Virginia just delivered the moment Hakeem Jeffries has been waiting for.

Voters approved a new congressional map that adds up to four Democratic-leaning districts, handing the party a stronger chance of retaking the House. The minority leader is leaning in, taunting Republicans and vowing “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

“Democrats defeated Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme in Virginia tonight,” Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday evening. “We will crush the DeSantis Dummymander in Florida next.”

Jeffries has staked much of his credibility as a party leader on the effort, pouring time, money and political capital into a nationwide push to create new blue districts as Republicans rush to do the same in red states.

Tuesday night’s narrow win marks a major feather in Jeffries’ cap that will help burnish his reputation in the Democratic caucus as an operator and foil to Trump. It’s also a signature win for a rising leader who is often compared to his iconic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats are reading the success as a promising bellwether ahead of the midterms and a sign of mounting voter frustration with Trump and the GOP trifecta.

Yet Tuesday night’s buzz could quickly become a political hangover, as a handful of Democratic primaries spring up in new seats and Republicans take a fresh look at other newly competitive districts.

“We don’t take anything for granted,” Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw said in an interview. “All of the districts will get a little bit more competitive.”

Walkinshaw listed five districts, including his own in Northern Virginia, that he thinks could require renewed attention from Democrats to hold. He said Democrats are bracing for the likelihood that “strong Republican candidates” may be waiting in the wings.

But House Republicans aren’t exactly projecting confidence about sudden pick-up opportunities, and they seem to be more focused on the sudden need for defense. All five Virginia Republicans — Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire and Rob Wittman — skipped votes Tuesday.

Notably, Wittman serves as vice chair on the Armed Services Committee. A loss in his new district — which Kamala Harris would have won by over 17 points in 2024 — throws a wrench into his not-so-secret plan to become the panel’s next top Republican.

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson said in an interview Tuesday that he hopes the state Supreme Court “will step in and stop” the new map.

Pressed on whether NRCC strategy or funding will change at all, Hudson did not offer any specifics — just that he believes Kiggans, who Republicans saw as their most vulnerable Virginia member, “can win either map.”

What else we’re watching:

— Vote-a-rama time? Senate Republicans are preparing to start a marathon voting session as soon as Wednesday to kick off consideration of Trump’s $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. It may slip to Thursday.

— FISA latest: House GOP leaders are exploring bipartisan options for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as Republican hard-liners dig in over privacy concerns with the spy program. Speaker Mike Johnson met Tuesday evening with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Darin LaHood, who have been talking with Democrats including Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on House Intel.

Jordain Carney, Jennifer Scholtes and Mia McCarthy contributed reporting.

Americans’ disapproval of Congress has matched an all-time high, a new poll from Gallup finds, as the beleaguered institution grapples with scandals, expulsions and its role as a co-equal, independent branch of Congress.

The survey released Wednesday shows that only 10 percent of Americans approve of Congress, just barely above 2013’s all-time low of 9 percent. In contrast, 86 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing — matching the historic high in the over 50 years Gallup has been asking Americans for their opinions on the legislature.

The last time 86 percent of Americans disapproved of Congress was in 2015.

The poll shows much of the disapproval likely stems from repeated government shutdowns, including the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Approval ratings for Congress fell sharply during the October shutdown and have not recovered since.

However, Congress has broadly grappled with other challenges, including concerns over the war in Iran, sexual assault allegations and high-profile ethics investigations against multiple members that may also be impacting Americans’ views of Capitol Hill.

Approval ratings, which hovered around 17 percent after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, briefly peaked at 31 percent in March last year.

Gallup’s poll also shows that those who lean or identify as Republican are leading the recent decline in approval ratings.

Republicans, who previously offered a 63 percent approval rating shortly after Trump was inaugurated, now offer the GOP-led Congress barely 20 percent approval rating.

The Gallup poll was conducted via telephone from April 1 through April 15, 2026, with a sample of 1,001 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Three lawmakers accused of serious ethical lapses have been forced to resign in just over a week, prompting even members of the House Ethics Committee to question whether the panel is up to the task of policing its own.

The committee is at a moment of reckoning as it seeks to prove itself ready, willing and able to root out bad behavior in its ranks. It’s spent the past year and a half rebuilding its reputation after internal disagreements about how to handle an ethics report over ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz spilled into the public and threatened the bipartisan panel’s credibility.

Now, amid the high-profile resignations of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), members who sit on the highly secretive committee are opening up — eager to share their perspectives, acknowledge their limitations and defend their work.

“The reality is we are still too slow, and I believe that we should be moving faster. I’ve expressed some of my recommendations on how we can do that to staff,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), who joined the Ethics Committee this Congress, in an interview. “I want people to take the Ethics Committee more seriously.”

In extended interviews Monday and Tuesday, Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) said his panel is hamstrung by the House’s institutional bureaucracy.

“I’ve been asked, you know, could the Ethics Committee, if there were additional resources provided to the committee, would that help us move cases through quickly? And of course, the answer to that is yes,” Guest said. “But you know, it has to be up to leadership. It has to be up to the Speaker and the Minority Leader as to the size of the staff that they would like to see the Ethics Committee command.”

Their comments come amid questions around how Gonzales and Swalwell were able to serve in office for so long unchecked: Both were accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with former staffers, with Swalwell accused of rape. Each stepped down before the Ethics Committee ever had a chance to render findings of fault and enact punishments.

Cherfilus-McCormick also resigned moments before the Ethics Committee was due to meet Tuesday afternoon to consider a punishment for a determination that she illicitly funneled millions to support her campaign, which could have culminated in a recommendation of expulsion.

Now attention is turning to Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who stands accused of numerous violations, including illicitly engaging in government contracts while in federal office and threatening to release a former girlfriend’s nude videos. He has maintained he has no plans to resign as his case before the Ethics Committee has languished without resolution.

In November, the House Ethics panel quietly requested the Office of Congressional Conduct — the quasi-independent office that fields and investigates complaints against members and staff from the public — to drop its probe into Mills, according to a person with knowledge of the ethics process who was granted anonymity to describe the confidential process. That message was transmitted to the OCC the same day the House voted to effectively table a resolution offered by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Mills for various alleged improprieties.

The OCC was established in 2008 by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and proponents say it provides a necessary, largely independent set of eyes — including on ongoing investigations. Critics view the OCC as an untrustworthy political group; it sat defanged for months this Congress before Speaker Mike Johnson brought a perfunctory measure to the House floor that set up its ability to launch investigations by appointing its board.

Guest declined to discuss details of the Mills case but did not deny that such a request had been made, saying it was standard practice for Ethics to take the reins on a probe from OCC “once an investigative subcommittee is established.”

He conceded the Ethics Committee at times may operate slower than some would like, but its process was deliberate and thorough. “If members want this to be a rush committee where we have two weeks to come up with a report and return that report back to the body, then I’m not the right person to be serving in that room.”

He did say he hoped to discuss with Johnson how to improve the panel’s operations. One continued challenge for members is the loss of jurisdiction once a lawmaker resigns from Congress, which has historically meant the committee stops its investigation and does not release a report of its findings. Guest proposed a new policy where a report could be made public upon a lawmaker’s resignation, meaning bad actors could not always leave office in order to hide from revelations about their misdeeds.

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of California, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said the committee could better handle cases of sexual misconduct and has spoken to Democratic leadership about modernizing the panel.

“I think on sexual harassment, [the] thing that occurs to me is that there should be one place to go that’s clear to report, that has enough staff, and they’re been very well trained in the subject area, so that people feel like there’s a place they can go and be safe, protected,” he said. “And then there’s a due process that responds in a way that is deliberative, but under the urgency of circumstances.”

This is an area where the Ethics Committee has, in recent weeks, found itself struggling to respond to public pressure. When the House was poised in March to vote on a measure brought by Mace that would have compelled the committee to make information on sexual harassment claims public, Guest and DeSaulnier said in a statement it would have a chilling effect for victims. The resolution was ultimately tabled.

On Monday, the panel released a statement reaffirming its commitment to taking allegations of sexual misconduct seriously — and a list of publicly disclosed sexual misconduct investigations dating back to 1976. Many of those cases were closed without resolution because the member under scrutiny resigned from office before the committee could conclude the case.

One lawmaker who has served on the Ethics Committee, who requested anonymity to describe the panel’s private operations, argued that disclosure of sexual misconduct cases can harm potential victims who may not want their cases brought before the panel in the first place.

This explanation is largely falling on deaf ears from members who want more transparency and accountability, though, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) calling the Monday release of previously disclosed sexual misconduct allegations against House members an inadequate “cleanup job.”

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a member of the Ethics Committee and a former federal prosecutor, suggested that improving the panel’s internal systems for handling sexual harassment claims might be a lost cause.

“I think the ugly truth is there’s no process that handles this well that I’ve seen, whether it’s state courts, federal courts, internal corporate investigations, Congress or the Senate,” he said.