Virginia Vows to Fight Court Ruling Striking Down Democrats’ Map

Virginia’s Democratic leaders are promising to fight the state Supreme Court decision to block their redistricting referendum.

Virginia’s leadership is preparing to fight its state Supreme Court ruling Friday overturning Democrats’ redistricting referendum.

In a statement, Democratic state Attorney General Jay Jones called out the court’s decision as “putting politics over the rule of law.”

“This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every corner of the Commonwealth, and it fuels the growing fears across our nation about the state of our democracy,” Jones said. “My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”

Senator Tim Kaine criticized the timing of the state’s Supreme Court ruling, saying, “If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots.

“The U.S. Supreme Court eviscerates the Voting Rights Act in a lawsuit brought by a January 6 extremist and Southern states race to craft backroom deals disenfranchising minority voters and candidates. Meanwhile Virginia voters choose to stand up against national disenfranchisement only to see their votes cast into the trash by a 4–3 ruling,” Kaine added.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states across the country continue to gerrymander following President Trump’s demand for mid-decade redistricting and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week. Most of those actions took or are taking place without state referendums, basically forcing through new congressional maps that disenfranchise Democrats and Black Americans.

One polling expert, Zachary Donnini of VoteHub, projects that barring any more court orders, nine Republican-led states will have successfully redrawn their maps this year, as opposed to one Democratic-led state. Thanks to a conservative-controlled Supreme Court, the GOP is stacking the deck and denying Black people representation.

MAGA Congressman Accused of Beating and Burning His Ex-Wife

Representative Max Miller has been accused of physical abuse by his ex-wife, the daughter of a sitting Republican senator.

Trump-endorsed GOP Representative Max Miller has been accused of physically abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno—daughter of GOP Senator Bernie Moreno—for years. Miller has denied the allegations.

Court filings obtained by the Daily Mail revealed that Emily is attempting to change their custody situation due to Miller’s “dangerous physical behavior” while their 2-year-old daughter was present. Moreno stated that Miller hit her during a custody exchange with their daughter in February, bruising Moreno’s arm and torso, as shown in photos obtained by the Mail. Moreno also claims that Miller threw a pot of boiling water on her in 2024 while their daughter was present.

Moreno also told the court that Miller “regularly speaks to me in an inappropriate, aggressive and demeaning manner, which is not in the best interest of our child.”

Miller and Moreno separated in 2024 and divorced in 2025.

Miller has faced similar accusations in the past. His ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, 49, alleged that he pushed her against a wall and slapped her after she accused him of cheating in 2020.

Miller blames his congressional colleague and former father-in-law for his current legal issues, and is framing his ex-wife as “malicious” due to her alleged bipolar diagnosis.

“It is unfortunate that @berniemoreno continues to fund and enable his daughter’s malicious campaign to ruin my life despite his knowledge of her mental health issues,” he wrote Friday on X. “Bernie, this must be distracting from your job. These antics harm your own grandchild. Anytime you want to put a stop to this, you can.”

Senator Moreno has yet to publicly respond.

Samuel Alito Quoted Fake Data in His Ruling Gutting Voting Rights Act

Alito cited data provided by the Department of Justice that used faulty methodology.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito relied on misleading data to support his ruling decimating the Voting Rights Act, The Guardian reported Friday.

In the court’s majority opinion, Alito claimed that the kind of racial discrimination that had prompted the creation of the Voting Rights Act no longer existed.

“Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana,” Alito wrote.

He was citing a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the Department of Justice, which relied on a statistical methodology that is not preferred by experts in determining statewide voter turnout. The brief calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. This is generally considered a suboptimal method because it includes people who can’t vote, including noncitizens and people with felony convictions.

Experts typically prefer to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population, or the eligible population. Using this methodology, The Guardian determined that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

Using the DOJ’s data, Alito also elided the fact that the racial voter gap is actually widening. In the three most recent presidential elections since Barack Obama was on the ballot, Black voter turnout has trailed white voter turnout, according to The Guardian’s analysis. In Louisiana, the disparity grew wider between 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Kevin Morris, a researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that Alito’s claim is “simply not factual,” and that the turnout gap had “exploded” over the last three years.

Michael McDonald, a leading expert on voter turnout who teaches........

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