California officials on Monday announced that they would deploy their own observers to watch over federal election monitors the Trump administration is sending to the state for next week\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits,\u201d California Attorney General Rob Bonta said during a virtual news conference. \u201cWe cannot be naive. The Republican Party asked for the U.S. DOJ to come in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bonta\u2019s comments come after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday that the Department of Justice would\u00a0monitor polling places<\/a>\u00a0during next week\u2019s off-year elections in California and New Jersey to uphold \u201cthe highest standards of election integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n California voters are casting their ballots on the state\u2019s highly anticipated Proposition 50, the initiative to approve new congressional districts that would net Democrats an estimated five more seats. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told NOTUS last week that Democrats are using Prop 50\u00a0as a blueprint<\/a>\u00a0for redistricting across the country.<\/p>\n Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump\u2019s deployment of monitors an act of voter intimidation and suppression.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a bridge too far,\u201d Newsom, a likely\u00a0presidential candidate<\/a>\u00a0in 2028, said on Friday.<\/p>\n Bonta agreed, alleging that the federal government monitoring state elections would be evidence of Trump\u2019s intentions to challenge future elections.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is laying the groundwork. He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous,\u201d Bonta said, noting that Trump still claims to have won the 2020 presidential election. \u201cAll indications, all arrows show that this is a tee up for something more dangerous in the 2026 midterms \u2014 and maybe beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the country, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move \u201chighly inappropriate\u201d and said the DOJ \u201chas not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions.\u201d<\/p>\n New Jersey\u2019s upcoming governor\u2019s race is drawing record-level funding as Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill faces former\u00a0Republican<\/a>\u00a0assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.<\/p>\n The head of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, is reported to have asked the White House to deploy the monitors. Dhillon took to X on Friday to mock Newsom\u2019s claims of voter suppression.<\/p>\n \u201cLol calm down bro,\u201d she\u00a0posted<\/a>. \u201cThe @TheJusticeDept under Democrat administrations has sent in federal election observers for decades, and not once did we hear that this was voter intimidation from states such as California.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was produced as part of a partnership between\u00a0NOTUS\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute \u2014 and\u00a0NEWSWELL<\/a>, home of\u00a0Times of San Diego<\/a>,\u00a0Santa Barbara News-Press<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stocktonia<\/a>.<\/p>\n READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California officials on Monday announced that they would deploy their own observers to watch over federal election monitors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,536,12835,457,1362,2794],"class_list":["post-27076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-2025","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-prop-50","tag-rob-bonta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}