The California legislature on Thursday approved a redistricting package aimed at giving Democrats five more seats in the US Congress, countering a partisan advantage President Donald Trump hoped to gain from a similar Republican plan to redraw political maps in Texas.
California Democrats pushed the three bills through the state Senate and Assembly in a remarkable flurry of fast-track action ahead of a Friday deadline set for getting the newly drawn districts on the ballot in time for a special election on November 4.
Swift passage of the measures marked a decisive victory for governor Gavin Newsom, who has led the charge in pushing back against what he and fellow Democrats nationally have decried as Trump's attempt at a power grab in the Republican-led state of Texas.
Newsom, who enjoys a Democratic supermajority in the two houses of the California legislature, ultimately seeks voter support for his plan. If it succeeds, it would neutralise the Trump-backed Texas bill designed to flip five Democratic seats to Republican control in the US House of Representatives.
Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged the Texas effort is about boosting their political clout by helping to preserve the party's slim US House majority in the November 2026 midterm races. The election is shaping up as closely fought.
Democrats have characterised their bid to depart from California's usual independent, bipartisan redistricting process, adopted by voters in 2008, as a temporary “emergency” strategy to combat what they see as extreme Republican moves to unfairly rig the system.
“The decks are stacked against us so what we need to do is fight back,” California senator Lena Gonzalez, a joint author of the redistricting plan, said when the state Senate opened floor debate on the bill.
Democrats said more than 70% of their newly drawn congressional districts were adopted from maps used by the independent commission in formulating the boundaries.
Republican Senator Tony Strickland objected, saying: “The maps were drawn behind closed doors.”
Within six hours, however, the two houses of the legislature had approved all three measures, voting along party lines to approve each bill in succession and sending it to the other body for its concurrence.
Unlike the California initiative, the newly drawn district lines in Texas would go into effect without voter approval, though Democrats have vowed to challenge the plan in court.
The Texas measure cleared a major hurdle on Wednesday when the state House of Representatives in Austin adopted it on an 88-52 party-line vote. The Texas Senate is expected to pass the measure next. The two versions of the bill may then need to be reconciled before the legislation goes to Republican governor Greg Abbott, who has said he will sign it.
“Big win for the great state of Texas,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Democrats and civil rights groups said the new Texas map further dilutes the voting power of Hispanic and black voters, violating federal law that forbids redrawing political lines on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination.
In pursuing redistricting mid-decade, the two sides are breaking with long-observed political custom of generally altering political maps once every 10 years after the US census to adjust for population changes.
Most Americans believe redrawing congressional lines to maximise political gain, known as gerrymandering, is bad for democracy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
Former US president Barack Obama weighed in on the issue this week, supporting the Democratic effort as a necessary short-term response to Republican overreach in Texas. However, he said he remained uneasy about the long-term consequences of gerrymandering.
Consideration of the Texas bill was delayed for two weeks after more than 50 Democratic state House members staged a walkout that denied Republicans the legislative quorum they needed to proceed.
Their collective absence sparked extraordinary efforts by Abbott and other Republican leaders to pressure the Democrats to relent, including civil arrest warrants, the imposition of fines and threats to withhold their pay.
The Democrats finally returned to Austin on Monday, by which time their legislative boycott had galvanised Democratic leaders in other states, especially California, where Newsom has vowed to “fight fire with fire”.
“We're going to punch the bully in the mouth, and we're going to win,” Newsom told reporters in a video conference call on Wednesday.
“This is about the rule of Don vs the rule of law.”
He was joined on the call by Texas representative Nicole Collier, one of the leaders of the Austin walkout.
“These are the most segregated maps that have been presented in Texas since the 1960s,” said Collier, who represents a predominantly non-white Fort Worth state district.
The Texas-California clash may be just the start. Other Republican-controlled states — including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri — are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic-led states such as Maryland and Illinois.
Reuters
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