President Donald Trump believes he’s “entitled to five more seats” – his phrases – within the U.S. Home of Representatives. And he’s appearing prefer it.
Reportedly pushed by his aides to stop shedding his Home majority to Democrats in November 2026, Texas’s Republican leaders are working laborious to ship the president extra congressional seats to make sure Republicans retain management of the Home.
Contemplating that chamber has essentially the most energy over the U.S. Treasury’s $7 trillion purse and greater than a 3rd of the California state authorities’s price range is funded by federal spending, what occurs in Texas could have super repercussions for California taxpayers who already ship extra to D.C. than they get again.
At present, Lone Star state legislators are thumbing their noses on the longstanding political norm, adopted by each different state, of ready till the following census earlier than redrawing their congressional districts. As an alternative, half means via this decade, they’re altering the principles of the sport. Ballot after ballot this summer season reveals congressional Republicans shedding within the midterms; fearing a wipeout, they’re making an attempt to cheat the old school means, gerrymandering.
The draft congressional map Texas GOP leaders unveiled late final month would freeze, a minimum of, 5 Democrats out of Congress and assist Republicans preserve their majority.
Will their ploy work? Too early to say.
Texas Democrats had left the state, denying quickly the state Legislature a quorum wanted to go the plan. In truth, they’ve been on the run, hiding from state (and apparently federal) authorities, who threatened to pull them again to Austin and ram via Trump’s plan.
Paying extra for much less
Amid the uncertainty, California can’t be caught unprepared if the Texas scheme works.
In spite of everything, no state has extra to lose than California if Trump will get away with manufacturing a Home majority. That’s a mathematical actuality.
Think about that California taxpayers gave $83.1 billion extra to the federal treasury than they took from it in 2022, the newest 12 months accessible. Against this, that 12 months, Texans took $71.1 billion greater than they gave.
No state pays extra and will get lower than California.
The imbalance of funds is dangerous sufficient when Democrats management all three branches of the federal authorities, like they did in 2022. However Trump and his Republican Congress are doing every part of their energy to make that ledger even much less pleasant to the Golden State, in opposition to which they’ve a transparent vendetta.
It’s the Home the place federal spending payments originate, and the One Large Lovely Invoice Act, which simply emerged from the Republican-controlled chamber, reveals in stark phrases why California wants Democrats to reclaim the Home in 2026.
California can anticipate to lose greater than $200 billion in federal funds over the following decade because of Home Republicans’ new tax-and-spending plan, in line with projections by the California Price range and Coverage Heart. (The state’s Legislative Analyst Workplace has not but launched its official projection.)
And the lack of federal {dollars} set in movement by that invoice is already wreaking havoc throughout the state, jeopardizing practically each sector of California — spanning transportation, schooling, scientific analysis and vitality infrastructure, only for starters. In truth, the state initiatives that as much as 3.4 million Californians will lose their medical insurance because of that one invoice alone, to not say something about all the opposite laws in Home Republican’s pipeline.
Throughout the Bay Space, county governments are scrambling to guard what’s left of their security nets. Federal funding right here helps help supply of meals help, little one welfare companies, housing, public security, medical and behavioral well being care. That’s all being dramatically reduce.
Santa Clara and Alameda counties, which obtain a majority of their well being care budgets from the federal authorities, are bracing for influence. In Santa Clara, which operates the second largest public well being system in California, it initiatives to lose greater than $4 billion over the following 5 years. That’s the most important income loss the county has skilled since Prop. 13 handed within the Nineteen Seventies and that now threatens its whole system’s viability as a dependable security web.
To avert catastrophe, Santa Clara County—one of many wealthiest anyplace within the nation—is now relying on passing a gross sales tax in November to boost a couple of third in native revenues of what it’s shedding in federal advantages. In different phrases, Santa Clara has to tax itself domestically to pay for companies its federal taxes had been paying for till Home Republicans took it away.
Responding in form
California leaders must be ready to fulfill power with power.
Which means pausing California’s high-minded impartial fee that has, admirably, drawn congressional boundaries in a non-partisan means since 2010.
Whereas we’d usually oppose gerrymandering of any form, we imagine California should act to guard its monetary pursuits.
Will there be a series response? Most likely. By all accounts, it’s already beginning.
Along with these tit-for-tat threats, Trump is now deploying Vice President JD Vance to make the case for a brand new federal census that will, undoubtedly, cut back the variety of secure Democratic congressional seats lengthy earlier than the 2030 census.
Merely put, there aren’t any good choices, together with inaction.
When the California Legislature returns from summer season recess on Monday, they’ll have 4 days (although presumably extra relying on the authorized interpretation) to go an official plan that can get on the Nov. 4 special-election poll.
We are able to anticipate authorized fights, well-funded opposition campaigns and an extended, messy course of to re-write our guidelines. The campaigning might be nonstop.
However whereas the main points of the plan are nonetheless being labored out, this a lot have to be clear:
Californians can’t sit idly by and take the ethical excessive floor whereas Trump and his allies in Texas create Machiavellian schemes to fabricate a Home majority hellbent on utilizing the federal authorities to extract extra wealth from California taxpayers whereas delivering their communities much less.
Initially Revealed: August 15, 2025 at 12:40 PM PDT
