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In Response to GOP Gerrymandering, O'Rourke Calls for Dems to 'Match Fire with Fire'
"I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power," O'Rourke said in a CNN interview. "We've seen Republicans only care about being in power regardless of what is right."
Jul 21, 2025
As Republicans move forward with an aggressive effort to gerrymander Texas in the coming year, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke called on Democrats Sunday to "match fire with fire" in blue states.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last week he'd follow through on a proposal from President Donald Trump, press legislators to re-draw congressional maps to maximally favor Republicans in the Lone Star State through a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting push.
The effort may net the GOP another five seats in the 2026 midterms. Trump has suggested Republicans push their advantages in "other states" as well, including Ohio.
In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he'd attempt to subvert California's independent state redistricting commission—which seeks to draw maps as fairly as possible—to instead pursue a maximum partisan gerrymander to favor Democrats.
Democrats have tended to be at the forefront of efforts to eliminate partisan redistricting. O'Rourke, a Democrat, has previously called for his state of Texas to have its districts drawn not by political parties but by an independent nonpartisan commission.
But in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday, O'Rourke said that while he still disagreed with gerrymandering on principle, as long as Republicans are willing to use it, Democrats need to be willing to play the same game.
"I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power," O'Rourke said. "We've seen Republicans only care about being in power regardless of what is right."
Asked about Newsom's efforts in California, O'Rourke said, "We have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power."
He called on Democrats in other blue states to press their advantages as far as possible too.
"In California, in Illinois, in New York, wherever we have the trifecta of power, we have to use that to its absolute extent," he said.
Should Newsom's effort to get around California's redistricting commission succeed, it could net Democrats an additional five to seven seats in the House. With Republicans clinging to just a three-seat majority, it could prove decisive.
However, the plan is a long shot. In 2010, California voters elected to enshrine the independent commission into the state constitution.
Newsom has said that when it comes to stripping the commission of its power, "it's all on the table," including calling a special session of the state legislature and introducing another ballot measure to the public, which he said he thinks they'd win.
He also said there were "other avenues" to consider, like having the legislature draw districts "in between" censuses.
Newsom described this as a legal gray area, since the constitutional amendment only requires the independent commission to create new maps after each census, but says nothing about its role in redistricting mid-decade. However, Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at the watchdog group Common Cause, told The Guardian that such an effort was "not lawful in any way."
Newsom said that Republicans, who don't have to worry about redistricting commissions in the states they control, "are playing by a different set of rules."
"From my perspective, if we're going to play fair in a world that is wholly unfair, we may have the higher moral ground, but the ground is shifting from underneath us, and I think we have to wake up to that reality," said the California governor.
The governors of Illinois and New York, meanwhile, have stayed mum on the question of whether they may attempt similar attempts at aggressive redistricting.
Illinois has no rules against partisan gerrymandering and its maps are already heavily weighted in Democrats' favor following the most recent redistricting effort in 2021.
New York's maps are only "slightly" weighted in favor of Democrats and could be made more lopsided. During the most recent redistricting session, which was the subject of a lengthy court battle, Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to maps that left the seven seats controlled by Republicans intact.
There, the legislature can draw maps, but they must be approved by an independent redistricting committee.
According to reporting by CNN Sunday, Democrats are nevertheless looking into possible efforts to maximize their advantages in New York and other states like New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington.
In response to Trump's effort to expand Republicans' seats, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) renewed calls for "fair maps" throughout the country, though he declined to comment on Newsom's efforts.
Jeffries is reportedly meeting with Hochul about the possibility of making the maps more "fair," by which he may mean maximizing the Democrats' advantage. This would likely necessitate dispensing with the independent redistricting commission, as Newsom hopes to do.
"If Republicans want to play by these rules, then I think that we shouldn't have one set of rules for one and the other set of rules for another," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told CNN. "I think we need to even the playing board."
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Former President Biden Has 'Aggressive Form' of Prostate Cancer
Biden, 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
May 18, 2025
Former U.S. President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to a Sunday statement from his personal office.
"Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone," according to a statement sent to CBS News and other outlets. "While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management."
A Gleason score, a grading system for prostate cancer, ranks the seriousness of cancer from six, which is considered "low-grade" cancer, to 10, which is considered "high-grade" cancer.
Biden has kept a relatively low profile since exiting the 2024 presidential race last summer following a disastrous debate performance in June that generated widespread concern about his fitness to serve as the Democratic candidate.
Since then, reports about this decline have continued to surface. On Friday, Axios released audio of Biden's interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated his handling of classified documents from before he took office in 2021. In the audio recordings of the interviews, which took place in October 2023, Biden has a difficult time remembering key dates and details.
Earlier in May, Biden did a television interview during which he refuted the notion that he suffered serious mental decline during his final year in office.
Democrats have continued to deal with the fallout of around Biden's departure from the race and reports regarding his mental acuity, with some fielding tough questions about their awareness of his decline before he decided to drop out.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Biden are the two oldest presidents to ever be sworn in, with Trump besting Biden by a few months when he was sworn in this past January. Biden, who is 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
Elected officials in both parties, including Trump, offered Biden well wishes and messages of support on Sunday.
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Even Republicans Want Trump to End US Support for the Gaza War
A new poll reveals that nearly 50% of GOP voters would back a withholding of military assistance to Israel in order to bring the carnage to a halt.
May 05, 2025
American voters want an end to the war in Gaza and for President Donald Trump to withhold U.S. aid, if necessary, to pressure Israel to end it.
During last year’s campaign, Trump promised big changes in U.S. Middle East policy. He said that the Gaza war never would have happened had he been president; promised he would end it; boasted it was his pressure that forced Israel to accept a cease-fire; and then, as president, proposed the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for a Riviera-like resort. Just before the 2024 election, we polled U.S. voters and found overall support for ending the war and using U.S. aid to Israel as leverage to press them to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and end the war in Gaza. This was true for strong majorities of Democrats, with some Republicans also agreeing.
We are now more than three months into President Trump’s second term, and Israel has ended the cease-fire, renewed its bombing campaign, instituted anew the mass forced “relocation” of civilians, and reimposed the blockade of food and medicine to the Palestinian population in Gaza.
While substantial majorities of Democratic voters and Independents have long parted ways with Israel over the Gaza war and the occupation, Republicans and their evangelical Christian base are now also losing patience with Israeli policies.
Last week, in a new poll we repeated these same 2024 questions. The overall results were about the same, but with one significant difference. Three months into his term in office, not just Democrats but President Trump’s own Republican voter base also want him to take a tougher stance to pressure Israel to change its behaviors.
This was one of the key findings in the poll released April 30 by the Arab American Institute Foundation. The foundation commissioned John Zogby Strategies to poll 1,000 American voters to assess their attitudes toward the Trump administration’s policies toward Israel’s war in Gaza.
What comes through quite clearly is that between November 2024 and April 2025 the overall responses did not change significantly. What has changed is that Israel is losing favor with Republicans, who now want President Trump to take a stronger stance to rein in Israel’s behaviors. This, however, does not translate into a lack of GOP voters’ support for the president’s domestic policies on allegations of antisemitism, crackdown on universities, and deportation of students involved in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests.
Here are the findings:
The poll finds that voters’ sympathy for Israel remains somewhat higher than for Palestinians. But by a significant 46% to 30% margin, American voters feel that U.S. Middle East policy is too one-sided in favor of Israel, with 39% of Republicans agreeing and 37% disagreeing. This represents a substantial shift from 2024 when only 33% of Republicans agreed that policy was too pro-Israel against 43% who said it was not.
By a 2 to 1 margin, American voters also agree that President Trump should “apply greater pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands and allow Palestinians to create an independent state of their own.” While this agree-disagree ratio largely tracks last year’s results, the major difference in this year’s findings is the substantial increase in Republicans who agree that the president should apply such pressure on Israel. In 2024, the agree-disagree split for Republicans was 37% to 40%. Now 49% agree that greater pressure should be applied as opposed to only 29% who disagree.
When asked whether the U.S. should always provide unrestricted aid to Israel or should restrict such aid if Israel “continues to operate in a way which puts civilian lives at risk in Gaza and Lebanon,” this year's overall results were essentially the same as last year’s. Twenty-three percent (23%) are in favor of unrestricted aid, while 53% are opposed.
A plurality of American voters also agree with the decisions of the International Court of Justice finding that Israel’s war in Gaza is tantamount to genocide and the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.
The bottom line in these initial results is that while Americans remain sympathetic to Israel, they continue to be opposed to Israeli policies and want the president, whether a Democrat or a Republican, to use U.S. aid as leverage to change Israel’s actions. And importantly, now a plurality of GOP voters, including those who self-identify as “born again Christians,” also want the president for whom they voted to crack down on Israel’s policies of bombing civilians and occupying Palestinian lands.
The responses, however, are different when it comes to measuring voters’ assessment of President Trump’s handling of the domestic fallout of the war in Gaza. Pluralities disagree with the administration’s decisions to deport student visa holders for their involvement in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests (saying that they “are antisemitic and pose a threat to the foreign policy of the United States”) or to cut funding from several universities charging that they have not agreed to demands that they do more to fight allegations of antisemitism. But there is a deep partisan split on these issues, with Democrats and Independent voters overwhelmingly opposed to the administration’s actions, and Republicans (including voters who are “born again”) strongly supportive of President Trump’s policies.
What comes through in all of these results is that while substantial majorities of Democratic voters and Independents have long parted ways with Israel over the Gaza war and the occupation, Republicans and their evangelical Christian base are now also losing patience with Israeli policies. What we don’t know is whether their change in attitude is due to greater frustration with Israeli behavior or whether it is that, with a Republican now in the White House, Israel is seen as making the job of the president more difficult. In either case, what the poll makes clear is that if President Trump has the will to act to rein in Israel, he will have substantial support from both parties to do so.
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