SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
virginia
'Bolstering' MAGA, Supreme Court Rejects Virginia Dems' Bid to Restore Voter-Approved Electoral Map
"Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain," said state Attorney General Jay Jones.
May 16, 2026
Virginia's Democratic attorney general, Jay Jones, said Friday night that he would redouble efforts to campaign on behalf of Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections following the US Supreme Court's rejection of a request to restore a voter-approved congressional map.
Following the high court's one-sentence denial of Democratic state officials' petition for emergency relief, which they had filed to block the state Supreme Court's ruling against a congressional map that passed via ballot measure last month, Jones said he would be "working tirelessly to support our Democratic candidates so we can win control of the House in spite of Republicans putting their thumbs on the scale."
With no dissents noted, the Supreme Court said Friday evening that it was denying the request to block the Virginia high court's ruling that had tossed out last month's redistricting referendum.
BREAKING: SCOTUS denies Virginia Democrats' request to block the Virginia Supreme Court ruling tossing out the redistricting referendum. There are no noted dissents and no opinion.
[image or embed]
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 6:35 PM
The decision "leaves in place the deeply flawed ruling from the Supreme Court of Virginia, which overturned the results of a lawful election and erased the will of millions of Virginia voters," said Jones.
It also served as "yet another profoundly troubling example of the continued national attack on voting rights and the rule of law by [President] Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts," said the attorney general.
The map that was narrowly approved by voters last month included four new Democratic-leaning US House districts in Virginia, putting the party on equal footing with Republicans nationally or potentially giving it an edge in a mid-decade redistricting battle that was kicked off last year. Trump has urged Republican state legislatures to redraw congressional districts to give the GOP more winnable seats in the US House—as the president's economic policies and his deeply unpopular war on Iran as well as other military actions have pushed his approval rating to a low point for his second term ahead of the November midterms.
The redistricting fight was intensified late last month with the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which held that Louisiana must redraw its 2024 congressional map. The map had created a second majority-minority district in the state, whose population is one-third Black. The ruling effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allowed voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
After the ruling, Louisiana's Republican governor, Jeff Landry, suspended the state's primary elections to allow the Republican-controlled legislature to redraw the congressional map, throwing out roughly 45,000 votes that had already been cast.
In the Virginia case, the US Supreme Court sided with the state's high court, which had found earlier this month that Virginia's Democratic legislature improperly began the process of placing an amendment to the state constitution after early voting in last fall's election was underway. The amendment cleared the way for Democrats to redraw the map, and the General Assembly approved the amendment days before the election.
Virginia voters then approved the redrawn map in April, only to have the state Supreme Court strike it down.
In filing their emergency petition with the US Supreme Court, Virginia Democrats argued the ruling had undermined the will of the residents who had voted for the referendum in April.
On Friday evening, Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger said the court had chosen "to nullify an election and the votes of more than three million Virginians."
Jones added in his statement that "Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain. Just this past month in Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina, they have redrawn their maps and diluted Black political representation because it threatens their hold on power."
"This attack is not subtle," said the attorney general. "It is a coordinated effort to stack the deck in the Republicans' favor before the midterms, lock in political advantage, and make it harder for voters, especially Black voters and communities of color, to hold Trump and his allies accountable. There can be no doubt: Trump and his allies want only their most politically extreme supporters to have their voices heard in Washington. The Supreme Court of Virginia’s previous decision and today’s refusal by the United States Supreme Court to act are only bolstering these extreme MAGA voices."
Addressing Virginia voters, Jones added, "This fight is far from over, and I am committed to fighting alongside you."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Unions Decry Spanberger Veto of Collective Bargaining Bill as ‘Betrayal to Virginia's Workers’
“We believed that she was being authentic and honest with us," said one Virginia labor leader. "She just flat-out flipped."
May 15, 2026
Labor unions are feeling betrayed after Virginia's Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed a bill on Thursday that would have restored collective bargaining rights for half a million public sector workers.
Virginia is one of the most restrictive states in the country for public sector bargaining, a holdover from the Jim Crow era when the General Assembly and other state legislatures across the South sought to crush the power of a public workforce with many Black employees.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Virginia has one of the largest public sector pay gaps in the country, with state and local government employees making about 27% less on average than their private-sector peers, and it is similarly stratified in other states with weak collective bargaining rights.
Spanberger, a former US representative who was elected governor this past November, made pro-union messaging central to her affordability-focused platform. She decried President Donald Trump's executive order stripping federal workers of collective bargaining rights last year and said that as governor, she'd "look forward to working with members of our General Assembly to make sure more Virginians can negotiate for the benefits and fair treatment that they earn.”
But since taking office, Spanberger's support for restoring public sector union rights has been more tepid as she's gotten an earful from fiscally conservative Right-to-Work and taxpayer advocacy groups who claimed higher salaries for public employees would drain state funds and raise the cost of services.
When a bill to immediately mandate collective bargaining rights to 500,000 workers was proposed in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, she introduced amendments aimed at watering down the bill—making it optional for employers to recognize unions, delaying the full implementation until 2030, and introducing what unions called a "kill-switch" that would have allowed future governors to revoke collective bargaining power.
The legislature shot Spanberger's amendments down and passed the bill in its original form. On Thursday, the governor vetoed it altogether.
In her veto message, Spanberger said she wanted the bill's other collective bargaining provisions for state employees, home care workers, and higher education employees to go into effect first "in order to demonstrate the efficacy of this new system" before it was opened up to all public employees.
But the unions that advocated for the bill say Spanberger led workers on with false promises.
"This veto is a devastating betrayal to the hundreds of thousands of public employees who have spent years, and in many cases decades, fighting for a seat at the table," said Doris Crouse-Mays, the president of the Virginia AFL-CIO. "Spanberger campaigned publicly and privately on promises [of] affordability, to support working families and respect workers' rights... Instead, when presented with the opportunity to make history and deliver on those promises, she chose to side with fear, political calculation, business, and the same anti-worker arguments that have been used for generations to deny workers power in Virginia."
LaNoral Thomas, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Virginia 512—a union which helped lead the charge to pass the bill—told the Virginia news site Dogwood that her union had "high hopes" for Spanberger when she was elected.
“We believed that she was being authentic and honest with us," Thomas said. "She just flat-out flipped. It is shocking.”
"Public employees are not a special interest. They are our neighbors. They are the educators, bus drivers, social workers, librarians, custodians, and first responders who hold our communities together," said a joint statement from Carol Bauer, president of the Virginia Education Association, and Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
They emphasized that the veto also carried "a deep racial and gender impact," noting that "Virginia’s public sector bargaining ban is rooted in a Jim Crow era effort to silence Black workers at the University of Virginia Hospital who organized for fair pay and dignity." They said, "Preserving that legacy today disproportionately harms women and workers of color, who make up so much of the public-service workforce and who have the most to gain from fair wages, safer workplaces, and a real voice on the job."
Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—the largest national union of public sector workers in the US, with more than 1.4 million members—said that Spanberger had caved to "anti-worker extremists [who] have sidelined working people while starving the public services Virginia families rely on, earning the state a reputation as one of the most anti-worker in the country."
"While the governor has broken her word," Saunders said, "AFSCME members are deeply grateful to the bill’s sponsors and the leadership of both chambers, who kept theirs. Their commitment to working people stands in stark contrast to the governor and will not be forgotten."
"Gov. Spanberger made a choice today," he added. "Working people will remember it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Virginia Democrats Ask US Supreme Court to Restore Voter-Approved Map
"The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision is profound and immediate," top state Democrats said of the decision that struck down the new districts.
May 11, 2026
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones and Democratic leaders in the state General Assembly on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to block a ruling against a ballot measure establishing new voter-approved congressional districts that favored Democrats.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday delivered a blow to the Democratic battle against President Donald Trump's gerrymandering campaign when it struck down a political map that Virginians had narrowly backed last month. The new districts could help Democrats secure up to four seats in the US House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
Jones, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Don Scott (D-88), state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-34), and Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas (D-18) are seeking a stay, arguing that based on a "novel and manifestly atextual interpretation" of the Virginia Constitution, the state Supreme Court "overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected."
"A stay is warranted because the decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia is deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the nation. The decision below violates federal law in two separate ways," the emergency application says. "First, it predicated its interpretation of the Virginia Constitution on a grave misreading of federal law, which expressly fixes a single day for the 'election' of representatives and delegates to Congress."
"Second, by rejecting the plain text of the Virginia Constitution's definition of the term 'election' to adopt its own contrary meaning, the Supreme Court of Virginia 'transgressed the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that it arrogated to itself the power vested in the state legislature to regulate federal elections,'" the application continues.
The filing also stresses that "the irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision is profound and immediate. By forcing the commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts."
The Associated Press noted that "Democrats are taking a legal long shot in asking the justices to reverse the Virginia ruling. The Supreme Court tries to avoid second-guessing state courts’ interpretations of their own constitutions. In 2023, it turned down a request by North Carolina Republicans to overrule a state Supreme Court decision that blocked the GOP's congressional map."
The high court also has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—and which gutted the remnants of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling related to Louisiana's congressional districts late last month.
Under current conditions, Republicans are expected to pick up seats in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas due to redistricting demanded by Trump, while Democrats are expected to win more districts in California, where voters also approved new political lines benefiting them.
The Washington Post reported Monday that "some top Democrats express little hope that the appeal will affect this November's congressional midterms and are pivoting to waging campaigns in the state's existing districts."
According to the newspaper:
Surovell (D-Fairfax) said "the practical realities of our election calendar" will prevent candidates from running in new maps even if conservative justices on the US Supreme Court were open to helping Virginia Democrats.
Tuesday is the deadline set by state elections officials for putting the ballot mechanisms in place. Surovell noted that Virginia’s elections software is antiquated and overdue for replacement.
Instead, Democrats are making the case that it’s time to work with the cards they have in hand.
"Since we can't control anything other than mobilizing and organizing, then let's mobilize and organize and turn our anger into fuel for that," Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) said.
In a Monday letter to fellow congressional Democrats, US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) called out the "vicious Republican assault on the right to vote, free and fair elections, and Black political representation in the South," and pledged that "our effort to forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme will not slow down."
Jeffries also announced a caucus-wide briefing planned for Thursday "to discuss the steps Democrats are taking to advance the largest voter protection effort in modern American history," and declared that "Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives in November."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular