During a press conference on Thursday, Newsom told reporters that he has spoken with state legislators and members of Congress about holding a special statewide election in November for Californians to vote on new congressional maps.
Voters would be able to review the proposed maps beforehand - which he claimed would be drawn transparently - and the election would likely be held on November 4, when many local elections are being held this year in California.
Newsom accuses Trump of trying to rig the midterm election by redrawing congressional districts in Texas and other states to favor Republicans.
Typically, districts are only re-drawn after the Census to reflect population changes.
"I don't think it gets much bigger, and we're going to respond in a transparent way and an honest way, but it's in response," said Newsom. "But I'm not going to sit back any longer in a position, in a fetal position, in a position of weakness, when in fact California can demonstrably advance strength."
Newsom has repeatedly floated trying to redraw California's congressional maps in response to Texas potentially redrawing its own.
Texas state legislators on Wednesday unveiled a proposal that could box out multiple Democrats.
The state has an independent commission that draws its congressional maps. Newsom said the proposal would sideline it and put new maps in front of voters, but would not eliminate the commission, and Newsom said the state would return to it for redistricting during the next Census.
California itself, along with other blue states like Illinois, have often been criticized for having their congressional districts drawn aggressively in favor of Democrats and as being out of balance with the partisan makeup of their states' electorates.
Only nine of the 52 House members from California are Republican, but almost 40% of the state votes for GOP House candidates.
Some have also criticized Newsom for talking about redrawing maps in response to the Texas gambit, saying that both states in fact are hurting their voters through favoring individual parties in congressional maps.
Philip Hensley-Robin, the Executive Director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, told reporters on a call on Thursday that "what we're seeing in Texas and California is partisan extremism ... Democrats in Texas deserve fair representation. The same is true for Republicans in California, and that's because every voter in every state deserves fair districts and fair representation."
Other Common Cause leaders on the call said the redistricting scramble being sparked by Texas and California benefits political interests while hurting people and trust in the political system.
Democratic-aligned groups continue to call the Texas effort damaging.
In a separate call on Thursday, John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the Texas redistricting effort a "very simple power grab."
Bisognano said that while the NDRC was "keeping all options on the table for the future", their focus would remain on Texas.
"We aren't going to stand in the way of States taking corrective and measured action to what is now an egregious problem in Texas. But the truth and the point is, we need to keep our eyes focused on Texas," Bisognano said. "The best case outcome here is that Texas does not engage in a further gerrymander. And that's still a choice."
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the NDRC, accused Republicans of drawing the district lines to dilute Latino and Black voters' electoral power.
"Black voters and Latino voters will have even less opportunity to have their political will considered on an equal basis as the law requires than they do in the already gerrymandered map. This is wrong. It's discriminatory," Jenkins said.
She pointed to the proposed district lines around San Antonio, a city with a majority Latino population, where the city center would be in one district while the suburbs would be split into three districts that each extend further out into areas with more white voters.
Jenkins also spoke about the area around Houston. She said a merger of Democratic Representative Al Green's District 9, where Black voters make up the largest bloc, with the currently vacant but majority-Democratic district 18 would be "essentially cutting in half the number of districts where black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice."
Addressing the efforts in other states to redistrict in response to Texas, Bisognano emphasized that "at no point is this organization going to seek a unilateral redraw of states in any capacity."
"We will always continue to strive for a representative democracy," he said.
ABC News Politics Journalist Oren Oppenheim and Correspondent Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.