Politics

Redistricting wars poised to ‘explode’ as California and Texas make their moves

Published

10 months ago

August 23, 2025

The redistricting war is officially on.

After weeks of bluster from dueling governors and state lawmakers, California and Texas raced forward with parallel action this week to draw new congressional maps, setting into motion a national redistricting fight that could upend the midterms and determine control of the House.

Texas Republicans on Saturday passed a new map that will help the GOP flip as many as five House seats — a partisan play at the hand of President Donald Trump. On Thursday, California Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom preemptively agreed to send a retaliatory ballot measure to voters — the first step in potentially offsetting Texas’ maneuver by creating new Democratic-leaning seats.

The nation’s two largest states had fired the opening salvo in what is likely to become an intense and protracted redistricting campaign by both parties to grasp power in Washington. Now other red and blue state governors face pressure to follow their lead and aggressively gerrymander their congressional maps.

Republicans hold a clear advantage in the arms race: The GOP is poised to move forward with redistricting in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana, which could yield at least half a dozen more seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have struggled to get gerrymandering efforts moving in blue states beyond California, though leaders in New York, Illinois and Maryland say they are weighing options.

“Right now, these other states need to step up,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from Long Beach, Calif. “I know it’s hard, I know it’s complicated … But, if you’re a blue state governor, the time is now to step up and get it done.”

Democratic state senators and staff in Texas huddle early Saturday morning as the GOP-controlled Senate prepared to pass the map.

As the map battles continue, at stake is a national shift away from the norm of once-a-decade, Census-aligned redistricting and toward a more polarized landscape in which both parties redraw political maps at will to shift the balance of power. The escalation has major implications for Trump’s post-midterm agenda and the political prospects of several prominent Democrats, including Newsom and his likely presidential run in 2028.

Democrats in the California Legislature framed their vote Thursday in that national context, casting it as a fight to save American democracy from Trump’s “election rigging” — even as they voted nearly unanimously to toss aside lines drawn by the state’s independent commission and put forward a partisan map. The ends, they argued, justified the means.

“We don’t want this fight and we didn’t choose this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we cannot and will not run away from this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat from Silicon Valley.

The vote sets off a Nov. 4 special election for Californians, and both parties are gearing up for an all-out campaign sprint. Democrats estimate they will have to raise up to $100 million to mount an advertising blitz across the state’s large and expensive media markets to convince voters, whom early polling shows are skeptical.

Republicans, who have a thin minority in the California statehouse, unsuccessfully tried to derail the vote with a host of procedural maneuvers. They argued California Democrats betrayed voters’ trust by adopting a map drawn behind closed doors, sidestepping the state’s voter-created redistricting commission. A GOP-backed legal attempt to thwart Democrats’ map was also dismissed by the California Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican from San Diego, called the vote a “political stunt.” When Democrats said he couldn’t use props during his floor speech, he retorted, “Then, why have you become props to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential campaign?”

Texas Democrats, a minority in their state House, have pulled their own stunts. House members prolonged passage of the map by leaving the state for two weeks in protest, denying Republicans the quorum needed to conduct official business. When they returned, Rep. Nicole Collier refused to sign a permission slip ordered by GOP leadership allowing law enforcement to supervise her movements and instead staged a sit-in on the House floor.

Unlike California Democrats’ map, which requires voter approval to take effect, the Republicans in the Texas Legislature were able to approve their map without going to voters or mounting a statewide campaign. Both parties have vowed to fight the maps in court, disputes that could ultimately lead to the U.S. Supreme Court. A lawsuit in Texas was filed just hours after the map was approved by the legislature early Saturday.

“The fight is far from over,” Texas Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said on the floor after the map passed the House on Wednesday. “Our best shot is in the courts. This part of the fight is over, but it is merely the first chapter.”

Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houson, sits through debate over a redrawn U.S. congressional map in Texas during a special session, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

In Texas, Democrats argue the GOP’s map illegally dilutes the voting power of Hispanic and Black voters. In California, where the state’s map preserves minority-opportunity districts, Republicans say the map illegally sidelines the state’s independent redistricting commission.

But in the redistricting wars, voting rights and other legal considerations are taking a backseat to purely partisan interests.

Efforts are underway to carve out more GOP seats in Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Florida — and Trump’s political operation is pressuring individual state lawmakers to act. On Thursday, Trump declared on X that Republicans in Missouri — where the GOP could pick up one more seat by splitting a district in Kansas City — are “IN!” to call a special session to redistrict.

The legal hurdles for Democrats in other deep-blue states could prove more formidable, hampering their party’s quest to retake the House in the 2026 midterms.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to disband a quasi-independent commission in charge of drawing House map. But the panel, created by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, cannot be erased until 2027 at the earliest.

It’s not clear whether New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will take action to redraw their lines, despite talk of fighting back.

And while the New York governor has talked tough about redistricting, she acknowledged to reporters her hands are tied by the state’s lengthy constitutional amendment process. Any changes must be approved by two separately elected sessions of the Legislature before going to voters in a referendum.

“Now, everyone says, ‘Why don’t you do what Gavin Newsom does?’ Gavin Newsom has a very different situation, because if I could, I would,” Hochul told reporters this week. “But I have to have the Constitution changed, and also the voters approved that change, before I can do that.”

Albany Democrats are under pressure to act faster anyway.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, has talked several times in recent weeks with Hochul about their options and this week urged her and other top New York Democrats to expand the state’s voting rights law — which enables legal challenges to local legislative districts — to include congressional seats.

That would open the door to a legal challenge to the existing house lines, a maneuver designed to force a mid-decade redistricting if the map is thrown out. But two New York Democratic officials, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that would be a long shot given the complexities of the strategy. One of them said there are “no clear options” for what New York can do ahead of the midterms.

That’s leaving Democrats to scour the map for potential redistricting pick-up opportunities outside California.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has spoken boldly about the importance for Democrats to not let Texas go unmatched, and the state hosted many of the Democrats who left the Texas state House. But Illinois has been known for its aggressive Democratic gerrymanders, and it currently has just three Republican seats it can target.

It’s also unclear Illinois Democrats have the political will to take on redrawing the congressional map — most of the redistricting talk this week has been on a whole other set of maps. Former Barack Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Chicago Democrat, and Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican who served as Obama’s transportation secretary, rolled out a “Fair Maps Illinois” proposal this week that would end the process of state lawmakers drawing their own districts.

In Maryland — one of Democrats’ few options to wage a response to the GOP — House Majority Leader David Moon is pushing legislation to open its redistricting process. Gov. Wes Moore has said that “all options are on the table,” but has not laid out any specifics.

“It is not our first choice to fight back against this, and I think it’s everybody’s preference that we stand down and everyone steps back from the brink here,” Moon said in an interview. “But I think the common sentiment you’re seeing from everyone is that we have to be prepared in the event that this thing does explode.”

Shia Kapos and Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.

Politics

Iran set to progress at World Cup

Published

1 minute ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iran’s adventure through a World Cup beset by geopolitical complexity and logistical complications will likely continue after the team landed a frenetic 1-1 draw against Egypt. The high-stakes encounter kicked off hours after a tenuous peace between Washington and Tehran was threatened by American strikes on Iranian military installations along the Strait of Hormuz. Read the full story from Seattle by Sasha Issenberg and Sophia Cai here.

Politics

The “Pride Match” that wasn’t

Published

2 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — As a lesbian who was born in Egypt, Noha Mahgoub could have chosen to dress for what local organizers branded a “Pride Match” in colors associated with either her sexual orientation or her country of origin. The 43-year-old Democratic legislative aide — one of the top staffers in Washington state government — chose the latter, arriving in a red Egyptian national team jersey, a black hat emblazoned with YALLA and red-white-and-black tricolor facepaint.

“I’ve seen Pride shirts, I’ve seen Pride face paintings,” she observed from a concourse minutes before national anthems began echoing around Lumen Field. “It’s been really great, but I’m seeing a lot more Egypt and Iran and people cheering for their countries and singing their songs.”

Indeed, despite FIFA’s announcement that rainbow flags would be permitted in the stadium, few were visible as the match began. Instead, the stands rippled with the colors of the two Middle Eastern countries on the field, including many of the pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flags that FIFA has attempted to ban under a stadium code of conduct that prohibits political displays.

Mahgoub had seen Egypt’s national team in person only once before, as a child while the team was angling to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Since then, Mahgoub and her family relocated to Washington state, where she said the local Egyptian-American community has become enlivened by new arrivals coming to work at Seattle-based tech companies.

“You know how it is, you start calling everybody your cousins — a lot of cousins that I wasn’t related to,” Mahgoub said. “Well, I think a lot of them are here.”

Politics

Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils

Published

5 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Ah, Belgium. The country of fries, chocolate, Kevin De Bruyne and, some might say, chronic political division.

Beyond Brussels, a mighty international melting pot, the country is split between Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and a small German-speaking community. Those linguistic divisions are mirrored in its politics: Belgium has separate party systems on either side of the language border, as well as a highly devolved federal structure that gives significant powers to its regions.

Today, Belgian politics is as fragmented as ever. It took 234 days to form a federal government after the June 2024 election (yes, you read that right). The delay was driven largely by the fact that no camp came close to winning a majority, forcing months of negotiations between parties with sharply different ideological and linguistic bases.

Flemish nationalism has also become a growing force, shaped by two right-wing nationalist parties: the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which wants to transform Belgium into a looser confederal state and ultimately give Flanders far greater autonomy, and the far-right Vlaams Belang, which openly campaigns for Flemish independence.

So, you might think the 2026 World Cup would offer Belgium’s leader a rare opportunity to rally and unify the country behind a shared national symbol, right?

Wrong.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who hails from the N-VA party, has expressed almost no public support for the Red Devils, Belgium’s national soccer team.

That contrasts with leaders in nearby countries that also qualified for the World Cup. The leaders of the Netherlands, Germany and France have all publicly backed their squads, whether on social media or through public appearances.

The reason may be simple: De Wever just doesn’t care for the sport.

A Belgian official told Blue Light News: “The prime minister is not a soccer fan, so he doesn’t seek to project that image publicly. To do otherwise would not be authentic.”

Flemish media have indeed reported that the prime minister has little interest in soccer. In a podcast appearance a few years ago, he said the sight of people “going totally crazy in a group in the stands” left him feeling “ice cold.”

But politics is likely part of the story too. De Wever has led the Flemish nationalist N-VA since 2004. Throughout his political career, he has argued that Flanders should have far greater autonomy and that Belgium should evolve into a confederal state. For a politician with that background, overt displays of Belgian national unity probably don’t come naturally, and in fact contradict emphasis on Flemish autonomy.

This is not the first time the N-VA’s relationship with the Red Devils has attracted attention. In 2015, after Belgium reached No. 1 in the FIFA world rankings, Francophone Socialist Party leader Laurette Onkelinx asked the Chamber of Representatives to applaud the team. All parties joined in, except the N-VA.

During Euro 2016, the N-VA had to deny it instructed ministers and MPs to avoid publicly celebrating the Red Devils so as not to appear too Belgian, after rumors circulated in Belgian media.

One of De Wever’s few comments about this year’s World Cup concerned Belgium’s official tournament song. His complaint: It did not contain a single word of Dutch.

“My staff have confirmed to me that not a single word is sung in Dutch. That is, to put it mildly, not elegant,” he said, in keeping with his ideologies of promoting Flanders, when asked about the song during a parliamentary committee hearing.

Sport is often treated as a vehicle for national unity. In New Zealand, Belgium’s opponent in today’s match, elite teams have successfully woven elements of Māori culture into their sporting traditions, most famously through the prematch haka, which has helped create a shared cultural identity that connects Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders.

In Belgium, however, this World Cup has not yet become that kind of unifying project. At least not from the very top.