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California is center stage on Thursday in the national battle over congressional redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Two-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom will team up with congressional Democrats and legislative leaders in the heavily blue state at an event in Los Angeles.
That’s where they’re expected to unveil their game plan to counter the push by President Donald Trump and Republicans to create up to five GOP-friendly congressional districts in red state Texas at the expense of currently Democrat-controlled seats.
“If you will not stand down, I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states,” Newsom said in a recent letter to the president.
NEWSOM VOWS TO FIGHT ‘FIRE WITH FIRE’ IN CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING BATTLE
And he argued that Trump was “playing with fire” with his push for rare—but not unheard of—mid-decade redistricting.
Newsom says Trump missed a deadline to stand down on his push to redistrict in Texas.
“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!),” Newsom wrote earlier this week in a social media post posted by his press office, which was meant to mock how Trump writes his own social media posts.
“BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN,” he added.
The Republican push in Texas, which comes at Trump’s urging, is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to pad their razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
NEWSOM DEMANDS TRUMP GIVE UP TEXAS REDISTRICTING PUSH
Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats stormed back to grab the House majority in the 2018 midterms.
But while the Republican push in Texas to upend the current congressional maps doesn’t face constitutional constraints, Newsom’s path in California is much more complicated.
In Texas, Republicans plan to enact the new maps they drew up once enough state Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to prevent the legislature from passing the measure return to Texas.
The governor is moving to hold a special election this year, to obtain voter approval to undo the constitutional amendments that created the non-partisan redistricting commission. A two-thirds majority vote in the Democrat-dominated California legislature would be needed to hold the referendum.
Democratic Party leaders are confident they’ll have the votes to push the constitutional amendment and the new proposed congressional maps through the legislature.
Thursday’s news conference by Newsom, who is considered a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, will also serve as a fundraising kickoff to raise massive amounts of campaign cash needed to sell the redistricting push statewide in California.
SCHWARZENEGGER’S NEW STARING ROLE: PUSHING BACK AGAINST NEWSOM’S REDISTRICTING DRIVE
The non-partisan redistricting commission, created over 15 years ago, remains popular with most Californians, according to public opinion polling.
That’s why Newsom and California Democratic lawmakers are promising not to scrap the commission entirely, but rather replace it temporarily by the legislature for the next three election cycles.
But their efforts are opposed by a number of coalition of figures supportive of the non-partisan commission.
Among the most visible members is former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican elected governor in Democrat-dominated California.
Schwarzenegger, during his tenure as governor, had a starring role in the passage of constitutional amendments in California in 2008 and 2010 that took the power to draw state legislative and congressional districts away from politicians and place it in the hands of an independent commission.
“Most people don’t really think about an independent commission much, one way or another. And that’s both an opportunity and a challenge for Newsom,” Jack Pitney, an American politics professor at California’s Claremont McKenna College, told Fox News.
But he added that “it’s going to take a lot of effort and money to energize Democrats and motivate them to show up at the polls” and that Newsom’s effort “is all about motivating people who don’t like Trump.”
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