California Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom hit back after Texas passes Trump redistricting map

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Aug 21, 2025

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California Democrats were set Thursday to pass a redistricting map to add up to five blue congressional seats after Texas Republicans rubber-stamped President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymander plan that would give the GOP a similar edge in the Lone Star State.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is championing the aggressive high-stakes Democratic effort to strike back at Trump’s Texas power grab as the two parties jostle for a political advantage in next year’s midterms and beyond.

The likely Democratic 2028 White House contender tweeted “Triggered?” at Trump after the president accused him of “destroying the great state of California” in a post on his social media site.

California Democrats were poised to use their legislative supermajority to approve the new congressional map, which Newsom could then sign ahead of a Friday deadline.

Then would then schedule a special election in November to ask voters to approve the map, which is aimed at flipping five GOP-held seats.

With angry Democrats itching to fight back against Trump’s second-term agenda, polls show broad early support for the effort, even though blue states have traditionally championed independent non-partisan redistricting efforts as a fair way to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives.

Trump hailed the Texas House for finally approving what he calls a “big beautiful map” on Wednesday. It chops up three Democratic held House seats in blue-leaning Texas metropolitan areas and makes two more seats in the Rio Grande Valley much tougher for Democratic incumbents.

He quickly took aim at other red states like Indiana, Florida and Missouri, urging them to take similar action to bolster already outsized Republican edges in their House delegations.

“We’re going to win the midterms … bigger and better than ever before,” Trump proclaimed Thursday.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, who is in line to become Speaker of the House if Democrats retake the House in the midterms, vowed to fight the Texas plan, which he says is unconstitutional and violates the Voting Rights Act.

“This corrupt power grab by desperate Republican hacks will be fought in the legislature and in federal court,” Jeffries tweeted.

The escalating redistricting arms race is unfolding as Trump aims to hold onto control of both the House and the Senate in the midterms so he can keep pushing his right-wing policy agenda past 2026.

Democrats hope to retake the House so they keep Trump in check.

Propr to Texas’ redistricting, history says Democrats would have had a great chance of flipping the handful of House seats needed to win the House in the midterms, especially with polls showing widespread public disapproval of Trump’s policies.

That’s why Trump wants to change the script by pulling off the unprecedented effort to redraw the congressional maps in the middle of the decade.

Newsom, on the other hand, appears to prove his mettle to the Democratic base, perhaps ahead of a 2028 presidential bid that many pundits believe he is certain to pursue.

He’s using his press office to troll Trump by imitating his social media style with cheeky all-caps messages that insult Trump and some of his loyal Republican acolytes. The tactic has won wide attention, even though some liberal pundits dismiss it as juvenile.

“MAGA HAVE NEWSOM DERANGEMENT SYNDROME!!! THEY SHOULD CRY HARDER! SAD!!!” Newsom tweeted.