Barack Obama pops into California politics with a straight face and a script: “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years… With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks.” California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) boosts it on X: “Listen to @barackobama.” The punchline? Prop 50 dismantles the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting and hands the pen back to the politicians—exactly the setup Democrats call “rigging” when the other team has the ball. It’s the same old two-step: shout “democracy” while you redraw the map to pre-decide outcomes. If your fix for “rigging” is a partisan map, you didn’t fix the problem, you rebranded it.
California isn’t an island. The wider play is a national gerrymandering push that converts blue control into seat insurance, regardless of vote share. Illinois Democrats squeezed the delegation down to three GOP seats out of 17; California Republicans sit at nine of 52, though registration and vote shares suggest far more competitive ground. Texas shows the other side of the coin—Democrats literally fled the state rather than vote, earning applause from Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as “good trouble,” while governors like J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) rolled out a welcome mat. None of that looks like the civic courage they sell on cable; it looks like a coordinated seat-protection racket masquerading as “saving democracy.”
Newsom’s mid-decade redo blows past the very commission California voters installed in 2008 to keep politicians from carving safe seats. When that neutral guardrail no longer suits the agenda, the new story becomes “emergency reform.” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) is even pushing a federal ban on mid-decade redistricting because, yes, this is now a feature, not a bug, in blue strongholds. Democrats are using walkouts, gut-and-amend shortcuts, lawsuits when losing, and commissions when convenient—until they’re not. The result is engineered dominance dressed up as civic virtue. Voters deserve competitive districts, not a shell game where leaders choose their voters, then accuse opponents of doing what they’re already doing.
The moral isn’t complicated. Proverbs 11:1 says, “Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight.” District lines are our civic scales. If you condemn “rigging” while building a system that guarantees your side wins, you’ve traded fairness for power and truth for talking points. By all means, oppose manipulation—on both sides. But don’t torch the commission, centralize the map in partisan hands, then preach about “level playing fields.” The map either measures votes honestly, or it doesn’t. Calling your rig “reform,” while accusing others of exactly what you are doing, won’t make the scales right. In California’s case Democrats are undermining the will of the voters by overruling a duly elected commission to prevent what they are now doing. Their brand of “Democracy” is lawlessness not the will of the people.
Sources:
Barack Obama in Newsom’s Prop 50 ad: “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years… With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks.” — Breitbart coverage of the ad: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/10/15/barack-obama-claims-republicans-want-to-steal-seats-rig-election-in-ad-for-newsoms-gerrymandering-proposal/ (Breitbart)
Gavin Newsom on X: “Listen to @barackobama.” — https://x.com/GavinNewsom/status/1978087550427480343(Breitbart)
