California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday said he’s “deeply confident” that California voters this week will approve the state’s Prop 50 ballot measure, which would allow the state to redraw congressional maps on a partisan basis ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In a wide-ranging interview, the California governor slammed the president’s push for mid-decade redistricting efforts in Republican states across the country, accusing the president of “rigging” next year’s congressional election and warning that Trump “is not screwing around.”
“He’s changing the rules. He’s rigging the game because he knows he’ll lose if all things are equal,” Newsom told Welker. “He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”
The California governor also spoke about his tactics in pushing back against Trump on social media, telling Welker that he believes he is holding “a mirror up to that madness.”
Asked if there was still room for Democrats to consider former first lady Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high” philosophy, Newsom said, “I would love to go back to that, but politics has changed. The world has changed. The rules of the game have changed.”
“We want to go back to some semblance of normalcy, but you have to deal with the crisis at hand,” the governor said. “It has been just 10 to 11 months of this presidency. We have three more years’ time to batten down the hatches, and it’s time for us to change if we want things to change. And that’s why our communication strategy has shifted. That’s why Prop 50 has shifted the conversation here in California. And I think we’ll shift the debate going into 2026 as a consequence of our success, and I think we, as a party, have become more unified and I think more aligned on what’s at stake.”
Prop 50 push
Newsom has championed the ballot measure, known as Prop 50, in response to a mid-decade redistricting in Texas, where the GOP-controlled Legislature redrew congressional districts to favor Republicans.
That move in Texas could lead to a net gain of five seats for House Republicans in 2026 and has kicked off a wave of redistricting efforts in states including California, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Louisiana, where state lawmakers have either floated the idea or taken concrete steps to draw new congressional maps ahead of next year’s elections.
On Thursday, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president last year, voiced her support for California’s redistricting effort, saying in a post on X that she voted yes on the ballot measure, “because we cannot let anyone silence the will of the people.”
Trump has urged Republican-led states to follow Texas’ lead since he first encouraged the move there in July. He spoke over the phone with Indiana Republicans in October, and Vice President JD Vance has visited Indiana twice this year to bolster the effort.
Newsom slammed Trump for his efforts to promote mid-decade redistricting in Republican-led states, accusing the president of “rigging” next year’s congressional elections.
Trump “is not screwing around. He’s changing the rules. He’s rigging the game because he knows he’ll lose if all things are equal,” Newsom told Welker. “He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”
The California governor has repeatedly emphasized that he wants Democrats to take back the House next year to ensure Trump’s administration grinds to a halt.
If Democrats win, he said, “there’ll be fire and fury [from the White House], but it will signify substantially less because we’ll finally have a coequal branch of government. So the Trump presidency, as we know it, from my perspective, will be over, if we’re successful in 2026.”
He noted that a Democratic majority will “have subpoena power. They’ll hold hearings. They can actually do something about congressionally approved appropriations.”
Democrats' brand
Newsom also argued that Democrats’ national brand is growing stronger, even after a bruising year in which the party suffered losses in the presidential and congressional elections and has had some of its lowest approval ratings in decades.
Asked whether the party brand is damaged, Newsom told Welker, “Not right now.”
“Four months ago, if you asked me that question, I would have been struggling to find positive signs of the party. I feel it’s a completely different moment,” he said, citing Tuesday’s elections, which include the vote on California’s ballot measure, New York City’s mayoral election and gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
“I feel like we’re on the precipice of a remarkable moment on Nov. 4,” the governor said. “And we’ve got leaders now that have a united front and a message that’s breaking through on health care, with [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [House Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries, that give me real confidence that the Democratic Party is on its ascendancy.”
To continue to rebuild the Democratic brand in voters’ eyes, he added, “we’ve got to win.”
“People want to see winners, what matters, momentum, strength, not weakness. I think the one thing that’s marked the Democratic Party in the last number of months, you know, when you get shellacked in an election, when you lose the electoral vote, the popular vote, we lost both houses of Congress ... there was concern about our ability to lead at this remarkable moment, the shock and awe coming from Donald Trump,” the governor said. “We were on our heels. We weren’t on our toes. And so I think people want strength. They want clarity and they want conviction.”
Newsom spoke about one of the drivers of distrust in Democrats — Joe Biden’s initial decision to seek re-election and his later decision to drop out of the race in July of last year, with just over 100 days to go before Election Day.
Newsom maintained that he never doubted Biden had the mental acuity and fortitude to serve another term.
Newsom was a staunch supporter of Biden’s re-election bid, from the moment Biden announced his campaign to the moment he dropped out of the race.
Shortly after his own re-election to the governor’s mansion in 2022, Newsom insisted that he wouldn’t challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024, telling Politico that his message to the Biden White House was: “I’m all in, count me in.”
Asked whether he and other top Democrats should have sounded the alarm about the president’s potential mental deficiencies sooner, Newsom said, “I never experienced [that].”
“I’m not going to substitute myself for someone else or for popular opinion. I’m going to express my relationship to my truth with the former president of the United States, including at the end of his term. … There was nothing to suggest what you just said or others have suggested in terms of my interaction. That’s all I can be accountable for,” the governor said.
Governing under the Trump administration
Newsom also reflected on his relationship with Trump and how the president’s agenda has impacted Californians.
The two have sparred over what caused destructive wildfires in California. And over the summer, California waged a legal battle against the Trump administration after the president deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration raids.
California ultimately prevailed, with a federal judge ruling in September that the troop deployment was illegal.
The state sued the Trump administration again in October when the president tried to deploy California National Guard troops to Oregon to quell anti-ICE protests there. A judge blocked the federal government from doing so.
“I’m holding hope that there’s one coequal branch of government left, and that’s the judiciary,” Newsom told Welker. “The courts, the lower courts, the federal courts have held pretty strong. And so I’m hopeful it’s the last institution standing. Again, he’s assaulting all institutions that stand in his way.”
And Trump’s actions are becoming more extreme as his term goes on, Newsom said.
“What the hell do we need to tell people to get them off their couch, to say, ‘Well, hold on, I may have liked his bluster, I may not have liked the last guy, but I didn’t sign up for this?’” Newsom said.
The governor also criticized the Supreme Court and Congress for caving to Trump, telling Welker, “I talked about this supine Congress. We’ve lost the coequal branch of government. Speaker [Mike] Johnson has no interest in oversight. He doesn’t believe in any foundational recognition or oversight, as the Founding Fathers advanced it.”
“You’ve got courts that are increasingly indulgent, particularly on the emergency docket, with the Supreme Court. We can lose this thing. This guy’s not screwing around. Trump is not screwing around,” Newsom added.
Still, the governor said he wouldn’t knock a chance to meaningfully work with the president if the opportunity arose.
“I always have an open hand, not a closed fist. I revere the institution of president. I revere that office. I’d pick up the phone if he called in a nanosecond. I will. I’ll work with anyone that wants to work in a constructive manner,” Newsom said.
Presidential ambitions
Last week, Newsom left the door open to a potential presidential campaign in 2028.
“I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom told CBS News last Sunday when asked if he’d consider running for president after the 2026 midterms.
Asked directly by Welker about why he wants to run for president, Newsom said, “I don’t,” adding that he tried to answer last week’s question honestly.
“I’m focused on Prop 50. I’m focusing on fair and free elections. And to the extent fate, the future, there’s an alignment, you have a big enough ‘why,’ you have a ‘what’ and a ‘how,’ you meet a moment and that moment presents itself in a year, year and a half, we’ll see what happens,” he said.
Harris has also fueled speculation that she’ll run for president again in 2028, telling the BBC, “I am not done. I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.”
In her book that was released last month, Harris wrote that she scrambled to reach out to prominent Democrats after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her, but she was unable to reach Newsom.
“I’ve known Kamala all my life. The last person she needs to reach out to is me,” Newsom said Thursday, adding that she left him a voicemail and he wasn’t able to connect with her later in the day.
“She was on to her next calls. We were already on to our press release endorsing her. So I don’t even know why that was even in the book,” the governor said.
