Yesterday, the California State Legislature passed bills to redistrict existing Congressional maps by scheduling a special election in November 2025. This fall, California voters will vote on Proposition 50, which, if passed, would ratify these new maps that will override the state’s independent commission that drew existing Congressional maps in the past redistricting cycle.

This act is in response to Teas’s redrawn Congressional maps, which came at the urging of President Donald Trump’s insistence to give his Republican Party five more winnable seats. With the 2026 midterms only a year away, every seat will matter in determining control of the legislative majority in Congress – and that will fundamentally dictate whether Donald Trump has a friendly Speaker to rubber-stamp his legislative agenda during the final two years of his term.

Democrats in California, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, have argued that this extraordinary measure to bypass the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is a necessary response to Trump’s increasingly authoritarian measures to consolidate his power. Unlike Texas, California’s maps are a temporary measure that will revert to the Independent Redistricting Commission after the 2030 Census.

What does this mean for Orange County?

If California voters pass this measure in the November election, existing Congressional boundaries will be thrown out in favor of new maps already drawn and passed by the California Legislature that give Democrats a larger advantage in the 2026 election. For Little Saigon in particular, the Congressional District representing Little Saigon (CA-45), led by Congressmember Derek Tran, will lose the Republican-leaning neighborhoods of Brea, Yorba Linda, and Los Alamitos and gain the Democratic-leaning suburbs of Artesia, Cerritos, and Norwalk. Additionally, while the neighborhoods of Little Saigon have remained mostly consolidated, a section of the western part of Santa Ana in Ward 1, which has a significant Vietnamese presence, will also be added to CA-45, ultimately splitting Santa Ana’s Vietnamese ward into two Congressional districts.

Our Thoughts

VietRISE played a significant role in the last redistricting cycle. We set up resident redistricting committees in Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Westminster, and across Little Saigon as a whole and mobilized residents to speak to their city councils. We canvassed thousands of residents and held focus groups to understand our community’s priorities for local governance. Residents consistently called for keeping Little Saigon together, and expressed the need for representatives who could address skyrocketing rent increases and the displacement of immigrant communities. We heard countless testimonies from residents who felt left behind by both political parties in addressing those concerns. Democracy is not an abstract concept to us – it sits at the heart of our organizing, and we know firsthand why so many people feel disregarded by political institutions.

People want our leaders to act with boldness and conviction towards the pressing issues of our day. If this proposition passes, will formerly “swing-seat” Congressional Democrats (like Derek Tran in the 45th district), who will be in safer seats as a result of the new maps, actually pass bold progressive policies like abolishing ICE? Will they finally listen to the majority of Americans who want an end to the genocide in Gaza and stop giving billions to Israel? Will they finally actually stand up to the Trump administration’s barbaric attacks on immigrant communities and fight for accountability and restitution for the individuals and families that were abducted and imprisoned by ICE? What will a transfer of power in the 120th Congress (2027-2029) to the Democratic Party mean for holding ICE accountable? Regardless of this ballot measure’s outcome in November, winning additional seats for the Democratic Party is meaningless unless those representatives show real courage and take bold legislative action to confront and take down Trump’s fascist agenda.

Over the next two months, we will see an avalanche of campaign mailers, ads, and news flooding our mailboxes and phones about this ballot measure, which will inevitably have broad ramifications across the country. Stay tuned for updates from VietRISE on this important issue, and share your thoughts with us!