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California Kick-Starts Counteroffensive In Trump’s Redistricting War

For months, Democrats, paralyzed by good-government reforms and self-interest, struggled to counteract a push led by President Donald Trump for red states to redraw their congressional lines and add more Republican seats in a desperate attempt to head off Democratic control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections.

In the past week, however, the Democratic counteroffensive has begun in earnest. A California referendum to add Democratic seats looks certain to pass. Virginia Democrats called a surprise legislative session to start their own redrawing process. And national leaders are increasingly bullish about redrawing lines in both Maryland and Illinois despite ongoing resistance from state legislative leaders.

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The first step is in California, where Republicans have openly given up on stopping Proposition 50, which would change the state’s constitution and set up the state legislature to eliminate five GOP-held seats in the state, counteracting Texas’ mid-decade redistricting that eliminated five Democratic-held seats.

Democrats are hopeful California’s success will create momentum, both by showing other states that changing congressional lines to combat Trump is politically popular and by forcing the ambitious governors of other blue states to keep up with the successes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“If you’re a blue state and you have a trifecta between the legislature and the governor and you have the opportunity to get another seat or two, it would seem to me you would be emboldened to do so if California is doing what it’s doing,” said Rusty Hicks, the chair of the California Democratic Party.

State and national Democrats have cast Proposition 50 as a necessary response to Trump’s efforts to consolidate his autocratic rule. In the final days, advertising in support of the proposition has featured state and national Democrats including Newsom, former President Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

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Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said he hoped the proposition’s passage would have a “chilling effect” on GOP redistricting efforts, noting Republicans are already facing resistance to their efforts in Indiana, Ohio and Missouri.

In an interview with HuffPost, Martin stopped short of directly calling on Illinois, Maryland or other blue states to pass new maps but his intent was clear.

“This is a showdown Republicans wanted, and we’re going to give them a showdown,” Martin said. “This is not the Democratic Party of yesteryear, where we can roll over and let them get away with this. We are going to fight fire with fire everywhere.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed state Democrats to put Proposition 50 on the ballot and led the campaign to sway voters who would otherwise oppose gerrymandering.

After appearing to face an uphill climb at first, Proposition 50 has successfully been sold as a tangible way for voters to stick a thumb in Trump’s eye. The initiative campaign has raised over $100 million, swamping that of the opposing campaign. The fundraising has been so successful that Newsom urged donors to stop giving with one week to go as Republicans have begun pointing fingers over the loss. Public polls show the initiative winning with wide support.

“With five days to go, I think we’re where we want to be heading into our get-out-the-vote program in the final weekend,” Hicks said.

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Trump started the war by pushing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state legislators there to redraw Texas’ maps, and continued by pressuring Missouri and North Carolina to follow suit, eliminating one Democratic-held seat each. GOP-run state legislatures in Florida, Indiana and Kansas have all made moves to redraw their congressional maps. In Ohio, redistricting commission members reached a compromise that made two Democratic-held seats slightly more red. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court could open the door for Southern states to eliminate up to 19 Democratic-held seats if it guts the Voting Rights Act in the case of Louisiana v. Callais.

Democrats’ efforts to counteract these moves have been logistically complicated — many of the states where they hold full control over state government have adopted nonpartisan redistricting legislation or constitutional amendments over the past two decades.

“State legislative Democrats need to keep all their options open including using legislative power to pursue mid-cycle changes to these maps,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “This is not a fight that we wanted, but this is not something that can go unresponded to.”

The clearest sign of post-California momentum is in Virginia, where Democrats began the process to put a constitutional amendment before voters in 2026 that would allow the legislature to circumvent the state’s nonpartisan districting commission to redraw maps. This effort, which could net up to three Democratic seats, requires Democrat Abigail Spanberger to win the governor’s race on Nov. 4, which most polls show her likely to do. The proposed amendment would also need to go before voters in the spring or early summer to take effect in time for the 2026 elections.

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“Our hand has been forced [by] unprecedented events,” Del. Rodney Willett, a Democrat and chief sponsor of the constitutional amendment legislation, said during floor debates on Thursday.

Other efforts to respond to Trump’s redistricting campaign are facing more intraparty resistance, even if national leaders are growing confident they can overcome local objections. Maryland already gerrymandered its district map in 2022 to limit Republicans to just one district out of eight. Gov. Wes Moore and state House Speaker Adrienne Jones, both Democrats, wanted the legislature to call a special session to redraw district lines to eliminate that one GOP district, but Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, rejected this idea in a letter to colleagues on Tuesday.

Ferguson, however, is battling with most of the other leading Democrats in the state. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told HuffPost he was “disappointed” in Ferguson’s letter. “Maryland has a responsibility to respond to the Republicans’ outrageous actions in Texas,” he said. “We should not unilaterally disarm and we should maximize our opportunities.”

Democrats view Ferguson’s objections as primarily idealistic rather than self-interested, and are hopeful a recent decision by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin — himself a fellow good-government liberal and former member of the state Senate — to embrace an 8-0 map can help persuade Ferguson.

“The Republicans only need to convince their legislators it’s in their best interest to draw new lines,” lamented one Democrat working on national redistricting efforts who requested anonymity to speak frankly. “We also need to convince our legislators to put aside their values.”

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The time frame for Maryland to draw new maps is also extremely generous, with the candidate filing deadline not coming until Feb. 24, more than a month after the General Assembly will start its regular annual session. Even if no special session is called, Democrats are hopeful the state legislature could move early next year.

Ferguson’s arguments against new lines are not without merit: Maryland’s existing map was adopted after a state court rejected the legislature’s 2021 map as an illegal partisan gerrymander. The current map, adopted as a compromise after that decision, has never been challenged and could be upended in the likely event that an even more partisan map were adopted. While highly unlikely, Ferguson fears a legal challenge to any new map could not only undo any effort to gain a seat, but also lead Democrats to lose a seat in the state.

“We do not know how a court would assess a revised midcycle map and whether the court would use party affiliation as a measure,” Ferguson wrote in his letter. “We do, however, have certainty under the current map; that evaporates the moment we start down the path of redistricting mid-cycle with an unclear legal landscape and an even more unclear legal timeline.”

Like Maryland, Illinois’ congressional district map is already heavily tilted to Democrats where only 3 out of 17 districts lean toward Republicans. U.S. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Illinois state legislators on Monday to urge them to redraw districts to eliminate one GOP-held seat. But such an effort would require redrawing up to four Chicago-area districts currently held by Black lawmakers. While those four members joined Jeffries at the meeting and at his presser afterward, that idea is not popular with Black political leaders in the Illinois Legislature.

“If a map is produced that dilutes Black votes, the Black Legislative Caucus have articulated that that is something that they’re not going to be able to support,” state Sen. Willie Preston, a Democrat who represents the South Side of Chicago and nearby suburbs, told reporters on Monday.

New York cannot redraw districts without the legislature passing a constitutional amendment to circumvent its nonpartisan redistricting commission. That process can’t be completed until after the 2026 election. A lawsuit filed Monday by a Democratic law firm alleging racial vote dilution in a GOP-held seat in Staten Island could net Democrats one seat if it succeeds in state courts.

The only other bright spot for Democrats in the redistricting wars came in Utah, where the state supreme court ordered the legislature to draw a new map giving Democrats in Salt Lake City a greater chance to elect a representative.

There are few other opportunities to counteract GOP redistricting efforts in states where Democrats hold control of the governor’s office and the state legislature in time for the 2026 election. That’s why Proposition 50 is so important for Democrats.