Washington, D.C., and Virginia are again colliding over who gets political representation as lawmakers react to this week’s Virginia redistricting referendum. On Thursday, Republican Rep. Rich McCormick introduced the Make DC Square Again Act, a proposal he said would roll back the 19th-century deal that returned land in the southwest part of the District of Columbia to Virginia, a process often referred to as retrocession.
McCormick framed the bill as correcting what he called a distortion created after retrocession, saying it would “restore the original ten-mile-square District and ends the artificial advantage Virginia Democrats have recently gained from all the federal bureaucrats moving into Virginia,” according to a statement he issued. The measure, he suggested, is tied to the political implications of where people now live and how new lines for the U.S. House may be drawn after Virginia voters approved the redistricting referendum, which supporters say could give Democrats a 10-1 House seat advantage.
Democrats and voting-rights advocates criticized the move as a maneuver aimed at weakening the influence of Democratic voters in the D.C. region. Alicia Yass, advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., said the proposal reflects how Washington can be treated as a tool for political advantage, saying that “Bills like this that mess around with the district just show how important it is for D.C. to have the full benefits and rights of a democracy,” and that D.C. residents are “not fully participating in the democracy of this country because we are not allowed to.”
Critics also said the legislation raises constitutional concerns. Some called on President Donald Trump to issue an executive order declaring the pre-Civil War return of Alexandria and Arlington to Virginia unconstitutional, arguing that such an order could provide a clearer legal basis for challenging the original retrocession arrangement. Former Trump Justice Department chief of staff Chad R. Mizelle wrote in a Fox News opinion article that such an order would be “on better legal footing” than many of President Joe Biden’s orders.
The retrocession question matters now because the affected area includes Alexandria and Arlington County, which contain local jurisdictions described as heavily Democratic. In both places during the 2024 presidential election, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won 77% of the votes cast, while Donald Trump won about 20%, according to the AP reporting in the cluster. Analysts and advocates said that Democratic-leaning voters in the area helped bolster Virginia’s redistricting referendum, and that changing the boundaries could dilute the political impact of those voters by shifting how districts would be drawn in a smaller state footprint.
The proposal is also part of a broader effort to gain leverage in a closely divided U.S. House ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The AP reporting said the measure’s chances in Congress appear limited given that lawmakers in Washington have struggled to pass major legislation. Still, McCormick’s filing is another partisan move in a redistricting fight that now extends beyond state lines into the history and future of the nation’s capital.
The bill’s proponents cite history in arguing that the original retrocession arrangement did not properly comply with what Congress required for returning federal district land. But the cluster noted that whether Congress had the power to cede parts of Virginia back into the federal district is not clear. George Derek Musgrove, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, questioned whether McCormick’s approach fits the retrocession narrative at all, saying it is “really a Virginia voter suppression bill” and that it stems from the outcomes of the Virginia referendum that could benefit Democrats.
The text of the Make DC Square Again Act was not immediately available, according to the cluster. Beyond McCormick’s approach, the AP reporting described other pathways that advocates say could challenge or reverse the retrocession outcome. One group, the American Capital Project, argues the path forward is a presidential executive order declaring the original law void, with the dispute eventually moving to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The cluster said it was unclear who funds or manages the American Capital Project, noting that the group’s website does not list contact information or the names of people or organizations behind it. Democrats, meanwhile, have also supported different ideas about how the federal district could be represented, including statehood efforts: in 2021, the Democrat-led House passed a statehood bill, but it did not advance in the Senate. At the time, some Senate Republicans suggested returning the current district to Maryland as another possible way for voters to gain full representation in Congress.
If McCormick’s effort faces resistance in Congress, the broader legal and political debate may still hinge on how courts and presidents interpret the constitutional and historical basis of retrocession—an issue now tied closely to the redistricting map fights driving momentum into the 2026 midterms.