Less than 24 hours after one of the most gerrymandered redistricting maps ever narrowly passed in a ballot measure fraught with legal issues, Virginia Judge Jack Hurley blocked the state from using the new congressional map. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones plans to appeal the ruling IMMEDIATELY. The Virginia state Supreme Court could soon get involved. Will the gerrymandering issue be resolved before the midterms? The Sekulow team discusses the judge’s decision, President Trump’s accusations of a rigged election, the ACLJ’s fight to preserve election integrity – and much more.
SPEAKER 01 :
We got breaking news.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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 in studio. Jordan Sekulow in studio. 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, 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 1-800-684-3110 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?
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. So what we get is this out of the circuit court of Tazewell 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 yesterday. in virginia because of a litany of uh of invalidation 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 you know state code you know again
SPEAKER 05 :
even if you live in Virginia, you’re not going to know all of these off the top of your head, but involving the 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 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 the republic it’s not good for the commonwealth of virginia voters or it’s not fair it was it was just straight up saying this violates our state law and constitution 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
SPEAKER 04 :
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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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. 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 going to 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 and, of course, it’s 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 going to 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.org slash double. 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 at a six. We got five open right now at 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110. Get your voice heard today on the air. Welcome back to Secular. 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, 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 you 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 a little bit. Of course, the day before was when the vote was happening. And that was for the what we feel is the improper redistricting of the state of Virginia. Really would change, Will, the full landscape of of this state to take it from a purple state.
SPEAKER 04 :
historically purple state for the last probably two decades to now being completely controlled by one 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 because right that’s what it currently is because kamala harris won the state by about 52 percent 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 one Democrat advantage for the congressional delegation. So taking out the seats of these, these Republican seats and giving it to the Democrat party to try and tip the balance of power in the house of representatives in 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 going to 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.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, hey, thanks for taking 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?
SPEAKER 05 :
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 of Democrats have spent on a wasted effort. Which we’ll 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, you say, OK, 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 10-1. congressional map, I mean, that’s worth the millions for the Democrat Party in this upcoming election. And so they had to weigh that and 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 the way they’re put forward, which commonly go through a long process. Usually the language goes through a process in certification and then the language itself can sometimes be litigated to make sure voters understand what exactly 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 uh right when the census comes out we’re just doing this to kind of get things in order now and and make things more fair uh 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 that tight they called it so quickly
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. That I felt like I didn’t even look at the percentage. I just assumed. It didn’t need like a super majority.
SPEAKER 05 :
It just needed a popular. It was clear it was going to pass. The question was now. The question is now is 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.
SPEAKER 04 :
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. Yes. 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 going to 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. 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.
SPEAKER 05 :
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. It doesn’t matter where they lean left or right to say, you know what? Hands off that. This is not right. You guys, you want to do this vote? There’s ways you can do it. This is not the way to do it.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ve never seen really a more blatant response from people on the other side specifically saying that this is a politically motivated moment. They don’t even have an excuse. You have most of the people voting for this knowingly and wantingly to make their state less representative of the actual populace. Now, of course, their response is, well, this is what happens when conservatives started doing this in Texas. And now there’s Florida is on a lot of states that are starting to roll out potential for these redistricting. Is it blanket? 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 is, hey, essentially an eye for an eye. If. If Texas can do it, so can we on the other side.
SPEAKER 05 :
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. Because these all come out of the general assemblies that the state sends. So you have to survive that first. In this court, that’s why it’s in the circuit court, Tazewell County is saying, listen, this is violating our state statutes and our state constitution. This is not about the U.S. 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, we had people actually calling in saying, look, I know 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’ve 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 Seculo. 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. 1-800-684-3110 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 mean, you know… I try to be respectful.
SPEAKER 05 :
I still say it’s state law in the Commonwealth. That’s how I kind of say it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Very confusing. 1-800-684-3110. 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… It’s happened in Texas.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s happened in California. Florida’s talking about it. 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 you know 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 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. I know that it feels like we’re quickly getting there, but the legal system, though, usually is a turtle’s feet.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is where we have to explain to people.
SPEAKER 05 :
Remember, when it comes to election laws, they move quick.
SPEAKER 01 :
ACLJ cases that sometimes take… Two years, three years, five years. 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.
SPEAKER 04 :
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 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 initiative, you have no idea what you’re voting for. It doesn’t say to shift these seats, to be more weighted.
SPEAKER 01 :
It says nothing. Almost nothing.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is 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
SPEAKER 05 :
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 a Republican. I mean, Republicans win the state, Democrats win the 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 Youngkin showed, and then the next time a Democrat can win. That’s the definition of a purple state, not a state governed by, in 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, is this kind of like a fan? And 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.
SPEAKER 04 :
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 delegation. So 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 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, when it’s not, it’s not taking, uh, out of the 38 seats, making it 37 to one, everyone would look at that and be like, no, this is not fair.
SPEAKER 05 :
We’re going to lose in court. We might be able to pass this and we’re going to look, 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 it’s been millions do that. And then we’re going to win the court and lose.
SPEAKER 01 :
We only got about a minute and a half, but I think let’s quickly take James in Virginia. He’s an ACLJ champion, someone that gives on a monthly basis. I want to make sure champions don’t have to hold that long. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thanks. I appreciate it. My point is somewhat redundant. It was just that the way the language in the bill is stated contains the falsehood within the text. And it’s not only false, but it’s deceptive. And so, yeah, I don’t understand how they can formulate that bill without both sides having to look at it and saying this is an accurate representation of of what this bill is.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that’s what courts are now looking at doing. Thankfully, you had a judge that felt the same way. I’m sure there were challenges before. People were maybe not following as closely. There were. It was the Virginia Supreme Court said, no, let people vote, and 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 is 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 they didn’t follow in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, 10 seconds left. We’ve got a second half hour coming up. Join us on ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble, however you get your podcasts. We’re there. Later on, archived again at ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back in less than a minute.
SPEAKER 02 :
keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 05 :
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 they were telling me about?
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right, and when you honestly think about what you’re actually voting on in Virginia, you’re not voting on the new congressional map. You’re voting on the ability for them to implement a congressional map that the General Assembly passed. So it’s even your 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 a little bit of a biased outcome where people who have no idea what is on the ballot go in there and say 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s go to Nick in Virginia on Line 1. He did vote. Let’s hear what he had to say about the experience. Nick, go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hey, hi, everybody. Yeah, I went and voted, and it was very, very misleading, very confusing. It wasn’t clear at all.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, this is probably 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 that, There’s some words here that I’ve been doing this so long. When I see fairness, I hear Democrats. Because why are you temporarily changing my voting 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 or Republican and clear to the people, but it sounds nice.
SPEAKER 04 :
And will it not be fair? fair later?
SPEAKER 05 :
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, 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. 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. They may 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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 from the state of Virginia. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Be right back. Seculo 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.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, thank you for taking my call. I’m going to try and make this simple. 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 uh things there was almost 49 of the people in virginia that say no that they could not disenfranchise 49 of the people and just say we don’t care how you feel yeah i mean i think that what you have to look at martin is every state so you can’t look at these and go nationally even though they involve uh obviously we’re talking about federal you know congressional districts
SPEAKER 05 :
inside those federal congressional districts it also involves you know all the state representation delegates there and 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 all three and initially the charge the the the easiest ways into court are 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. Thanks for the coverage, by the way. I definitely appreciate you guys going over, you know, what we definitely recognized as something that was not right, definitely misleading. Going to the polls, made sure 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, you know, we walk up and we see a sign that says vote for fairness and say yes 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
So at least someone was out there showing the counter of word fairness.
SPEAKER 04 :
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 or the RNC, who has initiated this challenge, will be appealing to the Supreme Court of the United States.
SPEAKER 05 :
In one way or another, the Supreme Court will have a chance to decide if they want to weigh in on this, 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, 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 a 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. We know they won’t admit that, but 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 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 may have isolated more conservative voters in the state.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s go ahead and go to Virginia. Let’s go to Luke on line one. Luke, go ahead.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hi. Uh, I just wanted to say that, uh, the current map six, five was, uh, 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 on a national level. Uh, I asked, uh, 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 at 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 Florida.
SPEAKER 04 :
To that point exactly where you say that it was the 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 now 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, I want to continue on, try to get to a couple more calls before we go to break. Let’s go to Doug. Doug’s been on hold for a while. Doug in Colorado, go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, guys, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. Yeah, 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 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… This bill is the very essence of gerrymandering. I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to grasp.
SPEAKER 01 :
They’ve almost admitted it.
SPEAKER 05 :
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 can probably assume that he hasn’t done a lot of political work, right? He hasn’t been 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 republicans and decide and one is going to be the majority party in a state that usually has a 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes, so… I know y’all already touched on this, but as us conservatives or independents that are being silenced, Howard, if the 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 silenced?
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 04 :
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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 04 :
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.
SPEAKER 07 :
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 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 in Tazewell 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.
SPEAKER 05 :
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 we’re going to have to look at federal challenges to try and stop such a partisan move which would disenfranchise so many Virginia voters?
SPEAKER 07 :
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 and 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, uh, this referendum. And now they want to say, Oh look, the vote of the people, the will of the people. Well, uh, w when they lose on any one or all four, of these constitutional challenges, the only people they’ll have to blame is themselves.
SPEAKER 04 :
When you look at what this judge out of Tazewell 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. 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?
SPEAKER 07 :
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. 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 that the most partisan judges would blush at ruling in their favor here.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah kind of a final question could you see this completely backfiring on Democrats not just that 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 to be could this up end kind of the democrats uh hold which right now is one seat but uh but backfire and kind of encourage uh virginia conservatives and republicans to show up and vote and say hey we can make a difference we can win these races so i definitely think there could be some of that motivation but they’re not stupid in how they’ve drawn this map
SPEAKER 07 :
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 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 second district of Virginia Beach. You all are familiar with that territory. And 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
SPEAKER 05 :
And kind of follow it along. See where this goes next. I think it’s going to happen pretty quickly.
SPEAKER 01 :
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’ve 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. We’re going to have a lot of new content tomorrow and, of course, next week. But right now, this is one of the last days. We are really towards the end here. We’re pushing towards the final week of the Double the Difference drive. Next week, I have a specialty week coming for you, but this is really the last of the traditional double the difference drive. You can be a part of it today. Any gift is doubled. If you’ve ever heard me explain it before, that is because other ACLJ members, ACLJ champions, ACLJ donors say, hey, during this month, I will unlock a pledge. And collectively, that pledge rate could be very, very high. So if we ever hit that limit, I’ll let you know. But right now, Essentially, I mean, it is not unlimited, but it is theoretically unlimited unless we have some major, major donations, you know, seven-figure-plus donations. I want you to come in right now and support the work of the ACLJ. The mass majority of people that donate to the ACLJ, they create the mass majority of the work here. Give $25, $50, $75. And when you give during these special months, like today, during the Double the Difference Drive, your donation is doubled. It is matched completely dollar for dollar. It goes twice as far in our fight and are here on the broadcast. Make your tax deductible donation today and have it doubled. ACLJ.org.
