including demanding uncustomary mid-decade redistricting in red states

What state Democratic legislators are doing to alter redistricting of Virginia’s seats in Congress is wrong. And totally understandable – especially when it comes to politics. 

They’ve convened a surprise special session in Richmond right before the fall elections for statewide offices. They want to counter President Donald Trump’s successful exhortations to Republican-controlled states to undertake rare, mid-decade modifications to current congressional maps. 

In that way, Trump has hijacked what had been a state prerogative. He corrupts much of what he touches.

Democratic lawmakers here and nationwide got fed up. They’re tired of being punching bags, expecting Republicans to adhere to long-established laws, norms and customs dictating how the political process operates. Trump and his sycophants have bulldozed those guidelines.

This newly combative stance will bolster Democrats with their followers and reframe Republicans’ dismissive attitude toward them. Here in Virginia, though, it could also backfire when Republicans eventually regain control of the state House and Senate in our purple commonwealth. 

“I think Democrats are looking at these nonpartisan and bipartisan redistricting efforts in blue states, and Republicans doing redistricting not once but twice, and looking at (this as) unilateral disarmament,” Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, told me this week.

“In many ways, the Virginia Democratic Caucus has shown national Democrats how to behave,” Farnsworth added. He cited, for example, when legislative Democrats rejected Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s expensive proposed stadium deal last year: “They created a compelling alternative narrative that it wasn’t a good use of state funds.”

People or profits: arena drama reflects a familiar struggle

Trump knows there will be an electoral backlash in 2026 in the narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives because of his ruthless domestic agenda. His blueprint gutted the social safety net for millions of Americans. The Darwin-like policies will be hugely unpopular – even in red states – when the full consequences take effect.

That’s why Trump demanded that Texas, North Carolina and other states redraw district lines to benefit him and give Republicans an advantage.

Several states obeyed. Others are considering it. California, a reliably blue state, has responded by trying to boost Democratic seats, but changes must be approved by voters there in a referendum next week.

And so on.

Virginia Democrats, who narrowly control both chambers in the General Assembly, are spitting in the eye of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission. It was created when voters overwhelmingly passed it in a 2020 referendum, after years of debate.

True, the citizen-legislative body often deadlocked in 2021, after the most recent census. But the new process was more transparent and prevented the majority party (Democrats that year) from steamrolling the minority. The state Supreme Court eventually oversaw the process of line-drawing.

Lots of procedural and legal hurdles remain to the Democrats’ current gambit to rewrite lines before the 2026 congressional contests. Among them: Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican who’s running for re-election, has opined that the process to amend the state Constitution “cannot be short-circuited by a last-minute vote of the General Assembly taken during an ongoing election.” 

Brian Cannon is past executive director of OneVirginia2021, which was among the main proponents for creating a bipartisan redistricting commission. He opposes the current machinations in the General Assembly.

“What are we willing to destroy to save the Republic?” Cannon asked. “ … I think this is wrong.”

He noted that if Democrats want to win specific contests in 2026 in the U.S. House of Representatives, upending the redistricting commission isn’t necessary. They should run better candidates, he said. 

If only it were that simple.

The redistricting process is no longer just a state issue. It’s become nationalized under Trump, who wants no guardrails on his autocratic tendencies. 

Also, because of the narrow party margins in the U.S. House and Senate, every contest is scrutinized. Local races carry national significance.

This is the political climate that Democrats in Virginia face. Redistricting battles in states that are at least nominally controlled by their party are among the few ways they can fight back.

Plus, they’re tired of being rolled. They can point to several examples over the past decade of partisan bad faith and rejection of established procedures. They include major flashpoints:

•  In early 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full year in office, he nominated Merrick Garland to a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, refused to hold confirmation hearings, claiming the next president should nominate the next justice. It was a standard made up of thin air.
• In eerily similar circumstances in late 2020, McConnell rushed to hold hearings following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The difference? Then-President Donald Trump would nominate Amy Coney Barrett. She was confirmed just days before that year’s presidential election. The move cemented a conservative majority on the high court.
•  Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol following his lies about the election he lost to Joe Biden. Several people died. Roughly 150 police officers who defended the Capitol – and congresspeople there in danger from the mob – were wounded. Yet, the majority of Republican senators voted not to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. They protected a man who threatened their own lives that day.
• U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat, who won a special election Sept. 23 in Arizona. He’s stalling, Democrats allege, because she’d be the 218th signature on a petition to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which Trump opposes. Even though Congress is shut down over budget disputes, Johnson can swear in new members during “pro forma” sessions when the House isn’t in session – as he did earlier this year with two Republicans, Axios reported. 

None of this makes what Democrats are doing in Richmond right. They and their colleagues nationwide, though, are sick of being taken for chumps.

I suspect many Virginians applaud their combativeness.