This is Gavin Newsom, and these are your questions.
You and New York Governor Kathy Hochel have been considering redistricting in your blue states in order to pick up seats in the twenty twenty six midterms because of what's been happening in Texas. Have you spoken to Governor Hokele and is there a national plan for redistricting that the DNC has been a part of.
Well, I appreciate the question. It is the existential question of our time. What do I mean by that? If Donald Trumpe wants to rig the system, he wants to change the game because he can't win the game by
playing by the traditional rules, period full stop. He made a phone call, just like he made a phone call in Georgia after he lost the election, after he tried to destroy our democracy lighted on fire after January sixth as he tried to steal the election, and he asked for twelve thousand votes from the Secretary of State in Georgia. He is now asking governors like Greg Abbott who are complicit. He knew Greg Abbot would say yes, sir, and what
more can I do for you? Says I need five seats in fact he said on National TV this week. He said he's entitled to five seats because he won the election by such a large margin in Texas that they're now his seats. Make no votes about it. This is next distential moment as it relates to the core principles of our founding fathers. They are trying to change the rules because they cannot win by the traditional rules
and the traditional game. Donald Trump knows who will lose the election and into facto, his presidency ends in eighteen months. Sure he'll be fire and fury and he'll be playing on true's social but will finally have a speaker. Jeffries. We will finally have a system that the founding fathers design of checks and balances and oversight. And he knows
that it's over in less than eighteen months. So if we want to allow that to happen, I guess California, New York, Gady Hoko and other state governors can roll over and act holler than now and say, well, we really believe in independent redistrict and we're against quote unquote jerrymandering these districts, which is another fancy way of saying picking our voters as opposed to voters picking them by changing the maps of who can vote and where they
can vote. And in California, we choose to do the opposite. We choose to fight fire with fire. We choose to stand up. We choose to support the principles of our founding fathers. We choose to support you, all of you, so you're can have a voice and choice going forward. Donald Trump is trying to deconstruct America. It's a serious moment. In all of the distractions, nothing is more important than this.
He's trying to rig the games how elections are done mid census, and so California is going to step up. They're talking about five seats in Texas. We will take those five seats in California. We have an independent redistricting commission that should be a national model. I support a national model for independent redistricting. I'm not for Jerry mannering in blue states anymore than I am for red states. But this is a new moment in American history. The
facts are new. He's rigging the game. So we have to fight fire with fire, and that's what we choose to do in California, and I hope other governors do the same. Blue state governors. They're going to export this as well. We just heard JD. Vance is being sent by Donald Trump into Indiana to get them to rig the Indiana ballot. Same thing in Florida with DeSantis. But California, we punch above our weight. Remember with size of twenty
one state populations combined. So we can do the five seats, and we could take other seats that are very competitive. There are us up and through the gerrymannering process that is well established in these red states, we can make those easier districts for a Democratic party. This should not be the model for the country, but it's the new reality. And so as a consequence, we have to act anew and we have to, as Lincoln said, disenthrall ourselves with
the way things have been done in the past. And so we're asking the legislature will require two thirds of our legislature put this on the ballot. We're hoping it gets on the ballot on the November fourth election. We're going to do it in a transparent way by putting the maps on the ballot, so the voters will know what they're doing, and we'll do it for a temporary period of time for the twenty six, twenty eight, and
thirty ballots congressional ballots only. We'll keep our independent redistrict and commission and we'll revert back to our original form once this threat has passed, and will do so only if triggered by the actions in Texas. They drew first blood. We will fight fire with fire. We will preserve and protect our democracy and all that is at stake in this country. And we're going to punch this bully right back in the mouth, and we're going to save our democracy.
After last week's job report, President Trump said he thought the numbers were wrong. After that, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. How concerned should we be that the president is firing people who report information he doesn't like. And shouldn't the business community be standing up against this?
Well, the Business meeting should certainly be standing up. But let's also put this in perspective. The economy is slowing down. The impact of Donald Trump's tariffs taxes on American consumers is starting be felt. We're not creating the jobs like
we created during the Biden administration. It's Trump's policies that have slowed the growth and as a consequence, now a lot of folks are concerned that not only is unemployment rising, but we're seeing price pressures once again, inflation starting to creep back up, and the word stagflation is coming back
in to the conversation. So that's number one. And as a consequence of that, Donald Trump now wants to kill the messenger, wants to fire the person that puts this information together with a team of people in a nonpartisan, a political way, and that should scare the hell out of everybody. That's what authoritarian regimes do. It's about truth and trust. The coin of the realm is trust. And the one institution that the world has long looked to
for trust is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's foundational from a global perspective, not just from an American perspective, and it is completely consistent. And this is why it's so alarming that Donald Trump is going after what he refers to as the deep state, which are competent bureaucrats. Politicians come and go, but there are people that maintain, through competency and character, the distinction of being professionals that
outlived administrations or outlive administrations. And what Donald Trump is doing is politicizing every single position. He's eliminated oversight by eliminating inspector generals. He's eliminating auditing functions so that there are no recourse for actions he takes. He's got immunity printed by the Supreme Court in terms of any actions he possibly could take. These are all all signs of
interiorating democracy. But this perhaps is the most alarming of all the actions so far by the Trump administration because this is about, as Tom Freeman wrote today in The New York Times, the deconstruction of the American system. And he will put in a crony. He will put in someone that by definition now people can't trust, and that foundation of trust is all we have. So this is code read. This is another reason we all need to
step up and share our voice. This is another reason we all need to stay focused and not get distracted by the latest true social or tweet or whatever today's headline is, and continue to focus on the essential nature of the architecture that holds up this system. That's why redistricting and all the conversations that are being had are on Texas and what states like California can do to
counter that are so important. Making sure that architecture of truth and trust is maintained, and we call out Donald Trump's tyrannical well forgive me authoritarian tendencies. If you want your questions answered, reach us at This is Gavin Newsom at iHeartRadio dot com, or leave a voicemail at eight five five six Newsome