Voters have once again handed President Donald Trump a loss in one of the defining fights of his second administration: the national congressional redistricting race.
Virginia
Virginia vs. NC State Live Updates | NCAA Men’s Basketball
Virginia (8-5, 1-1 ACC) earned its first ACC win of the season with a 70-67 victory over NC State (8-5, 1-1 ACC) in an ACC matchup on New Year’s Eve at John Paul Jones Arena. See a full play-by-play and live analysis for the game in the thread below.
Read five takeaways from Virginia’s win over NC State here: Five Takeaways From Virginia’s 70-67 Win Over NC State
Virginia nearly turns the ball over, but UVA manages to retain possession as an NC State player was out of bounds when he was fighting for the ball. That allows five seconds to drain off the clock and then UVA gets the ball inbounds to Elijah Saunders, who is fouled with 3.9 seconds left. Saunders misses the front end of the one-and-one, but O’Connell’s half-court prayer falls well short and Virginia hangs on to win 70-67. UVA erases a 14-point deficit and earns a huge ACC win.
NC State 67. Virginia 70 | FINAL
Marcus Hill scores a layup off the glass to get NC State back within three. UVA calls a timeout with 10.9 on the clock.
NC State 67, Virginia 70 | 10.9 2H
McKneely misses a deep three and O’Connell drives in transition, drawing a foul on Sharma and making 1/2 free throws to make it a five-point game. Both teams come up empty on their next couple of possessions and then Murray is called for a foul while trying to box out. Marcus Hill goes to the line for a one-and-one and makes both free throws to make it 68-65 with a little over a minute remaining. Rohde’s long drive ends in a missed shot and NC State gets a chance to tie it. Jayden Taylor gets a good look but misses his shot off the glass and Saunders secures the rebound and is fouled with 15 seconds remaining. Saunders goes to the line for a one-and-one and makes both to make it 70-65.
NC State 65, Virginia 70 | 15.4 2H
Brandon Huntley-Hatfield hits a short jumper to end UVA’s 8-0 run. Elijah Saunders gets a good look from the corner and knocks down the three, Virginia’s sixth triple of the second half. Buchanan is called for his fourth foul and then Huntley-Hatfield scores off the glass. UVA has had trouble defending him all game. Andrew Rohde does a good job moving off ball and Saunders finds him for an open three. Hoos lead by 10. Styles is fouled by Saunders, but he misses both free throws, which causes another loud cheer from the crowd at JPJ. McKneely finds Buchanan cruising down the lane and Buchanan gets the short push shot to fall. Michael O’Connell gets multiple wide-open looks from the corner and he makes the second one. Rohde drives inside and draws a foul on Huntley-Hatfield, making 1/2 free throws. Marcus Hill grabs an offensive rebound and lays it in. Parker misses a layup, but Huntley-Hatfield is there for the putback to get NC State back within six points.
NC State 62, Virginia 68 | 2:20 2H
Styles is fouled by Saunders and makes 1/2 free throws. Rohde finds an open Ishan Sharma on the left wing and the freshman drills the three-pointer. Virginia gets a couple of stops and then Rohde passes to Cofie, who spins past his man for a reverse layup. Isaac McKneely is left wide-open and he has time to dribble to the three-point line and splash his fourth three of the game. Virginia has its largest lead of the game at 59-51 and Kevin Keatts calls another timeout.
NC State 51, Virginia 59 | 8:01 2H
Saunders makes both free throws. Cofie blocks Huntley-Hatfield and then Isaac McKneely gets a very friendly JPJ roll on a three-pointer to get the Hoos back within five. NC State turns it over and then Taine Murray slashes from the corner and scores in the paint. Virginia gets another stop on defense and this place is about as loud as it’s been all season. Murray drives baseline and finds Rohde, who quickly pulls the trigger and buries the corner three. It’s a 10-0 run for Virginia and a 17-3 run over the last five and a half minutes to tie the game at 46-46. Breon Pass hits an incredibly tough jumper from the baseline to end the UVA run. Rohde posts up O’Connell and gets into the paint before getting a flip shot to fall with a smooth touch. UVA turns the ball over in transition and NC State scores on the other end as Marcus Hill scores over Buchanan. McKneely hits a deep three-pointer to give the Cavaliers the lead. Kevin Keatts calls timeout.
NC State 50, Virginia 51 | 11:06 2H
NC State gets multiple offensive rebounds and eventually Jayden Taylor knocks down the three-pointer. That’s a back breaker for the Cavaliers. UVA goes back to the hot hand with Saunders, who draws a foul in the post on Styles. He’ll shoot two free throws after the media timeout.
NC State 46, Virginia 36 | 15:59 2H
The second half starts just as the first half did, with Dontrez Styles driving to the basket for a layup. Marcus Hill hits a jumper to stretch the Wolfpack lead to 14 points. Elijah Saunders scores inside plus a foul on Styles to get the Hoos on the board in the second half. Rohde throws a great pass to a cutting Saunders, who draws a foul on Taylor and makes both free throws. Saunders gets deep post positioning on O’Connell and Rohde gets him the ball for an easy layup. It’s a personal 7-0 run for Elijah Saunders to get the Cavaliers back within seven points. Timeout Kevin Keatts.
NC State 43, Virginia 36 | 17:02 2H
Taine Murray drives baseline and whips a beautiful pass out to McKneely, who swishes the open three. That got a big response from the crowd at JPJ. Buchanan is called for a foul on Huntley-Hatfield, who again makes both free throws. On top of their six threes, the Wolfpack are also 6/6 from the charity stripe. Cofie picks up his second foul, so Anthony Robinson checks into the game for the first time. Jayden Taylor drives to the basket in transition and scores plus a foul on Robinson. Murray’s three rattles out at the buzzer and UVA goes into the halftime break trailing by 10 points.
NC State 39, Virginia 29 | Halftime
Jacob Cofie makes nice defensive plays on consecutive possessions, blocking a shot from Marcus Hill and then coming up with a steal. Saunders drives past his man and gets to the rim for a lefty layup. Virginia turns it over and Taylor finds Styles for an easy layup. Taylor gets a wide-open look from three and buries it for NC State’s six triple of the game; the Wolfpack average 5.8 made threes per game… Ishan Sharma answers with a three on the other end off the extra pass from Rohde. That was Virginia’s first made three of the game.
NC State 34, Virginia 26 | 3:33 1H
Virginia breaks the press and Taine Murray’s layup rolls off the rim, but TJ Power is there for the tip-in putback. Pass takes a three from the right wing and knocks it down; that’s the fourth three-pointer of the game for the Wolfpack and that’s not supposed to be one of their strengths. Rohde throws a cross-court pass to Murray, who pump fakes out of a three and splashes a mid-range jumper. Dennis Parker Jr. slashes to the paint and hits a lefty floater. Rohde uses a spin move to get by O’Connell for a layup. Trey Parker knocks down a three-pointer, NC State’s fifth triple of the first half. Murray fouls Taylor in transition and he makes both free throws. Saunders outhustles NC State to keep an offensive rebound alive and scores the second-chance layup. Virginia is executing well on the offensive end; NC State has just been too good shooting from the perimeter.
NC State 29, Virginia 21 | 7:06 1H
Blake Buchanan checks into the game and is immediately called for a foul on Huntley-Hatfield, who makes both free throws. Saunders hits a fadeaway jumper from the baseline late in the shot clock. Buchanan is fouled and makes 1/2 free throws. Michael O’Connell gets a three-pointer to rattle home. Breon Pass gets a clean look from three in transition and knocks it down. Ismael Diouf gets free rolling to the basket for an easy layup. It’s an 8-0 run for NC State to take a 19-13 lead. Timeout Ron Sanchez.
NC State 19, Virginia 13 | 11:16 1H
NC State wins the opening tipoff and scores right away as Dontrez Styles cuts to the basket for an easy layup. Jacob Cofie rolls free to the basket and Elijah Saunders finds him for the layup. Dai Dai Ames drives baseline and stops on a dime under the basket to shed Michael O’Connell for a layup. Virginia plays a good possession of defense but Marcus Hill knocks down a contested mid-range jumper at the buzzer. Isaac McKneely answers with a fadeaway jumper. Jayden Taylor hits a corner three. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield backs down Saunders and hits a jump hook in the paint. Cofie backs down Huntley-Hatfield and gets around him for a layup. UVA gets a stop and then Andrew Rohde finds Saunders for a transition bucket. Both teams are shooting well from the floor to start this game.
NC State 9, Virginia 10 | 14:55 1H
The starting lineups have been posted for both teams.
NC State: Dontrez Styles, Jayden Taylor, Marcus Hill, Michael O’Connell, Brandon Huntley-Hatfield
Virginia: Andrew Rohde, Dai Dai Ames, Isaac McKneely, Elijah Saunders, Jacob Cofie
As we await our 12pm ET tipoff on ESPN2 for Virginia vs. NC State, read a full preview of the game here: Virginia Basketball vs. NC State Preview, Score Prediction
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Virginia
Chemical leak at a West Virginia plant kills 2 people and sends 19 to hospital, officials say
INSTITUTE, W.Va. — A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery business on Wednesday killed two people and sent 19 others to the hospital, including one in critical condition, authorities said.
The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant in Institute as workers were preparing to shut down at least part of the facility, Kanawha County Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said.
A chemical gas reaction occurred at the plant involving nitric acid and another substance, Sigman said at a news briefing. He added that there was “a violent reaction of the chemicals and it instantaneously overreacted.”
“Starting or ending a chemical reaction are the most dangerous times,” Sigman said.
The chemical reaction that was believed to have occurred during a cleaning process produced toxic hydrogen sulfide, Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango said.
Among the injured were seven ambulance workers responding to the leak, officials said.
Other people were taken to the hospitals in private cars or even in one case a garbage truck, Sigman said.
One person was in critical condition, Salango said.
Vandalia Health Charleston Area Medical Center, one of several hospitals in the area, was treating multiple patients, some brought by ambulance, while members of the community were arriving Wednesday afternoon asking to be checked, hospital spokesman Dale Witte said.
Witte said patients were experiencing respiratory symptoms including cough, shortness of breath, sore throat and itchy eyes. They were being evaluated in the emergency room.
WVU Medicine Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston said in a statement it has cared for a dozen patients, including eight who arrived by personal vehicle and were not at the scene but were in the area at the time. It said those injuries were not considered life-threatening.
A shelter-in-place order was issued for the surrounding area and lifted more than five hours later. Officials said all the deaths occurred on the plant site.
“You had to get really close to the facility to smell it,” Sigman said.
The leak required a large-scale decontamination operation in which people had to remove their clothes and be sprayed down, authorities said.
Catalyst Refiners works to remove silver from what remains of chemical processes and can find thousands of dollars of the precious metal just by vacuuming the floors in a plant’s offices, Sigman said.
Ames Goldsmith Corp., the owner of Catalyst Refiners, said it is saddened by the deaths and its thoughts were with all those affected and their families.
“This is an unfathomably difficult time,” company President Frank Barber said in a statement released at the briefing. “Our thoughts and prayers are with our colleagues and their families.”
Ames Goldsmith promised to work with local, state and federal officials as they investigate the leak. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into what happened, a spokesperson said, adding that the agency has six months to complete its examination.
Silver is in a number of items ranging from circuit boards and other electronics, photographic and X-Ray films and jewelry. Nitric acid is used to dissolve materials, leaving behind silver nitrate that can be processed to recover pure silver. Recovery businesses can also crush or sandblast items with silver and use magnets or differences in density to sort out the precious metal.
Sigman said Ames Goldsmith recovers silver from the various plants at the Institute complex “and they’ll use it again. When they vacuum their carpets in their office, they recover so many thousands of dollars’ worth of silver out of it just vacuuming their carpets.”
The plant is located near Institute, a community about 10 miles west of Charleston, the state capital. The plant is in a region known as West Virginia’s “chemical valley,” although many plants that lined the area along the Kanawha River and produced hazardous materials have closed or changed ownership in the past several decades.
Raby writes for the Associated Press. Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
DALEVILLE, Va. (WSET) — Heads up, Virginia Iconicks! Nick Jonas is having a show in Danville in June!
The superstar is set to perform on June 11 at Caesars Virginia’s venue, The Pantheon.
SEE ALSO: Danville sees unusually high voter turnout for redistricting referendum, registrar says
He announced the concert in an Instagram post, revealing a six-stop tour spanning up and down the East Coast.
“Six nights with you this June!” Jonas said in the post. “I’ve been wanting to do a run like this for a while. Something that feels a little closer, playing through different releases from over the years. A few of my favorites, a lot of your favorites and sharing the stories behind them as we go.”
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You can reserve tickets on April 23.
Tuesday night, Virginia approved a ballot measure to redraw the state’s 11 congressional districts to give Democrats a significant edge — salvaging Democratic hopes of flipping control of the House of Representatives in the fall.
In case you need a refresher, congressional redistricting — or the process by which states define the districts that House members represent — usually happens once per decade, after a new census.
That all changed over the summer when President Donald Trump urged Republicans in Texas to redraw their congressional maps early, to shore up the GOP’s tiny (currently one-seat) congressional majority and give the national party a boost during 2026 midterms. Texas Republicans created new maps in the summer, giving the GOP a new edge in five districts.
Democrats in some blue states also mobilized, kicking off a wave of mid-decade redistricting in both Democratic and Republican-controlled states that has undone some of the final remaining electoral norms of the Trump era. In November 2025, California voters approved a ballot measure that redrew maps to add up to five Democratic seats — neutralizing the Texas GOP gerrymander.
Virginia is not California, however. Though it has tended to vote for Democrats in presidential and gubernatorial elections since 2000, the state is swingy and had a Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, until January. That made the Virginia redistricting campaign — a vote on a constitutional amendment to bypass the state’s normal mapping process until the next census — even more complicated and unpredictable.
Voters complained about confusing messaging from both sides of the campaign, and many independent voters were uncomfortable with a partisan power grab. The “Yes” side relied heavily on direct appeals from former President Barack Obama, who reassured voters that the move was a justified response to Trump’s moves to tilt the House election. The “No” side ran ads that also featured earlier clips of Obama decrying gerrymandering in prior years, and ads and mailers aimed at Black voters that portrayed the referendum as a betrayal of civil rights activism to protect voting rights.
Republicans also appealed to regional concerns, warning rural residents that they would be put into awkward districts that lumped them with distant Northern Virginia suburbs.
That was reflected in the final results of the election — rural regions of the state turned out at a high rate. The electorate, overall, was more Republican than the electorate that swept in complete Democratic control of the state government during last year’s elections. Meanwhile, big urban centers, like Richmond, Virginia Beach, and the Washington, DC suburbs of northern Virginia, would turn out enough Democratic and independent votes to carry the measure statewide. In the end, the race was closer than expected, but the “Yes” side was comfortably on track for a majority win as of publication time.
While the “Yes” victory in Virginia is another major win for Democrats nationwide, the results of the 2026 redistricting wars have been more haphazard.
Across the country, political infighting, reluctant legislators, and timing constraints have headed off other redistricting efforts on both sides of the aisle. Now time is running out for any additional efforts: Primaries are already beginning across the country, and election preparation has to begin soon in those that haven’t started yet.
The state of the redistricting wars
Currently, Virginia’s congressional delegation is split 6-5 in Democrats’ favor; the referendum approved on Tuesday night asked voters to rejigger the map to favor Democrats in 10 districts, netting four seats.
Combined with redrawn maps in California, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio (mandated by the state constitution), and Utah (due to a court decision), the Virginia vote creates the possibility that Democrats enter the midterm elections with a one-seat edge based on past voting patterns.
At the moment, Democrats stand to gain one seat
- California: -5 GOP seats (+5 DEM seats)
- Missouri: +1 GOP seat
- North Carolina: +1 GOP seat
- Ohio: +1/2 GOP seats
- Texas: +5 GOP seats
- Utah: -1 GOP seat (+1 DEM seat)
- Virginia: -4 GOP seats (+4 DEM seats)
Up until now, this electoral arms race had become a “close to a wash,” Barry C. Burden, an elections expert and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me.
“Even though Republicans are doing it in more states than Democrats are, they’re not making big gains outside of Texas,” Burden said. “And there are so many other factors in play that I think make it difficult to know exactly how the maps will play out.”
Not every state has thrown itself into the mix. Despite intense pressure from national parties, Democrats have so far turned down opportunities to squeeze out seats in Illinois, Maryland, and New York, while Republicans stood down in Indiana, Kansas, and Nebraska.
That leaves one last big redistricting wild card: Florida.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has wanted to redraw his state’s maps since Trump made his appeals, yet the effort has been mired in GOP infighting, a lack of preparation, and faces a state constitution that bars partisan redistricting, although the courts approved Republican-friendly maps in its last redraw. The state legislature was supposed to meet for a special session this week to create anywhere from one to five seats, but that meeting was delayed until April 28.
“It’s a big state, so that would give Republicans a lot of opportunity,” Burden said. “But they already have a map that’s pretty favorable to Republicans, and there’s a little more concern that spreading Republican voters more thinly across more districts might really put them at risk.”
That’s related to one big electoral wild card: whether the rightward shift of Latino and Hispanic voters since 2020 holds firm in a midterm year. In redrawing at least two districts, Texas Republicans bet that this trend will hold firm. Yet polling of these voters nationally, and some off-year election results, suggests that Trump’s 2024 gains may have evaporated, or reversed, because of discontent over the economy, Trump’s mass deportation agenda, and a general sense of chaos and instability that many of these voters trusted Trump to steady. That opens the possibility for the Texas gerrymander to come up short — a scenario Florida Republicans might not want to risk.
“Texas acted earlier, so it was at a time when maybe Trump and Republicans didn’t look as vulnerable going into 2026,” Burden said. “But now that we’re just months away, it’s clear Republicans are going to have a difficult environment in November.”
None of this factors in the effects of a potential Voting Rights Act decision by the Supreme Court this year or future redistricting efforts ahead of 2028. The Court has so far declined to issue a ruling on provisions of the landmark 1965 law that prohibited states from breaking up communities of minority voters, which led to the rise of majority-minority districts to boost nonwhite representation. A handful of states could still redraw their districts were the Supreme Court to decide the case during this term.
With the latest vote, though, we may be nearing the end of the redistricting wars — for this cycle, at least.
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