As the Legislature returns to Sacramento today for the final month of session, Democrats are racing to finish a plan that could tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor — and thrust California into another confrontation with President Donald Trump.

Republicans, who stand to lose more than half their seats in the state, decry the scheme as a self-serving power grab. But supporters, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, contend they are saving democracy by stopping Trump from rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterms.

Ultimately, California voters will likely decide in a special election this November.

Here’s what you need to know:

Wait, what is Newsom trying to do?

The governor is leading the charge for the Democratic response in a burgeoning partisan showdown that could effectively determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives before a single vote is cast next November.

This kicked off thousands of miles away from Sacramento — in Texas. Earlier this year, Trump began pressuring Republican leaders there to redraw its congressional lines to shore up the GOP’s narrow majority in the House. As his approval rating sinks, the president is worried Democrats could win back Congress in the 2026 election and disrupt the final two years of his term.

Even as dozens of Democratic members have fled the state in protest, the Texas Legislature is advancing a new map that could flip five Democratic House seats to Republican control. Other conservative states, including Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Florida, are considering similar actions.

So, channeling the anger of Democratic voters, Newsom has launched California into a retaliatory redistricting that would offset the Texas map with five new Democratic-leaning seats.

“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear and we will punch back,” Newsom said during a rally last week formally kicking off the campaign. “Don’t mess with the great Golden State.”

How would it work?

It’s complicated!

Unlike Texas, where the Legislature determines congressional lines, California voters in 2010 gave that power to a bipartisan citizen commission. The commission draws a new map once each decade, after the U.S. Census, to ensure each congressional district has roughly an equal number of people. It last did so in 2021.

Newsom is proposing to temporarily override the commission and create districts more favorable to Democrats until after the 2030 Census. That requires going to the voters for their approval.

Democratic officials already drew a new map in secret, which they finally shared publicly on Friday. The Legislature, where three-quarters of members are Democrats, plans to vote before the end of this week to put that map on the ballot in a statewide special election on Nov. 4.

“Voters will see the maps and have the final say,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, said in a statement.

Why the rush?

California’s primary election is in June, so work backwards from there. The deadline for candidates to declare is in early March. Those who want to collect signatures to qualify, instead of paying a filing fee, can start in December.

That means new congressional lines need to be in place by the end of the year, so candidates actually know which voters they need to reach.

Newsom is eyeing Nov. 4 for the special election to consolidate it with municipal elections across the state that day. State law requires elections officials to mail a ballot to every voter starting 29 days before the election, and to military and overseas voters 45 days before, which means ballots must be ready by late September.

The secretary of state’s office has said the Legislature must act by Friday to leave enough time for local elections officials to meet those deadlines for a Nov. 4 election. Even then, the next month will be extremely busy for them.

How much will this cost?

The state has promised to cover the expenses counties incur running this unexpected election, which won’t be cheap. The last state special election, an unsuccessful recall of Newsom in September 2021, cost about $200 million.

Newsom has said consolidating the election with already scheduled local elections on Nov. 4 could save money. But early estimates from counties — up to $4 million in Fresno and up to $16 million in Riverside — are higher than they were for the recall.

“No price tag for democracy,” Newsom told reporters last week following the kickoff rally.

Will this plan succeed?

Democrats feel good about their chances, but it’s a heavy lift.

A Politico poll found that nearly two-thirds of California voters prefer retaining the state’s independent redistricting commission over returning authority to the Legislature to draw congressional lines.

That is not exactly what Newsom’s plan would do, however. His messaging has emphasized that the commission would only be sidelined temporarily, because of what he calls a Trump-induced political emergency. It’s reflected in the name of the measure: the Election Rigging Response Act. Internal polling shared with lawmakers put support, when framed along those lines, at 52%.

While that’s enough to win in November, it may not be enough to withstand an intense campaign this fall that is expected to draw hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Charles Munger, Jr., the longtime Republican donor who poured more than $12 million into the campaign to pass independent redistricting, has said he will open up his wallet again to defend it.

“Citizens, not politicians or partisan party insiders, should not only hold the power at the ballot box but also the power to draw the lines,” Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for Munger’s campaign committee, said in a statement.

The National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement that it was prepared to “fight Gavin Newsom’s illegal power grab in the courts and at the ballot box.”

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As Texas this week began an off-cycle redistricting process meant to shore up Republicans’ slim House majority, Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared Friday with a group of Democratic legislators from that state, reaffirming his intention for California to respond with new maps of its own that would benefit Democrats.

Following a meeting with the Texas lawmakers at the historic governor’s mansion in downtown Sacramento, Newsom told reporters that “everything is at stake if we’re not successful next year in taking back the House of Representatives” — not only blunting President Donald Trump’s agenda, but protecting American democracy.

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028,” he said. “They’re not screwing around. We can’t afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”

There’s one major obstacle to the governor’s ambitions, however: While the Legislature draws district lines in Texas, California relies on a bipartisan citizen redistricting commission protected by the state Constitution.

In 2008, voters narrowly approved an amendment removing California legislators’ power to draw their own seats. Two years later, voters overwhelmingly passed another amendment expanding the commission’s authority to congressional maps.

The independent commission in California became a national model for advocates who hoped to end the partisan gerrymandering that has contributed to a decline in competitive House seats and the country’s fractious, sectarian politics.

Now Newsom, who said he otherwise supports independent redistricting, is exploring multiple options for working around the commission to squeeze more Democratic districts out of California, if Texas follows through on its plan.

That would probably involve calling a special election, Newsom said, though he is still discussing with the Legislature what sort of proposal they might present to voters. Would it include a new map to approve or create another process to draw on? Would the commission be temporarily or permanently repealed?

“This is a fluid conversation,” he said. “We’re gaming all those things out.”

Trump turns up the heat in Texas

States typically redraw their congressional seats once per decade, after the census, to ensure the districts are all roughly equal in population. The most recent maps were drawn after the 2020 election and took effect in 2022.

But last month, Trump’s political team began pressuring Republican leaders in Texas to revisit the state’s district lines and create additional GOP seats. The party won a five-seat majority in the House last November, the narrowest in nearly a century, leaving little room for error as Trump tries to enact his legislative agenda and putting control of the chamber at risk if next year’s midterm is a wave election against the unpopular president.

Despite opposition from Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation — who worried that diluting their conservative voter bases in redistricting could inadvertently make their seats vulnerable — Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps. He is targeting four Democratic seats in the Dallas and Houston areas that the Trump administration has deemed “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders” because they have high numbers of Black and Latino voters. The first public hearing took place on Thursday, with Texas Democratic lawmakers slamming the move as a “power grab.”

The boldly political maneuver juiced similar efforts in other Republican states, including Ohio and Missouri, that could further pad a GOP majority, while setting off alarm bells among Democrats nationally.

But even as party leaders voice their outrage, they have fewer options to fight back, because congressional districts in many of the largest Democratic states, such as California, New York and New Jersey, are drawn by independent commissions.

No one has been more outspoken than Newsom, who weeks ago began publicly floating the idea of sidestepping California’s commission to redraw more congressional districts in Democrats’ favor if Texas moves forward with its plan.

But it’s no sure thing in California

It’s a legally dubious and politically fraught endeavor. Even some of Newsom’s fellow Democrats have expressed skepticism because of the precedent it would set, including Assemblymember Alex Lee of Milpitas, whose vote may be needed to place a measure on the ballot. Common Cause California, a nonprofit that advocates for government in the public interest and backed the formation of the independent commission, blasted it as a “dangerous move” that would “put our state’s democracy on the line during a time of national instability.”

Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is already threatening to sue to stop a new map and has added to his platform a plan to require the redistricting commission to include more GOP seats.

Because of the legal risks in having the Legislature simply draw new congressional districts, the most likely route is a special election asking voters to overturn the independent commission, said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting consultant.

The problem is that the commission remains highly popular with voters in polling, Mitchell said. To get around that, Newsom may need to make concessions, like a temporary pause that resumes the independent redistricting process in 2031, after the next census.

“It’s ‘in emergency, break glass,’ not ‘let’s burn down the whole building,’” Mitchell said.

Even then, he said, Democrats would need to maintain the drumbeat of frustration over how the party is being harmed in Texas for months to turn out a motivated electorate in an unusual special election.

“It’s like lightning in a bottle right now,” Mitchell said. “Are they going to be able to keep this a front-burner issue for people?”

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