By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor
We have all heard about criminal cases so absurd, so outlandish, that the first explanation that comes to mind is “he must be setting himself up for an insanity plea.”
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when your guilt is absolutely certain, maybe sometimes there’s nothing else to try.
The Democratic Party of Virginia finds itself in that position today.
In late 2025, Virginia Democrats decided to attempt a redistricting of their Congressional District map this year, ahead of the midterms. It’s unclear exactly what prompted this desire in an essentially 50/50 state; many suspect that then-Congressman (now Governor) Abigail Spanberger was hoping to skyrocket to the top of the veepstakes for 2028, and thought this would help her cause.
But back then, Spanberger wasn’t the governor yet, though the polls had it looking likely. And the Democrats had an idea that if they redrew the maps in the spring, Virginia might be able to flip a few more Congressional seats in the midterms.
To be completely nonpartisan for a moment, we must remember that almost every state redraws the maps every ten years; the census comes out and population shifts are discovered, so legislative district boundaries have to be tweaked, at least. There’s nothing wrong with that, as one of the goals is that all residents of a state should theoretically be equally represented in the legislature.
But partisanship plays a role as well. As long as they are redrawing maps anyway – every ten years – the party in power has an almost irresistible opportunity to draw those maps in a way that favors them a little, as long as they do so in accordance with the state’s constitutional rules governing such things. These rules vary from state to state, but the common thread is an expectation that legislative districts should be as square as possible, and cut through as few different municipalities as possible.
In red states, Republicans sometimes dance gently along that line, when they have the chance, but if they push their luck, they get slapped down by the courts.
In blue states, Democrats commonly blow past that line and leave it in the dust. The domination of the courts by Democrat partisans makes court challenges difficult, if not impossible, and for sixty years, the (wrong but prevailing) interpretation of the Voting Rights Act gave the Democrats an incredible edge.
As a result, the nation is littered with districts that make the proverbial gerrymander (somewhat unfairly named for Founding Era Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry) look like a neat square by comparison. Slivers dart out of cities and snake their way through counties and parishes, slide along lakefronts, even hug a single railroad or river to pick up pockets here and there, to dilute Republican votes and strengthen Democrat ones.
Given the choice between violating state mandates that districts be compact, and violating the (again, wrong but prevailing) interpretation of the VRA, even red states have squeamishly chosen the former, excusing away their outrageous mapmaking to create Rorschach Test Democrat districts on the grounds that “the VRA made us do it!”
The Supreme Court’s recent correction of this outrage (in Louisiana v. Callais) has put an end to that particular excuse, and numerous states are now reviewing their options; the net benefit to such corrections is expected to be about a dozen seats in the GOP’s favor in 2026.
But last fall, this outcome was not known. Virginia’s Democrats didn’t anticipate redistricting being a top-tier issue across the country for months; they just saw what looked to be a golden opportunity for a mid-decade redistricting process.
Their problem is, this wasn’t an original idea. When the current Virginia state constitution was written in 1971, the drafters anticipated that future state legislatures might occasionally want to do such a thing, so they wrote some ground rules to protect the state from just such rank opportunism.
If population patterns were changing enough to justify a mid-decade remap, Virginia law requires that the state legislature first propose and pass the idea before an election is held, giving the voters a chance to absorb the issue and use that election to voice their opinion of the matter by potentially replacing incumbent legislators if they disapprove. And then, only after that, the newly elected legislature would have to pass it again the following year. Even that is all required just for the right to put an amendment for a new map on the next ballot, as a constitutional amendment referendum – which itself would be subject to the usual legal rules governing how amendments are written.
When the Democrats had this idea in late 2025, it was already too late to be accomplished legally. They didn’t allow themselves enough time. The Constitution has a timeline; the outgoing legislature would have had to propose and pass the bill before their voters had a chance to vote in a replacement legislature for 2026.
Virginia’s Democrats basically came up with a new batting roster for a ballgame, after the last inning had been held, the last out had already been scored, and the game was already over.
When did the Democrats pass their redistricting bill? After early voting had already begun. Some 1.5 million Virginians had already cast ballots for the November election when the sitting legislature passed their bill.
This meant that, in contradiction to their own state’s constitution, 1.5 million Virginians had been denied any opportunity to make their will known on the matter by rewarding or punishing their representatives for their votes.
Virginia politicians of both parties knew it was an open and shut case. They all knew that if they moved forward at this late date, it could not possibly withstand a court challenge.
And Virginia’s Democrats did it anyway.
We all know what happened since. Virginia held the referendum this April, despite everyone knowing it was illegal, and was certain to be squashed in court. A very slim majority of the electorate voted in favor of redrawing a “fair map” in 2026 (even the wording of the referendum was unconstitutionally vague). It was rightly challenged, and the state’s supreme court rightly threw it out as utterly unconstitutional. Case closed.
Most politicians would have let sleeping dogs lie: Don’t remind the world that you tried to break the rules and got caught. Don’t remind the world that you tried to fight it all the way to the state Supreme Court and got smacked down. Just say “you win some, you lose some,” and be done with it.
But not the politicians of the state of Virginia.
To the surprise of many onlookers, Virginia’s Democrats have filed an emergency court challenge with the Supreme Court of the United States.
Pundits and politicians alike are having fun commenting on it, as the VA Attorney General’s brief is full of comical misspellings.
The Supreme Court of the United States rarely rules on state cases, not from a desire to duck the question, but simply because they don’t usually have jurisdiction. The lines between state issues and federal issues are often clearly drawn.
But not always. And this is what makes it interesting.
Generally speaking, the states have the constitutional duty to manage their own elections, but elections can affect the entire country, and such issues as vote fraud, corrupt election processes, and the selection of federal legislators are all national issues, so, it is conceivable that SCOTUS could accept the case and rule on it.
There are several possibilities. SCOTUS could recognize a national interest and issue a straight ruling supporting the VA supreme court, SCOTUS could recognize a national interest and overrule the VA supreme court, or SCOTUS could refuse the case, saying it’s a state issue, so the VA supreme court has the final say.
But what court watchers are really looking forward to is how SCOTUS words whatever they do. There was so much wrong with this process – the late timing, the deceptive wording, the blatant sliminess of the effort (did we mention the goal was to turn the state’s congressional delegation from a 6D-5R split to a 10D-1R rout?) – it is hard to imagine that SCOTUS won’t find a way to work in some editorial comment.
After decades of Democrats insisting that Election Day should be a fluid time period of at least a free-for-all month of voting, both before and after the nominal date, Virginia’s argument demands that in this case, and this case alone in all the world, Election Day must be just one single calendar date, or their house of cards collapses. One wonders if these people have ever taken a moment to think anything through before acting.
Over the weekend, national Democrats even floated a trial balloon – quickly shot down – of the Virginia legislature retroactively lowering their state supreme court mandatory retirement age to 54 so they could fire them all and pack the court with a whole new group of hand-picked toadies. Just for this. Despite being quickly abandoned, such an outrageous proposal has fanned the fire even more.
We are therefore looking forward to how SCOTUS will respond to this last-ditch effort at an emergency injunction, and many are hoping that SCOTUS will use the opportunity to remind the Democrats – not just Virginia’s but all the states’ – of the sanctity of elections, the importance of a single Election Day, the need to stop robbing and conning their own constituents, the need to respect both state and federal constitutions, and the general American principle that you just can’t change the rules in the middle of a game. If SCOTUS takes this opportunity to hammer home a couple of these points, it will have been well worth the price of admission.
But in addition, the rest of us, not just court-watchers and political junkies, but all voters, all Americans concerned with good government, are already taking a lesson from this outrageous affair.
The Democrat leaders of the state of Virginia, by knowingly engaging in such an utterly sloppy, illegal, and malicious power play, have shown the American people who they really are, in a way far clearer and more undeniable than the usually slick Democratic Party has ever done before.
They usually bury their costly, destructive corruption in euphemistically named bills like the Green New Deal, the Affordable Care Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One must normally hire Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and a team of crack computer programmers to find the evidence buried deep in non-governmental organizations, alleged charities, shell companies and ethnic “learning centers.”
The beauty of the Virginia redistricting scam is its clarity. Anyone can see through it, and everyone does.
One almost wonders if those pulling the strings – the Governor who imagined it as her golden ticket to the Naval Observatory, the Attorney General who hired California lawyers to write his briefs for him, and the political consultants who spent some $70 million on an election doomed from the start – might have planned it all along as evidence to keep in their pocket for their rapidly approaching judgment day.
An extremist, left-wing party this corrupt, this cynical, this dismissive of the rights of its constituents, can only be crushed at the polls when the electorate wises up, as is happening even now in Argentina, in Hungary, in El Salvador, even in the United Kingdom.
Maybe they are setting it up as an insanity defense, for when they are ultimately exposed for the authoritarian criminals they really are.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
We have all heard about criminal cases so absurd, so outlandish, that the first explanation that comes to mind is “he must be setting himself up for an insanity plea.”
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when your guilt is absolutely certain, maybe sometimes there’s nothing else to try.
The Democratic Party of Virginia finds itself in that position today.
In late 2025, Virginia Democrats decided to attempt a redistricting of their Congressional District map this year, ahead of the midterms. It’s unclear exactly what prompted this desire in an essentially 50/50 state; many suspect that then-Congressman (now Governor) Abigail Spanberger was hoping to skyrocket to the top of the veepstakes for 2028, and thought this would help her cause.
But back then, Spanberger wasn’t the governor yet, though the polls had it looking likely. And the Democrats had an idea that if they redrew the maps in the spring, Virginia might be able to flip a few more Congressional seats in the midterms.
To be completely nonpartisan for a moment, we must remember that almost every state redraws the maps every ten years; the census comes out and population shifts are discovered, so legislative district boundaries have to be tweaked, at least. There’s nothing wrong with that, as one of the goals is that all residents of a state should theoretically be equally represented in the legislature.
But partisanship plays a role as well. As long as they are redrawing maps anyway – every ten years – the party in power has an almost irresistible opportunity to draw those maps in a way that favors them a little, as long as they do so in accordance with the state’s constitutional rules governing such things. These rules vary from state to state, but the common thread is an expectation that legislative districts should be as square as possible, and cut through as few different municipalities as possible.
In red states, Republicans sometimes dance gently along that line, when they have the chance, but if they push their luck, they get slapped down by the courts.
In blue states, Democrats commonly blow past that line and leave it in the dust. The domination of the courts by Democrat partisans makes court challenges difficult, if not impossible, and for sixty years, the (wrong but prevailing) interpretation of the Voting Rights Act gave the Democrats an incredible edge.
As a result, the nation is littered with districts that make the proverbial gerrymander (somewhat unfairly named for Founding Era Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry) look like a neat square by comparison. Slivers dart out of cities and snake their way through counties and parishes, slide along lakefronts, even hug a single railroad or river to pick up pockets here and there, to dilute Republican votes and strengthen Democrat ones.
Given the choice between violating state mandates that districts be compact, and violating the (again, wrong but prevailing) interpretation of the VRA, even red states have squeamishly chosen the former, excusing away their outrageous mapmaking to create Rorschach Test Democrat districts on the grounds that “the VRA made us do it!”
The Supreme Court’s recent correction of this outrage (in Louisiana v. Callais) has put an end to that particular excuse, and numerous states are now reviewing their options; the net benefit to such corrections is expected to be about a dozen seats in the GOP’s favor in 2026.
But last fall, this outcome was not known. Virginia’s Democrats didn’t anticipate redistricting being a top-tier issue across the country for months; they just saw what looked to be a golden opportunity for a mid-decade redistricting process.
Their problem is, this wasn’t an original idea. When the current Virginia state constitution was written in 1971, the drafters anticipated that future state legislatures might occasionally want to do such a thing, so they wrote some ground rules to protect the state from just such rank opportunism.
If population patterns were changing enough to justify a mid-decade remap, Virginia law requires that the state legislature first propose and pass the idea before an election is held, giving the voters a chance to absorb the issue and use that election to voice their opinion of the matter by potentially replacing incumbent legislators if they disapprove. And then, only after that, the newly elected legislature would have to pass it again the following year. Even that is all required just for the right to put an amendment for a new map on the next ballot, as a constitutional amendment referendum – which itself would be subject to the usual legal rules governing how amendments are written.
When the Democrats had this idea in late 2025, it was already too late to be accomplished legally. They didn’t allow themselves enough time. The Constitution has a timeline; the outgoing legislature would have had to propose and pass the bill before their voters had a chance to vote in a replacement legislature for 2026.
Virginia’s Democrats basically came up with a new batting roster for a ballgame, after the last inning had been held, the last out had already been scored, and the game was already over.
When did the Democrats pass their redistricting bill? After early voting had already begun. Some 1.5 million Virginians had already cast ballots for the November election when the sitting legislature passed their bill.
This meant that, in contradiction to their own state’s constitution, 1.5 million Virginians had been denied any opportunity to make their will known on the matter by rewarding or punishing their representatives for their votes.
Virginia politicians of both parties knew it was an open and shut case. They all knew that if they moved forward at this late date, it could not possibly withstand a court challenge.
And Virginia’s Democrats did it anyway.
We all know what happened since. Virginia held the referendum this April, despite everyone knowing it was illegal, and was certain to be squashed in court. A very slim majority of the electorate voted in favor of redrawing a “fair map” in 2026 (even the wording of the referendum was unconstitutionally vague). It was rightly challenged, and the state’s supreme court rightly threw it out as utterly unconstitutional. Case closed.
Most politicians would have let sleeping dogs lie: Don’t remind the world that you tried to break the rules and got caught. Don’t remind the world that you tried to fight it all the way to the state Supreme Court and got smacked down. Just say “you win some, you lose some,” and be done with it.
But not the politicians of the state of Virginia.
To the surprise of many onlookers, Virginia’s Democrats have filed an emergency court challenge with the Supreme Court of the United States.
Pundits and politicians alike are having fun commenting on it, as the VA Attorney General’s brief is full of comical misspellings.
The Supreme Court of the United States rarely rules on state cases, not from a desire to duck the question, but simply because they don’t usually have jurisdiction. The lines between state issues and federal issues are often clearly drawn.
But not always. And this is what makes it interesting.
Generally speaking, the states have the constitutional duty to manage their own elections, but elections can affect the entire country, and such issues as vote fraud, corrupt election processes, and the selection of federal legislators are all national issues, so, it is conceivable that SCOTUS could accept the case and rule on it.
There are several possibilities. SCOTUS could recognize a national interest and issue a straight ruling supporting the VA supreme court, SCOTUS could recognize a national interest and overrule the VA supreme court, or SCOTUS could refuse the case, saying it’s a state issue, so the VA supreme court has the final say.
But what court watchers are really looking forward to is how SCOTUS words whatever they do. There was so much wrong with this process – the late timing, the deceptive wording, the blatant sliminess of the effort (did we mention the goal was to turn the state’s congressional delegation from a 6D-5R split to a 10D-1R rout?) – it is hard to imagine that SCOTUS won’t find a way to work in some editorial comment.
After decades of Democrats insisting that Election Day should be a fluid time period of at least a free-for-all month of voting, both before and after the nominal date, Virginia’s argument demands that in this case, and this case alone in all the world, Election Day must be just one single calendar date, or their house of cards collapses. One wonders if these people have ever taken a moment to think anything through before acting.
Over the weekend, national Democrats even floated a trial balloon – quickly shot down – of the Virginia legislature retroactively lowering their state supreme court mandatory retirement age to 54 so they could fire them all and pack the court with a whole new group of hand-picked toadies. Just for this. Despite being quickly abandoned, such an outrageous proposal has fanned the fire even more.
We are therefore looking forward to how SCOTUS will respond to this last-ditch effort at an emergency injunction, and many are hoping that SCOTUS will use the opportunity to remind the Democrats – not just Virginia’s but all the states’ – of the sanctity of elections, the importance of a single Election Day, the need to stop robbing and conning their own constituents, the need to respect both state and federal constitutions, and the general American principle that you just can’t change the rules in the middle of a game. If SCOTUS takes this opportunity to hammer home a couple of these points, it will have been well worth the price of admission.
But in addition, the rest of us, not just court-watchers and political junkies, but all voters, all Americans concerned with good government, are already taking a lesson from this outrageous affair.
The Democrat leaders of the state of Virginia, by knowingly engaging in such an utterly sloppy, illegal, and malicious power play, have shown the American people who they really are, in a way far clearer and more undeniable than the usually slick Democratic Party has ever done before.
They usually bury their costly, destructive corruption in euphemistically named bills like the Green New Deal, the Affordable Care Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One must normally hire Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and a team of crack computer programmers to find the evidence buried deep in non-governmental organizations, alleged charities, shell companies and ethnic “learning centers.”
The beauty of the Virginia redistricting scam is its clarity. Anyone can see through it, and everyone does.
One almost wonders if those pulling the strings – the Governor who imagined it as her golden ticket to the Naval Observatory, the Attorney General who hired California lawyers to write his briefs for him, and the political consultants who spent some $70 million on an election doomed from the start – might have planned it all along as evidence to keep in their pocket for their rapidly approaching judgment day.
An extremist, left-wing party this corrupt, this cynical, this dismissive of the rights of its constituents, can only be crushed at the polls when the electorate wises up, as is happening even now in Argentina, in Hungary, in El Salvador, even in the United Kingdom.
Maybe they are setting it up as an insanity defense, for when they are ultimately exposed for the authoritarian criminals they really are.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
