Gov. Gavin Newsom stood with other prominent Democratic leaders Thursday to announce that the state will move forward with a partisan plan to redraw congressional maps in an effort to help his party win five more U.S. House seats in 2026.
Meanwhile, federal agents conducted an immigration enforcement operation just outside Japanese American National Museum, making at least one arrest as Newsom spoke.
It’s no coincidence that we stand here today, at the Democracy Center, with Trump's ICE agents standing outside as we speak.
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) August 14, 2025
Is this a threat to you, @realDonaldTrump? Are you scared of what happens when the people of this state come together to make our voices heard? pic.twitter.com/X4rQc76iMT
Newsom, in response to a Republican-led effort in Texas pushed by President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for a Nov. 4 special election to put the new maps before voters, who must give their approval for them to be in place for the next election.
The governor released a campaign ad on social media as Democrats kicked off a news conference where Newsom stood with a coalition of union leaders and California senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla.
Padilla later posted on social media that he was “proud to join @GavinNewsom to announce the Election Rigging Response Act and protect our elections from Trump’s power grab.”
State lawmakers must officially declare the special election, which they plan to do next week.
The Democrats’ proposed maps still haven’t been released. That’s expected on Friday. Then, lawmakers plan to quickly approve them next week. Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers.
The California map would only take effect if Texas and other states move forward with their own redistricting efforts, and they would remain through the 2030 elections. After that, Democrats say they would return mapmaking power to an independent redistricting commission approved by voters more than a decade ago.
Newsom, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, urged Trump in a letter earlier this week to abandon his scheme, telling the president he is “playing with fire” and “risking the destabilization of our democracy.”
Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio vowed to fight the plan and lead a campaign to defeat it through his Reform California movement.
“California politicians are using Trump as the window dressing to advance a corrupt and dishonest scheme to end fair elections in our state by eliminating the non-partisan Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission process to draw election districts,” DeMaio said.
DeMaio emphasized that state politicians strongly opposed the citizens’ effort advanced by California voters in 2010 that removed redistricting power from politicians through two voter-approved initiatives. Newsom’s proposal would reverse that, handing map-drawing power back to politicians.
“I plan to spend every day fighting Gavin Newsom’s assault on democracy through this partisan redistricting scheme – and we believe we have a comprehensive plan to stop him,” said DeMaio, whose 75th district includes suburban and rural communities in North, East and South county.
DeMaio announced in a news release that volunteers collecting signatures for the CA Voter ID Initiative also will be asked to harvest ballots with “no” votes against the redistricting plan.
San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond added his voice to Newsom’s critics, saying the “majority of Californians believe in local control and independent redistricting. Californians created the Citizens Redistricting Commission to keep politics out of drawing maps and to ensure voters pick their leaders, not the other way around.”
Updated 2:30 p.m. Aug. 14, 2025
