California leaders on Thursday approved a sweeping plan to elect more Democrats by redrawing congressional districts, delivering an immediate counterpunch to the gerrymandered map that Republicans in Texas are passing at the request of President Trump.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two redistricting bills that the Democratic-controlled Legislature sent to him earlier Thursday. He also declared a special election on Nov. 4 that will ask voters to grant final approval to the newly drawn congressional districts.
The moves will immediately thrust California into a feverish campaign with national implications as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of the House of Representatives through an extraordinary effort to redraw political maps in the middle of a decade. They will also put Mr. Newsom, a potential presidential candidate, at the forefront of a partisan fight against President Trump heading into the midterm election cycle.
“We’re responding to what occurred in Texas,” Mr. Newsom said before signing the bills. “We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance, because when all things are equal, we’re all playing by the same rules.”
Democrats see winning the House in 2026 as a critical way to check Mr. Trump’s authority in the second half of his term. Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers believe House control is key to furthering his agenda and avoiding a flurry of Democratic-led investigations.
Redistricting in the middle of the decade has been rare in modern politics. States normally adjust congressional districts after each census to reflect population changes, but President Trump’s request that Republicans draw mid-decade maps in Texas has upended redistricting protocols. It has precipitated a remarkable showdown between the two most populous states, which have become ideological rivals in a polarized nation.
“We don’t want this fight, and we didn’t choose this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we cannot and will not run away from this fight,” Marc Berman, a Democratic assemblyman in California, said as he presented the legislation in the State Capitol on Thursday.
Texas lawmakers were expected to approve the new congressional map by the end of the week, making it easier for Republicans to flip five seats there. California Democrats have quickly drawn their own gerrymandered map that they believe could help them also flip five seats and shore up four swing seats with more Democrats.
But the process is more complicated in California because the ultimate power to draw congressional districts lies not with partisan lawmakers, but with an independent commission.
Because the commission was created by voters and embedded in the State Constitution, California leaders need another vote of the people to establish new maps for next year’s elections. While Mr. Newsom has promised a vigorous campaign backed by donations big and small, Republicans plan to counter with a robust fund-raising effort of their own.
Under the proposed Nov. 4 ballot measure, the districts drawn by Democratic lawmakers would be in effect for House races in 2026, 2028 and 2030, after which the authority to draw maps would revert to the independent redistricting commission.
James Gallagher, the Republican leader in the California Assembly who opposes the redistricting bills, said that he believed Mr. Trump asked Texas to act only in response to Democratic gerrymandering that had occurred after the last census in Massachusetts and Illinois.
“It’s about power,” Mr. Gallagher said. “We know that it’s about power on both sides, rigging congressional districts to get partisan results. That’s what a gerrymander is.”
But, in a rare break from the president, Mr. Gallagher said that Mr. Trump was wrong to ask Republican-controlled states to redraw their districts.
“You move forward fighting fire with fire, and what happens? You burn it all down,” Mr. Gallagher said. “In this case, it affects our most fundamental American principle: representation.”
As the nation’s most populous state, California has more U.S. representatives than any other, with 52. Of those seats, 43 are Democrats and nine are Republicans. As large a partisan divide as that is, Democrats say they can flip five more of those Republican seats through gerrymandered districts.
In one striking example, the maps would be redrawn to combine Shasta County, a conservative area in rural Northern California, with one of the nation’s most liberal regions, Marin County, just north of San Francisco. Democratic voters along the coast would outnumber those in the Republican inland areas.
“Don’t, for a moment, call it temporary,” Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, a Republican, told Democrats on the Assembly floor on Thursday. “You will never give the power back to the people once you seize it from them.”
California Republicans lack the votes to block the redistricting bills in the Legislature, so they are left to battle Democrats in the courts and on the ballot. They lost one round on Wednesday when the State Supreme Court rejected a request by Republican lawmakers to block the Legislature from moving ahead with Thursday’s votes.
Mr. Newsom could face a challenge convincing voters to pass the redistricting measure, which will be called Proposition 50. Voters created the independent redistricting commission through a pair of ballot measures in 2008 and 2010, and recent polls have shown that they have little appetite to drop the system completely.
The commission — made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents — is meant to remove partisanship from the line-drawing process and give voters fair representation in the State Legislature and the U.S. House.
But Mr. Trump is unpopular in California, and Mr. Newsom is betting that he can persuade voters to temporarily support a Democratic gerrymander to blunt the president’s power.
The Trump administration’s actions in California this year could help Mr. Newsom make his case.
Earlier this summer, the president took control of California’s National Guard and deployed troops to Los Angeles amid protests against immigration raids that have rocked many communities. It was the first time since the 1960s that a president had sent the National Guard to a state over the objections of its governor.
“Los Angeles is a preview of things to come, with the federalization of the National Guard, the militarization of the streets of America,” Mr. Newsom said Thursday.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans also used an unusual maneuver to reverse a landmark California environmental law and block the state’s electric vehicle requirements. And the president has threatened to withhold long-term disaster aid for recovery from January’s wildfires in Los Angeles County.
Mr. Newsom is likely to highlight those actions in a campaign that will rely heavily on outreach to liberal podcast hosts and social media influencers, drawing national attention. The campaign got an early boost on Wednesday with an endorsement from former President Barack Obama, who said he generally opposes gerrymandering but that Mr. Newsom’s effort is “a smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”
But the measure is expected to face well-funded opposition. The Republican Party plans to fight it, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former California governor who helped create the independent commission, has said he will work separately to oppose any redistricting changes.
Charles Munger Jr., the son of the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Charlie Munger, helped to fund the ballot measures to create the commission in 2008 and 2010 and has vowed to defend the system during the fall campaign.
Soumya Karlamangla contributed reporting.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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