Even before Virginia voters decide on a new congressional map, Democrats are piling in to run for districts proposed under a redistricting plan that is designed to give their party a near sweep of the state’s U.S. House seats.
The latest entrant is Olivia Troye, who was an aide to former Republican Vice President Mike Pence and has become a vocal critic of President Donald Trump. She announced Tuesday that she'll run in Virginia's newly created 7th Congressional District, joining an already crowded field.
Voters will decide April 21 whether to adopt a Democratic-drawn congressional map that could help the party win four more U.S. House seats, a rare and enticing prospect for ambitious Democrats.
“I just feel like we need people that are going to stand up and fight,” Troye said. “And I’m not seeing that right now, across the Democratic and Republican parties."
The proposed district where Troye wants to run was designed to be an easy general election win for Democrats, taking in territory that is now part of six different districts.
About a half-dozen Democrats have announced plans to run in the district if voters approve the new boundaries. They include Dorothy McAuliffe, Virginia's former first lady, and former federal prosecutor J.P. Cooney, who served as a deputy to special counsel Jack Smith and was fired by Trump.
The sprawling district would have a population center in the heavily Democratic northern Virginia suburbs of Washington and would stretch deep into rural areas that favor Republicans.
Crowded primaries also are shaping up in some of the other newly formed districts, though the 7th District has an unusually deep stable of prominent candidates.
Virginia is the latest state to push a partisan redistricting plan beforethe 2026 midterms, when Democrats are looking to gain the House majority and the power it would give them to stymie Trump’s agenda.
Virginia's map aims to give Democrats the edge in 10 of the state's 11 U.S. House districts, replacing the current map that elected a congressional delegation with six Democrats and five Republicans.
Trump instigated a redistricting arms race last year when he pressed Texas Republicans to adopt new boundaries aimed at giving Republicans as many as five new House seats there. California voters responded with a plan favoring Democrats. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted Republican-friendly maps.
Democrats in Maryland this week rejected a plan to adopt a map favoring their party, while Florida Republicans are pressing ahead with their own redistricting plan.
Voters walk outside the Fairfax County Government Center during early voting for the Virginia redistricting referendum, Friday, April 3, 2026, in Fairfax, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Diplomats worked through back channels Tuesday to arrange a new round of talks between the United States and Iran after Washington enacted its blockade of Iranian ports, while Tehran threatened to strike targets across the war-weary region.
U.S. President Donald Trump said a second round of talks could happen "over the next two days," telling the New York Post the negotiations could be held again in the capital of Pakistan.
An initial round of talks aimed at permanently ending the conflict failed to produce an agreement last weekend. The White House said Iran’s nuclear ambitions were a central sticking point.
Though the ceasefire appeared to hold, the showdown over the Strait of Hormuz risked reigniting hostilities and deepening the regional war's economic fallout.
Meanwhile in Washington, direct talks between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the U.S. were set to begin, the first such negotiations in decades.
Pakistan has proposed hosting a second round of US-Iran talks. Two U.S. officials said Monday that discussions were still underway about the negotiations.
A diplomat from one of the mediating countries said that Tehran and Washington had agreed to the talks. The U.S. officials and the diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations.
The location, timing and composition of the delegations had not been decided, although Islamabad and Geneva are being considered as host cities, they said.
The war, now in its seventh week, has jolted markets and rattled the global economy as shipping has been cut off and airstrikes have torn through military and civilian infrastructure across the region.
The fighting has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,000 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Thirteen U.S. service members have also been killed.
The blockade is intended to pressure Iran, which has exported millions of barrels of oil, mostly to Asia, since the war began. Much of it has likely been carried by so-called dark transits that evade sanctions and oversight, providing cash flow that’s been vital to keeping Iran running.
Both the nature of enforcement and the extent to which ships will comply remained unclear during the first full day of the blockade Tuesday. Tankers approaching the strait Monday turned around shortly after it took effect, though one reversed course again and transited the waterway.
The tanker Rich Starry had been waiting off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, according to shipping data firm Lloyd’s List, which cited data from the energy cargo-tracking firm Vortexa. It was not immediately clear whether the tanker had earlier docked in Iran. Yet it was listed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control as linked to Iranian shipping.
Lloyd’s List, citing ship registry and tracking data, reported that the vessel is owned by a Chinese shipping company and ultimately bound for China.
U.S. Central Command said no ships made it past the blockade in the first 24 hours, while six merchant vessels complied with direction from U.S. forces to turn around and re-enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Chinese tankers will not be allowed passage through the strait. "So they're not going to be able to get their oil,” he told reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of IMF-World Bank meetings.
Since the start of the war, Iran has curtailed maritime traffic, with most commercial vessels avoiding the waterway.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait, through which a fifth of global oil transits in peacetime, has sent oil prices skyrocketing, pushing up the cost of gasoline, food and other basic goods far beyond the Middle East.
Trump said Monday that Iran's control of the strait amounted to blackmail and extortion as the U.S. blockade took effect. He said in a social media post that Iran’s navy had been "completely obliterated,” but it still had “fast attack ships.”
He warned that “if any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED."
Iran threatened to retaliate against Persian Gulf ports if attacked.
“If you fight, we will fight," Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in a statement addressed to Trump.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-chair a conference Friday for nations willing to deploy warships to escort oil tankers and container ships through the strait. The deployment will happen “when security conditions allow,” Macron’s office said Tuesday.
The talks in Washington between Israel and Lebanon were expected to be preliminary, focused on setting parameters rather than resolving core issues.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is facilitating the talks, downplayed expectations for any immediate agreement. He called the talks a “historic opportunity” but said the process was “working against decades of history and complexities” that will not be quickly resolved.
After more than a year of near-daily strikes in southern Lebanon, Israel escalated its offensive in the early days of the Iran war following Hezbollah launching rockets into Israel. The fighting has carved a path of destruction from agricultural towns near the border to Beirut, killing more than 2,100 people and displacing in excess of 1 million others, according to Lebanese authorities.
After the ceasefire in Iran, Israel pressed ahead with its air and ground campaign, insisting that the truce does not apply to fighting in Lebanon. It has, however, halted strikes in the country’s capital since April 8, after a deadly bombardment that hit several crowded commercial and residential areas in central Beirut and killed more than 350 people in one day.
The deaths sparked an international outcry and threats by Iran that it would end the ceasefire.
Just as negotiations were getting under way in Washington, Hezbollah appeared to step up fire into northern Israel and against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, claiming 26 attacks.
Fighting has intensified in and around the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil. The Israeli military said Tuesday that it killed three Hezbollah militants after they fired on troops, wounding 10.
Lebanese officials have pushed for a ceasefire. Israel has framed the negotiations around Hezbollah’s disarmament and a potential peace deal, without publicly committing to halting hostilities or withdrawing its forces.
Israel wants Lebanon’s government to assume responsibility for disarming Hezbollah, much as was envisaged in a November 2024 ceasefire. But the militant group has survived efforts to curb its strength for decades and said on Monday that it will not abide by any agreements that may result from the talks.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Tuesday floated the idea of cooperation with the Lebanese government to dismantle Hezbollah.
Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee, Fatima Hussein, Collin Binkley and Konstantin Toporin in Washington, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo, Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem and Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Damage is visible on a residential building that, according to Iranian authorities, was hit by a strike on March 4 during the U.S.-Israeli military campaign, in southeastern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
FILE - Oil tankers and cargo ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri,File)
Ahlam Badawi, 51, left, mother of Hassan Ali Badawi, 31, a paramedic of the Lebanese Red Cross killed in a Israeli strike, cries during his funeral in Choueifat, Lebanon, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A man flashes a victory sign as he carries an Iranian flag in front of an anti-U.S. billboard depicting the American aircrafts into the Iranian armed forces fishing net with signs that read in Farsi: "The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, The entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground," at the Eqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution Square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman wears a badge with a portrait of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28, during a campaign in support of the government at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, Square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A man drives his motorbike with a poster on its windshield depicting Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, top, and his father, the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
President Donald Trump speaks outside the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
