By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -The California Senate on Thursday was set to act on newly drawn political maps aimed at giving Democrats five more seats in Congress, countering a partisan advantage President Donald Trump hopes to gain from a Republican redistricting plan in Texas.
California Democrats, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, are pushing to achieve fast-track passage of their redistricting effort in the Sacramento statehouse by Friday, just in time to place it on the ballot for a special election on November 4.
Newsom, who enjoys a Democratic super-majority in both houses of the state legislature, ultimately seeks voter support of his plan – neutralizing a Trump-backed Texas bill designed to flip five Democratic seats to Republican control in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The newly drawn district lines in Texas would go into effect without voter approval, though Democrats have vowed to challenge it in court.
The Texas measure cleared a major hurdle on Wednesday when the state House of Representatives in Austin adopted it on an 88-52 party-line vote.
The Texas House and Senate, both controlled by Republicans, still must reconcile two versions of the legislation before it goes to Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who said he will sign it.
Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged the Texas effort is about boosting their political clout, helping preserve the party’s slim U.S. House majority in the November 2026 midterm races. That election already is shaping up as a closely fought contest for congressional control.
Democrats and civil rights groups say the new Texas map further dilutes the voting power of Hispanics and Blacks, violating federal law that forbids redrawing political lines on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination.
In pursuing redistricting in mid-decade, both sides are breaking with long-observed political custom of generally altering political maps once every 10 years, following the U.S. Census to adjust for population changes.
TEXAS WALKOUT GALVANIZED DEMOCRATS
“Why are we here? Because congressional redistricting is allowed,” Texas Representative Todd Hunter, a prime sponsor of the Republican bill, said before its passage.
Consideration of the Texas bill was delayed for two weeks after more than 50 Democratic state House members staged a walkout that temporarily denied Republicans the legislative quorum they needed to proceed.
Their collective absence sparked extraordinary efforts by Abbott and other Republican leaders to pressure the Democrats to relent, including civil arrest warrants, the imposition of fines and threats to withhold their pay.
The wayward Democrats finally returned to Austin on Monday, by which time their legislative boycott had galvanized Democratic leaders in other states, especially California, where Newsom has vowed to “fight fire with fire.”
“We’re going to punch this bully in the mouth, and we’re going to win,” Newsom told reporters in a video conference call on Wednesday. “This is about the rule of Don versus the rule of law.”
He was joined on the call by the Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, along with New Jersey U.S. Senator Corey Booker and Texas Representative Nicole Collier, one of the leaders of the Austin walkout.
“These are the most segregated maps that have been presented in Texas since the 1960s,” said Collier, who represents a predominantly non-white Forth Worth state district.
Collier, who spent two nights sleeping in the statehouse rather than submit to police escorts assigned by Republican leaders to newly returned Democrats, said she was forced to clandestinely join the Zoom call from a restroom of the Capitol building, then abruptly leave the call when she was discovered.
A visibly shocked Booker remarked: “Representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity that Donald Trump in the Oval Office.”
The Texas-California clash may be just the start. Other Republican-controlled states — including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri — are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic-led states such as Maryland and Illinois.
In California, the focus is on a package of three measures. One would allow the legislature to temporarily bypass the state’s independent, bipartisan redistricting process, adopted by voters in 2008.
The two others consist of the redistricting plan itself and the measure to establish a special election giving voters final say over the new map.
In a victory for Democrats, the California Supreme Court on Wednesday swiftly rejected an emergency petition filed this week by four Republican state lawmakers seeking to block legislative action on Newsom’s redistricting plan for 30 days.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Neil Fullick)
