Former President Barack Obama waded in to support California Democrats’ tit-for-tat efforts to more extremely gerrymander the state’s congressional lines “as a responsible approach” to counter Texas efforts at redrawing its own maps.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis upped the ante by vowing to pursue a mid-decade redistricting effort to create at least one extra seat in his state, which would presumably be filled by a Republican.
And by Wednesday evening, Nicole Collier, a Democratic legislator in Texas, claimed she’d been “confined” to a state capitol bathroom in Austin and threatened with a felony for videoconferencing with reporters from inside. Taking up her cause, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker accused the state’s GOP lawmakers of misusing the law “to silence a black woman” for participating in a Democratic National Committee redistricting Zoom call with Booker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and DNC Chairman Ken Martin.
Collier was part of the group of Texas Democrats who earlier this month fled the state for Illinois to prevent a vote on the Republicans' redrawn congressional maps. When they returned under threats of legal action by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, the Democrats were placed under police surveillance. Collier, who refused to comply with being shadowed by police, opted to sleep in her office rather than sign what the Democrats called “permission slips” agreeing to the surveillance on leaving the floor.
On Tuesday, Collier took a call from Kamala Harris, who lauded the Fort Worth Democrat for “standing up for the people,” telling her that “we are all in that chamber with you.” Collier quickly posted a video on social media of her on speaker-phone chat with the former vice president.
After gaining national attention for her dramatic flair, Collier spoke at a virtual news conference Wednesday with the DNC, where she gave an update just hours before Texas Republicans passed the new maps.
“I’m still under house arrest, I’m not free to leave. In fact, I am confined in a bathroom ... we’re going to push through this, we’re not going to be deterred,” she claimed. “I represent a majority black-and-brown community, and it’ll be my constituents, the people who look like me, who will be harmed by any type of redoing of maps by the Trump administration and Abbott administration.”
Toward the end of the call, after Newsom and Martin spoke, and in the middle of Booker’s remarks to the press, Collier abruptly interjected: “Sorry, I have to leave,” she told the reporters. “They said it’s a felony for me to do this. Apparently, I can’t be on the floor or in the bathroom.”
She then turned to speak to someone off camera: “You told me I was only allowed to be here in the bathroom. No, hang on, bye everybody – I’ve got to go.”
Booker immediately raised the race card in reacting to Collier’s complaints of threats of a felony and departure, calling her allegations “freaking outrageous” and accusing Texas Republicans of trying to “silence a black woman.”
“Let me tell you something, Rep. Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office,” Booker said, immediately buying into Collier’s explanation. “There you go there. Silence an American leader, silence a black woman.”
“The fact that she can’t even let her voice be heard is freaking outrageous,” he added. “And that is what we’re fighting for here. This is ultimately what this is about.”
The entire incident, however, raised more questions than it answered.
When RealClearPolitics asked who was threatening Collier, a DNC spokesman deferred to the Texas House Democratic Caucus, which didn’t respond to an inquiry.
Texas House Republicans denied threatening Collier to end the bathroom Zoom call. An aide to the Texas GOP leadership said their conference has no idea what Collier and Booker were talking about – that no one on their side, nor the House sergeant-at-arms office, told Collier to end the call.
Booker’s and Newsom’s press aides also did not return inquiries.
After the Texas legislature passed the maps in a party-line vote, Newsom responded on X.com: “It’s on, Texas.”
Newsom for weeks had pledged to “fight fire with fire” and respond to Texas Republicans’ partisan mid-redistricting plan to eliminate five Democratic districts with his own set of gerrymandering in California. Pulling off such a task, however, will be no small feat.
There are far more procedural hurdles in the state, where voters 15 years ago took the role of redrawing maps away from the legislature and set up a so-called independent Citizens Redistricting Commission in an attempt to make the task less partisan. Mid-decade redistricting in California is also illegal under the state’s constitution. Newsom and state Democrats are leading a drive to change all that and hold a voter referendum on Nov. 4 to throw out those laws and circumvent the commission.
“The fact that you have to submit to some overlord to have a full-time security watching your every move in 2025 – you can’t make this up,” Newsom told Collier on the Zoom call with reporters earlier Wednesday. “There’s nothing normal about this – it should make everybody’s blood boil.”
Newsom then referenced the ICE arrests outside a pro-redistricting rally he held with California Democratic lawmakers and union representatives a week ago in Los Angeles.
“Yes, we’ll fight fire with fire. Yes, we will push back,” he argued. “It’s not about whether they play hardball anymore. It’s about how we play – push back.”
The difference in California, he argued, is that he and other Democrats are pursuing their gerrymandering in the “most transparent and democratic way” and are poised to pass a constitutional amendment this week setting up the ballot initiative asking voters to approve the new maps eliminating five GOP congressional seats.
Newsom’s comments spurred jeers from the California Republican Party and several GOP lawmakers, who hold just nine out of the state’s 52 congressional seats. Four California GOP state lawmakers have already filed suit challenging the maps, and state Democrats are facing mounting questions about exactly which individuals have been involved in the closed-door map-writing process.
Over the last 48 hours, as the California legislature held hearings on its plan to gerrymander the congressional maps, Democratic leaders have refused to answer questions about who is responsible for writing the new maps.
According to a bill that’s part of the redistricting package, the California Assembly Committee on Elections and the Senate Committee on Elections had prepared them. But neither leader of those panels would confirm who was ultimately responsible, according to KCRA 3, a Sacramento-based television station.
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, who leads the Assembly’s elections committee, on Tuesday denied that state lawmakers drew the maps, amid reports that the Democratic Congressional Committee and consultant Paul Mitchell took credit for drawing the proposed maps.
Pellerin said the maps were a “collaboration” and she would get reporters “the specifics.”
When pressed, Pellerin retorted, “When I go to a restaurant, I don’t need to meet the chef, I just enjoy the food.”
With one day left on the California legislative timeline to pass the redistricting package, California Republicans responded by calling for a federal investigation into who drew the new partisan lines and assailed the cost of holding a referendum vote in November. Republicans have estimated that cost at around $230 million.
“What we need to know right now is who drew the maps,” argued GOP Assemblyman David Tangipa.
Republicans hope to capitalize on Newsom’s and state Democrats’ decision to plow ahead with their response to Texas Republicans’ power grab while public sentiment in California remains against mid-year redistricting and jettisoning the commission.
A Politico poll released last week found that just 36% of California voters support returning congressional redistricting authority to state lawmakers. Yet another Politico survey this week showed that Newsom is likely benefiting politically from his high-stakes gambit to fight Trump and Texas Republican efforts to secure more congressional seats before the 2026 midterm elections, as well as his embrace of the president’s bare-knuckle style of politics.
The governor has now surpassed Harris as the top 2028 presidential contender among Democratic-leaning voters in California, the poll found. Attempting to keep the heat on Democrats, the California GOP on Wednesday night released a video mash-up of the embarrassing set of interviews with California Democrats on the topic of who is responsible for drawing the new maps.
“Why is it so incredibly difficult for the Democrats to say or get their story straight — WHO DREW THE MAPS?!” the X.com post with the accompanying video repeatedly asks.
“It *should* be a simple question,” Los Angeles GOP Chairwoman Roxanne Hoge remarked on X.com. “CA_Dem are clearly puppets. Who is the puppet master?”
“Jerry Mander drew the map,” one X.com account replied in a post accompanied by a likely AI-generated photo of Newsom in a PPE mask with a pen, crouched over a map of California.
Back in Texas, Collier ended her night by posting a photo on X.com of her leaving the state House with a big roller suitcase. “My work here isn’t done,” she said. “But my stay here is.”
Newsom’s repeated point on the DNC Zoom call earlier Wednesday that the political machinations over redistricting had quickly gone haywire may have been his strongest.
“Nothing about this, everybody, is normal – nothing,” he told reporters.
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