RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/newsom-slams-redistricting-as-threat-to-democracy-vows-to-redistrict-california/

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to fight fire with fire, directing his outrage at Texas’s redistricting efforts. While gerrymandering has been a fairly bipartisan practice for decades, Newsom declared on X that it risks “the destabilization of our democracy,” and that he will do the exact same thing in response.

He stated that if President Trump does not call on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to cease redistricting plans, “I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states.”

Replies to Newsom’s X post quickly garnered criticism, as one user stated, “California has 52 Congressional seats and the GOP has 9 of them. That’s 17 [percent] for a state that votes nearly 40 [percent] Republican.” 

Although Newsom ironically attacks redistricting as a threat to the country before vowing to engage in it, California does maintain the constitutional right to redraw its districts. Doing so could prove challenging, however, as several blue states have already been gerrymandered to a substantial level. 

In late July, the New York Times noted this fact, stating, “States where Democrats would have complete control over any redistricting, such as Illinois and Maryland, are already gerrymandered heavily in their favor. Squeezing more Democratic seats out of those states would be a challenge.”

While the irony is stark, Newsom’s outrage over supposed election interference falls flat, as Texas and California have both had four standard decadal redistricting cycles since 1990. Even with rarer mid-decade redistricting taken into account, Texas has only gerrymandered on four additional occasions since 1990. Such actions are allowed as long as no racial discrimination or equal protection violations occur, meaning that timing itself is not prohibited by the Constitution.

Although Texas courts can legally order redrawing of congressional maps apart from the mandated cycle, the state’s only major, non-cyclical gerrymandering since 1990 occurred in 2003.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-re-emergence-of-american-culture/

What must Thomas Cole have seen when, in 1825, he first gazed upon the Hudson River Valley for the first time, and later as he ventured into the Adirondacks? The natural beauty is stunning, just begging to be put on canvas. Or Albert Bierstadt, upon leaving his native northern Germany and crossing the American continent, to gaze upon the Rockies and all the way to the great Sierras of California? Or Walt Whitman, who in traveling across this great land, found his heart bursting with the beauty of America and so brilliantly put it to verse?

To the first explorers, settlers, farmers, artists who arrived from Europe, America was a blank canvas begging to be put to story and verse, to be painted and built upon a style that was uniquely American. And that they did.

America was all ambition, the promised land; it was the Garden of Eden remade, the City on a Hill, biblical — almost literally — or seen that way by the early arrivals and into the 19th Century. America was truly formed in the 1800’s, from birth to tumult and war, to the Golden Age of American growth and destiny. America became itself as the 19th Century closed. All the promise, the dreams, the unrealized potential, the stunning growth of our great country is an astonishing story unlike that of any other nation or people in world history.

How this was portrayed, written, painted, designed and put to verse and song is an untold story that begs to be told. And given the attacks that American culture faces today, it desperately needs to be told.

America excelled in the areas of art, architecture, literature and poetry in a way that is at least the equal of the Europe that we came from. Just to cover one of these areas — art — gives us a glimpse of this incredible beauty that is vital to our history and of the American story.

Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt are just two of the world-renowned artists that painted America in the 19th Century. They, along with Frederic Edwin Church, Asher Brown Durand, and so many others majestically put to canvas the beauty of the American landscape and at their very best are at least the rival of the great English landscape artists John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. But how many of today’s students even know these names?

Cole, one of the founders of what became known as the Hudson River School movement, saw as his mission to create an “American” landscape vision and literary voice that was based on the exploration of nature – the natural world defined as a resource for spiritual renewal and as an expression of cultural and national identity.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/25/what-made-the-democratic-party-go-crazy/

The answer was not Trump alone.

Indeed, irony abounds when Democrats resonate with the claims of the vestigial Never Trumpers that the MAGA movement “hijacked” the Republican Party.

In characteristic projectionist fashion, the left is simply falsely attributing to their opposition the very hijacking that hit the Democratic Party.

The Republicans are still the party of conservatism and traditionalism. But in the last decade, it adopted an expansionary middle-class agenda that has led to record party registration, its first popular presidential vote victory since 2004, and control of all three branches of government.

The MAGA emphases also have accomplished what prior “moderate” Republican presidents and presidential candidates had sought but largely failed to achieve: making inroads with minorities and youth and substituting class commonalities for racial chauvinism.

Thus, in 2024, 55 percent of Hispanic men and somewhere around 25 percent of black males voted for Trump—along with a +2 advantage for Trump among young men in general (18-29).

In contrast, Joe Biden left office with below 40 percent popularity in many polls. His replacement, 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, despite a substantial advantage in funding and overwhelmingly biased, favorable media coverage, lost both the popular and Electoral College vote.

Since the election, a variety of data points show a steady erosion in Democrat Party favorability (24 percent positive polling) and voter registration (for the first time in memory, Republicans are out-registering hemorrhaging Democrats in new voter affiliations).

They are also on the losing end of a 40/60 split among voters on most issues—especially the border, energy, crime, transgenderism, and foreign policy—a truth that even the legacy media cannot disguise.

The Democratic implosion does not necessarily mean they will not win back the House in the next election. Historically, it is difficult for even an unpopular out-party not to pick up lots of House and Senate seats in an administration’s first midterm. But if Democrats capture at least the House, the vote will not be for their party’s policies or politicians as much as a reflection of their ginned-up opposition to Trump, the messenger of a radical and controversial counterrevolutionary message.

The Democratic project is bleeding out because it either does not address what the middle class is worried about, or it offers no solution to popular anger—namely over inflation, the out-of-control DEI commissariat, illegal immigration, crime, high energy prices and tyrannical Green New Deal policies, steep interest rates, unaffordable housing costs, and anemic foreign policies.