A Democrat running for Congress in Michigan is campaigning on a “Made in America” platform, but has a history of outsourcing jobs and products at his own companies.

Matt Maasdam is under scrutiny for expressing a desire to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. from overseas while relying on offshore production during his time at Under Armour and at two other companies he helped found — one of which is credited with making “Joe Rogan’s favorite jeans.”

The Navy SEAL-turned-businessman is running in a crowded primary to take on Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who flipped the seat in 2024 after Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., vacated to run for Senate.

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Maasdam’s campaign website says one of his top priorities if elected to Congress would be “making more essential goods here in America, ensuring jobs pay fair wages, and keeping our manufacturing and food supply chains strong so we’re not dependent on countries like China.”

PECOS Outdoor — a portable work table company where Maasdam is CEO — sought to use products from a Chinese vendor, according to a 2022 shipping record obtained by Fox News Digital.  The record denoted that PECOS received a container of samples from the Nanjing Tuchun Import and Export Co. in 2022. 

Additionally, both Under Armour and Revtown, which he co-founded, outsourced production of their clothing to foreign countries.

Emma Grundhauser, Maasdam’s campaign manager, argued in a statement to Fox News Digital that he took the opportunity to build a company that makes things in America, “because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s easy.” 

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“A one-off shipment of samples doesn’t change that record,” Grundhauser said. “Matt has been clear since day one: as a congressman, he’ll fight to keep the Michigan dream alive by making more things here in America so we’re not dependent on countries like China.”

“Michigan’s labor unions are standing with Matt because they know he’ll fight to bring jobs home — unlike Tom Barrett, who voted for Trump’s reckless tariffs that have killed nearly 100,000 American manufacturing jobs,” she continued. 

During a candidate forum in Michigan earlier this month, an audience member asked Maasdam about his private sector record after he highlighted endorsements from local labor unions. He insisted it was impossible to manufacture jeans in America as an excuse for why the apparel companies found work outside the U.S.

“I worked for Under Armour. They made a lot of their stuff overseas. I wasn’t in charge of Under Armour, right? As much as I would like to make that stuff here, we didn’t,” Maasdam admitted.

After serving as a military aide to former President Barack Obama — often spotted carrying the nuclear football during his administration — Maasdam entered the private sector and worked for sportswear company Under Armour. He later started his own apparel company, Revtown, best known for producing jeans branded as podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan’s favorite.

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Under Armour relies heavily on outsourcing, and similarly Revtown sourced denim from Italy and manufactured its clothing in Guatemala.

“There were two good denim mills in the world — one is in Italy, one is in Japan. There are none in America. So when you talk about how to get denim to America, we don’t make it,” Maasdam said at the forum. “We don’t actually make the material, right? And so we would bring that to Guatemala, then it got cut and sewn, and we brought it here to sell it.”

Maasdam later co-founded PECOS Outdoor, a Texas-based outdoor table company that touts its commitment to making and sourcing products in the U.S.

“I got poached from that company to start another company, and everything in that company was made in America and assembled in America,” Maasdam said. “And so, from the perspective of like where is my heart and mind in terms of that stuff, it’s here, in the United States. So, that’s what we did.”

But the 2022 shipping record obtained by Fox News Digital shows PECOS received a shipment of sample materials from a Chinese vendor, meaning none of the companies Maasdam has helped lead are free from foreign outsourcing.

PECOS Outdoor and Revtown did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Republicans are hoping to maintain control of the Michigan seat to preserve their narrow majority in the upper chamber. Meanwhile, Democrats are eyeing the district — which has proved flippable before — as a pickup opportunity in their bid to regain a majority in the House.

“Millionaire Matt Maasdam lined his own pockets by shipping jobs overseas,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Zach Bannon told Fox News Digital when asked about the revelations. “Maasdam has proven he will put his own bank account ahead of hardworking Michiganders.”

LEESBURG, Va. — Virginians head to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a congressional redistricting referendum that, if passed, could give Democrats a significant boost in the battle for the U.S. House majority in this year’s midterm elections.

If the ballot measure is successful, it would give the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature — rather than the state’s current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election. It could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge.

That would give the Democrats four additional left-leaning U.S. House seats ahead of the midterms as the party tries to win back control of the chamber from the GOP, which currently holds a razor-thin majority.

“It’s the most partisan map in American,” former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin told supporters at his final campaign stop on the eve of the election in this northern Virginia town on the far end of Washington, DC’s suburbs.

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Pointing to the Democrats pushing new maps, Youngkin charged, “What they are doing is immoral.”

Teaming up with Youngkin to crisscross the state in leading the GOP opposition to the ballot initiative was former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who told the crowd the Democrats’ map is one that “you draw when you’re drunk with power.”

Speaking with Fox News Digital ahead of their final election eve rally, Miyares charged that Democrats want to take away the voices of millions of Virginians and gerrymander the state.

Youngkin, pointing to the duo’s relentless campaigning in recent weeks, said “what we’re hearing over and over and over again is Virginians want fair maps. And what the yes vote represents are unfair maps.”

And the two Republicans reiterated their charge that the referendum was an “unconstitutional power grab” by the Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democrats who control the state legislature.

As Youngkin and Miyares were speaking in Leesburg, President Donald Trump took to the airwaves on a popular Virginia-based conservative talk show and later teamed up with House Speaker Mike Johnson to urge voters to defeat the referendum.

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Pointing to congressional Democrats, Trump warned that “if they get these additional seats, they’re going to be making changes at the federal level.”

Democrats counter that the redrawing of the maps is a necessary step to balance out partisan gerrymandering already implemented by Republicans in other states at Trump’s urging.

“By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important — not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country,” former President Barack Obama said in a video released Friday on the eve of the final day of early voting. “By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms.”

“By voting yes, you can take a temporary step to level the playing field. And we’re counting on you,” the former president added.

The video by Obama was the former president’s latest effort tied to the referendum. He has previously appeared in ads released by Virginians for Fair Elections, the Democrat-aligned group working to pass the ballot initiative.

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But Virginians for Fair Maps, the leading Republican-aligned group opposing redistricting, used past comments by Obama against political gerrymandering in its ads opposing the referendum.

“Because of things like political gerrymandering, our parties have moved further and further apart, and it’s harder and harder to find common ground,” the former president said in an old clip showcased in the spot.

Republicans are also pointing to comments from Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a former Virginia governor and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who acknowledged this past weekend in a Fox News Sunday interview that the new maps don’t represent Virginia’s partisan breakdown.

“Ninety percent of Virginians are not Democrats, that’s true,” Kaine said.

But Kaine added that “about 100% of Virginians want election results to be respected.”

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And Republicans are also taking aim at Spanberger, who won last November’s gubernatorial election by over 15 points as Democrats also captured the lieutenant governor and attorney general offices.

“Abigail Spanberger told everybody last summer that she had no interest in redistricting and then the first bill she signs is a bill to enable the gerrymandering of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginians don’t like this and that’s why independents and a lot of Democrats are voting no too,” Youngkin told Fox News Digital.

Minutes later, Youngkin told the crowd that Spanberger is “trying to disenfranchise million, millions, of Virginians.”

Republicans have trained their redistricting firepower on Spanberger since a poll two weeks ago from The Washington Post indicated that the new governor’s approval rating was barely above water, with the highest unfavorable rating for a new Virginia governor in two decades.

“She’s an unpopular governor with an unpopular agenda and she lied to the voters,” Miyares charged.

And Miyares and other top Republicans have accused Spanberger of pulling a “bait and switch.”

Spanberger, in an ad in support of the referendum, said she’s backing the measure because “it’s directly in response to what other states decide to do and a president who says he’s quote entitled to more Republican seats before this year’s midterms. Our approach is different. It’s temporary. It preserves Virginia’s fair redistricting process into the future.”

Supporters of redistricting have dramatically outraised and outspent groups opposed to the referendum, with Virginians for Fair Elections outraising Virginians for Fair Maps by a roughly three-to-one margin. Much of the funding raised by both sides came from so-called “dark money” from nonprofit public policy groups known as 501(c)(4) organizations that are not required to disclose their donors.

Despite the Democrats’ funding advantage, recent polling suggested support for the ballot initiative was only slightly ahead of opposition amid a surge in early voting, which ended on Saturday.

“They have outspent us three to one. They’ve raised over $70 million. And yet this is a close vote,” Youngkin said.

Pointing to the ads in support of the referendum, Youngkin said Virginians “aren’t believing the mistruths. They aren’t believing the lies on TV. They’re actually doing the work themselves and understanding that a no vote is for fair maps and a yes vote is for the most gerrymandered maps in America.”

And Miyares emphasized that Democrats “outspent us but we have the truth.”

Virginia is the latest battleground in the high-stakes fight between Trump and the GOP and Democrats over congressional redistricting.

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump last spring first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.

The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP’s fragile House majority to keep control of the chamber in the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

When asked by reporters last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.

But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.

Among those leading the fight against Trump’s redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

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California voters in November overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that temporarily sidetracked the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.

The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.

Republican-controlled Missouri and Ohio and swing state North Carolina, where the GOP dominates the legislature, have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.

In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge late last year rejected a congressional district map drawn by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms.

Republicans in Indiana’s Senate in December defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House. The showdown in the Indiana statehouse grabbed plenty of national attention.

Florida is next up.

Two-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature are hoping to pick up an additional three to five right-leaning seats through a redistricting push during a special legislative session that kicks off April 28.

Hovering over the redistricting wars is the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in Louisiana v. Callais, a crucial case that may lead to the overturning of a key provision in the Voting Rights Act.

If the ruling goes the way of the conservatives on the high court, it could lead to the redrawing of a slew of majority-minority districts across the county, which would greatly favor Republicans.

But it is very much up in the air when the court will rule and what it will actually decide.

Senate Republicans hope to nail down the first step of their party-line funding package for immigration operations this week, but other legislative obstacles and divisions could slow the process.

Republicans and President Donald Trump are in agreement that the partisan budget reconciliation process is the key to bypassing Democrats’ blockade of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol funding.

But in order to hit that fast-approaching deadline, Senate Republicans largely want to keep the package as narrowly tailored as possible to avoid any hiccups in the process. The main plan from Republican leadership is to fund immigration operations for the next three years with the current reconciliation package and look to a future bill as a later landing spot for other issues.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will kick off the process with a budget resolution that will act as the guiding document for the GOP as they push forward into reconciliation. That resolution will tee up the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as the main panels running the process.

“I hope we can get moving on it as early as next week,” Graham said before lawmakers left Washington, D.C., for the weekend.

Despite keeping the resolution, in theory, as slim as possible, other lawmakers in the upper chamber and in the House want more added to the package.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow last week that he was making the case that Republicans should “go big” on reconciliation. Cruz said he wants a decade of funding for ICE and Border Patrol and, more broadly, tax cuts and affordability measures.

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“Right now, leadership’s plan is to have the skinny, anorexic bill that just has funding for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. I think that is short-minded, short-sighted,” Cruz said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated that the forthcoming package would have to “fall within the contours of what we’re trying to do here,” but he acknowledged that other Republicans viewed the current package as a vehicle that could fit several other issues.

“We have another vehicle available, we’ll see, but right now, keep it tight,” he continued. “That’s the plan.”

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Part of the problem with adding more to the package is that more committees would have to get involved, like during the crafting of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which involved every panel in the Senate and House and narrowly survived in the upper chamber.

And House Republicans are on the same page as Cruz — they want to supersize the bill to take advantage of the GOP’s trifecta in Washington, D.C., ahead of the midterm elections in the fall.

It’s a give-and-take between the chambers in their quest to end the longest shutdown in history. House Republicans aren’t keen on passing the Senate’s bill to fund the bulk of DHS, minus funding for ICE and chunks of CBP, until the reconciliation package passes.

But that could further prolong the shutdown, and Republicans in the upper chamber argue that DHS should be reopened while they hammer out the details for funding immigration operations in the background.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital that adding more to the package would slow down the process.

“Every time you add stuff to it, you add committees of jurisdiction, you add complexity, and you add more time,” Hoeven said. “So if they want it expeditiously, which is what we’re working on right now, then you wouldn’t add stuff, right?”

Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump‘s pick to lead the Federal Reserve for the next four years, heads into a high-stakes confirmation hearing Tuesday with lawmakers on Capitol Hill set to scrutinize his views on inflation, independence and the Fed’s role.

The hearing comes as the Federal Reserve faces mounting political, legal and economic pressure, making it a key test of how the next chair could reshape the central bank’s independence at a critical moment for the U.S. economy.

And with current Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s term coming to an end on May 15, 2026, Republicans are scurrying to get a nominee confirmed even though they face pushback within the party.

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No institution has more influence over what people can afford than the Federal Reserve — an impact Americans feel every month. But that influence isn’t always obvious.

The Fed doesn’t set the price of groceries or cars, but it does determine how expensive it is to borrow money to pay for them. And right now, borrowing is costly. High interest rates mean larger monthly payments on mortgages, car loans and credit cards — even if sticker prices haven’t changed.

This makes the Fed’s leadership especially consequential.

Against that backdrop, Warsh’s potential ascent would come at a turbulent time for the institution.

The pressure is coming from multiple fronts: the Justice Department is conducting a criminal probe involving Powell, the Supreme Court is weighing limits on the Fed’s independence and rising costs are testing Trump’s affordability pledge—intensifying the stakes for the next chair.

Adding to the uncertainty, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has signaled he may not support Warsh’s nomination in committee unless the Justice Department drops its investigation into Powell.

Taken together, what began as tension over interest-rate policy has since broadened into a wider confrontation, marking one of the most challenging stretches of Powell’s eight-year tenure leading the Fed.

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Powell has called the DOJ investigation “unprecedented,” describing it as another example of what he sees as escalating pressure on the central bank. His unusually public response — after days of private consultations with advisers — marks a sharp departure from his typically measured approach.

In March, Powell told reporters at the Federal Reserve he has “no intention of leaving” the central bank until the DOJ investigation is “fully resolved with transparency and finality.” His term is slated to end next month.

Like Powell, Warsh is not an economist by training, instead bringing a background in law and finance that has shaped his views on the central bank.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1992 and a law degree from Harvard in 1995, before building his career at Morgan Stanley. At 35, he became the youngest person to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors in 2006.

Though he stepped down in 2011, Warsh was widely seen as the Fed’s key liaison to Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. He previously served in the Bush administration as a special assistant to the president for economic policy and executive secretary at the National Economic Council.

Warsh was also among Trump’s leading candidates to replace then-Fed Chair Janet Yellen in 2017, though the president ultimately selected Powell for the role.

Another Democrat has dropped out of California’s crowded gubernatorial race as the primary election approaches in roughly six weeks.

Former state Controller Betty Yee, of San Francisco, announced her withdrawal Monday after polling showed she had failed to break into the top tier of candidates, according to The Associated Press (AP).

Her exit comes just a week after embattled former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell also withdrew from the race amid multiple serious sexual misconduct allegations.

“Today I am announcing that my campaign for governor will be suspended,” Yee said in a video announcement, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported. “This campaign has always been about something much bigger than any one candidate. It’s about building a California where opportunity is real and owned, where government regains trust by being responsible and accountable, and where no one is left behind.”

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Yee, who had been vying to become California’s first female governor as Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to leave office, consistently lagged in the polls, never rising above roughly 3% support among likely voters, according to local nonprofit outlet Cal Matters. 

She attributed her inability to gain traction in part to fundraising challenges in a race known for its steep costs and heavy advertising demands.

“It was becoming clear that the donors were not going to be there. Even some of my former supporters just felt like they needed to move on,” Yee said, according to The AP.

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During an emotional announcement, Yee thanked her supporters who stood by her throughout her two-year campaign, which emphasized her experience managing the state budget and highlighted her family’s middle-class immigrant background.

Before serving as state controller, where she audited government agencies and oversaw the allocation of state funds, Yee previously worked as a budget director under former Gov. Gray Davis before being elected to the State Board of Equalization.

Yee’s exit leaves former Rep. Katie Porter as the primary woman in the race.

As the June 2 primary election approaches in what is expected to be one of the nation’s most closely watched state contests, other remaining key candidates include Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer, along with Republican frontrunners Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Virginians for Fair Elections, a main group fighting to get Virginia voters to approve a ballot referendum that will allow the state to redraw its congressional maps, has been pumped with millions in cash from a web of George Soros-backed dark money groups and top Democratic Party officials.

The money the group has garnered ahead of Tuesday’s vote, which is poised to allow Democrats in the House of Representatives to potentially take four seats from Republicans going into the midterms, also comes from leading Democratic Party figures and organizations like Nancy Pelosi and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Other left-wing juggernauts pumping money into the Democratic Party’s redistricting effort in Virginia include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which once championed the adoption of “independent redistricting commissions,” national green energy group the League of Conservation Voters, and the U.S. House of Representatives campaign arm for the Democratic Party, according to a Fox News Digital review of state campaign finance records and records from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), which tracks public spending in Virginia.

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“Dark money is flooding into Virginia,” GOP strategist Matt Gorman told Fox News Digital. “Democrats talked all about the cost of living during the campaign, but all they did once in office was raise taxes and rig elections. It’ll be the same elsewhere across the country in 2026 too.”

Fox News Digital reported in March that the left-wing group fighting to redraw Virginia’s maps raised more than $38 million, according to VPAP’s donation totals based on state campaign finance records. As of right before the mid-April referendum vote, just a handful of weeks later, that total ballooned to more than $64 million.

In 2026, the largest giver to Virginians for Fair Elections was House Majority Forward, the nonprofit counterpart of House Democrats’ House Majority PAC, which has donated over $38 million, records show.

Meanwhile, entities directly tied to Soros, or that obtained significant funding which can be traced back to the billionaire Democrat megadonor, come in second and third in terms of total giving to the group, per VPAP’s accounting of donation totals.

One of those groups, the Fund for Policy Reform Inc, was founded by Soros. The other, titled The Fairness Project, has been funded by groups like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund and the Tides Foundation, which Soros has given significant funding to.

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Another one of the top donors to the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections is American Opportunity Action, described as “a pure pass-through entity” by Parker Thayer, a dark money expert from the conservative Capital Research Center. The group is so new that it does not even appear to have any 990s filed with the IRS but is still one of Virginians for Fair Elections’ top donors, according to VPAP and state campaign finance records.

Top Democratic Party members of Congress from outside Virginia, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., and Katherine Clark, D-Mass., also donated tens-of-thousands of dollars, according to a review of state campaign finance records. Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s leadership PAC donated $100,000 as well, while the Democratic Party of Virginia put up just shy of a million dollars, per VPAP’s accounting.

Meanwhile, a group founded by Obama wingman Eric Holder, who previously championed “independent redistricting commissions,” provided a more than $10,000 in-kind contribution to the left-wing redistricting group, state election filings show. The League of Conservation Voters, and the Soros-backed MoveOn.org were also among Virginians for Fair Election’s top donors. In terms of labor union support, SEIU gave half-a-million, while AFT gave $100,000.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the other top donors pumping thousands or millions into the redistricting battle, but did not receive a response ahead of publication.

“No one wanted to take this action, but in a democracy, we can’t let entire states rig their congressional maps just to bend to the will of one person,” Alexis Magnan-Callaway, a spokesperson for The Fairness Project, told Fox News Digital in March.  

“We have to respond. This amendment is a temporary, one-time exception that gives Virginia voters a voice and meets the needs of the current moment, while ensuring Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting process will resume after the 2030 census,” she continued. “This isn’t about favoring one party over another. This is about restoring fairness across the board by temporarily changing Virginia’s congressional districts.”

A main group in Virginia opposing the redistricting effort led by Democrats, Virginians For Fair Maps, raised a little over $3 million at the time of Fox News Digital’s late March report. However, the right-wing redistricting group in Virginia appears to have gained some ground since then as well, albeit still far behind the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections funding totals.

As of just before the referendum vote Tuesday, the anti-redistricting referendum group raised its fundraising total to nearly $20 million, with most of that money coming from a group by the same name that is also a significant donor to the Virginia Republican Party. 

Other donations to the group come from a series of several much smaller donors, such as $50,000 from the National Shooting Sports Foundation and $100,000 from a wealthy D.C.-area real-estate investor, who donates primarily to GOP campaigns. That investor is the top individual donor at $100,000 out of just a handful of individual contributions, according to VPAP.

Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has reportedly given more than $500,000 in efforts against the redistricting measure, per reporting from the Virginia Scope. He also has been a leading voice in Virginia holding events to campaign against the measure despite no longer being in office.

Wealthy tech entrepreneur and Republican donor Peter Thiel has reportedly donated to Justice for Democracy PAC, which has been part of the anti-redistricting effort alongside Virginians for Fair Maps as well.

Ahead of a special election on Tuesday, Virginia Republicans blasted a proposed constitutional amendment in their state that could soon cost them their congressional seats, calling the effort the most “unfair” of a string of redrawn maps across the country.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., believes it’s a sentiment shared by voters.

“I was with a group of Virginia Watermen this morning from across the state and they’re [feeling] the same way. They say ‘no, we’re not going to let them turn us into a state that’s only governed by a portion of the state,’” Wittman said.

The Virginia redistricting effort, which requires a statewide vote to go into effect, follows similar shakeups in Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah.

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But unlike many of those other states that already have a distinct party advantage one way or another, Virginia’s GOP blasted what they saw as a drastic power swing they say misrepresents the state’s purple voter base.

If successful, the new maps would temporarily turn the current 6-5 congressional split to a 10-1 advantage for Democrats by stretching the borders of traditionally Republican areas across Democratic strongholds. The state’s normal process, conducted by a nonpartisan redistricting commission, would go back into effect in 2030 at the next U.S. census.

With up to four more seats, Democrats hope to recapture control of the House of Representatives, where a razor-thin majority favors Republicans — for now.

The GOP holds a 217-213 advantage in the chamber.

Democrats supporting the idea argue that Virginia is key to balancing out Republican-led gerrymandering efforts that began in Texas, describing the push as purely retaliatory.

“Virginia’s redistricting referendum gives voters the power to respond to a president who says he’s ‘entitled’ to more GOP seats in Congress before Americans vote in the midterms [and] to efforts in other states to give those seats to him,” Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger said in a post after teeing up the vote last month.

Former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin argued that the state’s current makeup more accurately reflects Virginia’s population.

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“We have fair maps today that represent Virginians, and what this constitutional amendment would mean is that we go to the most unfair maps in America, and therefore, ‘no’ is the right vote,” Youngkin said.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that politically favoring one party through the design of state’s district is constitutional, the practice, better known as gerrymandering, has been banned in Virginia since a constitutional referendum in 2020.

However, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state could temporarily amend its constitution to allow the implementation of new maps.

“’Do you want to restore fairness in elections temporarily?’” Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., said, referencing the phrasing of the referendum.

“It’s insane how that question is worded. So wrong how it’s written. But here we are. This is our chance to use our voice and our vote. And that’s very powerful. But the ball is in our court.’”

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., argued that undoing that prohibition now would be a mistake — even if it’s temporary in nature.

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“Virginians spoke in 2020; you know what they said? By a supermajority, they said no to gerrymandering. They said: ‘Let’s have a bipartisan determination of these districts.’ And by the way, they’ve been shown to be the most bipartisan districts across the United States,” Wittman said.

Polls open in Virginia at 6:00 a.m. and close at 7:00 p.m.

The matter of American hostages wrongfully detained in Iran could be resolved during negotiations between Tehran and Washington as both sides navigate a fragile ceasefire amid attempts to end the conflict, one expert said.

Ryan Fayhee, a lawyer for Abdolreza “Reza” Valizadeh, 49, who has been detained by Iran for more than a year, stressed the urgency of a diplomatic solution to secure his client’s release as pressure on Iran remains high during the war against the United States and Israel.

“It is my job as Reza’s lawyer to make sure that it doesn’t get lost,” Fayhee told Fox News Digital. “While I have high confidence that this is part of the negotiations, even though the administration hasn’t stated so publicly… it is officially my job to make sure it remains part of those conversations. And equally so — and this is the bigger challenge, because obviously, I don’t have full control — it’s my job to make sure Reza is safe and alive to allow for those negotiations to take place that ideally will secure his release.”

Iran is currently holding six Americans, though only two have been publicly identified: Valizadeh and 61-year-old Kamran Hekmati. Both hold dual Iranian and American citizenship and were being held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison.

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In recent days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have issued warnings on social media for residents living near the prison to evacuate the area amid continuing airstrikes.

“Despite Reza and Kamran Hekmati both being American citizens, the Iranians don’t recognize their American citizenship,” Fayhee said. “For that reason, they don’t receive traditional consular services. And even if they did, we don’t have an embassy there.”

In February, the State Department designated Iran a “State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention” for arbitrarily arresting Americans to use as bargaining chips in future negotiations.

“For decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time. “This abhorrent practice must end.”

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The designation adds extra layers of isolating tools, such as sanctions and travel restrictions, Fayhee noted.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the State Department and the White House, which has called on Iran to release every American being detained.

“President Trump has been clear that he wants every American wrongfully detained to be returned home safe and sound, and that there will be dire consequences for regimes who treat Americans as political pawns,” a White House spokesperson told The Associated Press.

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A second round of talks between Tehran and Washington has stalled as a clear path to a diplomatic resolution of the seven-week war remains uncertain. On Monday, President Donald Trump said he was under no pressure to make a deal with Iran, “although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Valizadeh was arrested in September 2024 during a visit to see family and was sentenced after being convicted of working with a “hostile government.” As a journalist, he previously reported on the 2009 pro-democracy protests in Iran and the regime’s heavy-handed response. As a result, he was exiled and began working for Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Securing a deal to free any Americans being held in Iran could prove difficult given Tehran’s proclivity for deception, Roger Carstens, the former U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, previously told Fox News.

“Strangely, the Russians, the Chinese, the Taliban, and the Venezuelans — when you start getting into hostage discussions, they tell the truth, and they stick to what they promise. You can do a handshake deal with the Taliban, and they’re going to follow through,” Carstens said. “The Iranians? Absolutely not.”

However, Fayhee, who also served as the lawyer for Paul Rusesabagina — the hotelier portrayed in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” — said he maintains hope for Valizadeh’s release. He noted that Iran is increasingly isolated following its missile strikes on its Arab neighbors and the opposition it faces from Western powers.

“It is the easiest problem on the table to solve, and both sides should acknowledge that,” Fayhee said. “Both sides should focus on it because clearly they’re trying to build a relationship of trust in these negotiations, and this is the surest way to do that.”

“The easiest thing Iran can do to show they’re genuinely interested in backing themselves out of this corner is to release these Americans,” he added. “It is low-hanging fruit.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., delivered a high-energy, revival sermon-style speech at the Michigan Democratic Convention, shouting and gesturing as he urged Democrats to become “foot soldiers for democracy” and warned that “darkness and wind” are sweeping the nation.

Booker was one of several out-of-state leaders, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, to participate in the Michigan Democratic Convention. All three have been floated as possible contenders for the 2028 presidential election.

Booker spoke for roughly 25 minutes and at several points bellowed at the crowd, adopting a poetic cadence and word choice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is a storm in our nation,” Booker exclaimed, finishing his speech. “There is darkness and wind. People are getting hurt. What we need is not from on high. We need foot soldiers of our democracy who in times of trial, are willing to stand up.”

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Booker then announced that it was time for Democrats to “redeem the dream of America.”

“Will you stand for our democracy? Will you stand to get out the vote? Will you stand for our children? Will you stand up for our elders?” Booker said. “And will you stand together, unified, strong — be the hope that people need. We are Democrats. It’s time for a new deal. It’s time to redeem the dream of America.”

Booker, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, used the speech as an opportunity to introduce himself to Michigan voters, sharing his career in politics and his family ties to the Great Lakes State.

CORY BOOKER ADMITS DEMOCRATS ‘FAILED IN MY GENERATION’ IN SCATHING ASSESSMENT OF HIS OWN PARTY

At one point, he expressed his dismay with voters who opted out of voting for presidential candidates Hillary Clinton or Vice President Kamala Harris because they disagreed “on ten percent of her views.”

“Well, you may disagree with her on 10% of her views, but you let someone get in office who you disagree with on everything,” Booker railed. “You let somebody get in office who is locking up our children. You let somebody in office who’s taking away our health care. You let somebody in office who’s taken away workers rights. You let somebody in office who got rid of the Department of Education.”

He then suggested that Democratic voters in Michigan turn the Michigan hand — a reference to the state’s shape — into the “Michigan fist.”

CORY BOOKER CONFRONTED WITH OLD CLIP OF HIMSELF SAYING HE LOVES DONALD TRUMP

“I don’t want the Michigan hand after your August primary, I want the Michigan fist,” Booker shouted. “I want you all to unite. I want you to punch a hole in the wall of resistance. I want you to grab a sledgehammer and knock some stuff down. I want you to reach up and grab somebody and get them off the couch and get him on the field. We got points to put on the board. I want that Michigan fist. I want some unity.”

However, former MSNBC commentator Medhi Hasan took issue with Booker’s assertion about Democratic voters who didn’t vote for Harris in 2024. Hasan said that Booker’s characterization places the blame on voters for a Democratic loss rather than the party platform.

“I tried to tell people who didn’t vote Dem in 2024 ‘to teach Democrats a lesson’ that sadly Democrats will never learn that lesson,” Hasan said on X, sharing a video of Booker speaking. “Here’s Booker simply attacking and mocking people who didn’t show up to vote Dem. It’s always the voters’ fault, never the Dems or their candidates.”

Other critics poked fun at Booker’s emphatic deliverance.

“Calm down, Spartacus,” wrote America First Works, a non-profit group and the advocacy arm of the America First Policy Institute.

Fox News Digital reached out to Booker for comment.

The Supreme Court’s emergency order blocking former President Barack Obama’s signature clean energy initiative in 2016 came after a series of leaked internal memos among the justices that revealed a fight along ideological lines about whether to intervene.

The rare glimpse at the high court’s internal memos, obtained by the New York Times, showed Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, urging the Supreme Court to block Obama’s effort, while liberal justices pushed back.

Roberts and the court’s conservatives were concerned not just with Obama’s policy itself, but with the possibility that the Clean Power Plan could reshape the power sector before the justices could fully review whether it was lawful, the newly revealed memos show.

“Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector before this court has an opportunity to review its legality,” Roberts wrote in one of the memos published by the New York Times on Friday. 

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Fox News Digital reached out to the Supreme Court’s communications team Monday for comment on the leaks.

The push from Roberts came as the justices were considering what was viewed at the time as an unusual request on the emergency docket, sometimes called a “shadow docket,” from red states and outside groups to halt the Obama-era regulation, which aimed to cut carbon emissions over the next 25 years, before lower courts had fully weighed in, a step that the liberal justices warned would break from longstanding practice.

The emergency docket allows litigants to bypass typical court proceedings and seek immediate relief from the Supreme Court if lower courts block them through restraining orders or preliminary injunctions.

The Clean Power Plan would have involved the Obama Environmental Protection Agency regulating coal, oil and gas plants under the Clean Air Act. Roberts wrote that without the Supreme Court stepping in, “both the states and private industry will suffer irreparable harm from a rule that is — in my view — highly unlikely to survive.”

In another memo, Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, disagreed, saying “the unique nature of the relief sought in these applications gives me real pause.”

JONATHAN TURLEY: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS COULD LEARN FROM BASEBALL GREAT TED WILLIAMS WHEN IT COMES TO LEAKS

Justice Samuel Alito, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, circulated a memo the same day as Kagan in which he agreed with Roberts.

“A failure to stay this rule threatens to render our ability to provide meaningful judicial review — and by extension, our institutional legitimacy — a nullity,” Alito wrote.

Within a matter of days, the justices temporarily blocked Obama’s Clean Power Plan 5-4 along ideological lines, effectively dealing it a death blow because Democrats would lose the White House later that year. The New York Times noted that the Obama White House dismissed the ruling at the time as a small hurdle but that “behind closed doors, officials were astonished that the court had intervened so quickly.”

The back-and-forth in the memos during the short period of time, from the end of January 2016 to Feb. 9, when the brief decision was issued, showed how fast the justices moved to weigh in on a major presidential action.

Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, wrote in an op-ed that the anonymous leak of the memos to the New York Times, the second leak of confidential material after the Dobbs opinion leak in 2022, was “clearly designed to wound some of its members.”

“For an institution that prides itself on its confidentiality and insularity, the court is looking increasingly porous and partisan in these leaks,” Turley wrote.

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The New York Times’ report highlighted that legal experts have long viewed the Clean Power Plan decision as one of the first examples of the Supreme Court using the emergency docket in a way that limits executive power over national policy.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, has been among the most vocal dissenters in emergency cases during President Donald Trump’s second term as the president frequently benefits from the fast-paced docket. Jackson is sometimes joined by her two liberal colleagues, Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissents, and emergency cases have often split 6-3 in favor of Trump.

Last week, Jackson aired her grievances in a different forum, blasting emergency docket decisions during a Yale Law School speech as rushed, “scratch-paper musings” that undermine the high court’s purpose.

“Given the real world facts that a stay request asks the court to consider, the court’s stay decisions can, at times, come across utterly irrational,” Jackson said. “We cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we consistently greenlight harmful acts.”

Legal experts have attributed the heightened activity on the emergency docket to a rise in presidents attempting to shape national policy through through executive orders.

“[An increase in emergency motions] coincides with the rise of executive orders and other forms of unilateral executive action really as the primary form of lawmaking in our country with the disappearance of Congress, and that has posed enormous challenges for the court,” attorney Kannon Shanmugam said during a Federalist Society panel last fall.

Fox News Digital reached out to Obama’s office for comment.