Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Sam Shirazi
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  • POLITICS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

  1. Redistricting Vibe Shift and Places to Watch

    1D AGO

    Redistricting Vibe Shift and Places to Watch

    Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia elections. This episode we will go over a vibe shift that has seemed to have happened with the redistricting referendum here in Virginia. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the potential areas to look for in terms of, you know, the important swing counties in this election. So the first thing I want to talk about is really just this vibe shift that has seemed to have happened in the past week or two weeks. 00:26.90 Sam Shirazi I think at the beginning, there was a sense that on the no campaign, there was some momentum. The initial early vote numbers look pretty good in terms of more red parts of Virginia coming out. 00:39.13 Sam Shirazi And I think there was a sense that, you know, and I had talked about this, that this referendum was not necessarily a a slam dunk. Virginia was not California. There were a lot of independents. So I think, you know, there was a sense that this was not necessarily a done deal in Virginia. 00:56.34 Sam Shirazi And while I think that’s still true to a certain extent, I don’t think it’s a done deal. I do think the last two weeks or so, there’s been a bit of a vibe shift. I want to talk a little bit about that. You know, right now we’re in kind of this lull of the campaign period where We’re in the middle of early voting. 01:13.29 Sam Shirazi It has come down a little bit, but it’s still very high numbers. I expect well over a million people kept voting early and potentially one and a half million people voting early, which is just really, really high numbers for a non-general election. 01:25.93 Sam Shirazi And then the last 10 days of this campaign are going to be really big. because that’s when all the, most of the early voting locations, satellite locations are gonna be opening up. So I think the last 10 days are gonna be a sprint. And so we’re in this kind of holding pattern right now where there’s some consistent early voting happening. And then I think at the end, there’s gonna be this huge momentum to for people to come vote early. And I think in terms of the vibe shift right now, 01:51.24 Sam Shirazi I think there’s a sense both in terms of the early vote. I think it’s starting to look better for the yes campaign. And I think part of the reason for that is just fact that typically the longer early voting goes on, the better it typically is for Democrats because more male votes are added. And I think oftentimes the people who vote earliest are like, 02:11.09 Sam Shirazi older people. And usually as the early voting period goes on, it starts to get a little bit younger, more diverse. So I think those are starting to show through some of the early voting data. And I think it’s going to get even better once we get the early voting satellite locations opening up for the Yes campaign. So I think The early voting is not as great as it was at at the beginning for the the No campaign. And there’s a couple of different outlets that do analysis of early vote. You know, in Virginia, there’s no party registration. So we don’t know what party anyone belongs to. 02:41.25 Sam Shirazi Like you can do that in some other states and do that type of early voting analysis. However, you can kind of model what the model party ID is. And one organization that does that, for they’ve and they’ve done it for a long time, is called L2. They’re just kind of a a data organization. 02:57.82 Sam Shirazi And their estimate is roughly that, you know, give or take, it’s about 60-40, the Democrats coming out in this election so far. You know, caveat that, but we don’t know how these people are voting. But typically, that’s what you see in Virginia early vote about a 60-40 advantage for Democrats if you take into account the mail vote. Chaz Netticombe, who was on last week, also did analysis through State Navigate. And he found or his team basically found the same thing, roughly sixty forty Democrats, you know, in terms of the early vote. 03:27.92 Sam Shirazi you know I caveat all that by saying that we don’t know how these people are voting. We don’t know how independents are voting. Even if if model ID is 60-40 Democrats, it could be 50-50 yes-no, just because the no campaign is getting some persuasion. 04:14.14 Sam Shirazi I think in this election, I think you can assume most R’s are going to vote no. I think most D’s are going to vote yes. You know, what is the number? Is it going to be 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%? I think that’s going to be important. 04:26.94 Sam Shirazi We don’t quite know how many D’s are voting against it. You know, it seems like there’s probably going to be more than voted for Earl Sears, but is it going to be a lot more or is it more anecdotal? and I think the real question mark are the independents. How do independents go? 04:41.53 Sam Shirazi Obviously, Spanberger did really well with independents last year. That’s part of the reason she got such a big win. This year, I think I could see the independents definitely being more skeptical of the Yes campaign, just given the nature of it, given it’s a more partisan endeavor to gerrymander Virginia. 04:56.83 Sam Shirazi At the same time, a lot of independents, their number one priority is maybe sending message to President Trump. So if it’s just a straight referendum on the president, I think that’s going to be better for the yes campaign in terms of independence. So still a lot of unknowns. Like I’m not comfortable saying, you know, definitely yes is going to win or no is going to win. I just think it’s not that type of election. 05:14.53 Sam Shirazi But I am comfortable talking a little bit about the vibe shift. And the the reason I mentioned that is election like this. There hasn’t been a lot of polls, and there particularly has not been a lot of polls of, you know, specifically the question that’s on the ballot. I think there are some organizations that have put out polls, but they’re not exactly a question on the ballot. 05:31.71 Sam Shirazi I think hopefully we’ll get some more polls in the final days of the campaign. I think Chaz Naticombe mentioned that State Navigate is going to be doing a poll. I think we’re going to probably get a few other polls, but there there isn’t a lot of polling to go off of. There isn’t kind of a lot of... 05:44.89 Sam Shirazi precedent for this in Virginia, you know, like we did with the governor’s election where, you know, okay, the party out the White House typically does well in the governor’s election. We just can’t really assume that because we don’t do this type of referendum in Virginia very often or ever. So I think a lot of the analysis so far has been on vibes. And and what I mean by vibes is just people’s guts, people’s like, you know, this kind of feels like, you know, the no campaign is doing okay or the yes campaign is doing okay. There’s not really a lot of logic behind it other than maybe some very, you know, 06:13.41 Sam Shirazi Broad interpretation of early vote data. So all of that is to say, basically, we are not going to get really good data on on this election until but maybe the end when we get the final polls. And so a lot of the analysis has been based based on vibes. I think certainly the No campaign and certain movements, certain people within the conservative movement have been very loud and I think they’ve made their voices heard. And I think that has perhaps informed the vibes in terms of, well, the No campaign seems like they have some moment momentum, seems like they’re doing well. 06:45.28 Sam Shirazi So I think that was kind of the initial vibe reading in Virginia, at least once the early voting started. I think the last two weeks, you know putting aside the early voting data, I think just given the national environment, I think things have gotten harder for the Republicans. 07:22.13 Sam Shirazi And so if you think about this referendum, you know what are people going to be doing when they go into the voting booth? Are they going to be thinking, you know, really nuanced questions about gerrymandering and trying to think through, you know, should Virginia gerrymander to counteract Republican states? I mean, is that really the calculation or is it just going to become, you know, I want to send a message. I don’t like what’s going on in D.C., so I’m going to vote yes on this campaign. Certainly the yes campaign wants that to happen. 07:48.01 Sam Shirazi Obviously, the no campaign is trying to make it a Virginia specific campaign. The yes campaign is trying to make it a national campaign. And you may have remembered that is the same dynamic that happened in Virginia in 2025. Almost always with these state elections, the party that’s out of the White House wants to make it a national election. The party in the White House wants to make it a state election. And you’re seeing those dynamics again. 08:10.70 Sam Shirazi The Yes campaign wants to make this about President Trump and national politics. The No campaign wants to make this about state-specific election in terms of gerrymandering these seats. 08:36.36 Sam Shirazi So we’re seeing all those dynamics play out. I mean, I think part of the analysis in terms of the vibe shift fives shiftft is just, you know, national politics is more in the news, especially now with gas prices, with the war in Iran. 08:48.55 Sam Shirazi It’s just... You know, people are not thinking about the nuances of gerrymandering. They’re kind of thinking about how am i going to pay for gas and groceries and all those things. And so the more that becomes the dominant issue in the news leading up to April 21st, I think the more difficult task the no campaign is going to have. I think interesting question is going to be, you know, we’re about. a little, about two and a half weeks out from this referendum, you know, what is going to be happening on Ap

    18 min
  2. Chaz Nuttycombe on Redistricting Referendum

    MAR 26

    Chaz Nuttycombe on Redistricting Referendum

    00:00.60 Sam Shirazi Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttikome back on. He is the Executive Director of State Navigate and Chaz, thanks so much for coming back. 00:13.42 Chaz Nuttycombe Hey, Sam, thanks for having me back on. Good to hear you Good to hear from you. 00:16.90 Sam Shirazi Yeah, so to begin with, just wanted to see how you’re doing. How are things at State Navigate? It’s been a while since we talked last year and how how are things been going for you? 00:26.22 Chaz Nuttycombe Yeah, I know. I think it’s been maybe since like right after the election, you know, after we had a really good a year for our polling. So, you know, been been working on some projects. You know, we launched in Michigan in January. 00:40.45 Chaz Nuttycombe We’re looking to launch in, I think, Colorado and Texas, our next targets. Trying to get up there next month. And we have like a jam. We have jam-packed content, you know, over... 00:53.02 Chaz Nuttycombe you know, the next like quarter in the states of Virginia and West Virginia and and Utah. So those are kind of our our three main states right now through the second quarter. And again, working to launch in Colorado and Texas, hopefully next month. 01:12.06 Chaz Nuttycombe And, you know, we’ve got some more exciting news coming out next month as well. You know, I think, a you know, a couple days or maybe a week after this podcast, we’ll hopefully have this big announcement. But yeah, it’s going great. It’s going great. 01:26.58 Sam Shirazi Well, awesome. And yeah, i definitely recommend everyone check out State Navigate. And it was really amazing to see all the resources you put out last year for the Virginia governor’s election. And you have a lot of great stuff already for the redistricting referendum. We’ll get to all that, like the the early vote tracker. 01:43.54 Sam Shirazi But before we kind of dive into the details of the redistricting referendum, you know, big picture, what are you seeing right now as we are less than a month until Election Day? 01:54.46 Chaz Nuttycombe Well, yeah, I mean, just real quick, going talk about the features, you know, just in case your audience doesn’t know. So, yeah, we have like an early voting tracker that compares to the same day equivalent in 2025 from 2026, right? So 2026 divided by 2025, same day votes, whether it be early in person or male. We have scatter plots and we’re going to add correlations to those soon now that we’re you know, like two weeks in and we got a lot of votes in, pretty much everybody is reporting mail. 02:24.53 Chaz Nuttycombe obviously males counted at different paces, right? Sometimes they count it slower. Sometimes they count it faster each year. you know, we’re kind of the mercy of registrars, but what’s nice is that early in person is, you know, pretty consistent. 02:36.31 Chaz Nuttycombe and they pretty much update, update that daily and in pretty much every locality. And then, you know, what what I was really proud, I was very proud of the State Navigate team when the maps dropped because we had spent the entire day, our creative director, Jack Hirsting, myself, and our elections coordinator, Michael Foley, to where when those maps dropped, we had an interactive ready to go. 03:01.30 Chaz Nuttycombe and so it’s it’s really fun to see you know like a lot of people posting our interactive map of the you know proposed uh uh you know democratic gerrymander you know i think especially conservatives are using it and uh you know it’s just nice to see our work you know be be used by uh used by the public i guess my only my only complaint is that sometimes they don’t include the state navigate logo that’s in the header so it’s like Well, at least you know, it’s like that’s that’s kind of killing our potential traffic, man. So, you know, if you’re if you’re one of those people, i would appreciate, you know, just include the state navigate logo in there. You know, we want to build our audience and help people learn about state government and state legislatures to to get to your question on, you know, kind of like what we’re what we’re looking at. 03:45.65 Chaz Nuttycombe I mean, you know, I was I was talking with, you know, the Times yesterday and, you know, it’s it’s a shame because my grandfather ran track and I should like know a little bit about this. But, you know, I kind of described, you know, like where we are in early voting as like we’re in the first quarter mile of a. 04:03.22 Chaz Nuttycombe you know, mile long track. And, the you know, he was like, you know, we’re at the first quarter mile and we don’t really know where the markers are. Right. In terms of like, you know, like what we, what we got coming up. 04:16.44 Chaz Nuttycombe So, you know, look, I mean, right now, I think these, these first two weeks have been, have been crazy when we’re talking about the early voting. I mean, if, if you had told me two months ago that like, 04:29.38 Chaz Nuttycombe we would be seeing early and like overall early voting on like being even or right now, as of this recording, when we’re talking about yesterday’s early voting, yesterday being March 24th on Tuesday, you know it was there were more votes cast on you know the equivalent day 2026 2025 early voting. 04:52.24 Chaz Nuttycombe you know it’s like a hundred two percent of early in person Right. And then it’s what is it for mail? Mail-in ballots versus 2025. 102%. Yeah. yeah So, I mean, we’re at like 102% thereabouts of, you know, gubernatorial same day turnout. 05:09.03 Chaz Nuttycombe This thing is going to be like incredibly high turnout, looks like. I mean, we’re we’re at least looking at 50% turnout. When I was like thinking about when we started to see like high turn in the first you know few days, it’s like, okay, first few days, you know first week, a lot of people come out from this thing, right? And then we we typically get to like a slump point. And right now it’s kind of like where we typically are are in a slump point, but we’re not. 05:33.70 Chaz Nuttycombe It’s just continually turnout, turnout, turnout. More and more people are voting in this thing. To the point where, you know, when all is said and done, we may see more votes cast in this election than there were in 2025. 05:47.92 Chaz Nuttycombe And, you know, if there are more votes, I’m going to take a guess and and say that the people who are, you know, who didn’t vote in 2025, who are already voting for this thing, are probably skewing Republican. 06:00.62 Chaz Nuttycombe So, you know, Michael Foley, our elections coordinator, has been doing, you know, a little bit of of rough modeling, you know, down to the precinct level. And, you know, we’re looking at an electorate that is probably... 06:13.90 Chaz Nuttycombe you know, probably two points, maybe up to three points, right. When we’re comparing to 2025. Now the, the main thing is pick your own path or universe whatever. When we talk about persuasion, right. You know, Abigail, Spamber did really well on persuasion. 06:31.75 Chaz Nuttycombe And so she won by 15 points. the sort of generic race was the Lieutenant governor race where Gazzalajami won by 11. And then, you know, Jay Jones did terrible on persuasion, lost a lot of college educated whites around Western Richmond and parts of Nova and especially the beach. 06:49.39 Chaz Nuttycombe uh, and so it’s like, well, this is not a partisan election, right? There’s no RRD on the ballot. So what is your persuasion baseline? 06:57.81 Chaz Nuttycombe Is it the AG race? Because if it’s AG race, we’re looking at a nail biter. and, You know, I, if, if I had to pick like what I think the baseline is, I would say it’s probably closer to the AG race. 07:09.86 Chaz Nuttycombe because I think that Dems are having a little bit of a hard time convincing their like soft Dems and especially independence on giving them a 10 to one gerrymander this year. Right. 07:22.98 Chaz Nuttycombe you know, I know like. like just off the top of my head, like three people who did not vote for Kamala Harris, but voted for Abigail Spanberger, and all of them are going to be voting against the amendment. 07:36.75 Chaz Nuttycombe Again, that’s like anecdotal. But, you know, it’s, I think that, they’re having a hard time with, with those college educated whites. 07:47.06 Chaz Nuttycombe And they really have to put in the work, the, the yes team. Right. So, i mean, it’s just kind of crazy when we talk about, you know, just, just two months ago, like if you had told me again, like turnout this high, 08:17.54 Chaz Nuttycombe We’ll see if things change by election day. I don’t know whether I’ll do like a a final, you know, throwing something on the dartboard or whatever, because there’s not going to be a model because you can’t really model something like this. We haven’t had a a general election in April since the 1950s. We have constitutional amendment outside of November since November. 08:38.74 Chaz Nuttycombe or at least in April, I think in like a hundred years, I know Jeffrey Skelly at like DDHQ put something together on this. So maybe I’m i’m wrong there, but I know it’s something like that. So like, you know, there’s not much history to work with here, whereas there’s a lot of history to work with in Virginia. So it’s kind of easy to model or or Virginia gubernatorial elections. So those are easy to model, honestly, you know, relative to this at least. 09:03.61 Chaz Nuttycombe so, you know, I, I think that, look, we’re, we’re going to go into the field, on, on April 10th and that’s when the satellites open up thereabouts. 09:13.27 Chaz Nuttycombe And I think that’s really like the week before the election, we’ll have a little bit of an idea where things are. You kn

    31 min
  3. HD-98 Special Election: Rare GOP Over Performance

    MAR 18

    HD-98 Special Election: Rare GOP Over Performance

    Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over a special election in the 98th House of Delegates District and talk about what that might mean for the redistricting referendum. 00:12.92 Sam Shirazi Now, I want to caveat that first by saying special elections are definitely special and you cannot read too much into them because they’re very unique circumstances, really depends on the district, depends on the night. 00:24.84 Sam Shirazi So I don’t want to go too crazy with the special election analysis, However, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about this district because I think people were a little bit surprised. Generally, since President Trump was elected in 2024, Democrats have been doing well in special elections. Most special elections Democrats overperform. And what does overperforming mean? Typically, overperformance is measured against 2024 results in the district. So, for example, if Trump won a district by 10 points in 2024, but the Democrat wins a district by five points in the special election, that would be a 15 point overperformance. 01:01.86 Sam Shirazi And across the country, we’ve seen Democrats doing really well in special elections. Most special elections, Democrats overperform. And earlier this year, there have been a bunch of special elections in deep blue seats in Virginia. And almost all of those special elections, Democrats have also overperformed. 01:17.58 Sam Shirazi So there’s a sense that Democrats are doing well in these special elections. And I think people were looking at this special election in the 98th house district to see what would happen because while it is a pretty red district it is not overwhelmingly red in 2024 uh president trump won this specific district by about uh 15 points however in 2025 spamburger carried excuse me spamburger still lost the district but it was a little bit closer she only lost it by about six and a half points 01:49.02 Sam Shirazi However, this district generally is known as more of a Republican district. It is in the most Republican part of Virginia Beach, which is kind of the southern part of Virginia Beach, includes even some rural areas and as well as some suburban areas. 02:03.54 Sam Shirazi And in 2025, the delegate who won that election was Barry Knight. He won by about 13%. So he overperformed Spanberger and did better than the top of the ticket. 02:15.99 Sam Shirazi And so, you know, When you look at this district, it’s kind of a Republican-leaning district, but not overwhelmingly so. Now, Delegate Knight unfortunately passed away, and so that’s why you had a special election for this seat. 02:29.18 Sam Shirazi And again, people were looking at this seat, seeing what would happen. Would it be close? Would the Democrats be able to overperform again? And it looks like Democrats have not done that. They are not going to overperform. This will be a rare instance where the Republicans actually overperform. 02:43.10 Sam Shirazi And I want to caveat by saying we do not have all the ballots yet. So in Virginia, the mail ballots can be received up until Friday at noon if they have been postmarked by Election Day. 02:54.22 Sam Shirazi So we don’t have all the ballots in. And basically, it’s impossible to know how many mail ballots are still out there. Typically in special elections, there tend to be more late ballots than usual because the early voting period is shorter. 03:07.30 Sam Shirazi People get their absentee ballots later, and so they have less time to return it. So you usually see more late mail in special elections. So I caveat all about saying the the vote totals are not final. However, i think the outcome pretty clear. Certainly the Republicans are going to win the seat. 03:24.05 Sam Shirazi And it looks like they are probably going to overperform Donald Trump’s margin in 2024. So as of the time of recording, the Republican in the 98th House of Delegates seat, Andrew Rice, got about 62.5% of the vote, the Democrat, Cheryl got 37.5% of the vote. 03:40.63 Sam Shirazi that’s about a 25% margin for Republicans. 03:45.08 Sam Shirazi so that’s about a twenty five percent or margin for the republicans you know That’s probably going to come down a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to come down that much. And so if you think the district being a 15% Trump district in 2024, almost certainly the Republicans are going to overperform in this special election, unless there’s like a crazy amount of late mail that will be added, which seems relatively unlikely. 04:08.36 Sam Shirazi So in the grand scheme of things, Republicans had a good night with the special election. They overperformed. And so the question becomes, what does all this mean? So I think a few things were at play here. One, obviously, when a delegate passes away, it’s it’s very unfortunate. And I think it was kind of a circumstance where it didn’t exactly lend itself to the Democrats having a big overperformance. It’s not like a situation where someone resigns in scandal. So I think the reason for the special election often is important. 04:40.15 Sam Shirazi And then if you look look at this district, It’s in more of a kind of white working class part of Virginia Beach. So typically Democrats have a harder time overperforming in districts with white working class voters. 04:52.74 Sam Shirazi There are suburban portions of the district, so I want to pretend, you know, it’s just a classic white working class district. But it certainly has some rural areas where I think it’s just very difficult for the Democrats to overperform in a district like that. 05:05.09 Sam Shirazi I also think the elephant in the room is the redistricting referendum. And so I want to talk a little bit more about that, because I think one explanation of what happened is the Republicans are fired up and they’re upset about the redistricting referendum. 05:18.76 Sam Shirazi Potentially, they could also be generally upset at what’s been going on in Richmond since the Democrats took over in January. So perhaps they’re upset with some of the bills that have been passed. 05:29.71 Sam Shirazi And so I think generally the Virginia Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. Now, having said that, I mean, 2025 was a really bad year for the Virginia Republicans. So it’s basically as low as they’ve been in a long time. So the fact that the Virginia Republicans are doing better than 2025 doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing great, but it definitely was the lowest point they’ve been. And I think they’ve a little bit started to dig themselves out of the hole. And how have they done it? i mean, I think At the end of the day anger is a very strong motivator to vote. And obviously in 2025, Democrats were angry at what was going on in D.C. 06:04.36 Sam Shirazi And so they were very motivated to vote. They were motivated to talk to their friends, convince them to vote for the Democrats. Democrats got a big win. After that big win, Democrats came into Richmond. They did a lot of things. 06:16.24 Sam Shirazi And specifically, with redistricting that upset a lot of Republicans. And so now you see the opposite reaction where Republicans are upset and perhaps they are starting to organize, whereas last year they were a little bit at asleep. And this is kind of a common thing we see in Virginia. 06:31.41 Sam Shirazi And, you know, that all goes to show you in in politics, you know, for... every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so democrats get a big landslide in 2025 uh they start doing all these things including redistricting you would think that the real reaction on the republican side and it kind of goes back to one of the things i’ve talked about that in politics one of the hardest things is to be present you know it’s easy in politics to one that we live the last election for the rest of time republicans want it to be 2024 forever Democrats want to be 2025 forever. 07:01.04 Sam Shirazi The reality is the world moves, things change. And I think 2026 is 2026. And the environment is different than 2025, than 2024. And I also think it’s important to kind of think about regional dynamics in elections. Like perhaps the Democrats are doing really well nationally. 07:17.68 Sam Shirazi National environment is definitely behind the Democrats. But perhaps in Virginia, Things are not as blue as they were in 2025, partly because the redistricting, partly because Democrats got a trifecta. 07:29.14 Sam Shirazi And yeah, so I mean, I don’t want to overread what happened in the Virginia special election as meaning, you know, Democrats are definitely going to lose the redistricting referendum. That’s certainly not the case. I think it’s just an indication that maybe the Republicans have woken up a little bit since 2025. 07:46.18 Sam Shirazi I won’t go and do this kind of deep dive early vote analysis right now. I think it’s too early. But, you know, there have been some indications that Republicans generally are turning out more than they did in 2025 for early voting. Again, I think it’s very early to read too much into that. 08:00.100 Sam Shirazi And again, 2025 Republicans did pretty bad. So the fact that they’re doing better than 2025 is not necessarily saying a whole lot. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to win. 08:12.04 Sam Shirazi But it does show that I think perhaps 2025 was kind of a low point for the Virginia Republicans. And I do think they’re going to start rebuilding a little bit in 2026. Having said that, I mean, 08:23.40 Sam Shirazi They were in a 15 point hole for the governor’s race. And so to dig out of a 15 15 point hole in the governor’s race is a lot. And let’s say the Republicans do like 10 percent better than they did last year at the governor’s race. 08:34.64 Sam Shirazi i mean, they’re still

    16 min
  4. Iran Special: Domestic Impact of the War

    MAR 16

    Iran Special: Domestic Impact of the War

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This is a special episode where we will go over the impact of the conflict in the Middle East, specifically the conflict between Israel, the United States, and Iran, and see how it is going to impact the elections here in Virginia and across the country And I was waiting to do this episode because I wasn’t sure how long things would continue. The conflict has gone on for over two weeks now and doesn’t seem to be like there’s an end in sight. So I thought it was a good time to maybe talk about it. 00:31.29 Sam Shirazi Talk about the impact both in Virginia and across the country. And the reason I thought it made sense to talk about it in this podcast is obviously the podcast is called Federal Fallout. And this is going to be an important federal fallout both in Virginia, across the country this year in the elections, the midterms, because really. 00:49.50 Sam Shirazi So there’s both the impact domestically in terms of the economy, and then we’ll talk about some of the international implications of what’s going on. So I thought it would be an interesting time to do a little bit of a different podcast. Obviously, I’ve been focusing a lot on Virginia redistricting referendum. 01:04.27 Sam Shirazi I’m not going to talk about it too much in this podcast because I don’t think it’s going to have a direct impact of what’s going on in Middle East. It’s going to have direct impact on the redistricting referendum. However, once the referendum is over, obviously, we’re going have the midterms here in Virginia and across the country. And I do think the conflict has gone on long enough now that there will be an impact that will be felt all the way even in November, even if the conflict conflict ends relatively soon because of some of the impacts to the national and global economy. So anyways, I thought it’d be interesting to do a little bit of a different podcast, something that’s not exactly hyper-focused on Virginia, but still back impacting Virginia. And I think just an interesting topic in general. 01:45.99 Sam Shirazi And, you know, i try to stay in my lane, talk mainly about Virginia elections. However, i also know a decent amount about the Middle East for various reasons. One, I studied Middle East foreign in as a foreign affairs major at the University of Virginia. So I’ve spent some time studying the Middle East, specifically Iran. And, you know, full full disclosure, my family originally, we come from Iran. So I generally have a good sense of what’s going on in the country. i have kept an eye on things for a while. Don’t really talk about it a lot on this podcast because usually it’s not super relevant, but now obviously it is relevant and I thought people might be interested in my perspective. 02:24.87 Sam Shirazi So I’ll try to keep it, you know, not focused on my specific experience, but more what the conflict in the Middle East is doing globally in terms of the economy, how that’s having an impact here domestically and what it might mean for the midterms this year in november So to begin with, I want to talk a little bit about just like the practical domestic impact of what’s going on in the Middle East. And obviously the big thing that’s been on the news domestically has been the impact on gas prices. Obviously, Middle East, Iran, countries that order it are big companies. oil producers. 03:03.68 Sam Shirazi And the big thing that’s happened since the conflict began, Iran has tried to essentially close the Strait of Hormuz. So the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow part of water that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the ocean. And obviously oil that’s coming from places like Iran, Iraq, Kuwait have to go through the Strait of Hormuz to reach global markets. 03:27.80 Sam Shirazi And I think Aaron has pretty effectively essentially shut down shipping through the strait, and that is causing oil prices to go up a decent amount. And the price of oil has hit almost roughly $100 a hundred dollars barrel. 03:43.09 Sam Shirazi And anytime oil hits that number, about $100 a barrel, I mean, that’s going to have significant significant impact both here and internationally. And just practically, I mean, everyone has seen at the the gas station that the price of oil, sorry, the price of gas has gone up and people are paying more. And obviously, Americans don’t like that. That was a big drag on President Biden when that happened. And it was probably a big reason why the Democrats lost the election in 2024, even though gas prices had come down from their highs in 2022. So 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. That causes another oil shock. 04:19.02 Sam Shirazi The price of gas goes up. And it never really came that down to the pre-war levels until I think recently. And so even though the initial jump in prices in 2022 caused a huge shock, it still had an impact years later on. 04:37.71 Sam Shirazi And The thing is, it’s not just gas. I mean, most Americans have cars that use gas, and so they feel that when they’re filling up the pump. But if you notice, if you look, the price of diesel has also gone up a lot. And diesel, while most of us don’t buy diesel, it’s important for shipping. So think a lot of things run on diesel, like most big trucks that transport goods runs on diesel trains, a lot of things run on diesel. And so when the price of diesel goes up, that means that the price of transporting a lot of goods or almost every single good will go up a lot. And that was one of the things we saw in 2022. mean, I think there’s been, there was a lot of talk about, oh, inflation was high when, when Biden was president. And that’s true. But 05:20.49 Sam Shirazi Part of the reason for that and a big part of it was because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that caused an oil shock that caused the price of gas to go up. It also caused the price of diesel to go up. And so once the price of diesel goes up, the price of almost everything else starts going up. And I do think the longer this goes on in the Middle East, the longer that there’s a risk that there will be inflation, inflationary shocks. 05:41.71 Sam Shirazi And, you know, the thing with inflation, it usually takes a little bit of time until we really see it, especially in the formal data in terms of the inflation rate. And so we saw that in 2022. 05:52.52 Sam Shirazi There was kind of initial jump in prices. And then eventually that kind of got reflected throughout the economy. And I do think that there is going to be something similar happening in the next couple weeks, potentially a couple of months. 06:05.74 Sam Shirazi And even if the war ended tomorrow, I mean, these shocks are still going to be felt in the system. Obviously, the sooner it ends, the less likely it’s going to have as big of impact. But I do think already we’re starting to see the immediate impact with the gas prices. And I do think next few weeks there’ll be a broader impact on on other goods throughout the economy. 06:25.58 Sam Shirazi So you know I talked about this previously in my podcast. Most people, they’re most the the most important issue is the economy. People had been struggling before the conflict had began. The affordability crisis has been going on for several years. 06:39.07 Sam Shirazi And that was one of the big reasons that Donald Trump got elected in 2024. And I think people expected him to fix that issue. And I think a lot of people have felt that that had not gotten better. 06:49.31 Sam Shirazi That was one of the big reasons. Now, Governor Spanberger got a big win in 2025. She focused a lot on the affordability issue because people had a sense that things were not getting better, even though the Republicans had come in and and, you know, there have been a lot of different policies that necessarily didn’t necessarily make things better in terms of affordability, such as the tariffs. 07:10.01 Sam Shirazi And I do think now with this conflict, there is going to be another round of potential rises and costs for the American people. And I think that’s obviously not going to be great for the Republicans if that happens and they will potentially be facing an even harder November where where they were already facing a hard November. I think it’s going to make their lives that much harder, specifically because, you know, if inflation at least starts rising again, probably won’t get up to like the 10 percent that it got under Biden. But even if it goes up to four or five percent, I mean, I think you draw a clear line where you say, you know, President Trump’s decision to go to war in the Middle East, that has 07:49.43 Sam Shirazi direct impact on the economy and and the Democrats will certainly make that argument that his decision to go to war has increased the cost to the American people. So even if most people are not spending all day you know focusing on what’s going on in the Middle East and what’s going on with the Strait of Hormuz, we are all going to feel the impact when we go to the gas station and eventually when we start buying things at the grocery store because of this conflict that is so far away. 08:16.96 Sam Shirazi Now, I also wanted to talk a little bit about of the political implications in terms of President Trump’s decision to start this war, because yeah obviously there are are a few catchphrases President Trump had during his campaigns. Probably his most famous one is make America great again. But I do think one that is also pretty famous is America first. And I think that was Originally, his main foreign policy ideology was American first. I think it’s a pretty you know vague statement. And you know people had a sense, OK, that means focus on America. 08:49.71 Sam Shirazi But what did it actually mean in terms of foreign policy? And we saw during his second term, particularly after what happened

    27 min
  5. Referendum Moves Forward: But Legal ?s Linger

    MAR 5

    Referendum Moves Forward: But Legal ?s Linger

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court and then also preview the start of early voting this Friday in the redistricting referendum. 00:14.71 Sam Shirazi So the big news that came out on Wednesday was that the Virginia Supreme Court had issued a ruling. We had been waiting for it. And finally, it had issued a ruling. Unfortunately, didn’t give us the final answer on Virginia redistricting, but did give us an answer on whether the referendum was going to move forward. And the Virginia Supreme Court said that the redistricting referendum itself, the voting can take place. So the court was very clear that the Redistricting referendum is going to happen. Early voting was going to start on Friday. 00:45.94 Sam Shirazi However, there’s an important caveat where they put some language in there basically saying that this is not the final order. we have not made our final decision. And so we’re going to let people vote. And then after that, we will give you our final say on whether this was legal or not. And so I think that’s leaving a lot of uncertainty in the air. 01:04.36 Sam Shirazi But we did get some kind of short-term answers. People will start voting on Friday. And then obviously there’s going to be a campaign. And then on April 21st, we will have election day and we will see whether the registry referendum passes or not. So a lot to talk about. The first thing I wanted to do was kind of break down the Supreme Court decision and kind of explain what happened. And I think a lot of people were a little bit confused about why the court is kicking the can down the road. 01:30.37 Sam Shirazi So to give you some background, the Virginia Supreme Court had previously said that the redistricting referendum could go forward. However, there was a new lawsuit and a judge in Tazewell County in entered a new temporary restraining order basically saying that the referendum couldn’t go forward. So it was pretty clear that the Virginia Supreme Court was going to have to say something because at least Tazewell County was unsure whether it could actually start the holding the referendum and having early voting start. 01:57.64 Sam Shirazi So it was very clear that Supreme Court, we were expecting that they were going to do something, but it took a while. And I was kind of surprised. It almost went at the last minute, two days before start of early voting, they gave their decision. 02:09.51 Sam Shirazi And it’s an interesting one. so So one of the things the court said was this was not really a temporary restraining order. It was actually an injunction. An injunction is basically a more long term thing, whereas a tmporary restraining orders in more short term. So the Supreme Court like was like, this is a big deal. What the court did was a big deal. So we have to rule on it. And I think what was interesting is they were grappling on what to do. They were grappling on whether to make the final decision now or basically wait until after the referendum. 02:39.61 Sam Shirazi So the Virginia Supreme Court really emphasized this court case from 1912. And this court case is called Scott versus James. And they kept citing this court case. So I think this was really important. And they felt like they really had to abide by this decision. 02:53.27 Sam Shirazi And this decision basically said that you first have to let the people vote, and then you can decide on the legality of it. And you can tell in the Supreme Court decision, they’re really grappling with this. I think they they don’t really like this outcome, but they feel like they have no other choice. They feel like for various reasons, it’s not within their power to really stop the election. And it it would be basically undemocratic for the judicial branch to basically say to voters, you can’t vote. However, they also said, well, once the voting is done, then we can decide what ends up happening. 03:26.78 Sam Shirazi And I think it creates this odd scenario where hypothetically the redistricting referendum could pass and then the Virginia Supreme Court could say, actually, this is not legal and so redistricting is not going to happen. 03:39.94 Sam Shirazi the court was very explicit that it will not rule if the redistricting referendum is not passed. Because the the court basically said that it’s going to be a moot issue. There’s no point in us ruling. 03:51.56 Sam Shirazi However, the court did open the door and very was explicitly said that they could overturn the referendum if after they hear all the arguments and they think about it, they decide that this was not legal. 04:04.23 Sam Shirazi And I think really you could tell in this opinion, They didn’t want to rush the decision. They really wanted to think this one through. They knew it was important. Obviously, the clock’s ticking. Early voting is going start. 04:15.04 Sam Shirazi They knew they had to put something out there. And so I think their ultimate call was that they are going to allow the redistricting referendum to go forward, and then they’re going to make the the final call later. And essentially, it’s kicking the can down the road again. They kicked the can down the road last time, and this time they again kicked the can down the road. 04:32.74 Sam Shirazi And I think the other part of the opinion that got a lot of attention was towards the end. So they basically talk about, okay, there’s all these issues that parties have raised, that this was done without enough notice, that the notices were not posted, that the language of the referendum is biased. So, you know, Republicans have raised a lot of arguments, and the court kind of summarized them all. 04:54.69 Sam Shirazi And, you know, at the end, The court put the sentence in there and it said, quote, these issues are of grave concern to the court. And I think I’m a lawyer. Anytime you’re a lawyer and you hear a court saying something is of grave concern, that is going to trigger you because you’re that that’s telling you the court’s grappling with something. 05:18.32 Sam Shirazi And so... The exact language is important. So the court said these issues are of grave concern. Not we have grave concerns. They said these issues of of are of grave concern. 05:30.97 Sam Shirazi And I think you can read this two ways. One of them is grave concern just basically means like it’s super important. Like we get it. Like this is an important issue. We’re going to take our time. We’re going to think this through. 05:42.57 Sam Shirazi We’re going rush it. So it’s a grave concern and we don’t want to you know come up with something you know right before early voting. We want to think this through. I think the other way you can read this, and this is certainly how the Republicans want to read it, is grave concern means they have grave concerns and they’re really worried about this. They just felt like it was not the correct procedural posture to strike down the referendum. 06:05.09 Sam Shirazi But they’re leaving the door open and so they’re kind of you know this is put in the opinion to show that they’re actually you know skeptical of what the Democrats are trying to do. They just couldn’t stop it right now. I mean, I don’t know. I think you can read it both ways. We’re ultimately going to get the final answer after redistricting referendum, if it passes, when the Supreme Court will have to make their final call. you know I think the the last one of the last lines of opinion, it says, issuing injunction to keep Virginians from the polls is not the proper way to make the decision. So I think really the court... 06:35.98 Sam Shirazi Bottom line, did not want to be rushed into it. I think the the Virginia Republicans, when they filed the second lawsuit and got the the judge in Tazewell County to issue the injunction, they were trying to get the Supreme Court to make a final decision very quickly. They were trying to force the court’s hand. 07:22.01 Sam Shirazi My gut was the court was not going to have its hand forced. basically where these important decisions are made in this posture, like right before a deadline and the court makes the ultimate decision. I think the Virginia Supreme Court didn’t want to be put in that position. i think they didn’t really appreciate having to rush their decision. And so I think at the end of the day they kicked the can down the road. 07:39.88 Sam Shirazi And, you know, the Democrats, they’re going to take that. They want to live to fight another day. They want to see the referendum happen. They think they’re going to win the referendum. And so Democrats were generally happy. i think, you know, in an ideal world for Democrats, the entire issue would have been resolved and they don’t have to worry about it anymore, but they’ll take it. I think Republicans obviously were disappointed because they didn’t want to fight the redistricting referendum. 08:03.50 Sam Shirazi But they’ve accepted that it’s going to happen. I think they have a little bit of hope with some of this language in the opinion that maybe the court is actually very skeptical and they will end up striking it down. Although, 08:14.97 Sam Shirazi I think the thing I’ve heard from a lot of people is if the state goes through this whole process of having a referendum and then potentially, you know, two million plus Virginians are going to vote and then it passes. i mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court in you know May really going to say, actually, this whole thing was illegal. It shouldn’t have happened. 08:36.44 Sam Shirazi And we’re just going to throw it all out. I mean, in their opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court said we reserve the right to do that. And so I think you can’t discount the possibility that that can actually happen. 08:48.44 Sam Shirazi However, you also have

    19 min

  6. FEB 21

    Redistricting Deja Vu: Court Ruling and New Map

    Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout. This episode we will go over the fun that is Virginia redistricting as it continues to unfold and how there a lot of twists and turns, and different things happening. So I want to cover everything that happened this week wtih redistricting. And it’s a little bit of deja vu all over again because a couple things happened that were big. First, the court in Tazewell County entered a temporary order to block the referendum from going forward, and we’ll cover that. And then there was some changes made to the map that we’ll talk about specifically in the second district. So this week is like all over again. We are just talking about the same thing, legal challenges to the redistricting. We’re talking about the maps slightly changing. So A lot of stuff still in flux, even though in theory, if everything goes to plan for the Democrats, early voting is supposed to start on March 6th, which is not too far away. 01:00.71 Sam Shirazi And so obviously there’s a lot going on. And it just kind of goes to show you that I guess nothing’s really finalized until it’s finalized. And we just have to wait and take it one day at a time with the redistricting stuff. So the first thing I’ll talk about is the court order that came out of Tazewell County. So if you remember, there was originally a court order from Tazewell County that seemed to suggest that there were some legal challenges the Democrats had with the referendum. 01:26.03 Sam Shirazi That lawsuit made all made its way all the way up to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Virginia Supreme Court essentially said, the thing the court ordered was not that specific, so we’re just going to you know punt this to after the referendum. 01:38.82 Sam Shirazi Obviously, the parties were paying attention to that because very quickly, the Republicans filed another lawsuit in the same county with the same judge. 01:49.77 Sam Shirazi And this time, they asked for a lot more and they named a lot of defendants other than the local county clerk. They named people like the head of the Department of Elections. 01:59.94 Sam Shirazi And the goal, really, from the Republican standpoint was this judge already ruled with us. He agrees with us on the law. If you remember my podcast on the Supreme Court ruling, really the issue in the original court order that that got its way up to the Supreme Court was that the order was very narrow. All it ordered was that the Tazewell County clerk with posts, the referendum notices. It didn’t say the referendum can’t go forward. 02:24.33 Sam Shirazi And the Supreme Court kind of seized on that and says, look, we don’t have to make a decision because this order is so narrow. Well, I think the judge and the parties learned their lesson. And this time the judge made very specific instructions and he made very specific instructions to specific people. 02:39.35 Sam Shirazi So essentially the Virginia Supreme Court can’t find a procedural way to get out of this. It seems like they will have to rule on it. But before I talk about the Virginia Supreme Court, I wanted to talk about the order the judge issued itself. And I won’t honestly go that much into the legal details because, frankly, it’s pretty much the same arguments that we’ve been talking about. Really what changed in this decision, the most important thing was the actual thing the lower court ordered. And that was the main problem for the Republicans in the last time they went to Supreme Court is the order was too narrow. And so this time the ne the order is a lot more broad and covers a lot more things, but it’s still a temporary order. And we’ll talk about why that’s important. 03:20.82 Sam Shirazi Okay, so here is what the lower court in Tadswell County ordered. He said, quote, all defendants temporarily restrained in their official capacities from administering, preparing for taking any action to further the procedure of the referendum or other otherwise moving forward with causing an election to be held on the proposed constitutional amendment. 03:43.73 Sam Shirazi So very broad. And this applied to a bunch of people, including on the Department of Elections. And so essentially what the court is saying is you guys can’t do anything to move the referendum forward. 03:55.79 Sam Shirazi And I thought it was interesting that. The court went even so far as to say that they can’t prepare for the referendum, which I think is really important because obviously early voting is supposed to spark on March 6th. 04:07.51 Sam Shirazi So the fact that they can’t even prepare for the the referendum certainly is putting a lot of limits on these people. And I think, again, I think the judge learned his lesson is that you have to be very specific in what you are ordering someone to do. 04:21.27 Sam Shirazi when you issue this type of order. And you know the other thing I wanted to really flag about this order from the Taswell court was that it’s it’s what’s called a temporary restraining order. So you might commonly hear that as a TRO. 04:35.56 Sam Shirazi So there are different types of things that courts will issue called equitable relief. So equitable relief is that basically any sort of non-monetary relief. And you can get a TRO, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction. So but the TRO, temporary restraining order, as its name implies, is temporary. 04:54.61 Sam Shirazi And it really is kind of an emergency kind of thing, like something, time is of the essence. The court can’t sit around on this for months. It has to rule quickly. Obviously, from a Republican standpoint, they made the argument, this is very urgent. Early voting is going to start. We need to stop this, nip it in the bud, because it’s illegal. That was a Republican position. 05:13.13 Sam Shirazi And the the lower court agreed here. But importantly, TROs, I mean, they’re supposed to be temporary. I mean, they’re called temporary restraining orders. This isn’t going to last forever. 05:23.05 Sam Shirazi And the lower court itself put an end date to this specific TRO, which was March 18th. So this specific order is essentially going to expire on March 18th. Obviously, before then, probably the court will issue what’s called a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction. 05:39.18 Sam Shirazi But this isn’t supposed to be forever. However, early voting starts March 6th, so obviously it will accomplish much of its goal of maybe stopping a referendum if the the early voting doesn’t start on March 6th. And ultimately what the judge will issue is either a preliminary injunction or a permanent injunction. 05:57.60 Sam Shirazi So a preliminary injunction is kind of like a TRO, but it’s a little bit more serious, and it usually doesn’t have an expiration date. That’s kind of at the beginning of a case you issue a preliminary injunction. Then at the very end of the case, you can issue a permanent injunction. 06:10.37 Sam Shirazi often i mean, it’s it’s pretty rare to get a preliminary injunction and not get a permanent injunction eventually. So the real distinction is between a TRO and a preliminary injunction. And this was a TRO. 06:21.62 Sam Shirazi And I think the legal significance of that in this context is that typically the appellate courts, they tend to review TROs, temporary restraining orders, much more quickly because in theory, 06:34.05 Sam Shirazi It was usually granted without much argument. There isn’t much time for the lower court to think about this because something is happening that requires immediate attention. And so that will that means it’s going to get appealed really quickly. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he’s going to appeal this. 06:52.84 Sam Shirazi Some people had even speculated that on Friday we would get some sort of order either from the Intermediary Court of Appeals or even from the Virginia Supreme Court. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. This weekend, but perhaps on Monday, we will get an immediate order. 07:07.64 Sam Shirazi But long story short, I mean, clearly, this is for the time being pause the Democrats plans. But I think this is the type of thing that would certainly be fast tracked by the intermediate court of appeals and potentially just go straight to the Virginia Supreme Court to make the final call. 07:24.74 Sam Shirazi And I think the Republican strategy here is to just force the Virginia Supreme Court to make a final ruling. I mean, clearly last time the Virginia Supreme Court essentially found a procedural way to avoid ruling before the redistricting referendum and kind of punt the final ruling till after the redistricting referendum. 07:42.05 Sam Shirazi The Virginia Republicans... are trying to force the issue. They’re basically telling the Supreme Court, we’re not going to let you wait wait it out. You have to decide before the the referendum whether this is legal or not. Now, you could argue that’s going to backfire. You may not want to put the court in that position, but the Virginia Republicans felt like they had no choice. 08:01.28 Sam Shirazi And the thing is that after this goes up for the appeal, there’s a lot of different ways the Virginia Supreme Court can handle this. They could essentially rule 100% for the Republicans and say, yeah, the lower court’s right, we’re going to keep this temporary restraining order in place. And that might be pretty much be the end of the redistricting referendum if that happens. However, that, you know, it’s it’s risky because I think there’s another alternative where the Supreme Court doesn’t do that and and makes kind of a quick decision to basically stay the lower court order and just say, you know, we’re not taking this right now and just issue a very short order. 08:39.81 Sam Shirazi There’s something called the shadow docket. So the shadow docket is typically talked about

    23 min

  7. FEB 14

    It’s Happening: Redistricting Referendum Confirmed

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court about redistricting and the fact that they allowed Virginia redistricting to go forward. 00:16.02 Sam Shirazi However, they also left open the possibility that after the redistricting referendum, they might make a final ruling. This was basically an interim ruling or interim order. 00:26.74 Sam Shirazi And so I kind of want to unpack all that. And then I want to talk about the redistricting referendum. But long story short, the short version is the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the redistricting referendum to go forward on April 21st. 00:41.72 Sam Shirazi Early voting will start on March 6th. So really right around the corner. And so I think overall, you have to say this is a good outcome for the Democrats, at least in the short term, because in theory, the Virginia Supreme Court could have said the redistricting referendum couldn’t go forward or could have made a very complicated legal decision where really left open the doubt about whether the redistricting referendum is going to happen. 01:04.82 Sam Shirazi I think the Virginia Supreme Court was very clear that the redistricting referendum is moving forward. I think after that, they’re a little bit less clear about what’s going to happen. But I think for now, the Democrats will just take that. They’re going to run the redistricting referendum, and then we’ll see what happens there. 01:20.70 Sam Shirazi And ultimately, there’s still some legal questions hanging around. So it’s not like 100% certain the Democrats have won the legal case. But in the grand scheme of things, they certainly got the better end of it. 01:33.02 Sam Shirazi And I think after this order came from the Virginia Supreme Court, I think Democrats were feeling pretty good. Republicans were a bit demoralized. And so I want to kind of unpack first all the legal issues, like what the Supreme Court actually said, why it said it, what it might do. 01:50.26 Sam Shirazi And then after that, I’ll talk about the redistricting referendum itself, because that’s 100% going to move forward. So just to give you a little bit of background, the reason this has gotten to the Virginia Supreme Court is because a lower court in Tazewell County entered a ruling which on the merits mainly ruled for the Republicans, but significantly had a very narrow relief for the parties. And I’ll go through all what all that means, all that legalese stuff. 02:20.41 Sam Shirazi But I guess my point is, that there there was a lower court ruling and made it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And I guess when I did my podcast on that ruling, I kind of neglected to spend time on the actual thing the court ordered. And I want to spend more time analyzing that now because I think it’s really important to understand why the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the way it did. 02:41.44 Sam Shirazi And I think part of what I’ve been thinking about, the more I thought about the lower court decision, over the past couple of weeks, the more I kind of had a feeling this Virginia Supreme Court might go down the route they did. And i’ll kind of explain why that’s the case and i’ll kind of unpack that. 02:57.76 Sam Shirazi So what the lower court found in the actual ruling, like on the merits of the case, you know, was the redistricting referendum process correct or not. So very clear the lower court found the Democrats didn’t follow the right process. However, I think the really strange part of that opinion is the order act the order the thing that it ordered or the actual relief that Republicans got was very, very narrow. And so you had this kind of big opinion that basically said the Democrats did everything wrong. 03:29.88 Sam Shirazi But then the actual relief that the lower court ordered was very narrow. So I’m going to read what the lower court So, ordered in terms of the actual relief. So it said the court hereby grants a temporary and permanent injunction requiring the clerk of the circuit court of Tazewell county to pose to post the proposed constitutional amendment at least ninety days before the next ensuing election of the members of the house of delegates election so Basically, the the only thing the lower court said was the local clerk in Tazewell County has to post the redistricting referendum notices. 04:08.12 Sam Shirazi That’s all the court said. The court didn’t say Tazewell County can’t hold a redistricting referendum, didn’t say the state state of Virginia can’t hold a redistricting referendum. Nothing applied to the Virginia Department of Elections. like it literally just told the local clerk, you have to post the notices. 04:24.60 Sam Shirazi And I think the Virginia Supreme Court really latched on to the fact that this was a very narrow order in terms of what was actually the relief the Republicans got. Because the Virginia Supreme Court said, given the limited scope of the injunctive relief issued at the circuit court’s order, and then it it reads the circuit court order, it says, the denial of motions to say has no effect on the referendum scheduled on April 21, 2026. 04:54.17 Sam Shirazi So what that basically means in a lot of legal language is the April 21st redistricting referendum is allowed to move forward because the lower court didn’t say anything about the redistricting referendum itself. 05:06.90 Sam Shirazi And you know it’s kind of odd that that the lower court issued such a very narrow relief in terms of what the Republicans were trying to get. So I wanted to just kind of break that down for the non-lawyers out there. So i mentioned this before, I’m an attorney, and so I like to think about legal issues. 05:26.49 Sam Shirazi And one of my favorite classes in law school was called Remedies. And Remedies is basically what do you get after you win a lawsuit because you can win something on the merits. So you might be right legally, like, yes, your position is correct. You win on the law. 05:42.16 Sam Shirazi But then the rubber hits the road in what you get. And so in some things like a car accident, it’s pretty straightforward. You’re going to get money. If you get in a car accident, you get hurt and you win your lawsuit, you’re going money. And that’s not super complicated. 05:57.26 Sam Shirazi I think where it gets complicated is in non-monetary cases and what are called equitable cases where the Virginia Republicans are going to the court and are asking for something. And I think as a lawyer, it’s very important, one, to make sure you ask for the right thing, and two, to always keep in mind what did the court give you. Because what happened in the Tazewell County Court is that the judge basically, in the opinion, said all these things. Yeah, the Republicans are right. 06:26.67 Sam Shirazi Democrats did everything wrong. But at the end of the day, he didn’t give the Republicans that much. He literally just told the local clerk, post the notice. And what the Virginia Supreme Court is saying This is being appealed. We’re taking the appeal and we’re going to create a scheduling order for when we’re going to get briefs and all that. 06:45.25 Sam Shirazi But there’s nothing about the redistricting referendum itself that we need to rule on right now because the lower court didn’t make any sort of finding about the redistricting referendum. So whatever we’re ruling on today in this order, it does not stop the redistricting referendum. And you can make an argument. 07:03.03 Sam Shirazi That’s because the Virginia Supreme Court is basically saying, like we don’t have the power to stop the redistricting referendum because that’s not what’s before us. But what before what’s before us is the lower court order. Lower court order is ordering the Tazewell County clerk to post the notices. 07:16.76 Sam Shirazi We’ll review that, but we’re not reviewing the actual referendum itself. And so we have no power to say yes or no to the referendum at this stage. However, I think the other odd thing about the Virginia Supreme Court opinion was at the very end, they put the last sentence of this ruling. It said, nothing in this order shall prevent the parties from raising the underlying arguments and issues as this matter goes forward. And so that kind of vague statement is telling me Virginia Supreme Court’s leaving the door open. 07:46.20 Sam Shirazi to kind of a final ruling after the redistricting referendum. And if you look at the the briefing schedule that the Virginia Supreme Court has laid out, basically the briefing will be done a couple days after the redistricting referendum. 08:00.91 Sam Shirazi So basically, the Virginia Supreme Court is saying we’re not going to be rushed into this. We’re going to let the redistricting referendum happen. And then we’ll get some briefs. And if we want oral arguments, we’ll ask for oral arguments. But basically, expect a ruling from us sometime, probably in May. 08:16.91 Sam Shirazi And we’ll let you know later. And we’re not going to stop the redistricting referendum. So again, overall, I would say good news for the Democrats, but they’re not 100% out of the woods yet because the Virginia Supreme Court has left open the possibility about a final ruling. 08:31.37 Sam Shirazi And I think there are essentially three possibilities about how the Virginia Supreme Court. One possibility is the redistricting referendum is not approved by the voters. And that’s kind of the easy case for the Virginia Supreme Court, because if the voters don’t approve it, they can just say the case is moot. 08:47.50 Sam Shirazi You know, there’s no point for us to rule because this isn’t going happen and there’s nothing for us to rule on. I think where it gets more complicated is if the voters say, yes, we approve this referendum. 08:59.21 Sam Sh

    27 min

  8. FEB 6

    10-1: Virginia Dems Release Their Proposed Map

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal of Fallout, the 2020 by Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the new map that has been proposed by the Virginia Democrats after they have undergone the process of potentially doing redistricting this year in Virginia. Now, caveat all that with first, they have to make sure that they... 00:19.57 Sam Shirazi overcome any legal challenges the Republicans are bringing, then there will have to be a referendum on April 21st, and the voters will have to approve redistricting this year in Virginia. But if all of that happens, then potentially this map that the Virginia Democrats have just released will be the maps that will be used in 2026. And there’s some really major changes in some districts. Other districts, there aren’t that many changes. So what I thought I’d do is I’d go district by district and kind of explain the changes, explain who won, who lost, why the districts look a certain way, and what were some surprises that we saw in this new map. 00:54.62 Sam Shirazi And so anyways, I’ll go district by district. I wanted to say big picture. what this district What this map does is essentially give Democrats a 10 to 1 delegation for it likely in 2026. So what that means is the Democrats will be able to elect... 01:12.08 Sam Shirazi 10 Democrats in Virginia versus just one Republican. Currently, there’s a 6-5 map. That means there are six Democrats, five Republicans. Not every single district is deep blue. And potentially in a competitive election cycle, the the Republicans could win some seats that under this map. 01:29.64 Sam Shirazi However, the goal, I think, for the Virginia Democrats is really to get in 2026 and probably in 2028. 01:38.41 Sam Shirazi 2030, lot of things could be different. We could have a Democratic president by 2030. And so it’s it’s possible the Republicans will win some seats under this map in 2030. But I don’t think the Virginia Democrats are too worried about 2030 because that’s the last election these maps will be used. They’ll be redistricting again because of the new census data. So this map is really for 2026 and 2028. And I think it does what it needs to do, it it seems like. And then I’ll go district by district. 02:05.40 Sam Shirazi And really the way the Virginia Democrats redrew the map, the main change was that they basically cracked Northern Virginia. There’s two ways of gerrymandering. You either crack or you pack. And cracking is often thought of as you crack... 02:20.25 Sam Shirazi in an area to disadvantage the other side, but you can also crack an area to advantage yourself. And obviously Northern Virginia is very blue. And so you could have a few very blue districts in Northern Virginia, or you could crack Northern Virginia and get a bunch of blue districts. And that’s basically what the Democrats have done. They’ve also packed in a couple of districts. So in the ninth district, they basically packed all the Republicans in this in the Western part of the state in the ninth district. 02:49.75 Sam Shirazi The sixth is technically a kind of a pack, although it’s a pack of Democrats. So the Democrats have basically found a bunch of different areas in Virginia where there are Democrats and they kind of pack them together. So long story short, I will go district by district because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. 03:07.10 Sam Shirazi And so I will start off with the first district. So the first district is currently represented by Rob Whitman. It’s basically a Richmond area seat and then it kind of scoops down and goes into Hampton Roads. 03:17.82 Sam Shirazi Under the old map, Trump won the district by about five points in 2024. The new map, Harris won it by about seven and a half points in 2024. So obviously we’re going from kind of a light red seat to a light blue seat. And I think in 2026 environment, it’s going to be pretty likely the Democrats are going to be able to win this seat. The current incumbent, Rob Whitman, he is going to be one of the losers of Virginia redistricting because his district has gotten a lot... bluer And he doesn’t even really live in this new first district and we’ll talk about it. And so I don’t even know if he’ll run in the first district if it ends up happening. 03:55.78 Sam Shirazi So the new first district is is kind of an interesting looking seat. It kind of goes from all the way from Fairfax And then it kind of goes down I-95 all the way down to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically kind of like an I-95 district from Northern Virginia down to Richmond. 04:17.20 Sam Shirazi And honestly, I think this is the district that Eugene Vindman, who currently represents the 7th district, I think Vindman is going to run in the 1st district. because his home of Prince William County, like the Woodbridge area, most of that is in the first district. And so I think Vintman’s probably going to run in that district if I had to guess. And, you know, both for the primary In the general election, I think Vindman would be the favorite. Now, obviously, they could, someone could run against him in the primary, depending on, you know, what happens. But I do think Vindman overall is is a winner of redistricting. 05:19.05 Sam Shirazi Okay, let’s go to the second district. And honestly, the second district was one of the biggest surprises of the night. Why? Because it didn’t change that much. And you know you would think this is one of the seats the Democrats are trying to win in Virginia, flip. 05:32.52 Sam Shirazi So you think they want to change it a lot, but they actually didn’t change it that much. So it went from kind of a very marginal Trump plus 0.3 district in 2024 to now it’s about a plus 1.3 Harris district. So about, you know, one point or so bluer. 05:49.96 Sam Shirazi And obviously that helps Elaine Luria, but the Democrats could have done even more. And the district really didn’t change that much. I was expecting the district to include parts of Norfolk. 06:01.17 Sam Shirazi And, you know, have a kind of a Norfolk, Virginia Beach district. I don’t think it includes any of Norfolk and it actually includes part of Chesapeake. So it’s kind of swapped some parts of Chesapeake. 06:12.98 Sam Shirazi Didn’t really expect that. I thought the second was going to change a lot more than it did. And, you know, there’s a lot of speculation about why that is. It’s potentially because the third district, Bobby Scott, he’s the dean of the Virginia delegation. It’s possible that he has some influence and he didn’t want his change his district changed that much. 06:29.73 Sam Shirazi I don’t really know. But regardless, I think the second district, Luria, still comes out ahead because it’s a bluer district. I think she’s not going to face any serious primary challenger. 06:40.51 Sam Shirazi So I think Luria is in the driver’s seat for the second district. You know, Kiggins, at the end of the day, the current incumbent, Jen Kiggins, like she could have gotten a much worse gerrymander against her. And so I guess in some ways, you know, things aren’t that bad for her. But I still think in 2026, she’s going to be the underdog. 06:56.88 Sam Shirazi There’s been a lot of federal fallout. Hampton Roads has felt a lot of that. So I do think In the second, Luria is favored, although it was a bit of a surprise that the district didn’t change that much. And it basically kind of looks like the same district with a little bit of changes here and there. 07:11.04 Sam Shirazi So I would say, you know, second district, Elaine Luria is, you know, the favorite, but not necessarily a slam dunk for the Democrats. 07:21.64 Sam Shirazi So I talked a little bit already about the third district. So the third district, the incumbent is Bobby Scott. The district goes from about a 34.5 Harris district in to about 31.5 Harris district. so honestly, not a lot of change. 07:37.93 Sam Shirazi Bobby Scott’s probably one of the biggest winners of the redistricting because his district is basically the same and it’s as blue as it was before or just slightly less blue. So he’s, you know, in a pretty safe position. And so anyways, not a whole lot to say about the third district in that sense. 07:56.06 Sam Shirazi All right, now let’s move on to the fourth district. So the fourth district is currently represented by Jennifer McClellan. It was about a 32.5 Harris district in 2024. And the new district is going to be about a 16 point plus Harris district. So still pretty safe blue seat in Virginia. 08:17.06 Sam Shirazi I think the changes in this district were kind of on the margins. You basically got – she gave up some of the some parts of Richmond and Henrico and got a little bit more of Southside. So that’s why her district got less blue. But at the end of the day, like Jennifer McClellan still came out on top because she’s got most of Richmond, which is her base. 08:40.43 Sam Shirazi And then the district is still you know pretty blue. And so I don’t really anticipate her her having many much problems in the the primary or the general. So fourth district, not a whole lot to talk about. 08:53.24 Sam Shirazi I will move on to the fifth district because this district district changed a lot. So the current incumbent is John McGuire. And the district is about 12-point Trump district from 2024. 09:05.81 Sam Shirazi Under the new lines, it’s almost a nine-point Harris district. So big swing. Democrats are going to be pretty safe in that seat. And the way it’s changed is the the fifth district currently is kind of a Charlottesville Southside district. 09:19.21 Sam Shirazi And actually, it doesn’t include any of Charlottesville. And it’s been shifted over to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically like the Richmond suburbs and then parts of Southside. And, you know, John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot

    25 min
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About

A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

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