If Texas Redraws Its House Map, California Governor Says It Will, Too

The NPR Politics Podcast

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Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If Texas Republicans go through with their plan to redraw the state's congressional districts to give Republicans five more U.S. House seats, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, says he'll push through new districts in his state that benefit Democrats. We discuss the growing redistricting arms race and why, at least for California, it's not that simple.

This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and KQED's Guy Marzorati.

This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems.
0:12.0	More information is at walton family foundation.org.
0:15.9	Hi, this is Mitch from Columbia, Missouri, and I am driving to my first day of professional development as a middle school teacher for the 2025-20206 school year.
0:27.8	This podcast was recorded at...
0:29.9	105 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
0:33.7	Things may have changed by the time that you're listening to this recording, but I know that I will be taking very highly detailed doodles all day long. Thanks. Here's the show.
0:47.4	Oof, middle school. I mean, I hope he keeps that Midwestern enthusiasm up because... Oh, my God.
0:53.6	That is a rough age. God bless. I just had like flashbacks. Oh, my God. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And Guy Maserati of member station KQED in San Francisco is here as well. Welcome back to the podcast. Great to be
1:12.7	with you all. And today on the show, we're talking about how Democratic leaders in states like
1:17.7	California are responding to Republican efforts in places like Texas to redraw their state's
1:24.3	congressional districts. Domenico, I want to back up for a second because a lot
1:27.8	has happened, especially when we're talking about Texas in the last week or so. So can you remind us
1:32.5	what's going on in Texas? Yeah, I mean, the basic point here is that Trump is trying to retain
1:37.8	control of the levers of power in Washington. And traditionally, you know, the party out of power winds up gaining usually 20 plus
1:47.7	seats in midterm elections. And it's even worse than that when a president is below 50% approval,
1:53.3	which President Trump is currently. So, you know, Republicans are facing some potential headwinds here.
1:59.6	And Trump has asked Republicans in the state of Texas to find more seats. He wants them to, you know, create a map that could get as many as five seats. And they've done that. But they're running into the issue that Democrats have fled the state. And they don't have, you know, the numbers to have a quorum.
2:19.7	Right.
2:20.2	And Democrats are effectively blocking this vote, although that's not expected to be able to hold up forever.
2:26.7	Right.
2:26.8	And Republicans are likely to get those five seats that they want.
2:30.5	Yeah.
	...

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