The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 33
Aug. 18, 2025
This Week:
- Why Trump’s D.C. cleanup threatens Dems so badly
- Newsom gambles everything on a gerrymandering referendum
- In a redistricting war, Democrats ultimately lose
Outlook
D.C. crime cleanup: When liberal journalists in Washington write that there is no crime problem there, or that crime is down from last year, or even at a “30-year low,” they are deliberately misleading you. They are also revealing two fundamentaies reality about crime in the district. One is that the local newspapers largely fail to cover it. The other is that many people, wealthy professionals especially, live in Wards One or Three in Northwest Washington, which, despite not being completely safe, are nothing like the rest of the city.
D.C. has always had a very serious crime problem and is much less safe than other major cities of its size. It is extremely dangerous compared to larger cities such as New York and San Francisco. Its murder rate, as we mentioned last week, is especially high, and its murder tally has more than doubled since hitting a low-point in 2012.
What’s more, President Trump has special authority in D.C. that he doesn’t have in other cities. There is no precedent in his crime crackdown for federalizing other police forces because this federalization is provided for by statute and under the Constitution, which places the District squarely under federal control.
So one might wonder what the current freak-out is all about — claims that by cracking down on crime Trump is imposing fascism. It’s actually very simple.
D.C. authorities — the City Council, the attorney general, the Metropolitan Police Department, really everyone — have been pathetic at fighting crime. If the Feds’ intervention results in or coincides with a massive drop in crime in the most liberal city in America, it’s just not going to look good for Democrats.
And the fruit in D.C. is even lower-hanging than it was in the early 1990s, when Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City. Crime is far worse in D.C. than it was under Giuliani’s predecessor, David Dinkins (D). And then, once people saw how good things could be in their city — and how much all the soft-on-crime nonsense had been harming their lives and lifestyles, forcing them to make undesirable compromises and live in fear — it took decades (until Bill DeBlasio) for another Democrat to get elected mayor.
The benefits weren’t limited to the Big Apple, either. The sudden demonstration in 1993 that New York City was actually governable after all created a talking-point for politicians all across the country about how ineffective Democrats were as a party. It contributed heavily to the national attitude that accompanied the historic 1994 overthrow of Democrats in the U.S. House —although there were other factors, too, as discussed below.
But again, if Trump shows that D.C. is easily governable if you just ignore Democrats and deport or incarcerate a few thousand malefactors, it’s not going to be a good look for the Democrats.
Newsom bets it all: With Texas’s legislature headed for a second special session and a new vote on a Republican-friendly congressional map, California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is gambling his political career and his shot at the presidential nomination in 2028 on voters supporting his proposed round of retaliatory gerrymandering.
Newsom’s proposed map would likely give Democrats five additional seats — tit for tat against the number Texas Republicans expect to gain. But he has to go through a much more arduous process to make it happen, because California voters (against Newsom’s will, by the way) have limited his power. Unless they vote to approve his new map in a snap November 2025 election, it’s not going to happen.
Newsom’s prospects do not look great from the inception. He needs voter approval in order to throw out the work of the voter-created nonpartisan citizen’s commission that produced the current map. In this, he appears to have already incurred the wrath of the Terminator — former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an unlikely ally to a Republican Party he turned against long ago. He now seems destined to lead at least part of the movement against Newsom. (Perhaps he even has a political comeback in mind?)
Politico polled the state and found that most people support the commission-based redistricting system. It found that only 36 percent approve of handing redistricting power back to politicians, which is effectively what his referendum would do, although its ballot language misleadingly says otherwise. The campaign against such a referendum almost writes itself. And if Newsom loses this battle in his own state, what sort of case can he make to national Democrats that he is the fighter to take on JD Vance or Marco Rubio?
Gerrymandering arms-race: Where else can Democrats redraw the map to improve their situation? They have little room left to manipulate the lines in Illinois or Maryland, which are heavily gerrymandered. In New York, there would be more opportunities, and they are at least talking about it. But again, it would require voter approval, and the polling does not look good at all. According to Siena, only 35 percent of voters support such a thing — and only 45 percent of Democrats.
Republicans, on the other hand, are already talking about redistricting a number of states where there is no such requirement. These include Missouri (where they could pick up one seat in the Kansas City area) and Florida (where they could pick up a few). Indiana Republicans could easily produce an extra Republican seat, although Gov. Mike Braun (R) does not necessarily sound convinced.
Republicans are actually required to redistrict Ohio for two reasons. One is a court case that made last year’s map temporary. The other, ironically, is a voter-approved provision intended to reduce partisanship in redistricting. The idea was that a new map would have to be drawn after five years if the decadal map didn’t pass on a bipartisan basis. This was supposed to encourage less partisanship, but instead it has obviously backfired and will encourage more adventurous and aggressive mid-decade gerrymanders, especially as long as Ohio is a one-party state. Additional seats in the Toledo, Cincinnati and Akron areas could all be winnable for Republicans once the new map comes out.
A fix is needed: For now, Republicans seem giddy at the idea that they can just gerrymander their way to a permanent majority. But even if that works in 2026, it is probably short-sighted. Something has to give.
This is actually a new problem — a case of computer technology (anyone can now draw partisan districts in a web browser down to the block level) overtaking legislative practice. Once you have the ability to draw all the districts to benefit your own party, why not do it? And most reforms — whether it’s a supposedly non-partisan commission or stricter guidelines for redistricting — simply don’t work. Voters in California, Ohio and Florida all voted to reform their systems, but their reforms have clearly backfired.
Democrats ruthlessly (albeit less effectively, due to the older technology) used gerrymandering for decades to dominate the U.S. House, so it’s not a case of worrying about precedent. But it’s worth noting, despite what some say now, that the creation of heavily black opportunity districts across the country under President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department helped make the 1994 Republican Revolution possible, by concentrating Democratic voters together and creating more opportunities for Republicans around them. Republicans are now talking about dismantling those very districts, depending on what the Supreme Court rules in a coming case about racial gerrymandering. They can afford to do this now because most of the Southern States where this strategy was so helpful in the changing South of the 1990s have since seen their entire white Democratic voter base vanish. (You can sort of anticipate Democrats’ complaint that they are going to have it both ways.)
The truth of the matter is, the system of electing members to the U.S. House is quite broken in a way that most voters don’t like. Maybe Republicans can benefit from it for now, but it would behoove them to come up with something better.
Simple statutory or constitutional requirements for maps — minimal county-splitting, for example — can at least limit to some degree how much control politicians have in designing their own districts. Another helpful provision might be an increase in the number of House seats, to 501 perhaps, so as to make representatives more local and responsive.
A proportional representation method by state, like in Spain, would be the more radical solution, but it might not pass muster under the Supreme Court’s current, largely incoherent Voting Rights Act jurisprudence regarding racial gerrymandering.
Unfortunately, though, there is no silver bullet here — only imperfect solutions.
Governor 2026
Ohio: Former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is now considering another statewide run, this time for governor, likely against conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (R). He was last seen losing to JD Vance (R) for Senate in 2022, although he performed relatively well in that 2022 race.
Senate 2026
North Carolina: Former RNC Chairman Michael Whatley (R) trails former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) in a poll of this race to replace incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis (R), 47 to 39 percent, in a new poll by Harper Polling for the Carolina Journal. But this race is going to be a lot closer than that, given that Whatley starts off as a relative unknown.
Ohio: Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who lost his seat in November to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), has been talked into another Senate race, this time against appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R), who faces a special election next year. Interestingly, Brown is viewed as an anti-crypto candidate and will likely face some headwinds from that community.
Texas: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) might just not be dead yet. A new poll shows him in a dead heat for renomination against Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), with either man leading the most likely Democratic nominee, former Rep. Colin Allred (D).
The bad news for Cornyn? He’s the incumbent, and he’s polling at just 29 percent in the primary (to Paxton’s 30 percent). Not only is that an appalling number for any incumbent, but it’s a very long way from 29 to the 50 percent he will need to win a runoff election next spring. Still, he’s not backing down or looking for a judicial appointment.
