Virginia joins gerrymander war.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Tuesday, Virginians voted 51.5%–48.5% to approve a constitutional amendment allowing the state to redraw its congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. The new map will shift several districts in Democrats’ favor, potentially turning the current 6–5 split to a 10–1 advantage. The referendum comes amid a broader mid-decade redistricting push by Democratic- and Republican-controlled states that began last summer in Texas, and it is facing a challenge in the Virginia Supreme Court.
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On our most recent episode, Isaac, Ari, and Kmele discuss the Virginia redistricting vote — and the gerrymandering war that surrounds it. Plus, a 30,000-foot view of the political landscape: Is Trump pivoting for the midterms? How are voters responding to the war and the economy? Are any cabinet members on the way out? Will Kmele finally have something to complain about?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:08.4 | Tangle. |
| 0:10.2 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. |
| 0:31.1 | I'm your host today, senior editor Will Kayback. Today we're going to be diving into the redistricting vote that just took place on Tuesday in Virginia, |
| 0:39.4 | where voters seem to have approved a mid-decade redistricting plan that is expected to significantly shift the state's congressional districts in Democrats' favor, |
| 0:49.9 | potentially turning a current six to five Democratic advantage into a 10 to one advantage. |
| 0:56.3 | Now, there are still some legal challenges pending that could upend the result. |
| 1:00.3 | We're going to get into that a little bit more later. |
| 1:02.3 | But for now, it does look like Virginia Democrats will be successful in implementing this plan. |
| 1:08.4 | So we're going to take stock of what this vote means, how it fits into the |
| 1:11.8 | broader gerrymandering wars that we've seen break out over the past year or so, and how it could |
| 1:17.0 | affect the 2026 midterms and beyond. We're really excited to have today's take be written by |
| 1:23.2 | our associate editor, Russell Nystrom, making his My Take debut. |
| 1:32.9 | Russell's a Virginia resident and someone who has been following this referendum really closely. |
| 1:36.1 | So he's got an on-the-ground perspective to share with you all. |
| 1:38.7 | And we're really looking forward to featuring his voice today. |
| 1:46.2 | Before we get into it, unfortunately, we have two corrections from yesterday's edition to share. Both of them came in the On This Day in History section, which is a newer section that we've rolled out, and these |
| 1:51.2 | corrections are definitely a note for us to be extra attentive in our fact-checking process in some |
| 1:56.0 | of these new sections. But the first one was that we referred to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a novel |
| 2:02.7 | when it is in fact a nonfiction science narrative. Second, we misidentified Pete McCloskey as a |
| 2:10.0 | U.S. Senator from California when he was in fact a U.S. representative. Both of these errors, |
| 2:16.2 | again, very unfortunately, were missed in our fact-checking |
... |
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