Democrats celebrate as Virginia voters approve new congressional maps that could flip House seats in their favor – as it happened

This concludes our US politics coverage for today.

Barack Obama has praised Virginia voters for backing the redrawn congressional maps that could give Democrats a significant boost in the midterm elections.

“Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back,” the former president wrote in a post on X.com.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said House Democrats have “crushed Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering scheme”, noting a string of state victories across the country.

A celebratory post from the office of Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said California and Virginia were “protecting democracy”.

And Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, praised Virginians for refusing to “let Trump play games with Americans’ right to fair representation”, saying, “Republicans can’t cheat their way out of accountability in 2026.”

The redistricting battle began last year after Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers from their seats. Missouri and North Carolina also approved new district boundaries that could cost Democrats one seat in each state, as my colleagues summarized. California voters retaliated by passing new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and the Virginia election is now the second time a Democratic gerrymander was approved by voters.

Virginia voters have approved a measure to adopt new congressional maps, according to the Associated Press, a major victory for Democrats that could help the party win control of the House of Representatives.

The redrawn maps could allow Democrats to win as many as four additional House seats in the midterm elections, though the referendum is expected to face legal challenges.

A federal appeals court dealt a victory on Tuesday to conservative Christians with a ruling that allows Texas public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.

Last year, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a bill mandating that public elementary and secondary schools put up the commandments. Critics argued that the piece of legislation violated a First Amendment clause regarding the “free exercise” of religion. The bill went into effect in September, but was blocked from being enforced in several districts, including Houston and Fort Worth.

“Students are neither catechized on the Commandments nor taught to adopt them. Nor are teachers commanded to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them,” wrote the conservative-leaning 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in its ruling.

Nationwide, Republican-led states have sought to insert religion, particularly Christian doctrine, into public schooling. A similar measure in Louisiana was deemed unconstitutional, before being cleared by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton hailed the decision in a statement. “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day,” he said.

A multi-faith group of families, who had filed suit against the bill, issued a statement through the American Civil Liberties Union expressing their disappointment.

Polls closed moments ago in Virginia, where voters were asked whether they wanted to amend the constitution to temporarily adopt new congressional districts that would help Democrats in this year’s midterm elections.

Recent surveys show the redistricting referendum carrying a narrow lead in the state that just elected a new Democratic governor.

The special election is the latest front in a tit-for-tat redistricting war set in motion by Donald Trump, who requested Texas redraw its congressional maps in Republicans’ favor. California retaliated and since then a host of other states have changed their boundaries or weighed changes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a prominent civil rights organization, has been indicted on federal fraud charges related to past payments it made to confidential informants to infiltrate extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, the justice department announced on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said an Alabama grand jury returned an 11-count indictment against the civil rights group in the case brought by the justice department in Alabama, where the organization is based. The charges include wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In his remarks, Blanche alleged that the group was “doing the exact opposite of what it’s told its donors it was doing – not dismantling extremism, but funding it”.

The indictment was announced shortly after the SPLC’s CEO, Bryan Fair, revealed that the justice department had launched a criminal inquiry into the organization. Fair said the group used to use paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and monitor them, but no longer does.

“This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence. In 1983, our offices were firebombed, and in the years since, there have been countless credible threats against our staff,” he said. “For decades, we engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups. In light of that work, we sought to protect the safety of our staff and the public.”

The FBI director, Kash Patel, had a testy exchange with reporters when asked about the recent Atlantic article outlining claims that he excessively drinks and at times has been unreachable.

At a Department of Justice press conference, a reporter asked Patel to “respond directly” to the claims that his ‘“unexplained absences created a national security risk” and if he could “definitively” say he has not been intoxicated or absent during his tenure.

Patel responded, “I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia and … when they get louder, it just means I’m doing my job.” He then said he has worked “twice as many days as every director before me”, saying that meant he has “taken a third less vacation than those before me”. After rattling off statistics about the FBI’s achievements during his tenure, he said: “I’m like an everyday American who loves his country, loves his sport of hockey and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me in to celebrate. I’ve never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a … defamation lawsuit.”

Patel was referencing the $250m defamation suit he filed against the magazine on Monday, along with the scrutiny he has faced for traveling to Italy on an FBI jet for the US men’s hockey team’s final and then chugging beer in the locker room.

A reporter then asked Patel about a claim in the Atlantic that when he recently struggled to log on to an internal computer system, he “became convinced that he had been locked out” and was fired. The director and the reporter talked over each other, with Patel saying, “The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie. It was never said, it never happened.” The reporter asked him to clarify the acknowledgement in Patel’s lawsuit that he had, in fact, had a “routine technical problem logging into a government system”, but Patel didn’t directly address the question.

Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American member of Congress, said she has been subjected to “unfounded attacks and threats against her family and staff” in a new statement.

The Democratic representative from Arizona, who has called for the president’s removal due to his handling of the war in Iran, said she has faced “hateful rhetoric, lies, cruel and deliberate misinformation, and threats” over the last two months, escalating after she introduced articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary. Ansari said her office has had to report threats to law enforcement, writing:

Bad actors have tried to smear my family and staff by circulating fake and AI-generated images and flat-out lying that my parents and I are not US citizens. They have pushed xenophobic and sexist attacks and amplified absurd conspiracy theories about my family. They’ve even gone so far as to spread the outright lie that I am somehow tied to the regime. I will say this once and move on: these absurd allegations are entirely false and I denounce them in the strongest terms.”

In an earlier interview with the Guardian, Ansari called Trump “mentally unstable” and an “evil human being” who “wants to be an emperor”. Our previous coverage:

Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy has decreased from March to April as prices climb due to the Iran war, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today.

Only 30 percent of respondents approve of his handling of the economy, down from 38 percent in March, the AP reported. Only 32% approve of his leadership on Iran, which has remained at the same levels since last month. And only 33 percent of US adults approve of his overall job performance, a dip from 38 percent in March.

The poll was conducted 16 April to 20 April, a period in which the strait of Hormuz reopened and closed, the AP noted.

Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about lowering prices, had particularly low ratings on the cost of living, with only about 25% approval.

A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll from today also found the president’s approval rating at the lowest of his term, with many questioning his handling of the Iran war and his feud with Pope Leo. That six-day poll concluded only 36 percent of Americans approve of his job performance.