Virginia Democrats are launching an effort to redraw the state’s congressional districts, positioning themselves in direct response to Republican-led redistricting maneuvers in states like Texas and North Carolina.
Speaker of the House of Delegates Don Scott announced that lawmakers will convene a special session in Richmond on Monday to begin discussions on the proposed changes to the state’s congressional map.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell told The New York Times, which first reported the story, “We are coming back to address actions by the Trump administration.”
The announcement reverberated across the state, injecting fresh uncertainty into next month’s elections.
State Republican leaders on Thursday signaled they plan to push back hard.
Republican House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore called the Democrats’ move “a power grab,” accusing them of trying to deflect attention from waning momentum just weeks before the election.
He also challenged the legal process, specifically questioning whether the initiative was procedurally flawed — since a constitutional amendment must be approved by both chambers of the General Assembly in two separate sessions, with a general election for the House of Delegates occurring in between.
“In my legal opinion, the election has already started, and it’s too late constitutionally to have such a vote,” Mr. Kilgore said. “So we are going to use everything, legally, everything that we can do, to stop this power grab.”
While any changes would not take place until after the current election, Democrats are defending a narrow majority in the House of Delegates, and the redistricting push could become a defining issue in the final stretch of the campaign.
The special session also threatens to pull lawmakers seeking reelection off the campaign trail roughly a week out from Election Day.
The plan mirrors a controversial move in California, where Democrats are advancing a constitutional amendment to dismantle the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and replace it with a more partisan process.
Polling suggests the California measure has a strong chance of passing.
Virginia Democrats now aim to follow suit. They want to ask voters in the Old Dominion to approve a similar amendment that would override the current bipartisan commission-drawn maps.
Currently, Democrats hold six of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats.
The broader redistricting clash began when Texas Republicans broke with precedent by adopting new mid-decade maps designed to secure additional GOP-leaning districts.
California Democrats responded with their own aggressive map proposal, which will go before voters later this year. Meanwhile, Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina have also approved new maps, and the Trump administration has urged Indiana lawmakers to follow suit — though internal divisions have slowed movement there.