redistricting

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.

The court’s conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.

The order came about an hour after the state called on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

The order was signed by Alito because he is the justice who handles emergency appeals from Texas.

Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year’s elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle.

The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

If the ruling holds for now, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state’s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats.

The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It’s not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

An Indiana lawmaker who has yet to make a decision on whether to back President Trump’s push to have Republicans redraw the state’s congressional boundaries was the victim of a swatting call that brought sheriff’s deputies to his home.

The call, in which someone reported a fake emergency at the Terre Haute home of state Sen. Greg Goode on Sunday, came hours after Trump criticized Indiana lawmakers for not moving forward with the plan and singled out Goode and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray. Trump has been trying to persuade Republican-led states across the country to aggressively redraw their congressional maps to help the GOP hold the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.

Deputies were sent to Goode’s home after receiving an email “advising harm had been done to persons inside a home,” according to a statement from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office.

“All persons were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” the statement said. The incident is under investigation.

Goode, a Republican, wrote on social media that the responding deputies were “under the impression of a domestic violence emergency.” He thanked the deputies for acting professionally.

“While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode wrote.

Trump singled out Goode and Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray while demanding that Republicans move forward with a redistricting plan for Indiana. Republicans already hold a 7-2 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

“Because of these two politically correct type ‘gentlemen,’ and a few others, they could be depriving Republicans of a Majority in the House, a VERY BIG DEAL!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Bray, the Republican leader of Indiana’s Senate, announced Friday that his chamber will no longer meet to vote on redistricting, citing a lack of support from his members even after pressure from the White House. Vice President JD Vance has visited multiple times to make the case.

Goode, a Republican member of the Senate, has not publicly stated his position on redistricting and says he will not make a decision without seeing a map and legislation introduced for lawmakers’ review.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The goal of swatting is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address by making bogus claims of violence happening inside.

Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House next year, leading to Trump’s strong-arming of GOP-controlled states. Legislatures or commissions in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted new maps to boost Republicans’ odds, while California and Virginia are poised to counter Trump’s push and redraw their own maps to benefit Democrats.

Weber writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — A federal court ordered Texas on Tuesday to throw out its redrawn Republican-friendly congressional maps for the 2026 election after finding it constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.

The 2-1 order by the three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court of Western Texas is a significant setback for Republicans after they pushed through an unusual redistricting of Texas’ congressional seats to insulate their slim House majority ahead of next year’s midterms.

President Donald Trump openly urged Texas state lawmakers to adopt the new congressional map in order to help the party’s prospects in Washington. Democratic lawmakers responded by fleeing the state in what was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass the new maps.

State Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat who led the quorum break, welcomed the court’s ruling in a post on X.

“Texas House Dems stood up to Abbott & Trump,” he wrote. “We broke quorum & we fought in the courts! We did not back down.”

However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a post on X that he would appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court. He criticized what he called partisan gerrymandering in Democratic-led states, including California, Illinois and New York. He added that he expects the Supreme Court to “uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats, and the now-scrapped redistricting was expected to give the party an edge by diluting Democratic strongholds.

But U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, instead focused on how the new map would affect the racial makeup of Texas’ congressional districts.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” Brown wrote. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”

In his ruling, Brown cited a July letter from U.S. Department of Justice officials to Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, directing the state to correct four districts because they were illegal racial gerrymanders.

Brown wrote that the letter was difficult to assess because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.” But Brown pointed out that Abbott cited the letter as the reason he added congressional redistricting to the legislature’s special session earlier this year.

Nov. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Sunday criticized Indiana state lawmakers who have dropped an effort to seek a vote for the potential redistricting of congressional seats.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, had called a special session last month to consider redrawing the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Rodric Bray, the president pro tempore of the Indiana Senate, issued a statement Friday that said Republicans did not have enough votes “to move the idea forward.”

Trump called Bray a “RINO,” which stands for “Republican in Name Only,” for not pursuing a vote in a post to his Truth Social platform Sunday.

“Very disappointed in Indiana State Senate Republicans, led by RINO Senators Rod Bray and Greg Goode, for not wanting to redistrict their state, allowing the United States Congress to perhaps gain two more Republican seats,” Trump said.

Trump then said that Democrats “have done redistricting for years,” which he falsely said was often done “illegally.”n

“They could be depriving Republicans of a majority in the House, a very big deal!” Trump said in his post.

He also criticized his “friend,” Braud, who he said “is not working the way he should to get the necessary votes.”

“Considering that Mike wouldn’t be governor without me (not even close!), is disappointing!” Trump said. “Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be primaried.”

A number of states across the country have revisited their congressional maps after Texas Republicans earlier this year pushed through a map projected to give the GOP five additional seats.

In response, California Democrats advanced changes expected to create five new Democratic-leaning districts, setting off a wave of similar efforts in other states from both parties.

Normally, Congressional districts are normally remapped every ten years after the U.S. Census has been completed.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — The Justice Department is suing California over its recently voter-approved congressional maps, alleging they are an unconstitutional “power grab.”

Earlier this month, Californians approved Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s redistricting initiative, introduced in direct response to Texas’ effort to create new congressional maps that favor Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

While Texas Republican lawmakers pursued an unprecedented mid-cycle redraw without voter approval, President Donald Trump and his allies have been critical of the California move. Democrats counter that they are trying to protect the state’s representation in Congress, accusing Trump — who pressured Texas to pursue the new maps — of undermining democratic norms.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday filed the lawsuit against Newsom over California’s redistricting plan, alleging that it racially gerrymandered congressional districts in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Gov. Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”

According to the lawsuit, federal prosecutors accuse California’s Democratic leaders of manipulating congressional maps to bolster “the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.”

“Our Constitution does not tolerate this racial gerrymander,” the 17-page court document states.

“No one, let alone California, contends that its pre-existing map unlawfully discriminated on the basis of Race. Because the Proposition 50 map does, the United States respectfully requests this court enjoin defendants from using it in the 2026 election and future elections.”

Texas’ GOP-controlled legislature in August passed its new maps that are projected to give Republicans as many as five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

Democrats have criticized this move as Trump trying to create more red seats to keep control of the House, which the GOP now narrowly holds.

Texas has 38 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, 25 of which are filled by Republicans.

California, which has 52 House districts — 43 of them held by Democrats — responded with Proposition 50.

Republicans hold a 219-214 majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, with two seats vacant.

Several states — led by both Republicans and Democrats — have since announced efforts to redraw their maps, setting off a gerrymandering arms race ahead of 2026.

“These losers lost at the ballot box, and soon they will also lose in court,” Newsom’s office said in a statement in response to the Trump administration lawsuit.

Voters’ approval of Proposition 50 means Democrats might win up to five additional seats in the US House of Representatives in 2026.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has joined a lawsuit against California over the state’s redistricting effort, which was approved by a landslide in the November 4 election.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice said it would seek to overturn California’s new map of congressional districts, which was passed through a ballot initiative with approximately 64 percent support.

“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

She accused California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, of attempting to stifle Republican voices in his state. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”

The ballot measure, known as Proposition 50, is poised to redraw the boundaries of electoral districts to favour the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

The proposition was designed as a counterattack against Trump’s gerrymandering in Republican states.

In Texas, for instance, the Trump White House urged the state legislature to pass new congressional districts that would allow the Republicans the opportunity to win five more seats in the House of Representatives in 2026.

In August, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the new Republican-backed map into law.

Republicans also expect to gain one seat each from new maps in Missouri and North Carolina, and potentially two more in Ohio. Civil rights advocates have argued that the new boundaries in Texas and Missouri illegally disadvantage minority communities at the ballot box.

Proposition 50 in California means that Democrats might win as many as five additional seats in the House in 2026, in an explicit attempt to offset the new Texas congressional map.

However, the California Republican Party and 19 registered voters sued the state in federal court on November 5, a day after the election was held.

They claimed California’s redistricting effort violates provisions of the US Constitution by unlawfully favouring Hispanic communities.

The Justice Department has echoed those concerns in its complaint. It argues that California’s map “manipulates district lines in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race”.

Tonight, California sent a powerful message to Donald Trump. We will fight for our democracy. And we will win. pic.twitter.com/tEcPlxVbi4

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 5, 2025

In response, Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Governor Newsom, said, “These losers lost at the ballot box and soon they will also lose in court.”

Newsom has emerged as a prominent Democratic critic of Trump, calling the president’s opposition to California’s ballot measure the “ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE”.

Newsom has confirmed he will consider a White House run in 2028 once the 2026 midterm elections are over.

California’s new district boundaries will apply for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.

Normally, congressional districts in California are drawn by an independent commission, based on the results of a national census taken every 10 years.

Proposition 50 suspends that commission’s work for the next three national elections and instead adopts a map created by the state legislatures.

In theory, electoral maps should reflect the people who live in a given state. In reality, most boundaries are rejigged by the parties in power, in a process called gerrymandering. Legislatures in many states determine how the districts are drawn.

California’s new congressional map aims to dilute Republican voters’ power, in one case by uniting rural, conservative-leaning parts of far northern California with Marin County, a famously liberal coastal stronghold across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

The Justice Department is asking a judge to prohibit California from using the new map in any future elections.

Nov. 13 (UPI) — California Republicans are challenging their state’s voter-approved redistricting plan, adding to the ongoing partisan court struggle over gerrymandering.

The lawsuit, filed a day after voters decisively approved Proposition 50 in a special election, claims the new congressional map was drawn in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments because race was unjustifiably a factor.

Proposition 50 amends the state constitution to allow state legislators to redraw California’s congressional map in an effort to counteract Texas’ new map. The map will remain until 2031 when the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission draws a new congressional map.

The congressional map approved by Texas this year was drawn at the behest of President Donald Trump who called on state lawmakers to add five more likely-Republican congressional seats before the 2026 midterm election.

Richard Hasen, professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, told UPI voters historically are opposed to partisan redistricting, making this a novel development.

More than 5.6 million Californians voted in favor of Proposition 50 while about 3.2 million voted against it, according to the vote count by the California Secretary of State’s office.

“It is unusual to say the least for voters to approve a partisan gerrymander through a ballot measure,” Hasen said. “Instead we have typically seen voters approving measures that make redistricting less political. But this can be seen as the voters’ response to Donald Trump for pushing Texas to do a new Republican partisan gerrymander. It is a kind of tit-for-tat that may become the new normal in future redistricting wars.”

The California Republican Party is joined in the lawsuit by several residents, state lawmaker David Tangipa and former congressional candidate Eric Ching. Tangipa represents District 8 at the state assembly. Ching ran an unsuccessful campaign to represent District 38 in 2024.

The complaint by the California Republican Party and co-plaintiffs says the new congressional map was drawn to boost the voting power of Hispanic voters by creating two new districts to “empower Latino voters to elect their candidates of choice.”

“However, California’s Hispanic voters have successfully elected their preferred candidates to both state and federal office, without being thwarted by a racial majority voting as a bloc,” the lawsuit reads. “This is unsurprising because Latinos are the most numerous demographic in the state and California voters nearly always vote based on their party affiliation, not their race.”

State legislatures are not prohibited from considering race when drawing district lines, Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told UPI.

The issue for the complainants is whether they can prove race was considered too much. If that can be proven to a court, they must also prove that there was no justification for considering race.

“The complaint seems to lower the standard or wants to wishcast a far lower standard where the simple act of drawing the district to be compliant with the Voting Rights Act is racial predominance,” Levitt said. “They want to skip past the racial predominance subordinating all others line and suggest that because some of the districts pay attention to race that means they’ve got to be super closely justified. But that is not where the line is currently.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Alexander vs. the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP raised the standard for proving racial gerrymandering. A lower court ruled that South Carolina lawmakers diluted the voting power of Black voters by drawing one majority-Black congressional district, violating the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court overturned the decision. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion for the majority, said that state legislatures must be presumed to be working “in good faith” when submitting redistricting plans.

Alito added another requirement, ordering that plaintiffs must submit an alternative congressional map proving that districts could be drawn in a way to meet “greater racial balance.”

The questions at hand in the Proposition 50 complaint are at the heart of a case in the U.S. Supreme Court: Louisiana vs. Callais. The court heard rearguments over the case, which weighed whether the Voting Rights Act is in conflict with the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment, in October.

Levitt expects an opinion on Louisiana vs. Callais may be months away, as late as June, but it could have a bearing on the California GOP’s lawsuit and other redistricting cases.

“Only nine people know what the court’s going to do and I’m not one of them,” Levitt said. “And if the Supreme Court sets off an earthquake then that earthquake will also reach California.”

The California GOP lawsuit already faces challenges set out by the Supreme Court. The court has agreed that partisan gerrymandering does not fit the principles of the democratic process but it also has also ruled that the courts are not the place to resolve these issues.

In the 2019 ruling on the case Rucho vs. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion said partisan gerrymandering presents a “political question beyond the competence of the federal courts.”

Because of this limitation, lawsuits alleging gerrymandering must demonstrate that race was a predominant but unjustifiable factor in redistricting.

“The Supreme Court said that it’s really hard to prove that race predominated, particularly when there are political reasons for drawing the lines as a jurisdiction has,” Levitt said. “That standard in the South Carolina case made it really difficult for plaintiffs to win these types of cases. And in a context like Prop. 50, where it’s pretty apparent to everybody that the overriding reason to draw the districts was to try to pick up Democratic seats, that makes it super hard to prove.”

SACRAMENTO — While President Trump was pushing National Guard troops from city to city like some little kid playing with his toy soldiers, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was coaxing voters into fighting the man’s election-rigging scheme.

It turned out to be an easy sell for the governor. By the end, Californians appeared ready to send a loud message that they not only objected to the president’s election rigging but practically all his policies.

Trump is his own worst enemy, at least in this solidly blue state — and arguably the California GOP’s biggest current obstacle to regaining relevancy.

Here’s a guy bucking for the Nobel Peace Prize who suggests that the country resume nuclear weapons testing — a relic of the Cold War — and sends armed troops into Portland and Chicago for no good reason.

The commander in chief bizarrely authorized Marines to fire artillery shells from a howitzer across busy Interstate 5. Fortunately, the governor shut down the freeway. Or else exploding shrapnel could have splattered heads in some topless convertible. As it was, metal chunks landed only on a California Highway Patrol car and a CHP motorcycle. No injuries, but the president and his forces came across as blatantly reckless.

And while Trump focused on demolishing the First Lady’s historic East Wing of the White House and hitting up billionaire grovelers to pay for a monstrous, senseless $300-million ballroom — portraying the image of a spoiled, self-indulgent monarch — Newsom worked on a much different project. He concentrated on building a high-powered coalition and raising well over $100 million to thwart the president with Proposition 50.

The ballot measure was Newsom’s and California Democrats’ response to Trump browbeating Texas and other red states to gerrymander congressional districts to make them more Republican-friendly. The president is desperate to retain GOP control of the House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

Newsom retaliated with Prop. 50, aimed at flipping five California House seats from Republican to Democrat, neutralizing Texas’ gerrymandering.

It’s all sleazy, but Trump started it. California’s Democratic voters, who greatly outnumber Republicans, indicated in preelection polling that they preferred sleazy redistricting to an unhinged president continuing to reign roughshod over a cowardly, subservient Congress.

A poll released last week by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that 93% of likely Democratic voters supported Prop. 50. So did 57% of independents. Conversely, symbolic of Trump’s hold on the GOP and our political polarization, 91% of Republicans opposed the measure.

Similar partisan voting was found in a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. Pollster Mark Baldassare said that “96% of the people voting yes on 50 disapprove of Trump.”

Democrats — 94% of them — also emphatically disapproved of the Trump administration’s immigration raids, the PPIC poll showed. Likewise, 67% of independents. But 84% of Republicans backed how the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency was rounding up people living here illegally.

ICE agents shrouded in masks and not wearing identification badges while traveling in unmarked vehicles — raiding hospitals, harassing school kids and chasing farmworkers — are not embraced in diverse, immigrant-accepting California.

When the PPIC poll asked voters how undocumented immigrants should be handled, 69% — including 93% of Democrats — chose this response: “There should be a way for them to stay in the country legally.” But 67% of Republicans said they should be booted.

The ICE raids were among the Trump actions — and flubs — that helped generate strong support for Prop. 50. It was the voters’ device for sticking it to the president.

“Californians are concerned about the overreach of the federal government and that helped 50,” Democratic consultant Roger Salazar says. “It highlights how much the Trump administration has pushed the envelope. And a yes vote on Prop. 50 was a response to that.”

Jonathan Paik, director of a Million Votes Project coalition that contacted 2 million people promoting Prop. 50, says: “We heard very consistently from voters that they were concerned about the impact of Trump’s ICE raids and the rising cost of living. These raids don’t just target immigrants, they destabilize entire communities and deepen economic struggles.

“Voters saw Prop. 50 as a way to restore balance and protect their families’ ability to work, pay rent and live safely.”

The measure also provided a platform for Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California to explore possibly joining a crowded field of candidates running for governor. Newsom is termed-out after next year.

The Trump administration did Padilla a gigantic favor in June by roughing up the senator and handcuffing him on the floor when he tried to query Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a Los Angeles news conference about ICE raids. Such publicity for a politician is golden.

Padilla became a leading advocate for Prop. 50 while seriously considering a gubernatorial bid. The senator said he’d decide after Tuesday’s special election.

“I haven’t made any decision,” he told me last week. “Sometime in the next several weeks.”

But it’s tempting for this L.A. native, the son of Mexican immigrants who was inspired to enter politics by anti-immigrant bashing in the 1990s.

“I’d have an opportunity and responsibility to be a leading voice against that,” he said. “California can be a leader for the rest of the country on immigration, environmental protection, reproduction quality, healthcare…”

In many ways it already is. But Trump hates that. And California Republicans step in it by meekly following the hugely unpopular president. Prop. 50 is the latest result.

California Republicans can do better than behave like Trump’s wannabe reserve toy soldiers.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: A youth movement is roiling Democrats. Does age equal obsolescence?
The what happened: Most Americans have avoided shutdown woes. That might change.
The L.A. Times Special: Voters in poll side with Newsom, Democrats on Prop. 50 — a potential blow to Trump and GOP

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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WASHINGTON — The hurried push to revise California’s congressional districts has drawn national attention, large sums of money, and renewed hope among Democrats that the effort may help counter a wave of Republican redistricting initiatives instigated by President Trump.

But if Democrats succeed in California, the question remains: Will it be enough to shift the balance of power in Congress?

To regain control of the House, Democrats need to flip three Republican seats in the midterm elections next year. That slim margin prompted the White House to push Republicans this summer to redraw maps in GOP states in an effort to keep Democrats in the minority.

Texas was the first to signal it would follow Trump’s edict and set off a rare mid-decade redistricting arms race that quickly roped in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom devised Proposition 50 to tap into his state’s massive inventory of congressional seats.

Californians appear poised to approve the measure Tuesday. If they do, Democrats potentially could gain five seats in the House — an outcome that mainly would offset the Republican effort in Texas that already passed.

While Democrats and Republicans in other states also have moved to redraw their maps, it is too soon to say which party will see a net gain, or predict voter sentiment a year from now, when a lopsided election in either direction could render the remapping irrelevant.

GOP leaders in North Carolina and Missouri approved new maps that likely will yield one new GOP seat in each, Ohio Republicans could pick up two more seats in a newly redrawn map approved Friday, and GOP leaders in Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas and Florida are considering or taking steps to redraw their maps. In all, those moves could lead to at least 10 new Republican seats, according to experts tracking the redistricting efforts.

To counter that, Democrats in Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would give lawmakers the power and option to redraw a new map ahead of next year’s election. Illinois leaders are weighing their redistricting options and New York has filed a lawsuit that seeks to redraw a GOP-held district. But concerns over legal challenges already tanked the party’s efforts in Maryland and the potential dilution of the Black vote has slowed moves in Illinois.

So far, the partisan maneuvers appear to favor Republicans.

“Democrats cannot gerrymander their way out of their gerrymandering problem. The math simply doesn’t add up,” said David Daly, a senior fellow at the nonprofit FairVote. “They don’t have enough opportunities or enough targets.”

Complex factors for Democrats

Democrats have more than just political calculus to weigh. In many states they are hampered by a mix of constitutional restrictions, legal deadlines and the reality that many of their state maps no longer can be easily redrawn for partisan gain. In California, Prop. 50 marks a departure from the state’s commitment to independent redistricting.

The hesitancy from Democrats in states such as Maryland and Illinois also underscores the tensions brewing within the party as it tries to maximize its partisan advantage and establish a House majority that could thwart Trump in his last two years in office.

“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Bill Ferguson, the Maryland Senate president, wrote in a letter to state lawmakers last week.

In Illinois, Black Democrats are raising concerns over the plans and pledging to oppose maps that would reduce the share of Black voters in congressional districts where they have historically prevailed.

“I can’t just think about this as a short-term fight. I have to think about the long-term consequences of doing such a thing,” said state Sen. Willie Preston, chair of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus.

Adding to those concerns is the possibility that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could weaken a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act and limit lawmakers’ ability to consider race when redrawing maps. The outcome — and its effect on the 2026 midterms — will depend heavily on the timing and scope of the court’s decision.

The court has been asked to rule on the case by January, but a decision may come later. Timing is key as many states have filing deadlines for 2026 congressional races or hold their primary election during the spring and summer.

If the court strikes down the provision, known as Section 2, advocacy groups estimate Republicans could pick up at least a dozen House seats across southern states.

“I think all of these things are going to contribute to what legislatures decide to do,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice. The looming court ruling, he added, is “an extra layer of uncertainty in an already uncertain moment.”

Republican-led states press ahead

Support for Prop. 50 has brought in more than $114 million, the backing of some of the party’s biggest luminaries, including former President Obama, and momentum for national Democrats who want to regain control of Congress after the midterms.

In an email to supporters Monday, Newsom said fundraising goals had been met and asked proponents of the effort to get involved in other states.

“I will be asking for you to help others — states like Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and more are all trying to stop Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts. More on that soon,” Newsom wrote.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called a special session set to begin Monday, to “protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair.”

In Kansas, the GOP president of the state Senate said last week that there were enough signatures from Republicans in the chamber to call a special session to redraw the state’s maps. Republicans in the state House would need to match the effort to move forward.

In Louisiana, Republicans in control of the Legislature voted last week to delay the state’s 2026 primary elections. The move is meant to give lawmakers more time to redraw maps in the case that the Supreme Court rules in the federal voting case.

If the justices strike down the practice of drawing districts based on race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated the state likely would jump into the mid-decade redistricting race.

Shaniqua McClendon, head of Vote Save America, said the GOP’s broad redistricting push underscores why Democrats should follow California’s lead — even if they dislike the tactic.

“Democrats have to be serious about what’s at stake. I know they don’t like the means, but we have to think about the end,” McClendon said. “We have to be able to take back the House — it’s the only way we’ll be able to hold Trump accountable.”

In New York, a lawsuit filed last week charging that a congressional district disenfranchises Black and Latino voters would be a “Hail Mary” for Democrats hoping to improve their chances in the 2026 midterms there, said Daly, of FairVote.

Utah also could give Democrats an outside opportunity to pick up a seat, said Dave Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. A court ruling this summer required Utah Republican leaders to redraw the state’s congressional map, resulting in two districts that Democrats potentially could flip.

Wasserman described the various redistricting efforts as an “arms race … Democrats are using what Republicans have done in Texas as a justification for California, and Republicans are using California as justification for their actions in other states.”

‘Political tribalism’

Some political observers said the outcome of California’s election could inspire still more political maneuvering in other states.

“I think passage of Proposition 50 in California could show other states that voters might support mid-decade redistricting when necessary, when they are under attack,” said Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute. “I think it would certainly provide impetus in places like New York to move forward.”

Similar to California, New York would need to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment, but that could not take place in time for the midterms.

“It might also embolden Republican states that have been hesitant to redistrict to say, ‘Well if the voters in California support mid-decade redistricting, maybe they’ll support it here too,’” Wice said.

To Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University, the idea that the mid-decade redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.

“It is a symptom of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism,” he said. “And, unfortunately, our tribalism is now breaking out, not only between each other, but it’s breaking out between states.”

He argued that both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.

“I am worried about what the end result of this will be,” he said.

Ceballos reported from Washington, Mehta from Los Angeles.

Oct. 31 (UPI) — Ohio’s representatives approved a bi-partisan redistricting map that might help Republicans gain more seats, but Democrats OK’d the plan because the others offered were worse for them.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission approved the measure unanimously Friday.

“Coming to an agreement that is in the best interest of the state, not just the most vocal elements of either party, I think is some of the toughest things that we can do as elected leaders in 2025,” said state Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

But Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio said it was the best option among bad ones.

“Facing this impossible challenge with no certain path to preserve a fair map, we worked toward compromise,” said Antonio, D-Lakewood.

Democrats faced a Friday deadline because the Ohio constitution allows Republicans to create a map without Democrats in November. They were also concerned about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act.

Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes of Akron will get a slightly more favorable northeast Ohio district, but it will still be very competitive, Punchbowl News reported.

Toledo Rep. Marcy Kaptur‘s district will be more difficult to win, but not impossible. She’s the longest-serving representative in the United States, and she won a close race in 2024. Her district chose President Donald Trump by seven points.

“Let the Columbus politicians make their self-serving maps and play musical chairs, I will fight on for the people and ask the voters for their support next year,” she wrote on X.

Cincinnati Rep. Greg Landsman also saw his chances at re-election diminished.

Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, said all of Ohio’s Democratic congresspeople could still win.

“This is a district Greg Landsman can and will win in, and that’s what the people of Cincinnati deserve,” Isaacsohn said.

Ohio had a failed ballot measure in 2024 that would have put residents in charge of making district maps.

“There’s a lot of anger and frustration in this room, and it’s not just the result of this most recent betrayal. The anger and frustration has been years in the making,” said Mia Lewis, associate director at Common Cause Ohio, the Dispatch reported.

“You have shown all of us, all of Ohio, that politicians cannot be involved in drawing district lines.”

Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said the people were denied being part of the process. “Republican and Democratic voters feel like their parties sold them out — and they’re both right.”