Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, on Thursday said state Democratic lawmakers would move forward with a redistricting plan intended as a direct response to a Republican-led effort in Texas to redraw congressional maps to control of the House majority after the midterm elections.
Newsom, joined by congressional Democrats and legislative leaders, unveiled his plan, known as the election rigging response act, to override the state’s independent map-making commission and approve new congressional lines that would aim to “neuter and neutralize” Texas’s proposal.
“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Newsom said in Los Angeles, formally calling for a 4 November special election that would ask voters to approve a new congressional map. “We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.”
As he spoke, at the intentionally chosen National Center for the Preservation of Democracy within the Japanese American National museum, federal agents, armed and masked, appeared outside of the building, led by Gregory Bovino, head of the border patrol’s El Centro sector. Local news footage showed one man being led away in handcuffs.
Related: Newsom says California will draw new electoral maps after Trump ‘missed’ deadline
Speaking to reporters after the rally, Newsom called the presence of border patrol agents “sick and pathetic” and accused Donald Trump of organizing the raid in an attempt to intimidate Democrats. “Wake up, America,” he said. “You will not have a country if he rigs this election.”
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass argued there was no way the deployment of border patrol agents was “a coincidence” and accused the White House of trying to intimidate elected officials. “The White House just sent federal agents to try to intimidate elected officials at a press conference. The problem for them is Los Angeles doesn’t get scared and Los Angeles doesn’t back down. We never have and we never will,” she said in a social media post.
The White House did not immediately respond for comment. However, the Department of Homeland Security responded to Bass’s comments, saying she “must be misinformed”.
“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law – not about Gavin Newsom. CBP patrols all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make LA safe,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said in a post on social media.
Texas lawmakers are considering a mid-cycle redistricting plan, requested by Trump, that would help secure five additional Republican House seats. The state’s Democrats, who have stalled a vote on the measure by fleeing the state, announced on Thursday that they intended to end their walkout when California releases its redrawn map proposal, expected on Friday.
The California map would only take effect if Texas – or any other Republican state – moved ahead with a partisan redistricting plan. Newsom emphasized that he preferred for all states to adopt an independent commission as California did and urged Trump in a letter to stand down. But with Texas vowing to act swiftly, Newsom said, California – a state with a population larger than the 21 smallest states combined – would not “unilaterally disarm”.
“It’s not complicated,” Newsom said. “We’re doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, ‘Find me five seats.’”
Newsom said the new map would remain in effect through the 2030 elections, at which point, he said, the state would return mapmaking power to its independent redistricting commission, approved by voters more than a decade ago.
The Democratic-led state legislature would formally unveil legislation to launch the effort on Monday, Newsom said, expressing confidence that the initiative would receive the necessary support.
“We anticipate the legislature will move quickly and by the end of next week they will complete that work,” he told reporters. If it’s approved, the map would then be put on the ballot for voters to decide.
California has 52 House seats – 43 of which are held by Democrats. But it is home to several of the most competitive races in the country, including a handful that helped secure the Republican majority in 2024.
It remains unclear how California voters would respond to the ballot initiative. Polls have found deep support for the state’s independent redistricting commission, suggesting Democrats will have to work quickly over the next three months to persuade voters to support their plan.
Common Cause, a good government group that has long opposed partisan map-making, said in a statement this week that it would “not pre-emptively” oppose the effort by California to redraw its maps in response to partisan redistricting in Texas.
“A blanket condemnation at this moment would be sitting on the sidelines in the face of authoritarianism,” the group said in a statement.
And on Thursday, Eric Holder, a former attorney general and chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said he supported “responsible and responsive” actions to Trump’s “demand for extreme and unjustified mid-decade gerrymanders in Texas and beyond”.
“Our democracy is under attack,” he said. “We have no choice but to defend it.”
Sara Sadhwani, a Democratic member of the California independent redistricting commission in 2020, said she wants to see partisan gerrymandering banned nationwide. But in Los Angeles on Thursday, Sadhwani stood side by side with Newsomand others in a show of unity in support of tearing up the maps she helped to painstakingly draw.
“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” she said.
California Republicans have denounced the plan, including the members targeted by the redistricting effort.
“Gavin Newsom’s latest stunt has nothing to do with Californians and everything to do with consolidating radical Democrat power, silencing California voters, and propping up his pathetic 2028 presidential pipe dream,” Christian Martinez, the National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson, said in a statement.
“Newsom’s made it clear: he’ll shred California’s constitution and trample over democracy – running a cynical, self-serving playbook where Californians are an afterthought and power is the only priority.”
There was little sympathy at the rally in Los Angeles for the nearly half-dozen California Republicans who may be out of job if the redistricting effort succeeds.
Speaking before the governor, Jodi Hicks, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, assailed the nine California Republicans who have voted for legislation rolling back reproductive rights: “You take away our freedoms, we’ll take away your seats.”
Texas’s plan to advance new maps kicked off a redistricting “arms race” that has spread to state legislatures across the country. Now, red state leaders in Florida and Missouri and blue state leaders in New York and Illinois are weighing whether they too can redraw their maps.
“Other blue states need to stand up,” Newsom said.
Newsom acknowledged the campaign, with a newly unveiled website, was an enormously expensive undertaking that would likely draw national attention and donors eager for a high-stakes, off-year political brawl.
Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who championed independent redistricting, has already expressed opposition to the plan. Newsom said he had spoken to Schwarzenegger and shared his disdain for gerrymandering, but argued that this was a fight for the preservation of American democracy.
“It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be,” Newsom said in his remarks. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.”
