voter

Kamala Harris does not want to be governor of California, which has a whole lot of contenders (and some voters) doing a happy dance this week.

But with her announcement Wednesday that she is bowing out of a race she never officially entered, Harris has ignited a flurry of speculation that she’s warming up for another run at the White House in 2028.

Whether you like Harris or not, a possible run by the XX chromosome former vice president raises a perennial conundrum: Can a woman win the presidency?

“This question is legitimate,” Nadia E. Brown told me.

She’s a professor of government and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. She points out that post-election, Democrats can’t figure out who they are or what they stand for. In that disarray, it may seem easy and safe in 2028 to travel the well-worn route of “a straight, old white guy who fills the status quo.”

That may be especially true in the Trump era, when an increasingly vocal and empowered slice of America seems to believe that women do, in fact, belong in the kitchen making sanwhiches, far away from any decision beyond turkey or ham.

Brown points out that even Democrats who flaunt their progressive values, including how much they’d love to vote for a female president, may harbor secret sexism that comes out in the privacy of the voting booth.

Post-2024, Harris’ defeat — and deciphering what it means — has caused a lot of “morning-after anxiety and agita,” she said. “We’re all doing research, we’re all in the field trying to figure this out.”

While confused Democrats diddle in private with their feelings, Republicans have made race and gender the center of their platform, even if they cloak it under economic talk. The party’s position on race has become painfully clear with its stance that all undocumented immigrants are criminals and deserving of horrific detention in places such as “Alligator Alcatraz” or even foreign prisons known for torture.

The Republican position on women is slightly more cloaked, but no less retrograde. Whether it’s the refusal to tell the public how Trump is included in the Epstein files, the swift and brutal erosion of reproductive rights, or claims, such as the one by far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, that the only reason for women to attend college should be to get a “Mrs.” degree, Republicans have made little secret of the fact that equality is not part of their package.

Although Trump’s approval ratings have tanked over immigration, he did win just over half of the popular vote last fall. So that’s a lot of Americans who either agree with him, or at least aren’t bothered by these pre-civil rights ideas on race and gender.

Add to that reality the eager pack of nice, safe Democratic white guys who are lining up for their own chance at the Oval Office — our current California governor included — and it does beg the question for the left: Is a woman worth the risk?

“I’ve definitely seen and heard consultants and, you know, even anxious women donors say, ‘Maybe this means we can’t run a woman.’ And I think it’s completely normal for certain elements of the party to be anxious about gender,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, a grassroots advocacy group.

She too thinks the gender question is “logical” since it has been blamed — though not by her — as “the reason we lost to Donald Trump twice in a row, right? Whereas Biden was able to beat him.”

While Timmaraju is clear that those losses can’t — and shouldn’t — be tied to gender alone, gender also can’t be ignored when the margins are thin.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, which backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, said that gender and race are always a factor, but he believes the bigger question for any candidate in 2028 will be their platform.

Harris, he said, “lost not because she was a woman. She lost because she did not embrace an economic populist message. And I think the electorate is angry about their standard of living declining, and they’re angry about the elites controlling D.C. and enriching themselves.”

Greevarghese told me he sees an opposite momentum building within the party and the electorate — a desire to not play it safe.

“Whoever it is — male, female, gay, straight, Black, white, Asian — the candidate’s got to have a critique of this moment, and it can’t be a normie Dem.”

Brown, the professor, adds, rightfully, that looking at the question of a female candidate’s chances through the lens of just Harris is too narrow. There are lots of women likely to jump into the race. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are just two names already in the mix. Brown adds that an outside contender such as a woman from a political dynasty (think Obama) or a celebrity along the lines of Trump could also make headway.

The criticisms of Harris, with her baggage of losing the election and critiques of how she handled the campaign and the media, may not dog another female candidate, especially with voters.

“Whether Kamala runs again or not, I’m optimistic that the American people will vote for a female president,” Vanessa Cardenas told me. She is the executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group for immigrants’ rights.

Cardenas points out that Hillary Clinton received more than 65 million votes (winning the popular vote), and Harris topped 75 million. If just Latinos had gone for Harris, instead of breaking in an ongoing rightward shift, she would have won. Cardenas thinks Latino votes could shift again in 2028.

“After the chaos, cruelty and incompetence of the Trump presidency, Latino voters, like most Americans, will reward candidates who can speak most authentically and seem most ready to fight for an alternative vision of America,” she said. “I believe women, and women of color, can credibility and forcibly speak to the need for change rooted in the lived experiences of their communities.”

Timmaraju said that regardless of what Harris decides, Democrats will probably have one of the most robust primaries in recent times — which can only be good for the party and for voters.

And rather than asking, “Can a woman win?” the better question would be, “Do we really want a system that won’t let them try?”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he’s considering calling a special election on Nov. 4 to ask voters to approve new congressional maps in California in an effort to thwart President Trump’s plan to redistrict Republican-controlled states and hold onto power of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

“I think there’s a growing recognition in this country, not just with Democrats, independents, but also Republicans, that de facto the Trump presidency ends in November of next year if the American people are given a fair chance and a voice and a choice. We’ll take back Congress,” Newsom said. “The President of the United States recognizes that, so he wants to rig the game, wants to change the rules midterm.”

The governor has cast his call to gerrymander California as a response to Trump’s request for Texas and other states to reconfigure their maps to pick up seats in 2026.

“We’re going to respond in a transparent way, an honest way, but it’s in response,” Newsom said. “But I’m not going to sit back any longer in a position, a fetal position, in a position of weakness, when in fact California could demonstrably advance strength and that’s what we intend to do.”

Under Newsom’s plan, the California Legislature would need to take a vote to send a ballot measure to voters.

Newsom said voters would be given the maps of new congressional districts. A special election would be held on the first Tuesday in November asking voters to adopt the maps and allow the new districts to remain in effect through 2030 when California would return to the independent redistricting system that’s currently in place.

California’s Independent Redistricting Commission would craft new maps after the next census to be put into effect in 2032.

The governor said he’s in the early planning states of the process and doesn’t have an estimate yet for the price tag of a statewide special election. Newsom called the cost of preserving Democracy “priceless.”

“There are many local elections that first Tuesday already on the ballot, so it requires significant less resources than a special election that didn’t already have regular elections considered,” Newsom said. “So that could be very meaningful in mitigating the cost.”

Newsom promised more information in the weeks ahead.

The potential redrawing of California’s congressional district lines could upend the balance of power in Washington, D.C., in next year’s midterm congressional election. The unusual and unexpected redistricting may take place in coming months because of sparring among President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Redrawing these maps — known as redistricting — is an esoteric practice that many voters tune out, but one that has an outsized impact on political power and policy in the United States.

Here is a breakdown about why a process that typically occurs once every decade is currently receiving so much attention — and the potential ramifications.

What is redistricting?

There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, each of whom is supposed to represent roughly the same number of constituents. Every decade, after the U.S. Census counts the population across the nation, the allocation of congressional representatives for each state can change. For example, after the 2020 census, California’s share of congressional districts was reduced by one for the first time in state history.

After the decennial census, states redraw district lines for congressional and legislative districts based on population shifts, protections for minority voters required by the federal Voting Rights Act and other factors. For much of the nation’s history, such maps were created by state legislators and moneyed interests in smoke-filled backrooms.

Many districts were grossly gerrymandered — contorted — to benefit political parties and incumbents, such as California’s infamous “Ribbon of Shame,” a congressional district that stretched in a reed-thin line 200 miles along the California coast from Oxnard to the Monterey County line.

But in recent decades, political-reform organizations and some elected officials, notably former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, called for independent drawing of district lines. In 2010, the state’s voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure requiring California congressional maps to be drawn by a bipartisan commission, which it did in 2011 and 2021.

Why are we talking about this?

President Trump recently urged Texas lawmakers to redraw its congressional districts to increase the number of GOP members of the House in next year’s midterm election. Congress is closely divided, and the party that does not control the White House traditionally loses seats in the body two years after the presidential election.

Trump has been able to enact his agenda — from deporting undocumented immigrants to extending tax breaks that largely benefit the wealthy to closing some Planned Parenthood clinics — because the GOP controls the White House, the Senate and the House. But if Democrats flip Congress, Trump’s agenda will likely be stymied and he faces the prospect of being a lame duck during his last two years in office.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, shown with Democratic lawmakers from Texas, speaks during a news conference in Sacramento on Friday.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

What is Texas doing?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called his state’s Legislature into special session last week to discuss the disastrous floods that killed more than 130 people as well as redistricting before the 2026 election.

Trump and his administration urged Abbott to redraw his state’s congressional lines with the hope of picking up five seats.

Abbott has said that his decision to include redistricting in the special session was prompted by a court decision last year that said the state no longer has to draw “coalition districts” that are made up of multiple minority communities. New district lines would give Texans greater opportunity to vote for politicians who best represent them, the governor said in interviews.

Democrats in the Lone Star state’s Legislature met with Newsom in Sacramento on Friday to discuss the ramifications of mid-decade redistricting and accused Trump of trying to rig next year’s midterm election to hold onto power.

Republicans “play by a different set of rules and we could sit back and act as if we have some moral authority and watch this 249-, 250-year-old experiment be washed away,” Newsom said of the nation’s history. “We are not going to allow that to happen.”

Democratic lawmakers in Texas have previously fled the state to not allow the Legislature to have a quorum, such as in 2021 during a battle over voting rights. But with the deadly flooding, this is an unlikely prospect this year.

Why is California in the mix?

The Golden State’s congressional districts are drawn by an independent commission focused on logical geography, shared interests, representation for minority communities and other facets.

If the state reverts to partisan map drawing, redistricting experts on both sides of the aisle agree that several GOP incumbents in the 52-member delegation would be vulnerable, either because of more Democratic voters being placed in their districts, or being forced into face-offs with fellow Republican members of Congress. There are currently nine Republican members of the delegation, a number that could shrink to three or four, according to political statisticians.

Strange bedfellows

These dizzying developments have created agreement among rivals while dividing former allies.

Sara Sadhwani, a member of the 2021 redistricting commission and longtime supporter of independent map drawing, said she supports Democratic efforts to change California’s congressional districts before the midterm election.

“I stand by the work of the commission of course. We drew fair and competitive maps that fully abided by federal laws around the Voting Rights Act to ensure communities of color have an equal opportunity at the ballot box,” said Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “That being said, especially when it comes to Congress, most certainly California playing fair puts Democrats at a disadvantage nationally.”

She said the best policy would be for all 50 states to embrace independent redistricting. But in the meantime, she supports Democratic efforts in California to temporarily redraw the districts given the stakes.

“I think it’s patriotic to fight against what appears to be our democracy falling into what appears to be authoritarian rule,” Sadhwani said.

Charles Munger Jr., the son of a late billionaire who was Warren Buffet’s right-hand man, spent more than $12 million to support the ballot measure that created the independent redistricting commission and is invested in making sure that it is not weakened.

“He’s very much committed to making sure the commission is preserved,” said someone close to Munger who requested anonymity to speak candidly. Munger believes “this is ultimately political quicksand and a redistricting war at the end of day is a loss to American voters.”

Munger, who was the state GOP’s biggest donor at one point, is actively involved in the California fight and is researching other efforts to fight gerrymandering nationwide, this person said.

The state Democratic and Republican parties, which rarely agree on anything, agreed in 2010 when they opposed the ballot measure. Now, Democrats, who would likely gain seats if the districts are redrawn by state lawmakers, support a mid-decade redistricting, while the state GOP, which would likely lose seats, says the state should continue having lines drawn by the independent commission once every decade.

“It’s a shame that Governor Newsom and the radical Left in Sacramento are willing to spend $200 million on a statewide special election, while running a deficit of $20 billion, in order to silence the opposition in our state,” the GOP congressional delegation said in a statement on Friday. “As a Delegation we will fight any attempt to disenfranchise California voters by whatever means necessary to ensure the will of the people continues to be reflected in redistricting and in our elections.”

What happens next?

If Democrats in California move forward with their proposal, which is dependent on what Texas lawmakers do during their special legislative session that began last week, they have two options:

• State lawmakers could vote to put the measure before voters in a special election that would likely be held in November — a costly prospect. The last statewide special election — the unsuccessful effort to recall Newsom in 2021 — cost more than $200 million, according to the secretary of state’s office.
• The Legislature could also vote to redraw the maps, but this option would likely be more vulnerable to legal challenge.

Either scenario is expected to be voted on as an urgency item, which requires a 2/3 vote but would insulate the action from being the subject of a referendum later put in front of voters that would delay enactment.

The Legislature is out of session until mid-August.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.

In a brazen move, Republicans in Texas have set out to redraw the state’s congressional map — an effort to boost President Trump and the GOP in the 2026 midterm elections.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to respond in kind, gerrymandering blue California to give Democrats a lift and offset the Lone Star lunge for power.

That would mean scrapping the political lines drawn by an independent citizens commission, which voters created nearly two decades ago to take line-drawing away from the state’s politicians.

Our columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria disagree strongly, but amicably, on the wisdom and implications of Newsom’s threatened move. Here they hash it out.

Barabak: Gavin Newsom — or the 48th president of the United States, as he fancies himself — is perhaps second only to Donald Trump when it comes to surfing a political wave. And so it is with redistricting and retribution.

It may set partisan Democratic hearts to racing — which is part of Newsom’s intent — but it’s a bad move for all sorts of reasons. Not least, ignoring the will of California voters, who resoundingly told the state’s self-dealing politicians no mas!

I understand the fight-fire-with-fire attitude that animates partisan support for the get-even talk by 48, er, Newsom. But the danger is causing even more widespread damage.

Over the years, a lot of zeitgeist-y moves by the headline-hungry Newsom have come to naught. This is another that belongs on the scrap heap.

Chabria: I agree that the Vegas odds are on the side of this tit-for-tat being nothing more than a partisan headline-grabber.

But.

There is a larger and more important question here that boils down to how seriously you believe our democracy is in jeopardy.

If, Mark — as I think you are inclined to at least hope — this too shall pass and our next election will be free and fair, however it may land, then the idea of gerrymandering our congressional districts can be nothing but appalling. This is especially true in California, one of the few states in which the people have voted to ensure our electoral maps are drawn with nonpartisan fairness in mind.

If, like me, however, you think we are on a knife’s edge of losing our democracy to authoritarianism — or at least an oligarchy where hate is wielded for power — then gerrymandering becomes a form of peaceful resistance.

Newsom recently said, “We can act holier-than-thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be, or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment” — which gives you an idea of his thinking, and frankly, mine.

I’ll dive into that more, but maybe that’s where we start. Do you think our democracy is sound and what we’re witnessing is just a period of discontent that will pass without lasting harm?

Barabak: I sure hope so.

I yield to no one in my disgust with Trump and concern about what he’s doing. He’s authoritarian. Autocratic. Arrogant. Anti-democratic. And that’s not even getting past the letter “A.”

But actions like the one Newsom threatens on redistricting don’t take place in a vacuum, which is important to bear in mind. Short-term tactical gains can result in long-term pain.

For instance: In 2013 Democrats were so upset about Republican blockading of President Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominations that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option.” At Reid’s behest, the Senate narrowly voted to change its rules and disallow the filibustering of presidential nominees.

The result is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a whole clown car of Trump Cabinet members.

And while Democrats explicitly said the rule change would not apply to the Supreme Court, once the door was open Republicans shouldered their way through and eliminated the filibuster for those nominees as well. The result is Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and the high court’s 6-3 Trump-coddling conservative super-majority.

Those who fight fire with fire risk getting badly burned.

If Democrats want a war over redistricting, Republicans have a lot more ways to gerrymander and potentially gain seats — in places such as Florida, Missouri and Ohio — than Democrats.

Chabria: No doubt. But, and this is as low as it gets, I’ll pay the price of a Hegseth, maybe even two, if it really does save democracy. Here’s the reality: The only hope of a Congress that will curb Trump through the democratic process is shifting at least some power to Democrats in the 2026 election.

If Texas Republicans, under pressure from Trump, manage to redraw as many as five new GOP-leaning seats — and it doesn’t blow up in their faces, which it could — the move would boost the chances the House remains a Trump entourage and the prospect of authoritarianism goes from brush fire to wildfire.

The truth is that gerrymandering is far more common than most realize. Kevin Johnson, an expert with the Election Reformers Network, wrote recently that “In the 1990s, only 40% of the seats in the House of Representatives were considered a sure thing for one party or the other, now that figure is 83%.” That’s because most states gerrymander.

Really, the only truly competitive races take place in states such as California that have independent, nonpartisan folks drawing the election maps. So to play devil’s advocate, we’ve already lost to gerrymandering in the U.S. and California just doesn’t know it.

That’s a problem that could be solved if a future president and Congress wanted to do so. But it requires getting to a future president and Congress. I always put this on the record: I care neither about Republicans or Democrats. I care about democracy.

If California gerrymandered, helped turn Congress into a real check against authoritarianism and left fixing gerrymandering for later, would it really be so bad?

Barabak: Your crystal ball must be less hazy than mine.

I’m not all convinced that even a gain of five Texas House seats would guarantee GOP control of the House. (And let me put this on the record: I think what Trump and his Texas handmaidens are doing is thoroughly reprehensible.)

Since World War II, the out-party has picked up an average of more than two dozen House seats in midterm elections. Democrats need a gain of three to seize control.

There’s even, as you suggest, a chance Republicans’ political pigginess backfires by spreading their voters too thin, creating districts that Democrats might pick up if there’s a big enough blue wave.

Speaking of moves backfiring, it’s no sure bet Californians would approve Newsom’s gerrymander effort if he put it to a vote in a special election to override the commission.

Surrendering power to politicians is a pretty big ask in today’s environment. And it’s not as though Newsom has a deep reservoir of goodwill to draw upon; just look at his poll numbers.

He went to South Carolina to, allegedly, campaign for Democratic House candidates, even though the state hasn’t a single competitive contest. California has about 10 races that look to be at least somewhat competitive — yet you don’t see fellow Democrats clamoring for Newsom to drop by their districts.

Chabria: I don’t have a crystal ball. What I do have is a deep well of foreboding, but an optimist’s hope that your blue wave, power-to-the-people scenario happens.

In the meantime, Newsom said Friday that redistricting “is not a bluff,” and he is exploring multiple ways to do it.

On that list is a legal gamble. Our current redistricting laws say maps have to be drawn fairly every 10 years, after the census — but doesn’t specifically say we can’t gerrymander in between. Newsom is basically suggesting cheating with a sunset clause: Immediate redistricting that benefits Democrats, but that would expire when the regular redistricting happens.

It’s drastic, and may just wind up tied up in courts indefinitely.

But I am frustrated that politicians, pundits and even regular people continue to treat this administration as just politics as usual, and I appreciate that Newsom is not, even if part of it is driven by personal gain for a 2028 presidential bid. Perhaps our democracy has been on the brink before, but that makes this cliff no less dangerous. We the people need to think outside of our regular reactions to Republicans vs. Democrats or cultural wars or partisan divides or any of the far more harmless stressors that have plagued our system in the past.

What I like about Newsom’s jab is that it forces us to have conversations like this one, and ask ourselves how do we fight differently?

Because this fight is different.

Barabak: This may sound Pollyannaish, but I think there’s nothing about these frightful times that can’t be remedied at the ballot box.

Texas may have a competitive U.S. Senate race next year. If Texans don’t like the ruthlessness of GOP lawmakers and their power grab, they can send a message by electing a Democrat, helping the party overcome the odds and take control of the chamber. That would put a check on Trump, regardless of whether Republicans hang onto the House.

It’s in the hands of voters. If democracy is going to be protected and preserved, it’s up to them. Not scheming politicians.

In 2010, California voters drove the foxes from the henhouse, seeing to it that lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento would no longer have the power to draw congressional districts to suit themselves.

It wasn’t close.

Proposition 20 passed by a lopsided 61%-to-38% margin, giving congressional line-drawing authority to an independent mapmaking commission and thus ending decades of pro forma elections by injecting much-needed competition into California’s House races.

Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is talking about undoing voters’ handiwork.

Newsom said he may seek to cancel the commission, tear up the boundaries it drew and let Democratic partisans draft a new set of lines ahead of next year’s midterm election — all to push back on President Trump and Texas Republicans, who are attempting a raw power grab to enhance the GOP’s standing in 2026.

The threatened move is a long shot and, more than anything, a ploy to boost Newsom’s White House ambitions.

It’s also highly presumptuous on his part, reflecting an increased arrogance among lawmakers around the country who are saying to voters, in effect, “Thank you for your input. Now go away.”

Take what just happened in Missouri. Last year, 58% of voters approved a ballot measure increasing the state minimum wage and requiring employers to provide paid sick leave. This month, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed legislation that limited the minimum wage increase and scrapped the sick leave requirement altogether.

In two other states, Alaska and Nebraska, lawmakers similarly tried but failed to, respectively, overturn voter-passed measures on paid sick leave and a hike in the minimum wage.

“It’s a damning indictment of representative democracy when elected officials are scared of the will of their own voters,” said Alexis Magnan-Callaway of the Fairness Project, a union-backed advocacy group that focuses on state ballot measures.

It is indeed.

But it’s part of a pattern in recent years of lawmakers, mainly in Republican-led states, undercutting or working to roll back voter-designed measures to enshrine abortion rights, expand Medicare and raise the minimum wage.

To be clear, those measures were passed by voters of all stripes: Democrats, Republicans, independents.

“People are transcending party lines to vote for issues that they know will impact their communities,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive organization. By ignoring or working to nullify the result, she said, lawmakers are helping contribute “to what we’re seeing across the country, where people are losing faith in our institutions and in government.”

And why wouldn’t they, if politicians pay no mind save to ask for their vote come election time?

In a direct attack on the initiative process, at least nine state legislatures passed or considered laws in their most recent session making it harder — and perhaps even impossible — for citizens to place measures on the ballot and seek a popular vote.

There can be issues with direct democracy, as Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice pointed out.

“There can be times when systems can be abused to confuse voters,” he said, “or where voters do things without maybe fully understanding what it is they’re doing, because of the way ballot measures are drafted or ballot summaries are offered.”

But it’s one thing to address those glitches, Morales-Doyle said, and “another thing to just basically say that we, as the representatives of voters, disagree with what voters think the best policy is and so we’re going to make it harder for them to enact the policy that they desire.”

In Texas, Republicans are wielding their lopsided power in hopes of erasing as many as five Democratic-leaning congressional seats, boosting the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House in the 2026 midterm election. Trump, staring at the prospect of an emboldened, subpoena-wielding Democratic House majority, is backing the effort whole-hog.

That, Newsom said, is the fighting-fire-with-fire reason to tear up California’s congressional map and gerrymander the state for Democrats just as egregiously as Texas Republicans hope to do. “We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or, we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment,” the governor asserted.

It’s awfully hard to argue against corralling the errant Trump and his Republican enablers. Still, that’s no reason to ignore the express will of California voters when it comes to reining in their own lawmakers.

Taking Newsom’s gerrymander threat at face value, there are two ways he could possibly override Proposition 20.

He could break the law and win passage of legislation drawing new congressional districts, face an inevitable lawsuit and hope to win a favorable ruling from the California Supreme Court. Or he could call a costly special election and ask voters to reverse themselves and eliminate the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, at least for the time being.

It’s a hard sell. One presumes Newsom’s message to Californians would not be: “Let’s spend hundreds of millions of your tax dollars so you can surrender your power and return it to politicians working their will in the backrooms of Washington and Sacramento.”

But that’s the gist of what they would be asked to do, which bespeaks no small amount of hubris on Newsom’s part.

If elections are going to matter — especially at a time our democracy is teetering so — politicians have to accept the results, whether they like them or not.

Otherwise, what’s the point of having elections?

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Wednesday vowed to remain in power to oversee the implementation of a new Japan-U.S. tariff agreement, despite media speculation and growing calls for him to resign after a historic defeat of his governing party.

Ishiba met with heavyweights from his Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, and former Prime Ministers Taro Aso, Fumio Kishida and Yoshihide Suga at party headquarters.

He told reporters afterward that they didn’t discuss his resignation or a new party leadership contest, but only the election results, voters’ dissatisfaction and the urgent need to avoid party discord.

Despite his business-as-usual demeanor, Ishiba is under increasing pressure to bow out after the LDP and junior coalition partner Komeito lost their majority in Sunday’s election in the 248-member upper house, the smaller and less powerful of Japan’s two-chamber parliament, shaking his grip on power.

It came after a loss in the more powerful lower house in October, and so his coalition now lacks a majority in both houses of parliament, making it even more difficult for his government to pass policies and worsening Japan’s political instability.

Ishiba says he intends to stay on to tackle pressing challenges, including tariff talks with the U.S., so as not to create a political vacuum despite calls from inside and outside his party for a quick resignation.

Ishiba “keeps saying he is staying on. What was the public’s verdict in the election all about?” said Yuichiro Tamaki, head of the surging Democratic Party for the People, or DPP.

At the LDP, a group of younger lawmakers led by Yasutaka Nakasone started a petition drive seeking Ishiba’s early resignation and renewal of party leadership.

“We all have a sense of crisis and think the election results were ultimatum from the voters,” he said.

Japanese media reported that Ishiba is expected to soon announce plans to step down in August.

The conservative Yomiuri newspaper said in an extra edition on Wednesday that Ishiba had decided to announce his resignation by the end of July after receiving a detailed report from his chief trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, on the impact of the U.S. tariffs on the Japanese economy, paving the way for a new party leader.

Ishiba denied the report and said that he wants to focus on the U.S. trade deal, which covers more than 4,000 goods affecting many Japanese producers and industries. He welcomed the new agreement, which places tariffs at 15% on Japanese cars and other goods imported into the U.S. from Japan, down from the initial 25%.

Still, local media are already speculating about possible successors. Among them are ultraconservative former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, who lost to Ishiba in September. Another conservative ex-minister, Takayuki Kobayashi, and Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of former popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, are also seen as potential challengers.

In Sunday’s election, voters frustrated with price increases exceeding the pace of wage hikes, especially younger people who have long felt ignored by the ruling government’s focus on senior voters, rapidly turned to the emerging conservative DPP and right-wing populist Sanseito party.

None of the opposition parties have shown interest in forming a full-fledged alliance with the governing coalition, but they have said they are open to cooperating on policy.

People expressed mixed reaction to Ishiba, as his days seem to be numbered.

Kentaro Nakamura, 53, said that he thought it’s time for Ishiba to go, because he lacked consistency and did poorly in the election.

“The (election) result was so bad and I thought it would not be appropriate for him to stay on,” Nakamura said. “I thought it was just a matter of time.”

But Isamu Kawana, a Tokyo resident in his 70s, was more sympathetic and said if it wasn’t Ishiba who was elected prime minister last year, the result would have been the same.

“I think he got the short end of the stick,” Kawana said.

Yamaguchi writes for the Associated Press. Reeno Hashimoto contributed to this report.

Imagine a Washington in which President Trump was held to account. A Washington in which Congress doesn’t roll over like a dog begging for a treat. A Washington that functions the way it’s supposed to, with that whole checks-and-balances thing working.

Enticing, no?

Democrats need to win just three seats in 2026 to seize control of the House and impose some measure of accountability on our rogue-elephant president. That’s something Trump is keenly aware of, which is why he’s pushing Texas to take the extraordinary step of redrawing its congressional boundaries ahead of the midterm election.

Republicans, who’ve exercised iron-clad control over Texas for decades, hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats. A special session scheduled next week in Austin is aimed at boosting that number by as many as five seats, increasing the GOP’s odds of hanging onto the House.

Enter, stage left, California’s White House-lusting governor.

As part of a recent Southern campaign swing, Gavin Newsom sat down with a progressive Tennessee podcaster to discuss the Republican power grab. (The picnic bench, rolled up shirt sleeves, beer and f-bomb showed the governor was being authentic, in case there was any doubt.)

“They’re not f— around now. They’re playing by a totally different set of rules,” Newsom said of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans. Years ago, he noted, California created an independent commission to draw its political lines, which states normally do once a decade after new census figures come out.

But with a super-majority in Sacramento, Newsom said, Democrats could “gerrymander like no other state.”

“We’ve been playing fair,” he continued, but Abbott’s actions “made me question that entire program.” Later, elaborating on social media, the governor accused Republicans of cheating their way to extra House seats and warned, “California is watching — and you can bet we won’t stand idly by.”

There’s a Texas expression for that: All hat and no cattle.

The fact is, voters took the power of political line-drawing away from the governor and his fellow lawmakers, for good reason, and it’s not like Newsom can unilaterally take that power back — no matter how well his chesty swagger might play with Trump-loathing Democrats.

“We have a commission,” said Justin Levitt, an expert on redistricting law at Loyola Law School. “Not only that, a Constitution and the commission’s in the Constitution. And not only that, we have a Constitution that says you only get to redistrict once every 10 years, unless there’s a legal problem with the existing maps.”

In other words, it’s not up to Newsom to huff and puff and blow existing House districts down.

California voters approved Proposition 20, which turned congressional line-drawing over to a nonpartisan, 14-member commission, in November 2010. The point was to introduce competition by taking redistricting away from self-dealing lawmakers. It passed by an overwhelming margin, 61% to 39%, and has worked just as intended.

After decades of prebaked congressional contests, when the success of one party or the other was virtually guaranteed, California has become a hotbed of competition; in recent years, the state — an afterthought in November balloting for president — has been key to control of the House. In 2026, as many as a dozen seats, out of 52, could be at least somewhat competitive.

“I think it’s worked out great,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant politics professor at Pomona College and a member of the redistricting commission. (Others doing the map-making included a seminary professor, a structural engineer and an investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.)

There are two ways, Levitt said, that Newsom and fellow Democrats could undo the commission’s handiwork.

They could break the law and pass legislation drawing new lines, face an inevitable lawsuit and prevail with a sympathetic ruling from the California Supreme Court. Or they could ask voters to approve different lines through a new constitutional amendment, in a hurried-up special election ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Both scenarios seem as plausible as Newsom delivering universal healthcare and fulfilling his pledge to build 3.5 million new homes a year, to name two other extravagant promises.

To be clear, none of the above condones the plot that Trump and Abbott are attempting to hatch. Their actions are politically ruthless and more than a little cynical. (A letter from Trump’s hand-in-glove Justice Department has provided a legal fig leaf for the special session. Texas was recently — expediently — notified that four of its majority-minority congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered along racial lines, thus justifying the drawing of a new map.)

That’s no excuse, however, for Newsom to end-run California voters, or call a special election that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars at a time the state is gushing red ink.

Politics rooted in vengeance is both dangerous and wrong, whether it’s Trump or Newsom looking to settle scores.

There’s also the matter of delivering vacant threats. Some Democrats may thrill each time Newsom delivers one of his pugnacious pronouncements. That seems to be a big part of his presidential campaign strategy. But those same voters may tire of the lack of follow through, as Californians have.

Newsom has a well-deserved reputation for over-promising and under-delivering.

That’s not likely to serve him well on the national stage.

Los Angeles County leaders are scrambling to restore a sweeping racial justice initiative that voters accidentally repealed, a mistake that could threaten hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to reducing the number of people in jail.

County supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to ask their lawyers to find a way to bring back the ballot measure known as Measure J, which required the county to put a significant portion of its budget toward anti-incarceration services.

Voters learned last week that they had unwittingly repealed the landmark criminal justice reform, passed in 2020 in the heat of the Black Lives Matter movement, when they voted for a completely unrelated measure to overhaul the county government last November.

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the county overhaul — known as Measure G — along with Supervisor Janice Hahn, called it a “colossal fiasco.”

“This situation that has unfolded is enraging and unacceptable at every level. What has transpired is sloppy,” Horvath said Tuesday. “It’s a bureaucratic disaster with real consequences.”

The county says it’s looking at multiple options to try to get Measure J permanently back in the charter — which dictates how the county is governed — including a change in state law, a court judgment or a ballot measure for 2026.

“We cannot and we won’t let this mistake invalidate the will of the voters,” Hahn said.

County lawyers say the mistake stems from a recently discovered “administrative error.”

Last November, voters approved Measure G, which expands the five-person Board of Supervisors to nine members and brings on an elected chief executive, among other overhauls.

What no one seemed to realize — including the county lawyers who write the ballot measures — is that one measure would wipe out the other.

Measure G rewrote a chunk of the charter with no mention of anti-incarceration funding, effectively wiping out the county’s promise to put hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail and support them when they leave.

The repeal will take effect in 2028, giving the county three years to fix it.

“I do agree that there’s all kinds of reasons to be outraged, but the sky is not falling. Even if you think the sky is falling, it won’t fall until December 2028,” said Rob Quan, who leads a transparency-focused good-government advocacy group. “We’ve got multiple opportunities to fix this.”

The mistake was first spotted last month by former Duarte City Councilmember John Fasana, who sits on a task force in charge of implementing the county government overhaul. The county confirmed the mistake to The Times last week, a day after Fasana publicly raised the issue to his unsuspecting fellow task force members.

The measure’s critics say the mistake adds credence to their arguments that the county overhaul was put together too hastily.

“It seems to be that if one has to go back on the ballot, it ought to be [Measure] G,” said Fasana, noting it passed by a narrower margin.

Otherwise, he says, the county has set an unnerving precedent.

“It’s almost like setting a blueprint to steal an election,” said Fasana, who opposed both the anti-incarceration funding and the government overhaul measures. “You’ve got this way to basically nullify something that was passed by voters.”

Some worry that putting either measure back on the ballot runs the risk of voters rejecting it this time around.

Measure G faced significant opposition — including from two sitting supervisors — who argued an elected chief executive would be too powerful and the measure left too much of this new government ill-defined. It narrowly passed with just over 51% of the vote.

The anti-incarceration measure also faced heavy opposition in 2020, particularly from the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, which spent more than $3.5 million on advertising on TV and social media. The measure passed with 57% of the vote.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled it unconstitutional after a group of labor unions — including the sheriff’s deputies union — argued it hampered politicians’ ability to manage taxpayer money as they see fit. An appellate court later reversed the decision.

Measure J requires that 10% of locally generated, unrestricted L.A. County money be spent on social services such as housing, mental health treatment and other jail diversion programs. That’s equivalent to roughly $288 million this fiscal year. The county is prohibited from spending the money on the carceral system — prisons, jails or law enforcement agencies.

Derek Hsieh, the head of the sheriff’s deputies union and a member of the governance reform task force, said the union had consulted with lawyers and believed the county would be successful if it tried to resolve the issue through a court judgment.

“A change in state law or running another ballot measure — it’s kind of like swimming upstream,” he said. “Those are the most expensive difficult things.”

Megan Castillo, a coordinator with the Reimagine LA coalition, which pushed for the anti-incarceration measure, said if the group has to go back to the ballot, it will try to slash the language that it feels gives the county too much wiggle room on how funding is allocated. The coalition has clashed repeatedly with county leadership over just how much money is actually meant to be set aside under Measure J.

“If we do have to go to the ballot box, we’re going to be asking for more,” she said.

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who helped get the anti-incarceration measure on the ballot, said she felt suspicious of the error by county lawyers, some of whom she believed were never fully on board with the measure in the first place.

“I just feel like they’re too good at their jobs for this error to occur,” said Hernandez, who said the news landed like a “slap in the face.”

County leaders have emphasized that the error was purely accidental and brushed aside concerns that the repeal would have any tangible difference on what gets funded.

When Measure J was temporarily overturned by the court, the board promised to carry on with both the “spirit and letter” of the measure, reserving a chunk of the budget for services that keep people out of jail and support those returning. That will still apply, they say, even if Measure J is not reinstated.

The motion passed Tuesday directs the county to work on an ordinance to ensure “the continued implementation of measure J” beyond 2028.

NEW YORK — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday he will campaign for mayor of New York City as an independent candidate, staying in a crowded field running against left-wing Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani.

In a video, Cuomo, who last month suffered a bruising loss to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, announced he was making another run to combat the progressive Mamdani, who he said “offers slick slogans but no real solutions.”

“The fight to save our city isn’t over,” Cuomo said. “Only 13% of New Yorkers voted in the June primary. The general election is in November and I am in it to win it.”

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams also is running as an independent in the general election, and Curtis Sliwa — founder of the 1970s-era Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol — is again on the Republican line.

People opposed to Mamdani’s agenda, which includes higher taxes on the wealthy, have called on donors and voters to unite behind a single candidate for the November election. They fear multiple candidates will splinter the anti-Mamdani vote, increasing the Democrat’s chances to win.

Mamdani’s campaign responded to Cuomo’s announcement by saying the ex-governor and mayor are cozying up to “billionaires and Republicans” while the Democratic nominee remains focused on affordability issues.

“That’s the choice this November,” campaign spokesperson Jeffrey Lerner said in a statement.

Cuomo’s decision to continue on in the race is the latest chapter in his comeback attempt, launched almost four years after he resigned as governor in 2021 following a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. He denied wrongdoing during the campaign, maintaining that the scandal was driven by politics.

Cuomo was treated as the presumed front-runner for much of the Democratic primary, with the former governor boasting deep political experience, universal name recognition and a juggernaut fundraising operation. He limited media interviews, held few unscripted events and avoided mingling with voters.

That strategy contrasted with Mamdani’s energetic street-level campaign centered around affordability issues. The 33-year-old amassed a legion of young volunteers who blanketed the city to build support, while the candidate’s savvy social media persona won him national acclaim.

Lagging behind Mamdani in the vote count, Cuomo conceded the race last month on primary night. Final results released after the city ran through its ranked choice voting calculations showed Mamdani besting the former governor by 12 percentage points.

Despite the Democratic primary loss, Cuomo had also qualified to run on an independent ballot line in November under a party he created called “Fight and Deliver.”

As he weighed whether to stay on as an independent, Cuomo began losing support from traditional allies. Key labor unions backed Mamdani, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, an influential Black leader, urged Cuomo to step aside.

Some deep-pocketed contributors have meanwhile aligned behind Adams, who is running as an independent. Although he’s still a Democrat, Adams pulled out of the primary shortly after a federal judge dismissed a corruption case against him at the request of President Trump’s Justice Department, arguing that the case had sidelined him from campaigning.

Cuomo, 67, served as governor for over a decade and modeled himself as a socially progressive Democrat who got things done. He pushed through legislation that legalized gay marriage and tackled massive infrastructure projects, such as a three-mile bridge over the Hudson River that he named after his father.

Cuomo’s national profile peaked in the early days of the nation’s COVID-19 outbreak during his televised daily briefings. The governor leavened stern warnings for people to wear masks with heartfelt expressions of concern for his elderly mother or brotherly banter with Chris Cuomo, a TV journalist.

His reputation was soon tainted when it emerged that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many victims who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed.

Cuomo resigned shortly after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found he had sexually harassed at least 11 women.

WASHINGTON — Debate over President Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package is over on Capitol Hill. Now the argument goes national.

From the Central Valley of California to Midwestern battlegrounds and suburban districts of the northeast, the new law already is shaping the 2026 midterm battle for control of the House of Representatives. The outcome will set the tone for Trump’s final two years in the Oval Office.

Democrats need a net gain of three House seats to break the GOP’s chokehold on Washington and reestablish a power center to counter Trump. There’s added pressure to flip the House because midterm Senate contests are concentrated in Republican-leaning states, making it harder for Democrats to reclaim that chamber.

As Republicans see it, they’ve now delivered broad tax cuts, an unprecedented investment in immigration enforcement and new restraints on social safety net programs. Democrats see a law that rolls back health insurance access and raises costs for middle-class Americans while cutting taxes mostly for the rich, curtailing green energy initiatives and restricting some workers’ organizing rights.

“It represents the broken promise they made to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who chairs the party’s House campaign arm. “We’re going to continue to hold Republicans accountable for this vote.”

Parties gear up for a fight

Whether voters see it that way will be determined on a district-by-district level, but the battle will be more intense in some places than others. Among the 435 House districts, only 69 contests were decided by less than 10 percentage points in the 2024 general election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 26 Democratic-held seats it must defend vigorously, along with 35 GOP-held seats it believes could be ripe to flip. Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has listed 18 GOP incumbents as priorities, plus two districts opened by retirements.

There are a historically low number of so-called crossover districts: Only 13 Democrats represent districts that Trump carried in 2024, while just three Republicans serve districts that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried.

Both committees are busy recruiting challengers and open-seat candidates, and more retirements could come, so the competitive map will evolve. Still, there are clusters of districts guaranteed to influence the national result.

California, despite its clear lean to Democrats statewide, has at least nine House districts expected to be up for grabs: three in the Central Valley and six in Southern California. Six are held by Democrats, three by the GOP.

Pennsylvania features four districts that have been among the closest U.S. House races for several consecutive cycles. They include a suburban Philadelphia seat represented by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of just two House Republicans to vote against Trump’s bill and one of the three GOP lawmakers from a district Harris won. Fitzpatrick cited the Medicaid cuts.

Vice President JD Vance plans on Wednesday to be in Republican Rep. Robert Bresnahan’s northwest Pennsylvania district to tout the GOP package. Bresnahan’s seat is a top Democratic target.

Iowa and Wisconsin, meanwhile, feature four contiguous GOP-held districts in farm-heavy regions where voters could be swayed by fallout from Trump’s tariffs.

Democrats fight to define the GOP

Beyond bumper-sticker labels — Trump’s preferred “Big Beautiful Bill” versus Democrats’ “Big Ugly Bill” retort — the 900-page law is, in fact, an array of policies with varying effects.

Democrats hammer Medicaid and food assistance cuts, some timed to take full effect only after the 2026 midterms, along with Republicans’ refusal to extend tax credits to some people who obtained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law; 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

“Folks will die here in Louisiana and in other parts of the country,” House Minority Leader Jeffries warned last week during a town hall in Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.

Jeffries singled out vulnerable Republicans such as California Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, who represents a heavily agricultural Central Valley district where more than half of the population is eligible for the joint state-federal insurance program. California allows immigrants with legal status and those who are undocumented to qualify for Medicaid, so not all Medicaid recipients are voters. But the program helps finance the overall healthcare system, including nursing homes and hospitals.

Republicans highlight the law’s tightened work requirements for Medicaid enrollees. They argue that it’s a popular provision that will strengthen the program.

“I voted for this bill because it does preserve the Medicaid program for its intended recipients — children, pregnant women, the disabled, and elderly,” Valadao said. “I know how important the program is for my constituents.”

Republicans hope voters see lower taxes

The law includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. It makes permanent existing rates and brackets approved during Trump’s first term. Republicans and their allies have hammered vulnerable Democrats for “raising costs” on American households by opposing the bill.

GOP campaign aides point to the popularity of individual provisions: boosting the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 (some families at lower income levels would not get the full credit), new deductions on tip and overtime income and auto loans; and a new deduction for older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

“Everyone will have more take-home pay. They’ll have more jobs and opportunity,” Johnson said in a Fox News Sunday interview. “The economy will be doing better and we’ll be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did.”

Democrats note that the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax code are wealthy Americans and corporations. Pairing that with safety net cuts, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz concluded, “The cruelty is the point.”

Immigration, meanwhile, was Trump’s strongest issue in 2024. NRCC aides say that will continue with the new law’s investments in immigration enforcement. Democrats believe that the Trump administration has overplayed its hand with its push for mass deportation.

Playing the Trump card

The president is a titanic variable.

Democrats point to 2018, when they notched a 40-seat net gain in House seats to take control away from the GOP. This year, Democrats have enjoyed a double-digit swing in special elections around the country when compared with 2024 presidential results. Similar trends emerged in 2017 after Trump’s 2016 victory. Democrats say that reflects voter discontent with Trump once he’s actually in charge.

Republicans answer that Trump’s job approval remains higher at this point than in 2017. But the GOP’s effort is further complicated by ongoing realignments: Since Trump’s emergence, Democrats have gained affluent white voters — like those in suburban swing districts — while Trump has drawn more working-class voters across racial and ethnic groups. But Republicans face a stiffer challenge of replicating Trump’s coalition in a midterm election without him on the ballot.

Democrats, meanwhile, must corral voters who are not a threat to vote for Republicans but could stay home.

Jeffries said he’s determined not to let that happen: “We’re going to do everything we can until we end this national nightmare.”

Barrow, Cooper and Brook write for the Associated Press. Cooper reported from Phoenix and Brook reported from New Orleans. AP reporters Michael Blood in Los Angeles and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

With President Trump continuing to bulldoze through American politics, Democrats are forced to confront a fundamental question: Do voters even want what they’ve been offering?

The meteoric rise of Zohran Mamdani, a fiery young Democratic Socialist who recently claimed a shocking New York mayoral primary win, points to a grim answer.

It’s presumptuous to extrapolate too much from one state or local race. (Remember how Scott Brown’s special election win in Massachusetts was supposed to signal the end of liberalism? Exactly.) But underestimating moments like this is also dangerous because tectonic rumbles often precede a political earthquake.

Even if Mamdani isn’t the solution — and he likely isn’t — his stunning victory suggests a sobering possibility: The very thing Democrats have been running from is precisely what voters are chasing.

For a decade now, there have been basically two prevailing theories about how to beat Trump.

The first is simple: Be whatever he isn’t. If Trump is vulgar, be decent. If Trump is chaotic, be stable. If Trump breaks things, fix them. This theory is comforting, but it also assumes that voters will respond to decency and logic. An assumption that, as it turns out, is dubious.

The second theory, while cynical, may be more accurate: Fight fire with fire. If you can’t beat him, join him. Not on policy — that would be insane — but on vibe. If Trump is a spectacle, Democrats should find one of their own.

Trump understood the importance of dominating the public’s attention from the start. Apparently, so does Mamdani. And so do a handful of other left-wing firebrands (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, et al.) who make the party’s establishment look like buttoned-up accountants.

There are different ways to break through in the modern era. You can be young and hip. You can be weird and magnetic. You can master the art of long-form podcast appearances and creating viral social media videos. But above all, you must eschew the trite pablum of scripted politicians.

In this regard, it’s difficult to divorce style from substance. It’s no coincidence that today’s most attention-grabbing pols tend to promote the most radical proposals that also happen to excite previously underserved portions of the electorate.

“Build the wall.” “Lock her up.” “Defund the police.” “Medicare for all.” These slogans are all, to varying degrees, unworkable — and previously unthinkable. But they all sound unorthodox and decisive, which in the contemporary political ecosystem is more effective than being wise or correct. Case in point: Trump can shift an entire news cycle by suggesting we should invade Canada or Greenland.

Could a mainstream Democrat, if he or she were charismatic and talented enough, cut through that noise? In theory, yes. But the problem with moderates is that they tend to be moderate. Even in how they talk and how they dress.

It’s not just their policies that feel safe — it’s their entire aesthetic. And in the attention economy, that’s a real handicap.

The center, to paraphrase Yeats, cannot meme.

This is why Mamdani’s radical take on politics is so resonant. Like Trump before him, he proposes ideas that have been wildly outside the political mainstream, and he actually seems to believe what he’s saying.

This last part is key. Younger voters, especially, don’t merely want revolutionary policy positions; they want existential authenticity.

So what is his radical take on politics? Mamdani wants to freeze rents and make buses and childcare free. He doesn’t think billionaires should exist. He has floated the idea of government-run grocery stores. He’s openly anti-Zionist. He refuses to condemn the incendiary phrase “globalize the intifada.” He’s confrontational. He’s shocking. He’s newsworthy. He’s … a complete turnoff to middle-aged, conservative commentators like me — which is proof he’s succeeding!

It might be horrible for America to have not one, but two extremist parties; but after years of trying to sell candidates who won’t scare the suburban normies (with Kamala Harris being an earnest yet flawed attempt at this), you could forgive Democrats for wondering if what they really need is a Trump of their own. Someone who is fiery, meme-ready and authentically combative (albeit in a younger and entirely different package than Trump).

It’s way too soon to say if this will be their trajectory. But it’s worth noting that, outside of Mamdani’s victory, the only Democratic moments this year that have evoked any real excitement or virality came during AOC and Bernie rallies.

Still, nothing is guaranteed. If Democrats decide to go this route (say, with an AOC candidacy in 2028), they risk alienating otherwise “gettable” swing voters and dragging down the entire ticket.

Indeed, some of Trump’s most potent 2024 ads involved pointing out Harris’ previous dalliances with “woke” politics. And that was with a candidate going out of her way to appear moderate.

What energizes the base can just as easily terrify the middle. And it could hand fresh ammunition to a suddenly rudderless Republican Party, which without Trump on the ballot in 2028 could be quite vulnerable to losing to a standard-issue “vanilla” Democrat.

Nevertheless, there’s an increasing sense that Democrats have no choice but to crawl into the carnival tent Trump built and become louder, flashier and fringier than he was. Not just because trying to be the respectable (read “boring”) party of institutions failed, but because our modern media milieu all but demands it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

July 10 (UPI) — A far greater percentage of voters over 60 have turned out to vote than younger voters, often by margins of 10 to 25 percentage points, in recent elections across Latin America, including Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Brazil, an analysis shows.

This persistent gap is a clear sign of a crisis of representation that especially affects younger generations and fuels abstention as a form of political disengagement across the region.

Voter abstention has been a growing trend since 2010 in national and regional elections. The reasons behind this disengagement vary, but a crisis of representation and rising distrust in political elites — especially among young people — stand out.

“The representative system is in crisis. Society is increasingly distrustful of elites, especially politics as a profession,” Argentine political scientist Adrián Rocha said. He warned that voters between the ages of 18 and 30 are showing growing indifference toward traditional democratic values.

Even in countries where voting is mandatory — such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay — low turnout remains common in regional and internal party elections.

In Argentina, for example, only 53.2% of voters participated in Buenos Aires City’s legislative elections in May 2024. In the 2023 primaries, just 43% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast ballots, compared to 71% of those over 60.

In Chile, only 9.16% of registered voters took part in the left-wing presidential primaries this past June. Just 35% of voters aged 18 to 24 turned out for the 2020 constitutional plebiscite, when voting was voluntary.

Similar patterns have emerged in other countries. In the Dominican Republic, abstention in the 2024 presidential election topped 46% — a steady rise compared to previous cycles.

Dominican attorney Allen Peña said the high abstention rate in his country is due “in large part to the lack of quality proposals from candidates — a perception that’s especially widespread among young voters.”

In Guatemala, turnout dropped from to 54% in 2023 from 61% in 2019, with the lowest participation among voters aged 18 to 29.

In Mexico, the judicial election held in June 2025 — the first of its kind in the country — set a record for low turnout: only 10% of eligible voters cast a ballot. While there are no official age breakdowns, analysts and international observers estimate that abstention among young voters exceeded 85%.

In Brazil, despite compulsory voting, more than 30% of voters aged 18 to 24 did not go to the polls in the 2022 presidential election.

Jorge Cruz, vice president of the Esquipulas Foundation, said “electoral abstention in Latin America is a growing phenomenon closely tied to the crisis of democracy. New generations show deep apathy toward politics, which they see as distant, bureaucratic and ineffective at solving their everyday problems.”

He added that many voters no longer see their ballot as a path to tangible change.

The 2024 Latinobarómetro confirms the trend. Although support for democracy rose from 48% to 52% across the region, one in four Latin Americans say they are indifferent to the type of political system.

The generational gap is also striking — only 45% of those under 25 support democracy, compared to 56% of those over 60. Preference for authoritarianism nearly doubles among younger respondents, rising from 13% among those over 60 to 21% among those under 25.

Last month, New York City’s mayoral race drew national attention when Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani secured a stunning victory over former governor and political veteran Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, thanks to the relatively new system of ranked-choice voting. Less noticed were the 28 contested New York City Council races on the same ballot, 10 of which also had no candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote.

In most places, including in most of California, such messy results would trigger a costly runoff between the top two finishers in each race. But not in New York City, where voters rank every candidate in order of preference on their ballots. If no one receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, whichever candidate received the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and voters whose ballots had that person in the top position are then counted as supporters of their second choice. This process of elimination and consolidation continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.

Perhaps Mamdani would have won the primary in a runoff against Cuomo, but he didn’t have to. This voting system reflected the will of the people without dragging out campaign season or asking voters to head to the polls an extra time.

Advocates say ranked-choice voting ensures your vote isn’t wasted if your top choice is eliminated. Proponents also contend that the system discourages negative campaigning (instead fostering cross-endorsements), improves representation for women and people of color, promotes more viable competition, reduces election costs and eliminates the “spoiler effect” from vote siphoning.

Ranked-choice voting is gaining traction, particularly in U.S. cities. Currently, 63 jurisdictions nationwide use some form of ranked-choice voting, including seven in California: Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, Redondo Beach, San Francisco and San Leandro.

Polling shows strong support for ranked-choice voting among residents of California cities that have it, and most of those cities increased the diversity of their governing bodies after implementation. These systems have already saved money for California taxpayers by eliminating costly runoff elections.

What would change if California implemented ranked-choice voting for state offices, or if general elections in the city of Los Angeles were decided this way? It would play out differently than in New York.

Unlike New York, which holds party primaries, most California jurisdictions hold nonpartisan primary elections in which all parties run on the same ticket — known as a top-two or jungle primary. This means when a candidate loses in a state or local primary, they can’t just switch parties or run as an independent to get on the general election ballot, as Cuomo now could.

California’s nonpartisan elections also mean that a candidate’s party affiliation plays a competitive role in primaries, unlike in New York City. Because of this, candidates will sometimes strategically register with the dominant party before they run in California, as Rick Caruso did in 2022. This wouldn’t necessarily change under ranked-choice voting, but some candidates might feel less inclined to employ this tactic if they think they have a chance at getting a voter’s second- or third-choice votes while running as a candidate of their preferred party.

There are two other crucial differences between California elections and New York races, one at the local level and one at the state level.

Locally, most jurisdictions, including the city of Los Angeles, hold a general election only if no candidate wins more than 50% of the primary vote. Thus ranked-choice voting would eliminate the need for primary elections altogether in most California races. This would save jurisdictions money and probably increase voter turnout, given that more people traditionally vote in general elections than in primaries.

In contrast, California uses a top-two primary system for most state and federal races, which advances the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation or margin of victory, to the general election. While this avoids costly runoffs, it often results in one-party general elections, especially in heavily partisan districts. Ranked-choice voting wouldn’t prevent that scenario, but it might give underrepresented parties a better shot at advancing in competitive races.

Less known is whether ranked-choice voting would alter the political makeup of representation if broadly implemented in California. Strategic crossover voting — in which Republicans and Democrats rank moderate candidates from the other party — could lead to more centrist outcomes. Likewise, in areas where one party dominates, consistent second-choice support for moderate candidates from other parties could move the controlling party toward the center. Conversely, in areas with many hard-left or hard-right voters, ranked-choice voting could push moderates to adopt more extreme positions to gain second- or third-choice support.

The combination of ranked-choice voting with California’s nonpartisan system would likely produce unique strategic incentives and political realignments unimaginable in cities with partisan primaries.

Campaign styles could also change. Candidates may tone down attacks and even form alliances with like-minded rivals, as progressives did in New York, to earn second-choice votes.

Those unknowns may make some state and local leaders hesitant to change the way we vote. After all, those who’ve won office through the current system are often the least eager to change it. But hesitation shouldn’t overshadow the potential benefits: lower costs, broader engagement, more representative outcomes and less divisive politics.

If California is serious about reforming its increasingly expensive and polarized electoral system, ranked-choice voting is worth a closer look.

Sean McMorris is the California Common Cause program manager for transparency, ethics and accountability.

ATLANTA — President Trump and other Republicans have long criticized states that take weeks to count their ballots after election day. This year has seen a flurry of activity to address it.

Part of Trump’s executive order on elections, signed in March but held up by lawsuits, takes aim at one of the main reasons for late vote counts: Many states allow mailed ballots to be counted even if they arrive after election day.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month said it would consider whether a challenge in Illinois can proceed in a case that is among several Republican-backed lawsuits seeking to impose an election day deadline for mail ballots.

At least three states — Kansas, North Dakota and Utah — passed legislation this year that eliminated a grace period for receiving mailed ballots, saying they now need to be in by election day.

Even in California, where weekslong vote counting is a frequent source of frustration and a target of Republican criticism, a bill attempting to speed up the process is moving through the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Order asserts federal law prohibits counting late ballots

The ballot deadline section of Trump’s wide-ranging executive order relies on an interpretation of federal law that establishes election day for federal elections. He argues this means all ballots must be received by that date.

“This is like allowing persons who arrive 3 days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd,” the executive order states.

It follows a pattern for the president, who has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of such ballots even though there is no evidence they are the source of widespread fraud. The issue is tied closely to his complaints about how long it takes to count ballots, his desire for results on election night and his false claims that overnight “dumps” of vote counts point to a rigged election in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

But ballots received after election day, in addition to being signed and dated by the voter, must be postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service indicating they were completed and dropped off on or before the final day of voting.

Accepting late-arriving ballots has not been a partisan issue historically. States as different as California and Mississippi allow them, while Colorado and Indiana do not.

“There is nothing unreliable or insecure about a ballot that comes back after election day,” said Steve Simon, the chief election official in Minnesota, which has an election day deadline.

In his executive order, most of which is paused by the courts, Trump directs the attorney general to “take all necessary action” to enforce federal law against states that include late-arriving ballots in their final counts for federal elections. He also directs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to condition federal funding on compliance.

Trump’s rhetoric motivates Republican states

Republicans in five states have passed legislation since the 2020 election moving the mail ballot deadline to election day, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election legislation.

Earlier this year, GOP lawmakers in Kansas ended the state’s practice of accepting mail ballots up to three days after election day, a change that will take effect for next year’s midterms. Problems with mail delivery had prompted Kansas to add the grace period in 2017.

Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Republican who chairs the committee that handles election legislation, compared the grace period to giving a football team extra chances to score after the game clock expires.

“We need this uniform end to the election just so that we know that all voters are operating on the same time frame,” he said.

A history of complaints in California

California has long been a source of complaints about the amount of time it takes for ballots to be counted and winners declared.

“The rest of the country shouldn’t have to wait on California to know the results of the elections,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Committee on House Administration, said during an April hearing.

He said California’s “lax election laws” were to blame for the delays.

The nation’s most populous state has the largest number of registered voters in the country, some 22.9 million, which is roughly equivalent to the number of voters in Florida and Georgia combined.

California also has embraced universal mail voting, which means every registered voter automatically receives a ballot in the mail for each election. The deadline for election offices to receive completed ballots is seven days after election day as long as they are postmarked by election day.

A survey of some 35,000 Los Angeles County voters during last fall’s election found that 40% waited until election day to return their ballot.

Election officials say the exhaustive process for reviewing and counting mail ballots combined with a large percentage of voters waiting until the last minute makes it impossible for all results to be available on election night.

California Democrats consider changes to speed the count

Under state law, election officials in California have 30 days to count ballots, conduct a post-election review and certify the results.

Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s chief election official, told Congress in May that his team counted nearly 97% of the 3.8 million ballots cast within a week of election day in 2024. Jesse Salinas, president of the state clerks’ association, said his staff in Yolo County, near Sacramento, already works 16-hour days, seven days a week before and after an election.

Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) introduced legislation that would keep the state’s 30-day certification period but require county election officials to finish counting most ballots within 13 days after the election. They would be required to notify the state if they weren’t going to meet that deadline and give a reason.

“I don’t think that we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend like these conspiracies aren’t out there and that this lack of confidence doesn’t exist, in particular among Republican voters in California,” said Berman. “There are certain good government things that we can do to strengthen our election system.”

He acknowledged that many counties already meet the 13-day deadline in his bill, which awaits consideration in the state Senate.

“My hope is that this will strengthen people’s confidence in their election system and their democracy by having some of those benchmarks and just making it very clear for folks when different results will be available,” Berman said.

Cassidy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

Former Vice President Kamala hasn’t decided whether she will run for California governor next year, but a new poll released Wednesday shows that she would be a favorite of voters if she does.

Though many voters were undecided, Harris was the choice of 41% of survey respondents, compared to 29% who opted for an unnamed Republican candidate, according to a poll by the University of California Irvine. She also had the greatest favorability ratings and is most well known compared to all of the candidates who have announced.

“The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” said Jon Gould, dean of UCI’s School of Social Ecology, in a statement. “Although she lacks majority support at the moment, people know her better than the other candidates and generally view her favorably.”

Only 5% of Californians had never heard of Harris, while every other announced candidate was unknown by a far larger number of respondents, including those who had run for statewide office previously. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who ran for governor in 2018, was unknown by 47% of survey respondents; 48% were unfamiliar with former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, who ran for U.S. Senate in 2024.

When tested against candidates who have announced, Harris was the choice of 24% of voters, the only candidate to crack double digits, according to the poll. However, 40% of respondents were undecided, according to the poll.

Among Democrats, who account for 47% of the state’s voters as of February, Harris had the support of nearly half, while every announced candidate had single-digit support. Harris led among Californians in every region and in every racial group, according to the poll.

Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 and is reportedly debating whether to run for mayor again or governor, was the favored choice of GOP voters, with the backing of 27% of survey respondents.

Harris, whose representatives did not respond to a request for comment, is expected to decide whether she enters the race by the end of the summer, a delay that has prompted criticism from several candidates in the crowded field of candidates who have already announced their bids.

The statewide poll of 4,143 Californians was conducted online in two separate polls, one between May 27 and June 2, and another between May 29 and June 4. The margin of error in either direction varies between 2.9% and 3.6%, according to UCI.

NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani has won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, a new vote count confirmed Tuesday, cementing his stunning upset of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and sending him to the general election.

The Associated Press called the race after the results of the city’s ranked choice voting tabulation were released and showed Mamdani trouncing Cuomo by 12 percentage points.

In a statement, Mamdani said he was humbled by the support he received in the primary and started turning his attention to the general election.

“Last Tuesday, Democrats spoke in a clear voice, delivering a mandate for an affordable city, a politics of the future, and a leader unafraid to fight back against rising authoritarianism,” he said. “I am humbled by the support of more than 545,000 New Yorkers who voted for our campaign and am excited to expand this coalition even further as we defeat Eric Adams and win a city government that puts working people first.”

Mamdani’s win had been widely expected since he took a commanding lead after the polls closed a week ago, falling just short of the 50% of the vote needed to avoid another count under the city’s ranked choice voting model. The system allows voters’ other preferences to be counted if their top candidate falls out of the running.

Mamdani, who declared victory the night of the June 24 primary, will face a general election field that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams as well as independent candidate Jim Walden and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

The former governor, down but not out

Cuomo conceded defeat just hours after the polls closed last week but is contemplating whether to run in the general election on an independent ballot line. After the release of Tuesday’s vote count, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said, “We’ll be continuing conversations with people from all across the city while determining next steps.”

“Extremism, division and empty promises are not the answer to this city’s problems, and while this was a look at what motivates a slice of our primary electorate, it does not represent the majority,” Azzopardi said. “The financial instability of our families is the priority here, which is why actionable solutions, results and outcomes matter so much.”

Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and member of the state Assembly, was virtually unknown when he launched his candidacy centered on a bold slate of populist ideas. But he built an energetic campaign that ran circles around Cuomo as the older, more moderate Democrat tried to come back from the sexual harassment scandal that led to his resignation four years ago.

The results, even before they were finalized, sent a shockwave through the political world.

Democratic support?

Mamdani’s campaign, which was focused on lowering the cost of living, claims it has found a new blueprint for Democrats who have at times appeared rudderless during President Trump’s climb back to power.

The Democratic establishment has approached Mamdani with caution. Many of its big players applauded his campaign but don’t seem ready to throw their full support behind the young progressive, whose past criticisms of law enforcement, use of the word “genocide” to describe the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and “democratic socialist” label amount to landmines for some in the party.

If elected, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor and its first of Indian American decent. He would also be one of its youngest.

Opposition mounts

For Republicans, Mamdani has already provided a new angle for attack. Trump and others in the GOP have begun to launch broadsides at him, moving to cast Mamdani as the epitome of leftist excess ahead of consequential elections elsewhere this year and next.

“If I’m a Republican, I want this guy to win,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University. “Because I want to be able to compare and contrast my campaign as a Republican, in a national election, to the idea of, ‘This is where the Democratic Party is.’”

New York City’s ranked choice voting model allows voters to list up to five candidates on their ballots in order of preference. If a single candidate is the first choice of more than 50% of voters, then that person wins the race outright. Since no candidate cleared that bar on the night of the primary, the ranked choice voting process kicked in. The board is scheduled to certify the election on July 15.

Mamdani has been a member of the state Assembly since 2021, and has characterized his inexperience as a potential asset. His campaign promised free city buses, free child care, a rent freeze for people living in rent-stabilized apartments, government-run grocery stores and more, all paid for with taxes on the wealthy. Critics have slammed his agenda as politically unrealistic.

Cuomo ran a campaign centered on his extensive experience, casting himself as the only candidate capable of saving a city he said had spun out of control. During the campaign, he focused heavily on combating antisemitism and leaned on his name recognition and juggernaut fundraising operation rather than mingling with voters.

Confronted with the sexual harassment allegations that ended his tenure as governor, he denied wrongdoing, maintaining that the scandal was driven by politics and that voters were ready to move on.

Cuomo did not remove his name from the November ballot last week, ahead of a procedural deadline to do so, and has said he is still considering whether to mount an actual campaign for the office.

Adams, while still a Democrat, is running in the November election as an independent. He dropped out of the Democratic primary in April after he was severely wounded by his now-dismissed federal bribery case. Though he had done little in the way of campaigning since then, he reignited his reelection operation in the days after Mamdani declared victory, calling it a choice between a candidate with a “blue collar” and one with a “silver spoon.”

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he would form a new political party in the United States if a Republican-leaning Congress passes President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which proposes tax breaks and funding cuts for healthcare and food programmes.

Musk has voiced criticism of the bill on multiple occasions over the past month and began suggesting the idea of the new party on social media starting early June.

Here is more about Musk’s reservations about the bill, and about his new proposed party.

What has Musk said about the America Party?

Musk has been saying that if the bill is passed, Republicans are no different from Democrats, who are often accused by conservatives of being profligate with spending taxpayers’ dollars.

The version of the bill that the Senate is discussing at the moment, if passed by both chambers of Congress, would expand the national debt by $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034. The current US national debt stands at more than $36 trillion.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Monday.

“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”

In an earlier post, Musk wrote: “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

The debt ceiling, set by the US Congress, determines the upper limit to the amount of money that the US Treasury can borrow. The current debt limit is $36.1 trillion.

Why does Musk oppose the bill?

Once a key aide and major campaign donor for Trump, Musk had a public online falling out with the president in June over his criticism of the bill.

On June 3, Musk wrote on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

Musk alleged that Trump was linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a now-deleted post on X. However, Trump and Musk seemed to have reached a detente when Trump told reporters that he wished Musk well while the latter wrote on X on June 11 that he had gone “too far” in his criticism of the US president.

However, since then, Musk has argued in a series of online posts that the bill would increase the debt ceiling, “bankrupt America”, and “destroy millions of jobs in America”.

Musk owns the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla. The current version of the bill, with amendments made by the Senate, seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of EVs worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30. This could reduce the consumer demand for EVs in the US.

What is the America Party that Musk proposed?

On June 5, Musk posted a poll on his X account, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle?”

While social media polls are known to be nonrepresentative of broader public sentiment, 5.6 million people voted on the poll, and 80.4 percent responded with “yes”. Since then, Musk has repeatedly reposted the poll result, citing it as evidence that most Americans want a new party to be formed.

“Musk believes that 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with the two major parties and are not being represented,” Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor at the Department of Government, the University of Essex, told Al Jazeera.

While that number might not reflect the wider American public, it does point to a trend in the electorate; according to a Gallup poll from 2024, 43 percent of Americans identified as independent, 28 percent identified as Republican and 28 percent identified as Democrat. In other words, more Americans identify as independent than as either Democrat or Republican.

One of Musk’s followers replied to a post on X with an image with the text “America Party”. The world’s richest man responded: “‘America Party’ has a nice ring to it. The party that actually represents America!”

How real is Musk’s threat?

Experts say Musk, whose net worth is $363bn as of Monday according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, would realistically be able to fund a third party in the US. However, it is still unclear whether he would go ahead with his plan or whether his party would have a significant effect on US elections.

“Musk certainly has the financial power to back a third party that could be very disruptive to the Republican Party, but it’s not certain if Musk will take on this risk,” Lindstaedt said.

Lindstaedt recalled how earlier this month, Musk backed down from his criticism of Trump on X. “If we take him at his word, he could spend hundreds of millions on this project,” she added.

“Musk has been ramping up his criticism of the bill lately, and he may find specific legislators [particularly from the House] would be willing to defect if their constituencies are more negatively affected by Trump’s policies,” Lindstaedt said, referring to the House of Representatives. “He will also have the attention of fiscal hawks in particular.”

Lindstaedt added that among American voters, there is a “huge appetite” for a third party.

“The bill will leave the US spending hundreds of billions just in the interest, and the more Americans understand this, the more they may want to flock to something different. US public frustration with the traditional parties is at an all-time high, and Musk may be able to capitalise on this.”

However, Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science in the UCL School of Public Policy in London, said it was unclear whether Musk is serious and suggested that the barriers to breaking the Republican-Democrat duopoly are hard to scale for anyone.

“This is Elon Musk bluffing,” he told Al Jazeera. “He knows as well as anyone that the power of party machines behind Democrats and Republicans is too much to surmount.”

Gift added that while forming a party is possible, “winning seats in Congress or the White House is another matter entirely”.

“At best, a third party will have little impact on US elections; at worst, it will play ‘spoiler’, taking votes from one of the two parties and de facto giving it to another.”

What has Trump said about Musk?

On Monday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, saying: “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one.”

Trump added: “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump wrote, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body aimed at boosting government efficiency and upgrading Information Technology, that Musk formed and led at the start of Trump’s second administration, before leaving on May 30.

Zohran Mamdani is a stylish, millennial, African-born Muslim with a Hollywood pedigree who just won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor’s race.

If he sounds like Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, he just might be. But he’s also a lot like him.

They’re both charismatic leaders who have bucked their parties, tapped into the current political ethos that eschews traditional loyalties and by doing so, made themselves popular enough with fed-up voters to win elections when — to many in the political elite — they seem exactly like the kind of candidate who shouldn’t be able to get their grandmother’s vote.

“Working-class people want somebody who really takes on the status quo, who pushes an economic populist agenda and convinces them that something’s going to change,” Lorena Gonzalez told me.

She’s the head of the California Labor Federation, which represents unions, and even she’s fed up with Democrats.

“There are days that I’m like, why am I still in this party?” she said. “When I see them cozy up to tech, when I see this abundance issue that streamlines worker protections, when I see this fascination with billionaires and this acquiescing to not taxing billionaires and not doing anything about rent control, you know, there’s a point where I’m like, come on, grow some balls, go decide who you’re for.”

Or, as Trump put it in a social media post after Mamdani’s win, “Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”

Trump is right, words that I don’t often say — Mamdani’s victory may signal something deeper than a lone mayor’s race on the East Coast. People — both on the left and the right — crave authenticity, and want someone to believe in, be it an orange-hued boomer or a brown-skinned hipster.

The Democrats, as political strategist Mike Madrid put it, are having their own Tea Party moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did beginning in 2007 when the far-right of the Republican party began its now-successful takeover. Trump was never the impetus of the party’s swing to the fringe, he just capitalized on it.

“This is just a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base,” Madrid said.

There’s been ad nauseam amounts of pontificating about the current state of the Democratic party. Should it go more centrist? Should it embrace the progressive end? But the truth is the voters have already decided. They do indeed want lower grocery prices, as Trump promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to not crumble. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in that order.

And they don’t trust many, if not most, of the current Democrats in office to deliver. Like Republicans before them, they want outsiders (Mamdani, 33, is serving in the state Assembly), or at least someone who can sound like one.

Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to voters and she said left and right, Democrat and Republican, they see few differences remaining between the two parties, and are tired of voting for career politicians who haven’t delivered on economic issues.

Mamdani, whose mother is the film director Mira Nair (and who once rapped under the name Young Cardamom), campaigned on “a New York you can afford.” That included freezing payments on rent-controlled apartments, building new affordable housing with union labor, making both transit and child care free and — you guessed it — cheaper groceries. Whether he delivers or not, those were messages that a broad swath of New Yorkers, struggling like all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear.

And he delivered them not just with credibility, but with an entertainment value that nods to his mom’s influence: hamming it up Bollywood style for the South Asian aunties, walking the length of Manhattan to talk with people, jumping in the Atlantic ocean in a suit with a skinny tie.

Charisma and chutzpah.

Which, of course, is how Trump made his own rise, promising, with showman verve, to be the voice of the toiling voiceless who increasingly are in danger of becoming the working poor. Yes, he is a con man who is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line to his base: “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.”

That may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon be voting for a new governor from a crowded field — of establishment candidates. Even Kamala Harris, maybe especially Harris, fits that insider image, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite zigzagging from centrist to pugilist, can’t forward his presidential ambitions as anything but old-guard.

“What makes someone like Zohran so compelling, is even if you don’t agree with him on everything, which few voters do, you understand that he believes it and that you know where he’s coming from,” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives to run for office.

“I think that’s the distinction between him and say someone like Gavin Newsom, which is, like, does Gavin believe what he says? Does he buy his own bull—? It’s sort of unclear,” Litman added.

The anger of voters is strikingly clear, though, especially for ones who have for so long been loyal to Democrats. A new Pew analysis out this week found that about 20% of the Republican base is now nonwhite, nearly doubling what it was in 2016. Republicans have made gains with Black voters, Asian voters and Trump drew nearly half of Latino voters. Ouch.

“One of the real challenges for the Democrats is two central pieces of the orthodoxy has been that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of nonwhite voters,” Madrid said. “Both of those are increasingly proving untrue, and the question then becomes, well, how do you get them back? The way you get them back is by having some sort of economic populist policy framework.”

Litman said that the way to capture voters is by running new candidates, the kind who don’t come with history — and baggage. In the 36 hours after Mamdani was elected, her organization had 1,100 people sign up to learn more about how to run for office themselves, she said. It’s the biggest spike since the inauguration, and it shows that voters aren’t disinterested in democracy, but alienated from the existing options.

“The establishment is not unbeatable. They’re only unchallenged,” Litman said. “And I think the more that the Democratic Party establishment, as much as it exists, can understand that the people and the playbooks that got us here will not be the people and playbooks that get us out of it, the better off we’ll be.”

So maybe there are more Mamdani’s out there, waiting to lead the way. If Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I’ve seen in a while — highlighting the insider/outsider Democrats who have, like Mamdani, made their name by rattling the establishment.

“I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into ‘play,’” he wrote on social media. “After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the Greatest Losses in History, the 2024 Presidential Election, the Democrats should nominate Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President, and AOC+3 should be, respectively, Vice President, and three High Level Members of the Cabinet — Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani and our Country is really SCREWED!”

Or not.

Wouldn’t that be a slate?

SACRAMENTO — The vast majority of California voters support expanding access to translated ballots for people who speak limited English, an effort that would likely increase turnout, a new poll found.

That finding comes from a poll released Monday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which conducted the survey in five languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese — to capture voter sentiment in a state where more than a quarter of residents are foreign born.

The poll, conducted for the nonprofit Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, found that about 70% of California’s registered voters agreed that eligible voters who speak limited English should be provided with ballots translated into their preferred language. Support was strong among all age groups, races and ethnicities, as well as among Democrats and independent voters. Republicans were closely divided.

“I think in the country as a whole there’s a lot of debate and struggle over how inclusive a democracy we’re going to be and a lot of controversy over immigration, immigrant rights, immigrant inclusion,” said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. “It’s timely just thinking about the question of inclusion of different groups — who feels fully American and is allowed to feel fully American in our political system.”

Schickler and others said that, according to the latest estimates, more than 3 million registered voters in California self-identify as limited-English proficient. As of February, just under 23 million Californians were registered to vote.

Under state and federal law, California is required to provide bilingual voting assistance to Spanish speakers. Nine counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara — must provide voting materials in at least one language other than English or Spanish.

Translated sample ballots and other assistance also must be made available in Spanish or other languages in counties or precincts where the state has determined at least 3% of the voting-age residents are members of a single-language minority and don’t understand English well enough to vote without assistance.

The Berkeley survey found that 82% of Democrats supported providing translated ballot materials to limited-English voters, as did 72% of voters registered as “no party preference.” Among Republicans, 45% supported providing the translated ballots, while 42% did not.

According to the poll, most California voters also favored a proposal that recently went before the state Legislature that would have allowed all limited-English-speaking communities that meet a minimum threshold in a county to receive translated versions of all voting materials.

Legislation to that effect, SB 266, proposed by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside), failed to pass out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. A more ambitious bill to expand access to translated ballots and materials, AB 884, passed the Legislature in 2024, but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The governor stated that while he supported expanding ballot access, the bill would have cost tens of millions of dollars not included in the budget.

Providing translated ballots to California voters with limited English proficiency is critical in a state that is home to such a diverse electorate — and is known for its complex state and local ballot measures, said Rosalind Gold of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

“Even folks who are very educated and native-born English speakers find trying to decipher the description of a ballot measure and what it means to be challenging,” Gold said.

Providing translated sample ballots and other election materials to voters does not go far enough, she said: The official ballots themselves, whether for Californians who vote by mail or those who vote at polling stations, should be provided in a voter’s preferred language.

“It is difficult to basically, kind of go back and forth between the ballot you’re going to be marking your choices on and a sample ballot or a facsimile ballot that’s in your native language,” Gold said. “When people can directly vote on a ballot that is in a language that they are more familiar with, it just demystifies the whole process.”

The Berkeley survey found that, among limited-English speakers who lacked access to translated election materials or were unsure if it was provided, 87% said they would be more likely to vote in future elections if they received a ballot in their preferred language. A similar number said receiving those translated ballots would make it easier for them to vote.

The poll surveyed 6,474 registered voters throughout California from June 2-6.