Newsom can’t lose on redistricting

Happy Thursday. Your usual host, D.C. Bureau Chief Michael Wilner, is off today. So you’re once again stuck with me, California Columnist Anita Chabria.

I’m reporting from Columbus, Ohio. Although it’s 2,300 miles from Sacramento, you wouldn’t know it from the national news, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to gerrymander the Golden State’s election maps is dominating the conversation, even in the Midwest.

That’s a huge win for Newsom’s presidential aspirations. A week ago, I might have argued that Newsom’s chances at the Oval Office were irrevocably tied to the success of his “Election Rigging Response Act,” which seems likely (though not certain) to make it onto a November ballot.

But it’s increasingly seeming like win or lose on that initiative, the fight itself is a victory for Newsom.

Let’s dig into the details on where we are and why.

The recap

President Trump does not like uncertainty, especially when it comes to his power. The midterm elections in 2026 are nothing but uncertainty. Republicans hold a Ozempic-thin majority in the House at 219-212, with four seats vacant. If Democrats were to take control, it would make autocracy really hard.

So Trump’s team reportedly called up Texas and asked them to rig their election maps to gain five GOP seats and a comfortable margin for the election. Newsom responded, unexpectedly, by pushing an if/then proposition for the same map-rigging in California: If Texas does it, then so will we.

The Legislature is expected to approve that plan (and new maps that smash the state’s Republicans mostly along an inland stretch against the Sierra Nevada), allowing it to go before voters in November. Because unlike Texas, California voters will have to OK the gambit for it to move forward.

That seems as though it could happen. Axios reported this week that Newsom’s pollster, David Binder, found that 57% of California voters were likely to back the redistricting plan once they understood two points. First, that it was temporary and the state would go back to fair maps in a few years; and second, that California will go forward only if Texas or another state gerrymanders first.

Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Ohio could also redraw maps before 2026.

And it seems as if Trump is pushing these just-in-case states to at least try. Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana recently, supposedly to encourage that state to drum up support for the idea, even though Republicans hold seven of nine of the state’s seats already. Florida is another place where map-rigging could happen. MAGA drummed up four additional seats after Gov. Ron DeSantis redrew maps in 2022 to give the GOP more seats. So there is little reason to believe he wouldn’t push it even further.

From Gavin to gavel

But like so many political policies these days, redistricting is likely to end up in courts.

California Republicans appealed to the state Supreme Court to at least delay redistricting. They are argued that state law requires any legislation to be in print for 30 days before a vote is taken on it.

The Legislature has a long-used but ethically dubious workaround to this — they take another bill, one that is already written but basically dead, and simply delete its contents and drop in whatever new measure they don’t have time to pass under a fresh bill number. Voila — in print for 30 days, technically.

Will the Supreme Court choose to censure that behavior now?

Nope. Wednesday, the court declined to take the case.

Texas might also find itself in courts with new maps it advanced on Wednesday.

The UCLA Voting Rights Project released a study this week that found the new Texas maps may violate federal law that protects minority voters from being pushed into districts where their favored candidate has no chance of winning.

“Federal law prohibits purposefully drawing large minority populations of Black and Hispanic voters into districts in which their preferred candidate loses,” the report notes. “While the map appears to add an extra Hispanic-majority district, VRP findings show it systematically places minority communities in districts where bloc-voting by white voters overrides their candidate of choice.”

The report found that minority-crunching especially problematic around Dallas and San Antonio.

Someone will probably sue. Which raises the interesting but as-yet unanswered question (I did ask, but no word back yet from the governor’s office) on whether California would still move forward if the Texas maps are passed by the Legislature but held up in courts. That scenario might melt Republican heads — the possibility of five new Democratic seats without Texas to even them out.

A win, regardless

Whether or not Newsom manages to get his “big beautiful maps,” as he’s cheekily calling them, through voters, this is already a win for him.

Trump is in public opinion trouble. A recent report from consumer-data company Resonate found that 50% of respondents were “dissatisfied with Trump’s behavior.”

That aligns with a new Economist/YouGov poll showing that 56% of voters disapprove of Trump, a really high number.

Meanwhile, between his social media explosion and map-rigging, Newsom is seeing a huge bump. One California poll by Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility found him significantly leading over former Vice President Kamala Harris when it comes to who state voters would back in the next presidential race.

That poll found that Newsom leads Harris 25% to 19% among the state’s registered no-party-preference, Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

But it’s not just California. I am seriously shocked that even here in the Midwest, folks are talking about Newsom and many — even if they don’t agree with redistricting — see him in a favorable light for fighting back so aggressively on Texas and Trump.

Even if Newsom loses the redistricting initiative in California, he will be able to argue that he fought harder than anyone else to curtail Trump’s power, and have the receipts to back that up.

So whether he gamed this out in advance or luck and timing have collided in that magical fashion, Newsom has, for the moment, captured lightning in a bottle — and certainly will ride that energy as far as it will take him.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: How Georgia Went From the Vanguard of Democracy to the Front Lines of Autocracy
The what happened: How Gavin Newsom trolled his way to the top of social media
The L.A. Times special: How California’s proposed redistricting map compares to current congressional districts

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