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Major votes are on tap this week in the Texas and California legislatures in the high-stakes battle between Republicans and Democrats over congressional redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In Austin, Texas, the GOP-dominated state House of Representatives on Wednesday resumes meeting amid a second straight special session called by conservative Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
At the top of their to-do list as they return to work is passing a GOP-crafted redistricting map that would create up to five Republican-leaning congressional districts at the expense of currently Democrat-controlled seats. Republicans currently control 25 of the state’s 38 U.S. House seats.
“Please pass this Map, ASAP. THANK YOU TEXAS,” President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.
REDISTRICTING BATTLE: FLEEING TEXAS DEMOCRATS RETURN HOME
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.
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 midterm elections.
Republicans in red state Texas enjoy a supermajority in the legislature and the state Senate passed the new congressional maps last week, during the first special legislative session.
TEXAS HOUSE SPEAKER VOWS RUNAWAY DEMS WILL BE ARRESTED IF THEY TRY TO SNEAK HOME OVER WEEKEND
But dozens of Texas Democratic state representatives fled the state to prevent a quorum in the Texas House, effectively preventing Abbott and Republicans from moving forward with new maps.
Many of the Democrats who had fled the state returned on Monday, and made it to the state capitol building as the House reconvened. They were cheered by supporters as they arrived.
But with Republicans outnumbering Democrats 88-62 in the state House, the new maps are expected to pass when lawmakers return on Wednesday.
“Let me also be clear about where we go from here. We are done waiting, and we have quorum. Now is the time for action,” Republican Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said on Monday.
During the walkout, Abbott and Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton sued to try and remove some of the absent Democratic lawmakers from office. Meanwhile, GOP Sen. John Cornyn worked to get the FBI’s help in tracking down the AWOL lawmakers. And Burrows issued civil arrest warrants and also pledged to fine the lawmakers $500 per day.
The fleeing Democrats, who set up camp in the blue states of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, late last week signaled that they would return to Texas after the adjournment of the first special session, and after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other top California Democrats unveiled their playbook to counter the push by Trump and Republicans to enact rare – but not unheard of – mid-decade congressional redistricting.
The end of the walkout by the Democrats will lead to the passage of the new maps, but Texas Democrats vow they’ll fight the new state maps in court and say the moves by California are allowing them to pass “the baton.”
CALIFORNIA UNVEILS NEW CONGRESSONAL MAPS TO WIPE OUT FIVE GOP-CONTROLLED SEATS AND COUNTER TRUMP
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.
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.
Democrats in Sacramento on Monday unveiled a bill to move forward with the referendum.
“California and Californians have been uniquely targeted by the Trump Administration, and we are not going to sit idle while they command Texas and other states to rig the next election to keep power — pursuing more extreme and unpopular policies,” Newsom said Monday in a statement.
The Democrat-dominated legislature is expected to approve the referendum on Thursday. The maps the Democrats unveiled late last week, would create up to five more left-leaning congressional districts at the expense of the Republican minority in heavily blue California.
“Here we are in open and plain sight before one vote is cast in the 2026 midterm election and here [Trump] is once again trying to rig the system,” Newsom charged on Thursday.
Last week’s appearance by Newsom, who is considered a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, also served as a fundraising kickoff to raise massive amounts of campaign cash needed to sell the redistricting push statewide in California.
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 Republican former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who represented a congressional district in California’s Central Valley for 17 years, argued in an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that “when you think about how they drew these lines, there wasn’t one hearing. There is no debate. There’s no input. Even the legislature in California doesn’t have input. The DCCC is just ending it. That is why we need to stop Newsom’s power grab.”
McCarthy, who is helping to lead the GOP fundraising effort to counter Newsom and California Democrats leading up to the likely referendum this fall, said that “November 4th will be the election that people could actually have a say,” as he pointed to polls showing strong support for the current non-partisan redistricting commission.
A handful of California Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court to stop the proposed redistricting reform.
And the push to temporarily replace the commission is also being opposed by other high-profile Republicans. Among the most visible is former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican elected governor in Democrat-dominated California.
The longtime Hollywood action star says he’s mobilizing to oppose the push by Newsom to temporarily scrap the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission.
“I’m getting ready for the gerrymandering battle,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a social media post Friday, which included a photo of the former professional bodybuilding champion lifting weights.
Schwarzenegger, who rose to worldwide fame as the star of the film “The Terminator” four decades ago, wore a T-shirt in the photo that said “terminate gerrymandering.”
Schwarzenegger spokesperson Daniel Ketchell told Politico earlier this month that “he calls gerrymandering evil, and he means that. He thinks it’s truly evil for politicians to take power from people.”
“He’s opposed to what Texas is doing, and he’s opposed to the idea that California would race to the bottom to do the same thing,” Ketchell added.
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 placed it in the hands of an independent commission.
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