Now that the Virginia Supreme Court has struck down the effort by Democrats to repaint the congressional borders of the state in their favor, some people are marveling at what a consequential loss this was for them.
George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley appeared on FOX News last night and called it a ‘face-planting of legendary proportions’ among other things, noting how bad this looks for Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, especially.
She stuck her neck out for this after vowing during the campaign that she wouldn’t. Then the whole thing blew up in her face.
Transcript via Mediaite:
TURLEY:No, that’s absolutely right, Sean, and there was a host of problems, but the most glaring was that one. Virginia was always the gold standard for gerrymandering. Virginia doesn’t like gerrymandering — makes it very difficult to do so. They have a commission to avoid gerrymandering. So to get this through, they had to do a sort of bum’s rush to get this in before the midterm elections. And the Supreme Court of Virginia said, “No, we’re not going to sign off on this.”
Now, this was a face-planting of legendary size for Governor [Abigail] Spanberger. She had previously assured voters that she was vehemently against gerrymandering. And as soon as she was elected, she went to the hard left, and then asked and pushed through the most radical gerrymandering scheme in the country. And so this is a remarkable effort that has resulted in a massive loss for the Democrats. They spent a fortune to get this thing through.
HANNITY:Sixty-four, 64 million.
TURLEY:Yeah! In addition to the 64 million, they alienated half of this state.
Here’s the video:
Jonathan Turley says Virginia Democrats suffered a major setback after a rushed redistricting effort was blocked, calling it a costly and damaging misstep:
“Virginia was always the gold standard for avoiding gerrymandering. The state has strict rules and a commission in place to… pic.twitter.com/athUwnTsxP
— Sean Hannity
(@seanhannity) May 9, 2026
Professor Turley is not even a conservative, but he can see all of this for what it is. A disaster for the Democrats.
They wasted tons of money and political capital on this project only to come up empty handed.
In the coming weeks, you will hear a lot of them talking about appealing this decision, but that will go nowhere. The Virginia Supreme Court is a Democrat majority court and their ruling will stand.
