Newsom imitates Trump at CA redistricting kickoff

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday parodied some of President Donald Trump’s greatest hits as he attempted to drum up support to counter potential Republican gains in the next midterm election by redrawing California’s own congressional districts.

The maps? They’re “beautiful,” according to the Governor’s Office. We’re supposed to see them later today when Newsom releases them.

Newsom’s rally? It was a “big beautiful press conference.”

The redistricting plan? It’s California’s “liberation day” and voters will see it on their ballots as the “Election Rigging Response Act,” according to Newsom. 

The imitation highlights the political warfare waging between both parties, as California Democrats push for a mid-cycle redistricting campaign that would mirror and offset Republicans’ efforts in Texas.

• Newsom: “(Trump) doesn’t believe in the rules. And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done.”

California relies on an independent redistricting commission that meets every decade to draw electoral boundaries. Newsom’s plan would sidestep the commission temporarily through the 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles by allowing voters to approve or reject new maps at a Nov. 4 special election. California would then revert to the commission’s authority after the 2030 census.

The Legislature will need a two-thirds vote to place the measure on the ballot. State lawmakers will take up the matter when they return from break on Aug. 18.

California Republicans are in lockstep against it, calling it a Democratic power grab that will drain taxpayers of a quarter billion dollars.

Common Cause, a good governance watchdog group that opposes gerrymandering and initially criticized California’s redistricting efforts, eased its stance earlier this week. Arguing that there are “authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation,” the group said it now neither endorses nor condemns California’s countermeasures.

It was a dilemma Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Culver City Democrat, remarked upon during Thursday’s event, when he said that California and American voters should generally oppose gerrymandering.

• Bryan: “We absolutely should. That’s not what this is about. This is about whether we will let the authoritarian in the White House break our democracy — while we sit silent, while we take a high road that doesn’t exist anymore.”

From CalMatters economy reporter Levi Sumagaysay:

California’s labor market is showing more signs of stress after high-profile immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this summer.

Californians — citizens and noncitizens alike — reported a decline in work for the second month in a row since the Trump administration’s immigration raids in the state began in June, according to UC Merced researchers. 

The researchers found a 4.9% drop in the number of Californians reporting work from May to July, the period of the most intense immigration sweeps.

The number of Latinos who reported work during this period fell 8%, followed by Blacks (5.6%), Asians (5.2%) and whites (3.4%). The state’s U.S. citizens saw a bigger drop in the number of workers (equivalent to a loss of 414,832) than noncitizens (327,659), but noncitizens saw a bigger percentage drop (12.3% vs. 3.3%). 

Last month, the researchers released their first analysis of U.S. Census Bureau survey data to show the effects of the immigration sweeps on the state’s private sector employment. The 3.1% drop in employment from May to June was second only to the surge in job loss during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly survey that asks members of a sampling of households about whether they worked the week before. That’s different from monthly unemployment numbers, which is a percentage that’s also based on the survey but does not include people who have not looked for work in the past four weeks. 

Despite the millions of dollars state and federal leaders poured over the last 10 years into increasing the number of women pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, the rate of women who attain degrees in certain STEM fields did not improve much, writes CalMatters’ Adam Echelman.

Data comparing California’s four-year colleges from the 2009-10 school year to 2022-23 — analyzed by the Public Policy Institute of California on behalf of CalMatters — found that while the percentages of women who received bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science increased, women graduating with a degree in math and statistics has decreased in the last five years. 

A separate study by Mount Saint Mary’s University also found that although women compose about 42% of California’s workforce, they make up just a quarter of those working in STEM careers.

The situation isn’t likely to improve: Since Trump’s return to the White House, the federal government has made deep cuts to scientific research at California universities, including suspending hundreds of grants to UCLA, and has curbed federal efforts that advanced diversity, equity and inclusion.

Read more here.

Federal agents arrested hundreds of workers during immigration sweeps in July at a California cannabis company. CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on the cannabis industry’s fresh uncertainty over federal enforcement as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.