Speaking at the Center for American Progress’ 2026 IDEAS Conference, US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had some interesting things to say about redistricting, including in Virginia. See below for video and highlights:
- “…the Republican gerrymandering scheme had been a complete and total failure, with Democrats fighting back aggressively, until they were aided and abetted by the Callais decision and an egregious decision by the Virginia Supreme Court decision, partisan decision, completely unacceptable to overturn the will of more than 3 million Virginia voters. Now, we’re still going to win two seats minimum in Virginia, and then we’re going to work as hard as we can in advance of 2028 to restore that 10-1 map, because that’s what the voters decided would be appropriate moving forward.”
- “Now, notwithstanding the Callais decision and what happened in Virginia, our assessment is that the Republicans may have netted – when it’s all said and done in terms of what’s happening in the South right now – maybe three or four seats in this environment. Which means that they will go perhaps from plus three, which is where we started, narrowest majority that any party has had in the Congress since 1930 in the Great Depression, to maybe plus six or plus seven. Keep in mind when we won the House back in 2018, and we’re in a 2018 type of environment right now – as poll after poll, private and public, continue to show, if not better – we needed to flip 24 seats…we flipped 40. 31 of those seats were in districts that Donald Trump had just won. And so we only need to flip a fraction of those, even given all of the gerrymandering that they’ve done, aided and abetted by these two Supreme Court decisions, we only need to flip a fraction of those in order to take , back control of the House. And I can tell you right now, as a guarantee, we are taking back control of the United States House of Representatives in November.”
- “But then our work is not done. Republicans had a structural advantage, which is why they launched this gerrymandering scheme, because so many of our states had commissions built into the law or constitutional impediment to being able to redraw districts in this cycle that have to be unwound. And in most state legislatures, California was an exception. it takes two consecutively elected legislative bodies before you can bring something before the voters or do it in the state legislature. Which means that in states like New York and New Jersey and Washington and Colorado, and we’ll add on top of that Oregon, Illinois, and Maryland, we’ll have at least seven states that we believe we need to respond in advance of 2028 to what they are doing in the Deep South, to wipe out any structural advantage that they’re trying to get themselves in advance of 2028. And we’ll have some opportunities…”
