USC and Baylor jumped into the top 10 of the Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll after big opening week victories.
The Bears began the season with a victory in Paris over then-No. 7 Duke to replace the Blue Devils in that spot Monday, climbing nine places. The Trojans edged then-No. 9 North Carolina State by a point Sunday to move up 10 spots to eighth overall.
While USC will be missing star JuJu Watkins all season as she recovers from an anterior cruciate ligament tear suffered last March, coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s team has a new young star in Jazzy Davidson, who hit the go-ahead shot with 8.2 seconds left.
Connecticut, South, Carolina, UCLA and Texas remained the top four teams in the poll after relatively easy opening week wins. The defending champion Huskies received 30 first-place votes from a national media panel while the Gamecocks got the other two.
Louisiana State and Oklahoma stayed at fifth and six, respectively. The Sooners faced UCLA on Monday night in Sacramento, a site of one of the NCAA regionals next spring.
Maryland moved up one place to ninth. N.C. State, which besides falling to USC beat Tennessee by three points in the opener, dropped to 10th. The Lady Vols fell to 12th and the Blue Devils 15th.
In and out
No. 25 Washington entered the top 25 for the first time in two years. The Huskies were hosting Montana on Monday night before heading to Utah on Saturday. Richmond dropped out of the poll after losing at Texas.
Banner raising
UConn unveiled its 12th championship banner on Sunday when the Huskies beat Florida State. The team took to the court before the game wearing custom white-and-gold tracksuits that read “National Champions XII” on the back.
Happy anniversary
The women’s basketball poll celebrates its 50th anniversary this month with the first rankings coming out in late November 1976. Founded by Mel Greenberg, the poll was a coaches’ poll until 1994-95 when it became one voted on by national media.
Games of the week
No. 2 South Carolina at No. 9 USC, Saturday. The Gamecocks will head west to face the Trojans in a home-and-home series dubbed “The Real SC”. Saturday’s game will be played at Crypto.com Arena and next year’s game will be played in Greenville, S.C.
No. 17 Texas Christian at No. 10 N.C. State, Sunday. The Wolfpack continue their difficult non-conference schedule facing the Horned Frogs, who added transfer Olivia Miles from Notre Dame this offseason.
Gov. Gavin Newsom strode onstage in Houston on Saturday to a cheering crowd of Texas Democrats, saying Proposition 50’s victory in California on election day was a win for the nation and a firm repudiation of President Trump.
Newsom possessed the air of a politician running for president at the boisterous rally, a possibility the California governor says he is considering — and the location he chose was not happenstance.
Newsom accused Trump of pressuring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to rejigger the state’s congressional districts with the goal of sending more Republicans to Congress, an action that triggered California’s Proposition 50. Newsom successfully pushed for a special election on the ballot measure to counter the efforts in Texas, which the governor said wasan attempt by Trump and the Republicans to “rig” the 2026 midterm election.
Cheers erupted from the friendly, union-hall crowd when Newsom belittled Trump as an “invasive species” and a “historically unpopular president.”
“On every issue, on the economy, on terrorists, on immigration, on healthcare, [he’s a] historically unpopular president, and he knows it, and he knows it,” Newsom said. “Why else did he make that call to your governor? Why else did he feel the need to rig the election before even one vote was cast? That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. That’s Donald Trump, and he had a very bad night on Tuesday.”
Newsom was the main political force behind Proposition 50, which California voters overwhelmingly approved in Tuesday’s special election. The statewide ballot measure was an attempt to counter Trump’s push to get Republican-led states, most notably Texas, to redraw their electoral maps to keep Democrats from gaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms and upending his agenda. Newsom and California Democrats hope the change will net an additional five Democrats in California’s congressional delegation, canceling out any gains in Texas.
Newsom thanked Texas Democrats for putting up a fight against the redistricting effort in their state, saying it inspired an uprising.
“It’s dawning on people, all across the United States of America, what’s at stake,” Newsom told the crowd. “And you put a stake in the ground. People are showing up. I don’t believe in crowns, thrones. No kings.”
“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom replied. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not — I can’t do that.”
In July, Newsom flew to South Carolina, a state that traditionally hosts the South’s first presidential primary. He said he wanted to help his party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. But South Carolina is a solidly conservative state and did not appear to have a single competitive race.
During that trip, South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker, told The Times that Newsom would be “a hell of a candidate.” Newsom received similar praise — and encouragement — when he was introduced at the “Take It Back” rally in Houston.
The Trump administration this year canceled funding for major clean energy projects such as California’s hydrogen hub and moved to revoke the state’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than the federal government.
When it comes to Proposition 50, Marcia Owens is a bit fuzzy on the details.
She knows, vaguely, it has something to do with how California draws the boundaries for its 52 congressional districts, a convoluted and arcane process that’s not exactly top of the mind for your average person. But Owens is abundantly clear when it comes to her intent in Tuesday’s special election.
“I’m voting to take power out of Trump’s hands and put it back in the hands of the people,” said Owens, 48, a vocational nurse in Riverside. “He’s making a lot of illogical decisions that are really wreaking havoc on our country. He’s not putting our interests first, making sure that an individual has food on the table, they can pay their rent, pay electric bills, pay for healthcare.”
Peter Arensburger, a fellow Democrat who also lives in Riverside, was blunter still.
President Trump, said the 55-year-old college professor, “is trying to rule as a dictator” and Republicans are doing absolutely nothing to stop him.
So, Arensburger said, California voters will do it for them.
Or at least try.
“It’s a false equivalency,” he said, “to say that we need to do everything on an even keel in California, but Texas” — which redrew its political map to boost Republicans — “can do whatever they want.”
A reasoned attempt to even things out in response to Texas’ attempt to nab five more congressional seats. Or a ruthless gambit to drive the California GOP to near-extinction.
It all depends on your perspective.
Above all, Proposition 50 has become a political ink-blot test; what many California voters see depends on, politically, where they stand.
Mary Ann Rounsavall thinks the measure is “horrible,” because that’s how the Fontana retiree feels about its chief proponent, Gavin Newsom.
“He’s a jerk,” the 75-year-old Republican fairly spat, as if the act of forming the governor’s name left a bad taste in her mouth. “No one believes anything he says.”
Timothy, a fellow Republican who withheld his last name to avoid online trolls, echoed the sentiment.
“It’s just Gavin Newsom playing political games,” said the 39-year-old warehouse manager, who commutes from West Covina to his job at a plumbing supplier in Ontario. “They always talk about Trump. ‘Trump, Trump, Trump.’ Get off of Trump. I’ve been hearing this crap ever since he started running.”
Riverside and San Bernardino counties form the heart of the Inland Empire. The next-door neighbors are politically purple: more Republican than the state as a whole, but not as conservative as California’s more rural reaches. That means neither party has an upper hand, a parity reflected in dozens of interviews with voters across the sprawling region.
On a recent smoggy morning, the hulking San Bernardino Mountains veiled by a gray-brown haze, Eric Lawson paused to offer his thoughts.
The 66-year-old independent has no use for politicians of any stripe. “They’re all crooks,” he said. “All of them.”
Lawson called Proposition 50 a waste of time and money.
Gerrymandering — the dark art of drawing political lines to benefit one party over another — is, as he pointed out, hardly new. (In fact, the term is rooted in the name of Elbridge Gerry, one of the nation’s founders.)
What has Lawson particularly steamed is the cost of “this stupid election,” which is pushing $300 million.
“We talk and talk and talk and we print money for all this talk,” said Lawson, who lives in Ontario and consults in the auto industry. “But that money doesn’t go where it’s supposed to go.”
Although sentiments were evenly split in those several dozen conversations, all indications suggest that Proposition 50 is headed toward passage Tuesday, possibly by a wide margin. After raising a tidal wave of cash, Newsom last week told small donors that’s enough, thanks. The opposition has all but given up and resigned itself to defeat.
It comes down to math. Proposition 50 has become a test of party muscle and a talisman of partisan faith and California has a lot more Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.
Andrea Fisher, who opposes the initiative, is well aware of that fact. “I’m a conservative,” she said, “in a state that’s not very conservative.”
She has come to accept that reality, but fears things will get worse if Democrats have their way and slash California’s already-scanty Republican ranks on Capitol Hill. Among those targeted for ouster is Ken Calvert, a 16-term GOP incumbent who represents a good slice of Riverside County.
“I feel like it’s going to eliminate my voice,” said Fisher, 48, a food server at her daughter’s school in Riverside. “If I’m 40% of the vote” — roughly the percentage Trump received statewide in 2024 — “then we in that population should have fair representation. We’re still their constituents.” (In Riverside County, Trump edged Kamala Harris 49% to 48%.)
Amber Pelland says Proposition 50 will hurt voters by putting redistricting back into the hands of politicians.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Amber Pelland, 46, who works in the nonprofit field in Corona, feels by “sticking it to Trump” — a tagline in one of the TV ads supporting Proposition 50 — voters will be sticking it to themselves. Passage would erase the political map drawn by an independent commission, which voters empowered in 2010 for the express purpose of wrestling redistricting away from self-dealing lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento.
“I don’t care if you hate the person or don’t hate the person,” said Pelland, a Republican who backs the president. “It’s just going to hurt voters by taking the power away from the people.”
Even some backers of Proposition 50 flinched at the notion of sidelining the redistricting commission and undoing its painstaking, nonpartisan work. What helps make it palatable, they said, is the requirement — written into the ballot measure — that congressional redistricting will revert to the commission after the 2030 census, when California’s next set of congressional maps is due to be drafted.
“I’m glad that it’s temporary because I don’t think redistricting should be done in order to give one political party greater power over another,” said Carole, a Riverside Democrat. “I think it’s something that should be decided over a long period and not in a rush.” (She also withheld her last name so her husband, who serves in the community, wouldn’t be hassled for her opinion, she said.)
Texas, Carole suggested, has forced California to act because of its extreme action, redistricting at mid-decade at Trump’s command. “It’s important to think about the country as a whole,” said the 51-year-old academic researcher, “and to respond to what’s being done, especially with the pressure coming from the White House.”
Felise Self-Visnic, a 71-year-old retired schoolteacher, agreed.
She was shopping at a Trader Joe’s in Riverside in an orange ball cap that read “Human-Kind (Be Both).” Back home, in her garage-door window, is a poster that reads “No Kings.”
She described Proposition 50 as a stopgap measure that will return power to the commission once the urgency of today’s political upheaval has passed. But even if that wasn’t the case, the Democrat said, she would still vote in favor.
“Anything,” Self-Visnic said, “to fight fascism, which is where we’re heading.”
