Enticing, no?

Democrats need to win just three seats in 2026 to seize control of the House and impose some measure of accountability on our rogue-elephant president. That’s something Trump is keenly aware of, which is why he’s pushing Texas to take the extraordinary step of redrawing its congressional boundaries ahead of the midterm election.

Republicans, who’ve exercised iron-clad control over Texas for decades, hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats. A special session scheduled next week in Austin is aimed at boosting that number by as many as five seats, increasing the GOP’s odds of hanging onto the House.

Enter, stage left, California’s White House-lusting governor.

As part of a recent Southern campaign swing, Gavin Newsom sat down with a progressive Tennessee podcaster to discuss the Republican power grab. (The picnic bench, rolled up shirt sleeves, beer and f-bomb showed the governor was being authentic, in case there was any doubt.)

“They’re not f——ing around now. They’re playing by a totally different set of rules,” Newsom said of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans. Years ago, he noted, California created an independent commission to draw its political lines, which states normally do once a decade after new census figures come out.

But with a super-majority in Sacramento, Newsom said, Democrats could “gerrymander like no other state.”

“We’ve been playing fair,” he continued, but Abbott’s actions “made me question that entire program.” Later, elaborating on social media, the governor accused Republicans of cheating their way to extra House seats and warned, “CA is watching — and you can bet we won’t stand idly by.”

There’s a Texas expression for that: All hat and no cattle.

The fact is, voters took the power of political line-drawing away from the governor and his fellow lawmakers, for good reason, and it’s not like Newsom can unilaterally take that power back — no matter how well his chesty swagger might play with Trump-loathing Democrats.

“We have a commission,” said Justin Levitt, an expert on redistricting law at Loyola Law School. “Not only that, a Constitution and the commission’s in the Constitution. And not only that, we have a Constitution that says you only get to redistrict once every 10 years, unless there’s a legal problem with the existing maps.”

In other words, it’s not up to Newsom to huff and puff and blow existing House districts down.

California voters approved Proposition 20, which turned congressional line-drawing over to a nonpartisan, 14-member commission, in November 2010. The point was to introduce competition by taking redistricting away from self-dealing lawmakers. It passed by an overwhelming margin, 61% to 39%, and has worked just as intended.

After decades of pre-baked congressional contests, when the success of one party or the other was virtually guaranteed, California has become a hotbed of competition; in recent years, the state — an afterthought in November balloting for president — has been key to control of the House. In 2026, as many as a dozen seats, out of 52, could be at least somewhat competitive.

“I think it’s worked out great,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant politics professor at Pomona College and a member of the redistricting commission (Others doing the map-making included a seminary professor, a structural engineer and an investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.)

There are two ways, Levitt said, that Newsom and fellow Democrats could undo the commission’s handiwork.

They could break the law and pass legislation drawing new lines, face an inevitable lawsuit and prevail with a sympathetic ruling from the California Supreme Court. Or they could ask voters to approve different lines through a new constitutional amendment, in a hurried-up special election ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Both scenarios seem as plausible as Newsom delivering universal healthcare and fulfilling his pledge to build 3.5 million new homes a year, to name two other extravagant promises.

To be clear, none of the above condones the plot that Trump and Abbott are attempting to hatch. Their actions are politically ruthless and more than a little cynical. (A letter from Trump’s hand-in-glove Justice Department has provided a legal fig leaf for the special session. Texas was recently — expediently — notified that four of its majority-minority congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered along racial lines, thus justifying the drawing of a new map.)

That’s no excuse, however, for Newsom to end-run California voters, or call a special election that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars at a time the state is gushing red ink.

Politics rooted in vengeance is both dangerous and wrong, whether it’s Trump or Newsom looking to settle scores.

There’s also the matter of delivering vacant threats. Some Democrats may thrill each time Newsom delivers one of his pugnacious pronouncements. That seems to be a big part of his presidential campaign strategy. But those same voters may tire of the lack of follow through, as Californians have.

Newsom has a well-deserved reputation for over-promising and under-delivering.

That’s not likely to serve him well on the national stage.

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Newsom also accused the president of trying to preserve Republican power in Washington by pressuring Texas to redraw congressional districts to elect GOP representatives. The governor repeated a threat to launch a similar effort in California to favor Democrats.

“Everything has changed, and it’s changing in real time,” Newsom told reporters Wednesday. “I’m not going to be the guy that said I could have, would have, should have. I’m not going to be passive at this moment. I’m not going to look at my kids in the eyes and say I was a little timid.”

The comments came at a news conference outside Downey Memorial Christian Church, where Newsom met with the Rev. Tanya Lopez, the senior pastor, to discuss an incident in June where she watched as plainclothes federal agents swarmed and detained a constituent in the parking lot of her church.

Newsom criticized the administration’s immigration crackdown, saying its only goal was to terrorize families and communities — not to pursue violent criminals, which Newsom said he would support. Newsom said the crackdown was also harming family-owned businesses as immigrants who work and shop at stores stay home out of fear.

The governor called the president’s decision to deploy about 4,000 National Guardsmen part of Trump’s “rule of cruelty” and said the decision to remove half the troops came after the Pentagon realized the absurdity of its deployment.

The government wasted of hundreds of millions of dollars on the deployment, Newsom said. He added that the “utilization rate” of the National Guard troops was only about 5%, meaning only that percentage was actively engaged with duties while the rest were held in reserve.

“They’re a solution right now in search of a problem,” he said of the National Guard.

The move to send home some of the troops comes after a legal battle over whether the administration could deploy the troops. A federal appeals court ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities.

State and local leaders said the National Guard was not needed to deal with protests over immigration raids that have led to around 3,000 arrests.

On a separate issue, Newsom repeated the threat that California could redraw its electoral maps to help Democrats pick up more congressional seats in response to Trump’s call for Texas and other states to redistrict to benefit Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans currently hold power in both the Senate and House of Representatives, which have been instrumental in enacting the president’s policy agenda, including cuts to healthcare and food assistance for Americans in need.

“They can’t win by the traditional games, so they want to change the game,” Newsom said. “We can act holier-than-thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be, or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.”

California voters in 2010 gave an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission the power to determine the boundaries of state voting districts for the U.S. House of Representatives instead of leaving that authority with the state Legislature.

Newsom said the California Legislature could pass a bill in the regular session or in a special session that places a proposed constitutional amendment before voters to change state redistricting laws through a special election held in a tight window before the 2026 primaries.

The governor said he’s also exploring a potential legal loophole that could allow the California Legislature to redraw the congressional maps themselves now with a two-thirds vote and avoid going to the ballot.

“That is an option that is also being considered and both of those are being advanced in real time, not only with members of the Legislature, but others that are interested, because they feel the same pressures I do about the existential threat of what Donald Trump and some of these Republican states are trying to do,” Newsom said.

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