SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It is Thursday, 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 or tune in right now. Welcome to the show. Will Haynes is in the studio, and Jordan Sekulow is in the studio. We have a special guest coming towards the end of the show because eyes are on Virginia. A lot of you were asking yesterday, and 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, "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. A judge stepped in in Virginia and has blocked the certification of this redistricting. Jordan's here, Will's here. What does this mean?

Jordan Sekulow: 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. This judge put out about a five-page order, a final judgment that is blocking the certification of the vote that took place. This 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 in Virginia because of a litany of invalidation reasons. They have violated repeatedly both the Virginia Constitution as well as state code with the way this went through.

Will Haynes: It starts off with state code. Even if you live in Virginia, you're not going to know these off the top of your head, but they involve the House Joint Resolutions and the Governor's special sessions back into 2024. Then it goes into the Virginia Constitution, Article 11, Section 1. There's been no ensuing general election of the House of Delegates, and that cannot occur until 2027. You can't do that until then.

Again, Virginia Code 30-13. It's not like he was just spouting off reasons why this isn't right because it's not good for the Republic or it's not fair. It was 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.

Jordan Sekulow: I think we should, as we tell people, keep watching. We're going to get into that breakdown of 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.

Logan Sekulow: 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?" We've been talking a lot about judges. We'll break all that down.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take your calls on this. Let's reset just a little bit because those of you who are just 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 to converse with like-minded and 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, 12:00 to 1:00 PM Eastern Time.

Jordan Sekulow: The main topic of the day, yesterday we discussed it a little bit, and of course, the day before was when the vote was happening. That was for what we feel is the improper redistricting of the state of Virginia. This would really change the full landscape of the state. It would take it from a purple state—historically purple state for the last probably two decades—to now being completely controlled by one party.

Will Haynes: Right, it would be a 6 to 5 split in favor of Democrats when it comes to congressional delegation which, in reality, is one of the more fair maps probably because Kamala Harris won the state by about 52%. If you look at that, 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.

Jordan Sekulow: They would then take it to a 10 to 1 Democrat advantage for the congressional delegation, taking out the seats of these Republican seats and giving it to the Democratic Party to try and tip the balance of power in the House of Representatives in Congress.

Will Haynes: Now, when you start to look at this, 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. It isn't just saying what you did was a purely partisan exercise 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.

Logan Sekulow: 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.

Benjamin: 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?

Will Haynes: 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, the Democrats have spent on a wasted effort which will go right back to the exact same congressional map. Some of that is politics. 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 and you say, "We're willing to take the legal challenges that come to see if we can flip from a 6-5 Democrat-leaning state to a 10 to 1 congressional map," that's worth the millions for the Democrat Party in this upcoming election. They had to weigh that when weighing what would happen in court.

Logan Sekulow: 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. They do it 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 goes through a long process.

Usually the language goes through a process and certification, and then that language itself can sometimes be litigated to make sure voters understand what exactly they are voting on. 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're voting 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.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Calls are starting to come in, and if you are in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we'd love to hear from you as well. Give me a call, 1-800-684-3110. I lived there, so I feel like I can go either way. When you're talking generally to a 50-state plus the world audience, I try to be respectful. I still say state law in the Commonwealth. That's how I say it. It's very confusing, but some people understand.

Jordan Sekulow: The main topic of the day, yesterday we discussed it a little bit, and of course, the day before was when the vote was happening. That was for what we feel is the improper redistricting of the state of Virginia. This would really change the full landscape of the state. It would take it from a purple state—historically purple state for the last probably two decades—to now being completely controlled by one party.

Will Haynes: Right, it would be a 6 to 5 split in favor of Democrats when it comes to congressional delegation which, in reality, is one of the more fair maps probably because Kamala Harris won the state by about 52%. If you look at that, 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 1 Democrat advantage for the congressional delegation, taking out the seats of these Republican seats and giving it to the Democratic Party to try and tip the balance of power in the House of Representatives in Congress.

Logan Sekulow: 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, voting for this knowingly and wantingly to make their state less representative of the actual populace.

Of course, their response is, "Well, this is what happens when conservatives started doing this in Texas," and now Florida is on—there's a lot of states that are starting to roll out potential for these redistricting. Is it blanket that this is not good heading in towards an election season? Even for Republicans that are trying these things? Because that's what they're saying is essentially an eye for an eye. If Texas can do it, so can we on the other side.

Will Haynes: I think it's 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 and the state senates. You have to survive that first. In this court, in this Circuit Court of Tazewell County, they are saying, "Listen, this is violating our state statutes and our state constitution. This is not about the US Constitution. This is not about federal law. This is about the Commonwealth of Virginia. You did it wrong."

Jordan Sekulow: This idea, again, of temporarily adopting new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming election, does that really tell voters what they're voting on? This judge said no. We had people actually calling in saying, "I know specifically I was going in to vote no. 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 on." We had that from a caller that called in just a few days ago who was at the polls.

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. The Supreme Court of Virginia had a challenge earlier 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.

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 that 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. 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. 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 and 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.

Will Haynes: Yeah, 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 procedure, your law doesn't get to go into effect. There are some ways around that if you have special powers like the 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. Again, I thought from the language to the way it broke down the districts, they had problems. Then of course, when you did a deeper dive into their own state law, the law of the Commonwealth, you realize that this violates a lot of their procedural rules. That makes it very easy for judges, doesn't matter where they lean left or right, to say, "Hands off this. This is not right. You want to do this vote, there's ways you can do it. This is not the way to do it."

Logan Sekulow: 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, voting for this knowingly and wantingly to make their state less representative of the actual populace.

Of course, their response is, "Well, this is what happens when conservatives started doing this in Texas," and now Florida is on—there's a lot of states that are starting to roll out potential for these redistricting. Is it blanket that this is not good heading in towards an election season? Even for Republicans that are trying these things? Because that's what they're saying is essentially an eye for an eye. If Texas can do it, so can we on the other side.

Will Haynes: I think it's 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 and the state senates. You have to survive that first. In this court, in this Circuit Court of Tazewell County, they are saying, "Listen, this is violating our state statutes and our state constitution. This is not about the US Constitution. This is not about federal law. This is about the Commonwealth of Virginia. You did it wrong."

Jordan Sekulow: I think we should also, as 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.

I'm going to read the question and also this is what the judge said in it. House Bill 1384 violates the submission clause of Virginia Constitution Article 12, Section 1 because the ballot language proposed submits to the voters a flagrantly misleading question to the voters. 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 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. It says nothing. It is so generic language.

Will Haynes: And also, to restore fairness in upcoming elections is so vague. Are they meaning Virginia elections, national elections? It is so vague. That is why this judge says that it is misleading and doesn't accurately describe the proposed amendment. What the proposed amendment is is you're going to allow the House of Delegates and the General Assembly to change the rules in the middle of the game without a new census just for partisan purposes. What other explanation can they have?

They can't say 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 their former Governor was a Republican. 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 10-1." I think 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 was to go 6-5 Democrat-leaning—makes sense if it leans 52% Democrat.

It's a state that has been growing bluest, 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're 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 in Congress represented by basically one single party and then we'll shove all the Republicans into this one district the way they did it, which was this kind of like a fan. If you look at it, they all emanate out of Northern Virginia. All these districts start out of Northern Virginia, they go 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.

Logan Sekulow: I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on this? Let's take James in Virginia. He's an ACLJ Champion, someone that gives on a monthly basis, so I want to make sure Champions don't have to hold that long. Go ahead, James.

James: Thanks. I appreciate it. My point is somewhat redundant. It was just that the way the language in the bill is stated contains a falsehood within the text. It's not only false, but it's deceptive. I don't understand how they could formulate that bill without both sides having to look at it and say this is an accurate representation of what this bill is.

Will Haynes: And that's what courts are now looking at doing. Luckily you had a judge that felt strongly. I'm sure there were challenges before people maybe not following as closely. There were. The Virginia Supreme Court said no, let people vote, then we're going to take a look at it. You can try. Some of this is timing purposes based on when you have election day set. 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.

Logan Sekulow: All right, 10 seconds left. We 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.