Gavin Newsom Says He Got Permission From Obama —

There was once a time, a long time in the past, when insinuating that Barack Obama would dare still be closely concerned in Democrat Party politics after his “retirement” from the White House would get you pilloried.

Now, it is just a matter of common information. Gavin Newsom, once again, just confirmed it.

The California governor was schmoozing Democrats in Lexington, South Carolina, on Friday when he determined to inform the group about the second he sought permission to launch one of the most aggressive Democratic redistricting gambits in the nation.

“The only way I could feel that I had real permission was I called you-know-who… Barack Obama,” Newsom said while recounting his resolution to pursue Proposition 50.

Gavin Newsom says Obama gave him the greenlight last 12 months to gerrymander California even additional:

“The only way I could feel that I had real permission was I called you-know-who… Barack Obama.” pic.twitter.com/7Ke1pAy9Xj

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 4, 2026

Newsom then described his trepidation about approaching the previous president, given Obama’s political model and longtime assist for impartial redistricting.

“I called you know who — Barack Obama. Because I’m like, come on, ‘we go high…’” Newsom said. “I wish I can tell you exactly what he said. Let’s just say, green light. And I’m like let’s go, we’re gonna win this thing.”

Newsom has told this story before, but the latest model is amusingly blunt. He did not merely call Obama to shoot the breeze. By his own telling, Obama was the particular person whose blessing made him really feel he had “real permission” to proceed.

And what precisely was he in search of “permission” to do?

Proposition 50 was California Democrats’ reply to a Republican-backed mid-decade redistricting effort in Texas. California voters accredited the measure with practically 65 % of the vote in November 2025. 

The impartial commission is scheduled to resume congressional mapmaking after the 2030 census.

The new strains shifted 5 Republican-held districts toward Democrats, giving the occasion a potential path to decide up extra House seats.

Forget about Gerry. Maybe they need to call it an “Obamamander”?

Newsom himself has hardly been coy about the aim behind it.

But apparently even Newsom wished some political absolution before taking the plunge. And for that, he went to the person who left the White House practically a decade in the past.

The fuller story Newsom told Axios in March makes Obama’s function even clearer. Newsom said he called the previous president in the summer time of 2025 because he was “very nervous” about what he was considering.

“I remember calling him very nervous when I was seeking his advice. It wasn’t even approval or support, it was just advice,” Newsom recalled.

He did not even get through the pitch.

“I didn’t even get into the conversation and he says, ‘I just want to let you know I like what you’re saying and I hope you do this,’” Newsom said.

That apparently settled it. Newsom later said Obama “gave us the cover and the moral authority despite all of his work that he did around independent redistricting,” because Proposition 50 was about “fighting fire with fire.”

After the pow-wow, Barack Obama went full on election-denier to promote the doubtful measure.

“Democracy is on the ballot Nov. 4,” Obama warned and accused Republicans of attempting to “steal enough seats in Congress to rig the election.”

Talk about accusing your enemies of what you’re doing.

This supplies yet another case of just how concerned the previous president stays in Democratic politics — not merely cutting the occasional marketing campaign industrial, but advising one of the occasion’s most outstanding governors on a congressional redistricting strategy.

It’s also ironic in mild of Obama’s 2020 riff about what his ideally suited “third term” may appear like.

During an look with Stephen Colbert, Obama joshed that he would fortunately make an association in which there was a “stand-in” sporting an earpiece while he sat “in my basement in my sweats” and provided the strains, because he still discovered the precise work of governing fascinating.

Then we obtained the Biden presidency. And the joke stopped being humorous.

The fact is that Obama never disappeared from Democratic politics after January 2017.

He remained a campaigner, adviser and powerbroker. During the Biden presidency, Democrats sought his counsel. As the occasion appears toward 2028, politicians continue speaking to him. And when one of its most outstanding governors contemplated overriding California’s regular congressional redistricting course of, he called Obama because, in Newsom’s own phrases, he needed “real permission.”

Nearly ten years after Obama’s presidency ended, the query is not whether or not he is still concerned in Democratic politics. It’s why anybody ever pretended that he wasn’t.

Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less in style as voters reject its globalist agenda.

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