Across America, states are redrawing their districts. Texas gave five more seats to Republicans by redrawing districts in their favor. Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina are following suit.
“It’s a very simple redrawing [in Texas,]” Donald Trump said to CBS. “We pick up five seats.”
The left has begun to “fight back.” Proposal 50, a redistricting initiative that passed on Nov. 4, 2025 in California, is almost indistinguishable from the gerrymandering tactics in Texas, only this time, it’s Democratic.
In the past decade, Democrats have been criticized for their lack of action. The growing extreme right is constantly on the offensive, attempting to change the way our country functions, from raising global tariffs to the termination of birthright citizenship.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California is one of the few Democrats who are flipping the script. Newsom is a former mayor of San Francisco and a major Democratic critic of Trump’s regime.
On Nov. 4, Newsom gave a speech concentrating on the quickly-expanding trend of gerrymandering in the United States. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district lines to unfairly benefit one party. He focused on Trump, who has been the driving force behind these redistrictings in the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections.
“Trump’s approval rating is underwater,” Newsom said in his speech. “We can de facto end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it.”
When Texas Republicans prepared to vote on their redistricting, Democratic lawmakers left the state to stall the vote. The proposed borders would split up minority districts, diluting urban and minority voices around the state, in deliberate denial of the Voting Rights Act. Texas’ Attorney General, Ken Paxton, and Speaker of the House, Dustin Burrows, then moved to issue arrest warrants for the protesting politicians. Eventually, they returned home after significant pressure from these arrest warrants.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen a total of 11% during his second term, with his rating sitting at an abysmal 36% as of Nov. 25. Trump’s increasingly unpopular policy has spearheaded this fall, with his Liberation Day Tariffs have raised prices by 3%, leading 70% of American adults to say they feel the government doesn’t care about them, according to Johns Hopkins University.
ICE’s unlawful arrests and deportations of immigrants and the presence of National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland are a blatant attempt to weaponize the US military against the American people. According to the American Psychological Association, 45% of adults in the U.S. do not feel protected by the law. Trump’s politics are beginning to be scare tactics rather than civilized speech.
Our standards as American people are falling. Allowing democracy and educated politics to turn into intimidation and childish back-and-forth is something our founding fathers did not stand for.
“The Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all,” George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address. “The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”
Following Trump’s unlawful and unconstitutional behavior, Newsom is starting to fight fire with fire, pushing back at Republican gerrymandering by using the same tactics in his own state.
California’s Proposal 50 is already complicated enough, given that the bill redraws California’s district lines halfway into the decade. District maps are usually only drawn at the start of each decade, based on the most recent census.
No congressional district map will be free of bias, and in this way, all maps are essentially “gerrymandered.” Every time a map is redrawn by a partisan effort, it will inevitably have a bias towards one party. People must look at the cases of Texas and California side by side rather than looking at Proposal 50 as an outlandish suggestion. A redistricting can only be free of partisan bias if the map is being drawn by an unaligned third party.
Locally, Prop 50 could lead to the normalization of impromptu redistricting in our communities. This means that change on either side of the political river will be harder to make, since with gerrymandering, the leading party will gain even more representation and make it harder for others to gain power locally.
At this time, Newsom’s tactic of “fighting fire with fire” is the best method for pushing back against the Trump administration. The Democrats absolutely need to take back the House of Representatives in the coming year. Without this, the damage Trump’s administration has caused will not be recouped.
“People were still in line, waiting up to three hours to cast their vote,” Newsom said. “To send a message. No crowns. No thrones. No kings.”
