The battle for control of the U.S. Congress in the wake of the 2026 elections has already begun. If the 2026 results are consistent with previous midterm elections, the party controlling the presidency is expected to lose seats in Congress. Since active Republican members of Congress only outnumber active Democrats today by 219 to 213, based on history, the odds favor Democrats gaining a majority after the midterms.

To improve these odds, Republicans controlling the Texas state legislature have redrawn their congressional districts. Typically, redistricting is done every ten years after the official U.S. Census results are available. In those instances, redistricting is necessary because states with high population growth over the past decade will gain seats, and those states with lower rates of growth will have to give up seats. But Texas Republicans decided recent shifts in voting patterns in their state made it probable that a round of partisan redistricting would result in the state picking up five additional Republican members of Congress after the 2026 elections.

California is now returning the favor, with other states, blue and red, potentially also getting involved. But it is important to note that California’s heavily gerrymandered congressional districts yield an overrepresentation by Democrats that greatly exceeds the degree to which Republicans are overrepresented in Texas’s congressional delegation. Using the 2024 election results as a proxy, 58 percent of Californians voted for Harris, while Democrats control 83 percent of the state’s seats in Congress—that’s 25 percent overrepresentation. Meanwhile, 56 percent of Texans voted for Trump, while Republicans control 66 percent of the state’s seats in Congress—that’s only 10 percent overrepresentation.

The implications of California’s disproportionate advantage through gerrymandering exceeding Texas by 15 percent translate into about five congressional seats favoring the Democrats. This means that if the current redistricting in Texas pays off in the form of five more Republican congressional seats, the respective partisan advantages are equalized between the two states.

The fact that Texas is merely leveling the playing field with California takes away any moral argument California’s Democrats can make for their own redistricting scheme, but that has never stopped them. Because in California voters have to approve mid-decade redistricting, the state is already awash in video ads exhorting voters to “save democracy.” These ads represent their “election rigging response act,” which they hope California’s voters approve this November in a special election called by the partisan state legislature, as a way to stop Republicans from “stealing congressional seats,” “level the playing field,” and cope with “an emergency for our democracy.” In what is a blatant lie, these ads proclaim that “Prop. 50 gives power to the people, not the politicians.” It’s unusual even for California Democrats to resort to a lie this brazen, since the intent of Prop. 50 is precisely the opposite of that; it calls for voters to reassign redistricting authority from an independent commission over to politicians in the state legislature.

For at least the last 10 years, California Democrats have relied on the carefully nurtured antipathy Democrat voters have for Donald Trump to advocate for virtually anything that suits their agenda. This campaign is no exception; only the intensity is heightened beyond the usual hysteria. Virtually every Yes on 50 video features nonstop vignettes of Trump, “the dictator who has unleashed a blitzkrieg, arresting people without warrants, targeting the free press, attacking universities; now he’s coming directly for our democracy.” But what might be most instructive to voters is who is paying for these ads.

The Money Behind California’s Prop. 50

Unsurprisingly, the primary backers are “over $12 million from labor groups, including SEIU, the California Teachers Association, and the California Nurses Association.” To be clear, these are not just any “labor groups”; these are almost all public sector unions, funded by taxpayers and accustomed to exercising absolute control over California’s state legislature. Public sector unions collect and spend an estimated $1 billion per year in California, which enables them to dominate spending in literally every election campaign in the state, from local city councils to the governor. With voting on Prop. 50 still six weeks away, $12 million is just the beginning. California’s government unions can, and will, spend whatever they think it’s going to take to convince voters to support Prop. 50.

Also, no surprise is the entry of George Soros into the fight, with a recent contribution to the Yes on 50 campaign of $10 million. Of course, Soros is diving in. Control of the U.S. Congress is at stake. But one has to wonder at what point the political contributions Soros has made are going to backfire with voters, even in California. Thanks to massive contributions by George Soros, candidates for county district attorneys who are essentially anarchists were propelled into office throughout California in campaigns that used to fly under the radar. Have Californians had enough of chaos and crime in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles? Because they have George Soros to thank for much of the mess his chosen candidates created in those cities.

Conservative voters in the rest of the United States can be forgiven when they criticize the choices California’s voters make, year after year, to elect Democrats. The irony is amazing; the state where the power of Democrats is most entrenched is the state with the highest home prices, highest energy prices, the most institutional hostility towards businesses small and large, the highest taxes, some of the worst schools, crime, homelessness, and poverty, and a bureaucracy that prevents any development or competition that might put downward pressure on the cost of living and create more good jobs.

But there’s a reason California’s voters keep electing Democrats. They’re facing the most sophisticated, most heavily funded political machine in America. They face an army of political operatives and career professionals who have access to unlimited funds and know how to win elections. They are ruthless, amoral, and brilliant. They saturate Californians with the most sophisticated and shameless propaganda campaigns in the history of the world. They pioneer the latest tools of psychographic microtargeting at the same time as they overlay it all with media buys in television markets where a pervasive campaign will cost tens of millions per week. They don’t care. They have money to burn.

At the same time, not only California’s state legislature but also most of its major cities and counties and the entire state and local government bureaucracies are controlled by public sector unions that are totally dominated by Democrats. They control the laws, the regulations, the permitting, the enforcement; the entire process of governing. This not only allows them to maintain their partisan agenda across all government institutions, but it also means they can target opponents with impunity, whether they are dissident candidates running for office or any corporate special interest that is impertinent enough to stand up to them.

It’s hard to compete for votes in this environment. California is a state where Democrats have assumed absolute power. In every facet of campaigning for votes, they have an overwhelming advantage.

Putting aside the rhetoric that California’s Democratic special interests have mustered in support of “a level playing field,” using Trump as their foil, the reality is the inverse of what they claim. California’s elections are rigged. They are rigged thanks to decades of Democrats consolidating their power, fueled by the perennial torrent of money from public sector unions combined with the largesse of leftist billionaires that find power and profit optimized by a political economy best characterized as oligarchic feudalism.

When Republicans in the rest of the country reach out to voters in states that are still battlegrounds, they need to remind voters what’s happened in California. It is not Texas’s redistricting that “threatens democracy.” What Texas is doing is leveling the playing field. What Newsom and California Democrats are doing in response is simply restoring an imbalance in their favor.