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Virginia voters delivered a major blow to Republicans on Tuesday by approving a constitutional amendment that will give Democrats up to four additional seats in the House of Representatives. Democratic lawmakers in the commonwealth proposed the new map to level the playing field after President Donald Trump pressed red states like Texas to enact fresh partisan gerrymanders in advance of the 2026 midterms. Virginia previously used a nonpartisan committee to draw its congressional districts, but voters decided to fight fire with fire by adopting the new map, with its 10–1 Democratic advantage. The result will more than offset the GOP’s gains from this year’s unprecedented mid-decade red-state gerrymanders and further diminish its chances of holding on to the House.

On this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed Tuesday’s vote with Madiba Dennie, deputy editor of Balls and Strikes and author of The Originalism Trap. They explored the Supreme Court’s role in the current redistricting wars, the virtues of constitutional hardball, and the still-unresolved legal fate of Virginia’s amendment. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: There was a lot of Republican bellyaching this week over these results. But didn’t the Supreme Court pretty much roll out the red carpet for this kind of electoral hardball with the decision in Rucho v. Common Cause?

Madiba Dennie: It really did. This is a great example of playing gerrymandering games and winning gerrymandering prizes. In Rucho, the Supreme Court said it didn’t think the........

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