Triumph

California voters fired Democrats’ first countershot in a congressional redistricting effort pushed by President Donald Trump in the mid-decade, approving a ballot initiative Tuesday that will allow the state legislature to redraw the state’s congressional districts before the 2026 elections.

After Texas Republicans followed Trump’s orders to eliminate five Democratic-held seats in the state, California will now be able to do the same after the passage of Proposition 50. The initiative allows the state legislature, controlled by large Democratic majorities, to temporarily set aside the state’s nonpartisan redistricting process until 2030 and redraw districts on a partisan basis. The maps Democrats are considering would include four to five GOP-held seats in their column.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has presidential aspirations, led the effort to bring Proposition 50 to voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. He billed it as a direct response to Texas redistricting in the mid-decade, naming the initiative the Voter Tampering Response Act, and, crucially, a way for Californians to weigh their disapproval of the second Trump administration.

“California will not stand by while Trump and his Republican lapdogs destroy our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” Newsom said as he introduced the legislation that put the initiative on the ballot. “In just six months, Trump’s unbridled power has cost Americans billions and shattered the greatest democracy we have ever known. This moment demands urgency and action; that is what we will present to voters this November, a chance to fight back against their anti-American attitudes.”

Jill Connelly via Getty Images

Big-name Democrats, from former President Barack Obama to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, helped promote the campaign by arguing that Democrats must respond to Trump’s provocations over redistricting or else their autocratic control over Washington would tighten.

“Republicans want to steal enough seats to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama said in a Yes campaign ad. “Proposition 50 could stop Republicans.”

The passage of Proposition 50 was not a certain outcome. Newsom and state Democrats needed to overcome California’s long-standing support for good government reforms by convincing voters to set aside the constitutional amendment to create the nonpartisan redistricting commission in 2008 pushed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican at the time, and backed by voters with a large majority.

Newsom raised more than $100 million for the Yes campaign, swamping the No camp, which was backed by Schwarzenegger and Republican donor Charles Munger. Other fundraising efforts by Republicans, such as that of former President Kevin McCarthy, failed. Trump and national Republicans largely stayed out of the race.

The campaign offered an outlet for the anger California Democrats and independents feel at the Trump administration’s apparent lawlessness. With immigration authorities and the National Guard swarming Los Angeles, deportation raids targeting rural farming communities, critical funds to the state frozen or cut, and more threats of troop deployments to the Bay Area, the campaign offered a tangible way to fight back.

It also negates Trump’s biggest coup in his attempt to save his increasingly unpopular presidency from the threat of future oversight.

Since regaining the White House, Trump has faced no opposition or oversight from the House, and little from the Senate, with lazy Republicans in control. This has enabled his extensive effort to consolidate autocratic control over the federal government and the country.

But Republicans have an incredibly slim majority of five House seats that they will likely lose in the 2026 midterm elections, considering Trump’s extremely negative approval numbers and the public’s sour economic sentiments. One way Republicans could make the Democrats’ effort to take back the House more difficult was to tilt the deck, redrawing congressional district lines to transfer Democratic seats to the Republican column. That’s why Trump launched the current mid-decade redistricting war.

On July 7, the Justice Department sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, arguing, falsely, that the Texas map was illegally racially gerrymandered for attracting too many seats for black and Latino Texans to vote for candidates of their choice. Abbott called a special session that was immediately derailed when Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state to deny the legislature a quorum. Newsom launched his response campaign while Texas Democrats were out of the state. They returned later, pointing to California’s response as a victory, and Republicans enacted a new map that eliminated three seats currently held by Democrats and increased the Republican tilt of two others currently represented by Democratic congressmen.

Eric Thayer via Getty Images

Texas offered the biggest net gain for Trump in a redistricting fight. California was the only Democratic-leaning state that was able to respond in kind.

While California will now rebalance Texas redistricting, other Republican states have already redrawn districts to eliminate Democratic seats or are considering doing so. Missouri and North Carolina have each already voted to convert a Democratic seat to a Republican seat. Members of Ohio’s independent redistricting commission reached a compromise on a new map on Oct. 31 that would make two Democratic-held seats tilt slightly further to the right. Other similar efforts are being considered in Florida, Indiana and Nebraska.

Democrats have had little success outside California in getting the states they control to redraw their maps. The main reason is that these states largely use nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw congressional maps, and the process of getting around them can be even more cumbersome than in California.

With Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesdaythe state’s Democrats are prepared to be the next to respond. Democrats in the state legislature have already voted to put an initiative before voters next year to sideline the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission. The legislature will need to vote one more time to do so. Then voters would have to approve an initiative next spring and the legislature would have to quickly draw a new map.

New York Democrats are also considering introducing a voter initiative to abandon their nonpartisan redistricting process, but the state’s rules for doing so mean no initiative can be introduced before 2027.

Illinois and Maryland are the only states governed by Democrats without nonpartisan commissions. However, their maps are already heavily gerrymandered to favor Democrats. It is possible that Maryland could eliminate the state’s only Republican seat and Illinois could eliminate one or two Republican seats, but powerful Democrats in each state are currently resisting doing so.

National Democrats hope Proposition 50’s victory will have a “chilling effect” on GOP redistricting efforts before 2026, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said. he previously told News themezone.

But if not, they can point to the success of Proposition 50 as proof to other Democratic state leaders that the party can fight fire with fire and win.