Tangle - Democrats are dealt a blow in Virginia.

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down a redistricting measure recently passed by voters that would have allowed the legislature to adopt a new congressional map designed to give Virginia Democrats a 10–1 advantage in the U.S. House. In a 4–3 decision, the court found that the process of putting the measure on the ballot violated the state constitution, affirming a county judge’s ruling. The decision will keep the current map — under which Democrats have a 6–5 advantage — in place for the 2026 midterms, though state Democrats said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Your criticism, Isaac’s response.“When an article takes off, I write a follow-up piece addressing those criticisms and questions. I do this because I think engaging with our audience is an important way to gain trust and an important exercise in humility and intellectual honesty.” — Tangle Executive Editor Isaac SaulOn Friday, we published a roundup of feedback to Isaac’s recent report exploring potential corruption in the second Trump administration. Isaac offered his response to some of the most common criticisms he received and answered a few questions his piece prompted. You can read it here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠. and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Salland on today's episode. We're going to be talking about the Virginia state Supreme Court's ruling. They threw out a democratic gerrymander last week. We're going to talk about the national. implications, the ruling itself, share some views from the left and the right, and then, of course, my take. We've also got a staff concurrence and a staff dissent today, so you're going to hear from Ari and Audrey as well. Before we jump in, though, I want to give you a quick reminder that on Friday, I did a big kind of mega response piece. We got a lot of email, comments, social media

attention for my piece on President Donald Trump's alleged corruption and stuff. dealing some of what I've been observing since he came into office. And I tried to address it all head on. So I did a huge newsletter and podcast on Friday where I quoted and responded to a lot of the feedback that we got. I think it came out pretty good. It's an interesting show for sure. And I encourage you to go back just a little bit in your episode feed to check it out if you're interested. All right. With that, I am going to pass it over to Will Kayback, who's hosting the pod today and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac.

All right, let's get into today's quick hits. Number one, President Donald Trump rejected Iran's response to a U.S. proposal to end the war between the countries, calling it, quote, totally unacceptable. Number two, the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention activated its level three response, the agency's lowest level of emergency activation, following the Hanta virus outbreak on a cruise ship. During a level three response, CDC experts on the virus lead the effort to monitor the outbreak with their staff and potential assistance from the emergency activation center. Number three, the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.3%. The monthly jobs total was lower than Marches, but higher than the 55,000 jobs predicted by analysts pulled by the Wall Street Journal.

Number four, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters he thinks the Ukraine war is, quote, coming to an end, adding that he was open to discussing new security deals for Europe. The comments followed Russia's annual Victory Day parade, celebrating the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, which was scaled back this year. And finally, number five, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that he wants to, quote, draw down to zero U.S. financial support over the next 10 years. years. We have some breaking news in the nationwide redistricting battle. The Virginia Supreme Court just struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan in that state. It's a big setback for the party that's looking to try to get an edge in this year's midterm elections. So President Donald Trump, quick to weigh in, plant the flag on this one, true social post, calling it a huge win for the Republican Party and America in Virginia. On Friday, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down a

districting measure recently passed by voters that would have allowed the legislature to adopt a new congressional map designed to give Virginia Democrats a 10 to 1 advantage in the U.S. House. In a 4-3 decision, the court found that the process of putting the measure on the ballot violated the state constitution, affirming a county judge's earlier ruling. The decision will keep the current map under which Democrats have a 6 to 5 advantage in place for the 2026 midterms, though state Democrats said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. On April 21st, Virginians voted 51.5% to 48.5% to approve a constitutional amendment creating a

one-time exception to the state's redistricting system, to allow it to redraw its congressional map. The new map would have been in place for the 26 and 2028 elections, but the amendment stipulated that the state would revert to its standard process of redistricting via a bipartisan, and Commission and Court Review at the start of the 2030s. In the Supreme Court of Virginia's ruling, the majority wrote that the amendment violated Article 12, Section 1 of the state constitution, which requires the state's General Assembly to, quote, twice vote in favor of a proposed amendment at two separate legislative sessions

with an intervening election of the House of Delegates, end quote. In this case, the General Assembly first voted to propose the amendment on October 31, 2025. Roughly five weeks after early voting had begun for Virginia's House of Delegates' election. Therefore, the court held the amendment did not meet the, quote, intervening general election requirement, as roughly 1.3 million voters had cast their ballots without having an opportunity to evaluate lawmakers' stance on the amendment. The dissenting justices argued that the state constitution defines an election as a single day, election day, and since the General Assembly voted to propose the redistricting amendment before that

day, Article 12, Section 1 was not violated. After the ruling on Friday, House Speaker Don Scott and Attorney General Jay Jones, both Democrats, filed a motion asking the state Supreme Court to pause implementation of its ruling while they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. If Democrats' appeal fails, the party would be positioned to only gain up to six House seats in the midterms from mid-cycle redistricting in California and a state court ruling in Utah. Republicans could gain up to 14 seats from mid-cycle redistricting in six states, most recently Florida and Tennessee. Today we'll share views from the left and right on the ruling. Then executive editor Isaac Saul gives his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the left is saying.

The left strongly opposes the ruling, arguing the amendment process didn't violate Virginia's constitution. Some say the majority's rationale fails under scrutiny. Others call on Democrats to fight the decision. In Vox, Ian Milheiser described the glaring error in the Virginia Supreme Court's gerrymandering decision. In essence, the majority argues that Virginia voters who are opposed to the amendment were disenfranchised because they were denied an opportunity to vote for lawmakers who oppose it in the 2025 state legislative elections. But there's a pretty glaring problem with this disenfranchisement argument. The amendment was submitted to the voters in a referendum. Virginia voters were, in fact, given an opportunity to cast an up or down vote on the redistricting amendment, and the majority of them voted to approve it. If Virginia's constitution called for a simpler amendments process where two subsequent votes of the state legislature were alone sufficient to amend the constitution, then the majority's argument would make more sense. In that case, the election held between those two legislature votes would be state voters' only opportunity to weigh in on the amendment.

But under Virginia's actual constitution, voters are given a direct, opportunity to vote on a constitutional amendment. So it makes no sense to say they were denied an opportunity to express their view on the amendment by the timing of a legislative vote. In above the law, Joe Patrice wrote, Republicans spend 30 pages trying to explain why election doesn't mean election. Mere days after the United States Supreme Court declared that the Voting Rights Act cannot be invoked to bar racially discriminatory gerrymandering, as long as state legislators make a halfway plausible claim that the new districts were drawn for purely political purposes, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned a statewide election to approve purely political maps. Tennessee, Alabama, South

Carolina, all actively redrawing their maps behind closed doors to strip black voters of meaningful suffrage. Virginia sent their maps to the electorate, and after it passed, the state Supreme Court scrambled to rewrite the rules to erase the whole election. Virginia's robed GOP activists embraced the opposite day role, genoceneing several years' worth of Republican messaging that early voting is fake and elections mean election day to pronounce with a smirk that as soon as early voting begins, nothing a legislature does can be before the election.

The majority grasps at historical hearsay that the purpose of the rule is to allow voters to make a single-issue vote for their next representative based on the possibility of a ballot measure. In the New York Times, Jamel Bowie argued, Democrats who are soft on Republicans have got to go. Key Virginia Democrats quickly acquiesce to the decision. Don Scott, the Speaker of the House of Delegates, said, quote,

we respect the decision of the Supreme Court, while Governor Abigail Spanberger said she was, quote, disappointed, but didn't challenge the ruling or the court's authority. This is a mistake. To start, the ruling is absurd. The effect of this new definition of election would be to vastly complicate the state's judicial system, as the Constitution forbids courts from pulling voters into the judicial process,

quote, during the time of holding any election at which he is entitled to vote, end quote. There's also the fact that the court had a chance to halt the process earlier this year. It didn't. To then invalidate the referendum when it won is to suggest that the law here was less important than the politics. But more than the absurdity of the ruling is the basic principle. the referendum wasn't just an election. It was the people of Virginia exercising their right to amend their constitution as they see fit. On what basis can the state Supreme Court, a creature of that constitution,

invalidate a sovereign decision of the whole people? The correct response is to fight back in the name of the people, who made their choice in a free and fair contest. Now here's what the right is saying. The right supports the court's ruling, saying Democrats gambled on a flawed process and lost. Some framed the decision as a win for constitutional law. Others warned that Democrats could respond by embracing more radical proposals.

The Washington Post editorial board argued the court was right to strike down the unconstitutional gerrymander. Friday's 4-3 decision may be technical and procedural, but the reasoning is solid. The Virginia Constitution includes clear requirements for any amendments, which were intended to make change. is difficult. The justices concluded that the constitutional requirement wasn't met because the state's General Assembly voted for the first time on October 31st, four days before election day, to put the constitutional amendment to voters. By that time, more than 1.3 million people had already cast ballots, about 40% of the total vote. The election was well underway. Prominent Virginia Democrats reacted disingenuously to the high court's ruling by focusing on its timing. A

Attorney General Jay Jones complained that the decision overturns election results and, quote, silences the voices of millions of Virginians who cast their ballots. Jones is the one who insisted that the court wait until after the election to judge the merits of the challenge. He believed a usually friendly court wouldn't dare defy his party's interests, and the case would be moot anyway if the measure failed. The result of Jones's imprudent legal strategy is that National Democratic Groups wasted 64 million in dollars to narrowly pass a referendum that the court was going to strike down all along. In the Daily Wire, Ken Cuccinelli wrote,

Virginia's Constitution held, and Democrats' power grab failed. Democrats' scheme was as cynical as it was procedurally reckless. During a disputed special session, they rammed through a proposed constitutional amendment on a party-line vote, one that would temporarily suspend the bipartisan redistricting commission and let the General Assembly redraw congressional districts to their liking. The court rejected the Commonwealth's tortured argument that election means only election day, a single 24-hour period rather than the entire 45 days of voting that Virginia allows, also thanks to the Democrats. So where does this leave Virginia?

The court's 2021 nonpartisan maps, the ones that earned an A from independent analysts, remain in full effect for the 26 congressional elections. Virginia will continue to have a six to five congressional delegation split, with the districts drawn fairly and without a partisan thumb on the scale. Today's ruling is a reminder that constitutions matter, that process matters, and that no political party, no matter how large its legislative majority or campaign war chest, is above the law. In the New York Post, Jonathan Turley said, Virginia's gerrymander flop leaves Democrats frustrated and dangerous. Democrats are facing a potentially catastrophic reversal of fortune. Once Virginia Governor Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation, total war broke out,

and now red states like Florida and Tennessee have moved forward with their own redistricting. On top of the fact that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court decision comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's ban on racial gerrymandering. To make matters worse for the Democratic Party, A new census in 2030 will correct the mistakes that erroneously awarded them multiple districts after the 2020 census. That prospect of a political apocalypse has democratic strategists pushing for radical changes in Washington before it's too late, top priority packing the Supreme Court as soon as they retake power. As Virginia has shown, an independent court can unravel the best-laid plans.

Last week, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared the Supreme Court illegitimate, as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering. After the Virginia court's ruling, the frustrated democratic establishment is ever more likely to echo him and to go beyond. All right, that is it for what the left and right are saying. Now I'm going to pass it back over to Isaac for his take.

Isaac, over to you. All right, that is it for with the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. I've written and spoken a lot about gerrymandering in the last few months, and it's fair to say I feel quite conflicted. I have a visceral, intense loathing for all manner of gerrymandering across the country, a process that allows politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around.

I blame President Donald Trump for opening up a new front in this war through mid-decade redistricting and then escalating it further by forcing state leaders to play ball or face the consequences. And as I look for an off-ramp, I'm left thinking that the only way, of this ends as if the gerrymandering gets so bad both sides realize it's in their best interest to back off. In Virginia, specifically, that means I'm in the uncomfortable position of rooting for gerrymandering as a response to previous gerrymandering to create an even national map. This ruling then leaves me deeply conflicted. It is an obvious electoral victory for Republicans and it's bad news for Democrats.

Yet it's also a good outcome for democracy and a bad outcome for my life. long-term hope, which is that both parties see clearly that gerrymandering is a bottomless pit and start to back away. For Republicans, the electoral victory is clear. Democrats tried to gerrymander a purple state from a 6-5 congressional makeup to 10-1 in their favor, and the court's rejection of the ballot measure to create that map gives Republicans either an edge or a shot at winning at least four competitive house seats they otherwise would have been very likely to lose. Pared with new maps, in Florida and Tennessee, the last few weeks have very much tilted the gerrymander wars in Republicans' favor. I've been hoping for a draw, and while that looked likely a week ago,

it's ancient history now. Barring another dramatic twist in the saga, the president's plan, is working. The court's decision is obviously a bad outcome for Democrats, not just because of the national map advantage Republicans just fell into, but also because Democrats sunk a lot of time, effort, money, and political capital into trying to get their amendment through. It looks like they aren't giving up either. Some members of the party are now considering a truly radical plan to lower the age limit for state Supreme Court justices, remove every justice currently on the court, replace them, and retry the map. That would mean dumping more money, more time, and more political capital into an environment to disenfranchise their own voters

with the added spice of breaking every norm along the way. As for democracy, this is still a good outcome for Virginia. Gerrymandering is a scourge, and a 10-to-one map in a purple state is a genuine absurdity. The court's reasoning for striking down the map was technical and understandable. To me, it was also almost beside the point. As Ian Milheiser wrote under what the left is saying, both sides had textual evidence in their corner, so the court could have justifiably ruled either way.

It seems to me the court applied the technical rule the way it was supposed to here, specifically for this kind of moment, yet the rule itself feels almost unworkable. Are we really saying we don't want voters to have any fast-moving power, even referenda as a tool on their belt? Ultimately, Democrats tried to rush this through, effectively deny millions of Republicans' competitive elections, violate a 2020 voter-led effort to ensure independent mapmaking, and they failed. Plenty of people suspected they might fail too, yet they barreled ahead anyway. A court checking that kind of indulgence means other state parties should think twice about

sinking tens of millions of dollars into efforts to undermine our representational democracy. Yes, this ruling helped a national party that is currently gallivanting across the country gerrymandering, and yes, unlike other gerrymanders, voters approve Virginia's measure in a very narrow statewide referendum. But it was still what play to rob voters' affair representation. Even acknowledging the will of the majority of Virginia voters, gerrymandering is still a cancer on democracy. In that sense, I'm glad this effort failed. Writers, like Jamel Bowie under what the left is saying,

criticized Democrats for acquiescing to a state Supreme Court ruling. Sorry, but no. If the left wants to criticize Trump and Republicans for attacking or ignoring the courts, they shouldn't publicly bemoan that Democrats aren't doing the same thing anytime they get a really big ruling they don't like. Louie also complained that the court didn't stop all this earlier, yet it was Democrats who insisted the court wait until after the referendum election

to rule on the legal challenge. And finally, this is a terrible outcome in the effort to make President Trump pay for his mid-decade redistricting push. As I wrote in my deep dive on gerrymandering back in 2022, while both sides gerrymander, the practice more often produces advantages for Republicans. If Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina redraw their maps, which they likely will, Democrats will have to win the combined national popular vote by roughly four points in the midterms just to flip the House of Representatives.

To be clear, Trump did not invent gerrymandering and he isn't the root cause of it. But right now, we are in the midst of one of the most egregious, unjustifiable, extra-legal gerrymandering binges in American history, and Trump started it. He launched this war with pure cynicism, and for a moment it looked like it was all going to blow up in his face. Now, it looks like it may actually work out for him the way he wanted it to. To call this frustrating or upsetting is an understatement. The Supreme Court has effectively said that it can't do anything about partisan gerrymandering, only that it would overturn racial gerrymandering, even though it's often impossible to tell one from the other. This means,

only hope under the current circumstances is that state-level politicians do the right thing. Yet, when Indiana Republicans stood up to Trump and refused to gerrymander, they ended up being ousted by their own national party's money and attacks. I'm not rooting for Democrats to get an electoral advantage, but I was hoping that Democrats' response would be successful enough that President Trump might back down. Yet, in their effort to punch the proverbial bully in the mouth, Democrats had to undo the progress of independent commissions in California and Virginia, which led to one of their maps being thrown out. Meanwhile, the new Florida map Republicans just drew is an obvious violation of the state's anti-jerrymandering law. Now, it's Florida's turn.

Will its state Supreme Court do the right thing? Six of the seven justices were appointed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis who approved the map, so I'm skeptical. The result is that both sides way deeper and deeper into this grotesque practice, where in one side seemingly always ends up getting an advantage. Our state and local level representation only matters as a rubber stamp for national political interests. Our national and presidential races swallow up everything, and the legitimacy of the entire system that is supposed to make our country so special is strained further and further. All the while, a president who has shown a reckless disregard for the law, the courts, and the decorum of our system ends up winning, or, for the president. Or, for a president,

forces his opponents to meet him in the mud just to degrade everything even more. I wish I had some good news, but I really don't. A few weeks ago, our best case scenario was that millions of voters in California, Texas, and Virginia would have their voting power diluted and that both parties would back off. Now, we're going to bowl ahead on this unrighteous path with no end in sight. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass it to Ari for a staff concurrence and then Audrey Moorhead for a staff to Thank you, Isaac. I'm going to read my concurrence to what Isaac wrote today, and then I'm going to read our associate editor, Audrey Moorhead's staff dissent. Since she's traveling, I'm going to fill in for her today. First, my concurrence. I agree with Isaac that both sides arguing before the Supreme Court of Virginia had valid arguments that could have won, and I want to explore that further. The entire case hinges on the Virginia Constitution's stipulation that a voter-referencing.

referendum on a constitutional amendment has to come after a legislative session. It all boils down to whether a session ending four days before election day counts as preceding the election. A partisan on either side will be backed into a contradiction one way or the other. Either an election is defined as election day, presenting a problem for Democrats arguing that ballots that arrive after that day still count for that election, or mail-in votes are a legitimate aspect of an election, which would present a problem for Republicans suspicious of mail-in votes. How does one resolve this apparent dilemma? Personally, I try to separate out the distinct issues at play. First, at the Virginia level, voters who wanted to see how the legislative session proceeded before casting their votes weren't deprived

of that opportunity simply because early voting was available, meaning definitional issues aside about what is or isn't the election, I disagree with the practical element of the state Supreme Court's decision. Second, at the national level, the temporal parameters that define the election are in dire need of definition. I wouldn't be at all surprised

that the Supreme Court believes it is their place to step in and provide those parameters, either by hearing a challenge to this decision or by issuing a broad ruling in the upcoming decision in Watson v. Republican National Committee. Now for Audrey's dissent.

Audrey wrote, I disagree with Isaac's position that successful gerrymandering in Virginia could solve the problem of national gerrymandering rather than worsen it. Partisan gerrymandering is so pernicious and so wrong because it asked state voters to bear the burdens of the national party's woes

when the system should be the other way around. State-level interests should be fairly represented at the national level. As such, allowing Virginia's gerrymandering to go through would not have solved the larger problem. Also, hoping the current cycle would stop with Virginia fails to recognize that it could have stopped with Texas and California. But now, because Virginia acted and its proposed map was so egregious, the cycle continues on in Florida. Arguing gerrymandering was okay in Virginia means believing it could be okay in Florida too.

Really, gerrymandering is wrong in every scenario. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take and our concurrence and dissent today, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Lauren in London, England. Lauren said, how much truth is there to the argument that European social safety nets are propped up by American military spending? All right, well, first of all, people from across the political spectrum have criticized countries for being free riders, including former President Obama and President Trump. If those two agree on something, we should probably look into it. The U.S. is, in fact, providing a huge chunk of military funding to protect other European countries.

When it comes to NATO defense spending, that is, money going toward defense specifically for NATO allies, which are largely in Europe, the U.S. has no competition. It spent $980 billion in 2025, accounting for 62 percent of NATO's defense spending. The next two highest spenders were Germany and the United Kingdom at roughly $94 and $91 billion, respectively. The U.S. devotes more money to NATO defense, and it's not close, although this could be in flux. The effect of that spending is a little more complicated. We don't have a way to track a direct link between more U.S. defense spending and more European social services, but a look at each country's social spending can tell us whether there is a large difference between countries that could potentially be downed, stream from spending less on defense than the United States. According to the Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development or OECD, in 2021, the total of government provided social expenditures for those three highest NATO defense spenders was 22% for the UK, 27.2% for Germany, and 23.2% for the U.S., so all roughly similar. Not every country is like the U.K. or Germany. Ireland's net public spending is 12.5% and France's is 28.6%. But overall, most of the European country's social spending falls within 5% of the U.K.S. in Germany. So overall, while the United States undoubtedly puts a lot toward defense that benefits European countries, the evidence doesn't strongly show that the spending props up sprawling safety nets. All right, that is it for your questions answered.

I'm going to send it back to Will for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Ari. All right, here's today's Under the Radar story. According to preliminary data from these Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, Affordable Care Act enrollment for 2026 decreased to approximately 23 million, roughly 1 million fewer enrollees from the year prior. A separate analysis by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that enrollment in healthcare.gov dropped by approximately 8% from 2025.

while enrollment in state-based exchanges increased 2%. The drop follows the end of the COVID-era enhanced ACA credits, which Democrats unsuccessfully sought to extend last year during a 43-day government shutdown. Experts and state officials suggested the enrollment decline will continue through 2026 and beyond. The Hill has this story, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. And finally, here's today's have a nice.

Day story. A retired chicken farmer in Australia gathered rocks from a nearby quarry for a garden wall and unknowingly mortared a 240 million-year-old fossil into it. Researchers from UNSW, Sydney, and the Australian Museum have now formally identified the specimen as arena Repton Supanatus, a four-foot-long salamander-like river predator from the Triassic period. The fossil was remarkably well preserved, with faint traces of skin still present in the stone. Quote, we don't often find skeletons with the head and body still attached, and the soft tissue preservation

is an even rarer occurrence, said PhD candidate Lachlan Hart. Scientists say the fossil is one of the most significant finds in the state in decades. Science Daily has the story, and again, we'll put the link to it in today's show notes.

We will be back with you tomorrow, and until then, have a great day and night. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.