Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday known as on California lawmakers to approve a November poll measure that might enable them to redraw the state’s congressional map, an effort to combat again towards Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting plans in Texas and elsewhere.
Newsom’s proposal, known as “Election Rigging Response Act,” would enable California Democrats to avoid the unbiased fee that controls the map-drawing course of within the state and go new congressional strains that might be extra favorable to their celebration.
The transfer comes as Republicans in Texas, with President Donald Trump’s backing, are pursuing a brand new congressional map that might enable them to achieve as much as 5 extra Home seats.
“It is not difficult. We’re doing this in response to a president of the US that known as a sitting governor of the state of Texas and stated, ‘discover me 5 seats,'” Newsom stated. “We’re doing it in response to that act. We’re doing it conscious of our increased angels and higher angels. We’re doing it conscious that we need to mannequin higher habits, as we have been doing for 15 years within the state of California with our unbiased redistricting fee. However we can not unilaterally disarm.”
California Democrats want approval from others in to sidestep the state’s unbiased redistricting fee, and the clock is ticking for lawmakers to approve a poll initiative for this yr’s Nov. 4 election. If the measure passes, it might enable new maps to be enacted in time for the 2026 midterm elections.
A number of different Democratic leaders in California appeared alongside Newsom at an occasion 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 fee who spoke at Thursday’s occasion, warned that immigration brokers have been exterior the venue the place the rally was going down and making arrests.
Sadwani stated Trump was “turning our cities into police states.”
“We’re watching government overreach that’s little doubt making our founding fathers flip over of their graves,” she stated.
California’s transfer is the subsequent salvo in what’s grow to be a nationwide tit-for-tat between Republican- and Democratic-led states in response to a plan to redraw the congressional strains in Texas to pad the GOP’s majority within the U.S. Home.
Final month, after Trump’s public urging, Abbott known as the GOP-controlled Texas legislature in for a particular session that together with a uncommon mid-decade redrawing of the congressional map exterior of the standard, once-a-decade cycle. Whereas Abbott has stated he based mostly the choice to redraw strains on constitutional issues, Republicans within the state and throughout the nation have been clear that redrawing the strains is primarily a political play forward of subsequent yr’s midterm elections.
Throughout an interview with CNBC earlier this month, Trump stated that Republicans are “entitled to 5 extra seats” in Texas.
Republicans already maintain 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats, however Trump gained 27 of these seats in final yr’s presidential election. If the brand new Republican-drawn maps go into impact, 30 of these seats may have voted for Trump final yr.
“Get up, America. Get up to what Donald Trump is doing,” Newsom stated Thursday. “Get up to his assault. Get up to the assault on establishments and information and historical past.”
Republicans’ transfer in Texas prompted dozens of state Home Democrats to flee the state to disclaim Republicans a quorum, the minimal variety of lawmakers required to be in attendance for the chamber to think about laws. For nearly two weeks, the Democrats have sat for dozens of interviews and held press conferences aimed toward criticizing the GOP plan and calling on Democratic governors to vow to reply by looking for to redraw their maps to counter the potential GOP beneficial properties in Texas, and presumably different states.
Newsom has been essentially the most vocal of these governors, spending weeks warning he’d push to redraw California’s maps if Republicans in different states did not stand down, and repeatedly badgering Trump in interviews and on social media.
However whereas Texas and different GOP-led states which can be contemplating mid-decade redistricting largely solely want approval from GOP-majority legislatures and governors, the method in lots of blue states is much extra difficult.
California wants the approval of the legislature after which the voters. The trail is much more arduous in New York, the place a proposed constitutional modification would wish to go two consecutive legislative classes after which be authorized by voters in a poll measure the subsequent yr. That prolonged course of all however assures that, even when Democrats are profitable, the maps would not change till the 2028 elections on the earliest.
Newsom, by his press workplace social media account, lately took a brand new public relations tack within the ongoing salvos between he and the White Home. In a sequence of posts on X, Newsom posted all-caps declarations, straight mocking Trump’s fashion of messaging as he labored to drive consideration to his efforts.
“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!!” Newsom’s press workplace 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!”
