Virginia House Speaker Don Scott Discusses Redistricting Plan

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Virginia is striking back immediately after the United States Supreme Court ruling, where a six to three decision, the right-wing Supreme Court justices saying that Texas can do the gerrymander to try to create more Republican seats in Texas.

They want to create five Republican congressional seats there before the midterms. I do think that that may backfire on Texas, but you have Virginia responding right away.

The Senate president pro tempore Luis Lucas. She says, I've got something in store for Texas.
Well, what does she have in store for Texas?

She says, I will give a follow back to every person who I see tweet 10 to one tonight. By the way, back on November 2nd, 2025, she said 10 to 1.

Remember when Republicans drew Virginia's congressional map so black people were packed into one district and said we should be grateful they gave our community this district?

Now they can have one district and see how much they love it. Not mincing words there.

And then we had the Virginia House Speaker, Speaker of the House of Delegates there, Don Scott, last night talking about how, you know, it's possible you do a 10 to one map right there for the congressional delegation.

The current delegation is six Democrats, five Republicans. We'll see.
I mean, you look at Donald Trump and the MAGA approval in Virginia right now.

The latest Morning Console poll has Trump at negative 12%

in Virginia, and that number just gets lower each one we give.

And just so we can show you what the Supreme Court ruled and why I think there is this massive opening for Virginia to do a in-kind gerrymander, an offset, if you will, or perhaps an offset multiple, given that what MAGA wants to do, North Carolina and Indiana, kind of what we saw in Prop 50 in California trying to offset what MAGA MAGA is doing.

Just take a look right here. This is the Supreme Court direct language.

With an eye on the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, several states have in recent months redrawn their congressional districts in ways that are predicted to favor the state's dominant political party.

So the Supreme Court acknowledges that one of those states is Texas. that it's the purpose of it is to get Republicans elected.
And here's what the Supreme Court says.

Based on our preliminary evaluation of this case, Texas satisfies the criteria for interim relief. In other words, that the legislative map there is presumed to be accurate.
Why?

The Supreme Court says, first, the district court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous, direct, and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.

Heck, the legislator in Texas is like, we're going to make some racist maps. Like they literally said that.

So I'm not really sure where the ambiguity is there, but the Supreme Court says, if the legislature says they acted in good faith, why is there even a Supreme Court or courts in general to question them?

Then it goes, second, the district court failed to draw a dispositive or adverse inference against the people challenging the map.

So the Supreme Court said, anyone who challenges it, you should automatically basically view them as losing before the case even gets filed. Okay.

And then they also say, courts shouldn't do anything before an election and we're too close to the midterms. So why even do anything at all? So, we're just going to hold off.

That's the framework right there. I want to bring in Speaker Don Scott, the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, who we spoke to here before those November elections.

You've expanded that majority in the House of Delegates since the last time. You said it.
You said it was going to happen. We're going to go there.
But first, I got to ask you, Virginia striking back.

What are you doing in the legislature right now regarding a response to this gerrymandering that we see in Texas that the Supreme Court says go for it.

Well, sooner or later, you know, thank you for having me, but sooner or later, you have to stand up to the bully on the block.

And I think Virginia Democrats made it clear that we're not going to sit on the sidelines while Donald Trump and Republicans in Texas and North Carolina and Missouri and Indiana and now Florida launched this unprecedented mid-cycle redistricting scheme.

to try to override the will of the people and tilt the midterms in their favor. Their policies are so bad that they know they have to do something.
And we have no choice.

I don't think you know any Democrat wants to be in a position. We are, we are against gerrymandering.

We want, we're hoping that there's a federal ban on gerrymandering, but we have to level the playing field. We can't pretend that they're playing on fair or in a fair manner.

And while we sit aside and yell at them, we have to do something and fight back. And where I came from, if a bully, you know, punched you in the face, you can sit around and whine about it.

You got up and you fought back. And I think that's what we have to do right now.
So, what can you tell us, though, about what that looks like?

when does the next

when does this happen like what's going on what can you share in terms of what's the next step i i mean look you mentioned it's 10-1's not outside the realm of possibility the senate president pro tempore said that she keeps writing 10 to 1 so i would assume that means not outside the realm of possibility talk to us about that and what happens next well as you know right now virginia's congressional delegation is six five six democrats five republicans and we you know, we have an opportunity, I think, to take a look at it.

The first thing that we did, you know, one, a lot of people are like, well, tell us your strategy. You're an attorney.
I'm not, I'm not going to tell you my overall strategy, but I will tell you this.

We've taken the first step, which is pass a constitutional amendment. That's what's required in Virginia to allow for a mid

10-year decade, mid-decade redistricting. So we've done that.

And then we had an intervening election, which is required to pass the same resolution again, the exact same language, which we will do on January 14th. That is the first day of session.

That's how important this is. We will do that on the very first day of session and pass the resolution to allow this to become a constitutional amendment that will then go to the voters.

So we have to put this before the voters and probably trying to get it done in April so that we can impact the 2026 elections.

We don't have a choice in this matter. This is a requirement and an obligation to be able to protect our democracy from Donald Trump's rampant assault on it.

We know that he doesn't care about democracy. We saw that on January 6th.
And I think we have an opportunity now to make sure that we level the playing field in light of what he's doing.

And I think that process will allow us to do that. And so then once we do that, the legislature will be able to draw those maps.

And we need to be very clear and concise and make sure it's community-based with some input to be able to get those maps drawn. And I don't think it's out of the

possibility to get to a 10-1 map in light of the shellacking that we just put on the Republicans in Virginia this last cycle. Abigail Spanberger won by 15 points.

We went from a 5149 majority in the House of Delegates to a 6436 majority in the House of Delegates. So I think we have a responsibility to speak up for our voters and protect Virginians from being

disenfranchised. Look, my nephew says it's incredibly cringy whenever I try to do the 6-7 joke, but I like 10-1.
10-1

sounds really much better than that. It might be the new 6'7.

10-1

is the next 6'7. So you're moving expeditiously there.
But

talk about the sentiment right now in Virginia, because when you and I talked last, there was a real affordability crisis. You have all the government workers there.

You have health care premiums now are going to spike with the Affordable Care Act subsidies not getting extended. There's this full-fledged assault.
on the Commonwealth. I mean,

it's an outward hostility from the regime against Virginia, and we saw that in the election. Talk to us about that.

Well, you know, when Elon Musk came in with Doge and basically came in with a chainsaw, disrespecting these people who have put their life, many of them are veterans that work in the federal government.

So basically, he had an assault on veterans through the federal government with his work, with coming in with a chainsaw and cutting people's jobs, not only cutting their jobs, but their livelihoods, their ability to take care of their families in a very cynical way, in a harmful way.

And I think Virginians sent a message of disapproval. And that is why Republicans were beat so badly.
We won five districts that Donald Trump won and carried in 2024.

That is, we won Trump voters back. And I think that's the story that's been missing on this.
We won folks who, they know that Donald Trump lied to them.

He blatantly lied to them when he told them that he would lower the price of everything, that he would lower the price of goods and services.

But everything's gone up from beef to cars to child care to health care. Everything's going up.
Nothing has come down. And people know when they've been lied to.

And I think the gig is up for Donald Trump. People see who he is.
He's just trying to line his own pockets and those of his family. And Republicans are allowing him and enabling him to do this.

And they won't stand up. I think what happened is, and what's going to continue to happen, is it's probably not good to be MAGA when MAGA ain't on the ballot.

Sooner or later, you have to be responsible. You have to stand up to Donald Trump.

Republicans in Virginia found out that fail to stand up to Donald Trump for their own constituents hurt them. And I'll watch to see if they've learned any lessons.

I think we need a robust, honest, two-party system.

But right now, the Republicans in Virginia have lost the right to be a good governing partner because, and it's not just me saying it's the voters gave us these huge majorities because they don't believe they have a right to be good governing partners because they've not been able to stand up.

to Donald Trump in the face of his attacks on Virginia's jobs, Virginia's healthcare, and Virginia's citizens. Right.
At some point,

some of the things that are happening are really not about Democrat, Republican, independent. It's just like responsible grown-up behavior as the floor.

And these Trump candidates and Trump, like they're just not behaving as stewards of responsible governance or set that aside, like they're not behaving like grown-ups.

Like I just sometimes watch their behavior and I said, look, if a second grader was behaving like this in elementary school, you know, they would probably need to be, you know, called out and saying, you know, that's not how people behave.

You know, and that's on a daily basis, the way these MAGA people like just act. It's like, it's just

strange behavior and it has very dangerous consequences.

Yeah, when you, when you see like, you know, Secretary Hexeth, you know, and these other folks, I mean, it's like the meanest people on Twitter who are anonymous actually are now running the federal government.

It's like, that's what's going on right now. We have some folks that are running the federal government that have zero empathy for the people that they're supposed to serve.
They don't have it.

They need to go out and touch grass and deal with some real people because they are so far removed from the struggles of everyday Americans that they have lost sight of what their responsibilities are.

And so I think we have an obligation, Democrats here in Virginia, at least, is to remind the country, you know, we want to be maba. You know, we want to make America boring again.

You remember when you didn't turn on the TV and your anxiety levels didn't go up? We want to make America boring again.

We have competent government, responsive government, and deliver at the end of the day. We want to deliver.
It's not just good enough to win. You have to win and then you have to deliver.

And that's what we plan on doing here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. You know, when I read that Supreme Court decision, I will end on this.
It seems to be.

an invitation in a way that didn't exist before, you know, for better or for worse, that the floodgates are open. Legislatures, whatever you do, we don't touch.

And as long as it's partisanship, in fact, even when Texas, where there was a DOJ letter saying, hey, you got to do this in a way that deals with race and we got to move Hispanics around.

And then, you know, and then Abbott were like, yeah, we got to move the Hispanics around.

I'm like, I'm like, that's what the judge cited. It's like, what? You know, the federal district court judge is like, you're literally saying some.

some pretty race-based things that you're not allowed to say after a nine-day trial. But even there, the most egregious of circumstance, the Supreme Court goes, you know what? We ain't touching this.

So based on their own precedent, when we talk about 10-1 or whatever, they seem to be saying, until a federal law is passed banning this, go at it. Just do whatever you want to do.

I don't think that's a great outcome, but Democrats can't unilaterally disarm. It can't.
I'll give you the final word. Yeah, we can unilaterally disarm.
I think Supreme Court Justice

Kagan said it best when she talked about, you know, the Supreme Court has overruled some Trump appointees who said this is racist, it's wrong, and it can't go forward at the district court level.

And they just took a weekend and took a read and overturned all of it and know that they didn't get it right.

And so I think we have an opportunity and an obligation, I think, to try to level a paying fail to prevent the Republicans from totally manipulating

the midterms. We don't have a choice right now.
I mean, if you can't figure out where you are in this, and lastly, that's what I'm going to say.

Spare me the Republicans lecturing us on what we're doing when they won't even say a word about what Donald Trump is doing.

They're trying to say, oh, no, Virginia is different, but you will benefit from that.

And so they won't say a word about what's happening in North Carolina and Texas and Indiana and now Florida, but they'll try to lecture us.

So spare me the lectures and the outrage and the fake outrage here in Virginia.

We have an opportunity and obligation to make sure that we protect the franchise for voters here in the Commonwealth of Virginia Virginia to make sure that the people who've been lost their jobs, the veterans who've been laid off, have a say and will have the ability to push back in the midterms, to put a check on Donald Trump, because we know Republicans will not.

Anytime MTG is the voice of reason in the Republican Party, you know that train is off the tracks. And thank you for having me.

Great to have you here. The 58th speaker of Virginia's House of Delegates, Speaker Don Scott.
Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me, my friend.
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