Gavin Newsom’s Bold ‘Trump-Mode’ Shift: A Surprising Power Move That Could Change Everything—Here’s Why It Works

Ever notice how sometimes politics feels less like a chess match and more like a slapstick comedy skit unfolding right before our eyes? Take California Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance — the guy’s turned the usual scramble over redistricting into a high-stakes game of political jiu-jitsu, flipping Trump’s own self-aggrandizing social media antics back onto him with style and, dare I say, a bit of flair. It begs the question: can clever mockery and bold counterpunches actually reshape the battlefield in this wild rodeo we call U.S. politics? As Newsom and his team take the digital gloves off to respond to blatant gerrymandering schemes, an intriguing narrative unfolds — one where smarts meet satire, and maybe, just maybe, the margins start to matter again. Gear up, because this isn’t your everyday political dance — it’s a full-on slugfest with a twist of wit. LEARN MORE

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Suddenly, as if sprung from the obscure patch of ground beneath which the Old Gentleman is buried, a powerful stream of mockery has entered the Democratic Party mainstream, which has been heretofore missing—except in certain shebeens along the docks of Blogistan—in that desiccated landscape, despite the fact that the MAGA cult and its leader are little more than a school of very big fish swimming in very small barrels. The technique is pure jiu-jitsu—take El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago’s vainglorious celebrations of himself on social media, and turn them around so they spotlight his many fiascos and acts of brigandage.

It reportedly started with a woman named Camille Zapata, a swashbuckler from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s social media crew. And may we just say, in our best Brando voice—Viva Zapata!

(Newsom, as we have seen, has taken the lead in responding in kind to Texas’s blatant ratfcking of its own redistricting process.)

From the governor’s press office on Xwitter:

DONALD TRUMP, IF YOU DO NOT STAND DOWN, WE WILL BE FORCED TO LEAD AN EFFORT TO REDRAW THE MAPS IN CA TO OFFSET THE RIGGING OF MAPS IN RED STATES. BUT IF THE OTHER STATES CALL OFF THEIR REDISTRICTING EFFORTS, WE WILL DO THE SAME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! DONALD “TACO” TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, “MISSED” THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE “BEAUTIFUL MAPS,” THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR “MAGA.” THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN

For the record, Newsom is not my favorite governor. Andy Beshear and our own Maura Healey share that title, but I do admire the art with which he and Zapata are hijacking the president’s ego and beating him over the head with it. And the idea is spreading. Here’s a recent entry from the Democratic Party of North Carolina (h/t the immortal Digby):

THE BIG, BEAUTIFUL TARIFFS ARE MAKING INFLATION GREAT AGAIN! THE GREATEST INCREASE IN INFLATION SINCE THE PANDEMIC (MANY ARE SAYING). HERBERT HOOVER (LIL HOOVER, THEY CALL HIM) HAD THE GREAT DEPRESSION BUT NO ONE REMEMBERS HIM. SAD! UNDER TRUMP AMERICA WILL HAVE THE GREATEST DEPRESSION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

Oh, please—two, three, a hundred more of these a day, preferably also containing references to the Epstein Files, until all the cheap gilding that he’s inflicted on the Oval Office is splattered thick with ketchup. I recall all the times the sainted Molly Ivins reminded us to raise all hell, but remember to have fun doing it. Or, as the Old Gentleman himself put it: “The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, but a banquet.”

Uh, if it’s all the same to your Exaltedness, I’d rather not live in 1980s Chile, thanks. From The New Republic:

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid right outside of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s rally on Thursday at the Japanese American National Museum in Downtown Los Angeles. Newsom held an event to announce his own redistricting efforts in California, a direct response to the Trump administration and the Texas GOP gerrymandering their House map to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterms. “BORDER PATROL HAS SHOWED UP AT OUR BIG BEAUTIFUL PRESS CONFERENCE! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!” Newsom’s press team posted, purposely mocking Trump’s social media syntax as they have been for days now. [Ed. Note: Nice job keeping the riff going, gang.] The post also included a video showing mostly masked Border Patrol agents milling about in full tactical gear. Newsom also acknowledged the raid during his speech “Right outside, at this exact moment, are dozens of dozens of ICE agents,” Newsom said, the crowd booing in response. “Donald Trump … you think it’s coincidental?”

I think we are all going to be shocked a year from November when it is reported by White House sources that, in many polling stations in swing states, thousands of undocumented people were found hiding in mailbags. Or, maybe not.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click

“Raining In My Heart” – Mary Lane

Yeah, I still sort of love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathé Archives

Here, from 1968, is the celebration of a crazy person. Barman Michael Meaney spent a record breaking 61 days underground being fed food and water through a tube. As you can see, they paraded Meaney in his coffin through the streets of Kilburn. Meaney enjoyed a smoke during the profession, and they freed him in front of the pub where he worked. Got to admit, old Mike had a bit of the Unabomber glow on him when they popped the top off his coffin. History is so cool.

Notice to all American tourists who may be popping by the UK: Be sure to visit Cotswold, because the good people there know a first-class faker when they see one. And while the report that the staff of a local pub threatened to mutiny rather than serve vice-president J. Divan Vance and his family remains unconfirmed, Cotswolders—that should be what they’re called even if they’re not—did their damndest to avoid giving a Laurel and Hardy handshake to the vice-president and his entourage. And they were good at it, too. From the Guardian:

Natasha Phillips, who had travelled 70 miles from Bath to attend the event billed as a “Dance against Vance,” bore a placard saying: “JD Vance—the guy who bullied a war hero from the comfort of his couch.”

“The way he treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy was disgusting,” she said. “The Ukrainian people are heroes. British people admire the way they are standing up to [Vladimir] Putin. I wanted to come here to show that.”

Chris Tatton, a long-term resident of Charlbury and a former councillor, said one of the worst things he had seen in a lifetime of watching politics was Vance’s ambush of the Ukrainian president. “That was disgraceful,” he said.

Ah, deeply researched contempt. The Brits invented that shit.

Stay thirsty, Your Pastelness. From Reuters:

“Out of the blue, while Finance Minister Jens Stoltenbergchar was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called,” Dagens Naeringsliv reported, citing unnamed sources. “He wanted the Nobel Prize—and to discuss tariffs.”

In a comment to Reuters, Stoltenberg said the call was to discuss tariffs and economic cooperation ahead of Trump’s call with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Stoere. “I will not go into further detail about the content of the conversation,” he added. Several White House officials, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were on the call, Stoltenberg added.

Jesus Mary, just make up a fake one, spell it “Noble,” just so Karoline Leavitt’s feelings won’t be hurt, and hand it to him the next time you see him. He’ll never know the difference.

Here’s some really good news. Old running buddy and charter Friend of the Blog Tom Junod at long last has finished his epic memoir about growing up with his father, Lou, of whom he wrote a classic GQ piece called My Father’s Fashion Tips back in 1997, when we were all working in the old Condé Nast building and trying not to stare at the models with whom we rode the elevators. He now has expanded, and deepened, and reportedly darkened, the insights in that piece into a book, In The Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, for which all of his friends and admirers have been patiently waiting out a long gestational period. Pub date is March 10, but you can pre-order now from all the usual suspects. And you should, because it’s going to be a hit.

While you’re at it, put a grab on my friend and fellow StephHead mook John Fugelsang’s Separation Of Church And Hate, in which John, the son of a former Franciscan brother and a former nun, goes all Christian heavyweight on the various pharisees, sadducees, and other whited sepulchers who have infested our politics much too long. John’s famous for reminding us of the following: “Jesus was a radical nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers hookers and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer (M 6:5); was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a co-pay; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless, community-organizing, anti-slut-shaming, Middle Eastern Jew.”

To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs: Blog sez check ’em out.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From WRAL:

The discovery came after an artifact was found underneath the vegetable garden of the university’s teaching and research farm, located near Fleetwood in Ashe County. Archaeologist Dr. Alice Wright said her team first discovered a sharpened piece of quartz, which she believes was sharpened by ancient hands, then possibly broken during a hunting expedition and then repurposed. The artifact was one of dozens unearthed from an early Native American campsite. There, Wright and her team of App State student researchers excavated spear and arrow points, pottery shards, a storage pit and remnants of a hearth.The team believes this area is where ancestral peoples likely gathered, cooked, created tools and told stories at.

Two-for-one drink specials every time the moon goddess cuts herself in half!

Hey, ABC News. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Ancient dinosaur footprints dating back 115 million years were discovered in Northwest Travis County, Texas, after recent flooding swept away layers of sediment and brush that had long hidden them, according to officials…The tracks were left by meat-eating dinosaurs similar to an Acrocanthosaurus, a roughly 35-foot-long bipedal carnivore, Brown said. Additional prints found nearby might have represented a large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur called Paluxysaurus, which is the official state dinosaur of Texas.

Yeah, I know. I thought it was Jerry Jones, too.

There’s a lot of old stuff coming to light now that the climate crisis is creating severe weather and melting all the frozen parts of the world. Too bad there won’t be any humans around to learn from it all. But they can make us happy now, which is something, I guess.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits and to see if we still own Alaska. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought foreveryone touched by the mass shootings in NYC and Reno. and everyone recovering from the flooding in Wisconsin, and in Texas, and in North Carolina. and by earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and in Turkey and Russia, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and Nigeria, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Los Angeles and in Canada, and for all the folks in Ukraine, who stubbornly fight on, and all the folks in Gaza, and all the people in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska, and in Missouri. And the folks caught in “historic floods” in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. (Hang in there, Pedro.) And all the folks we regularly cited here in the year gone by, and especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve. Thank you for your attention to this matter.