Adelaide Stone Van Gessel says she doesn’t agree with partisan gerrymandering in practice.
But she voted yes on Proposition 50, a California ballot measure that would allow the state’s Democratic leaders to temporarily bypass California’s independent redistricting commission and enact a more Democratic-friendly congressional map ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Van Gessel and others who back Prop 50 told NPR the proposal provides the Democratic-leaning state a rare opportunity to directly counteract President Trump and Republican efforts to redraw political maps in their favor in other states.
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/03/g-s1-96207/california-redistricting-prop-50-trump
To gerrymander or not to gerrymander?
That will be the question facing Californians on Tuesday in a special election that could reshape the balance of power in the state and the country for years to come.
Proposition 50, backed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, would temporarily redraw the state’s electoral maps in a way that could help Democrats flip five Congressional seats in the 2026 midterms.
https://nypost.com/us-news/what-is-california-prop-50/
What about Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona? pic.twitter.com/Jtz09Hftqa
— Jean P. Salib Rivera 🇵🇷🇺🇸🇺🇳🇵🇸 (@JeanPau28829583) November 2, 2025
Voting Rights Act faces a near-death experience at US Supreme Court
Supreme Court has a muscular 6-3 conservative majority
Landmark law was passed in 1965 during civil rights era
Having gutted one provision, court targets a second
Trump administration backed Voting Rights Act challenge
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) – The Voting Rights Act, a landmark law barring discrimination in voting, was a product of the U.S. civil rights era, sought by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King, passed by Congress and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.
North Carolina’s legislature formally began redrawing the state’s congressional district map Monday, plainly stating their intent to help Republicans gain another U.S. House seat under President Donald Trump’s push to retain his party’s grip on Congress next year.
The state Senate gave initial approval along party lines to new boundaries for two eastern North Carolina districts in a move aimed at thwarting the reelection of Democratic Rep. Don Davis, one of the state’s three Black members of Congress. That followed a committee meeting in which dozens of speakers from the public sharply accused Republican lawmakers in the ninth-largest state of bowing to Trump.
As they look ahead to next year’s fight to control Congress in the midterms, Republicans and Democrats are scrambling across the country to revisit the congressional district lines that will shape political battles ahead.
Redistricting is usually performed only once a decade after the release of data from the U.S. Census.
Texas Republicans, at the urging of President Donald Trump, passed a new map in August packing together Democratic voters in major urban and suburban areas and drawing new borders around Democratic seats to include more Texans who voted for Trump last year.