California state supreme court rejects Republican effort to stop mid-decade redistricting
On Wednesday night, the California state supreme court declined an emergency request by Republican lawmakers, which sought to block the Democratic plan to temporarily get rid of the maps drawn by a voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
Now the California legislature will vote today on three bills that would allow for a November special election to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries – creating five new Democratic House seats in the process.
The aim is to offset Texas’s gains, after Republican lawmakers passed a gerrymandered map that nets five new GOP-house seats in 2026. An effort that came at Donald Trump’s behest, and has now escalated into a nationwide redistricting battle.
The new Texas map now heads to the state senate today for approval – where it is sure to advance – before being signed into law by the governor, Greg Abbott.
Meanwhile, Democrats have a supermajority at the Sacramento capitol, and will probably pass the new maps. It’s important to note that California’s proposed legislation has language that stipulates it only goes into effect if Texas’s new GOP-drawn map is approved.
My colleague Lauren Gambino has been covering the latest and notes that California’s redistricting counter-effort, spearheaded by Governor Gavin Newsom, has “caused angst among some Democrats and independents who have fought for years to combat gerrymandering”.
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“FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election. She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
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Peters did not find evidence of Democrats cheating in the election.
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She was charged for allowing access to county voting equipment by an outside election activist, who was given security credentials under a different name. Materials and passwords were then published online on Telegram and on the rightwing outlet the Gateway Pundit.
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Peters was found guilty by a jury in Mesa county in 2024 of seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges. She was sentenced later that year to nine years in prison. Her attorneys had argued for probation instead of prison time.
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Donald Trump intends to leave Russia and Ukraine to organize a meeting between their leaders without directly playing a role for now, according to administration officials familiar with the situation, taking a step back from the negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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The next stage in Trump’s eyes to end the war in Ukraine remains a bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, the officials said.
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Trump has told advisers in recent days that he intends to host a trilateral meeting with the two leaders only after they have met first, although whether that initial conference takes place remains unclear and Trump does not intend to become involved in that effort.
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Attorney general Pam Bondi said that there have been 630 arrests since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital earlier this month. In her post on X, she added that agents have also seized 86 illegal guns in this period.
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When Donald Trump’s administration escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this summer, protest organizers responded with actions staged in an unusual setting: the hotels where immigration officers were staying.
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Protests took place at several southern California hotels where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents had been spotted. Some activists launched “No sleep for Ice” rallies, with chants and music blaring through the night, in hopes of pressuring the hotels to kick agents out.
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Now, public records shared with the Guardian show that the protests indeed sent federal agencies scrambling to find hotels for their officers in LA where they would not be “harassed”.
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A 16 June email from the US marines shows that military officials made a list of “LA Hotels to Avoid”. The information came from multiple law enforcement agencies who were tracking the community backlash to Ice and the border patrol, the marines said. The list was written by Army North, the domestic defense command deployed on the ground during the protests, and reviewed by the navy’s south-west division.
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On Wednesday night, the California state supreme court declined an emergency request by Republican lawmakers, which sought to block the Democratic plan to temporarily get rid of the maps drawn by a voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
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Now the California legislature will vote today on three bills that would allow for a November special election to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries – creating five new Democratic House seats in the process.
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The aim is to offset Texas’s gains, after Republican lawmakers passed a gerrymandered map that nets five new GOP-house seats in 2026. An effort that came at Donald Trump’s behest, and has now escalated into a nationwide redistricting battle.
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The new Texas map now heads to the state senate today for approval – where it is sure to advance – before being signed into law by the governor, Greg Abbott.
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Meanwhile, Democrats have a supermajority at the Sacramento capitol, and will probably pass the new maps. It’s important to note that California’s proposed legislation has language that stipulates it only goes into effect if Texas’s new GOP-drawn map is approved.
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My colleague Lauren Gambino has been covering the latest and notes that California’s redistricting counter-effort, spearheaded by Governor Gavin Newsom, has “caused angst among some Democrats and independents who have fought for years to combat gerrymandering”.
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The California state legislature was poised on Thursday to vote on a plan to redraw its congressional boundaries and create five potential new Democratic House seats – an answer to the Republican redistricting push in Texas, sought by Donald Trump, aimed at tilting the map in his party’s favor ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
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The nation’s two most populous – and ideologically opposed – states were racing on parallel tracks toward consequential redistricting votes, potentially within hours of each other. As Democrats in Sacramento worked to advance a legislative package that would put their “election rigging response act” before voters in a special election this fall, Republicans in Austin were nearing a final vote on their own gerrymandering pursuit.
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Approval by the Texas senate, which is expected as early as Thursday, would conclude a dramatic showdown with the state’s outnumbered Democratic lawmakers whose two-week boycott captured national attention and set in motion a coast-to-coast redistricting battle.
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The California plan, led by the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is designed to flip as many as five Republican-held seats in California – the exact number of additional GOP seats Trump has said he is “entitled to” in Texas.
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“This is a new Democratic party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,” Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “And we’re going to fight fire with fire.”
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The redistricting tit-for-tat is an extraordinary deviation from the norm. Traditionally, states redraw congressional maps once a decade based on census data, with both the Texas and California maps originally intended to last through 2030.
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The California state legislature, where Democrats have a supermajority, is expected to easily approve new congressional maps despite sharp Republican objections. Newsom’s signature would send the measure to the ballot in a special election this November.
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The California changes would only take effect in response to a gerrymander by a Republican state – a condition that would be met when the Texas legislatures sends the maps to the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, for his promised signature.
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Barack Obama waded into states’ efforts at rare mid-decade redistricting efforts, saying he agreed with California governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to counter the new Texas congressional map by launching an effort to redraw his own state’s map and create more Democratic-friendly districts, calling it “a responsible approach”.
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“I believe that governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach. He said this is going to be responsible. We’re not going to try to completely maximize it,” Obama said at a Tuesday fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. “We’re only going to do it if and when Texas and/or other Republican states begin to pull these maneuvers. Otherwise, this doesn’t go into effect.”
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Obama also called Newsom’s strategy “measured”, as it only temporarily grants the California legislature the ability to redraw maps mid-decade.
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While noting that “political gerrymandering” is not his “preference,” Obama said that, if Democrats “don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy”.
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According to organizers, the event raised $2m for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates, one of which has filed and supported litigation in several states over Republican-drawn districts. The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Eric Holder, who served as Obama’s attorney general and heads up the group, also appeared.
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Most Americans believe that efforts to redraw U.S. House of Representatives districts to maximize partisan gains, like those under way in Texas and California, are bad for democracy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
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More than half of respondents – 57% – said they feared that American democracy itself was in danger, a view held by eight in 10 Democrats and four in 10 in president Donald Trump’s Republican party.
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The six-day survey of 4,446 US adults, which closed on Monday, showed deep unease with the growing political divisions in Washington – where Republicans control both chambers of Congress – and state capitals.
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The poll found that 55% of respondents, including 71% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans, agreed that ongoing redistricting plans – such as those hatched by governors in Texas and California in a process known as gerrymandering – were “bad for democracy.”
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At Trump’s urging, Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the state legislature to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, aiming to help Republicans defend their 219-212 US House majority.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
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We start with news that the Texas legislature’s lower chamber passed a contentious new electoral map on Wednesday that aims to help Donald Trump’s Republican party retain its razor-thin US House majority in the 2026 midterm elections, AFP reported.
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The vote had been delayed by two weeks after Democratic legislators fled the southern state to halt the redistricting drive, which carves out five new Republican-friendly districts.
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More than 50 Democrats walked out, stalling legislative business and generating national headlines as they sought to draw attention to the rare mid-decade redistricting push.
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The Democratic lawmakers returned this week, but not before their protest had set off a national map-drawing war, with Trump pressuring his party’s state-level officials to do everything they can to protect the majority in the US House of Representatives.
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The stakes are sky-high for Trump, who will be bogged down in investigations into almost every aspect of his second term if Democrats manage to flip the handful of districts nationwide needed to win back the House in next year’s midterm elections.
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Trump hailed the “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas“ on Wednesday night. “Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Texas never lets us down.”
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The president also suggested Florida, Indiana and other states were looking into pursuing similar redistricting to benefit Republicans while once again calling to “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING.”
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Trump – who has long railed against postal ballots, even though they have benefited his party and he has voted by mail – said in a separate post:
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END MAIL-IN VOTING, AND GO TO PAPER BALLOTS. 100 additional seats will go to Republicans!!!”
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In other developments:
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The vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, staged a photo op with National Guard troops at Union Station in the nation’s capital. They were roundly booed and jeered on their way in and out of the station.
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A federal judge denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. US district judge Richard Berman said the small number of documents seen by the court pale in comparison with the 100,000 records the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.
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Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor Trump has called on to immediately resign over an accusation that she falsely declared a property she obtained a mortgage on was her primary residence, responded on Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down”.
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Trump has bought at least $100m of bonds since he returned to office in January, according to a CNBC analysis of new filings from the president with the US Office of Government Ethics.
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A young American citizen who was violently arrested by federal immigration officers in Los Angeles county in June, after he objected to the arrest of an older man in a Walmart parking lot, was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.
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Key events
Trump again calls for release of ex-clerk in prison for role in breaching Colorado election information
Rachel Leingang
Donald Trump again called for the release of a former election clerk in Colorado who was convicted for her role in breaching election data in a quest to find fraud, threatening he would take “harsh measures” if she wasn’t let out of prison.
“FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election. She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Peters did not find evidence of Democrats cheating in the election.
She was charged for allowing access to county voting equipment by an outside election activist, who was given security credentials under a different name. Materials and passwords were then published online on Telegram and on the rightwing outlet the Gateway Pundit.
Peters was found guilty by a jury in Mesa county in 2024 of seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges. She was sentenced later that year to nine years in prison. Her attorneys had argued for probation instead of prison time.
Also, earlier today, the president took to Truth Social to say that Ukraine’s strategy has been purely focused on defence.
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country,” Trump wrote. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia. Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND.”
This comes after the president’s meeting on Monday with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several European leaders, where Trump said that the America would help to coordinate security guarantees for Ukraine. The White House later confirmed that no US troops would be on the ground in Ukraine, but hinted that some form of air support could be possible.
A reminder that my colleague, Jakub Krupa, is following the latest developments in Europe.
Trump steps back from Russia and Ukraine peace talks for now, sources say
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump intends to leave Russia and Ukraine to organize a meeting between their leaders without directly playing a role for now, according to administration officials familiar with the situation, taking a step back from the negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The next stage in Trump’s eyes to end the war in Ukraine remains a bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, the officials said.
Trump has told advisers in recent days that he intends to host a trilateral meeting with the two leaders only after they have met first, although whether that initial conference takes place remains unclear and Trump does not intend to become involved in that effort.
In some more news from Texas, GOP congressman Chip Roy has announced a bid for attorney general, ahead of next year’s first open contest for the job in more than a decade. “I’ll always defend the conservative values our Texas families cherish,” Roy said in his campaign video. “Today we draw a line in the sand, Texas’ next attorney general must have a proven record of fighting to preserve, protect and defend our legacy.”
There are already several Republican candidates set to battle it out in a primary to succeed outgoing attorney general Ken Paxton – who has launched a challenge to unseat senator John Cornyn.
Roy, who served as Paxton’s assistant attorney general before joining Congress, where he’s become an outspoken member of the conservative wing, and serves in the Freedom Caucus.
Roy has also clashed with Donald Trump, most recently when he opposed the president’s proposal to raise the debt ceiling last year. In retaliation, Trump called for Roy to be primaried.
An update from the press pool travelling with vice president JD Vance today to Peachtree, Georgia.
Vance will headline a messaging event at 2pm for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is now being rebranded by the administration as ‘working families tax cuts’. The vice president is also travelling with second lady Usha Vance, and Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Oliver Milman
Donald Trump has made several unusual moves to elongate the era of coal, such as giving the industry exemptions from pollution rules. But the gambit to keep one Michigan coal-fired power station running has been extraordinary – by forcing it to remain open even against the wishes of its operator.
The hulking JH Campbell power plant, which since 1962 has sat a few hundred yards from the sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, was just eight days away from a long-planned closure in May when Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order that it remain open for a further 90 days.
On Wednesday, the administration intervened again to extend this order even further, prolonging the lifetime of the coal plant another 90 days, meaning it will keep running until November – six months after it was due to close.
The move, taken under emergency powers more normally used during wartime or in the wake of disaster, has stunned local residents and the plant’s operator, Consumers Energy. “My family had a countdown for it closing, we couldn’t wait,” said Mark Oppenhuizen, who has lived in the shadow of the plant for 30 years and suspects its pollution worsened his wife’s lung disease.
“I was flabbergasted when the administration said they had stopped it shutting down,” he said. “Why are they inserting themselves into a decision a company has made? Just because politically you don’t like it? It’s all so dumb.”
Attorney general says 630 arrested in DC by federal law enforcement since beginning of surge
Attorney general Pam Bondi said that there have been 630 arrests since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital earlier this month. In her post on X, she added that agents have also seized 86 illegal guns in this period.
Organizers disrupted Trump’s immigration crackdown by targeting hotels where officers were staying, documents show
Sam Levin
When Donald Trump’s administration escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this summer, protest organizers responded with actions staged in an unusual setting: the hotels where immigration officers were staying.
Protests took place at several southern California hotels where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents had been spotted. Some activists launched “No sleep for Ice” rallies, with chants and music blaring through the night, in hopes of pressuring the hotels to kick agents out.
Now, public records shared with the Guardian show that the protests indeed sent federal agencies scrambling to find hotels for their officers in LA where they would not be “harassed”.
A 16 June email from the US marines shows that military officials made a list of “LA Hotels to Avoid”. The information came from multiple law enforcement agencies who were tracking the community backlash to Ice and the border patrol, the marines said. The list was written by Army North, the domestic defense command deployed on the ground during the protests, and reviewed by the navy’s south-west division.
And when it comes to California’s redistricting efforts, a new poll from Politico and UC Berkeley Citrin Center found that while 70% of Democrats think that partisan gerrymandering is “never acceptable”, 63% do support the plan to counter Texas’ new GOP-drawn map by responding with a redistricting plan that offsets Republican gains in the US House.
More broadly, 42% of all respondents to the poll said that voters are most harmed by partisan redistricting.
California state supreme court rejects Republican effort to stop mid-decade redistricting
On Wednesday night, the California state supreme court declined an emergency request by Republican lawmakers, which sought to block the Democratic plan to temporarily get rid of the maps drawn by a voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
Now the California legislature will vote today on three bills that would allow for a November special election to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries – creating five new Democratic House seats in the process.
The aim is to offset Texas’s gains, after Republican lawmakers passed a gerrymandered map that nets five new GOP-house seats in 2026. An effort that came at Donald Trump’s behest, and has now escalated into a nationwide redistricting battle.
The new Texas map now heads to the state senate today for approval – where it is sure to advance – before being signed into law by the governor, Greg Abbott.
Meanwhile, Democrats have a supermajority at the Sacramento capitol, and will probably pass the new maps. It’s important to note that California’s proposed legislation has language that stipulates it only goes into effect if Texas’s new GOP-drawn map is approved.
My colleague Lauren Gambino has been covering the latest and notes that California’s redistricting counter-effort, spearheaded by Governor Gavin Newsom, has “caused angst among some Democrats and independents who have fought for years to combat gerrymandering”.
The president doesn’t have any public events today, according to his official schedule.
He’ll receive an intelligence briefing at 11am ET, and then will sign executive orders in the Oval Office at 3pm ET. For the moment that’s closed to the press, but we’ll update you if that changes.
California legislature poised to vote on redistricting plan in response to Texas gerrymandering
The California state legislature was poised on Thursday to vote on a plan to redraw its congressional boundaries and create five potential new Democratic House seats – an answer to the Republican redistricting push in Texas, sought by Donald Trump, aimed at tilting the map in his party’s favor ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
The nation’s two most populous – and ideologically opposed – states were racing on parallel tracks toward consequential redistricting votes, potentially within hours of each other. As Democrats in Sacramento worked to advance a legislative package that would put their “election rigging response act” before voters in a special election this fall, Republicans in Austin were nearing a final vote on their own gerrymandering pursuit.
Approval by the Texas senate, which is expected as early as Thursday, would conclude a dramatic showdown with the state’s outnumbered Democratic lawmakers whose two-week boycott captured national attention and set in motion a coast-to-coast redistricting battle.
The California plan, led by the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is designed to flip as many as five Republican-held seats in California – the exact number of additional GOP seats Trump has said he is “entitled to” in Texas.
“This is a new Democratic party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,” Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “And we’re going to fight fire with fire.”
The redistricting tit-for-tat is an extraordinary deviation from the norm. Traditionally, states redraw congressional maps once a decade based on census data, with both the Texas and California maps originally intended to last through 2030.
The California state legislature, where Democrats have a supermajority, is expected to easily approve new congressional maps despite sharp Republican objections. Newsom’s signature would send the measure to the ballot in a special election this November.
The California changes would only take effect in response to a gerrymander by a Republican state – a condition that would be met when the Texas legislatures sends the maps to the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, for his promised signature.