los angeles — California voters approved new congressional district boundaries on Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in a state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026, and with it the ability to thwart or advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Approval of Proposition 50 gives Democrats a chance to win up to five additional seats, just enough to thwart a move by Texas Republicans to redraw their own maps for five GOP seats at Trump’s request. The Texas move and the California reaction began A wave of redistricting efforts Across the country, Republican states appear to have the advantage. Deep blue California is Democrats’ best chance to hold the seats.
Midterm elections usually punish the party in the White House, and Trump is struggling to maintain his party’s slim majority in the House of Representatives. Republicans hold 219 seats, compared to 213 for Democrats.
Tuesday’s results represent a political victory for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called the measure an essential tool to fight Trump and protect American democracy.
Speaking to reporters in Sacramento, Newsom described the California vote as part of a broader national rejection of Trump’s policies that has led to the rise of Democratic governors in California elections. New Jersey and Virginia. But he warned that the most important battle will happen next year.
Newsom said that if Democrats win the House majority, they could “end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it.” “It’s all at stake, bright line, in 2026.”
California’s Proposition 50 asked voters to suspend House maps drawn by an independent commission and replace them with realigned districts adopted by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. These new regions will be ready for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.
The reshaped districts are intended to weaken the power of Republican voters, in one case by uniting conservative-leaning rural parts of the country. Far northern California With Marin County, a popular liberal coastal stronghold across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.
This action was led Newsom, Who has thrown the weight of his political operation behind her in a major test of his mettle ahead of a potential 2028 presidential campaign. Former President Barack Obama He urged voters to pass it also.
“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and enjoy unfettered power for another two years,” Obama said in one ad. “You can stop Republicans in their tracks.”
Critics said two wrongs don’t make a right. They urged Californians to reject the measure, even if they had doubts about Trump’s moves elsewhere.
Among the most prominent critics was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star and former Republican governor who pushed for the independent commission, which voters approved in 2008 and 2010. It makes no sense to fight Trump by becoming like Schwarzenegger. he said in SeptemberUnder the pretext that the proposal would “take power from the people.”
“I don’t want Newsom to have control,” said Rebecca Fleishman, a 63-year-old retired medical assistant from Southern California, who voted against the measure. “I don’t want the state to be blue. I want it to be red.”
After an early wave of television ads, opponents of the plan Struggle To raise money in a state with some of the most expensive media markets in the country.
The campaign followed an unusual course. A handful of Republican members of Congress, who will see their districts dramatically reshaped — and their jobs put in jeopardy — have mostly stayed out of the campaign spotlight. With opponents short of money, Newsom and his supporters have dominated television in crucial final weeks.
Total spending Broadcast and satellite advertising exceeds $100 million, more than two-thirds of which comes from supporters. Newsom asked people to stop donating in the final weeks of the race.
GOP members of Congress — Reps. Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kelly, David Valadao and Doug LaMalfa — will see a decline in the number of right-leaning voters and a boost of left-leaning voters in their districts in a shift that will make it more likely that a Democratic candidate will prevail in each race.
Issa issued a defiant statement, saying: “I’m not going anywhere. I will continue to represent the people of California no matter their party or where they live.”
Newsom is engineered to “seize power” while housing costs, gas prices and taxes continue to strain household budgets, Calvert said. “I am determined to continue fighting for the families I represent,” he said in an email.
Proposition 50 achieved a quick and decisive victory, with the Associated Press declaring victory when polls closed statewide. Early results were strongly in favor of the measure, as were preliminary results from the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of more than 4,000 California voters.
Nearly 7 in 10 California voters said party control of Congress was “very important” to them, and those voters overwhelmingly supported the measure, according to the AP Voter poll.
About 8 in 10 California voters who supported the ballot measure said it was necessary to counter changes made by Republicans in other states, while only about 2 in 10 said they supported it because it was the best way to draw maps, the AP Voter poll found.
Trump, who lost California by landslides in his three presidential campaigns, has largely stayed out of the fray. A week before the election, he urged voters in a social media post not to vote early or by mail — messages that ran counter to those of the state’s top Republicans who urged people to get their ballots in as soon as possible.
He said in a post on his social media page on Tuesday: The President called for voting in the state “Manipulative” and warned that it was “subject to a very serious legal and criminal review. Stay tuned!” Foreign Minister Shirley Webber described it as “yet another baseless allegation.”
Congressional district boundaries are typically redrawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts documented in the census. Mid-decade redistricting is unusual, in the absence of a court order proving an error in existing maps.
Outside of Texas, Republicans expect to pick up one seat each in the new maps in Missouri and North Carolina, and perhaps two more seats in Ohio. Five other GOP-led states are also considering new maps: Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska.
On the Democratic side, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Virginia have put forward proposals to redraw the maps, but significant hurdles remain.
A court has ordered new boundaries to be drawn in Utah, where Republicans represent all four House districts, but it remains to be seen whether the state will approve a map that makes winning any of them up for grabs.
Siddhartha Deb, 52, has lived in the United States since he was 7 years old, but became a citizen on Tuesday. Immediately afterward he registered to vote at San Francisco City Hall and cast his vote for Newsom’s measure.
“I don’t like the way the Republican Party is trying to rig the election by cheating,” Depp said. “This is the only way, fight fire with fire.”
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Cooper reported from Phoenix and Nguyen from Sacramento, California. Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Norco, California, and Terry Chia in San Francisco contributed.