On November 4, California voters will decide whether to approve a proposal, Proposition 50, that would amend the state constitution to authorize a temporary redrawing of congressional districts to boost Democratic Party representation. While redistricting is inherently political, this initiative, an explicit rebuke to legislation in Texas this August, goes well beyond standard gerrymandering. That the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations (OSF) recently donated $10 million to a nonprofit, the Fund for Policy Reform, to promote the measure underscores its radical purpose and OSF’s habitual blind spot for tax law governing nonprofits. But to understand what’s at stake, a good deal of context is necessary.
California Democrats, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, have been highly combative since Donald Trump became president again. As their state is by far the nation’s most populous, they are better positioned than other states to use redistricting to maximize their party’s presence in the U.S. House of Representatives. Newsom is blunt. “We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what’s happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas,” he said at a press conference in August. “We’ll pick up five seats with the consent of the people. And that’s the difference between the approach we’re taking and the approach they’re taking.” As if voter consent can’t be manipulated.
If approved, the legislature would redraw the state’s congressional district map in 2026, completing its work well in advance of the November midterm elections. The new map would be temporary; once Census data for 2030 are released, it would be back to the drawing board for the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, the nonpartisan body normally having supervisory authority. Voters approved the formation of the commission in 2008 and then expanded its coverage two years later under the premise that backroom gerrymandering would end. Now the backroom is on the front page. And the Commission is on the sidelines.
Proposition 50 is unabashedly partisan. The original Redistricting Commission chairwoman, Jeanne Raya, though a Democrat, understands the measure’s inherent risk of party favoritism and self-dealing. “Their [advocates’] determination to stack the congressional deck prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom (in photos with Alex Soros) to pursue retaliatory mid-cycle redistricting in California to elect more Democrats,” she wrote in a published article last month. “It’s now in the hands of voters in a special election on November 4. Proposition 50 would replace the maps drawn by the state’s independent commission with districts drawn by legislators solely to gain or protect Democratic seats.”
The language of Proposition 50, formally known as the Election Rigging Response Act, is a dead giveaway. Part A of the second section reads, “President Trump has called on Republican-led states to undertake an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of congressional seats to rig the 2026 United States midterm elections before voting begins.” Part F follows in an identical vein: “President Trump and Republicans are attempting to gain enough seats through redistricting to rig the outcome of the 2026 United States midterm elections regardless of how the people vote.” In case voters still haven’t gotten the message, Part G states, “President Trump’s election-rigging scheme is an emergency for our democracy.” For an encore, Part H declares, “The 2026 United States midterm elections are voters’ only chance to provide an essential check and balance against President Trump’s dangerous agenda.”
This reads more like a presidential stump speech than a proposed state constitutional amendment – and you can believe that Governor Newsom has the White House in mind in 2028. His embrace of “democracy” is a ruse for a desire for political dominance, a pretext for the state to continue along its rainbow-colored road to Total Social Equality. That’s why the Open Society Foundations supports it, as do Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Eric Holder and other Democratic Party grandees.
There is nothing new about using the constitutionally-mandated post-Census of Population redistricting process for political advantage. The term “gerrymandering,” after all, is named after one of our nation’s Founders, Elbridge Gerry, who later would serve as governor of Massachusetts and, toward the end of his life, James Madison’s vice president. But ever since the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, gerrymandering has evolved into a racial quota system for creating House of Representatives districts. And whites are the odd men out.
The Act’s original goal was nondiscrimination. Yet civil rights radicals, unable to leave well enough alone, reshaped it in ways that deliberately favor nonwhites over whites. If, hypothetically, blacks comprise 15 percent of the population in a state with 20 Representatives in Congress, then 15 percent – i.e., three members of that delegation – must be black. Toward this end, congressional boundaries must be redrawn to create “safe” black-majority districts. Implicitly, though few dare say so openly, this practice rests on the accurate assumption that blacks as a whole prefer candidates of their own race. As long as the number of Representatives is fixed at 435, a net gain of nonwhite House members necessarily means a net loss of white members in the same amount.
This is affirmative action applied to voting. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act guarantees it. Civil rights organizations, knowing their interests, have been prolific in filing federal lawsuits against states and localities based on questionable charges of racial discrimination. They usually come out ahead, too. In her heralded book, Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights, published back in 1987, the late Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recognized this:
(M)inority plaintiffs almost always prevail. These suits are not hard to win; they are exceedingly hard to lose. Plaintiffs, in fact, usually prevail even before the trial has begun, since jurisdictions faced with politically costly and financially draining litigation are generally quick to settle out of court…The 1982 revision of the statute has thus redefined the rights of minority voters. Black and Hispanic voters have acquired unprecedented power to insist on methods of voting that will facilitate minority officeholding, and the act has become a national instrument for instituting ‘racially fair’ electoral arrangements.
A federal monitoring program known as “preclearance,” enumerated in Sections 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act, for several decades amplified this shift in law. State and local jurisdictions with a history of racial bias (read: bias toward whites), particularly in the South, had to receive permission from the U.S. Department of Justice to change their election laws. Legal activists have used Section 5 in tandem with Section 2 to get ostensibly offending jurisdictions placed on the DOJ target list, especially as “Hispanic,” “Asian” and “Native American” are protected minority categories along with “black.” This bureaucratic contrivance was derailed in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated coverage formulas contained in Section 4(b). The ruling gutted Section 5, enraging the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the NAACP.
An earlier, underutilized brake on federal control was a 1993 Supreme Court decision, Shaw v. Reno. The Court ruled 5-4 that congressional districts redrawn on the basis of race could be challenged on Equal Protection Clause grounds and that redistricting must be subject to judicial “strict scrutiny.” The case, originating in North Carolina following the results of the 1990 Census, came about when the legislature created a black-majority district at the behest of the Justice Department. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno, coaxed by civil rights activists, insisted that this step wasn’t enough. A secondblack-majority district had to be created to accurately reflect the size of the state’s black population.
The North Carolina legislature dutifully complied. The result was the state’s 12th congressional district, a bizarre-shaped, sprawling configuration resembling either a snake or Lake of the Ozarks on a map. In one sector, the district was no wider than an interstate highway it encompassed. As this gerrymandering was intended to maximize the number of black voters, the reapportionment by any reasonable definition constituted racial discrimination.
A legal challenge came soon enough. Five affected white residents filed a federal suit alleging that the redistricting plan violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. And they won. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concluded: “Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters – a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the nation continues to aspire.”
The decision, however, did not formally outlaw racial preferences. It merely stated that if a legislature takes racial balance into consideration in reapportioning congressional districts, it must justify its actions as consistent with the Equal Protection principle. In effect, states could continue to accommodate demands by minority groups as long as they weren’t too blatant about it. “Civil rights” activists have been very creative in stretching legal boundaries to invent pretexts for racial gerrymandering. And they haven’t stopped. The Supreme Court presently is reviewing a case in Louisiana in which the legislature, after complying with a DOJ order to redraw a congressional district to benefit black candidates for Congress, created its own bizarre, sprawling configuration. This prompted a lawsuit to overturn the order.
This misguided legal activism has reshaped the composition and agenda of Congress. In the current (119th) Congress, 61 blacks serve in the House of Representatives, a number that would rise to 66 by including five black members of mixed race. That’s up from 19 in 1982, the year of the pivotal Voting Rights Act amendments. More broadly, minorities – blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans – now account for 133 of all House members. About 85 percent of these lawmakers are Democrats. This is an unspoken reason why the party has moved steadily leftward.
The recent Texas legislation, which triggered the California ballot proposal, represents an obstacle to this radicalism. In capsule, Texas Republicans, holding substantial majorities in the state’s Senate and House, passed a law this August ostensibly to redraw congressional districts in race-neutral ways, and indirectly, to elect more Republicans. Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, quickly signed the bill. Observers estimate that the law will flip five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from Democrat to Republican.
Democratic lawmakers in Texas, especially blacks and Hispanics among them, are incensed. Allied civil rights organizations quickly filed suit in El Paso federal court (LULAC et al. v. Abbott) to invalidate the law on grounds that it deprived racial minorities of voting rights. Some lawmakers already have testified. “They packed those districts, and by packing those districts, they took away representation from African Americans,” stated Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston. Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, seeing a dark shadow emanating from the White House, declared: “Texas Republicans were used as pawns to get what President Trump wanted. We (Democrats) wanted to make sure the darkness coming from Washington, D.C. was coming to light.” Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, testified, “They (new redistricting maps) are not built to give Hispanics or African Americans a candidate of their choice.” And Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, said of the law: “That’s not Texas. That’s not how we do things here.”
It’s lawmakers like these that explain why Republican lawmakers in Texas felt it necessary to revise its congressional district map. Yes, it was a political move. Indeed, President Trump urged passage. Yet from the standpoint of the Voting Rights Act’s original intent, it replaces racially-based redistricting with something more resembling race neutrality.
California Democrats are determined to even up the score. Their CADEM website endorses the ballot initiative this way: “Proposition 50 is a direct response to a Republican power grab orchestrated by President Trump and state leaders in Texas, who redrew Congressional district lines to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives.” State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat, during an October 2 press conference in Los Angeles, offered this opinion. “This special election will be your opportunity to stand up for Los Angeles and protect American democracy,” he declared. “By now, we know what President Trump will do to our country if we let him. Donald Trump wants to be a tyrant…A yes on Proposition 50 blocks Donald Trump’s takeover of Congress.”
In reality, this proposal doesn’t protect “democracy. It advances the interests of certain voters – racial minorities – at the expense of other voters. The goal is greater political dominance at the national level. Proposition 50 would enable the veto-proof Democratic supermajorities in the California Assembly and Senate to exert their influence even further. Given that California’s non-Hispanic white population in 2020 was only 34.7 percent, that shouldn’t be that hard to do. Indeed, white Republicans in metropolitan areas – where most of the state’s population lives – are a shrinking minority.
A look at the roster of California Democrats in the current U.S. House of Representatives underscores the desire for payback against Texas. Of the 52 current members of the House from California, 43 are Democrats and only nine are Republicans. Further Democratic dominance would be almost impossible without an aggressive, race-based redrawing of district maps. This measure is a political power play – and likely illegal.
An article authored in California Today by editor-in-chief Mac Douglass makes a convincing case that Governor Newsom does not have the authority to initiate a mid-decade redistricting plan in lieu of a constitutional amendment. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission’s authority, the author notes, is exclusive and enumerated in the state Constitution. Neither the governor nor the legislature may override it. Moreover, California’s Elections Code, as updated by AB 849 (the FAIR MAPS Act), makes clear that congressional boundaries can be drawn only once per decade following the Census of Population. Unless it is responding to a court order, mid-decade redistricting is illegal. Significantly, though the Texas law was politically motivated, that state’s constitution does not bar district revisions in mid-decade.
This doesn’t seem to concern the majority of California voters. Public opinion clearly is leaning toward approval. A recent survey by the polling firm “co/efficient” showed that 54 percent of Californians favor the amendment, 36 percent oppose it, and the rest are undecided. The results are similar to an Emerson College poll conducted in mid-September revealing that 51 percent of the respondents support the measure, 34 percent oppose it, and 15 percent are undecided.
Much of the high level of support for Proposition 50 can be explained by funding levels. As of this writing, donors have poured $209 million into the campaign. Donations in favor of passage have reached $130 million; donations in opposition are at $79 million. These are staggering sums for a voter initiative. Supporters include the California Democratic Party, the California Nurses Association, the California Teachers Association, and wealthy individuals such as billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz ($2.5 million), Mimi Haas, billionaire shareholder in Levi Strauss stock and mother of current San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie ($750,000), and billionaire philanthropist and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer ($12.8 million). Regarding the subject of large donations, let’s not forget the $10 million gift from the Open Society Foundations.
As the New York Times first reported a month ago, the Soros-run OSF contributed $10 million to an affiliate, the Fund for Policy Reform, in support of Proposition 50. This could have been predicted. The Soros network’s “Third World first, America last” worldview is the same as that held by the Democratic Party far-Left that runs California. Soros money has proven invaluable in aiding such people through OSF’s California Justice & Public Safety PAC. During the 2020 election cycle, George Soros provided more than $5 million to elect the soft-on-crime George Gascon as Los Angeles County prosecutor; $4.5 million of that sum was donated in 2020 alone. In 2021, Soros spent $1 million to enable Governor Newsom to withstand a voter recall election.
An intermediary of Soros financial support for the Prop. 50 campaign, the Fund for Policy Reform, is significant in its own right. Based in Wilmington, Del., the 501(c)(4) nonprofit was founded in 2009 with a $100 million donation from George Soros. Originally focused on climate change, it since has expanded its concerns to a wide range of progressive causes. And it doesn’t lack for money. At the close of 2023, the Fund had $776 million in assets and only $82.3 million in liabilities. Revenues and expenditures that year, respectively, were $329 million and $407 million.
The Fund for Policy Reform is a pass-through nonprofit, not a final destination. That is, it receives money from OSF and then routs it to the intended recipients. Clicking on the web page listing Open Society Foundations grants to the Fund for Policy Reform for the 2017-24 period (https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/past?filter_keyword=Fund+for+Policy+Reform), one finds 90 separate payments (Note: For some reason the number given is 95) totaling nearly $245 million. Around $170 million of that was directed to Alex Soros’ political action committee, Democracy PAC, formed several years ago. Yet none of these grantees bear the name “Fund for Policy Reform.” As the Open Society Foundations is a 501(c)(3) organization, and thus more restricted in political activity than a 501(c)(4), this arrangement conceivably constitutes a tax dodge.
Where is the money opposing Proposition 50 coming from? The largest donor by far is Charlie Munger Jr., a physicist and the son of the late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. Munger thus far has donated more than $30 million to defeat the proposal. Instrumental in the creation of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2008, Munger remains on the right side of the issue – unlike George and Alex Soros. If the measure passes, the current three-to-one Democratic Party majorities in the State Assembly and Senate are certain to use race-based gerrymandering to flip House seats in Washington. The IRS should give this issue close attention.
Carl F. Horowitz is an NLPC senior fellow.
