California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday that there is a “legal pathway” for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to carve out new congressional districts that could help Democrats secure more House seats ahead of next year’s midterm elections. 

Bonta told reporters that Newsom could present new congressional district maps directly to voters on a statewide ballot, allowing Democrats to circumvent the state’s independent redistricting commission. The maps would be prepared by the state legislature and presented to voters for up-or-down approval in a special election. 

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”I think that’s what’s being contemplated here, and I think that’s what the legal pathway is,” Bonta told reporters. 

He continued, “I think the governor could call a special election that the voters of the state of California would participate in, and present to them a pathway forward that’s different than the independent redistricting commission, that has maps presented to them ready, tangible, and specific, and then the people vote.”

A ballot initiative would need the approval of two-thirds of state lawmakers before being presented to voters in a special election. Lawmakers are currently in their regular session, which ends on Sept. 12, and could get it done in time. They return from their summer recess on Aug. 18.

California Republicans have blasted Newsom and Bonta’s take on redistricting, arguing that it is harmful to democracy. 

Assembly Leader James Gallagher (R-CA) criticized Bonta’s proposal as a “strange legal theory to undermine CA voters.”

“It’s undemocratic, it’s wrong, and it needs to be stopped,” Gallagher posted on social media Tuesday night. “If they move forward in this fashion they will rip the state and this nation apart.”

It has been more than two decades since California lawmakers drew congressional maps. Voters took the power away from them in 2008 and gave it to an independent, citizen-led redistricting commission. The commission was created to draw districts impartially, avoiding the manipulation of boundaries to benefit a single political party. 

Bonta said he believes the move to directly present new maps to voters would help California counter a push by Texas Republicans to redraw their state’s maps. 

President Donald Trump suggested that Texas’s redistricting could help Republicans gain five House seats to keep the party in control after the 2026 midterm elections. Currently, Republicans have a seven-seat edge in the House. Trump has been able to enact his agenda, which includes everything from mass deportations to extending tax breaks for the ultra-rich, because the GOP controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. If Democrats can flip the House, they will likely be able to stop the president’s agenda from moving forward and render him a lame duck during his last two years in office. 

Texas state lawmakers have been holding hearings on the controversial redistricting effort and rolled out their proposed map on Wednesday. The new map would create 30 Republican congressional seats, compared to eight Democratic districts, an expected five-seat boost for the GOP from its current 25-to-13 seat breakdown.

In response to Texas and Trump, three Democratic states, California, Illinois, and New York, have pledged to fight back. 

Texas Democrats have already met with Newsom to strategize. The California governor, who will be termed out of office next year and is considered an early 2028 Democratic presidential contender, called what is happening in Texas a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028,” he said at a press conference in Sacramento. “They’re not screwing around. We cannot afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”

Texas delegations also traveled to see Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) earlier this month and have another visit planned to see New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D).

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Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said her state would follow its rules, but added that “all’s fair in love and war.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) traveled to Austin, Texas, on Wednesday to meet with Democrats, who hold little power in the GOP-led legislature. Those familiar with his schedule told the Washington Examiner he will head to California later this week.