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Voting in California’s special election continues through election day, Nov. 4.

Proposition 50, a measure that would draw new congressional districts for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections and the only measure on California’s statewide ballot this election, is the latest volley in a national political brawl that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here is information Times reporters gathered about the redistricting measure:

What’s on the ballot

How and where to vote

More election news

When billionaire casino mogul and top Republican donor Steve Wynn was accused of a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct in the midst of the #MeToo movement, elected officials across the country quickly distanced themselves from him.

The news broke in January 2018, and some Republicans immediately called on their colleagues to return donations from Wynn, who was accused of pressuring employees to perform sex acts.

Sen. Susan Collins told CNN, “I don’t even think it’s a close call to return the money.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham also chimed in: “We should do of ourselves what we ask of the Democratic Party. So I don’t think we should have a double standard for ourselves.”

Within months, Wynn started to donate again, and by 2020, he was once again a major GOP donor, giving millions of dollars to conservative super PACs, President Trump’s reelection campaign, candidates and state Republican parties across the nation.

This year, Wynn gave more than three-quarters of a million dollars to a joint fundraising committee aimed at helping Republicans retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and that group gave donations to dozens of incumbents across the country, including nearly every member of California’s Republican delegation to Congress.

The recipients include Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita and David Valadao of Hanford, whose seats will be hotly contested in next year’s midterm elections because they are key to GOP hopes to retake control of the House.

Elections experts said Wynn’s reemergence in the political arena and the candidates’ willingness to take his money were unsurprising, and unlikely to move voters.

“In politics in general, I think the hope of people who have been accused of wrongdoing is that we’re all amnesiacs. And eight times out of 10 we are,” said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School. “Republicans in tight races — very few people are going to vote against them because they got money from a PAC that got money from Steve Wynn.

“At this point, because we’re not in that cycle of breaking news about Steve Wynn, I think it’s probably a pretty reasonable calculation, one, because time has faded and two, because it’s not a direct contribution.”

Wynn donated $771,900 — the maximum allowed — to the Take Back the House 2022 joint fundraising committee on March 26, according to the Federal Election Commission. From that day through the end of the month, the committee, which is controlled by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, sent $5,800 max-out donations to more than 40 members of Congress, with FEC documentation citing Wynn as the source of the money.

The California Republicans who received these donations are Reps. Devin Nunes of Tulare, Darrell Issa of Bonsall, Doug LaMalfa of Richvale, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Michelle Steel of Seal Beach, Valadao, Garcia and McCarthy. Rep. Young Kim of La Habra also received a donation from Take Back the House 2022 on March 31, but her FEC filing does not identify the donor.

McCarthy was the only one to respond to requests for comment.

Asked about the new donations, McCarthy said in a statement, “Steve Wynn is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism. I thank him for his continued support, and I look forward to working with him to retake the House Majority.”

In 2018, McCarthy reportedly gave a Wynn contribution to charity in the aftermath of the sexual misconduct allegations.

Three years ago, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Wynn had engaged in sexual misconduct for decades. Among the cases cited was one by a casino hotel manicurist who claimed Wynn forced her to have sex with him and who received a $7.5-million settlement, the Journal reported.

Wynn, now 79, responded to the investigation by denying that he had ever assaulted any woman and by blaming his ex-wife for airing the allegations as she sought to revise their divorce settlement.

Though Wynn was never charged criminally, the fallout was severe. He resigned as the head of his namesake company. Gambling regulators in Nevada and Massachusetts fined Wynn Resorts tens of millions of dollars for its executives covering up or ignoring Wynn’s alleged behavior. Wynn agreed to pay Wynn Resorts $20 million to partly settle shareholder lawsuits against the company.

Wynn, who previously had supported Democrats including President Obama, stepped down as finance chair of the Republican National Committee. His name was stripped off a commons at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater where he once served as a trustee.

Among the politicians who returned or donated Wynn contributions were Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

McCarthy is in line to take the speaker’s gavel if Republicans win control of the House next year. His Take Back the House 2022 is a joint fundraising committee of 59 members of Congress and 20 other political committees that raised nearly $22 million in the first quarter of this year, according to the Federal Election Commission. Wynn was one of 11 people who maxed out to the committee.

Wynn’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment, but he told the Associated Press that Wynn “has the same rights and entitlements as any other private citizen in the United States of America.”

Four of the Californians who received donations from the PAC — Garcia, Valadao, Steel and Kim — are among the 22 incumbent Republicans targeted by Democrats in the 2022 election. The four seats are in traditional Republican strongholds but their demographics are changing. Mirroring a national trend, these suburban districts have grown increasingly competitive as their residents have grown more diverse. Democrats won the four seats during the blue wave in 2018; Republicans flipped them back last year.

An added uncertainty is redistricting because California lost a congressional seat based on the latest census report. Garcia’s northern Los Angeles County seat, which he won by 333 votes in November, may shift closer to Los Angeles when the redistricting commission redraws the maps, a move that would make it more Democratic.

SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Monday kicked off the process to redraw the state’s congressional districts, an extraordinary action they said was necessary to neutralize efforts by President Trump and Texas Republicans to increase the number of GOP lawmakers in Congress.

If approved by state lawmakers this week, Californians will vote on the ballot measure, labeled Proposition 50, in a special election in November.

At a news conference unveiling the legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said they agreed with Gov. Gavin Newsom that California must respond to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the 2026 midterms by working to reduced by half the number of Republicans in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

They said doing so is essential to stymieing the president’s far-right agenda.

“I want to make one thing very clear, I’m not happy to be here. We didn’t choose this fight. We don’t want this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park). “But with our democracy on the line, we cannot run away from this fight, and when the dust settles on election day, we will win.”

Republicans accused Democrats of trying to subvert the will of the voters, who passed independent redistricting 15 years ago, for their own partisan goals.

“The citizens seized back control of the power from the politicians in 2010,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), flanked by GOP legislators and signs in the Capitol rotunda that said, “Rigged map” and “Defend fair elections.”

“Let me be very clear,” DeMaio said. “Gavin Newsom and other politicians have been lying in wait, with emphasis on lying … to seize back control.”

After Trump urged Texas to redraw its congressional districts to add five new GOP members to Congress, Newsom and California Democrats began calling to temporarily reconfigure the current congressional district boundaries, which were drawn by the voter-approved independent redistricting commission in 2021.

Other states are also now considering redrawing their congressional districts, escalating the political battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressional districts are typically reconfigured once every decade after the U.S. census.

Newsom, other Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders launched a campaign supporting the redrawing of California’s congressional districts on Thursday, and proposed maps were sent to state legislative leaders on Friday.

The measures that lawmakers will take up this week would:

• Give Californians the power to amend the state Constitution and approve new maps, drawn by Democrats, that would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections, if any GOP-led states approve their own maps.
• Provide funding for the November special election.
• Return the state to a voter-approved independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional districts after the 2030 census.

Whereas Texas and several other GOP-led states are considering an unusual mid-decade redistricting to keep the Republican Party’s hold on Congress, Ohio is an anomaly. If its congressional districts are not approved on a bipartisan basis, they are valid for only two general elections and can then be redrawn.

McGuire said California would go forward if Ohio does.

“The state of Ohio has made it clear that they are wanting to be able to proceed. They’re one of the few states in the United States of America that actually allow for … mid-decade redistricting,” he said. “We firmly believe that they should cool it, pull back, because if they do, so will California.”

Republicans responded by calling for a federal investigation into the California Democratic redistricting plan, and vowed to file multiple lawsuits in state and federal court, including two this week.

“We’re going to litigate this every step of the way, but we believe that this will also be rejected at the ballot box, in the court of public opinion,” DeMaio said.

He also called for a 10-year ban on holding elected office for state legislators who vote in support of calling the special election, although he did not say how he would try to do that.

McGuire dismissed the criticism and threats of legal action, saying the Republicans were more concerned about political self-preservation than the will of California voters or the rule of law.

“California Republicans are now clutching their pearls because of self-interest. Not one California Republican spoke up in the Legislature, in the House, when Texas made the decision to be able to eliminate five historically Black and brown congressional districts. Not one,” he said. “What I would say: Spend more time on the problem. The problem is Donald Trump.”

The redistricting plan taking shape in Sacramento and likely headed toward voters in November could shift the Golden State’s political landscape for at least six years and determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.

Maps made public Friday afternoon show how California Democrats hope to reconfigure the state’s 52 congressional districts. The plan targets five of California’s nine Republican members of Congress, and is designed to counteract the redistricting efforts in Texas that would favor Republicans.

The state Legislature is expected to place the new map and a constitutional amendment to override the state’s independent redistricting process on a Nov. 4 special election ballot.

Enter your address below or select somewhere on the current map to see how the districts could change.

Sean Greene and Hailey Wang contributed to this report.

Eric Bauman, a gruff and tireless political operative who led two of California’s most powerful Democratic organizations before resigning amid misconduct allegations, died Monday.

His family said in a statement that Bauman died at UCLA West Valley Medical Center after a long illness. He was 66.

Born in the Bronx to an Army doctor and a registered nurse, Bauman went to military school and moved to Hollywood just before he turned 18. He became a nurse and met his husband, also a nurse, in a hospital cafeteria during an overnight shift in the early 1980s.

Motivated in part by the AIDS crisis, Bauman became active in the Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles, a progressive political group, and was elected president of the organization in 1994.

Bauman grew L.A. County Democratic Party into a political force as chairman from 2000 to 2017 and expanded the number of Democrats winning elections at every level of government, from water boards to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I turned the L.A. Democratic Party from a $50,000-a-year organization into a $1.5 million-a-year organization,” he told a reporter in 2011.

With a Bronx affect and a gold signet ring on his pinkie finger that he twisted when he was under pressure, Bauman built a reputation as an old-school party boss who would give you the bad news straight. Democrats compared him to Ray Liotta, and some called him the “Godfather of Democratic politics.”

“People come up to me on the street all the time and think I’m Joe Pesci,” he told the Times in 2017. “I try to work with that.”

Bauman ran for state Democratic Party chair in 2017. After a bruising election that exposed the fractures between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, Bauman was elected by a mere 62 votes.

He was the first openly gay and first Jewish person to chair the party.

“I don’t wear a button that says, ‘Look at me, I’m gay,’” Bauman said in a 2009 interview with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. But, he said, “I never fail to recognize my partner from any podium. It is in my bio. It is a part of who I am.”

The high point of his tenure was the 2018 midterm elections, when California Democrats flipped seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and won back a veto-proof supermajority in the state Legislature.

Bauman said he wanted to overturn California’s voter-approved “jungle primary” system, which allows the top two vote-getters to advance to the general election, regardless of party. Bauman argued that Democrats should pick their own nominees, rather than spending millions of dollars fighting in the primaries.

In late 2018, The Times reported that Bauman had made crude sexual comments and had engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings, citing 10 party staff members and political activists.

Bauman resigned, saying he planned to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use. The state Democratic Party fired top staffers in the wake of the allegations and eventually paid more than $380,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by three of his accusers. A party spokeswoman did not respond to requests for a statement on Bauman’s death Tuesday.

After his resignation, Bauman disappeared from public life for several years. More recently, he began hosting a radio show called “The UnCommon Sense Democrat” on the Inland Empire’s KCAA-AM 1050.

In the mid-2000s, when Republicans still represented many outlying areas of Los Angeles County, Bauman set up a “red zone program” at the L.A. County Democratic Party that funneled money and volunteers to Democrats running for seats in GOP strongholds.

The investments were a gamble, but they built relationships and better candidates — and sometimes, a long shot candidate actually won, said former state lawmaker Miguel Santiago, who first got involved with the party in the early 2000s.

“He was really hungry for Democratic wins,” Santiago said. “There was no seat that that guy left on the table, whether it was a community college seat, a school board race, a water board race.”

Bauman also worked to strengthen ties with organized labor, now the California Democratic Party’s most powerful ally, and build voter registration and turnout.

State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, who chaired the county party after Bauman, said he spent countless hours as a young volunteer entering information about newly registered voters into the party database.

The data came from a booth that the Democratic Party set up outside citizenship ceremonies where newly eligible voters could register to vote as Democrats, he said. Bauman sent a signed card to each person, congratulating them and welcoming them to the party.

“That touched people, and it showed them that they matter,” Gonzalez said.

Bauman also worked for Gov. Gray Davis and insurance commissioner John Garamendi and as a consultant to several Assembly speakers, including Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles and Toni Atkins of San Diego.

He is survived by his husband and partner of 42 years, Michael Andraychak, and his father and sister, Richard and Roya Bauman.

WASHINGTON — A Democratic lawmaker is launching a renegade effort to impeach President Trump, pushing past party leaders on Wednesday with an attempt to force a procedural vote in the U.S. House that is expected to fail.

Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan announced his intention to charge ahead, saying that as an immigrant to America he wants to do all he can to protect its Constitution and institutions from Trump’s lawlessness. His resolution contains seven articles of impeachment against the Republican president.

“Donald J. Trump has been committing crimes since day one — bribery, corruption, taking power from Congress, creating an unlawful office in DOGE, violating 1st Amendment rights, ignoring due process,” the congressman said earlier from the House floor.

It would be the historic third time Trump has faced impeachment efforts after being twice impeached during his first term as president — first in 2019 on charges related to withholding military aid to Ukraine as it confronted Russia and later on a charge of inciting insurrection over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Trump was acquitted both times by the Senate.

Thanedar is not the only Democrat who has signaled impeachment efforts against Trump. But his decision to go it almost alone, without backing from party leadership, comes as he faces his own political challenges at home, with several primary opponents looking to unseat him in his Detroit-area congressional district.

Timing is also key. His resolution claiming Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” comes as Trump is traveling in the Middle East in his first major trip abroad of his second term, violating a norm in American politics of not criticizing the president once he leaves the U.S.

But Thanedar said he was pressing ahead in part because of Trump’s trip abroad and the potential conflicts of interest as the president appears to be mixing his personal business dealings with his presidential duties and is considering accepting a lavish gift of an airplane from the Qatari government.

“My constituents want me to act,” Thanedar told the Associated Press late Tuesday.

“It’s time for us to stand up and speak. We can’t worry about, ‘Is this the right time?’ We can’t worry about, ‘Are we going to win this battle?’ It’s more about doing the right thing,” he said. “I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. So did Mr. Trump. He has violated his oath, and he’s doing unconstitutional activities. It’s time for someone to stand up and say that, and if that’s just me, then so be it.”

Thanedar is using a procedural tool to force a vote Wednesday on whether to proceed to the issue or shelve the matter.

One top Trump ally, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, criticized Thanedar and dismissed the impeachment effort.

“It’s DOA,” she posted on social media.

Impeachment of a president or other U.S. officials, once rare, has become an increasingly common in Congress.

Republicans in the House opened an impeachment inquiry into then-President Biden, a Democrat, but stopped short of action. The Republicans in Congress did, however, impeach Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Senate dismissed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, ending his trial.

Thanedar, who’s from India, has said he came to the United States without many resources. He said he loves the U.S. and wants to defend its Constitution and institutions.

When he took over the Detroit congressional district, it was the first time in decades the city was left without a Black lawmaker in Congress.

Mascaro, Brown and Askarinam write for the Associated Press.