The redistricting skirmish set off between states began earlier this year when, according to reporting by The New York Times, President Donald Trump began pressuring Texas lawmakers to redraw their congressional map to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections.

Typically the party that controls Washington fares worse during midterm elections, which, depending on the scale of its losses, can limit a president’s ability to implement the party’s agenda.

Within months, the legislatures in both states had signed off on gerrymandered versions of their congressional maps, each intended to give the dominant political party five additional seats in Congress.

California’s map was drawn behind closed doors by redistricting consultant Paul Mitchell, with input from state and federal Democratic lawmakers. Reps. Zoe Lofgren, who chairs California’s state delegation, and Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic Caucus Chair, worked behind the scenes to get everyone on board. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi advised Newsom in the early stages of his redistricting push and secured donor support.

The new map targets congressional districts held by Republican Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao, Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa, making them considerably bluer, thereby hurting the incumbent congressmen’s chances for reelection.

While Texas lawmakers approved their map outright, California voters are required to sign off on their map because the state constitution normally gives redistricting power to a nonpartisan citizen commission.

The ballot measure has thrown a spotlight on California’s independent redistricting commission, the 14-member panel that since 2010 has drawn the state’s legislative and congressional boundaries. Prop. 50 would override the congressional boundaries set by the commission in 2021 and use the gerrymandered map until the body draws a new one following the 2030 census. The state’s legislative lines would not change.

To suspend the commission’s congressional map, state lawmakers passed legislation in August formalizing Democrats’ preferred lines and calling for a special election this November to let voters make the final call.

Democratic lawmakers met during their summer break on private Zoom meetings to hash out the details. By the time they returned in mid-August, their bills were ready to go and passed with the necessary two-thirds support later that week.

As a group, the commission has had no involvement in Prop. 50 and has not taken a position on it. But individual commissioners have spoken up on either side of it.

“Do I want to see the fair maps that me and my colleagues drew be thrown out? No, of course not. I want to see fair maps in all 50 states,” said Sara Sadhwani, a Democratic commissioner and assistant professor at Pomona College specializing in Latino and Asian American representation and voting.

“But we are so far away from having that conversation because of what's happening right now,” Sadhwani added, citing Trump’s recent push for Texas to redistrict.

Other commissioners from both parties have raised concerns with the idea of adopting partisan-influenced maps, even temporarily.

“Prop. 50 is not a magic pill to cure the nation’s ills,” a trio of commissioners from the 2010 redistricting cycle wrote in official ballot arguments against the measure. “It claims to protect democracy, yet diminishes our communities’ voices and is ineffective against any overreach of presidential power.”

“Voters don’t trust their elected officials. This is not going to help that,” Democratic commissioner Patricia Sinay warned in July. “Not trusting your elected officials hurts our democracy.”

Prop. 50 would not change anything about how the commission operates in the future. A new independent commission would be seated after the 2030 census to draw California’s political boundaries for the following decade – including legislative and congressional maps.

Like almost everything else in American politics these days, the arguments on either side of Prop. 50 are colored by partisanship and a high-stakes sense of urgency. Each side paints the race as one that will determine the fate of democracy itself.

Newsom has framed the measure as the best way to fight back against the Trump administration's “authoritarian actions” and level the playing field in the 2026 elections.

“This is a direct response to the attack on next year's midterm by the president of the United States, who dialed up the governor of Texas and said he was ‘entitled’ to five seats,” he said. “This is a profoundly consequential moment in our Republic, and it requires consequential action.”

Newsom swatted away arguments that the measure lacks transparency and is undemocratic: “I'm not aware of any other maps that have been presented in a democratic way to the people themselves to ultimately decide,” he said.

Opponents, meanwhile, argue that setting aside the independently drawn map in favor of a politically gerrymandered one would be a death knell for one of California’s treasured democratic processes.

“I can’t believe the only thing they came up with is ‘We’re going to cheat, too.’ It’s extraordinarily disappointing,” said Cynthia Dai, a former member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and a spokesperson for one of the primary ‘No’ campaigns.

Dai, a Democrat, said her party should focus on the competitive House districts in California’s existing congressional lines. “They need to start understanding what voters actually care about,” she said, and go “back to being a big tent party again.”

Prop. 50 opponents, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, also argue it’s an unabashed power grab to further entrench the state’s Democratic establishment.

“Politicians want to take the power away from the people here in California,” Schwarzenegger said last month at a USC event. “It is insane to let that happen.”

The opposition also questions whether it would truly be temporary, though the measure states the commission will return after the 2030 census to draw congressional and legislative maps as planned.

California’s endangered Republicans, including Rep. Kevin Kiley, have called for a nationwide moratorium on partisan gerrymandering by imposing nonpartisan redistricting commissions like California’s in every state. But Speaker Mike Johnson has not moved to take up Kiley’s bill.

Republicans in Congress previously voted against a 2021 bill that would have required independent redistricting commissions to draw congressional lines in all 50 states.

A slate of high-profile Democrats have come out in support of the measure, including Sen. Alex Padilla, Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Labor unions are also heavily involved in the pro-Prop. 50 campaign.

“It is absolutely the right way to go,” Harris said recently on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” “We (Democrats) tend to play by the rules but I think this is a moment where you’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

The ‘yes’ campaign is being run through Newsom’s ballot measure committee, which the governor jump-started with a $2 million transfer from his gubernatorial campaign account.

Democratic megadonor George Soros has given $10 million in support of the measure. Organized labor groups have given a combined $18 million-plus. House Majority PAC, a political action committee controlled by House Democratic leaders, has given $7.6 million.

The main funder of the opposition campaign is Charles Munger Jr., the son of the late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. The younger Munger, a Bay Area physicist, helped fund the successful ballot measures that birthed California’s citizen redistricting commission in 2008 and 2010. He reemerged this year to protect the commission, so far spending $30 million.

A separate ‘no’ campaign, run by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former CAGOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson, picked up a $5 million check from a PAC controlled by Speaker Mike Johnson. Rep. Doug LaMalfa – in danger of being gerrymandered into a blue district – has pitched in about $40,000.

According to campaign finance filings, Newsom’s campaign raised nearly $77 million between July 1 and September 20, more than twice the combined $35.3 million raised by both campaigns against Prop. 50 during the same timeframe.

Prop. 50’s revised map would chop up existing districts in California that are considered “safe Republican” or “Republican-leaning” seats and higher concentrations of Democratic voters from population centers both nearby and far-flung.

In one proposed district, voters in deep-blue Marin County and Trump-friendly places such as Redding and Modoc County would be grouped together. That’s a problem for Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican who has represented California’s northernmost reaches since 2013.

“So now, as a Bay Area representative, are you going to care that much that the wolves are devastating the wildlife and the livestock in Modoc and Sierra and Lassen County?” he said in an interview. “Are they going to care that much? Or are they going to listen to Marin constituents and say, ‘Well, wolves are great. They’re wonderful.’”

Prop. 50 would see LaMalfa’s sweeping 1st Congressional District split, morphing from a district where Republicans hold a 17-point voter registration advantage over Democrats to one where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 10 points. The change would see much of the rural inland areas in LaMalfa’s north state district joined with the state’s entire North Coast.  

The proposed changes would leave most of the Sacramento region’s congressional districts a shade of indigo. While GOP incumbents could inherit more Democratic voters, Prop. 50 would also add conservative areas to districts held by Democratic Reps. Doris Matsui and Ami Bera, shading their safely blue seats a lighter hue of purple.

Matsui’s 7th District would keep downtown and midtown Sacramento as its urban anchor. It would stretch south to Elk Grove and Galt before sweeping east, picking up the more conservative Placerville area, which is currently represented by Rep. Tom McClintock. While the changes would result in the 10-term congresswoman’s district shifting rightward by about 15 points, Kamala Harris still would have carried it by nearly 13% in the presidential election.

Similarly, Bera’s 6th district would shift slightly more conservative. The district delivered a 14-point margin for Harris in 2024 and under Prop. 50 she would have won by 9 points. The existing District 6 lines neatly cover the northern half of Sacramento County and could instead span three counties: Rocklin and Roseville in western Placer County, Citrus Heights and Sacramento’s Natomas neighborhood in Sacramento County, and West Sacramento in Yolo County.

Rep. Kevin Kiley’s 3rd district, which currently hugs the border from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley, would lose everything south of Tahoe as well as the Republican congressman’s home turf in Roseville. A new arm reminiscent of an elephant’s trunk reaches into Sacramento County to grab voters in Rancho Cordova, South Sacramento and the Arden-Arcade area. Trump won the district by 4 points in 2024; under Prop. 50, Harris would have won there by 10 points, a dramatic constituency shift for the GOP congressman.

Prop. 50 could give Democratic Rep. Adam Gray a small reprieve from running in one of the country’s most competitive House races. Even though Gray won his 2024 race by less than 200 votes, voters in the 13th District went for Trump by a nearly 6-point margin. Prop. 50’s changes would turn it into a district Harris would have won by half a point. Geographically, it would trade swaths of farmland near Fresno for a longer arm into Stockton, compacting the 13th District’s boundaries but keeping it centered around Merced and western Modesto.

Another Central Valley battleground district, the 22nd, would likely remain centered around Delano and keep much of its clubfoot that dips into Bakersfield to the south. Under Prop. 50, the district's footprint would stretch further north, brushing up against the western edges of Fresno. While redistricting would add to the voter registration advantage Democrats already have in the 22nd district, it would still be a district that went for Trump 2024. Under the current lines, Trump won there by 6 points; under Prop. 50’s lines, his margin of victory would have been less than 2 points. 

If Prop. 50 passes, the only remaining “safe” seats for Republicans would be those currently represented by Reps. Tom McClintock, CA-05; Vince Fong, CA-20; Jay Obernolte, CA-23 and Young Kim, CA-40.

If it passes, Prop. 50 would change the calculus for California’s House members of both parties and could have a domino effect on where candidates decide to run for reelection.

For Rep. Kevin Kiley, it may make more sense to run in the 6th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Rep. Ami Bera.

Under Prop. 50’s changes, Kiley’s home city of Roseville would shift from the 3rd District to the 6th District. The proposed 3rd District would also become much bluer while the 6th District would redden slightly.

In the end, the two districts would have similar shares of Democratic, Republican and independent voters, but the 6th District is slightly more competitive for a Republican candidate: Its voters chose Kamala Harris in 2024 by an 8-point margin, compared to the 10-point margin she won in the proposed 3rd District.

For other endangered Republican Reps. Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa, the Prop. 50 map represents a future of potential tough decisions.

Calvert’s Riverside County district would be sliced into several new ones: Palm Springs, the bluest part of the existing 41st District, would become part of the district Issa occupies. Part of Calvert’s home city of Corona would be absorbed by a safe Republican district, but running there would require a difficult primary challenge against fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim. The middle of Calvert’s district would become one where Democrats would hold a 19-point registration advantage.

Issa’s seat would lose much of its eastern San Diego County-based suburban constituency in exchange for Palm Springs to the north. If Prop. 50 passes, California’s 48th would switch from a district with a 12-point Republican advantage to a 3-point Democratic one. There would be few good options for Issa short of staying in the district, where voters chose Harris last year by a 3-point margin.

If Prop. 50 passes, it would set off a round of musical chairs for California’s House seats and add to the chaos of a high-stakes midterm election. But exactly how it will all shake out for candidates and their shifting constituencies is unclear until voters give the final word on the state’s temporary gerrymander.