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TROOP DEPLOYMENT - As a student and lover of democracy, I delight in teachable moments. The current attack by the weak, unpopular Trump Administration on California and Washington, D.C., by deploying federal troops in a buffoonish attempt to trample local governance and normalize thuggery, has opened a master class for Americans. The subject today is power of, by, and for the people.
California voters have a chance to push back against Trump’s power-grab and make his gluttony backfire. By using Texas Republicans as his accomplices to redraw Congressional lines in order to send 5 more Lone Star mail-order pushovers to the U.S. House, Trump triggered long-coveted moxie from Democratic governors. Led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, with assists from Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Illinois and Gov. Kathy Hochul in New York, California lawmakers got to work in July to craft a strategy to fight fire with fire. The goal is to offset the top-down power-grab in Texas by giving Golden State voters the choice of redrawing lines here to potentially send 5 more Democrats to Congress. Unlike their Texas counterparts, these Representatives would commit to do their jobs of holding accountable a White House that ignores the Constitution and defies federal court orders on the daily.
Let’s take a moment to catch up. The past six weeks have featured the worst poll numbers for a seven-month-old Presidency in the history of the nation, at just 40 percent. Trump as well as some of his billionaire donor cronies like Home Depot founder and top individual stockholder Ken Langone have spewed threats to forcibly detain, denaturalize, and deport prominent opponents, such as winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary Zohran Mamdani. Thousands of federal troops who did not want to be cast as an occupying force in a tragic right-wing script left L.A. Meanwhile other armed extras, equally unenthusiastic, were ordered into the nation’s capital as an occupying force on the pretext of crime prevention, which they are untrained to perform.
Amidst this maelstrom of Stephen Miller madness, several elected leaders in California put their heads down and got to work. Foremost among them are Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, and Attorney General Rob Bonta. He laid the legal groundwork for new maps to go to state legislators this week in time to be approved and to call a special election to place the ballot measure before voters on November 4.
Gov. Newsom spoke with fervor and did a great job to evoke fighting spirit vs. Trump’s power-grab at an electric rally in L.A. on August 14. He officially launched the campaign to pass the Election Rigging Response Act. Goon-squad tactics by roving patrols of gun-toting masked agents, targeting undocumented immigrants and citizens alike based on skin color and perceived ethnicity, drove home the urgency of challenging Trump’s lawless cruelty that very day when they ambushed day laborers at a Home Depot store in Monrovia.
Roberto Montoya fled in terror onto the nearby 210 Freeway and was killed by a vehicle going at least 50 miles per hour. The raid appeared to be yet another brazen violation of a federal court order on July 11 barring such ambushes based on race and language.
And who, in this context, will come forth to argue that Californians should surrender to Trump’s power-grab and reject the option to fight back? Perhaps former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who left office in 2010 with an approval rating worse even than Trump’s, at 22 percent. In contrast, an early poll indicates voters have a strongly favorable impression of the ballot measure to fight back and adopt new maps, once another state takes the dastardly step of carving up its turf to send additional Trump lackeys to Capitol Hill. Texas has now done that.
At its best, politics can be the art of the possible. And California, this hub of innovation and the fourth largest economy in the world, can be a place where democracy proves its strength and potential to self-correct. Every vote to approve the Election Rigging Response Act is a vote to fulfill that promise, to elect a Congress that will do its duty under the Constitution, and to lead by example for Americans in fighting back to defeat Trumpism.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns have appeared in USA Today and leading newspapers across more than 20 states. Based in Eagle Rock, he serves as president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), California’s largest grassroots Democratic club with over 1,100 members. Hans brings decades of organizing and policy experience to his work, advancing equity and accountability in local and national politics.)
