Newsom’s Proposition 50 gerrymander upheld by divided Federal Court

January 15, 2026 By James V. Lacy 5 Comments

Strong dissent filed. Elections to Congress in California will not be competitive with Democrats having huge advantages if ruling holds.

The Three-Judge Federal panel sitting in Los Angeles filed its decision today, after some delay, on the Plaintiffs’ and U.S. Department of Justice’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction to declare Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50’s highly partisan gerrymander of California’s Congressional districts unconstitutional because it referred to racial data in creating the lines. As some observers expected, the two Biden and Obama appointed judges concluded that eliminating the nonpartisan commission’s previous lines (which have allowed for 9 Republicans to be elected to California’s 52 Congressional seats by competitive format) was legal. The ruling will likely tank any competitive Congressional elections between Republicans and Democrats for the next three election cycles. (It will mean that voters in Norco in southern California, for example, who supported Trump by 72% of the vote, will be represented by Congresswoman Norma Torres, the first Guatemalan-born Member of Congress, who voted “No” on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act supported by Riley Gaines). This decision was made over a strong dissent by Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee, a Trump appointee and the only appellate judge on the panel.

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The majority decision covered some 70-pages and offered details about how various district lines were developed. The decision established a very high bar for the showing of evidence of racially-based gerrymandering, especially in District 13 in the Stockton area where Lodi as a city is divided into three different Congressional Districts, and states that the Plaintiffs failed to establish “serious questions going to the merits” despite this obvious example of a racial chop-up. On the Federal Voting Rights Act protections advanced by the Plaintiffs and the Department of Justice, to avert racial discrimination, including disenfranchising Asian and white voters, the Court devoted only four paragraphs to their Conclusion of consideration in their decision, simply saying they rejected evidence offered by the Plaintiffs that some racial groups were favored and others diminished by Proposition 50. Which would be illegal through another lens.

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Delay in decision points to Federal Court upholding Proposition 50 constitutionality

December 25, 2025 By James V. Lacy 1 Comment

Three-Judge Federal court hearing the challenge to Newsom’s Congressional gerrymander was expected to act by December 19, still has not filed an Opinion Order

Though the initial time-line was never mandated, the Federal Court in Los Angeles reviewing the constitutional challenge to the Congressional District revisions under Proposition 50 was expected to act last week, by December 19. The court held two days of evidentiary hearings on December 15 and 16 and closed its courtroom proceedings after receiving arguments from both sides last Wednesday, December 17, after which it took the matter “under submission” for the preparation of what was expected to be a quick Order deciding the matter.

Both sides in the matter had reminded the Court that December 19 was an important day. And on more than one occasion the Court chided the parties, especially the Newsom Defendants, for foot-dragging in the case, noting that time was of the essence. This is because for the 2026 Primary Election in California, the formal process for prospective candidates for Congress began on December 19. Referred to as the “Signatures-in-Lieu of Filing Fee Period,” from December 19 to February 4, 2026, prospective Congressional candidates are given an early window to collect signatures to reduce of eliminate their filing fees for office. Later in the year, from February 9 to March 6, 2026, the candidates actually declare their candidacies with county elections officials.


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The Plaintiffs are asking for a Preliminary Injunction (“PI”) in the case, declaring Prop. 50 unconstitutional and allowing the state and county officials to begin processing next year’s Congressional elections in California pursuant to the lines drawn on 2021 by the Independent Commission that Prop. 50 replaces. Generally speaking, a PI is an extraordinary type of relief, issued before a full-blown trial, when a court determines it is highly likely the Plaintiffs will win the case at trial. A PI is usually issued quickly after the hearing, because the idea is this is temporary relief that is immediately required.

The delay of the Court in issuing an Order and not making a decision for more than a week after the close of courtroom proceedings gives some indication that at least a majority of the Court (2 of the judges are Democrat appointments, one is a Trump appointment) don’t feel that the situation is now so urgent as to step in with a quick decision to stop county election officials from processing prospective candidates under the Proposition 50 lines. In fact, if the Court were to issue a PI now, the Order would be more disruptive to the local processes than it would have been if issued last week, because of confusion and the “do-over” it would create of the proper residency of in-lieu signers, based on differences in Congressional lines.

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Newsom distances himself from Prop. 50 mapmaker Mitchell in latest filing; other Defendants say he can’t be forced to testify

December 15, 2025 By James Lacy Leave a Comment

Newsom says Mitchell was not a “Defendants’ agent” when somebody asked him to write the Congressional district lines the Legislature adopted for Prop. 50.

Governor Newsom does not want the Proposition 50 mapmaker, data guru Paul Mitchell, to testify next week in the hearing on whether racial data was used, illegally, to create the 52 new Congressional Districts that voters approved in last month’s special election. In a filing mandated by the Court before 5 p.m. last night, Newsom says Mitchell, who refused to testify 100 times a few days ago at his deposition on the racial data issue, should not be considered an agent of Newsom (the main proponent of Prop. 50), or the Legislature, because he did not “work for the legislature”, and is not a formal “party” to the lawsuit. Let that sink in. Newsom says Mitchell did not work for the Legislature.

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While the U.S. Department of Justice is questioning the claim of “legislative privilege” in the case and is now asking the Court to compel Mitchell’s further testimony on racial bias in the mapmaking, Newsom says he has “no power” to produce Mitchell as a witness, has none of Mitchell’s documents and evidence in his possession, and cannot waive any claim of privilege to not speak that Mitchell asserts on behalf of the Legislature, because Mitchell is on his own, with his own lawyer, and is a “non-party witness.”

Other oppositions filed late yesterday against Mitchell giving evidence on racial bias in the mapmaking were filed by the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and LULAC. They repeat reasons to the Court why Mitchell should be allowed to gag himself and not disclose the evidence of racial number crunching behind Proposition 50, which remains a big secret, but they also expand arguments on “Mitchell really didn’t work for the Legislature” and is therefore a non-party witness who can’t be forced to testify at this stage of the litigation without being subject to, for example, formal subpoena again. This argument may have some “blue smoke” technical merit but only that, as the DOJ did in fact subpoena Mitchell a couple times for the deposition in which he refused to testify, a fact that the Newsom Defendants seem to ignore, and which will not be lost on the Court, which appears to actually want to hear what Mitchell has to say.

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In new Court filing, Gavin Newsom “turns the table” on GOP in defense of Proposition 50. Will it work?

December 5, 2025 By James V. Lacy 1 Comment

Yesterday Gavin Newsom and his associates met the deadline to file their oppositions in Federal Court in Los Angeles to the constitutional challenge to the partisan gerrymander of California’s 52 Congressional seats, and pulled no punches in their strategy to reverse the pressure of the lawsuit with their opening line, which quotes a communication from the Plaintiff California Republican Party (likely used in fundraising against the measure during the special election campaign) as essentially an “admission against interest.” “This special election is about one thing and one thing only: Democrats want to GUARANTEE a Democrat House majority,” citing to the CAGOP. Of course, partisan gerrymandering so far is legal, so the quote complains of a dastardly but still legal political action. It is racial gerrymandering that is not legal. Both things could be present in Proposition 50, but the measure will only be illegal if the facts show racial gerrymandering was employed as a key reason in drawing the lines. Newsom wants the three-judge panel in Los Angeles, who will hear the case at trial on December 15, to focus on the partisanship motivating Proposition 50, which is legal under current law, and not the facts the Plaintiffs will offer that race was used in drawing some or all of the districts, which is illegal.

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Newsom’s opposition is 55 pages of argument and includes attached exhibits such as a report from Bernard Grofman, PhD, a Democratic expert on redistricting who teaches at U.C. Irvine, (117 pages), and Joanna Southard (84 pages). Separate oppositions were also filed yesterday by Defendant-Intervenors Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and LULAC. (The filings by the DCCC and LULAC were allowed by the court but technically, curiously so, since they have been granted Defendant-Intervenor status, but have not “answered” the Complaint yet and have won a stipulation that they don’t have to do so till next January, when much of the judicial review may actually be over in the case.)

Newsom’s brief drills into the point that “Proposition 50’s partisan aim was no secret and expected to empower Democrats to flip five California Congressional seats currently held by Republicans – exactly the result the Legislature intended.” Such a statement to the Court is as true as it is crass and from the perspective of a person who thinks electoral lines should be drawn in a fair and neutral way to advance a competitive and representative Democracy, it is a sickening admission, but a legal one.

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Proposition 50 lawsuit witnesses are disclosed before trial and listed here

December 3, 2025 By James Lacy 2 Comments

Both sides reveal their evidence in anticipation of the December 15 trial on the constitutionality of Newsom’s gerrymander law.

The witness and exhibits lists were revealed yesterday in Federal Court in downtown Los Angeles by both the Plaintiffs and U.S. Department of Justice on one side, and the Newsom Defendants on the other, in the pending trial on the constitutionality of the Proposition 50 Congressional gerrymander.

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A total of 13 main live witnesses were identified and disclosed in a Joint Statement by both sides, along with four unnamed record-keepers of documents considered relevant to the case. Other additional witnesses “may” be called and were disclosed as well.

Witnesses that the Plaintiffs intend to examine include voting demographics guru Paul Mitchell, who is to testify on “how he drew the Proposition 50 lines”; and Tom Brunell and Sean Trende, who will testify on map drawing. The Plaintiffs expect to have Mitchell on the witness stand for two hours of court time, the Defendants will have an additional one hour with him. Trende is expected to testify for three hours, divided between the Plaintiffs and the Defendants. Trende is a senior election analyst at RealClearPolitics. Brunell is a political science professor at the University of Texas, with a PdD from U.C Irvine.

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Judge enjoins Texas GOP gerrymander. Is Prop. 50 next?

November 19, 2025 By Staff 1 Comment

Serious implications for constitutionality of Proposition 50 in California. But Texas may still have the upper hand as California’s reapportionment is now in some doubt.

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Just as Governor Newsom and the U.S. Department of Justice (with the California GOP) are gearing up for a December 3 show-down in Federal Court in Los Angeles on the constitutionality of Newsom’s Proposition 50 Democrat gerrymander of California’s 52 Congressional seats, a Federal three-judge panel in Texas has ruled today that the Texas Legislature’s partisan Republican gerrymander, which inspired Proposition 50, (and has lead to the word “Texas” to now appear in the California state constitution) is illegal.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling striking down the new lines. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

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I have written previously here that racial considerations are also quite present in the facts in California as presented in the DOJ’s Complaint in Intervention in the Proposition 50 case. I cannot imagine now that the two cases, California and Texas, will not end up quickly being resolved through the Federal appeals process all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will have ultimate authority to decide the issue, especially if there is a divergence of opinion between the two Federal circuits the states reside in. The SCOTUS will have it’s say, especially to ensure the whatever the law is found to be, it is applied equally in both situations.

The only variation here in the cases will be the facts and how the judges perceive them. I know more about the facts in the California case, especially involving a very problematic map for “District 13” in California, where race was surely a consideration according to evidence in the filings. Will there be a difference in the facts presented to the two Courts regarding how race was considered? Yes, but if race played any role, the lines will have violated the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Voting Rights Act in both states. A prediction will be either both cases stand, or both cases fall. My hunch is that both cases will fall, because to stretch dominant Democrat or Republican districts in either state, it is highly likely that the relevant number crunchers ran a Latino identifying software program, such as a “Latino name file”, against the voter files, and treated a name like “Hernandez” differently from a name like “Smith” in writing the new lines. While this is an unsophisticated presentation of what they likely actually did, you can grasp it this way, and it is illustrative of what the Courts will be looking for if they are to find illegal racial gerrymandering, in either or both states.

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What does having 11 tattoos convey to ICE?

September 21, 2025 By James V. Lacy Leave a Comment

Could it include “reasonable suspicion?”

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The recent Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Kavanaugh, sending back a lower Federal court decision that had enjoined ICE agents in Los Angeles from simply asking a person under “reasonable suspicion” if they are a citizen, has caused a lot of grief on the Left. The Left thinks just asking the question violates the Constitution. Pompous Illinois Governor Pritzker has gone bonkers on the “constitutional crisis” of just asking the question. But when the question is asked of a suspected illegal migrant, such as a person whom ICE may be informed is an illegal migrant, or who is acting in public in a manner that common sense supports an illegal migrant might act, and then after the question is asked, they attempt to evade and run away from the questioner, the ensuing pursuit (after the Supreme Court decision) is now pretty clearly going to be a legal one, as is the arrest, if the person is indeed an illegal migrant, when the dust settles on the case law.

Kavanaugh explained that “reasonable suspicion” is not “probable cause.” You thus can’t just constitutionally arrest anyone on the street by the way they look or act, common sense notwithstanding, without “probable cause.” Doing that would indeed, 100%, violate the Constitution. But illegal migration is a big problem for America, and especially Los Angeles, where 2 million of 20 million residents are illegals, according to court-recognized statistics. The migrant population has indeed strained the social welfare system, clogging space in hospital emergency rooms and taxpayer-funded maternity wards, and while advocacy groups argue otherwise, there is no doubt that in light of income disparities between the ranks of citizens compared to the cohort of noncitizens, that the high level of illegal immigrants present in the Los Angeles area also contribute to a higher crime rate than if Federal law was actually being enforced.

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No, they are not Trump’s “Stormtroopers.”

August 15, 2025 By James V. Lacy 5 Comments

The recent deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia to address evident violent crime and property damage has led to its members being characterized by some critics on the Left as “Trump’s Stormtroopers,” in clear allusion and equivalence to those angry Brown-shirted unemployed war veterans, bar brawling Nazi party members of 1930s Germany, who took oath to do the work of Adolph Hitler and, for example, illegally bashed the heads of Communists, and killed them on the streets, burned books they did not like at the Universities, and terrorized Jewish shopkeepers in the sadistic early Holocaust program known as “Kristallnacht.” These characterizations, including by some Democratic friends of mine here in California, cannot and must not be taken seriously. Calling these National Guard members “Stormtroopers” is not only wildly inaccurate, it does a grave disservice to history, and to those who actually suffered at the brutality of Hitler’s war machine and actual henchman and enforcers in Nazi Germany.

What is a “Stormtrooper?” In modern understanding, it is a character out of the “Star Wars” movies, a highly trained, elite shock trooper loyal to the Galactic Empire, identifiable by their distinctive white armor. They are the primary military force of the Empire and are known for their imposing appearance and supposed unwavering loyalty to the Emperor. But in historical context, a “Stormtrooper” refers to elite German shock troops, particularly those within the Waffen SS. These soldiers were trained in infiltration tactics and were used to spearhead attacks, exploiting weaknesses in enemy lines. While there wasn’t a single official stormtrooper regiment, various elite units within the Waffen SS and other branches of the German military adopted these tactics during the war. It is also a term used colloquially to describe Hitler’s roving Nazi thugs in political street battles as he was coming to power.

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Farewell Fisherman’s Wharf

June 8, 2025 By James V. Lacy 3 Comments

by James V. Lacy

San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is now a sorry, empty shell, awaiting demolition and major changes. This video shows almost all the restaurants and retail shops at the former iconic tourist destination, including Ghirardelli Square, totally empty, even amid a working wharf. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CtYx6OeFUkc. As a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, this video sickens me.

Times surely change and so do people, businesses and consumer tastes. (I am still a little annoyed that Santa Monica Seafood recently closed its restaurant and fish market in Costa Mesa.) But the almost total wipeout of a long-established and beloved, and sometimes bedeviled institution, going the way of other policy related failures in the City by the Bay such as the retail pullouts on Market Street and Union Square, is particularly ugly and unimaginable to me, surpassed only in my mind by the death of Luciano Pavarotti (which I still find hard to accept).

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As a tourist destination, and for a first time visitor, perhaps the cheesy souvenir shops and street experiences off the Wharf, like a Wax Museum, might have felt very remotely like some of the repulsive but exciting aspects of Times Square in New York City. Natives of San Francisco surely were not the biggest cohort of visitors to the Wharf. But since the 1950s, the Wharf restaurants and experiences offered strong impressions and views of the Pacific and San Francisco Bay, and wildlife, that made memories, and those memories will not be the same anymore because of perceived need for “revitalization and redevelopment efforts,” and proposals for new attractions, which one can only hope will result in something better coming out of San Francisco’s complicated and crazy politics. I have my doubts that things will be better.

Restaurants such as Alioto’s, Tarantino’s, and Fisherman’s Grotto, have permanently closed or faced eviction due to financial difficulties, allegedly based on reduced business from the impact of the pandemic.  But failures in public safety and policing might also have been a reason for the slow and steady business downfalls. Recall Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, an illegal migrant with a long rap sheet, was acquitted of murder in the killing of Kate Steinle, who was walking on a pier with her father when she was struck by a bullet in the back from Garcia-Zarate’s gun in July 2015. To add insult to tragedy, the liberal appeals court overturned a single conviction of Garcia-Zarate on a charge of being a felon in possession of a gun in 2019. Petty theft like pickpocketing, car break-ins, and tourist scams, were also reported at higher levels in the Wharf area than other parts of the City, along with higher reports of some violent crime. (To my mind, “revitalization” should include hiring and stationing more police in the area.)

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Ode to Fontana

May 31, 2025 By James V. Lacy Leave a Comment

by James V. Lacy

Las Vegas is a place I visit once or twice annually and when I go there I prefer to drive. I engage the auto’s cruise control, enjoy the vast scenic desert rolling by, and listen to SiriusXM Spa, or Watercolors to relax, or hear one of the news channels. I try to make my trips midweek when there is less traffic and stress on the road. But I had to make my return from a recent trip to Vegas last Friday, and I got caught in a huge traffic jam caused by a wreck, descending Interstate #15 just outside of Victorville, as I was en route back home to southern Orange County. And at rush hour. It was a mess. I really needed to make a stop when I worked my way out of it. Hence my story, a short ode to Fontana.

Over the years of driving to and from Vegas I have plotted out a series of familiar pit stops for a brief meal, or to get a coffee or water, to gas up, or to use the facilities. You need to be a little picky about these stops, to be safe. For example, I have learned that Baker is definitely not a good, safe place to stop for anything. I was almost mugged in daylight at a gas station in Baker once, driving off just in the nick of time, with no thanks to the station staff. And anyway, I am not interested in the slightest in the offerings at the Mad Greek restaurant. (A Gyro Meal in 109 degree weather does not appeal to me.)

But there are good places I have found for sure. I almost always stop at the Denny’s at the truck stop near the Barstow Outlet Mall, which sometimes has Fox News on at the counter, and which is connected at the truck stop to decent restrooms. Hidden in the nearby Outlet Mall itself are a really great set of clean, spacious air conditioned private restrooms with extensive beverage vending machines in the hallway, but you will have to find these for yourself.

Over time I have added a few newer stops that I consider “optional” as in “when you really need to stop.” One of those is the Chili’s on the Summit Road exit on #15 in Fontana. I may stop at the bar for a sparkling water but the real purpose is to use the bathroom and move on. I have made this stop a couple times and I did again this trip, after working thru that horrid traffic jam.

Chili’s Bar and Grill, Summit Road, Fontana

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