California GOP Congressman — Sweating Being Able to Keep His Own Seat — Files Bill to Block Mid-Decade Redistricting

Amid efforts in multiple states to initiate an unusual mid-decade congressional redistricting, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) filed a bill to block it nationwide — and also protect his own reelection hopes.

Normally, congressional redistricting occurs every decade after the latest U.S. Census, with the number of House districts reapportioned among the states to account for increases or decreases in population, and each state’s laws governing how the lines are drawn within their borders.

But President Donald Trump has been publicly urged legislatures in GOP majority states to undergo an early redistricting in advance of the 2026 midterms in order to increase the number of Republican seats. Several blue states, including California, have threatened to conduct their own redistricting to pad the Democratic numbers.

Kiley, however, is not on board, filing a bill, H.R. 4889, that would ban any efforts to change the congressional district lines mid-decade, preserve the current maps, and nullify any changes the states made to the maps after the November 2024 election.

“A nationwide redistricting war is not what our country needs,” said Kiley in a statement released by his office. “The resulting chaos would be harmful to representative government and a distraction from the important issues facing Congress and state legislatures. I’m calling on house leadership to give my bill a vote as soon as we return to session.”

In an appearance on CNN Friday afternoon, Kiley told anchor John Berman that he had spoken with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) “several times” about his opposition to mid-decade redistricting, and while he didn’t want to disclose the details of a private conversation, Kiley did say that he had made his views “very clear” to the speaker that he believed “this chaos needs to be brought to an end.”

It would be “a terrible thing for the country,” Kiley continued, to “have this domino effect of one state after another, redrawing their district lines in the middle of the decade,” denouncing the efforts as “ridiculous, ridiculous redistricting games” and a “dangerous move.”

“Right now, it’s a bad idea for any state to be engaging in this,” Kiley declared, noting that the redistricting process in California involved “an independent commission that was established by the voters,” and so redistricting now would “return power into the hands of politicians, even though voters said that’s exactly what they don’t want.”

“I don’t think it’s any justification to say that something wrong is happening in some other state,” Kiley concluded. “I mean, this fails the test of kindergarten logic. There’s two wrongs don’t make a right. And just because there’s something that we don’t like going on elsewhere, that doesn’t mean that our voters should be punished for it, we should make our elections less fair in California, we should degrade our politics.”

Kiley represents a swing district and would likely find his seat on the chopping block if the Democratic-majority California legislature tore up the map to create more blue seats, as several political commentators — and one of his fellow House colleagues from California — pointed out.

Watch the clip above via CNN.