House lawmaker ready to use ‘all legislative tools’ to stop CA, TX redistricting

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., is promising that “all options are on the table” to try and stop states from creating a nationwide fight over redistricting congressional maps.

“It creates a lot of instability if you’re just constantly shifting the lines on the map around so that, you know, representatives are losing constituents, losing communities, gaining new ones. People elect one person as their representative, and then suddenly that person is representing an entirely different area,” Kiley told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday.

“It’s just total chaos. It’s not good for representative government. It’s not good for constituents. It is not good for Democrats or Republicans.”

The California Republican spoke with Fox News Digital hours after introducing a bill that would block states from shifting the boundaries of their current congressional districts ahead of the 2030 census.

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Texas Republicans are currently mounting a push to redraw the Lone Star state’s congressional map. President Donald Trump, who supports the effort, said it would give the GOP as many as five new seats in the House of Representatives.

California Democrats have launched their own redistricting bid in response, with Gov. Gavin Newsom signaling he’s ready to wield the Democratic supermajority in the state legislature to push a special election for voters to decide on new congressional maps.

Several states, both with Republican and Democratic majorities, have since followed suit in threatening their own redistricting efforts.

When asked if he thought the issue began with Texas, however, Kiley pointed out that Newsom’s bid would require sidelining the state’s independent redistricting commission. California is one of eight states that has an independent commission charged with redrawing state maps, according to a chart by Loyola Law School.

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“What Newsom is doing is unique because he is actually trying to abolish an independent commission that currently exists and exercise a power that he doesn’t actually have, and to override the will of voters in the process,” Kiley said.

“That being said, I don’t love what’s happening in Texas, or I don’t like the idea of this happening anywhere else in the country.”

Kiley said he’d already spoken with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., about his bill, but would not discuss the details of their conversation.

California’s push comes in response to a similar effort by Texas Republicans. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

“I made it very clear my view on this and what I think he needs to do. And I’m hoping that he’ll do the right thing,” Kiley said.

He said at another point, “This is an issue that affects our Republican conference – and all of this is not popular among Republican members of our conference – but it’s also a matter of the House as an institution. And he, as the leader of the House, I think, needs to show some leadership.”

Johnson, for his part, has yet to weigh in on Texas and California, as well as the wider redistricting fight across the country. The Louisiana Republican has been on a congressional delegation trip to Israel for several days while the issue exploded onto the national stage.

But when asked if he saw a realistic path to getting his bill passed, Kiley told Fox News Digital, “I’m ready to use any and all legislative tools available to get the bill to the floor.”

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“The easiest way to do that would be for the speaker to do the right thing and get behind it. But I’m going to fight in every way I can to get it approved, because this is a matter that’s of tremendous importance for the country,” Kiley said.

“It’s of particular importance to my state, and I’m not a lot about to let the governor, you know, go down this incredibly destructive road that will do grave damage to democracy in California.”

He did not rule out mechanisms to force a vote on his bill, like a discharge petition or a privileged resolution, if House leaders did not act.

“We need to get this passed. We need to stop Newsom. And we need to bring this chaos to an end,” Kiley said.

Kiley vowed to use “all legislative tools” if Speaker of the House Mike Johnson does not put the bill up for a vote. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Any such action would have to wait until early September at the earliest, however. Congress is currently in its annual August recess, when lawmakers are back in their home districts connecting with constituents. 

Kiley said he was not “super concerned about my own seat,” noting he won re-election by a healthy margin. Indeed, Kiley won re-election in California’s 3rd congressional district by double-digits in November 2024 – even outpacing Trump, who won the area by 3% over former Vice President Kamala Harris.

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But Kiley said he was confident his bill would pass and argued House colleagues on both sides of the aisle disapprove of what’s happening in California, Texas and nationwide.

“People almost universally do not like the idea of suddenly overhauling district lines in an unscheduled mid-decade redistricting,” he said. “I mean, I know that’s true of the Republican members in Texas, that they don’t want to see their district, you know, completely changed overnight, communities that they’ve represented, that have repeatedly chosen them as their representatives. And that’s pretty universally true.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson and Newsom’s offices for comment but did not immediately hear back.