Republican

Nov. 29 (UPI) — Rep. Troy Hehls, R-Texas, on Saturday announced he will not seek re-election in 2026 and will retire from Congress and focus on his family.

Nehls, 57, since 2021 has represented Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, which is situated southwest of Houston and includes parts of Sugar Land, Richmond and Rosenberg, among other Texas communities.

“I have made the decision, after conversations with my beautiful bride and my girls over the Thanksgiving holiday, to focus on my family and return home after this Congress,” he said Saturday in a post on X.

“Before making this decision, I called President Trump personally to let him know of my plans,” he continued.

“President Trump has always been a strong ally for our district and a true friend, and I wanted him to hear it from me first,” Nehls added.

“Serving this country in the military, serving our community in law enforcement and serving this district in Congress has been the honor of my life.”

Nehls enlisted in the Army Reserve in 1988 and earned two Bronze Stars while serving in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He joined the Richmond (Texas) Police Department in 1994 and was elected sheriff of Fort Bend County in 2012, before winning the 2020 House election.

His announced retirement is among several made recently by Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Nehls’ twin brother, Trever Nehls, already announced his candidacy for the seat and has been endorsed by Troy.

LA28, the committee behind the Olympic Games coming to Los Angeles, quietly added to its roster of directors some high-profile Republicans with ties to President Trump.

The 35-member volunteer board of directors now includes notable Republican political figures Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Reince Priebus, who was Trump’s chief of staff during his first term. Before his role in the White House, Priebus served as the longtime chair of the Republican National Committee.

Diane Hendricks, a major GOP donor who has given millions to Trump’s campaigns, and Patrick Dumont, who owns the Dallas Mavericks and is the son-in-law of another major Trump donor, were also added to the board. Ken Moelis, an investment banker who worked with Trump in the 1990s and predicted the businessman would win the presidency in 2016, is also listed as a board member.

The Trump-adjacent inflow to the board of directors, first reported by Politico, is the latest sign of the president’s involvement in the major Los Angeles event.

It is not clear why the decision was made to expand the board of directors and how the individuals were selected. A spokesperson for LA28 did not immediately respond to The Times’ questions Thursday about the move.

Kevin McCarthy

(Associated Press)

Los Angeles business consultant Denita Willoughby and philanthropist Maria Hummer-Tuttle are also newly listed as board members.

“We are thrilled to welcome this accomplished group to the LA28 Board who will help create an unforgettable Games for athletes and fans alike,” Casey Wasserman, the chair of the 2028 L.A. Olympics organizing committee, wrote in a statement.

Wasserman could not immediately be reached by The Times for further comment.

Although past presidents have taken a largely ceremonial role in Olympics that have been held on U.S. soil, there are signs that Trump is seeking a more active role in the Games, which will occur in his final year as president.

In August, he signed an executive order naming him chair of a White House task force on the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. The president views the Games as “a premier opportunity to showcase American exceptionalism,” according to a White House statement. Trump, the administration said, “is taking every opportunity to showcase American greatness on the world stage.”

Trump at the time noted that he’d be willing to send the military back to Los Angeles to protect the Games. In June, he sent the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city amid escalating immigration enforcement actions, prompting pushback from Mayor Karen Bass.

Wasserman attended the signing at the White House in August and thanked Trump for “leaning in” to planning for the Olympics, which he said is akin to hosting seven Super Bowls a day for 30 days.

“You’ve been supportive and helpful every step of the way,” Wasserman told the president at the time. “With the creation of this task force, we’ve unlocked the opportunity to level up our planning and deliver the largest and, yes, greatest Games for our nation, ever.”

WASHINGTON — When President Trump doesn’t like someone, he knows how to show it. In just the last few days, he’s described Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a traitor, mocked Rep. Thomas Massie’s second marriage after his first wife died and demanded that comedian Seth Meyers get fired from his late-night television show.

But he had nothing bad to say about two people roiling his party: white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, where he declined to challenge his guest’s bigoted beliefs or a remark about problems with “organized Jewry in America.”

Asked about the controversy that has been rippling through Republican circles for weeks, Trump did not criticize Fuentes and praised Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years.”

The president’s answer echoes his longstanding reluctance to disavow — and sometimes, his willingness to embrace — right-wing figures who have inched their way from the political fringe to the Republican mainstream.

“We are disappointed in President Trump,” said Morton Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, adding that he should “rethink and retract” his comments.

The threat of antisemitism, which has percolated across the political spectrum, will likely be a recurring political issue in the coming year, as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of Congress in the midterms. Although Trump has targeted left-wing campus activism as a hive of anti-Jewish sentiment, Fuentes’ influence is a test of whether conservatives are willing to accommodate bigots as part of their political coalition.

A top conservative group faces antisemitism controversy

The turmoil has already engulfed the Heritage Foundation, a leading think tank whose president Kevin Roberts initially refused to distance himself from Carlson. A member of Heritage’s board of trustees, Robert George, announced his resignation Monday, which followed a recent decision by an antisemitism task force to sever its ties with the organization.

Although Roberts has apologized, George said “we reached an impasse” because he didn’t fully retract his original support for Carlson.

“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,’” George wrote on Facebook, quoting the Declaration of Independence.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, an evangelical conservative activist and film producer, joined Heritage’s antisemitism task force in June but stepped away when Roberts refused to resign.

“If we aren’t solid on condemning antisemitism, shame on us,” she said Monday.

Cardoza-Moore praised Trump’s record on supporting Israel but said he fell short on Sunday while talking about Carlson and Fuentes.

“We can all agree — and I wish — that he would have gone further,” she said.

It’s unclear what kind of pressure Trump will face despite his previous dalliance with Fuentes, who had dinner with the past-and-future president at his Mar-a-Lago club in between his two terms.

“I don’t think President Trump during his first or second term could be acting more strongly to prevent antisemitism,” said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He noted Trump’s first-term relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and, more recently, the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.

This is not the first time Trump has shied away from criticizing fringe elements on the right. During his first campaign for president, Trump initially declined to disavow support from white nationalist David Duke, saying, “I just don’t know anything about him.”

He claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” during racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. While running for reelection, he told the extremist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

Trump’s unwillingness to condemn either Fuentes or Carlson has the potential to prolong a rift within the Republican Party. On Sunday, as he prepared to fly back to Washington from a weekend in Florida, Trump praised Carlson and said “you can’t tell him who to interview.”

“If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”

Fuentes liked what he heard, posting “Thank you Mr. President!” on social media.

Trump’s remarks run counter to a wave of objections that have flowed from key Republicans. The issue will be the focus of a planned gathering of pro-Israel conservative leaders on Tuesday in Washington called “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right.”

The event features U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America.

Perkins said the event has been discussed for some time. “But with recent comments by folks like Tucker, there was an urgency to go ahead and hold the conference,” he said.

The recent annual summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas was similarly focused on condemning antisemitism within the party, a shift from the original plans to celebrate the ceasefire in Gaza and the return of Hamas-held hostages.

Brooks said at the time, “We are at this point in what I consider sort of the early stages of an undeclared civil war within the Republican Party, as it relates to Israel, and antisemitism and the Jewish community.”

“And it’s really going to be our challenge going forward to combat that before it has a chance to grow and metastasize in the Republican Party,” Brooks said.

During one part of the conference, college students waved red signs that read, “Tucker is not MAGA.”

Trump addressed the summit by prerecorded video, using his time to promote his administration’s support for Israel. He did not mention the controversy that had dominated the conference.

Megerian and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The House is poised to vote overwhelmingly on Tuesday to demand the Justice Department release all documents tied to its investigation of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

President Trump, who initially worked to thwart the vote before reversing course on Sunday night, has said he will sign the measure if it reaches his desk. For that to happen, the bill will also need to pass the Senate, which could consider the measure as soon as Tuesday night.

Republicans for months pushed back on the release of the Epstein files, joining Trump in claiming the Epstein issue was being brought up by Democrats as a way to distract from Republicans’ legislative successes.

But that all seismically shifted Sunday when Trump had a drastic reversal and urged Republicans to vote to release the documents, saying there was “nothing to hide.”

“It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The reversal came days after 20,000 documents from Epstein’s private estate were released by lawmakers in the House Oversight Committee. The files referenced Trump more than 1,000 times.

In private emails, Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours” at his house and “knew about the girls,” a revelation that reignited the push in Congress for further disclosures.

Trump has continued to deny wrongdoing in the Epstein saga despite opposing the release of files from the federal probe into the conduct of his former friend, a convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker. He died by suicide while in federal custody in 2019.

Many members of Trump’s MAGA base have demanded the files be released, convinced they contain revelations about powerful people involved in Epstein’s abuse of what is believed to be more than 200 women and girls. Tension among his base spiked when Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in July that an “Epstein client list” did not exist, after saying in February that the list was sitting on her desk awaiting review. She later said she was referring to the Epstein files more generally.

Trump’s call to release the files now highlights how he is trying to prevent an embarrassing defeat as a growing number of Republicans in the House have joined Democrats to vote for the legislation in recent days.

The Epstein files have been a hugely divisive congressional fight in recent months, with Democrats pushing the release, but Republican congressional leaders largely refusing to take the votes. The issue even led to a rift within the MAGA movement, and Trump to cut ties with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia who had long been an ardent support of the president.

“Watching this actually turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart,” Greene said at a news conference Tuesday in reference to the resistance to release the files.

Democrats have accused Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of delaying the swearing-in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, because she promised to cast the final vote needed to move a so-called discharge petition, which would force a vote on the floor. Johnson has denied those claims.

If the House and Senate do vote to release the files, all eyes will turn to the Department of Justice, and what exactly it will choose to publicly release.

“The fight, the real fight, will happen after that,” Greene said. “The real test will be: Will the Department of Justice release the files? Or will it all remain tied up in an investigation?”

Several Epstein survivors joined lawmakers at the news conference to talk about how important the vote was for them.

Haley Robson, one of the survivors, questioned Trump’s resistance to the vote even now as he supports it.

“While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is,” Robson said.

If signed into law by Trump, the bill would prohibit the attorney general, Bondi, from withholding, delaying or redacting “any record, document, communication, or investigative material on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

But caveats in the bill could provide Trump and Bondi with loopholes to keep records related to the president concealed.

In the spring, FBI Director Kash Patel directed a Freedom of Information Act team to comb through the entire trove of files from the investigation, and ordered it to redact references to Trump, citing his status as a private citizen with privacy protections when the probe first launched in 2006, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said the Trump administration will be forced to release the files with an act of Congress.

“They will be breaking the law if they do not release these files,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and Republican lawmakers took a victory lap on Tuesday after securing bipartisan support to reopen the government, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history without ceding ground to any core Democratic demands.

House members were converging on Washington for a final vote expected as early as Wednesday, after 60 senators — including seven Democrats and an independent — advanced the measure on Monday night. Most Democratic lawmakers in the House are expected to oppose the continuing resolution, which does not include an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits that had been a central demand during the shutdown negotiations.

The result, according to independent analysts, is that premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, rising from an average of $888 to $1,904 for out-of-pocket payments annually, according to KFF.

Democrats in the Senate who voted to reopen the government said they had secured a promise from Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, that they would get a vote on extending the tax credits next month.

But the vote is likely to fail down party lines. And even if it earned some Republican support, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has made no promises he would give the measure a vote in the lower chamber.

An end to the shutdown comes at a crucial time for the U.S. aviation industry ahead of one of the busiest travel seasons around the Thanksgiving holiday. The prolonged closure of the federal government led federal employees in the sector to call out sick in large numbers, prompting an unprecedented directive from the Federation Aviation Administration that slowed operations at the nation’s biggest airports.

Lawmakers are racing to vote before federal employees working in aviation safety miss yet another paycheck this week, potentially extending frustration within their ranks and causing further delays at airports entering the upcoming holiday week.

It will be the first time the House conducts legislative work in over 50 days, a marathon stretch that has resulted in a backlog of work for lawmakers on a wide range of issues, from appropriations and stock trading regulations to a discharge petition calling for the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

“We look forward to the government reopening this week so Congress can get back to our regular legislative session,” Johnson told reporters Monday. “There will be long days and long nights here for the foreseeable future to make up for all this lost time that was imposed upon us.”

To reopen the government, the spending package needs to pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority and Democrats have vowed to vote against a deal that does not address healthcare costs.

Still, Trump and Republican leaders believe they have enough votes to push it through the chamber and reopen the government later in the week.

Trump has called the spending package a “very good” deal and has indicated that he will sign it once it gets to his desk.

At a Veterans Day event on Tuesday, Trump thanked Thune and Johnson for their work on their work to reopen the government. Johnson was in the crowd listening to Trump’s remarks.

“Congratulations to you and to John and to everybody on a very big victory,” Trump said in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery. “We are opening back our country. It should’ve never been closed.”

While Trump lauded the measure as a done deal, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the chamber, said his party would still try to delay or tank the legislation with whatever tools it had left.

“House Democrats will strongly oppose any legislation that does not decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jeffries said in a CNN interview Tuesday morning.

Just like in the Senate, California Democrats in the House are expected to vote against the shutdown deal because it does not address the expiring healthcare subsidies.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi said the shutdown deal reached in the Senate “fails to meet the needs of America’s working families” and said she stood with House Democratic leaders in opposing the legislation.

“We must continue to fight for a responsible, bipartisan path forward that reopens the government and keeps healthcare affordable for the American people,” Pelosi said in a social media post.

California Republicans in the House, meanwhile, have criticized Democrats for trying to stop the funding agreement from passing.

“These extremists only care about their radical base regardless of the impact to America,” Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona said in a social media post.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) publicly called on Johnson to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare during the shutdown. He said in an interview last month that he thought there was “a lot of room” to address concerns on both sides of the aisle on how to address the rising costs of healthcare.

Kiley said Monday that he was proposing legislation with Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José) that proposed extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits for another two years.

He said the bill would “stop massive increase in healthcare costs for 22 million Americans whose premium tax credits are about to expire.”

“Importantly, the extension is temporary and fully paid for, so it can’t increase the deficit,” Kiley said in reference to a frequent concern cited by Republicans that extending the credits would contribute to the national debt.

Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve funding bill to re-open US federal government in coming days.

United States President Donald Trump has called the looming end of the government shutdown a “big victory” after the Senate passed a bill to fund federal agencies.

Trump congratulated Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday for the soon-to-be-approved funding bill.

“Congratulations to you and to John and to everybody on a very big victory,” Trump said, addressing Johnson at a Veterans Day event.

“We’re opening up our country — should have never been closed.”

The US president’s comments signal that he views the shutdown crisis as a political win for his Republican Party, which is set to end the budgeting impasse in Congress without meeting the Democrats’ key demand: extending healthcare subsidies.

The Senate passed the funding bill late on Monday in a 60-40 vote that saw eight members of the Democratic caucus backing the proposal.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to pass the budget in the coming days to end the shutdown, which has been the longest in US history. Assuming the House approves the bill, it will then go to Trump’s desk, and the president is expected to sign it into law.

In the US system, Congress is tasked with funding the government.

If lawmakers fail to pass a budget, the federal government goes into shutdown mode, where it stops paying most employees and sends non-essential workers home.

The current shutdown started on October 1.

Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, but their narrow majority in the Senate had previously prevented them from passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

In the 100-seat Senate, major legislation must generally be passed with at least 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, a legislative procedure that allows the minority party to block bills it opposes.

The Democratic caucus holds 47 seats in the chamber, which allowed it to successfully wield the filibuster until this week’s divisive vote.

Until Monday, Democrats had largely been united in opposition to the Republicans’ funding bill. They had previously maintained they would only approve government funding if the bill included provisions to extend healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Those subsidies, Democrats argued, help millions of Americans afford their medical insurance.

But Trump had threatened to ramp up the pressure against Democrats by cutting programmes he associated with their party.

During the shutdown, for example, Trump tried to withhold food benefits for low-income families – a policy that is being challenged in the courts.

The shutdown crisis has also led to flight delays and cancellations across the country due to a shortage of available air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay.

Monday’s Senate vote paved the way for a resolution to the crisis. But it has sparked infighting amongst Democrats, with segments of the party voicing disappointment with senators who backed the bill.

The issue has also intensified criticism against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted against the proposal but failed to keep his caucus united in opposition to it.

“Sen. Schumer has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said in a social media post on Monday.

“Schumer should step down.”

Senator John Fetterman, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, defended his vote on Tuesday.

“When you’re confronting mass, mass chaos, you know, I don’t think you should respond with more chaos, or fight with more chaos,” Fetterman told the ABC talk show The View. “It’s like, no, we need to be the party of order and logic.”

NEW YORK — U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a close Republican ally of President Trump, announced Friday that she’s running for governor of New York, a place she depicted in a campaign launch video as being “in ashes” because of lawlessness and a high cost of living.

In her video, a narrator declares “The Empire State has fallen” as it paints a grim picture of urban, liberal leadership and life in New York City, though the message appeared to be aimed at audiences in other, more conservative parts of the state.

Her candidacy sets up a potential battle with Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, though both candidates would have to first clear the field of any intraparty rivals before next November’s election.

Stefanik, 41, has teased a run for months, often castigating Hochul, 67, as the “worst governor in America.” She’s also assailed Hochul for endorsing the ascendent, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, now the mayor-elect of New York City.

In a written statement, Stefanik said she is running to make “New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state.”

“Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to Fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to Save New York,” she said.

Hochul’s campaign released its own attack ad Friday against the Republican, dubbing her “Sellout Stefanik,” and blamed her for enabling Trump’s tariffs and federal funding cuts to education and health care.

“Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn’t enough — now she’s trying to bring Trump’s chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state,” said Hochul campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika.

Representing a conservative congressional district in northern New York, Stefanik had once been a pragmatic and moderate Republican who would avoid uttering Trump’s name, simply calling him “my party’s presidential nominee.”

But in recent years she has reshaped herself into a brash disciple and ardent defender of Trump’s MAGA movement, rising through the ranks of the Republican Party’s congressional hierarchy as it molded to Trump’s political style.

Last year, Stefanik was tapped to become the president’s ambassador to the United Nations, though her nomination was later pulled over concerns about her party’s tight margins in the House. She then began to angle toward a run for governor, and very quickly got a public nod of support from Trump.

Her announcement video, which was titled “From the Ashes,” casts New York as a dangerous place plagued by “migrant crime” and economic crisis, placing the blame on “Kathy Hochul’s failed policies,” as urgent, ominous music plays in the background.

New York City police officials have long touted drops in crime and this week said the city is in its eighth consecutive quarter of major crime decline.

The Republican primary field remains unclear ahead of the 2026 race.

On Long Island, Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has said he’s weighing a run for governor. In a statement Friday, he said he has “tremendous respect” for Stefanik but that the GOP needs to nominate a candidate who has “broad based appeal with independents and common sense Democrats.”

“The party must nominate the candidate with the best chance to defeat Kathy Hochul and I have been urged by business, community and political leaders across the state to make the run and I am seriously considering it,” said Blakeman, who handily won reelection to another four-year term on Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler had been contemplating a run but instead decided to seek reelection in his battleground House district in the Hudson Valley.

Hochul faces a contested primary, with her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, running against her.

Democrats have a major voter registration edge in New York. The state’s last Republican governor was former Gov. George Pataki, who left office about two decades ago.

Still, Republican Lee Zeldin, a former Long Island congressman and current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a serious run for the office in 2022, coming within striking distance of upsetting Hochul.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration are increasingly anxious that an ongoing standoff with Democrats over reopening the government may drag into Thanksgiving week, one of the country’s busiest travel periods.

Already, hundreds of flights have been canceled since the Federal Aviation Administration issued an unprecedented directive limiting flight operations at the nation’s biggest airports, including in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Washington, D.C.

Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, told Fox News on Thursday that the administration is prepared to mitigate safety concerns if the shutdown continues into the holiday week, leaving air traffic controllers without compensation over multiple payroll cycles. But “will you fly on time? Will your flight actually go? That is yet to be seen,” the secretary said.

While under 3% of flights have currently been grounded, that number could rise to 20% by the holiday week, he added.

“It’s really hard — really hard — to navigate a full month of no pay, missing two pay periods. So I think you’re going to have more significant disruptions in the airspace,” Duffy said. “And as we come into Thanksgiving, if we’re still in a shutdown posture, it’s gonna be rough out there. Really rough.”

Senate Republicans said they are willing to work through the weekend, up through Veterans Day, to come up with an agreement with Democrats that could end the government shutdown, which is already the longest in history.

But congressional Democrats believe their leverage has only grown to extract more concessions from the Trump administration as the shutdown goes on.

A strong showing in races across the country in Tuesday’s elections buoyed optimism among Democrats that the party finally has some momentum, as it focuses its messaging on affordability and a growing cost-of-living crisis for the middle class.

Democrats have withheld the votes needed to reopen the government over Republican refusals to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits. As a result, Americans who get their healthcare through the ACA marketplace have begun seeing dramatic premium hikes since open enrollment began on Nov. 1 — further fueling Democratic confidence that Republicans will face a political backlash for their shutdown stance.

Now, Democratic demands have expanded, insisting Republicans guarantee that federal workers get paid back for their time furloughed or working without pay — and that those who were fired get their jobs back.

A bill introduced by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, called the “Shutdown Fairness Act,” would ensure that federal workers receive back pay during a government funding lapse. But Democrats have objected to a vote on the measure that’s not tied to their other demands, on ACA tax breaks and the status of fired workers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, has proposed passing a clean continuing resolution already passed by the House followed by separate votes on three bills that would fund the government through the year. But his Democratic counterpart said Friday he wants to attach a vote on extending the ACA tax credits to an extension of government funding.

Democrats, joined by some Republicans, are also demanding protections built in to any government spending bills that would safeguard federal programs against the Trump administration withholding funds appropriated by Congress, a process known as impoundment.

President Trump, for his part, blamed the ongoing shutdown for Tuesday’s election results earlier this week, telling Republican lawmakers that polling shows the continuing crisis is hurting their party. But he also continues to advocate for Thune to do away with the filibuster, a core Senate rule requiring 60 votes for bills that fall outside the budget reconciliation process, and simply reopen the government with a vote down party lines.

“If the filibuster is terminated, we will have the most productive three years in the history of our country,” Trump told reporters on Friday at a White House event. “If the filibuster is not terminated, then we will be in a slog, with the Democrats.”

So far, Thune has rejected that request. But the majority leader said Thursday that “the pain this shutdown has caused is only getting worse,” warning that 40 million Americans risk food insecurity as funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program lapses.

The Trump administration lost a court case this week arguing that it could withhold SNAP benefits, a program that was significantly defunded in the president’s “one big beautiful bill” act earlier this year.

“Will the far left not be satisfied until federal workers and military families are getting their Thanksgiving dinner from a food bank? Because that’s where we’re headed,” Thune added.

Republicans are licking their wounds after Tuesday’s ballot box defeats. But there is a lesson to be learned here. The various elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, viewed collectively, reminded us yet again of a perennial political truth: Americans still care first and foremost about their wallets.

Culture war-type issues often generate the most salacious headlines — and many of the Trump administration’s fights on these fronts, such as immigration enforcement and higher education reform, are just and necessary. Still, the economy remains the top political issue. Unless Republicans get more serious about advancing an actionable economic agenda to provide real relief to middle- and working-class Americans, the party risks losing even more ground in next year’s midterm elections.

When voters went to the polls in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, they were often asking the simplest, most urgent questions: Can I pay the rent? Can I fill up my truck at the pump? Can I fill the fridge? Will my job still exist next year? Do I have reliable healthcare for my children? Across too many districts and communities, those answers remain uneasy. Inflation, while well down from its Biden-era peak, is still stubbornly higher than the Fed’s 2% target. Purchasing power is still eroded, and cost-of-living anxieties persist for far too many.

For Republicans, this is both a warning and an opportunity. Despite a concerted effort in recent years to rebrand as the party of the common man, including but hardly limited to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien getting a coveted speaking slot at last year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, too many voters still associate the GOP with tax cuts for the donor class and a general indifference toward the tens of millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s the blunt truth. The perception of corruption in some of the highest corridors of power in Washington, especially when it comes to the influence wielded by the über-wealthy emirate of Qatar, doesn’t exactly assuage voters’ concerns.

If the GOP wants to regain the public’s trust, it must present a compelling vision of what a sound conservative economic stewardship entails in the 21st century.

That redefinition begins with a renewed focus on work, dignity and resilience. The Republican Party must build an economic narrative that centers on taming inflation, boosting wages, rebuilding America’s industrial base and greater healthcare security for the paycheck-to-paycheck class. Conservatives should pursue a pragmatic economic nationalism — one that ties together trade policy, manufacturing, energy production, workforce development and family formation. All proposed economic policies must be explained in concrete, local terms. The relevant questions each and every time should be: How does this policy tangibly benefit the average American, and how can the policy be messaged so that the benefit is clearly understood?

The voters Republicans need to reach are not tuning in to wonky policy seminars. They want results: lower energy bills, affordable groceries, job security and an economy that rewards hard work. The GOP must speak directly to these priorities with honesty and humility.

If economic anxiety persists through next fall’s midterms, voters will punish whichever party appears more indifferent to their struggles. The Trump administration and Republicans across the country need to get to work fast. That means more Trump-signed executive orders, within the confines of the law, that can provide real economic relief and security to the working men and women of America. And it certainly means a concerted congressional attempt to bolster the economic prospects of the middle and working classes, perhaps through the Senate’s annual budget reconciliation process.

Inflation must finally be tamed — including the Fed raising interest rates, contra Trump’s general easy-money instincts, if need truly be. Private health savings account access must be expanded and the ease of acquiring private healthcare must finally be divorced from the particular circumstances of one’s employment. More jobs and supply chains must be reshored. Concerns about child care affordability and parental leave availability must be addressed. And even more of our bountiful domestic energy must be extracted. These are just some of the various policies that voters might reward at the ballot box next fall.

Our searing cultural battles will continue — and they matter, greatly in fact. But when a family can’t afford its groceries or gas, such debates tend to fade into the background. Republicans must rebuild trust with voters on the most fundamental issue in American politics: the promise of economic opportunity and security.

It’s always dangerous to over-extrapolate and glean clear national lessons from a few local elections. But all three of the biggest recent races — for New York City mayor and for New Jersey and Virginia governors — had final winning margins for Democrats greater than most polling suggested. That seems like a clear enough rebuke. Accordingly, the Trump administration and Republicans across the country must deliver real economic results on the real economic issues facing the American people. If they don’t present a compelling economic vision and execute that vision capably and efficiently, there likely will be even greater electoral damage next fall.

That could all but doom the remainder of the Trump presidency. And what a disappointment that would be.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

On Tuesday, I voted for the first time. Not for a president, not in a midterm, but in the California special election to counter Texas Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts. What makes this dynamic particularly fascinating is that both parties are betting on the same demographic — Latino voters.

For years, pundits assumed Latinos were a lock for Democrats. President Obama’s 44-point lead with these voters in 2012 cemented the narrative: “Shifting demographics” (shorthand for more nonwhite voters) would doom Republicans.

But 2016, and especially the 2024 elections, shattered that idea. A year ago, Trump lost the Latino vote by just 3 points, down from 25 in 2020, according to Pew. Trump carried 14 of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border, a majority-Latino region. The shift was so significant that Texas Republicans, under Trump’s direction, are redrawing congressional districts to suppress Democratic representation, betting big that Republican gains made with Latinos can clinch the midterms in November 2026.

To counter Republican gerrymanders in Texas, Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats pushed their own redistricting plans, hoping to send more Democrats to the House. They too are banking on Latino support — but that’s not a sure bet.

Imperial County offers a cautionary tale. This border district is 86% Latino, among the poorest in California, and has long been politically overlooked. It was considered reliably blue for decades; since 1994, it had backed every Democratic presidential candidate until 2024, when Trump narrowly won the district.

Determined to understand the recent shift, during summer break I traveled in Imperial County, interviewing local officials in El Centro, Calexico and other towns. Their insights revealed that the 2024 results weren’t just about immigration or ideology; they were about leadership, values and, above all, economics.

“It was crazy. It was a surprise,” Imperial County Registrar of Voters Linsey Dale told me. She pointed out that the assembly seat that represents much of Imperial County and part of Riverside County flipped to Republican.

Several interviewees cited voters’ frustration with President Biden’s age and Kamala Harris’ lack of visibility. In a climate of nostalgia politics, many Latino voters apparently longed for what they saw as the relative stability of the pre-pandemic Trump years.

Older Latinos, in particular, were attracted to the GOP’s rhetoric around family and tradition. But when asked about the top driver of votes, the deputy county executive officer, Rebecca Terrazas-Baxter, told me: “It wasn’t immigration. It was the economic hardship and inflation.”

Republicans winning over voters on issues such as cost of living, particularly coming out of pandemic-era recession, makes sense, but I am skeptical of the notion that Latino voters are fully realigning themselves into a slate of conservative positions.

Imperial voters consistently back progressive economic policies at the ballot box and hold a favorable view of local government programs that deliver tangible help such as homebuyer assistance, housing rehabilitation and expanded healthcare access. In the past, even when they have supported Democratic presidential candidates, they have voted for conservative ballot measures and Republican candidates down the ticket. Imperial voters backed Obama by a wide margin but also supported California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. This mix of progressive economics and conservative values is why Republican political consultant Mike Madrid describes Latino partisanship as a “weak anchor.”

The same fluidity explains why many Latinos who rallied behind Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020 later voted for Trump in 2024. Both men ran as populists, promising to challenge the establishment and deliver economic revival. For Latinos, it wasn’t about left or right; it was about surviving.

The lesson for both parties in California, Texas and everywhere is that no matter how lines are drawn, no district should be considered “safe” without serious engagement.

It should go without saying, Latino voters are not a monolith. They split tickets and vote pragmatically based on lived economic realities. Latinos are the youngest and fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., with a median age of 30. Twenty-five percent of Gen Z Americans are Latino, myself among them. We are the most consequential swing voters of the next generation.

As I assume many other young Latino voters do, I approached my first time at the ballot box with ambivalence. I’ve long awaited my turn to participate in the American democratic process, but I could never have expected that my first time would be to stop a plot to undermine it. And yet, I feel hope.

The 2024 election made it clear to both parties that Latinos are not to be taken for granted. Latino voters are American democracy’s wild card — young, dynamic and fiercely pragmatic. They embody what democracy should be: fluid, responsive and rooted in lived experience. They don’t swear loyalty to red or blue; they back whoever they think will deliver. The fastest-growing voting bloc in America is up for grabs.

Francesca Moreno is a high school senior at Marlborough School in Los Angeles, researching Latino voting behavior under the guidance of political strategist Mike Madrid.

WASHINGTON — As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in talks to reopen the government. But Republican losses on election day could change that.

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown “was a big factor” in the party’s poor showing against the Democrats in key races.

“We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately,” Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with the senators to discuss what he would like to do next.

The president’s remarks are a departure from what has largely been an apathetic response from him about reopening the government. With Congress at a stalemate for more than a month, Trump’s attention has mostly been elsewhere.

He spent most of last week in Asia attempting to broker trade deals. Before that, much of his focus was on reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and building a $300-million White House ballroom.

To date, Trump’s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been calling on Republican leaders to terminate the filibuster, a long-running Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the chamber to pass most legislation. Trump wants to scrap the rule — the so-called nuclear option — to allow Republicans in control of the chamber to push through legislation with a simple-majority vote.

“If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” Trump told the GOP senators and warned that with the rule in place, the party would be viewed as “do-nothing Republicans” and get “killed” in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump’s push to end the shutdown comes as voters are increasingly disapproving of his economic agenda, according to recent polls. The trend was reinforced Tuesday as voters cast ballots with economic concerns as their main motivation, an AP poll showed. Despite those indicators, Trump told a crowd at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he thinks “we have the greatest economy right now.”

While Trump has not acknowledged fault in his economic agenda, he has began to express concern that the ongoing shutdown may be hurting Republicans. Those concerns have led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibusters, a move that has put members of his party in a tough spot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an “important tool” that keeps the party in control of the chamber in check.

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block a “whole host of terrible Democrat policies” when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview Monday with Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show.”

“I shudder to think how much worse it would’ve been without the legislative filibuster,” he said. “The truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that is essentially what we would be doing, we would own all the crap they are going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.”

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week he is a “firm no on eliminating it.”

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t,” Curtis said in a social media post.

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who are refusing to vote on legislation to reopen the government that does not include a deal on healthcare.

Budget negotiations deadlocked as Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend federal healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. If those credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums spike.

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by their demands to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to “end the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.”

“Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ letter.

“The election results ought to send a much needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,” Schumer told the Associated Press.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday signal that he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.

“It is time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that is to terminate the filibuster,” Trump told GOP senators. “It’s the only way you can do it.”

If Republicans don’t do it, Trump argued Senate Democrats will do so the next time they are in a majority.

Democrats have not signaled any intent to end the filibuster in the future, but Trump has claimed otherwise and argued that it is up to Republicans to “do it first.”

Reporting from Washington — To any nefarious hackers looking for information that could be used to sway elections or steal Americans’ identities, the file compiled by a GOP data firm called Deep Root Analytics offered all manner of possibilities.

There in one place was detailed personal information about almost every voter in the U.S. It was a collection of some 9.5 billion data points that helped the firm assess not only how those Americans would probably vote, but their projected political preferences. In some cases, the data collectors had scoured people’s histories on Reddit, the social media platform, to match vote history with social media use, and well-informed predictions were made about where each voter would stand on issues as personal as abortion and stem cell research.

It’s the kind of sensitive information that, if a bank or a big-box retailer or almost any other corporation had failed to protect it, would have triggered major trouble with regulators. But there it sat on the Internet, without so much as a password to guard it, for 12 days.

Luckily for the Republican Party and Deep Root, an Arlington, Va.-based firm that handles data management and analysis for the party, it was a cybersecurity consultant who came across the treasure-trove of political data this month, not a foreign agent. There is no indication that the database had been tapped by any other unauthorized parties while it was unprotected.

But the exposure of the data, which some are describing as the largest leak of voter information in history, is a jolting reminder of how deeply the political parties are probing into the lives of voters and how vulnerable the information they are compiling is to theft.

The Deep Root incident is the latest in a series of such problems with political data, the most infamous being the case of the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee. As cybersecurity experts sound an increasingly loud alarm about the potential consequences, the lapses keep happening — often with nobody held accountable for them.

“This is a catalog of human lives, with intrinsic details,” said Mike Baukes, chief executive of UpGuard, the Mountain View, Calif., firm that came across the file during a routine scan of cloud systems.

“Every voter in America is potentially in there. The scale of it is just staggering, and the fact that it was left wide open is wholly irresponsible.…This is happening all the time. We are continually finding these things. It is just staggering.”

Privacy experts were skeptical that political operatives will change their ways following the latest incident.

“The state of security for massive data sets is so incredibly poor despite a daily drumbeat of data breached,” said Timothy Sparapani, a former director of public policy for Facebook who is now a data privacy consultant at the firm SPQR Strategies, based in Washington. “It is shocking. It is embarrassing. People ought to lose their jobs.”

Sparapani said if the culprit had been a private firm, it would be subjected to punitive actions by attorneys general, consumer lawsuits and big fines from regulators. But political operations face no such repercussions.

“As a voter, you are left with almost no recourse because our laws have not caught up to the massive computing power which is readily available to gather enormous data sets and make them searchable at the click of a button,” he said. “The breadth and depth of data collection by these companies is not well understood. If it were, I think the average voter would be frightened.”

UpGuard was able to access the file merely by guessing a Web address. It alerted Deep Root as well as federal authorities.

Deep Root apologized in a statement, but also suggested the incident had been overblown.

The data file “is our proprietary analysis to help inform local-television ad buying,” the statement said. It noted that much of the voter information the analysis is built on is “readily provided by state government offices.” The firm said it has put security procedures in place to prevent future leaks.

Other digital strategists warned, however, that the failure to protect such detailed information not only raised major privacy and security concerns, but also may have tipped off political adversaries to the inner workings of the Republican Party’s closely guarded digital strategy.

The GOP contracted with Deep Root during the presidential campaign. The firm’s co-founder, Alex Lundry, led the data efforts of GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and then worked for the unsuccessful presidential campaign of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last year.

GOP officials said the data belonging to the party that was exposed was limited to very basic information about voters, such as their party registration. They said none of the GOP’s sensitive strategic data was exposed. The party has suspended work with the firm pending an investigation by Deep Root into security procedures.

The failure by Deep Root to protect its massive database was particularly troubling to some advocates at a time when Congress is investigating how Russia exploited data vulnerabilities to meddle in last year’s presidential election.

“This is data used for opinion manipulation,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington. “It needs to be regulated. And there needs to be consequence for breaches. We have a major problem in this country with data security, and it’s getting worse.” The foundation wants Congress to hold hearings on political data security.

But holding political parties and contractors accountable for their data practices has proven tricky. David Berger, an attorney with the Bay Area-based firm Girard Gibbs who has represented consumers affected by data breaches at Anthem and Home Depot, said part of the problem is voters are not demanding changes loudly enough.

When a retail company fails to protect the privacy of its customers, Berger said, the company suffers and lawmakers hear about it from the victims.

“When people see Deep Root, they are not going to necessarily associate that with the [Republican Party] or anything else,” he said. “If your average American knew the amounts of data and profiling that is already put together by these companies about every single one of us, people would be very concerned. But there’s no face here, and they try to keep quiet.”

Halper reported from Washington and Dave from Los Angeles.

[email protected]

Follow me: @evanhalper

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Six years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld highly partisan state election maps in North Carolina and Maryland — ruling that federal courts cannot block states from drawing up maps that favor one party over the other — one of the court’s liberal justices issued a warning.

“If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government,” Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent.

Kagan argued that Republicans in North Carolina and Democrats in Maryland — the two examples before the court — had rigged elections in a way that “deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights,” “debased and dishonored our democracy” and turned “upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”

“Ask yourself,” Kagan said as she recounted what had happened in each state: “Is this how American democracy is supposed to work?”

That’s the question Californians are now weighing as they decide how, or whether, to vote on Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to scrap congressional maps drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission and replace them with maps drawn by legislators to favor Democrats through 2030.

Democrats don’t deny that the measure is a deliberate attempt to dilute GOP voting power.

From the start, they’ve argued that the point of redistricting is to weaken Republicans’ voting power in California — a move they justify on the grounds that it is a temporary fix to offset similar partisan gerrymandering by Texas Republicans. This summer, President Trump upped the ante, pressing Texas to rejigger maps to shore up the GOP’s narrow House majority ahead of the 2026 election.

Experts say opponents of Proposition 50 have no viable federal legal challenge against the new maps on the basis that they disenfranchise a large chunk of California Republicans. Even since the 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision Rucho vs. Common Cause, complaints of partisan gerrymandering have no path in federal court.

Already, Proposition 50 has survived challenges in state court and is unlikely to be successfully challenged if passed, said Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

“If you’re a Republican in California, or you’re a Democrat in Texas, you’re about to get a lot less representation in Congress,” Hasen said. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do about that.”

If Californians vote in favor of the measure on Tuesday, the number of Republicans in the state’s House — nine of 52 total members — would likely be reduced by five. That could mean Republicans have less than 10% of California’s congressional representation even though Trump won 38% of the 2024 vote.

“All of this is unconstitutional, but the federal courts aren’t available to help,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

“Every time you redraw a district specifically to protect some candidates and punish others,” Levitt said, “what you’re basically saying is it shouldn’t be up to the voters to weigh in on whether they think the candidates are doing a good job or not.”

Possible legal avenues

But even if the issue of partisan gerrymandering is blocked in federal courts, there are other potential legal avenues to challenge California’s new legislative maps.

One route would be to claim that Proposition 50 violates the California Constitution.

David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, said that if Proposition 50 passes, he expects a barrage of “see what sticks” lawsuits raising California constitutional claims. They stand little chance of success, he said.

“Voters created the redistricting commission,” he said. “What the voters created they can change or abolish.”

Attorneys might also bring racial discrimination claims in federal court alleging California lawmakers used partisan affiliation as a pretext for race in drawing the maps to disenfranchise one racial group or another, Carrillo said. Under current law, he said, such claims are very fact-dependent.

Attorneys are already poised to file complaints if the referendum passes.

Mark Meuser, a conservative attorney who filed a state complaint this summer seeking to block Proposition 50, said he is ready to file a federal lawsuit on the grounds that the new maps violate the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“We’re saying that race was a predominant factor in drawing the lines,” Meuser said. “When race is a predominant factor in drawing the lines without a compelling interest, strict scrutiny will mandate the maps be stricken.”

Some legal experts believe that would be a tricky case to prove.

“It sure seems like the new map was oriented predominantly around politics, not race,” Levitt argued. “And though they’d be saying that race was a predominant factor in drawing the lines, that’s very, very, very different from proving it. That’s an uphill mountain to climb on these facts.”

Some experts think the new maps are unlikely to raise strong Voting Rights Act challenges.

Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who specializes in elections, said the new districts appeared to have been carefully carved to preserve Latino- or Black-majority districts.

A successful challenge is possible, McGhee said, noting there are always novel legal arguments. “It’s just the big ones that you would think about that are the most obvious and the most traditional are pretty closed,” he said.

Supreme Court looms large

Ultimately, legal experts agree the fate of California maps — and other maps in Texas and across the nation — would depend on the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on a redistricting case from Louisiana.

Last month, conservative Supreme Court justices suggested in a hearing that they were considering reining in a key part of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.

“Whatever happens with Proposition 50 — pass or fail — almost doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” Carrillo said, noting that the Supreme Court could use the Louisiana case to strike Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. “There’s a big litigation storm coming in almost any scenario.”

Levitt agreed that the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, which could come any time between now and June, could change current law. But he stressed it is impossible to predict how broad the ruling could be.

“Whether that leaves any of California’s districts vulnerable — either in the current map or in the map if Prop. 50 passes — depends entirely on what Scotus says,” Levitt argued. “There are only nine people who know what they’ll actually say, and there are a lot of possibilities, some of which might affect California’s map pretty substantially, and some of which are unlikely to affect California’s map at all.”

Will Congress intervene?

As the redistricting battle spreads across the country and Democratic and Republican states look to follow Texas and California, Democrats could ultimately end up at a disadvantage. If the overall tilt favors Republicans, Democrats would have to win more than 50% of the vote to get a majority of seats.

Congress has the power to block partisan gerrymandering in congressional map drawing. But attempts so far to pass redistricting reform have been unsuccessful.

In 2022, the House passed the Freedom to Vote Act, which would have prohibited mid-decade redistricting and blocked partisan gerrymandering of congressional maps. But Republicans were able to block the bill in the Senate, even though it had majority support, due to that chamber’s filibuster rules.

Another option is a narrower bill proposed this summer by Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, who represents parts of the Sacramento suburbs and Lake Tahoe and could lose his seat if Proposition 50 passes. Kiley’s bill, along with similar legislation introduced by California Democratic representatives, would ban mid-decade redistricting.

“That would be the cleanest way of addressing this particular scenario we’re in right now, because all of these new plans that have been drawn would become null and void,” McGhee said.

But in a heavily deadlocked Congress, Kiley’s bill has little prospect of moving.

“It may have to get worse before it gets better,” Hasen said.

If the redistricting war doesn’t get resolved, Hasen said, there will be a continued race to the bottom, particularly if the Supreme Court weakens or strikes down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Another scenario, Hasen argued, is Democrats regain control of Congress and the presidency, overcome the filibuster rule and pass redistricting reform.

If that doesn’t happen, Levitt said, the ultimate power rests with the people.

“If we want to tell our representatives that we’re sick of this, we can,” Levitt said. “There’s a lot that’s competing for voters’ attention. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have agency here.”