By David Wright, CNN

(CNN) — Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, announced Tuesday that she would run for Congress as a Democrat in Virginia’s proposed new 7th District, pending passage of a sweeping redistricting referendum this month.

Troye publicly broke with the Republican Party in 2020 after serving in political and national security roles, signing onto a letter with more than 130 fellow GOP officials endorsing Joe Biden’s campaign and arguing that “Donald Trump has failed our country.”

In the years since, Troye has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Republican Party under Trump. She was a featured speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

“The evil I saw in that White House was staggering. In 2020, I finally said ‘enough,’” Troye said in a video announcing her congressional bid. “Trump doesn’t scare me. I took him on when it mattered the most, and I’m ready to do it again.”

With the announcement Tuesday, Troye – now officially a Democrat – became the first candidate to declare for the race in the proposed new 7th District. A crowded field of potential contenders is taking shape, including former Virginia first lady Dorothy McAuliffe and several state lawmakers.

First, however, Democrats must prevail in the high-stakes redistricting referendum on April 21 that will determine whether the new 7th District exists at all. It’s the latest front in a nationwide fight over gerrymandering which, if passed, could enable Democrats to gain four seats and take a 10-1 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

Republicans have disparagingly branded the new 7th as the “lobster claw district,” a reference to its contortions aimed at maximizing Democratic vote share.

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The post Olivia Troye, former Pence adviser turned Trump critic, launches Democratic bid for US House from Virginia appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Edward Wu, CNN

(CNN) — Early voting data from Virginia suggests Democrats have an advantage in their push to enact a gerrymander that could net them as many as four US House seats in this fall’s midterms.

Groups backing the redistricting measure in an April 21 special election had long pointed to Saturday, April 11, as a date to watch, when many counties opened additional early voting sites. This included several population-heavy, Democratic-leaning counties in the Washington, DC, suburbs of Northern Virginia.

Next week’s referendum has major stakes for this fall’s midterms given the razor-thin House majority and the national redistricting battle launched at President Donald Trump’s behest last year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned this weekend with several Virginia Republicans whose seats would be sharply redrawn if the referendum succeeds. A day later, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries rallied supporters in Richmond, a sign of how both he and Johnson are aggressively fighting for a handful of seats that could help tip the House majority.

Nearly 63,000 early in-person votes were cast on Saturday, according to data from L2, slightly higher than the equivalent day ahead of last fall’s election in which Democrats swept all three statewide offices.

This year’s vote appeared more Democratic-leaning and more concentrated in Northern Virginia. Turnout in Northern Virginia was about 46% higher than the equivalent date last year, and roughly 57% of the statewide vote was cast in the region, up from 41% last year.

The early vote data overall finds that Saturday ended with partisan turnout across voting methods throughout the state basically unchanged from the equivalent point last year, when Democrat Abigail Spanberger cruised to victory by 15 points in the state’s gubernatorial race.

Partisan turnout is measured by comparing counts of voters who participated in only one party’s primaries over the last five major ones, since Virginia does not have party registration. Both last year and this year, Democratic primary participants had an 8-point lead in turnout early in-person or by mail over Republican primary participants.

There are some geographic differences. Despite the strong turnout in Northern Virginia on Saturday itself, the entirety of the shortfall in early votes relative to this point in 2025 comes from Northern Virginia. While the rest of the state had cast about 5,000 more votes through Saturday than it had in 2025 at this point, Northern Virginia still lags behind its 2025 turnout by about 39,000 votes.

CNN’s analysis found that this difference largely coincided with changes to access in early voting relative to last year.

Early voting access in Northern Virginia for much of the final three weeks before Election Day has been pared down compared with 2025, and it appears to be dampening pre-election turnout in the region. Prince William County, for example, had just one voting location open in the week ahead of April 11, compared with six locations during the same week last year. And Fairfax County, Virginia’s most populous county, expanded from three voting locations to 16 voting locations two days earlier last year than this year.

Northern Virginia voters who missed out on early voting due to access changes could shift to Election Day. But even if that area falls short of last year’s vote totals, opponents of redistricting face an uphill battle.

It would not be enough for the anti-redistricting side to simply outperform Republicans in last year’s election. A considerable improvement would be required to erase the 15-point statewide deficit notched by Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears.

National headwinds for the ‘No’ campaign

The “No” camp

By Donie O’Sullivan, CNN

(CNN) — I have been covering the extremities of the internet and how they affect our real, offline lives for more than a decade now.

I’ve spent countless hours burrowing down online rabbit holes. I spent months on the road trailing a traveling cult. I was even swept up in the crowd in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 – America’s starkest example yet of what happens when the online mob manifests beyond the internet.

Next to all that, a road-trip to California with “Emilycc,” a mild-mannered 28-year-old Twitch streamer, seemed like it would be straightforward and not too concerning.

For more than four years, Emily has streamed almost every waking (and sleeping) moment of her life online.

From George Orwell’s 1984 to Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, people spent decades grimly envisioning a dystopian world where our every waking moment is being watched. Then, in the 21st century, the technology for constant surveillance arrived, and countless people chose to turn the cameras on themselves.

Not many do it to the extent Emily does. I wanted to meet her and figure out why she was doing this. Why take such an extreme step as to broadcast her whole life on the internet? Why was she seemingly voluntarily living what many would consider a nightmare?

After spending two full days with her – which meant two full days on her live stream – what scared me was coming to realize how close I was already was, and how close many of us already are, to reaching Emily’s extremes.

On Route 66

Emily is one of millions of streamers on Twitch, the live-video platform that was bought by Amazon in 2014. According to some analyses, at any one time there are about 100,000 livestreams happening on the platform at any given moment.

But Emily’s stream is different because it never stops.

“Sometimes Emily dreads waking up and clocking into the reality show that is her life,” a Washington Post profile of Emily from last year reads. “It feels wrong to complain about this life, the new American Dream for millions of people who are lonely, young and online.”

Earlier this year my producer colleague Adam Falk heard that Emily was planning on leaving the small apartment in Austin, Texas, that she had streamed from alone for years and heading for Los Angeles.

A new generation of young people is flocking to the city with hopes of finding success not on the famed soundstages of Hollywood movie studios, but in front of webcams at so-called “streamer houses.”

Online influencers, streamers, and personalities chose to live with one another in a home where they are all constantly creating content and appearing on each other’s streams. In the online world of building clout, this kind of cross-promotion can yield more followers and more money. The best-known iteration of such a home was appropriately called “The Hype House.”

Emily was planning on driving from Texas to her new home in Los Angeles, taking in some of the nostalgic spectacle of Route 66 and streaming live all along the way. She kindly obliged when we asked if I could hitch a ride.

I met her halfway through her journey, in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her 2004 Toyota Camry was loaded with her possessions and her more-than-10-year-old cat Bella. With a camera secured to the inside of the windshield, Emily was, as always, streaming live to the world.

Immedi

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — The double-level airplane seat concept is back, this time in what designer Alejandro Núñez Vicente calls the “ultimate, final statement.”

Premiering first as a college project in 2020, then as an early prototype in 2022, over the past several years this dual-level design — called Chaise Longue — has inspired frequent social media frenzy, memes aplenty and fervent discussion everywhere from late-night chat shows to internet comment sections.

But for Núñez Vicente, the double-level airplane seat isn’t “some joke on the internet that started five years ago.” It’s his career — a passion project he remains excited about over half a decade since he first sketched out the idea in his college bedroom.

The Chaise Longue concept envisages removing the airplane’s overhead cabin to allow for two rows of seating, a top and a bottom level, with the bottom level designed to allow passengers to stretch out and enjoy extra legroom.

Prospective travelers have expressed claustrophobia fears (fears echoed by CNN Travel when we tested the design in 2022 and 2023) and eyerolled at the idea the design is a ploy to cram more passengers into the cabin. Núñez Vicente says increasing passenger capacity has never been his objective, but admits it’s a potential draw for airlines. The designer’s always been adamant his aim is to make flying more comfortable.

He’s spent his twenties fine-tuning the concept alongside his life and business partner Clara Service Soto (“It makes us feel kind of old,” 26-year-old Núñez Vicente says of the years that have passed since Chaise Longue first made waves). The couple regularly consult with airline CEOs and aviation insiders, whom they say see real potential in the design, despite internet naysayers.

Now Núñez Vicente has returned to Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, one of the world’s biggest aviation shows, to showcase the latest full-scale mock-up of his design — which he says is the best version of the concept yet.

“This is the ultimate mock-up that we can create at our level of a startup,” Núñez Vicente tells CNN Travel in an exclusive first look at the new mock-up over video call from Hamburg. “This is our best.”

Tackling privacy and space issues

While Núñez Vicente laughs off social media jokes focusing on upper-level travelers passing wind as “banter and fun,” he does scan comments for constructive criticism, and he noted privacy and space-focused concerns were frequent refrains.

With that in mind, the newest version of the concept focuses on improving privacy and increasing seat pitch for lower-level travelers. Chaise Longue’s latest mock-up includes a panel that stretches out behind the seats on the top level, meaning better separation and reduced likelihood of anyone dropping anything on anyone else.

And while previous mock-ups have included a tighter lower level — potentially perfect for travelers who just want to stretch out and sleep, less appealing for anyone else — the new design imagines a much roomier bottom

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Muere en Louisiana otro inmigrante mexicano bajo custodia de ICE. El papa León XIV le responde a Trump. La derrota de Orbán en Hungría muestra cómo el populismo puede quedarse sin camino. Esto es lo que debes saber para comenzar el día. Primero la verdad.

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