California legislature approves new congressional map favoring Democrats amid redistricting arms race News
David Jiang, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
California legislature approves new congressional map favoring Democrats amid redistricting arms race

The California legislature on Thursday approved a redrawn congressional redistricting map that could cut five Republican-held US House seats. The move comes after Texas approved its own new redistricting efforts that would give Republicans an upper hand in the 2026 midterm elections. President Donald Trump urged Texas to redraw its state congressional maps in the hopes that Republicans will regain control of the chamber next year. Many states are now fighting back in this so-called “redistricting arms race,” including Illinois, Maryland and New York.

California’s Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 8 emphasizes, “It is the intent of the people that California’s temporary maps be designed to neutralize the partisan gerrymandering being threatened by Republican-led states without eroding fair representation for all communities.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom answered questions regarding the new map’s approval at a press conference yesterday:

[Texas] shot the first bullet. They took an action in Texas, and we’re responding to it … It’s a power grab. They’re rigging the election. It’s unprecedented, midterm, to call out the five seats to do what they did. And so the consequence of that is we can’t just think differently. We have to act differently, and that’s exactly what the legislature just did.

Relatedly, the California Supreme Court rejected a challenge by Republican lawmakers on Wednesday to stay California’s new redistricting proposal, stating that petitioners have “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief under California Constitution article IV, section 8.”

The US Supreme Court is set to hear rearguements this fall in a Louisiana redistricting case that contemplates whether a state violates the 14th or 15th Amendments of the US Constitution when it draws election maps to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

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