Newsom Throws Down Over Trump’s New Threat in Redistricting War

California Governor Gavin Newsom is ready to throw down in court over his state’s upcoming redistricting referendum.

President Donald Trump vowed legal retaliation against the Golden State Monday, telling reporters during a White House press briefing that his administration would be filing a lawsuit against California “pretty soon” over its plan to put the state’s congressional lines to a vote.

“I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon and I think we’re going to be very successful in it. We’re going to be filing it through the Department of Justice, that’s going to happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Trump also condemned the use of blue slips in the Senate, which allow home-state lawmakers to veto district court nominees as well as appointments to U.S. attorneys’ offices.

“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping. You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman’s agreement, nothing memorialized, it’s a gentleman’s agreement that’s about 100 years old, where if you have a president, like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney in particular, those two.”

But Newsom was already ready and willing to meet Trump at his level.

“BRING IT,” the governor wrote on X, in response to the president’s comments during the presser.

Newsom announced the Election Rigging Response Act earlier this month, a statewide Democratic gerrymandering plan intended to offset Republican efforts to strip liberal areas around the country of their electoral votes. California will invite residents to vote on whether or not to pursue redistricting in their own state, in reaction to the battle raging in Texas, on November 4.

In July, the president demanded that Texas Republicans create five more House seats by redrawing its congressional map, eliminating a handful of blue districts. The order, and Texas’s subsequent obedience, elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous regions—California and New York. Both states have launched their own redistricting wars in the wake of the vote.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some peoples’ sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

President Trump was given an honorary U.S. Marshals badge at his executive order press conference on Monday, once again displaying how easily impressed he is by meaningless gifts.

“I think Gady Serralta had something he wanted to give you on behalf of all of the law enforcement who are out there every single night,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump with a grin, speaking to the President of the United States like a kid on Christmas.

“Mr. President, thank you for putting me in charge of this search as the director of the United States Marshals Service,” Serralta said. “On behalf of all the federal law enforcement agencies that we’re working with, and those that have yet to join the team, we thought it was only appropriate to present you with [an] honorary United States Marshall service badge,” he told Trump.

He then handed the president the badge and a handcuff key, to Trump’s delight. “That’s very nice,” Trump said directly to the camera while smiling without his teeth.

“You continue, through your policies and your efforts with your staff to un-handcuff law enforcement officers all over this nation,” Serralta said. “And I can tell you personally that they thank you for that. You can continue un-handcuffing law enforcement.”

“That’s a very great honor,” Trump replied. “I’ll save that and put it some place up, which is important.”

An honorary service badge is something law enforcement officials hand out to just about anyone, even children. The most notable instance of this was DJ Daniel, the cancer-stricken child who attended the State of the Union earlier this year. Daniel was made an honorary Secret Service member for dressing up and pretending to be a police officer in his hometown. But from children’s badges, to golden paperweights, to a literal Diet Coke bottle, it doesn’t take much to flatter Trump.

Asserting federal control over the private sector is as American as apple pie, according to Donald Trump.

The president apparently sees nothing wrong with his administration’s latest deal with Intel, the only chipmaker allowed to make the tech parts in the U.S.

Last week, the government took a 10 percent stake in the company, purchasing 433.3 million shares for a total price of $8.9 billion. In a press release Friday, Intel underscored that the exchange came at a “discount” to the company’s current stock rate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also confirmed the deal.

The transaction has made the U.S. government Intel’s largest single shareholder, though Intel said that the White House would not have a board seat or hold any governing rights of the company. The terms of the deal do, however, allow the U.S. to buy an additional five percent of Intel’s market shares if the company is “no longer majority owner of its foundry business,” according to MSNBC.

But Trump’s recounting of the events has been remarkably different. By Monday morning, Trump still refused to acknowledge that the stock purchase came with a price, deriding his critics of the deal with simple insults.

“I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, IT IS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS. All goes to the USA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that? I will make deals like that for our Country all day long. I will also help those companies that make such lucrative deals with the United States States.”

“I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER. More jobs for America!!! Who would not want to make deals like that?” he added.

Trump’s insistence that the White House’s involvement in private business is a good thing does not bode well for the rest of the private sector: The government is already looking to take equity stakes in other companies, according to one of Trump’s top economic advisers.

“I’m sure that at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry, in other industries,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC Monday.

The deal with Intel followed several weeks of personal attacks by Trump against Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, in which the president openly questioned the Malaysian-born American business executive’s previous investments in Chinese tech firms. Since the deal was announced, however, the president has noticeably pulled back on his calls for Tan’s resignation.

The Trump administration’s Intel deal represents only the first of more such interventions into the private sector, according to Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council.

Trump last week announced that the U.S. government will be taking a 10 percent passive ownership stake in the tech company Intel. The deal came just weeks after the president called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign after Senator Tom Cotton alleged the executive has problematic ties to China.

Trump made remarks Friday indicating that the move was something more of a shakedown than a deal, and that more such interventions may eventually be in the works. “[Tan] walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States,” the president told reporters. “So we picked up 10 billion. And we do a lot of deals like that. I’ll do more of them.”

On Monday, CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Hassett about that prospect.

“So, we should expect the U.S. government to be taking more equity stakes in businesses around the country?” Sorkin asked. “That is something that if you’re a CEO, this morning, watching us, you should say, ‘OK, the sovereign wealth fund may be coming and trying to effectively buy in some kind of equity stake?’”

Hassett replied in the affirmative. “It’s possible, yeah,” he said. “That’s absolutely right.”

To allay fears of government meddling in business decisions, the adviser insisted that the government would only ever acquire non-voting stock.

But such assurances are likely to be met with skepticism, given that a major tenet of Trump’s agenda appears to be bending American businesses and institutions to his will. Take, for example, recent reports that the administration is keeping a scorecard of companies’ loyalty to the administration’s agenda.

Donald Trump claimed the American people are asking for a dictator—and he seems more than happy to give them what they want.

While signing executive orders in the Oval Office Monday morning, Trump whined that people were up in arms after he suggested that he would deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, following his federal takeover of Washington D.C.

Not everyone in Chicago was unhappy with this plan, he claimed.

“A lot of people are saying ‘maybe we’d like a dictator,’” Trump said.

The president then attempted to course-correct. “I don’t like a dictator, I’m not a dictator,” he quickly said. “I’m a man with great common sense, and I’m a smart person.”

It’s not clear that there is any meaningful difference between a dictator, and a leader pleasing the people who are asking for one. What is apparent, however, is that Trump’s plan to move federal forces to other American cities is so unpopular that he’s concocting consent for tyranny as a means to justify it.

Crucially, Trump gets closer to becoming a dictator everyday. On Monday, he signed an executive order which would criminalize flag burning, an act of political expression protected by the First Amendment, claiming that it incited riots.

If Trump truly believed that inciting a riot earns you a year in prison, then the president himself is well overdue for a stint behind bars.