RALEIGH, N.C. — Democrats rallying Tuesday against a new U.S. House map proposed by North Carolina Republicans seeking another GOP seat at President Trump’s behest acknowledged they’ll probably be unable to halt the redraw for now. But they vowed to defeat the plan in the long run.
The new map offered by Republican legislative leaders seeks to stop the reelection of Democratic Rep. Don Davis, one of North Carolina’s three Black representatives, by redrawing two of the state’s 14 congressional districts. Statewide election data suggest the proposal would result in Republicans winning 11 of those seats, up from the current 10.
The proposal attempts to satisfy Trump’s call for states led by Republicans to conduct mid-decade redistricting to gain more seats and retain his party’s grip on Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats need to gain just three more seats to seize control of the House, and the president’s party historically has lost seats in midterm elections.
With Republicans in the majority in both General Assembly chambers and state law preventing Democratic Gov. Josh Stein from using his veto stamp against a redistricting plan, the GOP-drawn map appeared headed to enactment after final House votes as soon as Wednesday. The state Senate gave its final approval early Tuesday on a party-line vote. A House redistricting committee debated the plan later Tuesday.
Still, about 300 protesters, Democratic Party officials and lawmakers gathering outside the old state Capitol pledged repeatedly Tuesday that redrawing the congressional map would have negative consequences for the GOP at the ballot box in 2026 and beyond. Litigation to challenge the enactment on the map also is likely on allegations of unlawful racial gerrymandering.
“We know we may not have the ability to stop the Republicans in Raleigh right now … but we are here to show that people across this state and across this nation are watching them,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said to cheers.
The gathering served Democrats to censure state Republicans they accuse of agreeing to kneel to Trump through a corrupt redrawing of district lines to target Davis.
State GOP leaders defended their action, saying Trump has won the state’s electoral votes all three times that he’s run for president — albeit narrowly — and thus merits more potential support in Congress.
The national redistricting battle began over the summer when Trump urged Republican-led Texas to reshape its U.S. House districts. After Texas lawmakers acted, California Democrats reciprocated by passing their own plan, which still needs voter approval in November.
Republicans argue that other Democratic-leaning states had already given themselves a disproportionate number of seats well before this national redistricting fight started.
“It is incumbent upon us to react to this environment, to respond to this environment, and not let these tactics that have happened in blue states dominate the control of Congress,” state Sen. Ralph Hise, the map’s chief author, said during Tuesday’s Senate debate.
Seminera and Robertson write for the Associated Press.
As California voters receive mail ballots for the November special election, which could upend the state’s congressional boundaries and determine control of the House, billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer said Thursday he will spend $12 million to back Democrats’ efforts to redraw districts to boost their party’s ranks in the legislative body.
The ballot measure was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats after President Trump urged Texas leaders to redraw their congressional districts before next year’s midterm election. Buttressing GOP numbers in Congress could help Trump continue enacting his agenda during his final two years in office.
“We must stop Trump’s election-rigging power grab,” Steyer said in a statement. “The defining fight through Nov. 4 is passing Proposition 50. In order to compete and win, Democrats can’t keep playing by the same old rules. This is how we fight back, and stick it to Trump.”
Steyer’s announcement makes him the biggest funder of pro-Proposition 50 efforts, surpassing billionaire financier George Soros, who has contributed $10 million to the effort.
Steyer founded a hedge fund whose investments included massive fossil fuel projects, but after he learned of the environmental consequences of these financial decisions, he divested and has worked to fight climate change. Steyer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Democratic candidates and causes and more than $300 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.
Steyer plans to launch a scathing ad Thursday night that imagines Trump watching election returns on Nov. 4 and furiously throwing fast food at a television when he sees Proposition 50 succeeding.
“Why did you do this to Trump?” the president asks. The ad then shows a fictional TV anchor saying that the ballot measure’s success makes it more likely that Trump will be investigated for corruption and that the records of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will be released. “I hate California,” Trump responds.
The advertisement is scheduled to start airing Thursday night during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The late-night show was in the spotlight after it was briefly suspended by Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC last month under pressure from the Trump administration because of a comment Kimmel made about the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The esoteric process of redistricting typically occurs once every decade after the U.S. Census to account for population shifts. The maps, historically drawn in smoke-filled backrooms, protected incumbents and created bizarrely shaped districts, such as the “ribbon of shame” along the California coast.
In recent decades, good-government advocates have fought to create districts that are logical and geographically compact and do not disenfranchise minority voters. At the forefront of the effort, California voters passed a 2010 ballot measure to create an independent commission to draw the state’s congressional boundaries.
But this year, Trump and his allies urged leaders of GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to boost Republicans’ prospects in next year’s midterm election. The House is closely divided, and retaining Republican control is crucial to Trump’s ability to enact his agenda.
California Democrats, led by Newson, responded in kind. The state Legislature voted in August to call a special election in November to decide on redrawn districts that could give their party five more seats in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest in the nation.
Supporters of Proposition 50 have vastly outraised the committees opposing the measure. Steyer’s announcement came one day after Charles Munger Jr., the largest donor to the opposition, spoke out publicly for the first time about why he had contributed $32 million to the effort.
“I’m fighting for the ordinary voter to have an effective say in their own government,” Munger told reporters. “I don’t want Californians ignored by the national government because all the districts are fortresses for one party or the other.”
A longtime opponent of gerrymandering, the bow-tie-wearing Palo Alto physicist bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created the independent commission to draw California’s congressional districts.
Munger, the son of a billionaire who was the right-hand man of investor Warren Buffett, declined to comment about whether he planned to give additional funds.
“I neither confirm nor deny rumors that involve the tactics of the campaign,” Munger told reporters. “Talk to me after the election is over.”
Voting in California’s special election continues through election day, Nov. 4.
Proposition 50, a measure that would draw new congressional districts for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections and the only measure on California’s statewide ballot this election, is the latest volley in a national political brawl that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Here is information Times reporters gathered about the redistricting measure:
What’s on the ballot
How and where to vote
Get our L.A. Times Politics newsletter
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox twice per week.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a new U.S. House map into law Sunday as part of President Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a narrow Republican majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Kehoe’s signature puts the redrawn districts into state law with a goal of helping Republicans win one additional seat. But it may not be the final action. Opponents are pursuing a referendum petition that, if successful, would force a statewide vote on the new map. They also have brought several lawsuits against it.
U.S. House districts were redrawn across the country after the 2020 census to account for population changes. But Missouri is the third state this year — following Texas, which then triggered a response from California — to try to redraw its districts for partisan advantage, a process known as gerrymandering.
Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new U.S. House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, though it still needs voter approval. Other states also are considering redistricting.
Each seat could be critical, because Democrats need to gain just three to win control of the House, which would allow them to check Trump’s agenda and carry out oversight investigations. Trump is trying to stave off a historical trend in which a president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections.
Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats. The new map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. It reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, which he has represented for two decades after serving as Kansas City’s first Black mayor.
Cleaver has denounced the gerrymandering plan for using Kansas City’s Troost Avenue — a street that has long segregated Black and white residents — as one of the dividing lines for the new districts.
Kehoe has defended the new map as a means of boosting Missouri’s “conservative, common-sense values” in the nation’s capital, ignoring Trump’s unabashedly partisan justification for it.
“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the congressional representation of states like New York, California, and Illinois. We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk,” Kehoe said in a statement.
Kehoe signed the new law during an event that was closed to the public.
Opponents are gathering petition signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum on the new map. They have until Dec. 11 to submit around 110,000 valid signatures, which would put the map on hold until a public vote can occur sometime next year.
Meanwhile, opponents also are pursuing a variety of legal challenges. Several lawsuits by voters, including a new one announced Sunday by a Democratic-affiliated group, contend that mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed under Missouri’s Constitution.
“It was not prompted by the law or a court order; it was the result of Republican lawmakers in Missouri following partisan directives from politicians in Washington, D.C.,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
A previously filed lawsuit by the NAACP contends that no “extraordinary occasion” existed for Kehoe to call lawmakers into session for redistricting.
A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union also asserts that the new Kansas City-area districts violate state constitutional requirements to be compact and contain equal populations. It notes that the redistricting legislation lists a “KC 811” voting precinct in both the 4th and 5th congressional districts, which it asserts is grounds to invalidate the new map.
But Kehoe’s office said there is no error. It said other government agencies had assigned the same name to two distinct voting locations.
Lieb writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
It’s a number that’s both tantalizing and fraught, depending on your political perspective.
For Democrats, that eyelash-thin margin means they’re thisclose to regaining power and a political toehold in next year’s midterm election. All they need is a gain of three House seats. For Trump and fellow Republicans, it means their hegemony over Washington and life as we know it dangles by a perilously thin thread.
That tension explains the redistricting wars now blazing throughout our great land.
“History is on Democrats’ side, but it’s too early to know what the national political environment is going to be like,” said Nathan Gonzales, one of the country’s top political handicappers and publisher of the nonpartisan campaign guide Inside Elections. “We don’t know the overall mood of the electorate, how satisfied voters [will be] with Republicans in power in Washington or how open to change they’ll be a year from now.”
A look back offers some clues, though it should be said no two election cycles are alike and the past is only illuminating insofar as it casts light on certain patterns.
(Take that as a caveat, weasel words or whatever you care to call it.)
In the last half century, there have been 13 midterm elections. The out party — that is, the one that doesn’t hold the presidency — has won 13 or more House seats in eight of those elections. Going back even further, since World War II the out party has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats.
In Trump’s last midterm election, in 2018, Democrats won 40 House seats — including seven in California — to seize control. (That was 17 more than they needed.) A Democratic gain of that magnitude seems unlikely next year, barring a complete and utter GOP collapse. That’s because there are fewer Republicans sitting in districts that Democrats carried in the most recent presidential election, which left them highly vulnerable.
In 2018, 25 Republicans represented districts won by Hillary Clinton. In 2026, there are just three Republicans in districts Kamala Harris carried. (Thirteen Democrats represent districts that Trump won.)
Let’s pause before diving into more numbers.
OK. Ready?
There are 435 House seats on the ballot next year. Most are a lock for one party or the other.
Based on the current congressional map, Inside Elections rates 64 House seats nationwide as being at least somewhat competitive, with a dozen considered toss-ups. The Cook Political Report, another gold-plated handicapper, rates 72 seats competitive or having the potential to be so, with 18 toss-ups.
Both agree that two of those coin-flip races are in California, where Democrats Adam Gray and Derek Tran are fighting to hang onto seats they narrowly won in, respectively, the Central Valley and Orange County. (The Democratic gerrymander seeks to shore up those incumbents.)
You really can’t assess the 2026 odds without knowing how the redistricting fight comes out.
Republicans could pick up as many as 16 seats through partisan map-making, Inside Elections forecasts, a number that would be reduced if California voters approve Proposition 50. Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, puts GOP gains as high as 13, again depending on the November outcome in California.
One huge element is Trump’s approval rating. Simply put, the less popular a president, the more his party tends to suffer at the polls.
Right now Trump’s approval rating is a dismal 43%, according to the Cook Report’s PollTracker. That could change, but it’s a danger sign for Republicans. Over the past three decades, every time the president’s net job approval was negative a year from the midterm election, his party lost House seats.
Another thing Democats have going for them is the passion of their voters, who’ve been flocking to the polls in off-year and special elections. The Downballot, which tracks races nationwide, finds Democratic candidates have far surpassed Kamala Harris’ 2024 performance, a potential harbinger of strong turnout in 2026.
Those advantages are somewhat offset by a GOP edge in two other measures. Republicans have significantly outraised Democrats and have limited the number of House members retiring. Generally speaking, it’s tougher for a party to defend a seat when it comes open.
In short, for all the partisan passions, the redistricting wars aren’t likely to decide control of the House.
“Opinions of the economy and Trump’s handling of it, the popularity (or lack thereof) of Republicans’ signature legislation” — the tax-cutting, Medicaid-slashing bill passed in July — as well as “partisan enthusiasm to vote are going to be more determinative to the 2026 outcome than redistricting alone,” Amy Walter, the Cook Report’s editor-in-chief, wrote in a recent analysis.
In other words, control of the House will most likely rest in the hands of voters, not scheming politicians.
One could ask whether the not-insignificant cost of the special election is the best use of taxpayer dollars, or if the sum would be better spent, as veteran GOP strategist Ken Khachigian suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “on firefighters, police officers, schoolteachers and road repairs.”
The chairman of California’s Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, placed a more concrete price tag on the virtues of Proposition 50, suggesting to the Bay Area News Group that money spent on the special election would be offset — and then some — by the billions California would otherwise lose under President Trump’s hostile regime.
There is, however, an added, if intangible, cost to Proposition 50: Effectively disenfranchising millions of conservative and Republican-leaning Californians, who already feel as though they’re ignored and politically impotent.
Under the Democratic gerrymander, the already-meager Republican House contingent — nine of 52 California House members — could be cut practically in half. Starting in January 2027, the state’s entire Republican delegation could fit in a Jeep Wagoneer, with plenty of room to spare.
This in a state where Trump received over 6 million votes in 2024.
The cost of California’s special election is estimated at $282.6 million. The campaign is effectively a roll out for a Newsom presidential bid.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The would-be autocrat issuing diktats from the Oval Office may be odious to many. But making people feel as though their vote is irrelevant, their voice is muzzled and they have no stake in our political system because elections are essentially meaningless — at least as far as which party prevails — is not a recipe for a contented and engaged citizenry, or a healthy democracy.
We already have a chief executive who has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees himself as the president of red America, of those who support him unequivocally, with everyone else regarded as evil or subversive. We’ve seen how well that’s worked out.
Is the solution electing a governor for blue California, who — if not openly scorning the state’s millions of Republicans — is willing to render them politically powerless?
Proponents of Proposition 50 say the measure is needed to offset Republican gerrymanders in Texas and other states.
Your friendly columnist put the question to those seven Democrats. What do they say to Republican voters who already feel disregarded and politically unrepresented? As governor, is there a place for them in your vision of California?
Most, as you’d expect, vowed to be a governor for all: Red, blue, independent, libertarian, vegetarian.
Former Rep. Katie Porter noted she served a purple Orange County district and won support from voters of all stripes “because they knew I wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for anyone — no matter to what party they belong — who makes life harder for California families.” She said in a text message she’d bring “that same tenacity, grit and courage” to Sacramento.
Toni Atkins, a former Assembly speaker and state Senate leader, texted that she’s “made it a priority to listen to every Californian — Democrat, Republican, and Independent.” Assailing Republicans in Congress, she described Proposition 50 as “a way to fight back now” while eventually reverting to the independent redistricting commission that drew up the current congressional lines.
Xavier Becerra, the state’s former attorney general and a member of Joe Biden’s cabinet, said he would work to see that all Californians, regardless of party, benefit from his leadership on healthcare, housing and making the state more affordable. Doing that, he texted, requires fighting Trump and “Republican extremists” seeking to rig the midterm elections.
Betty Yee, the former state controller, just finished a campaign swing through rural California, where, she said, voters asked similar questions along the lines of what about us? Those vast reaches beyond the state’s blue coastal enclaves have long been a hotbed of resentment toward California’s ruling Democratic establishment.
Yee said she urged voters there to “look at your representation now.” The Republican-run Congress, she noted, has approved budget cuts that threaten to shut down rural hospitals and gut badly needed social safety-net programs. “How is that representing your interest?” she asked.
Tony Thurmond, the state schools superintendent, said much the same.
“One of the reasons that I support this measure is because California Republicans in Congress who voted for the ‘big, beautiful bill’ voted for a bill that they knew was going to throw millions of people off of health insurance,” Thurmond said. “And that’s troubling, and I actually think that this is a way to counter that action and to make changes in Congress.”
Villaraigosa called Proposition 50 “a temporary … direct response to MAGA’s election rigging efforts in Texas.” Cloobeck texted, “This is not the way it should be, but democracy and California are under attack, and there is no way in hell I’m not going to FIGHT.”
There’s a certain presumption and paternalism to the notion that California Democrats know what’s best for California Republicans.
But as Thurmond noted, “They have a right to vote it down. We’re putting it in front of the voters and giving them a chance to exercise their viewpoints, democratically.”
Every Californian who casts a ballot can decide what best suits them.
Some other year, under some other president, Republican Young Kim might have been a shoo-in to represent a majority-minority congressional district containing pieces of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.
Kim’s profile is as compelling as it is rare for someone running under the GOP banner: an immigrant, an Asian American and, perhaps most important, a woman in a year when female voter enthusiasm is surging. If she wins, she would be the first Korean American woman elected to Congress.
All of these facets might help her navigate the demographic changes that have been eroding Republican support for decades in the 39th Congressional District, where roughly two-thirds of residents are either Asian or Latino and immigrants make up about a third of the population.
But in this year’s tough midterm election, likely to be a referendum on Donald Trump’s divisive presidency, Kim will be forced to stitch together a majority out of disparate factions: die-hard Trump supporters, Trump-averse minorities and affluent suburban women. Kim, 55, finds herself in a race that’s virtually tied in a district where retiring GOP incumbent Ed Royce won the last three elections by double digits.
On the campaign trail, she says, she’s faced questions about the president — his tweets, his policies, his tone. Kim says that Trump’s rhetoric concerns her and that his disparaging remarks about immigrants and women can be frustrating.
“I try to tell them I’m not running to be his spokesperson or represent Donald Trump in the White House,” she says.
Many GOP House candidates — in similarly diverse districts from the Virginia exurbs outside Washington to the bedroom communities east of Denver — share her plight.
In Southern California, Republicans’ tactics for dealing with Trump range from avoidance, as with two-term Rep. Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach, to a full embrace by Diane Harkey, who is running for a seat left open by retiring Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista.
Kim’s 39th Congressional District includes Chino Hills, Fullerton, Yorba Linda — the birthplace of Richard Nixon — and Diamond Bar.
Here, a taqueria can share a parking lot with a Taiwanese cafe. Spanish, Korean, Mandarin and Tagalog can be heard along with English in the upscale ethnic supermarkets that dot the area.
As she travels the region, Kim has tried to drive home two major points: that people living here know her, and that she understands their stories. She’s spent decades in the public arena, first as a longtime district staffer to Royce and then as a one-term state assemblywoman. She was once a TV talk show host on Korean-language television.
Kim speaks with a knowing ease about the sacrifices immigrants make for a shot at prosperity.
She often shares memories of interpreting for her parents and picking up cans and bottles on the beaches of Guam — a way station between Seoul and Hawaii, where her family later settled — to help raise money for their church.
“My personal experience of being an immigrant, having gone through what this diverse immigrant community has gone through, struggling,” Kim said. “Those are real life experiences that really helped me understand … the district.”
Kim, who owns a government affairs consulting business, moved to Southern California 37 years ago to attend USC. She lives in Fullerton with her husband, Charles; they have four adult children.
One recent Saturday at a campaign office in Rowland Heights, Kim bowed and greeted supporters with “Annyeonghaseyo!” — “Hello!” in Korean — before Saga Conroy took the stage.
“President Trump is not on the ballot, but his agenda is totally in this midterm election,” said Conroy, trying to pump up volunteers. “If we lose the majority in Congress, everything he achieved could be lost.”
It was a departure from Kim’s attempts to cast herself as an independent voice who will call out the president when she disagrees but is willing to work with him on policies that help the district. Kim’s campaign manager, wincing at the remarks, felt compelled to point out that Conroy isn’t a staffer but a volunteer coordinator for the California Republican Party.
“Voters want somebody to stand up to Trump and put a check on him,” said Ben Tulchin, a veteran pollster helping strategize for Kim’s opponent, Democrat Gil Cisneros. “A Republican who worked for a Republican member of Congress is not the person they’re looking for.”
As supporters snacked on spicy Korean rice cakes and egg rolls at the campaign office, one young woman approached Kim with a contribution and an invitation to speak at the next Rotary Club meeting in Fullerton.
“There’s three rotary clubs in Fullerton, so which one?” Kim said without missing a beat. “The main one,” the woman replied.
Kim insists that her strategy of showing up to dozens of groundbreakings, cultural fairs and community events will insulate her from national politics in a way she couldn’t manage in 2016, when she sought reelection to her Assembly seat.
Her Democratic opponent plastered the district with mailers featuring Kim’s face alongside the polarizing GOP presidential nominee and even released an ad disguised as a music video featuring lyrics declaring “Young Kim is like Donald Trump.” It contributed to her loss in the swing district.
Back then, Kim tried to sidestep the issue, saying she’d never met Trump and calling the tactic “desperate.” This time, she’s drawing sharper distinctions between her views and the president’s.
In an interview, Kim maintained that her party has not been captured by one man. “There is no party of Trump,” she said, banging her hand on a table. She’s running, she said, “because I’ve been here, I’ve been working here, I’ve raised my family here, I know the district…. I’m not running for the party of Trump.”
Still, Trump so dominates political discussion these days Kim can’t help but be drawn into the conversation. Her strategy is to ignore the president and his serial controversies as best she can. Kim, for instance, declined this week to comment on Trump’s mocking of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
Kim has sought to carve out her own identity on issues by opposing, for instance, Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents who crossed the border illegally, saying it “does not live up” to American values. She vows to fight for a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the country illegally as children.
She also breaks with Trump by supporting what he refers to as “chain migration,” which allows citizens to sponsor family members to join them. Like many in her district, Kim’s family has benefited from the long-standing policy. Kim’s adult sister, who had married an American serviceman and joined the military herself, was able to sponsor her, both of her parents and four siblings.
But Kim echoes Trump in other ways.
She called California’s so-called sanctuary state law an “affront to law-abiding citizens and a threat to public safety.” She praised a decision by the Trump administration to weigh in on a lawsuit against Harvard that alleges the university’s admissions policies discriminate against Asian Americans.
One of her first campaign ads emphasized how her family came to the country legally “and not because we wanted handouts.”
Bernie Overland, left, speaks to Democratic congressional candidate Gil Cisneros, center, at his home in Fullerton.
(Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times)
Those positions may help Kim hold on to support from the Republican base, but they alienate others who want no part of Trump and his presidency. There are frequent reminders of the fine line she walks.
Bernie Overland, a 78-year-old Republican, opened his door in Fullerton one recent Saturday when Cisneros, the Democrat, came knocking. Cisneros was there to speak to Overland’s wife, who’s a Democrat, but he first asked Bernie what issues he cares about most.
“Well, Trump is certainly one,” he said with a laugh.
He’s angry about Trump’s plans to build a border wall (he called it “a waste”) and is incensed by the risk of ballooning national debt from recently passed tax cuts.
“I just think he is taking this country down the garden path to disaster,” Overland said in an interview later. Overland says that he wants to send a message to Trump in this midterm election and that nothing Kim does and says will change his mind.
His plan: Vote for any candidate who is not a Republican.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe is calling Missouri lawmakers into a special session to redraw the state’s U.S. House districts as part of a growing national battle between Republicans and Democrats seeking an edge in next year’s congressional elections.
Kehoe’s announcement Friday comes just hours after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain five more seats in the 2026 midterm elections. It marked a win for President Trump, who has been urging Republican-led states to reshape district lines to give the party a better shot at retaining control of the House.
Missouri would become the third state to pursue an unusual mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage. Republican-led Texas took up the task first but was quickly countered by Democratic-led California.
Kehoe scheduled Missouri’s special session to begin Sept. 3.
Missouri is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats — Reps. Wesley Bell in St. Louis and Emanuel Cleaver in Kansas City. Republicans hope to gain one more seat by reshaping Cleaver’s district to stretch further from Kansas City into suburban or rural areas that lean more Republican.
Some Republicans had pushed for a map that could give them a 7-1 edge when redrawing districts after the 2020 census. But the GOP legislative majority ultimately opted against it. Some feared the more aggressive plan could be susceptible to a legal challenge and could backfire in a poor election year for Republicans by creating more competitive districts that could allow Democrats to win three seats.
Republicans won a 220-215 House majority over Democrats in 2024, an outcome that aligned almost perfectly with the share of the vote won by the two parties in districts across the U.S., according to a recent Associated Press analysis. Although the overall outcome was close to neutral, the AP’s analysis shows that Democrats and Republicans each benefited from advantages in particular states stemming from the way districts were drawn.
Democrats would need to net three seats in next year’s election to take control of the chamber. The incumbent president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterm elections, as was the case for Trump in 2018, when Democrats won control of the House and subsequently launched investigations of Trump.
Seeking to avoid a similar situation in his second term, Trump has urged Republican-led states to fortify their congressional seats.
In Texas, Republicans already hold 25 of the 38 congressional seats.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video he posted on X of him signing the legislation.
In response to the Texas efforts, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom approved a November statewide election on a revised U.S. House map that gives Democrats there a chance of winning five additional seats. Democrats already hold 43 of California’s 52 congressional seats.
Newsom, who has emerged as a leading adversary of Trump on redistricting and other issues, tauntingly labeled Abbott on X as the president’s “#1 lapdog” following the signing.
Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit this week ahead of Abbott’s signing the bill, saying the new map weakens the electoral influence of Black voters. Texas Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new map in court.
The redistricting battle could spread to other states. Republicans could seek to squeeze more seats out of Ohio, where the state constitution requires districts to be redrawn before the 2026 elections.
Republican officials in Florida, Indiana and elsewhere also are considering revising their U.S. House districts, as are Democratic officials in Illinois, Maryland and New York.
In Utah, a judge recently ordered the Republican-led Legislature to draw new congressional districts after finding that lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Republicans have won all four of Utah’s congressional seats under the map approved by lawmakers in 2021.
Lieb and DeMillo write for the Associated Press. DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Ark. AP journalist Jim Vertuno contributed from Austin, Texas.
“The essence of the challenge to the party is weakness,” Newsom said during an on-stage interview Wednesday at an event hosted by the news outlet Politico.
Newsom said some of his more combative messaging choices, including sitting for interviews with Fox News host Sean Hannity and debating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, were efforts to break the cycle of Democrats responding to grievances ginned up by right-wing media, rather than setting their own agenda.
The same applies to his bombastic social media posts, posted by the governor’s media office, mocking Trump’s unhinged missives (complete with capital letters and exclamation points) and his new online store, called the Patriot Shop, that is peddling a tank top that says, “Trump is not hot,” among other not-to-subtle digs at the president. Newsom said he’s even toying with offering a “Trump corruption” crypto coin, a shot at the president’s own cryptocurrency, which the governor called a grift so great that it makes “dictators blush.”
Newsom said the problem with the Democrats, who are shut out of every branch of government in Washington, D.C., was best summed up by President Clinton after his party was shellacked in the 2002 midterm elections: American voters, given the choice, prefer “strong and wrong to weak and right.”
“Our party needs to wake up to that,” Newsom said. “We have to use every tool at our disposal to not only assert ourselves, but prove ourselves to the American people.”
Proposition 50, the redistricting measure that California voters will see on their ballot Nov. 4, is in the same combative vein, Newsom said.
At Newsom’s urging, leaders at the Capitol shoved the measure through the state Legislature and onto the ballot in record time last week. If voters approve the measure, California would scrap its independently drawn congressional lines for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections in favor of partisan districts that could help California Democrats win as many as five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, helping the party’s effort to win control and neutralize Trump’s far-right agenda.
Democrats have cast the effort as a way to counter the Texas GOP, which recently redrew the state’s congressional districts to help Republicans pick up five House seats.
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Democrats ended a two-week walkout Monday that stalled Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts as part of a national partisan brawl over President Trump’s desire to reshape U.S. House maps to his advantage.
Their return to the Texas Capitol will allow the Republican-run Legislature to proceed as California Democrats separately advance a countereffort to redraw their congressional boundaries in retaliation. The tit-for-tat puts the nation’s two most populous states at the center of an expanding fight over control of Congress ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The battle also has rallied Democrats nationally after infighting and frustrations among the party’s voters since Republicans took control of the White House and Capitol Hill in January.
Dozens of state House Democrats left the state Aug. 3 to deny their Republican-majority colleagues the attendance necessary to vote on redrawn maps intended to send five more Texas Republicans to Washington.
After spending nearly two weeks in Illinois and elsewhere, they declared victory when Republicans adjourned their first special session Friday and Democrats around the country rallied in opposition to the Trump-led gerrymandering effort. They pointed specifically to California’s release of proposed maps intended to increase Democrats’ U.S. House advantage by five seats, in effect neutralizing any Republican gains in Texas.
Many of the absent Democrats left Chicago early Monday and landed hours later at a private airfield in Austin, where several boarded a large charter bus to the Capitol. Once inside, they were greeted by cheering supporters. And for the first time since Trump’s redistricting push accelerated into a national issue, the Texas House floor was near full capacity when lawmakers convened briefly Monday afternoon.
Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows did not mention redistricting on the floor Monday but promised swift action on the Legislature’s agenda.
“The majority has the right to prevail. The minority has the right to be heard,” the speaker said. “We are done waiting.”
Democrats cheered at the Austin statehouse
Cheering supporters greeted returning lawmakers inside the Capitol before the House convened for a brief session.
“We killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation — reshaping the entire 2026 landscape,” Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said in a written statement.
Wu has promised Democrats would challenge the new designs in court.
The House did not take up any bills Monday and was not scheduled to return until Wednesday.
Trump has pressured other Republican-run states to consider redistricting as well, while Democratic governors in multiple statehouses have indicated they would follow California’s lead in response. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said that his state will hold a Nov. 4 special referendum on the redrawn districts.
The president wants to shore up Republicans’ narrow House majority and avoid a repeat of the 2018 midterms during his first presidency. Democrats regained House control then and used their majority to stymie his agenda and twice impeach him.
On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing district lines puts Democrats within three seats of a majority. Of the 435 total House seats, only several dozen districts are competitive. So even slight changes in a few states could affect which party wins control.
Texas’ governor jumped to the president’s aid
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott added redistricting to an initial special session agenda that included a number of issues, but most notably a package of bills responding to devastating floods that killed more than 130 people last month.
Abbott has blamed Democrats’ absence for delaying action on those measures. Democrats have countered that Abbott’s capitulation to Trump is responsible for the delay because he insisted on in effect linking the hyper-partisan matter to the nonpartisan flood relief.
Redistricting typically occurs once at the beginning of each decade to coincide with the census. Many states, including Texas, give legislators the power to draw maps. California is among those that empower independent commissions with the task, giving Newsom an additional hurdle in his bid to match or exceed whatever partisan moves Texas makes.
Abbott, Burrows and other Republicans tried various threats and legal maneuvers to pressure Democrats’ return, including issuing civil warrants for absent lawmakers’ arrest. As long as they were out of state, those lawmakers remained beyond the reach of Texas authorities.
The Democrats who came back to the chamber Monday did so without being detained by law enforcement. However, plainclothes officers escorted them from the chamber after Monday’s session. And Burrows’ office said Texas Department of Public Safety officers will follow the Democratic returnees around the clock to ensure that they return again.
Additionally, the lawmakers who left face fines of up to $500 for each legislative day they missed. Burrows has insisted Democratic lawmakers also will pick up the tab for state troopers and others who attempted to corral them during the walkout.
California lawmakers were scheduled to convene later Monday.
Barrow and Figueroa write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.
Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a request Sunday seeking records from the Trump administration to explain why a phalanx of Border Patrol agents showed up outside a news conference held by leading California Democrats last week.
Newsom filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking for “all documents and records” related to the Aug. 14 Border Patrol operation in downtown Los Angeles, which took place outside the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. At the news conference, Newsom announced a campaign to seek voter approval to redraw California’s congressional maps to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House and stymieing Trump’s agenda in the 2026 midterm elections.
“Trump’s use of the military and federal law enforcement to try to intimidate his political opponents is yet another dangerous step towards authoritarianism,” Newsom posted Sunday on X. “This is an attempt to advance a playbook from the despots he admires in Russia and North Korea.”
Newsom announced at the press event the “Election Rigging Response Act” — which would scrap independently drawn congressional maps in favor of those sketched by Democratic strategists in an attempt to counter moves by Republicans in Texas and other GOP-led states to gerrymander their own districts to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, dozens of armed federal agents massed in the adjacent streets wearing masks, helmets and camouflage.
Newsom and other leading Democrats, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, dismissed the Border Patrol action as an intimidation tactic. In response to questions from The Times on Sunday, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the agents were “focused on enforcing the law, not on [Newsom].”
McLaughlin said two people were arrested during the Little Tokyo operation. One was a drug trafficker, according to McLaughlin, who said the other was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been a focus of the Trump administration’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportation efforts.
She did not respond to questions about how many agents were deployed or what specific agencies were involved in the Aug. 14 operation. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration operations in California, was at the scene and briefly spoke to reporters.
McLaughlin did not name either person arrested or respond to a request for further information or evidence of links between the arrests and the Venezuelan gang.
“Under President Trump and [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” she wrote in an e-mailed statement. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, witnesses at the scene identified one of the men arrested as Angel, a delivery worker who was carrying strawberries when he was captured.
“He was just doing his normal delivery to the courthouse,” said the man’s colleague, Carlos Franco. “It’s pretty sad, because I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, and Angel isn’t going to be there.”
In the FOIA request, Newsom’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, called the Border Patrol deployment an “attempt to intimidate the people of California from defending a fair electoral process.”
In addition to documents related to the planning of the raid, the FOIA request also seeks “any records referencing Governor Newsom or the rally that was scheduled to occur” and communications between federal law enforcement officials and Fox News, which allowed the Trump-friendly media outlet to embed a reporter with Border Patrol that day.
Trump’s increased use of the military and federal law enforcement against his political rivals has drawn growing concern in recent months. The president deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to quell protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this year. Just last week, Trump sent swarms of federal law enforcement officials to Washington, D.C., to combat what he sees as out-of-control crime, despite the fact that most crime statistics show violence in the nation’s capital is at a 30-year low.
Although Newsom demanded an answer by early September, the federal government is notoriously slow in responding to FOIA requests and will often delay responses for years. A spokesman for Newsom did not immediately respond to questions on Sunday about what, if any, other legal steps the governor was prepared to take.
Voters would have to approve Newsom’s plan to redraw the congressional maps in a special election in November. The new maps, drawn by Democratic strategists and lawmakers behind closed doors instead of the independent commission that voters previously chose, would concentrate Republican voters in a few deep-red pockets of the state and eliminate an Inland Empire district long held by the GOP.
In total, Democrats would likely pick up five seats in California in the midterms under the redrawn maps, possibly countering or outpacing Republican efforts to tilt their map red in Texas. Other states have already begun to consider redrawing their maps along more partisan lines in response to growing anxieties over the fight to control the House of Representatives in 2026.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
The redistricting plan taking shape in Sacramento and likely headed toward voters in November could shift the Golden State’s political landscape for at least six years and determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.
Maps made public Friday afternoon show how California Democrats hope to reconfigure the state’s 52 congressional districts. The plan targets five of California’s nine Republican members of Congress, and is designed to counteract the redistricting efforts in Texas that would favor Republicans.
The state Legislature is expected to place the new map and a constitutional amendment to override the state’s independent redistricting process on a Nov. 4 special election ballot.
Enter your address below or select somewhere on the current map to see how the districts could change.
Congressional District 3 is represented by Kevin Kiley (R). The proposed District 3 would include 546,805 citizens of voting age.
Current: CA-3
Your district is represented by Kevin Kiley (R).
Proposed: CA-3
Your new district would include 546,805 citizens of voting age.
<!--
LOS ANGELES TIMES
-->
Sean Greene and Hailey Wang contributed to this report.
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Republican leaders said Tuesday that they were prepared to end their stalemated special session and immediately begin another standoff with Democrats in the GOP’s efforts to redraw congressional maps as directed by President Trump.
It’s the latest indication that Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections will become an extended standoff that promises to reach multiple statehouses controlled by both major parties.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows confirmed the plans during a brief session Tuesday morning that marked another failure to meet the required attendance standards to conduct official business because dozens of Democrats have left the state to stymie the GOP’s partisan gerrymandering attempts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Burrows said from the House floor that lawmakers will not attempt to reconvene again until Friday. If Democrats are still absent — and they have given no indication that they plan to return — the speaker said Republicans will end the current session and Gov. Greg Abbott will immediately call another.
The governor, a Trump ally, confirmed his intentions in a statement.
“The Special Session #2 agenda will have the exact same agenda, with the potential to add more items critical to Texans,” Abbott wrote. “There will be no reprieve for the derelict Democrats who fled the state and abandoned their duty to the people who elected them. I will continue to call special session after special session until we get this Texas first agenda passed.”
Abbott called the current session with an extensive agenda that included disaster relief for floods that killed more than 130 people. Democrats balked when Abbott added Trump’s redistricting idea to the agenda. Burrows on Tuesday did not mention redistricting but chided Democrats for not showing up for debate on the flood response package.
The redistricting legislation would reshape the state’s congressional districts in a design aimed at sending five more Republicans to Washington.
The scheme is part of Trump’s push to shore up Republicans’ narrow House majority and avoid a repeat of his first presidency, when the 2018 midterms restored Democrats to a House majority that blocked his agenda and twice impeached him. Current maps nationally put Democrats within three seats of retaking the House majority — with only several dozen competitive districts across 435 total seats.
Texas Republicans have issued civil warrants for the absent Democrats. Because they are out of state, those lawmakers are beyond the reach of Texas authorities.
Burrows said Tuesday that absent Democrats would have to pay for all state government costs for law enforcement officials attempting to track them down. Burrows has said state troopers and others have run up “six figures in overtime costs” trying to corral Democratic legislators.
Barrow and Lathan write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.
With Democrats lining up for a bare-knuckle match on redistricting, Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered President Trump a cease-fire proposal: No redrawing congressional maps in red states and California will stand down, he wrote in a letter sent to Trump on Monday morning.
“If you will not stand down, I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states,” he said. “But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.”
Newsom’s latest play comes as the drama around redistricting heightened over the weekend. Democratic leaders in other blue states argued on Sunday morning political shows that they were ready to battle head-to-head over the congressional district maps, which are normally tied to the census taken once a decade.
“Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives, he cheats at golf, and now he’s trying to cheat the American people out of their votes,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on “Meet the Press” Sunday.
Newsom has been at center stage in this national political fight that could determine the outcome of the midterm elections and, by default, the strength of the president’s power. The Republican-led Congress handed Trump “the big beautiful bill” that will supercharge immigration enforcement — his signature issue. And it has been deferential to his whims, but the Republican Party losing control of the House and Senate would be a major blow to his agenda.
The national political fight is gearing up with much at stake for both parties. Last week, Newsom hosted Texas Democrats who — under threat of arrest and daily $500 fines — had left the state in a bid to prevent their Legislature from altering the congressional maps. And he vowed to “nullify” what happens in Texas.
“You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy, while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you hope to make,” he told Trump in the letter. “This attempt to rig congressional maps to hold onto power before a single vote is cast in the 2026 election is an affront to American democracy.”
Trump has been pushing the Texas GOP to redraw congressional district maps, saying they are “entitled” to five seats. And he argued on CNBC last week that California was “gerrymandered,” pointing out the congressional delegation didn’t match the presidential vote results.
But, unlike some states, California has an independent redistricting committee.
On Friday, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called Newsom “a loser of the highest order” who would “never be president no matter how hard he prostitutes himself to the press.”
The California’s redistricting plan may be a risky gambit.
The plan calls for the state Legislature to approve a constitutional amendment establishing new congressional voting districts crafted to make GOP members vulnerable. The bill would create a Nov. 4 special election in which voters would decide whether to temporarily pause congressional boundaries created by an independent redistricting commission in 2021 and adopt new maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.
If approved by voters, the measure would include a “trigger” specifying that it would take effect only if Texas or other Republican-led states followed through with redrawing their maps to boost GOP seats before the midterm election. California would revert to its existing redistricting law after the next census and before the 2032 election.
Times staff writers Taryn Luna and Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — California became center stage for the national political fight over House seats Friday when Gov. Gavin Newsom welcomed Democratic lawmakers from Texas who fled their home state to foil President Trump’s plans to redraw Congressional districts.
California lawmakers plan to respond with their own plan to gerrymander districts to favor Democrats and neutralize any Republican seats gained in Texas in 2026, with a proposed map expected to become public next week, Newsom said at a press conference after meeting with the lawmakers.
“Make no mistake, California is moving forward,” the governor said. “We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what’s happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas.”
He noted that while Democrats still support the state’s independent redistricting commission, they must counter Trump’s plan in GOP-led states to give their party a better chance in next year’s midterm election.
“They drew first blood,” he later added of Republicans.
Asked about the gathering, a Trump administration spokesperson said Newsom was seeking the limelight to further his political ambitions.
“Gavin Newsom is a loser of the highest order and he will never be president, no matter how hard he prostitutes himself to the press,” said the spokesperson, Steven Cheung.
Friday marked the second time in two weeks that Texas Democrats have stood next to Newsom at the California Governor’s Mansion and warned that Republican efforts to draw a new map in their state would dilute the power of Black and brown voters.
The Democrats hoped that their departure would leave the state Legislature with too few members present to change the map in a special session. They face $500 fines for each day of absence, as well as threats of arrest and removal from office by Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP officials. Some of the Democratic lawmakers were evacuated from a Chicago hotel where they were staying after a bomb threat on Wednesday.
“We are now facing threats — the threat that we’re going to lose our jobs, the threat of financial ruin, the threat that we will be hunted down as our colleagues sit on their hands and remain silent, as we all get personal threats to our lives,” said Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston), one of six Texas lawmakers at the press conference, who was among those evacuated from the Chicago hotel. “We as Democrats are standing up to ensure that the voices of every voter is lifted up in this next election, and that the next election is not stolen from them.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco); Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), chair of the California Democratic congressional delegation; Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg); Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and other elected officials joined the meeting in a show of unity as California Democrats attempt to convince their own state’s voters to fight back.
Pelosi noted that the state’s congressional delegation is united in backing the redistricting proposal to counter Trump.
“The President has paved over the Rose Garden. He’s paved over freedom of speech. He’s paved over freedom of education, [an] independent judiciary, the rule of law,” Pelosi said. “He’s gone too far. We will not let him pave over free and fair elections in our country, starting with what he’s trying to do in Texas.”
She fought back against an argument some have made — that two wrongs don’t make a right.
“This is self-defense for our democracy,” she said.
The California plan calls for the state Legislature to approve a constitutional amendment establishing new Congressional voting districts crafted to make GOP members vulnerable.
Passage of the bill would result in a special election on Nov. 4, with California voters deciding if the state should temporarily pause the congressional boundaries created by an independent redistricting commission in 2021 and adopt new maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.
If approved by voters, the measure would include a “trigger” specifying that it would only take effect if Texas or other Republican-led states follow through with redrawing their maps to boost GOP seats before the midterm election. California would revert to its existing redistricting law after the next census and before the 2032 election.
At least so far, California voters appear uncertain about whether they want to swap Newsom’s plan for the independent redistricting system they previously adopted at the ballot box.
An Emerson College poll found support for redrawing California’s congressional map at 33% and opposition at 25%. The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted Aug. 4 and 5, found that 42% were undecided.
Newsom has expressed confidence that California voters will back his plan, which he is casting as a rebuttal to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the midterm elections.
“I’m confident we’ll get it when people know what it is and what it’s not, and I think, at the end of the day, they understand what’s at stake,” Newsom said Thursday.
Newsom argues that California’s process is more transparent than Trump’s because voters here will see the map and decide if the state should go forward with it.
To fulfill Trump’s request for five additional seats, Abbott is attempting to redraw House districts in Texas through a state legislative process that does not require voter approval. It’s unclear what will happen in Austin, with Democrats determined to block the effort and Abbott and other Texas Republicans insisting they will keep pressing it.
The current special session ends on Aug. 19. But in an interview with NBC News Thursday evening, Abbott vowed “to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”
In addition to arrest on civil warrants, the Democrats are facing threats of being removed from office. Direct-deposit payments to the legislators have been curtailed, forcing them to pick up their checks in person at the state capitol in Austin or go without the money.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions have reached a new low. In his efforts to look like a “fighter” ahead of a potential run for the presidency in 2028, he’s willing to ignore democratic rules in pursuit of political aims, setting aside the state’s independent redistricting system to counter Texas Republicans’ proposed partisan gerrymander. Newsom and his allies want to maximize the number of California Democrats elected to Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
In 2008 and 2010, California voters passed ballot initiatives that gave the power to draw the state’s legislative and congressional district lines to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, a 14-person independent body composed of five Democrats, five Republicans and four people who are registered with neither of the two major parties. Potential commissioners go through an extensive vetting and selection process (which the state Legislature participates in) and are prohibited from many forms of political activism, including donating to candidates, running for office or working for elected officials.
Since the latest redistricting, in 2021 — triggered as usual by the constitutionally mandated decennial census — the map crafted by the commission has survived legal and political challenges, and the current districts are set to be in place through the next round of redistricting in 2031.
Now Newsom wants to prematurely redraw the lines and craft his own partisan gerrymander for the November 2026 midterm elections, wresting control of the process away from the commission and giving it instead to the Democratic majority in the state Legislature. Last week, Newsom confirmed that he will call a special election to get voter approval for this end-run around the commission, but even dressed up with a vote, this is cynical politics, not democracy, at work.
Newsom’s excuse is the sudden partisan redistricting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Trump are backing to increase the number of Republicans elected to Congress from that state, and in turn, to enhance the party’s chances to retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) calls the Texas action a “Trumpian power grab,” and Newsom assails it as the “rigging of the system by the president of the United States.” (Recent public opinion research conducted by Newsom’s pollster revealed that the public is more likely to support a California redistricting maneuver if the fight has Trump, not Texas, as the central villain.)
But two wrongs don’t make a right.
A key difference between the proposed line redrawing in Texas and the California plan is that the former, however brazen, is legal and precedented, while the latter specifically contravenes California law and the expressed will of the state’s voters. In Texas, legislators are entrusted with drawing district lines, and a mid-decade partisan gerrymander they executed in 2003, again to boost Republican representation in the U.S. House, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (except for one district whose lines violated the Voting Rights Act).
But California voters explicitly placed the drawing of district lines in the hands of the independent citizens’ commission to take politicians out of the process. Commissioners draw district lines based on numerous factors, including laws, judicial decisions and population shifts. They’re bound by a basic rule: District lines cannot be drawn to purposefully benefit a specific party or candidate. And all the commission’s deliberations must happen in public. The maps they’ve devised have been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans; and that’s one of the many reasons why California voters entrusted the commission with this important power.
If Newsom gets his way, California’s districts for the 2026 midterm will ensure the election of as few Republicans as possible. Recent reports suggest that his gerrymander will mean Republicans win only four out of 52 House seats (9%), compared with the current California delegation, which includes nine Republicans (17%). Republicans make up about 25% of California’s registered voters and statewide Republican candidates have won roughly 40% of the vote over the last few election cycles.
The fact that Newsom’s plan returns the power to redistrict to the citizens commission after the midterms makes it no less a subversion of the democratically expressed will of California’s voters. To add insult to injury, the cost of the special election to ratify the scheme is estimated to be about $60 million in Los Angeles County alone, with statewide costs likely exceeding $200 million.
By bending electoral rules in service of their own political interests, Newsom and California Democrats become no better than Abbott and Texas Republicans. And Newsom’s hypocrisy strains the credibility of his argument that Trump and his allies are diminishing democracy.
If Newsom moves forward with his cynical plan, Californians will at least have the power to reject it at the ballot box this November. Voters should reinforce their commitment to minimizing the role of partisanship and politics in redistricting, and to the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission.
Lanhee J. Chen, a contributing writer to Opinion, is an American public policy fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a Republican candidate for California controller in 2022.
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
The author characterizes Governor Newsom’s redistricting plan as a cynical political maneuver driven by presidential ambitions rather than democratic principles, arguing that the governor is willing to ignore established democratic rules to appear as a “fighter” for a potential 2028 presidential run.
California voters deliberately established the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission through ballot initiatives in 2008 and 2010 to remove politicians from the redistricting process, creating a 14-person body with balanced partisan representation that must draw district lines based on legal requirements rather than political benefit[2][4].
The proposed plan represents a fundamental subversion of the democratically expressed will of California voters, as it would temporarily wrest control from the independent commission and place it in the hands of the Democratic-controlled state Legislature, directly contradicting the intent of the voter-approved system.
While Texas Republicans’ redistricting efforts may be politically brazen, they remain legal and precedented within Texas law, whereas California’s plan specifically contravenes state law and the expressed will of voters who explicitly removed redistricting power from politicians[1][3].
The financial cost of implementing this plan would be substantial, with estimates suggesting approximately $60 million for Los Angeles County alone and statewide costs likely exceeding $200 million for the special election needed to ratify the scheme.
The plan would create an extreme partisan gerrymander that would reduce Republican representation from nine House seats to potentially only four out of 52 total seats, despite Republicans comprising about 25% of California’s registered voters and Republican candidates typically winning roughly 40% of the vote in statewide elections.
Different views on the topic
Newsom and Democratic supporters frame the redistricting plan as a necessary defensive response to President Trump’s broader nationwide push for Republican redistricting efforts, with the California governor stating that Trump is likely “making similar calls all across this country” and comparing it to Trump’s efforts to “find” votes in Georgia after the 2020 election[3].
The plan includes a “trigger” mechanism designed to ensure California would only proceed with redistricting if Texas Republicans move forward with their own map changes, with Newsom emphasizing this is “cause and effect, triggered on the basis of what occurs or doesn’t occur in Texas”[3].
Democratic lawmakers and California congressional delegation members have signaled support for the retaliatory redistricting effort, meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss possible Democratic responses to Texas’ redistricting plan[1].
Proponents argue that the independent redistricting commission is only constitutionally mandated to draw new lines once every decade, leaving the process for mid-decade redistricting legally open and available for legislative or voter-approved changes[1].
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas characterizes the Texas redistricting effort as a “Trumpian power grab,” while Newsom describes it as the “rigging of the system by the president of the United States,” positioning California’s response as protecting democratic representation against Republican manipulation[3].
Democratic supporters view the plan as the last bulwark against Republican control of the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections, which they see as crucial for checking President Trump’s actions during his second term[3].
