On Wednesday, former President Barack Obama called out President Donald Trump’s push to gerrymander congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and endorsed the California ballot initiative seeking to counter Trump’s power grab.
Obama appeared on a video call with California Gov. Gavin Newsom to support that state’s Proposition 50, which would pause independent redistricting and instead allow lawmakers to draw congressional maps in response to Republican gerrymandering in other states.
“Our current president and his administration is explicitly saying that we want to change the rules of the game midstream in order to insulate ourselves from the people’s judgement,” Obama said.
Obama further noted that Republicans want to change the maps “before any election in which they’re worried they might lose—they want to tinker around to see if they can give themselves an advantage.”
Traditionally redistricting occurs on a ten-year cycle, following the census after which adjustments can be made to congressional districts based on population changes. Instead, Republicans are trying to accelerate the process and eliminate districts where voters have backed Democratic candidates.
Recent polling has shown strong support for Proposition 50 and GOP-aligned groups opposing the ballot measure have been scaling back advertising ahead of November’s elections.
“Redistricting fight” by Mike Luckovich
Trump is still pushing strongly to lock in the current, narrow, Republican majority in the House that has refused to fill its constitutional role of providing oversight of his presidency.
Earlier this month he called a meeting of Indiana’s state Senate Republican caucus to push them to redraw that state’s maps. Indiana is overwhelmingly Republican, having voted for Trump by 16 points over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election—but Republicans still are pushing to eliminate the state’s two Democratic congressional districts.
Pressuring Indiana would appear to be an acknowledgement of the weak position Republicans are in ahead of the midterm election. If Trump’s agenda and job performance were popular, it is unlikely that redistricting in safe Republican territory would even be a topic of conversation. But his approval has been falling since he took office.
Democrats currently hold an aggregate lead of 2.6 percentage points over Republicans in polling of the generic congressional vote. In eight of the ten most recent national polls the lead has gone to the Democrats.
As Obama explained, the motivation for Republicans in pushing to rig the process is abundantly clear.
