Utah gerrymander struck down by judge in a win for voters– www.latimes.com Source Link Excerpt:
It’s been more than 60 years since Utah backed a Democrat for president. The state’s last Democratic U.S. senator left office nearly half a century ago and the last Utah Democrat to serve in the House lost his seat in 2020.
Late last month, a judge tossed out the state’s slanted congressional lines and ordered Utah’s GOP-run Legislature to draw a new political map, ruling that lawmakers improperly thumbed their noses and overrode voters who created an independent redistricting commission to end gerrymandering.
It’s a welcome pushback against the growing pattern of lawmakers arrogantly ignoring voters and pursuing their preferred agenda. You don’t have to be a partisan to think that elections should matter and when voters express their will it should be honored.
Tragically, Mamdani is gaining momentum: Ironically, it is being made possible, made to happen, but the very people who benefited the most from capitalism. You can make this stuff up, Imagine, a billionaire funding a communist who says there shouldn’t be billionaires. Deadly stupidity.
Big Tech workers, including from Google and Meta, were among the biggest group of donors to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign — creating a fresh headache for companies in the Big Apple that could feel the brunt of the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist’s policies, The Post has learned.
The 33-year-old upstart has spooked New York business and tech leaders — many of whom fear that his vow to raise taxes on the wealthy and past calls to defund the police will spark a mass exodus similar to what San Francisco experienced under progressive leaders in recent years.
However, their underlings have thrown their financial support behind the front-runner for City Hall.
Rank-and-file Google employees donated nearly $40,500 to Mamdani’s campaign through July 11 — more than any other company or institution, according to NYC campaign finance data reviewed by The Post.
Meta workers chipped in more than $10,500, ranking seventh on the list, followed by Amazon employees, who donated nearly $9,000.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday voided a Pennsylvania law requiring proper dating of mail-in ballots. The law required the rejection of mail-in ballots improperly dated by voters. The Pennsylvania Attorney General, now a Republican, defended the law on appeal after his predecessor, a Democrat, had declined to defend it in a lower court.
Numerous types of dating errors could result in ballot rejection, the appeals court noted:
Pursuant to this “date requirement,” if a return envelope’s date field contains a mistaken additional digit, a stray pen mark, or missing information (including a year) then the ballot contained within that envelope may not be counted. (citations omitted)
The law led to 10,000 discarded ballots in the 2022 General Election. Only 4,500 ballots were discarded in the 2024 General Election after Pennsylvania redesigned the return envelope to reduce the number of discarded ballots.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that while the dating requirement only minimally burdened voters, the consequences of an improperly dated ballot outweighed any purported benefit of the requirement.
The challenge came after the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania interpreted a part of the state election code requiring voters to “fill out, date and sign” their mail-in ballot. The state supreme court held that the dating requirement mandates discarding ballots that are improperly dated.
After weeks of bluster from dueling governors and state lawmakers, California and Texas raced forward with parallel action this week to draw new congressional maps, setting into motion a national redistricting fight that could upend the midterms and determine control of the House.
Avowed socialist and New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani garnered attention with his pledge to allocate tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to gender-affirming medical care, but far less publicized is his proposal to fund LGBTQIA+ “educational liaisons” in every public school.
Mamdani’s LGBTQIA+ policy memo states that only two LGBTQIA+ liaisons cover the 1,800 schools and 900,000 students under the purview of the NYC Department of Education. Under Mamdani’s plan, an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs would be created, costing taxpayers $3 million to expand staffing and place at least one liaison in every NYC school district.
Given Mamdani’s views on gender ideology, these positions would inevitably push affirmation-only “gender-affirming care,” embedding the “student-to-trans pipeline” and placing children at the center of trans activism.
Now, the Democratic Party is for elite, college-educated women angered by President Donald Trump and MAGA, such as the white-haired Virginia woman who went viral last week with a racist protest message against black GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
“As a party of mostly college-educated females, they’re drastically alienating everyone else,” Cygnal pollster Brent Buchanan said this week, alluding to his latest survey showing the Democratic image sinking, now twice as bad as the Republicans.
He suggested that it’s the issues the Democratic base is choosing that are driving away its core. For example, the base is angered at Trump’s efforts to boost safety in cities by deploying the National Guard, but others aren’t worked up about it.
“It’s college-educated women driving the ‘threats to democracy’ increase in ‘top priority,’” Buchanan said. “The Left has become an echo chamber out of touch with the majority of the country.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has poured $15 million into paying off debt from the failed presidential candidacy of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The organization faces a shortfall after the Harris campaign spent $1.5 billion in her doomed 15 weeks as the Democrat hopeful, Breitbart reported.
Harris was crushed in the 2024 presidential election, and now a record-setting debt has forced the DNC to shell out millions in the first half of the year.
This figure comes as the Republican National Committee (RNC) is working with a cash surplus of $80 million after President Donald Trump’s historic win.
Fulton County BOC Members who refuse, under Court order, to appoint the GOP Nominees. From Left to Right: Commissioners Marvin Arrington Jr, Mo Ivory, Dana Barrett
Last week, a judge ordered the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to seat two Republican Party nominees: Jason Frazier and Julie Adams. The two were nominated in May but have yet to be seated.
Two of the Democrat members, Dana Barrett and Mo Ivory, were able to thwart Commissioner Bridget Thorne’s motion to confirm the two Republican appointees. Because of the absence of three other members on the seven-member board, the motion was blocked in a 2-2 vote.
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a petition filed by state Republican legislators seeking to halt Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) plan to redistrict California’s congressional map.
“Petitioners have failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time under California Constitution article IV, section 8,” reads a brief order posted to the docket.
Newsom has hit back at Republican redistricting efforts in Texas by pushing for a special election this November to get voters’ approval on a more favorable House map for Democrats in California in time for the 2026 midterms.
The ruling paves the way for the California legislature to proceed with voting as soon as Thursday on a package that would set up the special election.
As if Republicans didn’t have enough problems trying to hold on to the House majority, along comes Utah to give them a whole new problem.
Republicans once again tried to ignore the will of the people and the state’s constitution, and the matter went to court.
The Campaign Legal Center explained what happened:
The court determined that the Utah state legislature violated the people’s right to alter or reform their government when they repealed Proposition 4, or Prop 4 – a ballot initiative that aimed to prohibit partisan gerrymandering by establishing the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission and creating fair, neutral criteria and procedures for adopting district maps.
Prop 4, which was passed by Utah voters and unconstitutionally repealed by the legislature, is now the law again. The current gerrymandered congressional map passed by the legislature may not be used in future elections. The Utah state legislature now has a chance to pass a new, fair map that complies with Prop 4, and if it does not, the court will order a new map, which will be used for the 2026 election.
Former President Barack Obama is supporting California’s mid-cycle redistricting effort as a “responsible approach” to Republicans drawing new maps in Texas.
Obama praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ballot measure proposal to redraw congressional districts and tilt at least five congressional districts in the state towards Democrats at a fundraiser on Tuesday for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
“I believe that Governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach,” he said, according to excerpts obtained by POLITICO. “I think that approach is a smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”
