“We hit back hard”: Virginia Democrats redistricting plans approved, enraging Trump

Virginians approved a redistricting plan Tuesday that gives Democrats the edge in a gerrymandering race started by President Donald Trump. The redistricting, heralded by the Democratic-led state house, is likely to flip four Republican held seats and ultimately give Democrats 10 of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats come November.

Various red and blue states across the country are pushing for mid-decade redistricting to give their party an edge in the 2026 midterms. Trump set off the gerrymandering push last year when he called for Texas to redraw their maps to give more seats to Republicans.

Tuesday, Trump made a last ditch effort to thwart the Virginia referendum. Speaking with a local radio show, he said “I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is, but it’s not good.” But just a few months earlier, Trump seemed all for gerrymandering in his party’s favor.

“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas,” Trump told CNBC in July 2025, referencing the 2024 election. “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”

Since then, California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have successfully voted to change their districts. Florida is considering a change that would return the edge back to the GOP if approved. Seven other states’ plans to redraw maps have either been blocked or put on hold.

The Democratic Party is typically against gerrymandering as a practice, but many party leaders say their overarching principles must be put on hold.

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“While many expected Democrats to roll over and play dead, we did the opposite,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Democrats did not step back. We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard,” adding that the redistricting battle would be “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

“We would like to get rid of this stuff,” Tim Persico, a veteran Democratic strategist said to the New York Times on gerrymandering. “But in a world where one side is still actively, openly, cravenly engaging in it, we cannot afford to not engage by the same rules.”

Paul Mitchell, the strategist helping redraw California’s congressional districts, said that Democrats were willing to play ball, but aren’t all in on gerrymandering.

“It wasn’t 10 toes in on this idea of, ‘If they go low, we’re going to go lower,’” Mitchell told the New York Times. “It was, ‘If they’re going to go low, we’ll go low for a short period of time and then go right back to going high.’”

Trump was not pleased with the Virginia results, saying the election was “rigged” and that he hoped the courts would “fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”

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