California voters have passed a ballot initiative that will have a huge impact on next year's battle for the U.S. House majority.
According to the Fox News Decision Desk, voters in California approved Proposition 50, which would dramatically alter the state's congressional districts, putting the left-leaning state front and center in the high-stakes political fight over redistricting that pits President Donald Trump and the GOP against the Democrats.
Approval of the ballot initiative in the nation's most populous state will temporarily sidetrack California's nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
Two-term Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender, spearheaded the push to pass the proposition.
"If we lose here, we are going to have total Republican control in the House, the Senate and the White House for at least two more years," Newsom emphasized in a recent fundraising appeal to supporters. "If we win here, we can put a check on Trump for his final two years."
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The push by Trump and Republicans for a rare mid-decade redistricting is part of a broad effort by the GOP to pad its razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
"California voters have sent a strong and clear message that they will not stand by while Republicans try to rig the 2026 election," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene argued in a statement. "By overwhelmingly voting to pass Proposition 50, Californians are fighting back against the GOP’s disastrous record of raising costs and ripping away health care from millions, all to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy."
But Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the rival National Republican Congressional Committee, charged that "no matter how Democrats redraw the lines to satisfy Gavin Newsom’s power grab, they can’t redraw their record of failure, and that’s why they will fail to take the House majority. Even under this new map, Republicans have clear opportunities to flip seats because Californians are fed up with Democrat chaos."
Missouri last month joined Texas as the second GOP-controlled state to pass congressional redistricting ahead of next year's elections. The new map in Missouri is likely to give the GOP another right-leaning seat.
North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature also passed a new map likely to score another congressional seat for the GOP. Republican-controlled Indiana is on deck, with a special legislative session getting underway this week.
But, unlike those states, California voters needed to weigh in before giving redistricting power back to the legislature in Sacramento.
"Heaven help us if we lose," Newsom said in a fundraising pitch. "This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for Democrats."
