Over the past week, the disgraced former attorney general has been everywhere defending what Democrats are doing in Virginia, insisting it’s about “fairness,” insisting it’s a response to Republicans, insisting it’s necessary to keep the system balanced. He’s said Democrats are trying to “make the system as fair as it possibly can be,” and suggested they can’t sit back while Republicans “stack the deck.”
Then look at what Virginia voters are actually being asked to approve.
A 6–5 congressional split becomes 10–1. In a state Kamala Harris carried with less than 52 percent of the vote, a competitive state where the outcome is now being drawn in advance.
And as Virginians go to the polls to decide whether to keep what is one of the fairest congressional maps in the country or replace it with something that looks like a lobster, Holder is already turning his attention to Florida, claiming that Republicans here are trying to “steal” seats and “rig” the next election.
Same issue. Same moment. Completely different standard.
The explanation he’s offering, that Democrats are responding to Republican moves, only works if you ignore everything Democrats have already done when they had the power to act first.
Illinois didn’t respond to anything when it redrew its map after the 2020 census. It used the opportunity to delete Republican districts, force Republicans into the same seats, and reshape the map so that competition all but disappeared. Democrats now safely hold 14 of 17 seats in a state that regularly splits far closer than that.
Oregon didn’t stumble into safer Democrat seats either. It carved up Portland and pushed its vote outward until swing districts stopped being swing districts. Its delegation today? 5–1.
New Mexico even had one Republican-leaning seat before 2022. Not anymore.
California took the same approach and dressed it up as independence, running everything through a commission that somehow always produces the same result: fewer competitive districts and stronger Democrat incumbents. Democrats won 43 of 52 seats in a state where President Trump carried roughly 40 percent of the vote. A proportional map would give Republicans a dozen more seats, double the House majority we won in 2024.
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None of those states were reacting to supposed Republican overreach. They were setting the terms. Where Democrats controlled the process, they used it to secure outcomes that would hold even when voters didn’t move in their direction.
When President Trump called them out. California finally dropped the guise and went even further with Prop 50, stealing five more seats.
That’s the baseline Virginia is building on.
And it’s the baseline Holder is asking people to forget while he describes a 10–1 map in a 52–48 state as “fair.”
At the same time, he’s on calls with activists in Florida claiming that Republicans are trying to “rig” the 2026 midterms by revisiting their own map. The accusation is delivered as if the two situations are interchangeable, as if considering adjustments in Florida is somehow more extreme than what Democrats are actively trying to force through in Virginia.
They aren’t.
Florida has materially changed since the map was last drawn. More than any other state in the nation. The population has shifted, and some of the bluest seats in the state have been bleeding residents while growth has exploded elsewhere.
Others were forced into place under Voting Rights Act requirements that are now under serious review.
With that framework set to change, Florida shouldn’t keep a flawed map. It has every right to fix it.
That’s what Holder is trying to shut down before it even begins.
Because Democrats like him want people to believe that even touching those lines is somehow illegal, that correcting a map built under outdated assumptions is the same thing as rigging an election.
Holder knows the difference. He just needs you not to.
Because once you acknowledge that Democrats have spent years drawing maps to lock in outcomes they couldn’t reliably win at the ballot box, the argument he’s making collapses. You’re left with a system that gets labeled “fair” or “rigged” based entirely on who benefits.
Virginia makes that impossible to hide. A move from 6–5 to 10–1 doesn’t require interpretation.
It tells you exactly what the goal is.
The only thing Eric Holder is defending is who gets to draw the lines.
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