GOP whining over redistricting is laughable

Republican leaders loudly cheered Trump’s many awful actions. Now they suddenly care about political decency?

- GUSTAVO ARELLANO COLUMNIST

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM'S remapping plan may not sit well with many voters, but think of the alternative.

King Gavin is at it again!

That's the cry coming from Republicans across California as Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes the state Legislature to approve a November special election like none this state has ever seen. Voters would have the chance to approve a congressional map drawn by Democrats hoping to wipe out GOP-held seats and counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's Trump-driven redistricting.

President Trump "doesn't play by a different set of rules he doesn't believe in the rules," the governor told a roaring crowd packed with Democratic heavyweights last week at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. "And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It's not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be.... We have got to meet fire with fire."

California Republicans are responding to this the way a kid reacts if you take away their Pikachu.

"An absolutely ridiculous gerrymander!" whined Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the state's rural northeast corner, on social media. Under the Democratic plan, his district would swing all the way down to ultraliberal Marin County.

The California Republican Party deemed the new maps a "MASTERCLASS IN CORRUPTION" (Trumpian caps in the original). National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Christian Martinez said "Newscum" was giving "a giant middle finger to every Californian."