Get Ready to Vote on New Congressional Maps; Recall News Regarding Home Depot Ladders, Dollar General Coffee–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 14, 2025

Indy Digest: Aug. 14, 2025

Almost certainly coming soon to a special-election ballot near you: a request for California voters to OK re-drawing the state’s congressional districts.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic lawmakers and their allies on Thursday launched a special election campaign to ask California voters to approve new congressional districts to decrease the size of the state’s Republican delegation—a move that could determine control of Congress next year and stymie President Trump’s agenda.

The effort is a response to GOP-led states, notably Texas, attempting to redraw their congressional maps to decrease Democratic ranks in the narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives at Trump’s behest. …

“He doesn’t play by a different set of rules. He doesn’t believe in the rules,” Newsom said. “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 recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire.”

An interesting tidbit further down in the Los Angeles Times piece: “Outside the political rally (Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles), Border Patrol agents gathered and arrested at least one person. Newsom told the crowd inside that he doubted it was a coincidence.”

The San Francisco Chronicle added this detail: “As Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his California redistricting campaign Thursday at an event in Los Angeles, a U.S. Border Patrol sector chief showed up outside with a contingent of armed and masked agents. … Leading the action was Gregory Bovino, head of the Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, which has aggressively touted its anti-immigrant stance on social media and is under a court injunction blocking the agency from indiscriminately arresting people based on their appearance or location. ‘We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place, since we don’t have politicians that’ll do that,’ Bovino told a reporter in a clip posted by Newsom’s office.”

Newsom’s announcement comes as Texas Democratic lawmakers have said they intend to return to their state, meaning that President Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott will likely succeed in pushing through that state’s re-districting plan. The Associated Press explains:

Texas Democrats on Thursday moved closer to ending a nearly two-week walkout that has blocked the GOP’s redrawing of U.S. House maps before the 2026 election and put them under escalating threats by Republicans back home.

The Democrats announced they will return provided that Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal, both of which were expected to happen Friday. …

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott still intends to push through new maps that would give the GOP five more winnable seats before next year’s midterm elections. …

Abbott put redistricting on the agenda at the urging of President Donald Trump, who wants to shore up Republicans’ narrow House majority and avoid a repeat of his first presidency, when the 2018 midterms restored Democrats to a House majority that blocked his agenda and twice impeached him. It is unusual for redistricting to take place in the middle of the decade and typically occurs once at the beginning of each decade to coincide with the census.

If all of this happens, one of the California congressmen who will find himself in the deepest electoral trouble is … Ken Calvert. Our partners at Calmatters say:

Calvert didn’t comment on how the redistricting proposal would affect his district, but said the plan undermines California’s citizen-led redistricting process.

“I strongly oppose the scheme being orchestrated behind closed doors by Sacramento politicians to take constitutionally afforded power away from the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and replace it with a process that would allow legislators to draw district maps that are gerrymandered to benefit themselves and their political allies,” Calvert said in a statement to CalMatters. “A partisan political gerrymander is not what the voters of California want as they clearly stated when they passed the VOTERS FIRST Act and participated in the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission process.”

If voters approve the new maps it could put Calvert’s seat at risk. Previous redistricting in 2021 added the liberal Coachella Valley to conservative parts of western Riverside County, making it a more competitive race. Rollins brought a tightly run campaign and $8 million war chest to the fight and lost by just 3% in November. 

With even more Democrat-friendly boundaries and a wide field of candidates that include business executives, an educator and a pop star, the swing race would likely attract renewed national attention and campaign donations. 

Boy, what a mess. Stay tuned …

—Jimmy Boegle

Vote Now!

More News

• Just in time for the new school year … COVID-19 cases are on the rise. SFGate reports: “COVID-19 levels are up 32% percent from a month ago just as schools across the Bay Area are about to start for the fall semester. Levels of COVID-19 detected in Bay Area wastewater remain high throughout the region, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. The average amount of COVID-19 detected across the region has jumped about a third from July 8 to Aug. 3, the most recent date for which data is available. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert and a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, said experts had ‘hoped’ COVID-19 would become like the seasonal flu, which appears mainly in the fall and winter months. But COVID-19 has consistently surged in the summer in addition to winter months, which can mean even more cases as kids go back to school in August. … Gandhi said she’s especially worried that people will not have access to or trust COVID-19 vaccines after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made controversial moves including canceling funding for mRNA vaccine research and firing all members of a key vaccine expert advisory board.”

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement is flush with cash and wanting to hire. However, the process is not going at all smoothly, as Time magazine reports: “The new recruitment page on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s website shows a drawing of a white-bearded Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer. ‘America has been invaded by criminals and predators,’ the page reads. ‘We need YOU to get them out.’ The pitch emphasizes that a college degree isn’t needed, and says recruits could be offered up to a $50,000 signing bonus and $60,000 in student loan repayment. The offers are part of a supercharged recruitment campaign that will take years to meet its goal. Republicans in Congress just allocated $30 billion to ICE to hire 10,000 new officers so it can ramp up deportations. But the Administration’s interest in boosting ICE’s headcount from 20,000 to 30,000 is bumping up against multiple challenges, including finding applicants who are both qualified and willing to live in parts of the country where ICE is intent on deploying more agents. ‘You’re talking three years before you see a significant increase of ICE agents on the street, which is the end of the administration,’ predicts John Sandweg, who was the acting director of ICE during the Obama administration.”

• The New York Times headline is “Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone.” Details: “Just a few years ago, tech companies were minor players in energy, making investments in solar and wind farms to rein in their growing carbon footprints and placate customers concerned about climate change. But now, they are changing the face of the U.S. power industry and blurring the line between energy consumer and energy producer. They have morphed into some of energy’s most dominant players. They have set up subsidiaries that invest in power generation and sell electricity. Much of the energy they produce is bought by utilities and then delivered to homes and businesses, including the tech companies themselves. Their operations and investments dwarf those of many traditional utilities. But the tech industry’s all-out artificial intelligence push is fueling soaring demand for electricity to run data centers that dot the landscape in Virginia, Ohio and other states. Large, rectangular buildings packed with servers consumed more than 4 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2023, and government analysts estimate that will increase to as much as 12 percent in just three years. That’s partly because computers training and running A.I. systems consume far more energy than machines that stream Netflix or TikTok. Electricity is essential to their success. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, recently told investors that the company could have had higher sales if it had more data centers. ‘The single biggest constraint,’ he said, ‘is power.’”

• The Los Angeles Times reports that citizens documenting ICE raids and arrests are sometimes getting arrested themselves. Activist groups say people need to take steps to protect themselves if they decide to film or photograph a raid: “You have the 1st Amendment right to observe, take photographs and record video of immigration enforcement in public places, which includes streets and sidewalks, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Witness, a nonprofit that advocates for the documentation of human rights violations. ‘Do so in a way that you know ensures both your safety and ensures that you also are not getting involved in the (enforcement) actions whereby you can be charged with interference,’ (said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of communications for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.) Immigration enforcement officials can arrest you for interfering or obstructing an operation if they believe you are getting between a federal officer and the person they’re arresting. In this environment, whether you’ve been alerted to an arrest taking place or have stumbled into one as a bystander, advocates say an operation can happen quickly and the situation can escalate. If you decide to document, you should consider ‘how ICE prioritizes their own safety and their potential aggressive response to your presence,’ according to Witness.”

• AT&T customers are encouraged to submit claims as part of a legal settlement regarding a data breach. CBS News reports: “The first data breach, announced in March 2024, affected 73 million current and former AT&T account holders whose information—including birth dates and Social Security numbers—was found in a dataset on the dark web. The second, announced in July 2024, exposed the records of calls and texts (of) ‘nearly all’ of its cellular customers. …. Following a ruling from a federal judge, the settlement administration for AT&T said on Aug. 4 that a proposed settlement has been reached for $177 million, with $149 million earmarked for the first settlement class and $28 million set aside for the second settlement class. The settlement, however, still has to be approved. According to the settlement website, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas will hold a final approval hearing on Dec. 3, 2025. In the meantime, impacted AT&T customers can file for compensation.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves two things. First … coffee from Dollar General! The Hill explains: “Dollar General has issued a recall for three lots of its 8-ounce Clover Valley Instant Coffee due to the potential presence of glass fragments, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recall was issued Aug. 11 after a customer alerted Dollar General to the potential issue. The coffee was sold and distributed in every state besides Hawaii and Alaska between July 9 to 21 of this year. Customers are advised to dispose of the product and contact Dollar General for a full refund.”

• Second … ladders from Home Depot! The Associated Press says: “Werner on Thursday said it is recalling more than 100,000 faulty ladders due to a locking mechanism that can fail, potentially causing users to fall and injure themselves. In cooperation with federal consumer product regulators, Werner is recalling 122,250 Multi-Max Pro ladders that come in 20-foot and 24-foot sizes. The ladders were sold exclusively at Home Depot between November of 2021 and February of 2024 with prices between $200 and $281. The Illinois-based company said owners of the ladders being recalled should stop using them immediately and register at www.wernerco.com/recalls to begin the process for a full refund. … Werner said it has received 18 reports of falls, including 14 reports of injuries resulting in bruising, lacerations, head injuries and fractures to the wrist, leg and ribs.” Eek!

Support the Independent!

Thank you for reading! Times are tough for small businesses. Times are tough for news publications. Well … the Independent is a small business AND a news publication. Please, if you can, help us continue to do what we do—which is producing quality local news, and making it available for free to everyone!