Free Republic

Gavin Newsom is letting the Chinese buy up Pacific Palisades land.. American contractor works in both the Pacific Palisades and Altadena area and confirms Chinese nationals are calling him and asking to buy up 5-6 lots at a time He says China is buying so many properties, it’s “going to turn both Altadena and Pacific Palisades into the type of neighborhoods where you drive down and all of the signage is in Chinese.” “Do you know who's buying up all of the property in the LA fire zones? It's the Chinese. And I've avoided saying this for a while because...

Democrats rigged the 2020 Census. There are 20-30 Democrat seats in the House that would NOT exist if illegals weren't counted. Let's fix this.

Indefensible.. In a baffling turn of events, the media actually questioned whether Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is really qualified to be the standard bearer against gerrymandering on account of his state being more rigged than a south side backroom poker game. KRISTEN WELKER: I do want to look at the map of Illinois. Let’s take a look at this: despite President Trump winning 44% of the statewide vote in 2024, Republicans hold only three of Illinois’s 17 districts. These districts seem to be to maximize Democratic advantage. What do you say to those who argue that it’s hypocritical for you...

How asinine. Despite Republicans constituting 38% of the vote in California, Gov. @GavinNewsom recently redistricted to give Democrats 82% of the congressional seats (providing Republicans only 9 out of 52 seats) - a 20% advantage. Now, even though California’s constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting and is done by an “independent” commission, he wants to gerrymander further. That’s what should be “shocking.” According to the Texas Democrats that fled our state (without calling out what California and other blue states have done), if Republicans do redistricting, it’s a threat to democracy. Yet, if Democrats do redistricting, it’s democracy itself. How disingenuous and...

Let’s take a tour of the 13th Congressional District in Illinois. It starts in East St. Louis and then moves steadily north. By the time it gets to Springfield, home of Abraham Lincoln, about 90 miles away, it takes a sharp turn to the east, reaching Decatur and finally Champaign, itself about 80 miles away from Springfield. It’s a jagged, narrow strip of territory with no obvious rhyme or reason as it traverses six counties. It’s less a congressional district than a road trip, and bears a resemblance to the original gerrymander, a long, salamander-like state Senate district in Massachusetts...

Senator Adam Schiff is under criminal investigation by the US Attorney in Maryland for mortgage fraud

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Tuesday that he would file to vacate Democrat seats if they did not return to vote by the end of the week. He declared that breaking quorum constitutes an abandonment of office. Paxton said this on X: “I will seek judicial orders declaring that runaway Democrats who fail to appear by the Speaker’s deadline have vacated their office,” Paxton said in a statement. “The people of Texas elected lawmakers, not jet-setting runaways looking for headlines,” he added. “If you don’t show up to work, you get fired.” Texas State House Speaker Dustin Burrows...

Governor Greg Abbott today filed an emergency petition in the Supreme Court of Texas seeking to remove from office Texas State Representative Gene Wu, the ringleader of the derelict Democrats who fled the state to break quorum. "I made clear in a formal statement on Sunday, August 3, that if the Texas House Democrats were not in attendance when the House reconvened at 3:00 PM on Monday, August 4, then action would be taken to seek their removal," said Governor Abbott. "They have not returned and have not met the quorum requirements. Representative Wu and the other Texas House Democrats...

As New Yorkers mourned the victims of a mass shooting last week in a midtown Manhattan office building, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, inserted himself into the discourse. His comments concerned a photo taken Thursday of Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, sitting on a folding chair inside a mosque, next to Mayor Eric Adams. To her left, men in kurtas and police uniforms kneel on a carpeted floor. Hochul wears a dark pantsuit, a somber expression and, on her head, a black scarf looped over her hair. After an anonymous social media user posted the photo and asked...

California Democrats are considering new political maps that could slash five Republican-held House seats in the liberal-leaning state while bolstering Democratic incumbents in other battleground districts. The move comes in direct response to efforts by Texas Republicans to redraw House districts in order to strengthen the GOP hold on the chamber in 2026. A draft plan that’s circulating aims to boost the Democratic margin to 48 of California’s 52 congressional seats, according to a source familiar with the plan who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. That’s up from the 43 seats the party now holds. It would need...

Redistricting reform could die as it becomes another polarizing and partisan blood sport.David Daley is author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.”The 2026 midterms might not be decided by tariffs, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings or even Sydney Sweeney’s divisive American Eagle ad — but by gerrymandering. Just a handful of seats separate the two parties, and first Republicans and now Democrats are angling for more before votes are cast.Texas Republicans stand ready to adopt a new map that could award them as many as five additional...

Former President Obama on Tuesday blasted the Texas GOP’s attempts to redraw the Lone Star State’s congressional lines as “a power grab” that threatens democracy. “We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy,” Obama said in a post on the social platform X. The former president shared a post from All On The Line, a campaign affiliated with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), promoting a virtual event on redistricting.

Texas: Your vote matters—and so does your map. And right now, power-hungry politicians are trying to gerrymander it to silence your voices. Join @RedistrictFdn for a virtual event to learn how redistricting shapes your vote—and how you can take action. 🔗https://x.com/RedistrictFdn

Texas Democrats have fled the state. They don’t want to give the state legislature a quorum to pass a congressional map that favors Republicans. So, they decided to seek refuge in Illinois, a gerrymandered state in the country. The irony is almost as bad as the MLB moving the All-Star game out of Atlanta in 2021 over Georgia’s voter integrity laws. The game was held in Colorado that year, a state with voter ID laws. Gerrymandering did not begin under Donald Trump, which seems to ooze from all the whining and shouting from Democrats about the Texas map. The good...

The Democrats of Texas protesting against gerrymandering by fleeing to Massachusetts -- 40% GOP vote, ZERO GOP members of Congress, 12% state house representation -- is *chef's kiss*! ... Massachusetts put the Gerry in Gerrymander!

ALBANY, N.Y. (WRGB) — A redistricting showdown in Texas is now spilling into New York State and other states, with a group of Texas Democrats fleeing to Albany in an effort to block what they call a dangerous and partisan power grab. More than 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers walked out of the legislative session in Austin this week, effectively denying a quorum needed to pass a controversial mid-decade congressional redistricting plan.

The gerrymander in California is outrageous.. Of their 52 congressional districts, 9 of them are Republican. That means 17 percent of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40 percent of the vote in that state. How can this possibly be allowed?

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday confirmed he's seriously considering two options to try to redraw California's congressional districts to get more Democrats elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The update comes after President Donald Trump earlier this week urged Republican state lawmakers in Texas to help the party pick up five seats in that state. Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the state Legislature to discuss redistricting in an upcoming special legislative session. Unlike Texas, the California Legislature does not draw district maps. Every 10 years, the state's independent redistricting commission undertakes the work through a lengthy, citizen-led process. Voters...

Congratulations to Democrats who on Tuesday significantly increased their odds of picking up at least four House seats next November—thanks to New York’s Court of Appeals. A progressive 4-3 majority on the state’s high court bowed to the left and threw out the current court-ordered House map that was the most politically competitive in decades. The Legislature’s House map gave Democrats an edge in 22 of 26 seats, or 85%—significantly more than Joe Biden’s 61% vote share in 2020. We’ve long argued that proportional representation shouldn’t be required in map-making, but the Legislature’s disfigured districts were an egregious gerrymander that...

A new Republican majority on the state Supreme Court is making its preferences known. I’m not certain North Carolina has become the most anti-democratic state in the union. But over the past dozen years, we’ve surely joined the hunt. Our General Assembly has enacted, according to reviewing judges, among the largest, most pervasive racial gerrymanders ever presented to a federal court. Lawmakers used “surgical precision” to deny Black Tar Heels the right to vote. They created the most bald-faced and unrepentant political gerrymanders seen in modern America. They’ve effectively overturned municipal elections when they didn’t like the outcome. And they...