California Governor Gavin Newsom, along with local congressional representatives, state officials and supporters, speaks as he announces the redrawing of California’s congressional maps, calling on voters to approve a ballot measure, in response to a similar move in Texas being supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., August 14, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters
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, an effort to fight back against Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting plans in Texas and elsewhere.
Newsom’s proposal, called “Election Rigging Response Act,” would allow 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.
The move comes as 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, 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 immigration agents were outside the venue where the rally was taking place and making arrests.
Sadwani 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.
California’s move is the next salvo in what’s 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 of the typical, once-a-decade cycle. While Abbott has said he based the decision to redraw lines on constitutional concerns, Republicans in the state and across the country have been clear that redrawing the lines is primarily a political play ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
