Trump’s assassination campaign hits a blue wall in Virginia

Voters have once again handed President Donald Trump a loss in one of the defining struggles of his second administration: the national congressional impeachment race.

On Tuesday night, Virginia approved a ballot measure to redraw 11 congressional districts to give Democrats the edge — saving Democratic hopes of retaining control of the House of Representatives in the fall.

If you need a refresher, congressional redistricting — or the process by which states define the districts that House members represent — usually happens once a decade, after a new census.

That all changed over the summer when President Donald Trump urged Republicans in Texas to act redraw their congressional maps earlyraise GOP minors (currently one seat) majority and give the national party a boost during the 2026 midterms. Texas Republicans drew up a new map over the summer, giving the GOP a new edge in five districts.

Democrats in some blue states were also mobilized, kicking off a mid-decade wave of redistricting in Democratic- and Republican-controlled states that has overturned some of the last Trump-era election rules. In November 2025, California voters approved a ballot measure that redrawn the map to add up to five Democratic seats — reversing the Texas GOP gerrymander.

Virginia is not California, however. Although it has tended to vote Democratic in presidential and gubernatorial elections since 2000, the state is lopsided and had a Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, until January. That made Virginia’s campaign for redistricting — a vote on a constitutional amendment to bypass the state’s normal process of redistricting until the next census — more difficult and unpredictable.

Voters complained confusing message from both sides of the campaign, and many independent voters were not comfortable with the power grab by the parties. The “Yes” side depended a lot direct appeals from former President Barack Obamawho assured voters that the move was the right response to Trump’s actions to rig the House of Representatives elections. The “No” side had ads that also showed earlier clips of Obama denouncing poaching in earlier years, and ads and letters aimed at Black voters that portrayed the referendum as a betrayal of civil rights movement to protect voting rights.

Republicans also appealed to regionalism, warning rural residents that they would be placed in unfair districts that placed them in the remote suburbs of Northern Virginia.

That was reflected in the final election results – the rural regions of the state he turned around at a high level. Voters, overall, were more Republican than voters who took full Democratic control of state government during last year’s election. Meanwhile, large urban centers, such as Richmond, Virginia Beach, and the Washington, DC suburbs of northern Virginia, will provide enough Democratic and independent votes to carry the measure across the country. In the end, the race was closer than expected, but the “Yes” side was well on its way to winning the majority as of press time.

While the “Yes” victory in Virginia is another big win for Democrats across the country, the outcome of the 2026 redistricting battle has been even more unfortunate.

Across the country, political infighting, reluctant lawmakers, and time constraints have led to other efforts to block both sides of the aisle. Time is running out for any additional efforts: Primaries are already starting across the country, and preparations for elections must begin soon in those that have not.

State of preventing war

Currently, Virginia’s congressional delegation is split 6-5 in favor of Democrats; A referendum approved Tuesday night asked voters to redraw the map to favor Democrats in 10 districts, gaining four seats.

Mixed with redrawn maps in California, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio (authority and state constitution), and Utah (due to a court decision), the Virginia vote raises the possibility that Democrats will enter the midterm elections with a one-seat edge based on past voting patterns.

Until now, this electoral arms race was “almost a washout,” Barry C. Burden, an election expert and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me.

“Even though Republicans are doing it in more states than Democrats, they’re not making big gains outside of Texas,” Burden said. “And there are a lot of other things that I think make it difficult to know what the maps are going to look like.”

Not every state has thrown itself into the mix. Despite intense pressure from national parties, Democrats have so far rejected opportunities to squeeze seats Illinois, Marylandand New Yorkwhile Republicans stood down Indiana, Kansasand Nebraska.

That leaves the last big card to retake control: Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has sought to redraw his state’s maps since Trump issued his appeal, however those efforts have been marred by GOP infighting, a lack of preparation, and he faces a state constitution ban on redrawing partisan gerrymandering, though courts upheld Republican-friendly maps in his last redrawing. The state legislature was supposed to meet in a special session this week to create anywhere from one to five seats, but the meeting was delayed until April 28.

“It’s a big situation, so that would give Republicans a lot of opportunities,” Burden said. “But they already have a map that’s good for Republicans, and there’s more concern that spreading Republican voters into more districts could put them at risk.”

That relates to one big wildcard: whether the rightward shift of Latino and Hispanic voters since 2020 is stable in the midterms. In redrawing at least two districts, Texas Republicans bet that this trend will hold firm. However the voting of these voters nationally, and some off-year elections resultssuggests that Trump’s 2024 gains may have evaporated, or changed, due to dissatisfaction with the economy, Trump’s populist deportation agenda, and the general sense of chaos and instability that many of these voters believed Trump to stabilize. That opens up possibilities for a Texas gerrymander come up short — a situation Florida Republicans don’t want to risk.

“Texas took action early, so it was at a time when maybe Trump and the Republicans didn’t seem at risk going into 2026,” Burden said. “But now that we’re only a few months away, it’s clear that Republicans will have a tough time in November.”

None of these factors in the effects of a possible ruling on the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court this year or future efforts to redistrict before 2028. The court has so far refused to rule on provisions of the landmark 1965 law that prohibited states from breaking up minority voter communities, which led to the expansion of minority districts to increase non-white representation. A few states can still restore their districts if the Supreme Court decides the case during this period.

With the latest vote, though, we may be nearing the end of the redistricting battle — for this cycle, at least.