As a good citizen, this author was about to send a courtesy copy of today’s article, “Autism in Virginia,” to the Virginia Behavior Analyst Advisory Board, which helps the Board of Medicine regulate licensed behavior analysts.
He found that the Behavior Analyst Advisory Board hadn’t met in a year. It had canceled meetings in October 2025, February 2026, and May 2026. The next one is scheduled for September 28.
He is disappointed but somehow unsurprised by this development. He will get over it.
Dominion Energy Virginia is proposing to delay until March 2027 to bill its customers for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon allowances it must buy starting July 1. When the cost hits, however, it could be $13 a month or $156 per year for a typical residential customer.
The final decision rests with the State Corporation Commission, which will now open a case on the request (the full set of application documents is here.) When the Energy Commission of Virginia meets tomorrow with a RGGI rebate idea on its agenda, now the legislators have a real (and painful) customer cost prediction to chew over.
Dominion filed its application to reinstate what it calls Rider RGGI, which was on customer bills during the three previous years Virginia was part of the 11-state carbon tax, cap and trade compact. When last Dominion customers paid Rider RGGI, it was about $4.40 per month for 1,000 kilowatt-hours. That may now be almost triple.
But the carbon prices set a record in the June 4 auction of $35 per ton, and in its application Dominion assumed prices through 2028 of up to $38 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide. Dominion expects to buy and retire 51 million such carbon credits by the end of 2028. The $7-8 per month in RGGI customer cost that was predicted in that article proved to be wishful thinking.
Autism therapy is the wild west of medical qualifications and spending.
Autism is real, but industry professionals and the non-profits who lobby for limitless autism spending have richly earned widespread skepticism of the industry by not policing their own. They have created a closed loop for eternally increased spending:
The profession describes limitless demand.
Therapy is thus supply-driven, raising practitioners’ reimbursements. (That increases the demand for online college courses that too often result in debt and a failed professional exam.)
The Virginia government buys that story unquestioningly, at least in part because the regulatory system here is utterly broken.
The budget committees of the Virginia General Assembly, whose Health committees designed that regulatory system, allocate new “slots” for kids each year in the Medicaid budget and raise the payment rates in the same session.
There are long waiting lists – see above for limitless demand.
Slot access depends on the severity of the diagnosed need.
As diagnosed by the profession.
That describes the demand as limitless.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was not defineduntil 2013. ASDs are a group of developmental disabilities characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication as well as by restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
This article will discuss autism in Virginia, specifically:
The widely diverging genders of patients and therapists,
The education of Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), the top tier of treatment specialists, and
The exploding spending on treatment.
An autism diagnosis for a child is typically made by a pediatrician, a child psychologist, a child neurologist, or a child and adolescent psychiatrist. The populations of both autism patients and therapy providers have exploded, making Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) the fastest-growing and most troubled program in both Medicaid and private health insurance.
Medicaid spending on core Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) autism services increased by 403% from 2019 to 2024. The number of provider entities delivering these services to Medicaid recipients increased 346%. This suggests that much of the increase in spending is driven by new providers opening their doors.
So autism treatment growth actually is supply-driven, not demand-driven. The Wall Street Journal has been on top of the ugly side of that story. Virginia’s troubles have been discussed in this space and will be again.
Radical activist teacher comes to the rescue of Superintendent Aaron Spence.
by Victoria Manning
A Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) teacher who admits to political activism in her classroom and defying school board policies is now using school resources to lobby Congress.
Jessica Berg is soliciting signatures from her colleagues and others in defense of controversial Superintendent Aaron Spence who has been summoned to testify before Congress about “Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools.”
Berg used her LCPS email account to lobby Congress in support of Spence. She created a letter and is soliciting signatures from LCPS employees and community members in support of so-called “inclusive policies” created under Aaron Spence. A Google Form created by Berg shows that it was “created inside of Loudoun County Public Schools” and the letter itself was created by Berg’s work account.
Gov. Spanberger loves RGGI. Electricity will cost more.
by Steve Haner
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) held its second 2026 carbon allowance auction last week and the bidding cleared at $35 per ton, the group announced Friday. That price was a 40 percent increase over the $25 per ton set for the carbon tax just three months earlier and was 78 percent higher than an allowance had cost a year earlier.
Should that price hold for the September and December 2026 auctions, Virginia will collect more than $400 million in tax revenue before the end of this year. Over the course of a full year, the state is likely to collect $800 million or more from electricity producers using natural gas, coal or oil for fuel. Of course, future auctions could (and likely will) set even higher prices, as the record shows.
A legislative panel, finally getting touchy about RGGI’s impact on customer bills, on Tuesday will discuss whether to give some of that money directly to customers. Dominion Energy Virginia is the largest user of the allowances and is expected to announce soon how much it will ask the State Corporation Commission to increase our bills to cover it (the betting is $7-8 per 1,000 kilowatt hours.)
The $35 per ton was lower than the allowance prices seen in recent weeks on the secondary market, where futures prices for an allowance to emit one ton of carbon dioxide passed $40 and had reached over $50 per ton for a 2026 “vintage” allowance. The futures market has dropped back to levels closer to that June auction result but bears watching. The speculators haven’t lost their money yet.
From Louise Lucas’s Twitter Feed, courtesy of Virginia Political Newsletter
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) has taken a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook. She is resorting to assigning insulting nicknames to those who will not go along with her and trying to negotiate by social media using all capitals in her complaints.
As recently reported by the Virginia Political Newsletter, the budget negotiations seemed to be going well until this morning when Lucas, Gov. Abigail Spanberger, and Del. Luke Torian (D-Prince William), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, met. When Spanberger and Torian pressed Lucas on what she wanted to do with the additional revenue that would be generated by repealing the sales tax exemption on data centers, Lucas got frustrated and left the meeting.
Lucas later released this statement, “Just when I thought Chairman Torian and I were getting close to agreeing on a budget, we had a meeting with Data Center Diva [Spanberger] this morning and she agrees with Amazon Don [Don Scott (D-Portsmouth), Speaker of the House] who doesn’t want to impact the richest corporations in the country.” Later, on social media, she declared, “Amazon Don and Data Center Diva, you are making a MONUMENTAL MISTAKE! Maybe you should ask Glenn Youngkin how that worked out for him!”
At this point, the plan seems to be to report a “skinny budget”, one that will fund just core services, which could prevent a government shutdown on July 1.
Virginians for Safe Communities needs to broaden its outlook.
In a recent article on this blog, the organization pointed out that the number of offenses against persons in Arlington/Falls Church and Fairfax Co/Fairfax City had increased significantly from 2019 to 2025. It linked those increases to the policies of the Commonwealth’s attorneys in those jurisdictions, claiming they had “legalized crime.”
The organization went on to claim that, while crime increased in those Northern Virginia jurisdictions that happen to have Democrat Commonwealth’s attorneys, “it fell everywhere else.” That’s not quite true. As shown in the table below, the number of offenses against persons increased quite significantly in three traditionally conservative, Republican counties. If Commonwealth’s attorneys are to be blamed for increases in crime, the prosecutors in those jurisdictions have some explaining to do.
When former University of Virginia President Jim Ryan recently sat for a friendly interview with Cville Right Now, he sounded delighted to be off the clock. He described mornings spent writing a leadership book; afternoons kite surfing, skiing, golfing, biking and traveling; and he joked, “I’m really good at not working.” The joke lands differently once his sabbatical benefits are understood.
Ryan’s contract explains why he can afford to “not work” so enthusiastically. When he resigned in June 2025 under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice — after multiple civil rights investigations into UVA’s DEI practices — he exercised a contractual option to return to the law faculty at 75% of his presidential salary, or $825,000 a year. As I pointed out in RealClearEducation, that figure is so far beyond what other UVA law professors earn that it likely violates the Internal Revenue Code’s prohibition on private inurement, which bars tax exempt institutions from enriching insiders with unreasonable compensation.
But the sabbatical is even more revealing. Section F.6 of Ryan’s employment agreement states that during his sabbatical he “shall receive his last existing presidential Annual Salary.” That salary was about $1.1 million. The same provision gives him an office, staff support and an annual budget of $50,000 “to be used for research and travel expenses.” In plain terms, UVA is paying Ryan more than a million dollars this year, plus a $50,000 research and travel fund, while he skis, surfs, golfs, travels and writes a trade press book about leadership.
Sabbaticals are supposed to support serious scholarship. Nothing about the book Ryan describes requires a seven-figure salary and a $50,000 research budget — unless he is paying someone else to write it for him, which I doubt. What it does require is a Board of Visitors willing to treat the university’s resources as a cushion for a powerful man’s soft landing.
More details have emerged about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s funding the right-wing extremism it purported to fight. Here’s the updated account, contained in a superseding indictment filed by the Department of Justice, of SPLC Employee-3 who helped organize the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. — JAB
The SPLC Secretly Paid F-37 More Than $300,000 in Donor’s Money
i. F-37 was not involved in an extremist organization before F-37 reached out to the SPLC seeking employment.
ii. While receiving payment by the SPLC, F-37 made multiple racist posts on social media accounts under the supervision of SPLC Employee-3.
iii. In 2017, F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that helped plan the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. SPLC Employee-3 directed F-37 to attend this event in which one woman and two law enforcement officers were tragically killed. F-37 assisted in arranging transportation for others involved in the movement to the event.
iv. The SPLC extensively covered the “Unite the Right” rally on its various media platforms, both at the time of the rally and in the following years. The “Unite the Right” rally led to a massive fundraising windfall for the SPLC with open-source media reporting that the SPLC more than doubled their previous year’s reported revenue from private and corporation donations following the “Unite the Right” rally. The SPLC did not disclose to its donors that it used donors’ money to pay F-37.
The truth slowly emerges about what UVA leaders knew about the Health System scandal.
by The Jefferson Council
A bombshell disclosure in a recent FOIA proceeding reveals that UVA’s Board of Visitors, led by Robert Hardie, quietly retained Williams & Connolly (W&C) as “special counsel to the BOV and the Audit, Compliance, and Risk Committee of the BOV” regarding issues with UVA Health on May 23, 2024 — four months before the September 5th correspondence in which 128 physicians signed a no-confidence letter in UVA Health leadership. You can read the never-previously-disclosed letter of engagement here.
That timing is significant. By May 2024, the Ryan administration had already received years of complaints, resignation letters, and HR filings involving patient safety, retaliation, and leadership culture. On May 6, 2024 — just seventeen days before W&C was retained — at least three faculty members filed formal reports with Human Resources, resulting in hours of subsequent interviews. UVA certainly did not request special counsel because everything was fine.
Yet the Ryan administration publicly insisted that UVA Health was being managed responsibly and was in “the best shape it has ever been in.” When the physicians’ no-confidence letter –- documenting significant issues with UVA –- became public on September 5, President Jim Ryan dismissed it two days later as a “strategy” built on “generalized and anonymous claims,” suggesting that a few faculty meetings were sufficient to address the concerns being raised. He accused the physicians of “besmirching” the reputations of UVA Health leadership and casting an unfair “shadow over the great work of the entire health system.”
I admit it. After decades in the news business I’m jaded.
Bored, too.
Especially with the tedious, fear-inducing fluff pieces that news outlets sprinkle throughout the year as their reporters obediently attend press conferences and act as stenographers for bureaucrats.
You know, the stories with ridiculous “safety precautions” published year after year at Halloween that turn trick or treating into a weird evening of parents hovering around kids and forbidding them to eat at single M&M until Mommy and Daddy can examine their sugary booty. (You do know that there’s never been a verified case of a razor blade in apple, right? Yet this single urban legend is trotted out annually.)
Every July we get the usual warnings about the dangers of backyard fireworks for Independence Day. Apparently, somewhere out there, someone still needs to be told not to look down the business end of a bottle rocket.
Every August we get the same self-evident tips on surviving a heat wave: dress in light-colored clothing, drink water, stay out of the sun.
Yep, somewhere in America there must be idiots who dress in black, march around at noon and refuse to drink water when the temperatures are in triple digits.
And this, being the first week in June, means state officials will issue stern warnings about hurricane season, which technically started on Monday and lasts until November 30, even though we rarely see a major storm before August. Continue reading.
Dodging FOIA bullets a la Matrix. Image credit: Grok
Bob Morris, a Virginia Military Institute alumni activist, has filed suit in York County Circuit Court against VMI alleging the withholding, redacting, and even altering public records. Here follows a Chat GPT summary based upon a media backgrounder provided by The Cadet, a VMI student newspaper with which Morris is closely affiliated. — JAB
Core allegations
The lawsuit alleges that VMI officials and members of its Board of Visitors:
Conducted public business through “reply-all” emails and text-message chains that effectively functioned as secret meetings, in violation of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Withheld, redacted, or failed to produce public records related to controversial governance decisions at VMI.
Failed to produce records from board member Donald Hall, who allegedly described himself as the “principal negotiator” with state officials regarding VMI matters.
Withheld records involving former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, call logs, voicemails, and certain email metadata.
Altered a public-records portal entry to conceal the involvement of VMI’s FOIA officer in creating a records request for an outside journalist.
The Norfolk Police Department added toilet and shower partitions in its women’s locker room after a trans-identified recruit ogled an undressed female officer.
by Jordan Jantz Republished with permission from IWFeatures
Instead of protecting female-only spaces, the Norfolk Police Department in Virginia has spent $57,424.95 to “provide toilet partitions, shower drying area partitions and related finish work at shower area of NPD Women’s Locker Room,” allegedly in order to accommodate trans-identified individuals, according to communications obtained by IW Features.
Previously, the department locker room had only transparent shower curtains, Norfolk Officer Meghan Grabow previously told IW Features. The renovations added dividers and walls to create privacy, but those additions also took up floorspace and divided an already small locker room.
The renovation came after an alleged incident in the Norfolk PD when a transgender-identified male recruit entered the women’s locker room and stared at Grabow when she was undressed, as IW Features previously reported. The department also allegedly demanded that officers address the male recruit as a female and use female pronouns. When officers attempted to gain clarity, the department reportedly retaliated by suspending officer Grabow and firing officer Martin Powers when he stood with female officers.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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