California Democrats are poised to pass a contentious redistricting effort on Thursday in the latest escalation to a national back and forth that could prove critical in which party is able to win the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.
The new map would shift five of California’s Republican U.S. House seats to be more favorable to Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. The proposal will be brought to the floor for a vote following days of hearings, and if it passes, Californians would then vote on a constitutional amendment for the new boundaries during a special election on Nov. 4.
That election is likely to be expensive and unpredictable given how quickly the effort has come together and how little time there is between the legislature’s actions and voters starting to have their say.
California’s legislative votes are expected to happen just one day after Texas state representatives passed a GOP-backed congressional map on Wednesday at the request of President Trump, following a weekslong standoff in which Democratic lawmakers left Texas to delay a vote. These new Texas maps could help secure five additional GOP-leaning seats during the upcoming midterm elections. Republicans in the state have been adamant the Texas changes are fair, while Texas Democrats have already signaled the maps will be challenged in court.
Shortly after the Texas House passed the maps, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted “It’s on” on social media. When Texas first launched its redistricting effort, Newsom had vowed to redraw the Golden State’s congressional districts to counter the Lone Star State’s plan and neutralize any potential GOP gains.
Newsom — who is widely seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender — sarcastically congratulated Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott on X, saying, “you will now go down in history as one of Donald Trump’s most loyal lapdogs. Shredding our nation’s founding principles. What a legacy.”
President Trump late Wednesday congratulated Texas Republicans for passing the new maps, writing on social media that “Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself.” He also encouraged GOP-led Indiana and Florida to take on redistricting.
The relatively rare mid-decade redistricting gambit comes as both parties prepare to face off in 2026 and has major implications nationwide. Republicans have a narrow majority at the moment, and Democrats winning back three seats in the 2026 midterms could be enough to flip control of the chamber if the lines used in the 2024 election were still in place. Redistricting in red states could change that dynamic significantly however, and with it the impact of the final two years on Mr. Trump’s second term in office.
Texas and California are the two biggest redistricting battlegrounds, but Mr. Trump has pushed similar efforts in GOP-led Indiana and Florida, and New York Democrats have floated redrawing their House map. The Republican-led state of Missouri could also try and redraw a Democratic district in the coming weeks, and new maps are also expected in Ohio where a redraw brought about by state law could impact some of the red state’s Democratic members of Congress.
Earlier this week, former President Barack Obama acknowledged that he was not a fan of partisan gerrymandering but he backed Newsom’s redistricting plan anyway at a fundraiser in Martha’s Vineyard and on social media, calling it a “smart, measured approach.”
Less than 24 hours before California’s scheduled vote, Newsom joined a press call with Democratic party leaders, urging support for his state’s redistricting effort.
“This is about taking back our country,” Newsom told reporters. “This is about the Democratic Party now punching back forcefully and very intentionally.
A draft congressional map unveiled by California Democrats late last week would heavily impact five of the state’s nine Republican U.S. House members. It would redraw Reps. Doug LaMalfa and Kevin Kiley’s Northern California districts, tweak Rep. David Valadao’s district in the Central Valley and rearrange parts of densely populated Southern California, impacting Reps. Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa. And some more competitive Democrat-held districts could be tilted further from the GOP.
There’s no guarantee that Democrats will win in all five newly recast districts.
Democrats hold large majorities in both chambers of California’s state legislature. But some legal hurdles still lie ahead, and Republicans in the state have pushed back against the redistricting plans.
Unlike Texas, California has an independent redistricting commission that was created by voters earlier this century. To overhaul the current congressional map, a constitutional amendment would need to be passed by a two-thirds vote in California’s Assembly and Senate and be approved by voters in the fast-moving fall election.
On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court denied a GOP attempt to stop the mid-cycle redistricting. California Republicans had legally challenged Democrats’ efforts, claiming the state’s constitution gives Californians the right to review new legislation for 30 days. But Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said they “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time.”
The GOP legislators who filed the legal challenge told CBS News the ruling is “not the end of this fight,” vowing to keep fighting the redistricting plan in the courts.
In a phone interview with CBS News on Wednesday, California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, a Republican, condemned Newsom’s redistricting efforts.
“This whole process is illegal from the beginning and violates the current California Constitution,” Jones said. “The voters spoke with a loud voice in 2008 and 2010 that they were taking this process out of the politicians’ hands and putting the responsibility into an independent commission.”
Democrats faced a flurry of questions from Republican lawmakers during hearings this week on the alleged lack of transparency in the drafting of these maps and the financial implications of the Nov. 4 special election.
“If we’re talking about the cost of a special election versus the cost of our democracy or the cost that Californians are already paying to subsidize this corrupt administration, those costs seem well worth paying at this moment,” said Democratic state Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan.
Democratic lawmakers and Newsom have repeatedly emphasized that these redistricting efforts would not get rid of the independent commission and that the new maps he’s hoping to put in place will be the lines used through the 2030 election. The commission would go back to drawing the state’s congressional maps after the 2030 census, according to Newsom, who says this is only being done as a response to Mr. Trump and Texas’ redistricting.
That notion was rejected by Jones, who said: “Growing up, I was taught two wrongs don’t make a right, so no, it is not justified.”
