Legacy media in context-free freakout over ‘Democratic power grab’ in Virginia

By Zachary Roth

UNITED STATES - MARCH 31: A sign urges early voters to vote yes on the Virginia redistricting referendum at the Ellen M. Bozman Government Center in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. Early voting continues across the state for Virginia's redistricting ballot referendum held to counter the Texas redistricting for the 2026 midterm elections. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

The Washington Post is deeply concerned that Virginia’s vote Tuesday to allow a new congressional map is a “Democratic power grab” that “plunges America deeper into the gerrymandering abyss.”

It’s weird, because when Texas Republicans gerrymandered their state, in direct response to pressure from President Donald Trump, the Post was quick to lecture us that everything was fine, the move was “not a threat to democracy,” and Democrats should stop with their “freakout.”

OK — we already knew that the Post has gone full accommodationist for the Trump administration. But other legacy media have covered the Virginia election in a similar vein. 

“Democrats once loathed gerrymandering. Now they’re pushing for it,” was the headline of a New York Times piece Monday on the Virginia vote. 

Wow, those hypocritical Democrats. The party’s efforts in Virginia and last fall in California, the piece explains, were driven by its voters’ “desire for an immediate political advantage in the never-give-an-inch Trump era.”

The reality is that both initiatives were responses to Trump-driven GOP gerrymanders in Texas and elsewhere — neither was being contemplated before Trump kicked things off. That’s something even prominent conservatives have admitted.

But that reality was downplayed by the Times as merely Democratic spin, no more likely to be true than the Republican counter-argument.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom of California framed the redistricting push as a response to Trump’s redistricting gambit in Texas,” the story reported, adding that Republicans, “for their part, have cast the push for a new map as a Democratic power grab.”

Meanwhile, CNN gave a platform to GOP operative Scott Jennings to denounce the redistricting referendum as based on “lies.”

“It’s a complete joke, everybody knows it, and there’s a reason that all these national Democrats and all their money came into Virginia,” Jennings complained. “Because, you know,  they don’t really care about the people of Virginia. They just care about power.”

Democracy Docket’s coverage of Virginia has taken a different approach — making clear from the start the obvious and crucial point that the redraw is an effort to level the national playing field in response to Trump’s scheme. 

We’ll leave you with an exchange from the comments section of an AP story on Virginia’s vote. 

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.