California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom fired up a Los Angeles crowd Thursday, promoting a November ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional map in Democrats’ favor in response to Texas’ redistricting.
“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back,” Newsom said at the Japanese American Museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy.
“Here’s the good thing about California, folks,” he continued. “We’re the size of 21 state populations combined… We are not a small, isolated state. I know they say, ‘don’t mess with Texas.’ Well, don’t mess with the great Golden State.”
California currently has 43 Democrats and just nine Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a state where Trump received more than 38% of the vote in 2024.
Newsom is moving forward with a Nov. 4 special election, in which voters would decide on a constitutional ballot measure to allow the legislature redraw the congressional map. California currently employs a bipartisan redistricting commission to draw its district boundaries.
New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose state relies on a similar commission, has also threatened retaliatory redistricting.
“We have got to meet fire with fire, and we’ve got to be held to a higher level of accountability,” Newsom said to the Democrat crowd that included California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff. “We’re doing this in reaction to a President of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, ‘find me five seats.’”
Some Texas Republicans have pushed back on Newsom and Democrats’ accusations of unfair gerrymandering, arguing they’re simply following the playbook written in Democrat-governed states.
“Nothing we’re considering in Texas is anywhere near as aggressive as what already happened in California and in Illinois,” Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told The Daily Signal Thursday.
“Quite frankly, Texas should have done this [redistricting] by now. Texas should have been leading on this. In my opinion, it’s embarrassing it’s taken us so long,” he said.