Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,
Virginia used to be a model of fair redistricting. That reputation is now gone.
On Tuesday, Virginia Democrats passed a redistricting plan that transforms one of the most fairly apportioned states in the country into one of the most blatantly gerrymandered.
Keep in mind that Virginia only narrowly backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024 by roughly five points. Virginia is, in every way, a battleground state. Yet under the new map, nearly half the state’s voters effectively lose their voice. The new lines snake from densely packed, heavily Democratic suburbs deep into rural territory. There is nothing democratic about it.
And the endgame is obvious. If these maps survive a court challenge, Democrats will have a much easier path to stacking Congress against President Donald Trump — setting up yet another sham impeachment attempt over nothing.
Democrats aren’t even hiding what they’re doing anymore. Why would they? Republicans have spent years playing nice while the left plays to win, and they play dirty.
That has to stop. And there may be a remarkable way to stop it right now.
Chad R. Mizelle — former chief of staff to the U.S. Attorney General, former acting general counsel of DHS, former chief of staff at DHS, and former associate counsel to President Trump — has floated a counter-move.
He’s calling it a form of “re-Districting,” and it could nuke the Democrats’ new gerrymandered map.
Here’s the history. In 1790, both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to create the new national capital. Virginia’s portion — what is now Arlington County and the city of Alexandria — remained part of the District of Columbia until 1847, when Congress returned it to Virginia. The reason? To protect slavery. The District had abolished it, and Virginia slaveholders didn’t want to give up their slaves. Democrats love to talk about the legacy of slavery to justify tearing down statues, renaming buildings, etc. — to be consistent, they should give that piece of land back to the District.
The legal questions over this retrocession have never gone away.
President William Howard Taft and others argued that it was unconstitutional and pushed to reclaim the land for D.C. However, the Supreme Court has never definitively settled the matter.
Mizelle’s proposal is for Trump to issue an executive order declaring that slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional.
That order wouldn’t need to resolve everything on its own — it would immediately trigger litigation and force federal courts to finally answer the question: Do Arlington and Alexandria legally belong to Virginia or to the District of Columbia?
The legal footing here is rock solid, but the cultural argument is just as strong.
Obviously, Arlington and Alexandria are among the bluest jurisdictions in the country, packed with federal employees and D.C.-oriented professionals whose political and economic lives are already aligned with the capital.
As Mizelle notes, those residents would “feel right at home” as part of the District. Their removal from Virginia’s congressional map would substantially shift the partisan balance across the rest of the commonwealth, restoring a voice to the rural and small-town voters currently being drowned out.
This isn’t a mirror-image power grab. It targets a historically tainted decision, seeks legitimate judicial clarity, and corrects a gerrymander that disenfranchises nearly half a state. There’s more detailed legal analysis available over at The American Capital Project, and the constitutional case for returning that slice of Virginia to D.C. is solid.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Republicans have to stop playing nice. This is exactly the kind of response that shows Democrats the era of one-sided hardball is over.
Do it, President Trump. Do it.