Newsom threatens to redraw California House maps in protest at Texas plan | California

Seeking to compensate for a republican plan to take seats at the Congress in Texas, the Democrats of California say that they are ready to redraw the 52 districts of the Congress of the State in a long and controversial effort to collect democratic seats.

Governor Gavin Newsom, considered a probable presidential candidate in 2028, threatened the threat in recent days. And the Democrats of the California delegation in the American House seem to be on board.

“We want our Gavels to come back,” said representative Mark Takano, a California democrat at Punchbowl News. “This is what it is.” The Democrats hold 43 of the 52 seats in California and would have thought they could take five to seven additional seats by drawing new cards.

Newsom pushes the plan while the Texas Republicans are ready to redraw his 38 Congress districts during a special session that starts next week. The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, put the redistribution on the agenda at the request of Donald Trump, who wants the Republicans to add five seats in Texas while seeing to avoid a loss of seats in the congress next year. The effort was widely criticized by Democrats as an anti-democratic stratagem to make republicans inexplicable to their voters.

It is unlikely that Newsom’s plan will succeed. More than a decade ago, California voters approved a constitutional amendment that stripped legislators with their ability to draw congresses districts and gave it to an independent redistribution commission. Newsom only proposed waves on how to get around this requirement. He suggested that the Legislative Assembly could call a rapid voter referendum to potentially remove the commission from its power. He also said on Wednesday that there was a possibility that the legislature was trying to promulgate new cards alone – a new legal theory.

“It is not lawful in any way,” said Dan Vicuña, an expert in redistribution from the Common Cause surveillance group. “It was clear that it should be done once after the census, through a public and transparent process which centers the comments of the community, then not to be affected before the next decade.”

He added: “It is not an invitation to bypass the independent process and the Gerrymander cards in the middle of a decade. This would completely undermine the objective of the approved independent process.”

The Independent Commission of California has long been considered a model to make the process of traction of the district lines more equitable. There has been a bipartite thrust in recent years to bring more states to adopt commissions such as California, where ordinary – democrats, republican and unconvilled citizens – have the power to trace district lines. After the 2020 census, four states – California, Arizona, Michigan and Colorado – used independent commissions. Democrats have sought to demand that all states use independent redistribution commissions in federal legislation that blocked the US Senate during the presidency of Joe Biden.

Russell Yee, a Republican who sat at the California Commission, said that he understood the frustration of Newsom, the only solution is to restart reform at the federal level.

“Abandoning a commitment to equitable and fair electoral districts for the partisan advantage is to sell family treasures in a wages for a business bundle quickly spent,” he said.

Newsom noted that he had supported the creation of the Commission, but supervised his desire to redraw the cards because the type of hardball democrats should be more willing to play because Trump and the Republicans openly challenged the law.

“They play according to a set of different rules. They cannot win by the traditional game, so they want to change the game,” said Newsom on Wednesday. “We can act more holy than you. We can sit on the touch, talk about how the world should be. Or we can recognize the existential nature which is this moment. ”

Alex Lee, an assembly of state who presides over the progressive caucus of his room, rejected this argument. “The redistribution of independent citizens (imperfect) is a model for the nation,” he wrote in an article on X. “[Republicans] Use cheating to win. We win by performing a clear platform for the working class and by delivering. »»

Trying to pass through a restart of the California card could also undermine the efforts of the Democrats to convince voters of the serious dangers of Trump attacks against the rule of law.

“I do not think it is appropriate to fight against attacks against democracy with more attacks against democracy,” said Lee. “It looks like a very familiar game book. It looks like the Trump game book.”