Gavin Newsom & Obama Finally Fight Fire with Fire – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 22nd August 2025, 02:49 am

Former CleanTechnica contributor Gavin Newsom (now Governor of California) and former “overly bipartisan” President of the United States Barack Obama are tired of the nonsense and done with the extreme, unprecedented attacks on our political norms and democratic principles. Rather than responding to ridiculous distortions of our political system with statements about how Republicans are violating norms, degrading our democracy, and going against the will of the people, they have decided to fight fire with fire this time.

If you’ve been following US politics in the slightest, you surely know about what’s been going on in Texas with congressional redistricting, but if that’s not your beat, here’s a quick summary to catch up: President Donald Trump reportedly pushed Texas Republicans to increase Republican power and seats in Congress. In response, they basically said, sure thing, we’ll just redraw congressional maps in Texas and add several more Republicans to the US Congress. Aside from blatant problems of gerrymandering, redrawing these congressional maps normally happens at the beginning of the decade, not in the middle of the decade. Republicans are blatantly breaking more norms of our democracy by deciding they’ll just go ahead and redraw their maps mid-decade in order to gain an advantage in Congress. Republicans are expected to gain 5 seats in the US House of Representatives from this move.

California Governor Gavin Newsom decided to step up to the plate and respond to this. Instead of just letting Republicans blatantly take more power via funky map making, simply responding with statements about how this is wrong and why Republicans shouldn’t be cheating and distorting our political structure like this, he said, okay, if you want to play that way, we can play that way too. Newsom decided California would just do the same thing in order to neutralize Republicans’ move. Does this put us down a more dangerous path? Possibly. But you can’t fight fire with paper. For once, Democrats are fighting fire with fire. What other option is there?

On Tuesday, at a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, former President Barack Obama backed Newsom up. “I believe that Governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach,” Obama said. “I think that approach is a smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”

Indeed. It’s not normal times, and we can’t respond in normal ways. If the MAGA party is going to use a particular tool in an abnormal way in order to wrest more power for their side, it’s most sensible for Democrats to do the same. What’s the alternative? What’s the legitimate alternative?

“We cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game,” Obama added. “And California is one of the states that has the capacity to offset a large state like Texas.”

Obama also pushed Democrats to address gerrymandering in the longer term in order to make our election system more democratic again. However, that’s a hugely difficult problem that he and others have been trying to fix for years. Democrats can’t just say, “we’re going to stop gerrymandering because it’s wrong,” and then allow Republicans to do it, gaining more and more seats in government. “Given that Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House that is effectively saying: gerrymander for partisan purposes so we can maintain the House despite our unpopular policies, redistrict right in the middle of a decade between censuses — which is not how the system was designed; I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this,” Obama also said.

We are in extreme times. Trump and Republicans are repealing basic programs, policies, and even legal rulings meant to protect the United States public from pollution, from toxic chemicals, from unsafe corporate practices, and from financial abuse and recklessness. They are doing this much more so than Republicans would have even considered doing 10, 20, or 30 years ago. It’s brazen destruction of things put in place out of common sense and from scientific evidence, but it suits the financial interests of certain billionaires in the Republican Party, and what else matters? It’s just a consistent, truly absurd attack on the logic and democratic progress that did make the United States great. But people aren’t paying attention, much more interested in social media distractions and obscure gender topics that will likely never have anything to do with their actual lives. So, the cancerous actions continue, and the erosion of our representative republic accelerates.

This redistricting controversy is just one element of our ongoing political crisis. It’s a relief that, for once, Democrats are not sitting back and discussing it as if we are living in normal times while letting Republicans mutate and deform our political balance. “This isn’t politics as usual,” said California Democratic Assemblymember Anamarie Avila Farias this week. “This is an emergency for our state. This is an emergency for our country. This is an emergency for democracy.” Indeed. It is.

Featured image by Welcome to All ! ツ from Pixabay