(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Following the recent ballot referendum by Virginia Democrats to gerrymander four Republican-held seats by running them through population-dense Northern Virginia, some want deep-blue Arlington and Alexandria to be returned to Washington, D.C.
An organization called the American Capitol Project was leading the charge to “Make D.C. square again.” It argues that an 1846 “retrocession” allowing Virginia to annex the portion of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River was unconstitutional.
It notes on its website that at the time of the transfer, residents in Alexandria resoundingly voted against the proposal to transfer the territory to Virginia.
Thus, the decision to do so was in direct violation of statutory language saying that it “should not be in force until after the assent of the people of said county and town should be given thereto… and that if a majority of the votes cast should be in favor of accepting its provisions, the act should in that case (and not otherwise) be in full force.”
The group found a powerful ally in Rep. Richard McCormick, R-Ga., who introduced a bill in the U.S. House on Wednesday to return the affected portions to D.C.
DC Bureaucrats hijacked Virginia… but we will restore it.
Arlington and Alexandria were always meant to be a part of DC.
That’s why I introduced the Make DC Square Again Act, because it’s a simple concept: DC = 🟥 pic.twitter.com/lPWcUoQ6Yg
— Congressman Rich McCormick, MBA MD (@RepMcCormick) April 22, 2026
“The Constitution never authorized Congress to carve pieces out of the federal District and hand them back to a state,” McCormick said in a statement.
“Democrats have spent years manipulating maps and boundaries to rig elections,” he added. “The Make DC Square Again Act restores the original ten-mile-square District and ends the artificial advantage Virginia Democrats have recently gained from all the federal bureaucrats moving into Virginia.”
Democrats prevailed in the divisive special election on Tuesday with just under 100,000 votes overall. But a net gain of around 80,000 of those votes came from Arlington and Alexandria, with other D.C.-adjacent counties like Loudoun and Fairfax also adding to the effort to disfranchise rural voters.
Forcing Virginia to cede back the 40-square-mile area would go a long way toward restoring balance in the once-purple state, which has gone deep blue over a roughly 20-year period in which federal-government expansion has fueled much of the growth.
Republicans won Virginia in every single presidential election from 1968 to 2004. Even won it with Bob Dole in 1996. But George W. Bush’s presidency brought certain changes to Northern Virginia that forever tilted it to the left. McCain lost. Romney lost. And Trump lost the…
— Chris (@chriswithans) April 22, 2026
Some social-media users floated the idea that giving Virginia’s blue counties to D.C. could be part of a win–win compromise that would also grant D.C. statehood.
They argued that while it would likely deliver an additional two Democratic senators from the deep-blue district, giving Virginians the opportunity to elect Republican senators would, effectively, prove to be a net gain for the GOP.
I’ve always said this was the answer to DC statehood. Turns out it would be two birds one stone. 2 D senators in DC would also mean 2 R senators in Virginia. Now imagine what it would do to a new VA house map.
They can take Baltimore too now that I think about.
— Tyler Voigt (@TylerJVoigt) April 23, 2026
But unlike returning the blue areas of Virginia to D.C. — thereby restoring the original intent of the founding framers — granting statehood to the district would require a full-fledged constitutional amendment, since it is expressly designated in the Constitution as its own separate territory and not a state.
Such a compromise solution also would offer no guarantee that refugees from D.C. and other Democrat-run states would not continue to flee to Virginia as a result of their own states’ mismanagement, thus turning it blue again.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
