Tag: virginia

Virginia Governor Gets Bad News on Background Check Bill

Since the Virginia General Assembly approved a revised version of the bill last week, there’s been a whole lot of confusion about Virginia’s HB 1525, which raises the age to purchase handguns from 18 to 21 and requires the Virginia State Police to resume conducting background checks on private sales. Governor Abigail Spanberger’s amended version contained language that declared the act an emergency, which would allow it to take effect immediately, but the legislature did not approve the changes with a 4/5ths vote, which is supposedly what’s required in order for that “emergency” provision to be adopted. 

The Virginia legislative website lists the effective date for HB 1525 as July 1, but the Virginia State Police put out a notice on Tuesday that declared the law is already in effect. That was the good news for Spanberger. 

The bad news? The VSP won’t be resuming background checks on private sales of firearms anytime soon… at least not without a court order. 

Gun Owners of America and VCDL had threatened to seek contempt charges against the head of the VSP if they abided by Spanberger’s edict, and it looks like the VSP didn’t see that as an idle threat. 

Keep in mind that there are three parts to HB 1525; a ban on those under 18 from possessing handguns and “assault firearms” except under limited circumstances, the ban on handgun and “assault firearm” sales to adults under the age of 21, and the edict to the VSP to start enforcing the enjoined universal background check law. The only portion of the law that the state police say will not be enforced is the section of law regarding background checks on private sales of firearms, and as far as the agency is concerned it’s now against the law for a 20-year-old to purchase an AR-15 in Virginia, even through a private sale. 

Of course, as of July 1 it will be illegal for any adult over the age of 21 to purchase an AR-15 too. The sale ban wasn’t the primary motivation for HB 1525. It was the restoration of the state’s universal background check law, and the VSP just said that isn’t happening until a judge tells the agency it can resume enforcement. 

So what will that take? The case cited by VSP has concluded, with then-Attorney General Jason Miyares declining to appeal the decision. Current AG Jay Jones attempted to intervene before he took office, but the Virginia Court of Appeals shut down that effort fairly quickly. 

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REPORT: Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger Considering a New Tax on GYM MEMBERSHIPS

Shortly after winning the Virginia governor race by running on a campaign about affordability, it was widely reported that Virginia Democrats were gearing up to create a slew of new taxes for their constituents.

Now it is being reported that Spanberger is considering a new tax on gym memberships and possibly on streaming networks as well. Wehere does it end and how is any of this considered part of affordability?

More importantly, why is cutting the size of the state government not even a consideration?

The Daily Mail reports:

Virginia’s new Democrat governor teases possible tax on GYM MEMBERSHIPS and streaming services

Virginia’s new governor has teased that she may sign a new tax on gym memberships and streaming services if the bills ever reach her desk.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger refused to give a straight answer when asked about the so-called liberal wish list of taxation opportunities that Democrats are attempting to pass in her state.

Spanberger, a former intelligence officer who became governor in January, has made clear she is looking for unorthodox ways to create new revenue streams in Virginia.

New bills were introduced in the Virginia state legislature that proposed expanding taxes to include storage facilities, counseling, dry cleaning, vehicle repair, website design, data storage and digital subscription storage.

A tax on retail sales of services was also floated as an idea under bill HB978 – which would include fitness memberships and athletic club services.

The controversial tax bills never got through the General Assembly before the session’s end on March 14, meaning that it never reached Spanberger’s desk – but that may change in the future.

It’s remarkable how quickly Spanberger and her Democrat cohorts moved to create new taxes.

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Small-Town Virginia Mayor Arrested for Showing Up Drunk to Train Derailment

A small-town Virginia mayor was arrested this week after he allegedly showed up intoxicated at the scene of a train derailment.

The derailment and arrest happened this past Tuesday near the West Virginia border, where emergency crews were responding to a Norfolk Southern derailment.

According to WSLS-TV, Rich Creek Mayor Paul Morrison was taken into custody at the scene.

Jail records showed the 57-year-old was arrested by deputies from the Giles County Sheriff’s Office on a public intoxication charge.

Authorities have not released further details about what led directly to the arrest.

Morrison was later released on his own recognizance.

According to the New York Post, Morrison was cuffed and booked after allegedly arriving inebriated at the derailment scene.

The derailment itself involved a train that spilled soybean oil into the Bluestone River.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said the oil was not hazardous.

Morrison was elected mayor this past November through a write-in campaign.

He won 77 out of 106 votes cast in the town of roughly 700 residents, according to WSLS.

Morrison issued an apology for the arrest on Thursday.

“To my Family, the First Responders, the Town’s Employees, Town Council and the residents of Rich Creek, I would like to offer apologies for my state and any actions on 04/28 at the railroad incident,” the mayor said.

He added that he regretted “any inconvenience as well as embarrassment this may have caused.”

“I am truly sorry to have let you down and can assure you that nothing like this will happen again,” Morrison said.

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How Interstate Licensing Agreements Became Shadow Governments Policing Your Job

This month, Virginia became the 18th state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This provoked an agitated response because, if the agreement ever goes live, it will deliver all the state’s Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide, rather than the person Virginia voters selected.

With a war to cover, the news cycle moved on. While the country breezes past the question of whether states can compact away the Electoral College, the same loophole is being used to build compacts arguably more invasive.

A network of professional licensing agreements that would govern not just how Americans vote, but how they work, what they’re taught, and what ideological commitments they must demonstrate to keep their careers. In states where professional compacts have been enacted, there’s no need to ask for further consent.

The Constitution’s framers must have eyed compacts with suspicion, because they limited state authority to enter such agreements without congressional approval unless they were being actively invaded. Looking at the NPVIC, their concerns were justified. The Supreme Court relaxed those restrictions to facilitate states solving shared problems, such as coordinating water supplies or managing forest fires. But the risks remain.

The NPVIC isn’t an agreement to solve a shared problem. It is a mechanism for accomplishing, via compact, what Article V reserves for the amendment process. And professional licensing compacts are exploiting that same loophole to achieve a quiet revolution in governance.

Private Rules with the Force of Law

Professional licensure compacts achieve the worst of their outcomes by distributing rulemaking authority to private industry bodies through required exams or accreditation. This is how privately crafted codes of ethics or educational standards now bind practitioners on a national level with the force of law. Should one of these private bodies require professionals to understand the pervasive impact of white supremacy, or affirm gender identity, that sticks. 

There is no pathway to adjust these compacts through elections or legal accountability. This is rule without consent, delivered through one’s licensed career.

The details of how these compacts function are a significant part of the problem. The American social contract is based on consent, but these compacts destroy it on three levels.

First, they’re run by unelected industry insiders. Second, they hand rulemaking to professional associations and private bodies. Third, they give those private bodies’ codes and standards the weight of law. The result is a parallel government structure that sidesteps the Constitution to govern practitioner behavior.

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ICE Nabs Illegal Alien Pedophile In Virginia; Sanctuary Officials Ignored Detainer

ICE has arrested an illegal alien child sex predator in Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia. Authorities there tried to protect him by declining an ICE detainer last year and releasing him back into the community.

Of course they did.

The suspect, Roni Mendez-Escobar, a Guatemalan national, faced charges including multiple felony counts of possession of obscene material and child pornography with intent to distribute.

Fairfax County’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement allowed him to remain free despite the detainer – exactly the outcome sanctuary policies are designed to produce.

This isn’t an isolated failure. It’s the predictable result of Virginia Democrats turning the state into a magnet for criminal illegal aliens while American families bear the cost. Spanberger ran as a “moderate,” yet her administration’s moves to limit cooperation with ICE have repeatedly put Virginia children and residents at risk.

Just weeks ago, ICE urged Spanberger not to release another criminal illegal alien from Guatemala, Misael Lopez Gomez, who allegedly bludgeoned his own three-month-old daughter to death with blunt force trauma in Fairfax.

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VA Gerrymander Language Is So Dishonest, Dems Refuse To Defend It In Court

Attorney General Jay Jones, D-Va., attempted to defend the commonwealth’s redistricting ballot initiative in an appeal to the state Supreme Court, while doing his best to dance around the amendment’s misleading language.

In a spring special election Democrat legislators presented Virginians with a constitutional referendum to gerrymander the state’s 11 U.S. House districts, shifting the balance of power in the delegation from six Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats and one Republican. Democrats sold their proposal using the following language: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” (Emphasis added.)

Virginia voters voted in favor of gerrymandering, based on that language.

A blanket ruling from the circuit court in Tazewell County nullified the vote and blocked the referendum from being officially certified the day after the redistricting measure passed. The court noted that the language Democrats used on the ballot was “flagrantly misleading” and did not “accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly.”

Jones appealed to the state Supreme Court, but in his motion to stay, he made no effort to address the central language question on the ballot — the phrase “restore fairness in the upcoming election.”

“It asks voters whether to amend the Constitution to allow the General Assembly to ‘temporarily adopt new congressional districts,’ while ‘ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census,’” Jones’ motion states.

As Republican state Del. Wren Williams noted, Jones “quotes the words before that line. He quotes the words after it. But he selectively skips the eight words that are the entire reason we are in court to begin with.”

“If the language were defensible, he would have defended it. A lawyer who believes in his ballot question quotes his ballot question. What is there to hide from those reading your Motion? Or may be reading the ballot question for the first time,” Williams added.

Jones only makes reference to the “fairness” language once, where he brushes it off as “rhetorical choices,” stating that “reasonable observers may disagree about whether the accompanying reference to ‘fairness’ reflects persuasive framing.” “Rhetorical choices,” however, are a means by which people understand language and ideas, and “rhetorical choices” are the very things that can make something misleading or clear.

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Trans substitute teacher, 19, allegedly plotted chilling ‘murder spree’ at a Virginia school

A Virginia transgender substitute teacher was arrested for allegedly plotting a chilling “murder spree” at a local school — and bragging online about having a disturbing hit list.

Hadyn Dollery, 19, was busted on school grounds Monday after posting threatening messages on Discord targeting John Champe High School in Stone Ridge, about 40 miles west of Washington, DC, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and multiple outlets.

Police said a tip on the department’s Safe2Talk app exposed the suspect’s sinister online posts.

The accused would-be attacker allegedly unleashed threats against family and friends on the messaging app, including disturbing talks of a mass killing at the school, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Loudon Times-Mirror.

The warped teen, of Chantilly, also claimed to have a “kill list,’ the complaint said.

Dollery worked as a “non-licensed” substitute teacher for the 2025-26 school year but was later scrubbed from the district’s list after being thrown behind bars, the outlet reported.

The long-haired suspect, seen grinning in their mugshot, was charged with threats of bodily harm and is now being held without bond at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center, cops said.

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Virginia Democrat Says He Understands Rural America Because He Grew Up Watching the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’

A Democrat state senator in Virginia named Lamont Bagby recently said that he understands rural America because he grew up watching TV shows like the Dukes of Hazard and the Waltons.

Does this line of thinking apply to other TV shows? Does watching Law & Order make one qualified to be a cop or a district attorney?

It’s fun to imagine how the liberal media would treat this if it was said by a conservative Republican.

The Daily Caller reported:

Democrat Says He Understands Rural America Because He Watched Classic Shows Like ‘Waltons,’ ‘Dukes Of Hazzard’

Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby claimed Thursday that watching “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “The Andy Griffith Show” and “The Waltons” as a child taught him about rural America.

A judge in Tazewell County, Virginia, declared Virginia’s redistricting referendum that passed with just 51.5% of the vote Tuesday was unconstitutional, citing both procedural violations and ruling that the state’s Democratically-controlled Legislature exceeded its authority. Bagby, who represents parts of Henrico County and the state capital, Richmond, argued during a floor debate on the referendum that he understood rural Virginians because he had watched classic TV shows depicting rural culture.

“And listen, I almost took issue with the other side saying that we don’t understand [rural America],” Bagby said during the floor debate. “But I grew up watching ‘The Waltons,’ I grew up with Opie [the son of a sheriff played by Andy Griffith], I even watched the ‘Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America.”

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Judge Rules Virginia Redistricting Referendum Unconstitutional

A Virginia judge ruled on April 22 that the state’s redistricting referendum approved by voters a day earlier was invalid, nullifying the election results.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said he would immediately file an appeal.

“Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People’s vote,” Jones said in an X post.

Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley entered an injunction blocking certification of the election.

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said the legal fight was just beginning after language used in the ballot question raised a lot of interest among the opposition.

The question voters faced was the following: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

Cuccinelli expects the case to move quickly through the appeals process.

“The ‘yes’ folks probably are going to look back at Tuesday and think that was the easy part because they have so badly violated several constitutional provisions,” Cuccinelli told “The Scott Jennings Show.”

The referendum faces three legal challenges in addition to the one decided on April 22.

“Here’s my prediction, the referendum gets tossed out in May,” Cuccinelli said in an X post.

Three of the lawsuits challenge the referendum on procedural grounds, arguing that Democratic Party lawmakers didn’t follow the law regarding timing requirements and legislative steps when passing the measure to place it on the ballot.

The fourth argument is about how the electoral districts were drawn and challenges the maps on contiguity requirements.

Tens of millions of dollars were spent to pass the redistricting referendum as Democrats across the nation continue their quest to redraw congressional seats in favor of taking back the U.S. House.

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Virginia passes ‘egregiously’ gerrymandered redistricting map favoring Democrats

Virginians voted in favor of Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Democrats’ effort to completely overhaul the commonwealth’s congressional map to favor Democrats, the Associated Press reported Tuesday evening.

The Associated Press called the race in favor of “yes” at 8:50pm eastern time with an estimated 81% of the votes counted. At the time of the call, 50.3% voted in favor of the redistricting effort, while 49.7% voted against.

The AP called “yes” despite the slim margin because the outstanding ballots were in areas breaking hard for “yes.”

While 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans currently represent Virginia in Washington, the new Virginia congressional map will likely give Democrats a 10-1 advantage after the midterms. Democrats will hold this massive advantage despite the fact that Virginia went blue by less than 6% in the 2024 presidential election and voted for Spanberger by 15 points in the 2025 gubernatorial election.

The new congressional map is expected to result in 10 Democrats and one Republican by stretching congressional districts in Northern Virginia and areas of Charlottesville deep into southern and eastern portions of the state that are rural and reliably red.

Even prior to Tuesday night’s election result, voters in Virginia expressed concern with the language on the ballot. The Virginia Supreme Court decided to wait until after the election to hear the case over whether the language was fair. Notably, this is the same court that decided the current map was a fair one to begin with.

A recent poll conducted by Heritage Action found that nearly 50% of voters were confused by the term “restore fairness.”

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