Vice President JD Vance touched on the Republican Party’s redistricting efforts on Sunday, saying the GOP should aggressively redraw congressional maps because California has “way more” House seats due to the state’s counting of illegal immigrants for apportioning representatives.
“Even though illegal aliens theoretically are not supposed to vote — we know they sometimes do — you still count illegal aliens for congressional apportionment,” Vance told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures. “California has way more House seats than it should because they have such a high population of illegal aliens.”
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Notably, President Donald Trump has ordered the Commerce Department to begin conducting a mid-decade census that will not include immigrants residing illegally in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the resident population counts include both citizens and noncitizens living in the country at the time of the census. The president’s call for a new census comes five years ahead of schedule, as one is normally conducted at the start of every decade.
California gets “rewarded for welcoming illegal aliens into their state, giving them federal benefits, actually asking the taxpayers of states like Ohio to subsidize them,” Vance, who previously served the Buckeye State in the Senate, said. “Then those same taxpayers in Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere, they have fewer congressional representatives because of what California has allowed to happen.”
Vance called that strategy “ridiculously unfair,” saying it should act as justification for the Republican Party’s attempts to increase its razor-thin majority in the House.
“The only real way to fight back against it is for us to redistrict in some ways as aggressively as these hard blue states have done,” he added.
The vice president’s comments come amid an intense fight between Republicans and Democrats over redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans in Texas led the charge to obtain five more House seats, prompting Democrats in California and Texas to combat their efforts.
CALIFORNIA CHARGES FORWARD WITH COUNTER-PLAN TO TEXAS REDISTRICTING: ‘THEY DREW FIRST BLOOD’
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is planning to put the redistricting issue on a ballot measure this November for a special election, allowing voters to decide which of the state’s congressional maps should be redrawn in favor of Democrats.
Meanwhile, dozens of Texas Democrats fled a special legislative session last week to protest the Trump-backed redistricting agenda by withholding their votes. They are expected to face major repercussions after abandoning their posts and refusing to return to the Texas Capitol. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have taken several actions to force their return, including the possibility of arresting them.