It’s not a surprise that Donald Trump has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw congressional district lines to find five more GOP seats for the U.S. House of Representatives in time for the 2026 midterm elections. He just signed a deeply unpopular bill to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut healthcare for millions of people, and his approval rating keeps dropping. In an election based on district maps as they stand — and should stand until the next census, in 2030 — his party’s 2026 prospects for holding the House are grim. Unlike his predecessors, he’s proven willing to break our democracy to get what he wants.
If Trump’s gambit succeeds — and right now it looks as if it will — then California and other states that could counter the premature Texas redistricting have only one choice — to respond in kind.
Consider the stakes: A majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance and have done so since within a month of his taking office. Yet he is undercutting the institutions that we’d otherwise depend on to speak independently and resist presidential excesses — judges, journalists, university leaders and even government officials who make the mistake of neutrally reporting facts like economic data.
With history as a predictor, Democrats would succeed in the 2026 midterms, retake the House and provide checks and balances on the Trump administration. The framers regarded Congress as the primary actor in the federal government, but it is now a shell of its former self. Elections are how America holds presidents in check. But if Trump gets his way, voters may vote but nothing will change. The already tenuous connection between the ballot box and the distribution of power will evaporate.
One can understand why Democratic legislators might not want to mimic Trump’s tactics. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who represented New York for nearly a quarter century, warned decades ago about the tendency to “define deviancy down” and normalize actions that are anything but normal. But we don’t get to pick and choose the times we live in or the type of response that is required to meet the moment.
When voters in California approved independent redistricting 15 years ago, they would have reasonably expected that many other states would follow their lead. They would have hoped that Congress or the Supreme Court would step in to create a federal standard. They would have understood other states changing the rules for purely political reasons as unconscionable. And yet here we are.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom succinctly put it: “California’s moral high ground means nothing if we’re powerless because of it.”
The solution Newsom has proposed is a prudent one — redrawing just the congressional lines, not those for the state Legislature as well, and only doing so until the next census, when Trump will have passed from the scene.
Every objection to the proposal falls apart under inspection.
A radical left-wing plot? Even many moderate members of the Democratic Party, such as Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, have praised it as a necessary response.
An end run around voters? Unlike in Texas, California voters themselves will decide whether to approve the plan.
An expensive special election? Cost was a reason to oppose the wishful-thinking 2021 recall election launched against Newsom (which he defeated with more than 60% of the vote), but the argument applies less so today given that Trump’s extreme unilateral actions — budget cuts and slashed programs, ICE raids, the attack on higher education, including the University of California — are putting California’s fiscal future at risk.
A race to the bottom? The University of Michigan game theorist Robert Axelrod demonstrated that if we want to foster cooperation, a tit-for-tat strategy outperforms all others. As a summary of his research succinctly put it: “Be nice. Be ready to forgive. But don’t be a pushover.” California officials have indicated that they will withdraw the proposal if Texas Republicans stand down.
A political risk? Certainly, but the leader taking on the risk is Newsom. If the proposal is defeated at the ballot, voters will be in the same position they are in right now.
Czech dissident-turned-statesman Vaclav Havel, in his famous essay “The Power of the Powerless,” described the Prague Spring not only as a “clash between two groups on the level of real power” but as the “final act … of a long drama originally played out chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the conscience of society.”
We do not know how the current drama will play out. But the choice that Havel set out — of living within a lie or living within the truth — is as potent as ever. If Trump continues to goad Texas into abandoning its commitment to the norms of our election rules, Americans who hold onto hope that their voices still matter will be counting on California to show the way.
Vivek Viswanathan is a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He served in the Biden White House as senior policy advisor and special assistant to the president, and previously worked for Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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