Gavin Newsom, fuck yeah
California’s Governor is through playing games
‘fight back, you fucking fucks.’
for years, as Republicans have systematically taken a blowtorch to every guardrail that protects our fragile democracy, we’ve been screaming for Democrats to just fight back already.
get out of here with your speechifying. stick your strongly-worded letters where the sun don’t shine. that weak-ass shit don’t fly.
yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom fought back.
to counter Greg Abbott’s fascistic attempt to further gerrymander Texas and shitcan five Democratic districts, Newsom announced he was moving forward with the Election Rigging Response Act, his plan to redistrict California and neutralize Texas’ fuckery.
he brought, as Joyce Vance put it, a gun to a gunfight.
as James Bond wisely counseled Robin Hood in the Untouchables,
“he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
Gavin Newsom understands the assignment. let’s listen to him bring it.
“we’re here with the clarity of our purpose and conviction, to recognize that we need to reconcile the world we’re living in, and we do have agency. we’re not bystanders in this world. we can shape the future. and that’s what we intend to do today. we’re here because Donald Trump, on January 6th, tried to light Democracy on fire. tried to wreck this country. tried to steal an election. and here we are, in open and plain sight, before one vote is cast in the 2026 midterm election, and here he is once again, trying to rig the system. he doesn’t play by a different set of rules — he doesn’t believe in the rules. and as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. it’s not good enough just to hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. we have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire. it’s not complicated. we’re doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said ‘find me five seats.’”
Newsom has it exactly right: we’re not bystanders.
the time for sitting idly by and saying ‘hey c’mon you guys, that’s not fair’ is over. we must all do what needs to be done.
Donny started this fight. he knew he stood an excellent chance of losing control of the House in 2026, so he went running to Greg Abbott and said draw me new maps and give me five more Republican seats. Abbott was all absofuckinglutely — and they didn’t even try to hide what they were doing. they came right out and said ‘this is so we can keep the House.’
Republicans never expected that Democrats would fight back, and now they’re running around like scared little chidren and whining about how Gavin Newsom brought a gun to a gunfight, it’s so unfair!
oh, boo fucking hoo with this hypocritical nonsense. you brought this shitstorm on yourselves — so stop crying and dry your eyes. eat binky.
now, let’s say you were the diapershittingest bastard in politics. how would you respond to Newsom’s presser? probably how the actual diapershittingest bastard in politics did: by sending masked and armed ICE thugs to stormtrooper it up outside the building where it was taking place. how utterly fucking pathetic.
Gavin was all fuck off with your dime-store gestapo, little man.
“I think it’s pretty sick and pathetic, and it just said everything you need to know about the setting we’re under — that they chose the time, manner and place to send their district director outside, right when we’re about to have this press conference. it said everything you know about Donald Trump’s America. and that was top-down, you know that for a fact. they’ll deny it, I’m sure. maybe they won’t deny it. it said everything you know about the authoritarian tendencies of the president of the United States. I said it a moment ago: wake up, America. wake up. you will not have a country, if he rigs this election. you will have a president who will be running for a third term. mark my words. the rules do not apply to them. the most corrupt president in history. he is wrecking this country, wrecking the economy. he’s a lawless president. wake up, America. wake up to what’s going on.”
no lies detected.
you know, it’s pretty weird how when Gavin Newsom speaks, he sticks to the subject at hand. he doesn’t suddenly veer off on a tangent about how his big genius uncle taught the Unabomber, and then meander into a one-person debate over the merits of electrocution by boat battery vs being eaten by a shark.
what’s up with that?
so, did the Governor’s press office follow up Newsom’s press conference with another one of their all-caps Donny-mocking tweets?
‘DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER “HOT.” FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS “STEP.” MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE “BIG STAIRS” ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE — USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HE’S GOT HIS “MEETING” WITH PUTIN IN “RUSSIA.” NOBODY CARES. ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR. EVEN LOW-RATINGS LAURA INGRAM (EDITS THE TAPES!) CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL MAPS. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED “THE DEADLINE” (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN’
update, 8:31pm, New York Times. I’ve just been contacted by Governor Newsom’s office, and they have this to say:
GovPressOffice content is produced by a separate group of staffers. Camille Zapata is not involved in creating or managing any of the content you reference. She has no role.
sorry about that, everyone.
this is brilliant work, and we need to credit the folks responsible. let’s put a face to these tweets. meet Camille Zapata.
Camille Zapata and her staff of three are behind Newsom’s social media posts — and they are so fucking good at what they do.
elected Democrats everywhere should be sitting up right now and taking notes, and hiring their own Camille Zapatas — because every one of these tweets is worth a thousand strongly-worded letters.
meanwhile, look what the world’s tiniest ball of need has been up to.
U.S. President Donald Trump called Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg out of the blue last month to discuss trade tariffs — as well as his bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
oh my god, who does that? Little Donny Ballofneed, that’s who.
can you imagine being the finance minister of Norway? you’re sitting at your desk, reviewing charts and data, when one of your staffers tells you that ‘the president of the United States is on the phone again.’
I say ‘again,’ because —
his was not the first time Trump had raised the prize in discussions with Stoltenberg, the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv noted.
Finance Minister Stoltenberg probably deserves the Nobel Politeness Prize for having to endure Donny’s repeated calls — because if it were me, I’d have been all ‘would you stop fucking calling me, you annoying little pest. I’m not a member of the Nobel Committee. how about you try to stop being so needy for five seconds. holy shit, you’re an asshole.’
but that’s just me.
does Donny imagine that everyone in Norway knows everyone else, and they all meet down at the Viking Hall every Friday, to wear horned helmets and arm-wrestle over who should get the Peace Prize? I’ll bet he does. I’d put money on it. he’s that fucking dumb.
Nobel Prize Committee, can we talk? you have a golden opportunity to do the funniest thing ever: award a second Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. Donny will shit himself.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
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I know I'm going to get an earful about this, so let me state that Gavin Newsom is far from perfect. very far from perfect. I have a lot of problems with the stuff he's done. but right now, he's meeting the moment, and we should celebrate that
Democrats need to move beyond simplistic, concrete reasoning (e.g., “If we gerrymander too, we become just like them”) and instead recognize the complex reality we are living in with fascist tactics being normalized and used to dismantle democracy itself. Formal logic would ask: What is the goal? If the goal is to protect democratic institutions, human rights, and free elections, then any strategy that effectively preserves those ends, as long as it does not fundamentally destroy those values, should be on the table. Moral clarity means understanding that the greatest ethical failure is not breaking a norm, but allowing injustice, harm, and authoritarian control to spread unopposed.
In a context where people are being forcibly taken off the streets, immigrants are placed in camps, and laws are being weaponized to strip citizens of rights, the situation demands more than “polite” or “self-righteous” political solutions. These are not normal political disagreements, they’re systemic attacks on vulnerable communities and on the framework of democracy itself. Defending against that requires muscular, unapologetic resistance, not because Democrats want to mimic fascists, but because inaction or weak action enables fascists. Just as a person has the right to fight back when physically attacked, democracy has the right and obligation to defend itself with forceful, strategic action when it is being dismantled in broad daylight.
Democrats must abandon their posture of moral absolutism and meet power with power. Operating with integrity is noble, but when that integrity becomes a shield for inaction, it risks becoming complicity. History offers painful lessons: during the rise of fascism in Europe, many liberal and democratic forces failed not because they lacked values, but because they clung to procedural purity while their enemies weaponized the system. The refusal to act decisively out of a fear of “stooping to their level” has enabled those regimes to take root. Today’s Democratic leadership often displays a kind of developmental rigidity, holding to black-and-white ideals in a time that demands adaptive, strategic thinking rooted in formal logic and a deeper moral clarity. This isn’t about abandoning principles, but it’s about defending them with the full force necessary to preserve the republic.