US House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who hopefully will be Speaker of the House after November’s elections, commented on the big Virginia Supreme Court ruling last week, allowing the redistricting referendum to proceed on April 21 (early voting starts March 6):
- “Republicans started this redistricting war, and Democrats have made it clear we’re going to finish it. We’re going to make sure that there is a fair national map. So at the end of the day, it’s the voters who get to decide who’s in the majority after the November midterm elections and not Donald Trump. When they go low, we strike back. That’s the Democratic approach, and the Republicans are feeling It right now…We’re not going lower, we’re striking back. We’re going to make sure that there’s a fair national map. Donald Trump is the one who instructed five different Republican states to gerrymander the national Congressional map. And the reason why he he did that is because he wanted to rig the midterm elections. And for whatever the reason, didn’t think that Democrats were going to forcefully respond. He got that wrong. They thought we wouldn’t respond in California. They thought we wouldn’t respond in Virginia. They thought we wouldn’t win the litigation in Utah. They thought we wouldn’t force a referendum in Missouri.” (h/t to Aaron Rupar for grabbing this video)
- “I’m very thankful to the Maryland House of Delegates, who decisively passed this legislation which, by the way is going to give voters the opportunity in Maryland to make a decision about the future of this map. That’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans. They are passing maps that they are intentionally gerrymandering, often wiping away Black or Latino districts in the dead of night, legislatively, because they’re petrified of taking these things to the voters. We’re taking these things to the voters. That was done in California. That’s being done in Virginia. And that also is the legislation that is being undertaken and considered in Maryland now.” (h/t to Aaron Rupar for grabbing this video)
- Also see CNN’s article, in which Jeffries “is vowing to spend ‘tens of millions’ of dollars to push through an April ballot initiative in Virginia to potentially give Democrats four more seats.”
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