California Governor Gavin Newsom has said that the country’s most populous state will promote a partisan redistricting scheme aimed at countering controversial Republican-led redistricting efforts in Texas ahead of the United States’ 2026 midterm elections.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Newsom took a combative stance against US President Donald Trump and said that Democrats must respond to what he said were conservative efforts to politicise the electoral process.
“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Newsom said, appropriating a term used by Trump to refer to the imposition of tariffs on foreign countries.
Newsom and Trump have frequently sparred as the US president seeks to exert pressure on Democrat-led states that have pushed back against his political agenda on issues such as immigration enforcement.
During his remarks, Newsom said that masked immigration enforcement agents had gathered around the venue, which he depicted as a form of intimidation. Trump prompted outrage in California earlier in the year when he deployed the military and National Guard to Los Angeles during a round of aggressive immigration raids, and suggested at the time that Newsom should be arrested.
“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back,” said Newsom, who is seen as a possible Democratic contender for the presidency in 2028.
Newsom said that the redistricting scheme, which would favour the Democrats and could net them five additional seats in the 2026 midterm elections, will go before voters in a special election on November 4.
The California governor said the scheme was a direct response to a similar redistricting effort in the Republican-led state of Texas, which would help secure five additional likely seats for the Republican Party.
He stressed that, unlike in Texas, it would be up to California voters to approve or shoot down the new maps, and that they would only go forward if Texas and other states move forward with their own partisan redistricting efforts.
He added that the planned maps, which are expected to be released on Friday, would be in effect until 2030.
Earlier this month, Democrat lawmakers in Texas fled the state to block a House vote on redistricting efforts that would create an additional five Republican-leaning districts.
On Thursday, the lawmakers moved closer to ending their nearly two-week walkout that has blocked the GOP’s redrawing of US House maps and put them under escalating threats by Republicans back home.
The Democrats announced they will return so long as Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal, both of which were expected to happen on Friday.
Democrats did not say what day they might return.
Newsom’s move underscores calls within the Democratic Party to take a stronger stance against Trump and the Republicans, including moves that violate previously held norms and rules that Democrats say the US right has long since abandoned.
“We cannot unilaterally disarm,” he said, calling on other Democrat-led states to join California.
“Other blue states need to stand up. We need to be firm,” he said.
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