Referendum would let voters call their shot, guest columnist Jim Spencer writes.
by Jim Spencer | Virginia Mercury
Virginia lawmakers have advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts mid-decade. The proposed map would contain 10 Democratic-leaning districts and one reliably Republican one.
On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court decided to let plans for a statewide redistricting referendum in April proceed, as the justices prepare for an emergency hearing on a lower court ruling that blocked the initiative on procedural grounds.
Republicans in the legislature who sued to block the referendum and convinced a Circuit Court judge in rural Tazewell County to do so, continue to cry partisanship most foul.
But the latest economic reports by Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic and Policy Analysis make a strong case for voters to decide whether the redistricting plan is the right move.
The reports show the state losing thousands of good-paying federal jobs because of cuts ordered by President Donald Trump.
The job losses come as Virginia residents simultaneously face higher living costs because foreign exporters and American importers are starting to pass along the costs of Trump’s tariffs to consumers.
Virginia lost more than 23,000 federal civilian jobs in 2025, Dragas Center economist Vinod Agarwal told me. Those jobs paid better than private sector jobs. With benefits factored in, each brought about twice the economic impact as a private sector job.
Foreign exporters absorbed only 4% of tariff costs, Agarwal added. “Ninety-six percent are absorbed by Americans.”
Republicans, who just lost control of all statewide offices and both chambers of the General Assembly, have not challenged any of Trump’s policies. Virginia’s five Republicans in Congress have voted lockstep for whatever Trump wanted. Then, as the president’s policies hurt the people they claim to represent, these Republicans remained silent.
Virginia Supreme Court justices will decide to let Virginia voters — not Donald Trump sycophants — determine the future. The U.S. Supreme Court has already blessed congressional redistricting plans in Texas and California.
Virginia Republicans now trying to block their fellow citizens from deciding whether to allow a midterm redistricting amendment were silent when Trump ordered Republican states to break with longstanding practice and redraw congressional districts to favor GOP candidates years before they normally would.
Trump issued his order to maintain control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections as his popularity plummets and a Republican majority is at serious risk.
Five Republican-run states have dutifully redrawn districts as Trump ordered to increase Republican representation. More will likely follow if the U.S. Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act in a decision expected soon.
Without a referendum to allow a midterm redistricting, residents of Virginia will continue to find themselves betrayed by people whose job is to represent them.
Here is how the Dragas Center summed up Virginia’s economy in 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term:
“(W)e now have sufficient evidence that economic activity has slowed in Virginia. The civilian labor force and the number of individuals reporting they are at work has fallen in 2025. As the labor force has declined, the number of unemployed rose, leading to an increase in the statewide unemployment rate. Weekly continued unemployment claims, which capture individuals who are unemployed, looking for work, but have not found work, have been higher for each week of 2025 when compared to 2024.”
The Dragas Center findings show job losses battered two of the state’s biggest economic engines, Northern Virginia and Southeastern Virginia. From November 2024 to November 2025, the state lost more than 23,500 federal civilian jobs, Dragas reported.
Every Republican who supposedly serves Virginians in the U.S. House of Representatives endorsed those job cuts by supporting Trump’s mass government layoffs and tariff plans. Crazily, this includes the two Republican members who represent Southeastern Virginia, 1st District Rep. Rob Wittman and 2nd District Rep. Jen Kiggans.
Each voted for economic policies that, according to data cited by the Dragas Center, have now cost their Hampton Roads constituents about 6,500 federal civilian jobs. The region also lost 3,800 manufacturing jobs, 1,400 leisure and hospitality jobs and 500 retail jobs, the Dragas Center said. Individual employment in Hampton Roads declined 2.9%, from 857,301 to 832,810, the Center reported.
This raises serious questions about where Wittman’s and Kiggans’ loyalties lie. Do they lie with Trump’s Republican party or the Virginians they swore to serve?
The same question must be asked of every other Republican House member from Virginia who refused to challenge Trump’s destructive economic policies. But there are other policies that are just as harmful.
Consider Medicaid cuts that will make it harder for poor Virginians to get health care. Then, think about the permanent tax breaks for the richest Americans that will blow up the federal deficit. Finally, review the tens of billions of middle-income and low-income tax dollars that Republicans voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security’s increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement operations.
Almost no evidence indicates that Virginians ever voted to pay for an ill-trained domestic army that violently and illegally detains American citizens and legal residents because they have dark skin. Nor did Virginians vote to let immigration and Border Patrol agents ignore the legal rights of undocumented immigrants or to let government forces attack, injure and kill American citizens who protest the agents’ violent behavior.
Ignoring constituents to side with Donald Trump is now a political survival mechanism for Republicans, College of William and Mary government professor John McGlennon told me.
“The calculation (by Virginia’s Republican U.S. House members) is: ‘I’ve got to win renomination,’” McGlennon said. “If you get on the wrong side of Trump, he will find someone to run against you in a primary.”
Without Trump’s authoritarian intervention across the country, Virginia could have waited for its normal time frame of 10 years to redistrict. But at this point, this state and this country badly need a Congress that serves as a check and balance against executive overreach, not a rubber stamp for it.
