BREAKING: Judge Just Stopped Virginia Redistricting

We got breaking news. A judge in Virginia just stopped the redistricting. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. Made to Thursday, everybody, April 23rd. Starting to really wrap up our Double the Difference Drive.

So I want you to be a part of it as everyone starts to log on and tune in right now. Welcome to the show, Will Haynes' studio, Jordan Succulo in studio. Got a special guest coming towards the end of the show. Because eyes are on Virginia. A lot of you were asking yesterday.

We took one call about it because people were curious what the legal ramifications were going to be at the fallout of the successful, if you will, vote to redistrict Virginia in what we at least consider to be a fairly unfair way.

So much so that even some of my friends who are more liberal leaning in Virginia started posting, you know what, we don't like the idea of doing this, but we're going to do it anyway because the Republicans deserve it. That's really how you should be voting. With that, we want to take your calls at 1-800-68-430-110 because there was some breaking news, and that is that a judge.

Now, you may say, Logan, you guys talk a lot about judges blocking things, but a judge stepped in in Virginia and has blocked the certification. of this redistricting. Jordan's here, Will's here. What's this mean? That's right.

So, what we get is this out of the circuit court of Tezwell County in Virginia, in the western part of the state. And Jordan, this judge put out, it's about a five-page order, a final judgment that is blocking the certification of the vote that took place, which means that they cannot move forward with the redistricting. They cannot use that new map that has been put forward by the House of Delegates and the Senate in Virginia because of a litany. Of Of invalidating reasons, and that is where they have violated repeatedly with the way this went forward. Both the Virginia Constitution as well as state code.

Yeah, I mean, it starts off with state code. Again, even if you live in Virginia, you're not going to know all these off the top of your head, but involving House joint resolutions and the governors and special sessions back into 2024, then goes into the Virginia Constitution, Article 11, Section 1.

So there's been no ensuing general election of the House of Delegates, and that has to, and that can't occur until 2027, and then you can't do that until then. Again, Virginia Code 3013. It's not like he was just spouting off. Reasons why this isn't right because it's not good for the Republic. It's not good for the Commonwealth of Virginia voters or it's not fair.

It was just straight up saying this violates our state law and Constitution. And when something violates the state constitution and the state law in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it should not be able to move forward.

So this is one of the cases moving forward right now in Virginia. There are others as well, and we'll talk about them as the show goes on. Yeah, and I think we should, as we tell people, keep watching. We're going to get into that breakdown, how quickly this could move in the state court system and maybe even the Supreme Court of the United States when we get back. But there's a lot to unpack here today.

Yeah, because the ramifications of this are obviously very imminent. This is something that would be happening in just a few months.

So what does that look like for this process? We'll get into it. And of course, I see some of your comments going, well, the people voted for it. Why does a judge feel like they can do this? I know we've been talking a lot about judges.

We'll break all that down. Of course, phone lines are open for you. If you have a question or comment, 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air today. Again, the final week of our double the difference drive. I'm gonna ask you: let's throw up that QR code.

Put up that QR code. There you go. And if you want to, you can scan it right now. Because look, we're talking about election integrity. We've been talking about it for years.

It, of course, has reached a big turning point today. We're going to talk a lot about that. And how quickly the Virginia court system can move, what it's gonna look like for the next few months. Of course, the ACLJ has been hard at work on election integrity for a number of years now as it became such a hot-button topic. If you want to keep us in those fights, Your gift today will go twice as far.

Go to ACLJ. Have your tax-deductible donation doubled today. The double the difference drive is happening through the end of the month, but don't wait. Do it right now if you can. That being said, phone lines are very much open for you right now.

I'm looking at them out of six. We got five open right now. At a 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Get your voice.

Voice. heard today. All the air. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take your calls on this.

Of course, let's reset just a little bit because those of you who just are tuning in, maybe on YouTube or Rumble, and by the way, we encourage you to watch our show. You can do that at ACLJ.org or YouTube. Be part of the chat. It's always fun. It's a great way to converse with like-minded, sometimes not so-like-minded people, but it's a great interactive experience.

You can do that again at aclj.org or directly through YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, however, get podcasts. We are there live, 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern time. With that being said, the main topic of the day, yesterday we discussed it a little bit. Of course, the day before was when the vote was happening, and that was for what we feel is the improper redistricting of the state of Virginia.

Really would change, Will, the full landscape. of uh of this state, to take it from a purple state. historically purple state for the last probably two decades to now being completely controlled. By one party. Right.

It would be a six to five split in favor of Democrats when it comes to congressional delegation, which in reality is one of the more fair maps probably. Right, that's what it currently is. Because Kamala Harris won the state by about 52%.

So if you look at that, okay, a little bit more than half. That's what the congressional delegation breakdown is. That's probably a very fair map as far as it comes to representing the state. They would then take it to a 10 to 1 Democrat advantage for the congressional delegation.

So, taking out the seats of these Republican seats and giving it to the Democrat Party to try and tip the balance of power in the House of Representatives and Congress.

Now, When you start to look at this, and I think we should go to this call, because this judge put out this order, and I think it's very important also for people to look at, because it isn't just saying, What you did was a purely partisan exercise in this, and therefore, I'm just gonna throw it out and put it on hold. That's what you see a lot of times with these federal judges that we have disagreed with their nationwide injunctions and things of that nature. They were just trying to block policy. This is not really about the policy at all. It's saying that you didn't go through the right procedures.

To put this to a vote to the people. It's not even saying that the people's voices are invalidated. It's saying that the people, the General Assembly, that put this before you didn't do their job. They didn't follow the Constitution of the state and they didn't follow the laws that the General Assembly has passed in the state. Therefore, This is an invalidated vote.

We will not certify this vote that took place. And I think we should go to Benjamin calling from Montana on line one, because he has a similar question to that. Go ahead, Benjamin, you're on Sekulow. Yeah, hey, thanks for staying on the call. I was just curious, why did this not get struck down before it was on the ballot and save everyone time and money of going through the whole voting process?

It's interesting because a lot of people are talking about if this does eventually go down and does not go into effect, how much money, millions and millions the Democrats have spent on a wasted effort, which will go right back to the exact same congressional map.

So again, some of that is politics. And if you're going to play loose with politics and the court system and you want to rush something through and you've got the money to do it and you say, okay, we're willing to take the legal challenges that come to see if we can flip from a 6-5 dim-leaning state to a 10-to-1. Congressional map, I mean, that will that that's worth the millions for the Democratic Party in this upcoming election. And so they had to weigh that when weigh what would happen in court. And I think what Will said needs to be underscored here because we've seen activist judges try to invalidate votes of the people, votes of Congress, actions by the President, and they do it like in these one-liners and they try to do it for the whole nation.

This is not that. This is the appropriate challenge to inappropriate. Laws or constitutional amendments or the way they're put forward, which commonly go through a long process. Usually, the language goes through a process in certification, and then that language itself can sometimes be litigated to make sure voters understand what exactly they are voting on. And we read it out yesterday.

And if you just showed up to vote, unless you were educated on how to vote, like voting this way, if you vote yes, it means you're voting for more Democrats. If you vote no, you're voting to kind of keep the status quo, which at least gives Republicans a chance. Unless you knew that. This language sounds kind of temporary, which it is. Oh, we're going to do this again, anyways, in 2030, so don't worry.

When the census comes out, right, when the census comes out. And we're just doing this to kind of get things in order now and make things more fair now. And so when you see that. Again, it's not like it passed overwhelmingly either. I mean, outspent the Democrats poured money in.

It passed by three points. And so you realize a lot of Virginians didn't realize it was tight. I didn't realize it was that tight. They called it so quickly that I felt like I didn't even look at the percentage. I just assumed that.

So it didn't need like a super majority. It just needed a popular. It was clear it was going to pass. The question was now. The question is now: does it stand up for the next election?

And things aren't looking good right now. But this is day one of the legal challenges. Day two now. To Benjamin's question as well, why didn't they invalidate it before they even got to a vote? Part of it goes to the point of why it's being invalidated by this order is that the Supreme Court of Virginia had a challenge earlier that they said, we're not going to get to this until after the vote.

We're going to let the process play out. And we are gonna see, and then we will move forward. Part of that is the way the legal system works and when there is something that is ripe for a challenge.

Sometimes you want to get ahead of it, you'd prefer to, but you can't legally challenge it until there is harm or if there is a violation. You can't preemptively strike down a violation of the Constitution sometimes. And I think this is also the point as well. There is a hearing set in the Virginia Supreme Court on Monday. On a separate case that has already made it up to the Virginia Supreme Court.

We know that the attorney general of the state of Virginia, remember him? We talked about him. He's the one who had a lot of language saying he would like to kill Republicans or wished harm on someone else who was in the House of Delegates, his family, because maybe then he would change his policy on gun control. That's the guy who's the attorney general now. He won his race.

And he is saying we are immediately going to appeal this to the appellate level in Virginia. Because there is that case on Monday, we could see this move at lightning speed. They could appeal today. The appeals court could decide to do something very quickly so that the Supreme Court of the state has this by Monday to consolidate the hearings and try to move forward. Because I don't think they're going to want to have to do multiple rounds of this at the state court.

Also, Virginia's Supreme Court. When it comes to issues of procedure. in their constitution. They tend to go very textualist. They like to, when it comes to the procedures, they very much are like, hey, we have rules and we play by those rules.

You could see a positive ruling out of the Supreme Court. It's one of the main reasons, even they said we're going to hold until after the vote when it came to that other case. Yes, and this is something used against. Administrations time and time again on the right and left when they try to move too quickly is if you don't follow the right procedures, your law doesn't get to go into effect. And there are some ways around that.

If you have special powers, like President of the United States with executive order and commander-in-chief power, there are certain states of emergency and things like that. This isn't that situation, they are creating. this moment where they must redistrict, even though they're going to be going through this process again in just a handful of years. And again, I thought from the language to the way it broke down the districts, They had problems. And then, of course, when you did a deeper dive into their own state law, the Virginia and the law of the Commonwealth, you realize that this violates a lot of their procedural rules.

That makes it very easy for judges, doesn't matter where they lean left or right, to say, you know what, hands off that this is not right. Like you guys, you want to do this vote? There's ways you can do it. This is not the way to do it. I've never seen really a more blatant response from people on the other side specifically saying that this is a politically motivated moment.

Right. That they don't even have an excuse. You have most of the people voting for this, voting for this knowingly and wantingly. To make their state less representative of the actual populace. Right.

Now, of course, their response is: well, this is what happens when conservatives started doing this in Texas. And now there's Florida on. There's a lot of states that are starting to roll out potential for these redistricting. Is it blanket that this is not good in general heading in towards an election season? That even for Republicans that are trying these things?

Because that's what they're saying: hey, essentially, an eye for an eye. If Texas can do it, so can we on the other side.

Well, I think if Texas can do it and they follow the laws of the state of Texas and they survive the legal challenges. That's one thing. But if you're in a different state with different laws, you have to not only survive the federal challenges, you've got to survive your state challenges.

So you've got it, because these all come out of the general assemblies and the state censors.

So you have to survive that first. And in this court, I mean, that's why it's in the circuit court of Tazewell County is. Saying, listen, this is violating our state statutes and our state constitution. This is not about the US Constitution. This is not about the federal law.

This is not about enjoining these across the country. This is about the Commonwealth of Virginia. You did it wrong. And this idea, again, Temporarily adopting new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections. Does that really tell voters what they're voting on?

And this judge said no. Yeah. We had people actually calling in saying, look, I knew specifically I was going in to vote no. And then when I was presented with the copy, I was concerned that I had it wrong and I didn't know what I was voting for. We had that from a caller that called in just a few days ago who was at the polls.

I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on this? We will be taking some calls in the next segment. We got also special guests joining us, and we'll talk a little bit more about Iran.

Some things also happened overnight, some big changes. Once again, And some statements from President Trump. We want to hear from you on all those topics. 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back with more on Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Calls are starting to come in. And if you are in the state of Virginia, we'd love to hear from you as well. Give me a call, 1-800-684-244. 3110 to the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth. I mean, we lived there, so I feel like I can go either way. But, you know, it is when you're talking generally to a 50-state plus the world audience, I think. I understand. I try to be state law in the Commonwealth.

That's how I kind of say it. Very confusing. 1-800-0. I understand. 1-800-684-30110.

We would love to hear from you today. If you are in that district or in one of these districts or not, just give us a call. Because, look, this has implications. As they've started to roll out. The redistrict idea in a lot of states that maybe are happened in Texas, it's happened in California.

Florida's talking about it now. Florida's talking about it now. And listen, again, if you follow the rules of your state and you're the party in charge, but you've got to still do things right. And it starts off with getting the dates right. When do you have to put this before voters?

How far in advance of an election usually is I'd say most laws in the states around the country are going to have some timing requirements.

So you've got to have so much time for this language to be available so that groups like ours and others and news organizations can and even partisan groups can explain to voters. What they're voting on. Then you have sometimes the language gets challenged in court before you even get a vote. We've been part of those cases before where the language was so vague that you could not clearly expect a voter to understand what they were casting a vote on, whether it said yes or no.

So that was something, again, that was big. I'd say here the next part that is, I think, key. Virginia moved their primaries to August.

So there's time. And I know that it feels like we're quickly getting there, but the legal system, though, usually is a turtle slow slow. This is where we have to explain to people because we're used to ACLJ cases that sometimes take two years, three years, five years. It feels like we're still talking about some of these cases for years and years and years to come. The court system isn't the same based on every case.

There's an understanding that this one has to be determined in a very quick amount of time.

Well, and once again, we look at some of these reasons this judge went ahead and said, hey, we are declaring that it is void. This vote because of rules and things within the law and constitution. One of them goes back to something Jordan brought up. On the day of the vote earlier this week, when he even read the question that was being presented. And I'm going to read the question.

And also, this is what the judge said in it: is that. House Bill 1384 violates submission clause of Virginia Constitution, Article 12, Section 1, because the ballot language proposed. submits to the voters a flagrantly flagrantly misleading question to the voters. And because the ballot language did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly, here's what that language was, that this judge called flagrantly misleading and did not accurately describe it. Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

Now, If you had done zero research. Had no idea. You were just going in to vote. And it's a ballot. Uh initiative.

You have no idea what you're voting for. It doesn't say to shift these seats to be more weighted. It says nothing. It's almost poetry. It's so generic language of, and also to restore fairness in upcoming elections is so vague.

Are they meaning Virginia elections, national elections? It is so vague. And that is why this judge says that it is misleading and doesn't accurately describe the proposed amendment. What the proposed amendment is, you're going to allow the House of Delegates and the General Assembly. To change the rules in the middle of the game.

Without a new census. Exactly. Just for partisan purposes. I mean, what other explanation can they have? They can't say, look.

Our state's been voting 70% Democrat. Why do we have this 6'5 makeup? Even that alone would be a partisan argument. They can't because you know why? Their former governor was Republican.

I mean, Republicans win the state, Democrats win this state.

Now they've got a Democrat governor and a Democrat AG.

So they say, oh, we're going to switch it to, and I think, you know, the overreach here versus, even if you look at what Texas is doing and California. It's not nearly. What Virginia tried to do here, which is to go 6'5 lean Democrat makes sense if it leans 52% Democrat. It's a state that has been growing blue, especially in Northern Virginia, because of the bureaucracy that lives there and the government officials that live there for the federal government. But to say that you are going to go from 6-5 to 10-1 in a state that is still a purple state, a state where a Republican can still become the leader of the state, the governor of the state, as Glenn Young showed, and then the next time a Democrat can win.

That's the definition of a purple state, not a state governed by Congress, represented by basically one single party, and then we'll shove all the Republicans into this one district. And the way they did it, Logan, which was this kind of like a fan. And it's if you if you kind of so if you look at it, they all emanate out of Northern Virginia. All these districts start out in Northern Virginia, they go this way, that way, this way, that way, so that you've got the base of voters are the Northern Virginia voters. There's plenty of them to spread out amongst these districts.

So they elect all the Democrats, and then in one district, we'll shove the Republicans in the rural areas.

Well, and when you look at what you brought up, Texas, and while people may even have genuine criticism of what they did in Texas, but when you are specifically saying we are only going to do this just to completely change the system, make it not representative, how is that restoring fairness, as it says in the proposed language? But Texas has 38 members of their congressional delegations. There's 38 House seats in Texas. 24 are Republicans, 13 are Democrats, and there's one vacancy right now.

So let's say you're looking at this and then you look at the election for President. It's pretty close to representative of the state of Texas. When you take how many Republicans and how many Democrats.

Now, they are trying to move this a little bit. But you know what it's not? It's not taking out of the 38 seats, making it 37 to 1. Everyone would look at that and be like, no. This is not fair.

The Republicans there were looking at say, we're going to lose in court. Right. We might be able to pass this, and we're going to spend all this money to get people to vote, to go out and vote in a special election day that they don't usually vote on.

So we're going to have to do that.

So spend millions, do that, and then we're going to go into court and lose. We only got about a minute and a half, but I think let's quickly take James in Virginia. He's an ACLJ champion, some of the gives on a monthly basis.

So I want to make sure champions don't have to hold that long. Go ahead. Thanks. I appreciate it. My point is somewhat redundant.

It was just that the way the liter the language in the bill is stated contains the falsehood within the text. And uh it's not only false, but it's deceptive. Um and so, yeah, I I don't understand how they can formulate that bill without both sides having to look at it and saying this represent this is an accurate representation of What this bill is. That's what courts are now looking at doing. Thankfully, you're the judge that fellowship.

I'm sure there were challenges before people maybe not following us closely that were getting there were this. It was the Virginia Supreme Court said, no, let people vote, then we're going to take a look at it.

So you can try, and some of this is timing purposes based on when you have election day set. And again, it goes down to state election law.

So every state's different. It's hard to make general rules about this. Here's one, though, you can take: the language. is always going to be challenged in court. And the breakdown of how you redistrict is almost always going to be challenged in court.

I think this one has two big problems there, along with all of the procedures it didn't follow in the Commonwealth of Virginia. All right, 10 seconds left. We got a second half hour coming up. Join us on aclj.org, YouTube, Rumble, however, get your podcast. We're there later on, archived again at aclj.org.

We'll be right back in less than a minute. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now, your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome back.

Second half hour Sekulow happening right now. We got a special guest joining us a little bit later in the show. But because of that, we're going to be taking your calls a little earlier than normal.

So 1-800-684-3110. Go get yourself on hold. If you're on hold, we'll get to you. Because in this segment and the next segment, we're going to be taking all the calls we can. Again, at 1-800-684-3110.

We are talking about the redistricting of Virginia. The vote happened. It passed. Of course, we felt it was unfair, and it looks like a judge did as well. Shuts down the certification of this.

Of course, some of you are commenting, and this is what we fight against. We don't like a judge getting involved when the people are voting. But of course, it was a very tight election. And we even had people calling in saying, I wasn't sure which way I was even supposed to vote because the way it was worded. Even though they were told going in, and even though they knew they were supposed to vote no going in, that was the wild part.

They knew they were going to vote no, and they read it and said, is this the thing I was being told if they were telling me about it? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us have gone into the ballot box and felt that way and sat there and reread.

Some sort of plan five or six times, and I am sure I have voted the wrong way occasionally, just based on the fact that these all always seem to be written in a way that is confusing for the American people, for the voter. Right. And when you honestly think about what you're actually voting on in Virginia, you're not voting on the new congressional map. No. You're voting on a congressional ability for them to implement a congressional map that the General Assembly passed.

So it's even you're one step removed from the process. They already passed the map.

So it's not even like the language has to be descriptive of that map. It is just saying, yeah, we're going to allow the General Assembly to change the rules and do something different for this very limited period of time. But they also throw in that language that says it's for fairness, it's for all this, and that the judge called out, said it's flagrantly misleading and did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly. That's problematic no matter what state you're in, no matter what your ballot initiative is. That's also what always catches up people on their ballot initiatives.

When the language is not precise enough that a voter can actually know what they're voting on, it is deceptive in nature to try and get a little bit of a biased outcome where people who have no idea what is on the ballot go in there and say, Yeah oh, this sounds good. This sounds good, not knowing that it's actually going to take your congressional map from 6 to 5 to 10 to 1. Let's go to Nick in Virginia Online 1. He did vote. Let's hear what he had to say about the experience.

Nick, go ahead. Hey, hi, everybody. Yeah, I went and voted, and it was very, very misleading. very confusing. It wasn't clear at all.

Yeah, I think again, this is probably the one of the Top reasons other than the procedural violations with the state law. And some of the state constitution that this is in jeopardy now, so quickly in the courts, you know, a day and a half after passage. And that is because. of how many times we've heard people like Nick and even like us admit There's some words here that as someone been that I've been doing this so long, when I see fairness, I hear Democrats.

Okay, so like I see, because why are you temporarily changing my voting districts for two districts for basically two rounds of the House and maybe one round of the U.S. Senate? You're doing it for fairness. That sounds like something that isn't conservative and Republican and clear to the people, but likes to, it sounds nice. And will it not be fair later?

Like, are you going back to unfair? Obviously, it won't be because they say, listen, we're going to have to change it again anyway.

So if you don't like this one, well, we're going to have to go back anyways and make something that's a little bit more representative of the actual people of Virginia.

So I think here is where you've got a proper situation where voters can be misled, language is unclear, policies and procedures were not followed. And so courts are the appropriate place for action. I'll tell you, the ACLJ right now and our attorneys are looking at the right case to intervene in as we speak. Have already decided on that even by this morning while we're on the air. But I know that that was an active conversation going on last night, late into the evening, and early this morning as these cases came out.

So I do not count out that the ACLJ will be involved here in a variety of ways legally. That being said, we will be taking some calls. I know a lot of you have asked about specifically how the ACLJ will get involved.

Next segment, we're taking your calls, and then we have a special guest joining us in the state of Virginia. Give us a call: 1-800-684-3110. Be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are jammed right now, which is good because we're going to be taking more calls throughout this segment.

A lot of you calling from the state of Virginia.

Some of you, it looks like more than half the calls are from Virginia, but. We're actually going to start off with a call. from North Carolina because Martin is an ACLJ champion. And even on days when I called for Virginia to call. Champions get bumped to the front of the line.

Martin, go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking the call. I want to try and make this Uh simple.

Well, the word disenfranchised has been used a lot with the Save Act and redistricting in Texas and California, Florida and all over the place. Despite all the other legal challenges in Virginia of the vote, Would not the state and/or the federal Supreme Court not allow? It seems there was almost 49% of the people in Virginia that said no, that they could not disenfranchise 49% of the people and just say, We don't care how you feel. Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that what you have to look at, Martin, is every state.

So you can't look at these and go national, even though they involve, obviously, we're talking about federal, you know, congressional districts. Inside those federal congressional districts, it also involves all the state representation, delegates there, and everything else you've got down to the local level.

So you have to look at the state law, the state constitution, and the U.S. Constitution. And you kind of look at all three. And initially, the charge, the easiest ways into court. Are you looking at the state code, state law, the state constitution violations there?

And could this end up in federal court? It could, but it doesn't have to.

So voting issues can end up obviously in the federal courts, and they often have.

Some of that has, we've seen less of an impact of that as the Voting Rights Act has been pulled back because it was in place for so many decades and the automatic reviews by federal courts have been taken back. But at the same time, yes, there are ways, but again, to kind of compile them all, no. Texas has different rules about this than California, than Virginia, and they will all have to be handled separately as cases because they all have different state laws. All right. Thank you, Martin, for calling.

Appreciate it. I want to go to Eric in Virginia. You actually had a pretty good experience voting. Eric, go ahead. Hi.

Thanks for the coverage, by the way. I definitely appreciate you guys going over what we definitely recognized as something that was not right, definitely misleading. Going to the polls nature to bring the whole family. And honestly, the you know, news twisting it as they did. People not really knowing how to vote.

Going out to the poll, we walk up and we see a sign that says vote for fairness and say yes, and right beside it. thankfully, to make sure everybody knew What they were really voting for was a sign that said no and showed what the actual districts would look like. and just how incorrect that question really was. Yeah, so at least someone was out there showing the counter of word fairness. I think, Eric, I think what it does hinge on, and Jordan, we can talk about this as well, is that.

That is what happened at the polling place, at your specific polling place. But. That isn't what was required. Nor is it what the language did.

So the case may be able to, there may have been places that were extremely helpful in trying to showcase this, but at the end of the day, the language did not reflect that. And that is where the legal challenge can take place. And also, as you look at this, we said it could get to the state Supreme Court. We know there is a case Monday. This one could get there very quick.

And what happens after the state Supreme Court rules? Either the Attorney General of Virginia, Uh or The RNC, who has initiated this challenge, will be appealing to the Supreme Court of the United States. In one way or another, the Supreme Court will have a chance to decide if they want to weigh in on this, if they see a way to, if they believe they need to weigh in on this or not. Ultimately, here, I think that these are, again, while we've had the early success in courts, remember we're talking about courts. It's very hard to predict, even in like Virginia, where they do like to follow the rules, how exactly a court's going to come down.

When now you've got both a General Assembly vote, a redistricting, the map put forward, the General Assembly vote, and a constitutional amendment vote by the people, how strictly are they going to hold that to the fire of the state law and then the state of Constitution? I think, of course, it's much tougher not to hold it to the state constitution, but again, the state code, because they're saying this is a temporary move to make the map more fair. We know this is all politics. Uh we know they won't admit that, but we all we know that this is politics in Reaction to Texas first. Then California, but as we explained, those were much more minor moves when you look at the size of the states and the amount of districts they had, and kind of the Republican versus Democrat makeup there.

Virginia, which is still a very purple state. I mean, the Republican governor just leaving, Democrat governor just coming in for the first couple of months with their Democrat AG, who was a bit controversial race, and a state that had six Democrats in the House and five Republicans. And you know what? It wasn't easy for all those five Republicans to get elected, by the way. Those were some close races.

And so the question is: did you really need this redraw to get a Couple more Democrats in the House that were Democrats? Probably not. But now you've caused this con, you may have isolated more conservative voters in the state. Let's go ahead and go to Virginia. Let's go to Luke on line one.

Luke, go ahead. Hi, uh, I just wanted to say something. that uh the current map six five was drawn up by a bipartisan uh committee of Republicans and Democrats. You don't hear that mentioned very often. And the uh the fairness is that on a national level, I asked workers at a booth.

Uh why uh as I was carrying my vote no sign, I said, why are you doing this to us? And they said, well, because we have to get back it Texas and Florida. And if you listen to Obama's commercial on the weekend, He said the same thing, except he said, oh, we need to level the playing field. Besides getting back at Texas and uh to that point exactly where you say that it was the indecom independent commission that drew these maps. That is because that is already in the Constitution of Virginia.

The people of Virginia voted on that.

Now This is trying to say. Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness? And yes, it leaves out, it doesn't say, should the Constitution be amended to allow the General Assembly to bypass the bipartisan districting commission. That would be a more accurate representation. It says, no, just temporarily adopt new congressional districts.

And it says, and then. We go back to Virginia's standard districting process for all future redistricting after 2030. It doesn't tell you the key part of there is that. They actually in the state voted for Fairness. What they would consider fairness, a bipartisan commission.

And now they're being asked to do away with that just for a minute, just temporarily. All right, I want to continue on, trying to get to a couple more calls before we go to break. Let's go to Doug. Doug's been holding for a while. Doug in Colorado, go ahead.

Yeah guys, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. Yeah, the redistricting. I don't understand. This is a very objective thing.

Within a given census, a 10-year period from my understanding, you can redistrict once within that period, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. And it has to do with the movement of people within from one state to another, and then the population that grew in a certain area, that's where you can then redistrict and cut the lines there. It's a very objective thing. This bill is the very essence of gerrymandering.

I don't understand why this is so hard to under hard for people to grasp. They've almost admitted it. I mean, all of the ads, all of that. No one is hiding the truth. If Barack Obama is telling you to vote yes on one way, you could probably assume that he hasn't done a lot of political work, right?

He hasn't been there out there. If he's coming out to say, this is to get back at these other states, these Republicans, okay, this is. Purely political. And you're right. The idea of congressional districts, it's always going to have politics at play because there's Republicans on the and they have to kind of come together, the Democrats and Republicans, and decide.

And one is going to be the majority party in a state that usually has more influence. And so you'll see that. It's really about the population, how many people. And you try to make up this kind of clear makeup of who the people are, income levels, their backgrounds, so that they are similarly situated.

So that people who are similarly situated have a voice that isn't totally Taken apart by these congressional maps and lines. I want to take line five real quick, Jason in Virginia, because this is going to lead into our next segment very well. Jason, go ahead. Uh yes. I know you already touched on this, but as us conservatives or independents that are being silenced, How are if Virginia Supreme Court does not overturn this, would it be able to move federally and would they be able to enact something to where we're not silent?

All right, Jason. I want you to hold on. You can either stay on hold or you can listen on air because we're going to address all of this in the next segment. Will, because we've got a very special guest joining us coming up. That's right.

The former Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, is going to be joining us in the next segment. Stick around. You do not want to miss this. That's right.

So, Jason, stay on hold. We will do our best to get to some more calls. Also, we're going to have an extended conversation with the former AG.

So, we'll do our best to get to more calls, but we will see. 1-800-684-3110, this might be the last time, though, I get to tell you for today. The double the difference drive continues through the end of the month. I want your support right now if you have a way to financially support. And you've been with us for a while.

Maybe you watch this show every day. Maybe you support our legal efforts. All of it is because people like you support it. The only way all of that happens at free, no cost, including our legal work and our media side, is because you donate at aclj.org. We'll be back in just one minute.

Stay tuned. Welcome back to Sekulow. A lot of you are calling in right now. We will see if we have time to get. I don't want to make any promises to anyone that is on hold.

Right now.

Now, there was a question that came in earlier. We're going to address that here in this segment.

So, if you want to stay on hold, feel free. We got eight and a half minutes left. We'll do our best, but no guarantees here. And Will, that's because we have a very special guest joining us. That's right.

We are joined by Ken Cuccinelli, who is the 46th Attorney General of Virginia. Mr. Attorney General, when you see what happened, how quickly that this circuit court was able to jump in on this redistricting and block the certification, how quickly do you think this will go through the court system in the state? You know them well. Very fast.

This is a pure state constitutional issue to address the question of the last caller. It's all decided under the Virginia State Constitution. They are very sensitive to the fact that there's an election. And unfortunately, the last time the Democrats had Three-way control house, senate and governor. They gave us these 45-day elections.

Now, amusingly, they may get hoisted on that little petard here in this case. But it also means that at the August primaries, voting starts in early July. which means that campaigning and candidate qualification has to happen Before that, with some degree of comfort before that.

So the courts know they're in a hurry. We saw the judge and Taswell rush. On the day after the referendum to get his order in place. The Virginia Supreme Court is moving with. As much speed as I ever remember seeing it move.

They have briefing today, they have oral argument on Monday. on the two constitutional challenges, again, state constitutional challenges. that are already in front of the court, both of them very strong challenges. And the yes side is going to have a very difficult time holding on to this win. How quick, Ken, could this move through?

We get a lot of calls about that. You said very quick through the Virginia Supreme Court, and you seem it's going to have a very difficult time there. Is there any chance that other court that we're going to have to look at federal challenges and to try and stop this such a partisan move, which would disenfranchise so many Virginia voters?

So the federal courts the Supreme Court has made clear that partisanship isn't really a basis to overturn anything under federal law.

So this is really a state law fight, in my view. There are some questions about getting rid of minority, majority districts and how that would play out under the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court is considering a Voting Rights Act case right now that could have a big impact on that question. But the Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly have jammed through with no concern for the constitutional rules, this referendum. And now they want to say, oh, look, the vote of the people, the will of the people.

Well, when they lose on any one or all four, of these constitutional challenges, the only people they'll have to blame is themselves. When you look at what this judge out of Taswell County put out, you mentioned it's not just as if it's one or two violations which invalidate what was put forward, but it's a whole page and a half, two pages of specific issues that violated either Virginia Code or the Virginia Constitution with the makeup of the Supreme Court of the state, of the Commonwealth. What I'm not getting into the policy side, but because it is so in your face of violating both constitutional and statutory issues, does it seem like that is something the court would likely invalidate? It's obviously hard to ever predict what a higher court would do, but do you think that the side that wants this invalidated should feel positive about the direction of this? Yeah, if I were a betting man, I would bet on this getting invalidated in the Virginia Supreme Court, and I would take odds to do it.

Um the uh the the brazenness of the violations is such that this could be a 7.0 ruling. The court is split for three Republican, Democrat, but it doesn't act as a particularly political court. As a general matter. Like you see Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Montana, other state Supreme Courts that really. are just outcome determinative.

That's really not necessarily the case in Virginia. It hasn't been historically, including with this court. I think they're going to take this straight up on the law. And as I said, I think that some of the violations the Democrats have pulled off here are so brazen. that the m the most partisan judges would blush At ruling in their favor here.

Yeah, kind of a final question. Could you see this completely backfiring on Democrats? Not just getting the amendment, but through, but in whatever congressional districts ultimately people are choosing primary candidates for in August and really July when early voting starts, could this upend kind of the Democrats' hold, which right now is one seat, but backfire and kind of encourage Virginia conservatives and Republicans to show up and vote and say, hey, we can make a difference. We can win these races.

So I think I definitely think there could be some of that motivation, but they're not stupid in how they've drawn this map. And we haven't talked about that challenge. Virginia has a compactness and contiguity provision of its constitution. And if this map doesn't violate that, then no map does.

So we'll see. But in a midterm with a Republican President, and look, President Trump's good at many things, but one of those things is motivating his opponents. And he really pokes them in the eye and they show up.

So it makes midterms really tough.

So I don't see upsetting the expectations if this map were to this new map were to stay in place. At the same time, I do think The five Republican incumbents there now could all hold their seats under the current map, even Jen Kiggins down there, not conservative, but in the 2nd District of Virginia Beach. You all are familiar with that territory. It's Republican enough. And by the way, It defeated, it voted against.

the referendum down in that part of Virginia.

So that's a good sign as well. All right. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are wrapping up today's show. We are running out of time.

But thank you so much for spending some time with our audience. I think it's important to always hear from great officials and people who have had this kind of experience. We've had to follow it along, see where this goes next. I think it's going to happen pretty quickly. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, that's going to do it for today. But we do have one minute left. And I want to encourage you in that minute, we haven't spent a lot of time talking about our double the difference drive today. We spent a lot of time getting into the weeds and what's happening in the state and the Commonwealth of Virginia. But we're going to keep moving on.

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