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Don’t fall for GOP
megadonor’s mailers

Lately, a four-page ad printed on glossy paper with the title “Weakening Our Democracy Process, a Threat to California’s Landmark Election Reform” has been distributed in mailboxes to voters. It is asking to vote “no” in the special election about the redistricting process.

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Voters should be aware that the major donor for this campaign is Charles T. Munger, a billionaire who has contributed to very conservative causes — including against reproductive rights — for the past 25 years.

Let’s not ignore that if Texas had not started the process of redrawing its electoral map, at the request of our president and not at the legal time (census years), California would not have responded by doing the same.

Brigitte Bastrenta
Pleasant Hill

Project 2025 game plan
was a long-time coming

Donald Trump does not want you to read this letter. Whether a Republican, Democrat or Independent voter, the outline of the plan the MAGA movement is using to move the country toward authoritarianism is clearly represented in the book written by New York Times Bestselling author Tim Snyder. The MAGA party did not just come up with the Project 2025 document by chance.

The project was carefully researched and developed upon a foundation historically used in the 1930s in the countries of Germany, Poland and Russia. Today, MAGA is putting the 1930s plan into action in 2025.

The comparisons are vivid.

The past will repeat itself unless we learn from it, understand it and act upon it to maintain democracy. Please read “On Tyranny” by Tim Snyder, available at your public library.

Robert Celeste
Fremont

Newsom is acting
to defend democracy

During the Constitutional Convention, the framers reached an agreement, known as the Connecticut Compromise, that established a two-part legislative branch. One branch (Senate) favors smaller, less populated states by providing equal representation as larger states, and one branch (House of Representatives) is proportioned in accordance with a state’s population. Individual single-member House districts didn’t exist until the Apportionment Act of 1842.

The House of Representatives, with one notable exception (slaves counting as 3/5 of a person), was designed to be representative of the majority of the population. The efforts in Texas led by the president to strategically design congressional districts to minimize the voices of certain voters while maximizing the voices of others are antithetical to the Constitution and the spirit of democracy it is intended to promote. Gov. Newsom’s efforts to prevent Republicans from obtaining undue power are an effort to preserve the American experiment in democracy.

Barry Gardin
Hayward

Newsom should take
fight to red states

Re: “Obama endorses Newsom’s redistricting proposal as the ‘responsible approach’” (Page A4, Aug. 21).

Gov. Newsom’s confrontational “fighting fire with fire” move to gerrymander out Republicans in California fits nicely into how he is positioning himself to run for president in 2028.

Democrats want a fighter, and that is how our governor is representing himself to a national audience. But what would really show some political guts and put Republicans on their heels would be for Newsom to venture into Ohio or Florida. He has already ventured into South Carolina to “test the waters.” So, why not expand the map, go on the offensive and take the fight to Republicans in the states that Democrats have seemingly given up on? Such moves would also wrest the headlines, even if for just a minute, from Donald Trump, who dominates them so effectively.

The larger point, though, is that a real fighter is someone who represents everyone in this country, no matter where they live.

Anthony Pahnke
Oakland

State GOP should
condemn red states

California’s Republican leadership did not object when the Republican-packed Supreme Court neutered the Voting Rights Act or authorized partisan redistricting. They never complain when red states gerrymander for power. They didn’t protest Donald Trump’s call for early redistricting to eliminate Democratic seats, Texas’ GOP governor calling a special session to remap there or the Florida governor’s early gerrymandering proposal.

They support single-party maps that benefit Republicans. But they blast California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for fighting back with a plan to redistrict here — only if Texas and other red states redistrict first — and label that a “power grab.”

If Republicans don’t want redistricting here, they should tell Texas, Florida, Ohio and other red states to stop their naked power grabs. That would stop the trigger here. This is firmly in Republican hands, and California’s GOP should use its voice to stop it.

Chris Conrad
El Sobrante