SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — The national tit-for-tat redistricting battle entered its next phase Thursday as California Democrats launched their final legislative push to redraw their congressional map to add up to five winnable seats for their party, a direct counter to the Texas House's approval of a new map to create more conservative-leaning seats in that state.
California's Democratic-controlled Legislature opened debate on a package to revise the map and place it in front of voters for final approval in a special November election. The election is necessary because California Democrats must override their state's voter-approved nonpartisan commission that drew the existing congressional map.
“We don’t want this fight and we didn’t choose this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we will not run away from this fight,” Democratic Assemblyman Marc Berman said to kick off debate.
Gov. Gavin Newsom engineered the high-risk strategy in response to President Donald Trump's own brinkmanship. Trump pushed Texas Republicans to reopen the legislative maps they passed in 2021 to squeeze out up to five new GOP seats to help the party stave off a midterm defeat in 2026.
California Assemblyman Mike Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere, contending he was just responding to Democratic gerrymandering in other states. But he warned that Newsom's approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” was dangerous.
“You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”
In Texas, passage by the Republican-controlled state Senate and the signature of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott are now all that's needed to make the maps official.
California faces a more uncertain route. Democrats must use their legislative supermajority to pass the map by a two-third margin. Then they must schedule the special election that Newsom must approve by Friday to meet ballot deadlines.
Texas Democratic lawmakers, vastly outnumbered in that state's Legislature, delayed approval of the new map by 15 days by leaving Texas this month in protest. They were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday’s session.
That session ended with an 88-52 party-line vote approving the map. Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.
A battle for the US House control waged via redistricting
In a sign of Democrats’ stiffening redistricting resolve, former President Barack Obama has backed Newsom’s bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP’s Texas move.
“I think that approach is a smart, measured approach,” Obama said Tuesday during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party’s main redistricting arm.
The incumbent president’s party usually loses congressional seats in the midterm election. On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority.
Trump is going beyond Texas as he tries to ensure Republicans maintain their House majority. He’s pushed Republican leaders in states such as Indiana and Missouri to pursue redistricting. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland’s and New York’s maps.
However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, can’t draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval.
Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party’s interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.
Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.
___
Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press journalists John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Sophie Austin in Sacramento contributed to this report.
Trân Nguyễn And Jim Vertuno, The Associated Press
