The trick is using a debating tactic known as Gish galloping, named after American creationist Duane Gish. It refers to rapid-style speech where one interlocutor bombards the other with a stream of facts and stats that become increasingly difficult to pick apart.

When language models like GPT-4o were told to try persuading someone about health care funding or immigration policy by focusing “on facts and information,” they’d generate around 25 claims during a 10-minute interaction. That’s according to researchers from Oxford University and the London School of Economics who tested 19 language models on nearly 80,000 participants, in what may be the largest and most systematic investigation of AI persuasion to date.

The bots became far more persuasive, according to the findings published in the journal Science. A similar paper in Nature found that chatbots overall were 10 times more effective than TV ads and other traditional media in changing someone’s opinion about a political candidate. But the Science paper found a disturbing tradeoff: When chatbots were prompted to overwhelm users with information, their factual accuracy declined, to 62% from 78% in the case of GPT-4.

Rapid-fire debating has become something of a phenomenon on YouTube over the last few years, typified by influencers like Ben Shapiro and Steven Bonnell. It produces dramatic arguments that have made politics more engaging and accessible for younger voters, but also foment increased radicalism and spread misinformation with their focus on entertainment value and “gotcha” moments.

Could Gish-galloping AI make things worse? It depends whether anyone manages to get propaganda bots talking to people. A campaign advisor for an environmentalist group or political candidate can’t simply change ChatGPT itself, now used by about 900 million people weekly. But they can fine-tune the underlying language model and integrate it onto a website — like a customer service bot — or conduct a text or WhatsApp campaign where they ping voters and lure them into conversation.

A moderately resourced campaign could probably set this up in a few weeks with computing costs of around $50,000. But they may struggle to get voters or the public to have a prolonged conversation with their bot. The Science study showed that a 200-word static statement from AI wasn’t particularly persuasive — it was the 10-minute conversation that took around seven turns that had the real impact, and a lasting one too. When researchers checked if people’s minds had still changed a month later, they had.

The UK researchers warn that anyone who wants to push an ideological idea, create political unrest or destabilize political systems could use a closed or (even cheaper) open-source model to start persuading people. And they’ve demonstrated the disarming power of AI to do so. But note that they had to pay people to join their persuasion study. Let’s hope deploying such bots via websites and text messages, outside the main gateways controlled by the likes of OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, won’t get the bad actors very far in distorting the political discourse.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.” ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

While smoke hung in the air in Los Angeles, some politicians and political commentators were already stridently proclaiming that these fires prove we need more intensive forest management to stop such blazes and protect communities. People were mourning, and confused, and much was still unknown about the circumstances of the fires. Many, in shock, were looking for easy answers. Congress responded by passing the “Fix Our Forests Act” (H.R. 471) through the House on Jan. 23 while the fires still burned.

After the smoke cleared, and people had an opportunity to take a closer look at the facts surrounding the fires, and a closer look at the legislation, a very different picture emerged. Neither of the Los Angeles fires was a forest fire. The fires burned through grass and shrubs, not forests. The homes were not destroyed by walls of flames but, rather, by firebrands, blown for miles by fierce winds, showering down by the millions like an ember rain.

Many soon realized that the Fix Our Forests Act contained no provisions to help communities become fire-safe through proven, highly effective measures like home hardening, defensible space pruning and evacuation planning and assistance. Instead, it quickly became clear that the act was simply a logging bill that would override bedrock environmental laws to facilitate taxpayer-subsidized timber sales on remote, backcountry public lands under deceptive euphemisms like “thinning” and “fuels reduction.” The bill contains no limits on the percentage, size or age of trees that would be cut down, killed and hauled off of public lands by logging corporations.

Perhaps it was understandable why many members of both political parties voted to pass the Fix Our Forests Act through the House back in January. When so little was known or well-understood. When the fires still burned and the pain of loss, and the fear, were so fresh. Perhaps. But not now.

Heedless of the facts and impervious to evidence, however, the full Senate may vote on a similar version of the Fix Our Forests Act (S. 1462) early next year. Logging industry contributors to congressional reelection campaigns would benefit; everyone else would lose. In fact, if the Senate passes the Fix Our Forests Act, it would increase the threat of wildfires to communities, putting homes and lives in greater danger.

Abundant research finds that removing trees changes the microclimate of forests, reducing the cooling shade of the forest canopy and increasing sun exposure, which can intensify fires. Faster wildfire speed is most strongly associated with large losses of homes and lives. Removing trees reduces a forest’s natural windbreak, increasing windspeeds and causing fires to spread more rapidly. This means fires would reach communities much faster, giving people less time to safely evacuate, and giving first responders less time to arrive and help.

As over 200 ecologists and climate scientists recently warned Congress, “We have watched as one large wildfire after another has swept through tens of thousands of acres where commercial thinning had previously occurred … .” Will Congress listen?

Chad Hanson, based in the Sierra Nevada, is a wildfire scientist with the John Muir Project and the author of the book “Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate”.

I will fix the Assessor’s Office and reduce your taxes. Anyone running for assessor should offer essential reform, not just the same old bureaucracy.

Anyone could have submitted a ballot measure to push tax reform — but I’m the only assessor candidate who actually did because my focus is affordability. I authored “The 60+ Property Tax Exemption Act of 2026,” an initiative currently being reviewed by the state attorney general before it can be circulated for signatures to qualify for the statewide ballot.

While setting rules for tax exemptions is beyond the scope of the job as county assessor, my ballot measure would exempt every California resident age 60 and over from paying property tax on their primary residence. The initiative would require approximately 875,000 signatures to go on the ballot.

It’s the same legal path used for the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the cornerstone of California property tax protection. Sixteen states have already advanced property tax relief for seniors, and Virginia just used the same ballot-initiative process to exempt disabled veterans from property tax. I will get it done.

Keeping property tax predictable and fair helps seniors and families stay in their homes and keeps communities stable. When property taxes rise faster than income, seniors are forced to sell their homes and either move or are forced onto the streets.

My record is cutting taxes, cutting waste, opposing utility rate hikes and modernizing systems. Specifically, I’ve:

• Never voted for a tax increase.

• Helped defeat 10 San Jose water rate increases.

• Modernized IT systems as a software and AI executive.

• Never accepted PAC or special interest group money.

The Assessor’s Office needs an outsider as leader — a person adept at modernization and the latest technology. It needs a true changemaker, and I believe that shoe fits me.

Finally, assessor certification is a red-herring issue. It’s a simple and straightforward process. Every successful candidate has a year to obtain certification.  The previous assessor wasn’t certified when elected.

The choice is clear: Vote Rishi Kumar for county assessor.

The role of assessor is not showy or political.  Instead, the assessor’s primary responsibility is to fairly and accurately assess the value of taxable property in the county — the Assessor does not have the discretion to raise or cut taxes nor exempt seniors from property taxes in violation of existing laws.

The role involves appraising and assessing over 500,000 properties and producing an over-$700-billion assessment roll that generates roughly $8 billion in property tax revenue annually to fund vital services such as public safety, health care and schools.  The office manages over 11,000 active appeals and employs 251 professionals, most of them certified appraisers and auditors.

The work is governed by state laws and is highly specialized, requiring deep technical knowledge.  The next assessor must be a professional focused on the work of the office, not a politician looking to use the office as a steppingstone to other positions. I am the only candidate with the necessary skills and focus to have the office provide excellent service while modernizing and improving it for the future.

As your next Assessor, I will:

• Ensure that assessments are done legally, fairly and accurately, including applying legal exemptions and exclusions, and proactively reducing assessed values when allowed.

• Continue to save taxpayers money by educating property owners on how to take advantage of tax exemptions to which they’re entitled. Customer service and community engagement will continue to be priorities, including providing information in different languages to help guide taxpayers through the process and with accessing the services.

• Protect revenue by ensuring the assessments are performed correctly so they can be effectively defended.

• Continue to modernize the office.   Over the last year, I have led a team to acquire new modern technology to replace the 40-year-old system.  Along with the existing modern tools, this will improve efficiency, streamline processes and secure data. The new system will go live in two years.

• Improve the appeals process.  As an attorney who understands the process and the stakeholders involved, I am already working on improvements, including expediting the resolution of appeals.

• Be a strong voice for Santa Clara County.  I am currently serving my second term on the Los Altos City Council and have been unanimously selected by my colleagues to be mayor and vice mayor, and I have been elected or selected to be a leader both regionally and statewide.  My record demonstrates that I can effectively work with leaders across the state.

I am proud to have endorsements that include the Mercury News; the Santa Clara County Democratic Party; Rep. Sam Liccardo; retired Assessor Larry Stone; county Supervisors Margaret Abe-Koga, Betty Duong, Susan Ellenberg and Otto Lee; San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and Saratoga Mayor Chuck Page.

But what matters most is that you vote in this election. With a Dec. 30 election date, it’s easy to forget.  Voting has already started.  I respectfully ask for your vote.  Happy Holidays!

To read the Mercury News endorsement and commentaries by the two runoff candidates for Santa Clara County assessor, click here.

In the middle of a historic budget crisis, Santa Clara County is being forced to make painful choices. Public health clinics are bracing for staff reductions. Social workers are trying to do more with less. Even with the passage of Measure A, the county will have to do more with less because of the devastating effects of federal spending cuts.

Yet, while all of that is happening, we are spending millions of dollars on two elections to fill a single county office. The combined cost of the standalone special election for assessor and runoff was originally estimated at about $26 million.

Much of the cost for the Nov. 4 special election was subsequently offset by a state and another county measure on the same ballot. But county taxpayers will be stuck with the full cost for the Dec. 30 runoff.

Moreover, despite the cost, there’s likely to be little voter participation. Dec. 30 is not a date designed to produce robust civic engagement; it is a date that will produce low turnout reflecting the fact that voters are traveling, distracted or simply checked out.

This is an avoidable problem. And Santa Clara County already has a tool available to fix it: ranked choice voting (RCV) for county special elections.

RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no one wins an immediate majority, an instant runoff is conducted automatically during that same election by counting voters’ next choices. It ensures the winner earns majority support without requiring the county to run a second, expensive, stand-alone election two months later.

For off-cycle special elections, particularly those triggered by unexpected resignations or vacancies, RCV is a more responsible use of public money.

Implementing RCV for special elections is not theoretical. The county’s voting equipment already supports it. State law explicitly allows it. And county voters approved the concept more than 25 years ago, when they passed Measure F authorizing “instant runoff voting” when technology made it feasible.

Opponents sometimes argue that RCV would require new voter education. That is true. But compare that modest cost to the up to $13 million we are spending right now to hold a holiday-season runoff that few voters will even remember is happening.

At a time when county departments are cutting resources for those who inspect restaurants, protect abused children and respond to domestic violence, it is hard to justify spending millions on an avoidable second election.

We should not accept a system that costs more and engages fewer people. Special elections are already low-turnout events.

Adopting RCV for special elections is a targeted, fiscally responsible action that can be taken now to save millions of dollars in future special election costs. One election instead of two. Majority rule instead of holiday runoffs. Public money spent on essential services, not redundant ballot printing and staffing.

During a budget period when the county must decide between shortening clinic hours or suspending community health programs, the question practically answers itself: Why are we paying for two elections when one will do the job?

Recent history suggests this problem is not a one-off. In just the past two years, the city of San Jose has had to unexpectedly fill three separate City Council vacancies.  With the governor’s race opening up and the prospect of congressional redistricting, it is reasonable to expect additional vacancies in county offices that could require special elections. Ranked choice voting offers a practical way to prepare for the vacancies we know are coming, without draining scarce public dollars each time one occurs.

Santa Clara County has the authority. The technology is ready. The Board of Supervisors should adopt ranked choice voting for special elections before we find ourselves sleepwalking into another costly, low-participation runoff.

David Newswanger, a retired pediatric anesthesiologist, is a California Ranked Voting Coalition volunteer coordinator for Sunnyvale and speaker bureau coordinator for Santa Clara County, and a member of the Sunnyvale Charter Review Committee.

However, as Contra Costa County residents are learning, MCE is no longer delivering on the promise of local government-controlled community choice aggregators, or CCAs.

In fact, they may be better off with PG&E after all.

Although it has “Marin” in its name, MCE is now largely a Contra Costa County operation. Fifteen of Contra Costa’s 19 municipalities, along with the county on behalf of its unincorporated areas, have joined MCE, supplying more customers than the other three counties in which it offers service: Marin, Solano, and Napa.

So, Contra Costa reporters and residents should be paying more attention to the recent challenges at MCE. The agency’s latest financial report shows a $12 million operating loss for the 2025 fiscal year compared to operating income of $144 million the year prior. These operating losses may increase in future years as it appears that MCE has committed to long-term fixed price power purchase contracts at a time when electricity rates are actually falling.

Two cases in Southern California illustrate the serious downsides of the CCA model. In Riverside County, Western Community Energy (WCE), which served Jurupa Valley, Hemet and nearby communities filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2021. WCE was subsequently dissolved, returning all customers to Southern California Edison and leaving creditors, including at least one public agency, with unrecoverable losses.

Meanwhile, the Orange County Power Authority, or OCPA, has faced criticism from the county’s civil grand jury report over its lack of transparency, overreliance on highly-compensated contractors and poor hiring practices.

These cases are indicative of a broader problem: CCAs are governed by part-time elected officials from the communities they serve. These governing board members often lack the time and expertise to effectively steer these financially complex organizations.

Although MCE is a more experienced agency than Riverside’s WCE or Orange County’s OCPA, it is not immune to their issues. One concern evident from financial disclosure is the high cost of MCE staff and contract personnel. MCE CEO Dawn Weisz received $703,511 of cash compensation in 2024 well ahead of CCA peers managing larger agencies. MCE’s overall staff costs as a percentage of revenue are greater than those of peer agencies, yet they are exceeded by MCE’s spending on contractors.

A primary selling point of MCE was that it would be cheaper than PG&E. But as financial pressures mount, that value proposition has disappeared. For a typical residential customer paying “time of use” rates, MCE’s Light Green plan costs $3.06 more than PG&E per month. For those choosing Deep Green, the gap rises to $8.53.

And with higher power costs locked in, MCE will face the difficult choice of matching PG&E rate cuts or maintaining its financial stability.

Contra Costa officials and ratepayers should pay more attention to the situation at MCE.

We cannot afford to be silent partners in an agency named for Marin but mainly funded by customers in Contra Costa. Local leaders in Concord, Richmond, Walnut Creek and Contra Costa County’s supervisors need to demand rigorous, independent financial oversight and a governance structure that prioritizes solvency over political optics.

We traded a regulated monopoly in PG&E for an unregulated government bureaucracy in MCE. If we aren’t careful, we may find that the new boss is more expensive — and less stable — than the old one.

Finally, the four Contra Costa cities that stayed out of MCE thus far — Antioch, Brentwood, Clayton and Orinda — should take care before jumping in.

Marc Joffe is president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association and a visiting fellow at the California Policy Center.

We bore witness to their struggles and successes as they and their families became woven into the very fabric of our community. Many are now medical workers, skilled technologists and teachers, as well as elected American political leaders who give back to their communities.

Afghan students often come from families aligned with 20 years of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan. For infinitely varied reasons, and through two decades of war, they cast their lots with the United States and accepted the implicit — some might say sacred — promise to protect them as indispensable partners in our war on terror.

In 2021, the U.S. military departure from Afghanistan left many in devastating limbo, unable to get out of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, or dependent on a promise of temporary refugee status in the United States. Last month, the renewal of a ban on Afghan refugees, as well as earlier threatened nullification of formerly assigned temporary refugee status, represents a clear betrayal of our country’s implicit agreement to protect them.

When Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who came to the U.S. in 2021 after apparently working with a CIA-backed Afghan military unit, fired on the National Guard in D,C. on Nov. 26, tragically killing one guard member and critically wounding another, the president seized the opportunity to condemn all Afghans in the U.S. as potential terrorists.

There is no logic here: We don’t persecute Gulf War veterans because Timothy McVeigh, the home-grown terrorist who perpetrated the Oklahoma bombing of the Federal Building, was a Gulf War vet. Yet President Trump’s recent dehumanizing slurs against Afghans, Somalis and other non-European immigrants risk becoming dangerously normalized through repetition.

The anxiety among law-abiding Afghans and family members, who have come under now nullified temporary refugee status, is palpable as the president directly threatens a re-examination of their cases.  According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, now-ruling Taliban leaders have only intensified the detention and murder of journalists and human rights activists as well as their continued repression of Afghan girls and women.

This is the nightmare scenario of “repatriation” to which Afghans in America are currently threatened.

We are a nation of immigrants that has long struggled to live up to our highest ideals, including E Pluribus Unum (or “out of many, one”).

Across American history, xenophobic fears have been politically manipulated as a ready distraction from toxic political agendas of those in power. We remember with shame how Japanese Americans were confined to internment camps in a wave of hysteria given the imprimatur of law by the Supreme Court. We cannot allow the shame of this and other abandonments of our clear duty as a nation of immigrants to repeat.

My own family is no stranger to this history.

On March 10, 1941, my grandmother received a letter from the U.S State Department refusing a visa for her sister Miriam, a German Jew made stateless by the Nazi regime’s Nuremberg Decrees. Miriam and her family were soon thereafter sent to a death camp and murdered by the Nazis, as were many others following U.S. rejection of their refugee status. Ironically, rationales for granting refugee status included the fear that some European Jews might be Nazi spies.

If current exclusionary policies targeting Afghans seeking asylum are allowed to define our current historical period, there will no doubt be postmortem mea culpas as has been the case with the World War II Japanese internment and denial of refugee status to European Jewry.

And we should expect future generations of Americans to ask, “How could we have let this happen?”

Susan Sperling is president emerita of Chabot College. As a professor at the Hayward-based community college, she taught generations of Afghan students.

If you want a snapshot of how we are failing young people, especially boys, you can start there.

To balance its budget, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District is considering eliminating the equivalent of 15 full-time counselors, all 13 mental health clinicians and dozens of intervention staff at its schools — at a time when youth suicide is one of the leading causes of death for people ages 10 to 24.

Men and boys make up nearly 80% of suicides in the United States. For LGBTQ youth, the picture is even more alarming. A national survey found nearly 39% seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 12% attempted it.

This crisis is not abstract. It is here. It is now. And it is local.

Young people rely most heavily on school-based support, so if you remove counselors and clinicians, you remove the adults best positioned to intervene when a student’s silence becomes dangerous.

And when we talk about violence, context matters. What we frame as “school safety” is often a reflection of untreated pain.

When a boy explodes, we see a threat. When a boy shuts down, we assume he is fine. We rarely name what both can be — symptoms of a system that teaches boys to swallow everything and then acts surprised when the pressure finally breaks.

I see this every week in my work as project director of a countywide stigma reduction campaign on the Central Coast.

Our youth ambassadors — many of them Black, brown or LGBTQ — lead a movement called Break the Stigma Not the Vibe. They design billboards, bus ads and schoolwide messaging rooted in language they needed when they were younger.

Their message is simple: Asking for help is strength. You don’t have to go through this alone. And you deserve to be seen before you collapse.

Their words will soon move appear on buses and corridors, reaching thousands of students who may not talk to a teacher or open up at home. Sometimes visibility is the intervention.

Now, imagine pairing that visibility with the removal of every trained mental health professional on campus. That is the contradiction this moment demands we confront. You cannot cut lifelines in a suicide crisis and call it a safety strategy.

School counselors and clinicians are not extras; they are core safety infrastructure. They are the adults who notice when a student stops being themselves, when grades slip, when friendships change or when a child who laughs easily is suddenly withdrawn.

We have to stop treating mental health as a side conversation. These cuts are happening in winter — when depression, isolation and suicidal ideation increase.

They are happening in communities still recovering from violence, and after the federal government removed the “Press 3”  LGBTQ-specific option on the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — a resource that has supported more than a million people. We are watching lifelines shrink at the moment young people need more of them.

California has invested heavily in youth behavioral health in recent years. But investment means little if school boards eliminate the positions that translate those state dollars into daily, life-saving support.

If we are serious about preventing suicide, especially among boys and historically marginalized youth, then counselors, clinicians and trusted adults must be the last thing on the chopping block — not the first.

I say this not just as someone who works in mental health, but as someone who has lost people I love to suicide. Sometimes the difference between survival and silence is a single adult who knows your name and notices when your light dims.

We have a choice in front of us. We can keep cutting lifelines and hope for the best. Or we can decide that in a youth suicide crisis, the most dangerous decision we can make is to remove the people who keep kids alive.

Ayo Banjo leads a stigma reduction campaign funded through the California Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. He wrote this commentary for CalMatters.

While public debate about the issue has centered on dollars and deficits, the stakes are actually far greater: Access to comprehensive health coverage can determine whether people live or die.

A new idea is now gaining traction among some lawmakers: Let the subsidies expire and replace them with federal deposits into health savings accounts. These deposits wouldn’t lower the cost of buying a plan. Instead, the proposal assumes that people would purchase cheaper, limited coverage — such as high-deductible or catastrophic plans, which often come with deductibles around $6,000 — and then use the HSA funds to help pay the medical bills those plans don’t cover.

But HSA deposits do nothing to prevent the real harm. The health consequences of losing insurance — or of having insurance that is difficult to affordably use — are well-documented. A substantial body of research shows a clear relationship between lack of comprehensive coverage and higher death rates.

The U.S. Supreme Court once observed that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” In the context of health insurance, the converse is true: Withdrawing support for comprehensive coverage can be destructive as well. It affects not just how people pay for care but also whether they receive care at all.

One of the clearest demonstrations of this comes from a randomized study in which researchers partnered with the Internal Revenue Service to send informational letters about health insurance to millions of households. Only some households received a letter, and because the letters significantly increased enrollment, the researchers could reliably measure the effect of gaining coverage.

The findings were striking: For every 52 people who gained health insurance, one life was saved. Scaled to the 3.8 million people projected to lose insurance by the expiring subsidies, the potential death toll reaches into the tens of thousands — even if the real-world effect is only a fraction of the study’s estimate.

Timely treatment

Why does comprehensive health insurance matter so much? There are several proven ways that having meaningful coverage improves health.

One is the ability to seek timely care when something feels seriously wrong. Studies show that people without coverage often delay or avoid going to the hospital when they have serious symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath because of cost. These delays can be deadly: Timely treatment for heart attacks, strokes and other emergencies is one of the most consistent ways insurance reduces mortality.

Even when emergencies are covered after the deductible, the fact that patients must pay thousands of dollars out of pocket first leads many to avoid seeking care altogether — and catastrophic plans would amplify this effect. Studies of high-deductible health plans show enrollees delay evaluation of chest pain, avoid emergency departments for concerning symptoms, and experience worse outcomes in heart attacks and diabetic crises.

Insurance also plays a crucial role in catching serious diseases while they are still treatable. People are far more likely to seek preventive care when insurance makes it affordable (or as our own research has found, when insurance makes it free ). A JAMA Oncology study of 177,075 women found those without private insurance were much more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancer, resulting in survival rates far lower than women with comprehensive coverage.

Insufficient savings

Just as important is what happens in the day-to-day management of chronic conditions. A large body of research — including our own — shows uninsured and underinsured people often delay or skip this routine care because of cost, even when they know it will worsen their health. High deductibles re-create this dynamic: Patients routinely forgo essential medications, diabetes management or blood-pressure checks until they meet thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.

Federal HSA deposits help only at the margins; a modest contribution cannot meaningfully offset a $6,000 deductible. Cost-sharing continues to shape behavior, leading many, and especially those with limited means, to postpone care until it is too late.

As Congress approaches its vote this month, it is essential to consider not only the budgetary implications but also the extensive evidence linking insurance to health and survival. The research record is clear: The affordability of real, comprehensive insurance is not an abstract policy question. It has direct, measurable effects on life and death.

Wendy Netter Epstein is a professor of law and the former faculty director of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Health Law Institute at DePaul University. Christopher Robertson teaches law and public health at Boston University and Harvard University. His most recent book is “Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done About It.” ©2025 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

At the urging of President Trump, Texas’ Republican-controlled state Legislature redrew congressional districts to help Republicans retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Gov. Greg Abbott signed this into law on Oct. 25. It was immediately challenged in court.

Pursuant to federal law, this was heard by a three-judge federal court. The judges conducted a nine-day hearing, involving the testimony of nearly two dozen witnesses and the introduction of thousands of exhibits. There is a factual record of more than 3,000 pages. In a 160-page opinion, with the majority opinion written by a judge appointed by Trump, the federal court found that Texas impermissibly used race as a basis for drawing the election districts. The Supreme Court has held for more than 30 years that it violates equal protection for the government to use race as a predominant factor in districting.

But the Supreme Court nonetheless overturned the district court’s decision and will allow Texas to use its new districts. The court gave three reasons.

The rationale

First, it said that the lower court “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.” But this is belied by the overwhelming evidence recited in the district court opinion that the Texas Legislature achieved its goal of creating more Republican seats by using race to draw congressional districts. No “presumption” was appropriate: The legislators’ motives and methods were explicitly on the record for the lower court to assess.

One of the most basic principles in jurisprudence is that appellate courts are to accept the fact finding by lower courts unless it is clearly erroneous. The Supreme Court disregarded this and gave no deference to the detailed facts found by the federal district court.

Second, the Supreme Court said that the district court erred by not producing “a viable alternative map that met the State’s avowedly partisan goals.” This is an astounding argument: It asserts that the only way the lower court could have declared race-based districting unconstitutional would be for it to devise a different map that would also have created five more Republican-controlled congressional districts. What if there was no way to draw such a map without impermissibly using race? That surely should not be a basis for accepting an unconstitutional government action. As Justice Elena Kagan said in her dissent, “the map’s absence does not make the direct evidence of race-based decisionmaking go away.”

Finally, the court said that the challenge to the new districts came too close to the next election — the midterms of November 2026. The justices’ majority opinion stated: “This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.” This is the “ Purcell principle” — from a 2006 Supreme Court order in Purcell vs. Gonzalez — that federal courts cannot strike down laws regarding an election too close to the start of voting. On Thursday, the Supreme Court said that the three-judge court violated this rule by improperly inserting itself “into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Staggering implications

The Supreme Court never has explained the basis for the Purcell principle and did not do so here. Regardless of timing, it makes no sense that a state government should be able to violate the Constitution and be immune from judicial review in conducting an election. But the court’s decision in the Texas case extends the Purcell principle as never before. Even in a case such as this, when there was no possible way to bring an earlier challenge or get an earlier decision, still the Supreme Court says that there cannot be judicial relief for an unconstitutional government action.

Abbott did not sign the bill for the new districts until late October. The plaintiffs sued immediately. The district court acted as expeditiously as possible and issued its ruling on Nov. 18. This did not come on the eve of the election, but almost a year before it; the midterms are on Nov. 3, 2026. And still the Supreme Court said there could not be a legal challenge.

The implications of this are staggering. It means that if a state waits long enough to adopt an unconstitutional restriction on voting or districting, it will be completely immune from challenge until after the next election. Kagan made exactly this point in dissent: “If Purcell prevents such a ruling, it gives every State the opportunity to hold an unlawful election.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Texas case means that there cannot be challenges to the new districts in California under Proposition 50, or for that matter those that were drawn in Missouri or North Carolina. We’ll see next November what it means for control of the House of Representatives. But we can see already that the Supreme Court has abdicated its most important role: enforcing the Constitution.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the UC Berkeley Law School. ©2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.