This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Virginia lawmakers unveiled a proposed congressional map designed to help Democrats win four more seats in the US House of Representatives in this fall's midterm elections.
The new map comes in response to the redistricting push Republican President Donald Trump started to tilt the election toward the GOP.
The map and demographic information are available at this link, which was posted Thursday evening as a proposed amendment to the current budget.
"Donald Trump knows he's going to lose the midterms. He knows it. That's why he's started this mess in the first place," said Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas (D–Portsmouth) to reporters earlier Thursday. "Today we are leveling the playing field. These are not ordinary times, and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while it happens."
Mike Young, president of Virginians for Fair Maps, which opposes the redistricting effort, denounced the map in a press release Thursday.
"This is an illegal, hyper-partisan gerrymander drawn in backrooms hidden from the public. This map completely disregards common sense and silences millions of Virginians," he said. "This is not just extreme. This is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth, and it is exactly what voters rejected in 2020."
For the maps to go into effect, voters need to approve a proposed amendment to Virginia's constitution in a special election tentatively planned for April 21. Currently, the state constitution gives redistricting power to a bipartisan commission on the typical once-per-decade cycle, following a decennial census.
The amendment would give the General Assembly the power to bypass that process because other states have already redistricted for 2026.
Virginia's Democratic-controlled Legislature has put the question to a ballot with a vote. Gov. Abigail Spanberger, also a Democrat, has yet to sign that bill. Her deadline to act is Feb. 11.
The redistricting effort is also in the courts: Last week, a Tazewell County court said the Democrats didn't follow state law in the amendment process. Democrats appealed, and the Virginia Court of Appeals requested the Supreme Court of Virginia to take up the case in a filing Wednesday.
"The Court FINDS the General Assembly FAILED to comply with Section 30-13 of the Code of Virginia, which therefore PROHIBITS the proposed amendment from being submitted to the voters for their consideration," wrote Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley.
The Democrats began the appeal process Wednesday and have accused the Republican legislators who filed the suit of "court-shopping."
Virginia is key to national Democrats' plans to mitigate Trump's push to tip the scales in favor of Republicans in 2026. Currently, the commonwealth's 11-representative contingent in the House has six Democrats and five Republicans.
As a whole, the GOP has a slim majority in the US House. Holding onto that advantage would be key to enacting Trump's agenda — and staving off Democratic-led investigations into his administration for the last two years of his term.
The race started in July, when Trump got Texas Republicans to redistrict in a way that could net them five seats now held by Democrats. California Democrats countered with a map — backed by voters and recently upheld by a federal court — that could help them win five seats held by Republicans.
Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina have also redistricted in the GOP's favor. Florida Republicans plan to redistrict in April, during a session scheduled for the same week when Virginians are at the polls to vote on the redistricting amendment.
So far, Republicans have tilted two or three more seats their way than Democrats have. Republicans have an edge, in part, because they control more state legislatures.
Nicholas Goedert, a political scientist that studies redistricting at Virginia Tech, said in an interview last week that Virginia's current maps were "rather fair." It was drawn by two experts in 2023, after the bipartisan commission failed to draw new political districts.
"I think, even without redistricting, [the current maps] could in a good democratic year result in as large as an 8–3 Democratic majority," he said.
Virginia's proposed map adds to the woes of two incumbent Republicans, Reps. Jen Kiggans and Rob Wittman, whose districts Spanberger won in the landslide 2025 general election.
Most of Kiggans' current voters are in Virginia Beach. Former Rep. Elaine Luria has already started her challenge to Kiggans, seeking a rematch after Kiggans unseated her in 2022.
Wittman — who has been re-elected nine times since first winning office in a 2007 special election — represents Virginia's conservative peninsulas in the Northern Neck. But the 1st Congressional District reaches and hooks around the central Richmond suburbs — which had been more conservative, but have swung heavily toward Democrats in recent years.
Wittman's current district is spread out across multiple areas in the proposed map.
As Democrats debated the legislation to set the referendum date last week, Scott Surovell, the top Democrat in the state Senate, said that redistricting was necessary because of Trump's disregard for checks and balances.
"It is a temporary, restrained measure. We have never seen anything like what we have going on across the river right now in the history of this country," said Surovell, referring to Virginia's shared border with Washington, DC. "It is historically unprecedented to see a president who doesn't think the law or the Constitution applies to him, who has a court that will not do anything to curb his power, a Congress that does whatever he feels lets him do whatever he feels like."
State Sen. Bill Stanley (R–Franklin County) expressed frustration with Democrats' arguments.
"I hear from my good friends on the other side of the aisle that, 'Hey, this is nothing but a little thing. We're just taking care of a little business because the guy across the river is a meanie,'" he said. "I don't think this chamber has ever heard those words bounced off of its walls. We change the constitution. We do it very deliberately, and we do it for a reason."
Goedert cautioned against thinking that a new map giving Democrats a 10–1 advantage — an approach that has been supported by figures including Lucas — would necessarily produce that result in the future, given the state's propensity for voting against the party that holds the White House in off-cycle elections.
"I think the Democrats could win 10 seats in 2026," Goedert said. "But if you look at, say, 2030 — if you had a Democratic president, that could backfire on Democrats."
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