Elaine Luria, January 6 panel member seeking political comeback, says ‘the wind is on our back’ as Democrats try to flip House

Elaine Luria – once a member of the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol – says she is confident that “the wind is on our back” as she seeks a House comeback and her fellow Democrats aim to retake the chamber’s majority in the fall’s midterm elections.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the military veteran attributed that confidence to “grave concern” in and beyond her Virginia district with how Donald Trump’s second presidential administration began with implementing brutal cuts to the federal government. Among a host of other decisions, she noted that Trump went on to start war in Iran, which has sent gasoline prices soaring – with the cost of other goods or services expected to increase too.

“All indicators are that the majority of people in the country do not see the president favorably,” Luria said, a remark that came shortly before NBC News on Sunday published a poll finding that a lowly 37% of more than 32,000 US adults approved of Trump’s performance in the Oval Office.

She said she is sure that not only gives her an opening against her Republican successor Jennifer Kiggans, a fellow military veteran whom Luria called “a rubber stamp” vote for Trump since he returned to the Oval Office in 2025. She believes that is also the case for other Democratic candidates trying to flip or retain House seats in the midterms, which historically tend to disfavor the incumbent president.

Of the many voices weighing in on Democratic prospects of at least stymying Trump’s grip on federal power, Luria’s stands out in large part because of her already having taken a high-stakes stand against Trump as well as the district where she is running.

Virginia’s second congressional district in recent history has changed hands between parties, making it widely seen as one of the most competitive in the November midterms. It is also thought to be one of a handful to determine whether or not the House – where the president’s party has a minimal numerical advantage – can be any kind of impediment to Trump for the remainder of his second term.

Luria, 50, landed the seat in 2018 during the midterms of Trump’s first presidency. She won re-election two years later as her Democratic colleague Joe Biden took the White House from the Republican incumbent.

But then she lost her seat to Kiggans during the 2022 midterms. And she sat a cycle out as Kiggans won re-election when Trump defeated Kamala Harris – then the vice-president – to win a second turn as commander-in-chief, along with majorities for his party in the House and the Senate.

Looking back on that sequence, Luria said she always realized it was possible that enough voters could effectively punish her for her work on the committee investigating Trump as well as his supporters who attacked the Capitol in a desperate attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Many across the US are bound to still recall how she went ahead anyway and presented the Capitol attack committee’s findings – shortly before she became one of four people from the nine-member group who were either voted out of or retired from Congress in the second half of Biden’s presidency.

Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Elaine Luria listen during a panel for the January 6 House committee in Washington DC on 21 July 2022. Photograph: Lamkey Rod/CNP/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock

Luria and her committee members received pre-emptive pardons from Biden during the waning moments of his presidency, ostensibly meant to protect them from the kind of retaliatory prosecutions the Trump administration has pursued against those he perceives to be political enemies – for instance New York attorney general Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey.

She also watched as Trump initiated his second presidency with mass clemency – including unconditional pardons – for 1,500 people who participated in the Capitol attack that she helped investigate.

Some Capitol attackers have sought political office. And Trump’s justice department more recently moved to dismiss the January 6-related seditious conspiracy convictions of some of Trump’s most extreme supporters: Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members who were successfully prosecuted during Biden’s presidency.

Despite those rebukes, Luria said it was simply right to try holding Trump and his allies accountable. Now, the political winds that momentarily turned against her have shifted again in a way that she is fairly certain could be more favorable.

In a field with at least a half-dozen other announced candidates for a Democratic primary on 4 August, Luria has secured various key party endorsements in Virginia, among them from governor Abigail Spanberger as well as US senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. She raised more than $1.75m in the first quarter of 2026, outraising Kiggans – running for a third consecutive House term – by more than $700,000, despite the National Republican Congressional Committee criticizing Luria as an “out-of-touch liberal” who herself was a rubber stamp for Biden.

Luria’s campaign reported more than $2.3m cash on hand, with a private fundraiser scheduled for Monday evening in New Orleans, a Democratic stronghold.

On Tuesday, Virginia voters could also adopt new congressional maps, potentially allowing Democrats to win all but one seat in the state’s 11-member House delegation during November’s midterms.

The outcome of that vote – one front in a multi-state redistricting battle that Trump started last year in hopes of maintaining Republican control of Congress – could be a boost to Luria’s comeback bid. A campaign video in which Kiggans said she voted against Virginia’s redistricting, calling it a “gerrymandering power grab”, seemingly drives that point home.

Whatever the case, when asked to summarize her pitch to voters in her district, Luria first discussed addressing the cuts to the federal government – including the Department of Veterans Affairs – and curbing the presidential abilities to which Trump resorted to unilaterally wage deadly war in Iran. She linked those priorities to the concentration of military families in her district.

Asked about her political support for Israel, who is warring with Iran alongside the US, Luria said she realized the issue was a “divisive” one. She said that she does not favor “abandoning … our strongest ally … in the Middle East” as certain wings of both major US political parties would like – but that it was vital to balance “the appropriate support necessary for their defense and also how that ties into our own national [security]”.

Either way, this much she made clear, referring to herself along with other Democratic incumbents and hopefuls.

“I think that we’re going to have the resources, the momentum and the support from the voters to flip [control of] the House,” she said. “It’s important to all of us … to get a check on this administration and set the country back on a better course.”