Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called on California lawmakers to approve a November ballot measure that would allow them to redraw the state's congressional map to fight back against Republicans' mid-decade redistricting plans in Texas and elsewhere.
Newsom's proposal, called the “Election Rigging Response Act,” would pave the way for California Democrats to circumvent the independent commission that controls the map-drawing process in the state and pass new congressional lines that would be more favorable to their party.
Republicans in Texas, with President Donald Trump's backing, are pursuing a new congressional map that would allow them to gain up to five more House seats.
"It's not complicated. We're doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, 'Find me five seats,'" Newsom said. "We're doing it in reaction to that act. We're doing it mindful of our higher angels and better angels. We're doing it mindful that we want to model better behavior, as we've been doing for 15 years in the state of California with our independent redistricting commission. But we cannot unilaterally disarm."
California Democrats need approval from others in to sidestep the state’s independent redistricting commission, and the clock is ticking for lawmakers to approve a ballot initiative for this year's Nov. 4 election. If the measure passes, it would allow new maps to be enacted in time for the 2026 midterm elections.
Several other Democratic leaders in California appeared alongside Newsom at an event Thursday in Los Angeles, framing their mid-decade redistricting effort as a broader rebuke of Trump and the actions of his administration.
Sara Sadhwani, a member of California’s redistricting commission who spoke at Thursday’s event, warned that Border Patrol agents were outside the venue where the rally was taking place and making arrests.
Sadhwani said Trump was “turning our cities into police states.”
“We are watching executive overreach that is no doubt making our Founding Fathers turn over in their graves,” she said.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin pushed back against Democrats' criticism of the Border Patrol agents' presence.
"Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law—not about Gavin Newsom," McLaughlin wrote on X. "@CBP patrols all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make LA safe."
California's move is the next salvo in what has become a nationwide tit-for-tat between Republican- and Democratic-led states in response to a plan to redraw the congressional lines in Texas to pad the GOP's majority in the U.S. House.
Last month, after Trump's public urging, Abbott called the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature in for a special session that including a rare mid-decade redrawing of the congressional map outside the typical, once-a-decade cycle.
Newsom told reporters after the rally that the California Legislature would formally launch the effort Monday through a series of bills.
“We anticipate the Legislature will move quickly and by the end of next week they will complete that work,” he said.
He added that the proposed new maps would appear over the next few days and that he expected they would “neuter and neutralize” efforts in Texas. Democrats currently represent 43 of California's 52 House districts.
Newsom said that if red states don’t move forward with redistricting, then California’s efforts wouldn’t be necessary, but he added that “we’re not waiting.”
Trump said in an interview with CNBC this month that Republicans are “entitled to five more seats” in Texas.
Republicans already hold 25 of Texas' 38 congressional seats, but Trump won 27 of those seats in last year’s presidential election. If the new Republican-drawn maps go into effect, 30 of those seats would have voted for Trump last year.
“Wake up, America. Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing," Newsom said Thursday. "Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history."
Republicans' move in Texas prompted dozens of state House Democrats to flee the state to deny Republicans a quorum, the minimum number of lawmakers required to be in attendance for the chamber to consider legislation. For almost two weeks, the Democrats have sat for dozens of interviews and held news conferences aimed at criticizing the GOP plan and calling on Democratic governors to promise to respond by seeking to redraw their maps to counter the potential GOP gains in Texas, and possibly other states.
Newsom has been the most vocal of those governors, spending weeks warning he'd push to redraw California's maps if Republicans in other states didn't stand down and repeatedly badgering Trump in interviews and on social media.
Texas Democrats have signaled they are inching closer to ending their protest. On Thursday, Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu said in a statement that two conditions must be met for lawmakers to return to the state. The first was for Texas Republicans to bring the current special session to a close, which they are set to do Friday. And the second was for California Democrats to propose their own new congressional maps.
“When the legislature adjourns sine die and California introduces its maps, we will return to the House floor and to the courthouse with a clear message: the fight to protect voting rights has only just begun,” Wu said.
While Texas and other GOP-led states that are considering mid-decade redistricting largely need approval only from GOP-majority legislatures and governors, the process in many blue states is far more complicated.
California needs the approval of the Legislature and then the voters. The path is even more arduous in New York, where a proposed constitutional amendment would need to pass two consecutive legislative sessions and then be approved by voters in a ballot measure the next year. That lengthy process all but assures that, even if Democrats are successful, the maps wouldn't change until the 2028 elections at the earliest.
Newsom, through his press office social media account, recently took a new public relations tack in the ongoing salvos between him and the White House. In a series of posts on X, Newsom posted all-caps declarations, directly mocking Trump's style of messaging as he worked to drive attention to his efforts.
“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!!" Newsom's press office wrote on X. "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!"
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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