Newsom and Pritzker Are Showing How to Attack an Authoritarian Crook

In the latest episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon, Democratic strategist Arkadi Gerney argues that the United States is in the midst of a “cold civil war.” For liberals to win it, they must use “hardball” tactics, including borrowing from the Republicans’ playbook. Gerney says that Republican governors and attorneys general smartly coordinated during Joe Biden’s presidency to thwart him. He praised Democratic attorneys general for taking a similar tack, constantly filing and at times winning lawsuits against the Trump administration. He also lauded California Governor Gavin Newsom for immediately responding to Texas’s redistricting scheme with a proposal for California to redraw its district lines in ways favorable to Democrats. Newsom and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s threat to leave the bipartisan National Governors Association unless it condemns Trump’s National Guard deployments was also a savvy move, he says. A big and unresolved challenge for Democrats, according to Gerney, is dealing with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and the guard deployments from Trump that target Democratic-leaning cities in blue states. You can read the transcript here.