The remaking of the U.S. political map accelerated this week in courts and legislatures, all of it in this round expected to boost Republicans in their attempt to keep control of Congress in November’s elections.

This week’s major action came in Southern states, with a significant state court ruling in Virginia and continued fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month.

Here’s a look at where things stand.

In a 4-3 decision Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court stuck down a Democratic congressional redistricting plan that was approved by voters in April.

The new map was intended to give Democrats an inside track for 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House — a jump from the six they currently hold. The new lines were drawn as part of a push by both parties to redistrict for their advantage in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The court majority cited procedural reasons for rejecting the amendment to the state constitution that paved the way for new maps. To send a constitutional amendment to voters, lawmakers are supposed to approve the measure twice — once before and once after a legislative election. The court found that they didn’t comply because the initial approval came in October after early voting had begun for the general election.

The result is that the state’s previous maps will remain in place for this year’s elections.

Multiple GOP-controlled Southern states pushed this week to redraw their congressional maps in the aftermath of an April 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a Louisiana congressional district drawn to have a Black majority of constituents.

The ruling was seen as a blow to a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

Louisiana quickly suspended primaries scheduled for May 16 so lawmakers could create new districts. Voting rights activists there packed the statehouse to oppose proposals for new maps that could eliminate at least one of the two current majority-Black districts.

Republicans in Alabama enacted a law Friday that would ignore the results of its May 19 congressional primaries and instead hold a new election — if a federal court agrees to lift an order for the state to have a second congressional district where a majority or near-majority of residents are Black. Republicans currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the House and want to instead use a map that could allow them to win an additional seat.

South Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature met Friday to discuss a proposal to create a new map that gives the party a shot at winning all seven of the state’s House seats. But some worried that breaking up the one Democratic-controlled district could make some other districts vulnerable to Democratic election wins.

Tennessee enacted a law Thursday creating a new U.S. House map that carves up a majority-Black House district in Memphis, the only one now held by a Democrat. That would give Republicans a strong chance of winning all nine of the state’s seats.

Normally, House districts are reworked only after results from the once-a-decade U.S. Census are tallied.

This time it’s different.

President Donald Trump urged Texas officials to draw new districts to help his chance of keeping Congress in GOP control after the 2026 midterm elections. Texas officials complied with a plan designed to bring them as many as five new seats.

Democratic-dominated California responded with a map intended to bring them five new states. Other states have followed. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, the pace has picked up, though it’s been mostly in states where Republicans have nearly all the seats already and thus not much room for gains.

Without counting the pending possible map changes in Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, the mid-decade redistricting has created 14 more House seats that Republicans believe they could win and six that could give Democrats an edge. Overall, that would mean a potential eight-seat advantage for the GOP ahead of a midterm election, when the president’s party normally loses seats.

But as changes and court challenges play out — along with voters having their say — the results aren’t certain.

Currently, Republicans have 217 seats in the House to Democrats’ 212. There’s one independent member. Five seats are vacant.

By Hannah Lang

May 8 (Reuters) – U.S. senators are set to consider long-awaited legislation that would create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency next week, potentially ending a deadlock over the bill that pitted crypto companies against U.S. banks.

The bill, dubbed the Clarity Act, would, if signed into law, clarify financial regulators’ jurisdiction over the burgeoning sector, potentially boosting digital asset adoption.

U.S. Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said on Friday the panel would hold an executive session on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

The crypto industry has been pushing for the legislation, saying it is existential to the future of digital assets in the U.S. and necessary to fix core, longstanding problems for crypto companies. Among other things, the legislation would define when crypto tokens are securities, commodities or otherwise, giving the industry legal clarity.

The bill also includes a provision aimed at settling a heated dispute between crypto companies and the banking industry. Under the compromise brokered by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks, customer rewards on idle holdings of dollar-backed crypto tokens known as stablecoins would be prohibited, given their resemblance to bank deposits.

Rewards on other activities associated with stablecoins, such as sending a payment, would be permitted. Banking trade groups have pushed back on this provision, saying it gives crypto companies too much latitude and could shift deposits away from the regulated banking system.

Banks have launched a last-ditch effort to peel support from some Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee before the hearing, but it is unclear if they will be able to do so.

Lobbyists for the banking industry have been seeking a fix in the Clarity Act to close a “loophole” stemming from legislation signed into law last year that allows intermediaries to pay interest on stablecoins. Banks say this would lead to a flight of deposits from the insured banking system, potentially threatening financial stability.

Crypto companies say that prohibiting ‍third parties, such as crypto exchanges, from paying interest on stablecoins would be anti-competitive.

The industry hopes the Clarity Act gets passed in the coming months before the November midterm elections, in which Democrats could wrest control of the House of Representatives.

The House passed its version of the Clarity Act in July last year, but the Senate needs to pass the bill by the end of 2026 in order to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Many congressional Democrats have been opposed to the bill, arguing it is too weak on anti-money laundering provisions, and that it should do more to prevent political officials from profiting from crypto ventures.

The bill would need support from at least seven Democrats in the full Senate to gain approval.

President Trump courted industry cash, pledging to be a “crypto president,” and his family’s own crypto ventures have helped to propel the sector into the mainstream.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in New York; Additional reporting by Carlos Méndez in Mexico City; Editing by Tom Hogue)

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

The court ruled 4-3 that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the vote’s result meaningless.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting gains.

Friday’s ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has supercharged Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump said about the decision on his social media account.

Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the ruling was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms.

“We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” he said in a statement.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court’s opinion but lamented that it overturned the will of the voters: “They voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.”

A flurry of mid-decade redistricting

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump sparked an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year by agreeing with an effort by Republican officials in Texas.

California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.

PHOTO – A person votes in the Virginia redistricting referendum at Fairfax Government Center, Tuesday, April 21, 2026, in Fairfax, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

By Valerie Volcovici and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation are awaiting answers from the U.S. Air Force about its delay in informing them about a fuel leak from Andrews Air Force Base into a tributary of the Potomac River.

Maryland lawmakers said they still have not gotten a response from the Defense Department after they sent a letter earlier this week seeking answers about a fuel leak into Piscataway Creek in Prince George’s County that they were only notified about on March 23, two months after 32,000 gallons of jet fuel were discharged.

Approximately 22,000 gallons of fuel were discharged into the environment, contaminating soils and nearby Piscataway Creek.

The delegation, except for Republican Congressman Andy Harris, said the Air Force did not initially disclose the full extent of the spill and only did so weeks after the fact.

“Their failure to immediately contain the spill is unacceptable on its own, but their lack of transparency made matters worse – denying the Maryland Department of the Environment the opportunity to implement containment measures that could have limited the damage,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement on Friday.

The Air Force said the Air Force Secretary would respond directly to the lawmakers.

The base said on Friday it was responding to the fuel leak “after personnel discovered fuel odors and observed a visible sheen on Piscataway Creek on March 23, 2026.”

“Mitigation measures are in place to contain the release and prevent further migration, while the spill is being investigated and addressed. The installation is coordinating closely with environmental authorities to ensure all appropriate steps are taken to protect surrounding waterways and ecosystems,” the base said.

In the letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, the lawmakers said Joint Base Andrews didn’t reveal the full extent of the spill until April 8, more than two weeks after notifying the state of the incident.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to testify on Capitol Hill next week before House and Senate appropriations subcommittees and is expected to be asked about the spill, lawmakers said.

The oil spill is the latest environmental incident involving the Potomac watershed. In January, a large DC Water sewer pipe burst near the C&O Canal in Montgomery County, Maryland, and contaminated the river with raw sewage.

The Potomac Conservancy said the river is also vulnerable to pollution from the rapid buildout of data centers in the D.C. metro area.

“It’s part of a broader pattern of infrastructure failures and pollution events that continue to threaten the Potomac River’s health,” the environmental group said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Alabama Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for the state to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of November’s midterm elections in the latest fallout from the justices’ recent seismic voting rights ruling.

The state officials asked the justices to lift a lower court’s order requiring Alabama to use a map that includes two majority-Black districts out of seven. Both are held by Black Democrats.

Alabama is among a group of Republican-led states now seeking to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts and boost their party’s chances ahead of the elections following the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision gutting a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the midterm elections.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative members, struck down an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. ​congressional district. The redrawn map, the majority ruled, had relied too heavily on race in violation of the constitutional equal protection principle.

The decision makes it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act without direct evidence of racist intent.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in Friday’s filing that the court should reach the same outcome in this case.

“Alabama’s case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race,” Marshall wrote.

Alabama was ordered by a lower court to add a second majority-Black district — or close to it — to its congressional map after the court found that a Republican-drawn map with just one such district likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

Black voters, who make up a quarter of Alabama’s electorate, tend to support Democratic candidates.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski, Rod Nickel)

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Michael Erman

May 8 (Reuters) – The White House is considering naming FDA Deputy Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, who heads up the agency’s food group, as acting commissioner of the agency to replace current head Marty Makary, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Potential names being considered to be the actual nominee to run the agency include former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn and former acting commissioner and assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir, according to one of the sources and two other sources.

The White House was not immediately available for comment.

The White House has already signed off on a plan to fire U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, Reuters reported earlier on Friday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Other names being considered for acting FDA commissioner include Grace Graham – the agency’s deputy commissioner in charge of policy, legislation, and international affairs – and Sara Brenner, recently named a senior counselor to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the sources said.

Diamantas, Graham, Brenner, Hahn and Giroir were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Deepa Babington)

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s best-known campaign promise was tentatively advanced in a cacophonous college auditorium as a city housing board agreed in a provisional vote to consider freezing the rent for about a million regulated apartments.

In a weeks-long annual ritual culminating in a final vote in June, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board fixes how much landlords can raise the rent for tenants of rent-stabilized apartments, home to about a quarter of all New Yorkers. The board weighs tenants’ wages and landlords’ incomes from their buildings, inflation, taxes, shifts in housing supply and myriad other factors in closely scrutinized public calculations.

In the provisional vote late on Thursday, barely audible over the chanting and cheering of hundreds of tenants filling the audience, the board set a range ahead of the next month’s final vote: rent adjustments of zero to 2% for 1-year lease renewals, and zero to 4% for 2-year renewals. In short, a rent freeze remains a possibility, but an increase has not been ruled out.

“Freeze the rent!” tenants shouted, applauding every mention of the word ‘zero’ from the nine board members who sat behind a table onstage, and booing every number they heard larger than that. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Housing is a human right!” they chanted.

The board’s members, six appointed by Mamdani, pressed on as if they could not see or hear the hundreds of yelling New Yorkers arrayed before them, and the zero to 2% proposal was passed by a vote of 7-1, with one member abstaining.

Mamdani ran for mayor of America’s financial capital last year as a democratic socialist, promising to freeze rents and tackle soaring costs of groceries, childcare and other necessities in a city where the median rent for a newly leased apartment is $3,950, according to listings agency StreetEasy.

His success with voters has been admired and studied by fellow Democrats as they seek to regain power at the state and national level. It even impressed Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, a billionaire building developer.

ROACHES, MICE AND MOLD

Since Mamdani took office in January, moving from a roughly $2,300-per-month 1-bedroom Queens apartment to Manhattan’s 5-bedroom Gracie Mansion, New Yorkers have watched to see whether the simple declarative promises of the campaign trail will come to fruition.

“We have a new mayor, and he also lived in a stabilized apartment, he worked in the past with the people who had housing issues,” said Moreom Perven, before showing Reuters around her rent-stabilized studio apartment in Jamaica, Queens, ahead of Thursday’s vote. “He understands the situation of New York City, how we are suffering, and I expect this time, we’ll have the good news.”

Perven, 49, has lived in her apartment since 2000, now paying just under $1,300 a month in rent to a real-estate management company that owns more than 2,000 apartments in the city. Across her building’s 187 apartments, there are 270 active complaints, according to city building records, and 66 open housing code violations. Perven and her neighbors find themselves repeatedly waging battles with their landlord over basic maintenance.

“Roaches, mice, broken tiles, then water leakage, mold, bed bugs,” Perven recounted, sitting by a second refrigerator-freezer she bought and installed near the landlord-supplied one that hasn’t been cold in a long time. “They don’t want to invest money to fix the issue.”

Perven, a part-time tenants counselor for a housing-rights advocacy group, traveled with some of her neighbors to Thursday’s meeting.

Hundreds of tenants, waving signs in English, Spanish, Chinese and Bengali, filled the sidewalk outside, beating drums and blowing whistles that security would not let them take inside.

The tenants have divided broadly into two camps. There’s the Tenants Bloc, calling for a rent freeze, which has happened only three times in more than 50 years of rent-stabilization laws. And the Rent Justice Coalition, including Pervem and others, calling for an unheard-of negative adjustment, a “rent rollback,” to offset the cumulative 12% rent increase that came under Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, over his four-year term.

PROPERTY OWNERS CITE FINANCIAL DISTRESS

Property owners have also given testimony through the Real Estate Board of New York and similar advocacy groups, who argue that operating costs are rising, particularly in older buildings.

Mamdani, despite appointing a majority of board members, has no power to influence its decision beyond saying what he would like to see. Instead, he has used city resources to make sure New Yorkers know their rights and to goose turnout at the four remaining public hearings before the June 25 vote.

In a statement on Thursday night, Mamdani encouraged both tenants and landlords “to make their voices heard and speak directly to what this housing crisis looks like in their lives.”

Speaking for property owners, REBNY executive Basha Gerhards argued that the board’s preliminary ranges “ignore the clear financial distress shown in the data” and that “a freeze or near-freeze is unjustifiable.”

Perven left the vote downcast as a rent rollback seemed out of the question at least this year. She and other tenants were glad the range included zero, but worried that past final votes tended to fall somewhere in the middle.

“We need to organize. We need to fight back,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll see the same energy until June, for the final vote.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Aleksandra Michalska; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Frustrated abortion opponents met with White House officials on Friday amid growing criticism in the anti-abortion movement that President Donald Trump has not moved aggressively enough to advance key priorities, including new restrictions and stronger enforcement.

The guest list for the meeting was not disclosed but Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said its influential president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, attended.

“Marjorie had a very constructive meeting at the White House today,” said Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for the group.

Earlier this week Dannenfelser told the Wall Street Journal that abortions have risen in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, adding that “Trump is the problem.”

Tensions have grown between Trump and parts of the anti-abortion movement that were among his strongest political allies during his first presidential campaign. 

While activists credit Trump for helping overturn Roe v. Wade through his Supreme Court appointments, some groups say the administration has not followed through with aggressive federal action to curb abortion access, including tighter restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone and enforcement against online pill distributors.

Since Roe’s overturning, Trump has repeatedly said abortion policy should be decided by individual states.

White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster defended the administration’s record.

“President Trump is the most pro-life and pro-family president in American history, and his Administration has announced a series of bold actions to safeguard life and uphold Americans’ fundamental freedoms, including ending federal funding of abortion abroad,” Schuster said in a statement. 

Data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group, show abortions have risen since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning its decision making abortion legal nationwide, with an estimated 1,126,000 provided by clinicians in 2025, the highest since 2009, driven largely by the expanded use of abortion pills, which now account for 65% of abortions in states where the procedure is legal.

The pressure campaign has intensified in recent months as Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups push the Food and Drug Administration to revisit safety rules surrounding mifepristone, which is used in more than half of U.S. abortions. Senate Republicans in March launched a probe into abortion pill manufacturers and urged the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on online sales of the drug.

The White House signed off on ​a plan to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Makary has been under growing pressure to produce a safety review of mifepristone and Dannenfelser renewed her call this week to fire him.

The debate over abortion medication has escalated following a series of court rulings over mail-order access to mifepristone. 

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily restored access to the drug through telemedicine and mail delivery while litigation continues.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

The court ruled 4-3 that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the vote’s result meaningless.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. Later Friday, Virginia Democrats said in a filing that they intended to file an emergency appeal of the state high court’s decision with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday’s ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump said about the decision on his social media account.

Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the ruling was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms.

“We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” he said in a statement.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court’s opinion but lamented that it overturned the will of the voters: “They voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.”

Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized the court majority for what she said was a decision that “cast aside the will of the voters,” but she said the people will have the final say.

“In November, they will, and they’ll power Democrats to the House majority,” she said in a statement.

Democrats are taking a legal longshot in asking the nation’s highest court to reverse the Virginia ruling. The U.S. 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.

Still, even an unsuccessful appeal would let Democrats try to blame their failure on the conservative majority that dominates the nation’s highest court, which has already infuriated the party and civil rights groups by neutering the Voting Rights Act.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump sparked an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year by encouraging Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party’s narrow majority in the midterm elections.

California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.

Virginia is currently represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans, all elected from districts imposed by a court following a bipartisan redistricting commission’s failure to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state’s 11 congressional seats.

The state Supreme Court’s majority was critical of the state’s redrawing of the congressional maps to benefit one political party. Those justices noted that 47% of the state’s voters supported GOP congressional candidates in 2024, but the new map could result in Democrats making up 91% of the state’s House delegation.

Under the Democratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The state Supreme Court’s seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile.

The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.

Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October, during early voting for the general election, before it concluded. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.

Judicial arguments focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

But in its ruling, the Supreme Court said, “this view appears to be wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which voters can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed with that argument, writing: “The General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.”

By the time lawmakers initially endorsed the amendment, voters already had cast more than 1.3 million ballots in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast, the court said.

The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms a decision by a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia. The court had placed a hold on that ruling and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.

In the dissent to Friday’s ruling, Chief Justice Cleo Powell said the election for the purpose of considering the amendment does not include the early voting period.

“The majority’s definition creates an infinite voting loop that appears to have no established beginning,” she wrote, “only a definitive end: Election Day.”

By Joseph Ax and Tim Reid

May 8 (Reuters) – Virginia’s top court on Friday threw out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. congressional seats to Democrats, in a setback to Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

In a 4-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected a Democratic-backed ballot measure approved by voters in April that reconfigured the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts for partisan advantage.

Ruling in favor of a Republican challenge, the court’s majority found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in time to reach the ballot ahead of the November election.    

The opinion boosts Republican hopes of keeping control of the U.S. House, despite a razor-thin majority and deep voter unhappiness with President Donald Trump.

On his Truth Social account, Trump called the ruling a “huge win for the Republican Party.”

Democrats cried foul, with Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, calling the court’s decision undemocratic and ignoring the will of millions of voters who had voted in favor of changing the electoral map.

The state will submit an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to court papers filed late on Friday by Virginia Democrats.

Kyle Kondik, a nonpartisan elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said while it was still too early to predict the impact of the ruling, it had undoubtedly improved the electoral chances for Republicans.

“Whatever odds you would have given to Republicans winning the House yesterday, I think you would raise them today,” he said.

Still, Republicans face significant political headwinds ahead of November’s elections, with many voters unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy and the Iran war which has increased gas prices.

Marcia S. Price, a Democratic state delegate who played a central role in getting the new electoral map passed by voters, said the main job now was to work even harder to turn out voters to flip Republican-held seats from the old map.

“You lick your wounds, get back up and keep fighting,” she said in an interview.

Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle by both parties to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit. The mid-cycle process of redrawing maps is unusual. Maps are typically redrawn once a decade after the national census.

Republicans now hold a clear advantage in the fight, which began last year when Trump pushed Texas Republicans to rip up their electoral map and draw new district lines, targeting five Democratic U.S. House incumbents.

Democrats suffered a major blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Already, Republican-controlled states such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina have taken steps toward drawing new maps in time for the November elections, with some even postponing party primary elections to give lawmakers time.

DEMOCRATS STARTED TOO LATE

With Virginia’s map now invalidated, Republicans could eventually end up with an advantage in 10 House seats or more nationwide, pending the outcome of the efforts in those Southern states.

Republicans can afford to lose only two net seats in November’s elections to maintain control of the U.S. House.

Virginia voters had approved the Democratic-backed map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, according to an Associated Press tally. The referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 2020, that had put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

Under Virginia state law, two consecutive legislatures – with a state election in between – must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can be put to a vote.

The Democratic legislative majority approved the amendment in October, days before the November state election. Democrats, who gained additional legislative seats in that vote, then passed the amendment for a second time in January and scheduled the referendum for April.

Republicans filed multiple lawsuits, claiming in part that there was no intervening election since early voting had already started when the amendment was first passed.

In Friday’s decision, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed.

“The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025,” the majority wrote. “By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle.”

In dissent, Chief Justice Cleo Powell, joined by two other justices, wrote that the court had improperly stretched the meaning of the word “election” to include weeks of early voting.

“This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election,” Powell said.

Kondik said if Democrats had begun the process of trying to redraw congressional maps sooner, they might have prevailed in court against the Republican legal challenge, which was led by the Republican National Committee.

“Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” said Joe Gruters, the RNC chairman.

Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting fight, Democratic and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Tim Reid; Editing by Will Dunham, Ross Colvin, Alistair Bell and Sanjeev Miglani)