WHAT SEEMED A FEW WEEKS AGO like a far-fetched political fantasy ahead of the 2026 midterms has quickly evolved into a high-stakes showdown enveloping states across the country.
As Texas last week began an off-cycle redistricting process meant to shore up Republicans’ slim House majority, Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared Friday with a group of Democratic legislators from that state, reaffirming his intention for California to respond with new maps of its own that would benefit Democrats.
Following a meeting with the Texas lawmakers at the historic governor’s mansion in downtown Sacramento, Newsom told reporters that “everything is at stake if we’re not successful next year in taking back the House of Representatives” — not only blunting President Donald Trump’s agenda, but protecting American democracy.
“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028,” he said. “They’re not screwing around. We can’t afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”
There’s one major obstacle to the governor’s ambitions, however: While the Legislature draws district lines in Texas, California relies on a bipartisan citizen redistricting commission protected by the state Constitution.
In 2008, voters narrowly approved an amendment removing California legislators’ power to draw their own seats. Two years later, voters overwhelmingly passed another amendment expanding the commission’s authority to congressional maps.
The independent commission in California became a national model for advocates who hoped to end the partisan gerrymandering that has contributed to a decline in competitive House seats and the country’s fractious, sectarian politics.
Now Newsom, who said he otherwise supports independent redistricting, is exploring multiple options for working around the commission to squeeze more Democratic districts out of California, if Texas follows through on its plan.
That would probably involve calling a special election, Newsom said, though he is still discussing with the Legislature what sort of proposal they might present to voters. Would it include a new map to approve or create another process to draw on? Would the commission be temporarily or permanently repealed?
“This is a fluid conversation,” he said. “We’re gaming all those things out.”
Trump turns up the heat in Texas
States typically redraw their congressional seats once per decade, after the census, to ensure the districts are all roughly equal in population. The most recent maps were drawn after the 2020 election and took effect in 2022.
But last month, Trump’s political team began pressuring Republican leaders in Texas to revisit the state’s district lines and create additional GOP seats. The party won a five-seat majority in the House last November, the narrowest in nearly a century, leaving little room for error as Trump tries to enact his legislative agenda and putting control of the chamber at risk if next year’s midterm is a wave election against the unpopular president.
Despite opposition from Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation — who worried that diluting their conservative voter bases in redistricting could inadvertently make their seats vulnerable — Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps. He is targeting four Democratic seats in the Dallas and Houston areas that the Trump administration has deemed “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders” because they have high numbers of Black and Latino voters. The first public hearing took place on Thursday, with Texas Democratic lawmakers slamming the move as a “power grab.”
“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028. They’re not screwing around. We can’t afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom
The boldly political maneuver juiced similar efforts in other Republican states, including Ohio and Missouri, that could further pad a GOP majority, while setting off alarm bells among Democrats nationally.
But even as party leaders voice their outrage, they have fewer options to fight back, because congressional districts in many of the largest Democratic states, such as California, New York and New Jersey, are drawn by independent commissions.
No one has been more outspoken than Newsom, who weeks ago began publicly floating the idea of sidestepping California’s commission to redraw more congressional districts in Democrats’ favor if Texas moves forward with its plan.
But it’s no sure thing in California
It’s a legally dubious and politically fraught endeavor. Even some of Newsom’s fellow Democrats have expressed skepticism because of the precedent it would set, including Assemblymember Alex Lee of Milpitas, whose vote may be needed to place a measure on the ballot. Common Cause California, a nonprofit that advocates for government in the public interest and backed the formation of the independent commission, blasted it as a “dangerous move” that would “put our state’s democracy on the line during a time of national instability.”
Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is already threatening to sue to stop a new map and has added to his platform a plan to require the redistricting commission to include more GOP seats.
Because of the legal risks in having the Legislature simply draw new congressional districts, the most likely route is a special election asking voters to overturn the independent commission, said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting consultant.
The problem is that the commission remains highly popular with voters in polling, Mitchell said. To get around that, Newsom may need to make concessions, like a temporary pause that resumes the independent redistricting process in 2031, after the next census.
“It’s ‘in emergency, break glass,’ not ‘let’s burn down the whole building,’” Mitchell said.
Even then, he said, Democrats would need to maintain the drumbeat of frustration over how the party is being harmed in Texas for months to turn out a motivated electorate in an unusual special election.
“It’s like lightning in a bottle right now,” Mitchell said. “Are they going to be able to keep this a front-burner issue for people?”
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.