Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Ready To Take On Gavin Newsom

In these divided times, Californians of both stripes have been comforted by how readily its most recent Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and current Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have come together—especially when it came to standing up to (Republican, as if you didn’t know) President Donald Trump. But that Golden State alliance ended this week, after Newsom announced a plan to redistrict California in response to a Trump-inspired gerrymandering scheme in Texas.

For months now, Trump’s team has been lobbying GOP lawmakers and governors to redraw state maps to ensure a Republican House majority in the 2026 midterm elections. In Indiana, for example, Trump asked Gov. Mike Braun to call for a special legislative session to redistrict the Hoosier state, even sending Vice President JD Vance to implore leaders to convene.

Braun—who Trump relegated to the kids’ table during his star-studded inauguration—has yet to make a decision on the matter, but his counterpart in Texas, Greg Abbott, is all in on the plan, with a special redistricting session planned for this week that could net the GOP five more House seats.

In response, Newsom announced his own redistricting proposal Thursday, saying via X that he will call a special election “to redraw our Congressional maps and defend fair representation.” At a press conference on Thursday to promote the November 4 vote, Newsom explained that redrawing California’s electoral map would generate five Democratic house seats, effectively negating any Texas gains. It’s a move that the state must make “in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said ‘find me five seats,’” Newsom said.

“I know they say don’t mess with Texas. Well, don’t mess with the great Golden State,” Newsom said, even as Trump appeared to do just that: Armed and masked ICE agents assembled just outside Newsom’s press event to promote the redistricting effort, a show of force that LA Mayor Karen Bass described as “completely unacceptable” and Newsom pointed to as proof that California’s redistricting is the only way forward. The ICE agents’ presence was “pretty sick and pathetic,” Newsom told reporters, describing it as everything one needs to know “about Donald Trump’s America.”

That scene must have sent chills down the spine of Newsom’s fellow Californian, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator star, who had Newsom’s current job from November 17, 2003, to January 3, 2011, was born shortly after World War II to a member of the Nazi party—a group that, under Trump, has experienced a significant revival. “My father was, and so many other millions of men were, sucked into a hate system through lies and deceit. And so, we have seen where that leads,” Schwarzenegger said in a 2023 interview.