FIRE WITH FIRE: Newsom sets plan to counter Trump's gerrymander scheme

The Briefing with Jen Psaki

MS NOW, Jen Psaki

News, Ms Now, Versant, Politics, Versant Media

4.4 • 974 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been taunting Donald Trump all week with his intention to counter Trump's scheme to gerrymander Texas in order to keep Republican control of the House after the 2026 midterms. Today he revealed the Election Rigging Response Act, which would have to be voted for by Californians and would only be activated to redistrict California if Texas does so first. Texas State Rep. Gene Wu, and Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur, California Assembly Democratic Caucus chair, discuss with Jen Psaki.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ten years ago, conservatives across the country were completely convinced that then President Obama was secretly preparing to impose martial law.
0:09.5	It was a wild and crazy conspiracy theory.
0:12.7	And that belief was prompted by the fact that 10 years ago today, the U.S. military was a few weeks into a military exercise called Jade Helm.
0:21.4	Now, what Jade Helm actually was was a pretty standard eight-week military training exercise
0:26.9	that happened to take place across Texas, New Mexico, California, and other southwestern states.
0:32.9	But because Barack Obama was president, conspiracy theorists seized on the fact that the military was going to be in Texas, again, doing these exercises, as proof that a hostile takeover was planned, that this was all about a hostile takeover.
0:49.4	Now, rather than calm that completely unfounded conspiracy, conservatives fan the flames. Republican Senator
0:56.1	Ted Cruz said he understood the reason for concern because, quote, the federal government has
1:00.9	not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration. He was, of course, talking
1:04.9	about the Obama administration. Other Republicans insisted that the map of the fictitious exercise
1:10.3	be changed so that Texas wasn't
1:12.9	labeled as hostile. Again, this was just a military training exercise, something that is quite
1:19.4	standard that all the branches of our military participate in. But Texas's governor at the time,
1:25.2	who, believe it or not, was still Greg Abbott.
1:30.1	Man, that guy's been around doing damage for a long time.
1:33.4	Ordered the state guard to go monitor the exercise.
1:37.7	Using taxpayer dollars to send troops to watch the training exercise.
1:41.3	That is how hair-on-fire Republicans were just a decade ago.
1:46.0	About the unfounded, very remote, not even real possibility that the President of the United States might be calling the military into American cities.
1:51.0	Now fast forward to today. Check out how Republicans are responding to Trump actually sending troops into an American city.
1:59.0	What's happening in D.C., this is easy.
2:02.4	President Trump is showing bold and strong leadership.
	...

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