The Brief

California voters may be feeling some déjà vu as campaigns on both sides of a redistricting battle return to similar playbooks from past political clashes here — including the unsuccessful 2021 recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With Proposition 50, Newsom and fellow Democrats are asking voters to toss out the congressional maps created by an independent redistricting commission just a few years ago, and approve new districts aimed at giving Democrats five more seats in Congress. The measure was placed before voters after President Donald Trump urged Texas and other Republican-led states to redraw their maps to give the GOP an advantage in the 2026 midterms.

Just like the recall, which Newsom handily defeated by nearly 25 points, the Yes on 50 campaign is making sure to tie their measure to the president, national Republicans and the MAGA movement. Trump’s California approval rating generally hovers around 30% in independent polls.

“The overall messaging is this a measure that fights back against Trump and his policies,” said Yes on 50 senior adviser Jim DeBoo, who was Newsom’s chief of staff during the recall. “There’s a lot of similarities to the recall … The difference is, Democrats in the recall begrudgingly voted no. They were like, why are we doing this?”

This time, DeBoo said, the intensity among supporters is real — and it’s not just Democrats, but also a significant number of independent voters who are motivated to come out and vote against Trump.

“This is like anger and excitement, where the recall is just anger,” he said, adding that critics of the president have been looking for a way to push back on this Washington. “Most people who have an aversion to the administration don’t have a lot of actionable things they can do. And this is an actionable thing.”

The California State Capitol in Sacramento on May 6, 2025.

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And people get what Proposition 50’s about, he said — something the Yes on 50 campaign wasn’t sure would be the case when they started this truncated campaign this summer. It’s a complicated argument, he noted: Democrats need to not only explain redistricting to voters, but also convince them that Proposition 50 won’t eliminate the popular Independent Restricting Commission. Instead, it would only table the commission’s work until after the 2030 census.

Then, the Yes side needed to convince the electorate of their why: The ballot measure is needed to help ensure Trump doesn’t remain in control of all branches of government.

“When we first started, we were like, ‘This is gonna be tough from a persuasion perspective to not only convince independent voters or no party preference voters, but Democrats, that this is the right thing to do.’ And usually, in ballot measures in particular, complexity kills, simplicity sells — and this wasn’t simple,” he said.

But people get it, he said, noting that the campaign’s polling shows awareness of the measure above 80%. The national attention it garnered, especially when Texas Democrats fled their state to delay the passage of new Republican maps, was helpful, DeBoo said.

But Jessica Millan Patterson, who is chairing the No Campaign and previously ran the state Republican Party, said the Democratic strategy of attacking Trump is tired.

“They don’t have a playbook. They have one play and they play that every single time,” she said.

Patterson said a large swath of the electorate remains undecided and a range of voters — including disaffected Democrats and independents — are open to the argument the No side is making.

“This is far less partisan, despite what the Yes side is trying to do,” she said. “We talk about these lines that have been drawn by Democrats in a back room with very little public participation and D.C. lobbyists and map drawers that no one can name, that is when people are like this is fishy, this is shady, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”

So while Democrats lean into Proposition 50 as an answer to Trump, Patterson said Republicans — just like in the 2021 recall campaign — are banking on Newsom’s unpopularity with more conservative voters. The message:

“Gavin Newsom is redrawing these districts as a partisan power grab, not because he’s trying to fix a problem because we didn’t have a problem to fix,” she said.

That’s a smart move, said GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who is not involved in either campaign.

Republican Assembly member James Gallagher speaks during a press conference ahead of a meeting of the California State Assembly in Sacramento.

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“Newsom isn’t just unpopular with Republicans, he actually triggers them,” said Stutzman, president of Stutzman Public Affairs. “The Republican motivation on this is Newsom. As much as you’re getting Democrats to turn out to vote against Trump, the Republican turnout mechanism is Newsom.”

DeBoo didn’t disagree.

“Republicans are pretty dug in,” he said “They may not be Trump people, but they have their feelings about Democratic leadership.”

Stutzman said both sides’ tactics make sense. Democrats, who hold a 20 point registration advantage over Republicans in the state, are simply trying to turn out their base and capitalize on Trump’s highly negative reputation here. Republicans are trying to shore up their base and attract other voters who are turned off by Newsom. The governor’s approval rating in an August poll was 51% — up from 46% in the spring and largely driven by Democrats and independent voters excited by his aggressive posture against Trump.

Just 9% of GOP voters gave the governor high marks in that poll — compared to 77% of Democrats.

“They have a huge plurality of Democrat voters that they just want to turn out,” Stutzman said. “It’s what we call a base election.”

Democrats may have also benefited politically from something that didn’t happen: Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned for the independent redistricting commission when it was created more than a decade ago, has come out against Proposition 50 but not hit the campaign trail.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at Town and Gown of USC.

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Stutzman said Schwarzenegger’s lukewarm involvement — he has spoken out against the measure on TV and at at least one event, but not worked with the No on 50 campaign — makes sense given he’s not a fan of the president.

“Schwarzenegger is a critic of Trump, so he’s not exactly gonna feed the Republican base or be the face that they necessarily want to see, even though they may agree with him on this,” said Stutzman, who worked for Schwarzenegger when he was governor.

But the No side has been able to use Schwarzenegger’s appearances in their advertising, which Stutzman said could still be an effective tool in attracting some centrist or independent voters.

Early ballot returns show equal shares of Democrats and Republicans have already cast their votes early — but with the Democrats’ numerical advantage, that amounts to nearly twice as many votes for redistricting so far.

Those who haven’t voted yet will surely be hearing more about Proposition 50 as Nov. 4 approaches. It’s already ranking as one of the most expensive ballot fights in state history — with nearly $150 million raised on both sides — and there are still several weeks left until voting ends.

While voters are deciding whether to approve new maps, it may feel more like they’re really being asked to choose between Newsom and Trump.

The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that anonymously tracks the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has sued the Trump administration for free speech violations after Apple removed the service from its app store under demands from the White House.

The suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, asks a judge to declare that the administration violated the First Amendment when it threatened to criminally prosecute the app's developer and pressured Apple to make the app unavailable for download, which the tech company did in October.

Following Apple ejecting ICEBlock, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that "we reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so."

Lawyer Noam Biale, who filed the suit against the administration, said Bondi's remarks show the government illegally pressuring a private company to suppress free speech.

"We view that as an admission that she engaged in coercion in her official role as a government official to get Apple to remove this app," Biale said in an interview with NPR.

The Justice Department did not return a request for comment, but Trump administration officials have said the app puts the lives of ICE agents in danger.

When reached for comment, Apple also did not respond. The lawsuit, which does not name Apple, says the tech giant bowed in the face of political pressure.

"For what appears to be the first time in Apple's nearly fifty-year history, Apple removed a U.S.-based app in response to the U.S. government's demands," according to the suit.

Developer calls immigration crackdown 'abhorrent'

Joshua Aaron, the Austin, Texas-based developer of ICEBlock, said he launched the app as a way to empower those opposed to Trump's immigration crackdown.

"It was just the best idea I had to do everything I could to fight back against what was going on," Aaron said in an interview, describing Trump's immigration enforcement blitz as "abhorrent."

The app allows people to report an ICE agent sighting within a 5 mile radius, similar to how map apps, like Waze and Google and Apple Maps and others, alert drivers to police setting up speed traps. The ICE sighting alerts do not include photographs or videos and expire in four hours.

Yet the Trump administration has portrayed the app as being used to incite violence against ICE agents, something Aaron denies. An analysis of federal court records does not back up the administration's claim that violence against ICE agents has spiked.

Aaron's lawsuit says Bondi is mischaracterizing the purpose of the app.

"Fundamentally, ICEBlock neither enables nor encourages confrontation — it simply delivers time-limited location information to help users stay aware of their surroundings in a responsible and nonviolent way," according to the lawsuit.

Attorney General Bondi, in a July interview with Fox News, suggested Aaron was under investigation and had committed a crime. "We are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that's not protected speech," Bondi said.

To legal experts, ICEBlock is latest "jawboning" example

To First Amendment advocates, the White House's pressure campaign targeting ICEBlock is the latest example of what's known as "jawboning," when government officials wield state power to suppress speech. The Cato Institute calls the practice "censorship by proxy."

ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened regulatory action and Bondi promising a crackdown on hate speech following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk are two other prominent instances.

"The use of a high-level government threat to force a private platform to suppress speech fundamentally undermines the public's right to access information about government activities," said Spence Purnell, a resident senior fellow at R Street, a center-right think tank. "If high-level officials can successfully silence political opposition, it sets a dangerous precedent for the future of free expression in this country."

Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, said the White House's campaign against ICEBlock shows the administration using what has become a familiar playbook: "To use threats of adverse legal and financial consequences, sometimes vague sometimes not so vague, to pressure universities, media companies, law firms, you name it, into not speaking in the ways they like," she said.

One potential weak spot for the lawsuit, however, is a lack of direct evidence that Attorney General Bondi, or other administration officials, made threats against Apple to have the app removed, rather than merely convinced the tech company to do so.

"And government officials do not violate the First Amendment when they persuade private speech platforms to suppress speech because that speech poses a national security risk or is harmful in some other way," Lakier said. "They only violate the First Amendment when they coerce or attempt to coerce the private platform to suppress the speech."

Since Apple kicked ICEBlock out of its app store, it cannot be downloaded now, but those who had it on their phones before the ban can still use it. Being removed from the app store prevents Aaron from sending the app software updates, which could eventually make it glitchy.

Aaron said he hopes the suit will lead to ICEBlock being restored to the iPhone app stores and for a clear message to be sent to the Trump administration that prosecuting him for his role in developing the app would be illegal.

Aaron said he and his legal team "have been preparing for this fight," adding that "we will take it as far as it needs to go to ensure this never happens again."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Twelve FBI agents who were fired this year for taking a knee during racial justice protests in the heated summer of 2020 are suing the Bureau and its director, alleging unlawful retaliation.

The former special agents—who together have nearly 200 years of experience—once received awards for helping disrupt mass shootings, expose foreign spies and thwart cyber attacks.

But they say as elite federal law enforcement agents, they never received training on crowd control, nor did they have riot shields, gas masks, or helmets when they faced down volatile crowds in the streets of Washington, D.C., in June 2020.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington on Monday, described the small group of FBI agents as vastly outnumbered and literally backed against the wall of the National Archives building as unrest swept the country over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Court papers said they kneeled not to reflect a left-wing political point of view, but rather to de-escalate a situation that threatened to spin out of control.

"Mindful of the potentially catastrophic consequences, Plaintiffs knew that a split-second misjudgment by any of them could ignite an already-charged national climate and trigger further violence and unrest," said the lawsuit, filed by former Justice Department prosecutor Mary Dohrmann of the Washington Litigation Group.

Accused of 'lack of impartiality'

The Justice Department inspector general reviewed the incident in 2024 and found no misconduct. But the episode went viral on social media, attracting critics who cast the kneeling as a political act. Before he returned to the White House, President Trump also posted a negative story about the matter.

Soon after new FBI Director Kash Patel joined the Bureau this year, the lawsuit said he began targeting the agents involved in the episode for retaliation. Several of plaintiffs were yanked from supervisory roles at the FBI. Officials launched a new investigation. The matter was still pending when they were all fired in September, shortcutting typical procedures for FBI misconduct probes.

In their dismissal letters, Patel wrote: "You have demonstrated unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government."

During his confirmation hearing, Patel told senators he would honor the internal review process. But the lawsuit accuses him of breaking that pledge for his own political purposes.

The abrupt departure of the fired agents disrupted important work, including evidence collection in Utah following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and efforts to support the Trump administration's executive order on "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful," court papers said.

The case alleges violations of the agents' First Amendment rights to free association and their Fifth Amendment right to due process. They're asking to be reinstated to their jobs and for back pay.

The FBI declined to comment on pending litigation.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A drawn out battle over a city law boosting the minimum wage for tourism workers in Los Angeles seemed like it was finally over this fall when a referendum to overturn it failed to gather enough signatures.

Now there's another twist in the road. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson previously voted to raise airport and hotel worker pay from $22.50 to $30 an hour by 2028, when L.A. will host the Olympics. But in a motion filed Friday, he's proposing that the increase take effect more slowly, instead reaching $30 an hour in 2030.

Harris-Dawson's proposal sparked outcry from hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 and other labor advocates.

“These workers fought for more than two years to improve their working conditions, only to have the very people who should defend them try to take it all away," Yvonne Wheeler, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement. "It’s heartless, it’s callous, and it deepens the crisis of working poverty that is gripping our city.”

Labor advocates say Harris-Dawson is succumbing to pressure from corporate interests.

Over the summer, a coalition of business leaders filed a ballot proposition to repeal the city business tax, which brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the city. The L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce told LAist the proposition was partly in response to the City Council boosting the minimum wage for tourism workers.

Unite Here Local 11 filed its own raft of proposals, including raising the minimum wage citywide and requiring Angelenos to vote on building new hotels and event center developments. This war via ballot proposition led city leaders to encourage both sides to come to a compromise.

A spokesperson for Harris-Dawson said the city is currently in talks with business and labor interests, and declined to comment further on his recent motion. Mayor Karen Bass's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The motion now goes to council committees on tourism and jobs.