The Fight Over Gerrymandering
4/23/202612 min
April 22, 2026
Virginia voters support a constitutional amendment to temporarily redistrict the state, VA judge rules the amendment and the referendum were invalid, Virginia’s attorney general will challenge judge's decision, The partisan gerrymander race stated in Texas, Republicans are trying to excuse their partisan actions while jumping on Democrats for similar behavior, This pattern is not new, having played out before the Civil War, In 1856, northerners shocked southern leaders by calling them out for trying to destroy democracy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks out about the importance of Democrats defending themselves, echoing that moment.
Watch today's recording her...
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson0:00
[outro music] April 22nd, 2026. Virginia voters yesterday agreed to a constitutional amendment that would temporarily redistrict the state if any other state redistricted for partisan reasons. That is, in retaliation for the partisan redistricting President Donald J. Trump launched in Texas in 2025 in an effort to retain control of the House of Representatives. As Matt Cohn of Democracy Docket noted, Trump supporters immediately insisted the voting was rigged, probably through mail-in ballots. Trump himself took to social media to attack the election, repeating charges of rigging and then adding, "In addition to everything else, the language on the referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive. As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the referendum, and neither do they. Let's see if the courts will fix this travesty of justice." In fact, Trump himself began this mid-decade partisan gerrymander race with his pressure on Texas to rejigger its own maps to give Republicans more House seats. That prompted California to retaliate with its own temporary redistricting to offset the new Texas Republican-leaning seats. Other