Trump urges Virginia voters to reject ‘blatant partisan power grab’ by Democrats

President Trump and Speaker Johnson rally Virginia voters against a redistricting ballot measure they say could cost Republicans four House seats.

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President Donald Trump is urging Virginians going to the polls Tuesday to reject a redistricting ballot measure that could hand Democrats as many as four House seats in November, a large haul with House Republicans hanging onto a slim majority.
"This referendum is a blatant partisan power grab that nobody’s really ever seen anything like it," Trump told a telerally call with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday night, The Hill reported.
Just say "no" to Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger's push, he added.
"It’s the liberal extremist Gov. Abigail Spanberger, too bad, and the far-left Democrats in Richmond after Spanberger promised Virginia voters that she would never do this," he told the call. "And if it passes, Virginia Democrats will eliminate four out of five congressional seats, so you’re going to get just wiped out in terms of representation in Washington.
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"That’s what it’s all about. Please get out and vote and vote no. It’s very simple," the president added. "Just vote no."
Virginia has moved to push through a new map before the 2026 midterms, something that would not otherwise happen before the 2030 census.
Democrats currently hold six of the 11 House seats in Virginia, a state that narrowly went for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, but the new map would hand the Democrats a huge 10-1 advantage.
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Among the nearly 6 million registered voters in the state of Virginia, Democrats do have an edge, but not one that wide. The state is majority Democrat (51.24%), but Republicans (30.56%) and independents (18.2%) are both well represented, according to Independent Voter Project data.
"We have to stand up for fair maps and we have to vote no," Johnson told the call.
"As your speaker of the House, I see firsthand every single day how all five of those members are leading the fight on things like lowering costs and securing our borders and making Virginia and America great again," he said. "And we need to return all five of them to Congress this November."
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Johnson was referring to the vulnerable seats of Virginia GOP Reps. Rob Wittman, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith.
The new map would leave only Griffith's 9th Congressional District with a Republican edge, but it would pit him against Cline in a difficult primary. Kiggans' seat would remain a swing district, but one trending further into the favor of Democrats.
"They definitely want to turn us into New England," Cline told the Ruthless Podcast last week. "Massachusetts used to have Republican members of Congress, a much more balanced delegation. Now it’s 9-0. But Republicans vote, what, 40% of the population there. They do it in Illinois. Most of the states where they control, they’re trying to just draw Republicans completely out."
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It is not just about gaining House seats either. The map difficulty moves future candidates further left even on the right, according to Cline.
"Their goal is the long game," Cline added. "It is the short game of the next election, but it’s also the long game of trying to turn rural Virginia into either a non-impact on politics or convert. You either assimilate or you’re destroyed."
Griffith is planning a legal challenge on the structure of Tuesday's special election ballot question for its "compactness, other arguments about the process, and the question on the ballot," he told WJHL.
"These maps are horrible, and they do not work for good government, or good representation by any of the congressmen or women of Virginia," he added.
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Notably, the ballot asks a generic question about a desire to "restore fairness," suggesting the previously democratically approved map might be unfair.
"Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?"
Former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, is calling out the disenfranchisement of voters in the state.
"It's a measure to silence and disenfranchize the voices of millions of Virginians," he told "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday morning. "And you're exactly right when even The Washington Post calls the 'yes' campaign brazenly dishonest, that says something: They're definitely not a friend to conservatives."
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"But what this is is nothing but a left-wing power grab" Miyares continued. "Virginians have already spoken on this in 2020 by a 30-point landslide. They said, 'Hey, we don't want politicians of either party drawing these lines,' but Democrats, as soon as they got in power – remember Abigail Spanberger promised in August of 2025 that she wasn't going to gerrymander Virginia – yet that was the very first bill she signed in office and is one of the reasons why she's the least popular governor in the entire history of modern Virginia politics."
While Spanberger has argued Virginia has to retaliate for other states' efforts to redraw favorable districts for this midterm election, Miyares argued this one is the last and most blatantly lopsided.
"It's been called the most gerrymandered map in the entire country," he told Fox News. "And now it's why rural Virginians are standing up saying, 'No, do not disenfranchise our voices,' because 56 counties in Virginia, if this passes, will effectively not have a voice in Congress.
"That's wrong. That's not fair. That's not democracy. Virginians need to go vote now, today."