Damn!….
The way the media has been playing its reaction to Virginia Democrats efforts to change 4 districts fore them you’d think the November Midterms WILL Keep GOPer’s running the US House….
Not Quite….
Virginia voters passed the measure last month. But the state’s top court ruled that legislative Democrats did not follow the proper procedure when rushing the referendum to the ballot.
Virginia Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, writing for the majority, said Democrats “submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner” that violated state law.
The 4-3 decision means that the map used by Virginia in the 2024 elections will be used later this year. The state’s congressional delegation is currently split between six Democrats and five Republicans, with several battleground seats. The now-overturned map would have likely resulted in a 10-1 split of the delegation in favor of Democrats.
The decision means that Republicans will likely net seats in the nationwide gerrymandering battle that President Donald Trump kicked off last year when he urged Texas Republicans to redraw congressional lines there to give the GOP more seats….
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But Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who boasted of a“maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” redistricting agenda after his party’s win in the Virginia referendum, said the fight was far from over.
“We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision,” he said in a statement. “No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans.”
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, also a Democrat, said in a statement that his team “is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”
The GOP’s biggest prize outside of Texas — where they could flip as many as five seats in a best-case scenario for the party — is Florida. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed into effect a new congressional map in the Sunshine State that is expected to net up to four more seats for Republicans in early May.
Litigation continues there as well, with Democrats contending the new Florida maps violate the state’s anti-gerrymandering standards.
The late-April Supreme Court decision severely limiting the VRA has allowed Republicans to make a late play for yet more Democratic seats in Southern states. Tennessee Republicans just passed a new gerrymander, and other states including South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama are currently rushing to redraw their lines…..
…
Republicans have reclaimed a gerrymandering advantage, but that might not save them in the midterms.
Nationally, the contours of the map are getting tougher for Democrats, but the midterm picture for Republicans remains far from rosy.
When the dust settles on the redistricting fight ahead of the midterms, Democrats could end up losing at least half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, depending on factors including the passage of new maps in the Southern states favoring Republicans.
But that tells only part of the story in the battle for control of the House.
Republicans are battling headwinds posed by Mr. Trump’s poor approval ratings, the unpopular war in Iran and rising energy prices.
Many swing-district Republicans have been fretting about how the war will affect their chances in November. The conflict has alienated some leading conservative voices, and Republican candidates have been exasperated by Mr. Trump’s fight with Pope Leo XIV over the war….
Daily Kos with a deep dive into Virginia Status…..
Virginia will have to go back to the old map that is shown above and that is not a complete loss. We have one district the VA02 with Jennifer Kiggans in a EVEN district so she should be an easy pick up or Democrats are in real trouble. A second easy target is Rob Wittman in VA01 who is in a R+3 and John McGuire in VA05 at a R+6 which should be reachable in a decent wave. If things go on the average of the Democratic over performance in special elections, you could get Ben Cline VA06 who is at an R+12. I saw in a previous diary that a generic polling in VA had the Congressional Ballot at a D+14. Yes would the new maps make things easier, possibly, but it is still doable…
Platner points to Ohio GOP defying courts in response to Virginia redistricting ruling
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, pointed to past Republican defiance of court orders on redistricting as he reacted to the Virginia Supreme Court striking down the commonwealth’s new congressional map Friday.
“I’m old enough to remember when Republicans in Ohio just ignored court rulings repeatedly and did it anyway,” Platner wrote on the social platform X.
Platner was alluding to a legal battle that played out in Ohio ahead of the 2022 election in which the state Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that GOP-backed legislative maps were unconstitutional, but elections were ultimately held on them anyway.
The standoff began in September 2021 when Ohio lawmakers approved a new set of congressional lines that were quickly challenged as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
The Ohio Supreme Court struck down the map in January of the following year, and legislators adopted a second version that was also invalidated…..
The Democrats may very well win control of the House but the idea of some “ blue wave” which you have floated at various times is now highly unlikely.
Agreed on the change in the battlefield…..
The redistricting wars heading into the November midterm elections had been in a stalemate, with each party’s tit-for-tat gerrymanders roughly canceling each other out.
It’s not a stalemate anymore. Over just the last two weeks, new court rulings and new congressional maps have put Republicans on track to add more than a dozen districts that voted for President Trump. It would be enough for Republicans to obtain a significant structural advantage in the House of Representatives, giving them a much better chance to at least stay competitive even if they lost the combined national vote by a wide margin in the midterms….
Nate Cohen in The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/upshot/redistricting-midterms-republicans-house.html