The Brief

What seemed a few weeks ago like a far-fetched political fantasy ahead of the 2026 midterms has quickly evolved into a high-stakes showdown enveloping states across the country.

As Texas this week began an off-cycle redistricting process meant to shore up Republicans’ slim House majority, Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared Friday with a group of Democratic legislators from that state, reaffirming his intention for California to respond with new maps of its own that would benefit Democrats.

Following a meeting with the Texas lawmakers at the historic governor’s mansion in downtown Sacramento, Newsom told reporters that “everything is at stake if we’re not successful next year in taking back the House of Representatives” — not only blunting President Donald Trump’s agenda, but protecting American democracy.

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028,” he said. “They’re not screwing around. We can’t afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”

There’s one major obstacle to the governor’s ambitions, however: While the Legislature draws district lines in Texas, California relies on a bipartisan citizen redistricting commission protected by the state Constitution.

In 2008, voters narrowly approved an amendment removing California legislators’ power to draw their own seats. Two years later, voters overwhelmingly passed another amendment expanding the commission’s authority to congressional maps.

The independent commission in California became a national model for advocates who hoped to end the partisan gerrymandering that has contributed to a decline in competitive House seats and the country’s fractious, sectarian politics.

Now Newsom, who said he otherwise supports independent redistricting, is exploring multiple options for working around the commission to squeeze more Democratic districts out of California, if Texas follows through on its plan.

That would probably involve calling a special election, Newsom said, though he is still discussing with the Legislature what sort of proposal they might present to voters. Would it include a new map to approve or create another process to draw on? Would the commission be temporarily or permanently repealed?

“This is a fluid conversation,” he said. “We’re gaming all those things out.”

Trump turns up the heat in Texas

States typically redraw their congressional seats once per decade, after the census, to ensure the districts are all roughly equal in population. The most recent maps were drawn after the 2020 election and took effect in 2022.

But last month, Trump’s political team began pressuring Republican leaders in Texas to revisit the state’s district lines and create additional GOP seats. The party won a five-seat majority in the House last November, the narrowest in nearly a century, leaving little room for error as Trump tries to enact his legislative agenda and putting control of the chamber at risk if next year’s midterm is a wave election against the unpopular president.

Despite opposition from Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation — who worried that diluting their conservative voter bases in redistricting could inadvertently make their seats vulnerable — Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps. He is targeting four Democratic seats in the Dallas and Houston areas that the Trump administration has deemed “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders” because they have high numbers of Black and Latino voters. The first public hearing took place on Thursday, with Texas Democratic lawmakers slamming the move as a “power grab.”

The boldly political maneuver juiced similar efforts in other Republican states, including Ohio and Missouri, that could further pad a GOP majority, while setting off alarm bells among Democrats nationally.

But even as party leaders voice their outrage, they have fewer options to fight back, because congressional districts in many of the largest Democratic states, such as California, New York and New Jersey, are drawn by independent commissions.

No one has been more outspoken than Newsom, who weeks ago began publicly floating the idea of sidestepping California’s commission to redraw more congressional districts in Democrats’ favor if Texas moves forward with its plan.

But it’s no sure thing in California

It’s a legally dubious and politically fraught endeavor. Even some of Newsom’s fellow Democrats have expressed skepticism because of the precedent it would set, including Assemblymember Alex Lee of Milpitas, whose vote may be needed to place a measure on the ballot. Common Cause California, a nonprofit that advocates for government in the public interest and backed the formation of the independent commission, blasted it as a “dangerous move” that would “put our state’s democracy on the line during a time of national instability.”

Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is already threatening to sue to stop a new map and has added to his platform a plan to require the redistricting commission to include more GOP seats.

Because of the legal risks in having the Legislature simply draw new congressional districts, the most likely route is a special election asking voters to overturn the independent commission, said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting consultant.

The problem is that the commission remains highly popular with voters in polling, Mitchell said. To get around that, Newsom may need to make concessions, like a temporary pause that resumes the independent redistricting process in 2031, after the next census.

“It’s ‘in emergency, break glass,’ not ‘let’s burn down the whole building,’” Mitchell said.

Even then, he said, Democrats would need to maintain the drumbeat of frustration over how the party is being harmed in Texas for months to turn out a motivated electorate in an unusual special election.

“It’s like lightning in a bottle right now,” Mitchell said. “Are they going to be able to keep this a front-burner issue for people?”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A divided Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted 4-3 Tuesday to issue preliminary layoff notices to 657 employees, as part of a plan to reduce the budget after several years of the district spending more money than it brings in.

Even as California is poised to fund schools at record high levels, Los Angeles Unified and other districts have grappled with increased costs. For example, LAUSD hired more staff to support students during the pandemic, and now the federal relief dollars that initially funded those positions are gone. For the last two years, the district has relied on reserves to backfill a multi-billion-dollar deficit.

The “reduction in force” vote is the first step in a monthslong process that could result in layoffs for a still-to-be determined number of positions.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the focus on cutting jobs at the district’s central office was intended to protect schools.

“Does it do it at 100%? No,” Carvalho said. “But this approach reflects the deliberate effort to shield students and frontline educators and support staff from the most severe impacts of this fiscal downturn.”

What positions will be affected? 

LAUSD staff estimate the proposed cuts include less than 1% of its more than 83,000 member workforce.

Notices will go out to 657 positions concentrated in the district’s central office, but which also work at local schools. More than a third of these are IT technicians, by far the largest group.

The plan also calls for reduced hours and pay for several dozen positions.

The board also voted to issue layoff notices to an additional 2,600 contract management employees and certificated administrators as part of a “routine action that’s been taken annually,” said Saman Bravo-Karimi, the district's chief financial officer

What about teachers? 

LAUSD said it expects to need 350 fewer elementary and 400 fewer high school teachers next year because of declining enrollment and the closure of some non-classroom positions.

While some educators may be moved from one school to another, the district said it does not plan to issue layoff notices to teachers for the 2026-2027 school year.

The district's decision is based on attrition and the assumption that a new labor agreement will lower high school junior and senior class sizes, requiring more educators.

“This is a calculated risk that the district is taking on in order to maintain the stability at the schools throughout the spring semester,” said Kristen Murphy, associate superintendent of talent and labor relations .

Were deeper cuts considered? 

Yes.

Murphy said schools also identified about 800 additional certificated position closures, but that the people in those positions would be moved to different jobs as they became available.

The district is also paying $50-60 million to restore planned cuts to classified positions at school sites.

“We have worked with every possible solution we can think of to reduce that number of initial [layoff] notices and keep as many of our employees as possible,” Murphy said.

How did the board vote? 

Yes:

• Board Member Sherlett Hendy Newbill (BD-1)
• Board President Scott Schmerelson (BD-3)
• Board Member Nick Melvoin (BD-4)
• Board Member Tanya Ortiz Franklin (BD-7)

“Every person in our LAUSD community contributed to the academic gains last year,” Schmerelson said. “So whether these RIFs are approved or not we will continue to fight until the very last minute for funding.”

No:

• Board Member Rocío Rivas (BD-2)
• Board Member Karla Griego (BD-5)
• Board Member Kelly Gonez (BD-6)

“I will not accept reductions in force as a default response without a clear discipline showing that this is the most responsible and strategic course available to us,” Rivas said.

Rivas, Gonez and Melvoin are on the ballot in this year’s election.

What do employees say?

Representatives from the unions that represent LAUSD school support staff, teachers and principals asked the board to reconsider the proposed cuts at the start of the meeting and to seek additional funding from the state amid growing revenues from the artificial intelligence industry.

“You can decide to be brave and lead in the state by example and show what a fully functioning school system is,” said SEIU Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias.

SEIU Local 99 members, which include classroom aides, IT technicians and gardeners, are currently weighing whether to give their leaders the authority to call a strike. Members of the union that represents LAUSD teachers, psychologists, counselors and nurses voted to authorize a strike last month.

The unions, as well as several board members, called on the district to share more information about contracts with third-party companies before making cuts to staffing.

“This framing is not an honest engagement around budget priorities,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “It is a tactic used to scare workers and scare our school communities.”

What happens next? 

By March 15, layoff notices will go out to the 657 impacted employees as well as employees with less seniority in positions that could be “bumped,” to accommodate the employees in the impacted positions.

The district plans to freeze hiring until it can evaluate whether an employee included in the reduction in force can fill any vacant position.

“The district can’t issue these notices and then hire new people if vacancies come up,” Murphy said.

Staff said the board would vote to finalize any un-rescinded layoff notices in May or June.

What else has the district done to save money?

Tuesday’s vote is part of a $1.4 billion fiscal stabilization plan first approved last June.

Bravo Karimi said additional money-saving strategies included transferring $496 million in reserved funding to the district’s general fund and using $796 million to fund future labor agreements.

LAUSD staff’s report to the board said that even if the board approved the reduction in force notices, more cuts will be necessary to balance the budget in future years.

About 15% of California households lack access to high-speed internet, according to the latest report from UC Riverside. Researchers pointed to affordability as one of the biggest barriers to closing the persistent digital divide.

Edward Helderop, associate director at UCR’s Center for Geospatial Sciences and report author, told LAist that the findings weren't surprising.

“A lot of American households and California households don't have high-speed internet available at home,” Helderop said. “It's sort of just an unfortunate reality that that's the case for the state of California.”

What does the report say? 

Nearly one in seven households in California doesn’t have reliable internet access, according to the report. The biggest barrier continues to be affordability. Even in urban areas, like Los Angeles, where broadband internet is more widely available, the average monthly cost can range from $70 to $80 per month.

But in rural areas, broadband internet is still widely unavailable because of a lack of infrastructure investments from private companies. Only two-thirds of rural households have broadband access at home.

“This digital divide represents not just a technological failure, but a profound barrier to economic opportunity, educational advancement, and civic participation that undermines California’s potential for shared prosperity,” the report states.

Experts also call for mandatory broadband data transparency — internet providers should be required to publicly disclose their service speeds, pricing, reliability metrics and coverage areas.

“Private telecom companies administering the service, they're under no obligation to maintain publicly available data sets in the same way that you might get with other utilities,” Helderop said. “There are issues with the fact that the advertised speeds don't really match up with the actual speeds that people experience at home.”

Researchers also recommend that broadband providers be regulated as utilities, like water and power, monitoring rates, quality and service obligations.

“When we regulate something like a utility, it comes with a few regulations that we take for granted,” Helderop said. “Something like a universal service obligation, in which the utility … their primary motive is to provide universal service, so to provide the service to every household in California.”

As a public utility, officials could ensure that providers are offering the same type of service to every household in the state, as well as regulate rates.

Why it matters 

Norma Fernandez, CEO at Everyone On, said access to affordable, high-speed internet is a basic necessity.

"Still, too many families, particularly those in under-resourced communities, predominantly of color, are still left out,” Fernandez said. “Expanding reliable connectivity means addressing affordability, investing in community-centered solutions, and ensuring that digital access is part of every policy conversation."

Digital equity advocates say they see the need from local families every day, but available data doesn’t reflect that.

“On the maps, families appear to live in ‘connected’ neighborhoods, but in reality, they still can’t afford to get online because the monopoly provider’s plans are unaffordable,” Natalie Gonzalez, director at Digital Equity Los Angeles. “The provider-reported broadband maps don’t match what residents experience on the ground, and that gap has real consequences.”

In L.A., for example, hundreds of thousands of households lack reliable internet, but only a fraction qualify for public funding because available data says they’re already served, Gonzalez added.

“Public investment alone doesn’t guarantee equity if the underlying data is flawed,” Gonzalez said. “When the only data regulators have come from the providers themselves, the providers end up defining reality. Communities are then forced to prove they’re disconnected, without access to the same information the companies use to claim coverage.”

Cristal Mojica, digital equity expert at the Michelson Center for Public Policy, said pricing data is intentionally obscured.

“It makes it harder for people to shop around between internet plans,” Mojica told LAist. “It makes it really challenging for our state legislators to be effective and make effective decisions around affordability when they have to try to dig around for that information themselves.”

What’s next? 

California has already invested $6 billion for broadband –called the “Middle-Mile” project –through Senate Bill 156. The 2021 law is the largest state investment in broadband in U.S. history to get more people online.

Helderop explained that broadband investments are typically made possible through grants or loans to private telecom companies, making the state’s investment critical.

“It's the first time that any state, or any government in the United States, is taking it upon themselves to build and then own the infrastructure at the end of it,” Helderop said. “I would say that's probably the primary reason that we don't have universal broadband available to households in the United States right now.”

When completed, the “Middle-Mile” project will open markets to new providers and reduce monopolies, Helderop added.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s widow, Crystal Hefner, is raising the alarm over her late husband’s foundation collecting about 3,000 of his personal scrapbooks and his diary, which she says contain thousands of nude images of women, some of whom might have been minors at the time the photos were taken.

In a press conference Tuesday, Hefner and her attorney, Gloria Allred, announced they’ve filed regulatory complaints with California and Illinois attorneys general, asking them to investigate the foundation’s handling of the scrapbooks. The complaints were filed to both attorneys general because the foundation is registered to do business in California but incorporated in Illinois.

“I believe they include women and possibly girls who never agreed to lifelong possession of their naked images and who have no transparency into where their photos are, how they’re being stored or what will happen to them next,” Hefner said.

She added the diary includes names of women he slept with, notes of sexual acts and other explicit details.

Hefner said she was asked to resign from her position as CEO and president of the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation on Monday after raising concerns about the materials. She said after she declined to resign, she was removed from her role.

She said she was told the scrapbooks may be in a storage facility in California. Allred says they were informed that the foundation plans to digitize them, but it’s unclear what it plans to do with them.

“This is not archival preservation. This is not history. This is control. I am deeply worried about these images getting out,” Hefner said. “Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, digital scanning, online marketplaces and data breaches means that once images leave secure custody, the harm is irreversible. A single security failure could devastate thousands of lives.”

In addition to asking for an investigation into the foundation’s handling of the materials, it also asks the attorneys general to take appropriate actions to secure those images.

LAist has reached out to the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation for comment.