After a narrow loss in Virginia, Republicans are pointing fingers as President Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering fight slips into a stalemate.

Multiple Republicans say the party should’ve spent much more, much earlier to have a better shot at blocking Democrats’ Virginia map, which could give the party as many as four more House seats. And pressure is now growing on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make up for Democrats’ gains with a GOP-led redistricting effort in his state, as soon as next week.

“You’d be hard pressed to find a single Republican tonight who doesn’t think the GOP should’ve done more in Virginia. It actually hurts more that it was so close,” said a GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly, like others in this article.

There are mounting signs that Trump and the GOP have used valuable time and political capital on an arduous tit-for-tat that is so far looking like it will be close to a draw. Even if Republicans squeeze out gains in a new Florida map, their total gains are likely to be modest at best.

“I just don’t think that Republicans looked at the map and said, ‘Okay, what’s the worst case scenario, what could happen if all the Democrat-controlled legislators rebel against this?’” said one Virginia Republican. “We’re seeing a thing that felt really good at the moment erase gains that we fought for elsewhere.”

Tuesday’s results in Virginia, combined with gains in California and a new court-drawn seat in Utah, have effectively erased the advantage Republicans built off new maps in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri. It’s a stark reversal nearly nine months after Trump first urged Republicans in the Lone Star State to redraw maps, upending the midterm battlefield.

“Just so you get the truth and not the partisan spin here, Republicans came up with the idea of the mid-decade redistricting fight and started in Texas,” Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host and an influential voice with evangelical voters central to the MAGA base, wrote on X after the amendment passed in Virginia.

“Now, as drawn, the Democrats have an advantage from the redistricting fight,” he said.

The RNC and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson is holding out hope that the state’s Supreme Court, which reserved the right to weigh in on the new map after the election, voids Democrats’ effort.

“This close margin reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn’t be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander,” Hudson said in a statement. “That’s exactly why the courts, who have already ruled twice to block this egregious power grab, should uphold Virginia law.”

Still, several Virginia Republicans said their party could have done more to prevent Democrats from edging out a victory Tuesday. Democrats outspent Republicans by a roughly three-to-one margin, putting Republicans at a disadvantage on the airwaves until the late stages of the race. Virginians for Fair Elections — which led the “yes” effort — raised $64 million, according to Virginia Department of Elections data, boosted by nearly $38 million in support from House Majority Forward, a political nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership.

Even though Republicans have far more money stacked up in outside groups — including $297 million brought in by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. since the start of last year alone — they ultimately never matched Democrats’ investment.

“If they had spent some money, they could have won tonight and someone’s got to own that and explain why that decision was made,” said a second Virginia-based GOP strategist.

Some Republicans turned their ire to the Indiana Legislature, where GOP lawmakers rejected the White House’s push to draw a new map that would give them two additional red-leaning seats. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former campaign co-manager and a longtime Virginia-based GOP strategist, shared a social media post on Tuesday calling out Republicans in Indiana for not being more aggressive.

It’s now too late for the state to redraw its lines, and Trump allies have spent time and millions of dollars to defeat the GOP legislators who opposed the effort.

With most states off the table, Republicans are now looking to DeSantis as one of their last and best chances to win back the upper hand ahead of November. The Florida governor delayed a special session to take up redistricting in the state until after Virginia’s election, and he has yet to release a new map proposal.

Former Trump White House spokesperson Harrison Fields urged Republicans in Florida to respond to the Virginia outcome with an aggressive gerrymander.

“To my friends in Tallahassee: in a state that is ruby red, it’s time to respond to what we saw tonight in Virginia with a redistricting plan that reflects Florida’s true partisan lean — and adds 3–4 GOP seats to our supermajority,” Fields said in a social media post. “Virginia is a purple state being drawn as deep blue. Florida should draw a map that’s even redder — and get it passed ASAP.”

Not everyone is on board with escalating the redistricting arms race. Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican-turned-independent who was targeted by California Democrats’ gerrymander, said the result was further proof that the redistricting war never should have been started.

“It’s very unfortunate that it’s happened in Texas. I think it’s very unfortunate that it happened in California and Virginia and everywhere else where it’s happened,” Kiley told Blue Light News after the Virginia race was called Tuesday evening. “Now that this whole thing has just gotten completely out of hand, there have been no winners, and it’s created such instability, maybe this is the time that we can come together and say, ‘Alright, enough is enough.’”

Yet for all the recriminations over Republicans losing ground in the president’s redistricting campaign, one person escaped largely unscathed: Trump himself.

The president mostly stayed on the sidelines until he hosted a tele-rally alongside Speaker Mike Johnson to urge people to vote “no” in the race’s final hours.

Some Republicans in the state were glad he stayed away, given his flagging national standing, particularly in a light blue state. Thirty-three percent of adults approve of Trump’s job performance, according to an AP-NORC poll released Tuesday.

“If I was the Democrats, I’d want Trump on the stump every day,” Virginia-based Republican strategist Brian Kirwin said.

Blake Jones contributed to this report. 

Virginia voters on Tuesday approved Democrats’ effort to gerrymander the state, giving the party an edge in its bid to reclaim the House in November.

The new map would give Democrats the chance to flip four seats currently held by Republicans. Its adoption could put Democrats slightly ahead in the national mid-decade gerrymandering wars — a result few thought possible when President Donald Trump picked the fight by pushing Texas Republicans to redraw their map last summer.

The result is a major win for Democrats’ hopes of retaking Congress, and showed their ability to mobilize voters distrustful of partisan redistricting and push back against Trump in the Democratic-leaning state. It’s also a victory for Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger in her first national test as governor, after she faced pressure to take a more active role in the campaign’s final stretch.

Virginia’s contest saw an explosion of outside spending and the involvement of national heavyweights like former President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as both sides raced to convince people to vote during an off-cycle April election. Even Trump, who largely stayed on the sidelines of the battle, joined an eleventh-hour tele-rally on Monday to urge voters to reject the redistricting ballot measure.

“This is really a country election. The whole country is watching,” the president said.

Democrats entered the final stretch of voting cautiously optimistic despite tight polling numbers, buoyed by their five-seat gain in California last November and an unexpected new seat in Utah drawn by the courts. Those seats, and the new Virginia map, effectively wipes out the gains Republicans made in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri.

Still, one major threat still looms over Virginia’s map: The state’s Supreme Court could nullify the redistricting effort, a move that would effectively void the election results.

And this cycle’s gerrymandering fight isn’t over yet. Florida GOP lawmakers could act as soon as next week to unveil a new map that could offset Democrats’ new advantage.

Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida was already dealing with multiple, overlapping scandals when a judge issued a restraining order against the congressman last fall after one of his ex-girlfriends accused him of threatening and harassing her. Soon after, Mills found that even some of his allies were keeping him at arm’s length.

In December, Rep. Byron Donalds, a fellow Florida Republican, conceded“The allegations against Cory, to me, are very troubling. I’m concerned about him. I hope he gets his stuff worked out and cleaned up, but it has to go through ethics [the Ethics Committee]. And he has to, you know, basically do that hard work to clear his name, if it can be cleared.”

Donalds, a leading gubernatorial candidate in Florida, had previously suggested he saw Mills as a possible running mate, making the comments that much more potent.

It didn’t do Mills any favors when The Washington Post published a new report a few days ago highlighting body camera footage that showed police officers in Washington, D.C., who were prepared to arrest the GOP congressman after a woman accused him of assault last year, before a lieutenant ultimately ordered them not to when she changed her account. (Mills refused to comment, except to say that the woman’s initial claim was “patently false.”)

Two days after the Post’s report reached the public, one of Mills’ Republican colleagues announced an effort to kick the congressman out of office. NBC News reported:

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a resolution Monday to expel Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., from Congress over accusations that include sexual misconduct.

Mills is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in connection with allegations of ‘sexual misconduct and/or dating violence’ and campaign finance violations. He has denied any wrongdoing.

“The swamp has protected Cory Mills for far too long and we are done letting it slide,” Mace said in a statement. “We tried to censure him and strip him from his committee assignments. Both parties blocked it, but we are not backing down.”

By way of social media, the Floridian expressed confidence that he’d prevail if Mace’s resolution reached the floor, encouraging the South Carolinian to “call the vote forward.”

Time will tell whether the expulsion vote actually happens, but in the meantime, after NOTUS reported that Mills intends to respond with an expulsion resolution of his own targeting Mace, the congresswoman wrote online“Cory Mills lied about his military service, has been accused of beating women, has a restraining order against him, and has allegedly been stuffing his own pockets with federal contracts while sitting in Congress. As a survivor, I will always stand up and right the wrongs of others. He is only coming after me because he knows he’s next.”

It’s not often that Americans see members of Congress launch dueling efforts to kick each other out of office, but this is proving to be an unusually awful term.

Indeed, amid growing GOP anxieties about the upcoming midterm elections, there’s fresh evidence that the House Republican conference is both divided and unraveling.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”