In July, as Republicans in Texas were pushing, at President Donald Trump’s behest, to change the state’s maps to net themselves as many as five more U.S. House seats in next year’s midterms, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, warned that his state might feel compelled to respond in kind. “This is not a bluff,” he said. In fact, it was—or, at least, it had been at first. A month before Newsom’s pronouncement, as Politico has since reported , a senior House Democrat asked Paul Mitchell, the top redistricting consultant in California, whether a tit-for-tat would be feasible. Mitchell was skeptical, not least because the state had transferred responsibility for its congressional maps to an independent commission that was popular with voters. Nonetheless, Mitchell was di

See Full Page