Midterms: What impact did redistricting in California and Texas have?

I'm going to go to Los Angeles, where France 24's Wassim Cornet is standing by. Hello again, Wassim. We've been talking about redistricting this morning here, and it is a strategy that the Republicans, and to a lesser extent, the Democrats have used in this election. Has it always had its intended effects? No, it certainly hasn't. And let's take you back to last year or more broadly, actually, let's let you know that redistricting typically happens in the United States every 10 years when there are new census numbers that show essentially where populations live based on their demographics, their voter registration, et cetera, et cetera. Last year, the Texas Republican-controlled legislature decided to redistrict their house seats, their house districts, outside of that 10-year framework in order to to increase their chances ahead of this year's today's midterm elections. Now, that was very much seen among Democratic circles as an attempt to rig the race in favor of the Republicans. And the California Democrats here, the California Democratic-controlled legislature, decided it would not stand by and watch this go unchallenged. So it submitted a proposition, Proposition 50, November of 2025, to millions of Californians Are you okay for us to redistrict on our end to try to gain five? Democratic seats to counter those Texas and efforts to gain five Republican seats in the House. The proposition was a 50 was approved and it created a number of new competitive or at least what Democrats wanted it to be competitive districts in the state of California. Now, one of them is California District 22, which is located in the Central Valley, very heavily agricultural area, very heavily Latino area with the Democrat Randy Villanueva. He is trying to challenge the... incumbent Republican candidate. But there are four other seats across the Golden State that the Democrats are hoping to clinch thanks to this redistricting effort. There are currently 43 Democratic representatives for California in the House of Representatives. We spoke to one of them, Laura Friedman, earlier tonight. She said her goal is to see 48 now and hoping for all five of those newly or newly Redrawn districts to go in the Democratic tally. And what is perhaps the most ironic thing in all of this is that those Texas redrawn or redistricted maps, several of them did not go to the advantage for the Texans, for the Republicans, excuse me, in this election. Now, another election taking place there today or took place there yesterday, rather, in Los Angeles was for the mayoralty. And the incumbent, Karen Bass, had a bit of a fight on her hands. Yeah, very much so. You know, she was the first woman to be elected mayor of Los Angeles back in 2022, but she has been quite unpopular. She ran on a campaign to promise to end homelessness, which is, you know, she invested hundreds of million dollars in a program which yields very, you know, lukewarm results. Many critics have said it is not okay for her and her staff to be using that much taxpayer paying money for a program that... That essentially aimed to rehouse all homeless people in the city of Los Angeles, but four years later, 40% of the people who were gotten temporary housing are now back to be homeless, so certainly very, again, uncertain results. Yeah, results that were definitely not very convincing. And again, the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire, but specifically the Palisades Fire, because that fell under the purview of the city of Los Angeles, and the mayor of Los Angeles devastated major parts of the Pacific Palisades, killed 12 people, 7,000 structures destroyed, billions and billions of dollars in damage, and the mayor was very much criticized at the time for being absent, for being out of the country on an international trip, for taking her time to come back to the city of Los Angeles in a time... of crisis, the worst crisis the city has experienced in many, many decades. And there was, in the subsequent weeks and months, several investigations by local media outlets that found that the fire department had complained about the lack of budget, could have complained about the lack of the city's preparedness for these types of disasters. So yes, Nithya Raman, her challenger, who is a Democrat, progressive, excuse me, the same faction of the Democratic Socialists of America as the mayor of New York City, Zohra Mamdani. She's running on a progressive platform to try to increase housing, improve tenant protections, expand public transit. Her platform is popular, but again, if she does win, end up winning, and it might take several days to get those final results, if she does end up winning, it will also very much likely, because of Karen Bass's very poor track record over the past four years years and her deep unpopularity among several thousands of