Top MAGAverse figures are in an uproar over a Democratic victory in Virginia on exactly the same issue they couldn’t get enough of when it served to benefit Republican candidates in other states.
Voters on Tuesday approved an amendment to Virginia’s Constitution allowing Democrats, who currently hold six out of 11 House districts, to redraw lines on the state’s congressional map.
The measures remain subject to a Supreme Court hearing later in the week, but if approved, could shift the number of delegates to as lopsided as 10-1 in Democrats’ favor.
The outcome drew furious condemnation from Republican leaders and conservative commentators—many of whom had cheered or defended identical gerrymanders when Republicans drew them in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina.
Speaker Mike Johnson, who had campaigned against the measures as a “totally scandalous, unlawful, unconstitutional Democrat gerrymandering scheme,” has called the result “egregious” and an effort by his political opponents to “force their radical, unwanted agenda down the throats of every American.”
Johnson assumed the polar-opposition position eight months ago, on the Texas redistricting vote last August, which kicked off the now-ongoing nationwide voter map fight.
He told Fox News then that “we will probably have a few more seats out of that and, of course, that’s good news for me.”
Politico later reported he had also personally lobbied Indiana Republicans to redraw their state’s map to benefit the GOP, a move which cleared the state’s House but was rejected by its Senate.
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, issued a statement Tuesday night calling the Virginia result an “egregious power grab” and arguing the close margin “reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn’t be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander.”
Hudson had cheered the same move in Texas seven months earlier, writing in an official NRCC statement that “House Republicans are in the majority, on offense, and expanding the map,” and that “vulnerable House Democrats are painfully out of touch with hardworking Americans.”
His own state, North Carolina, also redrew its map last fall to flip a Democratic seat.
CNN’s resident MAGA pundit Scott Jennings has followed much the same trajectory, similarly calling Tuesday’s results “egregious,” attributing Democrats’ victory to them having “all the money and all the lines,” and slamming the whole affair as “a complete joke.”
Jennings previously dismissed “rigging” concerns in Texas during an on-air exchange with former Obama aide Xochitl Hinojosa by rattling off a list of states where Democrats dominate congressional maps.
He also later defended the Texas redistricting by arguing Republicans had gone “through the legal process and the courts.”
Vice President JD Vance, who has not yet commented publicly on Tuesday’s results, appeared to be following a similarly contradictory logic ahead of time.
At an April 16 Turning Point USA event in Georgia, he urged, “Virginia, vote against the Obama-Spanberger redistricting plan. Vote against it.”
But last August, as the Texas fight raged, Vance told Fox Business he was personally lobbying Indiana Republicans to follow suit: “We want a unified Republican team. We want to redistrict some of these red states and we want to make the congressional apportionment fair in this country.”
