(Photo credit Virginia Legislative Information System) Democrats may want to hold off on drinking too much champagne after last night’s re...
Democrats may want to hold off on drinking too much champagne after last night’s results in the Commonwealth of Virginia because President Trump may have something up his sleeve to turn their cheers into tears.
Virginia voters last night narrowly passed the redistricting referendum that will benefit Democrats and disenfranchise millions of Virginia independents and Republicans.
The map goes from a perfectly fair 6-5 Dem-GOP split to a whopping 10-1 advantage for Team Blue. Far-left NOVA will also essentially run the state, having 6 of the 11 representatives.
Governor Abigail Spanberger lied to the people of Virginia on the campaign trail, saying that she would not back this, and it was almost the first thing she did once in office.
The gerrymander has massive potential to backfire on Democrats, much like the passage of Obamacare. And according to one of President Trump’s former staffers, there is a way for Trump to make the Democrats pay with the mere stroke of a pen.
Chad Mizelle, who served a former chief of staff to the Attorney General of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security, published an op-ed on Fox News’s website on Tuesday with a highly explosive idea the President can use to destroy this new gerrymander.
Mizelle noted that back in the earliest days of the Republic, Virginia and Maryland gave a certain amount of land to the U>S government to create the District of Columbia. The Virginia part of the land, which included Arlington County and the city of Alexandria, remained part of D.C. until 1847, when it was returned to Old Dominion via retrocession.
The reason for the retrocession was to protect slavery in Virginia. Past presidents have considered this retrocession unconstitutional.
Now, Mizelle proposes that Trump issue an executive order proclaiming slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional and return Arlington and Alexandria to the nation’s capital.
From Mizelle’s Fox News Op-Ed:
So, what can the president and his allies do? Aside from motivating Virginia residents to oppose this power grab, Trump has another tool he can use to “fight back,” to borrow the supporters’ phrase. He could fight fire with fire and choose another type of re-Districting.
In 1790, Virginia and Maryland each gave five square miles of land to the Federal government to create a district for a new national capital. That Virginia land remained part of the District of Columbia until 1847, when it was retroceded to the commonwealth. The shameful reason for that retrocession was protecting slavery in Virginia when the district abolished it.
This became moot after the Union defeated the ancestors of this current effort to rig elections and resist the elected federal leadership in the Civil War. Other presidents, including William Howard Taft, have considered retrocession unconstitutional and wanted to reclaim the land for the district, but the Supreme Court has never been asked to weigh in.
President Trump could issue an executive order declaring the slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional, triggering certain legal action, and allowing the courts to finally weigh in on whether the county of Arlington and the city of Alexandria, in fact, properly belong to the District of Columbia.
Make no mistake: this move would prompt a fiery court battle. It could also require Virginia and the federal government to take action to ensure Arlington and Alexandria return to D.C.
But Mizelle says this form re-Districting is on sound legal footing:
This order would be on better legal footing than many of President Joe Biden’s most egregious orders, such as those imposing an eviction moratorium or forgiving billions in student debt with the stroke of an (auto) pen. As some of the deepest blue areas of the commonwealth – and the country – and loaded with federal government employees, residents of this region should feel right at home as part of D.C.
Trump has already gone several places on legal issues where no president has gone before, including on birthright citizenship. When it comes to this president, anything is possible.
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