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 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 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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by Nathaniel Rakich | Apr 1, 2026 | 2026 election, ballots, Constitution, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Donald Trump, elections, Mail-In Ballot, Mail-in Voting, midterms, News, Postal Service, Save America Act, United States Postal Service, USPS, Voting
President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a second executive order on elections, this one giving the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented oversight over who is voting by mail, a move experts and state election officials said will quickly draw legal challenges. The order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” says that states can send the U.S.
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by Brad Reed | Mar 25, 2026 | Article, ICE, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 24, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Right-wing podcaster and former Trump White House political strategist Steve Bannon on Monday said that President Donald Trump’s deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports was a preview of what could be expected later this year at polling places across the country.During a Monday episode of his “War Room” podcast, Bannon said that the Trump administration “can use what’s happening with these ICE [agents] at the airports, we can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”
BANNON (Epstein’s PR Guy): “We can use ICE helping out at airports as a test run to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterms.”P.S. — Non-citizens don’t vote and they know it pic.twitter.com/hPFaI9Ue9z— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 24, 2026
Bannon’s guest, MAGA influencer Mike Davis, agreed that ICE should be sent to polling places during this year’s midterms to ensure no undocumented immigrants are casting ballots.
“If you’re an American citizen, you should be happy ICE is there,” Davis said. “So you don’t have illegal aliens canceling out your vote.”
There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants vote in any significant numbers in US elections.
As The New York Times reported in January, the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s second term has been conducting a wide-ranging review of voter registration data and so far has found almost no evidence of non-citizens voting in past elections.
“Out of 49.5 million voter registrations that have been checked, the department referred around 10,000 cases to Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation of noncitizenship, or roughly .02% of
by Maximillian Alvarez | Mar 23, 2026 | elections, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Trump, video, Voting Rights
With the public outraged over the US-Israeli war with Iran, the Epstein Files coverup, and a cost-of-living crisis, even President Donald Trump’s base of supporters is fracturing, and Republicans are fixing to get slammed in the upcoming midterm elections. Perhaps that explains why Trump and MAGA Republicans are obsessively focused on attacking voting rights, taking federal control over the electoral system, and preemptively casting doubt on the midterm election results before the elections even happen. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, about MAGA Republicans’ effort to rig the midterms—and what can be done to stop it.
Guest:
Ari Berman is Mother Jones‘ national voting rights correspondent. He’s the author of the new book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, as well as Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
Additional links/info:
Ari Berman, Mother Jones, “The world is on fire. Gas prices are rising. Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote”
Ari Berman, Mother Jones, “The GOP’s “show us your papers” bill is the latest effort to help Trump take over elections”
Credits:
Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to the Real News Network Podcast. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. Between the federal government’s coverup of the Epstein Files, President Trump’s catastrophic decision to plunge the US into a war with Iran, an
