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Disenfranchising voters
should be a tough sell

Re: “Gerrymandering issue to be decided by voters” (Page A1, Aug. 22).

Kudos to reporter Grant Stinger for an eye-opening article about the gerrymandering issue.

In the five key districts that are targeted, only one racial group (white) is disenfranchised in all five districts. The remapping of the 41st district is particularly outrageousand suggests the entire Republican party could be disenfranchised with imaginative mapping.

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Could California voters possibly approve such a plan?

Harry Vantine
Danville

Texas’ wrong doesn’t
make California right

Re: “Lofgren integral to mapping project” (Page A1, Aug. 21).

The Republican gerrymandering of Texas is unethical and corrupt, even if legal. But for California to fight corruption with more corruption is equally unethical and unconscionable.

This isn’t just a “mapping” project — it’s election rigging and should be rejected by all honest Californians. We can conclude from how quickly California’s elected Democrats embraced the disenfranchisement of millions of California voters that these politicians are innately dishonest and have been and will continue to work to destroy our democracy in any way they can — all in the name of saving it.

The proof that politicians like Lofgren have been rigging California elections for decades is the highly disproportionate percentage of Democrats in the California Legislature and the U.S. House.

Newsom is fond of proclaiming California a leader in many areas. Now, he can claim leadership in cheating, too.

Dick Patterson
El Cerrito

Redistricting plan a slap
in the face of fair play

Re: “Gerrymandering issue to be decided by voters” (Page A1, Aug. 22).

This action by Gov. Newsom and the California Legislature is a slap in the face to the will of California voters, who passed Proposition 10 to establish an independent, nonpartisan redistricting commission to draw our congressional districts. And now, for political reasons, we are asked to suspend this process for the next eight years.

The fact that this act was literally rammed through with hardly any public hearing or real debate is in itself downright criminal. In other words, they are destroying democracy in order to save it.

I will end with this: Though a registered Republican, I have never been a fan of Donald Trump, who himself acts as if arrogance is a virtue. That said, our governor has taken that same arrogance and turned it into a science.

John F. Davies
Berkeley

AI design shouldn’t
leave ethics behind

When I began studying artificial intelligence as a college student, I saw its potential for social good, helping us understand climate change, improve health systemsand reduce waste. I still see that potential. But the way we are building AI today is taking us further from that vision.

Training large-scale AI models consumes massive energy and water. A 2023 University of Massachusetts-Amherst study found that a single model could emit over 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide.

We also overlook the labor behind AI. Thousands of underpaid workers in countries like Kenya and the Philippines label toxic content so others can use so-called safe systems. Their trauma is invisible.

In school, we talked about bias but rarely about climate or labor. That needs to change.

I still hold hope for AI, but hope is not enough. If we do not build ethically now, we may not get another chance.

Aadya Madgula
San Ramon

Instead of respect,
Trump gets laughter

Donald Trump is a bully. His brutal cruelty is usually directed at people who are defenseless against him. Dealing with people like Vladimir Putin, he melts like an ice cube left on a picnic table.

Putin cleaned his clock last week at their meeting in Alaska. Putin then told Trump that his election was stolen because of mail-in ballots. What a laugh they must have had back at the Kremlin.

I don’t think our allies respect him either. They shower him with lavish praise, really over-the-top stuff, and he eats it up. After he’s gone, they probably have a good laugh too.

Jim Peterson
Walnut Creek

Trump’s actions work
against stated goals

Does anybody see the irony? Donald Trump fires the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the weak jobs report has to be fraudulent — the Trump economy must always be great! At the same time, he is pressuring the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates, but the Fed is reluctant because of the strength of the economy and strong job growth.

Now that job growth is weakening — the Fed knows that the report is accurate — it is willing to consider cutting interest rates, while Trump undercuts his own goals by looking for a BLS director who will falsify future reports and always show job growth, reducing the Fed’s incentive to cut interest rates.

Merlin Dorfman
Livermore