, who has served in Congress since 2003, has not yet announced whether he will run again. Questions over his health and fitness for office have become public fodder – he lambasted a photographer for taking a photo of him in a wheelchair last year.Some are younger than the average age in Congress (58.9); all are younger than Scott, 80. One contender, state senator Emanuel Jones, is 66. In 2024, Scott fended off a crowded field of primary challengers to keep his seat.Jasmine Clark, 42, was first elected to the state house in Georgia in 2018. She has a PhD in microbiology, an expertise that has served her well in analyzing bills and communicating during the pandemic. If elected, would be the first woman with a science PhD in Congress.View image in fullscreenShe wants the district to have a fighter who can call out the rampant misinformation and disinformation coming out of the Trump administration. The Atlanta area is feeling the consequences of this information environment, she said, pointing to a shooting earlier this month at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by a man alleged to be fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.“When you have the same people in the same place for a really long time, that stagnation leads to stagnation of ideas as well,” she said. “There should be a healthy turnover, where you still have institutional knowledge while ushering in new ideas. But for whatever reason, we don’t really see that in Congress.”View image in fullscreenEverton Blair, who served on the Gwinnett county board of education, is touting his deep ties to the district where he was born and raised. He sees a lot of opportunities left on the table because of inactive representation.“There’s a general sense of despondency and just apathy right now that we address and we combat by bringing those very voices and people back into the conversation and making sure that they feel represented well,” Blair said.“The leaders who got us into this mess are not the leaders who can get us out of it,” he added.Scott did not respond to a request for comment.In California, Jake Rakov, who served as a deputy communications director for Brad Sherman, the 15-term incumbent he’s challenging, is making a similar case. He hasn’t spoken to his old boss in years, but he has been talking to the congressman’s constituents. Many, he said, are shocked that any member – let alone their own – has been in Congress for nearly 30 years.“We’ve got people in office who’ve been there since the 1990s and are still legislating like it’s the 1990s,” he said, adding: “It is so antithetical to our idea of a representative democracy that it just is immediately offensive to people when they hear about it.”Sherman has also drawn a challenge from Jake Levine, a veteran of the Biden and Obama administrations whose mother lost her home in the January fires. “It’s time for something new,” Levine says in his campaign launch video.Sherman argued that calls for generational change aren’t new. Estimating that he’s taken about 5,000 votes in Congress over the past decade, the overwhelming majority of which his challengers would agree with, Sherman asked: “If you did something right 5,000 times in a row – 100% of the time – is there any chance that you should get fired?”The upstartsUpstart candidates traditionally face steeper challenges against incumbents, but, with the help of slick online content, they’re finding new ways to gain traction. In an Arizona special election earlier this year, Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old influencer and activist, came in a distant second behind a longtime Democratic official whose father held the seat until his death – but she still managed to win more than 22% of votes.Katie Bansil, a 34-year-old political newcomer who works in finance, is challenging congressman Frank Pallone, 73, in New Jersey’s sixth congressional district over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Since launching her campaign, Bansil, who immigrated to the US from the Philippines and grew up in New Jersey, says she’s seen a growing desire for new leadership.View image in fullscreen“I started calling him ‘the asterisk’, because a lot of people have told me, ‘Oh, I just vote for the guy that is labeled as the incumbent,’” she said. “But I think people are actually waking up to the truth about what’s going on.”A spokesperson for Pallone said the congressman has “proven himself to be an effective champion of progressive causes”.“With daily assaults from the Trump administration on our democracy and institutions, Pallone will continue to use every tool to stop the Republican authoritarian agenda of stealing from the poor to give to the rich,” the spokesperson said.Liam Elkind, the challenger to Jerry Nadler, announced his campaign with a splashy video that opened with dirt being shoveled into a grave and his voiceover: “The Democratic party is dying.”“Our system often tells people to wait their turn,” Elkind said. “And look where we are.”A Rhodes scholar, Elkind founded the non-profit food delivery service Invisible Hands during the pandemic. He says that work – along with own experiences as a young person living in one of the most expensive cities in the world – would shape his approach to the job.Like many his age, Elkind doesn’t have health insurance. When he recently went to get a vaccine and was told it would cost $500, “I turned my ass around,” he quipped. “But look, that’s the day-to-day lived reality of a whole lot of people in this country.”View image in fullscreenA spokesperson for Nadler emphasized the congressman’s political strength, noting that he won his most recent election with 80% of the vote.“But this is the great thing about America, it’s a democracy – hopefully still – and anybody can run,” Robert Gottheim, the spokesperson, said, adding that Nadler would “put his over-30-year record of accomplishments against anyone including someone who appears to have no record of accomplishment to speak of”.Elkind said he voted for Nadler and respected his long record as a progressive voice for New York. But, he argued, the moment demands new energy and a break from the past.“The house is on fire, and we need leaders who can meet this moment,” he said. “We deserve to know that the next time a child is kidnapped off of our streets, that our congressman will be on that street in the next hour with a megaphone demanding that child’s release and then will travel to whatever foreign gulag the president has decided to stash that kid in.” More
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Schwarzenegger’s mission: terminate partisan rigging of California’s electoral maps
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 August 2025, 10:00
Arnold Schwarzenegger brags in his X profile that “I killed the Predator”, but even he was shocked when, as the freshly elected governor of California more than 20 years ago, he saw how unfairly the state’s electoral boundaries were carved up.One district in the eastern part of the state had such a long, thin middle section it was nicknamed the “swan”. Another was known as the “Jesus district” because you had to walk on water to get from one side to the other. Yet another, in LA’s San Fernando Valley, was memorably described by the Stanford law professor Pam Karlan as “a ghastly-looking, multi-headed, insect-like polygon with 385 sides”.This was the time-honored dark art of gerrymandering, practiced in state after state by whichever party happened to have a majority in the state legislature and wanted to keep things that way. To Schwarzenegger, though, a political neophyte after his long career as a Hollywood action hero, it looked a lot like election-rigging.“For a long time I thought that was something that happened way back in the 1800s,” Schwarzenegger said in a 2005 address to the state, “but the practice is still alive and well today.”What shocked Schwarzenegger was not that Democrats, then as now in control of the state legislature, were stealing seats from Republicans. (Decades earlier, Republicans had done much the same in the opposite direction.) It was, rather, that gerrymandering neutered the power of people’s votes. The year before his speech, in 2004, not a single one of California’s 153 congressional and state legislative seats changed party hands.“What kind of democracy is that?” he asked.It was an unusual question for any US politician to ask – most elected officials, of both parties, accepted gerrymandering back then as part of the price of doing business – and it set Schwarzenegger on a reformist path he has never relinquished.First, he proposed appointing a panel of judges to take over from the state legislature in redrawing district lines. When that was rejected by voters, he advocated instead for an independent redistricting commission, which began redrawing state legislative lines in 2008 and congressional district lines in 2010 – a reform that has proved enduringly popular with voters and has made California one of the most competitive states in the union for seats in the US House of Representatives.It’s a legacy Schwarzenegger has no intention of relinquishing, not even now that Texas Republicans, acting on the orders of Donald Trump, have redrawn their state maps to add another five Republican-leaning congressional districts, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has vowed to “fight fire with fire” with an initiative to suspend California’s independent commission and add five Democrat-leaning districts in the Golden state.“I’m not going to go back on my promise,” Schwarzenegger told the New York Times last week. “I’m going to fight for my promise.”Schwarzenegger, a rare moderate Republican in an increasingly radical party, is an outspoken Trump critic and said he hated what the president had asked the Texas Republicans to do.But, he said, sinking to the same level in California was no answer, and it made no difference to him that Newsom was pitching his plan as a temporary arrangement. “We are not going to go into a stinking contest with a skunk,” he said. “We are moving forward.”To underline that he meant business, Schwarzenegger appeared for the interview – and later in a post on X – in a T-shirt that read: “F*** the politicians, terminate gerrymandering.”Thus the stage is set for a showdown between the current California governor, who will take his emergency redistricting proposal to voters in November, and the formidable former holder of the same office.Already, Schwarzenegger has started tapping into his old political networks to set up a campaign and fundraising machine to thwart Newsom, and according to his staff he is planning a major policy address – in effect, a campaign launch – sometime in September.The issue is energizing Republicans across California. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, has ambitions to raise more than $100m to defeat Newsom’s Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act. Charles Munger Jr, the billionaire son of Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner Charles Munger Sr, is reported to have pledged $30m towards the same effort.The California Young Republican Federation has described Newsom’s initiative as a “dangerous power grab” – echoing almost exactly Democratic rhetoric about the Trump-inspired gerrymander in Texas – and Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate running to succeed Newsom next year, is helping to spearhead a legal challenge.Hilton argues that the independent redistricting commission was already skewed unfairly in favour of the Democrats, since Republicans won a little under 40% of vote in California last November but hold just 17% of California’s 52 House seats.“If we had truly independent districting and fair representation, Republicans would have an extra 12 House seats today,” Hilton says, rounding the number in his party’s favour. (Commissioners would counter that he is overlooking a handful of highly competitive races in Republican-leaning districts that Democrats won by narrow margins.)View image in fullscreenThe first polls on Newsom’s initiative are inconclusive, with voters seemingly split between liking independently drawn districts and a narrow plurality – especially Democrats – understanding the desire to counter what the Republicans are doing in Texas. Independents and Republicans are far more skeptical, if not outright hostile.Still, the campaign to stop Newsom will start at an inherent disadvantage, since Democrats have not lost a statewide election since 2006 and California voters, while not as liberal as Republican politicians sometimes like to portray them, have consistently shown a visceral dislike of all things Trump.Schwarzenegger is likely to be the most powerful weapon in the anti-Newsom arsenal, because he has no fondness for Trump and because his embrace of independently drawn electoral boundaries transcends any partisan allegiance. Since leaving office in 2010 he has campaigned in favour of independent commissions around the country – in states that lean both blue and red – and has spoken outside the supreme court when the justices have considered gerrymandering cases.He is also likely to serve as a bridge between Republican partisans and civic groups like the League of Women Voters of California, which views Newsom’s initiative as a slippery slope from which there may be no easy recovery.“Temporary exceptions rarely stay temporary,” the League warned in a statement. “Once you break a safeguard, you don’t just risk one or two or three elections, you set a precedent that future politicians can and will use again … Long-term damage to democratic norms will outlast any short-term gain.”California’s state legislature voted on Thursday to put Newsom’s initiative on the ballot but, after Texas voted to finalize its own maps, stripped out language that would have automatically abandoned California’s proposed partisan gerrymander if Texas chose to reverse course. Democratic lawmakers argued the escape clause was unnecessary because the Texas legislature had already acted. But scrapping it may also create the perception that Democrats, who enjoy a supermajority in the state legislature, have lost interest in playing fair – exactly the scenario Schwarzenegger warned against back in 2005.“The system is rigged to benefit the interests of those in office … not the interests of those who put them there,” he said then. “And we must reform it.” More

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