The Brief

Californians are voting in a special election Nov. 4 with just one statewide item on the ballot: Proposition 50, a measure to allow newly redrawn congressional maps to take effect for the next three elections.

This measure is just one part of a larger nationwide battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections, but it also affects who will get elected to represent you and your community in government.

What your vote means

A "yes" vote means: California will use new congressional maps drawn by Democratic state officials to elect congressional representatives in 2026, 2028 and 2030. 

A "no" vote means: Nothing will change. California will continue to use existing congressional maps drawn in 2021 by the state independent redistricting commission for all congressional elections through 2030. 

In either scenario, the state’s independent redistricting commission would once again be in charge of drawing new congressional district maps after 2030.

Understanding Prop. 50

This measure is all about redistricting, the process of drawing boundaries on a map that determine who’s included in your political district. Those geographic lines determine who gets to vote to elect your representatives in government.

Proposition 50 is specifically about boundaries for congressional districts, which affect who gets elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and which party ends up controlling the House. Republicans have a slim 219-212 majority in the House right now, but in midterm elections, the balance of power historically tends to shift.

Normally, redistricting happens once every 10 years, after the U.S. Census, to reflect population changes. California and other states weren’t supposed to redistrict again until after the next census in 2030.

But this year, with encouragement from President Donald Trump, the Texas state Legislature approved new maps that would give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections. Democratic leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, criticized the move as an attempt to “rig” next year’s elections.

Newsom then launched the effort behind Proposition 50 to give Democrats a similar advantage in California’s congressional elections and effectively cancel out Texas’ move. California’s state Legislature approved the new maps in August.

Unlike Texas, however, redistricting in California is supposed to happen through an independent redistricting commission — a politically balanced group of citizens who are not connected to political office. Voters approved the nonpartisan system in 2008, so they need to approve any proposed changes to it. That’s why Proposition 50 is on the ballot this year.

Which districts would be affected?

Most California district boundaries would change to a degree with the new congressional maps.

In Southern California, just five out of 30 districts would remain unchanged.

However, the political effects would be stronger in some districts than others. The following Southern California districts would see the biggest changes, turning safe Republican areas into swing districts or swing districts into Democratic-leaning ones:

• CA-27 in northern L.A. County, currently represented by Democratic Rep. George Whitesides.
• CA-41 in Riverside County, currently represented by Republican Rep. Ken Calvert.
• CA-45 in L.A. and Orange counties, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Derek Tran.
• CA-47 in Orange County, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Dave Min.
• CA-48 in San Diego, currently represented by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.

You can input your address in the tool below, created by our partners at CalMatters, to check where you live and whether your congressional district would change if voters approve the ballot measure.

You can also do a side-by-side comparison of the existing map and the new one proposed under Proposition 50.

How it would work

Proposition 50 is temporary. If passed, California would use the newly drawn maps for congressional elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030. That means if your district changes under the new maps, you’ll be voting with a different group of people to elect a U.S. representative for the next three elections.

After 2030, the independent redistricting commission would once again draw congressional district maps that would be in place for the next decade’s elections.

What people who support it say 

Proposition 50 has support from Newsom and many other prominent Democratic leaders in state and federal government, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Zoe Lofgren and Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.

Proponents say Proposition 50 is a necessary response to what they describe as Trump’s attempt to undermine democracy by giving Republicans an unfair advantage in the midterm elections. If California doesn’t act, they say, the redistricting move in Texas and potentially other Republican-led states could lead to Republicans retaining control of the House in next year’s elections and passing more of Trump’s agenda without reflecting the true will of voters.

Supporters argue that passing Proposition 50 would neutralize the redistricting effort in Texas and that, since the measure sunsets after 2030, it stays committed to California’s independent redistricting system in the long run.

Read more arguments from supporters below:

• Yes on 50 official campaign website

What people who oppose it say

Members of California’s Republican leadership, including Southern California House Reps. Ken Calvert, Young Kim and Darrell Issa, and the Republican caucuses in both chambers of the state Legislature, have come out against Proposition 50.

Other opponents include former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office, and Charles T. Munger,Jr., a Palo Alto-based physicist who has contributed significant funding toward the opposition campaign.

Opponents have generally characterized Proposition 50 as a “power grab” by Newsom and other Democrats in the state government, arguing that the new maps were drawn behind closed doors without adequate public input. They say that bringing back congressional maps designed by political officials undermines California voters who supported the creation of the independent redistricting commission in 2008.

Schwarzenegger has said that gerrymandering — redrawing district lines to favor a political party — is wrong, no matter which state does it.

“It is not at all serving the people. It is serving the party,” he said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

Munger argues that an escalation of redistricting efforts across multiple states would undermine democracy overall.

“If our nation devolves into competing efforts to gerrymander, we will lose the ability to fight back against overreach by either party,” he wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times.

Read more arguments from opponents below:

• No on 50 official campaign website
• Do Not Re-Gerrymander California (Charles T. Munger. Jr. for the New York Times)

What others say

Notably, some groups that promote political reform have declined to take a position on Proposition 50. They include Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.

In a statement, Common Cause President and Chief Executive Virginia Kase Solomón said the group opposes gerrymandering no matter who does it, but that it remains focused on the larger threat of authoritarianism at the national level. Common Cause released a list of “fairness criteria” to evaluate the new congressional maps, determining that California’s maps met that criteria while those in Texas did not.

The League of Women Voters issued a statement, saying “the people most affected by district maps, especially communities of color who are often underrepresented, should be the ones to decide if those maps are fair.”

Potential financial impact

The state Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that Proposition 50 would result in “minor one-time costs” to county and state election officials due to having to update election materials for a different group of voters.

That amount, according to their analysis, would come out to “a few million dollars” to county governments statewide and roughly $200,000 to the state government. It notes that the state costs are less than one-tenth of 1% of the state’s $220 billion general fund budget.

Follow the money

The apartment building planned on East Morris Avenue in Modesto is exactly the kind of thing that California’s political leaders want to see a whole lot more of: The project promises 44 units of affordable housing — half reserved for people without homes. It’s received zoning approval, weathered public feedback, earned the support of local elected officials and sits beside a busy bus line. Once built, the project promises on-site mental health services, job training and Zumba classes.

What the project lacks is money.

Having quilted together a financial patchwork of local government and corporate grants, private debt, and a plot of land donated by a foundation, it remains just shy of the total needed to break ground.

Six years and 13 funding applications after it was first proposed, the Morris Village project sits ready, but waiting.

An estimated 39,880 affordable units across California are stuck in financial purgatory, according to a new report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit that funds, consults and advocates for affordable housing. That’s 461 “shovel-ready developments” that, like the one on East Morris, are fully designed, legally green-lit and backed with a significant — but still insufficient — amount of money.

Many have “been sitting for a year or two waiting for funding,” said Justine Marcus, policy director for Enterprise’s Northern California office and one of the report’s co-authors. “There’s no exit route right now. It’s a bottleneck.”

For many developers and affordable housing advocates, that bottleneck represents an especially frustrating inconsistency of California public policy. Lawmakers are desperate to see the state build more homes — of all kinds, but especially for people with the least ability to pay the state’s exorbitant rents. State housing regulators have ordered local governments to plan for the construction of an additional 2.5 million units by the end of the decade. One million of those are supposed to be for people making less than 80% of each region’s median income.

As a general rule, that’s a population of hard-up renters that the private market has been unable to profitably serve at scale. To fill that gap, non-profit low-income housing developers typically turn to taxpayer-funded support. At the moment, according to the report, there isn’t enough of that to go around.

Enterprise took publicly available but hard-to-parse applicant lists from seven subsidy programs administered by various wings of California’s state government going back three years. With a combination of number crunching and a little inference, the report estimates that clearing the current backlog would require an extra $4.1 billion, split between state administered grants, low-cost loans and tax write-offs.

Once awarded, this final layer of state subsidy has to be spent in relatively short order. That means this list of 39,880 units comprise a group of affordable housing projects that are all but ready to go, said Marcus. “They kinda have to have their (stuff) together.”

Case in point: Two-thirds of the projects on the list have already received support from at least one other state program. Those dollars aren't awarded to just any developer, said Betsy McGovern-Garcia, vice president of Self-Help Enterprises, one of two non-profits behind Morris Village.

“These are all projects that are close to amenities,” she said. “These are all projects providing resident services. These are all projects that are financially feasible...They are all meeting the bar for what we want to see as a state out of our affordable housing community.”

In February, McGovern-Garcia and her colleagues applied for a final round of financial support from the state “to close the gap” and finally start construction.

“We are optimistic this might be our round,” she said in an interview, her fingers crossed.

A moving bottleneck

California has seen gridlock in affordable housing production before, but the precise location of the traffic jam has changed over time.

When Nevada Merriman was leading a team of affordable developers in Silicon Valley a decade ago, she said local approval was the major hold-up. Getting the legal okay to build low-income housing on a particular site in a particular town required developers to run a gauntlet of planning department and city council meetings, win over hostile neighbors with costly concessions, community meetings and design revisions and to fend off the ever-present possibility of litigation. Because relatively few projects survived that ordeal, the competition for funding on the other side wasn’t especially stiff, said Merriman, who is now policy advocate for MidPen Housing, an affordable developer in San Mateo County.

That began to change earlier this decade. California lawmakers began passing laws overriding these local impediments — especially for affordable projects. All of a sudden more projects were clearing those early regulatory hurdles and competing for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, the federal government’s signature affordable housing construction subsidy. The bottleneck moved further up the road.

But then that too began to change late last year. Buried in President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill from 2025 was a significant boost to the tax credit program. (Specifically, the law increased the total supply of one type of credit while allowing another kind to be spread out over twice as many projects).

Which brings us to the latest bottleneck.

Now projects can get through local approval. They can more easily acquire the final and most important layer of federal financing. But project sponsors typically can’t apply for that until all other financial holes are plugged.

“We’re looking for state sources to fill that gap,” said Merriman. “We want to make sure we don’t leave those federal sources on the table.”

MidPen currently has 1,198 units spread across seven developments waiting for that last bit of funding, she said. “Should there be a source…there’s a pipeline that is ready to go.”

“There’s no exit route right now. It’s a bottleneck.”Justine Marcus, Northern California policy director, Enterprise Community PartnersCalifornia’s last major infusion of public affordable housing dollars came in the form of a voter-approved bond in 2018. That well has run dry. A hodgepodge of funding streams remain.

Adding together funding that has already been approved by legislators but not yet spent and a variety of other state and federal sources, California’s Housing and Community Development department says at least $1.8 billion should be available for affordable developer applicants this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year doesn’t include any new discretionary spending beyond that.

Boosters of more funding have reasons to be optimistic. Newsom has taken such an austere posture in early budget negotiations before only to have the Legislature successfully pour hundreds of millions of dollars of affordable housing subsidies back into the final budget agreement.

California lawmakers are also considering a record-breaking $10 billion affordable housing bond for the 2026 ballot. If a majority of voters go for that, “we’d be off to the races,” said Merriman.

Cutting costs

One way to get more affordable housing built is by spending more money. The other is trying to make the existing money go further by cutting costs.

The cost of affordable housing construction is notoriously high in California: A 2025 study estimated that tax credit-financed projects here cost two- to four-times the amount of comparable projects in Colorado and Texas. There is no single reason for this disparity. Land costs in California are significantly higher. So too, often, is the cost of labor. Regulatory barriers like restrictive zoning, slow permitting and stiff impact fees are frequently named as culprits. Sometimes old-fashioned construction methods and materials get blamed.

But there’s also the cost of just waiting around.

A typical affordable development in California will have two or three public funding sources, with some drawing on six or more. Many of these sources are awarded on their own timelines. Each has its own program-specific requirements that can take time to meet. Some are conditional on the receipt of another. As time goes by, developers still have to make payroll, pay interest on pre-construction loans and watch as inflation drives construction costs up further. As delays compound, funding sources that have already been secured might expire, setting things back further.

Each additional funding source delays the start of construction on a project by an average of four months, adding an extra $20,460 per unit, according to an analysis by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.

The Newsom administration is currently tinkering under the hood of California’s affordable housing finance system in an effort to speed things up.

Last year, the governor proposed the creation of the state’s first ever cabinet-level housing agency. The California Housing and Homelessness Agency is scheduled to take over the state’s disparate housing loan and grant programs. The governor’s office also proposed legislative language that would force the new agency and the Treasurer’s Office to operate in tandem, giving affordable housing developers a single place to apply for the state’s various funding programs — and to cut out some of the time they spend stuck in line.

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

President Donald Trump threatened to withhold his signature on all bills until Congress passes stricter federal voting requirements — a move that escalates his efforts to change election rules ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In a social media post Sunday, Trump said he won't sign any bills into law until Congress passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act.

"I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed," Trump wrote.

If passed and made law, the measure would transform voter registration and voting in the U.S. It would require eligible voters to prove their citizenship with documents like a valid U.S. passport or a birth certificate and a valid photo ID. It's already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections.

Trump said the legislation should "go to the front of the line." He also praised a guest on Fox News who pressed for changes to Senate rules that require 60 votes to advance most legislation. Trump has previously asked senators to abandon the filibuster in order to avoid the need for Democrats to back bills he favors.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has consistently pushed back on that pressure, saying any plans to change the filibuster do not have support in the GOP conference.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reiterated that Democrats will not support the SAVE America Act.

"If Trump is saying he won't sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate," Schumer posted on X Sunday. "Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances."

The GOP-controlled House has passed a few versions of the legislation, but Democrats and some voting rights activists have argued the measure would make voting harder for eligible voters.

The impact of Trump's threat to withhold his signature on all bills remains unclear. If the House and Senate advance a bill and Congress remains in session, any bill would become law within 10 days even without a signature from Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump would sign a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security or a supplemental military package paying for the Iran war.

The offices of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Thune did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Live Nation has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice over a federal antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of monopolizing the live entertainment industry, according to a report from the Associated Press. NPR has not independently confirmed the settlement. The trial, which began a week ago in a New York City courtroom, aimed to break up Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster.

A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, the District of Columbia and 39 states in 2024 accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of unfairly wielding their power over concert promotion, artist management, venue operations and ticketing services to shut out competitors. The Biden-era Justice Department complaint was moved forward under the Trump administration. In previous comments shared with NPR, Live Nation denied the government's claims and stated that there is more competition in the ticket marketplace than ever.

Live Nation and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to NPR's requests for comment.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Eighty-eight condos could be coming to Windsor Hills after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors overruled an appeal last week from a local residents’ advocacy group.The five-story project, dubbed The View, would nest into the hillside between Overhill Drive and La Brea Avenue, south of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. 

Developers have battled Windsor Hills residents for nearly a decade over building housing on the empty hilltop parcel.  The board’s vote sends the project back to a county judge, according to the LA County Department of Regional Planning.

The View’s fiercest opposition has come from locals organized in the United Homeowner’s Association II, a nonprofit that represents any dues-paying resident of Windsor Hills, View Park and surrounding communities. The group is “extremely concerned” about the project’s effects on the local water system and its proximity to the Inglewood Oil Field and nearby earthquake fault lines, according to Angela Sherick-Bright, the nonprofit’s land use chairperson.

“We’re not against development,” Sherick-Bright said. “If you’re going to approve a project of this magnitude, why not make sure it’s going to work for us?”

Project developer The Bedford Group did not return a request for comment, but promotional materials for the project said it was designed to “reflect the legacy of the Windsor Hills community by offering upscale workforce housing opportunities to young professionals, couples and empty nesters.” 

The Bedford Group plans to set aside 10 of the condos for sale to moderate-income families, according to planning documents. The state defines a moderate annual income for a LA family of four as more than $127,000.

Susan Tae, a Planning Department assistant deputy director, said that after years of court and planning hearings, planners believe the project has taken community concerns into account.“We feel confident we’ve addressed any of the outstanding issues,” Tae said. 

The county first approved the project to go ahead in 2017, according to county documents, but the residents’ group sued and a court ordered The Bedford Group to do a deeper environmental review. Bedford made attempts throughout the process to rally community support for the project, including with a 2017 video outlining the company’s take on several of the potential pitfalls raised by locals. 

When the project landed back in front of supervisors on Feb. 25, it came with a fresh environmental review, but also with a renewed appeal from United Homeowner’s Association II.

Here are three concerns the residents’ group raised: 

There’s concern over the project affecting fire hydrant water pressure

Sherick-Bright said homes in the area have struggled with weak water pressure. The nonprofit is concerned the new project could hurt the local water system, including fire hydrants, even further. Brian Barreto, a California American Water spokesperson, said computer models show 96% of hydrants in the area pump 1,000 gallons or more, above the baseline recommended by the National Fire Protection Association. Barreto also said the water company won’t give The View access to water unless The Bedford Group makes a set of mandatory system upgrades.

There’s concern about underground drilling near a fault line

The View backs up closely to the Inglewood Oil Field, where the county is in the middle of a lawsuit against four oil companies for allegedly failing to plug old wells. It’s also near the Newport-Inglewood earthquake fault line. Sherick-Bright said locals are worried that digging down for a subterranean parking lot, as the project plans, could set off issues — either because of underground drilling or the fault line.“We just don’t know,” Sherick-Bright said. 

The county said in planning documents that the development will require a new geotechnical review to move forward. The last such review was in 2014.

There’s concern the project is a danger to drivers

The planned project is situated just a stone’s throw away from the high-traffic Overhill-La Brea-Stocker intersection. The residents’ group argued in its written appeal that one of the project driveways that spits vehicles out onto the steep Overhill Drive was dangerously situated. Tae said that the public works department reviewed signage and striping plans for the driveway in 2024 and found they met county requirements.

Here’s what comes next

Sherick-Bright said the nonprofit is weighing next steps but still is concerned about the project. The timeline for the environmental review to go before the court is not yet clear, according to Tae, the county planner. Tae said the county is actively working to address some of the resident concerns that go beyond the scope of The View project, including with the recent kickoff of its Westside Planning Area Capital Improvement Plan. 

The plan is targeted at water, sewer, electrical and other infrastructure issues in some of the county’s unincorporated communities.

“It will be an important project for the community to continue to be engaged,” Tae said.

The post LA County green-lights 88-condo project in Windsor Hills despite concers from locals appeared first on LA Local.