Politics
Commentary: Fix the potholes or fight the power? That’s the choice facing California’s next governor
You may have missed it, what with President Trump’s endless pyrotechnics, but California voters will decide in November who succeeds Gavin Newsom, the highest-profile governor since the Terminator returned to Hollywood.
Unfortunately for those attempting to civically engage, the current crop of contenders is, shall we say, less than enthralling.
In alphabetical order (because there is seriously no prohibitive front-runner), the major candidates are Xavier Becerra, Chad Bianco, Ian Calderon, Steve Hilton, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, John Slavet, Tom Steyer, Eric Swalwell, Tony Thurmond, Antonio Villaraigosa and Betty Yee.
Whew! (Pause to catch breath.)
Armed with that knowledge, you can now go out and win yourself a few bar bets by asking someone to name, say, even two of those running.
Meantime, fear not. Your friendly columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria have surveyed the field, weighed the odds, pondered California’s long history and concluded … they have absolutely no clue what will happen in the June 2 primary, much less who’ll take the oath of office come next January.
Here, they discuss the race that has Californians sitting on neither pins nor needles.
Chabria: Mark, I do this for a living and I’m having trouble summoning up any interest in this race — yet, anyway.
Part of my problem is that national events are so all-consuming and fast-moving that it’s hard to worry about potholes. I admit, I appreciate that our White House-contending governor is fighting the big fight. But remind me again, what’s a governor supposed to do?
Barabak: End homelessness. Elevate our public schools to first-class rank. Make housing and college tuition affordable. Eliminate crime. End disease and poverty. Put a chicken in every pot. Make pigs fly and celestial angels sing. And then, in their second year …
Seriously, there’s a pretty large gap between what voters would like to see happen and what a governor — any governor — can plausibly deliver. That said, if our next chief executive can help bring about meaningful improvement in just a few of those areas, pigs and angels excepted, I’d venture to say a goodly number of Californians would be pleased.
Broadly speaking, my sense when talking to voters is they want our next governor to push back on Trump and his most egregious excesses. But not as a means of raising their national profile or positioning themselves for a run at the White House. And not to the exclusion of bettering their lives by paying attention to the nitty and the gritty, like making housing and higher education more readily available and, yes, fixing potholes.
Chabria: All that is fair enough. As the mom of two teens, I’d especially like to see our university system be more affordable and accessible, so we all have our personal priorities. Let’s agree to this starting point: The new governor can’t just chew gum and walk. She or he must be able to eat a full lunch while running.
But so far, candidates haven’t had their policy positions break through to a big audience, state-focused or not — and many of them share broadly similar positions. Let’s look at the bits of daylight that separate them because, Republicans aside, there aren’t canyon-size differences among the many candidates.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan, the newest entry in the race, is attempting to position himself as a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” centrist. How do you think that will go over with voters?
Barabak: You’re having me tiptoe uncomfortably close to the Make A Prediction Zone, which I assiduously avoid. As I’ve said before, I’m smart enough to know what I don’t know. (Many readers will doubtless question the underlying premise of the former if not the latter part of that statement.)
I think there is at least a potential for Mahan to tap into a desire among voters to lower the hostilities just a bit and ease up on our constant partisan war-footing.
You might not know it if you marinate in social media, or watch the political shout-fest shows where, as in nature, the loudest voices carry. But there are a great many people working two or even three jobs, ferrying their kids to soccer practice, worrying about paying their utility and doctor bills, caring for elderly parents or struggling in other ways to keep their heads above water. And they’re less captivated by the latest snappy clap-back on TikTok than looking for help dealing with the many challenges they face.
I was struck by something Katie Porter said when we recently sat down for a conversation in San Francisco. The former Orange County congresswoman can denigrate Trump with the best of ‘em. But she said, “I am very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”
California’s homelessness and affordability crises were years in the making, she noted, and need to be addressed as such.
I heard Antonio Villaraigosa suggest something similar in last week‘s gubernatorial debate, when the former Los Angeles mayor noted the state has spent billions of dollars in recent years trying to drastically reduce homelessness with, at best, middling results. “We cannot be afraid to look in the mirror,” he said.
That suggests to me Mahan is not the only candidate who appreciates that simply saying “Trump = Bad” over and over is not what voters want to hear.
Chabria: Certainly potholes and high electricity bills existed before Trump. But if the midterms don’t favor Democrats, the next governor will probably face a generational challenge to protect the civil rights of residents of this diverse state. It’s not about liking or disliking Trump, but ensuring that our governor has a plan if attacks on immigrants, the LBGTQ+ community and citizens in general grow worse.
I do think this will matter to voters — but I agree with you that candidates can’t simply rage against Trump. They have to offer some substance.
Porter, Swalwell and Becerra, who have the most national experience and could be expected to articulate that sort of vision, haven’t done much other than to commit to the fight. Steyer and Thurmond want to abolish ICE, which a governor couldn’t do. Mahan has said focusing on state policy is the best offense.
I don’t think this has to be a charisma-driven vision, which is what Newsom has so effectively offered. But it needs to bring resoluteness in a time of fear, which none of the candidates to my mind have been able to project so far.
But this all depends on election results in November. If Democrats take Congress and are able to exert a check to this terrible imbalance, then bring on the asphalt and fix the roads. I think a lot of what voters want from a governor won’t fully be known until after November.
Barabak: The criticism of this collective field is that it’s terminally boring, as if we’re looking to elect a stand-up comic, a chanteuse or a juggler. I mean, this is the home of Hollywood! Isn’t it the birthright of every California citizen to be endlessly entertained?
At least that’s what the pundits and political know-it-alls, stifling yawns as they constantly refresh their feeds on Bluesky or X, would have you believe.
Voters elected Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor — that’s two movie stars in the state’s 175-year history — and, from the way the state is often perceived, you’d think celebrity megawattage is one of the main prerequisites for a chief executive.
But if you look back, California has seen a lot more George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis types, which is to say bland-persona governors whom no one would mistake for box-office gold.
It seems to me no coincidence that Schwarzenegger, who arrived as a political novelty, was replaced by Jerry Brown, who was as politically tried-and-true as they come. That political pendulum never stops swinging.
Which suggests voters will be looking for someone less like our gallivanting, movie matinee governor and someone more inclined to keep their head down in Sacramento and focus on the state and its needs.
Who will that be? I wouldn’t wage a nickel trying to guess. Would you care to?
Chabria: I certainly don’t care to predict, but I’ll say this: We may not need or get another Terminator. But one of these candidates needs to put some pepper flakes in the paste if they want to break out of the pack.
Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle.
The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterm elections with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out more red districts across the country.
Congressional maps have for generations been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, mid-decade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.
After the Virginia map passed in a statewide referendum late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps, which will favor Republicans.
Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.
Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority, including worries about the economy, the unpopular war with Iran, high gas prices and Mr. Trump’s sagging approval ratings.
In its 4-to-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that Democratic legislators had violated the state’s constitution with their move to enact a new map meant to give their party 10 out of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats, up from the six it currently controls. Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow for the map in a referendum.
The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.
That, the justices wrote, violated the process in the State Constitution.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the majority wrote.
Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” the president posted on his social media site.
Democrats seemed despondent over the decision after eight months and nearly $70 million invested in passing the referendum.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum, said that “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.”
He added: “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”
What those options are was not clear in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
Some legal experts believe that the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling may be the final word on the state’s maps before the election. That is because the case involved a state law challenge about whether state lawmakers had followed rules laid out in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling late last month that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps before the midterms. Those efforts could net Republicans a handful of additional safe seats before voters cast a ballot in November. South Carolina is also exploring a new map before November.
While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering, they are broadly struggling to keep up.
In part that is because years ago, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing process in an effort to insulate it from politics. But Republicans kept the power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.
In Virginia, voters approved the amendment to override the independent commission by about three percentage points after the General Assembly had passed it twice. But Republicans challenged nearly every aspect of the process. Most of these lawsuits were filed before in a county court in the rural southwestern corner of the state, where a judge repeatedly ruled in the Republicans’ favor. These rulings were appealed to the State Supreme Court.
In lawsuits, Republicans argued that the language in the amendment was misleading, that the new districts were not drawn compactly, that it was improper to vote on redistricting at a legislative session that had convened to discuss budget issues and that a state law required county clerks to post notices about the amendment months before it was actually voted on.
One of the most critical questions concerned the sequence of events in Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters weigh in on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the state’s House of Delegates taking place between the two votes. The first vote for this amendment was on Oct. 31, just days before the state election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians having already voted, Republicans argued that the legislative action had come too late.
The court sided with that argument.
“Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting,” the court’s majority wrote in its ruling.
But Democrats’ loss in Virginia is likely to only further stoke more redistricting battles. Already, the party’s lawmakers in New York and Colorado have signaled a desire to try and redraw their maps before the 2028 elections, and Virginia Democrats are likely to be in a similar position, since the court mainly took issue with the process, not with the resulting map.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.
Politics
Gorsuch says ideological divides on Supreme Court come down to ‘how you read law,’ not politics
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said differences among his colleagues on the high court are often less about politics than they are about diverging approaches to constitutional interpretation — a dynamic, he said, that influences both the court’s rulings and its internal relations.
“That has nothing to do with politics,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “That has to do [with] how you read law. Interpretive methodologies.”
Gorsuch, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has described himself as a “textualist,” noting his approach focuses on interpreting legal texts based on the ordinary meaning of the words as written. The philosophy is linked to originalism — or the view that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning when it was adopted.
Other justices have different interpretations, including ones that allow for evolving interpretations over time. Gorsuch stressed that differences, while significant, are not inherently personal.
JUSTICE THOMAS WARNS PROGRESSIVISM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA IN RARE PUBLIC REMARKS
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at the Reagan Library on May 5, 2026, in Simi Valley, Calif. (Getty Images)
“At the end of the day, you’re trying to get to the right answer under the law,” he said, adding that disagreement is an expected, and healthy, part of the process.
His remarks come as the federal judiciary and members of the Supreme Court have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, including by Trump and his allies, who have criticized the courts for impinging on what they see as the duties of the executive branch.
Trump took to Truth Social last month to criticize the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for showing him “very little loyalty” in blocking his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs in February.
He also suggested they might block his executive order seeking to end so-called “birthright citizenship” in the U.S.
“Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for,” Trump said.
JUSTICE GORSUCH HIGHLIGHTS HUMANITY, HISTORY IN CHILDREN’S BOOK CELEBRATING AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY
President Donald Trump greets Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts as he arrives to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress in 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
He contrasted this with liberal justices on the court, whom Trump said “stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there.”
Gorsuch, for his part, stressed that the justices often share plenty of common ground, even if their interpretation of the Constitution prompts them to reach different conclusions.
That approach, he suggested, carries over into how the justices work together behind closed doors — where collaboration and debate are central to the high court to perform its constitutional duties.
FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP BAN FOR ALL INFANTS, TESTING LOWER COURT POWERS
The U.S. Supreme Court building is shown in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2023, as the court unveiled a new ethics code following scandals involving gifts and vacations received by some justices. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
“The framers understood that people would come to the table with different views,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital. “The goal is to reason together.”
While ideological divides can be sharp, Gorsuch emphasized that culture at the high court is built on mutual respect.
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“If you sit and listen to someone long enough, you’re going to find something you can agree on,” he added. “Maybe you start there.”
Two press freedom groups that own shares in Paramount Skydance are demanding to see the company’s books and internal documents, citing allegations that the company’s leaders may have promised favors to the White House to win approval for Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The letter, sent Thursday to Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, says that media reports alleging that Paramount owner David Ellison and others promised favors to the Trump administration “create credible concern that Paramount leadership has offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange,” which the groups argue would “constitute a breach of fiduciary duties” and open the company up to a “range of potential civil and criminal penalties.”
The letter cites Delaware law that allows stockholders to inspect the company’s books and records “for any proper purpose.”
Paramount declined to comment on the letter.
Among the issues raised in the letter are promises reportedly made by David Ellison and his father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, that they would make “sweeping” changes at the news network CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Ellison family acquired Paramount, which includes CBS and the storied Melrose Avenue film studio, last summer.
The letter cites changes implemented in CBS since their acquisition, including their decision to end late night television house Stephen Colbert’s show days after he characterized a settlement Paramount reached with Trump as a “big fat bribe.”
Under Ellison’s ownership, the letter says, numerous high-profile reporters have left the network and its ratings have dropped to “historic lows.”
Larry Ellison, who is backing the financing of Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner, reportedly told White House officials that Paramount would “implement the CBS playbook” at CNN if the merger is approved, and remove anchors and commentators at the cable news network that Trump doesn’t like, according to the letter.
The effort comes just two weeks after Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly approved the proposed merger. Investors have supported the Larry Ellison family takeover, which would become the biggest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade. The deal would pay Warner stockholders $31 per share — four times the stock price a year ago.
The letter was written on behalf of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which develops secure communication tools for journalists and tracks violations of press freedom, and Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom globally.
The organizations are being represented by former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who established the Public Integrity Project this year to challenged alleged government corruption, as well as Delaware attorney Ronald Poliquin.
The missive, which could be a precursor to a lawsuit, opens another avenue of attack against the controversial $111-billion deal, which would transform the smaller Paramount into an industry titan.
With Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellisons would also control HBO, TBS and the vast film and TV library of Warner Bros., which includes the Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Scooby-Doo, in addition to CNN.
Paramount, led 43-year-old David Ellison, wants to finalize its Warner Bros. takeover by the end of September. President Trump favors the deal; he has long agitated for changes at CNN.
But the proposed merger would saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, stoking fears that Paramount would be forced to make steep cost cuts to juggle such a large debt load.
Politicians, unions and progressive groups separately have pressed California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize the proposed merger, hoping that he brings an antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to upend the deal.
More than 4,000 film industry workers, including Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, J.J. Abrams, Jane Fonda and Kristen Stewart, have signed an open letter imploring Bonta and other regulators to block the merger. The group lamented the proposed tie-up, saying it “would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four.”
Opponents fear the consolidation would lead to massive layoffs and diminish the quality of programming that Warner Bros., CNN and HBO are known for.
Hollywood has sustained thousands of layoffs over the last seven years since Walt Disney Co. swallowed Fox’s entertainment assets in another huge merger. In addition, the film production economy hasn’t recovered from shutdowns during the 2023 labor strikes. An estimated 42,000 entertainment industry jobs were lost from 2022 and 2024.
On Thursday, 34 California Democrats in Congress also sent a letter to Bonta, encouraging him to look closely at the merger.
The deal is expected to become one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever.
Ballou, who is working with the press freedom groups, previously served as a Justice Department special counsel with expertise in private equity transactions.
He resigned from the Justice Department in January 2025 when Trump returned to office. In his book, “Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America,” Ballou examined large leveraged buyouts and found that many of which resulted in bankruptcies.
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