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California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks about the “Election Rigging Response Act” at a press conference at the Democracy Center, Japanese American National Museum on August 14, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Getty Images, Mario Tama
Gerrymandering, California, and a Fight the Democrats Can Only Lose
Aug 22, 2025
California Democrats are getting ready for a fight they can’t win. And taxpayers will foot the bill for the privilege.
Governor Gavin Newsom, backed by national party operatives, appears poised to put a statewide gerrymander on the ballot under the banner of “fighting Trump.” The plan? Overturn California’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, redraw congressional maps, and lock in party control well into the next decade.
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The problem? This isn’t really about Trump, and the Democrats’ own numbers suggest it’s a losing gamble.
A Manufactured Trump Crisis
The stated justification for a rushed special election is to counter Republican gerrymanders in states like Texas and Ohio. This ignores the fact that Ohio is required to redraw districts in time for 2026 because of a voter-approved initiative.
And if this is truly about “checks and balances,” why not let the maps expire in 2026? The answer is obvious: national Democrats want maps locked through 2030 to save money and shore up safe seats.
Newsom has made it clear he sees this as a fight he can’t walk away from.
“These guys are ruthless on the other side,” he said at an August 8 press conference. “We can control what we can control. We’re not going to unilaterally disarm. We’re not going to allow them to roll us over.”
And in a letter to President Trump on August 11, he issued a direct challenge:
If you will not stand down, I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states. But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.”
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Some operatives are even floating the idea that Trump could run for a third term. This is a non-serious constitutional impossibility without an amendment requiring approval from 38 states. It’s a scare tactic, and that is all.
But Newsom’s stance has collided with an unusually broad wall of opposition. On August 1, 2025, leaders from groups as diverse as the California Farm Bureau, the League of Women Voters of California, Open Primaries, the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, the Independent Voter Project, and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association sent a joint letter urging him to abandon the plan.
Voters created this Commission through two ballot measures to remove self-interest and partisanship from the redistricting process,” the letter states. “It enforces strict conflict-of-interest rules, ensures diverse and balanced representation, and mandates public input at every stage. That reform — approved by the people — deserves protection, not political re-engineering.
The Math Doesn’t Add Up
Newsom has framed the move as both practical and principled. “It’s always the right thing to do the right thing,” he told reporters on August 8, even as his critics argue the numbers don’t justify the gamble.
Democrats now control 43 of California’s 52 House seats, including several competitive districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic hands last November.
Current congressional lines drawn by California’s independent commission are already winnable for Democrats. A targeted investment in competitive districts, like seats held by Reps. Kiley, Valadao, Kim, and Calvert, could flip at least four seats in a favorable cycle without the need to touch the commission.
Our national analysis of the proposed gerrymandered districts shows no guaranteed net gain for Democrats. Some newly drawn seats could even swing Republican in a strong GOP year.
Opponents note that California’s commission process has worked. In 2021, the commission passed congressional and legislative maps unanimously, without a single lawsuit. It held more than 250 public meetings, heard thousands of hours of testimony, and reviewed more than 35,000 public comments.
The result was widely hailed as transparent, independent, and fair.
A Costly Distraction
According to recent estimates, the special election alone could cost California taxpayers more than $200 million. This is before factoring in the hundreds of millions more that will be poured into newly competitive districts by both parties and their aligned super PACs.
Newsom said he wants the special election held on the first Tuesday in November, aligning it with local elections already scheduled in many communities. That timing, he argued, would make it easier to organize quickly and could help offset an estimated cost of more than $200 million — though he added that “there’s too much at stake” to be deterred by the price.
“How much did it cost to have the theatrics with the National Guard and Trump?” Newsom asked, pointing to the president’s recent deployment of thousands of troops in Los Angeles to quell immigration-related protests. “How many hundreds of millions of dollars was wasted?”
For Newsom, the price tag is part of the fight. “We don’t move unless they move,” he said on August 8. “They drew first blood.” It’s a framing that resonates with party loyalists but could alienate independents who view California’s commission as a national model worth protecting.
The August 1 coalition letter warns that using “the dysfunction of other states to justify dismantling California’s voter-approved reforms sets a dangerous precedent,” turning independent redistricting into a political bargaining chip that could sink California into “political quicksand.”
Of course, consultants on both sides are happy to take their cut. For them, a prolonged, high-dollar fight is lucrative. For voters, it’s just another reminder that political insiders see elections as an industry.
National Ambitions in Play
It’s no secret that Gavin Newsom wants a bigger role in national politics. Forcing a high-profile redistricting battle with Trump’s name attached is a way to insert himself into the national narrative heading into the 2026 midterms. But it risks alienating independent voters in California, who overwhelmingly support keeping the independent commission in place.
Newsom says he supports independent redistricting nationwide. Yet here he is, willing to dismantle the “gold standard” in his own state for a short-term partisan gain.
The Wrong Fight at the Wrong Time
Democrats could use the next cycle to build a majority the right way: by competing for the broad middle, leveraging California’s diverse electorate, and showing faith in the independent process voters chose. Instead, they’re poised to spend hundreds of millions on a partisan gambit that, at best, nets them nothing. A national gerrymandering contest could hand Republicans an enduring advantage.
“This is the time to defend and recommit to a democracy that puts voters, not politicians, first,” the August 1 coalition concluded.
This is not a national fight Democrats can win. But it is a fight they can lose, badly. And when it’s over, voters will be left wondering why the party that claimed to champion fair maps and voting rights was the one that tore them up in a state that had something to be proud of.
Gerrymandering, California, and a Fight the Democrats Can Only Lose was originally published by Independent Voter News and is republished with permission.
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AI-driven "surveillance pricing" hides the price increases from stressed-out parents.
Getty Images, Isabel Pavia
Back to School Shopping? Expect Higher Prices, “Invisible” to the Consumer
Aug 21, 2025
For families with school children, the summer is coming to a close, and it’s time to start thinking about—school shopping! New clothes, shoes, daypacks, and school supplies are topmost of mind, making sure your little Einsteins and Rembrandts are ready to take on the new school year.
But this year, it’s coming with a twist—not only are prices higher in the stores and online, but the price increases are seemingly “invisible” due to deceptive uses of new technologies and what is known as “surveillance pricing.”
While families will spend an average of $858 on school supplies, according to the National Retail Federation, a report by Intuit Credit Karma found that 39% of parents said they can’t afford back-to-school shopping this year. 44% of parents said they plan to take on debt to purchase school supplies to help their child “fit in,” up from 34% in 2024. More than half (54%) of parents plan to sacrifice necessities, such as groceries, to ensure their kids have what they need for the school year.
Parents aren’t imagining things. Recent data showing core inflation for July from the Consumer Price Index was the highest it’s been since early 2025. And the recent data for the Producer Price Index climbed to 0.9%, much higher than expected, and the highest since the sky-high inflation in 2022. Many are blaming President Donald Trump’s tariffs for the price increases; however, most of the tariffs didn’t go into effect until early August. Economists generally think shoppers have yet to feel the full effect of Trump's topsy turvy tariff policy.
So the exact cause of these price increases remains murky, even as they chip away at families’ sense of economic security and add to the anxiety that parents are feeling.
Stressed out parents, hunting for bargains
The evidence of stressed-out parents is more than statistical. Frustrated and increasingly angry people are venting their feelings by posting online videos of themselves shopping in stores.
One mother pushing her cart down the aisle in Target noticed something strange—Target had covered all of its prices from two days before and jacked up the prices by 10-20%. She narrated her stewing anger on TikTok as she rolled down the aisle, saying, “They are raising prices on everything in their store, and they’re just covering it up with little white tags…Are you guys mad yet?”
Another Target shopper videoed himself finding torn-off prices amidst price increases by as much as 75%, while Walmart shoppers also found prices removed and a markup of 60%.
Such a lack of transparency and understanding around price increases only adds to shoppers’ frustration levels.
Dynamic pricing is the (troubling) future
With posted price tags disappearing, it has created an opening for retailers to introduce another new technology that has insidious potential. It’s called “dynamic pricing,” which is a form of AI- driven automated pricing, combining digital surveillance of consumers and their spending habits with relentless corporate profit-seeking. In its worst form, this has resulted in complaints over price gouging.
With dynamic pricing, stores can change electronic prices instantaneously, allowing them to deploy strategies like “surge pricing,” when prices increase during a window of increased consumer demand. Surge pricing has already been used by Uber, hotels, and airlines. Hundreds of horror stories exist from when Uber’s fare prices suddenly zoomed higher during times of peak demand—such as during a mass shooting in 2022, when a suspect shot 10 people in a train car during morning rush hour, and those using Uber and Lyft to flee the scene found their regular prices quadrupling to as high as $100.
Now this kind of dynamic pricing is coming to retail stores like Walmart, Target, and others, led by Amazon. Proponents of dynamic pricing claim that it allows precision based on various factors, such as current market demand, seasonal fluctuations, and supply changes. Product prices continuously adjust—sometimes within minutes—in response to real-time supply and demand. Amazon has been one of the largest retailers to use dynamic pricing, with its algorithms continuously adjusting the prices seen on its website. During Hurricane Irma, Amazon was accused of price gouging when the price of bottled water in the storm zone suddenly jumped by 35%.
The creepiness of surveillance pricing
Businesses have always set their prices in response to changing conditions, but this technology allows for something even more stealthy and deceptive—enter “surveillance pricing.”
Amazon has already started deploying a type of dynamic pricing in which price levels change based on user-specific data. Its algorithms analyze browsing history, spending habits, credit scores, location, physical and mental health indicators, and more to tailor prices per individual. In practice, that means two users might see different prices for the same product at the same time. Using your personal data, a seller like Amazon is able to predict your “pain point,” which is the highest amount of money that you are willing to spend on a particular good or service. And you won’t even realize that you are being charged higher prices than another person. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has labeled this as “surveillance pricing” because of its privacy invasiveness.
Lina Khan, former chair of the FTC, reports that consumer watchdogs have found different people being charged higher prices for products, ranging from test prep services, an Uber ride, hotel rooms, to Internet connection services. The decisive factors used to raise pricing levels included characteristics such as whether the person was Asian, or lived in San Francisco, or lived in a poorer, non-white neighborhood.
This capacity has alarming potential for manipulation and abuse, particularly when there are no more price tags showing public prices and no one can actually see what anything costs. One study from the Harvard Business School found that “algorithmic pricing can lead to higher prices for consumers in competitive markets and even in the absence of collusion… pricing algorithms that are already in widespread use may allow sellers to extract a massive amount of wealth from consumers.”
The practice of dynamic pricing based on user data raises a number of ethical and legal questions. Indeed, using automated pricing based on consumers’ psychographic profiles opens a Pandora’s box of charging different prices based on race, religion, nationality, or gender. Doing so would be illegal, but how would a consumer know what algorithmic criteria are being used for the prices they are paying?
In 2024, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown called on Walmart and Amazon to better explain their use of these automated, AI-driven pricing systems. I am concerned, said Senator Brown, “by how corporations may use customers’ web browsing data to engage in discriminatory pricing, in which different customers are charged different prices for the same goods or services. On top of generally higher prices, I am concerned that the use of pricing algorithms may lead to higher prices for individuals or families based on variables including a customer’s location or other sensitive personal data.”
Generally, it is legal for a store to charge different prices to different customers for the same item. But, currently, the laws don’t cover many of the types of abuses that are occurring. This is yet another example in this digital age in which the laws have not caught up to the changes in technology.
Uber and Lyft, Amazon and Taylor Swift
As consumers shop for their school supplies, as well as their groceries and other essential goods, this kind of pricing behavior is starting to make people really angry. There is a deep sense that businesses should not be able to weaponize a consumer’s own data against her or him. Something about this practice seems unethical, unfair, potentially discriminatory, and a contribution to their personal economic woes.
No wonder then that everyday people cheered when Taylor Swift refused to allow dynamic pricing over ticket prices for her Eras Tour because, reportedly, “she didn’t want to do that to her fans.” But, so far, federal and state governments have been mostly AWOL. Certainly, there are policies that the White House or Congress could adopt to address this. As chair of the FTC during the Biden administration, Lina Khan launched a study to investigate surveillance pricing, gathering information from eight companies about their collection and use of private data to charge Americans different prices for the same product. But, so far, the Trump White House has not released the report. Meanwhile, the states of Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, and California have introduced bills to ban surveillance pricing.
Unfortunately, consumers have been left on their own to figure all of this out. Meanwhile, they see prices creeping up around them when they purchase school supplies and groceries, wondering where relief might come from.
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Defining The Democracy Movement: Lilia Dashevsky
Aug 21, 2025
The latest interview in this series features Lilia Dashevsky, the founder and CEO of Emet Strategies, a new strategic communications firm. Lilia launched Emet after leading democracy efforts at CLYDE, where she worked with many of the nation’s leading democracy organizations and advocates in the country, supporting their communications efforts before and after the 2024 election.
I’ve long admired Lilia’s work. I’ve collaborated with her through my role at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins and followed her insights on the democracy sector. What stands out is her dual focus: the need to strengthen the sector’s communications infrastructure, and the urgency of thinking and acting differently at a potentially existential moment.
Having led pro-democracy organizations and initiatives for over 15 years, I’ve seen firsthand what Lilia describes: at best, communications are often marginalized, treated as secondary, or reduced to chasing media attention. Rarely are communications deployed strategically to achieve larger outcomes. Yet in today’s fractured political environment, where Americans inhabit increasingly different information ecosystems, communications are central if we hope to cultivate a public that cares about democracy itself.
An effective communications strategy cannot rely on writing and publishing op-eds in legacy news outlets (as great as that might be).
In our conversation, Lilia was candid about how the field needs to adapt. Three themes stood out:
- The field needs to test more —and embrace risk. Following the 2024 election, many organizations reverted to familiar tactics, including newsletters, talking points, and op-eds. Lilia worries this retrenchment has stifled innovation.
Lilia is adamant that the field needs to be willing to test out new types of communications- even if they might not work. People and organizations need to become more comfortable with the concept of risk.
As Lilia says, testing out new strategies is “just not happening as much as I think good communicators should be doing. “That ranges from everything that's basic to... What's my subject line? How am I going to run an A/B test all the way through?
How am I testing certain creative campaigns against my target audiences?
How am I iterating on my strategy based on the way that it's being received online, in the press, or elsewhere? I think there's a large hesitancy to do so, and I think part of that reason, as much as I love our funders in this space, has to do with the… ability for funders to say it is okay. If you fail, you do not have to have the most bind-up perfect communications campaign.” - The field does not truly know its audience: There is a tendency in this pro-democracy field to continually push out more content, without taking the time to understand who we are truly trying to reach. It may be easy to say that the sector should be trying to reach all Americans, but that’s not how effective communication works.
Lilia pushed on this point, pushing the field to both understand and diversify its audience. When an organization comes up with a strategic communications campaign, it’s incumbent upon them to do so while specifying who their audience is and attempting to diversify that audience.
As Lilia notes, “We don't know who our audiences are. We make numerous assumptions about who they are, where they are, what they're reading, how they think, and what they're watching. But we don't have nearly the level of granularity about some of these audience-centric questions, the way that not only our peers and other nonprofit advocacy ecosystems do, but let alone our peers in the for-profit sectors do, and the way that they drill down on individuals and personas based off consumer habits, geolocation, and socioeconomic information. We are just not doing that.”
- We need to diversify the pro-democracy field and proactively learn from others. One of the topics I’ve touched on in previous pieces is the insularity of the pro-democracy ecosystem: there’s too much assuming that members of the field have similar ideological preferences, or too much talking to each other.
Leading up to the 2024 elections, for example, organizations spent considerable time developing talking points on how best to discuss elections. However, the target audience for these talking points was not clear at all. The danger was that all the pro-democracy groups spent a lot of time putting together talking points, sending them along, and then telling each other how great the talking points were received.
Lilia herself is trying to branch outside of the pro-democracy space as she starts her new practice. She is pushing others to approach the work with a sense of curiosity now: “What I'm advocating for is for organizations to a be curious and think a little bit- Oh, if I'm doing this one communication strategy, I wonder how somebody in the climate space is doing this, or I wonder if you know how my favorite brand might be handling this issue.
I would challenge everybody to critically evaluate the news that you are consuming each morning or each evening before you go to bed. I transitioned from receiving dozens of political newsletters in my inbox, which left me feeling overwhelmed, to now carefully curating newsletters that introduce me to new ideas, industries, and perspectives. I'm consuming information that most of the time has nothing to do with what I'm working on any given day.”
I left our conversation with a deeper appreciation for the role of communications in sustaining democracy. Lilia’s reflections are both a warning and a call to action: this work requires experimentation, a deeper understanding of our audience, and a willingness to learn from beyond our own echo chambers. I look forward to seeing how she builds Emet Strategies in the years ahead.
Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is co-leading a trans-partisan effort to protect the basic parameters, rules, and institutions of the American republic. He is the co-founder of Generation Citizen, a national civics education organization.
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"We’ve inherited a political system that often feels like it’s breaking in slow motion. But we’re not here to watch it crumble," shares student and writer Harper Brod.
Getty Images, AJ_Watt
We Were Raised in the Storm: Why Young People Still Don’t Trust Politics – but I Do
Aug 21, 2025
We were raised in the middle of a political hurricane.
Our childhoods came with breaking news alerts: lockdowns, impeachments, mass shootings, a pandemic, and presidents tweeting threats in real time. We never saw the so-called “good old days.” We learned early that politics wasn’t some distant, dignified machine—it was messy, volatile, and often cruel.
So, it’s no surprise that trust is in freefall. Only 22% of Americans believe the federal government will do the right thing most of the time. Among young people, it’s even worse. We trust each other more than we trust the people running the country—74% of us believe in our peers and neighbors, but just 37% trust Congress. Political parties? Still waiting.
We came of age in the era of Donald Trump, when “fake news” became a weapon, disagreement turned into a daily blood sport, and wearing a mask could spark a shouting match. Politics wasn’t a steady backdrop to our lives—it was the storm itself.
And yet—here’s the plot twist—we didn’t walk away.
In 2020, half of young voters showed up at the polls, the highest turnout in decades. In Boston and San Antonio, youth advisory councils are helping decide real budgets and policies. In Georgia, young organizers didn’t just knock on doors—they helped flip Senate seats. Across the country, Gen Z isn’t just voting. We’re running for office. And winning.
I’ve seen trust start small, in the rooms where decisions are made right in front of you. At a recent county town hall, young people in my community spoke up about how leftover COVID relief funds could be used for youth mental health services. A week later, the council announced that funding would go toward exactly that. Watching peers my age shape policy in real time reminded me: trust doesn’t have to start at the top. It can start with us, right where we live.
We’ve built our trust where it matters most: in grassroots climate strikes, in mutual aid food drives, in the town hall meetings where we can look the decision-makers in the eye. We believe in what we can see, touch, and shape ourselves.
If leaders want our trust, they have to earn it. That means more than token “youth outreach” events or carefully staged Instagram posts. It means giving young people a real seat at the table where decisions are made—voting power to match. It means appointing us to state and local boards, integrating youth representation into school boards and budget committees, and trusting us to stay there long after the cameras are gone.
We’ve inherited a political system that often feels like it’s breaking in slow motion. But we’re not here to watch it crumble. We've also inherited the tools—and the audacity—to rebuild it; stronger, fairer, and built to last. Our trust may be fragile, but belief lives in action. And action is one thing my generation refuses to surrender.
We’ve seen politics at its worst—and that’s exactly why we’re here to make it better.
Harper Brod is a Virginia-based student and writer focused on government and civic participation. She plans to pursue a career in public policy and is especially interested in how institutions can build trust with younger generations.Keep ReadingShow less
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