Sean Hannity and Ken Cuccinelli condemn Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger's redistricting as an unconstitutional power grab, citing procedural violations like bypassing the two-thirds vote requirement and violating plain English rules. They argue the measure illegally shifts six Republican seats to ten Democratic ones, prompting a lower court injunction pending a mid-May Supreme Court ruling. While callers debate military action against Iran and oil decommoditization, the core focus remains on this alleged disenfranchisement of Trump voters through gerrymandering. [Automatically generated summary]
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Unconstitutional Election Timing00:15:07
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There have been more attempts by Abigail Spanberger to basically cook the books, this vote that took place that has since been struck down as unconstitutional in Virginia with this unfair gerrymandering and the horrible language of it, never mind the constitutionality of it, which is separate and apart.
There are multiple avenues.
For legal remedy in this, as I said, this will come under judicial review.
It has already come out in favor of the Republicans.
I suspect that's where we ultimately land, but this is not the Abigail Spamberger that was running for office.
If you go back to August 25th, 2025, Spamberger then telling local ABC 7 that she has no plans to redistrict Virginia.
Here's her answer.
Short answer is no.
Certainly, Virginia, by constitutional amendment, has a new redistricting effort that was put in place.
First utilized after the 2021 redistricting.
Certainly, I've been watching with interest what other states are doing, but I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.
No plans to redistrict Virginia.
Then they put the constitutional amendment on the ballot, and of course, that would give Democrats 10 safe seats for Congress and Republicans only one, which would disenfranchise the 46% of. Trump voters in the last presidential election.
There's a whole series of hoops that you must jump through in Virginia to even get a measure like this on the ballot, never minding the abusively biased language in the ballot.
I think the person that has given the best analysis of it and understands it better than anybody is Ken Cuccinelli.
He's a former attorney general for the state of Virginia.
And Ken, I read all of your analysis, starting with the unconstitutionality of it.
Leading to the actual language that was there.
And never mind the broken promise of Abigail Spamberger.
If you can, I want you to explain why this was so quickly stopped in the courts and why this is likely to proceed into what the Democrats thought they won.
Yeah, Sean, so you've hit it that not only was the language on the ballot outrageous, but this Democrat legislature just absolutely ignored and trampled the constitutional requirements, state constitutional requirements for amending the Constitution.
Abigail Spanberger's answer there leaned heavily on the constitutional amendment that passed by a two to one margin in 2020 that I helped.
Bring about, which was a bipartisan redistricting.
It gave us our 6 5 map right now, and the Dems want to flush that down the toilet.
And to do it, they literally trampled the requirements of the Constitution.
There's no intervening election between two passings of the amendment as required.
They didn't let it, they didn't give the voters 90 days after they passed it the second time.
These are basic things, Sean, that have never before been contested or questioned, and they just trampled them in the push to get this.
Redistricting gerrymander done.
And now they're going to pay a price and they're going to pay it in the Virginia Supreme Court.
As you noted, a lower court has already enjoined certification of the election.
That happened two days ago.
And the current attorney general has appealed that.
And the Virginia Supreme Court has skipped the Court of Appeals and taken that case up.
But they're going to have oral argument Monday morning, Sean, on the first two constitutional problems with this referendum.
They were briefed yesterday.
In the Virginia Supreme Court.
I've never seen them go so fast, which is a good sign they realize we all need to know what our lines are.
We do know there is something called judicial activism, and I don't really know the makeup of the Virginia Supreme Court.
Can you break it down for us?
So the Virginia Supreme Court is chosen by the General Assembly.
Right now, there's always seven justices.
Four of them have been chosen by Republicans, three by Democrats.
But the brazen violations of the Virginia Constitution that the Democrats pulled off here.
I think it may get a 7 0 rejection from the Supreme Court by mid May.
That's what.
Now, would the court then be likely to leave the current districts as they are or maybe reconfigure it another way?
I would imagine they'd leave it as it is currently configured.
Correct.
You're right, Sean.
They'll leave him just as they are.
All right.
Now, let's go through this so people understand just how corrupt Abigail Spanberger and the Democrats are in all of this.
Now, the first passage was invalid.
The amendment was taken up during the special session convened in 2024.
That was supposed to be almost exclusively, and correct me if I'm wrong, for budgetary purposes.
And it was limiting the governing resolution, which limited the session scope and then expanded it in.
To include this constitutional amendment on redistricting, really gerrymandering, required a two third vote that never occurred.
Let's start there.
No, that's exactly right.
And that violates two parts of Virginia's Constitution.
They hijacked or really resurrected an old special session from May of 2024 that was to deal with the budget, as you noted.
And a year and a half later, they came back in in the end of October of 2025.
in the middle of the Virginia's 2025 election, we have odd year elections, and they declared the special session still going and they passed this constitutional amendment.
And, you know, the reason for that two thirds requirement, Sean, is so a majority can't bring a minority in on a pretense like the budget and then spring a trap on them like the amendment, exactly what was done here.
This was exactly what the Constitution was designed to avoid.
And they did the exact violation that was intended to be protected against by the state constitution.
And that was just the first of their constitutional violations.
Article 12, I believe, Section 1, I believe, requires that after first passage, a proposed constitutional amendment be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.
An election must intervene between the first and second passage.
You referred to this a little earlier.
I want to go into more detail.
Now, in this particular case, first passage occurred during an election cycle, not before an intervening one.
There's a huge distinction, isn't there?
Yeah, there's an enormous distinction.
And the hilarity here is their problem is we have a 45 day election.
Guess who gave us that?
The Democrats, last time they had the governorship in both houses, gave us a 45 day election.
So that 2025 election that elected Spanberger began on September 19th last year, but they didn't do first passage until Halloween, six weeks later into the election, after over a million people had already voted, Sean.
And they want to count that as their intervening election.
And as you saw, the judge in Southwest Virginia said, no way.
And that's in front of the Supreme Court.
Those two issues that you and I just talked about are the ones that are currently in front of the Virginia Supreme Court.
Those are the two issues they will hear oral argument on Monday.
This is why I'd never want to be a lawyer or an attorney general.
All of this, as important as all this language is, just reading it gives me a headache.
I'm sure it gives you a headache, too.
Now, let's go back to the same article, same section that requires the amendment to be submitted to voters not sooner than 90 days, which you just mentioned.
That timeline from the second passage to the April 21st vote did not satisfy that requirement either.
I mean, these are very, very specific constitutional requirements.
So I'm kind of a little bit surprised that this was not really discussed in more detail beforehand.
I had picked up on it.
And I kind of kept it to myself because I looked at it as an ace in the hole.
I look at Virginia as a blue state, not a purple state, as others look at it.
I was surprised it ended up being as close as it did.
We had Jason Miaris, we had Glenn Youngkin on to talk about it.
I was hopeful, but realistic as well.
I thought the odds of this passing were pretty high, especially now that Northern Virginia is so Democratic.
But the timeline here matters.
The constitutional language is very clear.
Yeah, that's right.
And constitutions are to restrain government and protect minority rights.
And that's exactly what was trampled here.
Look, a lot of people go to law school so they don't have to do math.
But as the judge joked from the bench this week, even a lawyer can figure out that when you start voting on March 6th and second passage was January 16th, that's less than two months.
That's less than 90 days.
And again, they get caught by their 45 day election.
The language in that part of the Constitution refers to when the ballot measure is submitted to the voters.
And they want to come in and argue that it's not submitted to the voters until the ballots are being counted after April 21st, because there are 90 days from second passage on January 16th through April 21st, but not when Virginians started voting, not when it was submitted to the voters on March 6th.
And this is why people like you and the Republicans were you were all geared up, you had your briefs written, you were ready to appeal if, in fact, the Democrats won this power grab, and you were so prepared because they had violated it.
Were you kind of playing the same game I was playing, which is kind of keeping it as an ace in the hole, not making it the bigger issue in the campaign?
The language itself was so atrocious.
Yeah, and the language is another reason the judge in Southwest Virginia threw it out, but that's statutory, not constitutional.
And it wasn't really hidden.
Jason Miares, when he was Attorney General of Virginia last year, issued a public opinion pointing out the timing of their proposed amendment vote was unconstitutional and that the election. the 2025 election that they were in the midst of couldn't count as the intervening election.
People have made the argument they're trying to make now, Sean, that judge the whole election should just be counted as election day.
That has been made in other cases and other situations all over the country.
It's been rejected in the Fourth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, the Sixth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and the Eleventh Circuit in federal cases.
It's never won anywhere, and I don't think it's going to win for the first time in Virginia in front of this Supreme Court.
All right, quick break.
Right back.
We'll continue with Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General for the State of Virginia.
800 941 Sean, this Friday, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, we continue now.
Ken Cuccinelli's with us, former Attorney General for the State of Virginia.
Why this gerrymandering power grab in the Commonwealth of Virginia will never pass judicial review?
It already has been stopped dead in its tracks right out of the gate.
We continue discussing the constitutional problems and the wording problems of this.
Go to the last constitutional issue, and if there's others, tell me, but then that is Article II, Section 6 requires that every electoral district be composed of contiguous and compact territory.
And their proposed congressional map violates this rather badly.
If this map doesn't violate the compactness requirement of our state constitution, no map ever will.
So, but we don't get to the map argument unless the yes folks survive.
All and every challenge to the legality and constitutionality of the referendum because you don't get to the new maps if the referendum that allowed the new maps is thrown out.
So I think the Dems thought they were going to win on Tuesday by a much bigger margin and then carry on the strategy that you said, Sean, of just saying, hey, look, the will of the people and don't get in the way of the will of the people.
And they squeaked by while outspending our side three or four to one.
They barely won it.
And with these gangster tactics and the Really outrageous ballot language calling this restoring fairness.
Let's go to the very language itself to restore fairness, and then it's only a temporary measure because you mentioned that the judge.
By not certifying the election, you know, reference this as well.
Yeah, so the language says Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?
That's the exact language voters were confronted with.
It's outrageous.
We have what's called a plain English rule, Sean.
We do not have a neutrality rule.
Some states have explicit laws that say the language has to be neutral.
The judge decided that this was so misleading that it violated the plain English rule on the books in Virginia.
I agree with him, but I think the constitutional issues are going to get decided first.
How high up do you think it goes?
Does this get to the U.S. Supreme Court or stop at the Virginia Supreme Court?
No, these are all state constitutional issues.
So the Supreme Court of Virginia is the final word SCOVA, not SCOTUS.
On this one.
And I'm perfectly comfortable with that.
I have a great deal of confidence in this Supreme Court.
And like I said, they're moving very fast.
I think you can look for a ruling in May, maybe as soon as mid May.
All right.
We appreciate your time, Ken Cuccinelli.
Thank you, sir.
Then your call's coming up this Friday, 800 941 Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
So I don't know if you saw this cut.
This one really stood out to me.
So we just had on Ken Cuccinelli.
Smart guy.
Always liked him.
And you have a Democrat, a Democrat Virginia State Senator.
His name is Lamont.
Rural America in Landman00:03:55
Bagby.
He claims he knows all about rural America.
Now, remember, the 46% of Virginians that voted for Donald Trump, the people that in the previous election voted for Glenn Youngkin, have been disenfranchised.
And Democrats, in the name of fairness, you know, where it's a 6 5 advantage, Democratic seats to Republican seats in Virginia now, the way it's currently districted.
Well, they want to now make it 10 safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat.
Donald Trump got 46% of the vote.
They will be disenfranchising.
You know, a vast majority of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Okay, it is, it's under judicial review.
It's already been stopped in its tracks.
I don't see any scenario in which they get away with this.
However, listening to radical leftist Democrats like Lamont Bagby in the Senate there say this really, really was a, oh, let's put it this way think irredeemable deplorables, think bitter Americans clinging to their God, guns, Bibles, religion, and think about, you know, that we're all pieces of garbage.
Because I think this is right up there.
Listen.
And listen, I almost took issue with the other side saying that we don't understand.
But I grew up watching the Waltons, I grew up with Opie.
I even watched the Dukes of Hazzard.
I think I know a little bit about rural America.
And when I think about why we are here, we're not just here.
I'm not just here for Thea.
I'm not just here for Arnold or Willis.
I'm here for Opie, John Boyd, Bloxham, Topanga.
Are you listening to this?
He says, I know all about rural America from watching the Andy Griffith show and Mayberry and the Dukes of Hazzards and the Waltons.
Our friend who runs the president of U.S. oil and gas, Tim Stewart, he's the king of funny things on X.
And he put out a post last night.
He goes, Oh my God, he watched the Dukes of Hazzards?
So tomorrow he's going to open a refinery because there's a new episode of Landman.
He should really get on that and just start running all of our energy production.
By the way, is Landman really back?
No, I think he was being funny, Sean.
That wasn't the point of the joke.
The point of the joke is that this is the thing.
I love Landman.
I love that.
Anywho, Billy Bob Thornton.
If you watch Landman, it's awesome.
Great job.
I have not watched Landman, no.
It's so entertaining.
It's like Tulsa Kings, so entertaining.
They're really good shows out there.
And they never, the problem is you get so into it, then they disappear for a year.
It's so frustrating.
And sometimes they never even come back.
I just watched The House of David, a series, and they had two seasons.
They had phenomenal.
And meaning the Old Testament Bible, David, Goliath.
I mean, it's really so informative if you want to study the Old Testament.
And, you know, it puts it in visual form, kind of like The Chosen, which I get so much out of.
And I read that they're not doing a third season.
They may not do a third season.
Why?
I mean, they always run into problems.
It's kind of like Kevin Costner and the problems, I guess, that him and Taylor Sheridan have.
I'm like, can you guys put aside your differences and bring back Yellowstone, please?
I'd appreciate it.
Well, the guy from Yellowstone just started a new series on Amazon.
Called Madison.
I think it's called Madison.
Yeah, apparently that's been a big hit.
And let me see.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell are in that.
Yeah, I love Michelle Pfeiffer and I love Kurt Russell.
And I saw this is me.
I like Kurt Russell.
I could live without Michelle Pfeiffer.
Why?
Don't ask me the reason why.
There's a reason.
Bringing Back Yellowstone00:09:06
Really?
I love her.
I mean, I don't know her politics, thank God, because then I probably wouldn't.
But right now, I like her.
And the show's great because they bash all the stupid wokeness of music.
Kurt Russell is a cool guy if you meet him.
You know, the best story that I have is about his.
His better half, Goldie Hawn.
So, Patrick is a young kid.
He's terrorizing everything in a department store.
And Patrick's in there.
And Goldie Hawn spent like an hour playing with young Patrick back in the day and loved every second of it.
I mean, the nicest lady you'd ever want to meet.
How can I not love that lady?
That's very sweet.
Anyway, yeah, it is.
All right, to our busy phones we go.
James in Atlanta on The Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, James?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
Hey, Lena.
What's going on, ma'am?
Atlanta.
What do you have?
It is hot today, and today is my birthday.
Happy birthday.
Congratulations.
You're 24 years old.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I go all the way back to I was a Reagan Democrat.
Yes, sir.
So I've crossed over and I voted for Donald Trump all three times.
So I preface that to tell you I would like to see President Trump be more aggressive.
With Iran than he is now.
Those people, he talks about negotiation, those people is crazy.
You're not going to negotiate with them.
You're not going to negotiate with people like bin Laden and terrorist minded people.
You don't negotiate with them.
They want to stall.
I would have.
Let me ask you a question, James.
I got your point.
I want to ask this question.
Okay.
Should the president, and I agree that there are radical Islamists, the radical Islamists, is 90 plus million people.
That the president's also thinking about that, you know, they're in their natural state that God made them.
They want to be free, like you're free in Hotlanta, free to go to the varsity, you know, free to hang out in Buckhead, you know, free to live on the outskirts of Atlanta and some of the more rural areas of Georgia.
Let me ask you a question Are you saying that the president should just wipe out the whole thing and not even give it a shot?
And knowing the impact on the 90 million people will be deep and wide and profound and long lasting?
No, Jeff.
Because you sound like a good guy, and I guarantee there's a part of you, your heart and soul says, if I'm going to go the extra mile, I always have this option available to me any second I want it.
Let me see if the sanctions, the blockade, you know, ends up bankrupting them and that forces them to the table.
Let me give it a little extra time and see if they can come to reason knowing that death is their future otherwise, that they'll have no country left.
I mean, do you really care if it goes on an extra week or two if the president's trying to do it the easy way and thinking of innocent people that will be impacted by this?
I think it's going to be the hard way, in a way.
I do not believe those leaders are going to give up that uranium.
I do not believe they're going to give up the idea of a nuclear weapon.
And so, because of the way they think, I wouldn't kill everybody.
I would not destroy the country.
What I would do, like he was doing, bomb, take out all the missiles and all of that, and the leadership as much as I can, and probably bomb the Revolutionary Guard or whatever they got.
Bomb dead.
They've been trying.
They've been doing a good job of it, actually.
But, I mean, here's the point.
If the president has to go to infrastructure, which would, let's say, the 25% he discussed yesterday that is left to take out, the last part of that would be their entire economy.
Yeah.
Okay.
That is the kill shot.
Yeah, I wouldn't do that.
I would send special forces down with a nuclear scientist and people like that.
And I would just land, and I know you don't like booths on the ground, but.
I would just get that uranium.
But, Carl, will you?
I don't think we're.
Look, the president's convinced me that, and he knows more than all of us put together because he's reading intelligence that we're not reading.
You know, what I'm reading in the tea leaves, as I said at the beginning of the show today, is that this blockade is killing their economy.
If they're going to have to shut down their oil wells, that means oil production in the future will be greatly reduced.
They're losing $400 to $500 million a day.
They have half their workforce out of work, 200% inflation.
They have zero value currency.
And they're on their knees.
And so the president's hoping just a little added pressure, he might get us to where we need to be.
And that would include all the goals that you stated.
It's all going to end the same way.
I'm just willing to be a little bit more patient than others, but I hear where you're coming from.
And I think deep down, the president may be smarter than all of us put together.
And he may have figured out that this blockade, bankrupting them, is the best path to follow with the least amount of collateral damage.
And I can't fault him for that.
For the time being, I understand that.
I'm a little bit afraid of the midterms because if we don't finish this thing up by the midterms and the Democrats get in, they ain't going to do it.
It'll be over way before the midterms.
I'm worried about the runway time that we might need to get markets back to normal.
That's more important to me than the actual midterm because he's laid out a great foundation for a wonderful economy.
But anyway, James, I can talk to you all day.
God bless you.
Why don't you stop by the varsity today and have some great food on me, okay?
All right.
Appreciate it.
What do you have?
What do you have?
All right.
James, appreciate you.
800 941 Sean.
You want to be a part of the program?
Back to our busy phones.
Let's say hi to Dan in Connecticut.
This is an interesting question from Dan.
What's up, Dan?
Hey, Sean.
Nice to talk to you.
I have an answer for our economy right now and the way we're suffering with the gas and oil prices.
And you seem to have that direct air to President Trump, which I think is awesome.
So, perfect opportunity to maybe relay this message on to him or the powers that be.
And you just talked about that runway leading up to the midterms.
Well, here's a solution that I'm.
I'm surprised nobody has thought about at this point.
The fact that we should, the president should order a decommoditizing of oil and gas.
Bring our own oil and gas that we produce here, decommoditize it, bring it back to the pricing levels before the war started, and our oil companies be happy.
Anything in excess that takes care of our own national interests, our own people here in the U.S., anything left over, they can sell back on the commoditized market.
You got to understand something.
The president cannot unilaterally do that.
That would involve removing those resources from private market trading through nationalization, price controls, public ownership, or treating them as non-market public goods.
And there are constitutional limits, separation of powers, property rights that would make it impossible.
Well, we're at war, right?
We're at a time of war right now.
And the president has that power to do so, whether through executive orders or other means.
But nobody loses at that.
We take care of our own.
We buy our own oil back instead of exporting it.
We take care of the United States' needs first.
Anything else that could be exported.
As soon as the war is over, we go back to commodities for oil and gas.
Well, I mean, if you look at what the powers the president has, regulating, leasing through various government agencies, the Defense Production Act allows prioritization of production, incentivizes all that sort of thing, strategic petroleum reserves, executive orders, et cetera.
However, that would only tweak a mostly private industry, and the president can't seize assets without due process.
It's just not anything that I think he could ever accomplish.
And no U.S. president has ever nationalized domestic oil and gas before.
I just don't see it happening.
But I can see why you would like the wisdom of it and you can see the benefit of it.
But that's just not who we are.
It's not how our republic works.
But I understand your argument.
I just don't see the way to get to where you want to go.
Okay.
I hope that answers your question.
And if you can maybe call back if you get more information.
Quick break, right back.
More of your phone calls this Friday, 800 941 Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.