Democrats seek to fight fire with fire on redistricting
The Democrats are quick to maintain that mid-decade redistricting — a rare move defying the traditional decennial process — is a rotten trend to emulate and a bad precedent to set. But the urgency in what Democrats see as an existential fight against Trump demands a bending of the rules, they say, to fight fire with fire.
'If the Republicans are going to redistrict in the middle of the decade, then we have no choice but to do the same,' said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). 'Because to do otherwise would be unilateral disarmament.'
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is already heading in that direction, saying he's weighing multiple options for how the state can redraw its lines to counter the Texas GOP. And there's speculation that Democratic leaders in several other blue states, including Illinois and New York, are assessing whether to follow suit.
As those discussions evolve, House Democrats say they're facing two bad options: Either they stick to their favored tradition of once-a-decade redistricting and watch Republicans, with a boost from Texas, keep control of the House in 2027, or they hold their noses and adopt the mid-decade remapping to neutralize the changes coming from Austin. Given the stakes, many are leaning toward the latter.
'It's a race to the bottom, and I wish we weren't in this place,' said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). 'But they have sort of forced the conversation, and I think you can understand why California and some other places feel like they've got no choice but to consider something like that.'
'I mean, are we just going to sit back and take it?'
Trump fired off the first salvo this month when he said he was vying to pick up five seats in Texas as Gov. Greg Abbott (R) holds a special session next week to consider redistricting, among other priorities. Republicans in Washington are bracing for the traditional headwinds that accompany the president's party in power during midterm seasons, and a midcycle map redrawing in deep-red Texas could help blunt the Republicans' losses next year.
The move quickly infuriated Democrats, who saw Trump and Republicans as trying to game the system and preserve their slim House majority, before Democrats decided to change their tune and try to offset potential Republican gains by considering midcycle redistricting in blue states.
'We can act holier than thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be,' Newsom told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday. 'Or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.'
California uses an independent redistricting commission to draw the state's maps, a body that was initially borne out of a ballot measure that state voters approved in 2008, and that was later updated in 2010.
Newsom has floated several ideas of how Democrats could tackle midcycle redistricting around the independent commission: One would be to create a constitutional amendment to go before voters, which would likely address the independent redistricting body, so that lawmakers could redraw the House maps.
Another would be what he described as a 'novel legal question,' which would ultimately end in lawmakers crafting the lines themselves on the idea that the state constitution doesn't say anything about what happens during midcycle redistricting.
Members of California's congressional delegation have signaled they're on board even if their initial preference is to adhere to the independent redistricting commission.
'It's out of my hands, it's not really my choice or my process, but I do think that Democrats need to stop bringing [a] butter knife to a gunfight,' said Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.), who represents a competitive House seat.
'All of us want to see a fair process, but if Republicans are going to try to cheat and redistrict, I think Democratic states need to consider all options,' he added.
Huffman said Democrats in California could 'easily' pick up three or four seats through redistricting — and 'maybe more.'
As Newsom plots his next move, some Democrats say other blue states should jump on board.
Torres said New York laws would make the process tricky, but he's pushing for it all the same, 'to the extent that we can legally.'
'New York is more complicated because of the state constitution,' he said. 'But if Republicans are going to exhaust every means of building political power, then we should reciprocate.'
Asked if New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is considering a midcycle redistricting push, her senior communications adviser Jerrel Harvey told The Hill in a statement: 'Governor Hochul is closely monitoring the redistricting developments in Texas and any potential implications they may have.'
In Illinois, some Democrats are singing a similar tune, arguing that Texas's moves demand a retaliatory response that might include new maps in Springfield.
'Given the extremity of what Texas is considering, it can't be ruled out,' said Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.). 'They're dismantling the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchising communities that have been protected in the past, given their historic disenfranchisement.'
'We need to look at all possible recourse to keep the playing field as level as possible,' he added.
The official justification for the Texas redistricting was provided by Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ), which sent a July 7 letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton saying the district lines are illegal because race was a factor in how they were drawn. The suggestion was that the process discriminated against white voters.
Four districts in particular 'currently constitute unconstitutional 'coalition districts' and we urge the State of Texas to rectify these race-based considerations,' Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ's civil rights division, wrote to the Texas officials.
Democrats say that argument strains credulity, since it was Abbott and GOP legislators who drew the current lines just four years ago. They're accusing Republicans of abusing their authority — and diluting the minority vote — in a brazen effort to 'rig' the map to stay in power because they couldn't win otherwise.
'It's painfully clear why Republicans are doing this. They know they are going to lose the majority next year,' said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the head of the House Democrats' campaign arm.
While Democrats believe redistricting is a needed avenue to counteract Republicans' redistricting push in Texas, the party faces several hurdles of its own. For one, some members of the party have expressed qualms over the idea to redistrict midcycle, suggesting it's antidemocratic.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), however, countered those concerns by saying that voters were 'pissed' that many 'lost their health care under the president's reconciliation bill.'
'They're also pissed that their neighbors are being apprehended by people wearing masks and indefinitely being detained, and these are nonviolent people that it's happening to,' Swalwell added. 'So right now, they're saying, 'Protect us,' and this is one break-glass way to protect it.'
A more serious hurdle, though, could be how the maps are drawn and whether they violate the Voting Rights Act. Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said that shaving down majority-minority seats 'runs the danger of violating the Voting Rights Act.'
Saenz said that MALDEF would sue if either party engaged in midcycle redistricting that violated the Voting Rights Act as it pertained to Latino communities.
Meanwhile, Democrats across the board say the stakes are high.
'This is not just about Texas or California or any other blue state — this is really the moment where we decide as a country whether our democracy succeeds or fails, because it is about something so much bigger,' said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas).
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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29 minutes ago
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News Analysis: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party. Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried. Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump's increasingly authoritarian impulses? That's essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California's own congressional districts to favor Democrats. His goal: counter Trump's drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own. 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(Newsom's press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.) California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state's congressional districts, however. While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a "life and death" battle against "Trumpism" and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California's Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. "Wake up, America," Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. "Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people." Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself. Much of Liao's group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom's digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X. The missives have largely mimicked the president's own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the 'caps lock' key. "DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER 'HOT.' FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS 'STEP,' " one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself. Some messages have also ended with Newsom's initials (a riff on Trump's signature "DJT" signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase 'Liberation Day,' or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom's smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month. Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president's first term and move away from his party's prior "resistance" brand. Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom's embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes' participation in women's sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy. Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump's victory in November. 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So far, California is the only state beyond Texas that has officially waded into the redistricting fight, although others have signaled they might launch their own efforts. California Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, unveiled the new map Friday. State lawmakers in both houses will hold hearings on the map and vote to put it to voters in a special election in November. If voters agree, the new map would replace the one drawn by an independent commission that took effect in 2022. The new map would only take effect if Texas or another Republican-led state moves forward with their own mid-decade redistricting and would remain through the 2030 elections. Democrats said they will return the map-making power to the commission after the next census. The current effort is to save democracy and counter Trump's agenda, they said. 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Newsom Trolls ‘TACO Trump' With a Truth Social-Style All-Caps Rant After Missed Ultimatum Deadline
California Gov. Gavin Newsom trolled President 'DONALD 'TACO' TRUMP' with an all-caps social media post, complete with run-on sentences and random quotation marks, announcing California's response to Republican gerrymandering. Facing the prospect of losing control of the House of Representatives during next year's midterm elections, Trump has pressured several red states to immediately redraw their congressional districts to give Republicans an advantage. The maps are usually redrawn once every 10 years, after the census is completed, and not mid-decade. On Monday, Newsom sent the president a letter asking him to call off the 'unprecedented, mid-decade, hyper-partisan gerrymander to rig the upcoming midterm elections.' '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,' he wrote. 'But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.' Newsom then followed up Tuesday with a trolling all-caps post saying Trump had 24 hours to respond to his letter, and when that failed, he went full MAGA, writing in a social media post: '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!).' Among Wall Street traders, the president's flip-flopping on tariff policy earned him the nickname 'TACO' for Trump Always Chickens Out. Newsom's post further announced a '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.' The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment. Facing record-low polling numbers, Trump launched a redistricting arms race last month when he asked Texas for 'just a simple redraw' of its congressional maps to help Republicans pick up five seats in the Lone Star State. Democrats vowed to retaliate in states like California, New York and Illinois, prompting Republicans to eye states like Republican-controlled states such as Ohio and Indiana. Unlike Texas, though, California has an independent commission that draws political maps, and Newsom will need to push through a special ballot measure in November to carry out his redistricting plans. During an interview Tuesday with Fox News, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed California's commission was a 'ruse' and the state map is already gerrymandered. 'The Thirst Queen has emerged,' Newsom's office hit back on social media. 'We will not be lectured on democracy by someone who lost to a cartoon mouse with gloves.' Florida became locked in a battle royale with The Walt Disney Company in 2022 when Disney's former CEO Bob Chapek vowed to work to overturn a 2022 state law—colloquially known as the 'Don't Say Gay' law—that prohibited classroom discussion of sexuality. DeSantis retaliated by working with Republican lawmakers to pass a measure revoking Disney's self-governing status. Disney sued, and the case was settled in 2024. The Daily Beast has reached out to DeSantis' office for comment.
