LITTLE TOKYO, LOS ANGELES – As ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents swarmed outside, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the political leadership of California announced their intention to hold a November 4 election for new mid-cycle maps that could net Democrats up to five additional U.S. House seats, offsetting the impact of President Trump’s attempted gerrymandering in Texas.
Because of its independent redistricting commission, California must go to the ballot for voters to approve the mid-cycle change. These new maps would be in place for six years; the independent commission would return to draw new ones after the next census in 2030.
The maps would be presented to voters directly; Gov. Newsom said at a press conference that they would be released “in the next few days.” Lawmakers told the Prospect that they have already seen at least some portion of the maps, and that they would not only net Democrats new seats but give frontline members in swing seats more breathing room.
“I know my part of the state, and I’m confident George Whitesides will have an easier time,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who represents part of the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles. Whitesides is a freshman frontliner who flipped a district in northern Los Angeles County last year.
But Sherman also managed some expectations for the outcome. “I’m not sure we pick up five seats,” he said. “But I believe that we pick up a minimum of three and that we take these swing seats and make them more secure.” Other congressional sources said that the map would net between four and five seats, while helping out the swing seats.
Sherman’s hesitation underscores how California has a tougher job than Texas in gerrymandering. Texas’s map was gerrymandered originally to create safe seats, so there was at least some wiggle room to reconfigure the map by spreading Republican votes around. But California had a competitive map in place where Democrats were already thriving, with 43 of the 52 seats. Democrats are also promising to abide by the Voting Rights Act and avoid racial gerrymandering. Sophisticated cartography can get around all that, but at the potential cost of not maximizing seats for Democrats.
Plus, Democrats have to convince voters to ditch a nonpartisan process they put in place at the ballot box 15 years ago by double digits, and which they still support in wide numbers. This will require some tricky messaging to sell the public that the state needs to alter its maps to prevent a Trump-led dismantling of democracy.
Outside of the event, dozens of ICE and CBP agents massed themselves, including the district director for the region. Sources told the Prospect that one arrest was made, without a warrant, before Mayor Karen Bass arrived, chasing off the federal officers. ICE and CBP are under a federal court order to end “roving patrols” not based on probable cause in Southern California.
Newsom called the ICE raid “sick and pathetic,” and that “it’s everything you know about the authoritarian tendencies of the president of the United States.”
THE ANNOUNCEMENT, KNOWINGLY HELD at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in the Little Tokyo section of downtown Los Angeles, had the feel of a campaign rally, kicking off what California Democrats are calling the Election Rigging Response Act. The statewide election needs to be placed on the ballot by the state legislature, which returns to Sacramento next week. A two-thirds vote is needed to rush the measure to the ballot, and Newsom said he expected it to be advanced by the end of next week. The state would pay the entire administrative cost of putting on the election.
The ballot measure would affirm support for a national independent redistricting commission, along with ensuring that the state version would snap back into place after 2030. Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor at Pomona College and one of the 15 members of the state redistricting commission, spoke at the event, praising the competitive maps that she and her colleagues established, but adding that “extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.”
Speakers, who included both of California’s U.S. senators, state legislators, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) of the House Democratic leadership, and labor leaders, compared President Trump’s demand of five new Republican seats from Texas to his explicit ask for more than 11,000 votes from Georgia after the 2020 election. “In normal times a political party in power would be running on their record,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), speaking several miles from where he was shoved to the ground by Homeland Security personnel during a Kristi Noem press conference. “They know that their only hope of keeping power is to rig the system.”
“Do Californians hate gerrymandering? Yes we do,” [Assemblymember Isaac] Bryan said. “That’s not what this is about. This is about, will we let the authoritarian in the White House break democracy, while we stand silent?”
Assemblymember Isaac Bryan of Los Angeles was among the most forceful in pitching the message. “Do Californians hate gerrymandering? Yes we do,” Bryan said. “That’s not what this is about. This is about, will we let the authoritarian in the White House break democracy, while we stand silent?”
Newsom, who is not so subtly eyeing a run for president in 2028, has taken up the fight-fire-with-fire redistricting cause over the past several weeks. He urged other governors in blue states to join him, quietly acknowledging that California doesn’t have enough Republican seats to counteract all the possible gerrymandering that Trump is pushing for. Missouri, Florida, and Indiana are at some stage of considering redrawing their maps, and Ohio is obligated to draw new maps for next year. As many as a dozen Democratic seats could be at risk, if not more. There are only nine Republican seats in California.
“Wake up America,” Newsom exhorted in the public announcement. “Wake up to the fear and anxiety … we cannot unilaterally disarm.” He suggested that putting the maps up to public scrutiny would actually give power back to the people of the state. “On November 4 you have the power to stand up to Trump … you have the power to save democracy.”
Newsom stressed that the maps would be temporary and in direct reaction to Trump-led gerrymandering, and if Trump called things off, the ballot measure and the new maps would be null and void. Later on, in a press conference, he clarified: If any state put forward new maps for 2026, that would trigger the new maps in the ballot measure. Since Ohio actually has to draw new maps, it seems that the election will automatically be triggered.
Newsom said he expected it would cost “tens of millions” of dollars to get the message out to the electorate in advance of November 4. Erika Jones, secretary-treasurer of the powerful California Teachers Association, pledged “full support” for the Election Rigging Response Act, and said her union would be “willing to do whatever it takes.” Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, concurred. “If he wants to cheat, we’re going to fight back,” she said, referring to Trump. “We will go to every one of our members.” There are more than two million workers in the labor coalition in California.
A full-on redistricting war where every state maximizes mapmaking technology to squeeze every member of the opposition party out of a House seat would favor Republicans, who control more state legislatures and governor’s mansions. A reporter asked Newsom about the endgame in such a tit-for-tat struggle.
“We’ve gotta win. Democracy is counting on us, the Founding Fathers did not live and die to see this moment,” Newsom replied, which is less of an answer than an idealistic appeal. The long-term answer is to make mapmaking irrelevant by using the tool of proportional representation, and expanding the size of Congress so that proportional representation can meaningfully work.
But in the short term, where Newsom is clearly right is that inattention by Democrats to Republican power-maximizing schemes—which looks a lot like the past couple decades of installing independent commissions in blue states while letting red states run amok—is ill-suited to the current moment. “We can roll over and say, ‘Maybe if we don’t, [Republicans] won’t continue this process well beyond Texas.’ You know for a fact they will. They’ll run up the score regardless. At least California can push back and neutralize Texas.”