by Jake Johnson | Apr 22, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 22, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a referendum that’s likely to give Democrats four additional seats in the US House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, a key victory in a gerrymandering war launched last year by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they pushed back against a president who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said following Tuesday’s vote. “As we watched other states go along with those demands without voter input, Virginians refused to let that stand. We responded the right way: at the ballot box.”
The ballot measure, which was approved by a margin of fewer than 100,000 votes, allows the Virginia constitution to 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.”
The new congressional map that Virginia lawmakers approved earlier this year—prior to putting the ballot question before voters—would aggressively redraw the state’s district lines to give Democrats eight safe districts. Two other districts would be competitive but Democratic-leaning, leaving Republicans with just one favorable district. Common Cause Virginia, an advocacy group that does not favor partisan gerrymandering, called the new Virginia maps “a proportionate response” to GOP redistricting in other states, including Texas.
Eric Holder, the former US attorney general and chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in response to Tuesday’s result that “the mere existence of this special election stands in stark contrast to the gerrymanders forced on constituents in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina
by Daniel Hunter | Apr 19, 2026 | CPAC, Donald Trump, elections, Hungary, JD Vance, News, Victor Orban
On Sunday night, the streets of Budapest were filled. Tens of thousands of Hungarians poured into the streets along the Danube River, singing folk songs and waving flags celebrating the end of Viktor Orbán’s rule. A young man named Mark Szekeres, his face painted with the colors of the Hungarian flag, told CBC News: “This election was about a clash of civilizations. Either you belong in a Western…
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by Mike Ludwig | Apr 10, 2026 | 2026 election, 2026 midterms, AIPAC, Dark Money, Democratic Party, Democrats, DNC, elections, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, midterms, News, Palestine, west bank
Democratic Party leaders had a chance this week to push back against Israel’s violent expansionism and the Israel lobby’s massive political spending in the United States. Once again, Democrats chose instead to punt the issue despite plummeting public support for Israel, both among their base and the wider U.S. public, ahead of the midterms. At a meeting in New Orleans on April 9…
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by Nora Loreto | Apr 8, 2026 | Avi Lewis, Canada, elections, Gaza, New Democracy Party, News Analysis, Politics
Canada’s left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) has elected a new leader, someone whose campaign drew comparisons to the politics and style of U.S. figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani. On March 29, the NDP elected Avi Lewis on the first round of balloting with 55 percent of the vote in his first successful political campaign. The NDP was decimated in the…
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by Marjorie Cohn | Apr 8, 2026 | 2026 Elections, 2026 midterms, Absentee ballots, Discrimination, elections, equal protection clause, midterms, News Analysis, Supreme Court, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court appears poised to deal a severe blow to the fundamental right to vote in two cases this term. Louisiana v. Callais threatens the right to vote free from racial discrimination and Watson v. Republican National Committee will test the right to have your absentee ballots counted. On August 1, 2025, when the Supreme Court asked the parties in Callais to brief the issue of…
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