Congressional redistricting, which usually happens once every ten years, is one of those boring inside-baseball process issues that is hard to dramatize for politics-weary voters. When it happens off-schedule, as is occurring this year thanks to a power grab in Texas by Donald Trump and his Republican allies, it demands some special attention, which California governor Gavin Newsom is supplying by taunting Trump in the coin of his own realm with hyperbolic social-media posts like this one:

The backstory is that Newsom created a Tuesday “deadline” for Trump to call off the redistricting drive in Texas that is intended to generate a net gain of five U.S. House seats in 2026, lest California’s Democrats retaliate with their own new mid-decade congressional map offsetting the Texas changes entirely. Trump predictably ignored the challenge, and so now Newsom is issuing the final green light for a response. He has absolutely no time to waste.

For all the bully-boy bravado of Newsom’s insults to Trump, he has a significantly harder task than his rival in the White House. In Texas, drawing congressional maps is entirely the prerogative of a GOP-controlled legislature, and there’s precedent for a mid-decade recalibration of the districts. The only weapon Texas Democrats have to stop this partisan maneuver is to deny........

© Daily Intelligencer