Election Law

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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was not pleased with the Louisiana v. Callais decision. She filed a dissenting judgment, which enforced the ruling with immediate effect because it relates to the upcoming elections. Ms. Jackson’s dissent was ripped apart by Justice Samuel Alito, who academically called her a moron—this is becoming a common occurrence. Even liberal justices have sought to steer clear of attaching their names to her opinions.

Alito called her dissent on the judgment utterly irresponsible. And now, after all that bellyaching from Ms. Jackson, she denied a motion to recall the Callais judgment. No justices dissented.

This case is settled. It involved Louisiana creating a majority-black congressional district after the initial map was invalidated under VRA. Now, this map was struck down as unconstitutional, with the court limiting its interpretation of Section II of the Voting Rights Act, which allows congressional apportionment based on racial quotas.

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The redistricting war for the 2026 midterms is on – and it may be the most aggressive mid-decade, multi-state map fight of the modern era.In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the redistricting fight accelerated across the country. GOP-led states such as Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee began moving or preparing to move on new congressional maps, while Virginia Democrats pushed a mid-decade redraw of their own.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping new congressional map into law on May 4 that could increase Republicans’ advantage in Florida’s House delegation from 20-8 to 24-4.

Louisiana delayed its congressional primaries while lawmakers begin work on a new map. Tennessee Republicans have released a proposal that could eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held congressional district, while Alabama and other Southern states are weighing how far the Callais ruling allows them to go. But this is by no means just a red-state story.

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As Republicans destroy historic Black-majority House districts in the South, they are being compared with segregationists George Wallace and Bull Connor.

In the last speech of his life, delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis on April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the legacy of the student civil rights activists of the early 1960s: “I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

The next day, King was assassinated just blocks away, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel—hallowed ground which now serves as the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Few cities are so closely associated with the civil rights movement of the 1960s as Memphis. And fewer still have so rich a history of struggle and success in making real the promise of representative democracy.

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President Donald Trump has made the SAVE America Act a central GOP priority ahead of the midterms. Voters still don’t know how to feel about it.

New results from The POLITICO Poll show that while many Americans support some core provisions of the SAVE America Act — such as requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote — that support is not overwhelming. And they are far less certain about the sweeping elections bill overall, even as Trump has for months pressured Republican lawmakers to pass it.

Democrats in particular oppose much of the SAVE Act, and many of them are unenthusiastic even about the voter ID provisions that generate the broadest support — a sign that Trump is prioritizing legislation that has little crossover appeal.

A 42 percent plurality of voters who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 back requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote, including when registering by mail. But that number is dwarfed by the three-quarters of Trump 2024 voters who support such a measure, according to the survey conducted by Public First.

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Virginia Democrats are clearly panicking. Rachael Bade, co-host of The Huddle, elaborated on what former Democratic Party operative and fellow co-host Dan Turrentine mentioned this week about the fate of the Old Dominion’s new congressional map. It grants Democrats a 10-1 advantage, but the state Supreme Court refused to dismiss the challenge to the map, setting the stage for serious intra-party battles.

The legal warnings were reportedly repeated endlessly, but to no effect. Now, Democratic leaders at both the Virginia and national levels could face a heavy setback if the maps are invalidated. Bade outlined the criteria the court could use to strike down the maps. Sure, the map might get approved, but if the Virginia Supreme Court sides with just one of these points, the map is cooked:

AND THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR SOME BIG NAMES. Per Dan’s reporting, Governor ABIGAIL SPANBERGER’s staff is quietly sniping at state Senate majority leader SCOTT SUROVELL and state Senate kingmaker LOUISE LUCAS — two lawmakers who pushed back hardest on the legal warnings last fall.

[…]

If this effort goes down, those quotes won’t age well. “People are lining up behind the scenes to go public, I think, very quickly if this does not go through,” Dan foreshadowed.

BUT HERE’S THE THING — Pointing fingers won’t let Spanberger off the hook, which we discussed at length on the show. Yes, she may have privately raised concerns about the effort early on. But she’s the one in the ads. She’s the face of this thing. As our other co-host SEAN SPICER put it bluntly: “She ate the political cookie on this one.”

The other name in the crosshairs if this goes down? House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES. Dan is already hearing from some Virginia Dems who say the Democratic leader pushed too hard despite legal concerns. (Though, let’s be fair to Jeffries — he would have been slammed by the party if he hadn’t leaned in, and his team would likely wear such criticism as a badge of honor.)

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The redistricting war of 2026, which had appeared to conclude in a stalemate between Democrats and Republicans after Florida’s special session, is anyone’s to win.

In the wake of the Louisiana v. Callais ruling, Republicans in the South are on the move, ready to redraw maps the courts had previously blocked efforts to change.

The outcome of the renewed tit-for-tat redistricting war could determine which party controls the House of Representatives in 2026.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana has already signed an executive order calling off the state’s May 16 House primaries to allow for redrawing the state’s map, declared a racial gerrymander by the high court.

Louisiana has two Democrat-held districts, held by Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee has also called a special session to redistrict after the ruling. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., is the only Democrat U.S. House member from the Volunteer State.

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Not a single Democrat in the Senate is willing to support the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, and a new op-ed from The Washington Post might just explain why.

The SAVE America Act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID to cast a ballot in federal elections. The current “safeguard” preventing noncitizens from registering to vote and voting is a tiny square box on the federal registration form asking applicants to attest they are telling the truth about their citizenship status. In other words, the honor system.

The legislation passed the House (with a single Democrat voting alongside Republicans) but has stalled in the Republican controlled Senate, with a few RINOs and the entire Democrat apparatus opposing the election integrity legislation.

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Democrats hope gerrymandering Virginia will give them the edge they need to win back the House. But Tuesday’s special election is proving more competitive than they’d like.

Tight polling and concerns over voter turnout in an atypical April election have many Democratic party strategists and officials preparing for a close finish.

“I always thought this campaign would be close [and] 24 hours out, I believe that to be the case,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said on Monday, before the final day of voting.

“Anytime you’re on the ‘yes’ side of a referendum, you’ve got the burden of proof,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what the referendum is, but anytime you’re arguing for ‘yes,’ the other side is going to be arguing for the status quo.”

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A majority of voters support the SAVE America Act and want Congress to pass it before the midterms in November, a March Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found. The majority of respondents also support other election integrity requirements, like counting ballots within 24 hours after Election Day, removing noncitizens from the voter rolls, and even allowing states to share voting records with the Department of Homeland Security.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll is conducted monthly. Last month’s survey, conducted March 25-26, included 2,009 respondents identified as “registered voters.”

Much of leftist media outlets’ coverage surrounding the SAVE America Act — which would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and voter ID in federal elections — fearmongers that the legislation would essentially disenfranchise voters en masse by enacting these common-sense safeguards. The recent Harvard/Harris poll suggests that Americans aren’t as worried about that as the corporate press would have you think.

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Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill making Virginia the latest participant in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact last week, as the compact draws perilously close to upending our constitutional order. Every American who cherishes our republic should take notice.

For years, left-leaning pundits and politicians have campaigned to scrap the Electoral College, the method the founders gave us for choosing presidents. Their vehicle is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. With Virginia’s recent entry, the compact now includes 19 jurisdictions (18 states plus the District of Columbia) controlling 222 electoral votes. That falls short of the 270 needed to trigger the scheme, but the trajectory is clear and troubling.

Virginia’s action carries special irony. This is the state of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution. Yet in April 2026 Virginia has joined an effort that effectively rewrites a core feature of the document Madison helped design.

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Maryland’s Legislature is run by Democrats, yet it refuses to gerrymander the congressional districts in its state. Virginia Democrats could learn something from the Free State.

Like it or not, Virginia is constantly comparing herself to next-door Maryland. Out of the 47 seats in the Maryland Senate, 34 are held by Democrats.

Still, those senators chose to leave mid-decade redistricting in a committee drawer rather than comply with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his nationwide redistricting campaign.

To be fair, President Donald Trump did say it would be nice if Texas — when ordered by the courts to redraw a few districts because they failed the Voting Rights Act “majority-minority” litmus test — made a few more Republican-majority seats.

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Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run.

“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” Bianco said during a press conference after he and his deputies seized the ballots last month.

The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted.

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A tough pressure campaign from high-profile Democrats has failed to persuade other members of their party in Maryland, where a new congressional map is now off the table.

Democrats enjoy a super-majority in both the Maryland House of Delegates and the Senate, and Democrat Wes Moore has been governor since 2023. Nevertheless, a redistricting proposal that would have threatened the lone Republican congressional seat died in the Maryland Senate when the legislative session ended Monday night.

‘At some point, I am going to have to have a conversation with him if he continues to stand in the way of an up or down vote.’

The Maryland House passed the map overwhelmingly in early February, 99-37.

Gov. Moore pressed hard to pass the map through the state Senate and onto his desk as a way to combat Republican redistricting efforts in Texas and North Carolina, spearheaded by President Donald Trump.

“I think Donald Trump is actively trying to manipulate and change the rules around the November election and beyond because he knows he cannot win on his policies,” Moore told the AP.

Blurb:

As Virginia voters take part in a closely contested redistricting referendum, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is heading toward the final tally with historically low approval numbers.

For the first time since the 1990s, a sitting Virginia governor is polling below historical norms.

According to Washington Post polling, Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47%—13 points lower than the average approval rating for Virginia governors and below a majority.

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In case you were still wondering why the Democrats were so militant about funding Ukraine and why Democrats and RINOs are now targeting Orban.

Watch Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, lay out explosive charges that Ukrainian funds were funneled through Europe to influence U.S. elections and benefit Democrats.This major scandal has serious legal and national security implications, raising urgent questions about foreign money, campaign integrity, and the handling of U.S. taxpayer funds tied to the Ukraine war.

WATCH:

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The mass mailing of mail-in ballots was a temporary emergency measure during the draconian COVID lockdown – another hoax. It was NEVER intended to be a permanent election fixture.

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With less than a month before election day in Virginia, a new poll finds voters aren’t crazy about the Democrats’ plan to change the constitution in order to rig the commonwealth’s political maps.

Heritage Action’s Redistricting Poll of 814 likely Virginia voters gauges support — and opposition — for the April 21 ballot question asking whether the state’s constitution should be altered. Members of the Democrat-controlled Assembly want to “temporarily” push aside the work of a state redistricting commission so that they can rewrite Virginia’s congressional maps. They want an extreme gerrymander that aims to take out four Republican House seats and give Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

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Just when you think the Senate GOP couldn’t get any more useless than it already is, its members find a way to prove you wrong.

While the SAVE America Act continues to languish, the Department of Homeland Security (including ICE and Border Patrol) remains unfunded, and dozens of Trump nominees await confirmation, Senate Majority Leader John Thune did what any typical Republican would do. He sent the upper chamber home on a two-week vacation.

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An estimated eight million people reportedly turned out on Saturday for “No Kings” protests. Many of the more than 3,300 protests looked the same: crowds largely made up of elderly white leftists holding signs accusing President Donald Trump of being a “dictator” or “tyrant” or, as might be guessed, a “king.”

On social media there’s no shortage of Republicans mocking the protests — and with good reason. But however stupid the message of the “No Kings” protests, the left nonetheless managed to mobilize millions of people, including current and future voters.

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The leftists who now control Virginia’s government desperately want you to believe that ripping up a bipartisan congressional map mid-decade for naked political advantage is fair. They insist as much in the language of the absurd referendum question before the commonwealth’s voters next month.

“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?” the ballot asks.

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Forty-seven Democrats voted against a photo ID amendment on Thursday despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer previously claiming that he was supportive of photo ID.

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) introduced an amendment to the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act that would simply require photo ID to vote. Acceptable forms of ID include an unexpired driver’s license with a photo, a valid passport, a military ID, an unexpired state-ID card, among others.

The measure needed 60 votes to pass but only received 53 “AYE’s.”

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Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has seized more than 650,000 ballots from California’s November 2025 special election and announced his office will conduct an independent count.

The move is setting up a direct confrontation with Democrat state officials demanding he stand down.

The investigation focuses on Proposition 50, a ballot measure tied to congressional district reform, after local investigators flagged what they describe as tens of thousands of excess votes.