The Daily Signal - Dems Struggle to Gerrymander, Gavin Newsom's Paper Tiger Problem | Aug. 25, 2025

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declares this week’s bold, new strategy against Trump is more gerrymandering threats. Maryland may be Democrats�� latest attempt to gerrymander even harder. Gov. Newsom’s social media campaign strategy may be a whited sepulcher. Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7AFk8xjiOOBEynVg3JiN6g⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  The Signal Sitdown: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Follow The Daily Signal:  X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declares this week's bold new strategy against the Trump administration to be more gerrymandering threats, namely Maryland, which may be the Democrats' latest attempt to secure one congressional district. And speaking of Governor Gavin Newsom of California's social media campaign strategy may be a wided sepulker. I'm Tony Kennett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kenned cast, syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is Monday, August 25, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10. After a few weeks out of the spotlight

due to some rather rough polling numbers for the Democrats and a little bit of that August recess, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took to the weekend shows to suggest that he was ready to fight President Trump on two things on Trump's possible sending the National Guard to places like Chicago. Here he was on that. There's no basis,

authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago. There's been no request from the state of Illinois, no request at all for federal assistance. To bringing all of the Democrats focus on redistricting. Now, this hasn't been a particularly successful strategy for the Dems so far given certain polling numbers. But Hakeem Jeffrey states that what Texas has been ordered to do by the department, of Justice regarding its redistricting map, which was just passed, is an extremely radical and racial agenda. Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly voted for the map because the redraw was fair.

That's not what's happening in Texas. In Texas, this is a racial partisan gerrymander ordered by Donald Trump as part of an effort to rig the midterm elections. Now, while Jeffries wasn't quite clear with CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union as to whether or not the state of New York planned to join the redistricting war. So is there not a plan yet in New York? Is that what I'm hearing? There's a plan to respond as appropriately in New York and in other parts of the country as the circumstances dictate. That may not be the next state to enter the fray. Over on CBS News, Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.

Governor Wes Moore, Democrat Governor of Maryland, suggested that all options are on the table, leading many to suspect that this might be the Maryland governor and possible 28 hopeful's chance to squeeze the very last Republican seat away from the state electoral map. Redistricting or gerrymandering, as some people know it. You've said you don't like talking about it, but all options are on the table when it comes to your state. There's only one. one seat here that is actually Republican, and it's a seat held by Representative Andy Harris.

Are you considering trying to redraw lines in Maryland? Yeah, when I say all options are on the table, all options are on the table. Are you actively looking at it now? Yeah, because, and I think we have to. You are. Yes, and I think we have to. Because I think what's happened is this is what people hate about politics in the first place, the fact that the president of the United States, very similar to what he did in Georgia, where he called up a series of voter registrants and said,

I need you to find me more votes. We're watching the same thing now where he's calling up legislatures around the country and saying, I need you to find me more congressional districts. He's doing it. That may be different. But Democrats redistrict, you know this. But Gavin Newsom's doing it right now. A few years ago in New York, we saw this.

This can backfire. Do you really want to go down this road? I want to make sure that we have fair lines and fair seats where we don't have situations where politicians are choosing voters, but that voters actually have a chance to choose their elected officials. We need to be able to have fair maps. And we also need to make sure that if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate the elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box,

then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters' voices can actually be heard and we can have maps. And you don't think in that one district where they represent, they have a Republican representative that they are actively being represented in Maryland? I think if you look at maps across the country, less than ten, 10% of congressional seats are actually competitive by nature, less than 10%. And so if you look at the average win margin in our state and so many states, the average wind margin is upwards of 20 to 30%. So that means we already have so many gerrymandered areas

that we have to be able to add a measure of fairness in the way that it's applied. Despite another week from House Democrats and gubernatorial administrations on the blue side of the aisle around the country, throwing more and more energy into the redistricting fight for the midterms, Klein, the Washington Bureau Chief for ABC, stated over on ABC's this week that it doesn't look like Democrats are going to be able to gerrymander any more than they really already have been for decades. The fight for the House is almost certainly going to be the biggest thing on the ballot next year. You see how tight it is now. After some special elections, Democrats are actually going to close this gap even more, we think, and they only need to flip three seats in the midterms next year

to win control of the House. So there's no guarantees, but he is definitely on to something. And in this nationwide war over redistricting, we've seen the two biggest states go first, the biggest red state, Texas. You mentioned those five additional seats. Look at all that red. Yeah, and there's not a lot of blue. They're squeezing that big time. Now, what we're seeing the opposite in California, where the Democrats under Gavin Newsom are putting a map on the ballot for voters this fall that could get them those five seats back. So that would make those two states.

Extraordinary, only four Republican seats, 48 for the Democrats if they pull it off. If they were able to pull it off with the voters next year. And John, if you look at the other states that might still do redistricting this year, bottom line, it is Advantage GOP. There are just more opportunities in places like Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Florida than there are in some of the big blue states like Illinois and Maryland. So at the end of this, it looks like Republicans are going to be able to squeeze just a little bit more juice out of these redistricting fights. Because if history is any guide, the Republicans are not going to maintain control of the House. Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the sitting president. Right now, Donald Trump, according to New York Times, polling average, has a 44% approval rating.

And again, we have more than a year to go before we get there. And if you look at the history of recent midterms, an unpopular president means a very, very rough midterm election, particularly when it comes to the House. Barack Obama lost 63 seats. Trump lost 40. He knows. Remember how angry he was the day after that midterm? I mean, that changed his presidency. He doesn't want it to happen again.

But Democrats are facing some serious heads. wins as well. Yeah, and this is just a stunning analysis that the New York Times has out in the last couple of days. You've seen nationwide a drop in Democratic registration numbers, and in the battleground states, it's just as stark. Look at this. The share of registered Democrats down almost four points in Arizona, just in 2020, Nevada, more than eight points, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, all of these big battlegrounds have lost Democrats in large numbers, again, just this decade. So that just tells you how tough it's going to be for Democrats to fight their way back when it comes to control of Congress or potentially the presidency down the road.

It's hard to create a wave if voters are fleeing your party. Extraordinary, the Democrats have lost more than 2 million registered voters just in the past four years, and Republicans have gained. There may even be a significant flaw in this particular strategy, as the New York Times reports, while the current makeup of the Illinois congressional districts are 14-3 favoring Democrats, the Democrats may not be able to redistrict and gerryman. or the state any further without severely weakening Democrat held seats, both because the maps can only get so convoluted and because if they get

convoluted enough, the Supreme Court might be forced to weigh in with a certain 6-3 majority, certainly not favoring a more progressive view of the U.S. Constitution. This brings us over to the captain of the current redistricting fight on behalf of the Democrats, California's Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been taking social media by storm, or at least has appeared to, over the last two weeks due to formulating a press office account that seems to mimic President Donald Trump, which, as CNN's Harry Enton points out, is a very effective method of gaining lots of social media attention due to the absurdity of the content. Yeah, I think it absolutely has been working in terms of generating attention, which is what he's

trying to do, right? I mean, take a look here. Let's take a look right at the atgov press office followers on X. That's, of course, where you get those sort of the account where Newsom post those Trump-style mocking types of tweets. Get this. That account, get this. Up 450% in terms of the number of followers since mid-June. And it's not just on Twitter, X, where Newsom is gaining.

Even on TikTok and Instagram, his followers are up over a million since January alone, my goodness gracious. And more than that, Laura, more than that. What about Google? What about those Google searches for them? Get this daily Google searches for Gavin Newsom up like a rocket. What are we talking about since June 1? Up 1, 300% compared to August 1st. Look at that.

Up 500%. So the bottom line is in politics, especially if you're thinking of entering in 2028. It's all about generating attention. And so far, Gavin Newsom has done a good job at generating attention. This is where the Newsom campaign becomes a bit of a paper tiger. A lot of policy decisions that Gavin Newsom is known for in California are extremely unpopular with the rest of the country. For example, the homelessness crisis, which Newsom,

while pledging to solve for 10 years, has not been able to solve even in a marginal way, nor the cost of energy prices, as was pointed out, when he posted an article saying that energy prices had risen in one particular facet of the economy on the Trump administration, whereas pundits, economists, and elected officials pointed out rather quickly. that Newsom's energy price hikes have certainly dwarfed any other administrations in the country. Before you go, head down to the description and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnett cast. And join us tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern for a great roundup of the day's news and nonsense. Heaven knows there's going to be a lot that breaks between now and then.

I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been The Daily Signals. Top News in 10. Take care.